C. U.S. INTERESTS, NATIONAL SECURITY OBJECTIVES, 1. U.S. Interests, Commitments, and Goals U.S. national interests encompass both broad ideals and specific security assets. America's paramount national interests are peace, freedom, and prosperity for ourselves and for our allies and our friends, and for others around the world. We seek an international order that encourages self-determination, democratic institutions, economic development, and human rights. We endorse the open exchange of ideas and other measures to encourage understanding between peoples. More specifically, we maintain our steadfast concern for the security and well being of our allies and other nations friendly to our interests. We oppose the expansion of influence, control, or territory by nations opposed to freedom and other fundamental ideals shared by America and its allies. But The peaceful existence and prosperity of democracies is the core U.S. interest. Our agenda is a modest one and threatens no one. the mere existence and prospering of democracies is also the greatest long-term danger to the world's most powerful foe of freedom, the Soviet Union. The danger to Moscow is not from the democracies' obviously defensive military forces, nor from the democracies' desire for peace and freedom. The danger is the contagiousness of freedom, the inherent superiority of free enterprise, and the universal appeal of basic human rights. Democracies are anathema to the Soviet world view. The most recent example is Poland, where the first glimmerings of freedom brought down the iron heel of Soviet oppression in the form of a puppet Polish general, as head of the government, who might as well wear a Soviet uniform. Therefore, to survive democracies must remain militarily strong in order to deter and defend against the Soviet Union, whose bankrupt political and economic systems leave it with only its military might to perpetuate and promulgate its communist system. The protection of U.S. interests has, over the years, led America to enter into joint commitments with other nations in the form of international treaties and agreements that reflect those interests. Alliances like NATO, and bilateral agreements such as those we have entered into with Japan and the Republic of Korea, serve to defend those common values that we share. By defending ourselves in this collective manner, we not only improve our own security, but we do so at a reduced cost, since the defense burden, which benefits all, is borne by many nations, and not the United States alone. Our adversaries seek to undermine these values and interests, thereby generating our need for military strength to uphold our commitments. 2. National Security Objectives The threats to U.S. interests described in Chapter I.B. require us to formulate national security objectives to counter those threats. Major U.S. national security objectives are to: Safeguard the United States and its forces, allies, and interests by deterring aggression and coercion; and should deterrence fail, by defeating the armed aggression and ending the conflict on terms favorable to the United States, our allies, and our interests at the lowest possible level of hostilities. Encourage and assist our allies and friends in defending Ensure U.S. access to critical resources, markets, the Where possible, reduce Soviet presence throughout the world; increase the costs of Moscow's use of subversive forces; and foster changes within the Soviet bloc that will lead to a more peaceful world order. Prevent the transfer of militarily critical technology to the Soviet bloc. Pursue equitable and verifiable arms reduction agreements. Because compliance is key to the value of any international agreement, and in view of the Soviet record of violations, fully effective verification is the most vital part of any agreement. 3. U.S. Defense Strategy a. Deterrence America's basic defense strategy, as it has been for the entire postwar period, is to deter aggression. Our strategy seeks to safeguard U.S. interests by convincing adversaries not to commit aggression against those interests. It precludes an attack from happening in the first place through clear alliance commitments and ready forces that provide us with an effective and credible response to any level of aggression. Deterrence works by persuading potential adversaries that by their perceptions, the probable costs of their aggression will exceed the probable gains. Deterrence is the U.S. strategy against conventional as well as nuclear aggression. Among nuclear powers, any conflict carries the risk of irreversible escalation; therefore, our goal is to dissuade aggression of any kind. We seek not only to deter actual aggression but also to prevent coercion of the United States, its allies, and friends through the threat of aggression. Successful coercion could give a hostile power the fruits of war without actual conflict. In Europe and Japan, for example, the Soviet threat consists of not only the danger of an actual attack, but also a long-term campaign of propaganda and coercion. The Soviets seek to dominate Western Europe and Japan without having to fire a shot. To this end, Moscow attempts to persuade our allies to distance themselves from the United States, neglect their military capabilities, adopt passive policies like nuclear-free zones and similar measures for unilateral disarmament, and ultimately end the 16-nation North Atlantic Alliance and our mutual defense treaty with Japan, which together embody our collective resolve to resist Soviet domination. As Churchill presciently observed in 1946, "I do not believe that Soviet Russia desires war. What they desire are the fruits of war and the indefinite expansion of their power and doctrine." - To deter effectively, U.S. defense strategy must meet four tests: Survivability: Our forces must be able to survive a preemptive attack with sufficient strength to be able to inflict on an aggressor losses that the aggressor perceives will outweigh any gains to itself. Example: Our strategic nuclear retaliatory capability is assured through our Triad of nuclear forces intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and strategic bombers. This prevents Soviet war planners from concentrating on the destruction of any single leg of the Triad. - Credibility: Our threatened response to an attack must be Clarity: The action to be deterred must be sufficiently clear Safety: The risk of conflict through accident, unauthorized Thus, the U.S. strategy to deter aggression does not just depend on our actual military capabilities. It also involves our adversaries' perceptions about those capabilities as well as the other elements of our strategy. The effectiveness of our deterrent will be determined in our opponents' minds, not in ours. Incorporation of this insight in operational defense planning presents a formidable intellectual and institutional challenge. Since our knowledge of Soviet perceptions is limited by their curtain of secrecy, there is a tendency among some to assume that Soviet concerns and motivations mirror our own. But preparing to deter an attack only by assembling forces adequate to deter us under similar conditions could prove insufficient to deter the Soviets. For example, some analysts have opposed this Administration's modernization of strategic nuclear forces with the argument that the resulting gain in attack and retaliatory capability is relatively small for the level of investment. The issue for a deterrent strategy that incorporates perception seriously, however, is whether the Soviet leadership shares the judgment that additional capability is pointless. The fact that for the past decade Soviet investment in strategic forces (as measured in dollars), has been two to three times the size of our own investment, strongly suggests that they do not. By making additional investments in our intelligence capabilities, the Reagan Administration is improving our ability to understand how the Soviets assess the military balance. One of the most useful threads in our research, development, and deployment decisions has been the increasing emphasis given to analyzing and understanding perceptions of the Soviet leadership. To deter the Soviet Union, we must make clear to Moscow that we have the means and the will to respond powerfully to aggression against our interests. We emphasize our resolve to respond, but our strategy is to avoid specifying exactly what our response will be. This is the essence of our strategic doctrine of "flexible response,' which has been U.S. strategy since 1961 and NATO strategy since 1967. Our forces deter a potential aggressor by confronting him with three types of possible responses: Effective Defense: To confront an adversary with the possibility that his aggression will be stopped without us resorting to actions escalating the conflict. This is sometimes referred to as "deterrence through denial." Example: Defeating a nonnuclear attack with conventional forces only. The Threat of Escalation: To warn an adversary that his aggres- The Threat of Retaliation: To raise the prospect that an attack Chart I.C.1 summarizes how the above three types of responses help deter nuclear and nonnuclear attack. The responses summarized above are part of the overall U.S. defense strategy for safeguarding our interests worldwide. Our global strategy for deterrence can be summarized as follows: - - To deter nuclear attack, the United States relies on a interests. To deter nonnuclear aggression, we rely on a military posture comprising U.S. conventional and nuclear forces, and allied forces. This combination of forces deters by making the outcome of Soviet aggression uncertain in their minds and by making the probable costs exceed the probable gains in the minds of any potential aggressors. Compared to the threat of escalation and retaliation, effective defense has several important advantages as a basis for deterrence: High Credibility: A potential aggressor would have no reason to doubt that a nation under attack would use its defenses to protect itself. |