American Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century
The United States confronts a bewildering national security dilemma: For the first time in the nuclear age, Washington faces not one but two nuclear-peer competitors—adversaries with arsenals comparable to America’s—emanating from the heart of the Eurasian landmass. Where once American defense planners could structure nuclear deterrence requirements around a solitary competitor, Russia, they must now account for China’s ongoing, massive nuclear buildup. Today’s strategic landscape no longer resembles the simpler threat environment that American planners anticipated when designing the existing US nuclear force posture over a decade ago.
Resolving this two-nuclear-peer dilemma raises vexing questions that cut to the core of America’s existing nuclear policy. Does the United States, for instance, require more deployed nuclear weapons to deter two peer adversaries? What is the role of such weaponry should Russia or China launch simultaneous offensives? And, more fundamentally, should the United States ditch the policy of targeting adversary nuclear forces, targeting only the adversaries’ conventional assets to reduce the pressure on American planners to offset China’s buildup?
To answer these weighty questions, Washington must address not only the size of Russia’s and China’s nuclear arsenals but their penchant for nuclear-backed coercion. At opposite ends of Eurasia, both are wielding their nuclear forces to break the US-led alliance systems in their respective neighborhoods, recognizing that these alliances are America’s greatest competitive advantage and, therefore, the most formidable obstacle to their revisionist agendas.
Although questions regarding US nuclear force numbers and targeting policy are critical planning considerations, they are ultimately downstream from more fundamental strategic choices. When Washington cannot dominate the combined arsenals of its peer adversaries, the American nuclear debate more than ever should move beyond numbers and discrete target sets to emphasize defeating adversaries’ strategies of coercion. Preserving a liberal international system that favors American interests will depend on nothing less.
Strategies of Coercion
For much of the nuclear age, Russia constituted America’s lone nuclear peer dating back to the Cold War when the Soviet Union pointed thousands of nuclear weapons at the United States to cast doubt on America’s pledge to defend NATO allies. Tensions between the superpowers eventually thawed. NATO ultimately weathered Soviet coercion, and the end of the Cold War ushered in a vast reduction in nuclear arms. With time, however, the Kremlin would shatter the positive post-Cold War spirit and the dream held by many Americans of a world without nuclear weapons.
Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has reverted to Soviet form by invading its neighbors, violating arms-control agreements, and devoting vast resources to nuclear upgrades. Unlike his American counterparts, who neglected nuclear weapons after the Cold War, Putin launched an ambitious modernization program in the early 2000s. This program, now nearly complete, includes the menacing Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), dubbed “Satan II” in the West as a nod to the destructive power of the 10 warheads it will carry. Contrary to America’s smaller missiles loaded with single warheads, Russia’s hydra-headed ICBMs can threaten the geographically dispersed missile silos that dot America’s heartland. All told, Russia has augmented its approximately 330 ICBMs, 192 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and 60 heavy bombers with more exotic delivery systems like nuclear-powered intercontinental torpedoes and cruise missiles. These exotic systems are exempt from the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty provisions limiting Russia and the United States to 700 delivery systems carrying 1,550 accountable strategic warheads—a category of weapons that can strike targets at global distances.
Contrary to America’s smaller missiles loaded with single warheads, Russia’s hydra-headed ICBMs can threaten the geographically dispersed missile silos that dot America’s heartland.
It is with these strategic forces that Putin first rattled the nuclear saber in the early days of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, placing them on “high combat alert” to deter NATO intervention. After his bid to topple Kyiv stalled, Putin raised the possibility of theater nuclear escalation to weaken America’s material support for Ukraine. Though his incessant saber-rattling proved hollow, Putin’s force modernization coerced Washington into slow-rolling its support for fear of provoking a limited nuclear attack.
In this sense, the Kremlin boss has successfully exploited his earlier decision to break a Cold War-era arms control treaty, which banned the deployment of Russian and American ground-launched medium-range missiles in Europe and Asia. Putin’s brazen violation has helped him lock in a sizable regional nuclear advantage, even as Washington has upheld its obligations and stood pat with a small number of gravity bombs assigned to less capable fighter aircraft. In total, Putin now has at his disposal some 2,000 substrategic nuclear weapons, many assigned to theater-range missiles, in contrast to America’s 100 gravity bombs forward-stationed in Europe. And it is this asymmetry that Putin would have leveraged to suppress America’s support for Ukraine by launching a nuclear-armed theater missile as a warning shot across Kyiv’s bow.
Russia’s coercion has thus far failed to decouple Washington from Europe. But the apparent disdain that some in Donald Trump’s administration harbor for NATO could breathe new life into Putin’s bid to succeed where his Soviet forebears failed. Look no further than Europe’s collective anxiety about Washington abandoning the continent or Poland’s rising interest in acquiring an independent nuclear capability to hedge against NATO’s demise. And though America’s overall strategic nuclear arsenal of 400 ICBMs, 240 SLBMs, and 63 bombers compares favorably to Russia’s, the rise of a second nuclear peer at the other end of Eurasia heaps more strain on America’s credibility.
China’s long-running campaign to absorb Taiwan without provoking a destructive war and decouple Washington from allies like Japan was given a boost by Xi Jinping’s decision in the early 2010s to jettison China’s “minimal” nuclear deterrent. China failed to deter American intervention in the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1996, but more recently, its coercion campaign yielded results when Beijing seized the Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines in 2012. In the 1990s, China was a primitive nuclear power, and its implicit—and wholly unbelievable—threat to strike Los Angeles failed to deter two US carrier battle groups from entering the region in support of Taipei. The stunning size and character of Xi’s ongoing nuclear buildup suggest he aims to bring credibility to these once-outlandish threats and successfully isolate Taiwan from the United States in the next cross-Strait showdown.
Where once China contented itself with a small, rudimentary arsenal designed to assure retaliation against adversary cities after it absorbed a nuclear blow, it is now building out more sophisticated forces capable of coercive attacks à la Russia. According to the Department of Defense, many Chinese strategists are increasingly open to the idea that precision missiles “could allow for the controlled use of nuclear weapons, in the warzone, for warning and deterrence.” They consider Putin’s saber-rattling as a proof of concept for shielding China’s conventional aggression in a regional contingency and deterring outside intervention.
Many Chinese strategists are increasingly open to the idea that precision missiles “could allow for the controlled use of nuclear weapons, in the warzone, for warning and deterrence.”
Since 2020, China has tripled its stockpile of nuclear warheads from 200 to 600, a furious buildup that has Beijing on track to match or surpass America’s 1,550 deployed warheads by 2035. China has also surged to over 400 ICBMs, increasing from just 60 in the early 2010s to levels that blow past America’s aging fleet. Beijing’s six ballistic missile submarines, which once lacked SLBMs capable of ranging the United States from home waters, now house missiles that can strike from the South China Sea. China’s air force, meanwhile, has reassigned a nuclear mission to a portion of its medium bombers, with plans to field a longer-range stealth bomber in the future. Beijing can brandish these capabilities to bring coercive pressure to bear on its neighbors, without drawing an American response.
China, like Russia, has also exploited America’s lack of long-range theater options. It has fielded precision-strike ballistic missiles that enable coercive operations across the western Pacific, stretching from Japan in the first island chain to Guam in the second. Washington, meanwhile, has vacillated in developing a theater-range sea-launched cruise missile that many Japanese strategists have long championed as a means to renew the US nuclear guarantee to the region. There is rising fear in Tokyo that the lopsided regional nuclear balance will cede to Beijing space to isolate and coerce Japan with impunity. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has warned that if these adverse developments go unanswered, the US extended deterrent in the Asia-Pacific region will “no longer function.”
Answering the Revisionist Challenge
Russia’s return to form and China’s emerging peer status raise uncomfortable questions. Defense planners must decide if the United States should field more nuclear forces to fulfill its existing targeting policy, threatening Russia’s and China’s forces, or revise its policy to forgo such a buildup. More importantly, the US must develop a modern strategy for successfully deterring, say, Russia from engaging in a nuclear-backed offensive at one end of Eurasia should China initiate hostilities on the other.
Force numbers and target sets are essential considerations. In a nuclear conflict, we need to be prepared to hit the right sites and have enough weapons to do so. But how much is enough? This is a perennial question, and the answer is inextricably tied to how we choose targets in the first place. At a time when the United States is in the sights of two nuclear-armed peers, it is critical to maintain a sizable strategic force that can survive a large-scale Sino-Russian attack and then inflict unacceptable damage on what those adversaries value most. This is why the US targeting policy stipulates an assured capability to hold at risk Xi’s and Putin’s political controls and their nuclear and conventional forces and war-supporting industries. Both autocrats rely on those assets to dominate their countries and would hesitate to jeopardize them.
What’s more, a US strategic posture with the size and endurance to go after adversaries’ nuclear forces would allow Washington to limit damage to the US homeland by hitting enemy weapons before they launch. Such a damage-limitation capability is essential for an American president to credibly resort to nuclear weapons in defense of allied territory. After all, why would a president deliberately risk nuclear escalation for Poland or Japan if the US homeland lies entirely exposed to nuclear attack? A robust damage-limitation capability thus provides a “roof,” so to speak, under which a president can more credibly respond to nuclear-backed aggression across the entire spectrum of risk. Proposals to cease targeting adversary nuclear forces and shift exclusively to conventional forces and war-supporting industry would constitute a deterrence posture that jeopardizes America’s credibility and alliance system.
Those opposed to a modest nuclear buildup to target two peer nuclear forces fear an arms race. But the United States need not match the combined arsenals of China and Russia; it simply needs a sufficiently large strategic force that can withstand a combined attack and destroy a portion of what Xi and Putin value most. Or, should China initiate a large-scale attack on the US homeland, the United States should retain the capability to absorb that blow, respond against China’s most valued assets, and continue to hold at risk Putin’s most critical sources of political control and military power. The US possessing these capabilities helps deter war, and the only scenario worse than an arms race is one in which revisionist dictators lock in nuclear advantages that drive a wedge between Washington and its allies.
To meet this two-peer force standard, the United States requires a modest buildup in deployed strategic warheads to cover China’s growth. But it need not maintain numerical parity with China or Russia. Indeed, if China and Russia continue racing among themselves in strategic weaponry, Washington should not chase blindly after them. To do so would be to compete on their terms and ultimately starve the US Navy and other conventional capabilities of the resources needed to deter lower levels of aggression.
Indeed, if China and Russia continue racing among themselves in strategic weaponry, Washington should not chase blindly after them.
On this point, the Soviet-American Cold War is instructive. By the late 1970s, many American planners believed the Soviets wielded superior strategic and theater nuclear forces. In fact, at no point after the US lost superiority in the mid-1960s did American officials have any confidence that they would ever again enjoy outright escalation dominance. In the fearful eyes of American planners, the Soviets enjoyed a sizable advantage in gigantic ICBMs capable of knocking out America’s missile silos, and Soviet leaders appeared on the cusp of splitting Washington from NATO by deploying long-range theater missiles under which Moscow could, in theory, press its numerical conventional advantages in Europe while holding a US nuclear response at bay.
By the mid-1980s, however, American planners had strengthened deterrence by looking beyond force numbers and discrete target sets to holistically counter the Soviet strategy of coercion. They swapped out an older and smaller ICBM for a larger one loaded with 10 highly accurate warheads to offset the Soviets’ heavier missiles. And under the roof of this enhanced damage-limitation capability, they fielded theater-range missiles to reassure NATO and convince the Soviets that a conventional war in Europe would likely unleash a US nuclear response. In combination, these adjustments upended the Soviet bid to decouple Washington from allies and, by extension, the Soviet theory of victory in Europe.
The United States can achieve similar results in today’s two-nuclear-peer environment. By loading more warheads from the reserve stockpile onto existing ICBMs and SLBMs, American planners can offset China’s growth and provide a roof under which a president can more credibly respond to aggression at both ends of Eurasia. And by moving beyond force numbers and target sets, planners can field impressive theater forces that upend China’s and Russia’s coercion strategies.
American officials did not take theater-level nuclear deterrence seriously until the mid-1970s but were lucky and careful enough to have avoided nuclear conflict in the two decades before then. Defense planners don’t have the same luxury of time today, given the glaring regional imbalance in Asia and Europe. To rapidly correct this disparity, the Trump administration should accelerate the development of the planned nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (currently set for 2034) or, as a stopgap measure, explore fitting older warheads from the reserve stockpile onto existing submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles. Such in-theater capabilities will ensure that the United States has a long-range nuclear option to respond promptly to China and Russia, degrade their ability to project conventional forces against allies, and raise the risk to China and Russia of further escalation.
As technology and the global environment evolve, the US nuclear posture will likely require further adjustments. The above approach, however, represents the most expeditious and cost-effective means of strengthening deterrence and reassuring allies in the near term. If the United States adopts a holistic approach to nuclear planning—one incorporating force numbers, targets, and strategy—then the United States can thwart the latest Eurasian bid to decouple Washington from its allies. China’s and Russia’s strategies of coercion are inseparable from their nuclear aspirations, and the US ignores this fact at its own peril.
Kyle Balzer is a Jeane Kirkpatrick Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on great-power competition, US grand strategy, long-term strategic competition, US nuclear strategy and policy, and arms control.