Bomb voyage!

• Author: Collina, Tom Z.

The United States is slated to spend about one trillion dollars over the next thirty years to maintain and rebuild its nuclear arsenal. That breaks down to roughly $35 billion a year, a fortune in this time of limited defense spending. Is it worth it? Twenty-five years after the end of the Cold War, the United States simply does not need--and cannot afford--to rebuild every nuclear-armed missile, bomber and submarine in its arsenal to last another fifty years as if the U.S.-Soviet rivalry never ended. Moreover, pursuing an excessive arsenal runs the risk of igniting a new arms race with Russia that could needlessly undermine U.S. security. Moscow has announced its own plans to rebuild its nuclear forces, but faces even greater economic challenges.

"We are about to begin a new round in the nuclear arms race unless some brake is put on it right now," former secretary of defense William J. Perry recently warned. Indeed, a new arms race has already begun in slow motion, with current plans taking decades to carry out. Multiyear contracts are being signed, such as the recent one with Northrop Grumman for a new strategic bomber, and billions of dollars are being spent. Before long, the programs will become too big to stop. The Obama administration's arsenal-modernization plans are also raising concerns among America's nonnuclear allies, who see the effort as inconsistent with the president's stated nuclear-disarmament goals. Yet Washington needs the support of these allies to strengthen global nonproliferation efforts.

It's past time for the Obama administration to take a hard look at where the U.S. nuclear arsenal is heading. Given Russia's saber rattling in Europe, it's tempting to overbuild in the mistaken belief of further insuring safety. But the actual risk of a nuclear war is low, and U.S. conventional dominance is unquestioned. The United States no longer needs such an expensive insurance policy against the Russian nuclear threat--and this fact provides a rare opportunity to save tens of billions of dollars.

Saving money is becoming increasingly important for U.S. national security. Last summer, an independent, bipartisan federal commission cochaired by Perry and retired general John Abizaid called the administration's plans for the nuclear arsenal "unaffordable" and a threat to "needed improvements in conventional forces." The good news is that the United States can safely scale back its plans for the nuclear arsenal, saving scarce defense funds and reducing the dangers of a new arms race.

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union produced massive nuclear arsenals to deter each other from launching nuclear and large conventional attacks. Since the 1960s, these arsenals have been reduced by around 85 percent, and there is a growing realization that the only credible use for nuclear weapons by the United States or Russia is to deter a nuclear attack by the other. While the number of deployed nuclear weapons has plummeted, the nature of the nuclear threat has changed even more dramatically. The chance that the United States or Russia would actually use nuclear weapons against each other has significantly declined, almost to the point of irrelevance. Other than keeping Russia's nuclear arsenal in check, nuclear weapons provide no advantages to the United States over conventional forces. And for defending against more likely attacks, such as terrorism or small-scale military operations, nuclear weapons are useless.

Some of America's highest-ranking military officers share this opinion. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and retired general Colin Powell said that "the one thing that I convinced myself after all these years of exposure to the use of nuclear weapons is that they were useless. They could not be used." Russian president Vladimir Putin's Ukraine adventure is a case in point. The existing U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe did not keep Russia from annexing Crimea. Nor would more U.S. nuclear weapons push...