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Iranians are apoplectic. The New York Times is indignant.
The Arms Control Association is in a dither. And the Russians and
the Chinese are demanding answers. What has gotten so many parties
riled up? Why, the leak of portions of the Bush administration's
highly classified Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), of course.
Most of the
anger has centered upon the allegation that the United States is
developing contingency plans for using nuclear weapons against seven
states — China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya, and
Syria — that have developed or might be developing weapons
of mass destruction (WMD). According to Daryl Kimball, executive
director of the Arms Control Association, "by targeting these
seven countries, some of which are new targets, the U.S. is increasing,
not decreasing, the possibility of using nuclear weapons in its
policy."
But critics
also have expressed concern over passages which indicate that the
United States is contemplating the development of a new generation
of smaller nuclear warheads designed to put at risk hardened, deeply
buried targets. Paul Richter, the Los Angeles Times writer
who broke the story last weekend, notes that arms-control advocates
believe the development of such weapons "could signal that
the Bush administration is more willing to overlook a long-standing
taboo against the use of nuclear weapons except as a last resort.
They warned that such moves could dangerously destabilize the world
by encouraging other countries to believe that they, too, should
develop weapons."
In one respect,
the furor over the NPR is much ado about nothing (or at least about
very little). In fact, the Pentagon is constantly planning for a
wide array of contingencies. There are operational plans for every
eventuality for which a scenario can be developed. This is common
sense: No one wants to be surprised. This is one reason that European
criticism has been muted, at least so far.
Besides, planning
for a contingency can contribute to deterrence. In general, our
ability to deter is a function of an adversary's perception of our
capability and will, though there is inevitably also the wild card
of uncertainty. As a rule, the more realistic the plan, the more
it enhances deterrence.
This raises
the issue of whether the United States should develop a new generation
of nuclear warheads. As illustrated above, the conventional wisdom
— informed as it is by the Cold War ideology of arms control
— says no. According to this view, there is a "firebreak"
between nuclear and conventional weapons and nothing should ever
be done to reduce that firebreak by making it possible to contemplate
the actual use of nuclear weapons. Such reasoning underlay the arms-controllers'
objection to the deployment of the enhanced radiation weapon, the
so-called "neutron bomb," in Europe during the Cold War.
The arms-controllers argued that by lowering the threshold of nuclear-weapons
use, the United States was making war — including nuclear war
— more likely.
But this reasoning
is flawed. During the Cold War, the objective of the United States
was to deter war with the Soviet Union, not just nuclear war. Our
Communist adversaries found that so long as the nuclear threshold
remained high, they could operate beneath it. The clearest example
of such an asymmetric response happened as a reaction to the "New
Look" defense policy of the Eisenhower administration, which
relied primarily on long-range, strategic nuclear air power —
"peoples' wars" or "wars of national liberation."
The Kennedy administration replaced the New Look with Flexible Response.
Even under that policy, however, had the Soviets ever come to believe
they could operate beneath the nuclear threshold with impunity,
they might have gambled that a massive conventional assault in Europe
could succeed.
By increasing
the uncertainty faced by Soviet planners, however, the enhanced
radiation weapon strengthened deterrence, as did many other
weapons and systems that arms-controllers criticized — for
instance, the extremely accurate D-5-submarine-launched ballistic
missile equipped with the W-88 warhead and a "hardened,"
very robust command-and-control system designed to function even
in the event of a protracted nuclear war. These systems enhanced
deterrence by signaling to the Soviet leadership that the U.S. possessed
both the capability and the will to use nuclear weapons, and that
Soviet planners could not be certain of the outcome.
A similar dynamic
is at work in the new NPR. Since the end of the Cold War, defense
planners have questioned whether the Cold War model of deterrence
will work against our likely adversaries in the future. What will
deter a Saddam Hussein or an Osama bin Laden from using chemical,
biological, or nuclear weapons?
Many analysts
have concluded that the weapons in the current nuclear arsenal are
too powerful to be used against even an adversary who employs WMD.
Besides, they argue, nuclear weapons are not necessary today. The
United States can deter the use of WMD by relying on enhanced conventional
weapons such as fuel-air explosives (FAE), like the thermobaric
weapon employed recently in Afghanistan. These weapons can generate
extremely high over-pressures capable of destroying hardened and
deeply buried targets.
But the array
of targets such weapons can threaten is limited. Accordingly, an
adversary has an incentive to harden and bury installations so that
they cannot be destroyed by enhanced conventional means — assuming
that U.S. planners will judge the use of high-yield nuclear weapons
to be disproportionate. The only way to threaten such targets would
be to use lower-yield nuclear weapons delivered by extremely accurate
means.
During the
1980s, critics were never able to understand that the development
of a nuclear war-fighting capability enhanced deterrence rather
than undermining it. By reducing the nuclear firebreak, the United
States increased uncertainty among Soviet planners, in turn making
it less likely that they would risk the consequences of launching
a conventional or nuclear attack. The same principle seems to be
at work with the new NPR.
Which leads
one to wonder if the leak of the NPR was really unintentional. After
all, this administration has gone out of its way to prevent leaks.
And the likely effect of the leak will be to enhance deterrence,
by signaling a willingness on the part of the United States to use
nuclear weapons in an unexpected way, should that ever become necessary.
This would accordingly make potential adversaries less likely to
believe they can operate under the nuclear threshold.
Perhaps the
Office of Strategic Influence is not really dead.
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