Perverse Paradoxes in the Application of the Paradoxical Logic of Strategy

E. Luttwak , Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).

E. Luttwak. ibid, pp. 74-80; F. Barnaby. The Automated Battlefield ( New York: The Free Press, 1986) is a lurid example of this error.

M. MccGwire , Soviet Military Objectives in Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1987).

M. MccGwire , 'Rethinking war: The Soviet concept of European security'. The Brookings Review (Spring 1988 ). However, there is no sign at this writing of a commensurate change in capabilities. In a paper to the Cambridge Russian History seminar on 3 March 1988. Professor John Erickson drew particular attention to the current switch from Army to Corps as the principal strategic formation in the WTO, and to evidence of Soviet General Staff awareness of deficiencies in defensive screening for its offensive forces, changes which, if anything, go towards improving the offensive defence. This is a point which MccGwire accepts and answers, observing that the Soviets also see themselves as having a capabilities threat which cannot be ignored, even during major rethinking. and so it is too early to expect hardware signs yet.

Luttwak , op. cit, p. 121. indicates that he sees militarily significant roles for battlefield nuclear weapons, on the lines advocated in the Ikle-Wohlstetter report: see F. Ikle and A. Wohlstetter , Discriminate Deterrence, Report to the Commission on Integrated Long Term Strategy (USGPO, January 1989). But this position has been unsustainable since the publication of Desmond Ball , 'Can Nuclear War Be Controlled?'. (London: Institute for Strategic Studies, Adelphi Paper No. 169. 1981).

Luttwak op. cit, pp. 156-74.

Ibid, p. 174.

Ibid, p. 200.

My emphasis. Ibid, p. 122, 123.

McGeorge Bundy , George Kennan , Robert McNamara and Gerard Smith , 'Nuclear weapons and the Atlantic Alliance', Foreign Affairs (Vol. 60, No. 4, Spring 1982 ); Field Marshal Lord Carver , A Policy for Peace ( London: Faber and Faber, 1982), pp. 102-3. Major statements signalled the shift in the West German position. Disavowing the battlefield nuclear rung, General Altenburg stated 'whoever thinks that way and hence assigns nuclear weapons the role of a better sort of artillery, has not understood their purpose and their role within our strategy'. Speech to the Atlantic Treaty Association, September 1986. The most perceptive discussion of these changes in the Federal Republic is to be found in M. Lucas , 'The United States and Post-INF Europe', World Policy (Vol. 5, No. 2, Spring 1988), pp. 183-233.

M. Lucas , op. cit, p. 190, 202.

C.M. Kelleher , 'NATO Nuclear Operations' in A. Carter , J. Steinbrunner and C. Zraket (eds.), Managing Nuclear Operations (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1987), pp. 445-69; D. Ball , 'Controlling Theatre Nuclear War', Working Paper No. 138, The Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University (1987).

D. Ball , op. cit, p. 7, 31.

C.M. Kelleher , op. cit, p. 469.

My emphasis. Luttwak , op. cit, p. 201.

P. Bracken , The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces (New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, 1983).

But there are severe limits upon what similarities in historical patterns may be thought to mean. For a more extensive discussion of the failings of conventional 'international relations' in this respect see G. Prins. 'The Security of the State and the State of Nuclear Deterrence' in M. Banks (ed.), The Srate in International Relations (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, forthcoming).

For a full statement of this case, E. Hobsbawm , The Age of Empire, 1875-14)14 (London: Pantheon, 1987), especially pp. 302-40.

Luttwak , op. cit Smuggled assumptions, begged questions and a non sequitur: 'With dissuasion by denial so unreliable...' (p. 202); 'Thus (in context, actually a non sequitur), the paradoxical consequence of avoiding nuclear use, by increasing nonnuclear strength, might be to provoke the Soviet Union's own use of nuclear weapons (p. 124).

Ibid, pp. 124-5.

Ibid, pp. 82-7.

G. Brossollet , Essai sur le nou-baraille ( Paris: Belin, 1975) is cited by Luttwak as his particular marker in a literature which includes, notably from that period, the work of Afheldt, Boserup, Hannig, Loser, Spanocchi and Uhle-Wettler. A convenient English summary of the case is B. Dankbar , 'Alternative defence policies and modern weapon technology' in M. Kaldor and D. Smith (eds.), Disarming Europe (London: Merlin , 1982).

Luttwak , op. cit, p. 109; see, for example, General Sir Hugh Beach , 'On Improving NATO strategy', in A.J. Pierre (ed.), The Conventional Defense of Europe: New Technologies and New Strategies, Europe/America series No. 5, Council on Foreign Relations (New York: New York University Press, 1986).

R.K. Huber and H.W. Hofman , 'Gradual dcfensivity: An approach to a stable conventional force equilibrium in Europe?', Operations Research (1984), pp. 197-211. He might also have just caught R.K. Huber , 'On strategic stability in Europe without nuclear weapons' in R. Avenhaus. R.K. Huber and J.D. Kettelle (eds.), Modelling and Analysis in Arms Control, NATO Advanced Science Institutes Series F, Vol. 26 (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1986), pp. 215-39, and H.W. Hofman , R.K. Huber and K. Steiger , 'On reactive defense options: A comparative systems analysis of alternatives for the initial defence against the first strategic echelon of the Warsaw Pact in Central Europe' in R.K. Huber (ed.), Modelling and Analysis of Conventional Defense in Europe (New York : Plenum, 1986), pp. 97-140.

As well as within the NATO High Level Task Group, these questions are at this writing being investigated by an international policy seminar series, conducted by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and convened jointly by it, the University of Cambridge and the Max Planck Gesellschaft. Its findings will become public in 1989.

This is one of the irremediable defects of the other main type of reform proposal, which advocates deep interdiction. The most ingenious advocacy of this route is by P. Bracken , 'Deep attack and European security', manuscript (November 1987). He argues that a pronounced deep attack capability would, by interdicting reinforcement, enhance the credibility of NATO's dissuasion by marking a clear threshold in space and in the levels of military preparation, increase crisis stability at the same time, and conform to the demographic, budgetary and technological futures that NATO faces. However, his proposal (ibid.. pp. 38-67) to overcome the vulnerability of the C'I architecture for Deep Strike fails to convince me. Both a horizontal expansion of intelligence assets and a raising of the executive decision-point up the command tree fall victim to the paradoxical logic: the former because nodal points for high quality data-processing cannot be avoided; the latter because they are them.

For the most recent state of analysis, R.K. Huber , 'On structural prerequisites to strategic stability in Europe without nuclear weapons: Conclusions from the analysis of a model of conventional conflict', Systems Research (Vol. 5, No. 3, 1988), pp. 1-13. For a comprehensive review of current German proposals, from a somewhat different perspective, K. Voigt. 'Konventionelle Stabilisierung und strukturelle Nichtangriffsfahigkeit: Ein systematischer Vergleich verschiedener Konzepte', Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (B. 18/88, 29 April 1988), pp. 21-34, (I am grateful to E. Boeker for alerting me to this essay.)

This will be a major problem in strategic nuclear disarmament, where a 50 per cent cut can be used for spring-cleaning the arsenal unless there is a coupled and comprehensive constraint on testing.

Benjamin F. Schemmer , interview with Philip A. Karber , 24 March 1987. published in Armed Forces Journal (May and June 1987). See especially the map and discussion of it on p. 116.

Beach , op. cit,, p. 179.

Luttwak , op. cit, p. 236.

Luttwak , op. cit, p. 122.

F. Ikle and A. Wohlstetter , op. cit, pp. 6-11; P. Kennedy. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict, 1500-2000 (London : Unwin Hyman, 1987). The idea of 'imperial overstretch' is, of course, original to Edward Gibbon; John Palmer , Europe without America? The Crisis in Atlantic Relations ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); D.P. Calleo , Beyond American Hegemony: The Future of the Western Alliance (New York: Basic-Books, 1987), p. 168.

L. Freedman , The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (London: Macmillan. 1981). p. 400.

'the nature of Warre consisteth not in acutall fighting: but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary ...'. Thomas Hohbes , Leviathan ed. C.B. Macphersan . (London: Pelican, 1968). pp. 185-6. My emphasis.

Calleo op. cit, p. 156.

For example, P. Lallouche , L'avenir de la guerre ( Editions Magazine. 1985).

Luttwak op. cit. p. 170, 196.

'The lessons of the Cuban missile crisis'. Time, 27 September 1982, p. 85: sec also R.L. Garthoff , Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (Washington, DC: Brookings. 1987) for an extended consideration of the Soviet management of the crisis.

Luttwak op. cit, p. 236.

J. Keegan , The Mask of Command (New York: Viking, 1987), pp. 311-51.