P1: FCW 0521857449c13 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 6, 2006 7:6 Strategic Independence: An Ounce of Prevention 313 The secretoftheAmericanmissiledefenseshieldproposalisthatit’saimed at China and Russia and that it’s part of a major shift in overall U.S. defense policy. Reagan introduced the concept this way, but each president since has found it expedient to mislead the public about the shield, insisting that it is aimed at terrorist states and that it is a minor part of existing U.S. strategy. Whatever the reasons for the deception, the media and the public have been smart enough to recognize that the implications of the shield go far beyond terrorism, and that if the shield is to be justified, it must be on another basis. Honesty about this has become crucial because the clumsy deception is now so confusing the international security environment that America’s attempt to build the shield and change it’s defense strategy may cause us to stumble into a serious war. The secret is becoming dangerous in itself. Nuclear arms controland national missile defense are the joint response to the emerging dangers of nuclear war. But we must recognize that the nuclear non-proliferation effort is in tatters. According to the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, nearly forty countries are now familiar enough with nuclear technology to make bombs (although only about nine are thought to have done so), and the non-proliferation treaty itself is fundamentally flawed in its provisions because it permits countries to enrich uranium to make reactor fuel and to reprocess fuel rods once they’ve been used – both techniques being not essential for an electric power program, but both essential to bomb making. 5 We have been relying on Mutual Assured Destruction to deter nuclear war. But this is a strategy best suited to a bipolar confrontation – like the Cold War – and increasingly risky in today’s different environment. Nuclear proliferation diminishes the credibility of MAD because we cannot be sure whom to counter-attack, and credibility is the essence of MAD – otherwise apotential aggressor is not deterred. That Russia continues to modernize its nuclear striking forces despite national hardship demonstrates that it has no intention of relying instead on conventional weapons and the abolition of weapons of mass destruction. China makes no bones about its commitment to becoming a nuclear superpowerand has devised a marketcommunist eco- nomic system that can support its ambitions. With even less of a foundation than Russia’s or China’s, other nations are building nuclear weapons. There are certain to be more nuclear weapons in more unstable hands tomorrow than today and our past reliance on MAD is no longer credible in deterring their employment. In the summer of 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld justi- fied the building of an American national missile defense shield as follows: P1: FCW 0521857449c13 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 6, 2006 7:6 314 The American Response “Imagine what would happen if a rogue state were to demonstrate the capability to strike U.S. or European populations with weapons of mass destruction. A policy of intentional vulnerability could give this state the power to hold us hostage.” 6 The Bush administration here followed the same path of political least resistance that its predecessor did, tying a national missile defense shield toarogue-state justification. In doing so it risked the same appearance of inconsistency that bedeviled the Clinton approach. For a national defense shield cannot be justified on rogue-state grounds. Why, then, is it done? Clinton may have had adopted this justification knowing that it was inadequate, and in the ill-disguised hope that the shield would be discredited and abandoned. This was not Bush’s motivation, however. Probably the administration feared that itcould notwin enough liberal support forthe shield if China and Russia were revealed as the targets of theshield, and hoped thatconservatives would see the intended threat while liberals could be won over by the rogue state argument. But the weakness of the justification for the shield was quickly perceived. Forexample, commentators abroad objected to the junking of the Anti- Ballistics Missile Treaty (ABM) that necessarily accompanied the plan to build an antiballistics missile shield. “The ABM Treaty has been the set- tled policy of the US for nearly 30 years ”wrote an Australian commenta- tor, adding, “One US commentator likens the US to a ‘blind Samson, tearing down thevery arms-control temple it built.” 7 The argument was well made – why should a treaty with Russia, a cornerstone of MAD, be junked just to build a defense against a possible attack by a few missiles from rogue states in the Crescent of Fire? Where was the evidence of capability by North Korea, Iraq, or Iran to make such an attack on the United States or Europe? There was little or none. And if there was so little threat, why junk MAD, a policy designed to prevent a really big threat – that of a nuclear exchange between Russia and America? The rogue state argument was disingenuous, hinted the press. For example, an editorial in The Economist,appears to accept the rogue state argument, speaking of “rogue rockets ,” but then adds that “America’s hopes must rest on preferring honest arguments over specious ones.” The editorialist suspects that the rogue state argument is specious, and says so. 8 The story then became more bizarre. The Bush administration, stung by criticisms of its justification of NMD as a response to rogue states, sought to shore up support for NMD by the strangest of political tactics. It seems to have gotten turned around on its basic strategy. According to a report in P1: FCW 0521857449c13 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 6, 2006 7:6 Strategic Independence: An Ounce of Prevention 315 The New York Times,“The Bush administration, seeking to overcome Chi- nese opposition to its missile defense program, intends to tell leaders in Beijing that it has no objections to the country’s plans to build up its small fleet of nuclear missiles, according to senior administration officials.” 9 One senior official said that in the future, the United States and China might also discuss resuming underground nuclear tests if they are needed to assure the safety and reliability of their arsenals. Such a move, however, might allow China to improve its nuclear warheads and lead to the end of a worldwide moratorium on nuclear testing. Both messages appear to mark a significant change in American policy. For years the United States has discouraged China and all other nations from increasing the size or quality of their nuclear arsenals, and from nuclear tests of any kind. The purpose of the new approach, some administration officials say, is to con- vince China that the administration’s plans for a missile shield are not aimed at undercutting China’s arsenal, but rather at countering threats from so- called rogue states.” Soon thereafter, still trying to salvage its justification of NMD as aimed at rogue states, American officials told reporters “that once China has more missiles in its arsenal, it should be less concerned about Mr. Bush’s missile defense system – because China would have a sufficient number of missiles to overwhelm any American missile defense now being contemplated.” 10 This is the topsy-turvy world of political diplomacy. The American gov- ernment, seeking to avoid the increasing Chinese buildup of nuclear missile capability, sets out to dissuade the Chinese from this course by building a national missile defense. But out government fears it will not gather enough political support and so it disguises the intent of NMD as being directed at rogue states. When commentators challenge this fairly obvious deception, the Ameri- can government refuses to admit its subterfuge, but instead tries to shore it up by, of all things, encouraging the Chinese to build their nuclear missile arsenal better and faster in order that our missile shield would not be a deterrent to them! Somehow, from trying to deter the Chinese from build- ing more missiles aimed at us, our government found itself doing exactly the opposite. Here, inawitches’brew,two factors combined to put our government in abackwards posture – first, the political necessity of defending a falsehood tempted our political leaders to abandon our own real purposes; and second, the logic of MAD – to strengthen your enemies to parity of weaponry with you–reasserted itself in the ensuring confusion about the real aims of our NMD policy. P1: FCW 0521857449c13 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 6, 2006 7:6 316 The American Response This was not the first time that politically motivated deception about strategic purposes tripped up our government; and it was not to be the last, as we saw in our discussion of the confusion of objectives in the aftermath of the Second Gulf War. But stumbling into urging China to increase more rapidly its ability to attack America with nuclear missiles must be a high point of confusion into which deception has led our government. The vibrant and much-needed debate – over national missile defense and its advisability as part of a strategy to displace MAD in dealing with the changing nuclear arms balance – that was occurring in the summer of 2001 in the press, in the halls of Congress and in the recesses of the defense agencies of Washington was ended suddenly on September 11, 2001, and has not been resumed. Thus, terrorist attacks derailed for years the most important public discussion being conducted in the world. Meanwhile, the need for a missile defense shield is rapidly growing. With- out a missile defense shield the United States has no effective means of persuading China to direct its rising aspirations into peaceful channels. Without a shield, we have only MAD – an increasingly flawed policy ill- suited to changing conditions in the world and therefore likely to result in an unwanted war. THE BUSH DOCTRINE In September 2002, the White House issued a document entitled “ The National Security Strategy of the United States.” 11 It expressed in simple and direct language what has come to be called the Bush Doctrine – preemption and military supremacy: r “To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries the United States will, if necessary, act pre-emptively r “Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.” 12 National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has elaborated on the document several times, saying at the time of its issuance, “if it comes to allowing another adversary to reach military parity with the United States in the way that the Soviet Union did, no, the United States does not intend to allow that to happen.” But military supremacy and preemptive war are not the only very signifi- cant elements of this document. In fact, it is not a national security strategy at all, but rather an entire statement of American foreign policy. P1: FCW 0521857449c13 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 6, 2006 7:6 Strategic Independence: An Ounce of Prevention 317 Forexample, its first section is not titled “ The National Security Strategy of the United States,” as areader would expect from the title ofthedocument, but rather, “Overview of America’s International Strategy. The second and third sections discuss defense policy, but the following sections go much further. Section VI is titled “Ignite a New Era of Global Economic Growth through Free Markets and Free Trade.” Section VII is titled “Expand the Circle of Development by Opening Societies and Building the Infrastructure of Democracy.” Here we have the full Bush Doctrine, the full foreign policy of America: r to defend our country via military superiority and preemptive war, when necessary, and r to rebuild the world, or as much of it as we can, in our own image – as a free enterprise democracy. Defense Policy Should Not Be Tied to an Overreaching Foreign Policy In avery significant way, the Bush Doctrine is amistaken policy. It’s a danger- ous overreach,aswe demonstrate in later chapters. America hastheopportu- nitytoadoptStrategicIndependence–acoherent,forward-looking, sensible defense policy stressing military strength and independence of action. But it is important is that we not let a poorly developed, inconsistent and utopian foreign policy interfere. We recognize that this is the opposite of what most specialists and analysts argue should be the case. The position they advocate has adistinguished lineage, since the Renaissance, and is that the geopolitical strategy of the nation should direct its defense strategy – that war should be an instrument of foreign policy. In our view, in the instance of America today, this is clearly wrong. 13 When a country has the sort of foreign policy our leadersordinarily articulate – fullof high-sounding phrases and imprac- tical objectives drawn from our public culture, then foreign policy cannot be a secure guide to anything. But at least we can defend ourselves effec- tively, so long as we don’t let the confusions of our foreign policy disrupt our thinking about defense. A better response than the administration’s would be to focus on our defense alone, leaving broader goals to persuasion and support, rather than to force and direction – we call this approach Strategic Independence, a return to a policy followed successfully for two decades by our country between the endof World WarII and thedevelopment by the Soviet Union of a full-range nuclear missile capability in the mid-1960s. A special issue arises with respect to the administration’s call for preemptive war; something that P1: FCW 0521857449c13 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 6, 2006 7:6 318 The American Response fits within the framework of Strategic Independence, but must be exercised with extreme caution. Another special issue involves the value of national missile defense, which plays a significant role in Strategic Independence. The formalization of the Administration’s posture in the Bush Doctrine is a milepost indicating how far America has come since September 11, 2001. Before that time, in the Clinton Administration, we were down sizing our military quickly. The Bush Administration planned to slow or even reverse the build down, but 9/11 precipitated the Bush Doctrine that provides a policy strikingly different from even that proposed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld earlier in 2002. At that time, Rumsfeld gave no hint of the military superiority goal in the Bush Doctrine. He described preemption as only an inexpensive tactic to deal with terrorists and rogue states while the United States was building down its military, not building up to military supremacy. 14 The Bush Doctrine is a huge shift from the policies with which many of us grew up – isolationism until we were forced into World War II, and then containment of the Soviets that we achieved as part of an alliance. The shift appears to have been brought about by the threat of terrorists using weapons of massdestruction, butin reality has been promoted for more than a decade by severalexperts. 15 It has major implications for our relations to Russia and China also, as we’ll see in later chapters. The Bush Doctrine is a step in the right direction for America, but it is also a significant overstep – two steps too far. It is a costly error to assert that our country will seek clear military superiority over any potential rival; and it is an even more costly error to attempt to remake much of the world in our own image. If the Administration has gone too far in these two ways, then what is the alternative? In our view the best alternative is to return to astrategic posture of the United States in the first two decades of the Cold War–aperiod of our Strategic Independence – in the search for peace in coming decades. AWindow of Opportunity The information revolution, Russia’s failed transition to a more productive economic culture, and China’s current backwardness have created a window of opportunity for shifting the terms of engagement in our favor. America should be responding to this changed reality because at this historic juncture America might have it all: deterrence with Russia, a defense against Chinese missiles, arms reductions of many kinds, and independence in our choice of actions. Given such a rare opportunity, it is prudent to try. P1: FCW 0521857449c13 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 6, 2006 7:6 Strategic Independence: An Ounce of Prevention 319 Changing priorities can be accomplished without appearing to alter our core policy. Current management of the terms of engagement can be tweaked by shifting priorities, not by junking the terms and starting over. Giving a much higher priority among the terms to Strategic Independence doesn’t require that we scrap ballistic missile ceilings nor foreswear arms reductions; it doesn’t even require that we abandon MAD. But it does cancel what has been our primary reliance on MAD; substituting for it greater reliance on Strategic Independence. MAD wasn’t a strategy for all seasons. It arose from the conjunction of a specific set of historical circumstances that have irreversibly changed with nuclear proliferation. What is required for America now to successfully assert Strategic Inde- pendence is: At the military level, a counterterrorism capability and a missile defense capability to join our current conventional and nuclear capabilities; and, at the broader level, the r economic strength to pay for these things; r technological superiority to enable them; and r political will to maintain Strategic Independence. Although Strategic Independence may seem inconsistent with military supremacy in theory, it’s very much like it in practice. This is because to have real independence of action, we must not have a rival of equal strength. If we do, then we must have allies, and we lose our independence of action. But this does not mean that we must match the strategic capability of each rival item by item – a danger in the concept of military supremacy; instead, we should oppose large numbers of missiles in an adversary’s hands with a combination of weaponry that will frustrate and overcome our adversary’s strength. To define our goal, as does the Bush administration, as having so much military power that an adversary cannot equal or surpass it is to confuse our proper objective and to suggest that we will participate in an arms race. This is unnecessary and potentially very costly . An objection to Strategic Independence is that it seeks absolute security for the United States and that absolute security for one party is absolute insecurity for others – because the secure party can act with impunity. Thus, in seeking absolute security for itself, the United States undermines security everywhere else and destabilizes the international scene. Certainly, many countries in the world assert today that the United States does whatever it wishes, regardless of others, and that freedom of action can be attributed to the supposed security it feels as the world’s sole superpower. P1: FCW 0521857449c13 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 6, 2006 7:6 320 The American Response But this objection, though sophisticated and with a superficial plausibility, is without merit. First, the United States should seek Strategic Independence not because it is currently invulnerable as the world’s sole superpower, but for precisely the opposite reason – that it is very vulnerable, as the events of September 11, 2001, made distressingly clear. Second, Strategic Independence does not seek absolute security for the United States, only sufficient security to provide freedom of action in our defense. The objection would have merit, however, if, as is a dangerous possibility, American leadership overreaches and seeks not reliable defense, but the capability of remaking the world. Preemption: An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure On May 12, 2003, a group of bombings killed some twenty-one persons, including seven Americans in Riad, Saudi Arabia. Said a Saudi spokesman to atelevision reporter soon thereafter, “We knew something was brewing. We had raised our terror alert. We had them under surveillance. It’s just a question of how do you know when they will strike?” Well, they did strike. Did the Saudi official have to wait for the damage to be done? Or should he have arrested them first? Sadly,the Saudi official omitted a crucial step: Recording the incidentsand observations that led him to conclude, “We knew something was brewing.” He likely believed that the evidence wasn’t specific enough to warrant such rigorous treatment; which, in the end proved to be a fatal error. Ordinary everyday traffic provides a simple analogy here. How many of us, while driving on a crowded highway, sense that a car in the lane next to us is about to change lanes even though no turn signal is displayed? How often is such “intuition” correct? Almost always. The reason is that our brains record imperceptible clues about the world around us that we aren’t even aware of such as the driver’s expression, a slight turn of head, a minor change in speed, a split second swerve and correction to the left. It is no different in war – but lives depend on being able to recognize, record, and analyze these changes to our environment and enemy behavior. How did this individual conclude “something was brewing”? Most likely small changes in behavior occurred that, if compared to historic clues before P1: FCW 0521857449c13 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 6, 2006 7:6 Strategic Independence: An Ounce of Prevention 321 similar attacks in the past, would have been shown to be strikingly similar. The official’s lack of discipline and awareness of his environment should surely have cost him his position. This is the key issue of preemption; it applies on both the personal and the national basis. It seems to us that the Saudisecurity services should haveactedin advance, saved the people’s lives, and borne the criticism from civil rights activists – which would have been rendered far less damaging in light of a thorough analysis of environmental clues. Also it seems to us that our nation must do the same in the world; act, save our people, and bear the criticism. Preemption is an element of Strategic Independence – an uncommon policy, to be used only infrequently. The currently popular notion that war should always be a last resort seems self-evident to many who don’t think it through carefully. In fact, the opposite is often the case – that is, some kinds of war should be not a last resort but an early one. Force, applied at the right time – early, before the attacker is prepared – is often both effective and inexpensive. Exhausting other means of attaining an objective can mean, ironically in certain cases, that ultimately a war results that is much longer, harder, more expensive, less certain, and more horrible for combatants and noncombatants alike, than otherwise. Preemptive war has significant promise if used correctly. Preemption extends to other dangers to American lives than those of ter- rorism only. For example, Donald S. Burke of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health wrote about preparing for a pandemic as follows: “ it may be possible to identify a outbreak at the earliest stage. The new mindset should be one that focuses upstream on the earliest events, emphasizing prediction and prevention before a pandemic begins.” Although we don’t usually think about terrorism or warfare as a kind of pandemic, it is just as much a public health problem as bird flu, and can be responded to in the same way. Had the Western powers acted preemptively against Hitler in 1936, then the conflict would have been very small and quickly ended. World War II, as we shall see below, would not have been necessary. But preemption is also subject to the risk of serious misuse, and so must be employed rarely and only when a significant danger looms – and by presidents of our country who are experienced in foreign affairs and able to make the proper judg- ments. By employing preemption in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, President Bush put the question of preemption at the top of political discussion in America. P1: FCW 0521857449c13 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 6, 2006 7:6 322 The American Response WORLD WAR II WAS AVOIDABLE World War II was almost certainly avoidable, had we acted in a preemptive way as the danger became apparent. Hitler took power in Germany in 1933 and soon after began to rearm. The Western democracies knew of this soon thereafter. The persecution of the Jews by the Nazis was soon underway and was well known in the United States in the late 1930s. In 1936, in defi- ance of the Versailles treaty that had ended World War I, Hitler occupied the German Rhineland.The Rhineland wasGerman territory adjacent to France that was demilitarized after World War I. Hitler’s first use of Germany’s expanded army was to enter the Rhineland and reabsorb it into Germany. French, and British leaders debated what response to make; possibly they discussed the matter with the Americans. They decided to make none. It was learned after the war that Germany military leaders were so con- vinced that they couldn’t have handled French and British opposition, to say nothing of American, that they were preparing to depose Hitler. But when Hitler got away with the gamble; when the British and French and Americans did nothing; then Hitler’s hold on Germany tightened; the oppo- sition in Germany was demoralized, and World War II became virtually certain. In the Pacific, the Japanese fired on a U.S. gunboat, the Panay, in Chinese waters in December 1937, and we chose not to respond strongly. Four years later, with Japan increasingly aggressive, and Germany triumphant in Europe, we embargoed oil to Japan, forcing Japan to decide on war or peace. They chose war, and somehow surprised us with an attack at Pearl Harbor. Nowitshould be said that we were not armed for war in 1936 or 1937. So in a sense, we couldn’t have successfully preempted either Germany or Japan alone. But we could have preempted both Germany and Japan if we had been armed, and we should have been; and we could have done so with allies (France and Britain), had we exerted leadership at the time. Hadwepreempted Nazi Germany in 1936 and Hitler had been deposed, so that World War II never occurred, then there would never have been agreat war, France would not have been overrun, the battles of Britain and the Atlantic would not have been fought, the Soviet Union would not have been invaded, the Holocaust would not have occurred. Pearl Harbor would not have been attacked; there would have been no Bataan death march; and no atomic bomb. None of these events, the clear evidence of the value of having prevented the war, would have occurred. Had the German invasion of the Soviet Union not occurred, few today would have [...]... a subordinate of cer is to carry out the INTENT of his commanding of cer’s instructions – not the letter of the orders, but their intent And we began a new regime of leadership training intended to forge tight bonds between of cers and soldiers – no more of the sort of fragging (when soldiers shot their of cers) that occurred in Vietnam In addition, somehow we managed to establish a culture in our military... military; one of which Americans are increasingly proud A few years ago, in the period between the two Iraqi wars, the Minister of Defense of a major European power at a dinner conversation commented on his meetings with the American military leadership and his assessment of their performance in Iraq in the early 1990s “You’d be amazed at how good these Americans really are these days,” he said “They’re... on the organization of the military It’s another weakness of the media that it focuses on the new technology of warfare, and not the much more important issues of the capability of command and execution Americans are thereby encouraged to believe that if we continue to introduce technological innovations in warfare, we will remain effective militarily, although this is only part of the story Another... time The military challenges are interesting During the Civil War, two Union generals challenged Lincoln for leadership of the nation General George McClellan ran for president against Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election, in the midst of the war, and lost General Joseph Hooker told his of cers that the Union needed not Lincoln but a dictator Lincoln was informed of Hooker’s comment, and when Lincoln... distinct from what we have called the public culture and the economic culture) – the pop culture is licentious; the traditional culture is almost puritan The pop culture is the direction in which the country is moving; the adherents of the traditional culture are increasingly uncomfortable with the direction of the nation The popular culture is showy and dominated by images offered by the entertainment... requires us to disengage from conflicts only distantly related to major power challenges We should not, in the context of Strategic Independence, be involved in many of the world’s flash points The only purpose of Strategic Independence is the defense of the United States The only defense against [modern warfare] is the ability to attack,” General Marshall told Americans in his review of World War II.9... conflicts that became the two world wars that we created great losses for ourselves in ultimately winning them CALCULATING THE RISK There has been discussion over the centuries about the circumstances under which preemptive war should be permissible They stress the immediacy of an attack by the adversary, clear evidence of the intent to attack, the lack of any other alternative, and that the force used should... overcome the democracy Further, democracies often end in dictatorships: the Weimar Republic ended in Hitler; the Provisional Republic of Russia ended in Lenin’s Soviet Union; the Italian democracy ended in Mussolini (to cite only a few of numerous examples) Hence, the Bush administration’s crusade for democracy in the Muslim world could have unfortunate outcomes The often-cited exceptions are the success of. .. in Germany and of the MacArthur occupation and demilitarization in Japan – and even with them there was a failure in both Germany and Japan to transplant American- style free enterprise, as we shall see later – the success of the remaking of Germany and Japan after the war would have been far less extensive and the case in support of extending the American system internationally would not have had the. .. part of the story is the difficult process of modernizing command and control For example, when a sergeant in Afghanistan calls in a B-52 from Omaha for a strike, what do each of the layers of command in 7: 9 P1: FCW 05218 574 49c14 Printer: cupusbw 334 CUNY 475 B/Rosefielde 0 521 8 574 4 9 November 6, 2006 The American Response between do – are they all redundant now? If so, they will resist the change in how . in dealing with the changing nuclear arms balance – that was occurring in the summer of 2001 in the press, in the halls of Congress and in the recesses of the defense agencies of Washington was. 2003 The finalresults of the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003await the passage of time. It was originally justified as an effort to prevent Iraq from building nuclear weapons, something that. of the world in our own image. If the Administration has gone too far in these two ways, then what is the alternative? In our view the best alternative is to return to astrategic posture of the