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Tilting Toward Thanatos: America's “Countervailing” Nuclear Strategy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Louis René Beres
Louis René Beres
Affiliation:
Purdue University
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Abstract

America's current nuclear strategy seeks to improve deterrence with a counterforce targeting plan that exceeds the requirements of mutual assured destruction. This “countervailing” nuclear strategy codifies an enlarged spectrum of retaliatory options. The author argues, however, that the countervailing strategy is based upon a number of implausible and contradictory assumptions, and that it actually degrades the overriding objective of genuine security. For many reasons, the Soviet Union is not apt to assign a higher probability of fulfillment to American counterforce threats; under certain conditions, current policy confronts our adversary with a heightened incentive to pre-empt. The conclusion identifies an alternative strategy for the avoidance of nuclear war, a network of doctrines and obligations that calls for a return to minimum deterrence, a comprehensive test ban, and a joint renunciation of the right to the first use of nuclear weapons.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , October 1981 , pp. 25 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1981

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References

1 The extreme advocacy for such preparations can be found in Gray, Colin S. and Payne, Keith, “Victory Is Possible,” Foreign Policy, No. 39 (Summer 1980), 14–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Sloss, , “Carter's Nuclear Policy: Going From ‘MAD’ to Worse”? “No: It's Evolutionary, Not Revolutionary, and Aims to Strengthen Deterrence,” Los Angeles Times, August 31, 1980, p. 3Google Scholar (emphasis in original).

3 The countervailing strategy has, it appears, never been strictly defined. The closest we can come to a definition may be found in Secretary of Defense Brown's, HaroldDepartment of Defense Annual Report for FY 1981:Google Scholar

For deterrence to operate successfully, our potential adversaries must be convinced that we possess sufficient military force so that if they were to start a course of action which could lead to war, they would be frustrated in their effort to achieve their objective or suffer so much damage that they would gain nothing by their action. … The preparation of forces and plans to create such a prospect has come to be referred to as a ‘countervailing’ strategy (Washington, D.C.: 1980), 65.

4 Presidential Directive 59 was clarified by Defense Secretary Brown, Harold in his “Remarks Delivered at the Convocation Ceremonies for the 97th Naval War College Class,” U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, August 20, 1980, p. 6.Google Scholar

5 See New York Times, January 13, 1954, p. 1.

6 A counterforce strategy emphasizes the targeting of an adversary's military capability, especially its strategic military capability. A countervalue strategy emphasizes the targeting of an adversary's cities and industries. Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) is a condition wherein each adversary possesses the ability to inflict an unacceptable degree of damage upon the other after absorbing a first strike.

7 See Brown (fn. 4), 6.

8 Ibid., 7.

9 See Brown (fn. 3), 66.

10 See Drell's testimony, “Possible Effects on U.S. Society of Nuclear Attacks Against U.S. Military Installations,” U.S. Congress, Senate, Subcommittee on Arms Control, International Organizations, and Security Agreements of the Committee on Foreign Relations, 94th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: September 18, 1975), 21.

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17 See, for example, “Soviet Charges Reiterated,” New York Times, August 21, 1980, p. A8.

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23 Ibid.

24 This point, made by Handler in his letter of transmittal of the report to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), is by no means uncontroversial. In fact, in the belief that it is an “overstated conclusion,” the Federation of American Scientists issued a public declaration that effectively accused the NAS of inadvertently encouraging nuclear war. The Federation, whose membership includes half of America's living Nobel laureates, charged that the Academy had reached a “false conclusion’ in suggesting humankind's probable survival. The Federation's statement was prepared by Jeremy Stone, the organization's director, and was approved by a majority of the organization's executive committee. The FAS position is supported by Bernard Feld, Editor-in-Chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists who believes that the NAS conclusion concerning the survival of the human race is “too sanguine.” See Feld, , “The Consequences of Nuclear War,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, XXXII (June 1976), 13.Google Scholar

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26 A “rad” is a unit of radiation dose that measures the amount of ionization produced per unit volume by the particles from radioactive decay.

27 Feld (fn. 24), 13.

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30 Ibid., 3. For additional authoritative information on the expected effects of nuclear war, see “The First Nuclear War Conference,” Washington, D.C., December 7, 1978, published as a special report of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; “An Open Letter to President Carter and Chairman Brezhnev,” Physicians for Social Responsibility, Newsletter, 1 (April 1980), 1; Economic and Social Consequences of Nuclear Attacks on the United States, a study prepared for The Joint Committee on Defense Production, U.S. Congress, 1979; Lewis, Kevin N., “The Prompt and Delayed Effects of Nuclear War,” Scientific American, Vol. 241 (July 1979), 35–47CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Beres, Louis René, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).Google Scholar

31 Effects of Nuclear War (fn. 29), 4.

32 Where the workings of nuclear deterrence are considered more broadly in terms of effects on day-to-day life under the threat of nuclear annihilation, they can hardly be termed “successful.” For more on these broader considerations, see, for example, Mandelbaum, Michael, “The Bomb, Dread, and Eternity,” International Security, V (Fall 1980), 3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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37 From The Discourses.

38 For a detailed examination of what is needed to achieve such control, see Beres (fn. 30).