ABSTRACT
For many, achieving ‘global zero’ has become the Holy Grail of nuclear arms control. How to get there, however, remains hazy and elusive, and the goal is hidden away in a distant future difficult to discern or grasp. Several conditions must be fulfilled before nuclear abolition can become reality, the principal one being the elimination of any degree of utility, whether military or political, of nuclear weapons. Weapons cannot disappear until they have no value to the possessor or their value has reduced to such a degree that other alternatives become possible. Until then, abolition will remain very difficult, perhaps impossible, to achieve. There is much to be said of the value of nuclear weapons. They can serve as a currency of immense power – and, despite the arguments of some, they do have perceived military utility as well. Nuclear weapons have been an important part of international relations theory for decades. Deterrence adherents argue that international peace and stability during the past six decades has been – ultimately – a nuclear peace. The logic seems appealing. The threat of mutual assured destruction means that no rational actor will consider starting a major conflict because that would mean the end not only of the enemy, but also of himself. All-out nuclear war is suicidal by nature, as was recognized early on. As Bernard Brodie wrote in 1946, ‘Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have almost no other useful purpose.’1 It is precisely the terrifying nature of these weapons that makes them useful as a deterrent. Highlighting their awesome character therefore plays into the hands of deterrence adherents, who, confronted with the humanitarian effects of weapons use, might perhaps respond, ‘Yes, I know that they are doomsday weapons which cannot be used, and that is their ultimate reason of being.’ Deterrence theory has been brought into popular culture through films such as Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove (1964) and John Badham’s WarGames (1983). In the former, while discussing the concept of a doomsday device, the doctor argues, ‘deterrence is the art of placing in the mind of the enemy the fear to attack . . . the Doomsday Machine is terrifying, simple to understand, and completely credible and convincing’. This popular statement neatly encapsulates the
thinking of the time, but also the thinking of today. And WarGames, while far less sophisticated than Kubrick’s masterpiece, features a final scene where a rogue supercomputer, on the brink of unleashing devastating conflict, eventually concludes that thermonuclear war is ‘a strange game. The only winning move is not to play’ (WarGames 2015). Nuclear weapons remain prevalent in defence planning even now, some two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. However, deterrence relationships have become more complex. In South Asia, for instance, Pakistani nuclear weapons are pointed at the long-standing Indian adversary, whereas weapons on the other side of the border are pointed at both Pakistan and China. In the Far East, the desperately impoverished Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has started to develop its own peculiar brand of nuclear deterrence against its southern neighbour and the USA (see, e.g. Lewis 2013). And, in the former, public support for the development of a nuclear arsenal of its own reportedly remains high (Keir and Persbo 2013). In fact, despite the coherent logic of deterrence, nuclear weapons have recently been portrayed by former deterrence strategists as a destabilizing factor, something fundamentally dangerous. This reformulation of thinking, however, does not go as far as saying that the theoreticians of the past were wrong, or that the Cold War balance of terror was fundamentally unstable. No, it is the emergence of these new complicated deterrence relationships that troubles the minds of former Cold Warriors. The thinking of statesmen such as Henry Kissinger, William Perry, George Shultz and Sam Nunn goes like this: ‘the risk of accidents, misjudgments or unauthorized launches [is] growing more acute in a world of rivalries between relatively new nuclear states that lacked the security safeguards developed over many years between the two superpowers’ (see, e.g. The Economist 2011). The underlying assumption, thus, is that there are responsible weapons-holders, and irresponsible ones. For some, nuclear weapons enhance security; for others, that they constitute a detrimental force. The overriding conclusion appears to be that deterrence does not work in all circumstances and at all times. Several authors have in the past outlined means and ways in which the perceived utility of nuclear weapons can be reduced, or perhaps eliminated. That discussion is also brought to the fore in Harald Müller’s chapter in this volume. It is less straightforward to discuss nuclear abolition in terms of establishing norms against their use or retention than it is to discuss ways in which acquiring nuclear weapons can be made more difficult and costly. That does not mean that those arguments are without value. Having a commonly accepted norm that it is unlawful to use nuclear weapons, for instance, clearly diminishes their utility for the military planner, and by extension reduces overall demand for these weapons. Making it time-consuming and costly to acquire them is a supply-side measure which, while not reducing demand per se, keeps the numbers of weapons at lower levels than if such measures were not in place. However appealing it is to engage further in a discussion about the concepts and values underlying deterrence and disarmament, this chapter leaves it here, as
an important backdrop for the ensuing pages. The following sections will assume that the deterrence knot has been solved, and that nuclear weaponry has lost political and military utility – however unattainable that may seem at present. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the role of verification in a world which has attained nuclear-weapons-free status. The reader will hence be brought into an imagined place, not yet in existence, to face questions that have not yet materialized. For some, this might devalue the discussion in the chapter, but it really should not. The simple fact that nuclear weapons still hold utility – in some shape or form – does not mean that practical questions concerning verification should not be asked, or that they are without meaning. After all, present policies will need to be shaped by the vision of the endstate. There remains a vast amount of political, technical and theoretical work ahead of anyone seeking to abolish nuclear weapons. Even though the end-state may be decades away, there is no point in delaying preparations for departure: even the longest of journeys must start somewhere, and more often than not with a simple step.
