Oppenheimer onwards: How nuclear strategists influenced strategic thought

Overview

“In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. …. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting” (Sun Tzu – Art of War)

Written nearly 2,500 years ago, the above quote by Sun Tzu refers to the idea of military deterrence rather than aggression. Today there are officially nine ‘nuclear weapon states’ including China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, United Kingdom and United States including five states acknowledged in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and others that are not part of the treaty but hold stockpiles of nuclear weapons that are managed under international agreements (Sanders-Zakre & Davenport 2019). After reaching a global peak in the 1980s of over 60,000 weapons, stockpiles of nuclear weapons have declined to 9,000 overall (Union of Concerned Scientists 2021) as nations agreed to dismantle their supplies while reflecting a change in international relations, but in the Arms Control Association Report Card 2016-2019 it was reported that in recent years, states have failed to make the desired progress in terms of reducing their supplies. Meanwhile Arbatov (2019) argues that the risk of a nuclear war is greater than ever before. Among official nuclear weapon states, the two major powers are the US and Russia who account for over 90% of weapons stockpiles and have dominated the paradigm since the start of the Cold War in 1945. Even since its end, nuclear weapons have remained at the strategic core of bilateral relations and international security. With the US as a leader in nuclear strategy and one of the major powers, this article considers why classical strategy was no longer applicable and looks at some of the key nuclear strategists who contributed to moving this form of warfare out of the realm of being a solely military tool and recognised that its significance made it a political tool to which politicians, civilians and social scientists should contribute in terms of developing a strategy.

The Rise of Nuclear and a Rethinking of Classical Strategy

Following discovery of fission technology in 1938 and the use of the atom bomb in the 1940s, the powerful devastating effect of nuclear technology was first recognised with US bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (US Dept. of Energy: 2020). With such a destructive impact, nuclear strategists realised that this new technology not only revolutionised the way in which weapons could be used in military operations but necessitated a change in the thinking about the way a war would be fought and the strategy for using weapons. While military strategies in previous centuries had focused on defeat, nuclear weapons not only moved strategic thinking away from the geographical environment (land, sea and later air) but more fundamentally created the need for a strategy to support use of a weapon that could paradoxically never be used (KCL Introduction to Nuclear Strategy 2021). While classical military strategists such as Clausewitz acknowledged the political nature of war (Lebow 1988: 83), their strategic focus in seeking defeat was effectively made obsolete by nuclear technology. It was for this reason that newer approaches such as deterrence theory and various formats emerged.

With the nuclear theatre of war no longer defined by a physical location but rather defined by the technology applied, and the start of the Cold War, as a global power, the US was challenged with growing its capabilities. The US Pentagon’s Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP-62) in the 1950s initially identified the use of nuclear for “massive retaliation” in particular in relation to the Soviet Union (Arbatov 2019). However, when the Soviet Union started to develop its own technology and the threat to the US became clear, the need for a deterrent approach became clear. Kissinger writing in 1957 noted that nuclear technology enabled a shift in the power balance “solely through developments within the territory of another sovereign state.” (Kissinger in Sempa 2020).

One of the key theoretical influencers of strategic policy was the naval historian and strategist Bernard Brodie who viewed nuclear as an “absolute weapon” (Ayson 2000: 48) and on this basis believed it should be governed not only by military but also by civilians. He recognised that this was not simply a larger and more powerful weapon, and due to its destructive capabilities and fast detonation, could never be used but only ever exist as a deterrent to other states. Brodie was among the first to recognise that the traditional strategic continuum of classical military strategists that focused on winning wars needed to broadened to include other government decision and policy makers including civilians as well as redefine what ‘victory’ meant (Gray: 1979: 63). Strategy therefore needed to shift away from the use of force towards averting wars. The likelihood of nuclear retaliation meant that “military superiority no longer guaranteed a nation’s security” (Brodie in Mahnken & Maiolo 2014: 436) and it was this that lead to a strategy of mutual deterrence. It was Brodie who first advocated that nuclear weapons were so revolutionary that they should be considered a separate field, nuclear strategy. With publication of his work, The Absolute Weapon (1946) advocating “strategic deterrence” this attracted attention by political elite within the US and created a dramatic change in the relationship between the military and US policy-makers (KCL First and Second Wave Strategic Thinking 2021). This also elevated the status of decision-making to the highest level and therefore nuclear became a political tool, a tool of diplomacy and potentially a tool for peace.

Gavin (2018) notes that nuclear deterrence theory was viewed as a powerful intellectual tool based on the idea that no adversary would risk their own annihilism and could provide a “means of achieving stability in an environment of mistrust, ideological clashes and intense security competition”. This was particularly relevant to the relationship between the US and Russia. The civilian-military dichotomy represented a significant change in the way strategy was developed. One key reason for this was that Brodie, together with a group now known as ‘First Wave Thinkers (Jervis 1979: 291-2), questioned how the military whose traditional objective was to fight, could strategise on the paradox of averting war and create the necessary more sophisticated and nuanced approach. Therefore, there was questioning and in many cases rejection of all previous classical thought. While the “First Wave” advocated elevation of decision making to a political level, the “second wave” went further in advocating scientific methodology and the use of economic theory. Academic input was embraced and game theory, human behaviour studies and rational decision-making were considered as part of US foreign policy development creating a multi-disciplinary approach with physicists, economists, historians, social scientists “turning deterrence theory into an esoteric intellectual exercise’ (Kissinger in RAND 2011: 1).

The Challenges of Deterrence Theory

US political scientist Albert Wohlstetter with a particular reference to the US and Russia, argued that deterrence in the 1960s would be difficult to achieve “is neither assured nor impossible but will be the product of sustained intelligent effort and hard choices, responsibly made” (Wohlstetter 1959: 211). Wohlstetter believed that there should be a focus on stability and maintaining a stable deterrent required not only the acquisition of sufficient numbers of nuclear weapons but also strategic deployment. Moreover, to be effective deterrents, they needed to pose a credible threat of retaliation.

By elevating nuclear strategy to an elite political level which balanced civilian and military input, strategy making became more complex and scientific. Both Brodie and Nobel-prize winning strategist Thomas Schelling emphasized deterrence using game theory as a key tool in predicting outcomes of war. For example, using game theory, they were able to anticipate the US Govt. Kennedy administration’s adoption of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which operated on the premise that as long as nuclear powers maintained a sufficient “second-strike” retaliatory capability, no nuclear state would launch a first strike (Tunander 1989: 368)

During the late 1979s and early 1980s, strategist Robert Jervis was vocal in his criticism of the previous forty years of research arguing that the US held a flawed view of nuclear deterrence and strategic stability. More recently, Kroenig (2013: 167) was also critical of the work of Jervis and Schelling arguing that if each state in a two-player game possesses a second-strike capability, any additional player should not affect the outcome of the game. If both sides escalate nuclear war, each player in the game is affected equally (which means destruction). Key weaknesses that were identified related to “rational action, risk taking, accuracy of calculation and perhaps most fundamentally, the influence of domestic and bureaucratic politics on decision-making” (King’s Third and Fourth Wave Strategic Thinking 2021) However, whilst critical, Jervis did not propose any new alternatives.

Governance and Transparency

With the acknowledged destructive nature of nuclear weapons, and mistrust between nations, Brodie highlighted that totalitarian states are generally able to maintain greater secrecy about their capabilities than a Western democracy and therefore argued that greater oversight was needed not only by governments within states on an international level. This led to the development of international organisations and frameworks. These frameworks included the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) and the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (SALT 1) (Arbatov 2019).

Since that time, formal as well as informal negotiation has continued between the US and Russia. In 1987, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty between the US and Russia to eliminate all of their nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. As a result, a total 2,692 missiles had been destroyed by June 1, 1991. In 1990, the Soviet-United States Joint Statement on Future Negotiations on Nuclear and Space Arms and Further Enhancing Strategic Stability aimed to eliminate incentives for a ‘first strike’ between the two nations.

Regional Players

While nuclear stockpiles have declined dramatically since the 1980s, Narang (2014: 8) argues that certain states may maintain nuclear arsenals for specific reasons. By recognizing this, new, nuanced policies that are better suited to preventing nuclear weapons from being used, either intentionally or by mistake can be developed. Examples include states that only have a few nuclear weapons, yet use them to persuade a superpower such as the U.S. to intervene on its behalf. Examples include Israel during the 1970s and Pakistan during the late 1980s. Narang outlines various postures including “assured retaliation,” for example when a state such as China or India develops sufficient capabilities for retaliation in case it is attacked. This includes secure second-strike capabilities as a deterrent tool. Another posture is “asymmetric escalation” whereby a state deploys nuclear weapons in order to present a credible threat of a first response to a conventional, non-nuclear attack as illustrated by France during the Cold War and reflects Pakistan’s posture today as a way of securing its borders against India. However, the key challenge remains which is how to safely many nuclear stockpiles.  

Nuclear Strategy and its Ongoing Legacy

Nuclear strategy was the “strategic concept that governed the political and military relationship between the former Soviet Union and the US as well as the Atlantic Alliance and the Warsaw Pact” (Dunn 2001: 9). Using deterrence theory, the strategy could be viewed as a bargaining process in which the vulnerabilities of each side could be reduced (Ayson 2000: 50). In addition to formal agreements between nations and alliances covering the spectrum of nuclear activities from testing to elimination, it was also recognised that ‘tacit understanding’ via informal measures such as exchanges of information was critical.

The threat of escalation of conflict during the Cold War was always present and the basic concept of nuclear deterrence remains despite criticism as ethnocentric with an over-reliance on assumptions about rationality (Jervis 1979: 296). One of the real key questions about nuclear strategy is how it applies to the 21st Century and new threats such as China which Dunn (2001: 10) notes “Washington adapted …. within the framework of existing Cold War strategic nuclear doctrine, operations, and force postures” suggesting no change in the approach. Essentially older formal agreements have been updated for example, the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty which was replaced by Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) agreements.

Nuclear deterrence continues to be the foundation of the US national security strategy. In 2019, David Trachtenberg, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy explained "Our [US] nuclear deterrent underwrites all U.S. military operations and diplomacy across the globe. It is the backstop and foundation of our national defense. A strong nuclear deterrent also contributes to U.S. non-proliferation goals by limiting the incentive for allies to have their own nuclear weapons." Lopez (2019)

Conclusion

2020 marked the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and the start of the Cold War. Today nine states officially have nuclear capabilities yet the two major powers, the US and Russia, continue to hold over 90% of the remaining global weapons stockpile maintaining a fundamentally bipolar relationship.

Since 1945, nuclear strategists revolutionized strategic approaches to the use of weapons and how we conceive of warfare – not only nuclear warfare but all forms of aggression. Shifting away from classical military strategy and the management of weapons as the preserve of the military, nuclear strategists elevated the status of decision-making by broadening of the actors to include civilians, social scientists and academics and developing a strategy for a weapon that could never be used. Strategizing on the most destructive weapon the world has ever seen, nuclear strategists have contributed to a strategy of stability and ultimately peace, rather than aggression. Deterrence theory has been a key contributor with U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals now approximately equal.  Romanian grand strategist Edward Luttwak argued "without nuclear deterrence, great- power politics would resume as before 1945” (Sempa 2019). Via a diplomacy-led effort, global peace has been maintained and a Third World War has been averted. Sempa (2019) also suggests that by realizing the “atoms for peace” ambition US Presidents Eisenhower and Truman, nuclear strategists did more to preserve peace than pacifists and disarmament groups who called for abolishing nuclear weapons and Western unilateral disarmament.

The early part of the Cold War was characterised by its broadening of expertise away from the military yet towards the end, in the 1980s, nuclear strategy saw a return to a position more concentrated around military experts and US-Russia relations are now at the forefront of discussions about international security and geopolitics. While various deficiencies have been identified with deterrence theory and concerns regarding the viability of a strategy that puts nuclear deterrence at its core have led to its demise as an approach. While stockpiles of nuclear warheads have continued to decline, US-Russia are returning to the forefront of discussions about international security and geopolitics. The paradox is that there has been greater peace through diplomacy and political means than via military strategy.

(This article was originally submitted in February 2021 as part of an MA in International Affairs with Cybersecurity, King's College London)

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