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APPENDIX G.1
Special Challenges in Extending Deterrence in the New Era
Paul K Davis, Rand
A PROVOCATIVE PREMISE
This paper proceeds from the following premise:
• A principal strategic issue for the developed
world is how to deter invasion or coercion of weak and
medium-strong states when the security of the threatened states is
important but is not a "vital" national interest of the powers that
might be protectors.
Deterring attacks on the United States, Western Europe, South
Korea, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia will continue to be a key national
security objective. Much more controversial, however, is the notion
of attempting to deter threats to Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic
states, Taiwan, or a unified Korea. The potential aggressors would
be Russia and China, although we hope that both countries will
instead travel down more enlightened paths in the decades
ahead.
On the one hand, it is obvious that the United States would
prefer to deter aggression against any of these states (as well as
future Bosnias). On the other hand, none of them is a clearly vital
national interest. As a result, it is difficult to formulate and
implement any strategy. Indeed, many people believe that
entertaining the notion of a deterrent strategy smacks of strategic
overextension and becoming a world policeman. This paper, however,
accepts the premise as a sober expression of fact.
TOWARD A STRATEGY FOR DETERRING
THREATS TO NON-VITAL INTERESTS
Factors Contributing to
Deterrence
Suppose that the United States wanted a deterrent strategy for
dealing with threats to important but non-vital interests. What
might it look like? Standard defense planning involving vital
regional interests tends to focus on military capabilities that
could with some confidence defeat aggression if it occurred
(deterrence by denial). In more difficult cases involving non-vital
interests, however, we will need to reduce our standards and rely
on a wide range of influence factors, some of them distinctly
squishy and political. Figure G. 1.1 summarizes these factors in a
"success tree" for deterrence: the factors below contribute to the
successful result at the top (deterrence).
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Figure G.1.1 Factors contributing to
deterrence.
Although the tree happens to have emerged from using decision
modeling methods to think about crises, conflicts, and deterrence,
none of the factors in the tree is truly remarkable. The tree could
have been assembled by merely combining ideas from a dozen texts
and articles in international relations. However, viewing
deterrence as influencing human beings operating in politically
rich contexts has the effect of increasing the weight one puts on
several of the factors, which are often mentioned in lip service
and then discarded. Moving from left to right, we see that
deterrence is served if the would-be aggressor has no compelling
incentives to invade and if there are moral and cultural
considerations that argue against invasion. These factors may
remind us that Canadians do not lose sleep worrying about invasion
by the United States; nor do the Low countries in Europe currently
worry about historical enemies repeating their deeds. Moving
rightward again in Figure G. 1.1, deterrence is served if there is
fear of military defeat in an invasion attempt and if there is fear
of other consequences even if "success" is likely. At the next
level of detail there are some important distinctions, but what
matters most to this discussion is recognizing that we must be
serious about all of the factors, not merely list them and then
move on to the more straightforward of military issues. Why?
Because both history and analysis indicate that depending on
extended deterrence by denial (being able to defeat invasion) to
protect non-vital interests is probably a losing proposition. In
some cases, deterrence by denial is not even militarily feasible.
In other cases, it is politically very questionable because it
requires prompt and decisive multilateral actions under ambiguous
circumstances.
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Possible Suggestions for Weak and
Medium-Strength States
One way to view the situation is to imagine ourselves giving
advice to a generic weak or medium-strength state concerned about a
strong and potentially troublesome neighbor. Motivated primarily by
issues highlighted in Figure G. 1. 1, Table G. 1.1 summarizes
possible suggestions. A few of the items merit elaboration.
Minimizing incentives for invasion (item 1) includes avoiding
excuses such as mistreatment of ethnic minorities for whom the
neighboring strong country sees a sense of responsibility (either
real or contrived during an internal political crisis). Nurturing
moral attitudes and cultural ties (item 2) includes the notion of
identifying and weeding out "dangerous ideas" such as
hatred-perpetuating stereotypes or distortions of history found in
some countries' educational materials (e.g., Arab materials
referencing Israel, Japanese materials misrepresenting as benign
the brutal Japanese imperialism in Korea, materials claiming that
recent events in Bosnia were "inevitable," or, less relevant here,
American materials ignoring the mistreatment of Native
Americans).
Maintaining a competent defense (item 3) is, of course, highly
important if feasible, which it is not, for example, for Latvia.
This, however, involves not just having an army, but also avoiding
operational vulnerabilities that would make a quick and successful
attack feasible. Today, a defender should worry about everything
from special operations forces to information warfare. Operational
arms control (item 4) has considerable potential because relatively
straightforward measures can greatly reduce opportunities for
surprise attack. It may also be that there will be increased
interest in total force structures, including support, that lack
credible offensive capability for theater-level campaigns, although
this is a complex subject and it is futile to try to label weapons
as offensive or defensive. In addition to all of these, weak or
medium-strong states are well advised to seek protectors and, as
necessary, to make their commitment credible and permit and even
encourage prepositioning or forward deployment of forces. Countries
should be discouraged from believing that the United States or any
other protector can keep its forces "over the horizon" and quickly
deploy them when needed. The last item in Table G. 1.1 deals with
something listed ambivalently in Figure G. 1.1—nuclear
weapons. By and large, dependence on nuclear weapons for deterrence
is a dangerous game for weak countries. Such weapons assure that
the countries are targeted, and the weapons might invite what would
be alleged to be preemption or preventive war and are not obviously
good deterrents anyway, except when nations appear willing to
commit suicide rather than be occupied. Israel appears to be the
exception here because it lacks strategic depth and is surrounded
by large countries with a depth of religious and ethnic enmity that
goes beyond normal rationality.
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Table G.1.1 Possible Advice to Weak or
Medium-Strong States
1. Minimize incentives
•
"Respect" your neighbor. for invasion or
coercion.
•
Do not threaten its major interests or permit
provocative actions involving minorities
2. Nurture moral attitudes and cultural ties
•
Identify and weed out "dangerous ideas."
•
Increase interdependence and normal contacts.
•
Cooperate in all-inclusive regional security
frameworks reiterating high principles.
•
Cooperate in high-minded joint activities.
3. If feasible, maintain a competent defense, even
if moderate.
•
Focus on precluding quick and easy invasions.
•
Avoid "holes," special vulnerabilities to coups de
main,
•
Consider defense-in-depth methods.
•
Have strong protector(s); permit forward
deployment of forces or infrastructure.
•
· Move quickly to high readiness in a
crisis.
4. Use operational arms control wisely
•
· Seek measures constraining neighbor from
posturing forces for a surprise attack.
•
Treat violation of such measures as strong
evidence of hostile intent. ·
•
Encourage other sensible confidence- and
security building measures, but nothing that degrades essential
readiness in crisis.
5. Consider nonoffensive defenses.
•
· Judge "offensiveness" on total posture,
including logistics for long-distance force projection
6. Seek regional and other security
protections.
•
Seek a combination of bilateral and multilateral
frameworks with complementary virtues.
7. See through the allure of nuclear weapons.
•
· Recognize that nuclear weapons would
guarantee being targeted and would be unlikely to be survivable in
a crisis
•
. Recognize that nuclear weapons are useful
primarily for deterring nuclear weapons.
Possible Suggestions for U.S. Security
Planning
What is the complement of Table G. 1.1 for countries like the
United States that would like to "extend" deterrence in politically
and economically feasible ways? Table G. 1.2 suggests some
principles. Many of them are by no means trivial. Even item 1
involves the controversial issue of NATO expansion but
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Table G.1.2 Generic Suggestions for Extending
Deterrence to Non-Vital Interests
1. Support a broad range of regional
stability-enhancing activities.
•
Participate in both bilateral and multilateral
agreements (e.g., NATO expansion)
•
Serve as a broker (e.g., Middle East).
•
Maintain regional military presence (e.g., Kuwait,
Korea, Japan).
2. Recognize and express interests clearly.
•
Repeat U.N. principles regularly and
unequivocally.
•
Maintain forward-deployed forces and
infrastructure where feasible.
•
Create formal security ties to enhance credibility
and resolve (e.g., NATO expansion).
•
Be more rather than less heavy handed in
"signaling" aggressive, risk taking adversaries; avoid compromise
actions that will be interpreted as weakness and irresoluteness (as
were, e.g., minor naval exercises in the Gulf during July
1990).
3. Prepare politically and militarily for prompt
intervention in a crisis.
•
Conduct peacetime games posing predictable
dilemmas; conduct high-level games given strategic warning; include
political figures and allies to increase the likelihood of
decisiveness in a crisis.
•
Emphasize forward presence in a crisis.
•
Deter use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by
credible threats of massive conventional retaliation; prepare to
operate in WMD environment.
•
Conduct joint exercises and training for
effective, prompt intervention
•
Fine-tune intervention capabilities to supplement
a target state's capabilities.
•
Prepare for militarily effective short-warning
D-Day intervention with long-range bombers, carrier battle groups
(CVBGs), and in-place forces
4. Encourage operational arms control and
asymmetric nonoffensive defense.
•
Seek measures reducing the feasibility of surprise
attack and increasing the likelihood of decisive political
decisions by the target state, the United States, and other
nations.
5. Find alternatives to current U.N. mechanisms
for crisis intervention.
•
Recognize that current U.N. mechanisms are
inadequate for a mission of immediate deterrence.
•
Develop other mechanisms of legitimized, prompt,
and competent action.
6. Create an expectation of sure and swift
long-term punishment for aggression, whether or not the aggression
is successful.
•
Seek regional security frameworks requiring
prompt political and economic sanctions making aggressors pariah
states.
•
Develop and exercise credible multilateral
military options for selective strategic punishment (e.g.,
destruction of navy or air force, selected countervalue
attacks)
•
Develop and exercise multilateral military
capabilities for sanction enforcement (embargoes, etc.), even if
leaky.
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would perhaps go farther to envisage arrangements involving the
Baltic states, Ukraine, and Taiwan among others. Item 2 recognizes
that a major cause of failure for immediate deterrence in the past
has been the failure to recognize and express interests
clearly—clearly enough to be understood by adversaries who do
not reason in the same "pragmatic" and status-quo-oriented way that
we and our allies do and who respect power and firmness, not
cosmetic compromise signals (e.g., a small-scale naval exercise
without serious warfighting capability) that suggest lack of
resolve and commitment.
The admonition to prepare for prompt intervention may sound
obvious, but it involves more than building military capabilities.
Democracies such as the United States have great difficulty
reacting decisively under ambiguous circumstances. To mitigate
these problems, the National Security Council might regularly
conduct strategic crisis games that would serve both to prepare and
to educate. Given strategic warning of a crisis, such games could
be called as a matter of operational political-military
doctrine—as a matter of responsibility. If game participants
included appropriate members of Congress and appropriate allies,
then working through the strategic dilemmas might go far to
encourage unified prompt and decisive action early enough for
immediate deterrence to work. Without such a doctrine of
preparation, it seems likely that the United States will often be
ineffective early in a crisis, when deterrence could work. This
conclusion is the result of studies of past crises and the use of
decision modeling to better understand the dilemmas felt by
political leaders. The theory of immediate deterrence is much
easier than its practice.
Another feature of preparing for prompt intervention includes
dealing in advance with the weapons of mass destruction (WMD)
problem. The United States needs a firm and frightening declaratory
policy, backed up by operational capabilities, to deter use of WMD.
In addition, the United States needs significant and even
substantial active and passive capabilities for missile defense.
Although this is already a national priority, it is also very
difficult to achieve technically. A major factor in any real-world
capability is likely to be early deployment, early commitment (in
part for deterrence and in part to assure our own resolve), and
early counterforce attacks on adversary systems, perhaps surprise
preemptive attacks. Envisaging this is sobering given traditional
American attitudes and behaviors. Without an ability to deter
and, if necessary, defeat WMD, the United States is likely to be
self-deterred with respect to protecting less than vital interests,
especially if not already forward deployed and committed.
Continuing in item 3 of Table G.1.2, any realistic assessment of
prompt intervention capability quickly demonstrates that the United
States should be prepared to assure that the earliest-arriving
capabilities are those tailored to supplement the defenses of the
target state. This might include capability for DDay Air Force and
Navy attacks on ground forces, air forces, and naval forces
(including small boats used for special operations units). It might
also include a capability for establishing information dominance,
which implies not only
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superb reconnaissance and surveillance, but also the requisite
communications with allies.
Arms control appears prominently in this list, as it does in
Table G. 1.1. The basic principle is that deterrence can be greatly
enhanced by making surprise attacks difficult, because aggressors
typically want a quick, easy, and low-risk victory. In practice,
surprise attacks have seldom been a surprise; instead, they have
been the consequence of exploiting ambiguous circumstances. Arms
control can reduce opportunities for such strategies by, for
example, prohibiting the massing of potentially aggressive forces
near a border. Actions in violation of the agreement would not be
particularly ambiguous; they would indicate hostile
intentions and would be more likely to trigger appropriate
responses.
Unfortunately, arms control measures can also be
counterproductive, especially measures proposed to avoid allegedly
provocative actions in a crisis that would preclude increasing
readiness to fend off attacks. Proponents of arms control in the
form of confidence-building measures too often assume a requirement
for symmetry that makes no sense militarily or in terms of
security-related equity. For example, it would be ridiculous to
require that a small state not be able to ready its modest forces
along its borders merely because its mammoth neighbor state was
enjoined from concentrating massive forces along the same border.
There is a significant late-1980s literature on the theory of sound
operational arms control.
One of the most important realities in thinking about immediate
deterrence is that the current U.N. mechanisms for crisis action
are altogether unsuitable and incompetent for supporting serious
efforts at immediate deterrence. Alternative mechanisms must
be found, because neither the United States nor its partners are
likely to engage in unilateral actions, however virtuous.
International legitimacy is essential.
Item 6 in Table G. 1.2 is unusual: it is a concept of assured
strategic punishment of aggressors. "Punishment strategies" have
been unfairly and incompetently maligned over the years by academic
studies. Except for nuclear deterrence, which is deemed unique, it
is often claimed that history proves that punishment strategies do
not work. Claims to that effect fail to understand the underlying
decision dynamics and overinterpret modest historical data (e.g.,
on the alleged failure of U.S. bombing of North Vietnam). What
Table G. 1.2 refers to is something quite different and quite
consistent with fundamentals of influencing decisions. A major
deterrent of action is the certainty of prompt and
unpleasant punishment. Today, a potential aggressor has many ways
to rationalize (whether or not wisely) that punishment might not
happen at all, would probably be short-lived if enacted, and would
probably be spottily applied. By contrast, suppose that in each
region of interest there were a regional security framework in
which participants agreed—in advance—to respond to any
armed aggression by immediately curtailing diplomatic relations,
severing trade, and imposing an embargo. The potential aggressor
would no longer be able to count on political dithering by the
various states. Further, the leader of the aggressive state would
no longer find it easy to persuade other
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Table G.1.3 Actions Needed to Extend
Deterrence
National Security Council (NSC)
•
Create "doctrine" for crisis action preparation
with representatives of Congress and allied states. Use seminar
gaming, analysis, option development, and assessment.
•
Develop strategy and "doctrine" for long-term
political, economic, and military punishment of aggressor states,
including a declaratory policy.
.
•
Develop "doctrine" for the most effective combined
use of political, economic, and military instruments for immediate
deterrence
Department of Defense
•
Develop operations plans for a wide variety of
punishment strikes, as well as related exercises and declaratory
policies.
•
Put a high programmatic priority on maximizing the
real and perceived effectiveness of long-range bombers and
on-station carrier battle groups for D-Day military strikes against
invading forces.
•
Raise further the priority of means for operating
in a weapons of mass destruction (WMD) environment and for
deterring use of WMD.
Department of State and Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency
•
Develop options for discussions with the world
community about ways to replace the current U.N. mechanisms for
crisis action.
•
Encourage, region by region, security frameworks
in which, among other things, participants agree on automatic
punishment of aggressor states.
•
Develop militarily sensible arms-control
initiatives tailored for the various regions of interest, focusing
primarily on avoiding surprise attack and improving relations
generally.
Department of the Navy and Navy commanders
•
Participate as a major player in activities listed
under and National Security Council actions.
Participating in CINC activities
•
Increase the military effectiveness of navy
“flexible deterrent options.”
•
Develop capabilities for short-warning D-Day
strikes on military forces.
•
Develop capabilities for leveraging target country
military capabilities early in a crisis (e.g., via reconnaissance,
surveillance, long-range fire, communications, and information
warfare, including the ability to communicate well with friendly
forces and other services).
•
Continue to pursue ship-based ballistic missile
defense and campaign management capabilities.
•
Develop preemptive options against WMD forces.
•
Examine needs for enforcing political, military,
and economic sanctions against large aggressor states.
•
Maintain indefinitely the ability to operate
safely in all ocean regions of interest, even in the "neighborhood"
of large states such as Russia and China.
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leaders that a proposed military action might be cost-free.
Suppose further that the United States and other relevant nations
were known to have capabilities and well-exercised operations plans
for strategically significant military punishment of rogue
states—e.g., destruction of the adversary's naval forces or
attacks on economic targets expected to cause few civilian
casualties. Surely, such options would further enhance worries
about ''consequences." To be sure, military punishment options
would be controversial against nations with the capability for
nuclear strikes on the United States (or even regional states), but
the existence of such punishment options would improve deterrence
and the options might actually be executable, especially given
overwhelming nuclear superiority and perhaps some level of
ballistic missile defense. In any case it would seem unwise to
preemptively discard such options out of a belief that they could
never be credible.
POTENTIAL ACTIONS
What implications might this discussion have for follow-on
actions? It would seem that there are many implications, but Table
G. 1.3 summarizes some of the most important. It ends with possible
actions for the Navy, without providing analogs for the other
services, because the Navy sponsored the National Research Council
study for which this paper was developed.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
immediate deterrence
