zenpundit.com

I’m pleased to offer a different perspective here from blogfriend Charles Cameron of Hipbone Games who blogs at Forensic Theology. Charles has a deep academic background in comparative theological studies and he is offering insight into the mindset of millenarian religious radicals and what their motivations might mean for the concept of nuclear deterrence.  Cameron seeks to address an aspect that is, surprisingly, seldom highlighted properly in the media despite the U.S. having been at war with Islamist terrorists since 2001. The number of voices who have also tried to do so – Gilles Kepel, Olivier Roy, Tim Furnish and Michael Scheuer – have focused exclusively on radical Salafist and Mahdist Islamism while Cameron puts these in context  with all eschatological religious extremists, mythic archetypes and other primal currents of human culture.

Charles Cameron’s post is really an 18 page paper of considerable intellectual depth and subtlety and I offer it here to readers with a strong endorsement for your careful consideration.

“Religious and apocalyptic background to nuclear policy making”

“I read about Cheryl Rofer’s invitation to the blogosphere of 18 December, suggesting that we should form a “blog-tank” on nuclear policy, on my blog-friend Zenpundit’s blog. My purpose here is to offer as background to that ongoing discussion of nuclear policy, some reminders from the spheres of religion and mythology.

It is my purpose here to suggest that the actions, plans and motives of those who are subject to religious drivers, and in particular drivers of an apocalyptic or “end times” nature, are, by reason of their seeming irrationality and fringe quality, often overlooked by those whose specialties revolve around such things as centrifuges and the enrichment of uranium, short-range missiles and their forward deployment, and so forth – and that a theological understanding of the place of nuclear weapons in the eschatological thinking of radical religionists of a variety of stripes is one of the key desiderata in an effort to come to grips with the realities of proliferation and peace”.

Read the rest here (PDF)

Cheryl Rofer summarizes and synthesizes the nuclear policy ” blog tank” for “Round 1“. This is an excellent way to get the overall thrust of the debate in a single post including the contributions of a few bloggers that I did not catch the first time around.

Blogfriend Dave Schuler brings in the important economic and scientific limiting factors to the discussion:

“World production of U₃O₈ is roughly 47,000 tonnes. The spot price of uranium is about $90/lb. Conseqently, the total world production of natural uranium (the yellowcake we’ve heard so much about) is about $10 billion annually, much of which comes from Canada, Australia, and Kazakhstan with lesser amount produced in Niger, Russia, the U.S., and other countries.

Since the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapons development program is much on people’s minds, let’s use Iran as an example.

Annual Iranian oil revenues, the government’s main source of revenue, are roughly $50 billion annually. BTW, there have been some signs that, despite the rising price of oil, the Iranian government’s revenues from oil are actually falling due to decreasing production (for various reasons). Add to this the draw on the treasury created by the profligate policy of subsidizing gasoline which, while creating a certain amount of political peace, has the unfortunate secondary effect of increasing the use of gasoline in the country and decreasing the amount of the government’s revenues available for spending on nuclear development programs, whether peaceful or weapons development.”

Read the rest here.

“The maximum possible deterrence may require a war winning capability, but much less force may nevertheless possess deterrent value. However, we must remember that the enemy has a very great incentive to ensure our destruction. That incentive must be countered in the only way possible, which is to guarantee strong retaliation. The automaticity of retaliation is taken too much for granted. Deterrence involves problems of choice among weapons, vehicles and also targets. Deterrent capabilities are also influenced considerably by the state of civil defense and of armaments limitation and control.”                                                                    Bernard Brodie,  Strategy in the Missile Age [1]

Cheryl Rofer of Whirledview recently proposed a “blog tank” on the question of American Nuclear Policy, a subject currently undergoing reexamination by the Bush administration under strong Congressional pressure to do so.  The answers have not come easily to the deep thinkers at the Department of Defense and the think tanks that inhabit the Beltway because, by and large, their strategic assumptions about how the world is supposed to work underwent profound shifts from 1991-2001. The ten year interregnum between the collapse of Communism and September 11 featured unprecedented economic globalization, information revolution and centrifugal decentralization that have rendered the massive Russian and American nuclear arsenals of the bipolar, Cold War, world not obsolete, but obscure.  What role do nuclear weapons serve in assuring America’s national security, vital interests or preservation of global peace and stability ? Against whom or what are these weapons to be directed?

It is important to note that American nuclear policy and warfighting doctrine during the Cold War were as much products of bureaucratic evolution within nation-states as they were of calm, theoretical, reflection by defense intellectuals or interstate diplomatic agreements like START, SALT, ABM and the NPT. Nagasaki was bombed almost on a political “automatic pilot” as a result of top secret decisions made during FDR’s tenure with the new president, Harry Truman being told that the city was a “military target” ( “Much like New York city was a military target” McGeorge Bundy was known to later quip). Even as Truman’s key adviser and later Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes (“Mr. Atomic Bomb”) was trying to use the bomb’s existence in a hamhanded way to maximize American diplomatic leverage, a privately worried Truman removed control of atomic bombs from the hands of the U.S. military and put them firmly under civilian and most importantly, presidential, authority. When General of the Army Douglas MacArthur insubordinately continued to agitate for the use of atomic bombs against Red China during the Korean War, Truman fired him. 

Dwight Eisenhower shared Truman’s misgivings about allowing an erosion of civilian authority over the military and he deliberately relied upon American dominance in atomic and hydrogen bombs and SAC to enunciate a doctrine of “massive retaliation” that helped keep Soviet armies contained while keeping the American Army small ( and cheap). The combination of increasing thermonuclear megatonnage, multiplying numbers of warheads and ICBM’s as an emerging delivery system resulted in a paradoxical situation of radical  “overkill” in America’s nuclear posture by 1960, an arsenal that could hardly be used in our defense without also threatening the existence of all life on earth. With “Massive Retaliation” having come to a dead end, from the Kennedy administration forward to the collapse of the USSR during the administration of George H.W. Bush, American presidents attempted to apply rational limitations to nuclear arms in conjunction with Soviet leaders and in partnership with key NATO allies. A retreat away from assured apocalypse and toward “selective options” and targeting enemy “command and control” and hopefully, human or even national survival.

The unanticipated consequence of the Superpower arms race was the end of interstate war between great powers who increasingly relied upon client states and by the 1970’s and 1980’s, non-state actors as proxies for armed conflict.  To a great extent, the unthinkability of a superpower nuclear exchange has accelerated the devolution toward anarchy in warfare by making the option of “total war” an increasingly remote one for statesmen and enhancing the incentives to acquire “plausible deniability” by using irregulars as cut-outs – irregulars who increasingly no longer require states as patrons for acts of terrorism or to wage insurgencies. As Martin van Creveld has written:

“Owing largely to nuclear proliferation, the armed conflicts of the second half of the twentieth century were, without a single exception, fought either between third and fourth rate states or by a first rate state against a third or fourth rate state”. [2]

In a large measure, the absence of great power warfare, nuclear proliferation and the granular devolution of warfare represent the strategic legacy that the Cold War has bequeathed to the 21st century and constitute major problems in crafting a new American nuclear policy. What to do then ?

• As WWII resulted in approximately 60 million deaths, American national interests are served by a continued general suppression of great power warfare provided for my American and Russian nuclear preeminence (and the astronomical costs of attempting to field a high-tech military that can play on the same battlefield as the United States). That being said, there remains considerable room for nuclear arms reductions by both Russia and the United States without endangering the comparative advantage that inhibits third parties from engaging in a new arms race; these further reductions in nuclear arsenals should come only jointly, and in return for a dramatic  strengthening the Non-Proliferation regime to which non-nuclear states adhere. “Linkage” to other, unrelated but “incentivizing” issues should be considered to draw in the most likely would-be new nuclear powers.
• A diplomatic “Come in from the Cold” option for *all* rogue states enmeshed with terrorism and WMD proliferation threats to follow the path of Libya, receiving diplomatic and economic normalization and security from “regime change” in return for transparently divesting themselves of threatening or injurious activities.
• An international “quick reaction” agreement in place in case of a nuclear club member undergoing state failure and anarchy that imposes nuclear security obligations on all nuclear weapons powers and an intervention process until a new government can exercise responsibility obver the nuclear arsenal. Pakistan is the poster-boy candidate here but we should not oversetimate how quickly seeemingly secure states can disintegrate. We were all very lucky in 1991.
• Clarification of American nuclear targeting doctrine regarding hostile states attempting to acquire nuclear arms or engage in “first-use” against American allies or sponsor non-state actors who use WMDs in terrorist attacks. We should be both credible and clear.
• Conventional alternatives to nuclear weapons ( “bunker busters”, EMP bombs etc.) should be pursued.
• Recognition that while no “near peer” nuclear threat toward the United States exists today, this cannot be an assumption for all time. How many of us, in 1985, imagined the USSR would no longer exist six years later ?

Making nuclear policy for the United States is hard but it is immeasurably easier in 2007 than it was in 1957. The world has changed for the better, not for the worse. Let’s keep it that way.

1. Brodie, Bernard  Strategy in the Missile Age. 1959  RAND Corporation 

2.  Creveld, Martin van  The Changing Face of War: The Lessons of Combat from the Marne to Iraq. 2006. Ballantine Books

Big Hat tip to Dave Schuler for these posts. Read the introduction here.

Jason Sigger of Armchair Generalist. Sigger has, for those who are unaware, a military background in CB warfare issues. An excerpt from his post:

“US Nuclear Weapons Policy”

“I am not going to have a long discussion on the proper role of nuclear weapons. If you want that understanding, go read Thomas Schelling’s “Arms and Influence.” I do want to outline the broad brush strokes of a progressive nuclear weapons policy that has a few main points of departure: 1) the US government will always need nuclear weapons as a strategic deterrent against other countries that have nuclear weapons; 2) the US government needs to minimize the possibility of a future nuclear conflict between other nations as well as between the United States and another major power; and 3) there is no such thing as a tactical nuke.

….US policy makers need to stop the practice of “deliberate ambiguity” as a diplomatic threat against other nations who are doing something the US government doesn’t like. We ought not threaten non-nuclear nation-states with nuclear weapons, as we did against Iraq in 1991 and 2003. Retaliating against chemical-biological weapons with nuclear weapons is not justifiable; this counters basic Cold War (Schelling) logic of rational deterrence. The message needs to be clear and simple: If you have nuclear weapons, you are now a target on our Single Integrated Operational Plan.

As for the second point, the US government needs to continue to pursue a strong nonproliferation strategy with both nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states. Part of this strategy must include acknowledgement that Israel has nuclear weapons, and that they are a part of the problem within the Middle East. I fail to understand the coy game played by US and Israeli politicians on this point. Until open discussions begin, how can we expect Iran, Syria, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia to discard the ambition of becoming a nuclear power? It’s basic deterrence theory again. I’m not suggesting that Israel give up its nukes; far from it, I want Israel to openly declare that they have nukes and will use them as part of its national strategy. This tact hasn’t hurt relations between the US government and India or Pakistan so far. “

Read the rest here.

Andy of Non Partisan Pundit:

“21st Century Nuclear Strategy”

“To begin with, I’d like to point out and discuss three important premises that I believe are critical:

1. Nuclear strategy is not isolated and is part of, and integral to, broader US strategy.  Although the concept of nuclear strategy as a mere portion of overall US strategy appears obvious and self-evident, debates on nuclear policy are still too often divorced from the “big picture” strategy debate.  It is my contention that nuclear policy differences among experts are those in the “blog tank” not primarily rooted in disputes over nuclear policy itself but represent disputes over broader US strategic policy and the role the US should and will play on the world stage in the 21st century.  Added to this mix is what “New World Order” the international system will morph into over the coming years and decades – a process which, in my view, is still ongoing.  Therefore, I would suggest the debate on US nuclear policy is really a debate on larger, more complex and highly-interrelated issues.

2. Related to the previous premise is my contention that the US lacks a coherent and defendable strategic vision or plan for the 21st century.  Without a coherent vision it becomes difficult to formulate coherent and integrated policies and nuclear policy is no exception.  The US appears to me divided and reticent after “winning” the cold war, unsure of where to go or what to do next beyond incrementalism and maintaining the status quo, particularly since interventionism is not working out so well.

3. Nuclear weapons cannot be 100% verifiably eliminated. The problem with eliminating nuclear weapons entirely is one of trust and verification.  For relatively new nuclear states, this is a difficult prospect, for the US, Russia, China, and others it is exceedingly difficult.  Ensuring that a country does not have a few weapons or material hidden away is virtually impossible given the nuclear history and accounting practices of many of these states.  Therefore, any agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons will require a relatively high degree of trust sans verification – a condition which states of all stripes will find difficult to accept.  This concern, however, can be partially addressed through limiting delivery platforms, as I’ll discuss later.”

Read the rest here.

I’m looking to have my contribution to Cheryl’s discussion up sometime late tomorrow night or possibly Friday.