Nuclear Deterrence Requires Only Dozens of Warheads — Not Thousands
Over the next decade, the US government plans to spend nearly $1 trillion on its nuclear arsenal — with the actual cost certain to run even higher than that. The huge outlay is driven in part by the sheer size of America’s doomsday-weapon collection, which comprises an estimated 3,700 deployed or stockpiled nuclear warheads, not counting another 1,500 that are purportedly “retired” and awaiting dismantlement.
Though Americans have been conditioned to think it’s reasonable to maintain such a large arsenal, the idea that thousands of warheads are required to deter nuclear aggression rests on flawed thinking about the nature of deterrence. While defense contractors and military bureaucracies enriched by the status quo will tell you otherwise, the truth is that an adequate arsenal of nuclear warheads can be measured not in thousands, but mere dozens.
During the Cold War, two successive doctrines guided nuclear war strategy. First came Massive Retaliation, which rested on the threat of a disproportionate, devastating nuclear response to either conventional or nuclear aggression. That gave way to Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), in which any nuclear attack was guaranteed to escalate to the point where both countries are completely destroyed.
Both doctrines shared a cornerstone premise — that effective, credible deterrence requires the capability to completely destroy the opposing country. That’s the wrong yardstick. Deterrence is achieved by the ability to impose an intolerable level of retaliatory destruction on a country that’s contemplating a nuclear first-strike — a threshold far lower than border-to-border annihilation.
For perspective, in World War II, Russia and China each suffered roughly 20 million total civilian and military deaths. The same unfat
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
