Sagan why states

Nuclear weapons have never been used in a world in which two or more states possessed them. These possibilities are examined in the next section. Consider blackmail first. Two conditions make for the success of nuclear blackmail. First, when only one country had nuclear weapons, threats to use them had more effect. In Korea, we had gone so far that the threat to go further was plausible.

The successful seige of Dien Bien Pbu in the spring of that year showed the limitations of such threats. Capabilities foster policies that employ them. But monstrous capabilities foster monstrous policies, which when contemplated are seen to be too horrible to carry through. No state can make the threat with credibility because no state can expect to execute the threat without danger to themselves.

Some have feared that nuclear weapons may be fired anonymously—by radical Arab states, for example, to attack an Israeli city so as block a peace settlement. But the state exploding the warhead could not be sure of remaining unidentified. Once two or more countries have nuclear weapons, the response to nuclear threats, even against non-nuclear states, becomes unpredictable. Although nuclear weapons are poor instruments for blackmail, would they not provide a cheap and decisive offensive force against a conventionally armed enemy?

And what goals could a conventionally strong Iran have entertained that would have tempted her to risk using nuclear weapons? A country that takes the nuclear offensive has to fear an appropriately punishing strike by someone. Far from lowering the expected cost of aggression, a nuclear offence even against a non-nuclear state raises the possible costs of aggression to incalculable heights because the aggressor cannot be sure of the reaction of other nuclear powers.

Nuclear weapons do not make nuclear war a likely prospect, as history has so far shown. No one can say that nuclear weapons will never be used. Their use, although unlikely, is always possible. In asking what the spread of nuclear weapons will do to the world, we are asking about the effects to be expected as a larger number of relatively weak states get nuclear weapons. If such states use nuclear weapons, the world will not end.

And the use of nuclear weapons by lesser powers would hardly trigger them elsewhere, with the US and the USSR becoming involved in ways that might shake the central balance. A number of problems arc thought to attend the efforts of minor powers to use nuclear weapons for deterrence. In this section, I ask how hard these problems are for new nuclear states to solve. The Forces Required for Deterrence. In considering the physical requirements of deterrent forces, we should recall the difference between prevention and pre-emption.

A pre-emptive strike is launched by one state to blunt an attack that another state is presumably preparing to launch. The first danger posed by the spread of nuclear weapons would seem to be that each new nuclear state may tempt an old one to strike preventively in order to destroy an embryonic nuclear capability before it can become militarily effective.

When Francis P. Thus President Nasser warned Israel in that Egypt would attack if she were sure that Israel was building a bomb. The uneven development of the forces of potential and of new nuclear states creates occasions that seem to permit preventive strikes and may seem to invite them. First, a country may be in an early stage of nuclear development and be obviously unable to make nuclear weapons.

Second, a country may be in an advanced stage of nuclear development, and whether or not it has some nuclear weapons may not be surely known. A preventive strike would seem to be most promising during the first stage of nuclear development. But would one strike so hard as to destroy the very potential for future nuclear development?

If not, the country struck could simply resume its nuclear career. To do either would be difficult and costly. Arab states that may attempt to do so will now be all the more secretive and circumspect. A preventive strike during the second stage of nuclear development is even less promising than a preventive strike during the first stage. To know for sure that the country attacked has not already produced or otherwise acquired some deliverable warheads becomes increasingly difficult.

Fission bombs may work even though they have not been tested, as was the case with the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. And if the number is zero and Egypt can be sure of that, she would still not know how many days are required for assembling components that may be on hand. Preventive strikes against states that have, or may have, nuclear weapons are hard to imagine, but what about pre-emptive ones? The new worry in a world in which nuclear weapons have spread is that states of limited and roughly similar capabilities will use them against one another.

They do not want to risk nuclear devastation anymore than we do. With delicate forces, states are tempted to launch disarming strikes before their own forces can be struck and destroyed.

To be effective a deterrent force must meet three requirements. First, a part of the force must appear to be able to survive an attack and launch one of its own. Second, survival of the force must not require early firing in response to what may be false alarms. Third, weapons must not be susceptible to accidental and unauthorized use. Nobody wants vulnerable. Will new nuclear states find ways to hide their weapons, to deliver them, and to control them? Will they be able to deploy and manage nuclear weapons in ways that meet the physical requirements of deterrent forces?

The United States even today worries about the vulnerability of its vast and varied arsenal. The Soviet Union could not be sure that we would fail to launch on warning or fail to retaliate later.

In this respect, as in others, strategic discourse now lacks the clarity and precision it once had. Both the United States and the Soviet Union have strategic nuclear weapons that can destroy some of the other sides strategic nuclear weapons. Deterrent forces are seldom delicate because no state wants delicate forces and nuclear forces can easily be made sturdy. Nuclear weapons are fairly small and light. They are easy to hide and to move.

Early in the nuclear age, people worried about atomic bombs being concealed in packing boxes and placed in holds of ships to be exploded when a signal was given. Now more than ever people worry about terrorists stealing nuclear warheads because various states have so many of them. Everybody seems to believe that terrorists are capable of hiding bombs. Why should states be unable to do what terrorist gangs are though to be capable of?

It is sometimes claimed that the few bombs of a new nuclear state create a greater danger of nuclear war than additional thousands for the United States and the Soviet Union. Such statements assume that pre-emption of a small force is easy. How can military advisers promise the full success of a disarming first strike when the penalty for slight error may be so heavy? In the worst case, some survive and can still be delivered.

Americans think so because we think in terms of large nuclear arsenals. Small nuclear powers will neither have them nor need them. Lesser nuclear states might deploy, say, ten real weapons and ten dummies, while permitting other countries to infer that the numbers are larger.

The adversary need only believe that some warheads may survive his attack and be visited on him. That belief should not be hard to create without making command and control unreliable. All nuclear countries must live through a time when their forces are crudely designed. All countries have so far been able to control them. Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Even if they buy the weapons, they will have to hire technicians to maintain and control them. We do not have to wonder whether they will take good care of their weapons.

They have every incentive to do so. Hiding nuclear weapons and keeping them under control are tasks for which the ingenuity of numerous states is adequate. Nor are means of delivery difficult to devise or procure. Ports can be torpedoed by small boats lying off shore. Moreover, a thriving arms trade in ever more sophisticated military equipment provides ready access to what may be wanted, including planes and missiles suited nuclear warhead delivery. Lesser nuclear states can pursue deterrent strategies effectively.

Deterrence requires the ability to inflict unacceptable damage on another country. To deter, a country need not appear to be able to destroy a fourth to a half of another country, although in some cases that might be easily done.

And what would be left of Israel if Tel Aviv and Haifa were destroyed? The weak can deter one another. But can the weak deter the strong?

The population and industry of most States concentrate in a relatively small number of centres. This is true of the Soviet Union. Geoffrey Kemp in concluded that China would probably be able to strike on that scale. And, I emphasize again, China need only appear to be able to do it.

A low probability of carrying a highly destructive attack home is sufficient for deterrence. A force of an imprecisely specifiable minimum capability is nevertheless needed.

In a study, Justin Galen pseud. He estimates that China has 60 to 80 medium-range and 60 to 80 intermediate-range missiles of doubtful reliability and accuracy and 80 obsolete bombers.

But surely Russian leaders reason the other way around. Despite inaccuracies, a few Chinese missiles may hit Russian cities, and some bombers may get through. Not much is required to deter. What political-military objective is worth risking Vladivostock, Novosibirsk. Prevention and pre-emption are difficult games because the costs are so high if the games are not perfectly played.

Inhibitions against using nuclear forces for such attacks are strong, although one cannot say they are absolute. Some of the inhibitions are simply human. Can country A find justification for a preventive or pre-emptive strike against B if B, in acquiring nuclear weapons, is imitating A? Awesome acts are hard to perform. Some of the inhibitions are political. The Credibility of Small Deterrent Forces. The first is physical. Will such countries be able to construct and protect a deliverable force?

We have found that they can readily do so. The second is psychological. Will an adversary believe that retaliation threatened will be carried out? Deterrent threats backed by second-strike nuclear forces raise the expected costs of war to such heights that war becomes unlikely.

But deterrent threats may not be credible. In a world where two or more countries can make them, the prospect of mutual devastation makes it difficult, or irrational, to execute threats should the occasion for doing so arise.

Would it not be senseless to risk suffering further destruction once a deterrent force had failed to deter? Why retaliate once a threat to do so has failed? Instead, in retaliating, one may prompt the enemy to unleash more warheads. The Soviet Union, some feared, might believe that the United States would be self-deterred.

One earlier solution to the problem was found in Thomas Sche! No state can know for sure that another state will refrain from retaliating even when retaliation would be irrational. Bernard Brodie put the thought more directly, while avoiding the slippery notion of rationality.

To ask why a country should carry out its deterrent threat once deterrence has failed is to ask the wrong question.

The question suggests that an aggressor may attack believing that the attacked country may not retaliate. This invokes the conventional logic that analysts find so hard to forsake. In a conventional world, a country can sensibly attack if it believes that success is probable. In a nuclear world, a country cannot sensibly attack unless it believes that success is assured. An attacker is deterred even if he believes only that the attacked may retaliate. One may nevertheless wonder, as Americans recently have, whether retaliatory threats remain credible if the strategic forces of the attacker are superior to those of the attacked.

Given second-strike capabilities, it is not the balance of forces but the courage to use them that counts. The balance or imbalance of strategic forces affects neither the calculation of danger nor the question of whose will is the stronger.

Second-strike forces have to be seen in absolute terms. In answering these questions, we can learn something from the experience of the last three decades. The United States and the Soviet Union limited and modulated their provocative acts, the more carefully so when major values for one side or the other were at issue. This can be seen both in what they have and in what they have not done. The United States, to take another example, could fight for years on a large scale in South-East ASia because neither success nor failure mattered much internationally.

Victory would not have made the world one of American hegemony. Defeat would not have made the world one of Russian hegemony. No vital interest of either great power was at stake, as both Kissinger and Brezhnev made clear at the time. One can fight without fearing escalation only where little is at stake.

And that is where the deterrent does not deter. Actions at the periphery can safely be bolder than actions at the centre. In contrast, where much is at stake for one side, the other side moves with care. Trying to win where winning would bring the central balance into question threatens escalation and becomes too risky to contemplate.

The United States is circumspect when East European crises impend. Thus Secretary of State Dulles assured the Soviet Union when Hungarians rebelled in October of that we would not interfere with efforts to suppress them. Thus her probes in Berlin have been tentative, reversible, and ineffective. Strikingly, the long border between East and West Europe—drawn where borders earlier proved unstable—has been free even of skirmishes in all of the years since the Second World War. Both of the nuclear great powers become watchful and wary when events occur that may get out of control.

The strikes by Polish workmen that began in August of provide the most recent illustration of this. The Problem of Extended Deterrence.

How far from the homeland does deterrence extend? One answers that question by defining the conditions that must obtain if deterrent threats are to be credited. First, the would-be attacker must be made to see that the deterrer considers the interests at stake to be vital ones. Nuclear weapons, however, strongly incline them to grope for de facto agreement on the answer rather than to fight over it. Second, political stability must prevail in the area that the deterrent is intended to cover.

It the threat to a regime is in good part from internal factions, then an outside power may risk supporting g one of them even in the face of deterrent threats. The credibility of a deterrent force requires both that interests be seen to be vital and that it is the attack from outside that threatens them. Given these conditions, the would-be attacker provides both the reason to retaliate and the target for retaliation. Deterrence gains in credibility the more highly valued the interests covered seem to be.

The problem of stretching a deterrent, which has so agitated the western alliance, is not a problem for lesser nuclear states. Their problem is to protect not others but themselves. Many have feared that lesser nuclear states would be the first to break the nuclear taboo and that they would use their nuclear weapons irresponsibly. I expect just the opposite. Weak states find it easier than strong states to establish their credibility.

Not only will they not be trying to stretch their deterrent forces to cover others, but also their vulnerability to conventional attacks lends credence to their nuclear threats. Because in a conventional war they can lose so much so fast, it is easy to believe that they will unleash a deterrent force even at the risk of receiving a nuclear blow in return.

With deterrent forces, the party that is absolutely threatened prevails. Use of nuclear weapons by lesser states will come only if survival is at stake. And this should be called not irresponsible but responsible use. An opponent who attacks what is unambiguously mine risks suffering great distress if they have second-strike forces. This statement has important implications for both the deterrer and the deterred.

Where territorial claims are shadowy and disputed, deterrent writs do not run. As Steven J. Establishing the credibility of a deterrent force requires moderation of territorial claims on the part of the would-be deterrer. For modest states, weapons whose very existence works strongly against their use are just what is wanted. In a nuclear world, conservative would-be attackers will be prudent, but will all would-be attackers be conservative? A new Hitler is not unimaginable.

After all, the western democracies had not come to the aid of a geographically defensible and militarily strong Czechoslovakia. In those years, Hitler would almost surely have been deterred from acting in ways the immediately threatened massive death and widespread destruction in Germany.

And, if Hitler had not been deterred, would his generals have obeyed his commands? In a nuclear world, to act in blatantly offensive ways is madness. Under the circumstances, how many generals would obey the commands of a madman? One man alone does not make war. To believe that nuclear deterrence would have worked against Germany in is easy.

It is also easy to believe that in , given the ability to do so, Hitler and some few around him would have fired nuclear warheads at the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union as their armies advanced, whatever the consequences for Germany. Two considerations, however, work against this possibility.

Early in Hitler apparently ordered the initiation of gas warfare, but no one responded. In the latter, no country will press another to the point of decisive defeat In the desperation of defeat desperate measures may be taken, but the last thing anyone wants to do is to make a nuclear nation feel desperate.

The unconditional surrender of a nuclear nation cannot be demanded. Considering one such scenario is worthwhile because it has achieved some popularity among those who believe that deterrence is difficult. Albert Wohlstetter imagines a situation in which the Soviet Union might strike first. Her leaders might decide to do so in a desperate effort to save a sinking regime. Imagination places the Soviet Union in a situation where striking first is bad, but presumably not striking first is even worse.

One common characteristic of scenarios is that they are compounded of odd elements. I 55 The central purpose of this article is to challenge this conventional wisdom about nuclear proliferation. I argue that the consensus view, focusing on national security considerations as the cause of proliferation, is dangerously inadequate because nuclear weapons programs also serve other, more parochial and less obvious objectives.

Nuclear weapons, like other weapons, are more than tools of national security; they are political objects of considerable importance in domestic debates and internal bureaucratic struggles and can also serve as international normative symbols of modernity and identity. The body of this article examines three alternative theoretical frameworkswhat I call "models" in the very informal sense of the term-about why states decide to build or refrain from developing nuclear weapons: "the security model," according to which states build nuclear weapons to increase national security against foreign threats, especially nuclear threats; "the domestic politics model," which envisions nuclear weapons as political tools used to advance parochial domestic and bureaucratic interests; and "the norms model," under which nuclear weapons decisions are made because weapons acquisition , or restraint in weapons development, provides Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide.

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