By Peter Huessy
July 03, 2026
With the expiration of the START series of arms control agreements, the U.S. now faces serious choices particularly how to respond to the emergence of two peer nuclear adversaries. Especially when the current nuclear modernization program of record was agreed to in 2010 when the nuclear balance was far more benign. Projected into the future, people across the political spectrum see a nuclear environment with storm clouds ahead. However, there is a serious divide as to what the U.S. should do. As a result, the U.S. will soon have some difficult choices to make.
In 1981 the U.S. faced a similar crossroad. Would détente continue along with a nuclear freeze of very large nuclear arsenals, modernized in the USSR but lacking in the U.S.? Or alternatively, would the U.S. and the West secure major nuclear reductions while modernizing, and adopt a peace through strength strategy as a pathway to dismantle the Soviet empire?
By 1991, the latter option won out. Strategic long range nuclear forces were projected to come down by over 80% through a series of START arms agreements. Miraculously, the Soviet Union collapsed and all of Eastern Europe was freed. But despite this extraordinary victory, the U.S. assumed it was the end of history, and all enemies were gone and would not emerge. And consequently, we took a subsequent interim forty year holiday from nuclear sustainment.
The U.S. now faces the challenge of simultaneously sustaining and modernizing the entirety of the nuclear deterrent.
So, like 1981, the U.S. and the West face another crossroads: either seek further nuclear reductions toward zero or abolition, while significantly curtailing nuclear modernization; or alternatively, accelerate and enhance both nuclear modernization and sustainment, while once again adopting a strategy of peace through strength but now to take down the hegemonic aspirations of the Chinese communist party.
Both options are relatively well spelled out by proponents, but they rely on very different assumptions.
Like the advocates of the nuclear freeze, abolitionists think nuclear deterrence is bound to fail. And while nuclear deterrence has worked since the dawn of the nuclear age, it will not be useful if deterrence breaks down. A key assumption underlines this new belief: if one or even a few nuclear weapons are used in retaliation, the odds are that nearly all other nuclear weapons will subsequently be used as escalation will take over. Thus, there is no capability to “use” nuclear weapons and survive.
Since the 2023 movie “Oppenheimer,” the abolition folks have brought forward a new twist on what is or is not possible for deterrence. As Annie Jacobsen in her book “Nuclear War: A Scenario” and the 2024 movie “A House of Dynamite” conclude, nuclear deterrence will someday not work and war will break out. And the assumption is that the U.S. military will “jam up” the American President to retaliate “all in.” The only alternative is nuclear abolition.
To get there HASC members Representators Mo Khanna and Jim Garamendi (both D-CA) and SASC members Senators Markey (D-MA) and Warren, (D-MA), have joined with Senator Sanders (I-VT) to propose a unilateral cut of U.S. nuclear forces from 400 to 150 ICBMs, from 12 to 4 strategic submarines and from 60 to zero nuclear capable bombers. The implied force is between 300-500 strategic warheads compared to the New START allowed 1550-1850 warheads which is the current force of choice.
On the other hand, there is an option one might describe as “Record Plus.” In 2010 the U.S. Congress strongly supported a modernized force of 12 submarines, 400 ICBMs, and 60 B2 and B52 strategic bombers for the U.S. strategic nuclear force. Funding for such modernization has generally been approved and is projected to cost $450 billion over the next decade. This was a force consistent with the limits of the 2010 New START nuclear treaty that expired earlier this year. What has yet to be decided is how much more nuclear capability the United States needs as generally recommended by the 2023 Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.
The choices are relatively straight forward. The U.S. needs theater or shortrange, nuclear forces such as sea and land-launched cruise missiles, and such development funding has now been approved. The U.S. could add to the existing silo based and submarine-based missiles we already have in the legacy nuclear forces or add to the planned new nuclear forces.
Each silo-based ICBM can add upwards of two warheads. The upload process allows 3 missiles per ICBM wing per month or 44 months, while sub warheads can be added much faster. Other buildups could be an additional 3-4 submarines but that could probably only be done at the end of the current acquisition schedule, with such submarines being acquired 2041-4. The new B21 Raider is now undergoing flight testing and there is general consensus that the U.S. needs not 100 but 175-200 more nuclear capable strategic bombers, with Northrop Grumman having committed to accelerate such new acquisition.
There is however a major new concern as the U.S. moves forward on modernization. In April 1999 Russian President Yeltsin in a secret decree ordered the development of thousands of short-range, low yield, “battlefield” nuclear weapons that Russia could use to win a nuclear conflict.” One recent study determined that Russian micro-testing of very low yield strategic long-range weapons could attack all 400 U.S. silo-based ICBMs and cause less than 10,000 casualties, making a U.S. retaliatory response less than certain.
Now the current U.S. retaliatory deterrent strategy is to destroy an enemy’s leadership and their supportive security forces along with their remaining nuclear weapons and industry support. The rationale is simple: threaten to take away those things the bad guys value. Mao Tse Tung once casually dismissed the consequences of nuclear war with the United States, declaring that Chinese women would in a generation make up for the loss of a few hundred million people. He hardly cared for his own people having killed some 65 million to sustain power.
To abolitionists such a U.S. strategy is illogical as they assume such a strategy is “warfighting” and not winnable. In the two movies and one book referenced earlier, some of the abolitionists are pushing to jettison current U.S. nuclear deterrent strategy altogether as unworkable. But what does the U.S. do for deterrent strategy on the long road toward nuclear abolition? How does one deter bad guys brandishing nuclear weapons prior to their hoped for abolition? How do you still deter on the way toward abolition?
Author Annie Jacobsen was asked just this question, but she explained she would drop her explicit support for abolition but let other “experts” figure it out. The movie “Dynamite” took both deterrence by retaliation off the table and missile defense to intercept an attack in the first place. The movie assumed missile defense—even against a single warhead—would not work. And not knowing where the missile originated, the U.S. had to guess— retaliate against everyone as one military officer proposed or do nothing.
Yeltsin’s 1999 decree is being implemented. And since the invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Moscow has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and its allies dozens of times. Many have assumed such nuclear strikes would involve the very battlefield nuclear forces called for in Yeltsin’s 1999 decree.
Critics of such weapons say there is no consequential difference between using a regional/theater/battlefield nuclear weapon with a minimal yield and a long-range strategic nuclear warhead of many hundreds of kilotons. Any such weapon use will result in Armageddon.
That may indeed be true.
But Moscow and Beijing may not believe so and thus would be reckless enough to use such weapons. That the U.S. and its allies must defend against and deter such use. That may take a sea-launched nuclear armed cruise missile. And a robust missile defense such as Golden Dome. Or any number of new technologies and strategies. But probably not unilateral restraint that does not take such threats seriously in the first place.
Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrtegic Analysis and a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrent Studies & the Gold Institute for International Strategy.
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.
