Russia goes ballistic.

• Author: Thayer, Bradley A.
• Position: Russia's ballistic forces

OVER THE next ten to twenty years, the erosion of American nuclear superiority will have major ramifications for the global balance of power. It will place new constraints on our freedom of action and lead our friends and foes alike to doubt the credibility of all instruments of U.S. power. As a result, decades-old alliance structures may fracture amid a drift toward multipolarity. Leadership from Tokyo to Riyadh to Seoul may find new incentives to develop their own deterrents as the relative power of states like Russia and China increases. With our extended-deterrent power lost, the international system will change--and not in Washington's favor. But this scenario is preventable if policy makers cast away the illusion of safety and act quickly to correct a trend which has plagued Washington for nearly two decades.

The giant has feet of clay. Though today the United States is widely seen to be dominant in almost every aspect of military power, and the expectation is that it will remain so, an examination of its nuclear forces and infrastructure reveals that its position is far from assured. The critical question is not whether the United States enjoys a strategic advantage in the area of nuclear forces presently, but rather what the forces and nuclear infrastructures of the United States and its competitors look like ten or twenty years from now. If Washington does not modernize, Russia could acquire a nuclear advantage within the next two decades.

The United States faces major problems in the maintenance of its nuclear forces and infrastructure. It is the only nuclear country that cannot manufacture a new nuclear weapon because of a self-imposed moratorium, which has halted the modernization of warheads and delivery systems alike. Even though Washington possesses an unparalleled capacity to modernize, Congress has failed to fund any new nuclear initiatives. Strategic forces have been continually overlooked by Department of Defense and air-force leadership because of a constant de-emphasis on the role of nuclear weapons within the halls of the Pentagon. This began after the cold war and has only been accelerated by doctrinal shifts outlined in documents like the 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, which argued that advanced conventional munitions could supplant nuclear forces in certain instances. But the problem of leadership on this issue extends across the Potomac to Capitol Hill. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle simply fail to understand the ongoing strategic military competition in which the United States finds itself, where the major powers are continuously jockeying for advantage.

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What was true during the cold war remains so: nuclear weapons are a tremendous source of power in the international system. Conventional military superiority will almost always be trumped by nuclear superiority. But the United States cannot continue to live off of nuclear capital accumulated during the cold war. We must combat the false impression that the U.S. nuclear enterprise is still strong and will remain so into the future. It is decaying in almost every respect, from the nuclear warheads themselves to the missiles that deliver them to the scientists that build them. These weaknesses in the nuclear arsenal will cause U.S. strategic forces to fail to meet future mission requirements.

That is good news for our competitors, who have not taken a "nuclear holiday." Though Beijing's rise should be watched closely by Washington, our biggest rival in the nuclear realm is not China. While the United States is letting its arsenal degenerate, its nuclear peer--Russia--is constantly improving its nuclear forces and infrastructure. The overwhelming military superiority of the United States cannot simply be assumed to last into the future; it's time for a concerted effort by policy makers in Washington to invest in needed capabilities. The repeated failures to properly fund U.S. nuclear-modernization efforts are both shortsighted and dangerous.

As the United States' nuclear capabilities and skills atrophy, a time will soon come when the United States is weaker in relative strategic power than Russia. The impact on national security will affect every ally from Europe to Asia. The substantial benefits the United States derives from its nuclear umbrella will be no more. Thanks to these weaknesses, our allies and enemies will doubt the credibility of the U.S. extended deterrent, giving other powers freer reign to threaten U.S. interests abroad. Aggression against the United States will become more likely because Washington's ability to respond to such force will be diminished. And advancement of U.S. interests against foes who--for the first time in history--may be better armed with nuclear weapons than the United States will be hindered. Other nuclear states will continue to...