by CKR
It must be something in the air. Or maybe it’s that the Subcommittee on Water and Energy Development (of the House Committee on Appropriations) just scratched the funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. That’s no guarantee that the funding won’t be put back in at some point on the appropriations bill’s journey through congress, but it got some people’s attention.*
Both Scientific American and a former colleague who calls himself Dr. Strangelove have proposed a debate, preferably on their blogs, on nuclear weapons. I’m not impressed with what they’ve got so far.
If you’re going to discuss the need for nuclear weapons or their possible missions, you should start out with a threat assessment. It’s also possible to begin with your druthers, but not particularly reality-oriented. So I’ll continue from my outline for a threat assessment.
I’ve done my own threat assessment of sorts. It’s developed over a period of years, and I suspect it’s as good as anything that might be done by others with more time and access to more information. I’m open to changing it if better information appears, but that information has to be reliably supported, not just suppositions about terrible things that might happen.
Here is my unofficial nuclear threat assessment for the United States. Note that this is a nuclear threat assessment, not an overall threat assessment. There are still some dangers out there; I am focusing on those that might use nuclear weapons against the United States or in some other way provoke nuclear retaliation by the United States.
Finding 1. No serious immediate threat.
There is no country in the world that seriously threatens a nuclear attack on the United States. Further, the probability that a terrorist organization has usable nuclear weapons is extremely low. The most serious current threat of a nuclear explosion in the United States arises from accidents resulting from the continuing alert status of US and Russian nuclear-tipped missiles.
Finding 2. Threats in the 2-5 year range are extremely low. Most can be managed by US actions.
Relations with Russia are deteriorating. Relations with China are good, except for some friction in the area of trade. An agreement has been reached with North Korea on denuclearization. Iran is unlikely to have nuclear weapons within this time frame. Pakistan’s current instability presents a concern that action against the government might put nuclear weapons in the hands of radical Islamic groups. Russia continues to improve its nuclear weapons security.
There are a number of ways to improve relations with Russia, including delaying construction of antimissile installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Because Iran is unlikely to have nuclear weapons within this time frame, there is time for negotiation. The instability in Pakistan is the most unpredictable and uncontrollable of the threats in this time frame. We have to hope that rumors are true that the United States has been helping Pakistan to “safe” its nuclear weapons with permissive action links that keep unauthorized people from using them.
Finding 3. Threats in the 5-20 year range are much less predictable, but remain low.
With intelligent diplomacy and some steps back from the more warlike policies of the Bush administration, such as preventive warfare (which step may have already been taken), good relations can be maintained with other nuclear powers. In a similar vein, progress should be possible with North Korea and Iran toward non nuclear weapon status. Instability in Pakistan and friction between Pakistan and India are probably the biggest threats of nuclear war or nuclear weapons becoming available to subnational groups. Regional conflicts could encourage other states (say Brazil and Argentina) to consider a path to nuclear weapons, but the probability of such conflicts seems likely to remain low.
Let’s just stop here for a moment and take a breath. This is a very different threat assessment from anything that might have been done during the Cold War. In fact, it surprised me when I saw it all written down this way. But if we stick to verifiable threats with reasonable probability, I think this is the way it has to come out.
I’m going to make a couple of other assumptions about United States nuclear policy: that conventional weapons are sufficiently powerful that nuclear weapons need not be considered as a response to any but a nuclear attack; likewise, that defending US interests abroad, such as shipping lanes, can be done adequately with conventional weapons.
The bottom line is that there is vanishingly little need for nuclear weapons in the United States as retaliation for a nuclear attack.
But deterrence has a value, demonstrated during the Cold War and in countless small ways then and since. If a nation is strong enough, potential attackers will think twice.
This seems to be largely the reasoning behind the smaller nuclear stockpiles: those of Britain, France, China, India, Israel, and Pakistan. All of those stockpiles, for nations with very different populations, land areas and potential enemies, are similar in numbers.
According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, those numbers are
Britain 200
France 350
China 410
India 70 – 110
Israel 100
Pakistan 50 – 110
Others believe that the number for China is closer to 100. The Federation of American Scientists estimates 145 warheads deployed, which could be consistent with a total of 410, but also with lower numbers. Jeffrey Lewis and the US Department of Defense estimate that the total is closer to 100, perhaps as few as 80. I tend to agree with this lower estimate.
In terms of strategy, and again I have not spent as much concentrated study on this as I might, but I have considered it over a long time, there appears to be almost a power law for nuclear weapons:
1 – 10 Demonstrates basic capability; useful for intimidating non-nuclear neighbors and deterring larger adversaries.
10 – 100 Capability for warfighting ranging from nuclear versus conventional to nuclear exchange.
100 – up Capability for nuclear exchange. Close to complete deterrence of rational adversaries.
Except for the United States and Russia, the numbers of nuclear weapons are on the borderline between deterrent and warfighting. This suggests that the motivation is largely deterrent, and it also suggests that numbers of a few hundred each should suffice for the United States and Russia as well.
_________________________________
* If you’ve clicked that second link, you’ll see it goes to the third incarnation of the LANL Blog. I hesitate to get wrapped up with that uncivil lot, but part of the discussion is going on there. So I’ll just put a warning here that various sorts of garbage will be deleted from the comments thread. The WhirledView bloggers are pretty broadminded about comments, but we have our limits. Complaints about our policy will also be deleted. It’s our blog.
