A couple of weeks ago The Board posted a video of a talk by Eric Schlosser, author of Command and Control. He argues that the United States needs to have a public discussion about nuclear weapons policy. We can’t know what weapons we should have without clarity about the goals of having such weapons. Schlosser also makes the case that such a review would lead to building a newer, sleeker, and safer nuclear arsenal.
Any discussion about the purpose of nuclear weapons will bring up some serious moral questions. That’s a good thing, but most popular discussions of nuclear weapons policy avoid many of these moral questions. Typically, if you ask someone what nuclear weapons are for, they will say deterrence. Well, what exactly are we deterring? It’s obvious right? We have nukes so others will be afraid to nuke us. In the rest of this post we’ll call this Classical Strategic Deterrence, or CSD.
While CSD has always been a part of nuclear strategy since 1949, it is a profound oversimplification. CSD is appealing as it avoids really grappling with the moral questions. Deterrence against mass slaughter is almost like self defense, and that can’t be wrong, can it? Well, perhaps it is, because it puts you in the position of maintaining the means to carry out mass civilian slaughter at almost a moments notice. Surely there’s a moral issue here. Most sane people would agree, but one could counter that such moral qualms about CSD are rendered moot by the strange necessities of the nuclear age. That’s a compelling counter argument, and if CSD were all there is to strategic policy, the staff at The Board would be forced to agree that there really aren’t any important moral questions about maintaining a nuclear arsenal.
But there are in fact very important questions that can’t be glossed over. The reason for this is that focusing on CSD is ahistorical. CSD capability has never been the sole reason behind any national government’s decision to acquire nuclear weapons. Everyone who has sought nuclear weapons has wanted more from them than just Classical Strategic Deterrence. This is obviously clear in the case of the US, which built bombs during an actual world war. But every other nation has had goals beyond CSD for its nuclear weapons and the US itself had other goals besides CSD once WWII was over.
It all comes back to the mission. What is the purpose of having nuclear weapons? And since almost the beginning, everyone gives the same answer in part: The purpose of having nuclear weapons is to deter attacks other than large scale use of strategic weapons. This includes credibly threating the first use of nuclear weapons to deter attacks by conventional forces. If this sounds risky, you are correct. Crossing the threshold and breaking the taboo absolutely might be risking national survival, but if you can’t maintain a credible threat, what’s the use of even having the bomb?
There has to at least seem to be a point when you won’t accept another slice of salami:
So, how many slices of salami are too many? What’s your slice? It’s a lot more morally complicated now that PM Jim Hacker has to think about it.
This classic clip from Yes, Prime Minister is an example of the public discussion about strategic policy we used to have back in the 1980s. It is honest. It admits that part of the purpose of nuclear weapons is deterring conventional aggression. Any public discussion about the mission of nuclear weapons in the future needs to be equally honest.
While The Board may admire the candor of Yes, Prime Minister, we should point out that back in the eighties the UK had more options other than a large scale attack against the Soviet Union with Polaris-Chevaline missiles referred to in the clip and elsewhere in the episode. The WE177 bombs pictured above and the Tornado tactical delivery aircraft pictured in the title background image, for instance.
And that brings us back to the INF Treaty. Everyone needs nuclear options other than an all out strategic attack. Back in the eighties, everyone had these options. They were good for the mission of deterrence because they maintained a credible threat of first use by giving leaders options short mass slaughter. They were also bad for stability because they lowered the threshold of first use.
But not all non-strategic weapons systems of the eighties were equally destabilizing. Some were a much bigger problem than others. And next week, in honor of the likely collapse of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement, The Board will travel back to the 80s once again to take look at how the most hazardous nuclear weapons of all time ever got built, and how a clear discussion of the purpose of nuclear weapons made them go away.
the big board 