In Monday night’s presidential debate, Donald Trump cited nuclear weapons as the single greatest threat facing the world, and said Russia’s modernization of its nuclear arsenal is a major part of the problem.
“Russia has been expanding,” Trump said. “They have a much newer capability than we do. We have not been updating from the new standpoint.”
That came the same day Defense Secretary Ash Carter also cited increasing concern about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s more aggressive nuclear posture, in which he has proclaimed he’s ready to use nuclear weapons to even the odds in a conventional conflict.
It may be just a bluff, but Carter, who was inspecting U.S. nuclear forces at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota said the comment has caused NATO to rethink its playbook for deterring a Russian attack.
These days, Carter says, nuclear weapons are not used as much to deter all-out war, as much as they are to “coerce a conventionally superior opponent to back off or abandon an ally during a crisis.”
“We’re refreshing NATO’s nuclear playbook,” Carter told U.S. troops at Minot, to better “deter Russia from thinking it can benefit from nuclear use in a conflict with NATO.”
Under Russia’s nuclear doctrine, signed by Putin in 2014, Moscow reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression, “when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.”
That’s one reason Carter gave unequivocal support to the plan to rebuild, replace and modernize all three legs of America’s nuclear triad; bombers, submarines, and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, at an estimated cost of $1 trillion over the next 30 years.
But speaking to reporters after his troop talk, Carter dismissed the idea that the U.S. is in a Cold War-style arms race with Moscow.
“No, it is not,” Carter said. “I can say that because the Russian nuclear activities, which are not only different in size but in their nature in some respects from the past, began before the United States made any decisions about recapitalizing its triad.”
Russia has not only changed its doctrine but has also embarked on an ambitious plan to build a new generation of long-range nuclear bombers, truck-mounted ballistic missiles and nuclear-armed submarines.
Trump’s comments prompted debate moderator Lester Holt to ask the candidates’ position on the current U.S. policy of not ruling out a first use of nuclear weapons, a question neither candidate answered, although Trump did say, “I would certainly not do first strike.”
Meanwhile Russia has made it clear that it has no plans to rule out a first strike, and in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes,” former Supreme Allied Commander retired Gen. Philip Breedlove said Putin from time to time has put his nuclear forces on higher alert, such as when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine.
“They see nuclear weapons as a normal extension of a conventional conflict,” Breedlove told CBS. “I think to them the use of nuclear weapons is not unthinkable.”
Carter said the United States needs to spend the billions to upgrade its nuclear triad, because the nation has not built a new nuclear weapon or delivery system in 25 years, and most have already been extended decades beyond their original expected service lives.
“So it’s not a choice between replacing these platforms or keeping,” Carter said. “It’s really a choice between replacing them or losing them. That would mean losing confidence in our ability to deter, which we can’t afford in today’s volatile security environment.”
Or as Trump put it in the debate in a more colloquial style, “I think that once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over. At the same time, we have to be prepared. I can’t take anything off the table.”
