It Works until It Doesn’t
At the Congress of Vienna, the European rulers decided upon an alliance system to counter any new threat like Napoleon. They all agreed to this settlement, as Napoleon had shaken the foundations of imperial Europe. From thereon, the European rulers relied on alliances to maintain the balance of power. This alliance system was further reinforced by Otto von Bismarck. The alliance system worked under the logic that by creating a chain of alliances, states could make the prospect of war so destructive that everyone would avoid it.
This was quite similar to the present concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) in nuclear strategy. The alliance system worked great until it did not. Europe saw the greatest era of peace since Pax Romana, with no major war for 99 years after the Congress of Vienna. However, when it stopped working, it culminated in the greatest war the world had ever seen with around 40 million casualties.
This raises a grave question about the longevity of the MAD doctrine. It has been working for 70 years but how much longer will it last? Humanity cannot afford to see through its failure, and we have already witnessed some very close calls with the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Able Archer Incident. There is a need to re-evaluate our nuclear strategies today. The advancements in the realms of artificial intelligence, cyber, and automated weapon systems like LAWS and LARS have brought new challenges to states.
The Incompatible MAD & Nuclear Deterrence
The lines of thresholds—already blurred by non-state actors, proxy wars, and irregular warfare—are incomprehensible today. States need to take this issue seriously and figure out new approaches to this issue. The Cold War doctrines are just not compatible with the challenges of the 21st century.
“Nuclear deterrence is like two scorpions in a bottle. Each can kill the other, but if one stings, the other will die from the poison too.”
Robert Oppenheimer
The fundamental flaw in deterrence theory is that it is built on the assumption that all actors are rational and will act rationally. Rationality, however, is not an objective phenomenon. What is rational for me may not always be rational for you. What may or may not be considered rational is shaped by values, goals, the availability of information, culture, and context. This is why different actors like the USA, China, Russia, North Korea, and Israel cannot be expected to behave as per the same benchmarks of rationality, since everything from their strategic culture to history, goals, values, and worldview is different altogether. This provides them with their unique subjective rationality.
Strong emphasis on a policy of deterrence can increase the risk of an accidental war in the event of any technical or human error, such as the Able Archer incident. Following the deterrence theory only leaves room for an ensuing arms race, which invokes the security dilemma. A security dilemma is when the strengthening of capabilities by State A induces State B, resulting in reciprocated measures by State B and so on. This can easily translate into an escalation of hostilities between the two states. In the nuclear age, a miscalculation is not just a blunder, it’s a potential apocalypse, and the fog of war can easily become the fog of nuclear winter.
On top of all that, nuclear deterrence does not even guarantee peace between states, as conventional war under the nuclear umbrella has been becoming the norm, thus leading to much regional instability. The economic costs of maintaining a fully credible, capable, and communicated deterrence are also extremely high, which takes a toll on human development priorities. Lastly, a fully functional deterrence strategy also has adverse psychological impacts on society as the deterrence rhetoric starts a normalization of threats and desensitizes the masses for acceptable mass murder policies.
Still, with all these consequences, deterrence is not a credible strategy. It is a strange game; the only winning move is not to play. Its chances of failure remain high and the world can surely not afford to see its failure. There is an immediate need to reorient our priorities and build a new global strategic culture based on confidence-building measures (CBMs), acceptance, and peaceful co-existence instead of nuclear deterrence. Instead of building walls, we need to build bridges—bridges of trust, bridges of cooperation, and bridges of understanding.
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