All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 2, 2025 01:21-02:24 - CSPAN
01:02:56
Discussion on U.S.-Russia Arms Control
|

Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Is it strong?
Is it fast?
Is it reliable?
At Sparklight, we know connection goes way beyond technology.
From Monday morning meetings to Friday nights with friends and everything in between.
But the best connections are always there, right when you need them.
So how do you know it's great internet?
Because it works.
We're Sparklight and we're always working for you.
Sparklight supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Next, former Defense Department officials discuss U.S.-Russia arms control at an event hosted by the National Institute for Deterrent Studies.
Topics include strategic defense against China and the efficacy of the 2010 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the U.S. and Russia.
This is an hour.
Good morning.
I'm Kimberly Charrington, and on behalf of the National Institute for Deterrent Studies, or NIDS, I want to warmly welcome you to today's HUC seminar and a special welcome to our featured guest, the Honorable Frank Miller and Ambassador Eric Edelman, who have joined us today.
During today's presentation, we encourage you to submit your questions in the chat at any time, which we will address at the Q ⁇ A portion of this talk.
And stick around to the end to get insights on some of our upcoming speakers or go to our website at thinkdeterrence.com on the event page to learn more and register you and your colleagues.
Now it's my pleasure to introduce our host for today's seminar, Mr. Peter Husey, President and Senior Director of Strategic Deterrent Studies and Geostrategic Analysis and a senior fellow here at NIDS.
Peter, over to you.
Thank you very much.
I want to welcome Mr. Ambassador and Frank Miller, also our president, Jim Petrofsky.
Eric Edelman will be speaking twice, but he was an American diplomat.
He served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy between 2005 and 2009.
He was also ambassador to Turkey and Ambassador to the Republic of Finland and principal deputy assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs between 2001 and 2003.
He is a career foreign service officer, entered the Foreign Service Office Series in 1992.
He's received the Distinguished Civilian Service Award from the Department of Defense and the State Department Superior Honor Award.
Frank Miller is a foreign policy and nuclear deterrent and nuclear defense policy expert, served 31 years in the United States government, including the Department of Defense, Department of State, and was a special assistant to the President George W. Bush in the White House.
He's also a principal at the Washington-based international business advisory firm called the Skokrop Group.
Frank will lead off our discussion today about Newstart and where we ought to go in terms of the future deterrent force of the United States, including arms control issues.
So Frank, on behalf of NIDS, I want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to come talk to you.
And over to you, sir.
Thanks very much, Peter.
First, let me extend my gratitude to the whole NIDS team and say how much it's an honor and a pleasure to be on this recording with Eric again.
Eric and I do a lot of work together.
We have throughout our career, and it's a pleasure.
Let me start by taking us back to some basics before we start talking about the New Start treaty.
Because the basics are either forgotten by most people or never learned.
The basics begin by saying that deterrence is a combination of will and capability.
And credibility of our deterrent rests on how people perceive our will and our capability.
That's how our enemies perceive us, how our allies perceive us, and what we in fact believe ourselves.
So what is U.S. nuclear deterrence policy?
For decades, it has been to hold at risk what potential enemy leaders value.
That's themselves, the support structure that keeps them in place, the secret police, the intelligence services, e-selected parts of their military forces, nuclear and conventional, and their war supporting industry.
It's those things that they need to dominate a post-war world, and it's those things that they need to know won't exist if there is a war.
So, now, there are people who will say we only need to bust potential enemy cities.
Well, that's foolish.
First of all, it's immoral, and second of all, the people who live in those cities have nothing to do with their leaders' decisions.
There are also people who say, let's only target conventional forces and war supporting industry and leave an enemy's leadership and nuclear forces intact, which precisely gives the enemy exactly what it wants, the ability to dominate a post-war world.
So, by holding at risk what enemy leaders value, themselves, their support structure, their key elements of their nuclear and conventional forces, and their war-supporting industry, we have a policy that we've successfully followed for several decades.
Now, New START keeps us and the Russians at an overall strategic force level of 1,550 strategic weapons.
That was perhaps fine for the world of 2010, a world in which the threat was principally Russian, but not really viewed as a threat.
The PRC was an afterthought.
It only had a few tens of silos.
But today is not 2010.
Today is very, very different from 2010, and the threats to us have increased.
The Russians have almost completed a massive modernization program, have built a large circa 2000 weapon regional nuclear force, and have found various ways to evade the New START treaty with novel systems.
China now has a very growing nuclear force.
They have over 300 silos, a great difference from where they were in 2010.
And so we can't pretend that the world hasn't changed and that indeed the target bases we need to hold at risk haven't changed.
So the issue is our credibility, which in a crisis, in a real crisis, could turn deadly if Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin or their successors doubt our will and our capability.
We must have force levels necessary to hold at risk the 2025 to 2030 target bases.
1550 is not sufficient.
And therefore, as soon as New START expires, we need to be able to start uploading our existing nuclear forces by adding warheads to the Minuteman force, to the Trident Force, and making a larger force of B-52s.
That's the short-term fix.
And for the longer term, we need to expand the modernization program originally proposed by President Obama to include more submarines and more bombers.
We can't do that with New Start.
And I haven't even touched on, and I think Eric will touch on the regional nuclear forces, which Newstart does not address at all.
So New Start stands in the way of our getting an adequate deterrent against China and Russia in modern times.
And therefore, our credibility is at risk because we don't have the forces necessary to carry out our policy.
And if we don't go past New Start, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin will decide we don't have the will to have an adequate deterrent.
With that, let me stop and turn it over to my colleague.
Well, let me echo Frank's word of thanks to the entire team that Peter and his colleagues have that's allowing us to do this.
Let me just add a couple of things that maybe build a little bit on what Frank said and on the article we wrote almost two months ago now in Foreign Affairs.
It starts, I think, by pointing out that we are facing a really novel situation because China is well on its way to becoming a nuclear peer of the United States.
Not quite there yet, but I would stress that it may happen sooner than we think.
The Department of Defense's reports, annual reports on Chinese military power, have said that China will build out its force and be a nuclear peer by 2035.
I would just note that China's deployment of capabilities on the conventional side have always gone quicker than we thought and at greater scale than we thought.
And I don't know why there's any reason to believe that that would not be the case on the nuclear side of the ledger.
As General Cotton has pointed out in testimony, China already has more ballistic missile launchers than the United States.
And so I think we have to be ready to deal with this sooner rather than later, which is one reason why I think Frank and I believe that when New Start expires in 2026, we need to begin the process of moving forward to deal with this novel situation of having to deter two nuclear peers at the same time.
I would also add that the instrument of ratification by the United States Senate of New Start actually specified a couple of things, one of which was that we had to move forward with modernization, but we are very late to that.
As Frank said, Russia is probably 95% done with its nuclear modernization.
It's been going apace for a decade and a half.
China is already in the midst of this large buildup.
We're really only at the beginning stages of our effort.
It also specified that in the future, we would have to take into account the disproportion, the asymmetry between Russian theater nuclear weapons and our theater nuclear weapons.
Now we've got to take into account two asymmetries because China's nuclear buildup is been the focus of a lot of attention on the strategic side, but it's also engaged in a buildup of theater capabilities that we have difficulty matching.
And I think the reality is that the path to any nuclear conflict would start with a regional confrontation.
That was certainly the case in the Cold War.
I don't see any reason to believe it wouldn't be the same in the two-peer nuclear world we're about to enter.
And so once again, we have some work to do and we have to think about the future of arms control in a completely different way in order to take into account these novel circumstances that we're facing.
I know that there have been some folks who have argued that some of the things that Frank and I recommended in our Foreign Affairs article, particularly uploading, would somehow get in the way of our nuclear modernization efforts.
I don't see any real reason why that would be the case.
People have proposed parallel talks with Russia and China.
I would actually point out that Frank and I, back in December of 2020, just on the cusp of the inauguration of the Biden administration,
actually proposed that rather than rolling over New START, which was expiring in February of 2021, with a five-year rollover, that it would be better to negotiate a conditional annual rollover with the Russians that would be predicated on actual progress in negotiations, which would have given the Russians some incentive and which would have also called for inclusion of China in those negotiations.
The idea of having parallel talks with Russia and China and keeping them in sync with one another strikes me as a task maybe beyond the ability of the United States government to carry out.
My own experience, I don't want to speak for Frank, but managing a negotiation with one superpower rival was stressful enough on the U.S. government back in the Cold War.
The idea that we're somehow going to manage two parallel negotiations strikes me as distinctly unrealistic.
And some people have recurred back to the freeze on nuclear warheads that President Trump in his first term proposed and reached a preliminary agreement with President Putin on.
The problem with that now in the current circumstance is that it would advantage our adversaries and disadvantage us.
And so I think that allowing New Start to die a natural death and moving forward to deal with some of the challenges to our deterrent that Frank outlined is really the order of the day.
And we ought to be prepared to do that in 2026.
And why don't I just stop there?
And I think Frank and I look forward to a robust discussion with many folks who've joined today.
Thank you, Eric, and thank you, Frank.
I have three questions I'd like to start with.
It was recently said on this seminar series that we should not upload our strategic forces because to do so would disrupt and delay the strategic nuclear modernization program currently underway.
You've addressed it partially, but I want to ask each of you to go a little bit more extensively, a bit more detail about part of the argument I think I heard people say was adding warheads to the ICBMs and SLBMs is doable,
but their view was it would take time and effort away from other parts of the Department of Defense and NSA, which both have a very full plate with respect to modernization.
So Eric, why don't you start and then we'll go to Frank because that is a question I think a lot of people are asking is should we upload?
Because it's a relatively easy thing to do in the scheme of things.
Building more submarines probably won't happen until after 2042.
And I've got 50 extra ICBMs, but if we can build any more than that, that's going to also be a much more lengthy process.
So, Eric, over to you, sir.
Well, I'll start, and Frank, I'm sure we'll have more to say.
Some of this is actually relatively easy because we're going to be in a transition period between at different paces at different legs of the triad.
So, reactivating some of the Trident tubes, for instance, on existing Ohio-class submarines doesn't get in the way of Columbia-class modernization.
The same with taking steps to reverse what we did with some 30 or so B-52s.
And so, I think that the same with Minuteman.
I mean, that's not going to get in the way of GBSD.
We downloaded Minuteman because correctly we regarded MERS as destabilizing.
Unfortunately, our adversaries are not following suit and, in fact, are deploying systems with even more warheads on them potentially.
And so, I think it is not outside the ken of the U.S. government to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
It will take money and it will take focus and effort on the part of the government.
And that, I think, is an important element, which we maybe can talk more about because I think these issues have suffered from having fallen into sort of dissuetude over the last 30 years.
And I think there are very few people in the senior ranks of the government who completely understand all of this.
And that is a problem that has to be remedied, but it's got nothing to do with the practicalities of uploading.
Frank, over to you, sir.
Thank you.
I completely agree with Eric.
Let's be clear.
The question, the people who would upload are your operational force.
It's the people at the weapon storage facilities at Kings Bay and Bangor in the Navy, and it's your Minuteman crews in the field at the three ICBM bases.
They have nothing to do with modernization, okay?
Nothing at all.
The people who are modernizing are the shipyards up at Groton and the Norfolk area.
They're the people at SSP who are designing the Trident II life extension 2, but they have absolutely nothing to do with the people who would upload, except at the very top.
Navy all reports to Admiral Wolfe at SSP.
So the fact of the matter is that that argument just doesn't hold water.
It's got nothing to do with modernization and upload are completely separate functions.
The only place it possibly comes together is for the Air Force when it does the upgrades to the B-52.
It has to get new radars anyway.
And so it's in that process that they're going to be, the ones that were taken out of the nuclear role will be reconverted.
So let me just put that argument to rest.
It's completely wrong, factually completely wrong.
And in fact, the Strategic Posture Commission said, and that was a wide range of people from the left to the right, bipartisan, nonpartisan group, said, let's prepare to upload and let's go full steam ahead on modernization.
And it did not see any contradiction between those two statements.
Okay, the second question I had, Frank, is again on my seminar series, there was a proposal or idea that, well, we can wait until 2035 before we add any warheads to our current new start levels of somewhere between 1550 and about 1800, if you count the bomber weapons.
And the argument is that we have all we need now to deter China and Russia.
And only in 2035 and beyond, if China gets to a higher level, then we can think about adding more heads.
I'd like you to respond to that, if you would.
Well, Peter, the logic on that just doesn't hold together.
I mean, if you believe in existential deterrence and you don't really have to have an operating force, you can believe that.
But the force of 2010, the 1550, looked at the world of 2010.
The world's changed.
The Chinese now have 300 silos where they might have had a couple of tens.
The Russian force is more diverse.
So the world's changed, the threat's changed.
And clearly, the force designed for 2010 doesn't comply with the threat and the deterrence requirements of 2025, 2030.
So I just don't understand that.
We clearly today need to grow the arsenal modestly to cover the dual threat from China and Russia and a bit for North Korea.
So no, I completely reject that.
Eric might want to have something to say.
Well, Frank and I have said in other venues that we don't believe the United States needs to match both Russia and China weapon for weapon in order to be able to deter both.
But that doesn't mean that the force in being, as Frank said, is now sufficient to deal with this growing threat of both Russia and China.
And by the way, that's not just a conclusion that Frank and I have reached and that the Strategic Posture Commission on which he served reached.
It's also a conclusion that was reached by some of the senior officials in the Biden administration who were dealing with this same set of problems and was reflected in the comments that Prane Vadi made at the Arms Control Association and that Vibbin Narang made at CSIS,
which suggested that there have to be some adjustments to the force to take into account the growing number of targets that need to be held at risk and still having some reserve that you can use to deter the other potential aggressor.
So when you add to the fact that anything we do in this domain takes a long time and takes longer than we think it will initially, I don't think there's really a lot of room to be waiting around to deal with the problem.
Thank you very much.
The third question I had was, it's often said, well, if we add to 1550, the Russians will add and then we'll add and it's the arms control narrative that seems to be an automatic response to, particularly within the media when they talk about nuclear modernization.
It seems everything we, the United States does, is starting off an arms race when in fact, as I've pointed out numerous times, everything we're building currently in the program of record keeps us at the New Start level.
So how do you call New Start an arms race?
You can't.
So if we go above that, we might, whether we do sea launch cruise missile or whatever.
But Frank, you and I have talked about this, and the question is, Keith Payne and Dave Trechtenberg and others have done a, I think about a year ago, a really extraordinary history of this idea that Paul Warnke said two scorpions in a bottle or two apes on a treadmill.
I think that was it.
There's no end to an arms race, so stop.
Restraint is good.
What do you say to, and I've heard during the HASS debate this year in the House, comments along that line from some of the members, not that many, but enough, that said, if we show restraint, then the other guys will, so that we shouldn't add beyond the 1550.
Sorry about that length of my introduction, but this is a very common response to what you see among the public and media think tanks as well as Congress.
So take it away, Frank.
Well, it's a myth.
It's a complete and total myth.
I mean, the Russians have been adding weapons ever since New Start was signed.
They do it by circumventing the treaty by coming up with systems like the transoceanic torpedoes and the Prvisnik, which are not controlled by the treaty.
And to be perfectly blunt, at the end of the day, I don't care how many weapons the Russians have if I have a deterrent that can adequately cover my target base.
Arms control is important, but arms control is an adjunct to deterrence.
It can't replace deterrence.
And so if I don't have an adequate deterrent, I don't have anything, and arms control is not going to help me.
It's just as Eric said, and I'm going to turn it to him in a moment.
We don't need to have the same number of weapons as the Russians and the Chinese together.
We need to have a number of weapons that are necessary to make our deterrence policy credible.
And I think we are getting to the ragged edge of that right now, unless we start uploading.
And so, you know, again, the Russians are going to do what the Russians are going to do.
We have to have a deterrent that we believe in, that our allies believe in, and most importantly, that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin believe in.
And we need to, therefore, go past New Start limits.
I mean, Eric has been in this business a long time, too.
Yeah, I would just add to what Frank said by saying, I mean, it's certainly possible that the Russians would add as well.
But right now, the Russians, because of their investment in a really brutal war of aggression and attrition in Ukraine, are really, I think, at the outer limits of what their economy will allow.
So although they certainly have the capability because of what they have in reserve to upload some of their own systems and increase the number of warheads that they have, I think there are some limits on how much they can do because of the straits they find themselves in.
Frank, I'm going to turn it over to my president, Jim Protrotsky.
He has two questions, which, Jim, go ahead and ask, and I'll come back after you're done.
Yes, thank you very much.
And this is really intriguing.
But looking at the past, I wonder what we learned from Russia's departure from New Start.
What is the big lesson takeaway on that in terms of how treaties work?
And how does this affect any potential nuclear arms treaty with China?
Or even if we are even considering having some sort of treaty with China as they begin to expand.
Let me jump in where you want to go first.
Well, let me start, Frank, and then you can revise and extend my remarks.
First, the Chinese have shown almost no interest in having any kind of nuclear arms control discussions with us.
They barely will talk to us about their nuclear weapons.
I have some personal experience of that back in the Bush 43 administration.
And as far as I can tell from talking to successors and colleagues in government, that attitude hasn't changed in the last 15 or 16 years.
Their position on this is that the bad U.S. and Russians are way ahead of nuclear weapons and they have nothing to talk about.
And understandably, you can see their point because they want to become a peer, I believe.
And any kind of arms control agreement would likely try and enmesh them in some level below parity.
And so I think we're not likely to see them be willing to negotiate.
Certainly not unless they see us developing systems that they would like to see constrained by some agreement.
So on the Russian side, Frank and I have written on this as well, which is that the Russians have, unfortunately, a very long history and pattern of violating almost every agreement that they've signed with us.
I think Frank and I have calculated that they're in violation of some nine different agreements, including right now in the war in Ukraine, the Chemical Weapons Treaty.
So to me, that puts the onus on making the Russians abide by the agreements that they have reached with us before we start launching into negotiating new ones.
So I agree completely.
On the first point, China's not interested.
In the Biden period, Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Mallory Stewart, had meetings with the Chinese in 2023 and said, we want to talk about arms control with you.
The Chinese said no.
So the two parties got together and the U.S. read its talking points and the Chinese said, next.
The Chinese fear arms control because arms control means that you have to have transparency and verification and they don't want any of that.
So if you knock out the basic underpinnings of an arms control agreement, there's really nothing much to talk about.
With the Russians, as Eric said, they're cheating.
They're cheating on new starts by developing weapon systems which were designed to evade the treaty, just like they developed fourth-generation chemical weapons designed to evade the chemical weapons treaty.
And they need to be back in compliance with their existing agreements before we start talking about something new.
And Eric said something also very important that people need to remember.
Russia and China don't engage in arms control out of the goodness of their hearts, which is kind of what we do, but never mind.
They want to constrain U.S. weapon systems.
And right now, they're looking at an aging U.S. deterrent.
You know, in seven or eight years, once the new systems and the modernization program start being deployed, they may wish to constrain those, and they may wish to bargain seriously about arms control.
But that's in the future.
Right now, it's quite clear that they have no interest in arms control, either, Putin or Xi, except perhaps in getting us to freeze our nuclear weapons at current levels so that we're below the deterrent requirements that we need in our credibility, sir.
Yeah, thank you for that answer.
I have a follow-up, but before you sort of intrigue me just a little bit more, if I can press this issue, then in the absence of treaties that are either functional or ones that we are involved in, you know, what is our only other answer?
What are our other answers in deterring these two countries, you know, aside from, you know, as Peter said, an arms race or at least increasing our arms and our deterrence.
What are the other options?
The option is to have a flexible, modern, deterrent force which clearly meets our deterrent requirements.
Full stop, period.
You know, we need to replace aging systems.
We need to build up to the level that the military, guided by civilian leadership, believes is necessary to hold Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un at risk simultaneously.
And that's what we need.
After that, it's gravy.
However, as Eric also pointed out, we need to do something about the regional balance.
We are woefully inadequate in our regional deterrent posture.
And systems such as Slick of N need to be accelerated because we only have dual-capable aircraft in Europe right now and nothing in the Pacific in terms of a regional posture in place day to day.
Yeah, if I could just add to what Frank said.
You know, our former colleague in government, David Cooper, has written a paper on the lost art of the bargaining chip.
I mean, for those who would like to get back to the arms control table, and as Frank pointed out in his comments, we Americans tend to see arms control as a positive good in and of itself, as opposed to a measure for constraining our adversaries from things we don't want them to do and allowing us to still maintain a reasonable deterrent capability.
But the way to get there, if you want to get the Chinese or the Russians back to the table, it's for us to have capabilities that are of concern to them that they would like to see limited.
And we can, in turn, can say, well, we're willing to do X or Y if you do A and B.
But we're not even close to that point right now, I don't think.
Thank you.
At risk of taking up some of our other listeners, though, I do, in our audience, I do want to ask, because it follows on directly with my previous question that I posted, which is, how does the balance, let me start out by saying, I feel that the Russians fear our conventional weapons more than our nuclear weapons.
That's just my posture.
But how does the balance of conventional and nuclear weapons change for the U.S. deterrent as China increases their dependence on nuclear weapons?
How do we balance that out on that side?
I think it's certainly true that the Russians have been highly motivated by their fear of our conventional capabilities, which we have demonstrated repeatedly since 1990, 1991.
I mean, there's a bit of a paradox there, though.
I mean, it's, you know, for those who say we should, you know, de-emphasize our nuclear capabilities and put all of our effort into conventional capabilities, as you point out, it's precisely those conventional capabilities that have driven them to develop greater nuclear capability and to rely more on it in their defense policy.
So we have to have a balanced approach, in my view.
We need conventional capabilities for a range of missions that we may have to undertake, but we need a fundamental deterrent that is at work every day to keep our adversaries from thinking that this might be the day that they want to launch either a conventional or a nuclear conflict.
And one thing we haven't talked about, which is one of my pet rocks right now, is the need as we move forward with our nuclear modernization to move forward with the command and control modernization that has to go along with those new systems.
It too has been, I would say, neglected over the last 30 years.
And our adversaries are demonstrating some very alarming capabilities, whether it's the direct ascent anti-satellite systems that both Russia and the PRC have tested,
Russia's reported interest in putting a nuclear weapon in space and its refusal recently to, at the UN Security Council, reaffirm the Outer Space Treaty, or whether it's the FOBS that the fractional orbital bombardment system that the Chinese tested two years ago or three years ago now,
and the fact that the Russians have that capability as well, as President Putin discussed in his 2018 Federation Council speech announcing all of his exotic new systems.
All of those systems are systems that only make sense if you're thinking about a potential low or no notice decapitation strike against your adversary's NC3.
So I think we've got to worry about that as well.
I'd emphasize two points.
One is the nuclear force is the backbone of our entire deterrent posture.
Conventional space cyber, it's the backbone.
Second of all, it's the cost.
And second of all, people talk about, well, you know, you put all this money into nuclear, you won't have a conventional capability.
Our defense spending on nuclear is about 7%, 8%, 9% of the total defense budget.
And that's for the modernization and for the current operations of our existing nuclear forces.
So the amount devoted to nuclear is not particularly large compared to what we're spending on other things.
And that's another one of these canards that's out there that, oh my gosh, we're spending so much on nuclear.
Can't afford to do our conventional upgrades and our modernization and bringing in advanced technologies.
That's just simply not true.
The numbers don't sustain that.
And if I could just add one other point here, which is that, you know, Frank served on the Strategic Posture Commission.
I co-chaired the National Defense Strategy Commission with former Representative Jane Harmon, which also came to a unanimous bipartisan conclusion.
And both of those reports have stressed the fact that we are facing a challenge that is really unprecedented in terms of the intensifying cooperation among our adversaries, particularly Russia and China, but also North Korea and Iran, three of whom are nuclear powers and the fourth is a nuclear aspirant.
And given the scope of that challenge, we are not just perhaps underspending on our nuclear deterrent.
We are underspending in general on defense.
I mean, if you believe this is as big a challenge as we faced in the Cold War, we are seriously underspending on defense and need to make some large investments.
And I think you're beginning to see that breakthrough on the Hill.
And certainly yesterday, Senator McConnell's comments at the Senate Appropriations Committee as he when they were having their markup and they were adding actually to the administration's defense request, I think is testimony to more and more people understanding that.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Peter, I'm going to turn it back to you for our other attendees.
Good.
Thank you.
I have a question that I've spoken with you, Frank, about, which I think is interesting.
And I've had Rose Gutenmüller come out and talk to us, and I want her to continue.
So, Rose, this isn't, I'm not attacking you, but you did lay out what you thought was we wouldn't continue with New Start, but there are some folks who think, well, maybe you did, but indirectly.
And that's what I'd like to have Frank address, because that gets to the uploading issue and whether it's better just to keep at the 1550 level and see where we go from here.
So, Frank, would you address this question as, because you read what Rose put in the U.S., I think it was Foreign Affairs Magazine.
She also laid that out in her speech to our group a number of weeks ago.
So, would you analyze that as you can go?
Well, first, you know, Rose is an old friend.
I mean, we've worked together literally for decades.
She's accomplished a tremendous amount, and I deeply respect her.
So, nothing I say has anything to do with a personal point of view at all.
And I want to emphasize that.
Second, I could only repeat what Eric and I have been saying, which is New Start constrains us to 1550.
Eric and I believe that 1550 is no longer adequate to deter Russia and China simultaneously.
Therefore, New START stands in the way of getting to the force levels necessary to deter Russia and China simultaneously.
A point I would make, by the way, that the NATO Secretary General and the head of NATO's military forces, the SACIR, have been saying that, you know, a potential conflict, which we seek to avoid, will likely be one featuring attacks by Russia and China.
Whoever goes first, the other might make an opportunistic attack.
Or as Secretary General Roota suggests, the Chinese would say, if we're about to start something in the Pacific, please attack NATO so that you distract the Americans.
So again, 1550 is too small today.
The amount that we need to grow is modest for now.
Depending on what China does, it could get larger.
But 1550 is just inadequate.
But Eric, you've known Rose as long as I have.
And I have the same high level of respect for her that you expressed.
I agree with Frank.
It's hard for me to see right now how there is much of a prospect for any arms negotiation.
And it's not because I'm opposed to those.
It's just because I don't see the will on the other side to engage in them right now.
You know, you've got a pattern of really irresponsible nuclear rhetoric From senior Russian officials, and as Frank pointed out, a very little disposition on the part of the PRC to engage in these kinds of discussions at all.
So, in the first instance, it seems to me what we need to do is first deal with our own late-to-purpose modernization and make sure it moves forward.
And in that spirit, I would say I find it troubling that the New York Times is reporting that the Department of Defense is taking almost a billion dollars out of the GBSD Sentinel program,
which has already run into a number of difficulties, which we can discuss if people want, in order to refurbish the 747 that Gutter has gifted to the U.S. government to serve as an Air Force One.
I mean, that seems to me to be indicative of a lack of sense of the urgency of moving forward on our modernization effort.
And that's, I think, what has to, where we have to have the emphasis.
And then we have to think about what is it that incentivizes our adversaries to actually come to the table.
And as Frank and I said, it's capabilities that worry them.
And right now, we don't have enough of them.
And I want to point out one thing.
The article that Eric and I wrote, and points that we've been making really for years, are not saying no arms control at all.
I mean, we have said that we need an arms control agreement that captures all nuclear weapons, intercontinental and regional, both.
And we say, you know, if the politicians are able to come up with something that does that and gives us freedom to mix under an overall ceiling, that's fine.
So we're not saying do away with arms control.
We are saying do away with New Start and any constraints that would keep us following New Start even after it expires.
Frank, I'm going to ask you to.
You had mentioned that Rose had also said don't undercut New Start.
So in a sense, you're sticking with the treaty, which, God bless her, she said when, I'm not asking for an extension, but you kind of get there if you don't undercut the treaty, correct?
Well, my view is 1550 is inadequate in New Start holding 1550.
Okay.
A friend of ours from the Stimson Institute had a very interesting question.
If the two weights on a treadmill is the incorrect way of looking at the arms balance, and he thinks that it is not correct.
What intellectual narrative could you lay out that would capture?
Because you're talking about the years since the Russians got nuclear weapons, and you're talking, what, 50 since the Chinese.
So I'm not, I don't even, I don't know if you can find a template that explains this, but what's your suggestion as to how we ought to reference how we try to remedy the balance without being immediately questioned as, oh, you're starting the arms race?
You know, so way back when, You know, the Office of Net Assessment back in the early 80s sponsored a pretty comprehensive study that was composed of the late Ernest May of Harvard,
John Steinbrenner, and Thomas Wolf to study the arms competition in the Cold War to try and determine what explained the evolution of forces on both sides.
And what they found, and you referenced the work that Keith Payne and Dave Trachtenberg have done, which in some ways builds intellectually on that earlier work, was that on both sides, the evolution of our forces was a product of bureaucratic politics, technological developments, strategic culture that favored one kinds of system over another.
And it was not, in fact, a kind of action reaction with each side developing some particular capability in response to another specific capability.
So I think it's a very complex phenomenon.
I mean, there is clearly strategic competition between the two sides, but how they express that in their forces is going to be always a kind of unique output of the history of the leaders,
the public support, the level of technology and other factors that are pretty hard to measure in any kind of quantitative way.
I think the other thing, Peter, is to get to the root of the regime's policies.
Since about 2008, Vladimir Putin has taken it on himself to threaten and try to intimidate NATO.
Then he went and took Crimea, part of another sovereign country that he had pledged in treaties to respect.
And then he invaded Ukraine.
So this is an aggressive government that seeks the territory of other countries.
With China, this is a country that threatens the government of Taiwan.
It is seeking to intimidate the Japanese, the Philippines.
It's encroaching into other countries' territories, the Philippines, the Vietnam.
Both countries routinely practice dangerous military activities to try to cut off and intimidate U.S. and Allied naval ships and aircraft.
So the question is: why are these countries carrying out these aggressive activities?
The United States is seeking to defend the status quo, and that's what we must do.
The fact that these other countries are up arming to make their threats against stability more credible is a dangerous thing.
And what they need to do is get back to working together peacefully and taking account of the treaties they've already signed.
Interesting.
You mentioned there was a proposal recently to, if we don't target the other guy's nuclear forces, he won't feel an incentive to use them early in a crisis.
So we'll get rid of extended nuclear deterrence.
We'll get rid of ordinary nuclear deterrence, similar to what Andy Jacobson's talking about and others, is that we'll just go to attack their conventional forces.
Would you expand a little bit, Frank, as to the dangers?
Pointed out that that puts their nuclear weapons in a sanctuary from which they then have the initiative to use.
So you've kind of given them kind of a blank check to use them as they see fit because if they trusted us, they said, well, we're not in any danger of losing them, so we'll use them whenever we want.
Well, you know, that's nonsense.
It's dangerous nonsense.
There's a phrase mirror imaging that says, what I think, therefore, the Russians think.
There was a phrase that Eric and I are familiar with in the Cold War that said that the heart, beneath the uniform of every Soviet general beats the heart of an Iowa farmer.
That's nonsense.
You know, these are people who are killing hundreds of thousands of their own soldiers who are invading other countries.
And then the notion that you say to them, oh, well, if you fight a war, we're going to let your nuclear forces and your leadership remain intact.
Well, what's wrong with that?
We don't care about our defense industrial base.
We don't care about our soldiers.
We made that very clear.
So, I mean, you want to hand them victory.
That is one of the dumbest ideas I've heard in a long time.
And the other thing is, excuse me, but maybe the Russians and Chinese would shoot first anyway, regardless of whether their nuclear forces were held at risk.
So this bridge to absurdity is something that ought to be discarded as quickly as possible.
It's not worth the paper that it's printed on, but I get emotional about this because I think it's so stupid.
I'll let Eric bring the discussion back center stage.
Well, I mean, the history of this is we now know since the end of the Cold War that despite having a no-first use pledge, that Soviet war plans called for the use of theater nuclear weapons early and often.
And I think that is just one indicator of the fact that the declaratory statements that the Russians and the Chinese make about their nuclear strategy and how they might use these things, we need to treat with a great deal of caution.
And in the end of the day, as uncomfortable as it is, because these weapons are so dangerous and the destructive power of them is so great, what has worked so far has been the deterrence policies that we have pursued.
And to say now we should abandon them as our adversaries are building up to new levels and in the case of China and with all sorts of exotic and weapons that frankly serve no real military purpose to depart from what has worked so far seems to me to be the height of folly.
Frank, a number of people in the chat function have asked a question about: are what we've seen in Korea and in Europe a matter of having assurances that the United States is serious about extended deterrence?
And with both of your experiences, what can the U.S. do to make that assurance credible or more credible?
So I would say three things, and then let Eric put me on the correct course.
One is to deploy an adequate number of weapons to make our policy credible.
Two, it's to modernize our strategic forces as rapidly as we can and to expand the modernization program to allow us to have the same number of required weapons to make the deterrent policy credible.
Three, it's to provide regional nuclear forces, both in Asia and in Europe, to offset the Chinese and Russian. regional nuclear forces, which we do today, but not as well as we should.
And that system, the lead system in that is the Slickam N, which I would love to see accelerated if the Defense Department, the Navy, and the weapons laboratories can do that.
Even to do sort of a weapon, sort of an alpha version, and then the more sophisticated Bravo version later in the 2030s.
But Eric.
Yeah, and I don't see any reason why not, because we had a TLAM in.
And so this is not, you know, kind of, we're reinventing the wheel here, and it shouldn't be quite as, you know, take as long and cost as much as for some reason people seem to think it will.
Yes.
I don't have anything to add actually to Frank's answer on that question, Peter, but if you'd allow me, because in your earlier question, you talked about abandoning extended deterrence.
Let me just make a couple of comments about that.
Look, extended deterrence was one of the most challenging problems that American leaders faced during the Cold War.
And almost every crisis that we had where people really thought nuclear weapons might come into play was the result of an effort to extend deterrence.
And in the end of the day, we were successful.
It's been a part of U.S. policy since the advent of nuclear weapons.
And I would say for good reason, because our extended deterrent has undoubtedly kept the number of nuclear powers in the world limited to the nine countries that have nuclear weapons now, potentially 10th if and when Iran ever gets them.
You know, the truth is, President Kennedy, after the Cuban Missile Crisis in the spring of 1963, was asked a question at a press conference about what kept him up at night.
And he said it was the prospect that we would have 20 or more nuclear powers by the end of the decade.
That was 1970.
That's right.
You know, we don't have a perfect record, obviously, on nonproliferation, but the situation is a lot better than it might be.
And for folks who want to give up the idea of extended deterrence, they need to explain why a world with additional nuclear powers would be safer and one in which they would sleep better at night than the one we inhabit now.
Let me ask a quick question.
I'm sorry, we've got a few minutes left.
Would you both address what role missile defense should play in deterrence?
And what about space?
And I know that's a big, broad subject, but there are people who said that we shouldn't build Iron Dome, I mean, Golden Dome, and they're worried about what they call militarization of space.
Go ahead, Frank.
Okay, so short.
Yes, missile defense can and should play a role.
The Strategic Posture Commission is very clear on that.
You need to raise the barrier to ballistic missile attack.
Look what's happening to Ukraine today.
So, we need a missile defense that doesn't threaten the entire Russian or Chinese deterrent, but which raises the bar that if they're going to attack us, they have to attack us in numbers, which will trigger other major actions on our part.
And the last thing is that technology has improved dramatically since the Reagan SDI.
We can do effective missile defense if we bring in space assets, both seekers and shooters.
And I think that we ought to be doing that rather than relying on 1970s arguments about strategic stability, which are outmoded.
Mr. Ambassador.
Just on space, you know, I think the sad reality is space has already been militarized by our adversaries.
Sure.
Yes.
And so to say we should avoid militarization of space is a lovely idea.
But in a world where the Russian Federation refuses to reaffirm the Outer Space Treaty and is threatened to put a nuclear weapon in space, I don't think we can afford to just sit back and wait for things to happen.
Yeah, a Navy admiral once told me, he said, we militarized the oceans with the U.S. Navy, and we went from a couple billion dollars worth of international trade to now it's 32 trillion.
So we made the world, the ocean, safe for dramatic expanded economic growth and economic growth.
So his point was, yeah, the Navy's out there.
You can call it militarization, but actually it's a very positive thing.
So with that, I want to thank Mr. Ambassador and Frank Miller and Eric Edelman.
Extraordinary remarks today.
We cover the waterfront.
I did want to say a few things about our friends who joined us today, Lockheed Martin and Bruce Allen, and Hexhorse, for example, and systems planning and analysis.
We have friends here from A-10 in the United States Air Force, also Stratcom.
Also, a shout out to Jim Kowalski, who used to be head of Global Strike Command and also at Stratcom.
I want to thank them both for being here today.
And also, just an advertisement is every week since 1981, I have been putting out something called the ICBM Ear, which is a weekly nuclear report.
If you would like to get a copy, please let me know because even though I came back from England last night at 2 o'clock in the morning, I'm going to put this together.
It'll be out hopefully sometime late tonight or tomorrow.
But again, Kimberly, you always do a wonderful job, Jim Protrowski, our president.
Thank you for this.
And Frank and Eric, it's wonderful to have you.
I hope people will take time to read and digest what you've said because these are really crucial issues, particularly when you see Medvedev about every 24 hours is threatening to blow us up, which I take with a little grain of salt.
But unfortunately, the Russians have that capability.
And finally, let me just say, Russia and China see their nuclear and conventional forces as instruments of aggression.
We see our nuclear and conventional forces as instruments of stopping aggression.
And I think that's a huge difference.
And it makes very complicated both maintaining deterrence and having any kind of arms control.
So with that, Frank, Eric, thank you very much.
We're honored to have your presence.
And again, I want to thank all our attendees.
For those who question I couldn't get to, we will put them together and send them to both Eric and Frank, and they can, at their leisure, decide to answer them or not.
But again, thank you, Kimberly.
You always do a great job.
And we will see all of you again at our next UC nuclear deterrence seminar.
Thanks for having us.
Thank you.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
Our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington to across the country.
Coming up Saturday morning, we'll look at President Trump's economic policies and how they affect the U.S. economy with Politicos Victoria Guida.
Then, Mazen Saleh with the R Street Institute joins us to discuss new legislation cracking down on illicit fentanyl.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Saturday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at cspan.org.
Democracy.
It isn't just an idea, it's a process.
A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles.
It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted.
Democracy in real time.
▲
Export Selection