Minerva, Fall 2011 - Citizens for Global Solutions

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and former Secretary of State HenryKissinger for proposing abolition, twentyyears later Nunn and Kissinger joined formerSecretary of Defense William Perryand former Secretary of State GeorgeShultz in adopting Reagan’s ideas. TheFour Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse,in their justly famous Wall Street Journaleditorial of January 4, 2007, boldly calledfor “a world free of nuclear weapons.”Having looked for decades at the variousdead-ends to which nuclear weaponsled, and the “increasingly hazardous”and “more precarious” nuclear future inwhich (a) even unpredictable third worlddictators were now capable of acquiringnuclear weapons and (b) nuclear materialscould more easily fall into the handsof non-deterrable terrorists, they endorsedReagan and Gorbachev’s vision of a nuclearfree world. 1 Similarly, dozens ofstatesmen from all over the world havecome out for abolition, as have dozens ofretired military generals and admirals andthe like (just to name a few: Admiral NoelGaylor, Admiral Eugene Carroll, GeneralLee Butler, General Andrew Goodpaster,General Charles Horner, George Kennan,Melvin Laird, Robert McNamara,Colin Powell, and George H.W. Bush). 2In short, the idea of abolishing nuclearweapons has moved from being the viewof a prophetic few 3 to being the new consensusposition, 4 held by approximately80% of the American public. 5And yet, despite this shift of both eliteand public opinion, twenty years afterthe supposed end of the Cold War, westill have thousands of nuclear missilesready to go off in minutes, with a collectiveforce 150,000 times the power of theHiroshima bomb. With “a decision windowfor each country’s president of fourto eight minutes” (after deducting timefor missile attack detection and confirmation,and the time for the response launchsequence and fly-away), 6 the increasinglydecrepit Russian C-3 (command,control, communications) systems, anda long history (largely unknown to theAmerican public) of “near misses” withnuclear war, 7 it is no wonder that those inthe know have become disenchanted withour current strategic posture. As one veryknowledgeable nuclear weapons industryinsider puts it:It has always been acknowledged thatan international security system basedon the willingness of nations to commitmutual suicide in order to protectthemselves is a suboptimum solutionto the security dilemma. 8Suboptimal indeed. George Shultz summedup the situation about as concisely asanyone when, confronted by the neoconservativesabout what almost transpired atReykjavik, he responded simply: “What’sso great about a world that can be blownup in 30 minutes?” 9In short, we find ourselves in a paradoxicalsituation where both candidates forpresident in 2008 ran on a platform ofabolishing nuclear weapons, where weare already theoretically obligated toeliminate them pursuant to the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (Article VI), and yet,for whatever reason — bureaucratic inertiaor the machinations of the militaryindustrial-congressionalcomplex — wehave thousands of nuclear weapons stillready and waiting to more or less end theworld in the course of one rather long afternoon.10 Despite all this, however, thereis a growing sense, a building momentum,a feeling that now is the time for abolition.The books under review all reflectthis consensus.46 • Minerva #39 • November 2011Two basic arguments are being made forabolition: (1) that nuclear weapons, onbalance, do not add to our security, butdetract from it (the strategic argument);and (2) that they are barbaric relics thathave no proper place in military armories(the moral argument). Most emphasishas been placed upon the first of thesearguments. What is involved is a rathercomplicated assessment of relative risks.Those who have looked longest and hardestat the paths where continued relianceupon nuclear weapons leads have, withsurprising unanimity, 11 concluded thatthis is simply “too frightful and dangerousa way to live indefinitely”. 12 As RobertMcNamara, the man who (as Secretaryof Defense) was Manager of Our Missilesfor longer than anybody, puts it:Among the costs of maintaining nuclearweapons is the risk — to me anunacceptable risk — of use of theweapons either by accident or as aresult of misjudgment or miscalculationin times of crisis…. Human beingsare fallible. In conventional war,mistakes cost lives, sometimes thousandsof lives. However, if mistakeswere to affect decisions relating tothe use of nuclear forces, there wouldbe no learning curve…. The indefinitecombination of human fallibility andnuclear weapons carries a very highrisk of nuclear catastrophe. 13These and other risks are well describedin Tad Daley’s important book, which isperhaps the single best collection of allthe arguments favoring abolition. Forthose interested in the historical evolutionof nuclear strategic thinking, RichardRhodes’ magnificent Arsenals of Follycollects in one place what was previouslyto be found in two dozen books on thecontradictions and occasional illogic associatedwith the topic. 14 Indeed, for a fullground-level feel for the awesome natureof nuclear weapons and their historic developmentover the past six decades, all ofhis books on nuclear issues, starting withhis Pulitzer-Prize-winning The Making ofthe Atomic Bomb, are essential reading.Of the many very good “collections”, theCarnegie collection, Abolishing NuclearWeapons: A Debate, offers a brilliant concept:an initial set of papers by the leadauthors (George Perkovich and James Acton)followed by “responses” from some18 writers with varying viewpoints fromall over the world. Many of the most invaluableinsights (e.g., chiding the lead authorsfor over-cautious thinking) are to befound in these responses. The very helpfulKelleher-Reppy collection featuresdetailed analyses of the nuclear strategicthinking in each of the nuclear weaponsstates; a focus on the role the labs mightplay in transitioning to zero (Judith Reppy);a nice analysis of the possible futurepsychodynamics of social change (MatthewEvangelista); and a good discussionof the role of conventional arms balancing(Dennis Gormley). Also of greatvalue, especially for a very detailed andthoughtful draft of a model nuclear weaponsabolition convention, is the SecuringOur Survival compilation. Several of thevolumes, especially Daley’s, Carnegie,Securing Our Survival, and the Evans-Kawaguchi International Commission,provide key insights into the question of
how strategically we might move towardabolition.Many if not most of the books (the notableexception being Douglas Roche’snew book), despite talking about the needto “de-legitimize” nuclear weapons, giveslight attention to the moral question.It is as if they are so eager to avoid beingcharacterized as too “idealistic” andinsufficiently “clear-eyed” and “hardheaded”as those strategic brainiacs of oldwho coolly calculated and contemplatedworldwide gigadeaths (deaths in the billions)that they repeatedly miss opportunitiesto note the obvious. That these arenot “military” weapons; that they are, asRonald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachevpointed out, “irrational and inhumane”.They are designed to boil, fry, incinerate,evaporate, and irradiate very largenumbers of innocent human beings. CambridgeProfessor Philip Allott nicely capturesthe enormity of their evil:In the 20th century, the crazy idea thatthe human race might not survive wastreated as a suitable topic for rationaldiscussion and rational decision-making.People who are otherwise saneand sensible could talk about MutualAssured Destruction and the End ofCivilisation. People who are otherwisesane and sensible could make andmanage total war, wars with no necessarygeographical limit, no effectivelimit to the methods of death and destruction,no limit to the suffering tobe endured by powerless and blamelesshuman beings. In the 20th century,people who are otherwise decent andcaring could regard it as regrettable,but natural, that countless millions ofhuman beings should live in conditionsof life which are a permanent insult totheir humanity…. 15The Objections to Abolition. Of themany possible objections to abolition, thefollowing seem to be the leading ones.1) You cannot dis-invent nuclear weapons.This is of course true, but it is noobjection to abolition. You cannot disinventchemical and biological weapons,but we did abolish them in the BiologicalWeapons Convention (1972) and theChemical Weapons Convention (1993).Secondly, as Jonathan Schell first pointedout, the very fact that the nuclear genie ispermanently out of the bottle is what willpermit a sort of virtual nuclear deterrenceto continue to work in a nuclear-freeworld, but without the actual weaponssitting there ready to go off in minutes.There remains a disquieting problem withthis concept, however, which is that it isarguably inconsistent with the abolitionist/de-legitimizationmission. Thus, whilethere may be some inevitable role forvirtual deterrence, there appears to be agrowing consensus that we need to set ourface determinedly against any ideas of reconstitutingnuclear weapons. If we everdo need to confront a recalcitrant nuclearlaw breaker, conventional forces will easilysuffice (as a last resort). 162) Abolishing nuclear weapons wouldmake the world “safe” for conventionalwar. This is probably the most seriousobjection to abolition. 17 But despite a certainsurface plausibility, when one looksat it carefully, it gradually loses its force.For one thing, it is fair to ask, as BarryBlechman does: “Has there been peace inEurope (Yugoslavia aside) for the past 60-plus years because Britain, France, andRussia have nuclear weapons, or becausethe national rivalries that led to the warsof the 20th century have been replaced bya common understanding in that part ofthe world that the price of modern war,even with conventional weapons, is horrendousand that international cooperationand integration is by far the bettercourse?” 18 Moreover, as various authorspoint out: (a) even in a world of zeronuclear weapons, Schell’s “knowledge isdeterrence” concept would be operativeto some extent; (b) the United States hasa huge edge over every other country inconventional weapons, and this would deterjust as well as nuclear weapons; 19 (c)at bottom, a nuclear-weapon-free worldwould be much safer than one with suchweapons; and (d) nuclear weapons are inthe end sociopathic and immoral weaponswhich, like mustard gas or the gas chambersof the Holocaust, can no longer betolerated.3) Breakout possibility. Probably the singlemost frequent objection to abolitionis the possibility of “breakout”. 20 But this47 • Minerva #39 • November 2011objection is actually rather easily rebuttedupon close examination. It turns out thatif you run various simulations on what abreakout state might accomplish with afew or even a great many nuclear warheads,“it would not be able to do muchof anything with them at all”. 21 Far fromsuddenly being able to “rule the world,”as postulated by abolition objectors, theywould be confronted with not only theUSA’s awesome conventional forces butthe combined military might of the wholeworld. 22 Moreover, worldwide moral outragewould condemn them as an internationalpariah, something that “nuclearrealists” tend to discount, but somethingthat in the real world tends to make quitea difference. 234) Verification & Enforcement Concerns.It has been objected that a treaty abolishingnuclear weapons could not be satisfactorilyverified. With each passing year, inwhich we gain new means of verification— including radioisotope monitoring,portal and perimeter continuous monitoring,environmental sampling, wide areasurveillance, real time surveillance, onsitesensors, hydroacoustic and seismicand infrasound monitoring — this willnot be a valid objection to an abolitionregime. It is true that nothing less than avery intrusive and solid verification regimewill be necessary. It will take hardwork, and it will be costly, but there is abroad consensus that it can be done. 24As to the key issue of enforcement: in additionto adequate verification, it will alsobe necessary to set up a robust and welldefinedsystem for enforcing an abolitionregime, if the nuclear weapons states areto have confidence that they can safelygive up their weapons. Some of the issueshere are only beginning to be explored.Most of the commentators admit that it isdifficult to predict at this point what it willtake or what might be negotiated, but itwill need to be more thoroughgoing thatwhat we now have. 25 Moreover, the consensusview is that, unlike most treaties,withdrawal from an abolition treaty mustbe prohibited. 26 Finally, accompanyingan abolition convention, the use or possessionof nuclear weapons and materialsmust be made an international crime punishableas a crime against humanity. 27
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