Project Atom; A Competitive Strategies Approach to Defining U.S. Nuclear Strategy and Posture for 2025-2050

Format is approximately 8.5 inches by 11 inches. ix, [1], 143, [1] pages. Footnotes. Boxes. Table. Appendices. About the Authors. Some ink marks noted. This is a Report of the CSIS International Security Program. Joining CSIS in 2001, Murdock has completed studies on a range of defense and national security issues, including strategic planning, defense policy and governance, and U.S. nuclear weapons strategy and policy. He directed the four-phase study on Defense Department reform, Beyond Goldwater-Nichols: USG and Defense Reform for a New Strategic Era, which released reports in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2008. Murdock is currently leading several ?track two? dialogues on nuclear policy issues?one involving the United States, United Kingdom, and France, and the other involving the United States, South Korea, and Japan. He has completed studies on methodological approaches to building force-planning constructs and on nuclear posture implications of U.S. extended deterrence and assurance. He is the principal author of Improving the Practice of National Security Strategy: A New Approach for the Post?Cold War World and The Department of Defense and the Nuclear Mission in the 21st Century. He coauthored Revitalizing the U.S. Nuclear Deterrent and Nuclear Weapons in 21st Century U.S. National Security. Murdock taught military strategy & military innovation at the National War College. From 1995 to 2000, in the Office of the Air Force Chief of Staff, he was deputy special assistant to the chief for long range planning, he helped develop a strategic vision for the 2020 Air Force. Project Atom is a forward-looking, blue-sky review of U.S. nuclear strategy and posture in a 2025-2050 world in which nuclear weapons are still necessary. The report highlights and addresses the current deficit in national security attention paid to the continued relevance and importance of U.S. nuclear strategy and force posture, provides a new open-source baseline for understanding the nuclear strategies of other countries, and offers a credible, intellectually tested, and nonpartisan range of options for the United States to consider in revising its own nuclear strategy. Project Atom took a competitive strategies approach to its zero-based, ?blue-sky? review of U.S. nuclear strategy and force posture. Three independent think tank teams?the Stimson Center, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS ), and the National Institute for Public Policy (NI PP)?addressed the fundamental issues: ? What should U.S. nuclear strategy be for the new era, defined as 2025?2050? ? What U.S. nuclear posture is needed to support that strategy? Their analysis (which can be found in the appendices of this report) was unconstrained by current strategy (e.g., reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. strategy) and current policy (e.g., the prohibition against new nuclear weapons or new nuclear capabilities), but was conducted within a common framework of assumptions about the future security environment, likely technological trends, and resource constraints. After leading the development of the common analytic framework and participating in the debate among the think tank teams, Clark Murdock drafted a recommended nuclear strategy and posture for 2025?2050, defended it at a half-day Project Atom working group meeting, consulted with additional experts, and drafted the study report. The competitive strategies approach, including the use of external (to the think tank teams) experts, was extremely helpful as he developed and refined the recommended nuclear strategy and posture.…