Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T11:14:44.080Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nuclear weapons and credibility: deterrence theory beyond rationaiity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Edward Rhodes
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The principal challenge for US nuclear deterrence policy in an era of mutual assured destruction capabilities has been to use the threat of nuclear retribution to deter Soviet actions that, however aggressive, do not directly threaten American national survival. The United States seeks to use nuclear threats to deter not only all-out nuclear attack on the United States, but major nuclear or conventional aggression against NATO and also limited, presumably counterforce, blows against America. Nuclear weapons are to serve as an umbrella protecting not only America's cities and society, but US allies and US military forces as well.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , January 1988 , pp. 45 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Among the best contributions to this debate are: Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, ‘The Mutual-Hostage Relationship Between America and Russia’, Foreign Affairs, Hi (1973); Herbert Scoville, Jr., ‘Flexible MADness’, Foreign Policy, xiv (1974); Ted Greenwood and Michael L. Nacht, ‘The New Nuclear Debate: Sense or Nonsense’, Foreign Affairs, Hi (1974); Rathjens, George W., ‘Flexible Response Options’, Orbis, xviii (1974)Google Scholar; Nitze, Paul H., ‘Deterring Our Deterrent’, Foreign Policy, xxv (1976—1977)Google Scholar; Jervis, Robert, ‘Why Nuclear Superiority Doesn't Matter’, Political Science Quarterly, xciv (1979-1980)Google Scholar; Gray, Colin S. and Payne, Keith, ‘Victory is Possible’, Foreign Policy, xxxix (1980)Google Scholar; and Keeny, Spurgeon M. Jr, and Panofsky, Wolfgang K. H., ‘MAD vs. NUTS’, Foreign Affairs, lx (1981-1982).Google Scholar

2. Kissinger, Henry A., ‘The Future of NATO’, The Washington Quarterly, ii (1979)Google Scholar. The remark was made at a conference on the future of NATO held in Brussels on 1–3 September 1979.

3. Many persuasive, though frequently irreconcilable, policy pieces have been written in the past few years predicting and prescribing futures for the American security guarantee to NATO. Among those worth serious review are: McGeorge Bundy, Kennan, George F., McNamara, Robert S. and Smith, Gerard, ‘Nuclear Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance’, Foreign Affairs, lx (1982)Google Scholar; Art, Robert J., ‘Fixing Atlantic Bridges’, Foreign Policy, xlvi (1982)Google Scholar; Kaiser, Karl, Leber, Georg, Mertes, Alois and Schulze, Franz-Josef, ‘Nuclear Weapons and the Preservation of Peace’, Foreign Affairs, lx (1982)Google Scholar; Bull, Hedley, ‘European Self-Reliance and the Reform of NATO’, Foreign Affairs, Ixi (1983)Google Scholar; Joffe, Josef, ‘Europe's American Pacifier’, Foreign Policy, liv (1984)Google Scholar; and Mearsheimer, John J., ‘Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence in Europe’, International Security, ix (1984-1985)Google Scholar. Perhaps the most provocative recent piece, however, is Garnham, David, ‘Extending Deterrence with German Nuclear Weapons’, International Security, x (1985)Google Scholar. See also the interesting collection of articles: Steinbruner, John D. and Sigal, Leon V. (eds.), Alliance Security: NATO and the No-First-Use Question (Washington, 1983).Google Scholar

4. See, for example, Ravenal, Earl C., ‘Counterforce and Alliance: The Ultimate Connection’, International Security, vi (1982)Google Scholar; and Gray and Payne, op. cit.

5. Weinberger, Caspar W., Annual Report of the Secretary of Defense to Congress, Fiscal Year 1987 (Washington, 1986), p. 40.Google Scholar

6. The elaboration of official US targeting and procurement strategy can best be found in the annual statements of Secretary of Defense Harold Brown to Congress, published by the Government Printing Office. Much the same information is also found, for example, in: Slocombe, Walter, ‘The Countervailing Strategy’, International Security, v (1981)Google Scholar; Schilling, Warner R., ‘U.S. Strategic Nuclear Concepts in the 1970s: The Search for Sufficiently Equivalent Countervailing Parity’, International Security, vi (1981)Google Scholar; or even in Davis, Lynn Etheridge, Limited Nuclear Options: Deterrence and the New American Doctrine (London, 1976)Google Scholar (Adelphi Paper number 121). Among the best of the critiques of US doctrine are those of Robert Jervis, Colin S. Gray and Earl C. Ravenal: Jervis, ‘Why Nuclear Superiority Doesn’t Matter’, op. cit.; Jervis, ‘The Madness Beyond MAD—Current American Nuclear Strategy’, PS, xvii (1984); Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca, 1984); Gray, ‘Nuclear Strategy: A Case for a Theory of Victory’, International Security, iv (1979); Gray and Payne, op. cit.; Gray, ‘Presidential Directive 59: Flawed but Useful’, Parameters, xi (1981); Ravenal, ‘After Schlesinger: Something Has to Give’, Foreign Policy, xxii (1976); and Ravenal, ‘Counterforce and Alliance: The Ultimate Connection’, op. cit. Two excellent histories of US nuclear strategy and strategic thinking have recently appeared: Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York, 1981); and Kaplan, Fred, Wizards of Armageddon (New York, 1983).Google Scholar

7. The most important of these are probably the works of Thomas C. Schelling. See: Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA, 1960); Schelling and Halperin, Morton H., Strategy and Arms Control (New York, 1961)Google Scholar; Schelling, ‘Comment’, Limited Strategic War, Klaus Knorr and Thornton Read (eds.) (New York, 1962); Schelling, ‘Nuclear Strategy in Europe’, World Politics, xiv (1962); and (largely summarizing his earlier writings), Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, 1966). The other landmarks in deductive deterrence theory produced during the period include (in chronological order): Brodie, Bernard, ‘Nuclear Weapons: Strategic or Tactical?’, Foreign Affairs, xxxii (1954)Google Scholar; Kaufmann, William W. (ed.), Military Policy and National Security (Princeton, 1956)Google Scholar; Kaplan, Morton A., ‘The Calculus of Nuclear Deterrence’, World Politics, xi (1959)Google Scholar; Wohlstetter, Albert, ‘The Delicate Balance of Terror’, Foreign Affairs, xxxvii (1959)Google Scholar; Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, 1959); Kahn, Herman, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, 1960)Google Scholar; Rapoport, Anatol, Fights, Games, and Debates (Ann Arbor, 1960)Google Scholar; Snyder, Glenn, Deterrence and Defense (Princeton, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Knorr and Read (eds.), op. cit.; J. David Singer,, Deterrence, Arms Control, and Disarmament (Columbus, OH, 1962); Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (New York, 1965); and Knorr, On the Use of Military Power in the Nuclear Age (Princeton, 1966).

Although these works generally use game theory for its heuristic insight rather than for formal/mathematical modelling purposes, underlying much of this work was the development of formal game theory, and here it is important to recognize Neumann, John Von and Morgenstern, Oskar, A Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (Princeton, 1944, 1953).Google Scholar

An excellent annotated bibliography of most of the literature of the period can be found in Halperin, Limited War in the Nuclear Age (New York, 1963), pp. 133–184.

8. ‘Chicken’ suggested an analogy to competitions among teen-age hot-rodders who compete for dominance by racing their cars directly at each other. To swerve (particularly if the opponent does not) demonstrates a lack of courage an d involves a loss of face. To fail to swerve, however, results in a fiery collision and mutual destruction if the opponent fails to yield the right of way. See, for example, Schelling, Arms and Influence, op. cit., pp. 116–25. For a rigorous look at the game, see also Snyder, Glenn H. and Diesing, Paul, Conflict Among Nations (Princeton, 1977), pp. 107–122.Google Scholar

9. For an unparalleled discussion of the contributions to the development of deterrence theory of the work conducted in the late 1950s and early 1960s—and of earlier and later work—see Jervis, Robert, ‘Deterrence Theory Revisited’, World Politics, xxxi (1979).Google Scholar

10. At least five of these contributions—those of Philip Green, Stephen Maxwell, John D. Steinbruner, Patrick M. Morgan and Jack L. Snyder—remain, for various reasons, worth careful reading. See: Green, Deadly Logic (Columbus, OH, 1966); Maxwell, Rationality in Deterrence (London, 1968) (Adelphi Paper number 50); Steinbruner, ‘Beyond Rational Deterrence’, World Politics, xxviii (1976); Morgan, Deterrence (Beverly Hills, 1977); Snyder, Jack, ‘Rationality at the Brink’, World Politics, xxx (1978).Google Scholar

More recently, there has also been considerable attention devoted to ‘formal theory’—applied mathematical game-theoretic modelling. See, for example, Brams, Steven J., Superpower Games: Applying Game Theory to Superpower Conflict (New Haven, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While the impressiveness of the mathematical rigour of much of this recent work in formal theory is beyond dispute, its relevance remains unclear. The utility of this work appears to be limited both by the behavioural assumptions it allows and by the difficulty of translating its numerical findings into predictions and prescriptions useful to policy-makers operating in the unqualified world of real life.

11. It seems fair to argue that in many senses Steinbruner and Jack Snyder came the closest to providing an alternative formulation of nuclear deterrence theory, but their cognitive/cybernetic models lack predictive (and theorefore prescriptive) power. As Steinbruner himself confesses: ‘We cannot leap directly to counsel a drastic change in established strategy… Cybernetic analysis is neither sufficiently developed nor sufficiently accepted to carry that degree of responsibility or impact.’ See Steinbruner, ‘Beyond Rational Deterrence’, op. cit., p. 242. Perhaps the best indication that it is not possible or practical at the present to reformulate deterrence theory within a cognitive/cybernetic, rather than analytic, paradigm is that there has been no rush to attempt to do so.

12. Perhaps the critical pathbreaking work in this area has been George, Alexander L. and Smoke, Richard, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy (New York, 1974)Google Scholar. See also: George, Alexander L., Hall, David K. and Simons, William R., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (Boston, 1971)Google Scholar; Kaplan, Stephen S. and Blechman, Barry M., Force Without War (Washington, 1978)Google Scholar; Kaplan, Diplomacy of Power (Washington, 1981); Mearsheimer, John J., Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, 1983)Google Scholar. The most insightful study of the unique problems of conventional coercion that I am aware of is Shimshoni, Jonathan, Conventional Deterrence: Lessonsfrom the Middle East (Princeton University Doctoral Dissertation, 1985)Google Scholar. While the problems inherent in quantification raise some concerns about the meaning of their statistical findings, the research of Paul Huth and Bruce Russett is also worth serious examination: see Huth and Russett, ‘What Makes Deterrence Work? Cases from 1900to 1980’, World Politics, xxxvi(1984).

13. I have developed this argument more fully elsewhere: see Rhodes, Edward J., Nuclear Weapons, Irrational Behavior, and Extended Deterrence (Ann Arbor, 1985), pp. 70–77 (microfilm).Google Scholar

14. See Brodie, Bernard, Escalation and the Nuclear Option (Princeton, 1966), p. 74Google Scholar. For a provocative expression of a somewhat dissimilar view, see Quester, George H., Deterrence Before Hiroshima (New York, 1966)Google Scholar, especially pp. 172–87. Quester identifies the invention (or imagination) of strategic air capabilities, rather than of nuclear weapons, as the revolutionary event. While Quester's work certainly reminds us of the danger of overestimating the impact of the nuclear revolution, not only does Brodie's summary still seem a fair one, but even at the psychological level nuclear weaponry's new potential for high-speed total societal destruction appears critical.

15. See, for example: March, James G. and Simon, Herbert A., Organizations (New York, 1958)Google Scholar; Cyert, Richard and March, James G., A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1963)Google Scholar; and Simon, Herbert A., Administrative Behavior (third edition) (New York, 1976).Google Scholar

16. The best-known representatives of this literature are: Allison, Graham T., Essence of Decision (Boston, 1971)Google Scholar; Halperin, Morton H., Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, 1974)Google Scholar; Neustadt, Richard, Alliance Politics (New York, 1970)Google Scholar. For personal reasons I remain fond of Edward J. Rhodes, ‘Trident: Bureaucratic Politics and Military Procurement’, an undergraduate honours thesis in the Department of Government at Harvard University, 1980.

17. Indeed, some of the bureaucratic politics literature foreshadowed later political psychology work by observing that how participants defined the national interest was itself coloured by their bureaucratic position.

18. There are, of course, some doubting voices about the ultimate significance of bureaucratic politics and organizational behaviour and about how far such interpretations of state behaviour can, should, or need be pushed. See, for example, Krasner, Steven D., ‘Are Bureaucracies Important? (Or Allison Wonderland)’, Foreign Policy, vii (1972)Google Scholar; Art, Robert J., ‘Bureaucratic Politics and American Foreign Policy: A Critique’, Policy Sciences, iv (1973)Google Scholar; and Freedman, Lawrence, ‘Logic, Politics, and Foreign Policy Processes’, International Affairs (London), lii (1976).Google Scholar

19. Recent works by Desmond Ball, John D. Steinbruner, Paul Bracken, and Bruce Blair have explored the organizational problems that decision-makers would be likely to encounter in maintaining rational central control over nuclear weapons during a major war. Their research tends to cast doubt on the practicality of nuclear targeting strategies that downplay or ignore command and control difficulties in complex organizations. See: Ball, Can Nuclear War Be Controlled! (London, 1981) (Adelphi Paper number 169); Ball, ‘U.S. Strategic Forces: How Would They Be Used?’, International Security, vii (1982–83); Steinbruner, ‘Nuclear Decapitation’, Foreign Policy, xlv (1981–82); Bracken, The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces (New Haven, 1983); Blair, ‘Solving the Command and Control Problem’, Arms Control Today, xv (1985); Blair, Strategic Command and Control (Washington, 1985). Also of interest in this regard is Scott D. Sagan, ‘Nuclear Alerts and Crisis Management’, International Security, ix (1985).

20. Bracken, op. cit., pp. 226–7.

21. Ibid.

22. Ball, Can Nuclear War Be Controlled1., op. cit., p. 36. Ball's argument is that: ‘Many command and control facilities, such as early-warning radars, radio antennae and satellite ground terminals would be destroyed, or at least rendered inoperable, by nuclear detonations designed to destroy nearby military forces and installations, while the widespread disturbance of the ionosphere and equally widespread generation of EMP [electro-magnetic pulse] would disrupt HF [high-frequency] communications and impair electronic and electrical systems at great distances from the actual explosions.’ See also Blair, Strategic Command and Control, op. cit., entire, for a thorough examination of the ability of US strategic command and control hardware to perform the tasks assigned to it.

23. Among the most important pieces of research in this field are: Hermann, Charles F. (ed.), International Crises: Insights from Behavioral Research (New York, 1972)Google Scholar; Holsti, Ole R., Crisis, Escalation, War (Montreal, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Janice Gross Stein and Raymond Tanter, Rational Decision-Making: Israel's Security Choices, 1967 (Columbus, OH, 1980); Michael Brecher with Geist, Benjamin, Decisions in Crisis: Israel, 1967 and 1973 (Berkeley, 1980)Google Scholar; and Lebow, Richard Ned, Between Peace and War (Baltimore, 1981).Google Scholar

24. Although the empirical study of crisis behaviour, noted above, represents an important contribution to this field, the research has been much broader. Perhaps the most important works in this area have been Irving Janis's and Leon Mann's, Decision Making and Robert Jervis's, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, but the literature is extensive and growing: see Janis, Irving L. and Mann, Leon, Decision Making (New York, 1977)Google ScholarPubMed; Jervis, Robert, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, 1976)Google Scholar. Daniel Frei summarizes much of the research that is relevant to nuclear deterrence: Frei, Risks of Unintentional Nuclear War (Totowa, NJ, 1983), pp. 109–55. Lester Grinspoon's brief article also focuses on the implications of these phenomena for nuclear war: Grinspoon, ‘Crisis Behavior’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, xl (1984). See also: Janis, Victims of Groupthink (Boston, 1972); Holsti, Ole R. and George, Alexander L., ‘The Effects of Stress on the Performance of Foreign Policy-Makers’, Political Science Annual, Cotter, Cornelius P. (ed.) (Indianapolis, 1975)Google Scholar; Knorr, Klaus, ‘Threat Perception’, Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems, Knorr (ed.) (Lawrence, KS, 1976)Google Scholar; George, Alexander L., Presidential Decision-making in Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO, 1980)Google Scholar; Richard Ned Lebow, op. cit.; and (summarizing much of the above literature) Levy, Jack S., ‘Misperception and the Causes of War’, World Politics, xxxvi (1983)Google Scholar; and Mandel, Robert, ‘Psychological Approaches to International Relations’, Political Psychology, Hermann, Margaret G. (ed.) (San Francisco, 1986)Google Scholar. A pathbreaking work in this field was Roberta Wohlstetter's, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford, 1962). While the full implications of stress and cognitive rigidity for rationality are somewhat broader, much of the current literature has focused on motivated and unmotivated biases. On the distinction between motivated and unmotivated biases, see: Jervis, Robert, Lebow, Richard Ned and Stein, Janice Gross, Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore, 1985), p. 4Google Scholar. On motivated bias, see: Janis and Mann, op. cit. On unmotivated bias, see: Kahneman, Daniel, Slovic, Paul and Tversky, Amos (eds.), Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge, UK, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The effect of psychopathological personalities on the course of international affairs has long been studied—unlike bureaucratic politics or social and cognitive psychology, it is not a new field. The classic case study of the role of personality disorder in irrational decision-making is George, Alexander L. and George, Juliette L., Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House (New York, 1956)Google Scholar. Sidney Verba's analysis of the rationality or irrationality of apparently psychopathological behaviour is excellent: Verba, ‘Assumptions of Rationality and Non-Rationality in Models of the International System’, World Politics, xiv (1961).

25. Glenn Snyder, op. cit., p. 26.

26. Holsti and George, op. cit., p. 257.

27. Janis and Mann, op. cit., p. 50.

28. Ibid., p. 51.

29. Alexander George and Robert Keohane have developed the idea of ‘value-extension’ that may occur in times of crisis. See George, Alexander L. and Keohane, Robert O., ‘The Concept of National Interests’, in George, Alexander L., Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy, op. cit., pp. 234–235.Google Scholar

30. Grinspoon, op. cit., pp. 27–8. Frei's discussion of stress-related problems of nuclear decision-making is also excellent; it should be clear, though, that much of his discussion is related to the synergistic effects between stress, cognitive failure, and organizational dysfunction. See Frei, op. cit., pp. 109–53.

31. See: Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, op. cit., pp. 16ff; and Glenn Snyder, op. cit., pp. 1–50.

32. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, op. cit., p. 4.

33. For a different explanation of this link between deterrence theory and realism, see Jervis, ‘Deterrence Theory Revisited’, op. cit., pp. 289–90.

34. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, op. cit., p. 4.

35. Knorr, Klaus, The Power of Nations (New York, 1975), p. 42.Google Scholar

36. Nixon, Richard M., The Real War (New York, 1981), p. 176.Google Scholar

37. See, for example, Weinberger, Caspar W., The Annual Report of the Secretary of Defense to Congress, Fiscal Year 1984 (Washington, 1983), p. 52Google Scholar; Gray and Payne, op. cit., p. 14; and Gray, ‘Presidential Directive 59’, op. cit., p. 32.

38. This approach clearly implies what Richard Smoke has termed an ‘actor’ image of escalation. Use of nuclear weapons is something an actor, does, rather than something that happens. For a discussion of an ‘actor ‘ image and its alternative, ‘phenomenal’ image of escalation, see Richard Smoke, War: Controlling Escalation (Cambridge, MA, 1977), pp. 21–2.

39. For a good discussion of the difficulties of maintaining central rational control over US nuclear forces in Europe during time of war, see Bracken, op. cit., pp. 129–78.

40. McNamara, Robert S., ‘The Military Role of Nuclear Weapons’, Foreign Affairs? Mi (1983), p. 72.Google Scholar

41. Wohlstetter, Albert, ‘Letters from Readers: Morality and Deterrence’, Commentary, Ixxvi (1983), p. 16.Google Scholar

42. Brown, Harold, Thinking About National Security (Boulder, CO, 1983), p. 275.Google Scholar

43. For suggestive analyses see, for example, Ball, Can Nuclear War Be Controlled!, op. cit.; Bracken, op. cit., pp. 1–128; Frei, op. cit., pp. 109–55; and Grinspoon, op. cit.

44. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, p. cit., p. 18.

45. See Bracken, op. cit., entire.

46. Phelps, John, ‘On “Firebreaks” to Inhibit Escalation’, in Phelps, John, Russett, Bruce, Sands, Matthew and Schwartz, Charles, Studies on Accidental War (Washington, 1963), pp. 1–18.Google Scholar

47. Carnesale, Albert, Doty, Paul, Hoffman, Stanley, Huntington, Samuel P., Nye, Joseph S. Jr, and Sagan, Scott D. (’The Harvard Nuclear Study Group’), Living With Nuclear Weapons (New York, 1983), pp. 143–144.Google Scholar

48. Schelling, ‘Comment’, op. cit., p. 30.