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Measuring A Nation’s Vital Interest:
Establishing Benchmarks to Gauge the Level of Crisis Importance

Introduction: The Current "Cart Before the Horse" Mentality

Given a litany of facts affecting this nation most strategists have relied upon simple decision type processes to choose a security strategy and a supporting military strategy. Instead of developing a strategy to fit a nation’s needs, strategists have simply reached to what’s available in an "off-the-shelf" type fashion. By and large, the US is in an era of reactive decision making and our consequential strategies are just that: ad hoc reactions to a volatile international world. Therefore, we must jettison our descriptive type decision process on when and how to deploy forces and embrace the fact that there is an important need for a prescriptive type methodology to decide when and how to deploy forces in response to a crisis.¹

The Clinton Administration’s 1996 Engagement and Enlargement is typical of the current methodology type in that it establishes the proverbial "cart before the horse" mentality. Like other strategies, it inappropriately shows how strategists promulgate which method best suits this nation by first establishing the strategy and then engaging a nation in a manner that best suits the described format.

Many strategists offer a laundry list of possible grand strategies to contend with the political and military environment in the world. These strategies range from neo-isolationism to a move towards global leadership.² While these descriptors may well classify a particular strategy, they often fail in defining the specific actions the US should take in reacting to crisis diplomacy. A good example of this is the Clinton administration’s wayward deployment of military forces during the 1990s which displayed a "gun-boat" type policy-strategy match deploying the military to various crises in response to the full spectrum of interests.

The US needs a criteria based strategy that establishes a benchmark to gauge the level of crisis importance. Establishing such a method negates the off-the-shelf type approach for establishing a grand strategy vision for this nation.³ Instead of measuring how well a strategy performs, we should focus on what first needs measuring given specific driving forces, predetermined elements, and critical uncertainties.⁴ Once we establish a measurement for each of these elements we can then implement a strategy for the nation.⁵

There are three general areas that US strategists can choose from when developing a policy to dictate how and when this nation will respond to a crisis. These areas include (1) maintaining the status quo in the Engagement and Enlargement strategy; (2) refining those national interests which drive the deployment of forces; or (3) reestablishing our strategy on a criteria based concept that benchmarks crisis importance.

Engagement and Enlargement - The US is Everywhere

No politician planned for a Cold War victory so complete. Consequently, the nation simply could not address the most basic question of when to use force to defend an interest. Representative Floyd Spence wrote that "... the dramatic reduction that the US military has undergone in the last decade ought to be sufficient reason to compel us to do a better job of establishing priorities."⁶ Of major concern is that the nation will pay more attention to the international periphery than to the powerful and potentially dangerous members of the international community. In reality, even with the fall of the Cold War, US national interests have changed little. They remain the indicators of how a nation will employ itself in pursuit of its objectives; used incorrectly, the result could be detrimental.⁷

In responding to crises, the US borders on an altruistic approach to the establishment of strategy on the grand level.⁸ Many argue that the current administration has an inability to "discriminate between those developments in the international system that are essential to America’s security, and those that are peripheral or irrelevant."⁹ As a result the US has struggled with justifying the deployment of forces in defense of those vague ideals.

Assuming that international politics is the driving force behind the policy establishment and its accompanying strategy, then many analysts are correct in defining specific parameters that need measuring before the proper grand strategy alternative is designated.¹⁰ Furthermore, diplomats should pose the question whether the proposed effort is for the good of the country or instead to carry out an idealistic abstraction? To simply deem every mishap or hiccup a national interest loses its utility.

This is not to say that Engagement and Enlargement is condoning the deployment of forces every time there is a crisis. Much to the contrary, the written strategy establishes a descriptive methodology that defines our nation’s objectives and supporting national interests. However, it is so descriptive that it offers no prescriptive methodology to define when and if the US should use force in response to a crisis. Others will argue that the Administration simply fails to follow it properly.

For instance, the strategy includes humanitarian efforts as the last in priority of the three stipulated national interests. Additionally, humanitarian efforts maintains a similarly small portion in the Missions section where it encompasses a two sentence entry.¹¹ Nonetheless, our nation has deployed its military at a dozen times in the past decade in response to "humanitarian" crises.

As Representative Spence infers, conducting national security policy as "social work" may not be according to our written strategy.¹² Clearly there is a better way to indicate when the US should involve forces. In short, it is possible that either (1) the interests are ill-defined or (2) the document is not prescriptive enough to indicate when to use forces in response to a national interest.

What Really Interest the US?

One of the biggest issues facing this nation continues to be the determination of our national interests. Even though there is no longer a monolithic challenge to the US it is still called upon daily to address disparate regional problems of uncertain relevance to American security.¹³

National security by definition is "how a state employs power to maintain its place in the international arena."¹⁴ Our Constitution intends for "the Congress to establish national strategic priorities and to allocate resources toward those priorities." However, as Admiral William J. Crowe states in his book The Line of Fire, Congress could successfully furnish the foundation for rational decisions at the national level if "it would attend more to fundamentals and less to cotter pins and washers."¹⁵ Besides the Congressional inability to establish priorities, no major new geopolitical theory or paradigm has emerged to extend or replace the works of the turn of the Century sages of Mahan, MacKinder, and Burnham.¹⁶

Recently, there have been many analysts exploring this paradigm. Charles Maynes, the editor of Foreign Policy, wrote that, "... the new world order and the doctrine of enlargement have been found wanting."¹⁷

Others contend that if the US continues to drift, it "will threaten our values, our fortunes, and indeed our lives."¹⁸ Still others contend that it is time to review our strategy and choose between the "competing visions for US Grand Strategy."¹⁹ Regardless of the strategy proposed, what appears universally common is the importance of defining a nation's national interests.

National interest roots trace back to the Machiavelli era.²⁰ Machiavelli’s concern was Italian unification and liberation from foreign occupiers. By the nineteenth century Clausewitz contended that all states are motivated by their need to survive and prosper. In the 20th century the seminal works of Hans Morgenthau considered only two interests exist: vital and secondary.²¹ Throughout the 20th Century, and most notably during the Cold War, a number of commissions established categories for compartmentalizing our national interests. The first real post-Cold War scrutiny of the compartmentalized interests occurred in July 1996 when the Commission on America’s National Interests established that there exists four levels of US national interests: vital; extremely important; just important; and less important interests.²² These interests look no different from those established prior to and during the Cold War and the question arises; should they be different given the changing international climate?

The interests that are clearly defined in Engagement and Enlargement are in keeping with the historically accepted labeling of interests. However there is no means established to indicate when and how to employ US forces in response to these interests.

Benchmarking Crisis Reaction

In the 1980s Secretary of Defense Weinberger argued that defining our national interests in a broad and general fashion was dangerous. To counter this danger he developed a set of six distinct independent tests. This "litmus test" defined when forces should be employed.²³ However it does not account for the evolving world environment in the post-Cold War era.

The Weinberger doctrine stipulates a set of conditions that judge when to employ forces. However, these conditions assume a bi-polar world where a clearly defined threat exists and national objectives are measurable. Assuming that the world is more complex makes these conditions too general. More importantly, while clearly definable, these conditions are not criteria. Rather they are bottom level objectives emanating from our security objectives. What is missing with this doctrine is a set of criteria identifiable to a particular crisis and manifested by the six step Weinberger test.

Considering the strategic changes in the world, Les Aspin’s Bottom Up Review (BUR) defined the structuring of US forces in relation to the possible post-Cold War threat. Aspin defined a generic threat yardstick and a set of capability building blocks used to yield force structure.²⁴ In the same light, the strategist should establish a benchmark to determine when to deploy forces in reaction to these threats.

Primus solus is a theory of the past; therefore the Weinberger Doctrine no longer adequately "tests the waters" for crisis response.²⁵ Instead we must move away smartly from the Cold War containment to what the current strategy to what the current administration rightly terms engagement and enlargement. However, while Engagement and Enlargement is termed correctly, it is used much like the Cold War containment strategy. There is no methodology established to tell the leaders when and if to deploy forces to support its interests.

Whether we like it or not, the US has inherited Bosnia, Haiti, Zaire and other similar international problems from our Cold War victory.²⁶ In the past few years the US has had difficulty in deciding if and when to deploy. While deciding when and how to deploy forces is difficult, the level of difficulty should not prevent the strategist from establishing well thought out criteria in support of national objectives; especially if it involves lives.

While the written set of interests may read sufficiently, US strategists have forced the military to "knee-jerk" to every Rwandan type mission lurking in the world. In the same light, many analysts think that if an interest is not vital, forces should not be deployed to support it. So how do we know when forces should be employed?

The NSS itself indicates that its overriding principle is security. The ancient Greek Thucydides wrote that a nation will fight for three reasons; security, ideology, and economics.²⁷ Strategy, as defined by the Naval War College’s Dr. Richmond M. Llyod, consists of those things that directly assist in the accomplishment of the national strategy or as a Clausewitzian would say, " ... strategy is the extension of policy."

Knowing that goals and objectives stem from the security principle in our NSS we can now determine the supporting objectives that will help determine our benchmark.²⁸ It is possible to use Nuechterlein’s four broad categories as the intermediate level objectives in our benchmark analysis. His categories include (1) defense of the homeland; (2) economic well-being; (3) favorable world order; and (4) promotion of values.²⁹

While Nuechterlein’s views his conditions in terms of importance, it is not only difficult but improper to label all interests early on and then react accordingly to that label. If that were the case, we could use the Weinberger Doctrine, which we have shown as lacking. For instance, if an interest is not labeled as vital then most would regard it as "not important enough" to act upon militarily. In the same light, the danger of ignoring a "peripheral" interest is that it may lead to a more volatile and harder problem to control in the future. This "interest creep" appeared most recently in Bosnia where an ethnic strife led to a test of NATO resolve.

The development of a hierarchy of national interests and their supporting objectives is essential in order to establish a measurable benchmark. Supporting objectives must show cause for how they achieve the national interests. The bottom tier of this hierarchy establishes the measurable criteria that quantify a decision maker's attitude in response to a crisis. It is important to note that these criteria must assist in measuring the supporting objectives which may be subordinate to a higher tier of goals. Furthermore, the criteria must have units of measure offering a decision maker a quantifiable method of measuring mission success.³⁰ A list of criteria may look like the following:

1. Fragility of the International Politics.³¹

2. US potential for influence in that region.

3. Desire for unipolarity.

4. Ability to maintain, strengthen and extend the zone of peace.³²

5. Preclusion of a hostile hegemon in the critical region.³³

6. The potential to hedge against re-imperilzation of Russia or the ability to assist Russia in becoming a "normal" country.

7. The extent to which that an action discourages Chinese expansionism.

8. Preserves or strengthens US military preeminence in the region/world.

9. Preserves US economic strength.³⁴

10. The desired amount of control over Pivotal States (those that effect regional and international stability).³⁵

Figure 1 is an example where the lower level objectives define the criteria as the measurable terms to help benchmark the importance of the crisis. Establishing this methodology and then conducting some analytical analysis will obviously benefit the decision maker. This example in not all inclusive, for it obviously ignores the direct relationship a specific scenario may entail. Nonetheless, if the decision maker establishes and properly weighs the criteria to support a possible decision, then a better "litmus test" would exist to help him understand the probable outcome of a crisis before deploying forces.

Figure 1: Objectives Tree Framework³⁶

Given the existing objectives and matching criteria the development of a new strategy is possible. These criteria and their respective levels of measure provide the characteristics for the specific crisis. Critics of this framework will claim that it is not practical. However, if the world’s climate is more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, then we must emphasize the development of models where the trade-off is in favor of validity and reliability over practicality.

Of course, accompanying any analytical approach is some sort of risk analyses. The deployment of forces has an associated level of risk involved. There are many methods (analytical and otherwise) that currently exist to measure this risk.

The analytical level of the process is also of importance. Critics will claim that this approach is forcing a science onto our policy decisions. For instance, the use of Markov chains is possible to indicate the steady state characteristics of the powers that dominate the world. Of the five major powers only two seem to be at a geopolitical balance while the others are struggling to succeed in reaching a steady state or balanced existence. All the more reason for the robust strategy I have developed in this paper.³⁷ Instead of simply defining that China and everything associated with China vital to the US, a Markov steady-state analysis could provide a set of criteria to quantitatively support a decision makers decision. Once we establish the criteria we can then develop the means for meeting the objectives outlined in such a strategy.³⁸

Tackling the Strategic Dilemma

According to Thomas Schelling, the foundation of a theory of strategy is, the "assumption or rational behavior -- not just of intelligent behavior, but of behavior motivated by conscious calculation of advantages, calculation that in turn is based on explicit and internally consistent value system."³⁹ It is time we heeded this theory.

Technology has evolved and many claim a revolution has occurred in the way we fight wars. The world is more complex and as a result it is more difficult to ascertain our place as a player if not a global hegemon. It follows that difficulty seeks a simplified solution. However, it is time to use our analytical and prescriptive abilities to format rational and systematic frameworks for each crisis defend our national interests. After all, if this process does nothing more than lower the level of risk to our troops then we have surely succeeded.

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Published Articles

Allison, Graham T. Extracts from "Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crises." American Political Science Review. September 1969, re-paginated 1-44.

Barbero, Michael and Caraccilo, Dominic J. "Measuring Mission Success." Military Review. July-August 1995, 40-43.

Barelett, Henry C., Holman, G. Paul, and Somes, Timothy E. "The Art of Strategy and Force Planning." Naval War College Review, Spring, 1995, 114-126

Burke, Edmund. "Remarks on the Policy of the Allies with Respect to France (1793)." Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1889.

Carpenter, Ted Galen. "Toward Strategic Independence: Protecting Vital American Interests." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 144-150.

Chase, Robert S., Hill, Emily B. and Kennedy, Paul. "Pivotal States and US Strategy." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 327-343.

Clarke, Jonathan. "The Conceptual Poverty of US Foreign Policy." The Atlantic Monthly. September 1993, 54-66.

Corgan, Michael T. "The Constitution, Congress, and National Security." Naval War College National Security Decision Making Department paper. No Date.

Drucker, Peter F. "Really Reinventing Government." The Atlantic Monthly. February 1995, 49-61.

Evans, Gareth. "Cooperative Security and Intrastate Conflict." Foreign Policy. Fall, 1994, 3-20.

Ikenberry, G. John. "The Myth of Post-Cold War Chaos." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 202-211.

Khalilzad, Zalmay. "Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 151-174.

Krulak. Charles, C. "Operational Maneuver from the Sea: Building a Marine Corps for the 21st Century." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 560-570.

Lloyd, Richmond, M. "Strategy and Force Planning Framework." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 1- 15.

Maynes, Charles William. "Bottom-Up Foreign Policy." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 175-189.

Mochizuki, Mike M. "Toward a New Japan-US Alliance." Japan Quarterly. July-September, 1996, 4-16.

Morgenthau, Hans J. and Thompson, Kenneth W. "The Future of Diplomacy." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 267-277.

"The New World Order: Back to the Future." Extract from the Economist. Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 320-327.

Nuechterlein, Donald E. "America Recommitted: United States National Interests in a Restructured World." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 93-101.

Nye, Joseph S. Jr. "The Case for Deep Engagement." Foreign Affairs. July/August, 1995, 90-102.

Owens, Mackubin Thomas. "The Political Economy of National Defense." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 212-224.

Posen, Barry R. and Ross, Andrew L. "Competing Visions for US Grand Strategy." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 102-143.

Robinson, Warren C. "Struggle for the Heartland: An Introduction to Geopolitics." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 308-319.

Roskin, Michael G. "National Interest: From Abstraction to Strategy." Parameters. Winter, 1994-1995, 4-18.

Ross, Andrew L. "The Theory & Practice of International Relations: Contending Analytical Perspectives." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 45-62.

Schwartz, Peter. "The Art of the Long View." Strategy and Force Planning. Second Edition. Edited by Strategy and Force Planning Faculty. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College, 1997, 29-44.

Spence, Floyd D. "What to Fight For? American Interests and the Use of Force." The Brown Journal of World Affairs. Winter/Spring, 1996, 279-283.

Unpublished Papers

Anglim, Edward P. "Pacific Military Strategy: Are We Meeting Our Strategic Objectives?" Unpublished Research Paper, US Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island: 18 May 1992.

Childress, Bobby L. "Bosnia: The Stabilization Force (SFOR) Decision." Unpublished Paper for the National Security Decision Making Department Policy Making and Implementation Course (PMI-5), US Naval War College, Newport , Rhode Island, No Date.

"Course Notes: SE401, Introduction to Systems Design." Unpublished Text Book, West Point, New York: Fall 1996.