Despite the rapid growth and modernization of Russian and Chinese nuclear forces, many believe that the United States should not compete but rather minimize its own nuclear capabilities as far as possible. By minimizing our own capabilities and depriving ourselves of any viable option except retaliatory city-busting (so the theory goes), we demonstrate that we have no intention of striking first and thereby eliminate the adversary’s incentive to strike first against us. Furthermore, if the adversary is convinced that any use of nuclear weapons will lead to city-busting (because we leave ourselves with no alternative), he will never risk a nuclear war in the first place and confine himself at worst to conventional war—which we would much prefer. 

Finally, restraint on the part of the United States will eliminate Russia and China’s incentive to increase their own nuclear capabilities, averting a costly arms race and ideally leading to the total abolition of nuclear weapons. This proposition is called minimum deterrence, and for the last four years, it has been, until recently, the de facto policy of the present administration, which has systematically downplayed the scale of the Russian and Chinese nuclear threat to convince the public that no increases to U.S. forces are necessary. Even so, many outside the administration stridently advocate for an even lower “minimum.” Both of these camps are dangerously wrong, and here is why: 

1) “When we build, they build; when we cut, they build.” So said President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Defense Harold Brown fifty years ago. Never has this fact been more obvious than it is today. Despite the administration’s extreme and persistent restraint, Russia withdrew from the New START Treaty, the only remaining arms control treaty limiting the force size of any of the nuclear powers. China—never a party to any arms limitation treaty in the first place—has been expanding its nuclear forces at a breakneck pace. There is no historical evidence that unilateral, self-imposed restrictions on U.S. forces have ever led to reciprocal changes in Russian or Chinese programs. For better or for worse, Pandora’s box was opened eighty years ago, and it won’t close. The nuclear arms race has been going strong ever since, and the only choice facing the United States is whether or not to run.

2) Contrary to popular belief, ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) have never been “invulnerable.” Today, due to the vulnerability of U.S. missile silos and the de-alerting of U.S. bombers, ballistic missile submarines at sea are the only U.S. nuclear forces that would survive an enemy's first strike. For the duration of the Cold War, both sides deployed anti-submarine assets to trail adversary missile submarines with the intention, in the case of war, to destroy them before they could receive the order to fire. The United States, which was particularly successful at tailing Soviet SSBNs without ever letting them know they were being tailed, ought to know better than to assume that its submarines can never be touched. The idea that the United States could attain a small, simple, unchanging, but permanently secure minimum force without the need for arms-racing constitutes an absurdly dangerous gamble at best and pure wishful thinking at worst. 

3) Yes, it is possible to win a nuclear war—in absolute and not merely relative terms. It is also possible to lose. The first and most effective way to win is to launch a surprise attack which cripples the enemy’s ability to retaliate. Due to extreme penny-pinching, which has hamstrung America’s command and control system, the danger of such an attack is already extreme. The second way to win is to destroy a certain limited target set (for example, enemy nuclear forces, enemy military forces at the front, or key military bases behind the front—or all three) while keeping a secure reserve to deter the enemy from firing all his weapons in retaliation. With modern, accurate, variable yield weapons, it is entirely possible to use nuclear weapons to decisive effect on the front lines with no more casualties than might be expected from the liberal use of high explosives. The surprise destruction of the entire U.S. Navy in its ports could be accomplished with (at most) a few thousand civilian casualties. Minimum deterrence requires that the United States respond to such an attack by committing national suicide. It makes no sense, so why should anyone believe it? 

4) Even if you believe that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is deterrence—that is to say, you do not care what happens if nuclear weapons are indeed used—Russia and China do not believe that a minimum deterrent is adequate to meet their own security needs. Why, then, should they be deterred by a policy whose validity they do not accept? 

5) When the shoe was on the other foot, the United States itself was not deterred by “minimum deterrence.” In the 1950s through early 1960s, when the current situation was reversed, and Russia was at a great disadvantage in nuclear weapons (though not for lack of trying), the United States planned and intended to immediately unleash total war at the outset of any conflict, even at the cost of many millions of U.S. civilian casualties, to offset the relative weakness of NATO’s ground forces in Europe. Furthermore, the president of the United States seriously considered launching a preventive war to destroy the Russian nuclear arsenal before it could grow larger. Once Russia gained nuclear parity and then moderate superiority over the United States, it was deterred from unleashing total war and henceforth planned to unleash merely limited nuclear war to compensate for NATO’s still inferior general-purpose forces. The preventive war was no longer even on the table. In other words, “minimum deterrence” demonstrably failed to deter Washington, whereas nuclear parity and superiority demonstrably succeeded. 

6) Nuclear weapons are the only weapons that can seriously damage the United States. Unlike all other great powers, the United States is relatively invulnerable to invasion and conquest—unless, of course, all its general-purpose forces are wiped out by nuclear weapons. As such, whereas U.S. general purpose forces defend U.S. allies, nuclear weapons defend the United States itself, as well as everyone else. Surely, then, America, of all nations, ought to err on the side of caution when it comes to the size of its nuclear forces?

7) All current U.S. nuclear programs—including modernization, cost overruns, and all—are projected to cost about 7.5 percent of total defense expenditures over the next ten years. Moreover, greatly improving U.S. nuclear capabilities would cost almost nothing. When the New START Treaty was signed, the U.S. kept a large number of warheads in storage as a “hedge” in case the treaty failed. Uploading these warheads would double the number of deployed warheads at the cost of about $100 million, or 0.0001 percent of the annual defense budget. Russia ended the Treaty almost two years ago—yet the U.S. warheads are still in storage today.

8) When it came down to it, the Biden administration implicitly and obliquely threatened to respond to a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine with, at most, “massive” conventional retaliation. Unfortunately, “massive” conventional strikes are not all that massive when compared to nuclear weapons—a fact that the average person can probably appreciate but which seems to elude our leaders. If such a ridiculous proposition were ever carried out, Americans would very quickly discover what it felt like to be Native Americans in the Frontier Wars. This was hardly inevitable. If, for instance, the United States had more than two hundred tactical nuclear weapons to counter Russia’s thousands, it could respond to a Russian nuclear strike by supplying some to Ukraine and stay out of the resulting conflagration altogether. Instead, the United States has already been backed mostly into the corner we call “minimum deterrence”—and that is precisely where the administration wanted the U.S. to be.  

9) Minimum deterrence achieves nothing. Though some are more honest about it than others, all but the most extreme advocates of minimum deterrence seek to equip the United States with only the capacity to massacre large numbers of enemy civilians. (The most extreme advocates also seek to deprive the United States of that capability). In a crisis, a minimum deterrent provides a country with only the options of capitulation, defeat in a limited nuclear war, or destruction in a total war. And, if the balloon actually goes up, it cannot stop U.S. allies from being overrun by nuclear-armed armies; it cannot stop enemy nuclear weapons from killing friendly civilians, and it cannot even destroy the enemy’s war—war-supporting industries. To top it all off, the price of inflicting grievous damage on the enemy civil population is accepting an even greater loss to our own. Paradoxically, a larger and stronger nuclear force with the capacity to attack the full range of military targets can pursue options other than the indiscriminate destruction of urban areas, ultimately resulting in lower casualties on both sides. We cannot guarantee this outcome, but we can guarantee that mass destruction or surrender are the only possible outcomes of taking a minimum deterrent force into an actual nuclear war because that is the whole point.