Sometimes media bias unwittingly reveals an important truth.
Take the following case.
Time magazine’s Mark Thompson writes an interesting piece about a possible coming clash between President Obama and the Defense Secretary he retained from the prior (incompetent, childish, warmongering, heedless) Administration.
The nub of the issue is, should the warheads that power America’s nuclear arsenal be replaced? They are old — the plant that built our most advanced warhead, the W 88, closed in 1989 – and there is worry in the nuclear priesthood that we may have some duds on our hands.
As an aside, let me just say that, among the clergy that is our foreign policy elite, there is no more elite, insular, arrogant, imperious or secretive bunch than the nuclear strategists. They are like the Jesuits. Or like the Jesuits when they still believed in God. But that is a big topic, and one for another day.
The solution is said to be something called the “Reliable Replacement Warhead.” Not to get too far into the weeds, but the problem – to the extent that one exists – with our current arsenal is that most of the warheads are very sophisticated. They pack a lot of destructive power into a very small physical space. But sophisticated designs up the chance of failure, for reasons too numerous and complex to go into now. And the older these warheads get, the more the chance of failure rises. The Reliable Replacement Warhead, on the other hand, is (or would be, since it is not yet in production) a deliberate throwback, a design that sacrifices yield and miniaturization for long-term reliability.
Gates wants it. But President Obama, as candidate Obama, said that under no circumstances would his administration ever build more nuclear weapons.
Reporter Thompson, however, unwittingly shows that the brewing dispute between the President and his SecDef misses the point. He closes his piece with the following paragraph:
Nuclear weapons have tended to prevent or contain conflicts between those nations that possess them. Today’s nuclear nightmare tends to focus less on a doomsday exchange with similarly armed rival states than on the nightmare of “loose nukes” falling into the hands of terrorists unaligned with any state and therefore beyond the reach of deterrence. A new batch of nuclear weapons, unfortunately, isn’t going to change that.
Leave aside the dubious notion that nuclear weapons are net stabilizers of international order. Follow instead the drift of that paragraph. Thompson piles up one unsustainable assertion after another. Are we so sure that any nuke that ends up in the hands of a terrorist must have been “loose,” that is, slipshoddily stored through negligence and not by design, and not passed on deliberately? Can we be so sure that said terrorists will necessarily be “unaligned with any state”? Do we absolutely know that they will be “beyond the reach of deterrence”?
Thompson, however, is sure about one thing. In the age of terror, there is no point whatever in the Reliable Replacement Warhead, and therefore the President is right and his Defense Secretary should get with the program.
In this, I am afraid to say, Thompson is somewhat ahead of the nuclear priesthood. At least he has given some thought to the “why” and not just the “what.”
Indeed, why are we arguing over the configuration of our arsenal when we no longer have any idea what that arsenal is for? Whom is it supposed to deter from doing what? Against whom would we use it in retaliation in the event of what? Once we have answered these questions, figuring out what kind of warheads we need will be relatively easy.
During the cold war, we actually thought about these things and came up with publicly stated doctrines (called “declaratory policies”). The idea was, announce what we would or might do beforehand, and we would (hopefully) lessen the risk that we might have to make good.
Not so today. The topic is too scary and leads in directions that no one wants to go. Instead, conventional wisdom just takes for granted that old categories still apply. For instance, the foreign policy clerisy is always quick to assure us that Iran going nuclear is not such a problem because, well, of course the Iranians would never do anything rash because they fear retaliation. Really?
Imagine yourself as a mullah who really wants to bring down the Great Satan. Sitting in Tehran, you get the following idea. Give some HEU to Hezbollah, which gives it to some marginally linked cell, which gives it to al-Qaeda, which puts it in a bomb (not nearly as hard to do as one would like to believe), ships to the US, and Boom! You might doubt that the impressive but nonetheless still imperfect technique of nuclear forensics would positively identify the nuclear fuel as Iranian. And even if it did, you might bet that all the many and sketchy links between fuel and delivery would introduce enough doubt in the American mind about who was really responsible. Would you, as that mullah, be absolutely certain that your country would face US retaliation? Are you therefore deterred?
Or take another scenario. You are an officer in the ISI, Pakistan’s notoriously Islamist intelligence service. The civilian government is desperate to maintain good relations with the US, but you have another agenda. Working through the network of Islamists in the nuclear program built by A.Q. Kahn and Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, you manage to convince some people to let security measures lapse and a bomb get “stolen.” It then goes to Waziristan and begins its journey to New York or Washington. After the boom, the Pakistani president — who would have had no idea that this was coming — either tries to bluff it out with Washington (maybe not the best idea, given nuclear forensics) or pleads on his knees that we not retaliate, that he is innocent and his people are innocent. So, as that officer – who presumably by this time would have fled the country – would you be deterred?
Thompson is right — such a threat is far more likely than a superpower exchange. But is he right that our nuclear arsenal is useless in the face of that threat?
Now, it may be that we simply cannot ever deter an attack like these, that responsibility for such an attack will never be certain, and that American public opinion will never allow for retaliation – at least not nuclear retaliation – after such an event, and therefore to make the threat would be worse than useless.
That’s all well and good, and may even be true.
But do we know that? Have we explored the issue thoroughly? Had a public debate? To the last, the answer is obviously “No!”
So, again, until we do … what is our nuclear arsenal for anymore? I submit that, from the President to the SecDef to the Joint Chiefs to the nuclear priesthood to US Senators to think-tankers to the man on the street, no one any longer has any idea.
15 responses so far
1 dendup // Feb 4, 2009 at 7:10 am
I commend you for bringing this up at all – and with some humility as well! Perhaps you could discuss possible scenarios in which nuclear retaliation would improve the situation. What is the role of tactical nuclear weapons in the post Cold War world? What is the basis for continuing the system of nuclear haves and have nots. Is it even possible?
2 sinz54 // Feb 4, 2009 at 10:36 am
The author appears to be ignorant of recent history. All of the author’s questions have already been considered and answered–though obviously some of the answers remain top secret. Presidential Decision Directive 60 (PDD-60), signed by President Clinton in 1997, authorized the use of U.S. nuclear weapons in retaliation for a biological or chemical attack on either our troops, our homeland, or our allies. This is significant for the War on Terror, because it’s far more likely that a terrorist organization would possess (and use) chemical or biological weapons, rather than nuclear weapons. President Bush went further. In a series of National Security Presidential Directives, the Bush Administration made it clear that the Clinton PDD-60 guidelines were insufficient. It is believed that the Bush Administration explicitly added the option of nuclear retaliation in the event of a massive terrorist attack; this might serve as a deterrent against such an attack. Some believe that the Bush Administration also wanted to preserve the option of a pre-emptive nuclear strike against a rogue state (North Korea or Iran perhaps) that was about to launch a nuclear attack on a U.S. ally. Most of this stuff is above my security clearance, so I can only speculate past this point.
3 dragonlady // Feb 4, 2009 at 10:50 am
Our nuclear arsenal is to deter anyone who thinks they can inflict a major attack on our homeland. While terrorism brings its own unique challenges, we’d be foolish to think that conflicts between major powers are over and won’t happen again. Just completely goes against history. Because that’s when all the chips are truly on the table. We’ve got a resurgent Russia, China at a cross roads, and bellicose rogue nations like Iran and NK. No one certainly wants to go to war with those nations, but we need to recognize our nuclear deterrent is what makes us a superpower and ability to shape peaceful negotiations with these other powers. Ever since SAC was disbanded, though, a coherent nuclear strategy has faltered and there does need to be efforts to renew the debate so we can appropriately configure our forces.
4 manton // Feb 4, 2009 at 10:51 am
All of my questions have been asked and answered? Really?
Then why are you forced to admit that you “can only speculate”? If the answers were so clear, wouldn’t you know?
Authorizing the use of weapons in the abstract is not the same — it is far from the same — as thinking through the various possibilities and what our potential response might be. The only thing the Bush administration “made clear” was a vague reference to the reserving the right to use of “all our options” in the event of a terrorist attack. (First NSS,) Is that specific enough to deter anyone, or to explain to the American people what is really at stake?
But even if you are right that secret documents make all this explicit … what is the point? What is the deterrent value of keeping such a doctrine secret? Not to be glib, but I am reminded of Dr. Strangeloves outburst to the Soviet Ambassador: The whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret!
5 dendup // Feb 4, 2009 at 12:09 pm
MAD worked well enough in the Cold War environment, and can continue to work against traditional nuclear powers. Anton’s post points out that now the greater threat is from groups and strategies that either are not based on nation states or that can disguise the nationstate that is behind an attack. The Middle East has shown that porvoking a massive retaliation can create a chaos that results in an opportunity for the attacker. “Deterrence” is such an enviornment can be turned against the stronger power.
6 herricane // Feb 4, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Great piece, Michael. I may have learned more from this article about nuclear proliferation policy than I have from anything else I’ve read in years. My thought is that it’s always the crisis we aren’t paying attention to that will strike next. In the 1990s it was terrorism. In the 2010s it might well be nukes. Horrible to think about, but that’s why we have leaders. Hopefully those leaders will acquit themselves better than they did in responding to the financial crisis, when our nation’s policy was WWGD (“What Would Greenspan Do?”) Good luck with your writing –JHerr
7 manton // Feb 4, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Mr. Hair: Is that you? Thanks for the kind words.
8 sinz54 // Feb 4, 2009 at 3:13 pm
dragonlady: A consistent nuclear strategy has never “faltered”; as I pointed out, it’s been under continual review and modification throughout every recent Administration. What has changed is that the public has lost interest since the end of the Cold War. So there has not been much *public* debate on these issues, leaving them to be handled by the National Security Councils of the various Administrations. So when the author claims that “from the President to the SecDef to the Joint Chiefs to the nuclear priesthood to US Senators to think-tankers to the man on the street, no one any longer has any idea,” he’s just flat WRONG. Everyone in the chain of command with the appropriate security clearances knows how and when nuclear weapons might be deployed. It’s just the man on the street who no longer has any idea–because he’s stopped asking the appropriate questions.
9 manton // Feb 4, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Your use of “deployed” is sloppy. OF COURSE people in the chain of command know how the weapons are deployed. That is largely a matter of physical positioning. Much of that is even in the public domain. But that is a secondary issue. What matters is how, when, and why they might be USED. Which is presumably what you meant to say. But if you meant to say deployed, then your point is true but irrelevant. However, if you meant to say “used,” then I just have no confidence — none at all — that “everyone in the chain of command with the appropriate security clearances knows how and when nuclear weapons might be” used. My own experience in government tells against it. And I repeat, even if it were true, what is the point if OUR ENEMIES do not know what we have concluded? Are they deterred by secret declarations?
10 sinz54 // Feb 4, 2009 at 3:23 pm
dendup: MAD was a bad idea during the Cold War, and you’re right that it’s an obsolete idea in the times we’re in now. And with that observation, you have effectively answered your own earlier question: There must be a variety of options for the use of nuclear weapons, beyond just doing nothing and turning the other cheek to an attack, or lashing out with everything we’ve got to annihilate an attacker. We must be able to employ them selectively, to eliminate an adversary’s ability to launch a second strike; or to eliminate the adversary’s industrial might; or even just for demonstration purposes in a largely unpopulated area. That was even true during the Cold War, and it’s still true today. Beyond that, there are circumstances when the U.S. might be forced to initiate hostilities. We had a good example this past year, when North Korea began arming Syria with nuclear technology. Israel bombed the Syrian installation in time. But supposed they hadn’t, and Syria nukes Israel. Israel will retaliate against Syria, of course. But after the CIA confirms that Syria had nuked Israel with North Korean-supplied nukes, I believe the U.S. should retaliate against North Korea as well. Obviously Israel can’t do that; and North Korea, by provoking a regional nuclear war in the Middle East, would need to be taught a lesson to deter future rogue states.
11 sinz54 // Feb 4, 2009 at 3:28 pm
manton: Of course, I meant “deployed” in the sense of “EMPLOYED.” Cf. Bush Administration National Security Presidential Directive NSPD-35, “Nuclear Weapons DEPLOYMENT Authorization,” which used the term similarly.
12 manton // Feb 4, 2009 at 3:32 pm
This is the most recent, and most fulsome, account of the US nuclear posture: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/nuclearweaponspolicy.pdf. Do you honestly believe a mullah in Tehran is going to read that and get scared? I don’t.
13 manton // Feb 4, 2009 at 3:33 pm
The Secretary of State, by the way, refused to sign off on that, so it went out without her sig, even though past similar documents had always had three sigs. That sure sends a strong signal. :sarcasm:
14 C.E. van Avery // Feb 4, 2009 at 6:12 pm
For an in-depth analysis of some of the problems, see Yankee Sailor’s posts:
http://yankeesailor.blogspot.com/2006/04/nuclear-deterrence-in-age-of-terrorism.html
http://www.yankeesailor.us/?p=767
15 dragonlady // Feb 5, 2009 at 11:24 am
sinz54, the air force chief of staff and civilian secretary head just got fired for lax accounting for nuclear materials. The military service with the preponderance of nukes was silent on the cancellation of the nuke-tipped bunker buster and delay in the RRW. I don’t believe nuclear deterrence is outdated, but I do think we’re struggling with its applicability in this day and age. While presidential directives may have been issued, how have these directives been translated into how our forces should be configured? The devils are in the details and it’s those details that are lacking. I think the author is exaggerating with the last few lines in his article, but I do believe we are still groping with updating our nuclear strategy. Ref this WaPo link on the RRW: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/17/AR2007061700969.html
“The committee pointed out that neither the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review last year nor the administration’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review “provided a long term nuclear weapons strategy or the defined total nuclear stockpile requirements for the 21st century.”
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