Political Sufficiency of Nuclear Forces

But if deterrence of nuclear war is our most fundamental defense objective--and it surely is--what counts is what Soviet civilian and military leaders believe. On that score, we face another uncertainty. What we see as sufficient may appear as something else to them. What would deter us might not deter them. What some consider as a deterrent, they may dismiss as bluff.

Secretary of Defense Harold Brown
15 September 1977

STRATEGIC analysts have long recognized that nuclear weapons serve two distinct but interrelated functions, In the military realm, they are a part of the real-world operational environment where their physical war-waging potential to maintain the security of the state is foremost. At the political dimension, on the other hand, nuclear forces are a part of the inner-mind psychological milieu of key decision-makers, where their deterrent utility in dissuading an adversary from attacking is paramount. While sufficient in-being forces are required to produce the desired effect, the essence of deterrence rests on an adversary's perceptions of the power that could be used against him and his judgment of the national will to apply it against him if provoked.

Perceived power in the eyes of national policymakers is the crucial element. It is the image of physical might that most often influences military and political decisions, regardless of whether the perception is accurate. Perceived power, which is always relative, will determine which side will "blink" first in a crisis. It will also influence both U.S. and Soviet risk-taking propensities and sway third parties in their support for one side or the other.¹

Despite the vital importance of perceptions in the political process, American analysts have often ignored this weighty psychological aspect of deterrence, focusing instead on hardware and forces that will support its inhibitive intent to pose an existing credible threat of counteraction to an adversary's possible hostile actions. These have been primarily quantitative considerations that revolve around computer models, war games, and other numerical manipulations. While providing valuable insight on which to base judgments of the physical state of deterrence and war-fighting potential, these analyses have told us little about the vital political-psychological component. This development is at least partially understandable. The qualitative state of mind (gray area of deterrence) and the real world (black-and-white computer-quantifiable dimension) are unwilling bedfellows on a single analytical plane. The problem is that the psychological ingredient is elusive and defies meaningful quantification. It is subjective, difficult to define, and based on inference. Precise, unassailable answers that will satisfy all audiences are impossible.

There was little need or urgency for appraisals of perceived power during the harsh years of cold war confrontation between the superpowers. American strategic superiority in all areas of the nuclear balance during the 1950s and '60s would have swamped any misperceptions by Soviet leaders. But the Soviet-American relationship has now evolved to the point where quantitative evaluations of deterrence and war-waging capabilities are insufficient in themselves. Today's delicate nuclear equilibrium has magnified the importance of political-psychological considerations, compelling us to take up a more systematic assessment of the political effectiveness represented by nuclear forces. Two salient questions, as suggested by Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, should be addressed when attempting to gauge political sufficiency: (1) Do the Soviets see their strategic nuclear forces as usable instruments for political leverage, diplomatic coercion, or military superiority? (2) Is the U.S. strategic nuclear posture seen by Soviet and third country policymaking elites as inferior in performance to the forces of the U.S.S.R.² Clearly, an affirmative answer to either or both questions would portend serious national security consequences for the United States.

Some might argue that in a nuclear-armed world, evaluations of strategic-force political sufficiency are patently irrelevant so long as both sides possess secure second-strike retaliatory capabilities (deterrence) against the other. This view, however, confuses weapons with war. In both peace and war, nuclear weapons generate political effect. Possession of nuclear forces communicates to an adversary some degree of national resolve to resist politico-military pressures and a concomitant potential of using them as persuasive instruments to influence the political behavior of others. It is the implied threat of force that confers power to weaponry; resulting power perceptions and judgments of the will to use it bestow political authority to the holder.

This Clausewitzian axiom has not been lost to Moscow. Much of the continued Soviet buildup of military forces across the board, in spite of détente and what many observers see as strategic nuclear parity, can be explained in terms of the political clout that armed might conveys to them. London's prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies, reflecting on the impulse of recent Soviet military deployments, observes that" if there are few other means to exert the political influence an ambitious power claims as its due, military strength has to be more than just an instrument for defence and deterrence; it also becomes the primary instrument for pursuit of political aims."³ In the Soviet view, strategic nuclear superiority can serve as a legitimate means of employing diplomatic leverage to achieve political ends. Their own writings admit as much.

The need to estimate accurately the political sufficiency of American nuclear forces in the face of an unrelenting adversary seemingly bent on achieving a predominant military position dictates that we at least attempt to infer perceived power as it might logically (or illogically by our values) exist in the eyes of the Soviet policymakers. Simply war-gaming "real" force factors with the assumption that resulting quantitative conclusions reflect power as it is seen by others is not enough. Evaluations of political sufficiency require that we delve into the nonrational aspect of mankind's existence and explore the inner minds of Soviet and third country leaders to identify their "strategic images," i.e., their perceptions of U.S. strategic nuclear forces and their estimates of the national will to use them if necessary.

To devise coherent policies and deploy appropriate numbers and types of forces in a delicately balanced nuclear world, American policymakers must be sensitive to their own and others' strategic images. Faulty perceptions by any party can lead to political miscalculation that could touch off events leading to a major nuclear confrontation. Indeed, may not the most serious threat to peace today be the difference between the strategic images held by American and Soviet leaders? We cannot be sure. But such a possibility drives us irrevocably toward attempting sound judgments of the political sufficiency represented by U.S. nuclear forces.

Strategic Images

The tests of political sufficiency--whether the Soviets see their nuclear forces as usable instruments for political leverage or diplomatic coercion, and whether Soviet and third country leaders see the U.S. nuclear posture as inferior to that of the U.S.S.R--can be formulated by comparing the political objectives to be achieved by American nuclear forces against the strategic images held by the decision-making elites of other countries. Although in our view the U.S. nuclear arsenal may be deemed politically sufficient, the important consideration is how it is judged by others. The policies of the Soviet Union and third countries, based on the strategic images of their elites, may not coincide with or be explained in terms of our strategic image of our forces. It is their perceptions that count, not our own.

Only a few years ago it may have been futile to try to outline a conceptualization of how strategic images are formed. But recent research by behavioral scientists has isolated many variables of the perceptual processes, providing new insights and analytical tools to use in appraisals of perceived power. Robert Jervis's studies, together with previous studies by Kenneth E. Boulding, Joseph DeRivera, Klaus Knorr, Herbert C. Kelman, and, more recently, Robert Axelrod, stand out as substantial contributions.⁴ Professor Jervis has cleared the way to a better understanding of not only how strategic images are constructed and how they impact on decision-making but also how American policymakers might influence those perceptions important to U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives.

A state's actual military. capabilities are viewed in a total context: numbers and types of existing strategic and theater nuclear forces; conventional air, ground, and naval forces; power projection capabilities; civil defense; and active defenses. Emphasis is placed on quantity, although the qualitative aspects of weapons may have a mitigating effect. Latent military capabilities, on the other hand, are potential forces. These consist of the perceiver's evaluations of a state's technological base, research and development activities, number and expertise of skilled technicians, availability of critical resources, economic strengths and weaknesses, and the number and preparedness of reserve military forces.⁵

The political effectiveness of existing and potential armed forces will normally be mitigated to some extent by the perceiver's judgment of the resolve to use those capabilities in support of national interests. Among the factors taken into subjective account by the perceiver include an evaluation of the popular consensus behind national goals and commitments, degree of public support for the existing government, extent of social cohesiveness, the citizenry's willingness to sacrifice for prescribed national objectives, size of the defense budget (as a demonstration of popular willingness to sacrifice for the national interest), readiness and morale of the armed forces, and the dynamism of national purpose to meet new challenges to the state's interests.

Commentators have often described these components of the projected image as a product that results in deterrence effectiveness: military capabilities times national resolve equals deterrence. It is used to make the point that superior military forces will not be politically sufficient unless the resolve to use them to protect or advance national interests is demonstrated. A good example is Angola. The United States certainly had the capabilities to counter the Soviet-Cuban intervention, but the Kremlin guessed correctly: the Vietnam/Watergate-racked America lacked the will to use those capabilities. Thus, the net deterrent effect of U.S. military forces was zero.

The perceiver sees the external environment through his preexisting images that may produce considerable distortion. This refractive lens constitutes a framework through which decision-makers see the world. It serves as a filter that determines what information will be received, interpreted, and remembered. Moreover, established strategic images are believed to be durable and resistant to change because people tend to see what they expect to see. This refractive prism helps the perceiver preserve his preexisting images-"cognitive consistency" --by screening out incompatible information that might dictate an undesirable reinterpretation.⁶

It is common to distinguish between the cognitive and affective components of images. The cognitive element includes all of the various aspects of knowing or the perception, judgment, reasoning, and remembering of salient features of the operational environment. The affective ingredient, on the other hand, consists of those emotional responses of like or dislike and hostility or friendliness toward the state perceived. These cognitive and affective elements oversimplify the operational milieu. They filter out discordant or irrelevant information, and they organize and simplify incoming data to fit the perceiver's established strategic image. They serve as "working hypotheses of the world that make sense of what we perceive but at the cost of complexity."⁷

A decision-maker's idiosyncratic belief system is another primary determinant of his perceptions, and it will influence much of his behavior. His values, attitudes, and beliefs have deep roots in the inner mind. Imparted largely from one's parents, sociocultural environment, and past experience, a person's belief system serves as a means of rejecting discordant data to protect and preserve the existing image. It determines a great deal of what and how much of the external environment is actually perceived. National ideologies also help set conditions of what will be internalized by the perceiver. They pose precepts that prescribe both goals and a picture of the future that screens out data at variance with the ideology and the individual's established image of the world.⁸ Socialized by his nation's sociocultural norms, the decision-maker is a prisoner of his society's "national images" that are imputed to other countries and groups. Emanating from the social milieu where the family plays a predominant role in their formation, "mass images" or "folk images" are unlikely to change over time. These stereotyped pictures are preserved through education and legend; they are often passed by word of mouth from one generation to another. In later life the social group reinforces the "national image," buttressing the policymaker's tendency to avoid incongruous information.⁹

Past experience with the country perceived also contributes to misperception. In effect, experience helps to constitute beliefs of what to expect of another state; these mind pictures tend to be held as true despite an enormous amount of contradictory data. Kenneth E. Boulding explains that "... the ordinary citizen and the powerful statesman alike have naïve, self-centered, and unsophisticated images of the world in which their nation moves. Nations are divided into 'good' and 'bad'-the enemy is all bad, one's own nation is of spotless virtue."¹⁰ Moreover, the strength of this feeling will be determined in a large part by the extent of the policymaker's firsthand experience with the country perceived. States will be seen in a manner consistent with their previous behavior, regardless of their subsequent actions. Decisionmakers see what their stereotypes condition them to see.

Cognitive dissonance is another mechanism for preserving preconceived images. Leon Festinger describes this inner-mind phenomenon as present when .two pieces of information are known to be incompatible with one another: "In general, two cognitions are dissonant with each other if, considering these two cognitions alone, the obverse of one follows from the other."¹¹ Discrepant data create internal inconsistency and psychological discomfort for the perceiver. In attempts to reduce or eliminate his disquiet, the perceiver may adjust his image to accommodate the disparate information; or he may choose to ignore it, discredit the source, or distort the data to keep his image intact. When discrepant information conflicts with a past decision, persons tend to go to great lengths to resolve the dissonance in a way that will justify their past behavior. The policymaker may simply resort to selective attention, weeding out data emanating from the operational environment that contradicts his previous decisions--". . . dissonance theory provides another reason why the people most involved with a policy will be the most deeply committed to its continuance."¹²

In sum, the decision-maker's natural, human propensity to see the world through his personalized refractive lens preserves his preexisting images and protects them from having to accommodate inconsistent information. His personal likes and dislikes, predispositions, sociocultural background, past experience and national stereotyping, and attempts to resolve cognitive dissonance all come together to produce a distortion of reality that will have a major influence on his subsequent decisions.

From the refractive influence of the policymaker's image is a personalized icon of the values, goals, capabilities, and intentions of other states that may be substantially in error. This psychological milieu (the world as it is seen) is political reality to the decision-maker even though his image may differ from the operational environment (the world as it is). It is the framework in which decision-making takes place. Moreover, the perceiver often will be unaware of his misperception, and his stereotyped image will be resistant to change until it is overwhelmed by a large amount of discrepant information.

The policymaker's psychological milieu is made up of additional factors as well. His national goals and the importance that he ascribes to them have a major influence. Resources already expended to achieve an objective provide a strong impulse to continue a certain course of action. The policymaker's own political system and his method of climbing to the top also will color his vision of the world. Similarly, domestic and bureaucratic interests impinge on the decision-maker, further hindering his ability to perceive external events accurately.

Moreover the head of state is normally surrounded 'by a host of elite insiders who help shape his perceptions. Irving L. Janis has labeled pressures for "concurrence-thinking" within a cohesive group as "groupthink." Those who suffer from this phenomenon, he explains, often share an illusion of invulnerability, construct collectively rationalizations without examining assumptions, believe in the inherent morality of the in-group, hold stereotyped views of leaders of enemy groups, apply direct pressure on members who express doubts about the group's shared illusions, keep silent about their misgivings thereby fostering group consensus, and share an illusion of unanimity within the group. This groupthink phenomenon insulates the decision-maker from contrary points of view and reinforces his existing images. As a result, alternative courses of action are often ignored or rejected without examination, and little chance exists for correction of perceptual errors.¹³

A composite world view resulting from an inner-mind synthesis of the external environment and internal ingredients of the psychological milieu is sometimes referred to as a strategic image. Each of the components--actual and latent military capabilities, national will, refractive lens, and psychological milieu-come together in forming the policymaker's strategic image. It is from this fundamental perception that he will analyze and appraise the military forces and national resolve of adversaries and friendly states. When the perceiver's personalized picture of the world is taken into consideration, the traditional deterrence equation should be modified: military capabilities times national resolve plus or minus perceptual distortion equals perceived power (strategic image). His perception of power will provide an estimate of his country's relative strategic position and serve as a foundation for decisions to deploy or reduce forces or take actions designed to demonstrate political resolve.

The policymaker's strategic image lies at the heart of his calculations of the potential costs and gains and assessment of the risks associated with the policies he will undertake. His perceptions of power will tell him whether the U.S. strategic nuclear forces are politically sufficient vis-à-vis the U.S.S.R

A Political-Psychological Yardstick

In his book Deterrence and Defense, Glenn H. Snyder taught us the importance of assessing U.S. nuclear forces in terms of two fundamental yardsticks. Snyder's consideration of the deterrent value gives explicit recognition that deterrence is a peacetime objective, a psychological determinant that works on an adversary's intentions. It is based on perceived power or the ef1ect on reducing the likelihood of an enemy attack. The defense value, on the other hand, is a wartime objective, a war-fighting determinant that works on the enemy's military capabilities. Both values have an impact on the enemy's "risk calculus" of weighing the potential net costs and net gains in deciding whether to attack or, having already done so, continue the fight.¹⁴

The imperative of assessing political sufficiency in an era of strategic nuclear parity calls for a third yardstick to supplement the important deterrence and defense considerations. One way of gaining an understanding of how the relative effectiveness of our forces is judged by others would be through the preparation of National Strategic Image Estimates (NSIE) of decision-making elites in the Soviet Union and third countries. Such estimates would attempt to blend the perceptual ingredients of the policymaker's novel refractive lens (with all of its psychological, sociological, and situational components) with an appreciation of his political system, how the elite climbs the ladder of success, pressures placed on him by domestic interests, and judgment of his own national goals and military capabilities. From these composites of the decision-maker's world view and self-image, we should be in a better position to infer how others judge the U.S.-Soviet balance.¹⁵

Based on the insight offered by the NSIEs, sound assessments of political sufficiency might be fashioned by comparing the strategic images of American, Soviet, and third country leaders. Six steps would be required:

Such an analytical process should enable us to judge whether U.S. nuclear forces are seen as inferior to those of the U.S.S. R. and whether Soviet leaders believe that they hold a margin of superiority sufficient to allow its use for political leverage and diplomatic coercion against the United States. Important, too, an awareness of how others see the political effectiveness of American nuclear forces can have a significant impact on subsequent U.S. foreign and national security policies. Moreover, an understanding of our own and the strategic images of others offers an important political-psychological yardstick as a supplement to the traditional deterrence and defense values for use in making force structure decisions. Edward N. Luttwak argues persuasively, for instance, that

Knowledge of how others evaluate the Soviet-American balance can also allow us to ask a host of nonquantitative questions not heretofore treated in a systematic way. For example, many strategic analysts find solace in the fact that the U.S. has a substantial technological edge over the larger and more numerous strategic missiles possessed by the Soviet Union. A sound case can be made that the advantages of one side are offset by bombers and qualitative superiority in missile weaponry (e.g., better warhead accuracy and yield-to-weight ratios) of the other. However, bombers, compared with missiles, operate at a snail's pace, and superior warhead characteristics may be hidden from view in stacks of classified documents.

DO THE Soviets see these qualitative advantages in the same way we do? How confident are they that their extensive defense network can handle the ageless B-52 and slow-moving cruise missiles? Indeed, does the Kremlin view deterrence solely in terms of quickly responding missiles? What about third countries? How do they compare the huge and numerically superior Soviet missiles with the relatively small U.S. ICBM arsenal? How do numbers count in deterrence and for political sufficiency? At what point are the advantages in numbers of forces seen by the Soviets as overtaking the U.S. qualitative edge? What is our own view? Do Soviet leaders really believe they can establish an effective civil defense network that will minimize their population and industrial losses in the event of nuclear conflict? What impact do Soviet civil defense measures have on our own view of the political sufficiency of U.S. nuclear forces?

Comparisons of strategic images will not provide all of the answers, but these estimates can give us sufficient insight to treat these and similar nonquantitative questions rationally and systematically. Even with a wide margin of uncertainty, inferences of how others see our forces will be far better than failing to address the hard-to-answer questions because of their nonquantifiable nature.

Attempting to infer the inner-mind strategic image of others is fraught with hazards. Our perceptions of their perceptions of our forces and national will should be taken with a grain of salt. We simply cannot fully escape our own frames of reference and readily step into the shoes of others. We are captives of our own past. But by stating our assumptions and interpreting available empirical data carefully, we should be able to obtain a generalized appreciation of the strategic images held by Soviet and third country leaders. Then, by cautiously comparing their perceptions with our own view of U.S. nuclear forces, without placing too much certainty on specific components of their images or our own, we should be in a much better position than we are today to assess political sufficiency. These qualitative judgments can supplement quantitative estimates, bringing new insights to the deterrence, defense, and political-psychological values of our strategic nuclear posture.

1. Portions of this essay are contained in a previous article by the author: "Operations Research Shall Inherit the Earth," Air University Review, September-October 1976, pp. 57-61.

2. Harold Brown, "Remarks at Thirty-fourth Annual Dinner of National Security Industrial Association," News Release No. 430-77 (Washington: Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, September 15, 1977), pp. 5-6.

3. Strategic Survey 1976 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1977), p. 3.

4. Robert Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970) and Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976); Kenneth E. Boulding, "National Images and International Systems," in International Politics and Foreign Policy, James N. Rosenau, editor (New York: Free Press, 1969); Joseph DeRivera, The Psychological Dimension of Foreign Policy (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, 1968); Klaus Knorr, editor, "Threat Perception," Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976); Herbert C. Kelman, editor, International Behavior: A Social-Psychological Analysis (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965); Robert Axelrod, editor, The Structure of Decision: The Cognitive Maps of Political Elites (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976).

5. Uri Ra'anan, "The Changing American-Soviet Strategic Balance: Some Political Implications," in Great Issues of International Politics, Morton A. Kaplan, editor, second edition (Chicago: Aldine, 1974), pp. 502-03.

7. Ralph Pettman, Human Behavior and World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1975), p. 206.

8. K.J. Holsti, International Politics, second edition (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972), pp. 361-66.

9. Boulding, p. 424; and William A Scott, "Psychological and Social Correlates of International Images," in International Behavior, Herbert C. Kelman, editor (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), p. 80.

11. Leon Festinger, "The Motivating Effect of Cognitive Dissonance," in The Cognitive Processes: Readings, Robert J. C. Harper et al., editors (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964), p. 512.

13. Irving L. Janis, "Groupthink," Psychology Today, November 1971, pp. 44-46 and 74-76.

14. Glenn H. Snyder, Deterrence and Defense (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 3-31.

15. The Department of Defense or the National Security Council appears best suited to host the ad hoc working groups that would be necessary for the preparation of NSIEs. A concerted effort should be made to bring together the best minds in the country. Members of the NSIE panels should include both government practitioners and a host of outside specialists: political scientists, historians, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and military strategists. They should be as diverse a group as possible in vocation, age, sex, and political orientation to provoke all points of view.

16. Edward N. Luttwak, "Perceptions of Military Force and US Defence Policy," Survival, January/February 1977, p. 5.

Lieutenant Colonel Robert W. Chandler (M.A., Ph.D., George Washington University) is a member of the Strategy Team, Directorate of Plans, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans, and Readiness, Hq USAF. He has served in both the intelligence and transportation career fields. Colonel Chandler is graduate of the Defense Intelligence School, the Armed Forces Staff College, and a previous contributor to the Review. His book, War of Ideas: The U.S. Propaganda Campaign in Vietnam, will be published in 1981.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.