stockpile made it feasible to target an increasingly comprehensive list of
"strategic" as well as theater aim-points.

On the other hand, using very large numbers of very inaccurate weapons,
many of them of very large yield, would make the control of destruction to avoid
unwanted damage much more difficult. In the view of many advocates of the H-
bomb, such as C. J. Hitch, as well as many who had opposed the H-bomb, like
Hans Bethe, the availability of fusion weapons called for increased restraint in
matching weapons to targets and in the number and kinds of targets selected. But
on the whole the increase in nuclear yields and the initial reductions in precision
encouraged a neglect of selectivity. This was compounded by the growth of the
stockpile in numbers and by a strategic bombing tradition that had, for varying
reasons, emphasized the importance of prompt mass raids against enemy targets --
to saturate enemy defenses, to destroy industry that supported the enemy ground
invasion, to shock and to bring the enemy political leaders to stop the invasion
and withdraw. However, the huge expansion in the destructiveness of our nuclear
response to an invasion of Europe tended to transform the nature of the war we
would be conducting. So comprehensive and destructive a response might continue
to include among its traditional targets war plants capable of supporting a Soviet
invasion during a year-long war, but given such a response the war was unlikely
to last that long.

The principal parallel development in the Soviet Union affecting the problem
of Western command and control was, of course, the increasing Soviet nuclear
force and, specifically, its development of a force capable of striking the United
States with nuclear weapons. Soviet manned bombers could threaten not only
American war supporting industry (and if the Soviets chose, population centers).
They could also threaten our own strategic bombers which were based in the
United States, and could directly threaten command and control. When the Soviet

31

forces grew large enough and better protected and able to survive a US counter-
attack, they provided strong reasons for us to exercise a continuing prudence and
restraint. However, to exercise restraint, we would need to protect a system of
elements including sensors and assessment centers, a survivable command, and a
viable network of communications connecting command with its sources of
information and with the forces commanded.

Until nearly the end of the 1950s, our strategic nuclear forces consisted almost exclusively in manned bombers and these were threatened mainly by Soviet manned bombers. Our bombers and the tankers they needed were not normally in combat ready condition. (Indeed until 1958 almost all were many hours away from being able to take off in non-combat-ready condition.) Moreover in good part they were based in peacetime in areas of the United States outside the contiguous coverage of the radars that we had deployed mainly to protect industry and cities. Since our overseas bases also had no significant radar coverage, well designed Soviet bomber attacks could have caught and destroyed our unprotected bombers on those bases as well.³³ The vulnerability of SAC was neglected in good part because decision makers at the time contemplated Soviet attacks that were not well designed to surprise and disrupt the complex operations involved in SAC's plans for retaliation, but rather larger Soviet attacks that, like our own, were directed at a much more comprehensive target system, including mainly much less urgent targets than strategic forces, like iron and steel and other war supporting industry. Such attacks, following routes to many targets, would have given many hours of warning.

SAC's vulnerability was greatly reduced by improving both our warning
system and SAC's readiness and especially by improving SAC's ability to respond

³³ See A. J. Wohlstetter & H. S. Rowen "The Selection of Strategic Air Bases", Rand Report R244S, Mar. 1, 1953, and A. J. Wohlstetter, F. S. Hoffman, R. J. Lutz, H. S. Rowen, "Selection and Use of Strategic Air Bases", RAND Report R266, April 1954, pp. xxv-xxvi and 246 ff.

32

to ambiguous warning without committing us to war (using Fail-Safe as distinct from Recall³⁴). And we improved the method of operating bombers overseas by extending their radius by air refueling and using overseas bases mainly for ground refueling on the way back from target to home bases in the continental United States. Such bomber operations, however, continued to be extremely complex. They imposed large demands on command, control and communication just to get bombers to target and back.

The coming of ballistic missiles able to hit the other side's home territory changed things. Soviet ballistic missiles would drastically reduce the warning time we could actually use. (The tactical warning of ballistic missile attack is likely to be short, but less ambiguous.) Bombers could still be launched on the basis of warning since we would not commit them to entering Soviet air space before sending a separate execute order confirming that the alarm was real. The reduced warning time available in the case of an ICBM (and, especially of an SLBM attack) could be answered only partially by further increasing bomber alert and speeding the sequence of takeoffs.

Our ballistic missiles, on the other hand, raised different problems of protection and control since they could not be launched using Fail-Safe.³⁵ ICBMs, however, could be put in silos and so protected against inaccurate ballistic missiles of the early generations. And ballistic missiles could be kept moving in submarines which are extremely hard to locate. Communicating with submarines without exposing them to attack, however, raised new problems. And fixed silos would not provide safety against later ICBM generations. Nonetheless, in the

³⁴ See Wohlstetter, Hoffman & Rowen, R290, *op cit*, p. 60. The recommendation for Fail-Safe was described as follows: "By a fail-safe procedure we mean one in which the bombers will return to base after reaching a predesignated point en route -- unless they receive an order to continue. (Without a fail-safe procedure, this initial decision comes close to being a final decision; without recall, it is the final decision.)"

³⁵ Ibid, pp. 60, 79-80.

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1960s, silos made it possible to ride out an attack and also to consider exercising constraints in our nuclear strikes in ways that would give the Soviets a stake in prudence and offered the possibility of deterring Soviet escalation after the outbreak of war.

These developments, however, did present us with the problem of dealing with Soviet military attacks of the same sort that would leave us a strong stake in prudence. Robert McNamara immediately after the Cuban Missile Crisis felt that both sides were more likely to stick to military targets if both had reduced the vulnerability of their strategic forces to attack. He changed his mind later, but at the time he said:

> I believe myself that a counterforce strategy (i.e. "hitting only military targets") is most likely to apply in circumstances in which both sides have the capability of surviving a first strike and retaliating selectively. ...today, following a surprise (Soviet) attack on us, we would still have the power to respond with overwhelming forces, and they would not then have the capability of a further strike. In this situation, given the highly irrational act of an attempted first strike against us, such a strike seems most likely to take the form of an all-out attack on both military targets and population centers. This is why a nuclear exchange confined to military targets seems more possible, not less, when both sides have a sure second-strike capability.³⁶

One tool critical for controlling nuclear operations, permissive action links (PALS), emerged at the end of the 1950s as a result of work at Livermore in Los Alamos and the pioneering research of Fred C. Ikle at Rand on the problem of accidental or unauthorized uses of nuclear weapons.³⁷ PALs are combination locks on nuclear weapons in which the "key" can be held at a separate and distant place. But this extra restraint, as was the case with Fail-Safe, and as frequently

³⁶ Stewart Alsop Interview with Robert S. McNamara, "McNamara Thinks About the Unthinkable", *The Saturday Evening Post*, Dec. 1, 1962. Emphasis in the original.

³⁷ Fred C. Ikle, with G. J. Aronson and A. Madansky, "On the Risk of Accidental or Unauthorized Nuclear Detonation", RAND RM-2251-PR, Oct. 15, 1958. See also Ikle with J. E. Hill, "The Aftermath of a Single Nuclear Detonation by Accident or Sabotage", RAND RM 2364-PR, May 8, 1959.

34

happens, had the operational consequence of increasing flexibility, of making some choices feasible which would otherwise be too risky.³⁸ PALS allowed nuclear weapons to be dispersed from central locations, greatly increasing their ability to survive attack, and their overall utility in the theater context, while control over their use is maintained centrally. Sophisticated electronics continue to improve the security provided by PALS, to reduce operational penalties, and to offer options for more flexible use during conflicts.

A second major development is also a product of the electronics revolution -- the steady improvement in the accuracy of long range missiles. Cumulatively, these steady improvements can increase effectiveness as much as the jump in yield made possible with fusion. In the 1950s we expected median errors of two to five miles. Terminally guided missiles may be able to hit within tens of feet of their intended target -- or in the case of cruise missiles with autonomous terminal homing come even closer. But increasing accuracy tenfold is roughly equivalent to multiplying explosive energy by a thousandfold against a small target.

The average yield of U.S. nuclear weapons peaked in 1957 at about 15 times its current level. Improved accuracy was only part of the reason for progressive reductions in yield. But these two developments complement each other critically in increasing the possibilities for maintaining control. Extreme accuracy will permit the effective use of a few long range non-nuclear weapons in many missions where only nuclear weapons or huge non-nuclear raids would previously have sufficed. And smaller, lighter, more accurate and effective nuclear weapons can be made less vulnerable because they can be moved more easily. (Non-nuclear payloads can avoid the political problems raised by intermittent peacetime

³⁸ Ikle used this as a major argument for introducing PALS. He said that a weapon with a "lock" may permit new peacetime operations and strategies that would otherwise remain unacceptable to the appropriate government authorities. That for example, political authorization of an airborne alert with sealed pit weapons for certain overseas bases might hinge on such a feature, and the "lock" might also facilitate meeting the American requirements for ultimate control of nuclear warheads in weapon systems of allied countries. *Ibid* Rand RM 2251-PR with Aronson and Madansky, pp. 101 ff.

35

movement of nuclear weapons.) Accurate low yield weapons, moreover, make it
feasible to attack critical targets discriminately instead of destroying whole cities.

Finally, the electronics revolution has directly affected command and control
of nuclear operations in several ways. It has sharply reduced the size and cost of
computing power and information retrieval to aid decisions and communicate
them. Fixed command centers of known location have become more vulnerable,
but it is becoming increasingly feasible to multiply them and to make them mobile
or moveable, or concealable. Individual weapons can have multiple targets
associated with a range of preplanned options. This minimizes the need for
central command centers to generate and communicate, in real time, changes in
strategy in response to either new military developments or changes in Soviet
targeting.

Moreover, the electronics (and photonics) revolution and concurrent changes in
such areas as space technology have also multiplied the alternative modes of
telecommunication. They have added to the familiar copper cable and microwave
towers, optical fibers and communication satellites. Satellites have made it
possible quickly to connect command authorities with overseas and seaborne forces
with which there had been no reliable rapid communication in the past.³⁹ (In the
future, excimer blue lasers that may be positioned on Submarine Laser
Communication satellites, SLCSATS, promise new solutions for the particularly
difficult problem of communicating with submarines without subjecting them to
the constraints and exposing them to the risks involved in surfacing HF antennae
or in trailing wires to receive low data rate VLF messages from TACAMO
aircraft. Such work on blue laser technology is proceeding now under the
sponsorship of DARPA and the Navy.) Optical fibers vastly increase the amount

³⁹ On the development of communication satellites, see Albert D. Wheelon, "Von Karman Lecture: The Rocky Road to Communication Satellites", presented to American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 6 January 1986, Reno, Nevada and "The Outlook for Communication Satellite Applications", presented to the Technical Symposium of International Telecommunications Union, October 1975, Geneva, Switzerland.

36

of information and the distance that it can be sent without vulnerable repeaters to
amplify signals. And the progressive digitization of communications, uniting
computer and telecommunication technologies, makes feasible very high speed
switching in distributed nets and flexible adaptive routing of messages by the
automatic selection of efficient paths bypassing any damaged or unreliable parts
of the net. In such a network, no single vulnerable station presents a better target
than any other.

The basic ideas for such a network were advanced 25 years ago by Paul Baran
as an answer to the problem of preserving strategic command and control under
attack. They have since found widespread commercial application and, in fact,
may now be the dominant technology for new communication nets. However,
important changes in the state of the art offer opportunities but don't compel us
to take advantage of them. The painfully slow process of applying packet
switching to the military problems which generated the idea, says a good deal
about the institutional and doctrinal obstacles that have slowed improvements in
command and control. Its history illuminates not only the obstacles but especially
the possibilities for robust control to be explored further in our next section.

Baran observed in 1961⁴⁰ that, in RAND studies⁴¹ of attacks on the United
States, typically 95% of critical communication network circuits were destroyed.

⁴⁰ P. Baran, "On Distributed Communications", RAND Corporation Research Memorandum B 265, August 17, 1961. See also the eleven Research Memoranda published in August 1964 "On Distributed Communications": I. "Introduction to Distributed Communications Networks", Paul Baran, RM-3420-PR; II. "Digital Simulation of Hot-Potato Routing in a Broadband Distributed Communications Network", Sharla P. Boehm & Paul Baran, RM-3103-PR; III. "Determination of Path-Lengths in a Distributed Network", J. W. Smith, RM-3578-PR; IV. "Priority, Precedence, and Overload", Paul Baran, RM-3638-PR; V. "History, Alternative Approaches, and Comparisons", Paul Baran, RM-3097-PR; VI. "Mini-Cost Microwave", Paul Baran, RM-3762-PR; VII. "Tentative Engineering Specifications and Preliminary Design for a High-Data-Rate Distributed Network Switching Node", Paul Baran, RM-3763-PR; VIII. "The Multiplexing Station", Paul Baran, RM-3764-PR; IX. "Security, Secrecy, and Tamper-Free Considerations", Paul Baran, RM-3765-PR; X. "Cost Estimate", Paul Baran, RM-3766-PR; and XI. "Summary Overview", Paul Baran, RM-3767-PR.

⁴¹ These studies formed the basis for the extended description, quoted on page 8 of this chapter, of the crucial difficulties apparent during the late 1950s in maintaining a survivable network of communications connecting responsible command with sources of information and the forces commanded. Frank Eldridge played a leading role in these command and control studies.

37

But 95% of the elements forming these networks survived. The basic reason for this was that our public commercial telecommunications net on which we depended for military purposes used a form of centralized switching in hierarchical or "star" nets. (Figure 1, taken from Baran, displaying a simplified standard communication network, exhibits the topological form of a connected set of stars.) A call from a station in one local area might go through several intermediate switching centers using trunk lines arranged in tandem to reach a distant station. Failures at the nodes or centers of a few of these stars clearly can interrupt long distance communications over a large part of the net. Public telephone systems, like AT&T, have therefore stressed quality control and reliability and the system has worked very well for normal traffic including predictable high traffic periods. Users don't mind getting a busy signal one or two percent of the time.

The situation is different, however, for military users of such a system. Crises in which there is a very large surge in traffic and, even more, enemy attack destroying a few nodes, could prevent transmission of messages precisely when they are most needed. The situation, moreover, could not be repaired by the current methods which then simply multiplied the number of lines connecting each tributary station to the existing communications switching centers, without any radical change in the configuration of the network. This is illustrated in Figure 2 which doubles the lines connecting each tributary station to the switching centers but leaves the same five vulnerable critical nodes.

Baran's idea was to use the evolving technology of the digital transmission of data and digitized voice signals, and especially the computer technology of high speed digital switching, to construct distributed networks that would function like a mesh rather than a star. (See Figure 3 showing the same array of stations as in the standard case but now connected by a distributed net.) Suitable switching might provide access to surviving links in multi-mode existing networks by

38

making feasible the interconnection of the surviving links whether they be
microwave, video, buried cable, satellite, etc. Or one could build a distributed net
from scratch.

Baran demonstrated that it was possible to build extremely survivable
networks with components that were liable to failure or to enemy attack and that
such networks could be built with a moderately low level of redundancy on the
order of only three or four times that of the minimum span network. Messages
would find their way to their destination by the shortest route available according
to a switching policy designed to work, without direction from a central and
vulnerable node, on the basis of self-learning through the information available at
neighboring nodes about routes taken by messages recently arriving at nodes.
Messages of any length could be broken into small blocks (or "packets") of
standard length and format including, besides the text, the addresses to and from
which it was being sent, and a tag or handover number indicating the history of
the message -- its path length or time in the system or number of times it has been
relayed. Any user could feed in messages at varying data rates. The standard
packets into which the message would be broken would be stored briefly (for
milliseconds) and passed on quickly to the "best" available outgoing neighboring
link. (Baran described this policy as "hot potato" routing.) Then packets
containing different parts of the message would be transmitted over alternative
routes at a high data rate and reassembled at their destination. (They might be
interleaved with messages from other senders to use the communications channels
efficiently.) The handover numbers measuring path length of messages that had
arrived at neighboring nodes indicate the best links. To introduce learning,
routing would give more weight to recent measurements than to old ones and so
respond quickly to gross changes in the environment without human direction.

Baran showed that his packet switched networks not only were better for
surviving attack, but also had advantages in automatic error checking and

39

correction as messages are relayed many times⁴², in the efficiency with which
communication channels could be used, in preserving the secrecy of transmissions
by end-to-end encryption, in getting reliable systems even with unreliable cheaper
components (a network that could survive deliberate enemy attack on its
components could be expected to survive random failures of unreliable
components), and in total costs.

With all this going for packet switching, and given the critical importance of
the problem of command and control, one might suppose that its application to
that problem would have proceeded quickly. However, according to a short
history of packet switching by Lawrence G. Roberts, who played a key role in
DARPA's later development of packet switching:

> This study [Baran's] was conducted for the Air Force and it
> proposed a fully distributed packet switching system to
> provide for all military communications, data and voice.
> The Study also included a totally digital microwave system
> and integrated encryption capability. The Air Force's
> primary goal was to produce a totally survivable system
> that contained no critical central components. Not only
> was this goal achieved by Rand's proposed packet switching
> system, but even the economics projected were superior, for
> both voice and data transmissions. Unfortunately, the Air
> Force took no follow-up action, and the report sat largely
> ignored for many years until packet switching was
> rediscovered and applied by others.⁴³

In fact, after the extensive development of the idea, including many nuts and

⁴² In 1955, F. R. Collbohm had suggested that broadcast stations could be used as a back-up to relay urgent voice messages. The number of times messages could be relayed was limited given the state of the art in 1955 by the cumulation of error and time delays. A feasible net awaited the development of low cost digital switching and the automatic routing of digital messages. Such a net was proposed in Paul Baran, *On a Distributed Command Control System Configuration, SECRET*, The RAND Corporation RM 2632 and *A Distributed Backbone Communications Network, SECRET*, RAND RM-2647, and in Baran and Frank Yates "A Non-Synchronous Digital Data Link Transmission System Using Randomly Surviving Relay Points", RAND Research Memo of May 25, 1960, and in Baran and Robert Hammerly, "A Verified Point of Origin Synchronous Digital Data Link Transmission System Using Randomly Surviving Relay Points", The RAND Corporation, P-1995, May 25, 1960.

⁴³ Lawrence G. Roberts, "The Evolution of Packet Switching", Chapter 2-1 in *Satellites, Packets, and Distributed Telecommunications*, Roy Daniel Rosner, Editor. Lifetime Learning Publications, Belmont, California, 1984, p. 111.

40

bolts details, Air Force communicators and MITRE did recommend an application
of packet switching in air borne relay systems. But this also came to nothing.⁴⁴

Near the end of the 1960s, the Defense Advanced Research Agency, DARPA picked up the idea of packet switching as a way of linking the computers at many universities and research laboratories in the United States whose computer research DARPA was sponsoring. The ARPANET publicly demonstrated packet switching in 1972. This was a crucial step in the spread of the technology to Europe as well as to the United States. Though DARPA is, of course, a defense agency, and though the ARPANET acquired enough military users for DARPA to transfer responsibility for it to the Defense Communications Agency in 1975, there was nothing intrinsically military about the ARPANET. It was an important experiment in the economics of resource-sharing. And the early packet switched networks that were deployed in the 1970s overseas as well as in the United States were private networks motivated by the superior economics. The public telephone and telegraph companies in Britain and France (PTTs) were slower than private corporations in adopting this radical departure in communications; but still rather faster than the US public telephone system which had an enormous investment in hierarchical land lines. The improved civilian PTTs and the accelerating increase both in Europe and in the United States in the number of large private civilian networks, many of which are digital and packet switched and are associated with powerful data processing centers, represent an

⁴⁴ Early 1960s service neglect of the requirements for communications able to survive attack is suggested also by a survey of Army officers reported in a 1962 study of Army communications by the Franklin Institute Laboratories for Research and Development (see J. N. Bloom, C. E. Mayfield, and R. M. Williams, *People, Organization and Communications*, prepared for the Army Communications Systems Division. FA 2312, Philadelphia, January, 1962.) In decreasing order of seriousness, Army officers named eleven problems: "Security", "Speed", etc. through "Over-classification". Survivability was not on the list at all. Baran, who judged the Franklin study as "outstanding", used it as a checklist for the adequacy of his system's synthesis, noting however that survivability topped his own list.

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important resource unique to the West which might be exploited as back-up
communications for military networks.⁴⁵

The French were rather early in applying packet switching to battlefield
communications in their RITA system. And the United States Army is only now
installing a distributed battlefield communications net called Mobile Subscriber
Equipment (MSE) purchased from the French, but compromised considerably by
the desire to use off-the-shelf equipment developed for TRI-TAC and with only
an option for packet switching to be installed later. The Defense Department is
installing an EMP hardened packet switched radio system called the Ground Wave
Emergency Net (GWEN) with low data rate connections for missile warning
centers, command centers and strategic force bases. And the Defense Department
in April 1982 directed that a Defense Data Network (DDN) based on ARPANET
technology be implemented to meet all DOD's needs for data communication
including the Strategic Air Command Digital Net. The backbone of DDN is
scheduled to grow to a net of several hundred packet switches located throughout
the world, and it is designed to survive damage at least as well as the facilities of
the subscribers that rely on DDN. Research on a very promising packet switched
multiple satellite system, with potential applications to strategic command and
control, to robust communication between the United States and distant theaters,
and strategic defense, is being sponsored by DARPA and ROME Air Development
Command. These, and several other applications, hold a great deal of promise for
the future.

But how to explain the long neglect and slow pace of applications of packet
switching to the military problems that generated the idea? First, packet
switching represented a radically new form of communication and one should

⁴⁵ According to a recent world survey of telecommunications (see *Financial Times* January 6, 1986) investment in such private nets by 1987 will have increased from $14.85 billion in 1980 when it represented 16.5% of the market to $76 billion in 1987 when it will represent 38% of the market.

42

expect it to run up against inertia. Those who were immediately responsible for communications tended in the early and mid-1960s to be less familiar with the digital technologies that were intrinsic to the basic ideas. Second, and more important perhaps, is that command, control and communications has never been as central in the attention of the military services as the programs for major weapons platforms such as bombers or ICBMs or SLBMs or tanks. Third, command and control and communications programs tend to affect more than one service -- to be joint programs -- and therefore seldom have the support given to the major service programs for weapons systems. Fourth, Congress, as many have pointed out, also focusses its attention on the major weapons programs. And, as Walter Slocombe has suggested, congressmen tend to be skeptical about the sorts of measures of redundancy that are usually essential in assuring that some alternative form of communications survives. Congressmen tend to think of redundancy as a member of the quartet of "duplication, waste, fraud and abuse". Fifth, the principal preoccupation of the services (and, in fact, most of the defense community) with wars that include an initial unrestrained massive strategic exchange, during which both sides expend almost all their strategic forces, tended to make the problem of continuing command and control seem both less soluble and less important. Finally, the increasing dominance of Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine during the late 1960s and 1970s, with its associated stress on the intrinsic uncontrollability and the certain total disaster involved in any nuclear war, and its hostility to any attempt to get the ability to *fight* a nuclear war, tended to discourage serious attention to getting communication nets that can survive attack and can be kept going during a sequence of attacks and counter-attacks.⁴⁶ Even those sophisticated supporters of Mutual Assured

⁴⁶ See *National Journal Inc.*, October 2, 1982.

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[LC]

Destruction doctrine who call for improvements in control for the initial retaliation and beyond may have a hard time persuading Congress to fund a survivable network of communications if they also hold that control will, in any case, be lost and destruction is almost surely going to be total. The debate on nuclear policy in the 1960s and the 1970s was not likely to result in a strong consensus on the usefulness of funding a durable C³I.

Nuclear policy in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s followed a complex path in part because of a split between the civilian and military leadership. Civilian leaders were largely responsible for budgets and the public choice of policy, while the military had effective charge of actual employment and much of targeting policy. Political and military leaders in the 1950s increasingly recognized that a massive nuclear exchange of the type they envisioned would almost certainly be enormously destructive for both sides. At best, new systems seemed to be able to provide the possibility of controlling or moderating, but not of preventing, the increase in violence. On the other hand, U.S. political leaders had to try to reconcile the possibility of increasingly self-destructive levels of violence with the original and continuing purpose of US nuclear weapons, namely to deter a Soviet invasion of Europe.

The Kennedy Administration, at its start, attempted both to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons and to make their use more selective and confined to military targets. As US policy, the NSC decision based on the Acheson Report in the Spring of 1961 ended simple "massive retaliation", which had been the response called for in NATO's MC14/2. The Acheson Report called for improving conventional forces and raising the threshold beyond which we would have to use nuclear weapons; McNamara's Athens speech called for targeting military forces rather than cities. This first and exclusively US version of "flexible response" in both its conventional and selective nuclear aspects was consistent with the first of the two broadly contrasting views of deterrence sketched in our opening section.

44

However, the change in policy at the start of the Kennedy Administration had
only a partial success. McNamara, in the mid-1960s switched from a nuclear
doctrine avoiding cities to one that stressed a capability for destroying the
adversary's cities and exposing ours to destruction. Actual targeting for strategic
forces did not focus solely on cities. In fact, as the comfortless saying goes,
population *per se* was not targeted. However, as the saying indicates, neither was
it avoided in the massive "Single Integrated Operational Plan" (SIOP) directed at a
very comprehensive list of facilities of military interest. The full SIOP was more
appropriate for simple retaliation to a massive and totally unrestrained attack.

McNamara qualified the focus on massive retaliation by deploying an
increasing number of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and proposing to use
them more flexibly.⁴⁶A In 1967, NATO adopted MC14/3, its own policy of
"Flexible Response" to replace MC14/2 and "Massive Retaliation". However,
NATO's flexible response differed substantially from that of the early Kennedy
Administration. Where the latter had primarily emphasized reducing reliance on
nuclear weapons and especially on their massive, unrestrained use, the former
reaffirmed NATO's primary reliance on the ultimate threat of a massive nuclear
exchange and did only a little more than threaten to arrive at it gradually rather
than immediately. MC14/3 might better have been numbered "MC14/2.5".
"Flexible response" has been defined rather flexibly. Most important, after NATO
adopted flexible response, the conventional balance moved increasingly in favor
of the Warsaw Pact.⁴⁶B Moreover, the United States began to lose its advantage
over the Soviet Union in nuclear forces which McNamara and other Secretaries of
Defense had previously insisted were essential for the defense of the West in order

46A *Statement of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara Before the House Armed Services Committee*, March 8, 1966, p. 79.

⁴⁶B *Report of the Secretary of Defense Casper W. Weinberger to the Congress*, February 8, 1982, p. II-18, and February 5, 1986, p. 62.

45

to compensate for Soviet advantages in geography and in conventional force.
(SALT I formally ratified this loss of the American advantage in strategic nuclear
force.)

Yet, the shifting conventional and nuclear balance only intensified the
difficulties that had originally led to the rejection of massive retaliation. And we
have witnessed a sequence of moves once again to avoid relying on the apparent
simplicities of assuring a destruction which would encompass the West as well as
its adversaries. NSDM 242, whose preparation started under Secretary Laird, was
supported by Henry Kissinger when he was Assistant for National Security. It
was adopted by Secretary Schlesinger and received the name "The Schlesinger
Doctrine". It considered Soviet selective attacks and called for militarily effective
but constrained strategic responses. Most importantly it included once again
strategic nuclear attacks designed principally to support NATO military
operations in the theater. Subsequent administrations have continued to wrestle
with the problem of giving our political leaders more choices.

Since NSDM 242 the technologies that can facilitate effective discrimination and control have advanced greatly. A long range R & D project sponsored by DARPA and the Defense Nuclear Agency, DNA, in the early 1970s pushed the development of weapons that could meet a dual criterion -- that of effective destruction of the military targets and, with equal emphasis, that of confining the destruction as much as feasible to the target so as to avoid unwanted destruction. It resulted in the development of intercontinental and theater range systems of accuracy extreme enough to permit the effective use of non-nuclear warheads against a variety of targets that had been considered to require nuclear weapons. And for most super hard point targets less susceptible to a non-nuclear warhead, these developments permit the use of very low yield nuclear weapons. It also resulted in the design of special, tailored, effective non-nuclear munitions and nuclear munitions, such as deep earth penetrating warheads, with quite confined

46

collateral effects.

Nonetheless, in spite of the continuing revolutionary changes in technology improving our ability to destroy military targets effectively while reducing the collateral damage, and, in spite of the drastic improvements in the state of the art of communications, and, the evident interest of the Soviet in maintaining control, and the discomfort of our leadership, displayed in a succession of NSDMs, PDs and NSDDs, with reliance on indiscriminate and poorly controlled responses, there remains a considerable opposition to moving unequivocally away from the threats to respond suicidally to attack towards a policy of responding to attack in a way that would serve our interests in survival at the time of decision.

46A

VII.

Requirements and Possibilities for Western Control

We do not aim in this section to describe in detail current Western systems for maintaining command and control, nor to assess how well they would actually perform. That would be infeasible within the bounds of security. Our concern is rather to analyze the structure of the problem, what is called for in dealing with it and the kinds of alternatives possible.

The first thing needed to develop a robust command and control of nuclear weapons is to focus our main attention on the most plausible circumstances in which nuclear weapons might be used, that is, initially (and possibly only) in an overseas theater; and specifically as an outgrowth of an ongoing conventional war in Eurasia. The focus of much discussion on the controllability of nuclear conflict has been too narrowly limited to strategic C³I and to apocalyptic bolts-out-of-the-blue (or, as they are called in the trade, "BOOB" attacks), with warheads launched on a flat ballistic trajectory from submarines seven minutes away exploding on the assembled National Security Council. And proposals for constructing a durable command and control have been sometimes presented or criticized as attempts to preserve command and control during a long series of all-out Soviet RISOP and all-out US SIOP exchanges. In rejecting proposals for strategic satellites at six times geosynchronous altitudes (halfway to the moon), Congress seemed to be rather skeptical about the feasibility and the importance of preserving command throughout a sequence of such unrestrainedly mutually devastating exchanges. And well they might be. The case is different, however, both in feasibility and in importance, for preserving control in response to selective nuclear attacks starting in a Eurasian theater and launched by an adversary who has every intention of directing his attack to overcome obstacles to the successful completion of a combined arms invasion and every intention of

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keeping his own operations under strict control. (Satellites at several times geosynchronous as well as some redundant systems in low earth orbit may look much more interesting then.) Such a circumstance is not only the most plausible critical case, and therefore the most important. It is also much less demanding than the apocalyptic and possibly suicidal BOOB attacks.

Second, we need to direct our attention not only to the political and military control by the national command authorities of nuclear responses to such nuclear attacks overseas, but also to the protected functioning of C³I during a non-nuclear war, or during the non-nuclear phase of a conflict that may become a nuclear war.

We need to do that:

(a) Because it will affect our success or failure during the non-nuclear conflict.

(b) Because the destruction or degrading of critical elements of C³I during a non-nuclear war will affect the viability of our control systems during a possible nuclear conflict that may follow.

(c) Further, we need to protect the functioning of C³I in a non-nuclear war not only against non-nuclear attack but also against potential nuclear attack: if we allow the function of our C³I in a non-nuclear war to be much more easily destroyed by nuclear than non-nuclear weapons, we would tempt an adversary to raise the ante to the nuclear level. Key elements of the C³I that we would use in a non-nuclear war (satellites are the plainest example) are targets whose destruction would be easily distinguishable from the results of an attack on population centers.

(d) Conventional weapons have improved greatly and they could do serious damage to elements of our nuclear C³I which have not been adequately hardened against such attack. Most notable here would be strikes against our communications satellites, specialized submarine

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VLF communications, and our missile warning system (satellites and radar stations). The three BMEWs (Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radars) would probably be the most vulnerable in the near term due to their far forward location (Alaska, Greenland, and England). We cannot assume that elements of our nuclear capability, (especially those outside the contiguous, continental United States) would be in sanctuaries during a conventional conflict. On the other hand, we could more easily deter or offset such non-nuclear strikes by the Soviet Union if we can make effective non-nuclear strikes against the Soviet means for locating and destroying our C³; for example, against Soviet reconnaissance satellites that could locate mobile C³ centers as well as the Soviet satellites, combat vessels, and forward ASW aircraft bases which make it dangerous for our submarines to surface and receive and transmit messages on more conventional radio frequencies. (The reconnaissance satellites that could locate the command centers for controlling nuclear operations tend to be at lower altitude than the communications and warning satellites that serve them. In the near term that means that we as well as the Soviets can use counters to the other side's means of locating our command and control and so better protect them.)

(e) Our adversary would have strong incentives to keep the war confined in geography -- perhaps to a single country. In the event of an invasion of the Persian Gulf, or an assault on an isolated, poorly defended member of NATO on a NATO flank, the other European members of NATO (though this is not usually mentioned) would have equally strong incentives to keep the war from spreading to their own territories even if they went to the aid of the invaded country. In such a circumstance, by definition, our NCA would not be attacked at the

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outset.

Third, even for the problem of protecting a functioning National Command Authority for the conduct of strategic command and control, the problem looks different if we consider that a war with the Soviet Union is much more likely to start overseas than with an all-out BOOB attack on the United States. During a conventional war overseas with the Soviet Union, and still more with an ongoing nuclear conflict in Eurasia, political-military leadership in the United States would find it reasonable to take protective measures which they would hesitate to take during a normal peacetime period or even during a crisis. In fact, it is absurd to suppose that responsible political and military leaders during an ongoing nuclear war would take no more precautions about preserving the function of national command than during uneventful times of peace. (Though newspaper accounts of various war games may suggest the opposite.)

Fourth, even if a nuclear war were to start, not by growing out of a conflict overseas, but with an attack that included targets in the United States, it is not likely to come as a bolt-out-of-the-blue. We need to consider the responses that we might take, then, in crises; and the responses we might make to the sorts of ambiguous warning likely to be available. An attack on the United States, as we have said, is not likely to come out of the blue. It might come out of the grey. But if we take precautions it would not be a "bolt" out of the grey. How then should we respond to the equivocal warning signs likely to be available in these circumstances without committing ourselves irrevocably? As a crisis develops, one might be tempted to loosen normal restraints on launching nuclear weapons in order to minimize the likelihood that a Soviet nuclear strike might destroy national command and in the process prevent the transmission of an order to release our nuclear weapons to be launched. Such a letting go is the standard unreflective assumption in the literature. At least two factors, however, work in the opposite direction.

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The warning provided during the crisis could give us time to improve our preparations for riding out the strike without forcing us to lose control. Our mobile nuclear forces could disperse. That would reduce our dependence on forces which can only survive if they are launched irrevocably on the basis of electromagnetic signals. We could disperse alternate mobile headquarters and means of communication, put airborne command posts on aerial alert, etc. Most obviously, in a serious crisis we can avoid gathering our leaders in one known place (for example to listen to a State of the Union Address) where they would be vulnerable to one covertly delivered nuclear weapon.

Actions taken to protect command by increasing uncertainty as to its location in response to warning or during the opening phase of a conventional or restrained nuclear conflict can have a large synergy with "standing" or steady state measures for protecting command such as hardening and active defense. The Soviets, as we have described earlier, combine extreme hardening for the alternate command posts of their top leaders with a variety of measures that conceal their location, and with arrangements that can rapidly and secretly convey their leaders to such locations during an emergency. The U.S. is likely to find a different combination of hardness, mobility, multiplication of alternatives, and concealment suitable for making it not worthwhile to target our leadership. A modest degree of hardness, for example, can suffice with sufficient mobility, and especially if it were reinforced with the ability to attack Soviet means of finding and tracking our mobile command posts.⁴⁷

⁴⁷ Of course, a system which depends upon dispersing on warning is vulnerable to the dual banes of responding too often, at too great a political and economic cost, to false alarms, or of being surprised catastrophically as the result of a false reassurance - to what are called in the Statistical Theory of Testing Hypotheses, Type I and Type II errors. For a discussion of these twin dangers and means to deal with them, see Richard Brody, "The Limits of Warning," *The Washington Quarterly*, Summer 1983; and Wohlstetter, Hoffman and Rowen, *RAND R290*, Sept. 1, 1956 *op cit*, pp. 18-20. See also material on repeatable responses to ambiguous warning in plausible contingencies in Roberta and Albert Wohlstetter *Responding to Ambiguous Signals of Soviet Power Projection: Overview*, PAN Heuristics Report PH82-5-0369-67-I, May 1982.

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Active defenses can also work well with mobile C³ by making a Soviet barrage over a wide area or a large volume of space impractical. An adequate Soviet barrage would have to cover the entire area or volume where our mobile post might be. But an adequate U.S. defense need only protect the one segment of a path where command would actually be. For example, even in the case sometimes cited,⁴⁸ where the Soviets might be able to predict the location of an airborne command post within a few hundred miles based on the constraints imposed by line-of-sight radio communications, an active defense could have a leverage of fifty-to-one or more in protecting what otherwise might seem a practical target for a barrage attack. If national political or military commanders are moved from known fixed positions along an escape path known to the active defense, but not to the offense, the offense would have to regard a large variety of escape paths as necessary targets, and also would have to treat all of them as if they were actively defended. Such virtual defense for virtually proliferated paths of escape can provide a very large leverage.

All these measures that increase the protection of command and control during a crisis would act to reduce pressures to predelegate nuclear release authority or otherwise to put nuclear forces on a hair trigger. A President, moreover, for good reason, is likely to *tighten* control during a developing and delicate pre-war crisis. Standard discussions of the problem of controlling nuclear weapons tend to stress always the pressures for loosening control, to "launch it or lose it". They seldom show adequate recognition of the enormous pressures to avoid an irrevocable commitment to nuclear war, and especially to an uncontrolled nuclear war headed for mutual total destruction (and possibly much global damage). It is during a dangerous crisis when a President least wants an inadvertent or unauthorized act that heightens the crisis, let alone an ill-

⁴⁸ Bruce Blair, *op cit*, pp. ____.

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considered launch of nuclear weapons. And he would be concerned that it is in a
crisis that some local commander might most plausibly be tempted to act without
authorization. Hence, President Eisenhower removed nuclear weapons from the
care of the military forces involved in the landing at Lebanon in 1958. And
President Kennedy, during the Cuban Missile Crisis reportedly ordered Jupiter
missiles off alert in Turkey to insure that they would not be used without
authority should they come under attack.⁴⁹ (Similarly Khrushchev switched from
threatening at the beginning of the crisis to let the "laws of war" take over to
assuring us -- and to making sure --that the Soviets had the missiles in Cuba, so to
speak, under lock and key.) Robert McNamara during the crisis bypassed the
Chief of Naval Operations to talk directly to the captains of ships involved in the
quarantine of Cuba. Since then other Presidents and American political leaders
have exhibited the same close interest in controlling even minor military
operations. President Johnson talked to local commanders in Viet Nam, and
President Ford communicated directly with pilots involved in the rescue of the
Mayaguez.

It is most unlikely that Western political leaders who exhibit such great
caution in a peacetime crisis or during modest conventional engagements with a
lesser adversary would throw caution to the winds when the first nuclear weapon
was used by the Soviets. If anything, our political leaders might want to exercise
control in infeasibly minute detail. National political leaders, and even national
military commanders, cannot aim each and every weapon used in a local combat.
That requires real-time information available only to commanders on the spot.
But political leaders are unlikely to be willing to relinquish control if they cannot
at the same time place limits on the numbers of weapons released, the kinds of
targets, the collateral damage that might be done, etc. And they will want to

49 Robert F. Kennedy, *Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis*, The New American Library, Signet Books, 1969, p. 98.

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know, at least grossly, how the operations turned out. When a national commander imposes such restraints, it is not because he has doubts about the loyalty or suspects irresponsibility on the part of the local commanders. Rather it has to do with the fact that he has knowledge of and responsibility for a much broader range of events and their consequences than those that concern a local commander.

Fifth, the performance we demand from sensors, assessment centers and communications involved in providing warning of enemy attack depends on what we propose to do with the warning and on the risks involved in error. It is usual to suggest that the problem of providing the tactical warning needed for deciding on and executing an all-out, unrestrained retaliation is much easier than the problem of gathering and communicating the information needed for continuing restrained responses to limited attacks. Nonetheless, if one looks at plausible contingencies of attack and the aims that would make sense to responsible decision makers during such contingencies, there is good reason to believe the situation is the reverse. For if, as General Toomay indicates, "massive retaliation ... is tantamount to ordering the destruction of one's own cities", getting warning reliable and unequivocal enough to warrant such massive retaliation may be intrinsically impossible. At any rate, much harder than securing or reconstituting sensors, assessment centers and communications able to keep destruction under gross control in response to plausible continuing selective attacks.

The problem is not merely that tactical warning, and in fact *any* warning is never completely reliable and unequivocal. The larger problem is that ordering national suicide would make no sense for responsible national leaders even if they had perfectly unequivocal information that we were under attack. The point can be phrased in terms of the treatment in the Statistical Theory of Testing Hypotheses of Type I and Type II errors. The rules for accepting or rejecting a hypothesis depend on the penalties of accepting the hypothesis when it's false

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compared to rejecting the hypothesis when it's true. The greater the risk in the actions that would be taken on the basis of accepting the hypothesis when false compared to the risks in rejecting it if it's true, the more we should lean towards rejection -- that is, towards requiring a very high probability that the hypothesis is true before we act on it. However, if accepting the hypothesis that we are under attack forms the basis for a decision to order a destruction that would immediately (or even a little later) be sure to engulf our own cities, it is hard to conceive of a severer penalty. It is the limiting or degenerate case. No amount of evidence, nor even certainty, can form the basis for a responsible decision to commit national suicide in response to an attack that itself did not destroy our society totally. And the case is only made more obviously extreme by those who propose that we might respond with our "fully generated" force while ICBMs were still on their way.

The problem for a policy of suicidal response to warning is made worse by the possibility that the functioning of the sensors, assessment centers and communications that provide warning may itself be interrupted or disabled. In the past infrared warning of ICBM launchings in their boost phase could have been interrupted by acts of nature, by small paramilitary units, or by other non-nuclear acts of small military forces. Sunnyvale, for example, was the lone readout station for US satellites for many years. Earlier versions of our IR satellites themselves were readily subject to damage by lasers available to the Soviets. And even more advanced IR satellites and other warning satellites would be subject to non-nuclear attack, for example by space mines. During the course of a conventional war, we do not expect the Soviets to forebear from attacking our nuclear weapons and nuclear capable aircraft in Europe. We should not expect them in all circumstances to forebear from interfering with key components of our warning systems, particularly those that are isolated from US or any other populations centers as satellites are. In short, the warning on which

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we depended for massive retaliation may be lost, and launching ICBMs on loss of
warning is even more questionable than launching them on ambiguous signals that
a massive attack is underway on the US. Moreover, it is unpersuasive to say that
the loss of such warning would itself be a warning. The question is, what would
it warn us of? It certainly could not be taken as unequivocal warning that
nuclear ICBMs were on their way to targets in the United States.

In short, the widespread impression that the continuing information gathering,
processing and communication requirement for a constrained use of offense or
defense weapons is much harder than the job of getting unequivocal warning for
massive retaliation is quite misleading. Nothing is harder than the task of getting
warning good enough to serve as the basis for deciding to launch a suicidally
unrestrained response.

Sixth, the cycle time for gathering, assessing and transmitting timely
information will vary with the realistic circumstances of an actual conflict and
with the functions that the information is serving. Information cycle times may
be very short indeed for managing the battle and bringing interceptors to bear
against a massive number of ballistic missile reentry vehicles headed towards
plausible military targets. But much of the current discussion on this subject
deals for example with the number of lines of code in the software for managing
an engagement against enormous numbers of ICBM reentry vehicles directed at
population centers in a Soviet surprise attack. Some opponents of active defense
say that 10 million lines of code are required. These critics may be unaware that
our strategic offense uses software with lines of code in that order of magnitude.
(The discussion has tended to center on the feasibility of an implausibly near-
perfect defense against a preposterously unrestrained and suicidal Soviet surprise
attack aimed, not at military obstacles to an invasion, but at dense collections of
bystanders.) And in any case they ignore the important point that the penalties
for error in a non-nuclear active defense are incomparably less than the

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consequences of ordering national suicide on the basis of a mistake which led us to launch ICBMs at Soviet cities in full knowledge that our own cities would be destroyed.

For much of the task of bringing offense and defense forces to bear against a ground invasion in Western Europe the timing requirements are likely to be less stringent and the penalties for error less severe. The rate of advance of Soviet ground troops in Europe, according to US Army Field Manuals, might be a few kilometers or so an hour. That is considerably slower than the 25,000 kilometers an hour at which an ICBM might be traveling in midcourse. And even if we ignore the questions of equivocality and the devastating risks of error, the time for launching our ICBM force on Soviet cities in retaliation on the basis of tactical warning might be measured in minutes. That compares very unfavorably, say, with the timing and the risks involved in mustering a useful response to the movement of Soviet ground forces in the course of their invasion of Western Europe or elsewhere in Eurasia. And the Soviets themselves have strong incentives as we have seen, to keep their own use of nuclear weapons in the theater under strict control if they are not to defeat the purpose of their invasion by destroying what they would prefer to take over intact, by impeding rather than aiding their own rate of advance on the ground, and by removing our stake in exercising prudence. The timing likely to be called for in the launching of nuclear weapons in the course of a theater invasion cannot be inferred simply from the nature of nuclear weapons. One has also to consider the circumstance and purpose of their use. Nuclear weapons don't launch themselves. Soviet military writers have noted⁴⁹A that the decision to use nuclear weapons is "the exclusive perogative of the political leadership ... it is the political leadership ...

49A Colonel M.P. Skirdo, *Narod, Armiya, Polkovodets (The People, the Army, the Commander)*, Moscow: Voenizdat, 1970, p. 121. Translated by the U.S. Air Force, Soviet Military Thought Series No. 14. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1978.

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not the military leadership ... who select the primary targets and the moment of
the infliction on these strike targets."

Seventh, since in the most plausible circumstances for the use of nuclear weapons each side would be using nuclear weapons to aid in achieving some political military objective (the Soviets, say, to complete the successful occupation of some part of Eurasia, and we to get them to withdraw), both sides are likely to use only a small fraction of their nuclear force to start with rather than to expend their entire forces in two near simultaneous spasms. There would then be a rather extended time during which some of the circumstances for exercising control might be improved. Some of the weapons effects would be transient. Disturbances to the ionosphere would not last indefinitely. It would be possible to take additional measures of protection on the basis of information available after the initial exchange of blows. For example, a mobile command could move from an area threatened by fallout to one that was not. Moreover, as we stressed in connection with protecting C³ during a non-nuclear war, we (like the Soviets) would be able to get some protection for command and control during a nuclear war by degrading the other side's means of locating and destroying critical elements of our continuing control. Some means of communication might then become available to us during a constrained nuclear conflict which we could not count on after a massive all-out nuclear attack.

Of course, neither side's efforts at protection would be perfectly successful. However, where the possibilities of destruction are so enormous, neither side is likely to abandon the effort to keep destruction under control, and there is no reason to believe that we have to be worse off than the Soviets in protecting our control and degrading the other side's means of destroying it -- providing we exert as much effort and ingenuity as the Soviets. It is not a "yes-no" matter. Nor a competition to be won once and for all between Offense in general and Defense in general, or between Measure and Countermeasure. In fact, the situation is the

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familiar one of measure and countermeasure which has obtained ever since
electronic communications were first introduced in warfare. It would be a
competition between the **United States** and the **Soviet Union** in which each side
would use both offense and defense, measures and countermeasures, to achieve its
political military objectives. In short, a war.

Eighth, in a competition with the Soviets for keeping more effective control,
each side has some advantages and disadvantages. The Soviets are closer to the
theater, and that makes it easier for them to use command and control based
within their own territorial boundaries. On the other hand, the infrastructure
supporting their invasion is more vulnerable to short or theater range attacks.
The US is beyond the range of any hostile land based systems except the
intercontinental ones. (Of course, the Soviets have taken the view in arms
discussions that targets in NATO Europe are not strategic but that any attack
launched from NATO Europe against the Soviet Union would be strategic.
NATO, for good reason, has rejected the Soviet position.)

The Soviets' plans for combined arms operations may depend very critically
on the operation of effective, sophisticated communications. Their plans involve
great mobility in maneuver, a great extension of the front in breadth and depth,
the exploitation of break-throughs to extend their advance and, all of this while,
maintaining quite detailed top-down control. Their battlefield communications,
however, are far inferior to the flexible and adaptive communication systems like
RITA which the French have been putting in place and also to those of the
British and West Germans and ourselves. The West has a large intrinsic advantage,
moreover, in the technical agility needed to *stav* ahead. On the other hand, the
Soviets so far have exhibited a more persistent and serious interest in protecting
command in the theater (as they have at home).

For the competition between the United States and the Soviets there are
important differences also in the satellite technology which each side has

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deployed and which each side might use in the future. The United States has concentrated on the deployment of high performance satellites capable of performing peacetime military functions over many years. These have tended to be increasingly large, complex, and expensive requiring a very large launch vehicle such as the shuttle or the Titan 34D. While some of our systems, like the GPS navigation system at semi-geosynchronous, involve a large number of satellites and might degrade slowly under attack, most involve only a few satellites with very long delays possible and very high costs for replenishment in peacetime. And almost no opportunity for reconstitution during a war. The recent disaster to the shuttle due to a defective O-ring, and the explosion on the launch pad of the last two Titan 34Ds suggest not only the hazards of relying so extensively on such systems in time of peace. Even more, they indicate potential vulnerabilities in time of war. In recent years there has been much useful effort to reduce the vulnerability of our satellites. But we should not assume that even satellites in semi-geosynchronous or geosynchronous orbits are immune to attack, for example, by space mines.

The Soviets have followed a different course. They have satellites of lower quality, including many communication satellites in low earth orbit where we have none. Their satellites have a much shorter mean-time between failures and they replace them much more frequently. They have to launch many more satellites a year just to maintain their systems. On the other hand, this difference in their satellite program has given them the capability of launching a great number of satellites on short notice and this gives them a substantial flexibility for both crises and for war. They have already used this capability to advantage during various crises. The possibility of replenishment during a war would be very useful for maintaining control throughout a conflict. The Soviets have also improved the survivability of their communications satellites themselves by multiplication. They have established a network of up to 24 very small (about 40

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kg) satellites in almost circular orbits of 1500 km altitude and an inclination of 74°. Each satellite can pick up messages from a sending location and when it passes another location designated to receive it, retransmit the message. The 1500 km ring complements a constellation of three satellites orbiting at 800 kms in orbital planes spaced 120° apart and operating in a similar "store and dump" mode.
(See Nicholas L. Johnson *The Soviet Year in Space 1984*, p. 18 and *The Soviet Year in Space 1985*, p. 20.)

Ninth, the preceding discussion casts light on the requirements for robust and flexible control during wartime and suggests a fruitful direction in which we might move in the future among those that are presently being explored. We need systems that do not depend excessively on a very few, only partially reliable and potentially vulnerable, elements, and, in particular, we need distributed systems that would degrade gracefully in the event that they conceal some unexpected mode of failure through random events or unanticipated vulnerabilities to enemy attack. (In what follows we treat only the possibilities using space technology.)

The packet switched Multiple Satellite System (MSS) now under study by DARPA and Rome Air Development Command, which was mentioned in the preceding section, would appear to have these desirable traits. It would use 240 small (120-150 lbs.) satellites in 350 to 400 nautical mile orbits at three different inclinations; and perhaps 1000 ground terminals, some mobile. Each satellite would cover only about 2% of the earth to provide global coverage for voice as well as data transmission by burst radio with a wide bandwidth and high data rates varying between 100 megabits and 100 kilobits per second. Low earth orbital dynamics (with periods near 100 minutes) would mean that if individual satellites failed, communication in a given region would be quickly healed by other satellites coming rapidly into view. In any case, the packet switching would automatically bypass nonworking satellites: each individual satellite could communicate at a high data rate with immediate neighbors and at lower data rates

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with distant satellites. Even with individually unreliable satellites, the network
would be reliable.⁵⁰

The manufacturing costs of individual satellites should be intrinsically
cheaper because (a) they don't have individually to be highly reliable and one
could avoid "gold plating", (b) they are smaller and also (c) they are less complex
since their stabilization, pointing and tracking requirements are relaxed, and (d)
the large numbers of satellites permit serial production, automation, and the
benefits of the learning curve. Launch costs should be low because of the light
weight of the satellites and the low orbits to which they would be lifted. And a
variety and multiplicity of launch vehicles could do the job. Therefore, the costs
and difficulties of replenishment during peacetime would be greatly reduced.
Moreover it would be feasible to replace satellites during wartime. (The MSS
would use an order of magnitude more satellites than the Soviet network at 1500
kms and, of great importance, the packet switched satellite-to-satellite burst
communications would make it unnecessary for an individual satellite both to
receive a message from a sending station and wait until its orbit path permits it to
retransmit the message to a receiving station in another location on earth. The
Soviet "store and dump" network may store a message from an earth station for as
long as an hour and a half if the satellite can complete the retransmission within
one orbit, or for as long as 11 hours if it needs to wait for the earth's rotation to
bring a specific receiving station, such as one on a distant ship at sea, within line
of sight. In MSS a satellite would store a message and transmit it to another
satellite within milliseconds. The expected total cycle time between transmission
and reception by users would be a tenth of a second or less.) In sum, if the
program is successful, it would seem to have precisely the desirable characteristics

⁵⁰ Note that some, though not all, of these desirable traits might be obtained with satellites in higher orbits. Other orbits, including those at several times geosynchronous, have particular characteristic advantages and disadvantages.

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of an adaptive, distributed communication network envisaged by Baran 25 years
ago.

The problem of getting sensors that can keep functioning or be reconstituted
in time of war has been at least as neglected as the problem of getting durable
communications. And the possibilities for dealing with the problem parallel in
important respects the alternatives we have discussed for communications. We
would need to receive at least gross continuing information on the status of
military forces and civil society on both sides. The appropriate information rate
and the degree of resolution would vary with the contingency (an initial small
selective exchange of nuclear weapons growing out of a conventional conflict on a
flank of NATO, large but selective exchanges of nuclear fire in the course of a
conventional invasion in the European center, etc.); and with the use to be made
of the information: detection, acquisition and tracking of military forces on the
ground or at sea for purposes of maneuver and directing fire; or of aircraft and
missiles in the air to enable interception; or of reentry vehicles as distinct from
decoys in space, etc. Take four examples of the possibilities in various stages of
research, development, acquisition and deployment: space based nuclear detectors,
electronic intelligence satellites, phased array radar satellites, and satellites with
staring focal plane arrays.

Nuclear Detection System (NDS) packages of sensors for detecting visible
light, X-rays and the electromagnetic pulse associated with a nuclear explosion are
programmed to be distributed on the 18 GPS navigation satellites we are in the
process of deploying at semigeosynchronous altitude. NDS so distributed would
degrade rather slowly and it could be distributed further by piggybacking on
other systems besides GPS, and so further improved in its ability to keep
functioning. The system of VELA detectors which preceded it as a method of
detecting nuclear explosions was placed not only on satellites at three times
geosynchronous altitude but was piggybacked on other satellites as well. NDS

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would provide information on the yields of explosions, the number of explosions, their times and precise locations as well as their heights of burst. When combined with weather forecasts available before an attack, and a target data base, this information can be used in models for approximating the military damage done by such explosions and the probable collateral damage including fallout. It might be supplemented in some areas by ground based detectors supplying continuing information on weather and on fallout. In this way it could supply surviving command in the US and overseas with very useful gross information as to the status of military forces and society on both sides. It could be used both for directing future strikes and, for example, for moving command and control so as to avoid some of the effects. (The GPS system of satellites would itself be a slowly degrading source of navigation and guidance information.)

The US has deployed and plans to deploy a substantial number of electronic intelligence satellites. Detailed discussion of these is, of course, infeasible. They are a very powerful passive means of collecting and deriving information from electromagnetic emissions. The focus of at least the public interest has been on the decryption and other data processing in large fixed facilities of signals related to the peacetime status of various enemy forces. However, with their associated ground facilities protected by movement, concealment, decoying, multiplication, etc., they can provide important tracking information during wartime for guiding our own maneuver and fire, and for taking protective measures.

Space-based radars can greatly reinforce the information derived from electronic intelligence. The Soviets for about 15 years have had primitive radar satellites (RORSATs) in low earth orbit, one or two at a time, to perform the function of wide area ocean surveillance; and one or two electronic ocean reconnaissance satellites (EORSATs) which use passive detection of electromagnetic emissions to locate and target US and allied naval forces for destruction by anti-ship platforms. Both the US Air Force and the US Navy have

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at least since the 1970s been considering systems involving several phased array radar satellites at three-tenths geosynchronous altitude. The Navy considered a system of 12 satellites for ocean surveillance, the Air Force six for air defense over the US. And a joint Air Force-Navy system of a dozen satellites, proposed for almost as long, would work over land as well as sea to enable the detecting and targeting of aircraft and ships world wide. So far it has met the usual fate of such joint projects. Under the stimulus of SDI, and the attention it has focused on the problem of survivability in space, much more advanced, more distributed, agile and powerful systems of radars are now under study. And the state-of-the-art has advanced substantially. The Air Force, in its Project Forecast II, proposes to investigate the possibility of placing extremely large phased arrays in space with major parts of the arrays on separate satellites without any rigid connection to each other. If phase coherence among these widely separated components could be achieved by electronic means, the system would degrade very slowly and elements of it could be replenished or added in time of peace and possibly in wartime. The project is in the idea stage and is clearly at most a prospect only for the long run.

The technology of focal plane arrays, on the other hand, has been under rapid development. Its wide range of potential applications varies from guided conventional submunitions in ground warfare to potential miniature homing vehicles for kinetic energy weapons in space to airborne optical sensors for acquiring and tracking reentry vehicles in midcourse to satellite-based sensors for detecting or tracking other satellites or aircraft or ships or moving tank divisions to imaging features of the terrain. A staring mosaic sensor may consist in the future of millions of detectors densely packed in a focal plane. As Gen. Toomay observes, such optical systems are capable of resolutions six orders of magnitude better than that of UHF radar with equivalent aperture. Staring mosaics in which each detector looks at its portion of the field of view continuously have several

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advantages in sensitivity compared to scanning sensors. The staring permits
longer integration times than scanning and since signal to signal accumulates
linearly while random noise fluctuation only as the square root, the sensitivity of
the staring sensor increases as the square root of the integration time. It is more
efficient also than scanning sensors in eliminating background clutter against
moving targets. From the standpoint of increasing the survivability and
reconstitutability of our systems for acquiring information, the most relevant
points are that such sensors should permit large weight reductions for a given
performance and the possibility of reducing the size of satellites with the
associated possibilities of multiplying the numbers of satellites, reducing their
launching costs, and increasing the possibility of replenishment.

In maintaining a continuing capability to acquire and disseminate the
information needed to keep operations under control, it is important not only to
look at programs individually but to view them as a whole for ways in which they
might reinforce each other. There are three key points:

(1) individual programs not only complement each other, but are also partial substitutes -- the loss of radar information on the movement of ships might be replaced for some purposes by information obtained through signals intelligence; and

(2) these individual programs can be designed much more than they have to take advantage of opportunities offered by related programs. Specifically there is considerable scope for more extensive piggybacking of the functions of some military satellites on other military satellites, as we have done with nuclear detectors and some transponders. And, using the model of the civil reserve air fleet, it should be possible to exploit the growing number of powerful civilian private and public computing centers and communications nets (including satellites) to improve capabilities for survival or reconstitution.

(3) Programs for active defense and programs for offense can reinforce

66

each other. A drastic improvement in the power and durability of sensing, attack assessment and communications which are needed for intercepting ballistic missiles on their way to target would provide an important addition for the durability, warning, precise attack assessment and fire control of our own offense forces. And in turn the ability to counter continuing enemy offense strikes before they are launched would impose important restraints on such continuing attacks and that would facilitate our active defense -- including an active defense that helped defend continuing command and control.

The problem of getting survivable satellite nets and the increasing importance of satellites for the West both in a non-nuclear and a nuclear war has led many to explore the possibility of preserving them through some agreements with adversaries simply to ban anti-satellite activity entirely. We believe that some agreements for the defense of space systems can be useful. In particular some arrangements for self-defense zones in space.⁵¹ However, any bilateral space agreement is likely to be illusory if it is thought of as a way of compensating for unilateral neglect of the problem of getting survivable satellites. No agreement that could be enforced is likely to save a satellite system that has a few critical nodes since these might easily be destroyed. Too many forms of anti-satellite activity can use systems that have innocent other uses as well. Ambiguities would make enforcement worse than doubtful.

On the other hand, an adaptive system with multiple nodes could degrade very slowly and would require for its surprise destruction the positioning by an adversary in peacetime of a great many objects which have no plausible other use than a surprise attack. Such a system might function adequately without benefit

⁵¹ Albert Wohlstetter and Brian Chow, "Arms Control That Could Work", *The Wall Street Journal*, July 17, 1985.

67

of a bilateral or multilateral agreement governing peacetime behavior. However
its very robustness would place a less crucial burden on arms agreements. It
would make possible agreements which would improve further the possibilities of
self-defense. Such agreements could clarify actions that each side would take to
avoid threatening configurations of space objects. And, by making clear that
defensive actions would be taken in the event that a configuration of space
objects was deployed that seriously threatened a vital satellite system, such
agreements would be self-enforcing. This may avoid some of the principal
difficulties about compliance that trouble the present debate over arms control.

Finally, the structure of the problem of getting a robust command, control and
communications for nuclear as well as non-nuclear war might be described in
terms of the preceding analysis as follows. From the standpoint of getting a
responsible control we want some essential features of the system to be
intrinsically hierarchical. We want to keep the authority to use nuclear weapons
in the hands of the highest political authorities. On the other hand, from the
standpoint of preserving the system in a hostile environment, we would like it to
be *virtually* distributed, that is to have no critical central node vulnerable to an
adversary. The best way to achieve this would seem to be to maintain a
distributed network of communications to which political authorities could gain
access at any of a large number of points where location can be kept uncertain
and therefore virtually invulnerable. Such a system would be commensurate with
the crucial importance of maintaining control in an era where self-destruction
may be avoided but will always be possible.

68

National Strategy and
Arms Control

Zbigniew Brzezinski

IN DISCUSSING THE relationship
between our national strategy and
arms control, I would like to make two
basic points. The first proposition is
that geopolitical and ideological con-
flicts between the United States and
the Soviet Union are the main cause
of the hostility and tension in U.S.-
Soviet relations. Competition in arms,
both strategic and conventional, is the
consequence of that condition, not its
cause. Hence, it is a mistake to make
a fetish out of arms control or to make
it the central facet of U.S.-Soviet re-
lations. The second proposition is that
mutual strategic security can be sought
through arms control but also outside
of arms control. In either case, the
United States needs to make some sa-
lient, strategic decisions. Moreover,
these decisions must be made now if
we are to be effective in achieving mu-
tual strategic security.

I consider these two propositions
the most significant and germane to
the issue before us. The conflictual
aspects of U.S.-Soviet relations are
historical in character and they are en-
during. They are not some transient
phenomena nor some unnatural aber-
ration. In spite of 40 years of U.S.-
Soviet tensions, there remains a ten-

dency in the American psyche to view
the conflictual aspects of the relation-
ship as an aberration to be resolved
either through an act of reconciliation
or through an apocalyptic confronta-
tion. Neither of these two extremes
are very likely. The U.S.-Soviet rela-
tionship has been managed quite sta-
bly, despite its inherent competitive-
ness, and the competitive aspects are
likely to endure for a long time.
Though that competition is global in
scope, it is focused heavily on Eurasia,
the central geopolitical prize of the
competition. The U.S. objective since
the 1940s has been to prevent Soviet
control from extending over all of Eu-
rasia; the Soviet objective has been to
drive U.S. influence out of Eurasia.
The Soviets have been explicit about
their goals, most notably in the re-
markably revealing Soviet-Nazi nego-
tiations of 1940 about the division of
the spoils after the anticipated Nazi
victory on the Western front in World
War II. At that time, the Kremlin
made it very clear that the Soviet
Union viewed the United States as
having no role to play in Europe, Asia,
or Africa. Thus, the Soviet desire to
gain political preponderance over Eu-
rasia is longstanding. We must face the
fact that we are dealing with a great
nation that, for a long time, has man-
ifested a rather remarkable capacity for
sustained expansionism. It is useful to
keep in mind one central and reveal-
ing fact: the Russian empire has ex-

Zbigniew Brzezinski is now counselor to
CSIS and the Herbert Lehman Professor of
Government at Columbia University. His
most recent book is *Game Plan: How to Con-
duct the U.S. Soviet Contest* (Boston, Mass.: At-
lantic Monthly Press, 1986).

THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY • WINTER 1987

ξ

Zbigniew Brzezinski

panded now for 250 years at the rate of one Vermont per year. It is a remarkably steady process of expansionism.

Military power has been important in that expansionism, but unlike some other imperial systems, Soviet military power always has been used prudently. I can think of only one example in the past several decades in which the Soviets used power imprudently—during the Cuban missile adventure. Other than that example, military power always has been used very prudently by probing and expanding gradually, but never by pushing so hard as to precipitate a direct confrontation with a powerful enemy. Thus the United States also should be prudent and restrained, but firm in offsetting Soviet military power.

If we do so, I am confident that we can prevail historically in the competition with the Soviets, for outside the military domain the Soviet Union is not a rival of the United States. It has lost in the ideological competition, the economic competition, and the socio-cultural competition. In every one of these three aspects, the Soviet Union is simply noncompetitive. Therefore our central task must be maintenance of an effective, credible equilibrium in military power that reduces the Soviet capacity to use military power toward political expansion.

As far as the Soviet military is concerned, it, of course, emphasizes the importance of offensive capabilities. But we should not associate Soviet military doctrine with a somewhat one-sided and largely U.S. offensive doctrine of mutual assured destruction. Soviet and Russian military doctrine also has traditionally stressed defensive aspects. For example, this is why Russian artillery has always excelled. Indeed, the Soviet case for def

ensive strategic systems made in the 1960s is a case that can be applied very effectively to President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Hence, once the Soviets are convinced that we will deny them a first-strike advantage, they may conclude that their interests will be better served by some accommodation on the issue of strategic defense, either tacitly or by agreement, rather than by continuing the spiraling and costly arms competition.

If we are to make progress in managing the U.S.-Soviet competition, if we are to reduce its centrality in world affairs, if we are to dull its sharp edge, and if our objective is to stabilize U.S.-Soviet relations and to reduce the scope of U.S.-Soviet disagreement, then some progress on geopolitical issues is imperative. Thus we must focus a great deal of our efforts on matters such as Afghanistan. The outcome of the war in Afghanistan is of central importance to the stability of Iran and Pakistan—or what might be called the southwestern front of the U.S.-Soviet competition. We also must make progress in stabilizing conditions in Central Europe, where political repression by Soviet-sponsored regimes continues to contribute to international tensions. And we must make progress, perhaps unilaterally, in dealing with the Central American issue before it gradually escalates into a major issue in U.S.-Soviet relations. This has not happened yet, but the conflict contains the potential to become larger in scope. Only if we make progress on these matters can we hope that progress in arms control genuinely will contribute to greater stability in U.S.-Soviet relations.

This brings me to the second point, namely, the importance of making decisions in the same arms control area.

6

Strategy and Arms Control

The United States must bite the bul-
let on a number of important matters.
First, we must recognize that we are
living in an era in which it may no
longer be possible to reach agreements
as wide-ranging as SALT I and SALT
II (Strategic Arms Limitations Talks).
Both were relatively comprehensive
and ambitious undertakings. I doubt
that it will soon be possible to replicate
either SALT I or SALT II with a com-
prehensive START (Strategic Arms
Reduction Talks) agreement.

The reason for this setting is not
only the additional complications
posed by geopolitical conflicts, but
also the increased complexity of new
weapons. Weapons technology has
moved forward so rapidly that it has
become more difficult to establish the
needed tradeoffs, the balances, and
the kind of mutually offsetting ar-
rangements needed for a comprehen-
sive agreement that deals with a vari-
ety of weapons systems controlled by
two superpowers with different geo-
graphies and strategic interests. More-
over, weapons technology has in-
creased the difficulties of verification,
and that, too, is a major obstacle to an
effective arms control agreement.

Furthermore, in my judgment, we
have not made enough of an issue,
privately and publicly, of Soviet stra-
tegic secrecy—what might be called
S³. Soviet strategic secrecy is a monu-
mental impediment to mutual stra-
tegic security. We have not made an
adequate issue of the fact that, in the
quest for mutual strategic security,
one of the partners operates on the
basis of a fraudulent defense budget,
conducts its weapons development
and deployment in total secrecy, and
even in arms control negotiations re-
fuses to present the needed data re-
garding its own strategic systems. It is
a little-known fact that Moscow simply

agrees to negotiate on the basis of U.S.
data about Soviet systems and deploy-
ments, as well as U.S. systems and
deployments.

This lack of information is a major impediment to mutual security. It permits the Soviet Union to undertake surreptitious programs to develop and deploy both offensive and defensive systems that are potentially destabilizing. Even if the Soviets are not doing so, S³ creates a condition in which our insecurity is maximized, perhaps to an unnecessary degree and maybe even exaggeratedly so. But because we do not know—and because our life is at stake—we have a right to be concerned. It is important that we make an issue of Soviet strategic secrecy as a fundamental impediment to stable and progressive accommodation in the arms control area.

Beyond that, we need to make cer-
tain that in the arms control negotia-
tions—if there are to be agreements—
we focus on the real danger in the
years ahead. This pertains particularly
to the deployment of increasingly ef-
fective, precise, and potentially first-
strike strategic systems. The real
threat in strategic deployments is not
necessarily their numerical maximiza-
tion and proliferation. Hence, in any
comprehensive or limited arms control
agreement, it is essential that the real
reductions take place in those systems
capable of being employed in a
preemptive, precise, first-strike at-
tack. The number of such systems
must be driven considerably below the
number of likely and necessary targets
for such an attack. This must be the
focus of the negotiations, rather than
the broad, across-the-board numerical
reductions that were foreseen in the
SALT process.

Last, for the reasons that I have
mentioned, any arms control agree-

7

Zhigniew Brzezinski

ment has to involve on-site verification if it will contribute to genuine mutual stability. I realize this is a tall order. But, precisely because of that, I do not anticipate that there will soon be a comprehensive new agreement. More likely, if there is progress, it will come in the form of limited, interim, ad hoc, and highly segmented agreements focusing on this or that aspect of the arms control conundrum. I have no objection to these types of agreements for they could represent real progress. But such progress certainly should not leave us with the illusion that arms control represents the breakthrough to a new strategic relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Beyond our need to understand the proper place of arms control in our national security policy and to face up to the fact that we may be unable to achieve comprehensive arms control, we need to make some basic strategic decisions. What concerns me is that the present administration has not made these decisions. After all, we do face the possibility that there may be no arms control agreement, and we do face the need to have leverage in the arms control negotiations. Both of these conditions call for decisions that will assure our security in the absence of arms control and increase our negotiating strength in the arms control talks.

Here we have two fundamental options. First, we can proliferate the number of our own offensive systems. If we anticipate that there will be no arms control and that therefore the Soviets will increase their offensive forces, this situation will bolster their capacity for launching a first-strike attack at some point in the future. Even if such an attack does not take place, this imbalance in first-strike weaponry will create political pressures that will

constrict U.S. freedom of action. Our current strategic doctrine calls for us to proliferate the numbers of our own offensive systems. This means facing up to the need either for a comprehensive deployment of the MX—and the MX issue has been very badly handled by this administration—or a basic decision on the deployment of the Midgetman. We are not ready to make such a decision. Congress is not ready to support either course, and the administration has not exercised the necessary leadership to move us in the direction of either a more significant MX deployment or an accelerated decision on the Midgetman.

Furthermore, if the Soviet response or ongoing Soviet programs proliferate Soviet strategic systems, our own additional deployments will have to be quite substantial. We have yet to face up to the strategic problems dictated by numbers. If projected Soviet deployments remain stable—much less accelerate—into the mid-1990s, the Soviets may have between 16,000 to 24,000 nuclear warheads, half of them capable of being employed in a preemptive first strike. That will dictate a U.S. response. If our response is the proliferation of our own offensive systems on this very significant scale, we will need something in the range of 1,500 Midgetmen—no mean undertaking from the budgetary standpoint. It is a major undertaking operationally, in terms of manpower, and it is a massively complicated undertaking in terms of deployment modes, as anyone knows who is familiar with the debates over the MX and the anticipated intensity and the difficulty of the debate about the Midgetman. If that alternative becomes impossible, or if it is too difficult to undertake, we must seek mutual strategic security in some other fashion.

The second alternative—which also

8

Strategy and Arms Control

requires us to bite the bullet— involves SDI. I believe that this president can take this course and should do so. SDI, I think, contains the potential to help stabilize U.S.-Soviet strategic relations, provided it is fitted into actual strategic circumstances instead of being essentially a long-term program related to a rather idealistic objective of total population defense. Limited strategic defense that is designed to defend our own strategic systems (and therefore make them invulnerable), to protect our national command authority, and to maintain the security of command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) would contribute to strategic stability.

At the same time, it would not be destabilizing internationally if SDI were linked to self-imposed restraint on the U.S. side on the number and character of further U.S. strategic offensive deployments. In my view, a limited strategic defense should be matched with a limited first-strike capability, not an unlimited U.S. first-strike capability that would be capable of placing all Soviet offensive systems in jeopardy. That means imposing restraint on the deployment of U.S. first-strike warheads such as the Trident II D-5, the MX, and the Midgetman. These weapons should be deployed at levels lower than the number of first-strike targets in the Soviet Union. Such a combination would convey an unmistakable message to the Soviets. We ourselves are not seeking a first-strike strategic capability, but we are determined to deny the Soviet Union the political and military benefits of such a capability. A limited strategic defense together with a limit on our own first-strike offensive deployments would convey that message. It might even obviate the need for a new land-based intercontinental ballistic missile

(ICBM), and thereby relieve us of a rather debilitating and divisive domestic debate that is enormously costly.

There is a further benefit to this approach. It puts maximum pressure on the Soviet Union to come back to the first policy alternative of a genuine, comprehensive arms control agreement. We will never get a cent, stabilizing, confidence-building arms control agreement with the Soviet Union if we are not prepared to bite the bullet regarding how we will assure our security in the absence of such an agreement. That is the only course that will enhance our ability to negotiate an agreement with the Soviets. The second alternative—a combination of defense and offense—rather than the first alternative—the proliferation of new offensive systems—puts the Soviet Union under the greatest pressure to reach an arms control agreement. For if the Soviet Union chooses to compete by deploying more offensive systems, we can obviate that move with a cost-effective tradeoff that would enhance our limited strategic defense and increase the mix of offensive forces.

We know that the Soviets moved toward the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty only after President Richard Nixon convinced the Soviets that he was prepared to deploy U.S. ABMs. It was then that the Soviets negotiated the ABM Treaty. Today the time has come for us to replicate that approach in a somewhat different mode. We should proceed with the deployment of limited strategic defense and indicate to the Soviets that it is our desire to renegotiate the ABM Treaty. That would send a credible message to the Soviets. If this is accomplished by a self-imposed restraint on the deployment of new first-strike offensive systems, it would not communicate the message that it is our

9

Zbigniew Brzezinski

intention to seek a first-strike capability against the Soviets. I anticipate that the Soviet response to any attempt to renegotiate the ABM Treaty would be negative. But the very process of discussing it would open up the issue and would create the grounds for eventually abrogating, if necessary, the treaty—which is our right if our supreme national interest is invoked.

What worries me is that this administration will not make the needed decisions at a time when the president is strong and popular. Whoever the next president may be, it is unlikely that he will have the popularity and the standing that President Reagan has. It would be a great tragedy if President Reagan left office without having made fundamentally binding and irrevocable commitments on some truly important strategic issues. His historical legacy could be a reasonable application of SDI to the strategic dilemma, but in a way that contributes to greater stability and perhaps creates a precondition for a comprehensive arms control agreement, but which even in the absence of such an agreement helps to stabilize the strategic equation. After all, we must consider the possibility that there will be no arms control agreement, and remain mindful that the strategic balance will not be more stable if both sides proliferate simply offensive systems. Thus the president has a unique chance. He can only take advantage of it, however, if he commits the country to a clear policy and uses his political strength now to make a commitment that any future president will have to follow.

In the meantime, we should engage the Soviets in a reconsideration of the nature of the strategic equilibrium. Short of that, the Soviets have no incentive either to reach a truly binding arms control agreement or to desist

from their own ongoing strategic offensive deployments. Rhetoric alone is not going to change the course of this momentum. It has to be altered by deliberate strategy, which, in my judgment, is the critical juncture between arms control and our national strategy.

As far as the political aspects of the U.S.-Soviet relationship are concerned, what strikes me about Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev's foreign policy up until now is its largely theatrical flavor. It is not a policy based on a sustained strategy, deliberately pursued and generating progressive attainments. Instead, it has been a policy of rather abrupt dramatic proposals, made not as serious negotiating gambits in the context of ongoing negotiations but through the mass media for the greatest possible dramatic effect. These rather theatrical proposals are not followed up in negotiations. Indeed, when the Soviets are asked to elaborate on the proposals made in public, the Soviet negotiators themselves are unable to respond because there is no follow-up. One may therefore doubt that the Soviet proposals are really meant to be the basis for serious negotiations.

Public opinion has become somewhat accustomed to this mode of operation, and the impact of Soviet propaganda gambits on Western public opinion has steadily diminished. I was struck by the fact that Gorbachev's most recent proposals, designed to evoke a sympathetic response in Europe, by and large did not provoke such a response. I think there is a growing recognition that these public proposals are made for effect, that they are theatrical and not substantive.

My hope is that over time, as the Soviet government shakes down and as new decision-making processes emerge, the Soviets will be prepared

10

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

Senate Armed Services Committee

January 13, 1987

FEB 12 1987

I would like to commend the committee for holding hearings on a subject that is often neglected: the fundamental strategic underpinnings of American defense policy. In my opening remarks, I would propose to outline briefly the basic geopolitical premises that our policies must address and then to take up in turn the strategic policies that I believe follow from these premises. (Specific recommendations are underlined in the text and itemized in the appendix.)

A long-term strategy for the United States must contain the following three elements: (1) it must be derived from a correct diagnosis of the American-Soviet conflict and be based on a realistic assessment of the Soviet challenge; (2) it must provide an effective response to the strategically most pressing threats and exploit the principal vulnerabilities of the adversary; and (3) it must actively explore opportunities for an equitable accommodation and generate the necessary incentives for a positive response from the adversary.

Basic Geopolitical Premises:

1. The American-Soviet rivalry is a long-term contest. It is a classic historical conflict between two major powers and is not susceptible to a broad and quick resolution, either through a victory by one side or through a grand act of reconciliation.

- 2 -

2. The American-Soviet contest is global is scope, but its central focus is the struggle for Eurasia. The Eurasian landmass constitutes almost half the world's land surface and contains the bulk of the world's population and economic wealth.

3. In the contest for Eurasia, there are three central strategic fronts.

The first front, Europe, is critical because it encompasses the most vital and industrialized section of Eurasia and controls the principal outlets to the Atlantic Ocean. Today, the European peninsula of the Eurasian landmass is also the most highly militarized region in the world.

The second front, the Far East, represents the world's fastest growing economic region and controls Soviet access to the Pacific Ocean. U.S. trade with the countries of the Pacific Basin now exceeds U.S. trade with the countries of Western Europe. This second front emerged after the Soviet-supported North Korean invasion of South Korea and the resulting American military intervention.

The third front, southwest Asia, contains almost two-thirds of the world's known oil reserves and contains the principal outlets to the Indian Ocean. The third front, therefore, is catalytic in nature, for a Soviet victory in the Persian Gulf region would give Moscow tremendous leverage on the other two fronts. It is also the most volatile of the three central strategic fronts. This front emerged with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent American commitment to the defense of the

-3-

Persian Gulf region embodied in the Carter Doctrine, reaffirmed
by the Reagan administration.

4. There is a danger that a fourth central strategic front may soon emerge in Central America. The Soviet Union realizes that in a superpower conflict in Central America or the Caribbean it would be at a massive geographical, logistical, and economic disadvantage to the United States. It therefore has pursued its geostrategic goals in the region with caution, advancing its interests with tactics not so aggressive as to precipitate a direct clash. Should the internal problems of Central America merge with a larger domestic explosion in Mexico that inflames the U.S.-Mexican relationship, the Soviet Union is almost certain to exploit it, thereby opening up a fourth central strategic front in the U.S.-Soviet conflict.

5. The Soviet Union is unique among major national powers in its history because it is a one-dimensional power. Moscow's only claim to the status of a world power is its military might, for in all other respects it is not even a truly competitive rival of the United States. While the United States is plunging headlong into the technetronic age, the Soviet Union is still struggling desperately to make its relatively conventional industrial economy more efficient and modern. That difference is crucial for the historical outcome of the U.S.-Soviet conflict. Unless military means prove historically decisive -- with Moscow exploiting its military leverage to attain Eurasian preponderance -- social creativity will probably determine which side prevails.

- 5 -

1986

Naval Forces in Central Conventional Conflict

Soviet capacity for serious, but not conclusive, disruption of U.S. ocean control and of U.S. sustaining efforts on be-half of U.S. forces engaged in conventional conflicts on any one of the three main fronts

1996

No basic change

Naval Forces in Remote Local Conflict

Soviets unable to sustain long-range deployment of ground forces in the event of limited conventional naval collision with the United States

No basic change but progressive expansion in radius of Soviet capability

In the light of the above, on the strategic level, the objective of U.S. policy must be Mutual Strategic Security. That requires the maintenance of a strategic balance that makes a first strike for either side militarily futile and societally suicidal and that sustains extended deterrence.

To best deter a nuclear war, the United States must adjust its strategic doctrine and its deployments away from mutual assured destruction and toward greater flexibility in war-fighting options, so that it will be able to respond at any level of a possible conflict.

American strategic forces should have both offensive and defensive components. U.S. strategic offensive forces must be modernized, but their configuration and numbers should be contrived not to pose a threat of a disarming first strike to Soviet strategic forces. But in light of Soviet modernization plans -- which in the mid-1990s will provide Moscow between 8,000 and 10,000 first-

- 6 -

strike warheads -- it is also necessary to deploy a limited
<u>strategic defense</u>. That defense should be oriented toward the
protection of U.S. strategic forces and command and control
systems. It should be composed of a space-based screen to
destroy Soviet missiles in the boost phase and a land-based
terminal defense to intercept incoming warheads. While it would
be an imperfect defense, it would achieve the critical objective
of injecting a degree of randomness into any Soviet planning of a
first-strike nuclear attack. As a result, no Soviet military
planner could ever advise the Soviet leadership that Moscow could
prevail in a conflict at the strategic level. That, in turn,
would give the United States the needed strategic confidence to
compete with the Soviet Union at other levels.

The alternate means of seeking Mutual Strategic Security --
namely, though the proliferation of mobile strategic systems of which
is in my view less desirable militarily and probably in terms of
cost. Leaving aside the likely domestic U.S. difficulties over
the deployment of numerous mobile systems, the fact is that in a
competitive proliferation of mobile systems the Soviet side is
likely to have a major advantage, both in quantitative deploy-
ments and in strategic deception. Moreover, competitive deploy-
ment of mobile strategic systems is likely to breed greater
insecurity than the deployment of a prudent mix of offensive and
defensive systems would be.

On the conventional level, the United States must address a
perilous strategic paradox: U.S. conventional forces are weakest

- 7 -

where the United States is most vulnerable, along southwestern Eurasian strategic front, and strongest where its allies have the greatest capacity for doing more on their own behalf and where the risk of a U.S.-Soviet clash is lowest, along the far western Eurasian strategic front.

Consequently, the United States should undertake a gradual -- and certainly only partial -- reduction in the level of American forces in Europe. A total of perhaps 100,000 troops could be gradually withdrawn. That would leave over 250,000 U.S. troops deployed in Europe, a number that represents a clear deterrent to the Soviets and substantial commitment to the defense of NATO. Budgetary savings from these reductions should be allocated to a significant expansion of U.S. airlift capability. Manpower withdrawn from Europe should be absorbed into an enlarged Rapid Deployment Force through the creation of additional light divisions for potential use on the southwest Asian central strategic front or in Central America.

## 2. Geostrategic component:

The first priority for American policy is to hold the three central strategic fronts.

In Europe, the United States should encourage the development of a politically and militarily integrated Western Europe, less dependent on the United States but still tied to it by a strategic alliance. NATO should become increasingly a European regional alliance, though with an active and major U.S. presence in it.

- 8 -

In the Far East, the United States should promote an
informal geopolitical triangle through wider economic, political,
and some military cooperation among the United States, Japan, and
the People's Republic of China. <u>Japan should be encouraged not</u>
<u>to increase its defense spending greatly, but rather to increase</u>
<u>its economic assistance to developing countries in which Japan</u>
<u>shares a security interest with the other industrialized demo-</u>
<u>cracies.</u> Recipients of this strategic economic assistance should
include Egypt, Pakistan, the Philippines, and even the democratic
states of Central America. In the future, the combination of
Japanese defense spending and strategic economic aid should reach
about 4 percent of Japan's GNP, which would represent a spending
level comparable to those of West European countries.

In southwest Asia, <u>the most important priority for the</u>
<u>United States is to step up the political and military pres</u>
<u>sure on the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.</u> It is imperative that
the United States increase, quantitatively and qualitatively, the
level of military assistance sent to the Afghan resistance and
promote a wider international awareness of the war through public
denunciations of the Soviet occupation and through efforts to
facilitate television and radio coverage. The United States
should also press in U.S.-Soviet bilateral meetings for a disen-
gagement of Soviet forces. <u>It should advance a diplomatic for</u>
<u>mula that calls for the external neutralization and the internal</u>
<u>self-determination of the country.</u> The former would restore
Afghanistan's previous status as a neutral, and the latter would

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allow the Afghan people to determine their own form of government. As a temporary expedient, peace-keeping forces from Islamic countries not unfriendly to the Soviet Union but still independent of Moscow (such as Algeria and Syria) could be stationed in Afghanistan upon the prompt removal of Soviet occupation forces.

In addition, the United States must seek to reinforce the resilience of Iran and Pakistan to Soviet advances where possible. Continued economic and military aid to Pakistan and the eventual restoration of more normal relations with Iran are essential components of the needed U.S. strategic response on the third front.

In addition, as part of its effort to hold the three fronts, the United States should exploit the weaknesses of the Soviet Union. Moscow is vulnerable at three levels, the systemic weakness of its socio-economic system, the geopolitical weakness of its imperial system, and the internal weakness of the multi-national nature of the Soviet Union itself.

The Soviet objective in Eastern Europe is to dominate its satellites militarily and ideologically and to integrate them into a kind of economic commonwealth. Consequently, the United States should promote the development of an independent-minded and increasingly assertive East European public opinion, not only through radio broadcasts, but also through new communications and information technology, such as videocassettes, miniaturized printers, and world processors. The United States should also

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look with favor on the growing economic cooperation between Western Europe and Eastern Europe because such cooperation would inevitably lead indirectly to closer political ties. That means, for example, that the United States should encourage the countries of Western Europe to provide Eastern Europe with economic options that even the communist regimes would find attractive.

The internal weaknesses of the Soviet Union stem from the fact that Moscow rules over the world's last surviving multi-national empire. The central government dominated by the Great Russians, whose population numbers about 135 million, dominates in turn a dozen other major nations and scores of smaller nations. Those include 55 million Soviet Muslims, 50 million Ukrainians, and 10 million Balts. The multinational character of the Soviet Union creates fissures and openings -- as demonstrated most recently in the protests in Alma Ata in Kazakhstan. **The United States goal should be to give sharper political definition to these trends through greatly intensified use of modern means of communication.** The techniques that have proven so effective in breaking down the Soviet Union's efforts to isolate Eastern Europe should be more actively applied to the Soviet Union itself. The object of the effort should not be to stoke national hatreds or even to foster the disintegration of the Soviet Union. **The real opportunity is to mobilize the forces for genuine political participation, for greater national codetermination, for the dispersal of central power, and for the termination of heavy-handed central domination that breeds the expansionist impulse.**

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Soviet systemic weakness compounds Moscow's vulnerability at both these levels. In virtually every other imperial system in history, the center exerted some kind of an attraction for the periphery, whether in terms of learning, culture, economic wealth, or ideology. That is not the case with the Soviet Union. Its ideology has lost its appeal, with not even the most fervent third world revolutionary movements aspiring to a future based on the Soviet model. Its imperial realm might be characterized best as an "economic co-stagnation sphere," with the communist bloc lagging severely behind the West in all indexes of economic well-being and falling further behind in most.

### 3. Negotiating component:

As part of the same overall strategy, the United States should engage the Soviet Union in bilateral negotiations. These should not, however, become obsessed with arms control at the strategic nuclear level, as has occurred in the last few years and particularly at the Reykjavik summit.

First, in the short term, the United States should formally propose a schedule for ministerial-level meetings to move forward U.S.-Soviet negotiations during the remainder of the Reagan administration.

Second, on the strategic level, the United States should in the course of the next two years seek a five-year interim agreement that provides for serious reductions in the overall arsenals of the two sides. The current proposals at Geneva which

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call for a restriction of 6,000 on warheads, 1,600 on launchers, and 154 on heavy missiles create the basis for such an agreement. A more comprehensive agreement, however, requires progress on issues of verification and modernization and on finding ways to incorporate limited strategic defense into the arms control process.

In addition to watertight provisions for verification and for restricting modernization, the United States should press the Kremlin to lift gradually Soviet strategic secrecy. In the age of highly accurate and prompt strategic systems, Soviet strategic secrecy introduces an element of uncertainty and anxiety that is incompatible with strategic stability and that vastly complicates the effort to achieve effective arms control. In this regard, the United States must make a major public issue of Soviet strategic secrecy and insist that its veil be lifted for the sake of mutual strategic security.

Third, beyond any potential five-year interim START agreement, the United States should propose a wider set of negotiations, involving proportional reductions in the strategic and conventional forces of both sides. Such Comprehensive Arms Reduction Talks (CART) ought to have as their objective the shaping of truly comprehensive mutual security, without either side enjoying a one-sided advantage in either strategic or conventional forces. This is of particular importance to stability and security in Europe. It is in the U.S. interest to draw down forces on the central European front, both because a smaller U.S.

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presence in Western Europe leads to less friction in allied
relations and more self-reliance among West Europeans and because
a smaller Soviet troop presence in Eastern Europe will inevitably
lead to greater self-assertion among the East Europeans.

Fourth, the United States should indicate a willingness to resolve the crisis in Nicaragua on the basis of the same formula as in Afghanistan. In both cases, the United States should seek external neutralization and internal self-determination. The external neutrality of Afghanistan and Nicaragua is consistent with the interests of both the United States and the Soviet Union. Neither country should become a base of operations for one superpower against the other. Internal self-determination for Afghanistan and Nicaragua disengages Washington and Moscow from the struggle for power within the two countries, thereby defusing the potential crises. At the same time, it is reasonable to assume that the outcome of genuine self-determination in both countries will produce regimes whose ascendence will be in the U.S. national interest.

Conclusion: The Need for Strategic Policy Planning

One final point. Within the executive branch, there must be
more emphasis on strategy. Occasionally, this has been provided
by particularly insightful top policymakers. There have also
been periods when all the top U.S. foreign policy decision makers
have been quite unversed either in Soviet-American affairs or in
matters of grand strategy. To compensate, the role of strategic
planning should be enhanced. The Policy Planning Council in the