Arms and Influence — Thomas Schelling on Nuclear Taboos, Salami Tactics, and Mutual Alarm

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Arms and Influence — Thomas Schelling on nuclear taboos, salami tactics, and alarm dynamics
Writer’s note: This post was first drafted in August 2021. I updated the last four paragraphs in early March 2022 to reflect recent events in Russia and Ukraine.

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The nuclear taboo

Nuclear weapons have transformed the nature of warfare and the diplomacy of violence. As Thomas Schelling writes in Arms and Influence, “deterrence rests today on the threat of pain and extinction, not just on the threat of military defeat”. But the very speed and threat of these weapons “could make them ideal for starting wars” as well. Descendants of the atomic age find themselves in a precarious position.

“Military strategy can no longer be thought of, as it could for some countries in some eras, as the science of military victory. It is now equally, if not more, the art of coercion, of intimidation and deterrence.”

Thomas Schelling. (1966). Arms and Influence. 2008 Edition.

Yet, the “most astonishing development” following the Second World War, Schelling says, is that nations have avoided the use of nuclear weapons. Indeed, the horrors at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the nuclear restraint shown during the Korean War and the Cold War, have made nuclear arms taboo. A single nuke, after all, is enough to trigger mutually assured destruction.

Embedded in our psyches today is the shared belief that nuclear weapons are more devastating and deplorable than conventional weapons. Taboos, in this sense, are a cultural and political asset “to be treasured”. It is “our main hope”, Schelling says, against future cataclysms. The question then is whether nations can uphold such conventions when conflicts and tensions flare.

“This attitude, or convention, or tradition, that took root and grew over these past five decades is an asset to be treasured. It is not guaranteed to survive, and some possessors or potential possessors of nuclear weapons may not share the convention. How to preserve this inhibition, … deserve serious attention.”

Thomas Schelling. (1966). Arms and Influence. 2008 Edition.

Lamentable principle

“One of the lamentable principles of human productivity”, Schelling reminds, “is that it is easier to destroy than to create”. From warring tribes to modern empires, people have long understood our latent capacity for violence and destruction. Unfortunately, it is also a powerful source of bargaining and is reflected in concepts like deterrence and retaliation today.

Schelling stresses, however, that bargaining power exists only when adversaries share common ground. Both sides, we presume, would prefer to avoid war altogether if agreeable concessions were made. In this way, negotiations are fruitless when the opposing side has nothing to lose through conflict. In a game theoretic sense, war is not a game of pure conflict.

“Diplomacy is bargaining; it seeks outcomes that, though not ideal for either party, are better for both than some of the alternatives. …There must be some common interest, if only in the avoidance of mutual damage. …The power to hurt is bargaining power. …Like the threat of a strike in industrial relations, …the threat of violence continuously circumscribes international politics. Neither strength nor goodwill procures immunity.”

Thomas Schelling. (1966). Arms and Influence. 2008 Edition.

Burning bridges

The effectiveness of any threat of war or retaliation depends on your credibility. Talk is cheap when your adversary believes you’re bluffing. Often, the enemy knows that some territory is simply not worth the expense to you. The challenge then is in keeping your threats persuasive. Schelling recalls, for example, Soviet Union First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev’s threat in 1959 during the Cold War:

“… Khrushchev went on, “If you send in tanks, they will burn and make no mistake about it. If you want war, you can have it, but remember it will be your war. Our rockets will fly automatically.”

Thomas Schelling. (1966). Arms and Influence. 2008 Edition.

Sometimes, the best strategy is to burn your bridges and relinquish the initiative. In certain battlefields, you might embolden your adversaries if they learn that you’ll retreat upon attack. Athenian military general Xenophon (430 – 354 BC) understood this principle, Schelling writes. When threatened against the Persian army’s pursuit, “[Xenophon] placed his Greeks with their backs against an impassable ravine”.

“Initiative is good if it means imaginativeness, boldness, new ideas. But the term somewhat disguises the fact that deterrence, … often depends on getting into a position where the initiative is up to the enemy, and it is he who has to make the awful decision to proceed to a clash.”

Thomas Schelling. (1966). Arms and Influence. 2008 Edition.

Unfortunately, not all commitments are as categorical as burning bridges. We have to grapple with the issues of complexity and clarity of scope. Schelling points, for example, to the construction and history of the Berlin Wall. While the West was committed to Berlin, did the Wall’s construction oblige “forceful opposition”? As history suggests, the Soviets “probably anticipated” a more “lenient interpretation” from the West.

Salami tactics

What’s more, thresholds and redlines are susceptible to undermining. Children, for instance, are well versed at salami tactics. They prod and probe at their parent’s boundaries, finding ingenious ways to shave their commitments.

As Schelling sees it:

“Tell a child not to go in the water and he’ll sit on the bank and submerge his bare feet; he is not yet “in” the water. Acquiesce, and he’ll stand up; no more of him is in the water than before. Think it over, and he’ll start wading, not going any deeper; take a moment to decide whether this is different and he’ll go a little deeper, arguing that since he goes back and forth it all averages out. Pretty soon we are calling to him not to swim out of sight, wondering whatever happened to all our discipline.”

Thomas Schelling. (1966). Arms and Influence. 2008 Edition.

Like children, world leaders are no strangers to salami tactics. Political commitments are often shrouded in legalese and rhetoric, and subject to interpretation. Should you let the transgression go, or do you set a precedent immediately?

Indeed, ambiguity is double-edged. Vague commitments can scare your adversaries into compliance. But if you leave too much room for interpretation, it can dilute your credibility. In the worst case, the adversary does not understand you and proceeds anyway.

Rational lunatics

Similarly, it doesn’t always pay, Schelling says, “to be, or to be believed to be, fully rational, cool-headed, and in control of oneself”. We do not, after all, expect rational calculators to participate in mutually destructive behaviors. What about the fanatical, zealous, or vindictive?

Would you pursue the same wartime commitment knowing your enemies are happy to destroy themselves if it brings you down with them? While economic theory prides itself on cool-headed rationality, real life finds situations in which the unstable and unpredictable are sensible, whether by intention or predisposition.

“I have been told that in mental institutions there are inmates who are either very crazy or very wise, or both, who make clear to the attendants that they may slit their own veins or light their clothes on fire if they don’t have their way. I understand that they sometimes have their way.”

Thomas Schelling. (1966). Arms and Influence. 2008 Edition.

Mutual alarm dynamics

The worst type of competition, Schelling says, is “one in which each side thinks it can win if it gets the jump on the other”. “Military technology that puts a premium on haste in a crisis puts a premium on war itself”. Indeed, each warmonger, in their desire to pre-empt the other, brings about total war (see the prisoner’s dilemma and preemption game).

The speed of warfare today means that retaliation may happen over the span of minutes or hours. Haste creates another double-edge, particularly if psychology dominates under pressure. Brash leaders, for instance, may overreact to a false alarm. An indecisive command, by contrast, may underreact to an imminent threat.

“The premium on haste — the advantage, in case of war, in being the one to launch it or in being a quick second in retaliation if the other side gets off the first blow — is undoubtedly the greatest piece of mischief that can be introduced into military forces, and the greatest source of danger that peace will explode into all-out war.”

Thomas Schelling. (1966). Arms and Influence. 2008 Edition.

Feedback and arms races

The situation is particularly unstable when a nation attains a first-strike advantage, raising the temptation of preemption. Since neither side wants war, investment in second-strike capability becomes a necessary deterrent. Without new norms, conventions, or agreements, both sides soon find themselves in an expensive arms race. While arms races are usually good for the consumer in a capitalistic economy, it is most undesirable to everyone in geopolitical warfare. 

“The first step toward inducing a potential enemy to moderate his arms build-up is to persuade him that he has more to lose than to gain by failing to take our reaction into account.”

Thomas Schelling. (1966). Arms and Influence. 2008 Edition.

Perhaps it goes without saying that all planning should take feedback loops into account. Your best response depends on their best response, which depends on your best response, and so on. Decision makers that do not search deep enough into their decision tree may find themselves cycling in an undesirable loop for many years to come.

“I see no reason to suppose that the Soviets react in a more rational, more coolly deliberate way, than the West. They surely suffer from budgetary inertia, interservice disputes, ideological touchstones, and the intellectual limitations of a political bureaucracy, as well as from plain bad information.”

Thomas Schelling. (1966). Arms and Influence. 2008 Edition.

Severance and humanity

If world leaders sever the nuclear taboo someday, could society mend itself? Schelling’s guess is probably the right one: “we do not know”. The fallout might restore the “curse” and “taboo” of nuclear weapons. But it’s not hard to imagine the likely alternative — an annihilation so great that we humans cannot recover from.

Regardless, it is imperative that nations preserve their nuclear inhibitions. Schelling wonders whether the world will uphold its “anti-nuclear instinct”. Will they see value in diplomacy and deterrence? Will they have the discipline to avoid Strangelove scenarios? Or will they use the threat of total war to further their political agenda and crimes against humanity?

Network of mutuality (March 2022 addendum)

Schelling wrote Arms and Influence during the Cold War in 1966. Unfortunately, his warnings and playbook remain relevant to this day. Large-scale invasions, decentralized terrorism, and crimes against humanity continue to wound the human condition. Every nation must in turn choose its response and position (noting that inaction is action too).

Martin Luther King reminds us that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an escapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”. Each of us, as individuals, communities, and nations, have an obligation to the rights, welfare and freedoms of our neighbors. The uneasy question, of course, is in the how.

Given the intelligence networks of modern government, I do not believe that the cost and consequences of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine were unanticipated by world leaders. Those outside the inner circles of geopolitics, however, can only speculate at the strategic calculus, frame-of-mind, and ideological objectives that guide each nation’s hand.

Ultimately, though, we have to remember that modern warfare is not a game of chess or Risk. It is often a product of madmen, megalomania, and misaligned interests — a price borne on the sacrifice of families everywhere.

So while the contributions of Schelling and the like provide penetrating insights into the diplomacy of warfare, it also reinforces the inhumanity of it all. Might we find a better strategic model for ourselves?

Sources and further reading

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