THE MYTH OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE

Abstract

Nuclear deterrence is sometimes treated as a known quantity—a definite thing that keeps us safe and ensures our security. It has also often been used as a justification for possessing nuclear weapons. Nuclear deterrence, however, is based on an unexamined notion: the belief that the threat to destroy cities provides decisive leverage. An examination of history (including recent reinterpretations of the bombing of Hiroshima) shows that destroying cities rarely affects the outcome of wars. How is it possible that an action that is unlikely to be decisive can make an effective threat? Recent work on terrorism suggests that attacks against civilians are often not only ineffective but also counterproductive. And a review of the practical record of nuclear deterrence shows more obvious failures than obvious successes. Given this, the record of nuclear deterrence is far more problematic than most people assume. If no stronger rationale for keeping these dangerous weapons can be contrived, perhaps they should be banned.

Keywords:

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

Notes

1. Glenn H. Snyder, “Deterrence and Defense,” reprinted in Robert J. Art and Kenneth N. Waltz, eds., The Use of Force: International Politics and Foreign Policy (New York: University Press of America, 1983), p. 129.

2. Alexander George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), p. 11.

3. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 69.

4. Bernard Brodie, “The Development of Nuclear Strategy,” in Steven E. Miller, Strategy and Nuclear Deterrence: An International Security Reader (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 4. Brodie, in this review essay, is citing his own earlier work.

5. David Alan Rosenberg, “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960,” in Miller, Strategy and Nuclear Deterrence, p. 123.

6. Schelling, Arms and Influence, p. 27.

7. Robert Jervis, “Why Nuclear Superiority Doesn't Matter,” in Art and Waltz, The Use of Force, p. 499.

8. Robert S. McNamara, “The No-Cities Doctrine,” in Art and Waltz, The Use of Force, p. 149.

9. See, for example, Matthew McKinzie, Zia Mian, A.H. Nayyar and M.V. Ramana, “The Risks and Consequences of Nuclear War in South Asia,” in Smitu Kothari and Zia Mian, eds., Out of the Nuclear Shadow (New Delhi: Lokayan and Rainbow Publishers, 2001, pp. 185–196; Thom Shanker, “12 Million Could Die at Once in an India-Pakistan Nuclear War,” New York Times, May 27, 2002, p. A5.

10. C. Graham White and H. Harper, The Aeroplane in War (London, 1912), cited in Edward Mead Earle, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: Military thought from Machiavelli to Hitler (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 487. The idea for this section of the paper comes almost directly from P.M.S. Blackett's excellent book Studies of War: Nuclear and Conventional (New York: Hill and Wang, 1962), pp. 4–8. Blackett is extraordinarily sound and remains relevant today. Needless to say, experts in England were not the only ones impressed by the likely power of aerial attack.

11. Giulio Douhet (translated by Dino Ferrari), The Command of the Air (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1942), pp. 57–58.

12. Giulio Douhet (translated by Dino Ferrari), The Command of the Air (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1942), pp. 57–58.

13. William Mitchell, Winged Defense, cited in Blackett, Studies of War, p. 6.

14. George H. Quester, “Strategic Bombing in the 1930s and 1940s,” in Art and Waltz, The Use of Force, pp. 249–250.

15. German production rose in 1943 and 1944 but fell in 1945.

16. In most developed countries, urban centers of 30,000 would be called large towns. To give an idea of how small these “cities” were, consider this: if every person from one of these “cities” went and sat in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, it would only be one-third full.

17. The “Big Six” is another name for the six members of the Cabinet called the Supreme Council, an inner group who effectively ruled Japan at that time. Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 294 n. It may be that there were other discussions about city bombing that we are unaware of because a great many records were destroyed by the Japanese after the decision to surrender but before the beginning of the Allied occupation. Even with this caveat, however, the omission is striking. In addition, in extensive post-war debriefings participants did not mention any lengthy discussions of city bombing or raise it as an important consideration in their decisions about continuing the war.

18. Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 103. Schelling asserts (left-handedly) that it was the fact that technology was not sufficiently developed that made terror bombing fail in World War I and World War II. “Some of the expectations in the 1920s and 1930s that another major war would be one of pure civilian violence, of shock and terror from the skies, were not borne out by the available technology.” Schelling, Arms and Influence, p. 19.

19. Hiroshima, the more destructive of the two attacks, ranked second in terms of people killed, fourth in terms of square miles destroyed, and seventeenth in terms of percentage of the city destroyed. See the United States Strategic Survey, Pacific Report No. 66, “The Strategic Air Operations of Very Heavy Bombardment in the War against Japan (20^th Air Force),” pp. 42–43.

20. Japanese leaders did not meet to discuss surrender for three days after Hiroshima. Foreign Minister Togo Shigenori requested a meeting of the Supreme Council but was turned down. Military leaders knew it was a nuclear weapon, and one of them, War Minister Anami, the most important military figure in the Cabinet, had met with the head of the Japanese nuclear bomb program to better understand the capabilities of nuclear weapons. They knew they had been bombed with a nuclear weapons, they understood what that meant, but they apparently just didn't care. When they did finally meet, the Soviet invasion seems to have been the event that motivated them, not the bombing of Hiroshima. See Ward Wilson, “The Winning Weapon? Rethinking Nuclear Weapons Based on Hiroshima,” International Security 31 (Spring 2007), pp. 162–179.

21. For the first suggestion that the Soviet intervention caused the Japanese surrender, see Ernest R. May, “The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Far Eastern War, 1941–1945,” Pacific Historical Review 24 (May 1955), pp. 153–174. Notably, the official British history of the war in the Pacific published in 1969 states, “The Russian declaration of war was the decisive factor in bringing Japan to accept the Potsdam declaration.” S. Woodburn Kirby, The War against Japan, Vol. 5: The Surrender of Japan (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1969), pp. 433–434. In addition, it seems likely that the belief that Hiroshima and Nagasaki “won the war” is not uniformly held in all nations. A Russian friend of mine recently told me, “Of course they taught us that the Russian declaration of war forced the Japanese to surrender. All Russian school children know that.”

22. See especially Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Sumio Hatano, “The Atomic Bomb and Soviet Entry into the War: Of Equal Importance,” in Tsuyoshi Hasagawa, ed., The End of the Pacific War: Reappraisals (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); and Wilson, “The Winning Weapon? Rethinking Nuclear Weapons Based on Hiroshima.” Additionally, for recent scholarship with a variety of viewpoints, see John W. Dower, Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993); Robert A. Pape “Why Japan Surrendered,” International Security 18 (Fall 1993), pp. 154–201; Edward J. Drea, In the Service of the Emperor: Essays on the Imperial Japanese Army (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998); Sadao Asada, “The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan's Decision to Surrender: A Reconsideration,” Pacific Historical Review 67 (November 1998), pp. 477–512; Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire; Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (New York: HarperCollins, 2000); Forrest E. Morgan, Compellence and the Strategic Culture of Imperial Japan: Implications for Coercive Diplomacy in the Twenty-First Century (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003). A particularly detailed and useful summary of recent scholarship that also contains reproductions of many primary source documents is in William Burr, ed., “The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II: A Collection of Primary Sources,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 162, National Security Archive, August 5, 2005, <www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm>. Most striking of all is Hatano's assertion in the Bibliographical Note at the end of Reappraisals that “The prevailing view among Japanese scholars is that the shock of the Soviet entry was a more potent factor,” p. 303.

23. Lawrence Freedman, “Strategic Bombing and World War II,” in Philip Bobbitt, Lawrence Freedman, and Gregory F. Treverton, US Nuclear Strategy: A Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1989), p. 5.

24. It is perhaps further confirmation of the centrality of the Hiroshima case in shaping perceptions that the Russian view of nuclear war has always been quite different than the U.S. view (as their view of the importance of Hiroshima in coercing surrender is different). The Russians have long doubted the decisiveness of city attacks. See, for instance, William E. Odom, “The Soviet Approach to Nuclear Weapons: A Historical Review,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 469 (September 1983), pp. 117–135; or Walter Slocombe, “The Countervailing Strategy,” in Bobbitt, Freedman, and Treverton, eds., US Nuclear Strategy: A Reader, pp. 415–425.

25. Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), p. 134.

26. William Sherman, Memoirs of Gen. W.T. Sherman (New York: C.L. Webster & Co., 1891), pp. 370–371.

27. It is striking how many Northerners were sure that the capture of Richmond would end the war. Abraham Lincoln grasped sooner than most, however, the principal of war that it is the enemy's army that matters. In an 1863 exchange, General Joseph Hooker, commander of the Army of the Potomac, bragged about the certainty of his capturing Richmond in the near future. Lincoln, in a memorandum and letter, reminded Hooker that “our prime objective is the enemies' army in front of us, … not Richmond,” and “Lee's Army, and not Richmond, is your true objective.” Abraham Lincoln, Speeches and Writings 1859–1865: Speeches, Letters, and Miscellaneous Writings Presidential Messages and Proclamations (New York: Library of America, 1989), pp. 443, 454. Stephen B. Oates notes, “He [Lincoln] realized something else, too. The war could never be won simply by seizing the rebel capital. What Lincoln perceived from his White House windows was that only the complete annihilation of the enemy armies could win the war.” Oates, Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths (New York: New American Library, 1984), p. 131.

28. Encyclopedia Britannica, 13th edition (London: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911), vol. 20, pp. 758–759. In order for a nuclear war involving the United States to have comparable casualties, for example, there would have to be 200 million Americans killed.

29. This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of acts of genocide. These are but some of the worst examples in recent history.

30. There is a case to be made for the American Indian Wars being a war of extermination. Certainly the end result was close to being the complete destruction of the Native American peoples in North America. However, it is difficult to argue that this was a single war, waged by a single government, with a fixed purpose. It is more like a clash of civilizations with an unequal distribution of technology.

31. John Rich, “Fear, Greed and Glory,” in Craige B. Champion, ed., Roman Imperialism: Readings and Sources (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003), p. 50.

32. It might be argued that nuclear weapons make wars of extermination easier and therefore more likely. There may be something to be said for this, but on the other hand, the fact that a war of extermination was possible with the weapons available 2,000 years ago argues that the tools are not the key factor.

33. Max Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” International Security 31 (Fall 2006), p. 51.

34. Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” p. 43.

35. Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” p. 55.

36. Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” p. 55.

37. Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” p. 56. Abrahms bases his conclusion on three case studies and an analysis based on “correspondent inference theory,” a theory developed by the social psychologist Edward Jones based on the work of Fritz Heider, the father of attributional theory. See, for example, Edward E. Jones and Richard Nisbett, “The Actor and the Observer: Divergent Perceptions of the Causes of Behavior,” in Edward E. Jones, David E. Kanouse, Harold H. Kelley, Richard E. Nisbett, Stuart Valins, and Bernard Weiner, eds., Attribution: Perceiving the Causes of Behavior (Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press, 1972), pp. 79–94.

38. See Appian of Alexandria (translated by Horace White), The Roman History of Appian of Alexandria, vol. I (New York: MacMillan Company, 1899).

39. George and Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy, p. 516.

40. Germany was banned by the Treaty of Versailles from manufacturing or importing chemical weapons, but the means to circumvent the treaty would have been easily available.

41. The use of chemical weapons was banned by the Geneva Protocol in 1925, which was signed by the major European powers. The United States did not sign a treaty banning chemical weapons until the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention was signed.

42. David Alan Rosenberg, “The History of World War III, 1945–1990: A Conceptual Framework,” in Robert David Johnson, ed., On Cultural Ground: Essay in International History in Honor of Akira Iriye (Chicago: Imprint Publications, 1994), pp. 217–219.

43. For U.S. expectations, see Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War 1945–1950 (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), especially Chapters 2 and 3. For the thin harvest of nuclear influence, see McGeorge Bundy, “The Unimpressive Record of Atomic Diplomacy,” in Robert J. Art and Robert Jervis, eds., International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary Issues (New York: HarperCollins, 1996).

44. The fighting in Panama, Somalia, and other places are better classed as police actions than full-fledged wars.

45. It might be argued that since Israel, which has a long-standing policy of not commenting on whether it has a nuclear weapons program, did not announce the existence of its nuclear weapons, that this is not a failure of deterrence, but merely of knowledge. You can't be deterred by weapons you don't know exist. It seems likely that Egyptian and Syrian intelligence services, however, would have been aware of Israel's nuclear program (if for no other reason than it would be in Israel's interest to quietly pass word of the existence of the weapons to those it was trying to intimidate). Even if the Egyptian and Syrian intelligence services were not reporting the existence of the Israeli weapons program, press reports were relatively widespread by 1973. In January 1969 NBC News reported that Israel “had a nuclear weapon or would soon have one.” On July 18, 1970, the New York Times reported that, “for at least two years the United States Government has been conducting its Middle East policy on the assumption that Israel either possesses an atomic bomb or has the component parts available for quick assembly.” Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998, pp. 327–328, 337–338. Avner Cohen and Willam Burr, “Israel Crosses the Threshold,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 2006, pp. 22–30.

46. Brodie, “The Development of Nuclear Strategy,” in Miller, Strategy and Nuclear Deterrence, p. 21.