Nuclear Weapons in the Changing World: Perspectives from Europe, Asia, and North America PDF
Preview Nuclear Weapons in the Changing World: Perspectives from Europe, Asia, and North America
Nuclear Weapons in the Changing World Perspectives from Europe, Asia, and North America ~CNSS .~~!j ~(~~ J~ Center for National Security Studies '--_________- -' Los Alamos National Laboratory ISSUES IN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY Series Editors: Robert E. Pendley and Joseph F. Pilat BEYOND 1995: The Future of the NPT Regime Edited by Joseph F. Pilat and Robert E. Pendley CHALLENGES TO AMERICAN NATIONAL SECURITY IN THE 1990s Edited by John J. Weltman, Michael Nacht, and George H. Quester EUROPEAN SECURITY IN THE 1990s: Deterrence and Defense after the INF Treaty Walter Laqueur and Leon Sloss NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN THE CHANGING WORLD: Perspectives from Europe, Asia, and North America Edited by Patrick J. Garrity and Steven A. Maaranen A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual ship ment. For further information please contact the publisher. Nuclear Weapons in the Changing World Perspectives from Europe, Asia, and North America Edited by J. Patrick Garrity and Steven A. Maaranen Center for National Security Studies Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos, New Mexico Foreword by Lawrence Freedman PLENUM PRESS • NEW YORK AND LONDON Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data Nuclear weapons in the changing world perspectives from Europe. ASla. and North America / edited by Patrick J. Garrity and Steven A. Maaranen ; foreword by Lawrence Freedman. p. em. -- (Issues 1n international secur1ty) Includes bibliographlcal references and lndex. ISBN 0-306-43472-5 1. Military policy. 2. Nuclear weapons. 3. United States- -Military policy. 4. Nuclear weapons--United States. I. Garrity. Patrick J. II. Maaranen. Steven A. III. Series. UA11.N841992 92-12785 CIP This series of books has been prepared as an account of work sponsored by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Neither Los Alamos National Laboratory, any agency thereof, nor any of their employees makes any warranty, expressed or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, mark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof. ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-5744-5 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-5742-1 DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4684-5742-1 © 1992 Plenum Press, New York Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation 233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher The Center for National Security Studies The Los Alamos National Laboratory's Center for National Security Studies (CNSS) investigates the complex interaction between national security policy and technological issues. The Center provides a broad perspective on policy issues related to national defense, and, specifically, promotes and conducts re search and analysis on key problems affecting the national security interests of the United States. A key objective of CNSS research is to assist Laboratory management and scientific staff in their decision making about technical pri orities and Laboratory directions. The Center also undertakes government-spon sored research, and facilitates and coordinates Laboratory participation in public discussion and debate on matters of national security. To carry out its programs and activities, the Center supports an inter disciplinary staff, drawing on expertise from the social sciences, including histo ry and political science, and the physical and biological sciences. The Center has an active visitor and consultant program, which encourages short- and long-term visits by experts from government and private institutions and by university faculty members. CNSS also sponsors an active postdoctoral research and gradu ate research assistant program to advance the careers of promising students of national security studies. In addition to research conducted by CNSS staff, the Center sponsors semi nars, workshops, and conferences designed to stimulate broader discussion of the relationships between technology and U.S. defense policy. These activities en hance communication between Los Alamos and other organizations, such as colleges and universities, that are studying issues of interest to the Laboratory. The publications program of the Center communicates the results of studies to Laboratory personnel and to a wider policy analysis community in govern- v vi The Center for National Security Studies ment, military, and academic circles, as well as private industry. Central to the publications program is this book series, Issues in International Security. The volumes in the series are based on research conducted by the Center's staff and by internationally recognized experts working with the staff. A primary goal of the series is to promote the reasoned analysis of international security issues, with emphasis on how these issues shape and are shaped by technological develop ments. Foreword Lawrence Freedman One of the major bonuses of the collapse of communism in Europe is that it may never again be necessary to enter into a sterile debate about whether it is better to be "red" or "dead." This appeared as the ultimate question in the great nuclear debate of the early 1980s. When put so starkly the answer appeared obvious better to live and struggle in a totalitarian system than to destroy totalitarian and democratic systems alike. There were a number of points to be made against this. Communist regimes had demonstrated the possibility of being both red and dead while the West had managed successfully to avoid the choice. If we allowed nuclear disarmament to become an overriding priority, this might encourage excessive respect for Soviet interests and a desire to avoid any sort of provocation to Moscow, a point not lost on those in Eastern Europe who were then struggling against repression and could not see why disarmament should be given a higher priority than freedom. Now that the old communist states have liberated themselves and the West no longer risks conspiring in their enslavement, there is a correspondingly re duced danger of mass death. As a result, and with so much else of immediate Lawrence Freedman • Department of War Studies, King's College, University of London, London WC2R 2LS, England. Nuclear Weapons in the Changing World: Perspectives from Europe, Asia, and North America. edited by Patrick J. Garrity and Steven A. Maaranen. Plenum Press, New York, 1992. vii viii Lawrence Freedman concern to think about, there has been remarkably little discussion of the future of the bomb. Nonetheless, for those who have long been anxious to rid the world of its nuclear weapons, this now appears as a moment of great opportunity. The Cold War and nuclear deterrence grew up together. Can the latter survive without the former? This is the fundamental question addressed in this volume from a great variety of angles. The end of the NATO-Warsaw Pact confrontation means a series of issues which until recently were at the center of political debate turn out to be of purely historical interest. However, nuclear weapons will continue to exist and play some role in international affairs; this means that new concepts will be needed. None of the authors expects that total nuclear disarmament is a realistic proposition for the moment for the reason that has provided the stock reply to disarmament advocacy in the past: the weapons cannot be disinvented. The secret is out, and for better or worse we now live in the nuclear age and must do the best we can. Many more nations are close to a nuclear capability. Verification of compliance with a total ban would be difficult, and just one weapon slipping through the net could make a significant impact when its existence was dis closed. Stockpiles could be re-created during the course of a conventional con flict. Meanwhile, having set up an enormous monitoring system to control one type of weapon, other types based on different physical principles could begin to playa similar role. Better to keep nuclear weapons in the open where they can be watched than pushed undercover. Moreover, an optimist might suggest the dangers of a total war have receded dramatically with the implosion in the communist world and the demise of the Warsaw Pact. Without a serious threat there is no need to allot nuclear weapons a prominent place in Western strategy. They can remain in being to remind every one of the horror of total war, while becoming increasingly marginal to the everyday conduct of international affairs. So might it be possible at last, as Stanley Kubrick put it in Dr. Strange[ove, to "stop worrying and learn to love the bomb"? The answer to this question lies in the relationship between nuclear forces and possible areas of political instability. As our authors demonstrate, it would be unwise to stop worrying quite yet. II The proposition that, by and large, nuclear weapons had a benign effect on international politics had come to be widely accepted by the end of the Cold War. The major powers had exceeded the properly pessimistic expectations of four decades ago in keeping the weapons under control. By warning in an unequivo- Foreword ix cal fashion of the dangers of total war, instead of providing the international system's most fatal flaw they played a critical stabilizing role. Confidence in nuclear stability came from the fact that no nuclear weapons were used in anger following the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These two attacks came at the end of a war which had been extraordinarily brutal. The United States had a monopoly of the weapons while Japan was on the verge of defeat and had no way of retaliating with nuclear weapons or in any other way. Since then states which have nuclear weapons have not been pushed into a comer by either nuclear-weapon or nonnuclear- weapon states. None has faced a mortal threat to its survival-except for the nuclear arsenals of potential adversaries. They have become involved in limited conflicts but, even when in difficulties, they have not found sufficient incentive to resort to the ultimate weapon. This tradition of nonuse can be used to support an alternative to the thesis of successful deterrence, namely, that the weapons have been useless. According to this view (advanced by John Mueller and discussed in this volume by John Lewis Gaddis) they are only relevant to great-power conflict, yet this sort of conflict was already becoming a thing of the past because of the levels of destructiveness achieved even before nuclear weapons arrived on the scene. The deterrence theorists have been left with the problem of proving a negative. They have done so by arguing that nuclear weapons introduced a qualitative change into the risks of war and that both anecdotal and archival evidence supports the view that this was fully understood by the responsible political leaders at the onset of the nuclear age and ever since. In the first decade after the Second World War, East-West tensions could have spilled over into war and, during this transitional period, nuclear weapons might well have served as an important stabilizing mechanism. The sharpness of the East-West divide in both geographical and ideological terms reinforced peaceful coexistence. The 1961 Berlin crisis was probably the point at which it became clear that all the major powers were prepared to come to terms with the European status quo. From that point on the system may have had sufficient stability of its own without the added ingredient of nuclear power. But once the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, and with it com munist rule in central and Eastern Europe, then the system opened up again. With Europe becoming politically unstable again, at least in the former Soviet sphere of interest, could nuclear weapons continue to playa stabilizing role? So far the record of managing the processes of political transformation, which had been assumed in anticipation to be fraught with danger, is in itself encouraging. The military aspects of European relations have been kept well to the background in the hope that it will make it easier to contain the effects of any future disturbance. When Yugoslavia turned in on itself in 1991 this provided a warning of a lingering capacity for intercommunal violence. Compared with previous Balkan crises from the earlier part of the century, a striking feature of x Lawrence Freedman this episode was less the rush of the great powers to get involved than their profound reluctance. In general, the extraordinary responsibility displayed by European leaders since 1989 indicates that the nuclear years have left their mark in terms of a heightened sensitivity to the risks of war and also a confidence that other nations share this sensitivity. Just because it has not been found necessary to issue explicit nuclear warnings does not mean that the irreducible existential threat has not exercised an influence. In this sense the weapons have ceased to serve as active instruments of strategy, but they nonetheless playa part in strategic calculations. Their role in the future will depend on the sort of strategic purposes that might arise in the post-Cold War political environment. In the past we have tended to talk of nuclear weapons within a self-con tained system, as if this was a sort of gyroscope at the heart of the international political system. If only we can get this into equilibrium then the total system will enjoy stability. It has been reasonable to make demands on the political system-including national budgets-in order to achieve this equilibrium. The requirements in this area have run from compounding the disincentives to a first strike to attending to the dangers of accidental launch to the crisis-managing capabilities of political and military elites. However, there has always been an alternative argument that there is an inherent stability to the nuclear system, which is more likely to be put at risk by political turbulence in the wider system than its own internal tensions. This is why there can never be an enduring technical fix to the problem of stability. There are still technical issues to be addressed. There seems to be no reason why there should be any relaxation of the basic criterion of a secure retaliatory force. The unsettling impact of a first-strike capability (including a comprehen sive defensive system) will remain. However, in general, the key questions now no longer involve exotic theories of crisis instability but more the interaction between nuclear systems and more general forms of political instability. III All strategic debates in the West still start from a preoccupation with the former Soviet Union. The nature of these debates, however, is undergoing a profound transformation. In the past the East-West nuclear relationship was dominated by two strategic assessments: first, and as already mentioned, that in some meaningful sense a rough equality of strategic nuclear forces captured the essence of the balance of power; and second, that given Soviet preponderance of conventional forces the threat of nuclear war was the best available deterrent to Soviet aggression in Europe.
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