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.