Last month I discussed nuclear game theory with Vipin Narang, a professor of political science at MIT and author of “Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era.” If we agreed on one thing, it was that nuclear war is not a game. “It’s really about a strategic logic,” Narang explained, “how your adversary behaves based on your moves and how you react to their reaction to your moves.”
President Donald Trump met with Kim Jong Un in Vietnam last week. As I expected, I did not see much strategic logic when the self-proclaimed “best negotiator in the world” sat down with the monomaniacal leader of a starving police state. I don’t consider North Korea a viable nuclear threat to the US or its allies. Kim may be unhinged, but he doesn’t seem the suicidal type.
The real problems are the other two great military powers, China and Russia. The former is formidable, but is (at least for now) unlikely to foment even the tiniest military imbroglio. Russia is the wildcard. As we saw in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin likes to conduct war by other means: propaganda, destabilizing politics, arming separatist groups and sending in the so-called little green men to give himself a fig leaf of plausible deniability. Putin is not unhinged, but he is an expansionist, with dreams of restoring not so much the Soviet Union but rather the Eurasian empire the czars strove for but never quite accomplished.
We started our discussion with North Korea and the Asia-Pacific. So let’s switch to Europe, and the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty. Was that a mistake, as opposed to trying to fix it?
“Russia was violating it for at least five years,” replied Narang. “But the way we first went about it – by threatening to immediately begin unilateral withdraw rather than consulting allies and formulating a unified front against Russia – probably wasn't ideal in terms of alliance management and getting NATO buy-in. I don't think it would have been better to quietly violate the treaty ourselves, by threatening to develop and deploy ground-launch systems that violated the treaty, or to say: ‘Look, this treaty is falling apart because the other side is violating it and we're going to legally withdraw.’”
“The reality is that the US does not really need intermediate-range ground-launch systems in Europe to deter Russia. And we've managed in East Asia without them. We have air-launch and sea-launch systems. It may be that you want to give yourself the option for ground-launch system, but they're potentially very vulnerable. Deploying systems in Guam would require the development of new longer-range ground-launch systems. And you obviously can’t deploy them in Taiwan without giving the Chinese an aneurysm. So your ground options in East Asia are limited.”
I asked Narang if there is a chance to work a new deal on intermediate-range missiles into talks on renewing New START before it expires?
He replied: “I'm not going to die on a hill for INF, but I will for New START. It is good for American security and global security. I worry that if you start linking INF to a New START extension, the Russians might just say that they’re not going to play this game, that the INF systems are too valuable to them for their European strategy. So, given Russian violations and no willingness for them to come back into compliance, I'd rather let INF go at this point than try to link the two and have Russia destroy the whole thing. New START is that important.”
Last month you gave me a really good rundown of Kim Jong Un's strategic thinking. What is Putin’s?
“He has apparently rediscovered his mojo. All the systems that Russia is developing and deploying pose a real threat to Europe. There are reasonable concerns that his appetite may be more expansive than just Crimea and Ukraine. It may include Russian-speaking populations in the Baltics. A lot of these systems are designed to support potentially offensive military or coercive actions against those states. Russia believes that it is in a position of strength, and is exploiting divisions within the Western alliance and within Europe itself, to pursue its political aims.
“From the US nuclear side, my concern has been that, for example, the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review is looking for technical solutions to a political problem. What we need is a better political strategy, and I think that includes a stronger conventional deterrent and cohesive alliance management. Nuclear weapons only come into the picture in Russian thinking if it starts losing the conventional war and you're pressing up against Russia. But the broader issue is how you got to that point in the first place, and it is not going be solved by simply developing a new low-yield nuclear weapon.”
This is Russia’s supposed “escalate to de-escalate” strategy, right? Using low-yield nukes to buy time for a conventional war.
“I call it escalate to win, or escalate to survive,” said Narang. “Basically, if they're losing a conventional war and NATO forces are threatening to push into the Russian homeland, I can see Putin saying, ‘OK, now I need to use battlefield nuclear weapons on NATO forces.’ I don't think it's going to be his first move. I think it's very deep into a conflict before nuclear weapons become salient, because of the escalation potential; Russia is not going to risk a strategic nuclear war unless its homeland is being threatened. The world comes to a screeching halt the second a nuclear weapon is used.
“The key is signaling to the Russians that NATO has no intention of invading the Russian homeland, but that we also are not going to stand by while it tries to incorporate independent states into Russian territory.”
Would Putin believe that NATO promise?
“I think right now he sees division in Europe. He's smelling blood in the water. And that's on us. Alliance cohesion has fallen apart, and that is the real problem in deterring Russia. If he sees divisions in the alliance, a question about whether the US will come to the defense of Eastern European states, it may embolden him to take the shot,” said Narang.
That goes to Trump saying that Americans aren't going to die for Montenegro after it was added to NATO.
“Exactly. That’s a real problem with extended deterrence. Making extended deterrence credible is very difficult,” replied Narang.
Are the British and French nuclear arsenals helpful in any way, or are they just symbolic? Are they possibly dangerous?
“I don't think they're dangerous. I love the British and French! The British and the US have a very tight coupling of their nuclear force postures. Whereas the French are completely independent; they have not historically coordinated patrols with the US the way the UK has, and all of their capabilities are indigenously produced. The French love their nuclear weapons. It is a point of national pride.”
Do you think the allies, and this is not just the Europeans, feel that America's stepping back from the world is just a Trump blip, or do they think it marks a turning point for future administrations as well?
“We go through cycles like this. The US during the George W. Bush administration withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, then came the Iraq war. There were a lot of threats to the integrity of the trans-Atlantic alliance. It's fair to say that Trump's incarnation of it is something that Europeans have not seen for a long time.”
Bloomberg
