{"id":104942,"date":"2018-01-15T12:01:24","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T12:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=104942"},"modified":"2018-01-15T19:18:22","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T19:18:22","slug":"exclusive-here-is-a-draft-of-trumps-nuclear-review-he-wants-a-lot-more-nukes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/01\/exclusive-here-is-a-draft-of-trumps-nuclear-review-he-wants-a-lot-more-nukes\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Here Is a Draft of Trump\u2019s Nuclear Review – He Wants a Lot More Nukes"},"content":{"rendered":"

His first Nuclear Posture Review: more nukes, more posturing.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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President Donald Trump at Yokota Air Base in Tokyo on Nov. 5.
JIM WATSON via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

11 Jan 2018 – <\/em>In his first year in office, President Barack Obama<\/a> gave a landmark address in Prague\u00a0in which he famously affirmed<\/a>\u00a0\u201cclearly and with conviction America\u2019s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.\u201d\u00a0The commitment to total nuclear disarmament was a major departure from the George W. Bush administration\u00a0\u2014\u00a0the first time, in fact, that the United States had declared a nuclear-free world a major policy goal.<\/p>\n

Now, eight years later, it\u2019s the Trump administration<\/a>\u2019s turn to lay out its nuclear weapons policy. And according to a pre-decisional draft of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) obtained by HuffPost, Trump\u2019s Department of Defense has gone a decidedly different route:\u00a0new nukes, for no good reason.<\/p>\n

The final version of the NPR is scheduled to be released in February. You can read the draft in full at the bottom of this article [PDF]. A Defense Department spokesperson declined to comment on the draft, saying that the agency \u201cwill not discuss pre-decisional drafts of the document.\u201d<\/p>\n

In October, NBC reported that President Trump<\/a> had told a gathering of high-ranking national security leaders that \u201che wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.\u201d While the report doesn\u2019t nearly go that far, it does call for the development of new, so-called low-yield nuclear weapons \u2014 warheads with a lower explosive force.<\/p>\n

The logic of those pushing for the development of smaller nukes<\/a> is that our current nuclear weapons are too big and too deadly to ever use; we are effectively self-deterred, and the world knows it. To make sure other countries believe that we\u2019d actually use nuclear force, the thinking goes, we need more low-yield nukes.<\/p>\n

But official language around nuclear weapons is slippery and euphemistic.\u00a0\u201cLow yield\u201d\u00a0suggests a softer sort of weaponry,\u00a0diet nukes, until you realize that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were technically \u201clow-yield\u201d weapons.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s NPR draft euphemizes the euphemism, referring to low-yield weapons as\u00a0\u201csupplements\u201d that will \u201cenhance deterrence.\u201d\u00a0The document claims that Russia is threatening to use these smaller nuclear weapons; the U.S. needs to match and deter the Russians in kind.<\/p>\n

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2018 Nuclear Posture Review Draft<\/p><\/div>\n

What goes unmentioned is that we already have over 1,000 nuclear warheads<\/a> in our arsenal with low-yield options, to say nothing of the fact that the more nuclear weapons you introduce into the world, the more likely it is that they\u2019ll one day be used.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaking the case that we need more low-yield options is making the case that this president needs more nuclear capabilities at his disposal,\u201d said Alexandra Bell, a former senior adviser at the State Department and current senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation,\u00a0\u201cregardless of the fact that we have 4,000 nuclear weapons in our active stockpile, which is more than enough to destroy the world many times over. So I don\u2019t think it makes a convincing case that we somehow lack capabilities. And, in fact, I don\u2019t think you can make the case that this president needs any more capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The draft itself doesn\u2019t do all that much to convince anyone of the necessity of these low-yield weapons. One tactic it uses right up front is fear. Look no further than Page 6:<\/p>\n

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2018 Nuclear Posture Review Drat<\/p><\/div>\n

This is a slightly darker picture than reality would support, according to Laura Holgate, a special assistant to Obama for weapons of mass destruction terrorism and threat reduction and a former U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. \u201cThe notion that there are uncertainties is actually not new,\u201d Holgate told HuffPost. \u201cThat\u2019s always going to be true about the international environment. And there were references to uncertainties in the 2010 report<\/a>, as well. But this dark perspective and this uncertain view underpin the decisions to walk back some of the decisions or postures presented in the 2010 report.\u201d<\/p>\n

And this new low-yield weapon initiative is one of those reversals. The 2010 NPR essentially removed one tactical low-yield weapon from our arsenal. The Trump administration wants to bring more low-yield weapons back in. And when this latest NPR draft does attempt to defend the decision, it immediately contradicts itself.<\/p>\n

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2018 Nuclear Posture Review Draft<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re saying that having low-yield nuclear weapons does not lower the threshold for use, then you\u2019re essentially saying there\u2019s no difference between using a low-yield and a high-yield weapon,\u201d\u00a0said Bell. \u201cYou\u2019re saying that we would use a high-yield weapon if we have to \u2014 or one of the low-yield weapons we already have in our stockpile. If you\u2019re saying adamantly in here that this won\u2019t change our current posture choices, it basically negates your reason to have this capability in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the report never really explains how any of these new capabilities would alter our security environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy their own argument, they\u2019re concerned that somehow the other side thinks that our current stockpile is getting in the way of our willingness to use nuclear weapons,\u201d explained Anthony Wier, a former deputy assistant secretary in the State Department\u2019s Bureau of Legislative Affairs who now works on nuclear weapons policy for the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker lobbying organization. \u201cOutside of the drafters of this posture review, I can hardly think of any Americans who would have woken up this morning worrying that Donald Trump was not willing enough<\/em> to use nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet the document argues that somehow our adversaries do<\/em>\u00a0think that, and so we need additional options to close this imagined credibility gap. What\u2019s missing is any evidence to support the idea that Russia or any other country believes this to be true.<\/p>\n

One possible reason for this omission is that no such evidence exists. Back in June,\u00a0Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, wrote that <\/a>\u201canyone can come up with a scenario that requires a new weapon. What\u2019s missing from the debate is why the existing and planned capabilities are not sufficient. The United States already has flexible nuclear forces, advanced conventional capabilities, tailored war plans and low-yield warheads in its arsenal.\u201d<\/p>\n

What the posture review makes clear, however, is that the Trump administration wants to produce a considerable number of new nukes. This would represent a break from precedents established even by Republican administrations. The George W. Bush administration cut our nuclear stockpile by more than half, down to roughly 5,000 warheads. The George H.W. Bush administration cut our stockpile by nearly 9,500 warheads.\u00a0\u201cBasically everything about this document screams that we\u2019re probably only going up,\u201d Wier said. \u201cThere\u2019s no reduction listed anywhere that I could find.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the bottom line, right? Building a lot more nuclear weapons and spending a lot more money to build it. At times it feels like they want to buy a can opener with a screwdriver attachment,\u00a0but they also want to pay for a screwdriver with a can opener attachment. There\u2019s a lot of redundancies and duplications, and they need all these extra things to keep you safe. At times, it really does feel like a lot of solutions in search of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are other significant departures from the 2010 NPR. The role of diplomacy in nuclear relations is mostly ignored. The report does pay lip service to NATO, and there are nods here and there toward the importance of diplomatic relations.<\/p>\n

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2018 Nuclear Posture Review Drat<\/p><\/div>\n

But Bell wasn\u2019t buying it.\u00a0\u201cIf the circumstances that we now find ourselves [in] are as dire as they paint them,\u201d she said, \u201cit doesn\u2019t make sense to me that you wouldn\u2019t have put all of the relevant officials needed to do good nuclear policy diplomacy into place immediately. We\u2019re still waiting for a lot of the leaders who should be doing these roles, particularly [in] the State Department. So the critical nature of our current threat environment they describe doesn\u2019t really match their staffing plans.\u201d\u00a0It\u2019s not just the State Department staffing that\u2019s been neglected<\/a>. The National Nuclear Security Administration, the very agency responsible for modernizing our nuclear arsenal, is still missing a number of appointees.<\/p>\n

Even more strikingly, the document appears not to contain a single reference to Article VI<\/a>\u00a0of the U.N. Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which obliges the United States, as one of the signatories, to move in the direction of nuclear disarmament. Other countries that have committed to the weapons ban treaty might be less likely to cooperate with the United States on nuclear matters, Holgate said.<\/p>\n

The document does mention disarmament briefly in the introduction.<\/p>\n

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2018 Nuclear Posture Review Drat<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s interesting about that is that it fudges it a little bit,\u201d Holgate said. \u201cNot as badly as it could have, but it uses a lot of vague weasel words like \u2018committed,\u2019 \u2018efforts,\u2019 \u2018support\u2019 and \u2018ultimate.\u2019 And then, it mushes bio and chem in with nuclear. So this is not a clear commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report is also noticeably vague when it comes to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty<\/a>, a global ban on nuclear explosive testing.\u00a0While the 2010 report <\/a>reaffirms nearly a dozen times the United States\u2019 dedication to maintaining its stockpile without nuclear testing,\u00a0this latest NPR draft says the country will not resume nuclear testing \u201cunless necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

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2018 Nuclear Posture Review Draft<\/p><\/div>\n

The document does at least reaffirm U.S. support for NATO.<\/p>\n

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2018 Nuclear Posture Review Draft<\/p><\/div>\n

But what the report states and what the president tweets are two very different things.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously it\u2019s very good to see in here that the NATO alliance is the most important defensive alliance in history,\u201d\u00a0noted Bell. \u201cBut saying it in this posture review and waiting until the next time the president says NATO countries aren\u2019t paying him enough money\u00a0\u2014 you\u2019re sort of waiting for the shoe to drop. At the end of the day, our elected leader changes his mind often and without a lot of explanation for the change. So that very much does endanger some of the ideas put forth in this document.\u201d<\/p>\n

The document is at pains to assure its audience that Trump isn\u2019t going to start firing off nukes on a whim.<\/p>\n

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2018 Nuclear Posture Review Draft<\/p><\/div>\n

And based on reported fears about Trump\u2019s erraticism, the world\u2019s leaders could definitely use some reassuring. Just last August, CNN reported that<\/a> Trump\u2019s \u201cwildly variant public interpretations of violent, anti-Semitic rallies by neo-Nazis and white supremacists\u201d had \u201ccaused European leaders to shake their heads in bewilderment.\u201d And South Korea is, if not more fearful, then at least equally as terrified of Trump mouthing off<\/a>\u00a0as it is of Kim Jong Un sitting overhead. But, of course, none of that has stopped Trump so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is clearly not Trump\u2019s policy,\u201d said Jon Wolfsthal, director of the Nuclear Crisis Group and former senior director at the National Security Council for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. It is, Wolfsthal said, a representation of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis\u2019 policy and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson\u2019s policy and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford\u2019s policy. \u201cAnd that will reassure people who hope and pray that the axis of adults is somehow going to constrain President Trump\u2019s impulses.\u201d<\/p>\n