PART I: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF “THE MYTH OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE”

Abstract

Several years ago, Ward Wilson presented in this journal a wide-ranging challenge to what every generation of national security scholars and practitioners since the end of World War II has been taught about nuclear weapons. He asserted that nuclear deterrence amounts to far less than its proponents have claimed and provocatively suggested that nuclear deterrence is a myth. Relying upon both empirical and theoretical objections to nuclear deterrence, he concluded that its failures were clear-cut and indisputable, whereas its successes were speculative. Yet in spite of a flourishing trade in scholarly articles, think tank reports, blog posts, and opinion pieces concerning nuclear deterrence, nobody—including nuclear weapons scholars—has ventured more than a limited critique of Wilson's essay. There are, however, serious shortcomings in Wilson's arguments—deficiencies that make his essay an unpersuasive brief against nuclear deterrence. Wilson's thesis could be correct. His arguments, however, are unlikely to persuade any skeptical members of Congress, upon whom future progress in arms control depends, to reconsider the value they attach to nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence.

Keywords:

• Nuclear deterrence
• nuclear weapons
• United States
• Soviet Union
• Israel
• United Kingdom

Notes

1. Ward Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” Nonproliferation Review 15 (November 2008), pp. 421–39.

2. Russ Wellen. “Deterrence: Hardest Argument in the World to Refute,” The Faster Times, March 30, 2010, <thefastertimes.com/nukesandotherwmd/2010/03/30/deterrence-hardest-argument-in-the-world-to-refute/>; Randy Rydell, “The Future of Nuclear Arms: A World United and Divided by Zero,” Arms Control Today, April 2009, pp. 21–25; Rob van Riet, “Nuclear Deterrence Theory: Still Alive and Kicking,” Waging Peace Today, June 3, 2011, <wagingpeacetoday.blogspot.com/2011/06/nuclear-deterrence-theory-still-alive.html>; Richard Tanter, “Rethinking Extended Nuclear Deterrence in the Defence of Australia,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, December 14, 2009, <www.japanfocus.org/-richard-tanter/3269>; and Tad Daley, Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon–Free World (Piscataway, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2010).

3. Ken Berry, Patricia Lewis, Benoît Pélopidas, Nikolai Sokov, and Ward Wilson, “Delegitimizing Nuclear Weapons: Examining the Validity of Nuclear Deterrence,” James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, May 2010, <cns.miis.edu/opapers/pdfs/delegitimizing_nuclear_weapons_may_2010.pdf>, p. 71.

4. “Ward Wilson Joins CNS as Senior Fellow April 20, 2010,” James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, press release, <cns.miis.edu/activities/100421_ward_wilson_joins_cns.htm>.

5. Philipp C. Bleek, Bruno Tertrais, and Edward A. Corcoran, “Nuclear Myth-Busting,” Nonproliferation Review 16 (July 2009), pp. 131–42; and Christoph Bluth, “The Reality and the Limitations of Nuclear Deterrence,” POLIS Working Papers No. 3, University of Leeds, 2010.

6. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” pp. 421–22.

7. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” pp. 422–23.

8. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 423.

9. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” pp. 427, 429.

10. One historian called the empire “a loose and flimsy structure.” See J.J. Saunders, The History of the Mongol Conquests (New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Publishers, 1971), p. 56. This paragraph based upon David Morgan, The Mongols (New York, NY: Basil Blackwell Inc., 1987), p. 67; A. Sevim and C.E. Bosworth, “The Seljuks and the Khwarazm Shahs,” in M.S. Asimov and C.E. Bosworth, eds., History of Civilizations of Central Asia (Paris: UNESCO, 1998), pp. 176–81; Saunders, The History of the Mongol Conquests, pp. 56–57; and Jeremiah Curtin, Mongols: A History (Conshohocken, PA: Combined Publishing, 1996), p. 104.

11. Sevim and Bosworth, “The Seljuks and the Khwarazm Shahs,” p. 181.

12. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 425.

13. “William Mitchell,” Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2011.

14. This paragraph is based upon the following sources: Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914–1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 176–250; A.C. Grayling, Among the Dead Cities: Was the Allied Bombing of Civilians in WWII a Necessity or a Crime? (London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2006), pp. 15–79; Barrett Tillman, Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942–1945 (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2010), pp. 67–105, 134–73; Gian P. Gentile, How Effective is Strategic Bombing? Lessons Learned from World War II to Kosovo (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2000), pp. 79–103; and Martin Van Crevald, The Age of Airpower (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2011), pp. 153–70.

15. Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, p. 292.

16. Dan Reiter, How Wars End (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 1.

17. Elizabeth A. Stanley, Paths to Peace: Domestic Coalition Shifts, War Termination and the Korean War (Palo Alto, California: Stanford University Press, 2009), p. 19.

18. Gideon G. Rose, “Victory and Its Substitutes: Foreign Policy Decision-Making at the Ends of Wars,” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1994, p. 16.

19. Gideon G. Rose, “Victory and Its Substitutes: Foreign Policy Decision-Making at the Ends of Wars,” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1994, p. 14.

20. Bluth, “The Reality and the Limitations of Nuclear Deterrence.”

21. Bluth, “The Reality and the Limitations of Nuclear Deterrence.”.

22.Bluth, “The Reality and the Limitations of Nuclear Deterrence.” p. 3.

23. Stanley, Paths to Peace, p. 23.

24. Rose, “Victory and Its Substitutes,” p. 12.

25. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 427.

26. Werner Gruhl, “Japanese Casualties,” Web Table 11, Imperial Japan's World War Two 1931–1945: Neglected Remembrance (Piscataway, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers Rutgers, 2006), <www.japanww2.com/wt11.htm>.

27. Werner Gruhl, “Japanese Casualties,” Web Table 11, Imperial Japan's World War Two 1931–1945: Neglected Remembrance (Piscataway, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers Rutgers, 2006), <www.japanww2.com/wt11.htm>. Gruhl presents four estimates in this range. Metropolitan Tokyo 1945 population (6,778,804) from “The United States Strategic Bombing Survey: The Strategic Air Operation of Very Heavy Bombardment in the War Against Japan (Twentieth Air Force) Final Report,” US Government Printing Office, September 1, 1946, Appendix A, p. 34. The hypothesized 10 percent would have exceeded actual Japanese civilian deaths (1942–45) from all causes, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Michael Clodfelter, Warfare and Armed Conflict: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1494–2007, third ed. (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc, 2008), pp. 565, 595, 658, 878.

28. The world's first thermonuclear device, “Mike,” tested at Enewetak Atoll on November 1, 1952, had a yield of 10.4 megatons. The explosion completely vaporized Elugelab Island and portions of two other nearby islands, leaving a crater 164 feet deep and 1.2 miles wide. Mike's “fireball alone would have engulfed Manhattan; its blast would have obliterated all New York's five boroughs.” See Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 510.

29. For an overview of how US nuclear weapons planning evolved in the early 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union, see Hans M. Kristensen, “Targets of Opportunity,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 1997, pp. 22–28. For a brief discussion of the leader willing to sacrifice his entire country as long as he survives, see Roger Speed and Michael May, “Assessing the United States’ Nuclear Posture,” in George Bunn and Christopher F. Chyba, eds., U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy: Confronting Today's Threats (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2006), p. 267.

30. This section is based upon Sandia National Laboratories, “U.S. Strategic Nuclear Policy: An Oral History, 1942–2004,” 2005, available at the National Security Archive website, <www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb361/index.htm>; David Alan Rosenberg, “Nuclear War Planning,” in Michael Howard, George Andreopoulus, and Mark R. Shulman, eds., The Laws of War: Constraints on Warfare in the Western World (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 160–90; Lynn Eden, “The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal and Zero: Sizing and Planning for Use—Past Present and Future,” in Catherine M. Kelleher and Judity Reppy, eds., Getting to Zero: The Path to Nuclear Disarmament (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 69–89; and David Alan Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960,” International Security 7 (Spring 1983), pp. 3–71.

31. Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill,” p. 10.

32. Sandia National Laboratories, “U.S. Strategic Nuclear Policy,” chapter 1.

33. Eden, “The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal and Zero,” p. 75.

34. Sandia National Laboratories, “U.S. Strategic Nuclear Policy,” chapter 1.

35. Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill,” p. 174.

36. Eden, “The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal and Zero,” p. 75.

37. Eden, “The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal and Zero,” p. 75.

38. Rosenberg, “Nuclear War Planning,” p. 175.

39. Eden, “The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal and Zero,” p. 74.

40. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 429.

41. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 429.

42. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” pp. 429, 430.

43. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” pp. 429–30.

44. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 432.

45. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 431.

46. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 429.

47. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 430.

48. Max Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” International Security 31 (Fall 2006), p. 56.

49. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 432.

50. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 432.

51. Likewise, Abrahms's article does not use the word “genocide,” and given the context, the two appearances of “annihilate” arguably refer to political and value systems, rather than people.

52. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 431.

53. Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” specifically: “Target countries view the negative consequences of terrorists attacks … as evidence that the terrorists want them destroyed” (p. 59); “The ‘dominant’ response was that the Palestinians wanted to ‘conquer Israel’ and ‘destroy a large portion of the Jewish population’” (p. 75); and “Target countries view the deaths of their citizens … as proof that the perpetrators want to destroy their societies, their publics, or both” (p. 76).

54. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 430.

55. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 431.

56. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 431.

57. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 431.

58. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 431.

59. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 431.

60. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 431.

61. Bluth, “The Reality and the Limitations of Nuclear Deterrence.”

62. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 433.

63. John Mueller, “The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons: Stability in the Postwar World, International Security 13 (Fall 1988), pp. 55–79.

64. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” pp. 433–34.

65. For a discussion of “rollback” proposals and concepts, see Robert R. Bowie and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 125–27. For a brief discussion of high-level US government proposals for preventive war against the Soviet Union, see Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, A Debate Renewed (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003), pp. 55–59.

66. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 435.

67. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 434. Regarding the Yom Kippur War, Wilson cites newspaper and TV stories indicating that prior to the start of this war, there already was sufficient public speculation about the existence of an Israeli nuclear weapon to have tipped off Egypt and Syria, even if their own intelligence had failed to take note.

68. Wilson, “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 434. Regarding the Yom Kippur War, Wilson cites newspaper and TV stories indicating that prior to the start of this war, there already was sufficient public speculation about the existence of an Israeli nuclear weapon to have tipped off Egypt and Syria, even if their own intelligence had failed to take note.

69. This paragraph draws from the following sources: Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (New York, NY: Random House, 1991), p. 227; Avner Cohen, “Cairo, Dimona, and the June 1967 War,” Middle East Journal 50 (1996), pp. 192–97; T.V. Paul, The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 148, 260; Maria Rost Rublee, Nonproliferation Norms: Why States Choose Nuclear Restraint (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2009), p. 117; and James J. Walsh, “Bombs Unbuilt: Power, Ideas and Institutions in International Politics,” PhD diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001, p. 141.

70. Avner Cohen, Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2010), p. 293; Cohen, Worst-Kept Secret, note 83, p. 294.

71. Avner Cohen, Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2010), p. 293; Cohen, Worst-Kept Secret, note 83, p. 294.

72. Abraham R. Wagner, adjunct professor of international and public affairs, Columbia University, e-mail correspondence with author, August 3, 2011.

73. Bluth, “The Reality and the Limitations of Nuclear Deterrence,” citing Christoph Bluth, “The British Resort to Force in the Falklands/Malvinas Conflict 1982: International Law and Just War Theory,” Journal of Peace Research 24 (1987), pp. 5–20.

74. Berry et al., “Delegitimizing Nuclear Weapons,” p. 24.

75. Ward Wilson, “Doubts About Nuclear Deterrence,” Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, February 7, 2011, <www.wagingpeace.org/articles/db_article.php?article_id=205>.

76. Thomas Meal, “Alumni Success Story: No Winning Weapons,” College of Arts and Sciences, American University, 2010, <www.american.edu/cas/success/no-winning-weapons-alum-wilson.cfm>.

77. I am indebted to Richard K. Betts for an e-mail exchange suggesting this final point.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Derrin Culp

[Editor's note: The Nonproliferation Review presents here a debate in three parts, featuring a critique by Derrin Culp of Ward Wilson's 2008 award-winning article “The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” a response from Wilson, and a finally a closing counter from Culp. We invite readers to join the debate via letters to the editor ([email protected]).]