Abstract
Last December, British Prime Minister Tony Blair formally unveiled a plan to spend billions of dollars on a new generation of submarines for Trident nuclear missiles. As Rebecca Johnson–a Bulletin Board member and cofounder of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy–noted in a special series for the Bulletin Online, “The issue was initially framed in terms of just replacing a few aging submarines,” but it rapidly evolved into “a full-blown debate on the role of nuclear weapons in defense and security for the twenty-first century.” The Trident replacement plan would effectively extend Britain's nuclear deterrent into the 2050s, despite that country's pledge, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to strive towards complete disarmament. The ensuing public debate polarized Britain, and Blair was only able to win the vote last March with the support of opposition politicians in the Tory Party.
Britain is not the only country confronting an aging Cold War nuclear arsenal. In the United States, the Bush administration is endorsing the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) Program, which would create the infrastructure to produce a new generation of nuclear warheads. Proponents of RRW argue that the program would allow the United States to build cheaper, safer warheads. More reliable warheads, they say, would also enable the United States to reduce the size of its nuclear stockpile.
But many critics of RRW, including former weapons designers, assert the current arsenal will remain in good working order for decades and are skeptical of claims that RRW warheads will not require nuclear testing. Indeed, they worry that the same capabilities that will allow for the simpler construction of nuclear warheads will also afford the United States the capability to rapidly ramp-up weapons production.
And how will other nations react? A recent study prepared for the U.S. Defense Department observed, “The world sees us as shifting from nuclear weapons for deterrence and as weapons of last resort to nuclear weapons nuclear weapons for war-fighting roles and first use.” Countries abroad might see RRW as further confirmation that the United States has offensive plans for its nuclear weapons, and could respond by expanding their own arsenals.
The stakes in this debate are high. But while Britain is engaged in a rigorous public dialogue over Trident, the RRW Program has elicited little commentary in the United States. The topic has not yet even been addressed in the debates among presidential candidates. To better inform the public, this issue of the Bulletin features a special report assembling experts on science, nuclear weapons, and international security to assess the RRW Program–and whether it represents a step forward or backward in the effort to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons.