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Making Security Decisions [1]
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Date: 2022-08-20
When Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine earlier this year, he warned any countries that dared to opposed him.
Any state that sent its troops to fight Russia, he said, would face “ominous consequences”—the likes of which the world has “never seen in [its] entire history.” His country was ready to act and had made “the necessary decisions” to respond if attacked. “I hope that my words will be heard,” he declared. Really the message was clear, if anyone opposed Russia, the country just might use its nuclear arsenal.
Putin’s mentioning of nuclear war reignited debates about deterrence and the utility of nuclear weapons. It has led Admiral Charles Richard, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command responsible for nuclear deterrence, to argue that the United States may need more nuclear weapons to deter and defend against Russia and China, which are both modernizing their nuclear forces. Writer Rose Gottemoeller stated why it would be the wrong move for any country to engage in a nuclear arms race in her story “The Case Against a New Arms Race: Nuclear Weapons are not the Future.” Technological innovations will change how we think about security.
With advances in sensing technology, states may soon be able to track and target their adversaries’ nuclear missiles, making the weapons easier to eliminate. And with nuclear weapons more vulnerable, innovations such as drone swarms—large numbers of small, automated weapons that collectively execute a coordinated attack—will increasingly define war. A fixation on building more nuclear weapons will only distract from this technological revolution, making it harder for the United States to understand the technology that defines the destruction of warfare in the future.
China is in the same geopolitical orbit as Russia, as both are in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China has gone from a nuclear posture depending on a small force of missiles intended for second-strike retaliation to building silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles in its western and northern desert while also building up its warhead numbers. Still, there is no need to panic. Even if it quintuples its stockpile, as some experts are predicting, China’s number of warheads will still be well below the numbers in the U.S. arsenal in 2030.
However, China has the clear goal of being the world leader in artificial intelligence by 2030, and it is putting substantial resources into achieving that objective. Beijing has already put artificial intelligence to work in tightening the security bubble around China’s society and economy, gaining an enormous amount of experience with the technology in the process. AI has military applications, and this is another problem, a problem that will not be covered in this story.
Gottemoeller also addressed the intentions of China to dominate the technological sphere and the complications of this when Russia is pounding Ukraine. She said: “the security of the United States, however, depends on its ability to stay in this race, to compete, and to succeed. The last thing the United States needs, as it is trying to prevail in new technologies, is a nuclear arms race…a nuclear arms race is a sidetrack that is not in the U.S. national security interest.”
Will our country make a solid security decision?
Jason Sibert is the Lead Writer for the Peace Economy Project.
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