With the ending of the Cold War, regional conflicts have come increasingly to the fore.  U.S. foreign policy goals in such areas continue to involve a mix of U.S. self-interest (as perceived by governing elites, Congress, and sometimes the electorate directly) and a desire to see conflicts in the world resolved more peacefully.  Both of these factors have led and will probably continue to lead to U.S. military interventions in some of these conflicts.

This paper addresses the issue of what role--if any--U.S. nuclear weapons should play in these interventions.  We focus on the following questions: given a military regional confrontation between the United States and a regional power, under what circumstances if any should nuclear weapons be used?  What arguments militate for and against their use? Can one come to an overall policy recommendation in this regard?

We are well aware that the best way to deal with military confrontations is to prevent them. To some degree, military confrontations represent a failure of policy.  Nevertheless, these confrontations do occur, and on occasion, the use of nuclear weapons has been and may again be contemplated.  The paper reviews some such possible occasions.

Continued sales of ballistic missiles to countries in the Middle East and South Asia have intensified international interest in China's advanced weapons. Proposals for halting these sales can succeed when the dynamics and motivations of China's defense system are taken fully into account. We have noted in an earlier article in this journal that the technologies, strategies and goals relating to Beijing's missile programs must be better understood by the concerned international community in order to overcome its confrontational stance with China and to build a cooperative regime.

A conference was held at Stanford in May 1992 on possible cooperation between the United States and Russia on early warning of ballistic missile attack. Included in this volume is a briefing paper that was prepared immediately after that meeting.

The U.S. Navy's New Maritime Strategy addresses the navy's role in a nonnuclear U.S.-Soviet conflict in Europe. Rather than protecting the North Atlantic sea-lanes by bottling up the Soviet Navy, it proposes that U.S. naval forces move aggressively into the waters near the Soviet Union and seek out and destroy Soviet warships. In particular, the strategy explicitly calls for destroying Soviet nuclear-powered attack and ballistic-missile submarines (SSNs and SSBNs). It posits that the threat to the SSBNs would accomplish two goals. The first is that the Soviets would not surge their SSNs out into the Atlantic to contest U.S. control of the seas but because of the threat would stay back and protect their highly valued SSBNs. The second is that attrition of their SSBNs by U.S. attack would decrease the incentive for the Soviets to go nuclear in the European war, since the balance of forces would shift to the U.S. side. Much debate has been provoked by the prospects of this strategy's leading instead to nuclear escalation.

Congress is being told that the proposed 600-ship navy is the minimum needed to carry out this mission. The strategy is the justification for both the number and the types of ships that are in the shipbuilding program. This program includes a new class of attack submarines, called the Seawolf, which will cost about $1 billion each and are described as the counter to the increasingly quiet Soviet submarines.

This study examines whether the force structure that is being proposed has a reasonable chance of success. lt explores whether modest changes in the building program can make a significant change in the outcome and considers possible alternative approaches.

This paper discusses several possible offensive applications of an SDI system or parts thereof--whether implemented by the US or the USSR. An effective ballistic missile defense may not make nuclear weapons impotent; rather, a BMD may have the opposite effect if used to suppress the ICBM deterrent of an adversary. The lower demands of an offensive system compared to a defensive system suggest that the offensive uses may in fact be favored in the implementation of SDI.

On October 30, 1984, a workshop met at the Stanford Center for International Security and Arms Control to examine near-term prospects for and alternative approaches to strategic defense. This report provides the results of that examination and thus represents the consensus of the signatories on a limited set of high-priority objectives and activities in strategic defense.

An earlier study by the Center gave a critical assessment of the President's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). One of its recommendations was an unspecified, treaty-consistent research and development (R&D) program in antiballistic missile (ABM) defense at "a level not very different from recent amounts." Because such an effort is also proposed herein, the present report may in that one sense be seen as a logical complement to the earlier study. However, not all of the members of this workshop endorse all of the conclusions of that study. Also, the present report is limited to the ABM research and development the United States should be pursuing in the near term (5-10 years).

This study by an eminent scientist, a former U.S. arms control official and a specialist on Soviet defense policy at Stanford, is strongly critical of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as "Star Wars," whether it is viewed as transcending deterrence through a nearly foolproof defense or, as more recently argued, as enhancing deterrence through a partial defense. The authors review the proposed technologies, as well as the countermeasures by which offensive systems could offset defensive systems, and question the technological feasibility and the cost assumptions. They confirm the findings of other reports. But the principal value of this one is in its discussion of the political effects upon the Soviet Union, U.S. allies, and arms control negotiations. Strategic stability would be impaired, it is argued, if in the absence of a major new arms control agreement both sides built up their offensive forces while simultaneously developing their new defense capabilities. The impact upon European and Asian allies would be decoupling, pushing them into new nuclear programs and to questioning American guarantees. One need not agree with the conclusions of this study to recognize its merits. A most useful contribution to what will surely be a growing debate.

--Foreign Affairs