The National Security State: Why We Don’t Pledge “No First Use” of Nuclear Weapons

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One of the contentious issues raised at the recent debates of the Democratic presidential candidates involved “no first use” of nuclear weapons.  Thus far, the United States has not been willing to issue such a statement.  It is not immediately clear why the “most powerful nation in the world” would feel endangered by such a declaration.  Our traditional nuclear adversary, Russia, is still joined with the US in a continuing “mutual assured destruction” stalemate.   Launching first provides no real advantage if the other side can retaliate before the damage from first launch is realized.  The US and Russia entered that bizarre state via fear that one might wish to annihilate the other to gain political or military advantage.  Such a threat dissipated long ago, but because defense industries on both sides needed the threat to continue, we must pretend that it still exists.  The other countries we have chosen as our enemies, China, Iran, and North Korea, either have no capability to threaten us with a nuclear weapon, or don’t seem to have anything to gain by threatening us.  The most likely cause of a nuclear exchange would be from an accidental or rogue launch from a nuclear state, or from a nonstate group who might acquire a weapon of some sort— events nearly impossible to anticipate.  If one had intelligence about a terrorist-like attack, conventional means presumably would be available to address it.  So, why exactly do we wish other countries to believe we might use nuclear weapons against any adversary?

David Hendrickson addresses issues related to our “defense” posture in his interesting book Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition.  He describes the period after the dissolution of the Soviet Union as one in which the US was the absolute military master of the world.  It could have decided that with no possible threats to its security, it was time to relax its military posture and withdraw from its global presence and let other nations pursue, peacefully, their own interests.  Instead, the nation decided that from its position of power it should indefinitely maintain military superiority over any and all and use that power for the “benefit” of the world.  The benefits that the US wished to provide included representative democracy, free market capitalism, and rules for conducting international affairs properly.

In fact, the US has often chosen to use its military, technological, and economic power to interfere in the affairs of others.  The decision by George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq was not driven by any threat to the United States or its interests, and not driven by the putative presence of weapons of mass destruction, but rather by the desire to remake Iraq and the Middle East to be more in its image.

“It looked toward a vast political reconstruction of the region that would leave the United States, in its victorious aftermath, with the power to coerce others.”

The United States has also held up its worldwide series of alliances as a mechanism for maintaining a “rules-based system” for international affairs.  In practice, however, breaking the rules has occurred often when it was convenient or useful.

“In theory it is a ‘rules-based’ set of relationships, but in practice it has been based on the distinction between friends and enemies.  In such a system, you are supposed to be good with your friends and tough with your enemies.  Indeed, being tough with your enemies is often the litmus test of whether you are good to your friends.  That distinction is an old one in political thought.  It suggests that the American alliance system has been a form of ‘negative association,’ whose central feature is cooperation against a common enemy.”

Maintaining worldwide military dominance is terribly expensive and could not be politically feasible without enemies to justify the required resources.  It has been the job of what Hendrickson refers to as “the national security apparatus” to identify the needed enemies and provide the weapons required to defeat them.  Since China has become a global economic force and can afford to spread its influence, economically and militarily throughout its part of Asia, it is a threat to the dominance of allies Japan and South Korea in the region and therefore a threat to the US.  The Middle East is involved in a religious battle between Sunni and Shiite Moslems, coupled with the complicated politics of Israel’s presence.  Since Sunni Saudi Arabia and Israel are considered US allies, then Shiite Iran must be the enemy.  In greater Europe, Russia has long been the enemy of the US and the nations of western Europe.  Russia, under Putin, is trying to regain some of the political influence lost in years past, and contention over the status of central European states will continue.

Curiously, the identification of Russia, China, and Iran as enemies has encouraged them to collaborate against their common adversary.  How clever of the US security apparatus.

So, the US has set forth from an era of overwhelming military dominance to one in which it has identified Russia, China, and Iran as “enemies” with whom it must contend.  The problem is that the US could never possibly have maintained such undisputed power, even though it is committed to acting as if it has.  In truth, the US hasn’t the resources to defeat any one of these countries militarily.  All are large nations with established societies and large populations.  There is no option for invasion by the US.  It is left with being able to convince an enemy that the price of resistance will be too high to bear and submission is necessary.  Hendrickson indicates the current strategy through a description of the AirSea Battle Concept as applied to a conflict with China.

“In a war with China, America would deploy ‘networked, integrated forces capable of attack-in-depth to disrupt, destroy, and defeat adversary forces.’  After withstanding an attack and seizing the initiative, ‘US forces would then sustain the momentum across all domains, rapidly identifying targets and breaking down the adversary’s defenses promptly and in depth—targeting the adversary’s reserves, fire support, logistics, command and control…US retaliation could destroy critical portions of China’s command and control network along with missile storage, manufacturing and launch sites.  Further salvos might also damage ports, airfields, logistical hubs and perhaps parts of the domestic security apparatus including facilities associated with the security services and the Peoples Armed Police Force’.”

This sounds much like an advertisement for a video game.  What it really is, is a plea for continued funding for ever more of the highly expensive and highly vulnerable Navy ships and planes.  This is not a plan to win a war—winning a war requires boots on the ground.  It is an attempt to intimidate an adversary.  And since our chosen adversaries are unlikely to be intimidated by conventional forces—where they are at or near parity—the threat of nuclear destruction must remain available as part of that intimidation strategy.  This is a tactic known as “escalation dominance.”

“The United States has local military inferiority in the Baltics, for instance, and can only cover that with ‘escalation dominance.’  It has local military inferiority in the South China Sea and can only cover that with ‘escalation dominance.’  This once looked easy; it has now become hard.  Anxiety about the permanence of conventional superiority in distant theaters is a key reason behind the establishment’s refusal to countenance a ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons pledge…”

The national security state consists of players and industries committed to an aggressive and coercive role for the US in international affairs.  These are foolish people playing a foolish and dangerous game.

And a no-first-use pledge would be a sign of progress.