Why attempts at nuclear disarmament will not enhance global security
Putin may be serious about a nuclear strike, but attempts at global nuclear disarmament will never save us from leaders like him.
Staring down the barrel of Putin’s gun, it is tempting to believe that global nuclear disarmament is the way forward. Beatrice Fihn and her team at International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) have thought this for a long time, and even received a Nobel Peace Price for it in 2017. After all, even a minor chance of nuclear warfare is petrifying. As Robert Wilkin said, and Rutger Bregman tweeted: 'If what you do gets three billion people killed it doesn't matter that the cause you were fighting for was just.'.
Both statements are true. Yet, I will argue that any Western attempts at global nuclear disarmament would disrupt, not enhance, global security. With global nuclear disarmament, I mean the dismantling of the nuclear capabilities of the nine countries that possess nuclear weapons. Two simple reasons underpin my claim. Firstly, the current nuclear order strongly induces peace and stability through at least four pro tanto mechanisms of deterrence. Secondly, whilst the status quo of nuclear weapons has the potential to disrupt the stability of the international system, these risks will not vanish but instead increase.
Four ways in which nuclear arms currently stabilise the international system
Rather than a cause for disruption, nuclear weapons can also be a source of stability, because these weapons create a deterrent effect through at least four mechanisms. To begin with, their destructive capacities imply that other countries cannot improve their chances of survival by picking a nuclear war over a compromise (Jervis 1988) – any party involved will incur enormous losses and is therefore unlikely to risk it. Secondly, unlike much conventional warfare, it only takes one; a single nuclear bomb can inflict major damage. There is a lower possibility of gradual spiralling dynamics that we see in traditional security dilemmas and that offer possibilities of de-escalation (Liff & Ikenberry 2014), because one overly-confident provocation may facilitate a response so severe that it is not a risk worth taking. Any first-mover advantage disappears in the face of second-strike capacities. In addition, nuclear weapons are difficult to intercept. They involve little war-fighting and it is very difficult for states to intercept an anti-ballistic missile carrying a nuclear warhead, according to experts (Ghose 2017). Moreover, the exchange of nuclear warheads between states ensures that the impact is not merely felt by military forces, but also by the industrial and population heartland (Waltz 1990). This increases the likelihood of a public backlash, because it increases the expected costs incurred on citizens (Sagan 1995). All of these deterrent mechanisms were clearly visible in the Cuban Missile crisis, when Khrushchev backed down at the vital point. The Soviet Union feared the destructive power of nuclear weapons, the difficulty of intercepting them, and the targeting of their own population. In this way, nuclear weapons cemented bipolarity and induced rather than threatened stability (Brodie 1963).
Two weak counterarguments: (i) deterring without nukes and (ii) no absolute deterrence with nukes.
Those in favour of global nuclear disarmament may object, firstly, that deterrent effects are not inherent to nuclear weapons, so they are not necessary for stability. It is hardly ever in countries’ interests to order large-scale retaliation (Fearon 1995). The Cold War’s ‘long peace’ can be explained not only through the lens of the nuclear peace hypothesis, but also with reference to the Soviet desire to avoid another total war like World War II (Mueller 1998), especially given the high Soviet casualties in WWII, reaching approximately 26 million civilians and soldiers. On top of that, nuclear weapons are not always more damaging than non-nuclear weapons; the US firebombing of Tokyo did more damage than both of the atomic bombs (Price & Tannenwald 1996). Nonetheless, whilst there is admittedly also a deterrent to non-nuclear weapons, such deterrence represents the very upper limit of conventional bombing destructiveness compared to the low-end of nuclear warfare. Security-inducing deterrence is a scale rather than a dichotomy, and nuclear weapons do a better job at this than conventional weapons (Narang 2012, p.503). Alternatively, one may object that the stability-inducing deterrence mechanisms are no guarantee for extreme stability or peace. The United Kingdom. for instance, had nuclear weapons when Argentina invaded the Falklands in 1982 (Mueller 1988). Yet, we can concede that nuclear powers do not guarantee peace, but still argue they have a powerful pro tanto deterring effect. This effect does not need to be absolute in order to induce stability. In brief, we should reject both the ‘alternative deterrence’ and the ‘no absolute deterrence’ counterargument.
Four stronger counterarguments: preventive strikes, indivisible issues, a loss of command and selfish leaders.
More powerful arguments in defence of the idea that global nuclear disarmament enhances global security concede that nuclear weapons induce stability through deterrence mechanisms, but argue that these effects are outweighed by stability-disrupting risks of nuclear weapons. We should, for instance, distinguish between the two stages of developing and having nuclear weapons, to recognise that the former presents challenges to stability. Countries in the process of becoming a nuclear power face a higher security threat as a result of possible preventive strikes carried out by an adversary (Monteiro & Debs 2014). President Trump, for instance, sent an ‘armada’ to North-Korea and kept 28,000 troops near the DMZ following Kim Jong-un’s continuing nuclear tests (Jeong 2012). In this instance, there were no preventive strikes, but Iran, for instance, bombed Iraq’s nuclear facility at Osirak in 1980, which was destroyed by the Israelis one year later (Monteiro & Debs 2014). Besides that, nuclear weapons can also disrupt stability over indivisible issues. Sometimes, neither nuclear power is satisfied with the status quo, and risk nuclear escalation to gain the upper hand over their opponents. When Pakistan infringed on the Line of Control in the 1999 Kargil War with India, for instance, it actively threatened to use nuclear weapons, escalating the conflict. Thirdly, a loss of command and control can create nuclear danger through risky horizontal proliferation; nuclear powers may lack the appropriate organisational sway over their weapons, creating a risk of nuclear war by deliberate decisions of a small minority, accident, or theft of nuclear material by terrorist organisations. Pakistani physicist A.Q. Khan was willing to sell nuclear technology to DPRK, Syria and Libya in 2004 (Corera 2009). Other than risky decentralisation, selfish leaders with nuclear weapons disrupt stability. Some commanders, like Hitler, wanted to drag their opponents down with them when the war was already fought (Giblin 2002). Indeed, this is exactly our fear with respect to Putin. If there is no way out of the mess he is in, there is a real risk he wants drag us down with him. From each of these angles, one may argue that attempts at global nuclear disarmament will make the international system more secure because these risks outweigh the stability-inducing deterrence effects.
Why Western attempts at global nuclear disarmament won’t resolve these issues.
The concerns in the arguments above are valid, but the conclusion is misguided. Indeed, it presupposes that attempts at global nuclear disarmament have a real potential to eliminate these risks, which is as naive as it is myopic. Given that nuclear technology is already out there, one would need to substantiate why the dismantling of the nuclear capabilities of the nine countries that possess nuclear weapons will automatically reduce the risks of secret nuclear development, and in turn, of reduction of the risks of preventive strikes, the use of nuclear weapons over indivisible issues, a loss of command and control or selfish leaders. I would love to see proof for that claim, but I am afraid it does not exist. In fact, I would argue that the dismantling of the nuclear capabilities of the current nine nuclear powers actually increases these risks and therefore further threatens the stability of the international system, because all countries have an even stronger incentive to secretly develop nuclear weapons than they currently do, as it could make them the only state with access to such weaponry. How much further would Putin go in a world where the West is stripped of its nuclear power?
In brief, the desire for Western attempts at nuclear disarmament conflates two different questions. We should not ask ourselves whether ‘a world without nuclear weapons would be more secure than a world with nuclear weapons’. We left that world in 1945. Instead, we should specifically question whether attempts at ‘global nuclear disarmament’ make the international system more secure in the real world – a world in which nuclear technology already exists. I am convinced that this is not the case, and remain reluctant to incorporate fictitious desires for a world without nukes into my framework. Even more so in a world where Putin has his finger on the button.