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POWER POLITICS AND
THE GROWING NUCLEAR CLUB

By ARTHUR LEE BURNS

Center of International Studies
Woodrow Wilson Hall
Princeton University

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PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

CENTER OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

STAFF

Frederick S. Dunn, Director

Klaus Knorr, Associate Director

Faculty Associates

Gabriel A. Almond

Cyril E. Black

Gordon A. Craig

William Ebenstein

Edgar S. Furniss, Jr.

William W. Lockwood

Wilbert E. Moore

Research Associates

Arthur Lee Burns

Robert J. C. Butow

Miriam Camps

Bernard C. Cohen

Herman Kahn (2nd term)

Morton A. Kaplan

Dankwart A. Rustow

Glenn H. Snyder

Research Assistant

Sidney Verba

Editorial Assistant

Jean MacLachlan

Recent Policy Memoranda

No. 15. *The European Common Market and Free Trade Area: A Progress Report*, by Miriam Camps

No. 17. *The First Year of the European Economic Community*, by Miriam Camps

No. 18. *The Free Trade Area Negotiations*, by Miriam Camps

No. 19. *The Strategy of Limited Retaliation*, by Morton A. Kaplan

Recent Research Monographs

No. 1. *Deterrence by Denial and Punishment*, by Glenn H. Snyder

No. 2. *Some Problems in the Strategic Analysis of International Politics*, by Morton A. Kaplan

No. 3. *The Rationale of Catalytic War*, by Arthur Lee Burns

Copies of the above memoranda and monographs can be obtained from the Center of International Studies, Woodrow Wilson Hall, Princeton, N. J., at 50 cents per copy.

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I

Nth-country problems are many. * One of them has been supposed to be the problem--namely, at what stage does the acquisition of nuclear weapons by states that have not had their own before become a danger to the two or three original possessors?

This itself is not a simple question. Some of the old club members may be endangered sooner--or more seriously--than others are. Some potential new members may be much more or much less upsetting than the average aspirant. The phrases "nth-country problem" and "nuclear club" are often used without an indication of whether entrance to the club involves, as a minimum, ownership of a few A-bombs only, or of at least some H-bombs, or of a stockpile of the latter and a delivery system worth the attention of the United States or the USSR.

Again, the question is usually put from the point of view of one or another possessor. British writers seem to have coined the expression "fourth-country problem" before Suez, in order to indicate their concern about the spread of nuclear forces to Continental and other supposedly reckless nations. Crossing the Atlantic, "fourth" changed to "nth" in order to suggest a proliferating but less definite source of anxiety--and also, perhaps, to hint that nuclear Powers other than the third might be chiefly worried about other countries than the fourth.

France's current weapons program, and the Swedish and Swiss debates on the advantages and disadvantages of an atomic arsenal, have served notice that "the problem" or problems, when seen from the viewpoint of non-possessors, may be different, just as disturbing, and even more complex. Would-be entrants to the nuclear club might of course aspire only for reasons of prestige, or from short-sighted panic at the thought of being precluded indefinitely from the "sole means of defense" in a nuclear age. But if they are assumed to be no less prudent than the original club members, it will be understood that such aspirants would wish to put certain questions to themselves--not only such technical and logistic questions as "Have we the resources, or the friends, to provide us with a truly independent deterrent capability?" or "May we instead, disposing of less hardware than that, still hope to gain security for ourselves through our ability to involve more powerful nuclear forces in

*This memorandum was written in part while the author was at the University of Chicago in May 1959.

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a last resort?" but also, pursuing certain implications of those very technicalities, a number of political questions, and pre-eminently "the" nth-country question, "How may the existing nuclear Powers be expected to regard *our* getting such-and-such weapons?"

Nor do the views of the countries without nuclear weapons comprise all the ramifications of the problem. States as well as persons have their own peculiar interest in the survival of the human race; but simply as men we may properly concern ourselves also with the moral qualities of a world that survives only because of a dynamic balance of terror--or, instead, survives despite the nth-country's apparently upsetting such a balance. A voter on the issue of his nation's acquiring nuclear weapons may not be willing to have that nation's physical security furthered through a virtual exchange of hostages with other possessor countries.

This memorandum will deal with one cluster of these many problems--briefly, with questions about the relations of power among states of varying nuclear capability, and with the stability, instability, and propensity for exploding into war that international systems constituted by such relationships of power might be expected to display. There are two sorts of completeness which we shall not here attempt. A complete *theory* of inter-nuclear relations would refer indifferently to possible or to practically impossible systems. It might deal with questions about the maximum possible number of deterrent Powers,¹ in theoretical disregard of the practical constraints already put upon the increase of such Powers by the dimensions, the economic capacities, and the political complexions of the United States and the Soviet Union. A complete *conditional forecast* of this number, if it were possible even in principle, would require one to exhaust the future alternative states of affairs practicable in the ideological, demographic, economic, and technological fields, and, by permutation of those possibilities, to derive the alternative political dispositions they would make possible.

Since we can do neither sort of job completely, we shall try to combine a little of both in discussing a few relationships of nuclear power which seem possible of realization upon the assumption that certain quite constricting *political* limitations are already imposed on the situation. As "prediction," what follows is almost certain to be wrong in detail. Whatever value it has will consist in its illustrating, through

1. As the writer has attempted elsewhere; see "From Balance to Deterrence: A Theoretical Analysis," *World Politics*, IX, No. 4 (July 1957), pp. 514, 524-25, *et passim*.

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imaginary examples employing familiar proper names, such half-theoretical and half-empirical concepts as "the triggering deterrent, " "nuclear sharing," etc.--notions which are in the air and in some degree influence the formation of policy.

We shall here give notice of a temporal restriction: at the center of our interest will be the prospects for the next fifteen years. This limit has been chosen because it corresponds with that of the best discussions of technological prospects;² because it excludes the international consequences of the present infant-population's impact as producers and potential fighters; because it is less sensitive than a greater duration would be to the unpredictabilities of long-run economic growth; and because current ideological movements such as communism are unlikely to fade away altogether or to change radically in less than ten or a dozen years, barring major war.

The ideological map provides us with some of our most definite guide lines. It is largely from ideological causes that the present international system is polarized. One should be able to predict that countries which now possess or will soon acquire nuclear weapons will dispose them only against members of the enemy bloc, and not use them as a general defense. The Soviet Union already exercises a tight control and the United States a much looser and more indirect one over acquisition of nuclear weapons by members of their respective blocs. Objections about policing and inspection currently raised by the Soviet Union in the discussions on the banning of atomic tests have an ideological component. Without the present differences over ideology, the problems of nuclear dispersal might be more immediately pressing, but more readily soluble. Few of the countries which try to keep above the battle of the cold war have immediate prospects of nuclear capability and, of the few that do, most are anti-Communist.

Independent acquisition of the new weapon-systems requires a complex assortment of economic, scientific, and technological powers.³

2. See, for example, the forthcoming book by Herman Kahn, to be published by Princeton University Press, in which he suggests that, from earliest research and development to final phase-out, the life-span of a weapon system is currently about fifteen years.

3. A most useful assessment of the potential needed for making a small stockpile of A-bombs is given in an unpublished survey, "The Nth-Country Problem," by William C. Davidon, Marvin I. Kalkstein, and Christop Hohenemser, of the Committee on the Technical Problems of Arms Limitation, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, August 1958.

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Economic growth and educational and scientific development should within fifteen years add to the number of countries wielding powers adequate for development of some nuclear weapons; but it is very much a question how soon any other nations beside Great Britain, or possibly any group of nations, can hope to put themselves in the nuclear company of the Soviet Union and the United States, with their vastly expensive air offense and defense systems and huge sustaining programs of research and development. France and Western Germany are economically comparable to Britain, but France is several years behind her in the development of nuclear weapons. Thus, by comparing the United Kingdom's nuclear strategic complex, so far as it is currently disclosed in the press, with the much grander capacities of the two greatest Powers, we may get a very general idea about the possible rate of unaided and unsponsored growth in membership of the nuclear club during the next few years.

In the longer run (i.e., by the end of the century, and not within our projected fifteen years), it is generally believed, many nations will become nuclear Powers to an extent comparable to that of the present possessors. On the one hand, nuclear weapons themselves are thought likely to become cheaper; on the other, nations such as Communist China, some countries in South America, and perhaps India will have developed economically to a level at which their large populations could easily support strategic nuclear forces substantial enough to rank them among the Great Powers.

The information either to support or to correct such predictions as those in the previous paragraph would be difficult to assemble at the present time. Some of the underdeveloped nations are obviously at a critical stage of their growth, so that the next few years may decide whether they might become Great Powers within the present century. Military technology, moreover, another important unknown, seems now involved in perpetual crisis, so that one cannot judge from it whether after ten years or so even small industrial states might be able to buy themselves cheap but adequate deterrents, or whether the maintenance of deterrent power might not come to strain the resources of the two or three leading Powers themselves.

It seems clear, nevertheless, that, short of an improbably pro- found and broad political settlement, the qualitative arms race will continue. 4

The leading Powers will go on searching for new weapons designed to

4. See Samuel P. Huntington, "Arms Races: Prerequisites and Results,"
   in *Public Policy*, Yearbook of the Graduate School of Public Administration,
   Harvard University, 1958; and the present writer's "A Graphical
   Approach to Some Problems of the Arms Race," scheduled for publication.

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render obsolete those relied upon by others. The most extreme formulation of the nth-country problem has been a figment of the small, ambitious nation's and the fearful analyst's too-static imaginations. Or rather, the most unstabilizing effects of the small Powers' search for deterrent capability may result from their acquiring forces quite inadequate for threatening retaliation against a major opponent, but menacing enough to give the latter an occasion for blackmail or for sudden attack. However, other motives besides ambition and the need for prestige may induce a minor state to develop its own A-weapons: it is not impossible that an independent deterrent will add substantially to the security of smaller countries. And there may be no surer means of persuading a Great Power to give one a complete deterrent than a demonstration of the intent to acquire an incomplete one on one's own. Our later discussion of "triggering" deterrents and strategies and effects may help to make this clearer.

Prospective changes in military technology provide probably the most important variables of our several problems. Certain general features of this technology may be predictable over a short period. We may for instance confidently expect the development, during the next few years, of miniaturized and more powerful explosive charges; a considerable degree of control over amount of fallout from explosives; a world-wide range for ballistic missiles; a larger variety of missiles--ballistic, semi-ballistic, guided, air-to-surface, air-to-air, etc.; highly sophisticated navigation (an improvement which could stabilize the stand-off between Russia and the United States, while probably pricing most other Powers out of the deterrent field); advanced processing of data and more efficient systems for detection, both of use in warning-systems and in guidance of offensive weapons; advances in chemical and bacteriological warfare; extensive civil defense, tending both to obsolesce and to improve; and elaborate but expensive submarine forces. Among other innovations which might also affect strategic nuclear capacity, but which may not be more than possibilities within the next fifteen years, are transmutation of elements and provision of abundant energy from nuclear or thermonuclear sources; control of atmosphere and the weather; massive radiological operations (cf. Project Argus); and space navigation with lunar and orbiting launching sites.

Before we conclude this catalogue of conditions that may delimit or direct the spreading of nuclear capability, let us take full account of its complicated uncertainties. Nobody knows what is going to happen; and in some leading groups it is recognized that nobody can know. In

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such circumstances, where even estimates of probability have little
significance, it may be useful to speculate about rational responses to
uncertainty of this radical kind.

Those that are already leading nuclear Powers should clearly re-
spond by speeding up in the qualitative arms race (unless they can all
agree on a method of thoroughgoing arms control). The prospect of
their doing this, and the consequent likelihood of the development of
novel weapons, of course add to the general uncertainty. Non-nuclear
countries, on the other hand, or those essaying no more than the manu-
facture of tactical atomic weapons, may have to choose between investing
a decisive part of their defense budget in procuring a complete thermo-
nuclear deterrent, or instead seeking a watertight alliance with one of
the great nuclear Powers.

The former alternative promises a gamble (which may fail be-
cause of tendencies toward obsolescence) at achieving the status of a
supposedly invulnerable Great Power; the latter alternative, at the cost
of permanent client-hood, offers the best prospect of belonging to a
combine that cannot be upset by changes in the technology of weapon-
systems. There may be, however, a third course⁵--the lesser Power
may join an alliance to which it makes its own contribution (perhaps
conventional forces) and through which, in return, it acquires such
advanced weapons as from time to time the Great Powers heading the
alliance may have developed.

This last procedure may well come to serve as the main disperser
of nuclear capabilities. If have-not Powers demand them, while the cur-
rent possessors fear their uncontrolled spread, some such quasi-feudal
system of nuclear alliances may offer an attractive compromise. We
shall discuss this and other grand strategies in the course of the following
analysis.

II

Aspiration to the autonomy of complete deterrence is an entirely
consistent extension of the drives toward national security and statehood.
Unless it is wrong for any nation to have the power of killing human beings

5. Discussed by the writer as an option for the Western allies in "NATO and Nuclear Sharing, " Chapter 7 of *NATO and American Security*, ed. by Klaus Knorr, to be published by Princeton University Press in October 1959.

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by the tens of millions, it cannot be wrong for Switzerland, for example, to have it. It may be both unwise and wrong for a small Power to risk upsetting the "delicate balance of terror" by tinkering with the manufacture of weapons it cannot produce in quantity enough, or with delivery-systems sufficiently adequate, to provide itself an effective deterrent force. It must be a still more dangerous and irresponsible procedure for any Great Power to undertake avoidable risks that, though of the same kind, are even greater in scale. Proposals for solving or postponing nth-country problems are not likely to be welcomed if they do not acknowledge a degree of justice in the aspirations of the nuclear have-nots.

We shall now--in order to describe one limiting case of nuclear relationship--examine briefly some possible forms of *nuclear control*, from the lesser Powers' point of view.

The banning of nuclear tests (under discussion at the time of writing) is often advocated as a method of closing the nuclear club, perhaps temporarily, at a membership of three. Scientists and others argue for such a ban on the technical ground that lesser Powers, inexperienced in nuclear-explosive engineering, would not try to develop weapons they could not test, and on the political ground that if the Big Three showed themselves willing to forgo testing, Powers such as France (despite its recent investments in the research and development of A-weapons) would have to follow suit.

The official rationale, however, is quite different: the ban has been sought, first, to prevent further fallout, and, secondly, as a pilot agreement supposed to lead to a reduction of nuclear forces by the Powers which have them already. Since initially only those Powers would sign it, only they would be directly bound by it. How might France or other aspirants be induced to sign?

One sometimes hears that "pressure would have to be put on the French to make them comply." But pressure, in the form of nuclear blackmail or threats to attack vital French interests, would hardly be plausible at the moment; for the United States could not without disastrous loss of prestige allow the French to be punished by the Kremlin for such an offense--especially, for instance, if they had resorted to a variety of weapon-testing that produced no fallout. Pressure from the United States itself, on the other hand, whether economic or political, would merely furnish the patriots a stronger case for seeking "nuclear independence."

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Sensible respect for an ally's convictions about his interests might be more effective than pressure. A nuclear stockpile seems to promise a conclusive though desperate means of last-resort defense, and consequently of resistance to nuclear blackmail. This, for some nations such as Britain and France, is sometimes construed as restoration to Great Power status. For weaker Powers, it could seem to mean safety from violations like those suffered by Belgium, Poland, and the Netherlands during the two world wars. But no guarantee, however watertight, that could be given by a Superpower to a second-ranking nation would make up for the abnegation of Great Power status; and in a large alliance similarly guaranteed, third- and fourth-class Powers might always fear that, in the event of a major war with the chief opponent of the whole alliance, considerations of grand strategy might allow them to be temporarily occupied by the enemy while the others defeated him elsewhere. In agreeing not to test, then, the nuclear have-nots would be abandoning some prospect of advantages.

It may be possible to show these lesser Powers, however, that the final result of abandoning independent nuclear aspirations would be a net gain. Firstly, they may be setting more store by nuclear capability than the military equations warrant--only the two Superpowers, for example, may in fact have second-strike capacities, and those may be joined with active defenses which the other Superpower might manage to saturate but which would be invulnerable against the most severe attack any lesser nuclear Power could muster. (This is unlikely to be the case, but is not unthinkable.) Secondly, there are other third- and fourth-class Powers, mainly outside the European area, which may not be very likely targets for nuclear attack during the next few years. I suggest that, if they are not likely targets, it is demonstrably irrational for such countries to put themselves in the nuclear arena until they have to, no matter how tempting the increase of prestige. Thirdly, the nuclear possessors may be able to convince all parties that the world as a whole would be less explosive if nuclear weapons were to spread no further than at present.

Whether it would be less explosive is a conditional matter, which we consider in the later part of this memorandum. But even neglecting the importance of military, technological, and other conditions, we may be sure that the world's two leading nations will have to take, as well as the banning of tests, some other clearly decisive step away from their own present dangerous juxtaposition, supposing they wish to persuade

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others to join in the pact against tests.⁶ Further, the United States at least must convince its allies that in a bilateral nuclear world it could and would deter a Soviet nuclear attack against them.

But arguments based upon projections of global affairs have a way of being two-edged. Even granted that a tight bi-polar system permits the least delicate balance of terror, it does not follow that if the process of innovation, by greatly favoring a strategy of surprise attack, should upset that balance, a bi-polar structure would be the least explosive under the new conditions. (We shall return to this topic below.) Just as the case for a ban on testing can be strengthened by the consideration that it might introduce more extensive arms controls and thus reinforce mutual deterrence, so an early agreement to control present types of weapons could well lead to measures favoring a long-term stability--i.e., to a military and international system that would adapt itself to, or would dampen down, sharp changes in the structure of power resulting from military and technological innovation. The greater the promise of multi-national commitment against weapon-testing, the more willing to forgo their aspirations the nuclear have-nots may be.

We have been considering a range of possible consequences for our nth-country problems that might ensue directly or indirectly from the introduction of a ban on nuclear tests. It appears that this, currently the most promising attempt at explicit arms control, cannot be guaranteed to slow down by much the rate of spread of nuclear weapons, unless it is combined with other and more far-reaching forms of control and stabilization. In any case, neither Communist China nor some of the countries of the "grey areas" are amenable to the influences that exercise effect upon the allies of the United States.

6. Both in Britain and in the United States there are advocates of a renunciation of nuclear weapons by Britain alone among the present possessors, so as to "set an example" to the French and others. Unless a banning of tests, together with the other conditions mentioned above, has first been agreed on, no British government is likely to implement such a policy; and, even though it did so, the effect of its example if this were a solitary act would probably be lost.

Opponents of renunciation find perhaps their strongest argument in the contention that Britain, in renouncing, would lose years of potential lead-time: even though the current state of technology and military art may allow her only a somewhat dubious deterrent capacity, it is suggested that her recent weapons programs have put her in a position to take immediate advantage of any favorable innovation that may come.

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Successful arms control, nevertheless, should go some considerable way toward tightening the present Western and Soviet alliances. If it fails, and if no unplanned or tacit limitations impose themselves to restrict nuclear diffusion, we may expect the bi-polar system, especially on the Western side, to loosen up rather more. The United Kingdom and France, for example, are already a little further withdrawn from NATO than they were. Yet (as has been argued elsewhere--see Footnote 1) not all types of nuclear diffusion need at once create a multi-lateral world. Allies of the United States may come to depend further upon that country, in the long run, as a source of the nuclear weapons meant to reduce short-run dependence. They may acquire nuclear stockpiles chiefly as insurance against ultimate Soviet blackmail, and may preserve a close alliance in respect of limited war. Or the nuclear forces which they possess may provide them with merely "triggering" deterrents; and these, as we shall see below, involve a relationship which is in fact an alliance with a superior nuclear Power. To understand how this may be possible, we need to consider certain projected ranges of military capability, notably those discriminating between first- and second-strike potentials.

### III

The balance of terror, as is now generally recognized, depends upon each side's finding it cheaper to destroy some given value of the other's resources or economy than to destroy his armed forces to the same value. Less generally recognized are certain other dependencies and relations. The balance will be the more stable, for instance, the more the cost to each of guaranteeing destruction of another's nuclear weapon exceeds that weapon's cost to the other. (This latter ratio is highly sensitive to apparently minor improvements in the performance of bombs and vehicles. It diminishes with increases in the area of bomb-blast, with decreases in the attack-missiles' circular probability of error, with increases in the ratio "manufacturing costs of retaliatory weapons divided by manufacturing costs of missiles for attack," and so on. It grows larger, on the other hand, with the remoteness, mobility, and hardness of targets, with the number of targets an attacker must eliminate, and therefore with the decreasing of costs of launching sites in comparison with costs of armed missiles, etc.). Perhaps more to the point of our present question, however, would be the numbers and the absolute and relative war-potentials of the nations that go to make up the deterrent international system. That aspect of the situation can make relevant or irrelevant most of the other factors which we have just mentioned.

Firstly, a small nation may not have an economy adequate for the variety of activities involved in securing or even in maintaining a nuclear

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capability. Secondly, there may be very considerable economies of scale in the production and deployment of these weapons, which only the Great Powers may be able to achieve. Thirdly, small nations may be constricted, by the size of their territories or by lack of access to the sea, in means of dispersing their forces. Fourthly and most importantly, the potential of the largest nation or nations in the system may give it or them the means of pricing smaller nations out of the deterrent field.

Let us consider a case apparently most favorable to small countries. Since the figures are purely relational, and therefore need not be tied to reality, let us assume that there are no asymmetries⁷ in respect of the type of dominant weapon disposed of by all sides--e.g., that it is a quick-firing missile of IRBM-ICBM range which, for an amount comparable to its initial cost, can be made mobile or can be protected to the extent of withstanding pressures of a few pounds per square inch; that at least five missiles on the average are required to yield a better than .95 probability of eliminating a protected missile, but that two or three missiles can certainly cause grave damage to any center of population. Finally, suppose that, at the six-hundredth missile, costs level down to about $5 million per effective missile.

This would mean that a small nation which at stretch could spend $3 billion on a missile system (development costs excluded) might consider itself to possess an independent deterrent against any single nation which ran at most to a $30 billion missile budget. But its position vis-à-vis two other nations running to $45 billion a piece if necessary, though ambiguous, would be in any case different. The

7. At present, the USSR is said to have an asymmetrical advantage over the United States by having more and better ballistic missiles, while the United States is superior in airplanes. Since on the one hand some hundreds of ICBM's might succeed in destroying, by a surprise attack, all but a few SAC bases in mainland America, but on the other hand SAC and other Allied forces might be able to eliminate that many Soviet missiles as well as the airfields of the Long-range Air Force, likewise in a surprise attack, neither side may have in fact a second-strike capability; and if both sides were convinced of this, a highly explosive attrition of the balance of terror would have occurred. As against that, Soviet predominance in missiles is said to be small enough for safety. Furthermore, each side's ignorance of the true ratio of forces should have a powerful deterrent effect, now that the concept of a balance of terror has a place, admitted or not, in the doctrines of both sides.

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ambiguities would be political in origin--that is, they would depend upon whether the two major Powers could trust each other sufficiently to form a coalition to control and, if necessary, disarm the minor one. To the extent that they trusted each other less than that, a $3 billion missile program might buy the small Power a "triggering" deterrent.

The deterring effect is here supposed to arise from each major Power's considering that though by a first strike it could count upon eliminating practically all of the small Power's missiles, it could do so only by so expending its own stock of missiles as to become vulnerable to a first strike by the other major Power. Thus though the small Power might not be able to punish directly an attack against itself, it could force the aggressor to weaken himself to a point at which he might be punished by his chief rival, who would thus be "triggered."

I shall refer to a small Power's nuclear force, of the type mentioned above, as a "passive triggering deterrent capability." Relative to the forces of two more-or-less rival major Powers, its dimensions fall between those which would enable the small Power to punish directly any first strike by any single major Power, and those so reduced as to be entirely eliminable by one of the larger Powers without the latter having to fear a first strike itself. We may notice that, though a somewhat uncertain advantage in its own right, the passive triggering capability might be thought to restore in some measure a formerly independent but waning deterrent capability.

A small Power's "active triggering capability" would be more dangerous for all concerned. It would also require a technological situation different from that just considered. Suppose that the costs of early warning, active defense, dispersal, mobility, hardening, and so on are many times greater than that of a force of attack-missiles or of suitable aircraft--i.e., that a small nation could manage to manufacture, buy, or gain control of enough nuclear forces--immobile, undispersed for reasons of economy and control, and unprotected--to reduce either of two greater Powers, by means of a first strike, to a level at which the stricken Power could not retaliate against another first strike by the second Great Power (e.g., the small Power might strike one larger Power, retaining and perhaps protecting a few of its own weapons, and immediately informing the other large Power of its having attacked). Since the "active trigger" is almost wholly a first-strike capability, either it must be kept invulnerable (hidden underground, for instance, and readied only and specifically for the

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purpose of striking), or the balance of terror between the two major Powers must itself be very shaky.⁸

For those reasons, an active triggering capacity is likely to be sought, adventuristically, as a means to power, whereas the passive triggering deterrent would be a somewhat chancy means to security. We shall now discuss some of the systems of world politics in which the latter instrument might have effect, and shall somewhat broaden the concept in the process.

We have already noticed that a small Power may sometimes have a passive triggering deterrent capability against two non-allied larger Powers of equal size. Against three, it would not, provided none trusted the others: a first strike by any one of the three large Powers against the small Power would leave the aggressor as virtually a small Power in a "two-plus-a-bit" world, and capable *ex hypothesi* of determining by possession of a passive trigger. Against four, the small Power might well lose all deterrent capacity; for, though none of the great ones would accept the others simply on trust, it would be easy and natural for them to divide into two equal alliances, each powerful enough to disarm the small nation without incurring grave risks to itself. Against five more-or-less equal nuclear Powers, the possible triggering permutations become too complex and conditional to be relied upon.

There is of course no reason why the Powers with truly independent deterrents should be peers. Vis-à-vis $70 billions' worth and $45 billions' worth (to recur again to imaginary figures), $4 billions' worth of missiles might have a triggering deterrent capability against the smaller of the two but be no deterrent at all against the greater--and this even though the technological situation gave the two large Powers a thoroughly stable, indeed more-than-adequate, independent deterrent against each other.

8. In some ways analogous to the "active trigger," and no less apposite to a study of the nth-country problem, would be the capacity on some third country's part for catalyzing war between two nuclear Powers. I discuss the last-named problem in *The Rationale of Catalytic War*, Research Monograph No. 3, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, April 2, 1959.

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Incidentally, we may find in the foregoing discussion another good reason for present nuclear possessors to be worried about the nth-country problem. Until recently, it has been supposed by several governments that thermonuclear weapons can reduce for their owner the cost of the security which he is in any case determined to have. This is because a balance of terror is believed (in many possible cases, correctly so) to halt the nuclear arms race at a point of stable equilibrium. The introduction of a third, though somewhat poorer, member into a nuclear club of two will in fact raise the "fees" payable by the original members, each of whom must now contemplate at least the possibility of having to meet a joint surprise attack from his great and his lesser opponents together. (Of course, a very small new member will make no noticeable difference.) Nuclear duopoly tends to keep the costs down, and raises the degree of security procurable at a given level of budget as high as the current state of technology will allow it to be.

From this economizing viewpoint, more powerful nuclear countries have a strong case to make to weaker aspirants. Though the original member's "fees" are raised, he will still presumably be paying less for his deterrent than the maximum he could actually afford. The smaller Power, on the other hand, must use almost all of its military budget to buy the alleged extra security. It is only when the balance of terror is in stable equilibrium at a low level of absolute forces, and when the stability is not dependent merely on special technical conditions but is relatively insensitive to changes in the state of military art, that the small Power, acquiring a truly independent deterrent, is likely to be able to economize as well.

## IV

Let us now extend the idea of a "passive triggering effect" by imagining two worlds, one made up of three and the other made up of two independent nuclear Great Powers. In both worlds, the same technological conditions hold, so that each is safe from the other in the two-Power world, and in the three-Power world each is safe from any possible alliance of the others. It will follow, however, that from a short-run military point of view the margin of safety will be greater in the two-Power world, and security will be cheaper--the stable equilibrium will be established at a lower level of absolute forces. But if we take a triggering effect into account, it should be

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clear that this tends to counterbalance the reduced margin of purely
military safety in the three-Power world. For each of its members
must realize that even though, by taking a great risk, it struck first
against one of the others and was, against all the probabilities, suc-
cessful in the attempt, it would have expended so much of its forces
that it would fall an easy victim to attack by the third Power.

Next we shall imagine that simultaneously a revolution in military
technology begins to reduce the advantages of a second strike, and to
increase those of a first strike. Admittedly, the situation of complete
independent deterrence for all Powers will, under these changing con-
ditions, come to an end sooner in the three-Power than in the two-Power
world, since the presence of two possible enemies who might form an
alliance requires each Power to maintain, for complete independent
deterrence, a larger strategic force than it would need if only one of
the two potential enemies existed. But in the two-Power world, as
soon as the technological conditions for complete deterrence change
into those favoring the offense, a limitless arms race should ensue,
leading eventually to a position in which both have overwhelming
reason for attempting to strike first.

In the three-Power world this will not be the case, at least
until the change has become so extreme that each of the three can be
sure that, by striking first and achieving surprise, it would destroy
the forces of both the others. Unless such extreme conditions prevailed,
even a successful first strike against one opponent might put the suc-
cessful aggressor at the mercy of the other. In short, though a three-
Power world's balance of terror is sooner upset, its upset matters
much less than in a bi-polarized nuclear system. If all then lose their
second-strike capacities--i.e., their independent deterrent capabilities--
about the same time, each one of them should immediately find it-
self master of a triggering deterrent. By the same token, a one-sided
technological breakthrough also matters less in a three-Power world.

A world of four equal nuclear Powers, none of them independently
capable of deterring a coalition of the others, might be expected to
polarize, if only because that is both a salient and a reasonably stable out-
come among many possible but usually unstable alternatives (e.g.,
three-against-one could result in a war that might bear unequally upon
the several allies; triggering effects would be uncertain, and reliance
upon them could produce contrary and disastrous results). In the era

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of two-day nuclear wars, any alliance less united than a bloc with a
common military command may be hard to maintain if even short-run
military interests temporarily diverge. This is why the most pronounced
triggering effect, which otherwise resembles a sort of tacit alliance
between conventionally armed powers, is not apt to restore the balance-
of-power system in place of the balance of terror.

Nuclear systems of five or more equal Powers may seem to be
purely hypothetical entities, given the marked inequalities of our present
and actual system of states. They nevertheless typify nth-country
situations. Strain jointly imposed upon the balance of terror by five
nations' potentials for nuclear war is greater than that deriving from
two or three nuclear Powers. On the one hand, a completely independent
deterrent against all comers would be possible only if a second-strike
capability were very cheap, and if surprise attack were hardly a problem.
On the other hand, opportunities for catalytic mischief would be much
more frequent, and though triggering effects would be likely in any
nuclear war, the directions of operation of such effects would probably
leave them quite unreliable as deterrents. These very uncertainties,
however, might constrain all parties to be conservative, eschew black-
mail, and subscribe to international projects for reducing the possibility
of surprise attack.

It is often said in this context that the "probability" of a nuclear
war's being started by some accident with a nuclear weapon must in-
crease with the number of nuclear Powers in the international system.
This may be but is not necessarily true. The *a priori* probability of
accidents certainly increases with the number of nuclear weapons in
the world, but there may be countervailing reasons why accidents are
less apt to occasion wars in a multi-Power system. (Unintended wars
have been a historical phenomenon: wars started by accidental discharge
of weapons have not.) In a strictly polarized system, a stray foreign
rocket can have only one origin. But if many nations possessed them,
the odd nuclear explosion would be a quite ambiguous signal, and one
could therefore not be sure just where to strike back. It is also con-
ceivable that an otherwise adventurist Power might be restrained by
the thought that, if it began to look too accident-prone or too aggressive,
the others might manage to concert a disarming strike against it.

We have now discussed various systems of nuclear Powers--
bi-polar, three- and four-sided, multi-lateral, whether consisting
only of peer-nations or of various mixtures of major and minor Powers--
under several types of technologically imposed situations: notably,

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that in which all have truly independent deterrent capability, and those
in which some or all have triggering deterrents. Common to these
analyses has been the assumption that all Powers possess the same
type of (thermonuclear) weapon, the great Powers being in a position to
have greater quantities, if necessary. We shall now assume, perhaps
more realistically, that the lesser have only A-bombs, while the greater
have H-bombs as well. In what sense could such a lesser Power,
probably carrying its A-bombs by an outmoded delivery-system, hope
to deter a greater one from disarming attack?

The rather narrow range of technological circumstances in
which the lesser Power would have a triggering deterrent has already
been considered. But even less ambitious alternatives are also pro-
posed: some authorities suggest that small Powers might deter attempts
to conquer them by having an atomic arsenal sufficient to guarantee
greater damage to the conqueror than successful conquest would be
worth to him9--e.g., it is suggested that Sweden could ensure its
ability to destroy one or two great cities in Russia, and that this would
suffice to deter Russia from any attack upon Sweden, perhaps short
of a world war.

This type of deterrent might or might not deter. But it should
appeal to small countries, since it would be, presumably, within the
capabilities of many of them. Furthermore, it has another use—that of
increasing one's power among one's small fellow-nations. One of the
Great Powers' nightmares concerns a junior atomic club in Southeast
Asia and the Middle East, where endemic brushfire war with small-scale
atomic weapons might at any time involve the Great Powers themselves
with each other. Such a prospect would be hastened, so one plausible
contention runs, if the Western Powers were ever to use tactical atomic
weapons during a limited war in Asian regions.

There are plenty of good arguments to the effect that dubious
atomic capabilities would more endanger than safeguard most small
countries. Nevertheless, it is only too likely that, as nuclear plants
begin to produce in such countries, their by-products will be developed
and their production adapted for atomic armament.¹⁰ The general

9. See George N. Rathjens, Jr., "NATO Strategy: Total War, " Chapter 4 in Knorr, ed., *op. cit*.

10. See Davidon, Kalkstein, and Hohenemser, *op. cit.*, esp. Chapters III and IV.

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United States policy of withholding information about nuclear weapons from countries which have not already revealed an ability to produce them themselves may paradoxically induce small nations in or friendly with the Western alliance to experiment with their own bombs, in the hope of getting better ones out of the United States. Such efforts, however, are not likely to go unmatched by others in the Soviet camp or in the grey areas. Thus the American policy, which is partly intended as a form of arms control and arms restriction, could have the opposite effect.

The full array of nth-country possibilities, then, includes the development of three types of deterrent--the independent, the triggering, and the minimum atomic variety which we have just been discussing. Those three varieties probably correspond to three grades of Power--great ones having populations of scores or hundreds of millions (though not all populous countries); nearly great Powers, scientifically advanced and economically strong; and, lastly, any nation that can devise or beg a few atomic bombs and some planes to deliver them. Within ten years, unless explicit arms control succeeds, it is not at all impossible that all three categories should have members--the United States and the USSR in the first, perhaps accompanied by the United Kingdom, some Continental Powers or an alliance of them, and Communist China if it has Russian help; in the second category, perhaps the last-mentioned countries, together with other European nations such as Benelux, the Scandinavian countries, and Italy, possibly Japan and India, one or two of the British Dominions, and one or two South American countries. (I have assumed that the USSR will be able to prevent its satellites from controlling their own nuclear weapons, but that China could strike a harder bargain.) Most of the above, however, are more likely to fall within the third group, the range of which tends to invalidate any neat model of the nth-country world.

V

Prospective changes in military technology were mentioned in the introduction to this memorandum. Some tend to support and some to subvert a counterforce strategy. We should now try to envisage the effects of one or the other upon the relations among our three categories of Powers.

Provided that changes in either direction (to extents that look feasible at present) are introduced *pari passu* in the United States and

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the USSR, their total effect would seem likely to consolidate the balance of terror between those two countries. If so, however, the problem of a strategy for a less than all-out conflict will be forcibly posed for each of them. They may have to choose between limited retaliation, graduated deterrence, limitation of warfare through formal agreement, and so on, as methods of putting controlled pressure on each other.

Asymmetries, such as one-sided development of a near-perfect guidance system, could of course give the hegemony to the successful innovator. Similarly, other symmetrical changes could start an arms race, perhaps leading to war, and thus upset the balance of terror, which for both of those reasons may be unstable at the level of qualitative change, though probably stable if quantities alone are considered.

In their relation to independent middle-ranking Powers, the two Great Powers should, all things considered, become relatively stronger. But here much will depend upon the order and dimensions of technological change. If even more explosive could be packed into less space, the victim of a surprise attack could do terrible damage to cities with a very few surviving weapons. On the other hand, for constant degrees of hardness, evasiveness, or concealment of sites, a more powerful warhead implies that fewer missiles would be needed to take out a given site. If warheads and rockets at the same time became considerably cheaper, the last-mentioned feature could probably be offset. Perfection of guidance by the Great Powers, however, may limit membership in the higher ranks of the nuclear club more effectively than anything else could--the middle-ranking Powers' sole hope of an independent deterrent would then rest on the possibility of making his launchers mobile and hard to find.

Even if the latter were a solution, however, the rising costs of the auxiliaries to nuclear weapons--civil defense, active air defense, warning-systems, thorough research development, and testing--would still introduce a distinction within our first rank of Powers between the two leaders and the rest. This would almost certainly involve the rest in relying heavily upon triggering effects--a solution which the world's ideological polarization might make more acceptable.

Here, however, the consolidation of the balance of terror between the two leaders works in an opposite direction. If each of them were capable of an overwhelming second strike, neither could be triggered. We must notice that if that is in any case the tendency, each leader may be able to extend it further--e.g., by dispersal and concealment, by

[1c]

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setting up dummy bases, etc. That is, they could use their economic superiority to outbuild the middle-ranking Powers. Tighter alliances, economies effected by division of defense production, and so on should then appear to the middle Powers, especially in the West, as a very reasonable alternative to racing against Great Powers.

More polarity of that sort would simplify the relations among the middle Powers themselves--itself perhaps an attraction. If they all had even triggering deterrents vis-a-vis the leaders, they would probably have truly independent deterrents against each other. There is a particular reason, however, why the balance of terror or nuclear stand-off between middling or small Powers can never be as stable as that between the Great Powers: it must be maintained in the presence of those Great Powers, with all their capacities for intervention. This is a very common effect, which we have seen operating at the level of conventional force since the Second World War.

If, finally, we put very small atomic Powers into the picture, it becomes clear that that class might be much enlarged by technological changes now in prospect. It might also have the effect of degrading the deterrent systems of the middling nations, and thus giving the greatest nuclear Powers even more pre-eminence. Perhaps the principal feature of such a world would be its extreme unpredictability. Because of the power and the range of modern weapons, a nuclear international anarchy is even more disordered than a conventional one--the makeshift systems of the old balance of power might seem neat by comparison.

To sum up: the structure of international affairs in the early 1970's will much depend upon guessable but unpredictable technological development in the meanwhile. Leading Powers may offset these effects of technology through schemes of arms control or, conversely, of nuclear sharing and dispersal. If instead they adopt policies of laissez-faire, the likeliest situation would be a loose bi-polar one, with many small Powers, some of them in the grey areas, possessing atomic weapons. Even a loose bi-polarization might be dispersed as economies besides those of the USSR and the United States were strengthened, and technological change developed cheaper weapons. A study of nth-country problems can thus lead to an investigation of proposals for arms control, on the one hand, and of potentialities for economic growth, on the other.

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World Politics

A Quarterly Journal of International Relations

Under the Editorial Sponsorship of
CENTER OF INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Princeton University

CONTENTS—Vol. XI, No. 4 (July 1959)

One Road from Marx: On the Vision of Socialism, and the Fate of Workers' Control, in Socialist Thought, by Daniel Bell

The Army and the Founding of the Turkish Republic, by Dankwart A. Rustow

Some Complexities in Military Planning, by Malcolm W. Hoag

What Is the Commonwealth? by Hedley Bull

Research Notes

United States Economic Foreign Policy: Research Requirements for 1965, by C. P. Kindleberger

Esoteric Communication in Soviet Politics, by Myron Rush

Review Articles

Theory and Practice of European Integration, by William Diebold, Jr.

Three American Studies of German Socialism, by Klaus Epstein

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Address: WORLD POLITICS