Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present:

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Chapter 2: On the Principles and Parameters of Strategic StabilityThe core of the modern military and strategic balance is its most dangerous and destructivecomponent: nuclear forces and means, starting with strategic assets. In this context, there are veryclose connections among the two sides’ separate offensive and defensive forces and within each oftheir military forces. At the same time, the stability of the balance, especially in the event of nuclearstalemate, is essentially influenced by their general-purpose forces and conventional arms.The concept of stability is implied to estimate how easy it is to startle and destabilize a system—inthis instance, the super-system of strategic nuclear interaction—out of its current state. 27 Thisconcept logically implies an estimate of the risk of an outbreak of nuclear war, in view of thegiven correlation and structure of the parties’ military forces and, first and foremost, the strategicpotential of those forces. The main aspect of stability is the existence of a certain potential barrierthat, if cleared as a result of some external disturbance, would cause the transition of the strategicmilitary super-system into a qualitatively new state—from the typical interactions of peacetime tothe interactions that are characteristic of the fundamentally different logic of military conflict, alogic that leads to a nuclear, strategic war.This potential barrier is formed by a group of political and military factors, where the principalfactor is a correlation between the following elements:• The political and military goals of nuclear war of various scales and types;• The capabilities of each side to use force in the resolution of crisis situations, and the currentlyavailable material and technical resources available for the prosecution of such a war; and• The relevant consequences of using such force.The stability of the balance is determined by the parameters, which are decisive factors in theevaluation of how easily one of the sides would disrupt the existing balance and attain superiority,and how difficult it would be for the other side to take countermeasures to restore the balance byneutralizing these steps.The concepts of balance or equilibrium, and stability formerly reflected one in the same conditionof strategic balance for each sides’ forces. In the first half of the 1970s, these concepts began todiffer in their meaning (the Soviet Union was several years behind the U.S. in the process of masstransition from single-warhead missiles to MIRVs). 28 The term “equilibrium” more likely reflectsquantitative parameters of the existing nuclear super-system, while the concept of stability characterizesits quality. (Therefore, equilibrium, or balance, may be stable or unstable). The emergentdifference does not resolve itself into the semantic nonidentity of the two concepts; rather, it isdeeply practical, since it provides for the identification of the main problems that determine theincrease or reduction of risk of nuclear conflicts, 29 including the risk of an outbreak of nuclearwar.Maintenance of military and strategic equilibrium with due regard for existing nuclear-missile armamentsdoes not stipulate maintenance of the exact symmetric equality of the two sides’ forces.To a certain extent, the enormous destructive capacity of nuclear weapons equalizes the20Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present: Theoretical and Applied Questions
differences between the parties’ arsenals, as well as the technical characteristics of certain componentsof their strategic forces. It should always be borne in mind that a nuclear explosion ischaracterized not only by an extremely high concentration of released energy in an extremelyshort time—fractions of a microsecond—but also by a variety of adverse factors: a major partof the energy is released in the form of the kinetic energy generated by the nuclear reaction andby neutron and gamma emissions. Apart from the blast wave and heat flash, the adverse factorsof nuclear weapons include penetrating radiation, radioactive contamination and electromagneticpulse (EMP). There are six types of nuclear explosions: the air burst, the high-altitude burst(above the troposphere boundary, which is higher than 10 km), the water-surface burst, thesurface burst, the underwater burst and the subsurface burst. The latter may be with or withoutsoil displacement (the camouflet or confined explosion). The main adverse factors of a subsurfacenuclear explosion include heavy seismic waves. A subsurface nuclear explosion with soil displacementis also accompanied by an air blast and severe radioactive contamination of the area. Oneof the characteristic features of these explosions is the formation of a crater, which may vary insize depending on the yield, depth of explosion and type of soil. Subsurface bursts are designatedfor high-accuracy destruction of hardened embedded structures. With present-day conditions inmind, a high-altitude burst is interesting first of all as a source of EMP and super-EMP, which primarilycause a blackout of the sensitive electronics of military and civil systems. 30 A surface bursttakes place on the ground surface or at when the fireball touches the ground surface; such explosionsare also designated for destruction of subsurface and hardened surface targets.The established military and strategic equilibrium has what Alexander Vasiliev, the distinguishedRussian expert on the problems of strategic stability and missile systems, once called a “safetymargin.” (When describing this phenomenon, Major Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin used the term “stabilitymargin.”) The existence of such a margin, and an accurate understanding of its scale, createessential conditions for maneuver in the course of negotiations on the limitation and reductionof nuclear arms and in the development of proficient, flexible approaches to the formulation ofarrangements.This safety margin, or stability margin, is to a certain extent amenable to quantitative and qualitativeevaluation; it may decrease concurrent to reductions in the parties’ nuclear arsenals. However,enhancement of the structure, the composition of strategic forces, and a number of othermeasures may provide for the preservation of the safety margin at a high level. With present-dayconditions in mind, calculation of this safety margin is especially important and topical for Russiain terms of devising approaches to the development of strategic nuclear forces (SNF) and of consideringwhether to negotiate new limits and reductions in nuclear arms.Generally speaking, strategic stability is based on the inability of each of the sides to deliver apreemptive or a fixed-time strike capable of disabling the major part (if not all) of the nuclearforces that other side could use in the delivery of a retaliation strike. Many experts equitably notethat there is considerable technical and operational uncertainty related to the possibility of a massivesynchronized strike (a salvo aimed at the mass destruction of hundreds of targets at the sametime), which could lead to destruction of all ICBM launching silos. Practical experimentation onsuch a scale is impossible, while computer simulation cannot reduce the degree of uncertainty to aconvincing level. Moreover, in the event of a nuclear strike, ballistic missiles will not be launchedalong their usual test-trajectories. Rather, they will be launched along combat trajectories thatBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs | Harvard Kennedy School 21
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