Just Like Ike (on Deterrence)
By CAMPBELL CRAIG
Aberystwyth , Wales
IN the spring of 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower made a sweeping change in the American approach to nuclear war. Henceforth, the United States would rule out waging nuclear war against non-nuclear states. It would eliminate the “ambiguity” of previous strategies, drawing a stark line between conventional and nuclear wars. And the primary role of nuclear weapons would henceforth be to deter nuclear war: to indicate to American adversaries (namely, the Soviet Union) that any attack would engender overwhelming retaliation and hence amount to national suicide.
Many critics attacked the move for appearing to rule out any kind of war — nuclear or conventional — with the Soviet Union. How could the United States then stand up to the Russians? But mutual assured destruction became America’s de facto policy for the rest of the cold war, which ended when the Russians gave up.
Eisenhower had no grand objective in installing this policy. Rather, he had become worried by a growing clamor emanating from the Pentagon, supported by “wizard of Armageddon” intellectuals like Henry Kissinger and Democrats keen on retaking the White House, that the United States could wage, and win, a “limited” nuclear war. That notion had to be nipped in the bud, so that if there were a showdown with Moscow no one would be tempted to actually use one of those bombs. If that happened, Eisenhower firmly believed, the war would inexorably escalate into a thermonuclear holocaust.
On Monday, President Obama announced, in his Nuclear Posture Review, a new American approach to nuclear war that comes right out of Eisenhower’s playbook. And, indeed, Mr. Obama quickly came under criticism from those who have argued that new American technologies, together with the diminished capacity of traditional adversaries, have now made nuclear war winnable.
These critics also assert, just as their predecessors did in the 1950s, that limits on the use of atomic weapons somehow make a nuclear war more likely. “By further unilaterally limiting the circumstances in which the U.S. would use nuclear weapons to protect itself and its allies,” warned John Bolton, the former United Nations ambassador, “the Obama administration is in fact increasing international instability and the risks of future conflicts.”
Like Eisenhower, Mr. Obama rejects this claim, realizing that an “ambiguous” approach to nuclear weapons will make nuclear war more thinkable.
Yet in the long run, Mr. Obama wants to do Eisenhower one better: his aim is to abolish nuclear weapons. He knows that only the United States, the world’s pre-eminent power, could bring about and enforce total nonproliferation. If the rest of the world is going to trust America to supervise a nuclear-free world, it hardly needs to be said that the United States must forgo using its vast nuclear arsenal for any political or military purpose save basic deterrence. Mr. Obama’s new nuclear posture and his recent arms control deal with Russia indicate not only that he understands this fact, but also that he, like Eisenhower, is willing to accept political risk in exchange for nuclear peace.
Campbell Craig, a professor of international politics at Aberystwyth University, is the co-author of “America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity.” |
