Reducing or Exploiting Risk? Varieties of US Nuclear Thought and Their Implications for Northeast Asia

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ABSTRACT

This article argues that there is no monolithic “United States perspective” when it comes to theories of nuclear stability, either structurally or during a crisis. Instead, the propensity of American policymakers to use or invest in nuclear weapons is heavily conditioned by their political and ideological orientation. There has always been a rough ideological divide between nuclear hawks (those tending to favor military coercion) and doves (those generally opposing signaling threats of force) in the United States, but the past several decades have seen more diversity in the types of views and preferences expressed in policy circles about strategic stability and the (dis)utility of nuclear weapons. This article categorizes the various US perspectives on nuclear weapons as “arms-controllers”, who seek to reduce risks to strategic stability and view advanced conventional weapons as heightening the risks of nuclear use, “nuclear traditionalists”, who accept the logic of mutually assured destruction, “nuclear primacists”, who believe stability derives from nuclear superiority, escalation dominance, and the willingness to launch damage-limiting nuclear first-strikes, and “future-of-war” strategists, who de-center the role of nuclear weapons in US strategy in favor of a focus on precision-guided conventional munitions and delivery systems. These categorical distinctions, and which group holds the attention of policymakers, matters. The scope for US nuclear weapons use – and the propensity to engage in actions that trigger adversary nuclear considerations – narrows and widens depending on whose logic and preferences prevail both over time and in moments of crisis or shock.

KEYWORDS:

• United States
• nuclear strategy
• nuclear use
• Northeast Asia
• scenarios
• Biden administration

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ This forms part of the catechism of neoconservatism (Vaisse 2011).

² For an uncritical historiography of this view, see Krepinevich and Watts (2015).

³ For the clearest articulation of this view, see Jervis (1993).

⁴ For representative text of this view that also summarizes the relevant literature espousing the same, see Kroenig (2018).

⁵ On Russia’s marginal relevance to Northeast Asian geopolitics for the United States, see especially Rumer, Sokolsky, and Vladicic (2020).

⁶ How quickly either could do this is a matter of some debate, but in both cases they are considered latent nuclear powers, meaning less than a year. On the concept of nuclear latency, See Volpe (2017).

⁷ Because the DPRK has more at risk than China in a US ally developing nuclear weapons, its incentives may be logically greater than China’s to conduct preventive attacks. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for mentioning this.

⁸ It remains unclear if the attack was conducted by US or Israeli forces, but both militaries had collaborated in planning. On the problems with the preventive bombing tactic and the 2007 case in particular, see Kreps and Fuhrmann (2011).

⁹ The greatest operational impact would be to target Osan or Kunsan air bases in the ROK, or Kadena Air Base in Okinawa. However, if the DPRK/China sought to maximize the chance of splitting the United States from its allies, they would target ally (rather than US) basing facilities.

¹⁰ On the DPRK’s strategic culture of pressure for pressure, see Jackson (2018a, 35–51); Jackson (2018b).

¹¹ Except for 1994 and 2017, it was US restraint that had steered every other crisis with the DPRK away from outright conflict. See Jackson (2016).

¹² The phases of a military campaign describe the sequence of military operations necessary to realize military objectives and political goals before instantiating a new status quo of stability. They span “shape, deter, seize initiative, dominate, stabilize, enable civil authority” (Fish 2016).

¹³ FoW strategists sometimes prize signaling US capability even more than signaling resolve (Bakich 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This paper is prepared for Reducing the Risk of Nuclear Weapons Use in Northeast Asia (NU-NEA), a project co-sponsored by Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition, Nagasaki University (RECNA), Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN) and Nautilus Institute with collaboration of Panel on Peace and Security of Northeast Asia (PSNA). Additional funding is provided by the MacArthur Foundation, and the Federation of American Scientists “Conditions for US-ROK Conventional Arms Reduction” project sponsored by the Korea Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Van Jackson

Van Jackson is a professor of International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington, as well as a distinguished fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, and a senior associate fellow with APLN. He is the author of two books on US-North Korea relations, as well as the forthcoming book, Pacific Power Paradox: American Statecraft and the Fate of the Asian Peace (Yale University Press). Before becoming a scholar, Van served in several policy and strategy positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense during the Obama administration.