If the United States wants to limit nuclear proliferation, it must decrease its vulnerability to nuclear strike and provide security assurances to nonnuclear nations. The presence and commitment of forward-deployed U.S. naval forces—here the carriers Independence (CV-62) and Kitty Hawk (CV-63) at Yokosuka, Japan—and U.S. troops—seen here with President Bill Clinton in the Korean Demilitarized Zone—are the key.
The overseas-presence debate has become sterile. We fill pages in search of purpose because we have not learned to think beyond the containment paradigm. At the same time, the combating-proliferation discussion has failed to garner much enthusiasm. No one has any compelling answers. Might there be a connection between the two problems?
What is at stake behind all the rhetorical fog? At stake is our greatest chance to shape the post-Cold War world. In the near term, effective overseas presence must convince allied and neutral countries that they need not procure nuclear weapons. In the less predictable not-so-near term, our naval strategic concepts—“Forward . . . From the Sea” and operational maneuver from the sea—will make nuclear weapons ineffective on the battlefield. More capable, more agile, faster, widely dispersed combat formations supported by highly mobile fighting bases at sea will move us from industrial-age to information- age warfare. They will eliminate the incentive for rogue states to continue their nuclear weapons programs.
Our postwar decisions in 1919 and 1946 affected world events decisively. Our decisions are likely to shape the world again, but shaping the world we want will require a much higher level of sophistication in the use of our armed services as a political instrument. The civilian leadership must recognize military utility as an instrument of policy. In return, military leadership must step away from the “use only in crisis or war” mind-set and incorporate the nuances of persuasive and coercive diplomacy done with the master arming switch off. Immediate and compelling world conditions make this military-diplomatic function, accomplished through our overseas-presence programs, our most important mission and our nation’s most important contribution to shaping the world.
If winning the nation’s wars causes us to resist all peaceful political uses of the military, we certainly will shorten this interwar period. Peace does not happen, or continue, without a lot of effort. If it is true that “war is too important to be left to the generals,” the corollary is that peace is too important to be left to the diplomats. This requires a cultural change. The civilian and military leadership must get a lot closer.
Why it is so important to do all that we can to shape the emerging world situation?
The Cold War provided the United States with a generally supportive ally in the fight against nuclear weapons proliferation. This was in Soviet self-interest, of course, but the net effect was beneficial. The bipolar opposing alliances also contained the ethnic, racial, and religious hatred now exploding around the world. In addition, nuclear ability was limited by technology to the advanced industrial states of Europe and Asia.
In April 1995, delegates from all over the world met to consider the extension of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This is the most broadly supported agreement of its kind in history. The challenge for the United States and for the conference participants is that nuclear proliferation incentives and disincentives are now exactly reversed from those of the Cold War days.
Today, nuclear materials, including warheads, are much more available. The former Soviet nuclear arsenal is guarded by a disintegrating military organization reportedly forced to moonlight and forage for basic necessities. Nuclear expertise also is much more available. Scientists, engineers, and nuclear technicians are underemployed and underpaid. When their families cannot be adequately fed, clothed, or sheltered, immediate needs will outweigh ethics. Rising organized crime networks only add worries. Well-financed renegade subnational groups, with no moral compunction against such weapons, will find willing suppliers.
The international nation-state situation is no more encouraging. Nations have many incentives to nullify the Non-Proliferation Treaty and become either declared or undeclared nuclear powers:
- First, it is a relatively cheap route to at least regional power status. Countries that harbor local expansionist ambitions—or that feel the need to justify oppressive regimes at home through foreign influence and adventures—find nuclear weapons very attractive.
- Second, many countries live in dangerous neighborhoods. Nuclear weapons effectively counter stronger conventional rivals. This desire to match if not exceed the military potential of hostile neighbors increases geometrically if the regional competition is known or suspected to be seeking its own nuclear capability. For example: Egypt, supported by many Arab countries and some African nations, refuses to back the Non-Proliferation Treaty unless Israel signs up. Ukraine lives next to a large nuclear-armed neighbor with a history of hostility toward Ukrainian independence. If we extrapolate this trend, we may be faced with multiple mutually assured destruction pairings in very unstable and volatile regions.
- Third, a regional nuclear power can effectively checkmate U.S. conventional power. Our resounding high-intensity, mechanized combat success in the Gulf War demonstrated a conventional capability impossible for any power or plausible combination of powers to match. This virtually guarantees the development of asymmetric, competitive strategies by others.
Our strategy of overwhelming force requires overwhelming industrial-age mass. Nuclear weapons make a fatal weakness of our greatest strength. One Scud hit a barracks in Dhahran near the end of the Gulf War, destroying the barracks and a reserve unit from Greensburg, Pennsylvania. If that had been a mass destruction weapon—of any type—the damage would have been crippling and catastrophic. Impregnable antimissile defenses are not an answer. Delivery means can vary from ballistic missiles to old trucks. A used Chevy can be a very effective stealth bomber, and it costs a lot less than our flying Stealth bombers.
With only a few nuclear weapons, an aggressor can avoid our strengths in the middle of the conflict continuum and attack our weakness at both ends. The massive base areas and logistics installations so necessary to our present continental concept of warfare require strong local security forces and are immobile. The choice between massing to aid security and dispersing as a hedge against the big weapons is one that cedes initiative to the enemy. Either way we turn, we expose a flank. We must change fundamentally this continental-warfare overwhelming-mass concept. The threat is clear and present. Remember how the North Koreans mixed soldiers with refugees in 1950? Remember our rear-area security problems in Vietnam?
Responding to such a situation with our own nuclear weapons might be militarily effective, but it certainly would be politically and morally disastrous. In a Gulf scenario, we would be destroying much of the oil infrastructure that we want to save. Our use of nuclear weapons to prevent the use of nuclear weapons is self-defeating—it just demonstrates their value. Symmetric response leads to a Pax Americana through universal extended deterrence. This is not the world we seek.
- Fourth, many nations suspect that all Cold War bipolar security guarantees are off. Many nations repudiated nuclear weapons because one or another of the superpowers was willing to underwrite their security as part of alliance strategy during the Cold War. Now, a significant objection at the Non-Proliferation Treaty conference was that “. . . the NPT curbs the spread of nuclear weapons to non-nuclear states without providing adequate security guarantees.”1 These countries now see the collapsing, sometimes quarreling remnants of the Soviet Union on one side and a United States threatening to turn inward on the other.
Remember the close congressional vote over intervention in Kuwait? Others certainly do. Absent a compelling, potentially fatal challenge to our national existence on a scale comparable to the old Soviet Union, what can possibly convince potential nuclear states that the United States is committed to their security? No substitutes are available. No other nation has the required national power- projection capability.
- Fifth, we have established, by convincing example, that the threat to achieve nuclear capability is a powerful lever to extort influence and money from the United States and international organizations. The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea continues to lead us and the world on a merry chase, treating our signed deal as a beginning of negotiations, not as a settlement. In addition, many nations, including some of our NATO allies, view international sanctions against treaty violator states as an inconvenient disruption of international trade. We have problems maintaining international support for sanctions against Iraq. And our “dual containment” policy toward Iran and Iraq—while we remain Iran’s largest trading partner—does not convince anybody that we mean what we say.
- Sixth, states determined to develop indigenous nuclear weapons have learned to disperse and hide their programs. The world forcibly stopped Iraq’s nuclear programs twice. The first setback—the Israeli attack on the Osirak reactor—forced Iraq’s program literally underground. The second setback was an almost accidental byproduct of Desert Storm. The program’s maturity surprised intelligence agencies and shocked the rest of us.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty conference gained ratification, but the success or failure of nonproliferation will depend more on decisions in Washington after the conference.2 Like all treaties, it must be nurtured and enforced. What will we do? What can we do?
President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 12938, “Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction,” includes ten detailed sections of instructions. The Secretaries of State, Commerce, and Treasury receive directive guidance. The Secretary of Defense, by contrast, is only mentioned in passing. Should we conclude that Defense, particularly the armed services, can do nothing without flipping the master arming switch to “on?” Is the military answer limited to earth-penetrating weapons, commando raids, tit-for-tat nuclear strikes, or preventive war? Is this the only military advice we can offer?
In his landmark study. Force Without War, Barry Blechman notes:
Clausewitz taught that although a state may use military force to obtain an objective through violent actions, the goal is never violence per se but rather the achievement of an objective otherwise unobtainable. He saw war as “a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of other means.” So too, the armed forces—by their very existence as well as by their general character, deployment, and day-to-day activities— can be used as an instrument of policy in time of peace. In peace, as in war, a prudent statesman will turn to the military not as a replacement or substitute for other tools of policy but as an integral part of an “admixture ... of means.”3
What, then, is our advice for a prudent statesman who turns to the military?
We can advise that we should plan in two frames, the predictable near term and the less predictable not-so- near term. Within the near term, we have three problems: the rogues, our allies, and the orphan states.4
- The Rogues include Iran, Iraq, North Korea, possibly Libya, Algeria, and Syria. We have decided against coercive action against North Korea, and we are in danger of losing the coercive sanctions against Iraq. Our policy against Iran is a charade. Our strategy against the others remains speculative. The prudent course is to assume the worst case: the rogues will obtain the weapons.
- The Allies are reevaluating. If a nuclear-armed Germany and Japan are not in our interest, then we must continue to provide them convincing security guarantees. The Soviet Union's demise decreased the urgency of our extended nuclear protection; nuclear weapon acquisition by the rogues will move it up again. Another worry is the course of Russia's political development. Yet another is how a nuclear-armed Japan would affect the policies of other Asian countries.
- The Orphans are the states with neither formal treaties with the United States nor U.S. troops on their territories during the Cold War. They include the countries of Central and Eastern Europe once allied with the Soviet Union. Some have moved to the threshold of declaratory nuclear power, such as Pakistan, India, and Israel. Others either have inherited nuclear weapons or are free to choose their defense strategy: Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, the former Soviet provinces, and others may be very carefully considering their policies.
The nonnuclear and near-nuclear states are most at risk from the potential breakdown of nuclear taboos. They must be confident of help when threatened with a nuclear or an overwhelming conventional attack.5 Given the situation, and all the incentives for many countries to go for the big weapons, how do we build confidence?
If limiting the spread of nuclear weapons is important to us, then we ultimately must decrease their political and military value. First, for the near term, we must continue to provide and increase real security assurances to our allies and the neutral orphans, so they do not feel compelled to seek nuclear weapons for their own security. Reactive or virtual assurances will not be convincing when confronted with nuclear weapons. We must provide real systematic assurances, tailored to the political realities of each region and country.
We Must Be There
Real forces make it far more difficult for our government to ignore unfavorable events. If possible, we must be there on a permanent basis, as in Europe and the northwest Pacific. If land bases are not possible, we must provide systematic presence by regularly operating combat- capable naval forces in the region. The simple fact, unalterable by technology or by paper agreements, is that when our forces are not regularly present in a region, we have much greater flexibility in identifying those events that call for our military forces. When we are not there, our commitments appear uncertain. We can just say no, and everybody knows that.
A major near-term purpose of overseas presence is combating proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons. The strategy to achieve this calls for overseas land-based garrisons to support our allies in Europe and the northwest Pacific, as long as those allies will have us. It means robust, systematic naval force presence in all regions of concern. Our forward-deployed, combat-ready, combat-capable formations are the key to the reassurance and the influence that will gain the time finally to defeat this emerging nuclear proliferation threat. Our persuasive diplomacy will be effective only if our capabilities are manifestly present, and manifestly capable.
Our troops—and their families—based in Germany, Japan, and Korea provide the strongest possible proof of our commitment. This must continue, regardless of the force-ratio calculations some have made regarding the Korean Peninsula. Many of the orphan states have political problems with Americans garrisoned too long on their turf. We also have a force and base security problem in many of these same countries. These countries and regions require the full and continuous application of systematic naval presence, stepping lightly on their societies and infrastructures while engaging in the full range of combined land, air, and sea exercises, military contacts, and cultural exchanges. Our work with former Soviet satellite countries is an important initiative. Naval presence is a feasible—and economical—way to maintain our multiple commitments and worldwide influence and assurance.
Overseas presence is, for the predictable future, the most important use of our armed services. It is a political instrument, certainly, but it also is our most important mission. This time of decision, of determining whether the world will see more or less of nuclear arms, is an extraordinarily important exercise in persuasive diplomacy. It may become our finest hour.
In the not-so-near term, we must limit the military effectiveness of nuclear weapons, to reduce the incentive for their possession and use. We cannot limit nuclear terror against civilian targets, but we can limit nuclear military utility by eliminating our vulnerabilities to nuclear strike, while enhancing our conventional effectiveness. Conventional destruction of a nuclear-armed enemy, avoiding as much collateral damage as possible, renders his nuclear weapons impotent. “Forward . . . From the Sea” and operational maneuver from the sea exploit emerging technologies to consign linear formations and massive, vulnerable land base areas to the dustbin of military history. We will fight in smaller, widely dispersed, highly maneuverable formations, supported by highly mobile fighting bases. This is within reach. This is the key to future credible, combat-capable, forward-deployed, overseas-presence war-fighting forces, and the only feasible route toward ending future nuclear proliferation.
1 Deepa Ollapally and Raja Ramanna, “U.S. India Tensions,” Foreign Affairs 74 (1): 13-18.
2 Michael Mandclbaum, “The Lessons of the Next Nuclear War," Foreign Affairs 74 (2):22-37.
3 Barry Blechman, Force Without War, The Brookings Institution, 1978, p. 4.
4 Michael Mandclbaum, op cit.
5 Council on Foreign Relations, Nuclear Proliferation, Confronting the New Challenges (New York: CFR, 1995), p. 10.
Colonel Gregson is Deputy Director, Office of Program Appraisal, in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy