One of the contentious issues raised at the recent debates
of the Democratic presidential candidates involved “no first use” of nuclear
weapons. Thus far, the United States has
not been willing to issue such a statement.
It is not immediately clear why the “most powerful nation in the world”
would feel endangered by such a declaration.
Our traditional nuclear adversary, Russia, is still joined with the US
in a continuing “mutual assured destruction” stalemate. Launching
first provides no real advantage if the other side can retaliate before the
damage from first launch is realized.
The US and Russia entered that bizarre state via fear that one might
wish to annihilate the other to gain political or military advantage. Such a threat dissipated long ago, but
because defense industries on both sides needed the threat to continue, we must
pretend that it still exists. The other
countries we have chosen as our enemies, China, Iran, and North Korea, either
have no capability to threaten us with a nuclear weapon, or don’t seem to have
anything to gain by threatening us. The
most likely cause of a nuclear exchange would be from an accidental or rogue
launch from a nuclear state, or from a nonstate group who might acquire a
weapon of some sort— events nearly impossible to anticipate. If one had intelligence about a
terrorist-like attack, conventional means presumably would be available to address
it. So, why exactly do we wish other
countries to believe we might use nuclear weapons against any adversary?
David Hendrickson addresses issues related to our “defense”
posture in his interesting book Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition. He describes the period after the dissolution
of the Soviet Union as one in which the US was the absolute military master of
the world. It could have decided that
with no possible threats to its security, it was time to relax its military
posture and withdraw from its global presence and let other nations pursue,
peacefully, their own interests.
Instead, the nation decided that from its position of power it should indefinitely
maintain military superiority over any and all and use that power for the “benefit”
of the world. The benefits that the US wished
to provide included representative democracy, free market capitalism, and rules
for conducting international affairs properly.
In fact, the US has often chosen to use its military,
technological, and economic power to interfere in the affairs of others. The decision by George W. Bush to go to war
in Iraq was not driven by any threat to the United States or its interests, and
not driven by the putative presence of weapons of mass destruction, but rather
by the desire to remake Iraq and the Middle East to be more in its image.
“It looked toward a vast
political reconstruction of the region that would leave the United States, in
its victorious aftermath, with the power to coerce others.”
The United States has also held up its worldwide series
of alliances as a mechanism for maintaining a “rules-based system” for international
affairs. In practice, however, breaking
the rules has occurred often when it was convenient or useful.
“In theory it is a ‘rules-based’
set of relationships, but in practice it has been based on the distinction
between friends and enemies. In such a
system, you are supposed to be good with your friends and tough with your
enemies. Indeed, being tough with your
enemies is often the litmus test of whether you are good to your friends. That distinction is an old one in political
thought. It suggests that the American alliance
system has been a form of ‘negative association,’ whose central feature is
cooperation against a common enemy.”
Maintaining worldwide military dominance is terribly
expensive and could not be politically feasible without enemies to justify the
required resources. It has been the job
of what Hendrickson refers to as “the national security apparatus” to identify
the needed enemies and provide the weapons required to defeat them. Since China has become a global economic
force and can afford to spread its influence, economically and militarily
throughout its part of Asia, it is a threat to the dominance of allies Japan
and South Korea in the region and therefore a threat to the US. The Middle East is involved in a religious
battle between Sunni and Shiite Moslems, coupled with the complicated politics
of Israel’s presence. Since Sunni Saudi
Arabia and Israel are considered US allies, then Shiite Iran must be the
enemy. In greater Europe, Russia has long
been the enemy of the US and the nations of western Europe. Russia, under Putin, is trying to regain some
of the political influence lost in years past, and contention over the status of
central European states will continue.
Curiously, the identification of Russia, China, and Iran
as enemies has encouraged them to collaborate against their common adversary. How clever of the US security apparatus.
So, the US has set forth from an era of overwhelming
military dominance to one in which it has identified Russia, China, and Iran as
“enemies” with whom it must contend. The
problem is that the US could never possibly have maintained such undisputed power,
even though it is committed to acting as if it has. In truth, the US hasn’t the resources to
defeat any one of these countries militarily.
All are large nations with established societies and large
populations. There is no option for
invasion by the US. It is left with
being able to convince an enemy that the price of resistance will be too high
to bear and submission is necessary. Hendrickson
indicates the current strategy through a description of the AirSea Battle
Concept as applied to a conflict with China.
“In a war with China, America
would deploy ‘networked, integrated forces capable of attack-in-depth to disrupt,
destroy, and defeat adversary forces.’
After withstanding an attack and seizing the initiative, ‘US forces
would then sustain the momentum across all domains, rapidly identifying targets
and breaking down the adversary’s defenses promptly and in depth—targeting the
adversary’s reserves, fire support, logistics, command and control…US
retaliation could destroy critical portions of China’s command and control
network along with missile storage, manufacturing and launch sites. Further salvos might also damage ports,
airfields, logistical hubs and perhaps parts of the domestic security apparatus
including facilities associated with the security services and the Peoples
Armed Police Force’.”
This sounds much like an advertisement for a video
game. What it really is, is a plea for
continued funding for ever more of the highly expensive and highly vulnerable Navy
ships and planes. This is not a plan to
win a war—winning a war requires boots on the ground. It is an attempt to intimidate an
adversary. And since our chosen
adversaries are unlikely to be intimidated by conventional forces—where they
are at or near parity—the threat of nuclear destruction must remain available
as part of that intimidation strategy.
This is a tactic known as “escalation dominance.”
“The United States has local
military inferiority in the Baltics, for instance, and can only cover that with
‘escalation dominance.’ It has local
military inferiority in the South China Sea and can only cover that with ‘escalation
dominance.’ This once looked easy; it
has now become hard. Anxiety about the
permanence of conventional superiority in distant theaters is a key reason
behind the establishment’s refusal to countenance a ‘no first use’ of nuclear
weapons pledge…”
The national security state consists of players and
industries committed to an aggressive and coercive role for the US in
international affairs. These are foolish
people playing a foolish and dangerous game.
And a no-first-use pledge would be a sign of progress.
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