Nuclear Strategy: A Regrettable Necessity

NUCLEAR STRATEGY:______ A REGRETTABLE NECESSITY Colin S. Gray Xn the United States today there are essentially two levels of debate over nuclear weapons policy: political-ethical and technical-strategic. I contend in this article that the Reagan administration is basically correct in its argument on both levels; that the real range of policy-relevant debate is far narrower than can be inferred from a monitoring of the parallel monologues; and that the question most in need of serious study (how to reduce the risk of nuclear war) is scarcely being addressed because of the focus on secondary issues or even nonissues. There is room for legitimate disagreement over important technical aspects of nuclear policy. For example: Should the United States sustain a strategic-forces triad of icbms, slbms, and manned bombers/cruise missile carriers? If the mx icbm is deemed necessary, is closely spaced basing (csb), or "dense pack," adequate as a deployment mode? Lurking behind such technical issues are a set of doctrinal disputes. Does the United States need to pose a threat to hard Soviet military targets? If so, does that threat need to be capable of prompt execution? Would the physical protection of American society destabilize the Soviet-American deterrence relationship? As will be shown below, questions such as these are less prone to dispute than first meets the eye. Colin S. Gray is president of the National Institute of Public Policy in Fairfax, Virginia. Dr. Gray is a member of the General Advisory Committee of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. His most recent books are Strategic Studies: A Critical Assessment (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), and Strategic Studies and Public Policy: The American Experience (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1982). 13 14 SAIS REVIEW As a matter of necessity, the organizers of the contemporary nuclear freeze movement,1 and many of the politicians who have jumped on that bandwagon, have succeeded in stimulating debate at the level of the lowest common denominator. In order to trigger and feed a grass-roots political movement, arguments and assertions have been developed that can reach the understanding and imagination of the general public. The general public does not comprehend, as a rule, technically sophisticated strategic arguments (or jargon), but it does understand fear of nuclear war, the high cost of nuclear weapon systems (and of défenseur se), and anxieties over the often nonspecific dangers of "the arms race." The very structure of this debate places "the defense community"—there is a rough bipartisan consensus on a prudent strategic posture and nuclear strategy—at a considerable disadvantage . To argue against the great simplifications of the nuclear freeze, they have to say, or appear to say, that: —Matters of nuclear war and nuclear peace are too complex to be debated sensibly in a town meeting. (In fact this is not true, but the superficially most appealing arguments are on the side of simplification.) —The United States must prepare for war if it is to deter war. —Nuclear war is possible, and a responsible American government has no choice but to prepare for it. —Arsenal modernization may not be the goal of mutual nuclear arms reductions on a major scale, but lackluster U.S. behavior in the arms race guarantees that the U.S.S.R. will have no compelling incentive to reduce its forces on a significant scale. —The threat of nuclear war is an "acceptable" instrument of U.S. national policy. If one side to the debate can cloak itself in the virtuous talk of nuclear peace, reduced defense budgets, disarmament, and moral rectitude, it follows that the other side cannot win. The Reagan administration has better arguments , but these tend to be contrasuggestive, and hence viewed as hypocritical by people with no education in national security. Just as Lenin was wrong, or at least misleading, in saying that "any cook can run a country," so is it demagoguery to arouse public opinion on the (non) issue of nuclear war. The nuclear policy debate should address, but does not, the best means of preventing nuclear war—that is, the utility of deterrence in times of crisis and war. It is instructive to identify subjects that are...