Are Saddams Becoming Immune?
Indiscriminate use of precision strike weapons is like drug abuse. Used selectively, painkillers such as morphine may have a lifesaving effect, but continued use can raise tolerance levels and ultimately result in addiction. Similarly, precision weapons, when used repeatedly as the first weapon of choice to announce resolve, to punish, or to send diplomatic signals, can gradually lose their ability to dissuade without being used. This is true of Tomahawks, as well as of F-l 17 stealth fighters, B-2 stealth bombers, and other precision weapons that rely on shock and surprise. Like the electrician who becomes less careful after surviving a major electrical shock, adversaries who weather a Tomahawk attack also may assume that they are now immune to “the big one.”
In early September 1996, for example, U.S. naval and air forces fired two barrages of 44 cruise missiles against targets in Iraq. The intent was to force an Iraqi retreat from the northern Kurdish enclave. The actual battle damage assessment is classified, but the strategic effect of the attack is unclear. After some hesitation, Saddam Hussein moved most of his forces out of the enclave, but only after achieving his main objective. Within several days, the Kurdish city of Irbil fell to the control of a Hussein ally.
Viewing these facts, it is prudent to be concerned about the apparent mismatch between our response and its effect. Firing cruise missiles against air-defense targets may make tactical sense as part of a combined-arms military campaign, but as an isolated response, its main result may be the erosion of the Tomahawk’s deterrent effect. During the Gulf War, Tomahawks penetrated Iraqi defenses to initiate the air campaign. More recently, they have been used to damage buildings whose construction costs hardly match the expensive ordnance. The question now developing is whether Tomahawk is fated to become an easily ignored conventional weapon that signals a “minimum response” to crises the United States seems unable to deter.
Search for Current Deterrents
At the beginning of the Cold War, strategist Bernard Brodie christened the atomic bomb as the absolute weapon, arguing that its prime utility was in non-use, as the ultimate deterrent. Today, however, the concept of nuclear deterrence has been effectively delegitimized. The United Nations is poised to conclude—with the sole objection of India—a comprehensive nuclear test ban. Poll data suggest that political elites see no situation in which the threat of a nuclear response is appropriate. Nuclear weapons capabilities have been stripped from most U.S. Navy ships and aircraft. At the same time, political stability in crucial regions of the world seems to have crumbled. Wars have been fought in Europe for the first time in fifty years, as well as in Asia, Africa, and the “usual” places. The United States seems able to deter such conflicts only with a demonstration of massive conventional force, but such demonstrations require considerable financial resources.
Enter precision weapons. The spectacular success of the well- choreographed Desert Storm air campaign held out the promise that strike weapons such as the Tomahawk and the F-l 17 could become the war deterrents of the post-nuclear era. In fact, part of the Air Force’s argument for increasing the inventory of B-2 bombers is based on a concept of virtual presence. This argument implies that a U.S. capability to strike anywhere with precision weapons from runways in North America can deter most aggression. From the Navy’s perspective, sea-based Tomahawk also could provide such a deterrent, while “actual” naval presence retains a capability for a stronger, multifaceted response.
The logic of precise weapons as deterrents has a defense-on- the-cheap flavor similar to that of the U.S. nuclear strategy of the 1950s. If precision weapons can achieve greater results, fewer ships, tanks, and troops are needed to buttress our conventional forces. If you can fly through the window, why retain the capability to bust through the door?
Impact of Tactical Employment
Tomahawk and the stealth bomber can remain deterrents, but only if they are employed with the same deliberation and care as Cold War-era nuclear weapons. In fact, there is a rough analogy between the strategic effect of atomic weapons in the war in the Pacific and precision weapons in Desert Storm. Both earned their reputations by being used in a successful war-winning campaign. Both were unknown quantities before their use and thus had considerable shock value when employed.
Strikes by precision ordinance did not appear to have the war-winning effect that the strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki appeared to have in 1945, but this mostly is a result of the strategic context. Atomic attacks were launched on Japan after a five-year war involving an air, surface, and undersea stranglehold on the Japanese empire. There is no definitive evidence that use of two atomic bombs on Japanese cities at an earlier date—in 1942, for example—would have achieved surrender. It is likely that repeated attacks would have been required. In Desert Storm, precision weapons were used from the beginning of the war to create stranglehold conditions. Yet, they did seem to have a paralyzing effect on both the Iraqi troops and Saddam’s decision-making process.
Nuclear weapons retained—in fact, increased—their deterrent perception throughout the Cold War largely because they were not used, even though the United States retained the deliberate planning to be able to use them. In contrast, the United States has used Tomahawk and other precision strike weapons to an apparently waning effect. What is the difference?
- The tactical employment of nuclear weapons was a matter of the gravest consequence, even if the battlefield effect of low-yield ordnance might not have been substantially greater than that of the largest conventional bombs. There was a threshold that required deliberate thought about long-range consequences.
- The deterrent effect of nuclear weapons was as important— actually, more important—than their potential battlefield results.
- The argument that nuclear weapons would eliminate the need to maintain conventional forces crumbled when it was recognized that their use was not appropriate in many practical situations.
In contrast, the United States seems to have embarked on a policy of using Tomahawks and other precision ordnance as weapons of first resort. Our response to the tactical situation in Kurdistan was to strike air defenses in other regions of Iraq. This was not followed up by an air campaign to reverse Iraqi gains. The long-range consequences of this reactive use of Tomahawk may not have been an uppermost concern. Our impression on Saddam also is a matter for conjecture.
The increasing use of cruise missiles—such as a second strike to produce results not initially achieved—appears to imply that the need to promote a deterrent effect for such weapons is secondary to immediate tactical results. This is akin to using a silver bullet for every wolf in the forest; a reasonable solution only if silver costs the same as lead. In addition, our reliance on the Tomahawk solution blinds us to the urgent need to retain and improve our naval air strike capacity and long-range surface gunnery.
Our choices for the appropriate tactical employment of Tomahawk and other precision weapons—frequency of usage, choice of targets, integration with other combined arms, and seriousness of purpose—have effects far beyond the number of C4I nodes destroyed or impact craters created. They have a profound effect on how the weapons are perceived by potential aggressors. Frequent usage also enables the development of increasingly effective countermeasures.
A Deterrence-Oriented Employment Policy
Arguably, we are relying more and more on Tomahawk to protect the lives of our pilots, and this certainly is an important and noble concern. But our increased reliance on precision munitions in attacks that do not have a definite, immediate payoff will have a gradual eroding effect on America’s conventional deterrent. If Tomahawks are perceived as a minimum weapon—one used to pin-prick dictators involved in successful aggression—the arrival of a cruiser-destroyer force off the coast of a potentially hostile shore may be regarded with the same concern as a speech at the United Nations. And if military deterrence is lacking, speeches in the face of aggression will have no meaning.
As a first step to retaining the meaning of speeches, we need to develop a national employment policy that preserves the deterrent effect of Tomahawk and other precision weapon systems by carefully articulating the circumstances in which such systems should be used. In a non-nuclear world, precision weapons have become our ultimate (and most expensive) weapons.
We also must work to utilize our non-precision ordnance and other warfare capabilities to their greatest effect. We should confine the use of Tomahawk and Air Force long- range strike systems to situations where they can have a significant, event-stopping effect. Perhaps we should look at their use in terms similar to those of the Weinberger Doctrine on the use of committed, massive force.
If we are going to use Tomahawk, let’s use it massively—in conjunction with other strike capabilities—and to win. To do less is to cheapen the impact of this technologically superior weapon in our overall global policy.
Commander Tangredi, U.S. Navy, is commanding officer of the Harpers Ferry (LSD-49).