Controlling Nuclear War

I T h e possibilities of complete nuclear disarmament by negotiation or unilateral actions look immensely remote. For an indefinite period ahead, mankind is condemned to live under the shadow of the nuclear bomb. The balance of terror, working through mutual deterrence, is the principal hope for escaping catastrophe. Most expert literature is not optimisticregarding the chances that the process of ”horizontal” spread and “vertical” escalation would be restricted or arrested in the early phases of military conflict. If nuclear war erupted and the superpowers expended a high proportion of their arsenals, their populations and presumably the Europeans would suffer casualties on a catastrophic scale, not to speak, in the aftermath, of the more diffused damage of radioactive fallout and what many believe will be the deadly ill effects identified with ”nuclear winter.” Even though the superpowers do not follow deterrent strategies of Mutual Assured Destruction, mutual destruction is very likely to describe the consequences of substantial nuclear hostilitiesbetween them. This awareness of lurking disaster is expected to make rational leaders give top priority to the avoidance of any war apt to culminate in nuclear catastrophe . What object contested between nations is worth committing suicide? But this expectationis unable to dispel all anxiety.Historicalexperience offers disturbing messages: leaders are not always rational or in sufficient control of the bureaucracies through which they must act; wishful thinking or exaggerated fears can distort the assessment of risks in a crisis; third actors can reduce or upset the superpowers’ control over events; accidentscan happen; etc. In short, the disaster of large-scale nuclear war remains an ever-present possibility. One need not be alarmist about it and see the world condemned to be continuously teetering on the brink of catastrophe. But even the slightest possibility of so enormous a scale of destruction is worrisome and, if there is a choice, too much. Everything possible should therefore be done The author wishes to thank Professor Stephen J. Cimbala of Pennsylvania State University for stimulating his interest in the subject matter of this article, and ProfessorFrank Von Hippel of PrincetonUniversity for making helpful comments on the first draft. Klaus Knorr is Professor Emeritus at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. International Security, Spring 1985 (Vol. 9, No. 4) 0162-2889/85/040079-20$02.50/0 0 1985 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 79 International Security 1 80 by governments, and by publics urging governments, cumulatively to minimize the danger of disaster by diminishing its magnitude and especially by making it less likely to come about. Approaches Toward Reducing the Nuclear Risk Five familiar approaches are available for organizing efforts to minimize the costs and risks of nuclear war. Two of these concern the prevention of war. First are preparations for crisis management to keep crises between the superpowers from escalating, and to defuse and end them. The ”Hot Line” between the United States and the Soviet Union is an example of a bilateral arrangement for this purpose. Second, there are measures to cultivate crisis prevention. As NATO’s Harmel Report of 1967 specified, deterrence can and should be pursued not only by maintaining military balances but also by a diplomacy that lowers tensions and encourages cooperative endeavor between potential adversaries. Two further approaches address suitable controls of military capabilities. First, there are measures of arms control. While the reduction of nuclear weapons to a degree that removes the dimension of annihilation, let alone their complete abolition, is not a serious prospect, certainly at this time, the phasing-out and barriers to the phasing-in of destabilizing nuclear systems are proper objectives of arms control negotiations and unilateral correction. The chief need is to remove weapon systems that are a threat as well as vulnerable to the opponent‘s forces and hence give a great technical advantage to striking first. Second, while CBMs (confidence-buildingmeasures) have thus far been thought of mainly in connection with a war in Europe, the merit of making each side’s military behavior more transparent to the other, thereby obviating reaction to unnecessary fears, is worth examiningalso with reference to nuclear hostilities.’ Finally, there is an approach that is often...