The New Arms Control Gambit: Unilateral U.S. Disarmament That Masquerades as Noblesse Oblige

(Washington, D.C.): A pattern with
ominous implications for U.S. national
security has begun to emerge in recent
years: Time and again, arms control
enthusiasts declare that “something
must be done” about the dangers
posed by weapons in the hands of someone
other than the United States. Bans on
biological weapons, poison gas,
anti-personnel landmines, blinding
lasers, anti-satellite weapons and
nuclear testing have all been advanced on
the grounds that, left unchecked, such
capabilities will endanger this country,
its military personnel and/or its vital
interests.

Unfortunately, the practical
effect of initiatives like these — due
to their inherent unverifiability and
impracticality — is to eliminate such
capabilities only from the U.S.
arsenal and that of other, friendly
law-abiding nations. They are,
to put it plainly, inappropriate
responses to real problems, responses
likely to increase rather than
reduce the threats emerging to the
Nation.

The Washington Post
Promotes Bad Arms Control

In the space of less than a week, the Washington
Post published not one but two
appeals of this sort.

The Landmine Campaign: The
first appeared on 18 June 1997 and was
drawn from remarks made the day before on
the Senate floor by Senator Chuck Hagel,
Republican of Nebraska. After
establishing his bona fides
(“There is no U.S. Senator in this
body who supports more strongly the U.S.
military, what we must do to always arm
our military, never taking away the
capabilities of our military”), Sen.
Hagel endorsed a proposal that would deny
America’s armed forces capabilities they
forcefully insist they need — namely,
self-destructing anti-personnel
landmines. In fact, the Pentagon
calculates that American casualties might
increase by as much as 35% if the U.S.
military is unable to employ such mines
for defensive purposes. href=”97-D84.html#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾

Sen. Hagel believes a ban on U.S.
production, stockpiling and use of such
weapons is needed to “send a message
to the world that we are a moral
nation” and demonstrate American
“leadership.” While he did, to
his credit, acknowledge that this ban
will “not dig up” the
“more than 110 million landmines in
the ground today all over the
world,” the Senator chose not to
address one other natty problem with his
proposal: There is no reason to
expect it will actually produce a
world-wide cessation in the production or
use of devices that are as inexpensive to
make and as effective — whether as an
instrument of warfare or terror — as
anti-personnel landmines are seen to be
by, among others, Russia, China, Vietnam,
Brazil and their clients.

‘De-Alerting’ Nuclear Forces: No
less reckless is a proposal advanced in
the Post‘s Outlook Section on 22
June 1997 by former Senator Sam Nunn and
anti-nuclear activist Bruce Blair. It
calls for “eliminating the nuclear
hair trigger” by having the United
States and Russia take various steps to
disarm or temporarily disable most — if
not all — their long-range ballistic
missile forces.

Just as the campaign to ban landmines
draws political support from the
humanitarian tragedy of innocent
civilians being maimed and killed by
those who irresponsibly use
anti-personnel landmines, the Nunn-Blair
proposal identifies a genuine problem —
the menace posed by thousands of Russian
nuclear-armed missiles whose safe command
and control are increasingly
questionable.

As with the proposal to ban landmines,
however, the Nunn-Blair solution is one
rooted in moral equivalence and noblesse
oblige — not hard-headed
strategic thinking:
“De-alerting” U.S. missiles by
removing their guidance units,
disassociating their warheads, reducing
their alert status and keeping fewer
submarine-borne nuclear weapons at sea.
To be sure, Messrs. Nunn and Blair argue
for taking steps to reduce the readiness
of Russian missile forces, as well. But
the only weaponry the United States can
be certain would be degraded will be its
own.

After all, no one in the West knows
for sure how many nuclear-capable
ballistic missiles Russia actually has,
where they all are or their exact status.
Historically, the Kremlin has maintained
large quantities of so-called
“non-deployed”
intercontinental-range ballistic
missiles. The military significance of
these unaccounted-for assets grows as the
potency of “deployed” missiles
is reduced, whether by negotiated
reductions or, as Messrs. Nunn and Blair
recommend, via reciprocal — but
non-negotiated — arrangements.

In short, even if the United States
could be sure that Russian deployed
missiles were actually being de-alerted,
it is far from clear that the net effect
will be to reduce the threat posed by the
totality of Moscow’s nuclear arsenal.
What is more, while Senator Nunn and his
co-author blithely assert that their
proposal would “preserve a basic
(albeit residual) deterrent effect
virtually as powerful as the Cold War
variant,” it is most
uncertain whether the Chinese, North
Koreans or other incipient nuclear
threats will regard an American
“virtual deterrent” as a
credible one.

Why the U.S. Military Is
Susceptible to These Proposals

Noblesse oblige arms control
notions are especially insidious to the
extent that they hold out the
false promise of cheap alternatives to
costly military problems. For
example, the justification for expensive
military — to say nothing of civilian —
defenses against chemical and biological
weapons attacks can be reduced (if not
eliminated) by bans on such weapons. The
ominous implications of cheap lasers
neutralizing the pilots of costly
aircraft or various devices wiping out
critical satellites can be discounted
once such threats are prohibited. And
those, like Bruce Blair, who are
adamantly opposed to U.S. ballistic
missile defense programs can claim that
de-alerted Russian missiles obviate the
need for an insurance policy against
accidental or unauthorized launches.

In a period when there are far too few
dollars to meet the Pentagon’s highest
modernization and readiness priorities,
the U.S. military has proven susceptible
to these seductive proposals. In some
cases, congressional funding cut-offs
have been threatened or instituted to
elicit the Defense Department’s
cooperation. In other cases, the Pentagon
has seen arms control as a way to justify
cutting forces viewed by the relevant
service as a distraction from its core
mission (e.g., the Navy’s willingness to
consider radical reductions in strategic
submarines and their ballistic missiles
and the Air Force’s proclivity to permit
the atrophying of its aging strategic
bomber force). Either way, with the
notable exception of the anti-personnel
landmine ban, the armed forces have (to
varying degrees) been willing to reduce
or terminate certain American weapons
systems or capabilities — even though
potential adversaries are unlikely to
follow the United States’ moral example.

The Bottom Line

It is unclear where the logic of noblesse
oblige arms control will end. One
could just as easily “ban”
small arms ammunition as landmines; after
all, many bullets originally procured for
fighting wars wind up being used long
after conflicts end to maim and kill
civilians. (In fact, the Swiss government
formally proposed an international ban on
the use of all small caliber bullets but
those utilizing a
“non-fragmenting”
Swiss-design.) What’s next: bans on
general officers, war plans or bad ideas?

The truth is that the United States
can ill-afford utopian delusions like
those being advanced by Senator Hagel and
Messrs. Nunn and Blair. “American
leadership” that is justified as
international norm-setting but that
results in the unilateral disarmament of
U.S. and allied militaries is a formula
for disaster, not increased security.

– 30 –

1. For more on the
shortcomings of the anti-personnel
landmine ban, see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Hold
That Line: JCS Objections Appear Crucial
To Retaining American Right To Use
Landmines To Save U.S. Troops’ Lives
(No. 97-D 81,
18 June 1997).