The Great Debate

ing that America seeks nuclear zero, Obama Is Nuclear Zero is simply reaffirming that we will follow our the Best Option? treaty commitments: states that joined the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (npt) agreed “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of Yes: Scott D. Sagan the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.” And since Article 6 of America’s Constitution says that a treaty com- very time Barack Obama announces mitment is “the supreme Law of the Land,” at that he is in favor of a world free of a basic level, Obama is simply saying that he E nuclear weapons, the nuclear hawks will follow U.S. law. descend. Soon after his inauguration, for- The abolition aspiration is not, however, mer–Reagan administration Pentagon of- based on such legal niceties. Instead, it is ficial Frank Gaffney proclaimed that the inspired by two important insights about the president “stands to transform the ‘world’s global nuclear future. First, the most dan- only superpower’ into a nuclear impotent.” gerous nuclear threats to the United States After Obama promised in his 2009 Prague today and on the horizon are from terrorists speech that “the United States will take con- and potential new nuclear powers, not from crete steps toward a world without nuclear our traditional Cold War adversaries in Rus- weapons,” former–Secretary of Defense James sia and China. Second, the spread of nuclear Schlesinger declared that “the notion that weapons to new states, and indirectly to ter- we can abolish nuclear weapons reflects on rorist organizations, will be made less likely a combination of American utopianism and if the United States and other nuclear-armed American parochialism.” And when the presi- nations are seen to be working in good faith dent won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, in part toward disarmament. for his embrace of the disarmament vision, Nuclear weapons may have been a danger- Time Magazine even ran an essay entitled ous necessity to keep the Cold War cold. But “Want Peace? Give a Nuke the Nobel.” scholars and policy makers who are nostalgic Obama is right to declare, loudly and often, for the brutal simplicity of that era’s nuclear that the United States seeks a world without deterrence do not understand how much the nuclear weapons, and the administration is world has changed. The choice we face is not right to be taking concrete steps now toward between a nuclear-free world or a return to that long-term goal. Indeed, by proclaim- bipolar Cold War deterrence; it is between creating a nuclear-weapons-free world or Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S. G. Professor of living in a world with many more nuclear- Political Science at Stanford University and co- weapons states. And if there are more nuclear director of Stanford’s Center for International Security nations, and more atomic weapons in global and Cooperation. arsenals, there will be more opportunities for

88 The National Interest The Great Debate terrorists to steal or casualties [would] be buy the bomb. in [the] region of 500 long-term affected if he threat of nu- dispersed in [a] busy T clear-armed ter- area (Inshalla).” A rorists is not new. In homegrown dirty- 1977, the Red Army bomb threat has also Faction in West Ger- emerged: in 2009, many attacked a U.S. James Cummings, a military base hop- neo-Nazi in Belfast, ing to steal the tac- Maine, was discov- tical nuclear weap- ered to have started ons there. The Aum collecting low-level Shinrikyo apocalyptic nuclear materials. cult in Japan sought recruits in the Russian The even-more-destructive terrorist-nucle- military in the 1990s to get access to loose ar-weapons danger is looming on the horizon. nukes and only settled on using sarin-gas Terrorists are not likely to be deterred by chemicals in the Tokyo subway when their threats of retaliation. Stopping them from nuclear efforts failed. Today’s threat is even purchasing a nuclear weapon, or stealing one, more alarming. It is well known that Osama or getting the materials to make their own is bin Laden has proclaimed that Islamic jihadis a much better strategy. If aspiring nuclear- have a duty to acquire and to use nuclear weapons states—such as Iran and Syria (and weapons against the West. And al-Qaeda is some suspect Burma)—get nuclear weapons known to have recruited senior Pakistani nu- in the future, the danger that terrorists will clear scientists in the past and may now have get their hands on one will clearly increase. “sleeper agents” in Pakistani laboratories to And if the United States and other nuclear- help in that effort. weapons nations are seen to be hypocritical, The easier-to-acquire radioactive dirty by not following our npt commitments and bomb with its concomitant threat to kill up to maintaining that we (but only we) are respon- one thousand people and create environmen- sible enough to have them, it will reduce the tal havoc is already a reality. In 2004, Dhi- likelihood of ensuring the broad international ren Barot, a veteran of jihadi campaigns in cooperation that is needed to reduce these Kashmir, was arrested in London. He admit- proliferation risks. ted to plotting attacks against the New York Stock Exchange and the World Bank and fficials in the George W. Bush adminis- possessed detailed plans to acquire nuclear O tration believed that there was no link materials from ten thousand smoke detectors between U.S. arsenal size or military posture for a radiological device. In a report sent to and nonproliferation decisions made by non- al-Qaeda central, Barot wrote that “estimated nuclear-weapons states. The Obama admin-

Sagan vs. Waltz September/October 2010 89 Obama is right to declare, loudly and often, that the United States seeks a world without nuclear weapons.

istration’s new Nuclear Posture Review main- liferator will not be tolerated. Fortunately, in a tains that the connection is strong, even if it is nuclear-free world, the former nuclear-weap- often indirect and hard to measure: ons states would have far stronger mutual in- centives to punish and reverse any new state’s By demonstrating that we take seriously our npt decision to acquire atomic bombs. Ironically, obligation to pursue nuclear disarmament, we it is precisely because nuclear-weapons states strengthen our ability to mobilize broad inter- have such large arsenals today that they some- national support for the measures needed to re- times succumb to the temptation to accept inforce the non-proliferation regime and secure new proliferators. In a disarmed world, such nuclear materials worldwide. complacency would be more obviously im- prudent, thus encouraging the once-nuclear- There are now many signs that the Obama armed states to enforce nonproliferation. administration is correct in its assessment that Verification at zero (or at low numbers for progress in disarmament enables progress in that matter) is an obvious challenge. Even if nonproliferation. The April 2010 Nuclear better verification technology is created, there Security Summit brought forty-six countries will remain the problem of what to do if an to Washington where they reached agreement erstwhile nuclear nation is caught secretly on a number of concrete steps to better pro- preparing to rearm. A way around this is to tect nuclear materials from terrorists. And accept the fact that all former nuclear-weap- in stark contrast to the Bush-era 2005 npt ons states will retain the option of reversing Review Conference, which ended in failure, course. Ironically, this capability will be both the May 2010 review took place in a co- reassuring and deterring: reassuring because operative atmosphere and produced a final it enables states to begin taking the final steps document that called on all states to sign onto toward total nuclear disarmament even in improved safeguards for their reactors, and the absence of complete confidence that the encouraged governments not in compliance process will be successful; deterring because with their treaty commitments to change their each state will know that even if it can reverse ways. The successful efforts to get additional its final disarmament steps, so can the others. rounds of sanctions against Iran in the un In short, there will still be a latent form of Security Council can be credited, in part, to nuclear deterrence even in a nuclear-disarmed the new spirit of cooperation, including the world. progress on arms-control agreements between Finally, there is the question of ballistic- the United States and China, and the United missile defenses. During and immediately after States and Russia. the Cold War, many saw these systems as “de- stabilizing” because as long as a government’s evere challenges to global zero remain. It nuclear security was dependent on the ability S will be critical that all states have increased to retaliate with devastating force after an at- confidence that final disarmament agreements tack, if an adversary hitting first could use will be enforced and that any new nuclear pro- even limited defenses to reduce the effective-

90 The National Interest The Great Debate ness of second-strike retaliation, mutually as- No: Kenneth N. Waltz sured destruction no longer held. Managed mutual-missile-defense deployments in the future could, however, permit the final steps ....ar may not pay, as British of disarmament to take place with less concern ..economist Norman Angell about cheating in the immediate term and Wrepeatedly claimed, but the lesson could provide more confidence in the ability proved a hard one for states to learn. Even of governments to respond in a timely manner with the horrors of World War I fresh in their to successful rule breaking by another state. minds, European countries went into World War II just twenty-one years later. Until Au- he nuclear-weapons-free world will not gust of 1945, violent conflict punctuated the T be a world free of conflicts of national history of states, especially of those major and interest; nor will it be a utopia in which gov- great. ernments never feel tempted to cheat on their When in short order the Soviet Union fol- international obligations. A world without lowed the United States into the nuclear busi- nuclear weapons will not be a world without ness with “man of steel” Stalin and in due war. Indeed, the maintenance of global zero course “we will bury you” Khrushchev at the will require that conventionally armed major helm, many in the Western world thought powers be prepared to enforce nuclear disar- that all hell would break loose. Robert May- mament and nonproliferation commitments nard Hutchins, boy president of the Univer- in a fair and vigorous manner. Potential pro- sity of Chicago (he was thirty when he took liferators may have to be “forced” to be free. over), and Bertrand Russell, eminent in math- In medieval times, European mapmakers ematics and rhetoric, proclaimed that in the placed the words hic sunt dracones (here be nuclear age, world government was the only dragons) at the edge of the known world. Dis- alternative to world war. With nuclear weap- armament critics today are like those medieval ons, war presumably meant that civilization mapmakers, fearing that we are entering un- would perish and we along with it. Instead, known territory fraught with hidden nuclear the alternative to world government proved monsters. But these dragons are fantasies. The to be nuclear deterrence, which banished war genuine strategic challenges we face in creat- among the world’s major nations through the ing a secure nuclear-free world—adequate long years of the Cold War and ever since. verification, enforcement of violations and mutual-defense deployments—are challenges Kenneth N. Waltz is the Emeritus Ford Professor that can be met over time. And the world of Political Science at the University of California at we are heading toward if we fail to find safe Berkeley and senior research associate at Columbia paths to mutual and verifiable disarmament— University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace a world crowded with nuclear-weapons states Studies. In 1999 he won the James Madison Lifetime and terrorist temptations—is even more Achievement Award from the American Political fraught with danger. Science Association.

Sagan vs. Waltz September/October 2010 91 Certainly, violent conflict still exists, but it be next. What to do? How can any state hope has been relegated to taking its course in the to deter a world-dominant power? To build a periphery of international politics. The United conventional defense against the United States States, in particular, has been fond of beating is impossible. Moreover, throughout history up poor and weak states. In the twenty years conventional deterrence has repeatedly failed. dating from 1983, we invaded six of them, Nuclear weapons are the only weapons capable beginning and ending with Iraq. Yet since of dissuading the United States from working the end of World War II, states with nuclear its will on other nations. weapons have never fought one another. Test- To suggest to other states that America’s ing propositions against historical events has willingness to shrink its nuclear arsenal should become a favorite indoor sport of social sci- induce them to follow the example, or should entists. This is the only proposition that has persuade them to give up their efforts to be- passed every test. One might think that the come nuclear states, is fanciful. For in spite best, in fact the only, peacekeeping weapon of much Obama rhetoric, the United States that the world has ever known would gain shows no intention of dropping its nuclear many fans. It does not seem to have done so. forces below the second-strike level. The president, speaking to the people of the Czech Re- e now have a president who wants public, promised that we will “take concrete W to free us from the atomic bomb in steps toward a world without nuclear weap- the hope of making the world a safer place. ons.” He then followed that statement with This “zero option” has intuitive appeal. Nu- this one: “Make no mistake: As long as these clear weapons are immensely destructive. No weapons exist, the United States will maintain defense against them is possible. Why then a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter should states not band together and agree to any adversary, and guarantee that defense abolish them? Why is the zero option not the to our allies.” That is, we will, as we should, best choice? continue to maintain forces able to launch Abolishing the weapons that have caused a devastating retaliatory blow even if struck sixty-five years of peace would certainly have first. Nuclear arsenals may be reduced to very effects. It would, among other things, make small numbers, but if they remain at or above the world safe for the fighting of World War the second-strike level, the military relations III. Like any dominant power, America is a of states continue unchanged. looming threat in the minds of many a leader. If somehow world leaders blundered into When the president of the United States iden- an agreement to go to zero, what would any tified three countries—Iraq, Iran and North nuclear country with sensible leaders do? The Korea—as forming an axis of evil, which answer can be given in one word: cheat. Nu- President George W. Bush did in January of clear weapons are small and light. They are 2002, and when he then ordered the invasion easy to hide and easy to move. Nuclear war- of one of them, what were the other two to heads can be placed in small vans or small think? They had to believe that they might boats and sent across borders or into har-

92 The National Interest The Great Debate bors. Because a ban on all nuclear weapons They are the only weapons ever invented that would be impossible to police and enforce, work decisively against their own use. Those some countries would be tempted to break who advocate a zero option argue in effect the rules. Since some might cheat, all would that we should eliminate the cause of the ex- have a strong incentive to do so. Even worse, tensive peace the nuclear world has enjoyed. if the zero option were generally accepted, one India and Pakistan provide an object les- state or another might eventually come to be- son. When they tested their warheads in May lieve that it faced a threat to its very existence. of 1998, journalists, academics and public A mad scramble to rearm with nuclear weap- officials predicted that war and chaos on the ons would then take place. As Thomas C. subcontinent would ensue. The result, as I Schelling long ago wrote, “Short of universal expected, was to ensure a prolonged peace brain surgery, nothing can erase the memory between countries that had fought three wars of weapons and how to build them.”1 since independence and continued for a time to spill blood in the conflict over Kashmir. ith the dawn of the nuclear age, peace That countries with nuclear capabilities W has prevailed among those who have do not fight wars against one another is a the weapons or enjoy their protection. Those lesson we should have learned. The proposi- who like peace should love nuclear weapons. tion has held exactly where the prospects for war seemed the brightest, for example, between the United States and the Soviet Union, between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, and between India and Pakistan. New nuclear states are often greeted with dire forebodings: Is the government stable? Are the rulers sensible? The answers may be disconcerting. Yet every new nuclear nation, however bad its previous reputation, has behaved exactly like all of the old ones. The effect of having nuclear weapons overwhelms the character of the states that possess them. Countries with nuclear weapons, no matter how mean and irrational their leaders may seem to be, no matter how unstable their governments appear to be, do not launch major conventional attacks on

1 Thomas C. Schelling, “The Role of Deterrence in Total Disarmament,” Foreign Affairs 40, no. 3 (April 1962): 392.

Sagan vs. Waltz September/October 2010 93 other countries, let alone nuclear ones. Even that new proliferators will also behave cau- conventional attacks can all too easily escalate tiously if they acquire the bomb. It is there- out of control and lead to an exchange of fore not surprising to learn that Waltz fears nuclear warheads. With conventional weap- that nuclear disarmament would “make the ons, countries worry about winning or losing. world safe for the fighting of World War III,” With nuclear weapons, countries worry about believes that the atomic bomb is the best surviving or being annihilated. Nuclear weap- “peacekeeping weapon” ever invented, and ons induce caution all around: think of the deduces that the Obama administration must, Cuban missile crisis, or think of the external despite the president’s grand rhetoric, really behavior of China during the frightful decade have no intention of moving toward global of the Cultural Revolution. zero. What is surprising is that Waltz exag- gerates the peace-inducing effect of nuclear hese days, everyone favors transparency. weapons, displays a strangely apolitical per- T On the nuclear front the United States spective on the causes of war, completely ig- is transparent enough. Transparently, it is in nores the risks of nuclear terrorism and mis- America’s interest to get would-be nuclear represents Barack Obama’s statements about states to foreswear the capability. Transpar- nuclear disarmament. Let me address these ently, it is in America’s interest to get pres- point by point. ently nuclear states to reduce or, better yet, Waltz claims that “states with nuclear weap- eliminate their warheads. We are after all the ons have never fought one another.” Wrong. world’s dominant conventional power and India and Pakistan, after testing nuclear weap- have been for years. Are we willing to reduce ons in 1998, fought the 1999 Kargil War, the number of our nuclear weapons? Sure; in which over one thousand soldiers died. we have far more warheads than deterrence Moreover, the Kargil War occurred not de- requires. Would we be willing to reduce the spite Pakistan developing nuclear weapons but number of our strategic warheads below what rather because Pakistan got the bomb. Paki- we think necessary for a second-strike capa- stani generals thought that their new nuclear bility? Obviously not. We are transparent on arsenal was a shield behind which they could that one as well. safely sneak Pakistani soldiers into Indian- controlled Kashmir without triggering a war. They were wrong, dangerously wrong. And Sagan Responds Waltz is wrong to ignore this history. Waltz also notes that “even with the horrors of World War I fresh in their minds, ..enneth Waltz served in the U.S. European countries went into World War Army in World War II, became a II.” This is apolitical political science. Didn’t K...leading proponent of realist “bal- Hitler and the Nazi Party’s ambition to cre- ance of power” theory during the Cold War, ate Lebensraum and gain mastery of Europe and has consistently maintained since then have something to do with the outbreak of

94 The National Interest The Great Debate Abolishing the weapons that have caused sixty-five years of peace would certainly have effects. It would, among other things, make the world safe for the fighting of World War III.

war? Poland, England and France did not just ments and create new verification technology, stumble into war in 1939 and 1940. They safe and secure disarmament is possible. Waltz were attacked by an expansionist power led misinterprets Obama’s nod toward realism as by a megalomaniac leader who did not fear hypocrisy. the consequences of war. (Indeed, by 1945 Nuclear weapons have not been the best Hitler thought the German people should things since sliced bread. They have been a be destroyed because they had proven them- mixed blessing, a dangerous deterrent. The selves unworthy of his leadership.) If the Cold War witnessed many close calls; new United States faced an aggressive leader like nuclear states will be even more prone to de- Hitler today, I would certainly advocate the terrence failures. Living with nuclear weapons maintenance of a U.S. nuclear arsenal for the was a perilous necessity in the past. It should sake of deterrence. But we do not now face not be repeated. Celebrating this dangerous that kind of threat in Russia and China. And condition is misguided. the possibility of leaders like Iran’s Ahma- dinejad getting nuclear weapons is precisely why the United States should work with oth- Waltz Responds ers to pressure would-be proliferators and prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. n 1963 President John F. Kennedy fa- It is revealing that the word “terrorism” mously speculated that by 1970 ten does not appear in Waltz’s essay. He may be- I countries would be able to deploy nu- lieve that terrorists’ interests in getting the clear weapons and by 1975, fifteen to twenty bomb are exaggerated, or that governments countries would have followed suit.1 In fact, can easily protect their arsenals from insider the number of nuclear-weapons states peaked or outsider threats. But he is incorrect on at ten when some of the successor states to both counts. Islamic jihadis, left-wing radi- the Soviet Union were born nuclear, then the cals and apocalyptic cults have all tried to number dropped to seven, and now it stands get nuclear weapons. More proliferation will at nine with Pakistan and North Korea having increase their chances of success. No wonder joined what remains the world’s most exclu- Waltz ignores this issue. He has no credible sive club. way to address it. Why have nuclear weapons spread so slow- Waltz cites Obama’s Prague speech about ly? The answer is found not in the Nuclear America keeping nuclear weapons as long as Non-Proliferation Treaty but in the fact that others possess the same capability as evidence most countries feel sufficiently secure without that we are not serious about disarmament. adding nuclear weapons to their conventional Wrong again. Obama was in fact emphasiz- arsenals. If a country believes that its secu- ing that the United States will not disarm unilaterally and that the process will take a 1 Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. significant amount of time. But if we can Kennedy in the White House (Boston, ma: Houghton negotiate multilateral arms-reduction agree- Mifflin, 1965).

Sagan vs. Waltz September/October 2010 95 Sagan, having rejected “legal niceties,” would instead rely on international pieties. If other countries believe that America is on the road to nuclear disarmament, they will presumably jump on the bandwagon. The problem is that no road leads from a world with a small number of nuclear-weapons states to a world with none. Sagan believes that if the world does not become nuclear weapons free it will soon be a world of many nuclear states. One wonders why. Many more states can make nuclear weapons than do. Why should one now expect a large number of new nuclear states to join the hitherto-exclusive club? The old answer was that states seek the prestige that members of the club enjoy. Little prestige, however, attaches to new nuclear states when countries like Pakistan and North rity depends on nuclear weapons, to prevent it Korea already have them. Strong states—the from acquiring them becomes almost impos- old Soviet Union and China—are no longer sible. President George W. Bush among others seen as threats. Sagan would have us transfer announced that North Korea becoming a nu- our worries to puny new nuclear states and clear-weapons state would be “unacceptable.” terrorists. We used to worry about the strong; Yet when North Korea developed a nuclear now we should worry about the weak. military capability, we quietly acquiesced. The Sagan emphasizes the perils that attend a alternative to acceptance would have been to world with many more nuclear states, thus attack North Korea’s nuclear facilities, and that increasing the chances that terrorists would would surely have been unacceptable. be able to steal or buy nuclear devices. To find Sagan emphasizes that verification and en- good words to say about terrorists is difficult. forcement of an agreement to create a nu- Terrorists are a big annoyance and may oc- clear-free world would be required. If for a casionally do a fair amount of damage. We all moment we imagine that Sagan’s hoped-for know about the attacks on the Twin Towers world without nuclear weapons could be real- and the Pentagon in which upwards of three ized, what would anyone do if a major state thousand people perished. One thought, how- revealed that it had secretly rebuilt a consid- ever, gives comfort: terrorists are incapable of erable nuclear arsenal? Would someone then rending the fabric of society and of occupying attack the reborn nuclear state using the only and administering territory. We should all weapons it would have, that is, conventional heave a sigh of relief that strong adversaries ones? I think not. have been replaced by weak ones. n

96 The National Interest The Great Debate