Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
8/29/2014
An Atlantic Council/Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security issue brief urges NATO to renew its focus on nuclear deterrence, calling nuclear weapons a “’core element of’ the Alliance’s ‘overall strategy.” The piece, published this week, dubs this era “the Second Nuclear Age,” and predicts tensions in Ukraine and the South China Sea as possible catalysts for an increased global focus on nuclear weapons and deterrence. Authored by Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security senior fellow Matthew Kroenig and Atlantic Council Secretary/former U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Walter Slocombe, “Why Nuclear Deterrence Still Matters to NATO” notes the 2010 Strategic Concept that highlights NATO’s prior dramatic nuclear force reductions and the organization’s decreasing reliance on nuclear arms. the growing call from some arms control groups to remove U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from Europe and support for nuclear force reductions among NATO allies while non-NATO states like North Korea, China and Russia, are bolstering their arsenals.
While the collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in two decades of loosening Cold War tensions and a greater member reliance on NATO’s increased conventional weapons capability, the piece expressed concern about the 2010 Strategic Concept’s omission of historically included language linking NATO’s nuclear force posture to international developments. Previous SC’s, such as one released in 1999, underscored a definite correlation.
Authors: Nuclear Weapons Remain ‘Important Deterrence Mission’ for NATO
The article suggests recent Russian nuclear modernization and provocations, such as abandoning the pretense of a “no first use” policy and referring to nuclear strikes as a way to de-escalate a conflict, as reasons why NATO should maintain a clearer and declarative nuclear deterrence policy. “At the very least, NATO should be abundantly clear about its resolve and capability to respond with terrible effect to any nuclear attack,” the article states. “Moreover, while the primary function of NATO’s nuclear forces is deterrence of nuclear attacks, the Alliance would gain nothing by claiming to absolutely renounce the option of responding with nuclear weapons to certain types of nonnuclear aggression. … So long as nuclear weapons retain such a prominent place in Russian force structure, procurement priorities, doctrine, and political rhetoric, it remains an important deterrence mission for NATO to retain a policy of, and a serious capability for, nuclear deterrence as a potential instrument for dealing with the remote but calamitous contingency of a military confrontation with Russia.”
In addition to emphasizing threats from Russia, the article asserts that Iran also poses a potential threat. The country has developed ballistic missiles capable of hitting NATO members in southern Europe, and “has the technological and financial resources” to build a ballistic that can hit all of Europe and the United States. The brief also supports full accountability for nations that facilitate nuclear terrorist attacks, and it supports a policy that would not explicitly threaten nor rule out a nuclear response to nuclear terrorism. The article also underscores the need to protect against “extremely grave nuclear threats” such as biological weapons and large-scale cyberattacks “that could, in principle, produce effects equivalent to nuclear attacks.”
