By Peter Huessy, Warrior Nuclear Weapons Analyst
The new book “Nuclear War” by Annie Jacobson has received multiple rave reviews. It portrays a scenario in which billions of people die within three days of a North Korean strike on the US with two nuclear warheads. The problem? The US deterrent policy that Jacobsen believes is based on nuclear war fighting, and which relies on an automatic launch on warning strategy if Washington discovers a missile has been launched at the United States.
The nuclear Armageddon story starts with North Korea launching a one megaton bomb that hits the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, described as a “bolt-out-of-the blue strike” for which the US is unprepared. Another nuclear weapon takes out a nuclear power plant in California. The United States immediately responds with a launch of 82 ICBMs at the DPRK but inside a short six-minute window within which the US President supposedly must decide whether and how to retaliate.
Jacobson also argues the US has to use our ICBMs because submarine-based missiles cannot be launched to fit within the six-minute window. And since as she claims, Russia’s early warning satellite and radar system are, unfortunately, not very good, and since the US ICBM range is inadequate to hit North Korea without going over Russia, Moscow incorrectly believes that the US retaliatory missile launch is on its way toward Russia, not North Korea.
Believing that the US launch is a first strike against Russia and Putin having adopted a new policy of “launch on warning of an attack,” Jacobson concludes that “Putin will not wait” for confirmation that nuclear warheads have landed on Russia soil. Russia will then launch a massive nuclear strike on the United States. And this would in turn push the United States into attacking Russia with its on-alert remaining nuclear force [which at the start of the war numbered some 1800 strategic nuclear warheads according to Jacobsen.]
The resulting tens of millions of immediate deaths would then be followed by the breakdown of food and energy supplies and the subsequent death of additional hundreds of millions of Americans and Russians. Even worse, the 300 billion pounds of soot produced by the massive fires brings with it “nuclear winter”, as the sun’s warming rays are blocked out from reaching the earth’s surface. The death of billions of people worldwide results.
In a number of interviews with Vanity Fair and Mother Jones, for example, and in reviews by the New York Times and the Cyber Brief, Jacobson argues that the US has a plan to conduct nuclear war fighting which is automatic and set down as a series of previously adopted requirements that leave US officials little leeway to change the US response.
Jacobson also say that one person, the President of the United States, can make the decision to destroy the world, and can do so even without very much information. And she warns, the military “war mongers” have a very “aggressive culture” that has a predilection to “jam” the President toward a “quickly launching a massive retaliatory strike.”
She argues that any Presidential candidate must therefore be assessed on whether that person is stable and not erratic, including as one reviewer noted, an “unsteady commander should not be in charge.” And this is really important, as the country is “at the brink” of possible nuclear war, the book argues. Not coincidentally, the title of a new series of essays being published by the New York Time is “At the Brink,” which in turn was initiated as a means of fully exploring the nuclear disarmament issues raised by the “Oppenheimer” movie.
Unfortunately, the scenario adopted by Jacobson is a “cooked the books” argument. Her book is filled with seriously misunderstood US policy prescriptions, and a gross failure to understand the basics of nuclear deterrence. She asserts nuclear weapons do not make us strong, and need to be significantly reduced in importance, and instead of modernization the US should seek arms control and disarmament.
Not only that, the scenario adopted doesn’t make any strategic sense as well. Why would North Korea just attack the US with two nuclear warheads, knowing full well the US could turn the DPRK into a parking lot?
While admitting that nuclear deterrence has worked perfectly for roughly 75 years, the book warns deterrence might definitely fail and if it fails, any use of nuclear weapons, no matter how small, will result in all out nuclear war. Jacobson also argues that all US previous military war-gaming, going through multiple scenarios of how nuclear weapons might be used, universally ends in general nuclear war. And thus, she concludes, the US policy of “mutual assured destruction” often referenced as “MAD” is itself “mad” and not reliable as a deterrent strategy!
She is wrong on all counts. The US however does not have a “MAD” nuclear strategy and does not have an automatic series of retaliatory strikes to carry out. The US also does not have a launch on warning strategy or policy, although she correctly notes that Russia does. Thus, the US President does not have to respond within six minutes which seems to be based on the assumption that the US does indeed have a “launch on warning” deterrent strategy.
Furthermore, the US would first try and shoot down the incoming North Korean warhead with its GBI or ground-based interceptors, or if available, a better system that is now being discussed and was unanimously recommended by the Strategic Posture Commission.
Jacobson does have the US shoot four interceptors at the incoming warhead, but the result is rigged: they all miss. She references Dr. Ted Postol of MIT that the US missile defense system is only successful 50% of time even in “scripted tests” but in the real world “cannot be effective” says Jacobson and would have almost a zero chance of intercepting a ballistic missile warhead.
However, in fact the GBI system and all national and theater missile defense systems deployed by the United States actually have been successful in nearly 84% of all tests. And while the GBI deployments in Alaska and California number only 44, that small deployment has been due in large part to disarmament advocates that have opposed all US national missile defenses going back to the 1972 ABM treaty.
Dr. Postol however has also been totally wrong about the high success of the Israeli Iron Dome missile defense that Jacobson explains many Americans with whom she has spoken believe the US can duplicate. The Iron Dome missile defense has indeed shot down an estimated 90% of Hamas and Hezbollah missile launches aimed at Israeli settlements.
This Iron Dome success rate was ridiculed by Dr. Postol as unproven. He explained that the Israelis did not suffer casualties but not due to the effectiveness of missile defense but because Israelis learned to run faster to the shelters. Noted Israeli missile defense expert Dr. Uzi Rubin commented that Postol’s “fortune cookie” analysis was ridiculous and was based on an animus toward missile defense rather than a reliance upon scientific fact.
Apart from trying to intercept the incoming NK warhead, for some reason Jacobson rushes the President to fire back and only with land-based ICBMs. However, there is no reason for the President to respond within a 6 minutes window. Even if NK launched a nuclear missile from a submarine and from just off the coast of North Carolina, for example, the warhead could arrive at the Pentagon much more quickly than from an ICBM, but again, what response by the US would require a near immediate Presidential launch decision, especially when no further North Korean missile launches have been detected?
Furthermore, a much more likely US retaliatory response could be to either laun
ch a SLBM from the Pacific from a US Ohio class submarine. Or if available, a Navy submarine or ship based nuclear armed theater cruise missile, (SLCM-N), a technology development that was a top recommendation of the 2023 Strategic Posture Review Commission.
In these scenarios, there would be no over-flight of Russia territory, the US could still destroy key North Korean targets promptly, including the NK leadership, and would be a relatively limited response. A reasonable result? The North Korean launches do not continue. Armageddon does not ensue.
Contrary to what Jacobson assumes, US deterrent strategy is not about “war fighting” but is to ensure the US is able to credibly respond to any adversary launch of nuclear weapons against the United States and its allies, a capability to deter being required across the spectrum of conflict. Such capability is not a “plan for nuclear war” or a “catalyst for Armageddon” as claimed.
It is true that Putin has appeared to have adopted a launch-on warning strategy. But even worse is that his strategy of “escalate to de-escalate” has also been adopted by the Russian leader. Here Jacobsen gets totally confused. It is not as she claims the strategy of the United States to use nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict. In fact, the US military has repeatedly underscored that the enemy introduction of nuclear weapons into a conventional conflict results in “nothing holds”—meaning our conventional war strategies of victory would fail.
And while indeed it was General John Hyten who brought this Russian strategy to our attention, Jacobson mangles the facts. The US nuclear umbrella and extended deterrence over our NATO and Western Pacific allies are not an aggressive and unwarranted “escalate” strategy.
General Hyten warned years ago “escalate to de-escalate” is a Russian not an American strategy. For example, Moscow attacks conventionally, as they did Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. And then if faced with a counterattack which might succeed, Moscow threatens the limited use of battlefield nuclear weapons which former President Yeltsin ordered Russia to develop in 1999. The objective? To get the US to stand down and not come to the defense of an ally attacked by Russia.
Thus, the Russian “escalate to de-escalate” policy is actually an “escalate to win” strategy, as Dr. Brad Roberts has explained. The policy is to secure the fruits of aggression and fundamentally eliminate the US conventional and extended nuclear umbrella.
When during the Cold War, the US would bring its nuclear capability to central Europe if faced with a conventional strike through the Fulda Gap by the Warsaw Pact nations, it was to prevent aggression and war in the first place, not to help aggression succeed.
In conclusion, the scenario offered by Annie Jacobson will scare the uninformed. And if believed might undermine the American public’s support for our nuclear deterrent.
In particular the story is a rigged critic on American ICBMs and Missile Defenses, the two bet noirs the disarmament community has been trying to kill for nearly the past half century.
Jacobson repeats all the criticisms about these systems and weaves them into a threadbare doomsday tapestry. We are told ICBMs can be launched in minutes; ICBMs don’t have adequate range and thus have to fly-over Russia; ICBMs are first strike weapons; ICBMs will end the world; ICBMs cannot be recalled.
Indeed, ICBMs can be promptly launched but that is a positive attribute because it tells an enemy that their key assets cannot remain in a sanctuary free from being destroyed. Given these assets are what they value most, holding such valuable assets at risk is the central plank of US deterrent policy through at least 14 Presidential administrations.
In the 75 years of the nuclear age, no ballistic missile has been launched at the USA. And no launch committee meeting has ever been convened at Strategic Command to evaluate such a launch.
And no President has ever had to decide to launch an ICBM or SLBM.
That is because deterrence works.
To eliminate deterrence, or weaken it, without replacing the system with something equally effective, would be a dereliction of duty.
And could indeed put the lives of billions of folks on this planet at risk.
Peter Huessy is the Senior Nuclear Weapons analyst, Center for Military Modernization. Huessy is also President of Geo-Strategic Analysis, Potomac, Maryland. Huessy has a Masters Degree in International Relations from Columbia University and a BS in East Asian Studies from Yonsel University in Seoul, South Korea.
