OUR NEXT PRESIDENT MUST UPDATE U.S. STRATEGIC DOCTRINE
Special to The Jewish Press
For publication on January 16, 2009
Professor Louis René Beres (Purdue University)
Lt. General (USAF/Ret.) Thomas McInerney
Major-General (USA/Ret.) Paul E. Vallely
------------------
On October 28, 2008, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, in a speech before the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that the United States would hold "fully accountable" any country or organization that assisted terrorists in the acquisition or use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. There was nothing essentially new in this outgoing Bush administration reassertion of "extended deterrence," nor – for that matter - was there anything wrong with it. But, we must now ask insistently: Why should our enemies be concerned? In the final analysis, deterrence must always be based upon something substantial. To back up its pertinent warnings, America now needs a compelling doctrinal infrastructure of sanctions and rewards. Otherwise, it is likely that this country's state and sub-state adversaries may simply dismiss all U.S. threats as the false bravado of a weak and dying civilization. President-elect Obama must quickly fashion a broad, coherent and updated strategic doctrine from which effective and credible policy options can be suitably drawn and implemented. Among other refinements, it will be necessary to fully modernize our nuclear arsenal, and to reinvigorate our nuclear capabilities along the entire spectrum of possible conflict.
The U.S. has always drawn operational plans from codified strategic doctrine. As has been pointed out repeatedly, both during and after the election campaign, our new president will face unprecedented vulnerabilities. Should he continue America's near-total reliance upon the logic of deterrence, even when the core assumption of rationality may sometimes be invalid? Continued belief in classical threat-system dynamics could be problematic even if American planners were to focus on the state sponsors of terrorist proxies. These states, like their surrogates, might value particular religious or ideological preferences more highly than their own lives and freedoms. Ironically, because Mr. Obama will almost certainly support a "Two-State Solution" in the Middle East, an especially dangerous scenario could involve a new state of "Palestine" and expanded anti-American terrorism. Here, the ill-conceived Palestinian state would quickly become a willing host not only to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but also to al-Qaeda.
In the beginning - at the start of the nuclear age - there was "massive retaliation" and "mutual assured destruction" (MAD). This later gave way to "flexible response" and "nuclear utilization theory" (NUT). Interpenetrating these strategic doctrines, first conceived with reference to the USSR, were fierce debates over nuclear targeting options. President-elect Obama will need to examine both "counter value" (counter-city) and "counter force" doctrines, but this time with regard to state and non-state proxies, and to rational and non-rational ones. These very sensitive examinations will surely be divisive, but the relevant issues concern nothing less than America's physical survival.
The Bush administration will soon be gone, but any updated US strategic doctrine will still have to include preemption. Inevitably, there will be major new perils that may require "anticipatory self-defense." Where rationality cannot be assumed, and where the effectiveness of ballistic missile defense would be low, the only alternative to capable and lawful forms of American preemption could still be surrender and defeat.
To be sure, it is not a simple or reassuring world. Strategic doctrine is always a complex matter, and any improved U.S. plan will have to be creative as well as comprehensive. If, for any reason, Iran is permitted to "go nuclear," our re-fashioned doctrine will certainly have to identify viable options for coexistence with that unpredictable country. In turn, these options will require enemy perceptions of persuasive American power and of a corresponding American willingness to actually use this power.
How should we deter a nuclear Iran, both from launching direct missile attacks, and from dispersing nuclear assets among terrorist proxies? Should the new president do more to aid and empower the Iranian opposition? And for Deterrence Against Nuclear Terrorism (DANT), how should he compensate for the absence of "fingerprints," and for the limits of satellites and radars? This is especially significant because Ahmadinejad states that soon there will be a world without the United States and Israel. Coupled with his regular pronouncements to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, this sends serious nuclear alarm signals that cannot be ignored.
A nuclear threat to American cities could come from cars, trucks and ships. Ballistic missile defense would be of no use against such ground-based attacks. Could we truly convince Tehran and its surrogates that any proxy act of nuclear terrorism would elicit a massive nuclear retaliation against Iran itself? We must, but meaningful policies can ultimately emerge only from a carefully re-conceptualized U.S. strategic doctrine.
Enemy state proxies were once very limited in the damage they could inflict, and the logic of warfare was traditionally based on reasonable expectations of victory. Today, however, some terror groups could bring greater disasters to the American homeland than could certain countries. These groups could even bring us greater pain than was deliverable by our national enemies in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
As to victory, there may no longer be any formal war-terminating agreements or other identifiable demarcations. In dealing with rational and irrational enemies, both state and sub-state, we will have to adapt to conditions of protracted uncertainty about conflict outcomes. Such an adaptation will be very unpopular in a clarity-driven America that, since Vietnam, has learned to utterly loathe ambiguous wars.
America's new president will have to deal with recent arguments that Washington should lead the way to a world without nuclear weapons. Perhaps, in the best of all possible worlds, all countries could actually turn back the clock, and impose effective limits on the always-evolving technologies of destruction. But we do not yet live in such a world, and the obvious incapacity to implement any real denuclearization means that (however reluctantly) we shall still have to reconcile our own national security with expanding nuclear proliferation.
On December 3, 2008, a nine-member bipartisan commission presented its conclusions to Vice President-elect Joe Biden and to Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, President-elect Obama's nominee for secretary of Homeland Security. According to The Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation, and Terrorism, which had been created by Congress last year expressly to guide the next administration, our new president should be concerned, above all else, by the need to reduce nuclear security risks to the United States. This is assuredly good and incontestable advice, and should be followed not only by the appointment of a new deputy national security adviser (to be in charge of coordinating all U.S. programs aimed at unconventional threats), but also by the creation of nuanced and up-to-date strategic doctrine.
LOUIS RENÉ BERES (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is Professor of International Law at Purdue University. The Chair of Project Daniel, he is the author of ten major books dealing with terrorism, counter-terrorism, nuclear strategy and nuclear war. He is Strategic and Military Affairs columnist for The Jewish Press.
THOMAS MCINERNEY, Lt. General (USAF/Ret.) is co-author of The Endgame: Winning the War on Terror (with Major-General Paul E. Vallely). General McInerney is retired Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force.
PAUL E. VALLELY, MG (US Army/Ret.), is an author, publisher, military strategist and Chairman of Stand Up America USA.
--
Paul E Vallely
Chairman Stand Up America Project
E-Mail: standupamerica1@gmail.com
blog; www.standupamericausa.com
No comments:
Post a Comment