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| INS Arihant: India's new Ballistic Missile Submarine |
By James R. Holmes
New ballistic missile submarine fleets could destabilize the nuclear order.
Editor’s Note: These are the prepared remarks of a speech the Naval Diplomat delivered at Lowy Institute International Workshop on SSBNs and Strategic Stability, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Singapore, May 14, 2014.
Did nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines, or SSBNs, make the Cold War more or less safe? And is the answer to that question likely to remain the same as Asia and the world enter what Yale University professor Paul Bracken calls a “second nuclear age?”
It depends. Consider the Cold War legacy first. From a strict Clausewitzian standpoint, the answer would probably be more safe on balance. Safe means stable, predictable, and nonviolent in this context. With all its mind-boggling devastation, a nuclear exchange would approach what Clausewitz termed “absolute war.” By that, Prussia’s master of strategy means a single act or a series of near-simultaneous acts utterly divorced from rational political calculations — bloodletting for its own sake, bereft of larger purpose.
Clausewitz doubts armed strife will ever escalate that far, degenerating into a spasm of absolute violence. Policy will intervene in all likelihood, applying the brakes to escalation. Decision-makers are rational beings for Clausewitz, or should be.
Few belligerents, that is, attach such value to their political objectives that they’re prepared to undertake an effort of extreme “magnitude” or “duration.” That’s doubly true when an unlimited counterstroke against their homeland is a real prospect. Limited aims warrant efforts that are shorter, consume fewer lives, armaments, and treasure, or both. Modest pricetag, modest expenditure.
By Clausewitzian cost/benefit logic, then, SSBNs disgorging fusillades of nuclear-tipped missiles cannot qualify as a rational act of statecraft. No sane statesman on either side would give such an order. It defies Clausewitz’s brand of Enlightenment rationality. Ergo, deploying invulnerable launch platforms carrying massive payloads must make the strategic environment safer.
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