The
Utility of Nuclear Weapons and the
Strategy of No-First-Use
Steven
E. Miller
The idea of no-first-use (NFU) of nuclear weapons has been rejected
by some nuclear weapons states and accepted only at the declaratory
level by most if not all of the others. But what would it mean for
a state to genuinely adopt NFU? What must it do in order for NFU to
become something more than a rhetorical stance easily disregarded
not only by other parties, but by the leaders and military organizations
of the state itself? To give NFU genuine meaning, states must be prepared
to alter both the purposes for which nuclear weapons are deployed
and the manner in which forces are deployed. In what follows, I will
sketch both what must be abandoned and what must be altered if NFU
is to have true operational meaning. This inventory reveals, however,
that most nuclear-armed states are quite wedded to using nuclear weapons
for a multiplicity of purposes incompatible with NFU.
PURPOSES ABANDONED: WHY USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS FIRST?
What is implied by a no-first-use strategy is either that the purposes
served by retaining the first-use option are not, or are no longer,
necessary or desirable or that there is some other means of achieving
those purposes. If states want or need to utilize nuclear weapons
for these purposes, NFU will be unacceptable. What purposes might
be served by first-use and how interested are nuclear-armed states
in these purposes?
To Compensate for Conventional Inferiority. Nuclear weapons
are often seen as an antidote to conventional inferiority (whether
real or perceived). The inferior party will seek to deter conventional
attack by threatening a nuclear response. If deterrence fails, nuclear
weapons may provide the answer to an overwhelming conventional attack;
in concept, this would usually entail battlefield use of tactical
nuclear weapons.
The adoption of a first-use nuclear doctrine is thought to provide
several desirable results. First, in introduces an element of nuclear
risk to any war contemplated by the superior state. It is hard for
the potential attacker to confidently calculate that it can achieve
victory at an acceptable cost when there is a possibility of nuclear
escalation. This, it is believed, enhances the deterrence of conventional
attacks. Second, the threat of nuclear first-use helps negate the
conventional advantage of the potential attacker by creating incentives
to avoid dense concentrations of forces. Such concentrations represent
valuable and vulnerable targets if nuclear weapons are used on the
battlefield. Third, first-use doctrines draw advantage from conventional
weakness. The more inadequate are the conventional forces of a state
or coalition, the more credible will be its threats of nuclear escalation.
Lacking an effective conventional alternative to nuclear escalation,
inferior states may be rapidly driven to contemplate or to implement
first-use.
The desire to use nuclear weapons to compensate for conventional
inferiority has been evident in several among the limited universe
of nuclear-armed states. The most prominent and long-standing example
is NATO during the Cold War. Believing that its own conventional forces
were inferior and fearing an unstoppable Soviet attack across the
north German plain into Western Europe, NATO was outspoken in its
embrace of a doctrine of nuclear first-use and loud, stubborn, and
explicit in its rejection of the proposition that it accept a no-first-use
posture. Similarly, after the Cold War, when Russia found itself with
much weakened and inferior conventional forces in a Europe dominated
by an extraordinarily powerful and expanding NATO, Moscow explicitly
repudiated the NFU pledge that had been made by the Soviet Union.
Moscow embraced instead a doctrine that resembled NATO's Cold War
nuclear doctrine in adopting - indeed, relying upon - the threat of
first-use to compensate for what do indeed appear to be dire conventional
inadequacies. Likewise, after Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in May
1998, it displayed unambiguous reluctance about offering a commitment
to NFU. Rather, like NATO and Russia, Islamabad appears to regard
its nuclear weapons as an offset to India's large conventional advantages.
Even Israel may fall into this category. Though it is not inferior
to its neighbors in the narrow military sense, it is surrounded by
hostile states who are much larger and potentially more powerful,
especially if they are coalesced against Israel. Hence, Israel has
had to worry about possible futures in which it is heavily overmatched
in aggregate resources by a combination of substantially bigger adversaries.
Part of the answer to this strategic dilemma has been the development
of remarkably effective conventional forces that have given Israel
a qualitative advantage in the region. But its nuclear capability
appears, at least in part, to be an insurance policy against the day
when Israel finds itself conventionally overmatched.
There appears to be a powerful regularity here: nuclear-armed states
or coalitions that feel inferior or fear inferiority reject NFU and
rely instead on first-use doctrines to compensate for their perceived
conventional disadvantages.
To preempt nuclear use by others. If war appears to be imminent
and inevitable, it is better to strike than be struck. This logic
- the logic of preemption - appears to have a powerful hold on the
strategic thinking of nuclear-armed states. In the nuclear rivalry
between the superpowers, both sides regarded preemption as an appropriate
or preferable option if there were clear signs that the opponent was
preparing to attack. Though the Soviet Union had made a NFU pledge,
for example, its military was deeply wedded to the notion of preemption.
As David Holloway has written, "Soviet strategic thought placed
considerable emphasis on preemption; if the Soviet Union was sure
that the enemy was about to attack, it should strike first in order
to break up his forces." 1
Similarly, military planners in the United States assumed that they
should provide preemption options to their political leaders, and
assumed as well that this would be the best option in the event that
war was about to occur. The first commander of the Strategic Air Command,
General Curtis Lemay, commented in 1954, "I believe that if the
US is pushed in the corner far enough we should not hesitate to strike
first."2 Early US nuclear war plans
placed great emphasis on what was then called the "neutralization
objective," that is, the aim of destroying Soviet nuclear assets
in a preemptive first strike.3 When President
Kennedy, in his first months in office, was briefed on the nuclear
war plan, he was instructed quite emphatically about the enormous
and desirable advantages in a preemptive first strike and of the additional
millions of Americans who would perish if the Soviet Union were allowed
to strike the first blow.4 Throughout
the Cold War, American operational plans for nuclear war placed enormous
and continuous emphasis on destroying Soviet nuclear forces in a preemptive
first strike.5
Nuclear preemption requires action in response to warning. If an
opponent appears to be mobilizing for an attack, the potential target
of the attack must be prepared to decide and to strike on short notice
to beat its enemy to the punch. This implies forces at the ready,
high levels of alert, preexisting war plans, and counterforce targeting
strategies to destroy enemy forces before they can be used. Many of
the perceived dangers of the nuclear age - what Schelling memorably
called the dynamics of mutual alarm, the reciprocal fear of surprise
attack, and so on - were in substantial measure a consequence of the
mutual interest in preemption.
Nuclear-armed states that wish to retain a preemption option must
be prepared to strike first. This is true even if they publicly articulate
a policy of NFU. The requirements of preemption are inconsistent with
a genuine embrace of a NFU strategy. Indeed, a NFU pledge that is
fully reflected in war plans and force dispositions is incompatible
with the preemption option. Because nuclear-armed states seem keenly
interested in retaining the preemption option, this represents a significant
barrier to the widespread acceptance of NFU. Even states that have
committed themselves to NFU are likely, in reality, to have preserved
their ability to preempt. Would India, with its NFU pledge, preempt
if it believed Pakistan were preparing a nuclear strike? History would
suggest: don't bet against it.
Preventive War. Established nuclear powers seem to find it
tempting to consider the option of preventive war when confronted
with the incipient nuclear capacity of a rival power. Preventive war
to forestall nuclear acquisition by an adversary need not be nuclear.
The clearest preventive attack of recent times was Israel's preventive
strike against Iraq's Osiraq reactor in June 1981, which involved
a conventional air strike.6 Similarly,
the Bush Administration's inclination in the fall of 2002 to wage
a preventive war against Saddam Hussein envisioned not a nuclear strike
but a conventional invasion to remove Saddam from power and to eliminate
his WMD programs.
As these examples attest, conventional preventive war is a viable
alternative if the adversary has yet to acquire nuclear weapons. But
if the opponent has already achieved a nuclear weapons capability,
then the nuclear component of preventive war comes directly into play.
In a hostile relationship between two nuclear-armed powers, the concept
of preventive war entails the superior power seeking to eliminate
by nuclear first strike the nuclear capacity of its opponent while
it still retains the capacity to do so. Delay that allows the opponent
to expand and improve its nuclear forces may eliminate the preventive
war option (because the opponent is able to achieve survivable forces)
or to greatly increase the risk of the preventive war option (because
the opponent may have some capacity to retaliate even after the nuclear
attack). The superior power thus faces a classic "window"
logic: act soon or the window of opportunity may close. This logic
puts pressure on the superior power to at least contemplate preventive
war while it is still a viable option.
While there are no examples in which any power actually launched
a preventive attack with nuclear weapons, there is considerable evidence
in the historical record that states with superior nuclear capabilities
discussed and seriously considered doing so. In his study of American
preventive war thinking in the early years of the Cold War, for example,
Marc Trachtenberg found that "In the late 1940s and well into
the early 1950s, the basic idea that the United States should not
just sit back and allow a hostile power like the Soviet Union to acquire
a massive nuclear arsenal - that a much more 'active' and more 'positive'
policy had to be seriously considered - was surprisingly widespread."7
Though in the end, President Eisenhower set aside the preventive war
option, he and other high officials wrestled with the possibility
that it was the right course of action. Ruminating on the dangers
that might attend a huge Soviet nuclear buildup, Eisenhower commented
to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1953 that they "might
be forced to consider whether or not our duty to future generations
did not require us to initiate war at the most propitious moment we
could designate."8 Similar calculations
are evident in the American reaction to the emergence of the Chinese
nuclear capability in the early 1960s.9
And in 1969, the Soviet Union famously approached the United States
to inquire about Washington's reaction to the idea of preventive war
against China.10
More recently, the Bush Administration has explicitly articulated
a policy of preventive war (often mis-labeled as preemptive war) as
a major component of its response to the threat of WMD proliferation
to hostile states. Bush's National Security Strategy states, for example,
that "We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist
clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction
against the United States and our allies and friends."11
Preventive action need not be nuclear, but the Bush Administration's
Nuclear Posture Review made it clear that preventive war involving
nuclear first use is not ruled out. There is great emphasis on destroying
hard deeply buried targets (HDBTs), for example, coupled with the
suggestion that there may be a need to develop new nuclear warheads
for this purpose.12 The notion of nuclear
preventive war is thus not merely a historical curiosity.
The risks associated with a preventive nuclear war are considerable,
and no state has been able to bring itself to implement the policy.
But the idea clearly tempts. And it is a notion that requires the
ability to use nuclear weapons first. It is, in short, another common
strategic impulse that is incompatible with NFU.
First use as an element of extended deterrence. During the
Cold War, a major challenge to America diplomacy and strategy resided
in the fact that it extended nuclear protection - the so-called "nuclear
umbrella" - to its allies. This raised the possibility that Washington
might need to use nuclear weapons on behalf of an ally even if the
United States itself had not been directly attacked. In Europe, of
course, this problem was intimately connected with NATO's strategy
of relying on nuclear weapons to compensate for conventional inadequacies.
Thus, the American security guarantee to its allies depended fundamentally
on Washington's expressed willingness to use nuclear weapons first
on behalf of other states that had been attacked, even if the attack
had been conventional - and to risk escalation to nuclear attacks
on the American homeland in the process. The structure of this relationship
led to endless NATO efforts to find ways of making nuclear first-use
threats credible. It led also to endless NATO debates and broodings
about battlefield nuclear weapons, theater nuclear use, the coupling
of theater and strategic forces, and about the urgency of being able
to dominate the escalation ladder.13
As Soviet nuclear and conventional capabilities grew, this led to
obsessive worries about the adverse shift in the military balance,
great fears that the Soviets would be able to dominate the escalation
game, and alarm that this would undermine NATO. As one characteristic
analysis put it, "Soviet and Warsaw Pact advantages in conventional
and strategic forces all lead to increased Soviet dominance of the
escalation process. This exacerbates the ever-present West European
concern about US decoupling of its strategic forces form the defense
of Europe, which in turn contributes to the erosion of the allies'
confidence in the United States."14
Because nuclear first use was at the very core of the security relationship
between the United States and its allies, NFU was not simply incompatible
with NATO's inclinations. It was thought to pose a mortal threat to
NATO's security arrangements, to undermine the alliance, and to raise
the risk of war. When in 1982 four prominent Americans (Mssrs. Bundy,
Kennan, McNamara, and Smith) proposed that NATO should consider adopting
a NFU doctrine, it provoked stern and alarmed responses from within
the alliance. Four distinguished Germans responded to this proposal,
arguing that the NFU doctrine would wreck NATO's successful longstanding
policy and undermine peace in Europe. Wrote the Germans, "It
is the inescapable paradox of this [NATO] strategy that the will to
conduct nuclear war must be demonstrated in order to prevent war at
all."15 The NFU proposal made no
inroads in official NATO policy - and indeed, to this day, NATO firmly
rejects NFU.
The general conclusion is this: states that seek to extend nuclear
guarantees to allied states will find NFU entirely unacceptable because
without a credible first use threat their commitments are meaningless.
Deterrence of or retaliation against use of chemical or biological
weapons. States that have forsaken chemical and biological weapons
(CBW) cannot deter CBW use by threat of symmetrical reply. As concerns
about CBW proliferation have mounted, there has been growing interest
in using threats of nuclear retaliation to deter CBW use. During the
Clinton Administration, the United States came close to explicitly
articulating this as its policy. The Bush Administration is similarly
inclined in this direction. "Official defense policy," says
one worried analysis of this 'deterrence gap', "declares that
nuclear weapons act as a deterrent against the entire spectrum of
potential nuclear, biological, and chemical attacks."16
Similarly, there have been suggestions that the Israeli government
might use nuclear weapons in response to an Iraqi CBW attack on its
territory.
Whether a state as comprehensively powerful as the United States
needs to rely on nuclear threats to deter CBW attacks is certainly
questionable.17 But there is no question
that there is wide interest in the United States in using nuclear
weapons to cope with this threat. The Bush Administration's Nuclear
Posture Review, for example, says that American nuclear weapons provide
"assurance" against "known or suspected threats of
nuclear, biological, or chemical attacks," and specifically singles
out the "defeat of chemical and biological agents" as one
of the missions on which the United States is working.18
Here, then, is a justification for the retention of first-use options
that has not merely persisted into the Cold War era; CBW are almost
universally viewed as a growing problem. So long as the United States
(not only the Bush Administration, but also the Clinton Administration
as well, albeit more quietly) believes that nuclear weapons are necessary
to deter CBW threats, there will exist a potent reason for resisting
calls for NFU. And resist the United States has done, unwaveringly,
throughout the dozen years of the post-Cold War era. It is conceivable
that other nuclear-armed states will come to the same position for
the same reason.
Crisis signaling or intra-war bargaining. In the literature
that emerged on nuclear strategy, a nuclear crisis was sometimes conceived
as an intense bargaining interaction in which the protagonists needed
to communicate threats, display resolve, and demonstrate risks. When
the line between crisis and war has been crossed, the bargaining and
the signaling continue. At least in the abstract, it is imaginable
that nuclear weapons might be used first in a symbolic manner, as
a dramatic signal of the determination of the party who utilizes nuclear
weapons in this way or as a dramatic expression of the risks and dangers
of the unfolding crisis. Herman Kahn, for example, regarded such action
as a discrete rung on the "ladder of escalation." Such a
"spectacular show of force," Kahn suggested, would seem
"extremely menacing, reckless, and determined" and would
be "an impressive, even if symbolic, act."19
Thomas Schelling particularly emphasized the bargaining dimension
of both nuclear crisis and nuclear war, and viewed the deliberate
"manipulation of risk" as an integral element of such bargaining.
Crossing the nuclear threshold is one particularly vivid way of attempting
to transform the existing dynamic. This "deliberately raises
the risk of all-out war" and thereby dramatically changes the
character of the situation. Commenting on nuclear use in a limited
war, for example, Schelling notes that "Once nuclear weapons
are introduced, it is not the same war any longer….It is now
a war of nuclear bargaining and demonstration."20
What is envisioned in such analysis is nuclear first use for the purposes
of crisis management or intra-war bargaining.
Obviously, no state has ever utilized a nuclear detonation during
a crisis for purely signaling purposes. Nor has there been any wartime
nuclear escalation (symbolic or otherwise) intended as a bargaining
tactic. (There has been some manipulation of nuclear alerts that seems
to have been undertaken in part communicate messages to the other
side, but this is far short of crossing the nuclear threshold, even
making allowances for the dangers raised by reciprocal alerting in
crisis.)21 Nevertheless, here is another
purpose that nuclear first use might serve. Any state that feels it
may need at some point to make recourse to this option will have one
more reason for resisting NFU.
A last resort escalation. For some states, nuclear weapons may be
regarded as the ultimate insurance policy against catastrophic conventional
defeat. In the desperate circumstance that total defeat is imminent,
nuclear first use of some sort may seem imperative, despite all the
risks that would inevitably attend any such use (particularly if the
war involved two or more nuclear-armed states). Theater use might
prevent disaster on the battlefield. A symbolic or strategic use might
salvage some bargaining leverage and permit the losing party to extricate
itself, at least partially, from a horrible predicament. These are
not attractive options, but they may seem necessary to a state with
little left to lose. More promisingly, if the adversary understands
that nuclear escalation may be the last recourse of its victim, it
may be reluctant to press for total victory; indeed, with the nuclear
shadow looming and uncertainty about when its victim may panic, the
adversary may be reluctant to wage war at all. States unwilling to
capitulate and unwilling to go down without a fight may find in nuclear
first-use their most compelling ultimate sanction.
At least some interpretations of Israel's nuclear capability find
elements of this logic to be applicable (though Israel is obviously
serving other purposes as well).22 Similarly,
Pakistan may see nuclear weapons playing this sort of role in its
rivalry with much more powerful India. Because the context for this
consideration is conventional disaster, few states are likely to be
explicit that this is an element of their nuclear thinking, so it
is hard to appraise what place it may hold in the nuclear doctrine
of particular countries. The main point, though, is that this represents
yet another rationale for retaining first-use options.
Nuclear-armed missile defenses. For the sake of analytic completeness,
it is necessary to point out that there has been recurrent interest,
in both Washington and Moscow, in the idea of employing nuclear-armed
ballistic missile defenses. Indeed, some of the missile defenses deployed
in the past were in fact armed with nuclear warheads. Though there
do not appear to be any active plans to pursue nuclear-armed defenses,
the Defense Science Board of the Bush Administration is said to be
examining the question. The current US approach to missile defense
is built around non-nuclear hit-to-kill technology that imposes very
taxing technical requirements on the system. Under the circumstances,
it is perhaps somewhat surprising that there is not more interest
in nuclear-armed interceptors whose large destructive power eliminates
many of the technical challenges associated with "hit to kill."
If hit to kill fails or falters - a likely prospect if critics of
the program are to be believed - it is imaginable that interest in
nuclear-armed missile defenses will be resurrected.
Under some circumstances, use of nuclear missile defense interceptors
could be construed as first-use. This would be unambiguously true
if such interceptors were used against attacking missiles armed with
CBW. Arguably, it would be technically true even if nuclear interceptors
were fired against incoming nuclear armed ballistic missiles; the
first detonations would be those associated with missile defenses
- though in that circumstance the sanctity of NFU pledges would be
the least of our worries.
At this point, there appears to be little interest in developing
modern nuclear-armed missile defenses. In thinking about NFU, this
seems like a second order concern. Nevertheless, a complete inventory
of the purposes that might be served by nuclear first-use should take
note of this consideration. And it is not impossible that it will
be a larger factor in the future - for example, in a world in which
there are major worries about ballistic missiles armed with biological
weapons.23
Governments see utility in nuclear weapons. It is often argued
by critics of the nuclear weapons states that these weapons have no
utility or that they can (or should) serve no purpose other than to
deter their own use. Nuclear-armed states have never accepted such
arguments and instead have sought to utilize their nuclear capabilities
in the service of a number of purposes. The US government, for example,
at one time or another has sought to exploit nuclear weapons for most
of the purposes enumerated above. Far from regarding nuclear weapons
as useless, it has viewed them as essential, perhaps indispensable,
in achieving important ends. Not surprisingly, therefore, Washington
has been among the most adamant opponents of NFU.
A genuine strategy of no-first-use implies - indeed, requires - that
nuclear-armed states relinquish any desire to utilize first-use threats
and options for the attainment of these purposes. This might become
possible because the purpose no longer seems worthy. There appears
to be little interest anymore, for example, in symbolic first use
for signaling purposes. This might become possible because the purpose
is no longer relevant. Arguably, there is little reason in the post-Cold
War era for NATO to be overly exercised about the problems of extended
nuclear deterrence. This might be possible because there are other
ways of achieving desired objectives. The United States, for example,
with its overweening power ought to be able to make credible deterrent
threats against CBW use without reliance on nuclear weapons. But whatever
the reason, the strategy of NFU means that nuclear-armed states cannot
use nuclear weapons for the attainment of these other purposes. This
is an inexorable connection. It explains why advocates of NFU insist
that nuclear weapons should serve no other purpose than nuclear deterrence.
Thus the articulate and influential nuclear weapons study of the US
National Academy of Sciences recommended that "the United States
should announce that the only purpose of US nuclear weapons is to
deter nuclear attacks on the United States and its allies" and
embrace an official policy of NFU.24
Neither the American government nor most of the other nuclear weapons
states have taken this advice. But if they become willing to abandon
the practice of linking nuclear first-use to an array of other purposes,
they then will need to address the more tractable, but still difficult,
problem of developing military postures consistent with a strategy
of NFU.
CAPABILITIES ABANDONED: MAKING NO FIRST USE REAL
If NFU is to be more than a declaratory policy, then it must be
meaningfully reflected in the war planning and force postures of the
nuclear powers. Because the possibility of first use inheres in the
possession of a nuclear arsenal, it is not easy to create a posture
that effectively displays genuine fidelity to the NFU pledge. Because
it is easy to proclaim NFU as a declaratory policy, little weight
has been given in the past to the NFU pledges made by various nuclear
powers. It seems safe to say, for example, that the United States
and its NATO allies gave no credence whatsoever to the NFU commitment
made by the Soviet Union.
What must nuclear-armed states do if they wish to genuinely adopt
a strategy of no-first-use? How might they make this a credible and
reassuring step? How could they configure their forces so as to reflect
a real NFU policy? In the context of anything like present nuclear
forces, it is not clear that there is a wholly convincing answer to
these questions - or at least, an answer that would be wholly convincing
to a suspicious adversary. But an implication of NFU is that the present
force postures must be left far behind. Then, as a general matter,
the answer must be that a real NFU policy would have to ripple through
the entire military posture and preparations of the nuclear-armed
state. And the end result would need to be a doctrine that does not
rely on first use and a nuclear force posture that has little or no
capacity to be used first.
War planning. NFU cannot be real if militaries develop war
plans that include, or even depend upon, the expectation of first-use
of nuclear weapons. It has long been a commonplace to note the gap
that often exists in nuclear powers between declaratory policy and
operation policy. The Soviet Union's NFU pledge, for example, coexisted
with war plans for a European war that called for substantial use
of nuclear weapons from the outset of hostilities.25
A genuine strategy of no-first use would need to be reflected in operational
war plans. These would have to assume an entirely non-nuclear character
and to extirpate all scenarios in which recourse is made to the first
use of nuclear weapons.
Eradicating the idea that nuclear first use is an option would have
enormous implications. It would alter the expectations of politicians
and commanders. It would (or should) influence military investment
decisions - more conventional capability may be necessary, for example.26
It could affect public articulations of defense policy and military
doctrine. In the Soviet period, Moscow's NFU pledge was undermined
by a profusion of military writings that emphasized nuclear preemption
and warfighting and otherwise were in tension with NFU. But a genuine
NFU strategy would need to harmonize doctrinal expositions and political
explanations of defense policy with the constraints of the NFU commitment.
Changes in public rhetoric alone will not be sufficient to convince
the world that a NFU strategy is firmly in place. But they could help
send the message that NFU was being taken seriously. NATO presently
proclaims at every occasion that nuclear weapons are essential and
that nuclear first-use is an integral component of alliance military
strategy. If NATO instead were to proclaim that nuclear weapons are
irrelevant to most of the alliance's security needs and that it could
not envision circumstances in which it would use nuclear weapons first,
this would certainly set a very different tone.
War planning, of course, is not a public activity, though it has
public outcroppings. So though this is a necessary step if NFU is
to be real, it must be coupled with other, more visible steps, if
others are to be convinced that NFU is more than declaratory policy.
Exercises and training. Militaries, goes the old aphorism,
fight the way they train. Military organizations are honed through
years training and exercises to operate in certain ways with certain
expectations. If exercises sometimes or routinely involve scenarios
that include nuclear first use, this will be visible to observers
of the exercises and will be have impact on the way the military thinks
and behaves. NFU cannot be real if militaries are practicing as if
nuclear weapons will be used first. In the context of a strategy of
NFU, exercises should ingrain the idea that first-use is entirely
out of the picture and should not figure at all in the calculations
of military commanders.
Force Composition and Disposition. A strategy of NFU would
require or permit dramatic alterations in force posture. A purely
deterrent force could be much smaller and simpler than the present
arsenals of the larger nuclear powers. There would be no need for
emphasis on speed or offensive readiness. (Readiness for survivability
would, of course, remain desirable.) The force postures most compatible
with NFU, and most convincing to other powers, would possess little
or no capability for first-use.
This proposition - that states should seek to minimize the first-use
capacities of their nuclear arsenals - has potentially profound implications
for nuclear posture. It could lead far down a road toward latent,
residual, undeployed nuclear capabilities. In effect, this would entail
the aggressive pursuit of deep dealerting.27
In the context of a strategy of NFU, nuclear forces need only survive
survive an attack and be capable of retaliation. No other demands
are placed upon them. This means that all readiness measures associated
with first use options are superfluous, unnecessary, and even undesirable.
Some categories of nuclear weapons - nonstrategic nuclear forces,
for example - would become expendable. Forward deployed weapons, such
as the American nuclear capabilities deployed in Europe, would be
neither necessary nor appropriate. With offensive readiness no longer
important, there would be no reason to leave warheads routinely mated
to delivery systems. There might be little reason, indeed, to possess
actively deployed nuclear weapons. There might be no compelling reason
to leave nuclear weapons in the custody of military organizations.
So long as survivability could be assured, there might be an argument
for keeping few, if any, fully assembled nuclear weapons in the arsenal.
Following this logic still further, in this sort of nuclear environment,
states might grow comfortable not only with NFU, but with the notion
of no-early-second-use - retaliation does not need to be prompt in
order to deter. The end point of this logic might be something like
the capacities of present day Japan, which might be regarded as a
massively dealerted nuclear power. It possesses nuclear expertise,
delivery systems, and fissile material. In some weeks or months it
could build nuclear weapons for retaliation if it needed to. But no
one fears its first use options. Thus, the premise of NFU, if taken
seriously, produces a logic that can lead in stunning directions.
In short, once nuclear arsenals are limited to purely deterrent purposes,
it becomes possible to envision substantial alterations of force posture
that would give considerable reality to NFU commitments. For the larger
nuclear powers, one could imagine much smaller forces, deeply dealerted,
incapable of rapid use, perhaps with warheads unmated from delivery
systems, perhaps with warheads withdrawn from regular deployment.
This is a very different nuclear force, far from anything presently
in view, but one entirely compatible with a world dominated by deterrence
and NFU.
CONCLUSION
To truly embrace a strategy of NFU has fundamentally important implications
in terms of both purpose and posture. Nuclear-armed states must be
prepared to abandon the practice of exploiting nuclear weapons for
the attainment of a variety of different purposes. Only one purpose
is compatible with NFU: the deterrence of nuclear attack. All other
purposes associated with nuclear weapons must be jettisoned or achieved
by other means.
This is the crux of the issue. If nuclear weapon states were really
prepared to limit themselves purely to nuclear deterrence, not only
would NFU be acceptable but many of the associated force posture alterations
would become palatable, if not congenial. However, most nuclear-armed
states appear to have objectives beyond nuclear deterrence that are
thought to be served by their nuclear weapons, leading to the embrace
of first use doctrines and the retention of first use options. Above
all, the sole superpower has linked its nuclear capability to at least
a handful of objectives other than nuclear deterrence, and hence finds
NFU to be entirely objectionable. Washington correctly appreciates
that NFU is incompatible with its present nuclear doctrine. So long
as this remains the case, the genuine strategy of NFU will make little
headway in the corridors of power.
If the time someday comes when the nuclear powers are truly interested
in a meaningful embrace of NFU, this will be a significant step toward
the marginalization of nuclear weapons. It will mean that their role
in international politics and national policy is much more circumscribed.
Once nuclear weapons have been restricted to the narrow purpose of
neutralizing the nuclear weapons of others, a familiar logic comes
into play: if the only purpose for nuclear weapons is deterrence,
then if no one has them no one needs them.
Footnotes
| 1. |
David Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms
Race, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 57. |
| 2. |
David Rosenberg, "A Smoking Radiating Ruin
at the End of Two Hours: Documents on American Plans for Nuclear
War with the Soviet Union, 1954-5-1955," International
Security, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Winter 1981-1982), p. 13. |
| 3. |
Rosenberg, "A Smoking, Radiating Ruin,"
pp. 31-32. |
| 4. |
See, for example, Scott Sagan, "SIOP 62: The
Nuclear War Plan Briefing to President Kennedy," International
Security, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Summer 1987), pp. 22-51. |
| 5. |
This is the major point, for example, in Desmond
Ball, "US Strategic Forces: How Would They Be Used?,"
International Security, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Winter 1982/1983),
pp. 31-60. See in particular p. 34. |
| 6. |
An account and assessment of the attack on Osiraq
can be found in Shai Feldman, "The Attack on Osiraq - Revisited,"
International Security, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Fall 1982), pp.
114-142. |
| 7. |
Marc Trachtenberg, "A 'Wasting Asset': American
Strategy and the Shifting Nuclear Balance," International
Security, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Winter 1988-1989), p. 5. |
| 8. |
Quoted in David Rosenberg, "The Origins of
Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945-1950,"
in Steven E. Miller, ed., Strategy and Nuclear Deterrence,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 143. |
| 9. |
See in particular William Burr and Jeffrey Richelson,
"Whether to Strangle the Baby in the Cradle: The United States
and the Chinese Nuclear Program, 1960-64," International
Security, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Winter 2001-2002), pp. 54-99. |
| 10. |
Kissinger recounts this episode in his memoirs.
See Henry A. Kissinger, White House Years, (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1979), pp. 183-191. As Kissinger makes very clear, he and
President Nixon were far more interested at that point in playing
the Chinese against the Soviets than they were in seeing the Soviet
Union eliminate China's nuclear capability. |
| 11. |
The National Security Strategy of the United
States, September 2002, p. 14. |
| 12. |
Nuclear Posture Review Report, January 8,
2002, pp. 15-16 (as available at http://www.globalsecurity.org). |
| 13. |
See, for example, Paul Nitze, "The Relationship
of Strategic and Theater Nuclear Forces," International
Security, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Fall 1977), pp. 122-131. |
| 14. |
James J. Martin, "How the Soviet Union Came
to Gain Escalation Dominance: Trends and Asymmetries in the Theater
Nuclear Balance," in Uwe Nerlich, ed., Soviet Power and
Western Negotiating Policies - The Soviet Asset: Military Power
in the Competition Over Europe, (Cambridge: Ballinger Publishing
Co., 1983), p. 105. |
| 15. |
The original salvo was McGeorge Bundy, George F.
Kennan, Robert S. McNamara, and Gerard Smith, "Nuclear Weapons
and the Atlantic Alliance, " Foreign Affairs, Vol.
60, No. 4 (Spring 1982), pp. 753-768. For the German reaction,
see Karl Kaiser, Georg Leber, Alois Mertes, and Franz-Josef Schulze,
"Nuclear Weapons and the Preservation of Peace: A Response
to An American Proposal For Renouncing the First Use of Nuclear
Weapons," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 60, No. 5 (Summer
1982), pp. 1157-1170. The quote is found on p. 1159. |
| 16. |
Gwendolyn Hall, Stephen Lambert, and John Capello,
"US Counter-Proliferation Strategy for a New Century,"
in James M. Smith, Searching for National Security in an NBC
World, (USAF Institute for National Security Studies, July
2000), p. 130. |
| 17. |
See, for example, the excellent analysis in Scott
D. Sagan, "The Commitment Trap: Why the United States Should
Not Use Nuclear Threats to Deter Biological and Chemical Weapons
Attacks," International Security, Vol. 24, No. 4 (
Spring 2000), pp. 85-115. Elsewhere I have suggested that the
US could credibly adopt a deterrent posture of "regimicide"
- based on the threat that any regime that used WMD against the
United States would be eliminated by the application of overwhelming
US conventional military power. See Steven E. Miller, "The
Flawed Case for Missile Defense," Survival, Vol. 43, No.
3 (Autumn 2001), pp. 95-109. |
| 18. |
Nuclear Posture Review Report, pp. 4, 16. |
| 19. |
Herman Kahn, On Escalation, (Baltimore: Penguin
Books, 1968), p. 91. |
| 20. |
Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence,
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 107, 110. |
| 21. |
See, for example, Scott D. Sagan, "Nuclear
Alerts and Crisis Management," International Security,
Vol. 9, No. 4 (Spring 1985), pp. 99-139. |
| 22. |
See, for example, Beatrice Heuser, "Beliefs,
Culture, Proliferation, and the Use of Nuclear Weapons,"
in Eric Herring, ed., Preventing the Use of Weapons of Mass
Destruction, (London: Frank Cass, 2000), p. 92. |
| 23. |
The Union of Concerned Scientists study, Countermeasures,
makes the point that BW can be delivered by large numbers of missile-borne
bomblets that are impossible to defeat using hit to kill technology.
If that threat should loom larger in the future, this could make
nuclear-armed interception much more attractive. |
| 24. |
National Academy of Sciences, The Future of US
Nuclear Weapons Policy, (Washington DC: National Academy Press,
1997), p. 71. |
| 25. |
See, for example, Beatrice Heuser, "Warsaw
Pact Military Doctrines in the 70s and 80s: Findings in the East
German Archives," Comparative Strategy, Vol. 12, No.
4 (October-December 1993), pp. 437-457, which found evidence on
this point in the war plans of the Warsaw Pact. |
| 26. |
John Mearsheimer, for example, argued against NFU
on the grounds that NATO would not make the necessary additional
investment in conventional capabilities. See his "Nuclear
Weapons and Deterrence in Europe," International Security,
Vol. 9, No. 3 (Winter 1984-1985), pp. 19-46. |
| 27. |
For a concise survey of a number of dealerting proposals,
including suggestions of Goodby, Feiveson, and Blair, see Tony
Taylor, "A Dealerting Primer," Union of Concerned Scientists,
at http://www.ucusa.org. |
