Dr Rajkumar Singh
THE emergence of atomic and, later of thermonuclear weapons of huge destructive power made
it clear to mankind that a new world war would cause incredible devastation. From then, peace among nations has become a necessary condition for mankind’s survival. It is true that there has been no world war since 1945; it is also true that nuclear weapons have been developed and deployed in part to deter such a conflict. Nuclear revolution, in post-world war II phase, has forced great powers to behave in a careful and restrained manner and to accept a compromise which in pre-nuclear times would surely have been unacceptable. It has even changed the modes of thinking about warfare as asserted by Albert Einstein in 1946, ‘the unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe. Obviously, the catastrophe Einstein envisaged has not occurred, the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was more than sufficient to prevent all the nations possessing this new technology from any actual use of it under any circumstances. Nuclear weapons made deterrence work across national and ideological boundaries : they taught Capitalists and Communists alike the virtues of a commitment to the status quo. Despite their revolutionary character, they showed that even revolutionaries can become members of a club.
What is nuclear deterrence? ‘Nuclear Deterrence; as a theory means – the threatened use of nuclear weapons, to keep someone else from actually doing what they may be contemplating doing. The possibility of an adversary possessing such weapons influence the perception of nuclear weapon threat by a country. The estimation of the probability of war with the country concerned, and of the probability of that country using or threatening to use nuclear weapons in such a war, play important roles in the development of threat perception.It happened for the first time in the history of international relations that the very existence of a weapons system devised to enhance the security of great powers had become sufficiently threatening to those powers to provide them with a persistent and strong incentive to settle their differences, rather than to risk getting into situations where they might be forced to use the means of warfare they themselves had devised. This was, then, a new kind of international order – imposed not by design or by principle, but by fear.
Significance of nuclear deterrence: Nuclear strategy, as a whole, can be regarded as a complex of pseudo-problem of which deterrence is a part. Since the aim of deterrence is to instil caution without raising tensions, there is always a very fine balancing act between making the opponent fear the negative consequences of his own aggression and reassuring him that there is nothing to fear as long as he stays on a peaceful course. However, in military perspective, this balancing act becomes more delicate than ever because of their tremendous destructiveness and closely related advantage of striking first if all-out war appears imminent. Advocates of nuclear deterrence argue that offensive measures are necessary to make the deterrence credible in a period of rough strategic parity. The basic idea is that military capability will enhance stability only to the extent that you are able to convince your opponent that you are better prepared than him to fight even if you are less inclined to start the fighting. The problem, of course, is that the things you do to deter the other side may also make him suspicious about your intentions. Obviously, continuation of the regime of deterrence depends largely on how the contending powers calculate their gains and loss but with equal rationality and efficiency which is rarely found in today’s international politics.
Successful working in Cold War period: Closely related to it is the aspect that whether the deterrence has worked in the past or not. Looking ahead begins by looking back. If the deterrence has not worked in the past it can not work in future. Its past working can be known in two ways – by knowing facts from archives and files which were planned but not implemented due to deterrence and second, by explaining conflict behaviour of the powers which, in fact, vary from power to power and is totally unpredictable. The core of the deterrence theory seems eminently reasonable, and even self-evident. If the expected punishment exceeds the gain, the opponents will be deterred. The claim of nuclear deterrence is inherent in the claim itself, for it is seeking to explain something that did not happen – a non-event in the literal sense.Because the deterrence is a pseudo-problem and it can not be solved, may be the reason for continuing to discuss and research. At most it should be respected as a necessary category of intellectual discourse. Its discussion does not end but merely punctuate. It often demands sweeping arguments and wide ranging perspective, while conclusions are highly circumscribed.
An unstable regional security, the drive for international prestige, the nuclear-weapons option as a bargaining chip and aggressive political intentions may be counted as important incentives for a state to acquire nuclear weapons. In case of the United States of America which happened to be the first in order, willingness and ability to play so large an international role, particularly on the Eurasian continent was the prime. Immediately after the second world war the USA was not in a position to challenge Soviet Union on political or strategic issues and it considered the bomb as a counter-weight to the massive Soviet military establishment. Being aware of bomb’s destructive capabilities and its unique potential as an influence towards world peace, US President Harry S. Truman linked it directly to the political characteristics of the states possessing it, and, equally important, of the international system to which they belonged. Besides deterring military aggression, this new kind of superiority was also thought to be essential for resisting Soviet attempts at intimidating the vulnerable West European democracies; keeping conventional military spending within reasonable bounds and maintaining US leadership in the emerging Western alliance.
The US monopoly over this new technology or its unilateral deterrence did not last long; The former Soviet Union was the most concerned, which put all its resources available to break US monopoly as told by Stalin that this technology has shaken the whole world and destroyed the balance as well. It feared attack on Soviet camp and expected the Americans to use their exclusive possession of atomic bombs to impose their political and economic schemes in Europe. The first Soviet explosion witnessed in August 1949 and it gained retaliatory capability in mid-fifties. Thus, in the first decade of the Cold War, both the US and Soviet leadership developed what we might call a defensive nuclear ideology. They felt that nuclear weapons were essential to prevent both political blackmail and large-scale military attack by the other side. Despite repeated call for nuclear disarmament, both clung to their nuclear deterrents as their best hope of maintaining peace.
— The writer is Professor and Head, P G Department of Political Science, Bihar, India.
