The commitment trap why the united states should not use nuclear threats to deter biological and chemical weapons attacks

International Security

Volumn 24, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 85-115

  Sngan, Scott D ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 0034370345     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/016228800560318     Document Type: Article

References (91)

1. Convention on Chemical Weapons (Treaty Doc. 103-21), Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, 104th Cong., 2d scss., prepared statement by William J. Perry, March 28, 1996, p. 123.
2. Quoted in Dana Priest and Walter Pincus, "U.S. Rejects 'No First Use' Atomic Policy: NATO Needs Strategic Option, Germany Told," Washington Post, November 24,1998, p. A24.
3. The United States is constrained by its obligations under the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) neither to possess nor to use chemical and biological weapons. The United States unilaterally destroyed its biological weapons stocks in the 1970s and is scheduled to complete the destruction of its existing chemical weapons and production facilities, under the rules of the CWC, no later than 2007.
4. There is only one declared exception to this U.S. government commitment. In 1995, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, on behalf of the U.S. government, stated that the United States "will not use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-weapons states party to the treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons except in the case of an invasion or any other attack on the United States, its territories, its armed forces, or other troops, or on a state toward which it has a security commitment carried out or sustained by such a non-nuclear-weapons state in association or alliance with a nuclear-weapon state." Department of State, statement of Secretary of State Warren Christopher, April 5, 1995. For analysis of the international legal standing of these commitments, see George Bunn, "The Legal Status of U.S. Negative Security Assurances to NonNuclear-Weapons States," Nonprolifemtion Revieio, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Spring-Summer 1997), pp. 1-17.
5. Prominent examples include Richard K. Betts, "The New Threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 1 (January/February 1998), p. 31;
6. Richard N. Haass, "It's Dangerous to Disarm," Neiv York Times, December 11, 1996, p. A21;
7. Keith B. Payne, "Post-Cold War Requirements for U.S. Nuclear Deterrence Policy," Comparative Strategy, Vol. 17, No. 3 (JulySeptember 1998), pp. 265-266;
8. Robert G. Joseph, "Deterring Regional Proliferators," Washington Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Summer 1997), pp. 167-175;
9. David C. Gompert, "Rethinking the Role of Nuclear Weapons," Strategic Forum, No. 141 (May 1998), pp. 1-4;
10. and Gompert, Kenneth Watman, and Dean Wilkening, "Nuclear First Use Revisited," Survival, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Autumn 1995), pp. 27-44.
11. For example, Franklin Miller, the principal assistant U.S. secretary of defense, has argued that U.S. doctrine does not affect proliférant states, because "any proliférant is going to develop nuclear weapons based on their own desires to either dominate their region or respond to their neighbor's development programs." Quoted in Brian Hull, "Overkill Is Not Dead," Neiv York Times Magazine, March 15, 1998, p. 84. See also Gompert, Watman, and Wilkening, "Nuclear First Use Revisited," p. 39.
12. Adam Yarmolinsky and Mark P. Schiefer, "Two Wrongs," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 3 (May/June 1998), pp. 158-159;
13. George Bunn, "Expanding Nuclear Options: Is the U.S. Negating Its Non-Use Pledges?" Anns Control Today, Vol. 26, No. 4 (May/June 1996), pp. 7-10;
14. and Bunn and Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky, "The Doctrine of the Nuclear Weapons States and the Future of Nonproliferation," Arms Control Today, Vol. 24, No. 6 (July-August 1994), pp. 3-9.
15. Bunn, "Expanding Nuclear Options," p. 10 (emphasis in original).
16. See also Thomas Graham, Jr., and Douglas B. Shaw, "Nearing a Fork in the Road: Proliferation or Nuclear Reversal?" Nonproliferation Revieiu, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Fall 1998), pp. 70-76;
17. and Hans M. Kristensen, "Nuclear Futures: Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and U.S. Nuclear Strategy" (Washington, D.C. and London: British American Security Information Council, March 1998), pp. 5-6.
18. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 128-142.
19. See Mitchell Reis, Bridled Ambition: VJliy Countries Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995); George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999);
20. and Scott D. Sagan, "Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb," International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter 1996/97), pp. 54-86.
21. James A. Baker, III, with Thomas M. DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War, and Peace, 1989-1992 (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1995), p. 359.
22. Daniel Byman, Kenneth Pollack, and Matthew Waxman, "Coercing Saddam Hussein: Lessons from the Past," Survival, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Fall 1998), p. 132;
23. Leonard A. Cole, The Eleventh Plague (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1997), p. 127;
24. and Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, "How Kuwait Was Won: Strategy in the Gulf War," International Security, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall 1991), p. 26, n. 72.
25. U.S. Strategic Command, "Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence" (1995), p. 6, originally cited in Kristenscn, "Nuclear Futures," p. 17
26. Quoted in Steven Erlanger, "U.S. Set to Give Up Arms Inspections for Curbing Iraq," New York Times, November 8, 1998, sec. 1, p. 1.
27. For examinations of the Gulf War threats, albeit with conclusions that differ from mine, see William M. Arkin, "Calculated Ambiguity: Nuclear Weapons in the Gulf War," Washington Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Autumn 1996), pp. 3-18;
28. Avigdor Haselkorn, Tlie Continuing Storm: Iraq, Poisonous Weapons, and Deterrence (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 51-85;
29. and Barry R. Posen, "U.S. Security Policy in a Nuclear-Armed World, or: What If Iraq Had Had Nuclear Weapons?" Security Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Spring 1997), pp. 1-31.
30. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), p. 463.
31. See also Colin L. Powell with Joseph Perisco, My American Journey: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 486.
32. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, p. 359.
33. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, published by the Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., January 12, 1991, Vol. 21, No. 3, p. 44.
34. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, p. 359.
35. The Politics of Diplomacy ibid. This statement conforms closely to the Iraqi minutes of the Baker-Aziz conversation as published in Foreign Broadcast Information Service-Near East and South Asia Daily Reports (hereafter FBIS-NES) 92-009, January 14,1991, p. 27.
36. Quoted in Rick Atkinson, Crusade: Tlie Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), p. 86.
37. CENTCOM (Central Command) transcript, news briefing by Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, January 30,1991. Vice President Dan Quayle erred in the opposite direction, telling the press on February 1,1991, that "I just can't imagine President Bush making the decision to use chemical or nuclear weapons under any circumstances." Quayle quickly returned to the chosen policy: "But you never rule options-any options-out." White House transcript. Vice President Dan Quayle on CNN "Newsmaker Saturday," February 2,1991, cited in Arkin, "Calculated Ambiguity," p. 6.
38. Quoted in Molly Moore, A Woman at War (New York: Scribner's, 1993), p. 318, originally cited in Posen, "U.S. Security in a Nuclear-Armed World," p. 19, n. 33.
39. Transcript, CNN's Evans and Novak, February 2,1991.
40. See "Quote Unquote," Independent (London), January 5,1991, p. 12;
41. and "Former Generals Urge Bush to Threaten Iraq with Nuclear Strike," Reuters, January 9, 1991.
42. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, George Bush, 1991, Bk. 1, January 1-June 30, 1991 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office 1U.S. GPO], 1992), p. 109.
43. Frontline interview with General Wafic al-Samarrai (henceforth cited as al-Samarrai interview) at www2.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/samarrai/l.html and www2.pbs.org/wgbh/ pages/frontline/gulf/oral/samarraiβ.html.
44. R. Jeffrey Smith, "U.N. Says Iraqis Prepared Germ Weapons in Gulf War," Washington Post, August 26, 1995, p. A01. See also Frontline interview with Tariq Aziz, Iraqi foreign minister, at www2.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/azizβ.html.
45. See Arkin, "Calculated Ambiguity," p. 9.
46. Joseph Fitchett, "Nuclear States See Vindication: Threat of Annihilation Deterred Iraq, They Say," International Herald Tribune, September 12, 1995.
47. On Iraqi support for terrorist attacks, see al-Samarrai interview; Andrew W. Terrill, "Saddam's Failed Counterstrike: Terrorism and the Gulf War," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 16, No. 3 (July-September 1993), pp. 151-171;
48. and Hearings, United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Terrorism and America: A Comprehensive Review of the Threat, Policy, and Law, 103d Cong., sess. 1, April 21-22, 1993, p. 32. On the Kuwaiti oil field fires, see T.M. Hawley, Against the Fires of Hell: The Environmental Disaster of the Gulf War (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992).
49. For an analysis of the effects of Israeli nuclear deterrence threats on Saddam Hussein, see Shai Feldman, "Israeli Deterrence and the Gulf War," in J. Alpher, ed., War in the Gulf: Implications for Israel (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Post Press, 1992), pp. 184-208.
50. For a discussion of the difference between signals and indices, see Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 18-40.
51. For analyses of how commitments influence domestic and international reputations in different contexts, sec James D. Fearon, "Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes/' American Political Science Review, Vol. 88, No. 3 (September 1994), pp. 577-592;
52. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 43-50;
53. and Robert Jervis, "Domino Beliefs and Strategic Behavior," in Jervis and Jack Snyder, eds., Dominoes and Bandwagons: Strategic Beliefs and Great Power Competition in the Eurasian Rimland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 20-50.
54. See Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996); and Daryl G. Press, "The Roots of Credibility: How Decision Makers Assess Their Adversaries' Credibility during Crises," Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, forthcoming.
55. Quoted in McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years (New York: Random House, 1988), p. 393.
56. Ernest May and Philip Zelikow, Tlie Kennedy Tapes: Inside the Wliite House during the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 92. On October 18, in the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExCom), Secretary of State Dean Rusk echoed this argument: "On September 4 you said: There is no evidence ... of the presence of offensive ground-to-ground missiles. Were it to be otherwise the greatest issues would arise. Now that statement was not made lightly at the time. And it was intended as a clear warning to the Soviet Union that these were matters that we will take with the utmost seriousness. I think also that we have to think of the effect on the Soviets if we were to do nothing. Now suppose that they were to consider this a major backdown, then this would free their hands for almost any kind of intervention that they might want to try in other parts of the world." Ibid., p. 127.
57. lie Kennedy Tapes: inside the Wliite House during the Cuban Missile Crisis Ibid., p. 177.
58. lie Kennedy Tapes: inside the Wliite House during the Cuban Missile Crisis Ibid., p. 278.
59. Synopsis of president's speech (n.d.), Theodore Sorensen Papers, John F. Kennedy Library.
60. May and Zelikow, Tlie Kennedy Tapes, p. 279.
61. For examples of such dangers, see Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 117-155.
62. See Mercer, Reputation and International Politics, pp. 2-5, for many examples of concerns about credibility and reputation influencing U.S. military intervention decisions.
63. Convention on Chemical Weapons (Treaty Doc. 103-21), Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, 104th Cong., 2d sess., prepared statement by William J. Perry, March 28, 1996, p. 124.
64. Convention on Chemical Weapons Ibid., p. 124 and p. 121 (emphasis added).
65. Robert Burns, "US. Said to Have No Non-Nuclear Way to Destroy Suspect Libyan Plant," Associated Press, April 23,1996; and Art Pine, "Only A-Bomb Could Destroy Libya Plant, Scientist Says," Los Angeles Times, April 24,1996, p. A7. For reactions to Perry's testimony, see Spurgeon M. Keeny, Jr., "Nuclear Policy in Disarray," Arms Control Today, Vol. 26, No. 3 (April 1996), p. 2; and Carole Giacomo, "Controversy Rages over Perry Nuclear Comments," Reuters, May 3, 1996.
66. Charles Aldinger, "U.S. Rules Out Nuclear Attack on Libya Plant," Wasliington Post, May 8, 1996, p. A32.
67. Press briefing by Robert Bell, Office of the White House Press Secretary, April 11, 1996.
68. For the best analyses of the ANWFZ controversy and the belligerent reprisal doctrine, see Harold A. Feiveson, ed., The Nuclear Turning Point: A Blueprint for Deep Cuts and De-Alerting of Nuclear Weapons (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1999), pp. 271-275; and Bunn, "Expanding Nuclear Options."
69. R. Jeffrey Smith, "Clinton Directive Changes Strategy on Nuclear Arms," Washington Post, December 7,1997, p. Al.
70. Quoted in Bill Gertz, "China's Nukes Could Reach Most of US.," Washington Times, April 1, 1998, p. Al.
71. Quoted in "U.S. Policy Allows Nuclear Weapons," Baltimore Sun, February 1,1998, p. 31A;
72. and Michael Specter, "Standoff with Iraq: The Russians," New York Times, February 5, 1998, p. A6.
73. Steven Erlanger, "U.S. Set to Give Up Arms Inspections for Curbing Iraq," Netv York Times, November 8, 1998, pp. Al, A12.
74. In the Habiger case, for example, his statement that "nuclear weapons will be used," but not his later effort to accurately reflect the calculated ambiguity doctrine, was picked up by the press. See Gertz, "China's Nukes Could Reach Most of U.S."; and Gen. Eugene Habiger interview with the Defense Writers' Group, Washington, D.C., March 31, 1998. It is also possible, of course, that these statements do reflect a firm U.S. government policy decision to retaliate with nuclear weapons after a biological or chemical attack and that the ambiguity added in "clarifications" is merely a diplomatic fig leaf used to hide the fact that the United States has reneged on its negative security assurances. If such a monumental decision had been made ahead of time by the president, however, it is likely that more clear and consistent nuclear threats would be issued to maximize the chances that deterrence would succeed.
75. On the Aum Shinrikyo, see David E. Kaplan and Andrew Marshall, The Cult at the End of the World (New York: Crown, 1996);
76. and Jessica Stern, "Terrorist Motivations," in Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James J. Wirtz, eds., Planning the Unthinkable: How Neu> Powers Will Use Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Weafions (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000).
77. See Joshua Lederberg, ed., Biological Weapons: Limiting the Tlireat (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999), especially chaps. 2, 10-13.
78. See Henry S. Rowen, "Catalytic Nuclear War," in Graham T. Allison, Albert Carnesale, and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., eds., Hawks, Doves, and Chcls: An Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1985), pp. 148-163;
79. and Arthur Lee Burns, Tlte Rationale of Catalytic War (Princeton, N.J.: Center for International Studies, 1959).
80. Erlanger, "U.S. Set to Give Up Arms Inspections for Curbing Iraq," p. Al (emphasis added).
81. U.S. Strategic Command, "Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence," p. 7.
82. The following two paragraphs are based on evidence presented in Timothy V. McCarthy and Jonathan B. Tucker, "Saddam's Toxic Arsenal: Chemical and Biological Weapons and Missiles in the Gulf War," in Lavoy, Sagan, and Wirtz, Planning the Unthinkable. The interpretation of the evidence, however, is my own.
83. "Saddam Hussein Addresses U.S. Senators," Baghdad Domestic Service, April 16, 1990, in FBIS-NES-90-074, April 17,1990, p. 7. Saddam may have tried to remind U.S. officials of this threat during the war. See "'Mother of Battles' Airs Saddam CNN Interview," Baghdad Mother of Battles Radio Network, February 2, 1991, in FBIS-NES, February 6, 1991, p. 21.
84. Eliot A. Cohen, Gulf War Air Power Survey, Vol. 2, Ft. 1 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1993), p. 281.
85. UV News Bureau, "A Psy-Ops Bonanza in the Desert," April 18,1991; Douglas Waller, "Secret Warriors," Newsuvek, June 19, 1991, p. 24. One additional bizarre false-warning incident occurred on the U.S. side during the Gulf War, when a disk jockey in St. Louis, as a protest against the war, deliberately broadcast an emergency bulletin announcing that the United States had been hit by a nuclear weapon. See "Disk Jockey Falsely Reports Nuclear Attack," Neiu York Times, January 31, 1991, p. A20.
86. The history of World War II provides examples of both leaders retaliating after accidental attacks and leaders practicing restraint. On these incidents, see Jeffrey W. Legro, "Military Culture and Inadvertent Escalation in World War II," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring 1994), pp. 108-142; and Frederick M. Sallagar, Tlie Road to Total War (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1969), pp. 181-182.
87. During the Gulf War, for example, the United States attempted to "decapitate" Iraq with conventional bombing attacks against command-and-control points where Saddam was believed to be located. See Bush and Scowcroft, A World Transformed, p. 463; and Atkinson, Crusade, pp. 272-274.
88. Soc Brad Roberts, "Rethinking How Wars Must End: NEC War Termination Issues in the Post-Cold War Era," in Victor Utgoff, ed., The Coming Crisis: Nuclear Proliferation, U.S. Interests, and World Order (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, forthcoming); and Utgoff, "Nuclear Weapons and the Deterrence of Biological and Chemical Warfare," Occasional Paper No. 36 (Washington, D.C.: Henry L. Stimson Center, October 1997), pp. 7-9.
89. U.S. nuclear threats during the Gulf War, for example, prompted then president of India's Congress Party Rajiv Gandhi to issue his first conditional, public support for India to test and deploy nuclear weapons, in the event of U.S. nuclear weapons use. See "Cong-I Cautions Government on Gulf Issue," Indian Express, February 12, 1991, p. 1; and "Rajiv Fears Use of N-Arms," Hindustan Times, February 12, 1991, p. 20.
90. It has been estimated that thirty states have the technical capability to develop nuclear weapons within a few years of a political decision to do so. See Steve Fetter, "Verifying Nuclear Disarmament," Occasional Paper No. 29 (Washington, D.C.: Henry L. Stimson Center, October 1996), p. 38; and Scott D. Sagan, "The Causes of Nuclear Proliferation," Current History, Vol. 96. (April 1997), pp. 151-156.
91. An important exception is David Gompert, who has argued that "actual U.S. nuclear retaliation for a biological attack . . . would not imperil the Nation and its global interests, let alone human viability. And it would make it less likely that any WMD [weapons of mass destruction] would ever be used again-at least against the United States." This assumes, however, that a new wave of nuclear proliferation would not occur as a result of U.S. nuclear use, or that such proliferation would not "imperil" U.S. global interests, or that such new nuclear weapons would not be used against the United States. See Gompert, "Rethinking the Role of Nuclear Weapons," p. 3 (emphasis in original).