Correspondence

A dangerous acquiescence

Hongyu Zhang and Kevin Wang argue (Vol. 26, Nos. 1–2, 2019, pp. 143–53) that “persuading North Korea to give up its ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] capability, not its nuclear arsenal, should … be the primary objective of US diplomacy.” They come to this conclusion, they say, because North Korea sees nuclear weapons as the most cost-effective way of leveling the balance of power on the Korean Peninsula and addressing its security dilemma, and so will not be persuaded to give them up. ICBMs, which threaten the US homeland, however, are not essential to leveling the balance of power and so can be bargained away.

The authors’ argument depends heavily on a theory of what motivates states’ behavior when survival is at issue. It invokes the tendency of states to seek a “balance of power” as they respond to the inevitable security dilemmas of the international system. Since the North Koreans, motivated as they are, cannot be persuaded to give up their nuclear weapons, but could be convinced to forgo further development of the means to deliver them to American soil, this trade-off should now be seized as the best of all realistic outcomes for all concerned: “a nuclear-armed North Korea is a bitter pill to swallow, but unavoidable.”

Even if we are strongly attracted to the proposition that successive regimes of the Kim dynasty have been principally motivated to pursue nuclear-weapons development out of self-preservation, we may not agree that accepting their success is the best way forward, even if to do so would put the United States out of range of North Korean ICBMs.

To begin, we should be clear about what we are and are not arguing over. No one will disagree with the proposition that the United States and its allies would be better off if a nuclear-armed North Korea did not also have an ICBM capability. The South Koreans and the Japanese understand the calculations involved in extended deterrence and would not want the United States to have to choose between the survival of their capitals and its own. But that is not the issue. The question is whether or not the prudent course is to remove the direct threat to US cities at the price of accepting, indeed legitimizing, as a permanent outcome, the North Korean possession of nuclear weapons and shorter-range ballistic missiles to deliver them.

The authors have not directly engaged the Scott Sagan and Kenneth Waltz dialogue or the simple Waltzian proposition that “more may be better,” but they have been dismissive of the cost involved if the United States embraces “more” in order to make its own security position “better.” To be sure, the United States has something of a mixed record on discouraging proliferation over the decades. For example, opposition was strong and effective with South Korea, Taiwan, and Iraq (1991), arguably important for South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, and Iran, and not so much for Israel, Pakistan, and India. However one scores past US policy, though, one should recognize that so clearly giving up on North Korea, as the authors recommend, will weaken the norm against nuclear-weapons acquisition, with unknown but potentially catastrophic consequences for the future.

Related here is consideration of the reaction of US allies in Northeast Asia. Somewhat mysteriously, the authors assert that South Korea and Japan would not regard their continuing vulnerability to North Korean nuclear-armed ballistic missiles as an “offensive threat.” But, of course, they would. And the imagery, not withstanding the logic of extended deterrence, would be awful: Washington acted to protect its people, rather than rely on its deterrent, and left the governments in Seoul and Tokyo to explain to their people why they should nevertheless rely on the US umbrella rather than develop their own deterrent. Nuclear proliferation in Asia would not be guaranteed to follow from the policy advocated by the authors, but it would become much more likely.

But the key to the authors’ argument is an assertion that has long been at the center of the policy debate over North Korea: that there are no security guarantees or inducements of any kind that will convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. If the authors are correct, then they can claim that the price of freeing the United States from the threat of nuclear attack from the North is not so great, since the Americans would be giving up something they could not ever achieve anyway, short of war. But if the authors are wrong on this point, their proposed pre-emptive capitulation could be an unnecessary and costly mistake. Since there is no one who should claim to know whether or not they are correct, we are left to argue from evidence about what is most likely, or, if we think the case is sufficiently compelling, what is virtually certain.

The past thirty years of North Korean behavior provide a lot of evidence that the North places great value on having nuclear weapons. The statements of their government officials consistently identify the United States as the major threat, noting the US propensity to change regimes it does not approve of. North Korea, therefore, needs a deterrent to insure its survival. The basis for the sustained negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program in the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump administrations has been the idea that relations between the United States and North Korea could be sufficiently improved so as to remove the threat of US-sponsored regime change there. This has unfairly been characterized as asking North Korea to replace its nuclear weapons with a piece of paper. That was never the plan.

The rough template for a deal between Washington and Pyongyang was laid out in the Agreed Framework of 1994: abandonment of all capability to produce nuclear weapons in exchange for billions of dollars in nuclear-energy assistance, normalization of relations with the United States, and negative security guarantees. Variations on the theme have been and are still being put forth. The reason for the continued reliance on this bargain is because there has not been an enduring geopolitical reason for US–North-Korean hostility—assuming, consistent with the authors’ view of North Korean motivation, that the North at some point abandoned any intent to reunify the peninsula by force. In other words, negotiated denuclearization might work, notwithstanding that the Kim regime has been totalitarian, guilty of gross human-rights violations and transfers of missile and nuclear technology and equipment, and sponsors of terrorism. These are reasons for tension and hostility, but they are not structural features: totalitarian regimes can become authoritarian, and the rest are matters of policy. The point here is that, at least in the Clinton and Bush negotiations, the idea was to address North Korea’s security concerns by a gradual evolution of relations between Washington and Pyongyang, accompanied by some up-front incentives. It is fair enough to observe that, so far, this has not worked as planned, but the reasons for that may be many; it may not necessarily be because the idea was conceptually flawed. Moreover, we are circling around the same framework now, albeit in Trumpian sorts of ways, with North Korea saying (again) that it is prepared to give up its nuclear weapons as part of the creation of a “peace regime.” Are we so sure that they do not mean what they say and that the United States should respond by offering them an even sweeter, fatter—and more dangerous—carrot?

A few more points about deterrence are in order. First, North Korean artillery is firmly entrenched along the demilitarized zone. The authors seem to have confidence in the US ability to effectively reduce this deployment’s lethality to the roughly twenty million people who live in and around Seoul with a (presumably) conventional pre-emptive strike. The concern remains, however, that catastrophic loss of life might still result from North Korean bombardment. Seoul is, in short, a hostage, even absent North Korean nuclear weapons, a significant deterrent to US military action against the North.

Second, the United States would have to take account of the anticipated Chinese response to any military action it might initiate, particularly if aimed at regime change in Pyongyang. The authors correctly credit China as perceiving North Korea as an essential buffer state, making the absence of any genuine political or cultural ties between North Koreans and Chinese a less salient fact in the event of such a contingency. This amounts to something like a Chinese de-facto extended deterrent.

Finally, there is the reality of nuclear inspections and the slipperiness of nuclear-weapon status for states that have once possessed them. North Korea has the capability to produce and separate plutonium, enrich uranium to weapons levels, and build nuclear, and perhaps thermonuclear, weapons. This capability exists today. Imagine if the most intrusive inspection regime were to be put in place on the peninsula tomorrow—even more robust than the post-Gulf War UN Special Commission on Iraq—and all known fissile material were removed, all nuclear facilities were completely dismantled and destroyed, and North Korea re-joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, accepting all inspections. On the very next day, North Korea would still have to be regarded as a possible nuclear-weapon state in any future military contingency.

Once a state has built and tested nuclear weapons, no one can be sure that some weapons were not secured somewhere in the country before it declared its non-nuclear status. These weapons would be available should the need for a deterrent arise in the future. Perhaps more likely, the critical pieces for reassembling a nuclear weapon could be kept from inspectors at multiple locations someplace on the state’s territory. The “long pole in the tent” for regeneration is fissile material, and the amount of plutonium necessary for a small arsenal of tens of nuclear weapons would fit under a dining-room table—criticality concerns aside. North Korea is a big place. Even if we were guided by the proposition, “Don’t trust and verify,” this scenario reflects the physical reality. We could estimate, as best we could, the amount of plutonium produced and uranium enriched in the past to be declared and removed, but the technical uncertainties would ultimately leave us uncertain. This should not undermine the real political value of de jure non-nuclear-weapon status or, obviously, enthusiasm for the very best inspection regime that could be constructed. It does, however, bear upon the authors’ argument about the implausibility of North Korea agreeing to give up its nuclear weapons.

In the end, I have no confidence that North Korea will eventually agree to give up its nuclear weapons, but I also do not believe that the authors have made a compelling case for giving up on the objective.

Missing pieces in the dual-track redux

Ulrich Kühn has written an in-depth, comprehensive analysis of European views of the situation on the continent in the aftermath of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty’s demise (Vol. 26, Nos. 1–2, 2019, pp. 155–66). His argument in favor of a more proactive European stance on arms control is even more welcome—indeed, someone needs to pick up the ball given that the prospects for a meaningful US-Russian dialogue are nearly non-existent, and, if Europe does not, no one will. He does not offer much by way of a forward-looking agenda, however.

Caution is justified. Even if one or two EU countries take the initiative, eventually any new policy requires formal or informal consensus among all EU countries. His analysis shows that the boundaries of that consensus are pretty narrow. The only feasible basis for consensus is apparently a version of the 1979 dual-track decision—an enhancement of NATO deterrence posture coupled with an arms-control track. To recall: in 1979, NATO, concerned about the Soviet Union’s deployment of SS-20 intermediate-range ground-launched missiles, decided to attempt to remove these missiles through negotiations and, if such negotiations failed, to deploy US ground-launched intermediate-range missiles. The new version of the same approach will emphasize weapons systems that do not fall under the INF Treaty—specifically, air- and sea-launched missiles, but that does not change how Moscow will likely perceive the new policy.

In Kühn’s new edition of the dual-track approach, the arms-control track is vague. Indeed, there are well-known political deadlocks relating to INF Treaty compliance as well as new kinds of weapons systems, which no one knows yet how to address. Development of the new arms-control agenda is also certain to cause serious differences in the EU.

The dual-track approach appears popular because the first attempt in the 1980s was successful: in spite of political tension in Western Europe, especially in Germany, and a significant—albeit short-lived—increase in the number of nuclear weapons deployed in Europe, it resulted in the conclusion of the INF Treaty in 1987, which eliminated all ground-launched intermediate-range missiles.

Yet, a repeat success of the 1979 dual-track approach is not guaranteed. In the 1980s, success was made possible by a fundamental change in Soviet foreign policy which was initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev. Until his ascension to power, the Soviet Union pursued a symmetric response to the deployment of American missiles both in Europe and in the Far East (deploying missiles with the capability of reaching Alaska and even the state of Washington); it also stationed strategic submarines close to American shores, which ensured short flight times to targets in US territory. Today, a change in policy similar to that implemented by Gorbachev is unlikely. Instead, Moscow is likely to follow the traditional Soviet pattern of response. Moreover, even if Russian domestic policy were to change, similar shifts in foreign policy appear less possible, since Gorbachev’s foreign policy is highly unpopular in contemporary Russia.

There is another big difference between the 1980s and the present. Then, the key disagreements were about the provisions of a possible arms-control solution: whether air- and sea-launched INF-range weapons would count and whether the Soviet Union would be allowed to offset British and French systems. Negotiations on these matters took years and a major change in Soviet foreign policy to resolve. Today, before the parties can get to that stage, they first need to address another, apparently irreconcilable conflict over the range of Russia’s 9M729 missile: the United States and NATO are firmly convinced that it violates the INF Treaty whereas Russia insists equally firmly that it does not. This controversy will vastly complicate any arms-control dialogue in the near future. On top of that, Russia conditions any movement on the 9M729 missiles upon US agreement to discuss Russian concerns, such as the Aegis Ashore missile-defense system and some others, which the United States refuses to discuss. Europe has little or no control over the US position on these issues.

Finally, Kühn’s analysis invariably leads to a conclusion that the European Union does not fit the role of a negotiating partner very well. Finding a position that would satisfy all its members, whose views on Russia and the desired outcome significantly differ, will be a challenge; the result has to be acceptable to all EU members regardless of whether it is negotiable with Russia. Furthermore, changes in the consensus position (which are an integral part of any negotiations) will be immensely difficult to achieve; the past record indicates that the European Union tends to avoid internal negotiations on such changes and sticks to its original position. This will likely result in Russian stonewalling.

All of this points to the high probability of a lengthy deadlock and growing tension as both NATO and Russia continue to enhance their deterrence postures while blaming each other for the deteriorated conditions. To break out of that deadlock, it will be necessary, first, to re-evaluate the current situation and, second, to chart an approach that could help bypass the stumbling blocks outlined above.

The re-evaluation of the security landscape in Europe should begin by accepting that a security dilemma has emerged in Europe, perhaps almost imperceptibly and against the wishes of all parties. Russia has been building a deterrence capability to counter the perceived threat of large-scale use of modern conventional weapons by NATO over political conflicts. NATO, in turn, has seen these efforts as a threat and fears the limited use of nuclear weapons by Russia. Both sides have examples to point to as they accuse the other of harboring aggressive intentions—Moscow cites the examples of Kosovo in 1999, Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Syria in 2014, whereas NATO talks about Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014.

In the current political climate, the notions of caution and restraint are not very popular on either side. Moscow is likely to regard as a threat even the most moderate NATO response among the options under discussion—increasing the air- and sea-launched conventional weapons assigned to the European theater—and its most moderate response will be to continue its current programs, which NATO regards as an existential threat.

NATO’s concerns center on a new and updated version of the “escalation dominance” concept, which dominated discourse in the early 1980s. At that time, NATO feared that the Soviet Union could utilize strategic parity with the United States to prevent the latter from coming to the defense of its allies and then coerce Europe using its regional superiority. The new edition of the same concept, as Kühn explains in his article, concentrates on the Russian “de-escalation” strategy, which is conceptualized as the ability to prevent NATO from responding to a lower-level aggression (such as occupation of the Baltic states) by invoking its theater-level nuclear superiority and demonstrating readiness to employ nuclear weapons in the middle of a conventional conflict.

As many have pointed out,¹ the popular image of the Russian “de-escalation” strategy is faulty. As someone who, in 2000, introduced the term “de-escalation” into Western discourse about Russian nuclear strategy,² I believe that greater clarity with regard to that concept is needed. Russian officials and experts are right to claim that the term is not used in any governmental documents. Indeed, I borrowed it from a 1999 article in Voyennaya Mysl ³ simply for convenience. The Military Doctrine⁴ adopted the following year introduced the notion of limited nuclear use in a less-than-global (“regional,” according to the doctrine’s definition) conventional conflict. Whether this concept is called “de-escalation” is immaterial; in essence, this was an updated version of NATO’s “flexible deterrence” strategy, which foresaw early use of nuclear weapons in response to large-scale conventional Soviet aggression.⁵ Both flexible deterrence and the Russian nuclear doctrine are fundamentally defensive by nature when invoked by a country whose conventional forces are inferior to those of the opponent.

The next big change in Russian doctrinal development took place in 2014, when the new iteration of the Military Doctrine⁶ introduced the notion of “conventional deterrence,” reflecting Russia’s success in developing its own long-range precision-guided conventional capability. Effectively, the strategy, as it had been introduced in 2000 (regardless of whether it can or cannot be called “de-escalation”), ended in that year and the recent explosion of attention to that strategy, which culminated in the 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review,⁷ has little to do with the actual evolution of Russian policy.

The 2014 doctrine, however, kept the old language about nuclear use in “regional” contingencies alongside conventional deterrence. The combination of these two provisions can be interpreted in two ways, which are not mutually exclusive. First, it could mean that Russia decided to introduce one more step into the “escalation ladder” and will try to handle possible conflict without resorting to nuclear weapons but still reserves the option of “going nuclear” in extreme circumstances if conventional capability is insufficient. At the very least, this means a radical increase of the nuclear threshold. Another explanation is that Russia will wait to adjust the nuclear component of its doctrine until it can build up its conventional capability (which in pure numbers is still relatively small). Either way, the removal of the “regional” contingencies from nuclear missions can hardly happen in the current environment.

It is difficult to see how this strategy can be reconciled with the popular scenario of Russian aggression against Baltic states. There is no doubt that Russia could occupy them in a very short time; it can rely on artillery and aircraft operating from Kaliningrad oblast and Belarus to close the reinforcement route through the (in)famous Suwalki gap (the narrow, 60-mile-wide passage that connects the Baltic states to Poland). It is a different matter whether Russia would want to attempt that gambit. NATO may have its own doubts about its willingness to come to the defense of the Baltic states, but Moscow’s planning must proceed from the assumption that it would. Even if successful, invading the Baltic states would pitch Russia against all of NATO and, more importantly, vastly enhance NATO cohesion and trigger efforts to significantly increase NATO’s military capability, even in the unlikely scenario that war did not immediately erupt.

Even in the extreme case of a military conflict, Russia’s military is bound to pay primary attention to more tangible NATO assets to the west (Poland, in fact, hosts a far more attractive set of targets than almost any other NATO country) while the Baltic states will remain on the margins. They could constitute an operational interest only if, prior to conflict, NATO increased its presence in the Baltics to the level that would allow devastating strikes against military infrastructure in the Russian northwest. (After all, it’s barely 100 miles from Estonia to St. Petersburg, and many vital Russian military targets are even closer.)

This means that NATO needs to calibrate its military presence in the Baltic states very carefully. It should be sufficient to constitute a tripwire capable of guaranteeing NATO involvement in the event of conflict (akin to the role of US troops in West Germany during the Cold War), but insufficient to become a tangible threat to the Russian military in that theater.

Thus, the security situation in Europe is perhaps not as hopeless as many in the West appear to think. The greatest danger is not the threat of Russian aggression against the Baltic states or, more broadly, conflict that includes nuclear blackmail, but rather the unfolding spiral of arms racing and mutual mistrust, which could result in unintended conflict. If that analysis is correct, the chance that a new edition of the dual-track decision will succeed is low, because its first component—an enhanced deterrence posture—risks causing the opposite effect. In contrast, an arms-control dialogue offers hope, but launching it will be difficult.

The first, although not obvious, issue is to determine who could be the main Western interlocutor for Russia—the point of contact, so to speak. The task is non-trivial, to say the least. It is a matter not only of who will be chosen to represent the collective West, but also to whom Moscow will agree to talk in a serious manner.

A logical forum for such consultations is the NATO–Russia Council (NRC), but interaction within that body has been stifled of late; Russia even refuses to appoint permanent political and military representatives and has apparently written off this forum as a serious negotiating venue. As noted above, the European Union’s decision-making procedures make it an awkward negotiating party, at least at the sensitive initial stage. It is therefore advisable to have one or a few EU/NATO countries take the lead. As I suggested elsewhere,⁸ Germany, perhaps together with France, seems the best fit for the role, as it combines a position of authority within the European Union and NATO with a reasonable degree of trust on the part of Russia.

Obviously, these cannot be formal negotiations; not only because Germany alone cannot represent the entire West, but also because the agenda of such negotiations is still completely unclear. Rather, emphasis should be placed on a series of track one-and-a-half meetings, conferences, and other fora, which could help improve understanding of the security concerns of each party and how they perceive actions of the other. As long as these discussions are pursued in a professional, non-politicized manner (best if they take place behind closed doors), they may eventually help identify mutually acceptable ways to address existing and new challenges to European security. In the near future, these consultations could also help mitigate the negative consequences of the security dilemma.

Changing the framework from a straightforward replacement of the INF Treaty to a broader discussion of strategic and European stability could help overcome the existing deadlock in the same way that a shift from the Central Europe-focused Mutual Balanced Force Reduction negotiations to the Europe-wide format helped achieve the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty in 1990. Another possible advantage of that approach is an opportunity to postpone the controversy over the range of the 9M729 missile until a later stage, or perhaps to agree, as a side measure, on procedures allowing attention to the Western concern over 9M729 and the Russian concern about the Aegis system in Romania.

Obviously, no agreement is possible without the United States, but preparatory consultations can be held with a limited US presence or even without direct participation of US officials (if nongovernmental American experts participated instead). Since the US government will be, without doubt, appraised of the discussions, it will be easier to launch formal negotiations once the political atmosphere becomes more conducive to such an endeavor.

To summarize, Kühn’s article thoroughly and convincingly explores the scene in Europe in the aftermath of the INF Treaty’s collapse. Yet, the options around which a European consensus seems to be emerging have a low chance of enhancing European security; instead, they are more likely to facilitate even further worsening. A closer look suggests that a more immediate task is to find new forms and venues for dialogue even as caution is exercised with regard to possible additional deployments of weapons in Europe or in its vicinity. Success is far from guaranteed, of course, but other options hold even less hope.

Superficial wounds: deterrence lives

In his provocative essay, Dallas Boyd worries that the credibility of the US nuclear deterrent is eroding (Vol. 26, Nos. 1–2, 2019, pp. 105–26). He expresses two main concerns: first, US officials publicly question the reliability of the US nuclear stockpile and, second, US leaders express “squeamishness” about accepting the costs of nuclear retaliation even if limited to just one American city. He notes that extending deterrence to US allies is especially challenging: the United States might not sacrifice the lives of its own citizens to retaliate against enemy attacks on some other country.

Boyd correctly views these as complementary concerns. Deterrence is weakened if the United States seemingly lacks the capability to deliver an effective blow against an adversary in retaliation; it is weakened further if the United States apparently lacks the will to deliver such a blow out of fear of retaliation. An adversary that concludes the United States cannot inflict harm, and lacks the fortitude to do so anyway, could use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons to secure easy wins.

Boyd is not entirely clear whether he wishes officials would keep their skepticism private or whether stockpile reliability is a real problem. Either way, the same criticisms hold. Whether his concern is based in “reality” or a “perception,” Boyd understates the robustness of deterrence in various respects.

First, Boyd implicitly overstates the certainty with which adversaries will judge the unreliability of the US weapons stockpile. Boyd correctly recognizes that “these weapons do not have to ‘work’ to deter—adversaries must simply believe that they will. Or, more precisely, foreign leaders must not be so confident that the weapons will not work that they behave in ways that would otherwise be considered too risky.” But reliability will always remain a hypothetical problem and thus—at worst, for the United States—a matter of adversary speculation. After all, reliability problems revealed in nuclear war cannot undermine pre-war deterrence. How would adversaries know to attack, or even coerce, when the fact of the deficiency was invisible to US military planners? How willing are they to attack, then, on a hunch?

We gain useful insight when viewing the problem from an opposing perspective. How willing are US officials to bet on the unreliability of North Korean warheads? US officials consistently voice fears that North Korea will mate a warhead with a missile capable of hitting US territory. They have yet tried to quell these fears by insisting that “the bomb might not work.” Even if Americans thought it highly probable that any given warhead would not explode, would not their confidence wane significantly if North Korea could deliver fifty warheads against US targets?

With how much confidence, then, should US adversaries view a US force of roughly 1,500 deployed strategic nuclear warheads? It is hard to imagine the chance of a system-wide failure is high, or that US adversaries will judge it so. If Russia and China thought reliability was an issue, they would be questioning the performance of their own nuclear weapons. Yet neither country has tested a nuclear weapon in decades. In any case, if they suspected their own weapons might not perform, their trepidations would undercut any coercive advantage they obtain from doubting the reliability of US weapons.

Boyd raises the reliability bar significantly, however, when he claims the United States cannot afford performance concerns against a highly capable adversary. He argues specifically that, “In a strategic first strike, where an attempt would be made to eliminate all or most of an enemy’s nuclear forces in one blow, confidence in the stockpile would be particularly influential, especially where Russia is concerned.” His concern, then, is that Russia might doubt US first-strike credibility, that is, the US ability to deliver a disarming blow. But is that not a good thing? What could the United States gain in a crisis if Russia feared a US first-strike advantage? Is that not precisely the situation that Thomas Schelling described when he warned of the dangers arising from a “reciprocal fear of surprise attack?”⁹

Second, Boyd focuses narrowly on only two factors that could affect the credibility of the US deterrence threat. Whether the United States retaliates against an attack on another country is, however, not just a function of perceived weapon reliability and a basic US cost aversion. It also depends on perceptions of threats and options, decisional structures and processes, the influence of presidential advisors, and so forth—all as perceived, in turn, by the adversary. Might adversary leaders conclude, for instance, that the costs to a US leader are prohibitive should they fail to take decisive action against an adversary that, after its attack, is now judged an existential US threat? After all, if US policy makers fear the consequences of but one warhead falling on the United States, they have lowered the bar significantly—from its Cold War highpoint—in defining an “existential” threat.

Indeed, some of the evidence that Boyd links to reliability problems could actually strengthen deterrence. He mentions a number of notorious incidents—safety violations and breakdowns in operator discipline—that could hurt the perceived capability to launch US weapons when needed. Yet these same factors could make the prospect of US retaliation more credible. Cold War experts warned of the dangers of relaxing negative controls on nuclear weapons (which prevent unauthorized use) and moving into the uncharted waters of positive control, where the burden shifts to making weapons available for use. The danger then is not just that ineptitude and unprofessionalism will keep these weapons from being used but also that, in a hair-trigger situation, informal rules, workarounds, and a lack of discipline will lead to unauthorized weapons use. If an adversary believes that US leaders lack full control, they might proceed with caution. Deterrence is thereby strengthened, as Schelling deemed possible when he offered his notion of a “threat that leaves something to chance.”¹⁰

Third, Boyd focuses on the limited set of “signals,” sent by concerns about weapons reliability and cost aversions, when US officials are, at once, sending a large number of often contradictory signals. While some US officials are expressing doubts, others are expressing confidence and making threats. What counts, and how it counts, is actually in the eye of the beholder. Might an adversary simply dismiss talk from US military or laboratory officials as self-interested efforts to feather their budgets, acquire new organizational tools, or push an agenda? After all, the US military constantly warned that the United States was falling dangerously behind during the Cold War. The glossy annual Defense Department publication, Soviet Military Power, stands as proof in that regard. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, US hawks warned of the opening of a “window of vulnerability”—and an accompanying Soviet first-strike threat—at a time when Soviet leaders feared they were falling behind in the arms race and that the United States posed a significant first-strike threat. What worries “us” does not necessarily worry “them.”

Fourth, Boyd implicitly overstates the contribution of uncertainty to the credibility of the US deterrent threat by highlighting probabilities, whereas risk requires that we consider probabilities and costs. Even a very small probability of things not working is sufficient for deterrence given the costs of “guessing wrong.” In Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood’s character recognized the favorable mathematics when he pointed a .44 Magnum at a “punk” who thought the gun might be out of bullets. His legendary question—“Do you feel lucky?”—sent a convincing message. The enormity of the potential cost to the target, if the gun was loaded, should weigh far more heavily in the target’s calculations than (even strong) suspicions the gun was empty.

In assessing credibility, then, we need to consider the combined influence of probability and cost. Thus, we can reasonably conclude that, for deterrence purposes, the potential costs that the United States can inflict on a small nuclear power like North Korea more than compensate for the higher probability that North Korea would test the US deterrence commitment to South Korea. Given the resulting “risk” here—a function of the cost tolerance of an adversary and its probability of incurring those costs—the US coercive position, relative to North Korea, is potentially equivalent to the US position against a less determined, but more punishing, nuclear adversary such as China or even Russia. Thus, dedicated preparations for “worst-case” adversary intentions might little improve the US coercive position. The United States has a credible force for deterrence purposes, given the high probability that (a) much of the US force will deliver on target and (b) a US adversary will not relish the thought that even a small number of these weapons will fulfill their missions. Therefore, while we can imagine a cost-acceptant, risk-prone adversary, we must also recognize that the cause of sound policy is not served by attempting to address all conceivable challenges and contingencies.

Finally, we must recognize that logic and historical evidence do not back concerns that US adversaries—including North Korea—are indifferent to costs or willing to take high risks. If we assume that North Korea will initially spare US targets—the reason extended deterrence is in question—we must also presume that North Korea prefers to keep the United States out of the fight. That behavior hardly befits a reckless adversary indifferent to costs. Yet we do not need to rely on logic alone to challenge the stilted depiction of the US challenge. After all, the armistice between North and South Korea has held now for sixty-six years.

The Cold War is highly instructive in this regard. Although hawks warned of the dangers of “mirror imaging”—assuming that Soviet leaders shared “American values”—the mirror image, it turns out, was more accurate than the “reverse image” hawks offered. We might remember that US policy makers once worried that the many thousands of warheads the United States could deliver assuredly against their targets was insufficient to deter a Soviet nemesis. They also warned that Soviet leaders might seek to take the United States down with them if they were ever forced to cede power. Yet it was US decision makers, not Soviet decision makers, who treated nuclear weapons cavalierly. The United States called a nuclear alert during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1973 Middle East War, not the Soviet Union. Indeed, the Richard M. Nixon administration is implicated in perhaps the most frightening nuclear gambit of the Cold War when, in 1969, it ordered B-52 bombers loaded with nuclear weapons to fly repeatedly at the Soviet Union and down its coast, ostensibly to convince the Soviets to press Hanoi to come to terms in the Vietnam War.

Maybe that behavior is where we should focus our concerns. We should ask how, in efforts to bolster US credibility, US decision makers might lose control and provoke the very consequences they seek to avoid.

Consequences, intended or otherwise

My first trip to the former US nuclear-test site in Nevada was about ten years ago. As I looked out at the Sedan Crater, I thought about the weapon that created that enormous void in the Earth and I shuddered to imagine what a weapon like that would do to a city. A few of my male colleagues were chatting away, saying things like “I thought it would be bigger” and “Don’t you kinda just want to see one [a nuke] explode, just once? How cool would that be?”

Reading Dallas Boyd’s article “Avoiding self-inflicted wounds to the credibility of the US Nuclear Deterrent” (Vol. 26, Nos. 1–2, pp. 105–26), I found myself returning to that moment a decade ago.

Though it’s been over thirty years since Carol Cohn first identified the masculinized, technostrategic language that allows nuclear “strategists” to contemplate genocidal destruction, Boyd’s article shows we haven’t come very far at all.¹¹ To Boyd, those, such as Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Noel Gayler, and Lee Butler, who have deigned to speak plainly about the consequences of nuclear use have put us all in peril by weakening the credibility of the US deterrent. When discussing how the “technical credibility of the stockpile was demonstrated in evocative fashion,” Boyd does not mention the people who died—and continue to die—as a result of past explosive nuclear tests. He chastises US leaders for expressing the belief that an entire US city would be unacceptable collateral damage, not dwelling on the unpleasantness of hundreds of thousands of Americans dying in the white-hot flash of a nuclear strike. Perhaps “overwrought descriptions” of human suffering get in the way of tidy theoretical musings.

But the irony of Cohnian “technobabble” is that, by stripping a discourse of emotive, visceral, or humanizing language, it has the opposite net effect of its intent: instead of imparting a precise and objective understanding, technostrategic talk obfuscates the truth of the matter. It speaks of “collateral damage” and “countervalue attacks,” not of deaths and cancers and pain and misery. In his article, Boyd’s own technostrategic-speak also has some unintended consequences and muddled inferences.

Boyd invites officials who have cast doubt on the efficacy of the Stockpile Stewardship to air their concerns behind closed doors, or not at all. But, to make his case, he must air their claims anew. Rehashing old and invalid critiques can easily serve to justify hardliners’ calls for a resumption of nuclear-explosive testing and turbocharged vertical proliferation.

Indeed, the author credits the Donald J. Trump administration’s menacing rhetoric and accompanying 2018 Nuclear Posture Review as helping to salvage the damage done to US nuclear credibility. Given the myriad of security challenges facing the United States, the case for more pronouncements of “fire and fury” seems unwise, to say the least. Nevertheless, that is a potential takeaway from Boyd’s article. His argument that the technical and political credibility of the US nuclear deterrent is in danger is alarming, if only because of the encouragement that it may offer to nuclear hawks.

It is true that presidents have, at times, opined on the horror of a nuclear attack. Some have even taken the time to talk to hibakusha (Japanese atomic-bomb survivors) and Downwinders (people who have experienced first-hand the effects of nuclear-explosive testing). Still, casual research can yield scores of times that they also made overt or subtle references to the potential use of nuclear weapons. President Obama, for example, regularly stated that “all options are on the table” for addressing Iran’s nuclear program. In his 2009 Prague speech, President Obama also said the United States would maintain a safe, secure, and effective deterrent force for as long as nuclear weapons existed.¹² Through Presidential Decision Directive 60, President Clinton expanded the scope of nuclear weapons targeting to include “rogue states” and posited nuclear responses to possible chemical and biological attacks, a practice continued by the George W. Bush administration.¹³ And, in a memorable recent incident, President Trump boasted about the size of his nuclear button.

Beyond little evidence that American leaders have conveyed a sheepishness about the US nuclear arsenal, there is scant reason to believe that the nation’s adversaries harbor doubts about American military capabilities or will.

Over the next thirty years, more than a trillion dollars will be invested in the US nuclear-weapons infrastructure. The United States has built a system to sustain its nuclear weapons which is unquestionably a scientific marvel. No one in the US government or military would trade the American nuclear arsenal for the arsenal of any other country. Every technical challenge facing the United States in the absence of explosive nuclear testing faces other nuclear-weapons states as well. In fact, given the United States’s much more expansive testing record, a permanent end to explosive testing would probably serve to lock in American nuclear dominance. This fact does not change, regardless of cherrypicked and decades-old concerns that the author resurfaces in his article, such as a twenty-year-old letter in which former cabinet secretaries expressed concerns about the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). Incidentally, “the passage of time” did “temper many officials’ misgivings” about that treaty. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, for example, remarked, “a Senator might have been right to vote against it when it was first put forward and right to vote for it now.”¹⁴

Further, Boyd’s discussion of US allies’ concerns about extended deterrence is unnecessarily narrowed to its nuclear component, disregarding the broader frame of modern deterrence which includes the United States’s unparalleled conventional capabilities, diplomatic tools, and unprecedented economic might. The articles and polling he cites as proof that the South Koreans are doubting US security guarantees date from before the rapprochement ushered in by President Moon Jae-in and certainly before the Trump-Kim summits. These events have changed the situation on the Korean Peninsula in important ways. The article also excludes counterpoints showing allied concerns about the lack of progress on arms control and disarmament, movements that are in fact fueled by the very humanitarian concerns Boyd claims are dangerous. Polls of the German public, for example, show steady support for disarmament—some polls show that a majority of German citizens no longer even feel the need for US extended nuclear deterrence.¹⁵

To be sure, US alliances and relationships have certainly suffered damage. But, far from being the result of Obama’s Prague aspirations, as the author claims, the real and more troubling damage has been levied by the preternaturally unreassuring behavior of the current president’s interactions with close allies—a salient omission from the article in question. Further, the Trump administration’s budget proposals have habitually sought to kneecap the State Department: how can the department charged with reassuring allies about the strength of the US extended-deterrence commitments perform properly if it is short staffed and undervalued?

I agree, however, with the author’s concerns over the alarmism of some US officials’ testimonies on the state of US nuclear modernization. Leaders should clearly and confidently lay out the case for budgets without resorting to hyperbole. However, the solution is to call for more transparency, not less, as Boyd argues. The American public pays for the nuclear arsenal; they deserve to have an unvarnished understanding of how and why their money is being spent. This administration already has a runaway trust deficit at home and abroad. Adding to it through obfuscation will not improve stability a single bit.

There is yet another unintended takeaway that readers may glean from Boyd’s article: the adoption of a no-first-use policy. Presidents, being charged with the protection of every American citizen, do have a “prohibitive aversion to the risk of nuclear attack” (p. 107), and would be unlikely to start a nuclear war for fear of the consequences. The American public shares that aversion. Multiple polls conducted by YouGov, Rethink Media, and the Union of Concerned Scientists have all shown strong support for the idea that the United States should never use nuclear weapons first. Polls aside, US allies and adversaries should be able to look at American values, morals, and threshold for risk and assume that the United States would be an unlikely candidate to start a nuclear war. They can also look at American values, morals, and investments in defense and assume that the United States would unleash all necessary force in defense of itself and its allies. Dallas Boyd thinks that American conduct, in word and deed, is demonstrative of a country uninterested in nuclear war fighting. By making that clear through declaratory policy, the United States would not only decrease the risk of nuclear war, but would also signal the US unanimity on nuclear policy, which Boyd’s article calls for.

Notes

1 See, for example, Olga Oliker and Andrey Baklitsky, “The Nuclear Posture Review and Russian ‘De-escalation:’ A Dangerous Solution to a Nonexistent Problem,” War on the Rocks, February 20, 2018, <https://warontherocks.com/2018/02/nuclear-posture-review-russian-de-escalation-dangerous-solution-nonexistent-problem/>.

2 Nikolai Sokov, “Russia’s National Security Concept: The Nuclear Angle,” James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, January 17, 2000, <www.nonproliferation.org/russias-new-national-security-concept-the-nuclear-angle/>.

3 V. Levshin, A. Nedelin, and M. Sosnovski, “O Primenenii Yadernogo Oruzhiya dlya Deescalatsii Voennykh Deistvii” [On the Employment of Nuclear Weapons for De-escalation of Military Conflict], Voyennama Mysl, Vol. 3, Nos. 5–6 (1999), pp. 34–37, <http://militaryarticle.ru/voennaya-mysl/1999-vm/9724-o-primenenii-jadernogo-oruzhija-dlja-dejeskalacii>.

4 Voennaya Doktrina Rossiiskoi Federatsii, April 21, 2000, <http://kremlin.ru/acts/bank/15386>.

5 See, for example, “The Management and Termination of War with the Soviet Union,” Net Evaluation Subcommittee of the National Security Council, 1963, <https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB31/docs/doc05.pdf>.

6 Voennaya Doktrina Rossiiskoi Federatsii, December 26, 2014, <http://static.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/41d527556bec8deb3530.pdf>.

7 US Department of Defense, “Nuclear Posture Review,” January 2018, <https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF>.

8 Nikolai Sokov, “The INF Treaty Crisis: Filling the Void with European Leadership,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 49 (March 2019), <www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-03/features/inf-treaty-crisis-filling-void-european-leadership>.

9 Thomas C. Schelling, “The Reciprocal Fear of Surprise Attack,” RAND, April 16, 1958.

10 Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960).

11 Carol Cohn, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 12, No. 4 (1987), pp. 687–718.

12 Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Barack Obama,” Prague, Czech Republic, April 5, 2009, <https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-barack-obama-prague-delivered>.

13 Walter Pincus, “‘Rogue’ Nations Policy Builds on Clinton’s Lead,” Washington Post, March 12, 2012, <www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/03/12/rogue-nations-policy-builds-on-clintons-lead/ed72a8e5-84ee-4904-a926-4c747ea07329/?utm_term=.af51908f3ce8>.

14 Daryl Kimball, “Former Secretary of State Shultz Reiterates Support for CTBT,” Arms Control Now, March 11, 2013, <www.armscontrol.org/blog/2013-03-11/former-secretary-state-shultz-reiterates-support-ctbt>.

15 “One Year on: European Attitudes toward the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, a YouGov Poll of Four NATO States,” press release, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, 2018, <www.icanw.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/YouGov_ICAN_EUNATOTPNW2018.pdf>.