BOOKSHELF: Mutually Assured DestructionThe Cold Comfort of Mutually Assured Destruction
Decades after the end of the Cold War, scholars have begun to cast doubt on what has been taught about nuclear weapons in graduate schools – especially the notion of “nuclear revolution,” that is, that the condition of mutually assured destruction (MAD) would promote stability among the great powers. If nuclear weapons-based deterrence is not robust, but rather delicate, then “This is a book that the field of security studies will need to grapple with, since it overturns much of what scholars believe about nuclear deterrence,” Jasen Castillo writes.
A review of Brendan Rittenhouse Green, The Revolution that Failed: Nuclear Competition, Arms Control, and the Cold War (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
Decades after the end of the Cold War, scholars have begun to cast doubt on what has been taught about nuclear weapons in graduate schools – especially the notion of “nuclear revolution,” that is, that the condition of mutually assured destruction (MAD) would promote stability among the great powers.
Jasen Castillo, who, as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, studied under Charles Glaser and John Mearsheimer, says that, for him, the realization that nuclear weapons do not necessarily promote stability in the relations among great powers, “comes as somewhat of a shock.”
Writing in War on the Rocks, Castillo notes that he had entertained such heresies for a while. “If the theory [of stability-promoting nuclear weapons] is so powerful, then why can it not explain the Cold War arms race? Why did leaders in the United States, NATO, and the Soviet Union not take comfort in MAD? Surely there must be more going on here than simply the suboptimal behavior of dunderheaded policymakers?”
Brendan Rittenhouse Green has provided a very compelling answer to these questions in his creative new book, The Revolution that Failed: Nuclear Competition, Arms Control, and the Cold War. Not only is this volume a balm for my distress, it also makes two important contributions to our understanding of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War. At the outset, Green provides a compelling strategic logic to explain why the United States and the Soviet Union pursued competitive nuclear weapons policies, including in the arena of arms control. Competition made good strategic sense because policymakers had doubts about the survivability of nuclear arsenals; the political and territorial status quo did not always seem clear or obvious; and strategists on both sides could never know for certain that their adversary believed in MAD. Put another way, both the balance of interests and the balance of power are hard to measure. Complicating matters further, a country that showed that it did not believe in MAD might gain bargaining advantages in a crisis.
….
If Green is right, and I think he is, his work calls into question the alleged benefits that should arise when nuclear-armed powers live under the condition of mutually assured destruction. International politics, his book posits, is not particularly stable in these circumstances. Theorists of the nuclear revolution discount the uncertainty about the survivability of nuclear arsenals that can arise with improvements in military technology. They also discount the ambiguity surrounding the political and territorial status quo. As a result, we should expect competition and crises, rather than the stable world predicted by the theory of the nuclear revolution. Green does a good job of explaining the wide-ranging implications of his argument for both international relations theory and national security policy. For example, optimists about nuclear proliferation need to exercise greater caution about the spread of nuclear weapons if they engender competition rather than peace.
China is increasing its nuclear arsenal, as does North Korea. Iran is enriching uranium at a much faster rate than it did before the 2015 nuclear deal. India and Pakistan are improving their nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Russia has developed hypersonic delivery vehicles. In 1981, Kenneth Waltz published his famous Adelphi Paper, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better, in which he argued that the destructive power of nuclear weapons is incontestable, and that the awareness of this destructiveness would tame and restrain even the more adventurous leaders, thus leading to greater stability. But if nuclear weapons-based deterrence is not robust, but rather delicate, then “This is a book that the field of security studies will need to grapple with, since it overturns much of what scholars believe about nuclear deterrence,” Castillo writes.
Such a finding is important for today’s policymakers, who have recently rediscovered — with too much enthusiasm — great-power competition. The Revolution that Failed should remind us that when it comes to nuclear weapons, such competitions are difficult and dangerous.
