Submarine Proliferation and Regional Conflict

Recent debates over the dissemination of weapons of mass destruction and high-tech military hardware and technology have largely ignored naval armaments, and particularly submarines. The growth in global submarine fleets, particularly in areas of post-Cold War regional conflict, may pose a serious threat to the peace. Their stealth, effectiveness, and poor communications may lead to aggressive preemption, inadvertent escalation, and the horizontal spread of conflict. Thus far the solutions put forward in both the strategic and arms control literature have stressed either unilateral coercive action utilizing the overwhelming naval and air superiority of the major powers, or `supply side' export bans initiated and enforced by the advanced industrial states acting in concert to maintain their technological advantage. Such solutions to the threat of submarine proliferation will almost certainly prove ineffective in the long run, however attractive they seem as short-term palliatives. Multilateral agreements beginning with naval confidence-and-security building measures, followed up by regional and global naval arms control regimes, offer far more promising methods of dealing with the growing submarine threat.