For recreational reading this week I indulged in some
escapist fare. Long before his mainstream success as a novelist and in Hollywood
(e.g. Jurassic Park), the
overachieving Michael Crichton while still a Harvard med student wrote pulp
crime fiction novels on the side under the pseudonym John Lange. They aren’t
bad. In the 1972 novel Binary a
domestic political extremist hijacks a nerve gas shipment and plans to release the
gas in San Diego. The title refers (primarily) to a safeguard in the most advanced
chemical weapons stockpiled by the US at the time: two components of the nerve gas
were kept separate. Neither was deadly on its own; they were lethal only when mixed
and they would be mixed only when used. Sometimes, as in binary artillery
shells, mixing would occur when the projectile was in flight. Now that I describe the plot, it somehow seems less escapist.
One of the more enlightened decisions of the Nixon Administration, by
the way, was unilaterally to eliminate US stockpiles of lethal chemical and
biological weapons. Nixon stated that nuclear weapons were a sufficient
deterrent to all forms of weapons of mass destruction, which was a clear
implication that any attack on the US or its allies with any type of NBC
(nuclear/biological/chemical) weapon would be grounds for nuclear retaliation. Eliminating
the stockpiles safely took time, however, so they really were being transported
on highways to facilities for processing and disposal under dubious security arrangements
at the time the Crichton/Lange book was written. They didn’t require a lot of
expertise to use. Short of acquiring a functional and armed nuclear warhead
intact, on the other hand, terrorists would be unlikely to be able to do
anything with hijacked nuclear materials other than, perhaps, contaminate an
area by dispersing them. The most realistic nuclear danger always has been and still
is from governments. The US has never declared a definitive “no first use” policy on
nuclear weapons. The Soviets did, but nobody believed them. Official Russian
military doctrine (English source War on the Rocks) promulgated in 2014 more honestly states, “The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear
weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass
destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression
against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the
very existence of the state is threatened.” The Congressional Research Service 2021 report titled Russia’s
Nuclear Weapons: Doctrine, Forces, and Modernization concludes the unofficial (real) doctrine may be less cautious: "When
combined with military exercises and Russian officials’ public statements, this
evolving doctrine seems to indicate that Russia has potentially placed a
greater reliance on nuclear weapons and may threaten to use them during
regional conflicts." This is sometimes called a policy of “escalate to
de-escalate.” The report’s conclusion is supported by commentary in other Russian
official documents such at the 2017 naval doctrine,
which states that deterrence can be achieved during an escalating conflict by “demonstrating
the willingness and determination to employ force, including non-strategic
nuclear weapons.” This isn’t much different from US policy. (Nor is it much
different from that of the UK, France, North Korea, Pakistan, and India; China
officially has a “no first use” policy, though unofficial policy is anyone’s
guess; Israel doesn’t admit to having the 100 or so weapons everyone assumes it
has, so it can have no official position; South Africa dismantled its nuclear
weapons in 1989.) Accordingly, the risk remains what it was during the Cold War:
misjudgment of an opponent’s response either to a threat to use or to the actual
limited use of tactical nukes with the result that events escalate out of
control. This is just something to keep in mind while playing brinkmanship
games in places such as Ukraine. I’m of an age to remember the height of the Cold War. There
was a weird sort of dark humor about the whole thing that was prevalent at the
time – a way of coping with what was beyond our control. I posted some years
ago about my memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis: see 22 October.
I remember well the civil defense drills in school. Recalling them does not
evoke nostalgia. Schools are scary enough these days without having cause to
restart them.
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