De-Alerting - Nuclear Weapons and the International Environment

I find Bruce G. Blair’s article’s paper Increasing Warning and Decision Time (‘De-Alerting’) interesting, however, in reality the steps to de-alerting both the US and Russia are extremely difficult. I am not sure how plausible it is to believe both the US and Russia would be willing to alter their nuclear operations so drastically.

Firstly, in phase one Blair mentions the verifiability for this step is low. Ideally, both Russia and the US would agree extending the fuse for launch times for nuclear weapons would be safest. However, if you can’t verify the other nation is genuinely taking these steps for ALL of their nuclear weapons, why would you? And who is to say a nation wouldn’t rearm some prior to phase four when they are all stored and accounted for. I think the low verifiability in phase one would be a huge deterrent for both the US and Russia.

Secondly, in order for phase four to be accomplished Blair states that one of the pre-conditions is possibly constraining conventional forces as well. I find it hard to believe actors like the United States and Russia would want to lose their immediate nuclear response capability and then constrain conventional forces simultaneously. I think these two losses would leave the US or Russia feeling vulnerable. In addition, I think the US and Russia would feel even more vulnerable because these protocols and steps are to lengthen their nuclear fuse, but who is to say China, Pakistan or India won’t shorten theirs. Blair mentions the potential for China and others to shorten their fuse based on the US increasing Chinese targets, but who is to say these other nuclear nations wouldn’t shorten their fuse preventatively.

Overall, I agree with Blair’s goals, particularly with the increasing cyberterrorism threat. Having a launch ready nuclear arsenal may not be the safest environment. However, I think de-alerting will be very hard to do. De-nuclearizing the international environment would be a way to control violence, however, how can there be a public authority telling states what to do and how to do it and then supervising them? I think at least the way things are now, de-nuclearizing would fall into the realm of international law. As Jackson said though there are international laws, nations must self-enforce. This self-enforcing aspect shows some of the difficulties in de-altering and de-nuclearizing our international environment, because all nations want to feel “safe”. At this point, it seems unlikely Russia or the US will want to unarm itself, however, perhaps implementing a concept such as removing the pre-programmed targets in nuclear operations would be the next step to lengthening our nuclear fuse.