Alphen, Netherlands. 7
December. Seventy-four years ago today the United States Pacific Fleet was
struck by a ‘bolt from the blue’, as the Imperial Japanese Navy sank much of
the American fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor. During the Cold War the US
strategic community was constantly exercised by the threat of a nuclear ‘bolt
from the blue’ from the Soviet Union. In
the years after the Cold War it appeared that the threat of nuclear mutually
assured destruction or M.A.D. had been cast into history. However, with Russia
now rattling nuclear sabres almost weekly nuclear deterrence is back on the
strategic agenda. What got me thinking about M.A.D.-ness was an excellent
conference I attended last week at the NATO Defense College in Rome entitled,
“The Future Deterrence Requirements of the Alliance”. What struck me was not the similarities that
exist between the Cold War and today, but rather the differences. What was also
clear to me is that NATO nuclear deterrence has become sad not M.A.D?
NATO’s nuclear deterrence
policy and posture is close to failure. Paradoxically, it is a failure made all
the more likely by the weakness of NATO’s conventional forces in preventing the
kind of limited war with big weapons strategy for which the Russians are now daily
preparing. Let me explain. The distance from the border of the Russian enclave
of Kaliningrad to that of Belarus is at best 60kms (40 miles) across Poland and
Lithuania. If Russia wanted to seal the Baltic States off from the rest of NATO
Moscow would first close that gap. Having established a fait accompli with
conventional military force Moscow would a) order forward deployed NATO forces
out of the Baltic States; and b) threaten the use of its burgeoning and
treaty-illegal short and intermediate range nuclear forces to prevent any kind
of NATO response – conventional or nuclear.
In such circumstances it
is hard for me to believe many Alliance political leaders would be willing to
go to war, let alone American, British and French leaders unleash their strategic
nuclear weapons. In effect, Russia would have applied to effect nuclear
superiority, and in so doing proven to further effect a key dictum of Sun Tzu;
that the ‘best’ wars are built on an irresistible fait accompli, just like
Crimea.
Deterrence theory, and
all the associated wonkery that goes along with it, relies on an essentially
simple premise; that in the event of war an adversary can never be sure that
the attacked would not resort to the use of nuclear weapons and quickly and has
the will, capability and intent so to do. In NATO’s case the theory is adjusted
to include the nuclear defence of the territory of allies, not just the three
NATO nuclear weapons states. When I look at the political classes of all three
NATO nuclear states I simply no longer believe that NATO leaders would resort
to the use of such weapons if faced with an essentially limited war on NATO’s
eastern flank. And, if I do not believe
it I am pretty damned sure Moscow does not believe it.
My doubts over the
credibility of NATO’s nuclear deterrent posture are manifold. NATO does not in
fact have any nuclear weapons and has no political consensus over their role or
use. The US nuclear arsenal is having to play a multipolar deterrent role the
world over which leads to a very different strategic calculus than the bipolar
strategic symbiosis that existed for much of the Cold War. France has a robust
nuclear policy and some ‘sub-strategic’ nuclear forces. However, its limited sub-strategic air-based
nuclear force would be unable to penetrate an increasingly sophisticated
Russian air defence system. The British (being the British these days) are
about to spend some £31bn on a new “Successor” strategic nuclear system whilst
British political leaders (and not just Jeremy Corbyn) repeatedly imply they would
never use it.
My sense is that neither
Britain nor France would conceive of using nuclear weapons unless as a response
to nuclear use by an enemy, and for all the rhetoric to the contrary, neither
power would use such weapons unless their own soil had been so attacked. And it is that problem of decoupled proportionality
that is rendering to my mind NATO’s nuclear deterrent posture ‘incredible’.
Paradoxically, the nuclear
capabilities assigned to NATO are more than enough to deter against a nuclear
attack by a major power, and yet are utterly unusable in the event of the nuclear-fringed
conventional threat Russia poses. Even in the case of a nuclear strike by a state
like Iran I find it hard to see that any of the three NATO nuclear powers would
respond in kind to the use of one or two first generation warheads, even against
a NATO ally.
In effect, NATO’s
conventional and nuclear deterrents are also in danger of becoming ‘de-coupled’
with no credible ‘escalation’ on offer from the use of conventional forces to
the use of nuclear forces. It is ‘de-coupling that is reinforced by the strange
estrangement from NATO of the Alliance’s three nuclear weapons’ states. The US
sees NATO very much as a side-show. The British talk NATO but never match words
with deeds. The French have only just re-entered the NATO integrated command
structure and remain NATO-sceptics, in the same way the British are
EU-sceptics.
Worse, NATO’s Nuclear
Planning Group is kept at the margins of policy planning precisely because
NATO’s 28, soon-to-be 29, nations cannot agree about whether to deter Russia or
debate with Russia. As for NATO’s fabled ‘dual-capable aircraft’, most of which
belong to the Alliance’s non-nuclear states, these are legacy systems that
whilst capable of carrying nuclear weapons would no longer get through Russia’s
air defences. Indeed, ‘NATO DCA’ is either outdated, incapable, or both. As for
missile defence it is the wrong system, defending inadequately against the
wrong people, incapable of being upgraded to defend against a Russian threat
(whatever Moscow says), paid for by an American taxpayer who it will not
defend! In other words NATO missile
defence does not fly strategically, politically, or technically.
However, the real danger
posed by NATO’s conventional and nuclear decoupling is the danger that the nuclear
use threshold will fall by mistake if the choice is surrender or nukes. By
deploying short and intermediate range nuclear systems Russia is implying that
it has already lowered the nuclear threshold, intimidating its neighbours with
implied and applied irrationality.
Indeed, much of what is today called the Gerasimov doctrine (after the
Chief of the Russian General Staff) looks much like the Ogarkov doctrine of the
early 1980s which also implied a warfighting use for nuclear weapons.
So, how does NATO defend
the Baltic States and indeed other allies? A senior American friend recently
warned me against implying the Baltic States are indefensible. He is right. To
my mind the Baltics must be defended. However, if a credible defence is to be
established such a defence must be placed in its proper strategic context.
First, NATO must protect both its eastern and southern flanks. That means
conventional forces in sufficient strength to deter, prevent and interdict on
both flanks. Second, to defend the Baltic States, NATO conventional forces in
sufficient strength must be forward deployed to the region to act as a trip
wire to further Alliance escalation in the event of Russian aggression. In other words, NATO needs a forward deployed
NATO forward deterrent. Third, the Russians must not be allowed to plan an
attack that joins Kaliningrad to Belarus at little or no cost. Kaliningrad must
be considered a NATO target for conventional forces in the event of Russian
aggression – even if Russia deploys Iskander
M and other nuclear systems to the enclave.
However, it is NATO’s
ability to escalate conventionally that is most in need of attention if NATO
deterrence is to be restored to credibility. Behind the Spearhead force agreed
at the September 2014 NATO Wales Summit powerful conventional forces must be
deployed forward that increase the risk to Moscow of even the most limited of
incursions. At the very least this would need a NATO force that looked
something like the Allied Command Europe (ACE) Mobile Force of the past which
combined both mass and manoeuvre.
Therefore, to restore
credibility to NATO’s deterrent posture next year’s Warsaw Summit should
enshrine a new triple-track approach. Track one would involve the reinvigoration of
the conventional and nuclear deterrents of the Alliance. Specifically, the
three Alliance nuclear weapons states would publicly re-commit to the credible
maintaining of NATO as a nuclear alliance (and mean it). Track two would see the
26 other NATO nations re-commit to enhancing their conventional forces as part
of a reinvigorated NATO non-nuclear deterrent, with the stated aim to keep the threshold
for nuclear use high. Track three would see the Alliance put forward new arms
control proposals designed to lessen tensions between Russia and the Alliance
via an initial redeployment of both nuclear and conventional forces, but only
in the event of a change of policy in Moscow.
Nuclear weapons are scary and most western liberal politicians and indeed peoples would rather not think about them. However, in the world into which NATO is moving the more the West's conventional military power is eclipsed by illiberal power the more NATO will rely on nuclear weapons,
We do not want to wake up
to another Pearl Harbor! We must make sure we do not!
Julian Lindley-French
