How Nuclear Weapons Changed the Character of War - Dr. Mackubin Owens

How Nuclear Weapons Changed the Character of War - Dr. Mackubin Owens

Over the past couple of decades, many military analysts have claimed that technology has changed the very nature of war. But this is, I believe, mistaken. Two centuries ago, Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian “philosopher of war,” described the nature of war immutable: the violent clash of opposing wills, each seeking to prevail over the other. In Clausewitz’s formulation, the will of one combatant is directed at an animate object that reacts, often in unanticipated ways. This cyclical interaction between opposing wills occurs in a realm of chance and chaos, and describes the nature of war from the time of Thucydides to the present. 

But while the nature of war is fundamentally immutable, the character of war is variable, affected by technology, geography, culture, and risk in the interaction between ends and means. This can be seen in how the character of war changed with the development and deployment of nuclear weapons following World War II, which likely prevented a war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

It is because of nuclear weapons that the Cold War did not become World War III.  Although the Nuclear Age did not lead to the end of war, fear of the destructive power of nuclear weapons placed an upper limit on conflict. To recognize the truth of this claim, one has only to compare the human cost of war since 1945 to that of the years between 1914 and 1945.

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During the Cold War, nuclear weapons policy and strategy suffused every aspect of national security, including non-nuclear strategy. For instance, the United States rejected conventional military options during both the Korean and Vietnam Was out of concern that escalation might lead to a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union or China.

It is customary to classify nuclear weapons as “strategic,” i.e. capable of striking assets in the enemy’s homeland; “theater,” capable of striking strategically important targets within a theater of operations; and “tactical,” intended to attack enemy units or weapons in relatively close proximity to one’s own forces. Strategic weapons have generally featured a higher “yield” of explosive power.

US nuclear weapons policy during the Cold War was based on the logic of an “escalation ladder.” The main theater of war in the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union was Europe. US and NATO policymakers believed that they could not match Soviet and Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) conventional forces in Europe but according to the logic of escalation, NATO could deter war by threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons—low yield weapons delivered by aircraft, tube artillery, and short-range missiles—if it were in danger of losing a conventional conflict. If WTO responded in kind, NATO could escalate to theater-level nuclear weapons and if necessary, to the strategic level.

In the early years of the Cold War, US policymakers believed that the United States possessed “escalation dominance,” i.e. that in any scenario, conventional or nuclear, the United States could threaten to escalate to a level of conflict at which we possessed the advantage. Escalation dominance was the basis of deterrence. But that belief evaporated in the 1970s as the Soviets began to deploy theater nuclear weapons and most critically, to develop powerful counterforce strategic nuclear capabilities, e.g. the SS-18, that erased US escalation dominance. A US threat to escalate to a nuclear exchange as it was losing a conventional war in Europe now rang hollow.

Beginning in the late 1970s and into the Reagan administration, the United States responded in three ways: at the strategic nuclear level, deploying a whole array of new accurate land-based and sea-based systems such as the Minuteman III, the MX, and the Trident Missile and the first components of a system of strategic defense; at the theater nuclear level, deploying the Pershing II intermediate ballistic missile in Europe; and perhaps most importantly, at the conventional level, developing true war fighting and war winning operational doctrines—for the US Army and Air Force, AirLand Battle/Operations, and for the Naval services, the “Maritime Strategy,” designed to bring naval aviation to bear against NATO’s northern flank and in the Pacific.

With the end of the Cold War, the central importance of nuclear weapons to US security policy declined precipitously. Of course, there were concerns about potential rogue actors such as North Korea and Iran. Indeed, one of the justifications for launching the Second Gulf War was to prevent Saddam Hussein from acquiring a nuclear capability.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought concerns about the use of nuclear weapons back to the fore. Putin has rattled the nuclear sabre from the beginning.  He previously warned against Western interference with his assault on Ukraine and put Russian nuclear forces on alert.  With his invasion of Ukraine having bogged down recently, he ratcheted up his threats to employ nuclear weapons. US officials have taken that threat seriously, voicing concerns that Russia might employ tactical or low-yield nuclear weapons in response to setbacks in Ukraine.

As Clausewitz observed, part of the nature of war is its unpredictability. But it appears that deterrence will work against Putin because US escalation dominance has been reestablished, making it unlikely that the nuclear Rubicon will be crossed in Ukraine. As one commentator has noted, “Putin has nothing to lose by threatening to use nuclear weapons. But he has everything to lose by actually using them.”