Beyond Contradiction

Daniel Poneman, a former U.S. Secretary of Energy—a position that includes supervision of America’s nuclear weapons—gave a recent talk called “Prospects for Nuclear Proliferation,” in which he argued that in an ever more dangerous world, the best chance for security is to bolster the U.S. deterrent. In other words, build more and better weapons and delivery systems. To be fair, Poneman also advocated for more arms control. But is that not a performative contradiction? An unworkable paradox has operated all along in American arms strategy and for other nuclear powers also: build more so that you are in a better position to negotiate reductions. Thus a leading establishment thinker and distinguished public servant ends up advocating, in a talk about preventing further nuclear proliferation, American nuclear proliferation!

Poneman’s premise is that the best method of disincentivizing more nations to go nuclear is to strengthen the so-called “nuclear umbrella” by which non-nuclear nations feel secure because they can rely on the strength of U.S. weapons to deter aggression. That trust is fraying as alliances change or are weakened by the U.S. itself, as Poneman pointed out.

While deterrence may have had had some residual effect in making some nations more cautious, it contains a fatal dilemma: in order to never be used, everyone’s weapons must be kept on hair-trigger alert, and so they become accidents waiting to happen.

Detonation of only a small fraction nuclear weapons over large cities would be sufficient to raise enough soot into the upper atmosphere to bring on a decade-long nuclear winter. So the primitive nuclear “revenge” built into strategies like “launch on warning” becomes a psychotically suicidal response. This is the rock upon which nations build their global security?

Adding hypersonic delivery systems further reduces the small amount of time national leaders have to make sane decisions. While the U.S. has considered protocols that would slow down the process by placing the decision to respond in more hands, the speed of international ballistic missiles renders that effort meaningless.

The cyber dimension of the challenge is not reassuring. The weapons are tied to thousands of computers and fallible humans. Military AI will introduce further level of complexity that renders disaster more probable.

The United States has become siloed into polarized groups which do not communicate well with each other. How much more dangerous is such siloing on an international level, where nations refuse to make connections on the basis of their shared self-interest in survival? You do not have to love your enemies to realize that your survival depends upon them and theirs upon yours. That applies equally to both nuclear weapons and climate effects.

There is zero public debate about the ethics of nine nations’ readiness to use weapons could kill hundreds of millions of people and perhaps end life on earth. The silent acceptance of strategic “realism” feels close to helpless resignation to self-created planet-wide evil. Why are there so many Daniel Ponemans and so few Daniel Ellsbergs?

Meanwhile our president denies the very existence of profound changes in Earth’s climate in order to protect the fossil fuel corporations that helped elevate him to power. The planet has become not only too small for modern war, but faces a global climate emergency about which the militaries of the world as presently constituted can do very little—in fact they are major contributors to the problem.

There is no international authority with the teeth necessary to control the growing potential for either nuclear or climate catastrophe. But reality provides an authority of its own: absent change we are going to broil quickly in nuclear fire or broil more gradually as global temperatures increase.

There are alternatives, some of which are politically risky, but their time has come. Four possibilities for our own nation: first, the U.S. should stand down its entire land-based ballistic missile force, as a good faith gesture toward the reality of what the future could look like with a change of direction. Our security would not diminish; it would increase, because ballistic missiles, which cannot be recalled once launched, are destabilizing. Second, the U.S. should sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as a further gesture toward a nuclear-free future. Third, we should call an international conference of political, military and non-governmental stakeholders to explore the no-exit nature of our present direction on Earth, including the relationship between military stalemate and the opportunity costs that come with failing to address chaos-causing climate effects. Fourth, to belabor the obvious, we are invited to elect political representatives that offer feasible plans for addressing climate change and are eager to work with other nations on agreements that ensure equal burden sharing. A further hope is the strengthening of people-to-people NGOs like Rotary International who are good at making human connections and building common frames of reference.

When are we going to understand that power no longer resides in military might, but instead in mutual understanding of what leads to common survival? The prevention of war by tenuous military superiority has now become unworkable on this planet, forever. When we admit this to ourselves, the door to new visions of security will open.