Deproliferation in the Debates

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

That was the most sad segue for myself I've ever created, right? You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:26

I'm Aaron Stein, the director of the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in a very muggy Philadelphia.

Anne Pellegrino 0:33

And I'm Anne Pellegrino, a research associate and project manager at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

Jeffrey 0:40

Aaron, are you actually insane enough to have watched that debate last night?

Aaron 0:46

All two hours and 22 minutes. And let me tell you, I didn't have a cocktail throughout the entire thing. Oh, wow. I had two club sodas.

Anne 0:58

Any particular reason?

Aaron 1:01

I just didn't feel like a beer last night. And it was, you know, like I was watching it on my iPhone, putting my son in the bath. And then after that, getting him ready for bed. And then by the time I got downstairs at like 915. They still had an hour to go, little did I know, and just felt like clubs out of time.

Jeffrey 1:19

See, Aaron, I thought you were going to jump right in there with your story of the farmer's market and your tacos.

Anne 1:26

Yes, I went to the farmer's market and bought seven bunches of basil to make pesto and had tacos at the new local taco place that were delicious.

Jeffrey 1:37

I was at a fundraiser for the foundation seeking to modernize the museum facilities at the very old Catholic church in Carmel. Father Sarah's church, which is like a couple hundred years old.

Anne 1:57

Oh, yeah.

Jeffrey 1:58

I'm not much of a churchgoer, and I think as I put on Twitter, that's the way to go to church for me. Yeah. So we had a sir catering and we had some shied wine. It was quite lovely.

Anne 2:14

All right. So we definitely had better nights than Aaron.

Jeffrey 2:17

And you know what, Aaron? We can sit here and read what they said without having to wade through all of that. Two hours and 24 minutes, you said?

Aaron 2:26

Yeah, and like I got to tell you, like CNN sort of set it up like a reality television show. So we had the national anthem. The only thing we were missing was some sort of fighter jet flyover in the intro.

Anne 2:39

No, what you were missing was a rose ceremony because the Bachelorette finale was going on at the same time.

Aaron 2:45

That's phenomenal. But so – The nuclear came up or like the nuclear. I can't even pronounce it the way you're not supposed to pronounce it. That came up during the debate. So I think we need to talk about it. Nuclear. Nuclear. Nuclear. What the hell is wrong with you? I have trouble pronouncing it in that way. You're like Tom York trying to play videotape.

Nuclear. Yeah, that one. So it came up. Elizabeth Warren and Steve Bullock. Who I call Governor What's-His-Name. He's from Montana. The Montana governor who... I have to say I didn't know who he was when he came onto the stage. There was some Googling. What's he polling at? As my Twitter feed was lighting up about the lack of foreign policy, we got foreign policy.

And for the podcast, we got nuclear content.

Anne 3:38

Poll. How did Governor Bullock fare in Tuesday's Democratic primary debate? Oh, it's just a poll that I can take. Never mind.

Jeffrey 3:49

I'm looking at a Morning Consult poll here, and he does not appear to be in the top 10. I'm having to click on more candidates.

Anne 3:59

Someone made the prediction that it is likely that he will not be on the debate stage next time around.

Jeffrey 4:05

Yeah, Morning Consult has him polling at 0%.

Anne 4:09

Oh, well, this is from this is from like, oh, well, and he had he had such he had a moment last night, but he totally poor thing totally botched it.

Aaron 4:18

Yeah. And, you know, I sort of I make it a habit not to be snarky on Twitter during these things. But he used the word deproliferation sort of nonproliferation. But then he said he would encourage proliferation. So he was OK.

Anne 4:31

So what he said, he was like. We need to get back to nuclear proliferation, deproliferation, reducing it. So I – okay. You can say what you're going to say.

Aaron 4:43

So I made fun of that, and then I referenced the Donald Trump start me up instead of new start on Twitter. But Jeffrey actually made a very good point and slightly shamed me a little bit.

Jeffrey 4:53

Which I'm catching hell for on Twitter at the moment. No, but you're right.

Aaron 4:56

So no good deed goes unpunished. Is that – We sort of make fun of people when they botch terms with, and then we stop listening to the substance of what it is that they're saying, just because they don't use the language that we've all adopted. And that shouldn't be a barrier to entry. If the idea that he's talking about is more or less in line, is that a fair assessment of your argument, Jeffrey? Yeah, I, I have become a

Jeffrey 5:26

Bit of a pain in the butt about gatekeeping. Because when I was starting my career, I noticed people gate kept a lot. If they don't like the substance of your argument, they nitpick Whatever you say in order to distract the debate, in order to derail the discussion so that, you know, you never really get to the substance of your remarks.

And, you know, like the famous example, which I know I've told on the podcast is I talked about using nuclear weapons. And then someone, you know, said the term is employ because we use nuclear weapons every day. And it was like. This total left turn. And the person who did it, I actually quite like, so I, you know, it, I don't think that, I think that we as a community, because this is such a specialized field and because the information is very difficult, like it is important for us to be precise.

And so we end up valuing that. And I actually think a lot of the gatekeeping is not necessarily intentional. It's just, you know, you've put in the effort and the time to learn to say nuclear. Right. Right. And and. There is a value to precision. And so I, I don't want to, you know, I'm not, I'm not a Jacobin, right.

When, when it comes to these issues, but at the same time politicians routinely massacre technical terms. And, and so like, He's an idiot, probably, and he is probably not qualified to be president and, you know, on and on and on. But I just I don't know. I have been increasingly concerned that one of the reasons that we lose these debates is because the gatekeeping function is so effective at keeping different voices out.

Aaron 7:19

I think it's right. And, you know, I think one of the candidates who we should maybe focus more on is Elizabeth Warren, because if you probably look at that morning consult poll, she's probably a little higher than Governor Bullock. And she has some thoughts about no first use.

Anne 7:40

Yeah, so... Well, we can also still talk about Bullock, because they kind of sparred back and forth, and I think that... Oh, we could totally make fun of him for being an idiot for disagreeing with her. Right. Right, but, you know, he's a bit more... Eloquent and doesn't botch it as much when he when he makes his points but yeah so warren came out strongly for a u.s no first use policy she said the united states is not going to use nuclear weapons preemptively and we and we need to say that to the entire world it reduces the likelihood that someone miscalculates someone misunderstands but then bullock said that in the and he would What did he say?

He said he wouldn't take that off the table, but that we should be negotiating down so there aren't nuclear weapons. But drawing those lines in the sand at this point, I wouldn't do.

Aaron 8:40

That's appropriately mockable. He also used trigger. Never hope, certainly in my term or anyone else, we really get close to pulling that trigger. I do loathe bad metaphors. That jumped out in my head last night. I guess I get Keith. I was like, it's not a trigger. But perhaps maybe we should talk about no first use and what it is that Warren was implying and whether or not we think it's a good idea.

Jeffrey 9:06

You know, I actually think the substance of those remarks is quite clever because... When we are talking about declaratory policy, this question of what we say about the situations in which we would use nuclear weapons, I actually think one of the more interesting and presumably not partisan considerations is, do you want other countries to be confused about our policy?

Because there is an argument for ambiguity. I don't much like it. But I actually think her point about miscalculation to me is the important one, which is I find it very hard to believe the United States would ever initiate the use of nuclear weapons against America. And I'm pretty sure it's not in our interest for them to be confused about that fact.

Aaron 9:58

Oh, yes. I mean, isn't it sort of the underpinnings of deterrence is both credibility, and that credibility derives from the idea that nobody should be confused that you would use nuclear weapons, but that you wouldn't be the ones to initiate the first use of nuclear weapons.

Jeffrey 10:13

Yeah, you know, I'm pretty sure Tom Schelling was not a great lover of no first use, so I shouldn't invoke him. But he made this kind of related argument on deterrence, which I do think is really important, and he probably would not appreciate the way that I'm applying it. But, you know, people tend to focus on his work on, you know, Deterrence being the ability to inflict pain if, if a state doesn't comply. But there is a separate piece of that which is, you have to be able to credibly signal that you would refrain from doing that if the country complies.

Exactly.

Aaron 10:49

Yeah.

Jeffrey 10:49

And I worry that the Russians have some crazy ideas about when we would use nuclear weapons. I mean, I know we have crazy ideas about when they would use nuclear weapons. And I think into that confusion is where danger finds a way.

Anne 11:04

Well, they just got to look to Trump's Twitter.

Jeffrey 11:10

Somebody should write a novel about a bad tweet starting a nuclear war.

Anne 11:14

It's a good idea, right? Maybe, you know, North Korea focused. Yeah.

Jeffrey 11:19

Yeah, you know, something like Kim Jong-un's not going to be around much longer.

Anne 11:25

Yeah, you know, a retrospective looking at, you know, what happened and, you know, how things went wrong. Yeah, it's a good idea.

Aaron 11:36

I think we should say is that I believe Warren is also the co-sponsor of a bill in the Senate that would make it declaratory policy that the U.S. – to establish a no-first-use policy on behalf of the United States. So this is something that she's been kicking around for a while. And so she obviously feels deeply enough about it is to put it in legislation but also to – You know, bring it up again on the debates page amongst the 10 people vying for 30 seconds of airtime on CNN.

Anne 12:10

Yeah, back in January, Warren and Adam Smith introduced the bicameral No First Use Act. I don't know what the status of that is now, but I doubt it's gone very far.

Aaron 12:27

And I don't know what you – I always worry a little bit when Congress gets involved in the use of nuclear weapons or at least sort of that decision-making platform, particularly because – Well, our Secretary of State isn't all that smart, and so like the 535th Secretary of State is – Only moderately smarter than Steve Bullock. It's something that goes back to the shelling thing that you just mentioned.

The way that you extrapolated based upon his ideas about deterrence is the ability to not inflict pain if you're complying and therefore to credibly signal pain. Is I would never like the idea, and I know that this has been hot because of concerns about Trump's mental capacities, for Congress to interject itself into this decision-making. Maybe that makes me a sort of right-winger, but it always freaks me out a little bit.

So I'm not sure how you would move about a declaratory no-for-use policy outside of just an executive saying it and actually meaning it and beginning to put policies down through the bureaucracy rather than through the legislature.

Jeffrey 13:40

Yeah, I don't think that Congress, as just as a constitutional matter, I mean, I know that they think that their power to declare war gives them this ability. But I mean, I don't know. I'm always, I've always been of the executive power view that once Congress gives the president military forces, the commander-in-chief power kicks in, and it's very hard to imagine a court saying that you know, Congress gets to then Tell the president as commander in chief, the manner in which the forces that he or she has been given can be used.

So I, I appreciate what they're doing. I'm delighted to have this discussion about the scenarios in which the United States should consider the use of nuclear weapons. I'm happy to talk about the Giant cheeto colored lunatic who can do this like I'm very pleased that we're having this discussion I'm I'm not sure well you know Scott Sagan and I have a different idea but I'm you know I'm glad for the debate tell us your idea that was the most sad segue for myself I've ever created right Jeffrey I really want to know your idea but does Aaron want to know my idea please enlighten me well I think yeah yeah I want to know your idea too I'm curious well okay so there are actually two proposals one I did with Scott one I did with Mort Halperin and the late Arnold Cantor each of which is kind of an alternative or parallel to no first use and we talk about them in turn but you know with Scott and I think I did a brilliant pebbles on this from Hiroshima

There's this enormous kind of discussion of What do you say about the situations in which you would use nuclear weapons? And then there's a second set of conversations about, like, does that actually reflect the planning you would do for using nuclear weapons? And we focused on that second question. And our thought is that, you know, as a matter of policy, the U.S. probably should never use a nuclear weapon if a conventional weapon would do just as well.

Anne 15:45

So, like, in any scenario because of, you know, the types of weapons that we have? Yeah. So, I mean...

Jeffrey 15:55

I like it tactically because it it defers it as a military question. So you can't claim you can't do what Bullock did to Elizabeth Warren in the sense that you can't say, well, which city would you be willing to give up? Right. Which is like a dumb argument. But. He did that, right? I'm not confusing him with Liz Cheney.

All these people from up there. You know, because you're not saying you wouldn't use nuclear weapons if you didn't need to, but you're actually trying to set the bar for need to to be reasonably high. And I actually happen to think that there are no targets in that set. Yeah. Or maybe there are only a few. But I'm actually really worried about, you know, I'm not worried about the U.S. conducting a first strike.

I am worried about there being some ambiguity that causes miscalculations. And I worry that the way that we plan to use nuclear weapons, which some documents seems to be about psychological effect, that that makes that problem worse.

Anne 17:09

Well, I guess, so going along with the ambiguity, yesterday CSIS released their new On the Radar website. And I was taking a look at it, and it's all about emerging technologies and how it reduces, how previously we would have, we had two sets of technologies for conventional and the nuclear weapons use detection. And then now those are kind of like, with all these new technologies, that is potentially Becoming blurred, and that really increases this ambiguity that we actually like, really don't want. Oh, do they talk about ASATs? They what? Do they talk about? Scare the pants off me. my first presentation for Monterey Institute, by the way. Oh, Middlebury Institute at Monterey, excuse me. What was the Monterey Institute when you gave the presentation? That's true.

They talk about AI advances in cyber attacks, small sat constellations, and then unmanned underwater vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles. So it's a nice website and I like it. Yeah. Well, you want to learn more.

Jeffrey 18:22

So, I mean, just to sort of end that conversation about that first proposal. I mean, one of the things that Scott and I are worried about is that because there aren't great targets for nuclear weapons and Scott's been running this ethics of war project for a couple of years with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. We're sort of seeing this kind of creep into the justification for nuclear weapons not being their military value or the target that they could destroy, but being the psychological effect that they might have.

And at least to me, that is really worrisome. One, because it's probably illegal, right? It's certainly unethical, and it's probably illegal to use a weapon simply because it terrorizes people. But on a related note, if your real goal is to inflict terror... Rather than accomplish a military objective, I think the chances for miscalculation on the other side go way up, right?

Because you're not really... It's easier to think about military objectives if you think that the other side is just interested in terrorizing you than the scenarios in which nuclear weapons could be used are pretty vast. So I would nip that in the bud and say we should only use nuclear weapons against targets where conventional ones won't do.

I have a second thing I want to say. Just lay it on us, man. Okay, I'll be quick. It's crazy that we talk about the scenarios in which we would use nuclear weapons. You know, I used to do a lot of work with China's nuclear policy and particularly the no first use policy. And they have an unequivocal no first use policy, and it's a nightmare in a declaratory sense because you can always come up with a crazy scenario in which you look like an idiot for not using nuclear weapons, right?

Yeah. And that's a little bit like if you know Detroit's going to get hit, then you... Like, why are you going to let that happen if you could stop it with nuclear weapons, which is the classic terrorist ticking time bomb scenario, which everybody uses, which is like intellectually bullshit, but like whatever. It's very effective in a public setting.

I don't think we should talk about the scenarios for which we would use nuclear weapons. I think we could talk about the scenarios for which we possess nuclear weapons, which is to say, you know, we would observe that. All the decisions we do make, because we never actually, right, it's that silly we use them every day. All the decisions we do make are about acquisition and planning.

And I think we should say that we only acquire capabilities and we only plan to use them. Basically everything we do is only for the purpose of responding to a nuclear strike. And then if somebody asks you about like a crazy hypothetical scenario, I think you say, we don't talk about the scenarios and we certainly don't engage in irresponsible speculation about hypothetical scenarios.

And so I would, I would talk about why we have them being for deterrence only for, for, for only responding to nuclear strikes. I would never, ever, ever, ever talk about the scenarios in which we would actually use them. Cause I think like there be dragons

Aaron 21:25

And that way would solve your – I hate to use this word, but that would solve your credibility issue within the deterrence. Within deterrence, as well as getting around to that no first use. So you could tackle two issues with one policy position or one declaratory policy.

Jeffrey 21:47

Yeah, you're talking about why you have them and what you expect and what they're postured to do. And then when somebody comes up with the, like, well, what if, you know, and you're like, well, like, what if aliens come? Like, I don't... No, that's not the thing we talk about, because that's, you know, we don't speculate, right?

And I think that would be a way to convey the reassuring aspect without getting caught in the semantic games, which, you know, frankly do dog the Chinese. Like, the Chinese have a very good, very clear policy, and it's so clear that... That people constantly play word games with them to try to prove that it's not. And I've just watched Chinese speakers struggle with this, and I think it would be much easier if you just said, this is why we have them, and then say, it's terrible to talk about using nuclear weapons.

I'm not going to engage in that kind of talk.

Aaron 22:38

Maybe you should join the bullet campaign. LAUGHTER You moved to Montana.

Jeffrey 22:49

I am pleased to report that I am volunteering on no campaigns, and it's wonderful. I did that for Obama eight years ago. No, well, I guess it's, what, ten years ago, and I'm so glad to not be doing it. Never again. I mean, never say never, but God, I hope not.

Anne 23:11

Well, I have a happy note to end on. We get to do it all over again tonight. Oh, God. Is there another one? Yeah, because there... How many candidates are there now? I think only one has dropped out.

Aaron 23:27

Only 20 made the stage, but I think there's a few who didn't make the decidedly low bar to get onto this stage.

Jeffrey 23:34

Oh, man. It's a cluster up there. I mean, it's a low bar when you could be polling 0% and still get invited. And have a major moment in the debate, right? Admittedly, one in which you cover yourself with shame, but...

Aaron 23:51

Yeah, it's democracy in action, everybody.

Jeffrey 23:56

It actually is, you know, once upon a time, the primary process was not so open. It was controlled by the parties. And you may say that's undemocratic. And I say Donald Trump would never have been the Republican nominee.

Aaron 24:11

I mean, we're off on a tangent, but it's true. They're bending over backwards in this sort of opening gambit of debates so that we don't have a repeat of the Russia email dump, i.e. The party was trying to push Bernie out. Do you know what I mean?

Jeffrey 24:25

Yeah. Yeah, no, I know what you mean, but like... Well, you know, there's a...

Anne 24:31

I mean, Steve Bullock is... There's a middle ground, and maybe the pendulum has swung a little too far.

Jeffrey 24:36

Steve Bullock is pulling 0%. How many pissed off voters? It's like four white dudes in Montana. Okay, we're off the rails. Okay.

Aaron 24:46

Okay, we're off the rails. Okay, so thanks, guys, for squeezing us in before your staff meeting. And thanks, everybody, for listening. If you like what you're listening to, head on over to patreon.com slash ACW podcast. And if you're a student, for $3 a month, you can join our Slack channel. If you're a regular person, that's $5, where we have extra content up there for anybody who's interested, mostly not about the debates.

With that, Anne, Jeffrey, it's always good to talk.