scholarly journals Escalation through Entanglement: How the Vulnerability of Command-and-Control Systems Raises the Risks of an Inadvertent Nuclear War

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M. Acton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dual Use ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Organizational Reform ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Cyber Espionage ◽  
Damage Limitation ◽  
And Control

Nonnuclear weapons are increasingly able to threaten dual-use command, control, communication, and intelligence assets that are spaced based or distant from probable theaters of conflict. This form of “entanglement” between nuclear and nonnuclear capabilities creates the potential for Chinese or Russian nonnuclear strikes against the United States or U.S. strikes against either China or Russia to spark inadvertent nuclear escalation. Escalation pressures could be generated through crisis instability or through one of two newly identified mechanisms: “misinterpreted warning” or the “damage-limitation window.” The vulnerability of dual-use U.S. early-warning assets provides a concrete demonstration of the risks. These risks would be serious for two reasons. First, in a conventional conflict against the United States, China or Russia would have strong incentives to launch kinetic strikes on U.S. early-warning assets. Second, even limited strikes could undermine the United States' ability to monitor nuclear attacks by the adversary. Moreover, cyber interference with dual-use early-warning assets would create the additional danger of the target's misinterpreting cyber espionage as a destructive attack. Today, the only feasible starting point for efforts to reduce the escalation risks created by entanglement would be unilateral measures—in particular, organizational reform to ensure that those risks received adequate consideration in war planning, acquisition decisions, and crisis decisionmaking. Over the longer term, unilateral measures might pave the way for more challenging cooperative measures, such as agreed restrictions on threatening behavior.

Should the United States Reject MAD? Damage Limitation and U.S. Nuclear Strategy toward China

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles L. Glaser ◽  
Steve Fetter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
Political Costs ◽  
Significant Damage ◽  
Ballistic Missiles ◽  
Damage Limitation ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Military

As China invests in its nuclear forces and U.S.-China relations become increasingly strained, questions of U.S. nuclear doctrine require greater attention. The key strategic nuclear question facing the United States is whether to attempt to maintain and enhance its damage-limitation capability against China. The answer is less straightforward than it was during the Cold War, because China's nuclear force is orders of magnitude smaller than the Soviet force was. Part of the answer depends on the military-technical feasibility of the United States achieving a significant damage-limitation capability: What would be the outcome of military competition over the survivability of China's intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and command and control, and over the effectiveness of U.S. ballistic missile defenses? The answer also depends on the benefits that a damage-limitation capability would provide; these could include contributions to homeland deterrence, extended deterrence, and reassurance of U.S. regional allies. The final piece of the analysis concerns the potential costs of a damage-limitation capability, which could include increased escalatory pressures during crises and growing political tension between the United States and China. A thorough analysis demonstrates that the United States should forgo such a capability because the prospects for preserving a significant damage-limitation capability are poor; the deterrent benefits would be small; and the escalatory and political costs would be relatively large.

China’s Modernising Nuclear Forces: In the Face of US Nuclear Primacy

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (03) ◽  
pp. 108-117
Author(s):  
Bojian LIU
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
Command And Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rapid Response ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
The Face ◽  
And Control

Since 2001, when the United States has accelerated the strengthening of its nuclear primacy with a clearer strategy of assured destruction against any rivals, China has encountered greater pressure to further modernise its nuclear forces. In highlighting the enhanced credibility of its retaliation-based nuclear deterrence under the no-first-use doctrine, China is enhancing command and control of nuclear forces, upgrading its nuclear triad, and constructing its early warning and rapid response capabilities. However, with a further destabilising global nuclear order, more normative challenges have been plaguing China’s nuclear modernisation.

Counterforce Revisited: Assessing the Nuclear Posture Review's New Missions

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles L. Glaser ◽  
Steve Fetter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Conventional Weapons ◽  
Damage Limitation ◽  
The Cold War

Current U.S. nuclear strategy identifies new nuclear counterforce missions as a means of impeding the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The strategy appears to overvalue these counterforce missions. U.S. conventional weapons can destroy most targets that can be destroyed with nuclear weapons; only moderately deep and precisely located targets can be destroyed only by nuclear weapons. In addition, the benefits of nuclear counterforce-which could include deterrence, damage limitation, and the continued ability of the United States to pursue its foreign policy objectives-are relatively small, because the United States possesses large nuclear forces and highly effective conventional forces. Finally, nuclear counterforce would bring a variety of costs, including an increased probability of accidental war and unnecessary preemptive attacks in a severe crisis. Nevertheless, the case for nuclear counterforce is stronger than during the Cold War, when the enormous size and redundancy of U.S. and Soviet forces rendered counterforce useless. When facing a small nuclear force, the United States may decide to use counterforce to limit damage. Although complex trade-offs are involved, if there are critical targets that can be destroyed only with nuclear weapons, then under a narrow set of conditions the benefits of planning for damage limitation might exceed the dangers. The United States must not, however, rely on nuclear counterforce to support a more assertive foreign policy; doing so would unjustifiably increase the probability of nuclear war.

When Temporal Orbits Collide: Embodied Trans Temporalities in U.S. Prisons

Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rae Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Prison Industrial Complex ◽  
Trans Women ◽  
And Control

This paper explores trans temporalities through the experiences of incarcerated trans feminine persons in the United States. The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) has received increased attention for its disproportionate containment of trans feminine persons, notably trans women of colour. As a system of domination and control, the PIC uses disciplinary and heteronormative time to dominate the bodies and identities of transgender prisoners by limiting the ways in which they can express and experience their identified and embodied genders. By analyzing three case studies from my research with incarcerated trans feminine persons, this paper illustrates how temporality is complexly woven through trans feminine prisoners' experiences of transitioning in the PIC. For incarcerated trans feminine persons, the interruption, refusal, or permission of transitioning in the PIC invites several gendered pasts into a body's present and places these temporalities in conversation with varying futures as the body's potential. Analyzing trans temporalities reveals time as layered through gender, inviting multiple pasts and futures to circulate around and through the body's present in ways that can be both harmful to, and necessary for, the assertion and survival of trans feminine identities in the PIC.

Corruption as a Political Issue in Modern Societies: France, Great Britain and the United States in the Long 19th Century

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Ivo Engels
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Bureaucratic State

The so-called “long 19th century”, from the French Revolution to the First World War, ranks as the crucial phase in the genesis of the modern world. In the Western countries this period was characterized by the differentiation of the public and the private spheres, the birth of the modern bureaucratic state and the delegitimation of early modern practices such as clientelism and patronage. All these fundamental changes are, among other things, usually considered important preconditions for the modern perception of corruption.This paper will concentrate on this crucial phase by means of a comparative analysis of debates in France, Great Britain and the United States, with the aim to elucidate the motives for major anti-corruption movements. The questions are: who fights against corruption and what are the reasons for doing so? I will argue that these concerns were often very different and sometimes accidental. Furthermore, an analysis of political corruption may reveal differences between the political cultures in the countries in question. Thus, the history of corruption serves as a sensor which enables a specific perspective on politics. By taking this question as a starting point the focus is narrowed to political corruption and the debates about corruption, while petty bribery on the part of minor civilservants, as well as the actual practice in the case of extensive political corruption, is left aside.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACCOUNTING AND INTERNAL CONTROL FOR THE NATIONAL LAND SYSTEM OF THE USA

1994 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-213
Author(s):  
Michael P. Schoderbek
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Internal Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Governmental Accounting ◽  
Land System ◽  
The Usa ◽  
And Control

This paper examines the early accounting practices that were used to administer the United States' national land system. These practices are of significance because they provide insights on early governmental accounting and they facilitated an orderly settlement of the western territories. The analysis focuses on the record-keeping and control practices that were developed to meet the provisions of the Land Act of 1800 and to account for land office transactions. These accounting procedures were extracted from the correspondence between the Department of the Treasury and the various land officers.

The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Security ◽  
International Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theoretical Explanation ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Empirical Record

What kind of nuclear strategy and posture does the United States need to defend itself and its allies? According to conventional wisdom, the answer to this question is straightforward: the United States needs the ability to absorb an enemy nuclear attack and respond with a devastating nuclear counterattack. These arguments are logical and persuasive, but, when compared to the empirical record, they raise an important puzzle. Empirically, we see that the United States has consistently maintained a nuclear posture that is much more robust than a mere second-strike capability. How do we make sense of this contradiction? Scholarly deterrence theory, including Robert Jervis’s seminal book, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, argues that the explanation is simple—policymakers are wrong. This book takes a different approach. Rather than dismiss it as illogical, it explains the logic of American nuclear strategy. It argues that military nuclear advantages above and beyond a secure, second-strike capability can contribute to a state’s national security goals. This is primarily because nuclear advantages reduce a state’s expected cost of nuclear war, increasing its resolve, providing it with coercive bargaining leverage, and enhancing nuclear deterrence. This book provides the first theoretical explanation for why military nuclear advantages translate into geopolitical advantages. In so doing, it resolves one of the most intractable puzzles in international security studies. The book also explains why, in a world of growing dangers, the United States must possess, as President Donald J. Trump declared, a nuclear arsenal “at the top of the pack.”

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