I Exist; Therefore I Deter

Deter Review: Nuclear Fallacy: Dispelling the Myth of Nuclear Strategy by Morton H. Halperin Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1987. 173pp. Blundering into Disaster: Surviving the First Century of the Nuclear Age by Robert McNamara New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. 212 pp. I T h e most recent stage in the great nuclear debate, which has now kept the strategic studies community busy and perplexed for a full decade, reflects disillusion with the more ambitious strategic concepts promoted by the Reagan administration and an attempt to come to terms with the new political situation created by the revival of arms control and the improvement in East-West relations. The tendency at the moment is to cut nuclear deterrence down to size, shifting the emphasis from nuclear to conventional strategy. The basic policy question is increasingly becoming one of how far this process can go. Are we to dispense with nuclear weapons altogether, as in different ways Reagan and Gorbachev have both advocated, or are we to stop short of that ultimate solution? Those who favor the general trend but recognize its limits have tended to argue that nuclear weapons now have no other role but to deter the use of those of the adversary. In particular, the United States can no longer with credibility promise its allies that it will initiate nuclear war on their behalf-even if they face a potentially mortal conventional attack. Advocates of this position comfort themselves with the observation that there is no reason why the allies need be unable to cope with conventional needs if only they would devote the necessary resources to the task. The author would like to acknowledge the help of Nicholas Wheeler in the preparation of this review. Lawrence Freedman is Professor of War Studies at King’s College, London. International Security, Summer 1988 (Vol. 13, No. 1) 0 1988 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 177 International Security 13:l I 178 It may be that the political and intellectual climate is ready for such an approach, but there is nothing new in it.’ It was proposed with as much passion and rigor in the 1960s as in the 1980s, and its most persuasive advocates are often the same people. In this review I will consider recent books by two formidable advocates who fall into this category. My intention is to focus on the narrow but critical question of the utility of nuclear weapons . As a result I will not do full justice to either book, which both offer a range of historical and strategic insights and make proposals that go beyond the concerns of this article. In particular I will not examine their arguments in support of the view that a conventional NATO response to a conventional attack is feasible, although this is clearly central to their overall case. First Use and the History of Flexible Response In 1962in the early stages of a memorable career as U.S. secretary of defense, Robert McNamara informed a rather startled NATO audience that: the US has come to the conclusion that to the extent feasible basic military strategy in general nuclear war should be approached in much the same way that more conventional military operations have been regarded in the past. That is to say, our principal military objectives, in the event of a nuclear war stemming from a major attack on the Alliance, should be the destruction of the enemy’s military forces while attempting to preserve the fabric as well as the integrity of allied society. He argued that by providing incentives to the Soviet Union to plan for discriminating attacks (essentially “no-cities”), Western fatalities in a major nuclear war, though still high, could be substantially reduced. The U.S. was seeking to create a ”controlled and flexible nuclear response in the event that deterrence should fail.” Among the high-priority military targets identified were ”the major Soviet nuclear forces threatening the United States.” Although he spoke of a U.S. nuclear attack as being “retaliatory,” he did not suggest that this could only follow a Soviet nuclear strike. He was quite clear that first nuclear use could well stillbe...