Western countries are more secure without nuclear arms
The Soviet statue at the UN in New York of St. George slaying the dragon, a powerful statement on the potential for agreement on nuclear disarmament. The dragon is made of parts from the scrapped Soviet and US intermediate nuclear missiles. UN Photo/Milton Grant.
Is the west’s own example more persuasive than admonitions and threats?
To me, this is the missing question in the ominous brinkmanship over North
Korea’s nuclear arms threats and looming crisis over Iran’s nuclear options,
should the nuclear agreement crumble under pressure.
If we think nuclear arms are our ultimate assurance of security, why
shouldn’t other countries think the same? A critical look at the role of these
doomsday weapons in western defense strategy is now imperative.
This year three events should call our attention to the question: are we
more secure with or without nuclear arms?
How my journey into
the heart of communism made me a strong believer
Stanislav Petrov’s death this year reminds me of my first real job as a
Visiting Lecturer from Norway at the University of Greifswald in the academic
year of 1980 – 81, under the just recently signed cultural exchange treaty
between our two countries, Norway and East Germany.
My journey into the heart of Communist Germany, not long after Timothy
Garton Ash,[1]
was considered daring at the time. This was when Reagan became President,
Angela Merkel was a budding physicist and dissenter somewhere else in East
Germany, and just a few years before Putin had been posted to the Dresden KGB
branch office. Stanislav Petrov was an officer
in the Soviet Strategic Missile Force where a few years later, he was to save
the world from nuclear war by deliberately misreading some instructions.
Although not that far away, East Germany in 1980-81 was practically
terra incognita. Consequently, I returned
home an expert I thought, confident that I had uncovered the truth behind the
veil of propaganda and lies. If anyone understood these communist power-mongers,
it was I, and I found them dangerous both to our democracy and our freedom.
Joining the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs after my job in East Germany,
I became a strong believer in drawing even in nuclear arms in one of my first
assignments, which was working on the disarmament process.
How I erred
Then after the end of the Cold War, when the truths came out, I
realized I had got it all wrong. One specific memory will suffice. In East
Germany, my wife and I soon blended in. So people let their guards down, and I
could slip into meetings where people said things not exactly meant for my
ears.
One such occasion was a discussion on whether class struggle in
Scandinavia would lead to war with the socialist countries. A high-ranking
naval officer stated that their observations in the Baltic Sea of the Swedish
navy confirmed this. There was no doubt that the Swedes were preparing to
attack. Two East German diplomats present then rejected this contention. They
did not believe the Swedes were prepared to attack. At the time, I had put the
naval officer’s bellicosity down to stupidity and sycophancy, and was reassured
by the good sense of the East German diplomats.
Dangerous delusions
Was I wrong! In hindsight, I realized I had witnessed Operation Ryan at work. Unknown to all but a very
narrow circle of decision-makers in the west, the ageing and ailing Kremlin
leaders under the dying Andropov had come to fear that the western powers were
preparing a nuclear first strike under the guise of a military exercise. Their
reason was precisely the kind of class struggle analysis with which the East
German naval officer had justified his bellicosity. In this ideological view of
the world, war between such incompatible “systems” as socialism and capitalism,
was inevitable. Maybe the time had come in 1983. Therefore, they ordered spies
and their military to look for signs of an impending attack, so that the
Kremlin could strike first to prevent the attack or at least cut their losses.
Spies telling the
truth not believed
Most disturbing about this was their refusal to believe the presumably
good news that their worst fears were unfounded. From the memoirs of the two
last East German spy chiefs, Markus Wolf[2]
and Werner Grossmann[3],
we now know that their KGB superior Krytsjkov, refused to believe their spy in
the NATO headquarter, Rainer Rupp, that there were indeed no NATO plans for a
first nuclear strike. Even more disturbing is the view of the western agent in
the KGB, Mitrokhin,[4]
that the sycophancy of the East German spy chiefs prevented them from offering any
intelligence that contradicted the prevailing view in the Kremlin.
Fortunately, British and US decision-makers believed their spy, KGB
agent Oleg Gordievsky, and took care to scale down military exercises and tone
down confrontational rhetoric.[5]
Ban on nuclear arms a
threat to western security?
It is in my view disturbing that in the current controversy over nuclear
arms there is not more focus on the example of Stanislav Petrov. The context in
which he exercised his good judgement, was that of a nuclear strategy still in
operation. A preemptive strike becomes a dangerous option when a political
crisis feeds delusions about concealed intentions. Hierarchical bureaucratic
organizations foster sycophancy by a combination of seduction and intimidation.
The kind of person capable of the sound judgement and courage that Petrov
demonstrated at that fateful moment, is far too rare and fragile a probability
for the survival of humankind to hinge upon it.
Instead of taking the occasion of Petrov’s death to reflect critically
on the soundness of current defense strategies, NATO states boycotted the UN
vote over the ban on nuclear arms. The Netherlands even voted against the ban. Then,
in an apparent rejection of the NATO nuclear strategy, the Norwegian Nobel
Committee gave the Nobel Peace Prize to ICAN, the international organization to
ban all nuclear arms.
Stanislav Petrov in his house in Frjasino in 2016. Wikicommons/ Queery-54. Some rights reserved.These contradictory views on nuclear arms reflect a serious
disagreement. What the disagreement over nuclear arms is all about, Petrov
brought into sharp focus in 1983 during his lonely watch in the Soviet command
center. He saved the world from total destruction when he prevented the Soviet
Union from launching an all-out nuclear attack through a misunderstanding. This
narrow escape shows that nuclear arms and concomitant strategies are a grave
security risk.
Disagreement is a
dilemma
The reasons for the persistence of NATO’s nuclear strategy in spite of
the proven risks is that the disagreement over the role of nuclear arms
actually reflects a dilemma, not only for NATO but also for Russia and for all
other nuclear arms states. The threat of nuclear arms shall make attack
impossible. At the same time, the thought of actually using nuclear arms under
any circumstances is also impossible. The threat of nuclear arms must in other
words be credible to be impossible.
The reason this contradiction turns into a dilemma is that two
imperative goals pull in opposite directions. We need to prevent political
pressure and block the options for military attack, while at the same time
preventing nuclear war. This dilemma turns into a disagreement over the
question of which of these goals entails the highest risk of unintended
consequences.
Risk of nuclear war
versus risk of vulnerability to political pressure
We can seek the answer to this question in evolving nuclear strategy, a
strategy not hewn in stone, but changed in response to political crises. Up
until the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, there was broad agreement that nuclear arms
were a panacea for security by blocking both political pressure and war.
However, on the brink of a nuclear war both the USA and the Soviet Union
realized how dangerous their nuclear strategy became in a political
confrontation.
We now know how President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis
gradually realized that the risks of unintended nuclear war outweighed the risks
of vulnerability to political pressure. Those who stuck to a tough posture were
concerned to avoid the miscalculation that in their interpretation failed to
contain the aggressive and expansive dictatorship of Hitler, the prelude to
World War II.
Kennedy, however, in the course of the crisis became more concerned with
the prelude to World War I. Robert Kennedy, in his book on how the President
handled the crisis, says he read one of the bestsellers of that year, Barbara
Tuckman’s book Guns of August. Her
point was that military strategies inevitably led to war. The parallels to the
nuclear strategies became impossible to overlook. After the Cuban Missile
Crisis, US Secretary of Defense, Robert MacNamara concluded that the only
realistic nuclear strategy was to avoid crises.
How western policy had
dangerous unintended consequences
The subsequent period when the superpowers avoided dangerous crises
between them ended abruptly with the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan in
1979. The west’s reactions, boycott, military
maneuvers and confrontational rhetoric, proved to have dangerous unintended
consequences. The ageing, isolated Kremlin leaders began seriously to envisage
a western nuclear attack. If so, they
needed to strike first to prevent the attack, or at least reduce the damage to
the greatest extent possible. Would they have to destroy the feared US missiles
before they could be launched? It was in this dangerous situation that
Stanislav Petrov kept his cool and prevented an all-out «defensive» Soviet
nuclear attack through misunderstanding.
This time, it took longer to adjust policy to the dangerous consequences
of nuclear arms in political confrontations. Only with Gorbachev as the new
Soviet leader did a radical nuclear disarmament become possible. The so-called
intermediate nuclear missiles were removed by an agreement in 1987.
Contradictions in
nuclear strategy block nuclear disarmament
However, an agreement to remove the rest of the nuclear missiles was
impossible even under favorable political conditions. The contradictions in the
nuclear strategies proved insurmountable.
Ever since the new leader of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev, met US
president Reagan in Reykjavik in 1986, disagreement over US and NATO plans for
missile defense blocked negotiations on effective nuclear disarmament. While
the US and NATO contended that a missile defense was able to block off the
feared nuclear attack, Russia thought the opposite. In the Russian view, a nuclear
attack becomes more feasible if a missile defense can block off the capacity
for a retaliatory attack. The problem is that both views are right.
New phase of
confrontation may make nuclear strategy dangerous again
We are now entering a new phase of confrontation that begins to resemble
the situation following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Then as now,
an absence of dialogue during political crises creates an emotional climate
that may feed delusions about concealed intentions. However, at the same time,
in political confrontations we face a growing need to resist political pressure
and, in a worst-case scenario, block options for attack. Once more, two
imperative goals pull in opposite directions. This may become dangerous – again.
NATO’s nuclear
strategy untenable
NATOs current nuclear strategy is untenable. Crises during the Cold War
reveal that the nuclear strategies become dangerous exactly in the
circumstances they are intended to deter, in political confrontations. Then the
risk of misunderstandings and miscalculations may reach a dangerous level.
Low political tensions
enable nuclear disarmament
By contrast, experience also shows that the lower the political
tensions, the easier it is to agree on cutting nuclear arms. By way of example, in the current political
climate of confrontation and ensuing high tension, the US – Russian agreement
to remove the old Soviet nuclear arms from the new state of the Ukraine would
not have been possible. With the end of the Soviet Union, the Ukraine was
suddenly a nuclear super power, but agreed to become a non-nuclear state,
hardly likely today. How would it have affected our security, were they still armed
to the teeth with nuclear weapons?
NATO defense strategy
feasible without nuclear arms
Those who do not support a ban on nuclear arms now are of course right
that we need an adequate defense to protect us against pressure and block
options for an attack, should anyone ever begin to entertain such a deranged
idea. The question is if an adequate defense is feasible without the ultimate
threat of nuclear arms. A related question is of course how nuclear arms can
deter when ultimate recourse to these doomsday weapons is inconceivable.
In the current disagreement over the ban on nuclear arms, nobody seems
to recall that only ten years ago a group of elderly statesmen from the US,
Russia and Germany called for a universal ban and a defense without nuclear
arms. Among them were several with a thorough insight into and personal
experience of both nuclear arms and nuclear strategies. The veteran Henry Kissinger in
1973 raised the US nuclear alert to pressure the Soviet Union to cease their
support of Egypt during the war with Israel, thus threatening with nuclear arms
for political leverage. The Soviet Union’s last leader, Michael Gorbachev, was
intimately familiar with the risks inherent in Russian nuclear strategy that
Petrov defused. Germany’s previous
prime minister Helmut
Schmidt initiated the fateful NATO nuclear rearmament that caused the 1983 war
scare in the Kremlin. These statesmen had sound reasons for calling for a
universal ban and a defense without the ultimate recourse to nuclear arms.
Open debate must
consider arguments on their own merits
A realistic analysis of nuclear arms today must ask why these
experienced and knowledgeable statesmen held this view. Those who oppose their
view must show how they erred.
The answer to these imperative questions can only be found by an open
and constructive debate in which arguments are considered on their own merits.
Sycophancy, the very nature of hierarchical decision-making and the preeminent
cause of bureaucratic dysfunction, is literally a security risk.
Robert Kennedy writes in his book on President Kennedy’s handling of the
Cuban Missile Crisis that the President always wanted disagreement among his
advisors to ensure the best possible advice.
[1] Timothy Garton Ash The File: A Personal History
[2] M. Wolf, Spionagechef Im Geheimen Krieg: Erinnerungen (Ullstein, 2003).
[3] Werner Grosmann, Bonn Im Blick: Die Ddr-Aufklärung Aus Der
Sicht Ihres Letzten Chefs (Berlin: Das Neue Berlin, 2007 (2001)).
[4] C.M. Andrew and
V.N. Mitrochin, The Mitrokhin Archive:
The Kgb in Europe and the West (Allen Lane. The Penguin Press, 2000).
[5] Benjamin B. Fischer, "A Cold
War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War Scare," (CIA); G. Schild, 1983: Das Gefährlichste Jahr Des Kalten
Krieges (Schöningh, 2013).