Command and Control

The United States now plans to spend as much as $180 billion, over the next twenty years, to maintain its nuclear weapons, run its weapon laboratories, and upgrade its uranium-processing facilities. The world’s other nuclear powers are behaving in much the same way. Russia has about 1,740 deployed strategic weapons and perhaps 2,000 tactical weapons. It plans to introduce a new long-range missile by the end of the decade. France is adding new aircraft and submarines to carry its roughly 300 weapons. The United Kingdom plans to obtain new Trident submarines for its approximately 160 warheads. China is thought to have about 240 nuclear weapons. It is building new cruise missiles, long-range missiles, and submarines to carry them. It has also constructed an “underground Great Wall”—thousands of miles of deeply buried tunnels, large enough to fit cars, trucks, and trains — in which to hide them. The size of China’s arsenal is not limited by any arms control treaties. After vowing for decades that nuclear weapons would be used only for retaliation after an enemy attack, China may be abandoning its “no-first-use” pledge. And a more aggressive Chinese strategy would increase the number of ballistic missiles, worldwide, that are ready to be fired at a moment’s notice — as well as the risk of mistakes.

The number of nuclear weapons possessed by Israel has never been revealed. Israel recently purchased submarines from Germany to deploy some of them and hopes in the near future to place others on long-range missiles. The nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran remain shrouded in mystery. Both may be seeking to deploy long-range missiles with nuclear warheads. North Korea may already have half a dozen nuclear weapons. Despite well-publicized threats to launch a nuclear attack on American cities, North Korea may not have the capability to destroy targets thousands of miles away. The technical proficiency of the world’s aspiring nuclear powers remains unknown. The yield of North Korea’s first weapon test was less than 1 kiloton. And Iraq’s nuclear weapon program, before it was halted, may have posed a greater threat to Baghdad than to Saddam Hussein’s enemies. “It could go off if a rifle bullet hit it,” one United Nations inspector said about the Iraqi weapon design. “I wouldn’t want to be around if it fell off the edge of this desk.”

The United States and Russia still maintain thousands of missiles on alert, ready to be launched within minutes. As tensions between the two countries have eased, the risk of an accidental war has diminished; but it has not disappeared. The targets of American missiles are no longer preprogrammed. They are transmitted right before launch, and the default setting of the missiles would send their warheads into the nearest ocean. The command-and-control systems of both countries, however, are still profoundly important. Russia has become far more dependent on land-based missiles than the United States — and, as a result, more vulnerable to a first strike. Any sign of a surprise attack must be taken seriously at the Kremlin. The ballistic-missile submarines in the Russian fleet are old, poorly maintained, and rarely leave their ports. The subs have become easy targets and no longer provide a secure retaliatory threat. The odds of the United States launching an all-out surprise attack on Russia’s nuclear forces are infinitesimal. But the pressure to maintain a launch-on-warning policy may be stronger now in Moscow than it was thirty years ago. And the reliability of the Russian early-warning system has declined considerably since the end of the Cold War.

On January 25, 1995, the launch of a small research rocket by Norway prompted a warning at the Kremlin that Russia was under attack by the United States. Russian nuclear forces went on full alert. President Boris Yeltsin turned on his “football,” retrieved his launch codes, and prepared to retaliate. After a few tense minutes, the warning was declared a false alarm. The weather rocket had been launched to study the aurora borealis, and Norway had informed Russia of its trajectory weeks in advance.

The greatest risk of nuclear war now lies in South Asia. The United States and the Soviet Union, for all their cultural differences, were separated by thousands of miles. Their animosity was more theoretical and geopolitical than personal. Pakistan and India are neighbors, embittered by religious and territorial disputes. Both countries have nuclear weapons. The flight time of a missile from one to the other may be as brief as four or five minutes. And the command-and-control facilities on both sides are not hardened against an attack. During a crisis, the pressure to launch first would be enormous.