A Second Nuclear Revolution: From Nuclear Primacy to Post-Existential Deterrence

Abstract

This article predicts that the nuclear weapon states may opt sooner for nuclear elimination than generally expected. This delegitimation of nuclear weapons is due to five factors whose importance has grown since the mid-1990s: nuclear proliferation, the risk of nuclear terrorism, the nuclear taboo, missile defence, and the increased importance of international law. The article starts with categorizing nuclear weapons policies: nuclear primacy, maximum deterrence, minimum deterrence, existential deterrence, and post-existential deterrence. The nuclear weapon states will probably shift their policies from nuclear primacy (US), maximum deterrence (Russia), minimum or existential deterrence (UK, France, Israel, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea) to post-existential deterrence (or elimination), taking one step at a time.

Key Words:

• Nuclear Weapons
• Nuclear Deterrence
• Nuclear Proliferation

Notes

¹Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, ‘The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy’, Foreign Affairs 85/2 (March/April 2006), 42–54. For a longer version, see: Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, ‘The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of US Primacy’, International Security 30/4 (Spring 2006), 7–44. For a reaction, see: Jeffrey Lantis, Tom Sauer, James Wirtz, Keir Lieber, and Daryl Press, ‘The Short Shadow of US Primacy?’, International Security 31/3 (Winter 2006/2007), 174–93.

²A second-strike capacity corresponds to a nuclear weapons capability that is able to launch a nuclear counterattack with sufficient destructive capacity after a first-strike by the opponent. A first-strike corresponds to a nuclear weapons capability that aims to eliminate all the nuclear weapons of the opponent in one (preventive) single blow.

³ Launch-on-warning means launching nuclear weapons in case of a so-called tactical warning (satellite and/or radar warning) that an enemy attack is under way.

⁴ Launch-under-attack means launching nuclear weapons after the first enemy missiles have exploded on one's territory.

⁵William Burr and Jeffrey Richelson, ‘Whether to “Strangle the Baby in the Cradle”: the US and the Chinese Nuclear Program, 1960–64’, International Security 25/3 (Winter 2000/2001), 54–99.

⁶See footnote 1.

⁷The concepts ‘maximum deterrence’ and ‘minimum deterrence’ have been used before in the literature in a slightly different meaning by Barry Buzan in his book An Introduction to Strategic Studies (London: Macmillan 1987). Earlier, Glenn Snyder introduced the concepts of ‘deterrence by punishment’ and ‘deterrence by denial’ in his book Deterrence and Defence (Princeton: Princeton UP 1961).

⁸Note that the notion of superiority is even more dominating within the option of nuclear primacy. The difference between nuclear primacy and maximum deterrence has to do with the availability of a first-strike capability.

⁹Michael Mazarr, ‘Virtual Nuclear Arsenals’, Survival 37/3 (Autumn 1995), 7–26; Jonathan Schell, The Abolition (London: Picador 1984).

¹⁰Schell, The Abolition, 119.

¹¹Kenneth Waltz, ‘More May Be Better’, in Kenneth Waltz and Scott Sagan, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons (New York: W.W. Norton 1995); Robert Jervis, The Meaning of Nuclear Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1989).

¹²John Mueller, ‘The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons’, International Security 13/2 (Fall 1988), 55–79; John Vazquez, ‘The Deterrence Myth: Nuclear Weapons and the Prevention of Nuclear War’, in Charles Kegley (ed.), The Long Postwar Peace (New York: HarperCollins 1991).

¹³Les Aspin's MIT commencement speech, 3 June 1992.

¹⁴Janne Nolan, An Elusive Consensus: Nuclear Weapons and American Security After the Cold War (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press 1999); Tom Sauer, Nuclear Inertia: US Nuclear Weapons Policy After the Cold War (London: I.B. Tauris 2005).

¹⁵South Africa also acquired nuclear weapons, but eliminated its arsenal already in the meantime, something unique. At the same time, the South African case demonstrates that nuclear weapon states can and do get rid of their nuclear weapons, contrary to what nuclear deterrence advocates (and Realists in general) would predict.

¹⁶Graham Allison, Transcript of interview by Allison of Mohamed El-Baradei at the Council on Foreign Relations, ‘The Challenges Facing Non-Proliferation’, 14 May 2004.

¹⁷Linton Brooks, ‘US Nuclear Weapons Policies and Programs’, speech at the Heritage Foundation Conference ‘US Strategic Command: Beyond the War on Terrorism’, 12 May 2004.

¹⁸Canberra Commission Report, 1996.

¹⁹Celso Amorim and others, ‘What Does Not Exist Cannot Proliferate’, International Herald Tribune, 2 May 2005.

²⁰Ashton Carter, John Deutch, and Philip Zelikow, ‘Catastrophic Terrorism’, Foreign Affairs 77/6 (Winter 1998/1999), 78–94; Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Times Books 2004).

²¹Matthew Bunn, Securing the Bomb 2008 (Cambridge, MA: Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard Univ. and Nuclear Threat Initiative Nov. 2008).

²²Nina Tannenwald, ‘The Nuclear Taboo: The US and the Normative Basis of Nuclear Non-Use’, International Organization 53/3 (Summer 1999), 433–68; Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2007).

²³Robert McNamara, ‘The Military Role of Nuclear Weapons: Perceptions and Misperceptions’, Foreign Affairs 62/1 (Fall 1983), 79.

²⁴Quayle quickly corrected himself by saying that no option would be ruled out. Quoted in William Arkin, ‘Calculated Ambiguity: Nuclear Weapons in the Gulf War’, Washington Quarterly 19/4 (Autumn 1996), 6.

²⁵William Martel, ‘The End of Nonproliferation’, Strategic Review 28/4 (Fall 2000), 16–21.

²⁶George Lewis and Ted Postol, ‘Future Challenges to Ballistic Missile Defence’, IEEE Spectrum 34/9 (September 1997), 60–8; George Lewis, Ted Postol, and John Pike, ‘Why National Missile Defence Won't Work’, Scientific American 281/1 (Aug. 1999), 36–41; Richard Garwin, ‘The Wrong Plan’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 56/2 (March/April 2000), 36–41.

²⁷NPT/CONF.1995/32/DEC.2. My emphasis. See <www.fas.org/nuke/control/npt/text/prin_obj.htm>.

²⁸The whole document can be found in Disarmament Diplomacy (May 2000), 20–1.

²⁹Tom Sauer, ‘The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime in Crisis’, Peace Review 18/3 (Fall 2006), 333–40.

³⁰John Deutch, ‘A Nuclear Posture for Today’, Foreign Affairs 84/1 (Jan./Feb. 2005).

³¹Ashton Carter, ‘How to Counter Weapons of Mass Destruction’, Foreign Affairs 83/5 (Sept./Oct. 2004), 72–85.

³²<www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?p1=3&p2=4&k=e1&case=95&code=unan& p3=4>.

³³Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry, ‘The International Sources of Soviet Change’, International Security 16/3 (Winter 1991/92), 74–118.

³⁴It is better to state that the Berlin Wall was knocked down (instead of ‘fell’), according to Ken Booth. See Ken Booth, Theory of World Security (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2007) 28.

³⁵George Schultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, ‘A World Free of Nuclear Weapons’, Wall Street Journal, 4 Jan. 2007. This publication of the so-called gang of four was followed up by conferences at Harvard University (Dec. 2007) and Oslo (Feb. 2008).

³⁶Douglas Hurd, Malcolm Rifkind, David Owen, and George Robertson, ‘Start worrying and learn to ditch the Bomb’, The Times, 30 June 2008. Three former generals wrote a similar op-ed: Lord Bramall, Lord Ramsbotham, and Sir Hugh Beach, ‘UK does not need a nuclear deterrent’, The Times, 16 Jan. 2009.

³⁷Massimo d'Alema, Gianfranco Fini, Giorgio LaMalfa, Arturo Parisi, and Francesco Calogero, ‘Per un mondo senza armi nucleari’, Corriera della Sera, 24 July 2008.

³⁸Helmut Schmidt, Richard von Weizäcker, Egon Bahr, and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, ‘Toward a Nuclear-Free World: a German View’, International Herald Tribune, 9 Jan. 2009.

³⁹ Beyond the NPT: a Nuclear Weapons Free World (INESAP 1995); Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (1996); Gen. (ret.) Andrew Goodpaster (ed.), An American Legacy. Building a Nuclear Weapons Free World (Washington DC: Henry Stimson Center 1997); Gen (ret.) Burns, The Future of US Nuclear Weapons Policy (Washington DC: National Academy of Sciences CISAC 1997); Middle Powers Initiative, established in 1998; New Agenda Coalition, established in 1998; Joseph Rotblat (eds.), The Road to Zero (Boulder, CO: Westview Press 1998); Hans Blix (ed.), Report of the International Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction (2006).

⁴⁰George Perkovich and James Acton, ‘Abolishing Nuclear Weapons’, Adelphi Paper 396 (August 2008).

⁴¹See <www.globalzero.org/>.

⁴²Gen. Charles Horner USAF in a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on 22 April 1993.

⁴³Two of Obama's campaign advisers – Ivo Daalder and Jan Lodal – published an article in Foreign Affairs in Nov.–Dec. 2008 that was titled ‘The Logic of Zero: Towards a World Without Nuclear Weapons’.

⁴⁴<www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered>.

⁴⁵Speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Non-proliferation Conference 2007, 25 June 2007.

⁴⁶Proposal by UK Defence Minister Des Browne at the UN Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on 5 Feb. 2008. See: ‘UK Offers to Host Nuclear Disarmament Talks’, NTI Global Security Newswire, 6 Feb. 2008.

⁴⁷David Milliband, ‘A World without Nuclear Weapons’, The Guardian, 8 Dec. 2008; David Milliband, Lifting the Nuclear Shadow: Creating the Conditions for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons (London: UK Foreign Office Feb. 2009).

⁴⁸See footnote 14.