 Welcome to the twelfth evening of Pony Debates the Issues, the live version, and thanks to the Pony staff, Mark Jansen, Chris Jones, John Warden, for making it happen. These debates are one aspect of the contribution of Pony, the project on nuclear issues, that Pony makes in rethinking nuclear weapons policy, strategy, operations, infrastructure, arms control, nonproliferation. Thanks John Hamry and Clark Murdoch started Pony almost a decade ago, Pony Conferences, the International Outreach, the Nuclear Scholars Initiative. All those things have helped build a community, linking younger folks just getting into the field with those who've been in the field a long time, and all those in between. I think the big strategic issues are always fresh and we always need to look at them with fresh eyes and be sure that we're looking at them in the context of contemporary issues. We have two experts with us tonight who will be debating damage limitation. Dr. Cure Lieber is an associate professor at Georgetown University in the security studies program. Dr. James Acton is a senior associate in the nuclear policy program at Carnegie Endowment. As for the topic of this evening's debate, it's been a while I think since we've heard much or read much about damage limitation, so I think it's an issue that's ripe for looking at with fresh eyes and reexamining in today's context. In tonight's debate, I hope to learn what damage limitation means in today's context, why it is good or bad and under what circumstances. Do we evaluate it differently for different adversaries, North Korea, Russia, China, or those different circumstances? If we're going to do it, how do we do it and how much do we do it? If we're not going to do it, what's the alternate philosophy? What's the presence do with these weapons should deterrence fail? These are all very difficult questions and I'm looking forward to hearing our debaters address them this evening. Thanks to both Kier and to James for taking this on. Thanks so much for Elaine for the introduction. I'm John Warden and I work here at the project on nuclear issues and would like to again thank both of the debaters for agreeing to come do this. The specific statement that we're debating tonight is resolved that damage limitation should be an important consideration in U.S. nuclear planning and the format that we have is we at Dr. Lieber is going to defend the affirmative and he's going to start with an opening speech and that'll be followed by a cross-examination and then Dr. Acton will defend the negative side and that will also be followed by a cross-examination and then after those opening speeches will I'll ask a couple moderator questions and then we'll open it up to the floor and hopefully you all will have some additional questions as well so without further ado Dr. Lieber. Okay I'm going to go ahead and start with a definition as per Elaine's instructions. The definition of damage limitation just to make sure we're talking about the same thing I think we're talking about the same thing. Damage limitation is the ability to destroy or minimize an adversary's capacity to use nuclear weapons. It typically the term typically includes things like missile defense and civil defense but I think when the rubber hits the road what we're most likely to disagree about or really want to focus on here is counter force capabilities capabilities that are targeted at and capable of destroying an adversary's nuclear weapons. I think damage limitation should be an important consideration in U.S. nuclear planning for two main reasons. First damage limitation may be crucial for deterrence and second damage limitation would be necessary if deterrence fails. Let me just take these two in order. First the deterrence mission you know the biggest obstacle for understanding the utility of damage limitation counter force forces today lies in the fact that most analysts and most nuclear analysts cut their teeth during the Cold War. Everything they learned about nuclear weapons they learned during the Cold War or shortly after or were conditioned by the Cold War. Everything they thought they needed to know about nuclear weapons and deterrence they derived from the Cold War experience but the Cold War is over. The Cold War framework is inappropriate for understanding the problem of nuclear deterrence today. So quick recap back then the goal of U.S. nuclear strategy was to deter a Soviet slash Warsaw packed attack against the United States in NATO and the goal was to make sure that the leader of the Soviet Union did not wake up one morning and think gee you know today's a great day to start to invade and conquer Western Europe right. That was the foremost objective of U.S. nuclear strategy. The strategy itself was to ensure that any adversary conventional or nuclear attack would quickly escalate to all out nuclear war. In other words we wanted to escalate. We wanted to ensure escalation not and we did this because we thought we would lose that conventional war for most of the Cold War. We did this not because we wanted to die but because we wanted to deter. Goal strategy forces what forces do we build what capability do we have we built a lot of different kinds of capability but the high yield city busting force that we had was well suited for this deterrence mission. Damage limitation especially in the latter half of the Cold War in my mind it might have been useful in the first half of the Cold War but that mission became a pipe dream the damage limitation mission of the United States launching a first strike against the Soviet Union in a way that no retaliatory forces remained in the 1980s some academic colleagues did an analysis of this and the best that they could get the best result that they could get from running the numbers doing a net assessment of a U.S. first strike on the Soviet force left hundreds of surviving Soviet weapons that could be used to retaliate. This is damage limitation strategy did not work and rightfully so arms controllers during the Cold War latter half of the Cold War in particular argued that the pursuit of damage limitation only signaled the line intentions exacerbated hostility and instability and raised the danger of provoking a preemptive nuclear attack by the adversary but times have changed and the heart of the problem for U.S. nuclear strategy today and for the foreseeable future is the possession and proliferation of nuclear weapons to potential regional adversaries specifically the big problem now is the prospect of those adversaries escalating to the nuclear level during a conventional conflict. Let me just clarify I'll say a bit more about this Daryl Press and I have written about this you can go read our article on foreign affairs November December 2009 I want to emphasize just a couple points first of all this does not this problem of course of nuclear escalation does not depend on a deranged dictator a deranged actor an irrational or suicidal actor the problem is that if the United States fights conventional conflicts against any of these regional nuclear armed states it will face a great danger of both rational escalation and inadvertent nuclear escalation. There are two different paths the rational path that you a potential regional adversary facing the prospect of defeat which would be likely given U.S. conventional superiority would understand the consequences of defeat to be terrible possibly the end of the regime in any scenario we can really think of and therefore nuclear coercion appears as a rational strategy to coerce the United States or its allies to stop military operations to course an end to the conflict before it's too late that's the rational path there's also an inadvertent path which people sometimes miss which is that the nature of modern war where particularly where the U.S. fights its wars we blind and confuse our adversary we take out his eyes ears nose throat etc. This is in many cases going to look like the precursor of a preemptive U.S. nuclear strike and therefore nuclear escalation may become appealing unless we are simply done with conventional war period and the record of U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War certainly doesn't lend much evidence to that that view nuclear proliferation to regional adversaries increases the odds that U.S. leaders will face nuclear escalation so in short the key problem for nuclear strategy today is not that a potential adversary leader might wake up one morning with the thought of nuking South Korea or Tokyo or Los Angeles you probably don't need damage limitation capability to deter that rather the problem of limited nuclear escalation will emerge as a consequence of the highly plausible situation in which the U.S. seeks to defend its foreign allies and other vital national interests abroad so compare then and now and it get to your answer here the goal today is still similar we want to deter nuclear attack that is the fundamental purpose of U.S. nuclear strategy of nuclear weapons the strategy itself is fundamentally different though back then we wanted to ensure escalation now we do not want escalation not surprisingly with that strategy being radically different the capabilities needed for the goal are also fundamentally different city busting is not a good deterrent given the new deterrence challenges of the post Cold War world city busting as a response to a limited nuclear escalation for example an adversary that starts going up the escalatory ladder maybe an MP burst but maybe hits U.S. forces in the region an allied force the allied city all those we typically would describe as a limited a limited nuclear escalation as opposed to all out nuclear war a city busting response in the midst of a conventional conflict is not a credible threat in that case that posture simply may not convince a desperate adversary to forego escalation the fact of the matter is that damaged limitation counterforce capabilities especially those that don't entail killing millions of people which is what a city busting strategy would do may prove to be a far better deterrent an adversary is less likely to think about going down a path if that path could suddenly drop off a cliff now inevitably there is attention here between how much time that one minute got inevitably attention here between the possible effects of damaged limitation capabilities that is contributing to deterrence as I've suggested versus making an adversary so insecure that it lashes out there are good reasons for it my good colleague James Acton and others to be nervous that counterforce capabilities could exacerbate rather than deter escalation but a the alternative force no damaged limitation capabilities only city busting would undermine credibility and thus does nothing to address and does nothing to address escalation problems be it's inconceivable that we wouldn't include the ability to defend our allies as an important consideration in defense planning which leads to the second and final point given my time constraints if deterrence fails right the consequences of failure to deter nuclear escalation in the midst of a conventional war are enormous here again only damaged limitation counterforce capabilities can contribute much if deterrence fails and an adversary actually starts going down the escalation road significant counterforce capabilities may offer the prospect of a successful disarming attack against the adversary and even if a splendid first strike were untenable counterforce capabilities could well limit the damage to our allies and to us from adversary nuclear use simply put us might need to use nuclear weapons to destroy critical targets that can't be destroyed with conventional means thank you back in the new we need which you wrote in 2009 which I very much encourage everybody here to read you looked at a US attack on Chinese silos sorry I'm sorry you looked at US attack on 20 silos and the reason you looked at that was because that was the approximate size of China's current long-range silo based missile force two years later do you still think that was the right target set to examine yes so you think damaged limitation is about destroying silo based ICBMs and not mobile ICBMs for instance it could well be mobile ICBMs can I offer a longer response or in the article nukes we need we did we did a notional counterforce attack on the Chinese arsenal 20 long range intercontinental ballistic missiles right for several different reasons first of all to show that prior analyses of such a counterforce strike which resulted in the deaths of something like three million Chinese civilians wouldn't would not necessarily be the approach a US leader would take but you want to address that problem but you want to address the issue of why you didn't look at mobile missiles in that study sure that and the point of your the point of the question is somehow that mobile missiles obviate the ability to conduct a counterforce strike well I'm gonna make sure I'm gonna I'm gonna get on to that later I just want us to establish what target set the US needs to destroy if it wants to do serious damage limitation against China okay and so you agree with me that it's both silo based ICBMs and mobile it could be and it could be a sea-based force as well yeah reason the reason we focused on the 20 ICBMs we're trying to do the same kind of analysis that others had done to show that this was a terrible solution to use nuclear weapons against nuclear weapons because it would kill millions of people we just laid out a scenario where US leader might contemplate such an action if they feared Los Angeles or Tokyo or other states other targets were being hit and therefore we conducted the same analysis using lower yield highly accurate weapons to do a realistic counterforce strike which results in a far lower casualty figures and when you take into account the silo based ICBMs and the road mobile ICBMs do you know roughly how many missiles you end up having to destroy haven't done the analysis against the mobile so just to let you know China has about 30 to 45 mobile missiles ICBMs and about the same number of launchers what about the IRBMs and the MRBMs which don't have the range to hit the continental United States but do have the range to hit US allies do you think destroying those missiles is an important part of damage limitation would depend on the context in the context we use in the analysis it was not an important part what would be the political context in which the United States was worried about destroying ICBMs but not sure to range missiles in what way could the US get into a conflict with China that would not involve a US ally give me one example I didn't suggest it wouldn't involve a US ally the alternative of course which we're leading to is that the ally has no alternative that the US has nothing that it could do to possibly reduce damage to its allies remember the scenario right the conventional war say against China over Taiwan and in that conventional war China is losing and decides to hit an allied base with a nuclear weapon exactly and threaten and threaten more exactly in two worlds one over is this statements or answers here in one world in one world we have counter force capabilities and we can plausibly suggest that we can begin to limit damage against an adversary in another world we do not have damage limitation capabilities in which case we can only threaten to nuke Beijing and Shanghai and a bunch of other targets right but you and millions of okay thanks kids what is the difference no no no no no honestly honestly honestly this is my cross-examination okay what you have what you have argued is that in your study all right hey let's let's move on to the statement so you can use this you can start your statement if you want but we shouldn't end the cross examination yes please last night I had a dream and my dream was that I was going to leave this field and become a sprinter because the thing that I really want to do right now is to win the 100 meters in front of my home crowd at the London Olympics I can think of nothing more I would want than that but what occurred to me is just because I want it doesn't make it practical and with all due respect to my good friend here the problem with kids analysis is it's a touch over academic the practical challenges of strategically meaningful damage limitation are not correctly modeled by destroying 20 silos so what I'm going to argue for you today is two things firstly that mutual vulnerability is a fact not a choice and that damage limitation to the extent that a president would find a nuclear war less unattractive is not available and secondly that there are costs to pursuing this course let me say what we agree upon I fully agree with Keir about his statement of the problem he is completely right that it would be rational for an adversary in a conventional conflict to use nuclear weapons if it feared losing the difference is his solution doesn't solve that problem the other thing we agree about is that the Cold War is over they're listening to some of his remarks that might surprise you yes the Cold War is over and that's actually made damage limitation harder because of the development of mobile missiles and that's what this debate fundamentally boils down to a question of efficacy China has 145 to between 145 to 180 missiles according to Chinese military power 2010 I know it's not called Chinese military power anymore but I can't remember the new name the vast majority of those missiles are mobile and when I asked Keir to name a circumstance in which the shorter range missiles would not be relevant he came up with Taiwan in which they obviously would be relevant because in a conflict over Taiwan that would be an obvious target as would the Japan as would that because the 7th fleet is based there so the question then comes can you get strategically meaningful damage limitation against mobile missiles in the 1991 Gulf War the United States and its allies flew 1460 sorties against mobile missile related targets there was a grand total of zero confirmed kills in the 2006 Lebanon war Israeli capacities which are not all that dissimilar from US capacities in this regard superficially had performed much better Israel destroyed 80 to 90 percent of his bullets long and medium-range transporter erector launches but when you dig a bit deeper what you find out is these capabilities that the Israelis had that are pretty similar to US capabilities would be useless against a nuclear armed adversary Israel detected enemy transporter erector launches by detecting the missiles after they had been launched okay that would not be an effective damage limitation strategy if you want to do effective damage limitation you have to destroy transporter erector launches simultaneously because when you start destroying some of them the others are going to launch Israel destroyed 50 in 40 minutes astonishingly impressive the next 50 it destroyed in two days less impressive Israel's made its successes by flooding Lebanon with UAVs that were loitering there this would be a much harder strategy against Chinese air defenses I'd also posit that the second artillery in China is probably a touch more adept than his bullet are hiding missiles and more than that that China is a slightly bigger country than Lebanon so the challenges of tracking down mobile missiles are exacerbated so we have no reason to think whatsoever that a damage limiting strike against dispersed Chinese mobile missiles would be anything less than spectacularly unaffected and would not make a nuclear exchange less attractive to a president which is what deterrence is fundamentally about in fact there are even other difficulties that I have that I'm not going to go into in huge depth China is developing conventional missiles such as the DF 21 D which is essentially indistinguishable from the nuclear DF 21 a so it's not just enough to destroy nuclear weapons because you don't know which ones they are you've got to destroy the conventional mobile missiles as well China has an anti-satellite capability which would be extremely effective at disrupting the ISR capability the intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities that the US needs to hunt these things down and finally there is massive new there is considerable numerical uncertainty over the number of missiles China has if you don't know how many missiles you need to destroy you don't know you've got all of them or most of them and let's not forget it's Kier who set his own target in the nukes we need as quote completely disarming an enemy we cannot get anywhere near that against mobile missiles let me briefly address the costs of this strategy here hasn't sat down and thought how to implement this strategy in practice the defense science board did in 2009 it looked at destroying 1010 mobile ICBMs in a regional power as opposed to a compare competitor and it was very emphatic about that of all of the options it scoped out for doing this capability the most expensive came in at 20 billion and did not provide a good capability against a rogue state with 10 mobile ICBMs the defense science board says it's very expensive and you can't do it and finally and briefly because I know it would disappoint Kier enormously if I didn't make this argument you have the problem of crisis instability otherwise known as shooting at silos doesn't achieve very much if they're already empty and the problem there is that if somehow China and Russia wrongly came to believe that the US had a credible damage limiting option or indeed any other adversary they would have a stronger incentive to use their nuclear weapons first for exactly the reasons that Kier says because what they would want to do is try and coerce the United States into backing down if they thought a nuclear strike was imminent it would be an entirely rational and logical strategy to do a to have a limited use of nuclear weapons in an attempt to terrify the US population I make no claim whether that would be an effective or a successful strategy what I do argue is it would be a rational strategy and one that Kiers solution to this problem only makes worse so I don't think damage limitation so from a strategic perspective damage limitation is not effective enough to set the goals that Kier himself has outlined it and it's expensive and it actually only makes the problem that he identifies worse I'll take the high ground now please limit your responses to yes or no answers would you wreck would you recommend damage limitation planning for a conflict against North Korea yes simple yes or no would be good it's complicated would you recommend damage limitation planning against a future nuclear armed Iran the serious answer to both the North Korea and the Iran question is you know I have no objection to ballistic missile defense I absolutely would not concede in a rhetorical way mutual vulnerability with them but the defense science board itself says that the United States cannot successfully destroy 10 mobile ICBMs in a in a in a rogue state even if you spend 20 billion dollars on the capability of doing so so I would not invest in new counterforce capabilities that I didn't need for other purposes over an Iran or North Korea scenario and by your focus on that I assume that you're now conceding the material on China do you believe that conventional war is obsolete the United States will not get involved in a conventional war abroad I I believe conventional war is not obsolete United States could get into a conventional war abroad what is your solution for dealing with the course of nuclear escalatory strategy that an adversary would either rationally adapt adopt quite likely or inadvertently well I don't have an obvious solution so if I thought but I wouldn't do is something that made the problem worse I don't have to demonstrate I have a solution to this problem deterrence might fail there might be nothing we can do about that the problem is that by attempting to take out their missiles you exacerbate the problem and that's all I have to say we wouldn't do exacerbate the United States in a conventional war against China or against North Korea if the adversary used two four kiloton nuclear weapons against Tokyo would you tell the Japanese that there's nothing we can do we're gonna continue to conduct the operation even if that meant 12 to 15 more four kiloton nuclear weapons would be used against Tokyo well so I would I I would do a couple of things in those scenarios firstly I think there are targets between damage limitation targets and city targets that that you can take out the kind of scenarios you correctly identify would almost certainly be in a conventional conflict so to the extent that there were conventional assets I think those would be very credible first targets secondly if I could go after North Korean leadership I would absolutely go after North Korean leadership and thirdly if I happen to know where mobile nuclear weapons were and I happen to be taking them out I happen to be able to take them out I would do so but I would not invest in capabilities specifically for the purpose of doing so because they are ineffective and exacerbate the problem final question if the United States had ISR capabilities to target mobile missiles with low yield nuclear weapons in such a conflict would you not recommend that if I were six inches taller much stronger and much faster than I would recommend myself running the Olympics but that's actually not a problem in the real world the question was if we had those capabilities if we don't understand how I can answer a hypothetical for a scenario are we working on ISR capabilities do you know the status of those ISR capabilities against mobile missiles the defense science board says that the type of capabilities you need are covert loitering capabilities and I see no evidence that the US is working on capabilities in those numbers suitable for operating over a hostile airspace environment in the numbers required for the mission that you assigned thank you okay thanks so much for the start I'll start with a couple quick questions and then we'll open it to the audience I'll start with Dr. Lieber so a lot of a lot of the debate or James focus the debate on our capability against China so if we is it actually possible for us to carry out a damage limitation strike against China so I guess my question is if the United States made made it clear that its policy was to pursue damage limitation and started investing in the capabilities that that you talked about that you think that we should improvements in ISR more lower yield capabilities so that we could threat credibly carry out a damage limitation strategy it seems oh sorry I'll continue the question and then you can have a longer no it's a good it's a good question look what's happened here is that James is basically acknowledged that damage limitation he wants to limit it just to missile defense but the whole concept of preventing you know preventing an adversary from using nuclear weapons is an appropriate strategy for a set of cases a set of regional nuclear weapons cases like I would say North Korea Iran and Syria he also didn't mention that the word Russia and I've also written a piece about Russia but presumably he would say that a damage limitation against Russia is not a wise strategy in large part because of its mobile missile mobile ICBM force I agree with so we agree on two of the categories right the smaller regional armed adversaries who don't have robust mobile forces and the Russian force which has a large one in one case damage limitation is good in the other it's bad basically agree about that the reality is the China case is a mixed bag it's somewhere in between is it headed towards the Russian category yes I think so I mean it sure will help if they actually get to put nuclear missiles on their subs and they've established regular mobile missile deterrent patrols but let's not get carried away we know it's really hard to hunt mobile missiles with conventional means it's probably less hard with nuclear means even low yield nuclear means and the big question that I ended with is simply that we don't know James doesn't know I don't know but we about ISR capabilities intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance but Lord knows we're working very hard at it we're spending a lot of money on it and my guess is we're getting very good at it things are on the edge so there's a tech it's it's these are technical highly classified points but whether they're small intercontinental forces vulnerable to preemption depends on highly classified analysis of issues relating to our ISR capabilities interaction of those capabilities and other things we may or may not be doing to locate mobile missiles so it but it seems like at some point the the United States as a policy has to make a decision about whether or not it's worth it to invest all that money to try to counter what China is building up so if China starts investing in things like more mobile missiles if they increase the launch readiness of their missiles if they invest in in nerves that make it so that our missile defense is less effective then probably no matter what investments we make they're going to have a survivable force so when what exactly is the calculus that the United States should be using to determine whether or not investing in damage limitation is the right decision it certainly depends on the adversary force and so again as I suggested as we suggested in our article as we never suggested otherwise I would expect China to establish a real survivable nuclear retaliatory force in those circumstances damage damage limitation is a much less appealing scenario all I'm suggesting is that we may or may not be there yet and we're close enough and we're working on capabilities to undermine their capabilities this is not a clear case this is not like Russia and night in Soviet Union in 1984 and anybody who suggests otherwise is jumping the gun on this one then you're also left with all these other scenarios where damage limitation is a necessary arguably useful tool to have in the arsenal and instead arms control folks like James want to simply get rid of it and they have no alternative for how you're going to handle that nuclear escalatory challenge in that kind of conflict okay a couple questions for James if I follow your comments it seems that you at least on some level think that there is some benefit for the United States either pursuing or at least planning for damage limitation strikes against countries like North Korea and Iran but that it's not worth the investment for the United States to keep damage limitation as part of its nuclear planning against Russia and China because of feasibility concerns and also just because of the level of investment crisis instability for all those reasons so that the first part the second part is just what can you just a little bit more flesh out the difference and also at what point would Iran or what capabilities would Iran or North Korea have to have where we would start saying that mutual vulnerability as opposed to damage limitation is the policy we should be pursuing so with Iran and North Korea and incidentally it's interesting that Darrell is now sorry it's interesting here is now saying that damage limitation against Russia is a bad strategy when his international security paper said that we could execute a perfect damage limiting strike against Russia but putting that putting that putting that fact aside the defense science board I mean don't need to listen to my analysis listen to the product of classified US analysis says that it is not within the capability of the US to develop the necessary capabilities to destroy a rogue state with 10 mobile ICBMs obviously in the event of a conflict if I happen to know where they were which is extremely unlikely after they had used nuclear weapons I would try and destroy them obviously but the point is that the challenge of hunting those things down is so difficult and it's not cost effective at the margins their count their their countermeasures to our countermeasures are easier and faster and cheaper than the countermeasures we would have to take that I would not invest in specific capabilities I would have no intention of rhetorically accepting mutual vulnerability with those states none whatsoever but there is a but I wouldn't invest in capabilities specifically to perform a mission that I was incapable of doing and let me make one more general point here which is I don't have to give you a solution to this problem if my solution which is just keep on doing what we're doing doesn't make the situation worse and Keir's solution makes it worse then you should probably go with what I'm suggesting rather than what he's suggesting okay I have one more question for for both of you to answer and then we'll open it up to the audience so it seems like one alternative strategy that might be between the positions that both of your advocating would be to invest in some of the the life extension programs or modernization programs that would give us more lower yield capability that would be usable but then for the United States to still maintain an overt policy of not pursuing damage limitation against Russia and China so therefore in some of these scenarios that you've described such as a Taiwan contingency or a fight over North Korea a fight over Japan if an adversary say China use nuclear weapons the United States could retaliate with lower yield nuclear weapons that are more usable but it would do so in a way that would signal to China that they're not trying to eliminate all their nuclear capability essentially giving them an out or a way to step down so what do you think about that as an alternative to damage limitation is that something that's worth considering or on both sides well if I if I if I understand it your question correctly I mean my response is that the that the only damaged limitations can give you any kind of flexibility in that in a scenario in which you've described which I've described in which I doubt that James Acton thinks is an impossible scenario to emerge in fact he said if in these circumstances what would I do I would do nothing you were a US commander leading a US president when the United States is moving up the Korean Peninsula toward Pyongyang Pyongyang nukes Kadena US base on Okinawa and says more is to come unless you stop this conflict unless you halt where what you're doing his solution do nothing keep fighting keep moving on Pyongyang arrest their leaders send them to the Hague for war crimes trials I believe that that is not the best response the best response is to respond in a way that eliminates their ability to continue to escalate he says it's all or nothing when all or nothing you got to get every single one at this point in time nuclear weapons the nuclear threshold has already been crossed we're talking about deterrence in target times but that's the whole point of nuclear weapons in terms of the force itself just very quickly what kind of force are we talking about damage limitation I'm not suggesting you know brand new kinds of capabilities I wouldn't mind seeing some new capabilities if you ask me but what we're talking about are subtle implications for the force right do we want to improve the Trident Missile Accuracy I say do it the proposal for the B61 LEP that could result in increased accuracy I say let's do it make the F-35 nuclear capable do it this is not in terms of money I know there's tough budget times these are not tremendously expensive kinds of capabilities replace the old outcome with a new outcome even that we're not talking about fancy new capabilities we're talking about retaining or improving existing capabilities in a way that would have a minimal impact on the defense budget why would you get rid of a useful tool in your toolbox I don't know about you I didn't hear myself say I would do nothing if North Korea use nuclear weapons in a conflict what I thought I heard myself say was yes I would retaliate with nuclear weapons but not fall into Kears force dichotomy would you hit with nuclear weapons not fall into Kears force dichotomy pretending the only possible target sets are adversary nuclear forces and cities presumably this is in the middle of a conventional conflict I think the most credible targets you could hit would be the air bases the naval bases whatever the North Korean assets were or the Chinese assets or the Iranian assets whatever it was involved in the conflict that would be my first step up the escalation ladder point number one point number two is what I've said all along is if by some miracle I happen to know where these fleeting assets were in the event of a conflict I would go after them but I think that's very unlikely and I wouldn't invest in capabilities and it's particularly the ISR you need I wouldn't invest in capabilities that were very expensive and be unlikely to do so and thirdly I would get I would get whichever leader had done so so no I didn't think I said nothing in terms of the force structure issues ISR in destroying mobile targets is everything so I think there is very little utility going after lower yield weapons unless you also go after the ISR which for reasons I've explained already I don't think is effective enough to merit huge investment and these are strained budget times and I know it's very easy in a university just to kind of say oh these are not big ticket items just spend more money on everything everything everything but actually you know in a world of constrained budgets I think the Obama administration's plan to revitalize the US complex the weapon production capabilities is the right place to spend the money not on actual new capabilities themselves okay so let's go to audience questions with a promise that both of you will get closing remarks yes ambassador Brooks yes until you started giving specific examples I don't understand how a low yield weapon is any better or worse against a tell I mean I don't understand that I understand how the B61 or an album is of particular value yes tell me it seems to me that the logic of your strategy is better ISR than we have today and ballistic missile attack and so I think they'd be interested in why your examples weren't about ballistic missiles and then the second question is you said that once China moves to see the strategy is much less likely is it a fair statement that to embrace your strategy you have to believe that you can solve the ISR problem before they solve the jail to problem I mean the submarines are there in the submarines work so if the missile works which we don't know when Chinese military power says that we don't know when it's gonna be operational but but doesn't the logic of your strategy depend on on a pretty dramatic breakthrough in ISR very quickly because all of this goes away once there's a significant Chinese ship to see and then James I got kind of confused use the Korean example when you use a Chinese example if I correctly understood you would not attack and seek to destroy nuclear weapons belonging to North Koreans unless they'd already been used if I really heard you correctly would you explain to me why that you know why it were your kid okay first apologies for confusing you on this one it's there is nothing that you can do with a 10 kiloton tactical nuke against either a tell or a silo that you can't also do better with a w88 you know for 375 kiloton 55 kiloton nuclear weapon from a fire from a sub the reason that low yield is preferable to high yield all things being equal is that you can lower is much fewer casualties that that's all I'm trying to get at so in other words when we did our original analysis of going after Chinese silos we didn't do as an RDC did use a bunch of w88s which result in fallout that kills millions of people we use low yield weapons against those same silos in a way that would be militarily effective but reduce casualties that we're fine no alchems or b61s again yeah you'd have to address penetration issues and things like that but I mean there's nothing inherently that limits it to somehow making in fact those are the least useful weapons for the kind of attack that we're talking about configuring at w88 to only have its primary go off or whatever I mean for us the issue is achieving low having low yields right I'm suggesting that the key capabilities are those low yield weapons in the forest alchems b61s okay and the reason that we like those better than we like the big city busting weapons is because of the the civilian casualty implications and again to me it really does matter if a U.S. president face had two options one of which is to kill 3 million Chinese and the other is to kill a thousand Chinese in a conventional war in which thousands are probably already dying that is a big difference so it is about the silos it has been you tell somebody a nuclear weapon is coming to a tell one of two things will happen the tail will move in which case you will blow up some location or the tail will shoot therefore prior to tonight I always believe that if you wanted to use nuclear weapons against tells in a country the size of China that you had to get them thereby ballistic missile I understand a little bit why why you're not worried that you bring about the result that you fear which is at least ensued by taking something that gets half an hour to go there and might be detected in her who will get I guess I I keep going around the same equation which is that if you're asking me would a U.S. would a leader contemplate a nuclear attack against a mobile missile force I think as I suggested with Russia at a certain point it becomes untenable given current ISR capabilities etc if you decide to go against that mobile force I'm not you know I did we'd have to do the analysis of whether or not you'd have a greater likelihood of getting in there and destroying those tells with ballistic missiles fired in a way that was optimal for that or whether it was B2 delivered munitions again the big challenge as you know it was with mobile missiles tell teleporter electors and launchers which basically are the mobile missiles is not just finding them right we can often find them but when you're using conventional munitions you need to find them at the moments before a convention actually hit the benefit of nuclear weapons is that you have a broader area in which you could do barrage attacks calculate the speed of tells me fix a location and you know within a certain area where it might be again I kind of think that this in some ways it detracts from the story I mean a what does that mean does all this mean the damage limitation against adversaries that don't have mobiles make sense because that is one implication of it well you tell me does North Korea have mobile missiles yeah okay and and so so we we are in a condition of mutual vulnerability with the China with North Korea at the nuclear level well given we can't it's not new to the defense science board you have this like problem here that if you think if you acknowledge North Korea has hundreds of mobile missiles North Korea has more mobile missiles than Russia long-range mobile missiles we're talking about right because he's not he's not saying he's not saying that our allies aren't gonna get their hair muster see there that James believes that a nuke is a nuke as a nuke I don't I think qualitative characteristics matter I think different yields matter I think it matters whether you convince people or thousands I believe that it matters that the kinds of forces that you're going after it's all it's matter of context and in some context like Russia today or Russian in the in the mid-80s I would not recommend you know serious I wouldn't get wrapped around the axle about damage limitation planning but how does that obviate a damage limitation planning and many other scenarios so there were two two questions the second was a dissub is that the end of story my my response about that was that if it's a reference about whether we can get them all right I think at the point that they're subs it may or may not I don't actually think that you know a Chinese submarine force of two armed with ballistic missiles is the end of the possibility of the United States getting all the long-range Chinese systems but what a Chinese sub certainly doesn't do is obviate counter the need for counter force capabilities in a coercive nuclear escalatory campaign in which now James is suggesting he does have a response wouldn't do anything he would use large yield W88 submarine fire missiles against targets on the North Korean Peninsula which by the way would result in the deaths of millions and millions of people probably in definitely in South Korea and probably in Japan too this is crazy and barrage attacks against Chinese mobile missiles which generally use the roads on the east coast of China wouldn't cause massive civilian casualties barrage attacks firstly you have much much more choice chance of finding isolated the civilian casualties fundamentally depends on whether or not the target is isolated if it's an isolated target then existing weapons in the US arsenal which incidentally are not all massive high yield no I wasn't advocating sticking one megaton not that the US has a bomb that large anymore one megaton on Pyongyang what I am suggesting is attacking if you can find them military targets that aren't right next to gigantic population centers what you are suggesting well because because because at the moment we're having a damage limitation debate I don't I don't I just the fundamental issue with reducing civilian casualties is the isolation of the target not the yield of the weapon let me answer Linton's question Linton Kier asked me what I would do if North Korea had used missile nuclear weapons first so I was focusing on the case of what I would do in that scenario if North Korea hadn't used nuclear missiles first there is a tremendous risk to using to trying to take out their tells because if you can't take them all take them all out you are pretty much certain that they're going to use whatever you can't take out so given that as Kier now seems to be acknowledging we're going to be far less than a hundred percent effective I wouldn't want to take an action that would bring about exactly what I'm trying to avoid and I would rather take my chance that deterrents will hold it might fail I've said throughout no point of this debate that deterrence is certain to work what I am saying is that Kier doesn't provide a solution to this real problem That seems to be lacking tonight except perhaps for Kier's suggestion about reduced casualties under certain circumstances Do you address that a little bit more in the current circumstances? Yeah I mean I you know again we've clearly focusing on the strategic implications here strategic constraints opportunities etc and again you know I'm comfortable making the argument just at that level to me if president again facing those option A and option B as a clear reason to prefer option A in part because it still holds out the prospect of de-escalating that kind of conflict an adversary uses a nuclear weapon in a limited way regionally United States doesn't have to launch a splendid first strike against all kinds of the entire force including its mobile missiles and silos it can use nuclear weapons in a way that's more flexible more appropriate for the kind of escalation that's occurred the fact that it would not kill millions of people also has a huge ethical implication it's the ethical implication which drives a president to want to prefer A over B right if it's all just what we can do with the weapons it's all the same right but that is a difference there's also another moral dimension of this which is our commitment to our allies if we're not prepared you know to take steps to if we don't believe there's a difference between two nuclear weapons used against Japanese forces versus 20 right then we should not have that commitment and James and I may end up agreeing on this I don't I don't know I would seriously have us reconsider our alliance commitments if we're not gonna build the kind of force or retain the kind of force that would protect them that seems to me on verge of being immoral to make a commitment that you have no intention of fulfilling I think the moral issues are actually very important here and I think it's about you know the fundamental moral question for me is how can we minimize the chances that nuclear weapons are used without undermining international security you know if there were absolutely no chance that nuclear weapons could ever be used then their deterrence would be entirely ineffective and you know presumably we will be living in a less safe world so you know for me the moral issues are I think here presents a strategy that for all the reasons I've outlined is it's unlikely to work so I don't see it you know reducing the loss of life by being a more effective strategy and be it potentially makes the problem worse by inducing crisis instabilities so you know by that kind of moral metric of preventing nuclear weapons being used weighed against you know preserving international security I don't see this as being a difficult moral question okay you know I think on missile defense I look Darrell press and I have made the case for retaining counter force capabilities tonight I've made the case for maintaining improving damage limitation capabilities mean counter force capabilities we think nuclear weapons play an important role in damage limitation but but the obvious implication or the obvious point to make here is that nuclear weapons are a part of a robust set of counter force capabilities damage limitation capabilities all of which I'm in favor of pursuing because I believe that the most plausible deterrence challenge is likely to rise in a coercive a conventional conflict with a regional nuclear armed adversary and therefore all these capabilities will useful confet conventional precision strike in some cases may be anti some remorse very critical ISR components that we've talked about cyber and of course missile defense do I think that you know hit to kill is am I more optimistic about missile defense today than I was even in 2006 I think the answer is yes in that article we just simply made the point that a missile defense system would be seen by any potential adversary for its mop up role in a in a first strike and earlier James took a dig at the earlier analysis which I just find surprising I mean here we are in the article saying on paper for the first time in decades we can model model based on certain set of Herculean assumptions whatever you want to call it a first strike against the Russian nuclear force which would which would succeed in a way that analysts hadn't been able to do for us we said we were agnostic this could be troubling right if you thought that US nuclear capabilities made others feel insecure and they would respond in dangerous ways we said if you had a much more you know primuses or ambitious foreign policy might be good news make us less vulnerable but again these are that was an article about a development that we thought everyone should look at and you can draw your own conclusions about what that meant marginally I you know the missile threat from Iran is predominantly a shorter range threat right now the missile threat from North Korea is a short-range threat right now basing the missile defense architecture on technologies that have proven to be more effective against shorter range threats seems to me it's more likely it's going to work I US existing US missile defenses and not designed to deal with countermeasures and that that's going to limit their utility as the Russian as the Iranian and the North Korean threats proceed but right now against in a very very hard problem I think the existing missile defense architecture is probably the best that's available yeah so yeah thanks I mean for the you know of the two pathways so this world which I'm deeply concerned about and of course everyone is about the problem of course of nuclear escalation in a conventional conflict your question addresses the inadvertent path right which is that the American way of war blinding confusing our enemy leads to certain dynamics that would result in nuclear use could we as one policy alternative policy solution to this be to change the way that we fight wars and the answer is yeah we could consider doing that but what you'd have to calculate are the trade-offs in cost in US lives I mean the reason that we take out our adversaries eyes and ears is because we're protecting our own soldiers and our own pilots that would come with real cost the other issue so again that might make sense and it probably does make sense to try to think about ways that we fight wars that would not undermine their confidence in their nuclear return to our capability but the rational path is the really the one that triumphs in this case right which is that we can fight the war anyway we want but the prospect of conventional victory against that adversary given the track record given our forces our conventional superiority is can't take away right the idea that nuclear weapons are a guarantee of security there are a weapon of the week they're the trump card just in the same way the United States relied on nuclear weapons in the Cold War right to protect Western Europe others will rely on nuclear weapons to keep their regimes in power when facing the prospect of a conventional defeat yeah I think when I was doing my grilling of James with the first three questions the first was you know would you advocate damage limitation against North Korea Iran was the second one and that's you know a future nuclear arms Syria I mean you can come up with the list for me sure the logic of my argument applies in all those cases if the United States has commitments all around the world right we have a lot we extend the nuclear umbrella over a heck of a lot of people unless you believe that that commitment is not that meaningful because we won't get involved in conventional conflicts in which our adversaries are likely to face tremendous rational incentives to escalate to the nuclear level because they're about to lose that conventional war then well now I lost the train I thought was that was an if then that was a long if the logic applies and in all of those cases the solutions other than signaling in a way fighting American way of war that that doesn't undermine our adversary the real solution is either not to fight in ways that would lead to regime change which would require a pretty drastic change in the way that America fights wars or it implies the retraction of American Alliance commitments around the world I think in many ways even with a damaged limitation strategy the extension of the US of the nuclear umbrella is going to be incredibly problematic alliance relations are going to be incredibly problematic as we move forward in this new world the Cold War is over it's a new world it's a disturbing world so I don't think there's any single answer to that question which I think is a very profound question you know the first thing is if the US enjoys conventional superiority nuclear threats it has to rely less on nuclear threats though the conventional superiority I've agreed throughout this debate with care can lead to adverse reuse of nuclear weapons but you know clearly if you enjoy conventional superiority you force the other side to decide to escalate to nukes which you'd rather be in than you having to escalate to nukes secondly I you know I think you just have to rely on quote unquote classical deterrence which is not guaranteed to succeed and if Iran does get nuclear weapons you know I'd love to say there was some magic bullet some guaranteed formula that would ensure that deterrence was going to work that doesn't exist I recall that you know during the Cold War you know when China got nuclear weapons that was not greeted with oh we don't really care by the US and China was the uber rogue state of its day I mean the Soviet Union was the uber rogue state when it got nuclear weapons so I think we shouldn't look back through the Cold War with rose tinted spectacles and pretend that at the time these were two mature states that fully understood one another because it wasn't like that at all and deterrence held so you know I can't guarantee that deterrence is going to work today but you know for all of the reasons we've been going into I don't think his solution solves that problem the best solution is clearly to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons at all but unfortunately I think I'm not terribly optimistic about that happening right now I that situation you you mentioned I I developed term for the called nuclear induced rationality and whereas I think it worked in the case of China and Russia I'm not sure that it could work in the case of Iran because I think the very definition of rationality is different there are other elements of it that we have to bring in but if I could if you could indulge me consider yourself as a planner in Israel given the size of the country the constraints and so forth and you have to do you know what decision would you make would you essentially sell for a national decision that would say okay we'll we'll accept the mutual assured destruction type of condition with Iran are given your asymmetrical vulnerabilities and so forth do you do you structure for us that's capable of carrying out first tracks and war winning strategy and I want to apologize if I'm off the track my internal GPS went off somewhere in DC so a quick answer and then we'll move on to closing savings the disagreement I mean Israel clearly has a massively unpalatable choice do you attack Iranian nuclear facilities and try to prevent it from getting the bomb by force if diplomatic means fail or do you try to live with deterrence I'm incredibly glad I'm not an Israeli decision-maker I don't think that structuring a force around damage limitation vis-a-vis Iran is practical for Israel because it's one thing flooding the skies over a small adjacent nation like Lebanon with UAVs to hunt down mobile missiles it's an entirely different issue to do it over Iran and more than that don't forget you know the Israeli success over Hezbollah involved things like destroying tales after they had launched missiles that's clearly you know I think your two-bomb point is exactly right and you know if Iran gets the bomb Israel does not have a technical capability at its disposal to produce perfect to completely disarm Iran I'm sure it wishes it had but if that technical capability simply does not exist just very quick I mean if deterrence is going to work against Iran it's more likely to work with Israel's own nuclear strategy in response whether it's an acceptance of mad or whether it's pursuit of a first strike capability the problem here is when you have a third party extending deterrence to an ally in which case the threat to respond to any nuclear use with the destruction of millions of people by blowing up cities or hitting targets with the high yield nuclear weapons in response to a relatively limited nuclear escalation is is incredible so to me if the United States pulls out of Asia I'm not recommending it does in Japan goes nuclear it's South Korea acquires its own nuclear weapons I think the problem of course of nuclear escalation is reduced okay let's move on to some quick closing statements and James will start with you this time just a couple minutes and then back to Dr. Lee practicality okay is the central issue that divides the two of us I thought it was pretty interesting that Kier acknowledged he wouldn't try a damage limitation strategy against Russia because China has basically the same number of mobile missiles as Russia does no Russia only has ICBMs China has a limited number of ICBMs but it has its MRBMs and its IRBMs as well so I'm kind of surprised that Kier thinks damage limitation against China might be practical whereas it's not against Russia when they have exactly the same number of missiles mobile missiles and North Korea has even more another issue that came up here is you know this is the question of demonstrating that the strategy is practical what Kier has done and I do not question this piece of modeling for one second is demonstrate that the US has a 99.9 whatever is percent probability of destroying 20 Chinese silo-based ICBMs my issue is not with the modeling it's with the scenario what I've given you is the US attempts in the Gulf War Israeli attempts in the war against Hisbola as well as the defense science board based on classified studies of the type that Kier wants all of which suggests the United States does not have the capability to meaningfully limit damage in a war against states with significant number of mobile ice of mobile missiles and the final issue I want to flag up is how good does damage limitation have to be to make a difference you know Kier's kind of been shifting on this because back in the nukes we need in 2009 he talked about quote completely disarming an adversary now he takes the attitude oh well we don't have to take everything out at the beginning of a nuclear war and there's a couple of reasons he could he could be arguing that firstly because he thinks that it would be incredible for a US adversary to use its short range forces the problem with that is any likely conventional conflict involving the US would be over extended deterrents commitments making US allies a target so the idea that you can't the idea that there wouldn't be credible targets for these shorter range forces I think is incredible and secondly the other reason he could say it doesn't matter if we don't have to take everything out right at the beginning is because he doesn't care if these forces are used at the beginning of this war because you know 20 30 million casualties tops depended on the brakes and again but that is inconsistent with everything he's been talking about previously involving you know the need to have a ensure that the president can avoid a conflict leading to massive casualties against US allies so he's trying to have it both ways on the one hand arguing that you need to do everything and then when you he's pushed on that saying it doesn't matter that you have to do everything the simple reality is the strategy that he advocates is not practical and will only make matters worse thank you it's ironic that practicality would be the first issue brought up by James and rather than suggest that many of the things he's just suggested are inaccurate portrayals my view is the beauty is we have it online and we can go back and watch the videotape and one of the things I'd like you to go back and watch the videotape and look for is an answer a practical answer to how the United States would deal with the problem of coercive nuclear escalation which we would be brought about by our participation in a convention of war in defense of an ally there is no solution at one point he suggested using large yield nuclear weapons against hopefully isolated targets he also suggested at one point we go after fleeting assets that sure sounds like damage limitation capability to me and my point is that you're getting there you're getting there but once you start treating damage limitation as a serious response you might think about what kinds of forces are would be most useful in what scenarios James is trying to make most of this debate about something that's less important about Chinese mobile missiles and he wants to engage me in a debate about whether or not the United States you know could definitely go after Chinese mobile missiles I could make I could have responded with an argument about with the deployment areas for the DF 31 a's in particular high G long province particularly mountainous we know the road areas suggested even more that than I actually know about ISR capabilities and that we're getting there this is a this is a red herring the key question is what do you do when faced with coercive nuclear escalation which is a highly plausible scenario if you can look me in the face straight in the face and say it makes no difference whether we have damage limitation capabilities or not I suggest that you certainly can't say that to your allies with a straight face and it's a stance that will likely lead us into a worse world than doing nothing so if practicality is the key question is that if it's a call for practicality on board 100% I have no ideological reason to like damage limitation it seems to be the most practical response to what would be a truly dark scenario of deterrence so right before this debate Kira asked me what makes the best in our series and I said when both sides are willing to directly address what the other side has said instead of just pretending like they agree and I think we got exactly that in this debate so please thank both of our participants