October 02, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Nuclear Deterrence, Part IV: Non-Proliferation
Nuclear Deterrence, Part IV: Non-Proliferation
In Part I, we discussed how MAD closes off potential areas of escalation. In Part II, we discussed the principle of overwhelming force. In Part III, we discussed the importance of presenting a credible threat. Now we'll talk about the central role of non-proliferation.
Believe it or not, you are not the first Americans to worry about the possibility of a suitcase nuke. Before MAD, this was the biggest worry Americans had about the new atomic age. The Russians did not, at the time of their first nuclear test, have the long-range delivery capacity to destroy us. What they did have was the open-ness of our society -- and issue we find ourselves facing once again.
At one point in the early years, there was actually a proposal to decentralize our entire economy in order to make it nuke proof. Ideas ranged from the mild (bury cities; move key factories out to the middle of nowhere) to the drastic (mandate a maximum population density, and forcibly disperse the populations of the cities, accepting the social and economic consequences that would follow.) We didn't do it; it was politically and economically nearly impossible. Instead we got MAD.
An important part of MAD, however, was making sure that our opponents had no incentive to put, say, a nuke in our 20 largest cities, and then deliver their demands. Or, more likely, put a nuke in our 20 largest city and blow them, effectively destroying us as a military and economic power. How did we do that? By treating such an attack the same way we would have treated any other attack on the territory of the United States, and launching our strategic nuclear arsenal.
Central to this, however, was non-proliferation. In 1951, if an atomic bomb had gone off in Cleveland -- well, we could be pretty sure it wasn't the British or the French.
In 1981, the differences in nuclear technology between the Chinese and the Russians would have likewise enabled us to identify the culprit. And we'd still be -- well, fairly sure, anyway -- that it wasn't the French.
But there were two other important reasons that non-proliferation was central to MAD. First of all, it removed the temptation to engage in proxy wars. "I gave a bomb to the Turks so that they could protect themselves from those crazy Greeks, and oops! they accidentally nuked Moscow. I've told them and told them you need to maintain an airtight maintenance schedule on those launchers."
And second, the nature of a MAD-type scenario is that while it is very stable with a small number of players, it is highly unstable as the number of players rises. And the decrease in stability with each additional player is exponential, rather than arithmetic.
Raising the number of players erodes the other pillars of deterrence we've been talking about. It reduces the credibility of your threat, because you can no longer take unilateral action. It likewise hampers overwhelming response. And instead of closing off potential avenues of escalation, it opens them, because as each player is added, there are more and more lines along which conflict can occur. At some point, the number of potential avenues begins to generate what I think of as collisions -- it is impossible to avoid one avenue of conflict without opening another.
This is why people who say we should just sigh and resign ourselves to the inevitable proliferation make me crazy. Because as far as I am aware, no one has yet designed a stable large-player system that would deter nuclear use. It isn't impossible to deter nuclear proliferation; for one thing, it would be possible for us to conquer every nation that supplies uranium and make sure none gets exported. Or conquer every country that even looked like it was trying to develop nuclear capability. It's just very, very unattractive. But then, so is the prospect of countries resolving border disputes with nuclear weapons. And since it's a lot easier to deter nuclear proliferation than it is to deter nuclear use once proliferation has occurred, I'd like to concentrate on the former rather than waiting for the latter.
Next: I wrap it all up and show you why I'm right and you're wrong. About everything. You bow down and worship me as a living god. I spend the rest of my days on earth lounging in my luxury apartment while humble disciples bring me tribute from the far corners of the earth.
Posted by Jane Galt at October 2, 2002 05:53 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links