Policy Document Series · Issue 28 of 35 · April 2026
Democratic Control, Fiscal Responsibility & the Path from Deterrence to Disarmament
Nuclear weapons are the only true existential threat to human civilization. The Doomsday Clock stands at 85 seconds to midnight — the closest in 79 years. The United States is spending $946 billion over 2025–2034 to replace every leg of the nuclear triad simultaneously. One person holds unchecked authority to launch the entire arsenal. No statute limits that authority. This must change.
Nuclear weapons are the only true existential threat to human civilization. Peer-reviewed science is unambiguous: a full US-Russia exchange would kill approximately 5 billion people through nuclear winter-induced agricultural collapse — not from blast, but from famine. The Doomsday Clock stands at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest in 79 years, with arms control collapsed and three nuclear powers modernizing simultaneously.
The Common Good Party's position: nuclear weapons demand democratic accountability, fiscal discipline, and a credible path toward disarmament. One person — the President — retains sole, unchecked, legally unregulated authority to launch the entire arsenal. No statute limits or regulates this authority. Under launch-on-warning posture, the decision window is approximately 10 minutes — based on sensor data that has produced false alarms. 61% of Americans are uncomfortable with this arrangement. This is not national security. It is unchecked executive authority over the most consequential decision in human history.
Against this reality, the United States is spending $946 billion over 2025–2034 — $95 billion per year, more than the entire federal contribution to K-12 education — to replace every leg of the nuclear triad at once, with the Sentinel ICBM suffering an 81% cost overrun that the Pentagon waved through with a "no alternatives" finding. 716 scientists including 10 Nobel laureates have called for Sentinel's cancellation.
This platform rests on six core commitments: (1) adopt No First Use by law; (2) reform presidential launch authority, requiring consensus of President, Vice President, and Secretary of Defense for any first-use order; (3) cancel the Sentinel ICBM and move to a submarine-bomber dyad, saving $120–149 billion over 30 years; (4) reduce to 1,000 deployed warheads through a verified successor to New START; (5) restore arms control and Iran diplomacy; and (6) redirect hundreds of billions toward healthcare, climate, education, and the cleanup of contaminated land the nuclear program left behind.
The nuclear threat is not a relic of the Cold War. It is growing. The Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight than at any point in its 79-year history. Arms control has collapsed. Three nuclear powers are modernizing simultaneously. One person holds unchecked launch authority. And the United States is spending nearly $1 trillion it cannot account for to replace weapons whose rationale has not been publicly debated in decades.
The Iran lesson: The JCPOA extended Iran's nuclear breakout time to 12 months with the most comprehensive verification regime ever applied to any nation. The 2018 US withdrawal triggered systematic Iranian escalation. Current breakout time for enough material for 5–6 weapons: under 2 weeks. The lesson of arms control abandonment is not theoretical — it is playing out in real time, and the consequence is a nuclear-armed Iran being assessed at 40–50% probability following the post-war period.
The current nuclear posture is not the result of deliberate democratic design. It evolved from Cold War emergency decisions that were never revisited, arms control frameworks that were built over decades and dismantled in under ten years, and a political culture that treats the most consequential weapons in human history as exempt from the scrutiny applied to every other federal program.
1945–1960s
Sole Presidential Authority — A Historical Accident, Not a Design
The current sole authority structure was not designed by democratic deliberation — it evolved from early Cold War urgency, when speed of response to a Soviet first strike seemed paramount. The architecture built around that assumption — 10-minute decision windows, launch-on-warning posture, no statutory check on presidential authority — has never been revisited despite 79 years of nuclear history demonstrating how close it has come to catastrophic failure. No democratic body has ever voted to give one person this power.
1983 & 1995
Near-Misses That Human Civilization Survived by Luck
In 1983, Soviet Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov received a warning of five incoming US nuclear missiles and personally decided it was a false alarm — correctly. In 1995, Boris Yeltsin activated the nuclear football after a Norwegian scientific rocket was mistaken for a US submarine-launched missile. Human civilization survived both incidents because one person made the right call under 10-minute pressure. That is not a system. That is luck — and the architecture that made those moments possible is still intact today.
2002–2019
The Arms Control Architecture Dismantled
The US-Russia arms control framework took decades to build and less than a decade to destroy. The ABM Treaty, signed in 1972 and cornerstone of strategic stability, was unilaterally withdrawn from in 2002. The INF Treaty, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear missiles from Europe, was abandoned in 2019 over Russian violations — without a multilateral framework to replace it. Open Skies, providing mutual aerial surveillance transparency, was withdrawn from by both sides. Each dismantlement removed a verification layer and lowered the cost of arms race escalation.
2018
JCPOA Withdrawal — The Proof of Concept for Diplomatic Failure
The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action extended Iran's nuclear breakout time to 12 months with the most comprehensive verification regime ever applied. The 2018 US withdrawal was followed by systematic Iranian escalation. Breakout time has since compressed from 12 months to under 2 weeks — the direct and measurable consequence of abandoning verified diplomacy. This is the clearest available evidence of what arms control abandonment costs.
February 5, 2026
New START Expires — No Treaty Now Limits Either Arsenal
New START — the last remaining US-Russia treaty limiting strategic nuclear warheads — expired February 5, 2026 with no successor in place. Russia suspended participation in 2023 and allowed it to expire. Both sides are now legally free to increase their arsenals without limit for the first time since the 1972 SALT I agreement. The conditions for unconstrained three-way US-Russia-China arms race competition are now in place.
2024–2026
Calculated Ambiguity — The Unchallenged Status Quo
The United States has never adopted a No First Use policy. Current declaratory policy reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first "in extreme circumstances." President Biden campaigned on NFU adoption but his 2022 Nuclear Posture Review rejected both NFU and "sole purpose" as creating "unacceptable risk" — described by the Federation of American Scientists as "a disappointment." China has maintained a declared NFU policy since 1964 without sacrificing deterrence credibility. The argument that NFU is incompatible with deterrence is contradicted by its longest-serving practitioner.
The international community has developed multiple frameworks for nuclear restraint, disarmament, and nonproliferation — some of which the United States has signed but not ratified, others that demonstrate credible alternatives to the current posture, and one that proves voluntary disarmament is possible.
| Framework / Country | What They Did | Lesson for the U.S. |
|---|---|---|
| NPT191 states parties | Created a legal framework separating nuclear "haves" from "have-nots" with a legally binding Article VI disarmament obligation on nuclear states. | Simultaneous full-triad modernization violates the spirit of Article VI. Two consecutive NPT Review Conferences (2015, 2022) failed to reach consensus because nuclear states modernize while demanding others remain non-nuclear. The compliance gap is the treaty's greatest threat. |
| TPNW74 states parties | First legally binding international ban on nuclear weapons. Entered into force January 2021. ICAN won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for driving its adoption. | The US should attend TPNW meetings as observer, formally acknowledge the humanitarian case for prohibition, and commit to a phased approach toward treaty goals consistent with strategic realities. |
| South Africa6 weapons, dismantled 1989 | The only nation to independently develop and then verifiably dismantle its entire nuclear weapons program under IAEA inspection — without external pressure. | Voluntary disarmament is possible. Security does not require a permanent arsenal. The South African precedent is the most powerful existing proof of concept for the disarmament pathway. |
| Ukraine, Belarus, KazakhstanBudapest Memorandum, 1994 | Surrendered inherited Soviet weapons in exchange for security assurances from the US, UK, and Russia. Russia's 2022 invasion was a direct violation of those assurances. | Russia's Budapest Memorandum violation is the single greatest blow to nonproliferation credibility in 30 years. It must be named explicitly and addressed through strengthened extended deterrence commitments to US allies facing similar pressures. |
| ChinaNFU since 1964 | Maintained a declared No First Use policy for 60+ years while building and modernizing its arsenal. Has never abandoned NFU despite growing arsenal size. | NFU is fully compatible with credible deterrence. The US argument that NFU creates "unacceptable risk" is directly contradicted by 60 years of Chinese NFU practice. China is the world's longest-serving NFU practitioner. |
| Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones5 zones, Southern Hemisphere majority | Tlatelolco, Rarotonga, Bangkok, Pelindaba, and Semipalatinsk ban nuclear weapons across Latin America, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Asia. | The US has signed but not ratified protocols for Bangkok, Rarotonga, Pelindaba, and Semipalatinsk. Ratify all four. This costs nothing strategically and demonstrates US commitment to the NWFZ framework. |
The JCPOA lesson, stated plainly: The most comprehensive verification regime ever applied to any nation extended Iran's breakout timeline to 12 months. Its abandonment compressed that timeline to under 2 weeks. Diplomacy with verification worked. Its abandonment created precisely the crisis it was designed to prevent. Every arms control skeptic must account for this empirical record before arguing that diplomacy is naive.
Six commitments that are simultaneously a security policy, a fiscal policy, an environmental justice policy, and a democratic accountability policy. These are not in tension. They are the same argument: that the most dangerous and expensive weapons in human history deserve the same democratic scrutiny, cost discipline, and strategic rigor as every other federal program.
Adopt NFU through legislation, not executive declaration. The United States will never be the first to use nuclear weapons. An executive declaration of NFU is revocable at presidential discretion — Congressional legislation enacting NFU makes it a structural commitment requiring legislative action to reverse, subjecting any change to public accountability.
This is not weakness. China has maintained this position since 1964 without sacrificing deterrence credibility. India adopted NFU in 2003. NFU reduces crisis instability — it reduces adversary pressure to launch on warning, lowers the temperature in escalation scenarios, and strengthens the normative framework that NFU is compatible with credible deterrence. The "calculated ambiguity" status quo creates uncertainty that adversaries must plan against, and that planning increases the risk of miscalculation in a crisis.
No single person should hold unchecked authority to initiate nuclear war. Require consensus of President + Vice President + Secretary of Defense for any nuclear first use order. Support the Markey-Lieu Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act, which would prohibit nuclear first strike without a Congressional declaration of war while preserving presidential authority to respond to a confirmed incoming attack.
Cancel Sentinel. The Sentinel ICBM — $140.9 billion, 81% overrun, Nunn-McCurdy breach — has been endorsed for cancellation by former Secretaries of Defense Perry and Mattis, former STRATCOM commander General Cartwright, and 716 scientists including 10 Nobel laureates. Retire land-based ICBMs at the end of Minuteman III's service life. Save $120–149 billion over 30 years.
Pursue a verified successor to New START targeting 1,000 deployed strategic warheads. SIPRI research identifies 1,000 warheads as more than sufficient for deterrence. Establish this target in law. Engage China in separate bilateral arms control discussions appropriate to its current arsenal size — not in a trilateral parity framework China has firmly and correctly refused as "unreasonable and unrealistic" given its arsenal is one-eighth America's total stockpile.
Return to JCPOA+. The 2015 JCPOA extended Iran's nuclear breakout time to 12 months with the most comprehensive verification regime ever applied. Israeli strikes in June 2025 set the program back 1–2 years, but the post-war probability of Iran pursuing weapons is assessed at 40–50%. A JCPOA+ framework with longer sunset provisions, broader missile coverage, and updated verification is essential. The alternative is a nuclear-armed Iran within this decade.
Permanently reauthorize RECA with no sunset clause. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was expanded in July 2025: $100,000 per claimant, expanded geography, $7.7 billion in funding — but it expires in 2028. Permanently reauthorize RECA. No more forcing Indigenous, Pacific Islander, and downwinder communities to re-litigate their right to compensation every few years. 2,056 nuclear tests by 8 nations killed an estimated 4 million people prematurely. Those who bore that burden deserve permanent, not recurring, acknowledgment.
This is primarily a policy of savings, not expenditure. The United States is spending $946 billion over 2025–2034 on nuclear modernization — $95 billion per year, more than the entire federal contribution to K-12 education. Our policy reduces that spending dramatically while maintaining credible deterrence. Every dollar saved is redirected to domestic priorities.
The fiscal case for nuclear restraint is straightforward: A submarine-bomber dyad provides deterrence that is more survivable, less vulnerable to use-it-or-lose-it crisis pressure, and far cheaper than the full triad. The Arms Control Association concludes: "There are no time-sensitive targets that require prompt ICBM launch." We are spending $140.9 billion on a weapons system that former Secretaries of Defense say is unnecessary, that 716 scientists including 10 Nobel laureates say should be canceled, and that breached the Nunn-McCurdy Act. This is not defense spending. It is waste.
"Eliminating ICBMs weakens deterrence."
Former Secretary of Defense William Perry, former STRATCOM commander General James Cartwright, and former Secretary of Defense James Mattis have all endorsed a submarine-bomber dyad without ICBMs as consistent with credible deterrence. A single Ohio-class submarine carries enough warheads to destroy any nation. ICBMs, in fixed known locations, create use-it-or-lose-it pressure in a crisis and are the least survivable leg of the triad. The Arms Control Association concludes: "There are no time-sensitive targets that require prompt ICBM launch." Deterrence depends on survivability, not on land-based vulnerability. The "nuclear sponge" argument — that ICBMs protect the coasts by drawing warheads to Montana and Wyoming — requires detonating hundreds of nuclear weapons on American agricultural land. That is not a defense of America. It is a theory that sacrifices the interior to protect the coast.
"No First Use emboldens adversaries and undermines extended deterrence."
China has maintained NFU since 1964 without any evidence of emboldening. India adopted NFU in 2003. The United States has NATO allies, AUKUS partners, and bilateral security commitments backed by the world's most capable conventional military, the most survivable submarine fleet, and a nuclear arsenal sufficient to destroy any aggressor in a second strike. The argument that adversaries will be emboldened by the removal of first-strike ambiguity is not supported by 60 years of Chinese NFU practice, by the logic of deterrence (which requires survivable retaliation, not first-strike capability), or by the security records of the countries that have adopted NFU. The US conventional military advantage makes nuclear first use unnecessary against any non-nuclear threat.
"Arms control with Russia is naive given Ukraine and Russian behavior."
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is precisely the reason the arms control architecture must be rebuilt, not abandoned. The alternative to negotiated limits is unconstrained competition: both sides legally free to increase their arsenals without limit for the first time since 1972, while simultaneously modernizing and adding new destabilizing weapons. The INF Treaty's collapse has allowed Russia to deploy intermediate-range missiles in Europe and the US to consider the same — exactly the instability arms control was designed to prevent. Arms control does not require trust — it requires verification, which the New START inspection regime provided successfully for over a decade. The answer to Russian bad behavior is stronger verification, not zero verification.
"We cannot reduce while China is rapidly expanding its arsenal."
China currently has approximately 500 warheads — one-tenth of America's total stockpile. Even if China reaches 1,000 warheads by 2030 as DOD projects, the US at 1,000 deployed warheads would have equivalent deployed capability and superior survivability through its submarine fleet. The trilateral arms race argument assumes that matching China warhead-for-warhead is the only path to deterrence. It is not. Deterrence requires survivable retaliation, not numerical superiority. Demanding parity before any reduction creates a permanent excuse for unlimited spending while foreclosing the bilateral engagement with China that could eventually lead to multilateral limits. The US has ten times China's warheads. If 1,000 is sufficient for deterrence — and SIPRI research says it is — then the US can reduce to 1,000 without waiting for China to reach parity.
| #6 | Israel & Gaza Conditional aid framework applies to nuclear-armed allies. Unconditional relationships that insulate partners from accountability are rejected across the platform. Nuclear-armed actors require special engagement frameworks. |
| #7 | Ukraine & NATO Russia's invasion violated the Budapest Memorandum security assurances Ukraine received when it surrendered its nuclear weapons — the single greatest blow to nonproliferation credibility in 30 years. Strengthened extended deterrence commitments to NATO allies are the direct response. |
| #8 | China Policy China's rapid nuclear expansion toward 1,000+ warheads by 2030 makes bilateral arms control engagement essential. Confrontation alone fuels the three-way arms race it is supposed to prevent. Engagement at arsenal-appropriate scale is required. |
| #9 | Defense Spending Pentagon must pass audit before any budget increases. The 15–20% defense budget reduction targets include nuclear programs. Sentinel's 81% overrun is exactly the unchecked spending the Pentagon audit requirement is designed to expose and prevent. |
| #11 | Climate & Energy Nuclear winter science establishes that even a "limited" regional exchange of 100 warheads threatens global agricultural collapse and multi-billion famine. Nuclear policy and climate policy are both existential-threat frameworks requiring the same urgency. |
| #22 | Racial Justice Nuclear test site selection and production site placement constitute environmental racism. The burdens fell overwhelmingly on Indigenous, Pacific Islander, Kazakh, and rural American communities — communities that did not benefit from the weapons that contaminated their land. |
| #23 | Indigenous Rights Marshall Islands, Navajo uranium mines, Western Shoshone land at the Nevada Test Site, Aboriginal land at Maralinga — Indigenous peoples bore the primary health burden of the nuclear age without consent, without compensation, and without remediation. |
| #25 | Infrastructure Hanford cleanup ($364–589B projected through 2100+) and other production site remediation are permanent infrastructure obligations that belong in the infrastructure investment framework — not treated as discretionary budget variables. |
"Nuclear weapons are the only threat that can end civilization in an afternoon. Democratic accountability demands that no single person holds that power unchecked, and fiscal responsibility demands that we stop spending a trillion dollars to maintain it."— The Common Good Party
Sources & References