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The Numbers Game
Travis | Feb 24, 2010 |
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I wish this movie was about John Bolton
John Bolton takes to the pages of the Washington Times today to assail President Obama’s supposedly naïve obsession with nuclear reductions. One of Bolton’s central criticisms is that the Obama administration is placing numbers ahead of strategy. He writes...
There is real danger, for example, in negotiating numerical weapons ceilings, such as on numbers of nuclear warheads, unrelated to our real strategic needs. Mere numerical targets typically do not reflect the opposing sides' differing global interests and obligations, their asymmetrical conventional military and intelligence capabilities or their varying economic strengths…This is no place for abstract and naive theories or numbers games at the expense of strategy.
This complaint is regularly expressed by Keith Payne, the paragon of conservative nuclear strategists. For instance, Payne wrote last year that “informed estimates about the functioning of deterrence must also include assessments of opponent decision-making processes, values, intentions, histories, levels of determination, goals, stakes and worldviews.” Since deterrence is not a quantifiable or scientific outcome, Payne concluded,
In the contemporary strategic environment, it is impossible to provide high-confidence, quantitatively precise and enduring answers to the question “how much is enough” for deterrence. The familiar game of linking some specific number of nuclear weapons with confidence in deterrence and the adequacy of U.S. strategic forces in general remains popular, but it now is unsupportable…even if done rigorously, identifying the requirements for deterrence is an incomplete basis for defining the necessary parameters for U.S. strategic forces in general.
Before considering whether this “numbers game” critique is justified, a comment is needed on Bolton’s and Payne’s methodology. Deterrence indubitably involves historical, cultural, psychological, and political calculations, as Payne suggests. NOH readers should recognize, however, that predicating deterrence on potential adversaries’ values, goals, stakes, and worldviews allows Bolton and Payne to configure U.S. nuclear forces according to how evil they perceive other countries to be. Do we really want to dismiss targeting-based deterrence analyses, such as Cimbala’s JFQ article and Lieber’s and Press’s Foreign Affairs appendix, as mere Cold War remnants and replace them with 1 inflammatory Ahmadinejad quote = 1 credible limited U.S. counterforce option? Payne is arguing, laudably, for recognizing deterrence’s complexity. Yet will an injection of red-blooded Manichaeism make U.S. nuclear policy more effective? I doubt it.
Payne is right that it is difficult to formulate “quantitatively precise” answers to deterrence questions, but that uncertainty doesn’t necessarily justify rounding up to the larger U.S. nuclear arsenal he would prefer. As Charles Glaser convincingly put it, “Deterrence is likely to be effective because, as was argued extensively during the Cold War, even relatively little credibility is sufficient when the costs of retaliation are so large.” In other words, a little nuke still goes a long way.
Now, is the “numbers game” critique justified vis-à-vis the Obama administration? I don’t think so. I base that assessment on the way government officials, in particular PDUSD-P and Nuclear Posture Review lead Jim Miller, have previously described the proper approach to nuclear force planning. In the expert volume that accompanied the U.S. Strategic Posture Commission, Miller described the right net assessment technique for sizing U.S. forces:
Such changes mean that a strategic nuclear assessment today must address a much wider range of variables. It should address the U.S.-Russia balance, but include prompt global strike capabilities, missile defenses, and (perhaps) varying alert levels. It should also consider limits on non-deployed warheads and fissile materials, tactical nuclear weapons, and the nuclear capabilities and postures of other states.
Similarly, the Cold War scenario-based analysis of alternative options must be broadened to a more general risk assessment. Computer-based exchange calculations will still play an important role, and can help address the potential impact of defenses and conventional capabilities on the U.S.-Russian strategic balance. Broader analysis and gaming is needed to consider the full range of potential issues, including any impacts on the risks associated with nuclear terrorism, proliferation, and third-party nuclear forces.
[snip]
Because subjective judgments are involved, and because it is unlikely that one option will dominate across all metrics, it must be understood that this is not an “optimization” process, but a process to inform discussion and debate, and ultimately help guide presidential judgment.
That description may not explicitly demonize Iran’s and North Korea’s worldviews enough for neoconservatives to be satiated. But, based on the approach outlined above, it is inaccurate to accuse the Obama administration of focusing on mere numerical targets or ignoring the possibility of deterrence failure. Such accusations are particularly unfounded before the release of the new NPR, which will delineate the threat assessment and strategic rationale that have undergirded the administration’s approach to New START and the rest of its nuclear agenda.
Nukes on a Blog, New START, Posture Review, Obama Administration (all tags)
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