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OCR for page 1
Introduction
Despite 40 years of the nuclear arms race and continuing rivalry
and tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, the
world has succeeded in avoiding nuclear war. This fact supports the
view that the probability of nuclear war is very small. But the
unimaginably horrible consequences of a nuclear war, if it were to
occur, make the probability, whatever it may be, too large for
comfort. Therefore, it is important to examine the various sequences
of events that might lead to nuclear war and find ways to make
each of them less likely.
Students of this subject have considered many different paths
that might lead to nuclear war, ranging from a so-called bolt out of
the blue to an accidental or unauthorized firing of a nuclear weapon,
to a terrorist or rogue nation attack. In the judgment of many
careful observers, however, the most likely paths to nuclear war
begin with either an international crisis directly involving the
United States and the Soviet Union or a regional crisis that involves
critical U.S. and Soviet interests or important superpower client
states that could lead through a series of escalating actions to a
war neither side wants.t The frightening possibility of an inadvertent
nuclear war one that develops from an unplanned and unpredicted
event calls for the most serious efforts to find ways to keep
superpower confrontations from escalating to nuclear war.
THE NATURE OF INTERNATIONAL CRISES
International crises are extraordinary situations of conflict be-
tween the national interests of two or more countries that call for
action under great pressure of time and that often involve or
threaten the use of military force. Such crises require coordination
between military and political leaders in each country and are
characterized by a complex interplay between the primary parties
and often other nations as well.
International crises can present a fundamental tension between
the goals of protecting the interests thought to be at stake and
avoiding military conflict or unwanted escalation. Crisis manage-
ment involves the development and implementation of strategies
1
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2
CRISIS MANAGEMENT IN THE NUCLEAR AGE
for reconciling the tension between these goals.2 The objective of
each side is not necessarily to avoid war at any cost; to attain that
objective, a country need only yield to its adversary's desires. Crises
persist and recur because nations participate in them, choosing to
defend their interests rather than acquiesce. A nation might not,
however, limit itself to protecting its interests; it might also try to
advance those interests in a crisis. Moreover, a nation's objectives
can change in the course of a crisis if it sees an opportunity to gain
relative advantage without incurring the risk of escalation to an
unacceptable level. Taking advantage of a crisis in this manner
goes beyond crisis management to crisis manipulation.
To achieve their goals in an international crisis, nations need
sufficient military capability and sufficient will to use it to
achieve the desired behavior on the part of their adversaries.
Capability and will must not only exist but must be conveyed to
and perceived by the other side. Conveying will may raise the risks
of war, but nations often take such risks to protect their funda-
mental interests in the belief, justified or not, that they can control
the risks and avoid unwanted costs. The difficulty of resolving
the tension between the objectives of protecting the national
interest and preserving international peace is what makes crises so
dangerous.
The dangers multiply when the adversaries have nuclear arsenals.
The leaders of the superpowers face the task of protecting their
nations' interests without using or provoking the use of nuclear
weapons, or causing a military conflict that could escalate to the
use of nuclear weapons. The possibility of nuclear war gives national
decision makers the strongest of motives to avoid military conflict,
but it does nothing to mitigate the importance of national interests.
Consequently, national leaders have much less room to maneuver
in the nuclear age. The advent of nuclear weapons has dramatized
the limits of power that can and should be exercised to attain
national goals. With the potential consequence of massive nuclear
destruction, the concept of being willing to win a war or protect
one's interests at all costs is no longer meaningful.
The technology and organization of nuclear forces create severe
management problems that raise the risks of inadvertent war. The
weapons and their command structures are far-flung and complex,
decision times are shortened, and in a crisis it is extremely difficult
to maintain central control over military decisions that might plunge
a nation into war. Central to the problems of command and control
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INTRODUCTION
3
and of crisis prevention is an inherent tension between readiness
and safety. Keeping one's nuclear forces at a high state of readiness
to ensure their survivability, which is important for deterrence, can
have the unintended consequence of provoking an adversary to take
additional steps to ensure the survivability of its nuclear forces,
particularly in a crisis situation. Such interactions risk the initiation
of a chain of events that could lead to inadvertent nuclear war.
This report explores the problem of keeping crises involving the
United States and the Soviet Union from leading to nuclear war.
It identifies major technical, military, political, and organizational
problems that arise when crises involve the superpowers; analyzes
the difficulties involved in resolving such crises short of war; and,
in light of this analysis, reviews some recent suggestions for
preventing or managing superpower crises.
TYPES OF INTERNATIONAL CRISES
Crises that may involve the superpowers can evolve from many
different kinds of political circumstances in many parts of the world.
In the past, such crises have involved direct U.S.-Soviet confron-
tations, as in the Berlin crises of 1948 and 1961; U.S.-Soviet
involvement in regional crises between client states, as in conflicts
between Israel and its neighbors; and conflict between a superpower
and another country, such as that between the United States and
Libya.
Crises between the superpowers and regional crises can be par-
ticularly dangerous because they involve fundamental interests in
volatile situations, and so may risk escalation to war. Nuclear war
in either of these contexts would probably require some unpremed-
itated action or miscalculation, because, presumably, neither side
wants to resort to nuclear exchange. However, these crises can
become very dangerous games of"chicken."
Crises triggered by a third party, as for example terrorist use of
a nuclear weapon, could also be very serious. Actual third-party
use of a nuclear weapon would cause great confusion, possibly
leading to retaliation against a nation thought, correctly or not, to
be responsible for the incident.
Crises can occur inadvertently or advertently. An inadvertent
crisis could arise, for example, from an accidental missile launch,
from unusual military maneuvers of one side that arouse concern,
or from the consequences of an unpredictable and unplanned event
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4
CRISIS MANAGEMENT IN THE NUCLEAR AGE
such as an insurrection in Eastern Europe. An advertent crisis is
one that is intentionally precipitated, for example, when the Soviet
Union cut off Allied ground access routes to Berlin in 1948.
Between these extremes lies an important class of crises in which
a planned action by one side is interpreted by the other side to
the surprise of the initiator as a threat to vital interests. This
kind of miscalculation occurred in Korea in 1950. At the time, the
United States did not seem to include South Korea in its defense
perimeter, but after the North Korean attack, the United States
reassessed its interests and chose to intervene in the conflict.3 This
sort of crisis is particularly dangerous because each side's interests
are not well known to the other and may not even be clearly defined.
It is in such a situation that it is easiest to imagine a miscalculation
that might lead to escalation across the nuclear threshold.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND SUPERPOWER CRISES
The restraint of superpowers in any future crisis will depend in
part on their confidence in the ability of their offensive nuclear
forces to survive and therefore to deter a nuclear attack. In terms
of the balance of opposing nuclear arsenals, a stable strategic
environment, or strategic stability, requires that each side's forces
be relatively invulnerable so that there is no perceived pressure to
"use 'em or lose 'em," and that neither side has a sufficient first-
strike advantage to lead to the temptation to attack preemptively
in a crisis. For deterrence to work, each side must believe that were
it to attack its opponent with nuclear weapons, the opponent would
retain surviving weapons adequate to cause unacceptable retaliatory
damage to the attackers In a time of crisis, stability is enhanced
when both sides believe that neither would benefit significantly by
striking first.5 Much of the structure of nuclear forces in both the
United States and the Soviet Union can be understood in terms of
the need to ensure that the forces can survive an opponent's first
strike and that the opponent is fully aware of this fact (see the box
entitled "Diversity in the U.S. Nuclear Force Structure".
The stability of the strategic balance is always subject to change
as new weapons technologies emerge and as the superpowers alter
their nuclear force structures, warning and alert systems, and
doctrines. In recent years, many observers have become concerned
that some new technological developments, particularly more ac-
OCR for page 5
INTRODUCTION
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curate delivery systems and weapons that shorten the warning time
for defenders and increase the feasibility of a "decapitation" strike
against command centers, may soon make the strategic balance less
stable. The box entitled "Technological Change and Strategic Sta-
bility," elaborates the effects recent technological changes may have
on strategic stability.6
OCR for page 6
CRISIS MANAGEMENT IN THE NUCLEAR AGE
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OCR for page 7
INTRODUCTION
7
THE DANGERS OF SUPERPOWER CRISES
IN THE NUCLEAR AGE
Superpower crises in the nuclear age present monumental prob-
lems of management with unprecedented stakes. Moreover, the
problems may be increasing in difficulty. The possible initiation of
a nuclear exchange depends on how political and military leaders
gather and interpret information, make judgments, balance political
and military imperatives, assess options, make decisions, and exe-
cute them through a far-flung and complex network of organizations,
technical systems, and individuals. Malfunctions in any part of this
process of crisis management can contribute to the initiation of
inadvertent nuclear war.
The next section of this report identifies the individuals and
institutions in the United States and the Soviet Union that would
most likely be responsible for decisions in a superpower crisis and
examines the problems of management they have faced in past
crises and may confront again in the future. The final section
presents some general guidelines that follow from past experience
and discusses some recent proposals for controlling or averting
superpower crises.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
crisis management
