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by Charles Knight, March 2023.

The present status of the war in Ukraine begs the question of whether anything like “decisive” warfare will occur this year?

Or will this war continue (since the summer of 2022) to uncannily mimic the often static battles of the Western Front during WWI?

In other words, will the war remain mired in mutual slaughter?

Presently, according to the many popular press narratives, the Russian winter offensive is concluding, and we await the spring and summer offensive by Ukraine.

It should be noted that there is no reason to believe that national leaders will follow popular press narratives. Offensives are risky business, and commanders often change their minds daily, especially regarding the critical factor of timing.

The Russians could try diverting the concentration of Ukraine forces readying for an offensive by opening their own offensive push at a place of their choosing. Or the Ukrainians could suddenly withdraw their troops from the threatened (and largely destroyed) town of Bakhmut while beginning one or more major offensives in Luhansk, Kherson, or Zaporizhzia.

There are many possibilities.  There are many paths to military success or failure.

None of this is predictable.  The generals are certainly not going to tell us about their plans.

Meanwhile, the war is not only terribly costly to Ukraine and Russia but much of the world pays through global economic disruption.

In poorer areas of the world, misery has surely increased because of the war.  There are growing signs that the world is growing weary.  An Economist report has found “…an emerging disconnect between wealthy Western economies and the Global South.”

The following is a Postscript (March 2004) to the report (September 2002) of a detailed exercise I undertook to apply the preemptive counter-proliferation guidelines developed by Dr. Barry R. Schneider, director of the U.S. Air Force Counterproliferation Center, to the case of Iraq. 

The 2003 Iraq War can be described as a preventive counter-proliferation war.  Schneider’s guidelines are for a preemptive war.  A preventive war is several steps closer to a war of aggression than a preemptive war — it is almost certain that any nation that is the target of a preventive war will view it as a war of aggression.  If the Kremlin were inclined to use this terminology, it would call its present war in Ukraine preventive, while Ukraine certainly understands it to be a war of aggression.  Therefore, we should expect the guidelines for a preventive war to be more stringent than those for a preemptive war. 

I completed and published the exercise findings in September 2002, six months before the invasion of Iraq.   

~ Charles Knight, 19 March 2023

Charles Knight, 17 October 2022

A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven.

~ James Baldwin, 1962

The comforting narrative of a dependable and stable nuclear deterrence between the US and Russia has been thrown into disarray by the War in Ukraine. This narrative, propagated widely in the years following the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, held that both the Super Powers fully appreciated that they could not “win” a nuclear battle and, therefore, would avoid direct conventional warfare, which might then quickly escalate into nuclear war. In a necessary corollary, it was thought that Russia and the US would make every effort to avoid a conventional war in Europe. Why? Because there are so many paths to escalation to nuclear war in Europe. Elsewhere in the world, US and Russian interests were more diffuse and, therefore, not so vital.

Recently Political Scientist Matt Fuhrmann posted on Twitter (@mcfuhrmann 10/10/22) a chart of “Cases of Attempted Nuclear Coercion 1946-2016.” It is from his and Todd Sechser’s 2017 book, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy, p. 128.  Fuhrmann’s Tweet begins: “Wondering how Putin’s nuclear threats over Ukraine compare to other nuclear crises?”

In their book, Fuhrmann and Sechser list 19 cases of attempted nuclear coercion over 75 years. I use the Fuhrmann/Sechser assembly of instances of attempted nuclear coercion as a starting data point to examine what the Ukraine War might mean for the notion of a stable (mutual) nuclear deterrent between two major nuclear powers.

The Construction of a “Stable Nuclear Deterrent”

I ask the question,   Is the nuclear deterrent aspect of the US/Russian relationship presently stable in any meaningfully reliable way?

Theoretically, for an effective and stable mutual nuclear deterrent, a credible capability must exist to respond to a nuclear attack with an overwhelming retaliatory attack. However, this was not the case for the Soviet Union until the end of the 1950s or the beginning of the 1960s. This meant that the US had about fifteen years following WWII in which it had relatively unrestrained nuclear options and could attempt nuclear coercion or compellence of adversaries without risking devastating retaliation by the target country.

The Cuban Missile Crisis marks the time when the US came to grips (for both the professional military leaders and the public) with the reality of mutually assured destruction … and thus, there was the need to invent a notion of a stable nuclear deterrent. Not that the nuclear arms race ceased after the Cuban Missile Crisis. It continued until the end of the Cold War (and has recently resumed.)

Nor did the US or the Soviet Union refrain entirely from attempting nuclear coercion. But Fuhrmann and Sechser only cite the 1969 threat by the US during the Vietnam War and the complicated multi-party threats during the 1973 Yom Kippur War as instances of attempted nuclear coercion in wars in which both the US and the Soviet Union were intensely interested parties. These should be counted as instances in which threats to use nuclear weapons locally could have escalated into a nuclear war between the great powers.

What did change after the Cuban Missile Crisis is that only a minority in the US leadership ranks believed there was a realistic chance to return to the heady days in the 1950s when it was possible to believe in the efficacy of nuclear compellence targeted at a near-peer nuclear power.

What does the history of attempted nuclear coercion tell us about the situation in Ukraine?

In this article, I discount all the instances in the Fuhrmann/Sechser list before 1960, leaving 13 cases over the 56 years from 1960 to 2016.

From those, I further remove those that do not pertain principally to conflict between the US and the Soviet Union/Russia. We then have left just 3 cases: the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Vietnam War in 1969, and the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Of these three, only the Cuban Missile Crisis qualifies as a direct big-power strategic confrontation. In Vietnam and the Middle East, the US and the Soviet Union were engaged as supporters of different sides in a local conflict. It is thought that these are the sort of conflicts in which the big powers are not likely to risk all by using nuclear weaponry.

In the run-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis, each side in that dangerous strategic confrontation had deployed medium-range strategic missiles to the territories of their allies in the close vicinity (Turkey and Cuba) of their adversary. As a result, both felt that the other nuclear power had critically threatened vital strategic interests.

Leaders on both sides in that crisis had to maintain an intense rational focus to arrive at a compromise settlement that would avoid nuclear war. Yet, despite their demonstrated rationality, there were several unexpected developments during the crisis not under the leadership’s control and which could have led to disaster. (See, for instance, Michael Dobbs, “I’ve Studied 13 Days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This Is What I See When I Look at Putin,” New York Times, 5 October 2022.)

In some important ways, the Ukraine War presents a greater nuclear risk than the Cuban Missile Crisis. Therefore, it demands even more careful rationality and restraint by Russia and the US.

By making threats to use all means at his disposal to protect the existential interests of Russia and its territorial integrity, Putin is using nuclear coercion to limit his adversary’s options in the war. However, as with most other instances of nuclear coercion, this is a highly risky tactic and inherently unstable. (See Steven Pifer, “Pushing back against Putin’s threat of nuclear use in Ukraine,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 10 October 2022, for how Putin has attempted to limit and restrain US/NATO support for Ukraine by repeated reference to his military nuclear options.)

Several things make the Ukraine War nuclearly fraught:

1. Putin has annexed several Ukrainian oblasts, effectively making them into vital Russian territorial interests to defend from the NATO-backed challenge. He has effectively created a situation that fits the criteria in Russian military doctrine for using nuclear weaponry. I assume he knows what he was doing in this regard. His views on the role of nuclear forces in defending Russian territory are clear.
2. The very success to date of the Ukrainian defense increases the perceived “need” for Moscow to reach for high-risk military options.
3. This is a war in Europe, precisely the sort of conflict that the Soviet Union and the US learned to avoid after the Cuban Missile Crisis. We are lucky that the Soviet Union and the US learned that lesson. It helped us to survive the Cold War. Unfortunately, with the launch of the Ukraine War, that wise restraint has been destroyed. There are so many ways wars in Europe can go wrong:  too many nations very near each other that have nuclear weapons  — most all with complex histories and cross-cutting webs of interests. With human emotions added into the mix, any war in Europe can easily and quickly escalate into irrational levels and types of violence.

What NATO and the US Must Do to Avoid Escalation to Nuclear War?

Some things can be done by the US or NATO nations to reduce the probability that Putin will order the use of nuclear weapons:

1. The US and NATO must make sure Putin and other Russian leaders know that there are realistic “exit ramps” from their war effort. Likewise, the Kremlin must know there are options to end this war that avoid oblivion.
2. As Kennedy smartly pursued talks behind the scenes with the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis, so must Washington pursue similar discussions with the Russians now. Domestic political pressures will necessitate that these talks be secret. They may not produce serious negotiations soon, but they serve to maintain a relationship and take psychological pressure off the Kremlin leaders that might otherwise incline them to use nuclear weaponry.
3. It is essential to make clear to the Kremlin a willingness to lift specific categories of economic sanctions when a negotiated war settlement is achieved.
4. The US has shown some wise restraint in the qualitative aspects of its substantial military support of Ukraine. This support has included not only ordnance and some sophisticated equipment but also superb battlefield intelligence. Nevertheless, the US must continue to ensure that no US service people become directly engaged in the fighting or are in harm’s way on the ground, sea, and air in the vicinity of the war. Deaths of US soldiers in this war could result in intense domestic pressure on Washington to retaliate against Russia, risking rapid escalation.
5. The US must resist suggestions that it supplies Ukraine with longer-range weaponry which could hit targets deep inside Russia. Moreover, Washington must restrain impulses to involve its military forces in the air or naval interdiction of Russian military platforms.

To return to the central question about the stability of nuclear deterrence in Europe between Russia and the US/NATO, it should be clear that any remaining mutual deterrence is presently highly fragile. It lacks a stable platform of shared strategic understanding.

And to the extent that we would rely on human rationality as a factor in deterrence, we must realize that rationality only goes so far. Indeed, presently, a very short way. Reflect for a moment on the recent history of big-power leadership. The US just went through four years with Donald Trump as commander-in-chief. It should be clear by now that neither was he inclined toward disciplined rationality nor did he have the most basic understanding of the limited “usefulness” of nuclear weapons. Furthermore, he did not demonstrate any interest in learning about such.

Putin’s degree of commitment to and capacity for rationality in his leadership of Russia remains unknown. His recent decisions about Ukraine do not give one confidence in that regard. Joe Biden is an old Cold Warrior, and no doubt learned a few things about what was safe to do and what wasn’t. However, he is famous for impulsive statements in public. We must hope he is more deliberate and careful in the war room.

Nonetheless, the historical record of national leadership informs us that we can not rely on rationality to carry the day, especially in the pressure cooker of war. Presently the world is utterly vulnerable to any failure of Biden or Putin to stop short of direct warfare between their respective military forces! The paths on which that failure could happen multiply the longer the war continues.

The US/NATO war effort in Ukraine must remain deliberately limited. Beyond that, we must resist the usual war fevers (beset with visions of victory over evil) that take nations toward total war.

by Charles Knight, originally published by the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, 22 December 2021.

While visiting Australia in mid-December, South Korean President Moon Jae-in announced that North Korea, China, South Korea, and the United States have agreed on an end-of-war declaration at the “fundamental and principle levels”. Since 1953, when an armistice ended large-scale combat on the Korean Peninsula, the parties to that war have not signed a peace treaty. Instead, they have prepared for war as though it could or should resume at a moment’s notice.

Moon first proposed the ‘end-of-war declaration’ in a speech before the UN in 2019. He renewed that call before that same body this past September, inviting diplomats from the U.S., South Korea, and North Korea to meet, negotiate, and sign a declaration. He also called for including China in a four-party declaration. The ‘end-of-war’ notion is formulated as an alternative to a formal peace treaty that remains politically out of reach, especially after the failure of the Hanoi Summit in 2019. As such, President Moon hoped that 3- or 4-party talks might lead to a renewal of negotiations regarding the broader issues of peninsular peace.

In his Canberra remarks, Moon pointed out that “we are not able to sit down for a negotiation on declarations,” because of Pyongyang’s insistence that the U.S. and South Korea “end hostile policies” before any talks could proceed. As the Deputy Director of the Publicity and Information Department of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party Kim Yo-jong stated in September, the first step is to “ensure mutual respect toward one another and abandon prejudiced views, harshly hostile policies and unfair double standards toward the other side.” Of course, this conditionality lacks specificity. Yet, judging from previous North Korean negotiating positions, Pyongyang is likely signaling that moving to meaningful negotiations will require the U.S. to provide offers of sanctions relief and reduce its military presence and joint exercises in the South.

The United States, for its part, still insists on the unilateral nuclear disarmament of North Korea. Numerous issues of mutual interest to Pyongyang and Seoul are considered secondary and contingent on nuclear disarmament. Given that North Korea is now a (minor) nuclear power that considers nuclear weaponry essential to its strategic posture, Washington’s position is equivalent to a refusal to negotiate from Pyongyang’s perspective. Until quite recently, the Biden administration’s behavior suggested it had adopted the Obama administration’s notion of “strategic patience,” a stance that amounts to taking no actual diplomatic initiatives. Recently, this has changed—with the U.S. now signaling that it is ready to talk, take a “step-by-step” approach, and honor the framework agreed upon in the 2018 Singapore Joint Statement made by Kim and Trump.

A step-by-step process will mean give and take. Moreover, it implies that the U.S. might ultimately have to settle for some tempering of the North’s nuclear arsenal rather than the complete, verifiable, and irreversible disarmament (CVID) it was originally seeking. Not that Washington is ready to acknowledge this publicly. In fact, the recent G7 meeting statement reasserted the CVID standard.

Washington might argue that its affirmation of CVID is justified given that the Singapore Statement includes a provision which declares: “Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” Nevertheless, the formulation “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” is a subject of contention, because North Korea and the United States interpret its meaning differently.

By reaffirming the Singapore Joint Statement as a basis for negotiations, however, the U.S. hints that it is prepared to negotiate with the North on the precise meaning of “Peninsula Denuclearization”. For instance, might the U.S. eventually agree to stop flying dual-capable (nuclear and conventional) bombers over the peninsula?

Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department recently announced new ‘human rights’ sanctions, blacklisting North Korea’s Central Public Prosecutors Office, a former Minister of Social Security, and the new Minister of People’s Armed Forces. Whatever value these sanctions might have in their particulars, they certainly send a mixed message to North Korea about prioritizing peace and disarmament negotiations.

Things change, however, and the situation in Korea is not stable. For several years, both North and South Korea have been in a short-to-medium range missile arms race, developing and testing missiles carrying greater payloads over longer distances. As Sangsoo Lee of the Stockholm Korea Center observes: “What we are witnessing today on the Korean Peninsula is the same kind of action-reaction dynamic that developed between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War—a destabilizing and expensive arms race.” This rings true, as, despite Moon’s desires for peninsular peace, he has not as of yet demonstrated the political will to reign in ROK’s military establishment.

In 2018 Pyongyang decided, at the urging of Russia and China, to induce negotiations with the U.S. by initiating a moratorium on testing new ICBMs and nuclear warheads. However, as time goes by, Chairman Kim faces increasing pressure from his military to end this moratorium. Pressure is unlikely to subside, for Military planners in the North are aware that the U.S. has been preparing its Air Force and Navy for conventional preemptive operations to prevent the successful wartime use of North Korean nuclear weapons. Pyongyang also understands that the deterrent value of its partially-developed
nuclear arsenal diminishes over time absent ongoing improvements, which require periodic testing. Therefore, if serious negotiations do not begin soon, one could expect the DPRK to end its testing restraint.

While many in Washington are content with a strategy of waiting patiently for sanctions to force Pyongyang’s capitulation, this approach overlooks how existentially critical nuclear weaponry has become in North Korea’s strategic calculus. Without an adequate national security alternative, Pyongyang will most likely choose to suffer indefinitely under the economic pain of sanctions, however severe.

President Moon has consistently sought a path toward peace with North Korea. Achievements in this regard include facilitating several intra-Korean summits and the three meetings between Trump and Kim. Economic opening to North Korea has been at the core of Moon’s program, but Washington’s sanctions regime has blocked most initiatives. The end-of-war declaration, agreed to “in principle” by four major stakeholder nations, may well be the last significant peace initiative of his term. Yet, even if it goes no further than the symbolic agreement announced in Canberra, Moon, as a practical politician, likely consoles himself with a secondary objective of burnishing his political party’s reputation for pursuing peace during the run-up to the next election.

The impasse in Korea raises profound questions about the U.S.-South Korea alliance. What is an alliance’s value for peace and security if a faraway great power effectively vetoes peace initiatives by a middle power dealing with a potential war situation in its immediate neighborhood? Of course, some will argue this to be simply the latest example of Thucydides’ Melian dilemma: “The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.” But this simple formulation never captures the full complexity or mutability of the real world. It did not do so for the Athenians, nor the Melians, and neither does it for us today.

Alliances cannot and do not last forever. To endure from one era to another, they must adapt and change. If Washington returns to old habits of leveraging its hegemonic will to control affairs on the Korean Peninsula, it may reap the unintended consequence of hastening the end of the alliance. After all, South Korea is much stronger economically and militarily than it was a few decades ago. It has earned substantial agency in its Northeast Asian geostrategic maneuvers, and it demands certain strategic autonomy independent from Washington. The U.S. would be wise to recognize this and accommodate Seoul. A relationship of partners will be more productive than the archaic patron-client one that actively shuns South Korean interest. And such strategic recalibration would come with the added benefit of helping end America’s longest war.

by Charles Knight, 31 January 2021.

During the last decade, we entered a new strategic era that will have large and lasting effects on the international and domestic policy and position of the United States.

An emergent sign of this new era was Russia’s decision in 2015 to intervene in the Syrian civil war in support of the Damascus government. This deployment was the first significant “out of area” military intervention by Russia since the demise of the Soviet Union.

While many Western commentators characterize Russian actions in Ukraine and Syria as ‘resurgent aggression,’ a more accurate assessment is that Kremlin leadership seeks to halt that country’s long post-Soviet decline in global influence by addressing perceived national security deficits. In Ukraine, Russia has sought to shore up its flanks against NATO expansion in its near-abroad. Russian forces have also deployed to protect Mediterranean and Middle East interests represented by its long-time Syrian ally and, in particular, the naval base at Tartus and, fifty kilometers to the north, the new tactical air base at Latakia.

Although Russia has been militarily assertive in words and deeds, the most significant and dangerous strategic developments involve China. The reason for this is quite straightforward: Russia is presently a relatively weak state and will likely be a declining power for years to come. On the other hand, China is a rising economic and military power (although its military strength lags its economic advance by a considerable measure.) China has demonstrated renewed national confidence and pride rising in the face of seventy years of dominating presence by the U.S. Navy in the Pacific, effectively reaching right up to China’s coasts.

Image by David Mark from Pixabay

China has been building out its territorial claims in the South China Sea. The U.S. Pacific forces have responded with repeated displays (by air and by sea) of disrespect for China’s sovereign claims. These demonstrations of U.S. power have ratcheted up tensions with China without in any way resolving the issue of the underlying competing sovereign claims.

Five years ago, the talk in American news and opinion media was of “a new Cold War with Russia.” Today, our media offers “a new Cold War with China.”

It would be a mistake to think that cold wars are something that happens to us – like a coronavirus spreading from Wuhan to Europe and from Europe to Seattle and then New York. Rather, a cold war is best understood as an ideological construct with a clear intent: to mobilize American and allied nations for an extended “struggle” with a designated enemy.

The first Cold War (1947-1989) was costly for the world, diverting one or two percent of global economic activity to military capabilities particular to that conflict. For the U.S. the Cold War consumed a much higher percentage of GDP than the global average.  U.S. defense spending rose to nearly 15% of GDP during the Korean War and averaged between 5 and 7% of GDP in non-war years. Overall, the Cold War cost American’s about 4% of their GDP.

On a global scale, the first Cold War was nothing like an uneasy peace. During its course, more than 30 million people died in some thirty-five wars. Although these conflicts were peripheral to the presumed central front in Europe, many were encouraged and provisioned by the main protagonists.

The U.S. government rallied a significant portion of several generations’ creative energies to the Cold War cause. Too often, our government and compliant media spun inaccurate and exaggerated stories of enemy prowess and intent, producing widespread fear. During the Cold War’s 40+ years, fears of the enemy took a profound psychic toll on all involved, especially children.

We can do much better than remain passive during the construction of an encore. There is a choice.

Graham Allison, former director of the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School, has written:

“If leaders in the United States and China let structural factors drive these two great nations to war, they will not be able to hide behind a cloak of inevitability. Those who don’t learn from past successes and failures to find a better way forward will have no one to blame but themselves.”

It will not be an easy task to create a structure for peaceful relations with China. We must privilege cooperation, always seeking to identify common security interests. This task will require imagination, persistence, and focused attention.

Alternatively, a cold war framework for our relations with China will result in $300 to 500 billion additional annual U.S. security expenditures. It will divert Americans’ energies and resources away from many important social, economic, and environmental goals. The U.S. will defer many domestic investments.

Nations wise enough to opt-out of a cold war with China will emerge as winners, while those that sign on to the struggle will likely reap decline and perhaps the whirlwind of war.

~~

[ Adapted from an earlier version of this cautionary tale published in the Huffington Post, February 2016.]