US thinks first strike on Russia & China winnable (and Russia Reacts)

One reason the Cold War was relatively cold and our fights with China and Russia were relatively small wars and half of those were through proxies was because of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the understanding that if either side used nukes it would escalate to the point that both sides would be completely destroyed, and therefore could never be done.

Now that has changed.

Foreign Affairs, the Journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, the premier bipartisan foreign policy think thank, now says that the US could soon completely destroy Russia or China's nuclear arsenals in a first strike.

Ironically, part of why Russia's nuclear stockpile is dwindling is we have been buying and destroying their warheads to keep them from falling into the hands of terrorists, Third World countries, or just going off in their silos. Russia may think twice about cooperating with that program after this.

Here's a snapshot of the Russian response from the Washington Post:

"The publication of these ideas in a respectable American journal has had an explosive effect," former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar wrote in an article in London's Financial Times newspaper. "Even those Russian journalists and analysts who are not prone to hysteria or anti-Americanism took it as an outline of the official position of the U.S. Administration."

"Today, it's accepted by most of the establishment that we are under pressure, that we are being surrounded, and it's leading to a defensive nationalist vision," said Sergei Rogov, director of the Institute of the United States and Canada in Moscow.

("Russians Sense the Heat of Cold War")

Maybe it's time to put some people in charge of our government who don't see nuclear war as pursuing their business interests by other means.


KEY EXCERPTS:

The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy
By Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006

During the Cold War, many scholars and policy analysts believed that MAD made the world relatively stable and peaceful because it induced great caution in international politics, discouraged the use of nuclear threats to resolve disputes, and generally restrained the superpowers' behavior. (Revealingly, the last intense nuclear standoff, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, occurred at the dawn of the era of MAD.) Because of the nuclear stalemate, the optimists argued, the era of intentional great-power wars had ended. Critics of MAD, however, argued that it prevented not great-power war but the rolling back of the power and influence of a dangerously expansionist and totalitarian Soviet Union. From that perspective, MAD prolonged the life of an evil empire.

This debate may now seem like ancient history, but it is actually more relevant than ever -- because the age of MAD is nearing an end. Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the United States' nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia's arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China's nuclear forces. Unless Washington's policies change or Moscow and Beijing take steps to increase the size and readiness of their forces, Russia and China -- and the rest of the world -- will live in the shadow of U.S. nuclear primacy for many years to come.

One's views on the implications of this change will depend on one's theoretical perspective. Hawks, who believe that the United States is a benevolent force in the world, will welcome the new nuclear era because they trust that U.S. dominance in both conventional and nuclear weapons will help deter aggression by other countries. For example, as U.S. nuclear primacy grows, China's leaders may act more cautiously on issues such as Taiwan, realizing that their vulnerable nuclear forces will not deter U.S. intervention -- and that Chinese nuclear threats could invite a U.S. strike on Beijing's arsenal. But doves, who oppose using nuclear threats to coerce other states and fear an emboldened and unconstrained United States, will worry. Nuclear primacy might lure Washington into more aggressive behavior, they argue, especially when combined with U.S. dominance in so many other dimensions of national power. Finally, a third group -- owls, who worry about the possibility of inadvertent conflict -- will fret that U.S. nuclear primacy could prompt other nuclear powers to adopt strategic postures, such as by giving control of nuclear weapons to lower-level commanders, that would make an unauthorized nuclear strike more likely -- thereby creating what strategic theorists call "crisis instability."

FULL TEXT:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85204/
keir-a-lieber-daryl-g-press/the-rise-of-u-s-nuclear-primacy.html



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