American Scientist

THREATS: Intimidation and its Discontents. David P. Barash. 235 pp. Oxford University Press, 2020. $27.95.

Living through the Cuban Missile Crisis shook me to the core. I was only a young boy at the time and quite naive about world affairs, but it was obvious to everyone that the leaders of the planet had come perilously close to destroying it. Horrified and aghast, I lost faith in the adult world, and that faith has never been fully restored. The same feelings of horror washed over me when I read evolutionary biologist David P. Barash’s Threats: Intimidation and Its Discontents. In this erudite yet highly readable book, the author uncovers innumerable flaws inherent in the very notion of nuclear deterrence and reveals why it is doomed to fail. By exposing the futility of nuclear deterrence as a policy, he both amplified my feelings of terror and sparked in me a desire to persuade others of the policy’s folly.

The first two sections of the book set the stage for the final section on nuclear deterrence. Section 1, “The Natural World,” explains how threats function among nonhuman animals. The reader learns that threats among nonhumans typically involve some degree of exaggeration, if not outright deception. For example, by assuming particular appearances or postures, animals can persuade competitors or predators to divert their efforts elsewhere. Within this scheme, genes that allow animals to successfully deceive others will be advantaged, but so too will genes that allow for the detection of deception. Presumably, these countervailing forces balance each other out, so that the use of threats among these animals remains adaptive.

Although Barash’s writing is generally quite lucid, early in the book I occasionally felt that I was sinking into a morass of details with only a vague idea of how they contributed to the overarching narrative. This feeling was strongest in section 1 when he chronicled numerous threats displayed by a small army of creatures. I could understand why Barash, as an ethologist, might find this subject matter exhilarating, but I would have been satisfied with far less detail. Perhaps I would not have had this reaction had he done a more convincing job of showing how this material contributed to his contention that threats are not terribly effective regulators of human behavior.

As threats become more sophisticated and complex, their effectiveness decreases while the risk of serious miscommunication increases.

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Section 2, “Individuals and Society,” shifts rather abruptly to the use of threats among individual humans, with emphasis on documenting the ways in which human threats can misfire. For example, Barash devotes a subsection to society’s use of capital punishment, torture, and other threats as a means of scaring people into prosocial behavior. He systematically evaluates the evidence for the effectiveness of each of these strategies, and concludes that none of the approaches are particularly effective. For example, he notes that the evidence indicates that capital punishment actually increases violent crime rather than serving as a deterrent. Although the reasons for this effect have not yet been nailed down, it may be that violence begets violence by creating an atmosphere that condones violence as a strategy of social control. Despite the dearth of evidence that capital punishment and other putative threats are effective, they remain popular within certain segments of society.

In another subsection, the author examines the effectiveness of more benign systems of threats designed to elicit desired behavior, such as religious teachings. Once again, he concludes that such threats are not effective regulators of behavior. He then proceeds to consider strategies through which individuals strive to avoid perceived threats posed by other people. He notes, for example, that just as some respond to perceived threats by acquiring guns, others embrace right-wing populist policies designed to discourage immigration. Here again, he concludes that such strategies are either ineffective, counterproductive, or both. Guns, for instance, increase rather than decrease mortality rates. And the riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, (which took place after the book was published) demonstrated that right-wing populism can threaten democracy itself.

My takeaway from the first two sections was that as threats become more sophisticated and complex, their effectiveness decreases while the risk of serious miscommunication increases. In the third and final section of the book, the author considers the implications of these conclusions for international relations. He alludes to psychological research over the past half-century that has made it clear that decision makers routinely violate rational rules, especially when they are operating under pressure (as they would be in a nuclear confrontation). Recent research on group processes (in which I have been involved) indicates that decision makers may suffer from an additional form of bias: When people become deeply aligned (“fused”) with their group, a threat to the group is perceived as a threat to the self, and when this happens, cost-benefit analyses give way to purely emotional reactions. If the recipient of such a threat happens to have a finger on the nuclear button, an emotional response could end life as we know it. If this scenario was scary during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it is even scarier now that weaponry has become far more lethal.

It is indefensible to put all life on the planet at risk and sheer folly to wager that nuclear deterrence will save us.

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Much of the last section of the book is devoted to examining the role of perceived threat in the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Barash begins by noting that governments often exaggerate threats from foreign countries to justify huge expenditures of money to counter the perceived threats. In reality, however, monies spent on elaborate defense systems, including nuclear systems, typically do not diminish threat. For example, he notes that the historical record offers no evidence that the possession of nuclear weapons has successfully deterred conflict between nation states. In fact, possessing nuclear weapons has not even helped countries achieve their goals. The abundance of nuclear weapons possessed by the United States and Russia, for example, did little to avert catastrophe in their successive campaigns in Afghanistan. Nor did the acquisition of nuclear weapons advantage Pakistan in its conflict with India. In these and other instances, nuclear weapons have been shown to have little utility.

When confronted with a paucity of evidence that nuclear weapons are instrumental in achieving goals, advocates of such weaponry retreat to the position that brandishing the threat of mutual annihilation will discourage countries from mounting attacks. Perhaps. But even if that is true, Barash says, this approach is morally dubious; it has been compared to strapping babies to the front and rear bumpers of cars as a means of reducing accidents. That technique may indeed reduce accidents, but it is obviously indefensible to place babies in harm’s way for any reason. It is similarly indefensible to put the survival of humans and all other living organisms on the planet at risk to deter nuclear war. Furthermore, given the evidence for the ineffectiveness of deterrence in all its forms, it is not merely morally indefensible but sheer folly to wager that nuclear deterrence will save us from disaster.

Barash is at his boldest in the final subsections, where he contends that his analysis calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons. To this end, he points to concrete steps that will take us in that direction. Among other things, he suggests that we do the following: (1) take all existing nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert and separate nuclear warheads from their delivery systems to reduce the risk that any other country might perceive that the weapons constitute a sudden, first-strike threat to them; (2) decommission all land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles; (3) announce and institute a no-first-use policy; (4) eliminate any hints of launch-on-warning and do nothing that would give computers ultimate control; (5) halt all plans for “modernization” of the nuclear arsenal; (6) eliminate all tactical, battlefield nuclear weapons; and (7) rejoin the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to eliminate other countries’ fear that we might be so foolish as to launch an attack thinking that we would be immune to retaliation.

For the benefit of readers (like myself) to whom his bullishness about implementing these suggestions might seem a tad Panglossian, Barash recounts the story of one of history’s greatest missed opportunities. In a summit meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986, the two leaders nearly endorsed the abolition of all nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the potential agreement was undermined by Reagan’s insistence that the United States be allowed to pursue the development of a strategic missile defense system (aka “Star Wars”), and Gorbachev rejected Reagan’s plan. I was startled by the revelation that the two leaders had come so close to ending the nuclear era, especially given that the Cold War was still in full swing at the time.

Could it be that Barash’s plan for nuclear détente is not a pipe dream after all? Although I remain skeptical, it is important to take his arguments seriously. As he points out, the human race just barely managed to stumble through the Cuban Missile Crisis and several later near misses. We have been extraordinarily lucky so far, but there is no telling how long our luck will hold out. One can only hope that this book will inspire successful efforts to take luck out of the equation.