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May 20, 2012

Escalation Dominance

Posted by stoopidnoodle under military | Tags: , , , |
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‘Escalation Dominance’ is a phrase I first encountered as an undergraduate reading about nuclear weapons policy. As wars escalate there is one side that controls the largest potential for destruction, the upward end of the escalation curve. That endpoint is escalation dominance, when the war cannot become any hotter. The theory was that we wanted to own that terminus because then the Soviet Union would not fuck with us.

As a concept it is not overly theoretical and its utility is suspect. Or so we thought. My debate coach did his PhD work with Whalen and we knew not to fuck with him because he controlled escalation dominance. That’s probably all I need to say about the story. Poking the bear and all.

Nicodemus and I opened a can of mustard sauced sardines and put it in the driver’s seat of Whalen’s rental car. It was not supposed to be a joke that went as far as it did. In any case, Whalen did not see the can and he sat down on it and then reached down and stuck his fingers inside it. This is the problem with escalation dominance as a deterrence strategy. Sometimes people know they do not own that terminus and yet they act, thinking that there will not be escalation. Israel could attack Iranian nuclear facilities thinking they have political cover (treaties, unilateral guarantees, etc.) and the aggrieved party then feels a need to respond (internal politics, illegitimacy of treaties and unilateral guarantees, etc.).

We knew we were in for some trouble. What we had thought would be funny and not invoke Whalen’s ire had backfired. It is even possible that Whalen did exactly what we expected (saw the opened can) and decided he would make our innocent prank not-so-innocent by playing it up. Regardless of how we ended up where we were, we knew Whalen would escalate and that it would outpace any retaliation we could conceive.

Whalen convinced our roommate to give him the room key. When we opened the door to our hotel room it smelled like Fisherman’s Wharf. There were oysters in our shoes. A live goldfish was swimming in the toilet. A mackerel was tucked into my bed, so its head was on the pillow. One eye looking up at me.

It was a long trip and after a few days there was still the smell of fish. Whalen took pity on my roommates, especially the one that loaned him the room key and told us that he had upper decked us. The real upper deck is when you have access to someone’s toilet and you take a shit in the tank and not in the bowl. There was another mackerel in the tank and that is what had been stinking up the place.

I never again fucked with Whalen. Escalation dominance was established, but only after a test.

 

September 23, 2009

Retaliatory Launch Only After Detonation

Posted by stoopidnoodle under military | Tags: , , , , |
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The United States' Peacekeeper missile was a M...
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One of the big arguments this year is to change the status of US nuclear weapon launch posture to Retaliate Only After A Detonation (RLOAD) as opposed to the current Launch on Warning (LOW) posture.  Once the early warning system detects a launch then commanders are authorized to launch.  The theory is that if we waited for the enemy attack to arrive then our arsenal might not survive making retaliation impossible.  Many argue, however, that the survivability of our arsenal is no longer in doubt because it is either much larger than other arsenals or other arsenals are not accurate/dependable or our arsenal is well defended/hardened to a first strike.

If it is true that our arsenal will survive a first strike then it makes sense to downgrade alert levels from LOW.  The enemy attack is getting through regardless of when our retaliation occurs.  The benefit to this downgraded hostility is the concern that our early warning system is fallible.  If we were to launch in response to warning detection and that detection ends up being a false positive then millions of people have died needlessly.  However, waiting for an actual detonation would guarantee those people would not have died needlessly.  I will leave the needless question for other venues as I want to deal, instead, with the lack of actual change RLOAD would bring.

There are a few reasons a needless launch might occur under LOW.  If there is an accidental launch on either our or someone else’s part then the change to RLOAD does not solve that problem.  Advocates will answer this argument claiming that RLOAD affords us more time than LOW so we can phone the Chinese, the Russians or whomever and figure out what happened.  However, LOW allows us this ability as well.  LOW does not require an immediate retaliation, but rather a retaliation before the first strike can arrive and decapitate the arsenal.  If a first strike provides a warning (not a nearby submarine launch, not a backpacked nuclear weapon, not a cruise missile attack, etc…) then it provides enough warning to make contact with the supposed aggressor.

A second cause of a warning comes from a faulty warning system.  This is supposed to be the area of largest gain for the change to an RLOAD posture, however, it is really the exact same system dressed up to make us feel better.  A warning of a launch serves as authorization for a field commander to issue the launch command.  Field commanders have the physical ability to order the launch, LOW is just a condition under which they are authorized to do so.  RLOAD merely reconfigures this authorization, but does not impede the physical ability to do so.  That is important to keep in mind.

The supposed benefit of RLOAD is that we ‘know’ a first strike has occurred because there is a detonation.  But, the field commander contemplating launching does not ‘know’.  This is Agamben’s insight on the witness problem.  If someone knew a nuclear detonation had occurred then the odds are they are dead.  Even if they survived they are not inside a secured military base lording over nuclear weapons.  The field commander ‘knows’ there was a detonation because some device relays that knowledge back to her.  However, that is precisely what the warning system does, and the premise why LOW fails is because there are mechanical malfunctions casting doubt on the accuracy of those knowledge relaying systems.  Why RLOAD is then immune from the problem its advocates is not dealt with.