Deterrence Stability with Smaller Forces: Prospects and Problems

Many scholars and policy-makers have assumed that reduction of US and Russian strategic nuclear forces to the lowest possible levels, perhaps to zero, is contributory to deterrence and crisis stability. This study tests a variety of reduced US and Russian nuclear forces, including hypothetical forces and START configurations, for their relative force advantage and for their ability to fulfil previously accepted standards of assured retaliation. It turns out that, as forces decrease towards very low levels, the Russian force falls behind the US force in operational flexibility and becomes much more vulnerable to surprise strikes without warning. Both forces maintain the ability to inflict historically unprecedented retaliatory damage even at the 1,000 warhead level, the lowest included here. The good news is that minimum deterrent forces rapidly run out of plausible targets, making them irrelevant for counterforce first strikes or for escalation dominance. The bad news is that minimum forces can become exclusively city attacking forces by default. Former adversaries now turned into potential partners in search of regional and global stability, the USA and Russia must safeguard the transition from a nuclear deterrence regime to a more disarmed world. The reduction of US and Russian arsenals to several hundreds of weapons is contributory to stability on the assumption that the British, French and Chinese nuclear weapons inventories undergo proportionate reductions also. A second assumption built into favorable prognoses for US and Russian reductions well below START levels is that nuclear proliferation can be constrained. Absent constrained proliferation and cooperative European and Asian nuclear powers, US and Russian force reductions below 1,000 warheads are ambiguously stable. Neorealist arguments in favor of well-managed proliferation understate the extent to which Cold War stability was overdetermined. US-Soviet nuclear deterrence rested on a substructure that included bipolarity and learned behavior modification for crisis management.