The Consequences of American Nuclear Disarmament

Since the end of the Cold War there has been considerable intellectual confusion over nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence. This is due to a number of reasons, a central one being the tendency of many scholars, public policy figures, and peace activists like global nuclear zero advocates to associate these weapons with the Cold War. The dissolution of the Soviet Empire in 1989, and with it the end of the Cold War, gave new impetus and seeming credibility to anti-nuclear movements around the world. However, we should not forget that it was an interesting historical coincidence that the Cold War and the nuclear age emerged at roughly the same time. So when the Cold War ended, it only seemed logical to many that the nuclear age, too, had ended. And so, the USA no longer needed to “rely” on these weapons for its security, and that of its allies.

The main problem may not be nuclear weapons themselves, but the concept of deterrence. A concept that has become perhaps irreversibly nuclear in nature, especially for the USA. But deterrence is here to stay. It was a fundamental strategic concept well before the nuclear age—nuclear weapons are just one more instrument that can be used to manage it. Now, nuclear deterrence may have emerged with the Cold War, but that does not mean that just because the Cold War is over, nuclear weapons and deterrence are no longer relevant to US grand strategy and security.¹ To the extent that it would be difficult to envisage returning to non-nuclear capabilities as the primary instruments for deterring major war between great powers. Instead, US nuclear strategy will have to be continually updated to deal with new technologies, new threats, and new contexts, especially given the fundamental transformations underway in both Europe and the Asia-Pacific today.

The international system is unlikely to be rid of nuclear weapons anytime soon, but we are obliged to think strategically about how US military power might be used in a world where the nuclear sword of Damocles either does not hang so low or has disappeared entirely. Bernard Brodie wrote Strategy in the Missile Age. That title of the book rang true enough, but what he was actually talking about was strategy in a nuclear missile age. Indeed, it is sometimes overlooked that the development of nuclear weapons coincided roughly with the development of short, medium, intermediate, and eventually intercontinental missiles.¹ More attention needs to be paid to the contribution of missile technology to the deterrence equation, not only for the USA but also in general. In anticipation of the possibility of a post-nuclear age, we need to rethink our assumptions about how much missiles themselves can contribute to the goals of US strategy.

Nuclear weapons have played a crucial role in America’s sense of power and influence in international politics since World War II. And this applies to how the USA has thought about entering into and maintaining the credibility of its alliances as well. Without the bomb, the USA might not have had the appetite for creating alliances in the late 1940s and early 1950s with so many countries, some half a world away.¹ Any thought of backing such commitments only with conventional forces may well have been quickly abandoned as politically infeasible and unsustainable. In addition, new archival material from allied countries about American nuclear strategy shows that US nuclear weapons have been central to how at least America’s most important allies think about their security, even if their relationship with extended nuclear deterrence is sometimes complex, ambiguous, distant, and multi-layered.² As such, we should be careful about the implications of deep reductions and any future marginalization of nuclear weapons in America’s posture for these alliances. This chapter focuses on how nuclear weapons have shaped some of the thinking about alliances. It examines the types of capabilities that were required in the pre-nuclear age to demonstrate alliance commitments. It discusses issues of alliance credibility, including vulnerability and cohesion, and how nuclear weapons have influenced these, conceptually and in operational terms as well.

Given the issues canvassed earlier and the arguments presented, this chapter uses the Asia-Pacific as a test case to demonstrate some of the early signs of the consequences for the USA of relying mainly on conventional systems in deterrence and extended deterrence relationships in the Asia-Pacific. Indeed, the challenges in this region are different to that of Western Europe, which is essentially a land theatre of operations. Extended deterrence may be much less stable in a maritime context as vast as the Pacific. And as the next chapter on arms control shows, these problems will be compounded by the difficulty of establishing formal multilateral arms control agreements on conventional systems, especially ballistic and cruise missiles systems. This chapter first compares and contrasts the past and current challenges to US extended deterrence in both Europe and Asia. It then covers the challenges associated with extended deterrence in a hubs and spokes system of alliances that is based in a maritime setting, where the members of the alliance are far apart from each other and the potential “red lines” of escalation and conflict are much less identifiable than they would be in a land context. It then outlines the military logistical challenges associated with US force deployment in such a setting. Given these mutually reinforcing problems, the chapter argues that US extended deterrence may not endure in the Asia-Pacific in the next two decades.

If one argues for further nuclear reductions and nuclear disarmament, then one needs to be responsible and also think seriously about conventional arms control, since it is upon conventional imbalances that any remaining system of deterrence would increasingly rely.¹ Especially because, in many instances, these have remained partially hidden in the current nuclear age.² Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obliges states, including the USA, to work toward general and complete disarmament of conventional weaponry. Which raises important questions: to what extent should the nuclear weapons states focus on reducing their arsenals as a precondition for conventional disarmament? We have tended to think that it would first be a good idea to reduce nuclear weapons before reducing conventional forces. However, nuclear weapons are but one component of the overall military balance between states. Countries like Pakistan, for instance, have developed their nuclear arsenals not only because of advances in nuclear weaponry by their rivals, but also because of perceived conventional imbalances.³

Nuclear Weapons are not good or bad. They just are. ¹