Are You MAD or NUTS?
The dilemma of nuclear strategy
There are two primary perspectives on nuclear strategy, Mutually Assured Destruction Theory and Nuclear Utilization Theories (MAD and NUTS). These theories are fundamentally different in the ways they view nuclear weapons, warfare, security, and, specifically, questions around escalation dominance — whether it is achievable, or if it is even desirable to achieve.
The reasons for these differences come down to acceptance or rejection of what is known as the Nuclear Revolution, a number of implications stemming from the observation that nukes are utterly incomparable to conventional weapons. MAD accepts the Nuclear Revolution and has tended to be the US’s preferred strategy. However, NUTS rejects the Nuclear Revolution and looks to solve problems that it doesn’t see MAD as able to.
First off, the Nuclear Revolution. This is the idea that nukes have drastically changed how we ought to think about warfare; that in fact there are now two different types of warfare, nuclear and conventional.
When it comes to nuclear war, unlike before, defense of any target is impossible: shooting down incoming nukes is too difficult, and nukes are too destructive to build fortifications against. Also, military victory becomes impossible: whereas before, whichever side won the military engagement would also win the ability to take the loser’s land, now, it is possible for the loser of the military engagement to raze the winner’s land. Consequently, wars that could previously have been justified by political goals no longer can be because the cost of nuclear war, total annihilation of both sides, nullifies any political goals.
MAD, then, is a deterrence strategy that accepts the Nuclear Revolution and in fact considers it to be the deterrence. MAD theorists believe that no one who understands the Nuclear Revolution will risk nuclear war, so the goal of nuclear strategy should be to emphasize the impossibility of defense and victory and promote cooperation and deescalation.
As Robert Jervis points out in his essay “The Nuclear Revolution and the Common Defense,” because nukes have only been used in war once, our strategies around them are based on speculation and logic; beliefs rather than facts. And if beliefs are what create strategy, and strategy action, then the best way to prevent war is to convince everyone to believe that it is in no one’s interest to start it.
Following from this, Jervis talks about how arms control is productive not because it limits the number of nukes everyone has — MAD sees nukes as absolute weapons anyway, meaning that the amount each side has compared to the other doesn’t matter — but because it demonstrates cooperation and deescalation.
As the dominant strategy, MAD has had great success; not only has nuclear war been avoided, but also conventional war has been limited due to the threat of it becoming nuclear. However, NUTS sees a gap in this success: what to do if a nation does actually decide to use a nuke. Because nuclear strategy is all about belief, if a nation believes there is an advantage to using a tactical nuke or to fight a limited nuclear war, it is likely they will.
Elbridge Colby, a NUTS theorist, argues in his essay “If You Want Peace, Prepare for Nuclear War,” that because the US is threatening suicide in the form of mutual destruction to deter the use of nuclear weapons, this threat isn’t a credible response to, say, China attacking Taiwan. And because this isn’t a credible threat, and because the US wouldn’t have an appropriate response, China would actually gain an advantage by attacking Taiwan with a nuke. Thus, in order to close this gap in credibility and options and actually deter the limited use of smaller nukes, the US ought to maintain a diverse nuclear arsenal that makes it dominant at every level of the escalation ladder.
This perspective clearly rejects the Nuclear Revolution by assuming that nukes can be relative weapons, that it does matter what size and amount of bombs each side has, that there can be military victory in a limited nuclear war, and that there might indeed be times when the political goals of such a war would outweigh the risks.
But in response, MAD theorists point out that in a conflict between two nuclear powers, each side’s cities are still held hostage by the other, so either side using a nuke for any reason is still irrational. A response to the NUTS example could be to ask if the US would risk Seattle to take back Taiwan.
Furthermore, there is no guarantee that dominance at different levels of the escalation ladder would deter escalation; not only is war complex and chaotic and easily results in misinterpretations and misunderstandings, but deterrence also relies on interests and resolve just as much if not more than capabilities. If China is more interested in Taiwan than the US is, and more resolute in fighting for it, then they could deter us from intervening even if we happen to have more tactical nukes than they do.
At the end of his essay, Jervis writes that “the common defense now extends to adversaries as well as to allies.” What he means by this is that, under MAD theory and the Nuclear Revolution, we can no longer secure our own country by making others less secure; only by making everyone feel secure can escalation and total destruction be avoided.
Contrarily, NUTS advocates don’t want to place that much trust in others. They aren’t certain that if we extend the common defense, others won’t just take advantage of this perceived weakness. I personally don’t know what the correct answer is right now. What do you think?
Bibliography:
- Jervis, Robert. “The Nuclear Revolution and the Common Defense.” Political Science Quarterly, vol. 101, no. 5, 1986, pp. 689–703. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2150972.
- Colby, Elbridge. “If You Want Peace, Prepare for Nuclear War.” Foreign Affairs, 28 Jan. 2019, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-10-15/if-you-want-peace-prepare-nuclear-war?gpp=16mmgTn8trC608ifrDQigzpxSEcrMGEzdWZrd09rRytrUXI3SzlOTXR0MHp6elJad2Y3RDJDTXFlRXFFNlg5QkQxbDBIYmFVWm1ZQ011RkZlOjUzYWMwYWRiZWM2YzhjZTE2NDcxMTJkMWQ4ZTkyYTUxODc4MzAzNzEwNzljODhkMTY0MjNlN2YzZWQyMzIxMTM%3D&cid=otr-novdec2018_issue_release-101618.
