Stephen J. Cimbala - Nuclear Weapons in the Information Age

Nuclear Weapons in the Information Age

STEPHEN J. CIMBALA

Continuum International Publishing Group

www.continuumbooks.com

Stephen J. Cimbala, 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers.

ISBN: ISBN: 978-1-4411-2684-9 (PB)
978-1-4411-8197-8 (HB)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cimbala, Stephen J.

Nuclear weapons in the information age/Stephen J. Cimbala
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-4411-8197-8 (hardcover: alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4411-8197-0 (hardcover: alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4411-2684-9 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-4411-2684-8 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Nuclear crisis control. 2. Information warfare. 3. Nuclear arms control. 4. Nuclear nonproliferation. I. Title.
JZ5665.C56 2012
327.1747dc23
2011034353

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Printed in the United States of America

N uclear weapons are the ultimate weapons of the industrial age the age of mass destruction and total warfare. Postindustrial technologies, including those that support information based warfare, offer the prospect of prevailing in war at an acceptable cost by privileging smart, precision-guided weapons that minimize collateral damage. The coexistence of nuclear weapons with advanced conventional weapons and information-based concepts of warfare will be the most important military contradiction of the twenty-first century. The present study explains what this might mean by looking closely at six aspects or cases of this apparent contradiction or unplanned coexistence of two distinct arts of war, in the chapters that follow.

Twenty years beyond the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons remain central to debates about the most significant threats to international peace and security. Evaluations of the importance of nuclear danger in this second nuclear age are not consistent as among policy makers and expert analysts. For example, U.S. President Barack Obama called in 2009 for the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons, joining a rising chorus of luminaries in government, academia, the clergy and other walks of life. Obamas national security and defense strategy included a large agenda of nuclear related objectives, including a strengthened Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive (nuclear) Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), sponsorship of an international agreement to cap the production of weapons grade material (the so-called Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty, or FMCT). In addition, Obama moved quickly to negotiate with Russia the New START agreement on further reductions in the two states strategic nuclear forces, signed by him and by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in April, 2010, and subsequently ratified by the U.S. Senate in December, 2010.1

Obama and other international leaders and nuclear security experts were calling, in summary form, for two kinds of restraints: on the growth in size of existing nuclear forces (vertical disarmament or arms limitation), and on the spread of nuclear weapons among countries that are technically capable and/or politically interested in joining the ranks of nuclear weapons states (horizontal disarmament or arms limitation). However, some contended that Obama and others have exaggerated the degree of nuclear danger, in the past and present.

According to Professor John Mueller, nuclear weapons have had a tremendous influence on the worlds agonies and obsessions, inspiring desperate rhetoric, extravagant theorizing, and frenetic diplomatic posturing although, in fact, they have had very limited actual impact, at least since World War II.2 Noting that military thinkers have struggled without success to define realistic battlefield uses for nukes, Mueller argues that ambitious plans for nuclear restraint like Obamas proposals are not necessary. For some time, nuclear weapons have been abolishing themselves, as states find their utility for deterrence and defense to be a wasting asset: Nuclear weapons are already disappearing, and elaborate international plans like the one Obama is pushing arent needed to make it happen.3

Kenneth N. Waltz sees an opposite trend in nuclear proliferation, compared to Muellers forecast. Waltz regards nuclear weapons spread as unavoidable and the slow spread of nuclear weapons as preferable to no spread or rapid spread.4 Basing his arguments on structural theory of international politics and on the history of states behavior since 1945, Waltz argues that nuclear weapons make effective deterrents even in small numbers, provided forces are survivable against first strikes. According to Waltz, nuclear deterrence works precisely because it is based on uncertainty: Uncertainty of response, not certainty, is required for deterrence because, if retaliation occurs, one risks losing so much.5 This argument is related to Thomas C. Schellings concept of the threat that leaves something to chance: nuclear armed states have to be careful, not only to avoid a deliberate decision for nuclear first use or first strike, but also the likelihood of getting caught up in a process over which either, or both, would lose control.6 According to Waltz, uncertainty-based nuclear deterrence has a strong track record:

It is now fashionable for political scientists to test hypotheses. Well, I have one. If a country has nuclear weapons, it will not be attacked militarily in ways that threaten its manifestly vital interests. That is 100 percent true, without exception, over a period of more than fifty years. Pretty impressive.7

Muellers critique of establishment thinking about nuclear weapons offers a cautionary tale against exaggeration of nuclear danger, but not necessarily a viable policy or strategy story for heads of state and defense ministers. Policy makers and their military advisors and commanders are required to plan against a range of possibilities, including some outcomes of low probability but, nevertheless, high cost. The attacks of 9/11, for example, concentrated the minds of policy makers, not only about the capability of terrorists for making strategic attacks against the American homeland, but also about the potential for even greater destruction if nonstate actors acquired nuclear weapons. Even terrorists armed with nuclear weapons, however, could not threaten the entirety of civilization in the Northern Hemisphere, as the nuclear armed Americans and Soviets were thought to have done during the High Cold War.

In contrast to the argument that present and past nuclear dangers have been exaggerated, Michael Krepon contends that, in the second nuclear age, the character but not the nature of nuclear danger has changed. Nuclear danger now lies, not in the possible outbreak of global nuclear war between the United States and the former Soviet Union, but in the bracket creep of interest in, and possible acquisition of, nuclear weapons by states and nonstate actors with antisystemic goals and radical political agendas. As he notes, encouraging signs and negative trends with respect to nuclear risk reduction appear simultaneously: