Post-Cold War Conflict Deterrence (1997) / Chapter Skim
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3 Significance of Post-Cold War Deterrence Concepts for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps
3 Significance of Post-Cold War Deterrence Concepts for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps
Pages 45-63
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From page 45... ...
naval forces that can especially contribute to fulfilling deterrence objectives. The final section examines the utility of models, games, and simulations as decision aids in improving the naval forces' understanding of situations calling for deterrence, and in improving the potential for deterrent actions to be successful.
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From page 46... ...
, rather than pursuit of new technologies, is the most important current need in advancing the naval forces' contribution to a national deterrence strategy. OBJECTIVES AND METRICS IN DETERRENCE STRATEGY Objectives of Deterrence The basic objective of deterrence remains what it has been since the origin of the strategic concept of deterrence during the Cold War: to influence the behavior of nations so that they do not undertake aggression against the United States and U.S.
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From page 47... ...
military forces must be able to meet the following deterrence objectives: · To deter attack on the United States and its allies by external forces ranging from the armed forces of hostile nations to national or multinational terrorist groups; · To deter similar attacks on allies with whom we have mutual security treaties; · To deter aggression against our own and our allies' vital interests and security in areas when we agree those interests and security are at stake; · To deter the proliferation of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction; and To deter the use of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in military conflict, especially when our own and our allies' national security interests are at stake.
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Nevertheless, certain metrics can play a role in guiding and refining such judgments. The key measures for gauging how successful deterrence might be in protecting the interests of the United States and its allies are summarized below.
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NAW AND MARINE CORPS ........................................................................................................................................................................... Have we started, given that a risk of aggression is detected?
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Nevertheless, special aspects of naval force structure and operation have an immediate and direct bearing on deterrence policy and strategy. These aspects range from essential combat capabilities to matters of support and preparation that are equally important and even more complex to implement.
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The qualities that have made it especially valuable its essential invulnerability, its stealth, its flexibility and ability to change operating areas, its long time on station commend it as a continuing key element of future deterrence strategy. Indeed, these qualities will be even more valuable as the world becomes more complex and as potential sources of attack, and uncertainty about the source of any particular attack, increase.
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It is essential that military commanders and leaders fully understand the significance of the new naval force technology and manage its introduction and use so as to gain its full capability for helping to achieve deterrence. Moreover, the military capacity provided by the modern and improving naval force defenses, the greater mobility and speed of the Marine Corps in amphibious operations, and the advancing weaponry and command, control, communications, computing, and intelligence (C I)
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The imperative of preventing effective attacks by ballistic missiles that may carry warheads of mass destruction leads to the concept of placing a "cap" over an aggressor state to prevent such attacks from reaching beyond Me aggressor's borders, with terminal defense as final "insurance." In this sense, TMD enhances overall offensive capability. Naval TMD will have the value of mobility the ability to move into place with high readiness on short notice on ships (ranging from carriers with attack aviation to surface combatants with vertical launch bays)
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In transmitting signals of resolve and in demonstrating quickly available capability, movement of naval TMD forces would have high deterrence value in brewing crises. For all these reasons, fleet TMD will be an important tool in implementing national deterrence strategy, and it must be part of the naval forces.
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As in TMD, defending against such submarines will run the gamut from attacking their bases and support facilities to finding and sinking them, as well as ensuring effective terminal defense against torpedos and cruise missiles. Having a demonstrable capability to clear coastal waters of hostile submarines is a way of showing that we can carry the war to the opponent by denying the use of a key military system and destroying that system, and is therefore an essential contributor to the naval forces' deterrent value.
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Preparing for such operations in the interest of deterring larger conflicts is a capability that the Navy Department must consciously cultivate. Sustain the Naval Forces' Forward Presence One of the elements of deterrence is the "existential deterrent": the visible existence of military forces that can be called upon to carry out the military actions of a deterrence strategy.
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NAVY AND MARINE CORPS ........................................................................................................................................................................... deterrence strategy.
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The need for intelligence to inform deterrence actions goes beyond the usual description of a threat that includes order of battle, force size, and questions of technical capability with which military forces as distinct from national intelligence agencies tend to be concerned in their peacetime planning. Since naval forces in a forward posture during peacetime are in close contact with both friends and potential foes as a routine matter, they may be positioned so as to gain understanding of those external forces that bears on adversaries' values, intentions, and plans for diverse contingencies.
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Finally, military forces and commanders must recognize that there may well be imperatives for the national civilian leadership that dictate the application of military force under conditions of force level, environment, and timing that are less than desirable by strictly military criteria. All this argues strongly for an emphasis on operations other than war and, in addition, for awareness of the potentially powerful influence of factors extraneous to military operations per se, in training naval forces for participation in a deterrence strategy.
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Taking on such a role also requires advanced preparation by the naval forces to maintain credibility on the subject and to ensure that Service positions bearing the authority of Service leadership are advanced and addressed. DECISION AIDS: INTELLIGENCE, GAMES, MODELING, AND SIMULATION The key decision aids for an effective deterrence strategy are accurate information about and understanding of a particular situation, the context, and the issues and the participants in any events of concern, as well as understanding of the relative merits of various approaches to the situation based on having thought through similar situations and experimented with ideas about how to treat them.
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. Decision aids should incorporate the capacity for decision making and for representation of values and patterns of influence among all the participants; subordinate models and simulations designed for specific purposes, such as evaluating duels between military forces, can be used to supplement decision aids that have the requisite qualitative characteristics.
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From page 62... ...
These include: · Enhancing the ability to represent decision processes of U.S., adversary, and coalition participants, all within their own value systems and with attention to the specifics of the participants' leadership and their circumstances; · Calibrating decision aids against real experience, to "bench mark" them and understand their strengths and weaknesses; · Making deterrence an explicit part of ongoing gaming exercises used for diverse planning and training purposes, such as the Navy's annual "global war game" at the Naval War College and strategic war games run from time to time under Joint Staff and Service auspices, and especially games involving members of the National Command Authorities INCA) , with concentration on the activities preliminary to war rather than on the playout of war; · Periodically undertaking political and military war games of deterrence per se, in which the beginning of warfare among the opponents represents a "loss" and the end of the game; Learning how other countries use models and games in situations applicable to deterrence the issues they examine, the opponents they consider, the outcomes they seek; Learning about and keeping abreast of activities in the various institutes for conflict resolution supported by U.S.
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Just as the evolution of Cold War deterrence strategy took place as events unfolded and analysts and policy makers both anticipated and reviewed them over a long period of years, so also will the appropriate application of available decision aids contribute to the development of deterrence policy and strategy in the current post-Cold War period.
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