Why is it a tradition?

While I see some merit in Tannenwald's theoretical arguments and empirical case studies, it is farfetched to regard the continued non-use of nuclear weapons a function of a taboo-like prohibition. I have argued in my book, The Tradition of Non-use of Nuclear Weapons, that a more modest tradition and the resultant reputation costs involved in breaking it may be assigned some credit for the absence of nuclear attacks toward non-nuclear states. Traditions and taboos are socially driven patterns of behaviour and expectations that emerge over a period of time, but the former are not as stringent as the latter. According to Webster's dictionary, a tradition is ‘an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom)’.Footnote ⁹ It is passed on from one generation to the other and social groups are expected to observe it as an ‘accustomed obligation’. Edward Shils conceives of tradition, in its ‘barest, most elementary sense’, as ‘anything which is transmitted or handed down from the past to the present’. The components of a human action that can be transmitted to a subsequent generation ‘are the patterns or images of actions which they imply or present and the beliefs requiring, recommending, regulating, permitting, or prohibiting the reenactment of those patterns’.Footnote ¹⁰ Although traditions have these imperatives (require, recommend, etc.) attached to them, observance is not automatic:

What this means is that traditions have a greater degree of malleability than taboos. They are sustained – or not – by human action. We contemplate whether to break them; we change and adapt them in subtle ways over time; we subject them to debate rather than internalising them to the point of unconscious, unthinking acceptance. Past actions have present relevance because of the imperatives attached to them, but it is up to present actors to decide whether and to what degree to carry them forward.

I have five basic reasons for thinking that ‘tradition’ better captures the norm of non-use than ‘taboo’. The first is the issue of explicitness. Tannenwald herself acknowledges: ‘a taboo is also generally associated with such qualities as absoluteness, unthinkingness, and taken-for-grantedness’.Footnote ¹² Most human beings do not even consider breaking a powerful social taboo, for example, against cannibalism, under most circumstances. This does not adequately characterise the way that state leaders and the public at large think about nuclear use. The nuclear powers have strategic doctrines that call for nuclear use under certain conditions. The US, Russia, UK and France have indeed enlarged those conditions which now include prevention and pre-emption of use of weapons of mass destruction by non-nuclear states. In a strict interpretation of this policy, these could include chemical and biological weapons. The policy changes during the Bush era (slightly modified by the Obama administration in 2010) with regard to the conditions for atomic use have been expanded to include prevention, pre-emption and other non-proliferation objectives involving rogue states and terrorist groups.Footnote ¹³ Had it been a well-entrenched taboo-like prohibition, such policy alterations would not have been contemplated or implemented by the nuclear weapon states with very little public debate. Therefore, the big challenge here is that the supposedly ‘rational discourse’ surrounding nuclear use cannot be captured under the concept of a taboo-like prohibition on nuclear use since such a concept implies that the taboo is internalised. Instead, nuclear use is continually subject to debate, and as such the norm against it is not as strong as a taboo.

Public opinion in nuclear states does not seem to accord with the existence of a taboo-like prohibition against nuclear use. A substantial majority in opinion polls in the US prior to the 2003 Gulf War favoured the use of nuclear weapons in the event of Saddam Hussein using chemical and biological weapons.Footnote ¹⁴ In Israel, there has been a steady increase of support for nuclear response to chemical and/or gas attacks, from 36 per cent in 1986 to 80 per cent in 1998.Footnote ¹⁵ The punishment the publics in these countries were willing to inflict was certainly most disproportionate to the damage chemical and biological weapons could have caused.

The reason for the public's peculiar attitude is possibly that in official discourses the taboo idea is discouraged, and nuclear weapons are very much viewed as an instrument of peace, that is, a weapon that could be used to prevent aggressive behaviour by an adversary. Large sums of money are spent every year to maintain and update nuclear weapons and their facilities. If the taboo idea is deeply entrenched, the public would not have supported such a massive expenditure when other priorities probably deserve more attention.

States also treat the norm against nuclear use strategically in another sense. The desire to attract allies and the allegiance of developing countries, as well as non-proliferation objectives, contributed to the creation of this partially invented tradition. Hence rational self-interest cannot be ruled out in its observance. This kind of strategic thinking is not easily permitted under a taboo concept. Although some social taboos have functions such as the maintenance of social or family order, the strategic development of the non-use norm for alliance and public diplomacy purposes reflects a further dimension of conscious action that a taboo-like analysis cannot adequately capture. A tradition, on the other hand, is less stringent. Therefore the concept of a tradition can capture more accurately the less-than-complete commitment to nuclear non-use by nuclear weapons states.

Second, the taboo concept implies that ‘deliberate nuclear use is seen as outside the pale, and is not seriously considered during hostilities’.Footnote ¹⁶ However, many of the case studies I present in my book The Tradition of Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons show clear-cut evidence of serious consideration of nuclear use by the US leaders. President Harry Truman considered nuclear use in Korea and against China and even moved thermonuclear weapons to Guam and Okinawa at the height of the crisis in 1951. His dismissal of General Douglas Macarthur as commander of the UN forces in Korea was due to his fear that the general would use them without his authorisation.Footnote ¹⁷ President Dwight Eisenhower is probably the most explicit in considering the use of nuclear weapons in conflict. He seriously pondered using it against China in 1953 and he claims that nuclear threat was essential for China to concede to the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War.Footnote ¹⁸ Even two and a half decades since Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks, the taboo idea was not well-entrenched. This is evident in President Richard Nixon's serious consideration of nuclear attack in Vietnam in 1969. The administration's plan, code-named ‘Operation Duck Hook’, involved use of tactical nuclear weapons to disrupt supply lines and to force Hanoi to capitulate. Nixon called his approach ‘mad man theory’ and in conversations with Kissinger, Nixon gave the impression that he was seriously open to the idea of using nuclear weapons against the North Vietnamese. The action was thwarted because of the fear of negative public opinion, that is domestic reputation costs and not for breaking the taboo.Footnote ¹⁹

Recently, US administrations have contemplated nuclear use in response to chemical and biological attacks. The George H. W. Bush administration in 1991 considered nuclear use against Iraq under its ‘policy of ambiguity’. Although the plans for nuclear use were developed by defense officials under the orders of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, they were eventually shelved following the insistence of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell.Footnote ²⁰ However, if the taboo idea is so well-entrenched, why would the George W. Bush administration in 2003 have included nuclear attack as part of its war plans against Iraq even if Baghdad used less powerful weapons of mass destruction such as chemical and biological arms? The Theater Nuclear Planning Document, prepared by the US Strategic Command, listed several potential targets for a nuclear strike. Prior to the war, Omaha-based STRATCOM was given the authority to incorporate Third World targets, including Iraq's.Footnote ²¹ The Bush administration's serious challenge to a taboo-like idea is the inclusion of nuclear attack under its pre-emptive and preventive strategy, enunciated in 2002.Footnote ²² If there exists a strong taboo against nuclear use, such a rational and deliberate policy change wouldn't have taken place. Thus Bush built into US strategic planning the possibility of nuclear use in the crises that it expected to face in the course of the ‘War on Terror’.

Other nuclear powers have also shown a penchant to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons during crises. The Israelis, in 1973, rolled out nuclear weapons as their military was facing defeat from the Egyptian and Syrian combined forces. The Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan, requested nuclear use but was stymied largely by the insistence of Prime Minister Golda Meir.Footnote ²³ Some believe that Israel used the threat of nuclear escalation in order to compel President Nixon to order an airlift of arms and ammunition to replenish the dwindling Israeli conventional arsenal.Footnote ²⁴ The nuclear threat was again a consideration in 1991 during the Iraqi attacks on Israel. The British also brought nuclear weapons to the Falklands in 1982. Despite denial of any intent to use them, it is very difficult to see why the British Navy would bring such weapons to this theatre.Footnote ²⁵ It was not unfathomable that Prime Minister Thatcher was playing the nuclear card as a hedge against the war with Argentina turning sour.

A fundamental challenge to the taboo argument can be located in the new nuclear doctrines of the US, Britain, France and Russia. They all call for expanded use of nuclear weapons against regional states acquiring weapons of mass destruction and now allow for nuclear use in a preventive and pre-emptive mode. Even though deterrence may be the motive, the intent to use is inherent in any threat to use as without it, no deterrent is effective. This form of policy reorientation would not have taken place if there were a stringent taboo against the use of nuclear weapons, especially against non-nuclear states, as argued by Tannenwald.

Third, the concept of tradition captures the likely response to a violation of the norm against nuclear use more effectively than the concept of taboo. There is widespread support for nuclear use in response to use of weapons of mass destruction, both in official doctrines and in public opinion. It is very unlikely that the violation of a clear social taboo by an opponent – for example, incest and cannibalism – would have elicited such a response, that is, responding by doing similar or much nastier things toward the breaker of the taboo. The violator would be viewed as a psychopath who needs to be put in jail or in a psychiatric ward. The rest of society distances itself from the perpetrator and his or her acts, rather than itself adopting those acts.

Although nuclear non-use is a tradition and not a strict taboo-like prohibition, it still can have a reasonably strong impact on the behaviour of states. It is not necessary to resort to the concept of taboo in order to get past a narrow Realist understanding of non-use as based on deterrence. The tradition has roots in reciprocity but goes beyond it. It gained normative power as a time-honoured practice, implying a modest level of normative prohibition. Accustomed obligations inherent in a tradition are not easy to break; but we can consider breaking them. Powerful social traditions are the basis for the maintenance of many social values even in the face of adverse circumstances. A tradition often has normative and practical content attached to it. Customary international law is very much premised on customs and traditions followed though generations. Michael Byers suggests that customary international law has its origins in applications of non-legal, traditional forms of state power, but regularises it to prevent the damage that would attend on arbitrary uses of power. In that sense, custom is a kind of conveyor belt from past practice to present rules.Footnote ²⁶ This concept thus allows for both continual evolution and incremental change in rules and their ongoing compelling power. While states have not formalised nuclear non-use in law, they have apparently adopted it in informal custom in a similar manner.

Fourth, the concept of taboo is resolutely inter-subjective and social, with states responding only to other states’ practices, and not to changing material circumstances. It therefore does not adequately account for the basis of the norm of non-use in the physical reality of nuclear weapons. The tradition of non-use emerged because of a realisation among political elite in nuclear states of the horrendous effects of nuclear attack (a material fact). What changed was not interpretation; what changed was available evidence. The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the initial pivotal events, but it took the hydrogen bomb tests in the 1950s for the world community to focus more clearly on the dangers of nuclear weapons and their use. The tradition was thus developing along with mutual deterrence between the two superpowers, premised on mutual assured destruction. Over a period of time, the tradition of non-use generated reputation costs for a potential user. More specifically, nuclear weapons use against a non-nuclear adversary would have done enormous damage to the reputation of the user (both the country and its leaders) in the eyes of the world. These reputation costs generated self-deterrence which has helped to reinforce the tradition (a feedback effect) which is partially restraining nuclear states from using their weapons for anything other than existential deterrence.

The maintenance of the weapons’ physical character is thus important for the sustenance of the tradition. The statement by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 illustrated the power of the tradition with its roots in the fact of nuclear destructiveness. In one of his campaign speeches, at Detroit in September 1964, he portrayed ‘nuclear war as a great catastrophe, with hundreds of millions dead, cities destroyed, fields in ruin, and industry demolished […] Make no mistake’, he said, ‘there is no such thing as a conventional nuclear weapon. For 19 peril-filled years no nation has loosed the atom against another. To do so now is a political decision of the highest order. And it would lead us down an uncertain path of blows and counterblows whose outcome none may know. No President of the US of America can divest himself of the responsibility for such a decision.’Footnote ²⁷

Another example of the material roots of the tradition is the rejection of the neutron bomb by the Carter Administration after much criticism because of the fear that the new weapon, which carried many attributes of the nuclear bomb, would make nuclear use easier. During the 1990s much of the debate on the development of mini-nukes revolved around the idea that the weapons, once developed, could end up breaking the tradition. Proponents argued that the weapon would not cause as enormous a material impact, and that it might be necessary to take out deeply buried WMD facilities in so-called ‘rogue states’. Opponents feared that the weapon would lead to unnecessary temptations on the part of the US President to use nuclear weapons even when conventional weapons could accomplish the task. These examples show that the concept of ‘tradition’ captures non-use better than the notion of taboo. Presidents Johnson and Carter seem to be more concerned about the breaking of a long-held tradition than a stringent taboo in their prognosis.

Finally, the tradition concept captures the evolutionary nature of the norm of non-use better than the taboo approach. A taboo-like prohibition, on the other hand, implies a less dynamic approach. An absolute, unthinking, and taken-for-granted norm cannot offer much room to incorporate changing circumstances, as taboos rarely change. Tannenwald's approach offers little by way of change. Using the less stringent conception of tradition would allow the induction of change in the evolution of the non-use norm. Though traditions gain their force from repeated practice, there is also a sense in which they are more open to challenge and mutation than taboos. This concept also allows for change due to material or political/strategic circumstances and not simply ideational factors. Further, unlike Tannenwald, who believes that ‘[t]he nuclear taboo, by delegitimizing a particular weapons technology, has decreased the likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used’,Footnote ²⁸ I believe this delegitimation is contingent on changing circumstances. Thus I do not see a linear, but a curvilinear progression in this regard. A tradition approach captures this progression and possibly changes in conceptions of nuclear use better than a taboo approach.

The concepts of iteration and reciprocity also help to explain how the tradition of non-use might change. Social expectations are such that subsequent generations observe these standards as it is expected of them to do so. There is indeed a sense of reciprocity in the tradition, such that actors expect others to follow the norms or standards of behaviour inherent in traditions. Indeed, one of the greatest fears of those who argue in favour of concrete political steps to maintain the tradition is that if one nuclear state breaks it, the others may believe that it is now acceptable to follow suit as the former contravened the reciprocal understanding of the tradition's observation. In other words, setting bad precedents have adverse consequences for a tradition of this nature to flourish. While Tannenwald also recognises the possibility of breaking the taboo, the thrust of her argument is in terms of its robustness and inherent strength.

Apart from the debate about whether the norm of non-use constitutes a tradition or a taboo, Tannenwald and other scholars who share her views give considerable importance to the democratic political culture of the US in helping to develop this taboo.Footnote ²⁹ The argument is based on the US’ position as the first to develop and use nuclear weapons, giving it several opportunities to use them against non-nuclear states that it did not take; this means that US nuclear history offers good source material for establishing the emergence of a taboo-like prohibition against nuclear use. Although evidence from non-democratic Russia and China is limited, it seems they played a significant role in the emergence of the tradition. Both proclaimed a policy of no first use early on, which the US and other democratic nuclear powers (the UK and France) refused to offer.Footnote ³⁰ Indeed, today, it is non-democratic China which alone offers a no-first-use principle, while all others have reduced their limited negative security assurances. During the Cold War and beyond, democratic nuclear powers have also been more prone to make loose nuclear threats against non-democratic opponents. The US, Israeli, and British warnings against Iraq during and before the two Gulf Wars attest to this contention. Indeed democratic cultures appear to be prone to using unlimited force against non-democracies.Footnote ³¹ Democracies seem to be susceptible to making such threats and tend to justify doing so on moral grounds. It is thus a major issue of contention whether democracies practice the normative restrictions on the use of force vis-à-vis one another when it comes to nuclear use against non-democracies.Footnote ³² It would not be surprising if a democratic country, such as the US, Israel or India, becomes the first one to break the non-use tradition. In the face of transnational terrorist efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, today loose nuclear threats are coming from democratic countries more frequently than from non-democratic nuclear powers.