The Bright Side of Nuclear Armament

Casey Rae-Hunter is a guest blogger for Sentient Developments.

Today's e-edition of the always thought-provoking Foreign Policy magazine had the usual roundup of articles on America's dicey diplomacy with Iran and the Afghanistan Question, which at this point can be summarized by the famous Clash song. The news roundup also featured a couple of articles on nuclear proliferation, including a contrarian piece by John Mueller called "The Rise of Nuclear Alarmism: How We Learned to Start Worrying and Fear the Bomb — and Why We Don’t Have To." How could I resist a provocative title like that?

The article posits that history would've dumped us in more or less the same place with or without the Bomb. That statement alone is sure to ruffle some feathers. But Mueller's assertion that nuclear weapons didn't even serve as a deterrent is in direct defiance of conventional military-historic wisdom.

Nuclear weapons are, of course, routinely given credit for preventing or deterring a major war, especially during the Cold War. However, it is increasingly clear that the Soviet Union never had the slightest interest in engaging in any kind of conflict that would remotely resemble World War II, whether nuclear or not. Its agenda mainly stressed revolution, class rebellion, and civil war, conflict areas in which nuclear weapons are irrelevant.

Nor have possessors of the weapons ever really been able to find much military use for them in actual armed conflicts. They were of no help to the United States in Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq; to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; to France in Algeria; to Britain in the Falklands; to Israel in Lebanon and Gaza; or to China in dealing with its once-impudent neighbor Vietnam.

In fact, a major reason so few technologically capable countries have actually sought to build the weapons, contrary to decades of hand-wringing prognostication, is that most have found them, on examination, to be a substantial and even ridiculous misdirection of funds, effort, and scientific talent.

It's certainly difficult to disagree with his last point, particularly when backed up by the sobering fact that, "during the Cold War alone, it has been calculated, the United States spent enough money on these useless weapons and their increasingly fancy delivery systems to have purchased somewhere between 55 and 100 percent of everything in the country except the land." Basically, that money could've bought cradle-to-grave health care for my uninsured countrymen several times over. Makes me proud to be an American.

Mueller also suggests that status quo thinking on nuclear armament has led to appalling strategic blunders, including the Iraq War:

For more than a decade, U.S. policy obsessed over the possibility that Saddam Hussein's pathetic and technologically dysfunctional regime in Iraq could in time obtain nuclear weapons (it took the more advanced Pakistan 28 years), which it might then suicidally lob, or threaten to lob, at somebody. To prevent this imagined and highly unlikely calamity, a war has been waged that has probably resulted in more deaths than were suffered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

And North Korea? Forget it. The payloads in their current weapons would, if detonated in the middle of New York's Central Park, "be unable to destroy buildings on its periphery," according to Mueller.

Though I lack the time and resources to independently verify his contentions, Mueller's central question is worth considering: What are we ultimately achieving with our nuclear fever-dream? Are we securing peace, or merely investing a long-dreaded boogeymen with an endless supply of neurosis? How big will we allow this beast to get? When will it fulfill those dark fantasies with which we keep it so well fed?

I'm not so sure that we should just kick back while Iran builds and tests a nuke. Nor should we stop using North Korea's weapons program as leverage in an international call for openness and reform. Nuclear blackmail is a two-way street. Where tyrants and theocrats seek to exploit their lust for the Bomb to create insecurity, America and its allies should be free to explore options that would limit the effect of such brinksmanship. Yet we would be well-advised to heed Mueller's message: by playing into nuclear paranoia, we add to the general shakiness of some already iffy geopolitical situations.

It may very well be the case that obtaining a nuclear weapon is, as Mueller claims, "substantially valueless," and a "very considerable waste of money and effort." Now who's gonna tell Ahmadinejad?

Casey Rae-Hunter is a writer, editor, musician, producer and self-proclaimed "lover of fine food and drink." He is the Communications Director of the Future of Music Coalition — a Washington, DC think tank that identifies, examines, interprets and translates issues at the intersection of music, law, technology and policy. He is also the founder and CEO of The Contrarian Media Group, which publishes The Contrarian and Autistic in the District — the latter a blog about Asperger's Syndrome.

And Now, for Something Completely Different: Doomsday!

Casey Rae-Hunter is guest blogging this month.

I've certainly been having a wonderful time guest blogging here at SD. In fact, it's hard to believe the month is almost up. Since I started late, maybe the boss will give me an extension?

Having talked about heavy stuff like cognitive liberty, neurodiversity and my personal stake in such matters, I figured we might want to tackle a lighter subject. Like doomsday devices.

It's probably old news by now, but I was really taken by an article in last month's issue of WIRED, called "Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine." As a child of the 1970s and '80s, I remember fondly the thrill of itemizing Soviet and American nuclear arsenals and learning cool new terms like "Mutually Assured Destruction." My parents and grandparents were not as wowed by my obsession with atomic game theory, but they put up. From forensics to German expressionist films to how many megatons are in an MX missile. . . such is life with a precocious and somewhat morbid kid.

Not to make this post purely personal, but there was another reason for my obsession. I grew up in Maine — a rural US state that one wouldn't think as having anything to do with the nuclear arms race. To the contrary: America's easternmost, northernmost province was positively riddled with backscatter radar stations, whose purpose was to detect a Soviet first strike. This made Maine more likely to be dusted in an initial attack than, say, Washington, DC. . . where I currently live.

Yet as much information as my apocalypse-obsessed mind could consume, I never encountered any tales of Perimeter — a Soviet doomsday system that came online in the mid-'80s, and is apparently still at the ready. Perimeter, also known by the more chilling moniker, "Dead Hand," is among the most secret and mystifying artifacts of the Cold War. Most perplexing is the fact that even the highest-level US officials, past and present, have no knowledge of its existence.

Yet it exists. Very much so.

The author of the WIRED piece, Nicholas Thomson, tells the tale of Perimeter with the panache of a noir novelist. He reveals, through painstaking first-person research and some rather uncomfortable interviews with Soviet and American principals, how the Ruskies devised a doomsday device that could still obliterate the US even after a devastating American first strike.

Perimeter ensures the ability to strike back, but it's no hair-trigger device. It was designed to lie semi-dormant until switched on by a high official in a crisis. Then it would begin monitoring a network of seismic, radiation, and air pressure sensors for signs of nuclear explosions. Before launching any retaliatory strike, the system had to check off four if/then propositions: If it was turned on, then it would try to determine that a nuclear weapon had hit Soviet soil. If it seemed that one had, the system would check to see if any communication links to the war room of the Soviet General Staff remained. If they did, and if some amount of time—likely ranging from 15 minutes to an hour—passed without further indications of attack, the machine would assume officials were still living who could order the counterattack and shut down. But if the line to the General Staff went dead, then Perimeter would infer that apocalypse had arrived. It would immediately transfer launch authority to whoever was manning the system at that moment deep inside a protected bunker—bypassing layers and layers of normal command authority. At that point, the ability to destroy the world would fall to whoever was on duty: maybe a high minister sent in during the crisis, maybe a 25-year-old junior officer fresh out of military academy. And if that person decided to press the button ... If/then. If/then. If/then. If/then.

Most interesting to me is the author's dead-on analysis of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense system, which the Soviets viewed as less of a "shield" than act of sheer provocation:

Reagan announced that the US was going to develop a shield of lasers and nuclear weapons in space to defend against Soviet warheads. He called it missile defense; critics mocked it as "Star Wars."

To Moscow it was the Death Star—and it confirmed that the US was planning an attack. It would be impossible for the system to stop thousands of incoming Soviet missiles at once, so missile defense made sense only as a way of mopping up after an initial US strike. The US would first fire its thousands of weapons at Soviet cities and missile silos. Some Soviet weapons would survive for a retaliatory launch, but Reagan's shield could block many of those. Thus, Star Wars would nullify the long-standing doctrine of mutually assured destruction, the principle that neither side would ever start a nuclear war since neither could survive a counterattack.

As we know now, Reagan was not planning a first strike. According to his private diaries and personal letters, he genuinely believed he was bringing about lasting peace. (He once told Gorbachev he might be a reincarnation of the human who invented the first shield.) The system, Reagan insisted, was purely defensive. But as the Soviets knew, if the Americans were mobilizing for attack, that's exactly what you'd expect them to say. And according to Cold War logic, if you think the other side is about to launch, you should do one of two things: Either launch first or convince the enemy that you can strike back even if you're dead.

Wow, right? I mean, I don't want to spoil it for you if you haven't yet read it, which you should.

It's interesting to note that Dead Hand is still active. Still out there, its once finely-tuned sensors decaying alongside the other relics of the ex-Soviet military/tech apparatus, waiting for seismic and communications evidence of a major strike by a fiercely cultivated enemy.

Does anyone in their right mind feel safer?

Casey Rae-Hunter is a writer, editor, musician, producer and self-proclaimed "lover of fine food and drink." He is the Communications Director of the Future of Music Coalition — a Washington, DC think tank that identifies, examines, interprets and translates issues at the intersection of music, law, technology and policy. He is also the founder and CEO of The Contrarian Media Group, which publishes The Contrarian and Autistic in the District — the latter a blog about Asperger's Syndrome.

Economist: Safe without the bomb?

The April 11-17 edition of The Economist asks the question: can the world be safe without the bomb? A nuclear-free world may never come about, they argue, but there can be safety in trying:

Nuclear weapons cannot simply be wished away or uninvented. The technology is over 60 years old and the materials and skills needed are widely spread. Still, by infusing his idealism with a dose of realism Mr Obama can do more to create a safer world than simple “Ban the bomb” slogans ever could.

For zero nukes would make no sense if this left the world safe for the sorts of mass conventional warfare that consumed the first half of the 20th century. How many bombs would be needed to prevent that? And with what co-operation and controls to keep these remaining weapons from use? It is hard to say what sort of nuclear future would be more stable and peaceful until you get a lot closer to zero. Happily, the difficult steps needed to get safely to low numbers would all be needed for zero too. Mr Obama’s vision is helpful if it gets people thinking about imaginative ways forward.

Mr Obama is already committed to using the goal of zero to shape his future nuclear plans. Both America and Russia still have far more nuclear warheads than either wants. Even George Bush, no dewy-eyed disarmer, negotiated cuts down to 1,700-2,200 apiece by 2012 (from the 6,000 agreed upon after the cold war had ended) and was ready to go lower. Encouragingly, Mr Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, have agreed that a modest cut will accompany new weapons-counting rules to be fixed by the end of the year, with more ambitious reductions to follow. All the official five except China have been trimming their arsenals too.

Hmm, now where have I heard this before? Oh, yeah -- right here on this blog.

Read the entire article.

The perils of nuclear disarmament: How relinquishment could result in disaster

Most everyone agrees that humanity needs to get rid of its nuclear weapons. There's no question that complete relinquishment will all but eliminate the threat of deliberate and accidental nuclear war and the ongoing problem of proliferation.

Indeed, the ongoing presence of nuclear weapons is the greatest single threat to the survival of humanity. To put the problem into perspective, there are currently 26,000 nuclear warheads ready to go -- 96% of which are controlled by the United States and Russia. These two countries alone could unleash the power of 70,000 Hiroshimas in a matter of minutes. In the event of an all-out nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, it is estimated that as many as 230 million Americans and 56 million Russians would be killed by the initial blasts. The longer term impacts are nearly incalculable, but suffice it to say human civilization would be hard pressed to survive.

Given the end of the Cold War and the establishment of the START agreements, the idea of a deliberate nuclear war seems almost anachronistic. But the potential nightmare of an accidental nuclear exchange is all to real. We have already come very close on several occasions, including the Stanislav Petrov incident in 1983. We are living on borrowed time.

The assertion, therefore, that we need to completely rid ourselves of nuclear weapons appears more than reasonable; our very survival may depend on it. In fact, there are currently a number of initiatives underway that are working to see this vision come true. President Barack Obama himself has urged for the complete eliminate of nuclear weapons.

But before we head down the path to disarmament, we need to consider the consequences. Getting rid of nuclear weapons is a more difficult and precarious proposition than most people think. It's important therefore that we look at the potential risks and consequences.

There are a number of reasons for concern. A world without nukes could be far more unstable and prone to both smaller and global-scale conventional wars. And somewhat counter-intuitively, the process of relinquishment itself could increase the chance that nuclear weapons will be used. Moreover, we have to acknowledge the fact that even in a world free of nuclear weapons we will never completely escape the threat of their return.

The Bomb and the end of global-scale wars

The first and (so far) final use of nuclear weapons during wartime marked a seminal turning point in human conflict: the development of The Bomb and its presence as an ultimate deterrent has arguably preempted the advent of global-scale wars. It is an undeniable fact that an all-out war has not occurred since the end of World War II, and it is very likely that the threat of mutually assured destruction (MAD) has had a lot to do with it.

The Cold War is a case in point. Its very nature as a "war" without direct conflict points to the acknowledgment that it would have been ludicrous to engage in a suicidal nuclear exchange. Instead, the Cold War turned into an ideological conflict largely limited to foreign skirmishes, political posturing and espionage. Nuclear weapons had the seemingly paradoxical effect of forcing the United States and the Soviet Union into an uneasy peace. The same can be said today for India and Pakistan -- two rival and nuclear-capable nations mired in a cold war of their own.

It needs to be said, therefore, that the absence of nuclear weapons would dramatically increase the likelihood of conventional wars re-emerging as military possibilities. And given the catastrophic power of today's weapons, including the introduction of robotics and AI on the battlefield, the results could be devastating, even existential in scope.

So, while the damage inflicted by a restrained conventional war would be an order of magnitude lower than a nuclear war, the probably of a return to conventional wars would be significantly increased. This forces us to ask some difficult questions: Is nuclear disarmament worth it if the probability of conventional war becomes ten times greater? What about a hundred times greater?

And given that nuclear war is more of a deterrent than a tactical weapon, can such a calculation even be made? If nuclear disarmament spawns x conventional wars with y casualties, how could we measure those catastrophic losses against a nuclear war that's not really supposed to happen in the first place? The value of nuclear weapons is not that they should be used, but that they should never be used.

Upsetting the geopolitical balance

Today's global geopolitical structure has largely converged around the realities and constraints posed by the presence of apocalyptic weapons and by the nations who control them. Tension exists between the United States and Russia, but there are limits to how far each nation is willing to provoke the other. The same can be said for the United States' relationship with China. And as already noted, nuclear weapons may be forcing the peace between India and Pakistan (it's worth noting that conventional war between two nuclear-capable nations is akin to suicide; nuclear weapons would be used the moment one side senses defeat).

But should nuclear weapons suddenly disappear, the current geopolitical arrangement would be turned on its head. Despite its rhetoric, the United States is not a hegemonic power. We live in a de facto multi-polar geopolitical environment. Take away nuclear weapons and we get a global picture that looks startlingly familiar to pre-World War I Europe.

Additionally, the elimination of nuclear weapons could act as a destabilizing force, giving some up-and-coming nation-states the idea that they could become world players. Despite United Nations sanctions against invasion, some leaders could become bolder (and even desperate) and lose their inhibitions about claiming foreign territory; nations may start to take more calculated and provocative risks -- even against those nations who used to be nuclear powers.

Today, nuclear weapons are are being used to keep "rogue states" in check. It's no secret that the United States is willing (and even thinking about) bombing Iran as it works to develop its own nuclear weapons and threaten the region, if not the United States itself (Iran will soon have intercontinental ballistic capability; same for North Korea).

It can be said, therefore, that the composition of a nuclear-free world would be far more unstable and unpredictable than a world with nukes. Relinquishment could introduce us to an undesirable world in which new stresses and conflicts rival those posed by the threat of nuclear weapons.

It should be noted, however, that nuclear weapons do nothing to mitigate the threat of terrorism. MAD becomes a rather soft deterrent when "political rationality" comes into question; rationality can be a very subjective thing, as is the sense of self-preservation, particularly when nihilism and metaphysical beliefs come into play (i.e. religious fanaticism).

Nukes could still get in the wrong hands

Even in a world where nuclear weapons are eliminated it would not be outlandish to suggest that fringe groups, and even rogue nations, would still work to obtain the devices. The reasons for doing so are obvious, a grim turn of events that would enable them to take the rest of the world hostage.

Consequently, we can never be sure that a some point down the line, when push comes to shove for some countries or terrorist groups, that they'll independently work to develop their own nuclear weapons.

Dangers of the disarmament process

Should the nuclear capable nations of the world disarm, the process itself could lead to a number of problems. Even nuclear war.

During disarmament, for example, it's conceivable that nations would become distrustful of the others -- even to the point of complete paranoia and all-out belligerence. Countries would have to work particularly hard to show concrete evidence that they are in fact disarming. Any evidence to the contrary could severely escalate tension and thwart the process.

Some strategic thinkers have even surmised that there might be more incentive for a first strike with small numbers of nuclear weapons on both sides, where the attacking nations could hope to survive the conflict. As a result, it's suspected that the final stage of disarmament, when all sides are supposed to dismantle the last of their weapons, will be an exceptionally dangerous time. As a result, disarmament is paradoxically more likely to increase the probability of deliberate nuclear war.

And in addition, concealing a few nukes at this stage could give one nation an enormous military advantage over those nations who have been completely de-nuclearized. This is not as ridiculous as it might seem: it would be all too easy and advantageous for a nation to conceal a secret stockpile and attempt to gain political and military advantages by nuclear blackmail or attack.

Conclusion

I want to make it clear at this time that I am not opposed to nuclear disarmament.

What I am trying to do here is bring to light the challenges that such a process would bring. If we're going to do this we need to do a proper risk assessment and adjust our disarmament strategies accordingly (assuming that's even possible). I still believe that we should get rid of nuclear weapons -- it's just that our nuclear exit strategy will have to include some provisions to alleviate the potential problems I described above.

At the very least we need to dramatically reduce the number of live warheads. Having 26,000 active weapons and a stockpile the size of Mount Everest is sheer lunacy. There's no other word for it. It's a situation begging for disaster.

All this said, we must also admit that we have permanently lost our innocence. We will have to live with the nuclear threat in perpetuity, even if these weapons cease to physically exist. There will never be a complete guarantee that countries have completely disarmed themselves and that re-armament won't ever happen again in the future.

But thankfully, a permanent guarantee of disarmament is not required for this process. The longer we go without nuclear weapons, the better.

NYT: Hidden Travels of the Atomic Bomb

The New York Times takes a look at two new books about the history and future of nuclear weapons proliferation: "The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation" by Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman, and "The Bomb: A New History" by Stephen M. Younger.

According to these insiders, the weapon was invented just once and its secrets were quickly spread around the globe:

All paths stem from the United States, directly or indirectly. One began with Russian spies that deeply penetrated the Manhattan Project. Stalin was so enamored of the intelligence haul, Mr. Reed and Mr. Stillman note, that his first atom bomb was an exact replica of the weapon the United States had dropped on Nagasaki.

Moscow freely shared its atomic thefts with Mao Zedong, China’s leader. The book says that Klaus Fuchs, a Soviet spy in the Manhattan Project who was eventually caught and, in 1959, released from jail, did likewise. Upon gaining his freedom, the authors say, Fuchs gave the mastermind of Mao’s weapons program a detailed tutorial on the Nagasaki bomb. A half-decade later, China surprised the world with its first blast.

The book, in a main disclosure, discusses how China in 1982 made a policy decision to flood the developing world with atomic know-how. Its identified clients include Algeria, Pakistan and North Korea.

Alarmingly, the authors say one of China’s bombs was created as an “export design” that nearly “anybody could build.” The blueprint for the simple plan has traveled from Pakistan to Libya and, the authors say, Iran. That path is widely assumed among intelligence officials, but Tehran has repeatedly denied the charge.

The book sees a quiet repercussion of China’s proliferation policy in the Algerian desert. Built in secrecy, the reactor there now makes enough plutonium each year to fuel one atom bomb and is ringed by antiaircraft missiles, the book says.

China’s deck also held a wild card: its aid to Pakistan helped A.Q. Khan, a rogue Pakistani metallurgist who sold nuclear gear on the global black market. The authors compare Dr. Khan to “a used-car dealer” happy to sell his complex machinery to suckers who had no idea how hard it was to make fuel for a bomb.

Why did Beijing spread its atomic knowledge so freely? The authors speculate that it either wanted to strengthen the enemies of China’s enemies (for instance, Pakistan as a counterweight to India) or, more chillingly, to encourage nuclear wars or terror in foreign lands from which Beijing would emerge as the “last man standing.”

Importantly, the authors go on to offer prescriptions for preventing the further spread of nuclear weapons. At the dawn of the nanotech weapons arms race, we need to be paying attention -- particularly given how quickly and how easily The Bomb got around.