A driving factor is the rising nuclear threat posed by China, North Korea, and Russia. Such a threat requires effective nuclear deterrence. Another concern is continuing doubts as to whether America’s extended deterrence is reliable in a serious international crisis or a major shooting war.

It is true that when authoritarian states brandish their nuclear arsenals for coercion, repeatedly threatening nuclear attack, any nation would be concerned and look to its guarantor of security for help. Unfortunately, the United States is proving slow to field the kind of arsenal that can not only deter or defeat aggression against itself, but also provide that same capability for almost three dozen allies.

The US is now in a position where it must modernize and expand its own nuclear arsenal and right-size those numbers to sustain dynamic parity with adversaries. Legally and morally, there is indeed an inescapable duty to deter. For Japan and South Korea, that duty will be met by the United States or themselves.

Nuclear participation by America’s allies in Asia would be in direct contravention to US policy, and would violate both the letter and the spirit of the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but it would certainly prove understandable. Australia, Japan, and South Korea all signed the treaty, but a voracious and aggressive China and North Korea are proving a real threat to all three states.

Rather than take a position for or against ally nuclear participation, an overview of the main arguments on both sides of the issue are instructive.

Pros

First, recall that Australia, Japan, and South Korea all have a level of experience with the nuclear issue. Japan, of course, faced atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, as Japan up-arms to deter China and North Korea, Tokyo might decide to field its own nuclear weapons.

Southern and western Australia were the sites of over a dozen British nuclear weapon tests between 1952 and 1963. This is a fact too few understand.

South Korea had its own nuclear weapon research and development program during the Cold War, which was abandoned because of American pressure. South Korea does rely on nuclear power for its generation of electricity.

Second, note that these American allies do possess civilian nuclear power industries, sophisticated militaries, sizable economies, and advanced science and technology capabilities. All three countries could build nuclear weapons in relatively short order. On the positive side, the fielding of Australian, Japanese, and South Korean nuclear forces would make aggression far more complicated for China and North Korea.

The inclusion of allied nuclear forces would disperse and diversify the collective nuclear deterrent available for employment and increase the number of targets China or North Korea must strike in a conflict. Allied nuclear participation is also an alternative to overseas nuclear basing agreements, like those that existed during the Cold War. Given the lack of available American weapons, such an arrangement could prove very beneficial.

Lastly, nuclear participation would put an end to the endless debate over the credibility of  American extended deterrence. Rather, the focus would turn to integrating nuclear forces in the event of a conflict.

Cons

There are some well-known arguments for continued nuclear nonproliferation. They include the longtime prohibition in US policy and the NPT prohibition against it. There are also pragmatic concerns.

First, if a country were to withdraw from the NPT, although allowed by Article X, it would create significant diplomatic tensions between the US and the country withdrawing from the treaty. American sanctions could significantly harm the economy of Australia, Japan, or South Korea.

Second, any democratic state pursuing nuclear weapons would undermine Western efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons development. Worse, it could open the floodgates of nuclear proliferation among states that are certain to prove less responsible with those weapons.

Third, China might see the pursuit of nuclear weapons by American allies as a sufficient reason to launch a “defensive” nuclear strike. China’s “active defense” strategy clearly supports the use of preventive attacks.

Fourth, the Nuclear Supplier’s Group would end all support to the civilian nuclear programs of Australia, Japan, and/or South Korea. Such a decision would cause great difficulty for power generators.

Conclusion

For Australia, American promises and the continent’s geographic position may prove sufficient to prevent a move to a nuclear weapons program. For Japan and South Korea, the threat is much closer. How these countries evaluate the threat is yet to be determined. They are signaling the United States that they want stronger assurances of American commitment.

Such assurance will prove difficult for the United States for many reasons. Neither China nor North Korea should take for granted that America’s allies will remain under the nuclear umbrella. It is only because of flagrant aggression that South Korea, and most recently, Japan, are even talking about the need for indigenous nuclear forces.

Joe Buff is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. Views expressed are his own.

The Pros and Cons of Nuclear Participation in the Pacific was originally published on Global Security Review.

Historically, adversaries, ranging from Imperial Japan to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, badly miscalculated American resolve. This was, in part, because the US did not effectively communicate national will and the country’s ability to generate combat power.

While nuclear deterrence held during the Cold War, a worrisome erosion of America’s nuclear deterrence appears underway. A combination of unilateral cuts to the American arsenal, sluggish nuclear modernization, and “nuclear psychosis” (fear of one’s own nuclear arsenal) likely led Russian President Vladimir Putin to develop an escalate to win nuclear doctrine. The same factors may also contribute to China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia issuing mounting conventional and nuclear threats against the West.

Americans need to remember that escalation dominance is an essential ingredient in effectively maintaining deterrence of adversaries and assurance of allies. Escalation dominance means having the option to retaliate up or down the escalation ladder—at America’s choosing. This means developing and fielding capabilities that at least achieve parity, if not superiority, at each rung of the escalation ladder.

Without the US investing in the needed capabilities for full-spectrum conflict, all-domain escalation dominance, adversaries can study America’s capabilities and identify gaps. They can then develop and execute successful strategies that exploit those gaps. They can also incorrectly believe gaps exist, because of a failure of American messaging. Either way, American deterrence might fail.

The US once understood the art and science of escalation dominance—including how to weigh and manage uncertainties and unavoidable risks. At the most dangerous point in the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US out-thought, outmaneuvered, and overmatched the Soviet Union. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev backed down. President Ronald Reagan successfully escalated an arms race while also waging economic warfare. The Soviet Union collapsed.

America now faces multiple adversaries it must engage across the spectrum of conflict. Both horizontal and vertical escalation are certain. With the potential for conflicts to start in the cyber or space domain, the United States must have the ability to limit damaging incursions and malicious interference, while out-escalating an adversary.

History shows that America’s enemies, whomever they might be, tend to be relentless, brutal, casualty acceptant, and even genocidal. Current events, in conflict zones around the world, prove that this has not changed. Appeasement is as ill-advised today as it was with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Restraint is also as ill-advised now as it was then.

Sound theories of American victory need to be developed. Sound American strategy requires the proper matching of objectives to means. Without these in place, deterrence might not hold.

The stakes could not be higher. Conventional war is still almost always a prolonged and very bloody business, in which civilians are caught in the middle and have no safe refuge. If America’s strategic deterrence ever fails, the homeland might suffer devastating attack. Destruction in Ukraine is a small example of what such destruction could look like.

Nuclear war would likely prove unimaginably worse. Nuclear deterrence demands the ability to respond with proportional retaliatory strikes. It also requires the ability to match enemy escalation. The US cannot allow itself to be self-deterred by either a lack of will or a lack of capability. Self-deterrence is to give license to adversaries.

Yet some in the US continue to advocate for policies that eschew escalation at any cost.  This is a theory of defeat, not victory. Attempts to avoid risks only increase the cost of risk.

Such advocates need to be reminded that bullies will always test those they despise. Saving face and taking safe off-ramps are not a priority. For the US to be unable or unwilling to respond with sufficient force when necessary will only invite further and far worse aggression.

In the Cold War now underway, there is a danger of rapid escalation. To cede the military initiative to adversaries, to abandon America’s time-honored strategic culture of retaining full-spectrum escalation dominance, is to invite a nuclear strike against the nation and/or its allies. Adversary malign-influence campaigning is underway and now pervades American information.  Succumbing to these efforts to convince American society that isolation and pacifism are the nation’s best option is a mistake.

Appeasement never satisfies autocratic aggression. The United States must instead invest in the capabilities required to re-master the art and science of strong-stomached escalation dominance. This will support deterrence of America’s adversaries, assurance of America’s allies, and defense of the homeland. Now is the time to act.

Joe Buff is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. Views expressed in this article are the author’s own. 

Modern Escalation Dominance Is Essential to Effective Deterrence and Assurance was originally published on Global Security Review.

Recent scientific research at Sandia National Laboratories proves that carefully aimed nuclear detonations in space, early enough in an object’s approach to Earth, can deflect a threatening comet or asteroid by enough to put it on a safe trajectory. The idea is not to try to pulverize the object by a direct hit, which might still shower Earth with debris. Rather, by detonating the warhead at a modest distance from the object, the forceful ablation (evaporation) of one side of its surface, induced by the intense X-ray of a nuclear detonation, would cause the entire object to move away from the detonation.

This would be an example of what has been called a peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE). Back in the early Cold War, the US Atomic Energy Commission looked into potential applications of nuclear detonations for peaceful civil engineering purposes. These included digging canals, creating harbors, and moving mountains. And yes, fallout was expected, which is why these terrestrial applications were abandoned. An underground nuclear blast was also tested as a way to extract natural gas, by creating in some geologically promising area a subterranean cavity that could then be tapped. The test was not a success because the natural gas was radioactive.

Later, India’s first successful nuclear test (1974) was announced as a peaceful nuclear explosion, for oil extraction and mining purposes, not a weapon test. Then, in 1976, the U.S. and the USSR signed the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty, which permitted such blasts anywhere on Earth if the host country gave permission. Thus, there is some precedent for the use of nuclear devices for peaceful purposes.

Certainly, non-nuclear methods for diverting menacing space objects are possible. For instance, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) test-demonstration DART high-velocity inert impactor mission was successful. But the object whose orbit was changed slightly was a very small moonlet of a slightly less-small asteroid. Other techniques being studied include attaching rocket motors to a threatening object or moving it aside via space tugs deploying giant nets. Such motors or tugs could be driven by chemical engines, or non-explosive nuclear propulsion, or solar power (either solar panels, or light sails).

These latter techniques are years or decades away from meaningful deployment. Due to their lower specific energy compared to a PNE, they would need for the inbound object to be detected very early and to be comparatively small.

For the largest potential Earth-bound objects, especially those coming from sunward, which can make them hard to detect very early, peaceful nuclear explosions might be an essential diversion method.

Obviously, such use of nuclear devices, well away from any people living on Earth or in space, would be for the benefit of mankind. However, nuclear devices can also be deadly weapons of war. They are indeed being looked at by America’s adversaries for purposes of space-based coercion and blackmail and even warfighting in space. Examples include Russia’s “Sputnuke” and China’s fractional orbital bombardment system. Effective strategic deterrence thus continues to require American preparedness and vigilance, throughout the cislunar and beyond the Moon.

However, nuclear explosives in space are truly a dual-use technology. There are already copious amounts of natural hard radiation throughout the solar system. An asteroid- or comet-moving PNE blast’s fallout would dissipate relatively harmlessly.

PNEs in space raise troubling but pressing questions about the need to rethink and update the Outer Space Treaty, since it prohibits placing any nuclear devices anywhere in space. On the one hand, all nuclear weapons based on-orbit should continue to be forbidden. But on the other hand, the same warheads used to defend Earth against space rocks simply must be allowed.

This might be achieved in one of two ways. One is to create a “Planetary Defense Guard” under the auspices of the UN, with the necessary nuclear devices put under UN Security Council control. However, the UN does not have a record of success regarding cooperative use of nuclear devices. A proposed plan in the early Cold War called for all nuclear arms to be pooled under central UN control. It went nowhere. The modern UN attempt at a treaty banning all nuclear devices everywhere (including PNEs) is also going nowhere, for the same reason. States owning nuclear warheads have no desire to give them up.

The other way to get the protection Earth requires is to recognize that planetary defense is a necessary and unavoidable aspect of the “Scramble for the Skies” now emerging. In this alternate scheme, rival powers compete using nuclear devices in a peaceful way for space-based civil engineering purposes. They vie to develop the best suite of proprietary systems, procedures, and technologies for deflecting Earth impactors via peaceful nuclear explosions. They could then also “race” to launch them whenever actually needed. Such healthy competition might significantly increase the odds of at least one contender making a successful diversion, while letting all contenders participate in this ultimate “space Olympic decathlon.”

Changing the OST out of sheer necessity, to allow PNEs for planetary defense, would have several very significant societal benefits. It would more rapidly and effectively advance humanity’s space defenses. It would urgently accelerate everything needed for the successful commercialization, industrialization, and colonization of space, which advocates say could take pressure off Earth’s endangered environment, too.

Allowing PNEs in space would also give spacefaring nuclear powers a way to stay within Cold War–style safety guardrails against nuclear crises and nuclear war. It would allow them to instead compete to show their culture’s and their government’s superiority through the peaceful, beneficial harnessing of both spaceflight and nuclear energy. Such a grand competitive program would help address three existential threats to the human race at once, three possible extermination events: a large asteroid strike, a climate catastrophe, and a nuclear holocaust.

Joe Buff is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies.

Nuclear Devices in Space was originally published on Global Security Review.

These early civil defense measures were eventually neglected and then forgotten after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Soviet Union ended in 1991. Such measures were mirrored in the USSR under General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, but by no means neglected afterward.

Civil defense is, by nature, a community-wide activity. The more people participate and help, the better the results for the entire citizenry. This includes improved morale and will to resist, fewer combat casualties, and prolonged lifespans in case of conventional or nuclear war.

The organization of processes, the laying down and buildout of infrastructure, the first-responder rehearsals, and pervasive homefront readiness drills all require group dedication in the face of natural popular skepticism, even active resistance by a vocal few.

Although there is ample room for volunteerism, and for more formalized national service (especially for those well above military draft age), governments at different levels do need to take overall charge. This ensures efficient coordination, direction of available funding into the most pressing needs, and arranging for efficient communication and reasonable compliance.

With Vladimir Putin’s many nuclear threats, it is once again time to ensure the nation has effective civil defenses against nuclear employment. It may not be the 1950s and 1960s, but civil defense matters.

This is perhaps a prime case where today’s financial-industrial and high-tech oligarchs (billionaires) can work with and/or under contract to the federal government, or even on their own initiative, to assure that, for example, America is hardened against electromagnetic pulse attack, cyber assaults, and nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction attacks. These may not be traditional civil defense measures, but they are civil defense for the modern era.

This collaboration is already happening in the space domain where President Putin’s “Sputnuke” threatens to totally disrupt space operations, and where President Xi Jinping’s growing space-dominance capabilities threaten to disrupt current civil society.

Effective civil defense measures are as central to effective nuclear deterrence and ally assurance as is nuclear modernization. Effective civil defense also includes ensuring the societal supporting infrastructure, such as housing, hospitals, and food stocks, are secure and survivable under even the most highly stressed circumstances.

In fact, an essential component of a truly superb American deterrence strategy must be a comprehensive program of being able to absorb an attack and nevertheless survive. Only in this way can the United States make it clear to adversaries, as President Richard Nixon said, “Not today, Comrades. Not ever.”

Church and synagogue groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as the Red Cross or Doctors without Borders, and fraternal organizations, such as the Shriners or the Boy Scouts can also play a significant role in providing the ultimate in community civil defense. Examples of such efforts abound from the current conflict in Ukraine and Israel.

Exactly how much civil defense is the right amount? Nuclear strategists Thomas Schelling and Herman Kahn were never able to agree. Such agreement is even less likely today.

The right answer to civil defense is likely a programmatic solution that is affordable and optimizes the strengths of local communities. The right amount of civil defense should be a discussion between the federal, state, and local governments. The challenge for any civil defense effort is that more than two-thirds of all federal spending and about half of all state spending are dedicated to mandatory social programs. This leaves very little room for civil defense programs, which must compete with all other government functions for an ever-dwindling percentage of federal and state budgets.

For most Americans, the threat of nuclear strikes on the homeland is an abstract threat. Thus, they would rather have immediate government services than look to an event that may never happen. This leaves the prospects for improving civil defenses low. Much as in the Cold War, it may be up to Americans to look to their survival in the event of the unthinkable.

Joe Buff is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. The views expressed are his own.

Modernizing Civil Defense Is Wise was originally published on Global Security Review.