Those who take the management approach to American national security policy believe that the diversity of challenges facing the United States means that maintaining the status quo is impossible. An exclusive emphasis on modernizing strategic and tactical nuclear forces and a continued focus on military rather than economic, security issues runs the risk of missing the boat. The opportunity to transform the U.S. - Soviet relationship exists, and now is not the time to let worst case analysis dominate our thinking. The United States must realize that the utility of nuclear weapons and a ladder of extended nuclear deterrence toward a world where the role of nuclear weapons is reduced, but not eliminated, and conventional forces are restructured into relatively more defensive configurations. Difficult budget decisions will have to be made to preserve essential military capabilities, selectively modernize strategic and tactical nuclear weapons systems, and to improve conventional forces.
Arms control is necessary to maintain political support for nuclear deterrence and modernization.
A third school of thought concludes that the correlation of forces is so decisively in favor of the Unites States and the opportunities to restructure the U.S. Soviet relationship are so great that American security planners should adopt a best case analysis. The United States has the luxury of taking risks that demonstrate our good faith with the Soviet Union. No major weapons systems should be deployed until extensive effort has been made tot negotiate drastic reductions in the number of strategic nuclear weapons and to restructure conventional forces in Europe into non-provocative, defensive postures. Once this is accomplished, financial, institutional and intellectual resources should be devoted to addressing nontraditional national security challenges such as drugs, terrorism, Third World debt and environmental issues. This report is a synthesis of the discussion from the August 1988 conference and seminar papers that were written to stimulate discussion.