1.
THINKING ABOUT REGIONAL DETERRENCE
War is a matter of vital importance to the State; the province of life or death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Are existing U.S. deterrence approaches and forces adequate to deter nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons use by regional states? Perhaps, but there are appropriate concerns that the regional states that have pursued NBC weapons will not readily or necessarily be deterred from using them, not only against their regional enemies but also against U.S. forces. If current approaches and forces are inadequate, why are they? What makes certain regional states hard to deter? Can U.S. deterrence approaches and forces be strengthened? How?
These questions take on a critical importance and urgency, because a growing number of regional states are aggressively pursuing the possession of NBC weapons and increasingly sophisticated means of delivery, including longer range missiles. In fact, several already possess extensive chemical weapon inventories, and a growing number have biological weapons in their military inventories. While the costs of war are always high, the potential use of NBC in regional conflicts further elevates the consequences of deterrence failure. The threat of use against U.S. forces, allies, or citizens requires recalculation of the risks associated with confronting such states when they take actions inimical to U.S. interests. If the United States cannot deter NBC use, it may ultimately be the United States that will be deterred from pursuit of its objectives. The threat of NBC use may also cause traditional allies to reassess the value of supporting U.S. policies and operations and will almost certainly require changes in the conduct of U.S. military operations. The use of such weapons could cause large-scale American casualties and lead to a U.S. humiliation, withdrawal, or even defeat.
Because the consequences of deterrence failure are significant, deterrence strategies must be based on more than an assumption or assertion that states will be adequately deterred by U.S. conventional superiority or the direct or implied threat of nuclear retaliation. Rather, regional deterrence should be based on critical analysis of deterrence requirements, which should be based in large part on examination of the strategic personality of the states we seek to deter. Thus, deterrence strategies must be tailored to the strategic calculations those states are likely to make and the national context within which decisions will be made. In-depth "strategic profiles" that provide insights into our potential foes have been lacking, particularly with regard to likely strategies for employing NBC weapons and how these states might be deterred.
Among regional states pursuing NBC weapons, few have done so as aggressively as Iran, and few offer a more clear-cut challenge to U.S. presence and traditional deterrence approaches. Iran therefore provides a worthy case for analysis of U.S. deterrence requirements, to include:
While no deterrence strategy is guaranteed to succeed, 1 efforts to maximize deterrence require affecting the opponent's cost/benefit analysis. Effort must be made to communicate so clearly and credibly to opponents, by word or deed, that the cost to be imposed if the proscribed action is taken will so exceed expected benefits that any thought of implementing the proscribed action is abandoned. Many assume that regional states will be deterred from use of NBC by the implied threat of unleashing the vastly superior U.S. conventional forces or the threat of U.S. nuclear retaliation. However, although this assumption may reflect unquestioned conventional wisdom, unfortunately the assumption may prove incorrect. The threatened action may not be credible, may not raise the cost of the action to a level deemed unacceptable to the enemy decision maker, or may not ensure that the enemy's war aims are thwarted. Thus, even if the threatened retaliation would, from the Western perspective, impose unacceptable costs on an enemy, what constitutes unacceptable costs in one culture may not necessarily be unacceptable to decisionmakers who weigh and calculate costs and benefits differently and who operate in a strategic culture vastly different from the Western tradition.
Denial strategies, which combine counterforce attacks 2 with active and passive defenses to diminish an enemy's offensive capability, would provide a substantial deterrence enhancement over the threat of retaliation alone, but still may not be adequate. Determined foes would certainly employ mobility and concealment to hide weapons to diminish the effectiveness of counterforce attacks. They might also seek to harden targets and evade active and passive defenses. The ability to degrade the enemy's forces through denial means will heighten his uncertainty about the success of his attack, but the risk may rationally be deemed to be acceptable to the enemy if he calculates that his use of NBC might enable him to attain his objectives at an acceptable cost. In these circumstances, the risk of deterrence failure is high.
Denial strategies must therefore be supplemented by a rigorous effort to identify and put in jeopardy those elements most likely to convince the enemy that he cannot attain his post-war objectives and, especially, that the cost of using NBC is unacceptable. An opponent must believe that costs will far outweigh gains, as both are calculated and weighed. These elements are best understood in the context of what Clausewitz called the opposing state's "centers of gravity:"
We can identify . . . principles that underlie all strategic planning and serve to guide all considerations. The first principle is that the ultimate substance of enemy strength must be traced back to the fewest possible sources, and ideally to one alone. 3
Rigorous examination of the critical characteristics of a state will enable definition of this "ultimate substance of enemy strength" or "centers of gravity." A center of gravity should be: "the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends-the point against which all our energies should be directed." 4 The centers of gravity will thus be the targets, the destruction of which increases the probability that the cost to the enemy of initiating war will be unacceptable and ultimately makes it impossible for the opponent to continue execution of war. Credible threats to destroy the centers of gravity should convince the enemy that the post-war situation will be his defeat. Combining these threats with denial strategies, which support protecting our own centers of gravity, offer a significant deterrence enhancement over either approach alone or general retaliation.
Implementing a well-calculated strategy for deterrence by retaliation or denial may well include or overlap the tools and targets identified for putting centers of gravity in jeopardy. Then again, unless a specific effort is undertaken to ensure that the centers of gravity are identified, they may remain elusive and therefore untargetted. "Deterrence by jeopardy," what we will call ensuring that the centers of gravity are identified and targeted, should be part of a strategy for regional NBC deterrence and part of U.S. analysis and regional deterrence strategy.
The centers of gravity to be put in jeopardy will differ depending on the state. For some states, the center of gravity may be the military forces; for others, it may be the leadership of the state, and for still others, the will of the people to fight. If the military forces are a center of gravity, the actions taken to support denial strategies will parallel the actions needed to make credible a strategy for deterrence by jeopardy. For other centers of gravity, the targets will not always be threatened by attacks on traditional military targets or even political leadership.
Getting the center of gravity right is critical. If, for example, the United States were to retaliate against the political leadership of a state, but the center of gravity was the military forces, war would not be terminated, and indeed, the attack on the political leadership could destroy the entity essential to war termination. If elements of an enemy's military forces (such as those that control use of NBC forces) are the center of gravity, failure to destroy those elements in a general attack on military targets could be a serious mistake, because it would permit the enemy to continue to fight and, particularly if some NBC weapons may remain, enable NBC use; follow-on use could be even more likely. Similarly, striking against religious targets might engender the wrath of the people, leading to an escalation in the enemy's war aims, decreasing any reluctance to use NBC, and making it likely that the war would be more protracted. Thus, care should be taken in analyzing potential opponents to ensure correct identification of the center of gravity for the state-in this case, Iran.
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