{"id":36411,"date":"2017-12-16T06:00:38","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T19:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=36411"},"modified":"2017-12-15T16:57:51","modified_gmt":"2017-12-15T05:57:51","slug":"nuclear-weapons-australia-not-fast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/nuclear-weapons-australia-not-fast\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuclear weapons for Australia\u2014not so fast"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/figure>\n

In my new Quarterly Essay<\/em><\/a>, I argue that Australia may have to rethink the acquisition of nuclear weapons in the post-American Asia which I believe is now upon us. Paul Dibb<\/a> has recently made a similar point. I stopped well short of either advocating that we should take that step or predicting that we will, and I think Paul did the same. Even so, I thought what we\u2019d each said in our different ways was rather bold.<\/p>\n

But we were not bold enough to please Andrew Davies<\/a>, who has gently but firmly reproved us for being coy, which suggests that he thinks we both really believe that Australia should go nuclear, but just are too timid to say so. Well I can\u2019t speak for Paul, but for myself I\u2019d like gently but firmly to correct that implication.<\/p>\n

I do think that there\u2019s a good deal of force in Andrew\u2019s argument that it would make no sense to invest in the more capable conventional forces we\u2019d need to resist a direct conventional threat from China without US support unless we also built nuclear forces as well, because conventional forces would be useless unless backed by a nuclear deterrent. That\u2019s why I\u2019ve argued that we\u2019d need to look at the nuclear question closely. But I have three reasons for thinking it would be premature to try to decide right now whether that argument is correct and whether we should go nuclear.<\/p>\n

First, we shouldn\u2019t presume to know with certainty how nuclear forces will function in shaping strategic affairs in the decades to come in Asia. These weapons are extremely revolutionary and still only 72 years old. They have hardly ever been used. Everything we think we know about their strategic effects derives from the single \u2018case study\u2019 of the Cold War, which was framed by a specific and unique set of ideological, geopolitical and operational circumstances.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know how far the lessons we learned from that contest will hold good in the very different circumstances of Asia over coming decades, and we\u2019ve hardly even begun to think about that question. So although, like Andrew and Paul, I think it\u2019s likely that a nuclear-armed power could neutralise the conventional forces of a non-nuclear adversary by nuclear blackmail, I wouldn\u2019t want to incur the costs and risks of building nuclear forces without thinking a lot more about that. That\u2019s something we should start doing right now.<\/p>\n

Second, it would be premature even to consider the nuclear question before we\u2019ve decided whether to invest in the conventional forces needed to resist a military attack from a major Asian power. As Andrew rightly points out, there is a real choice to be made here. It would be perfectly legitimate to conclude that the risk of such an attack over coming decades is too low to justify the costs of building the conventional forces to resist it.<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t make that decision soundly until we know a lot more than we do now about both sides of the cost-and-risk equation: how big is the risk, and what conventional forces would be needed, at what cost? We\u2019ve hardly even begun to explore all that, because for so long until so recently our defence and strategic community has been so unshakably certain that American primacy in Asia would last forever.<\/p>\n

Some will no doubt be tempted to think that the whole question of conventional forces can be sidestepped by going straight to nuclear weapons instead. I think they\u2019d be wrong. Noting the warning I just gave against jumping to conclusions about the strategic implications of nuclear forces, I think it\u2019s very unlikely that they could serve as an alternative to conventional forces in Australia\u2019s defence against nuclear adversaries. Their role would simply be to prevent an adversary deterring us from using our conventional forces by threatening a nuclear attack. So nuclear forces will do nothing for us if we don\u2019t also invest in the conventional forces we\u2019d need to win a conventional war.<\/p>\n

Finally, even once we reach a decision on conventional forces, the decision on nuclear forces would remain to be made. Andrew suggests, I think, that that isn\u2019t so. He seems to think there is only one choice to be made, embracing both conventional and nuclear forces, because if the risk of attack by a major power is high enough to warrant building the conventional forces needed to resist it, then it is high enough to warrant building nuclear forces too.<\/p>\n

But for me a choice to acquire nuclear weapons would be a separate and very different step. I could easily imagine that one might conclude that while the risk of a major-power attack was high enough to justify the costs of building more capable conventional forces, it wasn\u2019t high enough to justify the much higher costs and risks of going nuclear.<\/p>\n

Those costs and risks have many dimensions. One is fiscal. The nuclear forces Australia would need to neutralise the threat from a nuclear-armed great power\u2014essentially a \u2018minimum deterrent\u2019 force\u2014would have to have very high-yield warheads and long-range delivery systems and be secure from preemptive attack. It would most likely need to look a lot like the British or French nuclear forces. That might cost us another 2% of GDP on top of the 4% that I\u2019ve estimated the conventional forces would cost. Would the risk justify that spend?<\/p>\n

Another dimension of cost is strategic. We\u2019d need to be very sure that nuclear forces would on balance make us more rather than less secure. Every weapon is a two-edged sword, nuclear weapons much more than others. We\u2019d need, for example, to be attuned to the likelihood that an Australian nuclear program would spur others to do the same, contributing to a spiral of proliferation which would increase the nuclear risks for all.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a moral dimension to the question. Building any military capability is a grim business, because we\u2019re deliberately preparing the means to use lethal force to achieve political objectives. But the moral content of decisions about nuclear weapons is different from those involving conventional weapons, because their effects are not just quantitatively but qualitatively different. We shouldn\u2019t lose sight of how horrific these weapons are, and we should remain very reluctant indeed to acquire them.<\/p>\n

For all those reasons, I think a decision on nuclear forces would be, and should be, separate from, as well as subsequent to, a decision on conventional forces, and would only be justified if we believed the risk of attack was very high. I\u2019m far from sure it is that high. Of course, if we decided it wasn\u2019t, we\u2019d then need to go back and revisit our choice on conventional forces as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my new Quarterly Essay, I argue that Australia may have to rethink the acquisition of nuclear weapons in the post-American Asia which I believe is now upon us. Paul Dibb has recently made a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":36412,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[338,26,116,935],"class_list":["post-36411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-defence-policy","tag-defence-spending","tag-nuclear-deterrence","tag-nuclear-policy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNuclear weapons for Australia\u2014not so fast | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/nuclear-weapons-australia-not-fast\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nuclear weapons for Australia\u2014not so fast | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In my new Quarterly Essay, I argue that Australia may have to rethink the acquisition of nuclear weapons in the post-American Asia which I believe is now upon us. 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