Nipp
Nipp
Dr. Keith B. Payne
Dr. Keith B. Payne is a co-founder of the National Institute for Public Policy, professor emeritus at the Graduate School of Defense and Strategic Studies, Missouri State University, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and former Senior Advisor to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Introduction
In 1910, Sir Norman Angell first published a book entitled, The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage. With numerous illustrations and detailed evidence, Angell reached conclusions that the world was eager to hear, i.e., war and military preparations were of sharply declining value and could soon be a thing of the past. The Great Illusion was a sensation in much of Europe—particularly among the British intelligentsia. Angell was both knighted and awarded the 1933 Nobel Peace Prize for his powerful work.
The basic thesis of Sir Norman’s work was that, given the economic advancement and interdependence of European nations, territorial control and military power no longer were the basis for economic advantage and national prosperity. Continuing to think otherwise was “the Great Illusion.” Angell emphasized the point that wars waged for the purpose of territorial control and associated economic advantages were now more likely to impoverish both winners and losers because war destroys the financial and trade ties that create national wealth in an interdependent international system. War, he said, had become irrational because cooperative relations provide the potential for mutual prosperity. Angell deemed cooperation to be the only rational choice.
In short, Angell asserted that “the need for defence arises from the existence of a motive for attack,”[1] but the old wealth-based motives for attack no longer held. And, as leaders increasingly came to understand that warlike behaviors and preparations could not provide material benefit, rational citizens and leaders would retreat from supporting warlike behaviors and preparations. As broad European communities recognized the advantages of cooperation and the disadvantages of war for winner and loser alike, they would rationally seek cooperative transnational ties and reject war and the preparation for war. Angell wrote that the “Law of Acceleration” could rapidly drive more amicable and peaceful international relations, and prudent disarmament.[2]
Correspondingly, Angell suggested strongly at the time that a general European war was increasingly improbable, and that, “The cessation of military conflict between powers like France and Germany, or Germany and England, or Russia and Germany…has come already….armed Europe is at present engaged in spending most of its time and energy rehearsing a performance which all concerned know is never likely to come off.”[3] To help secure this peace, Sir Norman emphasized the need for the rule of international law and an international court to adjudicate conflicts peacefully.
The actual history of the Twentieth Century, of course, demonstrated that much of Sir Norman’s argument was deeply mistaken. Indeed, had London taken his predictions and disarmament recommendations more to heart, Britain would have been even less prepared to meet Hitler’s existential challenge.
The Great Illusion Redux
Modern church-based and secular proposals for nuclear disarmament, for all their variety, are substantively comparable to Norman Angell’s The Great Illusion in many ways and are as favorably received. For example, in recent years, multiple Nobel Prizes have been awarded for nuclear disarmament advocacy. In addition, disarmament proposals virtually always identify the need for a cooperative transformation of international relations as the path to disarmament.[4] Disarmament proposals invariably project that this greater amity and cooperation among nations can move the international system to some form of global governance that mandates and enforces nuclear disarmament.
It is self-evident that unprecedented global cooperation could lead to a new international order, including nuclear disarmament. But that insight hardly is useful in advancing an understanding of how to achieve disarmament. It simply shifts the question from how to achieve nuclear disarmament to another question, i.e., how do international relations become so amicable and cooperative that nuclear disarmament is the preferred choice of the many national leaderships who now see nuclear arms and deterrence as critical for their national survival in a dangerous world?
The Dynamics for International Transformation?
Akin to Angell’s 1910 thesis, modern nuclear disarmament proposals attribute great power and effect to new dynamics in international relations to drive the transformation of the global order and nuclear disarmament. The needed, unprecedented global cooperation typically is presented as a natural extension of an ongoing trend in human progress and reason—including national leaderships’ decision making that responds rationally to global “nuclear dangers.”[5]
Yet, unlike Sir Norman’s elaborate and detailed work in The Great Illusion, nuclear disarmament advocates typically point to dynamics for this transformation that are obscure, arcane, ambiguous, and/or transcendental. For example, the establishment of a new cooperative world order and nuclear disarmament, it is said, can be a “black swan phenomenon” that “consists of those parts of reality that shape historical change but are currently hidden from our perception or understanding…”[6] Momentum “calls on every person to disarm his or her own heart and to be a peacemaker everywhere….personal and communal conversion and change of heart.”[7] And, “When it becomes possible, it will be as a result of the intervention in our history of some totally unanticipated happening: a shock of some sort to the system, a charismatic leader who mobilizes a new public consciousness, a new cultural turn toward spirituality and universal humanism, even a repudiation of war as a legitimate institution.”[8]
In their highly acclaimed 1983 Pastoral Letter, American Catholic Bishops advanced the goal of cooperative global governance and corresponding nuclear disarmament. They identify the power of “public opinion” and “the genius of man” as dynamics for this transformation.[9] Others suggest that “revolutions of the mind,” “rising powers in the non-West” and “countries that embrace soft power” can drive national “accountability” under “international law,” “the needed nonviolent revolution,” and thus a new “peace-centric system.” These, it is said, can lead to the needed global transformation and disarmament.[10] The corresponding rejection of deterrence policies in favor of disarmament is said to be “rooted in morality, law, and a sense of the spiritual destiny and potential of the human species.”[11]
Additional dynamics for global transformation and disarmament identified include, “citizen movements that cry for peace so loudly that the world’s leaders cannot ignore us,”[12] “a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order,”[13] “a sense of urgency,” “human consciousness,” and “action…grounded on a solid foundation of hope.” These can lead to “change so profound that the status of man himself is drawn into question…”[14] Somewhat less nebulous are, “the normative force of the prohibition of acquiring nuclear weapons,” the common desire for nuclear non-proliferation, existing treaty obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and “unofficial advance work” done “by international experts.”[15]
Perhaps pointing to these dynamics for a cooperative global transformation and disarmament is prescient. But there is no denying that how and when these dynamics might lead there, at best, is opaque and unpredictable on any time frame.
Rejecting Armaments to Advance Transformation
Just as Angell’s The Great Illusion argued strongly against the military armaments of the day, so too are contemporary disarmament advocates extremely critical of nuclear deterrence policies and capabilities. These work against their pursuit of nuclear disarmament as the far safer and more effective alternative to policies of deterrence.
Consequently, proponents of nuclear disarmament often seek to “stigmatize” nuclear weapons and discredit policies of nuclear deterrence to help leaders recognize that cooperation and nuclear disarmament are the only rational choices. The existing international order can then transition to a system governed by an orderer able to mandate rules and enforce disarmament. With this transition, national policies of deterrence can be replaced with reliable global nuclear disarmament. Efforts to stigmatize nuclear weapons and discredit deterrence in the service of global transformation and disarmament have been ongoing for decades.[16]
A Contemporary “Great Illusion”?
Within three decades following the 1910 publication of The Great Illusion, it was abundantly clear that Angell had grievously misjudged international relations—as he himself later acknowledged. Whether contemporary church-based and secular nuclear disarmament proposals are prescient or similarly misjudge international relations is now the critical question. If prescient, they deserve greater acceptance and consideration as the basis for national policy decisions. If not, they should not be accorded policy priority or moral superiority over policies of nuclear deterrence; there is nothing superior about chasing an out-of-reach illusion and the opportunity cost of doing so.
Three Reality Roadblocks
The conclusion here is that contemporary proposals for the cooperative creation of a new global order and disarmament are implausible, and thus an imprudent basis for serious security policy formulation. These proposals should be treated with appropriate disapprobation because, as the basis for policy decisions, they could easily undermine Western security. The enduring general reasons for this conclusion have long been understood by Realist scholars.[17] But their reasoning is largely ignored or preemptively dismissed in much contemporary commentary on the subject.
Is disarmament governed by a benign global orderer impossible? At least three seemingly insoluble roadblocks exist, whether the nuclear disarmament proposals come from church-based or secular advocates.
A First Roadblock: “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” In 1788, James Madison observed in The Federalist No. 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Indeed, if all humans were cooperative pacifists, and reliably so, a new world would be at hand and the road to disarmament easily open. Madison’s point, of course, is that humans are not angels and governing institutions are not led by angels; they are led by humans with all too-well-known foibles.
Institutions and individuals obviously are different in many ways. But institutions, consisting of and led by humans, often reflect the frequently less admirable characteristics of their leaders and personnel, including willful deception, inconsistency, the lack of reliability and trustworthiness, and aggressive ambition, inter alia. This reality of institutional behaviors reflecting the choices of their leaders contributes to the first seemingly insoluble problems.
In addition, institutional decision-making processes can introduce their own wayward patterns of behavior independent of any individual. These behaviors include a failure to abide by commitments, inattention to key developments, poorly informed decisions, deceptive practices, the squandering of resources, biased favoritism, the reckless use of force, and a general lack of trustworthiness, inter alia. Consequently, absent a transition of all humanity to Madison’s angels and the attendant, reliably scrupulous and well-informed behavior of the global orderer, there is no reason to expect that any global regime could actually function to ensure that all prospective constituent members of the global body could be trusted to, or be compelled to, conform reliably to cooperative global laws and norms, including disarmament.
Members of an aspiring new order with aggressive designs and intentions could seek to retain military capabilities covertly or prepare covertly for a breakout of capabilities after others had disarmed in whole or part. The latter more scrupulous nations could then be highly vulnerable to the former uncooperative nations, particularly during the perhaps lengthy period of establishing the global orderer’s authority and power to enforce rules. This reality alone is likely to preclude the establishment of the envisaged global orderer. Why so? Because for those great powers with well-armed and untrustworthy foes, this risk of vulnerability could easily outweigh the expected benefits of subordination to a global orderer. For those leaderships, deciding to retain sovereignty and national power could indeed be the most prudent choice.
In addition, prior to relinquishing sovereignty and power to an international orderer, national leaders would have to be confident that the global orderer itself would not have aggressive ambitions, a lack of attention to its advertised mandates and goals, deceptive practices, or engage in the reckless use of force. The prospect that a powerful global orderer could itself become a despotic source of repression and horrific violence is the basis for the comment by renowned scholar and Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling that, with the establishment of a powerful global regime, “some of us would have to turn around and start plotting civil war…”[18]
The question confronting national leaders is not whether, in theory, a reliably scrupulous and powerful global authority would be a far superior alternative to the existing anarchic system. That much is obvious. The question is whether national leaders could ever have sufficient confidence in the prospective new global orderer, on a foreseeable timeline, to subordinate national sovereignty and relinquish the arms they see as critical for national security in the existing anarchic system. This is a wonderful vision, of course, but problematic because the global orderer envisioned would be run by individuals with human imperfections and foibles—again, unless they are Madison’s “angels”—and likely have its own institutional sources of misdeeds.
The prospect of a new global regime that is afflicted with imperfections and errors, as inevitably would be the case, is unlikely to inspire the needed confidence in national leaders on a universal and near-simultaneous basis. Past and existing institutions do not allow optimism in this regard—as is demonstrated by the continuous lineage of political upheavals, rebellions, revolutions, and civil wars across the globe. Why should it be expected that, somehow, a new global body of some variety would be fully reliable and transcend seemingly enduring human and institutional foibles?
Disarmament advocates typically avoid this question beyond, as noted, vague speculation regarding “some totally unanticipated happening,” “a new cultural turn toward spirituality and universal humanism,” a “black swan phenomenon,” or widespread “personal and communal conversion.” These, however, are unlikely to inspire the widespread confidence necessary for the creation of a new global order. Many leaders responsible for national security could instead understandably see basing national survival on hope for the realization of such an institution not as courageous and faithful, but as foolishly placing their nations at potentially even greater risk than otherwise would be the case. This reluctance would not be ignorant, ignoble or foolish. There could be no assurances whatsoever that they would be wrong in that expectation. Given these realities, establishing and sustaining the near-universal consensus needed for the creation and preservation of a high-functioning global regime would seem unlikely in the extreme.
Of course, if the seemingly enduring unscrupulous patterns of human and institutional behavior could be excised and cooperation and amity became the consistent norm—then national subordination to the envisaged global orderer would be prudent and plausible. In that case, however, as noted, a global institution to prevent war and enforce disarmament would hardly be needed. Ironically, a global orderer able to mandate and enforce disarmament would likely become feasible when it is no longer needed.
A Second Roadblock: Why Not a Powerful International Orderer? The second seemingly insoluble problem follows from the first. National leaders may well find some value in relatively weak international institutions, such as the past League of Nations and the contemporary United Nations. But, the great powers have refused to provide them with the combination of power and authority that might seriously challenge their own security requirements and ambitions.[19] The problem, of course, is that while relatively weak global institutions cannot forcefully challenge the great powers’ ambitions, and thus may be acceptable, they also are incapable of reliably mandating and enforcing the needed global order, norms, and law—as has been demonstrated for over a century, first by the League of Nations and since by the United Nations. Powerful global institutions reliably able to protect and enforce could, in principle, enforce global governance, but appear unacceptable to great powers for that very reason. The available evidence is virtually entirely contrary to any expectation that great powers will subordinate themselves for the creation of a powerful global orderer. This is not unreasonable; it is a rational response to the fact that there can be little confidence that a global orderer, once created, would reliably exercise its power for the adequate protection of all and would not itself become an existential threat.
A Third Roadblock: The Suggested Solutions to International Anarchy Do Not Address the Problem. A third problem confronting the disarmament agenda is that the two interrelated roadblocks discussed above are not obviously subject to correction via the dynamics advocates generally identify as the basis for transformation, e.g., reason, human “genius,” some new organizational structure, “rising powers in the non-West,” “countries that embrace soft power,” “action…grounded on a solid foundation of hope,” or, “the normative force of the prohibition of acquiring nuclear weapons.” These factors, powerful as they may be or become, are largely unrelated to the fundamental mistrust characteristic of international relations.
The supposedly powerful dynamics identified do not address the need because it is not correctable ignorance or a lack of reason that causes the absence of mutual trust and consequent fear. Mistrust in the prospective behavior of other nations (or an aspiring global orderer) is a reasonable response to seemingly enduring unscrupulous patterns of human and institutional behavior and the anarchic structure of the international system. These appear unlikely to yield to genius, reason, public opinion, or some new analytical or communication tools. Indeed, reasonable mistrust and trepidation can compel fully informed, reasonable, even brilliant national leaderships to seek, and cling to, national power, including nuclear weapons, because nuclear deterrence can contribute to national security in an anarchic and conflict-laden international system. In fact, the more informed a leadership may be about the aggressive intentions and capabilities of powerful neighbors, the more reasonable is its likely desire to accumulate and retain power for national defense.
In short, the lack of cooperation and amity often is not a matter of missing intellect or reason on the part of national leaders, but of their recognition of the seemingly enduring human and structural realities that bound their behavior. There is little, if any, apparent evidence that the root causes of international insecurity and mistrust are abating. Ample evidence of the conflicting national interests, irreconcilable goals, and lawless behavior that drive mistrust and mutual suspicion is manifest on a daily basis. To be sure, nuclear deterrence is only a palliative in this context, but for many leaderships facing well-armed and dangerous foes, the hope for a global orderer and nuclear disarmament does not provide a practicable alternative to deterrence on any workable timeframe.
No Opposition to the Idea, But Recognition of Seemingly Enduring Realities and the Cost of Chasing Illusions
This discussion should not be read as opposition to the ideal of a reliably cooperative world order. However, it is unhelpful or worse for disarmament proponents to point to a new global orderer to mandate and enforce disarmament, when the dynamics for transformation that they identify are vague, obscure, arcane, transcendental, and unclearly related to the root problems. In addition, frequent disparagement of deterrence and corresponding efforts to “stigmatize” nuclear weapons may undermine a tool known to provide limits on the prospect for nuclear aggression,[20] at least on occasion (i.e., deterrence), in pursuit of a vision unlikely to be realized in any foreseeable timeframe for fully understandable reasons.
A vision beset by seemingly insoluble roadblocks, unacknowledged potential regrets, and the complete failure to identify how to get “from here to there” is no real alternative and should not be considered the basis for rejecting the alternative known to provide a measure of limitation. Indeed, the ongoing campaign to so denounce nuclear weapons and deterrence is much more likely to have a restraining effect on Western democracies than on their authoritarian foes. The potential imbalance in the likely political effects of this advocacy may contain the seeds of future international crises and catastrophe; this serious caveat seems not to restrain such disarmament activism.
Summary and Conclusion
A century after the publication of The Great Illusion, Sir Norman’s “Great Illusion” appears to have been replaced by a wholly different illusion. That new illusion is the contemporary proposition offered by many church-based and secular advocates that nuclear disarmament can replace the need for nuclear deterrence and should be the focus of national policies.
The end of the Cold War brought widespread expectations that, somehow, international relations and human interactions had changed. Nuclear disarmament was widely anticipated as a new cooperative new world order supposedly replaced the constant episodes of great power warfare that had so characterized the past. Fewer than two decades later, however, it was once again painfully obvious that the structural and behavioral conditions that are the reasons countries seek and need armaments, including the benefits of nuclear deterrence, are much more resilient than the naïve Zeitgeist that followed the end of the Cold War.
It seems that this general lesson must be relearned with every new generation. In 1954, the great American diplomat, George Kennan, pointed to the same dynamic and idealist Zeitgeist in his assessment of the earlier, ill-fated 1925-1935 disarmament discussions under the League of Nations:
It had been pointed out by thoughtful people, many years before these discussions began, that armaments were a symptom rather than a cause, primarily the reflection of international relations, and only secondarily the source of them. I know of no sound reason why, even in 1925, anyone should have supposed that there was any likelihood that general disarmament could be brought about by multilateral agreement among a group of European powers whose mutual political differences and suspicions had been by no means resolved. The realities underlying the maintenance of national armaments generally were at that time no more difficult to perceive than they are today.[21]
Nuclear disarmament may, someday, be possible. But the beginning of wisdom in this regard is to understand that a manifest transformation of the global order must precede disarmament, and that some powerful dynamic that is now, at best, nebulous, will have to drive that transition. The realization of that vision would almost certainly have to wait until that dynamic—whatever it may be—and resulting transition are so mature as to be fully apparent to leaders responsible for national security. The global orderer must be seen as capable of the task of mandating and enforcing disarmament without also itself being a potentially despotic threat. The need for this transformation is a high bar and not a trivial detail; it is the single most fundamental point. Yet, the dynamics for this transformation identified by disarmament proponents are, at best, of dubious power and effect.
To misunderstand the challenges to the realization of disarmament is to misunderstand the basic realities of international relations—that the existing anarchic international system is highly resistant to the type of structural transformation recognized by virtually all as necessary for disarmament, i.e., a cooperatively-created global body able to mandate and enforce disarmament. This resistance is not because national leaders typically are foolish, uninformed or malevolent in this regard. It is because they are responsible for national security in an often unpredictable, dangerous, and anarchic international system.
Given historical experience, the prospect is very real that one or more nations would cheat on a multilateral nuclear disarmament agreement. All compliant nations would then be vulnerable to their less scrupulous foes. Consequently, a powerful global authority capable of monitoring and enforcing agreements is likely necessary for disarmament to be deemed a prudent choice. Yet, the establishment of such a global authority has consistently proven impossible given the enduring, sharp conflicts of interests among nations that often lead to violence. How these are to end on any realistic, foreseeable time frame is the unanswered and seemingly insoluble question.
In addition, yielding sovereignty and power to the hypothetical global authority would demand that national leaders also first trust that the global authority itself would reliably act in a conscientious and pristine manner. Yet, unless all prospective leaders and agents of that global authority could be expected to shed seemingly enduring patterns of inconsistent and unscrupulous behavior, it could immediately pose its own potential threat to its members.
Barring the fundamental transformation of humankind, and thus international relations, there appears to be little or no basis for trusting foes or a prospective global authority as necessary for disarmament. That trust seems absent in the past and shows no sign of emerging, and the dynamics for change identified by disarmament advocates shed no light on how to correct this seemingly enduring characteristic of international relations. It is in light of this harsh reality that leaderships now reliant on nuclear deterrence must weigh various church-based and secular proposals for disarmament. It seems unlikely that many ever will judge them to be prudent.
Some leaderships may elect to advance policies geared toward disarmament, but until a new world order emerges, or an alternative, new form of deterrence is at hand, when disarmament aspirations are incompatible with sustaining deterrence, for many the prudent priority option almost certainly will remain deterrence. In sharp contrast to prevalent church-based and secular calls for disarmament based on obscure dynamics and a wholly uncertain transformation of the international system, deterrence policies have a demonstrated measure of effectiveness for preventing war and its escalation in the existing anarchic environment.
Deterrence policies must, of course, be as safe, secure and non-provocative as possible, and a practicable, safer alternative to nuclear deterrence would be a great and unalloyed good. But a cooperative global transition and disarmament almost certainly is not a plausible alternative. The resilience of this truth and its significance seemingly must be relearned by every new generation—as is illustrated by the ill-fated disarmament conferences of the 1920s and 1930s, Sir Norman Angell’s even earlier frustrated predictions, and the successive failures of the League of Nations and United Nations to meet expectations. Unfortunately, the elegance of disarmament advocacy and the unarguable beauty of the goal do not put it within reach.
[1] Norman Angell, The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage (London: William Heinemann, 1912), p. 337.
[2] Ibid., pp. 119, 220.
[3] Michael Rühle, “The End of the ‘Great Illusion’: Norman Angell and the Founding of NATO,” NATO Review, January 14, 2019, available at https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2019/01/14/the-end-of-the-great-illusion-norman-angell-and-the-founding-of-nato/index.html.
[4] See, for example, David Krieger in, Richard Falk and David Krieger, The Path to Zero (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2012), p. 209; and. David Cortright and Raimo Väyrynen, Towards Nuclear Zero (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 21.
[5] Examples of cooperation and progress can be enumerated: “…optimism is the most logical, sound, and defensible position to arrive at after a rigorous study of history. We do not live in a perfect world. But we live in a perfectible one. History shows that, over the long run, we collectively have made progress work.” David Rothkopf, “The Case for Optimism,” Foreign Policy, No. 221 (Nov.-Dec. 2016), p. 56. (Emphasis added).
[6] Richard Falk in, The Path to Zero, op. cit., pp. 200, 204.
[7] Peter Turkson, “Foreword,” in, A World Free from Nuclear Weapons: The Vatican Conference on Disarmament, op. cit., pp. x-xi.
[8] Falk, in The Path to Zero, op. cit., p. 201.
[9] See the American Catholic Bishops’ Pastoral Letter in, “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response,” Origins, Vol. 13, No. 1 (May 19, 1983), p. 30.
[10] Falk and Krieger in, The Path to Zero, op. cit., pp. 208-209.
[11] Richard Falk in, Ibid., p. 36.
[12] Ronald Sider and Richard Taylor, Nuclear Holocaust & Christian Hope (Downers Grove, Intervarsity Press, 1982), pp. 227-228.
[13] World Federalist Association, “Cronkite Champions World Government,” Washington Times, December 3, 1999, p. A2.
[14] Richard Falk, This Endangered Planet (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), pp. 292-293.
[15] George Perkovich and James Acton, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons, Adelphi Papers, No. 396 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2008), pp. 7-8, 13, 84.
[16] See for example, Sider and Taylor, Nuclear Holocaust & Christian Hope, Chapter 3; more recently, see the discussion in, Matthew Gault, “The Lawyer Working to Dismantle the World’s Nuclear Weapons: Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, dreams of a world free from the threat of nuclear war,” Vice News (Motherboard), December 16, 2020, available at https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvx7vv/the-lawyer-who-is-working-to-dismantle-the-worlds-nuclear-weapons.
[17] See, for example, Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919-1939 (New York: Harper and Row, 1964); Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1962), Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977); and William O’Brien, The Conduct of Just and Limited War (New York: Praeger, 1983.
[18] Thomas Schelling, “The Role of Deterrence in Total Disarmament,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 40, No. 3 (April 1962), p. 405.
[19] As an illustration of this point, the United Nations itself is designed to provide the permanent members of the Security Council with veto power over prospective U.N. actions. Consequently, when members of the Security Council disagree, the U.N. is effectively prevented from actions necessary to defend a member state—as has been illustrated yet again by the U.N.’s wholly toothless response to Russia’s ongoing, naked aggression against Ukraine. This power arrangement within the U.N. was a conscious part of its design. See, the discussion in, Ashley Semier, “Why Isn’t the UN Doing More to Stop What’s Happening in Ukraine?” CNN, April 15, 2022, available at https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/15/politics/united-nations-ukraine-russia/index.html.
[20] See, for example, the discussion in, Keith B. Payne, Shadows on the Wall: Deterrence and Disarmament (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, 2020), pp. 30-32; see also, the discussion in Keith B. Payne and James Schlesinger, et al., Minimum Deterrence: Examining the Evidence (Fairfax, VA: National Institute Press, 2013), pp. 13-14.
[21] George F. Kennan, Realities of American Foreign Policy (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), pp. 20-21.
This Information Series article is adapted from Keith B. Payne, Chasing a Grand Illusion: Replacing Deterrence With Disarmament (National Institute Press, 2023).
The National Institute for Public Policy’s Information Series is a periodic publication focusing on contemporary strategic issues affecting U.S. foreign and defense policy. It is a forum for promoting critical thinking on the evolving international security environment and how the dynamic geostrategic landscape affects U.S. national security. Contributors are recognized experts in the field of national security. National Institute for Public Policy would like to thank the Sarah Scaife Foundation for the generous support that made this Information Series possible.
The views in this Information Series are those of the author(s) and should not be construed as official U.S. Government policy, the official policy of the National Institute for Public Policy or any of its sponsors. For additional information about this publication or other publications by the National Institute Press, contact: Editor, National Institute Press, 9302 Lee Highway, Suite 750 |Fairfax, VA 22031 | (703) 293- 9181 |www.nipp.org. For access to previous issues of the National Institute Press Information Series, please visit https://nipp.org/national-institutepress/informationseries/.
© National Institute Press, 2023