GLOBAL DIALOGUE
Volume 8 ● Number 1–2 ● Winter/Spring 2006—Nuclear Perils
Navigating the Second Nuclear Age: Proliferation and Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century
It is vital that decision-makers in the West understand that deterrence is not a panacea: they must not expect that threats, whether presently emerging or as yet unforeseen, can all be addressed successfully by consulting “the Cold War Deterrence Manual”. Rather, a variety of diplomatic and military measures—including ballistic-missile defences, which are often incorrectly perceived as being “anti-deterrence”—will have a role in creating a successful deterrence policy in this century. Every individual case will be unique. Sometimes it will be possible to deter would-be proliferators from obtaining nuclear arms; at other times, it will not, leaving the options of using military force to prevent proliferation or accepting an increase in the size of the nuclear club. In the latter contingency, efforts to deter nuclear use will often be successful, but prudent policymakers must assume that there will be occasions when such efforts fail and damage-mitigation will be critical. Did Deterrence Work?Far too often, observers of international politics simply assume that leaders will not undertake particular actions because it would not be in their best interest to do so—with “best interest” being defined by the observer. Thus, it is widely assumed that North Korea or Iran would, for example, never provide nuclear devices to terrorists or pre-emptively attack South Korea or Israel with such weapons. In both of these extreme examples, this assumption is probably correct: certainly, Pyongyang and Tehran are aware that such actions would be extraordinarily risky. However, even a very high probability that an event will not occur is not the same as a certainty that it will not occur.
When considering the problem of deterrence in this century, many observers essentially shrug and claim that because deterrence worked in the past against the Soviet Union, which possessed many thousands of nuclear warheads as well as potent conventional forces, it surely must work against comparatively weak foes with only a small number of warheads. While this argument may appear reasonable at first sight, it is in fact grossly deficient.
There are still a great many outstanding controversies concerning the reliability of deterrence during the Cold War. To claim that deterrence theory was proven to have worked because there was no United States–Soviet military conflict, much less a general nuclear war, is to assume a causal relationship which may or may not exist. Certainly, the United States attempted to deter Soviet military aggression, but whether American deterrence actually prevented war between the two powers is unknown and, ultimately, unknowable. History, unlike a laboratory experiment, cannot be repeated, and we have no “control Cold War” to compare with the real Cold War. If American strategists had not developed a sophisticated body of deterrence theory, perhaps a nuclear conflict would have occurred—or perhaps it would not. Similarly, perhaps a US–Soviet nuclear conflict would have occurred despite American deterrence if not for historical happenstance. Notably, in recent years some scholars, taking advantage of access to previously unavailable Soviet archives, have argued that at the time of his death Stalin may have been seriously contemplating a war against the West; it could be that a well-timed stroke (or poisoning) saved the world from nuclear war in the 1950s.1 Is Deterrence Reliable?If we are unable to say with certainty that deterrence prevented the Cold War from turning hot, we should be all the more cautious when attempting to predict the future behaviour of opponents whose decision-making is opaque and whose values are utterly foreign to those prevailing in the West. To say that “State X” will not commit a particular act because it would not be in its best interest to do so requires a judgement regarding the interests of that state. However, it is rare for all of a state’s key leaders to hold essentially indistinguishable views on their country’s wellbeing; for an outsider simply to assume that his own perspective inevitably will be reflected in that state’s policy is perilous indeed. Indeed, one need only examine North Korea today to see an example of a state whose behaviour seems improbable to most outside observers. The Kim Jong-Il regime continues to construct an expensive nuclear and long-range-missile arsenal while its starving population boils tree bark and eats grass, a cruel course that appears utterly irresponsible to most outsiders. Yet in the bizarre algebra that Pyongyang uses, it is sensible to acquire weapons while failing to provide the most basic necessities for its population.
It is important to recognise that leaders may have very different value hierarchies; what Tony Blair most treasures may be radically different from what Kim Jong-Il considers essential, and thus their conceptions of national interest may differ radically. This, in turn, has enormous implications for deterrence. A leader who places a very high value on the lives of his or her countrymen and/or on the national infrastructure is unlikely to undertake a nuclear attack if retaliation in kind can be expected. Cold War deterrence theory fits such cases very well, as the fear of punishment is likely to outweigh the benefits of aggressive behaviour in the leader’s mind. However, traditional deterrence theory has little applicability to a leader with very different fears and motivations.
A good example of such a leader is Osama bin Laden. He appears to place a higher value on his perceived religious duty than on personal comfort, or even survival; if he was focused on material joys, he could have led a long and sybaritic existence as an enormously wealthy construction executive. If bin Laden were able to obtain a nuclear device, it is conceivable that he would attempt to use it regardless of the consequences for himself or even for al-Qaeda as a whole. One might object that, as a non-state actor, bin Laden is anomalous and the attitudes of a state actor would be different, but such a presumption is based on little more than hope. After all, even great powers occasionally have been in the hands of leaders who were extreme risk-takers, or who placed certain goals above national survival. Examples are Adolf Hitler, or the Second World War Japanese leaders who wished to see their country destroyed rather than accept the humiliation of surrendering to the Americans. Should one assume that the clerics who control Iran, or the leaders of North Korea—necro-communists who regard the decidedly deceased Kim Il-Sung as their “eternal president”—will always act cautiously?
Prudent decision-makers must factor in the risk of an unlikely event when making decisions; the mere fact that the use of nuclear weapons in a given situation may be imprudent, or even outright foolish, is no guarantee that such weapons will remain unused. This is not good news for the reliability of deterrence. It is especially troubling when one considers that the two states mentioned above are not the only unpredictable polities that now own, or may soon have, nuclear weapons.
One particularly worrying country is Pakistan. Although the government of Pervez Musharraf seems fairly prudent, it is generally assumed that internal coup, civil war, or regime change by other means is a distinct possibility in Pakistan. Musharraf may have power today, but tomorrow he could be deposed and the Pakistani nuclear arsenal could be in the hands of Islamist radicals. Today, New Delhi and Islamabad appear to have a reasonably stable deterrence relationship: one certainly could argue that the doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) is working tolerably well in South Asia, and even that mutual fear of nuclear usage prevented a hot war from breaking out between the two countries in 2001–2, following tension related to Kashmir. But if a different government comes to power in Pakistan, that stability could disappear.
The simple—indeed, the perfect—answer to these uncertainties is to deny nuclear arsenals to “roguish”, or potentially roguish, states. Unfortunately, however, there is every reason to believe that it will be impossible to do so consistently. Rather, we should expect the number of nuclear states to increase over time. This is not to say that there will be no non-proliferation victories. Some states seeking nuclear weapons will be dissuaded from acquiring them (as Libya apparently was), and on rare occasions a nuclear state may even denuclearise (as South Africa did). However, it would be naive to assume that this means that the spread of nuclear weapons can be reversed overall. Knowledge about any technology can be expected to spread over time and nuclear weapons are an old invention: they were first built six decades ago. Unsurprisingly, there are increasing numbers of individuals from (currently) non-nuclear countries who are knowledgeable about nuclear technology. Moreover, given ongoing advances and concerns about the price of fossil fuels, it is quite likely that nuclear power is about to enjoy a worldwide revival in popularity, a development that would in turn make it all the more difficult to control the spread of fissile material. Although well-designed counter-proliferation efforts can slow the spread of nuclear weapons, further proliferation should be regarded as a certainty. This means that there will be more powers that possess the physical means to initiate nuclear war and, consequently, an increasingly complicated deterrence environment worldwide. The Second Nuclear AgeSome knowledgeable observers have argued compellingly that the world is entering a “Second Nuclear Age”, distinct from the first in a number of respects, one of the most important of which is the increasing unreliability of deterrence.2 As nuclear weapons proliferate horizontally—that is, are acquired by non-nuclear states, as opposed to the “vertical” proliferation of increased acquisition by a nuclear-weapon state—the risk of nuclear war occurring somewhere on earth can be expected to rise, especially as the proliferating states tend not to be models of international propriety. While nuclear weapons have not been used in anger since 1945, we should not expect this record to continue for another sixty years. If it is to endure it will require both a well-designed deterrence policy and, frankly, a bit of good luck, for if a truly undeterrable leader ever comes to possess nuclear weapons and is determined to use them, deterrence would be impossible. Leaders ultimately choose to be deterred, which is to say that they choose not to accept the consequences that would flow from taking a particular action; if they are willing to accept the consequences of that action, they may do as they like.
This Second Nuclear Age is, in short, an era in which deterrence must be carefully tailored to the cultural, political, military, and other characteristics of the state that one is endeavouring to deter. Not all leaders are similar to those individuals who led the Soviet Union; even if deterrence truly “worked” during the Cold War, it must be assumed that deterrence theory as it developed during that period is not infallible. We should expect and prepare for deterrence failures. If responsible powers—particularly the United States and its allies—design sound deterrence policies and prepare for the possibility of deterrence failure, the likelihood of a catastrophic failure of deterrence will be minimised, though it can never be eliminated.
This analysis is not intended to counsel despair. Indeed, in many respects, humanity as a whole is far safer today than it was during the Cold War. As alluded to above, a US–Soviet nuclear war may have been only narrowly avoided. Such a conflict could well have spelled the end of modern civilisation, at least in the northern hemisphere. Today, there appears to be little immediate danger of a civilisation-shattering nuclear conflict. It is far more likely that the next nuclear conflict will involve, at most, a few dozen warheads rather than the tens of thousands that might have been used in a US–Soviet war. That may be cold comfort when one contemplates the horrors that even a “small” nuclear war would entail, but the fact that today there is little danger that the modern world will be wiped out in an afternoon is important nonetheless. Obsolete PresumptionsIn this Second Nuclear Age, five major presumptions, common in the Cold War era, must be abandoned: that nuclear-armed potential foes will be “reasonable”; that ballistic-missile defence undermines deterrence; that arms control and disarmament treaties are central to counter-proliferation; that stability and peaceful resolution of conflicts are always critical, so responsible powers should be willing to surrender military and/or other advantages if that will result in improved diplomatic relationships; and, finally, that “all proliferation is equal” and all potential proliferators should be treated similarly. The problems with the first assumption have already been addressed, but deconstructing the last four beliefs is no less important to the construction of an effective deterrence policy. Ballistic-Missile DefenceBallistic-missile defence can play a vital role in dissuading certain states from obtaining nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, and even more vitally, in mitigating or eliminating entirely the damage that would result from the use of nuclear weapons. The late Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was an artefact of a specific vision of deterrence based on MAD, in which it was assumed that both the United States and the Soviet Union would not use nuclear weapons if they believed that, no matter how successful a first strike might be, it would be impossible to eliminate the ability of the other power to execute a devastating retaliatory attack. Even during the Cold War, “MAD logic” had a number of worrisome flaws (notably, the too-confident assumption that both superpowers would accept that any use of nuclear weapons would almost surely lead to general nuclear war), but in the Second Nuclear Age it is even more dangerous.
At present, only the United States and Russia have nuclear arsenals sufficient to allow them to practise MAD reliably. Fortunately, however, MAD today is largely irrelevant to the Moscow–Washington relationship, since the contemporary international system differs radically from the Cold War environment. Some proponents of MAD worry that American construction of ballistic-missile defences will “force” powers with small nuclear arsenals to build larger numbers of nuclear weapons to compensate for the decreased assurance that they will successfully inflict devastating damage on their shielded opponent. In short, they will build more missiles in the hope that they might overwhelm the shield.
In one easily imaginable case, this is plausible: China might in the future possess both the resources and the inclination to follow such a course. China, however, is a unique case—a budding economic and military superpower that, under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is already an acknowledged nuclear state that has the legal right to build nuclear weapons. Indeed, even if the United States today abandoned all plans to build a missile defence there is no guarantee whatsoever that Beijing would not in future decades choose to reinforce its great-power status by building a nuclear arsenal comparable in size and quality to those possessed by Moscow and Washington. China in fact has long been engaged in a serious nuclear modernisation programme that, besides other things, has included the theft of advanced American warhead designs.
Smaller powers, in contrast, probably do not possess the resources necessary to “outbuild” a well-conceived missile defence. North Korea, Iran, and similar states would be hard-pressed indeed to construct multi-thousand-warhead arsenals and the means to deliver those weapons across intercontinental distances. Thus, effective missile defences would probably be a powerful disincentive for medium and small powers contemplating the construction of a nuclear arsenal. Indeed, in this Second Nuclear Age, ballistic-missile defence may be the most important force discouraging horizontal proliferation, even if it encourages vertical proliferation by China. Arms ControlArms control and disarmament treaties are not necessarily crucial to counter-proliferation. When states feel a sense of threat or believe that it would be advantageous to threaten others, they will act accordingly, building the weapons they need to defend themselves or intimidate their foes. History indicates that arms control treaties, by themselves, do little or nothing to reduce the danger-level in the international environment. If they did, there would never have been a Second World War, as the period after the First World War was something of a golden age of arms control, with war itself essentially being banned by the 1928 Kellogg–Briand Pact. Again, the fact that the number of warheads possessed by Russia and the United States decreased radically after the end of the Cold War is instructive. The successful negotiation of the bilateral START I, START II, and Moscow treaties did not fundamentally alter the overall geostrategic environment: these treaties merely reflected the fact that the Russo-American relationship had itself changed radically.
This is not to say that arms control and disarmament treaties are never useful, but merely to argue that they play a secondary role in successful counter-proliferation. Measures such as the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI)—a US-led effort that allows states to co-operate in various ways to prevent the transfer of materials and know-how for weapons of mass destruction—will probably be far more important in slowing future horizontal proliferation than will disarmament treaties such as the NPT, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.
The reason for this is clear: compliance with universal disarmament agreements such as the NPT is essentially voluntary. Such treaties always have very weak provisions regarding inspection of suspect sites and no mechanism for seriously punishing “bad actors”. (The reason for this, in turn, is that in order to maximise the number of signatories, such treaties invariably accept the “lowest common denominator”: the provisions must be acceptable to would-be bad actors who otherwise would refuse to accede to the agreement.)
The case of Iraq before its occupation by the United States illustrates the pitfalls of the NPT in particular. As a militarily defeated state (in the 1991 first Gulf War), Iraq submitted to far more intrusive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) than are the norm. It was quickly discovered that not only did Baghdad have a nuclear-weapons programme, which was generally assumed, but that it was quite close to obtaining such devices. Despite these facts, the Iraqi government was allowed to play a decade-long round of hide-and-seek with IAEA inspectors—and, of course, it now appears that most of the world’s intelligence agencies grossly mistook the progress of the Iraqi nuclear programme during that time. If Iraq could mislead outsiders under such conditions, one can readily imagine how easy it would be for other states to do so.
Iraq’s Baath Party eventually paid an enormous price for its refusal to co-operate with IAEA inspections, but this was the result of Washington’s initiative, not that of the IAEA or the United Nations. Moreover, as the cases of North Korea and Iran presently illustrate, apparent non-compliance with agreements such as the NPT does not necessarily carry a prohibitive price: indeed, North Korea has profited greatly from its NPT non-compliance, thanks to the largesse of countries such as Japan, South Korea, and the United States. One could cite many similar tales of woe concerning the proliferation of various weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, chemical, or biological.
In short, one cannot expect arms control and disarmament agreements to carry much of the burden of counter-proliferation; they are simply incapable of doing so successfully. They can provide useful leverage for countries that are dedicated to stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction—as they did for the United States in its negotiations with Libya—but ultimately it is (powerful) states that practise counter-proliferation successfully, not toothless international agencies. If would-be proliferators believe that the benefits of proliferation outweigh its costs—as they surely will if the worst punishment they face is vigorous finger-wagging by an IAEA bureaucrat—they will proliferate. StabilityDuring the Cold War, there was a tendency on the part of many Western policymakers to place great stress on maintaining a stable balance with the Soviet Union, particularly on nuclear matters, and to shy away from opportunities to gain strategic advantages over Moscow that might upset that balance. That viewpoint was understandable (although this author considers it to have been misguided) during the Cold War, but is utterly inapplicable to a Second Nuclear Age that will not be defined by a bipolar contest of vertical proliferation. There is no balance between the United States (and, for that matter, Russia) and nuclear powers that possess small arsenals, nor should there be. Indeed, it is desirable that the military advantage the United States and its allies possess over rogue states, in particular, be maximised. While some powers may simply be undeterrable for the reasons noted above, others may be deterrable if the nuclear advantage possessed by the deterring power is sufficiently great. Responsible powers should not seek to maintain a mutual deterrence relationship with rogue states. They should endeavour to deter such regimes from disorderly behaviour, not attempt to assuage their fears by remaining vulnerable to destruction at their hands. The likely benefits of doing the latter are too small and amorphous (chiefly, assuaging the rogue’s fears and thereby theoretically encouraging better future behaviour), and the risks are far too great.
Under the conditions that will prevail during this era, efforts to be solicitous of the alleged security needs of rogue states will probably only encourage proliferation. The Western response to North Korean proliferation has taught a dangerous lesson: that it is not only possible to obtain nuclear weapons without suffering military consequences, but that it can be extremely profitable to do so. Pyongyang has both had its cake and eaten it, accepting huge blackmail payments from the United States and other countries in exchange for “ending” its nuclear-weapons programme and then, apparently, surreptitiously building such devices anyway. No Universal YardstickThis brings one to a key point regarding proliferation (and ultimately deterrence): every proliferation case is different. Obviously, some regimes are far more dangerous than others, but also some counter-proliferation cases lend themselves to a military solution while others do not. At this time, North Korea and Iran present the two most worrisome proliferation cases, but one should not expect that either country will be disarmed militarily.
Even if the United States possesses highly detailed and specific intelligence on the location and character of all the sites relevant to the North Korean and (presumed) Iranian nuclear-weapon programmes (and possession of such near-perfect intelligence is improbable), it is most unlikely that Washington, acting either unilaterally or as part of a coalition, would strike these facilities. In regard to North Korea, the United States would fear a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula. Given that North Korea possesses enormous numbers of artillery tubes and could inflict massive conventional damage on Seoul, killing tens of thousands of civilians, just in the early hours of a conflict, the risks of escalation preclude a disarming strike.
The Iranian case is not quite so dire, but it is generally assumed that Iranian facilities are widely dispersed and that destroying them would result in large numbers of civilian casualties. Moreover, American policymakers greatly fear that such a move would set back reform in Iran and turn the Iranian public—which appears to be increasingly pro-Western—against the United States. The American presence in Iraq further complicates matters. For these and other reasons, an American strike against Iran is unlikely. Some observers expect an Israeli strike against Iran’s facilities, but this also is unlikely: Israel has its own difficult political questions to struggle with, and it should not be assumed that it will forcibly “denuclearise” Iran because it did the same to Iraq in 1981.
North Korea and Iran are, in short, proliferation “hard cases” that are unlikely to be resolved through the use of military force. Thus, responsible policymakers and military planners must work under the assumption that they will have to accept the reality that these powers will possess nuclear weapons. If possible, they should be deterred from using these devices. But this may not be possible, and states must be prepared to respond accordingly, including via nuclear retaliation.
There may also be future cases in which relatively stable and responsible powers choose to obtain nuclear weapons, as India did. In such cases, it is often best to permit proliferation to occur with as little “drama” as possible. While some observers disapprove of how quickly India has been accepted as a de facto nuclear state, attempts to marginalise and punish such a large and reasonably conscientious power would be counterproductive. Not all countries can be treated equally, and a state’s form of government and record of international behaviour should be taken into account when considering questions of proliferation. By this standard, it is not only tolerable that certain polities such as Japan and Taiwan may one day possess nuclear weapons, but under some circumstances, it may be desirable that they do so. Should such countries confront predatory enemies who would take advantage of weakness, nuclear weapons may actually be important to the prevention of war.
The most important argument against this double standard (leaving aside the silly notion that it is “unfair” to treat an aggressive totalitarian dictatorship differently from a defensively oriented democracy) is the contention that any loosening of non-proliferation standards will erode the entire NPT edifice, with much proliferation resulting. This argument is not altogether without merit. When any power obtains nuclear weapons, this serves further to “normalise” nuclear possession (although it is worth noting that roughly half the human population already lives in countries that possess nuclear arsenals), and successful proliferation by one power can encourage others to act similarly. However, these disadvantages are trumped by Realpolitik; simply put, countries must be treated as unique entities because the alternative is to apply an international non-proliferation policy that is so watered down as to be ineffective in preventing proliferation at all. For example, inflicting sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq that cut it off almost entirely from the world economy was feasible because other countries did not rely on Iraq for products other than oil, which was easily obtainable elsewhere. Attempting to cut India, much less Japan, off from other economies would be an act of madness that would never be seriously attempted. Power and economic status matter, as does the unique character of individual states.
Sometimes, however, it may be possible and desirable to disarm would-be proliferators. When there is good intelligence on potential targets, when the political price of action would not be prohibitively high, and when the state in question is an international “undesirable”, assertive disarmament may be the best option. In such cases, it will rarely, if ever, be possible to undertake disarmament operations under the UN flag. First, the element of surprise—potentially crucial in order to deny would-be proliferators the opportunity to disperse their nuclear programmes—would be compromised. Second, the UN Security Council has an unenviable record in regard to proliferation issues, and it is most difficult to imagine China, Russia, France, Britain, and the United States all agreeing to the necessity of military action against a would-be proliferator.
This means that assertive disarmament will be undertaken unilaterally or by alliances, either formal (such as NATO) or ad hoc “coalitions of the willing”. Furthermore, for the foreseeable future, the United States appears to be the only power both willing and able to exercise leadership globally: in Colin S. Gray’s phrase, it is the international “sheriff”.3 However, given the difficulties related to this role, not to mention the unhappy circumstances that have accompanied Washington’s exercise in disarming Iraqi outlaws, it is likely that the United States will only very rarely take on the thankless task of assertively disarming proliferators. It simply has to be accepted that the Second Nuclear Age will be one with a diverse and growing set of nuclear-armed states. ConclusionIt is vital that responsible states quickly adapt to the conditions prevailing in this Second Nuclear Age. Theories and practices developed during the Cold War provide useful guidance and experience, but their applicability is limited in the conditions that now prevail. “Muddling through” without serious consideration of which counter-proliferation and deterrence strategies are most likely to succeed is not an acceptable course: the consequences of failure are simply too high.
Any serious discussion of global nuclear issues must acknowledge the fact that these weapons will not be “uninvented” and that horizontal proliferation will continue. Prudent policies can slow proliferation and decrease, although not eliminate, the danger of nuclear war. Creating such policies requires frank discussion of the five problems evident in the Cold War–era proliferation and deterrence paradigm, and the shattering of certain comforting illusions inherent in that paradigm. Given how controversial issues related to nuclear weapons are, one can certainly understand the reluctance of leaders to question Cold War–era thinking, but it is vital that they do so. It is far better that illusions be destroyed verbally, rather than by a preventable nuclear conflict.
2. See Colin S. Gray, The Second Nuclear Age (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1999), and Keith B. Payne, Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1996).
3. Colin S. Gray, The Sheriff: America’s Defense of the New World Order (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 2004). |