Regarding the issuance of a new National Security Strategy–the National Security Strategy should be the primary driver of our defense policy and guidance.  The National Security Strategy is the document that seeks to articulate our grand strategy–our core interests, threats to those interests and how we intend to defend and advance those interests in broad terms.  Documents like the QDR should operationalize that vision. Of course, strategy making in Washington is largely broken.  The release of a QDR before a National Security Strategy is tantamount to putting the cart before the horse—that is unless President Obama’s grand strategy is not so different from that of his predecessor.  I suspect that it is closer than anyone at the White House would ever admit. But what is our grand strategy?  Primacy? Collective security?  Whatever the answer is to that question should be driving our defense and military policy, not the other way around.

The U.S. should consider recalibrating its nuclear force structure by placing a greater emphasis on SLBMs.

Nuclear strategists are a dying breed–so too is the very art of nuclear strategy.  This year the Obama administration will conduct a review of existing U.S. nuclear policy.  The review will touch on a host of issues, from missile defense and nonproliferation to stockpile management and force posture.

The intellectual giants of the Cold War who helped us define nuclear strategy have either passed on or are largely retired.  Legends such as Herman Kahn, Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter are just a few examples.  Recently, The Hudson Institute and the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center hosted a panel discussion on the Wohlstetters and their contributions to American strategic thought.  You can find the link here.   

In anticipation of the upcoming review, I wrote an article in The Weekly Standard to examine some of the issues that will be teed up this year as the Obama administration confronts the very important issue of nuclear strategy.  Here’s an excerpt:

Almost fifty years ago, the legendary defense strategist Herman Kahn published his classic work on nuclear strategy, On Thermonuclear War (1960), followed just two years later by a popularized rendering entitled Thinking About the Unthinkable (1962). An iconoclast and one of America’s unsung Cold War heroes, Kahn argued throughout his career that it was the responsibility of the United States government to think creatively, honestly, and unemotionally about the prospects of nuclear war. Today, the need for an honest and open debate on the role of nuclear weapons continues, and the upcoming Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) presents an ideal forum. While competing priorities such as the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and a deteriorating economy at home have decreased the attention paid to the issue of nuclear strategy, its importance remains undiminished.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Defense Department has conducted two comprehensive reviews of U.S. nuclear strategy. The first NPR was conducted in 1994 during the Clinton administration and was plagued by infighting between the Pentagon’s civilian and military leadership. The 1994 review failed to result in any major policy shift, leaving Washington’s Cold War nuclear posture largely intact. The second comprehensive review was conducted by the Bush administration throughout 2001 and was submitted to Congress in December of that year. It marked the first real departure from Cold War thinking on nuclear strategy. The 2001 NPR called for significant reductions in the number of deployed warheads as well as a modernized force structure. The Cold War Triad, which consisted solely of offensive strike systems including bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), was supplanted by a New Triad. The New Triad folded the offensive strike systems into one leg and incorporated advanced conventional munitions; passive and active defenses formed the second leg of the New Triad while a responsive defense infrastructure formed the final leg. This new construct codified the value of strategic defenses and the importance of human capital management.

This article is something of a companion piece to an article Brad Thayer and I wrote last fall in The National Interest.  The aim of the piece is to facilitate an honest debate on the future of U.S. nuclear forces and their broader role in our national security strategy, which, I argue, should be significant.

One panelist, Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress, explained:

If you read John McCain’s essay in Foreign Affairs last year, he said it [his foreign policy vision] was “An Enduring Peace Built on Freedom.”  I’m going to highlight freedom because freedom is a consistent thread between President Bush and John McCain, and I would submit that freedom is just another word for not having a real national security strategy.

Like his colleagues, Mr. Katulis really needs to brush up on his twentieth-century American history.  Freedom has been a consistent thread between a majority of U.S. presidents during the twentieth century, including Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.  Freedom has been a central theme in U.S. foreign policy for much of the last century, through Republican and Democratic administrations.  Clearly, it has been the position of multiple presidential administrations that advancing liberal democracy throughout the world serves America’s national interest.  President Bush’s and Sen. McCain’s focus on freedom isn’t earth-shattering.  In fact, freedom and liberty have been the ideological underpinnings of U.S. grand strategy for quite some time, arguably back to the founding of the Republic.  Mr. Katulis’s argument is unclear.  Listening to Mr. Katulis I am left with more questions than answers.