Abstract
The United States should make clear that it will use nuclear weapons in response to a chemical or biological attack.
Although nuclear arms control negotiations have stalled in recent years, U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals have been greatly reduced. That suggests that nuclear weapons now have—and will continue to have—a reduced role in world affairs. That is surely a good thing. But precisely what that role will be remains unclear.
Many arms control enthusiasts, and undoubtedly the majority of the Bulletin's readers, believe that a declaratory policy of “no-first-use” of nuclear weapons—pledging never to use nuclear weapons except in retaliation against a nuclear attack—is a critical step in assuring nuclear peace.
But that would be a risky strategy. Attempting to lower the danger of nuclear violence through no-first-use would weaken the fear that nuclear weapons produce. If that fear helps prevent mass casualties from new and comparably dreadful weapons, we may not want to nullify it.
We have some experience with the fear of nuclear war. During the Cold War, it was used by the United States to engender caution and to produce stability. Had it not been for that fear, the twentieth century might have had three world wars instead of two.
The nuclear standoff—parity between arsenals large enough to assure mutual destruction—negated the nuclear threat and thus the likelihood of nuclear war. But simultaneously, the United States negated that negation by threatening to use nuclear weapons to block aggression by conventional Soviet forces. Fearing for their way of life, Americans risked nuclear war to buttress the status quo.
But the world has been transformed. The American way of life is no longer threatened; rather, it is on the march. Because the main current of change—globalization—promotes its interests and ideals, the United States no longer seeks to freeze the international situation. U.S. technological and conventional military capabilities instill confidence in means other than nuclear weapons to thwart conventional aggression.
Should the United States therefore embrace no-first-use, the opposite of the U.S. Cold War doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons? Should it disengage nuclear weapons altogether from international security and military strategy, relying on them solely to deter nuclear war? Is this humankind's chance to eradicate nuclear fear, even if the weapons themselves cannot be eradicated?
Regrettably, the answer is no.
Although the threat of a nuclear response to a conventional attack is no longer crucial to U.S. strategy, the United States still needs nuclear weapons to deter a nuclear attack. But it must also, I believe, present a threat of nuclear retaliation to deter a biological attack, which could be as deadly, and which might not be deterred by the threat of U.S. conventional retaliation.
In this century, the United States should aim to reduce the importance and attractiveness of nuclear weapons and it should delegitimize their use in response to conventional threats. But it must also sharpen nuclear deterrence against biological weapons. The United States could do this by stating that it would use nuclear weapons only in retaliation for attacks with weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Such a policy of no-first-use of weapons of mass destruction would better support U.S. and international security than either a policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons or the current official policy, which in its ambiguity rules out nothing.
The new era
The conditions that once led the United States to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression, shore up its strategic position, and perpetuate international stability no longer exist. Now predominant and unthreatened, the United States is no longer a status-quo power. Rather, it is a beneficiary of international change, which yields economic liberalization, democratization, integration, and improved security.
Most of the world's economic output, technological capacity, and military power lie within the circle of free-market democracies—the Americas, Europe, East Asia—a community that continues to expand. The success of the past two decades, beyond any expectation, has largely dispelled the dread of systemic instability.
Even though there is continuing uncertainty regarding the future of the U.S.-Chinese relationship, few analysts believe that China will become a Soviet-style threat in the next century. The Soviet Union sought to build its own system in isolation from—and as an alternative to—the Western world, and it failed. The Chinese have learned that lesson well. They seek to join the West. They are concerned with changing China, not the world.
More broadly, the trend toward democratization and globalization is reducing the danger of the sort of world war that helped make the twentieth century so appallingly bloody, and that caused the United States to engage nuclear weapons in the cause of equilibrium.
The prime mover of the favorable course of world politics is information technology, which is propagating investment, reform, and accountable government. It is also increasingly crucial to power, including military power.
A nation's ability to create and apply information technology depends on its openness and its involvement in the world economy. Authoritarian nations, even large ones, that rely on encrusted state economic power will be handicapped in the dominant technology of the new era. The world's most successful powers in the twenty-first century will likely be free-market democracies with convergent interests and outlooks, as is now the case.
Some scholars of geopolitics believe that clinging to its top ranking should be America's paramount objective. But in reality, the United States has an increasing stake in the success of the other great powers—Japan, the European Union, and yes, China.
More and more, U.S. foreign policy is designed not to block others but to collaborate and grow with them. The United States need not fear any challenger to the extent that it must exploit the fear of general nuclear war to help contain it, as it did with the Soviet Union.
Although the U.S. nuclear arsenal is the world's best, it is, thankfully, no longer an emblem of American power. Compared to U.S. technological and economic leadership, nuclear weapons neither distinguish the United States nor reflect the essence of its strength. Indeed, diluting further the symbolic and political significance of nuclear weapons cannot hurt—and it may help—American interests and image.
Non-nuclear military capabilities, in contrast, are integral to American power in the new era. The forces of the United States can defend its interests wherever required. The American defense budget is again on the rise. Because the United States is the first to exploit information technology strategically, its conventional military superiority is growing.
U.S. forces are being networked, making them more lethal, less vulnerable, and capable of integrated operations. Although the extreme one-sidedness of the recent U.S.-led NATO campaign against Serbia may set unrealistic standards for future combat, the ability of the United States to destroy an adversary's capacity to fight, without suffering high casualties, is apparent.
The idea that the United States would risk—indeed, start—nuclear war to avoid military defeat is far-fetched if not bizarre. For as far into the future as one can imagine, these basic conditions will remain.
Redefining threats
With its technological lead, its growing conventional military superiority, the absence of a mortal enemy, its stature in other forms of power, and its confidence in the face of change, the United States could decouple nuclear weapons from its military strategy and foreign policy without endangering the nation. But before redefining the purpose of nuclear weapons, we must ask if there are any emerging non-nuclear threats that warrant the threat, or the option, of a nuclear response.
Like most technologies, dangerous or benign, biochemical technology is spreading as the global economy integrates. Consequently, U.S. forces, U.S. allies, and eventually U.S. citizens will be vulnerable to attack with biological and chemical weapons delivered by long-range missiles or by clandestine means.
Of the two types, chemical and biological, the latter weapons present the greater danger of casualties on a nuclear scale. Ten kilograms of anthrax is at least as deadly as a 10-kilogram nuclear explosive, and it is cheaper, easier to assemble, and more portable.
While chemical weapons are more likely to be used to disrupt U.S. military operations, biological weapons pose terrible and lingering dangers to the general population, much like strategic nuclear weapons.
The most immediate concern is that rogue states, lacking other options, might threaten to use biological weapons against U.S. troops in a local war. The United States can partly neutralize this threat by exploiting information technology—dispersing its forces and striking accurately from afar. But determined enemies will then resort to longer-range means to threaten U.S. forces, allies, and territory.
Try as it might to stop the spread of these weapons, the United States must prepare to prevent or defend against their use. But defense alone, with antimissile and counterforce weapons, cannot make American forces and citizens entirely safe from lethal biological agents. Deterrence is crucial.
A common argument is that U.S. conventional military superiority—the ability to render an adversary defense-less—should suffice to deter the use of weapons of mass destruction. However, an enemy may already be receiving the full brunt of U.S. conventional strikes when it opts to threaten biological attack. Indeed, the most plausible reason why a rogue state would threaten to use weapons of mass destruction is that the United States has already unleashed its conventional might to defeat local aggression.
Given that, the threat of U.S. conventional reprisal presumably would be ineffective. And because the United States has forsworn biological and chemical weapons, deterrence could depend critically on the threat to retaliate with nuclear weapons. That, of course, would be contradicted by a nuclear no-first-use policy.
The countries whose WMD programs most worry the United States are rogue states such as Iraq, North Korea, and Iran. Because the aim of such states is to deter a U.S. conventional attack, it follows that an American pledge not to use nuclear weapons first, even if they had faith in it, would not diminish their interest in nuclear weapons.
Presumably rogue states already know that using nuclear weapons against U.S. interests could trigger U.S. nuclear retaliation. However, they may view biological weapons as more usable, more credible, and less risky, not to mention easier to obtain or make. A U.S. pledge not to use nuclear weapons first would make them even more eager to acquire—and less hesitant to brandish and use—biological weapons.
While it is possible to imagine a biological attack that would not warrant a nuclear response, this is no reason to discard the option of a nuclear response against any and all possible biological attacks.
When thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons were poised to strike, the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States risked a general nuclear cataclysm. In contrast, U.S. nuclear retaliation for a biological attack by a rogue state would risk, at worst, another WMD attack—awful to be sure, but worth the risk in order to deter biological use in the first place.
More likely, having proven its resolve with a presumably selective nuclear detonation, the United States would deter further escalation and prevail. In any case, being prepared to respond to an attack by weapons of mass destruction with nuclear weapons—and by saying so—the United States would be less likely to have to do so.
Of course, U.S. nuclear retaliation for a biological attack would be a grave, world-changing event. But it would not imperil the nation and its global interests, let alone human viability. And it would make it less likely that any weapon of mass destruction— at least a biological or nuclear one— would ever be used again, and certainly not against the United States.
A fresh idea
The strongest argument for a nuclear no-first-use pledge during the Cold War was that it could have saved the United States from nuclear hell. The strongest argument against such a pledge was that it could have condemned the United States to a communist hell.
Now that the Soviet Union is gone, neither argument is persuasive. Concepts saved in the attic from a different time, a different world, are not helpful. Both nuclear first-use and nuclear no-first-use are out of date. A fresh idea is needed.
During the Cold War, the United States would not exclude a nuclear response to any aggression. It was motivated by both a general concern, the Soviet menace, and a specific concern, a tank attack on West Germany. The former was the context and the latter was the sharp focal point of U.S. first-use doctrine. It was surely the specific prospect that the United States might resort to nuclear weapons if war broke out in Europe that got the Kremlin's attention.
Now, the United States wants rogue states to think that the use of biological weapons could cause a disproportionate response; it wants them to feel this fear quite sharply. To the extent that the United States fails to pinpoint this in defining the purpose of nuclear weapons, that fear will be dull and its utility will be lost.
Current U.S. policy regarding the use of nuclear weapons is not substantially different from its general Cold War policy. The United States maintains ambiguity about the circumstances under which it would resort to nuclear weapons. Despite growing and enduring U.S. conventional military superiority, even a nuclear response to conventional attack is not excluded.
And yet, so unreal is the thought that the United States would use nuclear weapons in response to conventional attack that the current open-ended policy actually dulls deterrence. As long as the United States refuses to rule out an option that is now patently incredible (nuclear retaliation for conventional aggression), it undermines the credibility of an option that could prove crucial (nuclear retaliation for biological attack). Ambiguity is sometimes useful. But in the new era, it does more harm than good.
The United States should explicitly warn that it might respond with a weapon of mass destruction—nuclear weapons—to an attack by a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. interests. (Chemical weapons could be included, although it could be made clear that the greater concern is biological weapons.)
But that is not enough. To sharpen the fear to a finer point, the United States should also say that it foresees no need to use nuclear weapons except in response to attacks by weapons of mass destruction.
A declaratory policy along these lines would reinforce deterrence by erasing the incredible aspect of current policy—that is, nuclear response to conventional aggression. And it would bolster the taboo against first use of any weapon of mass destruction—a taboo that today appears too weak for comfort.
In past efforts to stem the spread of nuclear weapons, the United States has said, in effect, that it would not use nuclear weapons against states that forswear them. But what if a state acquired biological weapons, which can kill Americans no less effectively than nuclear explosives? What if the state used them?
In light of this danger, the United States should retract its pledge not to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear states. If a non-nuclear state used a biological weapon against the United States, it should be on notice that it could pay a heavy nuclear price.
How would a U.S. policy of no-first-WMD-use work toward another nuclear power, say, Russia or China? Now that Russia's conventional forces are weak, it has reversed its doctrine not to use nuclear weapons first. Given its decaying command-and-control system and the possibility of political turmoil, this shift could prove dangerous.
Further, Russia seems to be maintaining its ability to assemble and use biological weapons. An American policy not to be the first to use a weapon of mass destruction would delegitimize Russia's growing reliance on nuclear weapons and sharpen deterrence against its use of biological weapons. Perhaps a U.S. no-first-WMD-use pledge could be used to goad Russia into a similar policy, which would be a great relief. As for China—which has said in every available forum that it would never be the first to use nuclear weapons—it would likely applaud and might even subscribe to such a U.S. pledge.
One hopes the time will come when nuclear weapons can be retired. With its natural and durable advantages, the United States should want this as much as any country. Nuclear weapons may be hard to outlaw, but the world may eventually outlive or outgrow the nuclear era. Perhaps the information age, with its emphasis on precision weapons, can reduce the scale of deadly conflict. If, as well, the new age blesses free-market democracies with superior power, the world may become increasingly safe and the need to rely on nuclear weapons to keep it safe may fade away.
We are not there yet. Rogue states are on the ropes, but they can hang on and do great harm if they acquire weapons of mass destruction. By concentrating nuclear deterrence on this particular problem, by creating a sharp fear, and by limiting the purpose of nuclear weapons to retaliation for attacks by weapons of mass destruction, the United States may help move the world a step closer to a world in which none of these horrible weapons would ever again be used.
The debate about nuclear use is a reasoned one among reasonable people. The argument for complete ambiguity is understandable, especially when coming from officials conditioned to hedge against all possibilities. However, in this case, ambiguity weakens credibility and dulls deterrence.
Similarly, renewed interest in having the United States give up completely the option to use nuclear weapons first is understandable, what with the dramatic turn of events since 1989. However, nuclear no-first-use is as much a Cold War concept as official nuclear declaratory policy is. It was motivated by a fear of nuclear Armageddon, compared to which the future potential of biological war was hardly noticed.
Just because U.S. official nuclear first-use policy is now obsolete, it does not mean that the time is right for its Cold War antithesis. The aim, after all, is to spare humanity from the horror of mass destruction, whatever the technology of causing it.