The official U.S. government policy is to maintain "calculated ambiguity" about whether the United States would retaliate with nuclear weapons in response to an adversary's use of chemical weapons (CW) or biological weapons (BW) against U.S. allies, U.S. armed forces overseas, or the U.S. homeland. Since the 1991 Gulf War, numerous civilian and military leaders have stated that the United States might use nuclear weapons in response to CW and BW threats or attacks, and some have even stated that the United States will use nuclear weapons in such circumstances. The central argument in my spring 2000 International Security article was that this policy has created a dangerous "commitment trap" problem.

The benefit of making such nuclear threats, whether stated ambiguously or clearly, is that they can increase an adversary's estimate of the probability that the U.S. president would order nuclear retaliation, which should therefore decrease the likelihood of chemical or biological weapons attacks. But there is a serious cost attached to this obvious benefit: If deterrence fails despite nuclear threats, the statements will also increase the likelihood that the United States will actually use nuclear weapons, because the president's personal and the U.S. government's institutional reputations for following through on threats would be perceived to be at stake.

I argued that current U.S. nuclear doctrine has therefore created a subtle dilemma that has not been recognized, much less debated, in both policy and academic circles: Is the improvement in the U.S. ability to deter CW and BW threats worth the increased likelihood of a U.S. nuclear response if deterrence fails?

This paper develops a probabilistic model that can be used to determine the technical performance required for a defense to meet specific political/military objectives. The defense objective is stated as a certain probability that no warheads leak through the defense. The technical performance is captured by the interceptor single-shot probability of kill and the warhead detection, tracking, and classification probability. Attacks are characterized by the number of warheads and undiscriminated decoys. Barrage and shoot-look-shoot firing modes are examined, with the optimal interceptor allocation derived for the shoot-look-shoot mode. Applications of this model for sizing national and theater missile ballistic missile defenses are discussed.

The military campaign unleashed in Chechnya in September 1999 was portrayed by the Russian leadership as a limited and carefully targeted counter-terrorist operation aimed at eliminating the threat to Russia posed by "international terrorism." In a 14 November article in the New York Times, then Prime Minister Putin sought to deflect American criticism of Russian actions and to win acquiescence, if not sympathy, by likening Russias effort in Chechnya to U.S. anti-terrorist actions. The Russian military, he insisted, had chosen "accurately targeted strikes on specifically identified terrorist bases" to avoid direct attacks on Chechen communities.

But the radical discrepancy between the initial rationale and the actual conduct of the campaign makes it clear that what we are seeing is in fact a deliberate resumption of the 1994-96 war by the Russian Government--and a unilateral abrogation of the agreements that terminated it--now pursued with even greater determination and brutality, with even less regard for civilian casualties, and with a more sophisticated military and public relations strategy.

Not only is there a massive chasm between the professed aims of the campaign and its actual conduct; there appears to be a major disconnect between the real problems of the region and the Russian Government's response. Indeed, the attempt at military subjugation and occupation of Chechnya by Russian forces is likely to exacerbate rather than solve the deeper problems of the Northern Caucasus.

This analysis focuses on three broad issues: (a) the challenge facing Moscow in Chechnya more broadly, and in particular why the opportunity for a political solution of the conflict afforded by the Khasaviurt and other peace agreements was squandered; (b) the assumptions that appear to underlie the actions of the Russian Government and why some of these assumptions appear to be questionable; and (c) the prospects for a political resolution of the conflict and for establishing longer-term peace and stability in the region.

Reprinted in Central Asia and the Caucasus, no. 4, August 2000.

Chapter in Chechnya: The International Community and Strategies for Peace and Stability, edited by Lena Jonson and Murad Esenov.