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Is “zero” the right target for
disarmament?
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
2015, Vol. 71(1) 98–101
! The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0096340214563687
http://thebulletin.sagepub.com
A Chinese response
Li Bin
Abstract
The United States and Russia have obligated themselves to pursuing complete nuclear disarmament.
But despite the two countriesÕ treaty obligations, itÕs reasonable to wonder if Russia and the United States
will ever accept the constraints on power that total disarmament implies. Here, Wael Al Assad of Jordan (2015),
Li Bin of China, and Sinan Ulgen of Turkey (2015) debate whether complete abolition of nuclear weapons is an
appropriate goal for the disarmament movementÑor whether disarmament might proceed faster if its aim
were reducing stockpiles to the point that they represented only a minimum possible deterrent.
Keywords
chemical weapons, Geneva Protocol, intelligence, minimum deterrence, missile defense, nuclear weapons,
precision conventional weapons, strategic stability, verification, Washington Naval Treaty
uclear disarmament is proceeding
very slowly. Some have suggested
that the pace might pick up if disarmamentÕs goal were, instead of eliminating nuclear stockpiles completely,
reducing them so that they constituted
only a minimum deterrent. But how
would this approach affect the existing disarmament and nonproliferation regime?
First, it would undermine the five
nuclear weapon statesÕ solemn political
commitments to disarm. Second (and as
a result), it would undermine the nonproliferation commitments made by the
non-nuclear parties to the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty. To these nations,
complete disarmament is the core of the
N
treaty. If abolition were no longer the goal,
it would be very difficult for them to understand why they should not be allowed
to possess nuclear weapons. Non-nuclear
states could then be expected to withhold
their support from important nonproliferation efforts.
Still, under certain circumstances a
minimum-deterrence approach could
have some value. If focusing on minimum deterrence could achieve deep
nuclear cuts faster than an abolition
focus could achieve its goal, deep
cuts would have to be considered a
positive development. Even so, these
cuts would represent only an interim
step in the process toward achieving
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ÒzeroÓÑnot a replacement for disarmamentÕs original goal.
Disruptive innovation
Over the years, one of the main principles
guiding US and Russian (or Soviet)
nuclear reductions has been strategic stability. According to the theory of strategic stability, nuclear rivals have very
little incentive to launch a nuclear attack
against the other, or for that matter to
enlarge their nuclear arsenals, if the
other sideÕs arsenal contains a certain
number of survivable weapons. Minimum nuclear deterrence, then, is the strategy of maintaining the smallest force
necessary to deter nuclear attack.
For a given country, the size of a minimum nuclear deterrent depends on the
offensive and defensive capabilities of its
rivals. Today, US and Russian strategic
nuclear forces seem too large for the purposes of minimum nuclear deterrence,
while those of France, the United Kingdom,
and China may come closer to the mark. If
the United States and Russia reduced their
nuclear forces to a level appropriate for
minimum deterrence, and the other three
nuclear weapon states joined in the process, this would represent real progress
toward global disarmament.
But that doesnÕt tell the whole story.
True, a multilateral arrangement for
minimum nuclear deterrence would at
first glance seem to promote stabilityÑunder such a regime, no one would
have to worry about the size of other
countriesÕ nuclear forces. But this holds
true only if nuclear factors are taken
into account and non-nuclear factors
are ignored. That is, new technological
developments in the non-nuclear realm
could change weapon statesÕ nuclear
calculations and complicate the situation radically.
One arena for such developments might
be in intelligence capabilities. Improved
intelligence in one nuclear weapon state
always has the potential to reduce the survivability of nuclear weapons in another
nation. The state with decreased survivability then must compensate somehowÑone obvious solution being to
increase the size of its nuclear arsenal.
A second arena for disruptive technological developments is missile defense.
If any state develops effective missile
defenses, its rivals may feel the need for
a larger nuclear arsenal to penetrate the
defenses. A third arena is precision conventional strikes. Some long-range conventional weapons may become capable
of destroying an enemyÕs nuclear weapons
or disrupting nuclear launches. Again,
increasing the size of nuclear arsenals
would be a possible response. So even if
a multilateral regime for minimum nuclear
deterrence could be developed, the
arrangement would not be stable or permanent. Nations might support the regime
under certain circumstances but become
uneasy when conditions changed.
None of this would pertain if nuclear
weapons were abolished. Under an abolition scenario, strong intelligence capabilities would be a positive force because they
could detect violations against the disarmament regime. Missile defense could
deter violations because it would make a
small number of hidden nuclear weapons
less effective. Overall, technological
innovations would likely support rather
than undermine a Òglobal zeroÓ world.
Define your terms
Perhaps an even more fundamental
problem with striving for minimum
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100
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 71(1)
nuclear deterrence is that minimum
deterrence is a difficult thing to quantify.
First, no consensus exists regarding how
many retaliatory warheads are sufficient
to deter a nuclear attack. Estimates might
vary from a few dozen to a few hundred.
Second, no consensus exists regarding
how many extra nuclear warheads
might be needed to ensure survivability
against an enemyÕs nuclear and conventional attacks and to ensure penetration
of the enemyÕs missile interception
capabilities (estimates will depend on
assumptions about a rivalÕs counternuclear capabilities). Without a universally accepted way to calculate the
proper size of a minimum nuclear deterrent, limits would have to be arrived at
through negotiations. Such limits,
unavoidably, would have an arbitrary
aspect. But as for defining Òcomplete
abolition of nuclear weaponsÓ? It would
be enough to say that no country can possess any nuclear explosive device.
Similarly, verification would be simpler in a nuclear-free world than in a
regime built on minimum deterrence. In
a nuclear-free world, nations would not
need laboratories or production facilities
for nuclear weapons. They wouldnÕt need
stockpiles of fissile material. They
wouldn't need military nuclear personnel. Any evidence that these facilities,
stockpiles, or personnel existed would
be evidence of a violation. So verification
would be very straightforward. Moreover, the intrusiveness of verification
procedures would be no great concernÑif nations had no nuclear weapons
facilities or capabilities, they would not
have to worry that their nuclear weapon
designs would be detected by intrusive
inspections. Compare this to a minimum
deterrence regime, where nuclear laboratories and all the rest would still exist,
making verification much more complicated and doing nothing to reduce concerns about intrusiveness.
These difficulties with definitions and
verification provide further evidence
that minimum deterrence cannot be a
workable long-term solution to the problem of nuclear weapons. A minimum
deterrence regime might prove a useful
interim step toward disarmament. The
ultimate goal, however, must remain
complete abolition of nuclear weapons.
Step by step
How to get there? For decades, nuclear
disarmament has focused on reducing,
and placing numerical limitations on,
nuclear arsenals. But this was exactly
the approach underlying the failed
Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, which
limited the number and size of warships
that nations could deploy but did nothing
to change the notion that warships were
useful, legal weapons. As the treaty was
negotiated, the major naval powers calculated their quantitative need for warships based on the size of rival fleets
(State Department, 2014). By the middle
of the next decade, an even more intense
naval arms race had developed and the
treaty collapsedÑbecause controlling
numbers of warships didnÕt change attitudes toward warships.
The history of chemical weapons disarmament demonstrates a more promising approach. The 1925 Geneva Protocol
prohibited signatories from using chemical weaponsÑor, in some cases, from
using them first (Organisation for
the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,
2014). The protocol helped establish the
idea that, for any nation using chemical
weapons, costs would outweigh benefits.
Thus it became less likely that chemical
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Bin
101
weapons would be used, their value
dropped precipitously, and nations
became more willing to relinquish their
weapons. Today, chemical disarmament
is nearly complete.
The history of chemical disarmament
suggests two things: Beliefs about weapons are mutable and banning the use of
weapons is a good way to devalue them.
For the nuclear disarmament community,
the priority now should be delegitimizing
the use of nuclear weapons and devaluing
them in the eyes of national decision
makers. If the notion ever truly takes
hold that nuclear weaponsÕ disadvantages
outweigh their benefits, nuclear abolition
has a real chance of becoming reality.
Editor’s note
In the Development and Disarmament Roundtable
series, featured at www.thebulletin.org, experts primarily from developing countries debate topics
related to nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, climate
change, and economic development. Each author contributes an essay per round, for a total of nine essays in
an entire roundtable. This feature is made possible by
a three-year grant from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. Wael Al Assad, Li Bin, and Sinan Ulgen all contributed to the online roundtable titled ÒZero: The
Correct Goal?,Ó featured at: http://thebulletin.org/
zero-correct-goal7386.
References
Al Assad W (2015) Is ÒzeroÓ the right target for disarmament? A Jordanian response. Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists 71(1). DOI: 10.1177/0096340214563689.
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (2014) History of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Available at: http://www.opcw.org/
news-publications/publications/history-of-thechemical-weapons-convention/.
State Department, Office of the Historian (2014) The
Washington Naval Conference, 1921”1922. Available at: http://history.state.gov/milestones/19211936/naval-conference.
Ulgen S (2015) Is ÒzeroÓ the right target for disarmament? A Turkish response. Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists 71(1). DOI: 10.1177/0096340214563688.
Author biography
Li Bin is a senior associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace and a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. From
1996 to 2000, he directed the arms control division at the Beijing Institute of Applied Physics
and Computational Mathematics. His research
focuses on ChinaÕs nuclear and arms control
policy and US”China nuclear relations. He is
the author of Arms Control Theories and Analysis and co-editor of Strategy and Security:
A Technical View.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any
funding agency in the public, commercial, or notfor-profit sectors.
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