The Cold War-era doctrine of mutually assured destruction will continue to deter nuclear war for at least another decade despite Russia’s claims of new and provocative doomsday weapons, said Gen. John Hyten, the head of U.S. Strategic Command.
But Hyten warned that the U.S. must modernize its arsenal and touted the Trump administration’s decision to pursue low-yield nuclear cruise and submarine-launched missiles.
Mutually assured destruction, or MAD, is the theory that no nuclear power will launch an attack if it would result in obliteration of both sides. The doctrine underpinned the decades-long nuclear standoff between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.
“I don’t think we have to worry about that [changing] for at least a decade,” Hyten said in a testimony to the House Armed Services Committee. “I think the capabilities that we have, that we will operate for the next decade, will allow us to maintain the basis of nuclear deterrence.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a stable of new weapons last week and claimed Russia has developed a submarine drone capable of carrying a nuclear payload and a hypersonic nuclear missile that can evade any U.S. defenses.
Hyten said the real risk is a miscalculation by Russia or China, which is also a nuclear power bent on developing new weapons to challenge the U.S.
“We can’t allow them to think that they can employ a nuclear weapon, either on the battlefield or strategically, and the United States will not be able to respond,” he said.
The Trump administration’s pursuit of low-yield nuclear weapons is seen partly as a bargaining chip with Russia, which has spent years growing its own arsenal as well as violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with shorter range missiles.
But it does little to change the calculus of nuclear war, which could be triggered by the use of small or large weapons, and Hyten said the U.S. still holds the ability to take out Moscow.
“There is nothing that they can do outside of a massive attack against our country that we would not have the ability to respond to,” he said. “And oh, by the way, our submarines, [Russia and China] do not know where they are and they have the ability to decimate their country if we go down that path.”
