Why Current Deterrence Theory is Wrong

The main argument given against the idea of nuclear abolition is that the “genie is out of the bottle,” and the only thing that keeps more countries from getting nuclear weapons is threatening them with nuclear weapons.  However, Iran and North Korea stand as stark evidence that this is simply not true.  Nation-states will develop nuclear weapons in response to being threatened by nuclear weapons.  In an age where the nuclear armed states can invade any non-nuclear country without drastic consequences, threatened states see that in this mindset, it only makes sense to arm oneself.  The US was able to invade Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  I would argue the only reason why the US hasn’t invaded Iran is because Russia and China have threatened retaliation.  Russia invaded Afghanistan in the 80s.  China took over Tibet.  The message the nuclear powers have been sending the rest of the world over the last 50 years is that if you do something we don’t like, and you don’t have a nuclear arsenal, then we can invade you.  Therefore, the logical conclusion is that in reality deterrence leads to proliferation because it creates a mindset in which nuclear weapons are the source of power and therefore necessary.  This is disastrous in an age where terrorists are no longer bound by national barriers.  It is dangerous in a world that is currently fraught with instability and popular unrest.  

Currently, President Obama and President Putin have agreed to lower their arsenals by a third more.  While this looks like a step in the right direction, it is not really progress.  Let me tell you why.  Both Russia and the US are modernizing their nuclear arsenals.  They are spending billions of dollars on making the nuclear weapons more deadly (as if blowing up an entire city-sized area isn’t deadly enough), more difficult to shoot down with missiles, and faster (missiles that can hit a target in 4 minutes rather than ten).  So really while they lower the number of overall warheads, all they are really doing is retiring the old warheads and actually creating a new stockpile of deadlier ones.  I must ask why the US needs to spend billions of dollars on making the deadliest weapons in human history deadlier.  It is almost laughable.  I mean how accurate does a nuclear missile need to be?  If you get within a mile of your target you will still vaporize it.

For example, the old WWII nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are 80 times weaker than our smallest nuclear warhead now.  Our smallest nuclear warhead completely annihilates a 1.7 mile radius around the detonation spot.  Most buildings and all living things in this area are wiped out instantly.  They get off lucky.  Then within a 2.7 mile radius from the blast (or 1 mile outside of the instant death area) all buildings except for steel structure are gone, fifty percent of living things are instantly killed, the other  fifty percent is mortally burned or wounded and will die within the coming minutes, hours, or days after the blast.  At a 4.7 mile radius from the blast center (or 2 miles outside of the last damage radius), all houses are destroyed by the blast wave, an estimated five percent of the population is instantly killed, forty-five percent are injured, all have been exposed to toxic levels of radiation.  They will most likely die slowly and painfully of radiation poisoning.  At a 7.4 mile radius (or roughly 3 miles from the last damage radius) there is still blast damage but only twenty-five percent of the population is injured.  After this point there is less damage from the blast itself, however every living thing within thirty miles from the blast center has been exposed to lethal doses of radiation.  They will die within days, and that area will be uninhabitable for ten years.  Within ninety miles, all living persons will die of radiation poisoning, also within days.  Within 160 miles, people will show symptoms of radiation poisoning: hair loss, white blood loss, nerve damage.  The elderly, the young, and the sick will die.  Finally within 250 miles from the blast center, radiation poisoning will occur, though most will live.  Also, the land will be safe to inhabit within three years.  This is the effect of both the US and Russia’s smallest nuclear warhead.  In another report, this time on a terrorist nuclear attack on New York City estimates that there would be 800,000 people killed, and 900,000 people injured.  Those are the effects of the smallest warheads.  If anything bigger is used the results are dramatically worse.  The fact remains if ever a nuclear attack were to occur on any city the results would be horrifying.  While deterrence may have prevented a nuclear attack from another country, no amount of nuclear weapons can prevent a terrorist from acquiring a nuclear weapon. 

How do you prevent a terrorist from getting a nuclear warhead?  Well one way is to keep nuclear weapons in secure facilities.  However, countries like Pakistan and India have questionable security, and the US can’t regulate their security.  Also, in Pakistan’s case, if government rule was to break down, nothing would stop terrorist groups from gaining access to those weapons.  However, if the nuclear powers come to an agreement to set a date for virtual disarmament, boost the power of the IAEA to regularly inspect and regulate nuclear programs in all countries, and agree to support the enforcement of the agreement through UN military force and sanctions then the disarmament could be permanent. This is quite a lot to ask from most of the nuclear powers.  However, I believe that security from nuclear attack should trump sovereignty in this instance.  If there is no enforcement, then there is no punishment for failing to make good on disarmament.  Once countries disarm, it would be very easy to make sure no country starts arming again because creating weapon’s grade plutonium is a lengthy, expensive, and fairly obvious endeavor.  Think about it; no terrorist organization has been able to make one because doing so requires building huge facilities and employing experts who are under surveillance.  Even North Korea, the most secretive country in the world, didn’t keep their nuclear weapons development a secret.  As long as the IAEA and various intelligence agencies do their jobs, no country could get away with making a nuclear weapon. 

So why is it likely that this idea won’t come to fruition?  First of all, the belief in nuclear deterrence is accepted as fact by both parties in Washington and Moscow.  Second, there is still little trust for the Russians in Washington DC.  The good news is that Russia is not our enemy anymore, and this mentality could be changed through effort.  For some reason, many politicians in America and Europe still see Russia as a country to fear instead of work with.  The truth is the moment America takes off its Cold War goggles and views Russia in a new way is the moment in which nuclear disarmament talks will actually bear fruit.  If the two countries with the largest nuclear arsenals and worst nuclear track records start transparently and honestly disarming, is when the rest of the world will see that a commitment to a nuclear-free world is actually possible.  Current deterrence ideology has failed.  However, I believe that if the world is transparently disarmed and then honestly regulated, nuclear weapons development can be deterred.

Sources:

Nuclear affects estimations come from: http://www.nationalterroralert.com/nuclear/

New York City scenario: http://www.atomicarchive.com/Example/Example1.shtml

Brooks Troiani is an intern at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

The Legal Issues of Nuclear Weapons

          Rule one of Customary International Humanitarian Law (March 2005) quotes: “The parties to conflict must at all times distinguish between civilians and combatants. Attacks may only be directed against combatants.”  A few rules down, rule twelve, declares that indiscriminate attacks are intolerable: prohibited.  Because most international law is the product of treaties, naturally cavities remain.  These cavities create dangerous ambiguity in how entities engage one another during armed conflict.  To curb this, customary international humanitarian law is in place as a set of 161 rules, implied and accepted as law by all recognized nations-states.  The rules as demonstrated above, predominantly focus on the protection of civilians and combatants during international and non-international armed conflict.

As we all should recognize, nuclear weapons cannot distinguish between personnel; they cannot be controlled after firing. This was/is the primary reason for conventions against the use of chemical weapons and cluster munitions.  The importance of customary international law is its potential to deter and mitigate the catastrophic implications that nuclear weapons present. If they cannot be effective in nuclear disarmament, then customary international law has failed its purpose.  However, when we open up the newspaper and flip to a page that discusses nuclear contentions, there is hardly if any serious discourse on the legal ramifications that nuclear weapons present.

Nuclear Deterrence Theory: still alive and kicking

One of the major impediments on the path to sustainable universal nuclear disarmament – meaning a world without nuclear weapons as well as the incentive to acquire them – is the persistent belief in the nuclear deterrence theory. This theory – which, in its most common form, claims that the threat of retaliation in kind will deter an opponent from carrying out a nuclear strike against you – was a cornerstone of the security mindset during the Cold War, yet continues to influence foreign and defence policies of nuclear weapon states, and such aspiring states, today.

Excellent efforts by academics, policy analysts and NGOs (with the support of some governments) have recently been undertaken to debunk the nuclear deterrence theory and as far as the present author is concerned, the reasoning displayed in these works is irrefutable and should convince anyone still in doubt of the uselessness of these instruments.[1] However, although there are hopeful signs that in some states the blind belief in nuclear deterrence is losing its grip on security thinking, in others the theory is still very much alive and kicking.

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).

My Critique of Nuclear Deterrence in The New York Times

On Saturday, October 9, my letter to the editor of The New York Times was printed. The letter was in response to an earlier editorial from the Times that essentially called on the UK to scale back its plans for replacing its Trident nuclear weapon system and rely on the United States for a full "nuclear deterrent."

Before joining the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, I worked for two years with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the UK. CND has worked tirelessly for over 50 years against nuclear weapons in the UK and around the world. Trident replacement was a huge issue when I worked there in 2006-07, as it continues to be now.

Typically I only write letters to the editor when an article or editorial gets me so fired up, I have no choice but to respond. This was one of those cases. Here at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we are working hard to debunk the myth of nuclear deterrence, like in our new 5-minute animated video. Combine that with my history and passion for preventing the UK from replacing its nuclear weapon system and you have a perfect story for me to comment on.

The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence

I'm thrilled to announce the release of our newest video, "The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence." This five-minute animated video shows that relying on nuclear deterrence is extremely dangerous and that, in fact, the only way for us to be safe from a nuclear attack is to abolish all nuclear weapons around the world.



The video was directed by Erik Choquette, an 18 year-old from Santa Barbara, CA. Erik won our Swackhamer Disarmament Video Contest in 2008 and 2009, and we are happy that he is continuing his involvement with the Foundation in this way. I owe Erik and his team at Chipotle Pictures a huge thank you for their hard work and dedication in getting this video done over the summer.

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?