Learning to Love the Bomb

Is nuclear proliferation inherently dangerous?

Steve Chapman from the February 2003 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Sagan notes that the most invulnerable part of the American nuclear force is on submarines -- a system "developed against the wishes of the U.S. Navy leadership," which preferred to spend money on traditional weapons. China, which became a nuclear power in 1964, didn't bother to make its force invulnerable until the 1980s. But Third World states may lack the resources to assure the survivability of their stockpiles, or they may simply neglect that need.

In a crisis, Sagan fears, misinformation may spawn catastrophe, and less developed countries like India and Pakistan may lack the warning systems needed to know what they need to know. A conventional bomb dropped on a target might be perceived as a nuclear strike. The people in charge of the bombs also may be unreliable. The U.S. military administers psychological tests to nuclear weapons personnel, says Sagan, and each year it decertifies up to 5 percent of them. Pakistan has no such program. In a country teeming with Islamic extremists, that's ample cause for discomfort.

In this debate, Waltz is the microeconomist, arguing that the correct incentives will produce the most efficient outcomes. Sagan is the organizational theorist, conceding that this may be true in the long run while noting that in the short run there may be lots of mistakes, including some major ones. In the economic realm, such errors are tolerable. In the nuclear realm, the costs are vastly greater.

Nuclear weapons are fundamentally status quo weapons, inducing caution and promoting stability. In the last half-century, they undoubtedly served as a strong check on the superpowers, and under the right conditions they could diminish the incidence of conventional war.

It's entirely possible -- maybe even probable -- that the world will grow more peaceful as more states go nuclear, and that the Bomb will never again be used. But the Cold War, though reassuring, provides an awfully small sample by which to judge what will happen in a world beset by steady proliferation.

To judge the effects of nuclear weapons, we need a lot more information drawn from real-world experience. For better or worse, we're going to get it.

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