Abstract
As long as the United States and other nations maintain nuclear arsenals, one or more nuclear powers might feel obliged to put their nuclear forces on alert in a serious crisis. It might result from a direct, serious confrontation between nuclear powers, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Alternatively, a nuclear power might alert its nuclear forces to ‘demonstrate resolve’ and influence the course of a peripheral conflict, as the United States did in the 1973 Middle East War. In either case, unless the nuclear powers involved actually do go to war, they eventually need to be able to stand down from their nuclear alerts in a safe, graceful way that does not exacerbate or actually precipitate a nuclear confrontation.
Invulnerability is the best confidence building measure.
Andy Aldrin, The RAND Corporation
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Notes
See, for example, Herman Kahn’s discussion of the First World War and possible future analogies in Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, 1969 Second Edition (New York: Free Press), pp. 357–75.
Bruce G. Blair, ‘Alerting in Crisis and Conventional War’, in Ashton B. Carter, et al. (eds), Managing Nuclear Operations (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution 1987), pp. 75–120.
Scott D. Sagan, ‘Nuclear Alerts and Crisis Management’, International Security Vol. 9, no. 4, Spring 1985, pp. 102–6.
Some Genie-related incidents occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Scott D. Sagan, ‘Accidents at the Brink: the Operational Dimensions of Crisis Stability’, unpublished paper, February 1989, pp. 26–9.
Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1982), pp. 587–9.
Barry M. Blechman and Douglas M. Hart, ‘The Political Utility of Nuclear Weapons: The 1973 Middle East Crisis’, International Security Vol. 7, no. 1, Spring 1982, pp. 132–56.
For a description of the operational concept of Rail Garrison Peacekeeper, see Barry E. Fridling and John R. Harvey, ‘On the Wrong Track? An Assessment of MX Rail Garrison Basing’, International Security Vol. 13, no. 3, Winter 1988/1989, pp. 113–41.
For a succinct description of the SICBM system concept, see Donald A. Hicks, ‘ICBM Modernization: Consider the Alternatives’, International Security, Vol. 12, no. 2, Fall, 1987, pp. 177–8.
William M. Arkin and Richard W. Fieldhouse, Nuclear Battlefields: Global Links in the Arms Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1985), p. 45 and
Congressional Budget Office (CBO), ‘Modernizing U.S. Strategic Offensive Forces: Costs, Effects and Alternatives’, November 1987, p. 72.
Donald B. Cotter, ‘Peacetime Operations: Safety and Security’, in Carter et al. 1987, op. cit., p. 50.
The seminal work in the open literature on US strategic Cs, its vulnerabilities, and their ramifications is Bruce G. Blair, Strategic Command and Control: Redefining the Nuclear Threat (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1985). Another classic is
Paul Bracken, The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).
See the discussion Soviet incentives for and moves toward a far forward air defense in James T. Quinlivan, Soviet Strategic Air Defense: A Long Past and an Uncertain Future, RAND P-7579, September 1989, pp. 21–4.
See Joseph Nation, The Utility ofDeEscalatory Confidence-Building Measures P-7571, The RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, June 1989 and Alan J. Vick and James A. Thomson, The Military Significance of Restrictions on Strategic Nuclear Force Operations. N-2113-FF, The RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, April 1984.
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© 1992 Joseph E. Nation
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Buchan, G.C. (1992). De-escalatory Confidence-Building Measures and US Nuclear Operations. In: Nation, J.E. (eds) The De-escalation of Nuclear Crises. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12734-4_5
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