Remember "mutual assured destruction" (MAD), that happy, nutty condition in which neither the United States nor the Soviet Union dared launch a nuclear first-strike against the other, and peace was--in Churchill's words--"the sturdy child of terror"? I had assumed that the end of the Cold War and the subsequent nuclear-arms reductions negotiated between Russia and the US had left MAD in place--so that no rational nuclear power would hazard a nuclear first-strike against either the US or Russia, at least, and maybe not against China. But, in "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy" (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006), Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press argue that this is not so:
For four decades, relations among the major nuclear powers have been shaped by their common vulnerability, a condition known as mutual assured destruction. But with the U.S. arsenal growing rapidly while Russia's decays and China's stays small, the era of MAD is ending -- and the era of U.S. nuclear primacy has begun....
Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike.
How has this come about? Lieber and Press ask,
Is the United States intentionally pursuing nuclear primacy? Or is primacy an unintended byproduct of intra-Pentagon competition for budget share or of programs designed to counter new threats from terrorists and so-called rogue states? Motivations are always hard to pin down, but the weight of the evidence suggests that Washington is, in fact, deliberately seeking nuclear primacy. For one thing, U.S. leaders have always aspired to this goal. And the nature of the changes to the current arsenal and official rhetoric and policies support this conclusion....
The intentional pursuit of nuclear primacy is...entirely consistent with the United States' declared policy of expanding its global dominance. The Bush administration's 2002 National Security Strategy explicitly states that the United States aims to establish military primacy: "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States." To this end, the United States is openly seeking primacy in every dimension of modern military technology, both in its conventional arsenal and in its nuclear forces.
(The 2002 National Security Strategy also announced the readiness of the Administration to launch preemptive wars despite the constraints of conventional just-war doctrine, which permits anticipatory force only to resist "imminent" threats.) Should we worry? Lieber and Press observe that
Hawks will undoubtedly see the advent of U.S. nuclear primacy as a positive development. For them, MAD was regrettable because it left the United States vulnerable to nuclear attack. With the passing of MAD, they argue, Washington will have what strategists refer to as "escalation dominance" -- the ability to win a war at any level of violence -- and will thus be better positioned to check the ambitions of dangerous states such as China, North Korea, and Iran. Doves, on the other hand, are fearful of a world in which the United States feels free to threaten -- and perhaps even use -- force in pursuit of its foreign policy goals....Owls worry that nuclear primacy will cause destabilizing reactions on the part of other governments regardless of the United States' intentions....If Russia and China take these steps, owls argue, the risk of accidental, unauthorized, or even intentional nuclear war -- especially during moments of crisis -- may climb to levels not seen for decades.
Lieber and Press's article has caused a ruckus in the foreign-policy world. Peter C.W. Flory, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, wrote to Foreign Affairs that:
The essay by Keir Lieber and Daryl Press ("The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy, "March/April 2006) contains so many errors, on a topic of such gravity, that a Department of Defense response is required to correct the record.
This, from "Nuclear Exchange: Does Washington Really Have (or Want) Nuclear Primacy?" (Foreign Affairs, Sept./Oct. 2006), where Lieber and Press reply to Flory and several other critics, and point to evidence that preemptive nuclear strikes have long been an element of Pentagon planning.
Today, the Pentagon announced the successful testing of a component of the "Star Wars" anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) system initiated during the Regan Administration--a "total success...a huge step." The US insistence on abrogating treaty obligations in order to push the costly ABM program figures into Lieber and Press's argument:
Washington's pursuit of nuclear primacy helps explain its missile-defense strategy, for example. Critics of missile defense argue that a national missile shield, such as the prototype the United States has deployed in Alaska and California, would be easily overwhelmed by a cloud of warheads and decoys launched by Russia or China. They are right: even a multilayered system with land-, air-, sea-, and space-based elements, is highly unlikely to protect the United States from a major nuclear attack. But they are wrong to conclude that such a missile-defense system is therefore worthless -- as are the supporters of missile defense who argue that, for similar reasons, such a system could be of concern only to rogue states and terrorists and not to other major nuclear powers.
What both of these camps overlook is that the sort of missile defenses that the United States might plausibly deploy would be valuable primarily in an offensive context, not a defensive one -- as an adjunct to a U.S. first-strike capability, not as a standalone shield. If the United States launched a nuclear attack against Russia (or China), the targeted country would be left with a tiny surviving arsenal -- if any at all. At that point, even a relatively modest or inefficient missile-defense system might well be enough to protect against any retaliatory strikes, because the devastated enemy would have so few warheads and decoys left.
Just over three years ago, it was "old Europe" whose global significance was unimpressive to Donald Rumsfeld--tomorrow, it could be "old Eurasia."
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