Lawrence J. Korb & Stephen Cimbala
Current and aspiring nuclear great powers (the United States, Russia, and China), together with other comparatively small nuclear weapons states (either declared or widely acknowledged as such), are investing in expensive and expansive modernization of their nuclear arsenals. This pattern of growing commitment to larger and costlier nuclear weapons deployments is predicated on the assumption that nuclear weapons are a necessary and sufficient deterrent to a major war, including nuclear war. But that assumption is now under widespread challenge.
What we are seeing is a growing willingness of state and non-state actors to engage in large-scale conventional and unconventional warfare, even against the interests of nuclear powers. It turns out that, without the capability to deter or win conventional wars or unconventional attacks against vital interests, a state’s nuclear arsenal is, effectively, a one-dimensional success story sitting atop a glue factory of military insufficiency.
Dissenters of the preceding view might argue that nuclear weapons serve to deter a nuclear attack against the state and its vital interests and nuclear blackmail by one state against another or its allies. This concept is of little consolation to practical heads of state and military planners. A deliberate nuclear strike “out of the blue” by one nuclear power against another, not preceded by a conventional war, is one of the least likely paths to nuclear war. More likely is the expansion of a conventional war into a decision by one side to engage in nuclear first use.
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