ABSTRACT
Introduction Nuclear weapons are still hanging around, long after the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union. The information age has made available improved technologies and tactics for the conduct of war without relying on weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Advocates of a restructured twenty-firstcentury U.S. military anticipate that new technologies for C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) and network-centric warfare will enable smaller and more lethal forces to deliver greater combat punches across the spectrum of fighting – from continental-range precision strikes to special forces in Afghanistan linked to close air support. Within this technological context, nuclear weapons might appear as expensive museum pieces – comparable to displays of medieval armor or matchlock handguns. In war as in strategy, however, politics is the dominating art. And, except in crises, politics changes more slowly than does technology, including technology with military applications. Therefore, nuclear weapons will persist and even be attractive for some states’ or others’ purposes. This chapter considers pertinent aspects of the past and contemporary relationships between technology innovation and deterrence as related to the future roles of nuclear and other WMD. First, I offer a résumé of the idea of deterrence that provides some assessment of the concept and also sets the stage for what follows. Second, I consider some of the more interesting security problems in the new world order and some of the kinds of challenges they might pose to existing notions of deterrence. Third, I discuss the problem of knowledge innovation in technology related to deterrence, using the example of ballistic missile defense.
