Arms and influence

Bluster, methinks

Armchair Generalist wonders if Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's mush-mouthed mumblings about "drastic measures" if Iran does not remove the Farsi word for nuclear from its vocabulary is just bluster, or something worse. I vote for bluster, in large part because of Olmert's own political problems.

Olmert is under pressure to resign, most immediately because of a corruption scandal, but also because of lingering anger over the failed 2006 mini-war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Back then, Israeli reservists had assembled a petition demanding Olmert's resignation, a sign of how low Olmert's national security credentials had dropped. Olmert's posture as being strong on defense took another beating earlier this year, with the publication of a report highly critical of how Olmert and top IDF commanders misconceived and mismanaged the Lebanon war. At that point, a majority of Israelis polled said that Olmert should resign.

Fortunately for Olmert, he can count on other people's stupidity to buttress his own. First, as the Generalist point out, there are Israel's friends:

SecState Condi Rice talks about extending America's nuclear deterrence "shield" over Israel as a warning to Iran (or any other adversarial nation) not to consider using or threatening to use nuclear weapons against that country. It's not necessary for two reasons. First, the Cold War is over. No one's impressed by the paper tiger of threatened nuclear immolation. Second, Israel's leadership is scary enough with its 150 nuclear devices - they really don't need our "assistance" other than the $2-3 billion we give them, despite their continued disruptive behavior.

Even better, there are the obliging enemies of Israel, such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmenidijad, who may have made fewer threatening statements in the direction of Israel, but hasn't exactly shut up completely. So, the verbal exchanges between Tel Aviv and Tehran continue.

Therefore, there's every reason to think that Olmert is more than willing to turn up the volume about Iranian threats to drown out the clamor about his deeply troubled prime ministership. It's unclear how successful this effort will be, however. Not even the White House is happy with Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz's statement that an Israeli strike on Iran was "unavoidable." Israelis are fimmediately worried about events in Gaza more than Iranian nuclear plans (whatever they really are). In other words, Olmert can't count on everyone's stupidity, all the time.

 

US nuclear strategy: what's left?

[This is the last in a series of posts about US nuclear strategy. Here are links to the first, second, and third parts.]

What's a nuclear-armed superpower to do? Without an arms race with a rival superpower, the impetus for maintaining a bulging nuclear arsenal collapses. Actual use of nuclear weapons, even in the noble pursuit of counter-proliferation, seems like overkill. The Defense Department will have a hard time structuring US nuclear forces around an enemy that does not exist yet, and may never emerge. While the nuclear club might seem like a good way to scare non-nuclear countries into doing what the US government wants, the track record of compellence thus far is poor.

Why, then, does the United States need a large number of nuclear weapons? Why does it need to invest in upgrading to new technologies? Beyond the minimum arsenal needed to deter a few other nuclear powers--a fraction, perhaps, of what the US has today--why have any nuclear weapons at all?

Regional conflict: back to basics
The only convincing answer lies in the dynamics of regional conflicts. US theater strategy for a few key hotspots doesn't depend on nuclear options, but nuclear weapons might enlarge, to a small but significant extent, the number of choices available.

If the relationship between the two Koreas were ever to disintegrate again, if the United States felt obliged to intervene in a war between India and Pakistan, if tensions in the Middle East were to snap...You have to strain a bit to summon the sort of international relations specters that are credible enough to be frightening, but they do exist. In these situations, the threat of nuclear escalation might be necessary to steer the course of events away from awful destinations, as the US did in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Obviously, the United States needs to have the means to deliver on these threats for them to be credible at all.

Even in these scenarios, the United States doesn't need a huge nuclear arsenal, and certainly not one centered around ICBMs pointed at fixed targets. Nuclear-tipped missiles or bombs can reach regional targets more readily from ships and aircraft than silos in North Dakota. Seapower and airpower better control the tempo of threats. Ships and planes can approach a troubled region, and then withdraw. ICBMs only "send a message" when they're launched.

Not only has the script of nuclear threat changed, but so too has the setting. The motivation of the major actors--India and Pakistan, China and Taiwan, North Korea and South Korea--remains the same. However, there is no rival superpower waiting in the wings to swoop in at a dramatic moment to seize an advantage against the American protagonist. Regional conflicts are far less complex--and they're already complex enough to give diplomats and military planners headaches.

Advantage is not the same as benefit
The US nuclear arsenal has little precedent. It has the terror factor of Greek fire, but its potential for actual use is far less. It has the mobile hitting power of the Roman legions--but so do American conventional forces. It has the same ability to give the country with the edge in technology and numbers that the Maxim gun and the dreadnought very briefly gave Great Britain. On the other hand, nuclear weapons inspire more intense opposition to their proliferation than these earlier weapons, and the practical hurdles are far less.

Unfortunately, an unprecedented advantage in numbers and technology does not automatically translate into unprecedented benefits. Beyond arguments about the Reliable Replacement Weapon, the implementation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or the Iranian nuclear program, the same overarching question remains: beyond the minimum requirements of deterrence, what do nuclear weapons buy us? The answer remains the same: in the pursuit of national security, not much.

US nuclear strategy: an enemy, to be named

[I'm picking up where i left off with the posts on nuclear strategy--or lack thereof--that I started a couple of weeks ago. Click here and here for the first two posts.]

During some public discussions of US nuclear strategy, you'll hear US officials justify the maintenance and modernization of the American nuclear arsenal, based on fears of a future enemy. Clearly, we don't have a great power or superpower competitor that matches the bad old Soviet Union...But who knows what the future will bring?

Nasty surprises
While that might sound like a thin, alarmist rational for expensive, dangerous weapons, American officials have a point. It's not cheap, easy, or quick to rebuild a nuclear arsenal. The entire "supply chain," from the manufacture of the weapons through their testing and deployment, is an expensive, time-consuming process. Without the retention of some nuclear threat, a new rival could surprise us in two ways, new intentions or capabilities:

• A country already armed with nuclear weapons might suddenly turn them on us. Russia, of course, is the country that is most capable of delivering this kind of grand strategic surprise.
• A country with modest or no nuclear capabilities might suddenly acquire weapons that could be used against US targets. For example, China's energetic modernization program might conclude with a sizeable number of  nuclear-tipped missiles that could strike American cities. Iran might develop nuclear warheads delivered by courier, not missile.

A quick aside: you can see the risk the United States has taken in neglecting the program of locking down and eliminating Russian nuclear weapons that started after the end of the Cold War. Once the Bush Administration lost interest, the risk that Russia might pull either kind of surprise--a change in intentions, or an increase in capabilities--increased substantially.

The hidden elephant
If you think that the "placeholder enemy" rationale doesn't have a prayer of flying with the American public, think again. From WWI to today, American voters has had practically no awareness of the size or nature of the US government's chemical and biological weapons programs. How many Americans today know that, in 1993, the US government agreed to the destruction of all chemical weapons by 2012? Who, outside a small group of specialists in this area, knows how much progress the US government has made?

The obvious question, of course, is why the US government was developing and storing tons of VX, sarin, and mustard gas in the first place. Against whom were we going to use chemical weapons? During the Cold War, you might imagine a temporary deployment of chemical weapons to stall a Soviet assault into Western Europe. However, if the situation ever got that bad, a far more horrible nuclear exchange might be in the offing anyway. After the Cold War, who would be the target of 31,000 metric tons of chemical weapons? And how many Americans knew their government had them?

If the US government can hide capabilities in plain sight, so too can it continue to develop war plans that don't make sense in light of the current world situation. Between the World Wars, American military strategists developed the "Rainbow plans," designed to respond to practically any threat from beyond American's borders. While War Plan Black, aimed at thwarting German aggression, in hindsight seems like justiifed caution,  how much sense did the premise of War Plan Red, a major war against Great Britain, make? War Plan Red envisioned a war across the US-Canadian border, with the possibility (as described in War Plan Emerald) of supporting an uprising in Ireland.

The real obstacle
In other words, the US government can maintain all sorts of plans and capabilities without the knowledge or assent of the American electorate. The biggest obstacle today, however, is cost.

Since 2001, the strains on the military budget aren't confined to the Army and the Marines. For example, the Navy's next-generation destroyer, code-named DDX, faced opposition based on justification (why this weapons program, instead of something that might help the wars we're actually fighting?) and cost ($2.6 billion for the first two destroyers).

However weird it might seem to be buying destroyers while improvised roadside bombs continue to kill American soldiers, the chance that these destroyers might be used, in actual war or just a show of force, is much higher than the use of nuclear weapons. While we might still be living in the waking dream where funding for the Iraq war (approximately $2 billion per week) appears from thin air, we're soon going to wake up to some hard budgetary realities. (Perhaps, conveniently, right after the 2008 election.) Nuclear weapons programs are going to face some minor public scrutiny, and even tougher resistance from within the US government itself.

Who knows, there may be some future, nuclear-armed enemy worth our concern. However, we won't have the luxury of such concerns, as long as the US military continues to bleed in Iraq, and the US economy begins to sputter.

US nuclear strategy: counter-proliferation

[For the first post on this topic, click here.]

Another potential use of the American nuclear arsenal that appears to be off the table is counter-proliferation. In other words, US leaders are not willing to use nuclear weapons to stop even the worst adversaries from acquiring nuclear technology, despite the high stakes involved.

That situation is not unique to the post-Cold War era. In the early days of the US-USSR confrontation, the United States had substantial nuclear superiority. While many practical considerations restrained US decision-makers--for example, the high risk of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe--other constraints overshadowed any cold-blooded calculations about what it might take to stop the Soviets from expanding their nuclear arsenal. Americans feared the nuclear cataclysms that the future might bring if the USSR were to acquire hydrogen bombs, submarine-launched nuclear missiles, or MIRVed warheads. However, under no circumstances did US leaders think that the prevention of hypothetical carnage, however great it might be, justified the actual carnage that a disarming first strike would create.

The horror of any nuclear attack, even if it were limited to Soviet military targets, overruled any argument for a disarming strike. American leaders did not want to be the executioners of millions of people, even if it might prevent an even greater cataclysm in the future. No one wanted to argue the merits of one apocalypse over another.

Instead, US decision-makers focused on how to reduce the risk of any nuclear war. Crisis management and diplomacy, not pre-emptive strikes, became the tools of choice.

Since the Cold War, the United States has had several opportunities to prevent enemies--Iran, North Korea, and Libya--from gaining nuclear technology, through the most brutally direct methods possible. Regimes that described the United States as the central engine of all evil in the world were apparently eager to acquire the most dangerous weapons in the world. Still, American leaders did not see any justification for a pre-emptive nuclear strike, even if these regimes were powerless to respond.

In other words, humanity operates at some threshold in US foreign policy. A suitcase bomb, built by the Iranian government and smuggled into an American city, is almost too horrifying to envision. Nevertheless, to prevent that scenario, American leaders were not willing to kill millions of Iranians.

The US might credibly threaten conventional war, as the Clinton Administration did in 1994 against North Korea. Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, seem to be a poor tool for counter-proliferation. Not even the threat appears to be useful.

US nuclear strategy: compellence

Cheryl of Whirled View kindly indicated that continued posts on the future of US nuclear strategy from national security bloggers were still welcome. Therefore, I'll throw in a couple of my own observations on this topic, starting with a few words about compellence.

In a widely-cited Harvard Business Review article, Michael Porter pointed out that strategy includes explicit choices about what you don't do. While not everything in Porter's article applies equally to corporations and governments, that statement certainly does. When the choice involves nuclear weapons, the consequences of what you do and don't do are, of course, potentially cataclysmic.

Early questions about compellence
For the first two or three decades that the United States possessed a nuclear arsenal, American nuclear strategists tried to figure out whether these fearsome weapons could be used not just for deterrence, but compellence. In less academic terms, you might summarize the question as, "Hey, if we have nuclear weapons, and lots of other countries don't, can't we use the nuclear threat to bully them?" Surprisingly, the answer appears to be, "No."

Thomas Schelling, whose landmark book Arms and Influence is the inspiration for the name of this blog, was one of many strategists who approached this question in the abstract. Sometimes, the tools of inquiry were analogies, such as Schelling's famous metaphor of the game of chicken. At other times, the tools were more quantitative, such as the complex mathematical projections of missiles, megatons, and mass casualties, to think as objectively and precisely as possible about, as Herman Kahn called it, "the unthinkable."

The analysts at the RAND Corporation and the Defense Department engaged in this research found many ways to deter a Soviet nuclear attack. They did not, however, find any sure-fire ways to use the US nuclear arsenal to blackmail the Soviets, Chinese, or even the many countries that lacked nuclear weapons of their own into taking actions they might otherwise resist. In other words, nuclear weapons could stop the other superpower from doing something; it was much, much harder to devise techniques to compel other governments to acquiesce to American wishes.

History belies theory
Historical experience also indicated that compellence was, perhaps, a pipe dream. The United States chose not to use nuclear weapons against the North Koreans and North Vietnamese. Just as importantly, the US did not make serious, consistent threats of nuclear attack, if these two adversaries did not halt their aggression against their southern neighbors. In other Cold War confrontations in which the other side lacked nuclear weapons--for example, the Arab-Israeli wars--US leaders largely kept the nuclear threat in its sheath.

The exceptions looked more like deterrence, but on a smaller scale. For example, the US went to a high degree of nuclear alert in 1973 to make it clear to the USSR that any Soviet military intervention in the Yom Kippur war. The Eisenhower gave the People's Republic of China a clear glimpse of the American nuclear threat during the Quemoy-Matsu crisis. Again, the goal was more deterrence--stopping the Chinese from expanding the conflict beyond the two disputed islands to Taiwan--and less compellence.

Why did compellence turn out to be a mirage? Only part of the answer depended on the unique balance of power mechanics of the Cold War. Both superpowers were wary of nuclear threats, for fear that the other superpower might get involved in the conflict, raising both the stakes and unpredictability of any conflict. The WWI-like escalation spiral, from regional crisis to global war, haunted both theorists and practitioners of nuclear diplomacy.

Credibility
However, the fear of escalation was hardly the only reason why compellence practically disappeared from US national security policy. The credibility of the threat was questionable whenever US cities were not directly at stake. Just as Hitler once wondered, "Who would die for Danzig?" American leaders asked, "Who would believe us if we threatened nuclear attack over the Soviet repression of Hungarian independence?"

The credibility of nuclear threats is always the most valuable part of having a nuclear arsenal. Otherwise, nuclear weapons are only useful by actually using them, which is the worst of all possible scenarios. Compellence, on the other hand, degrades the currency of US nuclear threats, since the stakes are far lower for the United States than the "nightmare scenario" of classic deterrence.

Humiliation
The psychology of international relations creates additional obstacles to successful compellence. Deterrence normally stops actions that have not been started at all. The other side loses practically nothing for backing down, since nothing has happened. In many situations, such as the Clinton Administration's threats against North Korea, no one outside the two governments involved might be aware that a crisis has been happening at all.

The threat, in these less dire circumstances, is not credible because no one believes that US leaders are either immoral or irrational enough to unleash mass carnage. That, too, is an important part of the credibility of US power and influence.

Compellence, on the other hand, often requires the embarrassment or humiliation of the other side. Not only do the scenarios often start with public statements or actions (for example, "Disarm immediately, or else"), but the adversary may want to publicize US nuclear threats, to make its cause more sympathetic in the face of American bullying.

Nuclear power, but no leverage
The end of the Cold War, therefore, has not improved the opportunities for nuclear compellence. No modern-day John Foster Dulles will find an updated version of the "massive retaliation" doctrine any more successful than it was in the 1950s.

The blogosphere on US nuclear strategy

WhirledView sponsored an excellent discussion of US nuclear strategy among various national security blogs. Very, very good reading. Click here for a summary of the discussion so far.

[The timing was bad, or else I would have gladly contributed.]

Poisonous words

Armchair Generalist has a short review of Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja that's worth reading. As you might expect, the book adds depth and complexity to our understanding of one of the signature events of the last few decades, Iraq's use of chemical weapons against its own population. By "depth," I mean details that show how countries develop and use chemical arsenals. By "complexity," I mean the larger story around a particular incident, including the US government's willingness to turn a blind eye to Iraq's chemical weapons program during the 1980s, when containment of Iran was the bigger priority.

A side note: we've yet to come to grips, morally and practically, with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. A sure sign is when you don't know what to call something: are they weapons of mass destruction? Not exactly, since chemical and biological weapons might be used "tactically" (i.e., in a very limited scope on the battlefield), and not just "strategically" (intended for mass destruction). Is it better to call them unconventional weapons? It depends on the context, perhaps. For national militaries, they certainly are a different category than small arms, tanks, and helicopters. However, for anyone in the business of inspiring terror (governments and private organizations may both apply), they're just another kind of terror weapon, with particular advantages and disadvantages.

Maybe it's not worth trying to lump them together at all--except in the contexts, such as proliferation of them as terror weapons, when they do inspire a shared abhorrence. If we choose a term that names but encapsulates all of them, such as CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear). Unfortunately, naming all of them begs the question, how are these things alike?

If you can't name something effectively, good luck on managing it.

No more chlorine?

Armchair Generalist notes that the chlorine attacks in Iraq appear to be dwindling or stopped. Maybe the insurgents noticed how ineffective they were?

Terrorists may not want killer viruses, either

I fully agree with the Armchair Generalist: it's an unjustified leap of faith to assume that terrorist organizations will inevitably try to acquire biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons:

We know that people can buy lab equipment and set up small scale production capable of producing BW agents. And yet... no earth-shattering kaboom.

To avoid repeating myself, here's what I've already written on this subject. I'll add a small coda: in some cases, terrorist groups may want to create the impression that they're about to get some kind of unconventional weapon, even if they're really not doing that. The bluff is cheaper than the actual program, and in some contexts, just as effective.

On the other hand, the bluff can also backfire. Since terrorists have brains, they do think through the pros and cons of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, for real, or as a bluff. Terrorist groups have internal arguments about this topic, and official policy can swing one way or the other.

It's a mistake to assume that, just because a scary weapon exists, terrorists will pursue it with an ant-like intensity and mindlessness. The possibility exists, but the probability is lower than most people think.

Viral stupidity

IN THE NEWS
One reason I often link to Armchair Generalist is the excellent discussions about chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons you’ll regularly find there. Nearly four years after the United States invaded Iraq for the official reason of eliminating “WMDs,” WMD programs, or people thinking about acquiring WMDs, Americans are hardly more educated about these unconventional weapons than they should be.

The Generalist’s frustration with the impregnable ignorance about these weapons frequently inspires hilarious, scathing posts like this one. Much like the author of The Daily Howler, who skewers TV and print journalists, the Generalist has good reason to be frustrated. Read Armchair Generalist and you’ll see how ridiculous many statements about chemical, biological, and nuclear threats can be--and how easily public ignorance of these threats can be exploited.

A cleaner picture of dirty bombs

IN THE NEWS
This post from Armchair Generalist about the risk of missing nuclear material being used for dirty bombs is definitely worth reading. The Generalist is an expert in this area, so in a few brief paragraphs, he can put the "threat" into perspective.

Free-floating anxiety

IN THE NEWS
Armchair General has been wrestling with the public's misperceptions about chemical weapons disposal. The Department of Defense has stockpiles of nasty brews like VX that it wants to destroy. In many cases, the Pentagon doesn't have a choice. Congress may have mandated their destruction; the United States may violate treaty obligations if it doesn't dispose of them; the cost of keeping them in secure storage may not be justified, particularly after the chemicals have lost their effectiveness.

Unfortunately, the Defense Department runs into public fears about chemical weapons. It's a standard NIMBY question: where and how is it safe to destroy these materials? Needless to say, the public is naturally skeptical about the potential risks.

Although the General is pretty frustrated with this state of affairs, I can't say that the Defense Department has done a great job educating the public about the risks. Not everyone is a chemist, capable of determining the possibility that a nerve agent might accidentally escape containment during the destruction process. Most people are unequipped to judge whether burning chemical munitions creates harmful residue. In short, all they know is, "The US government developed these weapons to be extremely lethal. I'd rather not be around when they're destroyed, buried, whatever."

In general, unconventional weapons destruction has been a low priority for the executive branch since Bush took office in 2001. Gone are the days when the US government was energetically working with the former Soviet republics to lock down and destroy nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Needless to say, this is an odd state of affairs for an Administration willing to invade Iraq, ostensibly over their unconventional weapons program. If the US had ever found hidden stockpiles of WMDs, how well-equipped would it have been to secure and eliminate them?

Like terrorism, unconventional weapons pose an important question about the perception of risk. The fear they generate may be far greater than the actual risk they pose. In that case, it's the job of government officials to make the actual risks clear and credible. Rather than look at  the fear of unconventional weapons as yet another thing to help sell a policy, people in the executive branch need to provide a sober appraisal of the risks that chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons pose. That statement is true for both unconventional weapons pointed at us and the ones in our own stockpiles. Free-floating anxiety--the emotion that the Administration prefers, when discussing threats--might seem like a way to steer public opinion in a particular direction. In reality, people who face ill-defined fears might go in any direction, not merely the one you prefer.