Strategic stability

Strategic stability is a concept[1] in the international relations indicating lack of incentives for any party to initiate the nuclear first strike;[2] it is also used in a broader sense of the state of the international environment helping to avoid a war.[3] Strategic stability characterizes the degree of the deterrence provided by the mutual assured destruction and depends on the survivability of the strategic forces after the first strike.[4]

Definition

The meaning of the term depends on the context. Edward Warner, a U.S. Secretary of Defense's representative at the New START talks, has observed that the strategic stability can be defined at multiple levels, from the narrowest to the broadest:[3]

  1. The most narrow sense, described in this article – making the first strike less tempting in the event of a crisis (also known as crisis stability) and absence of incentives to build up the nuclear arsenals (avoiding the arms race instability) – is used by the nuclear-weapon states, including the United States,[5] Even in this narrowest sense there is no universal agreed-upon definition of the strategic stability or ways to quantify it,[6] as the vulnerabilities are country-specific;
  2. A broader sense describes the condition of no armed conflict between the nuclear powers;
  3. In its broadest sense strategic stability defines an international situation, not necessarily global, which is not conducive to an outbreak of a war.

Evolution

The governments, sometimes intentionally, make confusing references to the strategic stability:[7]

  • the most consistent is the US government that typically uses the term in the context of reducing incentives to strike first, although occasionally the term is used in a broader sense;
  • the Russian government uses all three meaning listed above interchangeably;
  • the position of China ranges from refusing to acknowledge the applicability of the term to the PRC (since, in the Chinese view, the stability requires at the minimum the nuclear balance) to the statements that the disarmament efforts shall have strategic stability and indivisibility of security as their goals.

Although the traditional view of the impact of the strategic stability, to make a first strike less plausible, was clearly articulated only in 1990 in a joint US-Soviet statement,[8] the corresponding ideas date back to the early 1950s (the exact roots are hard to identify, as many authors were "circling around" the topic at the time).[1] During the development of the concept (until the early 1960s) the adjective "strategic" was rarely used, most authors used the term "stability" instead, mostly in the sense of the modern crisis stability.[1] The early thinking that evolved into the discussion of stability dates as early as 1946, when the dueling views of Bernard Brodie and William L. Borden were expressed. Brodie considered the nuclear bombs to be an effective weapon when used against the cities, while Borden argued that in the almost inevitable future nuclear war the prime target should be the nuclear forces of the enemy, as "attacking cities ... can so easily be carried out later", and the "assets of surprise and the initiative" should not be squandered on them. In combination, these views reflect both sides of the strategic stability framework: the problem of the vulnerability of the strategic forces to a surprise attack and protecting the ability for a nuclear retaliation as a solution.[9]

Notes
  1. Gerson 2013, p. 3.
  2. Trenin 2019, p. 7.
  3. Acton 2013, pp. 117–118.
  4. Steinbruner 1978, p. 411.
  5. Acton 2013, p. 118.
  6. Gerson 2013, p. 2.
  7. Acton 2013, pp. 118–119.
  8. Rojansky 2013, p. 304.
  9. Gerson 2013, pp. 4–5.

References
  • Elbridge A. Colby; Michael S. Gerson, eds. (2013). Strategic Stability: Contending Interpretations (PDF). Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press. ISBN 978-1-58487-562-8. OCLC 1225683283.
  • Trenin, Dmitri. "Strategic Stability in the Changing World" (PDF). carnegieendowment.org. Carnegie Moscow Center. Retrieved March 21, 2019.
  • Steinbruner, John D. (September 1978). "National Security and the Concept of Strategic Stability". Journal of Conflict Resolution. 22 (3): 411–428. doi:10.1177/002200277802200303. eISSN 1552-8766. ISSN 0022-0027.
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