Nuclear Response
In a recent debate, Hillary Clinton was asked what she would do about the Iranian nuclear program. Her answer was simple and direct. If the Iranians attack Israel with a nuclear weapon, we will annihilate them.
This is the theory of deterrence in a nutshell and also what is wrong with deterrence. I was speaking the other day with a person who had served on a nuclear submarine in the sixties. He said, somewhat proudly I thought, that if they had ever received a verified order to launch the weapons at the Soviet Union they would have done it. He thought that this would have led to a terrible outcome, but he could not imagine any other choice.
No one has ever gotten beyond the conundrum that it will always be a mistake to use nuclear weapons and yet the only way to prevent their use is to threaten their use. The strategists have suggested various clever ways around this problem, but for most people in most countries involved with nuclear weapons the tendency is to rely on all or nothing.
I personally do not want a person with their finger on the trigger who casually says “we will annihilate them. The them is, of course, a large number of people most of whom have played little if any role in the decision to develop or use nuclear weapons. So for an abstract goal of preventing nuclear use in the future we are set to declare that we will as a nation commit mass murder.
There are two possible partial solutions. The first is to resolve to think through the possibilities in the crisis before any nuclear weapon is launched, no matter what the provocation. The second, and more expensive, is to develop weapons and strategies that allow military success after a nuclear attack without a nuclear response. This might not be feasible in a conflict of major states, but certainly in the case of Iran we could and should develop such a strategy. (This is not to say that we should or should not be involved in war with Iran. There seem, however, are to be so many ways that we might strive to avoid this outcome.)
