It is important to keep in mind what America calls “nuclear capable” for America’s inventory. It denotes making necessary hardware modifications to physically carry specific nuclear hardware, plus putting in a set of intricate command and control protocols with sophisticated control hardware and software. From a safety standpoint this is valuable. But a nation at grave national risk may pass on these. Put bombs in a jet aircraft, then authorize the pilot to release them and—presto. A Rolls-Royce nuclear capability standard is preferable, but hardly an absolute necessity. When facing imminent obliteration a nuclear Chevy will do.
Saudi Arabia is not the only Gulf Arab state that can afford to pay for bombs and has F-15s and F-16s to carry them: add Kuwait and Qatar. That a nuclear Iran will create a Mideast arms race is a matter of indifference to Pakistan. Its growing ties with Iran are a contrary foreign policy consideration, but enough petrodollars can swing the balance of national interest for Pakistan in favor of aiding the Arab Gulf states over closer ties with Iran. For Pakistan, an obsessive focus on India remains the top priority. As the two sides carry out ballistic missile tests of growing sophistication, the need for funds will dictate Pakistan’s choice.
Thus the Sixth Lesson of nuclear-age history—CIVILIAN NUCLEAR POWER INHERENTLY CONFERS MILITARY CAPABILITY—expresses the tragedy of postwar Western technology-transfer idealism. And in the ultimate irony, the Nonproliferation Treaty was adopted when already there was conclusive evidence that the distance between civilian use established as a legal right under the NPT was perilously close to nuclear weapons production prohibited by the same treaty.
9.
IRAQ: THE INFORMATION LIMITS OF INTELLIGENCE
The danger is not that we shall read the signals and indicators with too little skill; the danger is in a poverty of expectations—a routine obsession with a few dangers that may be familiar rather than likely.
THE FAILURE OF THE 2003 IRAQI FREEDOM COALITION TO FIND stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and earlier strategic intelligence failures of similarly grand proportion, offer the Seventh Lesson of nuclear-age history: Intelligence cannot reliably predict when closed societies go nuclear.
The difficulty of predicting when a given country will cross the threshold of nuclear weapons capability is one of two big challenges for intelligence collection and analysis. The other is how to head off a surprise attack—especially devastating if a nuclear strike. We begin by considering the latter challenge.
Strategic Surprise
THE NOW infamous U.S. Iraq intelligence disaster was actually not America’s first. That occurred in 1991, and played a key role in shaping attitudes that led to the second. But to put both of these events in context, we begin in 1932.
Strategist Andrew Krepinevich tells the story of a little-known but chilling incident—an air raid on U.S. Navy ships in Pearl Harbor exactly two months short of a decade before the famous Japanese attack. After a week of sailing north of shipping lanes, using rain squalls for visual shelter in the stormy Pacific, a fleet of carriers launched 150 planes to strike Pearl Harbor’s Battleship Row and nearby Hickam Field on Sunday, February 7, 1932. Appearing over the target areas at dawn, the planes caught soldiers and sailors by complete surprise.
That day the carriers were American, under the command of Rear Admiral Harry Yarnell, and the bombs dropped into Hawaiian waters were flour bags. An army-navy war game called Grand Joint Exercise 4 was being conducted, and the air mission was Raid Plan No. 1.
Were the army and navy so alarmed at the results of the war game and Admiral Yarnell’s brilliant masterstroke that they began serious preparations to guard Pearl Harbor against possible Japanese surprise attack? Not quite.
The defenders claimed that there had been minimal damage to Hickam Field, and that they had found and sunk the carriers. Further, they complained that the attack was illegal under rules of the war game, because it had taken place on a Sunday. The postgame assessment shows how little they learned about the ability of sea-based air power to attack Pearclass="underline"
It is doubtful if air attacks can be launched against Oahu in the face of strong defensive aviation without subjecting the attacking carriers to the danger of material damage and consequent great loss in the attack[ing] air force.
The Japanese thought otherwise, and December 7, 1941, was not their day of rest, as Americans found out to their chagrin. Not only did the Japanese launch their unsporting attack on a Sunday, they did so while their diplomats were ostensibly negotiating in Washington, D.C. As Admiral Yarnell had pretended to bomb in 1932, Japan’s diplomats pretended to negotiate—while Vice Admiral Nagumo’s real fleet launched real dive bombers and torpedo bombers. A total of 2,403 Americans lost their lives that day, with 1,103 killed when a bomb struck the powder magazine of the battleship Arizona. The Japanese lost 55 airmen.
At the time, some had foresight. Admiral Chester Nimitz, who commanded the Pacific Fleet during World War II, said: “Nothing that happened in the Pacific was strange or unexpected.” But men of his vision were few. More typical was the attitude of the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson. He had closed down the State Department’s “Black Chamber” (code-breaker) section in 1929, saying: “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.” America’s adversaries were unfortunately not gentlemen.
Krepinevich, from whose superb book Seven Deadly Scenarios the above account was taken, discusses two other real-life war games in which there was comparably foolish disregard for lessons logically derivable from the outcomes—another from the period between the world wars and one in the twenty-first century Persian Gulf.
Krepinevich’s interwar example is from 1937, when the German army played a massive land war game on an open plain just outside of Paris near Versailles, featuring two mock German Panzer (armored) divisions attacking conventional troops. The tank corps overwhelmed the far less mobile defenders, ending a planned seven-day exercise in four days. The results of the war game inspired Hitler’s blitzkrieg through the Ardennes forests of Belgium, which pierced a gap in France’s then-vaunted Maginot Line. The defensive fortifications did not cover the Ardennes approaches because the French thought the forest impassable by armored divisions.
Not only had the tanks already demonstrated their superiority on French soil, the plan of attack had, too. In attacking France via Belgium, Germany repeated its 1914 foot-marching offensive, although in different tactical form. The Allies obtained Prussian strategist Count Alfred von Schlieffen’s war plan shortly after its December 1905 creation. Yet the Germans surprised France in 1914 and again in 1940.
The twenty-first-century example is from the summer of 2002, when the U.S. military conducted its Millennium Challenge 02 war game in the Persian Gulf. Set five years in the future, the war game pitted the Red Team, playing Iran, against the Blue Team, playing the U.S. Thinking creatively, Red Team captain Lieutenant General Paul van Riper used motorcycle messengers to communicate between land forces and coordinated his small boats for a “swarm” attack on the U.S. fleet via morning prayer broadcasts from (fictional) minaret towers. His ships used commercially available Swedish camouflage and signaled each other via light rather than radio. Van Riper’s Red ships sank or damaged 16 warships, including an aircraft carrier.