America’s Strategic Posture Is Slouching We’ve let our nuclear force atrophy while Moscow and Beijing have expanded theirs and gone on offense. By Jon Kyl
Thinking about war is unpleasant, and preparing for it is expensive. It isn’t surprising that many policymakers prefer to spend their time and energy hoping for peace. But there’s a cruel paradox: If we’re negligent in anticipating and preparing for military threats, we will be less capable of conducting successful diplomacy, achieving disarmament agreements and harvesting economic fruit. Ignoring the potential for war increases its chances of happening, as well as the danger of our defeat.
With these thoughts in mind, the Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States took on its congressionally mandated task of assessing how well the U.S. is positioned to deal with military threats over the coming decades. The commission is composed of 12 experts appointed by bipartisan congressional leadership in 2022. Brookings Institution fellow Madelyn R. Creedon was its chairwoman, and I was its vice chairman.
Together we submitted a unanimous report to Congress in October 2023 with 131 findings and 81 recommendations for how the U.S. can enhance its ability to deter war with China and Russia. Congress would do well to consider our conclusions during the next several weeks as it prepares to write the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act and following appropriations bills.
The U.S. is facing a historically unique global threat environment. Washington is on the cusp of having two nuclear peer adversaries—in Beijing and Moscow—each with ambitions to disrupt the international status quo, by force if necessary. We didn’t expect this and thus are unprepared to respond to it.
Two developments drove the commission’s assessment of our nation’s strategic posture. First, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. allowed its nuclear force to atrophy. At the time we considered Russia to be a competitor, not an adversary, and China a less serious challenge.
Second is the rapid modernization of Russia’s nuclear forces and China’s military breakout. Beijing intends to create a nuclear triad—land-, sea- and air-based nuclear delivery systems—that it hopes will match that of Russia and the U.S. by 2035.
Washington has struggled to modernize its nuclear forces in response to the Russian threat. Worse, the commission found, we have barely begun to develop plans to deal with the new Chinese threat. That is unacceptable, as Russia continues to maul Ukraine and China contemplates an invasion of Taiwan. The U.S. must urgently modernize our strategic deterrent to deal with both threats.
This means being able to produce more nuclear weapons if necessary and more “delivery vehicles”—missiles, bombers and submarines—than currently planned. This isn’t, as some critics have claimed, a call for a new “arms race.” The commission simply acknowledged that Russia and China have already embarked on an unprecedented military buildup, which, if unaddressed, will neutralize the strategic deterrent to prevent nuclear war on which the U.S. has relied since the end of World War II.
Rebuilding our capacity won’t be easy. The U.S. no longer has the advantage of an unrivaled industrial base. We lack a workforce skilled in critical areas, from shipbuilders to nuclear scientists. Supply-chain deficiencies have placed great stress on delivery schedules of new weapons.
While the commission didn’t attempt to calculate the costs of its recommendations, defense spending will obviously have to increase. Every recent defense secretary and Joint Chiefs chairman has said that the U.S. strategic deterrent, underpinned by our nuclear force, is the military’s first priority. As such, the U.S. can afford to fund our recommended modernization. The nuclear-force component is only a sliver of our overall defense budget—or, as the Congressional Budget Office noted, some 7.5% of the total 10-year cost of the president’s 2023 defense budget submission. The U.S. can muster additional spending, especially if the president and congressional leadership take the case to the American people—another recommendation of our report.
The U.S. government’s first responsibility is to protect the American people—particularly from nuclear annihilation. To do so, Washington needs conventional and nuclear forces strong enough that no adversary would ever be tempted to attack. As the commission concluded: “The challenges are unmistakable; the problems are urgent; the steps are needed now.”
Mr. Kyl is vice chairman of the Strategic Posture Commission. A Republican, he served as a U.S. senator from Arizona, 1995-2013 and 2018.
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