Deterrence: Is It Wise?

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Deterrence: Is It Wise?

The US Senate’s rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Russian Duma’s delay in ratifying START II suggest the two nations with the largest nuclear arsenals intend to hold onto them forever.

Is it worthy of any nation to base its security on terror, on the threat to annihilate millions of innocent humans, on the threat of genocide?

Is the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction — a policy that puts the human race at risk of extinction — worthy of civilization?

Is it wise?

"We cannot at once hold sacred the miracle of existence and hold sacrosanct the capacity to destroy it," says General Lee Butler, former Commander-in-Chief of the US Strategic Command. "Deterrence…at best is a gamble no mortal should pretend to make. At worst it invokes death on a scale rivaling the power of the creator."

Alan Cranston

Global Security Institute

Former US Senator

A Russian Perspective on Abolition

[With respect to] the sacramental question of whether it is possible to conceive going below 200 nuclear warheads and eventually reaching complete nuclear disarmament…it should be emphasized that the issue is not just whether it is technically, strategically, or politically possible, but rather whether the United States, Russia, and other states are willing to pay the price for a world free of nuclear weapons. In any case, what is meant by nuclear disarmament is varying degrees of depth of deactivation of nuclear weapons, implying different costs and time delays for reconstitution.

Nuclear weapons are the ultimate instrument and pillar of national sovereignty, and an expensive, dangerous, and provocative instrument at that. That is why so few states acquired nuclear weapons during the first half century of the nuclear age, and this is why those that have done it are so reluctant to give up nuclear arms.

Giving up nuclear weapons without making the world safe for conventional wars or creating too great a risk of nuclear cheating by some state or terrorist group would require enormous sacrifice of national sovereignty by major powers. To fill the gap created by abolishing nuclear deterrence as a primary factor of power politics, they would have to construct effective international organizations for conflict resolution, peacekeeping, and peace enforcement. They should be ready to abide by the decisions of such organizations, even against their perceived national interests. The international hierarchy would change dramatically, which would first affect Russia but eventually the United States as well. The right of veto in world affairs would have to be abandoned by major powers, and they would be severely constrained in their security policies and defense programs. They would have to concede all nuclear industries and dual-purpose technologies to comprehensive controls and possibly international management and profit extraction. They would also have to transfer all missile technologies, programs, and employment to international corporations for use and for exploration of outer space.

Alexei Arbatov, State Duma of the Russian Federation Defense Committee

Source: "Deep Cuts and De-alerting: A Russian Perspective" in Harold A. Feiveson, ed., The Nuclear Turning Point: A Blueprint for Deep Cuts and De-alerting of Nuclear Weapons, Brookings Institution Press, 1999, pp. 323-324.