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36th Annual IFPA-Fletcher Conference on
National Security and Policy
Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Forces in 21st-Century Deterrence: Implementing the New Triad

December 14-15, 2005
Grand Hyatt Washington Hotel
Washington, D.C.

Session 2 - Respective Roles of Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Forces as Instruments of Deterrence and Dissuasion

Address by Dr. Keith B. Payne, President, National Institute for Public Policy, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Forces Policy

Thank you, Jackie, it’s a pleasure to be here this morning. The topic that Jackie assigned to me is to look at the prospective roles for nuclear and non-nuclear weapons. To do so, what I’d like to offeris a framework for thinking about this particular question.

What you see here is, a matrix designed to help us think through such questions. And I’d like to tip my hat to my colleague and friend, Tom Scheber who created this matrix with me over the course of a couple of days. Thank you, Tom.

What this matrix is intended to do is to present a considerable amount of information in one page. Let me describe it very quickly. Across the top horizontally, is the diverse set of audiences that are of great interest, ranging from allies whom we seek to assure, to violent extremists, and those associated with violent extremists such as state sponsors of terror and the organizations within which the violent extremists operate.

This horizontal list of audiences illustrates how very diverse and in many ways complicated is the new set of audiences in which we have great interest. I say new set of audiences, obviously these audiences have existed in the past, but they are new for us in terms of the priority attention that we pay to them.

On the left vertical axis of the matrix you see the national defense goals, deterrence, dissuasion, defend and defeat, and assure. This matrix thus lists both audiences and our related goals to show literally how many boxes it is within which we are operating at this point. In the post Cold War period, what you see is a greater variety of audiences and goals than we typically focused on during the Cold War.

During the Cold War, deterrence by and large was the priority goal, because of deterrence failed catastrophically, everything was going to fade to black. Deterrence was such a priority goal that it consumed an enormous amount of our attention, and it will continue to do that. But in the post-Cold War world, we have a new set of goals and possible priorities. The matrix juxtaposes these diverse goals across diverse audiences. Why? To show essentially how unprecedented is the contemporary international security situation. We must address multiple goals of varying potential priorities, and multiple audiences, many of whom we don’t know well and some of whom are almost totally unfamiliar. And, each of these goals and audiences must be addressed simultaneously.

We tend now to focus much of our attention on those audiences on the right side of the chart as you face it, the violent extremists and rogue states. But in effect, what we have is an additive situation where we now have to think about simultaneously deterring, dissuading, defeating, and assuring multiple audiences. That is an unprecedented challenge.

The second point of this matrix is to illustrate that in many of these cases, the same force or set of forces that might be useful in one quadrant, might be completely inconsistent with our goals in another quadrant. So for example, if our priority goal is to assure allies, that may suggest, one set of forces for that purpose. If our priority goal is to, say, deter rogues, it may suggest a completely set of forces. The matrix illustrates the diversity of post-Cold War goals and audiences, and thus the potential range of appropriate force mixes. What insight does that suggest?

Well, one is that we must be able to prioritize the goals and audiences during any contingency. Absent that, there's not much useful that we can say about what particular force mix is more or less useful. The challenge we have is that there are very few generalizations about the value of forces that will hold across this broad set of audiences and goals.

“So what?” you might ask. Let me just give you a few examples of how this issue of prioritization of goal and audience may make a difference. If the goal for a particular contingency is to assure allies, which is highlighted in this particular overview, what might that suggest for us? Assuring allies, in some cases, may require nuclear threats for extended deterrence. In some cases, only nuclear capabilities may be adequate for extending deterrence to an ally or friend. Think of Japan, for example, and the challenges it faces. Nuclear deterrence and extended nuclear deterrence remain enormously important.

Assuring allies in another contingency, however, may lend itself very much more to non-nuclear forces. Why? Because in some cases we’ll see that non-nuclear force is that which is most credible for the U.S. to threaten or employ. It may be the type of force that we can display for extended deterrence purposes and be most conducive to maintaining the cohesion of an ad hoc alliance. The priority that you choose, even within a particular quadrant—whether it’s extended nuclear deterrence for an ally facing a very severe threat; or sustaining the cohesion of an ad hoc alliance— may lead you to very different conclusions regarding whether conventional forces or the threat of nuclear forces is most appropriate for the contingency.

Let’s take another case, pre-war deterrence of rogues armed with weapons of mass destruction. In a case involving a rogue state, say, threatening an ally or a U.S. interest abroad, a credible deterrent by the United States may require non-nuclear threats. Credibility attributed to U.S. conventional capabilities may be greater in this case in the eyes of an opponent because of U.S. concerns about collateral damage, and the close proximity of allies. In this case, U.S. priorities and audiences may suggest that deterrence of a rogue via conventional threats is most effective.

Now, let me change the scenario just a bit. Let’s say that it’s a contingency where intra-war deterrence is our goal. Imagine the contingency where weapons of mass destruction have already been used by a rogue against the United States itself, a friend, or ally,. What might be the U.S. priority in that case? Well, the U.S. priority in that case could well be, again within this box and this quadrant, deterring further enemy WMD use, and beyond that, deterring post war use of WMD by a future aggressor. What U.S. force mix might lend itself best to intra-war deterrence—deterrence after WMD has been used? Remember the goals are to deter further WMD use in that contingency and to send a strong signal to Third Parties that WMD better not be used against the U.S. or our allies in the future. In that case, it may be nuclear deterrence that's necessary to send a signal of the necessary severity.

Even within the same quadrants, the decisive factor in thinking about the potential roles for conventional and nuclear forces, will be the details of the contingency, the prioritization of the goal, and the tradeoffs that we face as we identify different goal priorities.

Why is this important? What does it have to do with the potential roles for non-nuclear and nuclear forces? It tells us that those factors that will be decisive as to the force mix most suitable for threat or use, will be determined by the specific audience, the specific signals we’re trying to send, including signals to multiple audiences simultaneously, the prioritization of our goals, and how we make tradeoffs among those audiences, goals, and priorities. The appropriate weapons and targets to threaten will change depending upon the prioritization of goals and audiences. And priorities will change per contingency, and even within the same contingency. For example, pre-war deterrence may suggest one type of threat for a given contingency, intra-war deterrence another, and post-war deterrence yet another. The details of any particular contingency are likely to be decisive in shaping our priorities regarding audiences, goals, and tradeoffs, and those priorities will determine the appropriate force mix for threat or employment. If we focus on a single goal and audience to assess the potential value of forces, which we frequently do, we will miss the broader picture.

What does this mean for nuclear weapons? For one, it means that the adage that the U.S. doesn’t need nuclear weapons because it will never use them, misses about 90 percent of reality: we gain value from nuclear weapons without employing them. In fact, they are particularly useful when not employed. The goals of deterrence, assurance, and dissuasion may be advanced more by the threat of employment than by actual employment. In such cases, whether or not the U.S. is, in fact, willing to use a nuclear weapon is likely to be far less important to our goal than is the opponent’s perception of our will. And, we know from numerous historical cases that opponents’ perceptions of our will frequently are far removed from the reality. Let’s not forfeit the likely deterrence value of nuclear weapons—which is based on opponents’ perceptions—based on conjecture about Presidential perceptions in an unspecified contingency against an unspecified opponent over unspecified stakes.

Questions and Answers

Audience: Thanks, David Roop from Global Security Newswire. We’ve heard several arguments so far from speakers leading to the conclusion that we need to broaden our strategic capabilities including possibly nuclear capabilities, global strike. But it seems like there's an issue that’s hidden behind the big curtain that isn’t being addressed, and that's the possibility that pursuing such capabilities could actually increase instability, encourage proliferation, and perhaps the risky behavior that we're trying to avoid from potential foes that seek to use their capabilities before they lose them. Could the panel please address this potential, is it a potential?

Dr. Payne: The short answer is possibly, but I by and large don’t think so. The coherence of the argument that said that broadening capabilities would lead to instability was based on the specific and rather unique conditions of the Cold War. Those arguments are not coherent in the post-Cold War period. The logic behind them does not hold; they are hangovers from the Cold War. The old instability argument now represent Cold War logic in a post-Cold War world; it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Audience: Hi, I'm Amy Wolfe from the Congressional Research Services, and although I’ve been quite amusingly distracted, I want to go back to something Keith said right at the beginning of his presentation. Keith, you were talking about using nuclear weapons in retaliation for weapons of mass destruction use by the bad guys to send a signal; not to destroy a target, not to achieve a critical military warring, but to send a signal. In other words, punish for using weapons of mass destruction and to send the signal to the next bad guys and might do it to punish him, too.

I'm really troubled by that. We’ve never used nuclear weapons to punish, or we would not have done so in the Cold War because the Soviet Union could have turned around and punished us right back. So is this change in strategy, doctrine, use theory related to the fact that we’re now looking at using nuclear weapons, or pick your buzz word, lower your threshold, raising the likelihood of use, changing our strategy because the bad guys can’t nuke us back? And what are the implications of saying we can now use nuclear weapons without fear of retaliation?

Dr. Payne: Thanks, Amy. I was fairly careful in the words that I used, at least I tried to follow my notes carefully and I wrote the notes carefully. When I referred to nuclear weapons, I referred to the threatened employment of nuclear weapons, particularly for the purposes of deterrence.

Dr. Payne: Intra-war deterrence, also requires a threat of retaliation to deter a second possible use. In terms of my own presentation, those were the remarks that I made. But I take your question, that is, is there any role for actual employment of nuclear weapons? The answer to that question ultimately has to be decided by the President. But there are some extreme but plausible scenarios where the employment of nuclear weapons could support U.S. national security goals. I don't need to go into those here in any detail. In my particular talk, I was referring to the threat of nuclear force for the purposes of deterrence, including intra-war deterrence.

Audience: A quick comment, quick question. Steven Young with the Union of Concerned Scientists. First, Ambassador Woolsey, you talked about the need for low yield bunker busting type weapons. Just to make sure you know this fact, that the weapon the U.S. had been looking at, the buster ... (inaudible) penetrator, is a very high yield bunker buster, 1.2 megatons, so we’re not talking about low yield, low casualty, we’re talking about a big yield, big casualty weapon. That's what we’re looking at now, is the option on the table for the U.S. military, not a low yield weapon at all.

Audience: That's been the main focus of debate of late in Congress and other places. The big question I want to ask, though, is simply in this new world we live in, please explain to me in very simple terms, and this is a question primarily based on ... (inaudible) last comment, please give me a scenario in which we need nuclear weapons. I mean, given our enormous ... (inaudible) advantage in the entire world, go back to Les Aspin’s question of if we didn't have nuclear weapons, we wouldn’t invent them. Wouldn’t the world be better off if we didn't have them? And what is the scenario in which we have to have a nuclear weapon that we can’t address with conventional weapons? I mean, they were needed, they’re not dissuading Iran now, they didn't dissuade Libya, they didn't dissuade—

Dr. Payne: I honestly didn't hear the second part of the comment—I think the point of the question was that the RNEP weapon that the U.S. was looking at was 1.2 megatons. I think you ought to go back and check your figures. I didn't hear the rest of the question, I’m sorry.

Dr. Payne: Okay. Do nuclear weapons have a role, if I can shorthand it that way. Nuclear weapons have a potentially enormous role in deterring opponents who cannot be deterred adequately by conventional forces. Now, I realize that that's a generalization; you have to ask yourself whether there are likely to be such opponents in the future? I would suggest to you that there have been opponents like that in the past, and there are likely to be opponents like that in the future. To come to the conclusion that nuclear weapons are no longer necessary for deterrence, you essentially have to say you’re very confident there will not be opponents in the future for whom nuclear deterrence will be the decisive factor in preventing them from using weapons of mass destruction against the United States. Anybody who believes that they can predict the future that well and that optimistically ought to reconsider their case.

The point of my earlier talk is that there's a diversity of opponents, a diversity of goals. We don’t know exactly what threatening contingencies are going to confront us in the future. We may well be surprised. As General Newton said, we ought to prepare to be surprised, and part of that is going to be retaining nuclear capabilities and possibly modernizing nuclear capabilities because they may be absolutely essential to deter threats to ourselves and our allies.