Twin political paths President Trump can take to ensure nuclear deterrence

US President Donald Trump (2L) and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin wait ahead a meeting in Helsinki, on July 16, 2018. (Photo credit ALEXEY NIKOLSKY/AFP via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump enters office at a possible inflection point in the ongoing nuclear competition with China and Russia. Though it is a moment of great peril for the US nuclear modernization program, it is also one of great opportunity — should Trump choose to seize it.

Both China and Russia have exploited America’s glacial effort to modernize its aging nuclear arsenal and atrophied defense-industrial base by rapidly expanding their own. Beijing has grown the world’s largest fleet of nuclear-capable land-based missile launchers. And Moscow has locked in a glaring theater nuclear advantage in Europe that helped constrain former President Joe Biden’s support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia. Compounding these developments is the fact that Washington, due to its deficient defense-industrial capacity, cannot reverse these trends in the near term by simply accelerating its troubled nuclear modernization program.

And yet, despite the long-term structural problems with nuclear modernization, Trump still has readily available options at his disposal. Two near-term options, in particular, stand out. Both are political in nature, dealing with the “software” of nuclear alliances and the mechanics of US domestic leadership. And both would generate immediate deterrence payoffs.

First, Trump should move quickly to initiate political consultations within NATO to integrate Poland, in some form, into the alliance’s nuclear mission. Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the deployment of Russian short-range nuclear weapons in Belarus, Warsaw has expressed interest in joining NATO’s nuclear-sharing program — an arrangement in which forward-stationed gravity bombs remain in US custody in peacetime, but are carried by allied aircraft during crises and wartime.

Poland’s fervor to host US nuclear weapons is undoubtedly a reflection of NATO’s failure to adjust to two transformations in the post-Cold War European security environment: the migration of the alliance’s center of gravity from Germany to Poland, and Moscow’s massive theater nuclear buildup that dwarfs the hundred or so American gravity bombs based in countries far from Russia’s border, like Germany.

Integrating Poland into NATO’s nuclear-sharing system would address NATO’s changing geography and Warsaw’s growing fear of Russia’s theater buildup. Washington would not necessarily have to station gravity bombs in Poland, where they would be more vulnerable to preemptive attack. Polish pilots, after all, could always fly dual-capable aircraft based in Germany, as both nation’s pilots will soon be trained on the F-35A.

A larger wrinkle would be to bring Finland into the nuclear fold and field weapons in both Poland and Finland — whether permanently or only for temporary rotations. This alternative might appeal to Helsinki, which has expressed a nascent interest in revising its long-held prohibition of nuclear weapons transiting its territory. It would mean Poland was not the only nuclear-armed NATO member along Russia’s border. And it would have the bonus effect of creating a nuclearized perimeter on Russia’s frontier that would greatly complicate Kremlin planning.

Of course, one can never know what, exactly, will deter Moscow. But Russia has a historic tendency to pick on the “little guy” — and a nuclear-capable NATO frontline is no small matter. The fundamental point, though, at least in the short term, would be for Trump to send a political message to Russia via allied consultations that American security is indivisible from NATO.

To be sure, this option is not a rationale for dramatically scaling back US conventional forces in Europe — which would only weaken the alliance’s overall deterrence. Nor should it be wielded as a bargaining chip in whatever negotiations Trump might pursue regarding the Russia-Ukraine war. Nuclear consultations should be treated on their own terms: as an effort to reinforce NATO via two allies who are already devoting vast resources to their own defense.

The second option readily available to Trump would be for him to get the White House back in the business of explaining to the American people the mounting threats they face — and what this means for their security. Here, Trump has a tremendous opportunity to outshine Biden, who neglected his duty to make the public case for greater defense spending. The simple act of adequately resourcing the military will have a deterrence effect by showing Beijing and Moscow that Washington is serious about defense. But sending this message will be impossible unless Americans hear from their president why they should support a larger defense budget.

Indeed, Trump can rip a page directly out of the Cold War playbook of Ronald Reagan, the last president to make the case for and oversee a military buildup to counter a nuclear-armed peer adversary. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Reagan hammered home the point that the country was on the wrong end of adverse trends in the Soviet-American strategic balance. And he clearly articulated, in speech after speech, why the country required modernized missiles and bombers to penetrate improved Soviet air defenses.

Reagan’s rhetoric and preparations to deploy these new capabilities ultimately had a demoralizing impact on the Soviets and yielded a landmark arms-control agreement on theater nuclear forces. Indeed, the Kremlin, as one Soviet official later recalled, was “already compromising” before the US nuclear buildup even began to pick up steam in the mid-1980s.

Fortunately for President Trump, the measures discussed above don’t require immediate solutions to America’s troubled defense-industrial base. They simply require the will to speak frankly with allies and the American people.

That nuclear modernization is beset with delays, a work-force shortage, and funding gaps is no reason to surrender to despair. President Trump, like Reagan, can achieve peace through strength if he seizes the opportunities before him.

Kyle Balzer is a Jeane Kirkpatrick Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute