NUCLEAR DECISION-MAKING AND NUCLEAR WAR: AN URGENT AMERICAN PROBLEM
By Louis René Beres November 8, 2018
In nuclear war, the past is necessarily a poor guide
Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.†His classic warning remains starkly relevant to the United States, nowhere more so than in the context of nuclear war. Decisions affecting nuclear strategy, nuclear weapons development and proliferation, command and control of the nuclear force, and arms control have always involved tremendous risk, yet these risks largely dropped from public view after the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the emergence and enlargement of a second Cold War, nuclear instability and the risk of nuclear war are back, as underscored by US President Donald Trump’s recently announced intention to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia. Any decision involving nuclear arms is deeply serious business, which makes the President’s apparently flippant approach concerning. Yet the greatest challenge in nuclear decision-making is its fundamentally unprecedented character. Nuclear war remains the black swan of black swans. The President must appreciate that accurate estimates of the probability of nuclear war are logically impossible, and capable risk assessments in this context are therefore profoundly limited.
In nuclear war, the past is necessarily a poor guide. The US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 simply do not count as proper examples of a nuclear war. Rather, these events represented singular episodes of nuclear attack upon selected enemy civilian populations in the context of an otherwise conventional war. If the Administration mistakenly assumes that future nuclear strikes would play out similarly, the results could be disastrous.
https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/nuclear-decision-making-and-nuclear-war-an-urgent-american-problem/
