INTERNATIONAL SECURITY IN THE MODERN

WORLD
Also by Trevor C. Salmon

UNDERSTANDING THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES

(with William Nicoll)
UNNEUTRAL IRELAND: An Ambivalent and Unique Security
Policy
International Security
in the
Modern World

Edited by

Roger Carey
Professor of International Relations
and Director. International Office
Glasgow Caledonian University

and

Trevor C. Salmon
Professor of Politics
University of Aberdeen

palgrave
macmillan
*
Published in Great Britain by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke. Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Compan ies and representatives throughout the world
First edition 1992
Reprinted (with alterations) 1996
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library .
ISBN 978-0-333-49022-8 ISBN 978-1-349-10772-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-10772-8
- - - - ..- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - . ---
First published in the United States of America 1992 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y . 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-08375-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
1nternational security in the modern world I edited by Roger Carey and
Trevor C. Salmon.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-312-08375-5
I. National security. 2. World politics-I 989- 3. Security.
International. I. Carey. Roger, 1943- II. Salmon, Trevor c.,
1948-
VA I0.5.15695 1992
355'.03-<1c20 96-8905
CIP
Editorial matter and selection © Roger Carey and Trevor C. Salmon 1992, 1996
Chapter 2 © David Dunn 1992; Olapter 3 © Michael Sheehan 1992; Chapler 4 ©
James Wyllie 1992; Chapter 6 © Caroline Thomas 1992; Chapter 7 ©
Trevor C. Salmon and Raad Alkadari 1992; Chapter 9 © Tony Mason 1992;
Chapter 10 © Martin Edmonds 1992; Chapter II © Eric Groves 1992

All rights reserved. No reproduction. copy or transmission of

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10 9 8 7 6 54321
05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96
Contents
Notes on the Contributors VI

Introduction to the J996 Reprint vii

The Nature of International Security

Trevor C. Salmon

2 The Nature of Contlict and Cooperation 20

David Dunn

3 Arms Control and International Security 39

Michael Sheehan

4 The Deterrence Condition 55

James H. Wyllie

5 Alliances and Technology 78

Roger Carey

6 Third World Security 90

Caroline Thomas

7 Crises, Crisis Management and Crisis Prevention 115

Trevor C. Salmon and Raad Alkadari

8 Low-Intensity Warfare and Limited War 133

Roger Carey

9 Airpower in International Security 152

Tony Mason

10 Land Warfare 179

Martin Edmonds

II Seapower 207
Eric Grove

Index 229

v
Notes on the Contributors
Raad Alkadari. formerly a research student at the Universities of St
Andrews and Oxford. is currently working with Oxford Analytica.

Roger Carey is Professor of International Relations and Director of the

International Office at Glasgow Caledonian University.

David Dunn is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at

Staffordshire University.

Martin Edmonds is Reader in Political and Defence Studies and

Director of the Centre for Defence and International Security Studies at
Lancaster University.

Eric Grove lectures in international security in the Department of

Politics at the University of Hull.

Air Vice-Marshal Tony Mason is Leverhulme Airpower Research

Director at the Foundation for International Security.

Trevor Salmon is Professor of International Relations at the University

of Aberdeen.

Michael Sheehan is Professor of International Relations at the

University of Aberdeen.

Caroline Thomas lectures in third-world studies in the Department of

Politics at the University of Southampton.

James Wyllie is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the

University of Aberdeen.

vi
Introduction to the 1996 Reprint
In their introduction to the original hardback edition of this volume the
editors wrote that, in their view, the end of the Cold War had not, and
would not, bring about change in the underlying nature of international
security. The events in the international political arena since that time
have served only to vindicate that conclusion. It seems likely, therefore,
that although attention will be paid to different aspects of international
security from time to time - the emphasis of the political and scholarly
debate will change as has been the case over the last five decades - the
underlying nature of the international political system will not change.
International security and the need to study it will continue to arise from
the nature of the international political process, from the inevitability of
conflict in a world in which resources of all types are finite.
International security in the post-Cold War world has become, if
anything, a more complex business. There are over 190 states in the
international system and the number seems set to rise rather than to fall.
All of these states - new and old, large and small, rich and poor - are
concerned to protect the integrity of their borders and to safeguard the
social and economic interactions that are conducted within those borders
as well as the value systems of their people. Statesmen are concerned, in
other words, to safeguard the security of the state
In the contemporary, technology-driven world there is a wide variety
of means, especially of weapons and weapon systems, available to states
to seek to achieve their security. These various means have the potential
capacity to give the required 'feeling' of security to states. But the
technological and physical components of these means, which contribute
so much to the sense of security, also provide the instruments to
undermine this same feeling of security in neighbouring states - the basis
of the classical 'security dilemma'. Security may, however, be more than
an absence of fear of invasion. A high proportion of the population of the
world is threatened by environmental catastrophe. To these people the
newest and more technologically advanced form of either protecting
oneself or destroying any potential opponent are an irrelevance. In this
context 'security' takes on a different meaning.
The complexity of the means of achieving security that are available is
matched only by the volume of literature that is available in the field of
international security - there is a rapid proliferation of books and

vii
VIII Introduction to the 1996 Reprint

journals that become more specialised and more complex as time goes
on. Many of these contributions are scholarly. erudite and informative
and serve to move forward the debate in a small area of expertise.
However, the vast majority of these volumes make an assumption that
the reader is familiar with the basic ideas that underlie the whole of the
debate about international security. There is a notable dearth of volumes
that inform the intelligent layman, or the undergraduate, or member of
the arn1ed forces coming to the study of international security for the first
time, of the 'nature of the game'. It is to this group of people who arc
seeking an intelligent introduction to international security that this
volume is addressed.
The initial momentum for the volume arose from the need for such an
introduction in teaching undergraduates in Great Britain. Both of the
editors have taught international security - in one guise or another - for
more years than they care to remember. In that time a variety of fashions,
often reflecting immediate concerns of the day, have come and gone, but
there has remained a core of material that it has been necessary for all
students to understand if they are to go forward successfully to examine
in depth the more specialised and esoteric areas of the discipline.
In examining the material that we considered constituted the 'core' of
the discipline we examined several ways of organising the material into
chapters that would be digestible by the reader. There emerged no
'perfect' way to organise such material. What emerges will always be a
compromise that is inevitable if any whole is divided into parts - there
will always be 'boundary problems'.
It appeared to us that any study of international security had to begin
by discussing the nature of the matter in hand and some of the
conceptual problems involved. This is the purpose of the first two
chapters. Despite our view on the inevitability of conflict - given
credibility by events in Chechenya, Burundi, Bosnia and Somalia, to
name only the most obvious and media-attended conflicts - the
international ~ystem is not totally anarchic. There are several elements of
regulation in the security-related behaviour of states often enshrined in
legal agreements, e.g. the various arms control treaties and the Non-
Proliferation Treaty. Others are dependent upon perceptions of capability
and intent of others, e.g. deterrence, and others developed out of
perceptions of self-interest. e.g. alliances. There are several chapters in
the volume that examine the various regulatory aspects of the
international security system.
 introduction to the 1996 Reprint ix

There is no chapter on the UN. Although the reasons for the failure of
international organisations to play any significant role in international
security may justify further analysis, the ongoing inconsequentiality of
such agencies, as evidenced by events in the former Yugoslavia, justifies
the initial decision not to accord them separate consideration.
The chapter on the Third World may use what may now have become
politically unfashionable terminology but the security problems
identified are no less than when the 'Third World' was a term on every
activist's lips. Indeed, many of the issues raised now have an even
greater saliency.
If conflict is inevitable between states, the techniques of crisis
management and crisis prevention, and the 'permissible' forms of violent
contlict seem to us to be worthy of some examination and two chapters
explore these areas. If the search for security in the international system
ultimately leads to either overt or covert warfare then military might well
be requircd to defend or project the values for which the state is alleged
to stand. It seemed propcr. therefore, to conclude the volume by
examining the various forms of military power. In the chapters on
airpower and warfare in particular, the vulnerability of the civilian
population becomes apparent and this facet of modem warfare has been
graphically illustrated in the newsreel reports of Sarajevo and Gorzy. But
the contrasts between the very innovative use of very high technology
weapons in the Gulf War of 1991, very carefully and strictly controlled by
the politicians, and the poorly controlled use of ill-disciplined troops using
antiquated technology in Chechenya iIlustrates the ovelWhelming lesson of
the search for international security: security is in many ways an intangible
asset that any state possesses and that it is as critically dependent upon the
skills of politicians as the skiIls of the professional military.
Each contributor has written his or her chapter especially for this
volume. Each received the same brief - to write on a topic that they
knew well and to do so in a manner that would allow the defined 'target
readership' to be well informed. Each author has, inevitably, his or her
own style, but we believe that each has succeeded in admirably fulfilling
their brief.
In producing this volume we have received help and encouragement
from many sources, especially those who read chapters and drafts of
chapters and made comments upon them. To all of these people we
publicly record our thanks. We are especially grateful to Belinda
Holdsworth, the editor responsible for the original edition, who thought
x Introduction to the 1996 Reprint

she was about to receive a manuscript for some considerable time before
it actually arrived. Annabelle Buckley and Tim Farmiloe, responsible for
the production of the paperback version, have suffered from similar
shortcomings on our behalf. To them in particular we have a special debt.
The production staff at Macmillan also helped us to cross many 't's, and
dot many 'i's - literally - and to them not only we but also our readers
have a considerable debt.

ROGER CAREY
TREVOR C. SALMON
1 The Nature of
International Security
Trevor C. Salmon

A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT

In the 1990s it has become a cliche, but true nonetheless, that it is necessary
to reevaluate the concept of security, since it is clear that the antagonisms
that defined the nature and scope of security for a generation have been
significantly assuaged. On 19 November 1990 in Paris, for example, the
member states of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the Warsaw
Treaty Organisation signed a joint declaration 'affirming the end of the
era of division and confrontation which has lasted for more than four
decades'. They solemnly declared that 'in the new era of European rela-
tions which is beginning, they are no longer adversaries, will build new
partnerships and extend to each other the hand of friendship'. The sig-
natories affirmed their 'obligation and commitment to refrain from the
threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political inde-
pendence of any state' and recognised that 'security is indivisible and
that the security of each of their countries is inextricably linked to the
security of all the States participating in the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe' . I
Such is the transformation that occurred in Europe at the end of the
1980s and at the beginning of the 1990s that, instead of being regarded
merely as pious words. this declaration was regarded as serious and as
setting the tone for relations hCtween the states of Europe and the super-
powers in the 1990s. The scale of the transformation in Europe has prompted
many to contemplate whether the traditional conceptions of security re-
tain any vitality or viability. Even the NATO Council in the London
Declaration in July 1990 had already noted that given the changing realities
in the world, 'security and stability do not lie solely in the military dimen-
sion, and we intend to enhance the political component of our Alliance'. 2
This perception of the possible change in the components of security and
in issues attracting priority in government attention was not, however,
merely the result of the events in Eastern Europe. In 1975 Henry Kissinger,
as United States Secretary of State, had spoken of 'progress in dealing
with the traditional agenda' as no longer being enough, since a 'new and
2 International Security in the Modern World
unprecedented kind of issue has emerged. The problems of energy, re-
sources, environment. population, the issues of space and the seas now rank
with the questions of military security, ideology and territorial rivalry
which have traditionally made up the diplomatic agenda. '3 As a con-
sequence, it has become almost routine to echo Joseph Nye's observation
that 'Security problems have become more complicated as threats to state
autonomy have shifted from the simply military, in which the threat is
defined largely in terms of territorial integrity, to the economic. '4

CONFLICT AND POLITICS

This shift has in tum led some to perceive a fundamental shift in the conduct
of human relations. such that it may now be possible to speak. of a 'non-
violent conflict culture'.5 This is, of course, very much like the situation in
domestic politics in developed Western societies. where the disagreements
that exist have become routinised, institutionalised and legitimised by agreed
and well established mechanisms for resolving conflict. It is crucial to
appreciate that the focus of any politics is disagreement or conflict. This is
not 'to suggest that people engaged in politics never agree, or that open
and flagrant disagreement is necessary before we can see politics going
on; what is important is that we should recognize that conflict lies at the
heart of politics. In a world of universal agreement, there would be no
room for it.'6 Because disagreements or conflict lie at the heart of politics.
so too does the concept of power, for it is power that is the mechanism
for resolving these disagreements, for determining, in David Easton's
famous phrase, 'the allocation of values for a society'. 7 Domestically this is
achieved by the acceptance of some procedure like (but not necessarily)
elections. In some states it is still true that the procedure is the subject of
contention, and there continue to be coups, revolutions, low-intensity wars,
and usurpations.
Generally, however, a key feature of the distinction between domestic
and international politics is that internationally there is no government or
legitimate authority backed up by the monopoly of the use of force as the
ultimate sanction. In the international arena there is no international or
world government, no fully-articulated and enforceable system of inter-
national law, and no underlying consensus among the members of the
international system on acceptable goals or even, on occasion, on how
disagreements should be resolved. This has led to the traditional view that
in the absence of world government, international politics can be seen as
the constant pursuit of self-interest by the actors involved. As Reynolds
 Trevor C. Salmon 3
has noted, from this perspective, international politics is 'preeminently
concerned with the art of achieving group ends against the opposition of
other groups. But the groups are unconstrained in this competition by
anything other than the limits on their power, and the losses that their
controllers think they might suffer from the adoption of particular courses
of action'.8 International politics is therefore based on the recognition of
disagreement, and that the capacity to impose one's will 'is limited by the
will and effective ability of other states to impose theirs. The conduct of
international relations must therefore always be a delicate adjustment of
power to power... .'9
Recognition of disagreement provides a link with the basic definition
of politics given earlier. It also raises the issue of whether international
politics in practice is completely distinct from domestic politics because, as
Howard goes on to say, the delicate adjustment of power to power leads
to 'an order which though fully satisfying to nobody, is just tolerable to
all' .10 It is order nonetheless. Such a perspective in turn leads to the realisa-
tion that while disagreement and conflict lie at the heart of international
politics, and indeed of politics in general, cooperation and agreement are
also to be found in the world, even though violence is lurking in the
background. This dichotomy has led historically to two major philosoph-
ical disputes about the fundamental nature of international relations:
the Hobbesian state of nature versus the Lockeian, and the Realist
versus Utopian debate of the first part of the twentieth century.

A QUESTION OF PERSPECTIVES

For Hobbes, writing in 1651, 'during all the time that men live without a
common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which
is called Warre; and such a warre, is as of every man, against every man
. , , every man is Enemy to every man , , , men live without other security,
other than their own strength', In Hobbes's view this situation allowed
for no industry, culture, building, art and 'no Society; and which is worst
of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of
man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short', Whilst this has never existed
per se, 'yet in all times, Kings and Persons of Soveraigne authority. because
of their Independency, are in continuall jealousies, and in the state and
posture of Gladiators; having their weapons pointing, and their eyes fixed
on one another; that is, their Forts, Garrisons, and Guns upon the Frontiers
of their Kingdoms; and continuall Spyes upon their neighbours; which is
a posture of War.'" This is not, of course, an accurate reflection of con-
4 International Security in the Modern World
temporary international relations,12 but it still encapsulates the fundamental
assumptions of many about the nature of the system and of man.
Locke took a rather more optimistic view, although also writing of a
state of nature. Locke did not assert, as Hobbes had done, that in such a state
of nature antagonism was the supreme force between men. On the contrary,
he firmly believed that sociability was the strongest bond between men.
Men were equal, sociable and free; but they were not licentious because
they were governed by the law of nature. He was clear that nature did not
arm man against man, and that some degree of society was possible even in
this state preceding government per se. 13 Three centuries later the differing
types of perception and assumptions about human nature that influenced
Hobbes and Locke were still able to divide approaches to the study of
the nature of international relations.
Modem International Relations as an academic subject grew out of the
belief that war must be prevented and that there must be no more carnage
like that of 1914-18. Between 1918 and 1939 the debate was renewed, this
time between Utopians/Rationalists and Realists, a debate reflected in E. H.
Carr's The Twenty Year Crisis}4 For Realists, power is the critical ingredi-
ent of international life. It cannot be eliminated, and is the primary motiva-
tion of states, and the pursuit of power is the primary obligation of states.
International politics concerns survival in a hostile environment.
In the post-1945 period these ideas were classically expressed by Hans
Morgenthau, who argued that 'the world, imperfect as it is from the rational
point of view, is the result of forces inherent in human nature.' He went
on: 'The main signpost that helps political realism find its way through
the landscape of international politics is the concept of interest defined
in terms of power.... We assume that statesmen think and act in terms
of interest defined as power.... International politics, like all politics, is a
struggle for power. Whatever the ultimate aims of international politics,
power is always the immediate aim. 'U
Given their pessimistic outlook, Realists also see war as a necessary evil,
or at least an inherent evil in the system. This is because the basis of order
is the delicate adjustment of power to power, or what came to be known
as the balance of power. States provide for their security by seeking to
balance the military power of their possible opponents. Periodically the
perceived balance will be challenged or tested, and those tests and chal-
lenges tend to involve military power. While it is too simplistic to see
this state as a reflection of •fallen man' and •sin', it is in marked contrast
to the Utopian/Rationalist view, originating in the Enlightenment.
This view held that man is perfectible or at least capable of improve-
ment, perhaps with the aid of some social engineering. It assumed the
 Trevor C. Salmon 5
inherent goodness of man. With rationality, man can achieve anything,
including ways of transforming human behaviour, establishing norms and
rules of conduct acceptable and apparent to all and ordering his affairs
so as to avoid war and conflict. It was felt that on this basis an harmo-
nious international political order could be achieved. This tradition made
great play with the role of international institutions, international law,
and the peaceful intent of public opinion. War was the result of a failure
of rationality, and of a failure to follow the will of the people. The debate
between these schools became entangled in the events of the 1930s and
the arguments about appeasement as against more traditional views of
international politics.
In the 1990s there has been a renewal of these themes, although in a
different form. This can be seen in the recent emergence of the so-called
'new realism', or as William T. R. Fox puts it, the distinction between
'doctrinal' and 'empirical' Realists. The former 'assert(s) the basically
rapacious character of contending great powers in a Hobbesian world',
whilst an 'empirical' Realist, looking to see how states actually behave,
'discovers that most statesmen most of the time seek security rather than
hegemony' and are aware of the competing demands upon resources and so
on that are placed upon them and their societies. 16 Whilst this new approach
is still being developed, it can be seen that it takes a much broader view of
both the nature of international relations as a whole and of security in
particular. It has been heavily influenced by the rise in the 1970s and 1980s
of the concepts of 'interdependence' and 'structuralism'.
Interdependence, in particular, has alerted the intellectual community to
the complexity of today's world and to the point that governments and,
perhaps more particularly, their citizens have a number of needs, values and
concerns, such that simple military defence of territory is no longer in
many cases the primary concern, a point made eloquently by Caroline
Thomas in Chapter 6 below. Although this was apparent before the oil crisis
of 1973-74, that event had a profound effect on the climate of opinion,
generating work on topics like 'energy security'. It came to be more fully
appreciated that security involved 'not merely . . . the maintenance of a
state's physical survival and territorial security but also ... the perpetuation
of the values, patterns of social relations, life styles and varied other
elements that characterize [a] ... way of life ',,7
Indeed. if survival was the original motivation for the creation of the
state, or the Hobbesian Leviathan that would bring peace and order to
the disordered world of a state of nature, it was an insufficient motivation
once that peace and order appeared to have been secured. Then other needs,
like prosperity, began to be more important, and there is an extensive
6 International Security in the Modern World
literature on individual need hierarchies, which build up from the most
basic need of survival or biological continuation of the system.
This type of perspective led Keohane and Nye to the concept of 'com-
plex interdependence'. Two characteristics of complex interdependence are
especially relevant: 'The agenda of interstate relationships consists of
multiple issues that are not arranged in a clear or consistent hierarchy.
This absence of hierarchy among issues means, among other things, that
military security does not consistently dominate the agenda . . . [and]
Military force is not used by governments toward other governments ...
when complex interdependence prevails. '18 It is important to note that
Keohane and Nye are not arguing that military force is irrelevant, but
rather that in some situations. particularly among industrialised, pluralist,
democratic states, force is 'unimportant as an instrument of policy' in
their relations with one another. What is also noteworthy is that this inter-
dependence does not mean there is no competition between states, but
rather that the competition takes on somewhat different forms, and is
limited as to means.
Structuralism is based upon assumptions relating to the politics of
dominance and dependence. An outgrowth of the work of Marx and
Lenin. structuralism has been the subject of renewed interest since the
1950s, as greater attention was paid to the issues of colonialism, imperial-
ism, and the problems of the lack of socioeconomic development in the
newly-independent and emerging states. As the term implies. structuralism
takes the view that '[a]lthough the state still acts as a focus of activity and
coercive power, it stands in a particular structural relationship to dominant
economic and political interests. which use it as a channel or a support
for the pursuit of their aims',,9
In effect, the assumption is that the real forces at work, or actors at work,
are the dominant classes or economic interests. and that the 'structural
relationship' in the international political and economic system means that
those in dependent positions are prevented by the status quo of current
structures from achieving real independence and influence. Especially im-
portant, therefore, in this view is the position a state occupies in the system,
and this has led to great emphasis being placed upon the centre-periphery
relationship, 'in which the major determinant of international action
has been seen as the confrontation between the dominant "centre" of
developed capitalism and the dependent "periphery" of the less developed
areas. '20 Such considerations structure all the relationships of those in-
volved, including security.
While no one perspective alone is now regarded as entirely satisfactory,
the traditional perspective focusing upon power is still strong in govern-
 Trevor C. Salmon 7
mental circles and tends still to predominate in debates about security,
although this is less true than used to be the case.

THE CURRENT DEBATE: OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM

These questions about perspectives are relevant to the current position in

Europe and to views about security, as there still remain pessimists and
optimists about state behaviour and human nature. Recently this has been
seen in the quite different perspectives offered by Ken Booth and John J.
Mearsheimer. Booth has promoted the 'New Thinking About Strategy and
International Security'.21 Optimists believe that the end of the Cold War in
Europe could bring about a complete change in the way in which states
think of themselves, others and security. They argue that the situation in
Europe might be transformed such that the whole of Europe can enjoy
the type of relationship that has prevailed amongst the states of Western
Europe for a generation or more, such that 'war is not merely unthinkable
but materially impossible',22 it being inconceivable that Britain and
France, for example, would go to war against each other. The goal is the
creation of international security, such that a condition exists 'in which
states have a justifiably high expectation that there will not be a major war,
and that in the peace that prevails their core values will not be under threat.
. . . International security will exist when the members of international
society reach common consent about the rules of behaviour between them
and about the practical implementations of those rules. '23 A model for
such transformation exists in the European Community and, indeed, the
objective of such a transformation was the basic rationale of the founders.
Whatever the merits and demerits of the EC, whatever it mayor may not
have achieved, it has among its members most assuredly fulfilled its origi-
nal purpose. Those who take this view would go on to argue that this
shows that it is false to say - or assume - that war is a necessary or inherent
feature of the international political system.
Karl Deutsch, of course, observed many years ago that 'certain areas
... have, in the past, 'permanently' eliminated war ... war has been
eliminated permanently, for all practical purposes, over large areas'.
Deutsch invokes the notion of 'security-community' in which, among a
group of people within a territorial area, a 'sense of community' had
developed. A concomitant of this was the development of a set of institu-
tions and practices strong enough to assure for a long period dependable
expectations of peaceful change, expectation of peaceful change being a
defining characteristic of community.24 This conception of community
8 International Security in the Modern World
conjures up also Kenneth Boulding's view of peace as other than 'the
absence of something - the absence of tunnoi 1, tension, conflict, and war'.
Peace is better to be seen as 'a condition of good management, orderly
resolution of conflict, hannony associated with mature relationships,
gentleness, and love' .2~
For others this was and will be too high an expectation, incapable of
fulfilment. Pessimists argue, ala Hobbes, that we are merely witnessing the
transfonnation of systems, that while one fonn of conflictual relationship
in Europe has ended, another is already emerging, with the rise of na-
tionalist/ethnic disputes. They take the view that the wave of the future
is not community and peace but several states being tom apart, with
Yugoslavia as a more reliable precursor of the future. Thus Mearsheimer
is pessimistic about the future in Europe 'on the argument that the distri-
bution and character of military power are the root causes of war and
peace'.26 Thus, along with John Lewis Gaddis, author of The Long Peace,
he stresses the role of powerY Mearsheimer is clear that the 'peacefulness
of the postwar era arose for three principal reasons: the bipolarity of the
distribution of power on the Continent, the rough equality in military
power between those two polar states, and the appearance of nuclear
weapons, which vastly expanded the violence of war, making deterrence
more robust', that is, it was based on power.28
It is difficult to gainsay the impact of nuclear weapons, although it is as
well to remember that there had been an expansion of violence in the
generations leading up to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. It was
not nuclear weapons that had already left a scene in Europe in May 1945
where' In the cities, the skyline was jagged with destruction: amid the ruins
and craters, rubble and wreckage blocked the streets ... machinery rusted
in bombed-out factories .... Roads were pitted with shell-holes.... Much
of the countryside was charred and blackened ... in some areas, unchecked
by peasant bows and arrows, herds of wild pigs roamed the land for forage.
Yet amid the destruction there were people.... The survivors ... for them,
this wasteland of rubble, rags and hunger was a prison without privacy
or dignity; and like all prisons it smelled . . . of sweat and vomit, dirty
socks and excrement; of decay and burning and the unburied dead. '29 No
wonder Churchill described it as a ·charnel-house'.
It has been this expansion of force, magnified and exacerbated by
nuclear weapons, that has made the debate about analytical perspectives
not just an arcane debate among academics but a central issue of our time.
It is not just the degree of the destructive power of these weapons that is
important. What has also proved to be unique is their speed of delivery and
 Trevor C. Salmon 9
both their relative ease of delivery and penetration, so that it is no longer
necessary to defeat an enemy before d4~stroying them. The Gulf War was a
demonstration of the contemporary firepower available, its accuracy, and
its destructive capability. The Gulf, the Iran-Iraq war, the Falklands,
Afghanistan and the Middle East have all also demonstrated that despite
all the well-known horrors of war, it remains, in some situations, an instru-
ment of policy for both defensive and offensive purposes.
It remains so because, as noted earlier, disagreement is at the heart of
politics, whether domestically or internationally. The question then be-
comes how that disagreement will be resolved. The answer to that question
will depend upon the analytical perspective or paradigm used. It ought to
be clear from the foregoing that the perspective or paradigm used will
affect the questions one asks about thl~ world, the type of information and
evidence sought, the type of answer that emerges and - perhaps most
crucially - the explanation with which one concludes. This in tum pro-
foundly affects the view of the future one holds - whether to be optimistic
or pessimistic - and it will even more importantly affect the approach
of individual statesmen to questions of security.

PERCEPTIONS AND THREATS

The question of perception is crucial because 'State action is the action

taken by those acting in the name of the state. Hence the state is the
decision-makers. '30 Action is not the result of some deterministic logic or
unseen hand or plan. It requires decision-makers to decide and individuals
to act. The fact that individuals are so important has significant implica-
tions, because they act on their perception of what the world is like. They
do not act on the basis of what some omniscient, objective observer may
know the world to be like. This is critical because it raises the vexed
question of perceptions.
Despite the reconnaissance revolution (the development of reconnais-
sance satellites and so on), policymakers cannot 'know' what the other side
is thinking or will do. Indeed, the very definition of a state as the •other side'
is subjective. It is interesting how subjective this is. Bernard Cohen has
observed that 'if we knew of certainty that no nation was in a state of
preparedness to undertake war with any prospect of success ... there would
be a profound change in the climate of international relationships'.)'
Nuclear weapons may have now brought that situation about, but it is
still worthy of note that it is not nuclear weapons themselves that neces-
to International Security in the Modern World
sarily cause the problem. Both Britain and France possess nuclear cap-
abilities, both possess the necessary delivery systems and so on, but neither
would regard the other as a threat.
This suggests that it is not simply annaments in and of themselves that
cause the problem, contrary to the well-known view of Lord Grey, writing
a decade after the commencement of the First World War. Reflecting on
events leading to the war he said: 'great armaments lead inevitably to
war. If there are armaments on one side, there must be annaments on
other sides. . . . While one nation anns, other nations cannot tempt it
to aggression by remaining defenceless .... Each measure taken by one
nation is noted, and leads to counter-measures by others.'
Thus, the increase of annaments that is intended in each nation to
produce consciousness of strength, and a sense of security, does not
produce these effects. On the contrary, it produces a consciousness of
the strength of other nations and a sense of fear. Fear begets suspicion
and distrust and evil imaginings of all sorts, till each government feels
it would be criminal and a betrayal of its own country not to take
every precaution, while every government regards every precaution
of every other government as evidence of hostile intent. ... 32
In modem parlance, this is the 'security dilemma', which John Herz
wrote of in the early 1950s. For Herz, this was almost a structural phenom-
enon, namely that 'the mere instinct of self-preservation . . . leads to
competition for ever more power' in a vicious circle. 33 A key issue, there-
fore, becomes why states perceive threats in some situations and not in
others. In the well-worn analogy, an individual has a very different view
of threat when a Rottweiler approaches if (a) it is on a lead and with a
friendly neighbour as against (b) it is on its own with its teeth bared. In
many situations it is not the weapons per se, the teeth, that generate the
tension and anxiety, it is the perception of the situation, what one believes
the intention and indeed the capability of the animal to be. As J. David
Singer put it many years ago: 'Each perceives the other as a threat to its
national security, and such perception is a function of both estimated
capability and estimated intent. To state the relationship in quasi-
mathematical form: Threat-Perception"= Estimated Capability x Estimated
Intent. '34
These perceptual matters are inherently difficult to deal with. This is
largely because, as Colonel George Lincoln puts it, 'until power is used, it
is what people think it is?' It is also partly because of the preconceptions
of policymakers, partly because they are dealing with a very uncertain
environment, and partly because the penalty for error is potentially cata-
 Trevor C. Salmon 11
strophic. This in tum tends to lead a 'worst-case scenario' situation, where
it is deemed prudent to plan for and expect the worst. Thus the 1990 British
government statement on Defence Estimates, whilst acknowledging the
transfonnation in Eastern Europe, and acknowledging that this 'raises new
questions about the very nature of security', went on to say, 'these are still
early days and we cannot yet be certain what the outcome will be ... our
approach to defence must be based on being able to respond to a range of
possible outcomes, not just the one we hope to see. Our defence is an
insurance policy, to make sure that we are still covered even if things
go wrong.'36
Those with such mind-sets are always mindful that while intentions
can change very rapidly, capabilities are rather more pennanent, less sus-
ceptible to quick structural change, although capable of rapid mobilisation
if intentions shift. A degree of caution is thus deemed prudent, but may
bring about the very danger it seeks to avoid. Nonetheless, caution is
understandable given the long historical background of mutual suspicion,
and the uncertain and dynamic situation in the fonner Soviet Union. That
uncertainty about Soviet intentions still existed even in 1991 is evident from
the furore over their apparent breaches of the Conventional Forces in
Europe (CFE) treaty signed amid much ballyhoo in Paris in November 1991
and the events in the Baltic Republics in the winter of 1990-91.

THE UTILITY OF MILITARY POWER

This has reinforced the notion, prevalent for over forty years, that in an
uncertain and dangerous world, states should rely upon their own strength,
particularly military strength, to maintain international peace and their own
security. It remains the case that, as Britain discovered in 1982 with the
unprovoked Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, there are cases
where states feel obliged to undertake unilateral action to defend their
interests. Given the lack of world government and the problems of the
United Nations in imposing views and international order, there remains
the problem of what governments are to do in a situation like that of
Britain in 1982, or indeed the situation that arose following the Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait and its refusal to withdraw or to be intimidated by the
huge coalition amassed against it. While some argued that sanctions should
be given time to work, a clear consensus emerged that they were too slow
(and that the events of 1990-91 showed that sanctions are not an alternative
to force but often require to be backed up by military enforcement). The
international community decided that as a last resort it was still necessary
12 International Security in the Modern World
to have available - and ultimately to use - military power, when all else
failed, or would not achieve certain results within an acceptable time, so as
to prevent the fait accompli of annexation.
While it is hard to disagree that the utility of military power has become
more circumscribed, and that the utility of economic power has increased,
recent events tend to demonstrate that military power is the ultimate weapon
states perceive for protecting and promoting their vital national interests.
They discover that on occasion, force or the threat of force is the only means
whereby they may achieve their objectives. Thus, while attention is rightly
paid to the growing importance of other dimensions of security, 'the mili-
tary one attracts disproportionate attention in thinking about security....
Mostly ... because military means can still dominate outcomes in all the
other sectors. A state and its society can be, in their own terms, secure in
the political, economic, societal and environmental dimensions, and yet
all of these accomplishments can be undone by military failure. '37 There is
still a widely-held belief that 'in a society of sovereign states, a power can
in the last resort indicate its interpretation of justice or defend its vital
interests only by a willingness to employ force' ,38 albeit that there is a
greater awareness now that force is not applicable in all cases, especially
those of complex interdependence.
It also must not be forgotten that states are not just concerned with
avoiding war or being dragged into the use of weapons of mass destruction.
As noted earlier, states have a number of goals they wish to pursue, as do
their citizens. In addition, many have drawn the lesson from the 1930s that
peace and security do not necessarily result from surrender of one's own
values. As William Kaufmann observed in 1956, states have a duality of
purpose, namely that they require 'to manage their affairs skilfully enough
to avoid the terrible weapons and still uphold essential interests'. 39 But the
crucial point is that it is a duality, and a feature of the postwar period has
been that states have pursued both objectives and it has been the relation-
ship between them that has often proved decisive in diplomatic bargaining.
If and when they have been involved in a 'competition in risk-taking' it
can be argued that it has been their 'comparative resolve to use force' or the
'relative risk-taking propensities of the two sides' that has been crucial in
determining outcomes, and that this in tum has depended upon their per-
ception of the 'balance of interests between them'.40 States do not just
seek a peaceful world. They also seek a world that suits their interests and
a world in which they can enhance those interests either to the mutual
advantage of all or to their own advantage.
States are now more aware of the mutuality of the situation in which they
find themselves, and indeed it is not without reason that their relationship
 Trevor C. Salmon 13
has been tenned an 'adversarial partnership'. Obviously the major states
will tend to be cautious and they are aware of the risks. It is for this reason
that one important effect of nuclear weapons has been to place a high
premium on the use of the threat of force, rather than the physical use of
force itself. Garnett was right to observe that it is 'not logical to argue
that since the most extreme kind of military violence imaginable is
mutually destructive and senseless, the use of all kinds of military force
is equally pointless.... Those who query the value of massive military
power usually have a very narrow interpretation of its usefulness ... [that
it is] useful if it is actually exercised in war, whereas in fact there are
reasons for thinking that military power is most useful when it is not
being used', and the 'hazards of modem war, far from changing this situ-
ation, have actually reinforced it' .41
This perception has been the bedrock of much strategic literature in the
last forty years, and was the foundation not only of deterrence but also of
the 'diplomacy of violence', the use of threats as bargaining power in a new
type of diplomacy.42 Schelling showed to the satisfaction of many that
statesmen do not necessarily have to threaten coolly, calmly or rationally to
initiate nuclear war, but merely to take steps which may dramatically
increase the level of tension, heighten the possibility of events becoming
uncontrollable, and thus bring the prospect of nuclear war much c1oser.41
Threats to initiate or escalate violence have often in the past played an
important supporting role in diplomacy in both crises and limited wars,
although, as the superpowers entered the 1970s and beyond, they appeared
to become ever more cautious in their relations with one another.

THE NATURE OF POWER AND SECURITY

The concept of threats brings one back to the concept of security. Although
Peter Mangold has warned of those who engage in the debate regarding the
redefinition of security and who tend to confuse the term security with
threats,44 it is significant that most definitions of security invoke, directly or
indirectly, the notion of threat. A seminal definition was provided by
Wolfers, namely that 'security, in an objective sense, measures the absence
of threats to acquired values, in a subjective sense, the absence of fear
that such values will be attacked'.45
An advantage of this approach is that Wolfers again alerts us to the
perceptual dimension. Implicit in this is that security can only be relative,
and not absolute. This is because, as long as security is perceived to depend
on some fonn of strength or power, it will always be relational and relative.
14 International Security in the Modern World
If power is 'a coercive influence based on the threat of value deprivation
or penalties' ,46 it will depend on the old adage that the ability to influence
is dependent upon who is trying to influence whom to do what, and upon
the relative resources and power in the specific context of the parties
involved, upon the 'policy contingency framework'.·7 This means that an
instrument of power in one context may be totally inappropriate in another
context; threatening to bomb a state is unlikely to persuade it to vote for
you in the UN, whereas the same threat may persuade it not to invade, or
to withdraw once it has invaded. Power is, of course, also a dynamic, as
well as relative concept. In other words, the potency of a missile is de-
pendent upon whether the other side has an anti-missile system. ICBMs
theoretically could be made impotent by the successful development of
a Strategic Defence Initiative. What matters, then, is not the absolute level
of capabilities but capabilities relative to those of the putative opponent.
This again feeds into the perceptual quagmire and the security dilemma
mentioned earlier, because of the uncertainty as to what the putative op-
ponent is trying to do, or has done. This in tum leads back to the question
of perspective or paradigm.

COLLECTIVE NEEDS AND COMMON SECURITY

So far the discussion has been focused at the level largely of the state, and
this reflects the belief that the state is still the predominant actor on impor-
tant matters in international politics, but it is both important and necessary
to recognise that it is the individual citizen who is the consumer of security,
in the sense that the fundamental rationale of a state is about providing for
the needs of the individual or of groups of individuals. This also alerts us
to the fact that for many it is questions relating to the environment that are
the threat to their existence. Events in south-east Africa and Bangladesh
remind us that the real everyday threat for many is starvation or destruc-
tion by the elements. For the citizens of these states arcane debates about
nuclear parity, or arms control, are not central to the daily grind of seeking
to survive. States in these areas and arguably states in other parts of
the world need to be concerned about the meeting of the basic needs of the
world's population. It is also becoming ever clearer that some threats are
of a collective good variety, namely that provision to meet them must be
on a non-exclusive basis, and that no one state can save itself from some
of these effects, and must act in cooperation with others if it and they are
to meet the problem.
 Trevor C. Salmon 15

Following from this and the idea of 'adversarial partners', the idea has
gained ground recently that security needs to be seen as 'common security'
- that while accepting the self-interest motivation of states, one must also
look to their interdependence. It is as well to remember that interdepend-
ence 'means mutual dependence', dependence being 'a state of being
determined or significantly affected by external forces'. Interdependence,
therefore, means 'situations characterized by reciprocal effects among
countries or among actors in different countries'.48
In the security field, this line of argument was articulated by the Palme
Commission in 1982. It pointed out that 'All nations would be united in
destruction if nuclear war were to occur. Recognition of this interdepend-
ence means that nations must begin to organize their security policies in
co-operation with one another,,49 it being believed that it is no longer
sensible for one state to pursue or organize for security at the expense of
another or without due regard to the position of another, so that 'military
capabilities, doctrines and postures should be so organized as to maximize
mutual rather than unilateral security'. ~ A problem, which reveals some-
thing of the paradigm issue, is the question of 'should' and what is to
happen in a situation involving a recalcitrant state.
While some measures might be taken, and indeed have been taken, to
build confidence and lower tension, this is very different from moving the
whole ethos of defence and strategy to doctrines of 'non-provocative'
'alternative' or 'defensive defence'. It remains the case that unilateral
action on these matters will be gradual and limited. Although there has been
a significant effort by the superpowers in the field of 'crisis prevention' (see
below, pp. 123-30), there is still scope for further measures, as is illustrated
by the fact that no progress had been made on ratifying the CFE deal well
into the summer of 1991.

CONCLUSION

Efforts in the field of crisis-prevention, endeavours in the area of Con-

fidence and Security Building Measures (CSBMs), and the approach of
the Palme Commission are a reminder that security is not just a military
phenomenon. Much effort has been put into building confidence so as to
transform the nature of relations in the way Deutsch alluded to and building
some sort of security community. The objective might be compared to that
indefinable presence or absence of a sense of security that an individual
has when walking home late at night. Does it cross one's mind at all even
16 International Security in the Modern World

to think of there being any possibility of danger. one being blissfully

unaware or unconscious of any threat. or is one constantly alert for shad-
ows, noises and expected alanns and threats? Security then is at least partly
an attitude of mind, and it depends heavily upon the perceived nature of
the environment one is in. Often the need to take physical measures is a last
resort, or only a latent possibility. Often the thought simply never occurs
that there is a problem.
What is in prospect now is not that the states of Europe will abandon the
military instrument as a means of resolving conflicts between themselves,
but that they will increasingly see it as a last resort or residual capability.
They will attempt to emphasise instead security regimes that are based
much more on the 'economic and political' aspects of security, rather
than the predominantly military. The EC has shown that such a transforma-
tion is possible, even in the relations between states that only six years
before creating the first European community (the European Coal and
Steel Community in 1951), had just concluded their third major war in
70 years. It is also worthy of note that in its dealings with third parties the
EC has encountered Some of the problems in trying to separate the eco-
nomic, political and military aspects of security, problems vividly illus-
trated in the Gulf crisis and war.
This has shown that any discussion of security needs to be holistic, not
just in the sense of individual, state and system. but also in the context of
its multidimensional aspects.~1 After all, the UK itself provides a good
example, where an internal security problem, namely Ulster, which has
been in turmoil for over twenty years, has proved to be a real threat to the
way of life of many of its citizens. its values and indeed the physical
survival of government. The UK is not alone in this regard. For many
states the real threat is not their neighbour but the internal problems of
development and lack of legitimacy of regime and the state itself. Those
who write as if force were obsolescent need to be reminded that the major-
ity of the world is not industrialised, pluralist nor democratic, and does
not live under the direct shadow of nuclear or weapons of mass destruc-
tion. Those states, therefore, have different security concerns, as Caroline
Thomas shows. ~2 They remind us that the security agenda is broad, but
they also remind us that military factors are still of great relevance.
 Trevor C. Salmon 17

NOTES

I. Text of CFE Joint Declaration, Paris, 19 November 1990. Foreign and Com-
monwealth Office, Arms Control and Disarmament Quarterly Review,
no. 19, January 1991.
2. Ibid., no. 18, July 1990.
3. Henry A. Kissinger, 'A New National Partnership', Department of State
Bulletin (17 February 1975), p. 199.
4. Joseph Nye, 'The contribution of strategic studies: future challenges', in The
Changing Strategic Landscape, Adelphi Paper no. 235, pp. 24-5.
5. Jahn E., Lemaitre, P. and Weaver, 0., 'European Security; Problems of
Research on Non-Military Aspects', Copenhagen Papers, no. 1, Copenhagen
Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, 1987.
6. Miller, J. D. B., The Nature of Politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962),
p.14.
7. David Easton, The Political System (New York: Knopf, 1953), p. 129.
8. P. A. Reynolds, An Introduction to International Relations (London: Longman,
1971), borrowing from Quincy Wright, The Study of International Relations
App1eton-Century-Crofts, 1955, p. 33.
9. Michael Howard, 'Military Power and International Order', in John Garnett
(ed.), Theories of Peace and Security (London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 46.
10. Idem.
II. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth:
Pelican, 1968), pp. 186-8.
12. See Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics
(London: Macmillan, 1977), pp. 46-51, for a discussion of why the Hobbesian
analysis is inappropriate to the contemporary system, namely: lack of world
government has not produced chaos; conditions among individuals and states
are not synonymous; and; there are limitations to the domestic analogy.
13. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, edited by Peter Laslett (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
14. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Year Crisis. 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study
of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1939; New York: Harper and
Row, 1964).
15. Hans Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and
Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 4th edn, 1967), pp. 3-25.
16. William T. R. Fox, 'E. H. Carr and political realism: vision and revision',
Review of IlIternational Studies, Vol. ) 1, no. 1, January 1985, pp. 12-13.
17. John Spanier, Games Nations Play: Analysing International Politics (New
York: Praeger, 1981), p. 60.
18. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence (Glenview
Illinois: Scott, ForesmanlLittle Brown, 2nd edn 1989), pp. 24-5 (emphasis in
original), and pp. 27-9.
19. Richard Little and Michael Smith, 'Introduction' in Richard Little and Michael
Smith (eds), Perspectives on World Politics (London: Routledge, 1991, 2nd
edn), p. 8.
On structuralism sec Johan Galtung, The European Community: A Super-
power in the Making (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973); Immanuel Wallerstein,
The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the
18 International Security in the Modern World
European World Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic
Press, 1974); The Modern World-System 1/: Mercantilism and the Consolida-
tion of the European World Economy, 1600-1750 (New York: Academic
Press, 1980).
20. Ibid., pp. 8-9.
21. Ken Booth (ed.), New Thinking about Strategy and International Security
(London: Harper Collins Academic, 1991).
22. Robert Schuman, 9 May 1950, creating the European Coal and Steel Com-
munity, Keesing's Contemporary Archives, Vol. 7 (1948-50) (Keynsham:
Keesing's, 1950), pp. 10701-2.
23. Ken Booth, 'Steps towards stable peace in Europe: a theory and practice of
coexistence', International Affairs, Vol. 66, no. 1 (January 1990), p. 27.
24. Karl W. Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area
(New York: Greenwood, 1969), pp. 4-6.
25. Kenneth Boulding, Stable Peace (Austin: University of Texas, 1978), p. 3.
26. John 1. Mearsheimer, 'Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold
War',lnternational Security, Vol. IS, no. 1 (Summer 1990), p. 6.
27. John Lewis Gaddis, 'The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar
International System',Internati01lai Security, Vol. 10, no. 4 (1986).
28. Mearsheimer, op. cit., p. 11.
29. Richard Mayne, The Recovery of EUl'Ope (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
1970), pp. 29-30.
30. Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin, (eds.), Foreign Policy
Decision-making (New York: The Free Press, 1963), p. 65.
31. B. V. Cohen, 'Disarmament and International Law', US Mission to UN Press
Release No. 1469,8 May 1952, quoted in J. David Singer, 'Threat Perception
and the armaments-tension dilemma', Journal of Conflict Resolution,
Vol. II, no. I, pp. 91-2.
32. Quoted in P. Noel-Baker, The Arms Race (London: Calder, 1959), pp. 80-1.
33. John H. Herz, Political Realism and Political Idealism (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1959), p. 4. See also his International Politics in the Atomic
Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), Chapter 10.
34. Singer, op. cit., p. 94.
35. Quoted in Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New
York: Harper and Row, 1957), p. 7.
36. Statement on the Defence Estimate, Vol. I, April 1990 (London: HMSO,
1990), Cm 1022-1, p. 5.
37. Barry Buzan, 'Is international security possible?' in Booth (ed.), New Think-
ing about Strategy and International Security, op. cit., p. 35.
38. Kissinger, op. cit., p. 4.
39. W. W. Kaufmann, Military Power and National Security (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1956), p. 262.
40. R. Osgood and R. E. Tucker, Force, Order and Justice (Baltimore, lohns
Hopkins University Press, 1967), p. 148.
41. John Garnett, 'Introduction', in John Garnett (ed.), Theories of Peace and
Security (London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 28.
42. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1966), Chapter I. See also his Strategy ofConflict (London:
Oxford University Press, 1963).
 Trevor C. Salmon 19
43. Schelling, Strategy of Conflict, ibid., Chapter 3, 'The Threat that leaves
something to chance'.
44. Peter Mangold, 'Security: new ideas, old ambiguities', The World Today,
Vol. 47, no. 2 (February 1991), p. 30. See also Peter Mangold, National
Security and International Relations (London: Routledge, 1990).
45. Arnold Wolfers, Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1962), p. 150.
46. Klaus Knorr, On the Uses of Military Power in the Nile/ear Age (princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1966), p. 17.
47. See the excellent David Baldwin, 'Power Analysis and World Politics',
World Politics, Vol. XXXI, (January 1979), pp. 161-94.
48. Keohane and Nye, op. cit., p. 8.
49. Palme Commission, Common Security: A Programme for Disarmament
(London: Pan, 1982), p. 6.
50. Ken Booth, 'Conclusion', in Booth (ed.), op. cit., p. 344.
51. See Barry Buzan, People, States a"d Fear, 2nd edn (London: Harvester
Wheatsheaf, 1991), passim, and Booth (ed.), op. cit.
52. See below pp. 90-114.
2 The Nature of Conflict
and Cooperation
David Dunn

In this chapter two themes will be explored. in three sections. The two
themes are the increasingly destructive nature of modem warfare and the
astonishing increase in the scale of international cooperation. The first
section, adopting an evolutionary perspective. surveys developments in
these areas in the modem era. The second attempts a broad classification.
while the third assesses how we have tried to understand the problems
created by the juxtaposition of conflict and cooperation in the modem
world.

AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE

The nineteenth century marked the transition from the old to the new in
so many aspects of human life and experience. Industrialisation, the devel-
opment of means of transport on land and sea, urbanisation and the de-
velopment of mass society are all products of the nineteenth-century
experience. In political terms, too, there were great changes and it is that
period to which we look to see the development of capitalism, socialism,
democracy, communism, liberalism and nationalism, the great creeds of
our age. The nineteenth century also saw the great shift of European
influences and populations, to North and South America, Asia, Africa and
Australasia.
Surprisingly, therefore. especially in light of these phenomenal changes
and upheavals in politics and society, for many the period from 1815 to
1914 is known as the century of peace. The century was 'peaceful' in this
sense; there was no great war which involved the great powers of the day.
Of course, there were wars, amongst which we might mention the American
Civil War (1861-65) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), as well as
the revolutions of 1848 and the •Scramble for Africa' after 1870, with the
major European powers extending their influence into Africa and creating
new colonial territories. In much of this there was great tension between
the states involved and no little bloodshed, but it was assumed that where

20
 David Dunn 21
there was an absence of a general war involving the major states - Great
Britain, France, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Prussia - then order and
stability were being maintained in the international system of states and,
thus, peace prevailed. The mechanism by which all of this was achieved
was the so-called Balance of Power, whereby shifting alliances would
ensure that no state (or group of states) could dominate the rest and where
war would be avoided, if possible, by means of meeting power with power.
All of this was to change in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World
War or the Great War as it was first called and, later, 'the war to end all
wars'.

The Great War and the peacemaking

The experience of the First World War marks the transition to the modern
age and it is there that we begin our survey of conflict and cooperation in
the modem world. The first thing to note is that the war which began in
1914 took so many people by surprise; not surprise that it began, for its
origins may be traced to the operation of the shifting and interlocking
system of alliances that were at the heart of the search for order amongst
the states. Rather, it took people by surprise in terms of its nature and its
duration. As Britain went to aid violated Belgium, as she was bound to do
by prior agreements, it was assumed that the Germans were to be taught a
lesson and that the war would be over by Christmas 1914. It was over in
the autumn of 1918.
In the course of the war troops from all over the world were involved.
Millions were killed. From our perspective, towards the end of the twentieth
century, the Great War at its beginning is summed up by the trenches of
the Western Front, the use of gas and barbed wire, men going 'over the
top' and, of course, the sheer scale of the casualties, due in no small part
to the impact of the rapid-fire machine gun able to cover open ground with
an enormous impact. The Somme, Verdun, Tannenberg, Vimy Ridge, the
Dardenelles conjure up stark images even now.
So the first things to note are the scale of the war, both in terms of
geography and intensity. In the case of the British, by way of example, at
the outset of the war men volunteered; later they were conscripted. Many
came from the great cities that had grown, with industrialisation, from
small towns and they joined the army together, many in what came to be
called 'Pals Batallions'. And, of course, as they died together the social
impact on the towns and cities was enormous. The impact of the war might
be judged by the number of war memorials it spawned across the world, in
22 International Security in the Modern World
cities, towns, villages and hamlets; few places seemed untouched by it.
Culturally, too, the war was important. The age before it became a lost age.
The experience of the war was written in the poetry of Rupert Brooke,
Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, amongst others.· The war proved
to be an instrument of social change too, for it served significantly to
change the role of women; as the men went to war, women moved into
conspicuous occupations, not least in munitions and other factories.
In such circumstances, and even at home, women were to become targets
in war, for new devices were coming into play. Early in the century the
Wright Brothers had pioneered powered flight. Early in the war, flying
machines played a role, at first uncertain. By the end of the war the early
machines had given way to long-range bombers, capable of flying long
distances and carrying heavy bomb-loads. Also, the war saw the uniting of
the new internal combustion engine with armour, to produce the annoured
fighting vehicle or tank, used with some uncertainty at first, but with
increasing impact.
In short, the experience of war between 1914 and 1918 was profound.
First, it was truly global; forces came to Europe to fight and fighting
took place outside Europe. Second, forces were deployed on the ground, in
the air and both on and under the sea, with the submarine playing an
important role. Third, it involved millions of men and women; the conflict
was to blur the old distinctions about combatants and non-combatants
that had been at the centre of the laws of war; and the Second World War
was to see them rendered, in effect, meaningless.
The shattering effects of the war conditioned attitudes to the peace that
was to follow. On the one hand there was the view that it was to be the war
to end all wars, such was its impact. Plans were made for the peace and a
broad programme was outlined by the President of the United States,
Woodrow Wilson, who had brought his country into the war in 1917, with
the Fourteen Points at the heart of it. Plans were afoot to found a new
international framework for increased cooperation and the achievement
and maintenance of peace in a new organisation of states, known as the
League of Nations. Universal in scope, in the sense that it was open to all
independent states who wished to join it, the League was to be concerned
with political, social and economic affairs. Most notable, in terms of the
search for peace, was the article in the constitution of the League, the
Covenant, which suggested that states in conflict should give three months'
notice of their intention to go to war. In such circumstances, it was assumed,
reason could be brought to bear and the conflict avoided. Misjudgements
and miscalculations could be clarified and peace ensured.
 David Dunn 23
But this rationalist response was not the only one. Also much in evidence
were motives of revenge and retribution, selfishness and nationalism. For
many, the Germans had started the war with their grand ambitions and
power-seeking and they must be made to pay; they were, in the words of
the British politician, Sir Eric Geddes, to be 'squeezed until the pips
squeaked'. The French, mindful of 1870 as well as 1914, were especially
concerned to ensure no further German ambitions. German armed forces
were to be limited, where they were allowed at all. The Germans were made
to pay reparations in terms of both money and industrial assets and com-
modities in both the short and medium terms. In short, they were expected
to pay reparations to the victorious states but from an economic base that
had been denuded by reparations in kind, as it were. Moreover, as a defeated
state the Germans lost all colonial territories (in Africa and the Pacific, for
example), which were transferred to the victorious Allied powers. Such
transfer of territories was but one part of the redrawing of the map after
1918.
New states appeared out of the former Austro-Hungarian empire in
Europe. such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, 'old' states that had been
subsumed, such as Poland, reappeared and new ones were created out of
the former Turkish empire in the Middle East. The key word to note here
is nationalism and, more significantly, national self-determination; implicit
in this was the notion that if nations had their own states this, with the
umbrella-role of the League, would be a basis for peaceful order in inter-
national politics. And this was not all, for the war had the effect of bringing
the United States into the international politics of Europe and the wider
world although, perversely, the US Congress refused to support American
entry into the League; so the Americans were now a player in the game
though not a member of the club. Furthermore, the Russians had left the
war in 1917 with the onset of the October Revolution and the subsequent
separate peace signed with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk to pursue its
own path to Communism.

The interwar period

It is now abundantly clear that the seeds ofthe Second World War are to be
found in the settlement of the First. Clearly, the German problem was
not settled; if anything it was exacerbated. In the late nineteenth century
German economic growth was impressive, as was its rise to power in
Europe and the wider world. After 1918 there was a sense of resentment
allied to thwarted national ambition which served as a breeding ground for
24 International Security in the Modern World
Hitler and fascism. The reparations issue could not be a purely German
question and American assistance was forthcoming in the shape of the
Dawes Plan of 1925. The position of the Americans was paradoxical. They
were isolated in terms of a policy of 'isolationism' formally adopted, so to
speak, but they were an economic giant whose status in the international
economy was simply too large to ignore. Politically and militarily also,
the United States was playing a central role, not least in terms of the
Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, the 1925 Kellog-Briand Pact to
outlaw war or the London Naval Conference of 1930; likewise with the
developing Soviet Union.
The building of Communism proved to be far from easy. Lenin died in
1924 to be replaced by Stalin and industrialisation was achieved at a price.
But the Soviet Union was just too important, both as a Communist state and
as a developing power, to be ignored despite its absence from the League.
Of the League it has to be said that it had some successes but that it
was the failures that mattered. It was never universal. When states wished
to escape opprobrium they left it (as did Italy and Japan) and some, like the
Americans, never joined it. Outside the League, it became clear that the
processes of interdependence that had first appeared in the nineteenth
century with the growth of international trade and a world economy were
proceeding apace. Overseas investments by American firms in Europe were
growing and, most notably, the consequences of the Wall Street stock-
market Crash of 1929 were felt far beyond the United States. In tum the
'roaring Twenties' and what the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald
called 'the Jazz Age' gave way to the Great Depression of the 1930s and
economic policies of beggar-my-neighbour and protectionism.
The war of 1914 to 1918 had seen the appearance of the aeroplane and
the tank; the interwar period saw their rapid development. Remember that
the great image of the war was of static warfare in trenches. This gave rise
to a sense that the new innovations in war were to be speed and decisiveness
and the instruments were to be tanks and aircraft. Tanks could be used in
order to smash through the massed forces of the enemy in order to reach
into the rear and disrupt logistic support and adversely affect industrial
production and morale. Likewise with the aeroplane, which could be used
to fly over the forces in order to reach into the enemy rear. The new
strategic innovation in the air was to be the massed air fleet of bombers and
the maxim was 'the bomber would get through'. In technical terms the
power of, and new role for, aircraft was advocated by Mitchell in the United
States, Trenchard in Great Britain and Douhet in Italy. In popular culture
the novelty was best illustrated in the film version of H. G. Wells' novel The
Shape of Things to Come, which depicted cities being bombed by massive
 David Dunn 25
fleets of bombers, thus bringing to a large mass audience, the cinema-going
public of the 1930s, the new face of war. In reality, the bombing of the
Spanish city of Guernica in the course of the Spanish Civil War demon-
strated the destructive capability of the aeroplane.

The Second World War

In 1939, with the German attack on Poland, the tank and the aeroplane were
used to devastating effect; tanks smashed through in so-called Blitzkrieg
attacks, accompanied by bombers capable of precise attacks and, in the
case of the Ju-87 Stuka dive bomber, equipped with sirens to induce a
sense of fear and panic in the population on whom bombs were to fall. In
Britain at the outset of war, children were evacuated from cities to rural
areas and the population at large was issued with gas masks, ample testi-
mony to the fear that the war would start with aerial gas attacks on cities.
Like the First, the Second World War was global, but not from the
outset. In Europe, the British were involved from September 1939. France
fell in the summer of 1940 after the so-called 'phoney war' of relative
inactivity. The Soviet Union came into the war in June 1941 with the attack
on their territory by the Germans (and this despite the 1939 Nazi-Soviet
pact which had seen each side take a slice of Poland) while the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 brought the United States into
the war. Britain. the USSR and the USA formed, in effect, a Grand Alliance
to win the war against the Germans and the Japanese (though it must be
said that the Soviet Union came into the war against the Japanese only at
the very last in 1945), their ideological differences notwithst,anding.
The basis of their cooperation was a common purpose; to defeat the
enemy. War stretched across Europe, into Asia and the Pacific and Africa.
On land. massive tank battles were fought on the flatlands of the Soviet
Union; German forces reached deep into the Soviet Union and the Soviet
dead were, ultimately, to reach twenty million. For the Soviet Union, the
war was The Great Patriotic War. Allied forces in June 1944 amassed
the largest seaborne invasion force in history to launch the assault on the
Normandy beaches.
War was waged in the air. on the sea and under it. The Battle of the
Atlantic raged as German submarines sought to cut off American supplies
to Europe. In the Pacific, Midway Island and the Coral Sea saw major sea
battles and Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Okinawa stand as examples of
ferocious fighting as Americans and Japanese fought over relatively small
land masses, but important as staging posts and airfield sites from which
airborne assaults could be launched. In Asia, jungle warfare was waged
26 International Security in the Modern World
against the Japanese. In Europe, German aircraft bombed cities and, in tum,
British and American airforces blitzed German cities. If trench warfare was
in large measure absent, the Second World War has its symbolic equiva-
lents of the Somme and Verdun in Stalingrad, in Coventry and London,
Berlin and Dresden. It also had Auschwitz and Dachau.
And, of course, the end of the war was decisive. Marked by fierce street
fighting in Berlin in May of 1945, the war ended against Japan with the
dropping of two bombs on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in
August. The war had not seen the dropping of gas on cities, as was anti-
cipated. However, modern science was harnessed to the war effort. Block-
buster bombs were developed to raze cities or destroy submarine pens; the
Germans developed jet aircraft and then missiles such as the V-I flying
bomb (a percursor of the modern cruise missile) and then the V-2 rocket.
And, in secret in North America, British, American and refugee European
scientists developed the atomic bomb. Recent (as recent as the 1930s, it
should be noted) discoveries about the nature of nuclear materials were
harnessed. It was assumed that the Germans were developing a bomb which
could use nuclear energy in a controlled fashion and cause great destruction.
For the Allies (that is, the British and Americans, but excluding the Soviet
Union) therefore it was imperative to obtain a bomb first, for it was as-
sumed that Hitler would be less restrained than others and use it accord-
ingly. In fact, the first nuclear device was tested in July 1945 in the desert
at Alamogordo in New Mexico, months after the war against Germany had
ended. The bombs were dropped on Japan, each single bomb dropped by a
single bomber. This stood in stark contrast to the thousand-bomber raids
on German cities and the firestorm raids on Japan, not in terms of the scale
of destruction, since scores of thousands had been killed in these raids,
but in the nature of the attack; now one bomb could destroy an entire
city and two decisive strikes had, apparently, ended the war against an
enemy known to fight fiercely and to the last.

The postwar world

Thus, the world after 1945 had to take account of the nuclear weapon. It
was to change the nature of war and dominate the postwar political land-
scape. At first, only the United States possessed the bomb but the Soviet
Union exploded a device in 1949, so ending the American monopoly and
ushering in what was to become the age of nuclear deterrence. In time,
Britain, France and the People's Republic of China (established after
the Communist revolution of 1949) would also develop nuclear weapons.
Four of these also played a role in the development of the new post-
 David Dunn 27
war international organisation that was to be the framework for peace and
order, the United Nations, for they were the pennanent members of the UN
Security Council (at first, Nationalist not Communist China was a member
of the UN). Planning for the new UN began before the war ended and the
organisation itself was established promptly in 1945. If the Security Coun-
cil had primary responsibility for peace and security, other organs had other
tasks. The General Assembly encompassed all member states (the Security
Council only some) while the Trusteeship and Economic and Social Coun-
cil had specific responsibilities with regard to dependent territories and the
wider questions of international welfare respectively. At the outset, the UN
had about fifty member states.
However, the organisation never operated as was envisaged for the
Grand 'win-the-war' Alliance proved to be precisely that; soon splits devel-
oped between the United States and Britain on the one hand and the
Soviet Union on the other. It is not correct to suggest that as the Second
World War ended so the Cold War began. However, from 1949 the new
postwar world was recognisably Cold War, in the sense that there was
mutual antipathy and suspicion between East and West. Forces grew on
both sides and they were manifestly hostile towards each other but not
actually fighting.
Threat, counter-threat and crisis dominated the international landscape.
Doubts about Soviet intentions surfaced early and the coup in Czechoslova-
kia and the Berlin blockade in 1948, Soviet control of, and territorial
expansion into, Eastern Europe, followed by the communist revolution in
China, seemed to be clear evidence of the spread of Soviet influence. From
the Soviet perspective, Marshall Aid (an American programme of assist-
ance to stimulate the economic development of war-torn Europe), Amer-
ican assistance to anti-Communist forces in the Greek civil war (1947) and
the stationing of American bombers in Europe seemed to be evidence
of hostile American intentions and a projection of American power and
influence into new areas. For the Americans, the objective was to contain
the spread of Communism.
By April 1949 the Americans tied themselves to the defence of Western
Europe under the tenns of the treaty establishing the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation. Over the course of forty years, the East-West split dominated
world politics. In time, the Soviet Union would fonn an alliance in Eastern
Europe, the Warsaw Treaty Organisation, and the alliances dominated
discussions of European security. East and West faced each other directly,
in periodic crises, in Berlin; both sides supported factions in wars outside
Europe; and, from time to time, used force directly to foster their own
interests (as when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956). Nuclear
28 International Security in the Modern World
weapons development proceeded apace; newer, faster bombers were ac-
companied by a range of missiles with nuclear warheads. Some had a range
of thousands of miles, from the Soviet Union to the United States and vice
versa, and these were known as strategic weapons. Others had short ranges
and were known as tactical or battlefield weapons. The European alliances
developed strategies that envisaged the use of nuclear weapons in a variety
of scenarios and the watchword after 1960 or so was 'flexible response',
the need to respond in like (and credible) fashion to any initiative by the
opponent. But central to the whole notion of nuclear deterrence was the
apparent willingness to use weapons not only against the armed forces of
an opponent but also against societies; people in their homes, offices and
factories. In short, the process of extending the 'target' in warfare that
began after 1914 with the development of airpower, became central to
the politics of nuclear deterrence.
Nuclear weapons proliferated but, after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962,
when the United States and the Soviet Union came close to nuclear war,
tensions between East and West eased somewhat. In 1963 the United States
and the Soviet Union, by now known as superpowers, together with the
British, signed a treaty banning the testing of nuclear weapons in the
atmosphere. By the end of the decade (with the United States now em-
broiled in fighting in Vietnam, following the apparent logic of a contain-
ment policy, and despite the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968)
the superpowers had begun negotiations to limit the numbers and types
of nuclear weapons, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, SALT. Both
sides now had huge arsenals, with nuclear missiles at sea, on land and in the
air. By 1972 agreement was reached and the SALT I treaty was signed.
Outside these formal discussions, a frequent mode of interaction between
the superpowers was the summit meeting, with leaders meeting leaders to
discuss issues of the day. By the end of the 1970s a second agreement,
SALT II, was signed but the period of easing of tensions, detente, had
been replaced by a different mood, one of suspicion and mistrust, similar
to the pre-detente days. The Soviet Union was directly intervening in
Afghanistan, there were problems about alleged Soviet non-compliance
with arms control agreements and human rights violations, and the election
of Ronald Reagan to the American presidency signalled a change in atti-
tude. For some, the period of the early 1980s was known as the 'New Cold
War'. However, with the elevation of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet
Union in 1985 the mood again changed and events moved very rapidly
indeed. Negotiations to limit nuclear weapons of certain ranges in Europe,
the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (lNF) talks, were successfully completed
in December 1987. to be followed by negotiations on the reduction of
 David Dunn 29
conventional (that is, non-nuclear) forces in Europe. By 1989 the perestroika
and glasnost that were characteristic of Gorbachev's Soviet Union had
spread to Eastern Europe and in an astonishingly short period of time,
and remarkably peacefully, Eastern Europe became democratic and Ger-
many united. In short, the forty years of mutual mistrust and suspicion,
accompanied by massive anns deployments in Europe, had given way to
a more open and cooperative system and a removal of annaments.
Yet if the East-West split and nuclear deterrence were dominating
features of the world after 1945, they were not the only significant features.
The pace of decolonisation after 1945 was remarkable. British, French,
Belgian, Dutch and Portuguese colonies became independent, sometimes
peacefully, often after intense conflict. This had much to do with the cost of
the war, politically and economically, for the Europeans, and the changes
outside Europe that the war had effected, not least the sense that the
Europeans were now vulnerable if challenged. The British were involved
in conflicts in, for instance, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus and Aden. The inde-
pendent state of Israel was proclaimed in 1948, the long-promised Jewish
homeland taking on added significance after the holocaust in Europe. The
French were defeated in French Indo-china in 1954, then embroiled in a
conflict in Algeria before conceding independence in 1962. In the late
1940s the Dutch tried and failed to reassert their influence in the Dutch
East Indies. The Belgian Congo became independent in 1960 and the
longstanding colonies of Portugal in Africa, Angola and Mozambique,
vanished with the Salazar regime in the 1970s.
At least two significant consequences should be noted. First, the number
of sovereign states in the international system grew enonnously; from fifty
members of the United Nations in 1945 to more than three times that
number today. Clearly, the United Nations has changed its membership and
a significant part of its agenda and workload. International politics has
become that much more complex. Second, as the imperial powers with-
drew, reluctantly or otherwise, the new states were often beset by problems.
Economic development is clearly one. But many states soon showed signs
of instability and then outright violent conflict. In part this was due to the
way the territories had been demarcated in the nineteenth century, for
boundaries drawn on the map by Europeans for their own convenience
showed little sensitivity to indigenous problems. Often several tribes or
ethnic groups were included in a new colony, with no sense of shared
history or much else to bind them.
In time, the new bonds of statehood have proved to be insufficient and
ethnic conflicts have broken out. Examples are many, including Cyprus,
Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Nigeria and Uganda. Whereas in the European ex-
30 International Security in the Modern World
periences after 1918 there were nations that demanded their own states.
in accordance with the notion of national self-determination. in the former
colonies. now the new states. statehood often was achieved without a
concomitant sense of nationalism. Moreover. with the passage of time.
succession problems have developed. where replacement of charismatic
leaders who led the anti-colonial struggle and united peoples has often been
difficult. Furthermore. the split between East and West served to complicate
matters even further. for the Soviet Union openly declared its support for
what it called 'wars of national liberation • and often got involved indirectly
or with advisers. Since the United States and its allies did not wish to be
disadvantaged. it too often got involved in what became known as proxy
wars, as for example in southem Africa after the fall of the Portuguese
empire. For some states, poverty allied to internal conflicts serves to com-
pound the problem, as in Ethiopia and Sudan in recent years.
And what of the European states whose empires disappeared? What is
remarkable in this context is the progress of Western European unity after
1945 and this cannot be divorced from the process of imperial contraction.
Starting with the experience of the European Coal and Steel Community in
1952 (involving France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands
and Luxembourg) and then the European Economic Community after 1957,
the path to European unity has been remarkable, going well beyond simple
interstate cooperation. After 1945, the solution to the German problem was
not to punish but to embrace, first at the level of coal and steel. the
foundations of a modem economy, then into other areas. Not only was
economic growth and development fostered, but the Germans were (in the
West) tied into the progress of the rest. At first the British were uninterested
in the plans for European unity but as the empire declined there was a
slow shift towards anew, Eurocentric, role and after some unsuccessful
attempts the British joined the European Economic Community in 1973.
With other new members, the European Community is now a significant
force in world trade and policy in its own right. With the arrival of a single
market in1992 the European experience moves further on.
In the context of world trade the Community is a superpower. So are
the Japanese. After their defeat in 1945 they too sought a new role. The
Americans were a dominant force in security terms and Japanese forces
were limited by treaty obligations, thus narrowing the range of options
open to postwar Japan. Such has been their progress that they now dominate
sectors of world trade such as consumer electronics. automobiles, motor-
cycles and shipbuilding. Also in the Far East. new post-colonial industrial
centres of growth are to be found in South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore.
 David Dunn 31

Indeed, the changes in the structure of world trade since 1945 are them-
selves profound and the recent changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union will certainly make matters more complicated. Trade. aid. tariffs
and free trade are central to the modem agenda of international politics.
not simply the preserve of international economists or bankers. Likewise.
questions of food and energy are political.
To sum up, the modem world is a world of many states. It is also a world
of many firms and corporations that merge and spread their influence
globally. It is a world of organisations that seek to regulate and order
our activities. be they trade, sport, tourism, energy consumption or what-
ever. In short. it is a world of complex interdependence with much co-
operation as well as much conflict, violent as well as regulated.

PATTERNS OF CONFLICT AND COOPERATION

The previous section is not a comprehensive history of the twentieth cen-

tury but it is hopefully an indicator of trends. Seeds sown in the nineteenth
century have grown and prospered in the twentieth, such that the world
has been modernised and this has had the effect of transforming inter-
national relations. 2 There is a sense that the First World War marked a
transition to a modem age; before it we see a world that is not just older,
but is also different. So many aspects of our daily lives have changed; we
communicate over vast distances, see images from overseas - of war,
famine, pop concerts, assassinations, sporting events, conferences - and
travel in means of transport and to places that would surprise our grand-
parents. A person born in Europe in 1900 and alive today will have wit-
nessed changes of a most profound sort in the course of a lifetime. Most
significantly, war has become more total. Once war was fought by recog-
nisable men in uniform and with some rules to follow. There was a dis-
tinction between combatants and non-combatants. Wars often started with
a formal declaration of war and ended with formal termination ceremonies
or procedures. In the course of the twentieth century, as we have seen, so
many of these distinctions have been lost, blurred or forgotten. Men, women
and children have been killed in their own homes or places of work. In
the age of nuclear deterrence. they are often the target; the legacy of
strategic bombing is the foundation of nuclear deterrence. On the other
hand, since 1945 there has not been a general war involving the great
powers, and it is thus claimed that nuclear deterrence has preserved some
degree of stability and interstate order, peace even, a pax atomica. (Yet, at
32 International Security in the Modern World
the same time, there have been many conflicts elsewhere, with the super-
powers involved directly or indirectly). Contrariwise, it is argued that. in the
guise of seeking stable conditions of nuclear deterrence, nuclear weapons
have proliferated, such that we inhabit a world with, on some estimates,
about 50 000 nuclear weapons, with a concomitant high risk of accidental
nuclear war and war by miscalculation, especially where reaction times
are very short and there is a great reliance on computers.
The paradox of deterrence is that it is a threat system constructed by
superpower adversaries, the United States and the Soviet Union, who had,
of necessity, to develop essential rules of deterrence in order to make it
work; they must understand each other and indulge in some sort of tacit
cooperation to make the system work. One of the first consequences of
the 1962 missile crisis in Cuba was the installation of a so-called 'hot-
line' direct link between Washington and Moscow. Beyond this, they
cooperated to stabilise or reduce armaments competition in the form of
arms control or disarmament negotiations, with the SALT accords being an
example of the former.
If nuclear deterrence is something of a novelty, older forms of conflict
have hardly been displaced. Interstate conflicts about territory. status and
influence persist. The Argentina-British conflict. fought in 1982. con-
cerned sovereignty over the Falklands. The eight-year long war between
Iran and Iraq dominated the eighties and the politics of the Middle East.
Trench warfare and 'over the top' assaults were employed. as was gas;
casualties were enormous. Regional conflicts erupt from time to time into
open fighting. such as that between India and Pakistan in the 1960s and
where there is not overt conflict there are regional arms races. A recurrent
and conspicuous feature of international politics after 1945 has been the
frequency of guerrilla or unconventional warfare. Here armed forces are
not massed and fighting on open battlefields; rather they melt into the
population or jungle. are hard to find and thus hard to fight. Examples
would include the Greek-Cypriots fighting the British in Cyprus before
1960, the Viet Cong fighting the Americans in Vietnam and the Afghan
tribesmen fighting the Soviet forces in Afghanistan after 1979. The interest-
ing phenomenon here is that of large states finding it hard to fight. and
win, small wars. The indigenous force knows the terrain. uses tactics that
suit their capabilities and uses time to frustrate, then defeat. the enemy.
Closely akin to this is the phenomenon of conflict within states. Some
cases even blur the distinctions. When Biafra seceded (from Nigeria) it
proclaimed itself a new state; others saw it as a civil war. However. there
are many other cases where ethnic or religious differences have spilled
over into fighting and instability, such as in Sri Lanka. Northern Ireland
 David Dunn 33
and Cyprus after 1964. We have already referred to internal conflicts where
outside parties become involved, directly or indirectly, in what become
proxy wars, with internal factions supported by Soviet or American forces.
Relevant examples here would include the conflict in Angola and the
several conflicts in Latin America where the United States has sought to
prevent what it regards as unwarranted Communist influences. To these
might be added an even more novel type of conflict that is neither domestic,
nor international; namely the conflict over drug production and trafficking,
involving local 'barons' and factions ranged against civil authorities and
interstate prevention measures. And, of course, the modem phenomenon
of terrorism, where modem society is exposed as vulnerable to bombs
and bullets, and airport security is now the order of the day, as are security
checks at the entrances to public buildings. Society, again, is the target.
In summary, forms of conflict proliferate during the twentieth century.
The modem world, for many people, is a dangerous place, especially in
newer states and poorer regions. In addition to threats to life from war
and violence, there is now a sense that there is a fundamental structural
conflict in world politics which is disadvantaging the poor at best and
killing them at worst. That is, the structure of world politics is one of
dominance and dependence, with the rich getting richer and the poor
poorer, saddled with more debt and with even more reduced life-chances.
The problem here is 'systemic', in the sense that the structure of the
international system locks the poorer states into dependence; they may be
legally or nominally independent states but in practice they are hardly free
and sovereign.
Yet if there are various levels and manifestations of conflict in the
modem world, there is also ample evidence of interstate cooperation. There
are now thousands of international organisations - intergovernmental,
international non-governmental and so on. 3 Cooperation is vital to the
functioning of the modem world: travel and communication would be
impossible without it, for even radio station wavelengths are the subject of
intergovernmental regulation. Organisations are of several sorts. They may
be universalist and be competent in many fields, such as the League of
Nations or the United Nations. The UN is universal because most states are
members. It is competent in areas such as peace and security (it can put
together peacekeeping forces at very short notice); trade, aid and develop-
ment; technical assistance; world health and international money. It has
specialised agencies and conducts its business through and with them.
Where organisations are universal in membership but limited in com-
petence, they may be referred to as functionalist organisations, in the sense
that they are concerned with one specific function, such as satellites or air
34 International Security in the Modern World
traffic or shipping. Cooperation learned in one field may, in certain circum-
stances, spill over into other areas. Some organisations may have a specific
title but develop a broad remit and a different competence over time, such
as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Organisations may also be regional and functional at the same time. The
Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) has a specific function
in a defined geographic area. Likewise, the North Atlantic Treaty Organ-
isation has a defined geographic area and has no legal competence outside
that area. What is especially remarkable is the extent of cooperation in
Western Europe and especially in the context of the European Community.
Such is the condition of Western Europe that the probability of violent
interstate conflict is very low indeed, though it should be remembered
that NATO allies Great Britain and Iceland were in conflict in the 1970s
over fishing rights, and ships were rammed. Moreover, though the prob-
ability of violence is low, there are disputes of some significance, such as
that between Britain and Spain over Gibraltar. Nevertheless, given that
the state is both a European concept and institution and that the two world
wars this century started in Europe, progress in the European Community
has been astounding. Legislation comes from a centre of authority in
Brussels. For some purposes interstate boundaries are of little or no impor-
tance and a single market dates from 1992.
Cooperation, however, does not need to be in the context of organisa-
tions such as these. It may be bilateral, where states agree on a common
purpose, such as the joint production of defence equipment, as in the case
of the Anglo-French Jaguar fighter or the Concorde airliner in the civil
sector. Cooperation might be multilateral, such as in the case of the joint
programme to build the Tornado aircraft by West Germany, Italy and Great
Britain or the civil Airbus programme involving France, Germany, Spain
and Britain. There is an important point to this. Note the fields of co-
operation; defence and high-technology equipment. They are also high-cost
and high-risk. Cooperation is almost a necessity in these areas because
the costs of going it alone are prohibitive. Likewise, there is intense com-
petition in these areas. Large firms, often with state support, compete for
orders with great intensity, for the stakes are very high. Large orders
for high-cost items can be very lucrative.
Implicitly here we have also identified a key problem at the centre of any
discussion about conflict and cooperation in the modem world: conflict and
cooperation about what? Traditionally, states have been concerned with
self- evidently political questions such as territory, sovereignty, alliances,
status and power. In addition to these questions, the foregoing discussion
 David Dunn 35
has touched on issues as diverse as tourism. communications. shipping.
soccer. food. drugs. aid, development. poverty and resources. In short, the
agenda of world politics has changed in the twentieth century. The politics
of security are central. in the era of nuclear weapons self-evidently so. but
the welfare dimensions of security are now important. Since we, as indi-
viduals. have expanded our competence. so mass society has changed the
things it does. What we do needs to be organised. In addition to states there
are other entities to do the organising, so that as well as the agenda chang-
ing. so do the actors; that is. the organisations which can influence the
agenda and the outcome of discussions. These actors are states. inter-
national organisations. formal and informal. regional and universal.
functionally specific or omnicompetent. But suggesting that the agenda
changes is not to say that certain traditional items may be discarded as
having been dealt with satisfactorily; far from it. In the first year after the
revolution in Eastern Europe. ethnic and national differences. many of
them rooted in the nineteenth-century experience and beyond. quickly
surfaced. Major conflicts go unresolved in the Middle East. not least
the relationships between and among Jews. Arabs and Palestinians. Yet
there are novelties. There is a global imperative with respect to the prob-
lems of pollution of the environment; no state alone can solve it; likewise
with respect to waste disposal and food resources.
There is a problem here. It is said that we live in something approach-
ing the global village. that we live in an age of complex interdependence.
Yet at the same time we live in a world of fragmented states and we value
them; they are said to embody our values. beliefs and preferences. They
give us a sense of belonging; they make us what we are. They tell us where
we come from and how we relate to others. For some functions they are
appropriate, for others they are impediments. But the system of states has a
fundamental aspect: no central authority exists in world politics to compel
and there is no penalty imposed by a central authority for non-compliance.
In such a system. conflict is endemic. Whether or not the conflicts become
violent is another question, but nonetheless important. The system is a self-
help system and state authorities have a constitutional obligation to their
own citizens first. But it is tempting to ask, do states have obligations to
those beyond their frontiers and if they do not, should they? Moreover, we
might also ask not whether we are in favour of the state or not, but what
functions we want it to fulfil and what tasks might be handled by institu-
tions beyond the state.
36 International Security in the Modern World
UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT AND COOPERATION

Other authors will discuss in depth many of the issues raised in this chapter,
but it is useful to raise a few questions about how we try to understand
the nature of conflict and cooperation to draw this discussion to a close. One
product of the First World War, among many, was the appearance of a
separate academic discipline, International Politics. At the centre of the
new subject was the study of war and, more specifically, how an inter-
national order might be achieved that minimised the prospect of war and
promoted cooperation. In time, the discipline expanded in scope and came
to be called International Relations, encompassing political and other
types of relationships.
In the nuclear age after 1945 a different strand emerged and at its centre
was the existence of the nuclear weapon. This new field or strand of
thinking was called Strategic Studies and war was clearly to be a central
concern. But so too were the nature and functions of deterrence; what types
of behaviour was to be deterred and by what types of threats? How could
threats be made credible? How important was technology in all of this?
These were but some of the questions that the strategists addressed and for
them the problem was how to manage the new strategic environment given
the existence of nuclear threats and the prospects of devastation if threats
turned to war. A different approach was adopted, at about the same time. by
a small group who were known as Peace Researchers. They did not accept
that the system of nuclear threat was to be managed; the system of deter-
rence was in part the problem and they set about researching how peace
might be created and war eliminated. They highlighted, among other
things, one of the great dilemmas of our age; in the absence of general war
we have tended to term the international system 'peaceful' yet at any given
time there are literally scores of violent conflicts in progress. In these terms,
what does a 'peaceful international order' mean and for whom? Closely
related to the Peace Researchers were a group known as Conflict Theorists,
for whom the central research question was the nature of conflict, of which
international conflict was but one aspect. More specifically: what are the
functions of conflict? what are the origins of conflict? why do some con-
flicts become violent and some not? what are the differences between
conflict settlement and conflict resolution? how might mediators be trained
to assist in conflict resolution? (It is interesting to note that. in the United
States a government-funded National Peace Academy has been established
and draws on and develops much of this work. Similarly, Peace Research
is well established in the United States, Japan and Germany.) More recently
 David Dunn 37
different approaches to the study of world politics have emerged to take
account of the newer problems and the processes of interdependence.
The World Order Models Project stresses the problems of violence and
inequality in the system of states, as well as the quality of life and environ-
mental concerns, and explores the potential for the creation of a new system
of international order that can go beyond the limits of a states system.
Similarly, John Burton has explicitly focused on the emergence of what
he calls a 'World Society' and the nature of human needs, stressing that
the behaviour of states in all of this is perhaps less important than is usually
assumed. s Yet again, new approaches have stressed less the processes of
world politics and rather more the dominant structures that make domi-
nance and dependence the norm, stressing the pyramidal nature of authority
and power, with a few influential states at the top and a mass of dominated
states at the bottom, locked into a condition of powerlessness.6

CONCLUSION

All of this serves to point up several significant issues as we explore the

nature of international security in the modem world. First, we live in a
world of rapid change.? But it is a world of change mixing continuity with
novelty. Second, we live in a world of many states and many cross-cutting
loyalties. It is a world where, on the one hand, we seem to be growing
similar to each other in terms of style or culture in the global village while,
on the other hand, some differences are little understood at best and con-
fused at worst, as for example in the case of religions, such as Islam or
Shinto. Thirdly, we are struggling to understand the world we inhabit in
the late twentieth century and that struggle is best exemplified by the
proliferation of approaches to the study of what we once conveniently
called 'international politics'. The Cold War is over and the post-postwar
world is upon us. Likewise, we are said to be in the era of post-modernism,
though few are agreed as to what precisely is meant by the term. Never-
theless, we have a sense of transition, out of something and into something
else. And, finally, we now quite clearly recognise the multi-dimensionality
of security in the modem world; war is still central in our concerns but
so are questions of welfare, resources and environment.
38 International Security in the Modern World
NOTES
1. Anyone interested in this aspect of the war should consult Paul Fussell's
superlative work The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1975).
2. This theme is outlined in some depth in Edward Morse, Modernisation and
the Trans/ormation 0/ International Relations (New York: Free Press, 1976).
3. For a survey and analysis see A. Leroy Bennett, International Organizations:
principles and issues (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1988), Founh edition.
4. An excellent statement from the World Order perspective is contained in Sam
Kim, The Quest for a Just World Order (Boulder: Westview Press, 1984).
5. See John Bunon, World Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1972).
6. For an early statement see Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System
(New York: Academic Press, 1974).
7. For a discussion of change, see O. R. Holsti et al.• Change in the Intema-
tional System (Boulder: Westview Press, 1980) and B. Buzan and R. J. Barry
Jones (eds). Change and the Study ofInternational Relations (London: Frances
Pinter. 1981).
3 Arms Control and
International Security
Michael Sheehan

Anns control and disannament are important concepts in the study of

security. Since 1945 they have come to be seen not as alternatives to a
security regime based upon the possession of adequate military forces, but
as formal adjuncts to security policies based upon deterrence and a balance
of military power. The terms 'disarmament' and 'arms control' describe
both objective and strategy and there are marked similarities between them.
However, there are also important differences, which require highlighting.

DISARMAMENT

The moral and political perspective of the disarmament approach is quite

different from that of arms control. There are critical distinctions between
the view taken of the acceptability of war as an instrument of policy and the
degree to which the existence of weaponry in itself acts to increase inter-
national tension. The disannament school's thesis is straightforward -
without weapons it is impossible to wage war, therefore since war is evil it
must be abolished by eliminating the weapons with which it is fought.
Practical problems may necessitate doing this in stages rather than in one
go, but the objective remains reductions aimed at eventual abolition.
In reality the goal of 'general and complete disannament' would be
impossible to achieve without fundamental changes in the intemational
system occurring first. The most crucial of these would be the advent of a
World Government capable of policing the agreement so that no country
cheated and thereby achieved a monopoly of military force. In the absence
of world-order change on this scale, general and complete disarmament has
remained a pious hope and efforts have been directed instead at the pursuit
of the more modest, but still radical goal of partial disarmament.
Partial disannament occurs when a proportion of the total number of
weapons in one class of weaponry or more are reduced, or with the elim-
ination of one or more categories of weapon. An example of the former was
the reductions in the numbers of warheads and delivery vehicles in the 1979
SALT II Treaty. An example of the latter was the elimination of superpower

39
40 International Security in the Modern World
intennediate range baJlistic missiles in the 1987 INF Treaty. The key
element is reduction in the numbers or types of weapons.

ARMS CONTROL

The anns control approach addresses the issue of security from a quite
different perspective to that of disannament. Whereas disanners view all
weaponry with distaste and the nuclear 'balance of terror' with abhorrence,
the anns controllers, who emerged as a distinct school in the 1950s, see
anns control as a way to buttress deterrence. Whereas disanners believe
that if states possess plenty of weapons they will want to use them, anns
controllers assume that if states want to go to war they will find the weapons
to do so. In other words anns controllers see weapons as a symptom, not
the cause of the security dilemma. What prevents war is not the absence
of weapons, but rather the absence of reasons to fight. Peace must therefore
be maintained by establishing a military balance that provides no state
with the temptation to attack because it thinks victory is inevitable. The
'anned peace' thus maintained then creates the stability within which polit-
ical solutions can be sought to the causes of international tension. Anns
control therefore seeks stability as its primary goal, not weapons reduction.
If a stable balance of power can be achieved at lower levels of military
deployments so much the better, but this is incidental. If more weapons,
or new types of weapons would increase stability then the anns control
approach favours such weaponry.
It can be seen therefore that the assumptions underlying the anns control
concept give rise to a quite different operational approach compared with
that of disannament. Since disanners presume weapons to be the root cause
of international tension and war, the solution is to reduce weaponry in all
circumstances. Any new weaponry should be opposed and its deployment
prevented. Anns control, by contrast, discriminates between 'those kinds
and quantities of forces and weapons that promote the stability of the
balance of power, and those which do not; to tolerate or even to promote the
fonner and to restrict the latter.'1
For example, in the early 1960s the United States began deploying its
Polaris nuclear-missile-carrying submarine. As a new weapon system this
was automatically opposed by the disannament lobby. However, the anns
control community favoured the deployment. They did so because they felt
that Polaris actually reduced the dangers of nuclear war breaking out. In the
1950s the United States had relied on a limited number of long-range
bombers to provide its nuclear deterrent. These aircraft were very vulner-
 Michael Sheehan 41

able to a surprise Soviet attack and this forced the US to remain on a 'hair-
trigger' high level of alert, with a high risk of accident or miscalculation
leading to war. In contrast, the Polaris submarines. constantly on patrol
deep in the North Atlantic, could not be detected by the Soviet Union. At
the same time their missiles were too inaccurate to strike at Soviet nuclear
weapons in the USSR. Thus the Polaris submarines did not invite attack by
the USSR, would survive any attack on the USA itself - making such an
attack pointless to carry out - and could not themselves launch a successful
surprise attack on the retaliatory forces of the Soviet Union. They were
therefore an inherently stabilising development which reduced, not in-
creased, the risk of nuclear war breaking out.
Arms controllers indeed have always been enamoured of nuclear deter-
rence, seeing in the existence of nuclear weapons a means both of prevent-
ing war and of preserving the status quo. They were and remain, more
interested in refining the nuclear balance of power than in abolishing it.
In other ways also, the approach favoured by arms controllers in the
1950s and 1960s differed from the traditional disarmament ethos. For
technical reasons arms controllers favoured maintaining the balance of
power at high levels of weaponry. This was because when each side had
few weapons a minor numerical advantage gained by one side was of
major military significance. However, when both sides had large numbers
of weapons, slight differences one way or the other were of no practical
importance. If balanced power was the objective therefore, a balance would
be more robust if it was maintained at high levels of weaponry.
It followed from this that reductions could in certain circumstances
actually increase the risk of war, a perspective not shared by those who
favoured disarmament. For arms controllers the objective was always
stability, not reductions per se. Reductions would occur if, and only if.
stability was thereby enhanced.
The classic early definition of arms control was put forward by Schelling
and Halperin in 1961. Arms control's aim was 'reducing the likelihood of
war, its scope and violence if it occurs, and the political and economic costs
of being prepared for it' .2 In practice it proved difficult to pursue all three
objectives simultaneously. Possessing the ability to retaliate with nuclear
weapons, for example, reduces the likelihood of war, but increases its
violence should it occur.
Unlike disarmament, which focused attention on weaponry, the arms
control approach concerned itself with what might be termed the software
of security as well as the hardware. Even without directly constraining
weaponry it was felt that the danger of war could be reduced through what
came to be termed 'confidence-building measures' (CBMs). These were
42 International Security in the Modern World
measures directed at reassuring the other side that the size and deployment
of one's armed forces were designed for legitimate defensive purposes, of
giving 'credible evidence of the absence of feared threats'. By providing
information and reassurance each side was less likely to overreact because
of miscalculation about what the other side had, or was planning to do.

THE HISTORY OF ARMS CONTROL

Arms control has a thirty-year record which is a mixture of success and

failure. Generally speaking, the more ambitious the goals set, the less
successful it has been. Early efforts were modest attempts to produce
limited gains. Thus, for example, the 1959 Antarctic Treaty included clauses
which demilitarised the continent, prohibiting the establishment of military
bases or the conduct of military manoeuvres and weapons tests. These
limitations attempted to preserve Antarctica's status as a region free from
military activity. While the signing of such a multilateral 'non-armament
treaty' was straightforward in the case of Antarctica, subsequent treaties
in this category proved more controversial.
In 1967 two such treaties were signed. The treaty of Tlatelolco created a
Latin-American nuclear-free zone, though its impact was marred by the fact
that some key states such as Cuba refused to sign, while others, such as
Brazil and Argentina, failed to implement in full the treaty's ratification
procedure.
The Outer Space Treaty of the same year banned the placing in orbit or
on bodies in the solar system of 'weapons of mass destruction' - that is,
nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. It quickly became clear that the
fact that the treaty did not ban 'conventional' weapons represented a
major loophole which the superpowers exploited during the 1970s and
1980s to test anti-satellite weapons.
A fourth non-armament treaty was signed in 1971. The Seabed Treaty
bans the emplacement of weapons of mass destruction on or beneath the
ocean floor. The utility of such a deployment is so doubtful that the 1971
agreement has been compared with an understanding not to bolt one's
bombers to their runways. In any case the precedent of the Outer Space
Treaty seems to suggest that states capable of exploiting such an environ-
ment would find a treaty loophole if it were expedient.
Although the phrase 'confidence-building measures' did not enter the
arms control lexicon until the 1970s, agreements reflecting this approach
emerged in the early 1960s. The 1963 'Hot-line' Agreement, for example.
established a secure communications link between the Pentagon and the
 Michael Sheehan 43
Kremlin. This agreement was a product of the 1962 Cuban Missiles Crisis
which had revealed the need for an instantaneous and secure means of
communication between the superpowers in times of crisis. The system was
updated in 1971 and 1984 to take advantage of advances in communications
technology.
In the early 1970s the nUclear-weapons states (minus China) signed a
series of agreements to reduce the dangers of a nuclear war breaking out
through accident or misunderstanding, including the 1971 US-Soviet treaty
on 'measures to reduce the risk of outbreak of nuclear war', the 1972
superpower agreement on military incidents at sea and the 1976 Franco-
Soviet treaty on the accidental or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons.
The major multilateral treaties embodying confidence-building meas-
ures were the 1975 Helsinki agreements and the 1986 Stockholm
agreement. To a large extent the latter extended and made mandatory the
voluntary measures embodied in the Helsinki accords. The Stockholm
treaty was a major breakthrough for arms control for a number of reasons.
It was the first arms control agreement signed after the frosty period in
East-West relations known as the Second Cold War (1979-86) and its
detailed provisions were the first unambiguous sign of the new approach
being taken to international security by the Soviet Union under Mikhail
Gorbachev. The Stockholm agreement included provisions for 42 days'
advance notice of major military activities such as manoeuvres, detailed
advance notice of activities invulving 13000 men or 300 tanks or amphi-
bious or parachute operations involving 3000 men. Verification of the
agreement was by a combination of remole-sensing techniques plus on-site
inspection. By agreeing to the latter the Soviet Union opened the way to a
whole series of agreements whose attainment was dependent upon such
intrusive monitoring techniques. As well as making possible later agree-
ments such as the 1987 INF Treaty and the 1990 Conventional Forces
in Europe (CFE) Treaty the )986 treaty was the first step along the road
that in the early 1990s saw the end of the Cold War and the emergence of
a new European Security order based upon equal security, military open-
ness and an end to the mutually hostile military blocs which had dominated
the continent for forty years.
How great a breakthrough Stockholm represented can be seen by look-
ing at the negotations on reducing conventional forces in Europe which
began in 1973 and ended their first phase in 1990. These negotiations were
originally known as the talks on 'mutual and balanced force reductions'
(MBFR). Between 1973 and 1988, however, they made virtually no progress.
This was essentially because of the obsessive secrecy of the USSR and
its Warsaw Pact allies, which led them not only to reject the intrusive
44 International Security in the Modern World
verification techniques needed to police such an agreement but also made
them unwilling to provide the details of numbers of troops and weapons
in their forces which was essential if the agreement was to be concluded.
Under the new regime of glasnost (openness) which increasingly charac-
terised the Soviet Union after 1985 all this changed. With the precedent of
the successful 1986 Stockholm agreement and 1987 INF treaty, the Soviet
Union embraced the 'military transparency' essential if CFE was to suc-
ceed. Early in 1989 a clean break with the past was achieved by ending the
MBFR talks and replacing them with the more ambitious CFE negotiations.
Within two years CFE achieved the treaty which had eluded MBFR in
16 years of talks. The Soviet Union accepted that it had the larger forces in
Europe and would therefore have to make proportionately greater cuts. At
the same time it provided accurate data on its forces and agreed to an
intrusive verification regime.

NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROL

For most of the period since 1959 the question of the control of nuclear
weapons has quite naturally dominated the arms control agenda. As a
technology with the capacity to destroy all life on Earth, nuclear weaponry
was given pride of place in the diplomacy of arms control. The earliest
efforts in this field concentrated upon trying to control the technical devel-
opment of such weaponry by limiting nuclear testing. In 1963 Britain, the
United States and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty
restricting nuclear tests to underground chambers. This was followed in
1974 by the superpower 'Threshold Test Ban' Treaty which restricted the
maximum size of a nuclear test explosion to 150 kilotons, about ten times
the power of the weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The second major area of nuclear arms control activity lay in efforts
to limit nuclear proliferation. The term proliferation suggests a far more
rapid process than has in fact been the case. Since China became the fifth
nuclear weapon state in 1964 only one other state (India in 1974), has
carried out a nuclear test explosion, though several states are known to
possess the necessary technology and others are suspected of actively
seeking it. The 'jewel in the crown' of anti-proliferation efforts is the
Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, which came into effect in 1970. This
commits those signatories which already possess nuclear weapons to pursue
nuclear disarmament 'in good faith', and to supply non-weapon states
with the technology for the peaceful exploitation of nuclear energy. In
 Michael Sheehan 45
return. the remaining signatories renounce the right to acquire nuclear
weapons and agree to allow their nuclear energy industries to be monitored
as a safeguard against the clandestine development of nuclear weaponry. It
is essentially a deal between the nuclear-weapon 'haves' on one side and the
'have-nots' on the other. Twenty years after it came into force no signatory
among the non-weapon states had tested a device, but progress towards
nuclear disarmament by the existing nuclear-weapon states remained
minimal. marked only by the very limited constraints of the SALT treaties
of 1972 and 1979.
The SALT negotiations were examples of efforts to halt the 'vertical'
proliferation of nuclear weapons; that is. the growth in the nuclear arsenals
of the existing nuclear weapons states as distinct from 'horizontal' prolif-
eration - the increase in the number of states possessing nuclear weapons.
The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) began in 1969. They were
bilateral negotiations between the two superpowers, and the United States
consistently resisted efforts by the Soviet Union to bring the British and
French strategic deterrents into the negotiations. SALT was a profoundly
conservative exercise. an attempt to control the speed and directions in
which the superpower nuclear arsenals were growing rather than to halt
or reverse the process. It was very much arms control rather than dis-
armament.
Nevertheless. the first SALT treaties. signed in May 1972. were ex-
tremely important. More important than the details of the numbers of
weapons permitted to each side was the fact that the agreements created a
structured and predictable strategic environment within which the super-
powers could plan and operate. The pressure to acquire more weapons than
were objectively necessary was lifted by having an arms control regime in
place which defined the 'threat' for years to come. In particular. the ABM
treaty codified a relationship which. by severely limiting strategic defences.
left each side totally vulnerable to nuclear devastation by the other, even in
retaliation. Since neither side could defend itself. and neither could deliver
a completely successful first-strike. the incentive to start a nuclear war was
eliminated.
Under the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. each superpower could
possess only two ABM networks, one around its capital city. the second
around a designated ICBM-field. A protocol signed in July 1974 reduced
this to one permitted site. with each being left the choice of whether to
defend its capital or a missile field. Only 100 interceptor missiles and a
limited number of radars could be deployed at each site. The treaty banned
the testing. development or deployment of sea-based. air-based. space-
46 International Security in the Modern World
based or mobile land-based ABMs and also prohibited conversion of other
weapons-systems to an ABM role or capability. The treaty was of unlimited
duration.
At the same time as the ABM Treaty, a second treaty regulating 'offen-
sive' strategic weapons was signed. The 'Interim Agreement on Strategic
Offensive Anns' limited the numbers of missile 'launchers' to those cur-
rently operational or under construction. Unlike the ABM Treaty it was of
limited duration, five years; however, this was only because it was seen as
a holding operation to provide a breathing-space during which a more
detailed and definitive treaty would be negotiated. Even in this limited fonn
the agreement was valuable since it placed an upper limit on launcher
numbers, identified the key issues for the subsequent negotiations and
established the sense of SALT being a process rather than a one-off event
so that stability and restraint could be steadily enhanced in subsequent
agreements. This was important because SALT I was a flawed achieve-
ment. While it limited the numbers of launchers, the number of warheads
which could be placed on such launchers was not controlled. Because of
this the number of nuclear warheads continued to rise during the lifetime
of the treaty - a highly destabilising development, since it meant that
there were more warheads than launchers to aim them at, increasing the
chances of a successful first strike. The SALT process offered the oppor-
tunity to redress such oversights in subsequent agreements, a process
made easier by the common strategic vocabulary and arms control tech-
niques developed during the SALT I negotiations.
The follow-on negotiations led to the signing of the SALT II Treaty in
June 1979. SALT II was a more ambitious undertaking than its predecessor
and began the process of reducing the nuclear inventories of the super-
powers, albeit modestly. It therefore represented disarmament as well as
arms control. a significant pointer to the way the practice of arms control
was developing.
Under SALT II each superpower was limited to 2400 'delivery vehicles'
(missiles and bombers) and key sub-limits restricted each side to a maxi-
mum of 1320 weapons equipped with multiple warheads or air-launched
cruise missiles. Only 1200 ballistic missiles could carry multiple warheads
and each land-based ICBM was limited to a maximum of ten warheads,
while submarine-launched ballistic missiles could carry a maximum of 14
warheads each. The treaty banned certain types of technology and allowed
each state to deploy only one new ICBM type during the lifetime of the
treaty.
SALT II imposed only marginal constraints on the United States, whose
weapons totals were close to the defined sub-limits. For the Soviet Union
 Michael Sheehan 47
the treaty effectively required a lO per cent reduction in strategic nuclear
weapons in order to get down to the pennitted ceilings. It also committed
both sides to negotiating a follow-on SALT III treaty, and the USSR's
opening proposal for this envisaged further cuts of 10 per cent by both
sides. In the event the breakdown in the superpower relationship, acceler-
ated by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, meant
that the USA never ratified SALT II, though both sides agreed to abide
by the tenns of the unratified treaty and continued to do so even after it
technically expired in December 1985.
Under the Reagan administration (1981-89) the United States commit-
ted itself to dramatic reductions in warhead and launcher numbers as an
anns control goal. This was reflected in the SALT negotiations being re-
named START, for Strategic Anns Reduction Treaty. The arrival in office
of Mikhail Gorbachev as Soviet leader meant that by late 1986 both
superpowers were committed to deep cuts in their strategic forces. At the
Reykjavik Summit in 1986 the superpowers adopted the goal of reductions
to 6000 warheads carried on 1600 delivery vehicles. When the complexities
of the various sub-categories were taken into account, the reductions would
be around 40 per cent of the 1986 totals. This represented not just anns
control, but also disannament on a major scale. Completion of the agree-
ment did not occur until well into the presidency of George Bush.
Reykjavik represented a critical threshold in the history of postwar anns
control. At the time its near-embrace of nuclear disannament and the
advocating of huge cuts in strategic forces seemed so breathtaking as to be
unbelievable and it was dismissed by many as a propaganda stunt. Within
months, however, it became clear that a turning-point had indeed been
reached. In the revived negotiations on Intennediate Nuclear Forces (INF)
in Europe, a series of Soviet concessions on all the key issues led to a rapid
acceleration in progress and the signing of a treaty on 8 December 1987.
The INF Treaty involved the superpowers in the elimination of all their
intennediate-range nuclear weapons within three years and the destruction
of all short-range INF within eighteen months. Nearly 2700 missiles were
to be destroyed, and 3 per cent of the global total of nuclear warheads.
Three per cent was not much, but it was 3 per cent more than had ever
before been achieved and represented the first movement of the nuclear
anns race into reverse.
The INF Treaty represented a breakthrough not only because of the
specific details of the reductions in weapons and all their associated equip-
ment, but also because of the nature of the agreement. The treaty was 127
pages long and its detailed verification procedures represented a trans-
fonnation of previous Soviet attitudes towards on-site inspection of milit-
48 International Security in the Modern World
ary facilities. Continuous monitoring of designated sites would continue for
13 years after ratification of the agreement. By allowing such intrusive
inspection the USSR was opening the door to breakthroughs in all the anns
control areas where verification had previously been a crucial obstacle.

CHEMICAL ARMS CONTROL

One such area was that of chemical weapons. Since 1968 multilateral
negotiations on chemical weapons have been pursued at the UN's Commit-
tee on Disannament in Geneva. These were aimed at producing a new
chemical anns control agreement to replace the 1925 Geneva Protocol,
which is effectively a 'no-first-use' agreement. Producing an acceptable
chemical weapons treaty is more difficult than the nuclear negotations,
both because chemical weapons have a proven military track-record and
because of the difficulties inherent in monitoring and verifying compliance
with a chemical treaty. Both these difficulties were increased during the
I 980s, the fonner by Iraq's demonstration of the continuing utility of
chemical weapons during its war with Iran, the latter by the emergence
of new, harder to monitor, chemical weaponry such as 'binary' chemical
weapons which consist of two chemical agents which do not become
lethal until mixed during flight or on impact.
Verifying a chemical treaty was always inherently difficult. Whereas for
example ICBMs are large, unique and specific pieces of technology, easy to
spot and to follow, chemical agents are produced in facilities which are
externally indistinguishable from those producing legitimate civil chemi-
cals. Indeed in many instances the same facility produces both kinds of
chemicals. The technologies within the plants are likewise virtually identi-
cal. To monitor compliance with an agreement therefore requires intrusive,
regular and lengthy on-site inspection of facilities and provision of detailed
data on output of key chemicals. In the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union the
nature of the regime precluded acceptance of such intrusive verification.
After the advent of glasnost, however, and the Soviet concessions on
verification seen in the 1986 Stockholm Treaty and 1987 INF Treaty,
verification ceased to be the insuperable stumbling block it had previously
been.
After 1987, therefore, the negotiations on chemical weapons became
increasingly productive. By 1989 a draft treaty of 343 pages had been
produced which detailed the areas of agreement, with areas of continuing
disagreement marked by alternative fonnulations in brackets. In addition a
 Michael Sheehan 49
series of 'national trial inspections' have been held in various countries to
test methods of verification.
Parallel to the 40-nation talks in Geneva the superpowers carried out
direct bilateral talks on the chemical weapons issue. The two countries
agreed in 1989 to undertake data exchanges and verification experiments
and to eliminate their chemical weapons stocks within ten years of a
chemical weapons treaty coming into force. The improvement in super-
power relations meant that attention was already beginning to focus more
on the proliferation issue than on the NATO-WTO confrontation which
had dominated the agenda for forty years. Between 1960 and 1990 the
number of chemical weapons states quadrupled, from five to twenty.3 The
accelerating progress towards an agreement on chemical weapons in the
early 1990s was increasingly driven by concern about the implications of
such horizontal proliferation of chemical weapons, an issue which some
states, notably those of the Arab League, specifically linked to the issue
of nuclear proliferation.

THE EVOLUTION OF ARMS CONTROL

Arms control emerged out of disillusionment with the disarmament process

as it had been attempted in the I950s. Originally an approach that was
clearly distinct from disarmament, arms control itself evolved as a tech-
nique after 1960 and as it did so, the differences from disarmament became
blurred, though they did not entirely disappear.
An obvious and important aspect of this change was that arms controllers
became increasingly concerned with reducing the numbers of weapons, an
objective associated with disarmament and one that featured little, if at all
in the first decade of arms control activity. This development led Thomas
Schelling to argue that arms controllers were abandoning their original
guiding philosophy and that reductions were an inappropriate goal for
arms contro\.4
In terms of the original logic of arms control this was absolutely correct.
Stability, not reductions in numbers, is the objective of anns control'. What
had happened in practice, however, was that the political rhetoric surround-
ing arms control negotiations and agreements in the 1970s had led the
public and many politicians to believe that reductions were in fact a key
objective and should always be sought so long as they did not manifestly
threaten stability. Thus whereas in the 19608 the onus of proof lay with
those who favoured reductions, by the end of the 1970s it had shifted to
50 International Security in the Modern World
those who opposed them. This profound change in approach crystallised
when President Reagan engaged in a major weapons build-up while simul-
taneously pursuing an arms control strategy which undermined the con-
sensus that had previously favoured balances at high levels.
During the 1980s, therefore, a revolution in attitudes took place in which
a number of interrelated processes came together to eventually generate a
synthesis between arms control and disarmament as techniques. The belli-
cose rhetoric of the Reagan administration in its first term stimulated a
powerful disarmament lobby in both the United States and Western Europe.
At the same time, the long hiatus in successful arms control negotiations
from 1980 to 1986 led to a reassessment of arms control as a goal and to
significant criticism of the methods previously employed to achieve it.
Agreements such as SALT and the NPT were valuable but they were not
much to show for twenty years of effort, while in retrospect most of the
other agreements achieved since 1960 appeared little more than cosmetic.
To some extent arms control by the 1970s was suffering from a revolu-
tion of rising expectations. Whereas the agreements of the 1960s and early
1970s satisfied public opinion simply by being achieved, by the late 1970s
this was no longer enough. The public had come to accept the permanance
of arms control as a process and now looked to each individual agreement
to produce visible evidence of significant progress.
This was the point at which it was hard for arms control to deliver, for in
the public mind progress in arms control was equated with negotiated
reductions in weaponry or military activity. In other words the public
ascribed to arms control the classical goals of disarmament. Since arms
control did not seek to produce disarmament except in so far as it did not
interfere with the central objective of stable security, the treaties appeared
lacking in impact.
1t was recognised, however, that the pursuit of arms control did confer
benefits over and above the agreements actually arrived at. By sustaining a
dialogue between suspicious states on the key issues of security it enabled
each side to come to a better understanding of the other side's fears and
needs. It also gradually established a valuable framework upon which
agreements could be built. By reducing the degree of misunderstanding,
arms control during this period reduced the risk of war.
The failure of the arms control process to produce any significant reduc-
tions prior to 1987 was due to a number of factors. The most fundamental
of these was the existence of the Cold War between NATO and WTO. Even
during the brief period of d~tente during the early 1970s, the relationship
between the two sides was characterised by an institutionalised paranoia.
Expectations of war were very low, but acceptance of an adversarial rela-
 Michael Sheehan 51
tionship was absolute. The other side were seen as rivals in every way and
while the risks of nuclear war forced the two sides to seek ways of manag-
ing their conflict in ways short of all-out war, no way was found to address
the basic conflicts of policy and interest which underpinned the hostile
relationship between East and West.
In such conditions arms control was a necessity, but disarmament could
not be expected to flourish. The amled might of the two blocs was too vital
a component of the balance of power and too flexible and useful an instru-
ment of foreign policy for it to be significantly reduced. NATO's 'flexible
response' strategy required very high force levels as much as did the Soviet
need to maintain its hegemony in Eastern Europe and to protect the disputed
border with China. Thus each side tried to use the arms control negotiations
to constrain the other side's forces while leaving their own only marginally
affected. Given the reluctance of either side to contemplate the implica-
tions of deep cuts, it was hardly surprising that the agreements were so
conservative.
In an atmosphere of Cold War, anus control negotiations, which typic-
ally lasted for several years, were highly vulnerable to the ups and downs of
East-West relations. Promising negotiations could easily be derailed by a
clash of interests in some other, unrelated foreign policy arena, as for
example the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 undermined the
chances of the Senate ratifying the SALT II treaty.
On occasion, arms control negotiations could themselves be a factor
in maintaining high levels of weaponry. for example in the tendency to
hold on to obsolescent or superfluous weaponry for use as 'bargaining
chips' in negotiations. Moreover gaining the backing of the military for any
particular arms control agreement often had to be purchased at the expense
of allowing them additional new weaponry in areas unaffected by the
terms of the agreement. The Trident submarine programme, MX missile
and 8-1 bomber were in part rewards to the US military for their testimony
in support of the SALT I accords.

THE SYNTHESIS OF DISARMAMENT AND ARMS CONTROL

SINCE 1985

During the 1970s and 1980s the sharp distinction between the concepts
of arms control and disarmament began to blur. Politicians and the gen-
eral public in the Western world gradually came to see arms control as
essentially 'disarmament in easy stages' and the success or failure of
any particular treaty or set of negotiations was assessed not in terms of
52 International Security in the Modern World
the original goals of anns control but rather on whether or not it had led
to significant reductions in the weaponry or activities under discussion.
This was unfortunate because, by that standard, anns control could not be
said to have been a great success. It had managed to slow down the arms
race in some areas and almost halt it in others, but it had not been able to
put the arms race into reverse. Since its objective was to sustain the balance
of power by increasing strategic stability, and such stability was seen as
being easier to maintain at high levels of weaponry, this is not surprising.
However, even if massive numerical reductions had been the goal it is
difficult to believe that they could have been achieved in the twenty-five
years after 1960.
During this period the relationship between the states of the northern
hemisphere was characterised by the tenn 'Cold War'. The fundamental
distrust underlying relations between the members of NATO and the War-
saw Pact was what had called forth arms control in the first place. The
two sides knew they had to cooperate to avoid a catastrophic nuclear
war but, beyond this obvious need, their mutual suspicions were such
that the movement towards imposing constraints on their own military
capabilities was bound to be characterised by caution to the point of
timidity. Even during the period of wannest relations, the detente years of
the early 1970s, conflicting interests in China, South East Asia, Eastern
Europe, Africa and the Middle East left the two sides unable to move
beyond a minimalist approach.
This had to be so, since neither side challenged the essentials of their
relationship. A significant 'build-down' in weaponry could only occur if the
very nature of the adversarial relationship between East and West was
challenged. Disarmament does not trigger improvements in relationships
between states; on the contrary, it follows such changes, ratifying and
accelerating them. Even when relations have begun to improve, caution will
predominate at first and arms control verification issues will be at centre-
stage. Anns control verification is 'the process by which states use their
intelligence gathering and analytical capabilities for the purpose of satisfy-
ing themselves that their treaty partners are abiding by the tenns of the
agreements they have signed'. 5 The worse relations between states are,
the more important verification issues will be, and the harder they will be
to overcome.
These factors meant that the changes within the Soviet Union after 1985
were of critical significance. Under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev
the Soviet Union not only fundamentally reassessed its foreign policy and
military strategy but also initiated profound domestic refonns. Both the
changes in foreign policy and those in domestic policy had enonnous
 Michael Sheehan 53
implications for arms control. As early as February 1986 Gorbachev told
the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party that 'security can
only be mutual . . . the highest wisdom is not in caring exclusively for
oneself, especially to the detriment of the other side'.
The 'new thinking' in Soviet foreign and defence policy represented a
recognition that the USSR could not solve its security problems simply by
amassing weaponry. It had too many enemies for that to be a feasible
strategy, and the economic burden of sustaining its enormous military effort
was already fatally weakening the Soviet economy. The solution to this was
to reduce the number of the USSR's enemies by new efforts to resolve old
differences and by altering the external perception of the USSR as a military
threat. Gorbachev used arms control policy as a central element of this
'charm offensive'. By combining unilateral Soviet reductions in man-
power and weaponry with significant concessions towards the NATO
positions in all the key arms control negotiations, he was able over a period
of years to steadily reduce the sense of threat felt by the Soviet Union's
neighbours. All this allowed new forward movement in arms control.
The Soviet Union's domestic reforms were equally important. Gorbachev
promoted policies of democratisation and greater openness and freedom
of speech (glasnost) in the USSR. For the first time the Soviet Union began
to demonstrate a more relaxed attitude towards providing information
about the Soviet armed forces and, as access to information became more
natural in the USSR, so the previous Soviet opposition to intrusive veri-
fication in arms control began to fade away. By the autumn of 1986 the
Soviet Union felt able to agree to such verification in the 1986 Stockholm
agreement and this set the pattern for the treaties that followed at regular
intervals over the next few years.
The new thinking in the Soviet Union created a willingness to disann
and once this was fully appreciated by NATO, the way was open to
significant reductions - a goal deemed desirable by both sides since the
Soviet and American economies were both in difficulties.
Between 1985 and 1987 a threshold was crossed. The new goal of
significant reductions meant that in the 1990s the activity called 'arms
control' would in fact more often than not be disarmament. Yet it was not
simply a case of things having gone full circle back to the 1930s or early
1950s. There were two crucial differences. Firstly, the new atmosphere of
entente between the superpowers meant that the disarmament efforts after
1986 were genuine and could lead to meaningful accords, whereas the
initiatives in the 1930s were doomed to failure because of the prevailing
international political climate, and those in the 1950s were merely pro-
paganda stunts which were not meant to succeed.
54 International Security in the Modern World

The post-1986 developments represented not a return to the past, but a

third stage in the evolution of postwar efforts to provide international
security by negotiating constraints on weaponry. A new synthesis had
emerged which combined the techniques and stability focus of arms control
with the medium-term objectives and hostility towards weapons of mass
destruction of disarmament. Given the logic of arms control, it is unlikely
that this can be sustained all the way to the goal of total disarmament. At
some point short of that goal arms control thinking would call a halt to
the process. Nonetheless the new synthesis opened the door to an enor-
mous reduction in weaponry during the 1990s, an unprecedented achieve-
ment in peacetime and one with potentially profound implications for
the future development of international relations.

NOTES

I. Hedley Bull, The Control of the Arms Race (London, 1961), p. 61.
2. Thomas C. Schelling and Morton H. Halperin, Strategy and Arms Control
(New York, 1961), p. 2.
3. Charles C. F1owerree, Elisa Harris and James Leonard, •Chemical Anns
Control after the Paris Conference', Arms Control Today, Vol. 19, no I,
(January/February 1989), p. 4.
4. Thomas C. Schelling, 'What Went Wrong with Anns Control?', Foreign
Affairs, (Winter, 1985-86), p. 226.
5. Michael Sheehan, Arms Control: Theory and Practice (Oxford, 1988),
p.123.
4 The Deterrence Condition
James H. Wyllie

Military power is a pervasive instrument of foreign policy, whose central

role is to serve the objective of national security. This has been the case
throughout the recorded history of the international system. And, despite
the great easing in political tensions between East and West in recent
times, which has been manifested by the decreasing emphasis on military
force as the fundamental bulwark of international order in the northern
hemisphere, military power will continue to play a crucial role in the
ordering of relations between states in the global political system, through-
out which security uncertainties will persist. Indeed, the removal of the
Cold War straitjacket and the declining ability of the United States and
especially the Soviet Union to impose discipline on past and present
client states could result in an increase in political instabilities and concomi-
tant threats to the great powers' preferred views of intetnational security.

THE CORE THEORY

For much of the postwar era, particularly in the developed world, the
military instrument has been deployed in a deterrence mode rather than in
a more classical defensive manner. Its primary role has been to dissuade
rather than to compe\. In East-West relations deterrence theory has been the
pre-eminent strategic theory over the past forty years. In the early years
following the end of the Second World War there was a strategic vacuum in
the defence policies of the West. But, with the deterioration of political
relations between the Soviet Union and its old anti-Nazi allies, military
tensions and anxieties increased. Profound disagreements over the future
of defeated Germany were severely aggravated by the 1948 Communist
coup d' etat in Czechoslovakia, the Berlin blockade, and then the Korean
War. Western governments searched for a strategic doctrine which could
utilise the new technology of atomic weapons in a cost-effective manner.
The modem application of the classic strategic theory of deterrence seemed
to provide the answer. From the early 1950s it was manifested in the
Massive Retaliation strategic doctrine pursued by the United States for most
of that decade and into the very early years of the following decade, and
in the Flexible Response strategic doctrine practised by the United States

55
56 International Security in the Modern World
and its NATO allies from the mid to late 1960s until the present day,
albeit in a low-key, more relaxed manner since the momentous political
changes in Europe in 1989 and 1990.
Both of these strategic doctrines have dominated and, in their respective
times, monopolised strategic behaviour in the West since the Korean War.
They are both fundamentally derived from deterrence theory tempered,
to a greater or lesser extent, by a pragmatic infusion of limited war theory.
In the case of Flexible Response, if deterrence initially fails and hostilities
break out, the doctrine decrees that war-fighting, deliberately and volun-
tarily restrained, continues. By restraining the military response a new
doterrent threshold is established. If that threshold does not dissuade the
enemy from continuing hostilities and it is breached, then another, higher
deterrent threshold is established further up the ladder of escalation. War-
fighting continues at a higher but controlled level, exacting greater costs
and imposing more severe punishment on the aggressor, but avoiding a
headlong rush to total war and tempting the enemy to call a halt to increas-
ingly costly and potentially catastrophic hostilities. While, in the event of
attack, Flexible Response posits a certainty of response, uncertainty as to
the exact level of response is deliberately fostered in the mind of the
potential aggressor. Ambiguity as to the cost of aggression, except that it
would be painful, is seen to complicate the cost-gain calculations of the
hostile state or bloc. In the case of NATO and the Warsaw Pact for much
of the postwar period, NATO felt it could never be sure how much the
Warsaw Pact was willing to pay if it chose to attack the West. NATO felt
that it must be free, psychologically as well as practically, to escalate as
required. If a specific price was set against a specific act then not only
would flexibility of response be inhibited, perhaps in rapidly changing
and unforeseen circumstances, but the Warsaw Pact and also Western
public opinion could be led to believe that certain objectives were only
worth a certain price and no more. That would have created political
problems among the NATO allies and weakened deterrence of the
Warsaw Pact. Uncertainty of level of response would always leave the
nagging doubt in the mind of the aggressor that the punishment inflicted
may far exceed that which could make the attack worthwhile. If put to
the test of engagement, Flexible Response would clearly be a mix of
deterrence and limited war with the ascending level of deterrent threat as
the cutting edge which concentrates the mind of the aggressor. To date,
neither Flexible Response nor its much cruder predecessor, Massive
Retaliation, have been tested in Europe, and it seems increasingly unlikely
that such a doctrine will be tested in the Europe of the 1990s. But those
 James H. Wyllie 57
who have supported the application of deterrence in the past, and con-
tinue to see a role for it in the uncertain future, attribute much of the
success of Western defence during the Cold War to NATO's deterrence-
based doctrines.
In the northern hemisphere, deterrence has been the core theory under-
pinning mutual East-West security relations over the past twenty to twenty-
five years, and it has served the West alone for the past forty years.
However, some sections of the Western public have become alarmed
rather than reassured by the character and the longevity of the West's
deterrence-based security doctrines. There have been episodic calls, and
responses, such as the Reagan administration's Strategic Defence Initiative
(SOl), to try to break out of the deterrence condition in which East-West
relations have become embedded. It is a fact of the modem world that all
the societies, states or otherwise, which constitute the international system
are vulnerable to terrible devastation.
If nuclear war were to occur, no state, no matter how powerful and
influential, could remain immune by its own volition or create an invulner-
able defence. Since the advent of the atomic bomb, offensive weapons - for
instance atomic bombers and later ballistic missiles equipped with multi-
ple warheads - have been in the ascendancy. Since 1983 the United
States has been engaged in a major programme of research, the Strategic
Defence Initiative, in pursuit of effective ballistic missile defence (BMD).
But, such are the immense technological problems to be overcome, there
is little reason to expect the eventual deployment of a leak-proof BMD
system around NATO, or even the United States alone. A major strategic
problem for BMD is that it appears, at present, much cheaper for an
adversary to multiply warheads to 'swamp' BMD than for the defender to
take compensatory defensive measures. Even if SDI does bear fruit and
provide a cost-effective, leakproof BMD for NATO or just the United
States, BMD is not effective against cruise missiles and manned bombers.
The state of the technological art suggests that it may be possible to pro-
vide effective 'point' BMD in the protection of, for instance, command
centres and ICBM silos, but societies will remain vulnerable to nuclear
devastation for the foreseeable future.
In sharp contrast to the other major revolutions in military organisation
and technology in the modem era - the mass warfare of the Napoleonic age
and the industrialised warfare of the First and Second World Wars - the
advent of nuclear weapons has raised the prospect of no escape from
societal devastation in the event of major hostilities between the great
powers in the contemporary world. The First and Second World Wars
58 International Security ill the Modern World

brought the battlefield to the homeland, and defeat in war could threaten
drastic changes in the form of one's society. War between nuclear powers
threatens the very existence of society itself:
Nuclear war does not fit into the moral categories that are ordinarily
applied to war. It undercuts familiar political ways of thinking by
escaping the bounds of the very definition of war. Similarly, it threatens
to shatter cultural mechanisms for coping with death by destroying
everything that makes symbolic immortality possible. The difference
between the wars in which the two previous modern military revolu-
tions appeared and a full-scale nuclear war is the difference between
destruction and annihilation. It is the difference between the end of an
era and the end of a culture. Nuclear weapons, unlike all other weapons
known to man, 'have the power to make everything into nothing.'1
Such vulnerability has been a major feature of East-West relations since
1949, when the Soviet Union demonstrated its atomic status as a military
power. The qualified exception to this general rule was the geostrategic
situation of the United States in the period before 1957. Between 1945
and 1949 the United States had an atomic monopoly; between the years
1949 and 1957 the American homeland was deemed to be relatively invul-
nerable to attack from external powers. Such were the distances between the
American heartland and the Soviet Union, and such were the limited ranges
of the Soviet delivery vehicles, that there was considerable confidence
that American society was invulnerable to a devastating Soviet atomic
attack. The Soviet Union was not in a similar fortunate position. The United
States' atomic and nuclear forces have been based forward, in Western
Europe, since 1948, within striking range of the western districts of the
Soviet Union and its social, economic and industrial heart. In the years
1948 to 1957 Soviet security was rooted in the notion of the preponderant
conventional power of the Red Army holding 'Europe hostage for
United States good behaviour'.2 While such a strategy was not clearly
articulated by the Soviet Union, it was implicit ill the deployment and
build-up of Soviet military power in Europe. Indeed, it could be argued
that it was under this conventional military umbrella that the Soviet
Union strove to develop its nuclear military power.
However, in 1957 the United States discovered itself to be, or soon to be,
as vulnerable as the Soviet Union to nuclear devastation. The successful
launching of the Sputnik satellite demonstrated that the Soviet Union had
acquired an intercontinental ballistic missile capability. The direct military
consequence was that the United States homeland was open to attack:
 James H. Wyllie 59
No event focussed popular attention on America's vulnerabilities to
attack more than the launching of the world's first artificial earth
satellite, Sputnik I, by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957. It brought
home the fact that the United States no longer enjoyed invulnerability
to the ravages of war. The peoples of Western Europe were familiar with
the effects of aerial bombardment and were already growing accustomed
to being well within the range of Soviet bombers and missiles. Before
the capability to destroy the United States provided the Russians with a
retaliatory option, the Western Europeans had served as a hostage. Now
Americans also began to suffer the uncomfortable sensation of being
candidates for annihilation in the event of total war.)
A further shock to the American psyche, which enhanced the feelings
of vulnerability, was that the Soviet Union had leapt ahead of the United
States in missile technology. Whereas the US had devoted most of its
resources to the development of a long-range bomber force, the Soviet
Union had concentrated on developing a missile capability and had slarted
research and development in this field before the United States.
There was considerable anxiety in the US that a 'missile gap' between it
and the Soviet Union had developed, clearly favouring the Soviets. In fact,
the Soviet Union chose not to mass produce ICBMs until the mid-1960s,
by which time the United States was far ahead in missile numbers. But in
the closing years of the second Eisenhower administration it was clear
that the United States could no longer assume itself to be somehow de-
tached from the military-strategic environment of the Old World. The
North American continent had become as vulnerable to nuclear holocaust
as its allies and adversaries in Europe and throughout the international
system. This novel international environment has added new dimensions
to the prospect of war and the reality of peace between the nuclear
powers of the developed world. Outside the developed world a tragic
number of traditional wars have been waged. These wars have been pur-
sued in an environment where the probability of the introduction of
nuclear weapons by patron states from the developed world was not
high, and where the deterrence condition was absent.
Even though Western strategic doctrines have sustained peace, deter-
rence has come under scrutiny and attack by a number of non-governmental
groups in the West - sometimes with good cause. There are legitimate fears
about the credibility of deterrence by retribution, if this means a major,
perhaps devastating, response by the adversary. However, as will be dis-
cussed in detail later, it is often overlooked that the initial action has to
come from the adversary: it is the adversary who must determine I he
60 International Security in the Modern World
credibility of the deterrer's threat. Even if the credibility of any given
response to aggression may seem low to some elements in the society of
the deterrer, to the adversary the risks may be unacceptably high. There
are genuine fears about the control of intra-war deterrence and the manage-
ability of the controlled ascent of the ladder of escalation. There are also
widespread qualms about the ethics and the morality of deterrence over
and above the traditional aversion to the grim reality of the battlefield.
given that the implementation of any threat could well result in dispro-
portionate military responses and millions of non-combatant deaths. One
may, or may not, fear or deride the imperfect strategic concept of
deterrence. but at least it has not caused any East-West wars to date. and
at best it may have prevented East-West conflict. A mere glance at the
memoirs. papers and public statements of the major Eastern and Western
statesmen of the past forty years - Eisenhower. Khrushchev. Macmillan.
Kennedy. Brandt. Schmidt. de Gaulle. Heath. Brezhnev. Nixon - clearly
demonstrates a caution and a prudence in their behaviour and pro-
nouncements derived from an acute awareness of the deterrent effect of
nuclear weapons.
This does not mean that complacency over the East-West deterrent
balance should be encouraged. Unfortunately, in a world of political rivalry.
no statesman, strategist or pressure group has offered a credible, practical
alternative to deterrence. What should be encouraged is constant attention
to the deterrence relationship between East and West. Attempts should be
made constantly to sustain the East-West deterrent balance and, as far as
possible, correct or manage any imperfections in it; but it is imperative
that any modifications to the deterrence relationship should not be
destabilising. In the United States the early extravagant claims of some SOl
enthusiasts in the Reagan administration that BMD could replace deter-
rence and all its imperfections with traditional defence were modified
fairly quickly. Administration spokesmen now suggest that BMD. if feasi-
ble in some form, could act as an adjunct to mutual deterrence. reducing
some of the perceived vulnerabilities and weaknesses of the current super-
power deterrence relationship - for instance, enhancing the survivability
of the US land-based ICBM force. Whether or not this would enhance
mutual deterrence if the Soviet land-based ICBM force did not also have
effective BMD is a moot question. Soviet land-based ICBMs constitute a
much higher proportion of the country's strategic deterrent than does the
land-based ICBM force of the United States strategic deterrent, and until
recently Moscow argued that SDI was an attempt to deprive the Soviet
Union of an effective retaliatory deterrent. 4
 James H. Wyllie 61

Competent deterrence, and a stable deterrence relationship between the

superpowers, demands a constant attention to capabilities in order to sustain
the credibility of the deterrer's threat. Competent deterrence requires that
the deterrer has the weaponry to guarantee a retaliatory strike or, from the
Soviet perspective, to wage war after a surprise attack. Ideally, both sides
have the systems they identify as necessary for credible deterrence without
undermining the deterrent credibility of the adversary. In other words, a
situation of stable mutual deterrence is desirable, and has been the primary
target of strategic arms control talks over the past twenty years. In pursuit
of this, East-West arms control agreements, and the intellectual environ-
ment created by the arms control process, have been relatively successful
in the short term. In the 19908 there is a mutual deterrence relation-
ship between the Soviet Union and the West, particularly in the northern
hemisphere. But military high technology and research and development
move at a great pace and at considerable expense. Constant attention to
arms control and persistent evaluation of capabilities are essential. Mutual
deterrence may require the unilateral introduction of new weapons
systems, given some technological advances or increases in numbers by
the adversary. On other occasions reductions in systems may be advisable
and practised, given the political will, by arms controllers and govern-
ments. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, the trend in the nuclear en-
vironment has been to build and deploy newer systems rather than to
remove whole categories of systems from the bloc arsenals. When numbers
are reduced it is usually because of obsolescence; or a few systems may be
phased out in the glare of pUblicity for propaganda purposes.
Sustaining mutual deterrence in peacetime usually means modernising
nuclear arsenals, or upgrading command, control or communications facili-
ties, or refining targeting planning. In peacetime, this induces among some
observers a sense of foreboding, perhaps paranoia, as well as feelings of
insecurity. This school of thought sees arms build-ups, whether in quantita-
tive or qualitative terms, as contributing to, if not creating, political hostility
which will inevitably lead to war. It is argued that what is perceived as
military competition - arms races - between rival states creates a 'war
psychology',5 which will spontaneously burst into conflict at some critical
point. But not everyone concurs with such perceptions:

To attribute wars to arnlS is to confuse cause and effect. An arms race

does not obey a logic of its own. It cannot be seen as an autonomous
process divorced from the political context in which it occurs. Cap-
abilities cannot be artificially separated from intentions. Military power
62 International Security in the Modern World
serves the political ends of the state. An arms race reflects political
tensions between nations; it does not cause these tensions. Armaments
are needed by states to protect what they consider to be their interests.
Nations do not fight because they possess arms. Rather. they possess
arms because they believe it might some day be necessary to fight.
Indeed. it can be shown that. when nations involved in political quarrels
fail to arm themselves. they invite aggression. While it is true that when
power confronts power there may be danger. it is certain that when
power meets weakness there will be far greater danger. It is all too easy
to point to conflicts and attribute them to arms races. It is much more
difficult to point to wars which were prevented because nations guarded
themselves. 6

Most official opinion in the West adopts the latter perspective on the
arms race and. so long as an acceptable degree of equivalence and parity in
arsenals is sustained. it produces stability in the centralilltrategic balance
and feelings of security. Over the past twenty years the foreign policy elites
in the West and in the East have looked to anns control as an instrument to
manage the inherent momentum of the arms race and sustain mutual deter-
rence. Each sustains suspicions of the motives of the other - which could
well be misperceptions - but nonetheless, until the enthusiasm of the
Reagan administration for ballistic missile defence, each clearly recog-
nised that a situation of mutual deterrence was to the mutual advantage
of the superpower blocs.7
But, the original objectives of SDI have yet to be realised, and the
deterrence environment continues. Governments have recognised this and
continue to pursue strategic doctrines largely based upon deterrence theory.
Indeed. the proliferation of ballistic missiles and the access of many coun-
tries to chemical if not other weapons of mass destruction have brought
into the deterrence environment regions previously deemed to fall outside
its scope, such as the Middle East. The objective remains national security.
States do not pursue expensive deterrence-based strategies as a whim of
policy or as a result of some conspiracy by the international military-
industrial complex. Certainly, it cannot be denied that the armed services
and defence industries benefit from doctrines which require large. sophist-
icated, modem standing forces but, where political tensions exist, more
traditional defensive doctrines would also be very expensive. The military-
industrial complex has been a major beneficiary of the traditional approach
to security practised in most parts of the developing world for the past
forty years, and from the periodic bouts of enthusiasm by the superpowers
for ballistic missile defence.
 James H. Wyllie 63
PURPOSE AND REQUIREMENTS OF DETERRENCE

Deterrence is when one party persuades another party to desist from a

certain action. usually perceived as hostile. by means of a threat that this
action will lead the aggrieved party to inflict retaliation and punishment.
The deterrer is setting a price on the action the potential aggressor wishes to
perform. and commits itself to collect that price - a price pitched at a level
which will make the action too expensive. The actor which is the target of
the deterrence is obliged. assuming rational behaviour. to make a cost-gain
calculation as to the worth of the action. The objective of the deterring party
is that the other party will decide to desist because what could be gained is
not worth the cost. Such a deterrence relationship does not just happen
because the parties want it to happen. There are three primary. interrelated
characteristics which a deterrence posture requires to be effective. be it
with nuclear or conventional weapons, or both. These characteristics are
not mutually exclusive, and effective deterrence requires that all three be
mutually supportive. And these requirements are more stringent if a state
is pursuing what is called extended or active deterrence, when a state
projects deterrence protection to allies and friends, which may be near by
or, more problematical. far away.
The first requirement is clear communication. It is vital for governments
to be able to communicate with rivals despite cultural and language barriers,
distance, or time differences. Deterrence demands that an adversary be
made completely aware of the value of the issue in dispute to the deterrer,
and the willingness to collect a price should the rival not be dissuaded
from its unwelcome course of action. The difficulties encountered in estab-
lishing clear communications between. for instance. very different societies
with value systems at wide variance has been demonstrated in contem-
porary times by Anglo-Argentinian relations in the spring of 1982 and,
earlier in the century. US-Japanese relations in 1941.
A second requirement is adequate capabilities. There is little point in a
state threatening to exact terrible punishment on another if the capabilities
to do so are inadequate. Numbers alone do not constitute adequacy. The
appropriate weaponry has to be of the technological level to assure penetra-
tion of enemy defences and also needs to be secure from preemptive attack,
for example, aircraft in hardened shelters and missiles in hardened silos
or deployed on submarines. Absence of such precautions may tempt a rival
to launch a surprise attack in order to undermine the deterring state's ability
to inflict punishment and exact its price. In the late 1950s and early 1960s
when both the United States and the Soviet Union had nuclear forces
susceptible to preemptive attack a 'delicate balance of terror' - a rather
64 International Security in the Modern World
fragile mutual deterrence - was reckoned to exist between these two polit-
ically hostile and competitive states. s Fears that one side could be tempted
to a preemptive strike were widespread, and contributed to the tension. By
the end of the 1960s, with a wider spread of more sophisticated weaponry,
much of it in hardened silos or submarine-based, a stable balance of terror
existed, with superpower strategic relations rooted in a robust mutual deter-
rence relationship. Either superpower realised that to launch a preemptive
attack would be of little value. The other side's weaponry would survive in
enough numbers to inflict devastating retribution. A situation of mutual
assured destruction - commonly known as MAD - was deemed to exist and
to be welcome in contrast to the hair-trigger nuclear deterrence relationship
of ten years earlier. This move from unstable to stable balance of terror is
an illustration of the benefits of extensive arms development and procure-
ment. More and better arms, if addressing a rational strategic objective, are
not always a bad thing. In the modem world. effective deterrence demands
secure second-strike forces, not just large, vulnerable first-strike forces.
To date, the most effective deterrent instrument is the nuclear-powered,
missile-firing, deep-diving submarine. It is the most mobile and least
vulnerable capital weapons-system.
The third vital requirement is that of credibility. A state may have clear
communications with its potential adversary, and it may have the capability
to inflict punishment. But it also has to convince the enemy that it has the
will to go ahead and collect the price if the unwelcome action proceeds.
Credibility is greatly enhanced if the character of the deterrent threat
bears some relation to the value of what is at stake. In other words, the
threatened punishment must be proportionate to the issue, otherwise it will
cost more, in military, economic. ethical or other ways, than the objective
is worth, and the credibility of the threat will be diluted. Deterrence cred-
ibility is further enhanced if a state has a record of standing up for itself,
and not retreating in the face of difficulties. It is often argued that Britain's
deterrence credibility is strong as a consequence of recent history. including
episodes such as standing alone against Hitler's Germany in 1940 and
retaking the Falklands in 1982.
Credibility is a particularly acute question in extended deterrence. The
deterrer state may bring a counter-strike against its own homeland when
inflicting punishment for an attack upon an ally. For much of the Cold War
period the credibility of US extended deterrence over Western Europe was
questioned, as much by allies as by enemies, because of doubts over the
ultimate willingness of any American president to risk New York, Chicago.
or Los Angeles if Moscow had dared to threaten or to attack Hamburg or
Brussels or London. NATO's answer to the credibility problem was to
 James H. Wyllie 65
emplace US forces, conventional and nuclear, in Europe, especially in a
forward defence role in West Gennany. In the event of conflict US forces
would have been engaged early, and would suffer quickly.9 The United
States could not help but be involved in any European war. It was reckoned
that deterrence was strengthened by the inevitable early entanglement of the
Americans in the event of conflict, and as a result of the strengthened
deterrence war was deemed less likely in the first instance. It was this
perpetual requirement of the West Europeans to be reassured as to the
credibility of extended US nuclear deterrence that kept about 300 000 US
troops, and many modem nuclear weapons, in Western Europe for most of
the past fifty years. The presence of such expensive forces also commun-
icates a clear US commitment to the security of Western Europe, as does the
presence of US forces for its allies in other parts of the world, for instance
the Far East.
A credibility question-mark is often raised over the efficacy of the
British and French independent strategic nuclear deterrents. Some critics
suggest that in the highly improbable but not impossible scenario of a
British-Soviet dispute, there would be little credibility in London, even
over an issue of the highest importance, threatening to punish the Soviet
Union. Most Soviet nuclear forces would survive any British attack, and
then completely destroy Britain in return. At first sight this view seems
plausible. But it ignores the sequential nature of deterrence and the cost-
gain calculation which lies at the heart of any deterrence relationship. In
the above hypothetical situation the deterrer, Britain, does not launch
any weapons until the potential aggressor actually commits the act to which
Britain objects. The choice to initiate the hostilities, and set in motion the
whole risk-taking process, lies with the state which is the subject of deter-
rence, not vice versa. The burden of deciding whether or not Britain would
indeed launch a punitive strike and, if Britain did, whether it was a price
worth paying, would be on Moscow's shoulders. This would be a very
heavy responsibility. It could be argued that there would be only a 20 or 30
to 1 chance that British missiles would be launched against the Soviet
Union in even the most extreme national crisis. But given the certainty of
destruction of some major Soviet cities if the missiles were launched, would
it be worth it just to gain control of what would be a devastated, radio-
active offshore north-west European island? And the odds against any
British government implementing a nuclear attack in time of extreme pro-
vocation may not be as long as suggested. The character of some prime
ministers may suggest shorter odds on a robust British response. Further-
more, Britain is now experiencing a third generation of high civil servants,
military officers, and senior politicians, who have been educated and trained
66 International Security in the Modern World
in a deterrence mode of thought. There is a whole politico-military struc-
ture. procured at great cost. and with long-established standard operating
procedures. organised to function as a deterrent. This compels any potential
aggressor to measure carefully its own real interests and relate them to
possible costs as well as gains.
Deterrence is not a competition in destructiveness. It is a psychological
exercise in persuasion and cost-gain analysis. Small nUclear-weapons states
know well that they could never inflict the same degree of damage on the
great nuclear powers as could be inflicted on them. But they can inflict such
a degree of cost in the case of a nuclear exchange that any gain made by the
great power is not worth the pain. It may transpire that the smaller state
would choose not to implement the threat. but the larger state can never
test that opportunity until it actually commits the initial aggression. So long
as the smaller state has clearly communicated the threat and the value it
attaches to the issue at stake. so long as it has the secure capabilities. and
so long as it appears firm in its resolve. then the larger state is duty-bound
to think most carefully and prudently about taking steps which could
determine whether or not the smaller state was bluffing. In the modem
European world. if not elsewhere. discussion of a scenario such as a
British-Soviet nuclear stand-off may seem unrealistic. Indeed. it is an
increasingly unlikely situation. but there are innumerable instances of what
seemed unlikely at the beginning of one decade actually happening a few
years later. An attraction of nuclear deterrence is that a properly organised
deterrence posture, taking full account of the three primary requirements
discussed above. can diminish the crude power differences between smaller
and larger states in a way that conventional military power never could.
because of the unprecedented degree of hurt that even a small nuclear
force can inflict. And such small forces are not expensive relative to other
items of government expenditure. In total terms. deterrent weapons sys-
tems such as nuclear submarines seem very expensive. but procurement
is spread over fifteen to twenty years. and as a proportion of national
defence budgets or gross domestic product. the figure is small. In Britain's
case. the Trident submarine programme is costing £9-10 billion over a
twenty-year period. Over that same period the aggregate British defence
budget will total approximately £400 billion at 1990 prices. This will be
about 4 per cent of gross domestic product. So the British Trident pro-
gramme will cost about 21/2 per cent of 4 per cent of gross domestic product.
Proponents of nuclear deterrence would argue that this is a small insurance
premium to cover a range of improbable, but not impossible. situations. It
is also argued that sophisticated nuclear deterrence forces deliver other
 James H. Wyllie 67
advantages, such as political influence over allies as well as enemies,
national prestige and self-esteem, and involvement in advanced scientific
research and development.

NON-MILITARY DETERRENCE

Normally, deterrence is exercised by the displacement and deployment

of military force. Few people living in Europe can doubt this observa-
tion. Large standing armies, numerous air force installations, and the
many naval bases spread throughout Europe have made it the focal point
for the practice of deterrence in the modem world. But, while in modem
Europe the practice of deterrence has been essentially of a military nature,
deterrence need not be restricted to the military instrument. Threats to
cut off diplomatic relations, to impose economic sanctions, or to inhibit
cultural or sporting contacts may also be utilised as vehicles for deterrence.
But, as in military deterrence, there must be clear communication, adequate
capabilities, economic or otherwise, and high credibility underpinning the
threat. There has to be a rational and proportionate relationship between
the issue under dispute and the level of threatened punishment. Too great
a threat over a minor matter defies credibility while expressions of great
outrage followed by minor sanctions makes a state a laughing-stock and
undermines its prestige and general foreign policy. To proclaim horror and
then withdraw a few diplomats, or ban direct airline flights. or boycott
some sporting event carries a hollow ring and does nothing for the cred-
ibility track-record of the state inflicting the 'punishment'.
There are also autonomous factors Which, outside the control of states,
may contribute to the creation of a deterrence environment. Domestic and
international public opinion, derived from cultural or ethical perspectives,
can act as autonomous factors deterring or self-deterring states from certain
behaviour even when the cost-gain calculation seems to be to the state's
advantage. An aspect of the Anglo-Argentinian War in the South Atlantic
in 1982 demonstrates this point. For the British government the Falklands
War was portrayed as a matter of high national interest and profound
political principle. Yet, about £2 billion was spent, and over 200 British
lives lost, rather than take quick and effective recourse to nuclear weapons.
The despatch of a Polaris nuclear submarine to the South Atlantic, and the
destruction of a large Argentinian garrison town, would have brought the
war to an end quickly. But domestic and international outrage would have
greeted the loss of thousands of innocent, non-combatant Argentinian lives.
68 International Security in the Modern World
World-wide odium would have fallen upon Britain as the first country
to break the nuclear weapons taboo since 1945. These factors deterred
Britain from pursuing the most rational military course.

A STRATEGY OF OUR TIMES

The practice of deterrence-based strategies in the modem, developed

world has been of such duration and depth that it is often assumed that
the theory is an invention of post-1945 foreign-policy specialists. But
deterrence has been a feature of international history for centuries, though
often in an implicit rather than explicit way:
Theorizing about deterrence seems to be a rather new phenomenon, but
its practice in a commonsensical, instinctive way must be as old as
the military art. One of our earliest military writers, Thucydides, in his
Peloponnesian War recounts many instances where one side or another
maneuvered for allies or other advantages in such a way that its opponent
would think that beginning a war, or expanding it, would not be worth
the risks or cost. 10
In more recent times, but before the advent of the atomic bomb, the Royal
Navy practised deterrence on the world's oceans through the nineteenth
and the early part of the twentieth centuries. Britain's imperial possessions
were not the only beneficiaries. The infant United States was allowed to
expand across the North American continent without interference from
the European continent because of the Royal Navy's dominance in the
North Atlantic. In the 1930s the Royal Air Force grew as a separate service
largely justified by the development of its long-range bomber force as a
deterrent against another European war. I I It should be noted, of course,
that not all exercises in deterrence are successful.
While the notion of deterrence is not unique to the postwar era, the
nuclear environment has brought deterrence theory to the fore and seen it
articulated in a lucid, deliberate manner as never before. It is established as
the dominant strategic theory of the developed world. The nuclear environ-
ment has transformed the primary purpose of the military instrument from
one of winning wars to one of preventing wars in the first place, or limiting
wars should they break out. In the nuclear world achieving victory now
takes second place to ensuring survival and avoiding unimaginable destruc-
tion. From at least the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, if not a few
years earlier, when the Soviet leader Khrushchev announced his peaceful
coexistence policy, there has been a political consensus in both East and
West that nuclear war is not winnable. There may be instances of generals
 James H. Wyllie 69
or strategists in the East and the West proposing a military formula for
victory, but no American president. and no Soviet leader since Stalin, has
ever advocated that nuclear war was politically worthwhile. Between the
great powers war-prevention is more important than the chimera of war-
victory, and deterrence is the most suitable strategic theory for that purpose.
Another feature of the modem world which has brought deterrence to
the fore is the nature of military technology. Ballistic missiles are fast,
covering thousands of miles in a matter of minutes, and relatively accurate.
At present. as discussed earlier, there is no effective defence against ballis-
tic missiles. Even against the much slower cruise missile, which can be
shot down by aircraft, there is no total defence. Faced by an attacking force
of hundreds of cruise missiles, no defending state could ever be sure a
few would not reach their targets. Armed with nuclear warheads cruise
missiles can be as destructive as, and may be more accurate than, ballistic
missiles. Modem, fast. nuclear-armed bombers pose the same degree of
threat. with at least a few managing to penetrate even the most sophisticated
air defence systems. The American SOl system. even if ever deployed,
provides no defence against cruise missiles or manned bombers. In a
world of increasingly sophisticated weapons, even if arms control does
limit some of the numbers, traditional notions of defence are long out-
moded. No society can guarantee its own invulnerability. In this environ-
ment, which looks unlikely to change in the foreseeable future, many
societies have come to terms with a high degree of physical vulnerability,
but sought psychological security through threatening to impose a level of
pain on any enemy which is not worth any gain the enemy may hope to
make by its aggression.
Notions of punishment. revenge, and hurt have been central to Western
views of deterrence for much of the past forty years. Traditionally, the focus
has not been on gaining victory on the battlefield but on inflicting an
unacceptable level of pain regardless of what happens on the battlefield. But
the march of technology has induced change in Western attitudes to deter-
rence, leading to a convergence between deterrence by punishment and, to
be discussed in detail later. the Soviet emphasis on deterrence by denial of
the prospect of victory on the battlefield. Early concepts of Robert
McNamara's Flexible Response incorporated plans for waves of ballistic
missiles achieving a military advantage - a sort of limited victory - and
thereby avoiding the need to launch strikes against cities. But given the
great increase in Soviet missile numbers by the mid-1960s, plans for dis-
arming counter-force strikes, while retaining enough US missiles in reserve
to deter any Soviet retaliatory attack on US cities, fell by the wayside. There
were just too many Soviet missiles to allow any chance of an effective
counter-force strike, and the crude logic of MAD came into play by the
70 International Security in the Modern World
end of the decade. However, while MAD remains with us as the final rung
in the ladder of superpower nuclear escalation, advances in technology in
the 1970s brought again the possibility of waging limited nuclear war and
perhaps winning some sort of battlefield advantage. The invention of mul-
tiple warhead technology, which allows one ballistic missile to cover a
wider range of targets with its many separate warheads, greatly increased
targeting options before the MAD threshold was reached. Greater flexibility
in targeting was created by advances in microchip and computer technol-
ogy. Missiles that took a week to retarget in the 1960s, could be retargeted
in hours in the 1970s, and in minutes in the 1980s. Conceptually, at least,
land-based strategic nuclear missiles could be considered as weapons of
tactical utility. Until the Trident class was deployed, submarine-launched
ballistic missiles were always less accurate than land-based missiles and
hence less flexible.
Since the early 1970s US war-planners have been anxious to utilise
that flexibility to enhance the US deterrent posture and push the final rung
of the escalation ladder as far away as possible, even if conventional
deterrent thresholds become less robust as a consequence. The argument is
that deterrence is more credible the more options a policymaker has at his
disposal. Retribution and punishment can be graduated, giving the oppo-
nent more time to consider the prudence of their behaviour, but resolve is
still being demonstrated by the defender. The avoidance of high population
centres for as long as possible gives the aggressor incentives to stop,
especially if there is little progress but lots of pain on the battlefield.
However, it must be mentioned that there is an opposing school of thought
which argues that the more war-fighting options there are, the less unattrac-
tive it becomes to break the deterrence thresholds. The more that flexibility
is sought, the more it looks as if the deterrer is reluctant to inflict high
punishment. Hence, the deterrent threat becomes less credible. Whether
more flexibility enhances deterrence by making the deterrent response more
graduated and less awful to contemplate, or whether it displays a lack of
determination and resolve to inflict great pain in the protection of vital
interests, and hence undermines deterrence, is a difficult argument to re-
solve. It does seem to be a matter of personal judgement, but successive US
administrations have insisted that greater flexibility of military power at
all levels enhances rather than diminishes deterrence. One illustrious com-
mentator sees the limited options debate in the following light:

I do not believe that such strategies 'make the world safe for nuclear
war'. Quite enough horror, quite enough suffused fear of holocaust,
 James H. Wyllie 71
would survive to inculcate caution, while the consequences of the failure
of deterrence might be infinitely preferable to those entailed by assured
destruction. So I see limited options as a few added stopping-places,
none too hopeful but very much needed stopping places, on the dreadful
escalatory slope.12

Despite many Western assertions to the contrary, there has been a similar
effort in the Soviet Union to design strategic doctrines to prevent war and
to achieve objectives and protect vital interests by peaceful means. The
Soviets have been unhappy with Western concepts of deterrence, and the
words used to correspond may be sderzhivanie, which means dissuasion or
keeping out, or ustrashenie, which means intimidation. In recent years the
fonner has been the word most widely used, yet neither really reflects what
is understood by deterrence in the West. 13 The Soviets are frequently alanned
by what they perceive as the West's deterrence objectives. They are more
inclined to ascribe the recent efforts to multiply deterrence options to a
quest for war-fighting, perhaps first-strike capabilities, than to an attempt
to enhance deterrence stability and overcome NATO's geostrategic prob-
lems. The Russo-strategic perspective is that the technological advances
in and doctrinal amendments to United States nuclear strategy in the 19708
attributed to Western deterrence a considerable power of compellance
with offensive characteristics. While the United States was enunciating
mutual assured destruction as the ultimate deterrent, it was making every
effort to acquire war-fighting capabilities through which it could dominate
and control any future nuclear conflict.
Mutuality is further diminished by the fact that while the US spoke of
'mutual assured destruction' (MAD), in effect her policy was designed
to increase counterforce capabilities - witness the MX missile pro-
gramme, the Trident SLBM programme and improvement in forward-
based systems (FBS) which simply amounted to 'outflanking' the SALT
agreements. Even worse, PD-59 allegedly reflected the real intent of
US policy, reinforced and supported by the release of previously secret
US documents such as the operational plan Dropshot: US policy is
designed to legitimise nuclear war by making the idea of limiting nuclear
war more feasible and thus 'more acceptable', resulting in a lowering of
nuclear threshold, where a 'Euro-strategic nuclear war' might be pur-
sued, leaving the USSR open to attack but giving sanctuary to the United
States. Behind all this lies the intent of establishing (or fe-establishing)
escalation dominance and thus 'intimidating' the USSR, or so the Soviet
leadership reads the present situation. 14
72 International Security in the Modern World
In the West much has been made of the reluctance of the Soviet military,
in their professional journals, to accept the hopelessness of all-out war and
the Western views of the role of retributive deterrence in war-avoidance. As
outlined earlier, the Soviet military seem to insist that their role is to fight
a future war, even nuclear, as they would fight any war, and defend the
Soviet Union. Their objective seems to be to achieve victory (perhaps they
mean 'survival'),., though there is an acute awareness in the Soviet military
press of the catastrophic costs of any all-out war. In the event of the failure
of 'deterrence', the Soviet military see their role as fighting through the war,
with conventional armies perhaps playing crucial roles in any post-nuclear
phase of the conflict, rather than the military merely being the reflex
instrument of punishment following an attack. However, the Soviet
emphasis on defence in a classical manner, and on attempting to fight a
war, does not imply a proclivity to wage war. To appreciate this an ex-
amination of how the Soviets view sderzhivanie, or what in the West
would be described as Soviet deterrence doctrine, is required.
In the Soviet Union deterrence is perceived as a political instrument
which is the responsibility of the political leadership. The Soviet leadership
since Khrushchev has attached the highest priority to preventing a war
between the West and the Soviet Union, by presenting before the West
such aggregate power that war may not be viewed as a cost-effective
option. Such Soviet power is composed not only of military might, but
also of political influence, economic capabilities and social forces. As
Khrushchev said at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU in February 1956,
'Today there are mighty social and political forces possessing formidable
means to prevent the imperialists from unleashing war, and if they actually
try to start it, to give a smashing rebuff to the aggressors and frustrate
their adventurist plans.' 16 The Soviet leadership since Khrushchev has
viewed deterrence as a political doctrine composed of a whole range of
forces and, until 1990, with a strength derived from the expansion after
1945 of the world Communist camp. Given the inherent political conflict
between East and West, the Soviet leadership has always recognised war
as a distinct and major danger, and acknowledged that it is the purpose
of Soviet foreign policy to control political policy so as to prevent war.
The radical high foreign policy of Gorbachev's Soviet Union towards the
United States since 1985 is a clear manifestation of such behaviour.
The military instrument is a major instrument of foreign policy, but it is
just one of the principal elements of deterrence policy for Moscow. 'In
Soviet eyes, the prevention of war is not only a matter of the balance of
military power, important though that is, but the object of a wider policy
that embraces political elements as well.'17 The Soviet military see their
 James H. Wyllie 73
task as preparing to do their best, in the event of a failure of Soviet political
policy, to defend the socialist camp, and if possible to be in a position to
influence the postwar settlement. To the Soviet Union the first line of
defence is deterrence by the clear ability to deny your enemy gains, in
contrast to the basic Western view of deterrence, which threatens punish-
ment for attempting, or succeeding in making, gains. IS In Soviet eyes
military preparedness is seen to enhance war-prevention rather than
weaken it:
It is therefore mistaken to draw, as some commentators have done, a
sharp contrast between the war-fighting policy of the Soviet Union and
the war-deterring policy of the United States. The primary goal of Soviet
military preparations is to prevent world nuclear war. At the same time,
however, a strong emphasis on the need to prepare to wage such a war
has been a distinctive feature of Soviet military thinking in the nuclear
age. 19
Although the major features of their deterrent doctrines differ in these
respects, it is clear that both the United States and the Soviet Union wish to
conduct their political competition and discourse without resort to nuclear
war, and that they look to their own concepts of deterrence as a first line of
defence. For both the nuclear superpowers and their allies, deterrence is
very much an instrument of the nuclear peace and while political postures
may be modified and military aspects of deterrence changed to reflect
technological and strategic developments, neither superpower has disowned
the doctrines of deterrence that they have been practising since the mid-
1950s. Indeed, as suggested above when discussing Western deterrence, it
could be argued that it is a question of US deterrence doctrine inching
towards the Soviet practice rather than, as has often been proposed, of the
United States having revealed the magic of deterrence to the strategically
unsophisticated Soviets in the course of arms control talks in the 1970s.
In modem times the West has found deterrence theory attractive not only
because it wanted to prevent or limit wars, nor just because the technology
of war left little alternative. In the Western democracies there is a cultural
resistance to striking first. There is an ethical revulsion to launching
preemptive attacks on the Pearl Harbor model. The NATO alliance of
sixteen Western states is unique in its geographical scope. scale of member-
ship, and longevity. Most of the electorates in this peacetime alliance would
not tolerate membership of a military organisation with an offensive char-
acter and an aggressive doctrine. Democracies are always reluctant to go to
war, and always feel there needs to be a clear cause. A deterrence doctrine
allows cause to be established but also provides for forces to be available to
74 International Security in the Modern World
respond to that cause. It should be added that democracies. while reluctant
to go to war. make cohesive. effective war-waging societies once convinced
of the necessity to go to war. A major psychological problem for defensive.
deterrence-based alliances such as NATO is that the high point of the
alliance is the day it is founded or. for later. new members. the day they join.
Thereafter. the fundamental task of the alliance is to stop things happening.
Paradoxically. the more successful such an alliance is. particularly over
the long term. the less the public sees the need for the alliance and the
associated high spending on a range of deterrent forces.
Deterrence-based defence may seem expensive. Large standing forces
must be available immediately, round the clock. to sustain the threat to
inflict punishment. Such forces need to be flexible. modem. and as invul-
nerable as possible. The world of ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads
is very different from that of fifty or one hundred years ago. In those
days, when war broke out. states often had weeks. sometimes months, to
mobilise and plan a campaign aimed at victory on the battlefield. If the
conflict became long-term. then conscription could be introduced. indus-
try re-orientated towards war production. and society organised on a war
footing. Between wars countries would often drift along on a very low
defence budget, maintaining only a small cadre of professional forces.
Nowadays, modem technology precludes the lUXUry of slow mobilisation.
As a consequence defence budgets of between 3 and 4 per cent of gross
domestic product are the norm among the larger Western European states,
6 per cent in the United States, and twice that in the Soviet Union. In the
developing world. figures are often much higher. However, while deter-
rence may appear expensive, full-scale war is even more costly. It is
reckoned that during the Second World War Britain spent over half its
gross domestic product on the war effort, and the Soviet Union even more.
In a postwar world of clear ideological division, imbued with apparently
deep-seated hostility, a small percentage of national wealth devoted to
deterrence over the long term was seen by successive leaderships to be a
policy preferable to very low defence spending which could perhaps tempt
an adversary into a mutually disastrous conflict.

BEYOND THE COLD WAR

While not unique to the world since 1945, the strategic theory of deterrence
has been particularly apt in that period of hostile, East-West ideological
division and competition known as the Cold War. But that period seems to
have come to an end. The collapse of Communism and Soviet political
 James H. Wyllie 75
power in Eastern Europe, and the widespread discrediting of Marxism
throughout the international system, have transformed the security environ-
ment in the northern hemisphere. Does this mean that deterrence is now
redundant in East-West relations?
There can be little doubt that in central Europe, the fulcrum of East-
West rivalry since 1945, political and military tensions have diminished to
unprecedented levels. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved as a formal organ-
isation in March 1991, having no credibility at all. The unification of the
two Germanies, and the democratisation of most of Eastern Europe, have
transformed the security situation. NATO's character is changing from one
of a Western defensive alliance with a forthright deterrent posture to that of
Western political and security forum. The primary value of NATO to its
members is changing from that of deterrence of the Warsaw Pact to that of
a vehicle for the incorporation of a unified, powerful Germany in the
Western political, economic and social value systems. In these circum-
stances the profile and the role of deterrence are being changed. Assuming
there is no major regression in East-West relations, the large standing
armies, air forces and navies in the European region will be reduced through-
out the 1990s. The political consensus throughout NATO, the Warsaw Pact,
and among the European neutrals seems to be that collective, region-wide
security measures should be organised through a common institution. It is
likely that the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE)
will fulfil that role. Nonetheless, while NATO's Flexible Response doctrine
and Forward Defence policy in West Germany have become largely redun-
dant, and prospects of substantial arms control are high at both conventional
and nuclear level, the emphasis on deterrence may decrease, but it will not
disappear. All the evidence of the twentieth century bears witness that
regional collective security concepts, and even institutions, do not make
longstand-ing ethnic, or territorial, or historical disputes disappear. Political
tensions and some military rivalries across, and within, sub-regions of
Europe will persist. Even if arms control does produce anticipated reduc-
tions, old rivals will still possess large arsenals. The Soviet Union's succes-
sor will remain, for the foreseeable future, the local military superpower in
Europe, with conventional and nuclear forces far in excess of any other
European state. Extended deterrence, though of a lower profile, will still
be required of the United States, and NATO will remain the vehicle for
that arrangement. 20 Western European armies will be reduced, for example
West Germany's from 450 000 to a unified German army of 300 000, and
Britain's from 150000 to 100 000, but the firepower of these forces will
remain considerable. And while US ground forces will be reduced gradu-
ally, there is little indication that any government on either side of the
76 International Security in the Modern World
Atlantic wishes the manifestation of the American commitment to West
European security to be removed completely. A paradox of this new era of
peace in Europe is that, while the probability of conflict is very low, if
tension was to rise it is strategic arsenals which will bear more of the burden
of deterrence, earlier, than in the days when NATO and the Warsaw Pact
were eyeball-to-eyeball on the Central Front. In the future there will prob-
ably be a buffer of non-Warsaw Pact states in Eastern Europe between
NATO and the Soviet Union's successor. Conventional armies will be
reduced and, following the eventual withdrawal of Russian forces from the
former territory of East Germany, which looks like being out of bounds for
any non-German NATO forces, US and Russian armies will be hundreds
of miles apart. In such circumstances the vehicle of rapid and robust
demonstration of resolve and commitment will be strategic nuclear weap-
ons. Nuclear weapons may be reduced in numbers, and certain whole
categories banned from employment, but there is little sign that the quality
and overall capability of the strategic nuclear forces of the nuclear weapons
states in the northern hemisphere will be reduced. So long as any serious
political rivalries exist between the Soviet Union's successor and the West,
nuclear deterrence will not be abandoned, though - as with the general issue
of defence - its high public profile will decline.
Outside Europe the deterrence condition will expand as the factors
which contribute to it proliferate. The spread of ballistic missiles. advanced
aircraft. and weapons of mass destruction, nuclear or chemical. may pro-
duce local deterrence balances, for instance between India and Pakistan, or
Iraq and Israel. Dangers arise when mutual deterrence is fragile because of
an imbalance of forces. States may then be tempted to use large. modem
forces for compellance rather than deterrence. In such circumstances in
such regions, the smaller, weaker states may look to larger neighbours, or
outside the region, for extended deterrence protection. If large, well-equipped
states do proffer deterrence protection then the commitment and the value
attached to the security of the state receiving extended deterrence need to be
communicated loudly and clearly to likely aggressors. And the state desir-
ous of protection needs to have the courage to welcome a clear, perhaps
physical. manifestation on its territory of its deterrence association with its
guardian state. These were principles ignored by Kuwait and. in the summer
of 1990, it suffered the consequences.
 James H. Wyllie 77

NOTES
I. Mandelbaum, M., The Nuclear Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1981), p. 210.
2. Wolfe, T. W., Soviet Power and Europe /945-1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1970), p. 33, fn. 3.
3. Freedman, L., The Evolution a/Nuclear Strategy (London: Macmillan, 1983),
p.139.
4. For three highly critical analyses of SOl as originally conceived, see Drell, S.,
Farley, P., and Holloway, D., 'Preserving the ABM Treaty', International
Security, Vol. 9, no. 2, Fall 1984; Bundy, MeG., Kennan, G., McNamara,
R. and Smith G., 'The President's Choice: Star Wars or Arms Control',
Foreign Affairs, Vol. 63, no. 2, Winter 1984185, pp. 265-78, and Glaser, c.,
'Why Even Good Defenses May Be Bad', International Security, Vol. 9,
no. 2, Fall 1984, pp. 92-123. For arguments supportive of SOl, see Gray, C.,
'A Case for Strategic Defence', Survival, Vol. XXVII, No.2, March/April
1985, pp. 50-5, and Payne, K. and Gray, C., 'Nuclear Policy and the Defen-
sive Transition', Foreign Affairs, Vol. 62, no. 4, Spring 1984, pp. 820-42.
5. See Spanier, 1., Games Nations Play (London: Nelson, 1972), pp. 241-2.
6. Ibid., p. 242.
7. See Garthoff, R., 'Mutual Deterrence, Parity and Strategic Arms Limitations
in Soviet Policy', in Leebart, D. (ed.), Soviet Military Thinking (London:
George Allen and Unwin, 1981), pp. 92-124.
8. See Wohlstetter, A., 'The delicate balance of terror', Foreign Affairs,
Vol. XXXVII, no. 2, 1959.
9. See Freedman op. cit., p. 290.
10. George, A. L., and Smoke, R., Deterrence in American Foreign Policy:
Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), p. 12.
11. See Howard, M., War in European History (London: Oxford University
Press, 1976), p. 129.
12. Martin, L., The Two-Edged Sword (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982),
p.26.
13. See Holloway, D., The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1984), p. 32.
14. Erickson, J., 'The Soviet View of Deterrence: A General Survey', Survival,
Vol. XXIV, no. 6, NovemberlDecember 1982, p. 245.
15. Ibid., p. 244.
16. Quoted in Holloway, op. cit., p. 32.
17. Ibid., p. 34.
18. See Erickson, op. cit., p. 244.
19. Holloway, op. cit., p. 55.
20. For an interesting prognosis, see 'The new nuclear age', The Economist,
10 March, 1990, pp. 11-12.
5 Alliances and Technology
Roger Carey

It is a long time since Liska wrote Nations in Alliance' and a very much
longer time since Thucydides wrote his History of the Peioponnesian
War.2 Yet each would recognise the writing of the other as describing the
principal features of a similar international system and both are sensible
tracts for any contemporary student of alliances to read. Given the 2000
years that separate the two authors it suggests that certain characteristics
of the international system have been sustained over that time and that
the nature of alliances is similarly timeless.
Alliances are undoubtedly the product of an international system in
which each state sees itself as competing with others - not necessarily a
completely Hobbesian 'state of nature', but an international system charac-
terised by competition and conflict at least as much as by cooperation. In
such a situation it is possible to conceive of states seeking allies both to
prosecute their interests and to defend their interests. Alliances become,
therefore, a product of the competition among states to control the scarce
resources of the international system. A military alliance seeks to join
two, or more, states together in a common enterprise to use military cap-
ability to common effect.
A military alliance may be formed for two reasons. It may be that a state
will ally with another in order to ensure that its partner does not ally with
a third party and thereby pose a threat to the security of the state. Or it
may be - more likely - that an ally will be selected in order to supplement
the power of the state with that of another in order to either prosecute a
common aim or to thwart the desire of other states to impose their will
upon the allies. The common aim in all cases is to enhance the security
of the state.
Military alliances are, of course, not the only technique by which a state
might seek to protect and further its interests. It may seek to acquire an
hegemonic position - i.e. it may seek to increase its power relative to other
states in a unilateral manner, perhaps by engaging in an arms race. It may
seek to opt out of the competition for power and influence in the inter-
national system by seeking to become recognised as neutral, thereby seek-
ing to diminish its desirability as an area for conquest and forgoing any
goals of conquering others - but this is a privileged position accorded
to very few states, usually only those at the periphery of international

78
 Roger Carey 79
politics. A few states may be in the position of contemporary Burma
(now Myanmar) that seek almost completely to isolate themselves from
the international system - but for that to be a viable aspiration the state
must have no ambitions outside its borders and must not be the target of
the aspirations of others.
Whatever the motive, military alliances are, therefore, matters of expe-
diency, the element of choice in policymaking often being heavily circum-
scribed. This element of expediency suggests that all alliances will be
terminated at the earliest possible opportunity, especially as all members
of alliances are usually convinced that they are contributing more to the
common good of the alliance than they receive in benefits - however
measured - from the alliance. (Witness the sometimes furious arguments
within NATO on the issue of burden-sharing.) States are also concerned
that long-term involvement in a military alliance, especially an alliance
that develops an integrated military command and control structure - such
as NATO - will erode their sovereignty. Paradoxically, however, the mem-
ber states of NATO seem singularly reluctant to disband the alliance despite
the official ending of the Cold War.
Prior to the ending of the Second World War in 1945, alliance partners
were determined almost totally by considerations of expediency - that is,
which partner would be most likely to aid the achievement of a given policy
goal. This situation resulted from a variety of factors - the small number of
states active in the international political system; the relatively limited goals
of state policy; the limitations of technology and, above all, the lack of
ideological considerations in the formation of alliances. It was thus possible
for Britain to select her alliance partners in the late eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries on the basis of her belief that no single state should
dominate the European mainland and thereby be in a position to threaten
the integrity of Great Britain. Britain was able, therefore, to aUy with the
weakest power against the strongest, irrespective of which state that hap-
pened to be at the time. After 1870 the Bismarckian alliance system began
to break down this notion of 'free movement' - while ironically being in
part motivated by the fear of such 'free movement' by Russia - in that
France came to be seen as an unacceptable alliance partner because it
was a Republican state. Ideology had begun to enter the considerations
of which states would be suitable alliance partners. After 1945 ideology
became a much more potent force in international politics and exerted
considerable influence over the choice of alliance partners.
Due to the nature of modem weapons technology, contemporary alli-
ances - alliances of the post-1945 period - also feature a total dominance
of fundamental political objectives over military aims. The two great
80 International Security in the Modern World
powers in the period following 1945 developed a determination to avoid
major overt conflict between themselves. Indeed, thermonuclear weapons
made it imperative that war between them became a measure that had to be
positively avoided. This altered the nature of alliances after 1945. Alliances
became concerned primarily with deterrence - with postures and strategies
to avoid war - rather than with strategies to win military engagements.
(Though they also needed to be concerned with strategies to fight military
engagements should deterrence fail to deter.)
This has meant, in tum, that the two great powers - the USA and the
USSR - as the powers controlling the major deterrent systems, have been
the states principally concerned with the great issue of war and peace in
the global international system. Other states may have considerable interest
in the issue, and may influence such matters in a local and regional con-
text, but only the USA and USSR have been able to determine whether
mankind has, or had, a future on earth. This has left the alliance partners
of the two great powers in a situation where they have been able to exert
only little influence over the style of the great-power rivalry - the alliance
leaders let it be known, overtly and tacitly, that the conflict between them
and their alliance systems was to be conducted in a political, rather than a
military, manner.
The dominance of the two major powers reflected the change in the
international system. From 1919 onwards there was a steady drift from the
system being multipolar to becoming predominantly bipolar. With only two
global powers after 1945, each heading an impressive system of military
alliances, it became inevitable that the interests of the two great powers
would often coincide because they faced problems that were unique to
them as great powers, and which might be resolved only at the expense
of the secondary members of their respective alliance systems. These
common interests in the management of the global international system
by the alliance leaders tended to lead to conflicts occurring within alliances
- for instance, over Suez in 1956 the USA voted in the United Nations
against the actions of two of its alliance partners.
A further consequence of the bipolar nature of the contemporary inter-
national system has been the stability of alliances. With only very limited
capability to alter alliance partnerships, the two major military alliances of
the post-1945 period - NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organisation - have
both been exceedingly longlived by the standards of any previous alliance.
These three conditions - bipolarity, ideology, and the dominance of
political aims over military aims - have allowed very interesting arguments
and conflicts to develop within alliances. The French, for example, chal-
lenged the role of the USA within NATO on numerous occasions, and in
 Roger Carey 81

1965 fonnally left the integrated military structure of the alliance. Such
challenges by France were possible because the only price that was paid
by France was political - there was no expectation that French security
would be irretrievably diminished. These challenges were a reflection of
the success of the Great Powers in ensuring that there was a high degree
of confidence that no war would break out in Europe - France would
not have dared to challenge the American position if it had actually ex-
pected a war to break out.
This same situation allows considerable conflict to arise within the
alliance systems about goal fonnation and implementation for the alliance.
The 'no war in Europe' environment removed from the participants in the
NATO and WTO alliances the possibility of immediate destruction - and
to a very large extent the possibility of external aggression - and thereby
allowed them to compete for influence within the alliance - both with each
other and against the alliance leader. This characteristic was more widely
manifest within NATO than the WTO, but there was little reason in theory
why the WTO should not have suffered the same problems. The best
interests of the NATO alliance might, for example, have suggested that all
high-technology weapon systems should have been purchased from the
USA by all the alliance members. But for reasons not necessarily connected
with security considerations, the European members wished - very ineffi-
ciently in total alliance tenns - to retain research, design and production
facilities, certainly on a European basis and often on a national basis. When
procurement decisions were made by NATO it was not unusual, therefore,
to find European members of the alliance competing with the USA and
with each other, and that for political reasons the purchasing decisions
were often not the most efficient in military and 'value for money' tenns.
An excellent example of this tendency was the 'sale of the century' to
supply NATO with a fighter/bomber aircraft in the 1960s resulting in the
purchase of the American F16. 3
A further consequence of the stability of alliances in the period from
1949 to 1990 was that the 'target' of that alliance was well-defined and
preparations could be made for military action against the 'target state' or
target alliance - either of an offensive or defensive nature. Whereas his-
torically alliances might have involved only loose military conversations
between Chiefs of Staff or at a lower level, the two major post-1945
alliances both developed integrated military structures and large civil and
military bureaucracies in order to control and command the military per-
sonnel. To the military and security imperatives for an alliance there is
thereby added the bureaucratic imperative to develop and sustain the al-
liance, and if necessary to diversify the role of the alliance from military
82 International Security in the Modern World
into purely civilian and even economic purposes - in order to sustain the
bureaucratic machinery (for example, the non-military aspects of NATO
which can be seen to become more 'high profile' as military threats dimin-
ish, as exemplified by the London Declaration of July 1990).
Military integration requires a known potential assailant, against whom
plans can be developed and strategies developed that will prevent that
potential assailant carrying through his nefarious plans. The postwar alli-
ances were, therefore, directed against specific targets - in the case of
NATO, for 40 years this was against a perceived threat from the Soviet
Union and its allies in the WTO. This selectivity of targets makes it possible
for alliances to be limited in the geographical area in which the member
states will act in cohort with each other. This does not necessarily preclude
'out of area' activity, although such actions have proved to be major
issues of contention within NATO. Such action may in fact be more likely
simply because of the habit of cooperation that has developed amongst
member states. Thus individual members of NATO were able to cooperate
together in the Gulf War of 1991 even though NATO per se was not
involved. Within the area of the two major alliances the forces of the
member states trained together and an integrated military structure was
developed, and in time of warfare it was envisaged that the national forces
would be consigned to the command of an alliance - not a national -
Commander-in-Chief, who just happened to be the Commander-in-Chief
of the alliance leader.
The integrated military structure developed by NATO and the WTO was
unusual. Military alliances drawn together for more localised defensive
purposes - e.g. ANZUS, CENTO in their day - had more limited goals that
could be satisfied by staff talks and common planning units and which
looked more like the alliances of the nineteenth century - shifting, loose
associations that integrated and disintegrated around specific issues and
threats. These alliances enjoyed a higher degree of fluidity than the great
power alliances, but may well have been less reliable in the event of con-
flict occurring.
In the great-power alliances reliability is critical - without apparent
reliability deterrence fails and the whole purpose of the alliance fails.
The stability of the international political system given by a predomi-
nantly bipolar world, dominated by the USA and the USSR and their
respective allies in either multilateral or bilateral military alliances, has
been remarkable. Bi-polarity made life relatively simple. There was only a
single major 'eye' of tension in the international system - between the
East (the USSR and allies) and the West (the USA and allies). All other
crises and conflicts were secondary to that relationship. The very tautness
 Roger Carey 83
of this relationship made it a predictable one - there was only one major
relationship to watch and that needed to be manipulated. Because of their
extensive influence, the great powers were able to control (or attempt to
control with varying degrees of success) even the conflicts in which they
were not directly involved - e.g. the Middle East wars of 1967 and 1973,
which they could not prevent but which they were successfully able to
control and limit.4
If deterrence is about the calculation of capability and intent then a
bipolar world was the simplest form of structure in which to make those
calculations. As the period from 1945 progressed, and NATO and the WTO
became established and institutionalised, so the 'rules of the game' became
more and more firmly established and Europe became one of the most
stable parts of the international political system, despite being at the 'eye'
of the tensions between the USA and the USSR. Indeed, so well-established
were the 'rules of the game' that spheres of influence developed and it was
possible for the USSR to quell revolts in Hungary and Czechoslovakia
without provoking anything other than diplomatic protests from the NATO
states. Similarly France was able to withdraw from the integrated military
structure of NATO and the only consequence was a degree of inconven-
ience internally to the alliance. Europe thus became a very secure area in
which to live, even if political - and economic - change was virtually ruled
out. The possibility of Mutual Assured Destruction gave no incentive to
go to war as a means of resolving any conflict to any alliance member.
MAD thus became a mechanism to reinforce stability.
In 1990 this cosy international system was changed. The formal ending
of the Cold War marked the end of bipolarity. The USSR determined. for
whatever reasons, that Eastern Europe was no longer such a necessary or
integral part of the Soviet security system that it required military occupa-
tion. This opened the way for internal political change in the states pre-
viously under Soviet domination, and, more importantly, it opened up the
possibility of change in their international alignments. What has emerged
is 'the fog of peace's and in the spring and summer of 1991 the dissolution
of one of the great alliances, the WTO.

MILITARY ALLIANCES AND THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

As a result of the changes in the states of the ex-Soviet empire there has
been a reemergence of an old phenomenon. Security, that has been thought
of in multinational terms for over four decades, has become again for the
members of NATO and the ex-members of the WTO the concern of the
84 International Security in the Modern World
individual nation or state. The stability that has characterised alliances for
over 40 years has broken down. States are now reviewing their contribution
to alliances more markedly than ever before in tenns of their national
perceptions, national economies, and national interests. As a result the
WTO has disintegrated and NATO faces major problems.
No contemporary alliance is more than the sum of its parts, though in
military tenns it may be more effective to plan to fight or deter as a whole
rather than in a number of parts. Politically the alliance can never become
more than the remit it receives from its founding treaty and the powers
invested into it by successive foreign and defence ministers. With the
perceived reduction in a threat that needs to be counteracted some states
will no longer feel it necessary to purchase part of their security from an
alliance - they can become free of military alliance commitments. This does
not mean, however, that states can afford to remain outside alliance group-
ings, but simply that those groupings may become much more fluid and
more subject to nationalist pressures to achieve national goals rather than
alliance goals.
The change from bipolarity is perhaps characterised more strongly than
anywhere else by the unification of Gennany. An event that was almost
inconceivable 12 months before it took place, it represents the pace of
change in international politics. The new Germany has yet to establish its
full identity and the nature of the role it wishes to play in both European and
international affairs. This is also true of the ex-WTO states of Eastern
Europe. Without doubt, however, nationalism will colour their actions,
especially in the security sector where for the first time for over 50 years
the divisions of Europe are being eroded. It would seem probable that
the 'new' states of Eastern Europe, and to a lesser degree the states of
Western Europe, will use military capability as a symbol of the new na-
tionhood or new nationalism. This, traditionally, has been a very potent
force in the international political system - a force for instability that
might, once again, potentially lead to overt military conflict. Whether
military alliances will be an appropriate mechanism for channelling this
newly-emergent force into constructive ways of seeking national security
must remain one of the enigmas of the present situation.
Does this herald a return to an international system of the nineteenth
century variety, in which there was greater fluidity in alliance fonnulation?
The traditional balance of power systems could come back into playas in
the nineteenth century. But there is one major difference. Thermonuclear
weapons now form the basis of major alliances and the deterrent functions
that they fulfil. If alliances revert to being diffuse, shifting affairs how can
thermonuclear deterrence - in which certainty of response is an essential
 Roger Ca,.ey 85
element - operate? How will any potential aggressor be able to assess the
likelihood of any response. or the nature of that response, in an alliance
system that lacks the stability of the bipolar situation?
The Gulf War of 1991 indicated that an ad hoc alliance. led by the
remaining major actor in the international system - the USA - could be
made to operate effectively in a limited war context. This alliance was
however, put together only for the purpose of liberating Kuwait from the
occupation by Iraq and once this task was fulfilled it disintegrated. The
political parameters were drawn tightly around the military action of the
alliance to ensure that the limited war aims were not exceeded. This style
of alliance may suggest the pattern for the future, in which the lead taken
by the major power in the international political system will have to be
followed by other states in order to ensure that they do not become victims
of the dominant power - not quite a situation of hegemonic power. but
clearly approaching that situation.6

TECHNOLOGY

The crucial difference between the nineteenth-century alliances and the

traditional balance of power system is the existence of thermonuclear weap-
ons and other high-technology weapons of mass destruction.
Thermonuclear weapons are different from any preceding weapon in that
they give their possessor the capacity to threaten the total existence of
another state - military and civil personnel and the total economic and
social infrastructure - without the enemy even being defeated in battle.
Faced with such a threat what state would dare to pursue its aims to the
ultimate? What state could resist the offer of being protected by alliance
with a state possessing such capability? Thus the stability of the inter-
national system of the postwar world was developed - a pax atomica - a
technological peace. based on extended nuclear deterrence through alliance
systems.
Technology, although offering to produce solutions to the problems of
an alliance in terms of how to deter an opponent, also produced problems
for alliances. Nuclear weapons, especially, have created tensions within
the alliances that they are designed to serve. The question of the 'finger on
the nuclear trigger' was a potentially disastrous issue that caused great
public anguish within NATO and less severe, and more private, debate
within the WTO. The non-nuclear states found themselves on the horns of
the proverbial dilemma. If the nuclear-weapon-owning member(s) of the
alliance used their nuclear weapons in anger, the result was likely to be
86 International Security in the Modern World
the total destruction of a\l the members of the alliance. If, on the other
hand, the weapons were not used, and it was known that they would not
be used, the deterrent effect of the weapons would be nullified and the
purposes for which the alliance was formed would not be fulfilled. If, as
an attempt to resolve this dilemma, the non-nuclear states were involved in
the decision-making process over the use of nuclear weapons it became
unlikely that nuclear weapons would ever be used - one member state
could always potentially cast a negative vote, if only because its percep-
tions of the threat to its national interest would be less dire than that of its
fellow members. Yet if the negative vote did not have a veto effect, there
would be little real point in involving the non-nuclear weapon states in the
decision-making process. This dilemma has never been fully resolved within
NATO - though the Nuclear Planning Group went some way to assuage
members' anxiety. But then two members of NATO, in addition to the
alliance leader, deploy a significant nuclear-weapon capability, suggest-
ing that they retain some doubts about alliance reliability. In the Warsaw
Pact the dilemma was less acute as the Pact was far more of an instrument
for the exercise of Soviet hegemony than one in which full and genuine
debate took place.
Technology causes other problems for alliances of a semi-permanent
nature. Technology changes and develops continuously. It may take several
years to evolve an alliance strategy, involving hard bargaining by all con-
cerned, and it may be several more years before the necessary adjustments
have been made to national forces and their equipment to fit into the new
strategic or tactical doctrine. In the meantime the 'onward march of tech-
nology' has continued, with the implication that many of the weapon
systems and their attendant doctrines are outmoded. Yet not to deploy the
most up-to-date and 'best' equipment is to put in jeopardy the lives of
the armed forces, or to ascribe a low value to the lives of service per-
sonnel. There is, therefore, a constant imperative to develop - and once
developed to deploy - more effective weapon systems.
The official strategy of the NATO alliance almost from its inception was
that of Massive Retaliation. Although the logic of Massive Retaliation was
never adopted by NATO and its force levels were never reduced to the
point where the only response to aggression would have been a nuclear
response, there came a point after the flight of Sputnik in 1957 - which the
Americans perceived as indicating the vulnerability of the USA - when it
was necessary to reappraise the alliance strategy, as the credibility of
Massive Retaliation had sunk to a very low ebb. It was 1962 before the USA
enunciated Flexible Response as an alternative in public, and it was a
further five years before the strategy became official NATO doctrine. This
 Roger Carey 87
technological imperative led to NATO having almost a decade in which
it lacked a credible strategy for the use of nuclear weapons.
Almost every new generation of technology has caused problems for the
alliance - whether it is 'smart' conventional technology or new nuclear
systems. The problem of continually advancing technology can be further
illustrated by the problem of intennediate range missiles to be based in
Europe. The development took place of an intennediate range missile and
an appropriate warhead in advance of the development of agreement
over the strategy within which such a weapon system would be utilised and
the basing agreements for such a weapon. This resulted in a major rift
within the alliance that centred around the view of the Gennan national
interest, the national interests of the other alliance members, and the inter-
ests of the alliance as whole.
Each generation of new technology exposed the fundamental weakness
of contemporary military alliances. Within NATO, for example, all mem-
bers had a strong interest in deterrence, supported ultimately by the USA's
capability to destroy the USSR. But the possibility of actions short of
total destruction posed major problems. The USA wished to defer the use
of strategic weapon systems for as long as possible in order to minimise
the chance of damage to the American homeland. The USA wished, there-
fore, to resist any attack from the WTO as far forward in Europe as possible
and, if possible, to confine any fighting that might take place to the Euro-
pean mainland. The Gennans, on the other hand, had little or no wish to
see this happen as any fighting in Europe would be over Gennan territory.
Gennany wished. therefore. to escalate as quickly as possible to the point
where strategic weapons would pass over Gennany. Each new weapon
system - each new technological development - was, therefore, perceived
to serve different purposes in Washington and Bonn.
These conflicting views - and those of the other members of the NATO
alliance - had to be reconciled (or, at least, apparently reconciled) before
any new weapon system deployment could take place. This has sometimes
given rise to developments that have been little short of the ridiculous -
for example, Intennediate Range Nuclear Systems (Cruise and Pershing
Missiles) were deployed in Europe only after several years of delicate,
and sometime indelicate, negotiations. Yet before deployment was com-
plete the INF Treaty, in which the European states were only marginally
involved, led to the withdrawal of these weapon systems.
This differing perspective also found an outlet in the rich seam of
burden-sharing issues within the alliance, especially the 'burden' of pro-
ducing and providing technologically advanced weapon systems with sig-
nificant technological spin-off into civil technologies. Once more, the logic
88 International Security in the Modern World
of what was required, and which member of the alliance might most
logically and economically produce it, differed from the perceptions of
national prestige and economic well-being of the member states.
Technology, by constant advance, creates an immense problem of redun-
dant weapons systems and the cost of deploying successor systems. A major
technological development in weapon systems takes place approximately
every five to seven years. Yet it takes most of this time, if not longer, to
develop, test, build, deploy and train service personnel to use, and incorpo-
rate into strategic thinking, a new weapon system. This implies that no
sooner is a system operational than it is redundant - a fearsome prospect, if
only in economic terms. Why then 'bother' with new technology? If all
one's opponents do not 'bother' then it might become possible to ignore
new technological developments. But this is very unlikely to occur. New
technology is concerned not simply with military artefacts but also civil
artefacts - e.g. solid state electronics - and if military applications are
ignored in the first instance they will. perforce. find their way into the
equipment simply because new technology is usually claimed to be cheaper,
is often more effective, and sometimes more reliable.
States, and alliances, do, therefore. have a choice. They may choose to
ignore technological advances and risk the loss of security that this could
bring about. Or they may choose to recognise technological advances and
deploy new weapon systems at regular intervals, and sometimes to develop
a whole technology only to find that the new weapon system to which it was
applied is obsolete before it is operational - for example, the British Blue
Streak missile, a liquid-fuelled intermediate range missile that, after a
decade of development. became operational in 1958 only to be totally
superseded by a later generation of solid-fuelled missiles.
Technology, therefore, has the potential to introduce instability not only
to intra-alliance relationships but also be inter-alliance relationships. A
stable situation of Mutual Assured Destruction could be rendered unstable
by the unilateral development of a technology that made one alliance
invulnerable to attack from another. This was the stated aim of President
Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative (The 'Star Wars' programme). The
potential for instability created by any success of the programme was clear.
A new technological development could ultimately lead to American in-
vulnerability. However. before that situation arose the competing alliance
system would be placed in a 'now or never' situation and have an incentive
to strike against the USA before that option was lost forever, once the
technological development had been converted into a significant military
capability. It was this fear that led President Reagan to offer to share any
new technology emerging from 'Star Wars' with the USSR. Such an offer
 Roger Carey 89
might appear to cast doubt on the value of the entire programme, but
was extremely rational in wishing to retain the stability that arises from
mutual knowledge and capability.
As the 'ultimate' weapon system cannot be developed and deployed, the
contribution of technology to international security is double-edged. By
providing nuclear weapons, it arguably gives the greatest guarantee of
security that has yet been developed. The same technology, however, has
the potential to destabilise the relationship between major alliances and to
lead to the very apocalypse that technological developments are designed
to avoid.
Perhaps the ultimate threat to alliances posed by technology is to raise
the question of their ultimate credibility. Will any state wish to aid an ally
if the consequence is likely to be a move on to an escalatory ladder that
could lead to the total destruction of the assisting state, that might not itself
have been attacked? In that context the fundamental idea of an alliance -
that each member will treat an attack on anyone of them as an attack on
itself, may well be fatally flawed.

NOTES

I. G. Liska, Nations in Alliance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

1962).
2. Thucydides, The Pe/oponnesian War (Hannondsworth: Penguin, 1954).
3. I. Dorfer, Arms Deal- the selling of the F16 (New York: Praeger, 1983).
4. These issues are discussed also by John J. Mearsheimer, 'Back to the future',
International Security, Summer 1990, Vol. 15, no. I and by John Lewis
Gaddis, 'The Long Peace', International Security, Spring 1986, Vol. 10,
no. 4.
5. P. Jenkins, The Independent, 3 April 1991.
6. See, for example, Joseph Nye, 'American Strategy after Bipolarity', Inter-
national Affairs, Vol. 66, no. 3, July 1990, pp. 513-22.
6 Third World Security
Caroline Thomas

The task of addressing the issue of security in the Third World in a single
chapter is formidable. We are dealing with over one hundred diverse states
within the confines of a few pages. Justice cannot be done to all these
states and their millions of inhabitants within such constraints. Therefore
the aim of the chapter is to offer guidelines for thought and further study,
and to signpost possible pitfalls.
The first task will be to investigate the meaning of the term 'Third
World'. The second will be to outline what is meant by security. Here
emphasis will be placed both on traditional realist interpretations which are
predominantly military in nature, and also on newer, non-military di-
mensions to security. The third task will be to consider three levels of
explanation of Third World states' security problems: the domestic or intra-
state level which revolves around the crisis of legitimacy of the state; the
regional level which interprets problems and solutions from a local per-
spective; and finally the global level which stresses that systemic factors,
such as bipolarity and the resulting ideologically-motivated superpower
competition, inform Third World security problems. Fourthly, we shall
turn to the non-traditional aspects of security now confronting not only the
Third World but the whole world, particularly the debt crisis and the
environmental crisis. The conclusion will argue that the world is even more
interdependent in security terms than ever before, and that traditional no-
tions of Third World security must be set aside in favour of a holistic
approach to global security.

WHAT IS THE 'THIRD WORLD'?

On turning to this chapter, you probably expected to read about the states
of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Central and Latin America and the Carib-
bean and Pacific. Most people have no difficulty in listing those states
which they feel belong to the Third World category, yet if pressed on the
issue of defining characteristics, they run into greater problems. There is a
fundamental problem which we must be aware of before we can proceed
with our discussion of the security of the Third World. The 'Third World'
grouping consists of well over one hundred states characterised by their

90
 Caroline Thomas 91

diversity, politically, economically, geographically, culturally and in terms

of religion.' We cannot speak of a Third World grouping in the way that we
can of a West European group. The latter share secular statehood, de-
veloped capitalist economies and pluralist democratic politics. The Third
World is a much larger, far less homogeneous grouping. Moreover, with
the momentous changes taking place in the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe, it is quite possible that more states will be added to the Third
World grouping. This may result both from the disintegration of the
Soviet state and the resultant creation of several new states based on
national self-determination, and also possibly from the categorisation of
some of the East European states, such as Romania, as Third World states
at least in terms of their economic indicators. Indeed, the whole category
'Third World' may well come up for reassessment; it may even disappear.
The term has been used until now for less than admirable reasons by
scholars and politicians in the developed world, particularly in the West,
to refer to all states that are not part of the developed, industrialised West
or East. In that sense it is a residual category or a 'catch-all' phrase for
referring to all those states which are perceived by the major power blocs
not to matter too much in the daily conduct of international politics. It
has also been used by some statesmen who locate their own state within
that group, feeling that there is a benefit in collective identity. 'Third
World' has also come to be used interchangeably with terms such as
'South', 'developing countries' and 'underdeveloped countries'. However,
many feel that the term 'Third World' has a derogatory connotation and
prefer to use another term. 2
The most important objective criterion for membership of the Third
World is ex-colonial status. This provides a very important psychological
backdrop to the grouping; there is a common idea of having been oppressed
politically and having won independent sovereign statehood. While this is
largely true, it is not universally the case. Ethiopia remained independent
for all but a very brief period in the 1930s. China was not a European
colony, but suffered at the hands of the Japanese. The USA is a former
colony, but is certainly not a Third World state. The states of Latin America
are Third World states; they were colonised, but differ from the colonies
of Africa and Asia in that independence was won not by indigenous peoples
but largely by the European settler population. Hence it is important to
keep in mind the rich variety of historical experiences of Third World
states.
For many of them, political independence has not resulted in an easy
transition to independent nation-statehood. Third World states tend to be
artificial constructs, and governments have to try to hold them together
92 International Security in the Modern World
after the first wave of anti-colonial nationalism has passed.) They under-
take nation-building in an effort to forge a common identity within the
boundaries of the state which may well cut through ethnic or religious
groups. In many cases, the efforts to make state and nation coincide and
to forge a high level of domestic consensus have fallen far short of the
target. The result is that the main problem facing most Third World states
today is that the state itself lacks domestic legitimacy; the methods for
resolving domestic differences tend to be based on force and repression
rather than any form of participatory process. 4
Economic criteria are often used to define 'Third World' states. Per
capita GNP is a yardstick commonly used by bilateral and multilateral aid
and finance organisations. Yet this too is problematic, for it ignores distri-
bution patterns within the society and social indicators such as literacy
rates, infant mortality rates and access to healthcare. World Bank tables
distinguish such categories as oil-producing states, middle-income develop-
ing states, least developed states, newly industrialising states and so forth.
Without doubt economic differentiation within the Third World is increas-
ing. Even if the growing tendency of most states to follow a free-market
path is taken as evidence of growing homogeneity (and notable changes in
this direction are seen in the policies of less obvious examples, such as
China and Vietnam), actual performance is highly variable. All the differ-
ences aside, certainly in the early postwar era, the Third World states were
characterised by lack of industrial development, even though levels of
infrastructural development varied, e.g. some of the Latin American states
were well blessed in this respect compared with the sub-Saharan states
of Africa.
While regional groupings may appear to make more sense than the
all-encompassing 'Third World' group, even at the level of region, it is
not always easy or accurate to draw boundaries that encompass within
them homogeneous groups of states. Geography is not enough to engender
common values and common purpose. Indeed, where values differ, pro-
ximity can heighten tension. Moreover, in terms of security, the mainspring
of a state's military security policy may be external to the geographical
region in which it finds itself. For example, in the case .of India, while the
regional dimension in terms of her difficult relationship with Pakistan is
very important, her overall security strategy is shaped far more by her
hostile relationship with China. Indeed, India has set her security target
for the 1990s so as to be able to reach Peking with the latest ballistic
missile technology at her disposal. Given certain common features or aims,
however, it may be possible in some circumstances to deal with a problem
 Caroline Thomas 93
in a region by regional consultation and action rather than by the entry of
an external agent, be it a hegemonic power or an international institution.
The term 'Third World' is very important because it refers to a large,
self-identifying group of states, and this importance is not diminished merely
because the unity exists at the level of lowest common denominator. It has
formed a valuable rallying cry and a symbol of self-identification for a
group who feel frustrated at being left out of the management of inter-
national strategic, political and economic affairs. Such states have come
together through forums like UNCT AD and the non-aligned movement to
call for changes in the existing political and economic structures. Such
identification of common cause was revealed very strongly in the response
of the non oil-producing Third World states to the OPEC price rises of
1974. Even those poor states which were badly affected by the price
rises regarded OPEC's action as a victory for the Third World as a whole,
for they perceived an opportunity for immediate gain for some of their
peers and of possible spin-offs for the whole group in terms of bargaining
power against the North. The perception of common experience, and the
fact of common negotiating through channels such as the Group of 77,
fed into other negotiations such as those concerning the development of
the Law of the Sea Convention.
However, changes are likely in the next century, if present trends con-
tinue. These include economic differentiation within the Third World, the
fading history of European colonialism, and transformation of the bipolar
system of the postwar era into a multipolar structure. Regionally-based
Third World groupings may become the predominant mode of reference.
For the majority of the world's growing population, however, poverty will
remain the common identifier: the amazing growth and development of
the five East Asian 'Tigers' cannot be repeated wholesale across the Third
World. s

WHAT IS SECURITY?

Security is a contested concept; there is no universally accepted definition.

P. Saravanamuttu has argued that definitions are influenced by ideology,
the time framework being addressed, and the unit of analysis identified.6
Within the conventional, realist approach to international relations, stand-
ard definitions of security usually refer to defence of a state's territorial
boundaries and protection of its core values. States are seen as homo-
geneous units bent on pursuing their national interest above all else and
94 International Security in the Modern World
which do not engage in extensive cooperation unless this is motivated by
self-interest. The political environment is perceived as being Hobbesian;
international anarchy is the order of the day.
In the Third World such definitions of security are problematic for a
number of reasons. Firstly. Third World states do not conform to the idea of
homogeneous political units. Even the states of Western Europe. which are
often regarded as an ideal type of such a model. fall somewhat short of
the mark as certain elements within them challenge the authority of the
state. In Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. the idea of homogeneous
units does not apply. In January 1990 we witnessed the Soviet army inter-
vene to try to halt a virtual civil war between neighbouring Armenians and
Azerbajanis. We have witnessed the Baltic states' call for independence.
Similarly in the Eastern European states the fate of ethnic minorities is far
from secure. In many Third World states the lack of domestic political
consensus means that core values of the populace can be hard to identify.
and even the territorial boundaries of the state may come under challenge
from groups within the state as well as outside it. In contrast. however. it
may well be possible to identify the core values of the ruling elite. and all
too often elite security has been mistaken for national security. Indeed we
cannot speak of national security in the Third World while nations and
states do not coincide. 7
Secondly. Third World states are extremely vulnerable due to their
economic weakness. or in the case of the oil producers. their dependence on
a single commodity. This affects their military capability. though it need
not determine it. (Client relationships with superpowers can result in a
very poor state such as Somalia having a huge arsenal of expensive weap-
onry.)8 It also affects how they define insecurity. They are dependent units
rather than insulated. separate units. They depend on developed states for
technology. money and markets. Due to threats to their sovereignty. they
have a great stake in making the international system a less anarchic place
in which to function. Hence international cooperation and the rule of law
become of great importance for them. for their weakness can invite
interventionary activity from stronger states and interference from external
organisations such as the International Monetary Fund. Well aware of
their vulnerability to economic pressure. the Latin American states began
the campaign for recognition of the economic dimension of sovereignty
and hence the economic dimension of the non-intervention principle in
international law long before the majority of Afro-Asian states won polit-
ical independence.9 After the achievement of political independence. the
Afro-Asian group joined with the Latin American in the push for economic
sovereignty. The Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States lO in
 Caroline Thomas 95
1974 was a major step forward, but as the Nicaraguan experience at the
International Court of Justice at the Hague has shown, without powers of
enforcement the relevance of international law to state practice can be
minimal.
In tackling the problem of insecurity, governments in the Third World
have to consider issues which have already been taken care of in the
more developed states - especially those of the West. Third World states
have to try to forge single nations within the boundaries of their state;
they need to address basic welfare issues like how to feed, clothe, house
and educate their populations; they need to be able to defend themselves
in case of internal or external challenge. All this has to be done in cir-
cumstances of grave economic and financial insecurity and technological
dependence: these states are at the mercy of a fickle oil cartel, fluctuating
commodity prices, floating interest rates and unpredictable weather, as
well as dictates from the IMF and other multilateral and bilateral lenders.
They feel the effects of such influences to varying degrees, but in general
we can say that they are more vulnerable to such forces than the developed
northern states, and that they have no domestic welfare system to cushion
their populations against these things. Thus internal and external security
are intimately interlinked. This is demonstrated clearly today in new
challenges facing these states, such as the debt crisis II and the environ-
mental crisis. 12 The punitive effect of debt repayment, plus increasing
protectionism in the North, has encouraged some states to step up their
production of arms for export to other Third World states. 13 For example,
Brazil has bartered arms for oil with Iraq, but in other cases has sold
them for hard currency to go toward debt repayment.
Third World states act individually and collectively to decrease their
insecurity. At one level, individual governments do what they can to main-
tain themselves in power, and they may foster differences or promote
cooperation for nation-state building to this end. They will develop tradi-
tional security relations with neighbours, regional powers or superpowers,
also to this end. At another level, Third World states act together to change
the regimes governing international relations in an effort to bring those
regimes closer to their common goal of an increased role in managing the
system and a more equitable distribution of the benefits. The values of
management and equity are extremely important in these concerted security
policies emanating from the South. We see them informing both military
and non-military security policies. We have witnessed dissatisfaction with
the nuclear non-proliferation regime by many Third World statesmen who
feel that the nuclear states have not kept their side of the bargain,I4 and also
latterly with the Missile Technology Control Regime. 15 The overt collusion
96 International Security in the Modern World
of the two superpowers which characterises the fonner is lacking in the
latter, yet there is a growing feeling that covert collusion is now the name
of the game. Frustration at being excluded from the sharing of such tech-
nological developments has fuelled the desire of some Third World states
to develop their own nuclear bombs and/or missile technology. The
Condor project to develop a ballistic missile involving three otherwise
unlikely partners - Argentina, Iraq and Egypt - can thus be explained. 16
States like India and Brazil which have well-developed space research
programmes can be expected to make the transition to ballistic missile
technology without too much difficulty. In the case of nuclear weapons,
Third World states that have refused to sign the Non-Proliferation
Treaty have pointed to its discriminatory nature and some have gone on
to develop such weapons; for example, India. J7 Similar feelings of dis-
crimination and frustration infonn efforts to change non-military regimes
such as that governing trade, where Third World states pushed success-
fully for the creation of a new body - UNCTAD"s Regimes of all kinds-
from those dealing with money and trade to nuclear weapons and ballistic
missile technology - must be seen to benefit all states or sooner or later
they will come under challenge, and possibly even break down. When
that happens, all states become more insecure. In a world where weapons
of great range and destruction exist and where economies and therefore
welfare are interlinked and people interdependent, security cannot be
sought by one state at the expense of others or a spiral of insecurity will
operate. Cooperation is the only sensible way forward; the great difficulty
is in achieving it in a world of self-interested states and government leaders.
The inspiration of the ideals of the League of Nations remains with us, but
the lessons of its failure haunt us. Given technological developments and
economic changes, it is imperative that some of its guiding principles are
resuscitated.

THIRD WORLD SECURITY: THREE LEVELS OF EXPLANATION

(a) The Internal Dimension

The majority of anned conflicts in the Third World are intra-state rather
than interstate. While the Third World states are marked by diversity, they
are also commonly characterised by a lack of internal legitimacy. This has
resulted in a crisis for many Third World states which has had and continues
to have profound implications for security domestically, regionally and
globally. Internal challenges to political authority are a more frequent cause
 Caroline Thomas 97
of military conflict than border disputes. Moreover, even where border
conflicts have occurred, they have almost never resulted in changes in
territorial boundaries. The creation of Bangladesh stands out as an ex-
ception. This situation exists both because of the manner in which state-
hood has been achieved since the Second World War (sovereignty has
been won by, or endowed on, fonner colonial units), and because of the
international nonns governing behaviour, particularly respect for sover-
eignty and non-intervention. '9
The Hungarian scholar, Istvan Kende, has undertaken a systemic ana-
lysis of wars since 1945.20 He shows convincingly that the majority of
wars have been of the anti-regime type, usually with foreign participation.
Over the period 1945-76, he identifies 120 wars, of which 73 were internal
anti-regime, 29 internal tribal, and 18 border wars. Kidron and Segal,
analysing the period 1973-86, identify 66 anti-regime wars, compared
with 30 border wars. 21 These analyses omit many domestic conflicts
which have not reached the proportion of a war but where anti-regime
activity prompts the government to use the forces at its disposal for
organised and systematic state repression of civilians; Chile, Argentina
and Guatemala, for example.
An examination of the reasons for this preponderance of internal wars
leads us to focus on the legitimacy crisis of the state. Here a comparison
with the states of Western Europe is important, for the latter are taken as the
model for the development of nation-states with high levels of domestic
legitimacy. These European states are characterised today by bounded
territories, social homogeneity and the monopolisation of violence by a
single centre. They have not always been like this. Indeed these states have
developed over several centuries, and in the process hundreds of them
have been lost, swallowed up by stronger neighbours. 22 They developed in
a very hostile international environment and war was frequent. Borders
moved with the changing ability of a ruler to defend and extend his hold
on territory by force of anns. In order to finance such ventures, taxation
had to be extended and increased, and for this to happen leaders had to
promote the infrastructural development of the land they held in order to
reach people. Rulers realised that the promotion of development was vital
to their survival. States in Europe therefore became powerful infrastruc-
turally as well as despotically; in other words, rulers had power over life
and death, and thus were strong, but they also derived strength from the
bureaucratic powers of the state which they were instrumental in develop-
ing. By this gradual process of integration, which was often bloody, nation-
states were forged. Thus today a situation exists where multi-party politics
is played out without the threat of anns being taken up against the govern-
98 International Security in the Modern World
ment. This is not to suggest that there are not important differences within
states, but rather that the mechanisms for resolving conflicting claims no
longer take on a military dimension. Where they do, as is the case in a few
European states, those who defy legal channels of opposition are a tiny
minority. They do not threaten the integrity of the state.
In complete contrast to this, the majority of Third World states have
come into being virtually overnight. 23 International law established that
colonial boundaries would be the legitimate boundaries of the new states.
Thus it froze into place artificial constructs whose boundaries had been
dictated often by colonial whim and bartering among European states in
the late nineteenth century. Nation and state did not coincide in the
way they had done in Europe. In the case of the older states of Latin and
Central America, while territorial boundaries are not under fire the states
are often in extreme crisis because the authority of governments is chal-
lenged. 24 The benign international environment today, which gives the
protection of sovereignty to all states, means that survival as a motor
for development is lacking. Mullins has written that there has been 'a
separation between the struggle for national existence and the drive
for development'.2~ In addition, the superpower competition which has
dominated postwar international politics until very recent times has often
been played out in the Third World, and vast arsenals of weaponry have
found their way to very poor states which have in effect acted as proxies
for the competition between the USA and the USSR. Thus regional arms
races have in some cases been fuelled. The contrast with the European
states is striking: there were no such external patrons to provide arms for
rulers who could not provide them for themselves either through produc-
tion or purchase via taxation.
The result is that many Third World states exist juridically, but not
as 'social facts'. Their governments can take comfort in the fact that the
norms of the international community - especially sovereignty and non-
intervention - militate against the territorial disintegration of states. Thus
even where intervention and occupation have occurred, we have seen oc-
cupying armies retreat in the face of international obloquy, as in Vietnam,
Afghanistan, Uganda and Kampuchea. For the same reasons we have seen
attempts at secession squashed with international approval, as in Nigeria
and the Congo. Thus it appears that the survival of these states in their
present form is guaranteed by the international community, yet in that
very guarantee the same community loses any possibility of legitimate
influence over promoting peaceful mechanisms for change within those
states and for recognising the legitimacy of social change. Without such
change, Third World states, and by implication the regions in which they
 Caroline Thomas 99
are located and the international system generally, will be beset by great
instability.
Developments in Eastern Europe and the USSR are important in this
context. As parts of the latter succeed in breaking away and becoming
independent states either in their present geographical fonn or by linking
up with territories which may secede from other states, e.g. Iran, then the
reaction of the international community through the UN and regional
organisations will be important. For regarding the disintegration of the
USSR as the final act of decolonisation by the last colonial power is one
thing; but recognising the right of all peoples everywhere to exercise
self-detennination outside of rather than within colonial boundaries will
open up a Pandora's Box. Even in the short time since changes have
been overtaking Eastern Europe and the USSR. we have seen that the
drive for self-detennination based on ethnicity can lead to very powerful
and destructive forces of nationalism. Clearly in the Third World the
trend could be repeated. On the other hand there is another lesson to be
learned: that ethnic differences cannot simply be ignored and expected to go
away. Peaceful coexistence of different groups can be shattered by many
things, such as competition for scarce resources or the need for a scapegoat.

(b) The Regional Dimension

The concept of regional security has become fashionable among politicians

and academics in the developed and the developing states. 26 It assumes that
many problems faced by Third World states are of a regional nature and
potentially could be solved by regional solutions. While on the surface
this seems perfectly viable, both the theory and the practice of regional
security are fraught with difficulties. Ayoob states that the idea of re-
gional security makes three assumptions: that external actors with interests
in the region will refrain from interference; that regional states will have
successfully dealt with their own domestic frictions; and that interstate
tensions in the region are at a low level and/or can be dealt with easily by
institutional mechanisms regionally accepted,21 Yet he argues quite rightly
that these criteria better fit Western Europe, which has had centuries of
state-building and political legitimation, than Third World states. A fourth
criterion can be added to Ayoob's list: that a region can be defined. Yet
even this can pose enonnous problems: where does one region end and
another begin; are regional problems always the main security concern of
all states in the 'region'; is the membership of the region perceived in
common by states and peoples within and outside the region?
100 International Security in the Modern World
It is extremely difficult to think of any area in the Third World where
all the above criteria are fulfilled simultaneously; indeed it is not an
easy task to think of one area where anyone of them is fulfilled. If we
consider the Middle East, Southern Africa, South East Asia, South Asia
and Central America, then examples abound of stateless peoples, the lack
of domestic legitimacy of states and regimes, the absence of regionally-
accepted mechanisms for conflict resolution. indirect or direct involvement
by one or more of the superpowers, ill-defined regional boundaries and
pariah states.
The idea of regional security stands in contrast to the notion of global
or systemic security which sees the international system as indivisible.
i.e. all developments in all parts of the system are interconnected. Whereas
in the postwar period global security has been interpreted in the context
of the East/West relationship. regional security analysts stress the impor-
tance of autonomous indigenous developments and do not look to the
ideological superpower competition to explain local developments. While
that global rivalry may be exploited by regional powers to enhance their
own status and weapons capability, the cause of the regional hostility can
be found within the region itself. Moreover, regional solutions are often
seen as the most appropriate form of conflict resolution.
A simple example will elucidate this point. A systemic interpretation
of the domestic crises faced by successive governments in EI Salvador
would identify the cause of instability as the spread of Communist ideas
imported most recently from Cuba or Nicaragua but whose origin stems
back to the Soviet Union.28 Thus the domestic legitimacy crisis in EI
Salvador is seen to be a result of Soviet expansionism. Hence it must be
challenged, not simply by the government of EI Salvador but by the cham-
pions of capitalism and democracy. notably the USA. In contrast, a regional
analysis would point to domestic reasons for the crisis in EI Salvador,
notably the failure of successive governments to bring about any significant
land reform which leaves the majority of peasants in poverty and the
authority of the governments open to criticism.29 The intellectual and moral
leadership of the ruling groups in government has been eroded as more and
more people risk their lives to protest against miserable living conditions.
Their protest stems not from knowledge of an imported ideology. Com-
munism. inspired by the USSR, but rather from the experience of daily
life. Thus supporters of a regional approach would encourage a regional
solution, possibly bringing together representatives of opposing factions
to debate with the leaders of neighbouring states a possible political solu-
tion. The idea of calling upon superpower help would be discounted if at
 Caroline Thomas 101

all possible. Of course in the example of EI Salvador, several neighbour-

ing states are also in crisis: Guatemala and Honduras of a similar kind,
and Nicaragua a totally different kind. So some of the governments of
El Salvador's immediate neighbours may be inclined to bring in help from
the USA.
Developments in Nicaragua also indicate a similar difference in ap-
proach. Since the Sandinista revolution ten years ago, the USA, adopting a
globalist or systemic approach to that state, has seen developments there as
being inspired by Communism and threatening to other states in the re-
gion. 30 In other words, the USA feared a domino effect stimulated by
Nicaragua exporting her revolution. The USA has armed the Contra
forces which have operated out of Honduras and Costa Rica in an attempt
to topple the government of Nicaragua. In contrast, those advocating a
regional approach to security see appalling social and economic conditions
and massive contrasts between the lifestyles of the majority and minority
of people as having caused the revolution. 31 Moreover, they regard US
aid to the Contras as interference in the domestic affairs of a state. They
advocate a regional political solution. 32
The two examples cited above illustrate regional problems caused by
the domestic lack of legitimacy of certain governments. However, another
type of regional security problem arises from interstate hostilities. South
Asia provides a pertinent example of this.l3 The region has been character-
ised by conflict between India and Pakistan which has already led to two
border wars and which will possibly lead to a third over the disputed
territory of Kashmir. 34 India is by far the strongest power in the region,
and some commentators have suggested that that state has an imperial
relationship with the smaller states in the region: Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka
and the Maldives. 35 India is also far stronger than Pakistan in terms of
economic and military power. However, regional balances have been upset
by arms transfers and indigenous arms developments. 36 Since the invasion
of Afghanistan, the USA has transferred huge quantities of sophisticated
weapons to Pakistan, and India has complained that these represent a
threat to her territory as they could never be used to defend Pakistan
against the USSR. The USA has not been concerned about this for a
number of reasons: firstly, her priority was the global competition with the
USSR, and Pakistan, given its proximity to Afghanistan, assumed impor-
tance in her global conception of the world;37 and secondly, despite the fact
that India is the largest democracy in the world, the USA has always
mistrusted her non-aligned stance and suspected her of tilting toward the
USSR.38 Even if the consequences were unintended, the US transfer of
102 International Security in the Modern World
weapons to Pakistan fuelled a regional anns race in the subcontinent which
was already simmering.
Efforts have been made to develop regional links through SAARC - the
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. 39 Yet for India, the
South Asian regional aspect of security is but one aspect of her security
policies and concerns: China is her most fonnidable enemy and she has
fought border wars with that state. This brings into question the validity of
the notion of regional security. Often threats are perceived to come from
outside the region, or several regions may overlap with detrimental effects
on security. This has happened in the case of Pakistan which has fonned
part of the USA's picture of West Asia, but which at the same time is a
major actor in the South Asian region.
The history of regional organisations for conflict resolution does
not inspire hope for the future. The early examples of SEATO and CENTO
(the Baghdad Pact) were more the product of the US desire for a global
containment policy than of indigenous regional developments. The Organ-
isation of African Unity has been more successful, but has been unable
to effect resolutions of the conflicts in Southern Africa, the Hom, Chad
and the Western Sahara. The Arab League cannot deal with many key
Middle Eastern issues as neither Iran nor Israel belong.40 The Gulf Co-
operation Council, a sub-group of the Arab League, and ASEAN, have
been highlighted as two commendable examples of what can be achieved
by regional organisations. 41 However, as S. D. Muni points out, both
have 'facilitated the consolidation of US presence in the region and led
to the sharpening of intra-regional conflicts in the Gulf (between Iran
and the Arab states of the GulO and Southeast Asia (between Indo-
china and ASEAN),.42 Muni concludes that 'the objective of collective
security through regional organisations can be achieved only if the organ-
isation is designed to seek greater independence and autonomy of action
as well as being a long-tenn basis for economic development and socio-
political stability' .43
Ayoob suggests that despite the grave limitations on the utility of
regional security, there are entrenched reasons for its continued usage.
Firstly, he says that 'superpower policy-makers and their intellectual
apologists view the lenn as a convenient one with which to clothe their
own interests in and strategies towards Third World regions'.44 Secondly,
Western liberals look upon regional organisations as a step along the
path to European-type integration, and thereby have promoted schemes
which have emanated from outside the region concerned and have rarely
enhanced the security of the region.4~ Finally, within the Third World,
regional security is often mistakenly seen as an antidote for intra- and
 Caroline Thomas 103

inter-state conflict. and unpopular regimes may use it as a vehicle to ally

with their equally unpopular neighbours in a mutual endeavour to sustain
themselves in power. 46 It is important. therefore. to approach regional
security studies with a degree of caution. This is especially so since in
the context of decreased superpower tension. regional security must not
be seen as a universal panacea; individual problems must be assessed on
their own merits and regional analyses and solutions suggested where
appropriate.

(c) Global or Systemic Perspectives

The systemic level of interpretation of Third World security was introduced

in the last section for the purpose of aiding differentiation and comparison.
Given that background knowledge. this section will be brief.
Systemic analyses of security see all parts of the international political
system as interconnected.41 and since the Second World War they have been
dominated by the East/West ideological competition.48 This competition
has been perceived by the superpowers themselves as well as by systemic
analysts to inform conflicts throughout the globe. Some have argued that
peace has been bought in the North at the expense of the South. and that
superpower competition was played out in the Third World .49 Thus social
change in the Third World has been interpreted not in its own terms but
rather in terms of gains and losses for the West or East. The over-arching
bipolar structure of the system over this period facilitated and accentuated
the competition. Williams suggests that as well as this structure, the
self-images of the superpowers gave the competition a Manichean quality
which encouraged intervention in the Third World. as did the geo-
political mind-sets.so
It is undoubtedly true that the superpowers have both aided and abetted
various Third World regimes in an attempt to win allies in the struggle.
Apart from economic aid. the overwhelming majority of which has been
provided by the USA. vast transfers of weaponry have occurred from
North to South. Both superpowers have provided arms to key client states
in the South. A high percentage of aid goes to only a handful of clients
in the Third World. Thus. for example. Israel and Pakistan receive from
the USA. while Cuba and Vietnam have been supplied by the USSR. It
is generally believed that such transfers create a dependent relationship.
While this is true in some cases. the superpower competition has created a
bargaining space for Third World leaders. Thus in Egypt the government
was able to get rid of one superpower and bring in another. In the Hom
104 International Security in the Modern World
of Africa. the superpowers actually changed sides. Client status can also
bring powers of leverage; thus in the case of Israel. the extent of aid
received from the USA. as well as the power of the Jewish lobby. has
made it difficult. if not impossible. for the US to use its apparent power.
In the case of Cuba. the improvement in the relationship between the USSR
and USA has resulted in a decline in her leverage vis-a-vis the USSR.
Despite their mutual suspicion. the superpowers have colluded to pre-
vent certain types of weapons from being acquired by more states. Thus
they have worked to maintain nuclear weapons within a handful of states
through the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime. The USSR has been par-
ticularly concerned that capitalist competition should not encourage prolif-
eration of such weapons. More recently their collusion has been covert. as
they have worked to prevent the transfer of ballistic weapons technology
to the South. Even in their competition. therefore. they have had a
common interest in ensuring that the international hierarchy was not eroded.
The superpower hegemony has been challenged on different levels by
the Third World as a group and by individual states. At the group level.
the Non-Aligned Movement has rejected the division of the world into
East and West. At the individual level, some states have been developing
their own weaponry which they feel will bring them greater independence
and security.
The Non-Aligned Movement" has represented a fundamental challenge
at the level of ideas to systemic analyses of security. It champions an
assessment of each problem as it arises, and stands against automatic
categorisation of Third World problems into an East/West framework. It
stands against superpower bloc politics being imposed on the South.
However. at the level of political reality. it has been unable to always
translate its principles into practice. This has been due both to the un-
willingness of the superpowers. especially the USA. to respect non-
alignment as a policy. tending instead to believe that if any Third World
government is not pro-US then it must be pro-USSR; and to differences
between members of the Non-Aligned Movement themselves and the in-
ability of the movement to settle differences amongst members such as the
Gulf War between Iran and Iraq. Nevertheless. the ideas inspiring the
movement have provided a great intellectual challenge to the agenda-
setting of the superpowers.
The attempts of various states to acquire or develop ballistic missiles
represent a challenge not only at the level of ideas but also at the level of
political reality. Whereas in the past the northern states have controlled the
types of conventional weapons they wanted to transfer to the South. states
like Iraq. Brazil. India. Israel and Argentina are developing their own
 Caroline Thomas 105
technologies. Once ballistic missiles are developed, then the type of
warhead with which they can be fitted will accelerate other arms races.
Chemical and nuclear warheads will be even more sought after. We can see
the effects of this in the Middle East already, where traditional Israeli
superiority has been eroded and the Israeli state now issues schoolchildren
with gas masks in fear of ballistic attack but is uncertain of the direction
from which it will come. In the Gulf War, towns in Iran suffered terrible
damage due to Iraqi firepower. While many states were happy to supply
Iran with sophisticated weaponry in her war against Iraq, the repercussions
of such transfers for the middle East region as a whole are now being felt.
While regional targets are the most likely, the proximity of the USSR to
Third World states developing missile technology will make her uneasy,
and the USA no doubt watches the situation with much anxiety.52

NEW DIMENSIONS IN THE DEBATE ON THIRD WORLD

SECURITY

(8) Development and Security

The majority of Third World states and peoples now face non-military
threats to their security which no weapons, military alliances or individual
governments can counter.S3 Moreover, some such threats are of equal con-
cern to the developed states, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that
a holistic strategy to global security must be adopted if the international
system as a whole is not to be ravaged by economic chaos, environmental
degradation and an unfettered scramble for unaffected resources. The prob-
lems of debt, poverty, population growth, the environment and drugs are
all interconnected; it is impossible to solve one without tackling the
others. Thus development and international cooperation are vital com-
ponents of any strategy aimed at increasing security in the Third World
or globally.54
Military strategy and hardware are necessary but not sufficient condi-
tions for security. Weapons are no deterrent against the physical devastation
of a state by floods (as in Bangladesh); drought (as in Ethiopia) or hurri-
canes (as in Jamaica). Nor do they lessen the vulnerability of states to the
adverse workings of the international capitalist economy, such as unstable
commodity prices, floating interest rates, poor terms of trade, IMF
conditionality and high oil prices through OPEC action. Yet such factors
can affect security critically, by undermining the social and political
fabric of societies, by making states dependent and by forcing govern-
106 International Security in the Modern World
ments to act repressively domestically or to engage in foolhardly external
policies directed at diverting domestic public opinion away from domestic
problems (as with the Argentinian invasion of the Malvinas under the
Galtieri government). Food can be a highly effective weapon: dependence
on imported food makes the recipient state very insecure indeed. India
experienced this in the 1960s when reliance on the US for grain was
perceived as a grave threat to her sovereignty. The grain was bought at a
price which included agricultural reform, more extensive family planning
programmes, a 36.5 per cent devaluation of the rupee, and changes in
Indian foreign policy including her attitude to the Vietnam conflict and
relations with Pakistan. ss Health is vital to security. Disease is a transnational
phenomenon which can have a devasting effect and whose transmission
pays no heed to territorial boundaries. We have yet to see the full impact
of the AIDS virus, but it is already thought to have overtaken several
armies, for example that of Zaire. 56 The wasted decade of the 1980s, in
terms of Third World development, will have repercussions which we
can only guess at in the next generation as a whole sector of people in the
Third World have suffered from long-term malnutrition, as adjustment
has taken place without a human face. 51
Development and redistribution are preconditions for both domestic
and international security. With states the desire to take up arms is often,
though not always, motivated by the huge gap between the poverty of the
majority and the wealth of a tiny minority. Between states, while the
perception of the international order as unjust persists, its rules are bound
to come under challenge. The experience of the 1930s shows that eco-
nomic protectionism can be taken to extremes which ultimately threaten
the international political system. Many Third World states feel that the
protectionist measures adopted by leading developed states are under-
mining their development prospects.
While the general problem of underdevelopment has been with Third
World states since their independence, the current debt and environmental
crises represent a new phase in the predicament and one that makes the
problem of security truly global. Moreover, these new challenges are inti-
mately interconnected.

(b) Debt and Security

In 1988, an estimated $30 billion was transferred from the Third World
to the West through debt servicing and repayment. 58 This movement of
resources threatens the internal stability of debtor states, and in tum this
 Caroline Thomas 107

threatens international security, as instability in the South often invites

northern military intervention. Given the location of several of the world's
major debtors in the US 'backyard', the dangers of political instability are
accentuated. Yet the very IMF structural adjustment packages which ac-
company the borrowing of new money and the rescheduling of old debts
intensify social and political unrest by increasing hardship while decreasing
welfare provisions such as food subsidies. The riots in democratic Ven-
ezuela in 1989 startled the Western World and indicated that austerity
measures can destabilise states. The outlook for the states which have
only recently undergone transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule
is bleak. Third World states remain at the mercy of fluctuating interest
rates which are totally beyond their control. In the year ending March
1989, Mexico had over $3 billion added to her repayment bill due to
interest rate rises alone. They are also at the mercy of the trading policies
of the developed states. All too often, Third World states have found
that when they become internationally competitive in a certain product,
the Western states put up new restrictions to the entry of such goods.
Brazilian steel is an example. Textiles often face such treatment, referred
to as the 'new protectionism'.
The problems of African debtors are enormous for the states and peoples
concerned but of far less significance to the governments, institutions and
banks of the West. Politically, however, they are significant in that the
taking of IMF medicine in the form of currency devaluation, cutting of
government spending and key subsidies has caused widespread misery.
Political unrest has been commonplace, with food riots linked directly to
the IMF austerity measures in Sudan, Morocco and in West Africa.
Cognisant of the security dimension of the debt crisis in the Third World,
Secretary of State Brady has proposed the 'Brady Plan' which, unlike that
that of his predecessor Baker, calls for voluntary debt reduction by the
banks. In the USA banks enjoy substantial tax incentives to write off
debt - so-called loan-loss provisions. This is just beginning in the UK
too, but as yet remains at the discretion of the tax man rather than being
part of tax law. The Brady Plan also incorporates the provision of new loans
to try to generate growth in debtor states. However, the scheme has faced
opposition since it brings responsibility for debt guarantees into the public
policy domain, and there have already been signs of discontent in West
Germany and the UK where the predominant government attitude seems to
be that further financial risk should not be transferred from the private to the
public sector.
The debt crisis is no longer a financial crisis for the majority of the
banks; however, it remains a financial crisis for the South, and its political,
108 International Security in the Modern World
social and economic implications suggest potential security crises for debtor
states where governmental legitimacy will be eroded further. This will
have repercussions for the international system.

(c) Ecology and Security

Several Third World states will disappear in the next century if the sea level
continues to rise at current rates.'9 Thus the security of the Maldives really
is about physical survival. Many coastal capital cities will be flooded
throughout the world. Rising sea levels are not the only climatic problem:
droughts and floods will result in famine, soil erosion and further deforesta-
tion, and the latter itself will further affect the climate. The ecological
debate is thus intermeshed with the development debate, and both are
affected by the debt crisis. Competition for scarce resources will proceed
apace between states and individuals. Clearly, international solutions are
vital, as particularist answers cannot be of value in the long run. However,
agreeing on strategies to alleviate these problems and to distribute resources
will be politically difficult. Essentially, a bargain has to be struck between
developed and developing states. Unfortunately the lowest common de-
nominator - survival- will not be very helpful when it comes to negotiating
agreements on gains and losses as the perceived needs of all states will
vary radically.
In 1985 the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer
was signed, followed in 1987 by the addition of the Montreal Protocol.
This represented the first global, as opposed to regional, agreement to
regulate an environmental problem. The protocol provided for the halving
of consumption of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and a freeze on the con-
sumption of halons by the end of the century. These are thought to be the
major cause of the depletion of the ozone layer, which results in ultraviolet
damage to crops and people. The convention also makes a significant
contribution to tackling the greenhouse effect. This refers to the warming of
the oceans and atmosphere. CFCs are one of the greenhouse gases, but
carbon dioxide produced by burning coal and oil is the major culprit.
Global warming will lead to increasingly extreme weather conditions -
droughts, floods, hurricanes and rising sea levels. The sea has risen lO-I5
cm since 1900, and with present trends could rise 1.5 metres over the next
century. London will be threatened by a rise of one metre. If disasters are
to be avoided, the amount of carbon dioxide and CFCs released into the
atmosphere must be cut drastically, but this will be difficult as crucial
domestic political issues are at stake, such "as industrialisation and the
 Caroline Thomas 109

mechanisation of agriculture in the Third World. At the London conference

on Saving the Ozone Layer in 1989, it was clear that the issue of equity
would have to be addressed for any agreement to be acceptable to the
developing states. For they perceive the industrialised North to have
created the bulk of the problem in the first place by its early industrialisation
and by its huge energy consumption. Dr Liu Ming Pu, representing
China, stressed that most of the environmental needs of the Third World
arise from poverty, and called for levels of economic development and
associated special needs to be taken into account in burden-sharing
formulas. He indicated that China produced 20 000 tonnes of CFCs
annually, compared with 300 000 tonnes by the USA and 130000 by the
USSR. China has 1.1 billion people, and thus suffers most from ozone
depletion, yet it has produced only 2 per cent of the world's CFCs and
related gases, compared with the 80 per cent produced by the developed
world. Other Third World statesmen expressed similar feelings. President
Moi of Kenya argued that the polluters must pay, as did Mr Ziul Rahman
Ansari, the Indian Minister of the Environment and Forests. Clearly, an
international regime governing the issue of the ozone is going to be
politically very difficult to achieve, yet it is vital for the security not only
of individual states but of the globe.
International discussions concerning environmental security will con-
tinue in 1992 with a UN-sponsored conference to formulate a plan of action
to combat global warming. Yet the negotiations are bound to be fraught.
One commentator has remarked that 'The in-fighting is likely to make arms
reduction negotiations between the superpowers look like child's play ...
action against the greenhouse effect ... is as important as the INF Treaty as
a safeguard for man's future',f'" Just as developing states have argued with
regard to the international monetary system that equal treatment of all
parties to the system by the IMF amounts to discrimination against the
poorest, so in the case of global warming they will argue that an equal
sacrifice by states which are unequal to begin with is unfair. It is unlikely
that short-term national interest will give way to international responsibility
in the present political climate.

CONCLUSION

Traditional concepts of security, based on a realist conception of inter-

national relations, fail to identify and address the most pressing security
concerns of the majority of Third World states. Most Third World military
conflicts take place within states, not between them. Military developments
110 International Security in the Modern World
within the Third World are certainly very important, and must not be
ignored. But they must be seen as one of a whole range of factors affect-
ing the security of Third World states. Moreover, these factors affect
each other, as well as affecting all states. No group can pursue meaning-
ful security alone: the problems faced are global, and require global solu-
tions.
Poverty intensifies the problem of population growth rather than allevi-
ates it, as children are seen as a form of wealth and protection for the future
in societies where there are no social welfare provisions. Poverty is ex-
acerbated by debt, and makes the production of drug crops an attractive
prospect to the Latin American and Asian peasant. Environmental problems
are also exacerbated by debt. Repayment of debt by the South to the
North intensifies the poverty of millions of people in the Third World, and
both this and the need to repay generate a huge impetus to pursue eco-
logically inappropriate land use. Added to northern protectionism, debt
stimulates the production of Third World arms industries to supply Third
World markets either through barter or to earn foreign exchange. Adjust-
ment puts further strains on already fragile polities, and increases the
likelihood of intervention either directly or indirectly through the transfer
of arms or logistical support. All these problems make the issue of Third
World security far more complex now than it has been in the past. Indeed,
a realistic assessment of Third World security must be undertaken in the
context of a holistic conception of global security. It is not enough for
Third World leaders to recognise this: it is imperative that the leaders of
the developed world act on it.

NOTES

I would like to acknow ledge many very helpful discussions with Darryl Howlett and
Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu during the writing of this chapter.

I. For a discussion of the meaning of the term 'Third World', see the debate in
Third World Quarterly: L. Wolf-Phillips, 'Why Third World?', Vol. I, no. I,
January 1979; P. Worsley, 'How Many Worlds?', Vol. I, no. 2, April 1979;
S. D. Muni, 'Third World: Concept and Controversy', Vol. I, no. 3, July
1979; J. L. Love, 'Third World: A Response to Professor Worsley', Vol. 2,
no. 2, April 1980; G. McCall, 'Four Worlds of Experience and Action', Vol.
2, no. 3, July 1980. Also Alan Thomas, Third World: Images. Definitions and
Connotations (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1983); and C. Thomas,
'Third World Security and Western Concepts: on an Unhappy Marriage and
 Caroline Thomas III
the Need for a Divorce' in C. Thomas and P. Saravanamuttu (eds), The State
and Instability in the South (London: Macmillan, 1989).
2. See A. K. Ray, 'The International Political System: a View from the South'
in C. Thomas and P. Saravanamuttu (eds), Conflict and Consensus in Southl
North Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
3. On the significance of nation-state-building for security, see C. Thomas, In
Search of Security: The Third World in International Relations (Brighton:
Wheatsheaf, 1987).
4. For a discussion of the legitimacy problem, see R. H. Jackson and C. G.
Rosberg, 'Why Africa's Weak States Persist: the Empirical and the Juridical
in Statehood', World Politics, 1982, Vol. 35, no. I, pp. 1-24; and 'Sover-
eignty and Underdevelopment: Juridical Statehood in the African Crisis', The
Journal of Modern African Studies, 1986, Vol. 24, no. I, pp. 1-31. Also
C. Thomas, 'New Directions in the Security of the Third World' , in K. Booth,
New Directions in Strategy and Security, (London: Unwin/Hyman, 1990).
5. See G. White and R. Wade (eds), Developmental States in East Asia, IDS
Reports, no. 16, Sussex, 1985; S. Strange, 'Protectionism and World Poli-
tics', International Organisation, 39, 2 (Spring 1985).
6. P. Saravanamuttu, 'Security: an Essentially Contested Concept', unpublished
research paper, Southampton University, Department of Politics.
7. C. Thomas, in Thomas and Saravanamuttu, op. cit., 1989.
8. See A. F. Mullins, Born Arming: Development and Military Power in New
States (Stanford University Press, 1987).
9. For a full discussion see C. Thomas, New States, Sovereignty and Inter-
vention (Aldershot: Gower, 1985).
10. See Yearbook of the UN, 1974, Washington, 1975.
11. See S. George, A Fate Worse than Debt, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989).
12. Neville Brown, 'Climate, Energy and International Security', Survival,
Vol. 31, no. 6, November-December 1989, pp. 519-32.
13. M. Brzoska and T. Ohlson, Arms Production in the Third World (London:
Taylor and Francis/SIPRI, 1986).
14. See T. B. Millar, 'The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and Superpower
Condominium', in C. Holbraad (ed.), Superpowers and World Order, (Can-
berra: ANUP, 1971); also C. Thomas, 'Nuclear Weapons and the Search for
Security' in Thomas, op. cit., 1981; and A. K. Ray, 'Third World Perspec-
tives on Security', in J. Simpson (ed.), The International Non-Proliferation
Regime in the 1990s, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
15. I am grateful to my colleague Darryl Howlett, who has undertaken pioneering
work on this area, for bringing it to my attention. On the MCTR, see
M. Navias and D. Howlett, 'Ballistic Missile Proliferation and International
Society', Adelphi Paper, London, IISS, 1990.
16. For extensive details on the Condor Project, see BBC Press Service tran-
script, 'Panorama: The Condor Conspiracy', broadcast 10 April 1989, BBC
1.
17. For a useful survey of the position of a wide range of states, including India,
see J. Goldblat (ed.), Non-Proliferation: The Why and the Wherefore,
(London and Philadelphia: Taylor and Francis/SIPRI, 1985); see also Leonard
Spector, Going Nuclear (Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 1986). For a dis-
cussion of nuclear developments on the Indian subcontinent, see Report ofthe
112 International Security in the Modern World
Carnegie Task Force on Non-Proliferation and South Asian Security, 1988;
also Staff Report, Nue/ear Proliferation in South Asia: Containing the Threat,
(Washington, DC: Committee on US Foreign Relations, US Senate, 1988).
18. See M. Williams, 'The Developing Countries and the International Economic
Order', in Thomas and Saravanamuttu, op. cit., 1989.
19. See Thomas, op. cit., 1990.
20. I. Kende, 'Twenty Five Years of Local Wars', Journal of Peace Research,
no. 8,1971, pp. 5-22; and 'Wars ofTen Years', no. 3,1978, pp. 227-41.
21. M. Kidron and R. Segal, The New State of the World Atlas (London and
Sydney: Pan Books. 1987).
22. On the development of these European states, see J. Hall, Powers and
Liberties: the Causes and Consequences of the Rise of the West, (Oxford:
Blackwell, and Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985); M. Mann, 'The Auto-
nomous Power of the State: its origins, mechanisms and results', Archives
Europeennes de Sociologie, Vol. 25, no. 2.
23. For a South Asian example, see A. 1. Wilson and D. Dalton (eds), The States
of South Asia: Problems of National Integration (Hurst Press, 1989).
24. V. Bulmer-Thomas, 'The Crisis in Central America: Economic Roots and
Historical Dimensions', World Today, 39:9, pp. 328-35.
25. Mullins, op. cit., p. 2.
26. See M. Ayoob (ed.), Regional Security in the Third World (London and
Sydney: Croom Helm, 1986).
27. Ibid., p. 4.
28. For a rigorous political history of the problems of Central America, see James
Dunkerly. For discussions of the security dimensions, see P. Calvert (ed.),
The Central American Security System: North/South or East/West? (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
29. T. D. Mason, 'Land Reform and the Breakdown of Clientelist Politics in
EI Salvador', Comparative Political Studies, 18:4, 1986. pp. 487-519.
30. L. Hufford, 'The US in Central America: The Obfuscation of History',
Journal of Peace Research, 22:2,1988, pp. 93-100; and J. Murachevik, 'The
Nicaragua Debate', Foreign Affairs, 1986n, pp. 366-82.
31. F. D. Colburn and S. de Franco, 'Privilege, production and revolution: the
case of Nicaragua', Comparative Politics, 1985, 17:3, pp. 277-90.
32. O. Arias, 'A Time for Peace', Government and Opposition, 22:4, 1987,
pp. 452-56; L. Whitehead, 'The Costa Rican Initiative in Central America',
.Government and Opposition, 22:4, 1987, pp. 457-64; and S. K. Russell,
'Demystifying Contadora', Foreign Affairs, 64:1, 1985, pp. 74-95.
33. A. Kapur, 'The Indian Subcontinent: The Contemporary Structure of Power
and Development of Power Relations', Asian Survey, July 1988; T. Shauman,
'India's Foreign Policy: Interaction of Global and Regional Aspects', Asian
Survey, November 1988.
34. D. Makeig. 'War. No War and the Indo-Pakistan Negotiating Process'.
Pacific Affairs. Summer 1987; S. Mansingh. India's Search for Power,
1966--.'12 (New Delhi and London: Sage. 1984).
35. S. D. Muni, 'India and Nepal: the Erosion of a Relationship', Strategic
Analysis, July 1989; S. Dutt, Altruism and Hegemony (London: Zed Press.
1987); P. Bhoga), 'India's Security Environment in the 1990s: The South
Asian Factor', Strategic Analysis, October 1989.
 Caroline Thomas 113
36. M. Ayoob, 'India, Pakistan and Superpower Rivalry', World Today, May
1982; A. Sheik, 'The New Political thinking: Gorbachev's Policy Toward
Afghanistan and Pakistan', Asian SUI'VeY, November 1988; R. Horn, 'The
Afghan Crisis and the Soviet-Indian Influence Relationship', Asian Survey,
March 1983; S. Cohen, 'South Asia After Afghanistan', Problems o/Com-
munism, February 1988; S. P. Seth, 'The Indo-Pakistan Nuclear Duet and the
US', Asian Survey, July 1988.
37. T. B. Thornton, 'US-Pakistan Relations', Foreign Affairs, Summer 1989.
38. Raju Thomas, 'Security Relationships in South Asia: Differences in Indian
and American Perspectives', Asian Survey, July 1981.
39. See articles by Muni, Ayoob. Bokhari and Khatri and Rahman in Asian
Survey, April 1985.
40. On the Arab League, see Mohammed El Sayed Said, 'The Arab League:
Between Regime Security and National Liberation', in Ayoob (ed.), op. cit.,
1986.
41. See Noordin Sopiee, 'ASEAN and Regional Security' and Osama Al Ghazaly
Harb, 'The Gulf Co-operation Council and Regional Security in the Gulf', in
Ayoob, ibid.
42. S. D. Muni, 'Regional Security in the Third World: Discussion', in Ayoob,
ibid., p. 32.
43. Muni, ibid.
44. Ayoob (ed.), op. cit., p. 19.
45. Ibid., p. 20.
46. Ibid., p. 20.
47. See R. Allison and P. Williams, Superpower Competition and Crisis Preven-
tion in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
48. For an interesting comparison of northern and southern views, see A. K. Ray,
op. cit., and in the same volume, John Simpson, 'The International Political
System and the Developing World: A View from the North'.
49. See Matin Zuberi in 1. Simpson (ed.), Nuclear Non-proliferation: An Agenda
/01' the 1990s, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
50. Phil Williams, 'Intervention in the Developing World: A View from the
North', in Thomas and Saravanamuttu (eds.), op. cit., pp. 144-57. See also
C. Thomas, •A Pragmatic Case Against Intervention' in I. Forbes and
M. Hoffman (eds), Ethics and Intervention (London: Macmillan, 1990).
51. See R. Allison, The Soviet Union and the strategy 0/ non-alignment in the
Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); and S. W.
Singham and S. Hune, Non-Alignment in an Age 0/ Alignment (Third World
Books, 1986).
52. See Guardian, 27 April 1990, p. 4, for an account of military developments
in Iraq, and responses of regional and extra-regional powers.
53. See, for example, A. M. AI-Mashat, National Security in the Third World,
(Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1985); and E. Azar and Chung-in Moon
(eds), National Security ill the Third World (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1988).
54. For a development of these linkages, see Thomas, in Booth, op. cit.
55. Paarlberg, Food Trade and Foreign Policy: India. the Soviet Union and the
US (Ithaca and London: Comell University Press, 1985).
56. Panos Dossier, Aids and the Third World (London: Panos Publications,
1988).
114 International Security ;11 the Modern World
57. C. Cornia, R. Jolly and F. Stewart (eds.), Adjustment with a Human Face
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
58. See Fidler, Financial Times, 15 March 1989; and H. Lever and W. Huhne,
Debt and Danger, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), and Susan George,
A Fate Worse than Debt, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989).
59. For general linkages between environment and security, see N. Brown,
'Climate, ecology and international security', Survival, Nov.lDec. 1989,
pp. 519-32, and N. Myers, 'Environmenland Security'. Foreign Policy. 74.
1989. pp. 23-41.
60. Hill and Wright in The Times. 1 March 1989.
7 Crises, Crisis Management
and Crisis Prevention
Trevor C. Salmon and Raad Alkadari

COMPETITION AND CONFLICT

While much of international relations involves routine, and even friendly,

interaction between societies and states, international politics centrally
concerns conflict and disagreement. It also concerns the 'security dilemma'
of armed sovereign states. Competition, crises, and conflict are the normal
conditions in international politics, although crises have been described as
'much more competitive than the ordinary flow of international politics
[and] as a merging, intensification and acceleration of the "normal" or
everyday patterns of conflict in the relations of actors in the international
system'.'
Short of war, crisis is the conflict situation par excellence although, as
in limited war, it is not a situation comprised exclusively of competition
and conflict, but rather one where there is a mixture of conflict and co-
operation. This combination stems from the 'duality of purpose', already
discussed (see pp. 12-13 above), in that it has been perceived by major
states for fifty years that their key task was how to 'manage affairs skilfully
enough to avoid the more terrible weapons and still uphold essential inter-
ests.'2 Although the Gulf War of 1991 and numerous other cases in recent
years show that wars may still occur between major powers, the general
consensus has been that they are to be avoided, though not at any cost.
This perception has been especially pronounced among the nuclear
powers, and clearly has influenced the behaviour of both the United States
and the Soviet Union. Initially this influence was seen in what came to be
regarded as crisis management, and in the last two decades it has played a
role in the movement to attempt to prevent crisis. Both crisis management
and prevention, however, still exhibit that 'curious mixture of cooperation
and conflict in that both parties, with a certain range of possible solutions,
will be better off with a solution, that is, a bargain, than without one, and
conflict in that, within the range of possible solutions, the distribution of
the total benefit, between the two parties depends on the particular solu-
tion adopted'.3

115
116 International Security in the Modern World
DEFINING CRISES

This mixture of cooperation and conflict lies at the heart of crises, because,
while perhaps somewhat surprisingly given their acknowledged impor-
tance, there is no generally agreed definition of crises, There is agreement
that, stemming from the etymology of the word, crisis involves a turning-
or decision-point, in this case between peace and war' (Greek krisis: a
decision), This in itself suggests that crises are dangerous,
The classic definition of a crisis is that of Charles Hennann: 'a crisis
is a situation that (I) threatens high-priority goals of the decision-making
unit, (2) restricts the amount of time available for response before the
decision is transfonned, and (3) surprises the members of the decision-
making unit by its occurrence',5 What is only implicit in this definition and
perhaps needs to be made more explicit, in the context of international
relations, is that crises involve a risk of war, a higher danger of war than
'nonnal', or at least a risk of violence, Although this risk is always present
in the international system, Snyder and Diesing are clear that 'expectation
of potential war, , , , is dramatically elevated'6 in a crisis, and Oran Young
defines a crisis as 'a process of interaction occurring at higher levels of
perceived intensity than the ordinary flow of events and characterised by:
a sharp break from the ordinary flow of politics; shortness of duration; a
rise in the perceived prospects that violence will break out; and signi-
ficant implications for the stability of some system or subsystem (or pattern
of relationships) in international politics',7 There has been some debate as
to whether the 'prospect of violence' occurring is perceived rather than
actual. It is agreed that crises are inherently dangerous, and Schelling has
argued that the very 'essence of a crisis lies in its unpredictability',8
A major controversy regarding definition relates to the issue of whether
crises do involve restricted or short time, Snyder and Diesing argue con-
vincingly that it is not shortness of time that is critical, but rather a sense
of urgency: 'in tenns of a sense of danger and risk that the parties feel must
be alleviated as soon as possible, short decision time is not a necessary
characteristic of crisis, Many historical crises lasted for months, even a
year or longer' ,9 The events in the Gulf in 1990-91 epitomise this issue,
Most would agree that the crisis started in July 1990, or on 2 August with
the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and lasted either until the international coali-
tion began its air offensive on 16 January or the fonnal ceasefire on
3 March, Arguably the crisis continued after that with the Kurdish question
and then the issue of Iraqi compliance with United Nations resolutions
on the destruction of their nuclear capability, The Gulf crisis also illustrates
that the build-up of a crisis may be gradual, involving several separate
 Trevor C. Salmon and Road Alkadari 117
moments of crisis of differing degrees of intensity, and encompassing a
series of actions and reactions, threats, warnings and counter-threats.
Similarly, it is the case that a crisis may not be of the same duration or
intensity for the parties involved.
The Gulf example also raises the issue of whether crises by definition
end once hostilities commence. Gottfried and Blair imply that crises can
range from 'peacetime posturing to warfare that does not involve the stra-
tegic nuclear forces'. 10 Snyder and Diesing, however, point out that usually
definitions refer to the prospect or probability of war and that 'excludes
war itself from the concept "crisis", although minor forms of violence
"short of war'" may be included, while acknowledging that it is often
difficult to distinguish between violence and war in any formal sense. II
This point is clearly valid, although if one returns to the idea of crisis
as a point of decision or turning-point then it becomes understandable why
particular moments in war itself may be referred to as 'crisis'.
Alexander George has made the point that crises are heavily context-
dependent,I2 while Coral Bell and Ned Lebow, among others, have noted
that there may be different types of crises: Bell writes of 'adversary and
intramural' crises, the one involving powers which regard 'themselves
as adversaries' and the latter between alliance partners or within a clearly-
defined sphere of influence. 13 Lebow writes of 'justification of hos-
tilities', 'spinoff', and 'brinkmanship crises'. The first in effect involves
simply a pretext, the second side-issues relating to the main contest between
the powers, and the third a direct clash of wills and commitments. 14
It is brinkmanship crises that are the most critical, dangerous and
important.

CRISIS MANAGEMENT

If 'crisis' has proved difficult to define, so too is the question of 'crisis

management'. Generally, crisis management appears to encapsulate the
suggestion that events are controlled for a non-war or non-violent outcome,
which relates to the earlier discussion about the definition of crisis, but Gray
finds it odd that 'most people have difficulty accepting the proposition that
successful crisis management and war are not incompatible' .IS It certainly
can be argued conversely that peace, of itself, is no guarantee of success,
since peace can be achieved through appeasement and surrender, through a
failure to uphold the 'duality of purpose'. Similarly there can be dispute as
to whether crisis management involves seeking solutions that are accept-
able to both or seeking rather to win. On this issue the consensus was quite
118 International Security in the Modern World
clearly that winning was the objective, albeit that the objectives were
somewhat restrained by the need to avoid war.
Much of the original literature on crisis management stemmed from the
Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, and reflected great confidence that
the United States had perfected the art of both managing and exploiting
crises. Writing after the crisis, for example, Tom Schelling in Arms and
Influence in 1966 argued that there were 'few clear choices ... between
war and peace' and that the questions that arose therefore involved
'degrees of risk'. Since the risks existed they should be made use of. In
the chapter 'The Manipulation of Risk' Schelling developed the notion
of manipulating the shared risk of war, and exploiting the danger that
one party might inadvertently go over the brink, dragging the other with
him. The risk was to be managed 'properly'.16 The problem goes back to
the 'duality of purpose', since the overwhelming consensus is that crises
are not only times of danger but are also times of opportunity, and that
states seek outcomes that are favourable to themselves while avoiding war.

'CONVENTIONS' OF CRISIS MANAGEMENT

Literal meanings of 'management' include 'to control' or 'to take charge

of', and a major preoccupation of the literature in the 1960s and 1970s was
the question of how to control events and not let them become out of
hand or develop a momentum of their own. Given this desire and the
optimism about control, a number of apparent ground rules were developed,
which arguably might help to achieve that function. Various listings of
the rules are possible, but there are usually certain common elements.
In essence, and perhaps understandably, given the attention paid to the
apparently successful handling and outcome of the Cuban missile crisis in
October 1962, many of these rules derive from that experience, and
comparisons between it and the 'crisis slide' of 1914 which led to war.'1
This led to the establishment of 'conventions of crisis' or 'instruments
and techniques of management', and the belief that there was (or is) a
'learning curve' of 'learned behaviour', which can become 'institutional-
ized'.ls This presupposes that, as crises reoccur expectations are developed
about what behaviour can be anticipated and is acceptable. However, these
'conventions' do not rest on solid foundations and can, of course, be
disregarded if the self-interest of one of the participants appears to demand
it. Moreover, it is heuristic to bear in mind the scepticism of Colin Gray
who suggests that while not false the conventions are 'general and obvious
to the point of near-banality'.'9 Some of the principle 'conventions' are:
 Trevor C. Salmon and Raad Alkadarj 119
(I) decisions over both general strategic questions and the details of
implementation, even minutiae, should be in the hands of those with
ultimate political responsibility;
(2) policy makers should pay great attention to the attempt to control
events;
(3) policymakers should also seek to establish empathy with the oppo-
nent's position, concerns and frame of reference;
(4) policymakers should respect the vital interests of their opponent (as
perceived by the opponent), and be restrained in their own objectives;
(5) every effort must be made by the state taking measures to avoid
painting the adversary into a comer, such that the adversary feels little
alternative between humiliation and escalation;
(6) policymakers should recognise that reducing the adversary's incen-
tives to escalate involves a combination of threats and incentives;
(7) that some of the more stringent bargaining tactics suggested by
Schelling et al. must be avoided; for example, burning of one's
bridges. Rather the objective should be to maintain freedom of
action for both oneself and the opponent;
(8) every effort should be made to slow the pace of events, to provide
time for reflection for all those involved;
(9) adversaries should communicate with each other in order to clarify
their respective positions and interests, it being remembered that
actions tend to speak louder than words;
(10) opponents must be aware of the distinction between coercion and
violence, and of the salience of that threshold.

BARGAINING POWER

Critics like Gray have noted that the problem is not so much that political
leaders will fail to observe these rules but 'rather that those rules and
conventions will be in conflict with the perceived need to conduct affairs in
a dangerous manner for high stakes' .20 There is also the question as to
whether it is the 'instruments and techniques' of crisis management that
are the decisive element or the 'inherent bargaining power of the parti-
cipants.' This is a 'function of the relative values the parties attach to the
possible outcome', which in tum is a function of 'the parties' substantive
interests at stake' and their 'comparative military strength'.21 This argu-
ment was acute in connection with the resolution of the Cuban crisis in
1962, it being possible to argue that it was the United States' superiority in
120 International Security in the Modern World
local conventional force and nuclear capacity that was decisive. In any
bargaining situation the outcome is influenced by such factors as commit-
ment and the perception of relative power. It is the potential of perceived
asymmetries in commitment and power that provides a certain leverage for
both bargaining and conflict resolution. Participants have sought to struc-
ture the situation so as to emphasise, even exaggerate, how deeply they
were committed to the interest involved in the dispute, seeking to convince
their opponent that they were, therefore, more prepared to run risks in
any 'competition in risk taking'.22
A key feature of superpower postwar crises has been that one side or
the other has come to realise that the other side cared more or had more at
stake in the interest under dispute. This partly has appeared to reflect
spheres of interest. The United States, for example, was ultimately prepared
to accept both the building of the Berlin Wall in the summer of 1961 and
the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, because it recognised that the
Soviet Union ultimately had more at stake in these cases. Similarly the
Soviet Union appears to have acknowledged that Cuba, only 90 miles from
the coast of Florida, was regarded as a key United States interest. A
difficulty, of course, is that this is a matter of perception, and that there
may be issues about which the principal opponents feel equally strongly. In
the 1970s the case that often caused concern was the potential struggle for
oil resources between the superpowers in the Middle East.
Notwithstanding the problems associated with the concept and philoso-
phy of crisis management, it remains true that the only alternatives to it are
mismanagement of crises or war, unless the efforts connected with crisis
management are developed into notions related to crisis prevention. How-
ever, before crisis prevention came into vogue, the confidence about
crisis management diminished.

THE FAD FOR CRISIS MANAGEMENT AND CRISES FADES

In contrast to the post-Cuba crisis-management vogue and the confidence

that crises could not only be managed but also exploited,23 the 1970s saw a
reexamination of this confidence. This reexamination was based on a number
of factors. Perhaps the first was a reassessment of the apparent lessons of
the Cuban missile crisis itself from three perspectives. In this regard a
primary stimulus was the movement away from a romanticised view of
the Kennedy years, a romanticism originally engendered at least partly by
the manner of President Kennedy's death.
 Trevor C. Salmon and Raad Alkadari 121
The reappraisal included the handling of the 1962 crisis, especially the
issue of the alleged control and management of the crisis. In 1965 the
Wohlstetters argued that the Cuban crisis was evidence that escalation
could be controlled, and that although the rhetoric of the respective
leaders had appeared reckless, there was in fact no lack of control, 'no
dearth of management of the crisis'. 24 Further examination revealed that
Cuba was in fact a 'close run thing', that there was much that was unanti-
cipated and uncertain, not least of which was the shooting-down of an
American U-2 plane. Such examination also began to pay more attention
to the problems caused in the crisis by such features as standard operating
procedures, bureaucratic politics, stress, 'groupthink' and the general
problems of decision-making and rationality.25
A secondary stimulus was the realisation that future crises were unlikely
to be simple reruns of 1962. Most important in this regard was the ac-
knowledged achievement of strategic parity by the Soviet Union, and
with it the arrival of Mutual Assured Destruction, both as a strategic
doctrine and as the likely result of any superpower conflict. This reduced
the significance of asymmetries in military power at the strategic level,
and brought home the fact that both major protagonists were equally vul-
nerable. Associated with this was the recognition that in any future crisis it
was quite likely that the United States would not have the local conven-
tional superiority it enjoyed in 1962. A further and related feature was
the recognition that in 1962 the weapon systems had been slower, more
easy to recall, and that there had been less of an interlocking between
the two sides' warning, alert and command systems than was apparent in
1973 and subsequently.
A third stimulus was a realisation of just how dangerous the crisis had
been, and how nearly the line between coercive diplomacy and violence
had been crossed. The combination of these stimuli created a greater aware-
ness of how dangerous the world was and created incentives to try to
avoid the dangers of 1962 arising again. The awareness of dangers, re-
inforced by MAD, led to an appreciation of the merits of caution, and a
declining sense of confidence in management. Thus academics and
others began to observe that even 'more astute statesmen would ... have
found it difficult to control the cascading events of July 1914'.26
The new mood was reflected by Gottfried and Blair, who argued that the
fact that there had been no serious crisis nor direct military confrontation
between the United States and Soviet Union since 1962, had 'led some
to the belief that there exists a craft called crisis management, and that
the superpowers have mastered it. We do not share this view.' Indeed, they
go on to issue a 'warning label';
122 International Security in the Modern World
As the gravity of a crisis increases, past experiellce becomes progres-
sively less relevant, comprehension of events more problematical, stress
and fatigue on men, machines, organisations, and societies, more
severe, and control correspondingly less firm. Crisis 'management',
though indispensable, can only cope with crisis. The Cuban Missile
Crisis, and the other successfully 'managed' crises, have been lame
confrontations in that they only involved marginal interactions between
the superpowers' armedforces.lt would be reckless to assume that those
experiences imply that crises are manageable to the degree of con-
fidence required by the existence of nuclear weapons. 27

Secondly, this realisation of danger was associated with a further new

perspective, namely the recognition that empirically crises were declining
in both number and severity, there being nothing approaching the scale of
the Cuban missile crisis in the years since 1962. Even the apparently serious
dispute between the United States and the Soviet Union over the Middle
East war in 1973 came to be regarded as merely a 'faint echo of its famous
predecessor' .28 The fear of MAD, and the concomitant recognition that the
possible costs of any war were almost bound to outweigh any putative
gains, appear to have introduced great caution into the behaviour of both
superpowers in the intervening period. The fear of war is particularly
relevant given the observation by Blainey that 'Recurring optimism is a
vital prelude to war. Anything which increases that optimism is a cause of
war. Anything which dampens that optimism is a cause of peace. '29 In
effect, as the 1970s progressed, the optimism about management and crises
declined, and made the superpowers exceedingly cautious in their dealings
with one another, particularly with regard to any activity that might risk
war. Far from thoughts of 'finely tuned' management, policymakers appear
to have been more concerned with gross calculations of dangers. Given the
potential catastrophe, neither wished to risk war on a chance or the flip of
a coin. Pessimism became 'a permanent accompaniment to ... thinking
about war', and that has been a contributory factor to the cause of peace
and caution. 30
Thirdly, after confrontation over Cuba in 1962 and the crises in Berlin in
1961 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, the superpowers appeared to settle on
an implicit recognition of a status quo and territorial division in Europe
and in other areas of contention. Although not always entirely clear about
it, they appear to have come to at least a tacit understanding on which
areas were too dangerous to mount a significant challenge to the other party.
The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 appears to challenge this,
but it was a reflection of a remaining ambiguity over spheres of interest,
rather than a fundamental challenge to an acknowledged sphere. Even in
 Trevor C. Salmon and Raad Alkadari 123
the Middle East, with declining Soviet influence, some of the previous
temptations to confrontation were eroded.
Fourthly, as on other matters affecting security, the period since the early
1970s saw a change in the perceived challenges to the interests and security
of the superpowers. Issues relating to the environment, such as concern with
global warming, and the international political economy, such as concern
over the scale of international debt, began to assume increasing importance.
Associated with this was a growing realisation by the United States and
Soviet Union that their interests were not necessarily best served by too
close an involvement with partners they could not easily control, a view
perhaps reinforced by the events in the Middle East in 1973 when the
United States went dn to nuclear alert to forestalI a Soviet intervention to
save part of the Egyptian army from the Israelis. Moreover, on the one side
the Americans suffered for many years from the Vietnam syndrome, whilst
the Soviets were later exposed to problems in Afghanistan. These experi-
ences do seem to have engendered further caution on the part of both, and
a movement to the use both of rather more covert activities and of proxies,
such as the United States' covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua.
Finally, the 1980s saw two developments of relevance. One was the
appearances of Richard Ned Lebow's Nuclear Crisis Management: A Dan-
gerous Illusion in 1987, which focused attention on the 1914 crisis and
Sarajevo. This had a significant effect on the intelIectual climate regarding
crises and their management, and encouraged scepticism, and even pessi-
mism, an orientation reflected in the Gottfried and Blair approach cited
above, their work appearing in 1988.
More importantly, 1985 saw the coming into power of Mikhail Gorbachev,
who ushered in perestroika and glasnost, as well as new strategic thinking,
in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. Although, as will be seen below,
significant moves towards crisis prevention had been made under the
ancien regime, the post-1985 changes in the Soviet Union and their con-
sequent effects in Eastern Europe, can hardly be underestimated. Without
the changes in the Soviet Union, there would not have been the revolutions
in Eastern Europe in 1989, and the disbandment of the Warsaw Pact in
1991. Even if this was not a complete harbinger of a 'new world order', the
unfolding of superpower cooperation over the Gulf crisis in 1990-91 showed
just how much had changed since 1973.

THE RISE OF CRISIS PREVENTION

All of these factors contributed to the growing attention paid by both

practitioners and academics to the ideas and practices of crisis prevention,
124 International Security in the Modern World
although the distinction between this and crisis management is not always
clear. This is demonstrated. for example. by the view of crisis management
taken by Hanspeter Neuhold. who argues that crisis management is about
the 'measures taken in order to isolate and mitigate crises'. Such measures
are successful if the 'intensity has so far been reduced that major (armed)
hostilities can reasonably be ruled out'. However, he goes on to say that
the 'most successful' form of crisis management is 'a middle or long
term policy which prevents the outbreak of crises altogether or nips them
in the bud' .31 While this confuses the issue somewhat, it does illustrate
usefully that the distinctions need to be treated with caution.
Most writers agree that the turning-point in postwar crisis management
and prevention was the Cuban crisis of 1962, which led not only to a focus
upon crisis management but also to a perception of the need to focus rather
more upon crisis prevention. After this crisis a series of measures were
taken by the superpowers. The first was the 'Memorandum of Under-
standing Between the USA and the USSR Regarding the Establishment of
a Direct Communications Link' signed in Geneva in June 1963. This
established not only direct communications between the two governments
- the 'Hot Line' - but each side undertook to 'ensure continuous func-
tioning', and prompt delivery to the head of government of any com-
munications received by it. Originally this communication was by
telegraph-teleprinter. In 1971, noting the 'positive experience' gained
by operating the system, it was agreed to add two circuits using a satellite
communications system, along with additional terminals, to increase reli-
ability. Further enhancement took place in 1975, and in 1984 'the direct
communications link was expanded and improved by the addition of a
facsimile transmission capability', allowing greater speed of exchange
and the transmission of graphic material. such as maps. It is not known
how often these systems have been used.32
A second significant agreement was signed in Washington in September
1971, the 'Agreement between the USA and the USSR on Measures to
Reduce the Risk of Outbreak of Nuclear War'. In this there was mutual
recognition of the 'devastating consequences that nuclear war would have
for all mankind', and the consequent need 'to avert the risk of outbreak
of such a war', especially by accidental or unauthorised use of nuclear
weapons. The USA and USSR agreed to improve their measures against
such eventualities, to notify each other of any such incident and of any
detection of any 'unidentified objects', and to notify each other 'in advance
of any planned missile launches if such launches will extend beyond its
national territory in the direction of the other Party'.3)
 Trevor C. Salmon and Raad Alkadari 125
Further agreement was reached in May 1972, on this occasion on
'The Prevention of Incidents on the High Seas'. This provided 'rules of
the road', and agreement that even surveillance ships would 'stay at a
distance which avoids the risk of collision' and activity 'embarrassing or
endangering the ships under surveillance'. Prior notification was to be
given of some manoeuvres, warnings given of areas of sea to be closed,
and annual meetings held to review compliance. 34
More substantive was the June 1973 •Agreement Between the USA and
the USSR on the Prevention of Nuclear War'. It too noted the devastating
consequences of nuclear war, and the need to reduce the risks of one
occurring. It noted their agreement to 'prevent the development of situ-
ations capable of causing a dangerous exacerbation of their relations, as
to avoid military confrontations, and as to exclude the outbreak of nuclear
war between them.' To achieve this they undertook to 'refrain from the
threat or use of force against the other Party and against other countries
... '. If a war or risk of war appeared to arise they agreed to 'immediately
enter into urgent consultations with each other and make every effort to
avert this risk.' It might be noted that the agreement does not specify any
mechanism for these consultations, although each party will be free to
involve the United Nations. 3s This agreement was part of the SALT
(Strategic Arms Limitations Agreement) process and discussion.
The two principal agreements of the SALT process initially were the
1972 agreements: the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Interim Agree-
ment on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. Limitation on anti-
ballistic missiles according to the treaty was a contribution to reducing
the arms race and lowering the risk of nuclear war, by limiting deployment
of such systems originally to two, subsequently one, and thus basing
security upon mutual vulnerability. The offensive arms agreement was
concerned to limit launchers, rather than warheads. 36 SALT also created
the Standing Consultative Commission to consider questions of com-
pliance and exchange relevant information. These two agreements should
be seen as part of the whole process being described, although they dealt
more narrowly with weapons. That process continued through the decade,
and in 1979 SALT II was signed, which was to establish the strategic
status quo for the 1980s, although it was never ratified,37 largely but not
exclusively because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December
1979. SALT II set a ceiling for both parties of 2400 launchers, heavy
bombers, and air-to-surface ballistic missiles.
This process of specific agreements on weapon numbers and character-
istics, combined with general statements of principles, became more muted
126 International Security in the Modern World

post-Afghanistan, and the emergence of the 'Second Cold War', but was
resurrected as part of the new climate in the late 1980s, when the two
superpowers agreed to establish two Nuclear Risk Reduction Centres,
one in the State Department of the United States, and the other in the
Ministry of Defence in Moscow. While Reiss notes that they 'are not
concerned with many of the most likely avenues down which the two
superpowers might be dragged, pushed or manoeuvred', they do provide
for notification of ballistic missile launches, as already provided for
under earlier agreements, and the transmission of so-called goodwill
messages. Shortly after their establishment they acquired new respons-
ibilities under the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which stated
'that the parties would use the centres to exchange and update data con-
tained in the Memorandum of Understanding, which listed each side's
inventory of missiles, launchers', and associated support systems. The
NRRCs were also to be used to notify each other of on-site inspections
and of the elimination of systems. In a further development in May 1988,
it was agreed that they would be the vehicle for providing 'notification
of all ICBM and SLBM launches'.38

NORMS AND RULES?

It is clear, then, that the superpowers have sought to establish what might be
termed a crisis-prevention regime, namely 'sets of implicit or explicit
principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which
actors' expectations converge in a given area of international relations'.39
There is some dispute as to whether such regimes require formal rather than
informal rules,40 but the superpowers have clearly attempted to adopt both
over the last two decades. Even the formal agreements described above are
subject to interpretation and ambiguity. This is even more so with respect to
the informal rules. As with the' conventions of crisis', a number of listings
are possible, but the following encapsulate the principal themes:
(1) while neither admits to having 'spheres of influence', respect for their
respective spheres appears to have been very influential in preventing
major crises;
(2) every effort has been made to avoid direct military confrontation
between United States and Soviet Union forces;
(3) restraint has been shown in seeking unilateral advantage, and reciproc-
ity in restraint has been demonstrated;
 Trevor C. Salmon and Raad Alkadari 127
(4) any major attempt to undermine the other side's leadership has been
avoided, but rather on the contrary its legitimacy has been accepted;
(5) despite the record of nuclear threats or diplomacy, a clear distinction
has been maintained between conventional and nuclear weapons;
(6) 'predictable anomaly over unpredictable rationality' has been accepted,
in that they have preferred 'to perpetuate the anomalies than to risk
the possibilities for destabilisation inherent in trying to resolve them; '41
(7) they have an acquiesced in 'asymmetrical intervention outside the
spheres of influence. If one side becomes militarily involved in a
regional conflict, then the adversary tends to remain on the sidelines' .42
Crisis prevention, of course, presumes that the United States and the Soviet
Union were willing to temper their political competition, and one of the
difficulties was that it was not at all clear that this was necessarily the case.
This could have significant effects. For example, one of the reasons for the
breakdown of dltente in the late 1970s was the American perception that
the Soviets were not playing by the 'rules', and were seeking unilateral
advantages in Angola and southern Africa. The Soviets, in tum, felt that
the United States was deliberately trying to exclude them from the Middle
East, especially the Camp David process. This serves to illustrate that
the same 'duality of purpose' as elsewhere operates in the context of
crisis prevention. Each power, whilst seeking to avoid nuclear catastrophe
and minimising the risk of nuclear war, has at the same time, still been
willing to exploit certain situations for one-sided advantage. This prob-
lem has been exacerbated by the very fact that these 'rules' are tacit and
implicit, since a corollary appears to be that they are also ambiguous.
Ambiguity may have some advantages, but it also provides scope for
attempts at exploitation, and this can lead to recrimination, which in tum
could prove fatal to the relationship and norms themselves.

EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENTS

Perhaps more optimistically, it needs to be noted that the superpowers

and their European allies (and the 'neutral and nonaligned' in Europe)
have been discussing similar issues, norms and rules in the specifically
European context for nearly twenty years under the aegis of the Conference
on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). CSCE was formally initi-
ated by the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, (although it was a statement of
intent, rather than a treaty), which was signed by 35 states - all of Europe,
(except Albania) and Canada and the United States.
128 International Security in the Modern World
The so-called 'first basket' concerned security. In this basket the parti-
cipating states again renounced the use and threat of use of force. More
significantly and innovatively, they declared that they accepted as inviola-
ble the frontiers in Europe. The Final Act also focused on 'confidence and
security building measures' (CSBMs). These have as their objective the
building of trust and confidence between the signatories, by measures
designed to make clear their intentions, and to introduce transparency into
military activities, making them more predictable and less threatening to
others, especially in relation to fears of a surprise attack. The ethos was
to reduce tension, strengthen confidence, and reduce the dangers of mis-
understanding and miscalculation by such measures as exchanges of
observers at military manoeuvres, prior notification of major military
movements involving more than 25 000 troops, and notification of
smaller manoeuvres to those adjacent to the area concerned. 4J
The CSCE was not and is not just a static conference. Rather it has been
a process with a number of review conferences and spinoffs in other areas.
A good example of this is the Conference of Disarmament in Europe
(CDE), which opened in Stockholm in 1984. This built upon the CSCE and
focused upon CSBMs. The main elements to this agreement were: firstly,
42 days' notice were to be given of military activities in the field involving
more than 13 000 troops or 300 tanks, or 3000 troops if amphibiousl
parachute landings were involved; secondly, observers from CDE parti-
cipating states were to be invited to all such activities involving more
than 17 000 troops in land exercises or 5000 in amphibious exercises;
thirdly, annual calendars giving a year's notice of these activities were to be
supplied; and, finally, there were to be up to three on-site challenge inspec-
tions a year to verify the foregoing. The agreement also extended the
geographical area of Europe affected from the Atlantic to the Urals.
The CDE has been operative for a number of years and its obligations
appear to have been taken seriously. Exercises have been observed, and
challenge on-site inspections made. 44 This process of seeking to build
confidence continued and led to the Vienna document of 1990 and the Paris
meeting of CSCE in November 1990, which also saw the signing of the
Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) agreement. In the Vienna document
there was agreement to exchange information on military organisation,
manpower and major systems, on deployment of major systems and on
budgets; the establishment of procedures for consultation on unusual activi-
ties (to take place within 48 hours of a request); visits to air bases; military
exchanges and so on. 45 The CFE set limits to the numbers of tanks, ar-
moured personnel carriers, combat aircraft, attack helicopters and man-
power, and also restricted the deployment of these within certain areas.
 Trevor C. Salmon and Raad Alkodari 129
Another feature of the CSCE meeting in Paris was the agreement to create
a permanent secretariat for CSCE, and to provide for meetings of experts
on the pacific settlement of disputes. although there is no majority voting.

CONCLUSION

Finally. it is worth considering whether the changes in the strategic environ-

ment in the late 1980s and early 1990s will make it more difficult to analyse
the approaches to crisis prevention and crisis management in future. In
particular. it may be pertinent to question the value of the apparent lessons
of the past at the present time. This has much to do with the decline of
the Soviet Union and the consequent emergence of the United States as
the only true global superpower. This could result in a reappraisal of how
to deal with crises as significant as that which occurred after the Cuban
missile crisis of 1962.
In addition to providing a salutary lesson that not all crises can be
prevented or managed. the Gulf crisis in 1990-91 and the subsequent
military action. raised questions as to whether they were indicative of a new
approach to crises, Clearly, there have been changes in the parameters upon
which the duality of purpose is assessed. The essence of this change has
been the West's apparent diminished perception of the risk from the East.
Parallel to this, and no doubt partly as a consequence of it, has been the
diminished perception amongst major Westem powers of the potential
risks which conflict and the use of force ultimately pose. This could
potentially reduce the urgency of preventing crises, and ultimately conflict.
The events surrounding the Gulf crisis and war of 1990-91 appeared to
highlight these possibilities. Both sides exhibited brinkmanship, thereby
escalating the risk of conflict. in a situation where crisis prevention or
management would previously have been the expected nOrm. In addition.
the crisis and its ultimate resolution were seen in terms of a zero-sum
outcome, rather than the positive, variable-sum approach which was char-
acteristic of the previous era. For it should not be overlooked that the
Gulf War in 1991 was to a great extent a conflict fought by one super-
power against a client of the other, a situation which would have carried
tremendous risks of escalation in the previous strategic environment.
Time may well prove that the whole episode in the Gulf in 1990-91 was
an anomaly. Alternatively, it may be that a superpower (the United States)
is now in a position to threaten military action with greater freedom (in
strategic terms at least). Clearly, it has been willing to do so against Iraq
since the conclusion of the Gulf War. What must be assessed is whether the
130 International Security in the Modern World
diminished risk of nuclear wear and the consequent reduction in threats
posed to the mainland United States will result in future administrations
perceiving a greater freedom to pursue national interests using force. If this
proves to be the case, will the flexibility which other states have enjoyed
by capitalising on the superpower stalement disappear? Indeed, will these
states be forced to learn from the lessons of conventions, understandings
and norms of the superpowers in a bygone age?
Ironically, it may be the case that as norms and even rules become
adopted between the old gladiators of the Cold War, other tensions between
other military powers will cause grave crises and risks of war. In these cases
there may well be no conventions, understandings or norms either to pre-
vent or control crises. There is also the danger that the diminished risk of
nuclear war may facilitate less caution in the behaviour of some states,
although there does appear to be a growing acceptance that there are other
weapons of mass destruction too. There is also the danger that just as the
Cuban crisis initially fostered a belief in the efficacy of crisis management,
the Gulf may foster a belief that neither crisis prevention or management
are necessary in some contexts. The new era thus poses vital new questions
relating to crisis management and prevention.

NOTES

t. Oran Young, Politics of Force (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968),

pp. 10 and t 6.
2. William W. Kaufmann, Military Policy and National Sec"rity (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1956), p. 262.
3. K. Boulding, Conflict and Defense (New York: Harper, 1962), p. 314.
4. See Coral Bell, Conventions of Crisis (London: Oxford University Press,
1971), pp. 6-7 and Young, op. cit., pp. 6-15.
5. Charles F. Hermann (ed.), International Crises: Insights from Behavioral
Research (New York: The Free Press, 1972), p. 13.
6. Glenn H. Snyder and Paul Diesing, Conflict among Nations: Bargaining,
Decision Making, and System Structure in International Crises (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1977), p. 4.
7. Young, op. cit., p. 15.
8. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1966), p. 97.
9. Snyder and Diesing, op. cit., p. 6.
10. Kurt Gottfried and Bruce G. Blair (eds), Crisis Stability and Nuclear War
(New York: Oxford University Press), p. 5, emphasis in original.
11. Snyder and Diesing, op. cit., p. 7.
 Trevor C. Salmon and Raad Alkadari 131
12. Alexander F. George, David K. Hall and William Simons, The Limits 0/
Coercive Diplomacy (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), p. 217.
13. Coral Bell, op. cit., p. 7.
14. Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: the Nature of International
Crises (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).
15. Colin S. Gray, Strategic Studies and Public Policy: The American Experience
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982), p. 107.
16. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1966), pp. 92-110.
17. See Bell, op. cit., pp. 14-15. Bell sees 'a crisis slide' as a situation where
crises come not'thick and fast, but seem ... to repercuss off each other until
... the whole society of states, begins to crumble' and as situations where
'decision-makers ... believe that they see the options available to them
steadily closing down to the single option of war or unlimited defeat'.
18. Bell, ibid., title and pp. 73-98, and p. 25.
19. Colin Gray, Strategic Studies and Public Policy (University Press of Ken-
tucky, 1982), pp. 1l0-11.
20. Gray, op. cit., p. 112.
21. Snyder and Diesing, op. cit., p. 525. Emphasis in original.
22. See Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (New York:
Praeger, 1965).
23. See Trevor C. Salmon, 'Rationality and Politics: the case of strategic theory',
British Journal of International Studies, Vol. 2, no. 3 (October 1976),
pp. 293-310, for a critique of this optimism.
24. A. and R. Wohlstetter, 'Controlling the risks in Cuba', Adelphi Paper 17
(London, IISS, 1965), p. 15.
25. See Salmon, op. cit., and the seminal work by Graham Allison, Essence of
Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).
26. Lebow, op. cit., p. 188.
27. Gottfried and Blair, op. cit., p. 7. Emphasis in original.
28. Lebow, op. cit., p. 181.
29. Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes o/War (London: Macmillan, 1973), p. 53.
30. Ibid., p. 122.
31. Hanspeter Neuhold, 'Principles and implementation of crisis management:
lessons from the past', in Daniel Frei (ed.), International Crises and Crisis
Management (Famborough: Saxon House, 1978), pp. 4-5.
32. See Josef Goldblat, Arms Control Agreements: A Handbook (London: SIPRI,
Taylor & Francis, 1983), pp. 141-3, 160-2, and 181 and Mitchell Reiss,
'Crisis Management Mechanisms: How Much is Enough?', Arms Control,
Vol. 10, no. 2 (September 1989), pp. 106-7.
33. Goldblat, op. cit., p. 163.
34. Ibid., pp. 166-7. This was followed by a further agreement in 1973, see
Goldblat, p. 175.
35. See Goldblat, op. cit., p. 177.
36. See Goldblat, pp. 166-75.
37. Ibid., pp. 212-29. It was followed by the Vladivostok Accord of November
1974.
38. Reiss, op. cit., pp. 114-15.
132 International Security in the Modern World
39. Stephen D. Krasner, 'Structural causes and regime consequences', Interna-
tional Organization, Vol. 36. no. 2, p. 186.
40. See R. Keohane and J. Nye, 'By creating or accepting procedures, rules or
institutions for cenain kinds of activity, governments regulate and control
transnational and interstate relations. We refer to these governing arrange-
ments as international regimes.' Power and Interdependence 2nd edn .•
(Glenview: Scott, Foresman, 1989), p. 5. However, in Internationallnstitu-
tions and State Power, Keohane defines them as 'institutions with explicit
rules, agreed upon by governments, that pertain to particular sets of issues in
international relations'. (Boulder: Westview, 1989), p. 4.
41. John Lewis Gaddis, 'The Long Peace', International Security, Vol. 10, no. 4
(Spring 1986). p. 138.
42. Roy Allison and Phil Williams (eds), Superpower Competition and Crisis
Prevention in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990), p. 251. For other work on these tacit rules, see Gaddis, op. cit., and
Phil Williams, 'Crisis Management: from Cuba to Sarajevo', in Ken Booth
(ed.), New Thinking about Strategy and International Security (London:
Harper-Collins, 1991), pp. 157-61.
43. See Goldblat, op. cit., pp. 182-3, and for the process as a whole, see Arie
Bloed (ed.), From Helsinki to Vienna: Basic Documents 0/ the Helsinki
Process (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1991).
44. Arms Control and Disarmament: the vital issues, No. 12 (London: Foreign
and Commonwealth Office/Ministry of Defence, 1990).
45. Vienna Document 1990.
8 Low-Intensity Warfare and
Limited War
Roger Carey

'Peace' and 'war' are two relatively easily-recognised conditions in the

relations of states. But 'peace' does not necessarily imply a lack of conflict
and 'war' does not necessarily mean major conventional or nuclear war
between the states concerned. There is a range of activities in which
states engage that do not always generate a declaration of war - or, indeed,
a 'state of war' - but which would hardly qualify for the designation
'peace' - e.g. the British conflict with Argentina over the Falklands
Islands in 1982. This range of activities may be defined as being 'low-
intensity warfare' and could include guerrilla warfare and terrorism.
Low-intensity warfare does not necessarily mean the formal involvement
of states - disaffected groups, would-be revolutionaries and the like use
this form of warfare to put pressure on governments, and the conflict takes
place usually within the confines of one state. External governments may be
involved directly by, for example, giving aid to the insurgency movement,
but this involvement will be characterised by its lack of formality and the
ease with which it can be both denied and withdrawn. Limited War marks
the lowest level of fonnal inter-state conflict.

LOW-INTENSITY WARFARE

Low-intensity warfare may be part of the bargaining process to help

government to 'see the point of view' of groups within and without the state
that are disaffected - for whatever reason - and to encourage action in line
with that viewpoint. These groups may receive support from sources
outside the state concerned and may even be created to carry out a low-
intensity warfare campaign. Low-intensity warfare thereby becomes an
adjunct, or alternative, to economic and political means of applying
pressure.
During the period following the Second World War, low intensity war-
fare became much more prominent as a means of action and there is a
number of reasons why this should be so, including a unique set of circum-
stances that, when juxtaposed, provided all the necessary 'ingredients'. The

133
134 International Security in the Modern World
dichotomy in wealth between the developed and underdeveloped world
provides a suitable environment; the process of social change produces
suitable personnel; and the international system has been structured in
such a way as to produce the appropriate conditions in inter-state relations.
First, as Gallung recognised as early as 19691 there has developed a
considerable dichotomy between the development of the northern and south-
ern hemispheres. The northern hemisphere comprises the developed world
- and to that extent the Antipodes and South Africa are honorary members
of the northern hemisphere. In this part of the international system the social
processes are associative ones. Using modem communication techniques
there is considerable interpenetration of societies. Social interpenetration
is frequent and cultural interpenetration is taken as an enriching experience
- e.g. 'mixed' marriages are common, travel and cultural awareness is
high. The northern hemisphere also exhibits a fulfilment of its economic
desires in a multi-state manner. There is economic interdependence (e.g.
multi-national corporations) and there are elements of economic integration
(e.g. the developing European Community). The very process of develop-
ment itself appears to give a certain number of common values to all
developed states, the chief of which are not only a commitment to the
process of development itself but also a very strong desire to prevent war
between themselves. When all of these integrative factors operate to-
gether the result is even further integration and greater development. Sig-
nificantly, there also develops a greater dependence upon other states. In
consequence, the notion of free - or relatively free - trade between the
states concerned becomes extremely important. This factor goes a long way
to explain the consternation in the northern hemisphere at the 1990 collapse
of the GATT negotiations. In this very highly-developed hemisphere
there is a great and increasing dependence upon certain 'nodal points'.
These are represented by major railway stations, airports, harbours and,
perhaps more significantly, by communication stations for telephone/fax/
TV/radio, and so on. The northern hemisphere therefore presents a set of
targets that offer potential for very great disruption by the use of a min-
imum amount of force.
By contrast the southern hemisphere - the Third World of previous
decades - is underdeveloped. The major characteristic of this hemisphere
is the dominance of disassociative processes. Rather than see the develop-
ment of integrated units economically and socially, in the southern hemi-
sphere there is an emphasis on nationalism. There is a stressing of all that
is different between 'them' (usually the northern hemisphere, but also the
'next-door neighbour') and 'us'. The stressing of differences makes it
 Roger Carey 135
difficult for states in this arena to cooperate with each other, despite what,
to northern hemisphere observers, might be thought to be the obvious
advantages of doing so. As well as stressing differences, nationalist leaders
also frequently make vast promises to the population of the state which
cannot be fulfilled except in cooperation with other states. This dichotomy
creates considerable tensions within leaderships, especially, as even more
paradoxically, the promises about 'the good life' are frequently modelled
on the northern hemisphere model - economic well-being leading to mate-
rial gains and benefits. This 'revolution of rising expectations', which, in
most cases, cannot be fulfilled, frequently leads to considerable. social
unrest, in tum leading to political unrest and creating an environment that is
ripe for low-intensity warfare.
A range of social factors tends to produce individuals able and willing
to participate in this fonn of warfare. The pace of change in all societies -
northern and southern - is now very rapid. This change leads, inevitably,
to conflict within society as some groups gain power, influence and wealth
at the expense of others who consider themselves more entitled to these
attributes. In the northern hemisphere this results from the process of
industrialisation, and in the southern hemisphere from the process of ur-
banisation. Each of these processes - as do others - causes a degree of
disorientation among those subjected to it. They have to learn new modes
of behaviour, new ways of conducting their lives. They have to alter
their whole value-system. During this dramatic process of change some
individuals are peculiarly vulnerable to influence from anyone, or any
creed, that happens to be around, so that ideological change and indoc-
trination becomes relatively easy at that point. By the same token the
change of the nature of society from a 'traditional' structure in which
authority stemmed from age and experience to one in which authority
comes with education and the ability to manipulate technology - being
'streetwise' (a very urban connotation) - again produces disorientation.
If 'experience' and age lose their value (in an urbanised society the rural
wisdom of knowing when to plant and when to harvest, learned through
years of experience, is heavily devalued), the new wisdom is urgently
required - education, the skills of new technologies, etc. There is, accord-
ingly, a huge demand for the new wisdom. It is unlikely that the 'establish-
ment' - of no matter what persuasion - will be able to satisfy this escalating
demand. In the northern hemisphere this manifests itself in a shortage of
places in higher education; in the south in a lack of basic education facilities
and skills. The inability of 'them' to provide what is regarded as necessary
leads, in tum, to resentment and a receptiveness to ideas of a radical nature,
136 iflternational Security in the Modern World
including ideas related to insurgency and other forms of low-intensity
warfare. There are, therefore, plenty of suitable 'candidates' to engage in
low-intensity warfare.
The international system at the end of the twentieth century also provides
a momentum to low-intensity operation. One of the major tenets of the
operation of the system has been the insistence by the major nuclear weapon
states that there shall be no major war - i.e. one that is likely to place them
in a situation where the use of nuclear weapons was likely or even possible.
This recognises that a major war involving the extensive use of nuclear
weapons would be devastating for the whole of mankind and that nuclear
weapons have an almost exclusively deterrent role to play. Because of
their predominant position in the international system the great powers -
chiefly the USA and USSR - have been in a position to effect this policy.
They have also been able to engage in crisis management - i.e. when
conflicts have broken out they have been able to 'manage' the crisis to a
greater or lesser extent. This management has been made possible by the
deterrent role of nuclear weapons (and has also been made necessary by
the existence of nuclear weapons) and the overriding concern with the
escalation of minor conflicts becoming larger and eventually global con-
flicts. Management has also been aided by the position of the two major
powers as suppliers of weapon systems to their friends and allies. Although
not necessarily able to prevent the outbreak of war they have been able to
limit the duration of any conflict by determining the resupply rate for
munitions and other pieces of high technology. If, therefore, major war is
not 'allowed' and even small conventional wars are 'controlled' the bipolar
nature of the international system has contributed uniquely to the environ-
ment in which low-intensity warfare has become the only form of warfare
in which disaffected groups and states have been able to freely involve
themselves.
Low-intensity warfare manifests itself in two major forms - guerrilla
warfare and terrorism.

Guerilla Warfare

Guerrilla warfare is a form of low-intensity warfare used by the weak to put

pressure on the strong. Guerrilla warfare emphasises the role of irregular
forces, which might often be very few in number in the initial stages of an
insurgency. As it is a strategy utilised by the weak it places considerable
importance on making political converts and on the guerrilla movement
gaining strength as it moves towards an ultimate goal. Guerrilla warfare is
not envisaged as a speedy solution to a problem, but rather as a slow and
 Roger Carey 137
steady development of support that will ultimately turn into an unstoppable
political and military tide - at which point the action might cease to be a
guerrilla action and become an open civil war with formal engagements
between insurgents and government. This pattern of activity is, perhaps,
best exemplified by the struggle for over 25 years of Mao Tse-Tung to gain
ascendancy over the Kuomintang in China.
Guerrilla warfare is seen as an attractive proposition to a number of
groups in different situations. First, to those within the state wishing to
oppose an existing establishment yet lacking a legitimate or sufficient
means of doing so, e.g. EOKA in Cyprus. Second, to insurgency groups -
sometimes backed by governments - from outside who wish to destabilise
a regime, e.g. the UNITA movement in Angola, supported by the Republic
of South Africa. Third, to those engaged in anti-colonial struggles, e.g.
the anti-colonial movements in the French and British colonies in Africa.
And fourth, to those involved in wars of liberation, e.g. Tito in Yugoslavia.
In a more specialised form it is also attractive to those operating in the
urban environment, e.g. the Tupermaros in Uraguay.
This form of low-intensity warfare has been established for a long
time. An early western exponent was T.E. Lawrence - Lawrence of
Arabia - who practised his art in the Middle East in the First World War.
In the interwar period the use of this tactic by Mao Tse-Tung enabled
him ultimately to gain power in China. In the post-1945 period the
most renowned guerrilla fighters have been Fidel Castro and Che
Guevara firstly in Cuba and then in other parts of Latin America.
Guerrilla warfare fits well with the traditional views of war, namely a
Clausewitzian framework. Clausewitz indicated that the centre of gravity
had to be destroyed and that war, of any intensity, required a political
rationale. Thus the object of guerrilla fighters - using very limited forces -
is to overthrow the centre of gravity as much by political means as by
military means.
Guerrilla warfare is difficult to classify. The theories of guerrilla warfare
- from Mao, the Cuban theories of Castro and Che Guevara, and so on -
manifest themselves only as modified forms of the Leninist theory of
revolution and become, in the main, 'handbooks' on how to fight the
guerrilla war. Whatever its limitations in political theory, the great attrac-
tion of guerrilla warfare is that it is cheap. This is certainly the case when
compared to any form of more formal, larger-scale, war in the international
system. Guevara maintained that it was possible to start a revolution in any
state in Latin America with a force of only 50 men - by this he implied that
a small number of dedicated men could set in motion the very long train of
events that could lead to the overthrow of a regime. 2
138 International Security in the Modern World
Guerrilla warfare is as much a political as military activity, being de-
signed to change the structure of the political system within the state. It is,
in that sense, a form of civil war. The practice of guerrilla warfare blurs
the boundary between international war and civil war. In a war of this
nature highly sophisticated weapon systems are not always the best or
most efficient ones. (Hence, some of the problems encountered by the USA
in Vietnam, where the American technological superiority could not be
brought to focus on the problem at hand.) It is often simple weapons,
suitable for assassination that are the most effective, not the weapons
of large-scale, international conflict - Mao Tse-Tung made this point in
rather picturesque terms by saying, 'the gun boat is a paper tiger, the
aeroplane is a paper tiger and the atomic bomb likewise is a paper tiger'.
This exaggerates the position. but is none the less a graphic expression of
one of the virtues of guerrilla warfare.)
The attraction of low-intensity warfare stems, therefore, from a number
of factors. First, it lacks the risks of escalation inherent in more formal
forms of warfare. Second, it provides a good strategy for insurgency groups
as it favours those not equipped with very sophisticated military equipment.
Third, unlike conventional warfare, it does not appear to provoke very high
levels of concern in the international system. Other states do not feel
threatened by this 'civil war' type activity and so have little interest in
the outcome of any conflict. Fourth, subversion and guerrilla warfare are
evident to those who want to see them, but totally invisible to those who
do not wish to see them. It thereby provides ideal opportunities for those
giving support to guerrilla movements to prevaricate, to deny and to make
counter-denunciations, etc. As guerrilla warfare is a largely covert activity
it is extremely difficult to provide evidence of its existence, let alone the
detail of its working. Fifth, it is part of the process of change, and as
such it is likely to attract support and should, in theory, be successful.
Despite all these advantages there are relatively few examples of com-
plete success. It is obviously not easy to start a revolution, especially from
outside the state, e.g. Guevara in Bolivia. Most of the colonial revolutions
have been instigated from within the state and have received only a mini-
mum of external support. Given the enormous amount of effort the Soviet
Union and its allies put into fostering revolutionary guerrilla warfare, it
must be disappointing to them to have so little to show as a result. The
Middle East, the Hom of Africa and Latin America are areas in which
activity was particularly intensive but neither decisive nor particularly
successful.
For guerrillas to survive and to bring about the changes they want they
need to develop and exploit three qualities that give them potential local
 Roger Carey 139
superiority - greater mobility, knowledge of the countryside (or the city in
the urban environment) and better intelligence (including greater security
for their own intelligence.t
Mobility does not necessarily imply greater speed of movement. only
greater ease of movement, with shorter notice and less fanfare than that of
regular forces. This contrasts markedly with the modem regular army that
has a vast logistic 'tail'. Knowledge of the countryside will enable the
guerrilla band to disperse easily and thereby elude capture, and possibly to
outmanoeuvre the regular forces as a whole. Better intelligence implies a
knowledge of enemy movements and plans. Such information is essential
to an insurgent as this enables him to make ambushes and to avoid the
open encounters in which he will invariably fare worse. Security of plan-
ning and operation thus becomes vital to all parties. Michael Collins of
the old IRA epitomised success in these areas, and this made an important
contribution to Irish success after 1919.
Gaining information critically involves the relationship of both parties
with the population. It is in this context that the 'battIe for hearts and
minds' is important, and where the political and military aspects of guerrilla
warfare become inseparable. The insurgent depends for his very survival
upon the support of the population. Supplies of all sorts, intelligence and
recruits come from this source. It is not necessary for the population to
give voluntary and enthusiastic support for whatever cause the insurgents
espouse. In most areas in which guerrilla warfare is fought the indigenous
population have only the very vaguest of notions concerning the issues
at stake. They will, however, understand the importance of finishing up
on the winning side. It is likely, therefore, that the formula first described
by T. E. Lawrence will still be accurate - 2 per cent active support and
98 per cent passive but not hostile is a recipe for success. Most of the
population, in this formulation, want only to be left alone. This presents a
problem for any government as it is expected by the bulk of the population
to do three things which may be totally incompatible with each other - it
is expected to raise living standards and provide new services to the
population; it is expected to tolerate a very slow rate of change in the
rural value structure and it is expected to provide total security at little or
no cost. It is these three contradictory expectations, and the inability of
government to fulfill them, that will provide the nucleus of support for
insurgency movements - the feeling that 'things ought to be better'.
Once an insurgency is under way, the population are faced with a major
problem. To support either party wholeheartedly would be to risk finishing
the conflict on the 'wrong' side. The population must decide, therefore,
whether the insurgents can win in the long run, or, more immediately,
140 International Security in the Modern World
whether the insurgents can enforce demands in the local area. In this
situation the population will tend to become opportunistic. Unless the
government can guarantee total security to the population then the popula-
tion have to accommodate the insurgents - jumping on the correct band-
wagon at the correct time becomes very important. This means that as soon
as the population begins to take a guerrilla movement seriously the govern-
ment has no option but to do likewise.

Urban Guerrilla Warfare

The object of the urban guerrilla is the same as that of the rural counterpart
- to discredit the government and make it impossible for the government to
govern. If the authorities wish to retain popular support they need to prevent
the insurgents achieving their aims, and to demonstrate a high degree of
concern for the welfare of the public. But almost every step that the
authorities might take to prevent the freedom of manoeuvre of the insurgent
will interrupt and hinder the normal life of the urban environment - the
very thing that the government is seeking not to do; truly a 'Catch-22'
situation. To impose curfews and travel limitations, to require identity
papers at a variety of checkpoints, to take the pCiwer to search buildings at
random may all be regarded as essential in the attempts to defeat the urban
guerrilla. But these actions can be seen to have two effects. First, they
indicate to the population that the government is concerned at the strength
of the insurgency, and so encourage the population to take the insurgency
seriously; and once the population take it seriously then the government has
to redouble its efforts. Second, the control measures will cause vast irrita-
tion to the very people they are designed to protect. Third, they eventually
begin to give credence to the claim by the insurgents that the authorities
are incompetent or wilful.
In the urban environment the problems are very similar to those of the
rural environment, but they manifest themselves in rather different ways.
For both parties the opponent is in very close proximity and it means that
both can react very quickly to information that is received - but the authori-
ties may find that the urban guerrilla fighter is well-hidden in a house
next-door to the police station! The problem faced by the authorities is to
make the guerrilla fighter show himself and to identify him in the crowded
street.
In the urban environment initially the police have to act to the same
effect as the military in the rural environment. It is the police who have to
operationalise the political need to win the 'hearts and minds' of the urban
population. The use of the military as reinforcements for the police is to
 Roger Carey 141

raise the psychological profile of the insurgents. The insurgents gain cred-
ibility and prestige from the fact that the military have to be used to counter
their activities.
The most striking example of insurgency in the urban environment was
the Uraguayan Tupermaros. s Over an eight-year period the insurgents suc-
cessfully undermined the authority of the government and moved to the
centre of Uraguayan politics, aided in part by the sheer incompetence of the
Uraguayan authorities. The collapse of the movement resulted from a
complex series of factors, including a new President and a more resolute
army. More recent examples include the collapse of Beirut and the con-
tinued problems of Northern Ireland.

Counter-insurgency

The reasons for the failure of guerrilla activity to fulfill its expectations are
mar.y and varied, but relate in large part to the ability of the authorities to
deploy appreciably greater resources, e.g. in the Malayan 'Emergency' the
British were able to relocate the rural population in fortified villages and to
offer substantial rewards for the defection or immobilisation of guerrilla
groups. Guerrilla leaders face a problem in seeking guidance for success,
for the leaders who fail rarely survive to indicate where they went wrong.
To counter the guerrilla it is necessary for the authorities to give support
to the population as part of a 'hearts and minds' campaign and to out-
manoeuvre the guerrilla on the military front. For the former it is necessary
for the authorities to provide channels that allow for the fulfilment of
the reasonable expectations of the popUlation, including aspirations to
perpetuate traditional ways of life and to be secure from guerrilla attack.
The latter can be achieved by training special forces, e.g. the British SAS
and Royal Marines, who are no less mobile than the guerrilla, no less
knowledgeable of the country, but much better equipped, supported and
trained.
Both of these areas require the support of the 'shadowy' world of
informers, code-breakers, double agents and the like, all of which the
government can afford to 'buy' but which are generally not available to
even the most successful guerrilla movement. There is no defence against
the informer. Information gives advantages to both parties but the advan-
tage lies especially with the authorities as it enables them to capture the
weaker insurgent. Judicious bribery thereby becomes a very potent counter-
insurgency weapon in the hands of the authorities. This is especially so if
they can afford to make generous financial and other rewards and also
offer complete security to the informer.6
142 International Security in the Modern World
Counter-insurgency is not easy. Cross? quotes the Official History o/the
Boer War, which gives an excellent summary of the problems facing
regular troops confronting guerrilla forces. 'To arrest broken bubbles of
mercury was a similar task to that confronting Lord Kitchener's troops. In
all parts of South Africa they were daily called upon to get sight of the
invisible, to crush the impalpable and to surround nothing.' Obviously, if
sufficient regular troops are available, and if the political consequences
are of no concern, it is possible to stamp out a guerrilla movement by terror
and slaughter, as the Soviet Union did in Budapest in 1956. But, more
usually, it is necessary for governments to retain local support and to
hold out the possibility of reconciliation with the guerrillas once the insur-
rection is over. In that situation the special forces that can 'out-guerrilla the
guerrilla' become a much more acceptable political and military solution.

Terrorism

Terrorism marks the movement of an insurgency from the domestic to the

international arena. So that when, in August 1973, the PLO attacked
passengers bound for the USA in the airport lounge at Athens this marked
the spread of a domestic conflict between Israel and the PLO to a wider
community. The passengers were not related in any way to the policy of
the Arab states and Athens was the capital of a state that was not unfriendly
towards the aims of the PLO. The PLO was attempting to intimidate and
blackmail the governments of the world - not just Greece - into supporting
the PLO cause. This cause could not be won in Israel either through
guerrilla activity or through direct confrontation with the Israeli authorities.
The PLO thus elected to use political terrorism as a technique to attain
their goals.
Terrorists will use their technique to attempt to make changes that their
objective power would never allow - to change government policy (IRAI
PLO), to overthrow governments (FLN) and possibly even just to gain
publicity (Free South Molucca Movement). In each case the weapon that
the terrorist uses is fear - fear is seen as the vehicle of change.
One of the earliest modem examples of terrorism being used by a small
group to gain disproportionate political influence was the use of terror by
the Girondists on the Committee of Public Safety during the French Re-
volution. By the use of terror and threats, both within the Committee and
in the country at large, this objectively small and weak group of about 22
men managed to dominate the French Assembly and the whole of France.
The terrorist employs fear in a particular and complex way. The terrorist
kills at random. In this he is unlike the soldier, or the rural or urban
 Roger Carey 143
guerrilla, or even a murderer, all of whom have very specific targets. The
terrorist is indifferent as to whom his victim is - male, female, young,
old, Christian, Muslim, and so on. The terrorist kills at random. But
random killing is random only in one sense - i.e. that you or I or anyone
may be next. In the sense that any citizen actually might be next it is very
much a calculated effect. Once a population becomes convinced that it
might actually fall victim to terror, and worries about it, and acts upon it,
then the terrorist is being successful in that he is inducing changes in
behaviour because of his actions or threatened actions, e.g. the fear of
terrorist activity, real or imagined, affected business and tourist travel to
Europe and the USA following the 1990 application of sanctions by the
UN against Iraq and the war of 1991.
Terrorism is essentially the strategy employed by weak groups who
have little or no hope of making an impact on the policy of governments in
any direct manner, e.g. through the ballot box, through guerrilla warfare or
in open military confrontation. By the manipulation of fear such groups
wield far greater influence than their objective capability would suggest.
The terrorist is not totally without some conceptual basis for his, or her,
action. One theory followed by terrorists is that if liberal democracies are
attacked, they will be forced to introduce restrictive and eventually oppres-
sive techniques in order to retain some degree of control within society.
This repression will, the terrorist believes, lead to the alienation of the
mass of the popUlation. In tum this will lead to revolution by the masses,
or, at least, leave the population open to manipulation by the terrorists.
Skilful manipulation of the population by the terrorist will then lead to the
overthrow of the government. This theory is not one that gains much
credence from the empirical situation. Beginning from a difference premise,
some terrorists have claimed that liberal democracies are only a guise for
autocratic police states and that their actions 'reveal' the true nature of
the state. The long-running terrorist campaign by the IRA in Ulster would
suggest that this premise is not well-founded.
Terrorism tends to be used only against the Western democracies. There
is very little terrorism used by groups against governments in totalitarian
regimes or in the Third World. The reasons are not hard to discern. In
liberal democracies, where a value is placed On human rights, a predomi-
nantly non-violent response is needed in order to sustain the long-term
values of the society. Although a 'military solution' may exist to problems
of terrorism it is not possible to use the 'military solution' because of the
need to sustain the long-term values of the society. This is exemplified by
the controversy surrounding the alleged 'shoot to kill' policy in Northern
Ireland. In liberal democracies the terrorist has to be caught and tried in
144 International Security in the Modern World
court. Violence has to be kept to an absolute minimum for fear that violence
will become 'part of the game'. Western industrial society is also a politi-
cally soft target - Western society is both conservative and rich. Associated
with this fact is the proliferation of suitable targets for any terrorist. Com-
mercial units such as shops, stores and warehouses are very vulnerable, as
are transport systems and utilities. A single terrorist bomb - or even the
threat of a bomb - can cause immense disruption in a heavily-populated
urban environment where high mobility is a necessary part of the economic
way of life - for example, the 1991 bombings of London railway stations
severely interrupted economic life in the city and one hoax-call is alleged to
have caused £25 million worth of identifiable disruption. Likewise energy
systems, water supplies, sewers, etc. are all extremely vulnerable and yet
essential to the smooth operating of the society. Citizens themselves are
densely packed in urban areas - especially in shopping malls - and a
random bomb will have a maximum impact in this area. Prominent citizens
in liberal democracies are easily identified - indeed they have to be so if
they are to survive in a liberal democratic environment - and yet this very
factor leads to their security being poor and their vulnerability being high,
a situation highlighted by the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in India in
mid-1991.
It is also suggested that the terrorist needs the media in a liberal demo-
cracy. The terrorist certainly needs the rapid communication of his deed to
make an impact on the society. Whatever the popular reaction to the act
of terrorism - even complete and total revulsion - the act is given a degree
of credence by the scope of its publicity. The deed and the public reaction
to it, are given to the very widest possible audience and within a very short
time the whole of a society will have been exposed to the viewpoint of the
terrorist - be it the PLO or the Free South Molucca Movement - and such
reports of actions accord status, however slight, to the terrorist.
Despite the apparent weakness of the terrorist, it is a fact that criminals
have been released, ransoms have been paid, and policies have been modi-
fied because of the actions of terrorists. Why are they successful? Govern-
ments and other authorities tend to concentrate on only one aspect of
terrorism - how to prevent acts of terrorism and to punish the terrorist.
Governments tend to ignore a second aspect - how the reaction of the
authorities will affect the behaviour of the terrorist. Terrorism only suc-
ceeds or fails in terms of the behaviour of those against whom it is targeted
- usually governments. The terrorist succeeds only if the response by the
target group is that which is required. No response, or the' wrong' response,
means that the terrorist has failed. In 1975, for example, the PLO made a
random attack on passengers at Orly airport in France. French response to
 Roger Carey 145
this attack was to publicly announce that its pro-Palestinian policy was to be
reviewed as it was apparent that this did not stop terrorist outrages. This
marked a serious failure for the PLO, and led them to denounce the attack
and announce that it would punish the people involved. The fact that the
perpetrators went unpunished is not especially significant; what was impor-
tant is the perceived need for a public relations about-tum by the PLO,
indicating that the reaction of the French government was highly appro-
priate in terms of preventing terrorism on French soil.
Paradoxically, as the situation continu,es to develop in which technology
increases the range and magnitude of the horrors that can be perpetrated,
and to which the media can give instant coverage, so the pressures from
within society to limit the freedom of action of individuals in order to
constrain the terrorist will grow.

LIMITED WAR

Limited war represents a further threat to the security of the state in the
international system. It can be differentiated from the sub-limited activities
of guerrilla warfare and terrorism by the more formal and structured in-
volvement of the states concerned. Limited war can be differentiated from
total war quite simply by saying that limited war requires a substantial
degree of restraint by one or both of the parties involved in the conflict -
restraint either of weapon systems, or war aims, or targets, or by the
geographical area over which the fighting is conducted, or by some com-
bination of these factors. If constraint is the critical element in defining
limited war it suggests that, by definition, limited war is an activity in which
only major states can be involved either directly or through the use of
·proxies'. The Korean War thus becomes an excellent example of limited
war, closely followed by the Gulf War. The Boer War too falls into this
classification. Interestingly, the area over which most speculation has oc-
curred concerning the possibility of limited war has been Europe in the Cold
War era. This concern with Europe highlights the essential characteristic
of limited war - that there is always the possibility of a total and un-
restrained conflict available to the contestants as an alternative to the
limited conflict in which they choose to involve themselves.
In the sense that total war is available as an alternative, limited war may
be regarded as a phenomenon of twentieth century technology. Before the
twentieth century, and especially before the advent of nuclear and thermo-
nuclear weapons, there simply did not exist the capacity to make any form
of warfare totally destructive of society. (Even the protracted European
146 International Security in the Modern World
wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not destroy society or
even pose a threat to do so.) Wars before the twentieth century were fought
in a limited manner, not as a consequence of policy, but because of a total
lack of ability to raise the level of the conflict and thereby threaten whole
societies. Populations were small and economic resources were limited,
thereby limiting the resources that could be spared for military purposes.
And even the resources that were available did not purchase very large
destructive capabilities. Until the advent of the internal combustion engine
and nuclear weapons it was not, therefore, possible to threaten to escalate
and pose a threat to the very existence of society.
The two major powers in the international system - the USA and USSR
- spent vast sums of money in order to acquire vastly destructive and
powerful weapon systems in order to be able to pose a threat to the totality
of each other's society. In this situation there is a certain irony that the
Clausewitzian notion that warfare is a continuation of policy by other
means can no longer be allowed to apply. The object of a war may no longer
be to impose one's will upon an enemy but simply to persuade him to keep
the fighting that has occurred limited in nature. In this context the problem
arises as to what constitutes 'victory' and whether it is possible to 'win' a
limited conflict. Where both the parties to a conflict have the capacity to
wreak mutual destruction, winning may simply be a matter of producing
terms that are acceptable to the defeated opponent. Certainly if terms are
produced by the victor that are too stringent then the option of raising the
level of the conflict lies with the defeated party, in the hope that victory will
emerge at the higher level of conflict. Integral to the idea of limited war is
the notion of deterrence and the credibility of deterrent postures, i.e. the
threat, and capacity, to escalate the level of the conflict. Escalation is,
therefore, a built-in concept to the idea of limited war and its control.
A capacity to fight a less-than-total war can, therefore, be seen as an
integral part of a strategy of thermonuclear deterrence. But not everyone
would subscribe to such a view. There are those who argue that limited war,
and any preparation for that eventuality, is a positive distraction from the
idea of deterrence. Sir John Slessor argued, 'The dog we keep to look after
the cat will also look after the kittens'. 8 This argument is familiar to all
those advocating Massive Retaliation as a deterrent strategy. Such a threat
may have been credible for the USA in the period up to 1957, when it
could threaten to strike at any state in the world, massively and at times
of its own choosing, without any fear of reprisal against the US home-
land. The flight of the Soviet Sputnik missile - and the vulnerability of
the USA that this implied - finally destroyed whatever credibility Massive
Retaliation may have had as a strategy. Even before that date the Korean
 Roger Carey 147
War had indicated - at a time when Massive Retaliation was in its heyday
- that massive bombardment was not seen as being an appropriate response
to each and every threat.
The capacity to fight a limited war does, therefore, become necessary
because of the alternatives that a lack of limited war capability imposes if
a state faces only a limited challenge, i.e. to either use total force or no
force, the equivalent to Armageddon or appeasement. The use of limited
force becomes a rational act of policy. There is a need to be able to meet any
aggression at more or less the level at which it is made, or to engage in
military activity at the lowest level conducive to achieving the goals of
policy.
If overt conflict breaks out, how can limited war be conducted? In any
determination of what constitutes limitation, one 'break point' that stands
out more clearly than any other is the nuclear/non-nuclear watershed. It is
significant, in itself, that this is regarded as a watershed - or at least has
been so regarded for the last 40 years. Since 1945 all conflicts have been
constrained to the use of conventional forces and weapons because there is
a fear of the consequence of crossing the nuclear threshold. This would
initially appear to be very restricting, because there is a whole range of
capabilities that exists between the conventional fighting of Korea and
the Persian Gulf and a strategic nuclear exchange. There is in existence a
considerable range of tactical nuclear weapons. Which of these capabilities
would be appropriate becomes a critical question. If it is not possible to
use all, or any, of the intermediate nuclear capabilities, why go to the
expense of developing and deploying such weapon systems? Unless one
can use the capacity for flexible response why build such a capacity?
What weapon system can be used in any particular conflict without that
conflict thereby escalating to become a general, unlimited war?
The crux of this problem would appear to be the 'usability' of tactical
nuclear weapons. Tactical nuclear weapons are very cost-effective if
measured by the yardstick of ton for delivered ton of explosive power. On
this basis resort to nuclear weapons will be justified at many levels of
conflict. However, is it possible to use nuclear weapons - of any size - if
they thereby promote escalation? One simple means of preventing escala-
tion is not to employ nuclear weapons. Whilst only conventional weapons
are used in a conflict it is assumed by all parties to the conflict that there
is a desire for moderation and that there is some capacity for a negotiated
settlement. This remains true even if powerful conventional explosives
are used of a capacity that is above the level of TNT-equivalent of the
smaller nuclear warheads. The reason for the nuclear threshold being
seen as important is that it is the only distinction that can be easily made
148 International Security in the Modern World
and it requires no communication between the warring parties except the
covert communication of the action of non-use of nuclear weapons. Escala-
tion thus becomes less likely if both parties possess nuclear weapons yet
refrain from using them.
It is probably true to suggest, then, that the crossing of the nuclear
threshold will increase the danger of escalation. But by how much this
danger is increased is very difficult to say - it would be determined by the
situation in which the breach occurred. Any benefit to be gained by crossing
the nuclear threshold is, therefore, extremely hypothetical. It is possible that
one effect the use of tactical nuclear weapons might have would be to
eliminate the whole idea of limitation. The use of a nuclear device, however
small, would probably eliminate the idea of limitation of weapon systems.
There is, after all, little point in crossing the nuclear threshold if it is only
to use weapons with a similar capability as conventional weapons. To
justify crossing the particular Rubicon of using nuclear weapons it must be
with the view to using the appreciable extra power that is placed in one's
hands, using weapons that are appreciably more powerful than any conven-
tional weapons that might be available. The only other conceivable justifi-
cation for crossing the nuclear threshold would be to 'signal' a very high
degree of commitment to the outcome of the conflict. As a signalling device
a single warhead delivered to a remote location might be adequate and still
allow constraint to be exercised in the area of direct contlict.
Limitations, however, are not all as obvious as the nuclear threshold.
Limitations can be arrived at in a more complex and subtle process, though
still taking the form of tacit bargaining, i.e. with no overt diplomatic
meetings resulting in a formal agreement on limitation. Limitation may,
instead, come from mutual example. In the Korean war the United Nations
(USA) allowed the Chinese a 'sanctuary' behind the Yalu River and UN
forces, especially air forces, did not cross the river into Chinese territory
or air space. Similarly the Chinese did not attack forces in the field with
fighter aircraft or bomb the supply ports. The breaking of these self-
imposed limitations by either side would undoubtedly have led to an
escalation in the level of hostilities in the conflict.
This is not to suggest that changes can never be implemented once a
set of limitations appear to have been mutually arrived at. Change can
take place, but only with difficulty and possibly requiring some form of
explicit communication and negotiation. Nor is it to suggest that the aban-
donment of restraint in one area will automatically lead to the escalation
of the conflict. But it does suggest that once constraints in a limited war
have been established these constraints should be abandoned or modified
 Roger Carey 149
only after very careful consideration - 'lome constraint, however imperfect,
may be better than the abandonment of constraint. Obviously, the greater
the number of constraints the more room there is for manoeuvre by all
parties concerned. But the more restraints that are breached, the more likely
the possibility of escalation to the event that limited war is fought to
prevent - total war.
No state, and certainly not the USA and USSR and their allies, will
follow a 'pure' strategy towards conflict and aggression. All will attempt, to
a greater or lesser degree, to have the 'best of both worlds'. States with an
appropriate nuclear capability will attempt to deter even minor aggressions
by the threat of nuclear response, yet at the same time will reserve their
positions concerning the circumstances in which they will actually use
nuclear weapons if an aggression should take place. These two competing
ideas - deterrence and defence - are, to a point, perfectly compatible -
doubt must always be a part of any strategy. It is important that an opponent
should never know precisely what response will ensue from a particular
aggression; there must always be some room for manoeuvre; and above all,
weapon systems must never come to be used in an automatic manner.
Conventional weapons have never offered themselves as an adequate
deterrent in either a limited or non-limited context. Conventional weapons
have always enjoyed a predominantly defensive function. They are de-
signed and used chiefly to defend a territory once a violation has occurred.
Nuclear weapons make a policy of deterrence possible, even in the context
of limited warfare. Nuclear weapons make preparation for a limited nuclear
conflict a rational act of policy - a deterrent policy - without losing the
possibility of conducting a conventional defence should the nuclear deter-
rent fail to deter. Once a conventional conflict has begun, it is possible to
use the nuclear capability to deter escalation - a threat that may be seen
to be more credible once war has broken out.
It is necessary for any war to have some overall strategic plan. With
limited war, this requirement is vital. Limited war has peculiar requirements
for constraint. It is, therefore, essential that it is fought in a manner that
coincides with the political views that predominate at that time. There is a
danger that limited war will cease to be limited when the civilian politicians
lose control and the aims of the war become military aims, i.e. the defeat,
or some other form of humiliation, of the enemy, such as the destruction of
his military capability. When, in the Korean War, General MacArthur, the
UN Commander-in-Chief, became frustrated with the civilian controls
upon him and expressed the view that there was no substitute for victory -
i.e. a military victory - he was, quite rightly, given the sack. The imperative
150 International Security in the Modern World

at Korea was to prevent the limited war being fought in the Korean
peninsula from becoming a general war. Within that framework it was
civilian and not military goals that were important.
War termination is always a complex matter. In limited war it is more
complex than most situations. Within the idea of limitation is the implicit
message that a negotiated settlement is both desirable and possible, and that
some compromise is possible. A settlement to terminate the war must,
therefore, satisfy all parties to a greater or lesser degree. In the case of the
Korean War the United Nations (USA) had managed to throw back a
Communist onslaught into South Korea. This action confirmed the value of
the various guarantees that the USA had distributed to various parts of
the world including Europe. The Chinese, for their part, had prevented a
presumed American attempt to destroy North Korea and, because they
had not been defeated by the American forces, they were able to gain
prestige and credibility among their allies. In the Gulf War the USA again
threw back an invading force and liberated Kuwait from Iraqi tyranny. The
Iraqis had the satisfaction of having fought the USA but of remaining
unvanquished even if militarily they suffered considerable defeat.
The objective of limited war may, therefore, be simply 'not to lose'.
However desirable it might be to win a military victory and impose crushing
conditions upon an opponent, the capacity of that opponent to escalate the
level of conflict, and thus to deny not only victory but also a compromise
solution to the political problem, makes military victory a less than desir-
able goal. In these circumstances, deciding 'not to lose' becomes a valid
policy goal. Such a goal reduces the desire of an enemy for conquest -
either by influencing his political aims or by having at one's disposal a
capacity to escalate the conflict to that of a much broader general war.

NOTES

I. 1. Galtung, Address given at Lanchester Polytechnic Coventry, 3 November

1969.
2. See, for example. Che Guevara. Guerrilla Warfare (Hannondsworth: Pen-
guin. 1969).
3. Mao Tse-Tung, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (The Little Red
Book) (New York: Bantam Books, c. 1967). Also from Foreign Languages
Press, Peking.
4. R. Taber, The War of the Flea (London: Paladin, 1970).
5. A. C. Porczecanski, Uraguay's Tupermaros -the urban guerrillas (Boulder:
Westview Press, 1982).
 Roger Carey 151
6. Illustrations of the military and political aspects of low-intensity warfare can
be gained from N. Barber, The War of the Running Dogs, (London: Collins,
1971) and from R. O. Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency (London:
Chatto & Windus, 1966).
7. J. E. Cross, Conflict in the Shadows (London: Constable, 1964).
8. J. Siessor, The Great Deterrent (London: Cassell, 1957).
9 Airpower in International
Security
Tony Mason

THE NATURE OF AIR POWER

The use of force, either by latent presence, threat or application remains an

instrument available to governments either in securing their own defence or
in projecting influence beyond their frontiers. It is frequently difficult to
distinguish between the two: one country's security is another's threat,
whether it be in Central America perceived from Washington or in Central
Europe perceived from Moscow. The projection of force may be indirect
and insidious, for example by the support of terrorist organisations and
insurgency, or it may assume the more traditional shape of nationally
organised and equipped navies and air forces. The latter is the context of
this chapter.
The use of force to resolve international disputes is as old as recorded
international history itself. Airpower, however, is a novelty of the twentieth
century, a product of man's desire to reach up into the third dimension of
the skies, above the land and seas. It may be defined as the ability to project
military force by or from a platform in the air, and increasingly in space
above it. The element which distinguishes airpower from land and seapower
is that the third dimension above the earth is actually exploited to advantage
by the platform or vehicle; for example, for manoeuvre, deployment, con-
cealment or surprise rather than simply traversed as by a bullet, a shell or a
ballistic surface-to-surface projectile. The grey areas, for example a ballis-
tic surface-to-surface missile with independently targetable warheads, and
surface-to-air weapons, do not significantly detract from the central defini-
tion. In common with military force associated with land or sea, airpower
has a latent impact. An aircraft on its airfield has a potential for influence
commensurate with its radius of action, akin to that more traditionally
associated with an army in its garrison or a fleet patrolling over the horizon.
'Radius of action' denotes the distance which an aircraft can cover in
completing its mission and returning to base. Its 'range', on the other hand,
usually refers to a distance between take-off and a different recovery base.
An aircraft may apply force directly, as in bombing or air-to-air fighting,
or it may distribute it by providing surveillance or reconnaissance.

152
 Tony Mason 153
In 1904 H. O. Wells was quick to identify the unique nature of air-
power in warfare. observing. 'In the air are no streets. no channels. no point
where one can say of an antagonist, "If he wants to reach my capital
he must come by here". In the air all directions lead everywhere.' The
practical limitations on the theoretical characteristics of airpower will be
examined later in this chapter, but the major differences between the unique
characteristics of airpower and those associated with land and seapower
are readily apparent.
The first is comparable speed. A mechanised army division, comprising
tanks and armoured personnel carriers could cover 200 miles a day; a naval
task force, steaming hard, perhaps 500 miles. A combat aircraft such as the
RAF Tornado can reach a target 500 miles from its base in one hour. A
modem jet troop transport of a size similar to a Boeing 747 would cover
3000 miles in six hours. In the history of warfare, the ability to initiate
action or to respond to it at high speed has been a highly-prized advantage.
Secondly, as aircraft speed has progressively increased, since the first
faltering flight of the Wright brothers at the beginning of the century, so has
its reach. or range. A modem fighter-bomber could be used against targets
up to 300 miles away; a USAF B·52 up to 5000 miles, transports regularly
cover 6000 miles while the ground surveyed by a reconnaissance aircraft
in one sortie would run into many thousands of square miles. Inflight
refuelling has a considerable effect on the range of many aircraft. The
integral range of a combat aircraft can be extended to limits detennined
only by the physical endurance of the crews. As a result. even a relatively
short-range aircraft such as the USAF F-16 or the RAF F-3 Tornado
interceptor can become an intercontinental instrument of policy projection;
alternatively both can remain on combat patrol in one region for several
hours.
The third major characteristic of airpower is to combine speed, omnidi-
rectional approach and range to achieve a very heavy concentration of
force. The ballistic missile is now the most effective delivery vehicle for
nuclear weapons, but the ability of a single aircraft to deliver from 10 000
to 80000 pounds of high explosive in a matter of seconds may be compared
with the six 30-pound shells per minute from a typical artillery battery.
The effectiveness of such firepower is further enhanced when harnessed
to the modem technology of target identification and precision guidance,
as in the opening hours of the air campaign against Iraq on 17 January
1991. Conversely, concentration of force can be achieved by the landing,
or dropping of airborne forces and their associated equipment. including
artillery and annoured personnel carriers. Both the United States and the
Soviet Union maintain several divisions of airborne forces together with
154 International Security in the Modern World
the long-range transport aircraft to deploy them. In smaller areas and on a
smaller scale, tactical air mobility may be provided for ground-forces by
helicopters. 'Concentration of force' ,like so many military expressions, is
not absolute. but relative. Twelve troops or 1000 troops; one bomb or 1000
bombs may be required to achieve it depending simply on the relative
vulnerability or strength of the objective.
The fourth characteristic is that identified by H. O. Wells: Ubiquity.
which may be interpreted to mean from many different directions. via
different routes. to many different kinds of targets. For example, some
NATO aircraft assigned to SACEUR in wartime could on various occasions
be called upon to attack with conventional weapons armour. troops, air-
fields. headquarters, and supplies at distances from close to the battlefield
to several hundred miles beyond. Or they could be required to join in
repelling hostile air-attack. Then, if such a political decision had been taken.
the aircraft could be rearmed with nuclear weapons. Such aircraft are
termed 'multi-role' in the conventional configuration, and 'dual-capable' if
designed to deliver both conventional and nuclear weapons. Most major
air forces demonstrate a very wide-ranging flexibility in deploying aircraft
to attack targets on both land and sea. The Soviet TU-22 Backfire, the
USAF B-52 and the RAF Tornado OR I, can be employed, with appropriate
weapons. against shipping although designed initially to attack long-range
targets on land. Conversely. carrier-borne aircraft may be expected to
operate against targets on land in addition to their primary maritime tasks.
Finally. a characteristic of airpower not hitherto universally recognised
is the opportunity it offers a government to project force without residual
commitment. Invading land forces have either to remain as an occupying
force, or be extracted by negotiation and frequently with an accompanying
element of vulnerability. Aircraft. on the other hand, can mount operations
at short notice from home bases. return to them, and apart from aircrew
who may have been shot down and captured, leave no hostage to fortune.
This characteristic will be examined in more detail below.
There is, however, another side to the balance sheet of airpower charac-
teristics. More than either seapower or landpower, it is the product of, and
heavily influenced by, twentieth-century technology. Unit costs are high.
The most recent manifestation, the Northrop 32 'Stealth' bomber designed
for use by the USAF, costs several hundred million dollars per aircraft.
Even the 'routine' fighter-bombers such as the F-16 or F-15E may be
15-20 million dollars per copy. Obviously such a cost-imposes a finite limit
to deployment and sharpens questions of vulnerability, even to the richest
of superpowers. Initial production costs are likely to be a small percentage
of the lifetime costs inherent in running. maintaining and supporting mod-
 Tony Mason 155
em aircraft. An extensive, sophisticated industrial base is necessary for
their production and a literate. technologically competent population is
required for their operation and maintenance. Such men and women are
expensive in all societies and still rare in many.
While technology has provided airpower with its positive attributes, it
has not left it immune to the traditional swings of advantage and disadvant-
age in the pendulum between defence and offence.
In the air, aircraft are threatened by surface-to-air defences (SAD) as
well as by other aircraft. On land, airfields, runways and essential ancillary
static services such as radar stations, command and control systems, air
traffic control and even hardened aircraft shelters are increasingly vulner-
able to specialist offensive technology. In some cases the threat comes
from the offensive component of airpower itself, in olhers from surface-
to-surface weapons or even airborne assault forces.
In sum, the abstract nature of airpower is no different from the abstract
concepts of warfare enunciated by Clausewitz at the time of the Napoleonic
wars. In practice, the concepts become attenuated by the 'friction' of day-
to-day circumstances: some predictable. some accidental, some flowing
from misjudgement; all in an environment so aptly described as 'the prov-
ince of uncertainty' which in late twentieth-century combat has become
further obscured by electronic warfare.

EVOLUTION IN THE EUROPEAN THEATRE

The practical contribution of airpower to international relations may be

illustrated by a brief summary of its evolution as a component of national
policy and by an examination of its role in the superpower confrontation
in Europe, its application by the state of Israel. and its contribution to two
Gulf Wars.
In the early years of the century there was no shortage of visionaries
who were prepared to forecast a revolutionary impact of airpower on
warfare. As is often the case with visionaries, their foresight considerably
exceeded the practical capabilities of the day. As early as 1893 J. C.
Fullerton, a British army major speaking in Chicago, speculated that aero-
nautical development (a decade before the Wright brothers became airborne
at Kittyhawk) would have as great an influence on warfare as the discovery
of gunpowder and that future wars might start with a great aerial battle,
that 'the arrival of the aerial fleet over the enemy capital will probably
conclude the campaign'. 1 Fifty-two years later Hiroshima and Nagasaki
were destroyed by two aircraft and two bombs. In 1991 the outcome of
156 International Security in the Modern World
the second Gulf War was detennined in the first 24 hours when UN
coalition aircraft seized effective control over the skies of Iraq.
In the First World War, however, it is the promise of airpower rather
than its material impact on the outcome of the war which has caught the eye
of military historians. Aircraft played no part in the events leading to the
outbreak, and none in its conclusion. Several thousand aircraft fought over
the Western and Eastern fronts. A handful of Gennan Gotha four-engined
bombers created panic in London and dismay in a few provincial towns.
At the time of the Annistice in November 1918, Allied aircraft were being
deployed for heavy air-attacks on Gennany itself. The perceived potential
of long-range aerial bombardment led directly to the creation of an inde-
pendent Royal Air Force in 1918 which was to become the model for many
other countries and prompted several international abortive attempts to
outlaw the bomber as a weapon of war. A combination of factors, however,
led to the emergence of airpower between 1918 and 1939 as a significant
instrument of foreign policy.
The first lay in a desire in those countries which had experienced the
exhausting attrition of manpower in the trenches in Western Europe to seek
a less costly way of war. Britain, France and, covertly, Gennany as well
as the Soviet Union, saw aerial bombardment as a relatively inexpensive
means of striking directly at the enemy's industrial heartland. A British
Cabinet paper of 1929 explicitly stated:
It is not, however necessary for an air force, in order to defeat the enemy,
to defeat its anned forces first. Airpower can dispense with the inter-
mediate step, can pass over the enemy Navies and their Annies and
penetrate the air defences and attack the centres of production, transpor-
tation and communications in which the enemy war effort is maintained.
2

Nine years later, the US Anny Air Corps Tactical School in Virginia, the
doctrinal heart of US airpower, was teaching that:
The possibility for the application of military force against the vital
structure of a nation directly and immediately on the outbreak of hostili-
ties is the most important and far-reaching development of modem
times. 3
Unfortunately, however, another far-sighted observation, also made be-
fore the outbreak of the First World War, was neglected by those who saw
only the potential of aerial bombardment. In 1911, in the first article on
airpower to be published in the Journal of The Royal United Services
Institution, Captain J. C. Burke asked, 'May not the command of the air
 Tony Mason 157
be of such importance to us in the future as the command of the sea is at
present moment?'4 While across the Channel, the French General Frey
expressed a similar sentiment, 'May not the command of the air be of such
importance that the power who loses it may be forced to sue for peace?'5
That concept, 'command of the air' and its diminutives 'air supremacy' and
'air superiority' remain at the heart of all air operations in the closing years
of the century. But in the interwar years, before the advent of strategic
reconnaissance, aerial surveillance and above all of radar early warning,
defending aircraft seldom had the power, the speed or awareness of the
location and heading of hostile bombers to give them an opportunity to
intercept. Hence the expression, and belief, that 'the bomber would always
get through'. By the late 1930s it was possible for Germany, by astute
publicity for the destructive potential of the Luftwaffe, to influence both
British foreign policy before Munich and, prompt a switch of emphasis in
British aircraft production from bombers to fighters.
Perceptions, however, were not unanimous among the major powers.
After 1936 both Germany and the Soviet Union concentrated on airpower
designed to support ground forces, with limited provision for 'independent
operations'. In Britain, on the other hand, a combination of budgetary
constraints, military and naval conservatism and forceful 'light blue' ad-
vocacy of strategic bombardment, resulted in only marginal provision for
other roles. In the USA, the doctrinal argument was inextricably enmeshed
in inter-service competition for funding and the desire of the US Army
Air Corps to seek independence from its khaki progenitor.
In the Second World War, all those who had argued for the primacy
of the bomber, or its limitations, or for tactical concentration, or against
it; for the independence of airpower or its subordination to operations on
land and sea: all could adduce considerable evidence to support their
claims. The evidence was there because, in the Second World War, airpower
moved from the periphery of activity to centre-stage, in every theatre. The
success of the German Blitzkrieg in 1940 and 1941 illustrated the impact
of airpower in a combined arms offensive. The fires of Rotterdam and
Warsaw, the decimation of the Russian armies, substantiated the view
of those who saw airpower's dominant role. In the Battle of Britain, the
failure of the Luftwaffe to remove the threat of the RAF to Hitler's invasion
plans appears to have been a factor in their subsequent cancellation. Pearl
Harbor was a military disaster which US naval airpower subsequently
revenged, but the psychological scar on the USA remains.
The Allied bomber offensive against Gennany still prompts controversy:
how far the industrial damage inflicted justified the efforts involved; whether
resources should have been diverted to maritime targets; whether target-
158 International Security in the Modern World
selection was either consistent or logical and, of course, the questions of
morality involved in targeting civilian population. A considerable pro-
portion of Gennan industrial and manpower resources were allocated
to air defence; the psychological impact on a beleaguered and isolated
Britain in 1940 and 1941 of being able to take the war back to the aggressor
is difficult to assess, but was certainly high in the national consciousness
at the time. And when the invasion of Europe took place in 1944, the
Allies had virtually complete control of the air over the Normandy beaches;
that the Luftwaffe were outnumbered and battle-weary owed much to the
attritional affects of the combined bomber offensive.
At sea, in addition to the reversal of Japanese fortunes in the Pacific,
aircraft shared almost equally with ships the destruction of the Gennan
U-boat force. In both East and West, tactical air forces accompanied the
advancing Allied annies in skies virtually cleared of opposition. Finally,
whether the Japanese government was already beginning to sue for peace
or not, the combination of the manned aircraft and atomic bomb seemed to
be the apotheosis of airpower. On one fact, however, all admirals, generals
and air marshals - British, Gennan, American and Russian - agreed. Com-
mand of the air was an essential prerequisite not only for air-operations, but
also, wherever airpower could be brought to bear, for the successful
outcome of operations on land and sea. As the world emerged from the
Second World War into an uneasy peace in the shadow of nuclear clouds,
there would be several national debates about which branch of the anned
services would control airpower, but no doubt about its availability and
utility as an instrument of national policy.
Occasionally in the 45 years following the end of the Second World War
it seemed possible that the confrontation between the Western allies and
the USSR could ignite into armed conflict in different parts of the world:
Korea in the early 1950s, Suez in 1956, in South East Asia in the 1960s
and the Middle East in 1973. The central confrontation was, however,
consistently located in Europe where the protection of national interests
was associated with heavy concentrations of anned forces in close pro-
ximity to each other.
When attributing cause and effect in the evolution of East-West rela-
tions in Europe since 1945, it is important to bear in mind that there is no
Freedom of Information Act in the USSR and that the public utterances of
politicians on both sides may occasionally be prompted by motives other
than the unsullied pursuit of truth. It is, therefore, possible to examine the
impact of airpower on Western policy with few reservations, but analysis
of its influence on the security policies of the USSR must inevitably be a
little more speculative.
 Tony Mason 159
For the greater part of the period of confrontation, airpower in one fonn
or another underpinned the defensive posture of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation. Moreover, while its practical manifestations varied, the fac-
tors leading to its consistent adoption remained remarkably constant. In
the early postwar years the nations of Western Europe were impoverished,
ravaged by five years of conflict and seeking to concentrate economic
resources on industrial reconstruction. On the other side of the inner
Gennan border they perceived an occupying power which had used its
anned forces to support the imposition of Communist regimes. Their satel-
lite status appeared to be not just the defensive glacis sought by the USSR
but a launching-pad for the extension of Soviet hegemony across the
entire continent.
Yet even in the 1950s, when economic reconstruction took place, there
was little sustained desire to match the conventional military strength of the
Warsaw Pact. Upheavals such as the Hungarian crisis of 1956, Berlin in
1961, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the incursion into Afghanistan in 1979
only acted as a temporary stimulus to reinforce the image of the USSR as
a totalitarian, militaristic power which relied primarily on the military
instrument to project its foreign policies. In 1952, for example, the North
Atlantic Council met in Lisbon and established force-goals for the alli-
ance, of 4000 combat aircraft by the end of 1952, 6500 in 1953 and 9000
by the end of 1954, in addition to a ground force of 90 divisions. In the
event, none of the goals were achieved.
Not only was detennination lacking, but the attention of the three major
Western powers was regularly distracted from the provision of conven-
tional forces in Europe to match those of the Warsaw Pact. British troops
and aircraft were required in Korea, Malaya, Suez, Cyprus, Kenya. Aden
and Brunei/Labuan. French forces were engaged disastrously in Indo-China
and unproductively in Algeria; the attention of US anned forces was di-
verted to Korea and later to South East Asia. The availability of production
line 'tactical' nuclear weapons from 1950 onwards in the USA, and later in
the decade in the UK, for delivery both by aircraft and surface-to-surface
missiles, offered a far more economical counter to Soviet conventional
force superiority than the considerable resource and manpower demands
of the Lisbon force-goals.
Even before the fonnal signature of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949,
the US Joint Chiefs of Staff had in 1947 included in an assessment of the
relative strengths of East and West the observation:
The Allies do not have the capability of mobilising or transporting. in the
early stages of war, ground and tactical air forces of sufficient strength
160 International Security in the Modern World
to destroy the Soviet Anned Forces which would have to be encountered
in depth along any of the avenues of approach which lead to the Head
of Russia .... 6
In 1947 the Western allies of the Second World War had reduced
their ground and air forces to levels considerably below those retained in
Eastern Europe by the USSR. There were, however, several squadrons
of USAF B-29s still in front-line service, and a further sentence in the
JeS appraisal read:
On the other hand ...• the United States has a capability of undertaking
soon after the beginning of the war an offensive strategic air effort
against vital Russian industrial complexes and against Russian popula-
tion centres. If this effort. adequately expanded. did not achieve victory.
it would destroy elements of Soviet industrial and military power to
such an extent that the application of this and other fonns of military
force should accomplish the desired end ....7
It is not yet known whether the USSR was aware of those sentiments
in 1947. but their practical manifestation was unmistakable within 12
months. Airpower made its first dramatic impact on the central confronta-
tion in response to the USSR's attempt to cut off the enclave of West Berlin
from the Western-occupied zones of Gennany. The sequence of events
from June 1948 to October 1949 is well-documented but is a frustrating
example of the paucity of reliable evidence on cause and effect in Moscow.
Western response to a serious political and military crisis was to despatch
over a quarter of a million transport flights carrying over 2 1/4 million tons
of essential supplies to the beleaguered city. The transport aircraft were
frequently escorted by British or American fighters and no attempts were
made to intercept them. The escorts were technologically superior to the
Russian aircraft which could in theory have joined combat. The latter
would. however, have had the advantages of numerical superiority, concen-
tration of force and proximity to home bases. For whatever reason, a
political decision was clearly taken by the USSR not to raise the level of
confrontation. The reason why the paucity of evidence is frustrating is
that the airlift was not the only, nor perhaps even the most significant
Western response to the Berlin Blockade. In July 1948, one month after the
airlift had begun, three groups of 8-29 bombers were deployed from the
USA to Europe; two to Britain and one to Gennany. The attacks by B-29s
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had taken place less than three years before.
Even if the USSR had been aware of the very small numbers of atomic
bombs available for the B-29s, or even known whether such weapons had
 Tony Mason 161

actually accompanied the aircraft, the use of the deployment as the clearest
of diplomatic signals could scarcely be misinterpreted.
The relevant point is that Western Europe had far too little military
strength on the front to contest the blockaded roads and railways, and the
outcome of a struggle for command of the air would at best have been
problematical. The combination of massive airlift, token air escort and il
scarcely-veiled threat of considerable escalation by strategic bombardment
seems to have checked what would otherwise have been a comprehensive
and, for the West, demoralising coup by Stalin.
The lesson was not lost on the USSR. After the German invasion of
1941, Stalin had needed little persuading about the ability of airpower to
launch a large-scale. no-notice attack. In 1948 his armies were numerically
so superior to those in Western Europe, now bereft of the air support
which had marked the closing months' campaigns in 1944 and 1945, that he
was able to concentrate Soviet military procurement on his air defences.
In 1948 the Soviet Air Defence was established as an independent force
co-equal with ground, naval and existing air forces. During the next
twenty years a protective network of sUlface-to-air missiles, manned inter-
ceptors, early-warning radar stations and a connecting command and
control system was constructed over Eastern Europe and back across the
USSR itself. Its effectiveness was subsequently to be called into account by
two tragic incidents involving civilian airliners and by the highly embar-
rassing arrival of a German light aircraft in the heart of Moscow, but its
construction was to have two specific implications for Western airpower
and more generally for the further evolution of NATO strategy.
In May 1960 a US high-altitude reconnaissance plane was shot down by
a Soviet SAM-2 near Sverdiovsk while en route from Pakistan to Norway.
Its destruction had an immediate, dramatic political impact on the relation-
ship between President Eisenhower and Secretary Khrushchev.
Aerial reconnaissance does not have the glamour of some other airpower
roles, but it has consistently made a significant contribution to the formula-
tion of Western policy. The product of the regular US flights across the
Soviet Union from both Turkey and Pakistan to bases in Western and North
Western Europe has never been declassified. It may. however. be confi-
dently assumed that before the introduction of satellite surveillance the
USA relied heavily on aerial reconnaissance to monitor military, industrial
and other economic activities within the USSR, as well as acquiring photo-
graphic data for cartography and potential target analysis for strategic
bombardment. Not surprisingly, therefore, there was considerable jubila-
tion in Moscow and dismay in Washington when the hitherto unassailable
U-2 flown by Gary Powers was intercepted.
162 International Security in the Modern World
British and American air forces responded to the threat posed by the
SAM-2 by placing much greater emphasis on low-level penetration of
enemy air defences, to take advantage of the basic laws of physics, which
determine the primary line of sight propagation of radar waves. That par-
ticular response was still favoured by the RAF in 1991. It was not the first
time, however, that fighter pilots had been reminded that air superiority was
not an exclusive issue. Von Richtofen' s invincibility in the First World War
was almost certainly ended by Australian soldiers, while in the Second
World War one particular artillery piece, the 88 mm, was increasingly and
effectively used as an anti-aircraft weapon. But the new generation of
missiles were more accurate, guided either by radar or by homing on to
the infra-red emissions of an aircraft engine. Increasingly, either aircraft
were dedicated to air defence suppression or they carried specialist sup-
pression weapons. Initially, as their offensive bomb-loads were reduced,
their effectiveness was proportionately impaired. By 1991, however, the
lethality of precision weapons more than made up for gross reduction in
bomb-weight, and the pendulum was swinging back to the offensive.
The construction of the Soviet air defence system, and especially its
inclusion of surface-to-air missiles, freed resources for the production in the
1960s of a new generation of Soviet aircraft whose primary contribution
was to be combined arms operations in either a conventional or nuclear
environment. Existing multi-role aircraft could be allocated to a higher
proportion of offensive activities. By the 1980s the Warsaw Pact had
formulated and widely publicised a coherent doctrine of airpower. Increas-
ingly it came to possess aircraft and supporting systems of a scale and
quality sufficient to prompt concern in the Western alliance, which for
40 years had looked to its own airpower to redress conventional force
numerical inferiority and a political unwillingness to match it.
A reliable net comparison of effectiveness of the two sides was difficult
to achieve, not least because of several elements in the application of
modem airpower which are difficult to quantify even with access to all
relevant information. NATO forces, notwithstanding Warsaw Pact asser-
tions to the contrary, were insufficient to mount an offensive against East-
ern Europe, quite apart from the fact that their doctrine and training were
directed to the deterrence of attack, and should deterrence fail, to the
defence of Western territory. All NATO planning scenarios assumed that in
any conflict in Europe the Warsaw Pact would have the initial advantage of
choosing the timing, location, direction and method of attack. Various
assumptions were made about the warning-time available to the West,
which would have been influenced not just or necessarily by rising political
tension, but by Soviet deception plans and the extent of any reinforcement
 Tony Mason 163
of forces already deployed close to the inner German border or any other
frontier to the north or south.
Both sides, however, were agreed on the contribution to be expected
from the Pact's airpower. The NATO view was expressed publicly in Bonn
in 1983 .
. . . a Warsaw Pact air operation would take place on three separate fronts
in Western Europe, with Pact forces attempting to clear two or three
separate air corridors per front. Each corridor is intended to be an area
25-30 miles wide and 100-150 miles deep. The plans call for rendering
NATO air defence missiles and aircraft virtually ineffective in each
corridor, allowing nearly free movement by Warsaw Pact aircraft. Pres-
ence of the corridor would allow Pact aircraft to slip through NATO air
defence belts, then spread out and attack relatively unprotected rear areas
... Radar and communications systems would be attacked by a combi-
nation of electronic and countermeasures, chaff and physical attack . . .
by a combination of standard ordnance and the Soviets' increasing
inventory of (AS-12) anti-radiation missiles. 8
The Soviet expression for this kind of activity is 'aerial preparation'. In
the entry under that heading in the Soviet Military Encyclopedia occurs
the following:
Aerial preparation involves making simultaneous or consecutive strikes
by frontal (tactical) aviation units and formations against objectives
located at tactical and close operational depth. Such objectives can
include those which cannot be destroyed by missiles and artillery, those
capable of changing location just before strikes are made against
them, and those requiring aviation ammunition for their destruction.
Long-range (strategic) aviation can also take part in aerial prepara-
tion. Nuclear strike resources, aircraft at the nearest airfields, control
posts, tanks and artillery in areas of concentration and in fire positions,
strong-points, centres of resistance, and water crossings are destroyed
primarily by aviation during aerial preparation.9
The doctrine was given a precise European focus in the authoritative
Polish Air Force and Air Defence Review in December 1981:
NATO war plans envisage the deployment of powerful groupings of
armed forces in the European theatre of military operations. These group-
ings include a considerable amount of aviation of various types as well
as missiles and nuclear weapons, which even in peacetime are constantly
maintained at a high level of combat readiness. . . .
164 International Security in the Modern World
The experience of the most recent wars has shown that the air forces
have always substantially affected the course of the combat action of
their own troops. Consequently the problems of combatting air forces
have been given much attention, and deserve still more, because a
breaking-up or serious weakening of the enemy's air force and nuclear
missile groupings leads to a fast decline of his capabilities. By ensuring
supremacy in the air, it creates favourable conditions for the action of
troops taking part in the operations in the TVD.... 10
In January 1991 Soviet air marshals watched with mixed sentiments the air
forces of the UN coalition implement with devastating impact a strategy
very similar to their own against the Iraqi air and ground forces.
Thereafter, the role of Warsaw Pact air forces was to provide close air
support for advancing ground forces by bringing heavy firepower to bear on
defensive strong-points. protecting exposed flanks against counter-attack.
placing troops by helicopter behind the battlefield to secure key points such
as river-crossings. resupplying by air. providing reconnaissance and, above
all, protecting Pact ground forces against NATO air-attack. There was
absolute agreement between Warsaw Pact and NATO commanders on the
need for air supremacy. A typical Soviet comment, by General P. Bazanov
in 1980 emphasised the need to neutralise enemy aviation to make it
possible for land, naval and home front forces 'to cope with their missions
without enemy hindrance ... air supremacy. is indispensible for success
both in each military operation and in a war as a whole'. \I
In 1991 the responsibilities of the NATO air forces were being revised
to reflect the new political realities in Central and Eastern Europe. Basic
roles were likely to remain, but perhaps with different priorities and on a
smaller scale. With the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the imminent removal
of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe and the preoccupation of the USSR
with internal problems, the demands on NATO air forces for swift and
powerful response to large-scale ground attack had virtually disappeared.
In their stead was the need to maintain air defences, to react to a re-
constitution of a military threat emanating from within the old USSR itself
and to be ready to contribute to rapid force deployment either within
Europe or at its boundaries.
Hitherto the role responsibilities of Warsaw Pact and NATO air forces
had, with one very important exception. been quite similar. NATO air
forces had been expected, in the opening phases of a conflict at the very
least. to make good numerical inferiority of ground forces and, in some
sectors of the central region, the peacetime maldeployment of allied ground
units. Airpower was very simply NATO's force of the first hours, tasked
 Tony Mason 165
with bringing heavy firepower to bear to check enemy ground-force ad-
vances. If NATO's air forces were ever perceived to be unable to discharge
their roles, the credibility of NATO's conventional defensive posture, and
hence a significant element in deterrence. would have been critically under-
mined. If, on the other hand, neither side could bring its airpower to bear,
the conventional ground-force strength of the Pact could by itself have
threatened military defeat. In sum. airpower was essential to NATO's
deterrent and defensive postures but a bonus to the ground commanders
of the Warsaw Pact.

AIRPOWER IN THE MIDDLE EAST

By 1991 the capabilities of either side to discharge its allocated responsi-

bilities in Europe had become a matter of historical conjecture. In the
Middle East. however. where force has so often been the arbiter of Inter-
national Relations, airpower has consistently made a dominant contribu-
tion, translating conjecture into operations.

The Arab-Israeli Conflict

Israel has not enjoyed peace since the creation of the modern state in 1948.
This study does not attempt to attribute cause and effect to that situation.
Sufficient to state that Israel. in comparison with her neighbours. has a
small but highly-educated, technology-aware population, inhabits a rela-
tively small geographical area, has no 'natural' geographical boundaries
except for the western coastline, and is situated in a region where clear air
and good flying conditions can be guaranteed for the greater part of the
year. One does not need access to classified Israeli papers to deduce con-
fidently that the state could not risk the losses in manpower and resources
inherent in a protracted ground campaign likely to be waged on more than
one boundary. The consequent heavy reliance by Israel on airpower as an
instrument of policy may be illustrated by five examples, all of which
have been widely documented.
In 1967 it is probable that Israel perceived an increasing degree of
military cooperation among her Arab neighbours (Egypt, Syria and Jordan),
which boded ill for its national security. The major partner, and the source
of the greatest threat to Israel, was President Nasser's Egypt. Despite
overall numerical inferiority, the Israeli Air Force enjoyed qualitative ad-
vantages which led to a well-justified belief that it could protect the country
from air-attack and gain air supremacy in all likely theatres of combat. The
166 International Security in the Modern World
advantages, expressed in the language of airpower, are recognisable as
extensions of characteristics well known from military history. To be a
fighter pilot was the ambition of very many young Israelis: the IAF could
choose from the best of the nation. The commanders were dynamic, profes-
sional and highly-trained. The ground crews were drawn from a pool of
technically competent civilians far superior to that available to the Arabs.
Intelligence was comprehensive in scope and microscopic in detail. Com-
mand, control and communication were efficient and undisturbed by
hostile interference. And finally, although in the event it was irrelevant,
Israeli aircraft were superior to their counterparts.
On 5 June Israel achieved both strategic and tactical surprise in attacks
on 19 Egyptian airfields. By noon two-thirds of the Egyptian air force
had been destroyed, almost entirely on the ground. The Jordanian and
Syrian air forces received similar treatment later in the day; by dusk 500
Arab aircraft had been destroyed for the loss of only 20 Israeli aircraft.
In the succeeding days the IAF provided unrestricted close air support
to support ground forces in the Golan Heights, in the Jordan Valley and
in Sinai, destroying troops, armour and artillery. The war ended six
days later with Israel in control of Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan
Heights: the numerically superior Arab allied armies were annihilated.
Airpower had formed the basis of Israeli strategy and, in Blitzkrieg fashion,
prepared the way for victory in battle. The fact that the Egyptian air
defences had been equipped with Russian-supplied SAM-2s of the type
which brought down Gary Powers seven years previously, passed almost
unnoticed.
Seven years in the evolution of modem military technology is a long
time; time enough for an opponent to devise tactics to assist the swing of the
defence-offence pendulum. Israeli aircrew ignored early-warning radars
and simply flew beneath the 138 missiles deployed by Egypt. Moreover,
because surprise was so completely achieved, and destruction of Egyptian
aircraft so swift and comprehensive, the IAF was able to operate from itr.
own airfields completely unimpeded. The critical importance of counter air
operations, and the need to protect against them, was not lost on the many
national air staffs who carefully analysed all aspects of the 1967 June War.
Six years later, however, the October War of 1973 showed that the
lessons of 1967 had been more thoroughly studied by the defeated Arabs
than by the victorious Israelis - not an uncommon attitude among victors
and vanquished. Egypt correctly identified the Israeli Air Force as the
opponent's centre of gravity: that nucleus of capability on which all else
depends. With hindsight the diagnosis was correct, the treatment in-
adequate. As in 1967, the major events of the war are not in dispute, but
 Tony Mason 167
there is insufficient corroborative evidence to validate several of the 'les-
sons' of airpower's contribution and shortcomings.
On this occasion Egypt achieved surprise, both on the ground across the
Suez Canal and in the air by a carefully coordinated air defence system of
SAMs, AA guns and aircraft. Israel reacted predictably to the ground
offensive by launching her air force to deliver first heavy retaliatory
firepower. But the Egyptian air defences were well-sited, well-trained and
vertically well-coordinated at medium and low level. In 48 hours Israel lost
40 aircraft, or 14 per cent of her front-line strength. On the critical northern
frontier, however. losses were endured to allow combination of close air
support and ground forces first to check the Syrian advance, and then to roll
it back across the Golan Heights. Thereafter, it is probable that the ensuing
Israeli recovery in the south was due in part to the exhaustion of the
Egyptian air defences; partly because their attacking ground forces outran
their static air cover; and partly because of the swift resupply of Israel by
the USA with both aircraft and air-to-surface weapons which had a greater
impact than a similar large-scale Soviet air and sealift to the Arab states.
In one sense the impact of airpower ill the October War was akin to that
of the Second World War: it offered lessons to anyone who wished to find
some. 12 For example, surface-to-air defences did severely restrict the close
air support contribution of the IAF, but only as long as friendly ground
forces stayed within their combat radius. Egyptian tactical and electronic
surprise were not sustained in the face of IAF tactical innovation and
electronic assistance from the USA. The capacity of the USAF to mount a
long-range. swiftly-responding airlift appears to have brought much-needed
succour to Israel. Later the threat of Russian airborne force intervention,
when Egypt faced military defeat. may well have been a factor in drawing
hostilities to a close.
In sum, airpower was shown to be just as vulnerable to technological
surprise as any other application of military force. Static surface-to-air
defences were unsuited to the protection of mobile forces and themselves
vulnerable to saturation, countermeasures and counter-attacking ground
forces. But the strategic airlift exemplified the importance of very long
reach to distribute force to exercise a major impact on the course of the war.
The Israeli air force had been identified beforehand by the Egyptians as
likely to be a critical element in the conflict, and its attrition by air defence
was prescribed accordingly. Yet for the second time in six years the IAF
was allowed to return to its bases, rearm. refuel and relaunch further attacks
without any counter air interference. An offensive strategy. whether based
on air or land power, demands offensive weapons to sustain it. The apparent
mismatch in 1973 between Egyptian political objectives and the military
168 International Security in the Modern World
instrument chosen to support them still awaited comprehensive analysis
in 1991.
Not surprisingly, Israeli military intelligence was severely criticised in
the aftermath of the October War. Nine years later it provided very conclu-
sive proof that it had taken the criticism to heart, and acted upon it. In an
attempt to circumscribe the contribution of Israeli airpower to ground
operations in South Lebanon. Syria constructed a carefully coordinated
network of surface-lo-air defences in the Beka'a Valley. For twelve months
before June 1982 Israel flew remotely-piloted vehicles (RPV) over the
valley, equipped with electro-optical sensors. Although the SAM batteries
could have been mobile, they remained static. As a result, the position
of every one was exactly known to Israeli intelligence as, from signals
intelligence, were their operational procedures and technical capability.
Consequently, once again the IAF achieved complete tactical surprise.
Syrian command and control communications, missile guidance systems
and aircraft radars were jammed by modified IAF Boeing 707s and other
aircraft flying near the battle area. The missile sites were attacked by both
aircraft and long-range artillery. When Syrian fighter aircraft took off
to counter the Israeli attacks they had no ground control support, inferior
aircraft and weapons, and their own attack radars were obliterated by
IAF electronic counter measures. Conversely, IAF airborne early-warning
aircraft watched Syrian aircraft taking off, guided IAF fighters to inter-
cept points and the F-15s and F-16s did the rest. In a brief but devastating
campaign of less than one month 17 or 19 SAM batteries and more than
80 Syrian aircraft were destroyed without any lAP losses in return. As a
result, a further period of Israeli air supremacy across her northern frontiers
was guaranteed, with consequent freedom of action for her ground forces.
Meanwhile, the IAF had demonstrated on two occasions that the strate-
gic use of airpower should no longer be considered solely in the context of
large-scale bomber offensives such as those of the Second World War or
even by the USA in South East Asia in the 1960s. In 1981 the Israelis
believed that Iraq was embarking on a nuclear weapon programme. In June
of that year a force of eight F-16 fighter-bombers, escorted by six F-15
fighters, destroyed the Iraqi nuclear facility at Tuwaitha near Baghdad. The
plant was destroyed by a surprise attack, without loss to IAF, over a
distance of 700 miles. Four years later the IAF destroyed the Palestine
Liberation Organisation's headquarters in Tunis with a precision attack by
laser-guided bombs launched from an even smaller number of F-16s, again
protected by F-15s.This time, however, in addition to in-flight fuelling,
the aircrafts' flight along the Mediterranean Sea was masked by an ECM
 Tony Mason 169
configured Boeing 707. Again, complete surprise was achieved without
loss to the attacking force.
The long reach of the IAF was starkly emphasised on both occasions
but, in addition, Israel's detennination to use her airpower to counter land-
based threats was illustrated by frequent raids on bases in Lebanon, alleged
to be the source of terrorist attacks on Israeli territory. On these occasions,
however, the inability of air-attack to discriminate between combatants
and civilian population led to mixed political reactions outside Israel,
casting a doubt on the ultimate benefits to be reaped from such an applica-
tion of airpower.
Israel's ability to sustain conflict over four decades with numerically
superior antagonists has depended heavily on airpower. Until the Scud
missiles were launched from Iraq in 1991, Israeli territory had been immune
to reciprocal attack from the skies. The intrusion of surface-to-surface
missiles in what had hitherto been the domain of the manned aircraft
threatened to upset a longstanding, if unstable, balance between Israeli
airpower and the Arab ground force.

AIRPOWER TO AFGHANISTAN, 1979-89

Like the USA a decade earlier, the USSR found both her attention and
her anned forces diverted to the Third World. Ten years later, Soviet forces
left Afghanistan in 1989 with very little pennanent political value to
show for many thousands of casualties inflicted by the mujaheddin guerril-
las. The USSR used airpower to invade the country swiftly at the outset
and airpower played a prominent part in the campaigns thereafter. But
unhappily for the USSR, there were many similarities between its experi-
ence in Afghanistan and those of the USA in Vietnam.
In both, an unpopular government was faced with widespread guerrilla
opposition; the terrain of each, although very different, made pursuit, loca-
tion, detection and destruction of insurgents very difficult for convention-
ally-equipped forces; and both sets of insurgents were constantly supplied
by external powers benefiting from geographical sanctuary.
In the first six years of the Afghanistan campaign the USSR enjoyed
almost uninhibited freedom of the skies, threatened only by mujaheddin
small-anns fire and an occasional obsolescent handheld SAM. Helicopters
were used to provide air-mobility to ground forces in the rugged terrain,
provide escort to convoys, patrol defensive areas and provide offensive
fire-support in clashes with the mujaheddin. Fixed-wing aircraft provided
170 International Security in the Modern World
heavier firepower and on occasions long-range bombers from bases in
Southern Russia were used against known insurgent base areas such as
those in the Panshir Valley in the north-east of the country. As a result.
insurgent forces could move by day only in small numbers and Soviet
ground forces could confidently rely on short notice air support. A rela-
tively small number of Soviet ground troops. assessed at approximately
105 000 could exert an influence over a wide area of difficult telTain. By
the end of 1985 there were signs that insurgent morale was weakening as
losses increased and supplies reduced.
In early 1986. however, the insurgents were armed with US-built Stinger
manportable, heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles. This was a weapon of a
kind never possessed by the Vietcong in Vietnam and soon had a marked
impact on Russian helicopter and fixed-wing low-level operations, as well
as taking a regular toll of transport aircraft flying in and out of Kabul
and other major air bases. Decoy flares reduced losses, but by forcing
helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft to fly either higher or faster. Stingers
reduced their effectiveness in providing air-to-ground fire and their free-
ranging provision of air-mobility was progressively curtailed. Nor was
there much opportunity for the USSR to interdict mujaheddin supply-
bases in Pakistan, because of the air-to-air capabilities of the F-16s of
the Pakistan Air Force, quite apart from the political implications of ex-
tending the conflict across the Afghan frontier. The impact of the intro-
duction of Stinger, therefore. was not so much a high Soviet attrition
rate but a reduction in operational effectiveness.
Until Soviet sources disclose full details of casualties and enforced
modifications to air operations, Soviet air policy in Afghanistan can only be
tentatively evaluated. It certainly did not bring either military or political
success. In the earlier stages of the campaign the mujaheddin and their
base areas were frequently surprised and badly mauled either by direct
firepower or by desant airborne operations. Airpower was used effectively
to counter insurgent mobility in terrain unsuited to conventional land-force
movement. But airpower cannot hold territory. nor provide continuous
protection or offensive support and. certainly. indiscriminate bombing did
nothing for the government's hearts and minds campaign. The pendulum
appears to have swung far enough towards the defence to reduce airpower
effectiveness. already in uncongenial sUlToundings, even further.

THE FIRST GULF WAR

Almost 12 months after the Soviet inv8.'lion of Afghanistan. large armies

 Tony Mason 171
moved across the Iranian border. Again the causes and antecedents of the
actual contlict are not relevant, but the air policies - or rather lack of them
- of both sides merit comment. At the outset, Iran appeared to have a
technological edge as well as numerical superiority in the possession of a
number of US-supplied F-14 Tomcat fighters, F-4 fighter-bombers and
the residue of the Shah's well-equipped air force. Before the end of 1980,
the Iranian air force had attacked oil facilities in Mosul and Kirkuk,
dams, petro-chemical plants and Baghdad City on several occasions.
Neither side, however, possessed sufficient offensive support aircraft to
make much impact on a war essentially fought by ground forces. Iraq,
in particular, did not seem to wish to pit her multi-role MiG 21 s against
the superior US-built aircraft. In due course, however, Iran's air force
withered on the vine: cut off from US sources of weapons, aircraft and spare
parts, while the USSR continues to resupply Iraq. In 1983, however, a
relatively small sale of aircraft was to have wide-reaching impact on the
outcome of the war. France sold five Super Etendard long-range attack
aircraft, with a number of AM-39 stand-off air-to-surface missiles to Iraq.
The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies Strategic
Survey, published in the spring of 1984, recorded a general belief that
their threat was more psychological than real. But the subsequent destruc-
tion of Iranian oil-installations and shipping in the Gulf achieved largely by
the EtendardlAM-39 combination in 1984 not only reduced Iranian oil
exports and hence the country's financial position, it also provoked Iranian
attacks on neutral shipping in the Gulf, and that may have been an Iraqi
objective.
The direct result of 'retaliation' was the commitment by the USA of
naval forces to the Gulf, the destruction by the US Navy of a large propor-
tion of the Iranian Navy and the further international isolation of the
Khomeini regime. Again, until hard, unclassified evidence from the two
combatants is forthcoming, the relative weight of the factors producing the
uneasy truce of 1988 is difficult to judge. It may well be, however, that
the operations of just five aircraft will come to be seen as the most decisive
factor in eight years of bloody but otherwise inconclusive contlict.
The Iranians had no defensive answer to the Super Etendard/AM 39
combination, but the unpredictability of modem technology was tragically
illustrated at either end of the offensive~efensive pendulum swing. By
1987 Iraq's aircraft were, with in-tlight refuelling, reaching far down the
Gulf to hit Iranian oil installations and shipping. On 17 May, the US
destroyer Stark was hit by mistake by an AM-39 Exocet, killing 37 sailors
and injuring many more. A year later, with US vessels in the Gulf on a much
higher alert state, the USS Vincennes, equipped with the ultra-modem
172 International Security in the Modern World

Aegis air defence system, fired missiles at an intruder identified by the crew
as hostile. The 'intruder' was an Iranian civilian Airbus, with over 200
passengers on board. All died. The subsequent US naval board of enquiry
attributed the tragedy to human error. Not for the first time and almost
certainly not for the last, the interaction of technology and air power
confounded the intentions of the planners and operators.

AIRPOWER IN ARMS CONTROL AND CONFIDENCE BUILDING

MEASURES

During 1988 military strategists and civilian defence analysts alike began
to grapple with another problem involving airpower which had lain dor-
mant since the breakdown of international disarmament conferences
before the Second World War. As has been noted above, much of West-
ern defensive strategy had rested for over 40 years on the concept of
deterrence: either by the threat of overwhelming nuclear retaliation in
the face of Soviet aggression, or as subsequently refined in theories of
mutually-assured destruction and flexible response, by combining de-
terrence by military denial with the assumption that any conflict would
threaten destruction on such a scale to both sides that resort to an instrument
of force would be manifestly unproductive. The projected development,
however, by the USA of the Strategic Defence Initiative was based on a
different premise: that sufficient protection even against a missile-borne
nuclear attack could be provided to render a nuclear deterrence posture
unnecessary. By 1989 the deployment of SDI was still problematical, but
in the relaxation of tension which followed the rapprochement between
President Reagan and the First Secretary Gorbachev political initiatives
were taken to reduce both nuclear and conventional weapon arsenals
on both sides.
In December 1988 and January 1989 the USSR and her European allies
unilaterally undertook to reduce numbers of combat aircraft in Eastern
Europe. The declarations were accompanied by proposals to reduce the
numbers of combat aircraft in both alliances, with priority to be given to
'offensive' aircraft, defined in Soviet terms as those able to deliver conven-
tional and nuclear weapons against targets on the ground. In such a defini-
tion, all NATO's multi-role and dedicated attack aircraft would have been
included, while Warsaw Pact fighters and interceptors would have re-
mained unrestricted. Not surprisingly, the offer was rejected by NATO.
In May 1989 the Western Alliance, at the instigation of President Bush,
agreed to include aircraft in the Conventional Forces in Europe arms control
 Tony Mason 173
negotiations in Vienna, but on tenns very different from those suggested
by the Warsaw Pact. 13
Equal ceilings for both alliances were to be applied for all combat
aircraft and helicopters, at a number 15 per cent below current NATO force
levels. Over the following eighteen months, hard bargaining was to ensue as
both sides grappled with intrinsic problems presented by aircraft to any
anns control regime, complicated in this instance by the particular strategic
interests of the protagonists already summarised earlier in this chapter.
With few exceptions, such as the B-2, B-52, 1'-111, TU-22M Backfire or
TU-160 Blackjack (aU designated solely for offensive operations), it is
impossible to distinguish between 'offensive' and 'defensive' combat air-
craft. Multi-role aircraft by definition may discharge many different tasks,
but aircraft classed as 'fighters' and apparently defensive in function, be-
come vitally important contributors to air-land or air-sea battles when
establishing air superiority above surface forces engaged in offensive
operations. Similarly, an interceptor operating over its own territory is
defensive in posture, but that same aircraft escorting bombers over hostile
territory, as in the case of Gennan Me-l09s in 1940 over England, is
manifestly part of an air offensive. In the second Gulf War of 1991, some
USAF F-15s escorted other aircraft attacking targets in Iraq while others
flew defensive patrols along the Saudi Arabian border.
Other traditional arms control criteria, such as size, weaponry or combat
radius, are also of restricted value in classifying combat aircraft. A rela-
tively small F-16, equipped with precision-guided munitions, could be
more effective against very important strategic targets than a B-52 deliver-
ing 60 000 pounds of unguided bombs. That particular principle was dra-
matically emphasised by the contribution of the USAF F-117s in January
1991 when less than 5 per cent of the coalition air forces destroyed more
than 30 per cent of the strategic targets attacked in the opening hours of the
air campaign.
Inflight refuelling is widely practised by all the world's major air forces,
blurring still further distinctions between short- and long-range aircraft
categories. The combination of long reach and high speed complicated
anns control proposals for geographical allocation because of the ease with
which aircraft could be redeployed into treaty exclusion zones. The com-
plication of long reach extended into Soviet concern over the possible
contribution to a war in Europe from US carrier-borne aircraft and from
bombers of the United States-based Strategic Air Command: neither of
which were covered by the conditions of the cm negotiations. 14
In the event, anns control agreements on aircraft and helicopters, reached
in Paris in November 1990, were facilitated by the political collapse of the
174 International Security in the Modern World
Warsaw Treaty Organisation, the reunification of Gennany, and bilateral
agreements between the USSR and her erstwhile allies to withdraw all her
forces out of Eastern Europe over a period of four years. The ensuing
dramatic change in the military balance in central Europe allowed NATO
to make several concessions to the Soviet position on aircraft which
overcame previous difficulties of definition and role classification. Such
difficulties are likely to recur in any other anns control negotiations
elsewhere in the world which need to take into account the presence of
combat aircraft in the theatre.

THE SECOND GULF WAR

In August 1990 attention was diverted again to crisis in the Gulf. In early
1991 another conflict in the Middle East was dominated by airpower. The
air campaign waged by the UN coalition against Saddam Hussein to bring
about the expUlsion of Iraq ground troops from Kuwait was both well-
documented and to a great extent internationally witnessed. IS 'Lessons'
about this application of airpower as an instrument of policy should, how-
ever, be extracted with caution, for several reasons. First, the exact consid-
eration of circumstances in the Gulf are unlikely to recur: the availability of
modem air bases in Saudi Arabia, an unimpeded opportunity over six
months for the coalition air forces to train and prepare for mission in
theatre: a supine and incompetent opposition and overwhelming coalition
qualitative and quantitative superiority in the air. Second, detailed evidence
of weapon accuracy, electronic warfare effectiveness, operational tech-
niques and tactical evaluations are likely to remain closely-guarded national
secrets. Third, the extraction of any 'lessons' from a conflict should be
tempered by lack of knowledge about the next examiner, or the location
and circumstances of the examination.
That said, the use of airpower in the Gulf illustrated very fully its
modem contribution to both diplomacy and strategic international security.
If Saddam Hussein had entertained inclinations to extend either his pres-
ence or his influence further south than Kuwait, they were abruptly compli-
cated in early August with the arrival of US and British combat aircraft
in Saudi Arabia. US and British political commitment to the crisis was
demonstrated, friendly governments in the region were reassured and the
example was set for further coalition contribution under the aegis of the
United Nations. Within 48 hours of authorisation, aircraft deployed from
the United States and from Britain were combat-ready along the Saudi-
 Tony Mason 175
Arabian border. Behind that protective shield, UN forces on land, at sea
and in the air were enlarged until in January 1991 the war begun by the Iraq
invasion of Kuwait moved into its second, explosive stage.
The result of a confrontation between Iraq and the coalition could never
be in any doubt. The major problem facing the allies was how to end the war
quickly with a minimum of allied casualties when up to 500 000 Iraqi troops
had been committed to the defence of Kuwait. The availability of airpower
was to resolve the other difficulties. With two deflections, a carefully
prepared plan was executed successfully.
The ground forces in the Kuwait area were decimated, disrupted and
demoralised by direct air-attack. The arteries linking them to sources of
supply in Iraq were severed by attacks on bridges and roads. Supporting
facilities, chemical and nuclear installations, political, administrative and
military command buildings in Iraq, together with industries providing
military support, were destroyed, largely by precise guided-weapon attack.
Almost half the coalition's combat aircraft were never engaged in hostili-
ties. Complete tactical surprise was achieved in the initial air attack on 17
January and the Iraqi Air Force never recovered from the destruction of
its command and control organisation. It made no further contribution to
the war although remaining a latent but uncoordinated threat.
Nevertheless, the air campaign lasted longer than expected by coalition
air force commanders. The worst weather in the area for 25 years obscured
targets and thwarted post-attack battle-damage assessment. The dispropor-
tionate political and psychological impact of Iraqi Scud attacks on Israel
and Saudi Arabia forced considerable diversion of air effort to locate and
destroy them. Even so, the accumulated impact of the air campaign was so
great that the coalition ground forces overran 40 divisions of Iraqi troops in
100 hours, meeting for the most part light, spasmodic and uncoordinated
opposition. In the entire war the coalition lost some 200 men killed and a
similar number wounded. Iraqi forces were expelled from Kuwait and
Iraq's military potential to further destabilise the region was virtually elimi-
nated.
Ironically, and tragically, the decision by coalition political leaders to
adhere to the letter of UN resolutions, i.e. not to prolong the mass destruc-
tion of Iraqi forces; not to advance on Baghdad; not to forcibly overthrow
Saddam and not to become involved in internal Iraqi affairs was to become
increasingly controversial as the horrors of civil war subsequently engulfed
the country. Such events prompted the reflection that the application of
airpower to effect military victory does not obviate the need to prepare for
its consequent political exploitation and resolution.
176 International Security in the Modern World
THE FUTURE OF AIRPOWER

Despite all the caveats on extracting lessons from the second Gulf War, its
impact on the evolution of modem airpower as an instrument of diplomacy
will not be ignored be either well-endowed industrial nations or those in the
developing Third World.
Several principles were reinforced which were already well-understood
by responsible politicians and commanders. Among the former was the
overriding importance of command of the air for all operations on land and
at sea when aircraft could contribute to either side. Once conceded, com-
mand of the air is extremely difficult to recover. On this occasion command
of the air was won by a combination of manned aircraft and long-range, sea-
launched, cruise missiles. Overwhelming technological superiority, espe-
cially in electronic warfare, was harnessed to achieve complete tactical
surprise against an enemy who was awaiting attack. The advantage of
surprise, long a fundamental principle of war, was greatly enhanced. The
combination of surprise with the destructive power of selective attacks
on high-value targets by precision bombing with conventionally-armed
munitions threatens instability in political crises between well-armed an-
tagonists. The reach of airpower extends such instability to international
relations well beyond contiguous territories.
In a Third World territory a relatively small number of political, ad-
ministrative, industrial and power installations are likely to have a major
influence on the nation's economic and political infrastructure. Their vul-
nerability to relatively small numbers of aircraft equipped with precision
weapons is likely to assume greater significance in defence and foreign
policy formulation. That in tum will encourage greater expenditure on air
defences and possibly counter-offensive capabilities. Consequently, regional
arms control problems in many parts of the world will become much more
complex and less tractable.
In sum, at the threshold of the twenty-first century, airpower has finally
achieved the impact on warfare and international diplomacy forecast for it
by visionaries 100 years ago. Its potential to devastate armies and navies,
together with its latent threat from airfields thousands of miles from a
potential adversary's political and economic nerve-centres comprise a for-
midable instrument whenever military force is being considered to further
a state's political objectives. But while technology has finally substantiated
theories, airpower is not an unlimited instrument. The pendulum will con-
tinue to swing between offence and defence. The long-range aircraft able
to launch terminally-guided weapons many miles from its target will be
faced with surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles coordinated by airborne
 Tony Mason 177
early warning and control aircraft heavily defended against both destructive
and electronic attack.
Arms manufacturers have lost the massive markets and development
stimulus of the superpower confrontation. They will seek alternative buyers
in the Third World and their competition will introduce a different kind of
acceleration in the swing of the offensive-defensive pendulum. But their
products will be expensive and many countries will face difficult priorities
not just between civilian and military funding, but between different mili-
tary weapons and supporting structures. The prospects are, however, not
all pessimistic.
While airpower's potential for devastating surprise attack is destabilising
and aggravated tensions in areas where political problems are unresolved,
its many other qualities may, paradoxically, offer prospects for peacekeep-
ing which were previously unattainable. The ability of international organi-
sations to cooperate over long distances at high speed, and of individual
countries to offer military guarantees over thousands of miles could actually
inhibit tendencies to local aggression and assure smaller nations whose
only choices would otherwise be submission or disproportionate allocation
of resources to self-defence.
In sum, like any other military instrument, airpower is politically neutral.
After almost 100 years of existence it has moved from the periphery of
international relations to a dominant role in warfare and become an increas-
ingly influential player in the complex equation of pressures exerted in
the international system of nation-states. Its capacity of either stabilisation
or destabilisation will not depend on the contribution of technology but
rather its harnessing in the pursuit of political objectives.

NOTES

1. Quoted in A. F. Hurley, Billy Mitchell, Crusader For AirpoK'l!r (Indiana

University Press, 1975), p. 142.
2. UK Cabinet Paper 332, CAB 24/27 1929.
3. Air Corps Tactical School, Air Force Part 1. 1 March 1938. p. I.
4. Captain J. C. Burke, 'Aeroplanes of Today and their Use in War' . .lournal 0,-
the Royal United Services Institution, May 1911. .
5. Quoted in 'Airpower and Warfare', Proceedings of the Eighth Military lIis
tory Symposium. USAF Academy, 1978, p. 23.
6. Joint Chiefs of Staff Paper 1725/1, 1 May 1947, para 10.
7. Ibid., para. II.
8. Seminar Report in Aviation Week and Space TechnoloRY, 16 July 1'11'1."
178 International Security in the Modern World
9. Soviet Military Concepts, USAF 1978, pp. 1-2.
10. Colonel Pilot Alexander Musail, The Character and Importance of Air Op-
erations in Modern Warfa,.e, translation No. 138 by the Soviet Studies
Research Centre, Sandhurst.
II. Lieutenant-General P. Bazanov, 'Air Supremacy', Soviet Military Review,
Vol. 9 (1980) pp. 42-4.
12. For a comprehensive analysis of airpower in this and other Arab-Israeli
conflicts see Mason and Armitage, Airpower in the Nuclear Age, (London:
Macmillan, 1986), Chapter 5.
13. Declaration of the Heads of State and Government Participating In The
Meeting of the North Atlantic Council In Brussels 29-30 May 1992, para. 17.
NATO Press Release, Brussels 30 May 1989.
14. For a comprehensive analysis of the air-related issues in the CFE Negotia-
tions see Survival, Sept.-Oct. 1989 (London: International Institute for Stra-
tegic Studies).
15. For a detailed description of objectives, planning and implementation of the
air campaign in the second Gulf War, see Survival, May-June 1990 (London:
International Institute for Strategic Studies).
 10 Land Warfare
Martin Edmonds

POLITICS AND WAR

Before turning our attention to the concept of land warfare, it is important

first to give some thought to the concept of war itself. The reason is quite
straightforward: land warfare is but one element in the conduct of modem
war, and must therefore be seen in context. Many would agree that the best
way to begin would be with reference to, perhaps, the most famous philo-
sopher of war, the nineteenth-century German writer, Carl von Clausewitz.
In a deceptively simple - and, incidentally, one which is often misunder-
stood and misquoted - but insightful observation, he encapsulated the
essence of war: it is, he said, 'nothing but the continuation of policy with
other means'.' Although this quotation has been taken out of context from
his book On War, his meaning is quite clear: war is a collective act of
violence; it cannot be divorced from the ends that those engaged in it hope
to achieve. It is a social phenomenon involving two parties in violent
conflict, and should not be considered in the abstract.
From this premise, we can assert that the form that any act of war or
violence can take - whether it is at sea (above or below the surface), in the
air (the atmosphere or outer space) or on land - should not be analysed
or discussed independently of the ends for which it is fought. Violent
conflicts on land, sea or in the air are merely the means to given policy
ends. These ends, of course, can vary enormously, and affect both the
form that physical combat will take and the intensity with which it is fought.
In anyone conflict, it must be remembered that there will be at least
two ends involved - the opposing objectives of the opponents - since war,
by definition, is a dialectic of opposing forces.
Over time, history has demonstrated that the underlying objectives of
war most frequently have to do with disputes over territory: the acquisition
of land, the right of ownership or access to the resources that it contains.
This being the case, a logical conclusion to draw is that one of the combat-
ants is challenging the status quo, Le. the existing international political
order. As such it will have assumed an aggressive posture. What cannot be
achieved through negotiation and compromise, or established as a right, de
jure, is pursued by physical means, which usually means through the
activation and use of armed forces. One of the parties to a conflict, there-

179
180 International Security in the Modern World

fore, has to take the offensive. and initiate the clash of forces; the corollary
is that the other is put on the defensive. Examples abound where states are
not satisfied with the world's existing political boundaries and, contrary to
accepted international norms, invade the territory of another. Hitler's entry
into Poland, the Chinese People's Republic's invasion and occupation of
Tibet, and Iraq's annexation of Kuwait serve as examples. It is also worth
noting that the pretexts of these military incursions - lebensraum, by
'invitation', historical right, divine injunction - differ, but the reality is the
same: the de facto ability to exercise political control and power over the
territory of another state.
Not all wars are fought for reasons of territorial expansion, of course.
There is also a range of other ends for which states, societies and peoples
are prepared to fight. These include honouring a promise to help friends
or allies, pursuing a 'just' cause (however that may be defined), or punish-
ing an adversary for 'wrongs' committed. Today, as a consequence of
Nazi behaviour during the Second World War and the principles guiding
the trials of Nazi leaders at Nuremburg, and the United Nations Declara-
tion on Human Rights, such 'wrongs' include 'crimes against humanity'.
Not all wars, therefore, need to be seen purely in terms of offence and
defence, territorial gain and loss, or, indeed, of right or wrong.
Analysts have sought an answer to the question whether there is any
fundamental, root cause of all wars but have yet to arrive at any definitive
conclusion. On one point, however, they are largely in agreement: security
- defined in terms of access to the basic necessities of life such as food,
shelter, and adequate space - is fundamental. Of importance in respect of
land warfare is the fact that security is rooted in the land. Territory is an
irreducible minimum of human existence; it is on land and about control
over what is done with it that ultimately humans fight among themselves.
Peoples, nations, and states have different cultures, needs, and sets of
values, and perceive the world and others differently according to their
geographical location, historical experience and economic circumstances.
There will therefore always be the potential for disagreement and conflict.
Moreover, for as long as there are scarce world resources - we should
reflect momentarily on the fact that the sea covers over 70 per cent of
the world's surface - and their distribution is grossly unequal, conflict
becomes virtually inevitable. This has drawn many to the conclusion that
there is no end to war. It is impossible to 'win' a definite and final victory
in war. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant's vision of a world 'Per-
petual Peace' is a chimera. The basic problem confronting all peoples and
states is that of maintaining national objectives in era of (eternal) protracted
violent and non-violent conflict. 2
 Marlin Edmonds 181

Since war. with all its destruction and tragedy. is part of the human
condition. the challenge is either to eliminate the most likely causes of
conflict. or to contain it in such a way as to prevent it erupting into violence.
Failing prevention. the next-best alternative is to limit conflict that becomes
war through negotiated agreements that restrict the quality and quantity of
weapon systems. and to get agreement on the laws of war (e.g. the Geneva
Protocols). Such laws would ban. or restrain. the use of certain categories
of weapons and provide some protection for civilians and military per-
sonnel of the warring parties and third parties. One contemporary sugges-
tion arising from recent technological developments in communications is
to increase world access to information and. by so doing. remove the
two factors of ignorance and secrecy that encourage national stereotyping.
misunderstanding. xenophobia and suspicion. 3

THE PRIMACY OF LAND WARFARE

The relationship between the means and ends of war is fundamental. If war
is the physical means to resolve disputes. then the only way to impose
authority is through victory and the physical defeat of the enemy. Victory.
moreover. can only be manifest through the disarmament of enemy forces
and a physical presence on his t~rritory. This is something that only forces
on the ground can achieve. There have been few better examples of this
than the confrontation between the large number of Iraqi ground forces
and the naval and air forces of several states arraigned against it over the
annexation of Kuwait during August 1990. Ultimately, it could only be the
reoccupation of Kuwait by land forces that would achieve the status quo
ante. Until that was accomplished, Iraq would continue to exercise author-
ity over Kuwait. even if its army were defeated by air attack. In war, as in
daily life. the adage that 'possession is nine points of the law' applies.
Sea and air warfare are relevant in the study of war only in so far as
they bear on the attainment of political objectives. This means. in effect. in
support of ground forces on land in their objective to defeat the enemy
and then to exercise political control over the outcome. Alone. success in
war at sea can only indirectly achieve political ends by denying other
states' maritime freedom of movement and access to strategic resources.
The prerequisite is command of the sea and denial of an adversary's access
to. and commercial and naval use of it. For example. the naval blockade
can be used to prevent the movement of essential goods to and from
an enemy state, thereby limiting or even preventing his ability to fight.
182 International Security in the Modern World
Alternatively a blockade can be used to persuade the adversary to change
his policies or find accommodation through economic pressures.
The same argument applies to war in the air. The principal objective of
airpower is to deny an adversary control of the air. Once this has been
achieved, the immense strategic and tactical potential of airpower can be
unleashed. Strategically, the threat of aerial bombardment can indirectly
persuade, and has been the foundation of modem (nuclear) deterrent
strategies. The use of strategic bombardment, as was demonstrated in the
Second World War, can shorten the duration of a war by persuading the
adversary to surrender. But in both instances, strategic airpower is an
indirect means; as the United States' strategic bombardment of North
Vietnam in the 1960s demonstrated, it can also fail to persuade enemy
forces to capitulate. Even if the North Vietnamese had done so, the physical
occupation of the country by United States and South Vietnamese forces
would have been the only reasonable guarantee of success in achieving
their declared political war objectives. Tactical airpower is used in sup-
port of ground forces in achieving their operational objectives; as such, it
is also an indirect means towards the ends of war.
The primacy of land, i.e. territory, and the exercise of control over it is
even more evident when it is recognised that both airpower and seapower
are dependent on their access to it. Aircraft and missiles need their own
bases from which to operate; naval ships are dependent on access to har-
bours and bases for supplies and maintenance. Although technology has
extended the capabilities of both air and sea-based weapon systems, and
reduced the need to return to a land base - for example the Harrier 'jump-
jet' fighter and the long-endurance nuclear-powered warship - their land-
based dependence still remains.
In the general conduct of war, seapower and airpower are important -
sometimes necessary - adjuncts to ground forces in battle. With science and
technology making possible new weapons systems with a wide range of
capabilities - range, destructiveness, accuracy, ubiquity - modem warfare
has become one of combined operations, with the integration of all three
(or four if space is considered separate) elements. Nevertheless, the original
proposition still applies: victory in the air and at sea in themselves cannot
achieve the ends of war, except in the cases of war where the political
objectives are limited in scope. Ultimately, victory in total war is finally
secured by the man on the ground. More often than not this is the role of
the basic element of all armies: the infantry.
One other distinction between the primacy of land warfare over sea and
air war is vitally important: that of international law. Apart from coastal
waters, all states have right of access to the world's navigable oceans.
 Martin Edmonds 183

Vessels that stop, intervene or sink others' ships on the high seas commit an
illegal act, that of piracy. They are then liable to justifiable retribution.
Other than in waters subject to internationally-agreed regulations, ships of
all nations may sail wherever they choose. The same, largely, applies to
the atmosphere. Except for national airspace, i.e. that space over national
territory up to an internationally-agreed height - aircraft may fly anywhere.
None of this freedom of movement applies to the movement of people, let
alone annies, over land. Outside their own national political boundary,
annies are limited by the pennission of other states concerned. Even civil-
ians require identification - permits, passports, visas - and are subject to
the laws of the country they enter. Entry into another state without permis-
sion is illegal. For an army to cross political boundaries is technically
an invasion, and in itself tantamount to an act of war. With permission, such
an act may be considered an intervention; but without permission, it is an
act of invasion and in contravention of the tenets of intemationallaw.
This distinction was well illustrated in 1982 when the Argentinian anned
forces invaded and annexed the Falkland Islands. It was, and stiII is, a
British colony. Having disputed sovereignty over the islands with Britain
through the international courts for decades, the Argentinian military gov-
ernment decided to use their anned forces to occupy the islands and declare
sovereignty, de facto. The United Kingdom government, knowing that it
would have no more success in regaining sovereignty through international
legal channels than had Argentina previously, was faced with two un-
palatable options: accept the situation or retake the islands by force. A third,
which was to find some political formula acceptable to both parties in order
to avoid bloodshed, was remote, for two reasons: first past attempts at
reaching such an accommodation had persistently failed; and second, the
very act of invasion had foreclosed for the leaders on both sides even the
very wish to attempt to find a compromise. Violence, as the French philo-
sopher Franz Fanon registered in another context, has a psychological
impact on human perceptions with the effect that it hardens attitudes and
makes accommodation difficult and sometimes impossible.
The Falklands experience well illustrates the roles of land, sea and
airpower, and reinforces the primacy of ground forces, occupation, and
control in the achievement of victory. The reoccupation of the islands by
British ground troops and the surrender of the enemy would not have been
possible without the Royal Navy task force physically getting them there
and maintaining logistic support. Nor would it have been possible without
air power providing the amphibious landings with sufficient (but far from
total) protection against the Argentinian Air Force and giving the soldiers
on the ground tactical air support against well-protected defensive
184 International Security in the Modern World
positions. But victory was only finally achieved when troops on the ground
entered the capital, Port Stanley, received the surrender of the Argentinian
Anny commander, and, in the name of the British political authorities,
resumed the exercise of authority over the country and its population.
The surrender of one state to another is both a political and a military act.
It is an acknowledgement by the government of one state on behalf of its
population that it no longer exercises authority within a defined political
area. Sometimes the outcome of surrender, as in the case of Tibet or
South Vietnam, is annexation and the disappearance of that state as an
internationally recognised, independent legal entity; more often, it is the
defeated government's acceptance of political conditions imposed by the
victor, as in the case of Italy, Germany and Japan in 1945. In the course
of a war, states can become occupied by invading forces, and while this
situation persists, they no longer exist in anything other than legal terms.
Such was the position of Kuwait, once that country had been occupied by
Iraqi forces and had been formally announced to have been annexed.
Frequently, surrender conditions include reparations and loss of some
territory. Such conditions are interrelated, and involve a readjustment of
national boundaries in favour of the victor. The chequered history of the
Saar, Alsace and Lorraine since the latter part of the nineteenth century and
the movement of the border between Poland and Germany in the twentieth
provide examples. The terms of surrender have to be signed by the legal
authorities of the combatants; it is a binding document which, metaphori-
cally speaking, recognises that 'to the victor go the spoils'.

THE DIALECTIC OF WAR

'Combined operations' is a relatively new phenomenon; its importance in

the history of warfare was only fully appreciated as one of the lessons of the
Second World War. Before then (and even for a while afterwards), combat
at sea, in the air, and on land was seen as in each case a somewhat discrete
activity; service organisations and command structures were more or less
independent (the German Wehrmacht being a significant exception). Com-
bined operations were the result of interservice negotiation - much of it to
do with overall command responsibility - rather than as a consequence of
combined operational and force planning. War at sea and war in the air were
generally seen as, and therefore planned for, independently of war on land.
Furthermore, national navies were first established during the sixteenth
century; air forces are a post-First World War development and in the case
of the United States, post-1945. There are occasions before the sixteenth
 Marlin Edmonds 185
century when large fleets were engaged in sea battle - Salamis, Mylae and
Sluys, for example; and some of these engagements undoubtedly had a
significant influence on the course of history. But, as a general proposition,
warships have primarily been for protecting the transportation of national
armies across water, and for the protection of commercial trade, as was the
case with the Venetians.
During the period of European global exploration and colonial expan-
sion from the seventeenth century until the late nineteenth century, naval
vessels were the vehicles for the safe transportation of imperial land forces
and the exchange of raw materials and manufactured products to and from
the home base. All things being equal, they provided an essential ingredient,
as the American historian and analyst of sea power, Admiral Mahan, noted,
in the projection of Britain's military power and economic influence across
the globe in the nineteenth century.4 Today, ships and navies continue to
perform the role of giving states mobility in war while denying the same
advantage to the enemy, and protecting national trade and other vital eco-
nomic interests. In this century, air war has had a significant role in giving
one side the military advantage in battle, but it has not been a determinant
of the political outcome of the war. All of which again adds up to the
proposition that the course of history has been significantly influenced
by war and that it is war on land, fought by ground forces, that has had the
most decisive impact.
Which brings us to one other important distinction: that between land
warfare and ground warfare. It is a matter of definition which has to be
clarified. Land warfare is war fought physically over territory. Ground, sea
and air forces can, and do, make contributions to its conduct and the
outcome, even if ultimately it is armies that determine victory. There are
many instances where bombardment from naval ships at sea against land
targets have helped achieve a tactical military objective (the first occasion
being the ships of Henry VIII's fleet giving fire support to his armies
fighting on the Scottish border in 1542). Then, there are examples of sailors
being put ashore to lend support to armies in the field, with one famous
occasion when they manhandled their own naval guns on land to provide
fire support. Finally, many navies have their own soldiers - Marines - first
employed for battles at close quarters at sea, and today used for amphibious
and hazardous and covert operations.
Land warfare, as noted above, also includes the tactical use of airpower
in support of military operations through interdiction against enemy milit-
ary targets, battlefield reconnaissance, and fire support for ground troops.
Land warfare, therefore, is a combined operations concept in which ground
forces play the dominant role. Ground warfare is more exclusively to do
186 International Security in the Modern World
with annies: it is that element of warfare in which the opposing elements are
annies. The tactics developed are those that relate to the principal constitu-
ents of armies: infantry, cavalry and artillery. In the event that war on the
ground assumes an unconventional character, as in the case of guerrilla
or revolutionary war. the tactics involve whole sections of the population,
civil and military, and covert units as well as armed forces, the police
and paramilitary organisations.
For the purposes of the remainder of this chapter, however. we shall be
looking mainly at conventional ground forces. In other words, we shall be
setting to one side both guerrilla and unconventional war, and land war in
its modem, multi-dimensional sense of combined and integrated operations.
Nevertheless, the three-dimensional ground/water/air ecology of the land
war battlefield has both to be recognised and acknowledged as being the
norm of modem combat operations.

From a purely military standpoint, the object of land war strategy has
been to bring the enemy to battle on the most advantageous terms . . .
having committed the enemy to the fight, tactics have been the ways and
means of defeating him. But over the centuries the increasing power of
weapons has caused commanders to evolve new systems of attack and
defence to reflect the changing pattern of arms and armaments. Tactics
therefore, and the science of war will change with the times, but the
underlying principles remain constant.s

But before giving thought to these guiding principles, let us first look at the
pendulum of strategy and tactics in ground warfare as it swings to and fro
between a preponderance of the means of attack over defence, and vice
versa.
The reason for this is quite obvious: if war is the continuation of policy
by other means, and policy is about pursuing one's enlightened self-interest
in the face of opposition. then military capabilities which give one advan-
tage in attack will invite expansionism and aggression. Correspondingly,
when the means of defence are in the ascendancy. then they will encourage
policies of consolidation and withdrawal from the political arena.
This essentially is Professor Andreski's argument. He is a sociologist
who has been concerned with the impact of military organisation on the
development of society. In Military Organisation and Society, he notes
that the dominant feature of human history is that of the 'omnipresence
of struggle'. Further analysis revealed that this struggle was essentially
about power, wealth and prestige, three factors that he encapsulated in a
single term - the competition for 'ophelimities'.6 In more simple terms,
 Marlin Edmonds 187
he is talking about human greed.
Primitive man sought survival either through a nomadic existence, seek-
ing food and shelter wherever they could be found, or within a bonded
community living a domesticated existence in villages and cultivating the
land. These two basic groupings, with their entirely different modes of
existence, would inevitably come into conflict: the nomad, by definition,
was a predator; as such he was the aggressor on the attack. Correspond-
ingly, the village-dweller was on the defensive. From this simple beginning
the fortified village, castle and city emerged, as, over time did the siege-
engine, the ballista and, finally, the cannon.
But these primitive and medieval developments were not all: in attempt-
ing to ensure success, both primitive groups began to develop a new form
of social organisation - a specialist warrior caste, or 'military', trained in
combat - who could apply time and resources to the development of
weapons and artifacts of war. In the process, the nature of human relation-
ships within societies irrevocably changed from those based on kinship
to those based on specialist 'function'. 7
From this primitive beginning, three powerful forces were at play in the
development of ground warfare: first, there was the social imperative of
survival, both in the economic and biological senses of having food for
survival and enough space to live and grow. Second. there was the psycho-
logical (or human nature) imperative of human beings' apparent need for
power, prestige and status. And third, there was the inexorable progress
of intellectual curiosity translated into science, and technology and then
applied to the resolution of both military and civil problems. Whether or
not war has served as a stimulus for science and technology is a continuing
and unresolved argument.
Whatever the weight of argument either way, technology in the form of
weapons and weapon systems has had a major effect upon all forms of war,
strategy and tactics, including ground warfare. Over time, science and
technology have given tactical and strategic advantage to offence or de-
fence. Military technological superiority, however, can never guarantee
success in war; there are too many other factors that bear on the issue for
that. But there is no doubt that it has a powerful and pervasive influence.
Though weapons technology in ancient times was crude and simple by
modem standards, relatively small improvements in military equipment
had major impact on armies' capabilities and the outcomes of wars. Thus
the development of siege-craft, for which existing town and village forti-
fications were no match, coupled with novel forms of organisation and
logistics, enabled both the Greeks and Romans to establish empires. Before
them, the Assyrians had built an empire throughout the Middle East and
188 International Security in the Modern World
eastern Mediterranean as a consequence of siege-engines and the develop-
ment of the cavalry.
The disintegration of the Assyrian, Greek and Roman empires were the
direct consequence of two factors: they had over-extended themselves and
lost the capability to exercise control and political authority over the popu-
lation; conversely, their subjects had learned new techniques of defending
themselves and defying political authority. In Europe around the tenth
century, this became manifest in new forms of fortification that took ad-
vantage of the terrain and the natural advantages it afforded. Unlike the
fortified city, these formidable castle structures had no occupants other
than their owners and immediate retainers. The castle in effect physically
provided the secure power base from which the incumbents could exercise
power. The castle, moreover, provided one of the essential foundations
of feudalism. It remained so until some technique of offence that could
effectively penetrate the castle's defences was developed.
Feudalism saw political power diffused among a number of baronial
fiefdoms. Those who sought to rule from the centre had to accommodate
these powerful men through bargaining and a distribution of privilege,
wealth and status in return for their loyalty and support. 8 Only a higher
spiritual authority - the church - was in any position to pose a direct
political challenge, though it was constrained militarily.
Technological development in metals and the invention of gunpowder
were the harbingers of a change that shifted the ratio of power away from
defence to offence. Military technology in the form of artillery, the musket!
rifle and explosives, coupled with innovations in military organisation and
discipline, tactics and recruitment introduced by the Swede, Gustavus
Adolphus. the Prussian, Frederick the Great. Britain's Duke of Marlborough,
and Revolutionary France's Napoleon Bonaparte, heralded a period of
political and military expansion. This reached its zenith with the French
Napoleonic Empire that by 1812 stretched from Moscow to the Atlantic,
and the British colonial Empire that spreadeagled across the globe during
the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Such was the perceived superiority of offensive weapons and modem
technology, coupled with the psychological advantage they afforded, that
practical military strategists such as Jomini and Foch concluded that a
massive attack at the decisive point in the enemy's defences would guaran-
tee victory. Jomini was drawing his conclusions from his interpretation of
the Napoleonic campaigns,9 Foch from the Prussian defeat of the French
armies in 187 I. 10 Both put considerable emphasis on the weight of fire-
power, though they differed in their emphasis on psychological factors.
Clausewitz also drew his inspiration from the French Revolutionary wars.
 Martin Edmonds 189

Although some of his concern was with the practical requirements of

securing victory, he was more concerned with the nature of war itself. His
work was more abstract and theoretical than practical, for which reason
his work was not widely read or his message heeded. Had military leaders
of his day and after given him the attention he deserved, they would
have noted his argument that defence is intrinsically superior to offence,
the more so when it is on one's own territory. It is from this and from
subsequent experience that the ratio of 3: 1 is necessary for offensive forces
to engage on equal terms with defence.
The experience of the First World War put an end to these assumptions
about offence, though both the American Civil War and the Russo-Japanese
war had put up markers that military technology in the form of the machine-
gun and trenches had progressed to a point, as Clausewitz had earlier
argued, that defence was already in the ascendant. 1I The Great War of
1914-18, proved this trend, but within the context of that war further
technological developments based on the internal combustion engine re-
vealed the potential for the successful use of attack. Driven by an urgent
desire to put an end to the carnage of static trench warfare and break the
deadlock, the armoured tank and the airplane were introduced on to the
battlefield. The war ended, not by the introduction of these weapons, but
by exhaustion, blockade, attrition and weight of numbers. 12
But the armoured fighting vehicle (tank) and the military airplane had
arrived. It did not take long for their tactical potential to be realised. Static
defence was vulnerable to the mobility and manoeuvrability of the ar-
moured fighting vehicle and fighter-bomber aircraft, combined with con-
centrated firepower. All that was needed was further improvement in the
mechanisation of weapons and the formulation of new military doctrines
and operational art. Among the first to recognise the potential of a combi-
nation of technology and military doctrine were Lenin and early Soviet
military theorists such as Triandafillov, Isserson and Tuckachevsky .13 Their
ideas disappeared under Stalin's purges, but were resurrected after the
Second World War and provided the foundation for modem Soviet ground
warfare doctrine and the Operational Manoeuvre Groups (OMGs) that have
given Western military planners so much concern. 14
Outside the Soviet Union, the theory and tactics of armoured warfare and
manoeuvre were being formulated during the 1920s and 1930s by such
strategists as Captain Basil Liddell Hart, J. F. C. Fuller, Colonel Guderian,
Marshal Petain, and Colonel de Gaulle.15 Only in Germany were these
translated into military doctrine: the British Army maintained its strong
commitment to positional and defensive strategies while the French Army
put its trust in its Maginot Line, an elaborate self-contained network of
190 International Security in the Modern World
concrete defensive emplacements linked by tunnels that stretched 200 miles
from the Swiss border to Malmedy in Alsace. '6 Guderian put theory into
practice, and with Rommel. became Germany's principal exponent of
tank warfare. When he combined concentrated, rapid tank-attacks on a
narrow front deep behind enemy lines with air-support first against Poland
in 1939, then against France in May 1940 and finally in 1941 in the invasion
of the Soviet Union he achieved surprise, and shock, leading to the disinte-
gration of enemy resistance and 'lightning' (i.e. Blitzkrieg) military success.
With the Second World War, the pendulum of the dialectic of war was
swinging faster. What had taken a thousand years up to the Middle Ages
had been reduced to a few decades in the twentieth century as a con-
sequence of the application of scientific discovery and technological inno-
vation to the conduct of war. The Blitzkrieg tactics of the German Wehrmacht
were finally halted by the weight of materiel brought to bear by the indus-
trial might of the United States, and in the case of Japan by the outcome
of a single-minded effort by a number of the world's top theoretical
physicists. The atomic warheads they developed that were subsequently
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki effectively ended the war in the
Pacific; however, they heralded a new era in the history of warfare which
made clear distinctions between concepts of attack and defence difficult
to define. The problem they opened up was that of whether or not, in a
nuclear war, there could ever be a 'victor' in the accepted sense.
Modem atomic and thermonuclear weapons technology has drawn a
conceptual distinction between two forms of warfare: nuclear and conven-
tional. This has a direct bearing on land war and ground forces, since if it is
on land that today's wars will be fought, the destructiveness of nuclear
warheads will make little or no differentiation between civil and military
targets. This fearful destruction of course is not only likely to destroy the
enemy's armed forces but also will do irreparable damage to the adjoining
land, its ecology and the surrounding atmosphere. The awesome nature of
nuclear weapons has given credibility (of a sort) to the policy of the
deterrence of war. Paradoxically, it has also opened up the prospect of new
forms of conventional and unconventional war, and given a new emphasis
to political objectives behind war.
If political objectives are to be achieved with the backing of military
force, they have to be credible both to the enemy and to one's own popula-
tion. Nuclear weapon systems alone lacked that credibility; even if there
were no defence against them (and realistically speaking there is not) they
still could not attain political objectives. Non-nuclear, conventional war-
fare, however, had that credibility. For 40 years, therefore, all forms of
conventional warfare, including ground warfare, have continued to de-
 Martin Edmonds 191

velop. Strategic and tactical ideas about ground warfare have correspond-
ingly evolved as government objectives, military technology and political
circumstances have changed.
The dialectic of attack and defence is still the currency of the conven-
tional battlefield debate. But it is a devalued currency. The complexity of
military planning, the array of different weapon systems and number of
different technologies at countries' disposal, plus the huge costs involved
and the risks attached to any conventional engagement escalating beyond
the nuclear threshold, have helped to determine that military conflict be-
tween the nuclear powers has become less likely. The same, however,
cannot be said of non-nuclear and other states where relatively small advan-
tages in the quality or quantity of weapon systems can be quickly translated
into offensive action.
When Andreski formulated his ideas about the dialectic of attack and
defence, he linked them to the Clauswitzian notion of the political objec-
tive. Where the technology of ground warfare tended to favour attack over
defence, he found that there was a tendency for the concentration of power.
Furthermore, the number of independent governments within a given geo-
graphical area tended to diminish. This held true of the Russian Empire (the
Soviet Union), and was the case with the British and Napoleonic empires
and even Hitler's Third Reich. States which controlled 'offensive' technol-
ogy were most liable to expand the areas under their authority and/or tighten
their control over areas already under their domination. Where the technol-
ogy favoured defence, political decentralisation followed and, with it, the
dispersal of political power. 17 Thus, offensive nuclear military power
through aerial bombardment by submarine- or ground-launched ballistic
missiles or long-range bombers has created two world superpowers, the
Soviet Union and the United States, each with political, cultural and eco-
nomic influence far beyond their shores.
Ground warfare is about achieving political objectives by military means.
These objectives might be those of expansion or consolidation; the deciding
factor is the military technology available and the quality of the armed
services at the disposal of the state. We now tum to the question of how
ground forces are raised, trained, equipped and used in operations within a
framework of the dialectic of attack and defence in the European theatre
since 1945. The discussion has been limited to this time and place because
they represent the most significant advances in the technology of conven-
tional war and where the most strategic and tactical attention has been
focused. Ground warfare elsewhere in the world is, by and large, a replica
of the European theatre but smaller in scale and technologically retrograde.
It also has to be remembered that ground warfare involving non-European
192 International Security in the Modern World
and non-superpower states is fought with the weapons and, often, the
training received from, the superpowers and their European allies.

GROUND WARFARE SINCE THE SECOND WORLD WAR

(a) Weapons and Equipment

(i) The Development of the tank and armoured fighting vehicles

The most potent item of ground equipment is still the main battle tank. The
tank - once referred to as a 'land ship' - made its first appearance during the
First World War. Slow, cumbersome and mechanically unreliable, it was
used in a limited way to drive holes in enemy barbed-wire defences through
which infantry might pass. Its potential, however, was recognised by such
strategists as 1. F. C. Fuller, particularly for the mobility and firepower
when used in large numbers. His confidence in the dominant contribution
of the tank to ground warfare was confirmed by German Blitzkrieg tactics
in 1939 and in the tank battles in the North African desert, such as Gazala,
and at the battle of Kursk. 18
The design of the tank, and the development of tank tactics, have been a
source of considerable debate over the years. Tradition and context have
had a part in the argument, which essentially is between those who advocate
lightness and mobility at the expense of armour and firepower against those
who feel that mobility is secondary to protection and a large, powerful gun.
Technological developments have tended to iron out these differences at the
margin. Firepower has been significantly enhanced but not specifically by
means of the gun itself; the most important technological developments
have been in the projectiles it fires and the rates of fire and accuracy that
can be achieved. Likewise, developments in armour have afforded greater
protection - as in the case of the 'sandwich' Chobham armour - with no
additional weight penalty, and improved suspension systems have enabled
heavier vehicles to go at faster speeds over rougher terrain. Command and
communications systems, sophisticated logistical support and a high degree
of automation have further enhanced the rapid striking power of massed
tank armies. 19

(ii) The Armoured Personnel Carrier

Although a powerful presence on the battlefield, tanks and armoured vehi-

cles generally cannot operate entirely independently. This was essentially
 Marlin Edmonds 193

the point at issue between Fuller and Liddell Hart, the latter making the case
that tanks have to be used in conjunction with all other arms. To be effective
in taking and securing their objectives, armoured fighting vehicles require
infantry support. To meet this requirement, mechanised infantry units have
been developed. Unglamourous and strictly functional, the infantry ar-
moured personnel carrier has made a significant contribution to the devel-
opment of modem ground warfare. As the battlefield ceased to be a single
location as mobility increased, so the infantry had to have the means to keep
pace with armoured fighting vehicles (cavalry) and be able to move about
the battlefield quickly, safely and in numbers. Trucks and half-tracks were
used in the Second World War for this purpose, but as firepower increased,
the infantry needed more protection. At first obsolete tank-hulls were con-
verted; later, the custom-built personnel carrier with chemical, biological
and nuclear protection capabilities was introduced. 20
As with the tank, there was some dispute over the design and specifica-
tion of the infantry personnel carrier: was it to be a 'battle taxi' with the
primary purpose of ferrying infantry quickly and safely to the battlefield or,
as the Soviet and West Germans believed, should it be a mechanised
infantry combat vehicle, with firepower capabilities of its own? On balance,
the debate has finally been resolved in the latter's favour with the Amer-
icans developing their Bradley APe system, and the British Army follow-
ing suit. The only problem with adding guns, cannon and missiles to
armoured personnel carriers with more and more firepower and anti-tank
missiles is that the principal function of the vehicle, that of bringing infantry
to engage with the enemy, will become a secondary consideration.

(iii) Artillery

Before the introduction of the tank, the weight of firepower in ground

warfare was the province of the artillery. Artillery bombardment reached
its apogee during the First World War when tens of thousands of tons of
shells would be fired on enemy positions prior to an infantry or combined
infantry/tank assault. At the battle of the Somme in 1916, 1738000 shells
preceded the Allied attack; at Ypres in 1917, for 19 uninterrupted days,
the total number of shells fired rose to 4 300 000. 21
The tactic was for artillery to bring indirect fire to bear on the enemy
from static positions well behind the forward edge of the battle area but
within reach of the targetY Distances varied according to the type of gun
and projectile: on average, heavy guns had a range of up to 16000 yards,
and field guns up to 9 000 yards. Their impact depended on their rate of
fire - for example, the German 'Big Bertha', at 75 tons the largest gun in
194 International Security in the Modern World
the First World War, had a crew of 280 and a rate of fire of 10 shells per
hour - and accuracy, for which forward observation posts and airborne
reconnaissance were essential.
As ground warfare became more mobile, the static nature of artillery
became a disadvantage, even a liability. It was not long before artillery
either became self-propelled on their own chassis, or were easily towable
behind tracked or wheeled vehicles. With improvements in the lethality of
projectiles, the heavy gun steadily disappeared from the battlefield, with
greater emphasis placed on the towed field-gun and the self-propelled
howitzer. In the Second World War, artillery pieces became more special-
ised, with anti-aircraft and multiple rocket launchers making their debut.
Another important development was the use of radio to coordinate artillery
fire across a wide front against a single target, thereby increasing firepower
effectiveness.
Today, conventional artillery pieces are lighter, more manoeuvrable,
more accurate and with a wider range of projectiles than ever. Modem
electronics have improved target location, range-finding, computation and
fire control, though the forward observer role continues to be essential.
Less conventional, but still within the definition of artillery, are the multiple
rocket launcher and the mobile, ground-launched tactical guided missile.
The heavy gun has both a conventional long-range bombardment role and
an unconventional nuclear function, to deliver nuclear warheads over en-
emy lines in the immediate theatre of battle. On balance, the Soviet Union
placed greater emphasis on weight of artillery fire than do Western forces,
with artillerymen accounting for 25 per cent of Red Army personnel.

(iv) Anti-tank weapons

As a form of artillery, the anti-tank weapon must be considered one of the

more significant developments that has altered the ecology of the land
battlefield. The early anti-tank weapon was the anti-tank gun; compared
with the speed and firepower of the tank, it had severe limitations. The first
generation of infantry anti-tank weapons,such as the 'bazooka' handheld
rocket and the Projector Infantry Anti-Tank (PlAT), required pin-point
accuracy and nerves of steel - the soldier had to be within 100 yards of his
target for the weapon to have any effect - to disable a tank. 23
The advantage was very much with the tank until the anti-tank guided
missile was introduced in the 1950s. First suggested by the Germans, the
guided anti-tank missile - the SS 10 - was developed by the French.
Guidance of these early missile systems varied and had only a limited
 Marti" Edmonds 195
degree of sucess, largely because the operator had to do several things
simultaneously when lining up the moving target with the missile. Second-
and third-generation anti-tank missiles have reduced the amount of
operator input, to the extent that, once having selected his target, today's
operator can now virtually 'fire-and-forget' .24
The significance of anti-tank missiles is that they are now relatively light
and no longer require heavy and complex guidance systems. The more
complex ones can be mounted on armoured vehicles, light vehicles, and
helicopters, and the lighter ones, such as MILAN, can be carried by infan-
try. Their importance to ground warfare today lies in their ubiquity; they
can be intiOduced anywhere and therefore pose a significant challenge to
the individual main battle-tank. Their impact on a massive, armoured as-
sault, however, is another question altogether.

(v) Infantry small arms

The infantryman might almost have been overlooked while all these com-
plex technological developments that emphasised the mechanisation of
ground warfare and increases in firepower were going on; but this was not
so. Aside from the armoured personnel carrier, infantry weapons have
quietly kept pace technologically. Infantry small arms - the basic rifle -
have become more automatic, and their range and accuracy maintained as
their rate of fire increased. Each soldier is capable of carrying more rounds
as they have been reduced in size and weight. Other weapons have en-
hanced infantry capability, including handheld surface-to-air missiles - for
example, Blowpipe - anti-tank missiles such as MILAN, and field mortars
with a wide range of projectiles. Protection for today's infantrymen has
been improved with bulletproof vests and, in the event of chemical, biologi-
cal and nuclear weapons being used, resistant suits have been developed.

(vi) The helicopter

Today, there is some debate as to whether or not an air force should be a

separate service, since its strategic bombardment role has largely dis-
appeared, and its principal roles are in support of ground forces and navies
on land and at sea. Leaving this contentious suggestion to one side, the
proposition at least puts the role of the helicopter in perspective. Originally,
the helicopter was assigned the roles of casualty evacuation and reconnais-
sance. Its limited payload restricted its use in logistic support until larger,
two-engined types were developed. Early use of helicopters for amphibious
196 International Security in the Modern World
assault was by the French and British during the Suez campaign in 1956.
but it was during the Vietnam War that the use of helicopters for ground
attack came into its own. 25
Technological developments have not merely enhanced the capability of
the helicopter in terms of range. payload. endurance.and speed. but also
enabled it to serve as a platform for more esoteric technologies. such as
electronic warfare systems. anti-tank missiles. rapid small-arms fire. and
reconnaissance techniques. Indeed. the helicopter is proving itself to be the
workhorse of the battlefield. yet with a significant punch in its own right.
Mass use of attack-helicopters armed with missiles. rockets and machine
guns has created what has come to be known as 'airborne cavalry'. The US
Army in Western Germany is equipped and prepared for this role, though
the full potential of the attack-helicopter was first realised by the Soviet
Union in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

(b) Logistics

The technology now available for combat - 'teeth' - ground forces has
increased the requirement for elaborate and effective logistic support. This
goes way beyond the normal necessity for food, fuel and ammunition and
includes the parts and facilities that are needed to maintain the operational
effectiveness of ground weapons on the battlefield. Weapons reliability and
'ruggedisation' can reduce this operational dependency. but modem weap-
ons complexity tends to increase it. As the battlefield becomes more exten-
sive and ground forces more mobile. the ground support units - engineers,
ordnance. electrical and mechanical engineers, transport and construction -
have not only had to become more mobile themselves. but also more
versatile. Whether or not it is more effective to have these facilities avail-
able on the battlefield. or to have the means to withdraw them from the
battlefield and repaired and reconditioned in secure workshops in the
rear continues to be debated.
The same dilemma faces the provision of medical services: whether it is
better to give medical assistance on the battlefield. or provide the means
with which to bring back the wounded - the numbers. as the Falklands and
Iran-Iraq wars demonstrated are likely to be high - for treatment in base
hospitals. Statistics show that more die in war from wounds and infection
than from direct shot; modern weapons and projectile warheads - the anti-
personnel mine/bomb/shell -- will impose heavy casualties. chemical and
nuclear weapons notwithstanding. While modem drugs and anti-biotics
have made a significant contribution to reducing both suffering and loss. the
medical care and support of military personnel is an increasingly important
consideration.
 Martin Edmonds 197

(c) Command and Control

Modem developments in ground warfare have raised one critical problem,

that of the command and control of combat ground forces. The 'stage-
managed' battle, or 'positional' approach to operational planning, a feature
of General Montgomery's approach to ground combat during the Second
World War. is one that has dominated British Army thinking for several
decades. Its advantage was that the command and control of ground forces
would have largely been planned in advance. All combat ground units,
artillery. amlour, and infantry, are instructed in military tactics and specific-
to-arms skills, and should be well prepared to act on command. Then,
given that they will have been briefed on the specific operational plan,
they could be controlled directly from headquarters over radio.
The state of the art in telecommunications and signals has more than kept
up with the manoeuvrability of modem mechanised warfare. and has had
two effects. On the one hand, greater electronic communications capacity
and security has enabled headquarters to keep closer touch with all that is
going on in the battlefield. The danger then becomes more one of informa-
tion overload than insufficiency and the possibility of political interference
in the course of military engagements. On the other hand, improvements
have enabled horizontal as well as vertical communication, thereby permit-
ting greater scope for independent initiative among smaller mobile units.
The •positional , approaches mitigate against this development; but, as
Rommel and Guderian demonstrated in the 1941 Meuse crossing, the abil-
ity to capitalise on advantage can bring disproportionate dividends in battle.
In the exercise of command rather than control (there are those who
think the two contradict each other). a close familiarity with military
doctrine among army commanders used to be required at all levels. The
military doctrine of the German Army in the Second World War and that of
the Soviet Army emphasised manoeuvrability and the rapid deployment of
mechanised forces. What they lacked at the time in communications cap-
ability they made up in training, and instruction in military doctrine and
philosophy. All forces knew what was expected of them and of other
commanders, should they lose communications-contact with their head-
quarters. In other words, there is a contradiction in the terms 'command and
control': either officers on the battlefield exercise command, or they are
controlled. Modem communications systems allow both, but if the potential
of manoeuvre warfare is to be realised, then the less that control is exercised
from the centre and the more that action on the field of battle follows the
principles laid down in military doctrine, the greater likelihood of success.
Whereas the Germans and Russians have adopted this approach for half a
century, it is still a relatively new concept in Britain and the United States.
198 International Security in the Modern World
(d) Organisation and Management

It is one thing to have access to modem technology; it is entirely another to

use that technology effectively in war. By the same token. as history has
repeatedly shown. numbers alone do not assure victory. The repeated suc-
cess of Israel against its foes since independence demonstrates that, while
the quality of weapons and size of annies are important, they are not
necessarily decisive. Many other factors bear on ground warfare, factors to
which, over the centuries, military strategists have given varying degrees of
emphasis. Included among them are training and organisation, morale,
military doctrine and operational art, quality of leadership, and luck. In any
one war, or in anyone engagement on land, no one can guarantee the
outcome except where there is overwhelming weight of force; but as the
Vietnam War revealed, even then one cannot be sure of the final outcome.
That said. certain factors are necessary for there to be a reasonable
chance of victory: of these, organisation and military doctrine and opera-
tional art are the most important. Organisation has two aspects: the first is
the link between the armed forces of a state and its citizenry. In anything
other than a totalitarian dictatorship there has to be a close tie between
the two. If there were no public support for the armed forces or the
roles they fulfil, there would be a disjuncture. The detrimental effect this
would have on armed forces' morale would be serious. In other words,
armies need to know that the actions they take and the engagements they
are involved in have the support and approval of the population at large.
This has something to do with their legitimacy, and the justification of
their use of force in pursuit of political ends.
The second aspect of organisation is the effectiveness of the chain of
command from the state political authority through the senior military
command to the forces on the ground. Modem developments in commun-
ications have improved the physical transmission of information and in-
structions, but it is the source of those instructions that is critical. The
problem is not merely one of effective command; it is also one of commu-
nicating clear instructions to military commanders in the field. Modem
warfare is fluid and situations can change rapidly. Often there is not time
for those on the ground to wait for orders from above. For these (and other)
reasons, such arrangements as 'rules of engagement' and delegated military
authority have to be used. It is essential that the legal basis of these
expedients is well-founded.
The difference in organisational structure and style between one country
and another can be quite marked. For example, the central role of the
political commissar in the Soviet Army and the influence that the Com-
 Marlin Edmonds 199
munist Party has exercised at all levels of operational planning can be seen
in contrast with the chain of command in the United States, where the sole
legal authority is vested in the President, in his constitutional role as
Commander-in-Chief. Only the US Congress can formally authorise a war,
but command authority emanates from the President via the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, to Commanders in the different theatres of the world where US forces
are found. Some presidents have preferred to leave military planning and
operations to their military chiefs; others, like President Carter, were di-
rectly involved in directing operations. Mrs Thatcher, during the Falklands
War, chose the former path, giving her naval and military commanders full
authority to prosecute the war as they saw fit in the light of the circum-
stances on the ground.
The organisational structure of armies has become more complex as war
itself has become more complicated. Today there is the requirement for
close coordination and integration not just between the different specialist
ground combat units but also with air, naval and amphibious support
units. Backing these forces must be massive logistic support which has to
be well aware of all operational plans and the conduct of the battle. In
the opinion of Field Marshal Lord Carver - and he is not alone in this
opinion - the quality of logistic support is the determining factor behind
success or failure in modem battle. 26
In a nutshell, ground war, as with all forms of combat, is a large and
complex management problem in a real-time framework. To make it possi-
ble. all modem armies place heavy stress on officer instruction and training,
clear definition of functional responsibility, a close adherence to procedure,
and a hierarchical system of command. In order to cope with the complexity
of ground warfare the need is for those in command to have a general staff
made up of senior officers experienced in the different aspects of ground
war. It is their responsibility to integrate plans, relate capabilities to opera-
tions and, in combat, advise military and political leaders on tactics.

(e) Military Doctrine and Operational Art

The other critical consideration in ground warfare is military doctrine and

operational art. Simply, these refer to the underlying philosophical prin-
ciples that guide armed forces' behaviour when in battle, and the guidelines
on how ground-force units are to be used. Basically, ground warfare is
about taking and holding land. Military doctrine - a concept that is not
well-developed in the British Army, but is well-understood in Germany and
the Soviet Union - provides forces with a fundamental understanding of
how they are to approach combat. In the absence of specific orders, they
200 International Security in the Modern World

would have a clear idea of what would be expected of them. For example,
each soldier would be familiar with such concepts as surprise, emphasis on
manoeuvre, reliance on logistics, use of mass, all-arms combat, and so on,
and be able to relate these to the situation he faced. At no time was military
doctrine more emphasised than among guerrilla fighters in China, Vietnam
and Cuba where they were invariably cut off from their higher command.
Operational art, or tactics, refers to the conduct of fighting on or near the
battlefield, whereas strategy refers to the conduct of a war as a whole. Ideas
about ground-warfare tactics have changed over time as new technologies
have been introduced. The two factors that have most influenced tactics
have been mobility and firepower. The French Revolutionary War wit-
nessed an emphasis on mobility through the extensive use of light infantry
and skirmishes and a move away from traditional linear formations. The
American Civil War took mobility a stage further, though it also revealed
in the massive firepower that had become available to both sides, the
tactical advantages of static defence tactics supported by efficient logistics
and communications.
The tactics of the First World War were based on static defensive
positions, leading to a situation of stalemate. Even so, by the end, two new
tactical developments began to emerge: the mobile firepower of the tank
and the German Hutier tactic of surprise by infiltrating lightly-armed
mobile stormtroopers behind enemy lines to cause havoc and dislocation.
The tank and fast-moving shock-troops were brought together as a basis
of German Blitzkrieg tactics in the Second World War.
Mobility and firepower continue today as the two dominant factors in
ground-war tactics. Two schools of thought have dominated tactical think-
ing, though each has been influenced as much by economic and political
considerations as purely military. After 1945 the Soviet Army played on its
strength, namely massive mechanised armies moving along a wide front
against the West in much the manner of their defeat of the Wehrmacht. The
Western initial strategic response was that of 'massive retaliation' against
the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons.
When this retaliatory strategy ceased to be credible, it was replaced with
one of Flexible Response - one that allowed a range of military responses
to a Soviet incursion before the West had to resort to nuclear weapons.
However, the West - that is, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)
- was severely constrained by the limited number of ground forces at its
disposal relative to those of the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies. Military
planning was also hampered by the political prerequisite that NATO's
posture was defensive, and battle had to be confined to Central Europe.
The strategy therefore was to hold a Soviet attack sufficiently long for
 Marlin Edmonds 201
reflection by both sides before tactical and strategic nuclear weapons would
be used. Tactically this was to be achieved by concentrating defensive
forces in those places through which Soviet tanks were obliged to go.
Since the 1970s, both sides have changed their military doctrines and
tactics. The Soviet Union resurrected the work on operational art by such
men as Tukhachevsky and drew lessons from their experience of the
Second World War. Instead of the mass two-echelon mechanised attack
supported with chemical and nuclear weapons, that dominated their think-
ing in the 1950s and 1960s, they began to develop and refine the tactical
concept of the Operational Manoeuvre Group (OMG) and all-arms rapid
mobile warfare. This is not unlike the Blitzkrieg concept but considerably
more sophisticated and developed. The tactic is to use highly-mobile, flex-
ible formations to break through Western defences in a concentrated sur-
prise-attack using tanks and mechanised infantry. The momentum of such
an attack along a narrow front would be maintained to penetrate behind
enemy lines in depth. The attacking forces would be supported by airborne
shock -troops parachuted into enemy communications centres and other
militarily critical points, and air support. The shock and dislocation
these rapid thrusts were expected to cause, bearing in mind the shallowness
of NATO defences, was thought to assure victory.
Meanwhile, NATO operational thinking also changed during the early
1980s. A new emphasis was given to mobility and firepower, for which
airpower was considered essential. Mindful that 'forward defence' was a
political prerequisite, since West Germany did not want to be the theatre of
any war in Europe, conventional or nuclear, NATO planners had to focus on
either an impenetrable defensive line, or other ways of blunting a Soviet
attack. The Soviet OMG concept raised problems for the former solution,
even though second-generation modem anti-tank weapons were a help, and
gave some impetus for the alternative tactic, that of 'Follow-on Forces
Attack' (FOFA). The objective was to interdict the supply of reinforce-
ments for any Soviet attack through air and ground attack deep in Eastern
Europe. FOFA was not well-received in Europe, for political reasons: first,
it compromised the principle of no Soviet incursion into West Germany and
second, it was considered to be an 'offensive' posture and therefore pro-
vocative, as was a purely US variant, the' AirLand Battle' doctrine. Euro-
peans, the Germans especially, therefore have been looking for alternative
military doctrines that emphasise non-provocative 'defensive defence',
based on emerging military technologies.
All the above address ground war in Europe. No reference has been
made to unconventional, guerrilla or insurgent war, or wars between Third
World or 'emerging' states. Space does not permit such discussion; suffice
202 International Security in the Modern World
it to say that all ground warfare doctrine, strategy and tactics focus on the
same thing: the taking and holding of land. The principles of concentration
and economy of force, mobility, surprise. command and control. and the
indirect approach are all applicable. Military strategy warfare is about
bringing the enemy to battle on the most advantageous terms; tactics (doc-
trine and operational art) is the ways and means of defeating him. New
weapons will cause military commanders to change their strategies and
tactics in the light of political objectives. Correspondingly the science
of war, and of ground warfare, will change with the times. Nevertheless,
their underlying principles will remain constant.

THE FUTURE OF GROUND WARFARE

ET, or 'emerging technology', is an expression that used to encapsulate

the wide range of new scientific developments that are expected to revolu-
tionise the battlefield of the future. Most of these are based on micro-
electronics and the semi-conductor, and are expected to have an impact on
both military organisations and the sorts of weapons that will be available
to armed forces. As early as 1969, General Westmoreland, then Chief of
Staff of the US Army, envisaged that:

On the battlefield ofthe future, enemy forces will be located, tracked and
targetted almost instantaneously through the use of data links, computer
assisted intelligence evaluation, and automated fire and control. With
first round kill probabilities approaching certainty, and with surveillance
devices that can continually track the enemy, the need for large forces
to fix the opposition physically will be less important. 27

In sum, Westmorland envisaged the automated battlefield. Although he

was somewhat ahead of his time - he thought it would have arrived by 1980
- the picture that he painted is taking shape as weapons, then at the
development stage, begin to enter service.
These new 'emerging technologies' can be grouped into categories: first,
there is the increasing automation of battle. The location of enemy forces
would be automatically identified and located through remotely-piloted
vehicles, satellites or ground sensors. The data would be transmitted to
computers programmed to decide what action should be taken, what weap-
ons should be selected, and direct them to their targets. The effect of
the attack would then be fed back to the computers that would decide the
next course of action. The critical elements in the sequence are the sensitiv-
 Martin Edmonds 203
ity of the sensors, the capacity of the military computers to process the data,
and the reliability of the programmes that are used.
Satellites are already extensively used for reconnaissance and commun-
ications. Remotely-piloted vehicles are less advanced. Sensors are becom-
ing highly-sophisticated, with the ability to pick up light, sound, magnetic,
pressure and heat disturbances generated by enemy forces. The signals
transmission of sensor data using micro-wave devices poses no problems,
except in the event of the electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) of a nuclear
explosion that can render micro-electronic circuits inoperable.
Modem electronics have revolutionised battlefield weapons, giving forces
the capability of 'fire-and-forget'. The majority of these weapons are mis-
siles that can seek out, identify and home in on their target. Sometimes
known as indirect-fire Precision Guided Munitions (PGMs) these weapons,
with their novel guidance systems, will significantly improve hit/kill prob-
abilities. According to some, this will have major impact on military tactics
in that it will give back the initiative to the defence, and make such
offensive tactical doctrines as Blitzkrieg almost impossible. 28 PGMs will
likely diminish the military advantage of concentrations of military force,
with the effect of reducing considerably the size of combat units. In all
probability, in land warfare 'the natural size of many such independently
mobile squads might be three or four men, moving on their feet or in
inexpensive vehicles [rather] than in expensive tanks. 29
However, the history of science in warfare has shown that for every
technological development that has given advantage a counter has been
eventually found. The automated battlefield and the PGM depend on micro-
electronics for their effectiveness; for every electronic measure there is
scope for a counter-measure. In pursuit of this goal, a whole new inventory
of techniques and equipment has been developed. For electronic counter-
measures to be effective, however, it is necessary to have the data on how
the electronics in enemy weapons works, for which a new area of military-
related activity has emerged - that of electronic intelligence, or Elint. This
is an expensive technology, and one which increasingly separates the ad-
vanced technological nations from the rest. The investment, however, is
necessary, for without it neither counter-measures nor counter-counter
measures, can be developed. The overtures between Iraq and the USA after
August 1990 clearly indicated that the technological advantage lay with the
latter. The US forces had the capability not just to eavesdrop on Iraqi
communications or track and target Iraqi forces wherever they were de-
ployed, but also (with Soviet help) to neutralise many of Iraq's weapon
systems. Furthermore, US forces had the capability of striking at Iraqi
forces with pinpoint preciSion.
204 International Security in the Modern World
These are the 'emerging technologies' about which much is already
known. Some have been seen in use, as in the case of the Falklands War and
the US attack on Tripoli. Most are either under development for the US
military, or are already in production.
There are other technologies about which less is publicly known, but
which are already on the horizon. These are the more esoteric discoveries
associated with the American Strategic Defense Initiative Programme (SOl)
that was initiated in 1983 and on which many billions of dollars have
already been spent. The objective then was to develop a space-based system
of locating, identifying, intercepting and then destroying incoming Soviet
ballistic missiles, and involved new technologies associated with laser,
high-power microwave, particle beam, photonics, and pulsed power. That
programme diminished in importance as relations with the Soviet Union
improved, and the costs increased; in recent years the ground-warfare
applications of the research have assumed increasing relevance.
Though originally funded for defensive purposes, these emerging SOI-
based technologies will nonetheless in time make available battlefield-use
of Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs) such as ground-based lasers, pulsed
power weapons, such as the electromagnetic and electrothermal guns,
hypervelocity (advanced kinetic energy) projectiles fired from such devices
as the 9-megajoule rail-gun, and Automatic Target Recognition (ATR),
such as over-the-horizon target acquisition systems. None of these tech-
nologies is advancing in isolation from associated research in semi- and
super-conductivity, sensors, materials and composites. biotechnology, data
fusion technology, computational fluid dynamics, phased arrays (radar),
and photonics (integrated optics).30 The battlefield in twenty years' time
will surely be radically different from that of today, with all the indicators
pointing towards the initiative being with the offensive.
Technology has been the handmaiden of ground warfare. Over the years,
it has given those involved advantage, either in attack or defence. Accord-
ingly, it is a political issue whether or not to capitalise on these advantages.
It is also a political issue how, and with what weapons, wars are fought.
Nuclear weapons have not been used in ground warfare, though plans to do
so have existed. Until recently, states have refrained from using chemical
weapons, and biological agents have yet to be used. Conventional ground
warfare has been constrained in recent decades by the knowledge that
modem weapons are highly destructive and threaten the political ends
for which wars are fought.
Which is a point on which it is perhaps worth ending this discussion
of ground warfare. Man has given himself the option in war of using
nuclear, chemical, biological, 'emerging technology', or space-based weap-
 Martin Edmonds 205
ons; the military power of these weapons may serve to deter others, but if
used will cause massive damage not just to the enemy forces but to the
civil population, and the land on which they live. It was once thought
that the economic cost of war was so great that no political objective would
be commensurate. This proved unfounded. However, the proposition might
be rephrased today, that the physical cost of conventional ground war in
tenns of the damage to the environment would be such that no political
objective would be important enough to contemplate starting it. The same,
however, cannot be said for unconventional war - but that is another story.

NOTES
I. C. von Clausewitz, 'Note on 10 July, 1827', in On War, ed. M. Howard and
P. Paret, Revised edition (Princeton: University Press, 1984), p. 69.
2. H. Eccles, Militaty Concepts and Philosophy (Brunswick: Rutgers Univer-
sity Press, 1965), p. 78.
3. M. McCluhan, War and Peace in the Global Vii/age (London: Touchstone,
1989).
4. Philip Crowl, 'Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Naval Historian', in P. Paret, (ed.),
Makers of Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986),
pp.451-2.
5. W. Seymour, Decisive Factors in 20 Great Battles of the World (London:
Sidgwick & Jackson, 1988), p. 359.
6. S. Andreski, Military Organisation and Society (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1954), p. 7.
7. R. Nisbet, The Social Philosophers (London: Paladin, 1974), pp. 33-5.
8. Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (London:
Macmillan, 1979), Chapter I, esp. pp. ~.
9. J. Shy, 'Jomini' in P. Paret (ed.), op. cit. p. 180; also M. Glover, Walfarefrom
Waterloo to Mons (London: Cassell, 1980), p. 51.
10. M. Howard, 'The Problem of the Offensive', in P. Paret, op. cit., p. 512.
II. M. Glover, op. cit., pp. 119 and 227-8.
12. G. Sheffield, Blitzkrieg and Attrition: land operations in Europe, 1914-1945,
in G. Sheffield and C. Mcinness (eds), Warfare in the 20th Century (London:
Allen & Unwin, 1988), p. 63.
13. R. Simpkin, Deep Battle (London: Brassey's Defence Publishers, 1987),
Chapler 4, pp. 53-77.
14. G. Sheffield, op. cit., p. 66.
15. B. Bond and M. Alexander, 'Liddell Hart and de Gaulle', in P. Paret, op. cit,
pp. 601-2 and 613-14.
16. R. Parkinson, Encyclopedia of Modern War, (London: Routledge, 1977),
p.l04.
17. S. Andreski, op. cil., pp. 75-8.
206 International Security in the Modern World
18. J. Keegan, Face of Battle (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), pp. 290-1.
19. M. Metcalf and M. Edmonds, 'Rationalisation, Standardisation and Inter-
operability and the Main Battle Tank', in M. Edmonds (ed.), International
Arms Procuremem (New York: Pergamon, 1981), pp. 159-60.
20. M. Metcalf, 'Ground Warfare', in M. Clarke (ed.), The Conventional Dimen-
sion of War (ADASS, Deakin University, 1987), p. 49.
21. R. Parkinson, op. cit, pp. 15-16.
22. L. Martin, 'The Techniques of Limited War', in L. Martin (ed.), Arms and
Strategy (New York: McKay, 1973), pp. 73-4.
23. R. Lee, Introduction to Battlefield Technology (London: Brasseys, 1981),
pp. 50-2. Also, R. Parkinson, op. cit., pp. 11-12.
24. R. Parkinson, op. cit., p. 12.
25. L. Martin, op. cit., pp. 75-6.
26. M. Carver, War Since 1945 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980),
p.280.
27. F. Barnaby, 'Battlefield of the Future', in F. Barnaby (ed.), Future War
(London: Michael Joseph, 1984), p. 72.
28. J. Mearsheimer, 'PGMs and Conventional Deterrence', in J. Alford (ed.), The
Impact of New Military Technology (Aldershot: Gower, 1981), p. 102.
29. 1. Digby, 'PGMs', in J. Alford, op. cit., p. 81.
30. US Department of Defense, Critical Technologies Plan, (Washington: DoD,
1989), p. 7.
 11 Seapower
Eric Grove

Seapower can be defined in two ways - one narrow, the other broad.
The narrow definition is military power deployed at or from the sea, and
for the purposes of this chapter, this is the one that will primarily be used.
The broader definition, however, a nation's general capability, both military
and civil, to use the sea for economic and political advantage, cannot be
separated from military seapower. Expressions of that capability are a
nation's fishing fleet, its offshore oil and gas platforms, its shipbuilding
industry and, most of all, its merchant shipping fleet. Merchant ships still
carry by weight the vast bulk of a growing amount of world trade. They
remain a key form of sea use that military navies protect. Alfred Thayer
Mahan, the American naval officer whose century-old writings still form
the basis of modern seapower theory, went so far as to argue that: 'The
necessity of a navy in the restricted sense of the word springs, therefore,
from the existence of a peaceful shipping and disappears with it." Yet in
the modem world the relationship of merchant shipping and state power
has changed. Many ships owned by the nationals of Western capitalist
states no longer fly the flags or are manned by the nationals of those same
states. In an expression of economic liberalism that would have shocked
Adam Smith, many Western merchantmen have been transferred to operat-
ing regimes and foreign flags that mean they are no longer clearly national
assets. This has potentially highly significant implications for the avail-
ability of shipping to protect military power overseas when required and
to sustain sea-dependent nations in crisis and war. It also means that when
Western warships assert the freedom of the seas they sometimes face
problems in defining which ships they may legitimately protect.
Another, more fundamental point made by Mahan has also broken down
the view, based on Britain's experience in the seventeenth, eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, that seapower was the essential foundation of a na-
tion's economic and political great-power position. The twentieth century,
as Professor Paul Kennedy has pointed out, has been the era not of Mahan
but of Halford Mackinder, who wrote in the early years of this century that
the control of large land masses would be the key to great-power status. 2
The world's two greatest navies, the American and the Soviet, are
expressions of power that has its roots elsewhere. Both nations have signi-
ficant sea dependencies, the USA for a significant proportion of its energy

207
208 International Security in the Modern World
supplies and the USSR for food and foreign exchange, but neither depends
on the sea as fundamentally as Britain did at the height of its power. Both
superpowers' major use of the seas is, in fact, as a medium for the applica-
tion of military power for political purposes.
This fundamental geopolitical fact is symbolised by the existence of
large fleets of nuclear-powered, ballistic-missile-firing submarines (SSBNs),
ready at a moment's notice to annihilate the political and economic heart-
land of the other side. These submarines use the sea's unique qualities as a
hiding place to make themselves the most stabilising form of long-range
nuclear striking power. Even smaller sea-dependent Western European
states, like Britain and France, make such units the core of their naval
investment, sometimes at great cost to the rest of their naval capabilities.
For the USSR the only form of positive sea use that is of fundamental
concern to its national security is the ability to deploy SSBNs as a form
of strategic reserve, a final deterrent against all-out Western nuclear attack.
So important is this SSBN fleet that the defence of its operation 'bastions'
has become a primary function of the rest of the Soviet Navy. Tying that
navy down in such protective operations became in tum one of the major
aims of current Western maritime strategy in the 1980s.
The other major war-fighting role of the Soviet Navy is the traditional
one - for the USSR - of defence of the homeland. The development of an
ocean-going fleet to engage in this primary task has reflected the growing
reach of Western maritime bombardment forces. The development of the
latter has, however, also had serious effects on the shape and direction of
Western maritime strategy. It is not too much to say that what has occurred
since 1945 has been a transformation of Western maritime strategy away
from its traditional emphasis on the protection of sea commlJnications (i.e.
shipping) towards the ability to project power against the shore. In tradi-
tional maritime strategy one commanded the sea to influence what went
on ashore; in the 'Maritime Strategy' of the 1980s one threatened the
shore to command the sea. It is worth analysing in some detail the interplay
of theory and practice in this transition as it is fundamental to understand-
ing much modem Western naval strategic and operational doctrine.
The two greatest classical maritime strategists were Mahan in the USA
and Sir Julian Corbett in the United Kingdom.) Both wrote their major
works before the First World War and both emphasised the sea as a medium
of communication. As Mahan put it at the beginning of the first chapter
of his first major book:
The first and most obvious light in which the sea presents itself from the
political and social point of view is that of a great highway; or better,
 Eric Grove 209
perhaps, of a wide common, over which men may pass in all directions,
but on which some well-worn paths show that controlling reasons have
led them to choose certain lines of travel rather than others. These lines
of travel are called trade routes; and the reasons which have determined
them are to be sought in the history of the world. 4
The tendency to speak of 'routes' rather than ships has proved an
unfortunate legacy in many ways as it has led to thinking in terms of 'sea
lines of communications' (SLOCs). Of course, one does not defend the
sea but the ships sailing upon it. Only relatively late did it dawn on Mahan
that the direct defence of shipping through a convoy system had been a
vital component of British seapower in the periods he had studied.' He is
best remembered for his ringing denunciation of the effectiveness of the
guerre de course, the direct attack upon shipping by light naval forces, and
his support for gaining command of the sea through the operations of
main fleets.
It is not the taking of individual ships or convoys, be they few or many,
that strikes down the money power of a nation; it is the possession of that
overbearing power on the sea which drives the enemy's flag from it, or
allows it to appear only as a fugitive; and which by controlling the great
common closes the highways by which commerce moves to and from
the enemy's shores. This overbearing power can only be exercised by
great navies. . . .6
Mahan was writing with the specific propagandist purpose of countering
the traditional 'coastal defence and commerce raiding' school of American
naval strategy, and in favour of a 'great navy' of US battleships. His
doctrine was, indeed, taken up not only in his own country but around
the world. He reasserted the dominance in the early twentieth century of
large, armoured, gun-armed warships grouped in battlefleets as the core
of a nation's seapower and the primary means of maintaining control of
sea communications and denying them to an opponent.
Corbett defined this control of sea communications as 'command of the
sea' which meant 'nothing but the control of maritime communications,
whether for commercial or military purposes. The object of naval warfare',
he went on, 'is the control of communications and not, as in land warfare,
the conquest of territory. The difference is fundamental.'7 Corbett sup-
ported the main fleet concept, although he inveighed against the Mahanian
tendency to insist on its deployment as a concentrated whole at all times.
He pointed, however, to the distinction between the battlefleet, those
forces designed to 'obtain or dispute command of the sea' and those forces
210 International Security in the Modern World
designed • to exercise such control of communications as we have, whether
the complete command has been secured or not'. The only way of securing
command of the sea, Corbett argued, was through a decisive battle with the
enemy's fleet but if the enemy would not come out and fight, blockade
could be resorted to in order to contain the enemy's main naval forces. If
even these operations were impossible, due to an unfavourable balance
of forces, then the battlefleet could be used as a fleet in being, using options
provided by its continued existence to constrain the enemy's options in
the use of his main fleet.
Under cover of the main fleet, subsidiary battle squadrons, cruisers and
flotilla craft 'exercised command', defending shipping from the attacks of
any raiders that managed to escape the battlefleet's blockade, supporting
military expeditions and protecting the warships' owners against invasion if
command of the sea was in dispute. Corbett was far from sound on the
defence of trade, as he fell into the trap of thinking technological develop-
ment had overturned the lessons of history. Unlike Mahan, he felt convoys
had outlived their usefulness and although this may have been true when
the commerce-raiding threat was limited to a few cruisers, the advent of
ocean-going submarines soon altered the situation back to the historical
nonn. Only the belated introduction of convoy in 1917 saved Britain from
defeat by the V-boat.
This is not to say that the events of the First World War undennined
classical naval strategy. Indeed, they vindicated it. The battlefleets of both
sides carried out their functions well. The British Grand Fleet kept the
Gennan High Sea Fleet blockaded in the North Sea and allowed the trade
defence squadrons and flotillas to operate safe from superior forces. The
Gennan High Sea Fleet acted as an effective 'fleet in being', tying down
the Grand Fleet and its escorts and preventing the diversion of destroyers
to the protection of trade, thus delaying the creation of a convoy system
until almost too late.
The Second World War in the Atlantic repeated the lessons of the First.
The battlefleets were now much smaller in size, although individually
rather more powerful. Gennan heavy units, operating individually or in
pairs, were sunk or blockaded while, under cover of the British Home
Fleet, Allied convoy escorts, both sunace and airborne, defeated the Ger-
man submarines in major convoy battles. The latter grew to such a scale
that they became almost parallel fleet actions fought to command the sea:
indeed, the defeat of the Gennan submarines in the crucial convoy actions
of 1943 were some of the decisive battles of the Second World War.
The US Navy played little part in the Atlantic battle during its most
crucial stages and this lack of experience has conditioned the way in which
 Eric Grove 211
its strategic doctrine has evolved postwar. Instead, the main theatre of
American naval operations was the Pacific, where a new kind of battlefleet
made its appearance, based on fast aircraft carriers as the core units. Carrier
forces, of both sides, could strike at ranges of hundreds of miles. They could
wipe out an enemy battlefleet at source to cover a major amphibious
offensive, strike enemy carriers and force the amphibious operations they
were covering to be abandoned, speed across broad areas of uncommanded
sea to support major amphibious landings and defeat the enemy fleet drawn
out to defend the areas thus threatened. With the enemy's carriers and
surface warships smashed as a coherent fighting fleet, US carriers would
then cruise up and down the enemy coast, completing the destruction of
enemy warships, again 'at source', and adding to the weight of strategic air
bombardment.
Submarines also played a key role in the Pacific war. They acted as
supplementary battle forces, scouting for the carrier forces and adding their
weight to attacks on enemy heavy units. More importantly, they carried
out the most successful guerre de course in naval history, cutting off Japan
from her newly-won maritime empire. Japanese trade defence methods
in the Pacific were much less competent than those of the British in the
Atlantic, and even though a belated and halfhearted convoy system was
beginning to mitigate losses before the war's end the experience of the
Pacific war demonstrated yet again the dreadful vulnerability of unescorted
merchantmen to submarine attack.
The Americans, however, misread this lesson. They tcnded to remember
their submarine successes against small escorted groups of vessels and
used these memories to imagine that their boats had been assaulting a
convoy system. They thus soon reverted to the view with which they
had begun the war, that badly-escorted convoys were worse than none.
This disastrous misconception had given the U-boats their 'Second Happy
Time' in American waters in 1942 but the experience was quickly for-
gotten amid confused memories of the apparent successes of 'hunter-killer'
anti-submarine warfare (ASW) forces in the Atlantic in 1943-4. The Japa-
nese submarines, used almost in support of main fleet operations, gave no
valid experience of direct shipping defence against a competent submarine
foe in the Pacific and again seemed to vindicate the viability of 'hunter-
killer' ASW forces.
It was thus hardly surprising that post-1945 the US Navy should empha-
sise the utility of 'offensive' carrier and submarine operations, especially
the former. Carriers could attack enemy forces in their ports and support
operations ashore. The power of carrier-based aircraft was increased still
further, indeed transformed, as nuclear weapons were acquired. It seemed
212 International Security in the Modern World
now, at last, practical to attack enemy submarines in their ports rather
than engage in frustrating and asset-intensive convoy-escort operations.
This was even more so as submarine and weapon development seemed
to make classical convoy tactics obsolete. The Germans had transformed
the conventional submarine by 1945 and the prospect of such U-boats in
Soviet hands necessitated a whole new generation of fast escorts that could
not be built in adequate numbers postwar. Nuclear-propelled submarines
made the situation even worse and the advent of long-range torpedoes and
anti-ship missiles made the tactics of convoy defence seem even more
problematical. The British persevered with the convoy idea as their primary
mission in the postwar period but by the early 1950s were being pulled by
the Americans towards their new thinking.8 In 1952 the NATO Striking
Fleet in the Atlantic became the centrepiece of the Allied naval posture: a
nuclear-armed carrier force. It was intended for early deployment to destroy
enemy naval forces at source and support with its air and amphibious forces
the defenders of NATO's Northern Flank, and even the Central Front. The
US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean did the same on the Southern Flank.
As the USA faced a continental power whose primary strength was on
the land, it was only natural that its naval thinking should elevate this kind
of power-projection to the primary place in the missions of its naval forces:
it would also be the key to commanding the sea. In 1954 Samuel P.
Huntington wrote an important article that encapsulated the new thought.
He considered the defence of shipping against submarine attack
can never become the primary mission of the Navy. For it is a defensive
operation designed to protect the Navy's base, i.e. its control and utilisa-
tion of the sea, and this base is maintained so that the Navy can per-
form its important offensive operations against shore targets .... It is a
secondary mission, the effective performance of which, however, is
essential to the performance of its primary mission. And, indeed,
the successful accomplishment of the primary mission of the Navy - the
maintenance of American power along the littoral - will in itself be
the most important factor in protecting the Navy's base. For holding the
littoral will drastically limit the avenues of access of Soviet submarines
to the high seas.9
In short, projecting power ashore assures command of the sea, undermining
the whole concept of long drawn-out hostilities in which seapower was
most relevant. This increased even further the emphasis on power projec-
tion and away from traditional defence of shipping tasks.
The US carrier force became part of American's strategic arsenal, and
submarine-launched long-range missiles were developed and deployed.
 Eric Grove 213

Other US naval forces began to be diverted to defending the USA from

nuclear torpedo and submarine-launched missile attack. The laying of the
SOSUS (Sound Surveillance System) chain of underwater listening devices
began to give ASW something of the character of anti-air warfare with
nuclear-armed, land-based air and carrier forces being sent to deal with
contacts.
Strategic deterrence and defence were not enough, however. Naval
forces continued to find themselves deployed in a whole range of contin-
gencies short of general war. Navies had been about their traditional peace-
time diplomatic tasks ever since 1945; in the prevailing political climate
these soon became known in Britain as 'Cold War' duties. The Korean War
demonstrated the utility of naval force in warmer, 'limited' contlicts. By the
mid-1950s navies were finding their primary rationale in such roles. This
helped to keep the Royal Navy in general and its carrier force in particular
in being, despite the successive attacks of the 1950s defence reviews which
culminated in 1957. That year's Defence White Paper said that the role of
the Navy in general was 'somewhat uncertain' but that nonetheless there
might be requirement to sustain Atlantic communications in more extended
hostilities should these occur. Most importantly, however, 'on account of its
mobility, the Royal Navy, together with the Royal Marines, provides an-
other effective means of bringing power rapidly to bear in peacetime emer-
gencies or limited hostilities'. to
Major amphibious landings took place at Inchon in 1950 and Suez in
1956, and investment in amphibious forces increased in Western navies.
New techniques of helicopter landing were adopted and by the early 1960s
the Royal Navy was articulating its role wholly in terms of amphibious
assault:
In peacetime the ships of the Royal Navy are stationed all over the world.
But when danger threatens they can be quickly assembled to take their
place with the Army and Royal Air Force in combined operations to
meet the threat. Every ship has her part to play. The commando ships and
assault ships put ashore the spearhead of the landing forces with their
guns, tanks and vehicles.
The aircraft carriers provide reconnaissance and tactical strike ahead
of the landing air defence for the seaborne force; and close support for
the troops ashore - especially when this cannot be done either adequately
or at all by land-based aircraft. Cruisers and escorts reinforce the air and
anti-submarine cover, direct our aircraft and give warning of the en-
emy's and use their guns for bombardment if required. Submarines
provide additional protection against hostile submarines and carry out
214 International Security in the Modern World

reconnaissance and minelaying. The minesweepers clear a way to the

land. II
The 1960s saw Western maritime forces engage in a number of maritime
intervention operations, including the successful British deterrent landing
in Kuwait in 1961. In the late 1960s, however, the emphasis of Western
maritime strategy began to shift back to Europe once more, with the evolu-
tion of the NATO doctrine of Flexible Response and its requirement
for both maritime crisis management and conventional deterrent forces,
especially on the flanks of NATO. This new role helped keep British
maritime power projection capabilities alive following the 1967-68 deci-
sion to withdraw from 'East of Suez' and it led to a number of significant
developments in NATO's Atlantic command, notably the creation of
contingency plans and forces for early crisis-use under Alliance command.
The most important outward and visible sign of this process was the setting-
up of a multinational Standing Naval Force Atlantic (SNFL). If fighting
actually occurred, however, the problem of NATO maritime operations
was planned to be rather like that mapped out in the immediate post-1945
period. Western forces would try to contain and destroy Soviet submarines
as far forward as possible, while strike carriers would support the land
and amphibious operations ashore and defeat the land-based Soviet Naval
Air Force. Defence of shipping would be concerted with an offensive
against Soviet maritime forces. 12
NATO planners assessed that they had sufficient strength in the late
1960s to win a battle for the Northern Flank, but it was less sanguine about
future trends. Indeed, during the 1970s the relative balance of naval power
tilted sharply against the West. Admiral Gorshkhov successfully utilised
both the evolving Western maritime threat and Mr Brezhnev's desire for
warships to argue for, and build up, a much more powerful Soviet navy than
ever before. This was a Soviet navy seen as a national status symbol and as
an instrument of an adventurous foreign policy, capable of operations at
oceanic distances on, below and above the surface of the sea. 13 On the
Western side the US and Allied navies began to suffer from 'block obsoles-
cence' as their stocks of Second World War ships began to wear out and
replacement on a one-to-one basis proved impossible. The British dropped
out of the large strike-carrier role entirely and instead built smaller ASW
carriers operating large helicopters and STOVL (short take-off vertical-
landing) fighters. The Americans drew down their own carrier force and
built large numbers of frigates for 'sea control' operations in the Atlantic.
At the US Naval War College, Admiral Stansfield Turner provided intellec-
tual justification for these changes. Under his auspices the twin concepts of
 Eric Grove 215
sea control and sea denial were developed. 'Sea control' was 'a deliberate
attempt to acknowledge the limitations on ocean control brought about
by the development of the submarine and the airplane'.
The term was 'intended to connote more realistic control in a limited
area and for limited periods of time. It is conceivable today to temporarily
exert air, submarine and surface control in an area while moving ships into
position to project power ashore or to resupply overseas forces. It is no
longer conceivable, except in the most limited sense, to totally control the
seas for one's own use or to totally deny them to an enemy'.'4
Sea denial was the opposite of sea control; the attempt by raiding forces
to interdict the efforts of those actually trying to use the seas for positive
purposes. Sea denial was the modem term for the guerre de course, the
luxury of those who did not need to use the sea, the Germans in the Second
World War, the Soviets in the 1970s. The submarine and aircraft were the
classic sea-denial forces and could not be countered, it seemed, by any kind
of battlefleet action, but only by defensive operations in the vicinity of the
assets at risk. In these circumstances it seemed sensible to revert to a policy
of containment at the Greenland-Iceland-UK 'Gap', backed up by direct
defence of shipping. Operations in the Norwegian Sea, still required to
defend Norway, might only be possible in tension rather than war. NATO's
admirals began to speak of 'pre-inforcement' of the Northern Flank rather
than reinforcement.
The pendulum began to swing back in the late 1970s. NATO's com-
manders began to think that Western maritime strategy was becoming too
reactive and too fixated with the GIUK Gap. Ministers ordered NATO's
maritime commanders to reassess how their forces might be used to support
the broad strategic principles of deterrence, forward defence and flexible
response. The result was NATO's 'Concept of Maritime Operations'
(CONMAROPS), approved in 1981 and twice revised since. CONMAROPS
defined a number of different maritime campaigns throughout the NATO
area; Norwegian Sea, Atlantic Lifelines, Shallow Seas, Mediterranean Life-
lines and Eastern Mediterranean. All were designed to be fought on the
basis of three principles: (I) containment, blockading Warsaw Pact forces
and preventing them deploying into open waters; (2) defence in depth,
putting the enemy at risk wherever he operated; (3) keeping the initiative,
positioning forces early in crisis to make the enemy respond to NATO
moves rather than vice versa. IS
This NATO development implied a considerable re-emphasis on for-
ward operations and it interacted with a complementary American national
effort to redefine their maritime strategy in a more coherent way. Admiral
Thomas Hayward, when Commander-in-Chief in the Pacific, had reasserted
216 International Security in the Modern World
the value of a carrier offensive against the Soviet periphery, and when he
was appointed Chief of Naval Operations in 1978 he tried hard to bring US
strategy back to its old 'offensive' traditions. He created new machinery for
strategic thought, the Strategic Studies Group at the Naval War College,
which worked out that forward deployed carrier and submarine forces
might well contain Soviet forces and keep them away from the SLOCs.
Deploying forward in a crisis would also demonstrate resolve and make
sure forces were in the right place if deterrence failed. 16
This thinking developed elsewhere also, most importantly in the US
Navy's Strategic Concepts Branch in the Pentagon between 1982 and the
1984. The result was a coherent exposition of a national 'Maritime Strat-
egy' for the USA. It was briefed to Congress in 1985 and, finally, rewritten
by officers in the Department of the Chief of Naval Operations, appeared
over the CNO's name, Admiral J. S. Watkins, in a brochure published
with the January 1986 issue of US Naval Institute Proceedings. The 'Mari-
time Strategy' became the basic doctrinal text of the US Navy. It mapped
out the fleet's role in peacetime, crisis and war. Forward operations were
seen as the key to success in all these contexts. In peacetime they demon-
strated US interest and a willingness and capability to stand by allies and
friends. In crisis they enhanced deterrence and helped control escalation.
Finally if, despite everything, war occurred, they allowed the initiative to be
seized and the enemy put on the defensive. This would be done by attacks
on exposed Soviet maritime flanks with carrier battle groups and amphibi-
ous forces, and on Soviet SSBN forces with Western nuclear-powered
attack submarines (SSNs). These would, it was hoped, achieve sufficient
war-termination leverage for the conflict to be concluded on terms favour-
able to the West before the nuclear threshold were crossed.
The emphasis was clearly on offensive operations from 'the battle of the
first salvo' (a term borrowed from Gorshkhov) to favourable 'war termina-
tion'. The latter was to be achieved by horizontal escalation on a global
basis, showing the Soviets that a conflict could be limited in time or space
by threatening to carry out strikes and landings even against the Soviet
homeland and by inflicting attrition on Soviet SSBN forces just at the
moment that US carrier, cruise missile and amphibious forces were being
deployed within striking range of the USSR. Watkins seemed not unduly
worried about the results of these actions:
Some argue that such steps will lead to immediate escalation, but esca-
lation solely as a result of actions at sea seems improbable, given the
Soviet land orientation. Escalation in response to maritime pressure
serves no useful purpose for the Soviets since their reserve forces
 Eric Grove 217
would be degraded and the United States' retaliatory posture enhanced.
Neither we nor the Soviets can rule out the possibility that escalation
will occur, but aggressive use of maritime forces can make escalation a
less attractive option with the passing of every day.17
Understandably, this thinking was not without its critics. These critics
argued that the 'Maritime Strategy' was dangerous in three ways. First, it
put US and allied forces at great risk in areas where the enemy was
strongest. These critics would have had the strong support of Sir Julian
Corbett. He was critical of elevating the maxim of 'seeking out the enemy's
fleet' into an article of faith. He argued that it should be borne in mind:
(I) That if you seek it out with a superior force you will probably find
it in a place where you cannot destroy it except at heavy cost.
(2) That seeing the defensive is the stronger form of war than the
offensive, it is prima facie better strategy to make the enemy come
to you rather than go to him and seek a decision on his own
ground. 18
Corbett was especially scathing about 'the tendency to exalt the offensive
into a fetish', and was impatient with slogans like his own time's 'the
enemy's coast is our true frontier' or the oft-expressed American passion
to go in harm's way. As he said in his lectures: 'You might as well try to
plan a campaign by singing "Rule Britannia"!' 19
Another set of criticisms of the 'Maritime Strategy' rested on different
assumptions - that it might actually work, or at least be perceived as
possibly working by the Soviets. Critics such as John Mearsheimer argued
that a USSR faced with a serious and sudden threat to what it values, or
faced with serious losses to its SSBN forces would find the risks of inaction
outweighing even the risks of escalation.20 An intensive and clearly-stated
offensive threat to the Soviet homeland and strategic reserve, the critics
argued, confronts the Soviets with a highly destablishing dilemma, espe-
cially when the Soviet Navy has a clear predilection for preemptive strikes
with nuclear weapons.
A third problem with the 'Maritime Strategy' and the related NATO
emphasis on forward operations was that it rested on some rather limited
assumptions about what the Soviets would do in crisis and war. This was
not coincidental. Its intellectual origins at the beginning of the 1980s lay in
a reassessment of Soviet maritime strategy, emphasising the latter's ten-
dency to concentrate on defence rather than offence.
The problem was that the Soviets might well have acted in unpredictable
ways. They might ignore the threat of forward deployed, or potentially
218 International Security in the Modern World
forward deployed, forces, and move submarines out into the Atlantic to
divert NATO attention back to reinforcement and supply shipping. There
were echoes of Corbett's remark, 'if you seek out the enemy's fleet without
being certain of getting contact you may merely assist it in evading you,
and enable it to get into position on your own communications, from which
it may be very costly to dislodge it'.21
Much of the criticism of the Western forward maritime strategy was
response to the self-consciously robust form of its articulation. This had
more to do with the US Navy's post-Vietnam and post-Gorshkhov inferior-
ity complex than anything else.
When one examines the way the forward strategy was actually exercised,
one sees a different story. By the mid 1980s, NATO's Atlantic commanders
had worked out operational concepts for implementing the forward strat-
egy that made a great deal of sense in terms of classical maritime theory.
The essence of the forward strategy was not the 'offensive' but the 'initia-
tive', a very different concept. As Corbett put it, 'The offensive must not
be confused with the initiative. It is possible to seize the initiative under
certain conditions, by taking a defensive position from which the enemy
is bound to dislodge us or abandon the operation. '22 This summed up
the forward strategy as actually put into effect. From 1985 onwards the
NATO striking fleet evolved a concept of operation based around insert-
ing carriers into the fiords between 67· and 70·, in particular Vestfiord and
Andfiord. These are not narrow passages but relatively wide stretches
of water with enough room for carrier operations. The advantage is that
the mountainous terrain gives excellent cover against missile attack, and
the difficult water conditions make submarine operations awkward. It was
found that the available ASW assets could be concentrated on a restricted
threat axis across the fiord mouth, making submarine attack doubly diffi-
cult. The vital requirements for fiord operations were effective 'precursor'
operations to neutralise any submarine or mine threats before the carriers
arrived. One advantage here was that one was operating in territorial
waters where weapons could be released against submarine intruders even
in a crisis.
There was an elegant synergy about the fiord variant of the forward
strategy. Land-based air assets linked with carrier-based air to defend
both Northern Norway and the fleet itself. Given Norway's reluctance to
have considerable forces deployed in its territory in peacetime, such
maritime reinforcement, of amphibious as well as air forces, was crucial
to the defence of the northern part of the country. The forward mari-
time presence, however, also created a threat to the Soviet side that the
latter could not ignore. The possibilities of air and missile attack from the
 Eric Grove 219
forward deployed Striking Fleet units, or even some combat surge out
of the fiord if the forces therein were not contained, were hard for the
Soviets to ignore.
They had, therefore, to keep significant forces back to guard against such
a surge even if they did not actually attack the Striking Fleet, something
they would be rather tempted to do. If they did succumb to the temptation,
however, they would be taking on an enemy with all the advantages of
the defender in a protected position.
The Western hope was that the threat of the Striking Fleet's long-range
striking power would force the enemy to come out and give battle. Norman
Friedman called this the 'bait and trap' conceptY It is often argued that the
number of fighters carried by a US carrier (four squadrons to only one
specialist strike squadron) is an index of carrier vulnerability to air-attack.
In fact, the F-14 and F-18 fighters are as offensive in basic orientation as
the A-6s: they are intended to destroy enemy main fleet units.
Soviet land-based maritime strike aircraft are at their most vulnerable in
the air away from their protected bases. Corbett would understand the
optimal combination of the initiative and the defensive form that has been
developed by NATO's maritime commanders in the last few years, even
if he would find some of the rhetoric disappointingly familiar.
The NATO main fleet, deployed in its northern bastions, was thereby
intended to attract the attention and/or destroy a substantial proportion of
the Soviet fleet. Whether it contained or destroyed all of it, however, was
always a very moot point. Never before had main fleet operations to gain
command of the sea been sufficient to protect shipping, even though
they may have been necessary to achieve this object. Some argued that it
was unlikely that they would be so again. However many Soviet submarines
and aircraft were soaked up or held back in dealing with the Striking Fleet,
there would, in all likelihood, be a dangerous threat to be dealt with by
NATO actually in mid-Atlantic. It was more than likely, therefore, that
ships would still have had to be convoyed, even though the escorts
would not be available in the quantities NATO's maritime commanders
would have wished. However, a relatively small number of escorts might
have been enough to deal with whatever threat was left over after enemy
assets had been diverted to deal with forward operations.
There is now less distinction in type between battlefleet units intended
to fight for command of the sea and 'cruisers' designed to exercise com-
mand. Quiet nuclear submarines might be both, as might missile-firing
aircraft. They could not be in two places at once. Only if the shipping plied
unescorted and vulnerable would the forward strategy have failed, as a
relatively small number of hostile platforms would have the same kind
220 International Security in the Modern World
of 'happy time' that a relatively small number of German submarines had
in 1940 and 1942 against unescorted shipping, not convoys.
The reinforcement and resupply shipping was vital to the defence of
Europe. In the last years of the Cold War the six-month NATO rapid
reinforcement plan required over 40 million tons of equipment and fuel to
be moved across the Atlantic to keep the NATO armies operating, a demand
that required over 3000 shiploads. In the first two months of reinforcement
some 800 ships per month had to move from west to east, rather more in
the second month than the first: after that the number of ships came down
to about 350 per month.24 In order to fulfil this demand some 1200 ships
were required, 600 dry cargo ships and tankers from the USA and 600
dry cargo vessels from European NATO.
It was a matter of some concern that numbers of the right kind of ships
available under NATO flags were barely adequate, given the decline in the
mercantile marines of the member states mentioned earlier.2s This is espe-
cially so as demand was going up rather than down as greater emphasis
was put on the conventional aspects of 'Flexible Response' in Europe, and
reductions in stationed forces increased the importance of transatlantic
reinforcement. With so much talk of 'sea lines of communication', it was
all too easy to forget that using them required ships. To solve this problem
a mix of solutions was suggested, ranging from special procedures to
recover nationally-owned ships under foreign flags, the maintenance of
reserves of personnel, and direct government support to maintain 'core'
merchant fleets in national hands.
The end of the Cold War has altered the context of such scenarios, but
merchant shipping would be required in any major war that exceeded a few
days in duration in order to maintain production and minimum living
standards in the Western Alliance. This might require a further 1500 ship-
loads per month carrying about 100 million tons of bulk cargo. 26 Both the
USA and the European countries would require deliveries. Europe's most
crucial need would, however, be for oil. Western Europe is the world's
largest regional importer of oil and oil products and the only domestic
sources of supply are also maritime, the North Sea oil fields whose survival
in any conflict cannot be assured. This dependence on overseas sources
of supply for vital energy also has an effect on the deployment of naval
power in peacetime. The Iran-Iraq War saw Europe for the first time de-
ploy a concerted naval presence 'out of area', operating side by side but
separately from the Americans to maintain the flow of shipping through
the Gulf. Japan, the most sea-dependent country in the world, might
have done the same were she not still denying her now quite respectable
navy the capacity to operate more than a thousand miles from her shores.
 Eric Grove 221
The dependence of Japan and the other industrial countries of the Pacific
rim on both seaborne imports and exports would make a maritime cam-
paign in the Pacific, in some future general war, of even greater potential
significance than that in the Atlantic. The national American 'Maritime
Strategy' was reborn in the Pacific and carrier operations against the more
isolated Soviet bases, including Petropavlosk in the Kamchatcha peninsula,
plus forward submarine operations into the SSBN bastion of the Sea of
Ohkotsk were expected to work the same strategic alchemy that similar
operations in Europe were expected to achieve. Shipping defence opera-
tions would also be necessary, however. Back in Europe, NATO maritime
forces were also deemed essential to maintain communications in the
Mediterranean and prevent amphibious operations in the Black Sea. The
carriers and amphibious assets of the Sixth Fleet traditionally provided,
and still provide, crucial Mediterranean-based power projection facilities,
although these would shore up local weaknesses in vulnerable spots, such
as Thrace, rather than cause serious offensive threats of horizontal escala-
tion. US Mediterranean carrier forces also have business to the east as
well as the north. Maritime power deployed both in the Mediterranean
and the Indian Ocean is vital to inserting and sustaining any significant
US forces in the Middle East, involving both carriers to provide rapidly
deployable air power and amphibious shipping and sealift to bring in
troops and supplies. This was amply demonstrated in Operations Desert
Shield and Desert Storm.
Although hostilities between the USA and USSR now seem much less
likely than they did in the 1980s the continued stability of the nuclear
balance still sustains Norman Friedman's point, articulated late in that
decade. He argued that the USA now found itself,
in a semi-non nuclear world in which the lessons of a pre-nuclear past
may have gained in instructive value. The mere existence of survivable
nuclear weapons is extremely important because it still inhibits the two
superpowers from violent confrontation. However, it is no longer pos-
sible to argue that, should they come to blows their war would end
swiftly as each tried to avoid nuclear escalation. There is no credible
war ending apocalyptic threat. Thus, where NATO has debated whether
to build seven or thirty days' worth of munitions, it seems more realistic
to imagine that should war come it might well last months or, more
probably, years. 27
And the longer the war the greater the relevance of traditional seapower.
Other, more familiar, kinds of limited war, as noted above, have been
endemic since that time, and maritime forces have played key roles in
222 International Security in the Modern World
them. The improvement in East-West relations has removed important
constraints on local conflicts and makes external interventions more likely
also. Even before Desert Storm the US Navy was formulating a new
'Naval Policy' that was less concerned with global forward operations
against the USSR and more orientated towards local power projection
operations. The old priorities of anti-submarine and anti-war warfare
are giving way first to strike warfare; second, forcible entry and third,
evacuation. The extent to which this process is completed depends on the
dynamics of US-Soviet relations in the early 1990s.
Sea power can only be decisive and definitive in certain limited and
local contexts - for example, when the target, as in the Falklands, is an
island. The 1971 Indo-Pakistani War saw intensive fighting at sea but this
had only limited effect on the outcome of the war. In the Gulf, as long as
naval action was limited to Iraq and Iran, its effect was equally marginal.
This seemed to bear out a general rule on the impact of local navies on
local wars, that their effects are limited by the restricted ability of the local
actor to inflict decisive damage, the resilience of the adversary to such
limited pressure and the likelihood of intervention by interested outsiders
whose interests are affected by the maritime dimensions of the conflict.
Once foreign navies appear in strength, however, the situation changes. A
country as economically dependent on seaborne exports as Iran was could
not but be affected by the clear US demonstrations of maritime supremacy
in April 1988. The US Navy was threatening Iran's economic survival.
When coupled with other factors, US naval action probably did affect the
Iranian decision to accept UN Resolution 598 and the end of the conflict.
The Middle East has been the major recent area for the application
of 'gunboat diplomacy', defined by its major contemporary theoretician,
Sir James Cable, as 'the use or threat of limited naval force other than as
an act of war in order to secure advantage or to avert loss, either in the
furtherance of an international dispute or else against foreign nationals
within the territory or the jurisdiction of their own state' .28
Cable divided gunboat diplomacy into four kinds: (i) definitive, the
creation of a fait accompli; (ii) purposeful, to force someone else to do
something or desist or refrain from doing something; (iii) catalytic, placing
forces in an area to take action in an uncertain situation; (iv) expressive,
of attitudes, statements or even emotions. Given the spread of powerful
navies around the globe, the pra,titioners of gunboat diplomacy are widen-
ing. Most notable is India, who is using her increasingly powerful navy
to assert her position as the 'policeman' of the Indian Ocean.
It used to be argued strongly that the march of both technology and
national organisation and the greater regard paid to sovereignty had dimin-
ished the utility of gunboat diplomacy, but as Ken Booth has argued,
 Eric Grove 223
The weak will always look for protection; and the strong will always
look for gain. Interventions will, therefore, continue to take place. But if
they will not be as frequent as in the historic 'age of imperialism'
because of changing cost benefit calculations, they will certainly be
more frequent than was generally assumed during the anti-intervention
mood which characterised Western thinking in the years following
the American tragedy in Vietnam. The continuing 'agony of the small
nations' will provide frequent opportunities in the future for powerful
states to intervene for ambitious purposes, to intervene as a result of
feelings of insecurity, to intervene in response to requests, to intervene
to pre-empt another's intervention and to intervene to maintain the
principle of non intervention. 29
Maritime intervention is one of the classic forms given the sea's utility as a
highway for the deployment of force. The interaction of the sea's ease and
stealth of movement, with its status as an international common, gives it
unique advantages as a medium for the deployment of military power in
situations short of war. Naval forces can be deliberately shown off or kept
out of sight. They can be manoeuvred threateningly or non-threateningly.
They can be sent to cruise in international waters without the commitment
that a deployment of land or land-based air forces would entail. They can
bring discriminate force to bear without the need to negotiate over flying
rights or engage in uneconomic aerial refuellings. Presence can be main-
tained for weeks on end, keeping options open, and forces can be with-
drawn without serious loss of face. Maritime forces also lend themselves
to operations requiring a short time-frame, such as the evacuation of
nationals from dangerous situations.
The ability of small states to protect themselves from intervention has
improved, but should not be overstated. It is true that the advent of the anti-
ship missile has given small states relatively cheap means of dealing with
larger maritime assailants, but the ease with which boats armed with these
missiles were brushed aside by a US carrier battle group off Libya in 1986,
and the way in which missile-equipped fast-attack craft were dealt with by
coalition naval forces during Desert Storm seems to demonstrate that the
threat of the missile-armed small combatant may have been something of a
bluff. The main asset for a smaller state is the mine - the maritime threat
that is most easily ignored, and the more traditional friend of the smaller,
weaker power. Mines caused the Americans serious difficulty during the
Iran-Iraq war and prevented the amphibious component of Desert Storm
being more than a useful bluff. Fields of influence mines covered by gun
and anti-ship missile shore batteries can create formidable obstacles and
greatly complicate the application of outside naval force against the shore.
224 International Security in the Modern World
They can do little, however, to interfere with more distant activities, be
they blockades or threatened air and missile strikes.
A traditional fonn of naval diplomacy is 'showing the flag'. Cable
carefully differentiates this from gunboat diplomacy. 'The expression "show-
ing the flag" is often loosely employed as a synonym for gunboat diplo-
macy. That practice involves the use or threat of limited naval force for
some specific purpose. Even the "expressive" variety when warships are
manoeuvred merely to ventilate emotion is recognisably related to some
specific dispute. "Showing the flag" is a more general reminder to foreign-
ers of the existence of the navy concerned. Any threat of force is seldom
more than remotely explicit. '30 Warships are often excellent ambassadors.
They are, perhaps, more capable of making friends than an armoured
division or even a transient visit by a detachment of aircraft. Impressive,
good-looking, well turned-out warships help maintain national prestige.
They also make excellent platforms for social events. Only the possible
carriage of nuclear weapons undermines this positive ambassadorial role.
This is one of many arguments for the early denuclearisation of navies,
at least as far as weapons designed for use at sea are concerned. It used
to be argued that the sea might be an area especially suited to limited
nuclear engagements, given the lack of collateral damage. Nuclear weapons
also made up for the deficiencies of early postwar anti-air and anti-
submarine equipment. Now, however, their military utility is dubious. Drop-
ping nuclear depth charges in the water damages one's own long-range
sonar capability to an unacceptable degree. Modem conventional weapons
can, in all likelihood, carry out any potential nuclear task. Moreover, they
had better be able to, as early granting of nuclear release at sea is most
unlikely. In contemporary nuclear strategy the role of less-than-strategic
nuclear weapons is not operational use but 'pre-strategic' warning shots.
Anti-submarine warfare is the worst possible environment in which to make
such clear political signals. The French Navy has argued a semi-plausible
case for 'pre-strategic' carrier-based nuclear air strikes on notable surface
combatants but even this seems somewhat extreme, especially given the
unwillingness of France to deploy its carriers forward. Only by threatening
land targets do naval forces offer themselves as useful methods of nuclear
escalation, but even here they face the fundamental drawback of their
very flexibility: they lack the theatre-relevance required to demonstrate
the 'linkage' of events on a particular battlefield to the overall nuclear
balance that is the key to the sub-strategic nuclear role. The logic of
Paul Nitze's reported call for all nuclear weapons except submarine-launched
ballistic missiles to be taken out of warships thus has considerable force.
Most American professional thinkers would agree, although many would
 Eric Grove 225
make an important exception of the nuclear-anned, land-attack sea-launched
cruise missile. Nuclear war at sea is simply not in the interest of the
conventionally superior navy, the American. As one of the pioneering
workers on the 'Maritime Strategy' put it succinctly: 'the use of nuclear
weapons at sea appears to be to our clear disadvantage' .JI
The Americans have unilaterally withdrawn from service three of their
older naval nuclear war-fighting systems. Whether further denuclearisation
will take place in this manner or through some anns control measures
remains to be seen. Anns control in general has only touched navies
indirectly since 1945 (although naval anns control was historically the most
important and successful fonn of anns control previously).
The strategic anns negotiations involve naval long-range land-attack
missile forces, both ballistic and cruise, but the US Navy is most reluctant
to engage in any dialogue with the East concerning general-purpose naval
forces. The Soviets reluctantly acceded to the exclusion of naval forces
from the Conventional Forces in Europe talks but the resulting reassign-
ment of ground forces to the 'coast defence' role created serious difficulties
of ratification in 1991 and threatened to undennine the whole CFE pro-
gramme. Beginning some official dialogue on naval forces seemed essential
if the anns control process between the Soviet Union and the West was to
continue. Such dialogue would probably emphasise confidence-building
rather than structural measures. In the meantime the highly-successful
network of bilateral 'Incidents at Sea' agreements signed between the
USSR and almost all the leading NATO navies help to prevent the naval
confrontation getting out of hand. '2
Navies are no strangers to rules and regulations. Indeed, they often
operate as constabulary forces to police the seas to maintain rights and
responsibilities under international law. The extension of marine exploita-
tion, from fishing to resource extraction, especially that of energy, has led
to important revisions in the law of the sea, notably the creation of 200-mile
exclusive economic zones. Some naval officers worry that these zones
may become areas of 'creeping jurisdiction' , while other analysts see this as
an inevitable process. JJ Whatever the outcome, naval forces of a compara-
tively low level of capability, sometimes separately organised as 'coast
guards', will spend most of their time maintaining law and order in their
national off-shore estate.
Law of the sea disputes might escalate into international maritime con-
flicts. Barry Buzan has provided a basic analytical framework for the
study of these disputes, which might take the fonn of disagreements over
boundaries (notably those caused by islands) or over rights within national
boundaries (e.g. fishing or mineral exploitation), disagreement over
226 International Security in the Modern World
rights in the ocean beyond national jurisdiction or disputes arising from
non-ocean resources but with an oceanic impact, for example, territorial
disputes among coastal states. 34 Such conflicts are usually kept low-key,
but they can interact with other sources of tension and escalate into serious
fighting - for instance, the conflict over the Paracel and Spratley islands
in the South China Sea. Given the need, however, for a local pax to allow
exploitation of the seabed, a risky undertaking at the best of times, the
incentives to peaceful settlement are strong.
Whether international naval peacekeeping action is possible is a contro-
versial point. The West opposed the setting-up of a UN force during the
Iran-Iraq War but the international blockade of Iraq in 1990-91 was a
useful first step in the direction of international naval action. The USSR did
not take part and the forces engaged were able to use basically Western
command and control practices, but more diverse peacekeeping forces
are possibilities for the future. Naval forces lend themselves to multi-
national operations, as the NATO navies have demonstrated. The pos-
sibility of future naval forces flying the UN flag cannot be ruled out,
therefore, although it is not a realistic short-term prospect.
National naval forces will continue to be the main elements of sea-
power for the foreseeable future. Many of them will continue to have
considerable 'reach', i.e. the ability to carry out operations at a distance. 3s
The US Navy will continue to be the world's dominant navy for some
time to come, followed (at some distance) by the Russian Navy, but both
will face problems of resource allocation that will cause their reduction in
size. No other navy currently deserves the title 'major', but Britain and
France both deploy medium navies that are capable of projecting force
on a global scale. Both Japan and China may come into this category in
the twenty-first century.
Currently they are, with India, deploying medium, regional navies, a
status also possessed by Canada, Australia, Argentina and Brazil and the
remaining major Western European naval powers, Italy. the Netherlands,
the German Federal Republic and Spain. All these can deploy force into
adjacent ocean areas, either individually or collectively. The other navies
of the world are more locally-based but some deploy significant power
closer to home and can reach quite far on an occasional basis. 36
Countries will continue to spend considerable amounts of money on
their maritime forces as they will recognise both their interests at sea and
their capacity to use the sea to influence events ashore, both in peace and
war. Some countries may choose to dismantle their maritime capabilities,
in particular their capacity to carry goods at sea, either wilfully or in a fit
 Eric Grove 227
of absence of mind, but others will build them up. Seaborne tranport
will, however, remain a keystone of the world economy just as seaborne
military force projection will remain something that few self-respecting
nations will feel they can do without. There will, therefore, be plenty of
scope for threatening and using force at sea, and seapower will live on
healthily into the next century and beyond.J1

NOTES

I. A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History 1660-1783 (Boston:

Little, Brown and Company, 1890), p. 26.
2. P. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, 2nd edition,
(London: Macmillan, 1983); Chapter 7 is entitled 'Mahan v Mackinder'.
3. For the former see W. E. Livezey, Mahan 011 Sea Power (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, revised edition 1981). For the latter D. M. Schuman,
'Julian S. Corbett: Historian of British Maritime Policy from Drake to Jellicoe'
(London: Royal Historical Society, 1981) and the new edition of Some
Principles of Maritime Strategy, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, and
London: Brassey's, 1988).
4. Mahan, op. cit., p. 25.
5. In Sea Power in Its Relations to the War of 1812 (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1905).
6. Mahan, Influence, p. 138.
7. Corbell, op. cit., pp. 91 and 94.
8. See the author's study of postwar British naval policy, Vanguard to Trident,
(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press and London: Bodley Head, 1987).
9. S. P. Huntington. 'National Policy and the Trans Oceanic Navy', US Naval
Institute Proceedings, May 1954, pp. 488 and 491-2. This is quoted in a
stimulating brief survey of US naval thought 1945-55 by M. A. Palmer,
Origins of the Maritime Strategy: American Naval Strategy in the First
Postwar Decade (Washington: Naval Historical Center, 1988).
10. Defence: Outline of Future Policy (Cmnd 124) quoted Grove, op. cit., p. 203.
II. Statement on the Naval Estimates 1962, Cmnd 1629, para. 2, quoted Grove,
ibid, pp. 252-3.
12. The most easily accessible description of NATO maritime strategy in this
period is J. J. Sckolsky, 'Canada and the Cold War at Sea 1945~8' in
W. A. B. Douglas (ed.), RCN in Transition 19/0-85 (Vancouver: University
of British Columbia Press, 1988).
13. For Gorshkhov's ideas see his two major works, 'Navies in War and Peace',
published as Red SIal' Rising al Sea (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1974)
and The Seapower of the State (London: Pergamon, 1979).
14. S. Turner, 'Missions of the US Navy', Naval War College Review, March-
April 1974.
228 International Security in the Modern World
IS. One of the best descriptions of NATO's current maritime strategy is Vice-
Admiral Sir Geoffrey Dalton, 'Nato's Maritime Strategy' in E. Ellingson
(ed.), NATO and US Maritime Strategy; Diverging Interests or Co-operative
Effort (Oslo: Norwegian Atlantic Committee, 1987), pp. 2~8.
16. An excellent account of the development of the US Maritime Strategy is J. B.
Hattendorf, 'The Evolution of the Maritime Strategy', Naval War College
Review, Summer 1988.
17. Admiral J. D. Watkins, The Maritime Strategy, pp. 11-14.
18. Quotation from 'Strategical Terms and Definitions Used in Lectures on
Naval History' reproduced as an Appendix to the 1988 edition of Some
Principles, pp. 324-5.
19. Lecture notes quoted in my introduction to Some Principles, pp. xxviii-xxix.
20. See, for example, J. J. Mearsheimer, 'A Strategic Misstep: The Maritime
Strategy and Deterrence in Europe', International Security, Vol. II, no. 2,
Fall 1986.
21. 'Notes on Strategy', 1909, Some Principles, p. 344.
22. 'Strategical Terms', ibid., p. 310.
23. N. Friedman, The US Maritime Strategy (London: Jane's, 1988). This is the
best and most intellectually sophisticated exposition of the 'Maritime Strat-
egy' available.
24. Dalton. op. cit., p. 45, and NATO briefing at Northwood Maritime Headquar-
ters.
25. E. J. Grove, The Merchant Fleet and Deterrence (London: British Maritime
Charitable Foundation, 1988).
26. Dalton. ibid., p. 45.
27. Friedman, op. cit., p. 33.
28. Sir James Cable. Gunboat Diplomacy /9/9-79 (London: Macmillan, 1981),
p.39.
29. Ken Booth. Law. Force and Diplomacy at Sea (London: Allen & Unwin,
1985) pp.181-2.
30. Sir James Cable. 'Showing the Flag: Past and Present', Naval Forces. III
1987, p. 38.
31. Quoted in Hattendorf. op. cit.
32. For the best study of naval arms control. see Rear-Admiral J. R. Hill. Naval
Arms Control (London: Routledge. 1989).
33. Booth, op. cit., pp. 44-5.
34. Barry Buzan. A Sea 01 T/'oubles. Adelphi Paper No. 148 (London: Inter-
national Institute for Strategic Studies, 1978).
35. Rear-Admiral 1. R. Hill. Maritime Strategy lor Medium Powers (London:
Croom Helm, 1986). Chapter 10. ,
36. This analysis is loosely based on that in M. A. Morris, Expansion olThird
World Navies (London: Macmillan. 1987).
37. For longer exposition of the author's ideas on seapower and its future see
The Future 01 Sea Power (London: Routledge. 1989).
Index

Aden 29, 159 Alford, J. 206

Adolphus, Gustavus 188 Algeria 29, 159
adversarial partnership 13, 15 alliances 21, 78-89
Aegis air defence system 171-2 ad hoc 85
Afghanistan 9,28,32,47,51,98, burden-sharing 79,87
101, 122, 123, 125-6, 159, and deterrence 80, 82, 83, 84-5,
169-70, 196 87
Africa 14,29,52,90,91, 107, 137 expedients 79
North Africa 192 future of 83-5
southern Africa 30, 100, 102, 127 and technology 85-9
sub-Saharan 92 Allison, G. 131
Afro-Asian states 94 Allison, R. 43, 132
Agreement between the USA and the Alomogordo, New Mexico 26
USSR on Measures to Reduce the Alsace 184, 190
Risk of Outbreak of Nuclear War alternative defence 15
1971 124 American Civil War (1861-65) 20,
Agreement between the USA and 189,200
USSR on the Prevention of Andreski 186, 191,205
Nuclear War, 1973 125 Angola 29, 33, 127, 137
AIDS 106 Antarctic Treaty 1959 42
Airbus 34 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM)
AirLand Battle 20 I (1972) 45-6, 125
Airpower anti-ballistic defence (BMO) 57,
aerial penetration 163 60,62
Afghanistan 169-70 protocol 1974 45
air superiority 157, 161, 173 Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) 211,
air supremacy 157, 164, 165, 168 213,214,218,222,224
Aral>-Israeli conflict 165-9 Anti-tank weapons 194-5
arms control and confidence ANZUS 82
building 172, 174 Arabs 35, 102, 142, 166-9
European theatre 155-65 Aral>-Israeli conflict 165-9
First Gulf War 170-2 Arab League 49, 102
future 176-8 Argentina 11,32,42,63,67,96,97,
Middle East 165-9 104, 106, 133, 183-4,226
nature of 152-5 Arias, O. 112
Second Gulf War 174-5 Armenia 94
AI-Mashat, A. M. 113 Armitage 178
Albania 127 armoured personnel carrier 192-3
Alexander, M. 205 arms control 14,39,61,62,69,73,

229
230 Index
anns control - collti1/ued Battle of the Atlantic 25
75,172-4,225 Bazanov, General P. 164, 178
'build-down' 52 Beirut 141
chemical anns control 48-9 Belgium 21, 29, 30
comparison with disannament Bell, Coral 117,130,131
39-42,49-50 Bennett, A. Leroy 38
definition 40-2 Berlin blockade 27,55, 160
evolution of anns control 49-51 Berlin Wall 120, 122, 159
history of anns control 42-51 Bhogal, P. 112
nuclear anns control 44-8 Bhutan 101
regional 176 Biafra 32
stability as goal 40,41,49,50,52, 'Big Bertha' 194
54,62 Bismarck 79
synthesis of anns control and Black Sea 221
disannament 51-4 Blainey, Geoffrey 122, 131
verification/inspection 47-8, 53 Blair 117, 121-2, 123, 130, 131
anns race(s) 61-2, 78, 98, 101-2, Blitzkrieg 192,200,201,203
105, 125 Bloed Arie 132
artillery 193-4 Blowpipe 195
ASEAN 102 Blue Streak 88
Asia 25,90,91, 110 Boer War 142, 145
Assyrians 187-8 Bokhari 113
Australia 162,226 Bolivia 138
Austria-Hungary 21, 23 Bond, B. 205
Ayoob, M. 99. 102, 112, 113 Booth, Ken 7, 17, 19, Ill, 113, 131,
Azar, E. 113 222-3
Azerbaijan 94 Boulding, Kenneth 8, 18, 130
Bradley APC 193
B-1 bomber 51 Brady plan 107
B-2 173 Brazil 42.95, 96. 104. 107.226
B-29 160-1 Brest-Litovsk 23
B-52 153, 154, 173 Brezhnev, L. 60
Baker, J. 107 Britain 7, 10,24,34,44,45,68,75,
balance of power 4, 21, 39, 40, 41, 79,88, 107, 137, 174, 185, 189,
51,52,72,84,85,214 191,194,195,197,226
delicate balance of terror 63-4 and Falklands 11,32,63,64,67,
deterrent balance 58, 60, 62, 76 133, 183-4, 199
naval 214 and nuclear weapons 44-5, 65-6
Baldwin, David 19 and postwar period 27-30, 158-60
Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) 57, and seapower 207-14
60,62 and World Wars 21,25-6,74,
ballistic missiles 152-3 156-8
ballistic missile technology Battle of Britain 157
transfer 104 SAS 141
ballistic missile dcvelopment - Ulster 16, 141
Third World 104-5 Brooke, Rupert 22
Ballic Republics II, 94 Brown, Neville Ill, 114
Bangladesh 14,97, 105 Bruck, H. W. 18
Barber, N. 151 BruneiILabuan 159
Barnaby. F. 206 Brzoska, M. III
 Index 231
Bull, Hedley 17, 54 Paris, 1990 12S-9, 173
Bulmer-Thomas, V. 112 Confidence and Security Building
Bundy, McGeorge 77 Measures (CSBMs) 15,41-3
Burke, Captain, J. C. 156, 177 (CBMs) 128, 172-4,225
Burton,John 37,38 Vienna document, 1990 128
Bush, George 47, 172 conflict and cooperation 31-8
Buzan, Barry 18, 38,225 conflict and politics 2-3, 115-16,
ISO
Cable, Sir James 222, 224 Conflict Theory 36
Calvert, P. 112 Congo 29,98
Camp David 127 Contras 101, 123
Canada 127, 226 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE)
Caribbean 90 treaty, 1990 II, 15, 17,43,44,
Carr, E. H. 4, 17 12S, 172-3,225
Carter, J., President 199 Coral Sea 25
Carver, Field-Marshal Lord 199,206 Corbell, Sir Julian 208,209-10,217,
Castro, Fidel 137 218,219
Central America 90,98, 100, 152 Cornia, C. 114
CENTO 82, 102 Costa Rica 10 1
Chad 102 counter-insurgency 141-2
Charter of Economic Rights and crisis
Duties of States 94-5 bargaining power 118, 119-20
Chile 97 definition 116-17
China 91, 137,200 type of crisis
China, People's Republic of 26,27, 'adversary crisis' 117
43,44,51,52,92, 102, 109, 14S, 'brinkmanship' 117
150,180,226 'justification of hostilities' 117
Chobham armour 192 'international crisis' 117
Churchill, Winston S 'spinoff' 117
Clarke, M. 206 crisis management 115-30, 117-23,
Clausewitz, Carl von 137, 146, 155, 136
179, ISS-9, 191 'conventions of' 11S-19
Cohen, Bernard 9, 18 crisis 'slide' 131
Cohen, S. 113 'Fad' 120-3
Colburn, F. D. 112 manipulation of risk 118, 146
collective security 75 crisis prevention 15, 115-30
Collins, Michael 139 European development 127-9
command of the air 157,176 norms and rules 126-7
command of the sea 209-10 rise of 123-6
common security 14-15, 19,96, 105, 'regime' 126-7
110 Cross 142, 151
Concept of Maritime Operations Crowl, Philip 205
(CONMAROPS) 215 Cruise missile 69,87
Concorde 34 Cuba 42, 100, 103, 104, 120, 137,
Condor project 96, III 200
Conference on Disarmament in Europe Cuban missile crisis, 1962 28, 32,
(CDE) 1984 128 43,6S, 118-22, 124, 129, 130
Conference on Security and Cyprus 29, 32, 33, 137, 159
Cooperation in Europe Czechoslovakia 23, 27, 28, 55, 83,
(CSCE) I, 75, 127-9 120, 122, 159
232 Index
Dalton, D. 112 Douhet 24
Dawes Plan 1925 24 Drell, S. 77
debt crisis 90,95, 106--8, 110, 123 •dropshot' 71
decolonisation 29 duality of purpose 12, 115, 117-18,
defensive defence 201 127, 129, 180
de Franco, S. 112 Dunkerly, James 112
de Gaulle 60, 189 DUll, S. 112
dependence 6, 37
Desert Shield 221 East Asian Tigers 93
Desert Stonn 221, 222, 223 East of Suez 214
detente 28,50,52, 127 Easton, David 2, 17
deterrence 13,26,28,29,31-2,36, Eccles, H. 205
39,40-1,55-77,86,87,136, ecology 108-9
146, 149, 162, 165, 172, 182, Edmonds, Martin 206
190,205,208,213,214,215,216 Egypt 96, 103, 123, 165-8
and alliances 80, 82, 83, 84-5 Eisenhower, President Dwight 59,
and defence 149 60, 161
beyond the cold war 74-7 Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) 203
British and French 65~ Elint 203
capabilities 60-1,63,67 EI Salvador 100-1
communication 63,64,67,76 EI Sayed Said, M. 113
compellance 71, 76 Emerging Technology (ET) 202-5
core theory 55~2 energy security 5
criticisms 59~ entente 53
credibility and 59~O, 61, 64, 67 Environment 90,95, 106, 108-9,
extended or active 63, 64-5, 75, 110, 123
76,85 EOKA 137
intra-war deterrence 54, 60, 64 Erickson, J. 77
Mutual Assured Destruction Ethiopia 30,91, 105
(MAD) 64,69-70,71,83,88, European Coal and Steel Community
121, 122, 172 (ECSC) 16, 30
non-military 67 European Community (EC) (EEC) 7,
punishment 69-74 16,30,34, 134
purposes and requirements 62~ Exclusive economic zones 225
risk-taking 60,65
Soviet view 71-3 FI-ll 173
Deutsch, Karl 7, 15, 18 F-4 171,219
Diesing, Paul 116, 117, 130, 131 F-14 171
Digby, J. 206 F-15 168, 173
diplomacy of violence 13 F- 15E 154
Directed Energy Weapons F-16 81,89,153,154,168,170,173
(DEW) 204 F-18s 219
disannament 39,40,61 F·1I7s 173
comparisons with anns Falklands 9, 11,32,63,64,67, 106,
control 39-42, 49-50 133,183-4,196,199,204,222
definition 39-40 Fanon, Franz 183
synthesis with anns control 51-4 Far East 65
Doner, I. I, 89 Farley, P. 77
Dossier, P. 113 Fidler 114
 Index 233
Fitzgerald, F. Scott 24 87, 107, 159, 160, 161, 163, 174,
Flexible response 55,56,69,75,86, 184, 193, 194, 196, 197, 199,
147, 172, 2~1, 215, 220 200,201
FLN 142 and seapower 210,212,215,220,
Flowerree, Charles C. 54 226
Foch, Marshal 188 and unification 84
Follow-on Forces Attack and World Wars 21,23, 24, 25~,
(FOFA) 201 55, 156, 157-8, 189-90
Forbes, I. 113 Gibraltar 34
forward defence 64,75,201,215 Girondists 142
Fox, William, T. R. 5,17 Glaser, C. 77
France 7, 10,34,45,79, 137, 156, glasnost 29, 53, 123
171, 189, 190, 194, 195,200 Glover, M. 205
and alliances 79-81, 83 Golan Heights 166, 167
and postwar period 26,29,30 Goldblat, Josef Ill, 131, 132
and seapower 208, 224, 226 Gorbachev, Mikhail 28,29,43,47,
and terrorism 142, 144-5 48,52-3,72,123, 172
and World Wars 21,23,25 Gorshkhov, Admiral 214,216,218
Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) 20 Gotha 156
Franco-Soviet treaty on accidental or Gottfried, K. 117,121-2,123,130,
unauthorised use of nuclear 131
weapons 43 Guadalcanal 25
Frederick the Great 188 Guevara, Che 137, 138, 150
Free South Molucca Movement 142, Gray, Colin 77, 117, 118, 119, 131
144 Great Depression 24
Freedman, L. 77 Great Patriotic War 1941-45 25
Frei, Daniel, L. 131 Greece 27, 32, 142
French Indo-China 29 Greeks 187-8
French independent deterrent 65 Greenland-Iceland-UK 'Gap'
Frey, General 157 (GIUK) 215
Friedman, Norman 219,221 Grey, Lord 10
Fuller, J. F. C. 189, 192. 193 Group of 77 93
Fullerton, J. C. 155 Guatemala 97, 101
Fussell, Paul 38 Guderian, Colonel 189, 190, 197
Guerrilla warfare 136-40, 141,
Gaddis, John Lewis 8, 18,89, 132 169-70,186,200,201
Galtieri, President 106 urban guerrilla warfare 140-1
Galtung, Johan 17, 134, 150 Guernica 25
Gandhi, Rajiv 144 guerre de course 209,211,215
Garnett, John 13, 17, 18 Gulf, Persian 102, 171, 174,220,
Garthoff, R. 77 222
Gatt 134 Gulf Cooperation Council 102
Gazala 192 Gulf crisis and war 9, 16,82,85,
Geddes, Sir Eric 23 105, 115, 116-17, 123, 129-30,
Geneva 49 143, 145, 150, 153, 156, 164,
Geneva Protocol, 1925 48, 181 173, 174-6, 181,222,226
George, A. 77, 117, 130 Gunboat diplomacy 222-3, 224
George, Susan Ill, 114
Germany 29,30,34,36,64,75,76, Hall, David K. 130
234 Index
Hall, J. 112 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF)
Halperin, Morton 41, 54 (1987) 28,40,43-4,47,48,87,
Harh, O. A. G. 113 109, 126
Harrier 182 International Court of Justice 95
Harris, Elisa 54 international law 182-3,225
Hayward, Admiral Thomas 215-16 International Monetary Fund 94, 95,
Heath, E. 50 105, 107, 109
helicopters 195-6 international organisations 33-5
Helsinki 'Final Act', 1975 43, 127 IRA 142, 143
first basket 128 old 138
Henry VIII 185 Iran 99, 102, 104, 105, 170-2,222
Hermann, Charles I 16, 130 Iran-Iraq war 9,32,48, 104, 147,
Herz, John 10, 18 170-2,196,220,222,223,226
Hill 114 Iraq 11,32,48,76,85,95,96, 104,
Hiroshima 8,26, 155, 160, 190 105, 116, 129, 143, ISO, 153,
Hitler, Adolf 24,26,64, 180, 191 156, 164, 168, 169, 170-2, 173,
Hobbes(ian) 3, 4, 5, 8, 17, 78, 94 174-5, 180, 181, 184,203,222,
Hoffman, M. 113 226
Holbraad, C. 1I 1 Islam 37
Holloway, D. 17 Israel 29,76, 102, 103, 104, lOS,
Holsti, O. R. 38 123, 142, 165-9, 175, 198
Honduras 101 I~serson 189
Horn, R. 113 Italy 24, 30, 34, 184, 226
Horn, the 102, 103-4, 138 Iwo Jima 25
'Hot-Line' Agreement, 1963 32,42,
124
Jackson, R. H. 111
Howard, Michael 3, 17, 17, 205
Howlett, Darryl ) 10, 1)) Jaguar 34
Jahn, E. 17
Hufford, L. 112
Jamaica 105
Huhne, W. 114
Japan 24,25-6,30,36,63,91,158,
Hune, S. 113
184,190,211,220-1,226
Hungary 27, 83, 142, 159
Jenkins, Peter 89
Huntington, S. P. 212
Jolly, R. 114
Hurley, A. F. 117
Jomini 188
Hussein, Saddam 174-5
Jones, R. J. Barry 38
HUlie,. tactic 200
Jordan 165-6
Iceland 34
Inchon 213 Kahn, Herman 131
Incidents at Sea agreement 225 Kamchatcha 221
India 32,44,76,92,96 101-2, 104, Kampuchea 98
106, 109, 144,222,226 Kant, Emmanuel 180
Indo-China 159 Kapur, A. 1I2
Indo-Pakistan War 222 Kashmir 101
Indonesia 102 Kaufmann, William 12, 18, 130
interdependence 5,6, 12, 15,24,31, Keegan, J. 206
34, 37, 90, 134 Kellogg-Briand Pact 1925 24
Interim Agreement on Strategic Kende, Istvan 97, 112
Offensive Arms 1972 46 Kennan, G. 17
 Index 235
Kenya 29, 109, 159 Liddell Hart, Captain Basil 189, 193
Keohane, Robert O. 6,17,19, 131 Limited Test Ban Treaty, 1963 44
Kennedy, President John 60, 120 limited war 56,68, 85, 115, 133,
Kennedy, Paul 207 145-50,213,222
Khomeini, Ayatollah 171 and deterrence 56,68, 146, 149
Khrushchev, N. 60,68,72, 161 and policy 149-50
Kidron, M. 97, 112 escalation 146-50
Kim, Sam 38 limitations 148
Kissinger, Henry I, 17, 18,60 limited nuclear war 70, 71
Kitchener, Lord 142 Lincoln, George 10
Knorr, Klaus 19 Liska, G. 78, 89
Korean War 55,56, 145, 147, 148, Little, Richard 17
149-50, 158, 159,213 Locke(ian) 3, 4, 17
Krasner, Stephen D. 131 London, 1991 1
Kuomintang 137 bombings 144
Kurdish question 116 London bombing in First World
Kursk 192 War 156
Kuwait II, 76, 85, 116, 150, 174-5, London Conference on Saving the
180, 181, 184,214 Ozone Layer, 1989 109
London Naval Conference, 1930 24
land warfare 179-206 Lorraine 184
command and control 197 Love, I. L. 1 \0
dialectic of war 184-92 low-intensity warfare 133-6
future of 202-5 Luxembourg 30
future of combined
operations 184-6 MacArthur, General Douglas 149
ground warfare 185, 192-205 Mackinder, Halford 207
logistics 196 Macmillan, H. 60
military doctrine and operational Macpherson, C. B. 17
art 199-202 Maginot Line 189-90
organisation and Mahan, Admiral 185.207,208-9,
management 198-9 210
politics and war 179-81 Makeig, D. 112
primacy of war 181-4 Malaya 29.30, 159
weapons and equipment 192-6 the Emergency 141
Latin America 33,42,90,91,92,94, Maldives 10 I, \08
98, 110, 137, 138 Malvinas see Falklands
law of the sea 93 Mandelbaum, M. 77
Lawrence, T. E. 137, 139 Mangold, Peter 13, 19
League of Nations 22, 23, 24, 32, 96 manipulation of risk 118
Lebanon 168. 169 Mann. M. 112
Lebow, Richard Ned 117, 123, 131 Mansingh. S. 112
Lee, R. 206 Mao Tse-Tung 137, 138, 150
Leebart, D. 77 maritime strategy 208,216-19,221.
Lemaitre, P. 17 225
Lenin, V. I. 6.24, 137, 189 Marlborough. Duke of 188
Leonard, James 54 Marshall, Aid 27
Lever, H. 114 Martin, L. 77, 206
Libya 223 Marx, Karl 6
236 Index
Mason, T. D. 112, 178 Musail, Alexander 178
massive retaliation 55, 56, 86, Mutual and Balanced Force
146-7, 200 Reductions (MBFR) (1973-89),
Mayne, Richard 18 43-4
McGall, G. 110 MX missile 51,71
Mcinnes, C. 205 Myanmar (Burma) 79
McNamara, Robert 69,77 Myers, N. 114
Me-109s 173 Mylae 185
Mearsheimer, John J. 7,8, 18,89,
206,217 Nagasaki 8,26, ISS, 160, 190
Memorandum of Understanding Napoleonic 57, 155, 188, 191,200
between USA and the USSR Napoleon Bonaparte 188
Regarding the Establishment of a Nasser 165
Direct Communications Link nationalism 20, 23
1963 124 nature of power and security 13, 14
Metcalf, M. 206 Navias, M. III
Meuse River 197 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact,
Mexico 107 1939 25
Middle East 9, 23, 32, 35, 52, 62, 83, Nazi 180
90, 100, 102, lOS, 120, 122, 123, Nepal 101
127, 137, 138, 158, 165, 174, Netherlands 29,30,226
187,221,222 Neuhold, Hanspeter 124, 131
June 1967 War 166 neutrality 78
October War 166-8 'new cold war' 28
Midway Island 25 Nicaragua 95, 100, 101, 123
MiG 21 171 Nigeria 29, 32, 98
Milan 195 Nisbet, R. 205
military incidents at sea agreement, Nitze, Paul 224
1972 43 Nixon, R. 60
military-industrial complex 62 non-alignment 101, 104
Millar, T. B. III non-aligned movement 93, 104
Miller, J. D. B. 17 Noel-Baker, P. 18
'missile gap' 58 Non-Proliferation Treaty 1968 44,
Missile Technology Control 50,96
Regime 95-6 horizontal 45, 49, 103-4
Mitchell, Billy 24 proliferation 62, tl2
Moi, President 109 vertical 45
MOnlgomery, Field-Marshal Bernard non-provocative defence 15
L. 197 non-violent contlict 2
Montreal Protocol, 1987 108 North 93,95,103,104,107,109,
Moon, Chung-in 113 110,134
Morgenthau, Hans 4, 17 North Africa 192
Morocco 107 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
Morse, Edward 38 (NATO) 1,27,34,49,50,51,
Mozambique 29 52,53,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,
mujaheddin 169-70 86,87,200-1,212
Mullins 98, 111, 112 aircraft 154
Muni, s. D. 102, 1l0, 1l2, 113 airpower 158,159,161,165,172,
Munich, 1938 157 173, 174
Murachevik,1. 112 burden-sharing 79, 87
 Index 237
North Atlantic Treaty - continued Paracel Island 226
deterrence 55,56,57,64,71, Paret, P. 205
73-4, 7'5, 76 Parkinson. R. 205, 206
fleet 212 Payne, K. 77
flex ible response 51, 56, 86, 200, PD-59 71
214 peace researchers 36
Lisbon Goals 159 peaceful coexistence 68, 99
London Declaration I, 82 Pearl Harbor, 1941 25,73, 157
massive retaliation 86 Peloponnesian War 68, 78
Nuclear Planning Group 86 perceptions 9-11, 13, 84, 115, 120,
rapid reinforcement 220 157
sea power 214,215,217,218,219, Pershing, General 87
220,221,225,226 perestroika 29, 123
North Korea 150 pessimism 7-9
Northern Ireland 32, 141, 143-4 Petain, Marshal 189
Norway 161,215,218 Petropavolsk 221
Norwegian Sea 215 Poland 23,25, 163, 180, 184, 190
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Polaris 40-1. 67
Regime 104 Porczecanski, A. C. 150
non-proliferation 95-6, 103-4, 112 Portugal 29, 30
Nuclear Risk Reduction Centres 126 Powers, Gary 161, 166
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty 28 Precision Guided Missiles
Nuremburg 180 (PGMs) 202-3
Nye, Joseph 2,6, 17, 19.89, 131 Prevention of Incidents on the High
Seas, 1972 125
Ohlson, T. III Projector Infantry Anti-Tank
Okinawa 25 (PlAT) 194
OPEC 93, 105 Prussia 21
Operational Manoeuvre Groups Pu, Liu Ming 109
(OMGs) 189,201
Ophelimities 18~7 Rahman 113
Optimism 7-9 Rationalists 4, 23
Organisation of African Unity Ray, A. K. III, 113
(OAU) 102 Reagan, Ronald 28,47,50,57,60,
Organisation for Economic 62,88, 172
Cooperation and Development realist 3, 4, 93, 109
(OECD) 34 •doctrinal' realists 5
Osgood, Robert 18 •empirical' realists 5
Outer Space Treaty 1967 42 new realism 5
Owen, Wilfred 22 Reiss, Mitchell 126, 131
ozone layer 108-9 revolution of rising expectations 135
Reykjavik, 1986 47
Paarlberg 113 Reynolds, Philip 2-3, 17
Pacific 90, 211 Romania 91
Pakistan 32,76,92, 101-2, 103, 106, Romans 187-8
161, 170,222 Rommel, Field Marshal Erwin 190,
Palestinian Liberation Organisation 197
(PLO) 142, 144-5, 168 Rosberg, C. G. III
Palestinians 35, 145, 168 Rotterdam 157
Palme Commission 15, 19 Royal Air Force 68, 156, 162,213
238 Index
Royal Marines 141, 213 Singer, J. David 10, 18
Royal Navy 68, 183, 213 Singham, S. W. 113
Russell, S. K. 112 Siessor, Sir John 146, 151
Russia 21,23,79 Sluys 185
Russo-Japanese War 189 Smith, Adam 207
Smith, G. 77
Saar 184 Smith, Michael 17
Salamis 185 Smoke, R. 77
Salazar 29 Snyder, Glenn 116, 117, 130, 131
Salmon, Trevor 131 Snyder, Richard 18
Sandinista 10 1 Somalia 94
Sapin, Burton 18 Somme, 1916 193
Sarajevo 123 Sopiee, Noordin 113
Saravanamuttu, P. 93, 110, Ill, 112, Sound Surveillance System
113 (SOSUS) 213
Sassoon, Siegfried 22 South 91,95, 103, 104, 107, 110,
Saudi Arabia 173, 174-5 134
Schelling, Thomas C. 13, 18,41,49, South Africa 134, 137, 142
54, 116, 118, 119, 130, 131 South Asia 100, 101, 102, 112
Schmidt 60 South Asian Association for Regional
Schuman, Robert 18 Cooperation (SAARC) 102
Scuds 169, 175 South East Asia 52, 100, 102, 158,
Seabed Treaty, 1971 42 159, 168
sea lines of communication South Korea 30, 150
(SLOCs) 209,213,216,220 Soviet Union 11,24,25,26,27,28,
Sea of Ohkotsk 221 29,30,31,32,33,80,82,83,86,
seapower 184-5,207-28 87, 136, 138, 142, 146, 149
sea control 215 and anns control 41,43,44,45,
sea denial 215 46,47,48,51,52,53
SEATO 102 and airpower 152, 153, 154, 156,
'Second' Cold War 1979-86 43, 126 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162,
security community 7, 15 164, 167, 169-70, 172, 173,
security dilemma vii, 10, 14, 40, 115 174
security and development 105-6 and crisis managemenl/
Segal, R. 97, 112 prevention 120, 121, 122,
Seth, S. P. 113 123, 125, 126, 127, 129
Seymour, W. 205 and deterrence 55,58-9,60,61,
Shah of Iran 171 63,65,66,68,69,70,71-3,
Shauman, T. 112 74, 76
Sheehan, Michael 54 and landpower 189, 190, 191, 193,
Sheffield, G. 205 194, 196, 197, 198-9,200-1,
Sheik, A. 113 203,204
Shinto 37 and seapower 207-8,212,214,
showing the flag 224 215,216,217,218-19,220,
Shy, J. 205 221,222,225,226
Simons, William 130 and Third World 91,94,98,99,
Simpkin, R. 205 100, WI, 103, 104, lOS, 109,
Simpson, J. lll, 113 115
Sinai 166 Spain 25,34,226
Singapore 30 Spanish Civil War 25
 Index 239
Spanier, John 17,77 global challenges 100-1
Spector, Leonard III global perspective 103-5
spheres of influence 83 intra-state problems 92, 96-9
Sprailey Island 226 regional challenges 99-103
Sputnik 58,86, 146 security in Third World 90-114
Sri Lanka 29, 32, 101 Thomas, Alan 110
Stalin, J. 24,68, 161, 189 Thomas, Caroline 5, 16, 19, 110-11,
Standing Consultative 112-13
Commission 125 Thomas, Raju 113
Standing Naval Force Atlantic Thompson, R. G. 151
(SNFL) 214 Thorton, T. B. 113
Stealth bomber 154 Thrace 221
Stewart, F. 114 threats 9-11, 32
Stinger missile 170 Threshold Test Ban Treaty, 1974 44
Stockholm, 1986 43-4, 48, 53 Thucydides 68, 78
1984 128 Tibet 180, 184
STOVL (short take-off vertical- Tito 137
landing) 214 Tlatelolco, treaty of, 1967 42
Strange, S. III Tornado 34, 153, 154
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Trenchard Air Marshal 24
(SALT) 28,32,45-6,47,50, Triandafillov 189
71, 125 Trident 5 I, 66, 70, 71
SALT I (1972) 28,45-6,51,125 Tripoli 204
SALT II (1979) 28,39,45-7,51, Tu-22 Backfire 154, 173
125 TU-I60 Blackjack 173
SALT III 47 Tuchman, Barbara 205
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Tucker, R. E. 18
1972 125 Tukhachevsky, Mikhail 189,201
Interim Agreement on Strategic Tupermaros 137, 141
Offensive Arms 1972 46, 125 Turkey 23, 161
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty Tumer, Admiral Stansfield 214
(START) 47 Tuwaitha nuclear facility 168
Strategic Defense Initiative 14, 57,
60,62,69,77,88,172,204 U-2 161
structuralism 5, 6 U-boat 210,211,212
sub-Saharan Africa 92 USS STark 171
submarines 211-13 USS Vincennes 171-2
Sudan 30, \07 Uganda 29, 98
Suez 80, 158, 159, 167, 195,213 Ulster 16
Super Etendard 171 UNCTAD 93, 96
Switzerland 190 Union of European Football
Syria 165-6, 167, 168 Associations (UEFA) 34
UNITA 137
Taber, R. 150 United Nations II, 27, 29, 32, 80,
tanks 192, 200 99, 116, 143, 148, 149-50, 156,
terrorism 33, 142-5, 152 164,174-5,226
Thatcher, Margaret 199 Economic and Social Council 27
Third World 90-114,134,176-7, General Assembly 27
201 Security Council 27
definition of 90-6 Trusteeship 27
240 Index
United Nations - continued of the Ozone Layer, 1985 108
United Nations Committee on Vienna document, 1990 128
Disarmament (Geneva) Viet Cong 32, 170
(1968) 48 Vietnam 28, 32, 92, 98, 103, 106,
United Nations Declaration on 123, 138, 169, 170, 182, 184,
Human Rights 180 196, 198,200,218.223
United States 22,23,24,25-6,27, Vladivostok Accord, 1974 131
28,30,32,33.36.91.98. 100. von Richtofen 162
101. 102, 103, 104, 105, 106,
107, 109, lIS, 136, 138, 142. Wade, R. 111
143, 146, 149, 150, 182, 184, Wallerstein, Immanuel 17.38
190,191, 193, 197, 199,201. Wall Street 24
202,203,204 Warsaw 157
and airpower 152, 153, 157, 159, Warsaw Treaty Organisation (WTO)
167, 169-70, 171, 173, 174 (1955) I, 27, 43, 49, 50, 52, 56,
and alliances 80,81,82,83,85, 75,76,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,
86,87 87,123,159,162-5,172-3,174,
and arms control 40-1,44,45,46, 200,215
47.50,51,53 Washington Naval Treaty 1922 24
and crisis management/ Watkins, Admiral, 1. S. 126-7
prevention 118, 119, 120, Weaver, D. 17
121, 122, 123, 126, 127, Weh,.macht 184, 190,200
129-30 Wells, H. G. 24, 153, 154
and deterrence 55, 57, 58-9, 60, West Africa 107
63,64-5.68,69,70,71,72, West Bank 166
73, 74. 75, 76 Western Sahara 102
and seapower 207,209,210-11, Westmoreland, General 202
212-13,214,217,220,221, White, G. III
222,223,225 Whitehead, L. 112
US Anny Air Corps Tactical Williams, Marc 103, 112
School 156 Williams, P. 113, 131
US Commander-in-Chief 199 Wilson, A. J. 112
US Congress 199,216 Wilson, Woodrow 22
US Joint Chiefs of Staff 159-60, 199 Wohlstetter, A. 77, 121. 131
US Naval War College 214,216 Wohlstetter, R. 121, 131
US Navy 171 Wolf-Phillips, L. 110
US President 199 Wolfe, T. W. 77
US Sixth Fleet 212,221 Wolfers, Arnold 13, 19
US Strategic Air Command 173 World Bank 92
US-Soviet Treaty on measures to World Order Models Project 37,38
reduce the risk of outbreak of World War, First 4. 10.21-3.24.31.
nuclear war, 1971 43 34,57, 118, 121, 123, 137, 156,
Uruguay 137, 141 162, 184, 189, 192, 193-4,200,
utility of military power 11-13 208,2\0
Utopian 3,4 World War, Second 22,23,25-6,55,
57. 74,79, 103, 133, 157, 158,
Venetians 185 160, 162, 167, 168, 172, 180.
Venezuela 107 182,184,189,190,193,194,
Vienna Convention for the Protection 197,200,201,210
 Index 241
Worsley, P. 110 Young, Oran 116, 130
Wright 114 Ypres,1917 193
Wright brothers 22, 153, 155 Yugoslavia 23, 137
Wright, Quincy 17
Zaire 106
Yalu River 148 Zuberi, M. 113