Nuclear War Theory: Continuity and Change

PETER CLEMENT: On my far left is Cynthia Roberts. She's a professor at Hunter College and here at Saltzman is a senior research scholar and adjunct professor at the Saltzman Institute. She will be the moderator. For those of you who may not know Cynthia as well as some of us here do, she's a very serious scholar of all things nuclear. She's also a Russia expert, and she had a great opportunity recently to go down and spend some time at the Pentagon for almost a year to work at the J5 looking at strategy plans and policies, so she has a little bit of insight into the whole problems we're going to be talking about in this nuclear panel. You can read more about Cynthia's accomplishments again in the program as well as all of our speakers. I will turn it over to Cynthia now to introduce the speakers. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: Thank you, Peter. I should start by saying good morning. Nuclear weapons are back, as we know, once again central to international politics along with renewed, intensified great power competition. What's more, Russia's aggression-- as Peter noted-- against Ukraine has brought the prospect of nuclear war back into the realm of possibility. We have a terrific panel here today at Columbia to give their perspectives on these questions about the new multipolar nuclear era, and we will anchor our discussion to the seminal works of Robert Jervis whose work on the nuclear age offers us, as you all know, essential guideposts to assess the continuities and change in nuclear theory, and this is one of those fields where we emphasize theory over practice. Our panelists are familiar to you because they've authored many of the most significant works on nuclear theory, on international relations, international security studies since Bob penned his landmark studies. They're all Jervis-ians-- I can say that-- but each in his or her own way. So please read the bios because they've written so many books and articles. We'd spend all morning just reviewing them. Let me just introduce them to you briefly. Starting at your far left, my far right, is Steve Van Evera the Ford International professor at MIT, and I think a Yankees fan. [LAUGHTER] Scott Sagan is the Monroe Professor of Political Science, the Haas University Fellow, and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford. Next, Etel Solingen is the distinguished professor and Tierney Chair in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California at Irvine. And to my right is Charles Glaser, a professor of political science and international affairs and co-director of the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at the George Washington University. So let's dive in. Bob Jervis, of course, is best known in this field-- in the area of nuclear theory for his book, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution. It was assigned reading for today, so I'm sure you brought your notes with you. So let's start with Bob's most important claims in this book and the ones that you think hold up best in the new nuclear age, in the emerging multipolar nuclear world. And as context, perhaps for the rest of you, I should note that the Biden administration's nuclear posture review which came out last year characterizes this era as unprecedented. "By the 2030s," and I quote from the NPR, "the US will for the first time in its history face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries." And then it goes on to talk about other nuclear powers like North Korea and so on. So given these developments, what do you draw from Bob's work as far as the insights that most carry over? Let's start with Charlie. CHARLES GLASER: OK. So the main thing for Jervis-- and I think it applies today and into the future-- was the logic of mutual vulnerability. And in fact, his work didn't say much about nuclear weapons outside of MAD-- which is not a shortcoming. At the time, the world was focused on the US and the Soviet Union, and we thought we were in MAD. And so I think the basic arguments-- and I think they're familiar, but it's worth reiterating them-- is that a state couldn't protect itself from its adversary in that situation. And therefore, it didn't make sense to target the other side's forces, or there was no value in targeting forces because you couldn't protect yourself, and then many things followed from that. So unlike in a world of conventional weapons, relative force size didn't matter. If you were in MAD and had that retaliatory capability, it didn't matter if the other side had more weapons because at least-- except maybe at the far margin-- it wouldn't affect how much damage you could do. So relative force size didn't matter. The size of forces after a nuclear exchange didn't matter. The quality of your weapons didn't matter very much, at least in the moment, and this is just radically different from a conventional world where all those things did matter. And among other things, his critique was that much of nuclear thinking was carried out in conventional terms thinking about relative force size, thinking about complicated options. But in fact, those were not logical conclusions. He said less about what the options should be. But I think if you took his arguments seriously-- and I think he follows in this on-- and he, of course, gives credit to many people that preceded him, but among others, Thomas Schelling. That basically in this world of mutual vulnerability, if you were going to use nuclear weapons, they should be limited attacks. There was no logic to all out attacks, and they should be attacks that inflicted damage. It was a bargaining process, and it wasn't one that necessarily-- or in fact, maybe even shouldn't involve attacking forces. One of the arguments that has currency today and that Jervis criticized from the 1970s was that, well, maybe there are countries-- and it was argued by the US government, including the Soviet Union-- that basically valued their forces and their leadership and not so much their society and their population. And this had the sort of rather bizarre implication of turning forces into what would be called value targets. If you wanted to inflict punishment, you had to attack the forces. So all of a sudden, there was this logic for attacking forces and not bargaining. Or if you were bargaining, it would be by attacking forces, but not by attacking the other things the adversary might value. This obviously had huge implications for force planning because in Jervis's world, there was no need to target forces, and you didn't want to target forces. And now all of a sudden, the countervailing strategy would say, no. You need to target forces and leadership. And so this becomes somewhat of a judgment call. It's unclear what the deep intel is on where this value of leadership came from and targeting forces came from. But at least intuitively, it never made sense to him or to me that even if that was how leaders thought about it-- if you were essentially destroying their society, then did it matter if the forces were not destroyed? OK, what value would you have on them? And so anyway, that's the basic-- I think the broad logic is the logic of mutual vulnerability and how it's very counterintuitive to and sort of opposite of traditional conventional logic. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: Yes. So Scott, maybe you want to pick up on this, how stability is really the result of a shared perception that crises cannot escalate. SCOTT SAGAN: Well, I want to start just by saying it's a real honor to be on a panel honoring Jervis and his contributions in nuclear strategy. And even though we were told not to tell too many Bob stories, I can't resist just one. I wasn't very close to Bob. I didn't go to Columbia. But I met him at the Council on Foreign Relations because he was the outside reviewer for my first book, Moving Targets. And he wrote a personal note after a very strong, detailed analysis of the manuscript that was very helpful. And he wrote, Scott, put this book to bed now, and get it published and get going on your second book. Because I like this book, but it lacks the theoretical heft that you'll need to get tenure at Stanford. [LAUGHTER] That was a hard thing for a young assistant professor to read, but it was absolutely true-- absolutely true. And I think about that whenever I have to give tough love messages to grad students today. For this occasion, I went back and took out my copy of his 1989 book. It's very important-- and Charlie's right. It's really about the inevitability of mutually assured destruction, and combining that with Bob's psychological insights, that meant that limited uses of force are very dangerous in that world. And arms racing is counterproductive and perhaps dangerous at worst. So I went back and began reading this, and I think there are two real characteristics I wanted to highlight. One is the erudition, the wide ranging, quite extraordinary understanding and knowledge of history. So he's not just great on psychology, but he will use examples. So to understand unauthorized uses of force, you find King Victor Emmanuel saying when the German gunboats show up in the Agadir harbor during the second Moroccan crisis-- Victor Emmanuel writes, "On such occasions, cannons have a way of going off on their own." He, of course, will use Thucydides to understand hubris. And to understand the dangers of people getting angry and doing something irrational, Bob opens up the newspaper and finds that yesterday, a pedestrian was stabbed to death on 42nd Street when he accosted a motorist whose van grazed him when he tried to cross an intersection. Witnesses say the two men exchanged words. The driver punched the pedestrian. The pedestrian punched back. The driver pulled out a knife and stabbed the victim. It looks like it just got out of hand, the police captain says. So Bob could bring both history and everyday life in New York City to bear on questions of international security. But the second characteristic of this book-- which really deserves to be reread, and reread again-- is how practical Bob was. He didn't approach these questions from a ideological perspective, but rather from a practical perspective. The most obvious problem, he says, with counterforce is that we can't destroy all Soviet strategic forces because there are too many of them. They're hardened, and they're difficult to find. What about counter leadership targeting? Well, small warheads with terminal guidance might be able to hit the KGB headquarters without destroying the areas around it, but we don't have those required weapons. Now, I would posit that we do have those required weapons today, both in terms of low yield nuclear warheads and in terms of many conventional capabilities. And while we still can't target all Russian nuclear forces, we can target with nuclear and mostly with conventional forces North Korea's nuclear arsenal, and that poses a very different logic. I wish Bob was here to help us analyze that. And with respect to China, I think the Chinese were believers in Bob Jervis until relatively recently. And it appears that the Chinese are now saying-- yeah, they're worried about their nuclear forces. And therefore, they're going to build a lot more of them, and we're going to have a near-- two peer competitors. And I think this is particularly dangerous because I think we could have a conventional capability of holding off one of those two states without nuclear escalation if Russia attacked NATO or if the Chinese attack Taiwan. But if one attacks, and the other takes advantage of a war-- what's often called opportunistic aggression-- then we're going to be back in a world where the United States is going to be very interested in nuclear escalation, which I think does get us back to a very dangerous situation. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: So Bob's other book on the subject, which got less attention in academe, was The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy. And in this book-- which we also encourage you to read-- he recognized that the actual practice of nuclear strategy diverged from what his theory recommended, the classic problem of prescription, description, explanation. Why were the policymakers not following Bob Jervis's theory? And more recently, since Bob's-- these two landmark studies, a bunch of next generation scholars have found that the nuclear strategies that surprised Jervis were in fact the pattern, not the exception. So they were siding with the illogic argument, saying, no, this is actually logical, challenging Bob's arguments about the stabilizing effects of mutual vulnerability, so now we come full cycle. How do you assess these next generation arguments in the context of the original arguments about mutual vulnerability? Let's turn to Steve and see-- or should I start with Charlie? STEPHEN VAN EVERA: Oh, I'll tackle it. We were asked not to tell Jervis stories here, but I have to. I'm going to tell one. SCOTT SAGAN: I set a bad precident. [LAUGHTER] STEPHEN VAN EVERA: Again, like Scott, I didn't have a chance to study under Bob Jervis ever. But he was my most important teacher, really, in terms of who taught me the most about international politics. And I used to trail him around if he was ever in a city I was in and he was giving a talk. I would like-- oh, man. Jervis is giving a talk. He's at Harvard. Let's go see what he's saying. He's at the APSA or whatever. So one day, he was up at Harvard. And I'm relating to Peter's comment about how his thing was suits because I don't think he fully stated the realities. [LAUGHTER] He hated suits. These guys are wearing suits today. But I'm at a Jervis conference. I'm not going to wear a suit. Believe it. Of course not. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: Neither am I. STEPHEN VAN EVERA: Pardon? CYNTHIA ROBERTS: Neither am I. [LAUGHTER] STEPHEN VAN EVERA: Neither are you. Exactly. So anyway, one day he'd given a brilliant talk, and I was just-- I somehow managed to latch on to him and followed him back to the hotel up there across from the Cambridge Common. And we were yakking about the fate of the world and the nuclear revolution and the security dilemma and spiral models. We just kept going all the way to his hotel room. And I thought, this is cool. I get to talk to Jervis for another 10 minutes. So he just went in the room, and I followed him in. And within 30 seconds, I was staring at Bob Jervis in his underwear. [LAUGHTER] He had a suit on because he-- he just ripped it off. It was like-- [LAUGHTER] There's several deep meanings to this whole story. [LAUGHTER] In any event-- so let me comment a bit about the new wave of thinkers who have differed with Jervis, or at least they seem to have differed with him, who've come along since more or less the year 2000 or so. A bunch of them went to MIT. They didn't listen to anything I told them. So what can I say? I'll say four things about the nuclear revolution and the new thinkers. They challenge his work in two ways. I will say number one. Jervis was the primary scholar who was for the first time quotable saying the nuclear revolution is a defensive revolution. Nukes mean great powers can't conquer each other anymore. And to me, when I look at writing, and the academic community, and its writing on what the nuclear revolution means, there's something, to me, sad about it, which is there was almost no writing about this question. Is this a revolution in warfare that affects statecraft, and affects the security dilemma? How does it affect the ability of states to conquer each other? Which is a crucial question if you're then going to ask what should your own defense policy be. Do nukes make you safe or not. And Brody wrote about this a little bit in the book, Absolute Weapon, and what's his name wrote, There Will Be No Time. There was two books about this question that disagreed back in 1946. And then there was no writing about it all the way until I think Ken Waltz commented on it in 1981 in Adelphi. He wrote he didn't really elaborate. And then Jervis was the guy I would always cite saying, finally, somebody is unpacking this idea. It's interesting even Jervis didn't unpack the argument in ways, I would have thought he did. He was a Groucho Marxist in the sense that he wouldn't be a member of any club he was a member of. And so he wouldn't toot his own horn, and he wouldn't use his own ideas very much. And to me, the huge story with the nuclear revolution is it really greatly eases the security dilemma. And that is a huge event in world history. And it all relates very much to his work on the security dilemma, his fantastic, 1978 article on cooperation, and security dilemma. And he never uses the word security dilemma in connection with the nuclear revolution in that book. He doesn't even say countries can't conquer each other. He says, "You can't win wars." and he says, "Nuclear weapons reinforce the status quo." Those words get used. But the word conquer doesn't come up even though it's crucial. And this security dilemma, doesn't get mentioned. Anyway, still it was the most important writing on that subject. And his theory would then predict if you think the security dilemma is important, if you think that lots of warfare stems from the search for security, and for the fact that states feel insecure, and therefore, wage war to gain the resources they need to defend themselves, or to reduce the power of others to hurt them, then you've really changed the world in a huge way. And one of the predictions of the theory would be that, or his views on nukes would be that we'd have a much more quiet world, much less great power conflict. And the new guys have said, well, look at all the crises. And look at Scott Sagan's work on how dangerous some of them have been, and how come we're not-- The Cold War, a lot of people got killed. We didn't have a general war. My view is that the big story on the nuclear revolution and the Cold War is that it was misperceived that neither elite, the Soviet nor American saw the nuclear revolution in the way that Jervis talked about it. My own short history is the Soviet elites came to view this as a defensive revolution very late in the game. It was the new thinkers around Gorbachev who believed it, as a few people you can name like Andrey Kortunov and others who wrote about it. And it got mixed up with the Soviet adoption of the idea of non-offensive defense, which they never actually implemented. But in the mid '80s, they changed their view about how to defend the Soviet Union. And these new thinkers, the old civilians, all not military, adopted the view that we now live in an easier to live in world with nuclear weapons. And this was part of the reason in my view why the Cold War ended. Soviet elites decided they did not need buffer room in the west the way they had assumed in the '40s. And they ended the Cold War by pulling out of Eastern Europe. They weren't pushed. But that was very late in the game. If you look at all the American strategic thinking leading up to that, look at how American policymakers thought about nukes. They did not see it as a defensive revolution. And my own view is this is tragic. My view is the US had wide room to conduct a much more relaxed foreign policy in the Cold War, that the widespread third world intervention in the US did, not only were we intervening in places, where the stakes were low, and the cost not worth it, and often failure was likely like Vietnam. But also even if those things weren't true, we were an unconquerable country. And so bottom line is, my view of the nuclear revolution, it means great powers will not conquer anybody anymore. My view is this calls for huge change in US national security grand strategy from former years. There's been some change. There should be more. And the youngsters are correct to say, well, gee Cold War was pretty mean, it was. Nevertheless, we didn't have a general war. And there was a lot of other things that you didn't see in the Cold War. For example, preventive war was a pervasive part of world politics, and great power relations during the years up to 1945. There was very little talk of it once we got to MAD. There also was talk before we got to MAD. The Americans thought about it in the late '40s and '50s, and then the US and the Soviet thought about preventive war against China. But this is a dog that doesn't bark in the Cold War. I think it's because Windows don't exist in a MAD world. Anyway, I'll stop with that. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: So just to push this one increment further. Bob wrote in the first book that if nuclear weapons have had the influence that the nuclear revolutionary theory indicates they should have, then there should be peace between the superpowers, and crises will be rare, and neither side will be eager to press bargaining advantages to the limit, and the status quo will be relatively easy to maintain. And the Young Turks come and challenge most of these. So are they completely wrong, and Bob is completely writers, there's some middle ground here? Where is nuclear theory today when we re-examine the logic of both of his books you want to bite on that a little more? CHARLES GLASER: I would emphasize. I mean, I think Steve hit a very important point of what the challenge, which has to do with these claims about the political implications of nuclear weapons. But a very important part of their critique, actually, is that MAD is that Jervis is assumption, as I think I said, at the beginning, it's like MAD is inescapable, largely inescapable, and not delicate. And so their argument is actually the Cold War was much more fragile in the sense that the United States was much more capable against Soviet forces than we knew at the time. There are submarines were highly vulnerable it turned out for much of the Cold War. It went in and out. Their ICBMs like our ICBMs were becoming quite vulnerable. By the end of the Cold War, fortunately, for the Soviet Union by the time their ICBMs were coming vulnerable, their submarines were becoming less vulnerable. So the argument is that we stayed in MAD, but it was a much closer call. And if you think it was a close call, which means maybe we could have even done better. Then all of a sudden, competition makes sense because you might be able to protect yourself. And so all of the arms racing that we did wasn't this futility that was explained by these semi weak or very weak countervailing strategy arguments, but by very basic arguments, which is if you can protect yourself, even partially, but substantially, then you can gain a bargaining advantage, and plus if war happens you might be better off. And so the argument then was, that's the argument that a few people have made. Austin Long and Brendan Greene, in particular, have laid it out Owen Koch's work at MIT is foundational on the vulnerability of submarines. But it turns out that the world we thought we lived in was not quite what we actually lived in, and it wasn't we were making a mistake. It's very interesting thing. It was like according to the laws of physics, the Soviet Union should have been able to make really quiet submarines. But were not able to work at that. They were not able to achieve that technological limit. And consequently, the world that was supposed to emerge actually didn't quite emerge. Although we stayed in MAD. Then there's a second argument, which I think is a very clever argument, which Brendan Greene says is to get bargaining leverage, you don't even really have to escape MAD. You just have to make the adversary believe that you might have escaped MAD, or even worse, that have them believe that you believe it. Because if you believe it, you will act accordingly, and therefore, you get that leverage. And so his argument is that we actually got close enough. He has a few quotes. I'm not convinced. But there are documents from the Soviet files that say, we think in the worst case, we might only have 12 survivable weapons, which is not the MAD world. It's still a world of tremendous potential damage. But the outcomes start to look very different. So in that world, basically the logic of the nuclear revolution is out the window. Because the logic of the nuclear revolution is that you're in bed. You shouldn't compete, shouldn't target forces. But if you can gain an advantage by targeting forces, then maybe you should do it at least. And a whole bunch of complicated trade offs are back on the table. This is not my view by the way. Then, of course, you have to look at a couple of really important technological questions, which is can you compete your way out of MAD? Can you get a significant damage limitation against the adversary? And then if you can, since we're talking about really MAD being loosely defined as destroying the ability to destroy the adversary society, how good does it have to be like? If you can just protect yourself a little bit, is that going to give you a bargaining advantage? How much leverage are you going to get unless you have a very effective, and high confidence damage limitation capability? And then, of course, if you said technologically, we can do it, and we can do it well enough to get an advantage, you would still want to look at the risks, because this then becomes a very competitive world. It's a world in which there are incentives to use nuclear weapons quickly, and there are not incentives to use weapons quickly. There's all the negative political effects of arms races. So the thing I would say is unlike MAD has an incredibly tight internal logic, it eliminates all these trade offs. There's not a lot of room for subjectivity once you're stuck in that world, with the exception of saying what the other side really values is or forces, which as I said turns it all on its head. Once you can get a damage limitation capability, the world is much more analytically much more complicated. So then this argument, then has also been extended to the future. And the argument is that it was hard to get a damage limitation capability during the Cold War, but it's getting easier. And so the arguments are now it is the case that both sides. Anything we can find, we can destroy. All fixed silos are highly vulnerable. So including our RICBM leg. So what about the other legs? And the arguments are, well, in the Chinese case, and the Russian case, they have mobile missiles. But now, we haven't done it yet, but we can deploy really large constellations of small radar satellites to contract mobile missiles. And if we can track them, we can destroy them. Not point wise, but in a barrage kind of attack. So then you have to analyze, who's going to win this competition between radar satellites and mobile missiles? It's not clear radar will win. Because then, you're going to have decoys, and hiding, and spoofing of satellites, and all sorts of things. But it is a different technology. And the world is quite different that way. And then people have made claims, much looser claims about submarines than they have about mobile missiles. We're going to have the combination of AI, and autonomous vehicles, and quantum sensing, and a variety of things. We're going to make the oceans transparent. I think that's definitely not happening. But people have said these things. So if you believe that, then maybe the nuclear revolution is something of the past basically. We're going to have a world of competing partial vulnerabilities, or something like that. So that's the attack. It's partly technological, but it's partly theoretical. And I think it's an open debate at this point. Although, there are projects ongoing, to look at this competition between the relevant technologies, the anti-submarine warfare, the antI-mobile missiles, that counter command and control. Missile defense. People are talking about major breakthroughs in missile defense. They're not going to happen either by the way. But people are talking about them. So I think we have to see where that shakes out. I mean, my own view, which is still forming is that we're likely to stay in a world of mutual vulnerability against very capable adversaries. But a very important warning, or maybe opportunity from the United States is that we shouldn't-- And this is something my own analysis didn't do. And Jervis didn't do. He took it as a given most of the stuff. He was not on the technical side. But it's not clear we should assume that adversaries will actually work, be able to operate forces as the engineering, and physical limit of what's possible. We've been close to that at least a lot of the time. But the Soviet Union strikingly wasn't. If China doesn't operate its mobile missiles really effectively, they'll be vulnerable. I think they can win that competition, but they have to be really good. Say of course, they're going to be really good. 10 wolves would have said, when the stakes are this high, states act really, really effectively. But what happened to the Soviet Union? I mean, they did really poorly it turns out. So there's another layer, which goes beyond the military technical layer, which goes to the societal capacity in this competition. And I think you'd want to look there both. How hard it is? The Chinese can't do certain things yet that we do on a regular basis. So will they be able to do that? Will they matter? That's just on the technical point. I think on the competitive side, it's a much safer world to accept mutual vulnerability than compete at the margins for small advantages. So you might say, but what about large advantages? Well, large advantages are harder to give up. They matter. So I think it's an ongoing. It hasn't been fully engaged. It's an ongoing debate. And like I say, it has these multiple layers in it. I think it's connected to the issues that Steve was raising, but is also a somewhat logically separable debate, which is how much competition would you really expect in mid at the superpower level between major powers. Let's say one last thing there, which is I think Jervis did overstate something, because we were so focused in the Cold War on the United States and the Soviet Union, that many of the things he said, I think he would qualify if somebody said, well, how about this other dyad? Because if you think about the US and the Soviet Union, it was a large war in the central front, with lots of tactical nuclear weapons. We're not small land grabs, and so on, and so forth. And so that war was pretty easy to deter because it was going to be a huge war. The stability and stability paradox wasn't nearly as severe. Escalation looked likely even where we were in MAD, et cetera, et cetera. But I think if you look at other dyads, including the US China dyad, for example, and the case of Taiwan, for a variety of reasons, he would have been less confident. But I don't know, but I'm guessing. Partly, MAD has this incredible deterrent potential, but it also depends upon how much actors what they want. And so, we may be in different situations that way. I do think that China is going to make it much harder. They're building a really large force. I think that their vision, the large force are building is because they want an assured destruction capability. They didn't have one. China, a couple of decades had a totally inadequate nuclear force given the threat the United States could pose. Now, they're going to have a very effective one. How is that going to influence their thinking about limited aggression in East Asia? CYNTHIA ROBERTS: And of course, Russia following the Soviet Union's lack of technological advantages, which Marshall Bulgakov so well detailed to Les Gelb in a fascinating interview on this question saying, we're just never going to be able to get the technologies at the same levels you have. We see Russia under Putin trying to maintain its assured destruction capability through modernizing its forces, struggling to do that as opposed to get the advantages in the same way as we have. Etel, did you want to jump on this because I was going to turn to you on the next question? ETEL SOLINGEN: Because I see we're almost an hour into the panel. And I'm supposed to give another talk. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: Yes. So let me turn to the next question, which is, why do more states seem to want nuclear weapons, or at least, a more viable nuclear hedging option when we haven't seen a lot of nuclear proliferation over the years, less than many initially expected at the dawn of the nuclear age? But now, we see notably South Korea, Saudi Arabia, potentially Japan, potentially Taiwan, Iran, how can one not mention Iran, and maybe even Ukraine depending on how the war ends and the post-war settlement. So Etel and Scott have both made very important contributions to theories about why states are more or less likely to pursue the bomb from strategic threats to domestic politics, normative, symbolic, frameworks. And Etel, I want to turn to you because you have this very interesting theory that distinguishes between internationalist and inward-oriented nationalist regimes, and their different domestic, political, and economic incentives to go nuclear or not. So what's your take on the current era drawing on the very rich evolving scholarship on this question? ETEL SOLINGEN: Thank you. And I do want to thank Karen who's not here right now, and Peter for the invitation. I'm very honored to be here. I wasn't a student of Bob Jervis either, but I did learn so much from him I met him for the first time at a certain agency in Washington, DC when he invited me to give a talk on some of these issues. Before the book, I think in the context of this article I had published in International security in 1994, I'm dating myself, that has to do with the question at hand. So regarding the drivers of, by the way, I have to say, we were given 11 questions to address. And so I addressed mostly three through 11. And we're only on two were done. So in that 1994 article in IS, I argued that the theoretical repertoire in the field had omitted what I noticed was some regularity. And that in brief, the inception of the nonproliferation treaty altered the balance of costs and benefits material and reputational related to the adoption of nuclear weapons or the abstention from acquiring nuclear weapons. And that since the NPT, and I want to make clear this is a world time that is different from the first nuclear age, that the drive to acquire nuclear weapons was arguably more likely, notice the language because this is I think what Bob might have favored in terms of how we cast our theories, that it was arguably more likely to emerge in domestic and regional contexts that are dominated by inward looking models from the point of view of an IPE perspective than in regions dominated by international ones. So that inward looking models were defined by rejection of the global economy as much of the Middle East for several decades. North Korea, et cetera. And that those models had greater incentives and encourage fewer costs, domestic regional, political, economic, and reputational, again, from exploiting nuclear weapons as tools of populist, nationalist, protectionist, policies, which is what they required to survive in power. And that by contrast, internationalizing models-oriented primarily to economic growth. For them, international competitiveness and global act this made the adoption of nuclear weapons less likely. And that there were clear synergies for international users across the domestic regional, and global pillars of an internationalizing grand strategy. Because acquiring nuclear weapons would have basically foiled that grand strategy. I want to say that these models, I thought explained several things. They explain why we observe competing nuclear preferences by different actors within the same country, why nuclear policies vary over time in the same country, in tandem with shifting IP models. Why different states varying compliance with internationalizing NPT commitments? Why some regimes find it convenient to spin external threats as intractable, whereas others spin the same threads as tolerable? Why some states rank alliances higher than self-reliance, or vise versa? And when external coercion and inducements may be effective? And finally, why nuclear ambitions surfaced were security hardly justify them Southern Cone? And why such ambitions were renounced where one might have expected them Jordan or other countries. So I believe there is extensive support for these regularities. I'm going to skip because of the time. But I do want to go back to the Bob story. Because now, we were told. No, not this panel is about theory, and so on, but I do want to-- in some ways, it ties with that. I'm skipping a lot. And I'm happy to talk about the cases. If you want to ban Iran, whatever later if there is time. But I do want to say something about Bob in the context of this argument. Because this is not an argument that Bob necessarily would have. So let me just say that a subsequent book that I published Nuclear Logics had an endorsement from Bob Jervis. I didn't request it. And I was frankly surprised. I wasn't necessarily doing cognitive, bias, and the theories that that Bob typically was concerned with. Nonetheless, he said, and I quote, the book not only provides a cogent account of the divergent nuclear trajectories of East Asia and the Middle East, and I'm quoting, but develops a powerful general explanation resting on whether the states ruling coalition is inward looking, or is geared to integrating in the world with the rest of the world. Both in its challenge to standard views, and in its strong positive arguments, this is a study of great value. And then he says, but I mention this because it says more about Bob than it does say about my book. It speaks to his intellectual generosity, but also to his openness to other modes of explaining, other findings, other theories that don't necessarily align with where he was toiling. These are the traits that I believe make a genuine social scientist. And indeed, the traits that account for improved predictions according to Phil Tetlock. And no, they're not all Occam's razor they actually are the kinds of theories that Bob was developing led to much better predictions, in my view, they entail cognitive agility. They entail detecting inherent contradictions, especially with unfalsifiable theories that he was very keen on discussing in a certain publication. And he's called for assessing counterfactuals, for minimizing seriousness, and indigeneity, probing deeper into claims and counterclaims. That's Bob's legacy. I also learned a lot from you indirectly on that one. But most importantly, acknowledging that multiple sufficient causation is not only possible, but frequent in the social world. Competing variables can do the job. And indeed, multiple sufficient causation is common not just in the social sciences. In the natural sciences, you have, well, this cog will make a difference. If this set of proteins are activated at the same time, but not this. They're very complex. And so Bob and Jack Snyder who's at the other conference, I'm supposed to leave in a minute, they are right they are right imputing causation is hard because we are in the domain of complex systems. And so the social world is even more complex than the social sciences, than the natural sciences. And I'm going to stop there. I have a lot more to say about this. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: So before we turn to Scott on nuclear proliferation, let's just develop your one or two of your cases a little bit more. We actually have more time. And they're not doing anything important over there without you. So be reassured. It's very interesting reading your work to note how China and Russia became more globalized economies, but still not only pursued nuclear weapons, but China is now modernizing, and expanding its force in a different direction. And then when we look at South Korea, it really does pose an interesting puzzle. This is not Iran. This is a country that has clearly pursued the more internationalist. So what's the additional variables we need here? And either any of the cases that you want to talk about. I think it's worth developing this a bit more. ETEL SOLINGEN: Well, thank you for that follow up. And I actually will go back to the theoretical dimension of this. And this is exactly the place where Bob's conceptualization of things, in particular, prospect theory did enter my work. So first of all, in the cases that you posted, China China's the one. I've been very consistent in depicting incentives and disincentives to acquire nuclear weapons, or renounce them in the second nuclear age after the NPT. The reason being that the NPT placed different international constraints and opportunities. So it's a different world time in my theory. The internationalization of the global economy, et cetera, it was a different world time than in the middle of the early Cold War. So Russia and China develop their nuclear weapons in the period of Maoist Stalinist, in vintage quintessential inward looking. Couldn't get more than that. Maybe we can. I don't. I have to ask for. Yeah. And North Korea. Exactly. So neither one was in the business of engaging in globalized trade at the time and when they were acquiring nuclear weapons. After Mao, and under then shopping and the others, we have the shift to global markets. But let's not exaggerate. China retain. Mercantilism controls over everything till today. Non-convertible currency, lack of compliance with, we can go on, and on, just on the China tango. If Tom says, yes, and I'm good. Even if this trend toward global openness is true after Deng Xiaoping, it's not the same here. I come to Bob. It's not the same to occur. The incentives are not the same when you're about to acquire nuclear weapons than the incentives of renouncing them once you have them. This is prospect theory at work. Here's what I'm aiming at. Backing down from even implicit commitments to acquire for full nuclear capabilities, maybe much easier for leaders. And it has happened in many of the cases that we're talking about including South Korea. For leaders in countries that have not yet achieved weaponization, right? Audience costs, in those cases, are of course assumed to be lower, and so on, and so forth. When our program is in the making, but less than realized, right? And no nuclear weapons have been acquired. But Bob's contributions here are very important because prospect theory introduces this scope condition for my argument, that leaders and publics value more what they already have the endowment effect than what they might or might not gain in an uncertain future. And so they're more averse to losing what they already possess for potential future gains. So eliminating existing nuclear weapons is expected to be much costlier politically, than reversing them before. You might just imagine then reversing them before, they come to fruition, right? China giving up nuclear, or anybody else giving up nuclear weapons. It happened with Ukraine. We know what happened. So temporality and sequence matter. And Bob, of course, was very keen on pointing that out. Now, is there any particular case you wanted me to come South Korea? CYNTHIA ROBERTS: Whichever one. Then we'll move on. ETEL SOLINGEN: Yeah. In general terms, I would say, my initial comments these waves of diffusion of nuclear weapons have been predicted for decades, especially in the neorealist world. When we're five decades into this empty era, and it hasn't happened. And we can quarrel about why it has not. Now, we're you're postulating in your question that this is it, right? I don't know whether that's the case. But I do want to dwell on a case, for instance, like Japan. So East Asia is now the center of gravity of the global economy, if you're expecting any. I mean, this is where things are happening right now. It also happens to be the place where the central actors, the Japan, and South Korea of the world have the best capabilities to do it if they wanted to. But they haven't. I mean look at Japan, for five decades, prime ministers in Japan have not been, let's say, at the left political spectrum. They've been the most right wing. If that was supposed to happen, it should have happened already because Japan faced not one, not two, but three rabid inward looking regimes in North Korea. It hasn't done it yet. So South Korea, in somewhat of the same predicament, I do realize that there is this sort of not new phenomenon of domestic public opinion in South Korea for nuclear weapons, but that is actually also not know. It may have reached a peak now, but it's not a new phenomenon and it hasn't happened now. Where we're headed? I don't know because predictions are one of these areas where Bob taught us be careful. Let me actually just say one more point about this predictions. And this is where the nuclear revolution. The way he caused the nuclear revolution is so powerful. Because he said, if my theory is right a, b, c, and you recited them, will happen. This is more than we get frequently in social science today. You need to be very clear if you're-- so what I did, this in a book by Bill Potter on forecasting nuclear proliferation. I don't really like forecasting, but I'm pushed to do it sometimes. So I did this 2 by 2 matrix basically with my argument, and I said, if the outcome is in these two cells, my theory will be wrong. And if these two cells, then my theory will be right. And this is the thing that I did learn from putting your mouth, where you're not putting your money. I forget. The money where your mouth is. That Bob has done for us, and that we should teach more of our students to do, rather than falsifiable predictions. For instance, about the nuclearization of the cases that you've mentioned, that for five decades, have not happened. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: Do you want to jump in on this? SCOTT SAGAN: I do want to jump in. I'm more pessimistic, and I'm willing to make predictions. I think we're in a really dangerous world right now, in part, because personal dictators are getting nuclear weapons, and have interest in getting nuclear weapons. Personally dictators are less constrained by international treaties that they've signed, in part, because they have fewer audience costs, in part, because they think they can't, or won't get caught. Versus dictators surround themselves with the yes men, who give them bad information, or tell them what they think the person wants, to think about Saddam Hussein, and decisions he made. I think we were in an extraordinarily dangerous situation in 2017, 2018 between the United States and North Korea. Think about the incident you recall in January 2018 in which a radar system in an emergency system in Hawaii announced. And everyone got the note on their cell phone that there's an incoming missile take shelter. Some people in Hawaii panicked, some went outside to look, which is not what you're supposed to do. But nobody in Omaha was command, or the Nora at headquarters in Colorado Springs, or in Washington panicked. Why? For three reasons. We had redundant sensors, all of which said no there's no attack coming. Second, we had professional people within minutes. They start saying no, there's a mistake. And even started putting stuff out on social media themselves saying, people don't panic. We're here. And third, we didn't think that North Korea was about to launch, a war by launching a single missile against Hawaii. Imagine now that incident occurred not in Hawaii, but in North Korea. All three of those mitigating factors wouldn't exist. They don't have redundant warning systems, just have just one or two really old radars. In North Korea, you don't get fired if you make a mistake like that, you get killed. So you're less likely to say, yes, we made a mistake, and report it. And third, Kim Jong-un did think that an American attack was likely. Why? Because Donald Trump kept saying an American attack. If you don't stop your testing, you'll have fire and fury right down on you. So the things that Jervis and others talk about stabilizing forces, people will say, you have to have a rational leader. Well, you could have a rational leader, who has very bad information. Think about Vladimir Putin, who's the elephant in the room today that we're not talking about yet, but I hope we will soon. And if you don't have a rational leader, you need to have checks and balances. That's why the very important piece that Dick Betts and Matt Waxman wrote about getting the attorney general into the chain of command, or at least having Jag lawyers present at all points is so important. Even in the United States. If you don't have a rational actor at the top, you need to have checks and balances down below. And I think I'll conclude there with just one comment to get us into Putin. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: OK. So that both of which will get us into Putin. And then we'll see if there's time for a third before we open it up to the audience. So you can have a panel at a conference about Bob Jervis commemorating Bob Jervis work without talking about misperception and psychological dysfunction. You were leading us there. And I want to take us there forcefully. So one important question for us is, what are the main potential misperceptions in any nuclear weapon states leadership that we should fear as triggers of inadvertent, or miscalculated decisions for major war between nuclear powers in the coming years, thinking about Putin in Russia, North Korea, and Xi and China as well. So theorists, this is interesting. Building on Bob's work, and many of whom are his disciples have been also focusing on nuclear leaders emotions and constructions of reality, which raises the question, should we be studying and profiling as autocratic leaders and others in this country, as well their comparative belief systems, their emotional types. Those who threaten fire, and fury, who may be motivated not by strategic incentives, but perhaps by emotions or misplaced feelings of revenge, or perhaps perceptions of imminent loss. And going down that route, who among us hasn't been thinking about as Scott has said? A Kim Jong-un, or a Vladimir Putin rashly ordering a nuclear launch with a haughty take this America, right? So how much is this a concern of ours mere bridging two parts of Bob's work, the nuclear theory revolution work, and the work on misperception and psychological bias point us in different directions? You want to bite again at that? Or let me start with Charlie, and then we'll go down the line. CHARLES GLASER: I'll take a slightly different angle on it. I have the concern that, I mean, there are these dangers that you suggest from misperception or revenge. But we need to keep in mind that there could also be rational uses of nuclear weapons, and they'd be very dangerous. But very dangerous isn't necessarily irrational. I think it's the beginning of the meaning of the nuclear revolution dervis says there is no fully rational, or no real rational nuclear strategy. But then, of course, all these game theorists have shown that what Schelling and Jervis were doing is actually rational, in large part rational theory. I think what Jervis meant was there no use of nuclear weapons, it's not extremely risky. But some uses could be extremely risky, and rational. So if Putin does anticipates what he understands is really a large losses, he could rationally use limited nuclear weapons to try and push convince bargain the west to stop supporting Russia. I wouldn't consider that to be irrational actually. I would consider it's very risky. But for him, the losses potential losses, if you're thinking about Crimea, or maybe even losing ground that Russia acquired, or at least was fighting for after 2014, those are taymyr big losses. I don't think of it in terms of prospect theory. I just think of it in terms of that's what he values. And those would be huge losses. So I think we need to be at least as attuned to the rational limited use. And there we have some control. On the one hand, we want to not allow or make it look like Russia has been successful. But on the other hand, it is a world of nuclear weapons, and they actually put constraints on us, or should put constraints on the west. So I know at least in certain circles it's very unpopular to say we shouldn't fully support Ukrainian victory, which would mean returning to pre-2014 borders. But that creates rational uses for Putin. And we have to think about from a US policy perspective, whether we are willing to run that risk. But I wouldn't cast it in terms of misperception. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: So that was the second question. And the rest of you can bite either way. On the one hand, we have problems of misperception, emotions, psychological biases. On the other hand, we have the likelihood that if nuclear weapons would be used, it wouldn't be in the Cold War, massive use of nuclear weapons, but more limited use of nuclear weapons for coercive purposes, either to end a war that you're losing, or in making nuclear threats as Putin is doing. This is the trade off. And you emphasize more the rational uses as would many. Any of you want to focus on the psychological dimensions, or do you want to stick with the stability, instability paradox of coercive use of nuclear weapons? SCOTT SAGAN: Well, I think what Putin's doing is making repeatedly making threats in order to try to deter the west from aiding Ukraine. That's was made on the very first it's a different kind of deterrence. That this could escalate. And therefore, you don't want to help Ukraine, don't want to get involved. And it's worked in terms of not having direct involvement, but it hasn't worked at all in terms of not getting supporting Ukraine militarily. He, after annexing parts of Ukrainian territory announced that that's now part of Russia, and that under Russian doctrine, if the sovereignty is threatened, he might use nuclear weapons. And then he said something very important, which is the United States use nuclear weapons in 1945 to end the war. So there's a precedent for doing that. Now, I don't know what Bill Burns, the head of the CIA, said privately to his counterparts or what Lloyd Austin said to Mr. Defense, or what Tony Blinken said to Mr. Lavrov. But I hope that what they said was something like the following is, yeah, we did use a nuclear weapons in 1945. Japan could not strike us back. We can track you back, and Ukraine can strike you back. And we will ensure that Ukraine has that capability. I wouldn't add anything more to that because we don't want to get committed. But the way we've been thinking about this, to me, is almost self-congratulatory. We've already deterred Putin from using nuclear weapons. I think he's been waiting. And what we know about leaders in crises, what we know about leaders who sometimes try to gamble for Resurrection suggests when you're losing, you might take a very rash decisions. So the last thing we can do to help deter that is to be telling the Russian military that the use of nuclear weapons against a Ukrainian city would be a war crime. And we have a really long history of tracking down war criminals. And therefore, are we should try to influence people below Putin to think that if he gives such a rash order, that be even more disastrous than the order he gave to invade Ukraine, that they should not follow those orders. And I think that's a thin red to have a lot of hope on, but it's still better than no read at all. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: So both Etel and Steve I think want to jump in on this. STEPHEN VAN EVERA: Well, I'll come in just to bring things the nuclear revolution to bear on Ukraine and Russia situation. I'm very worried about escalation. I'm very fearful that there will be nuclear use, unless this war is brought to an end for a number of reasons. One of them is that this is the first time the US has gotten itself into a conflict with another power, a nuclear power that maybe does or believes. It cares more about the stakes at issue than the US does. One of the sort of rules of nuclear statecraft, in my view, is don't get into a face to face confrontation on issues, where the other side cares as much as you do, or cares more, because the conflict will in the end assuming you're dealing with fairly, well, calculating chess players will be decided by the balance of resolve. And the way that the confrontation will play out is each side will take the measure of the other's willingness to run risks, and to take losses. And in the end, the player that cares more. And if they realize they care more, they're going to put WMD on the table. And if they feel there's something threatened that's of, shall we say, existential importance. And all the reporting is that the Russians do think that the stakes in Ukraine are existential. And for sure, if they think that way, they think the stakes are bigger than the Americans do, which may lead to a logic train that says, well, fine. If we really start rocking the boat as Tom Schelling would say, the Americans will back off before we do because they have much less at stake. And we've never been in a situation like this before. And I always counsel like I tell the Israelis. You need to think about your future boundaries in terms of avoiding nuclear confrontation with other people who care more about land you've taken than you do. How dangerous would be, for example, to change the status quo in religious places and to occupy lots of territory? You want a country that's got boundaries, that you care about more than the other guys do. So I'm worried about losing a contest of resolve in a situation-- Now are the Russians correct to think the way they do, I think they're wrong. I think the security stakes for Russia in Ukraine are small. And there are voices in Russia, who say so. I don't believe that having NATO on their borders would actually pose more than a really nuisance threat in terms of can they defend themselves. But that's not how they think. In fact, that's not how countries think. Countries tend to vastly exaggerate the importance of places that are nearby. The United States, and we have a long history of going completely bananas, when any unfriendly power or alliance-- SCOTT SAGAN: That's a technical political science term. STEPHEN VAN EVERA: Correct, but bananas. Yes, technical term. AppSheet is another one. That's a technical term. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: All right. So go ahead, Etel. Jump in. ETEL SOLINGEN: So on this same point, I don't want to be accused of being an optimist. Cause I'm not. I'm as concerned about all this as everybody else. But let me just use this also to bring in some of Bob's warnings about this. But the games that are played in our cognition as theorists. So this domain of escalation, and so on, shows quite clearly that it's hard to get perceptions right. It's also the case that perceptions are dynamic. In us, and the other ones in the way we interpreted the others. So we've witnessed in the course of this Ukraine war competing and evolving perceptions of what constitutes escalation, and these shifting thresholds. So first, Putin's first implicit threats popped up when NATO's had was supplying the most simple low grade defensive weapons to Ukraine. They then continued with the introduction of progressively more sophisticated weapons. Then the perception was OK. The EU promotion of the Ukraine would do it, and accession. That's the threshold. Then it shifted to Sweden and Finland joining NATO's work. That will do it. Then Ukraine was saying, Zelensky was saying to recapture the Donbas, that would Russia would consider, that Russia concerns that that's their own territory. That will do it. Then, the Ukrainian declarations that even Crimea is not out of bounds. That was another threshold. And throughout all this Putin's red line was on, not just Putin's, some of the theories amongst us, was, how much defeat can Russia can Putin accept? This was a leitmotif throughout of those warning against escalation. And of course, we should be very sensitive to the warning of-- to the threat of escalation. And I think the administration has demonstrated caution and thoughtfulness. But from the point of view of pundits and theories, it looks like some of us need to go back to Bob's work because the shifting thresholds, I just cited, are more strongly wielded by those who opposed NATO's, any major role, whatsoever in the Ukraine. And they and they implicitly or explicitly justified Putin's invasion, as if it was all NATO's fault. So this is vintage cognitive bias that Bob warned us against. Confirmation bias, accommodating new information to pre-existing beliefs. So let's just be conscious about it. I'm not saying they got it wrong or right. Let's just be conscious of our priors. That's the bottom line. Of course, we're all guessing what Putin's threshold of tolerance is. But Bob gave us again this warning about assessing risk, right? And yet there are many times when we don't have the luxury. We don't have the luxury of doing nothing in the face of aggression. Simply because we cannot estimate risk is not a reason for doing nothing. So doing nothing is sometimes equivalent to raising the risk of catastrophe. This is the lesson of 2014 when we did nothing, practically speaking. And it was Putin's perception of that inaction that may well have led, I say may well, I don't want to be as deterministic as Bob said we shouldn't. But is that perception of inaction that could have well led to 2022? I want to say one more thing about this escalation. I have little doubt that one main driver. So I spent for my sins, I was invited to Berlin for the first half of 2022. And I spent the war, the outbreak of the war, and so on in Berlin. And I can tell you, it was very palpable in all of this context, and private context. How much fear there was in the upper echelons of Berlin's society and politics about a nuclear response by Putin? So I have little doubt that another main driver of this fear of escalation is Germany's Schulz. Schulz with his Titan Bender notwithstanding. He's still very aware of alienating Putin. That I think has to do with his political ties to the upper echelons of German industry, and so on, and so forth. And industry and labor. But it's also because of a popular fear of Russian use of a tactical nuclear weapon. I'm going to stop there. I have more on that. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: Before we open it up, let me just take the chair's prerogative to offer two of my views on this. And they both go back to Bob Jervis insights as well. One is Bob taught us if nothing else to think about thinking. And in this respect, it doesn't matter what Putin thinks. I doubt he's even made up his mind. Is he going to use nuclear weapons kinetically or not? He's already been using them. And here, I completely agree with Scott from the very beginning as a coercive tool to set some red lines, which have been moving, and to deter us from getting directly involved in this fight. And to a large extent, it's worked although the red lines keep moving. So here's a lesson about thinking about thinking. We don't need to know what Putin thinks. But he needs only for us to believe that he thinks this, and you can get that reality. The second point that I would suggest is that, yes, it's true that Putin went out of his way to blame the United States, for setting the precedent, to use two crude nuclear bombs to end a war of aggression started by Japan. But he's also said other things that feed into another great Bob Jervis insight going back to the nuclear revolution, which is that what's very interesting about nuclear leaders, including the personal autocratic dictators, although he didn't use that term, is that they don't tend to press bargaining advantages to their extreme level the way we would expect them to in a foreign kind of sense. So there might be something to it in this sense of the nuclear revolution. And MAD having an impact limiting this. And that reminds me how Putin has said other things. For example, it surprised me when he said that he didn't think Stalin would have used nuclear weapons if he had them in 1941. As a student of 1941, and a student of Stalin, I totally disagree with Putin. He would have absolutely used them. But the fact that Putin was trying to make the opposite point, that we need to be cautious, tells us we need to be careful about taking Putin quotes and drawing firm conclusions. Anyway, if it's all right with the panel, I will open it up to the audience for questions. Peter, please tell us, are there going to be microphones that go to them? Yes? PETER CLEMENT: Yes. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: So if you raise your hands, here's your chance to ask our distinguished scholars a question. Yes, I think I see Barry Posen. PETER CLEMENT: If I could ask. If you're asking a question, please I identify yourself, where you're from, and direct your question to the panel. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: Oh, no. It's not Barry Posen. It's Gideon Rose. GIDEON ROSE: Oh, actually making the opposite point from Barry because Barry's on the other side of this for me. Gideon Rose Council on Foreign Relations. I all of you know much more, have written much more, are much wiser than I am on this. But I'm much more of an optimist on nukes than you guys are. And I'm curious, what more evidence of non use across so many different contexts across so many different generations would ever convince you to be more optimistic rather than less? Because I mean, I've heard the arguments about accidents my entire career. I've heard the arguments about potential use all my entire career. We've heard Putin's bluffs the entire war as he's gone well, he's gone badly, as every single other red line has been crossed. What would it take if this war ends without nuclear use and something resembling a Russian defeat? Would we accept that this is a highly unlikely situation, and change our views about the risk going forward? CYNTHIA ROBERTS: That's not for me. [INTERPOSING VOICES] All right. Go ahead. Scott and then Charlie. SCOTT SAGAN: I'd say two points to get in. One is if that's the case and he loses, then I think that means that some of the proliferation risks that we're talking about will be less widespread. If he uses nuclear weapons, and he wins because of that, that I think will be something that would increase the likelihood that South Korea, Iran, and Saudi Arabia will get nuclear weapons. So to me, this war in Ukraine is not just about the future of democracy, and the future of sovereignty, and the UN Charter, it's also about the future of the nuclear world that we might live in. So I think this is going to be, if what you posit that he loses does not use nuclear weapons, and Ukraine wins, I think that will be a very good thing for the spread of nuclear weapons. GIDEON ROSE: You'd be less worried that if that happens. SCOTT SAGAN: The next time he invades? Yeah. I mean, that's the biggest danger now that Ukraine is facing. Is if they have a cease fire, it's just going to give the Russians a chance to build up again. And that's why I think the Ukrainians are right to say, this winter and spring, it's really important for us to keep fighting, and not give the Russians a chance just to rebuild. If there is some kind of peace settlement, it has to be something that would create zones of demilitarization on either side of the border. That potentially could get Putin to say, oh, look, I won because the Ukrainians are no longer as big a threat to us. But the real reason to do that is to get Russian forces away from the Ukraine. ETEL SOLINGEN: [INAUDIBLE] There is a second order effect, and the issue of proliferation again pops up, or this is it, this is the next wave is over the horizon. But there is a second order effect of even without use, that is reverberating out there. That has to do with the Ukraine war, and that is the fact that the Ukraine was, this one country along with other too, that renounced nuclear weapons through the 1994 a Budapest memorandum. With the specific commitment of the Russian Federation, and the US, and the UK, and eventually, even China and France, not to attack the territory of a country that renounced nuclear weapons. But then we know what happened next. First 2014, nothing was done. Now 2022. So some are arguing out there that a second order effect might be. The others are saying, well, what the hell? What are these agreements good for? I'm not necessarily wedded to, again, we've had waves of predictions, and they haven't materialized. But this is actually one you might say legitimate concern of countries that haven't done yet, that haven't actually realized their nuclear weapons potential because some have it. Let's say 30 or 40 countries have it. And the so-called hedging, doesn't mean too much for me as a concept because many, many could if they wanted to. But they haven't. So anyways, that's also another pessimist, if you will, carry over from what we're witnessing in the Ukraine. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: Do you want to jump in? SCOTT SAGAN: Two quick points. One so Putin hasn't lost badly yet. There have been many things that haven't gone well. And so I don't take too much confidence in the fact that he hasn't escalated, the fact that if he would lose badly, or did if he still has a chance to do well, he would wait. So I think there's some evidence to think we could continue to push. But the other thing I would say is, though, here you could look at this as optimistic or pessimistic. If I said to you I think there's a 90% chance even if he loses Crimea, he won't use nuclear weapons. You could say that's great 90%. But where you could say, if that happens, and there's a 10% chance it uses nuclear weapons, because that's really bad, and we shouldn't try that at all. And on top of that, if he uses nuclear weapons, we don't quite know what happens next. One possibility is we say fine. Crimea's yours, or another is we say we're going to launch a large conventional invasion, or we're going to use tactical nuclear weapons. In other words, his limited use could lead to a really bigger nuclear war. So it's like 10% doesn't sound so good. And then if you think that 10% could be way some fraction of that goes really badly. It's just like are those stakes we want to compete for. So in that sense, it's not necessarily an absolute judgment about yes or no, it's about the risk given that. And once again, this is sort of not really a nuclear evolution argument, but it's a nuclear weapons argument. It's the world is really dangerous. And so low probabilities may not be worth accepting. So be more in that sense. I'm not convinced he's going to use nuclear weapons even if he faces the largest losses. The question is about the risk. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: I think we have to add that this is complex adaptive systems. He's already using nuclear weapons for coercive purposes. [INTERPOSING VOICES] I understand that. But if he were to prevail-- Russia were to prevail in its objectives, think then if China continues to modernize its systems as it is, right, well, China learned the lesson that nuclear weapons can be used this way as a shield for further aggression. And will North Korea learn that lesson? Well, others. So there are consequences from even this non-kinetic use of nuclear weapons that maybe are not as optimistic, Gideon, as you think. All right. Steve. STEPHEN VAN EVERA: I want to say responding to Gideon's thought. I had several thoughts. One is just to coin a Yogi Berra. I mean, this is a reverse Berra. Things haven't happened till they happened. That's like, it ain't over till it's over. Peace ain't over till it's over either. But then it's over. So you only need one. And your comment reminds me of the appendix to Ned Lobo's book on peace and war. His little paperback thin book. But I can't remember the name anymore. But at the back, he quotes predictions about war. Just got a whole bunch of predictions. And most of them, I mean, they're all over the map. But there was quite a few people in 1913 who said, oh, we've been hearing about this trouble with the Germans, and the danger of problems in the Balkans, and there going to be a war. There'll never be a war. Just stop talking about it. I think the president is Stanford, Leland Stanford. I remember he made this comment in 1913. It's been 43 years. I mean, people have learned not to do this stuff. I mean, we're past it all. My empirical way of answering your question though would be to say, I do think it's useful to look at the Cold War, and ask how close we came. And that's interesting test. And I believe we did come very close in 1962. And I commend people this new book by Sarah Pelosi, he's a historian at Harvard, and he has a book that's just a couple of years old I think. And he wrote it with sort of the theme being, let me focus on the things that were scary. And it's I think an excellent book. People should all read it if you want to understand how dangerous was thinking. And his picture he paints, he changed my mind. I did not think things were as dangerous as I now think they were. They also should read Scott Sagan's book on the limits of safety. Pardon? PETER CLEMENT: The second book. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: The second book. We could get along. [INTERPOSING VOICES] CYNTHIA ROBERTS: Other questions. Yeah. STEPHEN VAN EVERA: It's a terrific book. And it's not read enough. SCOTT SAGAN: It's so important on, this whole issue. STEPHEN VAN EVERA: Say a third thing though about nuclear weapons, and MDS. My view is my scariest thought about WMD, and the human race is not major power use. I think it could happen. And if we have the wrong leaders, or if misperception comes to dominate the way societies look at each other. I mean, I believe by the way the offense has the advantage in terms of misperception now, the liars are taking over the world. The Enlightenment is in danger because of the new media, and the fact that we no longer have vetted information that controls how public see things. Facebook and Fox News are a threat to peace. And we've invented technology that really does threaten the Enlightenment. And to me without the Enlightenment, you're going to have a lot of trouble. PETER CLEMENT: We've got two more questions here at least. STEPHEN VAN EVERA: Let me just say the scary scenario that people should think about is the spread of WMDs to non to terrible actors. The book by Martin Reese, Our Final Hour, which is a now 20-year-old book, but very important book. On his fear that the world of science is bringing to the fore more WMDs. And the next phases, the new WMDs will be much more dangerous than nuclear weapons, because they're going to have the characteristic that they can proliferate out to individual psychopaths terrorists. Nuclear weapons are pretty much the possession of states on states alone. The next wave bioengineering, nano engineering, CRISPR. Interestingly, Tom Clapper defined CRISPR as a threat to US national security four years ago. CRISPR being great medical stuff. But we need a book on Is Reese Right. In other words, is the world in fact going toward a new WMD regime, where there are more such things, and they can disperse more easily, and they can reach the hands of non-deterrable actors? The only way we know how to prevent use of nuclear weapons is deterrence by definition when WMDs get in the hands of non deterrable actors we are in real trouble. SCOTT SAGAN: OK. Steve, we're going to get a couple more questions. PETER CLEMENT: Professor Doyle. MICHAEL DOYLE: Michael Doyle of Columbia. This is a wonderful panel. Thank you so much. I have two worries that the panel didn't quite assuage me about the dangers of a nuclear war in Ukraine. One, I thought Scott's comment that we should convey to the Russian military that the use of nuclear weapons would be an extreme war crime, and they should contemplate the policy. STEPHEN VAN EVERA: Only if used against the city. If used on the battlefield, it would not be a war crime. MICHAEL DOYLE: If used against the city against civilians, large numbers, all of those factors. I think that is a great idea. And I hope that's been conveyed. I have no idea whether it has. My worry is that my friends in the UN right now are very busy documenting the existing war crimes that the conventional forces of Russia, and Wagner, and others have inflicted on Ukraine. A list is being made with names attached to it. And so if they're going to be prosecuted anyway, I'm afraid that some of them might not take as seriously as I hoped they would the threat that you just I think very importantly posed. So that's one word. The second word I'd like to get the views of the panel of whether Putin thinks, that if he did use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, there would be a nuclear response by the United States. Many of my friends in Europe are very skeptical as their fathers and mothers were about extended deterrence, and some think it would be even more difficult in this case. And so might he think he could get away with, let's call it a minor use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and not face a nuclear response. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: Who wants to jump in first on that one? SCOTT SAGAN: I could. Great set of questions, Michael. First, I think that there really is a dilemma of accountability for war crimes, and ending a war, and that they can be at cross purposes. I'd remind everybody in the audience that, we originally, in the unconditional surrender demand, let the Japanese know that there are going to be war crimes trials. And Hirohito was on the list. Even though people didn't focus on it so much right after the war, we ended up cutting a deal. And then Secretary Burns sent a letter to the Japanese government saying that the future role of the emperor will be determined by the Japanese people, and it was that got Hirohito to join the peace party. And then we started painting this peaceful picture of him, which was not true at all. So I think that's a really important question. And I don't think I hope this administration will not use nuclear weapons in response to a Russian nuclear use, because conventional capabilities could do a lot. So in 2016, there was a war game in the White House in which the deputies were presented with the scenario not Ukraine, but a Russian attack on the Baltics. And when the tech was not doing well, the Russians used nuclear weapons against a single non-NATO military base. The deputies discussed what they should do, and came up with the idea we should respond with conventional weapons escalating the war by attacking into Russia for the first time, but using conventional weapons only to destroy the base from which the nuclear forces had come. The principals then did the same war-game the next day. And they said, we've got to respond with nuclear weapons. That's what deterrence is all about. And they're told by the red team that, well, if you use nuclear weapons against Russia, they'll it's from the United States. And therefore, they retaliate against the United States. So they said, well, no, we'll use nuclear weapons against Belarus even though Belarus wasn't in the scenario. Who were the deputies who I think made the right choice? Colin Kahl, and Avril Haines today's guest. And according to Fred Kaplan, Haines made t-shirts saying the deputies had it right. PETER CLEMENT: So next, Jean-Marie Garneau, and then Tim Frei. So Jean-Marie, can we get a mic over here? AUDIENCE: Well, my question actually was just following on that discussion is, in the case of nuclear use by Russia, what would you see as the best response, and what would be the implications for the US-European strategic relationship? ETEL SOLINGEN: Can I add one thing? Because in some ways, it deals with some of the same questions. I hear that concern, and it's also not a new concern with the very concept of extended deterrence. It's been asked not just throughout the Cold War more recently, vis a vis North Korea, right? Kim Jong-un was threatening LA. I live there. Sorry. Actually, they said LA wouldn't be a target because of his friendships with some basketball players. But more seriously, it's a long standing concern. Will the US risk this city or that city for Seoul or whatever? But the point is going back to Bob's conceptualization of this problem, and Schelling's, there's leaving something to chance that in the minds of those that think, well, they might not respond, but the issue of the Chancy, the odds that it might actually work may or may not be enough. But the probability that it will have some residual effect is there. But I hear your concern. Especially in Germany, I witnessed that very, very high concern with will the US actually stand by its commitments with respect to. And the same in Japan, and South Korea, and so on. SCOTT SAGAN: Just a couple of other points on this. One, is we don't have an extended deterrence commitment to Ukraine, which is important. To the real issue in the Cold War was the United States and NATO's using nuclear weapons. First, this issue as actually about using nuclear weapons. Second, which is different. And so I just put those two basics on the table. I think I point out two things. One is I think Scott's right that may be the best option would be conventional invasion. But also, need to keep in mind, that the Russians still hold all their nuclear weapons. And that also is greatly raising the stakes. So a conventional support for Ukraine, or even threatening to take territory in Russia is not escalatory in the sense that you're using nuclear weapons, but it could easily lead to a much larger nuclear war. And so it sounds better because you're not using nuclear weapons, but it's not clear that it gets you to a better outcome. And it could actually oddly lead to a worse outcome, particularly if you're taking Russian territory. But the other thing I would say and it's very unpopular, but Steve never raised it at the beginning, which is the question suggests that, of course, we should respond. But he said, if you're in a nuclear situation, where the other side might care more, they're likely to prevail if you get involved in nuclear bargaining. And if that's the case here, it's not popular. And I'm not saying this is what I would do. But in the sense of all of what we're hearing about thinking about thinking, and thinking it through is sometimes not responding could in a nuclear world could be the right option. And that's something we would have to decide for ourselves as well. Because this is a bargaining, a competition, and risk-taking. And when Putin escalates, he's saying, I care enough to risk a nuclear war. We don't know how large a nuclear war. And we have to ask ourselves, given the stakes, do we want to risk that larger nuclear war? CYNTHIA ROBERTS: So just one. Go ahead. SCOTT SAGAN: No. So I'm just saying. But I think that's just all part of the analysis. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: As a footnote to this, I would all encourage you to read our other colleague, Dick Betsy's wonderful piece on this question in foreign affairs that makes the opposite argument that we cannot do nothing. And there are no good options. They're all bad options. And responding in some way requires us. If we're going to continue extended deterrence, which was a whole other topic, we didn't get to, because we need another hour. And I don't think our chair is going to allow it. But do you want to give Tim Fry the last question. PETER CLEMENT: I want to give Tim Fry the last question since he was patient here. TIM FRY: It's a lot of pressure to ask the last question. But thanks a lot. This has been really a tremendous panel. I had a question about a topic near and dear to Bob's heart, about communication during crisis bargaining. And there are obviously incentives to use, talk that the war is existential for Russia as cheap talk. So what are the things that we should be looking about beyond Putin's statements to understand what his next steps might be? And are there things that Putin can do to credibly signal about his intentions perhaps to use nuclear weapons? What are the things beyond just his statements that we should be paying attention to? CYNTHIA ROBERTS: So we all know them. Do you want to jump in? I'll throw them out if you want to. SCOTT SAGAN: Well, I'd say two things. One is look at the status of Russian forces. Putin declared on national television state of high alert. And nothing happened. That said something to us about how seriously to take it. And that's important. And lastly, I don't think many Russians think that this is an existential. Ukraine posed an existential risk. It poses an existential risk to Vladimir Putin. Because a successful Ukrainian democracy in a Civil War could be a threat to his regime. And to me, this war will end either when the Ukrainians win militarily, or more likely if Putin thinks the losses of Russian soldiers, and Russian equipment poses an even more risk to his regime than ending a war that's going poorly. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: So domestic politics. So you would look for a meeting taking the warheads out of storage, where they're still securely, and start mating them with the short range, or the intermediate range forces that would be the next serious signal to say, we don't like what's happening, and back off. ETEL SOLINGEN: We're ending. PETER CLEMENT: You can have the last comment. ETEL SOLINGEN: It's actually not even a comment. But even if something that, Steve evoked in me, we could actually end up getting predictions, in some sense. But not the complete story as Bob would always caution us against. And that reminds me of the story in 1939, of a journalist that saw it coming, 1939. This is going to be a catastrophe. I'm out of here. And he looked at the map, and he said, I'm going here. I'm disappearing until this is over. And he picked Guadalcanal. Hard to get it right. CYNTHIA ROBERTS: Happy note. Please join me in thanking our wonderful panelists. [APPLAUSE]

Channel: Columbia SIPA

Views: 946

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Id: EF1Etr4fuuI

Length: 101min 34sec (6094 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 24 2023