4th Wave on the W.M.D. Proliferation Horizon...

In the first decade of the 21^st century, United States (U.S.) national security has had to evolve to react to the international and domestic threat of non-state actors (N.S.A.).  The new breed of N.S.A.’s are globally positioned anti-American insurgents, and they represent the world’s fourth wave of weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.) and nuclear proliferation.  These loosely structured N.S.A. factions have declared that W.M.D. proliferation is a permanent goal of their strategy. The global decline of first-rate nation-states has forced American conventional warfare to reinvent itself to deal with an asymmetrical threat that has no borders and no need for treaties.  Such insurgencies span the globe, from Afghanistan and Indo-China to America’s doorstep, they are not going away, and it is inevitable that they will procure W.M.D’s.  America’s only recourse is to embrace this threat as a reality and transform our security tactics to deal with it.

America’s preemptive response to non-state actors in the first decade of the 21^st century has given rise to some very strange bedfellows: Iran and Hamas; Al Qaeda and Iraqi Sunni tribes; North Korea, Iran and Syria.  The majority of these blocs are fueled by Middle Eastern policies that have inspired hatred for everything American; this hatred, in turn, acts like insurgent superglue. Our enemies are no longer nation-states that understand the concept of M.A.D. that defined the Cold War balancing act for forty years.  Instead, America’s national security is today under siege by groups that do not wage war to spread national politics but to spread ideals. The U.S. has to comprehend the mentality of suicide bombers who value American death over their own lives and the cultures that give birth to this mentality.  U.S. security tactics must adapt to better defend against asymmetrical terrorism, and American diplomatic policies must transform to anticipate the societies that will breed the 21^st-century insurgents.

Mutually assured destruction (M.A.D.) is the most important concept to grasp in understanding the dire situation created by this fourth wave of N.S.A.’s.  At the height of the Cold War, nuclear weapon systems were developed to be as deadly as possible, ensuring that first-tier nations would never use them.  According to the game theory discussed in The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, the two superpowers of the world, the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., found success in the stalemate of mutually assured destruction. After these two world superpowers first established the concept of M.A.D., the world watched the rise of second- and third-wave nation-states develop nuclear warfare for political ends.  Treaties were developed. Nations like China, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea, once obscure locations on the globe, now had political bargaining power and were major players.  India and Pakistan were not a part of the original Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NNPT), but they were still nations that would understand the notion of M.A.D.  When North Korea backed out of the N.N.P.T. in 2003, the first-wave nations took ineffective reactionary steps with UN sanctions.  But it was M.A.D. that has kept North Korea’s nuclear arsenal at bay.

By doing a survey of the worlds’ nuclear powers in 2010, we can see an alarming trend of nuclear arms in destabilized regions.  Pakistan is a safe haven for Al-Qaeda operatives.  India, even though it has a stable marketplace, has unstable undercurrents of religious tensions.  North Korea’s nuclear arms are on auction to the highest bidder. According to Professor Tadie, in my International Securities class, North Korea was providing the technology for a suspected nuclear fissile materials refinement factory in Syria that was funded by Iran.  Right now, the world is a global marketplace for insurgents and religious zealots who have nuclear armament as a goal. These N.S.A.’s are the 4th wave of nuclear proliferation, and they have no concern for M.A.D.

American national security cannot afford to negotiate with non-state actors, and they will not go away.  When we kill them, they become martyrs; when we put them in prisons, they inspire recruiting propaganda; and when we attempt to utilize them for intelligence, we open up our defenses to the type of double-agent betrayal recently experienced in Afghanistan.  The enemy’s determination to get WMD's and nuclear weapons is stronger than our power to stop them. 

In the 1950’s, the U.S. accepted that a Soviet nuclear arsenal was inevitable.  America is at the same crossroads sixty years later: We have an enemy that will obtain these weapons, we just do not know when. What we do know is that, unlike the Soviets, this enemy will have no respect for M.A.D.  This enemy harvests and arms suicide bombers – what do they care about mutually assured destruction?
America is facing enemies that have no borders, no centralized government and no national economy. They have a multi-national web of safe havens in which to hide and recruit others.  America needs to attack the life-source of this enemy, its ability to reproduce its anti-American ideology in the hearts and minds of future insurgents.  We need to understand the scope of the American footprint in the Middle East and Indo-China.  I believe this decade’s security focus should be upon the endgame policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.  If we screw this up, we will enable the N. S.A.’s to proliferate nuclear arms and we will sew the seeds of hatred for our enemies to reap.  We could expect a century of asymmetrical warfare, not just in some proxy location, but also on our doorstep.

- jfoxwell

Works Cited:

Freedman, Lawrence. (2003) The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy

(3^rd edition) Palgrave, Macmillan, Great Britian,

Tadie, Eugene and Smith, John, International Security, George Mason    University (2010).