Arms Control, the Frg, and the Future of East-West Relations by Wolfram F Hanrieder

Author:Wolfram F Hanrieder [Hanrieder, Wolfram F]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367013776
Google: Is9hxgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 49529564
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

Responses to Criticisms of No First Use

Most European critics of no first use argue that no conventional force posture could deter conflict in Europe as effectively as does the threat of escalation to global nuclear war and that the consequences of even a conventional war in Europe with modern weapons would be so devastating that it must be prevented at all costs (Kaiser et al., 1982; Krell et al., 1983). They fear, in other words, that no first use, in the attempt to reduce the danger of nuclear war in Europe, will increase the danger of a conventional war that would not be notably less destructive. They tend to see the a priori probability of conventional war as much higher than that of nuclear war, arguing that the policy of "first use if necessary" is reducing a large danger (conventional war) by a lot at the expense of increasing a small danger (nuclear war) only a little—a good trade.

I believe this logic is flawed. First, as I have already argued above, the probability of a general conventional war in Europe would be very small even if nuclear weapons did not exist at all. Second, of the additional reduction in this probability that nuclear weapons provide, a much larger part derives from their mere existence on both sides than from NATO's declared polciy of "first use if necessary" and the arrangements designed to back it up. Third, while it is true that a general conventional war in Europe would be catastrophic, it is far from clear that all or even most conventional conflicts that are conceivable would escalate so far. Indeed, it is in part because escalation looks so much harder to control in a nuclear than in a conventional conflict that a NATO posture promising early nuclearization is a prescription for disaster: This posture may contribute somewhat to reducing the already small chance of a premeditated massive conventional attack, but it increases substantially the chance that smaller but much more probable conventional conflicts originating in any number of ways (some now foreseeable and others probably not) would escalate to general nuclear war. These considerations turn on its head the claim that the threat of first use makes a big problem much smaller while making a small one only a bit bigger.

Critics of no first use are reluctant to give up the deterrent benefit of Soviet uncertainty about whether NATO would respond to a conventional attack with nuclear weapons, but, again, they seem not to have considered how much of this uncertainty derives ultimately from the existence of nuclear weapons rather than from an explicit policy and posture of first use. Increasing Soviet uncertainty beyond the level created by the mere existence of nuclear weapons on both sides might be worthwhile if it were not too expensive, but the costs of doing so through the first-use posture are too high: They include, as argued above, the aggravation of the risks in what are already the most dangerous pathways to nuclear war and the neglect of practical options for strengthening conventional deterrence.

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