Playing with Fire: Why Obama Doesn't Love the Bomb

Jonathan Tepperman had what is currently the most read piece on the Newsweek website an extreme take on the standard "nuclear weapons prevent WWII style conflict" argument by arguing that even further proliferation isn't something to worry about because nuclear weapons "mellow their behavior." Nukes of Hazard's quip on the article:

"How do a couple of recycled Waltz quotes add up to ‘A growing and compelling body of research?'"

certainly has a point. While there is a heated debate about whether a nuclear free world may actually look more like early 20th century Europe and therefore be a bad idea, the argument that an increase in the number of nuclear states may actually be a good thing appears much less in mainstream nuclear discussion. There are 3 arguments that have helped revitalize the recent momentum for nuclear disarmament that are acknowledged but not adequately responded to by Teppermen:

1. The risk of nuclear terrorism. There are quite a few people who are in agreement that the most likely, even if still low, risk of a nuclear detonation in the world today is one by a terrorist group. As explained by the "Gang of 4" in their groundbreaking oped:

Most alarmingly, the likelihood that non-state terrorists will get their hands on nuclear weaponry is increasing. In today's war waged on world order by terrorists, nuclear weapons are the ultimate means of mass devastation. And non-state terrorist groups with nuclear weapons are conceptually outside the bounds of a deterrent strategy and present difficult new security challenges.

Tepperman dismisses this argument by arguing:

the risk of a WMD handoff starts to seem overblown. For one thing, assuming Iran is able to actually build a nuke, Desch explains that "it doesn't make sense that they'd then give something they regard as central to their survival to groups like Hizbullah, over which they have limited control. As for Al Qaeda, they don't even share common interests. Why would the mullahs give Osama bin Laden the crown jewels?" To do so would be fatal, for Washington has made it very clear that it would regard any terrorist use of a WMD as an attack by the country that supplied it-and would respond accordingly.

There are two general problems with this claim. First, it posits Iran handing Hizbullah or Al Qaeda a ready made nuclear weapon as the primary nuclear terrorism example. This ignores a host of other possible scenarios whereby a number of terrorist groups could steal or procure nuclear weapons or more likely weapons material from the 50 tons of highly enriched uranium at civilian nuclear facilities in more than 40 countries around the world. In the past few years, the surprise of the reactor in Syria and the eyebrow-raising cooperation between North Korea and Myanmar should serve as examples of how significant nuclear cooperation between sovereign nations can occur under the noses of the international community. Trying to keep tabs on all of the weapons and materials is an even more difficult task when you are talking about a scenario, for example, where Al Qaeda or another terrorist group is trying to acquire some highly enriched uranium for an improvised nuclear device. Second, the claim that we can deter intentional state diversion by simply threatening retaliation on the capital we would attribute the origin to is fraught with complications. While nuclear forensics is a laudable pursuit, it still has a long way to go before it could successfully attribute material in a post conflict scenario. The degree of confidence that would be needed to force an administration to publicly declare they have decided to retaliate on a capital with nuclear weapons because they believe the fissile material originated there is astonishingly high. It would require levels of international cooperation and more importantly transparency from the country in question (which would almost surely say no) that it seems highly unlikely that all the signs could conclusively point to one capital. For example, what if the material passes through a number of countries that could theoretically be implicated or the fissile material was stolen as a result of much greater instability in Pakistan? All of these obstacles make it quite unlikely that the United States would consider the policy of firing nuclear weapons on Tehran in response to a WMD terrorist attack a viable one, unless political pressure in a post-conflict scenario was so high that it had no choice, creating a lose lose situation where the US either loses all credibility in its declarations and assurances or has to break the post-1945 nuclear taboo. At the end of the day, the more nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons states you have, the more nuclear material exists that could be used in a WMD terrorism incident.

2. Changing deterrence dynamics-- the argument behind the more nukes the better relies on the fundamental claim that:

The iron logic of deterrence and mutually assured destruction is so compelling, it's led to what's known as the nuclear peace: the virtually unprecedented stretch since the end of World War II in which all the world's major powers have avoided coming to blows . . . The record since then shows the same pattern repeating: nuclear-armed enemies slide toward war, then pull back, always for the same reasons.

This argument relies on two very dangerous assumptions. The first is that the US/Soviet model of mutually assured destruction (MAD) can be exported to explain the behavior of any country that has nuclear weapons in today's security environment. The United States and Soviet Union had a unique bipolar atmosphere where their overwhelming nuclear arsenals were largely meant for one another and while the Cold War never went hot, citing the Cuban Missile Crises as example of deterrence gone right is a risky endeavor as the two countries came to the precipice of nuclear war that could have destroyed humanity and narrowly avoided it. Moving to the 21st century, the nuclear landscape looks much different and therefore potentially much more dangerous. Russia has compensated for its conventional inferiority by increasing reliance on nuclear weapons, including a war fighting role for them. Pakistan continues to modernizing their arsenal at a surprising rate while the country teeters on collapse. China has fielded some impressive new nuclear capabilities in the past decade. The problem with deterrence dynamics in the 21st century is that there are a host of asymmetric and regional interactions the plague the standard US/USSR MAD relationship. As a result, the supposed blanket of stability provided by the Cold War is much more tenuous. For example, a Japanese decision to get nuclear weapons likely prompts reactive measures from China which could lead to India building up opposite its highly unstable neighbor. In these circumstances (or possibly any), it is very risky to simply take solace in the fact the nuclear countries will "slide toward war then pull back." Crises escalation is inevitably very difficult to control and highly unpredictable, particularly for countries acquiring nuclear weapons for the first time in highly volatile regions of the world. That is not to say Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il are completely irrational and seek nuclear destruction of the US. The problem is that while these leaders may not be seeking a nuclear first strike, they can continue, perhaps even increase, their destabilizing actions that now have much larger consequences should the escalation ladder go the wrong way. It only takes one.

3. A tepid rise in nuclear powers isn't a huge deal. Tepperman argues:

This doesn't guarantee that one or more of Iran's neighbors—Egypt or Saudi Arabia, say—might not still go for the bomb if Iran manages to build one. But the risks of a rapid spread are low, especially given Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent suggestion that the United States would extend a nuclear umbrella over the region, as Washington has over South Korea and Japan, if Iran does complete a bomb. If one or two Gulf states nonetheless decided to pursue their own weapon, that still might not be so disastrous, given the way that bombs tend to mellow behavior.

Initially, my skepticism for the political feasibility and strategic desirability of a defense umbrella ("nuclear umbrella" is NOT what Clinton said) in the Middle East undercuts what seems to be the main reason against a larger nuclear spread. This skepticism was backed up by Egypt's recent rejection of the umbrella. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and others are very nervous about an Iranian nuclear weapons and could easily seek their own. Why might this be a bad thing? The first reason is that the transition to seeking a nuclear weapon is a very unstable time. The almost daily calls for a strike on Iran highlight that point. Nuclear powers that could be impacted by a new nuclear state have an incentive to prevent them from doing so and nonnuclear powers have every incentive to prevent unfriendly neighbors from developing a game changer.

In addition, there is a decent chance that as the nuclear club adds members it won't stop at 1 or 2 . The UAE, for example, will be watching how other states in the region respond to a nuclear Iran like a hawk. This is why many of the major recent nuclear reports have endorsed concepts such as "tipping point" to explain the current proliferation situation. The proliferation problem would be especially rapid in a world where the U.S. takes the articles advice to "make sure that any nuclear weapons state has what's called a "survivable second strike option," a means of ensuring that even if attacked, it could still shoot back." Does that mean we provide North Korea with a second strike capability? How does the U.S. make sure a country has a second strike capability? Do you lock in the "current" nuclear powers, which seems tough to do and contrary to the more nukes the better strategy, or offer an exorbitantly expensive Second-Strike-R-US for anyone in which case probably everyone except those technologically advanced and highly suspicious of the United States accepts.

Lastly, the idea that "bombs tend to mellow behavior" should be questioned. A nuclear Iran, for example, would almost certainly continue actions the U.S. views as destabilizing like funding proxies. In other words, nuclear weapons may actually do little to "mellow" behavior but that is combined with the very unlikely but very high consequence event that the escalation of a crises somehow goes nuclear. That is particularly true in a region like the Middle East where there are strong religious influences on politics and terms like "existential" are peppered into policy rhetoric.

4. The 1944 time machine-- As I've argued in the past, this argument is somewhat of a red herring in that it assumed pushing the "eliminate all nukes" button lands us in early 20th century Europe. While it is true many more people died in conventional war in the early part of the 20th century than after 1945, Barry Blechman had some good thoughts on the issue recently :

D. My point is that the world has already been fundamentally transformed since 1939, and certainly since 1914.

1. I don’t know if any of these critics has noticed that the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, German, Japanese, British, French, and Soviet empires no longer exist – the last three, by the way, despite the fact that they possessed nuclear weapons.

2. Does anyone think that Germany no longer seeks to transform the map of Europe because its former enemies now have nuclear weapons? Of course not. After paying a huge price in two conventional wars, the German people came to understand that there is far greater pay-off in peace and interdependence than in conquest and empire.

3. Does anyone believe that the US and China would deliberately go to war with one another – a war that would totally wreck both economies. There’s a reason why China policy was the one sector of US foreign policy that the reasonable policies espoused by Colin Powell and the State Department were able to dominate during the first George W. Bush term – our economic interdependence.

4. Yes, a war between the US and China is possible, the result of desperate actions by the Taiwanese or accidents or misunderstandings or miscommunications. But nuclear weapons cannot deter wars begun in this way – they can only make understanding more difficult and add to the potential carnage.

5. In short, the great powers have been fundamentally transformed – we are interdependent in ways unimagined before 1939.

6. Conflicts remain: legacies of WWII in Korea, legacies of the dissolution of the British empire in India and Palestine, and legacies of the Cold War in Georgia and elsewhere. But these are problems to be solved, not causus belli. None of the great powers sees value in revisionist policies to remake the world stage. These were the problems of the Twentieth Century, not the Twenty-first.

To be honest, it seems unclear, maybe impossible to determine, which side wins the battle about whether a post-nuclear world is worse but it does seem important to highlight that that world would have substantial differences than an early 20th century world. When the Strategic Posture Commission says things like it would "require a fundamental transformation of the world political order" (something Barry would probably dispute), therein lies the crux of the answer to whether this world would be more stable. For example, the unprecedented verification measures needed to ensure compliance would probably start to change what the role of the sovereign nation state looks like, for better or worse.

Lastly, he beat me to the punch but Doug Shaw had some great thoughts on the article as well.