Critically Important Measures the U.S. Can Implement to Ensure America’s Survival

U.S. Leaders Must Double the Size of America's Strategic Nuclear Deterrent, Build Thousands of ABM's and Harden U.S. Critical Infrastructure to Defend and Deter Against Sino-Russian Nuclear/EMP Attack

This article was originally published in The National Interest on October 21, 2021.

U.S. leaders could greatly reduce the risk that adversaries of the United States will join forces and engage in a catastrophic attack on the U.S. homeland by adopting a new national security strategy that would be less provocative to Russia and China. There are six critically important steps that the Biden administration could take to further deter U.S. enemies from attacking the United States, defend America, and save tens of millions of American lives in the unfortunate event that U.S. adversaries do attack. 

In recent years, the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China have continued to strengthen their two-decades-old military alliance and have engaged in a number of joint military exercises. In addition, there have been reports that they have taken steps to form a joint missile defense system. The Russian national missile defense system consists of over 10,000 anti-ballistic missile (ABM) interceptors and is potentially capable of shooting down 80 percent of America’s second-strike nuclear warheads following a Sino-Russian nuclear first strike. This would leave perhaps six dozen U.S. warheads to impact super-hardened Russian and Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos, which might be able to survive near misses, and deep underground nuclear command centers, which may be impervious to nuclear attack. Mark Schneider, one of the top U.S. nuclear weapons experts, explains that even setting aside the massive Russian national missile defense system and expanding Chinese national missile defenses, the U.S. nuclear arsenal is insufficient for its mission to hold enemy nuclear forces and underground nuclear command centers at risk. Dr. Schneider stated:

“There is an increasing disconnect between our nuclear strategy (which targets military strategic targets rather than population centers) and our nuclear targeting capability….With our current forces, the U.S. cannot possibly target these new Chinese and Russian (nuclear missile) silos with any serious level of effectiveness. . . . In addition to the new silos, China has built the “Underground Great Wall” to protect its mobile ICBMs and Bill Gertz has reported that Russia was “modernizing deep underground bunkers.” These are extraordinarily difficult to destroy or even to threaten seriously. . . . When Russian ICBM force expansion and the deep underground facilities in Russia and China are taken into account, our existing and projected nuclear forces have little capability to threaten them. Numbers count, and we no longer have the numbers.”

According to China expert Gordon Chang, Russia and China are likely coordinating not only on joint defensive planning but also on joint offensive plans as well to push the United States out of their respective spheres of influence by force. They might even be planning to neutralize the United States with one or more unconventional means of existential attack at the onset of conflict to eliminate the chance of any future U.S. interference in their respective spheres of influence.

In addition to the adoption of a new, less provocative grand strategy, which aligns more with America’s limited military means and recognizes Russia and China’s vital interests and spheres of influence, the other important national security imperative that America must pursue to ensure its survival is to adopt a policy of strategic rearmament similar to the one the United States pursued during the early stages of the Cold War. U.S. policymakers must return to the more realist, Cold War way of thinking because a nuclear war with nuclear adversaries is not only possible but increasingly probable. This realization should compel U.S. leaders to engage in a herculean, bipartisan effort to rebuild U.S. nuclear deterrent and strategic defenses as swiftly as possible. Funding should be repurposed from less important programs for this purpose, much as the United States did just before and shortly after the outbreak of World War II.

There are a number of important measures that the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress should implement as soon as possible to safeguard America against these existential threats. First, President Joe Biden should declare a presidential cyber/EMP/missile defense emergency to reallocate $30 billion dollars in funding to fully harden U.S. electronic power grid and other critical infrastructure, particularly U.S. nuclear Communications, Command, and Control (C3) systems, as well as future U.S. military satellites against cyber/EMP attack. In addition, Biden should use this emergency declaration to reallocate $150 billion more to build 5,000 SM-3 Block IIA ABM interceptors to deploy on sixty of the U.S. Navy’s Aegis cruisers and destroyers whose primary role should be “boost phase” national missile defense, not conventional military power projection. Hundreds of these missiles have already been purchased by the U.S. Navy.

The Biden administration should also consider deploying space-based non-nuclear missile defenses, which would be even more effective in deterring enemy nuclear attacks and shooting down rogue, accidental, or deliberate nuclear missile attacks…

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David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and H.Q. staff officer with an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as Deputy Director of National Operations for the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security and is a contributor to Dr. Peter Pry’s new book Blackout Warfare. He may be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.