Nuclear Weapons and Clear Lines
It was two generations ago that Bertrand Russell composed his single-sentence history of the world. “Since Adam and Eve ate the apple,” he wrote, “mankind has never refrained from any folly of which it was capable.” Experts were especially pessimistic about the nuclear folly. Even if there were no global war, they expected that the weapons would become accepted as regular and used in smaller conflicts.
Sixty-four years have passed since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki without a nuclear explosion in war. Economist and strategist Thomas Schelling calls this the stunning non-event of our era. He posits a “nuclear taboo,” a growing revulsion against the weapons that has put their use off the table.
If nations hold a taboo against using nuclear weapons, it is puzzling that they strive to acquire them for the sake of national prestige. Saddam Hussein held the prestige motive according to his CIA interviewer. India and Pakistan sought domestic and international prestige from their bombs, and even after the Cold War had ended Britain and France retained most of their arsenals, partly for international status.
Leaders have offered military rationales for building a bomb, but these were often weak and concocted. Nuclear weapons have one plausible military function, to deter a threat to the state’s very existence. In India’s case this was not a realistic worry, and its bomb has in fact made it less secure, since Pakistan built its own bomb, increasing the dangers of an accidental war and of the weapon slipping into the hands of terrorists. In a lesser political conflict, nuclear retaliation is not a credible threat, and in smaller wars possessing the weapons gives no advantage — they were no help to the United States in Vietnam or to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
It is hard to reconcile the prestige of acquiring nuclear weapons with the taboo against using them. An analogy would be a society that abhors cannibalism but continues to manufacture large cauldrons and dream up recipes. I have investigated whether a certain factor promotes both the prestige motive and the taboo: the clear, publicly recognized line between nuclear and non-nuclear explosions. As a matter of physics there is no such thing as a semi-nuclear weapon, at least in any practical sense. This fact contrasts with advances in human welfare, which are typically not clear or dichotomous. Making one’s country more democratic, giving the citizens a richer cultural life, or increasing their literacy are either poorly defined or continuously variable.
Evidence for the association of prestige with clear lines comes from other kinds of national achievements. Searching databases of historical studies, I found countries winning attributions of prestige by, for example, possessing colonies beyond their territories, aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, supersonic airlines, or space programs. Thanks to the sound barrier, planes separate into subsonic or supersonic, and a mission to the moon is all or none. Sometimes the clear line constituted being the first in time to achieve a goal—the British expedition climbing Mount Everest—or ranking number one by some other objective measure—possessing the largest collider, the fastest train, or the tallest building. Countries spend great amounts of money on these kinds of projects even when the practical benefits are low.
More evidence that prestige needs a clear public line comes from our regular lives. We join an exclusive club, acquire a professional title by which we are addressed in public, drive a prestigious make of car, live in a prestigious neighborhood, or finish a marathon. These accomplishments are public and dichotomous. High professional standing can bring a prize, which is typically conferred at a public ceremony. You win it or not, with no middle ground and people know whether you won it.
The reasons for the connection of clear lines with prestige are subtle. I distinguish quality, reputation, and prestige: quality means that we really are accomplished, reputation means that members of our group think we are accomplished, but “prestige” is one step higher, roughly that members of our group think that each of the others think we are accomplished. Game theory models clarify how this definition works. Without a line, the members’ beliefs about beliefs would become diffuse, but the line gives each one greater confidence that others recognize that we have passed a certain threshold of achievement.
The nuclear/non-nuclear dichotomy has a fortunate side since it supports the taboo against nuclear use. A war that might otherwise escalate to nuclear weapons might stay limited because a line gives the combatants a mutually understood stopping point. The effect of no line, of the metaphorical “slippery slope,” appeared during World War II when the norm against bombing civilians that was strong at the beginning, soon broke down.
In taking account of prestige and taboos, this approach treats nuclear matters as influenced by psychology, symbolism, and attributed meaning, not just military strategy, and it leads to different prescriptions for anti-proliferation policy. The current reassessment of nuclear strategy by the United States should avoid mental frames that group nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, such as the Bush Administration’s “New Triad” in its 2002 Nuclear Posture Review. Governments should refrain from making nuclear threats in response to non-nuclear provocations. In confronting North Korea and Iran over their nuclear programs, they should face the perplexing question that in applying coercion, they are increasing the prestige value to these governments of defying outside pressure and continuing their programs.