This week's column

The lasting peace provided by nuclear weapons

Recently on a remote Australian island, I had the privilege of spending time "on the beach"--so to speak--with Nobel economics laureate Thomas Schelling, whose thinking on nuclear deterrence shaped the international security environment we enjoy today. Expecting to find the wizened strategist downcast on the subject of nuclear proliferation, I instead found an outlook as optimistic as my own.

Speaking to a World Economic Forum retreat, Schelling admonished everyone to remember just how effectively nuclear deterrence has worked over the past six decades. No state, he noted, that has developed nuclear weapons has ever been attacked by another state. Moreover, no state armed with nuclear weapons has ever attacked another state similarly armed.

Think about that.

Read on at KnoxNews.
Read on at Scripps Howard.

Comments

[Nathan Elms]

Uhhh... when did Israel get the bomb? I know it is only reputed to have the bomb. But, seems like they've been attacked pretty in a sort of 4gw kinda way; and nobody disputes their possession of it. So is this statement only true in a conventional sense?

[Dave Goldberg]

Nathan, Israel has followed a policy of deliberate ambiguity on possesion of nuclear weapons. The Israeli government has never officially acknowleged a nuclear arsenal, but has implied that they would retialiate in kind if ever attacked with a WMD.

Israeli PM Olmert came under a lot of fire with a comment made last December in response to Iran's threat to wipe Israel off the map, when he stated that "Iran openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when you are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?" This was widely viewed as an admission if Israel's nuclear capability, but was officially denied as a "grammatical error".

[M. Garcia]

"But since conventional invasion is unthinkable following America's difficulties in far smaller Iraq, and because conventional bombing alone can't rid Iran of its nuclear capabilities, both Israel and the United States face an equally unthinkable choice -- going nuclear to prevent Iran's nuclear capability."

Conventional invasion (with attendant bombing campaigns and the "shock and awe" mentality) is old-school, strategic nukes are out of the question, and use of tactical nukes is unlikely. Have we no SOF capability anymore? I understand that would require quality intel, but still...JSOC can handle the job, I would think, without all the conventional bombing and cavalry/infantry that someone thought we needed in Iraq.

[Mark C]

How does MAD work with assymetrical warfare, such as if the nuke is delivered in the back of a truck by non-state proxys? To assure retaliatory destruction, we need to know for sure where the nuke came from. ICBM's and long range bombers provide the undeniable fingerprint of the attacker in the nation vs nation examples given in the article.Iran or North Korea would be able to deliver a nuke with more accuracy by having terrorists drive or ship the bomb to the target city. They would then be able to deny any complicity in the attack, pointing the finger at each other or anybody else they can think of, removing the assurance of mutual destruction.Do we have the capabilities to trace a nuclear explosion delivered assymetrically back to the providor of the weapon? A retaliatory strike against the wrong target would never be forgiven.