The Four Horsemen Stumble Again

In today's Wall Street Journal, the "Four Horsemen" (Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn) appear to address some of the problems with nuclear deterrence. But what are they really saying?

The four former high-ranking US government officials lay out five somewhat contradictory "practical steps toward deterrence that do not rely primarily on nuclear weapons or nuclear threats to maintain international peace and security."

The first step is to develop a strategy to deal with the many other issues that threaten the survival of a country (chemical/biological weapons, cyber warfare, terrorism, climate change, health crisis).

Does Deterrence Really Deter?

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.

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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?

Watch Former Senator Sam Nunn on the Colbert Report

Watch Sam Nunn speak about the Nuclear Threat Initiative's new film Nuclear Tipping Point on last night's Colbert Report.  You can order the movie for free at www.nucleartippingpoint.org.

On the Report, Nunn explained how he, William Perry, George Shultz, and Henry Kissinger all believe that all nations must commit to a real schedule of nuclear disarmament, and how nuclear abolition is not incongruous with national security.  The former Senator also commented on the increasing threat of nuclear terrorism, to which Colbert proposed an alternative strategy...see how Nunn responds below.

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Sam Nunn
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Former Senator Sam Nunn to Appear on Tonight's Colbert Report

The nation's favorite faux-pundit, Stephen Colbert, will host former Senator Sam Nunn tonight on his show The Colbert Report, on the Comedy Central network.  Along with CNN founder Ted Turner, Nunn co-chairs and is CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI)--"a place of common ground where people with different ideological views are working together to close the gap between the global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and the global response."  One of the Senator's most important acts in Congress was the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program which gives aid to Russia and former Soviet Republics for the securement and destruction of nuclear, chemical, and biological materials.

Recently, Nunn--along with former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former Secretary of Defense William Perry--appeared in the NTI documentary Nuclear Tipping Point.  In the film, the four men discuss why they co-authored two op-eds that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, which outlined a need for--and a plan on how to achieve--a world without nuclear weapons.

The Colbert Report airs at 11:30pm EST, and is re-aired the next day.