An article in the latest Foreign Affairs discusses the US pursuit of nuclear primacy, made possible by the demise of the USSR and Russia’s continued decay. Russia’s sorry state of affairs has essentially killed our MAD policy leaving the US able to launch a successful first strike. China of course, isn’t even remotely close to being able to play MAD. That being said, the author argues the hawks’ dream is coming true, that of American nuclear primacy. The article goes on to note something interesting about our supposed Missle Defense Shield:
Washington’s pursuit of nuclear primacy helps explain its missile-defense strategy, for example. Critics of missile defense argue that a national missile shield, such as the prototype the United States has deployed in Alaska and California, would be easily overwhelmed by a cloud of warheads and decoys launched by Russia or China. They are right: even a multilayered system with land-, air-, sea-, and space-based elements, is highly unlikely to protect the United States from a major nuclear attack. But they are wrong to conclude that such a missile-defense system is therefore worthless—as are the supporters of missile defense who argue that, for similar reasons, such a system could be of concern only to rogue states and terrorists and not to other major nuclear powers.What both of these camps overlook is that the sort of missile defenses that the United States might plausibly deploy would be valuable primarily in an offensive context, not a defensive one—as an adjunct to a U.S. first-strike capability, not as a standalone shield. If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China), the targeted country would be left with a tiny surviving arsenal—if any at all. At that point, even a relatively modest or inefficient missile-defense system might well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strikes, because the devastated enemy would have so few warheads and decoys left.
Will the inevitable US nuclear primacy help keep bad actors in check by giving the US a monopoly on force or will it encourage riskier behavior and ultimately do more harm that good? Readers, your thoughts?
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COMMENTS / 12 COMMENTS
Peter added these pithy words on 15 Mar 06 at 1:55 amAhh, you’ve identified why the only rational response for China + Russia would be to launch all their missiles at the US: that a missile defence system would be used primarily to defend against MAD. More harm than good is my thought.
NeonCat added these pithy words on 15 Mar 06 at 3:17 amMore harm than good, because I think it would tend to encourage a “use it or lose it” mentality. If, say, China decided to take Taiwan by force and some nukes had already detonated in the South China sea and the US Navy responded by taking out China’s crappy SSBNs, they might decide to go ahead and launch everything they had. Maybe the SDI system would stop some of the missiles, who knows? Any detonations on US soil would make the Katrina debacle look like a walk in the park. Actually, it would probably be far worse, overall, as if I were the Chinese (or the Russians, or North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, India, Israel, France) I would detonate a big dumb bomb high about the US to EMP all the electronics I could. The hardened goverment stuff might survive, but the rest of us would get to enjoy our new 19th century (if we were lucky) level of technology.
Not to mention the missile shield wouldn’t stop cruise missiles.
And how do we know there aren’t prepositioned nukes lying in the bottom of harbors? Sure, it’s impossible…
I think the US would “win” a nuclear war, in the sense that we’d have more nuclear weapons left over than our enemies would, and therefore could kill a lot more of them if we wanted to, but nukes on or over America would definitely be a bummer section of whoever’s Presidential Library.
KnightErrant added these pithy words on 15 Mar 06 at 7:09 pmI’m more concerned with a belief in the absence of consequences. With primacy, we are more likely to use nuclear weapons because can’t see any fatal consequences.
Say, we discover Iran has buried a nuclear facility so deeply underground none of our conventional weapons will work. In the old days, MAD would dictate caution because any use of atomic weapons could lead to Total War. Now, why not drop a few nukes? We’ll get the result we want the only way we can and who is going to do anything? Who can do anything? Primacy makes the use of nuclear weapons more, not less, likely.
Mi-Hwa added these pithy words on 16 Mar 06 at 1:15 amAfter 9/11, some countries have become more aggressive about the use of nuclear weapons. In 2002, the Bush Administration authorized pre-emptive strikes, including the use of nukes. The White House also threatened nuclear retaliation if America is attacked with biological or chemical weapons. The Pentagon is developing bunker-busting nukes. In 2003, North Korea announced that it possessed nuclear weapons. In 2005, a Chinese general threatened to nuke the US if it protected Taiwan. This year, France announced nuclear retaliation for terrorism.
All of these threats to use nukes are making it more likely for a nuclear attack to happen.
Elizabeth added these pithy words on 16 Mar 06 at 12:27 pm“What both of these camps overlook is that the sort of missile defenses that the United States might plausibly deploy would be valuable primarily in an offensive context, not a defensive one…”
If only they’d been listening to Democrats scream their lungs out over this very point throughout Star Wars and all of its 1990s and post-millenial incarnations. I’m not talking pacificm, I’m talking rational defense.
“the only rational response for China + Russia would be to launch all their missiles at the US”
Er, I’m not sure I would call that a rational response under anycircumstances.
“they might decide to go ahead and launch everything they had.”
Possibly, if they thought it would be better to destroy the whole world than lose Taiwan.
“...if I were the Chinese (or the Russians, or North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, India, Israel, France) I would detonate a big dumb bomb high… The hardened goverment stuff might survive, but the rest of us would get to enjoy our new 19th century (if we were lucky) level of technology.”
I am so glad you’re not the Chinese, or the Russians, or North Korea, or Iran, or Pakistan, Israel or France. And it’s too bad about 19th century technology, which is hard to use when your skin is melted off.
“think the US would “win”Â? a nuclear war, in the sense that we’d have more nuclear weapons left over than our enemies would,”
*I’m not counting weapons left, I’m counting people, hectares of arable land, and functioning industries.
Who wins now????*
“Now, why not drop a few nukes?”
There’s always morality and what not. The knowledge that utilitarian considerations might not apply, even in war.
“All of these threats to use nukes are making it more likely for a nuclear attack to happen.”
I fully agree. It needs to get back to MAD, back to the point where we are not willing to use these weapons, where we realise that it might be better to have a Chinese Islamist president than be dead.
Scipio added these pithy words on 16 Mar 06 at 9:21 pmUS nuclear primacy would do much, much more harm than good. There was an article on this in one of the big monthlies (biweeklies?), either the New Yorker or the Atlantic recently, which pointed out how potential US nuclear primary is in fact pushing Russia more in the direction of having a finger close on the nuclear trigger, and spreading its nukes.
You see, Russia’s made precisely the calculation you have and is worried that the US could potentially take them out before they could launch a counterstrike in response. Therefore because of that, the Russkies are now spreading out their nuclear arsenal increasingly onto submarines and remote installations while decreasing the central control required from Moscow to authorize a launch (since that way, the sub commanders and the officers in the remote installations could still retaliate even if the US hit Moscow). Thus, the conclusion goes, the probability of a nuclear war between the US and Russia now is as high as it’s ever been in history, even worse than Cuba in 1962, since Russia isn’t able to count on massive retaliation and must therefore “balance” the US threat by shortening the nuclear fuse. SCARY AS FSCK if you ask me, and it clearly suggests that the US would benefit and be more secure by reducing our nuclear stockpile and not trying for nuclear primacy (save us a couple hundred billion dollars too, to boot).
There’s some guy from Harvard who’s been writing some articles on this recently, pretty damn chilling stuff (a PDF). The idea is that with nukes on ready alert launch status, the old strategic logic for conventional weapons breaks down and a country has less security with a larger nuke weapons differential relative to its peers, since this makes the peers less secure and more prone to relax strict controls on its own nuke arsenal as a way to counterbalance the threat. Since officers in the nuke bunkers have just minutes to decide if a first strike from another country is occurring, and their info is fragmentary—well, you can see where this is going, there’s a high probability of an overreaction and an accidental launch, there’s just too little time to decide and verify the data.
One old buddy of mine from college days, said that the only way to realistically prevent nuclear war in the next 20 years would be for all countries—including the US and Russia—to go down to at most 40 or 50 nukes or so, and take them off ready-to-launch alert. This would be sufficient to provide a nice deterrent against anybody invading us with a big army, but not to launch a first strike—i.e., make them purely defensive, not offensive, and take everybody’s finger off the nuclear trigger. He didn’t think that the US would do that though, too many corrupt power-hungry idiots high in the halls of power, so he said the second-best option for world peace and security (the very survival of civilization) would be… for the US to break up and no longer stay as a unified nation, thus unable to launch such a coordinated strike at all. This really freaked me out, b/c he was in general one of these heavy-duty patriotic types, had served in ROTC in high school and was planning on joining the Army Reserve after college—but he was also a hard-nosed thinker, and this is what he told me straight out.
I hope it doesn’t come to this, but in my heart of hearts I think he has a damn good point. No nation should be allowed to achieve such nuclear supremacy over other countries, it makes nuclear war too high a probability by making everyone a bit more trigger-happy. I’d hope our politicians in the US would be smart enough to make the first move and reduce our damn stockpile, whic is costing us a kajillion dollars a year when we’re already drowning in debt. But if they won’t do it, if they’re too damn stubborn, then maybe we do need to fall apart as a nation, for the good of the world civilization (including our own, for that matter).
NeonCat added these pithy words on 18 Mar 06 at 6:10 amSpeaking as someone who was fortunate enough to actually take a class in nuclear weapons, I feel like I ought to address your comments, Elizabeth. Somewhere along the line, a lot of people seem to have gotten the idea that the use of nuclear weapons would kill everyone on earth, more or less instantly. This is, fortunately, untrue. Folks at Bucky Fuller’s World Game Institute like to cover the earth with little markers representing the effects of nuclear weapons, suggesting that the people who have gone to the trouble to spend billions of dollars, rubles, yuan, pounds and euros on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems have no better targeting options than even distribution about the planet. I’m not sure why anyone would want to nuke New Guinea, for instance. Even The Big One, a 1980s US vs Soviet Union war, wouldn’t have ended life on earth-greatly reduced it, to be sure, but the hyperbole was way overblown. (I guess the gap would be pretty safe, comparatively speaking)
Anyway, EMP use could be argued to be a rather humane form of nuclear war. Detonating a nuclear weapon in low earth orbit would fry any unshielded (or undershielded) electronics in line of sight of the blast. Several thousand people would die as their airplanes spiraled out of control and crashed, their controls useless. Unless you were looking right at the detonation, it probably wouldn’t hurt anyone on the ground at all. It would also take out the US’s GPS system, which is very important for conventional weapons and possibly for nuclear weapons as well. A foreign government could send a message to the US with an EMP blast: your people are frightened, isolated, rioting, afraid, and we have not even killed a thousandth of those who would die in a nuclear war. You can’t stop all our weapons.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, though, things would almost certainly escalate and rapidly get out of hand, to the point that each side would strike what targets it could depending on their level of technology, to wit, the US is not really interested in killing civilians. They are just sort of in the way. The US weapons are meant to (with the caveat that they may not work as planned) be used to concentrate on enemy missile installations, military bases and command, control, communication and intelligence centers. Lots of those have cities around them, though. Oops.
The less advanced nuclear powers, however, may have no real option besides targeting US cities, MAD style. The CEP of their missiles may range into the kilometers (CEP is how likely you will not hit what you want to hit) and therefore are not going to reliably hit Peacekeeper silos in rural America. Therefore, bye-bye cities, hello melting eyes, flesh, etc.
Use-it-or-lose-it has been a big part of nuclear war strategy for the US as well as the Soviets, Chinese, whomever else. That is why we spent billions on Ohio-class subs, the Russians on Typhoons and so forth: to be a deterrent and to buy some time.
In summation: nuclear war would not destroy the whole world. Destroy the US as a political entity, possibly. Western Civilization, maybe, maybe not.
As to whether or not it is a good thing that I am not in control of China, Russia, et al, is a question I do not feel qualified to answer.
Elizabeth added these pithy words on 19 Mar 06 at 1:20 pmNeon cat
“I feel like I ought to address your comments, Elizabeth.”
Thanks.
“Somewhere along the line, a lot of people seem to have gotten the idea that the use of nuclear weapons would kill everyone on earth,”
There are such people, but I’m not one. I believe that nuclear weapons could eliminate life on earth, and that they would kill thousands upon thousands.
“I’m not sure why anyone would want to nuke New Guinea, for instance.”
Two points. First of all, I don’t live in New Guinea, so I really don’t give a hoot if they survive. I have to think of my children. With one half of my family in Tajikistan and the other half about 50 miles from Boeing, I’m slightly concerned.
“greatly reduced it, to be sure, but the hyperbole was way overblown.”
I think it depends on whether you’re worried about life on earth as we know it, or personal survival. Quite frankly I am much more concerned about the latter, and so are most people I know. And if you think something is going to end your life, you end up getting a little excited. It’s not hyperbole, it’s fear of losing one’s life.
“Unfortunately for everyone involved, though, things would almost certainly escalate and rapidly get out of hand,”
“Unfortunately” indeed! Disastrously, I’d say.
“the US is not really interested in killing civilians. They are just sort of in the way.”
How dare they get in the way.
The cool way you discuss this makes me believe you’ve never toured a war zone. You took a class in nuclear weapons: I lived 90 miles from the edge of the Chernobyl blast site for three months. You talk about war, but I’ve seen the results of both war and nuclear contamination (having lived only 100 miles from Chernobyl zone for 3 months, and downstream from Hanford for most of my childhood). I appreciate that it may sound drastic to talk about thousands of deaths as if they are terrible, but that’s because it is so horrible you cannot imagine.
wf added these pithy words on 20 Mar 06 at 12:02 amNow, now. Don´t get hysterical. The missile shield is good as a homeland or theatre defense against rogue states, that´s all. For the foreseeable future, the missile shield will not be able to defend against even a small number of modern ICBMs with multiple warheads, such as could come from one single SSBN. Nor would it protect against cruise missiles. If you are worried that the US could not be destroyed in a second strike situation: Russian SSBNs do not even have to leave the White Sea to reach Washington, and Russia and China are still investing in improved missiles (and central control of these was never as good as on the American side, by the way). Once an enemy has decided to use nuclear weapons against the US, they will always launch everything they have, shield or no shield. Therefore US nuclear primacy doesn´t amount to much, unless you believe that a future US government will be eager to risk some major cities. Some commenters here will probably worry about that, well, I´d like to have your problems. The US had supremacy for several years following WW2 and MAD didn´t become a fact until many years later.
By the way, the work on nuclear bunker busters has been cancelled.
NeonCat added these pithy words on 20 Mar 06 at 6:59 amJesus H. Christ, Elizabeth, I feel like we’re both arguing that fire will burn you if you stand in it but you are upset that I am not arguing loud enough. I’m really sorry that I don’t have the street cred to appreciate the horrors of war. I’m sorry that you have lived in such shitty places, even though you don’t care about the poor un-nuked New Guineans.
I grew up in the 80s while living two miles away from the Lockheed-Georgia plant. I’d stand on my grandmother’s porch and look at the plant and wonder if we’d have any warning at all when the nukes came. I had nightmares about missles launching from my school playground. I think I’ve stared into this particular abyss for a long, long time. Don’t tell me what I have or have not imagined.
So if my cool dispassionate take on millions of people with radiation poisoning, flash blindness and third degree burns disturbs you, tough shit. I didn’t and do not want any goddamn nuclear blasts, which was the whole point of my original post, whether they be over Shanghai, Pyongyang or Seattle.
While I personally want to live a good long time, every now and again I like to take the long view and worry about the whole damn species, and realize that in a few centuries, very likely no one will know or care about who you or I were or what we argued here. I hope that they are free to be frivilous, whoever they are and whatever they may be doing.
Frankly, I’m tired, and tired of this. If it makes you happy, Elizabeth, just declare that I am a spiritual Nazi who would happily nuke anyone who isn’t American while I sit in my bunker deep beneath the earth, gently stroking my remaining missiles and plotting to destroy the other survivors, watching The Day After as if it were porn. Whatever floats your irradiated boat.
Have a long, fruitful, un-nuked life.
NeonCat
snow added these pithy words on 20 Mar 06 at 9:30 amI don’t mind the idea of making reductions in the overall numbers of nukes in the world, after all, I think even Bush has talked of doing this, didn’t he? I thought there was talk of making reductions in the past. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Anyway, even Reagan made reductions, but as he said, “trust, but verify, verify, verify!” I really don’t trust the Chinese or the Russians but I see that it would be best to be on relatively good times with as many countries as possible so that capitalism has the best chance of flying in as many places as possible (since I think it’s ultimately the best system out there). With Reagan’s nugget of wisdom in mind, I’d be willing to reduce and make other tension reduction moves (such as with North Korea, where the US should deal with them more business-like: tit-for-tat reciprocity, that is, verifiable concessions and nothing less).
I’d be loathe to do anything that actually did put the US at a strategic disadvantage. Is it a strategic disadvantage to reduce the number of nukes? Maybe not, if our ‘enemies’ are willing to make verifiable reductions as well. But we can’t forget that our enemies aren’t interested in being nice. It’s all realpolitik. They play to win, just as we do. If reductions put the US at a strategic disadvantage, then they’re not worth doing.
Elizabeth added these pithy words on 24 Mar 06 at 8:53 pm“Jesus H. Christ, Elizabeth,”
Sorry if my argument sounded that emotional. I wouldn’t consider all the places I lived “shitty” (Portland, Oregon, for example, is downstream from Hanford).
“Don’t tell me what I have or have not imagined.”
I’ve never said what anybody has or has not imagined. I was bringing up the cruel facts of war which were not being discussed.
“So if my cool dispassionate take on millions of people with radiation poisoning, flash blindness and third degree burns disturbs you, tough shit”
Your “take”, as you put it, does not disturb me. What disturbs me is the fact that people with such “takes” on things might one day make decisions without taking into account what I consider to be the most important consequences of nuclear war. Instead, we are talking about the number of nuclear weapons left over. It’s responsible to remind ourselves what is at stake.
.”just declare that I am a spiritual Nazi”
Why on earth would I declare something like that? Why on earth would you assume that I am somehow hostile towards you, or anyone else here, personally, just because I strongly disagree with the presentation of your arguments? I generally do not tend to post girly smileys at the end of my paragraphs, but I’m not really an angry person, just emphatic. I certainly don’t hold any bad feelings against you, personally.
I apologize if I gave you some other impression.
