The New Makers of Modern Strategy, page 97
Third, nuclear bombs are a relatively old technology, and how to build one is fairly well known, accessible, and within the abilities of even modestly competent states. That said, there has been enormous expenditure and innovation surrounding what might be thought of as the nuclear weapons complex—the institutions and infrastructure needed to build, control, and deliver nuclear weapons or anticipate and potentially defend against a nuclear attack. There have been profound technological changes in the ability to delivery nuclear weapons at increased distances, speed, and accuracy. There have been similar advances in the ability to defend against missiles and aircraft, track and identify an adversary’s weapons and delivery systems, and evade detection. Similar investments have also been made in the safety and control of nuclear weapons, as well as command, communications, and intelligence. While there remains an argument over how much political and military advantage these technological changes provide, they all require enormous financial and engineering/scientific investment and are available only to the most advanced, innovative states.
This leads to a fourth point—profound shifts in technology and changes in the different states’ nuclear weapons complexes suggest that it makes sense to divide the nuclear age into different periods. The late-1950s and early-1960s was a key pivot point, when the development of two technologies—intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and satellites—fundamentally altered the politics of nuclear weapons. These technologies had cross-cutting consequences. ICBMs allowed the catastrophic devastation of thermonuclear weapons to be delivered to anywhere on the globe in less than an hour, compressing time and eliminating geographic constraints. Satellites allowed a state to better see an adversary’s capabilities and potentially recognize a mobilization or preparation for an attack, reducing the danger of surprise attack. A second pivot point came in the late-1970s and early-1980s, as massive investments in qualitative and counterforce capabilities—increased accuracy, speed, miniaturization, stealth, and mobility—dramatically altered the nuclear balance. The United States invested large efforts into building sophisticated command, control, communications, and intelligence capabilities while also constructing elaborate safety and security procedures. We could be entering a third pivot during the 2020s, as new technologies in cyber, artificial intelligence and machine-learning, nano-technology, hypersonics, and additive manufacturing, among other changes, could once again shake up the nuclear weapons complex and the strategies surrounding it.
The key point is that there is an interactive, feedback loop between the development of new technologies and state strategies and grand strategies. Different strategies—and indeed, different grand strategies—demand different technologies, and different technologies allow for different strategies. A state whose goal is simply to deter an invasion or nuclear attack upon itself from a contiguous neighbor might have minimal technical requirements. If some element of its nuclear forces and its ability to survive and respond to an attack is secure, fairly basic nuclear forces and technology might suffice. On the other hand, a more ambitious nuclear strategy might require more sophisticated, advanced forces. The United States had grand strategic ambitions—namely, defending far-flung allies while also keeping them non-nuclear—that arguably required the possession of forces that went well beyond what was needed for simple mutual nuclear deterrence. These grand strategic requirements drove the development of preemptive capabilities—in other words, nuclear forces that could target and destroy the nuclear forces of other states before they were launched. That preemptive mission demanded more accuracy and better intelligence, as well as measures to protect American forces and even defend against a nuclear attack. Controversially, such a strategy also reserved the right to launch nuclear weapons first.
At times, novel technologies emerged that allowed for more expansive grand strategic aims, and at other times, grand strategic needs drove the technological process. The key is to understand that when we speak of nuclear technology, we need to analyze capabilities that go well beyond the bombs themselves, and include a wide range of complex, interconnected systems. These technologies did not remain the same for long, and the nuclear complex evolved and continues to evolve in dynamic and often unexpected ways, with important consequences for both strategy and grand strategy.
III
How might nuclear weapons be used to advance a nation’s strategy? The United States originally developed atomic weapons in order to defeat Germany during the Second World War. The war in Europe ended before the bomb was complete, but with the war in the Pacific still ongoing, focus shifted to use against Japan. The decision to drop atomic weapons on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 generated controversial questions that persist to this day.
In the aftermath of World War II, debates emerged in the United States over the strategic purposes of nuclear weapons moving forward. The debates fell into four broad categories.
First, there were those that believed the bomb could be used like any other weapon, such as a tank or a battleship, to defeat the enemy on the battlefield. In other words, nuclear weapons were seen as simply bigger bombs, integrated into war plans with other weapons and military forces. The utility of nuclear weapons was seen as especially important given the primary military challenge the United States faced in Europe during the Cold War. After the end of the Second World War, the United States had demobilized most of its military and redeployed the overwhelming part of its forces back home (and the few that remained in Europe were focused on policing the occupation of the American zone in Germany). The countries of Western Europe, ravaged by the war, were unable to quickly rebuild their forces and thus lay vulnerable to a Soviet conventional onslaught. The country with the greatest potential military power was a defeated, disgraced, and divided Germany, with no one eager to see it rebuild an independent military. To defend Europe under these trying strategic circumstances, early US military plans focused on aerial atomic bombardment of Russian forces, cities, and industrial capabilities to win a war against the Soviet Union.
The use of nuclear weapons as “bigger bombs” was problematic from the start. Ironically, given their devastating power, it was not clear that an atomic bombardment could actually defeat what was seen as a Soviet colossus whose territory covered eleven time zones. Furthermore, before the advent of longer-range bombers and intercontinental missiles, the United States would need bases in or near Europe—in the United Kingdom or North Africa—to deliver atomic bombs; yet it was not always certain these countries would allow such attacks from their territories if a war broke out. It was also impractical to use atomic bombs if the Soviet Union invaded Western Europe, as the bombs might devastate the very territories the United States and its allies sought to defend or liberate. And there was the growing sense that using atomic weapons generated deep moral challenges.
These moral considerations informed the second view—that the destructive power of nuclear forces and the misery they would bring on civilian populations and societies made them militarily unusable. For some, this meant that nuclear disarmament was the answer.10 Sometimes this manifested itself through civil society efforts, such as the worldwide, grassroots effort to ban the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. Even at the highest levels of American government, the idea of international oversight of atomic weapons was explored, first in the Acheson-Lilienthal and Baruch plans of 1946. Nuclear disarmament enjoyed support from important segments of both American and global public opinion, even if many top-level American policymakers remained skeptical.
Was there a way to extract strategic benefits from nuclear weapons while lessening the practical and moral concerns that burdened nuclear use? The third strategic purpose of nuclear weapons—deterrence—over time became the centerpiece of American nuclear strategy and was emulated by other nuclear weapons states. Nuclear weapons could be used to discourage an adversary from taking an action, such as invading Western Europe, out of fear of the consequences generated by a nuclear response. At the start of the nuclear age, the idea of deterring large-scale war was a powerful and important consideration. After all, the first part of the twentieth century had been dominated by deadly world wars started and largely fought in Europe. Most of modern history had been shaped by invasion and conquest. Nuclear deterrence promised to reduce, if not eliminate, this scourge. What adversary would risk the unimaginable damage to their invading forces or home country by attempting to conquer or destroy another state?
Deterrence, over time, came to be seen as the most important strategic function of nuclear weapons.11 Questions and debates about specific elements of the strategy, however, soon followed. Which actors, scenarios, and situations might nuclear weapons deter, and where, when, and against whom would nuclear deterrence be less relevant? Was the power to deter with atomic weapons narrow—for example, persuading an adversary not to launch a nuclear strike against you—or could nuclear strategy be used to deter broader phenomena, like a purely conventional attack against far away allies you had promised to protect? Relatedly, how credible were the promises to use nuclear weapons that were the foundation of nuclear deterrence? While responding to a nuclear attack upon your soil with your own nuclear weapons might be plausible, would using nuclear weapons (and exposing your homeland to a nuclear attack) against a conventional attack on your allies be credible? Analysts wondered which steps, weapons, or deployments would strengthen a strategy of nuclear deterrence. Many of the strategic debates within the United States about nuclear strategy surrounded the question of “how much was enough” to credibly deter, especially when it involved if and how deterrence could be “extended” to non-nuclear allies.
A fourth debate emerged over whether nuclear weapons could be used for purposes beyond deterrence. Could nuclear strategies be developed that not only prevented an adversary from taking an unwanted action, but also compelled a change in their behavior or policies?12 This was a controversial subject for a few reasons. First, many believed that nuclear coercion or compellence was not possible, and even if it was, it required strategies and forces that were dangerous and destabilizing. Second, distinguishing between which actions deterred and which compelled was often difficult and in the eye of the beholder. During the four-year crisis over the status of West Berlin between 1958 and 1962, the United States believed it was using nuclear weapons to deter the Soviet Union, whom it saw as trying to compel a change in the situation with atomic threats.13 The Soviets, on the other hand, may have believed that by employing nuclear threats over Berlin they were deterring Washington from changing the non-nuclear status of the Federal Republic of Germany; for the Russians, any effort to provide West Germany with access to the bomb was a coercive act. In other words, both sides believed that they were pursuing nuclear deterrence while the other side was attempting nuclear compellence.
Relatedly, a debate emerged over how nuclear weapons affected crises and whether certain types of nuclear strategies and postures would help one side or another prevail in a standoff between nuclear-armed adversaries. Which factor most shaped the outcome of a nuclear crisis: superiority in the balance of nuclear forces, resolve, or interest?
The scholarly literature has struggled with these issues. It is unclear what counts for nuclear superiority, how it should be measured, and whether it matters in a world of mutual vulnerability. Most security studies scholars have been skeptical, short of a so-called splendid first strike capability that would be difficult if not impossible to obtain, that numerical superiority would be decisive in a crisis. There is evidence, however, that some American presidents believed that the number, kind, and types of deployments of nuclear weapons could drive outcomes in the world beyond simply deterring an adversary from attacking. Moreover, it is unclear how to comparatively measure state resolve or interest ex ante. Finally—and perhaps most essentially—how should we define a nuclear crisis? Is any dispute where one or more sides possess the bomb, even if no nuclear threats are made, a nuclear crisis?14 Or must the use of nuclear weapons, explicit or implied, be in play?
These four different views of the strategic purposes of nuclear weapons are, of course, interconnected. The credibility of a strategy of nuclear deterrence, and to a greater extent, nuclear compellence, depends upon a willingness to actually use the bomb under certain scenarios. This logic also drives those who seek disarmament. If the weapons are unusable and deterrence based on a fiction, they are an enormous waste of resources. If certain kinds of nuclear strategies make the use of nuclear weapons not only possible but also plausible, it is a dangerous situation many want to eliminate.
IV
What about the question of who has—and can have—the bomb? Perhaps nowhere have the predictions from past policymakers and strategists been more off the mark than on the question of who would come to possess nuclear weapons. This issue had two components. First, which states (or non-state actors) have the interest and means to develop and incorporate atomic weapons into their military strategy? Second, could any strategy, pursued by a state, international organization, or regime, inhibit actors from acquiring those weapons?
Most analysts expected that, over time, many independent nuclear weapons programs would emerge and that there was little that could be done to stop or even slow what came to be called nuclear proliferation.15 Consider the perspective of a strategist looking at the world in 1945. Both recent and longer global political and military history had been dominated by bloody and costly imperialism, total war, invasion, and conquest. Given that the first strategic goal of any state was to avoid being destroyed or conquered, nuclear weapons—and the existential deterrence they supplied—should have been desired by almost every state in the international system. Relatedly, history has demonstrated that states compete ruthlessly for any strategic advantage to guarantee their security, especially if it involves acquiring technology that provides protection or power. The American-led effort to develop the bomb was technologically and scientifically complex, but history offered few examples of such an appealing and powerful technology remaining secret and out of the hands of competitors. Nor were efforts by the creator of a new technology to prevent others from copying it successful over the long run. Efforts to limit the spread of military technology to other states was fruitless at best and counterproductive at worst.
Given such circumstances, the analyst in 1945 might have predicted that the number of nuclear weapons states would increase dramatically over time and that there was little the United States could or would do to prevent it. The early years of the nuclear age bore this out. The Soviet Union developed the bomb in 1949, the United Kingdom in 1952, and France in 1960. By the beginning of the 1960s, a wide range of countries, from Australia to Sweden, had active nuclear programs or were exploring nuclear weapons capabilities. The United States had expressed an interest in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, though its policies were often inconsistent. Any reasonable forecast of nuclear proliferation in 1961, focusing both on a state’s strategic desire for the bomb and its ability to acquire one, would have predicted twenty, forty, or even sixty nuclear weapons states by the start of the twenty-first century. Few would have suggested there was much the United States, or even the international community, could do to inhibit proliferation.
Contrary to most predictions, the pace of nuclear proliferation slowed considerably in the ensuing decades. The United States made inhibiting the spread of independent nuclear weapons programs a core element of its grand strategy, employing a number of tools, including nuclear strategy, to achieve this goal.16 This was not the only reason the number of nuclear weapons states in the world stayed, to everyone’s surprise, in the single digits. Nuclear weapons were expensive and difficult to build. They had less strategic utility for many of the challenges states have faced over the last half-century, and in fact, may have generated unwanted vulnerabilities in a world where the threat of invasion and conquest appeared to shrink. American’s grand strategy of inhibition, however, was a crucial and decisive factor.
The United States had hoped to keep the number of nuclear weapons states low from the beginning of the nuclear age. But American strategists did not think the goal of inhibition was worth sacrificing its other grand strategic goals, such as containing the Soviets and winning over allies. As America’s experience with France in the 1950s demonstrated, half-hearted efforts to inhibit proliferation were not only unlikely to succeed; they also alienated friends and allies. If nuclear proliferation was inevitable, perhaps the right strategy was to get ahead of the curve and provide nuclear assistance and even weapons to allies in the struggle against the Soviet Union. High level officials even suggested providing nuclear aid to India and Japan. Most controversial were those who recommended bringing West Germany closer to nuclear decision-making. How could the United States accept a nuclear Great Britain and France, they asked, while not allowing loyal ally West Germany access to the bomb? The uncertainty around the German nuclear question, however, was a driving force behind Khrushchev’s aggressiveness in the late-1950s and early-1960s.
