Disarmament Scenarios

Steps toward Abolition: De-alerting

Reframing Nuclear De-Alert

A Report from the EastWest Institute

In June 2009 the EastWest Institute sponsored a seminar in Yverdon, Switzerland on “Reframing Nuclear De-alert: Decreasing the Operational Readiness of U.S. and Russian Nuclear Arsenals”. This was part of a project in partnership with the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland and the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Seminar participants were experts from the United States, Russia, and several non-nuclear weapons states. From the seminar report, “Reframing Nuclear De-Alert”, we provide excerpts from the Executive Summary. Also available are background papers by U.S. and Russian authors.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (excerpts)

Nearly twenty years after the end of the Cold War, Russia and the United States continue to maintain hundreds of nuclear weapons capable of striking the other side, and to have at least some of these nuclear forces at Cold War levels of alert, that is, ready to fire within a few minutes of receiving an order to do so.
The post-Cold War experience…demonstrates that alert levels can be reduced and measures taken to reduce risk of accidents or unauthorized takeover of nuclear weapons….U.S. and Russian experts alike stressed survivability as a key element in acceptance of these measures because of its importance in maintaining deterrence.
There was a sense that technical solutions to the problems of nuclear risk reduction are available and can be multilateralized.
Concerns over “re-alerting” races and vulnerability of “de-alerted” forces to conventional or nuclear strikes during “reversal” can be addressed through survivable forces, dialogue, and confidence building.
Other nuclear weapon states apparently have alert practices that differ from those of Russia and the United States….There was a sense that nuclear doctrines and alert practices of different nuclear weapon states cannot be analyzed in a vacuum and must be evaluated as parts of a larger political and security framework.
Non-nuclear weapon states’ experts forcefully asserted the legitimate interest their states have in the issue and underlined the practical and constructive approach of the U.N. General Assembly resolution on reducing operational readiness of nuclear forces….[This] would be a highly desirable confidence-building measure….[and] would also be a welcome step in the lead-up to the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.
The principal objection to decreasing operational readiness of nuclear weapons as commonly understood has been that it seeks to address a problem that does not exist….Furthermore, the remedy itself could end up undermining nuclear deterrence and strategic crisis stability.
The insight that emerged during the meeting was that the above objection flows from a narrow view of de-alerting as meaning measures that make it physically impossible to promptly launch an attack on order….De-alerting has to be seen not only as a technical fix but also a strategic step in deemphasizing the military role of nuclear weapons, in other words moving to retaliatory strike postures and doctrines instead of legacy preemptive or “launch on warning” postures.

The report noted that “if decreasing operational readiness of nuclear weapons is reframed in this manner, several concrete steps become possible:”

As part of the START follow-on negotiations, Russia and the United States could examine how measures to reduce operational readiness can accompany the bilateral arms control process.
Both Russia and the United States could
- further strengthen controls against unauthorized action, takeover, and tampering;
- further increase the capability of warning systems to discriminate real from imagined attacks; and
- enhance the survivability of their forces and their command and control systems.
Arrangements related to data exchange and ensuring a capability to destroy a “rogue” missile in flight could be multilateralized, at least in sharing data, to bring other declared nuclear states into the process.
Multilateralization of institutions such as the Joint Data Exchange may also have collateral benefits in the area of space security.

The Executive Summary concludes with this comment:

The premise of maintaining nuclear deterrence between Russia and the United States should not be considered immutable. A dialogue on legacy nuclear postures and doctrines in the Russia-U.S. context may trigger a broader dialogue among relevant states on reducing the salience of nuclear weapons, thus facilitating progress on disarmament and nonproliferation.

We find this a significant observation in a report that is framed primarily by a commitment to maintaining nuclear deterrence, though in a safer manner. An article on this website on “De-alerting: Beyond Deterrence” by Howard Hallman considers this perspective further.