UNESCO Courier: Nuclear roulette: 'conventional' thinking on nuclear weapons is a recipe for mutual

Nuclear roulette

THE existence of nuclear weapons has, so far, resulted in restraint in the use of force on the part of the nations that possess them. This may well have prevented a war at some time during the past four decades. Notwithstanding this, recent history cannot be our guide in planning for the future.

An international group of military, scientific and political figures who met in Toronto a few years ago gave the reason: "Our overall conclusion", they said, is "... that, while the avoidance of nuclear war up to the present time was a testimonial to good management, it was a still greater testimonial to good luck".

If it is true that we have been engaged in a game of nuclear roulette, then we carry a heavy burden of guilt. If, having come to this realization, we persist in the same policies, we lay ourselves open to the charge of criminal folly.

All too often we have been closing our eyes to the fact that we have entered a new age, as different -- probably more different -- from the preceding one than the Iron Age was from the Stone Age.

In the 1950s it was acknowledged that the delivery of a hundred nuclear weapons against any nation would cause such suffering and such a rending of the social fabric as to constitute an intolerable tragedy -- the death of a civilization.

There followed from this the truism of our times, namely that the only sane and moral purpose for nuclear weapons was to ensure that they should not be used: that is, their purpose is for deterrence. The numbers of deliverable weapons should, therefore, be held to a few hundred.

This was the prevailing view at the first of the Pugwash International Conferences on Science and World Affairs that I attended, twenty-seven years ago in Moscow.

The subsequent policies of the nuclear powers spoke louder than our words at that time, and differently. The numbers of nuclear weapons were permitted to escalate into the tens of thousands. Nations chose, it would seem, to treat nuclear weapons conventionally, as instruments of war.

The essence of sanity is to recognize the world for what it is. Our policies in regard to nuclear weapons have repeatedly failed to pass that test.

Let me give what appear to me to be three clear examples of this failure. Between them they cover the major areas for military debate.

The first concerns what is referred to rather loosely as the defence of Europe. It should be evident, following military exercises repeated over decades, that Europe is defended by what the American futurologist Herman Kahn once termed (in another context) a Doomsday Machine.

Even after the extremely welcome measures of disarmament now coming to fruition, the war-time task of a commander in a European conflict will be to ready thousands of nuclear weapons for use without inadvertently using them, and also without giving the impression that they may be about to be used, since that would invite nuclear pre-emption by the opposing side. This task would have to be carried out in a conventional war in which beleaguered subordinates were crying out for reinforcements, and in which nuclear weapons sites were being disabled or overrun.

The task of holding nuclear forces in check under such conditions gives every evidence of being impossible. The task of saving Europe from destruction once nuclear war has been engaged is almost certainly impossible. Add these two propositions together and it is apparent that we have opted to defend ourselves and Europe by holding a gun to our heads.

This is a consequence of treating nuclear weapons conventionally.

A second, similar folly underlies the competition in intercontinental ballistic missiles. These awesome and awful devices are commonly thought of as being the embodiment of deterrence, since they are so evidently too terrible to use. Conventional thinking in regard to these "weapons" is nonetheless evident in the compulsion to match opposing systems with missiles of comparable range, yield and numbers.

Such thinking is still more evident in the competition for accuracy and multiplicity of warheads seen in current debates over procurement. These weapons are sought after for their ability to destroy the missile silos on the opposing side. The opponent naturally and correctly supposes that the intention would be to destroy the silo before rather than after the missile that it housed was launched.

Far from deterring the enemy from using his missiles, this threat provides him with a strong incentive to use his missiles while he still can.

The logic that leads to the development and deployment of such weapons, on both sides, involves a commitment to the conventional aim of warfare, namely, to emerge victorious. The aim is sufficiently at variance with reality that it has been thought advisable to recast it into the less readily identified need to "prevail."

The aspect of deterrence that is most to be feared is the temptation to extend it beyond the restricted aim of deterring war, to that of deterring an opponent from actions one deplores. This constitutes "compellance", not deterrence. It is, in the oft-quoted phrase of the Prussian theorist of warfare Karl von Clausewitz, "Diplomacy pursued by other means". Deterrence is something different. Neither Clausewitz nor anyone else has suggested that mutual suicide serves the purposes of diplomacy; it merely obviates the need.

Finally, in this gallery of horrors, each a product of conventional thinking in a transformed world, I include the recourse to magic as a means of repealing the nuclear age. I do not of course really mean magic, but illusions achieved by the use of mirrors.

The mirrors in the current Strategic Defence Initiative scenario will be lofted into space within a minute of the warning being received that the opposing side is launching a missile attack. The function of the mirrors will be to direct laser beams at the enemy weapons as they rise from their silos thousands of kilometres away.

Why have the majority of the U.S. scientific community, possessed of relevant expertise, expressed scepticism as to the technical feasibility of the Strategic Defence Initiative? The two most prominent reasons are as follows. First, in order to provide convincing protection against nuclear weapons, given their enormous destructive powers, one needs a highly effective defence. This is absurdly difficult to achieve. Secondly, it should be evident that the same technologies -- kinetic energy weapons, lasers, X-rays, particle beams, and so forth -- that lure us in the direction of developing sophisticated defences, will be even more effective in the simpler task of undermining those defences.

Experts in the experimental sciences will confirm that it is easier to mess up a highly sophisticated experiment than it is to make it work.

In what sense do antimissile defences represent an outgrowth of conventional thinking? By rendering intercontinental missiles "obsolete", they seek to turn the clock back to an era now firmly lodged in pre-history; a time when we could settle our differences by a vast blood-letting, secure in the knowledge that as a society or species we would stop short of bleeding to death.

That can never be true again, since we know now how to shatter civilizations, and the knowledge will forever be with us. It is understandable therefore that, as the French sociologist Raymond Aron put it, the world is increasingly one of "virile weapons and impotent men". To vary the metaphor, there is no winning move in the international chess game as presently constituted. We must have the courage to change the rules.

There is nothing new in that statement. World leaders frequently make it. Their problem is to act upon it. That requires not only that they believe it, but, no less important, that they believe that others believe it. That is why actions such as the making of the 1972 AntiBallistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, that stand outside the previous pattern of history, are of such critical importance. In 1972, with the signing of the ABM Treaty, sworn enemies solemnly renounced their defences. Not only did they admit that in the nuclear age the emperor had no clothes, they legislated for this nakedness and made it the object of round-the-clock inspection.

The agreement on medium- and short-range nuclear missiles in Europe is of almost comparable importance, since it presents the world with the spectacle of two great powers with substantial unresolved differences destroying a part of their weaponry on the grounds that they are safer without it.

This is a lesson that will not be lost upon the world. It is the right lesson, though an incomplete one. At the outset of these remarks I spoke of the overwhelming danger that nuclear weapons would be used if a nuclear power felt that its vital interests or continued existence were threatened.

Even if one makes the implausible assumption that disarmament might proceed to the point at which nuclear weapons cease to have military significance, that overall picture does not change. The route to escalation, in our world of abundant fissile material, will remain wide open. A hint that one side might "go nuclear" would result in a race to be the first to do so.

Copernicus waited until he was close to death before declaring his belief that the Earth is not, after all, at the centre of the planetary system. He delayed out of fear. Not fear of the wrath of the Church, but of the more terrible prospect of being laughed at by his colleagues. A similar fear prevents many from saying what is evident today, namely that the political constellation no longer orbits around the hallowed conception of nationhood.

Nations came into being when those who were linked geographically banded together for protection, spiritual sustenance and mutual comfort. Today a nation can only offer to protect its citizens by means that invite a barbaric level of violence, likely to destroy them physically or morally.

We cannot base international order on such lethal behavior. Means short of war must be found to resolve national differences. Before too long this must be done within an organizational framework, one that makes visible the need, facilitates the process, and institutionalizes precedents for compromise.

The attempt to make international behaviour subject to agreed guidelines will depend ultimately on the demonstrated willingness of nations to accept the rule of law at home. A nation that claims absolute power within its borders cannot be trusted to relinquish it abroad. Similarly a nation that is careless of the plight of those threatened by starvation, or unconcerned about the rape of the environment, is unlikely to carry conviction in its renunciation of mass destruction as an instrument of policy.

If the agenda before us is so daunting, it is easy to despair. The risks in attempting to achieve a new international order are indeed formidable, being exceeded only by the risks in not doing so. Rather than lamenting human folly, we should count ourselves fortunate that the force of reason is compelling us along the path towards a more civilized world.