Much has been made of our glimpse into the administration’s nuclear philosophy, afforded by this week’s leak of the new Nuclear Posture Review and the signing of a new START with Russia. Most analyses I have seen tie the content to President Obama’s avowed aspiration for a nuclear-free world. It is never asked, however, if a nuclear-free world is a practicable effort – is it both possible and desirable – let alone a wise one. All three questions are “deemed-to-pass” as answered in the affirmative.
I think each of these issues – can it be done?, should it be done-A?, and should it be done-B? – are important enough to warrant discussion at least.
Is it possible to get 193 (and growing) nations to agree to abolish the deployment, testing and development of nuclear weapons; and is it possible to get 193 (and growing) nations to not cheat on that agreement? Both aspects of the “is it possible” criterion are inordinately important because of the inordinately outcome-relevant asymmetry of nuclear and conventional weapons. Each phase of the drawdown contains perils to the now-nuclear-armed nation. The profundity of cheating increases inversely as to the total number of the world’s nuclear weapons.
Assuming the US and Russia keep inching backwards, at some point they will encounter another player which, if the US and Russia reduce arsenals further, will become the world’s most nuclearized state. This is the threshold where both the US and Russia must agree to abdicate nuclear leadership to another sovereign. Does it matter if that third party is PRC or France? Should it? Reductions by all three will soon encounter Israel and the UK – are the three agreeable to relinquishing nuclear leadership to another state or states? This phenomenon continues until all the world’s nuclear powers are on-board and reducing toward zero. There are two problems here.
First, while Deputy American Ambassador to the United Nations, Lieutenant General Vernon Walters (USA) issued Walters’ Law of Negotiations – the probability against consensus rises as the square of the number of participants. Consensus – a condition necessary to universal nuclear disarmament – becomes exponentially more difficult with each additional negotiator over two. And second, human nature tells us the race to zero is more likely to be asymptotic than successful. Even if successful, we are now confronted by the 184 or so other nations of the world that must sign-on by dependably pledging to never, ever, pursue nuclear weapons, a process that increases in difficulty, and decreases in probability, with each additional negotiator. Is this an attainable goal, or just a negotiating stance? Does President Obama honestly believe that the world will voluntarily forego increasingly profound asymmetrical weapons for the sake of banning them? Or is this an honest desire by a president who knows it to be Quixotic? Does it matter – is the pursuit worth taking regardless of its attainability? The answer to this last one dictates how one proceeds as totals dwindle.
We are told that nuclear weapons must be banned because they are too dangerous – paradoxically justifying their existence as deterrents. This is part and parcel to the “we live in the most dangerous of times” syndrome, and we are to infer that the ban will rescue us from the predicament. The fact is, we have always lived in the most dangerous of times. The catapult, the gun, rifling the machinegun – all gave first-users a palpable advantage on the battlefield, and each was to change civilization as we knew it. These were the world’s most dangerous weapons, in their day, and each of their deployments, having ratcheted-up potential mayhem, placed us in a new “most dangerous of times”. As we, as a species, get better at everything – including warfare – the effects of our endeavors increase, increasing the danger of mishap. This just happens. We will always live in the most dangerous of times. So, is the pursuit of zero-nukes worthy in the absence of intrinsic security?
“Should We-B” asks if the operating post-nuclear vision is more utopian than realistic. We have a contemporary, in anthropological terms, analog of the dynamics of a post-nuclear world; it’s the pre-nuclear world – history prior to 6 August 1945 – one of trade wars, wars of conquest, and World Wars. It is commonly acknowledged that the presence of nuclear weapons all but eliminated wider wars. It would only stand to reason that the elimination of nuclear weapons would invite the return of wider wars and the cheapening of causus belli. Removing the American nuclear umbrella reduces our ability to project power to the current deployment of our carrier strike groups and [post-nuclear] cruise missile boats. I’m not lamenting the dwindling of American power so much as the nullification of existing treaties and the weakening of stability wrought by the weakening of alliances. Is a non-nuclear world safer than a nuclear one?
I’ve tried to provide several points of departure for discussions on the “invisible” aspects of nuclear disarmament.
Posted
04-08-2010 11:47
by
Eagle Watch
Filed under: politics, Obama, Israel, government, China, World War II, history, Russia, military, UN, axcess bloggers