The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response: Nato Strategy and Theater Nuclear Forces Since 1967 9780231887045

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
ABBREVIATIONS
PREFACE
Introduction. THE NATURE AND PRACTICE OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE
1. THE NATURE OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE
1. THE REQUIREMENTS OF EXTENDED DETERRENCE
2. FLEXIBLE RESPONSE—A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSIS
2. THE PRACTICE OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE
3. THE DEBATE ABOUT NUCLEAR EMPLOYMENT 1967–1986
4. THE DEBATE ABOUT NUCLEAR FORCES: 1970–1977
5. THE DEBATE ABOUT NUCLEAR FORCES: 1977–1979
6. THE DEBATE ABOUT NUCLEAR FORCES: 1980–1989
7. NATO STRATEGY AND NUCLEAR FORCES IN THE 1990s
APPENDIX
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

THE NATURE AND PRACTICE O F FLEXIBLE RESPONSE

THE NATURE AND PRACTICE OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE: NATO Strategy and Theater Nuclear Forces Since 1967

BY

Ivo H.

Daalder

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW

YORK

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY NEW YORK

PRESS

OXFORD

Copyright © 1991 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Daalder, Ivo H. T h e nature and practice of flexible response : N A T O strategy and theater nuclear forces since 1967 / by Ivo H. Daalder. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-231-07520-0 (acid-free paper) 1. North Atlantic Treaty Organization—Armed Forces. 2. Europe— Military policy. 3. Tactical nuclear weapons—Europe. I. Title. UA646.3.D33 1991 35 5'.031'091821—dc20 91-15272 CIP Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are Smyth-sewn and printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper

Printed in the United States of America c 10

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ρ 10

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For My

Parents

CONTENTS

L I S T OF T A B L E S AND F I G U R E S

X

ABBREVIATIONS

xi

PREFACE

XV

INTRODUCTION: T H E N A T U R E AND P R A C T I C E O F FLEXIBLE RESPONSE The Three Phases of NATO Strategy The Debate About Extended Deterrence The Nature and Practice of Flexible Response

1. THE NATURE

OF FLEXIBLE

1 1 2 11

RESPONSE

1. T H E R E Q U I R E M E N T S O F E X T E N D E D DETERRENCE

17

Flexible Response: An Agreement to Disagree Assessing the Requirements of Extended Deterrence Conclusions

17 22 38

2. F L E X I B L E R E S P O N S E — A F R A M E W O R K F O R ANALYSIS Pure Deterrence Conventional Deterrence Escalatory Deterrence War fighting Deterrence

40 43 48 53 58

viii

Contents Choosing an Extended-Deterrence Strategy Conclusions

2. THE PRACTICE 3. THE DEBATE 1967-1986

OF FLEXIBLE ABOUT

NUCLEAR

63 65

RESPONSE EMPLOYMENT 69

The Development of Political Guidelines for Initial Use of TN F 72 The Development of Political Consultation and ADM Employment Guidelines 80 Efforts to Develop Guidelines on Follow-On Use of TNF 87 The 1986 Revision of the Political Guidelines on the Use of TNF 90 Operational Planning for Nuclear Employment 94 Conclusions 102 4. T H E D E B A T E A B O U T N U C L E A R F O R C E S : 1970-1977 NATO Nuclear Forces in the 1970s Alternative The Warfighting-Deterrence The Conventional-Deterrence Alternative U.S. Efforts to Restructure NATO's TNF Posture European Perspectives and the Failure of Implementation Conclusions 5. T H E D E B A T E A B O U T N U C L E A R F O R C E S : 1977-1979 Prologue to LRTNF: SALT and the "Gray Area" Problem The U.S. Response Building a Consensus on LRTNF Modernization Filling in the Details: Modernization and Arms Control Toward Agreement on the Deployment Track Opposition, Agreement, and Deferral: The Double-Track Decision Conflicting Rationales for LRTNF Deployment Conclusions

106 108

112 120 128 148 155 159 162 171 174 187 188 200 204 224

6. T H E D E B A T E A B O U T N U C L E A R F O R C E S : 1980-1989

227

Efforts to Restructure NATO's TNF Posture: 1980-1986 The INF Negotiations Implications of the INF Treaty for NATO Strategy The Debate About Short-Range Nuclear Forces Conclusions

233 248 2 59 266 282

Contents 7. N A T O STRATEGY AND N U C L E A R F O R C E S IN T H E 1990s An Alliance Consensus Emerges The Third Phase of NATO Strategy Conclusions

287 289 291 298

APPENDIX

301

NOTES

305

BIBLIOGRAPHY

373

INDEX

399

ix

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

FIGURE 1

Extended-Deterrence Strategies Within the Strategic Concept of Flexible Response

TABLE 1

41

Nuclear-Employment Implications of Flexible Response

70

TABLE

2

NATO

Nuclear Weapons and Delivery Systems

(1975)

110

TABLE

3

T h e LRTNF Decision: A Chronology

161

TABLE

4

The Nuclear Debate in the 1980s: A Chronology

230

TABLE

Al

U.S. Nuclear Weapons in Europe (1975-1991)

301

TABLE

A2

Nuclear Delivery Systems in Europe (1975-1991)

302

TABLE

A3

NATO-European Nuclear Delivery Systems

303

ABBREVIATIONS

ABM

Anti-Ballistic Missile

ACDA

Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

ACE

Allied C o m m a n d Europe

ACIS

Arms Control Impact Statement

ADM

Atomic Demolition Munitions

AEC

Atomic Energy Commission

AFAP

Artillery-Fired Atomic Projectile

AFCENT

Allied Forces Center

ALCM

Air-Launched Cruise Missile

ASW

Anti-Submarine Warfare

ATACMS

Army Tactical Missile System

BNW

Battlefield Nuclear Weapons

C

C o m m a n d , Control and Communications

?

CDA

Christian Democratic Appeal

CDU

Christian Democratic Union

CENTAG

Central Army Group

CEP

Circular Error Probable

CFE

Conventional Forces in Europe

CIA

Central Intelligence Agency

CONUS

Continental United States

Abbreviations CSCE

Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe

DCA

Dual-Capable Aircraft

DOD

Department of Defense

DPC

Defense Planning Committee

ERDA

Energy Research and Development Administration

ERW

Enhanced Radiation Weapon

FBS

Forward-Based Systems

FEBA

Forward Edge of the Battle Area

FOTL

Follow-On to Lance

FRG

Federal Republic of Germany

FY

Fiscal Year

GDR

German Democratic Republic

GLCM

Ground-Launched Cruise Missile

GPG

General Political Guidelines

HE

High Explosive

HLG

High Level Group

ICBM

Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile

IDD

Integrated Decision Document

IISS

International Institute for Strategic Studies

INF

Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces

IRBM

Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile

ISA

International Security Affairs

JCAE

Joint Committee on Atomic Energy

JCS

Joint Chiefs of Staff

JTACMS

Joint Tactical Missile System

KT

Kiloton

LASL

Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory

LRTNF

Long-Range Theater Nuclear Forces

LTDP

Long-Term Defense Program

MBFR

Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions

MC

Military Committee

MIRV

Multiple Independently-targeted Reentry Vehicle

MIT

Military Implications of Technology

MLF

Multilateral Force

MLRS

Multiple-Launch Rocket System

MMRBM

Mobile Medium-Range Ballistic Missile

Abbreviations MOD

Ministry of Defense

MRBM

Medium-Range Ballistic Missile

MT

Megaton

NAC

North Atlantic Council

NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NCA

National C o m m a n d Authorities

NOP

Nuclear Operations Plan

NPG

Nuclear Planning Group

NSC

National Security Council

NSNF

Non-Strategic Nuclear Forces

NWRS

Nuclear Weapons Requirement Study

OMT

Other Military Targets

OSD

Office of the Secretary of Defense

PIT

Political Implications of Technology

PPG

Provisional Political Guidelines

PRM

Presidential Review M e m o r a n d u m

PSP

Priority Strike Program

QRA

Quick Reaction Alert

SACEUR

Supreme Allied C o m m a n d e r , Europe

SALT

Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

SAM

Surface-to-Air Missile

SAS

Special Ammunition Storage

see

Special Coordinating Committee

SCG

Special Consultative G r o u p

SEP

Selective Employment Plan

SDI

Strategic Defense Initiative

SG

Special G r o u p

SHAPE

Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe

SIOP

Single Integrated Operational Plan

SLBM

Sea-Launched Ballistic Missile

SLCM

Sea-Launched Cruise Missile

SNF

Short-range Nuclear Forces

SPD

Social Democratic Party

SRINF

Shorter-Range Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces

SSM

Surface-to-Surface Missile

TASM

Tactical Air-to-Surface Missile

xiu

Abbreviations TEL

Transporter-Erector-Launcher

TF

Task Force

TLAM/N

Tomahawk Land-Attack Missile, Nuclear

TNF

Theater Nuclear Forces

TNW

Tactical Nuclear Weapons

TSP

Tactical Strike Program

VTOL

Vertical Take-Off and Landing

WEU

Western European Union

WP

Warsaw Pact

PREFACE

This book examines the debate within the North Atlantic Alliance about the strategic concept of "Flexible Response" and its implications for the evolution of NATO's theater nuclear posture and employment doctrine from 1967 to the present. Why did the members of N A T O disagree about the meaning of Flexible Response even after its formal adoption in 1967? What accounts for the differences within the Alliance regarding the role of theater nuclear forces (TNF) in N A T O strategy? How, despite these differences, were the N A T O members able time and again to achieve a consensus on what nuclear forces should be deployed in Western Europe and on which doctrine should govern their employment in case of war? I argue that disagreements within the Atlantic Alliance about nuclear force posture and employment issues have been inevitable, because NATO has been unable to agree on a single, coherent interpretation of the strategic concept of Flexible Response. At the same time, the recognition on the part of all NATO members of the need for compromise on theater nuclear force issues has been based on the conviction that the maintenance of alliance cohesion was vital to ensuring the achievement of their objectives. My principal argument accordingly is that disagreements about theater nuclear forces reflected strategic differences within N A T O about Flexible Response, while decisions on these issues reflected a political compromise among the N A T O members made to ensure that alliance cohesion was maintained. An analysis of the nature and practice of

xvi

Preface

Flexible Response must therefore be based on strategic criteria to examine the debates over strategy, forces, and employment concepts, and at the same time demonstrate an awareness of the political logic of alliance dynamics in order to explain the outcome of these debates. These distinctions are detailed further in the Introduction. Chapters 1 and 2, respectively, explain the causes and the nature of the differences within N A T O concerning the concept of Flexible Response. I argue that disagreements over the requirements of extended deterrence within N A T O reflected differing estimates of both the nature of the threat to be deterred and the probability of nuclear escalation. These diverging estimates were largely subjective, since neither the nature of Soviet intentions nor the likelihood of escalation control could be tested with the empirical rigor necessary for a more objective assessment. In chapter 2 also, a framework is developed to explain the manner in which these disagreements about the requirements of extended deterrence have been manifested. This framework distinguishes among four extendeddeterrence strategies, each of which corresponds to a possible interpretation of Flexible Response. T h e actual choice of a strategy depended foremost on estimates of the costs and risks of adopting a particular extended-deterrence strategy. In part two, I examine the practice of Flexible Response as it relates to theater nuclear forces. Chapter 3 explains the disagreements within the Atlantic Alliance on how nuclear forces should be used in case of war. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 discuss the debate about theater nuclear forces since 1970. The purpose of this discussion is twofold. First, I test the utility of the framework developed in part one of this book. T h e main question addressed is the extent to which the changing nature of NATO's debate about theater nuclear forces can be explained by changes in the strategic preferences of the N A T O members. I argue that a narrowing of strategic differences among the NATO members provides a good explanation of why the nuclear debate evolved in the manner it did. Thus, of the four extended-deterrence strategies which carried relatively equal weight in 1967, over time some either were discarded as politically unacceptable or lost critical support within the N A T O community as a whole. Moreover, the changing strategic climate confronting the Atlantic Alliance in the 1990s may well enable N A T O in the future to coalesce around a single strategic perspective acceptable to all. My second objective is to provide a comprehensive overview of the major disputes regarding theater nuclear forces that occurred during the

Preface 1970s and 1980s. Issues of particular importance include debates about the nature and size of NATO's nuclear stockpile, the utility of deploying technologically advanced nuclear weapons, the 1979 decision to deploy long-range nuclear forces, the restructuring of the nuclear stockpile to emphasize long- over short-range systems, and debates over whether NATO should modernize its short-range nuclear forces. I conclude this discussion with specific suggestions regarding the future course of NATO strategy and nuclear force deployments. This book attempts to fill three gaps in the literature on NATO strategy and theater nuclear forces. First, it is a systematic study of NATO's debate about Flexible Response. T h e objective is to understand the nature and causes of this debate and thereby to elucidate recurrent disagreements within the Alliance over the issue of theater nuclear forces. It is not a plea for a particular strategy or force posture, since the argument presented here is premised on the belief that there is no one correct answer to NATO's strategic dilemmas. Rather, the thrust of the chapters that follow is that one can only understand NATO's recurrent strategic debates and nuclear crises by appreciating the value of unity in diversity. Second, this book takes as its focus the Alliance as a whole and discusses the entire period of NATO's strategic history since 1967. Although the analysis of necessity pays more attention to the acts, beliefs, and policies of major players within the Alliance, it attempts to add new dimensions and nuances that are often ignored in otherwise admirable discussions of NATO strategy and nuclear forces. Finally, what follows provides a comprehensive overview of the main T N F issues that have preoccupied the Atlantic Alliance since 1967. Although parts of this story have appeared elsewhere, the debates about nuclear-employment doctrine, the level of nuclear forces, the neutron bomb, intermediate-range nuclear forces, and the modernization of shortrange nuclear forces are brought together here for the first time. This book therefore follows in the tradition of Robert Osgood's NATO: The gling Alliance,

Entan-

which discussed NATO's debate in the 1950s, and Jane

Stromseth's The Origins of Flexible

Response,

which analyzed the debate

in the 1960s. The origins of this book go back to the early 1980s when, in the midst of NATO's crisis over intermediate-range nuclear force deployments, I wrote a master's thesis on NATO's strategic debate of the 1960s. Although other pressing needs and interests intervened, I had always intended to bring the

xvii

xviii

Preface story of NATO's strategic debate up to the present. This book fulfills that goal. Parts of the book were written and many of the ideas were developed while I was a predoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for Science and International Affairs from 1985 to 1987 and a research associate and senior research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London from 1987 to 1989. The manuscript was completed during my tenure as a visiting scholar at the Center for International Security Studies at Maryland. Financial support for my research was provided by CSIA and IISS, as well as by the Institute for the Study of World Politics, the Nuclear History Project, and by an award from the Social Science Research Council's program in Foreign Policy Studies. I am grateful to these institutions for having provided the resources which allowed me to undertake this study. My greatest debt is to the individuals who supported me through these years. Steven Miller, Harvey Sapolsky, and Gregory Treverton served on my dissertation committee. I am grateful for their assistance during the preparation of my dissertation on which this book is based. For making the years I spent at CSIA and the IISS a great learning experience, I would like to thank Joseph S. Nye and François Heisbourg, the directors of these institutions, and especially Stephen J. Flanagan, then executive director of CSIA, for his support, encouragement, and friendship. I am particularly indebted to Catherine McArdle Kelleher, director of CISSM. Our shared interest in the esoterica of NATO's nuclear travails has become evident in many stimulating discussions, and I am most grateful for the ideas, suggestions, and comments she has shared with me over the years. Michael Brown, Lynn Davis, François Heisbourg, Wolfgang Heisenberg, Eckhard Lübkemeier, Phil Williams, and David Yost made several insightful comments and suggestions on different parts of earlier drafts. James Schear, who found himself in the same position of writing a dissertation at home, provided needed moments of distraction and lighthearted banter as well as many instances of stimulating my thinking on the ideas developed in this book. A condensed version of chapters 1 and 2 first appeared in NATO Strategy and Ballistic Missile Defense, Adelphi Paper No. 233 (London: IISS, 1988). Parts of chapter 3 were included in "NATO Nuclear Targeting and the INF Treaty," Journal of Strategic Studies (1988), vol. 9, no. 3. I thank the International Institute for Strategic Studies and Frank Cass

Preface & C o . , Ltd., London, for granting me permission to include these materials here. Finally, I should like to single out three people whose support and encouragement were of particular value over the years. My parents were present at the creation in more ways than one. They supported, albeit sometimes with evident reluctance, my determination to attend educational institutions an ocean away and to take the intellectual paths I insisted upon, and they never hesitated to provide the financial underpinnings of these choices. This book is dedicated to them as a small measure of my appreciation. Last, but by no means least, I am grateful to Elisa D. Harris, who stood by me throughout the entire sojourn. She was always ready to listen to my ideas, providing invaluable criticisms where needed, encouragement where possible. She read the entire manuscript and made numerous suggestions on style and substance, making this a better and more readable product. As a colleague and husband, the best way I can show my gratitude to her is to do what she did for me as she continues on her odyssey of writing her own doctoral dissertation.

xix

Introduction T H E NATURE AND PRACTICE O F FLEXIBLE RESPONSE

The Three Phases of NATO

Strategy

In July 1990 the N A T O Heads of State and G o v e r n m e n t met in London to take stock of the implications for the Atlantic Alliance of the radical transformation of the European security scene. As part of this stocktaking, the allies agreed to develop a new military strategy more in keeping with the new realities created by the revolutions of 1989. 1 This agreement ushered in the third phase of N A T O strategy. 2 In its first phase, nuclear weapons were the principal means of supporting N A T O strategy. T h e doctrine of massive nuclear retaliation was both acceptable to the United States because of the relative invulnerability of U.S. territory to Soviet attack and reassuring to Europeans as it obviated the need for large-scale and diversionary expenditures on conventional forces. Moreover, U . S . d o m i n a n c e within the Atlantic Alliance was complete, ensuring that even if there was disagreement about N A T O strategy, little of it was aired publicly. T h e first phase ended around 1960, when it became clear that the credibility of threatening a massive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union had been undermined by the Soviet ability to retaliate against the American homeland. After six years of often acrimonious debate, N A T O formally adopted the strategic concept of Flexible Response in December 1967, thus opening the second phase of N A T O strategy. 3 In case of an

2

Nature

and Practice

of Flexible

Response

attack, Flexible Response provided, according to the 1967 Political Guidance to Military Authorities, "for the employment as appropriate of one or more of direct defense, deliberate escalation, and general nuclear response, thus confronting the enemy with a credible threat of escalation in response to any type of aggression." 4 Flexible Response left deliberately ambiguous when and how NATO would use nuclear weapons in case of attack and, as such, masked differences among the allies concerning the role and relative weight to be accorded to theater nuclear forces in support of NATO strategy. The second phase of NATO strategy was abandoned with the end of the Cold War in 1989. Although some continued to insist that NATO should leave ambiguous the possibility of using nuclear weapons in case of an attack, 5 neither the means for nor the overt reliance on a nuclear response was any longer acceptable politically in the new security climate of the 1990s. T h e strategic compromise defining the third phase of NATO strategy is therefore to be based on the recognition that Flexible Response must be modified "to reflect a reduced reliance on nuclear weapons" by "making nuclear forces truly weapons of last resort." 6 As a result, the primary means of collective defense will henceforth be conventional rather than nuclear. Notwithstanding the radical transformation in the European security scene of the 1990s, NATO is bound to confront many of the same issues and dilemmas in its effort to define an appropriate strategy for the third phase as it did in the second phase. A clear understanding of the strategic debate that preoccupied the Alliance over the last quarter century is therefore a necessary basis for deciding NATO's future course. In this study, I aim to provide this basis. My objective is to dissect the causes and nature of the disagreements within NATO about Flexible Response and to examine how these differences have affected the evolution of NATO's debate about theater nuclear forces from 1967 to the present. Once these issues have been systematically explored, the basis will have been laid for determining how NATO strategy and nuclear forces can be adapted to the new realities that confront the Alliance in the 1990s.

The Debate About Extended

Deterrence

In contrast to the first phase, the second phase of NATO strategy was characterized by a definite lack of agreement on the strategic direction of the Atlantic Alliance. This absence of a consensus was reflected in the

Nature and Practice of Flexible Response deliberate ambiguity inherent in the concept of Flexible Response, in NATO's reliance on a mix of conventional and nuclear forces, and in the recurrent disagreements about the role and relative weight that should be accorded to theater nuclear forces. T h e terms of NATO's debate about Flexible Response were framed by three factors, each of which affected the manner in which N A T O could achieve its objective of deterring a Soviet attack. First, once the Soviet Union had acquired the ability to threaten the American homeland with nuclear retaliation, a situation of nuclear interdependence between the United States and the Soviet Union was created. The effect of this nuclear revolution was to stabilize the central strategic balance of U.S. and Soviet nuclear forces. 7 Second, the unequal distribution of power and control within the Alliance, particularly with respect to nuclear weapons, implied that Western Europe was dependent upon the United States for its security. 8 Third, the geographical fact that Western Europe shares a continent with an adversarial nuclear superpower, while the United States does not, meant that Europe would be the probable point of military confrontation and suggested that the individual security interests of NATO members were likely to diverge. 9 The combination of these three factors implied that N A T O could only achieve its objective of deterrence if the stability created by the U . S . Soviet nuclear stalemate was extended to the situation in Europe. It is this extension of stability that people have had in mind when they refer to the requirement of achieving a condition of "coupling" between the United States and Western Europe. 1 0 N A T O has sought to establish and maintain a condition of coupling through a strategy of extended deterrence—that is, using the extension of the threats that deter attack on the United States to deter attack on Western Europe. 1 1 Extended deterrence therefore performed a pivotal role in NATO's strategic debate; since coupling was believed to be critical to the achievement of NATO's objectives, extended deterrence, as the means to enable coupling, formed the core of NATO strategy. As a result, the essence of NATO's strategic debate in the second phase revolved around the issue of extended deterrence. The strategic debate within NATO has since the 1960s been characterized by two general perspectives concerning extended deterrence. One maintained that extended deterrence faced a perennial crisis and therefore constantly questioned the existence of coupling. This view focused exclusively on the balance of relative vulnerabilities between East and West and was principally concerned about the credibility of particular extendeddeterrence strategies. In contrast, the second perspective contended that

3

4

Nature and Practice of Flexible

Response

extended deterrence was fundamentally robust and thus accepted the existence of coupling as a matter of course. This view focused on the balance of perceived interests between East and West in general and the United States and the Soviet Union in particular and was primarily concerned about the American commitment to the defense of Western Europe. 1 2 These divergent perspectives of extended deterrence were drawn from two opposite political contexts in which the nature of the deterrence situation between adversaries differed fundamentally. The preoccupation with the credibility of extended deterrence derived from a situation of immediate deterrence in which the prospect of war is believed or assumed to be imminent. The alternative focus on the American commitment to Western Europe was derived from a general deterrence situation—that is, one where competition between two armed sides is present over time but war is unlikely to occur in the immediate future. 1 3 Both these perspectives of extended deterrence are relevant to an understanding of NATO's strategic discourse since 1967. The differences between them is obscured, however, by the fact that the language employed by both is highly similar. As a result, the strategic debate within N A T O often tended to have an air of unreality that approximated a dialogue among the deaf. Awareness of these differences nevertheless helps to explain some of the confusion that surrounded much of the analysis of these issues. It is therefore important clearly to distinguish between these two perspectives and the subjects they were speaking to, since this will help in explicating both the sources and the nature of NATO's strategic discourse. T H E C R I S I S OF E X T E N D E D

DETERRENCE—A

FIRST PERSPECTIVE

Much of the debate within the strategic studies community about NATO strategy reflected a shared assumption of the crisis of extended deterrence. The resultant debate on both the nature of the crisis and the manner in which it was to be resolved dominated the conference and lecture circuit and much, if not most, of the scholarly writings on the issue of NATO strategy for over thirty years. 14 The shared assumption underlying the perspective of a crisis of extended deterrence was that the condition of U.S. - Soviet nuclear interdependence stabilized the strategic balance between their respective arsenals. 15 The result of this stability was a high degree of mutual self-deterrence with respect to the actual or threatened

Nature

and Practice

of Flexible

Response

employment of strategic nuclear forces. It was therefore no longer credible to threaten to use strategic nuclear forces to deter conflict at lower levels. Hence, strategic stability created the possibility of increasing instability in Europe. This perceived phenomenon has been referred to as the stability-instability paradox. 16 Already in the 1950s prominent writings on strategy began to assume the existence of this paradox. Basil Liddell Hart argued in 1954 that to "the extent that the H-bomb reduces the likelihood of fullscale war, it increases

the possibilities of limited war pursued by wide-

spread local aggression." 17 Henry Kissinger similarly argued that to "the degree that mutual deterrence of all-out war is achieved, the perils of limited aggression must multiply." 1 8 Indeed, the relation of stability between the two levels of conflict was inverse according to Raymond Aron, if only because "[stability at every level is impossible by definition." 1 9 In the particular case of NATO, an appreciation of the stability-instability paradox raised serious questions about the credibility of extended deterrence, particularly in regard to the threat to use nuclear weapons first.20 Both hawks and doves shared the assumption of the incredibility of suicidal threats and the consequent crisis of extended deterrence. 21 Thus, representing the former, Kissinger bluntly stated this view in 1979, contending "that our European allies should not keep asking us to multiply strategic assurances that we cannot possibly mean or if we do mean, we should not want to execute because if we execute, we risk the destruction of civilization." 22 Doves, such as Robert McNamara, agreed, maintaining that the use of "strategic nuclear weapons against the Soviet homeland would lead almost certainly to a response in kind that would inflict unacceptable damage on Europe and the United States—it would be an act of suicide. The threat of such an action, therefore, has lost all credibility as a deterrent to Soviet conventional aggression." 25 While the diagnosis of NATO's "disease" was similar, derived as it was from the acceptance of the stability-instability paradox, the prescriptions offered by hawks and doves generally differed. Some advocated policy options that purposefully destabilized the central strategic balance by rendering nuclear weapons, particularly strategic forces, more usable and, hence, less subject to self-deterrence. The perennial search for flexible and selective options for strategic force employment, dating back to McNamara's Athens address in May 1962 and revived forcefully by James Schlesinger in the guise of "limited nuclear options," reflected this effort. 24 In its most recent installment, this effort took the form of an

5

6

Nature

and Practice

of Flexible

Response

emphasis on strategic defenses and the development of "discriminate" offensive e m p l o y m e n t capabilities in order to render the resort to nuclear weapons less devastating and thus more credible. 2 5 Rather than attempting to decrease stability at the central level, others focused on reducing the instability at the European level, believed to be caused by the inadequacies of N A T O ' s conventional defense efforts. This focus first emerged in the 1950s with the development of strategies for limited war. 2 6 At that time, the primary source of debate concerned whether limited-war strategies should emphasize nuclear or conventional capabilities. W i t h the advent of strategic parity, a nuclear emphasis became increasingly difficult to sustain both militarily and politically. T h e assumption instead, as Senator Sam N u n n argued, was that "when you have parity in nuclear weapons, this means inevitably that you are going to have to seek parity in conventional weapons." 2 7 T h e focus was consequently on improving conventional capabilities and pursuing a variety of tactical and strategic innovations to improve N A T O ' s prospects for conventional defense. 2 8 Despite these various prescriptions to "resolve" the crisis of extended deterrence, n o n e ever gained sufficient acceptance to be fully implemented or, if implemented, to satisfy all sides of the strategic debate. T h e reason for this was that the N A T O members evaluated the costs and risks of various policy options in different ways. These differences in assessing costs and risks were but a particular manifestation of a more general condition confronting all military alliances. Alliances, by their very nature, will witness the presence of diverging security interests a m o n g their m e m b e r states. Indeed, that is why nation-states align rather than integrate into new political units. These diverging security interests express themselves in two different ways. T h e r e will be times that the risks or costs of fulfilling the alliance c o m m i t m e n t will be judged to be too great and, hence, allies confront the possibility of abandonment.

At other times, the

very c o m m i t m e n t to alliance may lead to the imposition of costs or risks that are deemed excessive and, hence, allies confront the possibility of entrapment.

This dual potential of allied a b a n d o n m e n t or entrapment

within an alliance results, as G l e n n Snyder has shown, in an alliance security dilemma. Policies that seek to reassure allies against the possibility of entrapment necessarily lead to heightening fears of a b a n d o n m e n t , whereas policies geared to reassure against a b a n d o n m e n t will raise fears of entrapment. 2 9 In the particular case of N A T O , the alliance security dilemma took the

Nature and Practice of Flexible Response form of competing preferences for different policies or strategies to solve the perceived crisis in extended deterrence. Thus, Europeans tended to favor strategies that would encourage nuclear escalation in case of war in order to avoid nuclear abandonment. Yet, this preference raised the possibility of nuclear entrapment for Americans. In response to the fear of nuclear entrapment, Americans favored strategies that offered the prospect for limiting escalation, which in turn raised European fears of nuclear entrapment. Similar dynamics promoting the alliance security dilemma were present in the conventional area. Thus, the U . S . fear of nuclear entrapment resulted in a strategic preference for strong conventional forces to raise the nuclear threshold. This American response not only heightened European fears of nuclear abandonment, however, but also exacerbated fears of conventional entrapment by rendering war both more probable and its confinement to Europe more likely. Conversely, in response to fears of conventional entrapment, Europeans attempted to de-emphasize conventional warfighting capabilities, which in turn accentuated American fears of conventional abandonment, again raising the possibility of nuclear entrapment. These abandonment-entrapment dynamics are indeed familiar sources of NATO's nuclear d e b a t e — w h e n c e the constant reference to NATO's nuclear dilemmas. 3 0 W h i l e often expressed in the language of strategy, diverging assessments of costs and risks that gave rise to these fears were at bottom strictly political in nature, reflecting differences over policy, power, and purpose. 3 1 Nevertheless, an appreciation of and focus on these paradoxes and dilemmas has generally been confined to analyses that were based on a narrow political context in which a situation of imminent crisis or war was thought (or theoretically assumed) to exist. T h a t is, the strategies and policies proposed to deal with the perceived crisis of extended deterrence assumed a situation of immediate deterrence in which, according to Patrick Morgan, one side is seriously considering an armed attack and the other side believes it necessary to threaten the use of force in retaliation in order to deter the attack. 3 2 Although this assumption was logical in view of the fact that strategic analysis is fundamentally concerned with immediate deterrence situations, 3 3 it was nevertheless rejected by those who believed that, far from being in crisis, extended deterrence was very robust indeed. T h e i r focus was instead on a situation of general deterrence in which the continuity of the U . S . commitment to the defense of Western Europe, rather than the credibility of extended-deterrence threats, stood central.

1

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Nature and Practice of Flexible

Response

T H E ROBUSTNESS OF E X T E N D E D

DETERRENCE—A

SECOND P E R S P E C T I V E T h e alternative perspective of extended deterrence maintained that the stalemate created by the situation of nuclear interdependence between the superpowers fostered stability in most, if not all, areas in which they might interact. T h e existential nature of deterrence ensured that the danger of nuclear war moderated the behavior of the superpowers, particularly in those situations, such as Europe, where large concentrations of military forces confronted each other. T h e possibility that even a limited military conflict might escalate to engulf everyone had a stabilizing effect on the competition between two armed adversarial sides. 54 In this situation, described by John Lewis Gaddis as "the Long P e a c e , " 3 5 the stabilityinstability paradox had effectively been overcome since, as far as N A T O was concerned, stability was present at all potential levels of conflict. Hence, those who believed in the robustness of extended deterrence focused not on immediate deterrence situations in which the prospect of force employment, including in particular of nuclear weapons, was real, but rather on a situation of general deterrence. T h e latter situation is defined by Morgan as one where there is a latent possibility that one side might resort to the use of force under certain circumstances and, hence, where the other side maintains both the evident capability and will to use force in case of attack. 3 6 According to this second perspective, Europe has been characterized by a general deterrence situation at least since the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 and probably ever since 1954, "the year of maximum danger," passed uneventfully. 37 T h e principal focus of this second perspective was therefore not on the credibility of deterrent threats but rather on how N A T O could secure general stability and thus maintain a situation of general deterrence. Because stability was believed to be a function of the potential for a conflict to escalate to general nuclear war, the conditions that enabled escalation in case of war were crucial to maintaining stability. Among these, the most important was the likelihood, if not the certainty, that any war in Europe would involve both superpowers. Since the Soviet Union is geographically inseparable from Western Europe, ensuring that the United States would be part of a conflict in Europe was seen as the sine qua non of stability. Hence, from this perspective, the U . S . commitment to the defense of Europe was more important than the credibility of particular deterrent threats to ensure the achievement of NATO's objectives.

Nature

and Practice

of Flexible

Response

The focus of analysis therefore centered around the U.S. commitment to and presence in Western Europe. O f particular importance was the perceived balance of interests between the United States and the Soviet Union. So long as there was a perception that the U.S. interest in the defense of Western Europe was stronger than the Soviet interest in subjugating Western Europe, the perceived balance of interest would favor NATO. Under these conditions, extended deterrence was believed to be viable and coupling was consequently assured. T h e U.S. commitment to Western Europe rested in part on a sense of shared political and economic values and in part on the belief that the Atlantic Alliance furthered American national security interests, including containment of a threat to these shared values. To some, the strength of this commitment was self-evident and need not have been a matter of debate. 38 T o others, however, the manner in which the U.S. commitment was symbolized was especially important. This was particularly true with respect to the nuclear element upon which the continuation of stability ultimately depended. As Lawrence Freedman, for example, argued, to ensure that existential deterrence continued to underpin the U.S. commitment, "political authorities controlling the nuclear weapons . . . must be wholly committed to the conflict. " Rather than assuming this to be the case, however, explicit reassurances of this commitment were necessary, because, as Freedman continued, if "existential deterrence is to be extended, then the deterrent must be seen to exist. "39 The deployment of American troops and nuclear weapons in Europe symbolized the existence of the U.S. commitment and, hence, assured that stability would be maintained. 40 From this perspective of extended deterrence, then, assurance of the U.S. commitment, rather than deterrence of Soviet attack, was the prime means for achieving NATO's objectives. 41 As long as West Europeans were assured of the American commitment to their security, stability would be maintained, coupling would exist, and extended deterrence would be robust. Once the American commitment was assured, the main policy preoccupation was to manage the prevailing conditions in Europe in a manner conducive to maintaining a general deterrence situation. The objective was to avoid situations where the possibility of a crisis or war would become imminent and issues relevant to an immediate deterrence situation would dominate relations within and between blocs. 42 T h e preferred means to sustain a general deterrence situation were two. First, it was necessary to establish and then maintain a general balance of forces between East and West. The idea was to be prepared (i.e., to

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Nature

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Response

develop military doctrines, deploy forces, maintain stockpiles, produce contingency plans, increase readiness, modernize equipment, etc.). Second, there was need for a dialogue with the East in order to prevent miscalculations and misperceptions from arising that might lead to war. A dialogue was also the only way in which the Alliance could attempt to transform, or at least ameliorate, antagonistic East-West relations toward more constructive ends. N A T O recognized both these requirements in December 1967 when it adopted the Harmel Report on "The Future Tasks of the Atlantic Alliance." 4 3 It was not always easy to strike an appropriate balance between these two requirements. Two reasons may be cited. First, the ability to pursue a constructive dialogue with the East depended foremost on the state of superpower relations. T h e difficulty confronting N A T O was that trends toward accommodation or, alternatively, toward increased hostility between the superpowers, although perhaps subject to some influence by allied preferences, were ultimately determined by the nature of the international system. Conflict between the superpowers inhered in an international system where both were juxtaposed to each other, not only structurally as a result of the two being the most powerful, but also historically and ideologically. Yet this juxtaposition occurred within an international system that was at the same time marked by processes of caution and timidity brought forth by the realization that any conflagration might not only result in immense destruction, but also in the annihilation of both powers. T h e international system was consequently characterized by a dialectic of tension and accommodation, a dialectic nicely captured by Aran's discussion of U . S . - S o v i e t relations entitled " T h e Enemy Partners." 4 4 T h e presence of this conciliation-competition dialectic invariably constrained the Alliance's ability to pursue a balanced and constructive dialogue with the East. T h e second difficulty confronting N A T O consisted of the fact that the dual requirements for a dialogue with the East and maintaining a balance of forces were to some extent in conflict. N A T O thus faced a dilemma in its relations with the East by being confronted with a choice between a posture of firmness versus one that stressed accommodation. This adversary dilemma, Glenn Snyder has argued, consisted of the fact that too m u c h firmness might contain the threat but at the potential cost of provoking the adversary, while too m u c h accommodation would avoid provoking the adversary but could convey the appearance of weakness. 45 This dilemma was especially apparent in the perceived conflict between

Nature

and Practice of Flexible Response

the need to engage in arms control negotiations and the requirement for unilateral force improvements. As will be demonstrated in subsequent chapters, the strategic debate within N A T O was, particularly in the 1980s, characterized by a constant tug-of-war between proponents of arms control on the one hand and advocates of force modernization on the other. T h e one factor that tempered these inevitable conflicts was the generally recognized requirement for the allies to remain united. All the benefits accruing from a general deterrence situation—including a robust extended deterrent and the consequent achievement of coupling—ultimately depended on maintaining alliance cohesion. In addition, alliance cohesion was also a vital condition for the successful implementation of the two strands of the Harmel strategy, since neither the establishment of a force balance nor a constructive dialogue with the East was possible if N A T O was internally divided. Only cooperation and coordination in matters of defense would enable the Alliance to muster the necessary forces to achieve a reasonable balance with the East. Similarly, as the Harmel Report argued, a dialogue with the East should "not be allowed to split the Alliance. T h e chances of success will clearly be greatest if the Allies remain on parallel courses." 4 6 Hence, despite intermittent disagreements about how to strike a balance between these two requirements, the allies were resolved to maintain a united front vis-à-vis their c o m m o n adversary. T h e need for reassurance with regard to the American commitment and the requirement for alliance cohesion were the central foci of those who believed in the robustness of extended deterrence. T h e challenge was to secure these commitments and requirements in order to sustain a condition of general deterrence. This implied the need to pay attention to a wide array of issues, encompassing not only military and strategic but also economic and particularly political factors. It also implied that this perspective was primarily concerned with intra-Alliance issues rather than with interbloc relations. 47 This broad and internal focus contrasted markedly with the narrow strategic scope and exclusive concern with Soviet military capabilities that characterized the first perspective of extended deterrence.

The Nature

and Practice of Flexible

Response

T h e two perspectives described above in effect represent alternative strategic and political models of extended deterrence. 48 Although these models

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Nature

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Response

have traditionally been viewed as competing explanations of NATO's strategic debate, this debate is best understood on the basis of both models simultaneously. T h e difference between them is one of focus and context, not one of fact. T h e strategic model focused on NATO's strategic requirements in the context of an immediate deterrence situation. In contrast, the political model focused on NATO's political requirements in the context of a general deterrence situation. T h e strategic debate within the Alliance was therefore not simply a debate about politics, purpose, and policy, as many have contended. 4 9 Nor was it only a debate about which strategies and forces would best enable N A T O to deter a Soviet attack, as others have maintained. 5 0 Both debates existed, but they occurred on the basis of diverse assumptions derived from different deterrence contexts. T h e essence of NATO's strategic debate in general and of the nature and practice of Flexible Response in particular is therefore best explained by the interaction of the strategic and political logic inherent in both models. Strategic analysis is by definition grounded in the assumptions that inhere in the strategic model. T h e only way in which to formulate strategies, determine force postures, and develop employment doctrines is on the basis of their presumed relevance to immediate deterrence situations. However, with the rare exceptions of the Berlin crises of 1958 and 1961 and the C u b a n missile crisis of October 1962, N A T O has throughout the postwar period operated within a general deterrence situation. In this latter situation, it is impossible to know the political context in which an immediate deterrence situation might arise. 51 Disagreement about NATO's strategic requirements was therefore likely, if not inevitable, since there were no objective criteria by which to measure the appropriateness of proposed force deployment and employment options. T h e absence of objective criteria for determining NATO's strategic requirements was particularly apparent in the case of nuclear weapons. These weapons have never been used when more than one country possessed them. T h e empirical basis for determining nuclear force requirements has therefore been absent. As a result, discussions about nuclear strategy and forces invariably revolved around the particular and, hence, diverging assumptions and perceptions of those engaged in these debates. 52 As I will argue further in part one, the key disagreements that characterized these debates consisted of diverse estimates of both the nature of the threat and the likelihood of nuclear escalation, estimates that in turn depended on particular assumptions about the causes, course, and consequences of a military confrontation between East and West.

Nature and Practice of Flexible Response Although disagreements within N A T O about strategy and force requirements were of necessity preoccupied with wartime (or immediate deterrence) contingencies, they occurred in, and were principally relevant to, a fundamentally stable (or general deterrence) situation. T h e principal effect of allied disagreement over NATO's strategic requirements was therefore not only to accentuate differences over force postures and disposition, but also to call into question the cohesiveness of the Alliance itself. 5 3 Alliance cohesion was, however, critical to sustaining a situation of general deterrence. As a result, the terms of NATO's strategic debates were framed primarily by the need to maintain alliance cohesion rather than by the requirement to pose a credible deterrent threat to the East. T h e nature and practice of Flexible Response should be examined on the basis of this strategic-political logic inherent in the two models of extended deterrence.

Flexible Response was a deliberately ambiguous

strategic concept that encompassed rather than resolved differences over strategy. As I argue in part one, the causes of these disagreements over strategy are best explained by the strategic model. However, while the nature of Flexible Response, including the different strategic preferences that it encompassed, can be understood only on the basis of the strategic model, its eventual acceptance by all participants in NATO's integrated military command cannot. Rather, the logic of alliance cohesion inherent in the political model of extended deterrence determined that a compromise was necessary. This compromise took the form of the strategic concept of Flexible Response, which detailed the possible options open to N A T O in case of attack. Hence, while strategic logic explains the differences over strategy within N A T O , political logic explains why a consensus was nevertheless achieved. This said, Flexible Response proved acceptable only because it left the matter of how to achieve NATO's objectives deliberately ambiguous. As Freedman has rightly maintained, Flexible Response was "satisfactory only as a peace-time doctrine, offering a form of words that can accommodate the great variety of strategic perspectives found within the Alliance. " 5 4 However, since N A T O operated in a situation of general deterrence, the ambiguous nature of Flexible Response was both necessary and sufficient to satisfy the overriding requirement of alliance cohesion. T o examine or evaluate Flexible Response for its applicability to immediate deterrence situations would therefore be singularly inappropriate, since it is a strategic concept detailing response options rather than a coherent strategy for the conduct of war. 5 5 Instead, an examination of the nature of

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14

Nature

and Practice of Flexible

Response

Flexible Response must focus on the content and interaction of the divergent strategic preferences that are encompassed by it. This task is undertaken in part one. T h e practice of Flexible Response can similarly be analyzed on the basis of this interaction between the different logic inherent in the strategic and political models. Given the inherent ambiguity in Flexible Response regarding the role and relative weight to be accorded to theater nuclear forces within this concept, the practice of Flexible Response consisted of frequent debates about what nuclear forces should be deployed and how these forces should be employed in case of war. These questions were debated according to the precepts of competing strategic preferences developed on the basis of wartime (or immediate deterrence) contingencies. However, Alliance decisions regarding nuclear weapons, including their deployment and employment, reflected the political logic of alliance cohesion rather than the strategic logic of deterrence theories. T h e resultant compromise decisions on T N F issues therefore "satisficed" most or all competing strategic preferences rather than optimized one particular preference. 5 6 These compromise decisions were nevertheless sufficient to maintain, or even strengthen, extended deterrence in a peacetime (or general deterrence) situation, even if they were unlikely to be optimal for wartime contingencies. Hence, while the recurrent debates within N A T O about theater nuclear forces reflected the logic inherent in the strategic model of extended deterrence, Alliance decisions can only be understood on the basis of the logic of alliance cohesion, which defined the political model. Part two is devoted to a detailed examination of this process.

THE NATURE OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE

THE REQUIREMENTS OF EXTENDED DETERRENCE

Flexible Response: An Agreement To Disagree In December 1967 the NATO Defense Planning Committee (DPC) formally adopted the strategic concept of Flexible Response. According to the DPC, the concept was "based upon a flexible and balanced range of appropriate responses, conventional and nuclear, to all levels of aggression or threats of aggression." 1 The details of Flexible Response were set out in Military Committee document MC14/3, entitled "Overall Concept for the Defense of the NATO Area," dated January 16, 1968. MC14/3 envisaged three levels of responses in case deterrence failed. The first was direct defense, which aimed to defeat the aggression at the level—conventional or nuclear—the attacker had chosen to fight. If direct defense failed, NATO could conduct a deliberate

escalation,

raising but where

possible controlling the scope and intensity of combat, with the aim of making the cost and risk to the aggressor disproportionate and the threat of a nuclear response more imminent. The objective would be to convince the aggressor to cease his attack and withdraw. Finally, NATO could initiate a general nuclear response in case of a major nuclear attack. 2 The operational implications of Flexible Response were deliberately obscured. In particular, the document was unclear about the specific role and relative weight to be accorded to theater nuclear weapons in case the Warsaw Pact were to restrict its attack to conventional forces. Although it

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Nature of Flexible

Response

has been claimed that this ambiguity enhanced deterrence by complicating Warsaw Pact planning, this was more a by-product of NATO's inability to agree on matters of doctrine than a deliberate design. In essence, Flexible Response represented a political compromise among divergent strategic perspectives. 3 As such, the concept was suited primarily to a general deterrence situation in which the political concerns for alliance cohesion dominated the military and strategic concerns for effective deterrence. Since its principal purpose was political—that is, to avoid debilitating disputes within N A T O over matters of strategy—its utility should be judged by political as opposed to strategic criteria. At one level, the adoption of Flexible Response in 1967 succeeded admirably. While NATO has witnessed many debates about nuclear and strategic matters, none was as intense as the debate preceding the adoption of Flexible Response and all have taken place within the consensual parameters set by this concept. Officially, the acceptance of Flexible Response by all members of the Alliance has gone unquestioned. At another level, however, the formal adoption of Flexible Response solved little, if anything. The strategic disputes that divided the allies before December 1967 still divided them thereafter. These differences consisted essentially of the different answers given to a single question: How flexible was Flexible Response? Within that single question were others, including against what was direct defense to be employed; when, how, and with what should N A T O escalate; and what purpose should the capability to respond flexibly serve? A first disagreement about Flexible Response related to the reasons for engaging in direct defense. Even though NATO formally accepted the notion that a conventional attack would not (at least not in the first instance) be met by a nuclear response, the reason for engaging in a direct form of conventional defense remained in dispute. While all N A T O members agreed that a less than all-out conventional attack was to be met with a conventional response, disagreements about the value of direct defense in case of a massive Warsaw Pact assault persisted. For example, some, like U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, argued that "the central role of direct defense within the Flexible Response strategy is to place the burden of escalation on the aggressor." 4 Others, however, believed that the reason for engaging in conventional defense against a massive conventional attack was to communicate the danger that war might escalate. Thus, Dutch Defense Minister den Toom argued in 1968

R e q u i r e m e n t s of E x t e n d e d D e t e r r e n c e

that NATO must have the conventional capacity "to meet a limited form of aggression with success. In the case of a more forceful conventional aggression, the opponent must be met with sufficient conventional force to ensure that he be clearly aware of the dangers of escalation to nuclear » 5

war. A second source of disagreement about Flexible Response concerned the reasons for which NATO would threaten deliberate escalation. These disagreements centered in particular around when and how NATO would escalate to the nuclear level. On the issue of the timing of deliberate escalation, NATO adopted the marvelously ambiguous formula "as late as possible but as early as necessary." 6 Some, naturally, emphasized the first part of this formula, whereas others clearly placed the emphasis on the second part. Thus, U.S. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger argued in 1975 that "it is highly desirable to maintain a high nuclear threshold and use nuclear weapons only if absolutely necessary." 7 Others, however, pointed out that Flexible Response does not necessarily mean that nuclear weapons would be used late, nor, indeed, only when conventional defenses had failed. Thus, General Bennecke, then commander of NATO forces in Central Europe, argued in 1970 that the "revised strategic concept [i.e., Flexible Response] does not rule out that nuclear weapons will, under certain circumstances, already be used at the start of war." 8 Similarly, in 1985 the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), General Bernard Rogers, told Congress that his guidance for nuclear release stated: "before you lose the cohesiveness of your defense, i.e., subject to deep penetration, you must request release of nuclear weap"9

ons. Even if agreement could be reached on when nuclear weapons were to be used, how and where they would be used was still disputed. Most NATO governments agreed that the initial use of nuclear weapons should be both controlled and selective, but that is where agreement ended. Some governments clearly favored using nuclear weapons to change or at least affect the battlefield configuration of the opposing forces. Thus, Schlesinger called for the development of "selective, carefully controlled options that will permit us . . . to enhance our ability to deal with major penetrations of an allied sector and achieve a quick, decisive reversal of the tactical situation." 10 Others, however, believed that nuclear weapons should primarily be used to ensure a political effect. As the West German Defense White Paper of 1975-76 put it, "initial use of nuclear weapons is

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Nature

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Response

not intended so much to bring about a military decision as to achieve political effect. The intent is to persuade the attacker to reconsider his intention, to desist in his aggression, and to withdraw." 11 These disagreements over how and when to use nuclear weapons in fact reflected disagreements about Flexible Response, including the required degree of flexibility in the response. Did flexibility mean that the opponent should be uncertain

about what response it could expect if he

attacked or, alternatively, should the opponent be certain that, whatever the level of his attack, NATO's response would be capable of defeating him at that level? Some stressed the inherent deterrent virtue of leaving the opponent in the dark about the nature of the response. The West German Defense White Paper of 1983, for example, maintained that the "strategy deliberately leaves the question of when what response is to be expected open, so as to confront an enemy, in the eventuality of aggression, with a risk he cannot afford to run." As a result, "NATO cannot confine itself to meeting every possible form of aggression with identical means. Any such defence planning would make the NATO type of response predictable and, consequently, the risk to the aggressor calculab l e . " 1 2 This view was echoed in 1976 by General Alexander Haig, then SACEUR: "we have adopted a strategy which requires [the adversary] to face uncertainties—uncertainties regarding how we respond, where we would respond, and to what level of conflict his aggression might ultimately propel him." 1 3 General Rogers, Haig's successor, apparently agreed: "the Soviet Union cannot predict with certainty when or where the Alliance would resort to the first use of nuclear weapons to defend NATO territory. For them, the risks of initiating any armed conflict would be open-ended and consequences would be incalculable." 1 4 On the other hand, others believed that the more capable the denial function of military forces, the more credible deterrence would be. Weinberger, for instance, contended that "we must have sufficient forces to make certain that the Soviets understand clearly that we can and will deny them their objectives at any level of conflict they might contemplate." According to the Secretary of Defense, this denial capability was at the heart of Flexible Response: "the credibility of our deterrent forces increases as we demonstrate flexibility in our response options and in our forces." Flexible Response thus implied the "profound belief that, if we have the capability to present the Soviet leadership with unacceptable consequences at any level of aggression of which they are capable, then that aggression will not occur in the first place." 1 5

R e q u i r e m e n t s of E x t e n d e d D e t e r r e n c e It should be clear, therefore, that disagreements within N A T O about strategic issues persisted despite the adoption o f Flexible Response. However, these disagreements should not be viewed solely on their own terms. As argued, Flexible Response was a political compromise that e n c o m passed rather than resolved differences over strategy. Issues such as what purpose conventional forces should serve, how and why to escalate, and what role uncertainty ought to play in Flexible Response merely reflected these differences. Unless stated in a deliberately ambiguous f a s h i o n — t h a t is, subject to multiple i n t e r p r e t a t i o n — n o single strategy could ever have gained the u n a n i m o u s consent o f the N A T O members. T h e question nevertheless remains why these differences over issues o f strategy existed. It is my contention that these differences can best be explained by diverging assessments o f the requirements o f extended deterrence. As I argued in the introduction, the principal strategic objective o f the Atlantic Alliance has been to couple the stability produced by the central strategic balance o f forces between the United States and the Soviet U n i o n to the situation in Europe. T h i s coupling has been

achieved

through extended deterrence. T o the extent, then, that there were differences over the requirements o f extended deterrence, disagreements about strategy within N A T O were inevitable. W h a t follows is an examination of the requirements o f extended deterrence. I argue that critical to determining the requirements for extended deterrence are perceptions o f the threat confronting N A T O and assumptions about the probable course o f a military confrontation between East and W e s t — i n c l u d i n g in particular different assumptions about whether and at what point such a conflict would escalate to general nuclear war. I further argue that estimates o f the threat differ in accordance with diverse views o f the nature o f the Soviet U n i o n , and that estimates o f the probability of escalation vary with attitudes regarding the controllability

of

escalation. Differing estimates o f the threat and o f escalation in turn explain the existence o f contrasting assessments o f the requirements o f extended deterrence within the Atlantic Alliance.

How these varying

assessments were reflected in terms o f differing interpretations o f Flexible Response is a subject taken up in chapter 2, where I develop a specific framework for representing these differences in terms o f competing extended-deterrence strategies.

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Response

Assessing the Requirements of Extended

Deterrence

Why is there no agreement about the requirements of extended deterrence? Specifically, why did N A T O governments agree that the Alliance's basic strategic concept is Flexible Response, yet disagree about what Flexible Response really meant? One reason, clearly, is that people who sit at different places will have different concerns. For example, Germans will be concerned with the conduct of any war because it would probably be fought on their territory, while Americans will be most concerned with the conduct of nuclear war, since this represents the primary threat to the physical survival of the United States. These differences, based as they are on structural factors, may help to explain why people sitting in different places may prefer different deterrence strategies. However, they do not explain why those who sit in the same place can nevertheless disagree about what deters. For example, these factors do not explain why Americans disagree about what nuclear targeting doctrines and force postures are required to minimize the risks of deterrence failing. T h e question posed earlier thus remains: Why is there no agreement about the requirements of extended deterrence? My answer is that an assessment of the requirements of extended deterrence depends on estimates of both the nature of threat and the likelihood of nuclear escalation in case of war. These estimates are likely to differ because they are a function of subjective perceptions of Soviet intentions and of the possibility of controlling escalation. If estimates of each or both of these determinants do diverge, then so will assessments of the requirements of extended deterrence. For example, if the Soviet threat is believed to be low, then the requirements of deterrence are likely to be less demanding than if the threat is believed to be high. Similarly, if nuclear escalation is assumed to be controllable, then the role accorded to nuclear weapons in deterring a conventional attack is likely to be greater than if escalation is assumed to be inevitable. T h e centrality of subjective perceptions and, hence, of the existence of varying estimates of both the threat and escalation, implies that a particular evaluation of either determinant is neither necessarily "true" nor necessarily "false. " It follows that there is no one correct way in which to assess the requirements of extended deterrence. Rather, since perceptions are likely to differ, so will assessments of these requirements. This said, the question remains why in the past perceptions differed and, hence,

R e q u i r e m e n t s of E x t e n d e d D e t e r r e n c e why estimates of the Soviet threat and the probability of escalation diverged. T h e remainder of this chapter is devoted to answering this question.

ESTIMATING THE T H R E A T In order to determine the requirements of deterrence (whether central or extended), strategic analysis seeks to evaluate the nature of the threat to be deterred. In m u c h of this analysis, such a threat assessment is generally reduced to an evaluation of the adversary's military capabilities. This reliance on examining an opponent's capabilities for the purpose of threat assessments inheres both in the underlying assumption of strategic analysis and in the methods it employs. In focusing on capabilities rather than intentions, however, strategic analysis by definition assumes that the threat is high. As such, it cannot account for varying estimates of the threat to be deterred. As I argued in the introduction, strategic analysis presumes the existence of an immediate deterrence situation in which the adversary's intentions are assumed to be expansive. In the absence of such an assumption the need for strategy disappears. An image (or assumption) of the e n e m y is therefore the sine qua n o n of all strategy. 1 6 Strategic analysis conseqently focuses on the adversary's capabilities, for its expansive intentions are assumed by definition. F r o m the perspective of strategic analysts, then, the requirements of deterrence will be determined solely by what the adversary can do rather than by what he intends to do. As long as those capabilities can be agreed u p o n , the question of differing requirements for deterrence simply does not arise. T h e tendency to reduce threat assessment to an evaluation of the adversary's capabilities is strengthened by the methods employed in strategic analysis. Because, it is argued, o n e cannot measure the adversary's intentions, prudent strategic analysis dictates that the threat be assessed in terms of his capabilities. T h e result of this "passion for quantification," as Colin Gray has argued, is that it "promotes the idea that anything important can be counted, and if it cannot be counted it is not i m p o r t a n t . " 1 7 In addition, it is often (though not necessarily) the case that strategic analysis presumes that an adversary's capabilities determines intentions or that, at least, capabilities can be taken as an operational guide to his intentions. 1 8 A particular level of military force therefore tends to be seen as positive proof of an adversary's offensive or defensive orientation. An example of

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Nature of Flexible

Response

this tendency might be the Reagan administration's repeated claims during the 1980s that since the size of Nicaragua's armed forces was larger than the combined armed forces of its neighbors, Nicaragua harbored offensive intentions. 1 9 As Robert Johnson has pointed out, this is a form of strategic reductionism, where, in the case of Soviet nuclear capabilities, the "prediction of Soviet behavior is reduced to a set of technological issues related to the strategic nuclear b a l a n c e . " 2 0 Such a threat assessment is, however, fundamentally apolitical. As Ken Booth argues, "[strategic reductionists take the politics out of strategy and reduce it to technology. T h e y are not 'neo-Clausewitzians'; they are anti-Clausewitzians." 2 1 Strategic analysis need not, however, be reductionist. In regard to an evaluation of the adversary's intentions it can clearly be neutral. Yet, even if it does not deduce an adversary's intentions from an evaluation of his capabilities, the reliance on measuring capabilities remains a dubious method for assessing the true dimensions of the threat. This is so, because the claim that capabilities are more easily measured than intentions might be both wrong and irrelevant. It might be wrong because there is no precision in measuring capabilities and it might be irrelevant because evaluating the meaning of the measured capabilities invariably involves an assessment of the adversary's intentions. T h e claim that an adversary's capabilities are far more easily calculated than are his intentions does not necessarily stand up to close scrutiny. Two reasons may be cited. First, assessing Soviet capabilities is a fine art of intelligence gathering that is frequently imprecise. Throughout the 1960s, for example, the U . S . intelligence community consistently underestimated the growth of Soviet nuclear capabilities. 2 2 Estimates of Soviet capabilities were revised year after year and at each time the U . S . intelligence community was internally divided over what capabilities the Soviet Union actually possessed at any one time. Hence, since actual Soviet capabilities were not known accurately, estimates of these capabilities diverged and so did assumptions about what was required for deterrence. An interesting example of the consequences of such inaccuracies was the debate in the late 1960s between George Rathjens and Albert W o h l stetter over the vulnerability of the U . S . Minuteman

intercontinental

ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to a new Soviet missile, the S S - 9 . This debate showed how small differences in assumptions concerning the number and yields of warheads, warhead accuracies, and missile reliability of the stillto-be-deployed Soviet I C B M could lead to widely divergent conclusions.

R e q u i r e m e n t s of E x t e n d e d D e t e r r e n c e As a result of these different conclusions, Wohlstetter favored, while R a t h j e n s opposed, the d e p l o y m e n t of the Safeguard A B M system to defend M i n u t e m a n silos. 2 3 A n o t h e r , m o r e recent, example of the uncertainty of intelligence gathering was revealed u p o n the signing of the Treaty on Intermediate-range N u c l e a r Forces (INF) in D e c e m b e r 1987. T h e treaty's M e m o r a n d u m of U n d e r s t a n d i n g detailing the precise n u m b e r , characteristics, a n d location of the weapon systems to be eliminated revealed that the n u m b e r of deployed SS-23s was significantly higher than Western intelligence sources had revealed publicly. Rather t h a n the estimated twenty SS-23 systems, the Soviet U n i o n had in fact deployed 82 SS-23 l a u n c h e r s a n d

167

missiles in East G e r m a n y a n d the Soviet U n i o n . M o r e surprising still was the revelation that the Soviet U n i o n had tested and stored a n e w g r o u n d l a u n c h e d cruise missile system in Latvia, including 84 missiles and six launchers. Finally, part of t h e U . S . intelligence c o m m u n i t y had apparently estimated the total n u m b e r of SS-20 missiles as being 30 to 50 percent higher t h a n the n u m b e r reported in the m e m o r a n d u m .

24

Hence,

even at c u r r e n t levels of technical sophistication, intelligence is still insufficiently

accurate to estimate the capability of an opponent's forces.

A second reason why m e a s u r i n g capabilities does not necessarily give o n e any m o r e insight into the nature of the threat t h a n evaluating the adversary's intentions is because people often disagree a b o u t what should be measured. T h e indexes that m a k e u p t h e adversary's capabilities are n u m e r o u s a n d h o w to balance o n e index of m e a s u r e m e n t against a n o t h e r has long been debated. T h u s , in the case of the relative U . S . - S o v i e t strategic n u c l e a r balance, does o n e m e a s u r e equivalent

megatonnage,

ballistic missiles, ballistic missile warheads, throwweight, delivery systems, postattack surviving delivery vehicles, post-exchange surviving warheads, arriving warheads, prompt-hard-target-kill capabilities, or what? Partly as a c o n s e q u e n c e of strategic arms control, these issues of what to m e a s u r e resulted in a most a c r i m o n i o u s debate on the n a t u r e of the Soviet threat t h r o u g h o u t the 1970s a n d 1980s. 2 5 H e n c e , m e a s u r i n g capabilities does not necessarily provide a m o r e exact or accurate threat assessment t h a n w h e n relying o n evaluations of the adversary's intentions. However, even if capabilities could be measured in a n exact a n d agreed-upon fashion, it is not at all clear that these m e a s u r e m e n t s can reasonably substitute for threat assessments based on estimating intentions. T h i s is so, because an agreed database does not necessarily provide a basis for agreeing o n the data's implications. For example, while there is n o

25

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disagreement about the data involved in the agreement to eliminate intermediate and shorter-range nuclear forces, the implications that flowed from their elimination were subject to diverse interpretation. T h u s , the elimination of I N F from Europe (a data point all can presumably agree upon) led General Bernard Rogers to argue that it would weaken deterrence because it removed a vital escalatory option. At the same time, Paul Nitze argued that an I N F agreement would enhance deterrence because with the removal of Soviet I N F , long-range aircraft could provide the necessary options for escalation. 2 6 Similarly, the debate over the "window of vulnerability" in the late 1970s and early 1980s did not so much revolve around disagreements about either Soviet or U . S . capabilities, but rather concerned the implications of these relative capabilities. T h u s , some, like Nitze, argued that a theoretical Soviet capability to destroy most (if not all) U . S .

I C B M s , non-alert bombers, and submarines in port would

provide the Soviet Union with an incentive for nuclear blackmail. Yet others, including the Commission on Strategic Forces established by President Reagan in 1983, disagreed, arguing instead that with sufficient nuclear forces remaining even after a Soviet first strike, deterrence would be assured. 2 7 T h e reason people disagreed about the implications of even agreedupon Soviet capabilities is because these disagreements centered inherently around estimates of Soviet intentions. W h i l e the language of discourse might have been Soviet military capabilities, the topic of discourse concerned Soviet intentions. 2 8 Viewed in this way, one may solve a puzzle once posed by Robert Jervis, namely why it was that "those who think that the Russians are cautious judge American weapons as m u c h more effective than those who see the Soviet Union as aggressive. " 2 9 T h e puzzle is resolved once it is clear that the disagreement was not about U . S . weapons or their capacity to deter the Soviet Union, but about Soviet intentions. It is true that measuring Soviet intentions has b e e n — a t least from the point of view of strategic t h e o r y — a n inexact art form. Yet, this is precisely the point: to determine the nature of the Soviet threat in order to assess the requirements of extended deterrence, subjective beliefs about Soviet intentions, not seemingly objective facts about Soviet capabilities, have been important. This is not to say that threat assessments should not take account of what an adversary can do, for one's own force requirements are indeed partly related to the adversary's capabilities. It is to say, however, that in the absence of a corresponding assessment of the adversary's intentions, a focus solely on capabilities is quite meaningless. 3 0

R e q u i r e m e n t s of E x t e n d e d D e t e r r e n c e If it is accepted that estimates o f the adversary's intentions are an important variable for assessing the threat, then the nature o f these intentions and the m a n n e r in which o n e estimates them b e c o m e critical issues. In general, assessments o f an adversary's intentions will tend to focus on the internal characteristics o f its society, including the nature o f its political regime, its dominant culture, and the values and beliefs o f its decision makers. It is these characteristics that will be seen as determining the state's basic external aims. 3 1 In this regard, Kissinger has argued that one can distinguish between two types o f m a j o r powers within an international system—status quo powers (which see the international order as legitimate and, h e n c e , intend to uphold the status quo) and revolutionary powers (which see the international order as illegitimate and, h e n c e , intend to overthrow the status q u o ) . 3 2 An alternative way in which the intentions o f states have been classified is according to their attitude toward the struggle for power. T h u s , Hans Morgenthau defined politics a m o n g nations as the struggle for power a m o n g status quo states that intend to maintain their power, imperialist states that intend to increase their power, and those states that pursue a policy o f prestige with the intent to demonstrate their power. 3 3 Robert Jervis, however, has pointed out that in defining a state's intentions solely in terms of its basic aims, the possible constraints on achieving these aims are not taken into a c c o u n t . 3 4 W h i l e it is important to estimate what a state's "utopian intentions" a r e — t h a t is, what a state intends to do in the absence o f any constraints on the ability to achieve that which it intends—-we are more concerned with the intentions o f a state, given the constraints it faces. After all, it is the mark of great powers to pursue what Arnold Wolfers called " m i l i e u goals" (i.e., to shape the international environment in conformity with one's interests). 3 5 In the absence o f constraints every great power would thus shape the international environm e n t in a m a n n e r consistent with its own interests. A state's intentions must therefore be defined not only in terms o f the abstract goals that it pursues, but also in terms o f the costs and risks involved in pursuing those goals. Jervis accordingly defines a state's "basic intentions" in terms o f both the costs it is willing to bear to change the status quo and the costs it is willing to pay to defend its present position. 3 6 F o r the purpose o f determining N A T O ' s requirements o f extended deterrence during the 1970s and 1980s, we may assume that the costs the Soviet U n i o n was willing to bear to defend its position were extremely high. Indeed, with few exceptions, one may assume this to be true o f all

Nature

of Flexible

Response

states. 37 As such, the key to determining the Soviet Union's basic intentions at that time was one's estimate of the costs Moscow would be willing to pay in order to change the status quo. And here there were at least two basic views. 38 On the one hand, there was the "minimalist" perspective which believed that the costs the Soviet Union would be willing to bear to change the status quo were relatively small. As a result, they viewed the Soviet Union as a risk-averse power and therefore believed that the threat to NATO was relatively low. T h e requirements for deterrence were consequently modest. On the other hand, there was the "maximalist" perspective which believed that the costs the Soviet Union would be willing to bear to alter the status quo were relatively great. Maximalists consequently viewed the Soviet Union as a risk-prone power and thus believed that the threat to NATO was relatively high. They therefore favored a robust extended-deterrence posture. 39 Different estimates of the nature of the Soviet Union thus clearly led to diverse assessments of the requirements of extended deterrence. As Robert Tucker has argued, "what is ultimately at issue in the persisting debate over nuclear weapons and strategy are not technical considerations but varying judgments about the character and aspirations of the Soviet regime." 4 0 These differences in judgment derived from evaluating the internal nature of the Soviet state and society. Unlike the level of the international system, however, focusing at the level of the state means that there are no objective standards by which to measure basic intentions. Although one might wish to adopt the Kantian notion that democratic states are peaceful whereas authoritarian states are not, doing so does not give one any insight about why there was disagreement about the basic intentions of an authoritarian state like the Soviet Union. Moreover, if the last forty-odd years are anything to go by, then it is clear that there have been many disagreements about the intentions of the Soviet Union. Whatever one's particular categorization or label, however, it is necessary to recall that these different perceptions of the nature of the Soviet Union were both held quite strongly and argued quite persuasively without either one being necessarily incorrect. Recognizing the fact that these beliefs were held strongly is nevertheless important, for my argument is that these differences of opinion account in part for the disagreements that existed within the Alliance about the requirements of extended deterrence. T h e balance of the disagreement rested on differences over how to deter the Soviet Union, which was decisively influenced by one's estimate of the likelihood of nuclear escalation.

R e q u i r e m e n t s of E x t e n d e d

Deterrence

E S T I M A T I N G THE PROBABILITY OF NUCLEAR ESCALATION While the nature of the threat to be deterred is a necessary condition for determining the requirements of extended deterrence, it is not a sufficient condition. In addition, one must make a judgment concerning how the adversary is to be deterred. In an age where nuclear weapons are widely deployed by both adversaries and in one where the N A T O alliance explicitly recognizes the possibility of deliberate escalation, including the first use of nuclear weapons, the manner in which one chooses to escalate to the use of nuclear weapons becomes an important factor in determining how to deter the Soviet Union. Views of the process of nuclear escalation in case of war (including whether the process itself is subject to control) will, in turn, be crucial to determining when, how, and with what to escalate. As such, estimating the probability of nuclear escalation is an important determinant of the requirements of extended deterrence and, hence, of one's particular interpretation of Flexible Response. T h e process of escalation involves two aspects—the origin of escalation (i.e., the reason why it happens) and the dynamics of the process itself (i.e., its evolution once escalation has begun). These two aspects, in turn, determine whether escalation can be controlled. It follows that as views diverge concerning either or both parts of the escalation process, so will views differ on the likelihood of escalation. In this respect, Richard Smoke has argued that people have either a phenomenal image of escalation or an actor image. 4 1 T h e phenomenal image of escalation sees the process as the product of mutual hostility inherent in war. Escalation is the result of a clash of force and willpower that occurs "naturally" in war. Indeed, escalation is, in this view, the essence of war. The dynamics of the process are accordingly viewed in terms of its automaticity. As such, the prospects of controlling escalation are minimal for it is not necessarily subject to the specific decisions of any of the actors engaged in war. The actor image of escalation, on the other hand, sees the process as the product of an intentional decision. Escalation in this image occurs because an actor consciously decides to expand the conflict beyond the confines or limits adhered to up to that point. Escalation is therefore a neutral possibility; it happens only because someone wants it to happen. T h e dynamics of the process are accordingly viewed in terms of a series of consecutive decisions by each opponent to escalate the conflict further. If the escalation process proceeds, then it will do so in an action-reaction

30

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manner. Hence, the key to the origin and dynamics of the process of escalation in the actor image is that it is willful, intentional, and deliberate. Because escalation is in this view a function of intentional decisions on the part of each actor, the process itself is subject to control. At a fundamental level, then, the key difference between the two images is, according to Smoke, that in "the phenomenal model, escalation is something that happens,

in which the participants are caught up.

In the actor model, escalation is something that some government unilaterally does."42

This typology of the escalation process is useful in that it

encompasses most, if not all, views on escalation. The dominant notion of controlled and deliberate escalation, be it for denial or for bargaining purposes, that characterizes much of strategic theorizing, is clearly derived from an actor image of the process. Thus, one view of NATO strategy would hold that, in the event of an incipient conventional defeat, NATO would deliberately escalate to the nuclear level in order to deny the Warsaw Pact its conventional advantage. Conversely, the notion of the inherent uncontrollability of nuclear war is clearly derived from a phenomenal image of the process. Thus, another view of NATO strategy would hold that the prospect of uncontrollable escalation to mutual nuclear destruction is a sufficient deterrent even to a conventional attack. Neither view can be proven correct or false and both are consequently largely subjective. However, both views have been held by a wide variety of people and the intellectual justification for each have been well grounded.

The Phenomenal Image of Escalation Perhaps the most prominent analysis of the phenomenal image of escalation was provided by Carl von Clausewitz in On War. 4 3 In his discussion of the essence of war, Clausewitz set forth the inherent dynamic that leads opponents to drive to the extremes of violence. In its ideal sense, war is a "dialectic of hostility" that invariably leads to absolute or total levels of violence. 4 4 This dialectic proceeds, according to Clausewitz, at three levels. First, war is violence and the application of force is logically unlimited. The reciprocity of the violent interaction among two opponents logically leads to violent extremes: "war is an act of force, and there is no logical limit to the application of that force. Each side, therefore, compels its opponent to follow suit; a reciprocal action is started which must lead, in theory, to extremes." Second, war must aim at the destruction of the enemy, for as long as

R e q u i r e m e n t s of Extended D e t e r r e n c e the enemy is not destroyed, his will to resist will impede the attainment o f the objective: " T h e ultimate aim o f waging war must be taken as applying to both sides. O n c e again, there is interaction. S o long as I have not overthrown my opponent I a m bound to fear h e may overthrow me. T h u s I a m not in control: he dictates to m e as m u c h as I dictate to h i m . " T h i s again leads to extremes. Lastly, to overcome one's e n e m y , Clausewitz argued, one must be superior to " h i s power o f resistance, which can be expressed as the product o f two inseparable factors, viz.

the total means at his disposal and the

strength o f his will. T h e extent o f the means at his disposal is a m a t t e r — though not e x c l u s i v e l y — o f figures and should be measurable. B u t the strength o f his will is m u c h less easy to determine and can only be gauged approximately by the strength o f the motive animating i t . " Having estimated his power o f resistance one can adjust one's own efforts accordingly. " B u t the e n e m y will do the same; competition will again result and, in pure theory, it must again force you both to e x t r e m e s . " 4 5 T h e essence o f war is therefore absolute violence and escalation to this level is thus inherent in the nature o f war. T o be sure, unlike some o f his later G e r m a n followers, Clausewitz was fully conscious that the reality

of

war would not lead to the extremes o f violence. Indeed, limiting factors on war include foremost the political context within which war takes place. T h e military character o f war is thus a function o f the political objective that war is to serve. T o the extent that the latter is limited, so is the level o f violence. As Clausewitz argued, " t h e more modest your own political a i m , the less importance you attach to it and the less reluctantly you will abandon it if you m u s t . " 4 6 In addition, other factors also contribute to moderating the extreme tendencies o f war, including that war consists o f a succession o f decisions rather than o f a single act, the military or psychological weakness o f either side, and, perhaps most important, the presence in war o f what Clausewitz termed " f r i c t i o n " — t h e inherent tendency for things to go wrong in war. Nevertheless, in a phenomenological sense at least, escalation was viewed by Clausewitz as the very essence o f war. It was, in this sense, a Ding

an Sich,

the logical result o f the

interaction between two opponents. T h a t war can b e limited by the political character o f the objective does m e a n , however, that escalation need not lead to the extremes o f violence. As long as Clausewitz's famous aphorism stands, that "war is nothing but the continuation o f policy by other m e a n s , " escalation o f the military character o f war beyond what is called for by its political objectives should

31

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not occur. If it does, it must reflect an escalation in the political objectives to which military forces are put. Indeed, the tendency for the political objectives in the course of war to change is strong, if only because the costs endured to serve a particular objective might have to be emotionally justified in terms of more substantial political objectives than those for which the war was initially started. 47 In this sense too, then, escalation (be it of the political or the military character of war or both) is seen as inherent in the nature of war itself. The dominant image of escalation therefore remains, in this view, a phenomenal one. The origin of escalation in this phenomenal view is thus to be found in war itself. As long as war continues, the pressure for further escalation will always exist. Hence, the dynamics of escalation in the phenomenal image must be seen in terms of this inexorable pressure for more and more violence. Smoke refers to this dynamic as "cyclical-sequence escalation." 4 8 The escalation envisaged here is an interactive one: the first escalatory step, together with the opponent's response, creates a new situation that in itself is conducive to further escalation. In the words of Smoke, the "essence of this image of escalation is that the action-reaction phenomenon interactively creates situations which cannot be fully calculated before embarking on the process, and which typically will involve unexpected new pressures (or unexpectedly strong pressures) for further escalation." 4 9 The key, again, in this view of escalation is its dialectical nature (i.e., both its origin and its dynamics result not from anyone's particular decision, but from the interaction of two opposing forces). As a result of such a view of the escalation process, its control becomes problematical, if not impossible. Escalation cannot be controlled by one actor's deliberate decision; rather, the key to halting it lies in the need to control the interaction

of two opponents. T o return to Clausewitz, con-

trolling escalation requires control both of the military character of war and its guiding political objective. The difficulty lies in the fact that the political objective changes because of the violent interaction between the two adversaries. Controlling the expansion of political objectives is thus problematical so long as the war continues. In fact, one might get caught in a vicious circle. Because escalation is inherent in war, controlling escalation requires war termination. But because wars are fought to attain certain objectives, war termination is possible only once political objectives have been attained. As long as the objectives have not been attained, the war will continue and this creates further pressures for escalation. With escalation, the political objectives are likely to expand further to

R e q u i r e m e n t s of E x t e n d e d D e t e r r e n c e justify the sacrifices accompanying the increase in violence, making it less likely that war will be terminated, and so on. Because escalation is caught up within this vicious circle, its control is very difficult. Although this analysis o f the origins and dynamics o f escalation as viewed from the p h e n o m e n a l image has relied primarily on the theoretical contributions o f Clausewitz, the p h e n o m e n a l image is not solely confined to Clausewitzian analyses. In m u c h o f the popular writings about nuclear war, the p h e n o m e n a l image o f escalation predominates; it is assumed that o n c e the nuclear threshold is crossed, there can be no turning b a c k . 5 0 As Hugh B e a c h described this view, the " m e t a p h o r is that o f a moving staircase: o n c e place a foot upon the lowest tread and there is no running back, n o emergency stop button; one is carried willy-nilly to the t o p . " 5 1 M o r e generally, there are those strategic analysts who point to the possibility o f inadvertent escalation, by which is meant that the c o m m a n d , control, c o m m u n i c a t i o n , and intelligence capabilities o f N A T O and the Warsaw Pact are incapable o f containing a large-scale nuclear war. 5 2 T h e true "fog o f war" is the technical inability to contain large-scale military operations in an environment that is necessarily affected by the psychological and physical consequences o f nuclear detonations. T h e disruptions that result from nuclear (or even extensive conventional) warfare thus makes control o f the military battle exceedingly difficult. H e n c e , not only does the interaction o f two opponents create uncertainties concerning the consequences o f various actions, but the use o f nuclear weapons, even if confined to o n e side, may further disrupt each side's ability to control the expansion o f violence. In short, those who hold a p h e n o m e n a l image o f escalation are likely to believe that the probability o f escalation is high and its control nigh impossible.

The Actor Image of Escalation In the actor image o f escalation, the process is a function primarily o f the behavior o f the participants in war and not, as in the p h e n o m e n a l image, a product o f the interaction between t h e m . T h e probability o f escalation is therefore directly related to the behavior o f the actors. As Bernard Brodie put it, " [ e s t i m a t i n g probabilities o f escalation is essentially an exercise in predicting the behavior o f those leaders (as well as our own) under various kinds o f crisis situations." 5 3 T h e origin o f escalation can therefore be found in the deliberate decision o f one actor to escalate beyond those limits in the conflict that were previously observed by both sides.

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Nature

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A focus on the intentional aspect of the origins of escalation leads quite naturally to a view of the dynamics of escalation as a process where an action is met by a reaction from the other side. Smoke refers to this dynamic as "reciprocal escalation" (i.e., one side's action leads to a proportional response by the other side). 54 T h e dominant metaphor for this dynamic is the "escalation ladder," first popularized by Herman Kahn. 5 5 As one side decides to move up one rung on the escalation ladder, the other side responds by moving up to the same rung. T h e ladder analogy underscores not only the action-reaction or reciprocal nature of the image, but also the essential stability of the escalation process. That is to say, once both sides have escalated to a higher rung on the ladder, the probability that they will escalate still further is independent of the earlier probability that they would escalate to this initial point in the first place. As such, each escalation is self-contained and prior events have no influence on the likelihood of what will happen next. Indeed, this is how Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter have characterized the process: "there are down-escalators as well as up-escalators, and there are landings between escalators where one can decide to get off or to get on, to go up or down, or to stay there, or to take the stairs." 5 6 T h e image of escalation represented here is one where it is the actor who decides what will happen next. Those who hold an actor image of escalation, however, will not necessarily deny the difficulty of controlling escalation, for they, like those who possess a phenomenal image, realize that the process of escalation involves two actors. Yet, because the focus is on deliberate decisions by the actors to escalate, de-escalate, or match the escalation, the idea of controlling escalation only involves deliberate decisions on the part of one or other of the adversaries. T h e key to escalation control is thus to influence the decision of the other actor. In this respect, as Brodie has argued, escalation control is not all that different from deterrence: " T h e control of escalation is an exercise in deterrence. W e try first and foremost to deter the opponent from doing that which will oblige us to threaten or resort to any use of arms; if he nevertheless persists and a conflict starts, we try to deter him from enlarging it, or even from continuing it. Deterrence, at any level, thus naturally means inducing the enemy to confine his military actions to levels far below those delimited by his capabilities." 5 7 By couching escalation control in terms of deterrence, Brodie makes clear that the key to both is influencing the adversary's decisions. There are essentially two ways through

R e q u i r e m e n t s of E x t e n d e d D e t e r r e n c e which one may influence such decisions: through defeat and through fear. T h e latter relies on the manipulation of inherent risks of escalation and the former on a military capability that denies the adversary from achieving his presumed objectives. O n e way to control escalation is by denying the adversary the achievement of his objectives. If the opponent can achieve his objectives at a lower level of violence (say by using conventional forces), engaging in escalation to a level where one's own forces dominate will enable one to deny the adversary from achieving his objectives. This is the notion of "escalation d o m i n a n c e , " which has been defined as "the ability of one side in a deterrence relationship to expand the scope of conflict to a level at which the other side could offer no proportional response and thereby would be forced either to escalate further (if possible) or capitulate." 5 8 Asymmetry at any one level of the escalation ladder thus can be used to maintain a dominant position. 5 9 Even if superiority is not in and of itself sufficient to deny the adversary from achieving his objectives, possessing superior forces at any one level still implies that the dominant side will be more willing to escalate than the weaker side. Thus, in referring to this superiority, Brodie argued that "it interposes a significant and obvious differential between the opponents in the military reasonableness of their being willing to take any of the successive steps in the escalatory proc e s s . " 6 0 T h e most preferable form of escalation dominance occurs, however, when one side dominates the escalation ladder at each successive rung up to and including the highest rung. If this is the case, one can threaten escalation as a way to control it because the other side has no choice but to desist. Yet one need not dominate all rungs, or even any, of the escalation ladder to engage in threats of or actual steps toward escalation in order to induce its control. O n e might instead threaten to escalate the conflict to that level at which the costs of proceeding are outweighed by any potential gains that one might achieve by continuing the conflict at that higher level of violence. 6 1 T h e escalation threatened—even if this were to imply intolerable costs for oneself if actually implemented—can still be a credible form of escalation control, for the potential costs involved to the other side might outweigh any benefits it seeks to obtain. T h e key to the success of such escalation control is that the level of destruction threatened be sufficiently severe so as to influence the cost-benefit calculus of the opponent. Because of their inherently destructive nature, nuclear weapons are unique instruments for threatening escalation in the hope of control-

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ling it. The fear engendered by nuclear use, or the threat thereof, can thus contribute to escalation control. No one has grappled more thoughtfully with this issue than Thomas Schelling. According to Schelling, escalation, including its control, can be seen as "the manipulation of risk." 6 2 The risk, in this instance, refers to the destruction resulting from nuclear war. T o engage in manipulation of risk is to induce fear of the consequences of escalation for the purpose of controlling it. Hence, an actor may wish to engage in the escalation of a conflict in the hope that the inherent risk of further escalation, including in the nuclear age to total and mutual destruction, may lead the other side to desist from continuing the war. Thus Schelling, arguing in opposition to the denial function of escalation, points out that "the purpose of introducing nuclears in a tactical war that we would otherwise lose is not just, or mainly, to redress the balance on the battlefield. It is to make the war too painful to continue." 6 3 If deliberate escalation of a conflict increases the risk that general war might result, then it is the fear that this risk produces that might lead the other actor to call a halt to the conflict itself. Exploiting this fear thus becomes a powerful tool for escalation control. The paradoxical truth is that the more one fears nuclear use and the escalation that might result from such use, the more likely it is that actual use is a powerful incentive to halt the conflict then and there. This is what Kissinger had in mind when he argued: "However paradoxical it may seem, the danger of escalation is one of the chief reasons why a strategy of limited war contributes to deterrence and also why, if deterrence fails, there is a chance of keeping a conflict limited. A strategy of limited war adds to deterrence for the very reason usually invoked against it. The danger that a limited war may expand after all works both ways." 6 4 In the same vein, Brodie, who viewed a tactical nuclear weapon, if used, as "a de-escalating device," argued that "a weapon which is feared and abhorred is so much less likely to be used automatically

in response to any kind of signal, including even the en-

emy's use of i t . " 6 5 The manipulation of risk through deliberate nuclear escalation thus seeks to influence the opponent's calculus of the costs and benefits of continuing the war in the face of possible total destruction. It is through the ensuing bargaining process that escalation is hopefully controlled. What is important here is the assumption that escalation can be controlled, for without this assumption, engaging in an escalatory action that risks suicide would be truly absurd. The assumption that escalation can

Requirements of Extended Deterrence be controlled is the result of the belief that escalation is a function of deliberate and intentional decisions on the part of the actors involved, for one engages in the bargaining process of the manipulation of risk to influence the opponent's decisions in order that further escalation might be avoided. This is made abundantly clear by Brodie: "we can and no doubt will threaten . . . some move or action which, so long as it spells violence, could escalate. We have to leave to the opponent in his next move the choice of making the situation more dangerous or less so, though we can of course massively influence the choice he will make." 6 6 The Control of Escalation From the above it should be clear that those who hold a phenomenal image of escalation will be much less confident that the process can be controlled than those who hold an actor image. The former view the escalation process as inherent in war and thus as invariably more difficult to control. In the actor image, the one variable that ensures escalation control is the opponent's decision to act or react and this should be far easier to influence than the interaction of two opponents. Because views of the control of escalation and the probability of escalation are interrelated, views of the former will determine views on the latter. As a general principle, we can now say that the probability of nuclear escalation will be deemed to be relatively high by those having a phenomenal image of escalation, while it will be deemed to be relatively lower by those having an actor image of escalation. While the distinction between the two views of escalation is analytically useful, the differentiation should not be taken to imply that the two views are mutually exclusive. In fact, most, if not all, people hold both views at the same time, the critical difference among them being the point at which they estimate that escalation can no longer be controlled because the process takes on a phenomenal character. Thus, since war does not occur spontaneously, its origin can be traced to a deliberate action undertaken by one side. We may all agree that such an action conforms to the actor image of escalation. However, there is likely to be disagreement about the point at which the process becomes uncontrollable. Some believe that any military confrontation between nuclear powers, even if started deliberately and confined to nonnuclear means, will invariably escalate to all-out nuclear war. 67 Others believe that this would be the inevitable outcome of any decision to use nuclear weapons. 68 Yet others

37

38

Nature

of Flexible

Response

assume that "there will be very powerful incentives on both sides to restrain the destructiveness of the use of nuclear weapons and to come as rapidly as possible to the termination of not only the war but also the causes of war." 6 9 Finally, there are those who believe that even after a large-scale nuclear use of nuclear weapons, including even of strategic forces, escalation can still be controlled and military and political benefits would still be achievable. 70 As will be argued in chapter 2, different views concerning the point at which escalation is likely to become uncontrollable have a direct influence on how one seeks to deter an opponent, including what risks one is willing to take with respect to threatening and/ or using nuclear weapons in case deterrence fails.

Conclusions I have argued that the existence of diverging assessments of extended deterrence accounts for the differences within NATO over strategy in general and Flexible Response in particular. I argued that assessments of the requirements of extended deterrence will be determined by estimates of the threat and of the probability of escalation. Both these estimates are subjective, with those of the threat being determined in accordance with views of the nature of the Soviet Union and those of the likelihood of escalation being determined by assumptions about the escalation process. Because of their subjective nature, specific estimates are neither true nor false, although some may be more plausible than others and are therefore accepted by a greater number of people. It follows that assessments of the requirements of extended deterrence will tend to diverge as a result. These differing assessments, however, should not be taken as representing failures of strategic understanding or as reflecting misguided assumptions of the uninformed, as has sometimes been the ease. 71 Rather, both analysis and policy formation should be based on the acceptance of existing differences. Having established the reasons for the prevailing disagreements about the requirements of extended deterrence and, hence, of Flexible Response, it is necessary next to analyze how these disagreements were manifested within NATO. In the following chapter, I develop a framework for representing these differences. This takes the form of a two-bytwo matrix depicting four extended-deterrence strategies that can logically be derived from the different perspectives of the threat and/or the proba-

R e q u i r e m e n t s of Extended D e t e r r e n c e bility of nuclear escalation. I argue that each of these four strategies is fully consistent with the strategic concept of Flexible Response and that their coexistence within NATO at one and the same time accounted for the large degree of confusion and disagreement about NATO's strategic requirements.

39

2 FLEXIBLE RESPONSE — A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSIS

T h e adoption of the strategic concept of Flexible Response in December 1967 ended a long-standing debate on whether N A T O should adopt a strategy that emphasized a conventional response to conventional attack or whether it should rely primarily on a nuclear response. The former was clearly the preferred strategy of the United States, whereas the latter found its most ardent supporters in France and West Germany. 1 In the end, N A T O (with the exception of Paris, which had left the integrated military command) decided that it would do neither, or rather that it would do both. T h e resultant compromise among these divergent strategic preferences, however, failed to resolve two fundamental issues: (1) the point at which N A T O would decide to move from a conventional to a nuclear response and (2) the actions it would take once that point had been reached. The essence of NATO's disagreement centered around these two fundamental issues. By analyzing the reasons for the existence of diverging assessments of the requirements of extended deterrence which encompass both these issues, the preceding chapter provided a general explanation why this was so. In this chapter, a framework for analyzing these differences is further developed. My specific aim is to examine how these differences were manifested in terms of competing extended-deterrence strategies. The differences in estimating the nature of threat and the probability of nuclear escalation that were explored in chapter 1 are perhaps most

F r a m e w o r k for A n a l y s i s FIGURE 1

Extended-Deterrence Strategies Within the Strategic Concept of Flexible Response Probability of attack (Nature of Soviet Union)

HIGH

(Uncontrollable)

LOW

HIGH

(Risk-averse)

(Risk-prone)

PURE

CONVENTIONAL

DETERRENCE

DETERRENCE

ESCALATORY

WARFIGHTING

DETERRENCE

DETERRENCE

Probability of Escalation if Nuclear Weapons Used (Escalation Control)

LOW

(Controllable)

accurately represented as a continuum. For analytical purposes, however, it is more useful to reduce these differences to two dichotomies—i.e., the Soviet threat is either high or low and nuclear escalation is either likely or it is not. T h e interaction among the two determinants produces what might be called an "extended-deterrence matrix" with four possible strategies (see figure 1). The horizontal axis of the matrix represents perceptions of the threat, which are a function of whether one views the Soviet Union as a risk-averse or as a risk-prone power. T h e vertical axis depicts the probability of nuclear escalation, estimates of which are related to one's view of the possibility of escalation control. The interaction of the two estimates produces four boxes, each of which represents a different extended-deterrence strategy: • Pure deterrence: The probability of attack is perceived as low and the probability of escalation as high. T h e strategy emphasizes the

41

Nature of Flexible

Response

likely catastrophe that will result if an attack should occur. Because the threat is believed to be low, its acceptance of the inherent risk of total destruction should deterrence fail is deemed to be tolerable. • Conventional deterrence: Both the probability of attack and the probability of escalation are believed to be high. The emphasis of the strategy is therefore on conventional defense in case of attack. Since the threat is assumed to be high, avoiding nuclear escalation becomes a key requirement of this strategy. • Escala tory deterrence: The assumption is that both the Soviet threat and the probability of escalation are low. Because an attack is assumed to be unlikely, relying on nuclear escalation to deter an attack is deemed tolerable, particularly since escalation can to some extent be controlled. • War fighting deterrence: The Soviet threat is assumed to be high and the probability of escalation is perceived to be low. Because an attack is seen as probable, attempting to defeat the opponent is deemed desirable. Defeat can be accomplished by way of using nuclear weapons, since escalation can be controlled. These four extended-deterrence strategies do not comprise the universe of possible strategic options for NATO. Many alternative strategies are left out, including conventional-only strategies, nuclear-emphasis strategies, nonprovocative defense strategies, and defense-dominance strategies. The reason for this omission is deliberate, however. The framework seeks to represent those extended-deterrence strategies that are compatible with the strategic concept of Flexible Response. It is the contention that these four strategies comprise all extended-deterrence strategies that at one time or another fell under the heading of Flexible Response and no more. My objective is to shed light on the twenty-year-old debate among NATO countries concerning the nature of Flexible Response. This requires elucidating why people interpret the same strategic concept in fundamentally different ways. The extended-deterrence matrix provides one such explanation. The four strategies can be outlined in more detail by examining prominent writings on Flexible Response, including different NATO governmental interpretations of the strategic concept. It should be clearly noted, however, that these writings are cited only to illustrate the differences among the four strategies and not as an attempt to categorize particular strategic analysts or NATO government positions. Such a categorization

Framework for Analysis

would in any case be difficult, since the actual preferences for a particular strategy will be influenced by factors other than perceptions of the threat and of escalation, including an assessment of the risks one is willing to run in adopting a particular strategy. Before examining these other factors that influence the choice of strategy, however, it is useful to describe the main features of, and the critical distinctions among, each of the four strategies. In so doing, particular attention is paid to how each strategy seeks to address the two issues facing N A T O posed at the outset of this chapter, viz., the point at which it would consider a nuclear response and the actions it would take once that point had been reached.

Pure Deterrence T h e key defining element of a pure-deterrence strategy is the denial of the existence of thresholds in war. T h e strategy denies the relevance and existence of any "firebreaks," particularly the one between conventional and nuclear war, and focuses solely on the most salient threshold of a l l — that between war and no war. The refusal to distinguish between the different types of war underscores the pure-deterrence character of this strategy. Whereas other strategies might consciously attempt to differentiate among levels of conflict and thus focus to some extent on the possibility of intrawar deterrence, the pure-deterrence strategy, by underlining the key distinction between war and no war, denies the differentiating character of war in an effort to deter all war. T h e opposition to thresholds in war implied by this strategy is, however, not only derived from a preference for pure deterrence. In addition, its advocates believe that an emphasis on thresholds is both impossible and undesirable. In an early scathing critique of the concept of thresholds, then West German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss termed these "conceptual aids for the precalculation of the inconceivable and the incalculable nature of the specific," 2 thus underscoring the arbitrary nature of differentiating types of war. The reason differentiation is believed to be impossible is derived from the assumption that escalation to general nuclear war is inevitable in a conflict between nuclear-armed adversaries. For example, West German President Richard von Weiszäcker expressed the view that it "makes little sense, in the East-West context, to develop game plans based on the difference between military operations that are geographically limited and those that are not so limited. There would be

Nature

of Flexible

Response

an escalation in either case. There is no really valid strategy of limited war between nuclear powers." 3 More generally, the pure-deterrence strategy is based on the belief that an undue emphasis on thresholds might encourage violence below that level rather than discourage war itself. T h u s Brodie, referring specifically to the notion of a firebreak between conventional and nuclear war, contended that one of its fallacies "is that the more confidence in the firebreak is built up, the less is each side restrained from committing larger and larger conventional forces within the limits of its capabilities. In other words, the effect is to stimulate escalation on the conventional side of the barrier." 4 U n d u e attention to the horrors of nuclear war may therefore detract from the need to concern oneself with avoiding all war. As Brodie argued, the entire idea of thresholds has so "focused men's minds on the dread consequences of using nuclear weapons tactically that the very act of aggression that might invoke these possibilities had been excessively deflated by comparison. " 5 It follows that if pauses and/or thresholds in war are seen as both impossible and undesirable, then the pure-deterrence strategy is likely to emphasize the continuity of possible responses, including nuclear responses, in case of war. In this interpretation of NATO's strategic concept, then, Flexible Response refers to the deliberate attempt to enhance the uncertainty of the nature of the response an adversary might face in case of attack. Dutch Defense Minister den T o o m argued this point in 1970: T h e deterrent effect is not a function of a planned response that the potential aggressor might know in advance; rather, the deployment of conventional and nuclear forces must present the potential aggressor with (1) the certainty that his aggression will be answered and (2) the uncertainty concerning the timing of, the place at, and the degree to which nuclear weapons will be used. This implies. . . that the presence of atomic weapons must always be felt and that the potential adversary must never entertain any thought of the possibility that the war could remain conventional and thus provide him with a free zone for the successful employment of his conventional forces. 6 Since this strategy assumes that deterrence of any war is best assured by accepting the invariable risk of escalation to general nuclear war, the strength of NATO's conventional forces should not be such as to leave the Soviet Union with any illusion that a conventional attack would not

Framework for Analysis escalate. As General Bernard Rogers argued, N A T O "should avoid having such strong conventional forces . . . that would delude ourselves and the Soviet Union into thinking that we might succeed conventionally without the threat of nuclear weapons." 7 Similarly, British Defense Minister Denis Healey argued in 1969 that since "the security of Western Europe rests as firmly as ever on the fact that N A T O presents the Soviet Union with unacceptable risks of escalation to strategic nuclear war, . . . it is far from clear that N A T O would be acting wisely in seeking to achieve security in Europe through the building of a Maginot Line of conventional forces." 8 T h e pure-deterrence strategy thus seeks to enhance the probability of nuclear use in case of attack by de-emphasizing NATO's capability to respond conventionally. As such, the strategy explicitly denies the existence of clear thresholds in war, thereby underlining the risk that any use of force may ultimately escalate to general nuclear war. Indeed, it is this denial of thresholds that, according to General Rogers, enables N A T O "to ensure that the Soviet Union remains aware that any level of military aggression carries with it the ultimate risk of nuclear devastation of its homeland. It is this uncertainty of response, which in the final analysis presents a risk, which, if credible, we can be reasonably sure the Soviets will find unacceptable." 9 Advocates of a pure-deterrence strategy are themselves willing to accept a similar risk because of their assumption that the probability of attack is very small. They are therefore willing to risk the very high costs that would result if their perception of Soviet intentions proved to be wrong. From the assumption that any level of aggression must inherently expose the adversary to the risk of his total destruction follows the imperative of integrating the conventional and nuclear forces in Europe with the strategic nuclear forces of the United States. As the West German "Gang of Four" maintained in 1982: "The tight and indissoluble coupling of conventional and nuclear weapons on the European continent with the strategic potential of the United States confronts the Soviet Union with the incalculable risk that any military conflict between the two Alliances could escalate to nuclear war." 1 0 In similar fashion, the West German Defense White Paper of 1975-76 emphasized the imperative of "gapless deterrence," the essence of which is "the final stage of escalation, viz. the threat to use strategic nuclear weapons." 1 1 T h e nuclear force structure itself can be viewed as underscoring the necessary conditions for uncontrollable escalation. Thus, the deployment

45

Nature of Flexible

Response

of large numbers of short-range nuclear forces may, because of their potential vulnerability to preemption and their deployment well forward, pose a use-them-or-lose-them dilemma and thus create escalatory pressures. Manfred Wörner, for example, maintained that "a Soviet planner must in all prudence assign a higher probability of potential use to weapons systems emplaced in the path of an invasion than to platforms remote from the battlefield. T o that extent, it could be argued that the very vulnerability of land-based systems enhances the credibility of their use and thus their deterrent value." 1 2 A relatively large T N F posture would be equally conducive to the central aim of the pure-deterrence strategy, if only because the inability to maintain positive command and control over the weapons might ensure that any conflict in Europe would, in fact, escalate. As Paul Bracken, for instance, argued, "In the event of a conventional war the prospect that all of these weapons can be kept under central firing authority is not certain, given the chaos of war and the complicated control regime involving multinational units, degraded command and control, and the psychological stresses on the individual members of the military. T h e chances of total central control erode further in the case of war that has already turned nuclear." 1 3 The prospect of a loss of control could therefore be viewed as a powerful deterrent in and of itself. As a strategy that relies on deterrence to avoid war, the pure-deterrence strategy is relatively unconcerned with the question of how nuclear weapons would be used if deterrence failed. T h e key to the strategy is to have nuclear weapons (particularly American nuclear weapons) deployed on the European continent in such a way that the risk of their use in case of any conflict would be significant. 14 As long as there is a large number of nuclear weapons present on the European continent and all are fully integrated into the conventional force structure, NATO's T N F posture can, as Bracken has argued, be viewed as "a mechanism for ensuring that a conflict would go nuclear, rather than for destroying enemy forces." 15 It is this "doomsday" aspect of the force posture that provides for credible deterrence. T h e central requirement of the pure-deterrence strategy in terms of nuclear employment is therefore to ensure that escalation to general nuclear war is inherent in the very use of nuclear weapons. In order to enhance the "seamless web" nature of deterrence, the likelihood that any nuclear use in Europe would escalate should add to the overall deterrence posture of the pure-deterrence strategy. The key here is the avoidance of

F r a m e w o r k for Analysis

nuclear sanctuaries, particularly of the Soviet Union and the United States. As Josef Joffe has argued, for "the sake of extended deterrence, the United States had to become absolutely vulnerable once it was no longer absolutely invulnerable." 1 6 Moreover, the manner in which theater nuclear weapons are to be employed is therefore guided by the need to act as a "trigger" of escalation rather than by the requirement to defeat enemy forces. In this sense, as Stanley Hoffmann has argued, T N F "can be seen as at least partly 'strategic'—and therefore a possible 'detonator' of the purely American central strategic forces—which constitutes the deterrent strength of N A T O . " 1 7 How, then, are nuclear weapons to be used to serve the purposes of the pure-deterrence "strategy? T h e logic of the strategy's tenets would lead to the following answer in regard to planning for the employment of T N F . First, nuclear weapons would have to be used early, thus underscoring that any conflict would necessarily lead to nuclear war. Second, their use should be relatively extensive in order to dissuade others from any thought of limiting nuclear war either in terms of total destruction or in terms of geographical impact. T o ensure that nuclear war would not be limited, a third requirement would be to use nuclear weapons in depth, thereby denying the aggressor any hope of remaining a sanctuary in a nuclear war. Finally, because the pure-deterrence strategy would seek to encourage nuclear escalation, nuclear-employment planning would stress the political rather than military impact of nuclear use. W h a t is important is the communication of the inherent risks of nuclear use to escalate to general nuclear war and not the military effect such use would engender in the battlefield situation on the ground. In its emphasis on rapid and uncontrollable escalation, the puredeterrence strategy thus seeks to couple Western Europe's security to that of the United States by extending to Europe the deterrent effect provided by the condition of U . S . — Soviet nuclear vulnerability. T h a t is to say, just as the Soviet Union would be deterred from attacking the United States because of the possibility of retaliation in kind, so, according to this view of how coupling can best be achieved, would it also be deterred from attacking Western Europe because of the likelihood that nuclear escalation would result in the same level of destruction. T h e high probability that a war in Europe would escalate thus couples the central strategic deterrent condition to Europe. Hence, from the perspective of a puredeterrence strategy, coupling is achieved by (1) ensuring the continued vulnerability of both the United States and the Soviet Union to nuclear

Nature

of Flexible

Response

destruction and (2) the absence of clear thresholds that could delay the escalatory dynamics of war. T o sum up, the pure-deterrence strategy denies the existence of thresholds in war and would leave the nature of NATO's response to any form of aggression uncertain. In relying on the uncertainty of response, extended deterrence is enhanced by invariably posing the risk of total destruction of the adversary's homeland. In posing a risk of all-out nuclear warfare even in response to a conventional attack, the pure-deterrence strategy favors the deployment of a range of nuclear forces (including short-range weapons in particular) that are to be tightly integrated so as to enforce a continuum not only of potential responses, but also of deterrence. Nuclear weapons would be used early and in relatively extensive fashion across the range of potential targets extending from the battlefield to those in. the Soviet Union. As a result, the very high likelihood of nuclear escalation in case of war assures that the mutual deterrence condition created by U.S. and Soviet vulnerability to nuclear destruction is coupled to Western Europe.

Conventional

Deterrence

T h e conventional-deterrence strategy distinguishes itself from the puredeterrence variant precisely on the key characteristic of the latter. Whereas the pure-deterrence strategy denies the relevance of thresholds in war, the conventional strategy explicitly focuses on such thresholds. Indeed, the whole concept of "firebreaks" was first popularized by advocates of this strategy within the McNamara Pentagon and the origins of the puredeterrence strategy can be traced to opposition voiced against this concept. Perhaps the clearest statement of the firebreak concept was put forward in 1963 by the then Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Analysis, Alain Enthoven: There is and will remain an important distinction, a "firebreak" if you like, between nuclear and non-nuclear war, a recognizable qualitative distinction that both combatants can recognize and agree upon, if they want to agree upon one. And, in the nuclear age, they will have every powerful incentive to agree upon this distinction and limitation, because if they do not, there does not appear to be another easily recognizable limitation on w e a p o n s — n o other obvious "firebreak"—all the way up to the destructive spectrum of large scale thermonuclear war. 1 8

F r a m e w o r k for Analysis

T h e concept of a firebreak, like the conventional-deterrence strategy from which it derives, is a function both of the belief that the threat is sufficiently high and of the view that nuclear escalation is likely. Thus, the entire notion of limiting war to the conventional realm is derived from a belief that control of escalation is difficult once nuclear weapons have been used. As McNamara put it in 1967, "it is impossible to predict with confidence the course of a limited nuclear war. The danger of escalation, once the 'firebreak' between nonnuclear and nuclear war has been crossed, and the damage, if escalation occurs, caution against relying on our ability to limit nuclear war." 1 9 Yet, unlike the pure-deterrence strategy, this belief in the uncontrollability of nuclear escalation is not exploited for deterrence purposes, since the assumptions concerning escalation are coupled to the belief that the chance of war is sufficiently high to warrant serious thought about its conduct. T h e assumption that the threat is relatively high is based on the acceptance of the stability-instability paradox discussed in the introduction. As was noted, the realization of this paradox led many strategists to think about the conduct of limited war. The entire notion of limited war, by definition, includes concepts such as the firebreak. And it is this realization that leads to an explicit recognition of thresholds in war and to a need to emphasize those thresholds as a deterrent to war. Thus, James Schlesinger argued in 1974 that "it is preferable to deter or repel limited threats by limited means. To do that requires a capability to place boundaries on conflicts and exercise some degree of control over the escalation of violence in the event that deterrence should fail." Placing boundaries on conflict and controlling escalation is, however, primarily the function of conventional forces, for it is they that "are best suited for these pur» 20

poses. T h e stability-instability paradox makes its influence felt in yet another way. To the extent that stability at the central strategic level is enforced by the superpowers' mutual vulnerability to nuclear retaliation, the probability of attack below that level is believed to have increased. This is what one might term the "balloon theory of war": if violence at one level is less likely because of mutual deterrence, then, like squeezing a balloon, violence at another level becomes more likely. As Brodie put it, those who hold this view are "assuming that the probability of some kind of war occurring has remained basically fixed . . . and thus if general war is now less likely, it must follow that limited war (including quite large-scale limited war) has become more so." 2 1

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Response

T h e balloon theory of war, combined with the view that nuclear escalation is likely, lies at the heart of the conventional-deterrence strategy. Perhaps the best exposition of how the two combine to produce the particular preference for the conventional strategy is a January 1969 draft memorandum to President Johnson by Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford. Clifford argued that the main reason for NATO's adoption of Flexible Response in December 1967 was that "the Soviets now have a major capability to strike back at U.S. and European cities. Thus, a threatened strategic nuclear attack on Soviet cities is no longer a credible deterrent to political pressure or limited military aggression in Europe." The deterrent effect of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) was similarly neutralized by Soviet deployment of these systems: "tactical nuclear weapons, when both sides have them, are not an adequate substitute for conventional forces. . . . [U]sing these weapons would kill millions of civilians whom we are trying to defend. It would also create enormous pressure for even more escalation to destroy the remaining delivery systems on both sides." The function of both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons is therefore to deter their use by the other side. As such, neither contributes much to the deterrence of conventional war, the primary deterrent of which must therefore be conventional forces. As Clifford put it, the strategy's "success depends upon having conventional military power roughly in balance with the Warsaw Pact." Only with such a balance could the "essence of the revised NATO strategy"—defined as avoiding "situations in which we would have to choose between using nuclear weapons and giving up territory or other crucial political objectives"—be fulfilled. 22 At first glance, it might appear that an emphasis on the conventionalnuclear firebreak like that put forward during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations implies a de-emphasis on coupling the United States and Europe through extended deterrence. Decoupling might indeed be the intended and logical outcome of the conventional-deterrence strategy. It was certainly perceived as such by many Europeans when McNamara first proposed it, a perception that was to be proven correct in the early 1980s when McNamara, among others, proposed that NATO formally adopt a no-first-use declaration and stated that nuclear weapons had no purpose except to deter their use by others. 23 However, the assumption that escalation cannot be controlled does provide a coupling mechanism, if only an existential one. As McGeorge Bundy has argued, the continued coupling of the U.S. and Europe resides in "two basic facts: the visible deployment of major American military

Framework for Analysis Europe, and the very evident risk that any large-scale engagement between Soviet and American forces would rapidly and uncontrollably become general, nuclear and disastrous." 24 Thus, the evident risk of escalation ensures that the stability of the strategic deterrence condition is still coupled to the situation in Europe. While both the pure- and the conventional-deterrence strategies recognize the existential nature of extended deterrence, the fundamental differences between the two is that whereas the former positively encourages the escalatory dynamic to enhance deterrence of an event it assumes is unlikely to materialize, the latter refuses to accept the risk of any war in Europe necessarily escalating to catastrophic proportions. The different emphases of these two strategies are reflected in their particular nuclear force-posture preferences. Whereas the pure-deterrence strategy favors a range of nuclear weapons, including forward-based, shortrange systems, the conventional strategy prefers to structure nuclear forces in such a way as to reduce the probability that a conflict limited to conventional means would in fact escalate. A limited number of nuclear weapons deployed in Western Europe is still necessary to ensure that existential deterrence is indeed extended to Western Europe and that coupling is consequently secured. The complete elimination of nuclear weapons from Europe would be inconsistent with coupling, for existential deterrence depends at least in part on the possibility of inadvertent nuclear escalation. As Heisenberg argues, "the existence of T N W makes the attacker less certain that his aggression will not lead to a general nuclear war in spite of his regionally limited intentions." 2 5 T h e preferred nuclear force posture of a conventional-deterrence strategy would therefore emphasize long-range systems for these would be most able to communicate the existential risk to the USSR. Such forces would need to be deployed in a survivable fashion so as to reduce incentives for preemption and be subject to positive control in order to minimize escalatory pressures. The force posture would therefore de-emphasize short-range, vulnerable, and uncontrollable weapons that would undermine these characteristics. 26 In order to ensure positive control over the weapons deployed in Europe, moreover, the creation of special nuclear units within the armed forces has been advocated so as to underline the separation between conventional and nuclear war. 27 T h e conventional-deterrence strategy, like the pure-deterrence strategy, places relatively little importance on issues of nuclear employment, in that it shares with the latter a belief that any use of nuclear weapons is

51

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Nature of Flexible

Response

likely to escalate to general nuclear war. Hence, the force-employment concept that will preoccupy conventional-deterrence advocates will focus on the use of conventional forces for direct defense. As a result, any nuclear employment should occur as late as possible—that is, only after all other possibilities for defeating the attack have clearly failed and only if the alternatives are clearly less acceptable. As Schlesinger argued, the "first use of theater nuclear forces, even in very limited ways, carries grave risks of escalation and should be considered only when the consequences of conventional defeat would be even more serious. " 2 8 O n c e confronted with the need nevertheless to use nuclear weapons, the preference would go to employment options that offer at least the theoretical possibility to limit escalation. O n e such possibility mentioned in this respect is the demonstration use of a single weapon to signal the adversary that the situation is becoming truly serious. For Alain E n thoven, such demonstration use is the only possible, even if not entirely convincing, first use of nuclear weapons that one might imagine: "In eight years of studying the problem, I never saw a convincing scenario in which such [first] use would make sense. But it is an uncertain world [and therefore] I believe we should have it [the option of demonstration u s e ] . " 2 9 In the event demonstration use does not end the conflict, the further use of nuclear weapons would be seen as merely another step toward the inevitable end of total destruction. There is therefore little, if any, indication on how proponents of the conventional strategy would use nuclear weapons beyond demonstration use. T h e need to control escalation would, however, imply that any employment would be (1) strictly limited in terms of the number of weapons used and (2) designed to hit military targets in order to minimize civilian damage while improving the prospects for a successful conventional defense. 3 0 A number of additional limits in employing nuclear weapons would also be observed within a conventional strategy, including avoiding targets located in the Soviet U n i o n , not striking Warsaw Pact nuclear forces, refraining from threatening Soviet c o m m a n d , control, and communication systems, and limiting the attendant collateral damage from any nuclear strikes. In sum, by insisting on the viability of thresholds, the conventional strategy seeks explicitly to de-emphasize the link between conventional and nuclear forces. Deterrence is enhanced by the prospect of a conventional defense capable of denying the adversary the achievement of his objectives. T h e conventional strategy therefore emphasizes a conventional response to attack in the hope that nuclear escalation can be avoided.

F r a m e w o r k for Analysis

Extended deterrence persists, however, by deploying some nuclear weapons in Europe to pose the existential risk that war could escalate to all-out nuclear war, thus coupling the stability of the mutual U . S . - Soviet deterrence relationship to Europe.

Escalatory Deterrence T h e principle distinguishing feature of the escalatory-deterrence strategy is its attempt to exploit the utility of limited war, including limited nuclear war, for the purpose of deterrence and, if necessary, escalation control. Like the conventional-deterrence strategy, it therefore recognizes the reality of thresholds in war, but it does not raise this reality to an orthodoxy that must be upheld. In this regard, the escalatory strategy rejects the notion of "raising the nuclear threshold," even if it might accept the desirability of reducing NATO's dependence on the early use of nuclear w e a p o n s . " Thus, the strategy recognizes the unique nature of nuclear weapons, particularly in terms of their destructiveness, but it sees that uniqueness as a factor contributing to deterrence rather than detracting from it. T h e escalatory strategy diverges from the conventional strategy, then, by rejecting the latter's total acceptance of the implications of the stability-instability paradox. Even if the higher levels of violence cannot be wholly relied upon to deter lower levels of violence because of the mutual vulnerability to nuclear retaliation, nuclear weapons still retain their deterrent value, particularly in that their actual or threatened use may raise the prospect of further escalation to general nuclear war. Although the escalatory-deterrence strategy relies on escalation to deter, it should not be confused with the pure-deterrence strategy, which similarly exploits the fear of escalation for such purposes. W h i l e both accept that the likelihood of deliberate Soviet aggression is very low, they differ in regard to their views about the threshold beyond which escalation becomes inevitable. T h e pure-deterrence strategy assumes that any war between nuclear powers is likely to escalate to general nuclear war, whereas the escalatory strategy is based on the assumption that such an escalation process is likely only after nuclear weapons have been used. Accordingly, whereas advocates of the former believe that it is improbable that nuclear escalation can ever be controlled, the latter believe that, at least in its initial stages, escalation is controllable. Indeed, the assumption of the escalatory strategy is that one can control escalation by being willing to engage in it. As Brodie maintained: "the best way, if not the only way, for

53

54

Nature

of Flexible

Response

us to avert not only defeat but unnecessary escalation is to demonstrate clearly that our readiness to take risks is no less than theirs. How can we do that except by using [nuclear] weapons—demonstratively, few rather than many, and in as controlled a manner as possible, but nevertheless rather more abruptly than the Russians seem to have bargained for in launching their aggression?" 32 From their acceptance of thresholds in war, the uniqueness of nuclear weapons, and the expectation that nuclear escalation can at least initially be controlled, advocates of the escalatory-deterrence strategy derive two propositions. First, the battlefield effect of the possible use of nuclear weapons is viewed as unimportant, for the sole purpose of engaging in nuclear use is to raise the risk of general war. As Schelling put it, "[l]imited and localized nuclear war is not . . . a 'tactical' war. However few the nuclears used, and however selectively they are used, their purpose should not be 'tactical' because their consequences will not be tactical." 3 3 The purpose is rather to signal one's political resolve to defend the stakes in question, even to the point of engaging in a suicidal nuclear war. 34 T h e key to nuclear use, according to Schelling, thus becomes a war of nerves: The resulting international relations often have the character of a competition in risk taking, characterized not so much by tests of force as by tests of nerve. Particularly in the relations between major adversaries—between East and West—issues are decided not by who can bring the most force to bear in a locality, or on a particular issue, but by who is eventually willing to bring more force to bear or able to make it appear that more is forthcoming. 35 It follows from this that the credibility of a deterrent threat need not be a function of its military effectiveness. Rather than threatening to deny the adversary his objectives, one might threaten to unleash a process of escalation the future control of which is uncertain. This is Schelling's "threat that leaves something to chance." 3 6 According to this argument, deterrence does not reside primarily in the credibility of the threat, but rather in the potential consequences of its implementation. T h e more frightful those consequences, the less certain one needs to be as to the threat's actual implementation or, indeed, the less "credible" the threat need be. Again, it is difficult to improve on Schelling's own formulation: [The idea] that a country cannot plausibly threaten to engage in a general war over anything but a mortal assault on itself unless it has

Framework for Analysis an appreciable capacity to blunt the other side's attack, seems to depend on the clean-cut notion that war results—or is expected to result—only from a deliberate yes-no decision. But if war tends to result from a process, a dynamic process in which both sides get more and more concerned not to be a slow second in case the war starts, it is not a "credible first strike" that one threatens but just plain war. 3 7 In this sense, nuclear weapons should be considered "primarily as political tools," as the former chairman of NATO's Military Committee, General Wolfgang Altenburg, put it. NATO's "intention, in threatening recourse to nuclear weapons, is to prove that an attack against the Alliance could lead to an escalation to an unacceptable l e v e l . " ' 8 In similar fashion, the West German White Paper of 1 9 7 5 - 7 6 stated that the "initial use of nuclear weapons is not intended so much to bring about a military decision as to achieve political effect. T h e intent is to persuade the attacker to reconsider his intentions, to desist his aggression, and to withdraw. At the same time, it will be impressed upon him that he risks still further escalation if he continues to attack. " 3 9 If the conduct of a limited nuclear war depends crucially on the balance of resolve, then a second proposition follows, namely that the balance of local military forces is relatively unimportant for determining how and why the conflict will be terminated. One side may still be able to achieve its objectives even if, by any military standard, its forces are insufficient to deny the other side its objectives by military means alone. T h e reason for this is that the cost threatened by the "weaker" side might be sufficiently large to outweigh any prospective military and/or political gains the other side hopes to achieve. As Jervis maintained, "a state confident of winning at a given level of violence may yet be deterred because it judges the cost of fighting at that level to be excessive. T h e other side of this coin is that even if the defense cannot succeed, the threat to defend can deter if the potential attacker thinks that the status-quo power is sufficiently strongly motivated to be willing to fight for what it knows will be a losing cause. " Jervis underscores this argument by pointing to the case of NATO: "the United States might deter a Soviet invasion of Western Europe by threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons even if the Russians believed that they could win such a war. T o gain control of Europe at the cost of having much of Eastern Europe and the Red Army destroyed might not be a good bargain." 4 0 T h e escalatory-deterrence strategy is therefore similar to the pure-

55

Nature

of Flexible

Response

deterrence strategy in that both rely on the fear of escalation to general war to deter attack on N A T O - E u r o p e . Yet, whereas the latter strategy assumes that such a fear is inherent in any East-West conflict, the escalatory strategy assumes that in order to enhance deterrence one should be prepared to threaten or actually engage in the use of nuclear weapons to communicate in an unambiguous fashion the dangers ahead. Because the prospect of general war exerts a deterrent influence at the central strategic level, the escalatory strategy seeks to promote deliberate escalation by threatening further escalation as a way of coupling that deterrent condition to the situation in Europe. T h e nuclear force-posture implications of the escalatory strategy are consequently modest. N A T O neither requires a balance of forces in relation to Warsaw Pact deployments, nor large numbers of weapons. Instead, it needs the capability for deliberate escalation and a sufficient n u m b e r of systems to render the prospect of further escalation credible (i.e., sufficiently likely to influence the perceptions of the other side about the likelihood of further escalation). Moreover, many advocates of the escalatory strategy believe that the threat of escalation is best c o m m u n i cated if the Soviet Union is directly exposed to the risk of nuclear war. This implies that long-range nuclear systems have a key role in implementing the strategy. T h e manner in which to employ nuclear weapons is guided by the escalatory strategy's central purpose of signaling resolve. In referring to nuclear weapons, Schelling thus argues that "the decision to introduce them, the way to use them, the targets to use them on, the scale on which to use them, the timing with which to use them, and the communications to accompany their use should not be determined . . . by how they affect the tactical course of the local war. M u c h more important is what they do to the expectations of general war." 4 1 From this it follows that nuclear use should occur early, or at least before the time that one might be forced to use them. For if one is forced to use nuclear weapons, the potential signaling effect of their use (i.e., that one is willing to risk general nuclear war) might be lost. T o accomplish the goal of signaling implies therefore "deliberate and restrained earlier use than might otherwise seem tactically warranted, in order to leave the Soviets under no illusion whether or not the engagement might become nuclear." 4 2 T h e key question then becomes how to use nuclear weapons for the purpose of signaling resolve. T h e military importance of the target is in this case less decisive than the effect its destruction would have on the

F r a m e w o r k for A n a l y s i s

opponent's expectations about the probability of escalation to general nuclear war. It is the latter, and not the course of the military conflict as such, that nuclear use in the escalatory strategy seeks to influence. As Schelling put it, the "difference between one weapon, a dozen, a hundred, or a thousand is not in the number of targets destroyed but in the Soviet (and American) perception of risks, intent, precedent, and implied 'proposal' for the conduct or termination of war." For example, "a target near or inside the USSR . . . is important because it is near or inside the USSR, not because of its tactical contribution to the European battlefield."43 Whether the use of nuclear weapons would result in the termination of the conflict depends to a large extent on the effect their use would have on the risk calculations of Soviet leaders. To the extent that the "tradition of nonuse" is seen as strong by these leaders, then any use of nuclear weapons might influence the expectations of the adversary to a significant extent, including a willingness to terminate the conflict. This is the view of Edward Luttwak: "by far the most likely outcome is that a war would end very soon if any nuclear weapons, however small, were actually to be detonated by any side on any target. The shock effect upon leaders on both sides—but especially on the Soviet leaders who had started the war — a n d also the devastating psychological impact upon the forces in the field, would most likely arrest the conflict there and then." 4 4 Others believe, however, that it is only once the risks of nuclear use escalating to involve targets in the Soviet homeland is made abundantly clear, that Soviet leaders will believe that the potential costs of continuing the conflict outweigh its benefits. If this belief dominates (as it traditionally has in NATO circles), then initial use of nuclear weapons would be directed at targets deep into Warsaw Pact territory. 45 Indeed, according to General Bernard Rogers, first use might require striking targets in the Soviet Union itself: "If you are going to use nuclear weapons first, you sure as hell don't want to use them on your own soil. You want them to be on Soviet targets on their own soil. Our plan would be to use a relatively limited number of nuclear weapons on a few military targets on Soviet soil so she would understand that her soil wasn't any kind of sanctuary, and that the victims of her aggression wouldn't be the only ones to suffer the consequences." 4 6 Whatever the depth of initial use, any use of nuclear weapons must be clearly limited in order to provide an incentive to the other side to halt the conflict. Thus, as Peter Stratmann has argued, "it is the compelling

57

58

Nature

of Flexible

Response

consequence of strategic logic that in the course of deliberate nuclear escalation N A T O must keep possible first and follow-on strikes within limits perceivable for the adversary." 47 This is so, for if the Soviet Union believes that NATO's use of nuclear weapons means the inevitable escalation to general nuclear war, then it has every incentive to respond in kind or, indeed, to escalate further. In sum, the escalatory-deterrence strategy, in recognizing the reality of certain thresholds in war, seeks to deter by posing the threat of unacceptable damage through the potential of nuclear escalation. It thus extends the deterrent threat provided by mutual assured destruction to Europe by threatening to enlarge a conflict in Europe to general nuclear war. Moreover, the strategy does not so much seek to affect the military situation on the ground, as to affect the political and psychological calculations of the opponent. By using nuclear weapons early and by engaging in a deliberate escalation of the conflict, the strategy attempts constantly to remind the adversary that its continuation may, in the end, be suicidal.

War fighting Deterrence T h e primary principle of the warfighting-deterrence strategy is escalation dominance. T h e strategy recognizes the existence of thresholds in war, but does so not as "firebreaks" on conflict, but as rungs on a ladder of escalation where superior forces are the key to deterrence through denial. Because the strategy is derived from the belief that escalation can be controlled, the escalation ladder is conceived in terms of functionally independent rungs with each rung viewed as a self-contained level of violence. T h e probability of escalating from one rung to the next is therefore independent from the earlier probability that one would have escalated to the current rung. O n c e the escalation process is viewed in these terms, the key to an effective strategy is the ability to dominate the higher levels of violence with superior forces. Establishing dominance would enable one to deny the adversary the achievement of his objectives, the prior knowledge of which would act as a powerful deterrent. That is to say, an adversary faced with defeat at any one rung of the ladder has two options—he can escalate further or he can desist. If he is sure that further escalation would result in his defeat, he is likely to choose the latter. T h e key requirement of the warfighting strategy, then, is to convince the opponent that whatever he does, he will not be able to achieve his objectives. As Secretary of Defense

F r a m e w o r k for A n a l y s i s

Caspar Weinberger put it, "our strategy is to secure all U.S. and allied interests, and deny the aggressor any of his war aims. We would seek to terminate any war at the earliest practical time and restore peace on terms favorable to the United States that secure our aims and those of our allies." 4 8 Elsewhere Weinberger had defined "favorable" as meaning "that if war is forced upon us, we must win." 4 9 In order to ensure a favorable outcome of any conflict, the warfighting strategy relies on the ability to dominate the escalation ladder. The notion of such a ladder implies the existence of various thresholds in war, rather than just one (that between nuclear and nonnuclear war) as is prevalent among those favoring the conventional- and escalatory-deterrence strategies. The warfighting strategy accordingly differentiates, among others, between limited nuclear war and unlimited nuclear war in Europe, between theater nuclear war and strategic nuclear war, and between limited strategic nuclear war and general strategic nuclear war. Each of these different levels of violence represents a distinctive rung on the escalation ladder. The recognition of these thresholds further implies that NATO must have various corresponding options for response. As British Defense Minister John Nott argued in 1980: the Alliance must have at its disposal a range of conventional and nuclear capabilities which could be used in response to an attack. The defence options these provide should not only be militarily effective but also express with unmistakable clarity the Alliance's determination to resist. The step from one level of force to higher ones must not however be so severe that an enemy might suppose that the NATO countries would be unwilling to take it. NATO therefore needs a full range of options extending from a limited response with conventional forces through a full-scale strategic nuclear strike. 50 The emphasis on options of response recalls McNamara's similar preoccupation with options during the 1960s. At that time, however, the major reason for stressing options was to underline the need for a conventional option because controlled nuclear escalation was deemed impossible. Since nuclear escalation, according to those who favor the warfighting strategy, can to some extent be controlled, the search for options is not confined to the conventional realm but, instead, includes the use of nuclear weapons. Thus, Schlesinger argued with reference to theater nuclear forces, "we should continue to develop selective, carefully con-

59

Nature of Flexible

Response

trolled options that will permit us: (a) to enhance our ability to deal with major penetrations of an allied sector and achieve a quick, decisive reversal of the tactical situation; and (b) to engage, if necessary, in a highly discriminating interdiction campaign against enemy lines of communicat i o n s . " 5 1 Like all military force, nuclear weapons should therefore fulfill a militarily useful role in defeating the opponent's attack. T h e emphasis on the denial function of military forces for the purpose of deterrence means, as Leon Sloss has argued, that a "credible policy of [nuclear] first use implies an ability to dominate, or at least to control, the process of escalation." 5 2 This in turn implies the need for nuclear superiority. As Jeffrey Record argued, Flexible Response was predicated on the assumption that the Alliance's pronounced strategic and theater nuclear superiority over the Warsaw Pact was sufficient in and of itself to deter a Pact invasion of Western Europe. NATO's chronic inferiority in conventional forces was deemed tolerable, because nuclear superiority permitted the Alliance to escalate a conflict across the nuclear threshold to the disadvantage and ultimate defeat of the Pact. 5 3 O n c e superiority in the theater is no longer available to N A T O , strategic superiority becomes essential. As Luttwak argues, "Given an American advantage in I C B M counterforce capabilities, the deterrence of low-casualty Soviet attacks against European-based theater nuclear weapons could be accomplished by the threat of low-casualty American attacks against Soviet I C B M s or theater nuclear assets." 5 4 T h e primary nuclear-targeting requirement of a warfighting-deterrence strategy is therefore to employ nuclear weapons in such a way as to dominate the escalation process. This means that whatever the level of attack, N A T O should have both the capability and the plans for employing nuclear forces in such a way as to deny the Soviet Union the achievement of its objectives. Given the assumption that N A T O conventional forces would be unable to defeat a conventional attack solely by conventional means, the warfighting strategy logically favors the use of tactical nuclear weapons to defeat a conventional attack. 5 5 Perhaps the most forceful exposition of this position was provided by Colin Gray. Gray set out to "demythologize nuclear weapons and to seek to bury the mindless cliches that direct us to such metaphors as 'pauses', 'fire-breaks',

'uncontrollable

escalation

processes',

[and]

'flexible

re-

sponses'." 5 6 In so doing, he advocated a deterrence strategy that empha-

Framework for Analysis sized the extensive and early use of nuclear weapons in order to defeat a conventional attack: "A tactical nuclear war-fighting posture (featuring heavy and early battlefield use) will guarantee that the Warsaw Pact can register no cheap, politically exploitable, territorial gains, and that the realm of the totally unknown (theatre nuclear warfare) will begin as soon after substantial forces cross the border as the weapons can be delivered. " 5 7 T h e implications of a tactical nuclear war-winning strategy for the defense of Western Europe have, however, proven unpalatable to West Europeans and Americans alike. The former have rejected the strategy, since its logical implication for Europe is a war confined to its territory. That is to say, because escalation to general nuclear war would, ultimately, have catastrophic consequences for all, the key to the strategy's success is to halt the war before it has escalated to that level. And this, in turn, implies the need to defeat the adversary in Europe. On the other hand, Americans have rejected the strategy because the operational requirements are such as to wrest the control over nuclear weapons from political authorities. Only predelegated nuclear-release authority to the commanders in the field would ensure that nuclear use has its maximum military impact. As Gray recognized, "only if the response is preprogrammed (with weapons deployed and authority to use, predelegated) can we be sure that these weapons will be used in time." 5 8 It has been a central tenet of U.S. strategic policy, however, that the control of nuclear weapons should be centralized under political authority. Hence, the operational implications of Gray's proposal have proven unacceptable to U.S. officials in the past. If a nuclear war-winning strategy is necessarily rejected by all members of the Alliance, what prescriptions does the warfighting-deterrence strategy have for the planning of nuclear employment? In essence, the objective of initial nuclear use would be similar to that advocated by Gray (i.e., to exact a heavy military price from the attacking forces). A sampling of opinion suffices to underscore this point. Schlesinger, for example, spoke of employing tactical nuclear weapons to "blunt W P armored attacks." 59 Laurence Martin would use nuclear weapons to "halt" an attack and thus force a "pause on the ground" by employing nuclear artillery, which would be "a strong candidate for this mission, given the clear escalation limits implied, . . . the accuracy possible, and the relative portability of ammunition." 6 0 Former SACEUR General Andrew Goodpaster favored "the controlled and selective use" of T N F , since it offered "a good

61

Nature of Flexible

Response

"a good probability that we could stun, halt, and partially destroy advanced elements that were engaged in an attack against us." 6 1 Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld argued that T N F would "allow NATO to militarily exploit the use of nuclear weapons with conventional forces in order to bring about a termination/settlement of the conflict on terms which are advantageous to N A T O . " 6 2 The Reagan administration's FY1984-88 Defense Guidance called for war plans to integrate T N F and conventional forces "to achieve theater campaign objectives." 63 Finally, and most recently, the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy argued in January 1988 that the "Alliance should threaten to use nuclear w e a p o n s . . . as an instrument for denying success for the invading Soviet forces." 6 4 Clearly, then, the initial use of nuclear weapons should, in these views, exact a significant military price from the attacking forces. This said, there is nevertheless a recognition that, to meet its objective, such nuclear use would have two significant drawbacks. First, it would involve a rather large number of nuclear weapons, many of which would explode on allied territory. And, second, the Soviet Union could respond in kind and thereby nullify any military advantage that NATO nuclear use might have wrought. As a result, the option to strike in depth—either to enhance the credibility of NATO nuclear use, or as an alternative—is also contemplated by the warfighting strategy. The use of T N F in depth would have two objectives in a warfighting strategy. The first objective would be to destroy the Warsaw Pact's reinforcement and logistic structure which directly support the conventional battle at the front. If such strikes in depth are contemplated as an alternative to nuclear use on the immediate battle area, then nuclear interdiction efforts would be directed at targets some 200 to 300 km behind the front. Destroying these targets would ensure an immediate impact on the battle. According to Rumsfeld, T N F employment options would include "attack of rear echelon armored units which are moving toward the FEBA [forward edge of the battle area], suppression of Warsaw Pact tactical support to their armored units (artillery, SSMs and rockets, tactical air and SAMs), and interdiction of the forward logistics base needed to support fastmoving Warsaw Pact attack." 65 If the nuclear strikes in depth are employed in addition to nuclear use on the battlefield, then targets might include those located further into Eastern Europe, as well as in the western military district of the USSR. 6 6 A second objective of nuclear strikes in depth would be the destruction of Soviet nuclear forces, thereby

Framework for Analysis denying Moscow its ability to dominate the next stage of escalation. 67 These strikes might include nuclear forces in the Soviet Union. 6 8 In sum, the warfighting strategy predicates success in deterring an adversary on the ability to dominate the escalation process. Escalation dominance, in turn, requires that N A T O be able to deny the Soviet Union achievement of its objectives. Since denial is to be imposed by military means, the strategy requires military superiority, at least at the higher rungs of the escalation ladder, and the necessity to use nuclear weapons. Because a capability to deny the Soviet Union its objectives in war enables the U.S. to deter an attack on itself, the resultant strategic deterrence can be coupled to Europe through an extended-deterrence strategy that relies on NATO's ability to dominate the escalation process up to the highest level of violence. Escalation dominance provided by superior strategic power thus couples U.S. security to that of Europe.

Choosing an Extended-Deterrence

Strategy

T h e discussion thus far has described four extended-deterrence strategies, each of which offered a different policy prescription for coupling the United States and Western Europe. I have suggested that the differences among these strategies reflect diverse beliefs about two critical factors, viz., the nature of the threat and the probability of nuclear escalation. T h e choice of a particular extended-deterrence strategy will, however, be determined by additional factors. In particular, assessments of the risks one would be willing to run in pursuing a given strategy are clearly also important. 69 Risk assessments will be determined both by one's views of the most probable causes of war in Europe and by one's expectation of the costs of war should it actually occur. Risk assessments are likely to diverge depending on one's views of the likely causes of war in Europe. To some, the most probable cause is a deliberate Soviet attack, which, as suggested in the previous sections, means that the requirements of deterrence will be determined by one's estimate of Soviet risk-taking propensities. To others, however, the more probable route to war in Europe is through inadvertence. For example, Hoist has argued "that war may also occur as a result of processes that are essentially beyond deterrence. Accidents, miscalculations and the snowballing or spill-over effects of a local crisis, for example within Eastern Europe, suggest alternative processes which could bring about war in

Nature

of Flexible

Response

E u r o p e . " 7 0 While it is difficult, if not impossible, to design a strategy to deter these developments, some strategies are more likely to cope with their occurrence in a way that minimizes risks than others. This is particularly true with regard to the conventional-deterrence strategy. Contrary to a pure-deterrence strategy which maximizes risks in case of war, the conventional strategy seeks to dampen escalatory pressures at least in the initial, conventional stages of a war and could therefore cope m u c h better with inadvertent conflicts. Hence, even though Hoist and others are likely to share the assumptions of pure-deterrence advocates regarding the Soviet threat and escalation, they might still prefer a conventional-deterrence strategy. In a more general sense, if the prospects of deliberate aggression recede because of a prevailing perception of a reduced Soviet threat, escalation concerns rather than fears of a deliberate attack will come to dominate the choice of strategy. Under these circumstances, strategies designed to minimize risks in case of war are likely to be preferred over those that maximize risk to deter an action that the Soviet Union is in any case increasingly unlikely to contemplate. Again, the tendency will therefore be to move toward the acceptance of the conventional-deterrence strategy, since this strategy, unlike the alternatives, is more directly designed to respond to fears of nuclear escalation. A second reason why people tend to assess risks in different ways relates to their expectations of the costs of war. Here geopolitical factors will be particularly important, for expectations will differ depending on a country's exposure to direct attack. Thus, in view of its geographical isolation from the most likely area of conflict, the primary threat to the physical survival of the United States is nuclear war. Since the most probable way in which nuclear war would engulf the U.S. would be if a conflict elsewhere were to escalate to general nuclear war, American expectations of the costs of war relate to escalation rather more than to war itself. Hence, avoiding escalation becomes the primary requirement for ensuring the physical survival of the United States. This, in turn, means that Americans will tend to prefer those extended-deterrence strategies that offer the prospect of either minimizing or dominating the escalation process (i.e., in figure 1 those located in the right-hand column of the extended-deterrence matrix). 71 West Europeans, on the other hand, are likely to view the expected cost of war rather differently. Since Europe is the probable battlefield, the expected costs of war will be great no matter what its nature. Hence,

F r a m e w o r k for A n a l y s i s

Europeans are foremost concerned with reducing the likelihood not of escalation but rather of war as such. Their preferred extended-deterrence strategies will accordingly be those that maximize the costs of war through escalation in order to enhance the prospects for deterrence (i.e., in figure 1 those strategies located in the left-hand column of the matrix). T h e geopolitical structure of the Alliance will therefore tend to differentiate the preferences for a deterrence strategy according to geographical lines. 72 This, indeed, is a common observation concerning the main faultline in the transatlantic debate over Flexible Response. Thus, Aron has argued that "[according to the geo-political position of their respective states, analysts worry over reinforcing the deterrent or underlining the line of separation between non-nuclear and nuclear combat." 7 3 Similarly, in discussing the notion of firebreaks, Freedman has argued that for the United States the "more firebreaks that exist, the greater the chance to contain a conflict at a tolerable level of violence." For the Europeans, on the other hand, "once the peace/war threshold has been passed the consequences will be catastrophic, so that their interest lies in removing the firebreaks so that there is a clear risk of inexorable escalation attached to any war." 7 4 And, expressing the faultline perhaps most bluntly, Theodore Draper, in commenting on Kissinger's observation that the West European "secret hope . . . was that the defense of Europe should be conducted as an intercontinental nuclear exchange above their heads," maintained that "America's secret hope, Kissinger might have added, was that the defense of the United States would be conducted in or through Europe — o r at least anywhere but in the United States." 75 The main point to remember is therefore that even though perceptions of the threat and escalation are important in determining how any particular person views the requirements of extended deterrence, the actual choice of a preferred strategy is influenced by his or her assessment of the risks posed by various strategies. Though partly subjective as well, risk assessments are likely to be predominantly determined by structural or objective factors such as geopolitics.

Conclusions T h e analysis in this and the preceding chapter offered an explanation for the causes and nature of disagreement within NATO about the strategic concept of Flexible Response. In chapter 1, I argued that the principal cause of this disagreement was the presence of divergent perceptions of

65

Nature of Flexible

Response

the nature of the threat and of the escalation process. These divergent perceptions accounted for the differing assessments of the requirements of extended deterrence. In this chapter, I have shown that the nature of this disagreement consisted of diverging strategic perspectives among the N A T O members on how to couple the stability of the strategic balance to the situation in Europe. These diverse perspectives were represented as a matrix depicting four distinct extended-deterrence strategies. T h e critical distinguishing factor among the four strategies is their conception of thresholds in war. 7 6 In particular, the four strategies differed concerning the threshold beyond which each estimated that escalation would take on a phenomenal character and thus become uncontrollable. Hence, the pure-deterrence strategy was based on the assumption that the critical threshold was that between peace and war, the conventionaldeterrence strategy believed it was that between conventional war and nuclear war, the escalatory strategy presumed it to be between limited theater war and strategic war, while the warfighting strategy perceived the critical threshold as lying between limited strategic war and general nuclear war. T h e four extended-deterrence strategies therefore in effect formed a continuum depicting the different points or thresholds beyond which each believed that escalation would become inevitable. T h e centrality of escalation in determining disagreements over strategy implied that the major disagreements within N A T O centered on the nuclear threshold. In particular, the four strategic perspectives differed as to the point at which N A T O should cross this threshold and the action it should take once that point was reached. These differences, in turn, expressed themselves in terms of disagreements concerning the nuclear weapons that N A T O should deploy in Europe and the manner in which these weapons should be employed once the decision to do so had been made. Hence, the debates within N A T O concerning the T N F posture and nuclear-employment issues reflected the more basic differences over extended deterrence detailed above.

T h e extended-deterrence

matrix

therefore provides a useful framework for analyzing and explicating this debate. This task is undertaken in part two.

THE PRACTICE OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE

2 THE DEBATE ABOUT NUCLEAR EMPLOYMENT: 1967-1986

The adoption of Flexible Response in 1967 settled, at least for the moment, the debate within the Atlantic Alliance concerning the role of conventional forces in NATO strategy. According to a 1968 memorand u m by U . S . Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, the allies had agreed that under Flexible Response, "NATO nonnuclear capabilities should help deter a deliberate nonnuclear attack by denying the Warsaw Pact any confidence of success except by using a force so large that it clearly threatens NATO's vital interests." This role, McNamara emphasized, clearly stopped "short of providing for a capability to deal successfully with any kind of nonnuclear attack without using nuclear weapons ourselves." W h i l e noting that the United States would not have opposed the latter, McNamara concluded that following "years of effort, this is the most ambitious strategy we have been able to convince our Allies to accept. " 1 Agreement on the function of conventional forces, however, still left ambiguous the role of theater nuclear forces in NATO strategy. For example, at what point would a Warsaw Pact attack be deemed "so large that it clearly threatens NATO's vital interests"? W h o would decide that the attack was indeed that large? And what constituted "NATO's vital interests"? In other words, agreement on the objectives for conventional forces provided no clear guidance as to the role of, and objectives for, theater nuclear forces in NATO strategy. For reasons discussed in part one, the existence within NATO of different strategic preferences encom-

70

Practice

of Flexible

Response TABLE

Nuclear-Employment

1

Implications

of Flexible

EXTENDED-DETERRENCE

Conventional

Pure

Response

STRATEGIES

Escalatory

Warfighting

NUCLEAR EMPLOYMENT

INITIAL USE When

Early

Latest possible

Relatively early

When militarily needed

How

Extensive

Demonstration

Selective / Demonstration

Sufficient to affect battle

Where

Deep / USSR

East Europe (low collateral damage)

Deep / O M T (possibly in USSR)

Shallow / Troops (interdiction of FOE)

Primary Purpose

Political impact

Political impact

Political impact

Military impact

When

Early

Late

Early

Early

How

Extensive

Selective

Selective

Sufficient to affect battle

Where

USSR

Battlefield (OMT in East Europe)

Deep / USSR (OMT, not T N F orC 5 )

Deep / East Europe (OMT, TNF, C')

Primary Purpose

Political impact

Military impact

Political impact

Military impact

FOLLOW-ON USE

C ' = C o m m a n d , Control, and Communication Systems F O E = Follow-on Echelons O M T = Other Military Targets

passed by the concept of Flexible Response ensured that there would be no agreement on this issue. In effect, T N F embodied the ambiguity of Flexible Response. 2 This was most apparent in the different nuclear-employment preferences of the four extended-deterrence strategies that were detailed in chapter 2. These disagreements centered around four specific issues: when to use nuclear weapons; how to use nuclear weapons; where to use nuclear weapons; and for what purpose

to use nuclear weapons. As shown in table 1, some

within the Alliance favored using nuclear weapons early while others insisted that the nuclear threshold be crossed as late as possible. Differ-

Debate About Nuclear Employment: 1 9 6 7 - 1 9 8 6

enees also existed concerning whether to employ nuclear weapons en masse or only selectively, whether to target the weapons in depth or just on the battlefield, and whether the impact of their use should be political or military. T h e task facing N A T O was to devise a single role or employment doctrine for theater nuclear forces that would be responsive to these diverse preferences for nuclear employment. The Nuclear Planning Group (NPG), established in 1966, provided the official forum for discussing this role, and it was within its environs that much of the official debate about N A T O nuclear strategy consequently took place. This chapter analyzes the efforts of the NPG to devise nuclear-employment guidelines in a manner acceptable to all NATO members. The initial work of the NPG focused on developing a set of guidelines on the initial defensive tactical use of nuclear weapons, on political consultations concerning the use of nuclear weapons, and on the possible use of atomic Demolition Munitions (ADM). These guidelines, which were developed in the early years of Flexible Response and approved by the Defense Planning Committee in December 1970, 3 all took the form of a compromise among the divergent strategic preferences and thus maintained the essential ambiguity of Flexible Response. T h e next stage of the NPG's deliberations proved more difficult. Having completed guidelines on initial use, N A T O embarked on an effort to provide guidance to its military authorities on how to use nuclear weapons in case initial use had failed to meet NATO's objectives. These discussions on follow-on use inevitably exposed the ambiguity of the earlier agreement concerning initial use. Rather than attempting to force the issue, however, the N A T O countries decided to defer development of guidelines for follow-on use and instead turned their attention to the restructuring and rationalization of the theater nuclear stockpile. It was therefore not until 1986, when these latter efforts had been completed, that N A T O again returned to the issue of devising nuclear-employment guidelines. In October of that year, the N P G adopted general political guidelines for employing nuclear weapons, thus completing a task first started almost twenty years before. Despite some progress, the N A T O members failed to develop sufficiently clear guidelines to ensure concise operational plans for nuclear employment. Agreed concepts were either so vague as to be essentially meaningless or allowed the NATO members to interpret them in different and often contradictory ways. For example, Richard Shearer, NATO's Director for Nuclear Planning, has argued that "NATO doctrine for the

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use of nuclear weapons is clear, concise, simple and direct. It is that when required, the Alliance would respond with nuclear weapons on the scale appropriate to the circumstances." 4 If anything, this statement reveals the difficulty NATO faced in arriving at a clear, concise, simple, and direct statement of its nuclear-employment objectives. As a result, the deliberations within the NPG on the guidelines did not—in fact they could not —eliminate the disparities in preference concerning nuclear employment. An examination of this debate is nevertheless instructive, since it clearly illustrates the existence of diverging strategic perspectives within NATO and thus helps to explain the practice of Flexible Response.

The Development of Political Guidelines for Initial Use of TN F O f the four studies undertaken by the NPG in the late 1960s, the most significant and enduring was the one establishing guidelines for the initial use of nuclear weapons. 5 T h e issue of tactical nuclear weapons was initially raised by British Defense Minister Denis Healey at the NPG's first meeting in April 1967. 6 The Healey-led discussion resulted in individual NPG members studying certain aspects of T N F employment according to specific scenarios and in different geographical regions. By April 1968 these studies had progressed to the point that a more formal effort to develop specific political guidelines for the initial use of nuclear weapons was deemed appropriate. Upon the suggestion of U.S. Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, the four permanent members of the NPG were tasked to examine specific aspects of T N F employment. The United States would examine the question of demonstration use, West Germany the issue of battlefield use, Great Britain the possibilities of maritime use, and Italy the problem of defensive use (i.e., atomic munitions and nuclear air defense). 7 At the Bonn NPG meeting in October 1968, each of the four countries reported their initial findings. According to Paul Buteux, the meeting was entirely devoted to examining the four reports, and the brevity of the meeting's final communiqué (which consisted of two sentences noting this examination and urging "expeditious completion" of the reports) was indicative of the wide differences of view on the T N F issue that existed within the NPG. 8 Two questions in particular proved to be contentious. First, when and how should NATO resort to initial use of nuclear weap-

Debate About Nuclear Employment: 1 9 6 7 - 1 9 8 6 ons? S e c o n d , w h a t purpose should initial use serve? T h e B o n n m e e t i n g failed to resolve either issue a n d the ministers instead instructed West G e r m a n y a n d G r e a t Britain to develop specific guidelines for initial use, t h u s integrating the earlier a n d separate efforts into o n e d o c u m e n t . T h e A n g l o - G e r m a n effort (known as t h e Healey-Schröder paper, after the two countries' defense ministers) e x a m i n e d different kinds of initial n u c l e a r use against a set of criteria, including h o w such use could help to convey a signal of political resolve, h o w it could contribute to controlling escalation, h o w collateral d a m a g e could be m i n i m i z e d , and h o w political control could be assured and alliance consultation m a i n t a i n e d . A 65-page draft of t h e Healey-Schröder paper was discussed at t h e L o n d o n N P G m e e t i n g in M a y 1969. It suggested a n u m b e r of general principles and m o r e specific guidelines that should inform a decision to resort to the initial use of n u c l e a r w e a p o n s . 9 T h e s e suggestions reflected a general acceptance of the escalatory-deterrence strategy a n d , at times, even of the pure-deterrence strategy. In every instance, the e m p l o y m e n t preferences in t h e Healey-Schröder draft therefore rejected the nuclear-targeting i m plications of both the conventional a n d the warfighting strategies. T h e s e preferences were reflected in four n u c l e a r - e m p l o y m e n t issues. First a m o n g these issues was t h e insistence on a relatively early use of n u c l e a r weapons. In O c t o b e r 1968, G e r h a r d Schröder had stated before the W e s t e r n E u r o p e a n U n i o n ( W E U ) that it was "in the

European

interest that, should the necessity arise, tactical weapons are used in good t i m e . " 1 0 T h e following February, D e n i s Healey similarly explained that in the event of a massive W a r s a w Pact conventional attack, the Pact would have advantages "so great as to render d o u b t f u l any prospect that N A T O m i g h t have of putting u p a successful conventional defense for m o r e t h a n a few days." " T h a t these views f o u n d their way into the Healey-Schröder draft was c o n f i r m e d by H e n r y Kissinger, the National Security Adviser in the N i x o n W h i t e H o u s e , w h o stated that E u r o p e a n allies urged "a guaranteed early resort to tactical n u c l e a r w e a p o n s . " 1 2 As shown in table 1, an emphasis o n early use of n u c l e a r weapons was compatible with both the pure- a n d the escalatory-deterrence strategies. T h e o n e clear instance w h e r e c o n c e r n s particular to the pure-deterrence strategy were included in the Healey-Schröder draft was the c o n c l u sion that there s h o u l d be n o formal guidelines regarding the specific point at w h i c h the n u c l e a r threshold could be crossed. All N A T O m e m b e r s of course recognized that the actual threshold would d e p e n d o n the specific circumstances prevailing at the t i m e . 1 3 In addition, however, the draft

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rejected the notion of a threshold in principle. Schroder, in particular, was adamant on this point in his October 1968 address to the W E U . W h i l e recognizing that "[n]uclear weapons, regardless of their type, are different in nature from conventional weapons," he argued "that in our view there is an inseparable interdependence between conventional forces and tactical nuclear f o r c e s . " 1 4 A third issue where the preference for an escalatory strategy clearly surfaced concerned the scale of any initial nuclear use. A preference for a strictly limited initial use was stressed by Manlio Brosio, who, as N A T O ' s Secretary-General, chaired the N P G and was thus privy to its discussions. In October 1968, Brosio argued that "the employment of hundreds of [tactical nuclear] weapons in Europe . . . would inflict intolerable devastation and losses to our countries. At that level of destruction the very distinction between tactical and strategic weapons would be lost." Instead, Brosio contended, the N A T O requirement was "for a selective and demonstrative use of a limited number of such weapons, in a way appropriate to warn the enemy that, if he insists on his advance, he should be ready to accept all its dire consequences." 1 5 Kissinger also records the Healey-Schröder paper's preference for "the use of a very small number of tactical weapons." According to Kissinger, the paper argued in favor of a demonstration option, which would involve "setting off a nuclear weapon in some remote location, which did not involve many casualties—in the air over the Mediterranean, for e x a m p l e — a s a signal of more drastic use if the warning f a i l e d . " 1 6 In recent years, Healey has himself stated his belief that the nuclear element of Flexible Response consisted of "discrete steps on the ladder of nuclear escalation, starting with the demonstrative explosion of a single tactical weapon somewhere in E u r o p e . " 1 7 A final issue reflecting the preference for an escalatory strategy related to the geographical depth of any initial use of nuclear weapons. West Germany, in particular, clearly preferred to use nuclear weapons in depth, both as a way to communicate the risk of escalation and to reduce attendant damage. It realized that the United States would, at least initially, be loath to use nuclear weapons against targets located in the Soviet Union, but similarly insisted that any initial use confined to N A T O (i.e., West German) soil was equally unacceptable. As Schröder argued, it was necessary to use nuclear weapons "as far forward as possible in order to avoid loss—and devastation—of N A T O territory." 18 T h e Healey-Schröder paper thus proposed to use nuclear weapons on non-Soviet Warsaw Pact targets rather than on N A T O soil itself. 1 9

Debate About N u c l e a r E m p l o y m e n t : 1 9 6 7 - 1 9 8 6 T h e Healey-Schröder draft thus reflected the central conclusions of the escalatory strategy with respect to the purpose of the initial use of nuclear weapons. The preferene for a relatively early, though limited, use of nuclear weapons at targets in depth clearly derived from the precepts of that strategy. Schroder's insistence on the tight coupling of conventional and nuclear forces also recalls the pure-deterrence strategy's employment preferences. However, many of that strategy's more extreme implications were rejected by Healey and indeed, as discussed further below, by Schroder's Social Democratic colleagues in the Bonn coalition government. T h e emphasis on limiting nuclear employment to a few or even a single demonstration shot clearly underscored this. The purpose of initial use was accordingly to communicate NATO's resolve to use nuclear weapons by signaling the danger of nuclear escalation. The objective of nuclear use, in other words, would be to reestablish deterrence. As Healey argued, the "purpose of nuclear weapons as we see them is to restore the credibility of the overall deterrent in a situation in which a large-scale conventional attack shows that that credibility has disappeared." 20 In essence, the Healey-Schröder paper, like the escalatory strategy on which it was based, viewed a relatively early and very modest employment of nuclear weapons, geared to reminding the Soviet Union of the potential escalatory dangers it faced, as the preferred nuclear-employment doctrine for NATO. Not surprisingly, the American view on many of these issues was quite different, thus reflecting the more general rejection of both the escalatory and the pure-deterrence strategies. On each of the nuclear-employment issues discussed, the American preference went out instead to a combination of the concerns underlying the conventional and warfighting strategies. With regard to the timing of any initial use, for example, the United States was clearly uncomfortable with an emphasis on relatively early use. While it considered adopting a strategy that would emphasize a nuclear defense of Western Europe, 2 1 the Nixon administration ultimately decided that N A T O should be capable of defending Europe conventionally for up to ninety days. 22 This meant that the administration favored sufficiently strong conventional forces in order to postpone the decision to use nuclear weapons for quite some time. Like its predecessors, then, the Nixon administration accepted the basic tenet of the conventional strategy that the conventional-nuclear threshold constituted a natural "firebreak" which should be crossed, if at all, only at a late stage in the conflict. Should NATO, however, be confronted with a decision to use nuclear weapons, then according to the Americans their use should aim at having

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at least some military impact. T h e United States consequently believed that a relatively more extensive use would be the best m a n n e r by which to force the Soviet Union to c o m e to political terms. As such, it tended to think in terms of "hundreds" of nuclear weapons in the initial salvo rather than of " t e n s . " 2 3 T h e United States similarly rejected the notion of a demonstration use, believing that a militarily ineffective use of nuclear weapons was bound to encourage rather than discourage further aggression. Kissinger, for example, argued that: "A reaction that was designed to be of no military relevance would show more hesitation than determination; it would thus be more likely to spur the attack than deter it. If nuclear weapons were to be used, we needed a concept by which they could stop an attack on the ground. A hesitant or ineffective response ran the risk of leaving us with no choices other than surrender or holocaust." 2 4 Finally, the United States was reluctant to sanction initial use of nuclear weapons in depth. In fact, by early 1969 the U.S. had developed what was termed "a new c o n c e p t — t h e initial defensive use of nuclear weapons restricted to N A T O territory." According to this concept, if "the Warsaw Pact attacked N A T O forces with conventional weapons and N A T O could not hold, as a m i n i m u m level of limited nuclear war we might consider using nuclear weapons in N A T O territory alone. Restricting the use of nuclear weapons to friendly territory might be less likely to lead to escalation than attacking targets in East G e r m a n y or other Pact countries." 2 5 T h e rationale for limiting initial use to N A T O territory was that such use might both halt the attack and put the onus of further nuclear escalation on the Warsaw Pact. These objectives of the new nuclearemployment concept clearly reflected the targeting preferences of both the conventional and the warfighting deterrence strategies, in that limiting escalation was the primary concern of the former while halting the conventional attack was the priority of the latter. In its first major test of the presumed consensus underlying the adoption of Flexible Response, the N A T O allies were thus clearly confronted with the continuing differences that existed among them in interpreting that strategic concept. A political compromise on many of the outstanding issues was nevertheless achieved in November 1969 when the N P G met at Warrington, Virginia. There, the N P G members adopted new political guidelines on initial use of nuclear weapons. 2 6 Most significant a m o n g these guidelines was the notion that the central purpose of nuclear e m ployment would be political rather than military, thus clearly representing

Debate About Nuclear Employment:

1967-1986

a defeat for the warfighting strategy. According to Legge, the fifty-page revised draft: of the Healey-Schröder paper, which had formed the basis of the agreed guidelines, arrived at the following conclusion: "Given that any initial use of nuclear weapons would result in a qualitative change in the nature of warfare, such use by NATO should have a fundamentally political purpose. It should be designed to confront the enemy with the prospect of the risks of escalation consequent on a continuation of the conflict, with the aim of making him halt his attack and withdraw, thereby restoring the credibility of the deterrent. " 2 7 That the acceptance of this conclusion was not ephemeral became clear in 1975 when the Defense Planning Committee issued the N A T O Ministerial Guidance on "Alliance Defense Policy." According to the Ministerial Guidance, the employment of tactical nuclear weapons would aim "to convince the aggressor that any form of attack on NATO could result in very serious damage to his own forces, and to emphasize the dangers implicit in the continuance of a conflict by presenting him with the risk that such a situation could escalate beyond his control up to allout nuclear war." 2 8 The principal utility of the guidelines was, as Healey had stated, to provide NATO's military authorities with guidance as to how and the purpose for which to employ nuclear weapons. 29 As such, the N A T O members did not commit themselves to any particular form of nuclear employment in advance. Rather, they opted to maintain a variety of selective employment options that could be used according to the circumstances prevailing at the time. 3 0 Earlier references to specific numbers of weapons to be employed were, as a result, excluded from the final guidelines." Not only was planning for multiple nuclear-employment options the sensible military thing to do, however, it was also the only way in which NATO could reach an acceptable compromise concerning some of the issues in dispute discussed above. Thus, with regard to one of these contentious issues—that of the geographical depth of initial use—it was agreed that battlefield use should go "hand in hand" with more extended geographical use and that the latter should be confined to targets in the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact countries. 32 The agreed guidelines thus neither excluded the use of nuclear weapons on, nor solely confined their use to, NATO/German soil. However, reaching this compromise was one thing, actually achieving its implementation was quite another. Thus, it was not until 1974 that Bonn formally agreed to the use of artillery shells on West German territory, while, as will be discussed shortly, it never actually

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agreed to the prior emplacement (or "pre-chambering") of A D M s on its soil." T h e inclusion of various employment options similarly meant that the demonstration use of nuclear weapons preferred by Healey was also not ruled out by the guidelines. 3 4 In fact, it was apparently still an option in the early 1980s. 3 5 In November 1981, then Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who had completed his five-year term as S A C E U R just two years before, confirmed that there were "contingency plans in N A T O doctrine to fire a nuclear weapon for demonstrative purposes to demonstrate to the other side that they are exceeding the limits of toleration in the conventional area. " 3 6 Even though Caspar Weinberger subsequently disavowed Haig's statement by claiming that there "is nothing in any plan that I know of that contains anything remotely resembling that," the U . S . Departments of State and Defense issued a clarifying statement confirming that " N A T O a number of years ago identified the so-called demonstrative use as a possible option." T h e same statement went on to say that "there is no precise nuclear plan and there have been significant doubts expressed in N A T O — d o u b t s which the United States shares—about the utility of this o p t i o n . " 3 7 Legge confirms that there were no military plans for a demonstration use, but argues that such use "for obvious reasons, does not require that formal military plans be drawn up in a d v a n c e . " 3 8 Notwithstanding an evident lack of enthusiasm, then, N A T O in the 1980s retained the option to use nuclear weapons in purely a demonstration mode. T h e provision of various options for nuclear employment might have been an acceptable political compromise, but it did not resolve many of the outstanding issues that had divided the allies during the initial deliberations. Prime among these was how to communicate N A T O resolve (i.e., how could N A T O best achieve its stated political purpose through the use of nuclear weapons?). Healey and Schröder clearly believed that a very limited use of nuclear weapons, or even a single demonstration shot, would suffice to communicate NATO's intentions. 3 9 This view continued to hold force in the 1980s. Thus, the West German chairman of N A T O ' s Military Committee, General Wolfgang Altenburg, argued in 1987 that "the purpose of nuclear weapons is deterrence on the one hand, and reestablishing deterrence by way of a 'demonstrative use' in case it had failed on the other. "

40

Others, however, argued that only a decisive use of nuclear weapons, with specific military consequences for the aggressor, would be able to

Debate About N u c l e a r E m p l o y m e n t : 1 9 6 7 - 1 9 8 6 communicate NATO's intentions. Kissinger's earlier cited views were repeatedly supported by successive U.S. spokesmen. Thus, in 1975 Defense Secretary James Schlesinger argued with respect to initial nuclear use that "the attack should be delivered with sufficient shock and decisiveness to forcibly change perceptions of W P [Warsaw Pact] leaders." 4 1 Similarly, in 1979 Secretary of Defense Harold Brown argued that "we must remain equally sceptical about small-scale nuclear demonstrations. . . . [A]s long as the nuclear forces are to serve as a major deterrent, they must be able to perform serious military missions." 4 2 Finally, in 1984 Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger argued that "for nuclear use to convey an effective signal of NATO resolve, such use must have a significant military impact." 4 3 The provision for multiple nuclear-employment options, then, did not settle the issue of how nuclear weapons should be used. Nor could the guidelines prejudge the issue of when such weapons would be used, for that would be a function of the circumstances prevailing at the time. W h e r e nuclear weapons would be used was an issue resolved only by a compromise that left the central disagreement, particularly between the United States and West Germany, essentially unresolved. Hence, despite their best efforts to arrive at a consensus on the initial use of nuclear weapons, the NATO allies failed to set out the "clear, concise, simple, and direct" guidelines that some have imagined. The allies did agree that any initial use of nuclear weapons should serve the purpose of signaling political resolve. In this sense, therefore, W i l l e m van Eekelen was correct when he argued that "any initial use has, in reality, a demonstrative character." 4 4 However, none of the other issues was resolved. The guidelines that were consequently adopted were seen as being provisional— hence the title "Provisional Political Guidelines for the Initial Defensive Tactical Use of Nuclear Weapons by NATO" (or "PPGs"). Indeed, Kissinger even characterized the PPGs as purely "a temporary compromise . . . that in effect papered over the dispute." 4 5 Notwithstanding their seeming "temporary" nature, however, the PPGs approved by the NPG in November 1969 and, with slight amendments, formally adopted by the Defense Planning Committee in December 1970, were not replaced until sixteen years later. It was only in October 1986 that NATO could formally replace the word "provisional" with "general." Before discussing these changes, however, we need to examine how NATO dealt with the other nuclear-employment questions, including those concerning political consultation and the use of ADMs.

Practice of Flexible

Response

The Development of Political Consultation A DM Employment Guidelines

and

Aside from the PPGs, the N P G spent considerable time in its initial deliberations on two additional questions. O n e concerned the forms and extent of consultation in the event nuclear employment was warranted. These matters had first been discussed in the North Atlantic Council in Athens in May 1962, at which time the nuclear powers (the United States and Great Britain) agreed to consult with the nonnuclear allies, "time and circumstances permitting." 4 6 A second issue concerned the potential role of atomic demolition munitions, including in particular the timing of their employment and the manner in which authority for their use would be granted. While these issues involved to some extent distinct questions, they were also linked in that both involved matters of positive control (in the sense of authorizing nuclear release) and negative control (in the sense of preventing unauthorized nuclear employment). In addition, the consultation and A D M issues were particularly important in terms of the evolving West German position in regard to nuclear weapons issues. T h e changing German attitude toward both these issues over time reflected a broader shift in German strategic preferences which occurred after the Social Democratic Party (SPD) entered the government in 1966. In the early to mid-1960s, the West European allies in general and West Germany in particular had sought a guaranteed early resort to nuclear weapons on the part of the United States. O n e specific German proposal that would have ensured such early nuclear employment was put forward in 1964. Developed by the inspector general of the Bundeswehr, Heinz Trettner, and endorsed by Defense Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel, the proposal called for the selective employment of a variety of nuclear weapons—including ADMs, nuclear air defense systems, and possibly battlefield nuclear weapons—in the early stages of a conflict. 4 7 T h e objective was, as von Hassel later put it, to ensure that tactical weapons were "made ready for employment in an early phase of a recognizable attack on Europe." 4 8 T h e rapid emplacement of ADMs played a critical part in this proposal. T h e American reaction to the German suggestion was, however, distinctly negative. 49 T h e proposal would have both undermined sole American control over the decision and actual use of nuclear weapons and

Debate About Nuclear Employment: 1967-1986

unduly lowered the nuclear threshold. Despite this negative reaction, the Federal Republic, this time joined by Turkey, pressed the issue again in 1966 in the Nuclear Planning Working Group, the NPG's predecessor. According to a memorandum by Secretary McNamara, both countries "suggested that in view of the urgency of releasing nuclear weapons when required, circumstances might warrant predelegation of ADM release authority to field commanders." While noting that the suggestion was "contrary to U.S. policy," McNamara suggested that the United States "should consider the problems of transmitting and processing requests for weapon release in crisis." 50 At the first NPG meeting in April 1967, Turkey presented a paper on ADMs in which it reiterated its earlier views. 51 The Turks believed that existing ADM release and employment arrangements were too slow, thus enabling the Soviet Union to penetrate through mountain passes before authorization for the release of nuclear weapons could be granted. They accordingly sought to accelerate the procedures for making nuclear weapons available in times of crisis or war. According to a report in the New York Times, the Turkish proposal suggested "a carefully defined prior predelegation of authority to release nuclear mines in the face of a troop build-up or imminent threat along the border and advance permission to explode the devices under specified circumstances." 52 The Turkish proposal was again discussed in the September 1967 NPG meeting in Ankara. The final communiqué of the meeting stated that, while "agreeing that conditions may vary in different areas, [the defense ministers] recognized that in certain circumstances the use of atomic demolition munitions might have significant military advantages by creating obstacles as part of a comprehensive defense system." 53 However, the communiqué was silent on the questions of control over the weapons and of the possible predelegation of release authority. That Turkey was not the only country interested in the ADM issue became clear the following November when a report by the Western European Union addressed similar concerns. T h e W E U report argued that at "present the political controls over the selective release of even small-yield tactical weapons, such as ADMs, are such that these are unlikely to be used by the West until hostile forces have penetrated deep into the territory of the Alliance." Given these political restrictions, it argued that "means should be developed to permit the selective early release of tactical nuclear weapons so that they can be used to their utmost effect against the adversary." Specifically, the report urged that "contingency plans might

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be drawn up, with member governments of the Alliance giving prior consent to the use of tactical nuclear weapons in certain circumstances." 5 4 At this point in time, the views of the West German government on nuclear-consultation questions became particularly important. Already at the first NPG meeting in Washington, Defense Minister Schröder had raised the potential role of nonnuclear countries on whose territory nuclear weapons were deployed in nuclear planning and decision making, particularly regarding decisions to use nuclear weapons. 55 He pressed for a decisive voice of the host country in any decision to use nuclear weapons, thus in effect demanding that such a country could veto any decision to use nuclear weapons from its own territory. 56 That the issue of negative control over nuclear-employment decisions was brought to the fore by the West Germans represented a sharp departure from previous German concerns, which had instead focused on the requirement for positive control (i.e., on reassurance that nuclear weapons would

be

used). 57 This shift in emphasis is explained by the accession of the SPD into government the year before. While both coalition partners agreed on the necessity of deterrence by posing the threat and risk of nuclear escalation, the manner in which this would be accomplished starkly diverged. 58 T h e Christian Democrats' policy had been (and continued to be) to seek a guaranteed early, albeit limited, resort to nuclear weapons. In essence, their position coincided with a preference for the pure-deterrence strategy. The Social Democrats, on the other hand, feared that the United States would seek to limit the nuclear conflict to the immediate battle area and thus sought a large measure of German control over the decision to use nuclear weapons in the first place. Any employment of nuclear weapons, moreover, should be clearly restrained to limit collateral damage and be geared to demonstrate to the Warsaw Pact the risks of further nuclear escalation. The 1970 German Defense White Paper, written when the C D U had left the government, encapsulated both these points: "[Nuclear weapons] must not be used except as a last resort, and even then only with constraint and on a selective basis." 5 9 In short, the SPD's preference went out to an escalatory-deterrence strategy, coupled to a significant West German voice in any decision to use nuclear weapons. It was this latter option that became prominent in the German contribution to the NPG's deliberations, particularly once Helmut Schmidt took over the Defense Ministry in mid-1969. 6 0 Once the SPD's view of the preferred strategy came to prevail within

Debate About Nuclear Employment: 1 9 6 7 - 1 9 8 6

the German corridors of power, the primary focus of its policy toward T N F began to center on the consultation issue. Two concerns, in particular, were dominant. First, the government sought a voice in any N A T O decision to use nuclear weapons for those countries on whose territory they would be used. This concern was, in fact, more widely shared by other West European allies. The earlier cited W E U report, for example, proposed "a new system by which the government of the European country in whose territory American nuclear weapons would be exploded, would have to give its assent before the American Government could employ such weapons." 6 1 A second concern related to a country's influence on the decision to use nuclear weapons from its territory. This issue was crucial to the Federal Republic, for not only were nearly all groundbased U.S. nuclear weapons present in Europe deployed on its soil, but, in addition, many other NATO countries had deployed their delivery systems for use of U.S. nuclear weapons in the FRG. Under the prevailing "dual-key" arrangements, a U.S. president would be required to obtain the consent of the allied government supplying the delivery system but there were no arrangements for the country on whose territory the systems were deployed to assent to or dissent from that decision. 62 In view of the German and, indeed, wider European concerns, the NPG therefore devised a set of specific guidelines on consultations. Neither the United States nor Great Britain agreed to any restrictions on the actual decision to use their nuclear weapons and both thus rejected any demand for a veto over nuclear-employment decisions. However, they did agree that the consultation procedures developed at Athens in 1962 were too cumbersome and slow and therefore in need of revision to ensure a much speedier consultation and decision-making process. In this, the nuclear powers thus responded partly to the Turkish concerns. At the same time, the specific concerns expressed by the West Germans regarding the special role of nuclear host countries were also taken into account. The final guidelines on consultations were based on a joint BelgianAmerican effort, the conclusions of which were discussed and then adopted at the Warrington NPG meeting in November 1969. 63 The guidelines included arrangements that emphasized allied discussions on a wide range of contingencies in preparation for an eventual conflict, thus narrowing the scope of required consultations and, hence, speeding up the entire process in case NATO were ever confronted with a decision to use nuclear weapons. In order to address the concerns expressed by the Bonn government, the guidelines also included a weighted formula for consultations. 64

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In a detailed exposition of the guidelines before Congress in 1974, Defense Secretary Schlesinger explained that they "provide that special weight be accorded the views of those NATO countries on or from whose territory nuclear weapons would be employed, countries providing the nuclear warheads, or the countries providing or manning the nuclear delivery systems." 65 However, the "special weight" provision did not imply a veto and overall control over nuclear weapons was thus retained by the nuclear powers. As Schlesinger made clear, "it is well understood that the agreed consultation procedures would be exercised, time and circumstances permitting." In addition, "the nuclear power or powers have the responsibility for making the decision on whether or not nuclear weapons will be used." 6 6 T h e adopted guidelines formed the basis for the various consultative procedures, discussed further below, which were regularly practiced in the biennial WINTEX "command post" exercises and which have accordingly been elaborated and refined over the years. 67 T h e adoption of the new consultative guidelines went some way to meeting West German concerns. But, as that government's views on the ADM issue were to show, the guidelines did not solve the central problem facing a nuclear host country situated on the front line. Thus, the West Germans were particularly concerned about the idea that ADM release should either be predelegated or result in their use at an early stage of a conflict. T h e concern about these issues clearly reflected a more general shift in the West German strategic perspective, given that only a few years before Bonn had pushed for precisely those provisions. Yet, predelegating release authority was now viewed as undermining the consultative procedures agreed to at Warrington and would, as such, dilute West German influence over the decision to use nuclear weapons. T h e idea that ADM employment should occur relatively early followed logically from the military role of these munitions. As weapons that might create various terrain obstacles to delay or redirect advancing conventional forces, their use before the forces had in fact advanced too far was critical. 68 Some therefore proposed the prior emplacement of ADMs along the inner-German border, enabling their employment as soon as the Warsaw Pact attacked in significant numbers. 6 9 However, not only was prior emplacement along the border politically unacceptable to the West Germans, but the automaticity of use implied by an ADM belt contravened their desire for a voice in the decision to use nuclear weapons and was thus equally unacceptable for that reason. West German opposition to ADMs also related to the fact that these weapons would be used on its

Debate About Nuclear Employment: 1 9 6 7 - 1 9 8 6

own soil. Bonn rejected this notion both because of the collateral damage that would result from their use and because ADMs were perceived as expressly designed to limit a conflict to the immediate battle area. Indeed, the very characteristics making ADMs attractive to some—that they were somehow different from other nuclear weapons in that they were purely defensive and would explode only on NATO soil—made ADMs singularly unattractive to West Germans. 7 0 The official attitude of the U.S. government to atomic munitions was in part complementary to those of the Federal Republic, but in part also diverged.71 Regarding the latter, ADMs were viewed as nuclear weapons whose use was least likely to escalate, a belief that to some extent made their use more attractive if the need to employ nuclear weapons should arise. As Secretary Clifford stated in a January 1969 memorandum, "being defensive weapons, [ADMs] could be considered less escalatory than other nuclear systems." 7 2 However, this conclusion did not mean that there was much enthusiasm for their use in the early stages of a conflict, for such use would be contrary to the general American desire to raise the nuclear threshold. In addition, ADMs were still considered to be nuclear weapons and the use of any nuclear weapon was deemed to be escalatory. Finally, since the utility of ADM employment would be most significant if they were used very early in a conflict, the need to emplace and detonate the system before they were overrun posed severe problems for command and control. For these reasons, the proposed American employment concepts stressed the need to use ADMs only at a later stage in a conflict. Thus McNamara in a 1968 memorandum suggested that, if used at all, their use "should come after nuclear weapons have already been used and the main battle line has shifted. Then we would wish to place obstacles where we have not had time to prepare for HE [high explosive] charges." 7 3 A similar concept was proposed a year later by McNamara's successor: "if it appeared that we were not able to defend conventionally, we would consider using ADMs . . .

to help stop the

attack. Thus, the primary region where we would consider using ADMs would be in the area from about 25 to 100 km behind our initial defensive positions—behind the place where we could first really test our conventional defenses and in front of the region where other nuclear responses would clearly be more appropriate." 74 Neither of these two proposed ADM employment concepts were likely to be very attractive options to the West Germans, however. The notion, propounded by McNamara, that ADMs should be used on NATO soil

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after initial use had failed was clearly unacceptable to Bonn, which considered even initial use of nuclear weapons on G e r m a n soil to be a questionable proposition. H e l m u t Schmidt consequently rejected this concept outright. 7 5 Similarly, Clifford's proposal to use A D M s up to 100 km inward on West G e r m a n soil (which he considered to be the area "in front of the region where other nuclear response would clearly be more appropriate"!) was equally unacceptable. As a result, the Federal Republic consistently refused to allow the prior emplacement or pre-chambering of A D M s on its territory. 7 6 T h e controversy over A D M s that had plagued the N P G ' s initial deliberations on T N F resulted in the development of a particular set of guidelines specifically devoted to the issue. Based on a study on defensive weapons undertaken by the Italians, the A D M guidelines were adopted by the N P G at its October 1970 meeting in Ottawa. 7 7 T h e y provided N A T O military c o m m a n d e r s with the authority to plan to move the atomic munitions in a crisis from their storage sites in the rear nearer to their place of employment. W h i l e it is unclear whether the guidelines also authorized the preparation of actual holes for A D M emplacement, it is clear that presidential authorization was required for their actual emplacem e n t in such holes. 7 8 More important than these specific authorization provisions, however, was the conclusion that A D M s were to be regarded as any other nuclear weapon and would therefore be subject to the same political-control arrangements. Hence, predelegation of release (as opposed to dispersal) authority was explicitly ruled out by the guidelines. As a result of this conclusion, Legge argued, " A D M s became m u c h less controversial."

79

T h e adoption of the A D M guidelines in October 1970 marked the completion of the initial stage of the N P G ' s deliberations on issues of nuclear e m p l o y m e n t . 8 0 However, the guidelines that had been developed u p to this point were but a necessary first step toward devising a coherent e m p l o y m e n t doctrine for N A T O ' s T N F . For example, although it was possible that N A T O ' s initial use might suffice in bringing a conflict to a satisfactory halt, it was equally (if not more) likely that the Soviet U n i o n would decide to respond to such use with nuclear strikes of its own. N o n e of the guidelines developed by 1970 provided any guidance as to how N A T O in turn should respond to such an eventuality. H e n c e , N A T O next turned to the issue of follow-on use, or to what the N P G termed the issue of "the tactical use of nuclear weapons in defense of the Treaty

Debate About Nuclear Employment: 1 9 6 7 - 1 9 8 6

area." 8 1 These efforts to study follow-on use went through a number of phases from 1971 through 1975. The NPG's subsequent intention to integrate its work performed during the period 1967-1975 into an overall statement of T N F employment doctrine, however, stumbled on the questions of new technology and T N F modernization. Only after these questions had been addressed in December 1979 did the NPG return to the issue of T N F employment, finally completing its work in October 1986.

Efforts To Develop of TN F

Guidelines

on Follow-On

Use

Having adopted guidelines on the initial use of nuclear weapons in November 1969, the NPG decided to investigate the issue of possible followon use if initial use had failed to achieve its intended effect. 82 It did so by undertaking a series of analytical studies on follow-on use of nuclear weapons in diverse geographical areas and according to a variety of different scenarios. Each study was to investigate these different forms of nuclear employment according to a set of agreed guidelines, which included such issues as the military effect of T N F use, the vulnerability of NATO's T N F to nuclear attack, the potential effects of a Warsaw Pact nuclear response to N A T O use, and possible ways to limit escalation by selecting different weapon systems with specific yields and ranges. In addition, each study was to base its analysis only on those nuclear forces that were then deployed in Western Europe. A total of eight studies were undertaken, which together formed Phase 1 of the search for guidelines on nuclear follow-on use. Their results were put to the NPG in a series of meetings from 1971 to 1973. 83 While differing substantially in some areas, the Phase-1 studies all arrived at a similar conclusion, which was that follow-on use of nuclear weapons could provide NATO with a temporary military advantage and could even force a pause in the military conflict. If, however, the Warsaw Pact responded in kind (or worse, if it responded on a greater scale), then NATO's military advantage would disappear. Indeed, to the extent that the Warsaw Pact enjoyed a superiority in manpower, mutual use of nuclear weapons could provide the Pact with sufficient residual conventional capability to make a decisive breakthrough. 84 In May 1973 the NPG announced that, with the Phase-1 studies completed, it would in the next phase turn to a "comparative analysis of

87

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the various studies for the purpose of gaining deeper insight into policy matters pertaining to the defensive tactical use of nuclear weapons." 8 5 This Phase-2 study was undertaken by a trilateral group consisting of the United States (which chaired the effort), West Germany, and the United Kingdom. T h e work of the U . S . - F R G - U . K .

team on the integrated

document on nuclear follow-on use, which was presented to the N P G in June 1974, reflected the underlying consensus of the earlier disparate efforts in phase-1. 8 6 According to Legge, the Phase-2 study was "irresistibly drawn to the conclusion that if the initial signal had failed adequately to convey the twin messages of NATO's determination to resist and the risks thereby involved in continuing the conflict, then the signal would have to be repeated in a more peremptory manner. " 8 7 This did not mean that follow-on use would not seek to destroy military targets. Rather, the opposite conclusion was reached: the best way to reinforce the message was to use nuclear weapons with "the maximum shock and decisive effect on enemy f o r c e s . " 8 8 T h e Phase-2 study therefore decided "to endorse the view of the PPGs. Follow-on use should have the same purpose as initial use (to persuade the enemy to cease his aggression and withdraw) and the nature of the use should therefore be selective and be designed to meet this political r e q u i r e m e n t . " 8 9 With the completion of the second phase and the final acceptance of the Phase-2 study in June 1975, the United Kingdom suggested that the N P G next embark on a final phase in which it would integrate the NPG's efforts on nuclear employment conducted over the preceding eight years into one consolidated statement. 9 0 T h e objective of this Phase-3 effort was therefore to integrate the previously agreed political, consultation, and A D M guidelines, the "Concepts for the Role of Theater Nuclear Strike Forces" paper, and the Phase-2 study into a single document detailing every aspect of NATO's T N F employment doctrine. T h e integrative Phase-3 effort was sidetracked, however, by a number of other issues then intruding into the NPG's deliberations. 91 Prime among these was a growing dissatisfaction with the NPG's conclusion that nuclear use should aim at achieving a political rather than military impact. Indeed, the conclusion that follow-on use of nuclear weapons should be little else than a more extensive and militarily effective form of initial use was bound to be somewhat disconcerting. Not only would this leave N A T O ' s fate in the hands of the Soviet Union, but any follow-on use that did not achieve a decisive military effect was likely to fail as dramatically as the earlier initial use. W h y , indeed, would the Soviet Union respond

Debate About N u c l e a r E m p l o y m e n t : 1 9 6 7 - 1 9 8 6 positively if more nuclear weapons were used when it had failed to respond when less were used at an earlier stage? In the end, it was these sorts of problems that led some to reexamine the NPG's conclusions regarding initial use. Particularly in the United States, the argument surfaced that initial use should achieve a dramatic military impact, leaving the Soviet Union with no chance to win the military conflict without escalating to higher levels of nuclear warfare. 92 As we will see in chapter 4, the essence of the argument was that new technologies, including smaller and "cleaner" nuclear weapons, coupled to increased accuracy in the means of delivery, might enable a credible nuclear defense without causing much collateral damage. T h e deliberations within the Nuclear Planning Group soon reflected this new emphasis on technology. Already in November 1973 the NPG had decided to undertake two studies on the military and political implications of technology (known as the MIT and PIT studies, respectively). The reports, presented to the NPG in November 1976 and June 1977, both concluded that new technology, while no panacea, would have to be incorporated into NATO's military posture if only to deny the Warsaw Pact a unilateral advantage. According to Legge, the overall conclusions, however, represented yet another setback for those who believed that new technology would enable a greater emphasis on the militarily effective employment of nuclear weapons. 93 Although neither report thus challenged the NPG's earlier conclusions with respect to nuclear-employment guidelines, their effect was to stimulate interest in examining the nature and possible modernization of the NATO nuclear stockpile. The NPG's primary interest consequently shifted from issues concerning how to use nuclear weapons to considerations involving the ways in which the nuclear stockpile could be modernized. As will be discussed in much greater detail in chapters 4, 5, and 6, the initial focus of this interest concerned shorter-range systems, including new artillery shells and a new tactical missile. Following the furor over enhanced radiation weapons and the expression of European anxiety about the direction of the SALT II negotiations, the NPG shifted its focus to longer-range systems, most particularly systems capable of reaching the Soviet Union from Western Europe. Once a decision to modernize longrange systems had been made in December 1979, the NPG returned to examining how it could integrate the work on T N F employment undertaken in the period from 1967 to 1975 into an overall statement on the role of theater nuclear forces. However, this effort was now further com-

Practice

of Flexible

Response

plicated by the need to incorporate the implications of an evolving T N F structure as a result of the December 1979 and subsequent decisions regarding the restructuring of NATO's T N F posture.

The 1986 Revision Use of TNF

of the Political

Guidelines

on the

After an eight-year-long study, the NPG adopted a forty-page document entitled "General Political Guidelines for the Employment of Nuclear Weapons in the Defense of N A T O " (or GPGs) at its Gleneagles meeting in October 1986. 94 The GPGs updated the 1969 Provisional Political Guidelines in light of developments in military technology and, for the first time, provided specific guidelines for follow-on nuclear use. T h e document also reaffirmed the consultation procedures agreed to in 1969 and, at the insistence of NATO's two nuclear powers, placed particular emphasis on the political control over both the decision and the actual use of nuclear weapons. Finally, the GPGs contained new guidance on declaratory policy, on communicating NATO intentions to the Soviet Union in a crisis and after any N A T O initial nuclear use, and on the use of sea-based nuclear weapons under NATO command. The General Political Guidelines therefore represented the first fully integrated NATO document to set guidelines for initial use, follow-on use, and general nuclear response, be it at sea or on land. Thus, after nearly twenty years of effort, N A T O was apparently at last able to agree to a single document setting out a role for theater nuclear forces within the strategic concept of Flexible Response. Among the earlier discussed issues that divided the allies before, two were apparently addressed directly and thus are particularly noteworthy. First, the guidelines had a more "sophisticated" view of the relation between using nuclear weapons to achieve a military effect and sending a political signal of resolve. They did so by accepting the traditional American view that the more effective the nuclear use was militarily, the more likely that the "signal" would have its intended effect. The GPGs thus formally abandoned the concept of an initial, demonstration use (enthusiasm for which had long faded) and, instead, called for the selective use of nuclear weapons against militarily significant targets. Second, however, the GPGs apparently also stressed that the political signal sought in the initial use would be enhanced by attacking targets in depth, including possibly in the Soviet Union. "Initial use of nuclear

Debate About Nuclear Employment:

1967-1986

w e a p o n s , " West G e r m a n D e p u t y D e f e n s e Minister Lothar Riihl, pointed out, "would be m a d e mainly o n the territory of the aggressor, i n c l u d i n g the Soviet U n i o n . " 9 5 According to G e n e r a l Rogers, the purpose of such selective strikes "against militarily-significant Soviet targets on both Soviet a n d non-Soviet soil" would be "to cause the Soviets/Pact nations to cease a n d desist in their conventional attack." T o underscore this objective, a message would be sent t h r o u g h political c h a n n e l s to the Soviet leadership "advising t h e m that they a n d their Pact allies would c o n t i n u e to suffer additional n u c l e a r strikes if they did not w i t h d r a w , " as well as to the Pact nations "advising t h e m that N A T O is s t r i k i n g — a n d will c o n t i n u e to strike —Soviet

military targets o n their soil because of their having joined the

Soviets in aggressing against N A T O . " 9 6 H e n c e , the emphasis in initial use would be placed o n destroying targets in d e p t h , including ones located in the U S S R , with the political a i m of reversing the attack and splitting the W a r s a w Pact coalition. However, the guidelines did not preclude the initial use of n u c l e a r weapons o n the battlefield or their use o n N A T O territory in order to halt the Pact's conventional advance. T h e adoption of the G P G s represented a step forward in N A T O ' s search for a general statement o n T N F e m p l o y m e n t doctrine. However, notwithstanding N A T O G e n e r a l Secretary M a n f r e d W ö r n e r ' s conclusion to the contrary, t h e guidelines constituted a c o m p r o m i s e d o c u m e n t that should not be viewed as having settled all n u c l e a r - e m p l o y m e n t issues within the Alliance. W ö r n e r argued that t h e G P G s "finally resolved the debate between those w h o argued that theatre n u c l e a r forces could be used decisively as a m e a n s of w i n n i n g a conflict in E u r o p e , and those w h o saw their role as essentially o n e of conveying a political signal. . . . T h e Guidelines unambiguously support this latter elaboration of [NATO's] strategy." 9 7 But t h e n both t h e provisional guidelines and the Phase-2 study on follow-on use already supported this c o n c l u s i o n , as the discussion above m a d e clear. N A T O ' s debate has always been a b o u t how to convey a political signal by way of n u c l e a r e m p l o y m e n t , not whether

it should d o

so. T h e G e n e r a l G u i d e l i n e s did not solve the long-standing differences within the Atlantic Alliance o n h o w N A T O could best convey its political intentions t h r o u g h the use of n u c l e a r weapons. In this respect, the G P G s o n c e again represented a clear political c o m p r o m i s e a m o n g divergent strategic preferences. T h i s c o m p r o m i s e is revealed by the d o c u m e n t ' s two noteworthy aspects discussed above. In c o m b i n i n g an emphasis on striking targets to military effect with a stated preference for initial use of n u c l e a r

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weapons against targets in depth, the GPGs clearly represented a compromise between the traditional American emphasis on militarily effective nuclear use and the West German preference for emphasizing the escalatory nature of initial use by targeting the Soviet Union. Moreover, the emphasis on targeting in depth did not exclude using nuclear weapons on the battlefield or even on N A T O soil. Hence, as a knowledgeable commentator has argued, the demand for "[consensus politics produced guidelines which effectively sought to cover every contingency from the battlefield to the Soviet homeland and ruled out n o n e . " In short, like the PPGs before, the G P G s were a political compromise between the preference of the escalatory strategy, which emphasized targeting in depth, and the preference for attacking targets near the battle area to avoid escalation, as prescribed by both the warfighting and conventional-deterrence strategies. That the G P G s failed to resolve outstanding disagreements concerning nuclear-targeting issues became evident following their adoption. T h e internal fissures were, for example, revealed, in the W I N T E X exercise of March 1989. T h e scenario practiced envisaged a surprise Soviet conventional attack on Western Europe with N A T O forces soon failing to hold the front. Following a Soviet chemical attack against 40 air bases in West Germany and Great Britain, S A C E U R requested the release for 21 warheads which, on European urging, was reduced to an initial nuclear strike using 17 weapons. Of these, just one was targeted against Soviet territory. This involved the use of a British Tornado fighter (as opposed to a longrange U.S. missile) against the Kola peninsula. T h e remaining weapons were targeted against Eastern Europe, including three on East Germany. This initial strike was clearly compatible with the main thrust of the compromise inherent in the GPGs, although the U.S. refusal to use American weapons against targets in the Soviet Union underscored Washington's traditional reluctance to consider initial nuclear use against the Soviet Union for fear of escalation." It was the American insistence to execute a follow-on strike that caused a major uproar, however. Despite the fact that during the exercise the Soviet Union did not respond with a nuclear strike to NATO's initial use, American officials insisted that a follow-on strike was necessary to halt the Soviet conventional advance. They accordingly requested release of an additional 25 weapons, some of which were to be targeted on West German and Turkish soil. This request was opposed by both the G e r m a n and the Turkish participants. T h e U.S. refusal to change the targeting

Debate About Nuclear Employment: 1967-1986

plan, however, led the West German participants, apparently on the direct orders of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, to stall the proceedings in order to avoid the need for a decision. 100 This episode thus underscored that while NATO's compromises regarding nuclear-employment issues might be politically acceptable at times of peace, such compromises are unlikely to survive at times of crisis or actual war. T h e signing of the INF Treaty in December 1987 provided another clear indication that the disputes concerning NATO force employment had not yet been resolved. As will be discussed further in chapter 6, opposition in both civilian and military N A T O circles to the treaty centered in part around the issue of initial use. Thus, General Rogers argued that the elimination of the Pershing-II missile would remove NATO's "ability to strike, with certainty, targets deep in the Soviet homeland" and, as such, would prevent NATO from executing the plans drawn up under the new guidelines. 101 Similarly, Uwe Neriich argued that since the INF "deployment and the accompanying guidelines were a clear shift in the strategy and strategic policy of the U.S.," the removal of the missiles entailed an unwelcome return to the situation of the 1960s when "the Americans withdrew all INF systems from Western Europe, such as the Thor, Jupiter, MACE A and Β, B47, etc. [and when] the Americans were still opposing any thought of selective nuclear use in extended areas." 1 0 2 These examples demonstrate that despite twenty years of effort the Atlantic Alliance has failed to develop a single, coherent doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons. This should not be surprising, however. In the absence of agreement on strategy, consensus on how this strategy should be implemented is simply impossible. The imperative of alliance cohesion nevertheless meant that the Alliance was forced to develop a single statement of its nuclear-employment aims. This generally took the form of detailing various nuclear-employment options, but without specifying any priorities among them. Actual operational planning for nuclear employment has similarly stressed the development of various different options. Though planning for multiple contingencies was, of course, militarily prudent, 1 0 3 it also necessarily reflected the absence of agreement among the NATO political leaders regarding the manner in which nuclear weapons would be used. In the remainder of this chapter, we will briefly review the principal steps that have been taken in regard to the development of NATO's operational nuclear-employment plans.

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Operational Planning for Nuclear

Employment

T h e operational planning for the use of nuclear weapons by N A T O is undertaken by the Nuclear Activities Branch at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) under the direction of the U . S . Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff. SHAPE nuclear planning derived both from U . S . and from N A T O guidance, including, in the 1970s, from the Provisional Political Guidelines, the A D M Guidelines, and the "Concepts for the Role of Theater Nuclear Strike Forces" paper, and since 1986 from the General Political Guidelines. On the basis of these documents, SHAPE has drawn up the Nuclear Operations Plan (NOP), previously known as the General Strike Plan. According to a 1973 U . S . Senate report on N A T O nuclear weapons issues, the N O P "provides S A C E U R with the capability for deliberate escalation with which he can expand the scope or increase the intensity of combat in order to strengthen his defensive effort or to insure the survival of his forces within the scope of authority the President has authorized him to use. T h e overall intent of the N A T O nuclear concept is to provide for the selective and controlled application of force. " 1 0 4 T h e actual planning for nuclear operations involves a myriad of issues, most, if not all, of which are not discussed in public documents. An analysis of N A T O nuclear planning is therefore of necessity confined to examining conceptual issues, which are concerned more with the method of planning than its actual contents. T h e present discussion thus confines itself to two issues. First, I will describe the concept of nuclear release, including the various channels through which release requests and allied consultation would take place. Second, I will analyze the main conceptual tools that N A T O has used to plan nuclear operations, including the manner in which it would use nuclear weapons. NUCLEAR-RELEASE

PROCEDURES

Any use of nuclear weapons is subject to strict forms of political control, with authorization granted only by the U . S . President or, where appropriate, by the British Prime Minister. There are both military and political channels through which a nuclear-release request would be transmitted. T h e political channels were first set out in the 1969 Guidelines on consultation, which have been refined as a result of the biennial W I N T E X command (or paper) exercises ever since. T h e basic consultative approach

Debate About N u c l e a r E m p l o y m e n t : 1 9 6 7 - 1 9 8 6 to be taken in the event of a nuclear-release request has, however, remained unchanged. According to a 1974 statement to the Congress by James Schlesinger, Requests for use of nuclear weapons in defense of NATO by a member government or Major NATO Commander, or a proposal to use weapons by a nuclear power, would be communicated directly to NATO governments and to the Council/DPC. The focal point for consultation normally would be the Council/DPC, where interest likely would center on the political and military objectives and consequences of the proposed use and non-use. T h e views of countries expressed there would be communicated to the nuclear power or powers concerned. 1 0 5 Although these political-consultation procedures would likely be cumbersome and time-consuming, 1 0 6 the standard proviso that consultation would take place only with "time and circumstances permitting" would ensure timely release of nuclear weapons. In addition, as Legge has pointed out, "in an actual crisis it is highly probable that Alliance discussions on the possible use of nuclear weapons would have taken place in the DPC before an actual request for release was originated." 1 0 7 Indeed, the thrust of the guidelines on political consultation adopted by the NPG in 1969 was to narrow the scope of consultations by establishing in peacetime the likely circumstances in which a nuclear release would be warranted in wartime. 1 0 8 T h e military channels envisage two models of nuclear release—a "bottom-up" model, where the request emanates from the field, and a "top-down" model, where the release is requested by SACEUR or by political authorities. 1 0 9 In either model, the release request would be transmitted alongside the political-consultative process just outlined. In the bottom-up model, the request for nuclear release (or warning of an impending request) would originate with the corps commander, as the corps is considered to be "the critical level in planning for employment of nuclear weapons on the battlefield." 1 1 0 A request for nuclear release by the corps commander could only be made if the commander had concluded that (1) his mission could not be accomplished without the use of nuclear weapons and (2) that the employment of nuclear weapons would enable a successful conventional defense." 1 Once the corps commander has made this determination, the request sequence would follow a long process from the corps through Central Army Group (CENTAG), Allied

95

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Forces Center (AFCENT), and SHAPE to the National Command Authorities (NCA). If granted, the request would go back along the line through the corps commander to the delivery units. In 1976 it was estimated that this nuclear-request sequence might take up to twenty-four hours from the moment of initial request to the moment of firing the authorized weapons. 112 Many have noted that the great length of time for the request sequence would undermine the utility of employing any nuclear weapons in situations marked by the rapid movements and changes characteristic of the modern battlefield. 113 While the complications in the request sequence necessitated by the requirement for strict political control might indeed weaken the immediate military impact of NATO's eventual nuclear employment, a number of factors that might speed up the process must also be kept in mind. First, improvements in communication links have cut the effective transmission times of the request almost to zero. As a result, the request sequence might be accomplished in half the estimated twenty-four hours. 114 Second, should the need arise, the United States could bypass much of the process by going outside N A T O channels, cutting the number of echelons in the request sequence by more than half. 115 Finally, there would be the possibility of a top-down release in which SACEUR (or even the NCA) originates the nuclear-release request. Since communication of an approved request from the NCA to the delivery unit is much more rapid than communication of a request from the corps to the NCA and back down, a top-down release should reduce the time of the request sequence significantly. 116

NUCLEAR-EMPLOYMENT

PLANNING

From an operational perspective, NATO nuclear employment, as set out in the Nuclear Operations Plan, envisaged strikes at military targets only. According to 1974 Congressional testimony by SACEUR General Andrew Goodpaster, all "[pjlanned targets for nuclear strikes are military in nature, and their selection is based on the twin criteria of achieving essential military objectives while minimizing civilian casualties and collateral damage." 1 1 7 To accommodate NATO guidance, the N O P provided for two broad categories of nuclear employment—selective use and general nuclear response. 118 Selective use referred to the nuclear-employment options for direct defense or deliberate escalation within the strategic concept of Flexible Response, while general nuclear response was the final option envisaged in this concept.

Debate About Nuclear Employment:

1967-1986

Much, if not most, of NATO operational planning has naturally focused on selective use rather than general nuclear response. Selective use would be undertaken "on a controlled or limited scale either for demonstrative or tactical purposes." 119 The objective would be "to confront the aggressor with an escalatory risk unacceptable to him, thus causing him to make the political decision to halt his aggression and withdraw." 1 2 0 T h e fundamental basis of planning for selective use was the provision of multiple nuclear-employment options among which military and political authorities might choose as the circumstances warranted. The range of planned options, as General Goodpaster explained in 1973, was extensive: there are many modes of operation [including] the controlled battlefield use of nuclear weapons, possible air defense use of nuclear weapons, possible use at sea, going from there into the more extended battle area which might include use of close-in interdiction purposes, extending even to counter-nuclear, counter-air, always in a tactical role against military targets and beyond that we have plans, prepared plans and capabilities for conducting the full-scale use against fixed targets of military significance and the threats against our command extending throughout the Warsaw Pact area. 121 This range of options corresponds closely to the five "employment options" identified in the U.S. Army policy paper, "The Deployment and Employment of Tactical Nuclear Weapons," approved on May 7, 1973. These five categories were "(1) demonstration; (2) limited defensive use; (3) restricted battle area use; (4) extended battle area use; (5) theaterwide " 122 use. The operationalization of these five options involved, according to General Goodpaster, two different types of planning, each reflecting the different target types to be held at risk. On the one hand, the more extensive categories of nuclear use (options four and five) involved "fully preplanned" options to strike at fixed targets. On the other hand, the less extensive options (options two and three) "are partially preplanned because, in many cases, they would be directed against non-fixed targets, against mobile targets, or against logistic support facilities that had come into play because of the way in which the attack had developed." 1 2 3 Any nuclear-employment option would have to meet, as the earlier statement by General Goodpaster noted, the dual criteria of military effectiveness and avoiding collateral damage. Nuclear planning accordingly relied on two distinct methods to meet both these criteria. A first was

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"preclusionoriented" targeting which reflected the collateral damage criterion. According to the U.S. Army's staff officers' field manual on nuclear employment, this method "is appropriate during fire planning, when detailed target information is not available. . . . It will be used for suspected targets and areas that may contain targets based on the enemy's tactics, doctrine, and a terrain analysis." 124 T h e second method, "targetoriented" targeting, would be used if the characteristics and location of the target were precisely known as well as in the case of high-priority targets. While nuclear planning would usually combine both methods in planning selective strikes, the preclusion-oriented method would tend to dominate. 1 2 5 Whatever the method employed, any selective use would be constrained by the a m o u n t of overall yield such use could employ. In this regard, S A C E U R operated within a specific yield-constraint policy that determined the maximum yield that N A T O could employ. 1 2 6 T h e maxim u m yield that coule, be used on N A T O territory was reportedly ten kilotons (KT), which declined to zero as the intended target got nearer to urban areas. Ground bursts of nuclear weapons on N A T O territory were also apparently prohibited. 1 2 7 T h e key concept guiding nuclear planning in the area of selective nuclear employment was that of a nuclear "package," defined as "a discrete group of nuclear weapons by specific yields for employment in a specified area during a limited time frame to support a corps tactical contingency. It should be treated as a single entity for the purposes of request, release, and control." 1 2 8 While a nuclear package would be planned, requested, and controlled by the corps, subpackages of weapons would be available for divisions and lower echelons. In addition, a package released to the corps commander "would be modified for the situation that exists at the time of employment." 1 2 9 T h e number and characteristics of nuclear weapons in a package would be determined by the threat, mission, terrain, and population aspects of the area of potential use. As such, it could range from a relatively few nuclear weapons to 150 artillery shells and missile warheads for a corps package. Employment of a package would seek to fulfill the basic objective of selective use through altering the "tactical situation decisively" by destroying the opponent's military forces. 130 T h e concept of a nuclear package was first developed by the U.S. Army in response to the formal adoption of Flexible Response. Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s the Army had based its nuclear planning on the

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assumption that once the political authorities authorized the use of nuclear weapons, all available weapons would be released to the military commanders. 1 5 1 Even as late as 1971, the U.S. Army still assumed that general release to theater commanders would be forthcoming. For example, a field manual on Tactical Nuclear Operations, published in August 1971, defined tactical nuclear warfare as a conflict where "nuclear weapons are limited to the defeat of opposing forces in a theater of conflict. Implicit in this definition is the condition that a strategic nuclear exchange on the belligerents' homelands does not occur." T h e manual thus argued that the "decision to use weapons must be made as early as possible. . . . Once nuclear weapons are released, employment of these weapons should be authorized to the lowest tactical commander possible." 1 3 2 It was the political unacceptability of this nuclear-employment preference as well as its incompatibility with Flexible Response and NATO guidance, as incorporated in the PPGs, that led to a revision of the U.S. Army's nuclear-employment doctrine in the early 1970s. The concept of a nuclear package was accordingly developed in recognition that both the release and the employment of nuclear weapons would occur on a selective basis only. 133 T h e objective of nuclear employment was also adjusted. Rather than defeating the opponent in a theater of operations, the Army now recognized that the "ultimate objective of the employment of nuclear weapons is to terminate a conflict at the lowest level of hostilities on terms acceptable to the United States and its allies." Accordingly, "the employment of nuclear weapons should serve to demonstrate to enemy leaders that potential losses outweigh gains if a conflict is continued or escalated," a view that reflected acceptance of the conclusions reached by the various N P G studies on the role of T N F discussed above. The Army nevertheless insisted that, to "accomplish this end, nuclear weapons could be used to positively and dramatically alter the course of battle and preclude the enemy from achieving his objectives." 134 Indeed, nuclear weapons were still viewed as an essential augmentation in available firepower, the use of which could ensure a successful conventional defense: "nuclear weapons provide the urgently needed tactical edge in combat power that is required for a successful defense." 1 3 5 In view of the U.S. Army's nuclear-employment preference in support of conventional operations, the initial nuclear packages consisted primarily of short-range systems. With the adoption of packages as the basis of N A T O planning for selective use in the early 1970s, the weapon numbers

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and characteristics within the packages were, however, scrutinized by allied officials at SHAPE. Because some rejected the nuclear-employment concept promulgated by the U.S. Army, the nature of some of the packages was altered over time to reflect these divergent employment preferences. Increasingly, then, the selective employment plans (SEPs), as N A T O termed the packages, consisted of weapon systems of longer range to meet the requirement set by some West European allies to target in depth. 1 3 6 T h e deployment of long-range T N F in the 1980s m e a n t that N A T O ' s SEPs would have to incorporate striking at targets in the Warsaw Pact rear, including in the Soviet Union. This option had long been resisted by m a n y in SHAPE, who instead favored withholding these weapons for a general nuclear response. 1 3 7 T h e United States more generally had also opposed targeting theater-based nuclear systems against targets in the Soviet Union. In 1978, for example, Secretary Brown argued that "[d]eep strike T N F are planned primarily for use in selective or limited operations short of the Soviet U n i o n . " 1 3 8 By 1983, however, General Rogers told Congress that selective employment options for initial use included using weapons against targets on Soviet soil. 1 3 9 In so doing, N A T O ' s nuclear planning became more responsive to the preference—representative of the escalatory strategy and later included in the G P G s — f o r striking at a limited n u m b e r of targets located in the U S S R . 1 4 0 W h i l e m u c h of N A T O ' s operational planning for nuclear employment concerned selective use, S H A P E was also involved in drawing u p employm e n t plans for general nuclear response. T h e objective of a general nuclear response was "to conduct, in concert with external forces, operations to neutralize enemy nuclear capability, destroy his ability and will to wage war, disrupt his capability to exercise c o m m a n d and control, and destroy his land, naval, and air forces, including logistic support elem e n t s . " 1 4 1 Targets were drawn from N A T O ' s Nuclear Operations Plan and the weapon systems available included land-based air, sea-based air (particularly those based on the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean which fell directly under S A C E U R ' s c o m m a n d ) , SLBMs assigned to S A C E U R , and long-range surface-to-surface missiles. 1 4 2 Possible targets in case of general nuclear response were drawn from the "Schedule Program" which included the Priority Strike Program (PSP) and the Tactical Strike Program (TSP). T h e PSP consisted of targets "of highest priority to S A C E U R " as well as those on the Allied C o m m a n d Europe's Critical Installation List. 1 4 3 T h e total n u m b e r of targets in the

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N O P was said to be 18,500 in 1984, of which 10 percent were in the PSP. 1 4 4 Of the latter, two-thirds were located in Eastern Europe and the remainder in the Soviet Union, some 70 percent of which were in range of the long-range T N F weapons then deployed in Western Europe. 1 4 5 T h e scale of nuclear employment involved in general nuclear response meant that this option would be coordinated with strikes by U.S. strategic forces executed under the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP). 146 Indeed, given the number of targets involved, strategic forces would be needed to cover at least part of the high-priority targets. Because a general nuclear response would be executed only in conjunction with strategic forces, all N O P targets were "deconflicted" with the SIOP. 1 4 7 T h e above discussion makes clear that SHAPE developed a wide variety of operational plans for nuclear employment. One result of this provision for multiple targeting options was the need for a nuclear force posture that would enable the execution of all options. 148 As such, battlefield weapons, including nuclear artillery and short-range missiles, provided the requisite degree of flexibility, accuracy, low-yield, and responsiveness to target massed enemy formations in the vicinity of N A T O troops. 149 Threatening troop concentrations at the front was required not only to halt a potential breakthrough, but also to force the dispersal of these troops in order to enhance the prospects of a conventional defense. Medium-ranged systems, including tactical air and longer-range missiles, provided N A T O with the ability to interdict supply convoys and reinforcements, to target choke-points such as bridges and critical rail junctures, and to threaten nuclear storage sites, nuclear weapon systems, and command and control centers. 150 Tactical aircraft were also important to threaten mobile targets on the battlefield and deeper into Warsaw Pact territory. As Schlesinger argued, "the manned aircraft has a potential advantage over current missiles in that the pilot could make last minute changes in his aim point, to correct for target movement, providing in effect a form of terminal guidance." 1 5 1 Finally, NATO required both long-range air and long-range missiles to attack targets deep in the Warsaw Pact, including in the Soviet Union. Soft targets in the Warsaw Pact rear, such as airfields and division assembly points, could be attacked by submarine-launched ballistic missiles. 152 Because of their relative inaccuracy, SLBMs would have been unsuitable for attacking hardened targets. In order to hold these targets at risk, NATO thus required either long-range aircraft or missiles with greater accuracy.

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Conclusions This overview of NATO nuclear-employment planning has made clear that even after twenty years of effort, the issues of when, how, and where to use theater nuclear weapons remained a matter of some dispute. At the end, there was more agreement on these issues than when NATO set out to devise specific guidelines in 1967, but basic differences of emphasis remained. Thus, some believed that in order to minimize the risks of escalation, nuclear weapons should be used as late as possible. Once the decision to use nuclear weapons had been made, however, such use should then be militarily effective in nature. As a result nuclear weapons should, in this view, be used in a more massive fashion against those military targets directly threatening NATO territory. This targeting preference in turn implied a requirement for many highly accurate, shortrange nuclear systems such as artillery projectiles. Others within NATO disagreed with this notion that nuclear weapons should be used late, more extensively, and on the battlefield. Instead, they insisted that in order to enhance the psychological impact of nuclear use, nuclear weapons should be used at a relatively early stage of the conflict. Moreover, once the decision was made, nuclear employment should be both selective and threaten the aggressor directly, including the Soviet Union. This targeting preference led, in turn, to emphasizing longrange nuclear systems in favor of short-range ones. These intra-Alliance differences over theater nuclear employment derived from basic disagreements about extended deterrence and Flexible Response. As a result, no consensus existed within NATO—indeed, none could exist—concerning the manner in which nuclear weapons ought to be used. The dividing lines that separated the various arguments concerning T N F employment clearly mirrored the dividing lines that separated the different interpretations of Flexible Response discussed in chapter 2. In terms of nuclear targeting these cleavages were reflected in the operational questions posed at the outset of this chapter, viz., when, how, where, and for what purpose to use nuclear weapons. Thus, advocates of the pure-, warfighting-, and escalatory-deterrence strategies shared a preference for the relatively early use of nuclear weapons, a position opposed by proponents of conventional deterrence. In the same way, those who preferred the escalatory and conventional-deterrence strategies tended to favor using a relatively few nuclear weapons, whereas advocates of either

Debate About Nuclear Employment:

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the pure- or the warfighting-deterrence strategy opted for employing nuclear weapons in a more extensive fashion. Similarly, proponents of the escalatory and pure-deterrence strategies favored using T N F in greater depth, a position opposed by the conventional and warfighting deterrence advocates who, at least in the initial stages, supported their use on the immediate battlefront. Finally, those who advocated an escalatory or conventional-deterrence strategy sought to avoid striking nuclear forces and command and control structures, whereas supporters of the pure- and warfighting-deterrence strategies favored destroying precisely those vital military targets. Two points are revealed by this catalogue of nuclear-targeting preferences. First, the dividing lines were not consistent across the panoply of nuclear-employment issues. In this sense, the array of disagreements concerning nuclear targeting represented a set of crosscutting cleavages. Second, even where advocates of different extended deterrence strategies agreed on a particular targeting issue, they often did so for different reasons. For example, while both pure-deterrence and warfighting strategy advocates believed it necessary to strike at vital military targets such as the opponent's nuclear forces, the former saw this requirement as following from the need to enhance the pressures for further escalation, while the latter believed that this form of nuclear employment was the only way to ensure that one could dominate the escalation process. Similarly, while the belief that only a limited number of nuclear weapons should be used in the initial stage of a nuclear conflict was shared by proponents of the escalatory and conventional-deterrence strategies, both did so for different reasons. Whereas the former attempted to use nuclear weapons in order to enhance the fear of further escalation, the latter favored the employment of nuclear weapons in such a way as to limit the inexorable tendency toward escalation as much as possible. T h e existence of these multiple differences posed a series of dilemmas for developing political guidelines and operational plans for NATO nuclear employment. The preferred method for dealing with these dilemmas was to develop a menu of employment options that together satisfied the multiple targeting preferences of the NATO member states. The development of multiple employment options was, of course, a sensible method of military planning in that it took into account the fact that military requirements were likely to diverge according to the circumstances prevailing at the time. Moreover, by providing a "seamless web" of possible responses, multiple options could be (and were) viewed as adding to

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deterrence by confronting the Soviet Union with increased uncertainty about NATO's likely response to an attack. At the same time, however, the development of multiple nuclearemployment options, as embodied in the SEPs, also ensured that the divergent and often competing employment preferences within the Alliance could be catered to in the operational planning stages of the development of nuclear-employment doctrine. Thus, while NATO would still be confronted with difficult choices among divergent employment plans once it actually faced a decision to use nuclear weapons, the development of the SEPs ensured that those choices would at least be postponed until that time had arrived. In this regard, both the employment guidelines and their operationalization in the SEPs represented a classic political compromise among divergent strategic perspectives. As a result of this compromise, the Alliance was able to avoid a continual debate about when, how, where, and for what purpose NATO should employ nuclear weapons and the compromise therefore contributed to maintaining alliance cohesion. Hence, the requirements of alliance cohesion clearly dominated the need to pose a credible deterrent threat in the development of NATO's nuclearemployment doctrine. Given that these political considerations were paramount, what nuclear force structure was able to satisfy all the different strategic requirements that nevertheless persisted? Clearly, in terms of when to use nuclear weapons, the key requirement was to possess a command and control structure that allowed N A T O both to make and to execute the decision to use nuclear weapons at the time of its choosing, be this early or late in a conflict. As to how to use nuclear weapons, given the partial need for a relatively extensive use, a sufficient number of survivable weapons would have to be available to satisfy this requirement. Moreover, in order to be able to strike both at targets in the rear and at the front of the battlefield, NATO required nuclear weapons with a variety of ranges. Finally, to ensure that specific military targets, including mobile ones, could be hit without causing undue collateral damage, NATO had to deploy a range of weapon systems possessing sufficient accuracy to destroy a given target using a low nuclear yield. In sum, the N A T O force posture required to match the variety of different nuclear-targeting preferences would have to consist of a relatively large number of weapons, including weapons with a number of different ranges, many of which would need to possess sufficient accuracy to strike high-value military targets with a reasonable degree of confidence. Al-

Debate About Nuclear Employment: 1967-1986

though many have throughout the years argued that NATO's nuclear force structure did not clearly match the strategic requirements set out by its guiding strategic concept, the above makes clear that, in order to have been able to satisfy the different interpretations of Flexible Response, NATO's nuclear force structure had to relate not to a single but rather to a number of diverse nuclear-employment preferences at one and the same time.1" Viewed in this manner, the intermittent debates about NATO's nuclear force posture represented various attempts to restructure the forces in a manner consistent with one particular strategic preference for extended deterrence. In so doing, these attempts necessarily challenged the forcestructure assumptions of other preferences, which resulted in a debate within the Atlantic Alliance. These debates about how to structure NATO's T N F posture are examined in the remainder of this analysis.

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4 THE DEBATE ABOUT NUCLEAR FORCES: 1970-1977

In the previous chapter, I described the efforts by the Nuclear Planning Group to implement the strategic concept of Flexible Response by developing political guidelines for nuclear employment. T h e modest initial success of these efforts was not followed by agreement on more farreaching questions, including on such issues as how to employ nuclear weapons if initial use failed to halt a Warsaw Pact attack and how to rationalize the T N F posture toward more efficient ends. Indeed, the failure during the 1970s to reach an agreed understanding on guidelines for follow-on use of nuclear weapons led some in the United States to reexamine the NPG's conclusion that initial use should be geared to achieving a political rather than military impact. 1 In particular, the development of new nuclear warheads with different weapons effects and of precision-guidance technology to deliver these warheads with greater accuracy were instrumental in convincing some that a capability to use nuclear weapons to greater military effect might be at hand. 2 At the same time as this initial reexamination of N A T O ' s conclusions regarding nuclear employment, questions emerged within the U . S . C o n gress and the American strategic community regarding the nature and size of the theater nuclear stockpile deployed in Western Europe (and, indeed, elsewhere). These questions raised such issues as the size, vulnerability, peacetime security, destructiveness, and political control of theater nuclear forces in Europe, then numbering some 7 , 0 0 0 weapons in total.

Debate About Nuclear Forces: 1 9 7 0 - 1 9 7 7 These concerns culminated in the adoption of an a m e n d m e n t to the Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 1975, which directed the Secretary of Defense to study the overall concept for use of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe; how the use of such weapons relates to deterrence and to a strong conventional defense; reduction in the number and type of nuclear warheads which are not essential for the defense structure for Western Europe; and the steps that can be taken to develop a rational and coordinated nuclear posture by the N A T O Alliance that is consistent with proper emphasis on conventional defense forces. 3 T h e resultant report, issued by Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger in April 1975, was the most complete and thorough official U.S. discussion of theater nuclear forces ever released publicly. Despite these pressures for restructuring the N A T O nuclear force posture, however, initial efforts failed to ensure more than marginal and incremental change. T h e political context of the t i m e — w h i c h included both serious concerns about U.S. troop levels in Europe (as exemplified by the Mansfield amendments and the adoption of the Nixon doctrine) and severe financial stringency (due to the worsening U.S. balance-ofpayments deficit and the oil crisis)—discouraged major restructuring of the T N F posture in Europe. In addition, European rejection of the proffered alternatives, combined with opposition in the State Department, ensured that a debate within N A T O about the nature and size of the force posture was postponed until it erupted in full public view in the late 1970 over the enhanced radiation weapon (ERW) and long-range T N F modernization issues. T h e efforts at and proposals for restructuring the N A T O nuclear force structure that were undertaken in the early to mid-1970s, however marginal these efforts initially proved to be, are worth revisiting. This was the first time that serious questions were raised about the nuclear stockpile in Europe. In addition, this particular period exemplifies the divergent strategic perspectives that existed within N A T O and particularly within the United States, and shows the dominance of political concerns on forceposture decisions in the Atlantic Alliance. Following a brief description of the nature and size of the N A T O nuclear stockpile deployed in Europe in the mid-1970s, this chapter turns to a discussion of various proposals to change the nuclear stockpile in ways consistent with prevailing strategic perspectives of the time. Next, the

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efforts of the Defense Department to deal with the concerns expressed by these alternatives are examined and Schlesingers attempt to develop a role for T N F is discussed. I then analyze the various force-improvement and restructuring proposals put forward by the United States, including the proposal to produce enhanced radiation weapons. Finally, I examine European perspectives of, and reactions to, the proposed restructuring efforts and detail the failure to implement these restructuring efforts.

NATO Nuclear Forces in the 1970s In 1967 Defense Secretary McNamara stated for the first time that approximately 7 , 0 0 0 U . S . nuclear weapons were deployed in Europe for the use of American and allied forces. In October 1968 McNamara's successor, Clark Clifford, raised this number to 7 , 2 0 0 . 4 Throughout the 1970s the 7 , 0 0 0 figure remained unquestioned and was officially confirmed on a number of occasions. 5 T h e weapons were stored at approximately 100 special ammunition storage (SAS) sites, one-third of which contained weapons for U . S . forces and the remainder weapons for allied forces. 6 While official data are not publicly available, 7 data adapted from various sources show that in 1975 about 7 , 0 0 0 nuclear weapons were available for use by some 2 , 4 0 0 nuclear-capable weapon systems deployed in Europe (see table 2). T h e United States controlled almost 50 percent of all nuclear-capable delivery systems in Europe. It deployed two types of nuclear-capable aircraft (F- 111 and F-4) which could deliver four types of bombs. It further deployed two types of surface-to-surface missiles or S S M s (Pershing-IA, which had replaced the Sergeant; and Lance, which was replacing the Honest John); two types of artillery ( 8 - i n c h and 155mm howitzers); and three types of defensive systems (Nike Hercules surface-to-air missiles, antisubmarine warfare depth bombs, and special and medium ADMs). In addition, allied forces deployed the F - 1 0 4 aircraft for nuclear and conventional missions, while Great Britain possessed Vulcan, Buccaneer, and Jaguar aircraft for use of its own nuclear bombs. O f these systems only the Pershing missile and the ADMs were dedicated nuclear systems, with the remainder being at least dual-capable (artillery and Honest John could also deliver chemical weapons). T h e vast majority of the nuclear weapons in Western Europe were deployed in the Federal Republic of Germany. West Germany itself was also the most nuclearized of all European countries, possessing some 600

Debate About Nuclear Forces: nuclear-capable weapon systems.

1970-1977

It alone a m o n g the allies possessed

Pershing and Sergeant launchers. In addition, it deployed F - 1 0 4 aircraft, Honest John missiles, 8 - i n c h and 1 5 5 m m artillery, and the Nike Hercules S A M . It also had special teams trained for deploying A D M s . T h e Netherlands had six nuclear tasks, including aircraft, Honest Johns, 8 - i n c h (but not 1 5 5 m m ) artillery, the Nike S A M , A S W depth bombs,

and

specially trained A D M teams. T h e United Kingdom, Belgium, and Italy shared all the nuclear tasks o f the Netherlands except that the possessed no nuclear air defense systems, Italy no A D M teams,

U.K. and

Belgium n o nuclear A S W capability. Finally, G r e e c e and Turkey had four nuclear tasks each (aircraft, Honest J o h n , artillery, and the Nike SAM). O f the approximately 7 , 0 0 0 weapons in Europe, 21 percent were defensive weapons ( A S W s , S A M s , A D M s ) and the remainder offensive. Thirty-five percent o f the offensive weapons were air-delivered bombs, 31 percent missile warheads, and 34 percent artillery-fired atomic projectiles (AFAPs). O f the offensive systems, the aircraft ranges varied from about 1 , 9 0 0 km for the F - l l l to about 8 0 0 km for the F - 1 0 4 , while missile ranges varied from 7 5 0 km for the Pershing to 38 km for the Honest J o h n . O f the nearly 2 , 5 0 0 nuclear-capable weapon systems deployed in Europe, only 122 systems ( F - l l l s and V u l c a n bombers) had sufficient range to reach targets in the Soviet U n i o n from Europe. An additional 8 6 6 medium-range systems were capable o f attacking Soviet and Warsaw Pact targets in depth. T h e vast majority o f N A T O systems, however, were only capable o f attacking targets at short range (under 150 km). T h e same was true for nuclear weapons, about 7 0 percent o f which could be delivered only by short-range systems. According to Secretary Schlesinger, the nuclear weapons deployed in Europe had an average yield o f below four kilotons. 8 Yet, since artillery accounted for 2 7 percent o f all nuclear weapons in Europe and since their yield was for the most part below one kiloton, the average yield o f the remaining systems was considerably higher than 4 K T . T h u s , while the Honest John and Sergeant missiles carried warheads in the low-kiloton range, the newer systems that were to replace these missiles (the L a n c e and Pershing, respectively) carried warheads with several yields, ranging from 1 - 1 0 0 K T in the case o f L a n c e and from 6 0 - 4 0 0 K T for Pershing. T h e four types o f bombs carried by the air-leg o f the forces also had different yields, which ranged from 2 0 0 tons in the case of the televisionguided W a l l e y e to over 1 M T in the case o f older b o m b s . 9 T h e overall

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