Abstract
Last year, then-bulletin editor Mike Moore argued in these pages that the “Revolution in Military affairs” (RMA) was so advanced in the United States as to produce great loathing among smaller nations (“Unintended Consequences,” January/February 2000). The U.S. lead in information warfare and precision weaponry, Moore wrote, would eventually inspire countermeasures so profound as to “make the United States less secure in the long run by encouraging the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”
The result? Nasty folks would attain an ability to wreak havoc that they would not have bothered to acquire had the United States not pursued an overwhelming lead in conventional war-fighting capability. Moore added that the U.S. military's plans for weapons in space would only intensify their efforts.
Such logic seems plausible. Ironically, it is an argument that resonates within the Pentagon. The entire theory of “asymmetric competition” presumes that foes will inevitably seek ways to counter U.S. conventional superiority. And what better route than through weapons of mass destruction (wmd)–nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons?
Moore would have the United States back off its attempts to shove its military forces into techno-overdrive (especially in space). The Defense Department, in contrast, has no such desire; it sees countering wmd as yet another item on its agenda.
Left unexamined, though, was the possibility that the linkage between the rma and nuclear proliferation does not hold. Indeed, the rma has had little discernible effect on the efforts that other nations have made to develop nuclear weapons, which are by far the most militarily useful of the wmd. In fact, the reverse may well be true: The rma reduces the rationale for nuclear acquisition on the part of states that might otherwise plan to use them against U.S. forces.
Let's take each claim in turn. A question such as, “Would the rma eventually spur countervailing wmd programs?” is tough to answer. The rma is a 50-year process that began sometime in the late 1970s (in efforts to counter the numerical superiority of Soviet tanks in the European theater), and it is only halfway complete.
Fortunately, although the start of the rma may be imprecise, the date at which it was first perceived can plausibly be fixed to the day–January 17, 1991–when U.S. bombers started coming back from Baghdad unscathed.
Until then, there was considerable doubt that the U.S. military machine would work as advertised. Influential analysts argued that Defense was putting too much stock in high technology, which could neither be maintained nor used very well and thus offered no great advantage over cheaper, lower-tech equipment (which, being indisputably cheaper, could be purchased in larger quantities).
Suddenly, their case was lost. A force equipped with high technology had worked much better than anticipated (having six months of downtime in the desert to work out the bugs did not hurt). The revolution was discovered.
One can then ask what happened before and after January 1991. Consider the nuclear weapons programs of the following countries: Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iraq, North Korea, and Iran. (There are others, but it's hard to argue that the programs of Britain, France, Israel, and potentially Taiwan, would be spurred on by the unexpectedly advanced conventional capabilities of an ally.)
Russia, it is true, has tended to emphasize its nuclear capabilities, at least rhetorically. Given the grim state to which its conventional forces have fallen (as demonstrated in the first Chechen war), the emphasis is not surprising. Yet, in its parlous state, Russia has not done much to augment its strategic forces. It has adhered to treaty limits and in November 2000 offered to make drastic cuts in its arsenal if the United States would do the same–and maybe even if not.
China is upgrading its nuclear arsenal, notably with new generations of intercontinental ballistic missiles (icbms). But China suddenly found itself labeled America's public enemy No. 1. It also had a great deal of new money to spend on toys of all sorts, thanks to a growing economy. Yet, its nuclear program has scarcely accelerated relative to its conventional modernization program. China shows no desire to match the United States bomb for bomb; it consistently maintains that its nuclear arsenal is akin to the French force du frappe–meant to deter others, but by no means capable of prevailing militarily in even the most tortured sense of the word.
India and Pakistan have developed, but not yet weap-onized, a nuclear capability. Despite the oft-quoted remark of an Indian general (who said, in essence, “Don't wage war on the United States without nuclear weapons in your back pocket”), there is no evidence that India's nuclear program is in response to the United States (much less to the U.S. rma). Indeed, India is trying to develop a new strategic relationship with the United States. Pakistan has its eyes firmly fixed on its Indian rival. No RMA echoes here.
Iraq, of course, has been forced to retreat from the nuclear capability it started working on in the 1970s–which leaves North Korea and Iran. North Korea evidenced some nuclear capability before being confronted by the United States in 1994. If its activity represented an acceleration of a pre-1991 program (information is scarce), a more potent motivation than the rma may have been that its chief patron, the Soviet Union, had started playing footsie with arch-rival South Korea even before Moscow abandoned communism.
Iran, for its part, may or may not have accelerated its nuclear program after 1991 (again, information is scarce). Although its nuclear program began during the reign of the Shah (as measured by the number of students sent to mit's nuclear engineering program), it may well have been further motivated by the Iraqi invasion in 1980, followed by eight long years of war.
“Senators! Come quick!”
Meanwhile, over the last decade or two, Argentina, Brazil, and South Africa abandoned their nuclear weapons programs. Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan gave up nuclear weapons entirely. Granted, none of these countries were hostile to the United States, although Belarus is a dictatorship, Argentina fought a war with a nato ally, and Brazil is a hemispheric rival.
So, 10 years after the rma's defining moment, there is little evidence that any country has accelerated its nuclear program as a direct result.
SO much for practice–what about theory? Contrary to Moore's argument, the U.S. rma could actually dissuade other countries from undertaking nuclear programs by making it much harder for them to find worthwhile targets among U.S. forces.
In Desert Storm, coalition forces presented a target-rich environment. Not only were there large encampments of U.S. (and allied) forces, but also ships, and physical infrastructure–ports, roads, airfields, and perhaps best of all, the cities of host nations. If that circumstance were indicative of future U.S. combat, the claim that targets would be hard to find would be difficult to back up.
But will the United States need to fight that way again? The continuing RMA is a large part of the reason why the answer may be “no”–or more precisely, “not as much.”
Desert Storm was only the beginning. Dumb rounds made up 92 percent of the ordnance used by U.S. forces; in Kosovo, dumb rounds played almost no role. And much of what took place in Kosovo involved the use of reconnaissance satellites or unmanned aerial vehicles (uavs) to identify targets, with B-2 bombers from Missouri and cruise missiles from beneath the Adriatic dispatched to destroy them–all of which came of age in the decade after Desert Storm.
Furthermore, better communications permit ground forces to function in more dispersed formations. And lean logistics and the ability to reach back to the United States for information and related services have substantially pared the number of support forces that have to be in theater.
The American way of war, after all, consists of replacing enemy assets with holes (and either occupying what remains, or having someone else do it). The rma means that it can be done using things–sensors and precision weapons–rather than personnel, and from increasingly far away.
Many U.S. force vulnerabilities persist. Most of the aircraft in the air force and sea services do not have the range to put their air bases outside of missile range. The army has yet to figure out how to get in, strike, and get out from well over the horizon. But these are not insurmountable problems.
The ability of U.S. forces to attack from stand-off range not only puts them past the reach of hostile WMD-tipped missiles, it also reduces their dependence on the logistics and communications assets of nearby host nations. Thus, the United States can more easily stare down wmd threats, knowing that the rma has given it greater freedom of action. All in all, any state tempted to respond to U.S. conventional superiority by developing WMD has to also understand that the United States will not be doing them the favor of providing useful targets.
Might countries unable to target U.S. forces take the next step and decide to target the United States itself? They might. But that kind of escalation is akin to taking two steps into the abyss (first by introducing nuclear arms, and then by targeting the U.S. homeland). A strike on the United States rather than on deployed U.S. forces would carry a much greater risk of horrifying retaliation. Furthermore, icbms are actually harder to build–and more expensive to care for–than nuclear weapons. Operating medium-range missiles on sea-worthy submarines, or aircraft capable of getting anywhere near U.S. airspace is harder yet. And covert weapon delivery is bedeviled by under-appreciated problems in moving, hiding, storing–and worse, exercising effective command and control over them.
If the United States can make missile defense work, anyone who threatens the United States had better possess icbms in quantity, and be prepared to use them all at once–there will be no second chances.
I suppose it is possible that a hostile nation would try to build a survivable nuclear force against the United States because its conventional threats against its neighbors have been frustrated by the U.S. rma. It's possible. But is it plausible? The rma can only have a dissuasive effect on the nuclear plans of others.
Finally, what of the provocative potential role of space weaponry? Provocative though it may be (it is disturbing to look up at something that could kill you at a moment's notice), such weapons are neither necessary for the RMA nor particularly cost-effective. Barring a breakthrough (after 35 years of frustration) in the cost of lifting a gram into orbit, it still takes far too much money to get kinetic weapons up, and too much time and energy to slow them down to hit anything particular on Earth. Space lasers (and other directed-energy weapons) make great viewgraphs until one considers the high cost of hauling enough chemicals into orbit to create a beam strong enough to burn through the atmosphere and have some punch left when it reaches the surface. Even surveillance satellites are of limited targeting use because they are often elsewhere when something actionable takes place below. For the rma, unmanned vehicles and precision guided munitions will do just fine.
One can hardly argue that the original purpose of the rma (countering Soviet tank battalions) was to discourage nuclear use (except indirectly, by discouraging Soviet adventurism). In that sense, the link between the rma and nuclear weapons was unintended. As it is, history offers little evidence that other countries have responded to the U.S. RMA by revving up their nuclear programs. And logic suggests that they may as well not bother. That may be an unintended consequence of the rma; but it would be a welcome one.