The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a publication founded in the dawn of the nuclear age to promote the gospel of arms-control doctrine under the guise of empirical science, in 1947 set its “Doomsday Clock” at seven minutes to midnight. The clock metaphor was chosen by the editors to signal how close they thought the world then was to nuclear extinction.
Periodically the editors set a new time, when they decide that a significant event has altered the world’s nuclear risk level. Twice the clock reached two minutes to midnight—in 1949, upon the first Russian A-bomb test, and in 1953, after the 1952 American H-bomb test. It stood at three minutes to midnight in 1984 when Ronald Reagan allowed the Soviets to walk away from the bargaining table. When the INF Treaty became reality four years later, on Ronald Reagan’s terms, it was moved back to six before the witching hour. The end of the Cold War in 1991 pushed the clock back to 18 minutes to Doomsday—the furthest from Doomsday it has ever been. During President George W. Bush’s second term it was pushed to five minutes to midnight, as the hydra-headed Islamist monster surfaced and struck. On January 14, 2010, following U.S.-Russian arms talks and President Obama’s call for a nuclear-free world, it was moved back to six before. On January 10, 2012, the clock was moved back to five minutes to midnight, due to lack of progress in arms reduction over the past two years.
It is tempting to dismiss the clock as all for show, and indeed those positioning it have conceded that its original time setting was theater to grab public attention. It is certainly not scientific, in any real sense. Rather, it is ideological. Only arms agreements seem to move the clock back, while saber rattling or breakdowns in negotiations seem to nudge it forward. Yet, with proliferation attained by rogues, and Islamist fanatics in search of their jihadist nuclear genie, time is running out. After two-thirds of a century without a nuclear attack, even a single nuclear detonation would tragically alter the course of history, causing catastrophic loss of life and damaging the global economy to the tune of trillions of dollars—a reality even President Obama recognized in his 2009 Prague address. Depending upon what form such a nuclear attack takes, Western civilization would at minimum suffer a devastating blow to societal cohesion; in an absolute worst case it might be extinguished permanently.
It is not too late to act. But we must act decisively and soon, focusing on threats of today, understanding the past as it actually unfolded and the lessons it teaches, and deferring utopian projects for a nuclear-free future and benevolent world government. THE BEDROCK GOAL OF NUCLEAR STRATEGY FOR CIVILIZED NATIONS MUST BE TO AVOID WHAT MIGHT BE CALLED THE “APOCALYPTIC TRINITY” OF STRATEGIC NUCLEAR OPTIONS: MUTUAL SUICIDE, GENOCIDE, OR SURRENDER—in the words of strategist Raymond Aron—submission “to a detestable world order provided it dispels the agonies of individual insecurity and collective suicide.” This goal makes up the Twelfth—and most fundamental—Lesson of nuclear-age history.
We must take preventive action to foster regime change in nations whose acquisition of nuclear weapons creates grave risk of nuclear catastrophe. As a last resort, if other means fail, a preventive military option must be preserved. Failure to take necessary active measures to defend against nuclear-armed missiles and passive measures to harden societal infrastructure essential to life and health greatly increases the payoff for surprise attacks. Such lapses simply increase chances that attacks will be carried out and succeed.
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought,” Albert Einstein said, “but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” To have the best chance to avoid nuclear catastrophe, we should absorb the right lessons from the two-thirds of a century we call the nuclear age. We should keep in mind Dean Rusk’s tart quip that “only one-third of the world is asleep at any given time and the other two-thirds is up to something.”
President Obama’s utopian rush towards nuclear abolition ignores the vital lessons nuclear-age history teaches. His abject failure to support the Iranian uprising of June 2009 by leading an allied coalition to impose strong sanctions then, instead of pursuing talks that had no plausible chance to succeed, exemplifies why we are sleepwalking towards an avoidable nuclear catastrophe. Equally risky is his desire to “set an example” for other nations to follow in reducing nuclear arms, when our adversaries are more likely to increase their arsenals instead, in pursuit of greater power and influence.
History’s Twelve Vital Nuclear-Age Lessons
TWO-THIRDS OF a century offer up twelve guidelines for leaders in public office.
1. Arms control cannot be viewed in isolation, but rather must be considered along with an adversary’s conduct.
2. Arms agreements must be based upon genuine, not presumed, commonality of strategic interest.
3. Revolutionary powers cannot be contained; they must be defeated.
4. Nuclear weapons give nations a “dying sting” capability that virtually precludes preemptive action and confers near-total survival insurance.
5. The nuclear balance matters if any party to a conflict thinks it matters, and thus alters its behavior.
6. Civilian nuclear power inherently confers military nuclear capability.
7. Intelligence cannot reliably predict when closed societies go nuclear.
8. Ally proliferation can be prevented only by superpower constancy.
9. Popular pressure for unilateral disarmament can prevail unless Western governments explain its hidden, grave dangers.
10. Disarming hostile powers cannot be done by negotiations alone.
11. Never allow single or low-number points of catastrophic vulnerability.
12. Nuclear policy must be fundamentally defensive: its goal is to avoid the apocalyptic trinity of suicide, genocide, and surrender.
In applying these lessons it is supremely important to distinguish between three classes of adversary states: rivals, rogues, and revolutionaries. Rivals, like China and Russia, do not desire our outright destruction; their interests are too intertwined with our survival to allow for that. But they do desire to displace us in primacy of influence in world affairs. China desires to attain the supreme position it enjoyed for most of the past two millennia as the world’s preeminent power; it is beginning this quest by seeking to become primary power in the western Pacific region. For its part, Russia desires to regain the territories it controlled before the end of the Cold War. Rivals, however, may aid rogue regimes by transferring military and nuclear technology.
Rogues, like North Korea, do not necessarily seek to dominate a region. Rather they seek to ensure their own survival. Towards this end, nuclear weapons are the best survival insurance policy their leaders can purchase.
Revolutionaries, like Iran, seek not merely to adjust their position in the existing global order, but to overturn that order and establish a new one. Iran’s leaders are militant Islamists who ardently desire the destruction of Great Satan America and Little Satan Israel. These regimes are least likely to be peacefully persuaded to change their course.
Of the 12 lessons history offers as to nuclear policy, lessons 3, 6, and 11 are those that address the most immediate threats facing the civilized world: a revolutionary Iran in hot pursuit of nuclear weapon status (3); the danger of more rogue proliferation through careless diffusion of civilian nuclear technology (6); and the risk of nuclear blackmail if leaders leave their country open to potentially catastrophic single-point strikes from hostile powers willing to take extreme risks (11). Failure to fully meet these challenges would present civilized peoples with apocalyptic choices, with the least bad achievable outcome a Pyrrhic victory.