Nuclear Strategy and World Order: The United States Imperative

1982 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Rene Beres
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Disarmament ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty ◽  
Comprehensive Test ◽  
Test Ban ◽  
Active Preparation

This paper argues that current US nuclear strategy goes beyond the legitimate objective of survivable strategic forces to active preparation for nuclear war fighting. The proponents of this counterforce strategy claim it is necessary to make US deterrence more credible. The author rejects this claim and shows how US strategy actually degrades US security. Moreover, the author contends that it actually encourages nuclear war because it is based on a number of implausible and contradictory assumptions. After examining these assumptions in detail, the author proposes an alternative strategy for nuclear war avoidance and for improving the likelihood of nuclear disarmament. This strategy involves a comprehensive test ban treaty, joint renunciation of first use, and the establishment of new and more extensive nuclear weapon free zones.

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.”

Rational Superiority, Crises, and Arms Control, 1961–1963

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Cameron
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Security ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Rhetoric ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Test Ban

Chapter 1 describes how John F. Kennedy rose to power by articulating his own new nuclear strategy, which would use the latest advances in social and organizational sciences, combined with US superiority in nuclear weapons, to defend the United States’ national security interests. The foremost exponent of this strategy of “rational superiority” was Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. The chapter then explains how this scheme was dealt a series of blows by Kennedy’s experiences during the Berlin and Cuban missile crises, which disabused him of the idea that nuclear superiority could be used to coerce the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the Kennedy administration used the rhetoric of rational superiority to advance the Limited Test Ban Treaty and was planning to employ it as part of the president’s reelection campaign in 1964. Kennedy had not reconciled this gap between his public rhetoric and personal doubts at the time of his death.

Raymond Aron and nuclear war

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-224
Author(s):  
Barry Cooper
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Technology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Strategic Thinking ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Raymond Aron ◽  
The Impact

Raymond Aron began his studies of postwar politics by taking into consideration the impact of the atomic bombing of Japan by the United States. As was true of many strategic thinkers after 1945, he was concerned that the new technology would alter the significance of warfare and thus of politics — because, as a student of Clausewitz, Aron was of the view that war and politics were intimately connected. This paper explores the evolution of Aron’s thinking from 1945 until the 1980s and the development and changes in nuclear strategy. Alone in France, and almost alone in Europe, Aron kept abreast of changes in American nuclear strategy and made some insightful, if commonsensical, analyses of the then secret strategic thinking of the Soviets as well as of the European NATO allies of the United States.

Ban on Nuclear Tests: What are the Prospects?

2010 ◽  
pp. 33-39
Author(s):  
V. Belous
Keyword(s):  
Control System ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Primary Component ◽  
Nuclear Disarmament ◽  
International Review ◽  
System Construction ◽  
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty ◽  
Comprehensive Test ◽  
Nuclear Tests ◽  
Test Ban

Referring to recent history, the author examines specific stages in nuclear weapons development, which, for their part, determined the fundamentals of the control system construction. The importance of the international Review Conference to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in May 2010 is noted, where serious attention was paid to the primary component of nuclear disarmament – the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which largely predetermines what the future world will be – nuclear or nuclear free.

scholarly journals THE DANGER OF CONFRONTATION BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA IN THE NEW COLD WAR

2020 ◽  
pp. 114-130
Author(s):  
Mykola Fesenko
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Optimal Choice ◽  
People’S Republic Of China ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Republic Of China

The article analyzes the risks to global security in the face of confrontation, as well as the struggle for world leadership in the United States and China. It is shown that the confrontation and deepening of contradictions between the United States and the People’s Republic of China can lead to a nuclear war. However, many researchers also believe that the image of the Chinese threat is now heavily exaggerated and based on the misunderstanding of China’s intentions. In general, expert and analytical centers are encouraged to start technological cooperation with China, rather than exacerbate confrontation. Therefore, on this day there is no clear answer to the question of whether the PRC really threatens US leadership in the framework of the emerging world order. On the contrary, among scholars, politicians and experts one can see the split that is growing in relation to this problem. Despite the opposite view on the ambitions of the People’s Republic of China to represent serious US competition in all areas, rivalry between countries of the so-called “Group Two” (“G-2”) in the coming years will intensify and more and more to put global security policy tasks. China will be able to pursue a more independent policy than the United States only if it bypasses them in the areas of armaments and high technology. However, it is here that American leadership will remain undisputed for a long time to come. However, many analysts predict China’s world leadership in the next decade or decades, as it may soon surpass the United States in economic terms. However, being the greatest does not mean being the first one. In addition to being the world’s second largest economy, China is still a long way from taking the lead or competing in other areas (military-strategic, technological, social, etc.). It has been proved that the optimal choice for China will not be the desire to forcibly introduce its regional, not to mention global, unipolarity, but to actively enter the multipolar world as a major independent center of power.

scholarly journals L’évolution de la doctrine nucléaire américaine de contreforce

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-31
Author(s):  
Charles-Philippe David
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Strategic Consensus ◽  
Conventional Weapons ◽  
Central Purpose ◽  
The U.S

There has been a tendency lately in the United States to talk about the breakdown of the domestic consensus on the purpose of American nuclear strategy. The Reagan administration policies have been largely responsible for the growing felt need by many to question the doctrine and plans underlining that strategy. Why did the erosion of the strategic consensus take place ? One explanation examined in this paper is that the U.S. government has appeared in its nuclear strategy to emphasize more and more counterforce and limited nuclear war plans as its nuclear weapons policy, and therefore has become increasingly receptive to the idea that atomic bombs can be treated like conventional weapons and thought in ways characteristic of the pronuclear world. The central purpose of this article is to analyze how those two phenomenons - the attractiveness of counterforce and the erosion of the strategic consensus - are related to one another. The evolution of the doctrine of counterforce is assessed through a survey of the literature from 1974 to 1984, and particularly from 1980 with the coming to power of the Reagan administration.

Tilting Toward Thanatos: America's “Countervailing” Nuclear Strategy

1981 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis René Beres
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Alternative Strategy ◽  
Current Policy ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Comprehensive Test ◽  
The Right ◽  
Test Ban

America's current nuclear strategy seeks to improve deterrence with a counterforce targeting plan that exceeds the requirements of mutual assured destruction. This “countervailing” nuclear strategy codifies an enlarged spectrum of retaliatory options. The author argues, however, that the countervailing strategy is based upon a number of implausible and contradictory assumptions, and that it actually degrades the overriding objective of genuine security. For many reasons, the Soviet Union is not apt to assign a higher probability of fulfillment to American counterforce threats; under certain conditions, current policy confronts our adversary with a heightened incentive to pre-empt. The conclusion identifies an alternative strategy for the avoidance of nuclear war, a network of doctrines and obligations that calls for a return to minimum deterrence, a comprehensive test ban, and a joint renunciation of the right to the first use of nuclear weapons.

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