Illusion of Missile Defense

8/4/2019 Illusion of Missile Defense

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/illusion-of-missile-defense 1/13

THE ILLUSION OF MISSILE DEFENSE:

Extended deterrence and the theory of strategic defense

By Jonathan Marshall

"Welcome to the world of strategic forces, where we target weapons that don't work againstthreats that don't exist."

--Ivan Selin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, late 1960s seminar on nuclear strategy.Quoted in Fred Kaplan, The Return of the ABM," Atlantic Monthly, September 1981, p. 18.

Forty years ago two atomic bombs turned Hiroshima and Nagasaki into radioactive rubble and

revolutionized the art of war. Today the threat of mass annihilation still haunts the world. Butnow comes the promise of another strategic revolution, this time to free the earth from the specter of nuclear weapons: the promise of peace through strategic defense.

Though military analysts for years have weighed the merits of strategic defense, PresidentReagan more than anyone has given the notion real currency. Despite the nobility of his vision,the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) has triggered an intense and bitter debate over itstechnological feasibility, cost and strategic implications. Far from shielding Americans against anuclear strike, building a "Star Wars" defense may unleash a staggeringly expensive arms raceand heighten the tensions that threaten a nuclear holocaust.

Too many citizens--members of Congress included--have been tempted to leave the debate to the"experts." Intrigued perhaps by the hope of finding some alternative to nuclear terror, non-scientists come away bewildered by the exotic and contradictory technical claims of eminent physicists.

But the fundamental questions about SDI are political, not technical. Even its most ardent proponents agree that a perfect population defense isn't in the stars. Just why administrationstrategists nonetheless embrace the program is a matter that their disingenuous public rationalestoo often obscure. "Star Wars" critics, on the other hand, are sometimes guilty of questioning the program's merits without looking closely enough at its real aims.

When Pentagon planners detail their real goals in statements before Congress and in policy journals, SDI stands exposed as a militantly offensive weapon of American foreign policy. Itrepresents a last-ditch effort to turn the clock back more than two decades to the time when theUnited States enjoyed unquestioned nuclear superiority. And it is a scheme to translate suchsuperiority--at extreme risk of war--into concrete political and military gains in Europe, the

Persian Gulf and the Third World.The following argument relies overwhelmingly on the statements and admissions of SDIdefenders themselves. Stripped of the more outrageous claims made only for mass consumption,their case appears coherent and logical, indeed an almost inescapable deduction from the currentdemands of U.S. foreign policy. Yet the sum of all their logic is both dangerous and absurd. Butthe fundamental absurdities lie not just with the "Star Wars" hawks, but with all thosemainstream and liberal policy makers who uncritically accept the basic notion of "extendeddeterrence" that underlies their program.



I. SDI: Helping our missiles survive

On 23 March 1983, President Reagan surprised the country--and most of his senior advisers--bymasterfully communicating his vision of liberating populations held hostage by nuclear terror.Speaking on nationwide television, he proposed tearing down the old strategic edifice of "mutual

assured destruction" (MAD) and building a defensive shield against atomic weapons. His appealto the nation's scientists "to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent andobsolete" went beyond patriotism to the core of their humanity. "Is it not worth every investmentnecessary to free the world from the threat of nuclear war?" he asked. "We know it is!" [NewYork Times, 24 March 1983.]

Reagan has not wavered in his personal commitment to "help demilitarize the arsenals of Earth"and "render nuclear weapons obsolete." [Quotes from President Reagan's inaugural address, 21January 1985.His humanitarian impulse--like his generous offer to share defensive technologyeventually with the Soviet Union-- undoubtedly strikes a popular chord.

But expressing such a dream and translating it into reality are two entirely different matters.From the standpoint of civilians, nothing less than a perfect defense will do. A "very good"defense isn't good enough. Given the immense destructive power of today's nuclear warheads, allof them many times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, even a few tiny leaksin the defensive umbrella would prove catastrophic. A mere one percent "leakage rate" wouldstill permit nearly 100 Soviet warheads to reach their targets--enough in the worst case todevastate all major U.S. cities and produce the greatest disaster in human history.

Few if any of the president's own strategists think so perfect a defense can be devised. Hisscience adviser George Keyworth calls such a comprehensive shield merely a "hope" and says ata minimum "it will take us generations" to develop. [CBS 15 August 1984.] The head of theentire SDI effort, Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson, admits that "A perfect astrodome defense is not arealistic thing." [Science, 10 August 1984, p.601.] And Robert Cooper, director of the DefenseAdvanced Research Projects Agency, told Congress that "there is no combination of gold or platinum bullets that we see in our technology arsenal that we are pursuing in this program thatwould make it possible to do away with our strategic offensive ICBM forces." [Testimony beforeSenate Armed Services Committee, 6 March 1984. See also Fred S. Hoffman, Study Director,Future Security Strategy Study and James Fletcher, Chairman of the Defensive TechnologiesStudies Team, quoted in Science, 6 April 1984.]

Official administration policy calls for modernizing, not scrapping, the same offensive nuclear weapons that Reagan decried as immoral instruments of mass destruction. National SecurityDecision Directive 172, issued 30 May 1985, flatly endorses MAD: "US policy supports the basic principles that our existing method of deterrence and NATOs strategy of flexible (nuclear)response remain fully valid, and must be fully supported, as long as there is no more effectivealternative for preventing war." [Newsday, 14 June 1985.]

Pentagon officials don't view SDI as that alternative. On the contrary, they expect it to protect theland-based missiles that now threaten limited or massive retaliation to a Soviet attack. SDI, said

Richard DeLauer, "primarily is a major contributor to survivability" of US land-based offense.[Washington Post, 26 August 1984. "Our efforts do not seek to replace proven policies for maintaining the peace, but rather to strengthen their effectiveness in the face of a growing Sovietthreat." [Quoted in Sidney Drell, Philip Farley and David Holloway, , p.4.]Fred Ikle, another top defense planner, insists that the program "will help protect the deterrentforces." [Washington Post, 27 October 1984.]



Protecting missiles--housed in superhardened silos--is far more achievable than safeguardingcivilians against nuclear blast and fallout. A near-miss against New York City will still killmillions; a near miss against a silo opens the door to a devastating retaliation.

And if missile defenses complicate a Soviet first strike against our Minuteman ICBMs, thetheory goes, the Kremlin won't ever by tempted to launch a preemptive attack.

By this standard, emphasizes "High Frontier" champion Gen. Daniel Graham, even a leaky, 50- percent effective shield will do the job just fine. [Interview with Patrick Buchanan, WRC radio,27 August 1984. Reagan's science adviser George Keyworth has emphasized that "what we aretalking about is restoring stability" because SDI helps ensure "a fairly large number of our ownretaliatory forces surviving an attack. . . . My point I'm trying to make is that even a system thatis imperfect totally changes the scene . . ." [Interview with Bill Moyers, "Crossroads," CBS-TV,15 August 1984; cf. also his statement in "Technology and the Nuclear Treadmill," Air ForceMagazine, November 1984. Robert McFarlane, national security adviser, says that "Evendefenses that are imperfect strengthen deterrence because they create enormous headaches anduncertainties for anyone contemplating an attack." Remarks to Overseas Writers Association, 7March 1985.]

But if the goal is simply to discourage a Soviet first strike by raising the uncertainty of a

successful sneak attack against us, SDI is a fabulously expensive solution--potentially costing asmuch as $1 trillion to deploy [Lowell Wood, a leading SDI researcher at Lawrence LivermoreLaboratories, estimates that a space defense will cost "a T dollar" to implement--shorthand for $1trillion. Quoted in The Tribune (Oakland), 22 August 1984. James Schlesinger, former secretaryof defense, predicts the whole system will cost "well over half a trillion dollars and probably willexceed a trillion." New York Times, 7 February 1985.--to a problem that hardly exists. For avariety of reasons, including well-founded doubts about the reliability and accuracy of ICBMs,the chances of either side cleanly "decapitating" the other's retaliatory forces are dim at best--toodim for any rational leader to bet on. And there are much better, proven ways of further loweringthe odds than resorting to elaborate and untested defenses.

How would a sneak attack proceed? According to one scenario, Soviet ICBMs would devastateAmerica's own land-based forces, leaving a president no choice but to surrender or commit

suicide-by-retaliation. But would an American president, faced with an unprovoked attack andupward of 20 million dead citizens, really call it quits? With he not fight back with the 2,500 or more warheads remaining on submarines at sea, and the hundreds more aboard alert bombers?How many of the strategists who advance this script would, if sitting in the Kremlin themselves,really take the plunge? The technical and psychological uncertainties would rule out any such anattack. [Even Hitler, arguably a psychotic, respected the deterrent value of some weapons likechemical nerve gases.]

A more sophisticated version of this scenario posits that the mere possibility of such a Sovietstrike would deter American leaders from acting boldly during a crisis. As we shall see, however,unless the United States radically alters the nuclear balance in its favor, it has no choice evennow but to act with due caution abroad; while even nuclear inferiority needn't require surrender when the American homeland itself is threatened. Ironically, this scenario "works" only if

American leaders overestimate the Soviet capability to strike first and survive a retaliation, adanger that hawks of the Committee on the Present Danger stripe have done much to foster through propaganda campaigns of misinformation.

Those who do believe such unworldly scenarios, observes former Defense Secretary RobertMcNamara, "assume that the Soviet leaders are confident that their highly complex systems,which have been tested only individually and in a controlled environment, would perform their myriad tasks in perfect harmony during the most cataclysmic battle in history; that our electroniceavesdropping satellites would detect no hint of the intricate preparations that such a strike would



require; that we would not launch our missiles when the attack was detected; and that thethousands of submarine-based and airborne warheads that would surely survive would not beused against a wide array of vulnerable Soviet military targets. Finally, they assume Sovietconfidence that we would not use those vast surviving forces to retaliate against the Soviet population, even though tens of millions of Americans had been killed by the Soviet attack onour silos. Only madmen would contemplate such a gamble. Whatever else they may be, the

leaders of the Soviet Union are not madmen." [Robert McNamara and Hans Bethe, "Reducingthe Risk of Nuclear War," Atlantic Monthly, July 1985, p. 45.]

After President Reagan made the so-called "window of vulnerability" a key campaign issue, hisown Commission on Strategic Forces, chaired by Brent Scowcroft, closed it again byhighlighting the insuperable obstacles the Soviets would face trying to destroy simultaneously allU.S. land-, air- and sea-based nuclear forces. As Secretary of State George Shultz has statedflatly, "The three legs of the triad--bombers, submarines and land-based ballistic missiles--strengthen deterrence by greatly complicating Soviet planning. . . . For example, it is not possibleto attack our bomber bases and our ICBM silos simultaneously, without allowing certainretaliation. Indeed, deterrence rests upon the Soviet planners knowing they cannot contemplate asuccessful, disarming first strike. [Shultz testimony before the Senate Armed ServicesCommittee, 26 February 1985. Cf. statement of Gen. John Vessey, Jr., chairman of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff, to Senate Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Defense, 7 March 1985.]

The "window of vulnerability" was premised on highly pessimistic estimates of Soviet missileaccuracy. The numbers implied that with two warheads targeted against each U.S. silo, only ahandful of our ICBMs would survive an attack. The Air Force has since reestimated their accuracy downward by at least a third. Small degradations in accuracy have enormousrepercussions on missile lethality. [Gen. Bernie Davis, head of the Strategic Air Command,recently testified that Soviet SS-18 missiles are no more accurate than the Minuteman III missile,reports Aerospace Daily, 18 March 1985. That makes its Circular Error Probable (a statisticalmeasure of inaccuracy) at least one third larger (250 meters vs. 180 meters) than previouslyestimated (numbers supplied by John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists). The latest National Intelligence Estimate similarly downgrades the accuracy of SS-19s by one-third, to the point where they no longer threaten U.S. silos (New York Times, 19 July 1985).]

Real world lethality may be worse. Missiles are in tested (and fine tuned) over unrealistic east-west routes. Despite efforts to measure gravitation over north-south routes, no one can be surethe compensation is correct. Severe weather effects, errors in inertial guidance systems,determination of the target position and reliability of warhead fusing and yield and the commandelectronics are also potential problems. Soviet ICBM reliability probably lies within the range of 75 percent to 85 percent. Finally there is enormous uncertainty about fratricide--the effect of oneincoming nuclear blast on a second, third and following missiles. See Matthew Bunn and KostaTsipis, "The Uncertainties of a Preemptive Nuclear Attack," Scientific American, November 1983, 38-47; Jonathan Marshall, "Missiles that Fizzle," Inquiry., March 1983, 24-27.]

The 1974 testimony of former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger in this regard is bothauthoritative and enlightening: "It is impossible for either side to acquire the degree of accuracythat would give them a high confidence first strike because we will not know what the actualaccuracy will be like in a real-world context. . . . As you know, we have acquired from thewestern test range a fairly precise accuracy, but in the real world we would have to fly fromoperational bases to targets in the Soviet Union. The parameters of the flight from the westerntest range are not really very helpful in determiing those accuracies to the Soviet Union. . . . Theeffect of this is that there will always be degradation in accuracy as one shifts from R&D testing,which is essentially what we have at the western test range, to operational silos. . . . Let meunderscore, Mr. Chairman, once again, that neither side can achieve the kind of counter-forcecapabilities that the authors are implicitly assuming. There is just no possibility that a high



confidence disarming first strike is attainable for either side, even against the ICBM componentsof the strategic forces on both sides and certainly not against both sets of forces, SLBMs andICBMs." See Senate Subcommittee on Arms Control, International Law and Organization of theCommittee on Foreign Relations, hearing, US-USSR Strategic Policies, (Washington, DC: USGovernment Printing Office, 1974), pp. 15, 38.]

Based on these numbers, and the fact that existing Minuteman silos "are harder than originallythought," Strategic Air Commander Gen. Bernie Davis recently made the astonishing admissionthat "The whole question of a `window of vulnerability' that was raised some years ago did notrelate specifically to the vulnerability of missile silos." On that premise he and other administration spokesmen could recommend basing the MX missile in fixed silos, hithertoconsidered easy prey for Soviet ICBMs. In other words, the whole vulnerability scare was simplya mistake--or a fraud. [Washington Post, 7 March 1985; cf. Shultz statement to Senate ArmedServices Committee, 26 February 1985.]

Fortunately the invulnerability of our Poseidon and Trident submarine fleet makes the debateover the survivability of land-based missiles moot. Only a quarter of America's strategic nuclear warheads reside on land; more than 5,000 are carried beneath the sea, where the Soviets cannottrack or destroy them. And as the newer Trident boats come on line, these submarines will risk only 33 percent of their life in harbor, versus 45 percent for the older Poseidons. [Defense Daily,15 March 1985.] The comparable figure for Soviet ballistic missile submarines is only 15 percent, making their fleet much more vulnerable to preemption in dock.

To neutralize America's potent submarine-based deterrent, the Soviets would have to track downand kill our subs simultaneously throughout the oceans of the world in the face of potentcountermeasures, including artifical noisemakers to confuse acoustical detectors, decoys thatsimulate sub noise and direct attacks on the enemy's submarine detection system. [RichardGarwin, "Will Strategic Submarines Be Vulnerable?" International Security (Current News 26Oct 83), 52-67.]

According to Vice Admiral Nils Thunman, deputy chief of naval operations, "there isauthoritative assurance" that the U.S. ballistic missile submarine force will remain secure againstany foreseeable technological advances in Soviet antisubmarine capabilities. [Defense Daily, 15

March 1985. His claim was substantiated by Edward Y. Harper, director of the Navy's security program. See Defense Daily, 13 March 1985. Vice Adm. Albert Baciocco, Jr., director of research, development, testing and evaluation for the Chief of Naval Operations, says "there isnothing in the foreseeable future that we see as detracting from the invulnerability, survivabilityand effectiveness of our submarine deterrent. The oceans are not going to get transparent in mylifetime." (Interview, 16 July 1985)]

The latest oceanographic research has advanced the aim of concealment rather than detection."When people ask, `Aren't the oceans getting more transparent?' we say, `No way, they're gettingmore opaque,'" states Admiral James Watkins, Chief of Naval Operations. "Because we'relearning more about them all the time . . . how to employ them in a stealthy sense." Watkins predicts that U.S. submarines won't become vulnerable before the turn of the century or later.[Los Angeles Times, 22 March 1985. Navy Secretary John Lehman confirms that whatever "The

hiders are gaining an advantage over the seekers." [New York Times, 26 June 1985.]

The potency and security of the Navy's strategic nuclear deterrent leave the Soviets absolutely noincentive, even in a period of crisis, to risk a preemptive attack. Pictured as an essentiallydefensive measure to protect our homeland, therefore, SDI adds nothing of value to the currentcapabilities of the nearly 13,000 warhead strong nuclear "triad." [Even so staunch a warfighter asColin Gray admits that "US policy today is adequate, indeed more than adequate, to deter thehighly unlikely possibility of a Soviet nuclear assault on urban-industrial America" and that "thecredibility of US retaliation is very high indeed in the event of a Soviet first strike, of any



character or quantity, against the American homeland." His point, as we shall see later, is thatthe real challenge "relates most directly to the problems of extended deterrence." See Colin Gray,"War-Fighting for Deterrence," The Journal of Strategic Studies, March 1984, pp. 12-13.]

Ironically, however, SDI might undercut, rather than enhance, our current deterrence if theSoviets follow suit with a similar defense. Our defense would protect theoretically vulnerableland-based missiles from attack, but their's would limit the effectiveness of both our land- andsea-based ballistic missiles. For a small gain in missile security, a defensive arms race may buy amuch greater loss in deterrent power. As William Perry, former undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, notes, "unless a defensive system were perfect--which is asunachievable as the perpetual motion machine--it would not replace offensive, retaliatory forces,only supplement them, and the task of maintaining that deterrent would be made immeasurablymore difficult by the existence of a Soviet missile defense built to match ours." Washington Post,27 March 1983.]

II. "Star Wars": The war-fighters' dream

Looked at from the Kremlin's point of view, however, an American lead in strategic defense willdegrade their existing deterrent substantially. Suddenly their powerful ICBM force will losemuch of its effectiveness--at the very time a host of deadly new American offensive weapons are

coming on line: the MX, submarine-based D-5 and forward-based Pershing II missiles. Thesehighly accurate delivery systems, combined with the Navy's giant lead in anti-submarine warfare,will bring the United States closer than it has been in 20 years to enjoying a "not incredible" firststrike option. [Howard Morland, "Are We Readying a First Strike?" The Nation, 3-16-85.]

No rational American leader would risk such an attack, just as none did when the United Statesenjoyed a nuclear monopoly. But Washington hopes, and Moscow fears, that the perception of aU.S. strategic advantage, of an ability to "dominate" escalation at any and every force level,could both deter the Soviets from acting adventurously abroad and bolster U.S. political andmilitary initiatives in the Third World.

A missile defense would enhance the perception of offensive superiority. Any shield, whether of steel or laser beams, has a similar effect in tandem with other weapons. A warrior armed onlywith a shield makes a difficult but non-threatening target. A warrior armed only with a swordmakes a potent but vulnerable --and thus cautious--enemy. But a warrior armed with a shield andsword makes a dangerous and potentially aggressive foe.

President Reagan himself alluded to these distinctions in his March 1983 "Star Wars" speech.Strategic defenses, he candidly admitted, "raise certain problems and ambiguities. If paired withoffensive systems, they can be viewed as fostering an aggressive policy and no one wants that."

Yet the president's own men do want precisely that. As we have seen, Pentagon planners insistthat SDI will supplement offensive forces, not replace them. Gen. Robert Marsh, head of the Air Force Systems Command, was hardly thinking defensively when he announced in 1982, "Weshould move into war-fighting capabilities--that is ground to space warfighting capabilities,space-to-space, space-to-ground." [Quoted in The Defense Monitor, v. XII, no. 5, 1983, p. 1. His posture conformed to the Pentagon's five-year "defense guidance" plan, which assigned a war-

fighting role to space-based weapons. [According to the 1984-88 defense guidance, "The UnitedStates space program will contribute to the deterrence of an attack on the United States or, if deterrence fails, to the prosecution of war by developing, deploying, operating and supportingspace systems." New York Times, 17 October 1982.]

Under Secretary of Defense Donald Hicks, in charge of research and development for Star Wars, put SDI directly within the Pentagon's deterrence-through-warfighting program. He told a forumof university presidents in 1985 that "To me, the goal of all this (work on SDI) is to come upwith deterrence. It's amazing how many people don't think about deterrence, but deterrence



means you have to be able to fight a war. If we don't have a viable and realistic capability of fighting and winning . . . then you don't have deterrence." [From discussion of October 7, 1985,quoted in Science and Government Report, XV (October 15, 1985), p. 2.]

The New York Times now reports that the Department of Defense "is devising a nuclear war planand command structure that would integrate offensive nuclear forces with the projectedantimissile shield" and that "officials said the plan was to draw together forces and operations inthe Strategic Air Command, the Navy's submarines bearing ballistic missiles plus submarinesand surface ships armed with cruise missiles, and the new unified Space Command and the NorthAmerican Aerospace Defense Command." The planning will also include the Army's Pershing IImissiles in Europe and the Air Force's fledgling antisatellite weapons. [New York Times, 29May 1985. For a non-denial denial by Fred Ikle, see New York Times, 1 June 1985.]

This offensive-defensive modernization program raises questions about the bland claims of SDI planners that the system will "enhance deterrence." Just what do they mean by "deterrence"?Apparently not what the general public thinks--that is, power enough to discourage any thoughtof a nuclear attack on our homeland. That's the least of what they mean. For as the president'sscience advisor George Keyworth remarked, "If ICBMs serve only to retaliate in case the other side does attack first, then both sides can consider truly massive reductions in ICBM warheads.Ten or twenty nuclear weapons are virtually all the retaliatory deterrent that any countryneeds . . ." [George Keyworth, "The Case for Arms control and the Strategic Defense Initiative,"Arms Control Today, April 1985, p. 8. See also note 43.]

Defense Secretary Weinberger suggested the broader meaning of deterrence while expounding onhis rationale for SDI. "As defined by both our treaty commitments and security interests," hecommented, "deterrence is a concept which embraces not only the United States but our allies aswell. For this reason, any strategic defense system would certainly be designed to defend our allies as well as ourselves." [Interview in International Combat Arms, September 1985.]

America's ICBMs thus actually serve the much more ambitious purposes of American foreign policy, as defined in part by those "treaty commitments and security interests." For that reason,President Reagan's first arms control director, Eugene Rostow, warned that protection of America's homeland would be a "totally inadequate standard" for any future arms treaty. Nuclear

parity and minimal deterrence, he said, would leave us "prisoners in our own country, beset andimpotent, and unable to defend our interests in Europe, the Middle East, or elsewhere."[Baltimore Sun, 15 April 1981.]

In a seminal statement of his strategic philosophy, shared by other administration planners,Rostow insisted that "the mission of our nuclear forces goes beyond making it too expensive for the Soviet Union to consider launching a nuclear attack against the United States. They must also provide a nuclear guarantee for our interests in many parts of the world, and make it possible for us to defend those interests by diplomacy or by the use of theater military forces whenever suchaction becomes necessary. . . . Behind the shield of our second-strike capability, we carry on theforeign policy of a nation with global interests, and defend them if necessary by conventionalmeans or theater (nuclear) forces." [Eugene Rostow, "The Case Against SALT II," Commentary,February 1979.]

Rostow's linkage of nuclear threats to an expansive foreign policy was particularly explicit but byno means contrary to mainstream doctrine. Practically every innovation in U.S. strategic planning since the days of John Foster Dulles and "massive retaliation" has had not America'sdomestic security in mind, but rather the credibility of its "extended deterrent"--that is, the promise to fulfill foreign commitments by shoring up limited conventional strength withoverwhelming nuclear might. NATO's doctrine of "flexible response," Richard Nixon's embraceof limited counterforce, ["Counterforce" refers to the ability or intent to target militaryinstallations as opposed to industrial and populated zones, although in practice most nuclear



weapons are too powerful to discriminate when targets are in close proximity. In the extremecase--represented by MX and D5--counterforce weapons may be aimed at hardened sites and particularly enemy missile silos, threatening a "damage limiting" first strike. Jimmy Carter's PD-59 and Ronald Reagan's preoccupation with "warfighting" and now strategic defense have allshared one aim: to make the Soviet Union believe the United States has credible nuclear optionsother than outright suicide. Only thus would a nuclear response to a distant crisis appear realistic.

Only thus could the threat of such a response deter the Soviets from challenging a broad range of U.S. interests abroad. [Thus, for example, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger in 1974explained his new emphasis on limited counterforce strikes in terms of "deterrence," by which hemeant extended deterrence:

"It is our judgment that this change in targeting doctrine shores up deterrence. A targetingdoctrine which stresses going only against cities is not an adequate deterrent for most purposeswhen the Soviet Union, as is the case today, has a counter-deterrent which is beyond the capacityand, I believe, the desire of the United States to take away.

". . . Now, in my judgement, the effect of the emphasis on selectivity and flexibility, which Iseparate from any issue of sizing, is to improve deterrence across the spectrum of risk.

"Mr. Chairman, as you know from our previous discussions about NATO, there has been a

declining credibility, as the Europeans see it, in the relationship of US strategic forces toEuropean security.

"The decline in that credibility was based upon the belief that the Americans would not usetheir strategic forces if, for example, New York and Chicago were placed at risk in order to protect Western Europe. Consequently NATO, which is undergoing many travails, was alsoundergoing the travail of growing European disbelief that the US strategic forces were lockedinto the security of Europe, despite our having made that pledge repeatedly over a period of many years.

"The reaction in Europe to change in targeting doctrine has been uniformly welcoming, even joyous, because they recognize that this means US strategic forces are still credibly part of theoverall deterrent for Europe."

U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Arms Control, InternationalLaw and Organization, March 4, 1974 hearing, "US-USSR Strategic Policies," (Washington,DC: USGPO, 1974), p. 8. Cf. pp. 9, 12, 26-27.]

The United States has always extended its nuclear umbrella first and foremost to WesternEurope, a fact emphasized by the stationing of intermediate range missiles under U.S. control onthat continent. Washington in principle stands firmly committed to "first use" of nuclear weaponsin case of a Soviet onslaught against NATO. But policy makers have also sought to exploitAmerica's nuclear might in more remote theaters. On some 20 occasions since World War II,U.S. leaders formally considered using nuclear weapons, including Korea (1950), Indochina(1954), Quemoy and Matsu (1955, 1958), Berlin (1961), Cuba (1962), Vietnam (1968) and theMiddle East (1973). [Desmond Ball, "US Strategic Forces: How Would They be Used?"International Security, Winter 1982/1983, pp. 41-44. Richard Nixon recently told Time magazine

of four such nuclear episodes during his administration.]

In the Persian Gulf, Presidents Carter and Reagan both warned that America's commitment to theregion was backstopped by our nuclear arsenal. After the Pentagon concluded in 1980 that aSoviet thrust into Iran might be stopped only with tactical nuclear weapons, Carter's defensesecretary Harold Brown threatened that a Soviet intervention would mean "global nuclear war."[Baltimore Sun, 12 January 1981 (Brown); New York Times, 2 February 1980 (Pentagon).President Reagan, in his first press conference, said he would maintain an American military presence in that theater "based on the assumption--and I think a correct assumption--the Soviet



Union is not ready to take on that confrontation which could become World War III. . . . They'regoing to have to take that into their computations." [Reagan interview, New York Times, 3February 1981.]

Such threats justify the reminder from administration adviser Colin Gray, that "the possibility of use of US strategic nuclear forces might, in practice, be related less to their extended deterrenceduties on behalf of allies, and rather more to their role as `top cover' and `back up' to very largeAmerican expeditionary forces that would be at severe immediate risk around the periphery of Eurasia." [Colin Gray, "War-Fighting for Deterrence," The Journal of Strategic Studies, March1984, p. 26n. Emphasis in the original.]

For administration strategic planners, the maintainance of extended deterrence in the face of growing Soviet power demands and drives its program of nuclear modernization. [See, for example, Gen. David Jones, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Air Force Magazine, May1979; John Lehman in International Security Review, Fall 1980; Richard Burt, quoted inChristopher Paine, "On the Beach: The Rapic Deployment Force and the Nuclear Arms Race,"MERIP Reports, January 1983, 8-9; Paul Nitze in "An MX card is needed at Geneva,"Philadelphia Inquirer, 20 March 1985.] Thus Rostow's successor at the Arms Control andDisarmament Agency, Kenneth Adelman (another alumnus of the Committee on the PresentDanger) defended the MX and similar counterforce systems on grounds that

". . . the credibility of extended US deterrence depends on the Soviet belief that the US wouldindeed risk nuclear escalation on behalf of foreign commitments. In other words, US strategicforces do not exist solely to deter a Soviet nuclear attack or an attack against the United Statesitself. Rather they are intended to support a range of US foreign policy goals, including thecommitment to preserve Western Europe and even parts of the Persian Gulf against overtaggression. . . The US should be prepared (and be seen to be prepared) to put our strategic forcesinto limited play in limited crises that may arise in the wider world, such as the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Middle East War of 1973; US forces should not be fashioned solely for the mostremote crisis of all: that of an all-out US-USSR nuclear conflict." [Kenneth Adelman, "BeyondMAD-ness," Policy Review, Summer 1981.]

Secretary of State George Shultz likewise cited the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and 1973 nuclear

alert as times when "American strategic power was in important element in denying the SovietUnion any credible option to escalate beyond the local level." The loss of U.S. strategicsuperiority, he warned, will have an "important effect on the Soviets's willingness to run risks ina regional conflict or crisis . . . The Peacekeeper ICBM (MX) has a direct relevance to this problem of Soviet risk taking. . . . It will enhance our capacity to deter nuclear war andsignificant conventional attack or the threat of either" (emphasis added). [Statement to SenateArmed Services Committee, 20 April 1983.]

From this analytic vantage point, the Reagan administration's preoccupation with nuclear "warfighting," including weapons modernization, hardened command and control and, as weshall see, strategic defense, is merely a logical reaction to the changing requirements of extendeddeterrence in an age when the Soviet Union enjoys ample nuclear might of its own.

More than a year before Reagan took office, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger offered aclassic analysis of those changes before a distinguished NATO audience.

He harkened back nostalgically to the days when "the United States possessed an overwhelmingstrategic nuclear superiority" and was able to lean on that force in "the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962" and "the Middle East crisis of 1973."

In subsequent years the Soviet Union closed the gap and safeguarded their own deterrent byhousing their ICBMs in hardened silos. Soviet equality in strategic weapons, he argued withstriking bluntness, effectively shifted the world power balance:



"[T]he change in the strategic situation that is produced by our limited vulnerability is morefundamental for the United States than even total vulnerability would be for the Soviet Union because our strategic doctrine has relied extraordinarily, perhaps exclusively, on our superior strategic power. The Soviet Union has never relied on its superior strategic power. It has alwaysdepended more on its local and regional superiority. Therefore, even an equivalence indestructive power, even `assured destruction' for both sides, is a revolution in the strategic

balance as we have known it."

His final conclusion was no less striking or blunt: "If my analysis is correct we must face the factthat it is absurd in the 1980s to base the strategy of the West on the credibility of the threat of mutual suicide." [Henry Kissinger, "The Future of NATO," The Washington Quarterly, Autumn1979.]

Kissinger offered no detailed solutions. But he did suggest two alternatives. Either the Sovietsmust be "deprived of their counterforce capability in strategic forces," or "a U.S. counterforcecapability in strategic forces" must "be rapidly built." The former option would relieve pressureon the United States, the latter would multiply its strategic power.

The Carter administration's commitment to the MX, Pershing II and D-5 missiles with their "hardtarget kill" capability satisfied the latter requirement. And it is the Reagan administration's push

for strategic defense that promises to satisfy the former.

Kissinger's 1979 speech clearly, if only sketchily, asserted the strategic merits of protecting theAmerican homeland from attack. Breaking with the tradition of assured destruction, he brandedas "historically amazing" the theory that "vulnerability contributed to peace and invulnerabilitycontributed to war." Of the 1972 ABM treaty--generally considered his main arms controlaccomplishment--he added "It cannot have occurred often in history that it was considered anadvantageous military doctrine to make your own country deliberately vulnerable." [Ibid.]

While Kissinger only hinted then at a recommendation, he and other strategists later made itexplicit: strategic defense. America had the power to devastate the Soviet Union; what it lackedwas the ability to use that power without risking suicide. Augmenting offensive power with adefensive shield might make suicide a less likely outcome of limited nuclear war.

Defense in the broadest sense could take several forms. "Star Wars," with its promise of offering partial protection to urban industrial civilization along with missile silos, is but one element of adefensive mix. Civil defense is another. And so is counterforce--the ability to nullify the Sovietoffense with a preemptive strike of pinpoint accuracy. A counterforce offense represents, ineffect, the pre-boost-phase layer of strategic defense.

In their famous 1980 article "Victory is Possible," strategists Colin Gray and Keith Payneanticipated the Reagan administration's warfighting doctrine and commitment to "prevailing" in a prolonged nuclear war. To make victory in the nuclear age plausible, they proposed that "acombination of counterforce offensive targeting, civil defense and ballistic missile and air defense should hold U.S. casualties down to a level compatible with national survival andrecovery." [Colin Gray and Keith Payne, "Victory is Possible," Foreign Policy, Summer 1980.]

Gray and his colleagues, it must be added, do not pretend that a leakproof population defense,nor do they think it necessary. For them, casualties in the low tens of millions would be deeplyregrettable but acceptable as the price of victory. They believe that an offense-defensecombination could "limit" the dead and wounded to such a level.

Such an expensive victory would be their worst-case scenario. By ruling out the inevitability of national suicide in a nuclear war, such a damage-limiting offense and defense would givesubstance to nuclear threats that "backstop foreign security commitments." [Colin Gray,"Deterrence, Arms Control and the Defense Transition," Orbis, Summer 1984.] Faced with this



shift in the strategic balance, the Soviets would (they hope) back down before a confrontationcould lead to war.

In a recent elaboration on the theory of SDI, Gray, a senior administration adviser, reiterated that"A United States with a multilayered strategic defense capability for the limitation of damage toits homeland (to a low though certainly not trivial scale) should be a United States far better placed than it is today both to succeed in the prosecution of local conflict . . . and--if need be--toexpand a war in order to seek to restore deterrence through action at a higher level of violence."[Colin Gray, "Reactions and Perspectives," in Ashton B. Carter and David N. Schwartz, eds.,Ballistic Missile Defense (WDC: Brookings, 1984), p. 403. See also Colin Gray, "A New Debateon Ballistic Missile Defense," Survival, March/April 1981, p. 68, quoted in David Yost,"Ballistic Missile Defnse and the Atlantic Alliance," International Security, Fall 1982, p. 154).Gray is president of National Institute for Public Policy and member of administration's GeneralAdvisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. For similar, brutally logicalstatements on strategic defense and extended deterrence see Keith Payne, "Strategic Defense andStability," Orbis, Summer 1984, 215-227; "Should the ABM Treaty Be Revised?" ComparativeStrategy, Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 1-20; and "Deterrence, Arms Control and U.S. Strategic Doctrine,"Orbis, Fall 1981, pp. 747-769.]

Contrary to those allies who fear that the United States will retreat behind a "Star Wars" shieldinto a "Fortress America," the effect of patching up its nuclear umbrella abroad will be to injectnew vigor into Washington's pursuit of allied interests abroad. "If we can move into an erawherein the American homeland enjoys a growing measure of direct, physical protection," Grayhas observed, "the willingness of US presidents to run risks on behalf of distant allies logicallyshould be strengthened. Far from being an instrument with `decoupling' implications, strategicdefence would work to enhance solidarity of behavior in crisis and war." [Colin Gray, "StrategicDefenses," Survival, March/April 1985.]

Fully in accord with that logic, Henry Kissinger in recent years has argued on behalf of SDI that"assuming you could get a fully protected America, that would be in the European interest, because it would certainly increase our willingness to use nuclear weapons in the defense of Europe." [Interview with Stern magazine, reprinted in Los Angeles Times 16 June 1985.]

As Kissinger's endorsement suggests, Gray and his colleague Keith Payne are far from lonevoices in the wilderness. Free from political constraints, they state their assumptions and spin outtheir logic with greater directness than most administration officials. But their views accuratelyreflect those of White House and Pentagon strategic planners.

For example, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, speaking in West Germany in late 1985,dropped all pretence that Star Wars would move this country away from reliance on offensivenuclear weapons. "By increasing the survivability of our strategic forces," he stressed, "SDI willstrengthen both coupling and deterrence. And in addition to strengthening our deterrence of nuclear attack, strategic defense would help deter conventional aggression." [Remarks at theGerman-American Rountable, Bonn, West Germany, 5 December 1985.]

But take it from President Reagan himself: SDI will extend the power of the US nuclear arsenalrather than replacing it. "By countering ballistic missile threats against all members of thealliance, including the United States," he remarked in 1985, "strategic defenses would strengthenthe credibility of US extended deterrence and NATO's flexible response doctrine by reducing thevulnerability of United States reinforcements to Europe." [Remarks in an interview with LeFigaro, 26 September 1985.]

IV. The need for strategic retrenchment



SDI proponents offer strategic defense and a counterforce offense together as the keys to makingnuclear war a credible extension of politics by other means--on Washington's terms.

That is the real rationale behind what President Reagan sold to the nation as an instrument of peace. [To be sure, the strategic analysis may have supplied the rationale for a program drivenmore by bureaucratic imperatives. But the strategic implications outlined by that analysis in turnshape US foreign policy and Soviet nuclear and foreign policy responses. And peaceful it might be if only the Soviets would accept a Pax Americana. But if, as seems more likely, they respondin kind and react with technological innovations of their own, the result will surely be afabulously expensive and destabilizing new arms race.

Even if the United States gains several laps on its adversary, its advantage may have deleteriouseffects on the behavior of both superpowers. The Soviets have a greater incentive to launch preemptively during a crisis--or at a minimum to launch on warning, with all the attendant risksof misjudgment. Their only hope of penetrating an American defensive shield would be to strikewith all the weapons at their disposal.

Illusions of a U.S. strategic advantage would bend Washington's policy for the worse, too. A bold president might be tempted to play "chicken" in regions where geography and our conventional power would otherwise dictate caution, on the assumption that a superior

warfighting posture would guarantee the outcome. But if that assumption proved wrong not evena fabulous investment in defense could prevent immense destruction to the U.S. homeland.

Since no combination of counterforce and strategic defense will ever be perfect, the linkage of U.S. survival to foreign commitments, through extended nuclear deterrence, remains the greatestand least appreciated gamble of postwar American foreign policy. Its potential payoff versus lossare infinitely disproportionate--a sort of reverse Pascal's wager. If the strategy works, it preventsa costly US-Soviet crisis or war in abroad. But if it fails, we get no second chance.

Ironically, the extension of such supreme power abroad makes America's fate hostage to eventsin regions we can't really control. It may give allies dangerously false expectations about their own ability to dictate events in areas of Soviet interest--without a corresponding willingness toconsult Washington fully.

Finally, it may also tempt our rivals to test the credibility of our nuclear umbrella at its weakestand "thinnest" points--a Korea, Vietnam or Iran, for instance. That risk in turn accounts for theexpensive preoccupation of U.S. policy makers with establishing credibility in otherwiseinsignificant trouble spots. Resolute behavior in "test cases," they believe, will discourageadversaries from miscalculating and going to the brink in places Washingtons more vital to itsinterests.

Fortunately, Washington has rarely if ever put the strategy of extended deterrence fully to thetest; even the Cuban Missile Crisis, often cited as a victory for strategic superiority, arguablydepended far more on local conventional superiority. ["The Cuban missile crisis illustrates notthe significance but the insignificance of nuclear superiority in the face of survivablethermonuclear retaliatory forces. It also shows the crucial role of rapidly available conventionalstrength." -- Dean Rusk, Robert S. McNamara, Theordore Sorenson, George Ball, Roswell

Gilpatric and McGeorge Bundy, statement reported in New York Times, 20 September 1982.Most often U.S. leaders have shown healthy skepticism about the practical limits of nuclear power and a disinclination to push their luck. That reticence could readily change in the future if the United States undertakes a massive commitment to SDI.

Such considerations were presumably what Defense Secretary Harold Brown had in mind in1979 when he said, "I have always been concerned about massive ABM systems because I havealways felt there was some possibility that some clever briefer could delude a political decision



maker into thinking that they were going to work." [Quoted in Wall Street Journal, 28 September 1984.]

Such "clever briefers" clearly abound--from administration advisers like Colin Gray toadministration insiders like Kenneth Adelman. And they include more than a few uniformedofficers, such as the Air Force Space Command planners who promise to create a space warfare policy to restore "preatomic notions of military superiority" in order to "make conflict at theupper levels of military violence (nuclear attack) again thinkable." [Such an outcome, they say,would be an "invigorating turn of events for the spiritual vitality of the Western democracies."Quoted by Flora Lewis in The Tribune (Oakland), 10 January 1984.]

Only madmen--or professional nuclear strategists--can ever suppose nuclear war to be"thinkable." Counterforce and SDI conceivably may change the psychology of the nuclear balance; they cannot ultimately change the reality of mutual assured destruction.

Mainstream foreign policy analysts by and large have not faced up any better than administrationstrategists to these dilemmas: Extended deterrence logically demands nuclear superiority andhomeland defense, yet it also increases the risk of homeland annihilation when deterrence fails.Who will lay odds that will never happen? A strategy based on suicide, however prettily it isdressed, looks ugly when the object of deterrence is something less than our own nation's

survival.

To continue promising Europe and more remote regions of the world the protection of the U.S.nuclear umbrella thus makes no sense with or without some kind of leaky defense in place.Critics of SDI must go the last mile and admit that the fundamental question is not "what does ittake to deter" but "what are we trying to deter?" And if their answer is a nuclear holocaust in theUnited States, they must be prepared to abandon not only strategic defense, but the strategictheory behind it.

The alternative strategy of decoupling the U.S. nuclear arsenal from overseas interests, andcommitting it only to deter an attack on our homeland, entails certain risks. It may indeed makethe Soviet Union bolder in some regions. It may behoove our relatively wealthy allies to investmore resources in their own defense. But it also promises outstanding benefits: vastly reducedrisk of a nuclear catastrophe and vastly reduced costs to maintain a limited, but credible, nuclear force. [See also Jonathan Marshall, "The Missiles of December," Inquiry, December 1983, pp.16-19.]

Documents

Illusion of Missile Defense