Some questions for the candidates

From Andrew Bacevich:

• What is the present-day justification for maintaining the US nuclear “triad,” a strike force consisting of manned bombers and land-based ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles?
• Why is the Pentagon embarking upon a decades-long, trillion-dollar program to modernize that triad, fielding a new generation of bombers, missiles and submarines along with an arsenal of new warheads? Is that program necessary?
• How do advances in non-nuclear weaponry — for example, in the realm of cyberwarfare — affect theories of nuclear deterrence devised by the likes of Kahn and Wohlstetter during the 1950s and 1960s? Does the logic of those theories still pertain?
• What lessons should be drawn from America’s costly and disappointing post-9/11 wars and how should those lessons apply to future policy?