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Seen from near what was to become the fleet landing at Istanbul, the battleship Missouri, flanked by a U. S. destroyer and the Turkish battle cruiser Yavuz, lies in the Bosphorus in the spring of 1946. President Truman’s dispatch of the battleship to Turkey served as a loud warning to the Soviet Union to end its efforts to gain a share of the control of the Straits. The Yavuz also once played a major diplomatic role for in 1914, when she was the German Goeben, she was instrumental in bringing Turkey into the World War on Germany’s side.
A
A. JLfter 1904 Admiral Sir John Fisher as First Sea Lord brought as much as possible of the Royal Navy’s power into the North Sea and home waters to be ready to beat back any challenge from the High Seas Fleet of Germany. Historians have hailed this foresightedness and the determination which accompanied it, and Fisher’s contemporaries praised him for it even when he fell from power during the first World War. In the ten years before 1914, however, Fisher’s accomplishment did not look so promising to some British naval officers and civilian officials.
One might cite, for instance, the Gilbert and Sullivan-like performance of the admiral on the China Station who pleaded to be left "just one battleship” for protocol purposes; in 1908 the admiral commanding at Hong Kong recommended the Great White Fleet not be invited there because it would make the depleted Royal Navy squadron look "conspicuously small.” The Colonial Office was chagrined that there was no British warship in Jamaica when an earthquake struck there in 1907; the United States Navy reached the disaster scene first. But it was the Foreign Office, ever conscious of what command of far-off waters had meant to Britain, that summed up the case against Fisher in complaining to the Admiralty about ". . . important British interests in distant seas where the opportune presence of a British ship of war may avert a disaster which can only be remedied later at much inconvenience and considerable sacrifice.” Though suitably understated, this was the ultimate rationale of gunboat diplomacy.
Fisher would have none of it: "The question of the small vessel for police duties will long be with us. Vice-Consuls and Resident Commissioners will, no doubt, continue to act on the great principle: When in doubt wire for a gunboat. The Foreign and Colonial Offices, to whom the dispatch of a gunboat means no more than persuading a gentleman in Whitehall to send a telegram saying she is to go, will probably never realise why the gentleman should be so perverse as to refuse.”
Policy and strategy aside, Fisher actually won his argument with the Foreign Office on the narrow but politically well-chosen ground that keeping more ships and squadrons on overseas stations would add significantly to the Admiralty’s budget needs.
In this vignette of 70 years ago we can see in outline many of the elements involved in any discussion of the military arm’s role today in foreign policy. It is a role almost generic in applications.
Any state with international interests and responsibilities plus even a modicum of usable force may be faced at any time with a decision on employing it. Even self-defined neutrals employ force in the United Nations’ service. A British example from history has been chosen here largely because time has both sanctioned its validity and drained it of emotion. But, if this role of armed forces in foreign policy is always with us, clearly that role can not be summed up in Clausewitz’s statement that "War is a mere continuation of policy by other means” or Frederick the Great’s statement (also attributed to Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary in 1914) that "Diplomacy without armaments is like music without instruments.” The various factors in that role are much more detailed, much more subtle than these aphorisms reflect. Looking at the ramifications of the Fisher decision, we can see these factors not only in history, but also in their relation to the problems of tbc American policy maker and military officer of today-
1. Just what was the role of Fisher’s navy? Tbc defense of the British people, their Empire and prop erty? The support of British foreign policy? The afi' vancement of British interests? If the last, what interests? Who defined those interests?
2. Was the decision to concentrate against German)1 purely a naval one? Did it reflect a naval response to i prior political decision? At what level was that decision made, and was the Admiralty part of the decisionmaking apparatus?
3.When the military cloth wouldn’t cover tfif foreign policy coat, who made the budgetary decision* on how much cloth could be made available? Or, in tl>c absence of any such decision, were military resource spread too thinly or were foreign policies left unsup ported militarily?
4. What weight was given to the flag-showinf rescue-operating, and gun-boating capabilities of tb£ navy?
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5- Finally, was public opinion taken into account? 1 popular opinion see the Fisher concentration as tokening British power and prestige overseas? Or, did u Welcome the added protection at home? Did the
anti-imperialists anc^ "little Navyites” welcome the
j^t drawal from palm and pine? How did "the lesser t^ee<^s without the law” perceive British power when e White Ensign was no longer to be seen flying in „ harbors from what one Royal Navy officer called C e gtey diplomatists”?
These questions are pertinent today, but any attempt 0 compare a pre-1914 British case with a 1976 Ameri-
cal °nC °an ^oun<^er at many places. American politi- a military experience and traditions are quite different
°m those of the British, and six differences are worth mention.
^’rst> American tradition has been to allow a military °mmander far wider powers in his theater than British -—lets have been allowed. These powers extend In iylnt0 ^^omatlc> political, and economic spheres.
orld War II these powers were at their widest. ^ ^Ce tllen there has been a much shorter leash on erican commanders in the field for a variety of °ns—faster communications, the dangers of inad- of i"'nt nu°lear war» ancl a certain civilian wariness e military, bred of failures in Korea and Vietnam to the military in turn ascribe in some part
e very pervasiveness of civilian control in both th°Se campaigns). Second, the U. S. Grant tradition of e Army that calls for massive application of power ^ rd a purely military victory has made not only the s. 7 a less flexible instrument than is needed for tr H’1 C ^ore*§n policy options, but to some extent that to ltl0n ^as also shaped Navy and Air Force responses Political requirements. Coercive diplomacy cannot be lcecl with any degree of flexibility against a foe 0 foresees annihilation, although that threat of nation could conceivably concentrate the mind of
SOffte r J
lo l IOeS wonflctfnlly- Third, the preeminent and s ^ r°le of the United States in a wide alliance a ,erri ltas restricted for almost 30 years the freedom of ma'n0 °f tltc policy maker and the sword bearer in ...T situations. Fourth, using the phrase more for its lcy as shorthand rather than validity as fact, the tary-industrial complex’s role in foreign and mili- p./ Policy seems peculiar to the American situation.
’ Tiere is a great degree of institutionalization of fo military’s r°le in tlie formal processes of American instj^H- fn crisis situations the role and the
and Utlons Set scanted (e.g., the Cuban missile crisis abl t^C ^a)'aSuez affair) but the mechanism is work- in ^ ^CaSt 0n PaPer- Finally, for the American officials e Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, or the Executive Ce Building'there is now a special inhibiting factor
at work which will have to be weighed even in international situations that would otherwise be described as humanitarian—the legacy of Vietnam. From the disastrous miscarrying of that affair both public and Congressional opinion have drawn the conclusion that increased vigilance and control over policy maker and soldier are the best guarantees against repetition. In truth, that paragon of objectivity, the man from Mars, might well agree. But lines drawn around the Executive Branch’s freedom of action have tended to tighten almost monthly, and it will be a lucky diplomat or soldier who will be able to say just what actions will be inside those lines; in the spring of 1975 a Foreign Service Officer writing in the Marine Corps Gazette questioned whether it would even be possible in the future to use U. S. forces to protect the evacuation of American citizens from an active war zone. A month later the United States was faced with just that issue in Cambodia and Vietnam.
On a wider issue, the actual use of force, one suspects that the ultimate answer will come from the Democratic and Republican parties. The professionals of both parties, with due respect to right-wing Republicans and many southern Democrats, seem to have concluded that military actions in Korea and Vietnam have been domestic political disasters. Voting statistics seem to bear out this conclusion, particularly if one throws out
the 1972 defeat of the Democratic presidential candidate as the result of factors other than foreign policy. The first flush of the Mayaguez incident faded rather more quickly than both the Executive and its enthusiasts would have expected.
It is not only these American-centered considerations which made difficult the American problem of the mixture of force and policy The international environment has changed radically, not only from 1914 but from 1945. It would be a brave man who would predict that we have seen the end of that process of change, and an even braver one who would predict that there will be any improvement in the stability, rationality, or certitude of that environment over the next decade. The safer course is to count on more breakdowns in the fragile international order that developed in the years after World War II. There might be some comfort in the realization that our great rival, the Soviet Union, must face many of the same frustrations with the evolving order, but that is a small comfort and in any event will do nothing to ease our own pains.
To both super-powers the primary quick-changing and volatile elements of the international order must be the new or revolutionary national states (numbering at least 70, and possibly 100) many of whom are not in the habit of thinking deeply before either acting or speaking. To many of these states the United States and the Soviet Union represent less competing ideologies than they represent, along with Western Europe, Canada, Japan, and possibly, even Eastern Europe the industrialized world, the modern world. Increasingly world tensions will be created out of the difference in the degree of development between these two worlds.
Race complicates and embitters these differences. Poverty adds its acid. A nascent superpower, China, encourages these tensions; "Countries want independence nations want liberation, and the people want revoluJ tion . . .” runs the Chinese side of the 1972 Shanghai Communique with President Nixon. Neither alliance with any of the superpowers nor the international framework that the United Nations is supposed to represent will deter aberrant actions by these states, j That action is as likely to come against an equally poof neighbor as against one of the northern industrialize1! powers.
The dangers of unsettling acts by recognized sovereignties are already compounded by the acts of quasi-independent international actors such as terrorist*, exile movements, revolutionaries, and purely national actors who nonetheless can carry out disturbances i11 the international field; the Red Army Faction in Japan, for instance, attacking the Lod airport in Israel. Those people responsible for the foreign policies of the major powers may have to be prepared to employ military force in the future much as their predecessors used h against pirates and slavers.
Not only will there be new and unpredictable actors, legitimate and otherwise, on the international stage bn1 the rules of the international order will be changing The United Nations may hope to regain what little standing and prestige it had, but nothing that N- happened at recent General Assemblies suggests op timism is warranted. The changes impending in the la" of the sea will have an unpredictable effect on nav^ power. Large areas of the seas will probably be enclose^ as surely as English common land once was, and tbc results may be equally unsettling to the establish^ order. The spectacle of a land-locked country claimifly areas of the sea bed as it own can delight international lawyers, but sailors may find it a bit unnerving. We afC also moving to a new order in the matter of accesSl exploitation, and movement of raw materials. When $ American Congresswoman suggests letters of marql)C be issued to American fishermen to act against foreig11 fishermen off New England, one gets an idea of ho"1 such allies as Great Britain and Iceland can empl°' naval force against each other in pursuit of peripateff
Tn concentration against him.
3e hrst question in this e:_.._ .
a^rCCs anh foreign policy is the first one that was asked °ut Fisher and his problem. What is foreign policy st FP°sed to do? Political scientists give us both highly Wh' UrC<a an<f highly theoretical models, many of Us f arC not onl>' fascinating but even occasionally , u • For American democracy, though, it might be of u C° rcly-on the American people’s own perception at they expect foreign policy to do. In March of
.^ring and cod. These examples are not lost on a Third 0r u now acutely aware that the maws of the north- n ’ndustrial machines are gaping for that world’s raw
materials.
, ^he foregoing paragraphs suggest that in an increas- 8 y disorderly world the American Armed Services ^ay °f limited use to a President and Secretary of e who must work within the bounds set by an open press> a skeptical Congress, and the terms of the War Se<jWCrS ^ct °f 1973. Nonetheless, they will find them- th^es °ften facing just about the same type of questions came out of the much neater and better ordered . °f Jackie Fisher. An examination of the pos- ult' *tIeS *n f^s new> naughty world suggests that the u 1 r.mace decision for the United States may be the tio mate ^ec's‘on tf'at Fisher reached—the concentra- £r\d ^°Wer against the primary foe. And, we could n. by paying much of the same price that the British p.1 f°r Fisher’s decision and, it must be added, for ^ er s success: Initial losses ('political and military) in Stant waters and a near fatal loss when the main g ,mY changed his strategy to avoid the effects of the ruish con
- hrst question in this examination of the armed
1975 the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations released the results of a nation-wide poll it had commissioned of 1,500 persons picked at random and 330 leaders (from Congress, business, the press, government, and the universities and foundations). The Department of State called the poll "unusually comprehensive” and the results "significant.” Respondents were asked to rate 18 possible goals for foreign policy as to importance and to rate the job they thought the United States was doing in reaching those goals. The first five goals named by the public and the leaders plus the percentage who saw the job being done as "excellent” or "pretty good” were:
Public
1. | Keeping peace in the world— | 60% |
2. | Promoting our Security- | 71% |
3. | Securing adequate energy supplies— | 38% |
4. | Protecting American jobs— | 35% |
5. | International cooperation to solve common |
|
| problems— | 44% |
| Leaders |
|
1. | Keeping peace in world— | 73% |
2. | Promoting our security— | 85% |
3. | Arms control- | 37% |
4. | international cooperation to solve common |
|
| problems— | 33% |
5. | Helping solve world inflation | 8% |
Both groups ranked the export of democracy and the export of capitalism at the very bottom of the 18
suggested goals, and containing communism was ranked about the middle of the list.
If we except some of these desirable goals (jobs, energy, inflation) as reflecting important issues of the moment rather than basic judgments, we are left with the clear agreement of both the public and its leaders on two main goals, with a very high degree of satisfaction with national performance toward these goals. But if we take these findings a step further, we could conceivably lump these two goals into a single one, peace and security of the United States, and thus suggest a basic conclusion that for foreign policy purposes the role of the military and the role of the diplomat are synonymous. Under this rubric of peace and security, both the foreign policy maker and the military planner might take a reasonable degree of pride in their accomplishments as reflected in the eyes of their countrymen. There is, of course, one vital area of non-congruence between peace in the world and national security; the latter can always be surrendered to obtain the former. The percentage both of leaders and public giving good marks to U. S. performance on security suggests Americans are sophisticated about the possible contradiction in pursuing peace at the price of security.
The foreign policy of the United States gets its basic support from the ability of the military arm to provide security for the homeland. As far as nuclear weapons go, such security rests in offensive nuclear weaponry: Land-based missiles, long-range bombers, and submarine-based missiles. That triad is not static. Technological advances now strengthen the underseas deterrent; time and public opinion seem to erode the bomber; arms control treaties change the configuration
of the land-based systems.
All of these changes have foreign policy implies-1 tions, but neither changes nor implications alter the truism that great power diplomacy must have a sound . military basis. Thousands of statesmen and generals ft have colorful quotes to support that truism. But the nature of nuclear "strategic” warfare gives the lie tog many of those ringing phrases emblazoned in memories, monuments, and history books. For we have learned (even though some Americans have been reluctant learners) that as a practical matter, large, long- range nuclear weapons can probably be used only against a power with similar weapons, and then probably only when there are just two such powers. Wep shall all see the difficulty some day soon when Chin* gets such weapons. The answer to the trinomial equation, as to the present binomial one, may be that sud1 weapons "hold the ring” for diplomacy and the arms of lesser violence. How then do arms and diplomacy reconcile their professions within this ring and wha[ then are their joint pursuits?
The formal relationship of the Armed Services to the formulation of foreign policy can be charted with minor difficulty through the maze of the Nation** Security Council’s organizational boxes. Prominent a1 all stages of policy development are various echelons of the Defense Department and the Services, culminating in the Secretary of Defense as a member of the NSC and the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, as an invited advisor. Long before any issue would reach the NSC however, there would have been Defense and Service participation at the Interdepartmental Group Level, the Review Group, and in the Under Secretaries Committee. Additionally, military officers serve on the National Security Council Staff, and both officers and Defense civilians are often appointed by the President to NSC ad hoc groups. Certainly the system allows fo( the military voice to speak. The problem is, will there ever be anyone listening? On this formidable form** line the main listeners are liable to be operators of the system itself and a few nosey neighbors in officii Washington and Virginia who have, or think they should have, an interest in the subject matter. The NSC process, which in its present form reflects both forme1 President Nixon’s and Secretary Kissinger’s concepts of the essential limitations of both civilian and military bureaucracies, is nonetheless an invaluable education** tool for both bureaucracies. Neither the diplomatic nor the military branch is likely to be surprised at the other’s initiatives or limitations in a situation involving policy and force.
There are two other major fora where the military voice is directly heard—the Arms Control and Vli'. armament Agency (ACDA) and the Department of
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arms control agency has its own organizational t?a2e- Enough has been published to demonstrate both e military role and the strength of that role in arms c°ntrol. The formal mechanism should ensure against a ePetition of the Washington Conference (1921-1922) ^xample where the serving officers of the Navy first ard of the proposal to scrap their building program en the Secretary of State announced it in open Jjssion. That the present system doesn’t always work is fo Vl°US ^rom the published record and corridor gossip;
r °ur needs here, let us agree to await the historians’
Meanings.
sj^Ee pm relationship is close, informal, and perva- e- Such matters as base rights, military aid programs, ^ s safes, overseas stationings—the whole gamut of oreign policy implications of the Armed Services’ in Ures~are dealt with both on a day-to-day basis and f[ere^ataon t0 long-range policy planning concepts. re> State is the supplicant, often seeking not so much v°ice as just information. The parlous state of State in k nt years needs no telling here. Even State’s ultimate argaining chip—negotiations with other govern- ts—is sometimes successfully discounted. At other k s State’s attempts to negotiate changes in treaty and rights to reflect new political realities fail because St^a-lcs attitude of J’y suis,J’y reste (Here I am, Here I tate asks the right questions, particularly on force ores and planning, but in recent years it too often s before the Defense budget like a solitary climber, ab Cn P'ck;. two pi tons, and a frayed rope in hand, °ut to assault the Jungfrau. In a perfect world State
should be able to say, "We have the following commitments and we have the following probable enemies.” Defense would reply, "Then, we need the following bases, ships, aircraft, weapons, etc.” In our imperfect world the relative strengths of the institutions (Defense/jCS dwarfing State) make the defense budget almost impregnable. One might pause a moment, however, to consider the rigidities which a one-to-one correlation of military strength to political commitments would be and how expensive it could be given the human .and bureaucratic tendency to guard against the fall of every sparrow.
Difficult and major decisions (few of which fit both those adjectives) come out of a different forum and a much less structured milieu then the NSC, ACDA, or PM. No one is astonished that this should be so, for no one can deny to the President any advisor he feels he should have. This may explain, if not assuage, the dismay in both the Foreign Service and the Armed Sendees at the quality of some of the decisions so reached. A combination of the security regulations, good taste, and a certain disdain for enjoyment obtained from the mishaps of others persuades against any rehearsal of
some of these monstrosities of recent years.
Rather, let us try to look at some of the power factors now operating in foreign policy formulation to see if we can sort out where the armed forces can expect to have influence in the future.
Most textbooks suggest that power in American government is less a matter of constitutional checks and balances than of competing and largely institutionalized groups. This theory of countervailing power identifies many such groups in the foreign policy framework— the Congress, business, labor, the academic-foundation society, the military-industrial complex, the bureaucracy, ethnic groups—these are just a few of the participants. Both in their own identities and as members of sub-groups (Senator Goldwater as an Air Force Reserve sub-member in the Congress is an obvious example, as is the automatic support of the JCS given by many Congressmen) the armed services can be counted as significant factors in the foreign policy decision-making process.
Opposed to this concept of competing forces is the school that would examine first the socio-economic origins and mind sets of the individuals involved in the decision process. Here, those examiners (C. Wright Mills exemplifies the school) find the influence of the Armed Services to be major and, in some cases, dominating in the formation of American foreign policy. In the Chicago poll cited earlier 34 per cent of the leader group saw the military playing a very important role in
determining foreign policy as against only 27 per cent seeing the State Department "as a whole” in that role (although 97 per cent saw the Secretary of State himself in such a role). In the postwar era there has been a great deal to be said, at least at a first cut of analysis, for the validity of this elitist concept and for the major role of the military in the determining group.
The Cold War did militarize our foreign policy frotn the very first, as George Kennan tells us in his account of the origins of the Truman Doctrine in the Greek- Turkish aid crisis of 1947. Often the nature of the Soviet challenge was military and even more often it was seen as military by Americans: Soviet development of nuclear weapons and rocketry, the Berlin blockade, Korea, the defeat of the Nationalist government if China, all contributed to the impression that American.! military force was the major, if not the only, appropriate countering force. The concept of "negotiations from strength” (which, to the American mind seems to mean the other side’s unconditional surrender, a concept that would mystify European negotiators of othtf centuries), which was the slogan of every Secretary of State from Acheson to Kissinger, was interpreted to mean overwhelming military strength.
Most importantly, a mind set of "can do” became the characteristic most valued by the Cold Warriors. T° American political leaders and to much of the public the military personified this. So did the para-warriors of the CIA. The trendy phrase, "American illusion of omnipotence,” sums up much of the spirit. Even President Kennedy, who almost alone of American postwar leaders had a sense of the skull beneath thc skin, a sense of the essential limits of the human condition, found diplomats more likely to see problem5 rather than opportunities in foreign policy (as thac opportunist, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., put it). Such I sentiments spread quickly and civilian careerists soon adopted the same gung ho attitudes as the military' held. The tough guy posture of the Nixon-Kissingef ^
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era t0°k all this to its logical and tragical (but nonnuclear) end in Indochina. In this way, far more than through the diffuse workings of the military-industrial complex, were large elements of American foreign policy brought under military influence.
We are now presumably wiser; we’re certainly sadder, ut in both the pluralist and elitist models, as well as in t e formal structure of the NSC, the armed forces will continue to play a role in foreign policy decisions and 'mplementation. This is as it should be. But in the a terrnath of the Nixon administration’s downfall there w*ll be a difference. Formal and informal channels will f^H used to influence the President. He will still ave the constitutional and political buck stop in front ? fhm. But the aftermath of Vietnam will mean that 0 _ President and advisors will now be subject to explicit and implicit legislative restraints that will alter e possible roles and influence of the Armed Services.
A y
n° one, no one, will have illusions about omnipotence or the virtues of activism.
The major foreign policy support requirement of the rmed Services that seems likely to be the last to be cu into question in the remaining years of the cade would be the forces assigned to the North antic Treaty Organization. These forces, whether on Statlon in Western Europe or on call in emergency, ePfesent the will behind our most revolutionary and m°st successful post-World War II change in foreign P°licy. This American commitment to Western Europe,
a break in 150 years of traditional policy which historians already recognize as the major division of the Republic’s diplomatic history, seems resistant to the ravages of neo-isolationism, disillusionment with empire, economic straits, and even faithless or feckless allies. To revert again to the Chicago poll, 77 per cent of leaders would use U. S. troops if Europe were invaded by the Soviets, 55 per cent if West Berlin were seized. The comparable percentages for the public were lower (39 per cent and 34 per cent) but when compared with the percentages answering yes to a similar question about Taiwan (17 per cent), South Korea (14 per cent), and Saigon (11 per cent), the strength of support for the commitment even in the 1975 winter of discontent is notable. It should also be noted that in a hypothetical invasion of Canada the public’s willingness to use U. S. troops to help their neighbors lags behind the leaders.
In NATO, of course, is where the integration of political and military planning and operations has been most highly developed. The stakes are enormous. Deterrence must be seen as a matter of material as well as will. The presence of militarily sophisticated allies in both policy and planning has brought all American policy planners up to a high mark. In NATO the Army has the primary role, and here the tradition of mass is valuable. Friend and foe can see that there is force in our commitment. The American ground forces in the Republic of Korea play much the same role. At the same time the very size of these forces presents targets, particularly to Congressional critics. The tail-to-teeth proportion is high, some deployments questionable, and the cost discouraging. Allied forces do not always seem to reflect comparable commitment or sacrifice. In Korea, the domestic political situation seems to be getting dangerously brittle. Yet there are many officers, military and diplomatic, who have seen Congressional criticism as a useful goad. For example, meeting the requirements of the Nunn Amendment either to convert support troops to combat troops or withdraw them gave the Army 6,000 more combat slots in Europe in 1975, slots that--didn’t seem to be coming too readily from regular planning procedures.
The Air Force and Navy have not as yet been called
"Yangtze Patrol, Asiatic Fleet, Seventh Fleet; the lure of China ...” These are among the reasons "the Navy has historically looked upon the Pacific as ’its’ ocean.” Here U. S. sailors parade through Shanghai sometime in the 1920s, just as they might have through an American city.
upon to demonstrate a comparable commitment to the defense of Europe. The reasons flow from the natures of their arms. To see a correlation of arms and policy, though, we might consider if more emphasis in Air Force doctrine for close ground support might not have a good political effect on both sides of the Stettin- Trieste line, to say nothing of what the change could do for foot slogger and tanker morale. This example, rather cavalierly chosen, illustrates the complexity of the military role in NATO; forces stationed on battlefields of past centuries which are known well (and often through painful personal experience) to political and military leaders on both sides, can by their stance and gear convey messages of policy that diplomatic notes only hint at, and can never bluff about.
When one turns from NATO to look at the rest of the U. S. alliance structure (formally, it includes over 40 nations) the Army’s role shrinks, that of the Navy and Marines expands, and the Air Forces’ changes character from air space control to a mixture of deterrence and quasi-political presence.
The stark fact of the military role in these other alliances, however, is the lack of a structural commitment comparable to that in NATO. The esthetically regrettable but basically accurate shorthand, 1% wars,
should say it all. Correspondingly, the NATO commitment is diluted in the other alliances. Even though the Rio Treaty (the hemispheric alliance) uses much the same language in its operative clause as does the Nord Atlantic treaty, few would claim that there is qualitative difference. The nature of the threat explain* the difference. And here we come to one of the main problems that has bedevilled U. S. diplomacy and U. & arms in East Asia for three decades.
Reactions to perceived or real threats in Asia hav£ been related less to formal treaty obligations than t° poorly defined concepts of vital interests, nation^ honor, moral obligations, and Communist containment. To say that these concepts had consistent!)' betrayed us would be too much. The United States no treaty commitment to South Korea in June 1950’ both General MacArthur and Secretary Acheson publicly had dropped South Korea from their definitions °\ U. S. security interests. Yet, from a combination 0^ motives that could be subsumed under these concept*’ the United States chose to support South Korea and di<! so successfully, both militarily and diplomatically- Japan’s economic success was accomplished behind * shield erected from a mixture of these motives. Mof£ ambiguous in its results was the massive U. S. military and diplomatic effort for a quarter of a century tC contain the People’s Republic of China which also its roots in these concepts. Interestingly, there was u° formal U. S. security commitment to any of the IndO' china successor states, either before or after the GenevJ Conference of 1955 or the Paris Agreements of 1973- Yet, we know what happened.
The unpredictability of U. S. reactions has led us (0 erect a huge base and force structure in East Asia who*c raison d’etre has been related to a foreign policy who*c directors have rarely been able to offer a good definition
have
introduced the element of racism; the Navy had
the threat or a convincing rationale of the vital national interest either in the various Asian alliances we have created or the political survival of the regimes in the non-treaty states. The upshot has been that this base and force structure has tended not to support the policy ut to dominate the policy, and upon occasion, its tnaintenance has become the policy. Policy, general or specific, became the handmaiden of presence. It would e easy here to indict the Navy as an example of an armed service that "quite o’ercrows” foreign policy.
The Navy has historically looked upon the Pacific ^ "its” ocean. In World War II it looked upon the acific theater as "its” war. One can evoke names and fjents which suggest why. Perry, Mahan, Dewey; angtze Patrol, Asiatic Fleet, Seventh Fleet; the lure of lna, the threat of Japan, the heavy price of victory in |945. During recent history the Commander-in-Chief acific has been a Navy man even when we had 500,000 men involved in a land war on the mainland of Asia and no enemy with a deep draft ship, a bombing plane, ^ a submarine. Leftist critics have not missed the avy s fascination with Western Pacific bases, noting at as late as 1948 the Navy was prepared unilaterally .T t0 hold an enclave on the China coast against the inese People’s Liberation Army. Those same critics
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eated or rescued these "little brown brothers” and it was going to keep them "on our side.” The sence of sophisticated allies or of an organized alliance structure encouraged both American civil and Unitary officials to set their own rules. We have done S°me real damage to ourselves in Asia, because many of rS chink that the Asians aren’t in our league. We once kUn<a ourselves cut off from Japanese information ecause a four-striper decided not to give the Maritime to ^e^ense h°rce an intelligence report it was entitled ’Tc Japanese didn’t complain, and never mentioned matter until we began to wonder why they had led up completely. Other critics have suggested that k C ^avy saw the Pacific as the only place to survive the ureaucratic in-fighting for budget funds in an era en rhe Air Force seemed the wave of the future. One can dismiss as much of this as one wants as nsense, but in the revolutionary situation in Asia ej^er 1945 the U. S. Navy was one of the few constant ments of stable strength and, in conjunction with a asCa ^ate Department, the Navy defined that strength essential to the defeat of the revolutionary move- k nts- Again, this was done under the confused but 0asically honorable four concepts (interests, honor, tha1^ataons’ containment) set out above. It is ironic at the consequences of failure to stem those move- Conts.may mean that the resulting lack of public and nSressional support, as well as nervousness of allies,
can now jeopardize the Navy’s and the State Department’s abilities to support the insular Asian alliance system which can be defended by a maritime force.
President Nixon saw the problem clearly in 1969. His Nixon Doctrine seemed to offer an alternative to the massive political and military American overcommitment to continental East Asia. The alternative wasn’t taken. Basic to this failure was the unwillingness of the Executive, the bureaucracy, and the military to move with any dispatch to use the Doctrine as a shield behind which to realign commitments, policies, and forces to the reality of a iy2-war capacity. There was always a danger that adversaries, as well as allies, would mis-perceive the speed of the American withdrawal from exposed salients of the Cold War in East Asia. Both gave plenty of time. Only in Okinawa and to a limited extent in South Korea was the opportunity taken. The Vietnam withdrawal took four years and left in the end an ambiguous commitment. In Cambodia, under the guise of the Nixon Doctrine, there was an attempted extension of power and commitment. On Taiwan we had more forces present for long periods after the Shanghai Communique of February 1972 than before, despite a guarded pledge in the Communique to reduce such forces. In Thailand, hundreds of planes and thousands of men were kept in place for a year after congressional sanction for their use in Indochina had been withdrawn. Politically, the absence of will to withdraw was best illustrated by the Secretary of Defense admitting in his Fiscal Year 1975 report that some reappraisal of commitment was probably necessary, but then going on to use some of Mr. Nixon’s 1969 language about the dangers of a "precipitate” withdrawal. In his FY 1976 report the Secretary spoke of undefined "vital interests” and then added the same argument, . . surely the right cure for what may seem an excess of commitments is not the blind and hasty abandonment of all commitments.” Both the American people and their allies still wait a resolution of the roles of U. S. foreign policy and military power in East Asia.
Another example of a military command overbalancing a political commitment is in Latin America. The Rio pact, as previously noted, is clear about the U. S. commitment to hemispheric defense. To Latin Americans, however, the U. S. Southern Command appears less as a potential protector than as a prospective intervener in their affairs. Negotiations over modernizing the role of the United States in the Panama Canal Zone have not been advanced by Latino perceptions of CinCSouth, no matter how loudly the United States protests the sincerity of its intentions.
If the political-military equation in alliance areas seems in instances to be weighted too heavily toward
the military side, there is a danger that in interest areas political commitments can run ahead of military capabilities. This is usually a function of interests changing with events while treaties remain constant. What is the difference between an alliance area and an interest area? Alliance areas are clear, one hopes, to friend and foe; interest areas rarely are clear. A nation has interests, and up to a point it is prepared to defend them. Most of us
assume (sometimes with a prayer added) that we and our allies would fight for a defined alliance area. But a nation does not lightly decide that interests are worth a war.
The Navy long wanted an Indian ocean fleet of "presence” for a variety of reasons, none of which seemed overly persuasive to the Congress or to the public (most of the latter may well not have known a proposal was even pending); the few critics of the proposal concentrated on the rivalry with the Soviet Navy as a fallacious reason for an extension of American naval power into an area where there were no political commitments. To them the basic aim seemed to be only to counter Soviet ships in the Indian Ocean—they saw this as a parochial concern of admirals largely irrelevant to the needs of U. S. security. The pace of constructing the diplomatic infrastructure for a presence was set therefore at the speed of its most recalcitrant critic. Then the Pakistan "tilt,” the oil crisis, Middle Eastern instability, and Israel’s vulnerability combined to signal to some political and military planners the need for a capability to operate military forces in the Indian Ocean. However, the unhappy consequences of the Indochina adventures had taken their price. Negotiations with the British over Diego Garcia were held up by Congressional watchdogs; new legislative hurdles were built (a certification by the President as to the need for an Indian Ocean facility was made a prior requisite to Congressional consideration); and, of course, the Vietnam-induced inflation had doubled the cost of even a modest facility- Meanwhile, also, foreign opposition to the proposal grew, not unrelated to foreign nations’ reaction to whar they saw as a potential "Vietnam.” Finally, the proposal brought to the surface an arms limitation idea which could either delay or kill the proposal. All the while* however, the situations (except possibly for Bangla-
desh) which had moved the planners worsened, but the Navy’s capabilities in the area could scarcely be said to have been improved much in the meantime.
A mixture of both alliance area and interest area is found in the Eastern Mediterranean. While no one has defined with any precision the American commitment t0 Israel, neither has anyone questioned that a deep commitment does exist; at least 76 members of the Senate signaled that to President Ford in May 1975. But:, beginning in 1973 events moved ahead of the diplomats’ ability to obtain the facilities needed by the military to support this commitment. In fact there was a net loss of facilities, suffered largely, ironically enough, in the alliance states of NATO. The possible parallel to the evolving situation in East Asia is hard to escape.
In the past when the Sixth Fleet, like the Seventh Neet and Air Force, needed facilities that had to be ^■gained for politically, we accepted regimes whose 'nternal policies were abhorrent to many Americans. To rcfuse to deal with and to give support to a militarily Useful regime was denounced as Pecksniffian democracy at its worst. In the case of Spain, we characterized °ur NATO allies’ reluctance to become associated with the Franco government as "doctrinaire social democratic cant.” Now, the Congress and the public know from experience that in the near future authoritarian tegimes are likely to be unstable and consequently of ubious value as allies.
When we turn from security of the homeland through deterrence and support of viable alliances by 0rce postures, we find that order of military-diplomatic relationships which so exercised Fisher’s opponents, the Presence role. In United States history presence has had an honored role. The isolated geographical and political Positions of the United States have made an overseas presence almost exclusively a military one. The Navy opened” Japan and Korea. In 1873 half the first-class s tps of the Navy (they were not really very classy) ^Cre on the Asiatic Station. We had the Special Service rjuadron in Central American waters until 1940. The avy has a history of presence in the Mediterranean going back to the founding of the Republic. In Asia, it 'Vas only the major upheavals of the Pacific War in f^4l and the People’s Liberation Army triumph in 1949 that could end Yangtze Patrol or Seventh Fleet Careers on Chinese rivers or in Chinese harbors.
Presence ashore has played a much smaller part in * *s political-military history, although both the urines and the Army were stationed in Central rnerica, the Caribbean, and in China for many years efore World War II. One does not have to disagree ^utirely with General Smedley Butler’s complaint that ls career was spent "strong-arming” weak Central
American governments or being the agent of United Fruit and Standard Oil to appreciate that these overseas deployments were not "militarism run wild.” They were an integral part of the American political leadership’s way of handling economic diplomacy and imperial power. It was a perceptive Commander-in-Chief of the Asiatic Fleet, Admiral Mark Bristol, who wrote to a friend over forty years ago about our consuls, businessmen, and missionaries: "You know as well as I do that once you get forces in a place like Shanghai you can never get out of the Foreign Service or of the Americans a recommendation to have such forces withdrawn.”
That admiral has not been alone in knowing his policy makers well. More than one post-World War II admiral or general has had to continue unproductive or potentially dangerous presence missions because his political masters were unwilling to risk the possible perception of retreat involved in withdrawal, whether the perception came from friend or foe. Lack of funds (the basic cause of the demise of the almost purely symbolic Taiwan Strait patrol) or host country displeasure (Thailand and the Air Force presence in 1975) will do the trick. But in one famous instance, the Jupiter missiles in Italy and Turkey, even Presidential orders didn’t work. Why? Because the Italians and Turks wanted the missiles to remain and the desk officers in the State Department were more interested in keeping their clients happy than in carrying out policy. They were backed by their counterparts in the Pentagon.
After World War II there grew up in the Navy (and to a limited extent in the Air Force) a certain mystique of visit diplomacy and presence. The custom is both old and honored. Routine port visits by navies are occasionally supplemented by special visits—coronation naval reviews, base openings, or even funereal missions as with the USS Astoria returning the ashes of the late Japanese ambassador at Washington to his homeland —the Astoria was commanded on that occasion by Captain Richmond Kelly Turner who must have reflected at some time between 1942 and 1945 on the fates both of the Astoria and of Japanese-American friendship.
The real effect of visit diplomacy is hard to gauge. Generally, if well done it is a minor plus but almost always only at a municipal level; if bungled, a minor minus with some potential for effects beyond the municipality. No visit or flag showing, though, can disguise real power relationships. Modern communications and diplomacy make these relationships fairly clear to any sovereign state. Foreign naval ships in ports or waters rarely change perceptions of such relationships.
The presence bluff has probably reached the limits of usefulness. Aircraft carriers on ad hoc missions support foreign policy only if there is no question but that planes are to fly off armed and with orders to do damage. Even cabinet members of land-locked countries, most of whose inhabitants would have trouble conceptualizing an aircraft carrier, can spot the bluff these days. Small units, "too weak to fight, too slow to run away” in Fisher’s phrase, are at best diplomatic nuisances to be protected if they can be or, at worst, hostages.
One sums up the future of this presence role much as Fisher did the gunboat role; he thought they might be useful in China or in the Congo until the natives got artillery, but nothing more. True, he was premature in his obituary; it was not until 45 years later that the PLA’s artillery hitting HMS London, Amethyst, and Black Swan on the Yangtze proved him correct. But how much had British policy really been advanced in those 45 years by gunboats on the Yangtze? In brief, if you don’t have a navy that can stay and fight, then get out of there.
Two possible future roles for the Armed Forces, somewhat akin to the presence role, may, however, become indispensable tools of American foreign policy, if we think out clearly the implications of their employment.
First, whatever emerges from the successive conferences on the law of the sea, the prospect is that there will be a significant need for policing such laws. They have already made it clear we will have new rules on 12-mile fishing zones, 200-mile "economic zones,” new rules on straits, new rules on seabeds, pollution, marine research, in fact, a whole new codification of what essentially is an international sharing out of the seas, straits, and seabed resources. Diplomacy can only go a limited way toward protecting U. S. rights in many of the situations that will arise, either from private acts by Americans or public acts by strident new nations. There will have to be a coercive element. Violators will have to be brought into port. There must be photographic or electronic proofs in some cases. There must be surveillance. The size of the problems which will face the United States almost surely after an agreement on a new law of the sea is going to make tempting the prospect of employing the Navy as a policeman. Indeed, upon occasion now, as when they locate or track violators of international fishing agreements, the Navy augments the Coast Guard’s efforts. The question we may want to ask ourselves and our fellow signatories is whether the employment of naval power as such will aid the search for practices and precedents under the new laws. Of course, the large numbers of possible violations and the complexities of enforcement may dictate that in many countries, including even the United States, naval forces will be used. But the connotations are not pleasant; we don’t use tactical police units to track high school truants. International amity and the establishment of useful precedents may benefit from an international (or a unilateral U. S. or other national decision) to employ the Coast Guard or in other nations its nearest equivalent as the main enforcement agent of what will a1 best be a very difficult law.
Second, international lawlessness seems bound to increase. To the extent that the acts and actors are seaborne, one questions the advisability of employing purely national naval forces for suppression. Here, coast guards may not be appropriate or available. One suggestion would be to try to get some United Nations’
Unction for an international naval force or for the deputizing of a national naval force, as long as sovereignty is not at issue. The difficulties of any attempt to get such sanction are enormous, but international order would be served best if these difficulties were faced.
If, in the aftermath of the Indochina disaster and in ffie face of the uncertain international scene sketched here, the role of the Armed Forces in policy support seems changing, the possible dangers in that change should be explored. Those dangers could bear similarity t0 what happened to Fisher and his attempt to cut a strategic suit from a not too adequate naval cloth.
As the Soviet naval potential grows relative to Amer- lcan strength, the iy2 war strategy will dictate that U. S. j^ditary power, aside from the nuclear deterrent that holds the ring,” be concentrated in NATO and in the North Atlantic. Other areas will be stripped; not yyrnediately, but eventually such stripping is inevitable.
here will be military and political costs. In Fisher’s case, for example, as a result of the Royal Navy leaving f e China Station, the military price, paid ten years after C e event, included defeat at Coronel, the losses to the mden, and a massive diversion of shipping. The Political costs were even higher—the secret agreement whh Japan over the mandated islands, the distrust ^gendered in the dominions who feared they would be ^ r alone in the Pacific with a Japanese Navy but no r*rish Navy, the Japanese adventure in China, and the ack of a shared policy with the United States in the acific (the last persisted until almost 1940 despite e papering over by the Washington treaties). Similarly, the military costs even of success at °gger Bank, Jutland and, eventually, Scapa Flow, V,'erc high. Overwhelmed on the surface, the Germans g anged to a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. I (hen the Royal Navy’s concentration on the huge s Ts which became the core of the Grand Fleet had COst it the small vessels needed to cope with this new ^nace. Fisher fell from power, as did Jellicoe, before e deficiency was made good.
No one will argue that we can look forward to a I'tnilar experience with the United States and the Soviet n'0n- Equally, no one can argue confidently that there ^°n t be elements of similarity. For instance, in a ?0n"nuclear war, should the Soviets follow what might ^ called a High Seas Fleet strategy in the Atlantic, ere would be opportunity to exploit denuded AmeriCan and allied positions elsewhere. Other possible near Parallels suggest themselves: Cradock’s squadron and ! at astonishing conglomeration of vessels the Navy as in the Middle East. There is a potential naval faster for the United States on either sea flank of if we continue to look upon fleets in the
Mediterranean or Barents seas as political necessities.
The problem lies in the definition of the value of presence versus the value of concentration. The British were overextended in 1914, just as we are overextended today. It would be nice to be able to guard against every eventuality, every contingency. Certainly, no officer wants to risk any part of his command by having less than overwhelming strength (the romantic Beres- ford appalled the Admiralty by saying he would have fought the Russian fleet in 1905 by using only four battleships at first, saving the others in case the first four were getting the worst of the "sporting” contest). By the same token many diplomatic and political officials, as Fisher noted, wanted their gunboat; today, they would ask for a carrier. The governments of some allies would always feel better if there were a visible reminder of American strength, although the same leaders would quickly see the value to be diminished if it gave their political opponents a useful stick for domestic attacks. In the trade off between presence and concentration not only definitions of policy (is the commitment a "vital interest”?) are involved, but also timing. If the interest is not vital, can an overextension of force and commitment be reduced in time to avoid disaster? On a small scale, the withdrawal of the Marines from China in 1941 (long advocated by the Navy but long and successfully resisted by the State Department) is a good example. The Vietnam withdrawal and Vietnamization were time directed. Not only were Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger watching the approach of the 1972 elections, so were the North Vietnamese.
These may seem bogeys, but the lack of phase between military power and political policy of the 1969-1975 era which ended so disastrously in East Asia is possible in a 1% war strategy. Over the longer run such a failure of phasing is possible in the developing North-South confrontation or in a generally unsettled international order. Fortunately, the cloth cutting is still to be done, but it cannot be postponed much beyond Fiscal Year 1978. Before then there should be an alignment of policy, power and, one hopes, understanding with allies, with Congress, with the academic- foundation society and their journalistic voices. A repetition of the fate of the Nixon Doctrine—policy without force, force undirected by policy—will leave only the nuclear lock guarding us in the 1980s. All locks have keys.