Air University Review, January-February 1982

Deterrence: After the Golden Age

The Pericles of the golden age of deterrence was Bernard Brodie. Like the Athenian statesman, the American Brodie established a strategic framework for this nation that would guide its policies long after his death. Working for The Rand Corporation in the late 1950s, Brodie began formulating the thinking that would later become the mainstay of the American concept of deterrence. The term deterrence, as applied to nuclear war, appeared as early as 1955 in a British defense white paper. But the first definitive expostulation on the principles that would become the backbone of American strategic nuclear policy was published by Brodie in 1959 in Strategy in the Missile Age. Most of Brodie’s later writing on the subject would incorporate technical advances that solidified this thesis.

The essence of Brodie’s thesis was simple. He argued that there was no adequate defense against nuclear weapons and that it was unlikely an adequate defense would ever be developed. Although a small faction once held that nuclear weapons were simply more destructive variants of traditional weapons, the development of thermonuclear devices smothered these arguments. Thermonuclearbombs were as great a leap in destructive power over fission weapons as fission devices had been over conventional explosives. Wide-scale deployment of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) seemed to prove Brodie’s thesis. Consequently, he concluded that our nuclear policy must be to avert a war that would lead to wide-scale employment of nuclear weapons, and this could best be achieved by a secure nuclear force capable of retaliating "in kind" to any sort of attack. His thesis had such an aura of "obvious truth" about it that deterrence became the mainstay of American policy in the nuclear age.

The theories of Pericles had much the same effect on the policies of ancient Athens. Pericles insisted that the Athenians remain secure within their long walls and exploit their superior it at sea. While he was alive, he was able to guide the maritime strategy of his country and gradually attain successful ascendance over its enemy, Sparta. But after his death, the Athenians insisted on modifying his strategy. They insisted they were retaining the maritime essence unchanged. They glibly argued that all strategy must change with circumstance. Yet Pericles had always insisted on several qualifiers to his basic theory. Among the most important was not to dilute Athenian superiority at sea by engaging in large-scale land conflict. His successors ignored these strictures, and their policies led to the Athenian catastrophe at the siege of Syracuse and the ultimate defeat of Athens that ended its golden age.

Brodie, too, had several qualifiers to his basic concept for our less-than-golden age. He insisted that deterrence was a variable quality, sharply affected by the passions and stresses of crisis. To retain its deterrent effect, a military force must not only survive but be able to fight effectively should deterrence fail. He saw clearly that people do not always react in coldly logical ways, especially under the enormous pressures of war. He even stipulated that our forces must be capable of striking first and over-whelming the enemy retaliatory force. Brodie felt strongly that a war-winning policy was no longer meaningful, but he also felt that a war-winning capability was essential for deterrence. In time, these qualifiers were rejected and the basic theory revised by Brodie’s successors. They still called their policies deterrence, but its foundation would be drastically altered.

Decline and Fall

Ironically, the Cuban missile crisis proved how useful a pronounced nuclear superiority could be, and yet it convinced American policy makers to change the thrust of our nuclear strategy. President John Kennedy’s brinkmanship is considered by political scientists as a classic demonstration of the use of nuclear superiority to achieve political goals. Yet the gravity of the situation chilled the participants. The realization that American cities were totally vulnerable to missile attack shifted from an intellectual abstraction to a gut-level fear. The number of Soviet systems capable of threatening American cities was growing while our systems lacked the accuracy and explosive power to destroy a silo; and the problem of intercepting an incoming warhead was, in Kennedy’s words, "like shooting a bullet with a bullet."

The problem of deterrence was now viewed from a different perspective. It no longer seemed feasible to attempt massive strikes against Soviet offensive capability. Both nations had apparently solved the problem of industrial infrastructure and could conceivably turn out a limitless supply of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles. American strategists favoring attacks on Soviet nuclear forces now faced the dilemma of targeting a growing force with inaccurate systems and without good intelligence to target with. Technically, it was an insoluble problem.

American strategists groped for another answer. The basic dilemma was our inability to protect our population and industry from nuclear attack. The solution was to present the Soviets with the same dilemma. American strategy shifted to a "balance of terror." The United States would prevent a nuclear attack on its territory by exacting a terrible price from any aggressor. And that price would be measured in terms of destruction of the aggressor’s population and industry. Although the precise level of destruction was somewhat controversial, then Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara set an official level of a quarter of the population and half the industry in his 1969 defense report. McNamara called his policy assured destruction, and the level of destruction this policy stipulated subsequently drove America’s force size and structure. Superiority became superfluous under this policy. An equal number of systems held by both sides became the best guarantee of stable equality in the balance of terror.

Brodie’s superiority thus bowed to parity as the proper structure for America’s nuclear forces. Prime importance was attached to securing a retaliatory force capable of inflicting McNamara’s level of punishment. But there were other results of this policy. The communications connecting these nuclear forces were, and remain, highly vulnerable. After all, they only need to work once. The targeting was strictly preplanned and required months to complete. The targeting process was not time-sensitive and need not be flexible. It only had to optimize the destructive capability of a fixed number of weapons. Should nuclear war begin, a decision-maker would be forced to launch American forces quickly, before enemy missiles destroyed our communications. And the American forces would be aimed at a target set designed not to prosecute a traditional war aim but to exact revenge.

The essence of deterrence evolved to maintaining a state of mutual vulnerability between the United States and the Soviet Union. When, in September of 1969, the Soviets passed the United States in numbers of land-based ICBMs deployed, the future of the emerging American concept of deterrence became closely tied to arms control agreements President Richard Nixon would introduce the term sufficiency to the nuclear vocabulary, and American negotiating tactics were aimed at both limiting future growth and preserving the vulnerability of existing forces At the conclusion of the first series of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), the administration felt it had succeeded on both counts. Although the SALT I interim agreement allowed the Soviets greater numbers of missiles, American forces were still considered "sufficient" for the purposes of deterrence. Moreover, the Antiballistic Missile Treaty ensured that no defenses would impair the mutual vulnerability between the two powers.

But the SALT agreements met sharp opposition in the United States. The sophisticated logic dictating that American security was enhanced by adopting an inferior nuclear posture escaped many observers. Others were suspicious of the argument that SALT slowed the momentum of the growth of Soviet forces. Ultimately, Congress was to insist that future SALT agreements not limit American force levels below those of the Soviet Union.

Once again, technology crept ahead of our concepts for using it. Guidance systems have improved by several orders of magnitude. It is now possible to place more than one warhead on the tip of a single missile. Reconnaissance systems are better able to locate land-based missiles. And the once invulnerable missile silo is slowly becoming a viable target. Technology has made it possible for a bullet really to hit a bullet. These advances in technology have seriously undermined a strategy based on uncertain intelligence and inaccurate weapons.

There is, however, an even greater threat to modern concepts of deterrence. The entire framework of contemporary deterrence has rested on the premise that the Soviets entertain roughly the same view as we do toward nuclear war. There is a growing body of analysts who feel that perhaps no assessment of enemy intentions has landed so wide of the mark since Neville Chamberlain’s estimate of Hitler at Munich. These analysts claim that, rather than embracing Western views of deterrence, the Soviets have sharply rejected them. While admitting the tremendous destructive capacities of nuclear weapons, the Soviets cannot admit that their peculiar brand of socialism can be annihilated by technology. They refuse to acknowledge that an idea can be extinguished by a weapon. While many Americans cannot conceive of a political goal that could be achieved by nuclear weapons, the Soviets cherish the destructive capacity of these weapons as the method to resolve the greatest historical problem of the age, the conflict between social systems To the Soviets, it is inevitable that nuclear weapons will resolve the problem in favor of Marxism-Leninism as exemplified by the Soviet system.

Instead of rejecting the use of nuclear weapons, the Soviets have integrated these devices into a classically Clausewitzian concept of war. War remains an extension of policy by violent means. On a tactical level, the Red Army is designed, equipped, and indoctrinated for operations in a nuclear environment. The Soviets depend on nuclear weapons to neutralize American interference with the Red Army operating on the Soviet periphery. The Soviets consistently refuse to separate nuclear from conventional operations and stress a totally combined arms approach to war. Indeed, rather than parallel the American view of nuclear war, the Soviet view in many ways directly contradicts it.

This interpretation of the Soviet attitude toward nuclear war is a controversial one. It is drawn primarily from Soviet military doctrine and has been criticized for not accurately representing the viewpoint of the Soviet political leadership. Advocates respond that it requires a particularly naïve view of the Soviet system to propose that the military would be permitted to promulgate a strategic view not shared by the hierarchy of the Soviet political structure. The issue has been clouded by Soviet statements to the Western press that seem to mirror the American view of nuclear war. The statements are criticized on one hand as bald propaganda to ingenuous American observers and supported, on the other hand, as candid observations made beyond the watchful eye of the Soviet censor. In the end, however, there is no officially sanctioned body of literature that contradicts the position outlined in Soviet military doctrine. There exists no other authoritative source for the Soviet view of nuclear strategy. And because of this apparent Soviet view, the credibility of those forms of deterrence characterized by terms like parity, sufficiency, and essential equivalence has declined, and in some circles completely fallen.

Into the Dark Ages

As much as these concepts of deterrence had fallen from grace, the real dark ages for post-Brodian thinkers began when the concept of war fighting emerged. The idea that nuclear weapons were nothing more than a bigger bomb had many followers just after World War II. But the explosion of a thermonuclear device closely followed by Brodie’s persuasive writings effectively stifled the early war-fighting movement. The reemergence of this school of thought was based on far more sophisticated logic than that of the postwar thinkers. This new school began with the increasingly persuasive premise that the Soviets deny the American precept that a nuclear war is unwinnable. If the Soviets feel such a war is winnable, they will not be deterred by the oft-stated American view that, in a nuclear war, everyone loses.

The war fighters argue that it makes no real difference if, as some suggest, there is a split in the Soviet leadership on the issue of whether a nuclear war is winnable. We cannot identify the split in the communist hierarchy; and, more important, we cannot identify the adherents of one view or the other. Thus, we cannot predict which side might prevail in some future hypothetical debate. What we can identify is a strong and prolific body of authors who publish volumes of writings in one of the most tightly closed societies in history; and it is a body of writings that loudly and vehemently proclaims a nuclear war is winnable. If two schools do exist, the traditional policy of revenge is probably adequate to deter the first. But revenge is inadequate to deter an ideological mind-set so confident of its destiny that the use of nuclear weapons is not the ultimate catastrophe but a calculable risk. The war-fighting school feels that an effective deterrence strategy must also act on this starkly Clausewitzian view of nuclear war. We must somehow convince this second school that the use of nuclear weapons will not be worth the gain. In so doing, we must not simply add to the destruction we can already muster. We must intelligently apply that destructive capacity to the objects that second school values and cherishes. The determination of those objects, of course, also proves an issue of considerable controversy.

Even among war fighters there is considerable debate on how to employ the nuclear instrument. Early on, one branch called itself "the war winners" and jumped into the literature with what amounted to targeting strategies for prosecuting a "winnable" nuclear war. But this branch also quickly ran into heavy going. For example, one strategy proposed targeting the Soviet state. Another suggested targeting the Soviet war recovery economy. Both strategies were criticized not only for being difficult to implement but also because the outcome would be extremely uncertain even if they proved successful The example of Germany following World War II is not encouraging. We succeeded in destroying its political leadership and reducing its economy to a shambles. Yet no one would recommend the result that began in 1939. The experience of post-World War II Germany and Japan seems to indicate that the rational method to ensure genuine political reform is to occupy the conquered nation, rebuild its economy, and firmly guide its future political development. Few in contemporary America are prepared to embark on such a process with the Soviet Union.

The underlying problem with the proposals forwarded by the war winners is that they have developed a strategy inconsistent with American national policy. They have proposed total war on the Soviet Union à la World War II with the goal of politically extinguishing Soviet leadership. While that may well be a valid wartime strategy, we are nominally at peace today. Furthermore, there are those who would argue that a strong Soviet Union is crucial to American interests. They point out that the Western world is essentially unified for the first time in its history. At least the nations of the West are no longer shooting at each other. They refer us to that time before World War II when America had to develop war plans against virtually everyone. Today, the existence of NATO and whatever political and economic spinoffs the alliance generates are largely influenced by the threat of the Soviet Union. Moreover, the Soviets counter potential Chinese hegemony in the Far East. Others also point out that the resurgence of Western influence in the Third World is largely due to heavyhanded Soviet behavior in the area. In the end, many would argue that peacetime American policy should aim at constraining Soviet expansionism and aggression rather than destroying the Soviet Union itself.

The strategy proposed by the mainstream of the war-fighting school is more consistent with this interpretation of American policy. Actually, the mainstream of the war-fighting school hesitates to accept this nickname, for they remain dedicated to deterrence as the mainstay of American nuclear strategy. But they are equally dedicated to the proposition that if the Soviets choose to fight, America must also be prepared to fight with a vengeance. They use a two-part concept of deterrence as a point of departure. The threat of revenge has always been the mainstay of a nuclear strategy of deterrence. But since the Eisenhower days, massive retaliation had been discredited as a response to aggression below the nuclear level. The essence of flexible response was the concept of building conventional forces up to the level where they had a deterrent effect by being capable of preventing the Soviets from achieving their objectives by fighting with conventional military forces. Thus, deterrence at the conventional level was not based on revenge but on forcible denial of Soviet objectives. Given the Soviet view of nuclear war, the war-fighting school argues that denial of objectives must also be included in a deterrence strategy for nuclear weapons.

Denying Soviet objectives requires a different concept of operations from that called for by both the war winners and by the post -Brodian school of deterrence. Both of these demand a brief massive retaliatory strike early in the campaign. To the war fighter who is trying to counter a carefully calculating Clausewitzian mind, this is precisely the wrong method of deterrence. If a Soviet planner is convinced that a nuclear war can be won, then providing him with precise data on the size, composition, and timing of your attack is simply insane. It provides him everything he needs to know and can only encourage him. The war fighters argue that the best way to deter this sort of military mind is to introduce a huge helping of uncertainty into his problem. Planners as historically conservative as the Soviets have been would hardly ignore General Helmuth von Moltke’s caution that "no plan of operations can look with any certainty beyond the first meeting with the . . . enemy." The war fighters want to make sure that the Soviets will have to contend with many more than just one nuclear meeting should they decide to attack the United States. The war fighters feel the key to deterring the Soviets is the ability for America to fight a prolonged nuclear war. To the war fighter, fighting a long-term nuclear war includes the best of both worlds. It incorporates all the elements of past policies of revenge by threatening the enemy with massive destruction. But more important, it will deter that peculiar Soviet mind-set that not only considers a nuclear war thinkable but also winnable.

Renaissance

It seems clear that the force structure required to fight a prolonged war should consist of a mix of forces. The concept of the triad provides the variety of capabilities and strengths required. Two legs of the triad already incorporate the capability to fight a prolonged campaign by virtue of the ability to reload the launch platform. The third leg, our land-based missile force, is less capable of fighting a prolonged war. In order to fight a nuclear war over time, the launch system must be highly survivable. A land-based intercontinental ballistic missile can be made survivable by a number of means, among them high mobility, hardening, or hiding them. And the best method of bolstering the survivability of our land-based forces is currently the focus of intense study. But the forces themselves are only part of the solution. A strategy aimed at frustrating enemy military objectives cannot count on accurately predicting those objectives in peacetime. Once the war starts, we must be able to assess enemy objectives, formulate appropriate military responses, and be capable of executing our responses. Our intelligence resources must be able to collect information on the enemy rapidly and analyze and disseminate it promptly. Our targeting staffs must be capable of timely and flexible reaction. Command posts must be survivable. Communications must be hardened and redundant. Most important of all, our strategy should shift from targets of revenge to those targets that support the enemy’s capability to wage prolonged warfare. Once that capability is denied him, the enemy can no longer resist.

Whatever specific system becomes the mainstay of America’s nuclear force, it will be the ability to strike our enemies again and again that will deter them. No feasible civil defense system can protect a population against nuclear attacks that last for months. No fixed installation, no matter how hardened, can withstand repeated, methodical assaults by thermonuclear weapons. No war machine, no matter how massive, will ever march in its victory parade if still threatened by a nuclear strike.

America cannot sustain a nuclear attack. Our industry is soft, our population unprotected. A nuclear war would be a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions for this country. Deterring such an attack remains the core of American nuclear policy. But we must not confuse the goal of deterrence with the practices that we once used to pursue it. The policy of revenge no longer seems adequate to deter the Soviet mind---set. Parity and essential equivalence were once means to an end we called deterrence. But they may not be effective means any longer. We cannot ignore the existence of an authoritative body of doctrine that directly counters American concepts of nuclear war and deterrence. We cannot ignore the fact that this doctrine is supported by at least one-third of the ruling Communist Party, the officer corps of the Soviet military. And we cannot ignore the fact that the Soviets have built a massive military machine whose composition and structure support that doctrine. Our policies must be designed to counter that doctrine. To ignore it is to risk our very existence.

Bernard Brodie was convinced that a war-winning capability was an essential part of deterrence. But he did not mean winning in the American tradition of total annihilation. Winning in deterrence means denying the enemy his objectives. It means controlling outcomes. We no longer have the strength to mass superior forces. To attempt it would exhaust us. But we do have the strength to deny objectives. Not by adding numbers but by adding the new dimension of time can we finally control outcomes. And, in Brodie’s own words, "so long as there is a finite chance of war, we have to be interested in outcomes; and although all outcomes would be bad, some would be very much worse than others." We cannot revive the transient technical advantages of the 1950s that made Brodie’s concept of deterrence feasible. But we can design adequate forces; and, by employing them over time, we can meet the criteria he established in his classical concept of deterrence. By being able to fight a prolonged nuclear war, we can generate a renaissance of our own and enjoy the stability of our own golden age of deterrence.

Major Leslie J. Hamblin (USAF Academy; M.B.A., University of Utah) is assigned to the Command, Control, and Reconnaissance Division of Studies and Analyses, Hq USAF. He has flown the C-97 and C-130 and was a staff officer with Hq USAFE. Major Hamblin is a graduate of Air Command and Staff College and a previous contributor to the Review. His article here is the first prize winner in the first annual Ira C. Eaker Essay Competition.

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.

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