Nuclear Deterrence during the Period of Confrontation

2015 ◽  
pp. 30-39
Author(s):  
A. Savel'ev
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Problem Analysis ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
Nuclear Targeting ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Strategic Stability ◽  
Military Conflicts ◽  
Security Problem ◽  
Massive Retaliation

The article focuses on the main aspects of nuclear deterrence concept, including the mechanism of its application during the period of international tension. The author pays attention to the strategic triad configuration which makes nuclear deterrence more effective and reliable. Along with it the credibility of nuclear deterrence is also under consideration as a very important element of the overall problem analysis. The central part of the article is devoted to the problem of nuclear targeting and possible application of nuclear weapons in case the deterrence failed, and the decision to use these weapons were taken. The author argues that there is no rational variant to apply nuclear weapons without unpredictable and deadly reaction from the opposite side. There is no hope to achieve any positive result after the first use of nuclear weapons – whether strategic or tactical. Thus, a massive counterforce strike cannot prevent from a massive retaliation resulting in the complete annihilation of the rivalries. A limited strike against strategic offensive forces of the opponent can be interpreted as a massive strike ending with massive retaliation. A single strike cannot solve any military problem and, moreover, may give strategic initiative to the opponent. Tactical nuclear forces can be used in different, but generally “unproductive” ways – whether against the own territory, or by solving only limited tasks, while producing an unpredictable reaction from the opponent. The author comes to a conclusion that the nuclear weapon is only an instrument of self-destruction which cannot solve any security problem. It can only play a symbolic role in terms of the country's prestige, and nothing else. Finally, the author insists that the strategic stability concept started to play a counter-productive role in the U.S.-Russia strategic relations, and must be substituted by a new approach to security. This approach should reject the central idea of strategic stability which calls for preserving a powerful retaliatory potential. Acknowledgements. The publication is prepared with financial support of the Russian Foundation for Humanities; Project № 15-37-11136 “The Influence of Technological Factors on the Spectrum of Threats to National and International Security, Military Conflicts and Strategic Stability”.

scholarly journals Possible approaches to reducing the risks of nuclear escalation at the regional level

2021 ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Pavel Zolotarev
Keyword(s):  
High Precision ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Nuclear Potential ◽  
Armed Struggle ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Strategic Stability ◽  
Military Conflicts ◽  
Nuclear Systems

The article deals with issues related to the task of reducing the risks of escalation of a local military conflict to the level of a nuclear one. To find ways to solve this problem, three aspects are considered – doctrinal, concerning official views on the use of nuclear weapons; features of the means of delivery of tactical nuclear weapons; features of the storage of tactical nuclear ammunition; the influence of high-precision weapons. The main doctrinal provisions are considered for Russia, the United States and China. The conclusion is substantiated that it is expedient to consolidate in the doctrinal documents of nuclear states or in other forms of mutual obligations the provision that each state will develop new non-nuclear systems of armed struggle with a simultaneous reduction in the role of nuclear weapons in ensuring security. To reduce the risk of escalation of the conflict to a nuclear one, it is proposed to work out the issue of refusing to create and deploy delivery vehicles that allow their use for both conventional and nuclear strikes. Relevant proposals have been made regarding the deployment of short-range nuclear weapons carriers and storage sites for nuclear charges, aimed at minimizing the risk of the use of nuclear weapons. An assessment of the capabilities of high-precision weapons to disrupt strategic stability when trying to use them for decapitating or disarming strikes is carried out. The conclusion is made about the unreality of such scenarios. A comparative analysis of the risks of escalation of military conflicts to the nuclear level was carried out for the European and Asia-Pacific regions. Taking into account the achieved level of survivability of the Chinese nuclear potential and the prospects for its development, it is assumed that there is a higher risk of an escalation of a military conflict for the European theater. 

scholarly journals Nuclear warfare beyond counterforce

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Gallagher ◽  
Michael Cevallos
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
Nuclear Targeting ◽  
Nuclear Arsenal ◽  
Nuclear Attack ◽  
Economic Infrastructure ◽  
Potential Damage ◽  
Nuclear Warfare ◽  
Multiple Actors

Abstract A counterforce attack intends to disable an opponent's nuclear arsenal to limit potential damage from that adversary. We postulate a future when hardening and deeply burying fixed sites, transition to mobile strategic systems, and improved defences make executing a counterforce strategy against an adversary's nuclear forces extremely difficult. Additionally, our postulated future has multiple nations possessing nuclear weapons. Consequently, each country needs to consider multiple actors when addressing the question of how to deter a potential adversary's nuclear attack. We examine six nuclear targeting alternatives and consider how to deter them. These strategies include nuclear demonstration, conventional military targets, and attacks consisting of communications/electronics, economic, infrastructure, and population centers that a nation might consider striking with nuclear weapons. Since these alternative strikes require only a few nuclear weapons, executing one of them would not significantly shift the balance of nuclear forces. The attacking country's remaining nuclear forces may inhibit the attacked country or its allies from responding. How can nations deter these limited nuclear attacks? Potentially, threatening economic counter-strikes seems to be the best alternative. How might escalation be controlled in the event of a limited attack? Other instruments of power, such as political or economic, might be employed to bolster deterrence against these types of nuclear strikes.

scholarly journals Assuring Assured Retaliation: China's Nuclear Posture and U.S.-China Strategic Stability

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona S. Cunningham ◽  
M. Taylor Fravel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Critical Factor ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arms Race ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Strategic Stability ◽  
Small Force

Whether China will abandon its long-standing nuclear strategy of assured retaliation for a first-use posture will be a critical factor in future U.S.-China strategic stability. In the past decade, advances in U.S. strategic capabilities, especially missile defenses and enhanced long-range conventional strike capacity, could undermine China's nuclear retaliatory capability, which is based on a relatively small force and second-strike posture. An exhaustive review of Chinese writings on military affairs indicates, however, that China is unlikely to abandon its current nuclear strategy of assured retaliation. Instead, China will modestly expand its arsenal, increase the sophistication of its forces, and allow limited ambiguity regarding its pledge not to use nuclear weapons first. This limited ambiguity allows China to use the threat of nuclear retaliation to deter a conventional attack on its nuclear arsenal, without significantly increasing the size of its nuclear forces and triggering a costly arms race. Nevertheless, China's effort to maintain its strategy of assured retaliation while avoiding an arms race could backfire. Those efforts increase the risk that nuclear weapons could be used in a crisis between the United States and China, even though China views this possibility as much less likely than the United States does.

Threatening the Unthinkable: Strategic Stability and the Credibility of North Korea's Nuclear Threats

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Kodama
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
North Korea ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
Strategic Stability ◽  
Willingness To Use

Abstract With the spread of nuclear weapons to regional actors facing adversaries with superior conventional and nuclear forces, the prospect of deliberate nuclear first use is no longer unthinkable. This is especially the case with North Korea, which not only faces strong incentives for first use in a crisis but also has made the threat of first use a key component of its nuclear posture. To analyze the emerging US-DPRK deterrence relationship, this article presents a framework for outlining North Korea's calculus of when first use is rational, and examines the interaction between North Korea's threshold for first use and the United States’ perception of that threshold. By conceptualizing this interaction with four ideal-typical dyads, this article argues that the most stable dyad is one in which the United States recognizes that North Korea has the capability and willingness to use nuclear weapons at low crisis thresholds.

Perfect Deterrence. By Frank C. Zagare and D. Marc Kilgour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 441p. $74.95 cloth, $27.95 paper.

2002 ◽  
Vol 96 (3) ◽  
pp. 695-696
Author(s):  
Michael D. McGinnis
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Deterrence Theory ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Flexible Response ◽  
Preceding Period ◽  
Massive Retaliation ◽  
The Cold War

For too long, nuclear deterrence theory has been treated as a casualty of the end of the Cold War. During the preceding period of superpower rivalry, debates over the credibility of nuclear deterrence attracted the attention of sophisticated game theorists in diverse disciplines. But with the end of the Cold War, this research tradition virtually ground to a halt. In this important new book, two long-term contributors to this body of research revisit these issues and effectively recast these models as representations of policy dilemmas of long-standing and continuing relevance. For instance, their models of U.S. strategic doctrines of massive retaliation and flexible response prove relevant to any situation in which the parties perceive two levels of conflict to be significantly different, even if neither level involves the use of nuclear weapons.

scholarly journals An Illusion of the Indian Balistic Missile Defence System

Politeja ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2(59)) ◽  
pp. 39-53
Author(s):  
Ashfaq Ahmed ◽  
Saima Kausar
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Proliferation ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Defense System ◽  
Missile Defense ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Strategic Stability ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
False Sense ◽  
Ballistic Missile Defense

In this paper, the Researcher has endeavored to test the hypothesis that the Indian ballistic missile defense system (BMDS) erodes the sense of mutual vulnerability. It seems that the BMDS provides a false sense of security to India. For this reason it is felt that the Cold Start Doctrine (CSD) can therefore be launched against Pakistan in an attempt to actualize a disarming strike. Consequentially, the BMDS disturbs the India-Pakistan crisis and deterrence stability. Indian policymakers should realize that firstly, the operationalization of the CSD crosses Pakistan’s nuclear threshold and it requires Islamabad to unleash strategic and tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs); secondly, the Pak-India crisis and deterrence stability is functional due to the sense of mutual vulnerability; thirdly, the credibility of nuclear deterrence has not been tested and fourthly, the deterrence stability solidified the crisis and strategic stability. The BMDS deployment in South Asia will certainly result first in quantitative and qualitative nuclear proliferation; second, it weakens the NPT and; third, it may break the nuclear taboo based on non-use of nuclear weapons. India needs to understand that Pak-India can survive the long persisting threat of conventional and nuclear war because of the mutual vulnerability of counter value and counterforce targets.

The Subtle Knife

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Peter Rautenbach
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Psychological Effects ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Cyber Warfare ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Hybrid Warfare ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Polar Opposite

This article looks to tie together the polar opposite of hybrid warfare and nuclear deterrence. The reason for this is that hybrid warfare and its effects on nuclear deterrence need to be explored as there appears to be substantial increases in hybrid warfare’s usage. This article found that hybrid warfare has an erosion like effect on nuclear deterrence because it increases the likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used. This may be due to both the fact that hybrid warfare can ignore conventional redlines, but also because the cyber aspect of hybrid warfare has unintended psychological effects on how deterrence functions. how does this relate to nuclear war? In short, cyber warfare attacks key concepts which make nuclear deterrence a viable strategy including the concepts of stability, clarity, and rationality. Therefore, hybrid warfare increases the chance of nuclear use.

A Bifurcated Global Nuclear Order

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramesh Thakur
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations

The very destructiveness of nuclear weapons makes them unusable for ethical and military reasons. The world has placed growing restrictions on the full range of nuclear programs and activities. But with the five NPT nuclear powers failing to eliminate nuclear arsenals, other countries acquiring the bomb, arms control efforts stalled, nuclear risks climbing, and growing awareness of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, the United Nations adopted a new treaty to ban the bomb. Some technical anomalies between the 1968 and 2017 treaties will need to be harmonized and the nuclear-armed states’ rejection of the ban treaty means it will not eliminate any nuclear warheads. However, it will have a significant normative impact in stigmatizing the possession, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons and serve as a tool for civil society to mobilize domestic and world public opinion against the doctrine of nuclear deterrence.

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