Analysis

About 110 U.S. B61 tactical nuclear weapons were removed from the Royal Air Force base at Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, the Federation of American Scientists said June 26. This removal of the last U.S. nuclear weapons maintained in the United Kingdom follows similar reductions at Ramstein Air Base in Germany in 2005 and in Greece in 2001. The reductions are emblematic of a continued — if slow — move away from the nuclear posture of the 20th century.

For the better part of that century, the existence of nuclear weapons was defined by the Cold War. That legacy still largely informs global nuclear dynamics to this day. Today’s nuclear force structures — especially in the United States and Russia — often reflect past rather than present or future geopolitical dynamics. In our second analysis on nuclear weapons, we examine the relevance of nuclear weapons in both the last century and the current one.

Major and rapid shifts in the global nuclear dynamics will be difficult without a return to regular nuclear testing. Without that return, the knowledge base for nuclear weapons design will become increasingly theoretical and decreasingly practical — even with the aid of some of the world’s fastest supercomputers. But the nuclear weapon genie is out of the bottle, meaning nothing can be ruled out.

Three Types of Nuclear Arsenals

Stratfor classifies nuclear arsenals into three main types: peer-to-peer competition, legacy arsenals and negotiation tools. These classifications help delineate underlying motivations for acquiring and maintaining nuclear weapons, some of which have shifted but many of which hold true.

Peer Systems

There is no more compelling motivation to spend the vast sums required to back a nuclear program than a serious adversary. Indeed, it was the fear of a German nuclear program that gave urgency to the Manhattan Project. When the United States dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945, the Soviet Union began a crash program and intensified its espionage efforts. The Cold War balance between the United States and the Soviet Union represents the most long-standing and clear example of a peer program.

Attempting to level the strategic playing field asymmetrically is a subset of the peer program. Israel, for example, exists at a profound size disadvantage, with Arab animosity in the years after the foundation of the Jewish state doing little to ease Israeli concerns. Israel acquired nuclear weapons not because a peer had them, but in an attempt to defend itself. In the special case of the Israelis, it was also justified as an “existential guarantor” by a society still haunted by the Holocaust. Generally speaking, if a small or disadvantaged country can successfully field a weapon, it will have gained an additional — and uniquely compelling — layer of defense.

The peer program is perhaps the easiest to understand, but it also is the most arcane of the three classifications. Peers such as India and Pakistan are loath to engage in the seemingly endless arms race marked by massive investment in nuclear weapons and their associated delivery systems that the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in during the Cold War. China could not dream of achieving parity with the world’s only remaining superpower. And though Russia still aspires to it, the Kremlin knows that without the continuation of the Cold War arms control regime, even the facade it maintains of nuclear parity with the United States will continue to erode. Indeed, academics have begun to characterize the current nuclear dynamic as unilateral, and the present era as one of U.S. nuclear primacy.

Legacy Systems

This is a special class of program that at the moment includes only the United Kingdom and France. World War II left both countries devastated, with even the final remnants of their-once great colonial empires crumbling. After two massively destructive wars, both countries pursued nuclear weapons in the decades after 1945 (the British with much more extensive U.S. cooperation). France in particular chose this route to assert its independence under Charles de Gaulle. While the Soviet threat loomed large during the Cold War, there is little conceivable military justification today for either London’s or Paris’ nuclear arsenal. They exist as a legacy of an earlier era.

Nevertheless, as a tool of state, a small legacy arsenal is a terribly difficult thing to give up, and both countries recently have made high-level decisions to maintain their arsenals indefinitely. They are the ultimate guarantors of sovereignty. Additionally, the protection of this nuclear umbrella can be offered to allies, and the technical expertise can be a valuable commodity.

Negotiation Tools

A rogue nuclear program can be a powerful diplomatic lever because of the international attention it attracts. North Korea’s program is the prime example of this phenomenon. Working deliberately toward a bomb for decades, Pyongyang carefully manipulated international pressures and negotiations all the while. Iran is an even more pointed example. While Tehran certainly would like to have a nuclear weapon, even the crudest device might be beyond its reach — at least for the next few years. Yet the Iranian program has been an essential part of Tehran’s ability to negotiate and maneuver for the real prize: Iraq.

The 20th Century

The dawn of the nuclear age came hand-in-hand with the Cold War. For nearly fifty years, the nuclear balance was an inescapable element of the global geopolitical balance. This was an era when the world seemed to turn on calculations of throw-weight and yield-to-weight ratios, and Washington and Moscow spent vast sums of money to attain, maintain or outpace complex and ever-shifting measures of nuclear parity.

Surprisingly, the main lesson of the Cold War was that nuclear weapons function primarily not as weapons of war, but as political tools. Nuclear weapons did not deter the Chinese from conducting a massive counterattack against U.S.-led forces on the Korean Peninsula in 1950. Nor did they deter the Arabs from carrying out a devastating surprise attack in 1973 against Israel, which at that point possessed nuclear weapons. We are left with the empirical fact that, in a world of intense bipolar geopolitical conflict and extensive deployment of both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons –- including everything from artillery shells to torpedoes — not once since Nagasaki have such weapons been used in combat. Ultimately, the prospect of escalation proved daunting, and the tactical utility of using even small nuclear weapons never proved compelling. Ironically, the ultimate product of the Cold War was a very strong and established international taboo against their use under any circumstances.

We do not put much stock in taboos as geopolitical constraints, however. Ultimately, no nuclear power would hesitate to use its weapons if its core national interests were at stake. But there is something to be said for a line no state wants to be the first to cross, and the value of the continued maintenance of that taboo should also be considered.

For example, if Washington or Israel decides that an Iranian nuclear weaponization program has crossed a red line, they would almost certainly engage in conventional airstrikes –- perhaps sustained in the case of the United States — that would put hundreds of planes and pilots at risk. These raids almost certainly would use only conventional bombs, even though a tactical nuclear device would better ensure destruction of Iran’s most deeply buried facilities. (The B61 Mod 11 is hardened to penetrate up to nearly 50 feet of earth before detonating; in addition to its larger explosion compared conventional bombs, the concussive effects of a nuclear blast would be more likely to destroy a hardened, buried facility.) Even in the event of a conventional attack, Iran probably would pull out all the stops in terms of retaliation, so there would be little more it could do if nuclear weapons were used. The nuclear option is, at least ostensibly, always on the table. But it remains an unused option. Again, this is not to say nuclear weapons would not be used to defend a core national interest. There are certainly scenarios where Israel might feel sufficiently threatened to use its weapons. But we are nonetheless left with the empirical reality: in the course of the second half of the 20th century, it never once happened.

Meanwhile, the last decade of the 20th century closed with a marked step back from the nuclear testing that continued regularly through the 1980s. With a few exceptions, between 1961 and 1989, the world’s five major nuclear powers tested at least one weapon almost annually. In that time frame, the United States conducted no fewer than 10 tests per year, and almost always many more.

The 21st Century

This shift has profound implications for nuclear weapons in the 21st century. Though a number of countries have not yet ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the deal has effectively established a de facto test moratorium that has been broken just five times since 1996, the year the treaty was opened for signature. This new climate of disapproval toward nuclear testing essentially precludes the development of weapons at the pace and on the scale of the Cold War.

This does not mean a state would hesitate to “test” if the credibility of its nuclear deterrent were ever truly called into question, or if testing were necessary to adequately certify a new weapon design for the arsenal. But at present, testing on an annual basis appears to be a thing of the past. And with it, the global nuclear balance will necessarily be much less dynamic in the 21st century.

This is because the design of nuclear weapons is unlikely to stray terribly far from the architecture of the late Cold War; specifically, the roughly 100-500 kiloton two-stage thermonuclear strategic warheads. They are the most mature nuclear warhead designs in the world. (Only the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, China and possibly Israel have such weapons; India’s attempt to demonstrate a hydrogen bomb in 1998 fizzled.) These warheads are incredibly difficult to develop, and reliable weaponization is the product of repeated testing. Even careful refinement is tricky without actual testing, but 21st century changes to these designs are likely to be motivated by considerations such as long-term shelf life, ease and affordability of maintenance and sustainability. But as most of the people with firsthand experience designing nuclear weapons during the days of actual testing approach retirement age, a deep mastery of the institutional knowledge of weapon design will be a challenge for national nuclear enterprises in the 21st century.

Meanwhile, the deterrent value of this class of weapon is eroding. The list of scenarios in which such a devastating weapon credibly would be used is minuscule, and most such scenarios are apocalyptic. More significantly, the world cannot tolerate the use of such weapons. (Time and again in actual U.S. exercises with the National Command Authority, it has been found next to impossible to convince civilian leaders to authorize the use of nuclear weapons unless one has first been used against the United States or a key ally.) While nuclear weapons will be retained for their political value, it will be difficult to alter this perception.

Tactical nuclear weapons, with yields as small as a fraction of a kiloton, are far less devastating and have far greater tactical utility. The B61 Mod 11 would be the hypothetical weapon of choice for cave complexes in Afghanistan or hardened, buried nuclear facilities in Iran. But tactical nuclear weapons have patently failed to deter either militants hiding in caves from attacking the United States with civilian aircraft or Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. While certain sectors of the Pentagon would like to see a new generation of tactical weapons like the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, the U.S. Congress seems extremely hesitant to move in this direction and has repeatedly refused to fund such efforts, even in a post-9/11 world. Even a reliable replacement warhead to simply sustain the current arsenal is a contentious issue on Capitol Hill.

While the arsenals of Russia, China, India and Pakistan appear to be more dynamic, there are very real limitations to those countries’ abilities to meaningfully expand their arsenals without further testing. Meanwhile, just as the United Kingdom has scaled down its arsenal to essentially the bare minimum, others will seek to zero in on the proper force structure for the 21st century — if only for financial reasons. (A pair of comprehensive evaluations of the U.S. nuclear posture are currently under way.)

Ultimately, the United States in particular will watch carefully as India and Pakistan along with China continue to modernize and make small expansions to their own arsenals. But while the current climate against comprehensive nuclear testing seems durable, and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is fully in force, it does not preclude renewed testing down the road. The United Kingdom retains excess throw-weight on its submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and the United States will certainly seek flexibility in its next nuclear posture to ensure the capability to respond.

The nuclear weapon genie is out of the bottle. Though most states profess at least an ostensible interest in global nuclear disarmament, the very fact that the weapons can exist is enough — at the bare minimum — to keep a small arsenal of nuclear weapons in the hands of a few global powers indefinitely. Stratfor does not foresee a scenario where total disarmament is likely or geopolitically possible. There will never be a guarantee that a global power will not resume testing on a regular basis, creating the grounds for a new generation of nuclear weapons.

This article is published at Lebanonwire by agreement with www.stratfor.com, the world's leading private intelligence provider. For any questions or comments on this article please write to analysis@stratfor.com

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