Source: United States Senator for Nebraska Deb Fischer
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the top Republican on the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, discussed America’s nuclear force posture at a hearing this week. Sen. Fischer emphasized the importance of ensuring U.S. strategy reflects the changing global threat environment.
Sen. Fischer secured measures in the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to stop the Biden administration’s attempts to cancel the SLCM program and to retire the B83. Last year, Sen. Fischer spoke on the Senate floor about the importance of modernizing America’s nuclear deterrent.
Sen. Fischer questioned the following witnesses:
- Ms. M. Elaine Bunn, Senior Adviser at the Project on Nuclear Issues Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Dr. Brad Roberts, Director of the Center for Global Security Research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
- Mr. Gregory Weaver, Senior Associate at the Project on Nuclear Issues Center for Strategic and international Studies
- Dr. Evan B. Montgomery, Senior Fellow and Director at the Research Studies Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments
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Click here for video of Sen. Fischer’s questioning
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The following is a transcript of Senator Fischer’s opening statement.
Senator Fischer: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to all our witnesses for being here today and for sharing your perspectives on nuclear strategy and deterrence theory — particularly with respect to the role it plays in regional nuclear stability. According to the 2022 NPR, effective nuclear deterrence “requires tailored strategies for potential adversaries that reflect our best understanding of their decision making and perceptions.” The NPR also notes that the United States “will collaborate with allies and partners to tailor extended deterrence and assurance policies.” These strategies must be continuously evaluated to ensure they reflect and take into consideration the evolving threat environment. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on effective strategy concepts and how they may impact regional nuclear deterrence. Thank you very much.
The following is a transcript of Senator Fischer’s questioning.
Senator Fischer: Thank you, Senator King. On Saturday, March 25, President Putin announced that Russia is going to station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. And he also informed us that an agreement had been made with Belarus to equip 10 of the Belarussian aircraft with tactical nuclear weapons along with their Iskander mobile, short-range ballistic missile system. It was fascinating, I thought, that he did this. Obviously, I got a very strong message that he would do this — first of all, take the action and secondly, tell us what he did. Mr. Weaver, let’s start with you. How do you think that this action is going to change the nuclear deterrence dynamic that we see in Europe right now?
Mr. Weaver: So, Senator, I don’t believe Russian deployment of some of their non-strategic capabilities to Belarus changes the military equation in Europe at all. It is a political move. The Russians have long complained that we have nuclear weapons forward-based in Europe on the territory of our allies and that we have nuclear sharing arrangements with
Senator Fischer: And they made it clear. This was not for Belarus to use. It was for Belarus to use for Russia.
Mr. Weaver: Right. But the Russians have somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 non-strategic nuclear weapons today. They’re embedded throughout their conventional forces across the Russian Federation. Putting a few of them—moving a few of them forward now into Belarus really doesn’t change the military equation. They can range anybody in NATO that they want to with the existing systems they have — including the SSC-8 Ground Launch Cruise Missile that has a range of about 2,000 kilometers that violated the INF Treaty and led to our withdrawal. So, they can threaten NATO throughout its depth, and they have always had the ability to move Russian forces forward into Belarus in the event of a conflict in any event. So, I don’t think it changes the military equation, but it’s a political signal.
Senator Fischer: Dr. Roberts, Ms. Bunn, do you agree with that?
Ms. Bunn: Yes, I would agree with that. It will be interesting. The Russians—and now the Chinese—in NPT meetings have complained about NATO nuclear sharing. And I don’t know if this will change their rhetoric on that at all, probably not.
Senator Fischer: Dr. Roberts, anything to add on that?
Dr. Roberts: Same essential view. The Russian military strategy for local war, which is what it claims to be fighting as opposed to a regional war against a large coalition, that strategy is in part about keeping it local, keeping the outsiders out, casting a long shadow, making us fearful that, if we engage, we’ll pay a terrible price. And President Putin has to keep beating that drum one way or another. And I think this is just one more sign of his effort to alarm us. But it doesn’t change the military equation.
Senator Fischer: Dr. Roberts, between recent news of Russia’s non-compliance with the New START Treaty, China’s modernization rate, and North Korea’s daily shows of force, we also see Iran’s nuclear weaponization capability. How should the U.S. focus our regional nuclear strategy? If we’re talking about regions, how do we focus that?
Dr. Roberts: Well, I don’t think we have the luxury of prioritizing. One of the big questions in the Two Peer Study was: do you prioritize one over the other, or the first contingency over the possible second one? And our conclusion was, we can’t afford to do that. Too much risk. It’s giving a green light to aggression in the area you haven’t prioritized. So, my take on this is that the complex landscape you describe renders essentially out of date the bet we placed in 1991. The bet that we could do regional deterrence essentially with our Strategic Forces and a little bit of theater nuclear force. And the rebalance has to come between those two elements of the bet we placed. So, with the rest of the group, I think more weapons and a more diverse toolkit at the regional level are in our interest and in the interest of our allies. But, let’s be clear, I don’t think any of us are arguing that the U.S. and its allies should have a regional nuclear posture that’s symmetric to that of Russia or China or North Korea. We have different strategies. So, we need different numbers and different types of weapons.
Senator Fischer: Would you say there’s plans out there now that would address that? Has planning taken place? Do you know?
Dr. Roberts: Capability development or operational planning?
Senator Fischer: Both.
Dr. Roberts: Both?
Senator Fischer: Both. You said it. It’s not the same. It’s not the same. You have to address each one individually. So, do you know of any plans that have taken place either within government or outside of government?
Dr. Roberts: So, for development of new capability, the administration certainly has a plan.
Senator Fischer: Right.
Dr. Roberts: In my view, it needs to evolve in the direction we’ve talked about. Operational planning — of course, the STRATCOM commander stands ready to do what might need to be done tonight. But I bear in mind the findings of the National Defense Strategy Commission of 2018, which concluded, as you will recall, that the United States could well lose a war against a nuclear-armed rival, largely not because we have the wrong capabilities, but because we haven’t understood the nature of the war that is being waged against us. We haven’t done our intellectual homework. We haven’t developed the concepts we need to organize our operational planning and conduct operations. I don’t know to what extent that remains true. But that was an important marker that rang a lot of alarm bells for me.
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Senator Fischer: I just want to really thank you for being here today. I think these discussions are extremely helpful to, first of all, educate the Members of Congress, but also to educate our public as well to the threats that this country faces. When we look at North Korea, they have various missiles. They have ICBMs. They have long range, short range. They have an underwater nuclear attack drone now that’s out there. You know, we obviously are developing things as well. But, when we see other countries doing this, how does that affect us in our decision making, to counter and provide deterrence, not just for the weapons, which we’ve talked about — tactical weapons, weapons in theater, the changes we see there regionally — but also the platforms? Dr. Montgomery, you’re nodding your head.
Mr. Montgomery: I often do. Two points: I think there’s a quantitative dimension to this and a qualitative dimension. So, quantitatively, when you see countries like North Korea building up their forces — and we’re not talking about a rogue state with 10 or 15 nuclear weapons, but potentially a regional nuclear power with 50 or 100 nuclear weapons — those numbers matter. And it becomes potentially more difficult for the United States with say, 15,050 treaty-accountable strategic warheads, to manage threats from and deter a peer in Russia, an aspiring peer in China, a North Korea with a significant arsenal. That’s a lot of weapons to measure up against. In terms of the qualitative dimension, if you look at the diversity and capabilities that a country like North Korea is investing in — and, Senator King, this ties to your question about Pakistan and India as well — Pakistan also has made investments in low-yield nuclear capabilities. So now, we see Russia placing significant emphasis on low-yield nuclear weapons, Pakistan placing significant emphasis on low-yield nuclear weapons, North Korea investing in low-yield nuclear weapons, and potentially China exploring low-yield nuclear weapons. We should probably take that message that a lot of adversaries and potential adversaries or countries we have difficult relations with see a lot of value in these capabilities and think about what deficiencies in our arsenal might exist that could potentially undermine deterrence, relative to those systems.
Senator Fischer: And it also limits the options that can be presented to our President to make decisions in a short period of time, in response to actions of other nations, correct?
Mr. Montgomery: Absolutely. You know, we talk about our strategic forces, one of their key attributes being promptness. Promptness, I don’t think is an attribute you would ascribe to some of the limited low-yield nuclear options that we have. And that does mean that the options available to the President in a crisis that are time sensitive are limited.
Senator Fischer: Any other comments on that?
Dr. Roberts: Sure. You asked about how we react watching these developments. And, for a long time, we watched and didn’t react. For a long time, it was unthinkable to us that these things mattered because, after all, we had conventional dominance. We had confidence in our strategic nuclear deterrent. And we didn’t see the problem. The threat remained unthinkable. It was just implausible to most in the U.S. national security community that an adversary might ever contemplate the possibility of employing a nuclear weapon in a conflict with the United States and somehow escaping intact. And our view began to shift, principally as a result of the Russian annexation of Crimea, a wake-up call. As Ash Carter said at the time, it was time for a “new playbook” on Russia.” And we discovered a need for a new playbook on North Korea, a new playbook on China. And now we’re all trying to create that new playbook.
Senator Fischer: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
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