 All right My name is Clark Murdock. I'm the director for the project on nuclear issues Pony has been entering its We're in our 11th year of of operations. We probably should have had a big 10-year Celebration over the year last year, but it's been a tremendous program. I'm delighted to have been associated with it from its Inception My function here is a very narrow one. I'm just introducing the panelists and thereby Leading the gravitas lending the gravitas of the director project on nuclear issues to To the event It's with Considerable pleasure. I would give you a long recitation of the bios when everybody has a copy of it in front of them I do want to point out. I hold a PhD in political science My colleague to my immediate left as a as a lawyer And on the far left is an Historian with a PhD now as a political scientist I'm perhaps if I'd known about this beforehand I would have thought differently about it, but But a debate between a historian and a lawyer seems like a good thing to do under any conditions Particularly since the political scientists would be sitting over there to the side And judging them both during that time But anyways with a great pleasure. I introduce Sarah Weiner. She's the one that's going to be moderating this event. She's a former National collegiate debater. She's also a coach for her debate team now It's on the road pretty constantly for that. She'll be going to law school next year And no doubt continuing to debate Sarah Thanks Clark Welcome everyone. It's so glad to see such a full Room, I know that it has been cold and terrible outside although I guess today was a bit better So it's nice to see So many people thanks to Clark Thanks to both of these fine gentlemen who agreed to the debate sometimes people are more or less amenable When I say I would like you to debate someone else and they were very willing and thanks to you all for coming The resolution today is resolved the United States should modernize only one leg of the nuclear triad And that's a way of getting at the question whether or not the United States needs a nuclear triad or maybe We should move to a dyad or a monad although as both of them pointed out to me when I originally proposed that topic The triad is something that exists now, and it's not a normative question, but a question of fact But the real question is what we do in the future and whether or not we can continue to afford it So My role after saying that little introduction is very minimal. I just make sure that we want it on time There'll be ten minute opening statements from each of the debaters, and then there'll be five minute cross-examination periods We'll each one of them will have five minutes to ask questions of the other one Then we'll do a question-and-answer session I'll begin by asking a question or two and then we'll open it up for you all There'll be mics Please wait for the mic and identify yourself when you ask a question and then there'll be closing statements A five minutes apiece at the end and so without much further ado I would like to invite Chris Prepple to begin Thank you sir. Do you want me to sit up there or do you want me to do it from here? I think that whatever you want to do. If you prefer to stand or sit Thanks, thanks Sarah. Thanks Clark. Thanks to CSIS for hosting this event and for inviting me Thanks to bridge for participating and to all you this is a great turnout. So thank you for coming out this evening So the question resolved the United States Should modernize only one leg of the nuclear triad Do we need a triad for deterrence the triad of course being nuclear-tipped and not intercontinental ballistic missiles submarine launch ballistic missiles and Bombers could we get by with just two or just one? My charge this evening is to convince you that All three legs are not necessary that two aren't even necessary and just one would suffice Now I want to emphasize at the outset. This is not a debate over numbers of warheads Under current law and treaties the United States will have 1550 deployed warheads I think that more than sufficient for deterrence both for deterring attacks against the United States and attacks on our allies That is extended deterrence Nor is this a war over a debate over war per se Bridge and I agree that war is unlikely But neither of us believe that war is impossible and therefore we agree that nuclear weapons have played some role in the Absence of great power war since 1945 So we want to keep a nuclear arsenal. I want to emphasize that at the outset So this is a debate over the delivery vehicles. How many do we need? What is credible in order to have an effective deterrent? and I Don't believe that the triad as a whole is necessary for deterrence in truth I don't believe that the old one ever was Necessary for deterrence even during the Cold War and that's the subject of this paper I there are copies in the back the end of overkill that I wrote with my colleague from Cato Benjamin Freeman and our co-author Matt Fay Where we looked at the history of the nuclear triad how it developed with the rationales were a couple of our findings We said the triad grew from Military services competition To meet the Soviet threat the arguments for it arrived after the fact were a rationalization for components that already existed Once the competition between the Air Force and the Navy in particular diminished in the 1960s They stopped denigrating each other's delivery systems and began arguing for the triads necessity before that they were competing once they realized That they had failed to kill the other ones leg in the in the crib They decided that it was all better to just get along and this agreement throughout the 70s 80s and into the current era Prevented appreciation in the flaws of the triad's justifications Today us power both conventional and nuclear makes the case for the triad even more dubious Survivability is no longer. We argue with feasible justification No u.s. Adversary has the capability to destroy all us ballistic missile submarines Just the submarines let alone all three legs and there would be time to change that if Circumstances changed and Last nuclear weapons have some role we argue that they have less role in the wars that we actually fight But we admit that they have some role in hypothetical u.s. Wars with nuclear armed powers, but cases where deterrence's success hinges on The u.s. Capability to destroy enemy forces are far-fetched and Even hawkish policies do not require a triad in short if the United States were to develop a Nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver those weapons today from scratch if we were to start from a standing stop We would not decide on a triad What we're really debating is the modernization of the force that exists today and the force that will exist into the future and so much of this debate is conducted in the realm of hypotheticals and counterfactuals and We should be glad for that of course because the alternative to arguing why there was never a war and not knowing why there was Never a nuclear war is to arguing why there was one okay, and there hasn't been one But we simply don't know why that's the case We do not know why there has never been a nuclear weapon fired since that used since 1945 an anger And so we can speculate and I'm sure we will about the circumstances when and if those weapons might be used But I'd like to close my opening remarks by focusing on just a few hard cold facts What is known or or believed with high confidence and that's money and dollars Okay, if you spend a dollar Modernizing the Ohio class replacement ssb and x that same dollar cannot be spent on anything else For the purposes of this debate I'm going to assume That money not spent to modernize one or more triad legs will instead Be spent on some other defense function Now I'm gonna make that assumption, but we all should be clear-eyed about this That that's highly unlikely to be the case Okay, the defense budget. I wish it were so let's be honest. You know where I'm from. I'm from the Kato Institute Okay, you if you don't know what that means you can look it up Okay, but I don't intend for money saved from not building one or more triad legs to go to say Medicare Medicare Part D. Okay, that's not what I'm about here. Okay, but For the sake of argument I'm going to assume that a dollar spent on ssb and x modernization for example will necessarily be drawn from other military modernization programs that means Surferships or fast attack submarines that means that modernizing the land-based ICBMs necessarily will come from fighter aircraft or logistics or UAVs or that means If we decide that a long-range bomber with nuclear capabilities is absolutely essential What other things are we trading off in that very bomber? Are we trading off crew comfort? Are we trading off range? Are we trading off speed? Those are the choices now bridge I predict we've debated before and we will continue to do so I'm going to predict that he will say That the choices are not that stark that the costs of nuclear or not modernization are not that great and that it need not be a Zero-sum game we can modernize the Navy surface fleet and its fast attack subs and its ballistic missile submarines We can move forward with ICBM modernization and not sacrifice it on the altar of the F-35 Okay, but I think he's wrong. I think the numbers don't add up Let's go with just two because I've refrained from bombarding you with numbers and facts But as it happens that serves my purpose Congressional Budget Office just released this study actually late in December when we were all getting ready for Christmas and the holidays They estimate that under current law the United States will spend between 296 and 355 billion dollars on nuclear weapons over the next 10 years Okay, that does not include most of the modernization that we're going to talk about today Okay, so between 250 296 355 The James L. Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies the Monterey Institute came out with a study about the same time and they did look past That 10-year period and estimated that the United States will spend approximately one trillion Dollars to maintain the current arsenal over the next 30 years Okay, of that they estimate about a hundred and twenty billion on Minuteman modernization as much as a hundred billion to design test and build the long-range strike bomber and up to a hundred and Two billion for procuring not operating just procuring the SSBN axis. I actually think those are very conservative estimates. I Think the actual cost will be higher than that Just the modernization costs alone They don't cost don't account for the cost of operating these forces once they're deployed the case for modernizing all three legs of The triad or just one or two Therefore hangs on the argument that the credibility of our deterrent Would be fatally undermined if we were to have a mirror 1500 nuclear warheads deployed on just 10 or 12 submarines or That same number deployed on just 400 to 450 ICBMs or that same number deployed on just a hundred or so long-range bombers relies on the belief that we can with high confidence Respond to any attack by any adversary under any circumstances if we have all three legs But we lack the confidence to do so with only one. I Don't believe that's true and if you agree you should support the affirmative in the debate. Thank you Thank you, and now it's your turn to give a 10-minute speech Great, thank you very much Sarah. Thanks Clark CSIS and Pony for the invitation to talk about this important topic Thanks to the friends in the audience and most of all thanks to Chris who's a delightful debating partner But hopefully we'll put on a decent show for you tonight with some some sparks The question we're debating tonight is whether the United States should modernize only one leg of the nuclear triad My view is that this would be ill advised Chris disagrees as you just saw We've both looked at this problem reasonably carefully. So how should you all adjudicate this dispute? My suggestion is not that different from from Chris's I'd look at this question in a cost-benefit way as if you're buying for instance insurance it seems to me like a rational way of taking on the issue and it's also apt because nuclear weapons like an insurance policy are Designed to ward off and deal with extreme scenarios ones that are less likely, but that would be crippling or catastrophic if they struck us unprepared When you're buying insurance you do a cost-benefit analysis if you over ensure you waste resources that could be used productively elsewhere as Chris Whiteley points out But if you under ensure you run the risk of being under prepared when disaster strikes and in this particular case you may actually invite it So let's look at the issue through this lens Chris argues that we shouldn't be buying as much as insurance as we've had with a triad in In essence because as I understand it He sees the international environment that we should care about as a lot more safe and secure and more to the point as a lot more Enduringly and resiliently safe and secure than I do and so he thinks the cost of modernizing all three legs of the triad Simply doesn't justify it in his view security as I understand his view Security is pretty easily gotten and maintained and the dangers of war coercion and instability or minimal military technological surprise of the kind that the triad is designed to protect us against is Unlikely and can be effectively and affordably weathered even if it happens The United States doesn't need all that much to safeguard its interests And so things like the triad are wasteful and possibly even unduly provocative We are as I understand his view substantially and wastefully over ensuring now. I don't agree Now I'm not one of those I would like to emphasize who says that we live in an especially dangerous world today as you Sometimes hear defenders of the triad and other military programs argue quite the contrary I think this is patently untrue my sense is that we are actually been safer since 1991 then during any time since before the first world war I think many of the military interventions undertaken in the last decade and a half were unnecessary And I think big chunks of the foreign policy commentary it do in fact exaggerate the threats that we face particularly from rogue states and insurgents But while this is all true while I agree with Chris on many of these points I'm also considerably less confident about the future security environment than he is and this is where I think the triad issue Really becomes relevant This is not because I think things are doomed or fated to get worse But because I think that they very well may Especially if we don't do certain things that I believe as I understand Chris that he doesn't think we should do In other words, I think the kind of stability and security that we want in the future is more the product of our working at it Then he does Why am I worried? Well, I certainly see the pacifying effects of commerce ideology and so forth in the modern world But I also see that the practice of power politics is by no means dead I see bitter hatreds resentments envies and revanchist ambitions in many places around the world And I see highly sophisticated and modernizing military establishments and proliferating weapons technologies And I see potential breakthrough in the military technology technological environment in the future as well Moreover and more profoundly I see the continuing temptations tendencies and structural incentives to war aggression and coercion and I don't see these factors disappearing rather in many respects They actually appear to be intensifying I'll be it from a lower baseline than we had during the Cold War Moreover, this isn't just happening among the marginal the North Korea's in the Iran's But it's also happening among the strong and the growing just look at the Middle East South Asia and the Western Pacific Look at what potential adversaries like China Russia Iran and North Korea are up to but also look at what allies like? Poland South Korea and Japan all of them significant allies and all with significant military program armament programs underway and Then we're called the tensions and even hatreds that are rife in many of these places So this is the kind of basis of my fear of my concerns about the future Now I fully agree with Chris that we shouldn't be sticking our noses everywhere Tensions similar or a conflict explodes But I do think we need to be prepared to defend and vindicate our interests when they're threatened And I think our interests are while narrower than something are still broad and include favorable balances of power in key regions That affect us like East Asia Western Europe and the Middle East Europe is all so I see the present peace as more precarious than Chris does And I therefore worry more about what the future holds and because of this I see a much greater role for and valuing us military power and ultimately in the cornerstone of our military power Which is our nuclear forces in protecting ourselves and our interests going forwards I think our military forces and ultimately our nuclear forces grant us valuable political leverage Determine wars and aggression and when necessary allow us to actively protect our interests And I think our nuclear forces are especially useful for deterring the worst kinds of aggression and coercion And so I believe they in turn are especially valuable And so my inclination is for us to be as strong as possible commensurate with other concerns like cost and provoking arms races Moreover though, I think the deterrent and coercive value of our nuclear force derives in considerable part from their evidence survivability Flexibility discrimination and so forth and I think this is one of the areas where Chris and I really disagree And all these things are attributes that a diversified triad provides But because I worry about the future strategic and military technological environment I also doubt very much whether reducing our forces to a monad would give us these attributes that we enjoy today and Might very well want in the future in an uncertain in this uncertain future And so it makes sense to me that we should preserve the triad for the possibility of a more threatening world Not even a world of the USSR of 1953 or 1969, but a more threatening world than we have today Which I think is entirely possible In case that world emerges we want to try its attributes of survivability of variability of options and penetration and effects of signaling capabilities and so forth and we want to avoid putting our eggs all in one basket like the SS SSBNX thereby narrowing the targeting problem for adversaries and reducing the flexibility and discrimination of our force But we need to make a decision if we want something like that in the future We need to make the decision today to invest going forward So my inclination again is to be conservative to follow the old and I in my view wise rule of thumb if you would seek to prepare If you would seek to prevent war prepare for it But now maybe this won't convince all of you Maybe I'm too prone to fears that don't have real foundation I think they're reasonable, but I can't prove to you that my fears are valid But I think I should be able to persuade even those of you who I haven't convinced yet by laying out the cost-benefit analysis of ensuring through a triad Let's go back to the insurance rubric and compare the cost of my being wrong versus Chris being wrong now Chris is not a nuclear abolitionist So we're not talking about a gigantic bet off right off the bat But he is talking about a dramatic transformation in the US nuclear posture, which I can talk about in the Q&A Removing its visible signaling legs its ability to attack targets with discrimination its flexibility at its survivability redundancy Etc and the major upside as I understand it He proposes is the consequence savings of money according to his Kato report, which I highly recommend reading is something under the tune of 20 billion dollars So these are the benefits of his course of action But what if Chris is wrong and it is I who am closer to being right about the future if he's wrong then a Weakening of our nuclear deterrent runs the risk of countries ranging from North Korea and Iran to China and Russia Seeing a diminution in our nuclear capability as opening up areas of possible military advantage and not just advantages in actual shooting war But in the ability to credibly threaten military force for political advantage Moreover such a diminution runs the risk of allies and fence sitters acting in ways that contribute to international instability or even a more hostile environment For instance by bandwagoning or kowtowing to US rivals or by sparking arms races at worse Chris's proposed build-down could mean emboldened adversaries unnerved allies instability in a greater likelihood of war and in the event Of war it could leave us weaker and with fewer options for the effective application of military for force Leaving us worse off in the ability to resolve such conflicts or stand firm intense face offs with serious implications for our interests Now my understanding is that Chris doubts that such scenarios are realistic and obviously I can't prove that they're plausible But I'd note simply that geopolitical rivalry is alive and well And I'd remind you that only 25 years ago the two great blocks faced off across each other Across the inter-german border and it was in the lifetime of some of us Not me, but if some of you probably that the world saw the greatest war in human history Are we so different from our grandparents our great grandparents that such a phenomenon could not happen again? These points suggest to me that at the very least my fears for the future are not fanciful So the downside risk that Chris is wrong or serious and possibly severe and even catastrophic in my view But to me his argument really fails when we consider the costs involved in maintaining a larger nuclear force Now if the cost that we were talking about with a triad were exorbitant We would quite reasonably focus on economizing on them But the fact is that these costs are certainly in relative terms actually quite modest Chris claimed last year in his cater report that the DOD annual spend on nuclear forces is 23 billion dollars a year And Pentagon says 16 or 31 billion with the energy expenditure in the national labs included But let's put this in perspective This is three to four percent of the total defense budget and that includes the SSBN Which is by far the most expensive leg of the triad but which Chris sensibly as I understand it advocates retaining Even with NSA we're talking about five percent or so of the total defense budget and more to the point my understanding of the future Defense spending is that this ratio is expected to stay around that rough ratio of our total defense budget even as we begin ramping up spending and again the big hump in spending is the SSBN X and Of course the cost of the Air Force legs that I understand Chris wants to get rid of are only a portion of this spending My understanding of this 20 billion dollar figure that Kato is talking about is actually a total Cost not an annual cost so that amortizes to something like as I understand the billion or so dollars a year Now, maybe it's something in that vicinity, but we're talking about a quite small Quite small fraction of the total defense budget. That's pretty modest much less than 1% now Of course the government should never be profligate with our money But I think it's hardly profligate to buy the extra measure of safety afforded by the Air Force legs at a reasonable price Even if so somewhere only in that ballpark now I should know quickly Chris raises issue that it could always be built back up But I think that's unrealistic and I think it's not the cost efficient way to handle this because Recreating the kind of nuclear infrastructure would be enormously expensive and difficult look at for instance Some of the difficulties the labs have been having even with recreating or maintaining the nuclear weapons themselves And on his point about regarding defense ballers how it allocated. I agree look I think that's a fair that's a fair question my preference and you probably won't be surprised hearing what I've been saying is I'd be willing to take from places like the ground forces stability operations personnel costs and these kinds of these kinds of areas and cut even within the overall defense budget So I mean I think we can talk about that a little bit more Let me close I think that a fair balancing of the costs and benefits of getting rid of the triad should lead the American people and their Representatives to favor its conservation now I personally would pay a lot for the triad and I'd actually pay more than we pay today But that's not the argument is it because the fact is that in relative terms the tried simply doesn't cost that much So the real question we're debating is whether we should insure ourselves by keeping a set of capabilities that plausibly have to help help and Will help us deter war aggression and coercion against ourselves in our interests and will do so for a quite modest price To me the answer to that is a no-brainer. Thank you very much Great. Thank you very much Now we move into the cross-examination period of the debate and so we'll start with dr. Prep Dr. Preble examining Mr. Colby for five minutes So as many questions as you can get in with reasonable answers and then we'll flip for the next five minutes And then we'll open it up to the rest of us. So invite you to start Here I'll just I'll just say that's easier right we'll stay here. Yeah, you can all see us Okay, bridge. So first of all one point of Clarification or correction the Kato report estimates 20 billion annually not amortized over the lifetime and it it does not include All of the cost of modernization where we have at the time when we wrote that report now We have more data on modernization costs and therefore we would revisit that statistic even in the last three or four months Okay, okay, my my I I changed that figure from my original because I had understood that that but I Let's have the debate based on 20 billion dollar fine, okay, and and you and I are actually in agreement that In relative terms that is not that much money relative to the size of the entire pending on budget But you I would like you to go into a little bit more detail you alluded to it But what other capabilities assuming that the Pentagon's budget will remain flat or or even decline modestly Adjusted for inflation what other capabilities would you not retain in exchange for modernizing all three legs? Sure, and I'll try to be brief because it's your time look my vision for the future defense posture of the United States is that we focus on maintaining the high end of the military sort of competition and so we should focus on high end conventional capabilities and value add technological capabilities You know things like strike ISR Etc with with more discrete capabilities down the escalatory spectrum like special operations forces and the like and then at the sort of crown jewel of that the Cornerstone of that if you will are nuclear forces, which I think we should have flexible and Discriminate and very survivable ones that nobody will want to test so where do I cut from that? Well, I cut substantially from the ground forces I'm not talking about getting rid of the army and entirely but as I understand the recent defense budget included more Expenditures on the on the Abrams tank I mean it's a phenomenal weapon system But I simply don't see any point for it and I would also I mean look Unfortunately in a lot of ways personnel costs are ballooning now you could say that I'm being cute because it's so difficult to cut Military personnel costs, but you know that would be where I would look Maybe maybe in focusing more on technological replacement I mean you were a Navy service warfare officer. Maybe we don't need quite so many sailors on ships So, you know that in general, I mean if you're thinking of if you're gonna think about it strategically I would focus on nuclear forces, you know strike ISR high-end capabilities and economize on the ground force side, okay And you know that we've written in other papers at Kato my colleague my colleague Ben Friedman And I we actually agree that that the no, I come in the personnel Mainly in the in the ground forces the army and Marine Corps the question then becomes and you said this and I want to make sure I get this right you said that the nuclear force is the cornerstone of our military power and I think going back to your argument about the role that our military plot power plays in Calming the international environment discouraging war Discouraging security competition among our allies or even among between our allies and our adversaries, etc You believe that nuclear weapons play a particularly salient role in that case I would simply point out. This isn't really an interrogatory so much I would simply point out that there are a range of other capabilities that do a similar thing so what we're really debating is those scenarios in which our Conventional military capability did not calm the international environment, but our possession of nuclear weapons did correct so That's a question because I close with a question mark. So the so so Explain to me or or sketch out a scenario whereby that's true whereby the possession of three Distinct delivery vehicles for our nuclear weapons calm the international environment, but one Leg with our existing conventional capability pretty much as it is would not well. I mean Let me let me let me answer it and I'm not trying to be a basic But let me answer it in a different way I mean and I think you pointed out well like let's concretize it you said that during the Cold War It would not have been necessary to have been for the United States who have been as militarily powerful as understood particularly in the nuclear realm You know, that's a good example where I actually think you know, I guess at a basic level I think that that war and major war and the kinds of things that cause it National ambitions honor, you know, a grieved sort of national pride Averis etc. These things are deeply rooted and they are best Forstalled and deterred by preponderant force. You can't always get that we didn't have it against the Soviet Union But whatever we had was enough I can't prove that to you because as you pointed out yourself it can't be proved we can't prove a negative But I mean I look at the kind of guy that Joseph Stalin was and I think okay We need it. So just just let me just start to bring it forward just briefly and please take some of my time But but you know, I think that kind of personality and those not Stalin necessarily per se But that kind of problem could rearise and I think that they look I think other people look at our nuclear weapons and it has a sort of a Dissuasive effect in the sense that it's not even worth getting in that game Combined with our conventional military capabilities, okay, so not zero your last question So that's my that is my concluding question is what where does the conventional military capability? factor into that discussion because it seems to me that that Force that disparate force of surface ships and fast-attack submarines and planes and people etc etc etc all of those things 97% of the Pentagon's budget right that also is a prodigious prodigious deterrent to warfare and a Reassurance to our allies. Would you agree? Yes? Yes, but it's but it's not as it's not as good for a couple of reasons One is I just think nuclear deterrence and conventional deterrence are different and we can talk about that if we want That's when you know that I'm not giving up the concept of nuclear deterrent. I understand that but I'm just saying The second point is that I do think it's plausible that first of all you potential US adversaries like a North Korea for instance Or Russia under certain circumstances could use nuclear weapons in a way that would make our conventional posture very difficult to Effectively apply and second of all more in the longer term But it's not impossible even in the in the span of a couple of decades The US could lose the conventional advantage in areas that we care about most notably the western Pacific So I think relying on I think relying on conventional deterrence alone is unwise I know you're not relying on conventional deterrence alone But I just given the cost that we're talking about and given the advantages that they provide that they provide these sort of additional protections And and also, you know, there are specific attributes of the nuclear force. I didn't get into so much That that the triad provides that if you just had a submarine it wouldn't it wouldn't provide the same kind of targeting Flexibility etc. So you are losing certain things Can I respond? There's a question in there. Can I respond to that taking? The question in there is that certain adversaries are developing certain conventional capabilities in areas of concern East West Pacific East Asia, etc and and I would argue that that's an art. That's why we need to invest in Competing with those technologies conventional technologies what I do not see maybe I'm I'm just not paying very close attention I do not see an effort on the part of our peer competitors or potential peer competitors Russia and China to challenge our nuclear superiority what I see and particularly in the case of China is Very targeted investments to undermine our conventional presence our conventional superiority. Would you disagree with that? No, no, and I mean I'm in favor of doing precisely the things you're talking about. I just don't see why That why taking a relatively small amount of money out of the nuclear force with dramatic effects on its capability is a better I'd which we might need in in a contest or in a deterrence relationship with a major power rival or a sort of Kind of a a brash smaller power like in North Korea who really will not be that impressed by lower level conventional capabilities But will be impressed by nuclear capabilities. I think I think let's leave the 20 billion dollars in the Air Force alone Given the high impact it has and take from capabilities that we really just don't need but that are actually much much more expensive Like the ground forces may I ask a question? So I mean of course what what I'm sort of perplexed about is is and I was perplexed to see you guys Take this to take this point because it seems to me that from from what I understand your point of view to be That you know the first priority and I agree with this the first priority of the u.s. Defense Establishment is to protect the united states You know obviously it's sort of remote in the near term and you know, there's a there's it's a somewhat fantastical In the immediate future But you know we've had experience in the 20th century in living memory with both the sovi union and nazi germany Why given how inexpensive and by the way that so so there's a sort of real There's a real sort of deterrent capability than the effective and diversified nuclear posture creates Moreover, it's very difficult to get embroiled in sort of these wars of choice with with a with a nuclear triad So i'm just kind of mystified why you guys are why you guys are picking on on on the air force likes the triad when they're really great for sort of Minute, you know, maybe you're over ensuring maybe I mean who knows right but you're over ensuring with a at a pretty inexpensive rate and the downside costs and sort of and the sort of Attendant kind of grappling hooks that pull you into various Quagmires or really are really aren't there. So can you explain why why you guys are picking on the triad? The short answer to your question is I think we're over ensuring for the wrong things and the analogy I would use is that While it makes perfect sense for people living in miami to have hurricane insurance It makes much less sense for people living in detroit to have hurricane insurance And so what are we ensuring against and how much should we be willing to pay For that highly unlikely scenario I take your point well made that I would like to have fewer Capabilities to get us embroiled in stupid little wars like we've been involved with in the last 12 years And I think we're headed in that direction Okay, and it's true that nuclear weapons are far less likely to embroil us in those things I also believe however that the current posture of the nuclear force is not Primarily directed at deterring attacks against the united states. That's a role, but you understand this better than many It is postured to discourage other countries from developing nuclear weapons Now I think that it probably has had that effect to some extent. We can't prove again. We can't prove how much so But Over time I worry about the credibility of those security guarantees Not by virtue of the posture and the and the size and structure and composition of the force, but because those commitments Attenuate over time if you look at the other things that might cause people to question our willingness To use nuclear weapons This is when nuclear weapons would be used not to deter an attack or respond to an attack against the united states But to respond to an attack against our one of our allies. Okay, and I think those considerations Lend lead lead us away from a nuclear force postured for extended deterrence and one focused on Traditional deterrence during so are you are you accepting the possibility of future proliferation as it is? And I also want to point out I am accepting that possibility Okay, and I think we also have to be honest with ourselves that countries develop Choose to acquire nuclear weapons for many reasons one of which is Prestige or honor which our security guarantees not only don't Address but actually undermine their willingness their ability to to defend themselves incredibly believe that they're incredibly defending themselves But it is true This point and we you and I have discussed this before If we believe that the triad multiplicity of delivery vehicles is essential to Maintaining the credibility of our extended deterrence guarantees Then we have to account for why the reduction in the arsenal from 30,000 warheads to 1500 Has not resulted in any of our allies choosing to go nuclear. Well, but I mean That's a question. This is a okay question. Um, chris. Do you do you think Do you think it's it's Possible that the united states could face a highly sophisticated kind of revisionist Adversary rival even in a cold war kind of context in the next 50 years Possible, of course Again, I think the the key is to differentiate you've lumped together north korea and russia and north korea and china a bit too casually bridge I mean, well, no, I mean, I mean because it should be because the again The kind of adversary the kind of scenario that the triad is postured to defeat Is a peer competitor that is capable of carrying out a demobilizing First strike that knocks out our retaliatory capability And you know as well as I do that north korea could never imagine that scenario Surrogacy is not the only attribute of the triad though, right? But it's the most it's the most important part of the triad. It's the most important part of the triad And which by the way the most important part of the triad which can be satisfied by a submarine only monad just by the way I'm gonna break in here. Um I think that this could go on for a while and it's super interesting for all of us But at some point, uh, I think everyone else will ask a question Although I'll begin with uh taking a bit of the moderators prerogative and I'll pick up a little bit where you left off and ask If you would maybe talk about you sort of made some references to the different attributes of each leg of the triad flexibility Target discrimination. Could you talk about one of those things you think will lose if we go to a submarine only leg? And then can you say either whether you think that those attributes are unnecessary? Or if you think that the submarine leg would be able to to deal with those things Let's just talk about it technically for for a second as we've been talking about the sort of geopolitical aspects I mean The the the submarine force has one kind of missile With two warheads. It has the d5 missile. They have a certain roughly comparable You know broadly broadly speaking effect. They um, the submarines are communicated with in a particular way They operate in a certain kind of way the uh bomber force For those of you who follow the b61 discussion the bomber force offers a kind of discrimination and flexibility in its usage Not just in the signaling and the ability that you can sort of send it to be as a sort of a political signal But also in the actual kinds of effects that it delivers against a potential target That are dramatically different in certain respects than the submarine force now You know, maybe chris has has a has a recommendation for how we should deal with it But getting really, you know, one of the things that I think is that one of the most crucial attributes of a future nuclear force should be discrimination in our ability to apply it basically in our ability to To operate or to use the nuclear force in a way that that that Gives us or or at least allows us some degree of escalation advantage and crucial to that Is the ability to use it in a discriminate discriminate and controlled fashion And that is not so much the case with the submarine force It is the bomber force provides that for you from a survivability perspective If you look at the, you know, we're looking at the last ssb and x is supposed to go out of the force sometime around 2080 now, I don't know, you know, 15 years ago people weren't even imagining iPhones 20 years ago. You couldn't even think of itunes now people say that it's impossible that you could track The submarines at sea. I don't think it's impossible. I think it's probably unlikely I think the navy does a very good job at as far as I can tell from the outside But I don't know right and we could face, you know, for instance china could become a much more assertive and more aggressive actor As russia could could recover, you know, any other number of scenarios could could come to pass I'd rather have a posture in which you have several hundred different aim points Including aim points that are that the national command authority can communicate with very effectively and reliably As opposed to just potentially six or if you have Just the boomer force you've got the two bases and whatever whatever submarines are at sea So I look at that and I say given the costs involved, you know, I get the flexibility I get the signaling capability. I get the controllability and I get the sort of the confident You know survivability and and you know, some people say stability of the force. I mean, I'm There are limits to the the the level of detail that we can talk about this too But I think hopefully that gives you a sense that it's more than just a survivability problem Right the only thing it's not just that we want to be able to retaliate to a strike Particularly because as chris points out we are extending insurance So it's not necessarily credible for us to launch An sort of an unrestricted Retaliatory strike. We need the capability to modulate Our response to make it appropriate to the provocation or the attack that we're dealing with I think that so much of the The debate over the unique characteristics and attributes of the three legs of the triad are Unfortunately not taking full account of the dramatic technological changes that have taken place in terms of these delivery vehicles over the last 50 years 40 years And that's why we spend a fair amount of time in our paper talking about the history of the triad because it turns out That the criticisms of or the questions about The secure second strike the the minimal deterrent that was favored by navy leaders like admiral arlie burk when they were developing the Polaris submarines were legitimate to a point the Polaris was not hard target capable the Polaris had communication linkage Questions there were questions about its its Vulnerability and what has what have we seen since then we see that by the end of the cold war The trident d5 was more accurate than comparable weapons launched from from icbm silos or and as As accurate when you take into account the countermeasures against bombers as the bombers were Its communication linkages are as good as those communication linkages to icbm. We learned of course if you read bob gates's memoir of an interesting story about The silos being disconnected. So the communication linkages to the land base forces are not Are not perfect And and i'm i've always been puzzled just puzzled by the signaling argument Because the argument is that the knowledge That a u.s. Aircraft is capable of carrying nuclear weapons Maybe maybe it hasn't maybe it doesn't that that signal when that plane is sent to a particular place or flies over a particular place Is going to have a crucial effect In discouraging challenges or causing someone to back down And i struggle to come up with a scenario where that's true Because where the argument is that not knowing that that that plane has nuclear weapons that they would not back down or That that the signaling what is which is meant to dampen down the crisis doesn't escalate the crisis And and i i just i've never bought that argument as far as the flexibility uh, i think that the There are technological challenges that relate to how The the submarine force deploys its weapons and if if If the time comes It does so in a in a discriminating or escalatory manner And i think that's but that's a a challenge that can be dealt with you don't have to rely on two other legs To do that the new the the submarine force again We don't argue this this on on cost grounds alone because the submarine force is obviously the most expensive to maintain But i think it has those distinct attributes that you claim are only available to the icbms in the in the bottom I i should make one other last one one final point There are distinct advantages to the submarine force in terms of its ability to retaliate Much much later potentially okay not relying on Launch on warning on on warning or launch under duress and things like that But if you look at the kinds of concerns that people had In the late fifties and early 1960s making the case for the submarines in the first place I think many of those arguments still prevail to this day and thinking through the scenarios where A a land-based force is so heavily reliant upon warning to retaliate. I think that makes a very very strong case for the submarine Okay, uh now it's time for questions from you all i'll point out that we Livecast these debates and so this is being run as a webinar which means for those of you Watching on your computers Partly because of the miracles that that is the iphone if you have a question Email it to pony at csis.org and I will get it here and I will read it for you Um so with all of that said, um, yes, please and if you just wait for the the mic and identify yourself Yes, thank you. Edward F. Georgetown University both speakers seem to have accepted the premise that The choice is between either building an entirely new system Or giving up that leg of the triad entirely And I think it's worth asking is is that really the only choice? I mean when I came into the government, we were told these b 52s are terribly old. They've got to be replaced now 40 years later. They're still flying and doing pretty well. I think so, I mean, I think I said I have been suspicious of claims from the pentagon that we can't use this system beyond, you know three more years or whatever now I understand there is a unique aspect of submarines and that is the life of the reactor but Would I like to have a new car? Of course would have a lot of advantages But with Some maintenance and modest upgrades would my current car last a really long time? Yes, it would Right, but thank you the problem is the b 52 is great to have around but nobody thinks it's survivable Right. I mean if you care about survivability, you have to modernize and that's that's the key point and just to chris's replace Well, I mean my understanding is that the the pentagon considered basically keep sticking with the Ohio and I mean I think there have been but replacing the Ohio as such would not have been cheap either And I mean, I think you wouldn't have built in the possible survivability improvements that you've got to have for a submarine that's supposed to last for 50 or 60 years and that and that chris rightly points out It's going to be the cornerstone. I mean, let me be clear like I love the ssb and I'm thrilled that it's part I have nothing but basically good things to say about the ssb and the question is simply Do we want to spend that extra increment of money to make bombers that we're already going to have Nuclear cable and do we want and I think what you're saying is in the miniman context? Maybe right. I mean do we need to build a new miniman? Maybe I think we should study it I think the air force is studying it. Maybe you get cost savings Maybe there are other attributes you get that you wouldn't have otherwise But maybe you put you know, you either keep you extend miniman out or you simply maybe start up a missile line and you Refers the silos and something like that. So from that from that point of view I think that's right, but I think in terms of the basic You know cornerstone of the survivable force, which is the submarine you have to you have to put the money in Uh, I think that question was mainly for bridge and I think it's a good one But I I actually do agree with him that the submarine force You know probably does need to be modernized perhaps not quite we've already we've already postponed it several times Um, but in the in the grand scheme, I think it's probably necessary I think I he just made a good case for you know, does miniman modernization necessarily mean a successor to the miniman missile And not and the answer is not necessarily so yes um, james axman from the carnage in downmount Lest brooch think i'm asking a question to back him up Let me say that I think he's failed to present any argument in favor of icbms whatsoever But on on the subject on the subject of the bomber directed at chris, um You've you've advocated for high-end high-tech us capabilities And i'm assuming that one of those would be a new penetrating conventional bomber And if you do support that the extra increment of money to make the convention, uh, uh the Conventional bomber nuclear capable is extremely small true. I'm not going to say it's zero I'm not going to say there's none of the trade-offs that you mentioned Right, but the amount of weight that the extra bit of kit in Reduces from range is really extremely minimal So it seems to me that you really have to argue that the advantages of the bomber are so minuscule Compared to the extra cost if you don't want to make the new bomber nuclear capable And it seems to me that when you look at the advantage of having something that's non ballistic, especially if we're thinking 60 years ahead um Something that tries to get survivability in a very different way something that can be used for signaling in a way that doesn't Scare the living daylights out of an enemy because it lacks the kind of hard target kill capability that the d5 has um Why why do you believe that the bomber is? So pointless that it's not worth the tiny amount of money You would spend in addition give it if you support getting a new conventional heavy bomber anyway A good question james. I I do we make the case in the paper and I do believe that The main argument against the bomber is the lack of support for the bomber within the bomber community That is a nuclear capable bomber you have Within that community a serious discussion about whether or not the cost even the incremental cost Of making it nuclear capable is worth The trouble because again, it's not just the rating of the weapon But the fact that that mission will be sustained over the life of that plane. Okay, and we've seen You know sadly That this mission is a is a troubled one within the air force No, not one that can't be turned around by training and whatnot. I understand that But we mainly focused on it because the political support within the within the community was such that it was It was susceptible to or is vulnerable to to scrutiny Okay, now We also think that The we think that the that the missiles the land-based missiles are also subject to scrutiny at the end of the day If you look at our paper, we say pick one But not both. Okay, or none or neither of the two Uh, we just think that politically it's harder to make the case against the the minute man in in the current in the current era So so that's that explains why we came down the way we did can I can I just say I mean My view is is that the icbm is the I I think I agree with james that the the arguments of the bomb are very persuasive given some of the attributes of And also the relative relative in expense Um, I think the most persuasive argument for for retaining the icbm Predicated on the relatively modest costs if we were talking about a trillion dollars in modernization We were talking about a huge investment of defense resources. This would be another matter But given the costs And given the possibility of significant technological breakthroughs affecting the ballistic missile submarine force Why not maintain a posture where you have several hundred enemy aim points rather than 10 Not to mention the not to mention the the I mean I could take Chris's point But my understanding from talking to people who do know this far better than I Is that the the command links to the icbm force are do remain by far the best The same the same vulnerabilities That might afflict the point my point is that the communication linkages that are said to be most vulnerable for the submarines Are also most vulnerable for the land-based missiles. In other words, the The same it's essentially the same Well, but I mean you can have you know, you can have buried, you know underground links You can have a completely dedicated right but the communication from the national command authority to the executing to the officers Executing those orders is the same Right, but it doesn't have to jump over the ocean and go into some, you know And and that link is my understanding the more vulnerable of those of those is actually the land-based version not that is not what I understand Um, I'll break in with a question from mark quint who's at the Monterey Institute of international studies And I believe one of the authors on the Um paper you cited, um, there are a lot of numbers here So I'm gonna go so it's directed to you The one trillion dollar cost to maintain and replace the nuclear arsenal is not a flat line across the next 30 years Most of the spending will be disproportionately expended in the mid to late 2020s to preempt forces aging out around 2030 Defense officials have begun to recognize. This is a modernization mountain in the same period The nnsa plans to conduct three near simultaneously simultaneous warhead life extension programs Would it change your position to know that the current force is intended to be replaced simultaneously On a compressed schedule of roughly 10 years immediately following sequestration No First of all, I don't accept I don't accept a trillion dollar figure I have not gone through it in enough depth and I'm not a budget expert But people that I respect and who do know this stuff very well Hardly reject that figure. So, uh, you know, I mean it's a good question But I don't I don't take that as a baseline. I do take as a reality though the problem of the kind of the You know the rat or whatever in the bow constrictor that there is a serious problem And I know the navy is very concerned about this and this is where you know get back to what Gets back to what chris now we're discussing earlier. I do think that there should be reallocation among defensive resources I do think that the navy ship conventional shipbuilding budget should on the whole be protected And I think that the nuclear force should be funded and I think we should take that out of To the extent necessary out of the out of the ground force and maybe a Plus up in defense spending over those over those couple of years That's that's a simple reality. I mean the russians for instance right now are doing a major I think they're doing five missile programs at the same time But we you know, we really built up our nuclear forces in the 1980s in particular the reagan defense build-up Now some of these I understand we might be able to delay some aspects of the modernization program into the 2030s I think the b52 goes in and the b2 will go into the 20s and 30s and 20s and 40s So I think there are ways of staggering it but ultimately I you know, it's it's going to be expensive But still the expense even the trillion dollar figure is what 30? What 33 billion dollars a year over 30 years as I think my math is right. I mean We're talking about what six seven hundred dollar defense Budget on a billion six or seven hundred billion dollars defense budget. I mean, we're talking about a quite small I just think the whole cost discussion is really misplaced and it's sort of bizarre When when the huge problems in the defense budget are nowhere near the nuclear force So, I mean if you you know, for instance, james, you could say that actually I think there's an argument against the ballistic missile submarine I don't agree with it But the russians are scared and the the chinese are scared of our of our of the d5 Which they sort of should be so there's actually a stability argument I think this is why general scowcroft for instance likes the icbm I may be wrong but my understanding of why he likes them in a man three is it's less of a first strike Capability, I mean the russians have always been afraid of the d5 So there are other there are other considerations here But which I don't accept but there are there on the table, but the cost one just seems sort of Bizarrely misplaced, you know, it's like the disarmament thing happened and now it's over on this cost issue But we're talking about like a tiny fraction of the defense budget that you know There hasn't been a major war since you know among among major powers since 1945. I don't you know It seems to me like let's not tinker with success We've time for one more question. There's another one out there They've answered it all Yeah, hold on will you wake for the mic? Yes, hi, uh, Sean kill off from Georgia Washington University Uh, I one of the things that I noticed in the past year come out Was a study by I believe as as paul kappard the National naval postgraduate institute looking at the responses that india and pakistan during the lessons they learned during the cargo crisis and one of the thing one of the findings was that Each of them thought they could control escalation and in fact The the the way that they're understand their misunderstandings of each other's intentions were possibly that Escalation would not have been controlled with with each of their strategies I was wondering if each of you could comment on in your vision of the future us posture nuclear posture whether One escalation could be controlled and to how how would they either monad or triad deal with that problem I think that the um For me the more likely scenario and the one it's still low very low thankfully but the but the more likely scenario than a Surprise both from the blue attack chinese are hiding thousands of weapons somewhere and they all suddenly decide they're going to take them up Take all of ours out That is far less likely than a conventional conflict that escalates to a nuclear exchange Okay, and therefore we should be focused mostly on preventing that Okay deterring that from happening through conventional means and then controlling the escalatory cycle to the extent that we can through nuclear our nuclear means I've always been of the opinion following my Dwight eisenhower that it that controlling nuclear escalation would be extremely difficult if not impossible And therefore we should assume that once the decision was made to go nuclear then there was no escalations I suspect the bridge disagrees which is why you need a particular triad with a particular set of discriminatory you know All the things that he talks about And that's where I think we do have a pretty significant disagreement I think that our force should be postured primarily as a deterrent with the understanding that That once the decision is made to go nuclear there is no going back and therefore that's what makes it so horrific And that's why it is a successful and effective deterrent So, you know, here's here's the here's the problem nuclear escalation Is controllable in theory, but we can't know whether it would be controlled and we have good reason to think that it might not The problem is that if you assume what chris does which is the nuclear escalation cannot be controlled Then your posture is incredibly brittle, which is why the u.s. Eventually I mean, I love eyes now But it's why the u.s. Eventually Abandoned the eisenhower massive retaliation doctrine I actually think it was the right doctrine at the time because the u.s. Had overwhelming superiority over the soviet union The problem is though, especially on issues that are relatively peripheral to the interests of most americans Which is to say most of our extended deterrence commitments It's simply incredible. It would actually be kind of stupid if we started out by going to all-out nuclear war So what we want actually because we are extending deterrence and chris is right about this is we want capabilities that plausibly incredibly can be used For relatively controlled escalation and discriminant escalation And I think south asia is actually a great example of this because you know Seems like the pakistanis have sort of figured this out and are trying to see how they can get political Sort of coercive leverage out of this and I think You know if you look at the work of historians like frank gabin I think you see a lot that that a lot of the history of the of the nuclear age is in a sense People trying to capture value from the shadow of nuclear weapons khrushchev actually was calculating There were actually discussions in the pilot bureau about the likelihood of an american nuclear response To their specific actions in berlin. He said, ah, they're not going to do anything, right? Well, because yeah, I mean maybe it would have happened and that was an era when we really were at a face-off Where it was a you know, it was a sort of an apocalyptic manichean fight, which we're not really in thankfully these days So actually the kind of nuclear posture that we need is in a sense We need a discriminate nuclear posture in some ways even more now We need it for other reasons back then given the military bounds But today given that the stakes are sort of lower but not Too low. They're actually very real, but they're not the kind of scenario where people think Oh, if the chinese win or if the russians win the world is going to turn red and we're all be under the communist boot for eternity It's a different kind of story, but we still want to be able to have an effective deterrent And that's why that you know the triad does give you Particularly the submarines and the bomber leg into a sort of a lesser degree more in the survivability side the icbm Uh leg they do give you this discriminant capability. I think I think chris is you know, I what he was saying I think where I disagree is that there is no there is no clear Line between nuclear and conventional when people are calculating how they behave towards the united states Potential adversaries are saying yes. Oh as you say a war might start out conventionally But we never know if it escalated to a certain point the united states might take nuclear action and given their capabilities and their Uh, you know, hopefully their resolve and their good sense, you know to some extent we we don't think we're going to come away from this um We're going to come away from this better So my view is given the sort of low cost and the advantages that it provides Let's be stronger if we can but bridge in that scenario the burden of proof for you is to demonstrate That that additional increment of power an important one nuclear weapons Can only be provided by a triad and not by a monad or a dyad That's the part of your argument that I don't know, but I I take your point chris But but no the real criterion is based on the cost, right? If if we were going to create something Like the triad and it cost something orders of magnitude more than I then I would I would be in a very disadvantageous position But the bomber it's going to be a bare increment of cost with very substantial additional benefits And the icbm is a relatively more remote kind of plausibility, but very serious If the submarine were threatened or were somehow able to be Uh molested or intercepted then our whole posture would essentially fall apart basically from a survivability point of view Now would nuclear war happen the next day? No, probably not But you know there would be political and military consequences So I accept the burden of proof, but I accept the burden of proof based on the cost, which I think is actually very minimal Um that'll end the question and answer period and we'll move towards closing statements. Um, so chris you get to go first Okay, thank you. Um, you'll be let me do this again, right? What do you think? Whatever it might be easier for the folks in the back. Yeah, well, that's kind of what I thought. Okay fine. Um So as usually happens, I wrote out closing remarks, and I'm not really sure if I'm going to use them But what the heck uh, we've kind of covered what I wanted to say. Um, I actually think um I actually think that bridge had a harder job Uh this evening than I did because of even while the costs are modest as he says relatively speaking um We are in an era in which every weapon every base Every aspect of pentagon's operations is and will be for the foreseeable future under very close scrutiny And so In that sense defending this just the status quo is tough saying we have to continue what we've doing what we've been doing in the past Well because we can or we have to that's that's kind of the way it's been in the past And bridge is a very smart debater and a very smart guy. Uh, and so He if you if you think he won the debate tonight, and you might I still think he's going to lose the bigger argument tomorrow or the next day or later Because at the end of the day this is about money It's about choices and the services Themselves both by their words and their actions are demonstrating their lack of commitment to this mission if the choice is SSBNs or surface ships or fast attack submarines some naval officers Perhaps many Would throw the SSBN over the side figuratively speaking. That's a navy term as opposed to under the bus, which is the ground force term uh within the air force We i've already mentioned there are reports of low morale within the missile air community we've known we know about these cases of Of custody challenge problems and things like that. There is there is a quite serious problem Within the air force again. I think that I have enough confidence in the air forces community to deal with this through training, etc but The bomber community as i were alluded to uh, they want a new aircraft But some in that community are willing even publicly to call for shedding the nuclear capability um on the other hand bridge has history on his side because bureaucratic inertia is a powerful thing And changing people's minds and changing u.s defense policy is really hard uh ashton carter learned this The hard way when he attempted in early 1994 To replace the triad with a submarine only monad and he failed He failed spectacularly so badly in fact that it probably discouraged anyone from even attempting for 20 years That's how bad it was um, his efforts were thwarted by a pretty small cadre of senators from states that hosted One or more triad leg and those senators mainly agreed not To scrutinize the rationales for the other guys legs like we're in it together We're going to stay together. It's the triad or nothing And the triad survived we hear similar arguments today the argument that The triad itself not the fact that we have nuclear weapons Not the fact that we have plans to use them not the fact that we're trained etc etc It is the triad as some kind of religious incantation It is the triad that saves us from all this stuff I'm not naive parochialism partisanship, etc. It's a fact of life here in washington But what we tried to do in this paper what I encourage you to do here is to strive to Overcome that bureaucratic inertia To to just try to make the argument for these weapons on the merits Not on the basis of is there political support for changing it? I'm just I'm just now finished reading bob gate or close to finishing bob gates's memoir Um just a quick passage I was more or less continuously outraged by the parochial self-interest of all but a very few members of congress any defense facility or contract In their district or state no matter how superfluous or wasteful was sacrosanct I suppose I should have known better going in but I was constantly amazed and Infuriated by the hypocrisy of those who most stridently attacked the defense department for being inefficient and wasteful But would fight tooth and nail to prevent any reduction in defense activities in their home state or district However behavior that was simply frustrating to me in 2009 and 2010 Will seriously impair our national security in the years ahead as the defense budget shrinks Failure to cut or close Unneeded programs and facilities will drain precious dollars from the troops and our war fighting capabilities So my closing argument is simple We should not let bureaucratic inertia Dictate u.s. Force structure and posture. We should not allow congressional parochialism to interfere with a necessary review Of our nuclear weapons delivery needs We should not ignore the enormous technological advancements that have taken place since these weapons were first developed in the 1950s And we should not ignore the changed geopolitical circumstances And we should not ignore that the pentagon's budget is not likely to grow over the next decade or longer And will very likely decrease modestly in real dollar terms So we should subject the claims about the unique attributes of every leg of the triad to very very close scrutiny We should revisit anew the supposed strengths and weaknesses of each and we should choose consciously Strategically to modernize only one or at most two Of the nuclear triad legs, but not all three. Thank you very much Um, it's actually it's been interesting to debate and I thought I thought about this at the beginning that that You know chris and I in a way didn't fully join because i'm defending the triad and he's defending the monad whereas The sort of the middle position might be might be that might be the dyad which neither of us really Really really really took out which I think is actually fair. It's a it's a sort of uh You get it. You get a more sort of you know, the two extremes a kind of a dialectic, hopefully Um, you know, I think at one level I think chris is right. I mean, I do have the tougher job in the sense of You know, the world seems relatively safe. We're trading with china. Russia is a shadow of its former self And you know part of the international system at least to some degree You know, but on the other hand, I think I had the easier job right which is that you know, if it ain't broke Don't fix it. I mean, you know getting rid of the icbms. Maybe is an easier sell But why you know, it's it's hard for me to see what? Possible compelling reason there would be to get rid of the bombers given that you have, you know real military capability that you'd be foregoing That you wouldn't have in the submarine force You know, and if you you know, if you're thinking about Just the icbms for a second, you know, I think this gets to the point given that they're basically about sort of survivability And and stability issues Um, you know what I've tried to impress upon you and I think all of you are you know, certainly aware of this You know, we're thinking about a 50 to 70 year time frame here, right in these decisions I mean it is possible that you could get rid of everything and then build it back up But that's actually almost certainly much much less efficient and more and more risky technologically and so forth But if we're thinking in a 50 to 70 year time span, I think Chris is exactly right Think how much the world has changed since since the uh, you know Polaris missile was introduced in the late in the early 1960s We'll think how much you could change the next 50 or 70 years and don't just think about actual, you know threats, you know Anti-submarine warfare, but think about communications think about the ability to understand what's going on inside the ocean Think about the ability to interrupt targeting capabilities and and satellite operations and so forth And I think about this and I say well, you know, all things being equal If we get the nuclear piece wrong things could get really bad You know, and if if we can buy extra increments of security and stability and deterrence Let's look at it and then I look at it and I say gosh these increments are actually quite inexpensive There's an existing infrastructure for doing it What we're talking about doesn't require a massive investment Of new resources rather it involves more or less a maintenance. Maybe you have a new missile Maybe you have a new type or something like that, but basically we're talking about a continuation I think to myself Geez, I guess maybe I'm sort of risk averse, but I think the world was a really terrible place Only 70 years ago and it was it was a pretty pretty pretty touchy place 50 60 even even 25 years ago and I and and that world to me could reemerge Especially, you know as we get farther and farther out and I would like for my country Which I think is you know the last best hope of earth I'd like it I'd like for it to be this the the stronger one. I'd like us to have those extra increments Of security and I'm not just saying this I think I've offered Hopefully not just saying that we should take money from the cookie jar or you know from my you know my piggy bank or something I've said look I think we actually could get rid of other Parts of the federal budget and not just the federal budget, but the defense budget You know I don't think we need you know We're not building so many m-wraps anymore But if we don't get it if we don't get involved in huge stability operations the next 10 years Probably will be better off, right? I mean if we can possibly avoid it and do we need so many abrams tanks You know our armored personnel carriers and so forth You know I think as a whole in the defense budget We should be focused on the military upper hand and strengthening our advantages there Because I look at the future and it's uncertain politically, but it's also very uncertain technologically There are very dramatic technological breakthroughs that could be out there And I think that we should be building in as much advantage and latent potential for us to exploit it As as possible So you know in closing I'd ask you to look at it as you would look at a sort of an insurance issue If I were asking you we need to invest another hundred billion dollars every year or something of that effect Then you should probably you know Then you should think scrutinize it really carefully and you should think about it pretty skeptically But if you know we could bicker about the figures But we're talking about something like on the order of one percent of defense budget for the air force legs I'd say You know maybe chris is right. Maybe i'm right about what the future may hold But you know if he's wrong and we didn't take my actions We could be a lot worse off than if we've maybe Overspent by a couple billion dollars a year On things that we could take from other other programs. So with that, thank you very much Pony started this debate series because we wanted to get past the talking points and the bumper stickers and get real Deep nuanced debate between people on nuclear issues And I think you saw just an excellent example of that tonight So if you'd join me in thanking both of the debaters, please