What’s Worse than MAD?
By Really, really interesting post by Brad Plumer on a project by Daryl Press and Keir Lieber to determine whether MAD, or Mutual Assured Destruction, still applies to the US-China and US-Russia relationships. They conclude that China and Russia cannot be confidant of maintaining a second strike capability against the US. It would be wrong to say that I’m surprised, but I hadn’t fully thought through the implications of the problem before reading Plumer’s post.
One caveat that I have (not having read the study I can’t fully evaluate it) is that a second strike capability doesn’t have to be absolute, or even probable. If, say, there is a 40% chance that China will be able to launch 5 nuclear missiles at the United States, then the expected utility of a first strike by the US is pretty goddamn low. Try to imagine what kind of foreign policy goal would be worth the incineration of 15 million or so Americans; it’s pretty hard. I’m also kind of doubtful about the likelihood that the US could track down every Russian boomer before they had a chance to launch, but Lieber and Press are both excellent analysts, so I’m sure they’ve done good work.
A second caveat regards the ability of China or Russia to strike US allies. While the Chinese have only a few missiles capable of reaching the US, they have plenty that can hit closer targets. I doubt, again, that an administration could come to the conclusion that a successful first strike was worth the destruction of Tokyo, Warsaw, Seoul, or New Dehli. However, to the extent that the analysis relies on the command and control centers of Russia and China rather than on their actual weapons, Lieber and Press may have that covered, as well.
The US has a number of advantages over our nuclear competitors. Our strategic bomber forces can deliver warheads with little notice. Ohio class boomers can fire extraordinarily accurate ballistic missiles from hidden position with extremely short flight plans. I doubt that the missile defense could actually do anything important, but it probably wouldn’t hurt in the case of an actual shooting war.
What does this mean? Well, clearly China and Russia are not worried about a US attack. Building more nuclear missiles is very cheap, compared to other ways of projecting power. That neither seem to be taking the US seriously as a nuclear threat indicates that they are paying a lot of attention to intentions, rather than to capabilities. Eisenhower was perhaps quite correct to suggest that the only thing worse than losing a nuclear war would be to win one.