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| Why Waltz is Wrong by David Krieger July 12, 2012 |
The lead article in the July/August 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs is titled “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb.” The author, Kenneth Waltz, a former president of the American Political Science Association, argues that the world should stop worrying about Iran getting the bomb. He sums up his basic argument this way: “If Iran goes nuclear, Israel and Iran will deter each other, as nuclear powers always have. There has never been a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed states. Once Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, deterrence will apply, even if the Iranian arsenal is relatively small.”
In essence, Waltz puts his faith in nuclear deterrence and justifies this in historical terms. But the history is short and there have been many close calls. During the 67-year period since the dawn of the Nuclear Age there have been numerous accidents, miscalculations and threats to use nuclear weapons. Fifty years ago, the US and Soviet Union stood at the precipice of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Waltz’s faith in nuclear deterrence reflects a belief in rationality, a belief that all leaders will behave rationally at all times, including under conditions of extreme stress. This defies our understanding of human behavior and the ever-present potential for human fallibility.
Another way to view the historical data from which Waltz finds comfort is by an analogy of a man jumping off a hundred-story building. As he passes floor after floor, he wonders why people on the ground are showing concern for his well-being. He ignores the approaching ground and focuses his attention on the fact that nothing bad has happened to him yet. In Waltz’s theory of nuclear deterrence, there is no hard ground below, nor gravity acting upon the jumper. He argues that “history has shown that where nuclear capabilities emerge, so, too, does stability. When it comes to nuclear weapons, now as ever, more may be better.” While having more may be better, it may also be far worse.
Martin Hellman, a professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford University and an expert in risk analysis, argues that a child born today has a ten percent or greater chance of having his or her life cut short by nuclear war. Unlike Waltz’s analysis, risk analysis takes into account the odds of an event occurring and doesn’t base its analysis of the future simply on what the historical record shows at a given point in time. Ten coin flips may produce ten straight “heads,” but it would be unwise to assume that the results between heads and tails would not even out over time. With nuclear weapons, the consequences of being wrong in one’s projections are, of course, far more dire than with coin tosses.
Another analogy that has been used to describe the standoff between nuclear-armed powers, particularly the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War, was of two men standing up to their waists in the same pool of gasoline and each man being ready to strike an unlit match. If either man struck the match, both men would be consumed by the fire that would result. With nuclear weapons, the conflagration would not stop at the two men – it would include their families, their communities, their countries and the world.
Waltz makes the bet that no leader of a nuclear weapon state will ever strike the match or allow the match to fall into hands that will strike it. It is a foolish bet to make. The two men, and the rest of us, would be far safer if the gasoline were drained from the pool. In the same way, the world would be much safer if nuclear weapons were abolished, rather than shared in the hope they would enhance security in the Middle East or elsewhere.
Waltz may believe that it is precisely the threat of conflagration that keeps the men from striking the matches. For many, even most, men he may be correct, but the fact is that neither Waltz nor anyone else can predict human behavior under all conditions. There may be some leaders in some circumstances for whom striking the match would seem rational. In addition, even if neither man were to strike a match, lightning may strike the pool of gasoline or other sparks may ignite the pool from unforeseen causes. Instances of accidents, madness and human fallibility abound.
Nuclear weapons have brought humankind to the precipice. These weapons threaten cities, countries, civilization and complex life on the planet. It is the responsibility of those of us alive on the planet now to abolish these weapons of mass annihilation, not justify their spread, as Waltz would have us do.
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Comments
Of course this is obvious to anyone who chooses not to have their thoughts coloured by fear or political ideology. But the question is what should we do next?
We cannot un-invent the technology, and political will is very unlikely to be swayed whilst there are financial incentives to be gain from the Military Industrial Complex and whilst the propagation of fear is an effective way of garnering political power.
This needed move away from the brink of lunacy will unlikely come from corporate or political interests. So how do we wrest these decisions (non-violently of course) away from those who hold sway currently?
As usual, I am always impressed with Mr. Krieger's comments on eliminating nuclear weapons in our world. He is truly a man of peace. I first met Mr. Kreiger in the late '70' s when he was teaching Karate at the YMCA . His message then and now is that force and violence only leads to more force and violence. We need to eliminate the tools of violence since we cannot predict the actions of men. Thank you David for your efforts to bring about world peace.
I visited many stores but could not buy any patience or tolerance.
Under these circumstances the importance of nuclear disarmament is a matter of common sense. But it is difficult to fnd that also.
With the ''pool of gas'' analogy, if only one man is in the gas wouldn't the other be much more willing to strike the match and destroy his enemy...especially if he saw him as an ''existential threat'' as Israel claims it sees a nuclear Iran?
There is something less than logical about arguing that nuclear bombs are inherently stablilizing and, therefore, peace-promoting, because there has been a world without actual nuclear war ever since the Japan tragedies in WWII. It just seems like logic sleight-of-hand to suggest there is a cause and effect here when it reality it's more likely that it's plain luck that a conflict, misunderstanding or accident hasn't led to a detonation since 1945.
I recall a few years ago, the editor at large of TIME (actually a fairly young journalist) wrote an essay half-seriously suggesting that the Nobel Peace Prize should be awarded to the H-Bomb itself symbolically. His ideas were similar to Waltz's: He argued that nations' owning H-bombs basically causes everyone to be sane and sober and careful and not enter into battles around the globe capriciously. He reviewed the decades before Hiroshima -- including WWI and the earlier years of WWII -- and said the world was marked by widespread, savage fighting before atomic weapons were ever used. He wrote that ridding the world of every nuclear weapon would be a "terrible" idea and would just lead to vast numbers of deaths in conventional wars and lesser fights.
But I think that's disturbingly weak and questionable reasoning. History is an interplay of extremely complicated events and personalities. Some of those personalities may be calm and stable and peaceful, but some may be totally unpredicatable and, at worst, aggressive and psychotic. Just because years of "no nuclear war" have coincided with worldwide nuclear proliferation and the continued possession of nuclear arsenals among nations does not mean (to me) that there is a causal or simple relationship here. I think we've just been very fortunate that the everpresent oil surrounding us has not ignited and burned us.
So then make sure the US does not violate international law by invading a defeated and vulnerable 3rd world country under UN sanctions with our massive conventional strength thereby negting the belief in international law and makeing a nuclear deterrance attractive if not manditory for protection. We have no moral voice whatsoever having already used 2 nuclear bombs on Japanese cities saved throughout WWII as virgin test territory. With our nuclear inventory we are the greatest danger and have had numerous close calls. We evern used the Cuba missile crisis for nuclear brinkmanship while nuclear submareine already roamed off our coasts perhaps undetected versus at know land sites in Cuba.
The state of international law and the rule of law today.
Condoleezza Rice, future US Secretary of State, writing in 2000, was equally contemptuous of international law. She claimed that in the pursuit of its national security the United States no longer needed to be guided by "notions of international law and norms" or "institutions like the United Nations" because it was "on the right side of history." — Z Magazine, July/August 2004
"If we have to use force, it is because we are America! We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future." — Madeleine Albright, U.S. Secretary of State, 1998
"The causes of the malady are not entirely clear but its recurrence is one of the uniformities of history: power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations — to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image." — Former US Senator William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power (1966
© Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Excellent essay, Mr. Krieger, well-reasoned and rationale. It was really surprising to see Foreign Affairs give such prominence to a very short, poorly-thought-out, superficial essay that did not even treat such a serious topic in-depth and with real, substantive analysis.
In an effort to find something shocking and unusual, the magazine really just failed to provide something with real value -- despite the credentials of the author. At least there could have been a variety of other essays and viewpoints included on the same subject to provide balance. Instead the magazine went for big headlines and something close to sensationalism. Would James Hoge have let this little take over the cover?