Introduction

During the Cold War and for the remainder of the twentieth century, states learned to live with nuclear weapons – however uneasily. The United States’ and the Soviet Union’s outsized nuclear arsenals became ironic sources of political stability. No concept of victory in a nuclear war, at an acceptable cost, could be briefed to politicians by their military advisors. It is now obvious that the world of the twenty-first century will pose challenges to our thinking about the relationship between war and politics – and that includes how we think about nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are no longer stabilizing or status quo-supporting instruments, as they were between Cold War opponents which once dominated the international system. Unless the United States and Russia can agree on significant arms reductions and take the lead in controlling nuclear proliferation, their own security, and the future of international politics, become more unpredictable and problematical. U.S. and Russian nuclear deterrence and arms control are not only complicated by the threat of nuclear weapons spread. Also looming over the horizon are new technologies for ballistic missile defenses (BMD) that complicate the calculations and estimates on which stable deterrence rests. Both those opposed to and those in favor of missile defenses have reacted in the context of very immature technologies relative to the offensive weapons to which the missile defenses would be opposed. If defenses improve relative to offenses, additional options for deterrence and defense may present themselves. In summary, a three-sided security management problem presents itself for the United States, for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), for Russia, and for other nuclear weapons states, as well as for non-nuclear states that might aspire to become nuclear powers. The first side of this triangle is the stability of the nuclear balance between the United States and Russia, the latter having inherited from the former Soviet Union the responsibility for securing and managing an enormous nuclear arsenal. The second side of the triangle is the likelihood of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferating, and the placing into jeopardy of the entire nonproliferation regime, unless the nuclear and non-nuclear powers act to prevent both outcomes. The third side of the triangle is represented by the first deployments of components of a global missile defense system by the United States and the implications of

those technologies and deployments for U.S.–Russian relations, for arms control and for the control, of nuclear proliferation. The complexity of the preceding discussion is masked by the terseness of its presentation here. Details and nuances are explored in the interior chapters that follow. Each chapter explores one aspect of these complex relationships, but each chapter is not sui generis. All eight chapters at least touch on each side of the triangle, but with differences in relative emphasis. The effect is that of reinforcing the understanding of the interactive complexity among U.S.–Russian nuclear deterrence and arms control, nuclear proliferation, and missile defenses. It’s the interactivity or “system effects” among the three sides of the triangle that challenges the adequacy of simplistic explanations and sound bite policy prescriptions. If the preceding summarizes our contents, a word is in order about methodology. This is not a work of history per se, or an exercise in game theory, scenario modeling, or number crunching. It is a policy study based on a composite approach that borrows from several traditions and disciplines in deference to the contents of the topic and the vitality of the issues at hand. The world will not wait while theorists spin wool about nuclear danger. Urgent topics demand timely attention. On the other hand, scholars are not CNN or BBC commentators, and strategy, including the arms control and proliferation components of strategy, requires deliberation and contextual thinking. There are no easy solutions, and few exemplary problem statements, in this complex system of social interactions in which international power balances, state goals and capabilities, and the personalities of leaders overlap to create chaos – or, hopefully, to prevent it. Since this study deals with the avoidance of nuclear war by means of deterrence, arms control, and nonproliferation, the central concept of “stability” appears throughout the discussion in the chapters that follow. However, stability is not all of one piece: it is a hydra-headed phenomenon with many parameters. For purposes of the analysis that follows, stability may appear in any of the contexts described below.