Document created: 9 September 02
Air University Review, July-August 1979

The only legitimate reason for a nation to pursue arms control measures is because its national security would thereby be enhanced. As a consequence, no nation can expect other nations to pursue arms control measures unless their national security is enhanced also. In order for arms control agreements to succeed, then, the interests of all parties must be advanced. It would be folly for any nation to agree to an arms control measure that would harm its security, and hence no government would knowingly sign an agreement against its own interests. Nor is it wise for one state to try to deceive another by calling for arms control agreements but actually preparing for war; with satellites and other modern surveillance techniques, a state's true intentions and capabilities cannot long be concealed. The nation attempting deception would quickly find that its intended victim's euphoric sense of security would give rise to a deeper sense of insecurity than before the arms control agreement was signed. The betrayed party would soon build up arms, and further invitations for arms control negotiations would only lead to increased distrust.

In short, arms control agreements will be successful only if they are based on mutual trust and serve to enhance the national security of all nations involved. Arms control, then, can serve as a means to further national security. It cannot, however, serve as an end goal of international politics. The nature of mankind is such that a part of it will always seek domination over the rest. Pursuit of arms control as an end by one well-meaning nation will only encourage more aggressive nations to use it as a means to greater power and even domination. To pursue arms control as an ideal divorced from political reality is to sacrifice one's interests and security. If the United States, then, is to pursue arms control, those responsible for conducting our foreign policy must have a clear understanding of the political reality that such agreements are to operate in and must be vigilant to ensure that American security is indeed enhanced.

The motivations for American foreign policy, however, are mixed. While the U.S. consciously seeks to safeguard its security and economic interests abroad, only the most cynical would deny that one of the primary motivations for American foreign policy is idealism. Especially in this century, Americans have repeatedly tried to change the nature of world politics, and of the world itself, by convincing the world of the justness of our values not only for ourselves but for all nations. Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations, Franklin Roosevelt's United Nations, and even Jimmy Carter's human rights campaign are only a few examples of the hope of recasting the world in our own form. Three recent books continue this American tradition. One is a Council on Foreign Relations 1980's Project study entitled Controlling Future Arms Trade by Anne Cahn, Joseph Kruzel, Peter Dawkins, and Jacques Huntzinger. Another is NPT: Current Issues in Nuclear Proliferation, compiled by Susan Ridgeway of the Center for the Study of Armament and Disarmament at California State University at Los Angeles. The third is the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Environment, actually written by Arthur H. Westing, an American botanist.

In the section of Controlling Future Arms Trade,* written by Anne Cahn and Joseph Kruzel, the outcome of continued heavy flows of conventional arms to the Third World from the major powers is discussed. They see this trend eventually leading to widespread conflict that the U.S. would be unable to control. Particularly ominous, they believe, is the transfer of new technologies such as precision-guided munitions (PGMs) and possibly even cruise missiles. The weapons now being transferred are highly complex, and supplier assistance is required to maintain them in operating order. A Third World state presumably would not undertake military action that its supplier found objectionable. The withdrawal of supplier assistance would lead to an immediate and long-term decline in military power, as occurred when Egypt and Somalia split with the Soviet Union. New technology weapons, however, are much simpler to operate, the authors believe. Third World states could maintain them on their own. This might be an inducement to more aggressive action. Further, a threat to cut off assistance by the supplier may not be as credible if resupply from another major power of similar weapons was readily available and could be integrated more easily.

*Anne Hessing Cahn, Joseph Kruzel, Peter Dawkins, and Jacques Huntzinger, Controlling Future Arms Trade (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977, $5.95), 210 pages.

Cahn and Kruzel present a persuasive case that increased arms shipments to the Third World make undesirable conflict there much more likely if only because these nations did not previously have the means to fight more and create crises that the superpowers might unwillingly be drawn into. However, the solutions that they, along with Dawkins and Huntzinger, offer to avoid such conflict are rather less than convincing. Cahn and Kruzel feel that unilateral American restraint would induce other powers to act similarly. Yet recent events in the Horn of Africa have shown that the lack of U.S. assistance to Somalia did not prevent massive Soviet arms shipments to Ethiopia. Colonel Dawkins proposed that economic incentives be rearranged in the West to diminish the desire to supply arms. He believes that an ambitious NATO standardization program could absorb all the weapons that would otherwise be sold to the Third World. This, however, does not take into account the tremendous economic dislocations that would result in Western European economies, the fact that the Soviets sell weapons for primarily political and not economic reasons, and the basic desire of Third World nations to buy arms. Jacques Huntzinger's proposals for arms-import restraint by developing nations themselves depend on the cooperation of all regional actors. Yet, in every region there is at least one actor, feared by others, who refuses to limit the acquisition of arms.

Another proposal is to link security assistance with economic assistance. A recipient would receive more of the latter as a reward for accepting less of the former. However, it should be clear by now that there are relatively few governments in the Third World that are more concerned with their nation's development than with their own survival and strength. While development funds are considered desirable, arms are considered essential. The one solution that might be effective in controlling Third World conflict over the next generation or two--an agreement among the supplier nations to strictly control arms transfers--is avoided because the authors consider a solution by the great powers imposed on smaller ones to be immoral. The reader is led to doubt the authors' sincerity since they obviously would not support conventional arms control at the expense of Third World sovereignty.

None of the authors recognize that the problem of arms transfers is only part of the much greater problem of growing conflict in the Third World. For the U.S., the only major politico-military competition for them is not with the superpowers but with one another and with internal opposition. This is a fact that the U.S. cannot change, but should American foreign policy-makers choose to ignore it, then they must be charged with actually encouraging the Soviet Union to become the major arbiter of Third World disputes. And if a halt in U.S. security assistance programs only serves to encourage the more rapid development of indigenous Third World arms industries, then the U.S. may not be able to regain any of its influence among these nations at all and be forced to live in a considerably more disordered world than we would like.

These are problems that have not been dealt with at all in Controlling Future Arms Trade, for they have not yet even been recognized as problems. If the U.S. is to prevent growing conflict in the Third World, though, American foreign policy must address the underlying political reasons for such conflict. Third World conflict will not go away if we naively cut off arms shipments in the hope that nations will not fight if they cannot have our weapons. The entire problem requires much more thorough study than has yet been given to it.

NPT: Current Issues in Nuclear Proliferation* is not a monograph but a selected bibliography. Nevertheless, it is useful to examine because the compiler, Susan Ridgeway, has included works representing virtually every aspect covered by the growing literature on nuclear proliferation. Most striking in the bibliography are the extensive listings of technical and legal approaches to halt the spread of nuclear weapons. It should be apparent by now, though, that technical constraints hardly pose a barrier to any state determined to acquire nuclear weapons. The knowledge required to construct an atomic bomb is becoming increasingly widespread, thanks primarily to Western publishers. The restrictions that the International Atomic Energy Agency hopes to enforce can hardly stop any nation determined to obtain the necessary material for a bomb. Indeed, if a nation is patient, it can take away small quantities of plutonium waste from nuclear power plants operating within its borders without detection. While technical limitations might deter some states that are not really interested in acquiring nuclear weapons, they are not an effective means of halting nuclear proliferation.

*Susan Ridgeway, compiler, NPT: Current Issues in Nuclear Proliferation (Los Angeles: California State University, 1977, $2.00), 57 pages.

Nor do legal limitations promise to halt nuclear proliferation. Even the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) allows any signatory state to withdraw from its provisions by merely declaring its intentions to do so only three months in advance. Further, the treaty provides for no sanctions against nations withdrawing from it either legally or illegally. The threat of not having nuclear energy plants sold to a nonsignatory is hardly credible. Indeed, a nation determined to acquire nuclear weapons might possibly sign the treaty to give the impression of peaceful intentions in order to obtain greater access to nuclear material. Even nations such as Brazil and Pakistan, which insist on not signing the NPT, have been successful in purchasing all manner of nuclear technology. The legal approach to nuclear nonproliferation, then, can only give a false sense of security to those who unwisely place their faith in unenforceable utopian measures.

What the literature on nonproliferation has not addressed at all are the political motivations for a nation to acquire nuclear weapons. On reflection, it will be found that there are only two basic motivations: 1) a government fears that its national security will be endangered unless it obtains nuclear weapons, or 2) a government has aggressive desires that are so ambitious that the possession of nuclear weapons is necessary to fulfill them. No other motivations can exist other than these two basically offensive and defensive political ones. While technical or legal approaches to nonproliferation may marginally affect them, they do not reach the heart of nations' concerns, which are political.

Nevertheless, a world with even more nuclear powers than exist now would not be in America's interests, especially if an irrational government could launch a nuclear war that the U.S. might be drawn into. But to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the U.S. must direct its foreign policy to the political motivations of those nations likely to acquire them. To prevent the acquisition of such weapons by nations that fear their security or even survival might be at risk without them, the U.S. could guarantee the defense of such nations from attack. For those nations with aggressive designs on others, the U.S. could make clear to them that any nuclear attack they might launch on anyone would be considered as sufficient grounds for the U.S. to retaliate in kind. These are strong proposals-ones which are not to be found in the writings on nonproliferation listed in this bibliography. While they may not be the best ones possible and would require the exercise of will in U.S. foreign policy that has been noticeably lacking recently, they do at least address the basic political causes of the nuclear proliferation problem. Any solution that is to be effective must do this also, unlike the multitude of technical and legal proposals that do not and as a result are completely unworkable.

In Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Environment,* Dr. Arthur Westing speculates on the damage that would occur to plant and animal life if nuclear, chemical, biological, geophysical, and other weapons were used in forested and other wilderness areas. While the author makes a compelling case that the damage would be overwhelming, he does not address the obvious question of how likely a nation taking part in nuclear war would be to target an opponent's forests. It would appear that if two nations were ever so enraged by each other as to risk their own destruction through engaging in nuclear war, more valuable targets such as population, industry, and military installations would be destroyed first. Dr. Westing implies that the most important burdens of a future major war would fall on plants and animals, and hence weapons of mass destruction should be banned. His lack of attention to the human costs seems strange.

*Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Environment (New York: Crane, Russak, & Co., 1977, $12.95), 95 pages.

Dr. Westing believes that the more nuclear and other highly destructive weapons that the superpowers possess, the more likely it is that they will be used in war. Hence, the best means of preventing a major war would be to eliminate nuclear weapons. This sort of proposal to end war, which has been advanced by many others also, deserves critical examination. The absence of nuclear weapons did not prevent such highly destructive wars as the Thirty Years War, the Napoleonic wars, the American Civil War, World War I, and World War II, to mention but a few. Since 1945, however, no major war has occurred. Nuclear weapons have been in existence for only a short period historically, so one cannot say definitively that they have deterred a major war. But what would the world be like if there were no nuclear weapons? Without them, the two superpowers could not threaten each other, or anyone else, with total and immediate destruction in return for undertaking unacceptable aggressive actions. If the U.S. could not threaten the Soviet Union in such a manner, how could we hope to prevent aggressive actions on their part? In fact, such actions could not be prevented as easily and would probably have to be stopped through a massive commitment of men and materiel such as was necessary to halt a much smaller Germany in two world wars. Without nuclear weapons, the ability to prevent a major war is greatly reduced, and, if such a war were to come about, the destruction to population, industry, military installations, and even forests would very likely be greater than through nuclear war.

Once again, a proposal has been made to enhance peace that does not address the basic political problems it hopes to solve. Nuclear weapons are to be eliminated in order to prevent war. But nuclear weapons are a means of conducting war and not the cause of it. Eliminating them will not alter the political fact that nations have conflicting goals for which they would prefer to go to war rather than meekly allow other nations what they desire in order to avoid violence. To eliminate war the basic causes of conflict among nations must be eliminated. Historically, this has proved impossible, and wars continue. But if the causes of war cannot be eliminated, the best means of decreasing their likelihood is to instill such a tremendous fear of the consequences of war that even aggressive nations would willingly avoid it. Nuclear weapons, it cannot be denied, have instilled this fear of war to an intense degree and thus have served a useful purpose in preventing the all-out war that they have the potential to unleash.

All three of these works seek to point out potential dangers to the interests of American foreign policy that will occur unless something is done to eliminate them. Yet the solutions they all propose are highly idealistic, the authors displaying both insensitivity to their effect on American interests and ignorance of their inappropriateness to the political reality that exists in the world. The problems posed by the transfer of conventional weapons, the proliferation of nuclear weapons states, and the growth of the nuclear arsenals that already exist will not be solved through naive proposals calling for the halt in transferring or the elimination of such weapons. The conflicting goals that exist among nations will doom the idealistic pursuit of such solutions to failure. The problems these weapons pose is an outgrowth of this conflict in international relations, which has proved to be insoluble. Only through the recognition that this basic conflict is a permanent factor in international relations can arms control negotiations hope to orchestrate the mutuality of fear that exists into agreements mitigating some of the common dangers that various weapons present. It is a curious phenomenon that Americans continue to advance highly idealistic and woefully unrealistic solutions to the world's problems when the pursuit of such solutions in American foreign policy has repeatedly resulted both in failure to achieve bur ideals and in harm done to our interests. The history of this century has shown that only through a foreign policy that advances American interests can we hope to transform some of our ideals, such as the control of arms, into reality.

Mark N. Katz (M.A., Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies) is a graduate fellow in defense policy and arms control at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has held positions with the Department of State, the Arms Control Association, and, most recently, the Department of the Treasury. His article "How Should the U.S. Respond to the Spread of Soviet Influence in the Third World?" appeared in Air Force Magazine (August I978).

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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