DETERRENCE/DETERRENCE FAILS

WE CANNOT COUNT ON DETERRENCE TO KEEP US SAFE

NUCLEAR DETERRENCE CANNOT BE COUNTED ON TO LAST FOREVER

JEROME SLATER is a professor of political science at Univ Buffalo, .The Buffalo News

May 19, 1999, SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE, Pg. 2B HEADLINE: U.S. MUST STRIVE TO DEVELOP SOUND NUCLEAR-DEFENSE SYSTEM // lnu-acs

In the words of arms-control expert David Goldfischer: "MAD envisions the preservation of deterrence for an eternity of rational leaders and stable societies, of freedom from accident and freedom from miscalculation. Nuclear deterrence cannot be counted on to last forever."

DETERRENCE NO LONGER WORKS IN THE POST COLD WAR WORLD

Charles Krauthammer The Buffalo News July 6, 1999, SECTION: VIEWPOINTS, Pg. 3B HEADLINE: ABM TREATY INTERFERES WITH OUR DEFENSES // lnu-acs

Defenselessness was good because it made for "strategic stability" with the Soviet Union. Perhaps. But the Cold War is over, and there is no evidence that Kim Jung Il or Saddam Hussein or the next ayatollah will be deterrable by "mutual assured destruction" the way Leonid Brezhnev was.

MAD DOCTRINE NO LONGER WORKS TO DETER ATTACKS

HENRY KISSINGER February 06, 2000, The Houston Chronicle SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. 4 HEADLINE: Quick-fix on missile defense is unwise and dangerous // ACS-LN-02-10-00

In any event, whatever tenuous plausibility the MAD theory had in a two-power world disappears when eight nations have tested nuclear weapons and many rogue regimes are working feverishly on the development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction and the ballistic missiles to deliver them. If one of these destroyed an American city by accident or design, how would a United States president explain his refusal to protect our country against even limited attacks?

STATUS QUO DETERRENCE POLICIES ARE OBSOLETE

Fred Ikle, Former Secretary of Defense, 97 (The Washington Quarterly, Summer, "Facing Nuclear Reality, p-89)/. TD

The U.S. obviously can neither prevent the production of nuclear ,arms in every country, nor transform the world so as to abolish existing arsenals entirely. America's goal must be to establish sufficient control over the use of weapons of mass destruction so that open societies can continue to flourish. To preserve nonuse will require policies more ambitious and comprehensive than the obsolete bipolar deterrence strategy.

LACK OF WILLINGNESS TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS RENDERS DETERRENCE MEANINGLESS

ABBA EBAN, FORMER ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER, 1998 "DIPLOMACY FOR THE NEXT CENTURY" p.105 /MM

Once the two nuclear giants had an equal capacity to destroy the planet, the survival of mankind became dependent not on a realistic prospect of nuclear war but on the effectiveness of deterrence and the avoidance of miscalculation or surprise attack. Deterrence means that you have to threaten the use of weapons that you don't want to use in order to avoid using them. For deterrence to succeed, there must be three conditions: the existence of power, the readiness to use it, and the reflection of these two facts in the consciousness of the potential adversary. If the power exists and there is no belief in its usability, the deterrent effect is in abeyance.

SHORT DECISION TIMES FOR NUCLEAR USE DESTROY THE VALIDITY OF DETERRENCE DOCTRINE

MOVEMENT IN INDIA FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, 2001, Why are Nuclear Weapons Uniquely Objectionable?

A major part of the argument showing the futility of nuclear weapons as deterrence is technological. Given that more than one 'side' have nuclear weapons, watch systems need to be designed to warn for incoming missiles carrying nuclear weapons. Such surveillance systems are not and can never be fool-proof, and mistaken identification of all sorts of events as incoming nuclear missiles has occurred repeatedly in the past and will no doubt continue to occur. Between the two erstwhile 'global nuclear superpowers', the warning time has been in the vicinity of 30 minutes, during which time much confirmation, cross-checking and diplomatic conversation could and can be attempted. Between the new South Asian 'nuclear superpowers', the time lag is likely to be about one to three minutes. This means that no confirmation can be sought, no diplomacy can intervene, and a decision to retaliate 'just to be on the safe side' [whatever being safe in such a situation means] becomes immensely more likely. This increases manifold the chances of an 'inadvertent' nuclear exchange in South Asia.

SAYING NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE "WEAPONS" AS WELL AS "ONLY FOR DETERRENCE" CREATES A FATAL CONTRADICTION IN DETERRENCE THINKING

DAVID MUTIMER, Prof. Political Science York University, 2000; THE WEAPONS STATE: PROLIFERATION AND THE FRAMING OF SECURITY // VT2002 acs p. 33

A considerable contradiction is implied in the dual framing of nuclear explosives as weapons and as instruments exclusively for deterrence. This contradiction is seen in a number of ways throughout the strategy debate, most notably in the odd position of nuclear weapons being accepted as weapons whose only use is in their nonuse. Williams cites a wonderful example of the result of the contradictions of deterrence. "This is a conclusion that even Hoag himself seems to find difficulty in believing, to say nothing of justifying: 'Such a policy,' he argues, 'suffers from the political defect, but analytic virtue, of explicit bizarreness.' Explicit bizarreness would seem to be a peculiar attribute to consider as an 'analytic virtue. '" The contradiction between weapons and deterrence with regard to nuclear weapons has also led Robert Jervis to make one of the most trenchant critiques of nuclear strategy: that it suffers from what he calls "conventionalization." For Jervis, thinking of nuclear weapons in conventional terms-as weapons-leads to dangerous strategies because it ignores the lessons of the nuclear revolution, which produced the possibility of strategies of mutual deterrence in the first place. These contradictions, the conventionalization critique in particular, point directly to the constructed nature of the weapon framing of nuclear weapons. The central characteristic of nuclear explosives-that they are extremely powerful explosivesseems to deny their coherent consideration as weapons at all, yet this is how they are primarily conceived.