CIAO DATE: 05/02

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

Volume 1, Number 2, Summer/Fall 2000

 

Undeterred: The Return of Nuclear War
Stephen Blank ^*

 

As the Cold War ended, pundits proclaimed a “post–nuclear” era, when both deterrence and warfighting would be exclusively conventional and U.S. nuclear guarantees to allies against non–nuclear attack would become increasingly implausible. Nuclear weapons, therefore, would allegedly have a diminishing utility except for deterring nuclear attacks against the United States. Consequently, contemporary deterrence and stability would be more generally measured by conventional defense capabilities than by nuclear ones.

These prophecies, however, have proven strikingly incorrect. Major powers increasingly have been moving to operationalize weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). This includes asserting a broader range of missions, developing a credible second–strike capability, and using WMDs to weaponize space. Such trends transcend the proliferation debate to include both existing and potential nuclear powers. These actions are the consequence of a broader worldwide trend in response to the fundamental strategic developments of our epoch: the revolution in military affairs (RMA), the end of the Cold War and search for a new international order, globalization, technological revolutions, and the rise and fall of major powers. The rising number of disturbing threats to the non–proliferation treaty (NPT) regime must relate in part to contemporary trends in warfare. Non–proliferation campaigns, however well–meaning, will fail unless they can account for real trends in modern warfare and strategic situations. The undoubted slowdown in non–proliferation, therefore, is not just due to a lack of U.S. leadership or to benighted politicians, as some partisans of nonproliferation argue.

An emerging global trend toward the weaponization of nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) capabilities disproves conventionally focused prophecies and the misplaced emphases of a unilaterally virtuous American foreign policy of non–proliferation. It tells us that too much American thinking on military strategy is excessively ethnocentric and plain ignorant of foreign conditions. It demonstrates the absurdity of substituting theory or normative anti–nuclear values for close observation of empirical facts. It also highlights one of the most disturbing features of writing on arms control, nuclear war, and proliferation: It too often ignores new developments in contemporary warfare and strategy. For example, much scholarship on China complacently assumes that, in the foreseeable future, China cannot alter the fact that, “with the proper mix of U.S. forces in the region, rimland and maritime Asia will always have the ability to ’trump’ Chinese projection attempts.” This view neglects how fundamental changes in strategic geography due to China’s and other Asian states’ development of WMD and ballistic missiles threaten U.S. allies and interests in Asia. This observation also overlooks the fact that whatever threat China poses is not so much to the United States but to its Asian allies and partners. U.S. allies cannot blithely count on superiority against a nuclear and developing China. Indian authorities, in part, invoked this concern over China to explain and justify India’s nuclear tests. To ignore such palpable strategic realities is to continue refusing to think seriously about major contemporary strategic issues, a failing that characterizes much of the literature on nuclear war, arms control, and proliferation.

Another cause for the WMD danger is the security dilemma created by U.S. strategy for high–tech warfare as the leader of a global RMA. This revolution may be characterized as the application of revolutionary technological advances in cybernetics, information technology, and telecommunications to weapons systems, particularly in the United States. Precisely because many potential American adversaries cannot compete at this level, they are intensifying their nuclear and space capabilities to deter and threaten regional rivals or the United States. Subsequently, other states in the region will feel the need to move toward nuclearization, second–strike, or missile defense systems to counter these new threats.

The creation of a more unstable post–Cold War strategic environment and the advent of the RMA have resulted in two parallel, yet distinct, patterns in WMD developments. First, regional powers are increasingly relying upon WMD and ballistic missiles to provide national security. This trend can be seen in areas ranging from the Middle East to South Asia and Northeast Asia. The post–Cold War strategic challenges, for example, are forcing Iran and North Korea to pursue strikingly similar policies toward WMD and ballistic missiles, despite widely differing regional contexts. Second, established nuclear weapon states are looking to expand the operational uses of WMD, particularly nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities. New threats that emerged in the post–Cold War world have forced Russia, China, and the United States to employ nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in conventional warfighting scenarios.

 

WMD and Regional Powers

Much of the focus of recent non–proliferation programs has been on regional actors. These programs, however, often ignore the strategic context and the resultant change in operational doctrines that are causing the spread of WMD and missile technology in these areas. Therefore, we should consider these recent nuclear and military events in East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and among the existing nuclear powers in the light of post–Cold War context.

North Korea persuaded Washington to compensate it in return for halting the development of a probable nuclear weapons system, aided Iran’s and Pakistan’s nuclear missile programs, and flight tested the Taepo–Dong 1 and Nodong missiles that could become the ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to the continental United States. In response, Seoul has sought to develop or purchase longer range missiles against the North.

India and Pakistan have tested and weaponized nuclear weapons, and are quickly developing short–, medium–, and long–range missiles. India’s new security doctrine advocates early warning and deterrence, which requires a very large nuclear arsenal, but may be impossible to achieve given Pakistan’s proximity. Both governments have and still are receiving material assistance from China, the United States, and Russia for their nuclear programs. Russia is helping India build the Sagarika sub–surface nuclear missile and nuclear–powered submarines. Moreover, Russia is providing technology to India’s civilian space program that can be used to improve the construction of India’s nuclear missiles, since space launch vehicles can double as missile launchers. Both states also intend to have a robust space presence with the goal of militarizing space, presumably starting with satellites and then other systems. Meanwhile, Pakistan continues to tempt fate by inciting bloody, prolonged, low–level conflicts in Kashmir.

U.S. and Israeli officials accept that Iran will have an inter–regional ballistic missile (IRBM) and nuclear capability by 2005 with the Shihab–3 and will be close to expanding it into an inter–continental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability with the Shihab–4. General Anthony Zinni, commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, publicly professed that Iran would have a nuclear capability within three to five years, and the CIA now says it cannot guarantee that Iran will not have a nuclear capability to accompany its recently tested Shihab–3 IRBM.2 These developments have become possible only with extensive Russian, Chinese, and North Korean proliferation.

Israel is expanding its acknowledged first–strike capability to a second–strike sea–based nuclear capability by purchasing German Dolphin Class submarines. This quest for credible sea–based second–strike deterrent capabilities is a predictable response to Iranian and Iraqi nuclearization. Simultaneously, Israel has been building the Arrow missile–operational as of March 2000–that also has an offensive capability “to cover all bets” and prevent missile attacks upon its territory or forces. Israel may also offer Turkey a modified form of missile defense against missile what Ankara perceives as threats from virtually all its neighbors. Meanwhile, Iraq’s WMD programs continue despite all the UN–imposed restrictions on them. As inspections ended in 1998–99, Saddam Hussein has undoubtedly continued his lifelong quest for diverse WMD capabilities.

 

Conventionalization among the Established Nuclear States

Alongside the rise of new nuclear weapon states, established nuclear weapon states are also looking to conventionalize WMD. States involved in this movement toward conventionalization include Russia, China, and even the United States. These countries are increasingly looking to incorporate WMD, including nuclear weapons, into conventional warfighting doctrines and operations.

The U.S. Senate decisively repudiated the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty despite widespread fears that doing so would encourage more proliferation, an accusation that Moscow, among others, subsequently repeated. Meanwhile, the Clinton administration has delivered Moscow an ultimatum that it support amendments to the anti–ballistic missile (ABM) treaty, allowing the United States to construct a national missile defense; otherwise, the United States would leave the ABM treaty.

Defense Secretary William Cohen has stated that any attack on U.S. satellites, a likely opening move by an enemy seeking to deny us precision strike capabilities and information dominance, would be regarded as an “infringement on our sovereign rights.” Such an attack could justify the use of all appropriate self–defense measures by the United States, including the use of force. If that attack was a nuclear one directed to, from, or within space, political pressure for an equivalent riposte would be enormous. Furthermore, the Clinton administration has publicly stated that chemical or biological attacks on the United States could justify nuclear responses and refuses to rule out the use of nuclear weapons as part of its counterproliferation program.

Russia has repeatedly stated that it will deter even smaller–scale conventional attacks against key installations or allies with nuclear weapons. Its new security concept and defense doctrine repeated those statements. Russian analysts and officials told the author that NATO’s invasion of Kosovo stimulated doctrine writers to add scenarios for using tactical nuclear weapons against purely conventional attacks. Thus in December, 1999, Colonel General Vladimir Yakovlev, Commander of Russia’s nuclear forces, stated that Russia must lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons, extend the nuclear deterrent to smaller–scale conflicts, and openly warn potential opponents about this potential response. Meanwhile, Russia is continuing under START II to replace old arms with newer, more accurate Topol–M ICBMs that are especially designed to frustrate Western defenses.

Russia’s new national security concept and defense doctrine postulate all–encompassing and growing threats to Russian security that include proliferation of WMD and their delivery vehicles. These documents proclaim Russia’s readiness for a nuclear first–strike against threats to Russian vital interests that cannot otherwise be resolved. Specifically, the security concept states that the armed forces must deter aggression on any scale, nuclear or otherwise, against Russia and its allies. It thereby extends deterrence to those allies, presumably members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The security concept also states that nuclear weapon use would become possible “in the event or need to repulse armed aggression, if all other measures of resolving the crisis situation have been exhausted and proven ineffective.” The new defense doctrine reiterated this idea.

Russian nuclear weapons serve crucial but not necessarily complementary functions. They deter a wide range of contingencies that could conceivably threaten Russia. They are also warfighting instruments that might be used against a wide range of threats arising out of actual conflict situations. Their use will be tailored to the particular threat at hand, as stated in the security concept. The security concept and other open source documents proclaim limited nuclear war as Russia’s officially acknowledged response to many different kinds of contingencies. Russian military writers regard these weapons not just as weapons of mass destruction, but as perfectly legitimate weapons for performing military missions. Essentially, there is no clear firewall between conventional and nuclear scenarios.

Making nuclear weapons a legitimate tool of war fundamentally contradicts the notion that nuclear weapons are primarily for deterrence. Nor is it clear if Moscow distinguishes between tactical or strategic missiles. Indeed, many Russian political and military analysts view NATO’s enlargement as a future military threat that can only be countered by the threat or use of tactical, if not strategic, nuclear missiles. This conventionalization of Russian nuclear weapons substantially lowers the threshold for nuclear use, which incorporates new lethal, highly accurate, third generation weapons. Russia will also have to concurrently increase the accuracy of delivery and the effectiveness of target engagement. Hence, nuclear warfighting scenarios have become truly feasible options.

At the same time, the People’s Republic of China is also displaying a disturbing trend toward the conventionalization of WMD. China bracketed Taiwan with intimidating missile launches in 1995 and 1996 and has continued proliferating to Pakistan and Iran despite its membership in the Missile Technology Control Regime. Furthermore, China is moving toward a new nuclear doctrine that contemplates using nuclear weapons not only for deterrence, but also for warfighting. Aided by Russia, China is modernizing and extending the range and precision of its ICBMs and sea–launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), shorter range missiles, and missile defense systems. Through these advancements, China will be able to threaten the continental United States, diversify and expand its arsenal, and counter foreign missile attacks in the event of conflict over Taiwan or elsewhere in Asia. This is only part of a much larger comprehensive modernization of military technologies that is intended to give China the means to fight for information dominance and strategic superiority by striking the enemy’s most critical targets first, even preemptively. This strategy and target set could easily mandate space war, nuclear attacks, or both.

Thus, we see the return of limited–and possibly even unlimited–nuclear war as a viable operational mission. Proliferators and established nuclear powers alike see new justification for nuclear use as threats change and as warfare becomes multi–dimensional. Today, the potentiality for weapons to strike from underwater, the sea, the air, space, and the earth at targets in any one of the other dimensions are realities. The trend whereby proliferating states, such as China and North Korea, then become salesmen of WMD systems to other proliferators diffuses these capabilities.

The universal trend to expand the role of nuclear weapons occurs against a backdrop of widespread military modernization that is part of the RMA. Proliferators and established nuclear powers are also robustly modernizing their conventional and high technology capabilities for waging electronic, space, and information warfare. Frequently they acquire these capabilities not just for political reasons or for deterrence but to counter U.S. technological primacy. The nuclear buildup is inconceivable apart from this context. Moreover, the problem with too much U.S. thinking about nuclear issues–warfighting strategies, deterrence, arms control, and proliferation–is its refusal to consider war’s changing context.

 

Killing the Sacred Cows

These current trends support the argument that proliferation really is America’s most serious threat. The situation mandates going beyond merely stopping proliferation. Many existing nuclear weapons states, including the United States, have discovered the increasing utility of nuclear weapons to deter conventional attacks and fight smaller–scale wars. This trend to consider the use of nuclear weapons in scenarios other than nuclear attack is undermining several “sacred cows” in security studies.

One sacred cow is the “major war is obsolete” school that contends that major war between the great powers is increasingly obsolescent, which is strongly related to the belief in the existence of a nuclear taboo. However, it seems that other governments will break taboos against using weapons of mass destruction much more willingly than we assume. In Chechnya, the Chechens resorted to chemical weapons and Russia used what it considers to be WMD–fuel–air explosives and cruise missiles. Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against the Kurds went unpunished, highlighting the weakness of the international community’s commitment to condemning the use of WMD.

Another sacred cow is the argument that proliferation is a declining threat, and even if it is not, new nuclear states will probably not use these weapons except for deterrence, which is linked to the argument that more nuclear states are really better. However, the trend towards the operationalization of nuclear weapons undermines both these arguments. Further, as Iraq, North Korea, and previous proliferators have demonstrated, truly determined proliferators cannot be stopped from succeeding. The experience of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Iraq shows that extensive proliferation, including Iraq’s increased biological warfare capability, can happen under the most severe inspection regime without the inspectors’ knowledge. Meanwhile, foreign suppliers remain willing to help proliferators like Iraq.

Nor can the U.S. expect that proliferators will follow its testing procedures or that its intelligence services can accurately warn it of policies, strategies, intentions, and capabilities. In addition, the United States cannot attribute the disturbing trends to nuclearization and the spread of chemical and biological warfare capabilities solely to proliferators’ desire for bigger and better WMD. Even existing nuclear powers Russia and China are acting in ways that apparently indicate that they favor proliferation. Reportedly, Russia and China are covertly violating the accords on preventing biological warfare even as they devise new missions for their nuclear weapons. Russia exported tritium to China to improve China’s nuclear weapons and renewed its military collaboration with Iran. And as they draw closer together, their military cooperation in nuclear missile, launch, and space capabilities will continue and deepen.

A third sacred cow is the long–standing American belief–a cornerstone of deterrence theory–that nuclear weapons have no discernible military–strategic utility other than to deter a nuclear attack. As the argument goes, defenseless nuclear powers will deter each other from attacks. However, this cow is being undone because proliferators and established nuclear powers are further extending their capacity to exploit space for military purposes and integrating space–based satellites and sensors with missiles to enhance precision. For instance, the Pentagon believes that China is attempting to develop an anti–satellite capability against the U.S. space satellites.

Such weaponization could come to include nuclear missiles or vital command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) components of nuclear arsenals, such as satellites and anti–satellite weapons, ballistic missile defenses, and anti–ballistic missiles. Such weaponization of space is hardly new. During the 1980s the Soviet Union established a space theater of strategic military operations (Teatr’ Voennykh Deistviya) that included a command and control structure as well as planning for the conduct of strategic operations in, to, and from space. Moscow was hardly alone in this endeavor. Therefore, the sheer scope of nuclear, space, and conventional improvements to a major military’s capability cannot be explained away as simply a failure of the non–proliferation campaign.

Finally, these build–ups also undermine another sacred cow of American writing and policy under the Clinton administration, namely that we can arrest, inhibit, or even prevent nuclear proliferation by supplying potential proliferators with high–quality conventional platforms and weapons or by further reinforcing pledges of extended deterrence. Increasingly, it looks like those states only pocket the conventional weapons transfers while continuing to develop their WMD capabilities. Even allies, like South Korea, who in the past have resisted from developing nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles, now seek to extend the range and capacity of their missiles. Japan is extending both the perimeter of its defense–under new guidelines with Washington and its space and reconnaissance capabilities. Since Japan could easily and quickly build nuclear weapons, its plutonium program and policies evoke some concern across Asia. Thus, the quest for ever better conventional missiles and space systems for military purposes have the potential to contribute to further nuclearization and operationalization of those weapons.

Re–Educating the Policy Elite

Developments in the weaponization and operationalization of nuclear capabilities transcend the proliferation issue and express at least to some degree trends in modern warfare. Part of the answer as to why we should fight this trend toward nuclearization lies in a cause larger than the canonical motives–a strict nuclear deterrence or prestige factor–ascribed to proliferators. Trends in modern warfare and technology make the build–up of WMD and ballistic missiles more feasible and even desirable for potential nuclear states. Hence, the present exclusive concentration on non–proliferation and purely nuclear scenarios is bound to fail because it only deals with part of the problem. While Russian and Chinese claims that Kosovo stimulated regional powers to consider going nuclear are self–serving, they also discerned a crucial truth: In the post–Cold War strategic environment, regional powers will opt for WMD.

At the same time, trends in modern war and strategy are driving the established nuclear states toward further nuclearization. It may be unpalatable for Washington, who is leading the revolution in modern warfare, to hear that its embrace of, for example, strategic preclusion and information warfare is at fault here. But as long as the United States embraces a form of war whose conventionally or informationally achieved strategic results equate to those of nuclear war and pursues nuclear and conventional superiority, other potential strategic rivals will look to nuclear weapons as a force equalizer.

If the United States wishes to arrest the nuclear danger, it must begin by educating its own elites of the need to make more progress on nuclear issues. Justified or not, repudiating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty allows anyone to build and test nuclear weapons. In most cases, these weapons will be used against our strategy and forces. This was clearly not the Senate’s intended outcome. Second, our elites must better grasp the connections between advanced conventional weapons, information warfare, and nuclear weapons. Finally, we must build real missile defenses to prevent attacks and keep the pressure on proliferators and their recipients, while also trying to reduce operating arsenals through arms control treaties, such as START III. None of this will be easy. Congress and many foreign powers, including allies, are obstructive and do not see the linkages between the issues that have been connected above.

Likewise, much of the arms control and non–proliferation lobby is equally inflexible in not understanding how warfare is changing and its subsequent impact on nuclear weapon use. The lobby’s visceral opposition to missile defense derives on classical deterrence arguments that are forty years old and fail to take into account modern developments. Until policy elites and the public grasp the important new trends that are developing in warfare and regional deterrence agendas, the U.S. will continue to fight old battles and rely upon old truths that are irrelevant to current realities and that other governments are busily repudiating. Whatever security the U.S. then obtains by those methods will be illusory and short–lived.

The old landmarks of deterrence are undergoing severe stress and must be buttressed or restructured. This outcome may be disconcerting, but it is not unusual that strategic doctrines conceived for one kind of war makes another form of warfare much more conceivable. Global trends toward nuclearization oblige us to rethink our strategies more closely. If we do not learn from what others are doing, we will have to learn from what they did to us.

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Endnotes

Note *:   Stephen Blank is Douglas MacArthur Professor of Research at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College. Back.