Abstract
Mankind cannot unlearn the nuclear secret. Nor is there hope that a grandiose technical scheme, à la President Ronald Reagan’s vision of an impenetrable Strategic Defense Initiative peace shield, will make it possible to emasculate nuclear weapons. Only a true peace can render them obsolete and ineffective, that is, a situation in which nonviolent mechanisms of conflict management have become the universally accepted norm. In such a peace community, war between member states is inconceivable; consequently, the only justification for maintaining armed forces is protection from threats originating outside the community.1 Today the relationship between North America and its European allies meets the requirements of a peace community. The United States, Great Britain, and France deploy nuclear weapons, but mutual confidence among them has reached such a level that their nuclear arsenals are designed to deter outsiders and not to protect them from each other.
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Notes and References
The concept of a peace community is identical with the notion of a security community as developed by Deutsch et al. in the mid-1950s. See Karl W. Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), chap. 1.
For the concept of a peace community see Eckhard Lübkemeier, “Security and Peace in Post-Cold War Europe,” in Armand Clesse and Lothar Rühl, eds., Beyond East-West Confrontation: Searching for a New Security Structure in Europe (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1990), pp. 183–201.
Some may reject the continued use of the term “deterrence” as reflecting “old” thinking in the post-Cold War world. Indeed, in the East-West context deterrence needs to be adapted to fundamentally changed circumstances. Such an attempt is made in this chapter. Nuclear deterrence, however, is a state of affairs as long as nuclear weapons have not been rendered politically impotent and obsolete. Even in the new East-West context, such a stable peace will take a long time to mature. In the intermediate period of controlled mutual disarmament, nuclear weapons retain a residual deterrent quality.
This has been termed the “‘usability paradox’: Nuclear weapons can prevent aggression only if there is a possibility that they will be used, but we do not want to make them so usable that anyone is temped to use one.” The Harvard Nuclear Study Group, Living with Nuclear Weapons (New York: Bantam Books, 1983), p. 34.
Field Marshal Lord Carver, A Policy for Peace (London: Faber and Faber, 1982), p. 102
Erhard Forndran, “Abschreckung und Stabilität—Ziele und Probleme,” in Erhard Forndran and Gert Krell, eds., Kernwaffen im Ost-West-Vergleich: Zur Beurteilung militärischer Potentiale und Fähigkeiten (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1984), p. 48
Jerome H. Kahan, Security in the Nuclear Age: Developing U.S. Strategic Arms Policy (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1975), p. 232; Bericht der Unabhängigen Kommission für Abrüstung und Sicherheit, Der Palme-Bericht (‘Common Security’) (Berlin, West: Severin und Siedler, 1982), p. 59.
The Harvard Nuclear Strategy Group, Living with Nuclear Weapons, pp. 142–46. A variant of this argument posits a similar dilemma between counterforce capabilities and prewar deterrence stability, the difference being that in this case the development of counterforce strategies is said to be motivated not by credibility concerns but the goal of damage limitation should deterrence fail (Kahan, Security in the Nuclear Age, p. 304).
Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 198.
This is not an argument in favor of nuclear war-fighting strategies based on erroneous notions such as the controllability of nuclear exchanges or prevailing against a nuclear opponent. The political Achilles’ heel and technical problems of such strategies will be demonstrated in this chapter. In the present context the argument only serves to stress that employment flexibility and stability are not antithetical concepts per se.
Glenn H. Snyder was among the first to highlight this tradeoff; see his “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” in Paul Seabury, ed., Balance of Power (San Francisco: Chandler, 1965), pp. 198–99. More recently, Jervis has also argued that “stability at the strategic nuclear level can lead to instability at lower levels of violence.”
Robert Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 48.
Robert Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 199.
Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1973), p. 403.
This is argued by Robert Art, “Between Assured Destruction and Nuclear Victory,” in Russell Hardin et al., eds., Nuclear Deterrence: Ethics and Strategy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 126–27
McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 588
Lawrence Freedman, in Oliver Ramsbotham, ed., Choices: Nuclear and Non-nuclear Defense Options (London: Brassey’s, 1987), pp. 236–37.
Phil Williams, “Nuclear Deterrence,” in John Baylis et al., eds., Contemporary Strategy: Theories and Concepts (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1987), p. 134. Bundy sees a similar tradeoff: “While these fears [of nuclear disaster] have helped to keep us away from nuclear war, we must recognize that they have also fueled the nuclear arms competition.”
McGeorge Bundy, “Existential Deterrence and Its Consequences,” in Douglas MacLean, ed., The Security Gamble (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984), p. 11.
Erich Fromm, “Argumente zur einseitigen Abrüstung,” in Donald G. Brennan, ed., Strategie der Abrüstung: Achtundzwanzig Problemanalysen (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1962), pp. 211–12; enlarged German edition of Arms Control, Disarmament, and National Security (New York: Braziller, 1961)
Dieter Senghaas, Abschreckung und Frieden: Studien zur Kritik organisierter Friedlosigkeit (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1972), p. 104.
Senghaas, Abschreckung und Frieden, and Dieter Senghaas, Rüstung und Militarismus (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1972), chap. 2.
For example, McGwire has tried to demonstrate that adherence to the “deterrence dogma” (“the body of theory that grew up around nuclear weapons in the 1950s”) has had a lasting and damaging effect on American domestic and foreign policy. Michael McGwire “Deterrence: The problem—not the solution,” International Affairs 62 (Winter 1985/6), pp. 55–70.
This is well reflected in the following statement issued by a grouping not known for a pronuclear attitude: “We are convinced that nuclear weapons have changed the security calculations of nations. They can no longer achieve security at each other’s expense. The existence of nuclear weapons creates common interests which transcend ideological, political, and economic divisions.” Statement from the European Social Democratic and Socialist Parties of Countries Belonging to the Atlantic Alliance, Rome, November 19, 1988.
Or, to put it in a general fashion, “the risk involved is composed of two elements: the chance of something happening and the amount of damage caused by such an occurrence.” Daniel Frei, with the collaboration of Christian Catrina, Risks of Unintentional Nuclear War (Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 1982), p. 222.
Richard H. Ullman, “Denuclearizing International Politics,” Ethics 95 (April 1985), p. 586.
Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better, Adelphi Papers no. 171 (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981), p. 21.
For a forceful argument showing the limits of deterrence on the basis of historical case studies, see Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), esp. chaps. 6–8
Lebow, “Deterrence Reconsidered: The Challenge of Recent Research,” Survival 27 (January/February 1985), pp. 20–28.
John Mearsheimer has expressed a similar warning in Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 65–66, 208–12.
“Nevertheless, it is perhaps the central tension in deterrence, especially as practiced by a democracy, that its ultimate threat is to engage in a senseless act of total destruction. It is bizarre for a state to maintain its security by making its adversaries believe that it is prepared to bring about the end of its civilization.” Robert Jervis, “Deterrence Theory Revisited,” World Politics 31 (January 1979) p. 300.
Ullman, “Denuclearizing International Politics,” p. 587.
“By the year 2000, more than two dozen developing nations will have ballistic missiles, 15 of those countries will have the scientific skills to make their own, and half of them either have or are near to getting a nuclear capability, as well.” U.S. Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, opening remarks to the Second Annual Conservative Leadership Conference, November 9, 1990, in U.S. Policy Information and Texts, Embassy of the United States of America, Bonn, no. 155, November 13, 1990, p. 21.
Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 119.
Michael Howard, Clausewitz (London: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 70.
This is a slight modification of Bracken’s rather macabre statement that “people just don’t like to be reminded that the United States has a nuclear force that can instantly turn someone’s pleasant afternoon into a traumatic confrontation with the apocalypse.” Paul Bracken, The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 69.
Henry A. Kissinger, The Necessity for Choice: Prospects of American Foreign Policy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1966) p. 62.
Once a state possesses a secure retaliatory capability, pressing it to the point of complete defeat could provoke a devastating nuclear strike. Therefore, war against a nuclear opponent cannot be waged to force his unconditional surrender; instead, it must be guided by more limited objectives. On this need, see Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), pp. 313–14
Herman Kahn, On Escalation (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), pp. 110, 200–5
William W. Kaufmann, “The Requirements of Deterrence” and “Force and Foreign Policy,” in William W. Kaufmann, ed., Military Policy and National Security (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), p. 24 and p. 244, respectively.
Thus, then-Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger suggested that “if we were to maintain continued communications with the Soviet leaders during the war, and if we were to describe precisely and meticulously the limited nature of our actions, including the desire to avoid attacking their urban industrial base, then in spite of whatever one says historically in advance that everything must go all out, when the existential circumstances arise, political leaders on both sides will be under powerful pressure to continue to be sensible.” Quoted in Lynn Etheridge Davis, Limited Nuclear Options: Deterrence and the New American Doctrine, Adelphi Papers no. 121 (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1975), p. 7.
Henry A. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), p. 185.
Kahn, On Escalation, pp. 133, 143; Kissinger, The Necessity for Choice, p. 64; Schelling, Arms and Influence, p. 159.
Desmond Ball, “U.S. Strategic Forces: How Would They Be Used?” International Security 1 (Winter 1982/1983), p. 46.
Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), p. 397.
Leon Wieseltier, “When Deterrence Fails,” Foreign Affairs 63 (Spring 1985), p. 829.
Klaus Knorr, “Controlling Nuclear War,” International Security 9 (Spring 1985), p. 88.
This distinction between negative and positive control draws on John D. Steinbruner, “Choices and Trade-offs,” in Ashton B. Carter et al., eds., Managing Nuclear Operations (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1987), p. 539.
A U.S. Navy spokesman has confirmed that there is no technological safeguard against an unauthorized launch of submarine-launched ballistic missiles. In his words, negative control is exercised procedurally: “There is a requirement that multiple people on board that ship, essentially the entire crew, must execute their responsibilities once a valid launch order has been received from the President before those missiles could or would be launched.” (U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, 99th Cong., 1st sess., Hearings, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1986, Part 7 (Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, 1985), p. 3855.
Bracken, The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces, p. 168; see also Bruce G. Blair, “Alerting in Crisis and Conventional War,” in Carter et al., eds., Managing Nuclear Operations, p. 113. Kelleher, however, maintains that “the risk involved in tying release authority and the transmission of PAL codes to a decision to disperse is, and will remain, politically unacceptable.” Catherine McArdle Kelleher, “Managing NATO’s Tactical Nuclear Operations,” Survival 30 (January/February 1988), p. 76.
In Clausewitz’s words: “War is a clash between major interests, which is resolved by bloodshed—that is the only way in which it differs from other conflicts.” On War, p. 149.
“Subordinating the political point of view to the military would be absurd, for it is policy that has created the war. Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa. No other possibility exists, then, than to subordinate the military point of view to the political.” Ibid, p. 607.
Ibid., p. 579.
Ibid., p. 87.
Bernard Brodie, “Implications for Military Policy,” in Bernard Brodie, ed., The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1946), p. 76.
“Nuclear Notebook,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 46 (June 1990) and (July 1990), p. 48 and p. 49, respectively.
The phrase is borrowed from McGeorge Bundy, “To Cap the Volcano,” Foreign Affairs 48 (October 1969), pp. 1–20.
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Lübkemeier, E. (1992). Building Peace under the Nuclear Sword of Damocles. In: Garrity, P.J., Maaranen, S.A. (eds) Nuclear Weapons in the Changing World. Issues in International Security. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-5742-1_14
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