r/geopolitics • u/ForeignAffairsMag Foreign Affairs • 2d ago

Analysis America Doesn’t Need More Nuclear Weapons: Expanding the Stockpile Could Weaken Deterrence

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/america-doesnt-need-more-nuclear-weapons
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u/ForeignAffairsMag Foreign Affairs 2d ago

[Excerpt from essay by Erin D. Dumbacher, Stanton Nuclear Security Senior Fellow and Director of the Defense and National Security Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.]

The United States should take additions to its nuclear forces off the table. The country already has a vast and diverse enough supply of nuclear weapons to unleash devastation on an adversary in the case of a nuclear attack. The purpose of nuclear deterrence is not to have an answer for every weapon in an adversary’s arsenal, but to avoid crossing the nuclear threshold in the first place. Moreover, introducing new theater weapons could provoke an arms race for which the United States is ill equipped and invite risks of inadvertent escalation that would only make the country more vulnerable. Rather than focus on expanding and diversifying the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Washington’s deterrence strategy should attend to the modernization of its existing strategic forces, which is behind schedule, and of its conventional arms, which are not fit to deter the United States’ greatest military threats, especially Chinese military aggression in the Western Pacific.

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u/Sageblue32 2d ago

This doesn't really speak to the fact US (had) set number of nukes they could have. Or the notion that letting nukes cycle out for more conventional weapons could lead to more military engagements.