The “D” Word IX: Has Deterrence Been Proven to Work? Or Is It a Faith?
Deterrence, wrote the historian Jill Lepore in an article in the New Yorker, is a “fearful faith.”
What? It has been proven to work, hasn’t it?
“Deterrence” is doubtless “fearful.” It is resorted to because of something we fear and it relies upon fear to turn away what we fear.
Lepore said, however, that it is also founded on “faith.” That’s because if something doesn’t happen, it’s impossible to prove it didn’t happen because of something you might have done to deter it. What doesn’t happen might not have happened for any number of reasons.
What we feared during the Cold War—a use of nuclear weapons on us—didn’t happen, it’s true. But why couldn’t it not have happened because of a prayer someone prayed, or a dance someone danced? How would you be able to prove that isn’t what had done the trick?
The prayer and the dance are not modes of deterrence, we should notice, because they don’t hope to work by instilling fear. If they work, they work by something that might be called “grace.”
Nevertheless, it is often asserted confidently that the fact that nuclear weapons haven’t been used in war since we used them in Japan in 1945 is because of our “nuclear deterrent.” Or, as we now may need to say—since eight or nine countries now have nuclear weapons—our “nuclear deterrents.”
I’ve seen it argued that we’d be safer if every country had nuclear weapons. I suspect those who argue that would also believe that we’d all be safer if everyone were packing guns. If that’s true, perhaps those of us who have more guns or nuclear weapons than we need should provide them to those who don’t. I’ve not seen that suggested. Instead those who have guns and nuclear weapons hug them to themselves. When it comes to nuclear weapons they also do all they can to maintain “secrecy” about something that, as some of the physicists of the Manhattan Project pointed out, isn’t secret now and never was.
Having a faith in something doesn’t mean that it’s true or that it isn’t true. It just means it can’t be proved to be true.
Insisting on the truth of what can only be a matter of faith shows not courage but bad faith.
If what you believe is a matter of faith and only might be true, something very important follows. To avoid bad faith, you have an obligation to be open to other possibilities.
Since 1945, when we used nuclear weapons against Japan, they have not been used in war. They have often been used, however, by threatening their use. Threats of that kind are a “use,” of course, just not the kind that involves nuclear explosions and what follows from them.
From 1945 to 1949, when we Americans were the only ones to have nuclear weapons, some of us believed that our having them would deter all war. The great nuclear weapons designer Ted Taylor, who began his work at Los Alamos in 1949, said he had at first justified his work on nuclear weapons to himself on that ground. The wars that followed, like the Korean War, had shown him, Taylor said, that his belief was unfounded. He stopped working on them.
In August 1949, the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb. They clearly hadn’t thought, as we did, that the world would be a better, safer world if the United States were the only country that had nuclear weapons. They didn’t trust us as much as we thought we should have been trusted.
Were they right or wrong not to trust us? Some of the spies who passed information to the Soviets during the Manhattan Project did their spying, we’ve learned, not for money or because of loyalty to the Soviet Union, but because they thought the world would be less safe if the United States were the only country to have nuclear weapons. Were they right or wrong about that, do you think?
In any case, as a number of Manhattan Project scientists pointed out even before the first bomb was tested, the “secret” of the bomb was no secret, not to any decent physicist. It followed that it was never the case that the United States would be the only country to get nuclear weapons. If any country insisted on having them, other countries would get them.
By 1950, we and the Soviet Union both had them.
In the 1950’s, President Eisenhower had put his faith in our nuclear weapons to keep the Soviets from invading Western Europe. They didn’t invade. Was that because of our nuclear weapons or for another reason?
By the end of the 1960’s, the U.S. and the Soviets were both putting their faith in having enough nuclear weapons and effective delivery systems to assure the utter destruction of the other if attacked. They had put their faith in what was called “Mutual Assured Destruction.”
MAD is still the shape of the faith in deterrence. From time to time some military and national leaders have talked as if they believe that nuclear weapons might be used in “limited” ways that would allow us to avoid mutual destruction. President Eisenhower, among others, didn’t think this was possible. I don’t either.
We don’t yet know who is right about this.
For many, the efficacy of our “nuclear deterrent” is now an article of faith—meaning, in this case, not that it is unprovable, which it is, but that it is unquestioned.
The “nuclear deterrent” that was ours alone from 1945 to 1949, for about four years, was, by the end of the millennium, possessed by six other nations: Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, and Pakistan. And, almost certainly, Israel. It has “proliferated,” the expression is. Has proliferation made us safer, or less safe, do you think?
The ninth country to acquire nuclear weapons was North Korea. They did it in 2006, during the administration of George W. Bush. President Bush had taken a very tough stance toward them. It hadn’t stopped them. Israel has taken a very tough stance toward Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Or anyone in their region, with the possible exception of themselves.
In the 1990’s, with the end of the Cold War, stockpiles of nuclear weapons had started to decline. At the end of the Cold War, some people had allowed themselves to hope that they might decline to zero. One who did was General George Lee Butler, who had been the Commander in Chief of our Strategic Air Command. SAC’s mission was delivering our strategic nuclear weapons upon our enemies.
After he retired from the military, Butler committed himself to eliminating them. He argued that we didn’t need to set a date for elimination. In fact we shouldn’t. But we did need to commit ourselves to this goal.
If we did, we could start to evaluate everything we did as to whether it contributed to this goal or took us away from it.
Today the nations who have nuclear weapons have about 13,000 of them.
President Obama said in his first policy speech that if the weapons exist, they will someday be used. Do you think he was right about that?
In any case, the stockpile is growing again.