When, in January, he takes the office of House Minority Leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., should push back against dangerous efforts by Democrats to obstruct President Trump’s nuclear modernization of U.S. nuclear forces.
It’s a necessary concern in light of Politico reporting that suggests that the new Democratic House majority will seek to pare back our nuclear deterrence capability. Politico notes that incoming House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., recently told a disarmament group, “The rationale for the triad I don’t think exists anymore. The rationale for the numbers of nuclear weapons doesn’t exist anymore.” Smith is referring to the U.S. nuclear triad arsenal of ground-based, nuclear-armed missiles; submarine-based missiles (SSBN); and aircraft-based missiles and bombs.
The U.S. is currently developing replacement programs for key elements of the triad, most notably a smaller-yield nuclear warhead and the Columbia-class submarine replacement for the aging Ohio-class SSBNs.
But Democrats don’t simply want to gut these programs; they appear to want to gut the nation’s ability to defend itself. Smith tells Politico, “We want to avoid the miscalculation of stumbling into a nuclear war. And this is where I think the No First Use Bill is incredibly important: to send that message that we do not view nuclear weapons as a tool in warfare.”
Here, Smith is referring to a particularly silly bill from Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., that seeks to limit a president’s nuclear command authority. While the intended effect of that legislation is patently unconstitutional, House Republicans must push back against the Democratic Party’s new disarmament focus here. When it comes to national security, it’s clear that this is no longer the party of former Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy.
The need for America’s world-leading nuclear deterrent is proved by our world today and the possibility of a worse world tomorrow. There’s no question that the triad is now dated. The missiles, warheads, and launch platforms (especially the Ohio-class submarines) are all aging. At the same time, America’s two primary nuclear challengers, China and Russia, are also pursuing their own nuclear weapons upgrades.
That speaks to the critical point here: Effective nuclear deterrence cannot rest on an idle foundation. Instead, effective deterrence requires an adversary’s potent understanding that America has the means and amenability to rapidly annihilate them if necessary. This dual capability-to-destroy, willingness-to-use equation is the fundamental underpinning of nuclear deterrence.
Attempting to remove both sides of that equation, Democrats are acting with extraordinary disregard for national security. Republicans have a duty, in terms of policy, to oppose such reckless action. Of course, they also have a political interest in doing so: What Democrats are proposing is far outside the mainstream of public opinion. Publicizing Democratic plans, the GOP can shred them.
This is not to say that Republicans should be reflexively deferential to Trump’s nuclear policy. The president’s focus on heavily resourcing intercontinental ballistic missile defense systems, for example, is mistaken. Those platforms are of utility only against lower capability nuclear threats such as North Korea, and they fuel hyper-aggressive countermeasures from China and Russia. Better to keep deterrence simple: We can kill you more easily and effectively than you can kill us.
But when it comes to defending America against the most nationally exigent of threats, we must not accept the faux morality of self-imposed weakness. History testifies to the stupidity of those who invite challenge.
