Two-sided nuke-rattling against the ISIS third?
[ by Charles Cameron — trying to catch up with posts here when working on book proposals ]
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Consider these two statements made in recent days:
How does a war game — or game theory, for that matter — deal with the differenes, similarities, or continuum between threats and exercises on the one hand, and the actions they threaten or game on the other?
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I have eagerly forgotten what temperature a nuclear strike inflicts on its human victims, and just how quickly they arrive there from room temperature. A sahih (trustworthy) hadith found in Tirmidhi tells us that the Prophet reserved the burning of infidels for God in the hereafter, and rejected its use by his followers in carrying out a death sentence:
That ‘Ali burnt some people who apostasized from Islam. This news reached Ibn ‘Abbas, so he said: “If it were me I would have killed them according to the statement of Messenger of Allah (saw). The Messenger of Allah (saw) said: ‘Whoever changes his religion then kill him.’ And I would not have burned them because the Messenger of Allah (saw) said: ‘Do not punish with the punishment of Allah.’ So this reached ‘Ali, and he said: “Ibn ‘Abbas has told the truth.”
I lasck specific knowledge of contemporary commentary on this hadith, but it occurs to me that in the time of the early Muslim community’s war for survival, apostasy would be equivalent to desertion. The US sentence for desertion in time of war, to this day, is described thus in the US Manual for Courts-Martial:
Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct,
The death penalty for desertion in time of war was last administered by US authorities in 1945.
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Don’t we have something pretty close to a taboo on the use of nuclear weaponry?
December 18th, 2015 at 4:31 pm
No, the United States does not have a taboo on using nuclear weapons. While the Carter and Reagan administrations moved to target military and command structures instead of populations and Obama administration has narrowed the scope of contingencies in which we would introduce nuclear weapons and shifted toward deterrence based on fewer nuclear warheads and delivery systems, we are explicitly by policy a “first strike” nuclear power.
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304620304575166263632513790
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Moreover, this is not simply tough talk. The United States is the only state to have used nuclear weapons in wartime and we were verifiably prepared to do so on a number of other occasions. We may forget this, the rest of the world never has.
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What exists is a psychological reluctance to become the second user of nuclear weapons in world history.
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This is particularly the case with adversarial, minor nuclear powers or even China because they lack a reliable second-strike capacity that would bring them into a MAD dynamic with the US or Russia. Nuking San Franciso (or a Russian target), as China or maybe North Korea or Pakistan someday could do will guarantee the utter annihilation of their regime and the deaths of at a minimum, tens of millions of their people.
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The World Court decades back attempted to “outlaw” the use of nuclear weapons, even in self-defense in rulings. Their rulings are not binding and we don’t give it a shred of credence in this instance.
December 18th, 2015 at 5:56 pm
This is a great kickstarter to an exploration of the topic, Zen — thanks.
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By “we” in “Don’t we have something pretty close to a taboo” I wasn’t referring so much to USG as to a sort of global concensus, ill-defined and probably extrapolated from my own sense (a) that use of nuclear weaponry is best avoided, and (b) that we’re very fortunate to have avoided it thus far since 1945.
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The mere possession of nuclear weapons, even if not officially proclaimed, is a potent threat, the degree varying (as you note) according to the respective positions of potential opponents, and yes, “We” — here meaning the US — “may forget this, the rest of the world never has”.
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I hope you and others here will continue to offer further background, detail and nuance to this comment section. I have much to learn.
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Thanks again.
December 19th, 2015 at 2:36 am
Obama approved the biggest nuclear buildup since the cold war
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2015/12/15/obama-backs-biggest-nuclear-arms-buildup-since-cold-war/
Putin has reportedly deployed short and medium range missiles in Crimea. Now with the rising tension between Russia and Turkey, there is some legitimate questions about what side we should be on.
December 21st, 2015 at 1:35 am
Charles, the “taboo” link doesn’t go anywhere. Perhaps appropriate?
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I’ll try to supply the counter to Mark’s comment.
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There is a certain amount of learned talk about a taboo on nuclear weapons. I’ve read one or two articles in that vein, and I didn’t think they made the case that “taboo” in the anthropological sense applied. And it seems to me that the evidence isn’t out there.
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I do think that there is a consensus that nuclear weapons are not to be used, although the talk often goes against that, most recently and frequently from Vladimir Putin and his lieutenants.
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As Mark says, deterrence against secondary powers is pretty strong. And perhaps that consensus is just what he calls a reluctance to become the second user in history.
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Putin’s recent nuke-rattling worries me because he seems to have made some impulsive decisions, like taking Crimea and now inflicting cyberwar on Turkey. But both of those are far from a nuclear strike. I hope that is true in his mind too.
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And there’s one more reason to think his nuke-rattling may merely be rhetoric.
December 21st, 2015 at 4:31 am
Oy, thanks — it should go to:
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I’ve fixed the link above. I haven’t seen, much less read, the book.
Thanks as always for your comments, and for the pointer to Nuclear Diner.
December 21st, 2015 at 5:02 am
Nina Tannenwald is the one I was thinking about but didn’t recall her name. I haven’t read the book either, but have read articles by her and others on the topic.
December 21st, 2015 at 11:59 pm
Thinking that there is some taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is really, to me, just some wishful thinking. Such as before 2001 and the thought that the US would have an active policy of torturing people with many of its population supporting it would have been unthinkable, nukes are still an option.
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So in disregarding the taboo myth, it really comes down to tactics and strategy. Tactically, the US (and I think this holds for Russia as well) has a policy of using nukes.
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But the US military and implicitly Russia has said that they don’t need them. Close is only good for horseshoes and nuclear bombs, and most modern (so far excluding China) militaries would rather be accurate than close. There is no profit in being close.
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I don’t think China has a problem with close, because they are already close with the US. At least close enough economically to maintain it as an option, if its untried military was to fail.