Blackmail Under a Nuclear Umbrella

warontherocks.com/2017/02/blackmail-under-a-nuclear-umbrella/

Paul Bracken6/2/2017

The idea of nuclear blackmail fascinated analysts early in the atomic age. It offered an
especially vivid nightmare scenario: Some new Hitler demanding concessions but this time
armed with nuclear weapons. Hitlers cold-blooded demands backed with force made Britain
and France back down in one crisis after another in the Rhineland, Austria, and
Czechoslovakia. The first generation of strategists thought that a nuclear Hitler would present
nearly impossible challenges to the West. Fortunately, such fears never materialized in the
Cold War, as the superpowers lacked the daring drive of the Fuhrer. They were much more
conservative and cautious.

Still, it is a good time to analyze blackmail once again in the present. Many things have
changed since the Cold War. When it comes to nuclear strategy, multipolarity is the order of the
day in the second nuclear age. A nuclear context now blankets many more parts of the world,
in East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. Whether or not nuclear blackmail is attempted,
the nuclear context of any kind of blackmail surely does. Today nine countries have the bomb,
so the opportunity for blackmail is greater for this reason alone. Further, the risk-avoiding
behavior of the Cold War might not apply in a second nuclear age. The early strategists who
worried about nuclear blackmail did not have the curse of knowledge of Cold War history. The
cautious behavior of the first nuclear age may well repeat itself in the second. But then again, it
might just be a historical relic. We simply do not know.

There is an important distinction that is needed to analyze the blackmail issue today between
nuclear blackmail and blackmail in a nuclear context. The two are quite different. The latter
blackmail in a nuclear context illuminates important issues that go unseen and unanalyzed
when our framework focuses on straight out nuclear blackmail.

Nuclear blackmail is the threat to use atomic weapons to compel someone to take an action
they do not wish to take. It contrasts with nuclear deterrence the threat to retaliate to
prevent an unwanted action. Lets illustrate this with an imaginary example from the United
States in the Vietnam War: Washington tells North Vietnam to get its armies out of South
Vietnam or Hanoi will be leveled with a nuclear strike. This is nuclear blackmail. It would also
be nuclear blackmail if the United States told Russia to vacate Ukraine in 30 days or suffer a
military offensive using tactical nuclear weapons.

Blackmail in a nuclear context is different. It tries to compel someone to do something when

one or more parties involved possess nuclear arms but when theres no specific threat to use
atomic weapons. Heres another imaginary example: North Korea says that, if the United
States continues to increase strategic pressure (with draconian sanctions, a blockade, roll up
of overseas assets, jailing of all overseas North Korean officials, shutting down air space) to
compel the Kim family regime to abandon its nuclear weapon program, Pyongyang will
respond in ways that could easily lead to large scale war and that no options are off the table.
The consequences, North Korean officials insist, will spill over to China, South Korea, and
Japan. Here, both countries use blackmail threats. But neither the U.S. threat or the North
Korean counter-threat is specific or explicit. Neither country says exactly what action will be
taken, nor do they say that atomic weapons will be fired. Both sides will likely attempt to avoid
looking like a calculating game theory strategist, using cynical power advantage to get what
they want. Yet blackmail is still present on both sides. Washington threatens Pyongyang to give
up its program, and Pyongyang threatens Washington to back off.

Or consider another example: Suppose China puts tactical nuclear weapons on its man-made
islands in the South China Sea. Presumably this is to get the United States to back off from
intrusive, provocative probes of the air and sea space around them. Suppose China says
nothing, but the placement of weapons is purposefully leaked. Is this nuclear blackmail?
Absent a specific demand from Beijing to Washington referencing their nuclear weapons, it is
not.

Yet, clearly, the nuclear context matters a lot in all of these examples because all parties are
likely to think about where things might go if the crisis intensifies. The distinction between
nuclear blackmail and blackmail in a nuclear context is not some academic difference
without a meaning. North Korea knows well that the United States has nuclear arms, and the
United States knows the same about North Korea. Even if the United States has no plan or
strategic intent, or even thought, about firing nuclear weapons, Pyongyang is likely to calculate
that it does or at least that it might. Washington may well know that it is not going to fire these
weapons, but it has a hard time convincing North Korea of this. The reverse holds too.
Regardless of North Korean or Chinese strategies, plans, intent, or thinking, the United States
will worry about a crisis in a different way because of nuclear weapons.

An important conclusion follows from this discussion: The mere existence of nuclear weapons
changes the context, regardless of plans, strategic culture, or psychology. It may well be that
narrow nuclear blackmail (Give up Kashmir immediately or well attack Mumbai with atomic
weapons) is not very likely anymore. But, the opportunities for blackmail in a nuclear context
are greatly increased today.

Nuclear blackmail in the narrow sense offers what in economics is called a narrow bracketing
of the problem. It is often said that nuclear blackmail does not work. It may well fail. But, a
country that tries it can cause disaster. Hitlers blackmail failed too. But, the failure led to
millions of deaths in Europe in World War II.

Technology can make a difference, and this is important to underscore in the current era.
Suppose North Korea gets a hydrogen bomb. Compared to the ten to 20 kiloton bombs it now
has, a hydrogen bomb has an enormous lethal radius of destruction. If it landed on Seoul or
Tokyo, it would kill at least hundreds of thousands of people. Todays North Korean arsenal has
the ability to kill in the thousands but not more. That North Korea could develop a hydrogen
bomb is hardly implausible. China moved very quickly, taking only three years to go from an
atomic to a hydrogen bomb in the 1960s. A North Korean hydrogen bomb would make a big
difference. Imagine how Japan and South Korea would now view the already fraught missile
tests that fly over them.
In addition, a nuclear accident in North Korea would have consequences many times greater
with a hydrogen bomb, compared to their current arsenal of small atomic bombs. The
radioactive fallout would be immense and likely blow on to South Korea and Japan.

Blackmail in a nuclear context widens the problem frame to operational and strategy issues as
well. Enlarging the problem frame of nuclear blackmail brings in some important issues,
namely the sequencing of blackmail and the object of the blackmail. Most narrow descriptions
of nuclear blackmail use something like this abstract sequence of events:

There is peace, and this is interrupted by an attempted blackmail by a country to extort some
gain or concession. This fits the outbreak sequence of World War II, as well as the hypothetical
example of the United States threatening to strike North Korea, or Pakistan demanding that
India get out of Kashmir.

But this is only one of many possible sequences. Some historical cases of blackmail fit this
sequence:

For example, in order to end the Vietnam War, the United States blackmailed the government
of South Vietnamo accept a peace negotiated behind their backs in Paris that allowed large
numbers of North Vietnamese forces to stay in South Vietnam. Note here the sequence and
object of the blackmail. It came as part of a U.S. effort to end the ongoing Vietnam War, and it
was directed not at the enemy but against an ally. Washington made a take it or leave it offer
to Saigon. If Saigon did not sign the peace agreement, all military aid would be terminated. If
this is not blackmail, I do not know what is. The Korean war was also ended with enormous
pressure on an ally. The United States pressured Syngman Rhee to accept a divided country
and repatriate North Korean prisoners. Here again, there was an intrawar bargaining problem
to terminate a conflict. Washington even had a plan to overthrow Rhee, Operation Ever-ready,
to arrest and isolate him from to prevent his obstructing the armistice negotiations with the
Communists. If we substitute crisis for war in the sequence diagram, Moscow sold out Fidel
Castro by removing nuclear weapons to end the Cuban missile crisis. This was over the
strenuous objections of Castro.

The sequence of peace-war-blackmail-termination offers a way to enlarge how we frame the

subject of nuclear blackmail: as an intra-war bargaining device, and to ask a really interesting
question, Who is the object of the blackmail? As the world goes into a new nuclear age, it is a
useful exercise to stimulate and stretch our imaginations beyond the narrow framing of the
blackmail issue. Major powers historically have put enormous pressure on their allies to accept
deals they do not want. Adding a nuclear context to this, in my judgment, is likely to make this
an even more significant possibility.

For example, suppose there is a crisis in North Korea or Pakistan that breaks out into a
shooting war. One or two nuclear weapons are fired to signal that no one is bluffing. Further,
suppose the damage is small because the weapons were fired on the territory of North Korea
or Pakistan in defense against invaders. So, there already is a nuclear war underway, and the
question arises of intra-war bargaining to end it. In this situation, both countries would still have
a significant arsenal left over to threaten the attacker with considerable damage. The attacker
would have a strong interest in avoiding this. In peacetime, it is common to overlook this kind
of situation. This is because galactic abstractions, like deterrence theory, emphasize stopping a
nuclear war before it starts. But what if a nuclear war has already broken out? Then, the
details, tactics, and sequence of moves, etc. matter a lot. So does the object of blackmail (Is it
the enemy? Or is at an ally?). Would the United States pressure South Korea not to take
Pyongyang? Would China pressure Pakistan to stop the war? This is the reason that scenarios
and war games are useful to uncover dangerous possibilities that were not recognized, like the
importance of intra-war bargaining in a nuclear context. They also focus attention on issues
that people have chosen to overlook to fit peacetime sentiments, like the importance of
deterrence.

If there is a policy prescription that comes out of this discussion it is this: Calculated and
cynical nuclear blackmail may not work and is extremely dangerous. But this too narrowly
brackets the problem. A wider aperture is needed to understand blackmail, for there are
multiple scenarios and possibilities that are overlooked in the narrow frame, especially as
nuclear dynamics further darken some of the most unstable regions in the world. The
opportunity for blackmail of any kind and for escalation to new and novel blackmail situations is
growing.

Paul Bracken is professor of management and political science at Yale University. He is the
author of The Second Nuclear Age, Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics (Times
Books, 2012).