way forward, then, would seem to be a straightforward matter of simplifying U.S. nuclear doctrine and reconfiguring the strategic nuclear force to correspond to a more limited post–Cold War mission. Unfortunately, nothing is ever that simple, but since 1994 each of three successive U.S. presidential administrations of both parties has embarked on a major review of American nuclear policy.
Each of these reviews produced limited and disappointing results. In the end, they all reflected an unwillingness to part with the weapons and strategies of the Cold War. Some of this resistance to changing the U.S. nuclear deterrent reflected the sincere belief on the part of many people in the government, the military, and the American electorate that nuclear weapons kept the peace, and perhaps even saved the world, for more than a half century. Ultimately, however, the reviews of nuclear strategy conducted by successive U.S. administrations have been monuments less to the Western victory in the Cold War and more to the sheer power of political and bureaucratic inertia.
Reviewing the Nuclear Reviews
Few nations study their own defense policies as often and as openly as the United States. In the wake of major reforms in U.S. defense policy enacted by the Congress in the mid-1980s, both the executive and legislative branches of the United States government have commissioned repeated studies and reports meant to examine and to explain the various facets of U.S. national security. These documents have included the National Security Strategy of the United States, the National Military Strategy, the National Defense Strategy, the Quadrennial Defense Review, the various reviews conducted by each armed service, and the overarching study of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and its purpose, the Nuclear Posture Review.3
In a world free of bureaucratic friction, all of these documents would agree with each other. Taken together, they should provide a relatively complete picture of U.S. national defense: they should explain how the United States views the international security environment, identify areas of particular concern or emphasis, and describe how the United States plans to arm itself in the future. In the real world, however, these reports often miss their required date of submission, end up out of phase with each other, and represent a spectrum of diverse and occasionally conflicting inputs from throughout the government. To be fair, the staffs that create them actually overlap in many cases, and the apparent lack of coordination is sometimes less than it seems, but it is nonetheless difficult to piece together an overall picture of U.S. security policy from these many documents.
The National Military Strategy, for example, is a classified report from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the secretary of defense. In theory, it should follow the guidelines of the National Security Strategy, which has been required as an annual submission from the president to Congress since 1986. But the 2011 National Military Strategy was the first in seven years, and coordinating anything with the National Security Strategy would be impossible in any case since presidents almost never submit them on time. In more than twenty-five years, only Bill Clinton met the requirement for an annual submission, although it is arguable whether the National Security Strategies of the 1990s actually said anything or whether anyone read them.4 George W. Bush submitted two reports during the entire eight years of his presidency, and Barack Obama likewise submitted only one during his first term. While quantity is not quality, “annual” does not mean “every four years,” either.
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