Adam Lowther
In hopes of opening a debate between the nuclear disarmament and nuclear deterrence practitioner communities, I responded to Alan Kaptanoglu and Stewart Prager’s critique of Guide to Nuclear Deterrence in a Time of Great-Power Competition in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist. The editors published a second response from Kaptanoglu and Prager, but did not care for my reply, which seems endemic of the challenge two communities face when largely talking past each other. Fortunately, Real Clear Defense is a home for open debate about the role of nuclear weapons in national security.
Rather than offering a point-by-point refutation of the technical errors made by Kaptanoglu and Prager in their latest reply, I wanted to take a more fundamental look at why the disarmament and practitioner communities rarely find any common ground.
The Difference in Worldviews
I have often wondered how nuclear disarmament advocates can take the same information available to deterrence practitioners and draw diametrically opposing lessons. The answer is a combination of several factors, but a significant explanation may lay in the differing worldviews held by the two camps. Let me explain.
Theologians Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcy’s How Now Shall We Live? defines a worldview in the following way: “It is simply the sum total of our beliefs about the world, the ‘big picture’ that directs our daily decisions and action.” Colson and Pearcy further add, “Our major task in life is to discover what is true and to live by that truth.” They go on to suggest that every worldview explains where we came from; what went wrong with the world; and how to fix it. This is similar to the German Weltanschauung but has its own distinct attributes.
Many disarmament advocates hold what is interchangeably called a utopian, idealist, or humanist worldview. For those who hold this worldview, humanity arose through random forces. Mankind’s long history of violence is a result of structural flaws within society. Thus, the solution is simple. Create the right social and economic structures and peace is possible. Because human nature is not fixed, creating the right institutions with the right values will reshape the thinking and action of humanity (redemption). Thus, striving toward human perfection is the goal.
For a majority of deterrence practitioners, a more traditional theistic perspective allows for a creation that is stained by evil and redeemed through faith. Judeo-Christian values still influence American civic culture, which views human nature as inextricably flawed and imperfectible. Experience in the military or intelligence community underscore a pessimistic view of humanity.
Whether purposeful or not, there are distinct religious elements to every worldview, regardless of whether a person is secular or of a faith tradition.
In international relations, these two worldviews manifest themselves in the form of idealism and realism. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides, father of realism and author of History of the Peloponnesian Wars (410 BC), attributed the occurrence of warfare to man’s fear, honor, and interest. In his classic work, Politics Among Nations (1949), realist Hans Morgenthau wrote, “International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power.”
Keith Payne’s recent book, Shadows on the Wall: Deterrence and Disarmament (2020), offers a concise description of realism and idealism when he writes, “For the realist, interstate conflicts of interest and the potential for aggression are constants in an anarchic, ‘self-help’ international system.” He adds, “In contrast, idealists see the inherent dangers of an anarchic international system. They focus on the priority goal of transforming the system to achieve a cooperative order that facilitates and enforces the peaceful resolution of conflict.” This goal is possible if national leaders will follow reason and enlightened self-interest.
The optimism of idealism clashes with the pessimism of realism and leads their adherents to vastly different solutions in both domestic and international politics. Is it any wonder then that Prager and Kaptanoglu, whom I suggest are idealists, look at the existence and utility of nuclear weapons very differently than myself, a classical realist? Our worldviews begin with vastly different a priori assumptions, which shape our interpretation of the world in very different ways. I would submit that these differences lead us to choose different careers, which further influences the experiences we have in life—making agreement difficult if not impossible.
The Public Debate: Experts and Novices
In a representative republic, like the United States, the citizenry elect representatives to act on their behalf. Congress serves as the legislative body and the president serves as the elected head of the executive branch. The ability of citizens to make informed decisions in the voting booth is, as Prager and Kaptanoglu suggest, an important aspect of our form of government. But, in the end, the United States is not a democracy. It is the responsibility of the people’s elected representatives to manage the affairs of government.
Civilian control of the military through elected representatives is a hallmark of our form of government. Congress funds the government, declares war, and ratifies treaties. The president leads the executive branch. However, the United States is not a democracy for the very reasons spelled out by Plato in The Republic.
In their discussion of deterrence and whom should be taken seriously in the broader nuclear deterrence debate, Prager and Kaptanoglu offer an example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect when they demean deterrence as a special area of study, arguing, “But deterrence theory is not rocket science.” However, as one friend pointed out, “The human mind is infinitely more complex than rocket science. As an aerospace engineer, I would much rather calculate orbital mechanics or a flight envelope than try to figure out why people make the decisions they do.”
As Keith Payne notes in a recent article, when Albert Einstein was asked how we can discover the structure of the atom, but cannot devise the political means to keep from destroying ourselves, Einstein replied, “That is simple my friend. It is politics that is more difficult than physics.”
Deterrence is more than a theory. It is more than seven decades of experimentation, observation, and hard-won experience. Deterrence is, in part, the product of psychologists, political scientists, historians, physicists, anthropologists, linguists, and economists. It is also the incorporation of the lessons learned from the regular operation of the nation’s nuclear forces.
Nuclear War and Nuclear Peace
For Prager, Kaptanoglu, and the disarmament community, nuclear conflict is, by definition, a full-scale exchange of strategic nuclear weapons. Defining nuclear conflict in such a way creates a useful strawman for the disarmament community because it establishes the worst case as the only possibility. In reality, all or nothing is not the only option, but when your worldview leads you to attribute moral agency to objects (“Nuclear weapons are evil!”), you are constrained in how you must think, act, and feel about a weapon.
Even if their worst-case scenario were to come true, Professor Prager’s own Princeton colleagues estimate that a smaller percentage of the population will perish in a nuclear war than perished in great-power wars in the twentieth century. Yes, a strategic nuclear war will kill tens of millions, but great-power wars have already killed tens of millions and are likely to do so if we return to the era of great-power war.
Contrary to Prager and Kaptanoglu’s worst case, the next use of a nuclear weapon is far more likely to look like the first use of a nuclear weapon. My colleagues and I suggest that the use of one or a small number of low-yield battlefield nuclear weapons is far more probable than a large-scale strategic nuclear exchange, in part, because Russia has a clear strategy for employing low-yield options for limited political and military objectives. For the Russians, a limited nuclear strike may be their only way to attain objectives that conventional forces fail to achieve.
While Prager, Kaptanoglu, and many disarmament advocates will find my acceptance of any nuclear use inexplicable, this is, again, an example of how our differing worldviews see nuclear weapons. Where idealists see their elimination as the structural change required to advance peace, realists see them as a necessary tool for improving security—all while seeking to constrain their use by evil men.
Even more important than contemplating the next use of a nuclear weapon is discussing how they are used on a daily basis to promote peace and limit or deter conventional conflict—well beyond the threat of existential nuclear attack. Let me offer three examples.
First, nuclear weapons play a significant role in preventing great-power conflict. Cold War histories of the Korean Conflict (1951–1953), Vietnam Conflict (1964–1973), and Hungarian Revolution (1956) illustrate how the Soviet Union and the United States altered their behavior to prevent conventional conflict from escalating to nuclear war. With World War I resulting in more than 22,000,000 deaths and World War II leading to 70,000,000–85,000,000 deaths, ending great-power war is a positive outcome of nuclear weapons. The fear of nuclear conflict causes great powers to act with restraint, which is illustrated in the graph below.
Wartime fatalities as a percentage of world population, as appears in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review report.
Second, nuclear-armed great powers constrain their allies in conflicts with their own adversaries. This happens because great powers fear they may be inadvertently pulled into a conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary. Thus, interstate conflict declines, at every level, because the fear of nuclear conflict generates restraint.
In understanding the chart above and the success of nuclear deterrence, it is important to keep in mind that humans are not rational. As Nobel Prize–winning psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky demonstrated, humans overvalue potential losses and undervalue potential gains when making decisions under risk. This is important because the irrational fear of nuclear weapons use (overvaluing a potential loss) causes nuclear-armed states to restrain themselves and their allies. In other words, our belief that any use of nuclear weapons may very well lead to nuclear Armageddon, an overvaluing of potential loss, is the very reason nuclear deterrence holds.
Third, nuclear weapons play a significant role in decreasing spending on defense and national security. By any calculation, the sovereignty insurance provided by the nuclear arsenal is far less costly than the conventional capability needed to replace it. And, by eliminating great-power conflicts, the United States is able to reduce its overall defense spending. Let’s not forget, at the height of World War II, more than 40 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product was allocated to the military. Throughout much of the Cold War, military spending hovered around 5 percent of gross domestic product. This number was only possible because of the war-prevention role played by nuclear weapons.
As the United States undertakes its largest modernization effort in four decades, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that spending on nuclear weapons will reach $60 billion annually. In a federal budget that exceeds $6 trillion and loses about $70 billion annually to waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid alone, the nuclear arsenal offers a cost savings.
Claims that a large-scale nuclear exchange is inevitable are unfounded speculation just as Prager and Kaptanoglu’s theories about nuclear winter and the end of civilization are based on guesstimates that are woefully inadequate. Such fearmongering is useful for persuasion, but it is not useful in developing an accurate assessment of the real threats facing the nation.
Nuclear Weapons and the Security Dilemma
It is the inherent pessimism of my worldview, but the greatest mistake of idealists lies in their understanding of the security dilemma American conventional military power presents to our adversaries. China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran learned an important lesson from the first Gulf War—the United States cannot be defeated conventionally.
The fear of the American conventional miliary might lead China to develop “informatized” warfare as an asymmetric strategy for defeating the United States. China also recently began a large increase in its nuclear forces. Russia undertook a complete modernization of its nuclear forces and added low-yield options in Europe, mimicking aspects of President Eisenhower’s New Look Policy. North Korea accelerated its nuclear weapons program even as its people starved. Iran undertook a covert nuclear weapons program and an advanced ballistic missile program. None of these efforts were in response to the United States’ nuclear arsenal—which was shrinking during this period.
If, out of an idealist desire to lead by example, President Biden and Congress were to unilaterally eliminate the United States’ nuclear arsenal, the relevance of nuclear weapons for our adversaries would only grow because of their increased ability to better security vis-à-vis the United States. Russia knows it cannot win a conventional conflict with NATO and therefore relies on nuclear blackmail. China fears a conventional conflict with the United States over Taiwan and is growing the size and variety of its arsenal as a means to deter the United States from defending Taiwan. North Korea and Iran both fear a fate similar to Iraq and see nuclear weapons as the only deterrent to American invasion. North Korea also fears a Chinese or Russian invasion.
In such a world, I wonder how Prager, Kaptanoglu, and the disarmament community can align an idealist worldview with the actual events taking place around them? Too often decision-makers are judged by their intentions, not the outcomes of their actions. For the realist that is pessimistic about human nature and about our ability to persuade authoritarians of our good intentions, disarmament seems little more than naiveite.
Conclusion
Although my first instinct was to respond to Prager and Kaptanoglu with a point-by-point refutation, the chances that such an approach would change the minds of either is low. In offering differing worldviews as a primary explanation for why we look at the same events and reach such different conclusions, I sought to apply the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises approach to praxeology—theory of human action—to aid in explaining these differences.
It is my inherent pessimism, but I fear there is little room for consensus. This is unfortunate because the stakes are high for the nation and the world. I would again encourage Prager, Kaptanoglu, and other advocates of nuclear disarmament to join the nuclear enterprise or, at a minimum, spend more time with practitioners. You might be surprised by what you learn.
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