Why NATO Expected to Lose Most of Europe to Russia

Cold War lessons on the promise—and nuclear peril—of escalation

Robert Farley

February 20, 2016

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A recent RAND wargame on a potential Russian offensive into the Baltics brought talk of a “new Cold War” into sharp focus. The game made clear that NATO would struggle to prevent Russian forces from occupying the Baltics if it relied on the conventional forces now available.
These wargames have great value in demonstrating tactical and operational reality, which then informs broader strategic thinking. In this case, however, the headlines generated by the game have obscured more about the NATO-Russian relationship than they have revealed. In short, the NATO deterrent promise has never revolved around a commitment to defeat Soviet/Russian forces on NATO’s borders. Instead, NATO has backed its political commitment with the threat to broaden any conflict beyond the war that the Soviets wanted to fight. Today, as in 1949, NATO offers deterrence through the promise of escalation.

The Early Years
Let’s be utterly clear on this point; from the creation of NATO until the 1970s, Western military planners expected the Warsaw Pact to easily win a conventional war in Europe. Conventional warfighting plans by the major NATO powers often amounted, almost literally, to efforts to reach the English Channel just ahead of the tanks of the Red Army. NATO expected to liberally use tactical nuclear weapons to slow the Soviet advance, an action which would inevitably invite Soviet response (the Soviets also prepared for this dynamic).
The belief that NATO would lose a conventional conflict did nothing to contradict the notion that NATO could play a valuable role in deterring war. For one, NATO could certainly make things more difficult for the Soviet Union; overwhelming combined British-German-American forces would prove far more costly than defeating a West Germany that stood alone. Moreover, by triggering an expansion of the war NATO could create costs for the Soviets in other parts of the world. Overwhelming NATO superiority at sea and in long-range airpower would prove devastating for Soviet interests outside of Eurasia, even if the Soviets prevailed on the Central Front.
Most importantly, the threat that France, Britain and the United States would launch strategic nuclear strikes on the Soviet Union in response to a successful conventional assault was supposed to give Moscow pause. Even if an American President refused to exchange Berlin for New York, the Soviets would have to worry about the rest of NATO’s nuclear deterrent.

Active Defense/AirLand Battle
The expectation that NATO could defeat the Warsaw Pact in battle only emerged after the Yom Kippur War. In that conflict, precision-guided conventional munitions exacted such a toll on advancing forces (both in the Golan and in Sinai) that American military planners began to believe that they could stop a Soviet attack. Drawn up in defensive positions that would channel oncoming Red Army armor into large kill zones, NATO forces could sufficiently blunt and disrupt a Soviet advance, and prevent the collapse of positions within Germany. The defense would buy time for NATO to transit additional forces and equipment from the United States to Europe, to carry out in depth attacks against Warsaw Pact logistical and communications centers in Eastern Europe, and to attack Soviet interests in the rest of the world.
After 1982, AirLand Battle would return maneuver to the battlefield, as American commanders grew more confident of their ability to defeat the Red Army in a fluid engagement. Cooperation between the Army and the Air Force would allow attacks all along the depth of the Soviet position, turning the formidable Red Army (and its Eastern European allies) into a chaotic mess. At the same time, the U.S. Navy prepared to attack directly into the Soviet periphery with airstrikes and amphibious assaults, as well as into the cherished “bastions” of the Soviet boomer fleet. None of this depended on the protection of any given piece of NATO territory; planners accepted that the Soviets could make at least some gains at the beginning of any plausible war scenario.
In this context, news that Russia could win a localized conventional conflict against small NATO nations on its border becomes rather less alarming than it sounds at first blush. Apart from (perhaps) a brief window of vulnerability in the 1990s, Russia has always had the capacity to threaten NATO with conventional force. Indeed, NATO did not even begin to plan for the conventional defense of the Baltics until well after their accession, on the belief that the faith and credit of the alliance, and in particular its ability to retaliate against Soviet interests in the rest of Europe, would prove a sufficient deterrent.
The RAND wargame suggests that Russia could take the Baltics, and perhaps hold them, for a while. Moscow would begin to pay costs very early in any conflict, however, as NATO forces moved against Kaliningrad, Transnistria and other Russian holdings. The Russian Navy would likely come under severe attack from NATO submarines and aircraft. Long range strikes would debilitate much of the rest of Russia’s air force and air defense network. In short, Russia could grab the Baltics, but only at a cost vastly in excess of the value of holding onto them. This is how NATO conducted deterrence in 1949, and it’s how NATO does deterrence today.
Robert Farley, a frequent contributor to the National Interest, is author of The Battleship Book. He serves as a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky. His work includes military doctrine, national security, and maritime affairs. He blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and Information Dissemination and the Diplomat.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/Defense Intelligence Agency

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Is nuclear Armageddon more likely than ever?

The Week Staff

Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

February 27, 2016

New weapons, unstable nations, and terrorism are raising the nuclear stakes. Is a doomsday attack more likely? Here's everything you need to know about the new nuclear arms race:

How many nuclear weapons are there?About 16,000. Russia and the U.S. have 93 percent of them, with more than 7,000 each; the rest are split between France, China, the U.K., Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. The global stockpile is much smaller than it was at the height of the Cold War: In 1986, Russia and the U.S. had 64,000 nukes pointed at each other — enough to devastate every square inch of the entire globe. But there are growing fears that nuclear catastrophe is becoming increasingly likely. The established nuclear powers are modernizing their arsenals with smaller, more sophisticated weapons. The unstable regime in nuclear-armed North Korea is trying to develop a hydrogen bomb. ISIS, which is richer and more ambitious than any previous terrorist group, is trying to get hold of a nuclear device. The Doomsday Clock, the symbolic countdown to Armageddon, was last year moved from five minutes to midnight to three minutes. "We are facing nuclear dangers today that are in fact more likely to erupt into a nuclear conflict than during the Cold War," says former Secretary of Defense William Perry.

What's the biggest worry?
Probably North Korea, since it's run by the erratic, belligerent dictator Kim Jong-Un. The Hermit Kingdom carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, and claimed it was a hydrogen bomb. Atomic bombs create their explosive energy solely through nuclear fission, while H-bombs rely on nuclear fusion, the same chain reaction that drives the Sun. This makes them vastly more powerful than atomic weapons: A-bombs tend to be measured in kilotons (equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT); H-bombs in megatons (1 million tons of TNT). Nuclear scientists are unconvinced that North Korea's underground test was a thermonuclear weapon, based on the shock waves it produced. But the country is believed to have built a 10-kiloton atomic weapon — slightly smaller than the Hiroshima bomb, but enough to destroy a city. The regime already has the capability to strike South Korea, Japan, and other nearby countries with nuclear weapons; its recent launch of a satellite into orbit, which was widely seen as an intercontinental ballistic missile test, suggested that it could soon reach the U.S.

What are other powers doing?
Arming up. Russia's defense budget has increased by over 50 percent since 2007 — a third of it is devoted to nuclear weapons. China is increasing its warhead stocks and developing nuclear-armed submarines. Pakistan and India's own nuclear standoff shows no sign of cooling. President Obama, who in 2009 pledged to try to create a "world without nuclear weapons," has proposed spending $1 trillion over the next 30 years updating America's nuclear arsenal, replacing 12 nuclear-armed submarines, 450 land-based missiles, and hundreds of nuclear bombers. Some of the weapons in development are very controversial.

Why is that?
They're becoming smaller and more advanced, and thus more likely to be used. Last fall, the U.S. Air Force tested its first precision-guided atom bomb, which can be remotely guided like a cruise missile to zero in on small targets. Its explosive power can be dialed up or down, from 50 kilotons to 0.3 kilotons. Critics argue that nuclear weapons should never be used as battlefield weapons — only as a deterrent. "What going smaller does," says retired Gen. James Cartwright, "is make the weapon more thinkable." Russia's new weapons are also causing concerns. Last November, the Kremlin leaked plans for a nuclear torpedo designed to sneak under traditional nuclear defenses and hit cities or military installations along the coasts.

Could terrorists acquire a nuke?
It's possible. Between 1995 and 2012, the International Atomic Energy Agency catalogued 2,200 attempts to steal or smuggle uranium. ISIS's propaganda magazine has suggested buying a nuclear weapon in Pakistan and smuggling it into the U.S. Nuclear experts warn that an improvised device could be fitted into an SUV-size shipping container. Ports and airports are fitted with radiation sensors, but they only work at very close range. Another potential threat is a "dirty bomb" — a regular explosive device that would spray radioactive material over a blast zone, exposing thousands of people to radiation and turning an entire city into an uninhabitable ghost town. Authorities in Iraq are now searching for a sizable quantity of "highly dangerous" radioactive material stolen last year, which theoretically could wind up in the hands of ISIS.

Is a nuke-free world possible?
Not in the foreseeable future. Once rogue nations develop nuclear weapons, they're extremely unlikely to relinquish them. "The reason you attacked Afghanistan is because they don't have nukes," a North Korean diplomat told American negotiators in 2005. "That is why we will never give up ours." For similar reasons, none of the nine nuclear powers will surrender its weapons. The nuclear genie was let out of the bottle in Hiroshima in 1945, and it will probably never be forced back in.

Monitoring nuclear wannabes
Any nation seeking to develop nuclear weapons has to test them — and the good news is that it has become impossible to conduct a nuclear test in secret. With a huge network of seismic stations and underwater hydroacoustic centers, the international organization responsible for enforcing the ban on testing can detect and measure a nuclear explosion anywhere in the world. But uncovering the construction of a nuke is another matter. Satellites play a big part, but they're far from infallible. Syria hid a nuclear reactor by assembling it in a building with a lowered floor, which from the outside looked too small to house such a facility. (The reactor was discovered and destroyed by Israel in 2007, before it could be completed.) Once a program has been detected, advances in nuclear forensics — the analysis of air and soil for radioactive particles — have made it very hard to cover up previous activity. "You can detect individual atoms," says Andreas Persbo of Vertic, the international agreement verification think tank. "It's virtually impossible to hide that you've been doing nuclear activity in a room."

Nuke chief: running out of time to begin updating nukes

The commander of U.S. nuclear war-fighting forces says time is running out to begin modernizing nuclear weapons that are reaching the end of their useful lives

By Robert Burns, Associated Press 16 hours ago

This Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016 photo provided by the U.S. 

Air Force shows an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental …

 

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) -- In describing how little room the Pentagon has to extend the life of its decades-old nuclear forces, the top U.S. nuclear war-fighting commander, Navy Adm. Cecil Haney, says "we're at the brick wall stage."
Time to begin modernizing the country's nuclear weapons is running short, he and other Pentagon leaders say. They contend the force is still in fighting shape — "safe, reliable and effective" is the official mantra. But they also argue the time has come to begin modernizing the force or risk eroding its credibility as a deterrent to attack by others.
They don't face brick wall-like resistance in Congress, but the debate over spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build and field a new generation of nuclear-capable bombers, submarines and land-based missiles is just beginning.
Critics say full-scale modernization is neither affordable nor necessary.
The debate is influenced not only by the perceived need to fully replace aging weapons but also by worries about North Korea's nuclear ambitions and concern over what Defense Secretary Ash Carter calls Russia's "nuclear sabre-rattling."
Robert Work, the deputy secretary of defense, said the Pentagon will need an estimated $18 billion a year between 2021 and 2035 to modernize the three "legs" of the U.S. nuclear triad — weapons capable of being launched from land, sea and air.
"We need to replace these," Work said. "We can't delay this anymore."
The enormous sums needed are at risk of getting squeezed by high-priority requirements for non-nuclear, conventional weapons. And Work's numbers don't include the billions that would be needed to modernize the nuclear warheads on the business end of missiles and bombs.
"Modernization now is not an option" — it must happen, Haney, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said in an interview on Friday, just hours after watching a test launch of an unarmed Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. The Minuteman, which has been on constant 24-hour alert since 1970, has long surpassed its 10-year life expectancy.
Haney said the U.S. stockpile of nuclear warheads is the oldest it has ever been. As head of Strategic Command he is the military's top nuclear war-fighter.
"We have to realize we can't extend things forever," Haney said, noting that the Navy is planning to replace its aging Ohio-class ballistic nuclear missile submarines, while the Air Force intends to build a new nuclear-capable bomber to replace the B-52.
Work said that although the Pentagon is closely monitoring Russia's nuclear modernization, which includes development of new versions of its ICBMs, those moves are not driving U.S. decisions about how quickly and broadly it should modernize its nuclear forces.
Some private analysts, however, see the U.S. and Russia entering a new arms competition.
"It's disturbing how quickly both the United States and Russia are sliding back toward the Cold War, both rhetorically and operationally," said Stephen Schwartz, an independent nuclear policy analyst and author.
"Worse still, both the United States and Russia are now using each other's nuclear programs and military activities to justify and rationalize their own," he added.
Haney and Work both were present Thursday night for the Minuteman 3 test launch, which was the second such test of the year. Work said Friday that the test was successful, with the missile's payload landing within a targeted area of water near Kwajalein Atoll in the south Pacific. He said it was the eighth consecutive successful Minuteman test launch, which would mean the last unsuccessful test was in December 2013, according to a chronology provided by the Air Force.