Alternatives to Genocide:
Missile Defense and the Future of Nuclear Weapons

Fritz W. Ermarth

Participating in the great debate we are now having on ballistic missile defense (BMD) gives this contributor mixed feelings. On one hand, it is a pleasure to take part in so important and challenging a discussion. On the other, there is an unusual distress. In nearly forty years of professional work on security affairs in government, think tanks, and industry, this presenter has never witnessed a debate so riven with vacuous arguments, flabby reasoning, and erroneous information.

I blame this mostly on the previous US administration. Had Bush Sr. been reelected in 1992 or Clinton chosen to follow his policies, aiming to create effective limited BMD based on the GPALS concept -- in cooperation with Russia with whom negotiations were proceeding positively -- not only would we be much further along with the program, we would not have the conceptual muddle about the strategic issues that Clinton policy actually produced. This came about because Clinton wanted to make political points by seeming to do something about the emerging threat of long-range ballistic missiles wedded to weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a number of hostile states. At the same time, his security policies were in the hands of people opposed to the whole idea and devoted on ideological grounds to the ABM Treaty. The new Bush administration is now struggling to clamber out of this swamp and is particularly challenged by the task of public education entailed.

Strategic stability and a new arms race

I have neither time nor qualification to address all the conceptual issues in this muddle. Let me focus on two very important ones: First, the claim that the ABM Treaty is the cornerstone of strategic stability, and, second, that abandoning it for limited BMD will spark a new arms race.

The ABM Treaty is not the cornerstone of strategic stability. It is in fact the obstacle to creating one of the requirements for strategic stability in the new era, which is to block the extortionary threat of small numbers of long-range weapons of mass destruction in conflict situations were the stakes and military capabilities are highly asymmetrical. I'll say more about this paradigm in a moment. But to say now that the ABM Treaty is the cornerstone of strategic stability is a little like saying that the Berlin access corridors are the cornerstone of European security. Both assertions have some historical meaning, but little more. Moreover, the real role and meaning of the ABM Treaty are grossly misrepresented by critics of BMD and misunderstood by their audiences. Explaining this requires a short but important historical digression.

The reigning claim is that the ABM Treaty represented the most formal and authoritative instrument by which both the United States and the USSR entered into a mutual suicide, or more accurately, mutual genocide, pact in order to stabilize deterrence and constrain strategic arms competition. To some extent this assertion is accurate with regard to the attitudes of important American groups and elites. Soviet decisionmakers, however, never bought into this proposition.

Soviet theory of victory or superiority

From the 1950s, the Soviets developed a strategic doctrine that rested on the idea of what I call a plausible theory of victory or superiority in general nuclear war. They evolved it, modified it, elaborated it, and they used arms control negotiations and agreements to try to protect it. And above all, they built military forces in a systematic, very expensive, and ultimately futile and self-destructive effort to implement it. Their attempt to insert nuclear missiles into Cuba was an early short cut when the US was spurting ahead in deployment of intercontinental strike systems.

The Soviet theory of superiority or victory rested on a number of integrated elements.

  1. Long-range counterforce strike systems to suppress enemy strike systems, command and control, bases, and logistics.
  2. Active defense capabilities against aircraft and missiles, along with elaborate civil defense measures to protect population and especially Soviet leadership.
  3. Massive conventional and nuclear land-combat forces to overrun NATO Europe and other adjacent regions.
  4. Extensive special operations and electronic warfare capabilities to add support.

The Soviets knew, of course, that any general war putting these concepts to the test would be horribly destructive. I don't think any responsible Soviet military or civilian leaders ever regarded this doctrine as the foundation for deliberately initiating aggressive war, a la Hitler in 1939. They saw it as:

Should such a war occur, they aimed to win by conquering Europe and somehow surviving better than the US in the Soviet homeland, however awesome the cost. This thinking accorded with an ideology of unrelenting struggle with:

US ABM and MIRV developments in 1960s challenged Soviet superiority theory

By the mid-60s, the Soviets were actively developing and deploying in all aspects of this concept, and were within reach of an important initial element, parity with the US in intercontinental nuclear strike systems. But they observed three things on the US side, two troubling, one promising. Although it had abandoned serious civil defense programs and greatly reduced emphasis on air defense, the US was seriously developing ABM technology and considering limited deployment. It was also forging ahead with MIRVs to multiply survivable offensive punch and to overcome early ABM capabilities on the Soviet side. This could create a situation in which the Soviet doctrine of eventual superiority was not only blocked, but dangerously set back. On the promising side, however, the Soviets saw that US leaders were increasingly troubled by the cost and possible danger of unconstrained competition along these lines. Indeed, the Americans were now pleading for a deal that would limit defenses and offenses to avoid this.

US intelligence detected Soviet plan to break out from ABM Treaty

As we all know, in a process that led from the Glassboro summit of 1967 to the arms control agreements of 1972, a deal was reached. But the Soviets saw the deal in quite different terms than did most Americans. Basically, they saw the deal as a means to inhibit US exploitation of its superior economic and technology base to thwart Soviet strategic efforts, while the Soviets beavered away as secretly or discreetly as possible on all the elements of their strategy, which portended among other things eventual breakout from the ABM Treaty. This was the conclusion and forecast of a thorough study of the SALT ONE negotiating record done by me and Dr. Tom Wolfe of Rand for the Defense Department in late 1972. Then, as our intelligence saw the visible results of Soviet strategy appear -- more accurate ICBMs, energetic work on all promising ABM technologies, the SS-20, steady modernization of land-combat forces, the Krasnoyarsk radar in violation of the ABM Treaty, and many other developments quite out of keeping with the MAD stability concept -- a long American debate about Soviet strategic policy and doctrine ensued, which included such dramas as the B-Team within the intelligence community and the Committee on the Present Danger in the public arena.

I was in the thick of this debate throughout the period. By the end of the decade, most informed observers in intelligence and defense planning were convinced that the B-Team was essentially right, that the Soviets had a theory of superiority they were trying to implement. (By B-Team I refer to the larger school of thought, not to all the points and charges made by the group of that name convened by DCI Bush in 1976 and chaired by Richard Pipes, although this group was a major milestone). The question was now how well they were doing in this effort and what the eventual results would be.

Soviets deployed smallpox warheads on ICBMs after US stopped inoculations

If anyone harbors any doubts about this interpretation of Soviet strategy, I'll cite one data point we did not know about at the time but only later. According to Ken Alibek, a senior scientist in the Soviet biological warfare program, the Soviets put smallpox agent into the warheads of some of their ICBMs. They did this in total secrecy at a time when they knew the US had stopped inoculating its population against smallpox. This was not for deterrence. This was for the warfighting objective of surviving better than the US according to the dictates of their doctrine. Memoirs, open archives, and interviews since the fall of communist rule in Russia have confirmed this interpretation of Soviet behavior, by and large. The Soviet theory of victory or superiority in general war created huge vested interests that spurred the hyper-militarization of the country and the eventual collapse of Soviet rule. The role of industrial and party interests here was greater than we thought. The military were more realistic in some ways. Soviet military leaders claim that they never really believed in the doctrine, but had to act as though they did.

The outcome, however, was a happy one. By the late 70s, the economic pinch of Soviet military ambitions was becoming severe, notwithstanding the transfusion of oil money and Western credits, and we saw Soviet defense spending flatten out. Then came the Reagan administration and a new ideological and military challenge, including SDI, which was both a technological and a doctrinal challenge to Soviet strategy. Marshall Ogarkov began telling the leadership that they were buying too much of the wrong (rapidly obsolescing) stuff and that, to stay in the game of strategic competition, they had to modernize the economy, especially its technology base. My sense is that Ogarkov was less concerned about SDI than he was about precision munitions in conventional theater warfare and sophisticated reconnaissance to target them. But together, the combination of SDI and precision weapons imperiled the two pillars of Soviet military power: the rocket and the tank. Then in came Gorbachev who concluded that to modernize the economy he had to liberalize the system and get out of the Cold War. As a result of the processes he unleashed, the Cold War ended within a very few years.

Throughout this entire period, the Soviets did not view the ABM Treaty as the cornerstone of strategic stability, but as one of the stepping stones to strategic superiority. Happily, the whole staircase was too slippery, steep, and expensive for them. But if we are to project the history of this period into our present debates, let us make it an accurate history.

A new arms race? By whom?

I wish briefly to address a second fallacious argument in the debate: Limited BMD will inspire a new arms race. By whom? If we wish, both we and the Russians can assure mutually genocidal capabilities for large second strikes in the face of limited defenses, at modest cost. So can the Chinese, if they wish. The Russians advance this contention as though it were an argument against limited BMD, when it is the opposite. The Russians cannot afford and will not conduct a real arms race. Because they earn a large portion of their growing GNP by selling to the consumers of America and its allies, neither can the Chinese. With respect to other actors the point is simply ludicrous. Effective BMD, by depriving limited ballistic missile arsenals of their extortionary or military effectiveness, will help dissuade potential proliferators from acquiring them.

Three vastly important changes have occurred in the world since the ideology of peace through total vulnerability, and its anti-BMD canon, emerged in the mid-60s.

  1. The Cold War has ended and one of its contenders has taken on a completely different, if not in all respects congenial, character.
  2. The technology for combining WMD and long-range ballistic missiles has rapidly proliferated and the efficacy of controls is dubious at best.
  3. The technology for effective defense against limited ballistic missile attack has greatly improved.

We simply cannot address the situation, the threats, and the opportunities before us with a frame of reference of more than thirty years ago, especially when the real history of that period is so blatantly distorted.

Not only do we have to think anew, we have to think long term. The Cold War is over and will not return. But ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction cannot be disinvented; they are here forever as real and current threats or potential future ones. The combination of long-range ballistic missiles armed with WMD in large numbers that cannot be defended against is an awful threat. Eventually we may find technical and/or political means to eliminate this threat. For now and the foreseeable future we must rely on mutual deterrence in the one or two cases where this is relevant. The pressing problem is the threat of small-scale attack which cannot be reliably discredited or nullified merely by threat of comparable retaliation when the issue at stake is simply not worth the destructive price of putting deterrence to the test, and killing tens of thousands to millions of people.

PRC and others prefer that US and allies remain vulnerable to attack

The Russians and the Chinese understand this logic, and the Chinese come closest to explicitly countering it, in a pejorative but logical and highly revealing way. They say that the US wants limited BMD so that it can act or use force "with impunity" around the world. Leaving aside that a law-governed and casualty-averse America can hardly be accused of using force with impunity anywhere, the logic here is clear and sound. The Chinese, and others, prefer a world in which the US, its allies, and its security partners are vulnerable to attacks that could kill 1-10 million people should the US intervene in a conflict over serious, even vital, interests, but interests still not credibly worth that price. Small numbers of long-range ballistic missiles with WMD, undefended against, are an asymmetrical response to the US main strategy of power projection in a world of asymmetrical capabilities and asymmetrical stakes. Simply existing, they help cut America down to size and to free up those who posses that capability to act with impunity. They want to deter the US and its allies and, in a sense, the international community from projecting power.

So, if the argument against BMD is serious and not spurious, my question is why does one want a world in which those who have or can build small forces of massively destructive missiles can themselves act with impunity against neighbors. This is not merely a question of so-called rogue states, it is a question of rogue options for any state with a capability or potential to have them. This is what the debate is really all about.

BMD in the context of Russia's increased reliance on nuclear weapons

Let me conclude with an observation that I made briefly at the Hanns Seidel Stiftung conference in Moscow last December. It is politically awkward, but strategically unavoidable, and perhaps in the long run constructive, that the debate about BMD comes at a time when both Russia and the United States are having to rethink the role of nuclear weapons in their respective strategic policies and postures. In the US this is because nearly everything about our posture -- weapons, forces, infrastructure, conceptual approaches -- are wearing out, obsolescing, becoming less relevant to our needs and aims. In the case of the Russians, this need arises because of the weakness of Russia's conventional forces, the meager resources available to support them, and the possibility that nuclear weapons can in some form make up for these deficiencies. Over the past several years, a number of authoritative Russian voices and documents have proclaimed that Russia will increase reliance on nuclear weapons to make up for conventional weaknesses and develop new, small, clean weapons to meet this need.

This concept or approach certainly equals, if not exceeds, the violence done to so-called traditional arms control doctrine by the idea of abandoning the ABM Treaty. The Russians are talking about making truly usable tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. No concept has been more anathema to the arms control thinking of the past. Yet little attention has been paid to this. Nor have the Russians, to my knowledge, ever agreed to consult with anybody about this.

Should the Russians move in this direction, the most serious strategic and political issues arise. What are the proliferation dangers posed by a large number of small, user-friendly nuclear weapons integrated into Russian forces and operations? Will Russian "rules of engagement" for the employment of such forces resemble Russian operations in Chechnya? Is US money under such programs as Nunn-Lugar going indirectly to fund this? What the Russians seem to be doing or at least contemplating is not necessarily irresponsible or destabilizing. If responsibly and carefully executed by responsible and accountable leadership, it could be stabilizing and contribute to Russian security at a time of weakness without imperiling others. That could be a unique and positive development in Russian history. It all depends on what Russia does, how Russian behaves toward neighbors, and what kind of a country she is.

Alternatives to genocide

My point here is that, in the context of BMD and discussions about a new strategic architecture that President Bush has proposed to President Putin, we must unavoidably have a discussion about the future of nuclear weapons. If Russia needs small, clean, usable nukes for local defense, how will these needs be met? The US faces different needs that push in the same direction, how will they be met? If the Russians need a genocidal nuclear capability against the United States for their security, we can find ways to put up with this. But for how long? In this discussion, we cannot avoid the fundamental, existential question: If nuclear weapons are forever, is it permissible that any civilized nations rest their security on strategies, forces, and weapons that would be truly genocidal if they had to be used? That's a situation we had to live with in the Cold War. And probably for some years more. But now is the time to start thinking and talking about eventual alternatives.

Fritz W. Ermarth retired in 1998 from CIA following a 35 year national security career in government, thinktanks, and industry. He is currently a Senior Analyst at SAIC. The views in this article are his own and should not be attributed to SAIC. This article is an elaboration of remarks offered at the Hanns Seidel Stiftung Conference on BMD in Munich, Germany, May 2001.

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