Life beyond Arms Control: - Specialized Research AI at MIT

Life beyond Arms Control:
Moving toward a Global Regime of
Nuclear Restraint & Responsibility

Nina Tannenwald

Today, we are on the verge of a world without nuclear restraint. In the absence of
formal arms control, how do we proceed? What broad principles and norms would
we want? What measures might nuclear-armed states take, even without formal
agreement, that would reduce the risk of nuclear war and control the arms race? I
suggest that nuclear-armed states move toward a global regime of nuclear restraint
and responsibility. Restraint would primarily take the form of reciprocal commit-
ments and unilateral measures to avoid an arms race and reduce nuclear dangers.
Responsibility refers to the fact that nuclear-armed states must pursue limited forms
of deterrence and are accountable to the international community. I suggest several
steps that governments, with the help of civil society, could take, beginning with the
most minimal, declaratory initiatives and unilateral measures, and proceeding to
steps that require more action.

T oday, we are on the verge of a world without nuclear restraint. If the New

START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) between the United States and
Russia disappears after 2021, there will be no formal limitations on stra-
tegic nuclear weapons for the first time since 1972. The restraints on missiles and
warheads imposed by New START, along with its critically important verification
regime, would either be tacit and informal or nonexistent. Nuclear-armed gov-
ernments appear to be enthusiastically embracing an arms race in an era of height-
ened hostility while demonstrating little interest not only in formal arms control
but in nuclear restraint of any kind. Arms control treaties are being discarded and
norms are eroding; new qualitative arms races are underway while quantitative
arms races may be in the offing; and some governments are reviving old war-fight-
ing strategies including damage limitation and battlefield nuclear weapons. Al-
most no stability talks are taking place while leaders brazenly brandish their nu-
clear arsenals and engage in brinkmanship. Most experts agree that the risk of nu-
clear war is the highest it has been since the height of the Cold War. We are, in
short, in a world of what I would call “irresponsible deterrence.”

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Unfortunately, little prospect exists for negotiating new treaties. Increasing
polarization in the political sphere, both domestically and in the global nuclear
regime, will make it exceedingly difficult to agree on any new treaties. In the Unit-
ed States, the Republican Senate is averse to treaties. Internationally, increasing
great-power hostility, growing regional tensions, and virulent nationalism are lead-
ing to new trade wars and looming arms races while undermining prospects for co-
operative agreements among the great powers. In the global nuclear realm, the ap-
proval of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, or Nuclear Weapon
Ban Treaty, in 2017 has exacerbated polarization in the international community
between those states that favor the ban treaty and disarmament, and states com-
mitted to maintaining nuclear deterrence. These two groups increasingly exist in
separate universes, making it ever harder to find common ground at UN meetings.
In the absence of formal arms control agreements, how do we proceed? What
broad principles and norms would we want? What measures might the nuclear-
armed states take, even without formal agreement, that would reduce the risk of
nuclear war and rein in the arms race? In this essay, I focus primarily on nuclear-
armed states, which have the major (though certainly not the only) responsibili-
ty here. This group includes not only the five “declared” nuclear-armed states ac-
knowledged by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)–
the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China–but also India, Pakistan,
Israel, and North Korea, which possess nuclear weapons but are not parties to
the NPT. I suggest that nuclear-armed states should move toward a global regime
of nuclear restraint and responsibility. In the absence of formal arms control, re-
straint would primarily take the form of reciprocal commitments and unilateral
measures to avoid an arms race and reduce nuclear dangers. Responsibility refers
to nuclear-armed states pursuing limited forms of deterrence and being account-
able to the international community. Needless to say, in the current environ-
ment of heightened great-power competition, the nuclear-armed governments
are probably incapable of moving toward a regime of restraint and responsibility
without significant prodding. Therefore, much of this work will fall to civil soci-
ety and domestic politics, as well as to diplomacy at the United Nations and other
international organizations, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the
Conference on Disarmament, and even alliances such as NATO.

Many will argue that the current global nuclear order is illegitimate and un-
sustainable, and that nuclear risk can ultimately be managed only through dis-
armament. A concept of responsible deterrence must indeed be compatible with
the pursuit of disarmament. Responsible deterrence is not simply about main-
taining secure command and control or refraining from giving weapons to ter-
rorists (though it certainly includes these measures). It must also be consistent
with reducing global nuclear dangers. In a global regime of nuclear restraint and
responsibility, disarmament must remain the ultimate goal. The immediate goal,

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesLife beyond Arms Control

however–and the focus of this essay–is preventing nuclear war. Thus, even those
for whom disarmament is so far in the future as to be illusory should still be able to
embrace many of the tenets of responsible deterrence laid out here.

M any alternatives exist to the negotiation of formal, legally binding trea-

ties for achieving arms control objectives. These include informal
agreements that are politically but not legally binding on their parties,
and unilateral initiatives that may or may not be coordinated with other parties
but are expected to be reciprocated. Additional approaches include agreements
in principle (agreements to agree), parallel policy statements, joint declarations,
and tacit agreements.

The history of U.S.-Soviet/Russian arms control provides numerous exam-
ples of nontreaty approaches, including the 1987 Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers
Agreement, the U.S.-Soviet 1988 Ballistic Missile Launch Notification Agreement,
and the 1992 Cooperative Threat Reduction program under which the United
States assisted Russia in reducing the number of its nuclear weapons and secur-
ing its fissile material. Prominent unilateral initiatives included the 1991 U.S. and
Russian Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs) under which the United States and
Russia withdrew approximately seventeen thousand tactical nuclear weapons
from service. The PNIs were “reciprocal unilateral commitments”: that is, they
were politically, not legally, binding and were nonverifiable.

Yet treaties do have some advantages over political commitments. Whatever
gets written into a treaty becomes the law of the land and, consequently, has the
“force of law” behind it. Treaties create a strong sense of legal obligation that
whatever measures negotiators write into a treaty–say, intrusive verification–
will in fact be carried out. In contrast, a political agreement lacks the force of the
law. Consequently, implementation tends to be more politicized and less certain.
The force of law is one important benefit that is lost in a world without treaties.

T he goals of traditional arms control are to reduce threats, provide predict-

ability, foster stability and transparency, reduce the risk of nuclear use,
and strengthen norms of restraint. Many of these goals can still be pur-
sued in the absence of treaty-based agreements. Indeed, for the United States, the
near impossibility of getting a treaty through the Senate these days means that
pursuing restraint through political agreements is more likely to produce results.
Thus, the nuclear-armed states need to move toward a global regime of nucle-
ar restraint and responsibility: a set of principles and goals that would provide
a broad framework for reciprocal political agreements among nuclear powers
to reduce nuclear dangers.1 Restraint–or “keeping a situation under control or
within limits”–is associated with notions of self-control, moderation, and pru-
dence.2 Without a collective effort by nuclear-armed states to renew practices of

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149 (2) Spring 2020Nina Tannenwald

restraint, a competition in excess is likely to occur, heightening the risk of nucle-
ar war.

Responsibility as applied to the nuclear realm has tended to be defined nar-
rowly in terms of upholding nonproliferation norms. Nuclear-armed states like to
tout themselves as “responsible nuclear powers” if they do not proliferate nucle-
ar weapons and materials and maintain secure arsenals. Yet not all nuclear-armed
states, such as India and Pakistan, are members of the NPT, and nuclear responsi-
bility must be much broader than simply nonproliferation.3 It must also include
nuclear doctrine, nuclear safety and security, and commitment to norms of nucle-
ar restraint, including arms control and disarmament. Together, these practices
are key elements of responsible deterrence. At minimum, a regime of nuclear re-
straint and responsibility would include the following principles and goals.

Principles

1. Security cannot be achieved unilaterally. A regime of nuclear restraint and respon-
sibility must be based on the fundamental recognition that security in the nu-
clear age cannot be achieved unilaterally. It requires the cooperation of others.
U.S. and Soviet leaders learned this crucial lesson during the Cold War. Today’s
leaders must recommit themselves to this shared understanding.

2. Must include all nuclear-armed states. While the United States and Russia have
by far the largest nuclear arsenals and therefore bear the greatest responsibili-
ty for containing the nuclear arms race, all nuclear-armed states contribute to
nuclear dangers. States with smaller nuclear arsenals should not be allowed to
hide behind the excuse that they are smaller. China and the other new nuclear
states have traditionally resisted a multilateral arms control process, perceiv-
ing that it would be about preserving the dominant power position of the orig-
inal nuclear states, and that unequal nuclear-conventional balances disadvan-
tage them and complicate arms control calculations. In a regime of restraint
and responsibility, however, all nuclear-armed states must take appropriate
steps to reduce nuclear dangers. U.S. leaders should allay Chinese concerns
that risk-reduction or arms control measures would provide useful intelligence
on the location of Chinese nuclear weapons to U.S. targeteers. Rather, to re-
duce nuclear dangers, nuclear-armed states need to understand each other’s
doctrine and decision-making, not the location of weapons.

3. Recognize that every person and every state in the world is a stakeholder. We are long
past the days when nuclear-armed states could pretend that they had the sover-
eign right to possess nuclear weapons and do with them whatever they wanted
regardless of the consequences for others.4 A nuclear war would almost sure-
ly affect many countries. Even a regional nuclear exchange, such as between
India and Pakistan, would have an effect on Earth’s atmosphere and climate,

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesLife beyond Arms Control

possibly wiping out large swaths of agriculture and resulting in nuclear fam-
ine.5 It could also produce radioactive fallout extending thousands of miles
from the explosion site to produce health effects, for example, in China and
Southeast Asia.6 States and civil society groups have a legitimate right to offer
proposals and criticisms to reduce nuclear dangers. Nuclear-armed states, for
their part, have an obligation to participate in such efforts and to hold them-
selves more accountable for the consequences of their nuclear policies, includ-
ing greater transparency, reporting, and information exchanges.

All nuclear states need to be more accountable for the possible consequenc-
es of their nuclear postures and decisions about use. Since 1945, principles of
accountability have become a much more prominent feature of internation-
al law and relations, and states have agreed to be increasingly accountable to
each other in many realms such as trade, pollution, human rights, and justice.7
Accountability remains low in the realm of nuclear weapons policy, however,
both domestically and among nation-states. Domestically, the American pub-
lic and Congress are excluded from any decision to use nuclear weapons, rais-
ing questions about democratic oversight of a momentous decision.8 Interna-
tionally, non-nuclear states struggle at NPT review conferences to extract more
accountability from nuclear-armed states in terms of reporting and transparen-
cy about stockpiles, doctrine, weapons developments, and the consequences of
their war plans. Accountability in general is under siege everywhere in today’s
increasingly antidemocratic politics. Yet in the same way that efforts are under
way to strengthen accountability for any use of chemical weapons, accountabil-
ity for the consequences of nuclear weapons policies must be a much more cen-
tral principle of responsible deterrence.9

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Goals

1. Focus on reducing the risk of nuclear use. This must be the primary goal and would
entail a whole range of measures to reduce crisis instability and the possibili-
ty of nuclear war through inadvertence, miscalculation, or accident. As long as
nuclear weapons exist, states must depend on responsible deterrence to prevent
the deliberate use of nuclear weapons (if a state is determined to start a nuclear
war, no set of norms can prevent it from doing so). Yet experts widely agree that
the likelihood of nuclear use by accident, miscalculation, or design is rising. The
purpose of risk-reduction measures is to find ways to prevent leaders of nuclear-
armed states from thinking they have to act because the other side is about to es-
calate, or to minimize the possibility of miscalculation. Risk reduction is not a
new idea, but in the current climate, it has become more urgent.10

2. Strengthen norms of nuclear restraint. These norms include nonuse, nonprolifer-
ation, deterrence, and disarmament. Additional norms include the norm of

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149 (2) Spring 2020Nina Tannenwald

no-explosive-testing, the right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy, nuclear safe-
ty and security, and a firm commitment to effective political control over nu-
clear policy and planning and to reserving decisions on nuclear use to heads
of government. Important procedural norms include reciprocity (reciprocal
commitments) and transparency. Transparency regarding nuclear stockpiles,
deployments, force postures, and doctrine is an important means of stabilizing
expectations and reducing worst-case analysis and miscalculation.11

I propose twelve steps that governments, with the help of civil society, could

take to demonstrate nuclear restraint and reduce the risk of nuclear war. Be-
cause the prospects for even confidence-building measures seem so bleak to-
day, these proposals begin with the most minimal, declaratory initiatives and uni-
lateral measures, and proceed to steps that require action, not just words. In re-
ality, many of these steps will likely have to begin with initiatives by civil society.
Certainly, other proposals might be possible, but I have focused here on a small set
that could serve as initial steps or way stations for further progress.

For All Nuclear-Armed States

1. A joint public declaration by the leaders of all nuclear-armed states reaffirming the
Reagan- Gorbachev statement: “Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
This 1985 statement about the futility of nuclear war represented an important
statement of nuclear restraint and a political turning point in U.S.-Soviet ef-
forts to control the arms race. The two leaders also agreed that their countries
would not seek military superiority over one another. In articulating the dec-
laration, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev played key leadership roles.
Today, such a declaration could be promoted by civil society and the United
Nations, and leaders of all nuclear-armed states could be asked to sign on. It
could be announced at Hiroshima by a group of senior statespeople. UN dis-
armament officials have already been using and encouraging adoption of this
language.12 Sweden presented a working paper at the 2019 NPT preparatory
meeting calling for nuclear-armed states to make this “unequivocal expression
against any notion of nuclear use.”13

Despite the seemingly low-cost nature of such a declaration, however, at a
side event at the NPT preparatory committee meeting in May 2019, the British
ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, Aidan Liddle, in response to
a question, struggled to explain to his baffled audience why his country could
not endorse the Reagan-Gorbachev statement at this time. The fact that the P5
states–the United States, the United Kingdom, China, France, and Russia–
find themselves unable to reaffirm this basic statement today is astonishing
and signals how far backward we have gone in terms of beliefs about nucle-
ar use (the Trump administration may be reluctant in part because it imagines

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesLife beyond Arms Control

it can win a nuclear war with North Korea). Such a declaration nevertheless
remains a critical starting point for reaffirming that the shared goal must be
nonuse of nuclear weapons. If it is not feasible to have a declaration endorsed
by all nuclear-armed states, the United States should seek bilateral statements
with Russia and China declaring that nuclear war between the United States
and Russia or China cannot be won and must never be fought. India and Paki-
stan should also be encouraged to make such a joint statement. These bilater-
al statements would provide at least some benefits. Leaders should also pledge
to refrain from brandishing nuclear weapons or engaging in nuclear coercion.

2. Explicit reference to the seventy-four-year tradition of nonuse. An alternative declara-
tion would adopt the Obama-era talking points that explicitly emphasize the
tradition of nonuse: “It is our fervent hope that the [74]-year tradition of nu-
clear non-use will continue forever.” Ideally, this declaration should always be
tied to actual risk-reduction efforts. Fervent hope is not enough; there must be
an active effort to maintain the nonuse tradition in perpetuity. More generally,
leaders should make speeches that lay out the risks of nuclear use and empha-
size the importance of the tradition of nonuse.

3. Risk reduction. The United States, Russia, and other NPT-declared nuclear-
weapon states, as well as India and Pakistan, should engage in discussions on
the full range of measures to reduce to an absolute minimum the risk of nuclear
use. This would include consideration of measures such as de-alerting, as well
as changes in doctrine and operational practices to strengthen crisis avoidance
and management. The UN Institute for Disarmament Research has developed
a comprehensive set of nuclear risk-reduction measures that focus on risks as-
sociated with doctrine, escalation, unauthorized use, and accidents.14

One possibility is that discussions of nuclear risk reduction could be part of
an improved “P5 process.”15 For the past decade, this process has brought to-
gether government officials from the five NPT nuclear-weapon states to coor-
dinate their positions on issues and undertake initiatives as part of the NPT re-
view process. Although the P5 states tout their process, the deliverables so far
have been extremely modest. An improved P5 process could focus much more
on risk reduction. Although there will be some reluctance to do this, the P5
have a strong mutual interest in avoiding nuclear war. The P5 states could use
this existing forum to engage in dialogue about possible scenarios of nuclear
escalation, whether through miscalculation or accident, as well as concepts of
strategic stability. Exchanges of views could be followed by the development
of cooperative steps to reduce risks.

Nevertheless, a recognized shortcoming of the P5 process–in addition
to the modest results–is that it is tied to the NPT and therefore does not in-
volve India or Pakistan. An alternative is for the Nuclear 7 (the P5 plus India

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149 (2) Spring 2020Nina Tannenwald

and Pakistan) to discuss improvements in nuclear safety and security via an ex-
change of best practices.16 If this works, it would provide a foundation to build
on. If such efforts to discuss safety and security fail, it is likely that talks on
more ambitious steps would falter. Moving outside formal state-to-state dis-
cussions, another idea is to develop a global commission on military nuclear
risks, an independent, globally representative body of diverse nongovernmen-
tal experts to offer an authoritative assessment of trends in nuclear risk.17

4. Nuclear-armed states should find a way to engage constructively with the goals of the ban
treaty. Nuclear-armed states are unlikely to join the 2017 Nuclear Weapon Ban
Treaty any time soon, but they should find a way to engage constructively with
its goals rather than dismissing it. In addition to much greater effort on risk-
reduction measures, as discussed above, a positive step by nuclear-armed states
would be to offer more public transparency about the extent to which their nu-
clear war plans meet humanitarian criteria. For example, the United States has
formally declared that its nuclear war plans must meet the criteria of the laws
of armed conflict (discrimination, proportionality, and necessity).18 The United
States should publicize this commitment and other nuclear-armed states should
consider it. Even if other nuclear powers decline to make such a commitment,
however, the U.S. example is important. Further, as part of this effort, nuclear-
armed states should seek to minimize the consequences of even limited nuclear
use, especially for noncombatant states. This is a major concern of the human-
itarian consequences movement. Nuclear-armed states should declare publicly
what steps they are taking to minimize collateral harm from nuclear use.

Finally, in the effort to bridge the gap between ban treaty supporters and
defenders of deterrence, U.S. allies can play a key role. For example, Japan has
offered a thoughtful set of ideas about how to move forward, including regular
dialogues between deterrers and disarmers, and feasibility studies of minimal
nuclear arsenals.19 States may be able to build on these ideas, and having a dia-
logue not exclusively driven by the United States may be advantageous.

5. Adoption of no-first-use policies. The other nuclear-armed states should move to-
ward joining China and India in adopting no-first-use or “sole-use” policies.
These could be unilateral or joint declarations. No-first-use policies are crisis
stability measures and signal a willingness to limit nuclear use.20 A U.S. no-
first-use policy would reduce the risk of Russian or Chinese nuclear miscalcu-
lation during a crisis by alleviating concerns about a devastating U.S. nuclear
first strike. To be credible, this declaratory pledge would need to be reflected in
retaliatory-strike-only nuclear force postures. When fully implemented, such
a policy would eliminate first-strike postures, preemptive capabilities, damage
limitation, and other types of destabilizing war-fighting strategies. It would
emphasize restraint in targeting, launch-on-warning, alert levels of deployed

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systems, procurement, and modernization plans. Organizations such as Glob-
al Zero have proposed detailed deterrence-only postures incorporating many
of these measures, including eliminating land-based missiles.21 It would be
desirable to make the force structure changes by agreement, but the United
States could also do so unilaterally.

Many practitioners believe that the “calculated ambiguity” of a U.S. first-
use threat creates uncertainty in the mind of an adversary that contributes to
deterrence. A first-use threat is also necessary to reassure allies that the Unit-
ed States will come to their defense. Yet today, the risks and costs of an aggres-
sive first-use posture appear to outweigh the benefits. For this reason, numer-
ous former Pentagon officials, including former Secretary of Defense William
Perry, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cart-
wright, and former Head of the Strategic Command General Lee Butler, among
others, believe the United States should move toward a no-first-use posture. Al-
though the political moment does not seem propitious for the adoption of no-
first-use policies, nuclear-armed states should nevertheless begin dialogues–
perhaps at the Track 2 (back channel) level–on moving toward such a policy.
This should include discussion about the conditions, if any, under which first
use of nuclear weapons would be morally acceptable. The United States should
begin discussions with allies about limiting the role of nuclear weapons in ex-
tended deterrence policies to deterring, or responding to, a nuclear attack.

6. An expanded accountability regime. This could be organized under the United
Nations to hold all nuclear-armed states accountable for the consequences
of their nuclear policies. Currently, one of the big asymmetries of the NPT is
that the Security Council plays a role in enforcing the nonproliferation pillar
but not the disarmament pillar. A framework for a global regime of nuclear
restraint and responsibility could eventually be adopted by the UN Security
Council, similar to the way the Security Council adopted the “responsibility to
protect” principle in 2005.

For the United States, Russia, and China

7. Commit to “no new deployments” beyond New START limits and of land-based missiles
abroad (both nuclear and conventional). These commitments would be a type of
freeze. Just as the United States and Russia continued to observe SALT II (Stra-
tegic Arms Limitation Talks) limits even though the treaty was unratified, they
could continue to observe New START limits. As nuclear analyst Vince Manzo
has proposed, “the two countries could pledge, in the form of parallel political
commitments, to remain at or below the treaty’s limits after New START ex-
pires. Each country’s restraint would be contingent on the other’s reciproca-
tion.”22 Likewise, in the wake of the demise of the Intermediate-Range Nucle-
ar Forces (INF) Treaty in August 2019, a political understanding not to deploy

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new land-based missiles abroad would reduce tensions. Russia has warned the
United States against deploying new missiles to Europe and threatened to de-
ploy its own in response. Since European governments are unlikely to be in-
terested in hosting new U.S. missiles, a commitment to no new deployments
would avoid creating political turmoil as well as a destabilizing strategic situa-
tion in Europe. Reintroducing U.S. land-based missiles in Asia to deter China,
as some analysts have proposed, also seems unwise for similar reasons.23

8. Commit to transparency. The United States, Russia, and China should not go
backward on transparency; instead all three countries should pledge greater
transparency in nuclear weapons stockpiles, force postures, deployments, and
doctrines. The United States has always been more transparent about its nucle-
ar weapons stockpile than either Russia or China, which gave it the moral high
ground to demand more transparency from others. Thus, the Trump admin-
istration’s decision in April 2019 to halt, without explanation, a decade-long
practice of disclosing the current size of the nuclear weapons stockpile is an
unfortunate–and puzzling–step backward in transparency. As analyst Hans
Kristensen has noted, with this decision “the Trump administration surren-
ders any pressure on other nuclear-armed states to be more transparent about
the size of their nuclear weapon stockpiles.”24 Since the Trump administration
had repeatedly complained about secrecy in the Russian and Chinese arsenals,
instead it now appears to endorse their secrecy. Likewise, if New START disap-
pears, it is in the strong interest of both the United States and Russia to contin-
ue maintaining the verification provisions, which provide the only windows
into the strategic posture of the two sides.

China has traditionally declined to engage in transparency measures, argu-
ing that its small arsenal and no-first-use posture mean it has to preserve uncer-
tainty about the exact size and structure of its arsenal. But as part of responsi-
ble deterrence, and as a matter of risk reduction, China must commit to great-
er exchange of nuclear information. For example, the United States and China
should establish a reciprocal advance-launch notification agreement for long-
range missile systems. Such an agreement would duplicate existing ballistic
missile-launch notification agreements between the United States and Russia
(1988) and between Russia and China (2009). As advocates note, it would serve
two purposes. “First, it would establish the foundation for a broader military
notification mechanism. Second, it would serve as a test case for informal arms
control arrangements between the United States and China.”25

Unilateral Measures

9. Unilateral efforts by each of the nuclear powers to enhance awareness of the risks of en-
tanglement of conventional and nuclear arms and strengthen crisis stability. Advances

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in sophisticated, long-range conventional global-strike weapons, as well as the
creation of dual-use weapons, are increasingly entangling nuclear and conven-
tional deterrence and defense, creating new kinds of escalation scenarios.26
Nuclear-armed states should undertake unilateral efforts to enhance aware-
ness of these dynamics and possible escalation pathways. Dialogue among nu-
clear powers could eventually follow in the form of stability talks.

10. Interpret “parity” broadly. The United States’ commitment to having a nuclear ar-
senal “second to none” does not require duplicating every weapon of the adver-
sary. The Trump Nuclear Posture Review unfortunately gave new life to old ar-
guments that the United States must match Russia in every category of weapon
on the escalation ladder, regardless of whether such weapons add meaningfully
to U.S. deterrence. In fact, strict parity may not be necessary. As Manzo has ar-
gued, even if Russia were uninterested in maintaining New START limits, there
are strong reasons for the United States to stick to them unilaterally. The United
States could meet all its deterrence objectives at New START levels “even if Rus-
sia exceeds them by hundreds of deployed strategic warheads.”27 As long as the
United States maintains a triad of strategic delivery vehicles, U.S. posture is re-
silient to Russian increases. Staying within the New START limits–even if Rus-
sia does not–would enable the United States to avoid a quantitative arms com-
petition it might lose and would also help avoid a negative reaction from allies
and other friendly nations if New START expires.28

Likewise, a strict interpretation of parity is an ill-suited guide for the
U.S.-Chinese relationship. In the interest of nuclear risk reduction, the Unit-
ed States and China should engage in regular nuclear weapon information ex-
changes. While these should be reciprocal, they will need to be asymmetric,
given the very different force postures and also the two countries’ different
outlooks and experiences on cooperative transparency.29 For their part, Chi-
nese leaders cannot cite asymmetry in arsenals as an excuse for avoiding great-
er transparency and information exchange.

11. To increase arms race stability, Congress can cut the budget for nuclear modernization. By
cutting funding for unnecessary new weapons that both fuel an arms race and
might be destabilizing in a crisis, Congress can use its power of the purse to shape
a nuclear arsenal that exhibits more restraint. Modernization of the nuclear ar-
senal is important for the safety and reliability of the weapons, and U.S. spend-
ing on its nuclear arsenal constitutes only about 6–8 percent of all U.S. defense
spending. Still, the Trump administration’s expansive modernization plans
include a new low-yield warhead to match Russia’s supposed “escalate to de-
escalate” strategy, and a new submarine-launched cruise missile that many ana-
lysts argue would be destabilizing. Because both Russia and China are increasing
the number of their low-yield nuclear weapons, the Pentagon thinks it will have

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a deterrence “gap” and seeks similar weapons. There are compelling arguments
that the United States does not need these weapons for deterrence. U.S. inter-
ests would also not be served by matching Russia’s violation of the now-defunct
INF Treaty by developing a comparable U.S. ground-launched missile, as called
for in the 2018 Defense Authorization Act. Congress should limit the funding for
unnecessary and destabilizing new weapons.

12. Congress can adopt measures to strengthen the checks and balances on the president’s
ability to launch nuclear war unilaterally. A silver lining of the Trump era is that
members of Congress have become acutely aware of how easy it would be for
a president to launch a nuclear war unilaterally and of the tremendous risks
of this unchecked power. This issue is primarily a matter of U.S. constitution-
al norms, not the norms of the global nuclear regime. Beginning in 2016, Rep-
resentative Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) have reg-
ularly introduced a bill that would prohibit the president from launching a
first-strike nuclear attack without congressional approval.30 In January 2019,
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Adam Smith (D-WA)
went even further, introducing legislation that declared: “it is the policy of the
United States to not use nuclear weapons first.”31 Congress is divided on these
matters, however. More desirable may be institutional changes to require the
secretary of defense and the attorney general to participate in any decision to
use nuclear weapons. The secretary of defense would certify that a given order
is valid (meaning that it is definitely from the commander in chief ); the attor-
ney general would certify that it is legal (that is, within the president’s author-
ity and proper legal bounds). These changes may be better done by executive
decision rather than congressional legislation.32

More feasible in the near term might be the recent proposal by political
scientists Jeffrey Lewis and Scott Sagan that the United States should declare
it will not use nuclear weapons “against any target that could be reliably de-
stroyed by conventional means.”33 Congress could hold hearings on the topic,
which would invite useful debate on what targets, if any, really require a nucle-
ar weapon. While this debate over presidential authority is primarily a matter
of U.S. constitutional norms, it also usefully highlights the widely shared in-
ternational norm that nuclear use is (and should be) a last resort.

If taken, these proposals, individually and together, would help mitigate the
larger effects from the loss of a formal arms control regime by establishing alter-
native approaches for dealing with destabilizing developments, minimizing the
costs and risks of arms race instability, and fostering transparency and predict-
ability. The unilateral proposals that I offer are framed primarily in terms of the
United States, but there is no reason they cannot also be an exhortation to other
nuclear-armed states to take similar measures.

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W hat is the feasibility of this agenda in an environment of toxic politics

and difficult geostrategic relations? Skeptics on the right will argue
that in an unstable, threatening international environment, policies
such as no-first-use are unwise. Critics on the left will argue that notions such as re-
sponsible deterrence legitimize nuclear possession. In the face of resistance from
nuclear-armed governments, civil society and domestic politics will likely play a
key role in fostering nuclear restraint in the absence of treaties.

The nuclear freeze movement of the early 1980s provides a relevant compar-
ison. The call to halt the nuclear arms race launched by activist Randy Forsberg
in the late 1970s grew into the nuclear freeze movement in the United States, the
largest peace movement in American history. It advocated a bilateral halt to the
testing, production, deployment, and delivery of nuclear weapons. Through a
campaign of grassroots organizing, it grew into a vast coalition of major religious
denominations, academic associations, women’s organizations, and physicians’
groups. Numerous city councils and state legislatures passed symbolic freeze res-
olutions.34 The freeze offered a cogent critique of the nuclear rhetoric and policy
of the Reagan administration, and “even became a plank of the Democratic Par-
ty platform in 1984.”35 While an actual nuclear freeze was never put in place, the
movement was highly successful in putting pressure on Congress and the presi-
dent to rein in the arms race and engage in nuclear restraint.36

Following the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons fell off the public’s radar
and arms control became largely an inside-the-beltway, elite-driven process. In
recent decades, the lack of a widespread grassroots antinuclear movement helps
explain the lack of pressure on nuclear-armed governments to engage in disarma-
ment and arms control. While polling shows that publics tend to support the goal
of nuclear disarmament, only a small minority takes part in activism that raises
awareness about the dangers of nuclear weapons, lobbies for arms control, or con-
tributes to the goal of abolition.37 This suggests the importance of, and need for,
education for a public often woefully uninformed on nuclear issues.

The major exception to this picture in recent years is the Nuclear Weapon Ban
Treaty. This treaty–a total prohibition on possession or use of nuclear weapons
by any state–was the outcome of nearly a decade of mobilizing by a coalition of
civil society organizations and non-nuclear states. The coalition sought to high-
light the devastating humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weap-
ons as a way to mobilize support for disarmament.38 Remarkably, the treaty was
achieved over the objections of nuclear-armed states, which boycotted the nego-
tiations, while the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN),
the civil society organization leading the campaign, was recognized for its work
with the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2017.

Coming thirty-five years after the freeze, the humanitarian campaign benefit-
ted from new antinuclear organizations such as Global Zero, the Nuclear Security

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Project, and Beyond the Bomb, along with a whole new world of social media that
tremendously facilitated grassroots and transnational organizing. Supporting
these were funders such as the Ploughshares Fund and the Stanton and MacArthur
Foundations. As with the earlier freeze movement, the ban treaty is inspiring ac-
tion at the regional and municipal levels that seeks to put pressure on national gov-
ernments. More than thirteen hundred active members of parliaments in Europe
have pledged their support for the treaty, while a growing number of city coun-
cils have joined the ICAN Cities Appeal, including Washington, D.C., Baltimore,
Los Angeles, Melbourne, Toronto, Geneva, Berlin, Munich, Sydney, Oslo, Man-
chester, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. The state legislatures in California, Oregon, and
New Jersey have called on the United States to join the ban treaty, while the EU par-
liament has called on all EU member states to do so. Meanwhile, the “don’t bank
on the bomb” campaign urges companies not to be involved in the financing or
production of nuclear weapons. These actions are mostly symbolic, of course, and
cannot force nuclear powers to join the treaty or to disarm. But they are mobilizing
antinuclear activism that can eventually put pressure on governments, especially
those of NATO allies in Europe, to do more to reduce nuclear dangers.

Will these civil society movements actually help to reinstate norms and restrain
the arms race? Skeptics argue that civil society activism has a largely one-sided
effect, influencing democracies but with no evident impact on nondemocratic
nuclear-armed states, which are largely immune to such pressure.39 It is therefore
unclear how civil society pressure will motivate the needed global responsibility
and lead to universal norms.

It is true that civil society pressure has mostly been focused on democracies: the
ban campaign, for example, has focused its demands for disarmament dispropor-
tionately on the United States and European allies, while seemingly letting the other
nuclear powers off the hook. Yet the asymmetry is not as sharp as some may think.
It is true that a large grassroots movement for the ban treaty will not be organized
in Russia or China (and does not currently exist in the United States, either). Yet the
Russian government has been outspoken against the ban and clearly does not see it
as posing a problem only for democracies. Officials in both Washington and Mos-
cow seek to diminish the significance of the treaty, and they would not be happy if
it is eventually ratified by most of the 122 countries that have signed it and publics
press some of the major governments that have resisted it to join them. This would
delegitimize nuclear weapons in the eyes of a large portion of people everywhere.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, would not be pleased to see a weap-
on that he likes to wave about regarded as anathema by the rest of the world.

Moreover, were this to become the dominant view in most of the countries
without nuclear weapons and even a few with such weapons, Russian authorities
–including the military–would be concerned that the attitude would soon cross
Russian borders. This does not mean that they would fear, let alone permit, a large

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organized groundswell. But as with climate change and environmental issues,
Russian leaders are sensitive to broad public sentiments, even if amorphous.40
Nevertheless, in the immediate future, the United States and other democracies
are likely to feel most acutely the pressure of pro-ban activists. I have suggested
several ways they might engage the movement constructively.

Formal arms control has been an important tool of nuclear restraint and its
loss will be felt. Likely someday, it will revive. In the meantime, even without trea-
ties, nuclear-armed states can take numerous steps, both unilaterally and cooper-
atively, to reduce the risk of nuclear war. In the end, it is in the fundamental inter-
est of the United States to pursue measures of nuclear restraint and responsibility,
jointly with Russia and China if possible, and unilaterally if necessary. The United
States could usefully begin by publicly reaffirming the importance of the seventy-
four-year tradition of nonuse. U.S. leadership in demonstrating restraint and re-
sponsibility might help nudge the world toward a retreat from nuclear confron-
tation. Of course, it might not work, but the alternative, an unrestrained nuclear
arms race, seems worse.

about the author

Nina Tannenwald is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at
Brown University. She is the coeditor, with Matthew Evangelista, of Do the Geneva
Conventions Matter? (2017) and author of The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the
Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons since 1945 (2007).

endnotes

1 This notion explicitly invokes the concept of the responsibility to protect, adopted by the
UN Security Council in 2005, which promoted a global dialogue to develop criteria for
military intervention to prevent mass atrocity crimes.

2 Oxford English Dictionary, “Restrain,” https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/

restrain.

3 Scott D. Sagan, “Shared Responsibilities for Nuclear Disarmament,” Daedalus 138 (4)

(Fall 2009): 157–168.

4 A State Department official commented to me in 2014 regarding the humanitarian cam-

paign, “Who are they to delegitimize OUR nuclear weapons?”

5 Michael J. Mills, Owen B. Toon, Julia Lee-Taylor, and Alan Robock, “Multidecadal Glob-
al Cooling and Unprecedented Ozone Loss Following a Regional Nuclear Conflict,”
Earth’s Future 2 (4) (2014): 161–176.

6 Raymond Jeanloz, “Long-Range Effects of Nuclear Disasters,” in The Nuclear Enterprise:
High-Consequences Accidents: How to Enhance Safety and Minimize Risk and Nuclear Reactors and

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Weapons, ed. George P. Shulz and Sidney D. Drell (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution
Press, 2012), 107–126.

7 Beth A. Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics (Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 24–36.

8 Elaine Scarry, Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing between Democracy and Doom (New York:

W. W. Norton, 2014).

9 See Rebecca K. C. Hersman and William Pittinos, Restoring Restraint: Enforcing Accountability
for Users of Chemical Weapons (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International
Studies, 2018).

10 Michael Krepon, ed., Nuclear Risk Reduction in South Asia (London: Palgrave MacMillan,

2004).

11 These norms are discussed in greater detail in Nina Tannenwald, “The Great Unraveling:
The Future of the Nuclear Normative Order,” in Meeting the Challenges of the New Nuclear
Age: Emerging Risks and Declining Norms in the Age of Technological Innovation and Changing Nu-
clear Doctrines, by Nina Tannenwald and James M. Acton (Cambridge, Mass.: American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2018).

12 UN Secretary-General António Guterres has endorsed the joint statements by Reagan
and Gorbachev that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” adding
that “any effort to expand the possible range of situations in which nuclear weapons
are designed to be used could be destabilizing and jeopardizes the 72-year practice of
non-use.” United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, Securing Our Common Future:
An Agenda for Disarmament (New York: United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs,
2018), https://front.un-arm.org/documents/SG+disarmament+agenda_1.pdf.

13 “Unlocking Disarmament Diplomacy through a ‘Stepping Stone’ Approach,” working
paper presented by Sweden to the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Confer-
ence of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Third
Session, New York, April 25, 2019, NPT/CONF.2020/PC.III/WP.33.

14 Wilfred Wan, Nuclear Risk Reduction: A Framework for Analysis (Geneva: United Nations In-

stitute for Disarmament Research, 2019).

15 For this suggestion, see Lewis Dunn, “The Strategic Elimination of Nuclear Weapons:
An Alternative Global Agenda for Nuclear Disarmament,” The Nonproliferation Review 24
(5–6) (2017): 427–428.

16 International Institute of Strategic Studies, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation
Studies, and Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation, Improving the Securi-
ty of All Nuclear Materials: Legal, Political, and Institutional Options to Advance Institutional Over-
sight (London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, 2016), 34–35.

17 Lyndon Burford, “A Risk-Driven Approach to Nuclear Disarmament,” European Lead-
ership Network, June 25, 2019, https://www.europeanleadershipnetwork.org/commentary
/a-risk-driven-approach-to-nuclear-disarmament/.

18 U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Report on Nuclear Em-
ployment Strategy of the United States Specified in Section 491 of 10 U.S.C. (Washington, D.C.:
Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2013).

19 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Bridges to Effective Nuclear Disarmament: Recommen-
dations for the 2020 Review Process for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

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(NPT) (Tokyo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 2018), https://www.mofa.go.jp/
files/000359856.pdf.

20 For an extended discussion, see Nina Tannenwald, “It’s Time for a U.S. No-First-Use

Policy,” Texas National Security Review 2 (3) (2019).

21 Bruce G. Blair, Jessica Sleight, and Emma Claire Foley, The End of Nuclear Warfighting:
Moving to a Deterrence-Only Posture: An Alternative U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (Princeton,
N.J.: Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University, 2018).

22 Vince Manzo, Nuclear Arms Control without a Treaty? Risks and Options After New START (Ar-
lington, Va.: CNA, 2019), 4, 80. These limits would not preclude replacement systems.
23 Toshi Yoshihara and Jacob Cohn, “The Case for Deploying U.S. Land-Based Missiles to

Asia,” The National Interest, May 13, 2019.

24 Hans M. Kristensen, “Pentagon Slams Door on Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Transparen-

cy,” Federation of American Scientists blog, April 17, 2019.

25 Nicholas Cosmas, Meicen Sun, and John K. Warden, “U.S.-China Need a Missile Launch

Notification Deal,” The Diplomat, October 27, 2014.

26 James M. Acton, Tong Zhao, and Li Bin, “Reducing the Risks of Nuclear Entanglement,”

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 12, 2018.

27 Manzo, Nuclear Arms Control without a Treaty? 83.
28 Ibid., 83–85.
29 Ibid., 110.
30 Restricting the First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2019, H.R. 669, 116th Cong. (2019–2020).
31 A Bill to Establish the Policy of the United States Regarding the No-First-Use of Nuclear Weapons,

S. 272/H.R. 921, 116th Cong. (2019–2020).

32 Richard K. Betts and Matthew C. Waxman, “The President and the Bomb: Reforming

the Nuclear Launch Process,” Foreign Affairs 97 (2) (2018).

33 Jeffrey G. Lewis and Scott D. Sagan, “The Nuclear Necessity Principle: Making U.S.
Targeting Policy Conform with Ethics and the Laws of War,” Dædalus 145 (4) (Fall
2016): 62–74.

34 Lawrence Wittner, “The Nuclear Freeze and Its Impact,” Arms Control Today, December 5,

2010.

35 Anne I. Harrington, Eliza Gheorghe, and Anya Loukianova Fink, “What Arguments
Motivate Citizens to Demand Nuclear Disarmament?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 73
(4) (2017): 256.

36 William M. Knobloch, Nuclear Freeze in a Cold War: The Reagan Administration, Cultural Activ-
ism and the End of the Arms Race (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2017).
37 Harrington et al., “What Arguments Motivate Citizens to Demand Nuclear Disarma-

ment?” 255–263.

38 Motoko Metaka, “How Transnational Civil Society Realized the Ban Treaty: An Inter-
view with Beatrice Fihn,” Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament 1 (1) (2018): 70–92.
39 Brad Roberts, “On Creating the Conditions for Nuclear Disarmament,” Washington Quar-

terly 42 (2) (2019): 7–30.

40 I thank Robert Legvold for these points.

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149 (2) Spring 2020Nina Tannenwald
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