Saturday, June 13, 2009

Staying Alive as a Nation President Must Update U.S. Strategic Doctrine

Dr. Louis René Beres Friday, June 12, 2009

By Dr. Louis Rene’ Beres, Lieutenant General Thomas McInerny (USAF Ret.) and Major General Paul E. Vallely (U.S. Army Ret.)

In the latter part of 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 the Bush administration reassertion of “extended deterrence,” nor – for that matter - was there anything wrong with it. But, we must also ask: Why should our enemies be worried?

To back up such ad hoc warnings America 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 US threats as the false bravado of a weak and dying civilization. In the final analysis, therefore, our next president 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 conflict.

The U.S. has always drawn operational plans from codified strategic doctrine. The President faces 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 the President certainly support a “Two-State Solution” in the Middle East, a particularly dangerous scenario could involve a new state of “Palestine” and al-Qaeda.

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. Our next president 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 be divisive, but the pertinent issues concern nothing less than America’s physical survival.

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 be surrender and defeat.

It is not a simple or reassuring world. Strategic doctrine is always a complex matter, and any improved US 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 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 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 evident absence of “fingerprints,” and for the operational limits of satellites and radars?

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 emerge only from a carefully re-conceptualized US 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 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 suitable 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 an America that, since Vietnam, has learned to loathe ambiguous wars.

Finally, The President must 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 real denuclearization means that (however reluctantly) we shall still have to reconcile our own national security with expanding nuclear proliferation.

Thank you Gen. Vallely

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