Our Political and Military Leaders Must Abandon MAD Nuclear Policies

This week marks the anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is no better time, especially in the middle of a presidential race, to call attention to where we are with such weapons today. Unfortunately, while risks from nuclear weapons largely fell from public consciousness after the end of the Cold War, the current strategic environment has made such risks all too real again. Russia’s prolonged war with Ukraine, China’s assertiveness as it emerges as a great power, the continuing volatility of the Middle East, and rapid cyber and AI developments—all raise the risk of nuclear war.

Addressing the risks is even harder today. During the Cold War, nuclear deterrence and its central feature August 2022 study by leading scientists forecast that a major nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would lead to 5 billion deaths as a result of a nuclear winter that blots out sunlight and destroys growing seasons throughout much of the globe.

To which nuclear proponents argue that we’d just use low-yield nuclear weapons with limited climatic and other effects. Yet such minimizations of the effects of nuclear weapons are unsupported and unrealistic. Political and military leaders have long recognized that uses of low-yield nuclear weapons among nuclear powers would likely—indeed, almost inevitably—lead to escalated uses of high-yield nuclear weapons. This is self-assured destruction (SAD), the reality that use of nuclear weapons against another nuclear state would likely wreak destruction on the initial attacking state as well as its target.

We don’t need to examine international law to know that no one state may destroy human life and civilization—or even threaten to do so—for some perceived advantage from such a threat.

And, in any event, our posture is to use high, not low-yield nuclear weapons. Of our approximately 1,800 deployed nuclear weapons, only some 100 are low-yield. Even then, they are “dial-a-yield,”—capable of high as well as low yields.

And here’s the ultimate irony: We largely no longer need nuclear weapons. We have developed such superiority in our conventional forces that we’re able to address many, if not most, of our potential military needs with such weapons. The accuracy of contemporary delivery vehicles, whereby we can or will soon be able to hit essentially any target anywhere in the world within an hour or less, removes many needs that might have been believed in the past to require nuclear weapons.

It is not hyperbole to say the use of nuclear weapons between nuclear powers, certainly between the U.S. and Russia, would pose existential risks to human life and civilization. We don’t need to examine international law to know that no one state may destroy human life and civilization—or even threaten to do so—for some perceived advantage from such a threat. Certainly, nuclear weapons are every bit as indiscriminate, immoral, and illegal as chemical and biological weapons—and far more self-destructive on the using state and less likely to yield any net military advantage.

We need to revive our belief in the human potential for rationality and our moral and legal judgment across states and cultures. If we can regain such consciousness, we’ll likely be able—through effort, diplomacy, and example—to move the world toward fundamental changes in defense policies and practices. No doubt leaders of other countries share such a desire to survive and preserve human life and civilization.

We must require our political and military leaders to reformulate our nuclear polices. Moving the world toward mutual security will be hard in the current environment, but continuing our current policies is the height of folly and truly MAD.