Showing papers in "International Security in 1982"

Why the Soviets Can't Win Quickly in Central Europe

Abstract: I I n light of the emergence of strategic parity and NATO’s manifest lack of enthusiasm for tactical nuclear weapons, the importance of the balance of conventional forces in Central Europe has increased significantly in the past decade.’ Regarding that balance, the conventional wisdom is clearly that the Warsaw Pact enjoys an overwhelming advantage. In the event of a conventional war, the Soviets are expected to launch a blitzkrieg that will lead to a quick and decisive victory. The implications of this specter of a hopelessly outgunned NATO are significant. Certainly, NATO’s behavior in a major crisis would be influenced by its view of the conventional balance. Furthermore, one’s perception of the conventional balance directly affects his or her view of the importance of both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons for deterrence in Europe. The New York Times, for example, endorsed the controversial neutron bomb as a means to counter NATO’s perceived inferiority at the conventional level.2 The fact of the matter is that the balance of conventional forces is nowhere near as unfavorable as it is so often portrayed to be. In fact, NATO’s prospects for thwarting a Soviet offensive are actually quite good.3 Certainly, NATO

Inadvertent Nuclear War?: Escalation and NATO's Northern Flank

Abstract: C o u l d a major EastWest conventional war be kept conventional? American policymakers increasingly seem to think so. Recent discussions of such a clash reflect the belief that protracted conventional conflict is possible, if only the West fields sufficient conventional forces and acquires an adequate industrial mobilization base. Indeed, the Reagan Administration has embraced the idea of preparing for a long conventional war, as evidenced by its concern with the mobilization potential of the American defense industry.’ Underlying this policy is the belief that the United States should be prepared to fight a war that, in duration and character, resembles World War 11. American decisionmakers seem confident of their ability to avoid nuclear escalation in such a war if they so desire. That confidence is dangerous and unwarranted. It fails to take into account that intense conventional operations may cause nuclear escalation by threatening or destroying strategic nuclear forces. The operational requirements (or preferences) for conducting a conventional war may thus unleash enormous, and possibly uncontrollable, escalatory pressures despite the desires of American or Soviet policymakers. Moreover, the potential sources of such escalation are deeply rooted in the nature of the force structures and military strategies of the superpowers, as well as in the technological and geographical circumstances of large-scale East-West conflict. If the escalatory pressures

Counterforce and Alliance: The Ultimate Connection

Abstract: I America's drift to counterforce nuclear strategies is neither perverse nor accidental. The emphasis on counterforce became a notable aspect of the nuclear strategy of the Carter Administration, at least in its promulgation of Presidential Directive 59 in July 1980 and its promotion of the MX intercontinental missile; and it continues in the strategy of the Reagan Administration, embodied in the weapons system decisions of October 2, 1981. To grasp the rationale of counterforce, it is necessary to understand the logic of extended deterrence. For ultimately it is its adherence to alliance commitments that skews the United States' strategy toward counterforce weapons and targeting and warps American doctrines of response toward the first use of nuclear weapons, prejudicing crisis stability and increasing the likelihood of escalation to nuclear war. Few realize how intertwined American weapons and strategies are with American commitments. And few understand how integral to the entire foreign policy stance of the United States has been the strategic paradigm of deterrence and alliance that the U.S. has maintained for thirty-five yearsand therefore, how much would have to change, if we set about to achieve an alternative, more stable, nuclear stance that might provide greater safety for Americans in an age of pervasive nuclear danger. But also, few see how much is actually changing, under the surface of the familiar strategic and diplomatic arrangements, precisely because the objective conditions that are the requisites of America's present stance are not being fulfilled.

Thinking about Nuclear Terrorism

Abstract: Sometime in the 1980s an organization that is not a national government may acquire a few nuclear weapons. If not in the 1980s then in the 1990s. The likelihood will grow as more and more national governments acquire fissionable material from their own weapon programs, their research programs, their reactor-fuel programs, or from the waste products of their electric power reactors. By "organization" I mean a political movement, a government in exile, a separatist or secessionist party, a military rebellion, adventurers from the underground or the underworld, or even some group of people merely bent on showing that it can be done. My list is not a definition, just a sample of the possibilities. Two decades of concern about the proliferation of weapons have generated a familiar list of national governments that may have motive and opportunity to possess weapons-grade fissionable material, and some ideas about how they might behave if they had it and what they might use it for. But there is also a possibility that somebody other than a government may possess the stuff. Who they might be and how they might acquire it are related questions. While not impossible, it is unlikely that an entity not subject to nationalgovernment regulation could independently obtain and enrich uranium for use in explosives or could produce plutonium as a reactor product and refine it for weapons use. There are undoubtedly corporations technically and financially able to do it, but not many with both the motive and the opportunity to do it without being apprehended by an adversely interested party. Access to weapons or a weapon program, or to an authorized nuclear fuel cycle, or to an official research establishment licensed and authorized by some national government is currently the only way to do it. Identifying the opportunities and the access to those opportunities generates some answers to the question "Who?" Theft of weapons is an obvious possibility. As far as we know, it hasn't happened. Despite the thousands in existence, including the thousands on

ICBM Vulnerability: The Cures Are Worse Than the Disease

Abstract: I T h e Soviet Union has the means to destroy the United States. An attack by only a fraction of the thousands of nuclear warheads now deployed on Soviet long-range missiles and bombers would be sufficient to annihilate most Americans, to destroy our material accomplishments, and to transform our country into a wasteland. We have virtually no defense against such an attack. Our nation is vulnerable, and has been for decades. The Soviets could also destroy a substantial portion of our military might. Land armies, surface ships, airfields, theater-based nuclear forces, and command, control, and communications facilities are especially vulnerable. Of the strategic forces, those at greatest risk are the ballistic missile submarines in port (normally about half of the SSBN force) and those long-range bombers not on alert (normally about two-thirds of the bomber force). These vulnerabilities too have been recognized for decades. The comparative newcomer to the world of vulnerability concerns is the land-based ICBM force, for it is only recently that the numbers, yields, and accuracies of Soviet ICBM warheads have approached the levels required to pose a meaningful threat to a large number of hardened silos. Opinions differ on whether this threat is credible in light of the substantial uncertainties inherent in predictions of the outcome of such a complex, sophisticated, unprecedented, and untestable attack. But in theory at least, a large fraction (perhaps as high as ninety percent) of America’s ICBM silos could be at risk within the next few years. Heightened awareness of this potential vulnerability has been an important factor in the perception of declining American strategic power, in the rhetorical opening of the “window of vulnerability,” and in the demise of SALT 11. Why, it might be asked, should one worry about ICBM vulnerability? Why should this particular instance of vulnerability deserve our attention any more than the other vulnerabilities cited previously? Some observers believe that a survivable land-based ICBM force is essential to U.S. security; others find the need less than compelling, but still substantial; and still others

Can the Secretary of Defense Make a Difference

Abstract: I L i k e John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan assumed office having vowed to further increase defense spending and strengthen America’s military posture. Like Kennedy but unlike Nixon, Reagan could look forward to cooperation from the Congress and general public support for his defense initiatives. Though procurement, research, and development had been increasing in recent years, numerous weapons development and procurement proposals accumulated during the preceding decade were awaiting Reagan’s go-ahead. The stage was set for President Reagan to deliver on promises made by candidate Reagan. The issue would not be quite that simple, however. The President’s determination to balance the budget and stop inflation in large measure by reducing social spending began producing congressional defections from the Administration’s defense-spending plans, and more are sure to occur when heavy outyear defense obligations come due. A more serious problem for the Reagan Administration looms, however. The Administration confronts the Pentagon’s propensity, deeply ingrained over three decades, to buy weapons of steadily higher unit costs and increasing complexity, propensities well documented by recent critics of the weapons acquisition process. To increase defense spending without correcting these underlying propensities will, these critics argue, be wasteful and dangerous. Because their arguments have won a sympathetic audience among thoughtful legislators of both parties, failure to make headway in solving problems with weapons costs and performance could prove embarrassing to the Administration and ensure deepening involvement by congressional committees in defense management. Other administrations have confronted this same problem of high cost and

Early Thoughts on Controlling the Nuclear Arms Race: A Report to the Secretary of State, January 1953

Abstract: I I n April 1952 Secretary of State Dean Acheson set up a Panel of Consultants on Disarmament, consisting of Robert Oppenheimer, as Chairman, Vannevar Bush, John S. Dickey, Allen W. Dulles, and Joseph Johnson. Oppenheimer, then Director of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, was completing his service as Chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission; Bush was back at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and still the dean of American scientific advisers. Dickey and Johnson, one President of Dartmouth and the other President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, had worked on problems of disarmament and United Nations affairs as State Department officers in earlier years. Allen Dulles was practicing law in New York. I became secretary to the Panel, responsible for keeping track of its discussions and writing up its conclusions. Acheson and Oppenheimer had initially thought in terms of a review of American policy and proposals on disarmament, but the Panel soon concluded that the relevant field of concern was necessarily broader, and with Acheson’s support its inquiry was widened accordingly. When its conclusions were reported orally to Secretary Acheson late in the year, he encouraged the preparation of a written report for the use of the next Administration, and such a report was submitted to him just before he left office in January 1953. Recently my research associate, Donald White, obtained from the Department of State a declassified copy of the report, in the slightly sanitized version that was circulated inside the Government at the time. In somewhat abbreviated form we present it here. The basic judgments which animated this report have considerable resonance in 1982: that the dangers in the Soviet-American nuclear arms race were great and growing, and that without deeper public understanding and stronger executive leadership the United States could not expect to deal effectively with those dangers. The members of the Panel came to their work

Reform and Stability in South Africa

Abstract: Multi-ethnic or multi-racial systems' can be classified as vertical or hierarchical, on the one hand, and horizontal or parallel, on the other. In a vertical or hierarchical system, "stratification is synonymous with ethnicity"; in a horizontal or parallel system, different ethnic communities coexist side by side, each with its own stratification system independent of the other.2 Multiethnic societies often combine elements of both hierarchy and parallelism and over time, one type of system may change into another. Most systems generally tend, however, toward one ideal type or the other. In the contemporary world, parallel systems have been more prevalent than hierarchical ones, with Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Cyprus, Guyana, Lebanon, and Nigeria some of the more notable instances of modernizing parallel multi-ethnic societies. Such societies often have sustained high levels of conflict among ethnic groups and yet also are often able to survive and moderate such conflict through political accommodation and the use of a variety of institutional devices often associated with the term "consociational democracy."i

Can the Defense Industry Respond to the Reagan Initiatives

Abstract: The Reagan Administration is requesting, and Congress is likely to approve, hundreds of billions of dollars more to be spent over the next few years on badly needed military equipment. Only with changes in defense's weapon acquisition practices, however, will taxpayers get their money's worth, and U.S. national security posture be strengthened. Without such changes, the recent trends-in diminishing economic efficiency and declining strategic responsiveness of the defense industrial base-indicate that these increased dollars will mostly continue to feed the inflationary spiral (especially in the price of military goods) rather than result in the additional quantities of required defense equipment. As evidence of this likely result, consider the situation over the past five years:

Manning the Soviet Military

Abstract: I n December 1979, the military forces of the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan. On the very eve of the 1980s-a decade of increasing economic strain and manpower shortages in the Soviet Union-the Soviet leadership chose to expand its military commitments. The Soviet troops that poured into Afghanistan included both active duty servicemen (professionals and draftees) and mobilized reservists called to temporary active duty to fill out the invasion units. The current occupation force involves an estimated 100,000 troops. The Afghanistan invasion thus increased the Soviet Union's requirements for military manpower at a time when demographic trends are producing a steady decline in the pool of 18 year-old males. At the same time, the invasion prompted the United States to renew draft registration, a call that produced a chorus of dissent. It revived opposition to the draft, sparked debates on the legality of exempting females from registration requirements, and rekindled the continuing discussion of the viability of the all-volunteer army. The Soviet invasion and the U.S. response to it thus point up dramatic differences in the way the worlds two foremost military powers procure their military personnel. Every society that maintains a military organization must adopt a strategy of procuring personnel; that decision inevitably involves both advantages and disadvantages. One of the most basic decisions is that between a relatively small army of highly trained, volunteer military careerists and a mass army based on conscription. Western military manpower analysts have long debated the relative costs and benefits of each option. For the Soviets, there was never really any debate; reliance on some form of conscription is one of the strongest military traditions in the Soviet Union-one that predates the Bolshevik revolution. The tsarist leaders from whom the Bolshevik Party seized power introduced selective conscription (applying only to certain social classes) in 1699 and universal military service in 1874.' After the Bolshevik takeover in 1917, the new leadership experi-

The Persian Gulf and the Correlation of Forces

Abstract: the Correlation of Forces I Today’s debate concerning the Soviet threat to the Persian Gulf-and to larger Western interests in the Indian Ocean area-has generally taken place in isolation of assessments of the Soviet threat to other regions or to the United States itself. To take the polar extremes of the debate such as it is, one side of the argument purports that the Kremlin has a master plan: the latest demonstration of Soviet power and leverage-whether in Afghanistan or over Polandhas long been scheduled for this season. As Dennis Ross aptly put it recently in these pages, this school of thought ”assumes away the inherent Soviet belief in the need for flexibility in exploiting trends and developments in the world . . . and the socialization of Soviet leaders which leaves them with a strong sense that they should avoid unnecessary risks. . . .‘‘I Such “maximalists” are few in number (though not in the allusions of more moderate scribblers); but it has become de rigueur for those seeing a Soviet threat to disavow belief in a ”master plan.” At the other pole is the argument that the source and support for conflicts in areas like the Persian Gulf are essentially local, a function of the unstructured and vulnerable character of the states themselves. The Soviet involvement is often then justified in terms of the danger that such instability otherwise poses of spilling over into Soviet territory. Similarly, a Soviet forward position can be defended with reference to the Soviet Union’s “encirclement” or to the threat to it of invasion-something, oddly, always seen as going in one direction, despite the fact that the Soviet Union has become the territorially largest world power.2 This “minimalist” view nevertheless sees many obstacles to the successful projection of Soviet power, even in areas adjacent to Soviet territory and in

Gains for Soviet Policy in the Middle East

Abstract: Renewed and intensified superpower competition in the Middle East and Persian Gulf in recent months has come at a time when the region is in an era of historic transformation. On a profound level it is anachronistic to see two states contend for power and influence over a region neither understands, cares for, or is likely to be able to influence more than marginally. On another level the process and result of the competition could seriously affect the autonomy and prospects of the peoples of the region. The sense of powerlessness, lack of control, and susceptibility to manipulation by outside forces have of course been increased by the jockeying for position, solicitation of diplomatic support, and request for base and access rights of the great powers. This intensified pressure for alignment, according to which local actions are interpreted in terms of the East-West competition, increases the sense of impotence of the local states which watch the game being played out over their heads. The precise relevance of this game to their needs is as shrouded in mystery as the eventual outcome is a source of anxiety. The possibility of a superpower arrangement made at their expense worries the regional powers almost as much as more pressing and immediate security threats. As small states, the regional powers' interests are local while those of their patrons are global; the possibility that their interests may be sacrificed in a wider arrangement is therefore ever present. A related concern is the possibility of conflict in the region unrelated to the region itself; if Afghanistan was a Soviet "breakout" from potential encirclement, it was the Arabs and Iran, and not China, that paid the costs.' Even this regional theater thus can be an arena rather than a stake in great power rivalry.

Japanese Security Policy: A Time for Strategy

Abstract: F o r more than 30 years, Japanese security debates were essentially contests between supporters and opponents of the U.S.-Japanese Security Treaty, the opponents of which advocated unarmed neutrality. These debates have now almost ended. Opinion polls indicate popular support for U.S.-Japanese security arrangements and appreciation of their military significance for the security of Japan. Even Japan’s socialists, traditionally supporters of unarmed neutrality, now claim that they would not immediately threaten the existence of the SelfDefense Forces (SDF) or the Security Treaty if they came to power. During the long period in which the security debates took this form, however, discussion of Japanese defense policy rarely went beyond the primarily diplomatic question of whether to support the Security Treaty and almost never addressed the question of Japanese strategy. The sterility of strategic thought in Japan certainly reflects domestic constraints that exist in post-war Japan, particularly the abhorrence of anything military as a tool of its external policy, even including Japanese security policy. But it is also the product of the international situation in the post-war world, especially in East Asia. Until very recently, the United States maintained a clear overall superiority over the Soviet Union. In East Asia, the Soviets do not possess the same conventional ground force superiority as they possess in Europe. Certainly the Soviet Union has maintained a large ground force in the Far East, but its potential threat to Japan is limited by its modest amphibious landing capabilities. What matters most to the security of Japan is the air and naval balances, which are the fields where the United States long maintained a clear superiority. In such a military environment, nothing more was required of Japanese strategic thought than the simple endorsement of the U.S.-Japan Security

In Defense of Counterforce

Abstract: Last rites have been given to multiple shelter basing for the MX missile. Its demise probably became inevitable with election of the current administration. The new adm, inistration has seen the SALT II Treaty as fatally flawed, and given SALT's uncertain future, could not project any limits on the size of the threat the Soviets might ultimately pose to MX. With no near-term prospects for limits on Soviet warheads, no guarantees could be given that the United States wouldn't end up building thousands of additional shelters in the Southwest-and the citizens of that area realized that. There are respectable arguments suggesting that a race to keep MX vulnerable would never have taken place, even if multiple shelter basing had been pursued. It would not have been an attractive race for the Soviets to run. Unless they had increased the threat to MX by investing in silo-based missiles, which are relatively inexpensive, the race would have cost them far more to run than it would the United States. Alternatively, threatening MX with additional silo-based forces would have meant heavy new investments in forces that are going to be vulnerable, a prospect the Soviets seem likely to find as worrisome as do Americans. Equally important, an unlimited race to maintain a threat against MX in multiple shelter basing would have required the Soviets to forgo SALT and any prospects for limiting the comprehensive modernization and expansion

Fallows' Fallacies: A Review Essay

Abstract: J a m e s Fallows' book, National Defense, has much to recommend it. First of all, it is lucidly written. I appreciated his prose style as I read the book; I envied it as I committed to writing my own ideas on defense. More importantly, Fallows sets a high goal-to focus the defense debate on issues that are significant, to discuss what American defense objectives should be, and what policies and programs can most efficiently achieve these objectives. This is a refreshing change from the narrow debates on specific weapons, or from the partisan cries that the United States is spending too little or too much on defense. Unfortunately, the substance of the book is not equal to its literary merit. Fallows' treatment of defense problems often fails to grasp the key underlying issues; as a result, the solutions he offers tend to be simplistic. The best part of National Defense, in my view, was the first chapter, where Fallows presents the \"realities\" on which his analysis-or any analysis-of defense issues must depend. This is an excellent beginning and the \"realities\" he choosesU.S . economic limits, the unpredictable nature of the \"threats\" an American defense must accommodate, and the importance of intangible qualities (weather, human error, etc.) in warfare-all are significant and his treatment of them effective. Inasmuch as his analysis flows from these \"realities,\" it is clear that his conclusions can only be as good as his perceptions of which realities are significant. Inexplicably, he left out two major realities which have a driving effect on the whole defense issue, and this omission in his first chapter flaws the analysis which follows in subsequent chapters. He omits the fundamental point that the effectiveness of U.S. forces must be measured relative to those of the Soviet Union. American forces may face less challenging tasks, but the United States must design them so that they could prevail in combat with the forces the Soviets actually have or are likely to have in the future. It is misleading to imply that one fighter airplane is better than another because it is simpler or cheaper if it could be readily defeated by its counterpart Soviet fighter. The reality is that modern Soviet fighter aircraft are complex and effective fighting machines (probably more