Counterforce or Countervalue

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Western military man is by and large a humane creature. In spite of the popular impressions to the contrary, he neither reveres nor seeks war. In fact, he conceives of his role—the planning and conduct of violence on behalf of the state—as an honorable profession, which in the total scheme of things is dedicated to the furtherance of peace and the good of mankind. In his classic study of Western civil- military relations, The Soldier and the State, Samuel R Huntington has written, "The motivations of the officer are a technical love for his craft and the sense of social obligation to utilize this craft for the benefit of society.”

Out of this strong humanistic Western tradition arises what is perhaps the central ethical canon of the Western military profession: That in undertaking violence on behalf of the state the prime targets should be the combatant forces and equipment which comprise the enemy’s combatant assets—not his noncombatant civilians, his cities, his cultural treasures. In contemporary jargon, to target the former is to wage war on the basis of counterforce. To target the latter is to wage war on the basis of countervalue.

In this century, the Western World has attempted to write this distinction into covenants defining proper and improper targets of warfare. We refer to these covenants as the "international law” of warfare.

Yet, this seemingly easily differentiated distinction

has become increasingly indistinct and perhaps unworkable in the face of what contemporary historians describe as "total war”—whole nation, industrialized- technological warfare. In particular, Western warfare since World War I has witnessed much deliberate and systematic targeting of those noncombatant industrial and transportation assets that usually are closely interlaced within the warring nation’s society. These actions have been justified by the Western military profession on the ground that industrial and transportation assets, though themselves noncombatant, contribute to a nation’s warmaking potential.

This blurred distinction between a combatant and noncombatant asset confuses and frustrates today’s Western military man in the reconciliation of what he conceives as his professional duty (to successfully wage war) with what he has come to accept as his moral obligation (to avoid or minimize harm to noncombatants). Witness the debate, in military as well as civilian circles, which accompanied the U. S. bombing of North Vietnam in the recent war.

Beyond this, it should be noted that much of the world’s warfare since 1945 has confronted Western military man with an added measure of uncertainty regarding appropriate and ethical targets of military activity: Under the influence of Asian and Arab-world political and military leaders, who, by and large, have been the style-setters of these so-called "limited” wars, recent international conflict and combat has differed markedly from historical Western "norms.”

Virtually all post-1945 warfare can be described as "non-Western” in character to the degree that it has relied upon the use of terror as a weapon by paramilitary, guerrilla or irregular troops. Most of this terrorism warfare (e.g. in Algeria, Vietnam or at the Munich Olympic village) has, because of its political or psychological effect, been directed at noncombatant civilians.

While the traditional Western style of warfare—the roots of which are traceable to the Greek phalanx— acknowledges to some degree such "unconventional” combatant activities, historically it has not embraced this "weapon-of-the-weak” warfare, except as a minor adjunct (of questionable "legality”) to more formalized combat. While, for example, America had its guerrillas in both its Revolutionary and Civil Wars, in general, the American military has dismissed such combat as being relatively insignificant in the total scheme of conflict.

Yet, since 1945, particularly in Asia and the Arab lands, there has been more unconventional or irregular than "regular” warfare; and the record is one of somewhat more success than the conventional wisdom of Western military academia has yet acknowledged.

Perhaps of more importance, at least to this essay, it is not alone the character or style of warfare that has been different in the post-1945 era; the ethic has also been different.

The last statement will come as no surprise to Americans who fought in Vietnam. Whether one thinks first of the Vietnamese enemy or the Vietnamese ally makes no difference. Both of them, North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese alike, waged terroristic countervalue warfare. As those U. S. officers who were there know well, terrorism, directed against South Vietnamese civilians, was the standard technique employed by the North; though it remains one of the eternal mysteries of that war that this fact was so little reported by Western news media. The non-Western attitudes and values displayed by both our enemy and our ally with regard to the handling and exploitation of prisoners of war are also noteworthy in this respect.

In making the above observations, any assumption of Western cultural or moral superiority should be avoided. That is not what this paper is about. The point is that international conflict in the world today is begetting some profound and important differences— different from historical Western conceptions—both in the style and ethical standards governing the conduct of war.

These differences naturally reflect the ideological and cultural diversities of today’s world. In consequence of these diversities, one finds a great many managers of state violence who are not attuned to the Western military ethic, who do not share the Western view of what warfare should and should not consist of, and who have distinctly different notions as to what constitutes effective or successful military enterprise. Quick corroboration of this may be found in the writings of Lenin, Mao, or Giap, et al., as well as in the tactics of the Palestinian Arabs or Vietnamese.

In Vietnam, the United States met an enemy who exactly conformed to this non-Western description, and who—as a consequence—almost beat us. If we can fully understand this, we can begin to understand much about that war which eluded us at the time.

In short, the character of warfare, as Western military officers have studied and practiced it during most of the Western epoch of history, now seems to have entered a new period. To fully explore and define this new character and its ethic, still in a relatively fluid state, is a task demanding more than can be delivered in this short essay. But perhaps we can focus here on one timely issue which finds itself entangled within the dynamics of the changing realities just outlined: The choice between a countervalue or counterforce strategic weapons posture for the deterrence of nuclear general war.

21

Counterforce or Countervalue

Deterrence. Nowhere is this clash of traditional Western values versus non-Western values more evident than in America’s current crisis of conscience and policy with regard to the proper strategic weapons posture for nuclear general war deterrence.

Fred C. Ikle, the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, has written that America’s policies for preventing nuclear war "rest on a form of warfare universally condemned since the Dark Ages— the mass killing of hostages.”* He deplores America’s reliance on "assured destruction” of the U.S.S.R.—to deter that country from nuclear attack against the United States—as a strategy which is not only alien to our historical value system but highly suspect because of the extent to which it assumes that Soviet leaders will behave rationally in the face of this U. S. posture.

A number of recent press reports have hinted at (or explicitly predicted) a forthcoming change in U. S. nuclear war deterrence strategy—a turn away from the present _ countervalue emphasis, as prescribed by a countervalue "assured destruction” posture, toward a "counterforce” strategy which would seek to deter the Soviet Union through the acquisition of a capability to "win” against the Russian strategic weapons in a nuclear general war.

Implicit within such a shift toward reliance on the counterforce principle of warfare would be a need for better U. S. strategic weapons and/or more forces than we now possess. Because the quantitative factor is currently constrained by the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), most efforts to achieve a counterforce strategic posture presumably would take place in the form of qualitative improvements within the U. S. strategic nuclear arsenal.

An example of this thinking was reported in August a 1973 by newsman Orr Kelly in the Washington Star-News on 19 August 1973. "New U. S. A-War Strategy Aimed at Soviet Weapons,” reads the headline and the text goes on to say:

"Both the United States and the Soviet Union are now shaping their strategic arsenals so they can fight a nuclear war without necessarily destroying each other’s cities. . . . What Schlesinger has in mind, according to Pentagon officials, is precisely the kind of very accurate weapons that were long ruled out by U. S. policy. They are weapons that could be used to root out an underground command center or a heavily reinforced warhead storage facility. They might be used in a limited war by a president to show his willingness to resort to nuclear warfare

‘"The Deterrence Trap,” Washington Star amt Daily News, 18 Feb. 1973, P- D-4. Also, Foreign Affairs, January 1973, pp. 267-285.

without launching an all-out exchange. But the technology involved in these weapons is the same as that that would be used in developing weapons designed for a surprise attack.”

On 22 July 1973, the Washington Star-News carried a short essay in its editorial section by Colonel William C. Moore, (U.S.A.F., Ret.), who argued that America’s present approach to this issue is unsound because "a full case is not being made for the need to improve our counterforce capabilities—especially for proposals to increase the accuracy of our missilry so that it can destroy even the most carefully fortified of Soviet Military targets such as buried ICBM sites.”

The examples cited above are but a few of many which might be quoted to demonstrate the growing pressure within the United States for a return to a counterforce deterrence strategy, such as was possible in the 1950s and early 1960s when the United States held a big lead in nuclear weapons. Most of this pressure comes from within the U. S. military establishment—the inclusion of the present Director of the Arms Control Agency notwithstanding.

Many U. S. military professionals didn’t and don’t like SALT I because it is premised upon countervalue assumptions. It freezes the two superpowers in a virtually defenseless strategic environment. Most military strategists now concede that the resulting nuclear environment is one that can comfortably accommodate only countervalue deterrence strategies, i.e., strategies which may be viewed as non-Western in principle.

Perhaps the word comfortably should be underlined in the above sentence because—by stretching both the legal and technological realities—one can remotely conceive of a counterforce strategic posture within the SALT I rules, but only at an exhorbitant economic cost. In addition, as perceived by the other side, such a posture would very likely be highly destabilizing of the strategic balance. Thus, attempts to achieve a truly counterforce strategic posture within the provisions of the SALT I agreements—a promise that some have implied—is probably a false hope. That is just as true in Moscow as in Washington.

Nevertheless, at some point in its national deliberations on this issue, America is likely to seek answers to the two questions which have been raised by the proponents of a counterforce strategy.

►    Can we rely upon our national will—in the face of the contentious ethical issues raised—to carry out a countervalue deterrence strategy that is perhaps in conflict with our cultural value system?

►    Which strategy for nuclear general war deterrence, counterforce or countervalue, will be the more effective in deterring the Soviet Union?

To many U. S. military professionals, the latter is not merely the "gut” question; it should be the only question. However, that cannot be the case with U. S. military policy. Once the best military policy has been satisfactorily resolved, we find that we must return to the first question, calling for an examination of the political and psychological capacity of the nation to sustain the "best” military policy. These questions are therefore addressed in the order indicated.

Which Will Best Deter the Soviets? In his Star-News article, Colonel Moore invokes the weight of traditional Western axioms of war—"the rules and techniques in military textbooks used by military strategists since Alexander the Great”—on behalf of his contention that the U. S. should increase its capability to wage counterforce strategic warfare. He also states that the Soviet military leaders are similarly committed to these Western axioms of warfare.

We cannot know, of course, that that is true of the Soviets; just as we cannot know what traditions and axioms would have been given to us by Alexander, Clausewitz, et al., had these great military figures been confronted, as we are today, with the dilemmas of nuclear general war. Perhaps we should not, therefore, place too much reliance upon such claims of Soviet or ancient Greek commitment to counterforce warfare.

These claims are also dubious on the record. The military historians, Preston, Wise, and Werner, in their book Men In Arms, tell us that, ". . . the primary objective of the Greek army in the field was the crops of its antagonist, not only because this would help solve its own supply difficulties, but because seizure of the harvest would bring the enemy to his knees.” * In this, do not the early Greeks provide us with a rather clear-cut example of the exploitation of the counter- value style of warfare?

As for the Soviets, it may be equally doubtful that they are pursuing exclusively—or even primarily—a counterforce deterrence strategy; else one would expect that they would be doing more to counter the U. S. Polaris/Poseidon Fleet, which, alone, can destroy the U.S.S.R. and is the most countervalue-oriented of the three systems comprising the U. S. strategic triad. Further, an overwhelming majority of the Soviet ICBMs appear to lack a significant counterforce capability against U. S. ICBMs, though they are very clearly well suited to "city busting.”

Nevertheless, the belief that the United States should premise its strategic force posture on the maintenance of a capability to wage a counterforce nuclear general war is evidently shared by a rather large and influential

•Richard A. Preston, Sydney F. Wise, and Herman O. Werner, Men In Arms, Rev. Ed. (New York: Praeger, 1962), p. 20.

segment of the American strategic community. The issue which this notion raises is nothing more nor less than the question whether America’s strategic policies should rest on a commitment to win a strategic nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union or, alternatively, that we are totally committed to the deterrence of that war.

This is not a play on words. The two are not the same; though the proponents of counterforce usually argue that the two are the same. Deterrence, they contend, consists of the creation of a strategic relationship wherein the potential attacker will know that, if he attacks, his military forces will be destroyed and he will thus be denied the means to achieve his political objectives. In the previously cited article, Colonel Moore reflects this traditional view when he enumerates three Western axioms: "The greatest calamity that can befall a nation is to be disarmed. The will to fight is directly proportional to the capability to fight; and a nation without the means to fight has no alternative but to surrender if challenged.”

Initially, few students of Western military affairs will be inclined to differ with Colonel Moore’s thesis. As he suggests, that is the way we all learned our catechism at the war colleges. Yet, as perceived by political and military leaders who are not the products of our Western civilization—which includes the Russian leaders— all three of Colonel Moore’s axioms may be substantially inaccurate.

Judging by the historical record of the post-1945 Arab, Algerian, and Vietnamese military efforts, the following conclusions appear to be more accurate and perhaps would provide a more effective basis for Western military and political action when dealing with political and military leaders from some of the non- Western value system societies, particularly those leaders who are close students of Lenin, Mao, and Giap. ► There are calamities that can befall a nation which are apt to be perceived as worse than being disarmed. One case in point: When, in late 1972, Hanoi began to suspect that the United States was shifting its efforts from a military and counterinsurgency disarming effort in the South to a systematic destruction of the North—via bombing and blockade—Hanoi’s political leadership "blinked;” the major combat effort was ended and the POWs, who for some time had constituted Hanoi’s last leverage for a favorable settlement, were released. Throughout the war, Hanoi’s actions, vis-a-vis threats to the "socialist” society which had been built, left no doubt but that Hanoi clearly placed a higher premium on the continuation of "socialism” in the North than the preservation of its army in the South. The army, in accordance with traditional Communist doctrine, was clearly expendable on behalf of political objectives.

Counterforce or Countervalue 23

^ The will to fight is not directly proportional to the capability to fight. One case in point: If ever a nation resolutely pursued its objectives in the face of overwhelming military superiority by the other side, it was North Vietnam from 1965 to 1972. This experience (as well as the example of the Palestinian Arabs) should make it difficult for future Western military strategists to ignore the fact that the linkage binding a nation’s ability to fight and its determination to continue fighting—whatever the odds—is not always severed merely by confronting it with a prohibitive military disadvantage. Where nuclear deterrence is concerned, an attempt to achieve prohibitive military odds over your opponent may be the surest way to panic him into an attack. It appears to be one of the paradoxes of the nuclear age that greatest stability obtains when both sides are confident that they could fire the last salvo. ► It is not at all clear that ''a nation without the means to fight has no alternative but to surrender if challenged.” The Palestinian Arab National Movement is a case in point. And the Chinese have promised a strategy of engulfing an invading Russian contingent in a "human sea” of Chinese resistance. (I suspect that the Russians take this seriously, as well they should.)

Thus, if we can briefly disengage our thinking from traditional Western conceptions of warfare and examine the so-called "axioms of war” in the way that many non-Westerners view them, we may discover that the countervalue style of warfare adds up to an even more effective deterrent than counterforce. Certainly that is so if the nation (and/or political leadership) you wish to deter regards countervalue action as more intolerable than counterforce.

In truth, particularly in this nuclear era, do we not ourselves regard countervalue military action as generally more horrendous in its consequences? Of course we do. And the Russian political leadership almost certainly perceives this. Perhaps that explains why they now appear to be committed to a countervalue deterrence strategy, as revealed in part by the positions they took during the SALT I negotiations.

Should the United States, therefore, now decide to revert to a counterforce philosophy of deterrence, it would merely be making nuclear general war more tolerable to the other side—and without any guarantee of a similar, compensating shift in the Soviet philosophy.

The Psychological Issue. In the context of the present strategic environment, as well as historically, the military arguments in favor of a countervalue deterrence policy for the United States appear to be persuasive. But what of the second question—the nation’s psychological capacity to pursue successfully such a policy?

While many critics of countervalue deterrence have posed this question in terms of national or Western ethics, it perhaps should be dealt with more as one of contemporary politics and the national psychology. On this basis, it can be treated with more rationality and perhaps less emotion. Besides, as hinted earlier, this writer is not convinced that the history of Western warfare justifies the popular notion that the West has, in Dr. Ikle’s words, "universally condemned since the Dark Ages” countervalue warfare. The historical record is not that pure.

Nevertheless, the myth of Western ethics is what one is dealing with here; and, to that extent, the proponents of a counterforce strategic policy can make a case for the psychological issue.

It does appear that a great many U. S. military professionals (not to exclude the Congress and the public) share Tennyson’s Sir Galahad view of inherent Western military and moral superiority—"My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure.” One who holds this belief has assumed a substantial burden which he must carry into combat—and into planning for combat—against another who, frank'y, cares less about purity of heart and more about imposing his will. Stated even more bluntly: Can America afford the luxury of a counterforce strategy against an opponent whose cultural propensity is to wage a countervalue war?

America’s failure to deal effectively with the challenge suggested by this question was the origin of much wasted U. S. military effort in Vietnam. On the same basis, one might very well predict a similar failure in the event of a threat of nuclear general war versus the Soviet Union, although the consequences of our error would obviously be much more serious than they were in Vietnam.

Isn’t it also true that the distinction we are making here—between counterforce and countervalue—surely would be unrecognizable by the noncombatants on either side in a nuclear general war?

In earlier periods of history (even in the West) when the loser contemplated that his city would be sacked by the victor, his women and children carried off as captives, the distinction between being disarmed and destroyed was difficult to perceive because the two conditions were virtually synonomous in outcome. Nuclear general war returns us to that condition, with the added stipulation that neither can the "victor” contemplate a meaningful survival.

This condition is a manifestation of another important factor, at work in today’s nuclear war environment, which argues against submitting to our Western propensity to make nuclear general war a more tolerable prospect. I refer to the fact that the psychological forces

and the technological forces within our society have been moving in opposition to each other. While Western society has been engaged in convincing itself, at least superficially, that war should be made more tolerable, Western technologists have succeeded in making war more /Vztolerable. Certainly this is true in the case of nuclear general war. Both superpowers have today, in their strategic nuclear arsenals, the means to destroy each other without regard to which side wins or loses. While it may still be possible to acquire a capability to "win” a nuclear general war, at present force levels it is no longer possible to destroy enough of the other side’s strategic nuclear forces to prevent one’s own destruction. This is a condition that Alexander, Clause- witz, et al., never faced.

One conclusion seems to stand out above all others with a certitude that is the only comforting and perhaps unanimous judgment in this paradoxical controversy. A nuclear general war between the United States and the Soviet Union must never be fought! It must be unequivocally deterred.

If deterrence, therefore, is to be the sine qua non of our policy, it seems vitally important that we begin to recognize the extent to which our traditional cultural inhibitions—against countervalue warfare—have translated into a propensity within our society to seek to make war less intolerable, i.e., more tolerable. Hence, more difficult to deter!

That tendency is what we are witnessing in the latest efforts to revive counterforce deterrence in the United States. These efforts threaten to undermine not only the current hardware of our deterrence, but also an important element of its psychological believability.

Viewing the total spectrum of conflict, this cultural tendency is perhaps of less concern in its negative impact upon our ability' (or inability) to deter limited wars, such as Vietnam. In such cases, the price we pay—very little deterrent effect—is perhaps not too great, in return for the feeling of superiority derived out of our constancy on behalf of the Western value system. But at the general war level—where the issue is national survival—the price of such protectiveness toward a Western cultural vulnerability can only be defined as prohibitive.

Clausewitz seems to have experienced this same cultural hang-up. He perceived that, in war, "the use of force is theoretically without limits.” But he then gave the Western military profession a non sequitur, which it lives with to this day. "The aim,” he wrote, "is to disarm the enemy.”

He was wrong. "To disarm the enemy” is not the aim. The aim is to break his will. (Clausewitz said that too, which adds to one’s confusion when studying him.)

Contemporary Western military professionals need to appreciate what Clausewitz evidently did not—that military conflict against an opponent’s combatant forces may or may not contribute to breaking his will. That is to say that in some circumstances and against some opponents, counterforce actions may be less effective than countervalue actions. Some counterforce efforts may prove to be totally irrelevant—or even counterproductive. Yes, the same can be said of countervalue actions.

The point is, of course, that neither should be applied without due attention to one’s objective and the enemy’s value system; nor should either be arbitrarily excluded—on grounds of a mythical Western ethic or sanctified military traditions. In dealing with the nuclear general war deterrence quandary, it will help us all (professional military, Congress, and the public) if we can first acknowledge the depth of our cultural inhibitions on this score.

Warfighting. The above is not exactly "news” to many readers. Some will see in it merely the confirmation of their own long, deeply held instinctive beliefs. But how many will be willing to work to educate the Congress and the public on that score? Thus far, too many U. S. professional military officers have seen, in the most recent Defense Department debate concerning our strategic weapons posture, mainly an opportunity to push their favorite weapons project at the expense of the countervalue principle. In the name of being able to fight a "clean” nuclear general war, a number of "precision” strategic weapons are now being promoted by the U. S. military, the American arms industries, and their lobbyists.

There is nothing improper about these qualitative improvement weapons programs, per se. Nor is it improper for military professionals aggressively to seek to upgrade their equipment. The tax-paying public should expect nothing less. And there may be good military or technological reasons for many of these programs ultimately to be approved by the Administration and the Congress. But "in order to fight a 'precision’ counterforce nuclear general war” should not be one of those reasons. That line of argument can only weaken deterrence—and it threatens the SALT I agreements.

This conclusion does not rule out the use of nuclear weapons for warfighting or deterrence in "limited” conflicts—where superpower survival is not at issue, thereby bringing the nuclear deterrence mechanism into play. The more we progress in understanding big power nuclear deterrence, the clearer it becomes that the nuclear general war deterrence mechanism has little impact at the limited war level. It may even contribute to the greater frequency and higher level of violence

Counterforce or Countervalue 25

recorded by those wars in the past two decades. Another way to say this is that the U. S.-Soviet strategic balance, accompanied by their continuing political differences, results in greater recklessness by the smaller powers.

It is possible that somewhat more stern action exercised by the superpowers in subduing limited conflict—in particular, the employment or threat of nuclear weapons—would enhance deterrence at lower levels in the spectrum of conflict including the threat of limited war between the superpowers.* If so, it is in that dimension-limited war deterrence and employment—that qualitative superiority or "precision” becomes a usable feature in nuclear weapons.

Such technological (i.e., qualitative) military superiority in a usable form should be a justification for itself. It does not need a dubious, moralistic rationale directed against America’s current deterrence strategy—which in this case could be catastrophically counterproductive.

Alternatively, a genuine U. S-Soviet resolution of political differences would probably make such superpower "sternness” unnecessary in limited war. Perhaps we saw the hint of such genuine superpower collaboration in the resolution of the Middle-East War of October 1973. Until this collaboration becomes the rule rather than the exception, however, the Western professional military officer would be well advised to sharpen his tools for the limited (including "unconventional”) kinds of conflict.

SALT I. This paper has not been written to oppose legitimate technological progress in America’s nuclear forces, but to oppose a false rationale, a rationale that serves mainly to undermine SALT I with its concomitant countervalue premises.

The opposition expressed here against the latest efforts to undermine countervalue strategic deterrence is not, as some readers may allege, to become entrapped in some utopian dream of an end to international conflict or war as a result of the SALT agreements. This Writer assumes that, until a genuine political detente is achieved, the Cold War will go on albeit in a more subdued form. The need for realistic, even "superior,”

'See "A Doctrine for Limited War,” Proceedings, October 1970.

overall military preparedness is taken for granted.

Nor do I intend to suggest that countervalue warfare is a panacea or that it in any way denies the existence of counterforce warfare—or the need to be adequately prepared to wage counterforce warfare when confronted by an enemy who is also so prepared. Instead, I am here focusing on the reality of countervalue warfare and insisting that it should not be arbitrarily excluded from our calculations.

Insofar as nuclear general war is concerned—because of the value system of the Soviet society—I strongly suspect that countervalue deterrence will prove to be the more certain, the more stable, and the more enduring.

Both U. S. and Soviet proponents of counterforce strategic weaponry must understand that perceptions are the all important adhesive which governs the durability of such arms control agreements as SALT I. However legalistically one side may justify a particular qualitative improvement for its strategic arsenal, if that improvement is viewed as destabilizing by the other side, it can be pursued only at the risk of wrecking SALT I. This will apply equally to Soviet MIRV programs, mobile ICBMs, and to U. S. ICBM accuracy improvements.

Finally, we should all understand that if the proponents of a counterforce deterrence strategy win out in their current efforts to reverse SALT I, there can be little doubt that America must gird itself for another round of large expenditures on weapons which, essentially, are relevant only to a non-winnable military option. The pity of it is that such expenditures are almost sure to be at the expense of other forces and hardware which would be much more useful in the decades ahead.

Commander Beavers received his U. S. Navy commission in 1952 via the NROTC at the University of Missouri. Throughout his career, he served in destroyers, cruisers, and aircraft carriers, his last sea duty being as executive officer of the USS George K. Mackenzie (DD-836). His Washington duty included assignments to the Bureau of Personnel and the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. In 1970, he received his M.A. in Political Science from the University of Maryland. He retired in 1972, and is presently conducting independent research for a book on the changing character of warfare.