Nuclear First Strike: Consequences of a Broken Taboo

3 Likely World Reactions

C H A P T E R T H R E E Likely World Reactions Having outlined a variety of categories of nuclear escalation scenarios, we turn to speculating about how the world would react to these cases. If only because the scenarios are typically so horrible that no one wants to think about them, such reactions are indeed very difficult to predict. One can hope that the world will be brave and resolute, and also perceptive and responsible, so that the task of governments in responding to a breaking of the “nuclear taboo” will be easier. But we must also be prepared for much less helpful responses among peoples around the world. Given the worldwide trend toward the establishment of democracy, there will be many political leaders to whom such public reactions will be very important, because they will be facing the need to win reelection. Responses everywhere may depend heavily on whether the nuclear weapon use was by a very marginal possessor of such weapons (we already noted above how this might affect the physical nature of the weapons) or by a major nuclear power (known to have a large stockpile, so not likely to have run down or exhausted its stock in launching the attack). If the initiator of nuclear warfare was an established nuclear weapons state, the attack might have utilized the state’s strategic nuclear forces, or instead have involved only its tactical or theater nuclear forces; if the attack came from a state not even known beforehand to have possessed any nuclear weapons, the reactions would be different again. These categories of attacker have to be arrayed against the categories of victim . The state suffering a nuclear attack might itself be a nuclear weapons state, which would suggest a high likelihood of nuclear retaliation, in continuing rounds of nuclear warfare. Very different outside reactions, and paths of appropriate policy, might emerge if the victim did not possess any nuclear weapons of its own. Ambiguity about Whether the Line Was Crossed (Category A) The first category of scenarios in our break-out above comprised the cases where nuclear escalation was difficult to define or the facts were difficult to determine. Was the Israeli attack on Osirak a nuclear escalation?1 Today we do not remember it that way. If the fourth skyjacked airliner on September 11 was headed for Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, was this an attempted nuclear escalation? Again, whatever our shock at the events of that day, we do not quite see this attempt as a nuclear escalation. For a hypothetical “near-miss” from the past, if the British Navy really had nuclear depth charges on board the ships engaged in combat around the Falklands , might Prime Minister Thatcher have been tempted to let her military commanders use such ASW munitions against the Argentine submarines that were threatening the success of the British expedition? Speculation about this counterfactual possibility (the possible response had the torpedoes fired by Argentine submarines against British ships exploded instead of failing to) was once answered by a knowledgeable specialist as follows: “How would the world have known if the British had used nuclear rather than conventional ASW?” since the evidence would not have been clear at the surface (although it might have come through clearly enough to all the acoustic listening stations monitoring the oceans of the world).2 Almost by definition, the world’s reactions to ambiguity in these scenarios, for as long as it remains ambiguity, would be less reactions of shock; individuals and governments would perhaps be inclined to shrug off the news as rumor, so as to continue life as it was, to continue as if no violation of the taboo had occurred. Some such cases might be definitionally marginal but still very destructive to life, for example spreading radioactive nuclear waste materials across some wide area. Cases with Surprisingly Low Collateral Damage (Category B) The second group of escalation possibilities comprised cases in which nuclear weapons would be used in ways that caused little civilian harm. Contrary to what most of us normally expect, the first use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki might (in a number of our scenarios) produce the reaction that 54 Nuclear First Strike “nothing so drastic” had happened, that nuclear weapons were in effect really “just another weapon,” that no great changes in policy were required in response , as the appropriate attitude...