Robert Jervis
Monday, November 9, 2009 at 02:01PM Robert Jervis, in a book review called "Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying," admonishes us not to get so worked up about nuclear weapons. He's reviewing John Mueller's Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda for The National Interest and he seems to agree with much of what Mueller says about our over-reaction to the Bomb.
Jervis disagrees with some of Mueller's judgments about the importance of nuclear weapons, but he seems in accord with Mueller's basic point that we need to try to keep our hair on about nuclear weapons. He seems to believe we should just keep the weapons we have and stop worrying quite so much.
I find Jervis' position inexplicable and I may post a little something about that in the next few days. He seems to be one of those people who believes that nuclear weapons will never be used no matter what the circumstances, nuclear deterrence is far too strong to fail, and that nuclear weapons are not, in their current configuration, particularly dangerous.
I think Mueller is right that we initially invested nuclear weapons with greater emotional importance than they deserved. I don't think, however, that because we projected our own (rather odd) apocalyptic feelings onto nuclear weapons, that therefore nuclear weapons are not dangerous. They have the capacity to make any war in which they are involved immeasurably more destructive than anything humans have experienced to date. People who believe that nuclear deterrence cannot fail are making a fundamental mistake.
More important is that Jervis thinks that efforts to abolish nuclear weapons are misplaced. He writes:
I suspect, however, that overestimates are indeed more common. In a significant number of cases, our responses have made things worse, and the appropriate mantra would be "don't do something, just stand there." One such case mentioned in passing by Mueller is the movement for abolishing nuclear weapons that is now championed by President Obama. Leaving aside the fact that no one has ever tried to rebut the powerful argument made almost a half a century ago by the Novel Prize-winning student of strategic interaction Thomas Schelling, that just about the most dangerous number of nuclear weapons in the hands of the great powers would be zero, if the menace of these arms is overestimated, our efforts will at best be misdirected and the diplomatic resources would be better spent elsewhere.
Actually, I have recently taken on the task of rebutting Schelling's argument and the process is considerably easier than you might at first think. The result, titled "Stable at Zero" will appear as the final summarizing chapter in a book being produced shortly by the Stimson Center and perhaps as a journal article in the near future.
There is no excuse for anyone who has studied history to make the claim that nuclear weapons have created unique circumstances that make them essentially benign and safe. More to come . . .
