The Relevance of the Nuclear Posture Review

Aaron Stein 0:02

Deterrence has failed, so let's do the same thing that just didn't work, but more.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:10

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog.

Aaron 0:27

And I'm Aaron Stein, the director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. We have a guest. We have junior, junior fellow, Aaron Stein, who is at my feet, happily watching Sesame Street. But if you hear, there she is. If you hear little baby noises in the background, it's because we're still all at home despite having shots in our arms because our children still can't get vaccinated.

Well, Aaron, my kids are in school, so my heart breaks for you. My older is in school, although tomorrow is his final day until we start the summer. It's going to get even more lively on the Arms Control Walk podcast for our listeners. You don't have any camps planned? July 5th. July 5th. So we have about a three-week window there.

Jeffrey 1:17

Oh, yeah. One of my kids is going to sleepaway camp in Tahoe. Oh. That sounds like fun. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we have to get him a COVID test the day we take him up. And if he fails it, he doesn't go and we lose all the money. But, you know, other than that, it's fine.

Aaron 1:36

And he has COVID, which is just obviously something that you want to avoid more than the sleepaway camp.

Jeffrey 1:42

Oh, I'm actually worried that the test has a very high false positive rate. It's like we have a we have a friend who's like like a like a no infectious disease specialist. She's the one who swabbed Cuomo on national TV. And she told us the false positive rate for the test. And it was like, oh, that's not great.

Aaron 2:02

Yeah, no, that is not great, but better than nothing, right?

Jeffrey 2:08

Yeah, I guess.

Aaron 2:09

Better than nothing.

Jeffrey 2:11

Hey, you know what else is better than nothing? You tell me. Actually, not a nuclear posture review. A nuclear posture review is not better than nothing.

Aaron 2:20

It's worse than nothing. Your disdain for the nuclear posture review is, I think, well documented on this podcast. And I think the Biden administration may be trolling you because we're getting one.

Jeffrey 2:30

No one ever listens to me, but let me just say for the record, fuck nuclear posture reviews. Doing a nuclear posture review is the equivalent of kicking yourself in the nuts. Why would you do that to yourself?

Aaron 2:48

Why? Why? Well, it's something to do, right? It's not just a nuclear posture review. I see on Twitter we're getting a missile defense review as well.

Jeffrey 2:58

Yes, yes, that's right. Well, so I actually, I'm sort of fine with missile defense reviews because the more time, my basic objection to nuclear posture reviews, and we can talk about this in kind of the first third of the podcast, but it's ultimately that they're a waste of time. And that the president has a very limited window in which he or, God willing, someday she can make changes to U.S. nuclear posture.

And the posture review essentially sucks up all that time. And basically leaves U.S. nuclear weapons policy posture forces on autopilot. That is probably also true in terms of missile defense. But that shit's already on autopilot and that shit's already a giant waste of money and that shit's already kind of pointless. And so like wasting time before you waste some money just doesn't offend me in quite the same way.

Aaron 3:58

Yeah, no, and there's a lot of stuff coming down the pike. You know, you have nuclear modernization going on. And I think ultimately tied to this is the appropriation of dollars for that modernization. Should we do it? Should we not? What systems should we invest in? But also, you know, how this is all wrapped up in the future of arms patrol is something that we talked about in this podcast a lot.

You know, like it's all these things that are coalescing that the Biden administration is going to have to be taking on. And as to your point, do you really want to waste time? How long do you think this takes? A year? Six months? I can't remember how long they usually take on an NPR. I mean...

Jeffrey 4:36

Your mileage may vary. The Bush administration, the George W. Bush administration did theirs quick and dirty because they knew it was a waste of time. And they just like kicked it over to a contractor and he shut that out and it was terrible and forgettable. And people noticed it when some of the kissy bits leaked and then it was forgotten, which is what should happen to nuclear posture reviews.

But, you know, the Obama administration did one, and it was so dumb because they had to do a mini posture review before the summer because they were trying to negotiate what would become the New START Treaty with the Russians. And then they did the full posture review, which then dragged into May, 2010. I think they got it out before the NPT review conference.

So they might've gotten it out a little, I guess they got it out a little bit before that. But it was really bumping up against that deadline. So we really kind of went into the spring of 2010. And then what's crazy is because it's a review, right? It's just a review, it's a study. Then you have to do the whole thing over again to implement the things that you decided to do in the study.

So the Obama people Signed a new presidential, what were they back then? They were presidential policy directives, 90-day implementation study, you know, which stretched on for like a couple more years. I remember it kept going on and on and on. And Lyndon Brooks started calling it the increasingly poorly named 90-day implementation study. This is something that the Clinton administration found out too.

It's like you do the study, but then the study is basically a waste of time because then you have to redo all of that work to actually produce decisions to implement the review. So, like, why not just, you know, like, cut to the freaking chase and start making the changes that you think you want to make rather than, like, go through this entire process that, you know, I think ultimately in the end.

Doesn't get you any closer to answering the questions. Like all the things you mentioned are super important questions, and they are all bearing down on the Biden administration. And we don't know how long Joe Biden is going to have to make these decisions, right? In two years, we could have a Republican Congress. In four years, we could have the second Trump term.

And so you just don't have that much time. And so to piss a bunch of it away on a nuclear posture view doesn't make me very happy.

Aaron 7:35

No, and I mean, we've talked about this before. I mean, I think this is something that you and Scott Sagan have written about, you know, because you have these ideas about where... There she is. About that you and Scott have... She also thinks nuclear posture reviews are freaking stupid. Yeah, she does. And she's very unhappy with her slippers.

Sorry. Is that you and Scott Sagan, you know, have written about the way in which you think nuclear weapons, and at least the U.S. nuclear policy, nuclear posture should go.

Jeffrey 8:03

Yeah, absolutely. I mean... I don't, you know, I think one of the things that has me nervous about the posture review is that what tends to happen is you tend to basically have the same old fights you've had over and over and over again. And we're going to have that fight again about sole purpose. Right. And all the people who don't like sole purpose are going to not like it for the same reasons they didn't like it last time.

And all the people who like sole purpose are going to continue to like it for all the same reasons that they liked it last time. You should tell people what sole purpose is for the new listeners. Yes, you're right. I should have done that. There are two versions of sole purpose. There's the real version and then Jeffrey's hybrid version.

The real version is you say that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to respond to nuclear attacks against the U.S. and its allies. Right. The Jeffrey variant is you would say you wouldn't make it a statement about employment, which I think is kind of always a dangerous territory to get in, although I'll happily jump in about two minutes.

But the Jeffrey version is to subtly change that instead of making it about when you would employ or use nuclear weapons to say the sole purpose for possessing the weapons is to deter a nuclear attack on the U.S. or its allies. Right. Really, this is a question of, is the United States going to preserve the right to use nuclear weapons in response to non-nuclear attacks?

It's the same debate we've been having since late 1945. And it's gone through various iterations. It used to be no first use. Would you initiate the use of nuclear weapons or only respond? Today, it's sole purpose. It's not like in doing the study, there's gonna be some change. It's not like Greg Weaver is going to forget that he loves nuclear weapons.

There's no point. All you're doing is putting these people down in a room and then they shout at each other. It's ultimately down to the president and the people appointed by the president to say, we're gonna take path A or we're gonna take path B. And with all due respect, If you're the president or the secretary of defense or the undersecretary of defense for policy, you already know what your opinion on this matter is, you know?

Aaron 10:25

Yeah, totally.

Jeffrey 10:26

Like this will not be the first time Colin call has ever heard this discussion. No, probably not. I mean, he's not going to be like, Oh, tell me more about this idea. I'm very unfamiliar with it after a 30 year career that, you know, like, come on.

Aaron 10:43

Yeah.

Jeffrey 10:43

So I just, to me, it's, You know, this is ultimately about what the president wants. And so Scott and I, right, have, have this very distinct idea. This is what I'd like to see is to get out of the sole purpose debate which is instead of trying to go down that path, because remember, sole purpose ultimately flounders on this idea of What the Obama people said was, well, we'd like to, it's a very, it's a very Obama solution in all the ways that drive me crazy.

Well, we'd like to do sole purpose, but we can't because we don't have the conventional weapons we need to get to sole purpose. So it's our goal, and someday, God willing, we'll get there, which I just, you know, whatever, drives me crazy. Instead of revisiting that debate, Scott and I, and we've actually added a third musketeer, a guy named Alan Weiner, who is a professor at Stanford Law School.

We think that the president should say as a matter of policy that the U.S. would not use a nuclear weapon against a target that could, pick your felicitous phrase, be destroyed with reasonable confidence by conventional weapons.

Aaron 12:11

Could we replace nuclear weapons with hypersonics? I'm sorry, that was just a joke. That was just a joke. You know, I always think about these things You're talking about scenarios in which the fundamental premise of deterrence is actually broken down. One of my least favorite phrases is reestablishing deterrence. Or we have to deter. After rockets or missiles start flying at one another, it just means that you aren't deterring.

Yeah. But I know that you've thought... Deterrence has failed. So let's do the same thing that just didn't work, but more. But more, right. Don't do it. Just do more of the thing that failed.

Jeffrey 12:52

It was clearly a moral failing on our part. And if we just fix it, yeah, it's very 19th century.

Aaron 12:58

Right. But I think what we were talking about off pod, maybe I'll just prompt you here a little bit, is rather than looking at it as a posture review, but like a deterrence review, something along those lines, putting them all together.

Jeffrey 13:10

Yeah, I have heard this idea kicking around that instead of doing a missile defense review and a nuclear posture review, they might do an integrated deterrence review. And that's not necessarily as bad of an idea because I do think when you get down to it, what's really happening is we have competing ideas about how nuclear deterrence functions, how nuclear weapons create deterrence, and what are the legal limits.

And, you know, I mean, the point of our pledge, by the way, kind of goes right to that idea of trying to clarify that very clearly. Do you know this story about the principals and deputies in the Obama NSC where they played a tabletop exercise responding to a Russian low-yield escalate-to-de-escalate strike? Wasn't it written recently? I swear I just read about this.

Yeah, Fred Kaplan got the scoop. So it, to me, it perfectly illustrates how many terrible ideas there are floating around about deterrence, including terrible ideas that are probably war crimes. but they like pop, they kind of just percolate, you know, like people have them and they don't really explore them. and that game, I think, brought that out. So they played it twice..

They played it at the deputy's level and the principal's level. So in both games, the Russians use a low-yield nuclear weapon in an escalate-to-de-escalate way against a NATO airbase in Europe. So they don't kill that many people. I'm not prepared to accept that our immediate view when it really happens is it's low-yield, but whatever. It's the game, and you have to stipulate some shit, and so that's been stipulated.

So the deputies... The policy people basically look at the military people and they're like, well, because the military people are like, well, we have to respond with nuclear weapons. And the policy people are like, okay, well, nuclear weapons are weapons with big political costs. So explain to me how much faster we will win the war if we use nuclear weapons.

And the military people are like, well, I mean, it might actually be a little slower. We got to work around it. It's not about that. And then the policy people are like, well, your job is to tell me how to win the war as fast as possible. Your job is not to tell me about this other stuff, because that's my bailiwick.

And I'm telling you, us using nuclear weapons without having a clear theory of how that's going to Reestablish deterrence, help us prosecute the war. Like, without understanding what the actual military benefit of doing this is, we think politically this is a nightmare. And like, how about we just go ahead and win the war? Which they do. They play the game again at the principal's level.

And they're just, for whatever reason, right? Because, you know, I guess, you know, principals, different group of people. And the principles buy into this argument that like, oh, we really do have to use a nuclear weapon. They used one. We have to use one. What do we do? But they're too cowardly to nuke the Russians. The Russians have nuked us and we have to nuke them back.

But, ah, gosh, if we nuke them back, I mean, could be terrible. And so they decide that they're going to nuke Belarus. Belarus is not even a party to the conflict, by the way. And so, you know, what I think is happening here is that, just to lay it all on the table, and this is why Scott and I support this idea, there's a kind of sleight of hand that goes on.

If you ask targetters, like, how do nuclear weapons work? They say, well, the nuclear weapon destroys the target that has value. It's a permissible military target, and the destruction of the target is what creates deterrence because they lose their ability to prosecute the war. And so like the famous example is, you know, when they put like 60 nuclear weapons on that radar in the Moscow suburbs.

And the official argument is it's a legitimate military target because it's a missile defense radar and destroying the target reduces their capacity to defend their military assets. And therefore that produces deterrence. And everybody knows it's actually like 60 nuclear weapons hitting the Moscow suburbs that is deterrence. But that's illegal, right? You can know that in your mind.

But if you actually came out and said, yeah, well, we're just going to kill a couple million suburbanite muscovites.

Aaron 17:43

Yeah, suburbanite muscovites.

Jeffrey 17:46

You can't say that, right? So the point of Scott and I is to try to bring that tension to the surface. My view is... I take literally the idea that nuclear weapons are just weapons. And if they do things, like real things, like destructive things that conventional weapons can't, then they're to be preferred. You know, like Ankit Panda has said there's one target in North Korea, according to the US intelligence community, that is too hard to be destroyed by conventional weapons.

So that's a role. But like all this metaphysical mumbo jumbo about like the unique psychological effect of nuclear weapons, I think one, it's not real, because it's just made up. And it's certainly not like a falsifiable belief. And two, it's a war crime. Right?

Aaron 18:29

So I agree with you on the metaphysical stuff and sort of the mumbo jumbo. But that also leads me to question the taboo. Oh, the taboo's bullshit. I totally agree, but I have to always raise that, which means that the taboo doesn't actually exist. And if the taboo doesn't exist, it's actually very dangerous.

Jeffrey 18:46

That's my point. Have you—I mean, we know the taboo doesn't exist because there were a bunch of dipshit principals around Obama who were going to nuke Belarus for no goddamn reason. Well, it's— So, yeah.

Aaron 19:00

Well, I'm just saying maybe Belarus deserves it.

Jeffrey 19:04

So, in our view— All these people out there, they're protesting Lukashenko holding the signs. And then the Russians invade Lithuania and we duke the people holding the signs. Because, you know, fair is fair, right? Fair is fair. This is like when the Nixon administration, by the way, I know we're off the rails, but I teach this in my national security decision making class.

When the North Koreans shot down U.S. reconnaissance aircraft, Nixon ultimately and Kissinger decided that we couldn't do nothing because, you know, the commies would think we're weak. And that was the justification for the secret bombing of Cambodia. So I just imagine this poor, you know, like Cambodian farmers, like looking at these bombers like way up there and it's like...

Why are they bombing us? It's like, and you know, his friend says, oh, well, Kim Il-sung shot down an American aircraft.

Aaron 19:54

And it's like, does he know that's a different country?

Jeffrey 19:58

So anyway, just to, to put a bow on it, cause I don't want to belabor it anymore, but for our, from our perspective And this is where Alan really comes in. When we look at how STRATCOM interprets the law of armed conflict, particularly something called the principle of precaution, which the US military does believe in, the military as a whole has one view of the principle of precaution about minimizing civilian casualties and STRATCOM is a little bit at odds.

With the way the rest of the military does it. Because it would be very hard to justify using nuclear weapons except for in very limited circumstances. And therefore it would be hard to justify STRATCOM. Yeah, right. So our argument is that if you made this policy pledge, it would bring the legal arguments into alignment, right, so that we'd have a kind of consistent and correct interpretation of the law of armed conflict.

And then for me, the kind of second benefit is... Preventing insanity, like nuking Belarus, because what it really does is it, it says like, look, the value of nuclear weapons is what they do for you militarily, and it's, you know, you're not going to be able to justify the use of a nuclear weapon based on this shall we call it, highly speculative idea that there is this metaphysical effect of using them. And you know, I think, I think that's probably where Biden is. You know, he said stuff like that before. So yeah.

But the thing is, you don't need a nuclear posture review to do that. I mean, the other part of this... Biden's almost 80 years old. He's been doing this for 50 years. He knows what he thinks.

Aaron 21:46

Yeah, he does know what he thinks.

Jeffrey 21:47

I mean, you think Biden's going to wake up and be like, you know, I just had a small stroke and I think nuclear weapons are grand. It's like, come on.

Aaron 21:57

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Come the F on. I do see value in combining the two, though. I don't know what you think. If we have to do it as a document and we're already down the...

Jeffrey 22:10

Hey, that's three votes for an integrated deterrence review.

Aaron 22:15

Because as you wrote for foreignaffairs.com, was the centerpiece of arms control being the ABM Treaty and the acceptance of vulnerability and the movement of missile defense towards ultimately one of the main prongs now of how we conceptualize nuclear deterrence. And I think we both agree, other people disagree, but I think they're wrong, which is ultimately that advances in missile defense are leading to more instability, not more stability, more investments in crazy weapon systems than less investment in crazy weapon systems, is that you have to put the two together.

But I'm not sure how that ultimately manifests itself, because if the document is on autopilot, we can actually end up in a bad place. Do you know what I'm saying?

Jeffrey 23:07

I do. I mean, you know, full disclosure, I know Leonor Tamero, the deputy assistant secretary of defense pretty well. And further full disclosure I've had plenty of disrespectful arguments with Greg Weaver on Twitter. I think I helped bully him off of Twitter, actually. And he's the joint staff guy who would work on this. So, you know, just knowing what the two of those people think, that's a pretty big range of views.

And so, yeah, I think you could get a document that came out in a good place. You could get a document that came out in a bad place. I just don't know. But it would be good to... I don't want to be too fatalistic about it, but I would say in that argument, in that foreign affairs article, I accept that the United States is not in a place at the moment where limitations on missile defense are going to command anything like widespread support, even among Democrats.

And so this is going to be one of those cases where, you know, like Tom Schelling said, when they started making this argument in the early 60s, Democrats looked at them like they were crazy. And it took them years. And, you know, in retrospect, it looks like it was pretty fast. But for him, it was nearly miraculous.

That academics were able to come and say, hey, you think these things are defenses, but actually they work better as part of offenses and they're deeply destabilizing and you're not going to like what happens. And I just, you know, even if the document comes out in the wrong place, I think those of us on the outside... You know, we have a generational task in front of us in terms of reestablishing the, you know, the correct view of why missile defenses are not really even defenses and are ultimately destabilizing.

So, like, maybe it's good to start that fight now, even if we're going to lose.

Aaron 25:21

Well, the fight, I think, is going to be presented in front of us, you know, because this will be a key Russian demand, this link between offensive, defensive, conventional versus non-conventional in any follow-on to the New START Treaty. If we are to have any future arms control between the two countries, you know, setting aside the sort of Trump-era idea to, I guess, make it a trilateral with the Chinese, but if you keep it in the bilateral direction,

Jeffrey 25:50

Wait, you mean the Trump idea to use the Chinese to justify them not negotiating the agreement they didn't want to negotiate? I just want to make sure we're clear about... Yeah, it was silly. Marshall Billingsley, a man who will piss on your foot and tell you it's raining. He's on Twitter. Marshall Billingsley, a man who tried to steal his government Twitter account and...

I mean, I understand impersonating a police officer or impersonating a service member, but who impersonates a State Department official after they leave?

Aaron 26:28

He did not want to give up that Twitter account.

Jeffrey 26:30

That's the lamest stolen valor case I've ever seen.

Aaron 26:34

I thought it was hilarious.

Jeffrey 26:35

God! But my point is... No offense to my friends at State. You're wonderful people.

Aaron 26:43

This issue is going to be shoved in front of our faces. I think it will be the defining issue moving forward in arms control negotiations, more so than limits on launchers and warhead numbers. Don't you think?

Jeffrey 26:58

Yeah, because it's become the fundamental justification for the modernizations that the Chinese and the Russians are carrying out. And so the idea that we're going to be able to go to the Russians and say, hey, you're developing an, you know, insert system, doomsday torpedo. We'd like it if you didn't do that. They're literally going to say then, you know, like you need to take down the defense that we're designing it to beat.

I mean, I just, it's crazy to me that We can't grasp this idea that the panoply of capabilities that they are developing, which they say are for defeating missile defenses, which were, as a matter of historical fact, developed in the 80s, that the concepts were pioneered to defeat SDI, the programs that basically went You know, dormant in the 1990s and then kind of came roaring back after the US left the ABM treaty.

Like, I don't, I don't know what more evidence you would need to understand that the Russians and the Chinese are sincerely committed to having a survivable second strike capability. And that includes defeating defenses. Like, I just, I don't. You know, like I sometimes, you know, we confront people and they're like, oh, this is all a lie. Like what they just they just like cuddling with them.

Like what? Like why? Like why do you think they're building them?

Aaron 28:38

Well, I think Ankit Panda, you know, he's come up a couple of times in the show, has talked about, you know, as part of this, looking at how missile, how missile defense prompts other people. And basically prompts peer adversaries in how they try and defeat them as a matter of a public study. And I know that you have some other ideas about like the missile defeat.

Are they calling it the Missile Defeat Agency now or the Defense Agency? I forgot.

Jeffrey 29:02

Well, this is my idea. It's still the Missile Defense Agency, but I have a modest proposal for the Missile Defense Agency. Lay down. This is the time. I'm chock full of good ideas here. What was... Mattis' nickname was Chaos. Colonel has another outstanding idea. Yeah. Yeah, well... Well, Jeffrey has another outstanding idea.

Aaron 29:24

J House.

Jeffrey 29:27

J House.

Aaron 29:28

It's German.

Jeffrey 29:28

Yeah, we have to work on that. So, listen. It used to be the Strategic Defense Initiative. Then it became the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, BIMDO, which I miss. And then BIMDO became the Missile Defense Agency because, you know, it wasn't just ballistic missiles. It was cruise missiles, like whatever. It is time to end this entity as we know it.

You know, about a decade ago, the National Academies was asked to do this study on boost phase missile defenses. And they like wrap that work up in a couple of weeks. It's like, oh, boost phase missile defenses don't really work. Not a great idea. Check. So they took it upon themselves to do a comprehensive review of the missile defense architecture.

Aaron 30:20

It's a phenomenal report, by the way.

Jeffrey 30:22

It is a phenomenal report. It's phenomenal. I mean, I know it's mission creep and it was bad and they shouldn't have done it, but it was wonderful. It was a great report. And, you know, these are people who like missile defense, right? So, you know, not a nary a hippie among them. And they ultimately – they had a big internal debate, which was never really reported, and I don't know why.

But about half the panel wanted to take missile defense away from the Missile Defense Agency and give it back to the services. Because it's really important to understand that missile defense programs are unlike any other real defense program because they're not really real. The services don't say we need this capability and then pay the money and develop them like any other weapon system subjecting them to all the same you know all the same procurement rd well basically all the same defense funding roles mda just runs them like giant science projects with the plan that someday they will transition them to the services who will say thank you for this very valuable program we'll take it from here and while that has happened in a couple of cases like The ground-based system in Alaska is still run by the Alaska National Guard.

It's still an MDA entity. The Army does not want to pay for this crap. And so my idea is to basically do that, is to give all the missile defense programs back to the services, where they compete like any other weapon system, and to take the Missile Defense Agency and change its name and mission. And so I would call it the Missile Defeat Agency.

And their job would be to think about the mission of defeating missile attacks. And that would not just include the SDI interceptory parts, but special forces, cyber attacks, through interception up to civil defense, if it's appropriate. And they should have only RDT&E money. And that money, I think, should be competitively provided to the services. So basically, we say we have a national mission of missile defeat.

MDA has however many billions of dollars or tens of billions of dollars. I lose track of how big their budget has gotten now. And the services all compete for that money. So like if special forces are like, you know, we think we can do a better job, but we need the following equipment, then that's a thing that MDA could fund, right?

Is the development of equipment, technologies, supporting infrastructure in order to allow special forces to go do this mission or to allow, you know, Cyber Command to go do this mission or, you know, But really to treat it as a mission and to make those interceptor programs compete against other service priorities and also other methods of achieving the same mission.

And you know, if it turns out that the disaster in Alaska is still the best use of funding, then I'll accept that.

Aaron 33:47

There's really no way to justify The system in Alaska. I think we all agree on this. I don't have an answer to that because the system in Alaska... It makes Lisa happy. I don't get the system. I mean, I think we all... I think we would call the Arms Control Podcast... A supporter of theater missile defenses.

Jeffrey 34:07

Yeah.

Aaron 34:08

And I would say of... SM-3 works just fine. And naval missile defense. It's the big one. It's the big one. The disaster in Alaska. The blunda in the tundra. That one I just can't ever get behind. But that makes sense. And you can, I don't know, there's all sorts of fun things you could do with that. But your idea is essentially is to make it compete with the priorities of the other services to make it at least insulated from the sort of what is the monopoly of which it now operates in.

Jeffrey 34:40

Here is the common thread between these two ideas. The use nuclear weapons only against targets that can't be reasonably destroyed by or reliably destroyed by conventional weapons and weapons. Shift to a missile defeat mission and compete the interceptor systems against other alternatives and more broadly other service priorities.

Aaron 35:01

These things have become magic wands and people love them.

Jeffrey 35:07

And they're not magic wands, they're just weapons. And they either work or they don't work. And they either are cost-effective or they're not cost-effective. And if they don't work or are not cost-effective, then don't build them. It's really not that complicated. But they're not, right? They're symbols, they're ideas, they're fantasies, they're penises, they're imbued with all this other just that has nothing to do with the mission.

And, you know, you would think that, you know, when you get to a position of responsibility, you would leave all that behind. But as we see with like all the hypersonic nonsense, you know, you get senior defense officials who still think gliders are faster because it's no longer about the actual military capability. It is about all the emotional baggage that they're bringing to this discussion.

Aaron 35:59

So did we just draft the comprehensive deterrence review posture document? Nah, we just have two good ideas to make the situation slightly less insane. Well, to be honest, they're your ideas. I'm just trying to stay on mute as much as possible. My daughter is marching with a balloon in front of Sesame Street. I like to think every time she screams, that is a full-throated endorsement.

Well, she's now spinning in circles and dancing to Elmo Sesame Street.

Jeffrey 36:25

Oh, so she's spinning in circles, so she's reenacting the last 30 years of missile defense development?

Aaron 36:31

I was about to say she's jumping for joy. Yeah. And doing the happy dance.

Jeffrey 36:38

Oh, I have a happy note.

Aaron 36:40

What's the happy note?

Jeffrey 36:42

For years, I remembered a Bloom County cartoon that was the perfect mockery of SDI. And the cartoon was the characters had decided to apply for funding as like a small business under the SDI program. And their proposal was to ring the earth in dollar bills. And so they basically just requested crates of dollar bills from SDIO. And of course, in the cartoon, they ship them just crates of money.

And I think that that to me was the, like, that is how I look at missile defense. Like we have no idea how this is going to work to ship us crates of money. And I could never find it. And like, I looked hard, like I would go to bookstores and go through Bloom County books. I Googled, I could never find it.

And Matthew Galt, after I complained about this on Twitter, sent it to me and it was every bit as funny as I remember. You should blow it up in frame and put it in your office. I think that is a great idea. I'll I'll repost it on, on Twitter. Yeah.

Aaron 37:58

And then that could be Jeffrey's father's day gift.

Jeffrey 38:01

Oh my God. It was just, it's just, it's just incredible. So like years I've been looking for this damn thing. So to have it finally and be able to see it again and have it be just as, as wonderful as I remember it.

Aaron 38:21

Just incredible. Well, that is a happy note. Anything else we need to hit before doing the sign-off here?

Jeffrey 38:30

No, I got lots of other good ideas for the nuclear posture review, missile defense review, slash integrated deterrence review. But I'm going to... I'll keep lobbing the hand grenades. We'll see what blows up. You should write about it. We should dust those fingers off.

Aaron 38:49

I haven't written anything in so long. There you go. What's your next foreign policy piece? Or you can put it on the old blog. The old blog. All right. Well, thank you, Jeffrey. Thank you, Alara, for joining me. You're now with Blocks. If you enjoyed the show and want to continue to support us, head on over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast.

You can find our Patreon page there and you can become a patron yourself. $3 if you're a student, $5 if you're not. Join the Slack channel on your phones. If you don't want to give any money but still like the show, leave a review on iTunes five stars only. And type in some good stuff because we enjoy reading it.

We actually do read it. With that, Jeffrey, have a good rest of the day. It was a pleasure.