December 2024

When Donald Trump begins his second term as U.S. president on January 20, he will assume control of an arsenal of 5,044 nuclear weapons and responsibility for guiding U.S. policy toward nine nuclear-armed states, one state that is dangerously close to becoming nuclear-capable and several conflicts that potentially could escalate to nuclear-weapons use. Trump also will assume a major role in deciding the direction of an estimated $1.5 trillion, 30-year program that is already underway to modernize all three legs of the U.S. nuclear triad, including bombers, submarines and missiles. It all occurs as tensions with Russia are at their worst since the Cold War and as Russia and China are pursuing their own nuclear modernization and expansion programs, setting the stage for a new arms race. Arms Control Today invited five experts to examine the challenges with China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and the defense budget faced by Trump, with an eye toward how he could or should manage these problems.—CAROL GIACOMO

• Dangerous Parallax: Chinese-U.S. Nuclear Risks in Trump’s Second Term
  By Tong Zhao
• Reducing the Russian Nuclear Danger: A Way Forward
  By Thomas Countryman
• Trump Could Make His Mark With a New Iran Deal
  By Ellie Geranmayeh
• How Will Trump Balance South and North Korea This Time?
  By Jenny Town
• Trump, the United States, and the New Nuclear Arms Race
  By Geoff Wilson

December 2024
By Sebastian Brixey-Williams

UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer’s Labour Party has signaled its “unshakeable” and “absolute” commitment to nuclear deterrence after sweeping to power in the United Kingdom in July.

After 14 years of Conservative Party-led government, voters handed Starmer’s party a landslide victory on par with Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1997. Bolstered by an overwhelming majority of members of Parliament, Labour now has the mandate to make ambitious policy change across government. The public will see what that means for nuclear policy when the Strategic Defence Review is released early in 2025.

The review will be headed by Lord George Robertson, reporting to Defence Minister John Healey. Robertson is a Labour defense policy veteran, having served as defense minister in 1997-1999 before becoming NATO secretary-general in 1999-2003. He will work alongside Fiona Hill, a former U.S. National Security Council official, and Richard Barrons, a retired army general and former commander of the UK Joint Forces Command.

The review must articulate Labour’s approach to nuclear weapons policy at a moment of profound international upheaval: the full-scale war against Ukraine waged by Russia; growing violence in the Middle East involving nuclear-armed Israel, which may drive Iran to nuclearize further; ongoing uncertainty about the relationship between China and the West; and growing disquiet about the erosion of the multilateral nonproliferation and disarmament regime. Within this darkening context, how might Labour demonstrate accountable leadership on nuclear weapons policy?

By extending a strong tradition of forward-leaning Labour policy, there are several concrete ways that the new government can demonstrate its commitment to reduce nuclear weapons risks and harms and advance the multilateral disarmament agenda, while signaling Labour’s seriousness about defense and security. To do this, Labour should demonstrate that responsibility, accountability, transparency, and international law are the bedrock principles of the UK nuclear weapons program.

Progressive Opportunities

The review team should start by revisiting the in-depth introspective work done by the civil service on UK nuclear responsibilities with respect to its nuclear weapons, partners, adversaries, and the wider international community. Working through frameworks such as BASIC’s Responsibilities Framework¹ has proven a valuable starting point for building shared understanding across government of UK obligations and duties, and much of this prior work still has relevance.

Yet, the review process also should explore whether the UK can reverse the Prime Minister Boris Johnson-era policy of secrecy and return to publicly releasing numbers on the operational stockpile and deployed warheads and missiles. This move would restore confidence in the UK commitment to the principle of transparency, signal its willingness to contribute responsibly to arms control and disarmament dialogue, and remove an excuse for other nuclear-armed states not to behave similarly. It also would signal an important break from the recent UK turn toward rearmament. UK nuclear forces were on a gradual downward trend under successive Conservative governments, with the 2010 strategic review announcing a planned inventory reduction from “not more than 225 to not more than 180” warheads.² Surprising many observers, the 2021 review increased the cap on warhead numbers from 225 to “no more than” 260. This change was reported widely as a 40 percent increase, based on the 180 figure, even though the actual change may well be narrower.

In another departure from precedent, the 2021 review announced that the government would “no longer give public figures for [the] operational stockpile, deployed warhead or deployed missile numbers,” deepening UK nuclear opacity.³ Yet France, which has a similar-sized nuclear arsenal, does make such information available, and restarting data releases would match the U.S. decision to return to declassifications earlier this year.⁴ Such a move would strengthen international norms of transparency and accountability and set clear standards for other nuclear-armed states to follow.

Labour also should explore whether the UK can provide greater transparency on nuclear doctrine, with the purpose of making the case to domestic and international audiences about the lawfulness and ethics of its employment policy. There is an incompatibility between the UK “commitment to transparency of doctrine and capability”⁵ and the policy of being “deliberately ambiguous about precisely when, how, and at what scale” the government would use the weapons.⁶ This does not mean that Labour needs to start listing target sets publicly, in a manner that could risk national security or be misinterpreted as nuclear threats. Instead, Labour should revive the spirit of elaborating UK nuclear deterrence philosophy as exemplified in a 1980 defense document, which clarified that the state’s nuclear weapons were intended to pose a “potential threat to key aspects of Soviet state power”⁷ rather than, as its probable author Michael Quinlan later explained, “crude counter-city or counter-population concepts.”⁸ Nearly half a century later, Labour should reaffirm this principle and explore how to exclude publicly certain varieties of target to signal its compliance with international humanitarian and environmental legal obligations. If this was possible during the Cold War, it should be possible now.

Embracing International Law     

Building on this, the UK should commit to updating and expanding its understanding of how international law applies to nuclear weapons targeting. This move has precedent, but the last detailed official document on the subject is the UK’s 1995 statement to the International Court of Justice.⁹ Customary international law and popular understanding of the effects of nuclear weapons have evolved in significant ways since then. The UK should commit in the new review to articulating in more detail how the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution in attack under international humanitarian law would apply to nuclear targeting and the kinds of legal tests that must be met for 100-kiloton UK weapons to be used lawfully. Being transparent about such advice is essential to accountability and especially important when it comes to highly contested legal questions, such as whether belligerent reprisals against civilians populations are lawful.           

Labour also should elaborate the internal processes by which the Ministry of Defence determines lawfulness, for instance by explaining the role that legal advisers play in screening nuclear targeting plans; the kind of legal advice that prime ministers receive upon entering office while writing their “letter of last resort,” which provides the final orders to Royal Navy ballistic missile submarine commanders in the event that London is believed destroyed; and the way in which legal advice is integrated with nuclear decision-making during crises. Now led by Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions who has campaigned on a platform of integrity and accountability, the government has an opportunity to provide greater confidence that UK nuclear targeting is fully compliant with its legal obligations by clearly articulating its understanding of the law and reaffirming the authority of international law in nuclear targeting more generally.

It is critical too that Labour restore and nourish legislative oversight of nuclear modernization programs, which has diminished dramatically as key members departed Parliament and the public and the media lost interest. The closure this year of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Security and Non-proliferation following dwindling attendance and funding exemplified this trend.¹⁰ Labour should replenish the stocks of parliamentarians who consider nuclear weapons policy to be part of their issue brief by grooming and training new members of Parliament and peers of all political parties, with the support of experts countrywide. The government should restart the annual updates to Parliament on the future UK nuclear deterrent, which unexpectedly stopped after 2022.

Labour should launch a comprehensive public inquiry into historic UK nuclear weapons harms to establish whether the UK has caused humanitarian, environmental, or social harms in developing and sustaining its nuclear program and take steps to mitigate or redress these harms where necessary. Harms should be understood broadly, covering the full life cycle of nuclear weapons production, including uranium mining, testing, and the displacement of populations. Those leading the inquiry should engage widely with officials and military officers, lawyers, anthropologists, scientific experts, and affected communities during the investigation. If warranted, the inquiry should produce recommendations for restorative or reparatory justice mechanisms.

Finally, Labour should invest in the UK as an incubator for innovative, practical measures toward multilateral reductions in nuclear weapons. The UK has done detailed work on nuclear disarmament verification and irreversibility in recent years. In addition to building on these foundations, Labour should be more ambitious by reviving and adapting the concept outlined in 2007 by Labour Foreign Secretary Margarett Beckett of positioning the UK as a “disarmament laboratory.”¹¹ Now that the Defence Ministry has established a nuclear deterrence fund, the government should increase spending for new research and diplomatic initiatives on risk reduction, arms control, and disarmament. At this critical juncture, the UK should demonstrate that a world without nuclear weapons is in its vital interests and publicly signal a willingness to be included, under certain conditions, in future multilateral arms control reductions talks.

Labour’s Nuclear Inheritance

These and other recommendations will need to overcome two challenges in UK nuclear politics. First, political attention is directed primarily toward ensuring the viability of UK nuclear deterrence because of the significant programmatic challenges that Labour has inherited and the perception that the country’s adversaries and competitors are placing new strategic demands on it.

The existing Vanguard ballistic missile submarine program is in poor shape. Submarine sea patrols, previously no more than three months, are being forced to remain at sea for as many as six months due to spiraling repairs and reported challenges in recruiting crew.¹² In 2022, one of the four UK submarines finally returned to service from a refit that was extended from four years to seven after the scope was expanded beyond the original plans and failures in workforce and infrastructure investments. During the extra three years that the HMS Vanguard was in dry dock, the Royal Navy was forced to try to maintain its mission of keeping at least one submarine at sea at all times while at times missing 25 to 50 percent of its operational submarine fleet. Major questions remain on whether the submarine replacement program Dreadnought will meet its deadline for having the first boat enter service in the early 2030s.¹³ Labour must be careful about its messaging to avoid being blamed for operational, budgetary, or procurement failures that preceded its mandate.

Labour also inherits a nuclear warhead modernization program at a critical juncture, the Astraea. Although promoted as a “sovereign design,” this warhead is being “delivered in parallel with” the U.S. W93 warhead.¹⁴ The name of the UK warhead was carefully calibrated: Astraea is named after the Roman goddess of justice and, according to some sources, innocence, purity, and precision. In some depictions, she fittingly carries a thunderbolt of justice and was said by the epic poet Hesiod to have been the last deity to leave the earth during the evil days of the Bronze Age, when warlike men were consumed by their own rage and perished.¹⁵ The most recent program update to Parliament in 2022 stated that the warhead had moved into the concept phase, but little more is known about the program. David Cullen, executive director of the watchdog Nuclear Information Service, has reasoned that the “technological dependency of the UK nuclear weapons program on the United States means that the UK Replacement Warhead is likely to have a similar design to the W93, and may therefore produce a significantly higher yield than the current UK warhead.”¹⁶ If true, this raises important questions as to whether the UK modernization plans are geared more toward like-for-like replacement or a capability change.

Starmer’s government also may have inherited a country poised for U.S. forward deployments. Although not mentioned in the 2021 review, the Federation of the American Scientists, citing a vague U.S. budget reference, reported in 2023 the possibility that RAF Lakenheath is being readied again as a base for U.S. nuclear weapons.¹⁷ London has declined to comment on this report, but there are plausible reasons why it might be true. With U.S. attention increasingly focused on China, the UK appears to be taking on a greater share of the responsibility for NATO’s nuclear deterrence against Russia. This will be especially true under the second Trump administration, whose attention will be on China and will call for European allies to take greater responsibility for their own defense.

London also may be concerned about its lack of substrategic options compared to Russia. Although it is commonly assumed that the UK still has the capacity to deploy a low-yield variant of its Holbrook warhead, it is difficult to imagine that more than one or two missiles per boat would be dedicated to this variant or that they would be used readily because their use simultaneously would locate the UK’s second-strike capability. U.S. forward deployments might provide a cost-efficient alternative to developing a U.S. low-yield nuclear capability, for instance by reestablishing a Royal Air Force nuclear capability or arming Royal Navy attack submarines with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Such basing also would put another bargaining chip on the table for any longer-term European arms control and demilitarization. In essence, NATO could attempt to trade U.S. weapons at Lakenheath for Russian weapons in Belarus without fundamentally changing the remaining balance of nuclear, missile defense, or other forces in Europe.

The increase to the UK warhead cap, London’s rollback in transparency measures, and the credible possibility of U.S. forward deployments have ended an extended period of complacency about the irreversibility of UK disarmament progress and demonstrated that the civil service is not locked into a linear course toward nuclear elimination. Although the new leaders undertaking the Strategic Defence Review are well-informed, the process will be advised by an entrenched cadre of civil servants, which will surely influence Labour’s nuclear weapons policy. The strategic context in Europe has changed dramatically since the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, meaning further increases to the UK warhead cap or even the adoption of new capabilities should not come as a surprise.

Starmer’s Opening Position

The second key challenge is that the diminished space for democratic debate on UK nuclear politics is now led from the top of the Labour Party itself. Starmer came out swinging in his election campaign to dispel any allegation that the party is “weak on defence,” a deep-rooted association that has been an Achilles heel in Labour’s domestic policy platform for decades. Indeed, Starmer’s “unshakeable” and “absolute” commitment to nuclear deterrence is stauncher than any recent Labour leader. Contrast this to the equivocal, almost flippant position taken by former Prime Minister Blair in his memoir on the Trident renewal decision in 2006: “[A]fter some genuine consideration and reconsideration, I opted to renew.… I said to [Gordon Brown]: imagine standing up in the House of Commons and saying I’ve decided to scrap it. We’re not going to say that, are we?”¹⁸

At the top of Starmer’s mind will be closing off any comparison with his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, who ran on a divisive platform advocating pacifism and unilateral nuclear disarmament and later was mired in anti-Semitism allegations. Corbyn’s public refusal to “push the button,” however noble in its intention, undoubtedly harmed Labour’s electability.¹⁹ Formerly in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, Starmer is doing everything he can to sever any association with his predecessor and depoliticize nuclear weapons for his government so it can focus on the country’s myriad domestic challenges.

Eliminating any doubt about Starmer’s commitment to a “triple lock” on the nuclear deterrent,²⁰ the government’s first major public act has been the extension of the UK-U.S. Mutual Defence Agreement. This included the permanent removal of the need to renew the key clause on the transfer of materials and equipment every 10 years,²¹ further embedding cooperation and eliminating a substantial risk to the continuity of the UK nuclear program. Although the allies still may review minor technical updates to the agreement, this major indefinite extension decision will deprive elected officials in both countries of the opportunity to revisit the more fundamental principle of whether to share nuclear materials and equipment in future years.

Indeed, Starmer is under little political pressure to concede ground on disarmament. The near-total electoral collapse of the Scottish National Party, having nosedived from 49 to 9 seats in Scotland’s 57 constituencies, looks to have weakened permanently efforts toward a second Scottish independence referendum and unilateral nuclear disarmament in the UK. Only a few years ago, Scottish independence appeared to be the most likely route to a unilaterally disarmed UK, given the immense practical, legal, and financial difficulties of relocating the nuclear submarine base to one of the few deepwater ports elsewhere in the country.²² Not so today.

Although Starmer’s opening statements have been forthrightly pro-nuclear, Labour ultimately may soften its approach. Evidence of this can be seen in the foreign policy philosophy set out by Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who has campaigned as a “progressive realist” with hopes to weave together elements of an “ethical foreign policy” espoused by the late Foreign Secretary Robin Cook with “tough on defence” pragmatism.²³ The message is one of continuity with a difference: an approach to defense and security that is framed as strong and serious, but differentiated from its predecessors through its greater moral sensibility. The government is not short of international security or foreign policy decisions by which Lammy’s vision can be tested.

As the strategic review gets underway, Starmer’s government must find its own way to grapple with the conflicting UK policy commitments toward deterrence and disarmament. Domestic political pressures, limited parliamentary capacity, and an unstable international environment make reductions to the UK arsenal improbable; they may even reverse further. Yet, nearly two decades on, Beckett’s words are as true today as they were in 2007; and Labour would do well to recall them: “The judgement we made forty years ago, that the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons was in all of our interests - is just as true today as it was then. For more than sixty years, good management and good fortune have meant that nuclear arsenals have not been used. But we cannot rely on history just to repeat itself.”²⁴

ENDNOTES

1. Sebastian Brixey-Williams, Alice Spilman, and Nicholas J. Wheeler, “The Nuclear Responsibilities Toolkit: A Practical Guide for Thinking, Talking and Writing,” British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security, September 2021, p. 25, https://basicint.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/BASIC_Nuclear-Responsibilities-Toolkit_2nd-Edition.pdf.

2. “Securing Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The Strategic Defence and Security Review,” 
Cm 7948, October 2010, p. 39.

3. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament commissioned a legal advice that sought to challenge the lawfulness of the buildup, which concluded that the “announcement by the UK government of the increase in nuclear warheads and its modernisation of its weapons system constitutes a breach of the [nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Article] VI,” but puzzlingly it stopped short of litigating the decision in the courts. Christine Chinkin and Louise Arimatsu, “ Legality Under International Law of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Policy as Set Out in the 2021 Integrated Review,” Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), April 2021, https://cnduk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CND-legal-opinion-1.pdf.

4. U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, “Transparency in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile,” n.d., https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/U.S.-Nuclear-Weapons-Stockpile-Transparency-2024_2.pdf (data as of September 2023).

5. 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, “National Report of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Pursuant to Actions 5, 20 and 21 of the Action Plan of the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons for the Tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty,” NPT/CONF.2020/33, November 5, 2021, p. 33.

6. UK Defence Nuclear Organisation, “The UK’s Nuclear Deterrent: What You Need to Know,” n.d., https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-nuclear-deterrence-factsheet/uk-nuclear-deterrence-what-you-need-to-know (accessed November 17, 2024).

7. UK Ministry of Defence, “The Future United Kingdom Strategic Nuclear Deterrent Force,” Doc. 80/23, July 1980, para. 12, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/qw8t8k-z13mv/34.pdf.

8. Michael Quinlan, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons: Principles, Problems, Prospects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 126.

9. UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, “Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons (Request for an Advisory Opinion by the United Nations General Assembly): Statement of the Government of the United Kingdom,” June 1995, https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/95/8802.pdf.

10. Sebastian Brixey-Williams, “APPG on Global Security and Non-Proliferation to Close After 24 Years,” May 14, 2024, https://basicint.org/appg-to-close-after-24-years/.

11. “Keynote Address: A World Free of Nuclear Weapons?” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 25, 2007, https://carnegieendowment.org/events/2007/06/keynote-address-a-world-free-of-nuclear-weapons (remarks of Margaret Beckett) (hereinafter Beckett address).

12. CND, “Royal Navy Struggles to Attract Recruits for Nuclear-Armed Subs,” June 19, 2023, https://cnduk.org/royal-navy-struggles-to-attract-recruits-for-nuclear-armed-subs/.

13. Toby Fenwick, “(Dis)Continuous Deterrence: Challenges to Britain’s Nuclear Doctrine,” BASIC, September 2018, https://basicint.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/DisContinuous-Deterrence-Web.pdf.

14. UK Defence Nuclear Enterprise, “Delivering the UK’s Nuclear Deterrent as a National Endeavour,” CP 1058, March 2024.

15. “Astraea,” Oxford Reference, n.d., https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095430649 (accessed November 17, 2024).

16. David Cullen, “Extreme Circumstances: The UK’s New Nuclear Warhead in Context,” Nuclear Information Service, August 2022, p. 49, https://www.nuclearinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Extreme-Circumstances-print-version.pdf.

17. Matt Korda and Hans Kristensen, “Increasing Evidence That the US Air Force’s Nuclear Mission May Be Returning to UK Soil,” Federation of American Scientists, August 28, 2023, https://fas.org/publication/increasing-evidence-that-the-us-air-forces-nuclear-mission-may-be-returning-to-uk-soil/.

18. “Blair on Trident: ‘There Was a Case Either Way,”’ Nuclear Information Service, March 9, 2010, https://www.nuclearinfo.org/blog/nuclear-information-service/2010/09/blair-trident-there-was-case-either-way/.

19. Patrick Wintour, “Jeremy Corbyn: I Would Never Use Nuclear Weapons If I Were PM,” The Guardian, September 30, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/30/corbyn-i-would-never-use-nuclear-weapons-if-i-was-pm.

20. Nick Ritchie, “Keir Starmer’s Trident Triple Lock: How Britain’s Obsession With Nuclear Weapons Has Become Part of Election Campaigns,” The Conversation, June 6, 2024, http://theconversation.com/keir-starmers-trident-triple-lock-how-britains-obsession-with-nuclear-weapons-has-become-part-of-election-campaigns-231834.

21. UK Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, “Amendment to the Agreement Between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of the United States of America for Cooperation on the Uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes,” CP 1135, July 2024.

22. Sebastian Brixey-Williams, “Voting for Trident Before the Scotland Question Is Settled Is Illogical,” BASIC, July 18, 2016, https://basicint.org/news/2016/voting-trident-scotland-question-settled-illogical.

23. “A Friend of Obama Who Could Soon Share the World Stage With Trump,” The New York Times, April 21, 2024.

24. Beckett address.

Sebastian Brixey-Williams is executive director of BASIC, a think tank, and a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Project on Managing the Atom. 

December 2024
By Jez Littlewood and Filippa Lentzos

By the end of this month, states-parties will be halfway through their latest attempt to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). This effort was launched in 2022 at the convention’s ninth review conference with the establishment of a working group to “identify, examine and develop specific and effective measures, including possible legally binding measures, and to make recommendations to strengthen and institutionalize the Convention in all its aspects.”¹

The working group was tasked with addressing seven areas: international cooperation and assistance, scientific and technological developments relevant to the convention, confidence building and transparency, compliance and verification, national implementation, assistance, response and preparedness in the event of use of biological or toxin weapons, and organizational, institutional, and financial issues. States-parties also decided to develop two mechanisms to support the BWC: one to review and assess scientific and technological developments and provide advice to states-parties on their implications and the other to facilitate and support international cooperation and assistance under BWC Article X, which covers peaceful uses of biology. Both mechanisms would be developed by the working group, which would make recommendations to states-parties.

The working group was given 60 days (15 days a year over four years) to make recommendations to strengthen and institutionalize all aspects of the BWC. How to best accomplish this has been contentious throughout the treaty’s nearly 50-year history. Most of the topics have been explored previously, with states-parties failing to reach consensus on advancing more robust transparency, cooperation, and compliance procedures. Now it is being done again in a period of particularly fraught geopolitical relations.

Substantial progress has been made in some areas, but beneath the surface is a broader conflict about the shape of arms control agreements generally. This raises a question about whether strengthening the BWC needs to follow the traditional model of legally binding multilateral agreements with declarations, inspections, investigations, and an international organization where consensus rules or whether states-parties can agree to a new model that allows states to opt in to the mechanisms with which they agree and opt out of any processes or new commitments they are unable to support.

The Working Group

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the working group agenda was the inclusion of verification and compliance issues as topics for discussion. Their inclusion raised the possibility of legally binding measures similiar to the protocol on verification provisions from the 1990s.

Since 2001, when negotiations on a verification protocol collapsed, multiple events have influenced how states and civil society think about the BWC, its weaknesses, and ways to strengthen it. These include the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the anthrax letters targeting media outlets and politicians shortly after those attacks, the Iraq war, and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons. In addition, there have been fears of terrorist groups acquiring biological weapons, significant scientific and technological developments that have lowered the barriers to biological weapons development for nefarious actors, the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s rejected allegations of offensive biological weapons activity by the United States and Ukraine, and changing attitudes toward arms control and disarmament.

The first session of the working group, in March 2023, organized the group’s 60 days of work on a schedule that would include 10 days focused on compliance and verification; eight days each on international cooperation and assistance and scientific and technological developments; seven days on assistance, response, and preparedness; five days each on confidence building and transparency and national implementation; four days on organizational, institutional, and financial issues; two days on each of the mechanisms; four days to consider issues related to all topics; and five days to complete any leftover work and write the report. To date, more time has been spent on cooperation issues and scientific and technological development compared to compliance and verification and other areas. As a result, compliance and verification issues are more conceptual but a new working paper by the United States and six other states-parties is more concrete than anything else put forward for over two decades.²

At this stage, three visions of how to strengthen the BWC are emerging. The first is a traditional arms control approach centered on a multilaterally negotiated, legally binding verification treaty, essentially a return to the protocol debated in the 1990s. The second is a pragmatic approach that embraces the working group’s task to explore and make recommendations that fulfill the objective of strengthening the effectiveness and improving the implementation of the BWC. The pragmatists are not prejudging how to achieve that objective. It may involve a range of approaches and could include a legally binding component. The third approach is incremental and suggests a way forward that is built on a series of actions and activities completed by states-parties in different ways that cumulatively move BWC implementation forward through national, bilateral, and multilateral approaches. Although multilateralism is one component of action, states can pursue other approaches outside the convention.

The Traditional Approach

For a few states-parties, the weaknesses of the BWC are mainly if not completely the result of the U.S. decision in July 2001 to reject the draft version of the verification protocol. China, Iran, and Russia are the dominant voices advocating for a traditional approach to strengthening the BWC, as they have been for most of the last 20 years.

Each state has a slightly different emphasis, based on their formal proposals reflected in working papers. For Iran, the dominant issue is peaceful cooperation and technology transfer, and its main target is sanctions; anything other than a legally binding agreement is insufficient. China’s starting point is to review the work on the protocol completed in the 1990s to assess its applicability to any future negotiations.

Of the three, Russia seems most determined to live in the past, having resurrected its previous proposals for agreed definitions and terminology, lists of pathogens and equipment that are relevant to offensive biological weapons activity, and quantitative and material accountancy approaches to determine compliance.³ Quantitative approaches to determining compliance with Article I of the BWC are anathema to most Western states-parties because the convention prohibition hinges not on specific things or identified amounts, but on the purpose for which something is being used. Material accountancy approaches will not work in the BWC.

Although it would be incorrect to characterize everything espoused by China, Iran, and Russia as unhelpful, each has a vision of a strengthened convention that places consensually agreed-on procedures, mechanisms, and approaches as the only way to determine confidence in compliance. Mechanisms outside the convention are irrelevant to their vision of a strengthened BWC: only states and what states want are relevant.

The Pragmatic Approach

The pragmatic approach is apparent in the wide variety of states-parties that are focused on the task of the working group and using its meetings to find ways to strengthen the convention. A legally binding approach is favored by many but not all of these states, and it is not an option that excludes other approaches, at least so far. By identifying ways to improve and enhance implementation of the BWC but not prejudging or committing to how that might be achieved, this approach is allowing ideas to get a fair hearing and have an opportunity to ripen. Importantly, this approach allows for verification to be discussed by states-parties. Because verification has not been covered by the BWC for more than 20 years, the distinctions between verification as an abstract concept and verification as a real, complex challenge is something that requires time and discussion to emerge.

A notable aspect of the pragmatic approach is the groups of states that have come together to advance proposals that cut across the old regional and nonaligned blocs that bedevilled consensus agreement in the past. Denmark, Malawi, Montenegro, Norway, Panama, Singapore, and Uruguay presented a joint paper identifying key considerations in any discussion of verification.⁴ Georgia, Malawi, Norway, and the Philippines identified five elements that generated broad convergence for a mechanism for international cooperation and assistance.⁵ Kenya and Panama proposed to strengthen and institutionalize the BWC by enhancing youth engagement, building on the Youth Declaration for Biosecurity.⁶

Meanwhile, France and India, building on their earlier cooperation from 2018 on a database for assistance under the framework of Article VII, proposed cooperating with the Implementation Support Unit (ISU) on a modular, phased approach to the actual establishment of the database as a working group recommendation.⁷ The Association of Southeast Asian Nations brought attention to regional cooperation under its chemical, biological, and radiological defense experts group and with other international organizations and bodies such as the UN 1540 Committee.

Emphasizing cooperation with other international actors is a second aspect of the pragmatic approach. In papers presented to the working group by states that cut across traditional interest blocs, scores of entities, including the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Organisation for Animal Health, the European Union, and the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, have been identified as relevant to the future strengthening of the BWC.

The Incremental Approach

The incremental approach can be discerned not by what it stands for but what it is opposed to: a single, legally binding instrument as the only way to strengthen the convention. States in this camp tend to focus on existing approaches that can be improved rather than new initiatives. They tend to identify what exists in the BWC or outside of it that is relevant as examples for moving forward. Predominantly, they include the United Kingdom, the United States, and the EU, but as with the pragmatic group, there is no single vision on which they all agree.

Opposition to the single, legally binding instrument does not mean rejection of any legally binding mechanisms. The EU and its member states said they could envisage national declarations consistent with existing BWC confidence-building measures.⁸ This was similar to the U.S. proposal for the working group to consider measures to achieve consistent implementation of the confidence-building measures and how to transform any of them into annual, legally binding declaration requirements.⁹

Similarly, the United States and the EU noted the need for an investigation process and the possibility of other special measures to address serious suspicions of violations. For the EU, this would be a challenge or special inspection component with strong links to the UN secretary-general mechanism. The United States also identified a certified network of laboratories, possibly in partnership with the OPCW given the toxins overlap, as an option for consideration.

Another aspect of the incremental approach is a focus on strengthening national implementation and enhancing the institutional mechanisms of the BWC. For the UK, compliance depends on effective implementation at the national level and other domestic measures.¹⁰ Many of these approaches are evident in the new paper outlining the possible functions of a new BWC implementation organization submitted by the United States and six co-sponsors, including on-site familiarization visits to maximum containment laboratories, technical assistance, more effective national implementation, and enhanced international cooperation as ways to institutionalize implementation.

International cooperation plays an important role in the vision of the future convention for these states, but it should be realistic and focus on what works in the real world rather than traditional concepts of what multilateral verification looked like in the 1990s.¹¹ In this category, ongoing practices such as the Global Partnership, which has launched more than 311 projects valued at more than $1.6 billion and funded by more than 20 states since 2016, can be the basis of improvement.¹² 

Mechanisms as a Foundation

Although ongoing discussions in many areas are overly conceptual, the mechanisms are developing at a quick pace. Friends of the chair groups aligned, respectively, with the international cooperation and assistance and the science and technology mechanisms issued nonpapers to stimulate additional thinking during July and August. One idea with wide support is that the mechanisms could be a foundation and catalyst for additional action going forward. If agreed, they could set a cadence of future annual meetings and activity that would be focused and directly relevant to strengthening the BWC.

In the nonpapers, the mechanisms are structured as being open to all states-parties while a smaller group of representative states-parties would conduct more focused work. The proposed international cooperation and assistance program would be overseen by a steering group and supported by a newly created assistance fund. The steering group is expected to have up to 21 state-party members who reflect a broad geographic distribution and gender balance. In contrast, the proposed science and technology advisory board would work with an advisory group, which is open to all states-parties; a subcommittee of up to 30 members; and temporary working groups to focus on areas where specific technical expertise is required.

The nonpapers call for six additional staff in the ISU to support work with each mechanism and for additional meeting time for their respective areas. The additional costs will be met by increasing the assessed contributions of states-parties. Building on working papers from a variety of states, the international cooperation and assistance mechanism would fund projects based on requests that outlined the objectives, intended outcomes, proposed timelines, and the resources required to implement and sustain the projects.¹³ There also would be a co-pay element, with most of the states that request assistance providing 15 percent of the costs. Projects would be supported by a voluntary trust fund.

For the science and technology mechanism, the focus is not solely on the risks posed by scientific and technological developments, but also on the opportunities they present to strengthen BWC implementation. As such, there is a complementary and potentially synergistic aspect to the mechanisms. It is possible to envisage a promising science or technology development that has the potential to strengthen implementation of the BWC being identified and assessed by the science and technology mechanism and then funded as a pilot project under the international cooperation mechanism. Assuming some level of success that is identifiable, scaling up the adoption of that innovation becomes an option that any interested state-party might pursue, perhaps with additional funding from other organizations. Much is still to be decided in both mechanisms, but each is sufficiently well developed that the working group potentially could deliver early in 2025 on at least one of its core objectives: recommendations on the establishment of two new BWC mechanisms.

Challenges Ahead

The task before the working group is complex, and it will be easier to fail than succeed. The challenges include some issues of substance, many issues where flexibility will be required, and the securing of a commitment by all who want to strengthen the convention to spend more time and significantly more money to achieve their stated objectives.

One issue of substance is the legally binding approach. If the failed 2001 protocol or some new variant of it as a single, legally binding instrument is the only acceptable way forward for a few states-parties or if any legally binding measure is unacceptable to a few other states-parties, this impasse likely will doom any chance of a consensus report on recommendations.

Flexibility will be required in how the mechanisms are finalized. The international cooperation mechanism is more focused and pragmatic than the traditional open-ended, unspecific calls for more money, more cooperation, and more technology transfers.

A third challenge is money. Some states-parties claim they cannot support any rise in their assessed contributions to offset large BWC budget increases. If that is the case, work may as well end now. There is no feasible way to strengthen the convention without a commitment to more meetings, more institutional support, and more staff for the Implementation Support Unit. A parsimonious approach will not alleviate the BWC weaknesses.

Overall, the working group has made progress, thanks in part to the states-parties that are gravitating to what might be pragmatic and incremental possible solutions rather than what would be ideal. Even if pragmatism and incrementalism wins and the working group succeeds at making recommendations on two mechanisms and on ways to strengthen the convention in seven areas, decisions still will have to be made in 2027 at the 10th BWC review conference. As such, even if the working group succeeds, there remains significant work to be done beyond that point.

ENDNOTES

1. Ninth Review Conference of the States Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “Final Document of the Ninth Review Conference,” BWC/CONF.IX/9, December 22, 2022.

2. Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons on Their Destruction,“Possible Structure/Functions of a BWC Implementation Organization: Submitted by the United States of America, Co-sponsored by Australia, Bulgaria, Germany, Slovenia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,” BWC/WG/5/WP.1, November 12, 2024.

3. Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “Contemporary Challenges to the Objectives of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction (BTWC) Related to the Development of Synthetic Biology Technologies and Practical Approaches to Overcome Them: Submitted by Russia,” BWC/WG/2/WP.15, August 7, 2023.

4. Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “Key Considerations When Relaunching the Discussion on Verification and Compliance in the Context of the Biological Weapons Convention: Submitted by Denmark, Kenya, Malawi, Montenegro, Norway, Panama, Singapore, Thailand and Uruguay,” BWC/WG/3/WP.8/Rev.1, December 7, 2023.

5. Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “Considerations Regarding an International Cooperation and Assistance (ICA) Action Plan: Submitted by Georgia, Malawi, Norway and the Philippines,” BWC/WG/2/WP.22, August 10, 2023.

6. Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “Engaging the Next Generation Leaders in Global Biosecurity: Proposals for Strengthening Youth Participation in the Biological Weapons Convention; Submitted by Kenya and Panama,” BWC/WG/2/WP.24, August 18, 2023.

7. Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “Proposal for the Establishment of a Database for Assistance Under Article VII of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention: Submitted by France and India,” BWC/WG/4/WP.4, August 13, 2024.

8. Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “Position of the European Union on Compliance With and Verification Under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention: Submitted by the European Union,” BWC/WG/3/WP.17, December 8, 2023.

9. Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “U.S. Approach to the Working Group on the Strengthening of the Biological Weapons Convention: Submitted by the United States of America,” BWC/WG/3/WP.9/Rev.1, January 4, 2024.

10. Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “Building Global Biosecurity via Confidence in Compliance With the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention: Submitted by the United Kingdom,” BWC/WG/3/WP.6, November 20, 2023.

11. Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “Assistance and Cooperation Under Article X - Background and Options for Consideration: Submitted by the United Kingdom,” BWC/WG/2/WP.2, July 21, 2023.

12. Ninth Review Conference of the States Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “International Activities of Global Partnership Member Countries Related to Article X of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (2017-2022),” BWC/CONF.IX/WP.51, December 6, 2022.

13. Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “Proposal for Cooperation and Assistance Mechanism Under Article X: Submitted by Pakistan,” BWC/WG/2/WP.13, August 4, 2023; Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “Assistance and Cooperation under Article X - Background and Options for Consideration: Submitted by the United Kingdom,” BWC/WG/2/WP.2, July 21, 2023; Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction, “Considerations Regarding an International Cooperation and Assistance (ICA) Action Plan: Submitted by Georgia, Malawi, Norway and the Philippines,” BWC/WG/2/WP.22, August 10, 2023.

Jez Littlewood, a policy analyst, previously served on the faculty at Carleton University in Canada and on the Secretariat of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) ad hoc group at the United Nations in Geneva. Filippa Lentzos is an associate professor at King’s College London, a member of the UK Biosecurity Leadership Council, and the BWC nongovernmental organizations coordinator. This article is supported by research funding under the Key Verification Assets Fund of the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability.

December 2024
By Geoff Wilson

The world is on the brink of a frightening new nuclear age. Over the past decade, all nine of the world’s nuclear-armed states have committed to a path of expansive new nuclear weapons spending and modernization. Many of these nuclear programs have grown to include not only upgrading and retrofitting extant nuclear weapons systems, but also the development of entirely new weapons including many described as “exotic,” “battlefield,” or “nonstrategic.” Many experts say this trend is a worrisome departure from traditional “deterrence-based” approaches and may herald a return to a more coercive Cold War-like role for the world’s nuclear arsenals.

The United States has led the charge in this new nuclear arms race, dedicating $1.7 trillion to its nuclear arsenal over the next 30 years, or roughly $75 billion a year between fiscal years 2023 and 2032, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. To put that figure into context, adjusted for inflation to 2023 dollars, the four years of the Manhattan Project cost approximately $30 billion, while all eight years of President Ronald Reagan’s nuclear buildup cost about $75 billion.¹ That means that Washington currently is spending twice as much a year on nuclear weapons as it did during all four years of the nuclear weapons development during World War II and the same amount as during all eight years of the last major nuclear spending drive of the Cold War.

This spending spree is underwriting a transformational effort to replace simultaneously all three legs of the U.S. nuclear triad—the land-based missiles, strategic bombers, and stealthy nuclear submarines that carry most of the 1,670 U.S. deployed strategic nuclear warheads. It has opened the door to development of the first entirely new nuclear warheads and plutonium weapons cores that the United States has built since the 1980s and ultimately may force the state to consider resuming nuclear testing for the first time since 1992. Unfortunately for U.S. taxpayers, most of these expensive programs are significantly behind schedule and overbudget.²

Donald Trump’s election to a second presidential term is likely to stoke this new nuclear arms race even further. During his first term, President Trump’s agenda was a paradigm shift from how nearly all his predecessors acted in regard to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The way Trump talked about nuclear weapons, supposedly asking at one point “if we have these weapons, why can’t I use them” and threatening North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has ever seen,” shocked many people.³ The development of new and more usable nonstrategic nuclear weapons such as the W76-2 warhead, which is deployed on Navy submarines, and the nuclear-armed submarine-launched cruise missile, which is still under development, signaled that the United States might turn away from Reagan’s declaration that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and instead could see a use for a “limited” nuclear strike and war-fighting strategy.

As a result, there is real cause for concern that the United States will continue to commit itself to an expanded role for nuclear weapons in its military and foreign policy. Congressional leaders, military commanders, and former Trump administration officials are campaigning for new nuclear weapons and funding above the current $1.7 trillion nuclear modernization program. Nuclear spending boosters point to the recent findings of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, which among other escalatory steps suggested that the government consider developing new road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and new tactical nuclear forces to be deployed in the Indo-Pacific and European theaters.⁴

Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), for one, argued that the report showed that the massive $1.7 trillion program of record was “essential, although not sufficient” to maintain U.S. national security in the near future.⁵ Pointedly, when questioned at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing about what these additional changes to U.S. nuclear forces would cost and how the country would pay for them, a commission spokesperson said that the panel deliberately avoided that issue when the report was written.⁶

Political posturing during the 2024 campaign pushed calls for more spending even further. For instance, Trump’s former acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, wrote as part of Project 2025, the putative policy playbook for a second Trump term, that a new administration should develop a nuclear arsenal “with the size, sophistication, and tailoring, including new capabilities at the theater level, to ensure that there is no circumstance in which America is exposed to serious nuclear coercion.” In addition, he proposed to restore readiness to test nuclear weapons, reject congressional proposals that would further extend the service lives of U.S. capabilities such as the Minuteman III ICBM in favor of buying new systems, and improve the U.S. ability to use the triad’s upload capacity in case of a crisis, thus enabling the rearming of U.S. missiles with more warheads than currently allowed under treaty limits.⁷

Robert O’Brien, one of Trump’s former national security advisers, echoed several of these points when he wrote that the United States must develop nuclear weapons platforms more quickly, purchase more new platforms, and test new nuclear weapons “in the real world for the first time since 1992, not just by using computer models.”⁸

If the administration follows these proposals, there could be a quick move within its first year to reactivate dormant missile silos and rearm U.S. ICBMs with multiple nuclear warheads. Similarly, there could be significant new funding for nuclear weapons systems and preparations for new explosive nuclear testing because Trump’s Republican Party controls both houses of Congress.⁹

Despite such trends, there is some hope for restraint. The existing nuclear weapons program is already a serious drain on the defense budget. Marquee triad replacement initiatives—the Sentinel ICBM, the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, and the B-21 strategic bomber—are all significantly behind schedule and overbudget. As a self-styled canny businessman, Trump could be well served by canceling or reducing programs that clearly are failing.

The Sentinel missile offers the clearest opportunity, having had its budget balloon by more than 80 percent. The missile promises to get more expensive as the Air Force and prime contractor Northrup Grumman face unexpected technical hurdles and the dubious prospect of having to reopen the contract to bidding for new parts.¹⁰ Moreover, as the national security focus turns more toward China, U.S. land-based ICBMs can only be targeted effectively against Russia. That is because these ballistic missiles would have to overfly Russia to reach China, likely buying any U.S. president two nuclear wars for the price of one.

Barring significant course corrections, the world should expect Trump to lead an expanding U.S. commitment to the global nuclear arms race. During his first term, Trump broke with nearly 50 years of history by becoming the first U.S. president since Richard Nixon not to negotiate an arms control treaty. That seems unlikely to change given Project 2025’s calls for the administration to outright reject any new treaty that might limit the deployment of U.S. nuclear forces. Paired with growing calls from political forces for the United States to seek technical and numerical superiority in its nuclear arsenal, the prospect of an unconstrained nuclear arms race could pose a real threat.

Facing such a future, experts and advocates concerned with reducing nuclear dangers should remind U.S. leaders that merely possessing more nuclear weapons during the Cold War did little to make the nation safer. Quite the contrary, the unintended accidents, miscalculations, and miscomprehensions caused by seeking nuclear supremacy nearly led to global Armageddon on more than one occasion.

The truth is that the world almost did not survive the last nuclear arms race. U.S. political leaders and military experts should not risk repeating those mistakes by insisting that the only way to ensure national security is to possess more nuclear weapons or introduce more novel and destabilizing nuclear weapons in the hopes of achieving some ultimately unquantifiable supremacy over nuclear rivals.

ENDNOTES

1. U.S. National Park Service, “Manhattan Project: Frequently Asked Questions,” July 19, 2024, https://www.nps.gov/mapr/faqs.htm#:~:text=The%20Manhattan%20Project%20cost%20approximately,War%20Powers%20Act%20of%201941; Daryl Kimball, “Looking Back: The Nuclear Arms Control Legacy of Ronald Reagan,” Arms Control Today, July 2004, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004-07/arms-control-today/looking-back-nuclear-arms-control-legacy-ronald-reagan. These figures have been updated to 2023 constant dollars.

2. Geoff Wilson, “America’s Nuclear Weapons Quagmire,” Stimson Center, August 7, 2024, https://www.stimson.org/2024/americas-nuclear-weapons-quagmire/.

3. Mattew J. Belvedere, “Trump Asks Why U.S. Can’t Use Nukes: MSNBC,” CNBC, August 3, 2016, https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/03/trump-asks-why-us-cant-use-nukes-msnbcs-joe-scarborough-reports.html; Peter Baker and Choe Sang-Hun, “Trump Threatens ‘Fire and Fury’ Against North Korea If It Endangers U.S.,” The New York Times, August 8, 2017.

4. Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, “America’s Strategic Posture,” October 2023, https://armedservices.house.gov/sites/republicans.armedservices.house.gov/files/Strategic-Posture
-Committee-Report-Final.pdf.

5. Office of Senator Deb Fischer, “Fischer: Biden’s Defense Budget Proposal Fails to Address Rising Threats From China and Russia,” April 9, 2024, https://www.fischer.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2024/4/fischer-biden-s-defense-budget-proposal-fails-to-address-rising-threats-from-china-and-russia.

6. U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, “Open/Closed: To Receive Testimony on the Findings of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States,” October 19, 2023, 54:20-57:00, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/to-receive-testimony-on-the-findings-of-the-congressional-commission-on-the-strategic-posture-of-the-united-states.

7. Christopher Miller, “Department of Defense,” in Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, ed. Paul Dans and Steven Groves, 2023, pp. 95-125.

8. Robert O’Brien, “The Return of Peace Through Strength,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2024, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/return-peace-strength-trump-obrien.

9. Office of Senator Roger Wicker, “Senator Wicker Joins National Security Shows to Discuss ‘Peace Through Strength’ Plan,” August 27, 2024, https://www.wicker.senate.gov/2024/8/senator-wicker-joins-national-security-shows-to-discuss-peace-through-strength-plan.

10. Doug Cameron, “U.S. Nuclear Missile Silos Need Modernizing, but Fixes Aren’t Coming Soon,” The Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2024.

Geoff Wilson is a distinguished fellow and senior adviser at the Stimson Center.