The New York Review of Books

To the Editors:

Theodore Draper [NYR, July 15] makes many good points about nuclear weapons, but he misses one aspect of an argument, and one of his conclusions needs more discussion.

1. A “no-first-use declaration” would be more than an empty gesture, because it would compel NATO to abandon its strategy relying on the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the event of an attack by the Warsaw Pact conventional forces which could not be stopped by conventional means. Those of us who agree with the late Lord Mountbatten and with Lord Zuckerman that this strategy is unwise and dangerous, would therefore welcome the no-first-use declaration. However, if it is indeed true that NATO conventional forces are inferior to their counterparts, such a declaration will not be made, until this deficiency is rectified. This might include measures which would be politically unpopular.

2. The present grotesque overkill capacity of each of the superpowers is defended by their hawks as necessary for an effective deterrent because a “first strike” by the enemy could destroy all their missiles. To be sure of deterring such an attack, each side must therefore, it is claimed, have as great a destructive power as the potential enemy, or preferably greater.

This, as Draper rightly points out, ignores the submarine-launched and cruise missiles, which in the present state of technology, would survive a first strike and be available as an effective deterrent after such a counterforce strike. It is argued, however, that there is no guarantee that one day effective means of submarine detection and defence against cruise missiles may not be developed, and while the experts regard this as unlikely, one should plan for the “worst case.”

The question turns, therefore, on whether one believes that, even without submarines and cruise missiles, a counterforce first strike is a realistic possibility. Would any government stake the survival of their country on a highly complex operation functioning with high efficiency and with nearly perfect timing? Failures of missiles are not uncommon, in spite of careful preparations. Even with space shots, prepared and supervised by a collection of the most highly qualified experts, delays due to malfunction of vital components are frequent. One knows that in the heat of battle the efficiency of equipment and of the humans who operate them, is very different from what can be done in the laboratory, or in computer war games.

This is the problem on which a realistic assessment by experts is needed. I believe the answer would show that the counterforce first strike belongs to science fiction. If so, Draper is right about the dangerous waste of the present stockpiles.

Rudolf Peierls

Oxford, England

To the Editors:

In his otherwise lucid and useful article on thinking about nuclear weapons Theodore Draper fails to understand that no-first-use, negotiated arms reductions, and deterrence are interdependent. Draper rightly identifies the culprit—weapons designers who are constantly improving their product, making them more accurate and easier to use—but in my opinion he misses the point, which is that better weapons threatens deterrence.

The problem is that deterrence cools and shrinks. In the 1950s the near-monopoly on nuclear weapons of the United States effectively deterred a whole list of undesirable things—not just a Soviet attack on the United States, but war in Europe or adventurism elsewhere as well. The outcome of the Cuban missile crisis was the result of the nuclear superiority which allowed us considerable leeway in pressing the Soviets to back down. The Soviet did not miss the significance of this broad and robust deterrence. Vasily Kuznetsov told John McCloy at the time that we would never be able to do this to them again. Shortly thereafter the Soviets embarked upon the long strategic buildup which has resulted in their current status of rough parity with the United States.

This parity is not without practical result. The list of things we can deter has cooled and shrunk. Even a decade ago American strategic superiority allowed us to threaten direct attack on the Soviet Union to deter war in Europe. This is no longer the case. Such an attack would bring a devastating response. We know it, and the Soviets know we know it. Our threat to risk a big intercontinental nuclear war in defense of Europe is simply not credible. We don’t believe it ourselves. In their roundabout way American military leaders have been trying to confess this for the last decade. A threat to use nuclear weapons on a large scale still deters, but it only deters one thing—a big attack. Anything lesser would bring a lesser response, or no response at all.

When James Schlesinger reintroduced the idea of flexible or limited use of nuclear weapons in 1974, he was trying to address this problem. At that time a limited execution of the Single Integrated Operating Plan—the SIOP—called for a minimum initial salvo of about 2500 nuclear warheads, pointed at Soviet nuclear and conventional military targets. That was our idea of a warning shot. The Soviets could hardly have responded to attack on such a scale with anything less than all-out war. In short, we had painted ourselves into an all-or-nothing corner. The current talk of “protracted war” theories in Washington is an attempt to get out of this corner. In my opinion these theories have a fatal weakness of their own—the nearuniversal belief, even in military circles, that limited use of nuclear weapons would escalate into all-out use—but even so I think it fair to grant these theories are a rational attempt, at least, to deal with the shrinking of deterrence, and to get out of the all-or-nothing corner.

Draper is right to be skeptical of our ability to change the world in dramatic ways, and right to emphasize that about the best we can hope from nuclear weapons is deterrence. But we can never go back to the old robust deterrence. The threat of a big nuclear response can deter a big nuclear attack, but that is all it can deter. If we want to deter limited nuclear attacks, or conventional war, we have got to do it with something other than a threat to destroy the world which not even we take seriously.

This is where I think Draper goes wrong. If we are to deter a conventional war without running the risk of nuclear war, we have got to deter it in a conventional way. A no-first-use pledge would be an important step in this direction, not because the Soviets would believe it, but because we would have to reshape our military plans accordingly. I think Draper underestimates the effect of such a pledge on the military planning process. We can be sure the Pentagon would make itself heard if we renounced plans to use tactical nuclear weapons in the event of war, without making conventional provision to take up the slack. As things stand now, conventional war in Europe means nuclear war.

That leaves the problem of deterring limited nuclear attack. This can no longer be achieved by threatening all-out nuclear response. The consequences of such a response would be too great for it to be credible. This pretty much means that the threat of a limited attack can only be deterred by the threat of a limited response—”protracted war” under one name or another. But limited nuclear war is only a hair short of being as dangerous as all-out nuclear war, something just about everybody seems to recognize. The move to pure minimum deterrence which Draper seems to favor, and which makes a lot of sense if we agree with Draper that the total abolition of nuclear weapons is beyond us, requires two difficult steps—a sharp reduction in the numbers of nuclear weapons on both sides, and some degree of change in the weapons themselves to make them less threatening to each other. Both steps clearly depends on successful negotiations with the Soviets. In their absence we are stuck with some sort of limited nuclear war-fighting capability as the only practical deterrent to limited nuclear attack.

I stress these points because Draper too easily dismisses the proposals for no-first-use and for negotiated reductions—both important—and because he seems to feel the United States can unilaterally return to a posture of robust deterrence based on a single threat of all-out response to attack. Things have gone too far for that. The weapons designers have put paid to such an approach. The Soviets may not have to contend with public agitation in the Western style, but they do not need it. They can calculate the threat posed by vast numbers of versatile weapons as well as we can. It is the scale of that threat—persuasively described by Jonathan Schell—which explains our current and thoroughly justified alarm. If anything is to be done about it, it must be done by both sides together.

Thomas Powers

South Royalton, Vermont

To the Editors:

Your recent article by Theodore Draper is indeed a demonstration of how not to think about nuclear war. Draper’s contentious approach allows him to score points, but in doing so he discounts the authors’ efforts to confront the fears that fuel the arms race. He emphasizes weak points in the books under review and tends to disregard the strengths of their arguments. This approach to such a serious matter as the nuclear arms race reveals a sad lack of comprehension of Jonathan Schell’s major message. The Fate of the Earth is certainly often hyperbolic and vague, nevertheless it communicates, at times brilliantly, the conviction that none of the objectives for which wars have been fought throughout history can possibly be achieved if nuclear weapons are used. Therefore our thinking about wars and conflicts between nations has to change.

This change will have to include our approach to the Soviet Union. It is unrealistic to discuss the lasting trauma of the memories of the second world war in Western Europe without considering the similar trauma in the Soviet Union. As George Kennan and others who know the Russian people have attested, their sentiment for peace, although it cannot be organized, is nevertheless both strong and important politically.

Undoubtedly the fears arising from the experiences of WWII, including the specter of Munich, have been exploited by leaders of both sides to justify the ever-increasing expansion of the arms race. The advantage of proposals such as No-First-Use, Nuclear-Free Zones and the Nuclear Freeze lies in their attempt to defuse the root fears which drive the arms race, while at the same time halting the ever more dangerous arms build-up.

In our opinion, the no-first-use proposal is crucial. Contrary to what Draper argues, there is an enormous difference between a no-use pledge and a no-first-use pledge. Unfortunately, at this time, the former is not credible. But a no-first-use pledge is believable, because it makes it clear that the only use of these weapons is for deterrence. Since it works to make nuclear war less likely, it is in the self-interest of all parties.