Thomas C. Schelling - Specialized Research AI at MIT

Thomas C. Schelling

A world without nuclear weapons?

A new and popular disarmament

movement was provoked by a com-
pletely unexpected combination of
Henry A. Kissinger, William J. Perry,
Sam Nunn, and George P. Shultz with
their op-ed pieces in The Wall Street
Journal from January 4, 2007, and Jan-
uary 15, 2008. For the ½rst time since
the demise of General and Complete
Disarmament (gcd) in the 1960s, there
is a serious discussion of the possibil-
ity of utterly removing nuclear weapons
from the planet Earth. Furthermore,
the discussion is taking place among
nuclear policy professionals, the people
who publish in Foreign Affairs, Internation-
al Security, and other serious journals.

The International Institute for Strate-
gic Studies, founded in London in 1958
and notable for its Adelphi papers, pub-
lished in August 2008, Paper 396, Abol-
ishing Nuclear Weapons, by George Per-
kovich and James Acton of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. It
was central to a conference at the Car-
negie Endowment that produced 17 re-
sponse papers from around the world.
Other meetings similarly motivated
have been occurring, many under the
sponsorship of the Nuclear Threat Ini-

tiative (nti). The Stanley Foundation
convened 25 of½cials, including diplo-
mats from un institutions, U.S. and for-
eign experts, and of½cials from other
nations “to examine the ½rst steps to-
ward a world free of nuclear weapons.”
The rapporteur of that meeting noted,
“Participants were in general agreement
that complete and eventual disarma-
ment, or global zero, is the objective.”
The American Academy of Arts and

Sciences, which publishes Dædalus,
awarded the Rumford Prize to Perry,
Nunn, Shultz, Kissinger, and Sidney
Drell at its 1929th Stated Meeting in
October 2008, for “their contribution
to nuclear abolition.” President Oba-
ma’s April 2009 Prague speech, in
which he stated “clearly and with con-
viction America’s commitment to seek
the peace and security of a world with-
out nuclear weapons,” was a sign that
the disarmament debate was now a se-
rious enterprise.

Some of the motivation, among the

diverse respondents on the issue, is
to ful½ll, or appear to ful½ll, the “com-
mitment” undertaken by the of½cial
nuclear-weapons states in the Non-Pro-
liferation Treaty (npt) “to pursue nego-
tiations in good faith on effective mea-
sures relating to cessation of the nuclear
arms race at an early date and to nuclear

124

Dædalus Fall 2009

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
d
a
e
d
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
3
8
4
1
2
4
1
8
3
1
5
4
3
d
a
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
4
1
2
4
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

disarmament, and on a treaty on gen-
eral and complete disarmament under
strict and effective international con-
trol.” The underlying motive would
be to renew and strengthen the Treaty
itself, by removing an objection often
voiced by non-nuclear governments
about unacceptable discrimination.
Some of the motivation is evidently
to spur an overdue drastic reduction
in Russian and American nuclear war-
heads, especially those on high alert.

But hardly any of the analyses or pol-
icy statements that I have come across
question overtly the ultimate goal of
total nuclear disarmament.1 Nearly
all adduce the unequivocal language of
The Wall Street Journal quadrumvirate.
None explicitly addresses the ques-

tion, why should we expect a world
without nuclear weapons to be safer
than one with (some) nuclear weap-
ons? That drastic reductions make
sense, and that some measures to re-
duce alert status do, too, may require
no extensive analysis. But consider-
ing how much intellectual effort in the
past half-century went into the study of
the “stability” of a nuclear-deterrence
world, it ought to be worthwhile to ex-
amine contingencies in a nuclear-free
world to verify that it is superior to a
world with (some) nuclear weapons.
I have not come across any mention
of what would happen in the event of a
major war. One might hope that major
war could not happen in a world with-
out nuclear weapons, but it always did.
One can propose that another war on the
scale of the 1940s is less to worry about
than anything nuclear. But it might give
pause to reflect that the world of 1939
was utterly free of nuclear weapons, yet
they were not only produced, they were
invented, during war itself and used with
devastating effect. Why not expect that
they could be produced–they’ve already

been invented–and possibly used in
some fashion?

In 1976, I published an article, “Who
Will Have the Bomb?” in which I asked,
“Does India have the bomb?”2 India
had exploded a nuclear device a couple
of years earlier. I pursued the question,
what do we mean by “having the bomb?”
I alleged that we didn’t mean, or perhaps
didn’t even care, whether India actually
possessed in inventory a nuclear explo-
sive device, or an actual nuclear weap-
on. We meant, I argued, that India “had”
the potential: it had the expertise, the
personnel, the laboratories and equip-
ment to produce a weapon if it decided
to. (At the time, India pretended that its
only interest was in “Peaceful Nuclear
Explosives” [pnes].) I proposed an anal-
ogy: does Switzerland have an army? I
answered, not really, but it could have
one tomorrow if it decided today.

The answer to the relevant question
about nuclear weapons must be a sched-
ule showing how many weapons (of
what yield) a government could mobi-
lize on what time schedule.

It took the United States about ½ve
years to build two weapons. It might
take India–now that it has already pro-
duced nuclear weapons–a few weeks,
or less, depending on how ready it kept
its personnel and supplies for mobiliza-
tion. If a “world without nuclear weap-
ons” means no mobilization bases,
there can be no such world. Even start-
ing in 1940 the mobilization base was
built. And would minimizing mobili-
zation potential serve the purpose? To
answer this requires working through
various scenarios involving the expec-
tation of war, the outbreak of war, and
the conduct of war. That is the kind of
analysis I haven’t seen.

A crucial question is whether a govern-

ment could hide weapons-grade ½ssile

A world
without
nuclear
weapons?

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
d
a
e
d
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
3
8
4
1
2
4
1
8
3
1
5
4
3
d
a
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
4
1
2
4
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Dædalus Fall 2009

125

Thomas C.
Schelling
on the
global
nuclear
future

material from any possible inspection-
veri½cation. Considering that enough
plutonium to make a bomb could be
hidden in the freezing compartment of
my refrigerator, or to evade radiation
detection could be hidden at the bot-
tom of the water in a well, I think only
the fear of a whistle-blower could pos-
sibly make success at all questionable.
I believe that a “responsible” govern-
ment would make sure that ½ssile mate-
rial would be available in an internation-
al crisis or war itself. A responsible gov-
ernment must at least assume that other
responsible governments will do so.

We are so used to thinking in terms
of thousands, or at least hundreds, of
nuclear warheads that a few dozen may
offer a sense of relief. But if, at the out-
set of what appears to be a major war,
or the imminent possibility of major
war, every responsible government
must consider that other responsible
governments will mobilize their nucle-
ar weapons base as soon as war erupts,
or as soon as war appears likely, there
will be at least covert frantic efforts, or
perhaps purposely conspicuous efforts,
to acquire deliverable nuclear weapons
as rapidly as possible. And what then?
I see a few possibilities. One is that

the ½rst to acquire weapons will use
them, as best it knows how, to disrupt
its enemy’s or enemies’ nuclear mobi-
lization bases, while itself continuing
its frantic nuclear rearmament, along
with a surrender demand backed up by
its growing stockpile. Another possibil-
ity is to demand, under threat of nucle-
ar attack, abandonment of any nuclear
mobilization, with unopposed “inspec-
tors” or “saboteurs” searching out the
mobilization base of people, laborato-
ries, ½ssile material stashes, or any-
thing else threatening. A third possibil-
ity would be a “decapitation” nuclear
attack along with the surrender demand.

And I can think of worse. All of these,
of course, would be in the interest of
self-defense.

Still another strategy might, just
might, be to propose a crash “rearma-
ment agreement,” by which both sides
(all sides) would develop “minimum
deterrent” arsenals, subject to all the
inspection-veri½cation procedures that
had already been in place for “disarma-
ment.”

An interesting question is whether
“former nuclear powers”–I use quota-
tion marks because they will still be la-
tent nuclear powers–would seek ways
to make it known that, despite “disar-
mament,” they had the potential for a
rapid buildup. It has been suggested
that Saddam Hussein may have wanted
it believed that he had nuclear weapons,
and Israel has made its nuclear capabil-
ity a publicized secret. “Mutual nuclear
deterrence” could take the form of let-
ting it be known that any evidence of
nuclear rearmament would be promptly
reciprocated. Reciprocation could take
the form of hastening to have a weap-
on to use against the nuclear facilities
of the “enemy.”

But war is what I ½nd most worrisome.

In World War II there was some fear in
the U.S. nuclear weapons community
that Germany might acquire a nuclear
capability and use it. There is still spec-
ulation whether, if Germany had not
already surrendered, one of the bombs
should have been used on Berlin, with
a demand that inspection teams be ad-
mitted to locate and destroy the nucle-
ar establishment. Would a government
lose a war without resorting to nuclear
weapons? Would a war include a race
to produce weapons capable of coerc-
ing victory?

Could a major nation maintain “con-

ventional” forces ready for every con-
tingency, without maintaining a nucle-

126

Dædalus Fall 2009

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
d
a
e
d
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
3
8
4
1
2
4
1
8
3
1
5
4
3
d
a
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
4
1
2
4
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

ar backup? Just as today’s intelligence
agencies and their clandestine operators
are devoted to discovering the location
of terrorist organizations and their lead-
ers, in a non-nuclear world the highest
priority would attach to knowing the
exact locations and readiness of enemy
nuclear mobilization bases.

Would a political party, in the United
States or anywhere else, be able to cam-
paign for the abandonment of the zero-
nuclears treaty, and what would be the
response in other nations?

I hope there are favorable answers
to these questions. I’m uncertain who
in government or academia is working
on them.3
One can take the position that sub-

stantial nuclear disarmament makes
sense, and that the abstract goal of a
world without nuclear weapons helps
motivate reduction as well as presents
an appearance of ful½lling the npt
commitment. Maybe some leaders of
the movement have no more than that
in mind. But even as a purely intellectu-
al enterprise the “role of deterrence in
total disarmament,” to use the title of
an article I published 47 years ago, de-
serves just as thoughtful analysis as mu-
tual nuclear deterrence ever received.4
In summary, a “world without nucle-
ar weapons” would be a world in which
the United States, Russia, Israel, China,
and half a dozen or a dozen other coun-
tries would have hair-trigger mobiliza-
tion plans to rebuild nuclear weapons
and mobilize or commandeer delivery
systems, and would have prepared tar-
gets to preempt other nations’ nuclear
facilities, all in a high-alert status, with
practice drills and secure emergency
communications. Every crisis would
be a nuclear crisis, any war could be-
come a nuclear war. The urge to pre-
empt would dominate; whoever gets

the ½rst few weapons will coerce or
preempt. It would be a nervous world.
It took a couple of decades for the
United States to work out a satisfactory
theory of “strategic readiness,” of how
to con½gure strategic nuclear forces to
provide reasonably comfortable assur-
ance against surprise or preemption,
with appropriate command and con-
trol. Nothing is perfect: we never did
solve the mx missile basing problem;
we apotheosized a “triad” that didn’t
really exist; we missed the early oppor-
tunity to restrain multiple independent-
ly targetable reentry vehicles (mirv);
we never had an agreed understanding
of “flexible response” or “no-cities”
and its relation to counterforce target-
ing; and we let a president carry us
away with an expensive dream of ac-
tive defense of the population. Still, we
got away from soft, exposed, unready
bombers and missiles; we avoided the
troubles that rival anti-ballistic-missile
(abm) systems would have brought;
and we understood the mx problem,
if we couldn’t solve it.

There are now many proposals for rad-

ically recon½guring the strategic offen-
sive force. Possible reductions in num-
bers get plenty of attention. The compo-
sition of the force–undersea, airborne,
and ½xed; gravity, ballistic, and cruise;
air and naval–gets less attention, but
will receive it intensely when service ri-
valries become aroused. The proposals
that to me sound hasty and in need of
more thought than I can detect behind
them are those that would drastically
change the readiness status of the stra-
tegic force. These involve various pro-
posals for reduced alert status. In partic-
ular, some propose physically separating
warheads and vehicles. An extreme case
is the idea of “strategic escrow,” war-
heads removed from vehicles, presum-
ably at quite some distances, and stored

A world
without
nuclear
weapons?

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
d
a
e
d
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
3
8
4
1
2
4
1
8
3
1
5
4
3
d
a
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
4
1
2
4
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Dædalus Fall 2009

127

Thomas C.
Schelling
on the
global
nuclear
future

under international supervision. I have
heard proposals for keeping warheads
nearby but separate from the bombers
or the missiles themselves. There are
also proposals, which I’m not able to
judge, for electronic de-alert or fail-
safe retargeting.

What I think took those couple of
decades I mentioned was really getting
“vulnerability” under control. It began
seriously with the Gaither Committee
in 1957, got incorporated into the sur-
prise-attack negotiations in 1958, led
to airborne alert for bombers and aban-
donment of Atlas and Titan, and gave
the navy a strategic lease on life. One
key to reduced vulnerability was disper-
sal. Minuteman was spread out so that
no single enemy weapon could destroy
more than one. (Decoys for the same
purpose were considered during the
mx predicament.)

What has me worried is a new kind
of “dispersal,” a perverse kind: offer-
ing multiple disabling points for an en-
emy to target. If a missile or bomber
can be rendered inactive by, alternative-
ly, destroying it, destroying its warhead,
or destroying the means of locomotion
from warhead storage to vehicle, vulner-
ability has increased. If removed war-
heads are stored centrally, or in clusters,
“dispersal” has been reversed. (Subject-
ing warhead storage to inspection elim-
inates the possibility of keeping loca-
tions secret from potential targeting.)
If there are limited transport routes by
which warheads can join their vehicles,
vulnerability is increased. And maybe
not just vulnerability to strategic attack
but to disruption or sabotage as well.

Another theme of strategic readi-

ness that took pretty good hold during
those decades was “crisis stability.” The
concept involved a couple of potentially
contradictory ideas: that any urgent ef-

forts to enhance readiness in a crisis
should be unnoticeable, lest they alarm
the enemy, and that any efforts should
be so visible that, if they were not being
taken, the enemy could see they were
not! On balance I think the consensus
was that the dynamics of mobilization
should be minimized; that, of course,
could depend on what kinds of actions
we are talking about. And the actions
depend on just what mode of de-alert
or separation of components is being
considered.

I worry that the necessary scenario
analyses to ½nd the strengths and weak-
nesses, especially the weaknesses, of
these proposals have not been done. I
do not want to see many years–more
than half a century now–of painfully
acquired understanding of the require-
ments of “safe readiness” be lost or ig-
nored in a hurried effort to invent new
con½gurations of readiness-unreadiness.
In particular, just what can be done on
what time schedule and with what visi-
bility to the public or to the enemy (or
to international referees) in various
kinds of crises needs to be thoroughly
worked out; the logistics need to be
carefully simulated; and the range of
choices needs to be identi½ed.

I do not perceive that this analysis

is being done before proposals are
launched that would produce highly un-
familiar strategic-readiness situations.
What we have developed and become
acquainted with should be dismantled
only when we are sure we understand
what we may be getting into.

We have gone, as I write this, more

than 63 years without any use of nucle-
ar weapons in warfare. We have expe-
rienced, depending on how you count,
some eight wars during that time in
which one party to the war possessed
nuclear weapons: United States vs.

128

Dædalus Fall 2009

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
d
a
e
d
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
3
8
4
1
2
4
1
8
3
1
5
4
3
d
a
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
4
1
2
4
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

North Korea, United States vs. Peo-
ple’s Republic of China, United States
vs. Viet Cong, United States vs. North
Vietnam, United States vs. Iraq twice,
United States vs. Taliban in Afghani-
stan, Israel vs. Syria and Egypt, United
Kingdom vs. Argentina, and ussr vs.
Afghanistan. In no case was nuclear
weapons introduced, probably not se-
riously considered.

The “taboo,” to use the term of Secre-

tary of State John Foster Dulles in 1963
–he deplored the taboo–has apparently
been powerful. The ability of the Unit-
ed States and the Soviet Union to collab-
orate, sometimes tacitly, sometimes ex-
plicitly, to “stabilize” mutual deterrence
despite crises over Berlin and Cuba, for
the entire postwar era prior to the disso-
lution of the ussr, would not have been
countenanced by experts or strategists
during the ½rst two decades after 1945.
These are two different phenomena,
the taboo and mutual deterrence. We
can hope that mutual deterrence will
subdue Indian-Pakistani hostility; we
can hope that the taboo will continue

to caution Israel, and that it will affect
other possessors of nuclear weapons,
either through their apprehension of
the curse on nuclear weapons or their
recognition of the universal abhorrence
of nuclear use.5

There is no sign that any kind of nu-
clear arms race is in the of½ng–not, any-
way, among the current nuclear powers.
Prospects are good for substantial reduc-
tion of nuclear arms among the two larg-
est arsenals, Russian and American. That
should contribute to nuclear quiescence.
Concern over North Korea, Iran, or

possible non-state violent entities is
justi½ed, but denuclearization of Rus-
sia, the United States, China, France,
and the United Kingdom is pretty tan-
gential to those prospects. Except for
some “rogue” threats, there is little
that could disturb the quiet nuclear re-
lations among the recognized nuclear
nations. This nuclear quiet should not
be traded away for a world in which
a brief race to reacquire nuclear weap-
ons could become every former nucle-
ar state’s overriding preoccupation.

ENDNOTES
1 For exceptions, see Harold Brown and John Deutch, “The Nuclear Disarmament Fantasy,”
The Wall Street Journal, November 19, 2007, and Charles L. Glaser, “The Instability of Small
Numbers Revisited,” in Rebuilding the nptConsensus, ed. Michael May (Stanford, Calif.:
Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University, October 2008),
http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/22218/RebuildNPTConsensus.pdf.
2 Thomas C. Schelling, “Who Will Have the Bomb?” International Security 1 (Summer 1976):
77–91.
3 See Sverre Lodgaard’s and Scott Sagan’s essays in this issue of Dædalus for expert analyses
of the problem of stability without nuclear weapons.
4 Thomas C. Schelling, “The Role of Deterrence in Total Disarmament,” Foreign Affairs 40
(1962): 392–406.
5 T. V. Paul, The Tradition of the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons (Stanford. Calif.: Stanford Uni-
versity Press, 2008); Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2007); and Thomas C. Schelling, “The Legacy of Hiroshima,” in Schelling,
Strategies of Commitment and Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
2006).

A world
without
nuclear
weapons?

D
o
w
n
o
a
d
e
d

f
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
i
r
e
c
t
.

i
t
.

e
d
u
d
a
e
d
a
r
t
i
c
e
–
p
d

f
/

1
3
8
4
1
2
4
1
8
3
1
5
4
3
d
a
e
d
2
0
0
9
1
3
8
4
1
2
4
p
d

b
y
g
u
e
s
t

o
n
0
8
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Dædalus Fall 2009

129
Download pdf