Sleepwalking With the Bomb (3 page)

There was little historical guidance. America’s Founding Fathers, by contrast, drew lessons extracted by painstaking study of historical examples dating back to ancient Greece, traced through imperial Rome, medieval England, and more. Over 2,000 years of history were encompassed in such narratives.

Now, after two-thirds of a century, global nuclear history offers multiple clear examples that teach lessons on how to minimize the risk of nuclear catastrophe in the present and future. Yesterday’s history gives us concrete evidence of what has worked and what has failed. Now there are enough examples to illustrate—for the public and policy makers alike—how to most effectively address the nuclear issues we face. This book applies lessons of nuclear-age history to chart a less utopian, more prudent path.

Support for nuclear disarmament—so-called nuclear zero—flies in the face of history’s lessons. Proponents of nuclear zero hold that the possibility of nuclear annihilation creates among all nations a common interest in mutual survival. They also hold that a world without nuclear weapons can be achieved by means of diplomacy. According to their view, the use of a single nuclear weapon will inevitably lead to an all-out nuclear war—that is, to mutual assured destruction; disarmament is therefore necessary to save the human race.

Public policy prescription has always been, in the main, guesswork, but there are better and worse guesses. Guesses that rely on the belief that all countries and all leaders share our core civilizational values are likely to be wrong. The strategists, with their numbers and calculations, can err with catastrophic consequences—but equally so can those who slight sound strategic principles or disdain numbers and calculations, because they pursue disarmament as an end in itself in spite of what history has to teach.

The first two chapters of the book offer some background.
Chapter 1
explains why policies driving America’s arsenal towards nuclear zero would, far from making America, its allies, or the world safer, bring everyone closer to nuclear catastrophe. This is especially crucial to realize as the United States elects a president in 2012; the winner likely will face decisions of greater moment than any since at least the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Chapter 2
reviews nuclear-age history, highlighting key events from the three eras of nuclear arms evolution: 1945 to 1967, which saw an all-out arms race; 1968 to 1992, which was dominated by superpower efforts to restrain arms competition; and 1993 to the present, which has featured growing nuclear proliferation by hostile states.

Each of the next eleven chapters offers a narrative of key faces, places, and cases with an eye towards the vital lessons nuclear-age history now offers—lessons that are being ignored at grave peril to world political, economic, and social stability.

Chapter 3
looks at the former Soviet Union and today’s Russia to examine the relationship—in strategic parlance the question of “linkage”—between the nuclear arms policies and foreign policies of nuclear nations. It offers the F
IRST
L
ESSON
: A
RMS CONTROL CANNOT BE VIEWED IN ISOLATION, BUT RATHER MUST BE CONSIDERED ALONG WITH AN ADVERSARY’S CONDUCT
.

Chapter 4
examines the problem of trying to negotiate arms agreements with adversaries. The experience of the United States over several decades teaches the S
ECOND
L
ESSON
: A
RMS AGREEMENTS MUST BE BASED UPON GENUINE, NOT PRESUMED, COMMONALITY OF STRATEGIC INTEREST.

Chapter 5
examines the risk of a future global nuclear confrontation with Iran in light of new information about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. That event, properly understood, teaches the T
HIRD
L
ESSON
: R
EVOLUTIONARY POWERS CANNOT BE CONTAINED; THEY MUST BE DEFEATED.

Chapter 6
looks at North Korea to consider the risk of a rogue nuclear state blackmailing adversaries with the threat of a sudden resort to nuclear weapons. It offers the F
OURTH
L
ESSON:
N
UCLEAR WEAPONS GIVE NATIONS A “DYING STING” CAPABILITY THAT VIRTUALLY PRECLUDES PREEMPTIVE ACTION AND CONFERS NEAR-TOTAL SURVIVAL INSURANCE.

Chapter 7
looks at China and Chinese history to consider the risk of a regional power confrontation escalating to nuclear war. The Chinese experience teaches the F
IFTH
L
ESSON:
T
HE NUCLEAR BALANCE MATTERS IF ANY PARTY TO A CONFLICT THINKS IT MATTERS, AND THUS ALTERS ITS BEHAVIOR.

An “interlude” between chapters 7 and 8 examines how thin is the line between development of commercial nuclear power and the development of weapons. The discussion there serves as an important background to subsequent chapters.

Chapter 8
looks at India and Pakistan to examine the risk of regional nuclear war. It also examines the risk posed by theft of nuclear weapons or an Islamist takeover of the country. These countries’ experiences teach the S
IXTH
L
ESSON:
C
IVILIAN NUCLEAR POWER INHERENTLY CONFERS MILITARY NUCLEAR CAPABILITY.

Chapter 9
examines the problem of obtaining accurate intelligence on a country’s nuclear power program, looking specifically at Western experiences with Iraq and Iran. It offers the S
EVENTH
L
ESSON:
I
NTELLIGENCE CANNOT RELIABLY PREDICT WHEN CLOSED SOCIETIES GO NUCLEAR.

Chapter 10
examines why nations go nuclear and considers Russia, Britain, France, and Israel in turn. It offers the E
IGHTH
L
ESSON:
A
LLY PROLIFERATION CAN BE PREVENTED ONLY BY SUPERPOWER CONSTANCY.

Chapter 11
looks at the implications of popular pressure to disarm, such as arose after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as pressure to ban atmospheric tests. It offers the N
INTH
L
ESSON:
P
OPULAR PRESSURE FOR UNILATERAL DISARMAMENT CAN PREVAIL UNLESS
W
ESTERN GOVERNMENTS EXPLAIN ITS HIDDEN, GRAVE DANGERS.

Chapter 12
also looks at disarmament, though from a different angle: it explores why nations disarm (the examples are South Africa, Libya, Argentina, Brazil, and three former Russian republics) or are disarmed by force (Iraq and Syria). These examples teach the T
ENTH
L
ESSON:
D
ISARMING HOSTILE POWERS CANNOT BE DONE BY NEGOTIATIONS ALONE.

Chapter 13
examines the special catastrophic threat posed by surprise “electromagnetic pulse” attacks, now within reach of smaller, emerging nuclear powers such as nuclear-club-aspirant Iran. It offers the E
LEVENTH
L
ESSON:
N
EVER ALLOW SINGLE OR LOW-NUMBER POINTS OF CATASTROPHIC VULNERABILITY.

Chapter 14
, the last chapter, ties everything together: concepts, cases, and coping with future dangers. It suggests that, if learned, the vital lessons afforded by nuclear history can reduce the risk of nuclear catastrophe, and it offers a final, summative T
WELFTH
L
ESSON:
N
UCLEAR POLICY MUST BE FUNDAMENTALLY DEFENSIVE: ITS GOAL SHOULD BE TO AVOID THE APOCALYPTIC TRINITY OF  SUICIDE, GENOCIDE, AND SURRENDER.

Four appendices offer important context.
Appendix 1
discusses how the imaginations of novelists and filmmakers swayed the public via scenarios starkly at odds with nuclear-age realities.
Appendix 2
discusses the tightening of control over nuclear weapons since 1945.
Appendix 3
discusses intelligence failures regarding strategic arms deployment.
Appendix 4
discusses nuances of the complex relationships between missile defensive and offensive weaponry.

This book assembles in one place an integrated picture of what lessons history and strategic thinking offer us to confront today’s nuclear threats. They are lessons we are well advised to absorb, and to apply to evolving events and threats today and in the future.

So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. I’m not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly—perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, “Yes, we can.”

P
RESIDENT
B
ARACK
O
BAMA
, H
RADCANY
S
QUARE
,
P
RAGUE
, C
ZECH
R
EPUBLIC
, A
PRIL 5, 2009

S
INCE NEWS OF THE TWIN ATOMIC BOMBINGS THAT ENDED THE
S
ECOND
World War first hit front pages around the world, the cause of abolishing nuclear weapons has resonated with millions. A visit to the Los Alamos “Trinity” test site, where the first atomic bomb exploded, offers mute testament to the vast scale of man-made destruction unleashed two-thirds of a century ago: the three-foot-high remnant of the 100-foot tower that cradled the massive, ungainly device; the ground littered with tiny shards of “trinitite,” also called “Alamogordo glass.” The explosion instantly fused the sand around the tower base into a green-gray glass that sparkles in the sun—and that emits radioactive alpha and beta particles. One site visit will give visitors about half the radiation dosage they would get from a transcontinental plane flight. A brown rock obelisk, about twice the average height of an adult, marks the spot where the world was changed forever.

Beginning with President Harry S. Truman, every American president has expressed a desire to see the world rid once and for all of nuclear weapons. All have stated that it is a goal unlikely to be achieved anytime soon. But on February 15, 2012—less than three years after President Obama joined his predecessors in cautioning that nuclear abolition is a faraway goal—“perhaps not in my lifetime”—anonymous senior administration officials leaked a “trial balloon.” The Obama administration was considering three levels of arms cuts beyond those already slated in the 2010 New START Accord, down to far lower nuclear force levels than 2009’s total stockpile of 5,133 warheads. The three target level ranges leaked were 1,000–1,100, 700–800, and 300–400.

It is evident that President Obama desires to push America’s nuclear arsenal as low as possible, to levels near those he had originally said might be decades away. He gave the reasons in his April 5, 2009, Prague address:

The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. No nuclear war was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, but generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light.…

[T]he threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued. Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one. Our efforts to contain these dangers are centered on a global non-proliferation regime, but as more people and nations break the rules, we could reach the point where the center cannot hold.…

Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped.… Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.

… [W]e must stand together for the right of people everywhere to live free from fear in the 21st century. And … as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it.

Obama views himself as a transformational president. And in national security what could be more transformational than ending the world’s post-1945 nuclear nightmare? The New START Treaty, ratified in December 2010, and the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit are cited as examples of success in the direction of nuclear zero. But New START was a unilateral U.S. strategic arms-reduction agreement, as the Russians were already below treaty limits. Under the treaties to which they are signatories, the Russians can actually build newer, more modern missiles and add to their arsenal; they are in fact doing so, testing several models. New START’s verification provisions are far more limited than those in the treaty it replaced (the Bush Moscow Treaty of 2002). As for the Nuclear Security Summit, its participants paid more attention to Israel for its arsenal than they did to North Korea for having exited the Nonproliferation Treaty and joined the nuclear club.