Deterrence, the 'Freeze,' the Future

terrence. My own view is that it's unlikely that we're going to find any magic formula that will permit us to escape from the box of nuclear deterrence....

Let's assume 60 percent of all the nuclear weaponns on both sides were destroyed, an event whose possibility I would calculate as somewhere between epsilon and delta....In other words, you have to go so far from where we are now to a period in which there isn't a very complex game of nuclear deterrence, that I think we're in it for the long term....

On the question of the forces, again, without sort of going into yea or nay on particular systems, I would just try to add one point that hasn't been quite spelled out so far. This whole issue of limited nuclear options, limited nuclear war, I feel is much less motivated by political considerations or doctrinal considerations. In this particular case I'm a believer that it's technology-push that's at the forefront...It's not a matter of the technical community sort of sitting on their hands, you know. They've been pushing forward and developing new systems and letting the technology lead them. Now we have these weapons, now it's up to the decision-makers to figure out the reason for their use....We have to now really invent. I would submit, a doctrine to explain, to rationalize, the need for the numbers of weapons that we have. And it's true I think on the Soviet side as well.

Sherwin: There are so many interesting points on the table that I hardly know where to begin....The first is Michael's comment about we need to rationalize the doctrine to fit the technology that exists....I think that's exactly where we have to insert ourselves and stop, that we can't keep allowing the engineers to create weapons that will control the international situation....Now we can only do that, of course, in partnership with the Soviet Union, and that's what START is all about...

I would say, point two, that in terms of recommendations, that it is the extended-nuclear umbrella that we have back away from....It's getting too dangerous. The weapons are getting too sophisticated. There are too many of them. They're being used to counter too many situations, and we have to begin to move back to a position of nuclear weapons for deterrence of nuclear war. And I think that a no-first use approach is a good step. Not because that's going to solve anything; in fact, it clearly will create, temporarily, some other problems. But it's a step in the right direction, if taken in the right spirit....I certainly would be for taking that step unilaterally. In other words, a general point that I would make is that arms control and the general political situation are totally linked, and that you can't have an arms control--a positive arms control policy--without a detente policy....

I would also argue that if we're going to reverse the nuclear arms race, the general trend of more and more and more, the technological push, the technological imperative, what we need to do is begin to dismantle a part of the structure that has propelled the nuclear arms race in the post-war period, and that is what we have to begin to dismantle. Let's call it the American dominance of NATO. I think that West Germany, for example, has to be encouraged in its reorientation of the expansion of its interests towards the East, towards the Soviet Union, that it is really only Germany in reorienting itself towards playing something of a middle ground, the honest broker between the East and West, that will create an atmosphere in which the United States and the Soviet Union can reach some genuine progress on detente. Because as long as Russia fears a potential West German threat, there will never really be any progress between the United States and the Soviet Union. So in other words what I'm saying is that everything ties in to everything else in the most fundamental way.

Nye: Let me reply on the extended deterrence. I think it still is important. In the balance of power since 1945 it has rested on the back of the major industrial areas of the world....close to the Soviet Union, which sets some of the basic dilemma of extending deterrence....The arguments about extended deterrence being dead: I think it's premature. But you are probably going to work in a mixture where there'll have to be more of a conventional component in it than a nuclear component...

I think I would depart from the no-first use declaration because it does have a strong effect on Europeans....Everything I've seen of European responses, they want the residual uncertainly in the Russians' mind that a war in Europe on conventional terms could lead to a nuclear escalation, and the idea of going to a purely non-nuclear defense. I think, creates considerable anxiety. I think you can get about 85 percent of the benefits that a no-first use pledge would bring about...while avoiding some of those intense political costs of creating uncertainty in Europe by a declaration that nuclear weapons are a weapon of last resort....You would have a no-first-nuclear use so long as there has been a withdrawal of conventional troops.

Mandelbaum: I would say perhaps a couple of things about the European issue and extended deterrence. I myself don't feel that a no-first use pledge would make much difference as long as there are 7000 or I guess now 6000 American nuclear weapons in Europe. I don't think the Soviet Union would act on the assumption that the United States would not use these weapons even if the American president said we wouldn't. So I think they have and will continue to have a deterrent effect by their very presence....One of the things that Marty Sherwin said seemed to me a very provocative suggestion--that...control of nuclear weapons depended on the international climate and the international climate would be improved if West Germany, at least if I understand it correctly, moved away from a close association with the United States and served as more of a bridge between East and West....

Extended deterrence is the policy made necessary by the Atlantic alliance and the American effective monopoly of nuclear weapons, although not total monopoly of nuclear weapons within the alliance. As long as that political arrangement holds there will have to be extended deterrence, and the United States will have to worry about the requirements for it....I don't think there's likely to be a complete rapprochement between West Germany and the Soviet Union as long as the Soviet Union in effect occupies a quarter of the German nation.

Sherwin: Could I just clarify. I don't think that the issue of Germany is zero-sum gain, that is to say that every time they make an extension towards the Soviet Union we lose out. They always will in the foreseeable future be part of a Western alliance. I simply think we should not stand between their efforts to reach a hand to the east, too.

Nacht: The post-war period, with all of its grief, has been a period of peace for 37 years....There have not [been] many periods of 37 years of peace. The principal reason for the peace in my own view is that the United States has had the military force to deter the Soviet Union for attack--either with conventional or nuclear weapons, and because, in part, Germany has been divided and Japan has been militarily weak and under the American nuclear umbrella. It may be that there are other worlds that are better than this world, but I don't think we can get from here to there without running a large risk of major hostilities....On foregin affairs, one can hypothesize four consequences of the no-first use doctrine if it was in fact embraced by the Reagan Administration, the probability of that being, I think, zero. Well, let's assume for the moment, for argument's sake, that they do. The four possibilities are: one...what Mike said, no difference. They make the statement, nothing happens, life goes on. Second possibility is presumably what the authors wanted: namely a kind of redirection toward strengthening our conventional forces in Europe.

Crimson: Do you see that as preceding the declaration?

Nacht: No, I think the argument is that a declaration of no-first use would stimulate the build-up of conventional forces by the Europeans. They don't advocate waiting 10 years until the forces are in place before making this declaration....Anyway, I think a third possibility is a decline of American credibility of unclear guarantees toward Europe and a movement toward talking to and thinking with and listening to the Soviet Union in a way that is highly undesirable for American interests. And finally, there's another possibility, and that's a sort of waning dependence shift of Europe away from the United States but not toward the Soviet Union and a growth of, perhaps, nuclear proliferation in Europe....

It has a kind of emotional appeal which is very alluring. But I think that if you look at the political practicality of it and the possible threats...it's either...modestly malignant or terribly malignant....

Let me make one final point. I think that it's a horrible kind of conclusion to reach, and I wish I personally hadn't reached it, but you have to at some point come to a judgment in your own mind whether a lot of the issues we're talking about are...discreet problems, that can in fact be solved...whether you think...international relations is more a set of conditions which are managed for better or for worse and kind of for the most part never go away....I personally think international relations is much more the latter....We've had a Middle East problem for 3000 years, we'll have a Middle East problem for another 3000 years. It's not just a matter of the fact that the Israelis don't want to grant this kid of autonomy relationship to these particular Palestinians on the West Bank at this time. If they did it we'd have some other problem....

It's somewhat depressing, and it's quite antithetical to the American character, which is very problem-solving oriented. I think the Europeans are much far ahead of us in this respect. They've kind of lived with ambiguities and complexities and permanent problems for a long time.

Sherwin: I totally agree with that. If I believe that the system that existed now would in fact maintain peace for 6000 years. I would up you six, and say 12. I mean, why not. I mean, what we're all concerned with is peace, so it's basically our assumptions that are at odds about the structure of things.

You're an optimist, that is, to the extent that anyone can be optimistic in this world...[thinking that there is] a better chance at maintaining stability and peace than to start to fool around with the system in significant ways. I'm concerned that the direction we're going is putting with respect to nuclear weapons too much weight on the camel's back...and we haven't even mentioned proliferation, which of course is going to complicate it....So I'm a pessimist.

Mandelbaum: If one wishes to think of nuclear weapons as a problem, then it seems the solution is a more radical transformation of international politics than anything that we know about or have reason to expect will occur in our lifetimes. But of course even if we are stuck with the task of managing nuclear weapons, even if we accept that they will always be with us....

Sherwin: Could I just ask you, Michael, to define what you mean by management and what you mean by structural changes in international relations?

Mandelbaum: Structural changes I take to mean the disappearance of sovereignty, the creation of some sort of world government....Changes of management would involve no-first use proposals. It would involve [a] fool-proof, non-proliferation. It might involve drastic reductions in the arsenals of the two sides. It would involve...a radical improvement in U.S. Soviet relations.

Crimson: Do you think there was really a good chance to prevent the events of the last 37 years in the arms race we've had at the inception or that once it became apparent that these weapons could be built that they would be built?

Mandelbaum: Well this is a real difference between us, and I think that it's reflected in our...relative optimism and pessimism about improving management techniques. My argument is a kind of inevitablist argument, that it was not at all likely that things would turn out much differently than they did.

Sherwin: The major point that I would make about the...missed opportunity that I point out specifically during the war--Niels Bohr's suggestion to Roosevelt and Churchill that they approach Stalin with an assurance that nuclear weapons would not be used against the Soviet Union after the war and that what we want to do is get together and start building a plan for the international control of atomic energy.

The most important historical point there is that is pointing to the state of mind of Roosevelt and Churchill with respect to nuclear weapons, that this idea was rejected because they already viewed nuclear weapons as a very important and critical and advantageous part of the Anglo-American power in the post-World War II period. I wouldn't argue that thing would have come out differently. I would insist that they may have come out differently if the orientation of the Western statesmen was different.

Crimson: I guess we could wrap it up with a different kind of question, which is whether you expect to see a nuclear explosion in your lifetime and how you think it would be most likely to come about?

Mandelbaum: That question evokes not a reasoned estimate of the future but one's deepest sense of what the world is like....The chances of the United States or the Soviet Union exploding a nuclear weapon in anger against the other is small. On the other hand, if I didn't believe that. I don't think that I would be able to write about these issues in a more or less academic manner. So perhaps all I'm telling you is what my outlook on life is.

It seems to me that the second nuclear war is likely to take place between lesser nuclear powers outside Europe, but that such a war is perhaps not as likely as we might imagine. We haven't talked about proliferation, but one of the great fears that people have about the spread of nuclear weapons into states that don't possess them at the moment is that the conditions that have made for the nuclear peace between the United States and the Soviet Union will not [occur] elsewhere. Perhaps the most intriguing question of all is what will be the world's reaction to the second nuclear war? Will the next nuclear war provide the stimulus for making the world safer?

Sherwin: If there is a nuclear war in our lifetime on the periphery, let's say, that is outside of Europe and not between the United States and the Soviet Union. I'm very pessimistic about what that will encourage.

I think the major powers have a rather paternalistic view towards the third world and the argument will be, 'Look we managed to avoid nuclear war for 40 years or 50 years or whatever it is, and these countries get nuclear weapons and within 10 years they're using them. We told you so. We can handle it and they can't...I know for certain in my mind that the possibility of [nuclear war] exists in our lifetime...that's why I feel that these management techniques or reversal of the nuclear arms race...are necessary.

If we're successful, that's good, and that's what we have to work toward....What we're living with, ultimately, is a northern hemisphere, if not worldwide, Jonestown. And that is something we have to work to prevent.

'It seems always better to err on the side of caution....Continuing to run the nuclear arms race, erring on the side of caution...hasn't really been all that dangerous. It's simply been a moderate expense.'

'It is the extended-nuclear umbrella that we have to back away from....It's getting too dangerous. The weapons are getting too sophisticated. There are too many of them. They're being used to counter too many situations, and we have to begin to move back to a position of nuclear weapons for deterrence of nuclear war. And I think that a no-first use approach is a good step....I would certainly be for taking that step unilaterally. In other words, a general point that I would make is that arms control and the general political situation are totally linked.'