Research and Case Studies

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  CONCESSIONS TO THE LIMITED POWERS: Considerations of Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons, Asymmetrical Capability, and Extended Deterrence

  Bob Williams and James Giordano

  Quite recently, nuclear strategy scholars Kier Lieber and Daryl Press posited that arms’ tables have turned, citing the asymmetry of limited nuclear powers as a reboot of the United States (US)-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) tactical nuclear playbook during the Cold War. Their key message—that “The United States must take seriously the nuclear capabilities and resolve of its foes”—isn’t lost on us: we previously called for the need to begin serious counter-weapons of mass destruction (WMD) planning for adversarial use of nuclear weapons below the threshold of Armageddon. We must raise an objection, however, to the assertion that states with limited nuclear capabilities are reprising the US’ 20th century strategy of coercion and dissuasion with their handfuls of weapons. Instead, we see a world wherein not only Russia and China, but militarily asymmetrical nuclear aspirants, such as North Korea and Iran, increase their resolve to employ nuclear threats to gain concessions outside previously conceived escalation ladders.

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  Miniaturization as Grail in the Third Nuclear Age

  Bob Williams and James Giordano

  Instability of the international system and order is arising from competition among great powers, who possess large, thermonuclear arsenals, and from greater multipolarity of both established and aspirational nuclear weapons states to exercise their own aims for possessing “tactical-size” yields. The capacity of the United States arsenal to deter a nuclear attack on its partners and/or allies—as affirmed in the combined 2022 National Defense Strategy and Nuclear Posture Review—will be challenged in an emerging Third Nuclear Age by threats of nuclear weapons use with far lower yields (i.e., tactical or non-strategic nuclear weapons) than those of the Cold War. The First Nuclear Age clearly began in 1945 and was characterized by the bipolarity of US-Soviet relations. The collapse of the USSR ended this era, but a Second Nuclear Age had already started, overlapping with the first. This intervening period proliferated the bomb to rising powers, regimes with starving populations, and those with revisionist agendas; it began sometime after China’s first test in 1964 and has matured through the present aspirations of North Korea and Iran. Still, the world has remained free of nuclear weapons use in conflict for nearly 78 years, driven by fears of global catastrophe from megaton exchanges.

  The emerging Third Nuclear Age, however, will be dominated by more probable threats of low-yield nuclear use in regional conflicts rather than the classic dyadic promise of mutually assured destruction. We predict high-precision, low-yield nuclear weapons that are measurable by the hundreds or even tens of tons will become as strategically important to adversaries engaged in their own violence escalation with neighbors as the existing US nuclear arsenal is to deterrence of city-evaporating power. In the emerging Third Nuclear Age, the capacity for Washington to respond to threats of such limited nuclear use in conflicts that do not directly threaten the homeland will depend on the credibility of strategic messaging for assured US capabilities to respond in kind through retaliatory nuclear use—with conventional force or in other domains, such as cyber. We anticipate the proliferation of low-yield nuclear options during this new era to generate challenges to the credibility of at least in-kind US nuclear response options, given a perceived paradox of American ethics and jus in bello principles entwined in scenarios of strategic nuclear use. We also expect regional belligerents to reconsider limited first-use as viably below the US appetite for an assured, devastating response.

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  Anomalous Health Incidents of the Havana Syndrome: Implications and Lessons for Global Biosecurity and Defense

  James Giordano and Diane DiEuliis

  Last week, the United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community. [1] The report noted that, "global shortcomings in preparedness for…biosecurity may inspire some adversaries to con-sider…biological weapons developments." The report further stated that "recent advances in dual-use technology…could enable development of novel biological weapons that complicate detection, attribution, and treatment." Particular in this regard, the report addressed "anomalous health incidents", of the so-called Havana Syndrome, with the ODNI "focusing…upon a subset of priority cases for which it has not ruled…the possibility that one or more foreign actors were involved." The new ODNI Report echoes the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) previously stated position on Havana Syndrome [2], which, when taken together, establish that: • the approximately two dozen individuals originally affected in Havana in 2016 are regarded as verified cases of a physical injury. • the exact nature and probable cause of this injury remains under investigation; but exposure to some form of directed energy device remains a valid and viable possibility. • several lines of evidence support that the multinational state-of-the-science and-technology is sufficiently advanced and developed to produce and operationally employ such devices.