Toward True Security: A U.S. Nuclear Posture for the Next Decade
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Date
2001-06Citation
Bruce G. Blair, Thomas B. Cochran, Tom Z. Collina, Jonathan Dean, Steve Fetter, Richard L. Garwin, Kurt Gottfried, Lisbeth Gronlund, Henry Kelly, Matthew G. McKinzie, Robert S. Norris, Adam Segal, Robert Sherman, Frank N. von Hippel, David Wright, and Stephen Young, Toward True Security: A U.S. Nuclear Posture for the Next Decade (Washington, DC: Federation of American Scientists, Natural Resources Defense Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, June 2001), 33 pgs;
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This report proposes a nuclear weapons policy for the United States for the next
decade that reflects today’s political and strategic realities. By contrast, the official policies and doctrines of both the United States and Russia are mired in Cold War patterns of thought. Eleven years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, both countries still maintain massive nuclear arsenals ready for nearly instant use. Although nuclear war
plans differ in size and detail from those drawn up 20 or more years ago, their basic
structure remains unchanged.
The US nuclear arsenal and doctrine were designed to deter a deliberate large-scale
Soviet nuclear attack on the United States and a massive Soviet conventional attack on
US European allies, as well as to preserve the option of a disarming first strike against Soviet nuclear forces. This force structure and doctrine are obsolete and jeopardize American national security.