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conventional forces
Page 113
APPENDIX E
Nuclear Weapons in Post-Cold War Deterrence
John C. Hopkins1 (retired) and Steven A. Maaranen, Los
Alamos National Laboratory
INTRODUCTION: A DEFINITION OF
DETERRENCE
"The current questioning of nuclear deterrence implies something
other than its withering away. There is no post-nuclear strategy. .
. .[T]he nuclear instrument remains the central element in the
defense of the nuclear powers."2Perhaps in today's environment, only a
French analyst would be bold enough to make this argument publicly.
There is a perception in the United States that nuclear weapons are
a burdensome legacy of the Cold War that have lost their relevance
and perhaps become counterproductive to American and international
security. Deterrence, it is argued, is still vital to U.S. national
security strategy, but perhaps it can be achieved by a combination
of actions ranging from preventive diplomacy to military deterrence
by means of modern conventional weaponry.
Few would disagree that conventional forces will play a greater
part in deterrence in the future. But, in fact, as several
thoughtful scholars have pointed out, the jury is still out on
whether nuclear weapons can be dispensed with in the post-Cold War
world.3Will conventional deterrence be enough,
or will nuclear weapons continue to fill a unique niche? If so,
what will be required to sustain an adequate American nuclear
deterrent? Here we review the meaning of deterrence and the
relative capabilities of nuclear and conventional forces to satisfy
remaining deterrence needs for the United States for the
foreseeable future. Admittedly, the decision to retain or reject
nuclear weapons has become a complex problem with the end of the
Cold War era, and there are arguments on both sides of the question
that need to be taken into account. One thing that is certain is
that there is now a high level of geopolitical uncertainty in the
world. Much remains to be decided, both in the evolving relations
among states
1 The views expressed
here are the authors' own and do not reflect those of the
Department of Energy.
2 Boyer, Yves. 1993.
"Questioning Minimal Deterrence" in Serge Sur, ed., Nuclear Deterrence: Problems and Perspectives in
the 1990s, pp. 101-104, United
Nations, New York.
3 See, for example,
George H. Quester and Victor A. Utgoff, "No-First-Use and
Nonproliferation: Redefining Extended Deterrence," Washington Quarterly, Vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 103-114, Spring 1994. The
authors argue that not only nuclear weapons but also an implicit
threat of nuclear first use will be required into the foreseeable
future.
Page 114
and in the responses of the United States to those developments,
which will profoundly affect the need for deterrence strategies and
nuclear weapons, and the wisdom of further nuclear disarmament. We
believe that this uncertainty means proceeding cautiously; we
conclude that nuclear weapons should retain an attenuated, but
still important, role in U.S. national security policy for the time
being.
Meaning of "Deterrence"
It is widely agreed today that "deterrence" as a term of art
means preventing war either through fear of punishment or fear of
defeat, or sometimes even through fear of undefined negative
consequences. The word "deterrence" is derived from the Latin de
+ terrere, literally "to frighten from" or "to frighten away."
Thus, fear is central to the original meaning of deterrence. The
idea that vast, indiscriminate, and unacceptable damage would be
inflicted in retaliation for aggression, as was associated with the
prospect of the aerial bombing of open cities in the 1930s, or the
employment of nuclear weapons since World War II, has long been
central to the popular understanding of the term deterrence. That
fear of defeat could be powerfully deterring, although a
longstanding idea, has been less widely understood.
Nuclear deterrence both as a concept and as practical doctrine
had several variations during the Cold War. These included the
declared doctrine of massive retaliation, with its stark punitive
threat and heavy reliance on the strategic nuclear air offensive.
The mature U.S. nuclear strategy, which obtained from the 1960s
until the collapse of the Soviet Union, was extended nuclear
deterrence. Under this doctrine, the United States deterred direct
attack upon itself with strategic nuclear forces, while extending
protection to its Cold War allies and friends by promising to
escalate a war to the nuclear level if they were in danger of
defeat by Soviet-led forces, even if this entailed first use of
nuclear weapons by the United States. Extended deterrence was
achieved via the "seamless web" of conventional, theater, and
strategic nuclear forces. Although this strategy did have an
important conventional component, it ultimately depended on the
threat of escalation to large-scale nuclear use. One interesting
late variation on the theme of extended nuclear deterrence was that
the fear that deterred could be a threat to destroy not
urban-industrial areas per se but those items the opposing regime
valued most. In the case of the Soviet Union, this was postulated
to be the survival of the regime itself and its ability to preserve
and perpetuate its control over the Soviet state. Another variation
was that deterrence could be strengthened by posing the threat that
the Soviets' strategic nuclear strike would not succeed because of
the operation of U.S. strategic missile defenses, especially if
linked to the prospect for subsequent punishment. It is also true
that the idea of deterrence was subsumed within a system of mutual
deterrence because of the deployment of large-scale Soviet nuclear
forces in the 1950s and 1960s. However, neither mutuality nor
parity is a necessary or inherent characteristic of the concept of
deterrence.
Page 115
The idea that effective deterrence could be accomplished by
conventional forces alone began to emerge in the mid-1980s.4At
that time, it was based in part on questions about the efficacy of
extended nuclear deterrence in the presence of a massive and
growing Soviet nuclear arsenal and in part on improving the
conventional defense capabilities of the United States and
NATO.
Deterrence vs. Dissuasion
Some uncertainty has emerged over the breadth of coverage of the
term deterrence. The definition of deterrence is expanding to
include more than military threats. Those who argue for a more
expansive definition believe that deterrence should be modified to
include all instruments of national security, not merely the threat
of military force. These might include nonmilitary sanctions,
foreign policy initiatives, economic measures, and positive
inducements. On the other hand, some have persuasively argued that
the term "dissuasion" should be used to refer to a broader spectrum
of deterring actions than those narrowly associated with military
deterrence. The word dissuasion derives from the Latin dis +
suadere, "to advise or persuade against," and is clearly more
comprehensive in meaning than deterrence.
It is certainly proper to think about national security in this
encompassing way and to remember that military deterrence is but
one component of national strategy. During the Cold War, for
example, deterrence was by no means identical with containment,
although nuclear deterrence played a constant, everpresent, and
central role in making containment possible. Following the Cold
War, U.S. objectives to promote peace and enlarge the influence of
democracy have relied heavily on diplomacy and multilateral
actions. Military deterrence remains an important U.S. tool, but
nuclear weapons have now assumed an unstated (but powerful)
supporting role, while American, allied, and multilateral
conventional forces currently supply the bulk of day-to-day
deterrence.
For the purpose of understanding deterrence in the post-Cold War
era, however, it is better not to encumber analysis with too broad
a definition of deterrence. Coming to terms with a concept of
deterrence that spans punishment and defense, conventional and
nuclear weapons, in a multinational setting, is a large enough task
without making deterrence synonymous with national security policy
or foreign policy.
NUCLEAR VS. CONVENTIONAL
DETERRENCE
Nuclear Deterrence
Deterrence emerged in its modem form in the 1930s in the context
of the newfound capability to attack the whole of an enemy's
civilian population and
4 Following on John
Mearsheimer's examination of conventional deterrence in historical
context and on the NATO-Warsaw Pact front (John J. Mearsheimer,
Conventional Deterrence, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y.,
1983).
Page 116
civil infrastructure without first defeating its ground and
naval forces. Airplanes and dirigibles were first used militarily
in World War I and were employed to attack cities almost as soon as
they were used for reconnaissance and attacks on the battlefield.
Although the impact of these terror attacks was minor, the
development of air power in the 1920s and 1930s allowed for the
theories of Douhet and other military strategists. Their theory of
strategic air warfare argued that air forces could by themselves
conduct a strategic campaign against the vital elements of state
power that could win a war, with little or no involvement by ground
and naval forces.5 The
implications of this theory led to the emergence of the theory of
deterrence as we know it.
In 1932 the British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, reflected
in horror on the theory of air attack as understood at that time:
''I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that
there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed.
Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through. .
. . " Accordingly, "[t]he only defense is in offense, which means
that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the
enemy if you want to save yourselves."6 On the basis of arguments like these,
Britain engaged belatedly in the creation of a bomber-heavy air
force that, it hoped, would serve to deter rather than actually
fight a new world war.
As it turned out, both sides in World War II resorted early to
urban bombing.7Conventional bombing could be defended
against to some extent; the prospect of strategic conventional
bombing did not deter war, nor was strategic bombing by itself able
to secure the defeat of the opposing side (even though, eventually,
the fire-bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, and the devastating thousand
plane raids, approached nuclear strikes in the magnitude of damage
they inflicted).
The lessons of World War II changed abruptly with Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Nuclear weapons clearly threatened damage that was
unacceptable by any definition and would be almost impossible to
defend against. Bernard Brodie, in his book The Absolute
Weapon, in 1946, swiftly developed the theory of nuclear
deterrence.8
Although nuclear weapons certainly played a major role in
preventing major conflict during the Cold War, several problems
emerged that increasingly cast doubt on the long-term utility of
nuclear deterrence as the foundation of
5See, for
example, David MacIsaacs, "Voices from the Central Blue: The Air
Power Theorists," in Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy:
From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Princeton University Press,
Princeton, N.J., 1986.
6Stanley
Baldwin, House of Commons, Debates, 5th Series, Vol. 270, cols.
630-638.
7 Urban bombing was
driven, in part, by a desire to encourage popular unrest and to
make the casualties a burden on the government and in part by the
inability to accurately deliver bombs against key strategic targets
such as military installations and war-supporting industries. This
was a particular problem for the British after they moved to
nighttime bombing to reduce their losses to German
defenses.
8 Brodie, Bernard. 1946.
The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order, Harcourt, Brace
and Co., New York, pp. 74-83.
Page 117
U.S. security policy. The first problem is related to the
massive destructive power of nuclear weapons. In the early days,
large-scale destruction was considered an advantage, since large
targets, like cities, could be struck and destroyed using a small
number of bombs delivered with poor accuracy. Some even spoke of
widespread collateral effects as "bonus damage." But as interest
grew in attacks that could be discriminating and limited,
collateral damage needed to be reduced: the previous virtue of
nuclear weapons became a limitation. Moreover, the deployment by
the Soviet Union of its own nuclear forces quickly put in place a
mutual deterrence relationship, where the United States had to
persuasively establish the credibility of its use of nuclear
weapons, both in retaliation and in a first-use mode, even though
the expected strike from the Soviets would inflict enormous damage
on the U.S. homeland. Partly because of these developments, the
U.S. public came increasingly to question nuclear weapons as the
basis for its security while America's European allies grew
skeptical of the notion of extended deterrence.
The end of the Cold War raised more doubts. Maintaining a ready
nuclear strike force when the putative enemy had become a potential
partner and seemed to be on the path to democracy appeared
unwarranted. Moreover, continuing to rely heavily and directly on
nuclear forces could be seen as reinforcing the idea that nuclear
weapons have utility in assuring a nation's security interests, an
argument that undermines our desire to make these weapons
unattractive to potential proliferant states.
Deterrence After the Cold War: Are
Conventional Forces Enough?
In light of this questioning of nuclear deterrence, Les Aspin
(when he was still chairman of the House Armed Services Committee)
coalesced a good deal of thought in the defense community that
holds that, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United
States possesses overwhelming conventional power. For that reason,
Aspin argued, the United States would benefit from the worldwide
elimination of nuclear weapons, if it were possible.9 At the same time, there is growing
interest in the proposition that technology may now make it
possible for the United States to achieve deterrence using
conventional forces and weapons alone.10
A number of significant improvements have been made in the
technology of conventional weapons in recent years, notably in
accuracy, stealth, intelligence, and information support. Nor does
the current theory of conventional deterrence require that
conventional weapons be as powerful, destructive, or fearful as
nuclear weapons. Rather, it is argued that sophisticated nonnuclear
weapons can now hold at risk those assets most highly valued by
9 Aspin, Rep. Les,
Chairman, House Armed Services Committee, From Deterrence to
Denuking: Dealing with Proliferation in the 1990s. Informal paper
given at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies,
February 18, 1992.
10 For example, John A.
Warden III, The Air Campaign: Planningfor Combat. Brassey's U.S.,
1989.
Page 118
potential aggressors, for example, the enemy's leaders' lives
(viz., the apparent success of the U.S. strike on Libya), their
military forces, key elements of the aggressor state's civil
infrastructure (as in Iraq), and so on. Of course there are critics
who believe that, although conventional strike technologies have
come a long way in recent years, there are still many important
capabilities that can effectively be protected against current and
foreseeable conventional weapons. Desert Storm, they point out, was
not characteristic in that it was fought after long and careful
preparation, in open desert, with effective basing and logistical
as well as political support nearby. The absence of these factors
could reduce the potency of conventional weapons against different
opponents, to say nothing of the fact that many of the units in
operation against Iraq have now been disbanded.
Congressman Aspin and others have also noted that non-Western
leaders may operate upon different systems of belief and with
different perceptions of reality than those that are inherent in,
and have apparently worked well as a part of, nuclear deterrence.
Thus, they may not accurately perceive U.S. capabilities or resolve
and may not be deterred by our nuclear weapons. This line of
reasoning by no means proves that deterrence is impossible against
such leaders. Even Saddam Hussein declined to use his stocks of
chemical weapons against the United States and its allies, deterred
by some combination of factors that may well have included the
possibility of nuclear retaliation, by either the United States or
Israel. If there is a risk that a foreign leader will misperceive
the power and decisiveness of U.S. deterrence capabilities, it
probably is greater with conventional forces than with nuclear. On
the other hand, U.S. resolve to use conventional as opposed
to nuclear weapons is probably much more palpable to such
leaders.
An important concern with conventional deterrence is that it has
not always worked in the past, and it is not obvious even now that
conventional force can have deterrent power that approaches that of
nuclear weapons (although, as noted, the threat to use overwhelming
conventional force may be much more credible). Conventional
war à outrance in World War I, terrible as it
was, did not deter the leaders of Germany and Japan from embarking
on World War II. On the other hand, deterrence seems to have worked
vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and against the Warsaw Pact,
where nuclear weapons were directly implicated, although it did not
prevent war in Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq (even if it helped to deter
escalation), where nuclear weapons were a distant and vague
threat.
Conventional deterrence also must face a number of practical
problems. First of all, it requires a large and credible power
projection capability because of the simple facts of geography. The
United States does have a vital interest in the configuration of
power in Europe and Asia. Being able to intervene in these areas
militarily in order to protect U.S. interests is hard and
expensive, entailing a complex of naval, air, and ground forces and
their support. To operate these forces effectively requires an
overseas base network, which we are losing, and a forcible entry
capability, which is doubly challenging especially if there are no
local bases to rely on. And as the Bottom-Up Review reminded us,
even in the
Page 119
post-Cold War era, our security requirements demand a large
standing force structure, and technological superiority, to assure
the success of conventional campaigns.11 Not surprisingly, such complex,
capable, and large forces prove to be very costly.
Another concern is that it is probably impossible to assure
complete and reliable nuclear disarmament. Nuclear weapons are easy
to hide, and it has even proven difficult to demonstrate the
existence of nuclear weapons development and production
capabilities to the extent necessary to justify intervention. The
credibility of a threat by the United States to deploy conventional
forces alone against small powers that may possess weapons of mass
destruction, perhaps including nuclear weapons, is problematic.
It is often argued that a U.S. move to conventional deterrence
might induce nuclear disarmament and prevent nuclear proliferation,
but it is also plausible that nuclear disarmament by these powers
would encourage or reward nuclear proliferation by rogue states or
by those states that now take shelter under the umbrellas of the
nuclear powers. A lesson that some foreign leaders and militaries
learned from the Gulf War was that nuclear weapons may be necessary
in order to offset otherwise overwhelming U.S. conventional
capabilities.12
Conclusion: Nuclear Weapons Remain a
Necessary Component of U.S. Deterrence
In light of the international situation and U.S. security
interests as we can now know them, it seems impossible to safely
remove nuclear weapons from U.S. deterrence calculations for the
next 15 to 20 years. There is too much uncertainty to see beyond
that period. There have indeed been historic, unforeseeable changes
in the world situation over the past decade, and so we should not
rule out further changes that could allow for further nuclear
disarmament compatible with U.S. security, or perhaps even the
shift of nuclear weapons into some form of international control
regime. But in the present state of turmoil and uncertainty,
complete elimination of nuclear weapons, or their entire removal,
would be very unwise.
DETERRENCE VIA NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE
FUTURE
Current U.S. Nuclear Policy
The United States now maintains a reduced but survivable, highly
capable nuclear force that is in a nearly ready but not
hair-trigger status (intercontinental and submarine launched
ballistic missiles have been detargeted, bombers have
11 Bottom-Up Review:
Analysis of Key DOD Assumptions, NSIAD-95-56, U.S. General
Accounting Office, Washington, D.C., January 31, 1995.
12 Garrity, Pat. 1994.
Gulf War Lessons Learned, Center for National Security Studies, Los
Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N. Mex.
Page 120
been taken off day-to-day alert, and so on). The nuclear force
is available in the event it is needed again to deter Russia (or
China), neither of which is now an enemy state, but both of which
have significant arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The
ability to upload a number of additional weapons is also retained
as a hedge against an unexpected surge in Russian nuclear
capabilities.13 Moreover, nuclear
weapons have not been ruled out as a response to the use of
nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against the United States,
and we still deter aggression against U.S. forces and allies
overseas in part with nuclear forces. Officially, by treaty, the
United States renounces the use of nuclear weapons against
nonnuclear states that are not allied with nuclear-armed states. In
practice, the U.S. nuclear posture implicitly supplements
deterrence of all military challenges to U.S. security interests,
even from nonnuclear Third World states.
Future Options for Nuclear
Deterrence
The option the authors prefer is a modest extension of current
U.S. deterrence policy; the United States should express an
intention to apply nuclear weapons specifically to the deterrence
of nuclear challengers (nuclear weapons to deter the use of nuclear
weapons). At the same time, the United States should not take steps
(or make statements or pledges) that in practice would completely
exclude nuclear retaliation from the calculations of nonnuclear
states, especially so-called rogue states that may possess chemical
or biological weapons and that may contemplate challenges to U.S.
security. The nuclear forces of the nuclear weapons states could be
smaller, with the relationships among those arsenals set by
explicit or tacit agreement. The United States probably can safely
eliminate specifically "tactical" nuclear weapons (the removal of
weapons from Europe is a sensitive, symbolic political issue to be
decided by the needs of the NATO states). Remaining U.S. nuclear
weapons would be able (though not optimized) to serve both
strategic and tactical deterrence. The United States would attempt
to make its nuclear weapons fade into the background, in order not
to weaken its hand unduly in advocating nonproliferation, but the
nuclear force would remain in the shadows as a potent
deterrent.
An alternative approach would be for the United States to retain
adequate nuclear weapons capability and credibility to continue to
support extended nuclear deterrence by means of a policy of
flexible response. This would differ mostly in the retention of a
more visible, but not necessarily larger, nuclear force and perhaps
retention of a small, dedicated set of theater nuclear weapons.
Such an alternative would be less attractive to the extent that it
underscores our belief that nuclear weapons confer major national
security benefits, and dilutes our nonproliferation activities.
An option widely explored is to move to a minimal or existential
deterrence posture and policy, retaining either a very small alert
nuclear force, an off-alert
13Department
of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Nuclear Posture
Review briefing, Washington, D.C., September 22, 1994.
Page 121
force, or even dismantled forces that could be reactivated if
the security situation demanded it. How small a nuclear force can
be and still sustain effective deterrence is not known, but it is
clear that for operational reasons it is difficult and expensive to
go below some lower limit (e.g., at what level is it no longer
technically or economically feasible to sustain a ballistic missile
submarine fleet?). Nor is it likely that the United States will
agree to reductions below those that the Russians would accept or
that would bring the Chinese near nuclear parity. The proposal to
dismantle all nuclear forces but retain them for a rainy day
suffers from some of the same problems as complete nuclear
disarmament. It adds to the concern that our capacity to restore
these forces would atrophy while we continued to believe, perhaps
inaccurately, that a nuclear deterrent force could readily be
reconstituted. There is also the risk that a decision to
reconstitute nuclear forces would exacerbate rather than stabilize
a major crisis, either increasing the likelihood of war or
dissuading the United States from rearming.
Finally, there has long been a constituency, given greater
prominence by the end of the Cold War, that would like to see the
United States and the other nuclear powers completely abandon
nuclear weapons and denuclearize by agreement, with inspections and
safeguards. Although there is some support for this proposal in the
United States, it appears very unlikely, especially given the
considerable interest of the French, British, Chinese, and Russians
in continued reliance on their own nuclear forces. An alternative
to denuclearization is to vastly reduce the number of nuclear
weapons and to deliver the remaining weapons into the hands of an
international peacekeeping organization, thereby retaining the
utility of nuclear weapons in deterring all forms of war, while
eliminating nuclear weapons as instruments of national policy.
However, it is implausible that the nuclear states are prepared to
relinquish their sovereignty and control over their ultimate
security interests to an international body, as this proposal would
require.
REQUIREMENTS FOR MAINTAINING NUCLEAR
DETERRENCE
If the United States pursues a course of action that requires
some continuing reliance on nuclear weapons, several technical and
policy steps are essential. First and foremost, the United States
should do its utmost to retain an adequate conventional force
posture and superior conventional force technology. The more
capable American conventional forces are, the less important
nuclear weapons seem and the less the United States will need to
rely on them. However, it is optimistic to believe that the United
States will retain an adequate level of conventional forces, the
determination to use them, and the ability to accept casualties
that normally accompany conventional conflict, such that we could
safely reduce our nuclear force, to an existential deterrent.
Moreover, since conventional forces do not have the full deterrent
power of nuclear weapons, they probably would not be acceptable to
counter existing or future threats from nuclear weapons or other
weapons of mass destruction.
Page 122
Nevertheless, the United States should try to place nuclear
weapons in the background, making it known that they are viewed
only as a final guarantor of vital U.S. national interests (which
include due regard for the security of U.S. allies and friends).
The United States need seldom or never explicitly raise a nuclear
threat, whereas it should continue to try to suppress nuclear
proliferation. Although perhaps not as clear-cut as some would
like, this would be a simple, understandable, and believable policy
(both for the American people and for those to be deterred). We
need not, indeed should not, provide a detailed description of
exactly when, under what precise conditions, or against which
targets nuclear weapons might be used. In sum, a nuclear force
somewhat smaller than today's, in conjunction with powerful
conventional forces, should be capable of achieving U.S. security
objectives in the world we now foresee.
Some sort of hedge against an increasingly hostile international
environment is also important. The Defense Department advocates
retaining some nuclear forces in reserve for a nuclear hedge. In
addition, the United States should retain a capability to design,
produce, and maintain nuclear weapons, although this, too, should
be kept only as large as is necessary to meet national needs and
should also be moved into the background. The need to do so is
being addressed today under the rubric of stockpile stewardship.
This program includes the maintenance of a much smaller stockpile
than in the past, plus retention of the technical expertise
necessary to understand and support the current stockpile. The
Department of Energy, with the cooperation of the nuclear weapons
complex, is developing a program that tries to fulfill these
requirements.
No one knows whether there will ever be another requirement for
new, or different, nuclear weapons. The present weapons, which were
designed to address Cold War threats, certainly are not what one
would design today for the 21 st century. Be that as it may, in the
world that prevails, it is only prudent that the United States
retain some capability, across the board, to address the concerns
or problems of the arsenal as they arise.
If the world situation continues to relax, the role of nuclear
weapons in U.S. security could again be reviewed and the nature of
the nuclear complex required to support it reconsidered. But we
should always be cautious with those forces that are the core of
our deterrence policy. In this regard it is useful to remember the
lesson of the British Ten-Year Rule. Following the allied victory
in World War I and the Versailles Treaty, the British Cabinet
decided that defense planning could proceed on the assumption that
a major war would not occur for the next 10 years. This was a safe
assumption at the time, which allowed for significant savings
during the interwar years. But the Ten-Year Rule was then allowed
to become rolling guidance: the need to begin reconstructing
British military forces was constantly pushed at least 10 years
into the future. When the new threat did begin to emerge in the
early 1930s, the British were perilously tardy in responding. They
were too late to deter war, and almost too late to avoid
defeat.
