North Korea, Iran, and the Demise of Nuclear Deterrence

When South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited Washington for a summit with President Barack Obama on June 16th, the United States reaffirmed its "commitment of extended deterrence" to Seoul, "including the U.S. nuclear umbrella." In response, on June 25th, the 59th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, North Korea vowed to continue to expand its nuclear arsenal, to deliver a "fire shower of nuclear retaliation" in response to U.S. "provocations," and insisted that the nuclear umbrella statement only "provides us with a stronger justification to have a nuclear deterrent."

Perhaps, in light of all this radioactive rhetoric, it is worth pausing to consider just what "nuclear deterrence" might mean in today's world ... or whether it means anything at all.

The conventional wisdom holds that nuclear weapons have only one legitimate function in today's world -- deterrence. Most often this is framed as one country (the deterror) dissuading the use of nuclear weapons against it by another country (the deterree), by threatening nuclear retaliation in reply. This has long been the primary answer to the awkward question, just what are nuclear weapons for?

Deterrence theory has sometimes also extended to deterring non-nuclear attacks. During the protracted Cold War, for example, the United States threatened nuclear retaliation in response to a hypothetical conventional Soviet attack on Western Europe - in an attempt to dissuade the USSR from launching such an attack. (Never mind that in historical retrospect that threat appears never to have been more than a phantom, used primarily to justify enormously bloated military budgets of our own.) The last U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) under the Bush Administration envisioned using nuclear weapons reactively in response to the use of chemical or biological weapons, proactively to prevent other countries from even acquiring such weapons, and unrestrictedly in the event of "surprising military developments" and "unexpected contingencies." And, indeed, the vague statements in this month's rhetorical nuclear exchange between Pyongyang and Washington leave somewhat unclear whether each party is intending to deter only nuclear aggression, or instead all aggression by the other.

Like much conventional wisdom, however, it turns out that today, there just ain't much there there. We need to remind ourselves that "deterrence" is a high-falutin' term for basing one country's security on the threat to entirely incinerate another country, and all its inhabitants, and also making that country (and likely surrounding countries as well) radioactive and uninhabitable for generations to come. So deterrence theory is, to say the least, a morally shaky basis for a country's security. Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, let's say we can live with that moral quandary. Let's say that we just want to know whether or not deterrence "works".

That brings us to the contemporary cases of both North Korea and Iran. If deterrence does work, then why should we care if North Korea keeps nuclear weapons, or if Iran gets nuclear weapons? Shouldn't the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Israel, vastly superior in both quantity and quality, deter North Korea or Iran from ever using nuclear weapons -- against us or anyone else? If not, then just what are the more than 9,000 American and perhaps 200-400 Israeli nuclear weapons good for?

As the prophet Edwin Starr might say, absolutely nuthin'.

No international political issue received more attention during George W. Bush's second term than the possibility that Iran might acquire nuclear weapons. Today, still, few issues stand higher on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's things to do list. Yet a very simple question has rarely been asked. If Iran in fact acquired nuclear weapons, just what could they do with them?

Indeed, it was Senator Clinton herself, during her 2008 presidential campaign, who arguably addressed that question most directly. Asked by an ABC News reporter in April how she would respond to an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel, she replied, "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran. ... In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

However indelicate and unsubtle Senator Clinton's speculations might have been, it is difficult to dispute their validity. If Iran does in fact become a nuclear weapon state in the next few years, the "policy option" for Tehran of launching a sudden and unprovoked nuclear first strike, on Israel or anyone else, would result in certain and immediate destruction for the Iranian nation - and in certain and immediate death for the leaders who had initiated it as well.

Sometimes the question of what Iran might actually do with nuclear weapons has been expressed in a single word. "If the Iranians were to have a nuclear weapon," said President Bush in 2006, "they could blackmail the world." He offered no elaboration or explanation of exactly what that might mean. Our American Heritage Dictionary defines "blackmail" as "extortion by the threat of exposure of something criminal or discreditable." Pay me money, or I'll reveal that you embezzled the community chest, or dispatched the leaky ferryboat, or seduced the farmer's daughter. What that has to do with the political utility of nuclear weapons is difficult to discern.

Perhaps it meant that such a state might try to coerce another state by threatening a nuclear first strike. ("Evacuate the entire Israeli presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by next Thursday, or else.") But all existing nuclear weapon states already possess the capability to make such coercive threats. And yet, it is difficult to identify any historical instances where any of them have actually done so.

Perhaps, instead, it meant that such a state might use its nuclear capability to persuade someone else not to do something. ("Don't send tanks across the Elbe, or else." "Don't try to change our regime, or else.") That's nuclear deterrence. Why that is considered legitimate geopolitical behavior in one case, but "nuclear blackmail" in the other, is also difficult to discern.

Senator Clinton, in her April 2008 remarks, did not say that if Iran actually used nuclear weapons, the United States would necessarily have to employ its nuclear arsenal "to totally obliterate them." And she didn't need to. The United States, today, could do so completely with its conventional capabilities alone. When one includes such things as Department of Energy allocations for nuclear weapons (which, astonishingly, are not considered part of America's "defense budget"), veterans' benefits (which our children and grandchildren will still be paying to those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan more than half a century from now), and the repeated "supplemental allocations," it becomes indisputable that the United States spends more on its military prowess than all the other countries in the world ... combined. That is a situation probably unprecedented in all of world history.

And however much those of us in the peace advocacy arena might deplore that reality, what it means today is that nuclear weapons have become militarily unnecessary for the United States. Any military mission that nuclear weapons can achieve for the United States can now be fully accomplished by its conventional weapons alone. That is true not only of Iran but also North Korea. There is simply no need for Washington to extend a "nuclear umbrella" over South Korea, because the United States can threaten North Korea with complete and utter destruction without any need to resort to nuclear weapons -- and thereby hopefully deter North Korea from external aggression. To protect American national security, to defeat any enemy, and to dissuade any potential aggressor by threatening to inflict catastrophic retaliatory destruction upon it, America's conventional military power alone can fully do the job.

Then there is the "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" conundrum. If the United States, despite its vast conventional superiority, still insists that it "needs" nuclear weapons to deter other countries from committing aggression against it, then why don't smaller, less well-armed countries need them as well? Especially countries like Iran and North Korea, which have legitimate concerns about having vastly superior military powers as neighbors.

Consider the underlying credibility of the essential claim by the U.S. -- first to possess such overwhelming conventional military power, then to insist that even despite that it cannot protect American national security without also maintaining a vast nuclear arsenal, and then to haughtily instruct other states that despite their laughably smaller conventional military establishments, they should be fully able to protect their national security with these alone. Other states, which by any measure possess conventional military capabilities only a tiny fraction of our own (Iran, for example, spends on its military about 1% of what the U.S. does ), are told that they ought to be able to protect themselves from external threats with those forces alone. But we, with vastly greater conventional capabilities, maintain that we also must possess the nuclear hammer, or we will be unable to protect and defend ourselves.

How could any other state possibly draw any other conclusion but one? If nuclear weapons serve to protect the national security of the mightiest country in the world, then surely they must be necessary to protect the national security of other countries as well.

We want the scourge of nuclear weapons to be wiped from the face of the Earth forever. No nation should have them, not a single one. The human race must now get down to the hard business of negotiating the abolition of all nuclear weapons. That in the long run will be much more politically sustainable than the present reality - with nuclear weapons states hypocritically holding on to their own nuclear arsenals, while trying (and failing) to deny any nuclear weapons to anyone else.
President Obama has repeatedly stated his commitment to provide leadership toward a nuclear weapons-free world. He re-iterated his support for that goal in a stirring speech before a huge outdoor rally in Prague in April, saying, "Today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons." Unfortunately, just a few sentences later, he felt compelled to add the caveat that a world free of nuclear weapons would likely not "be achieved quickly, perhaps not in my lifetime."

The president is a young man, and for us, on this, too cautious. But he is not alone. Just last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stated, "If those who made the atomic bomb and used it are ready to abandon it, along with - I hope - other nuclear powers that officially or unofficially possess it, we will of course welcome and facilitate this process in every possible way." Putin is nobody's idea of a peacenik. However, there is no reason to believe he is just blowing hot air on this issue. Even if he were, it would cost Obama nothing to find out -- by proposing negotiations on not just further nuclear weapons reductions, but complete elimination.

Russia and the US are currently negotiating a "post-START" treaty to cut nuclear warheads to (probably) fewer than 2000 each. However, they can and should go much further. We recommend that when President Obama visits Moscow next month, the United States and Russia announce that they intend to launch formal multilateral negotiations directed toward transforming the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) into a universal, verifiable, and enforceable Nuclear Weapons Elimination Convention (NWEC). Such a convention would require the phased dismantling and destruction by a time certain of every nuclear weapon on Earth, prohibit thereafter the development, production, testing, deployment, stockpiling, transfer, threat or use of nuclear weapons, and impose strict controls with rigorous inspection provisions over all nuclear fuels and nuclear activities in every country in the world. Including ours.

Just as common sense ain't too common, the conventional wisdom about the need to retain nuclear deterrence indefinitely apparently ain't too wise. The time to launch formal multilateral negotiations directed toward nuclear weapons abolition is now. Indeed, such negotiations could be commenced at the official 40th anniversary NPT Review Conference, scheduled to convene at the United Nations in May 2010. There is probably no other step that could simultaneously put us on the road toward strengthening the global non-proliferation norm, toward ditching nuclear weapons anywhere and everywhere, and toward ensuring that these abominations never return to haunt the affairs of the human race again.

Comments

[digeridoo2]

All we have to do is lead the charge to disarmament. If we say nukes are bad, and disable/destroy our arsenal, N. Korea and Iran will follow suit. Kumbaya.

[Liberal2]

Duhhhh....­stupid....­..Nuclear weapons may not deter the mentally disturbed but they do deter world-wide war. Ya see, nuclear weapons are the reason Russia didn't invade Western Europe and the Korean War didn't lead to all-out war with China.

Try to grasp these subtle points.

[oxi]

Maybe Russia was not interested in Western Europe, ever thought about that?

Maybe they knew that Western Europe could have been a solid buyer of their vast oil and gas reserves to gain income from?

By the way what the hell is NATO doing marching east? Now NATO is the threat in Europe and Russia now has no choice but to threaten nukes against this evil aliance.

[nightwind928]

Imagine a world without nuclear weapons. A nice thought. But like most fantasies, an impractical one. We already have many nuclear powers besides The U S A and Russia. France, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Isreal and probably Saudi Arabia also sit at the nuclear table. What makes anyone think that these players in the nuclear game will just throw their cards in with a smile? For countries like Isreal who live in a state of siege daily, they view their nuclear capabilities as the single greatest deterrent to invasion by their hostile neighbors. They're probably right. And as tecnology progresses and nukes are improved and refined and made into suitcase bombs, there is no accounting for many of these weapons anymore. Nobody knows with any accuracy, just how many are out there. Nukes are just another one of many weapons of mass destruction.Poison gas, biological threats...all are part of a grim scenario and are probably included in the arsenel of countries who aren't considered part of the nuclear club. What do we do about them, they're equally dangerous to large population centers? This kind of thinking depends on all our global neighbors to be honest and forthright and we know, unfortunately, they are not.

[oxi]

"Poison gas, biological threats...all are part of a grim scenario and are probably included in the arsenel of countries who aren't considered part of the nuclear club."

Think again, the U.S. has quite a bit of biological weapons in her arsenal to go along with her evil nukes!

What to do about it? Cease from being an imperial power and concentrate on the home front! Stay out of their business and their backyards, like Iran it's their election not ours!

[BryantG]

I recall that deterrence is the phenemonon whereby nations with nukes don't attack each other. As such it would appear to be alive and well.

[johnsopinion]

North Korea and Iran seek nuclear weapons for one reason, Recognition,
to be treated as one of the Big Boys, the Inner Circle, so to speak.

Does your son bring an Uzzi to the dinner table to force you to recognize
and talk to him? Is he holding a Waltham when he asks if he can use the
car? Does he take it to school each day?

Why have we made guns and nuclear weapons the bartering chip needed
to get attention, to be recognized, to be treated as an equal?
But then, why has the accumulation of money become the goal instead of
being a means to an end?

[Mecheng]

Drop an atomic bomb on North Korea and then tell us nuclear deterrence does not work .

[oxi]

Is North Korea a part of the NPT Treaty?

If not, they have every legal right to build nukes like Israel does!

If Israel has nukes, Iran by nature will try to build an arsenal to counter Israel's so in reality Israel is the problem, not Iran. Israel wants to be greedy and own a monopoly in the Middle East with nukes, not fair at all!

[jules23]

An interesting argument, which fails to acknowledge the real dangers of unstable nations possessing nukes. Kim Jong appears crazy. Iran and Pakistan appear unstable. Is there not a reason to fear an unstable country, which has a culture of suicide bombing? Were these weapons to fall into the wrong hands, the rational behind nuclear deterrence would be moot. A suicide bomber is not interested in threatening and posturing for global clout, instead they are interested in a dogma that perceives everything through a lens of apocalyptic conflict. If you're willing to sacrifice your own life for an idea, why not a city or a country?

I agree that a massive reduction in nukes is a fine idea for all countries, but I don't think it would stop small aggressive countries, from trying to get a leg up with nukes.

[PaHairO]

George Bush appeared crazy, too. Dick Cheney is off-the-charts nuts. I wouldn't have trusted either of them to park a car, much less run a country.

[SgtMac]

Deterrence does work. For example:
1) Before acquiring nuclear capability, India and Pakistan fought four wars. Since both sides became nuclear weapons states, there has been no major conflict between them. The threat of nuclear attack has stabilized the situation because neither side can afford to start a conflict which may spin out of control.
2) China has deployed a small number of strategic nuclear missiles, 25-50 I believe. . They have not developed a larger number and stayed out of the nuclear arms race because they know that even a limited number of nuclear strikes is a risk no nation can afford to take.
3) The only time nuclear weapons were used, they were used by a nation (USA) which had them on a nation (Japan) which didn't.
4) North Korea believes that having nuclear capability will dissuade the USA and South Korea from attacking it. Similarly, Iran is convinced that having nuclear capability will prevent an attack by Israel.
We are opposed to proliferation because of the danger that unstable, weak governments may lose control of their arsenal and weapons may be stolen or sold to groups like Al Qaida, who are not likely to be deterred by the threat of retaliation. France and India have nuclear weapons, but we don't consider this a threat, because their actions are responsible and predictable.

[BiBiJan]

Insult on top of injury

Not only you plagiarize Iranian official stance re nuclear weapons, you go ahead and lump the non-nuclear state of Iran with the irrational nuclear states.

Here's an excerpt from Ahmadinejad speach at the UN.

"Some powers proudly announce their production of second and third
generations of nuclear weapons. What do they need these weapons for? Is the
development and stockpiling of these deadly weapons designed to promote peace and
democracy? Or, are these weapons, in fact, instruments of coercion and threat against
other peoples and governments? How long should the people of the world live with
the nightmare of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons? What bounds the powers
producing and possessing these weapons? How can they be held accountable before
the international community? And, are the inhabitants of these countries content with
the waste of their wealth and resources for the production of such destructive
arsenals? Is it not possible to rely on justice, ethics and wisdom instead of these
instruments of death?"

http://www.un.org/webcast/ga/61/pdfs/iran-e.pdf

[jake1492]

The author's logic breaks down when one considers the possibility of an event where a bomb goes off....... and it is not clear where it came from. Retaliation in such a circumstance would be immoral of course, because the retaliation might be against the wrong country.

The fewer nuclear weapons there are around, under the control of the smallest number of and least belligerent countries and the more secure they are the better.

[ezeflyer]

What the world needs is a deterrent against conservatives everywhere. http://ni4d.us/

[jhNY]

Fear of the irrational provokes irrational fear. The threat, spoken or not, by possessors of nuclear weapons is always the same: there are matters considered so existential that nuclear weapons will be used to settle things. It's a promise of genocide, and one we made and still do make, with our refusal to rule out first strikes.

I agree with the author that the best solution would be no nukes in anybody's arsenal, but the smaller nations will always want something to even the odds in a fight against a larger one, as we developed our own arsenal as a way to contain the Soviets' larger conventional threat in Europe post WWII. If anything, the free-wheelin' cowboy foreign policy of GWB has made it overwhelmingly likely that for the next few years, there will be an increasing number of nukes in the world, and they will be cherished by small rogue nations like North Korea and Iran as the only practical guarantee against invasion by a conventionally superior state like ourselves.