America First in a Nuclear World
By Kevin R. James
August 17, 2023
Struggles between hostile nuclear powers end with nuclear war unless regime change that eliminates the hostility happens first. The U.S. needs a national security strategy that aims at regime change for its opponents.
An America First national security strategy that aims above all to keep America safe, prosperous, and free at home must begin by facing a fundamental truth about our nuclear world: there is no such thing as a Cold war between hostile nuclear powers. While it may appear that the U.S. is in Cold wars with Russia, China, North Korea, and (soon) Iran underpinned by nuclear deterrence, this is an illusion. Nuclear deterrence is inherently and inescapably unstable — it can fail during a crisis if events spin out of control, and it can fail during non-crisis times if an early warning system failure triggers a retaliatory strike by mistake. Over a long enough horizon, then, a game of deterrence roulette inevitably ends with a nuclear exchange — as the U.S./Soviet struggle nearly did more than once — unless regime change in one party or the other that eliminates the hostility happens first. So, what we think of as a deterrence based Cold war is in reality a Regime Change or Nuclear Exchange (RCONE) war.
The U.S. needs a national security strategy to prevail in the RCONE wars it is fighting rather than the Cold wars it isn’t. The principal objective of this strategy must be to utilize all instruments of national power to bring about regime change in the opponent(s) in a manner that minimizes the cumulative long run probability of a nuclear exchange. That is, the U.S. needs to replace its current Cold war strategy of Integrated Deterrence/Containment with an RCONE war strategy of Integrated Rollback.
Cold Wars or RCONE Wars?
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/08/17/america_first_in_a_nuclear_world_973529.html
