Document created: 01 September 04

Air University Review, November-December 1971

Realistic Deterrence and New Strategy

Late in 1970, after nearly two years of foreign policy and strategic studies by the Nixon Administration, Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird announced a “new strategy of realistic deterrence.” The Secretary’s 191-page “Defense Report” of 15 March 1971 provided many additional guidelines and explanatory details and emphasized that the strategy truly “is new.” However, study of the Defense Report and the accompanying fiscal year 1972 budget shows no clear pattern for future force structure in the late 1970s.¹ It is the theme of this article that the final and definitive “realistic deterrence” strategy has not yet evolved, and the final force-structure concepts have not been determined. The Air Force seems to be in a unique position to offer the strategy’s one missing ingredient.

Mr. Laird’s 1971 Defense Report is a particularly interesting document, especially when read in conjunction with President Richard M. Nixon’s Foreign Policy Report of 25 February 1971 and the 1970 versions of both reports. Together, these documents provide an insight into the Nixon Doctrine, the criteria for strategic sufficiency, and other guidelines of realistic deterrence.

It is not necessary here to trace the development of the Nixon Doctrine from the initial Presidential “backgrounder” during a fueling stop of Air Force One at Guam on 25 July 1969 to its most recent articulation in the President’s 1971 Foreign Policy Report. Nor is it necessary to review the many abandoned terms—such as “low profile,” “1½-war strategy,” or “zero-war strategy”–which have been used at various times, officially or unofficially, to describe the Administration’s tentatively evolving strategic concepts. It suffices merely to describe the present, for 1971 contains the latest diplomatic and strategic milestones in the Administration’s progress toward a “new era.”

Mr. Laird reports that “in effect, we have completed our transition to baseline planning, and we are now building for the future,” but he adds that “we have not solved all the hard problems before us.” Mr. Nixon says “the transition from the past is underway but far from completed.  . . . our experience in 1970 confirmed the basic soundness of our approach. We have set a new direction. We are on course.”

The course charted by Mr. Nixon emphasizes partnership (the Nixon Doctrine) with “our friends” who “are revitalized and increasingly self-reliant.” This partnership, together with strength and negotiation, will form a new foreign policy and “an enduring structure of peace.”

Acknowledging the President’s foreign policy direction, the 1971 Defense Report defined the supporting “new National Security Strategy of Realistic Deterrence.” The new strategy “is designed not to manage crises but to prevent wars” and is to operate “across the full spectrum of possible conflict and . . . capabilities.” It is, the Report asserts, “positive and active” as compared to past policy which was “responsive and reactive.”

In a recent interview, Mr. Laird said that realistic deterrence had to be developed to “deter not only nuclear war but all levels of armed conflict. But at the same time we had to develop this new strategy in a way that faces up to the realities of the 1970s.” Being “perfectly frank,” he observed that “successful implementation of the strategy of realistic deterrence is the most difficult and challenging national-security effort we have ever undertaken in this country.”²

What makes it so hard are the new realities in today’s world. As listed in the Defense Report, these realities are a growing Soviet military capability and international influence, emerging Chinese nuclear threat, reordered national priorities and higher personnel costs for the U.S., changing world economic environment, and greater awareness of burden-sharing by NATO and Asian friends.

Perhaps because the 1971 Defense Report was, as one newspaper described it, “top-heavy with broad philosophy and rather thin on explicit details,”³ general reaction to it was somewhat unenthusiastic and confused. Most press accounts repeated without much comment Mr. Laird’s claim of a new strategy and did not attempt to interpret or endorse its reputed innovations. A Washington Post editorial considered that “novelty—newness and change—was a central, even somewhat obsessive, theme,” adding that the Report’s “novelty is overstated, as are claims for the internal cohesiveness of the new policy in all its many parts.” ⁴ Other reporters saw contradictions in the logic and the words. The Washington Star quoted a defense official as saying, “The whole point [of the new strategy] is to put downward pressure on war and upward pressure on negotiations,” but the paper also noted that Mr. Laird’s Report “leans very heavily on a concept called ‘the total force.’”⁵ A later Star column hit the Report’s criticism of the old “responsive and reactive” policy while discussing “only a few pages later . . . how the United States might ‘respond’ to world problems.”⁶

Admittedly, it is difficult to put one’s finger on exactly what is new. The Defense Report points out strongly that the new strategy is not “a mere continuation of past policies in new packaging.” Yet it contains many hoary truisms, such as the necessity for “lowering the probability of all forms of war through deterrence of aggressors” and for correlating “military strategy, national security strategy, and foreign policy.” Despite a 22-page chapter on force planning concepts and 52 pages on the plans themselves, it is much easier to find piecemeal shading differences than it is to find significantly new concepts.

In some respects the two former strategies, massive retaliation and flexible response, receive clearer definition than the new one. For example, the Defense Report states that massive retaliation’s “strategy and forces were deterrence-oriented with emphasis on nuclear umbrella” and that its research and development emphasis was “on development of new systems.” For flexible response, the “significant change in strategy was the shift in emphasis to greater orientation for U.S. toward beating the principal Free World burden in non-nuclear conflict.” Flexible response R&D “emphasized refinements rather than conceptual new systems.” The Defense Report does not supplement these succinct descriptions with a similar description of realistic deterrence, although it does present diagrams to illustrate all three strategies. These diagrams are helpful in a general way but offer few detailed conceptual insights.

Realistic Deterrence:
An Interpretation

The most subtle—but perhaps most important—conceptual change is the use of “realistic deterrence” to a void fighting wars in the lower part of the conflict spectrum. Massive retaliation and flexible response deterrence focused on the upper part of the conflict spectrum, where it worked very well. What is new in realistic deterrence is the idea that America may be freed from lesser wars by strengthening other Free World nations. In his Foreign Policy Report, Mr. Nixon said, “It is our policy that future guerrilla and subversive threats should be dealt with primarily by the indigenous forces of our allies. Consistent with the Nixon Doctrine, we can and will provide economic and military assistance. . . .”

This idea was expressed another way by the President in two interviews shortly after release of the Defense Report. Mr. Nixon told C. L. Sulzberger of the New York Times that, after Vietnam, “I seriously doubt if we will ever have another war. This is probably the very last one.” ⁷ A few days later he told Howard K. Smith of American Broadcasting Company there would continue to be brushfire wars but “the main thing for us is not to get involved in them.” ⁸ Strangely enough, the press and public paid little attention either to the President’s statements or to this basic concept within the Defense Report.

Possibly the concept was not fully understood because the Defense Report did not explicitly correct earlier statements which seemed to emphasize improved U.S. conventional forces. However, instead of emphasizing U.S. conventional capabilities, the Defense Report indicates that strategic forces will remain about level while other manpower is to be reduced during FY 1972. U.S. active duty personnel will continue to decline (from 2.7 to 2.5 million during FY 72—down from 3.5 million in FY 69). There will also be a slight reduction in civilian and reserve component strength. The Defense Report contains considerable discussion of the desired “reduction of draft calls to zero by July 1, 1973,” and of the continually rising personnel costs, while the Nixon Doctrine calls for fewer U.S. troops overseas. These factors dictate “smaller U.S. active forces, with great emphasis to be given to their readiness and effectiveness.” This reduction is an important part of the new strategy and a major change from the flexible response force structure, especially in ground forces.

The Report implies that the main improvements for deterrence of lesser wars will come from other Free World nations—aided and supported by the U.S. nuclear umbrella, conventional forces, and military and economic assistance. These other nations will provide deterrence mostly within the lower two-thirds of the spectrum, while the U.S. must provide deterrence in the upper two-thirds. The Report’s most significant new strategic emphasis is on this “Total Force approach” to deterrence, which is described as applying “all appropriate resources for deterrence” across the spectrum.

The Defense Report states that “for those levels in the deterrence spectrum below general nuclear war, the [Free World] forces . . . must have an adequate warfighting capability, both in limited nuclear and conventional options.” The total force approach seems to place some increased emphasis on U.S. theater nuclear forces. For general nuclear war, realistic deterrence depends upon the U.S. nuclear umbrella just as the previous two strategies did, but at the same time there is discussion and some added dependence on negotiations ( SALT) and on defensive measures (ABM). The importance of “maintaining and using our technological superiority” is recognized, and the FY 72 R&D budget is indeed increased some 16 percent. The new strategy avoids emphasis on either new systems or refinements but in­stead proposes “options to adjust” future force capabilities.

Despite these indications that the new strategy is different from the two previous ones, it is not always clear what the differences mean in terms of future U.S. forces and capabilities. For example, in the listing of “six major reasons” for the R&D increase, five reasons are related to advanced technology and new capabilities while the last is “to develop simpler and less expensive weapons.” The Report talks elsewhere of assigning “multi-mission roles” to some forces and of specially tailoring other forces. It notes that the Army’s readiness today “is lower than we would like” and that “our tactical air forces also need to be improved”; extensive descriptions of these improvements are provided. But the Navy is the only service to receive an increase (seven percent) in the FY 72 budget, perhaps because of the acknowledgment, buried in a brief discus­sion of European deployments, that “in this context naval forces are particularly important.” On the other hand it is maintained that “our goal is to minimize the need” for naval deployments.

These illustrations are not presented here in any critical sense; no such document could be written without providing some ambiguities and apparent contradictions when statements are selected from within its lengthy context. The point is that the concepts and guidelines for realistic deterrence are not specific enough to permit resolution of the ambiguities.

There are a number of factors—some described in the Defense Report and some not—which might enable realistic deterrence to work, even without further evolution and clarification. Factors favorable to the new strategy include

–Increased readiness, burden sharing, and the total force approach, to provide greater deterrent utility of Free World forces.

–Negotiations that may lessen the probability of war and reduce defense costs.

–Nixon Doctrine redefinition of U.S. national interests and roles overseas. This means greater psychological and material self-reliance of the Free World, with less direct American involvement and, implicitly, lowered U.S. military commitments.

–Greater public and governmental willingness to accept security risks (or at least to accept a lowered priority for security needs). This willingness is based partially on perceptions of a decreased external threat and on the optimistic hope that potential Soviet/Chinese threat developments will not materialize.

Unless the calculated risks fail and the potential threats do materialize in some inescapable manner, the above factors probably would create a more “enduring structure of peace” than existed in the past when world stability depended almost solely on U.S. military power. Realistic deterrence might well work within such a structure.

Nevertheless, the “favorable” elements alone do not appear to be sufficient to insure the credibility and success of the new strategy. Burden sharing, improved readiness, and the total force approach are goals that have been sought by the U.S. ever since the formation of NATO in 1949, though these goals were not always specifically named and given the same emphasis as today. There is an obvious limit to the additional capabilities which might now be expected, and it is not at all clear that these concepts alone will be enough to compensate for the reductions in active U.S. forces. Similarly, negotiations will not necessarily lead to any breakthroughs for American and Free World security.

Finally, reduced American emphasis on overseas involvement might make the new and less “reactive” military strategy more tolerable to the American public (and therefore more workable in the seventies than its predecessor); yet it would not seem to make America more effective in worldwide deterrence. U.S. force reductions, together with evidence cited in the Defense Report that the threat is not decreasing, may actually offer a prospect of decreased and endangered deterrence in at least some parts of the spectrum. Obscurities and weak points remain in the deterrence equation, and it is not always clear how Free World forces will deal with them.

The situation today perhaps is analogous to that of 1949—two years after the policy of containment had been adopted—when containment’s accompanying military force structure was still unclear. The Unification and Strategy hearings proved how little definition or agreement there was. By 1953-54, containment’s massive retaliation strategy and force-structure concept had been fully articulated, and it was understood and acquiesced in by all. Similarly, so much had been written and discussed about flexible response that it was well understood when adopted in 1961. In 1953 and again in 1961, although there were many arguments about details, the basic thrust and implications of each new strategy’s force structure were not in question.⁹ That is not the case with realistic deterrence; something is missing.

On the surface at least, the guidelines seemingly fail to provide a clear indication of the U.S. force-structure and employment concepts that are to make realistic deterrence work. Though some of the guidelines are original and distinctive, the combination of vital new elements or capabilities does not seem sufficient to establish a truly new dimension to the concept of deterrence. There is not yet a new strategy as innovative and conceptually lucid as the Nixon Doctrine itself. Something must be added to make the evolving strategy more than simply “a movement toward a middle position between” massive retaliation and flexible response (as one writer saw it in late 1970). To support the distinctive new foreign policy, the new strategy should be completely distinctive in its own right.

It is not the purpose of this article to be critical of anyone for failing to develop a wholly new military strategy in two years. (Developing the 1947 containment policy’s strategy took six years.) Rather, the purpose is simply to examine the state of evolution of realistic deterrence and to make the point that its new strategic guidelines are not yet matched by specific force-structure concepts.

Service Concepts Needed

Another purpose is to appraise what might be done by the military services to assist in the further conceptual evolution of realistic deterrence.

The Army does not appear to be able to offer much that is new. Pared by the new strategy from almost 20 divisions to 13 1/3 (plus 8 “Modernized Reserve”) divisions, the Army also has had its budget reduced from $25 billion in FY 68 to $21.5 billion in FY 72. (In the same time period the Air Force was reduced from $25 to $23 billion, and the Navy was increased from almost $21 to almost $23.5 billion.) The Washington Post quoted an “administration insider” assuming it up: “The Army is taking it in the neck.” ¹⁰ Writing knowledgeably on the future, in the July 1971 Foreign Affairs, an Army colonel observes that the Army and other services must provide “a flexible military force relevant to political realities” and that “careful force planning and programming at the highest echelons are necessary to lay the groundwork for rewarding peacetime service.” ¹¹ But he suggests no new strategic policies whereby the Army could facilitate fulfilling these needs. The new strategy would seem to preclude any new and conclusive Army contributions except, of course, in the areas of military assistance and more responsive reserve forces.

Many maintain that the key to new capabilities for realistic deterrence is something called the “Blue Water Strategy.” Navy Magazine editorialized about this in its January 1971 issue, noting that the Nixon Doctrine “seems aptly fitted to a ‘blue water’ or maritime military strategy, emphasizing seaborne air and amphibious power just over the horizon, keeping American forces largely out of foreign countries but able to move in with limited means quickly. . . .” In its February issue, Navy returned to the subject. The President, it proclaimed, “seems to be moving—albeit ever so slowly—toward  ‘Blue Water Strategy.’”¹² In March Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, former Chief of Naval Operations, wrote that the “only way” the Nixon Doctrine “can be fulfilled is through a strong maritime strategy.” He advocated a “hard-hitting modern naval force” for controlling the seas, showing the flag, and supporting other nations. “The ability to engage decisively and disengage quickly,” he said, “is the inherent strength of a maritime strategy.” ¹³ A few days later the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative F. Edward Hébert, said 1971 would see a “renaissance” of the Navy, “top dog” in the defense budget for the first time since World War II. He supported not only more aircraft carriers and rebuilding of the surface fleet but also a larger fleet of nuclear fleet ballistic missile (FBM) submarines—“perhaps the best protection we have now, the best deterrent we have now as far as the Navy is concerned.”¹⁴ Emphasizing the latter point, a Prize Essay in the April U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings urged a “blue water oceanic option” that would move the “strategic deterrent to sea while there is still time.” ¹⁵

A “blue water” strategy, including FBM strategic forces as well as carriers and other surface ships for conventional operations, may indeed be the missing link that is needed in realistic deterrence, even though at first glance this strategy seems to run counter to the policy of increasing deterrence across the spectrum while reducing U.S. manpower and costs. The only justified observation here is that there has been no clear articulation (at least publicly) of how the blue water strategy would work, what general force structure would be required to support it, and whether the resultant capabilities would in fact provide any essentially new and decisive element for realistic deterrence. Thus it is difficult to visualize how a blue water strategy could, at reasonable cost within the new realities, offer any sizable innovations.

But there is no intent here to argue against either the Army or Navy coming up with a new force-structure concept in support of realistic deterrence; they should be encouraged to do precisely that. And the Air Force should address what the Air Force might do to help implement Mr. Nixon’s “new direction” and Mr. Laird’s “new strategy.” The nation should have the opportunity of selecting from a large marketplace of ideas.

The services must seek, “in a way that faces up to the realities of the 1970s,” to contribute more to the total force approach. As an indispensable feature of this effort, the military establishment must offer a new breadth of Presidential options—something Mr. Nixon clearly indicates that he wants.

Curiously, the matter of Presidential military options has received more emphasis in the Foreign Policy Reports than in the latest Defense Report. In 1970 Mr. Nixon posed a question which received considerable attention and conjecture at the time:

Should a President, in the event of a nuclear attack, be left with the single option of ordering the mass destruction of enemy civilians, in the face of the certainty that it would be followed by the mass slaughter of Americans? Should the concept of assured destruction be narrowly defined and should it be the only measure of our ability to deter the variety of threats we may face?

In his 1971 Foreign Policy Report, in discussing strategic “flexibility—the responses available to us,” the President answered his question:

We must insure that we have the forces and procedures that provide us with alternatives appropriate to the nature and level of the provocation. This means having the plans and command and control capabilities necessary to enable us to select and carry out the appropriate response without necessarily having to resort to mass destruction.

Perceptive reporter William Beecher of the New York Times put the question and answer together in a recent column, concluding that they reflect “the President’s determination to increase his choices in nuclear war should deterrence fail.” ¹⁶ But it is more than that. Elsewhere in his Foreign Policy Report, Mr. Nixon indicated a parallel desire for “a full range of options” for general purpose forces. What he wants, it emerges, is precisely what Mr. Laird wants: deterrence across the spectrum. The President merely places a different emphasis on the problem. For realistic deterrence across the spectrum, there must be credible options anywhere within that spectrum.

The need for Presidential options and the concept of realistic deterrence are indivisibly related—each calls for greatly improved flexibility in deterrence. And improved flexibility appears to be the one missing ingredient in realistic deterrence. Without flexibility, large and separate U.S. forces would be needed for each separate increment of the upper deterrence spectrum. Such a force structure is hardly realistic within the President’s stated defense limit of 2.5 million military personnel and 7 percent of the gross national product.

With reduced resources, the U.S. must emphasize (as Mr. Laird has said) advanced technology, nuclear-capable forces, highly skilled but limited manpower, and (as Mr. Nixon has urged) flexible Presidential options. Also, to provide deterrence in the upper two-thirds of the spectrum, U.S. forces must emphasize multimission capabilities to operate efficiently and broadly within this range. To support such operations, the U.S. command and control structure must be able to guarantee the essential worldwide information and responsiveness so that the President could select and confidently order anyone of the variety of options at his command. 

An Aerospace “Total Force”
New Strategy

This U.S. force-structure requirement matches exactly the Air Force’s near-term potential. Of all the services, the USAF is the one which can best provide versatility for worldwide total force deterrence, using multimission aerospace forces supported by advanced, survivable command and control, including aerospace surveillance systems. Air Force strategic forces could be used to help deter less-than-all-out strategic nuclear or tactical nuclear attacks, or even conventional conflicts in such places as Vietnam or NATO. Nuclear-capable tactical air forces similarly could be used to help deter strategic war as well as tactical nuclear and conventional conflicts. (The Defense Report makes these latter two points, but without emphasis and without attention to command and control— the key to both flexibility and credible options.)

Army and Navy forces, on the other hand, are not so flexible. For example, armor and amphibious battalions, helicopters, aircraft carriers and other naval surface forces, ABM systems, and FBM submarines—all offer something special for realistic deterrence; each will be required for its special applications. But none offers efficient and realistic deterrence except in one rather narrow part of the spectrum. None—except aircraft carriers—has the flexibility to deter substantially in other parts of the spectrum.

In my opinion it will be up to the Air Force to provide most of the force and option flexibility needed in the seventies. No listing will be suggested here of the specific systems and developments required; this calls for detailed, classified studies. It can be said that the necessary aerospace force and command and control systems either exist today or are possible within the state of the art. With the right principles and appropriate emphasis, the required capabilities can be put together well within the fiscal and manpower limits. It can also be said that the Army and Navy would retain important roles in the new strategy, each making its own contributions.

Primarily, however, for deterrence in the critical upper two-thirds of the spectrum, I believe the new force-structure concept must be founded upon U.S. aerospace flexibility. Emphasis on aerospace flexibility must be the central U.S. element in the total force approach. This one innovative ingredient will complete the evolution of a distinctive new strategy of realistic deterrence needed for the seventies.

Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research

  Notes

1. The Defense Report contains the FY 72 budget and force summary; the remainder of the Five-Year Defense Program (FY 73-76) is classified. This writer’s observations are based solely on the Defense Report and its unclassified guidelines, without reference to or knowledge of the FY 73-76 program.

2. U.S. News and World Report, May 17, 1971, p. 29.

3. Charles W. Corddry, “Laird Brings Defense Plan to Congress,” Baltimore Sun, March 10, 1971, p. 1.

4. “A New Nuclear Strategy,” Washington Post, March 15, 1971.

5. Washington Star, March 9, 1971, p. 1.

6. Orr Kelly, “Nixon Strategy—By The Numbers,” Washington Star, March 16, 1971, p. 8.

7. New York Times, March 10, 1971, p. 1.

8. “Nixon Doctrine and the Hope of No More Wars,” Kansas City Star, March 28, 1971.

9. The assertion that the two earlier strategies were distinctive and reasonably clear is, based on the Defense Report’s, incisive analysis of them as well as on the writer’s own research.

10. Michael Getler, “Defense Costs Peril Strategy,” Washington Post, April 19, 1971.

11. Colonel Robert G. Gard, Jr., “The Military and American Society,” Foreign Affairs, July 1971, pp. 705, 706.

12. “Nixon Doctrine and the Blue Water Strategy,” Navy, January 1971 (and editorial on same subject—Part II, February 1971).

13. Arleigh A. Burke, “China Sea to the Caribbean,” New York Times, March 2, 1971, p. 35.

14. Don Lewis, “Hébert says ’71 ‘Year of Navy,’” New Orleans Times Picayune, March 6, 1971.

15. George E. Lowe, “The Only Option?” United States Naval Institute Proceedings, April 1971, p. 23.

16. “On Defense, Nuclear Options Are Sought,” New York Times, February 26, 1971, p. 14.

Colonel Kenneth L. Moll (USMA; M.A., University of Omaha) is Chief Coordinated Action Plans Division, Directorate of Doctrine, Concepts and Objectives, Hq USAF. He flew F-80s in Korea and T-39s in Vietnam and has served with ADC, SAC, and JCS. He has written numerous articles on military history and strategy, the present one while he was USAF Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins University Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research.