Role of Nuclear Weapons

Force and threats to use force have persistently played a part in international relations, and developments in military technology have often had an important impact on structures and processes of political systems. Thermonuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missile systems are not merely quantitatively different from those that preceded them; they also possess qualitative attributes that have had, and will continue to have, a significant impact on the international system, its member units, and the nature of relations between them. This is not to say, however, that conventional armaments are obsolete; indeed, most nations' military forces are still limited to such weapons, and even the nuclear

⁵ Leonard Mosely, On Borrowed Time (New York: Random House, 1969), pp. 25-27.

⁶ Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (New York: Norton, 1969), p. 61.

272 Weapons, War, and Political Influence

powers have found it expedient to maintain conventional forces to deal with limited provocations. In most circumstances nuclear power cannot easily be converted into political influence.

The most obvious characteristic of nuclear weapons is their destructive capacity. The bombs that obliterated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Naga­saki at the end of World War II had an explosive power of 20 kilotons (20,000 tons of TNT). By recent standards, such weapons are considered almost minia­ture. In 1961, the Soviet Union tested a bomb rated at 61 megatons (61,000,000 tons of TNT), which exceeded the combined explosive power of all weapons fired during World War II. A single Soviet SS-18 missile is capable of delivering eight to ten multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) in the megaton range or a single 25-megaton warhead a distance of 7,500 miles, within less than one mile of its target. The United States reportedly possesses over 7,000 strategic nuclear warheads, all with a destructive capacity far greater than those that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and the stockpiles of the other nuclear nations add significantly to this total.⁷ The U.S. Defense Depart­ment has estimated that a general war between the United States and the Soviet Union might kill 149 million Americans and 100 million Russians—and other estimates have been even more pessimistic. Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that some traditional views of the function of military forces have been rendered obsolete, and that nuclear war as an instrument of policy has been deemed irrational but, unfortunately, not impossible. Both Soviet and American leaders have expressed the view that there are few, if any, goals that can be served by the actual use of nuclear weapons; thus, the threat to use these weapons, rather than their actual use, has become of paramount impor­tance.

It is not only the destructive capacity of thermonuclear weapons that has had an impact on the international system. The development of accurate long-range ballistic missiles has provided the means for their delivery across continents at speeds that have reduced warning time almost to the vanishing point. Space and time, which once provided protection against devastating sur­prise attack, have all but lost their defensive value in the nuclear-missile age. This development is somewhat analogous to the invention of gunpower in the late Middle Ages, which contributed to the decline of feudalism. With the intro­duction of the cannon to warfare, the feudal lord was no longer able to ensure the security of his subjects within the walls of his castle or fortified town. Out of the destruction of the feudal system emerged a new unit of security—the nation-state. In a somewhat similar manner, the destructive capacity and range of nuclear missiles lay the territorial state open to total destruction.⁸ Before

⁷ The Military Balance, 1980-81 (London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, 1980), pp. 3, 4, 9.

⁸John Herz, "The Rise and Demise of the Territorial State," World Politics, 9 (1957), 473-93. However, see also Herz, "The Territorial State Revisited: Reflections on the Future of the Nation-State," Polity, 1 (1968), 12-34.

273Weapons, War, and Political Influence

World War I, a nation at war was unable to inflict severe damage on the adver­sary's territory, industrial capacity, or population without first defeating its armed forces, whereas today it is possible to do so.

The Global Arms Race

Since World War II, the policies of nations armed with nuclear weapons have clearly dominated the international system, but acquisition and deployment of military instruments are by no means limited to the major powers. Nor, despite the huge defense budgets of the five major nuclear powers—the United States, the USSR, Great Britain, France, and China—is the expenditure of vast resources for military means restricted to these nations. As a percentage of their Gross National Products (GNP), the defense expenditures of the "Big Five" are as follows: United States 5.2 percent; Great Britain, 4.9 percent; France, 3.9 percent; USSR, 11-13 percent; and the People's Republic of China, 9 percent. Countries diverting over 10 percent of their GNP to military spending include: Egypt (13.2 percent), Israel (31.1 percent), Saudi Arabia (15.0 percent), Syria (22.1 percent), Iraq (10.9 percent), and North Korea (11.2 percent). At the other end of the spectrum, one major power, Japan, spends less than 1 percent of its GNP on military items, and such nations as Costa Rica, Gambia, Iceland, Lesotho, and Surinam have even smaller defense budgets proportionate to na­tional income. Global military spending was approximately $500 billion in 1980, more than double the 1970 figure. Of that amount, the United States, the USSR, and their NATO and Warsaw Treaty Organization allies accounted for about 75 percent (the comparable figure two decades earlier was 90 percent). But by far the fastest growth in military spending at present is among the developing nations. The huge expenditures for armaments by the newly rich oil-producing nations such as Syria, Libya, and Saudi Arabia—none of which has recently been at war—is impressive evidence of the high priority that even less-developed countries place on acquisition of modern armaments. Using another criterion, percentage of total population in the armed forces, we find that the Republic of China, Israel, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Jordan, Libya, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, South Korea, and North Korea have proportionately larger armed forces than any of the major powers.⁹

Thus, although nuclear weapons are of undeniable importance, several important points should be kept in mind: (1) Virtually all nations maintain armed forces; (2) the intensity of violence in military actions may vary across a wide scale, but force is rarely used in an unlimited manner; (3) sources of international instability are by no means confined to the actions and conflicts between nuclear powers; and (4) although nuclear weapons have had a revolutionary impact on some aspects of international relations, many observations about force as

⁹ The figures in this paragraph have been calculated from data in The Military Balance, 1980-81; and U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, 1969-1978 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980).

274 Weapons, War, and Political Influence

an instrument of policy are equally valid for nuclear and for conventional weap­ons.

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