In Omaha, 'the highest collective nuclear IQ' on the planet warns of 'a dire situation' (2024)

If you wanted to hear a sunshine-and-roses view of America’s standing in the world, Omaha’s CHI Health Center was definitely not the place to be.

About 800 military and civilian experts in preventing (and, if necessary, executing) nuclear Armageddon gathered for the U.S. Strategic Command’s 15th annual Deterrence Symposium on Tuesday and Wednesday. From its headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base, StratCom’s leaders maintain and operate the U.S. arsenal of 1,770 deployed nuclear weapons — and discourage other nuclear-armed nations from using theirs.

“This room has the highest collective nuclear IQ of any place on the planet,” Gen. Anthony Cotton, StratCom’s commander, told the group.

In past years, the symposium has featured in-the-weeds topics like the “Deterrence, Assurance, and Stability Implications of State-Initiated Grey Zone Conflicts” and “The Influence of Emerging Domains and Capabilities on Deterrence.”

Not this year.

Some of the nation’s top nuclear security analysts delivered shrill warnings about the growing threat posed by Russia, which is rapidly modernizing its nuclear arsenal, and China, which is rapidly expanding its own — especially now that their governments and militaries are cooperating with one another.

“This emerging security environment is unprecedented,” said Vipin Narang, a professor of national security at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who, until last week, oversaw space policy at the Pentagon. “We now find ourselves in nothing short of a new nuclear age.”

‘We find ourselves in a dire situation’

Those attending included nine of 12 members of the bipartisan Strategic Posture Commission — appointed by Congress in 2022 to review threats to the U.S. and the readiness of its forces to handle them — which issued a report urging quick action to counter the rising nuclear threat from Russia and China last fall. The 160-page report used the word “urgent” at least 40 times, noted Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, a commission member who headed the National Nuclear Security Administration during the Trump administration.

“Our world has changed, but our leadership strategy has not,” she said during a panel discussion among members of the commission. “We find ourselves in a dire situation.”

Gordon-Hagerty said the United States “took a honeymoon” and adopted a peace strategy in the 1990s, during a period of cooperation and de-escalation with the post-Cold War Russian regime.

“We believed that Russia would follow us, but they did not,” Gordon-Hagerty said. “When that honeymoon was over, we woke up to a nuclear enterprise that was stripped bare.”

During the Obama administration, Republicans and Democrats reached a deal to begin upgrading the nation’s nuclear triad of air, land and sea-based nuclear weapons, including replacements for decades-old B-2 strategic bombers, Ohio-class nuclear submarines, Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, and B-61 gravity bombs.

As part of the deal, the Senate ratified the New START treaty with Russia, limiting the number of nuclear warheads and launchers.

These weapons systems are slated to come on line in the 2030s, if all goes well, which is hardly a given. The Sentinel ICBM, the replacement for the Minuteman III, with a projected $141 billion price tag, already is 81% over budget. And deployment of the missile is still years away.

“We are in the middle of a generational change in our nuclear capabilities,” said Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Wednesday’s keynote address at the symposium. “We’re going to have to put back together some things that were torn down after the Cold War.”

China’s rapid escalation has thrown off U.S. nuclear planners’ calculations. After maintaining an arsenal of about 250 weapons for many years, the Chinese began building missile fields in its remote deserts. They are projected to deploy 1,000 by 2030, and 1,500 by 2035, said Marshall Billingslea, a former State Department presidential arms-control envoy during the Trump administration.

“What China is doing is unprecedented,” said Billingslea, who also served on the Strategic Posture Commission.

China’s nuclear surge has raised more questions than answers about how the United States should respond? Do we need more nukes? Bigger nukes? Different nukes?

The answers aren’t clear. So far, the emphasis has been on making sure the weapon systems already in the pipeline get built.

Cotton and his predecessors have raised alarms about China’s building binge and Russia’s rapid upgrading of its nuclear arsenal. What’s new this year is their cooperation with each other, and their support from North Korea and Iran. North Korea is believed to be sending arms to Russia for its war with Ukraine, and Iran is supplying the Russians with drones.

“They are all active and somewhat more interconnected,” Brown said. “We need a deterrence strategy that fits today’s world, more complex with interconnected threats.”

An arms race ahead?

To add to the danger, all but one of the nuclear arms treaties that have constrained the United States and Russia — and reduced weapons stockpiles to a fraction of their Cold War peak — are expired or nearly so. That last one, the New START treaty, is set to expire in February 2026, and the Russians have shown no interest in talks to renew it.

“We must prepare for a world where constraints on nuclear arms disappear completely,” Narang, the MIT professor, said.

During a panel discussion — and in a subsequent interview with The World-Herald — Mallory Stewart, the current assistant secretary of state overseeing arms control and deterrence, stressed the continuing need for the treaties and agreements that make up what she called the “rules-based international order,” which she said has prevented great-power wars since the end of World War II.

“We value international laws and norms that provide international security,” she said. “We need to demonstrate that there will be no advantage whatsoever to violating norms that have been in place since the end of World War II.”

China hasn’t been part of past arms-control agreements. But last fall, Stewart met for the first time with her Chinese counterpart. While the meeting produced no firm agreements — or even a promise of further talks — she said she found value in the exchange of questions.

“I was very happy to be able to meet with them. … We need to have those conversations,” Stewart said. “We’re trying to figure out how to ask questions and break through barriers.”

Despite the challenges, Cotton said he thinks the U.S. and its allies hold the advantage in the current geopolitical struggle because of their deep, decades-old ties based on real friendship — unlike Russia and China, North Korea and Iran.

“They’re marriages of convenience. There’s no bond there,” he said.

Several of the speakers said that keeping America safe will depend on new ideas, by the very people gathered in Omaha for StratCom’s symposium.

“It’s an all-hands-on-deck challenge to figure out how we create a force that’s not just bigger but smarter,” Narang said. “We need help from the next generation of thinkers. ... We’re in a different world right now.”