What’s wrong with this analysis, if anything?
I am shell shocked. Dale was an exemplary and creative moral philosophy, rigorously engaged with the most foundational issues across…
13 responses to “The increasing risk of nuclear war”
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Imaginative paraphrase in King’s spirit, not an actual quotation from Dr. King:
What is missing here is not factual sobriety, but distance from the framework itself. The analysis shows, clearly enough, how deterrence becomes more fragile: arms control decays, decision times shrink, dual-use systems deepen uncertainty, and new technologies heighten the danger. But it still reasons within the assumptions of deterrence. It asks how a system of organized nuclear terror might be made less unstable, not whether reliance upon such a system is itself a sign of moral failure. And that is the deeper question. The issue is not only whether this arrangement can be managed more safely. It is whether a civilization can still call itself sane while grounding its security in permanent preparations for mass death. A society that names this peace has already surrendered too much. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/national-committee-sane-nuclear-policy-sane
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There’s a couple of issues here:
On point 3, it’s been a long time since I looked into this, so the science may have shifted. But at the time I did look into it, my impression was that we just don’t know what the real probability of a nuclear winter is, or what the consequences would be if it occurred. I don’t mean that it *wouldn’t* be caused by a 250 warhead exchange, I mean that we just *don’t know*, even though a number of scientists were loudly claiming that we did. In particular, studies depended on unjustified assumptions about how much ash would make it into the upper atmosphere. But like I said, this was a while back, so I may be out of date.
On point 4, while this is strictly-speaking true, we actually know relatively little about nuclear decision-making. At least in the US, the force is structured to allow us to absorb a first strike and still retaliate, so the president would not need to make a decision in only 15 minutes. That’s (part of) why we have those hideously expensive ballistic missile submarines, instead of only using much cheaper silo-based ICBMs – to ensure that the president can wait until we know for sure what’s happening.
On point 5, when I looked into this, it was really unclear how close we actually came to a nuclear war in the 80s. The Russians have incentive to exaggerate on this point. But similarly to point 3, it’s been a while since I did, so I may be out of date.
So I guess my assessment is that while I overall mostly agree with the linked article, the picture is murkier and less certain than they would suggest.
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On (4), and with the usual caveat that I’m not an expert here: The US has 400 land-based ICBMs, carrying about a fifth of its (deployed) strategic warheads, and they are very vulnerable to a first strike. The “launch on warning” idea is basically about being able to fire them before they are destroyed. It used to be that this was thought essential because these were the only missiles capable of precisely hitting hardened targets, but submarine missiles are now pretty much as accurate and there is a very good case that the US should stop deploying land-based ICBMs precisely because that launch-on-warning window is so dangerously destabilizing, or at least give up on launch-on-warning and accept the possibility of losing the land-based ICBMs.
At least according to what is said publicly, though, we haven’t done this and launch-on-warning is still a thing; certainly, the land-based ICBMs are still there. The cynical reason we haven’t done so is that a lot of jobs in the Mountain West depend on them. The more principled reason – point 10 on the original list – is that some technological advance might render submarines vulnerable and so the US wants to keep its weapons diversified. (Autonomous AI-controlled underwater drones is the most plausible concern I’ve seen raised.)-
In theory, the US retains a launch-on-warning *capacity* for the ICBMs. But I’m pretty sure they’re not on an actual launch-on-warning posture except during severe crises. I haven’t found recent documentation about this, but back in the 80s the big argument for MX Peacekeeper’s weirder basing modes was that, without secure basing, we would have to put the ICBMs on launch-on-warning, i.e. we were not on it then.
As far as keeping the ICBMs go, another argument I’ve seen is that they act as a “bomb sponge”. If someone were to launch a massive nuclear attack on the US, they would need to target the ICBMs to keep them from retaliating, which is at least 400 fewer warheads landing on civilian targets.
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On point 4, in The Doomsday Machine, which is based on the author’s personal experience as a RAND consultant advising the military about nuclear war, Daniel Ellsberg argues that in practice there is much more delegation of authority to use nuclear weapons than the official policies would lead one to believe.
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I haven’t read The Doomsday Machine, but wasn’t Ellsberg’s experience in the 50s and 60s? When Eisenhower was writing pre-delegation letters and the Army was deploying nuclear bazookas. I’m doubtful that that’s still the case today, especially since there are far fewer tactical nuclear weapons in the stockpile.
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Yes, Ellsberg’s experience was in the 50s and 60s. I don’t know enough about these issues to have anything meaningful to say about whether changes in states’ nuclear-weapons stockpiles or in communications technology have diminished the practical rationale for delegation. For what it’s worth, in the book, Ellsberg argues that this delegation still persists today. Although 1960 was a long time ago, in my mind, the observations of an informed insider from that time period remain valuable today due to the cloud of secrecy that (understandably) hovers over any state’s policies and procedures regarding nuclear warfare.
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Perhaps one can quibble with this or that statement or claim, and of course speaking about probabilities or risk estimates on this topic is a perilous enterprise in many cases. That said, I don’t find anything generally wrong with the analysis in toto. It might be most useful if only to generate further debate and discussion on the particulars.Several years ago I assembled what I judged at the time to be the relevant literature (in English) that speaks to many of the issues raised here, should anyone be interested: https://www.academia.edu/4844106/Nuclear_Weapons_bibliography
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I’ve looked only quickly at the linked piece, but I did notice a factual mistake in point 5. Point 5 begins by referring to Stanislav Petrov, and then it ends by mentioning the Cuban Missile Crisis and Able Archer as two additional examples of “close calls.” However, the incident in which Petrov was involved *was* Able Archer, so calling Able Archer “another example” is not correct.
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In itself, not much. (A few quibbles: the estimates of deployed warheads are implausibly precise; the assessment of nuclear winter is much too confident and specific; the claim that nuclear winter is ignored in war planning is debatable at best; the section on nuclear near misses I think gives an overstated impression of their frequency; including ‘low funding for nuclear risk research’ on the list comes across as a bit self-serving.)
The more important point is that I think it misses the geopolitical wood for the technological trees (with the partial exception of point 6). I would have thought *much* the most frightening nuclear risk at present is how much closer we are to conventional conflict between nuclear powers (US/China, or Russia/Europe, in one configuration or another), at a time where fear of nuclear war has diminished enough in the US that neither Congress nor the public regards an unstable or incapable President as disqualifyingly dangerous. If we returned to the geopolitical environment of the 1990s then I would be much less alarmed by this list. Even the Cold War had a certain learned stability, and a certain seriousness on the part of US/Soviet leadership concerning nuclear use, that we don’t see at present.
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What’s wrong with it is it’s so terrifying I don’t want to read it
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On the plus side, advances are being made in missile defence – including in laser technology (‘star wars’) – which may soon substantially reduce the chances of nuclear missiles reaching their target, and make the chances of an effective first strike minimal. On the negative side, if one major nuclear armed state (e.g. China) achieves comprehensive missile defence ahead of others then it will be able to defeat/destroy/blackmail the others.
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This is sharply at variance with my understanding of the situation. The general consensus for some while has been that shooting down intercontinental ballistic missiles is an extremely difficult technical problem even for a handful of missiles (e.g. Nirth Korea) and any serious adversary can realistically overwhelm a defense. If that has changed I would be very interested in a reference.
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