Why the U.S. nuclear weapons policy needs to be discussed in the Democratic debate

The upcoming Democratic Party presidential debate in Los Angeles provides another opportunity for the candidates to address an issue that many Californians are keenly interested in: their plans for U.S. nuclear weapons policy.

The California legislature, city councils in six cities — including Los Angeles and Santa Barbara — and dozens of groups across the state have endorsed Back from the Brink, a national initiative that calls on the U.S. government to take concrete steps to prevent nuclear war.

The campaign specifically recommends that the government renounce the use of nuclear weapons first in a conflict, take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert, end the president’s sole authority to launch a nuclear attack, cancel plans to replace its arsenal with enhanced weaponry, and pursue international agreements to eliminate nuclear stockpiles.

Indeed, California’s congressional delegation is paying attention. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Ted Lieu and others have sponsored legislation to block the development and deployment of new, more dangerous nuclear warheads. Feinstein also cosponsored a no-first-use bill.

Endorsed by 40 municipalities and more than 300 public interest groups nationwide, the Back from the Brink campaign could not be more timely. The risk of nuclear war remains a grave threat to civilization, and security experts warn that the risk of nuclear war is greater today than it has been in decades. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the next president could make America — and the rest of the world — safer by reforming U.S. nuclear policy.

Under the current policy, the United States could start a nuclear war by mistake. How?

The Pentagon keeps 400 land-based missiles on hair-trigger alert so they can be launched quickly upon warning of a Russian attack before they could be destroyed by incoming missiles. If the military received such a warning, the president would have less than 10 minutes to decide whether to launch U.S. missiles. That warning, however, is generated by computers based on radar and satellite data, all of which are fallible.

Frighteningly, there have been false alarms over the years due to a range of technical and human errors. This tight time span in which to make a decision increases the risk of starting a nuclear war based on a false warning.

Keeping missiles on hair-trigger alert is not only dangerous, but also unnecessary. Most U.S. nuclear weapons are hidden at sea on submarines, safe from attack, so the United States can wait to see if a nuclear attack is actually happening before it retaliates.

The PBS Newshour and Politico debate moderators should ask the candidates if they would remove U.S. missiles from hair-trigger alert to eliminate the possibility of starting a nuclear war by mistake.

The next president also could reduce the chance that the United States would deliberately start a nuclear war. Current policy permits the United States to use nuclear weapons first in a non-nuclear conflict with Russia, China or North Korea — all of which are nuclear-armed. Doing so would almost certainly provoke a devastating nuclear response against the United States.

The moderators should ask the candidates whether, if elected, they would clearly state that the only purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack and establish a policy that the United States will never use nuclear weapons first. Such a policy also would reduce the likelihood of a preemptive strike against the United States out of the fear that a U.S. nuclear strike was imminent.

Finally, the debate moderators should ask the candidates if they are committed to maintaining verifiable agreements that limit nuclear forces, how they would reinvigorate U.S.-Russian negotiations, and how they would address North Korea and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Voters in California and across the nation want to know where the candidates stand, which means debate moderators have to ask the right questions. The moderators should press the presidential candidates about what they would do, if elected, to reduce the nuclear threat and guarantee national — and international — security.

Denise Duffield is director of the nuclear threats program at Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles (PSR-LA). David Wright is co-director of the Global Security Program and a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).