Nuclear deterrence & dilemmas
The concept of nuclear deterrence sounds easy on paper. It was succinctly described by Dr Strangelove, anti-hero of the 1964 Hollywood darkcomedy film Dr. Strangelove as, “...deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy... the fear to attack.” The premise of deterrence is that the destruction caused by nuclear weapons is so enormous that threatening to use it against an adversary will dissuade that country from attacking.
But the business of deterring an adversary, however, isn’t that simple in reality. An entire bureaucratic machinery is at work making guesstimates on the optimal nuclear arsenal for a country. More often than not, decision-makers must deal with the paradox of deterring the enemy as well as fighting a war if deterrence fails.
Fred Kaplan’s new book, The Bomb, provides a perfect illustration of this problem. The book sketches the history of how American presidents and military leaders have made decisions about the most dangerous weapons in history, and how they deal with the paradoxes that accompany these weapons. The book acts as a sequel-of-sorts to Mr Kaplan’s first book, Wizards of Armageddon, which outlined the intellectual history behind nuclear strategy.
Nuclear weapons in the early 1950s were relatively large and crude devices capable of being carried on heavy bomber aircraft. Naturally, the monopoly on nuclear weapons went to the US Air Force. Nuclear strategy was now under the aegis of the Strategic Air
Command (SAC) and its strategy to stop a Soviet invasion of Western Europe was a simple one: Bomb everything in the Soviet Union, which would kill at least 275 million people. Both civilians and military personnel. This idea was taken straight out of Curtis Lemay’s experience of firebombing Japanese cities in World War II — and in 1960, this philosophy was incorporated into the Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP), the war plan for fighting a nuclear war.
Horrified by the prospects of killing 54 per cent of the Soviet population and injuring millions of innocent civilians, Secretary of Defence Robert Mcnamara in the Kennedy administration tried to introduce a degree of flexibility to the war plan, and brought in the “whiz kids,” a group of highly talented civilians, to review these plans. At the same time, nuclear weapons technology had advanced significantly, and now nuclear warheads could be miniaturised and fitted on missiles. Other branches of the
military wanted their fair share in the game, particularly the US Navy, which now had the capability to launch ballistic missiles from Polaris submarines. This created a new rivalry among the services, with each side asking for more weapons to hit more targets within the Soviet Union, giving rise to the infamous arms race of the Cold War.
While Mcnamara’s effort to revise the SIOP seemed somewhat successful, little had changed in reality. Meanwhile, the US arsenal continued to grow, with newer and more advanced weapons. And little changed in the war plans. A full review of the war plans would come only during the George H W Bush administration, and it came from an unexpected figure — Dick Cheney. Mr Cheney, known for his hawkish view on national security matters, ordered a full review of the war plans in a serious attempt to reduce the
needless redundancy in the American nuclear arsenal.
The first 200 pages of the book covers the Cold War-era, while the rest of it is from the post-cold War to the present day. Mr Kaplan provides the most detailed account of the nuclear discussions that took place within the Trump administration — symbolised by the death of arms control agreements and renewal of a new arms race. Mr Kaplan's book, if anything, is a story of dilemmas. A story of how military officers and elected representatives wrap their heads around the most destructive weapon invented by mankind. A narrative of how each side fights their way through to get around a very different set of problems that each group faces.
Despite being centred on American leadership and strategic thought, Mr
Kaplan’s research leaves much room for thinking about how leaders and decision-makers of new nuclear powers think about their arsenals.
India has maintained a policy of nofirst use (NFU) since it became a nuclear power. It’s arsenal size is a fraction of those of the US and Russia. Yet, Indian leaders face their own set of dilemmas with NFU. Should India allow its enemy to strike first with a nuclear weapon and sacrifice its citizens as a matter of policy? How many weapons does India need to deter both China and Pakistan sufficiently? Indeed, the late Manohar Parrikar (who was then the defence minister) reflected on these dilemmas in 2017, when he questioned why India must restrain itself with NFU. More recently, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh also hinted at the NFU policy may change in the future depending on the circumstances. There are no simple answers to questions about NFU and deterrence. We may never know what the right answer is. Dilemma indeed.