Nuclear credibility in theory and in practice

Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology

斯特罗布塔尔博特安全、战略和技术中心

Over its more than 80-year history as a nuclear power, the United States has sought to convince adversaries that it can wage, will wage, and will win a nuclear war.

在作为核国家 80 多年的历史中，美国一直试图让对手相信，它能够发动、将会发动核战争，并且将会赢得核战争。

It has sought to convey the credibility of these threats through different combinations of the types, sizes, and locations of its nuclear weapons.

它试图通过其核武器的类型、大小和位置的不同组合来传达这些威胁的可信度。

No nation has yet exploded a nuclear weapon on the territory, people, or allies of the United States.

目前还没有任何国家在美国的领土、人民或盟友上爆炸过核武器。

That nonuse, however, has remained constant even as U.S. nuclear strategy has varied, making it impossible to conclude that strategy, rather than other factors, did the causal work.

然而，尽管美国的核战略发生了变化，但这种不使用的情况仍然持续存在，因此无法得出结论认为是战略而不是其他因素造成了因果关系。

Nuclear attack, however, is not the only empirically observable event that can provide information about U.S. nuclear credibility: the United States has made and has been the recipient of nuclear threats, both implicit and explicit.

然而，核攻击并不是唯一可以提供有关美国核信誉信息的经验可观察事件：美国已经制造并且一直是隐含和明确的核威胁的接受者。

These are moments of acute nuclear danger; each incident has the potential to turn into nuclear disaster.

这些都是严重核危险的时刻；每一起事件都有可能演变成核灾难。

Responsible policy, therefore, will seek to minimize how often such crises arise.

因此，负责任的政策将寻求最大限度地减少此类危机发生的频率。

This study examines whether and how different U.S. nuclear strategies are associated with few nuclear crises, or with many.

这项研究探讨了美国不同的核战略是否以及如何与少量或大量核危机相关。

It uses an original dataset of 36 U.S.-involved nuclear crises between 1945 and 2026—instances in which the United States or a nuclear-armed adversary made an explicit or implicit nuclear threat—and tests whether their frequency is associated with the features of U.S. nuclear strategy and the broader military and political context.

它使用了 1945 年至 2026 年间发生的 36 起与美国相关的核危机的原始数据集（其中美国或拥有核武器的对手发出了明确或隐含的核威胁），并测试了这些危机的频率是否与美国核战略的特征以及更广泛的军事和政治背景相关。

The single most robust finding is that nuclear crises were less frequent when the United States and its nuclear adversary approached rough parity in nuclear capability and markedly more frequent when one side held a substantial advantage.

最有力的一个发现是，当美国与其核对手的核能力大致相当时，核危机的发生率较低，而当一方拥有实质性优势时，核危机的发生率明显更高。

The policy levers the U.S. national security establishment has spent eight decades pulling in the name of credibility—doctrinal refinements, arsenal size, the forward deployment of nuclear forces—show no consistent, independent association with how often nuclear crises occurred.

美国国家安全机构花了八年时间以可信度的名义拉动的政策杠杆——理论完善、武库规模、核力量的前沿部署——与核危机发生的频率没有一致、独立的关联。

These findings speak directly to live policy debates.

这些发现直接反映了当前的政策辩论。

Some officials and analysts warn that the United States faces a potential “credibility deficit”: that U.S. nuclear strategy today is inadequate to hold at risk enough Russian and Chinese targets to deter both simultaneously, and so it must prepare to expand its arsenal’s size, variety, and posture to close the gap.

一些官员和分析人士警告说，美国面临潜在的“信誉赤字”：美国目前的核战略不足以同时威慑俄罗斯和中国目标，因此美国必须准备扩大其核武库的规模、种类和态势，以缩小差距。

The historical record instead suggests that a Chinese arsenal organized around a secure second-strike capability is unlikely to increase the frequency of nuclear crises and might reduce it.

相反，历史记录表明，围绕安全的二次打击能力组织起来的中国核武库不太可能增加核危机的发生频率，甚至可能会减少核危机的发生频率。

Historically, it is an assured second-strike capability—not nuclear advantage—that has been stabilizing.

从历史上看，稳定下来的是有保证的二次打击能力，而不是核优势。

Seeking to widen the U.S. lead over China, or to match a combined Russia-China target set, would therefore be to implement an enormously costly solution to a problem that the United States does not have.

因此，寻求扩大美国对中国的领先优势，或者匹配俄罗斯和中国设定的联合目标，将是对美国没有的问题实施成本高昂的解决方案。

The findings also have implications for arms control.

研究结果对军备控制也有影响。

If parity is associated with stability—if the condition most associated with fewer crises is mutual assured retaliation and not U.S. superiority—then the relevant policy question is not whether, but rather at what level, to seek parity.

如果平等与稳定相关——如果与减少危机最相关的条件是相互确保报复而不是美国的优势——那么相关的政策问题就不是是否寻求平等，而是在什么水平上寻求平等。

The historical patterns offer no evidence that larger arsenals on both sides are more stabilizing than smaller ones; what appears to matter is the balance, not the count.

历史模式没有证据表明双方较大的武库比较小的武库更稳定；看起来重要的是余额，而不是计数。

This should make small stockpiles far more appealing than large ones: negotiated reductions that preserve mutual second-strike capability while shrinking the overall nuclear inventory save taxpayer dollars without sacrificing security.

这应该会使小型核库存比大型核库存更具吸引力：通过谈判进行削减，以保留共同的二次打击能力，同时缩小总体核库存，从而在不牺牲安全的情况下节省纳税人的钱。