Nuclear Weapons Acquisition and Deterrence

Abstract

The effects of nuclear weapons acquisition on deterrence will depend on the nature of the state, leadership, or even organization that obtains the weapons; the types of actions to be deterred; the purpose and strategy the weapons serve; the consequences for the military situation between the acquiring state and its adversaries; and the ways in which those adversaries respond to the opposing nuclear threat. The implications of nuclear acquisition for deterrence are likely to change over time as nuclear capabilities move from a nascent state and gain, among other qualities, increased size, longer range, more diversity, better survivability, and greater destructive power. Deterrence is not only a matter of who is being deterred, from what action, by whom, for what reason, by what threats, and in what circumstances, but also when in the extended process of acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities a deterrence challenge occurs.

Notes

1. Only months after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, Bernard Brodie wrote his oft-quoted lines that, “Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have almost no other useful purpose.” “Implications for Military Policy,” in Bernard Brodie, ed., The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1946), 76.

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49. Charles A. Duelfer, in Senate Armed Services Committee, The Weapons of Mass Destruction Program of Iraq, S. Hrg. 107–573, 107th Cong., 2d sess. (Washington, DC: GPO, 2002), 96. Duelfer at the time of the conversation was the executive deputy chairman of the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq.

50. Rolf Ekéus, executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq, in Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Global Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Part II, S. Hrg. 104–422, Pt. II, 104th Cong., 2d sess. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1996), 92. Ekéus added, “this is the story he, Aziz, tells. I think one should be very careful about buying it. I don't say that he must be wrong, but I believe there are strong reasons that this may be an explanation he offers of why Iraq lost the war in Kuwait. This is the story which they gladly tell everyone who talks to them. So I think one should be cautious at least about buying that story. I think still it is an open question.”

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69. See Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). In a recent reiteration of the formula, Michael Oren, Israeli ambassador to the United States, told an interviewer, “Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weaponry into the Middle East … this has been Israel's policy since … 1958 [when construction on the Dimona nuclear reactor began]. And Israel maintains that policy to this day.” “Global Public Square,” hosted by Fareed Zakaria, CNN, May 16, 2009, transcript available at http://www.cnn.com.

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72. Some Soviet officials in the early Cold War did worry that their cities might fall prey to clandestine nuclear attack. See Vladislav M. Zubok, “Stalin and the Nuclear Age,” in John Lewis Gaddis et al., eds., Cold War Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy Since 1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 55.

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79. With regard to North Korea, Joseph Bermudez argues that, “By 1989, a number of factors converged and prompted the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] to establish comprehensive, long-term requirements for the ballistic missile program. These factors included: … the DPRK's desire to strike at targets in the southernmost sections of the ROK [Republic of Korea] and at US bases in Japan [and] the DPRK's desire to eventually develop a true strategic missile force capable of striking US targets throughout East Asia and the continental United States. … In this regard, the DPRK followed the PRC's [People's Republic of China's] example of basing missile-development goals on target ranges. Whether the DPRK defined its requirements at once or over a period of several years is unclear, but they were in place by 1990.” Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr., A History of Ballistic Missile Development in the DPRK, Occasional Paper No. 2 (Monterey, CA: Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, 1999), 14.

80. International Crisis Group, North Korea's Nuclear and Missile Programs, 9–11; Joby Warrick and Greg Miller, “Discontented Iranian Officials Provide Wealth of Intelligence,” The Washington Post, April 25, 2010; David E. Sanger, “Administration Presses Its Case Against Iran Abroad,” The New York Times, June 8, 2010; and “Media Availability with Secretary [Robert] Gates en Route to Lima, Peru,” Department of Defense transcript, April 13, 2010.

81. On the capabilities of North Korean and Iranian ballistic missiles, see National Air and Space Intelligence Center, Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat, NASIC-1031-0985-09 (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH: National Air and Space Intelligence Center, April 2009).

82. Department of Defense, Ballistic Missile Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, February 2010).

83. Evan S. Medeiros, “‘Minding the Gap’: Assessing the Trajectory of the PLA's Second Artillery,” in Roy Kamphausen and Andrew Scobell, eds., Right Sizing the People's Liberation Army: Exploring the Contours of China's Military (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, September 2007), 162, 163.

84. See, for example, Desmond Ball, “The Development of the SIOP, 1960–1983,” in Desmond Ball and Jeffrey Richelson, eds., Strategic Nuclear Targeting (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), 57–83; William Burr, “The Nixon Administration, the ‘Horror Strategy,’ and the Search for Limited Nuclear Options, 1969–1972,” Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 7, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 34–78; Terry Terriff, The Nixon Administration and the Making of U.S. Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); Harold Brown, Department of Defense Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1982 (Washington, DC: GPO, January 19, 1981), 38–43; and Desmond Ball and Robert C. Toth, “Revising the SIOP: Taking War-Fighting to Dangerous Extremes,” International Security, vol. 14, no. 4 (Spring 1990): 65–92.

85. Lewis and Xue, China Builds the Bomb, 197.

86. See Ashley J. Tellis, India's Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal, MR-1127-AF (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corp., 2001), 499–502, 507–517; Sachin Parashar, “Kalam Certifies Pokharan II, Santhanam Stands His Ground,” Times of India, August 28, 2009; Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar and Principal Scientific Adviser to the Indian Government R. Chidambaram, press statement on the May 1998 Pokhran II nuclear tests, September 24, 2009, Mumbai, available at NetIndian News Network, http://www.netindian.in; and “India Has Thermonuclear Capabilities: NSA,” Indo-Asia News Service, September 20, 2009.

87. George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 431.

88. Tellis, India's Emerging Nuclear Posture, 515.

89. Ibid., 499; and Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb, p. 385.

90. Shannon N. Kile, Vitaly Fedchenko, and Hans M. Kristensen, “World Nuclear Forces,” in Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Yearbook 2009: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 345–379; Norman Polmar and Robert S. Norris, The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal: A History of Weapons and Delivery Systems Since 1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2009); and Pavel Podvig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).

91. See Viktor Adamsky and Yuri Smirnov, “Moscow's Biggest Bomb: The 50-Megaton Test of October 1961,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, issue 4 (Fall 1994): 3, 19–21.

92. See Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (New York: Praeger, 1965), 23.