Nuclear Order in the Twenty-First Century
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Why The World Needs Nuclear Deterrence 3.0
Published in The Straits Times (Singapore) on 15th January, 2021
When Trump leaves office and Biden takes over, humanity should breathe a huge sigh of relief. Trump is the only recent President to threaten the use of nuclear weapons. In August 2017, Trump warned North Korea, “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen…” Even as President-elect, Trump had already put the nuclear option on the table. Responding to a question on whether he would rule out using nuclear weapons, in April 2016, he said, “Would there be a time when it could be used? Possibly. Possibly.” This is one reason why the Doomsday Clock, established in 1947 by a group of scientists who developed the first nuclear weapons but now wanted to convey the risk it posed to humanity, was calibrated in 2020 to 100 seconds to midnight, the closest to a global catastrophe that it has ever been.
Despite this stark warning from the Doomsday Clock, many nuclear strategic experts tell us that we should feel more secure. After all, the nuclear taboo has held since 1945 despite the Cold War. US-USSR/Russia arms control agreements have helped reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles from nearly 65,000 in late-1970s to less than 15,000. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that entered into force in 1970 for 25 years with about 50 states was extended indefinitely in 1995 and is the most widely accepted treaty, with 190 adherents.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) may well be the most universal treaty but it has reached the limits of its success. The five nuclear-weapon-states party to it (USA, Russia, UK, France and China) blithely ignore their responsibility for nuclear disarmament, convinced that NPT legitimises their possession of nuclear weapons and the four non-NPT countries (Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea) have built weapons for their own security reasons. Indeed, in a direct violation of the spirit of the NPT, Trump said blithely to Bob Woodward, “I have built a nuclear – a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t seen or heard about.” William Lambers, a nuclear weapons specialist, has observed that “while for over 60 years presidents in both parties worked to reduce nuclear weapons and the likelihood of their use, Trump has begun unravelling these efforts.”
Pacts in the past
Deterrence 1.0, which governed the US-Soviet Union nuclear rivalry during the Cold War, was characterised by arms control agreements and efforts to curb global proliferation. Deterrence 2.0 characterised the post-Cold War era of unipolarity, when the US largely determined the global nuclear agenda. The US strengthened its Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) system, which was intended to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons. However, this had an unintended consequence as China and Russia embarking on their own – India and Pakistan, that never signed the NPT and North Korea, after announcing its withdrawal from it.
In the current changed political reality, old instruments of US-Soviet arms control and non-proliferation no longer work. Secondly, new developments in cyber and space technologies as well as hypersonic missiles and missile defence systems are challenging old deterrence equations. In Covid terminology, the challenge has mutated and old prescriptions do not help. Today’s politics is marked by growing major power rivalry, sharpening nuclear multipolarity. More usable weapons and blurring of the nuclear-conventional line creates a permissive scenario, raising the likelihood of the non-use taboo being breached. Old arms control agreements are under strain and some (such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and the Treaty on Open Skies) have collapsed.
Restoring nuclear sanity
The stage is set for Deterrence 3.0 except that this time, it is not a ‘known-unknown’ but an ‘unknown-unknown’.
Indications are that US President-elect Joe Biden is inclined towards the Russian proposal to extend New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty). This treaty lapses on 5 February 2021. This will provide some breathing room. But, will this be enough to restore nuclear sanity? Traditional arms control and non-proliferation believers believe ‘Yes’ but the Doomsday Clock indicates otherwise. Bridging this gap is necessary and while it does not mean discarding old instruments or treaties, it does mean realising their limitations in today’s nuclear world.
This is why the world needs Deterrence 3.0.
Deterrence 3.0 has to create a new consensus for a multipolar nuclear world, a world not of nuclear parity but asymmetry in terms of both sizes and nature of arsenals. This asymmetry in turn exacerbates mistrust, where some countries believe that ambiguity and unpredictability strengthens their deterrence. Such need to preserve ambiguity makes cooperative verification difficult, especially when cyber and AI developments are heightening risks of an accidental nuclear collision.
The Biden administration therefore provides an opportunity to step back from the Trump Administration’s hyperbole of ‘fire and fury’. We should use this opportunity to create a platform where the nine nuclear-weapon-states can at least meet, have intensive discussion and agree that preventing the use of nuclear weapons is a shared responsibility. They should also exchange views on how to step back from escalatory postures; and share experiences on fail-safe, critical and secure communication channels to be employed in times of crisis. Deterrence 3.0 recognises that nuclear weapons cannot be wished away. What is critical is to reduce their salience in security doctrines and ensure that they are never used.
Two approaches
There are two complementary approaches, one doctrinal and the other technical. The first is the policy of no-first-use. In other words, nuclear weapons would be used only for retaliatory purposes. This diminishes the role of nuclear weapons.
The second is de-alerting or increasing the lead-time between the decision to use a nuclear weapon and the time that it takes to implement the nuclear strike. The issues of hair-trigger-alert (which enables nuclear weapons to be launched in minutes) and highly centralised control has been the subject of debate and discussion in the US in recent years.
In Asia, where several nuclear weapons states are locked in decades-long conflicts, Deterrence 3.0 is crucial in ensuring that conflicts do not escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. This includes China and India, as well as nuclear flashpoint regions such as South Asia and the Korean Peninsula. In the India-China context, the nuclear dimension has never surfaced because both countries maintain a no-first-use policy. However, in South Asia, both India and Pakistan have experienced many close shaves: Kargil in 1999, the terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament (2001) and in Mumbai (2008), and the latest incident in Pulwama, Kashmir, in 2019, leading to the crash of an Indian jet in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Given these close shaves, the world must once again focus on the dangers of an accidental nuclear exchange.
The goal of Deterrence 3.0 is to ensure that once again, the Doomsday Clock is recalibrated far away from midnight. We will all sleep better when that happens.
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NPT @ 50: Celebration or Midlife Crisis
Published in Hindustan Times on 12th March, 2020
Last week, on 5 th March, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) turned 50. Often described by its supporters as the ‘cornerstone of global nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament’, the NPT is among the most widely adhered to global treaties. All countries except four (India, Israel and Pakistan that never joined, and North Korea that withdrew in 2003) are parties to the NPT.
Yet NPT’s golden anniversary passed without much notice. A statement issued in New York by the Spokesman for the UN Secretary General was notable for its brevity and anodyne character. There are suggestions that the NPT Review Conference due to open in New York on 27th April be postponed, ostensibly on account of the coronavirus outbreak, but actually to avoid a potentially bruising showdown.
In 1963, President Kennedy voiced an apprehension that by 1975, there could be as many as 20 countries with nuclear weapons. USSR shared similar concerns. This convergence of interests between the two Cold War adversaries enabled the negotiations for an NPT.
To make it attractive, it was initially conceived as a three-legged stool – non-proliferation, obliging those without nuclear weapons to undertake never to acquire them and accept full-scope safeguards; disarmament, obliging the five countries with nuclear weapons (US, USSR, UK, France and China) to negotiate to reduce and eventually eliminate their nuclear weapons; and, third, to ensure that non-nuclear weapon states would enjoy full access to peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology.
By the time the negotiations concluded in 1968, India had concluded that the disarmament leg was too weak and the definition of a nuclear weapon state (one that had exploded a nuclear device before 1 January 1967) was one that created a permanent division between nuclear haves and have-nots; it chose to stay away.
Among the oft-cited successes of the NPT is the dramatic reduction in the number of nuclear weapons from a peak of 70300 warheads in 1986 to around 14000 at present, with US and Russia accounting for over 12500. What is overlooked is that nearly all the reductions happened between 1990 and 2010 and the process has now dwindled to a halt. More significantly, these reductions were a result of bilateral talks between US and Russia reflecting their state of relations and no negotiations have ever been held in the NPT framework. In fact, during the first fifteen years of the NPT, the US-Soviet arsenals went up from below 40000 to over 70000, making it abundantly clear that the NPT nuclear-weapon-states have blithely ignored the disarmament leg of the NPT.
The NPT has successfully prevented proliferation. Since 1970, only four countries have acquired nuclear weapons bringing the total number of nuclear-weapon-states to nine, much less than Kennedy’s apprehensions in 1963. However, it brings out the uncomfortable reality that the NPT has no means of dealing with these four states.
The five nuclear weapon states recognised by the NPT (N-5) are also the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (P-5) giving rise to the inevitable conclusion that nuclear weapons remain the currency of political and military power. This conclusion can only encourage potential proliferators by making nuclear weapons more attractive as the ultimate security guarantor.
NPT supporters also claim credit for strengthening the taboo against nuclear weapons by pointing out that nuclear weapons have never been used since 1945. However, a closer examination of recently declassified papers indicates that since 1970, there were over a dozen instances where US and USSR came close to initiating a nuclear exchange, often based on misperceptions about the intentions of the other or plain system errors. Even today, US and Russia maintain over 1000 nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert, increasing the risks of an accidental or inadvertent nuclear exchange.
Today, the nuclear taboo is being challenged as major nuclear powers undertake R&D for more usable low-yield nuclear weapons. Ballistic missile defence, hypersonic systems that carry both conventional and nuclear payloads and growing offensive cyber capabilities further blur the line between conventional and nuclear.
Frustrated by the lack of responsiveness on the part of the N-5, 120 countries party to the NPT joined hands with civil society to push negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty (TPNW), concluded in 2017. These countries had concluded that despite near universal adherence, the NPT could never be the vehicle for nuclear disarmament. It had delegitimised proliferation but done little to delegitimise nuclear weapons. And in the process, the NPT had reached the limits of its success. The N-5 and their allies boycotted the negotiations but the existence of the TPNW exposes the inherent imbalance in the NPT’s three-legged stool.
The uncomfortable truth is that the old nuclear arms control model reflected the political reality of the Cold War. Today’s reality reflects multipolarity, marked by asymmetry. It is hardly surprising that US-USSR treaties of the bipolar era, like the ABM Treaty or the INF Treaty are already dead and others like New START and Open Skies Treaty are being challenged.
The NPT faces a similar challenge, of continued political relevance. Unless the NPT members, especially the N-5 realise this, its golden anniversary may well mark the onset of NPT’s mid-life crisis.
RAKESH SOOD 