The Maritime Strategy: The Next Step

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The Maritime Strategy will become more than a set of unilateral Navy concepts if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs broadens it into a joint conventional strategy. The Secretary of Defense’s endorsement of early operations against Soviet SSBNs (Delta III, facing page) implies the Maritime Strategy is part of a larger, coherent military strategy.

Since 1945, the bedrock for U. S. national security planning has been the containment of Soviet military power. To achieve that goal, the United States has shaped a military policy emphasizing forward defense in concert with—and designed to reassure—allies and friends around the globe. About once a decade or once in every two decades, the United States proposes a major modification to the military strategy that supports the pol­icy of containment.

In the realm of nuclear forces, Defense Secretary Rob­ert McNamara gradually introduced the ambiguous and controversial concept of mutual assured destruction (MAD) in the 1960s. In the mid-1970s, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger challenged MAD, suggesting that the United States needed options for the limited employment of nuclear weapons. During the early 1980s, President Ronald Reagan initiated research to defend against ballis­tic nuclear systems, rather than relying upon retaliation as the sole recourse.

Regarding conventional forces, the doctrine of the 1950s stressed a nuclear response to Soviet conventional aggression. At that time, the United States possessed un­doubted nuclear superiority. Many in the U. S. Army challenged the doctrine’s appropriateness and credibility, and in the 1960s, the concept of massive retaliation was replaced by flexible response. This concept asserted that an enemy’s attack would be countered at that level and not by nuclear weapons. In Europe, where Soviet conven­tional strength was superior to NATO’s, in 1967 a com­promise doctrine, referred to as MC 14/3, was agreed upon. This doctrine called for both conventional forward defense and for a nuclear response, if the initial defense failed. In the late 1970s, following the tragedy of the Viet­nam War, special emphasis was given to U. S. forces for NATO—conventional defense in Western Europe was a concept which could and did gain widespread congres­sional support. The underlying premise of deterrence re­mained unchanged, however: in the event of hostilities, given the force balances, the United States would likely have to resort to nuclear weapons.

However, just as the Army had questioned strategy in the 1950s, the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps were ques­tioning strategic premises in the late 1970s and early 1980s. When the U. S. Naval Institute published nearly 150,000 copies of The Maritime Strategy Supplement to the January 1986 Proceedings, these questions became public. For the first time since 1967, open debate exists about whether to modify some key national strategic premises, especially the premise that the United States may have no choice except to initiate nuclear war after only a few days of conventional conflict in Europe. The Maritime Strategy has explicitly advanced options at vari­ance with established NATO doctrine.

At this stage, the Maritime Strategy is not joint—it was developed unilaterally by the Navy—and does not have allied consensus, or blessing. Yet if a new strategy did not deviate from established doctrine, it would not be new. But will the Maritime Strategy become a strategy rather than a set of unilateral Navy concepts? Only if the Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) takes up the case for a conventional strategy. In order to foretell the next steps in the evolution of the strategy, first a few nuclear issues must be discussed, then conventional ones.

Nuclear Issues

Shifts in U. S. Strategy: There are several options for changing the nuclear balance during a conventional war. Before leaving office, former Chief of Naval Operations James Watkins indicated that, during a conventional war, Soviet ballistic missile submarines might be sunk in order to change the nuclear balance and pressure the Soviets to cease hostilities. Secretary of the Navy John Lehman has voiced similar opinions. In earlier Proceedings articles, several writers (including this one) have referred to “hori­zontal escalation.” Some critics chose to interpret such U. S. naval pressure as a reference to geography, e.g., seizing Cuba if the Soviets seized the Persian Gulf—- hardly an exchange of equal geopolitical value. Admiral Watkins, however, explicitly stated that horizontal escala­tion referred to pressures the Soviets would treat with the utmost seriousness. It certainly would be serious if a U. S. Army spokesman announced an intention to drive salients into Eastern Europe and exploit the psychological fault line that separates the loyalties of Warsaw Pact nations from the Soviet Union. The U. S. Navy announcement about changing the nuclear balance must be taken as seri­ously by the Soviets, and we must assume that the state­ment is part of a larger, carefully coordinated U. S. strat­egy. Elsewhere, he has testified that U. S. military strategy is coherent and coordinated. What, then, is the Purpose of telling the Soviets that their nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) are vulnerable? The Secretary of Defense (SecDef) and Chairman of the JCS explained to Congress that the Soviets would strike our SSBNs, if they could find them. But since they cannot, °ur invulnerability to losses cannot be the reason for in­flicting such losses upon them. So we must speculate fur­ther in order to fathom U. S. strategic thinking.

How serious is the U. S. naval threat to the Soviet nu­clear capability? SSBNs account for less than a quarter of the Soviet strategic nuclear arsenal. So the loss of even half the SSBN fleet would not seem critical, unless the United States has also attrited land-based nuclear systems. In discussing “competitive U. S. substrategies,” the Sec- Def has referred to strikes by stealth technology “to reach into the Soviet Union and destroy selective highly valued targets,” although the Air Force and Army have been more reticent than the Navy about which Soviet targets they intend to strike.

The Maritime Strategy suggests that altering the nuclear balance in a conventional war would exert significant le­verage upon the Soviets to accept a ceasefire. Presumably, that alteration would not be a unilateral U. S. Navy strat­egy. So one might expect attrition of Soviet land-based ICBMs to be a high priority among the “highly valued targets” in the Soviet Union. This is a case where technol­ogy and capabilities (stealth, long-distance, and high ac­curacies) are leading to a shift in strategy, i.e., U. S. ef­forts during a conventional war to improve the nuclear balance. This is presumably a shift in U. S., not U. S. Navy strategy, because Admiral Watkins repeatedly stressed that the Maritime Strategy was part of a “coher­ent strategy.” Elsewhere, he linked the procurement of the SSN-21 to SDI.

The strategy assumes the Soviets will tolerate substan­tial damage to their nuclear systems during a conventional conflict, without resorting to nuclear use.

In fact their declared strategy is to sink U. S. SSBNs and to destroy other nuclear forward-based systems. Under the Maritime Strategy, the nuclear attrition during a conventional war would be two-sided, and the Soviets would gradually lose the seaborne leg of their nuclear forces.

One can debate this scenario and its effects. One cannot debate that the U. S. Navy has spent almost, a decade working out a set of ASW concepts and performing hun­dreds of exercises and war games to test and refine capa­bilities. The State Department should examine whether certain military campaigns gain leverage for negotiations

or raise incentives for escalation to chemical or nuclear strikes. The U. S. Navy has declared it has the campaign capability, in the current timeframe. Therefore, this is an option; it is not a set course of action.

Effects Upon Soviet Nuclear Strategy: Since the Soviets have featured the Maritime Strategy in Izvestia, we can assume that within the Kremlin they are debating whether to insist upon compensation in arms control negotiations for the U. S. assertion of superiority in ASW and the capa­bility to sink SSBNs. Any such demand for compensation would also be a Soviet admission of a vulnerability. Yet we should expect various Soviet proposals which will seek ASW limitations while masking Soviet vulnerabilities.

Regardless of what the Soviets say, the publicity has placed their navy in serious, long-term trouble, because it most likely contradicts what Soviet naval officers have been telling their superiors in the Kremlin. If the U. S. Navy can sink Soviet SSBNs lurking in bastions with sub­marine, surface ship, and air protection, then all elements of the Soviet Navy are very vulnerable. The other Soviet services will not be shy in pointing this out and raising questions about Soviet naval leadership, credibility, and funding priorities.

Clearly, one Soviet reaction to the anti-SSBN an­nouncement will be a quest for more redundancy in offen­sive systems. Since their sea-based systems are targeted, proponents of land-based mobile missiles will demand increased emphasis. Hence, the long-term U. S. negotiat­ing plan must include limits on the throw weight of such mobile missiles, if stability is to be enhanced.

Conventional Issues

Analyses of Capabilities: Much of the debate over the U. S. Navy has shifted from capabilities—whether it could sink Soviet SSBNs near the Kola Peninsula—to strategy-—whether it should conduct such operations. Many critics now concede U. S. naval superiority. This concession should provoke a reevaluation of the standard measures of performance by which we arrive at net com­bat assessments. The prime measure of capabilities in force-sizing scenarios is a U. S.-Soviet conflict, including allies on both sides. This conflict would be global and would, in the worst case, rage at least on a scale and with the intensity of World War II. To avoid this possibility, the United States and its European allies have focused on strategies that maximize an initial (less than 30 days) for­ward defense, backed by the assumption that the Soviets will cease fighting if not quickly successful in a conven­tional blitzkrieg.

The Maritime Strategy runs counter to a NATO assump­tion of early recourse to nuclear war, because of NATO conventional inferiority. Geography and sheer numbers tend to favor massive Soviet land forces (right) over the sparser Western forces, but tepid assessments of NATO’s high-quality TacAir capability—facing page, a U. S. F-14 flies with Belgian Mirage Vs—are puzzling in light of assumed NATO naval technological superiority.

Unfortunately, the theory of the conventional defense has two flaws. First, history provides no precedent for an aggressor quitting a month or two after the initial cam­paign. Second, at current funding levels, NATO officials repeatedly infer that the NATO initial forward defense probably could not stop a Warsaw Pact assault. Table 1 summarizes key factors in comparing the forces, assuming fewer than 30 days’ warning.

To rectify the imbalance is not merely a matter of dollar investments. Geography, tradition, cultural preferences, procurement habits, and other matters enter in. The United States, for instance, prefers very high quality, and, there­fore, often very expensive items; the Soviets, on the other hand, concentrate on large quantities with poorer quality control. Consequently, allied confidence in different types of forces (land, air, etc.) is not directly related to the dol­lars invested. (See Table 2.) For instance, the United States invests $40 in land forces for every $100 the Soviets invest and the United States plus NATO invest $120 for every $100 the Soviets invest.

On the one hand, one can argue that the index used in Table 2 exaggerates Western investment because NATO Europe and the United States duplicate research and devel­opment and production efforts. On the other hand, one can also argue that the index understates the West’s investment

edge because in the civilian production sector (and in the examination of captured military equipment), the Soviet Union has been unable to produce goods of price/quality comparable either to the United States or to Western Eu­rope. Regardless of how one argues the case, however, Table 2 shows that modest U. S. increases or shifts in investment or procurement efficiencies will not alter per­ceptions of the military balance.

We do, however, have a case of cognitive dissonance, or at least of a major anomaly, in that U. S. naval forces are widely perceived as superior to Soviet forces, while

the West’s land and tactical air forces are viewed as infe­rior. In the case of land forces, geography, the Soviet Army tradition, sheer manpower, and mass may more than offset an edge in investment. But this does not ex­plain the tepid official NATO assessment of U. S. and allied tactical aviation (TacAir). TacAir is a military func­tion where high quality, careful manufacturing, electronic miniaturization, individual pilot skill, and adaptation should count for more than low-quality mass. The same is true of naval ships, from missile and attack submarines to nuclear-powered carriers.

The anomaly is that our naval forces are assessed as being of higher quality and would prevail in combat over the Soviets, while our TacAir forces, with the same set of characteristics, are seen as struggling to a draw at best and ns not assisting our land forces in proportion to our invest­ment decisions. NATO TacAir does not dominate in war games or paper analyses as do NATO (primarily U. S.) ships and submarines.

The retort can be that, while NATO tends to be too Pessimistic, the U. S. Navy tends to exaggerate its prow­ess. While this objection (or explanation) can be con­firmed or denied only by expert and highly classified re­view, it is not a secret that our ASW assessments are based ^upon the collection of real data in the actual environment— U. S. and Soviet naval forces are in contact 365 days a year. Therefore, these data are more accurate than assess­ments of other conventional warfare areas. For instance, °ur pilots would greatly appreciate the chance to share airspace in exercises with Soviet pilots. We, along with °ur allies, have a larger investment edge over the Soviets *n TacAir than in ships and submarines.

The 1986 Department of Defense (DoD) Posture State­

ment states that the United States “requires an array of competitive strategies that capitalize on our advantages and exploit our adversaries’ weaknesses.” The statement claims that the U. S. ASW capability is keeping the Soviet Navy on the defense close to its homeland and away from the sea lines of communication (SLOCs) to Europe and Asia. The statement then implies that U. S. TacAir is as superior to Soviet systems as is U. S. ASW. The score in the 1983 air war between Israel and Syria was 86-to-l against Soviet MiGs; this is cited as being the result of “the decisive advantage of American air technology and Israeli air tactics.”

The air example in the Posture Statement is puzzling. The NATO strategy of early recourse to nuclear war is based on an assessment of NATO conventional inferiority. If NATO TacAir is superior, we are not factoring this suf­ficiently into combat assessments. Five years ago, many questioned whether the U. S. Navy had the power to carry out an offensive strategy. Today, we should ask whether it is only the U. S. Navy that has exploited comparative advantages. Are such advantages being systemically intro­duced into our conventional forces, creating a lag in the analyses of capabilities, which, when corrected, will re­sult in greater public confidence in several other military balances? The Maritime Strategy draws into question

whether the analytical parameters for assessing the differ­ent military balances are consistent. We should perform an interservice systematic review, especially in light of DoD’s emphasis upon competitive strategies, to determine whether we have overemphasized or underemphasized our capabilities in various areas, especially TacAir. It may well be, especially with the “emerging” technologies, that our net capabilities relative to the Soviets’ are stronger than we are giving ourselves credit for.

The Pacific Theater: The Maritime Strategy is not ex­plainable as a budgetary gambit; it appears to be the prod­uct of deeply held convictions. Although the anti-SSBN reference has received the most attention, the strategy’s most noteworthy aspect is the declaration that a U. S.- Soviet war might be global, conventional, and protracted. The global dimension is not new. In 1982, President Rea­gan signed National Security Decision Document (NSDD) 32, setting forth the administration’s national security strategy. Among other things, defense planning was to assume that a U. S.-Soviet war would be global, and not a NATO war confined to the European theater. Eventually, the global nature of a U. S.-Soviet conflict found a vague acceptance.

The Maritime Strategy has not clarified that vagueness. The problem is that the United States has agreed to help defend Japan, if attacked, but Japan has not agreed on the ways it would help NATO (including the United States), if attacked. Given the 1985 deployment of a U. S. Air Force F-16 wing to Japan, presumably the United States plans— if NATO is invaded—to attack Soviet bases in the Pacific, tie down Soviet forces, and attrite Soviet command, con­trol, and communications (C³) and air units. This would reduce the threat to Japan and increase China’s confidence in the eventual balance of power in the Pacific, including a SLOC with military supplies to China. If the United States does plan to attack Soviet bases, we should not remain coy about it; the Japanese must be brought on board, so they will not veto the idea in a crisis. If such a veto is expected and is the reason for not discussing the missions of the F-16s and other U. S. TacAir units, then those forces may better be used if they swing to Europe.

The way the United States conducts negotiations, per­suading the Japanese of the necessity of offensive strikes will take years. After all, for 15 years we have insisted that 1% of Japan’s gross national product (GNP) is insuffi­cient for self-defense; all the while, the Japanese have explained that they must develop a consensus (presumably in the 21st century) before becoming financially serious about their own security. Imagine how many years will be dithered away before a consensus is reached that offensive strikes will be conducted from Japanese air bases. On the other hand, if we do not raise the subject because we antic­ipate that the Japanese will refuse an agreement we con­cede that the concept of a global war plan is largely theo­retical.

The European Theater: The Japanese problem is easy, however, compared to the Maritime Strategy’s central issue: persuading allies, foes, sister U. S. services, and the American public to take seriously the option of a pro­tracted conventional war. The most extraordinary part of the Maritime Strategy is that two of the five members of the JCS have advocated the option while still serving on active duty and without including the standard diplomatic escape clause that NATO’s initial forward defense line must be held or nuclear war will probably be initiated. The U. S. Marine Corps article on the Maritime Strategy in the

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Proceedings January supplement, pp. 18-29, coauthored by General P. X. Kelley and Major Hugh O’Donnell, re­fers explicitly to “a NATO defense which is in extremis on the English Channel coast,” forcing the West into a protracted war to regain parts of Western Europe. In advo­cating an alternative to the initiation of nuclear war, the CNO and the Commandant of the Marine Corps joined the ranks of many former senior officials, most notably Dr. Henry Kissinger. As serving military officers, their opin­ions carry special weight.

The issue is how to strengthen NATO deterrence and ensure that its forces are flexible enough to respond to unanticipated crises, given: forward defense and coalition cohesion; 0 to 3% real growth in U. S. forces; 3% or more real annual growth in Soviet forces; a nuclear balance that does not make U. S. first use credible; U. S. allies who will continue to contribute less of a percent of GNP to defense than the United States; worldwide U. S. interests; and worldwide Soviet military power. Our current strate­gic planning for conventional forces is too narrow.

The current NATO planning focus, however, is under­standable. Having fought a terribly destructive war 40 years ago, the West Europeans are determined not to re­peat the experience. Nuclear weapons, because they risk the mutual suicide of nations, have been perceived as the guarantor of nonwar. Therefore, many West Europeans tend to take conventional war seriously only as a means of legitimizing the use of nuclear weapons. According to this view, the role of the hundreds of thousands of allied troops •n West Germany, reeling under the impact of Soviet ag­gression, is to engage the pitched emotions of the 16 NATO nations, making credible a desperate Western re­sort to nuclear war. Therefore, proponents of this “deter­rent-only” theory view any serious planning for conven­tional defense as weakening deterrence because it weakens the supposed automatic resort to nuclear weapons. Under this theory, NATO conventional forces must at least be strong enough to put up a stout defense, to prevent any quick fait accompli by a Warsaw Pact blitzkrieg. Once the West is deeply committed, resorting to nuclear weapons is credible.

Critics argue that this theory of total, even suicidal, commitment is incredible, not least because those advo­cating the theory are doing so in order to avoid paying for modest peacetime increases in conventional forces. If the democracies of the West are unwilling to support even 5%

GNP for defense in peacetime, critics have observed, they will not choose the final sacrifice in wartime.

True, the Maritime Strategy is a framework of opera­tions, not a fixed plan. It increases Soviet uncertainty and hence contributes to deterrence. However, it would be dis­ingenuous to try to be on all sides of any strategic issue.

Instead of nuclear war, the CNO and the Commandant have proposed the alternative of a protracted conventional war, even if driven to the English Channel. There are on­going navy-to-navy bilateral discussions to persuade the West European navies of the correctness of the U. S. Navy’s Maritime Strategy. But even if other navies are convinced, such a sensitive policy must be coordinated in the United States.

The CNO and the Commandant have raised the contra­diction between the American desire for a rational plan for conventional defense and the West European desire for deterrence based upon the somewhat irrational threat of nuclear initiation, implying mutual suicide, in response to a Soviet conventional attack. The balance of terror does contribute heavily to the deterrence of Soviet aggression. Nonetheless, there are numerous severe crises in which a president would demand the kinds of nonnuclear war­fighting responses that the Maritime Strategy is trying to develop. The West European political leadership, how­ever, will not endorse the Maritime Strategy as long as it is based on a protracted conventional conflict.

It would be disingenuous to rationalize that the Mari­time Strategy does not imply protracted conflict and only applies to the crisis warning period or to the initial week or so of hostilities. Naval power—be it sinking SSBNs, de­livering supplies, or projecting power—would affect a U. S.-Soviet war over the course of months and years; it is not a matter of days or a week. The West Europeans will not accept this premise, because a time period of weeks, months, and years implies the widespread destruction they hope to deter forever by the threat of nuclear holocaust. Logically, one cannot endorse the Maritime Strategy and the early use of nuclear weapons.

U. S. NAVY (J. HILTON)

U. S. Second Fleet exercises along NATO’s Northern Flank—here, the USS Saipan (LHA-2) is shadowed by a Soviet intelligence collection ship—are troubling the Sovi­ets as much as they are pleasing the Scandinavians.

Some senior naval officers dismiss this dilemma as aca­demic and irrelevant to the real world, pointing out that a number of U. S. and West European officers and officials have nodded approvingly when briefed by U. S. naval officers. But there is a difference between nods of polite­ness and official, political endorsement.

The essence of the Maritime Strategy is planning for a protracted conventional conflict, regardless of the out­come of the initial battle along the inter-German border. The strategy, of course, could be changed to make it de­pendent upon successful forward defense. Since the Su­preme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEur) and most experts are pessimistic about a successful defense, how­ever, this means more resources should be devoted to NATO, at the expense of either U. S. nuclear retaliatory forces, strategic defense forces, or naval forces. If the Maritime Strategy is defined as being dependent upon the achievement of official or public confidence in initial for­ward defense, then the strategy is irrelevant for the fore­seeable future and is actually an endorsement for the re­duction of naval forces. If the strategy is intended as an alternative to either successful forward defense or early initiation of nuclear war, then we will not achieve en­dorsement or silent compliance by West European govern­ments for many years.

The Maritime Strategy should be viewed as an alterna­tive to, but not as a replacement for, the current NATO strategy of MC 14/3. Either the Maritime Strategy is a real alternative and breaks new ground, or it is not intended as an alternative and does not affect the concept that has driven planning since 1967. In order to achieve coherence, the President is required to make a decision, as he did when he signed NSDD-32. When NSDD-32 was devel­oped, one key concept was rejected: the declaration that the United States would develop military alternatives so it would not have to choose, in a global war, between the initiation of nuclear war and the permanent cession to the Soviet Union of allied territory. The prime objection raised was that the NATO allies would object strenuously to the perceived decoupling from a near-automatic U. S. nuclear response to conventional aggression. The Mari­time Strategy is, in a more diplomatic manner, again pro­posing that alternative. West European politeness will greet the strategy as long as it is not taken too seriously. However, if our allies believe the United States is serious about such an option, they will raise strong reservations. This hard “either-or” choice may be finessed. For in­stance, Vice Admiral Henry Mustin, until recently Com­mander of the U. S. Second Fleet, presented the Maritime Strategy in the context of NATO’s Concept of Maritime Operations. In what might become known in diplomatic circles as the Mustin Shuffle, NATO and naval strategies were reconciled—at least as long as the time lines for forward defense along the Central Front and probable al­lied surface movement into the northern Norwegian Sea were not addressed in the same meeting.

Just as MC 14/3 is a political compromise, so too is the Maritime Strategy. The compromise is not to discuss time lines. The Maritime Strategy makes a difference in a long war; our allies assume a short war. Sensitive to this politi­cal reality, senior naval officers such as Admiral Mustin do not discuss time lines or the attrition of Soviet SSBNs.

Agreement within the United States: The next step for the Maritime Strategy, then, is to seek serious coherence within the United States before approaching the allies. This must be done by working with the services, the com­manders-in-chief (CinCs), the State and Defense Depart­ments, and White House civilian officials. Some propos­als for defense reorganization suggest an opposite approach: the President issues broad national security goals which the JCS, especially the Chairman, coordinates with the CinCs to turn into a military strategy. Because this approach appears to reduce the role of civilians in military strategy, at first glance it may seem to have ap­peal. But the clock cannot be turned back to the 1940s, when presidents worked with the senior military without the presence—or intrusion—of a SecDef or the National Security Council (NSC) staff. Today, there is no distinct line between defense policy and military strategy: witness the NATO strategy of MC 14/3, which was deliberately crafted as a political compromise to ensure the NATO alli­ance’s integrity. Table 3, excerpted from public testi­mony, shows that the JCS addresses a mixture of military and policy matters. So must the senior civilian officials in the national security community address military matters.

There is little possibility that the Navy could persuade by logic alone all the services and CinCs to plan coher­ently for a protracted conventional war alternative. Even if this were possible, civilian involvement would be required because, as the role of Secretary Lehman illustrates, the subject matter would still be as much concerned with na­tional policy and international diplomacy as with military strategy. To move from a Maritime Strategy to a coherent, all-service, all-CinC strategy will take years under central, non-Navy direction.

The way to deal with a U. S. protracted conflict alterna­tive is to proceed with its interservice development— without asking the allies. Their involvement and coordina­tion can come later. The precedents for such com- partmented U. S. plans, not shared with our allies, are numerous.

The effect upon the Soviets would be to introduce even more uncertainty, which reinforces deterrence in a crisis. They already suspect the United States, if challenged, may choose a protracted war alternative, forcing the Soviet Union to face a trillion-dollar U. S. defense budget one year hence. The Maritime Strategy has reinforced this sus­picion. The Soviets cannot know whether or not the United States has worked out the option of protracted con­flict and would apply it in extremis, rather than initiate nuclear war. That highlights the shrewdness behind the CNO’s and the Commandant’s statements: they have added greatly to the Soviets’ uncertainty about the U. S. response to aggression. Given the subsequent public en­dorsement of the Maritime Strategy by the SecDef and the Chairman of the JCS in congressional testimony, the Sovi­ets cannot assume that the United States, if faced with aggression, does not have a carefully planned alternative that does not rely upon the early use of nuclear weapons. Yet, at the same time, the NATO allies are not unsettled, because' the NATO strategy of MC 14/3 and the public statements of SACEur have not changed. Hence, the am­biguity necessary for allied cohesion is preserved, and any serious interservice planning is done outside public and diplomatic channels.

The Resource Base: Despite our rhetoric, do we have the wherewithal to fight beyond 30 days? For five years the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy has stressed the need for a U. S. mobilization base. Yet the resources have not matched the requirement. Nor are they likely to. This is a definition of Western democracies at peace. In war, initial setbacks, as in World War II, would have to be accepted and tough priorities set. There is nothing new in this reasoning—it is the logic behind the decade-old de­bate about “swinging” U. S. forces from the Pacific.

We need a plan to gamer modest contributions from many quarters, including a number of competent and friendly non-European nations; these contributions would in the aggregate be substantial. As long as the United States holds the sea and air lines of communication around the globe, the production bases of many non-European countries come to bear upon the outcome of the protracted conflict. Asia’s production output alone exceeds Europe’s. Therefore, a logical next step for the United States is to look beyond the NATO countries when analyz­ing the West’s military resource base.

The Geopolitical Effects of the Maritime Strategy: The Maritime Strategy is one of several plans that might be implemented in a serious contingency. In itself, this is prudent military planning, whether or not any given plan is used in the moment of crisis. There is another dimen­sion, however, to what has been going on inside the Navy, and that has to do with self-confidence.

At heart, the Maritime Strategy is a firm expression of self-confidence. This has already had three beneficial geo­political effects, which have not been pointed out. First, the most remarkable metamorphosis in combat scenarios is the confidence that northern Norway can be reinforced and held, given the U. S. Marine prepositioning and exer­cises begun in 1980, and the more recent innovations and

northern exercises of the Second Fleet with NATO. This has troubled the Soviets as much as it has pleased the Scandinavians. The political effect has been to lessen the shadow of the Soviets’ power and deprive them of a pres­sure point in a crisis. The Soviet threat to isolate Norway was one of the prime reasons in the late 1940s leading to the creation of NATO. The threat of Soviet bullying or nibbling tactics in severe crisis is reduced when NATO has appropriate responses other than escalation to full-scale war. The Maritime Strategy has provided such a response on the Northern Flank.

Second, only ten years ago, Chinese and Japanese lead­ers expressed directly to senior U. S. defense officials their concern that the United States had neither the naval power nor the national will to hold open the logistical lifelines across the Pacific in the event of Soviet aggres­sion. Today, the issue is how to communicate to our Asian friends how and why, in a global conflict, we plan to carry the war to the Soviets in the Pacific. That is quite a differ­ence in perspective.

Third, when the President has decided to use naval forces in the Mediterranean—whether near Lebanon or Libya—Soviet naval forces have not been an impeding factor. Many reasons for this exist in terms of bilateral relations and other Soviet objectives. Nevertheless, there is quite a contrast between the Soviet fleet’s behavior in the Mediterranean in the 1973 period, when some senior

U. S. Navy officers were publicly doubtful of U. S. naval capabilities, and the behavior of the Soviet fleet and the Sixth Fleet in the 1980s. Whatever other factors are affect­ing Soviet decisionmaking and inhibiting naval inter­positioning, the trend since 1973 has not led to a decrease in U. S. naval confidence, to include air strikes against Soviet air defenses.

It could have, if the U. S. Navy had followed a path that concentrated on the close-in defense of the SLOCs and accepted uncritically the defensive strategic frameworks advocated in the 1970s. The progenitors of the Maritime Strategy in the 1970s were Navy Secretary Graham Claytor, Under Secretary R. James Woolsey, and the former CNO, Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, who resisted sustained pressure to accept a defensive strategic construct for the U. S. Navy. As a result, Secretary Lehman and Admiral Watkins did not have to change an institutional or doctrinal mind-set within the Navy before developing new concepts and a strategic framework different from the de­fense of SLOCs to Europe.

The climate was right for strategic change.

Much energy has been wasted debating the Maritime Strategy in a vain effort to drag naval thinking back into the defensive and NATO-centric constraints of the 1970s. It is the duty of the military professionals to offer alterna­tives. The Maritime Strategy is the beginning of the alter­natives; the next step is to enlarge it until it is an all-serv-

Determinants of Military Power

What determines a nation’s military power? A simple ques­tion, with a simple answer, at first glance. Obviously, a na­tion’s military power consists of the army divisions, the air force wings, the navy ships compris­ing its armed forces. To use cur­rent jargon, force structure is the basis of military power.

But wait a minute. Does that mean a nation’s military strength is simply a function of the hard­ware and materiel it owns? Not entirely. How one employs that force structure also affects mili­tary power. The collection of doctrine and war plans that es­tablishes how force structure will be used can be labeled strategy. This combination of strategy and force structure de­termines military power.

That may be a good answer for a war that starts today or tomorrow, but are strategy and force structure the only determi­nants of a nation’s military power further into the future?

Certainly they have a bearing on the question. Force structure has enormous inertia. The capi­tal investment needed to pur­chase the implements of war is so large that the primary mode of changing the force structure must be evolution, not substitu­tion. The replacement of force structure components usually occurs at the 20- or 30-year point when the hardware is too obsolete or too worn out for fur­ther service. Cost limits the amount replaced to about l/20th or l/30th a year.

Therefore, the force structure we own now not only constrains today’s strategy but also holds in its grip the strategy of the fu­ture, releasing that grip only gradually. Of course, strategy affects force structure also— directly in deciding what to buy, and indirectly through the in­vestment strategy that accompa­nies procurement. Yet, there is even a third determinant of fu­ture military power—the re­source input that establishes the size of future defense efforts.

The resource input to defense is more than just dollars, though this is a good way to keep score. Beyond money are mat­ters such as the quality of the industrial base, the strength of political will, the condition of the economy, and the nature of public opinion. In the long run, the summation of such elements into the amount of national treasure devoted each year to

ice strategy with the same premise: defense without initiating nuclear war. This task requires major planning by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

For the United States to reduce reliance upon the threat of the first use of nuclear weapons would be an extraordi­nary strategic shift. But at the Reykjavik Summit in Octo­ber, President Reagan reaffirmed his goal of a world free of nuclear ballistic missiles. So the U. S. threat of first nuclear use is becoming less and less credible. And at reasonable budget levels, the NATO emerging conven­tional technologies may not persuade both East and West that the current political strategy of holding a Maginot forward defense line has a high chance of success, if chal­lenged. Therefore, it is to be expected that, as professional military officers, the members of the JCS and their Chair­man will develop a thoughtful, coordinated blueprint of how they would fight conventionally, taking into account the possibility of early, severe setbacks. The Joint Chiefs do not have to advertise this planning; they do not have to undercut the nuclear deterrent; and they do not have to unsettle allies. But they must do more than game crises in which the Soviets conveniently blink once the United States deploys.

At issue is how the United States would fight conven­tionally. The Maritime Strategy is premised on a pro­tracted conventional war. If the U. S. military plan for the future, however, is the same as the present—an initial conventional defense followed by the early release of nu­clear weapons—then the Maritime Strategy should be dropped (and so should many of the publicly declared goals for strategic defense and arms control).

On the other hand, if a combination of several trends is rendering the NATO nuclear threat less credible—and I believe that is the case—then it is necessary that the JCS, and not just the Department of the Navy, develop and game conventional warfighting plans which are not based upon the early use of nuclear weapons. The Maritime Strategy contributes to such plans.

"Bing” West received a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and a master’s degree from the Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He went to Vietnam both as a Marine platoon leader and as a civilian correspondent. Later, he worked at the Rand Corporation and then was Special Assistant to Secretary of Defense Schlesinger. In 1978, he directed the U. S. Naval Force Planning Study, called “Sea Plan 2000,” which articulated a strategy based on offense and a total force of 600 ships. His article “A Fleet for the Year 2000: Future Force Structure” was published in the May 1980 Naval Review issue of Proceedings. He held two billets simultaneously at the Naval War College—as a Professor of Management and the Dean of Research. From 1981 to 1983, he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. He is currently president of the Gama Corporation, specializing in gaming and analysis.

By Captain John L. Byron, U. S. Navy