Extending US Nuclear Deterrence to the Middle East is a Crazy, Bad, Idea
Every now and then we see the development of curious debates in US strategic circles. Some are dead serious, some are just amusing and others are crazy. I think that the debate on extending nuclear deterrence to the Middle East might fit the latter category.
First some background.
In an old and rather dated publication the British strategic analyst, Peter Mangold, in Superpower Involvement in the Middle East pointed out that both superpowers (he was writing in 1978) had engaged in interventionary actions in the region "under a nuclear umbrella".
Extended deterrence in the Middle East is not new. In 1970 the US nuclear umbrella played a role in the crisis that was occasioned by Jordan's attack against Palestinian factions. This attack prompted a dispatch of Syrian tanks headed for Amman in support of the Palestinian groups, which prompted a further international crisis. As Kissinger recounts in his memoirs, the US nuclear umbrella served to deter Soviet support for the Syrian action as the US organised a proxy response through Israel. Assad of Syria should know about all this as his father, Hafez Assad (who opposed the Syrian gambit), came to power on the back of this fiasco.
The latest move is a little bit different for it involves the development of a formal extended deterrent. The proposal here revolves around, so far as I can see, two issues. Those are (1) the Iranian nuclear program and (2) Arab nuclear energy programs.
I believe, for what it is worth [surprise, surprise 
], that (2) is the main issue. A formal extended deterrent would have some resemblance to the old Baghdad Pact, in that it would involve a formal military alliance between the US and select Arab states. This would formalize US strategic primacy in the region, a long sought after goal but one that Arab regimes have been reluctant to give.
The second aspect to (2) is more immediate. Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the Gulf States have expressed an interest in pursuing nuclear energy programs. Offering extended deterrence might be seen as part of a broad package to persuade these states from pursuing, either or both, front-end and back-end fuel cycle programs whether individually or in a joint regional fuel cycle program.
Plenty more will be said on the Iranian nuclear program in the next few days, for the IAEA is due to hand down its next safeguards report. Speculation has been swirling on the topic as of late and let us leave this aside for now.
The latest news on Mid East extended deterrence was prompted by Persident Mubarak of Egypt's visit to the United States. According to an Inter Press Service agency report the Egyptian leader rejected Cairo's participation in any region wide system of extended deterrence. His stated reasons echo my point about the Baghdad Pact above
...Such an umbrella, he said, "would imply accepting foreign troops and experts on our land — and we do not accept that." Mubarak also emphasized that a U.S. nuclear umbrella "would imply an implicit acceptance that there is a regional nuclear power — we do not accept that either."...
What role would Israel's nuclear weapons play in all this?
There appear to be three schools of thought on whether a regional extended deterrent would be a good idea or not, two of which I focus on here. On one side we have Joshua Pollack, who argues
..."Nuclear extended deterrence, if it fails, could embroil the United States, or whoever else is providing this guarantee, in a nuclear war that they otherwise could have avoided," said Joshua Pollack, a nuclear proliferation expert who contributes to the ArmsControlWonk blog. "These second-hand retaliatory threats that we're talking about may not be quite as credible as the retaliatory threats one would make on behalf of one's own country."
"Our allies in the Persian Gulf tend to be very sensitive to claims that they are overly reliant on the United States for their security, and perhaps are not fully independent," Pollack added. "So, revolutionary states like Iran and like Syria could reap a propaganda coup, a bonanza, from too-overt an American nuclear security guarantee. Even al-Qaeda could be expected to try to capitalize on a declaration like that."...
Michael Krepon, however, argues
..."Extended deterrence remains very important. It is a key element to preventing cascades of proliferation," said Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center. By extending such protection to Japan and South Korea, Washington sought to remove the need for either nation to counter North Korea's nuclear weapons with a nuclear deterrent.
Existing U.S. military commitments in the Middle East could complicate a deterrence program for the region, which would require tighter defense connections with friendly nations and a readiness to rapidly field land-, air- and sea-based forces, Krepon added.
"It's up to the Obama administration now to shore up the credibility of that guarantee," he said, adding that long-range bombers deployed at a U.S. air base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia would be sufficient for launching a nuclear strike in the Middle East....
Krepon repeats the standard defence for extended deterrence. The standard defence is not necessarily true. For example, France and the UK both have an independent nuclear deterrent whilst being members of NATO. Extended deterrence did not prevent proliferation in these cases.
In the case of Japan and South Korea there are many more factors involved than simply extended deterrence. For instance, both have been heavily reliant on US markets for their export led industrialisation programs. If they had went nuclear then perhaps they would have had to join Kim il Sung in Juche.
If Japan were ever to go nuclear or to seriously downgrade its alliance relationship with the US then this would reflect a lack of confidence in the post war economic model, not in extended deterrence. This is a live issue as the looming election of the Democratic Party of Japan and the 20 year economic crisis demonstrates. This is one of the biggest global security issues today, but rarely is discussed. I've been following this closely.
Indeed if there are any debates in Egypt, Syria and Iran about obtaining their own deterrent or, at the very least a breakout capability, then extended deterrence in the Gulf could tip the scales towards hardliners. Extended deterrence could just as well as act as a proliferation catalyst.
Also we must be aware that there is a link between extended deterrence and the nature of US nuclear strategy. Counterforce nuclear planning doctrines and escalation control strategic concepts are linked with extended deterrence because of the nexus between credibility and extended deterrence. This was not that much discussed in the FAS counterforce report, but is real enough. Relying on extended deterrence, indeed extending that reliance, for non-proliferation only further encourages the maintenance of such nuclear strategies and ultimately dents non-proliferation because of Article VI effects.
Notice Krepon's statement about tighter military links. He sees that as a consequence, but I think that might be more a cause. Pollack's points are surely correct. Others in the region will argue that the US nuclear umbrella is being extended to shore up the existing conservative order in order to secure US energy interests. Pollack's point about war is no joke.
If that SOB UBL should come to the same conclusion as Peter Mangold, that US support for what he takes to be apostate regimes depends upon a nuclear umbrella, I shudder to think where such an idea might eventually lead.
That's why I submit this idea is crazy.
Health Care Reform and the Reliable Replacement Warhead
Well, I just couldn't help myself. I was just reading this great article on health care reform and Brand Obama and instantly thought of the Reliable Replacement Warhead.
The GOP wants RRW, so does the DoD and the DoE. Now State is in on the act, leaving the VP and Congressional Democrats on the outer.
David Michael Green writes, in relation to the public option and health care reform,
...The Capitulation Administration signaled this week that it is giving up on that as well. Because of Republican opposition, of course. You remember those guys don’t you? The folks who have such small minorities in Congress that they can’t even muster forty percent of Senate votes to block consideration of legislation by filibuster? That’s who Obama is caving to. That’s who’s in charge. It seems that we regular folks are in the process of getting a fresh education about the way American politics really works. Evidently, there’s a new algorithm I wasn’t aware of. It goes like this: When Republicans control Congress and the White House, they rule. When Democrats control Congress and the White House... Republicans still rule. Okay...
You might recall Hillary Clinton's reasoning for supporting RRW. It might be necessary to proceed with RRW in order to get the post-START arms control accord through Congress.
That fits Green's algorithm, no?
The New Blog Title
The blog has evolved into a nuclear strategy-grand strategy blog. That wasn't planned, but neither was Homo sapiens. I figure, then, that The Nuke Strategy Wonk is a more accurate title. I confess that this comes from The Arms Control Wonk.
I guess that I'm not that creative in these things.
I'm open to better suggestions.
India’s Conventional Forces and Pakistani Nuclear Weapons; Is there a Link with Terrorism?
India has rolled out locally produced T-90 Main Battle Tanks, produced under license from Russia. The first batch consists of 10 T-90's. This comes on top of the signing of an "end use agreement" between the US and India that paves the way for weapons exports to India from the US. Reports suggest that India is interested especially in fighter aircraft, such as the F-16.
The interesting thing here, of course, is what affect this will all have on Pakistan? T-90's and F-16's are great for strategic offensives. There might develop, over time, an impact on Pakistani nuclear capabilities. Most attention, adding in the Bush-Singh nuclear deal, focuses on Pakistani fissile material production, and thereby, nuclear weapon numbers. That is indeed an issue.
But perhaps a more important issue concerns itself with doctrine and operational readiness. Pakistan already does not rule out first use of nuclear weapons, due to a conventional imbalance, so it would be expected that nuclear weapons will come to have a greater role in Pakistani military doctrine as Indian conventional forces become more and more capable of modern operational warfare. One would not like to see the army high command develop doctrines of limited nuclear war such as NATO's "flexible response."
Also, it is reported that the Pakistani army separates warheads from delivery vehicles. Some reports also suggest the separation of the physics package of Pakistani warheads and the arming, firing and fuzing mechanisms. If nuclear weapons were to increasingly play an important role in Pakistani military posture then higher alert readiness, for instance by maintaining armed weapons on launch platforms ready to launch upon warning, might be possible.
Some have speculated that the US has either helped Pakistani to develop PAL technologies or transferred PAL technologies. If true, the higher the confidence that Islamabad has in PALs the more ready would it be to maintain alert status nuclear forces. The same thing happened in the US. This could create a causal link between terrorism and war, like in 1914.
What impact would all this have for nuclear terrorism?
In fact, there are more immediate issues too. Pakistan had supported the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, partly, because it was perceived that this gave Islamabad "strategic depth" with respect to India. If India augments its conventional capability, with US assistance, then this strategic calculus might well persist. The US is reportedly insisting that the Pakistani army launch an offensive against Taliban elements attacking from Pakistan into Afghanistan.
The Pakistani offensive into the Swat valley was launched against the TTP, the Pakistani Taliban, who got too big for their boots by attacking out of Swat. Islamabad is reluctant to attack Taliban elements that bother the US in southern Afghanistan.
If India is rolling out T-90's and getting F-16's, why should it?
If India augments its conventional capabilities, alongside its nuclear capability, what reason would India have to make concessions in Kashmir? Does it not keep open the Pakistani policy of supporting Kashmir Jihadi elements as a form of leverage?
It appears that Brand Obama's policy in South Asia is working at cross purposes. Many suppose that this conflict, in "Afgh-Pak", could be a defining feature of his presidency. You would think that he would have an integrated South Asian policy.
That's if terrorism is priority number one.
The mismatch in policy invites the hypothesis that, in fact, it is not priority number one.
Colonel David Kilcullen and Julian Burnside at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival
I had attended an interesting discussion/seminar at the Melbourne Writers Festival with Colonel David Kilcullen, said to be a key adviser to the US Army High Command first in Iraq and now in Afghanistan.
He made a number of highly misleading remarks.
Firstly, we had his claim that every Western leader sincerely believed that weapons of mass destruction were in the possession of Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion. Yet we have some declassified documents that tell us the exact opposite; that the intelligence on Iraq was being fixed around a preconceived policy. However, the old "intelligence failure" bogey refuses to die. Now the story goes, first brought up after David Kay's investigation and recently re-aired following the release of FBI interview transcripts with Saddam Hussein, that the Iraqi leader engaged in a ruse.
He sought to pretend that he had weapons of mass destruction in order to maintain some form of deterrent relationship with Iran. Clearly the argument will not do.
The tacit assumption is that Saddam's ruse was so successful that it also fooled the West. It did not, because evidence strongly suggests that the intelligence was cooked to suit predeveloped policy, as stated above. Saddam may have tried to play a fast one with Iran but he did not fool the US. Playing a ruse and that ruse working are two different things entirely.
One of the key reasons why Iraq was invaded was precisely because it did not have weapons of mass destruction.
Colonel Kilcullen claimed that the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11 and after 9/11, i.e before Operation Enduring Freedom started it is tacitly furthermore assumed.
Documents I have seen suggest that, pre 9/11, Mullah Mohamed Omar hinted at a tradeoff with the Clinton administration. This seemed to involve trading Osama bin Laden for recognition of the Taliban regime. It would seem that nothing came of this.
After 9/11 the Taliban did not outright reject the notion of handing over bin Laden. At the time the Taliban asked that the US provide evidence that indeed al-Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attack. We do not know how serious this move was, for it wasn't taken up. My point here is that this might play a role in any ethical evaluation of the conflict, which was the purpose of the Melbourne Writers Festival gathering which was organised under the title; "do the ends justify the means".
If Yugoslavia had bombed the Vatican in 1945, after the Pope had refused Belgrade's demands that the Vatican cease the funneling of fascist war criminals out of Europe, World War Three may have been a real prospect.
The discussant at the seminar was Julian Burnside, a noted human rights lawyer and key member of the Australian critical intelligentsia. Colonel Kilcullen stated that NATO's 1999 aggression against Serbia received retrospective United Nations sanction. Burnside nodded his agreement. In fact, Colonel Kilcullen refers to UN resolution 1244 which was the agreement reached by the warring parties that ended the conflict. It provided no retrospective sanction of the aggression itself.
The suggestion is fanciful. In fact, UN 1244 was unilaterally violated by the US when it set up the false state of Kosovo, which was warmly endorsed by Kevin Rudd. Notice that this is the same Kevin Rudd, our supposed foreign policy wonk Prime Minister, who states that he believes in a rules based system of world order founded upon the United Nations. Latham is right on his real foreign policy positions, amongst other matters it might also be added.
Rudd is of course all spin and no substance, so nothing new there.
It was indeed remarkable to have seen Burnside's performance and, indeed, much of the liberal intelligentsia's at the gathering. You could see that they really lapped it up. Burnside stated that he and Kilcullen are in almost complete agreement. For those brought up on Chomsky this declaration by one of Australia's leading members of the critical-liberal intelligentsia should not surprise.
Finally I make a broad comment about the whole tenor of the discussion. Kilcullen draws a direct parallel between surge operations in Iraq, which to summarise Kilcullen's position were (as he tells it) counterinsurgency with a human face, and the conduct of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan. The educated liberal audience lapped this up. However, best comment on this that I have seen comes from the, very good, journalist Patrick Cockburn
...The main American success in Iraq was that, having backed the Shia and the Kurds against the Sunni, the US military did a side deal with the Sunni insurgents to turn on al-Qa’ida. The Sunni needed an agreement with the Americans because they were getting the worse of a civil war with the Shia. The recent bombings were probably Sunni parties, using al-Qa’ida as their messenger, brutally demonstrating to the Iraqi government that they will not be marginalized. The idea, popular in some Washington think tanks, that a few obvious tactical innovations won the war in Iraq, and can do so again in Afghanistan, is wholly misleading and will lure the US and Britain further into the morass...
There's nothing stopping a Burnside or a Robert Manne from knowing about these things and speaking of them.
Australia does not have a Chomsky.
I read a very interesting profile on General Petraeus in The New Yorker. It provides an explanation for why this stuff is lapped up by liberal intellectuals. The Kilcullen thesis is great for those versed in the arts and humanities. As the 2008 profile argued, counterinsurgency puts those educated in the social sciences in a seat right next to the senior commanders at the planning table.
At any rate, the lecture by Beevor on D-Day was superb. I wonder however whether the differences between the combat behaviour of German and US soldiers was less about ideology and propaganda and more about battle hardness. A few of the German divisions that he spoke about would have had plenty of combat experience in the East, where things didn't go exactly according to the Geneva conventions.
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Marko is also interested in philosophy, especially the theory of knowledge, and science, especially physics, and considers himself to work within the naturalist and enlightenment tradition. He is writing a book on nuclear terrorism.