In one of his most famous lines, Captain Ahab urged: “Strike, strike through the mask!” Admittedly, said captain isn’t the finest role model one can imagine, but I’ve long thought that his demand is precisely what good skeptics are called to do: to strike through the mask of bullshit, false logic, and appeals to misleading passions so as to reach the substance underneath—if there is any—and to reveal its absence if such is the case. When it comes to skeptical unmasking, nuclear deterrence is long overdue. Just ask the citizens of Hawaii the second week of January 2018 when they were alerted by the government to run for cover with an ICBM incoming, possibly containing a nuclear warhead. It was a false alarm, but a stark reminder—with video footage filling the evening news of masses of peoples scrambling to find cover—that this is no theoretical game for intellectuals to play.
Deterrence is a remarkably simple concept, based on threat: If you attack me, I’ll retaliate so strongly that you’d wish you hadn’t started it. Therefore, you won’t attack me in the first place and both of us will be better off. Simple enough, or so it might seem—until it comes to nuclear deterrence. For many people, threatening to retaliate with nuclear weapons (following an initial attack) is a necessary evil, the only safe and secure way to live in a world with nuclear weapons. For others, it’s downright wonderful, a guarantor of peace and, moreover, a confirmation of the power and influence of their country. For me, however—and a growing number of deterrence detractors—it’s an immense evil, a downright dunderheaded, dastardly dangerous, double-dose of deception. Also ethically dubious (make that “despicable”), strategically incoherent and misleadingly marketed pile of nightmarish, nuclear nonsense.
You now know where I stand. Clearly many others are not so skeptical. To advocates of deterrence, nuclear weapons are not only justified, their existence seems to have worked, and to be working, right now. After all, they point out, nukes haven’t been used in conflict since August of 1945. Why, then, should one be so skeptical of nuclear deterrence?
Let’s start with a bit of biology, where deterrence, in its non-nuclear incarnation, is widespread and not always malign. It emerges in day-to-day affairs, in the animal world and even among plants. Roses and blackberries have thorns, saying in effect “Don’t touch me—or else!” Confront a spider, perhaps one that has accidentally strayed indoors and is thus on human turf rather than its own. The tiny creature will likely rear back on its hindmost legs and assume a threatening posture, one that is ridiculous given that it can easily be squashed with a shoe. Yet, everyone understands the gesture, even though to locate the most recent common ancestor shared by a spider and a human being one must go back more than 500 million years.
Threats have an ancient pedigree in the human imagination, too. Among the most iconic and oft-repeated tales are explicit prohibitions: in the ancient Hebrew Bible, Yahweh warns Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, lest you “surely die.” (They do, anyhow.) Prometheus gives fire to human beings, despite Zeus’s explicit order to the contrary. Also from Greek mythology, Pandora gets a box (originally, a jar) that she is forbidden to open. Bluebeard’s young wife is warned not to open a particular basement door. The list goes on—and inevitably, deterrence fails.
There is no doubt, however, that in some cases, it works. Lions have large canines, not only for killing their prey but also for threatening other lions; they are notably silent when stalking zebras, reserving their impressive roar for discouraging other lions from invading their territory. When threatening another animal, the standard procedure is for the threatener to make him or herself seem larger, more imposing, more dangerous than it really is, in an effort to deter an opponent from taking its food, nest site, mate, or, quite simply, from attacking. Deterrence is far less costly than actual combat but you have to signal that you are willing to use your weapons for the deterrence to work.
There is no punishment more draconian—for an aggressor, but extending inexorably to the entire planet—than nuclear retaliation.
Nature isn’t only “red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson wrote. Nevertheless, living things are typically equipped with a range of intimidating options: not just teeth and claws, but also horns, antlers, poison fangs, bony shields, scary hisses and formidable roars, often wrapped up in a package designed to make themselves seem as ferocious and intimidating as possible. All the better to deter you.
At the same time, a would-be deterrer must be prepared “if deterrence fails” (a frequent and terrifying phrase within the community of nuclear strategists), but something that is not uncommon in nature. In that event, a fight ensues, which might be harmful for one or both parties, but most often results in the loser slinking, slithering, flying, climbing, or running away—to fight, or at least threaten, another day. Unlike nuclear deterrence, failure of natural deterrence is rarely disastrous. Often the result is a standoff, with a would-be aggressor held at bay, the status quo maintained and individuals settling down on their territories, their nests, and with their mates and lives more or less intact.
Even if push comes to shove, antler comes to antler, beak to beak, tooth to tooth, or claw to claw, and if, as a result there are winners and losers, the former enjoy the fruits of their (sometimes temporary) victory while the latter, albeit defeated and disappointed, are only rarely annihilated. In the worst case, at least their ecosystems are still intact. Not so if nuclear deterrence ever fails.
I am not opposed to all uses of deterrence. Our ten-acre farm in western Washington state is patrolled by an aggressively territorial 140 lb. Anatolian shepherd dog—and we have never been burglarized. We also maintain an electric fence around the perimeter of our property, to keep our animals in (including the Anatolian), and others out. Even if we could, however, we wouldn’t seek to deter intruders by threatening to blow up the neighborhood. Aside from the insuperable practical and moral constraints, such a threat would lack credibility (an enormous and consequential problem when it comes to nuclear deterrence, which, as I’ll describe later, has led to such dangerous absurdities as doctrine and weapons designed for fighting “limited nuclear wars”), and also because on occasion, accidents happen.
Thus, we have sometimes inadvertently touched our “hot wire,” and although painful, such events simply reinforce our subsequent caution; the effect is unpleasant but far from lethal. More than once our big dog has misfired and in a fit of excessive, redirected exuberance—for example, when a coyote is tantalizingly close but on the other side of our fence—he has attacked one of our smaller dogs. The outcome has been financially beneficial for our local veterinarian, but the canine victim has always recovered—unlike the all-but-certain consequence of a nuclear response to a misfiring computer or satellite false alarm, or an ostensibly “limited” nuclear war.
The “Baker” explosion, part of Operation Crossroads, a nuclear weapon test by the United States military at Bikini Atoll, Micronesia, on 25 July 1946. The wider, exterior cloud is actually just a condensation cloud caused by the Wilson chamber effect, and was very brief. There was no classic mushroom cloud rising to the stratosphere, but inside the condensation cloud the top of the water geyser formed a mushroom-like head called the cauliflower, which fell back into the lagoon. The water released by the explosion was highly radioactive and contaminated many of the ships that were set up near it. (Photo derivative work by Victorrocha based on original by United States Department of Defense [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
My opposition to various alternative forms of deterrence is thus less than absolute, and yet herein lies part of the problem when it comes to nuclear deterrence. Although carrots are generally better than sticks, and threats are less effective (also less ethical) than rewards, the fact that threats sometimes work—that indeed, they are baked into much of the animal and human world—readily leads to the unspoken assumption that what’s good, at least occasionally, in the interpersonal and conventional domain is also good when it comes to nuclear weapons. It ain’t necessarily so. In fact, it is downright wrong.
Here is a basic rule: when you multiply something by a million, you not only change it quantitatively, but also qualitatively. You might currently have, say, $40 in your wallet; multiply this by ten, and your new-found $400 would have a genuine impact, but would not likely make a deep change in your life. Multiply it by a million, however, and with $40 million in your pocket there’s a good chance that your future would be radically altered. Most people walk at about two miles per hour. Increase this by a factor of ten, and you’re riding a bicycle at 20 mph, or perhaps in a car going slowly. Multiply by a million, and you’ve exceeded escape velocity and are heading for outer space. A change, not just of degree, but of kind.
No one should ever have the opportunity to unleash nuclear war: not Trump, not Pence, not Theresa May, Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un—nobody!
TNT is a powerful but conventional explosive. A ton of it can do enormous damage. Atomic bombs are measured in kilotons (thousands of tons of TNT) and hydrogen bombs in megatons, or millions of tons. The difference, once again—in this case between conventional and nuclear munitions—is qualitative, not merely quantitative. The temperature inside a nuclear explosion is similarly a thing unto itself: in the range of millions of degrees, something not otherwise found on Earth. Not surprisingly, although deterrence exists in both the conventional and nuclear world, when it comes to things nuclear, its implications and its dangers are also qualitatively discontinuous.
Nuclear deterrence isn’t normally discussed in polite civilian conversation, but start looking for non-nuclear deterrence and you will find it almost everywhere. “Don’t make me say this a second time, or else”, “If you hit your sister again, you’ll be timed out.” From Pink Floyd’s The Wall: “You can’t have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat!” Strong doors and locks are intended to deter crime. So are police. But although a policeman on the corner may well deter criminals, recent well-publicized events make it clear that sometimes the police resort to lethal force when it is not called for. A saving grace is that such occasions, although tragic, do not result in destroying an entire city, or country. Not so in a nuclear context.
In its non-nuclear manifestation, deterrence is fundamental to law enforcement, with the expectation that the threat of condign punishment will inhibit malefactors. (Whether it does so, on the other hand, is another matter.) By the end of the 18th century, English law specified 220 different offenses—most of them involving theft of property—that were punishable by death. The expressed intent of the infamous Bloody Code was deterrence: “Men are not hanged for stealing horses,” wrote the Marquis of Halifax, “but that horses may not be stolen.” But horses were stolen nevertheless, and people—poor people, especially—were hanged for stealing a quill pen or a bolt of cloth.
European reformers—notably Cesare Beccaria—sought a more effective social policy by making “the punishment fit the crime,” and shortly thereafter, Jeremy Bentham argued strongly for similar adjustments. This corresponds to strategists’ “ladder of escalation,” by which U.S. presidents are supposed to have a variety of punishing nuclear options instead of simply an all-out, insensate, devastating response to any aggressive transgression.
Structured levels of punishment make sense in the world of criminology, not only because it is widely seen as immoral to execute someone for stealing a loaf of bread, but for practical reasons: before the relaxation of England’s Bloody Code, judges and prosecutors often ignored or understated a crime so as to avoid becoming complicit in overly draconian punishment. There is no punishment more draconian—for an aggressor, but extending inexorably to the entire planet—than nuclear retaliation.
What follows is a brief survey of some of the skeletons in the closet of nuclear deterrence.
Skeleton #1: No Limits. Deterrence is a psychological maneuver whose avowed goal is to pose unacceptable damage to a would-be attacker. Rarely acknowledged, however, is that no one knows how much threatened damage is sufficient. During his tenure as JFK’s Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara attempted to oversee a logical analysis of “how much is enough.” Graphing percentage destruction against megatonnage “delivered” against the USSR, the curve showed a levelling off—essentially, diminishing returns—at destruction of a quarter of the population and two-thirds of the industrial capacity. This was then arbitrarily announced to be sufficient for deterrence; just to be “safe,” however, it was decreed that each leg of the strategic triad (land-based ICBMs, submarine launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers) should independently have this capability.
Given the current anxiety in the U.S. over the prospect of a handful of North Korean nuclear-armed missiles, it seems reasonable that effective deterrence could be achieved with a very small number of such weapons. (China has calculated similarly, having capped its arsenal at about 300 nuclear warheads, carried by roughly 100 missiles.) A single U.S. Trident submarine can carry 24 D-5 missiles, limited to 20 by current treaty. Each missile has eight independently targetable warheads, of about 465 kilotons (thousands of tons of TNT equivalent), with each such warhead being about 30 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb. Thus, a single Trident sub packs 20 × 8 × 30 = 4,800 Hiroshimas. If this alone seems excessive, consider that the U.S. has 18 Trident submarines, not to mention the bombers and ICBMs—and yet the Trump Administration claims that much more is needed! Suffice it to say that there is no logical way to cap the size of an adequate deterrence force.
The lack of limits is a serious economic and political problem, and a blank check for what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. But this particular skeleton is not in itself perilous. The remaining ones, however, are.
Skeleton #2: Credibility. Let’s say you want to deter your child from poking the cat. You might threaten a loss of desert, or of screen time, etc. Or, you might announce that the next time the cat is assaulted, you’ll blow up the house. Since such a threat would likely lack credibility, you might enhance your would-be deterrent by planting sticks of dynamite throughout the house. Your deterrent’s credibility would still likely be low, however, and most psychologists would probably argue against such a child-rearing tactic.
Similarly, people who invest in a home security system are understandably reluctant to install one that responds to a burglary by blowing up the house—even if such a threat were advertised on a conspicuous lawn sign, just as a guard armed with a backpack nuclear bomb is unlikely to stop a thief: “Halt, or I’ll blow us all to bits!” This speaks to one of the most intractable skeletons in the closet of nuclear deterrence: its incredibility. Decades ago, McNamara noted that it is impossible to make a credible threat out of an incredible act, a problem that long vexed NATO planners, summarized by one general’s complaint that West German towns were “only two kilotons apart.” It wasn’t credible that NATO would destroy western Europe in order to save it from a potential Warsaw Pact invasion. The result was—and continues to be—the design and deployment of smaller, more accurate nuclear weapons, whose use is therefore more believable. The intractable problem, however, is that insofar as nukes are made more usable, in order to be more credible they are unavoidably more likely to be used, and thereby dangerous. Incredibly so.
Nuclear weapon test Mike (yield 10.4 Mt) on Enewetak Atoll. The test was part of the Operation Ivy. Mike was the first hydrogen bomb ever tested, an experimental device not suitable for use as a weapon. (Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
The credibility skeleton has led to no end of hair-raising attempted work-arounds. For example, since the heart of deterrence—nuclear retaliation after a first strike—is itself lacking in credibility, not only because of its ethical problems as well as the fact that doing so would contribute to the worldwide catastrophe of nuclear winter, there has been continuing pressure to take people “out of the loop” and rely on “launch on warning,” whereby satellites and computer systems would automatically launch retaliation upon warning of an incoming attack. But such a move would itself be perilous, given the documented high frequency of false alarms, computer malfunctions, and so forth, as in the Hawaii example most recently.
Skeleton #3: Vulnerability. The issue here is vulnerability of the weapons themselves, not of the population. Seemingly more ethical than threatening population centers, “counterforce” doctrines target a potential opponent’s weapons (particularly ICBMs), bringing to mind the Lone Ranger on 1950s TV, who would neatly shoot the pistol out of a bad guy’s hand…without even hurting him! A key problem, however, is that such a capability—aside from being technically impossible—suggests that the Lone Ranger might be planning a disarming first strike, which, in times of stress, could result in a never-ending cycle of instability in which each side endeavors to attack first.
Skeleton #4: The Assumption of Rationality. Nuclear deterrence makes the peculiar assumption that we can scare the hell (or more) out of opponents by threatening the most unimaginable horror and then expect them to behave with exquisite cognitive control. This problem is immensely enhanced if and when the leader of a nuclear-armed country ever happens to be mentally unstable, thin-skinned and quick to anger, vindictive, indifferent to facts, impulsive, unreflective, ego-threatened, politically and militarily inexperienced, ethically challenged, untaught and unteachable, and so forth. This potentially catastrophic weakness isn’t only found in today’s political leaders, although it seems especially developed in the current president of the United States. No human being is rational all the time. Isn’t it therefore rational to turn a deeply skeptical eye on the proposition that we can trust the animal called Homo sapiens to never, ever screw up?
Skeleton #4: Ethics. Nuclear deterrence is widely justified because it is a preventative, and as such “much better than nuclear war.” This ignores the conundrum that the only way this doctrine could prevent nuclear war is if anyone brandishing deterrence is fully prepared to engage in nuclear war if pushed or sufficiently provoked (see Skeleton #2, credibility). And there would be nothing ethical about such a war. The most influential ethical analysis of war in the Western tradition can be found in the Catholic Church’s “Just War” doctrine, which is divided into jus ad bellum (the legitimacy of fighting a given war, regardless of how said war is fought) and jus in bello (the legitimacy of the tactics employed). Each of these, in turn, is divided into several sub-components, and nuclear war violates every one. As to being a Just War, nuclear war simply wouldn’t be Just Another War.
Skeleton #5: Efficacy. But hasn’t deterrence worked? Maybe. But maybe not. The fact that the Cold War never went hot might have been due to deterrence, or to the fact that the U.S. and USSR had nothing worth warring about. And of course, correlation is different from causation. In ancient China, it was widely believed that solar eclipses were caused by a dragon swallowing the sun, so people responded to sudden darkening by making as much noise as possible: banging pots and gongs, yelling loudly and guess what? It worked! Every time. If for some reason the villagers had refrained from all that noise-making and the eclipse resolved anyhow, the worst outcome would have been a loss of confidence in the role of dragons. But if nuclear deterrence had failed, I likely wouldn’t be around to write this, or you to read it, so neither of us would be congratulating ourselves on the efficacy of deterrence.
In some cases, it only takes one failure for an entire scaffolding, previously thought to be safe, to come crashing down. The Concorde Supersonic Transport entered service in 1976 and flew flawlessly throughout the late 1970s and 1980s. In fact, it was lauded as not only the fastest but the safest passenger plane of all, having a zero accident and fatality rate. Then, in 1990, one of them crashed on a runway in Paris, killing all 109 people on board and ultimately grounding the entire fleet, which was subsequently abandoned. Its safety record instantly jumped from the safest to the most dangerous (because only a handful of the planes were ever built and flown). Failure of the Chinese dragon myth wouldn’t have been catastrophic; failure of the Concorde was, but “only” for the passengers (and the plane’s investors); failure of deterrence—just once—would be catastrophic for hundreds of thousands, more likely millions and perhaps billions, not to mention the rest of the innocent natural world. Such considerations should mitigate against celebratory confidence as to the reliability of deterrence, and the fact that it has always worked…thus far.
Moreover, you cannot prove a counter-factual: why something has not happened. Maybe there was no U.S.-Soviet nuclear war because of the Howdy Doody show, or the invention of air conditioning. To be sure, The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962—when by most accounts we were closest to nuclear Armageddon—is sometimes cited as an example of successful deterrence. But, in fact, this crisis was caused by nuclear weapons, specifically the Soviet attempt to base nuclear missiles in Cuba. And according to many historians, the major reason Khrushchev backed down was because the Soviets were greatly inferior to the U.S. in conventional military forces in the Caribbean. In any event, it is not unlikely that the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved short of nuclear war not because of nuclear deterrence, but despite it. It may seem a truism that absent nuclear weapons there wouldn’t have been any crisis, but that is precisely the point: Khrushchev’s move to install nukes in Cuba in 1962 was a direct consequence of the Soviet perception that such weaponry was needed. Why? To deter the U.S., which had deployed intermediate range Thor missiles in the UK in 1959, and Jupiter missiles in Turkey in 1961. And why had the U.S. done that? To deter the Soviet Union. (An initially unpublicized part of the agreement that ended the Cuban Missile Crisis was for these Soviet and US missiles—i.e., mutual provocations—to be removed. In that limited sense, deterrence was successful: as a prod toward giving up on one aspect of itself.)
What about North Korea? The thousands of artillery pieces maintained by the North and aimed at Seoul and environs have almost certainly dampened any potential enthusiasm from aggressive militarists in the South to march north, just as the South’s well-oiled military machine plus the deployment of U.S. “tripwire” forces have constrained aggression from the North. In short, conventional deterrence worked and showed no signs of failing…until the Kim regime, fearing that it needed yet more deterrence, began vigorously pursuing a full-fledged nuclear arsenal, which touched a nerve in what Senator Bob Corker aptly called the “adult play-pen” at the White House. The currently unstable situation on the Korean Peninsula is frightening testimony to deterrence run amok.
Okay, but haven’t nuclear weapons and their deterrent threats enabled nuclear armed countries to get their way in the world? Hardly. The U.S. wasn’t able to bend North Vietnam to its will, or the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. Our atomic arsenal didn’t benefit us in Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, or against ISIS, nor did the Soviets gain similarly in Afghanistan, or in keeping control of its East European satellites, or even in maintaining its territorial integrity. France’s nukes didn’t help them keep Algeria. And when it comes to protecting them from attack by non-nuclear aggressors, forget it: In 1951, China’s non-nuclear status didn’t inhibit Mao from sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers against a nuclear-armed U.S. in Korea, nor was non-nuclear Argentina inhibited from invading nuclear Britain’s Falkland Islands in 1982. There are many other examples, to which the following must be added: nukes didn’t deter terrorist attacks against the U.S. on 9/11, or subsequently against the UK or France, attacks that in the future are far more likely to be conducted with nuclear weapons than deterred by them.
Overall, perhaps the most pernicious skeleton rattling in the closet of deterrence—and the most cogent reason to be skeptical of the whole enterprise of nuclear deterrence—is that it has served as the bedrock justification for the ongoing development, deployment, maintenance and escalation of nuclear weapons themselves…the whole shebang. It is because of nuclear deterrence that we have all been condemned to live under what President Kennedy called a nuclear sword of Damocles, liable to descend at any time. To be sure, Trump in the White House is especially terrifying; he is a national and international emergency. But no one should ever have the opportunity to unleash nuclear war: not Trump, not Pence, not Theresa May, Emmanuel Macron, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un—nobody!
There is a story, said to be of Cherokee origin, in which a young girl was frightened by a recurring dream in which two wolves viciously fought each other. She described this to her grandfather, a tribal elder, renowned for his wisdom, who explained that everyone has both peaceful and violent wolves within them, and they struggle for control. At this, the child was even more worried and asked who wins. Her grandfather replied: “The one you feed.”
It’s time to stop feeding the nuclear wolf, to unmask the unacceptability of deterrence, and turn a skeptical eye on the whole rotten enterprise. 
About the Author
David P. Barash is professor of psychology emeritus at the University of Washington; his most recent book is Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. With his wife, Judith Eve Lipton, he is currently writing a book about nuclear deterrence.
This article was published on March 28, 2018.
CocaCola, Pringles, Oreo Cookies and MacDonalds = carrots. Not to mention caterwauling females and shouting blokes with guitars, poor quality disaster and unfunny comedy films and TV series.
These seem to be things the great unwashed love. Beats “Peace Keeping” anyway.
Jim says:
“Where’s the second part of the article? The first part is useless unless the author presents alternatives to nuclear deterrence. He doesn’t. I agree that there should be a better way to prevent nuclear war than nuclear deterrence. Unfortunately I haven’t seen one.”
The answer my friend is blowing in the wind. It is mutual cooperation, respect and good diplomacy. Where that fails, a good spy system with help. Along the lines of “Keep your friends close, buy keep your enemies closer.”
I can only think that this stupid thing about expelling Russian (NOTE – no longer Soviet, just a foreign power that does not bow to the USA) diplomats is because the US (as well as Britain) is afraid of the end of the Cold War.
There are those of us who are not happy with the takeover of Australia by the United States, but it at least beats having them decide to ‘peace keep’ in our Country.
Give the poor North Korean a break – let them feel unthreatened and learn to live in safety. All threats do is increase polarisation of politics and increased defensive measures put in place.
Lyle T. Jones says:
“If Kim il Dumb sends a missile at the USA I don’t think we should say, ” that was naughty of you Kim, stop that!” We should leave the NK capital (not the rest of NK)a smoking radioactive hole! That is the ultimate deterrent for anyone else planning on using nuclear weapons.”
Well, North Korea is definitely NOT the only Nation with a Mad Leader.
Then consider that North Korea hads been threatendy by the United States of America since the end of World War II. Aftr the wat, the Koreans wanted the Japanese iccupiers out of their Country, but the US supported the Japanese. N otht Koreas surrendered to US occupation while ht Noth continues to resist.
Kim Jong-il, is doing nothing more than supporting/devising a weapon as a deterrent to the US intensifying I attacks on their country.
In the past the USA had completely dominated other nations by supplying them with Coca Cola, MacDonalds, Pringles and (those horrible) Oreo “Cookies”. It the US didn’t feel so strongly that they needed enemies to support their Arms Manufacturers they take over North Koreas as easily as they have bought out most of Australian Industries and dictated to our politicians
Lyle T. Jones says:
“If Kim il Dumb sends a missile at the USA I don’t think we should say, ” that was naughty of you Kim, stop that!” We should leave the NK capital (not the rest of NK)a smoking radioactive hole! That is the ultimate deterrent for anyone else planning on using nuclear weapons.”
Well, North Korea is definitely NOT the only Nation with a Mad Leader.
Then consider that North Korea hads been threatendy by the United States of America since the end of World War II. Aftr the wat, the Koreans wanted the Japanese iccupiers out of their Country, but the US supported the Japanese. N otht Koreas surrendered to US occupation while ht Noth continues to resist.
Kim Jong-il, is doing nothing more than supporting/devising a weapon as a deterrent to the US intensifying I attacks on their country.
In the past the USA had completely dominated other nations by supplying them with Coca Cola, MacDonalds, Pringles and (those horrible) Oreo “Cookies”. It the US didn’t feel so strongly that they needed enemies to support their Arms Manufacturers they take over North Koreas as easily as they have bought out most of Australian Industries and dictated to our politicians
An oldie but a goody.
“Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond about the futility inevitability of an ‘arms race’ and the futility of trying to control ‘other societies’ ownership of weapons.
Grimbeard, there is no “defensive” nuclear position or action it is only an attack on civilians. This idea that you can respond in kind to stop a like threat is delusion. You will end up with millions of dead innocent people.
“Such considerations should mitigate against celebratory confidence as to the reliability of deterrence, and the fact that it has always worked…thus far.”
It should not be “mitigate against”.
It should be “militate against”.
(… Could not resist correcting it. …. Sorry if this is a damper.)
Ron said: “Yes, we all wish nuclear weapons will never be used again, regardless of the humanitarian use of them to end WWII. ”
Humanitarian? Really?!? I must wonder how much time this man has spent looking at the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to those on the ground. I’m sure he thinks it shortened the war (by gruesomely killing hundreds of thousands of people) but it is my understanding that Japan was very close to surrendering anyway and certainly was after the first one was dropped.
Bombs?
Bombs??
etc
ho hum
can we get an email about a Controversial topic ??
snore again
Dr, S.
I’m not a Trump fan, but I’m tired of “elites” talking about how awful Trump is, while ignoring how horrible Hillary Clinton would have been (is), and how terrible Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc. down through the years were. No one who seeks to be president is fit to have any power over others.
Anyway, I don’t trust anyone with nuclear weapons; especially not governments.
http://blog.kentforliberty.com/2018/03/the-right-to-keep-and-bear-nukes.html
Leaving aside the many mixed metaphors the author used, I’d like to pick up on the two key points mentioned by the commentors above.
1. Nuclear weapons cannot be un-invented. Failing to deal with that fact up front renders most of article irrelevant.
2. Nations are composed of people but to describe them as having simple humans emotions like fear is common failure of analysis. In this case it is more important to focus on the elites, specifically those in actual control of the nuclear weapons. Other forms of deterrence fail when leaders weight the risks and deem them acceptable, which usually means that someone else is going off to die. Nuclear tipped ICBMs reversed that risk equation.
These weapons placed the elites directly at risk with no sure counter. What people in power fear most is the loss of that power. That is a key point on which any analysis of nuclear deterrence must turn.
More Doomsday Clocks.
There are any number of WMD’s to fear on our planet. There are always threats of a calamitous end to civilization. The newest Mutually Assured Destruction panic is our global reliance on vulnerable cyber systems. We could swiftly return to small bands of hunter-gatherers.
I tell myself that there may be too many billionaires spread across our globe to allow that. A civilization that can launch one of its fetish-objects into the vast unknown is capable of anything.
How is it that avowed skeptics so quickly turn to trivializing a critique of an essay with simplistic political bickering?
I can’t ever remember an article on Skeptic that was so filled with bad logic as this one, top to bottom. What a mess, Skeptic needs to step up its game before allowing rubbish like this on its site.
I believe Dr. Barash alluded to a solution that someday may prove useful:
” Although carrots are generally better than sticks, and threats are less effective (also less ethical) than rewards, the fact that threats sometimes work—that indeed, they are baked into much of the animal and human world—readily leads to the unspoken assumption that what’s good, at least occasionally, in the interpersonal and conventional domain is also good when it comes to nuclear weapons.”
The aftermath of WWI was dominated by a determination to cripple Germany so they could never wage such a war again. The harshness of the terms imposed is almost universally understood to have given Hitler the opening to challenge the world all too soon. After WWII efforts were made to rebuild the Axis states, and though those countries have been considered economic threats at times, we feel no danger from them. I grew up reading articles by pundits who were extremely critical of “coddling” the losers. This variety of punditry still seems to sway too many world wide.
When USSR more or less collapsed, some in the US couldn’t seem to help themselves and gloated endlessly. I cringed at the time, hoping the Russian people hadn’t noticed. What we’re experiencing now with uncertainties about whether our system can overcome the new kind of warfare may well have stemmed from the insensitivity of some of our leaders’ comments.
As the basic animals that we are, empathy and compassion is too often reserved for members of our own tribe. If others have feelings that can be affected by our acts or words, we may be shocked, even outraged, but we need to try to understand and employ the “golden rule.” Not a popular stance, I know. And not an easy thing to implement, certainly.
Ron: “Those on the left are prone to fantasies.”
No doubt; we’re hopeful beings.
I might suggest, though, that you consider the idea that “commies,” as you call them, are necessarily leftists in fact. If you look at the behavior of the various incarnations of the Russian and Chinese rulership over most of the twentieth century, it is not unlike that of the fascist dictatorships in any real way.
I applaud the author for trying to make the argument against something that is a fundamental principle of evolution. But I don’t understand what exactly he wishes to change.
Isn’t deterrence a simple function of possession? Maybe this author doesn’t like Trump’s verbal reminder (and the way he does the reminding), but it seems irrelevant. If the author is arguing for global disarmement then fine, just say that.
The real question is this….if we were attacked with nuclear weapons would we fire back with Nukes? I think the author’s problem is that tough talk makes him nervous that the answer will be yes. I’m not so sure. Hopefully we’ll never find out, but clearly there will be an argument to be made for two wrongs not making a right when so many additional lives and the earth’s environment are at stake.
@123elle
“video game-driven invincibility.”
Ho ho. Don’t think you’ve played many video games…
In the Comments, ‘Mike’ says ‘If the author was not so obviously politically slanted maybe he could have sent out a better message.’
Like what – that nuclear war is after all a Good Thing? What kind of politics is it that thinks that way?
And in what exactly does the slant show itself to Mike?
Why do some seem so sensitive towards criticism of Trump? We should question the mental capacity of any president who’s holding the nuclear football.
Regarding politics, this has nothing to do with left or right but incompetence and stupidity. With Trump this is an all new different kettle of stupid.
We all know he is a moron – excuse me “fucking moron” to quote Rex Tillerson.
Add in the megalomania of Kim and Putin, one just hopes the checks and balances keep prevailing.
“@Barbara
Thank you for pointing out the only real solution: we need to work on ending war.
This obsession with Nuclear Weapons is short sighted today.
Nukes are bad. But so are chemical and biological weapons. …”
And you are proposing we all become nice people ’cause we like junior or some such? It’s not like talking has not been tried. Did you notice the name of the publication?
I really want a pony, and I should have one! ‘Cause that’s what I deserve! ‘Cause!
If you are to be taken seriously as an adult, your gripe had better be accompanied with a proposed solution.
Otherwise you’re just claiming sainthood for your ‘concern’!
Phbbbbp!
@Barbara
Thank you for pointing out the only real solution: we need to work on ending war.
This obsession with Nuclear Weapons is short sighted today.
Nukes are bad. But so are chemical and biological weapons. Chemical and Biological agents are deployed all the time (the Russian nerve gas attack comes to mind) and not just by nations. The scary thing is it doesn’t take much sophisticated equipment to produce enough chemical or biological agent to wipe out a city.
It’s also much easier to transport the ingredients to poison a water supply than to move radioactive material across borders.
The technical obstacles to making nukes is still huge … otherwise > 100 nations would have nukes.
But I bet there are > 100 nations with biological and chemical weapons ‘labs.’ Why?
Weapons of mass destruction are entering the ‘homebrew’ era and anyone who wants ’em can get ’em. On a ‘down home scale’ Your neighbor who fights with your other neighbor can get chemicals that s/he can pour into the vents of a car and kill them. Even Liechtenstein can procure enough bioagent to wipe out France’s vineyards (and thereby destroying France ;).
The only tools we have left are talking to and listening to our ‘enemies’ (AKA fellow humans). The future of homo sapiens is at stake. Biology, Chemistry and Physics have provided enough tools of destruction – and some are quite inexpensive – that we need to solve our tribalism for good.
“Mutual disarmament has happened before, why not again?”
Please refresh my memory; I seem to have forgotten that.
I really don’t know how this got in a publication claiming to support skepticism. The article and many of the comments run strongly toward “I think people should be other than what they are; aren’t I a wonderful person?”
No, you’re not. At least as a skeptic. Ignoring that complication known as “reality” means you’ve relinquished any claim to being a skeptic; if skepticism is not grounded in reality, it might just as well wish for eternal life from some sky-daddy.
Yes, we all wish nuclear weapons will never be used again, regardless of the humanitarian use of them to end WWII. But so far, there has been no alternative offered to prevent their use than ‘nuclear deterrence’ (including here) and while you might claim it has not been proven to do so, nothing else has been proven to do so either.
As I do to whiners near the beginning of August every year, I ask the same question:
Got a more humane alternative?
Crickets….
Oh, and stuff your whining about Trump somewhere; get over it.
The only answer to nucleart weaponry is the hope that we can come closer to each other and overlook the differences of race, doctrine, belief, and nationality. This would end the incentive for war, as well as the need to confront potential enemies. We continue to read the same book, watch the same movies and television programs while observing the suffering many endure.
How about you threaten a belligerent leader with their own death (the Russians seem good at knocking off people in other countries!). A leader might think twice if he knew HE would die and not just the rest of us.
And what leader can claim to love their country when he puts his own land and millions of his supposedly beloved fellow citizens at such appalling risk? Not to mention the innocent citizens of other nations.
Mutual disarmament has happened before, why not again?
“Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here! This is a war room.”
—Peter Sellers, playing the U.S. President in Doctor Strangelove, or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
This whole argument is out of date and moot. For one thing, any country with even one nuclear reactor has both the material and the experts to build nuclear weapons. In fact, I would assume any country with a nuclear reactor has already got a stash of them or at least the components stockpiled and ready to assemble in a few days if needed.
No missiles are needed to deliver a bomb. As Carl Sagan said, all one needs to do to smuggle a nuclear bomb into the U.S. is to hide it in a bale of marijuana. I assume several potential enemies have done so and there are nuclear bombs already in place in most American large cities ready to be set off by remote control. If I was Prime Minister of Canada or President of Mexico I would certainly have nukes in place in case of an American invasion. I would make sure the American government knew it but their subjects would not be told. And of course America has done the same to most other countries in case of trouble.
But there is also no reason to think only a nation-state can have nukes. There are several other possible nuclear-armed groups. Anyone with enough money to spend can own a nuclear weapon.
Also, while a nuclear explosive requires fissionable material, a hydrogen bomb does not. It only needs a high enough temperature to cause a hydrogen reaction. That has been traditionally done by using a nuclear explosion, but it could be done with lasers. One single laser is not hot enough, but an array of them all aimed at the same spot would do the job. So anyone can build a hydrogen bomb in his home workshop for a few thousand dollars.
Who are you going to retaliate against if some drug lord is arrested and demands to be set free or he will order his followers to set off a nuke in Washington D.C. ? And what makes you think it has not already happened? If some criminal blackmailed the cops into releasing him it would not be publicized for fear of copycats.
“Unfortunately, conservative politicians thrive on stoking fear among voters.”
Yeah, all the commie leaders were/are “conservatives”, as was FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, Clinton, and Obama.
Those on the left are prone to fantasies.
“So the rule is that one must have an alternative in order to decry nuclear duelling?”
Yes, as a matter of fact. If you want to change something, you need that to which you propose to change it.
Fools are easily sussed out; I didn’t vote for the man, but the continued whining of losers is tiresome in the extreme.
Please put a sock in it.
Lots of negative commentary, when surely we can all see that nuclear weapons are fundamentally a blight on mankind as an evolved species. I looked in vain for any recognition of the deep shame of military planners’ blithe disregard for the anticipated destruction of our beautiful natural world – what did Nature do to deserve the sort of ghastly fate envisaged for it by our nuke strategists?
There is an obscene amount of money spent on militaries in our country and globally that could help solve a whole lot of human problems if diverted to peaceful uses. This should be a goal that most could agree upon. Countries and civilizations have declined due to military overreach. The whole species could be next, taking much of the rest of life on earth with us.
Unfortunately, conservative politicians thrive on stoking fear among voters. An interesting study are the differences between conservative and liberal minds. The former are already predisposed to react to fear-stoking, having enlarged reptilian parts of the brain that are designed to react to fear. Liberals tend to have enlarged parts of the brain that are more recent evolutionarily. Thus, the case can be made that liberals and peace advocates—e.g. Gandhi, MLK, John Lennon–are, in fact, more evolved than the average person.
123elle, I’m with you.
I’m not aware of any serious thinker who believes the existence of MAD is a good thing, so Mr. Barash’s assertions in this regard seem of little value. Similarly, most of us, I believe, would be delighted at the abolition of all nuclear weapons, but I know of no signs that this is likely any time soon. If we take it as a given – surely we wish otherwise – that somewhere in the world such weapons will exist, some deterrent to their use is wanted. Mr. Barash offers no credible alternative to MAD, so I’m uncertain why he’s even written this piece. Nothing in my world is changed by these platitudes, and I don’t find anything here that seems useful.
Where’s the second part of the article? The first part is useless unless the author presents alternatives to nuclear deterrence. He doesn’t. I agree that there should be a better way to prevent nuclear war than nuclear deterrence. Unfortunately I haven’t see one.
So the rule is that one must have an alternative in order to decry nuclear duelling?
One can suss out Trumpers so easily: “bullbleep” “worthless rant.” Touchy, touchy people, spluttering invective when their hero is exposed.
I found this article to be interesting but not too helpful. It more-or-less boiled down to, “nuclear deterrence is something that should not be done or advocated for these reasons”. Ultimately providing no alternative courses of action for the countries engaging in this type of behavior.
Even if most/all of the countries dismantled their nuclear arsenal tomorrow, what is to stop the next regime from reneging on the agreement or doing it in secret? This is compounded by Mr. Barash’s point that not all rulers are rational. What types of safeguards could be implemented to prevent this type of thing from happening?
Then again I am unsure of what Mr. Barash’s intention was when writing this article. For all I know this could only be a conversation starter on the topic. If that is the case then I think it does a relatively good job.
So: Peace good, war bad. Big war worse. Big bombs —-> big war. Trump bad.
Did I miss anything?
“I’m not surprised at the appearance here of so many fearless keyboard nuclear warriors. ”
There was exactly one who proposed use of nuclear weapons, and that in response to attack, so your ‘so many’ is so much bullbleep.
“The fact that so many fear Trump’s capacity for triggering war as a distraction from his personal legal woes has to give us pause. ”
Speak for yourself.
You, too, propose nothing as an alternative; worthless rant.
“If Kim il Dumb sends a missile at the USA I don’t think we should say, ” that was naughty of you Kim, stop that!” We should leave the NK capital (not the rest of NK)a smoking radioactive hole! ”
What an appalling, inhumane and ignorant attitude Lyle. In your hypothetical example, what did the people of Pyongyang do to deserve being killed? What could they have done to stop Kim? Do you think Kim would even care about the people of Pyongyang being killed, given that he is starving and oppressing the North Korean people as it is (and would himself be safely ensconced in a nuclear bunker)?
I’m not surprised at the appearance here of so many fearless keyboard nuclear warriors. They are to be expected, since brandishing is such common behavior across human confrontations. Brandishing of unconcealed guns, for example, is widely believed to discourage attacks, and perhaps it does — unless the adversaries are pumped up on both fear and testosterone / video game-driven invincibility.
The danger of nuclear war — or of any kind of deadly attack — also rises exponentially when both sides are infested with chickenhawks, led by inexperienced, immature, and in our case, proven mentally unstable man-boys. The fact that so many fear Trump’s capacity for triggering war as a distraction from his personal legal woes has to give us pause. Unequivocally, the U.S. is, as so many professional diplomats aver, at higher risk of waging first-strike nuclear war now than at any other time in its history. We also have far fewer reasons (like none) for even contemplating it.
The presumption of this entire article is that we have better choices in this issue, though the author proposes no solutions. This technology exists. The bell cannot be unrung. Any group of people that have this technology at the ready have a terrible sword to hang over the heads of any other group. There is no feasible, realistic way to convince all of us, everywhere, to give them up. Using these weapons would be madness. But refusing to have them would be suicide.
This long-winded article makes a strong case for MAD being evil… but doesn’t quite demonstrate that it isn’t a necessary evil.
Also, many of the examples of deterrence seemed off base to me: Adam & Eve, Prometheus, Pandora and Bluebeard’s wife seem better examples of why you don’t put up a big button with a sign saying “Don’t Push Me!”
A better example of deterrence – especially in warfare – was the many, large stockpiles of poison gas that were never used in WWII. Both sides made it clear that if the other started using poison gas a replay of WW I would ensue. Deterrence worked.
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?” – Mahatma Gandhi
I’m glad you examined the usual rationalization for continuing MAD, that it’s ‘worked’ all these years. I hear that and think it no different than heaping praise for calling a successful hail mary play, or telling a lotto winner they sure are great at picking numbers. Did 5/6 of the people who chose to play russian roulette make the right choice?
One, overlong wail, of no help whatever in the real world.
It does seem that using the Concorde airliner as an example of loss of credibility pays no attention to the facts and perhaps displays some USA bias. Firstly, many airliners crash over time but this does not seem to deter people from travelling by air. Secondly, as to the history of the Concorde type, the crash happened after the aircraft in question ran over a piece of debris that had fallen onto the runway from a previous departing aircraft. This caused a tyre to disintegrate and puncture the wing above, allowing fuel to escape and catch fire. The aircraft took off, then as the fire spread and melted the aluminium airframe, the aircraft crashed several miles away (not on the runway). The Concorde fleet was subsequently fitted with improved fuel tank linings and went back into service. Three years later, the fleet was withdrawn because the responsible manufacturer, Airbus, withdrew maintenance support for the type, this being the ultimate fate of many types. The fleet had been in service for around 27 years which is quite a good life for the individual airliners.
Nuclear deterrence needs to be discussed but this article was perhaps more emotive than rational and so flawed.
I don’t know what drug the author was using but he is obviously delusional! If Kim il Dumb sends a missile at the USA I don’t think we should say, ” that was naughty of you Kim, stop that!” We should leave the NK capital (not the rest of NK)a smoking radioactive hole! That is the ultimate deterrent for anyone else planning on using nuclear weapons. It worked fine to end WW2 and saved 10’s of thousand of lives and it looks like Kim is finally getting the message. “We have the weapons and are not afraid to use them in self-defense!”
I find this remarkably similar to the claims that using nuclear weapons to end WWII was not acceptable. The problem arises with the inability of those making that claim to offer a better alternative.
While I can understand Mr. Barash’s distaste for nuclear deterrence, In this case he offers no alternative at all, let alone a worse one. Does he hope the world’s governments will simply decide to push that genie back in the bottle?
We’ll ignore his gratuitous swipes at Trump, tiresome as they are.
If the author was not so obviously politically slanted maybe he could have sent out a better message.