Pentagon launches Nuclear Posture Review
April 17, 2017
(Editor's Note: This story has been updated to reflect additional information supplied by the Pentagon subsequent to publication.)
The Pentagon, amid escalating tensions with North Korea and Russia, has named the team that will manage its first Nuclear Posture Review since 2010.
The review will be led by the deputy defense secretary and the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, "and include interagency partners. The process will culminate in a final report to the president by the end of the year," according to a Pentagon statement issued Monday.
Multiple sources said Rob Soofer, a Senate Armed Services Committee staffer, had been tapped to become the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, which would position him to potentially oversee the review.
The Pentagon declined to confirm that Soofer was joining the Defense Department, and Soofer, who previously worked as an aide to former Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ), was unable to be reached for comment.
The Defense Department has not named a new deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy since President Trump was inaugurated, according to spokeswoman Laura Seal, who declined to confirm Soofer's appointment. The Obama administration's Nuclear Posture Review was headed by Brad Roberts, a former DASD who had the job multiple sources say Soofer is about to get.
The nuclear review, which the Pentagon commenced Monday, comes as North Korea recently conducted a failed missile launch over the Sea of Japan and displayed an arsenal of weapons during a massive military parade in Pyongyang.
A final report is due to the White House by the end of the year.
Significant details of the review structure have yet to emerge, though Gen. John Hyten, the chief of U.S. Strategic Command, has told Congress it will likely take six months. The Pentagon has not announced whether the results of the review will be classified.
Trump first directed the Pentagon to produce the review in a Jan. 27 presidential memorandum, which noted the NPR should ensure the nuclear triad is "modern, robust, flexible, resilient, and appropriately tailored to deter 21st century threats and reassure our allies and partners.”
James Acton, co-director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the review under Trump would likely have different “mood music” than what was produced under President Obama, partly because the Obama review focused on a world without nuclear weapons and framed the U.S.-Russia relationship as one of mutual cooperation.
“I would expect [the Trump administration] to take a somewhat more robust line on declaratory policy talking about the circumstances in which the U.S. would use nuclear weapons, I would expect them to massively de-emphasize a world without nuclear weapons, I'm sure they will make some more bellicose noises abut nukes,” Acton said. “But the actual operative statements? I would be surprised if they looked significantly different from the Obama administration.”
The Obama administration's position on maintaining the triad and sticking to mostly 20 years of declaratory policy did not deviate much from previous administrations, Acton said. The George W. Bush administration wrote an NPR calling for new nuclear capabilities, but neither the funding nor the political will to start any programs materialized.
“It's going to be very hard to get the money for new capabilities,” Acton said. “And the actual circumstances in which the U.S. categorically rules out the use of nukes is extremely thin already. That's why I think there won't be much change.”
Still, Michaela Dodge, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, said she expects the new global security environment – namely, a revanchist Russia and a confrontational North Korean ruler -- will lead the Trump administration to look long and hard at recommending new nuclear capabilities and missions.
“I do think it will affirm commitment to the nuclear triad,” she said. “I think it will recognize that the past assumption that Russia was no longer a potential adversary or that the potential for conflict was low should be looked at very hard.”
Dodge said the administration might also debate whether to remain part of the New Start Treaty with Russia, especially now that the Pentagon has asserted Russia violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. New Start calls for the United States and Russia to draw down their respective arsenals to 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads by February 2018. Trump has criticized New Start as a “bad deal.”
Hyten, the chief of STRATCOM, told the Senate Armed Services Committee April 4 the review will assess possible threats from Russia, China, North Korea and Iran as well as military options available to address those threats. The review, he said, would also examine Russia's violations of the INF Treaty and the modernization of the nuclear triad.
Hyten said the United States has spent 20 years de-emphasizing nuclear weapons in its national security strategy, while adversaries have been doing the exact opposite.
“Russia, in 2006, started a huge, aggressive program to modernize and build new nuclear capabilities; they continue that to this day,” he said. “China has done the same thing. . . . Our adversaries have taken the exact opposite view of our de-emphasis and have emphasized those nuclear capabilities once again.”
The cost to maintain and modernize U.S. nuclear forces, meanwhile, is expected to exceed $400 billion over the next decade, according to a Feb. 14 Congressional Budget Office report.
"Over the next two decades, essentially all of those nuclear delivery systems and weapons would have to be refurbished or replaced with new systems to continue operating," the report states. "Consequently, the Congress will need to make decisions about what nuclear forces the United States should field in the future and thus about the extent to which the nation will pursue nuclear modernization plans."
Bob Scher, a former assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities in the Obama administration, said the review will also have to wrestle with cost of the nuclear portfolio.
“Cost is always an issue, especially when there are so many other needs within the defense budget for that same dollar,” he said. “In the end, I believe we have taken all of the slack out of the modernization timelines and have no choice but to move forward with the plans we have on the books now, or we risk having systems slowly age out before replacements can be fielded. The only way to significantly reduce costs is to change the underlying nuclear strategy and field fewer systems, and the only real cost savings there is getting rid of an entire leg of the triad, and honestly I don't see that happening in this environment.”
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Paul Selva, told the House Armed Services Committee on March 8 the Pentagon should maintain the nuclear arsenal, but also “emphasize that the existence of that arsenal need not be absolute” if adversaries are open to transparent, bilateral negotiations.
“I think if we can balance those two things in our discussion, both publicly and privately, of what the implications are for maintenance of an arsenal and reduction of that arsenal in a measured and prudent way, we can be successful,” he said.
