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Abstract
While the arrival of nuclear weapons coincided roughly with the development of short, medium, intermediate, and eventually intercontinental missiles, the contribution of missile technology to the deterrence equation is often lost. If nuclear weapons were eliminated, even new generation missiles with conventional payloads could struggle to render effective deterrence. But some of the physical and psychological effects commonly ascribed to nuclear weapons could still be in play. And in a world without nuclear weapons, thinking about the use and control of force from the nuclear age would also deserve renewed attention.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Roland Popp, Liviu Horovitz, Dennis Gormley, David Hamon, Richard Speier, Alex Wellerstein, and anonymous reviewers for the Journal of Strategic Studies for their excellent suggestions and feedback.
Notes
1 United States Department of Defense, Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) Report (Washington DC: Department of Defense 2010).
2 For one of the more recent exceptions, see Bryan R. Early and Christopher Way, ‘Launching Nukes and Nuclear Weapons Programs: The Spread of Ballistic Missile Technology and Nuclear Proliferation’, Paper prepared for the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, 30 Aug.–2 Sept. 2012. Short-range missiles are normally regarded as having ranges of up to 1,000 kilometers; medium range between 1,000 and 3,000 kilometers; intermediate range between 3,000 and 5,500 kilometers, and intercontinental over 5,000 kilometers.
3 James M. Acton, Deterrence During Disarmament: Deep Nuclear Reductions and International Security, Adelphi Papers No. 417 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, London 2010).
4 Ron Huisken, ‘A Political Strategy for Nuclear Disarmament’, unpublished paper, 2012.
5 Eliminating Nuclear Threats: Report of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (Canberra: ICNNPD 2009), 199.
6 Australian Department of Defense, Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030 (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service 2009), 32, 39, 50. In early 2013 Chung Mong-Jun, an influential South Korean politician, observed that two years beforehand he had ‘proposed the re-introduction of tactical nuclear weapons because the threat of a counter-nuclear force is the only thing that will discourage North Korea from developing its own nuclear arsenal … some say the only way to solve the North Korean nuclear problem is for the nation to follow the India-Pakistan example, or the case of Israel’. ‘US Nuke Umbrella Not Enough’, Korea Times, 19 Feb. 2013, <www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2013/02/120_130747.html>.
7 Leopoldo Nuti, La Sfida Nucleare: La Politica Esterna Italiana e le Armi Atomiche, 1945–1991 (Bologna: Il Mulino 2007); Alexander Lanoszka, ‘Protection States Trust?:Major Power Patronage, Nuclear Behavior, and Alliance Dynamics’, PhD dissertation, Princeton Univ., 2013; Andreas Lutsch, ‘The Federal Republic of Germany’s Nuclear Security Policy Between the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the NATO Dual Track Decision’, PhD dissertation, Univ. of Mainz, 2013; Christine M. Leah, ‘Australia and Nuclear Strategy’, PhD dissertation, Australian National Univ., 2012.
8 See James L. Schoff, Realigning Priorities: The US-Japan Alliance and the Future of Extended Deterrence (Boston: Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis 2010).
9 See for example, Hyun-Wook Kim, ‘Nuclear Posture Review and Its implications on the Korean Peninsula’, Center for US-Korea Policy, 2/5 (2010).
10 Michael J. Green and Katsuhisa Furukawa, ‘Japan: New Nuclear Realism’, in Muthiah Alagappa (ed.), The Long Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia (Stanford UP 2008), 354–355.
11 See James L. Schoff, interview with former Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, 30 July 2007. Schoff, Realigning Priorities, 31.
12 On the technical difficulties, including in terms of verification, that moving to zero would pose, see George Perkovich and James Acton, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons (London: Routledge for IISS 2008).
13 See Michael Howard, ‘Problems of a Disarmed World’, in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight (eds), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics (London: Unwin University Books 1966), 206–14.
14 Herman Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s (New York: Simon & Schuster 1980).
15 See for example, Nancy W. Gallagher, ‘International Security on the Road to Nuclear Zero’, Nonproliferation Review 18/2 (Winter 2011), 431–44; Tanya Ogilvie-White and David Santoro (eds), Slaying the Nuclear Dragon: Disarmament Dynamics in the Twenty-First Century (Atlanta: Univ. of Georgia Press 2012).
16 For a discussion of some of the aspects of this argument, see Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Pres, ‘The New Era of Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence, and Conflict’, Strategic Studies Quarterly (Spring 2013), 3–14.
17 Cited in D.G. McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon & Schuster 1992), 649–50.
18 On the calculations and variables involved in estimating the potential damage caused by a given conventional warhead, see S.K. Singh and V.P. Singh, ‘Mathematical Model for Damage Assessment of Composite Panels Subjected to Blast Loading from Conventional Warhead’, Defence Science Journal 45/4 (Oct. 1995), 333–40.
19 Samuel L. Huntington, ‘Conventional Deterrence and Conventional Retaliation in Europe’, International Security 8 (Winter 1983–84).
20 Greg Weaver, cited in Elaine M. Grossman, ‘Conventional Arms No Substitute for Nuclear: Strategic Command Official’,. Nuclear Threat Initiative, 29 Feb. 2012, <www.nti.org/gsn/article/conventional-arms-no-substitute-nuclear-strategic-command-official/>.
21 See Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945 (Cambridge: CUP 2008).
22 Hedley Bull, ‘Society and Anarchy in International Relations’, in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight (eds), Diplomatic Investigations (London: George Allen and Unwin 1966), 46.
23 See for example, Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton UP 2006).
24 Desmond Ball, Can Nuclear War be Controlled?, Adelphi Paper No. 169 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies Autumn 1981).
25 See for example, John Pay, ‘The Battlefield Since 1945’, in Colin McInnes and G.D. Sheffield, Warfare in the Twentieth Century: Theory and Practice (London: Unwin Hyman 1988), 213–20; Colin S. Gray, Nuclear Strategy and National Style (Boston: Hamilton Press 1986), 1–21.
26 André Beaufre, Deterrence and Strategy (London: Faber 1965), 24.
27 Glenn H. Snyder, Deterrence and Defense: Toward a Theory of National Security (Princeton UP 1961), 15.
28 Ibid., 4.
29 George H. Quester, Deterrence before Hiroshima: The Airpower Background of Modern Strategy (New York: John Wiley 1966), 173.
30 For a depiction of the World War I mobilization crisis as a much slower form of the pre-emption pressures of the nuclear age, see Thomas C. Schelling, ‘War Without Pain and Other Models’, World Politics, 15/3 (April 1963), 473.
31 See Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1989).
32 See Bernard Brodie, The Absolute Weapon (New York: Harcourt Brace 1946), 76.
33 See Patrick Morgan, Deterrence: A Conceptual Analysis (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications 1977).
34 Robert J. Art, ‘The Fungibility of Force’, in Robert J. Art and Kenneth N. Waltz (eds), The Use of Force: Military Power and Internatinal Politics, 5th ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 1999).
35 Admiral A.T. Mahan, quoted in Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, 1st ed. (Princeton UP 1959), 398.
36 Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 1966), 33.
37 Ibid., 17.
38 Brian Green, testimony for the Senate Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces Subcommittee Hearing Regarding Global Strike Issues, 28 March 2007, p.6.
39 For example, see P.L. Carlen et al., ‘Phantom limbs and related phenomena in recent traumatic amputations’, Neurology 28/3 (March 1978).
40 See for example, Eugene Miasnikov, ‘The Air-Space Threat to Russia’ (Carnegie Moscow Center 2013).
41 For an overview of the debates surrounding CPGS, see Elaine Bunn and Vincent A. Manzo, ‘Conventional Prompt Global Strike: Strategic Asset or Unusable Liability?’ Strategic Forum, Institute for National Strategic Studies, Feb. 2011; Jonah Friedman, ‘The Case for Conventional Prompt Global Strike’, 11 Aug. 2011. Center for Strategic and International Studies, <http://csis.org/blog/case-conventional-prompt-global-strike>; Craig Whitlock, ‘US Looks to Nonnuclear Weapons to Use as a Deterrent’, Washington Post, 8 April 2010.
42 For a comprehensive overview of the background, history, issues, and programs of conventional prompt global strike, see Amy Woolf, Conventional Prompt Global Strike and Long-Range Ballistic Missiles: Background and Issues (Congressional Research Service, Washington DC 13 Feb. 2012).
43 Ibid., 7–8.
44 Discussion with former senior official in the Australian Department of Defence, Canberra, 9 Aug. 2012.
45 Steve Fetter, ‘Ballistic Missiles and Weapons of Mass Destruction: What is the Threat? What Should be Done?’ International Security 16/1 (Summer 1991), 5–41.
46 Michael S. Chase and Andrew S. Erickson, ‘A Competitive Strategy with Chinese Characteristics: The Second Artillery’s Growing Conventional Forces and Missions’, in Thomas G. Mahnken (ed.), Competitive Strategies for the 21st Century: Theory, History and Practice (Stanford UP 2012), 214.
47 See US Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Time Critical Conventional Strike from Strategic Standoff, (Washington DC: Office of the Defense Science Board March 2009), 26.
48 George Perkovich, Do Unto Others: Toward a Defensible Nuclear Doctrine (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 2013), 63.
49 Bruce Sugden, ‘Speed Kills: Analyzing the Deployment of Conventional Ballistic Missiles’, International Security 34/1 (Summer 2009), 116.
50 US Department of Defense, Office of the Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Future Strategic Strike Forces (Washington DC: Office of the Defense Science Board Feb. 2004), 5-1.
51 Sugden, ‘Speed Kills’, 141.
52 Unless of course the country on the receiving end of the conventional strike had somehow hidden nuclear weapons, or if the attacking country had done so or was widely expected to have done so.
53 Dennis Gormley, Missile Contagion: Cruise Missile Proliferation and the Threat to International Security (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International 2008), 124.
54 Ibid., 160.
55 For examinations of their thinking on arms control and strategy, see Robert Ayson, Thomas Schelling and the Nuclear Age: Strategy as Social Science (London: Frank Cass 2004); Robert Ayson, Hedley Bull and the Accommodation of Power (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2012).
56 See Thomas C. Schelling, ‘The Role of Deterrence in Total Disarmament’, Foreign Affairs 40/3 (April 1962), 392–406.
57 For an early example of this logic, see Hedley Bull, ‘Disarmament and the International System’, Australian Journal of Politics and History 5/1 (May 1959), 41–50.
58 Harold A. Feiveson (ed.), The Nuclear Turning Point: A Blueprint for Deep Cuts and De-alerting of Nuclear Weapons (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press 1999), 29.
59 Alton Frye, ‘Zero Ballistic Missiles’, Foreign Policy, No. 88 (Autumn 1992), 6.
60 Randall Forsberg, ‘Abolishing Ballistic Missiles: Pros and Cons’, International Security 12/1 (Summer 1987), 194.
61 Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton UP 1959).
62 Ibid., 5.
63 Ibid., 390.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Robert Ayson
Robert Ayson is Professor of Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington and Honorary Professor at the New Zealand Defence Force Command and Staff College. He has also held positions with the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre and is a former Senior Research Associate with the University of Oxford’s Centre for International Studies. Ayson is the author of Thomas Schelling and the Nuclear Age and Hedley Bull and the Accommodation of Power.
Christine M. Leah
Christine M. Leah is a Stanton Post-doctoral Fellow at MIT. Previously a visiting fellow at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies, a summer associate at the RAND Corporation, and a research analyst/intern at Karen News, IISS-Asia, IISS London, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the French Ministry of Defense, and the UMP office of Mr Nicolas Sarkozy. Leah is an alumna of SWAMOS, PPNT, and the Woodrow Wilson Center Nuclear Bootcamp.