The Nuclear Revolution: Deterrence, Flexible Response, Massive Retaliation, Medium Nuclear States and the Impossibility of Victory

November, 2013

In August 1945 the United States military dropped nuclear devices on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, directly or indirectly bringing about the end of WWII. These attacks were the first and—so far—last time atomic weapons have been used in war. I argue these attacks represented a ‘nuclear revolution’, the dawning of a new era in which the character of warfare was dramatically altered. Anyone who then or since has witnessed the consequences of their use understands that the awesome destructive power of atomic weapons is greater than anything the world has seen before. However there is more to this fundamental change. Below I will explore three additional dimensions of this shift in the nature of military conflict: the impossibility of victory in nuclear war, how the revolutionary character of atomic weapons bolstered smaller states as much as large, and how the concept of deterrence turned warfare on its head to explain why the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the beginning of this ‘nuclear revolution’, signalling a fundamental change in the character of warfare.

Nuclear War Cannot Be Won
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki represented a revolution in that they marked the beginning of a new era of warfare in which neither side could, no matter the outcome, claim military victory. Both parties would stand to lose so much that even if one side were left standing, they would preside only over a ruined world. A mass nuclear first strike and ‘mass retaliation’ would leave the world decimated. This state of affairs is ‘mutually-assured destruction’ (Jervis, 1989:4).

U.S. President Eisenhower (1956, cited ibid.: 5) held that nuclear war means destruction of the enemy and likely ‘suicide’ for the victor. In all previous iterations of warfare, from archaic and ancient to modern up to 1945, there was still some way to determine that one side had come out ahead of the other, whether the measure was military, economic or political. In a full-scale nuclear war, the destruction by both sides following a mass first-strike and mass retaliation would be so total that any national government which scurried out of their bunker after the exchange would have nothing left to rule over. It can hardly be imagined that any political, military or economic goal would be worth risking such an outcome to any rational actor. Ambrose quotes Eisenhower (1954, cited ibid.: 4) as questioning his Joint Chiefs of Staff what could be done with such a victory with society in North America, Europe and Asia destroyed, devoid of communications and virtually devoid of life. That cannot be seen as a victory in any sense. French President Charles de Gaulle held, “[After nuclear war, the] two sides would have neither powers, nor laws, nor cities, nor cultures, nor cradles, nor tombs” (ibid.: 1).

The ‘Flexible Response’ doctrine attempted to address Ike’s bleak picture of mutually-assured destruction through first-strike and mass retaliation. Advocates of the policy such as Colin Gray (1981: 47-9) argued that U.S. nuclear strategy should not be based upon a large-scale unleashing of the full nuclear arsenal upon Soviet cities and industrial areas likely to be met with an equal reaction from Moscow, but rather based upon a more restrained, step-laddered approach where tit-for-tat nuclear strikes, though heavily damaging, would still leave open the possibility for diplomatic negotiations and a political climb-down before the conflict reaches nuclear Armageddon. Such a nuclear exchange would leave open the possibility of one side or the other ‘winning’ without destroying society as we know it (ibid.).

However critics of Flexible Response such as David Dessler (1982: 55-7) argue the idea was wrongheaded. Such a policy could lead to ‘deterrence failure’ if the Soviets did not believe the U.S. would respond massively in kind to a nuclear attack, thus inviting them to try their luck. It also ignored Moscow’s ‘strategic culture’, namely that the USSR utterly rejected a graduated response in favour of massive retaliation. In this view, attempts to lessen the costs of a nuclear war could in fact increase the likelihood of nuclear war occurring (ibid.). According to Schelling (1963: 6), pursuing a ‘lesser evil’ policy of limiting war below massive retaliation detracts from deterrence because the reduced threat this implies may not create enough disincentive for a would-be attacker. Thus if the Soviet Union mounted a mass nuclear attack, the U.S. would be faced with the option of hoping to absorb it and respond with a step-laddered approach or respond immediately in kind. The USSR had stated its policy, thus eliminating any real options in a U.S. response. Thibaut and Kelley (1959, cited in Jervis, 1989: 3) call this the difference between ‘fate-control’ and ‘behaviour-control’—namely that the U.S. and USSR controlled one another’s fates in a nuclear exchange, but U.S. Flexible Response policy could not control Soviet behaviour, only hope to influence it. If the Soviets struck, their policy stated it would be en masse. The only hope was that a limited U.S. action would reciprocate a limited reaction from Moscow—a rather risky idea.

Further, Ball’s (1981) analysis of American and Soviet nuclear command and control systems calls into question the ability of either side in a nuclear exchange to control their response in a coordinated way once a nuclear engagement has begun as communications and firing control systems would likely be destroyed or break down and/or political and military leadership may be eliminated. If true, the advantage will lay with the party conducting the first strike and seriously degrade or even eliminate the possibility of a retaliatory strike if not conducted immediately or simultaneously. This reinforces the idea that nuclear strikes must be an ‘all or nothing’, massive force affair; otherwise the loss of command and control may render any non-immediate response ineffective or impossible (ibid.).

Fortunately the impossibility of victory or the rectitude of mass retaliation or Flexible Response have never been, and hopefully never will be, tested in practice. In any case, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a revolution in that they signalled the beginning of a phase when both sides had to take into account that a nuclear war meant neither side could ever really claim victory, a wholly revolutionary state of affairs in the history of conflict.

A Revolution for ‘Medium’ Nuclear States
Possession of nuclear weapons was also a revolution for powers smaller than the U.S. and USSR. It meant states with relatively small militaries, small population and/or smaller industrial and financial resources—though large enough to develop and maintain nuclear weapons—could keep up with states with vastly more such resources.

This aspect was especially important for Western second-tier nuclear powers such as Britain and France who were able to maintain a degree of influence over collective security in the new bipolar world, unlike satellites of the Soviet Union such as Hungary, East Germany and Bulgaria (Mastny, 2005: 30-1). Because of the military and political influence nuclear weapons granted them, Britain and France arguably maintained more influence in the U.S.-dominated Western bloc than did their Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact opposite numbers. The USSR wholly rejected the idea of arming its satellite states with an independent capability, refusing to help them build their own programs or even to jointly develop Warsaw Pact nuclear strategy (ibid.). In this regard, nuclear weapons were a revolutionary tool for less powerful states to stay in the game militarily and politically.

According to Clark and Wheeler (1989: 43), the 1947 British decision to pursue the bomb was, “So self-evident as to require no compelling strategic assessment in support of it.” Though individual policymakers had their own reasons, there was never any doubt Britain would pursue atomic weapons (ibid.). In 1945, the Soviet military had consisted of 6 million service personnel (Dear and Foot, 2005: 966) and the United States had over 8 million spread across North America, Europe and Asia (ibid.: 931). Britain had only 4.6 million in uniform (ibid.: 884) to cover home and all of its international empire. Britain’s domestic economy was greatly strained under the heavy burden of war-related debt and the costs of conventional forces had to be reduced (Clark and Wheeler, 1989: 25-30). The argument would frequently be put forward, predominantly in the early 1950s, that investment in nuclear arms would translate into cost savings by reducing Britain’s need for conventional forces (ibid.: 27). Though pursuing atomic weapons was not cheap for Britain, they were certainly more obtainable than attempting to build as many conventional bombers, tanks and artillery pieces to stay relevant in the contest between the U.S. and USSR and simultaneously attempting to maintain the standard of living at home. Both the United States and Britain came to see nuclear weapons as a set-off to reducing spending on conventional forces (Pierre, 1972: 87-8). It is arguable that while Britain lost political and economic influence and shed its colonial empire following WWII, developing nuclear arms kept London at the table with Washington and Moscow while it cut spending on conventional forces and rebuilt the economy at home.

According to Stoddart (2007), this lesson was not lost on Charles de Gaulle, who, in a similar situation economically, was already pursuing an independent path for France after splitting with the U.S. and Britain over NATO policy. De Gaulle hoped to convince Britain to help France obtain its own nuclear capability quicker and cheaper and there is good evidence Britain traded atomic know-how, telling French atomic scientists what not to do, for UK accession to the European Economic Community in 1972 (ibid.). Though France was late to enter the Cold War nuclear club, the capability made sure France was still a player in the politics of the era.

The nuclear era, ushered in by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, represented a revolution for Britain, France and later smaller powers in that developing their own independent nuclear capabilities allowed them to influence the actions powers such as the United States and USSR, relieved some of their budget pressures, and allowed them to have a significant say in their independent and collective security.

Deterrence Turns War on its Head
One of the major facets of the revolution in the character or warfare that followed the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was that nuclear weapons turned the focus of military power on its head. As Brodie states, “Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them” (1946, cited in Jervis, 1989: 7). Schelling (1963: 9) called deterrence, “A theory of the skilful nonuse of military forces” (original emphasis).

There were differences in how these states viewed the use of their nuclear weapons and how credible the threat of their use was (Pierre, 1972: 87). Britain and France could not afford to build a nuclear arsenal capable of credibly threatening the Soviet Union with the same level of mutually-assured destruction America could. However atomic weapons meant they possessed their own independent nuclear capabilities which could still inflict a degree of ‘punishment’ on Soviet cities in a nuclear exchange that would be high enough to deter Moscow from attacking (ibid.).

According to Pierre (ibid.), Britain’s 1952 ‘Global Strategy Paper’ called nuclear weapons a revolution in the character of warfare. It was also the first policy paper to call for a strategy based upon the concept of deterrence, picked up in the United States by President Eisenhower’s ‘New Look’ policy (ibid.). The idea was for the West to openly state that Soviet military advances would be met with an atomic response, not just local, conventional action. Deterrence would make clear to Moscow that any aggression would be met not solely at distant points of friction between East and West, but would strike at the centre of the USSR itself (ibid.). Moscow would not be allowed to whittle away at the margins by taking calculated risks. The idea was to promise to punish the Soviets severely for any attack on Western interests.

Jervis (1989:6-9) points out that the speed and scale of destruction wrought by atomic weapons is such that their use is almost unthinkable despite the clear offensive advantage they represent. Conventional weapons such as artillery and strategic bombers and methods such as sieges and blockades could rationally deliver as much ‘punishment’ through destruction, but could do so only very slowly, very intensively and very expensively. Such conventional methods are calculated to bring an opponent down before their destruction was total and certainly before the act became destructive to the aggressor as well and still left time for diplomacy and second thoughts (ibid.). Nuclear weapons are of such awesome power and so fast and absolute in their destruction that there can be no real rational basis for their use. When both sides possess nuclear weapons, the destruction is mutual and virtually simultaneous. Cities are destroyed within hours and no time is left for negotiation. Rationally, their character becomes therefore more responsive than active or offensive. Facing such destruction, an opponent will be demur from attacking in the face of this scale of ‘deterrence by punishment’ (ibid.).

Another aspect of nuclear capability is that it defeats ‘deterrence by denial’. In conventional war, the credible ability of a state to repel or defend itself against attack by an opponent is ‘denial capability’ (Snyder, 1961: 3-5). Defence is the actual capability to repel an attack. A state that is credibly seen to be capable of defending itself by inflicting damage on any aggressor will deter an aggressor from attacking—deterrence by denial. However, nuclear weapons make defence impossible and thus eliminate deterrence by denial (ibid.).

The creation of a weapon that can hardly be defended against is a revolution, further exhibited in the unique response to the prospect of developing capability to defend against them. The development of every other weapon in history has logically led to the development of a defence, leading, of course, to further improvements to the weapon or new weapons to overcome that defence. Swords and arrows were countered by shields and armour. Bullets and artillery were countered by flak jackets and Kevlar helmets. As yet, there is no credible defence against a nuclear attack. The position of nuclear weapons in this regard was revolutionary because both the U.S. and USSR agreed not to fully develop a defence against them. U.S thinkers argued stability could be gained through this concept of ‘mutual vulnerability’, though both sides continued to attempt to develop nuclear defences to varying degrees (Yost, 2007: 555). Barnaby (1969: 26-35) writes comprehensively on the arguments for and against developing anti-ballistic missile systems and exhibits the difficulty in coming to any conclusion as to whether developing such a defensive capability actually provides increased security or if it decreases security. In the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, the U.S. and USSR agreed to limit their capability to destroy each other’s incoming nuclear missiles to one battery of interceptors each. Later, Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or ‘Star Wars’, missile defence programme threatened to derail nuclear arms reduction talks. Though the feasibility of such a program was questioned, it presented enough of a threat to the balance of nuclear power to Moscow that Premier Mikhail Gorbechev was induced to sign the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Agreement, a bilateral treaty to eliminate IRBMs and SRBMs, in exchange U.S. promises regarding the SDI (Boyd and Scouras, 2013; Norman, 1986). Never before had a weapon of war been considered so essential or given so much credence as to induce two powers to agree not to develop a defence against it in order to maintain peace.

Conclusion
Besides the great destructive power nuclear weapons represent as shown through the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons were a revolution that changed the character of warfare. Conflicts in which both opponents possess nuclear weapons made victory in war for either side impossible, despite risky attempts to control the destruction through Flexible Response. Atomic weapons gave smaller states such as Britain and France more leverage, independence, and economic relief than they would have otherwise had, shown more clearly in contrast with their Warsaw Pact counterparts who were denied the capability. The deterrent effect nuclear weapons created and virtual impossibility of defending against them meant that military strategy was now more concerned with avoiding war than with winning it. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki truly marked a ‘nuclear revolution’ that brought about a fundamental shift in the character of warfare.




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Antagonizing America: Our Enemies Depend Upon us

This article originally appeared on The Truman Doctrine on 28 March 2013.

There’s a theory that says when you’re the new kid in a rough neighborhood the first thing you should do is find the biggest, toughest kid on the block and punch him in the face. The sheer audacity of the act will make anyone else think twice about tangling with you, especially if you manage to go toe-to-toe for a few rounds before losing. Power perceived is power achieved–until the contrary is proven. America is the biggest, toughest kid on the block. There is value in antagonizing America.

“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders … tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” –Hermann Goering

This is very much the idea that states such as Iran follow. The regime gains its power by focusing the minds of the population on a common enemy—America. The weekly anti-American demonstrations in Tehran, complete with flag burning, occur with such clockwork regularity that they have to come up with new gimmicks just to keep people interested.

It’s been said they pay people from the countryside to come into the city for a day to hold up signs and chant. Who wouldn't like to hop on a bus for a day in the city on the government’s dime? What university student would turn down a few bucks for burning a flag?

There’s nothing like an enemy to focus the mind of the people on external factors. The benefit is that while they’re worried about the enemy outside their borders they won’t give too much thought to life and problems within their own. Keeping the country safe from the enemy is a good justification for all kinds of internal security measures that would be questionable in other circumstances. A perpetual state of wariness exists on a pseudo-wartime footing.

Ironically, the Iranian regime and other dictatorships and theocracies like it throughout the world depend upon the United States. Their continued grip on power depends upon having America as an enemy to rattle their saber against. They derive their power from a manufactured need to bravely resist American imperialism that would destroy their culture and way of life. Every time commodity prices go up and put strain on peoples’ wallets, it can be blamed upon the enemy and their embargo, not on the regime and its actions or policies.

North Korea under the Kim dynasty has made an art of cycling between alternately opposing and folding to America and its allies. They develop nuclear weapons and elicit all manner of inducements from the West to get rid of them. The U.S. has delivered hundreds of thousands of tons of food aid, almost none of which made to ordinary Koreans.

After the Obama administration structured the aid to ensure it reached the people directly, the North called it off, going ahead with missile tests, beginning to rebuild its dismantled nuclear facilities and has recently threatened nuclear war against South Korea and the United States. There are signs the North is preparing for another underground nuclear test.

However, two or three years from now America and its P+5 allies will likely find themselves on the verge of another diplomatic breakthrough with North Korea. But once again, the North will snatch final victory from our mouths and the cycle will begin again. Iran follows a similar pattern in its own nuclear talks with America. Every time a breakthrough is reported through public or back channels and there seems to be progress, it runs off the rails almost like clockwork.

If Iran were really determined to build a nuclear arsenal, they could certainly have done so by now. Pakistan did so as a hedge against India and we couldn't or didn't do a lot to stop it. Some have been predicting a nuclear-armed Iran since the 1990’s. In reality, it isn't the nuclear weapons Iran is seeking; it is the confrontation and antimony with America that it wants and depends upon. Iran has had an open door to developing nuclear weapons for many years now and will likely sit on the fence for years to come.

None of this makes Iran or North Korea stuffed tigers. The Iranian regime has done actual damage to America going back to 1979 and the Cold War. Anywhere America becomes involved in the Middle East, Iran backs the other horse. It funds international terrorist groups, targeting Israel in particular. In Iraq, Iranian intelligence operatives were caught on the ground by U.S. forces and their footprint was easily seen in the training, weapons and explosives training funneled to the insurgency there. Iranian operations have likely killed thousands of Americans directly and indirectly.

The deep cult-of-personality that exists around Kim Jong-un and his father before him is grounds to wonder if North Korea will one day stop being a rational actor. Right now, Kim has decided that he is going to punch tough-kid America in the face to show the world and his people that he is made of sterner stuff. However, if he begins to believe his own propaganda and it turns to mania, he has his fingers on a lot of buttons.

Understanding this behavior is important. Unfortunately our response often seems to be to adopt the same model of these states in our own national political discourse on the topic. The war drums come out and red lines are drawn. Accusations are hurled back and forth and there’s a scramble to take up the patriotic mantle.

The Global War on Terror has been used to excuse many security measures in America wholly unacceptable in other circumstances. If we have learned anything in the last decade of conflict, it is that we should never sleepwalk towards war as inevitability without a full consideration of its necessity and aftermath and a wholehearted commitment to seeing it through to the end if we do.

Will Military Action Be Necessary to Stop Iran's Nuclear Program?

The article appeared on Truman Doctrine and PolicyMic in December, 2012.

At times America has hesitated to act when it should or could have. Earlier action against Iran could have halted their nuclear program, as in the case of Israel’s strikes against Syria’s and Iraq’s nascent nuclear programs. Decisive action could have prevented genocide in Sudan or the proliferation of nuclear technology to Pakistan and North Korea. Many question if we have hesitated too long to act in Syria, against spreading Islamism in Africa or in closer conflicts such as the cartel wars in Mexico. However, U.S. interventions in the Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Libya were swift, clearly defined and decisive.

At times over the last few decades it has been hard to answer the question of what America seeks to achieve in the world. Our overarching national security goal should be to secure American victory. It may seem a semantic point at first, but there is a major difference in thought between protecting America and its interests and pushing America and its interests forward. It is the difference between reaching acceptable compromises to live with our foes or defeating our opponents finally and decisively.

Many Western countries are guilty of drawing lines in the sand and when the line is crossed they just draw a new one. Israel has been drawing red lines regarding Iran’s nuclear program and stepping back every time. Some have recently argued the U.S. should draw a line alongside them. It arguably erodes credibility to characterise certain conditions as ‘unacceptable’ and then accept them. However, the important point is not that we should fight when our line is crossed, but that we should be more considered about when and where we draw them.

There is just as much danger in pushing your chips forward too early, or not pushing forward enough of them, as there is in hesitating too long. Iraq and Afghanistan are illustrations of this point. Iraq was a war commenced on false pretences which never had clearly defined goals and drew focus away from Afghanistan, a war which could have been won in the beginning but was allowed to drift into today’s stalemate. Both of these conflicts suffered from insufficient troop numbers, divided focus, and unclear goals.

It is for these reasons that America should be hesitant to draw red lines when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program now. We should not allow sabre rattling and rhetoric to draw us into a fight before we are ready or before it is necessary. The propaganda spiral moved America to war in Iraq with the argument we couldn’t afford to wait. Had we waited and asked more questions it may have become clear how unnecessary it was and how profligate it became. Once the propaganda cycle has begun in earnest, it becomes very hard to back away from the precipice. We should not be in a rush to reach this point of no return. It may pull us into a third conflict before we have ended or recovered from the other two.

And that would indeed be a great tragedy. A truly nuclear armed Iranian military presents a greater national security threat to the United States than Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden ever did. If or when that point is reached, we should be rested and ready to devote our full strength and attention to confronting it. The spectre of a nuclear armed Iran is not just a straw man. Iran and the U.S. and its allies have been fighting proxy wars in the Middle East for 30 years. Iran is already directly and indirectly responsible for the death of thousands of Americans and our allies in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and in acts of terror elsewhere. Those who portray Iran as an innocent victim of U.S. or Western aggression simply defending itself or being made a target because they challenge our hegemony are wrong.

The truth is that Iran is much further from this point than often portrayed. There are disagreements as to the amount of fissile material Iran has and America and its allies have already scored big hits against their refinement capability using the embargo and the Stuxnet virus. But refinement is only a part of the process. Nuclear warheads require a delivery vehicle with a complex guidance capability — an intercontinental ballistic missile system. Though this technology is easier to master and obtain than nuclear technology on the market, it can be effectively curtailed by embargo. Iran has not had much success with its missile tests.

But waiting to act should not be understood as hesitancy to act decisively. It is a strategic pause we should take advantage of to plan and prepare to confront this threat when or if it becomes necessary. If the Iranian regime is indeed set upon obtaining nuclear weapons and draw indisputably closer to reaching that point, we will have to confront them decisively and eliminate the capability. They have not reached that point. We should use the period between now and then to take our troops out of combat elsewhere and prepare for this more necessary fight if it comes. If it comes, it may likely be a tougher fight than any we’ve faced in the Middle East yet and an opportunity to show we have learned from our strategic and planning mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There is still the possibility it will not be necessary and a diplomatic solution may be reached. It should always remain preferable to us to confront and dissolve these conflicts without a fight. Taking the time to do so is not a sign of weakness, but of strategic caution and, in any case, gives us a strategic pause. We should not rush to failure. In any case, we have the upper hand in the conflict from the outset and should not be in a hurry. When tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of lives are in the balance, the nick of time will do. The time to militarily confront Iran may come. Now is not that time.

New START: Less is More

This post appeared in The Truman Doctrine on 23 July 2012.

When it comes to bombs, the conventional Cold War arms-race wisdom was “The more, the better.”

When it comes to nuclear weapons, this thinking produces diminishing returns. President Obama, along with President Reagan, understood this. There are some, including presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who still argue that reducing America’s nuclear arsenal threatens our national security. Romney still names Russia as America’s greatest foe. In 2011, GOP Senators held out as long as they could against ratifying the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia on this thought-basis. But there is such a thing as enough nukes and the benefits of bilateral nuclear arms reductions to our national security outweigh any cost.

How many nuclear weapons does America need? Let’s do the quick devil’s arithmetic. Nagasaki, Japan had a population of roughly 240,000, (think Madison, Wisconsin) in 1945. It was destroyed by the ‘Fat Man’ device with an estimated yield of 20 kilotons of TNT. It destroyed virtually all buildings, caused 3rd degree burns to tissue, and immediate death from radiation within four kilometers of the epicenter. The deadly effects spread as far as twelve square kilometers.

If America wanted (to borrow a phrase from Iranian President Ahmadinejad) to literally wipe all 1.65 million square kilometers of Iran off the map, we would need over 137,000 ‘Fat Man’ devices. Using today’s nukes, we would need a little over 2,300. New START allows America and Russia to possess 1,550 strategic warheads apiece. That is still more than enough to destroy all population centers in any country in the world; enough to destroy every living thing in 1 million square kilometers.

America still maintains a very significant nuclear arsenal under New START. Other studies have shown that America needs as few as 300 nuclear weapons to maintain deterrence. What the U.S. gets in return from New START is a reduction in nuclear arms outside of its own borders. ‘Loose nukes’ provide many nightmare scenarios involving terrorist attacks in America, its overseas installations, and its allies. The U.S. has spent millions on programs to buy or secure foreign nuclear weapons and materials. The breakup of the USSR and breaches in the nuclear security of western countries by state-directed nuclear espionage programs have led to a doubling of the nuclear club. Iran appears to want to be the newest member.

As Iran’s struggle to get the bomb shows, it is difficult to start a nuclear program from scratch, especially after the cat is out of the bag about its existence. Iraq and Syria’s nascent nuclear programs were allegedly nipped in the bud by Israeli airstrikes. Iran has years of nuclear refinement ahead of it to produce a significant nuclear arsenal and it is facing stiff international diplomatic and economic resistance. It is far easier to piggyback or reverse engineer off of intelligence and materials from another existing nuclear state. Iran is receiving assistance from Russia and China. Once successful, the genie cannot be put back in the bottle, as North Korea and Pakistan show.

The United States and the Obama administration should continue to do all it can to reduce the amount of nuclear warheads, material, and knowledge in the world outside of its borders. New START does this while allowing America to maintain a more than sufficient nuclear deterrent of its own. Sometimes less is more.