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The World Doesn’t Need Any More Nuclear Strategies
The Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review answers questions nobody should be asking.
The non-use of nuclear weapons since 1945 is a great
achievement that we take for granted all too often. Although the number
of states possessing nuclear weapons has slowly increased over the past
seven decades, no country has used a nuclear weapon since 1945, and
despite some worrisome incidents, I know of no case where a
nuclear-armed state ever came really close to firing a nuclear bomb at
another country. Continuing this lucky streak for as long as possible —
ideally, forever — should be a paramount goal for all human beings.
There are a number of obvious reasons why nuclear weapons have never been used. Attacking another nuclear-armed power is obviously foolhardy, because it risks one’s own destruction and because no political gains could possibly be worth the costs of being hit by even a handful of nuclear bombs in retaliation. It is possible to attack nuclear-armed countries with conventional forces — as Egypt and Syria did in the 1973 Yom Kippur War — but if you do, your aims had better be limited and you must take care not to threaten the survival or independence of the state you’ve attacked. Using a nuclear weapon to attack a non-nuclear state would also be very costly to the attacking country’s reputation, unless the non-nuclear state had done something truly horrible and seemed likely to continue doing it. The good news is that one does not have to be very smart or perfectly rational to figure these things out.
The extensive efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation have also made nuclear use less likely. Although this campaign could not stop a few additional states from joining the nuclear club, it ensured that this process occurred gradually and allowed other states time to adjust. Over time, improved command-and-control and other security arrangements made accidental or unauthorized use less likely, and the emerging “taboo” against nuclear use probably reinforced non-use as well. Instead of thinking of nuclear weapons as just a bigger bomb, both politicians and weapons experts actively worked to place these fearsome weapons in a special conceptual category, thereby increasing the political costs of crossing that particular threshold. And humankind also got lucky, insofar as there have been a few moments since 1945 when things might have gone differently.
I raise all this because nuclear weapons are back in the news. One reason, of course, is the widespread concern about North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile capabilities. Officials in the Donald Trump administration have repeatedly said it is unacceptable for North Korea to have the capacity to strike the American homeland, and their attempts at saber-rattling — such as talk of a so-called bloody nose strike — have raised fears that a real shooting war might break out on the Korean Peninsula.
There are a number of obvious reasons why nuclear weapons have never been used. Attacking another nuclear-armed power is obviously foolhardy, because it risks one’s own destruction and because no political gains could possibly be worth the costs of being hit by even a handful of nuclear bombs in retaliation. It is possible to attack nuclear-armed countries with conventional forces — as Egypt and Syria did in the 1973 Yom Kippur War — but if you do, your aims had better be limited and you must take care not to threaten the survival or independence of the state you’ve attacked. Using a nuclear weapon to attack a non-nuclear state would also be very costly to the attacking country’s reputation, unless the non-nuclear state had done something truly horrible and seemed likely to continue doing it. The good news is that one does not have to be very smart or perfectly rational to figure these things out.
The extensive efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation have also made nuclear use less likely. Although this campaign could not stop a few additional states from joining the nuclear club, it ensured that this process occurred gradually and allowed other states time to adjust. Over time, improved command-and-control and other security arrangements made accidental or unauthorized use less likely, and the emerging “taboo” against nuclear use probably reinforced non-use as well. Instead of thinking of nuclear weapons as just a bigger bomb, both politicians and weapons experts actively worked to place these fearsome weapons in a special conceptual category, thereby increasing the political costs of crossing that particular threshold. And humankind also got lucky, insofar as there have been a few moments since 1945 when things might have gone differently.
I raise all this because nuclear weapons are back in the news. One reason, of course, is the widespread concern about North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile capabilities. Officials in the Donald Trump administration have repeatedly said it is unacceptable for North Korea to have the capacity to strike the American homeland, and their attempts at saber-rattling — such as talk of a so-called bloody nose strike — have raised fears that a real shooting war might break out on the Korean Peninsula.
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