Military Officer - October 2006 - (Page 57) interim, the military’s job is to buy the time needed for these other elements of counterinsurgency to succeed. T Challenge No. 2: Nuclear proliferation he spread of nuclear weapons to unstable and/ or hostile states in Asia is another major, enduring challenge to U.S. security. India and Pakistan have tested nuclear weapons and created nuclear arsenals. North Korea apparently has nuclear weapons and is producing the fissile material necessary for more. Iran, no doubt aware of the very different treatment accorded North Korea by the U.S. relative to a nonnuclear Iraq, is pressing forward keenly with its weapons program. It is conceivable that before the decade is out, a solid front of nuclear-armed states will stretch from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Japan, running through Iran, Pakistan, India, China, and North Korea, with Russia looming from above — a 5,000-mile “atomic arc of instability” in a part of the world that has become increasingly important to U.S. security and economic well-being. These states might not view nuclear weapons in the same way that the U.S.’s political leadership has come to over the years — i.e., as weapons of last resort, to be used only in the most extreme circumstances. In particular, it is far from certain that Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan, whose cultures are quite distinct from that of the U.S. and whose regimes are either unstable or unremittingly hostile (or both), view the role of nuclear weapons in this way. The acquisition of nuclear weapons by hostile rogue regimes also threatens the military balance. All things being equal, the U.S.’s willingness to project power against nuclear-armed adversaries likely would be much more constrained than against those who do not possess them. The U.S. administration might be compelled to alter its war aims when confronted by rogue states armed with nuclear weapons (e.g., abandoning the objective of regime change). This seems to be a principal motive for North Korea and Iran to acquire these weapons. If they succeed, it will reduce substantially, and perhaps precipitously, American freedom of action in two regions of vital interest. It also could make it far more difficult to deal effectively with ambiguous forms of aggression, such as Iran’s support for terrorism and for the insurgency in Iraq or potential North Korean trafficking in fissile materials. The proliferation of nuclear-armed states also increases the likelihood that these weapons will be used. Again, it is not clear that the new nuclear powers will view nuclear weapons as weapons of last resort or take the kinds of precautions to secure them against unauthorized use that the “mature” nuclear powers have put in place over time. Due to the relative instability of states like Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan when compared to the mature nuclear powers, it is conceivable that these weapons could fall into the hands of nonstate entities, either as a consequence of corruption (e.g., unauthorized sale to a nonstate entity) or state failure (e.g., possession by a faction in a civil war; seizure by radical Muslims). Nor can one discount the possibility that a state like North Korea, which proliferates ballistic missile technology, or Pakistan, whose top nuclear scientist ran a nuclear weapons production materials bazaar, would deliberately provide, for a price, nuclear weapons or fissile material to other states or even to nonstate groups. Bluntly put, the U.S. is now in an era that might be characterized as a Second Nuclear Regime, with the First Regime (which began in 1945 with the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) now history. That earlier regime was defined by two principal elements: first, a few mature great powers possessing nuclear weapons, with all but China having a common European cultural orientation. Second, during that period, which lasted until the early 1990s, there developed a strong tradition of nonuse of these weapons. Now the former characteristic no longer holds, and the latter is open to debate. We might expand the Second Nuclear Regime’s definition to include state and nonstate actors possessing biological weapons. By all accounts, biological weapons are becoming progressively easier to fabricate — certainly far easier than nuclear weapons — and, under the right conditions, can produce the mass casualties, economic disruption, and terror comparable in scale to a nuclear strike. Yet little has been done to restrict the knowledge associated with developing biological weapons, and the infrastructure costs for producing them are quite modest when compared with those associated with nuclear weapons. For nonstate entities, this combination of comparatively low cost and high destructive potential may make the pursuit of biological weapons irresistible. T Challenge No. 3: China he third enduring challenge the U.S. confronts is the rise of China to great regional power status and, perhaps in time, to global power status. To date, discussions about the disposition of China often describe it as either a threat that must be addressed (along the lines of the Soviet Union) or a state that simply needs to be engaged and brought more fully WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU What do you think of Krepinevich’s viewpoint? Share your views by going to www.moaa.org/ discussion and scrolling down to the Quadrennial Defense Review link. OCTOBER 2006 MILITARY OFFICER 57 http://www.moaa.org/discussion http://www.moaa.org/discussion
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