GSN Digital Edition April 2016

likely that anyone will challenge them
in this area believed rich in oil and
gas and strategically vital.
“Mutual Assured Destruction”
One fear about the new weapons is
that they could undercut the grim
logic of “Mutual Assured Destruction,”
the Cold War doctrine that any
attack would result in massive retaliation
and ultimately the annihilation
of all combatants. While much debated
and often mocked, in classics like
the movie “Dr. Strangelove”, “MAD”
worked. Now the precision and lessdestructive
nature of these new weapons
raises the temptation to use them.
Moscow and Beijing are testing
space weapons that could knock out
U.S. military satellites at the beginning
of a nuclear war. In response,
Washington is launching space observation
satellites meant to deter
and help defeat such attacks. For decades,
the main nuclear powers have
observed a shaky global ban on testing,
a central pillar of nuclear arms
control. Advocates of the U.S. nuclear
modernization program call it a reasonable
response to Putin’s aggression,
especially his 2014 invasion of
Crimea.
While that fulfills the president’s
commitment to rely less on atomic
weapons, it may prompt adversaries
who cannot match the technology
to depend more on nuclear arms.
The diminished nuclear arms and
the non-nuclear
weapons that the
U.S. is developing
could make
the unthinkable
more thinkable.
No major nuclear
power feels
more threatened
by U.S. advances
than China.
A pre-emptive
strike might easily
do in its relatively
small arsenal. Beijing has felt
increasingly encircled. It sees a U.S.
HGV as a way to attack China without
crossing the nuclear threshold,
complicating its assessment of nuclear
retaliation.
For decades Washington and Moscow
have kept their nuclear forces on
high alert so that, in theory, military
authorities can fire missiles if networks
of radars, satellites and computers
detect an incoming strike. The
tactic is meant to dodge a crippling
blow that might curb or eliminate a
nation’s ability to retaliate.
Critics see the “launch on warning”
tactic as greatly increasing the risk of
accidental war. In the past, they note,
false alerts have repeatedly brought
the world to the brink of disaster. Last
year, the Chinese military declared
in an official document that it seeks
to “improve strategic early warning”
for its nuclear forces. Advocates of
11
arms control see increasing numbers
of warheads and lethality of delivery
vehicles. If maneuverable warheads
become a global reality in the next decade,
then the world will have failed
to put a new nuclear genie back in
the bottle, and these new HGV genies
will be on the loose at Mach 10.
George Lane has 25 years of experience
in the development of chemical
security systems, conducting research
as a NASA Fellow at the Stennis Space
Center and as a NSF Fellow. Lane was
air quality SME for the University of
California at Berkeley Center for Catastrophic
Risk Management during the
BP Oil Spill. Lane is currently chemical
security SME for the Naval Postgraduate
School Maritime Interdiction
Operations in the Center for Network
Innovation and Experimentation.