cyber war crisis management - 3-29-21 - paper

0 Why the Next “Cuban Missile Crisis” Might Not End Well: Cyberwar and Nuclear Crisis Management Stephen J Cimbala@ Abstract Speeded up offensive threats, vulnerable nuclear warning and command – control- communications (C3) systems, and advanced technology for cyberwar will complicate future efforts in nuclear crisis management New technology for waging conflict in the cyber domain is only part of the problem The principal danger for nuclear-strategic stability lies in the interactions between instruments for cyberwar and the sinews of nuclear decision making During the Cold War and the first nuclear age, expectations about crisis management and deterrence stability were based on relatively static models of nuclear exchanges and “black box” assumptions about the decision making processes of states and leaders In the middle decades of the 21st century, software (including people and organizations) matters as much, or more, than hardware States’ efforts to approach the brink without crossing the nuclear threshold will depend upon their ability to fulfill the objective requirements for successful crisis management, as discussed herein, despite a new matrix of embedded uncertainties created by the information age Introduction The full implications of combining the worst weapons of mass destruction with advanced weapons for cyberwar are still obscure The nuclear revolution that dominated the Cold War took place in an environment of relative information scarcity and primitive information technology, compared to present and foreseeable future trends One aspect of the nuclear – cyber conjunction lies in its potential impact on nuclear crisis management For the United States and Russia, the nuclear-cyber relationship has special significance: the two powers hold more than 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons; both have advanced offensive and defensive cyberwar capabilities; and both Washington and Moscow have experienced the stress of nuclear crisis management under Cold War and later conditions.1 The implications of the nuclear-cyber nexus are explored below in two steps.2 First we *Grateful acknowledgment is made to Paul Davis, Andrew Futter, Lawrence Korb Gabi Siboni and Timothy Thomas for insights into the topic of this study They bear no responsibility for its content Paul Bracken The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics New York: Henry Holt – Times Books, 2012 For insights on this topic, see Erik Gartzke and Jon R Lindsay, “Thermonuclear cyberwar, Journal of Cybersecurity (2017), pp 1-12, , and Andrew Futter, “The double-edged sword: US nuclear command and control modernization,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June 29, 2016, http://thebulletin.org/double-edged-sword-us-nuclear-command-and-controlmodernization.html See also: Futter, Cyber Threats and Nuclear Weapons: New consider important conceptual issues emerging from the overlap of nuclear and cyber Second, we turn to the specific issues related to nuclear crisis management under cyber-impacted conditions I Conceptual Issues What are the implications of potential overlap between concepts or practices for cyberwar and for nuclear deterrence?3 Cyberwar and nuclear weapons seem worlds apart Cyber weapons should appeal to those who prefer a non-nuclear, or even a post-nuclear, militarytechnical arc of development War in the digital domain offers, at least in theory, a possible means of crippling or disabling enemy assets Questions for Command and Control, Security and Strategy (London: Royal United Service Institute for Defence and Security Studies, RUSI Occasional Paper, July 2016), www.rusi.org; and Futter, “War Games Redux? Cyberthreats, U.S.-Russian strategic stability, and new challenges for nuclear security and arms control,” European Security (December 2015), published online, DOI:10.1080/09662839.2015.1112276 In this study we use the terms information warfare and cyber war generically, although some cyber grammarians might insist that “cyber” war be restricted to digital attacks on information systems and networks per se, and information warfare to broader kinds of influence operations, possibly including digital and-or other methods For sensible approaches to these issues, see: Martin C Libicki, “The Convergence of Information Warfare,” Strategic Studies Quarterly, no (Spring 2017), pp 49-65; P.W Singer and Allan Friedman, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp 67-72 and passim.; John Arquilla, Worst Enemy: The Reluctant Transformation of the American Military (Chicago, Ill.: Ivan R Dee, 2008), Ch 6-7; and Libicki, Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2009) without the need for kinetic attack, or while minimizing physical destruction.4 Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, are the very epitome of “mass” destruction, such that their use for deterrence, or the avoidance of war by the manipulation of risk, is preferred to the actual firing of same Unfortunately, neither nuclear deterrence nor cyber war will be able to live in distinct policy universes for the near or distant future Nuclear weapons, whether held back for deterrence or fired in anger, must be incorporated into systems for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) The weapons and their C4ISR systems must be protected from attacks both kinetic and digital in nature In addition, the decision makers who have to manage nuclear forces during a crisis should ideally have the best possible information about the status of their own nuclear and cyber forces and command For example, see David E Sanger, Julian E Barnes and Nicole Perlroth, “Preparing for Retaliation Against Russia,U.S Confronts Hacking by China,” New York Times, March 7, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/07/us/politics/microsoft-solarwinds-hack-russiachina.html On the information operations concepts of major powers, see: Defense Intelligence Agency, China: Military Power – Modernizing a Force to Fight and Win (Washington, D.C U.S Defense Intelligence Agency, 2019, www.dia.mil; Timothy L Thomas, Cyber Silhouettes: Shadows Over Information Operations (Ft Leavenworth, Kansas: Foreign Military Studies Office, 2005), esp Ch 5-6, 10, 14 and passim See also: Thomas, Russia: Military Strategy – Impacting 21st Century Reform and Geopolitics (Ft Leavenworth, Kansas: Foreign Military Studies Office, 2015), pp 253299 for a discussion of Russian cyber capabilities and doctrines, and Pavel Koshkin, “Are cyberwars between major powers possible? A group of Russian cybersecurity experts debate the likelihood of a cyberwar involving the U.S., Russia or China,” Russia Direct, http://russia-direct.org, August 1, 2013, in Johnson’s Russia List 2013 - #143, August 6, 2013, davidjohnson@starpower.net systems, about the forces and C4ISR of possible attackers, and about the probable intentions and risk-acceptance of possible opponents In short, the task of managing a nuclear crisis demands clear thinking and good information But the employment of cyber weapons in the early stages of a crisis could impede clear assessment by creating confusion in networks and the action channels that are dependent on those networks.5 The temptation for early cyber preemption might “succeed” to the point at which nuclear crisis management becomes weaker instead of stronger As nuclear command and control expert Bruce Blair noted in 2020: Cyber penetration of early warning networks could corrupt the data on which a presidential launch decision would depend Farther down the chain of command, cyberattack could degrade the launch-readiness of strategic forces, especially the silo-based Minuteman missiles It appears far more remote but not impossible that cyberattack could even produce unauthorized launches of these un-recallable missiles, which are poised to fire instantly or with a short preprogrammed time delay after receiving a short stream of computer code The missiles not care who sends them the code, only that it is correct.6 Cyber weapons are not necessarily easy to use effectively as enabling instruments for operational-tactical or strategic effect See Martin C Libicki, Conquest in Cyberspace: National Security and Information Warfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), esp Ch 4-5 Bruce G Blair, “Loose cannons: The president and US nuclear posture,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, v (2020), pp 14-26, citation p 19, https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2019.1701279 Ironically, the downsizing of U.S and post-Soviet Russian strategic nuclear arsenals since the end of the Cold War, while a positive development from the perspectives of nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, makes the concurrence of cyber and nuclear attack capabilities more alarming The supersized deployments of missiles and bombers and expansive numbers of weapons deployed by the Cold War Americans and Soviets had at least one virtue Those arsenals provided so much redundancy against first strike vulnerability that relatively linear systems for nuclear attack warning, commandcontrol and responsive launch under, or after, attack, sufficed At the same time, Cold War tools for military cyber mischief were primitive compared to those available now In addition, countries and their armed forces were less dependent on the fidelity of their information systems for national security Thus the reduction of U.S., Russian and possibly other forces to the size of “minimum deterrents” might compromise nuclear flexibility and resilience in the face of kinetic attacks preceded or accompanied by cyber war.7 In addition, although the mathematics of minimum deterrence would shrink the size of attackers’ as well as defenders’ arsenals, defenders with smaller size forces might have greater fears of absolute compared to relative losses – and, therefore, be more prone to preemption-dependent strategies than defenders with larger forces An expert critique of proposals for minimum deterrence for U.S nuclear forces appears in: Dr Keith B Payne, Study Director, and Hon James Schlesinger, Chairman, Senior Review Group, Minimum Deterrence: Examining the Evidence (Fairfax, Va.: National Institute for Public Policy, National Institute Press, 2013) For a favorable expert assessment of the prospects for minimum deterrence, see: James Wood Forsyth Jr., B Chance Saltzman, and Gary Schaub Jr., “Remembrance of Things Past: The Enduring Value of Nuclear Weapons,” Strategic Studies Quarterly, no (Spring, 2010), pp 74-90 Offensive and defensive information warfare as well as other cyber related activities are obviously very much on the minds of U.S military leaders and others in the American and allied national security establishments.8 On the other hand, arms control for cyber is apt to run into daunting security and technical issues: even assuming a successful navigation of political trust for matters as sensitive as these Of special significance is whether cyber arms control negotiators can certify that hackers within their own states are sufficiently under control for cyber verification and transparency Both Russia and China reportedly use ad hoc and unofficial hackers to conduct operations about which governments would prefer to remain officially deniable The cyber domain cuts across the other geostrategic domains for warfare as well: land, sea, air, and space On the other hand, the cyber domain, compared to the others, suffers from lack of an historical perspective: the cyber domain “has been created in a short time and has not had the same level of scrutiny as other battle domains,” as one author has argued.9 What this might mean for the cyber-nuclear intersection is far from obvious The following diagram offers an oversimplified summary of some of the cognitive challenges involved in a crisis between two states and their efforts to obtain accurate information in support of crisis management objectives David E Sanger, The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age (New York: Crown Publishing, 2018) See also: Fred Kaplan, Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016) Major Clifford S Magee, USMC, “Awaiting Cyber 9/11,” Joint Force Quarterly, Issue 70, 3rd quarter 2013, pp 76-82, citation p 76 Figure One Cognitive Challenges in Crisis Management II Crisis Management A Definitions and Parameters Crisis management, including nuclear crisis management, is both a competitive and cooperative endeavor between military adversaries A crisis is, by definition, a time of great tension and uncertainty.10 Threats are in the air and time pressure on policymakers seems intense Each side has objectives that it wants to attain and values that it deems important to protect During a crisis state behaviors are especially interactive and interdependent with those of another state It would not be too farfetched to refer to this interdependent stream of interstate crisis behaviors as a system, provided the term "system" is not understood as an entity completely separate from the state or individual behaviors that make it up The system aspect implies reciprocal causation of the crisis behaviors of "A" by "B," and vice versa 10 For important concepts, see: See Alexander L George, "A Provisional Theory of Crisis Management," in Avoiding War: Problems of Crisis Management, ed Alexander L George (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991), pp 22-27, for the political and operational requirements of crisis management; and George, "Strategies for Crisis Management," ibid., pp 377-94, for descriptions of offensive and defensive crisis management strategies See also: Ole R Holsti, "Crisis Decision Making," in Behavior, Society and Nuclear War, Philip E Tetlock, et al., eds., (New York: Oxford Univ Press, l989), I, 8-84; and Phil Williams, Crisis Management (New York: John Wiley and Sons, l976) See also George, "The Cuban Missile Crisis: Peaceful Resolution Through Coercive Diplomacy," in The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, Alexander L George and William E Simons, eds., (2d ed.; Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994), pp 111-132 26 Able Archer was intended to practice nuclear release procedures Soviet intelligence routinely monitored these exercises However, the 1983 version took place within a background of rising U.S.-Soviet political tensions and heightened suspicions within the Soviet political leadership and military high command that the United States and NATO might be preparing for a nuclear first strike Russian sensitivities to the possibility of U.S or NATO nuclear first use or first strike were high at this time, partly due to NATO’s decision to begin deploying Pershing II ballistic missiles and ground-launched cruise missiles of intermediate range in Europe, beginning in the fall of 1983 Soviet and Warsaw Pact reactions to Able Archer 83 included an unprecedented surge of Pact technical collection, a significant increase in reconnaissance by Soviet strategic and naval aviation, and other unusual Soviet moves that indicated increased concern about NATO and U.S intentions.32 The case illustrates how mistaken interpretations of “normal” events can overvalue pessimistic assessment at just the 32 President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, The Soviet “War Scare,” February 15, 1990, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb533-The-Able-Archer-War-ScareDeclassified-PFIAB-Report-Released/2012-0238-MR.pdf, esp pp 69-74, and p vii See also: Jill Kastner, “Standing on the Brink: The Secret War Scare of 1983,” The Nation, May 31, 2018, in Johnson’s Russia List 2018 - #99 – June 1, 2018, davidjohnson@starpower.net, in addition to sources cited below 27 wrong time.33 As the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board concluded in 1990: We believe that the Soviets perceived that the correlation of forces had turned against the USSR, that the US was seeking military superiority, and that the chances of the US launching a nuclear first strike – perhaps under cover of a routine training exercise – were growing We also believe that the US intelligence community did not at the time, and for several years afterwards, attach sufficient weight to the possibility that the war scare was real.34 Similar problems in coordinating the management of deescalation and conflict termination with the conduct of information operations might appear in two other situations One example is the use of a bunker-busting or other advanced technology conventional weapon that the other side, during the fog of crisis or war, confused with a nuclear first use or first strike Russia expressed this concern specifically during New START negotiations in 2010, with regard to 33 On Able Archer and its implications, see Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990), pp 599-601 Additional parts of the background relevant to political tensions at this time included U.S.-announced plans for the Strategic Defensive Initiative (SDI) in the spring of 1983, the KAL 007 shootdown by a Soviet fighter in September, 1983 and an ongoing KGB-GRU intelligence operation (RYAN) to detect telltale signs of any U.S or NATO decision for a nuclear attack (Ibid., pp 582-598) See also: Robert M Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p 273, also cited in Davis, Wilson, Kim and Park, “Deterrence and Stability for the Korean Peninsula,” p 21 34 President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, The Soviet “War Scare,” p vii 28 American plans to deploy some conventionally armed ballistic missiles on nuclear capable intercontinental or transoceanic launchers Russia continues to warn that any ballistic missile launched at its territory will be perceived as a nuclear attack.35 New START counting rules will regard conventionally armed ballistic missiles as also nuclear capable launchers and, therefore, subject to overall restrictions on the numbers of deployed launchers and weapons U.S plans for Prompt Global Strike (PGS) systems including missiles or future space planes were first approved during the George W Bush administration and carried forward under its successors Another example is military competition in space U.S Department of Defense officials now accept that the era of unweaponized space has been superseded by new threats and deterrence requirements.36 Major powers have already launched satellites designed to shadow, repair and-or destroy the satellites of another space power U.S satellites in low earth and higher orbits have been closely followed by rapidly maneuvering Russian and Chinese satellites We can anticipate that states’ capabilities for spaced-based prompt destruction of enemy satellites will only improve in the future In turn, countermeasures to ground or space based attacks on satellites will also be developed Given the extent to which the U.S is dependent upon space assets for early attack warning, for command, control and communications, and for navigation and 35 Vladimir Isachenkov, “Russia warns it will see any incoming missile s nuclear,” Associated Press, August 7, 2020, https://apnews.com/article/nuclear-weaponsinternational-news-moscow-europe-russia-888e0816c6fa7f58b9ad4f1e97993643 36 US Defense Intelligence Agency Challenges to Security in Space Washington, D.C.: Defense Intelligence Agency, January 2019, www.dia.mil/Military-Power-Publications 29 targeting, opponents’ war plans will include options for early space as well as cyber strikes During a crisis, spacefaring military powers will be acutely sensitive to cosmic or terrestrial maneuvers that resemble a “space first strike” against key satellites that support their military brains and nervous systems Activation of defensive satellites to high alert and aggressive maneuver postures, intended to support a warning against enemy attack, may have the opposite effect of encouraging anti-satellite preemption The likelihood that defensive space maneuvers are perceived as offensive increases to the extent that a tense situation of political antagonism and proximate threat already exists We can perhaps narrow the range of scenarios for purposes of discussion about future possibilities The exercise that follows uses U.S Congressional Budget Office projections for future American strategic nuclear force structures, under the assumption of enduring New START constraints, under different assumptions about U.S nuclear modernization and deployment: (1), the “2017 Plan” assuming a triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs); submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs); and heavy bombers; (2), a strategic nuclear dyad without ICBMs; (3), a dyad without bombers; and, (4), a triad with 300 ICBMs and 10 SSBNs (ballistic missile submarines) For symmetry, alternative Russian force structures are also analyzed: (1), a balanced triad of ICBMs, SLBMs and heavy bombers; (2), a dyad without bombers; (3), a dyad without SLBMs; and, (4), a force entirely made up of ICBMs Charts One through Four, immediately following, summarize the force structures and outcomes of nuclear force exchanges under two conditions: a peacetime maximum deployment limit for each state 30 of 1,550 nuclear weapons on intercontinental launchers (the New START limit); and, second, a lower maximum deployment limit of 1,000 warheads on intercontinental launchers Charts One and Two show the force structures and outcomes for the 1,550 deployment limit case; Charts Three and Four display the same information for the 1,000 deployment limit forces 31 Chart One U.S – Russia Total Strategic Weapons Alternative Force Structures 1,550 Warhead Deployment Limit Graphics in this and following charts are based on force structures in U.S Congressional Budget Office, Approaches for Managing the Costs of U.S Nuclear Forces, 2017 to 2046 (Washington, D.C.: CBO, October 2017), pp 33 and 44, www.cbo.gov/publications/53211 Grateful acknowledgment is made to Dr James Scouras for use of his AWSM@ model for making calculations and drawing graphs He is not responsible for its use here, nor for any arguments in this paper 32 Chart Two U.S – Russia Arriving Retaliatory Weapons Alternative Force Structures 1,550 Deployment Limit 33 Chart Three U.S – Russia Total Strategic Weapons Alternative Force Structures 1,000 Warhead Deployment Limit 34 Chart Four U.S – Russia Arriving Retaliatory Weapons Alternative Force Structures 1,000 Warhead Deployment Limit 35 Interpretation of the information summarized in Charts One through Four depends, in part, upon the expectations policy makers impose upon their strategic nuclear forces in the event that deterrence fails The most basic level of expectation is assured second strike retaliation, regardless the scale of the attacker’s first strike Assured retaliation provides for a level of destruction against the opponent’s industrial base and society that is unacceptable by historical standards A more ambitious political guidance for nuclear retaliatory forces would also require the capability to strike against a wider variety of targets, especially the attacker’s remaining nuclear forces and command systems A third posture would include the capability, in addition to those previously listed, to maintain enduring and resilient nuclear command, control and communications (NC3) through the various stages of a nuclear war Each of these postures anticipates at least some flexibility in targeting and planning for “withholds” for postattack coercion and bargaining Regardless the ambitions of policy makers, the numbers of weapons deployed and used would create an unprecedented global catastrophe Therefore, the purpose of nuclear weapons and their supporting infrastructure is the avoidance of war or nuclear blackmail, instead of the ability to prevail in war at an acceptable cost Toward that end, the ways in which forces and built and deployed must signal to prospective competitors that they are crisis stable Crisis stability is enhanced if nuclear forces are survivable, flexible and resilient, on the one hand, and nonprovocative, on the other If we look at the outcomes summarized in Charts Two and Four, as below, we note some issues with respect to crisis stability In both the 1,550 and 1,000 warhead deployment cases, significant differences exist between the numbers of second strike surviving and retaliating 36 weapons for each state under conditions of “launch on warning” compared to “riding out the attack” and then retaliating This is primarily due to the vulnerability of ICBMs deployed in silos Their expected low rate of survivability compared to other platforms invites a mistaken decision for preemption (a first strike in the expectation that the other side has already launched an attack or made an irrevocable decision to so) This situation has led some critics to recommend that the U.S away with its ICBM force entirely and deploy only a dyad of bombers and SSBNs On the other hand, the putative vulnerability of ICBMs compared to other launchers should be seen in a larger context The U.S strategic nuclear triad operates with synergy to confound the calculus of prospective attackers The “attack surface” of U.S strategic nuclear launch systems offers three very different kinds of targets, each with unique attributes ICBMs are the most reliable forces for prompt launch; sea based SLBMs are the most survivable; and bombers can be launched, used as signals of coercion without irrevocable commitment, and recalled if necessary ICBMs provide the largest number of targets which the attacker must destroy quickly in order to disarm U.S retaliatory forces They complicate the first striker’s attack calculus and force the expenditure of at least one warhead, and perhaps two, against each silo based ICBM to guarantee its destruction If the U.S chooses to continue present plans to replace the Minuteman ICBM with the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD), it might acknowledge the problem of crisis stability for silo based missiles by making part of the force mobile Mobile ICBMs were studied during the Cold War but eventually discarded for reasons of cost and environmental constraints On the other hand, the U.S could consider deploying 300 total GBSD missiles with 100 of that number 37 based in mobile configurations Fifty ICBMs could be based on movable TELs (transporter – erector – launchers) and maneuvered on land; another 50 could be moved around on railroads Infrastructure issues would not necessarily be insurmountable – depending on where the mobile missiles were deployed In addition, some of the 200 silo based ICBMs could be augmented with co-located simple-novel missile defenses: ground based non-nuclear missiles that intercept attackers within the atmosphere In short, if the U.S insists on maintaining a strategic nuclear triad instead of a dyad, it might make at least part of the ICBM force more crisis stable Conclusion During the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, there were thirteen days for the frog to boil in water before loss of control over events could result in an outbreak of nuclear war The next “Cuban missile crisis” will take place within a different technology environment that impacts upon the probability of success or failure in crisis time decision making Military cyberwar has already been used to attack nuclear production facilities, to hijack computers and servers for hostile purposes, to infiltrate networks with lurking malware awaiting timely activation, and to divert or prevent rocket launches by hostile powers Advanced cyberwar capabilities might also interfere with future crisis management, either intentionally or otherwise, resulting in misperceptions, faulty communications, caricatures of the other side’s intentions and capabilities, and hasty judgments based on 38 stereotypical thinking pushed forward under duress.37 Added to this list, in the case of nuclear crisis, is the possibility of imminent attack with historically unprecedented consequences: creating a bias for preemptive action “striking first in the last resort.” Finally, it is important to emphasize that deterrence, whether it is based on the credible threat of denial or retaliation, must be successfully communicated to – and believed by – the other side The “deterree” has the decisive vote.38 37 Some of these and other decision pathologies actually happened during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, about which a large literature exists See, for example: Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, ‘One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964 (New York: W.W Norton and Co., 1997); and Graham Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971) See also recent reflections and discussion by Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), pp 186-222 Khrushchev’s perspective is provided in Jerrold L Schecter and Vladislav V Luchkov, Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), pp 170-183 Lessons from nuclear security crises are addressed by experts in: Henry D Sokolski and Bruno Tertrais, eds., Nuclear Weapons Security Crises: What Does History Teach? (Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S Army War College Press, July 2013) 38 As Colin S Gray has noted, "Because deterrence flows from a relationship, it cannot reside in unilateral capabilities, behavior or intentions Anyone who refers to the deterrent policy plainly does not understand the subject." Gray, Explorations in Strategy (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996), p 33 As argued by Todd S Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, nuclear coercion (or compellence) may be more problematical than deterrence for this reason: “Many of the problems that make coercive nuclear threats incredible are less acute in deterrence contexts Most notably, nuclear deterrent threats are often more credible because the stakes for nuclear defenders tend to be higher than they are for nuclear coercers.” Sechser and Fuhrmann, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p 255 and passim 39 ... Board, The Soviet ? ?War Scare,” February 15, 1990, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb533-The-Able-Archer -War- ScareDeclassified-PFIAB-Report-Released/201 2-0 238-MR.pdf, esp pp 6 9-7 4, and p vii See... https://thebulletin.org/2021/03/regulating-military-ai-will-be-difficult-heres-a-wayforward/ 29 Graham T Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971),... Week, August 18, 2020, https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/missile-defense-weapons/usaf-errantly-revealsresearch-icbm-range-hypersonic-glide; and Margot van Loon, Dr Larry Wortzel and Dr Mark