Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Getting It Wrong

Admiral Halsey notified me
He had to have a berth or he couldn’t get to sea.
I had another look and I had a cup of tea and a butter pie.

I always liked that song. A little bit of Beatlesque story telling, presumably floating out of Paul McCartney’s hash pipe. I always assumed if there was an Admiral Halsey, he was simply a character in a pop song, like Father McKenzie or the pretty nurse selling poppies on Penny Lane.

Then I came across his name in the first volume of Larry Wittner’s authoritative history of the nuclear disarmament movement [1], and learned that British Admiral William Halsey had publicly criticized the use of the atomic bomb against Japan a little more than a year after the event, only to be pilloried by the US State Department and Navy Secretary James Forrestal. Bernard Baruch, Wittner tells us, lashed out at Halsey for “putting America in the wrong on moral grounds in the eyes of the world.”

These were people who were determined to build as many bombs as possible, as fast as possible, and to ensure a US nuclear monopoly for as long as possible. Real paragons of morality. A little more than 60 years later, those advocating a nuclear-weapons-free world find themselves vilified by some intellectual heirs of the first bomb enthusiasts—a disgruntled collection of neocons in exile, including the likes of Frank Gaffney, Henry Cooper, and Troy Wade [2]. Unlike 60 years ago, however, one of the main objects of the nuclear priesthood’s ire happens to be the President of the United States.

Calling themselves the New Deterrent Working Group, they have published a white paper that recycles one old and bankrupt argument after another for retaining and modernizing the US nuclear arsenal [3]. I’m about as ardent a recycler as you can find, and even I understand that certain things just need to go into the trash or, like toxic waste, be permanently isolated from the environment. This paper is one of those things.

Unfortunately, the arguments themselves won’t seem to go away and are being marketed afresh by the proponents of a nuclear-armed world (who really are only proponents of a world in which their guys are nuclear-armed and dominant). Instead, they are sprouting up like invasive plants in foreign policy journals, op-ed columns, blogs, and radio and TV talk shows.

The premise behind the entire white paper, which has no basis in logic, international law, morality, or common sense and is offered as an article of faith, is that the goal of a world without nuclear weapons is naïve and unrealistic, and that the Obama administration has its priorities wrong. Instead of embracing the idea of a nuclear-weapons-free world, the US president should be making sure the country has the best possible nuclear weapons, and a lot of them, for as long as the New Deterrent Working Group thinks we need them, which, for all practical purposes, is forever.  What jumps out from this paper, after the migraine goes away, is a slightly more candid objection to what would happen if the newly declared US policy were to become reality: ridding the world of nuclear weapons would…well…deprive the US of its nuclear weapons. That everyone else would consign theirs to oblivion at the same time doesn’t seem to matter.

If that sounds like a logical cul de sac—or even just lame—consider this. President Obama himself has echoed the circular reasoning that for as long as nuclear weapons exist, the US “will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal.” Maybe he feels obliged to say that, but it’s exactly that sense of obligation to the fatally flawed concept of deterrence that all but guarantees the continued existence of nuclear weapons.

The tedious claims that have been repackaged by the New Deterrent Working Group (sounds like a boy band, doesn’t it?) have been thoroughly rebutted and their disinformation corrected so often that the CliffsNotes version is all I’ll give them here. (I highly recommend FAS Strategic Security blog if you want the particulars.) Italic text is my (irreverent but fair) paraphrasing of NDWG arguments.

The Russians can’t be trusted. They cheat and count funny and hide stuff and won’t submit to intrusive inspections any more than we will (wait…scratch that last bit). The Cold War is over; when sensible people say it’s time to set aside Cold War ways of thinking, this is exactly what they’re referring to.

Everyone but us is modernizing their nuclear arsenals. If we don’t catch up, our enemies…uh, former enemies…uh, trading partners who could always become enemies again…will have nice, new, shiny weapons and ours won’t work anymore. Modernization is nothing more than an expression of the belief that nuclear weapons are good for security (and for the profits of weapons contractors), and that newer is better. The goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world will not be served by the US building reliable replacement warheads. A continued Congressional ban on RRW funding, UK cancellation of Trident replacement, a Russian halt to the development of new multiple-warhead missiles, France scrapping its new nuclear submarines and fighter-bombers, and China halting additions to its submarine fleet and intermediate and long-range missile programs would help. Stopping modernization across the board is a crucial step on the path to a nuclear-weapons-free world.

The Senate should refuse to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty because it can’t be verified, would allow the Russians to cheat (see above), and would prevent the US weapons labs from making advances in nuclear weapons technology. While these folks were busily disseminating the wit and wisdom of Richard Perle, the technology of verification has made some advances of its own. Don’t take my word for it; the Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC) has the facts the NDWG would just as soon ignore. As for the CTBT putting a crimp in plans to design new nuclear weapons…um…that’s kinda the point.

“[C]uts in the American nuclear arsenal do not translate into lessened proliferation of nuclear weapons around the world.” I wanted to quote that one directly, because the exact words are almost better than a sarcastic paraphrase. First of all, the subtext to this rather bizarre assertion is that reddest of all red herrings: the pretense that abolitionists advocate unilateral disarmament by the US. Look at the goal again: a world without nuclear weapons. The non-nuclear-weapon states, in particular those flirting with the idea of acquiring nuclear weapons or actually trying to do so, are not stupid. They know the difference between making reductions on a deliberate and systematic march to zero (which is the obligation of all the nuclear-weapon-state parties to the NPT under Article VI, including the US), and retiring “excess” warheads, sometimes to clear space for new ones.  It’s the double standard that’s driving proliferation, not some perverse calculation that too few US nuclear weapons would necessitate nuclear buildups by friends and would be a weakness to be exploited by adversaries. These guys crack me up.

Not only do we need nuclear weapons to deter attacks against the US, but we also have to make sure we can continue to extend deterrence to our allies. If we withdrew the promise of extended deterrence, our friends might feel compelled to acquire their own nuclear weapons, resulting in an even bigger proliferation problem. The opponents of a nuclear-weapons-free world—at least a world in which their country no longer has nuclear weapons—appear to be betting the farm that this argument will stop the momentum of the nuclear abolition movement before ink is ever put to paper on a new START agreement, however modest. If it kills CTBT ratification in the process—or makes the reliable replacement warhead and missile defenses the price of ratification—all the better. If I were trying to make their case, this is the one I’d go with, too.

Anxieties about extended nuclear deterrence, fueled by North Korea’s reckless and irresponsible nuclear warhead and missile tests, now preoccupy Japan and South Korea, and have become a serious concern for the Obama administration. The irony here is that Pyongyang, which has legitimate concerns for its own security, is mirroring the false claims made by the other nuclear weapons states in order to justify their possession of these instruments of mass murder. This, in turn, is strengthening the arguments of the still small minority who want Japan to acquire its own nuclear arsenal, as well as those mainstream voices in both Japan and South Korea calling for more explicit assurances about extended deterrence from the US, even at the expense of progress toward a nuclear-weapons-free world.

Any country that accepts and relies upon a proxy nuclear arsenal, however, is making a Faustian bargain. For nothing more than a vague promise that its “protector state” will retaliate upon millions of innocent people on its behalf, a country such as Japan or South Korea makes itself a target of nuclear weapons, turns its own fate over to someone else, and forfeits its moral stature as a non-nuclear-weapon state. Extended nuclear deterrence—and nuclear deterrence in any form—is an unsustainable strategy that needs to be rejected.

For all its 60 pages of shameless nonsense, the NDWG white paper has one very uplifting theme. The authors are openly resigned to the fact that their recommendations will be dismissed out of hand by the Obama administration. “President Obama,” they mourn, “seems determined instead to pursue an arms control agenda shaped by his embrace of the ‘Global Zero’ vision of a ‘world without nuclear weapons.’”

Maybe the boy band got that one thing right. I sure hope so.

—
1. Wittner, Lawrence S. The Struggle Against the Bomb. Volume 1: One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement Through 1953. Stanford University Press. 1995. Read it. Then read volumes 2 and 3.

2. Three of nine listed authors. Gaffney, an acting assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and a protégé of Richard Perle, is a familiar and annoying face to anyone who ever had a disparaging word to say about nuclear weapons; Cooper is the Chair of High Frontier and one of the high priests of the missile defense religion; Wade is a former director of defense programs at the Department of Energy who helped defeat ratification of the CTBT in 1999.

3. New Deterrent Working Group. U.S. Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Getting it Right. Washington, DC: Center for Security Policy Press. July 2009.