Protection: Should deterrence fail, effective defense provides protection against attacking forces, reducing the damage we would suffer. Stability: Effective defense is not inherently escalatory, nor likely to be misinterpreted in a way that would lead to a worsening of the conflict. Resistance to Coercion: Because of the above advantages, effec- Reassurance: All these advantages make effective defense the most reassuring basis for deterrence. They engender both peace, and peace of mind. People are most reassured when they are actually shielded from attack. The unique advantages of effective defense explain the attractiveness we see in having thoroughly reliable strategic defenses, which is the objective of our Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) research. If effective strategic defenses prove feasible, they could bolster deterrence, provide protection should deterrence ever fail, and reassure peoples now living unprotected from nuclear attack. As President Reagan has said, "Isn't it better to save lives, than to avenge them?" The advantages of defense also explain why the United States and its allies must have strong conventional forces, and the capability to project them and support them, in order to protect our global interests. We cannot rely forever solely on a nuclear crutch and maintaining the balance of terror to deter and defeat nonnuclear aggression. But, of course, as long as our adversaries possess nuclear weapons, we must continue to maintain modern, effective nuclear forces, as we are doing. b. Should Deterrence Fail Our purpose is to prepare for war so well that we successfully deter aggression. But should deterrence fail, our strategy is to secure all U.S. and allied interests, and deny the aggressor any of his war aims. We would seek to terminate any war at the earliest practical time and restore peace on terms favorable to the United States that secure all our aims and those of our allies and friends. In seeking the earliest termination of war, the United States not only would act to defeat the aggression, but would also try to convince the attacker that his continued aggression would entail grave risks to his own interests. Still, because of the enormous military strength of the Soviet Union, the United States cannot prepare only for a "short war," which could merely tempt Moscow to believe it could outlast us in combat. U.S. strategy seeks to limit the scope and intensity of any war. and confine it to conventional means. Our goal is to end hostilities on favorable terms to us by employing conventional forces that do not engender or risk escalation. Should our attempts to limit the scope or intensity of war fail, however, U.S. strategy provides for the flexible and sufficient application of force to ensure that no area of vital interest is lost by default. The Soviet Union, together with Soviet-backed forces, is fully capable of simultaneous aggression in multiple regions of the world, and U.S. strategy must take account of that fact. We and our allies seek to deter aggression by maintaining forces that are capable of responding effectively to the most serious threats to our interests. We also want these forces to be flexible enough to give us credible responses to other threats to our interests. Should aggression occur in several regions simultaneously, U.S. military responses would be governed by existing commitments, general strategic priorities, the specific circumstances at hand, and the availability of forces. Unfortunately, Soviet military power and Soviet intentions, as best we can read them, dictate the contingencies for which we must be ready neither budget deficits nor wishful thinking can change that. - 4. Supporting Defense Policies a. Balance of Forces To protect our mutual interests, the United States and its allies must maintain military capabilities sufficient to make our defense strategy effective. This does not necessarily require that we and our allies match our adversaries in every category of weapons systems; e.g., numbers of tanks, aircraft, ships, etc. The calculus of deterrence and defense is far more complicated than just static numbers. At least as important are the performance characteristics of the weapons, the quality of people operating them, and the tactics used. Moreover, geography and the unique features of a specific security mission decisively affect the military forces needed. These variables, plus others, are weighed against the threat to our security in determining our concrete military needs for protecting U.S. interests and meeting our commitments. From these defense needs, we derive our defense programs and budget. How Under our flexible response doctrine, nuclear weapons make a crucial contribution to our deterrence of nonnuclear attack. ever, since the Soviet Union has acquired nuclear capabilities at least as strong as ours, the credibility of nuclear responses to deter conventional attack has weakened. Therefore, our nuclear forces do not relieve the United States or its allies from the need to maintain adequate conventional forces. In 1981, the largest problem we inherited arose from a 20-year Soviet arms buildup, which was accompanied in the decade of the 1970s by a 20 percent real reduction in the U.S. defense effort. The global military balance in Soviet terms, the "correlation of forces" - - was shifting in favor of the Soviet Union, in their view as well as ours. Through an investment nearly 50 percent larger than our own, the Soviets were buying advantages in virtually every area of comparison - in nuclear forces, in the NATO-Warsaw Pact balance, and in Southwest Asia. The most important truth about our recent strengthening is that we have been buying and fielding forces to implement policies and strategies over which there was little public disagreement between our Administration and all of its predecessors back to World War II. Our principal difference arose from our judgment that we must actively move toward a more adequate balance of forces, and as quickly as possible, reflecting our view of the dangers of U.S. military inferiority we saw in 1980. b. Alliances for Collective Security For free peoples, cooperation and collective security are essential to the preservation of our nations and our values. We cannot afford to return to the pre-World World II myopia of isolationism and undefended neutralism, or wishful thinking and the construction of a strategy based on unfounded hope and the desire to avoid unpopular budget decisions. As witnesses to wartime horrors retire, and turn over political and economic power to younger leaders around the world, our free peoples must not be allowed to forget the perils of ill-preparedness and the short-lived intoxication of wishful think ing. A strong system of alliances and regional cooperation helps the United States and nations friendly to our interests preserve peace and freedom. This alliance system enables us to share our common security burdens and achieve a division of labor capitalizing on the relative strengths of each state. Our alliances with the nations of Europe, Asia, and our own hemisphere, together with other important security relationships in those regions and in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, are critical strands in U.S. strategy. Efficient alliance security requires that national forces be able to fight together effectively in combined operations. It also requires a coherent program of security assistance and a sharing of key technologies so that each alliance partner can increase its capabilities for the military role it accepts for itself. Because of our alliances, we all are able to achieve a level of deterrence and defense that otherwise would be unattainable for any one of us. Furthermore, cooperation in defense matters can reinforce political cohesion and improve diplomatic and economic relationships. A more detailed discussion of these issues can be found in Section III.H.1. Security assistance is an indispensable tool of American foreign policy and an essential element in strengthening our defense posture around the world (see Section III.H.2). It is in our national security interest to keep old alliances strong and form new ones, and to assist allies and friends in strengthening their defenses against external aggression and internal conflict. Our security assistance program is the principal instrument for accomplishing this goal. program also helps us gain access to bases and overflight rights, The improves our power projection and forward-defense capabilities, and can augment the U.S. industrial base. Because American values and interests are shared by many nations that literally span the entire globe, and because of our insular geographic position, we cannot adequately defend those interests with U.S.-based forces only. The proximity of Soviet forces to our allies and overseas interests imposes severe demands on the timeliness of our response, since territory or interests once lost would be difficult to regain. Thus our strategy requires forward-deployed forces, whose purposes are to: - - Deter aggression and coercion more convincingly than could be done without a visible U.S. presence; Increase our ability to respond effectively and quickly in the event of a conflict and to bring it to a favorable end; Reassure our allies of our commitment to our common security, assist them in resisting intimidation, and encourage them to sustain their full contribution to our collective security; Facilitate in peacetime the integration of U.S. and allied forces in wartime; Discourage regional instabilities and ambiguous aggression; and Provide a more stable international environment for con- For the above purposes, the United States maintains ground and air forces in Europe, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, plus naval carrier battle groups and Marine amphibious forces in the Atlantic, the Western Pacific, and the Indian Oceans, and the Mediterranean Sea. We also forward deploy nonstrategic nuclear forces for these same purposes. It is sometimes suggested that we should "bring the troops home" to save money. Every study of this issue, however, has found that it is more expensive to bring our forces home and keep them here -- with the requisite deployment capabilities than it is to maintain them abroad. - We must also have the capability to augment and expand rapidly our forward-deployed units through reinforcement by U.S.-based Active and Reserve Component units. These forces will provide additional combat capability in the event of an extended confrontation. They will depend on airlift and sealift to get them to the combat theater in time to be effective. We will continue to complement our rapiddeployment capabilities by expanding our stocks of prepositioned material overseas. Furthermore, we will continue to make every effort to secure host nation support; overflight, landing, and bunkering rights; and access to essential overseas bases and facilities in advance of potential crises or contingencies. To a marked extent, U.S. forward deployments and our contingency plans for U.S. forces represent our judgment about the seriousness and likelihood of aggression against our interests. Yet we know we can never be certain about the location, time, and nature of future aggression against our interests. Therefore, our forces, our plans, and our way of thinking must be flexible to enable us to respond to unexpected contingencies. Our flexibility increases the importance of strategic mobility our ability to deploy and sustain our forces over great distances. New Soviet outposts in many regions of the world make it possible for Moscow to threaten friendly nations, directly and through surrogates, in places where we have no shield of land-based forward deployments. The spread of these military outposts is made more serious by the expansion of Soviet capabilities for projecting power, particularly in regions close to the Soviet Union. |