Nuclear security

A nuclear weapon that could change everything: Don't allow low-yield atomic warheads to be deployed

Since the creation of the atomic bomb nearly 75 years ago, scholars have offered only one major insight into how such weapons should change our thinking about national security. Sadly, the Trump administration is now ignoring that signal lesson of the nuclear era, by commencing production of a “low-yield” atomic warhead for submarine missiles, which could backfire by increasing the risk of a nuclear attack on the United States. The only hope is that Congress will prohibit deployment of this dangerously destabilizing weapon.

Prior to the nuclear era, defense planning aimed to destroy enemy military arsenals as quickly as possible. Such preparation could both deter war and, failing that, reduce the human and financial costs of victory. However, nuclear weapons upset that calculus, because experts realized that countries would actually be more secure if they could not threaten to destroy their adversaries’ nuclear arsenals.

This vital concept is known as “crisis stability.” During a dispute between nuclear-armed rivals — say, the U.S. and China, or India and Pakistan — each should be deterred from initiating use of nuclear weapons by fear of certain retaliation, thereby encouraging them to settle their differences peacefully if possible or otherwise only with conventional force.