Letters and comment

The letters (and my response) to "The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence" are up on the Nonproliferation Review's website. I recommend that you run right down to the corner drugstore and get a copy. (I'm kidding. I know it's not the fifties.) But you really should give it a look - if for nothing else to read Jeffrey Lewis' interesting piece on China, which I found thought provoking.

Here's a part of my response:

Finally, in arguing that nuclear deterrence might work, even though killing civilians doesn’t seem to have affected war’s outcome very much in the past, Tertrais notes that “Most modern states have less tolerance for human suffering and destruction than was the case until 1945.” It is certainly true that there seems to be less stomach for violence since World War II (although the Cambodians and Rwandans might see things differently). But even a cursory review of history will show that the lust for war ebbs and flows throughout history. We appear to be sailing through a period of relative calm now, with less destruction and less killing than sixty years ago. But these sorts of calms have come before.

At the turn of the 19^th century the European Victorians congratulated themselves on their civility and good manners. There might be wars in the colonies (fighting savages), they said, but there would never be savage war again in Europe. We have evolved too far, they said, our commercial interests are too intertwined, we are too cultured for the sort of brutal, rampaging war that engulfed all of Europe during the 1600s or the Napoleonic era. Massive wars like that, they confidently and complacently asserted, are gone forever. World War I disabused them with a savage fury.

Human beings have demonstrated, time and again, a lust for war that does not seem to fade or wear itself out. It is true that there have been times when we fight less. But the desire for war - and the destruction and killing that go with it - seems to be a savagery that only sleeps. When we think about the most destructive weapons yet created by man, this is a bit of history worth remembering.

Read the whole thing here.

Upcoming winner

The big $10,000 Doreen and Jim McElvany prize for the best essay on nuclear deterrence and nonproliferation is about to be announced. I have been lucky enough to to read the winning essay and it is very, very good. It is important work, intellectually interesting, and will reshape the debate on nuclear weapons. I cannot say more until the official announcement is made.

Keep an eye out for an announcement in the next few days here.

Deterrence: the Two Bobs

Imagine you lived in a town with two guys named Bob. No one ever used either Bob's last name but just simply said, "Well, Bob got in a snow mobile accident Tuesday." You had to just kind of figure out which Bob was intended. It would make for lots of confusion.

This is roughly what the current situation is with deterrence. There are two different concepts connected with deterrence - as different and distinct from one another as two different Bobs would be. Yet we often use them interchangeably without indicating which deterrence we're talking about.

The first deterrence is the larger, overarching concept of deterrence. Garden variety deterrence. This sort of deterrence could be defined as persuading someone not to do something by using a threat. So the child reaches for a cookie fresh out of the oven - still on the cookie sheet - and the parent says, "Don't touch that cookie or you'll be sorry." This is deterrence plain and simple. The parent doesn't grab the child's arm (preventive attack). The parent doesn't block the child with his hand (defense.) The parent issues a threat which then deters the child. (At least until the parent is out of the room.)

The second deterrence is a less general form of the larger concept. A specific subset. This is deterrence as it relates to nuclear weapons in the Cold War. In the Cold War the US and USSR were adversaries. Both had large arsenals of nuclear weapons. These arsenals were roughly the same size and presumed by most people to balance each other out. Both countries had the capability to obliterate the other.

This second form of deterrence inherits the characteristics of the first type of deterrence, but has three important qualifiers. 1) The presumption of balancing arsenals. 2) The presumption of arsenals large enough to obliterate an enemy. 3) The presumption that fear of obliteration plays a key role in decisions about the confrontation between the two adversaries.

Notice the differences. When I say, "Don't touch those cookies" there is no presumption that I will obliterate the child if the threat is ignored. There is no presumption that the child can mutually obliterate me once I take action. There is no presumption that either of us is thinking about obliteration.

It's worth pointing out that this second kind of deterrence is not "nuclear deterrence." There are any number of cases where nuclear weapons are used to deter that don't match this definition. When Israel uses nuclear weapons to deter invasion, its opponents have no balancing arsenals of nuclear weapons. When China (with its arsenal of 200) deters Russia, there is arguably no presumption that Russia will be obliterated. When North Korea deters South Korea, the fear of obliteration probably doesn't enter into South Korea's calculations. This second form of deterrence is a very specific concept that grew up in the 1960s and applies really only to one case in the current world: confrontation between the US and Russia. It is a very specific sub-case of the overall concept. 

This second kind of deterrence ought to be called something like "matching-large-arsenal-obliterating-deterrence." When people talk about "deterrence" here in the US (and particularly in connection with nuclear weapons), it is often this second type of deterrence that they mean. When I was at the University of Chicago recently we had a long discussion about the difference between deterrence and compellence. I said I was unimpressed with the assertion that deterrence is more likely to work that compellence. They spent the better part of an hour trying to get me to see sense. The problem, I've come to realize, is that we were talking about two different Bobs.

They were actually arguing that matching-large-arsenal-obliterating-deterrence is more likely to work than matching-large-arsenal-obliterating-compellence. They may be right about this. If both of you have the ability to obliterate the other, then it may be easier to maintain the status quo than to try to compel some sort of change. But proving this point has very little to say about the character of deterrence (the first kind, the larger, overarching, more general concept.) It doesn't even really have that much to say about nuclear deterrence, since there are - increasingly - more small arsenals in the world that are not balanced by another arsenal.

I really don't understand this completely. I need to spend some more time with it. But at least I've finally figured out that there are two guys named Bob in this town.

Free Global Communications and Social Networking

This is the third of ten posts by Nathan Pyles in a series called "Our Nuclear-Free Opportunity." I respect Nathan and like what he says.

At the height of the Cold War my father went to Vietnam in the first of many waves of U.S. servicemen. In 1965 international telephone service was unreliable and incredibly expensive. While he wrote letters home daily, I remember him calling only twice. His miraculous calls sent me and my brothers bouncing around our mother impatiently waiting our turn.

Last year while our daughter was studying in Asia, my wife’s and my weekly high point was our Skype video chat. It was free and easier than dialing a phone. My daughter and her friends are more than the first internet generation – they are a nascent global generation. Of her nearly two hundred Facebook friends, nearly half are from countries other than the U.S.

All these communication advancements in less than two generations. The number of transnational Facebook or Linked-In relationships will only grow. Business and science colleagues work daily on international projects in real time using instant messaging to exchange quick thoughts and gather immediate feedback. Gamers from every country, between plotting gory headshots, are pausing long enough to build global friendships.

Free instant global communication is more than just a convenience or a cost savings. It is a sledgehammer to our cultural and national boundaries. Our lives are already laced with virtual artifacts from this splintering blow. A surprised world turned to YouTube to witness candidate Obama win a most unlikely victory, won in part by his supporters’ viral creativity. Susan Boyle of Scotland is being cheered on by over 100 million people from every country in a four minute real-life Rocky recreation. Our shared experiences are now global, not just national, not just local.

Increased transnational exchanges, while also exposing our darker undersides, do far more to dissolve barriers and perceived differences. So much so that I’m going out on a limb with a prediction – that Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, will one day receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Berners-Lee’s innovation and decision to make web access unfettered and free, has been a diplomatic tsunami. The web and social networking have democratized foreign relations. Affordable travel brings us into more frequent international contact – free global communication makes it easy for these relationships to last.

Meanwhile, there are policy makers within the nuclear weapons states who continue to make the case that we are somehow made safer by wielding weapons which can annihilate us at any time. While they talk targeting strategies, counterforce versus countervalue, and extended deterrence – global communication technologies are racing ahead of them obliterating borders and eroding national differences. These nuclear proponents seem oblivious to how these communication innovations are rapidly remaking our social, economic, and political worlds. Their worldviews still shaped as if the Cold War were a current event.

Nearly 180 nations already get it. These nations have renounced nuclear weapons and any attempt to acquire them. Several South American nations abandoned their fledgling nuclear weapons programs years ago. Just this spring the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone entered into force with five more nations agreeing to forever forgo nuclear weapons. South Africa once achieved nuclear capability and subsequently dismantled both their warheads and their nuclear weapons program. And in doing so, they demonstrated to others that the nuclear genie can indeed be coaxed back into its bottle when accompanied by genuine political will.

It is the nuclear weapons states who are now the risk-taking minority. To have any chance of marshalling global consensus for effective sanctions to halt North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, the current nuclear weapons states must simultaneously turn their sights on their own nuclear arsenals.

The nuclear weapons states will need to lead by example if we are to finally halt proliferation and reduce our nuclear risks.

The Goal of War

War is not a competition in killing and destruction. Imagining that it is will seriously distort thinking about important topics - like nuclear weapons.

Soldiers sometimes say their job is to "kill people and break things." This is wrong.

At least, those activities do have to be done by soldiers sometimes, but that is not the goal of war. Consider: in war civilians are often left alone and buildings are sometimes left standing. True, some civilians do die in almost every war and some works of man (buildings, bridges, power plants, etc.) are destroyed. But if that is the only goal of war, then the people carrying out this task have been wildly inefficient throughout history. In war the killing of even 5% of the civilian population is a brutal slaughter rarely equalled in history. If the goal of war is to kill people, how can armies have killed so few, how can they have been so consistently ineffective in the past?

The goal of war is clearly not to kill civilians. The goal in war is defeat the soldiers of your enemy. To whip his army. Killing civilians is only incidental.

What does this say about a weapon whose most obviously use is to destroy cities?