Document created: 29 September 03
Air University Review, May-June 1974
In the “good old days,” civilians involved in national defense were limited primarily to the feeding, clothing, and arming of the troops. The heady stuff like grand strategy and the actual employment of troops in the field was left to the generals. Today the situation is different. Never before have so many nonmilitary people involved themselves in matters affecting national security.
The geometric increase in the destructive power of modern weapons seems to have created and sustained an atmosphere of anxiety within the United States. Quiescent for the most part but surfacing occasionally, as it did during the Cuban missile crisis, this atmosphere appears to be the driving force compelling people to action. Thus the instinct for self-preservation, once limited to the soldier in battle, now pervades the fibre of American society, and we see concern being expressed by scientists, scholars, statesmen, and Sunday school teachers alike.
From the mid-1950s on, we have seen pour forth a multitude of suggestions that attempt to resolve the dilemma of how to use force to further national security objectives without wiping out mankind in the process. Many eminent writers and perhaps a greater number of pseudostrategists have attempted to simplify and quantify the profound and unquantifiable. We have witnessed slogans such as “massive retaliation,” “minimal deterrence,” “credible deterrence,” “mega-deaths,” and “crisis instability” being coined, growing popular, being worn out, and then being discarded like so many empty cans along the roadside. More recently computer analysts, fascinated by the revelations emanating from their machines, have become self-proclaimed prophets on how to save the world. They back up their neatly packaged strategies with reams and reams of computer printouts that, if anyone takes the trouble to read, prove beyond a doubt that two times two does in fact equal four. They revel in the discovery of the most efficient methods for maximizing deaths in the sterilized war games played on their computers.
Classical strategists like Clausewitz offer theorems and absolutes that are still valid regardless of technological advances in weaponry. One may be convinced that, barring an irrational leader, another general war is highly unlikely. However, if general war does occur, the firebreak may depend no longer on the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons but on the attack or non-attack of civilian population centers. Extremely low-yield nuclear weapons can now fill the gap in the continuum of destructive force from conventional to maximum nuclear. Mutual restraint against type of targets, rather than restraint on the intensity of the conflict, may be the governing criterion in the future.
There is a new trend under way in the United States to extend and improve academic education and scholarly research in the national security field. College and university faculty members are taking an active interest in the teaching of national security, defense policy, civil-military relations, defense economics, and related areas. Prominent among the projects devoted toward this end is the National Security Studies Series under the general editorship of Professor Frank N. Trager of New York University. The first publication in the series attempts a broad overview of the major components of the national security system.* Over 300 books and articles were reviewed, and 45 were selected to appear in this work. From Clausewitz to James R. Schlesinger, from grand strategy to broad social issues, the work offers a valuable insight to the intellectual controversies and central issues surrounding national security.
* Frank N. Trager and Phillip S. Kronenberg, editors, National Security and American Society: Theory, Process, and Policy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1973, $8.95 paperback), 612 pages.
The first few essays in the book attempt to provide a means for approaching the study of national security. They provide models, frameworks, and definitions for the field. For example, the nature and use of military power may be studied by examining the factors that influence military potential, the decisions to mobilize and use military strength, and the causes of international conflict. A conception of national security is proposed by Trager and Frank L. Simonie in their “Introduction to the Study of National Security”: “National security is that part of government policymaking having as its objective the creation of national and international political conditions favorable to the protection or extension of vital national values against existing and potential adversaries.” They go on to observe: “The United States government’s failure to retain popular support for the Vietnam War is traceable, in part at least, to its inability to demonstrate to many people a direct relationship between the war and vital national values.” Trager and Simonie continue:
Many of the best scholarly works in the national security field have been concerned with the nature and purposes of military power. Unfortunately, this phase of the national security process is still surrounded by emotional controversies that tend to obscure the fundamental realities of national security in the twentieth century. . . . National security is concerned first and foremost with values and with the political conditions in which those values can flourish. Because of its potentially destructive consequences, military power is used only when failure to do so would result in an intolerable sacrifice of some vital national value. The obvious criterion is the relative weight of endangered values and risks involved in deciding for war. This is the most critical decision any policymaker in the national security system of any country will ever have to make.
The authors also note that peace can always be attained by a country’s refusing to defend its vital national values but that the political consequences could be more adverse than the averted condition would have been. “That there would be political differences is indisputable. In short, military power is a tool, a tool most countries would prefer not to use. But in the world of practical affairs, the tool will be used whenever the projected losses are judged to be greater than the risks of the war itself.” The emphasis in the past has been on the means of national security rather than the ends. Issues have been centered on weapon systems and their employment instead of the end purposes of national security.
In the selection entitled, “Power, Glory and Idea,” Raymond Aron discusses values, interests, and objectives in national security and highlights the most important of all objectives that any country seeks. Referring to Hobbes, he says that”. . . each political unit aspires to survive. Leaders and led are interested in and eager to maintain the collectivity they constitute together by virtue of history, race, or fortune.” He also notes that, historically, “societies have fought amongst themselves for three primary reasons: space, men, and souls. Why should societies fight if not to extend the territory they cultivate and whose wealth they exploit, to conquer men who are alien today, slaves or fellow citizens tomorrow, or to insure the triumph of a certain idea, whether religious or social, whose universal truth the collectivity proclaims simultaneously with its mission?”
The potential to wage war is a necessary instrument in a state’s struggle for power, and technological advances only serve to increase the utility of this instrument. According to Quincy Wright, in the selection “Causes of War,” this struggle for power is the driving force behind most wars, and the people are encouraged to support the state through ideological and symbolic interpretation of the war.
In his article Gerhard Ritter writes: “A law of national policy of radical pacifism could be maintained only at the risk of self-destruction; and survival is the basic instinct of all living things and of states as well.” But he does note that there are limits which should not be transgressed, else we risk the dehumanizing of the combatant.
This is only a small sampling of the many articles appearing in this 612-page work. The majority of the articles were written by professors, primarily in the political science field, but there are also some military authors; French, German, and Russian authors; and articles from the RAND Corporation and the New York Times, just to cite a few of the authors and sources.
Readability of the book varies from excellent to poor, depending on particular author and translations. As an example of good readability and low abstraction: “. . . a returned prisoner of war, Major James Rowe, declared that American POW’s largely ignored Hanoi’s propaganda until late 1967, when Hanoi began citing U.S. Senators by name. ‘The peace demonstrators and the disheartening words of these senators made our life more difficult,’ said Major Rowe.”—(Morton A. Kaplan, “Loyalty and Dissent”) Now try wading through this: “Programming likely attains the maximum degree of parabureaucratic characteristics that is possible, given the nature of the interorganization. Routinized decisions, instrumental rationality oriented very explicitly toward stated goals, and a mechanistic structural pattern are to be expected. This routinization of decision-making and the mechanistic structural characteristics also imply high congruency between organizational domain and the supradomain of the interorganization.”—(Philip S. Kronenberg, “Interorganizational Politics and National Security”)
From the foregoing the work could be criticized in some respects as an attempt by some professors to impress other professors. However, it has high research value, and I recommend it to those who have an interest in national security strategy and policy-making and in the social and economic processes affecting decisions in these areas. The work has a slight liberal bias, which is to be expected, considering its origin. On the whole, it is a refreshing compilation and well worth reading.
Minot AFB, North Dakota
Colonel George Holt, Jr. (M.S., Auburn University) is Deputy Commander for Operations, 91st Strategic Missile Wing (SAC), Minot AFB, North Dakota. He is a master navigator. His previous assignment was as a planning and programming officer at Headquarters USAF, working on Air Force and JCS positions relating to strategic force structure and national security. Colonel Holt is a distinguished graduate of the Air War College, class of 1973, and author of articles relating to aerospace operations.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air
Force or the Air University.
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