PETER HUESSEY: SEEKING NUCLEAR ROADMAPS
For more than the past two decades, the United States has adopted a conventional wisdom that our nuclear deterrent enterprise was not as important as it was during the Cold War. As USAF General Garret Harencak has correctly argued, we went on both a procurement and philosophical holiday after the breakup of the Soviet Union. We failed to replace and sustain key elements in our nuclear deterrent force, and we neglected to put together a coherent and well thought out framework for going forward with our nuclear deterrent in a different but still challenging world.
Some former high ranking defense officials argued nuclear deterrence no longer mattered. Others said we could substitute conventional weaponry for our nuclear deterrent, while others argued to slash spending for our deterrent way below levels needed to sustain even minimum force levels. We did what Washington excels at-we kicked the can down the road year after year.
Particularly troubling has been the problems facing the National Nuclear Security Administration which handles the nation’s nuclear labs, our warhead and nuclear material production facilities and the dismantlement of weapons and their storage and safety.
Although nominated in September 2013, the chosen new Director of NNSA, Lt Gen Frank Klotz (Ret) has not been approved by the full Senate and thus NNSA does not have the long term leadership it needs to get its work done correctly. NNSA has been left without its top two administrators for far too long. In addition, retirements are growing (warned about since at least the Chiles Commission report) yet no serious recruiting has been undertaken at the lower ranks. At some point this becomes unsustainable.
A panel co-chaired by two very distinguished Americans-former Strategic Command head Admiral Richard Mies and former Lockheed Martin chairman Norm Augustine-laid out the issues we need to examine and problems we need to correct in recent Congressional testimony. It follows. It is a critical issue which we as a nation ignore at our continued peril.
We have over regulated and underfunded NNSA while also failing to give it direction and leadership. Too much time is spent filling out paperwork and not enough doing what needs to be done. Too little thought has been given to developing and keeping the skilled folks we need to do the job.
Former DOD and DOE official John Harvey is correct-the roadmap of what we have to do is available. The Perry-Schlesinger Strategic Commission on Nuclear Forces laid out the way forward in a remarkably done consensus document. That formed the basis of many elements of the administration Nuclear Posture Review and that helped in turn give substance to the roadmap identified in section 1215 of the 2010 Defense Authorization Act passed by Congress as a companion to the New Start strategic nuclear arms control treaty.
Nuclear deterrence is not something “nice to have”. It is not something you go down to the nearest Wal-Mart and “get”. It is a long term effort that must be sustained over administrations and through many sessions of Congress.
It’s part of that document we call a Constitution: “Provide for the Common Defense”.
Interim Report of the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security
Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis of Potomac, Maryland , a defense and national security consulting firm.
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