Great discussion. Some thoughts. For what it’s worth, I’m a Cold-War Era Columbia SIPA graduate, took a couple of courses with the great Robert Jervis in the 80’s.
A couple of points and a question
What I come away with is:
There’s no way to resolve these questions.
The existing evidence doesn’t get you there. So you’re all trying to kind of logic it out. Logic can only get you so far. Prof. Glaser says as much.
I’d say this was the most important part of the pod.
Glaser: “[T]here are these features slash bugs that exist. And the question is, how do we weigh them? And, you know, that becomes much more subjective than sort of much of the nuclear debate allows. And I accept that in a sense that it's not like you can nail it down in a logical sense.”
“Subjective.” Can’t nail things down “in a logical sense.” Hmm.
So why do you come down on different sides? It must come down to priors or other tie-breakers. What could they be?
Based on the n=4 here, I’d hazard: service in government.
The three govt. servers on one side. The ivory tower guy on the other.
It struck me that Vipin said in a podcast about damage limitation, “no zealot like a convert.” The conversion happened while he was in government.
Why would govt. service affect your views? Some possibilities.
-Maybe you guys who served in government know secret stuff that affects your views.
-Or maybe it’s not secret info - it’s just the experience of coming to grips with concrete responsibility of preventing a nuclear war.*
—Or it’s something vaguer to do with the culture of the places you worked and how it affects you.
Question for mailbag:
What evidence, in principle, could resolve these issues, or tilt the balance of evidence one way or the other?
There wasn’t much evidence in this discussion. What could there be? Did a high European official ever collar you and say: “Guys, get with the program on damage limitation. I need to be reassured.”
In the absence of evidence, is the honest answer to all this: We don’t know ?
*Very interesting discussion with Franklin Miller here that I’m sure you’re familiar with
“I approach this topic unashamedly as a practitioner, not a theorist. While I have enormous respect for the work of Schelling, Kahn, Gray, Freedman, and others, none of them ever bore the responsibilities of implementing their ideas or working every day to ensure that deterrence held firm 24/7, 365.”
A lot of this really does come down to speculation and gut feelings. My instinct is always that such grounds couldn't possibly give us good reason to take additional existential risks as a country.
If that way of looking at the problem makes extended deterrence infeasible, it may be time to back out of some of our extended deterrence commitments! There's no law that says every problem has to have a satisfactory solution.
I really liked the discussion, and came down squarely on the side of Charles Glaser. Damage limitation through counterforce is a fools errand that increases risks without increasing security. It leads to force structures that create incentives for preemption rather than restraint. When it comes to nuclear war, I prefer the stability side of the stability-instability paradox.
I appreciated the discussion of how the current damage limitation strategy is rooted in the perceived need to reassure allies so they won't feel the need to obtain their own nuclear weapons. My own view is that this is not a feasible role for nuclear weapons. Alliance security guarantees are fundamentally political, and nuclear weapons are neither necessary nor sufficient. Extended deterrence does contribute to nonproliferation, but its role should not be overstated.
There were two points I wanted to ask about because I didn't understand and I didn't hear a response.
At one point someone (Austin or Vipin) said they wanted the adversary to feel pressure to launch under attack, the classic "use it or lose it" scenario. Why? Isn't it the opposite of damage limitation to provoke an all-out counterstrike? I want both sides to feel confident that they don't need to launch under attack. I want each sides to doubt its own ability and the other side's ability to preempt.
At another point Glaser acknowledged a potential role for theater nuclear weapons. I am skeptical and would have liked to hear his argument, but there was no further discussion since everyone seemed to agree.
Good comment, however, on this, "extended deterrence does contribute to nonproliferation, but its role should not be overstated", I think Seoul, Tokyo, Riyadh, Berlin - and most Allied capitals would disagree rather strongly. I never thought I'd here a serious German debate about how to rearrange nuclear arrangements without the United States - including the potentnial of their own - in my lifetime. Any wavering on the US part would set of a cascade in Asia first, the Middle East second, and quite possibly in Europe third. The consequences are truly horrifying and far more costly than any "benefit" derived from abandoning extended deterrence.
Hi William! My view is that alliance security guarantees are fundamentally political. They depend on confidence that the United States will defend them because of a convergence of interests. The presence of nuclear weapons cannot overcome a lack of confidence, and nuclear weapons are not the essence of that confidence. To take it a step further, the prospect of potential nuclear escalation can contribute to that credibility, but I am skeptical of the nuclear planning details. To me, they seem more symbolic than operational. And there are nonproliferation costs to overstating the role of nuclear deterrence: If nuclear weapons are essential to security in Europe, why not the Middle East?
The problem with the large truck vs. Fiat in a game of chicken analogy is that the Fiat is loaded with explosives and your truck has no chance of surviving. Your size doesn't really give you any advantage.
Lots of ambiguity here. My gut says that given public sentiment here, the stakes for the US in Eastern and central Europe are so low that no amount of less-than-foolproof damage limitation would give us the ability to win the game of chicken.
It seems to me that the best solution here is a Euro deterrent. There's probably nothing the US can do to maintain credible extended deterrence in the region. If our population and both parties were fanatically anti-Putin and pro-EU, then we could do it, but that just isn't the situation.
I'm much less clear on what could possibly be done about China.
updated to include links to articles
Great discussion. Some thoughts. For what it’s worth, I’m a Cold-War Era Columbia SIPA graduate, took a couple of courses with the great Robert Jervis in the 80’s.
A couple of points and a question
What I come away with is:
There’s no way to resolve these questions.
The existing evidence doesn’t get you there. So you’re all trying to kind of logic it out. Logic can only get you so far. Prof. Glaser says as much.
I’d say this was the most important part of the pod.
Glaser: “[T]here are these features slash bugs that exist. And the question is, how do we weigh them? And, you know, that becomes much more subjective than sort of much of the nuclear debate allows. And I accept that in a sense that it's not like you can nail it down in a logical sense.”
“Subjective.” Can’t nail things down “in a logical sense.” Hmm.
So why do you come down on different sides? It must come down to priors or other tie-breakers. What could they be?
Based on the n=4 here, I’d hazard: service in government.
The three govt. servers on one side. The ivory tower guy on the other.
It struck me that Vipin said in a podcast about damage limitation, “no zealot like a convert.” The conversion happened while he was in government.
Why would govt. service affect your views? Some possibilities.
-Maybe you guys who served in government know secret stuff that affects your views.
-Or maybe it’s not secret info - it’s just the experience of coming to grips with concrete responsibility of preventing a nuclear war.*
—Or it’s something vaguer to do with the culture of the places you worked and how it affects you.
Question for mailbag:
What evidence, in principle, could resolve these issues, or tilt the balance of evidence one way or the other?
There wasn’t much evidence in this discussion. What could there be? Did a high European official ever collar you and say: “Guys, get with the program on damage limitation. I need to be reassured.”
In the absence of evidence, is the honest answer to all this: We don’t know ?
*Very interesting discussion with Franklin Miller here that I’m sure you’re familiar with
https://www.csis.org/analysis/poni-live-debate-us-nuclear-targeting
“I approach this topic unashamedly as a practitioner, not a theorist. While I have enormous respect for the work of Schelling, Kahn, Gray, Freedman, and others, none of them ever bore the responsibilities of implementing their ideas or working every day to ensure that deterrence held firm 24/7, 365.”
A lot of this really does come down to speculation and gut feelings. My instinct is always that such grounds couldn't possibly give us good reason to take additional existential risks as a country.
If that way of looking at the problem makes extended deterrence infeasible, it may be time to back out of some of our extended deterrence commitments! There's no law that says every problem has to have a satisfactory solution.
I really liked the discussion, and came down squarely on the side of Charles Glaser. Damage limitation through counterforce is a fools errand that increases risks without increasing security. It leads to force structures that create incentives for preemption rather than restraint. When it comes to nuclear war, I prefer the stability side of the stability-instability paradox.
I appreciated the discussion of how the current damage limitation strategy is rooted in the perceived need to reassure allies so they won't feel the need to obtain their own nuclear weapons. My own view is that this is not a feasible role for nuclear weapons. Alliance security guarantees are fundamentally political, and nuclear weapons are neither necessary nor sufficient. Extended deterrence does contribute to nonproliferation, but its role should not be overstated.
There were two points I wanted to ask about because I didn't understand and I didn't hear a response.
At one point someone (Austin or Vipin) said they wanted the adversary to feel pressure to launch under attack, the classic "use it or lose it" scenario. Why? Isn't it the opposite of damage limitation to provoke an all-out counterstrike? I want both sides to feel confident that they don't need to launch under attack. I want each sides to doubt its own ability and the other side's ability to preempt.
At another point Glaser acknowledged a potential role for theater nuclear weapons. I am skeptical and would have liked to hear his argument, but there was no further discussion since everyone seemed to agree.
Good comment, however, on this, "extended deterrence does contribute to nonproliferation, but its role should not be overstated", I think Seoul, Tokyo, Riyadh, Berlin - and most Allied capitals would disagree rather strongly. I never thought I'd here a serious German debate about how to rearrange nuclear arrangements without the United States - including the potentnial of their own - in my lifetime. Any wavering on the US part would set of a cascade in Asia first, the Middle East second, and quite possibly in Europe third. The consequences are truly horrifying and far more costly than any "benefit" derived from abandoning extended deterrence.
Hi William! My view is that alliance security guarantees are fundamentally political. They depend on confidence that the United States will defend them because of a convergence of interests. The presence of nuclear weapons cannot overcome a lack of confidence, and nuclear weapons are not the essence of that confidence. To take it a step further, the prospect of potential nuclear escalation can contribute to that credibility, but I am skeptical of the nuclear planning details. To me, they seem more symbolic than operational. And there are nonproliferation costs to overstating the role of nuclear deterrence: If nuclear weapons are essential to security in Europe, why not the Middle East?
The problem with the large truck vs. Fiat in a game of chicken analogy is that the Fiat is loaded with explosives and your truck has no chance of surviving. Your size doesn't really give you any advantage.
Lots of ambiguity here. My gut says that given public sentiment here, the stakes for the US in Eastern and central Europe are so low that no amount of less-than-foolproof damage limitation would give us the ability to win the game of chicken.
It seems to me that the best solution here is a Euro deterrent. There's probably nothing the US can do to maintain credible extended deterrence in the region. If our population and both parties were fanatically anti-Putin and pro-EU, then we could do it, but that just isn't the situation.
I'm much less clear on what could possibly be done about China.
You guys are producing content faster than I can consume it! This is great