Assessing Russia's Nuclear Strategy

wow what a turnout thank you all for coming out this morning to see professor Jason Castillo from Texas A&M it's a few words about Jason's background before we get started he is the associate Perfector professor and the Evelyn and EDF Cruz 49 faculty fellow at Texas A&M University at the George Bush School of Government and public service Jason came to the bush school after serving on the staff of policy planning office in the Department of Defense between 2005 and 2007 and before that he worked at RAND Corporation and at the Institute for Defense analysis Ida his PhD is in political science from the University of Chicago and as research focuses on u.s. national security policy especially nuclear deterrence how many here have had Jason's deterrence and coercion of course so we have quite a few of Jason's alums from that course I am also by the way and so we've had the pleasure those of us who have been in the course they've had the pleasure of working with Jason having him present through his views on deterrence and coercion at the bush school as part of this laboratory partnership with Texas A&M University and that's part of what we call the national security leadership program and it is something that is continuing on for those of you that haven't been involved it's certainly something you should think about doing if you have the opportunity for me personally it helped prepare me for my time in Washington DC and then now as I'm back here and my systems analysis group I apply a lot of the things that I've learned from Jason to ongoing work that we're doing now for the laboratory so with that please join me in welcoming Jason [Applause] is it safe for a Dodger fans into this room there's early for that argument to come out does anyone remember when Reagan was running against Mondale there was a famous commercial about a bear in the woods all right there's a bear in the woods you can you look at this in the YouTube machine I do this late at night when I have trouble sleeping but the whole message was like there was a debate about the intentions of the Soviet Union whether we sow Union was being encircled or whether or not the Soviet Union was hell-bent on world domination that debate went away in 1989 all right thanks to our namesake at UH at the bush school but it appears now the bear is back right and if you look at the Nuclear Posture review the big driver there is not China it's not North Korea it's not Iran it's really Russia it's the extended deterrence mission that we have visa vie NATO with respect to NATO and the growing Russian military modernization and changing Russian intentions that's driving the Nuclear Posture of you and I know this in this group you've all memorized and probably can chant the Nuclear Posture review by now in its original latin but one of the striking things about the Nuclear Posture review is that all the critics who are sort of surprised and that we believe in limited nuclear war that the idea that the United States has thought about limited nuclear wars oh my god this is you know another another nail in the Trump cross right that he's brought back limited nuclear war well I think limited nuclear war has never gone away right we were big practitioners and we developed concepts of limited nuclear war and so I'm not sure we should be shocked or surprised that it's back in the Nuclear Posture review or that our adversaries think about limited nuclear war and so today what I want to lay out is a framework for thinking about Russian nuclear strategy countries are purposely opaque about their nuclear strategies because that has deterrence value you don't want to provide a menu and a list of actions you're going to do in certain circumstances because that will invite what Tom shelling called salami tactics so there is ambiguity about a country's nuclear strategy so what we need then are some set of frameworks or some way to evaluate a country that's purposely opaque about its nuclear strategy and to think about well what are the circumstances under which they would use nuclear weapons now in this group you'll know that there is a debate about Russian nuclear strategy and the phrase that captures their strategies escalate to de-escalate right and and for some people this is a uniquely Russian thing right that has to do with hybrid warfare and history of Russian occupation going back to Napoleon you can find all these different arguments well escalate to de-escalate with NATO strategy right this is a strategy that states adopt when they have conventional weakness and use nuclear weapons to offset that conventional weakness and so what I want to do in this talk is think about what escalate that de-escalate might look like Brad Roberts calls this Reds theory of victory in his book is excellent book on the case for nuclear weapons well let's flesh out what Reds theory of victory might look like not just for Russia but other types of adversaries with nuclear weapons there is not a one-size-fits-all based on strategic circumstances and capabilities and let's try to understand the conditions under which Russia would use nuclear weapons I think one of the themes of this talk and more emerging work on Russian nuclear strategies that nuclear weapons are in the background for Russia right this is not the Russia of Boris Yeltsin this is not even the Russia of 2008 this is a Russia that has the some formidable conventional capabilities now I'm not here to tell you they're the Soviet Union they're not the third shock army is not going to crash into West Germany any time soon but it's also a Russia that has seen how the United States performed in the last 17 years in conventional Wars and has focused on developing conventional capabilities to keep us away and out of their neighborhood can you think of any other large great powers in Northeast Asia that have developed similar capabilities right people adapt people pay attention no one wants Saddam Hussein treatment and Russia has adapted especially since 2008 and developing anti axis area-denial capabilities and this is a work that I've been doing with my colleague John Parrott Keeney at Rand so what does that look like when we have escalate to de-escalate what does this mean now there are debates about Russia nuclear strategy some people will say this is all about domestic consumption right Putin this is some of the arguments you see people like Walter lack you're making Putin and putinism right requires a muscular form of Russian nationalism in order for him to maintain power he has to run slide shows and cartoon shows of different Russian nuclear capabilities that may or may not exist this bolsters his credibility at home so it's this is all about domestic politics nothing to see here they don't really have any kind of nuclear strategy to be worried about I think that's probably true but they are building their capabilities and that looks like it's integrated with their conventional forces so we should start thinking to be a prudent planner what that might look like and we need some kind of framework to think about what's the strategy today and what might the strategy look like over time so let's back up and think about the constraints that Russia faces if you don't think the Russian nuclear strategy is just for domestic consumption and I'm not one of those people I think they actually have a strategy it's not clear so we have to puzzle it out one constraint they face is they understand that we are really good at conventional war see jsr put out a terrific paper on russian nuclear strategy by Dave Johnson and he outlines how in Russian military doctrine they're obsessed with aerospace operations right so if you hit shift f7 on your Microsoft Word that's a synonym for US air power us tactical precision air power how do you keep step one how do you keep the US Air Force away and step two how do you operate in this kind of environment right they've seen this show I mean look at the empirical record the last 17 years right Saddam Hussein twice Libya Afghanistan for good measure the Chinese will probably say something about Kosovo in 1998 and precision-guided munitions that hit their embassies we're very good at conventional war right so the so called middle of the of the spectrum so that's the first constraint one way to adjust to that constraint is to develop nuclear weapons everyone remember a Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert work he talked about offsets right what was the first offset talks about different offsets well the first offset was our nuclear weapons against Soviet conventional weapons well they're developing offsets right it was the second offset it was our precision guided munitions against Soviet conventional superiority what do you see in Russian conventional developments precision guided munitions and the third offset which we've thought about in terms of the china-us conflict in the Straits of Taiwan is a so-called air sea battle which is using attacks on command and control with precision guided munitions to overcome someone's anti-access area-denial capability but it's pretty clear to me that Russia is pursuing those first two offsets right this is straight out of the Cold War playbook right I'm conventionally weak these would be the United States so I'm gonna use nuclear weapons to offset that and I'm also gonna imitate in the precision guided munitions developments the United States has made in all those investments to offset US aerospace power they modernized and were modernized so there's an action reaction cycle now some people are shocked by this right and I think they need to sort of take a step back and understand that history did not end in 1991 right you all remember that Frank Fujiyama essay in the national interest that he actually wrote it but I think when he was still at Rand and the argument was that you know before world war two World War one it's right before World War two you had three competing ideologies yet communism National Socialism and liberalism raid and then in the Cold War knock out National Socialism air socialism liberalism and then liberalism wins in 1991 what does this mean well we figured it out there won't be any more great power of conflicts on top of that where the unipolar power right remember Charles crimer who recently passed he coined that phrase the unipolar moment well maybe we're not in the unipolar moment there are a lot of us who are skeptical the idea that there would be one great power for ever and ever locking in liberal institutions the world would keep getting better and better the trend in great power politics is people compete they adjust our adversaries are adjusting and we're Justin and again when I give this talk elsewhere people are kind of shocked that the United States had a policy during the Cold War of using nuclear weapons first but you know if I could teleport you back to 1983 when the music was really good and the fashion was terrific and I could run a YouTube clip of general like John Galvan had a sack your NATO he talked about using nuclear weapons three days into a conventional conflict with the Soviet Union and that's a that's a purposeful threat which is if you beat me conventionally I will use nuclear weapons so this isn't something new like this oh this exotic Russian military strategies sort of have great powers behave so one thing that is clearly different though is the strategic circumstances is different so think of it this way during the Cold War right we made it very clear to the Soviet Union that Western Europe was important to us right we developed strategic nuclear weapons to defend Western Europe we developed tactical nuclear weapons that have ran Western Europe we raised a large conventional military to defend Western Europe we put our families in Western Europe we put our soldiers there but we also put our families there that's signaling that we have skin in the game right my wife was born in Frankfurt I always tell her you were part of the US extended determinant right because what you were signaling to the Russia's if a war happens you're gonna kill Americans and that's gonna tie our hands and force us to defend and use nuclear weapons so we we did a lot to convince the Soviets that Western Europe mattered greatly to us in other words the stakes were very high for us and that's important because of the stakes are high we're going to take more risk to defend something that's important if you think about the conflicts we might have with potentially nuclear-armed adversaries elsewhere the stakes seem to favor them that's a very dangerous situation so think about this way if you're gonna have a fight with Russia in the Baltics as they're defending ethnic minorities Russian and minorities in Estonia right Russia is going to be conventionally weaker the arrogant in the United States and the stakes are going to be higher for them than the United States that's not a recipe for stability that's a recipe for a dangerous escalation so I like to say the tables have turned right in the past we were conventionally week and we threatened nuclear first years and that looks really hard I know some of us look fondly back to the Cold War not only just that fashion and pop culture but we also have this view that it was easy right the clue was clear there was two great powers and everyone knew what the rules well actually when you go back and look at the history it wasn't easy at all write what you know in 1980 we figured out how nuclear deterrence worked we did that's a news flash right if I took a poll in this audience and asked you how does nuclear deterrence work and I even gave you three options we would get some kind of distribution we have it we don't have a consensus about how nuclear deterrence works and by the way I think that explains a lot of the hand-wringing in the Nuclear Posture review they haven't figured out how nuclear deterrence works either and they don't know how Russians think about how nuclear deterrence works so the Cold War circumstance was hard and I'm here to tell you that the circumstance were in now is even harder there's an upside and downside to that right the upside is we have plenty of business nuclear modernization and the downside is I'm not sure I want to be in this strategic circumstance right because I used to be in the circumstance where I had to credibly convince you that I would use nuclear weapons first to defend NATO now I'm in the circumstance of having to deter you to turn the Russians from using nuclear weapons first and a conventional conflict where they have more at stake think about how difficult that is right so if you're the US and NATO during the Cold War or Russia today and you face conventional weakness and you want to make threats of nuclear first years to prevent a conventional defeat right you have to choose options between doing nothing and emptying out the whole arsenal between no first use and what Eisenhower would call massive retaliation right you have to attenuate the problem between zero and one and so to do that you have to think about well what are the different strategies that I could adopt that would make nuclear use credible there's one more complicating factor in the Cold War and in today both sides have survivable retaliatory capabilities now we can argue about like well of the u.s. struck first and it wasn't very cloudy that day and Putin was on vacation we might get 99 percent of the Arsenal ok but that 1 percent is still gonna hurt so if your adversary can can retaliate in kind then you have a credibility problem threatening the first use of nuclear weapons so how do you do that one of the best ways to develop credible strategies and what I'm going to take you through are different schools of thought on this question that an adversary like Russia or China or North Korea might pursue in order to prevent conventional defeat something we thought about and the goal here is some kind of negotiated settlement that turns off the war in other words this is called flexible response remember old flexible response Robert McNamara brought to you by your friends at the RAND Corporation right somewhere in this ladder of escalation I need options policymakers don't like the well we won't use nuclear weapon this is all giant hoax and they don't like their we will strike first and get all the weapons say well what's your second best option right so school 1 popularized by people like Bob Jervis Bernard Brodie most of the academics who trained me like Charlie Glaser is the punishment school it says that nuclear weapons are good at imposing costs right they're good at inflicting pain they're not like giant artillery shells this is why we've had a nuclear revolution right you know the story about Bernard Brodie he's finishing his PhD at the University of Chicago he's listening to Mahler he's writing about naval strategy and then 1945 happens two atomic bombs drop right suddenly that book on naval strategy doesn't look as interesting and to paraphrase his views the nature of warfare has changed right now militaries think about deterring war not winning wars right this is someone who thinks that there's been a revolution in military affairs this is something we like to talk about in different circles well Brodie and company would say this is really is a revolution right because now I can destroy another country in 30 minutes or less without defeating their military in the fields right and this only in technology will aid that over time during the Cold War and the key to making deterrence work is having a survivable nuclear force what a survivable mean it means you can't get it with the first strike if I have a survivable nuclear force then we should live in stability right and and no one's gonna no one's going to run the Schlieffen Plan or blitzkrieg into France if I have a survivable nuclear force because I'll send the other side back to your zero right is the argument in a sense we should see great stability nuclear weapons are a force for stability you should embrace and love the bomb I have that remember that those old Planet of the Apes movies and there's one plan of the Apes movie where they like worship this nuclear this is why I think when I talk about the nuclear revolution now of course the problem for these folks right is that that's not how people behave right no one in this room or within defense circles during the Cold War thought that we lived in a stable environment because we arms raced right we arm is raised in very intense qualitative and quantitative ways at the other end of the extreme right you know this is Curtis LeMay smoking irradiated ruins his argument and people in this school they think deterrence actually is not robust and it's likely to fail for rational and irrational reasons people can miscalculate they can make mistakes and so what you really need is the capability to destroy and disrupt the other side's nuclear forces and you're gonna make any credible threat for deterrence it requires counter force going after someone else's nuclear forces and the problem with this is that it's it sounds great but it's extremely difficult right now you know we can probably go to different rooms where well I can't go in and you know there's secret ninjas and precision this and that and UAVs but again one argument that you should remember from the nuclear revolution of folks that one or two of these really hurt if they land on Dodger Stadium right so yes you probably could limit lots of damage there's no doubt that we have impressive precision capabilities the question is can you get it all without getting your hair mussed up folks know who this is Harold Brown right he used to be a former head of Livermore at the age of 38 so we all feel like underachievers I'm working my way through the Pentagon's official history of Harold Brown's time in the defense department amazing guy sort of programmed all the capabilities that Reagan and could later use to win the Cole but he's also one of the fathers of the countervailing strategy right and and Browns argument was that we need something between relying on second-strike nuclear forces like the punishment school advocate and damage limitation capabilities we need the ability to fight a limited nuclear war lots of questions pop into your head when you think about limited nuclear war the first question you think about is well how am I going to win and what does winning look like is there some kind of abacus well someone's keeping score or you know what at what point does someone cry uncle and here I want to introduce the concept of escalation dominus like much of our liturgy on nuclear deterrence it has been abused and used in ways I don't think are appropriate escalation Dominus basically means I want to deter you from continuing the fight I want to convince you that this isn't going anywhere right hence the countervailing strategies focus on denying war aims but notice what that means it means you have to have the ability to control escalation right when these things start to go off if we believe even if we're not full nuclear revolution people but we believe with nuclear weapons start to go off our people are going to be able to control their emotions or they're going to be able to resist this right how many rounds of 1 z 2 Z's before us someone says you know maybe Curtis has a point right I can't trust the Russians or the North Koreans to be restrained they limited nuclear war requires restraint it requires the ability to communicate it requires some under mutual understanding between both sides about how what escalation dominance looks like what winning and losing you have to have an agreement about winning or losing looks like think of it as a dance both partners have to want to remain on the dance floor and there will always be the temptation for this I think in the Cold War we call that the clever briefer right someone who comes in and convinces you that well I think you're waiting too long the more you wait doing this right and the more mobile missiles move I think there's a fourth school that I want to tease out and I'm coming to embrace this school it's what I call the risk school and it's personified and advocated by Tom Schelling who believes there's who believes in a lot of the tenants of the punishment school but you have to do things to generate risk of uncontrollable escalation in order to win in a limited nuclear conflict or even to deter right it's not enough to have survivable nuclear forces you have to develop things that trigger mechanisms that trigger the use of those nuclear forces like trip wires right shelling would say the forces we had in Germany in the Cold War what was their purpose was a defense he would say yes right because that's just at the very bottom of the ladder if I can win conventionally that's great Charlie would say no the purpose of those forces is to die right you have to get your to think about how shelling did his work shelling was a he approached it like an economist great people are rational they're weighing cost and benefits expected cost expected benefits but a very simple elegant point which is once the shooting starts bad things will happen why because people behave irrationally they get afraid they get upset organizations are complicated right there can be accidents there could be in an advert in s collation one of my favorite books at the end of the Cold War and I have to card back copies is bury pose ins inadvertent escalation all right it came out like in 1989 right sort of like Bernard Brody and pose ins point in his book is that the way the United States is preparing to fight against the Soviet Union can certainly trigger a nuclear war think about how the United States fights conventionally think about the old air land battle involve using airpower mostly air power there's some ground ground fires but mostly air power to interdict in the rear to attack the command and control of your adversary why do you do that cuz well disrupts their ability to resist so you rip down the air defense go after the commander control go after the follow-on forces well what's in the rear of most nuclear armed adversaries their nuclear command and control and poses point was the way NATO was preparing to fight could trigger inadvertent escalation by the way sales of that book have gone back up it's now in reprint shelling would say well that's actually that's kind of good right because what you want is you want people to know that once you cross that red line of the conflict bad things are gonna happen the risk of uncontrollable escalation is going to happen so we have now a nice distinction right we have one school that says limited nuclear war who needs to worry about it the world's a safe place the only problem we have is convincing people that they have wrong ideas about nuclear deterrence hey Marcus never fail until they fail and then you have this school of thought which is deterrence always fails so we have to go after the other guys nuclear forces with counter force and the good news is we can do that today with precision guided munitions right we don't even have to use nuclear weapons because that's very junior varsity we're parse it and then you have two schools of thought about limited nuclear war one says you got to achieve escalation dominance and to do that you have to have escalation control and then you have the flip side he says I see your escalation control and raise you uncontrollable escalation right so so when we talk about North Korea we talk in these terms especially this talking about escalation dominance right we could do a google search and I could show you where the countervailing strategies in our DNA and RNA but if I were advising Dear Leader I would say you need to get on TV with a steering wheel and maybe the Joker lipstick right there's some shaving cream to say surely you're foaming at the mouth but the point is you want to show that you're reckless and dangerous that you can't participate in a limited nuclear war that uncontrollable bad things will happen so these are the four logics that we could tease out to think about different strategies on that ladder so in the paper we make some assumptions about Russia there are not true but that's because their assumptions before we get into the black box which is mired with lots of traps and dueling debates about Russian military doctrine we make some simple assumptions that Russia would want to survive it's basically strategic there's uncertainty right when we're doing this because we don't know much and this is remember this is a framework that you add data to and we argue that your strategy is driven by two variables right how strong are your conventional forces and how strong are your nuclear forces your nuclear forces tell you how ambitious your strategy can be and your conventional forces tell you how early you have to use them in a conflict right so like I have grave doubts about the ability of North Korea to stand up to South Korea in the United States and a conventional conflict so I think they're going to use nuclear weapons early in a conflict right so then you'd want to look at what does the arsenal look like and that might tell you what limited nuclear options look like so I think there are basically four strategies the first two are what I call risk strategies this is this is embracing that shelling esque kind of logic country like China has a lot of conventional options in a fight with the United States and would use nuclear weapons I think late in a conflict fire giving this talk ten years ago the China mafia would come out they'd beat me over the head and says this is a friendly panda it doesn't mirror image us global something about globalization they don't think about using nuclear weapons first but over time you see in different reporting about China there's been discussion about thinking about limited nuclear options but again it's in the background because they have some pretty impressive any access area denial capabilities that that might not be able to keep us out forever in the straits of Taiwan but over time the balance of power is changing in a way conventionally for them that's really good and then there's North Korea which I already alluded to I think North Korea will use nuclear weapons early in a conflict I think they would use it in a demonstrative way right rattle the windows to remind people that this conflict can get out of control the whole threat here is limited use maybe during wolf Blitzer's situation room a small bomb goes off where the Sea of Japan isn't demonstration maybe attacks against Japan right the idea here is you want to make the threat that leaves something the chance that there'll be uncontrollable escalation Pakistan I think contemplates using nuclear weapons to offset India's conventional strength hence the focus on short-range missiles that can attack advancing India and conventional forces Pakistan is what oh four five depending on how you count in conventional war with India so this is a rational response when we thought about it and then I think there's Russia Russia is these these this is all flexible response I think Russia has a calibrated form of escalation where they will start here if necessary and then maybe use nuclear weapons to address the conventional balance but the thing to remember about Russia is that it has an array of conventional forces that allows it to attenuate this problem even more and allows it to delay nuclear use so I think there is a defensive logic and an offensive logic to how Russia will use nuclear weapons the defensive logic at its core is well first nuclear we have nuclear weapon because we don't want to be attacked by nuclear weapons so we will advance the survivability of our nuclear force then we have nuclear weapons because we don't want to be defeated by NATO in a conventional conflict that's the defensive logic and it depends on a form of escalation dominance that's dependent on stakes I want to go back to this just because it's a crucially important point and I had a lot of times driving here to think about it so I was subjected to it this argument about fighting limited nuclear wars and I think you see it in the Nuclear Posture review is about achieving escalation dominance through technology that is I want to put the adversary in a position where he has no other options and he has got to cry uncle this is limited nuclear war is a competition in risk-taking who is willing to run more risk this is a crucial difference right because if you think the stakes favor you then you're going to be willing to run more risk and the question is risk of what it's risk of uncontrollable escalation it's a risk of uncontrollable escalation who is going to run more risk and Russian strategy I think is based on this understanding of a competition that is taking their near broad is more important to them that is to us especially if they're defending ethnic Russian minorities and places like the Baltics and you can see improvements in their conventional and nuclear forces that support this defensive strategy right first improve survivability write your own member of the 2005 Libre and press piece about how if we on the right day in the right moment we could first strike Russia and take out all their nuclear forces I remember that because I was an action officer in OSD and do you know these two guys no I don't never met them Russians the Russians listened they improved their survivability their nuclear force they also retained and developed tactical nuclear weapons your what did we do with their tactical nuclear weapons after the end of the Cold War well poppy Bush got rid of a lot of them right we're kind of out of that mission and that's important to understand when you're reading the NPR to because the NPR is basically saying you have lots of conventional options you the United States have lots of conventional options and you're really good the strategic nuclear stuff but what's in the middle of the ladder and hurry up and develop a low-yield SLBM Mach schnell right that's because we've abandoned that middle of the ladder and the Russians have not so they've improved their survivability built tactical nuclear weapon will maintain and then improve their tactical nuclear weapons probably by date violated the INF treaty while you're at it and then developed conventional weapons to complement that and some of those conventional weapons right and crew include land attack cruise missiles and air defense Network that can keep the US Air Force out I think one of the great puzzles for me when I teach my US military power class and the fall is why did Saddam never attack us and in a very ambitious way as we were building up our forces in theater right I mean twice we float forces to the region you know we practice we got ready and then we invaded but one of the great lessons is don't allow us to do that right make it hard for us to operate in theater and Russia has developed a bunch of capabilities like the Chinese to prevent us from acting in the theater right they also have a number of conventional land attack cruise missiles that are also dual use which complicates our planning it's a happy story right they they contemplate using against NATO allies who are a little bit wobbly all right so you can imagine posit the ran scenario for the Baltics Russia invades maybe not the entire country of Estonia but a part of Estonia that has their ethnic brethren well so the United States wants to then its obligated to rerun the Gulf War and Estonia that's the ideal case for us right we go in we build up reject but we don't cross into the Russian homeland that's the model where the Russians understand that that's the model right and so now they have a bunch of options across the ladder of escalation the ladder of violence that makes it hard for us you're going to be you're at least going to be deterred by the prospect of conventional punishment this is something that we don't really contemplate because we grew up with you know step one rip down their air defense step to bring freedom well you're gonna have to bash down this air defense probably endure conventional cruise missile attacks against your allies then you're apt to think about ferrying those forces well not the people but the equipment from CONUS because remember we during my time in the Pentagon we started bringing things back to college well you have to start to fair back to Europe and the Russians have continued develop capabilities like the backfire bomber that would make that complicated so let's assume oh and this scenario requires to eject Russia just based on that Rand analysis I'm slightly biased twenty-plus brigades lots of air power right you do you're not fighting Saddam Hussein you're fighting you're not fighting the Soviet Union either I don't I'm not here to threaten flee only slightly this is going to be a formidable fight and it's according to this Rand analysis is gonna take 40 to 90 days right and their analysis as we win by a squeaker right but let's think about what that means you have to bash down that air defense Network it's gonna require numerous sorties they're gonna be casualties right and then think about what your what what is your consolation prize when you win this conventional fight to liberate Estonia well the potential of Russia using nuclear weapons and what would that look like right you start to win the Russian strategy is well look in the United States NATO I have a survivable nuclear force yeah maybe it's not the Soviet force of the 1970s but it's it's survivable enough that I could hit the US homeland and what would nuclear use look like well how about alerting during a crisis how about brandishing those weapons remember when Putin took Crimea he made statements about how Russian nuclear forces were at the ready I don't know if that's bluff or not but it has a term value but about demonstration attacks oh this might be a good time to test because I know the United States and CNN are watching there you could always use tactical nuclear if you're losing the conventional fight you could always use tactical nuclear weapons to reverse the conventional balance and then what do you do as the United States because this conventional fight is very difficult cuz you're projecting power into the teeth of the bear so let's think about Russia's nuclear calculation what would drive Russia to use nuclear weapons well the first question we've already talked about it's the conventional balance but what about this risk right Russian decision-makers have to know that using nuclear weapons is dangerous and I can point to numerous statements by mattis or other US policymakers DEP secretary Secretary of Defense Robert work reminding Russia that if you use nuclear weapons uncontrollable things this is a dangerous thing no one's gonna win all right but if I'm in a competition at risk-taking then I want to run those risk if the stakes are high for me and I think this is this is an important point we have to decide how you get good outcomes in these limited nuclear wars 13 years ago when I worked on these issues in the building people talked about a France oh my off-ramps people are still talking about ah France and you asked well what does the offering look like my my favorite off-ramp is don't get involved at all but right but that makes me sound like the second coming of Neville Chamberlain but I have trouble thinking about what the other off-ramps look like right and I keep going back to how this is a really difficult situation and then when NATO is in this situation we definitely were going to use nuclear weapons first in the way I just described and we did it because we understood that there were risk but the stakes were really high for us there's an alternative view that I think is quite popular in government and I'm sympathetic to it but I don't think it's compelling and that is we can find a technological solution to these limited nuclear wars that is we'll build some really good missile defence will have good nuclear and conventional counter force the adversary will know this they won't run these kinds of risk but remember that depends on your ability to control the war and I'm not sure once these wars happen you'll be able to control them and clever adversaries we have more at stake will manipulate that and use that to their advantage I said there was a defensive point to the strategy think there's an offensive point to this strategy Russia reminds me a lot of Pakistan what do I mean by that well it's not because it's domestically unstable on exporting Islamic extremism no that's not what I mean I mean it's because they have nuclear weapons and think about using nuclear weapons as a shield against a superior conventional adversary so my colleague Paul Kapoor at the Naval Postgraduate School has written a terrific book about Pakistan's nuclear strategy and he makes the argument that since they developed nuclear weapons their support for Lo and what we used to call low intensity conflict then it became your regular warfare and now became hybrid warfare their support for low intensity conflict has gone up in South Asia I think Russia is kind of adhering to that playbook right I don't think it's particularly special I don't think it deserves a new name this is just international politics if yes well what does Russia really want I'm not sure they want to march to Berlin again because then they would lose a paying customer for all their gas but I do think that Russia is upset about the status quo drawn in 1991 and I don't want it sound like I'm carrying the brief for Russia but Vladimir is nodding but we told them we would not unify Germany and we did and then we told them we wouldn't put a unified Germany in NATO and we did we told them we wouldn't expand NATO we did we told them we would here to the ABM Treaty and we got rid of it and then the EU plays kissy face with Ukraine and I mean at some point right great power strike back this may be shocking for those of you who thought that great power of war and great power of conflict ended and you still got your Tom Friedman on your shelf somewhere and globalization will solve all these problems but I think this makes perfect sense for Russia that at the level of low levels of violence using low intensity conflict to try to change the status quo to try to divide NATO that's been a Russian and goal since the advent of NATO right if we were to go back in time thirty years ago we'd be having a conversation about German neutralization why was Germany going to go neutral at some point and did you see in Sunday's newspaper the article in a German newspaper about advocating maybe Germany should start thinking about acquiring nuclear weapons that's that's a sea-change right so implications of all this Russia's got their strategies like layers of an onion at the core of the onion is developed survivable nuclear forces so Libra and press are wrong the second rung of that that onion second part of that onion is develop limited nuclear options so if you get in the conventional fight you can avoid losing third layer of that onion and this allows you to use low intensity conflict in the mirror broad and it deters US intervention and then you wrap that onion in developments in Russian conventional precision-guided munitions there's a pretty impressive rational strategy what does this mean well the first point I want to leave with you is that I want to remind you that extended deterrence is really dangerous if I told you that in 1983 you'd understand we'd all go home and watch the day after and have a stiff drink but most of my students don't understand that right there they're worried about 9/11 but we're now back into a world just read the Nuclear Posture review we're contemplating the use of nuclear weapons in a limited way right why are we doing that well because I've gone from threatening first use to deterring first years I can't think of a more difficult mission I need the technical go out and build me the technological capabilities so when I have the Russian down at the bear on the mat and I'm gonna give him the Coupe de Grace that he'll disarm he'll give up because my reading of Cold War history is that when we were down on the mat we were not going to give up we're gonna use nuclear weapons how do I determine that how do you determine one who is in the domain of losses how you determine who's about to get the coup de Gras from using nuclear weapons that you you all figured that out it I'm sure it has something to do with hypersonics or ninjas and then we have to think about escalation management I I laid out two opposing views of limited nuclear war one it's highly technological this is the Harold Brown denial school and one that's about a competition and stakes and then the way I described it at least as a baseline is it's very rational at some point someone gives up but there's going to be all these different pressures for escalation as a crisis erupts before the war begins they'll be the temptations to strike first right if I can limit damage by striking first against some kind of opponent they'll know this and I'll know this and they'll know this you see this is what Sharleen called the reciprocal for a surprise attack so just in the crises before the shooting starts that instability is there as the shooting starts there's going to be the temptation to preempt because the longer a war goes on the more survivable when in some respects more survivable the adversaries forces and here I have in particular mind if I want to go after with the real boogeyman for us our Russian mobile missiles SS 25 SS 27 if if they disperse right there that's a harder target set to go after so I might want to go after them early and then there's just plain accidents and then there's inadvertence right dear Russia this is only a conventional war please refer to the Marquis de Queensberry rules on page 4 this is a conventional only fight until it's not and again I think that the real issue here is competitions and risk-taking as opposed to some kind of technological solution to nuclear use and then lastly what's the right what's the right US nuclear strategy and I guess I should have quit what's the right US conventional and nuclear strategy we're in a bad spot I read the Nuclear Posture review and I don't think oh my god who who's thinking about limited nuclear war we've never thought about this is so awful right it's not true everyone thinks about limited nuclear I mean not everyone my wife doesn't think about it but the current Nuclear Posture review deserves credit for grappling with a really tough situation which is how do you determine one from using nuclear weapons first and if you ever read sometimes I don't always read it but the war on the rocks had this great piece by Frank Miller about the low-yield SLBM right and he basically says that it's the whole leadership targets at risk I'm not I'm not sure I wonder what leadership targets at risk right and maybe you do right if if you have a shelling esque risk point-of-view right then you're engaging in the competition and risk-taking with Russia by saying okay I understand all the developments you've made but now I have this capability that can penetrate your air defense you can run but you can't hide and it's gonna be low yield right and you're basically generating more risk so that that makes sense but I'm not sure that was the logic behind the thinking if the logic is the other way which is I'm looking for technological solutions to fight a little bit of nuclear war then you need to control escalation which means you probably don't want to target leaders because someone has to turn it off so if anything this is a cry for let's be clear about our logics about why we're doing what we're doing alright I babble long enough questions questions [Applause]

Channel: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Views: 10,098

Keywords: nuclear, physics, science, LLNL, lawrence livermore national lab, nuclear tests, atomic tests, test films, deterrance, diplomacy, politics, NATO, CGSR

Id: 37ypn0HBcWI

Length: 54min 21sec (3261 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 21 2018