Today's post is from Martin Hellman, friend of the NAPF and author of the blog Defusing the Nuclear Risk. Martin is a Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University.Calling nuclear deterrence by that name was a stroke of marketing genius for selling it to the public. Unfortunately, that stroke of genius was also a potential death sentence for us all by hiding another, more ominous aspect of this strategy.
To deter someone is “to discourage him from doing something, typically by instilling doubt or fear of the consequences.” Hence deterrence implies that it will work, that it will deter adversaries from calling our nuclear bluff.
To date, it has worked somewhat as advertised, though far from perfectly. If nuclear deterrence really worked, would the US have risked Soviet ire by deploying nuclear armed missiles in Turkey in 1961? And would Khrushchev have risked American ire by placing similar missiles in Cuba the next year? More recently, would the US have planned an Eastern European missile defense system that raised Russian ire, including a threat to respond by basing nuclear-armed bombers in Cuba?
To see deterrence for what it really is, it helps to go back to the early days of the nuclear era. Henry Kissinger’s 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy noted that:
Deterrence is greatest when military strength is coupled with the willingness to employ it. It is achieved when one side’s readiness to run risks in relation to the other is high; it is least effective when the willingness to run risks is low, however powerful the military capability.I agree with Kissinger, but wish he also had stated the obvious conclusion: To have any hope of being effective, nuclear deterrence must be conducted with a high tolerance for risk, namely that it might fail and destroy civilization. Deterrence is only an appropriate name for this strategy early in the process, after which it can suddenly be transformed into nuclear chicken and then into nuclear Armageddon.
All of which leads to two critical questions: Balancing its risks and rewards, is nuclear deterrence a net positive or a net negative for our security? And, if it detracts from our security, why do we cling to it instead of seeking alternative strategies?
Notes:
1. My thanks to the Arms Control Wonk blog for its post yesterday which included the above Kissinger quote.
2. My web site is dedicated to bringing objectivity to the assessment of nuclear deterrence’s risks and rewards.
3. One of my posts last September, makes a related point.
As a professor of psychiatry, I want to draw attention to another aspect of nuclear deterrence. That is its effect on mental health. Such deterrence rests on the frank acceptance of massive efforts to inculcate dread. Our lives from birth on do that superbly without the addition of dread of deliberate nuclear armageddon, and we have suffered for 12,000 years now from a continuously increasing overload of "civilization dread" deriving from poverty, pollution, injustice. To prevent both the end of civilization and the mental incapacity to live enjoyability within civilization, we urgently need to abolish nuclear weapons.
ReplyDeleteIt is important to note that Henry Kissinger, Shultz, Nunn & Perry have all concurred that the only sane approach to remaining safe in this world is for total abolition of nuclear weapons. The sooner the better.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it seems the Republicans in Congress are attempting to prevent any real progress on START before November midterm elections. It is also disgraceful that we have not ratified the CTBT and we are approaching the 65th Anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear weapons are a threat to humanity - that includes republicans and democrats.