{
"authors": [
"Vipin Narang",
"Ankit Panda"
],
"type": "other",
"centerAffiliationAll": "dc",
"centers": [
"Carnegie Endowment for International Peace"
],
"collections": [
"Korean Peninsula"
],
"englishNewsletterAll": "ctw",
"nonEnglishNewsletterAll": "",
"primaryCenter": "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace",
"programAffiliation": "NPP",
"programs": [
"Nuclear Policy"
],
"projects": [],
"regions": [
"East Asia",
"North Korea"
],
"topics": [
"Nuclear Policy"
]
}
Source: Getty
Could a president’s overconfidence in U.S. defensive systems lead to deadly miscalculation and nuclear armageddon? Yes, it could.
Source: War on the Rocks
Could a president’s overconfidence in U.S. defensive systems lead to deadly miscalculation and nuclear armageddon? Yes. Yes, it could. Last Wednesday, referring to potential American responses to North Korea’s missile and nuclear program, President Donald Trump told Sean Hannity “We have missiles that can knock out a missile in the air 97 percent of the time, and if you send two of them it’s gonna get knocked out.” If Trump believes — or is being told — that American missile defenses are that accurate, not only is he factually wrong, he is also very dangerously wrong. This misperception could be enough to lead the United States into a costly war with devastating consequences.
Here’s why: If Trump believes U.S. missile defenses work this effectively, he might actually think a first strike attempt to disarm North Korea of its missile and nuclear forces would successfully spare U.S. cities from North Korean nuclear retaliation. They probably wouldn’t. Believing that each ground-based midcourse missile defense (GMD) interceptor can provide anything close to a 97 percent interception rate against retaliation raises the temptation to attempt a so-called “splendid first strike” based on the assumption that missile defenses can successfully intercept any leftover missiles North Korea could then fire at the United States.
In this article, we first lay out the complexity of American missile defenses and explain why it’s way off the mark to believe U.S. ground-based missile defense interceptors are even close to as effective as Trump suggested. We then explain how overconfidence in national missile defense may tempt the president to consider a first strike with no actual guarantee that it can spare an American city — or multiple cities — from potential North Korean thermonuclear retaliation. For a president who has already expressed an inclination to visit “fire and fury” on Kim Jong Un and threatened to “totally destroy” his country, we’re obligated to take Trump’s misplaced confidence in GMD very seriously. His attraction to attempting a first strike will only grow if he is blind to an important gap in U.S. defenses. Not only might he still want to denuclearize North Korea by force, he might think it is actually possible to do so without putting the U.S. homeland at risk.
This article was originally published in War on the Rocks
Former Nonresident Scholar, Nuclear Policy Program
Vipin Narang was a nonresident scholar in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Ankit Panda is the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
For Putin, upgrading Russia’s nuclear forces was a secondary goal. The main aim was to gain an advantage over the West, including by strengthening the nuclear threat on all fronts. That made growth in missile arsenals and a new arms race inevitable.
Maxim Starchak
The Kremlin will only be prepared to negotiate strategic arms limitations if it is confident it can secure significant concessions from the United States. Otherwise, meaningful dialogue is unlikely, and the international system of strategic stability will continue to teeter on the brink of total collapse.
Maxim Starchak
The collapse of the Budapest summit is an inevitable result of the Russian system of artificially creating foreign policy crises in order to achieve a desired outcome.
Alexander Baunov
Russia could compensate for “nuclear losses” to its aviation by strengthening other elements of its nuclear triad. At a time when control mechanisms are not functioning, there is a risk of strategic uncertainty emerging over the development trajectory of Russia’s nuclear forces.
Maxim Starchak
Moscow isn’t exactly thrilled by the prospect of sanctions against Iran being lifted, but if a new Iranian nuclear deal is inevitable, then the Kremlin is prepared to play an active role in it.
Nikita Smagin