Aspiring wonks, here is your end-of-semester exam question: It’s not OK to use cluster munitions in metropolitan areas, but it is OK to use nuclear weapons against targets that fall within or close to them. Yes? No? Under some circumstances? Explain.
States that possess nuclear weapons are reluctant to argue whether and how their use applies to the laws of armed conflict. To do so would risk undermining deterrence by nullifying battlefield applications, except as a last resort and for responses in kind. Even here, I suppose legal scholars, like The Hague Court, would have more than a few words to say.
Cluster bombs are not supposed to be used in built-up areas because they can have indiscriminate and long-lasting effects. Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, are widely presumed to be targeted against command and control, war-supporting industry, and leadership targets in and around cities.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara tried (briefly) to place metropolitan areas off-limits to nuclear targeting. He gave a commencement speech at the University of Michigan in June 1962 on this subject. Here’s the key passage:
The US has come to the conclusion that, to the extent feasible, basic military strategy in a possible general war should be approached much the same way that more conventional military operations have been regarded in the past. That is to say, principal military objectives, in the event of a nuclear war stemming from a major attack on the Alliance, should be the destruction of the enemy’s military forces, not of his civilian population… In other words, we are giving a possible opponent the strongest possible incentive to refrain from striking our own cities.
McNamara’s good intentions were defeated by the logic of Cold War nuclear deterrence. The imperative of damage limitation meant that high-value targets in or close to cities could not be stricken from targeting lists – particularly since there could be no assurance of comparable restraint by an adversary once the nuclear threshold was crossed.
Can you imagine hearing an address about nuclear targeting at your college graduation? Thankfully, I’m no longer in the business of reading or grading exams. Still, the question lingers, especially when the answers are unpersuasive.