Coupling Capabilities to Objectives: Relinquishing the Initiative
Often we must maneuver into a position where we no longer have much choice left.
Often we must maneuver into a position where we no longer have much choice left.
Schelling - The Art of Commitment
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No one seems to doubt that federal troops are available to de- fend California.
I have, however, heard Frenchmen doubt whether American troops can be counted on to defend France, or American missiles to blast Russia in case France is attacked.
It hardly seems necessary to tell the Russians that we should fight them if they attack us. But we go to great lengths to tell the Russians that they will have America to contend with if they or theirsatellitesattackcountriesassociatedwithus. Sayingso, unfortunately, does not make it true; and if it is true, saying so doesnotalwaysmakeitbelieved. Weevidentlydonotwant war and would only fight if we had to. The problem is to demon- strate that we would have to.
It is a tradition in military planning to attend to an enemy's capabilities, not his intentions. But deterrence is about inten- tions- not just estimating enemy intentions but influencing them. The hardest part is communicating our own intentions. War at best is ugly, costly, and dangerous, and at worst disas- trous. Nations have been known to bluff; they have also been known to make threats sincerely and change their minds when the chips were down. Many territories arejust not worth a war, especially a war that can get out of hand. A persuasive threat of war may deter an aggressor; the problem is to make it persua- sive, to keep it from sounding like a bluff.
Military forces are commonly expected to defend their home- lands, even to die gloriously in a futile effort at defense. When Churchill said that the British would fight on the beaches no- body supposed that he had sat up all night running once more
through the calculations to make sure that that was the right
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policy. Declaring war against Germany for the attack on Po- land, though, was a different kind of decision, not a simple re- flexbutamatter of "policy. " Some threats are inherently persua- sive, some have to be made persuasive, and some are bound to look like bluffs.
This chapter is about the threats that are hard to make, the ones that are not inherently so credible that they can be taken for granted, the ones that commit a country to an action that it might in somebody's judgment prefer not to take. A good start- ing point is the national boundary. As a tentative approxima- tion-a very tentative one-the difference between the national homeland and everything "abroad" is the difference between threats that are inherently credible, even if unspoken, and the threats that have to be made credible. To project the shadow of one's military force over other countries and territo- ries is an act of diplomacy. Tofight abroad is a military act, but to persuade enemies or allies that one would fight abroad, under circumstances of great cost and risk, requires more than a military capability. It requires projecting intentions. It requires having those intentions, even deliberately acquiring them, and communicating them persuasively to make other countries be- have.
Credibility andRutionulity
It is a paradox of deterrence that in threatening to hurt some- body if he misbehaves, it need not make a critical difference how much it would hurt you too-ifyou can make him believe the threat. People walk against traffic lights on busy streets, de- terring trucks by walking in front of them.
The principle applied in Hungary in 1956. The West was deterred by fear of the consequences from entering into what might have been a legitimate altercation with the Soviet Union on the proper status of Hungary. The West was deterred not in the belief that the Soviet Union was stronger than the West or that a war, if it ensued, would hurt the West more than the Soviet bloc. The West was deterred because the Soviet Union was strong enough, and likely enough to react militarily, to make
Hungary seem not worth the risk, no matter who might get hurt worse.
Another paradox of deterrence is that it does not always help to be, or to be believed to be, fully rational, cool-headed, and in control of oneself or of one's country. One of Joseph Conrad's books, The Secret Agent, concerns a group of anarchists in London who were trying to destroy bourgeois society. One of theirtechniques was bomb explosions;Greenwich Observatory was the objective in this book. They got their nitroglycerin from a stunted little chemist. The authorities knew where they got their stuff and who made it for them. But this little purveyor of nitroglycerin walked safely past the London police. A young man who was tied in with the job at Greenwich asked him why the police did not capture him. His answer was that they would not shoot him from a distance-that would be a denial of bour- geois morality, and serve the anarchists' cause-and they dared not capture him physically because he always kept some "stuff" on his person. He kept a hand in his pocket, he said, holding a ball at the end of a tube that reached a container of nitro- glycerin in his jacket pocket. All he had to do was to press that little ball and anybody within his immediate neighborhood would be blown to bits with him. His young companion won- dered why the police would believe anything so preposterous as that the chemist would actually blow himself up. The little man's explanation was calm. "In the last instance it is character alone that makes for one's safety . . . I have the means to make myself deadly, but that by itself, you understand, is absolutely nothing in the way of protection. What is effective is the belief those people have in my will to use the means. That's their impression. It is absolute. Therefore I am deadly. " '
We can call him a fanatic, or a faker, or a shrewd diplomatist; but it was worth something to him to have it believed that he would do it, preposterous or not. I have been told that in mental institutions there are inmates who are either very crazy or very wise, or both, who make clear to the attendants that
1. Joseph Conrad. The Secr. erA,genr (New York. Doubleday, Page and Company, 1923). pp. 65-68.
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they may slit their own veins or light their clothes on fire if they don't have their way. I understand that they sometimes have their way.
Recall the trouble we had persuading Mossadegh in the early 1950sthat he might do his country irreparable damage if he did not become more reasonable with respect to his country and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Threats did not get through to
him very well. He wore pajamas, and, according to reports, he wept. And when British or American diplomats tried to explain what would happen to his country if he continued to be obsti- nate, and why the West would not bail him out of his difficul- ties, it was apparently uncertain whether he even compre- hended what was being said to him. It must have been a little like trying to persuade a new puppy that you will beat him to death if he wets on the floor. If he cannot hear you, or cannot understand you, or cannot control himself, the threat cannot work and you very likely will not even make it.
Sometimes we can get a little credit for not having everything quite under control, for being a little impulsive or unreliable. Teaming up with an impulsive ally may do it. There have been serioussuggestionsthatnuclearweaponsshouldbeputdirectly at the disposal of German troops, on the grounds that the Ger- mans would be less reluctant to use them- and that Soviet lead- ers know they would be less reluctant- than their American colleagues in the early stages of war or ambiguous aggression. And in part, the motive behind the proposals that authority to use nuclear weapons be delegated in peacetime to theater com- manders or even lower levels of command, as in the presidential campaign of 1964,is to substitute military boldness for civilian hesitancy in a crisis or at least to make it look that way to the enemy. Sending a high-ranking military officer to Berlin, Que- moy, or Saigon in a crisis carries a suggestion that authority has been delegated to someone beyond the reach of political inhibi- tion and bureaucratic delays, or even of presidential responsi- bility,Someonewhosepersonalreactionswillbeinaboldmilitary tradition. The intense dissatisfaction of many senators with President Kennedy's restraint over Cuba in early 1962, and
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with the way matters were left at the close of the crisis in that November, though in many ways an embarrassment to the Pres- ident, may nevertheless have helped to convey to the Cubans and to the Soviets that, however peaceable the President might want to be, there were political limits to his patience.
A vivid exhibition of national impulsiveness at the highest level of government was described by Averell Harriman in his account of a meeting with Khrushchev in 1959. "Your gener- als," said Khrushchev, "talk of maintaining your position in Berlin with force. That is bluff. " With what Harriman describes as angry emphasis, Khrushchev went on, "If you send in tanks, they will burn and make no mistake about it. If you want war, you can have it, but remember it will be your war. Our rockets will fly automatically. " At this point, according to Harriman, Khrushchev's colleagues around the table chorused the word "automatically. " The title of Harriman's article in Life maga- zine was, "My Alarming Interview with Khrushchev. "z The premier's later desk-thumping with a shoe in the hall of the General Assembly was pictorial evidence that high-ranking Russians know how to put on a performance.
GeneralPierreGallois,anoutstandingFrenchcriticofAmeri-
can military policy, has credited Khrushchev with a "shrewd understanding of the politics of deterrence," evidenced by this "irrational outburst" in the presence of Secretary H a ~ ~ i r n a n . ~ Gallois "hardly sees Moscow launching its atomic missiles at Washington because of Berlin" (especially, I suppose, since Khrushchev may not have had any at the time), but apparently thinks nevertheless that the United States ought to appreciate,
as Khrushchev did, the need for a kind of irrational automaticity and a commitment to blind and total retaliation.
Even granting, however, that somebody important may be somewhat intimidated by the Russian responsive chorus on automaticity, I doubt whether we want the American govern- ment to rely, for the credibility of its deterrent threat, on a corresponding ritual. We ought to get something a little less
2. July 13, 1959, p. 33.
3. Revue de DCfense Nationale, October 1962.
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idiosyncratic for 50 billion dollars a year of defense expendi- ture. A government that is obliged to appear responsible in its foreign policy can hardly cultivate forever the appearance of impetuosity on the most important decisions in its care. Khru- shchev may have needed a short cut to deterrence, but the American government ought to be mature enough and rich enough to arrange a persuasive sequence of threatened re- sponses that are not wholly a matter of guessing a president's temper.
Still, impetuosity, irrationality, and automaticity are not en- tirely without substance. Displays can be effective, and when President Kennedy took his turn at it people were impressed, possibly even people in the Kremlin. President Kennedy chose a most impressive occasion for his declaration on "automatic- ity. " It was his address of October 22, 1962, launching the Cuban crisis. In an unusually deliberate and solemn statement he said, "Third: it shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the So- viet Union. " Coming less than six months after Secretary Mc- Namara's official elucidation of the strategy of controlled and flexible response, the reaction implied in the President's state- ment would have been not only irrational but probably- depending on just what "full retaliatory response" meant to the President or to the Russians- inconsistent with one of the foundationsofthePresident'sownmilitarypolicy,afoundation that was laid as early as his first defense budget message of
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1, which stressed the importance of proportioning the re-
sponse to the provocation, even in war i t ~ e l fN. ~evertheless, it
4. Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter have evaluated this statement of Kennedy's in "Controlling the Risks in Cuba," Adelphi Papers, 17 (London, Institute for Strategic Studies, 1965). They agree that, "This does not sound like a controlled response. " They go on to say, "The attempt, it appears, was to say that the United States would respond to a missile against its neighbors as it would respond to one against itself. " And this policy, they say, would leave open the possibility of a controlled, or less than "full," reaction. Even if we disregard
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was not entirely incredible; and, for all I know, the President meant it.
As a matter of fact it is most unlikely- actually it is incon- ceivable- that in preparing his address the President sent word to senior military and civilian officials that this particular paragraph of his speech was not to be construed as policy. Even if the paragraph was pure rhetoric, it would probably have been construed in the crisis atmosphere of that eventful Monday as an act of policy. Just affirming such a policy must have made it somewhat more likely that a single atomic explosion in this hemisphere would have been the signal for full-scale nuclear war.
Even if the President had said something quite contrary, had cautioned the Soviets that now was the time for them to take seriously Secretary McNamara's message and the President's own language about proportioning military response to the provocation; if he had served notice that the United States would not be panicked into all-out war by a single atomic event, particularly one that might not have been fully premeditated by the Soviet leadership; his remarks still would not have elimi- nated thepossibility that a single Cuban missile, if it contained a nuclear warhead and exploded on the North American conti- nent, could have triggered the full frantic fury of all-out war. While it is hard for a government, particularly a responsible government, to appear irrational whenever such an appearance is expedient, it is equally hard for a government, even a responsible one, to guarantee its own moderation in every circumstance.
the word "full," though, the threat is still one of nuclear war; and unless we qualify the words, "any nuclear missile," to mean enough to denote deliberate Soviet attack, the statement still has to be classed as akin to Khrushchev's rocket statement, with allowance for differences in style and circumstance. The point is not that the threat was necessarily either a mistake or a bluff, but that it did imply a reaction more readily taken on impulse than after reflection, a "disproportionate" act, one not necessarily serving the national interest if the contingency arose but nevertheless a possibly impressive threat if the government can be credited with that impulse.
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All of this may suggest that deterrent threats are a matter of resolve, impetuosity, plain obstinacy, or, as the anarchist put it, sheer character. It is not easy to change our character; and becoming fanatic or impetuous would be a high price to pay for making our threats convincing. We have not the character of fanatics and cannot scare countries the way Hitler could. We have to substitute brains and skill for obstinacy or insanity. (Even then we are at some disadvantage: Hitler had the skill and the character- of a sort. )
If we could really make it believed that we would launch gen- eral war for every minor infraction of any code of etiquette that we wanted to publish for the Soviet bloc, and if there were high probability that the leaders in the Kremlin knew where their interests lay and would not destroy their own country out of sheerobstinacy,wecouldthreatenanythingwewantedto. We could lay down the rules and announce that if they broke any one of them we would inflict the nuclear equivalent of the Wrath of God. The fact that the flood would engulf us, too, is relevant to whether or not the Russians would believe us; but ifwe could make them believe us, the fact that we would suffer too might providethemlittlecon~olationI. f~wecouldcrediblyarrangeit so that we had to carry out the threat, whether-we wished to or not, we would not even be crazy to arrange it so if we could be sure the Soviets understood the ineluctable consequences of infringing the rules and would have control over themselves. By
5. This is why Gandhi could stop trains by encouraging his followers to lie down on the tracks, and why construction-site integrationists could stop trucks and bulldozers by the same tactic; if a bulldozer can stop more quickly than a prostrate man can get out of its way, the threat becomes fully credible at the point when only the operator of the bulldozer can avert the bloodshed. The same principle is supposed to explain why a less-than-mortal attack on the Soviet Union by a French nuclear force, though exposing France to mortal attack in return, is a deterring prospect to the Soviet Union; credibility is the problem, and some French commentators have proposed legally arranging to put the French force beyond civilian control. American tanks in an anti-riot role may lack credibility, because they threaten too much, as the bulldozer does, even in the use of machine guns to protect each other; so a more credible-
a less drastic and fully automatic- device is used to protect the armed steel monsters: a mildly electric bumper,
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arranging it so that we might have to blow up the world, we would not have to.
But it is hard to make it believed. It would be hard to keep the Soviets from expecting that we would think it over once more and find a way to give them what my children call "one more chance. " Just saying so won't do it. Mossadegh or the anarchist might succeed, but not the American government. What we have to do is to get ourselves into a position where we cannot fail to react as we said we would- where we just cannot help it- or where we would be obliged by some overwhelming cost of not reacting in the manner we had declared.
Coupling Capabilities to Objectives: Relinquishing the Initiative
Often we must maneuver into a position where we no longer have much choice left. This is the old business of burning bridges. If you are faced with an enemy who thinks you would turn and run if he kept advancing, and if the bridge is there to run across, he may keep advancing. He may advance to the point where, if you do not run, a clash is automatic. Calculating what is in your long-run interest, you may turn and cross the bridge. At least, he may expect you to. But if you burn the bridge so that you cannot retreat, and in sheer desperation there is nothing you can do but defend yourself, he has a new calculation to make. He cannot count on what you would prefer to do if he were advancing irresistibly; he must decide instead what he ought to do if you were incapable of anything but resisting him.
This is the position that Chiang Kai-shekgot himself into, and us with him, when he moved a large portion of his best troops to Quemoy. Evacuation under fire would be exceedingly diffi- cult; if attacked, his troops had no choice but to fight, and we probably had no choice but to assist them. It was undoubtedly a shrewd move from Chiang's point of view-coupling himself, and the United States with him, to Quemoy- and in fact if we had wanted to make clear to the Chinese Communists that Quemoy had to be defended if they attacked it, it would even have been a shrewd move also from our point of view.
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Coupling Capabilities to Objectives: Relinquishing the Initiative
Often we must maneuver into a position where we no longer have much choice left. This is the old business of burning bridges. If you are faced with an enemy who thinks you would turn and run if he kept advancing, and if the bridge is there to run across, he may keep advancing. He may advance to the point where, if you do not run, a clash is automatic. Calculating what is in your long-run interest, you may turn and cross the bridge. At least, he may expect you to. But if you burn the bridge so that you cannot retreat, and in sheer desperation there is nothing you can do but defend yourself, he has a new calculation to make. He cannot count on what you would prefer to do if he were advancing irresistibly; he must decide instead what he ought to do if you were incapable of anything but resisting him.
This is the position that Chiang Kai-shekgot himself into, and us with him, when he moved a large portion of his best troops to Quemoy. Evacuation under fire would be exceedingly diffi- cult; if attacked, his troops had no choice but to fight, and we probably had no choice but to assist them. It was undoubtedly a shrewd move from Chiang's point of view-coupling himself, and the United States with him, to Quemoy- and in fact if we had wanted to make clear to the Chinese Communists that Quemoy had to be defended if they attacked it, it would even have been a shrewd move also from our point of view.
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Thisideaofburningbridges- of maneuveringintoaposition where one clearly cannot yield- conflicts somewhat, at least semantically, with the notion that what we want in our foreign policy is "the initiative. " Initiative is good if it means imagina- tiveness, boldness, new ideas. But the term somewhat disguises the fact that deterrence, particularly deterrence of anything less than mortal assault on the United States, often depends on get- ting into a position where the initiative is up to the enemy and it is he who has to make the awful decision to proceed to a clash.
In recent years it has become something of a principle in the Department of Defense that the country should have abundant "options" in its choice of response to enemy moves. The prin- ciple is a good one, but so is a contrary principle- that certain op- tions are an embarrassment. The United States government goes to great lengths to reassure allies and to warn Russians that it has eschewed certain options altogether, or to demonstrate that it could not afford them or has placed them out of reach. The commitment process on which alAmerican overseas deterrence depends- and on which all confidence within the alliance depends- is a process of surrendering and destroying options that we might have been expected to find too attractive in an emergency. Wenotonlygivethemupinexchangeforcommit- ments to us by our allies; we give them up on our own account to make our intentions clear to potential enemies. In fact, we do it not just to display our intentions but to adopt those inten- tions. If deterrence fails it is usually because someone thought he saw an "option" that the American government had failed to dispose of, a loophole that it hadn't closed against itself.
At law there is a doctrine of the "last clear chance. " It recog- nizes that, in the events leading up to an accident, there was some point prior to which either party could avert collision, some point after which neither could, and very likely a period between when one party could still control events but the other was helpless to turn aside or stop. The one that had the "last clear chance" to avert collision is held responsible. In strategy when both parties abhor collision the advantage goes often to the one who arranges the status quo in his favor and leaves to
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the other the "last clear chance" to stop or turn aside. Xenophon understood the principle when, threatened by an attack he had not sought, he placed his Greeks with their backs against an impassable ravine. "I should like the enemy to think it is easy-going in every direction for him to retreat. " And when he had to charge a hill occupied by aliens, he "did not attack from every direction but left the enemy a way of escape, if he wanted to run away. " The "last chance" to clear out was left to the enemy when Xenophon had to take the initiative, but de- nied to himself when he wanted to deter attack, leaving his enemy the choice to attack or retire. 6
? ? ? ? ? ? An illustration of this principle- that deterrence often de- pends on relinquishing the initiative to the other side- may be found in a comparison of two articles that Secretary Dulles wrotein the 1950s. His articleinForeign AfSairs in 1954(based on the speech in which he introduced "massive retaliation") proposed that we should not let the enemy know in advancejust when and where and how we would react to aggression, but reserve for ourselves the decision on whether to act and the time, place, and scope of our action. In 1957 the Secretary
? ? wrote another article in Foreign Aflairs,this one oriented mainly toward Europe, in which he properly chose to reserve for the Soviets the final decision on all-out war. He discussed the need for more powerful NATO forces, especially "tactical" nuclear forces that could resist a non-nuclear Soviet onslaught at a level short of all-out war. He said:
In the future it may thus be feasible to place less reliance upon deterrence of vast retaliatory power. . . . Thus, in
6. The Persian Expedition, pp. 136-37, 236. The principle was expressed by Sun Tzu in China, around 500 B. C. in his Art of Wart "When you surround an army leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard. " Ptolemy, serving under Alexander in the fourth century B. C. , surrounded a hill, "leaving a gap in his line for the enemy to get through, should they wish to make their escape. " Vegetius, writing in the fourth century A. D. , had a section headed, "The flight of an enemy should not be prevented, but facilitated," and commends a maxim of Scipio "that a golden bridge should be made for a flying enemy. " It is, of course, a fundamental principle of riot control and has its counterparts in diplomacy and other negotiations.
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contrast to the 1950decade, it may be that by the 1960decade the nations which are around the Sino-Soviet perimeter can possess an effective defense against full-scale conventional attack and thus confront any aggressor with the choice between failing or himself initiating nuclear war against the defending country. Thus the tables may be turned, in the sense that instead of those who are non-aggressive having to rely upon all-out nuclear retaliatory power for their protec- tion, would-be aggressors will be unable to count on a successful conventional aggression, but must themselves weigh the consequences of invoking nuclear war. 7
Former Secretary Dean Acheson was proposing the same principle (but attached to conventional forces, not tactical nuclear weapons) in remarkably similar language at about the same time in his book, Power and Diplomacy:
Suppose, now, that a major attack is mounted against a Western Europe defended by substantial and spirited forces including American troops. . . . Here, in effect, he (our potential enemy) would be making the decision for us, by compelling evidence that he had determined to run all risks and force matters to a final showdown, including (if it had not already occurred) a nuclear attack upon us. . . . A de- fense in Europe of this magnitude will pass the decision to risk everything from the defense to the offense. *
The same principle on the Eastern side was reflected in a remark often attributed to Khrushchev. It was typically agreed, especially at summit meetings, that nobody wanted a war. Khrushchev's complacent remark, based on Berlin's being on his side of the border, was that Berlin was not worth a war. As thestorygoes,hewasremindedthatBerlinwasnot worthawar to him either. "No," he replied, "but you are the ones that have
7. "Challenge and Response in U. S. Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs,36 (1957), 25-43. It is interesting that Secretary Dulles used "nuclear war" to mean something that had not yet been invoked when "tactical" nuclear weapons were already being used in local defense of Europe.
8. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1958, pp. 87-88.
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to cross a frontier. " The implication, I take it, was that neither of us wanted to cross that threshold just for Berlin, and if Berlin's location makes us the ones who have to cross the border, we are the ones who let it go though both of us are similarly fearful of War.
How do we maneuver into aposition so it is the other side that hastomakethatdecision? Wordsrarelydoit. Tohavetoldthe Soviets in the late 1940sthat, if they attacked, we were obliged to defend Europe might not have been wholly convincing. When the Administration asked Congress for authority to station Army divisions in Europe in peacetime, the argument was explicitly made that these troops were there not to defend against a superior Soviet army but to leave the Soviet Union in no doubt that the United States would be automatically in- volved in the event of any attack on Europe. The implicit argument was not that since we obviously would defend Europe we should demonstrate the fact by putting troops there. The reasoning was probably that, whether we wished to be or not, we could not fail to be involved if we had more troops being run over by the Soviet Army than we could afford to see defeated. Notions like "trip wire" or "plate glass window," though oversimplified, were attempts to express this role. And while "trip wire" is a belittling term to describe an army, the role is not a demeaning one. The garrison in Berlin is as fine a collection of soldiers as has ever been assembled, but excruciatingly small. What can 7,000 American troops do, or 12,000 Allied troops? Bluntly, they can die. They can die heroically, dramati- cally,andinamannerthatguaranteesthattheactioncannotstop there. They represent the pride, the honor, and the reputation of the United States government and its armed forces; and they can apparently hold the entire Red Army at bay. Precisely because there is no graceful way out if we wished our troops to yield ground,andbecauseWestBerlinistoosmallanareainwhichto ignoresmallencroachments,WestBerlinanditsmilitaryforces constitute one of the most impregnable military outposts of modemtimes. TheSovietshavenotdaredtocrossthatfrontier.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Berlinillustratestwocommoncharacteristics ofthesecom-
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mitments. The first is that if the commitment is ill defined and ambiguous- if we leave ourselves loopholes through which to exit- our opponent will expect us to be under strong temptation to make a graceful exit (or even a somewhat graceless one) and he may be right. The western sector of Berlin is a tightly defined piece of earth, physically occupied by Western troops: our com- mitmentiscrediblebecauseitisinescapable. (Thelittleenclave of Steinstucken is physically separate, surrounded by East Ger- man territory outside city limits, and there has been a certain amount of jockeying to determine how credible our commit- ment is to stay there and whether it applies to a corridor con- necting the enclave to the city proper. ) But our commitment to the integrity of Berlin itself, the entire city, was apparently weak or ambiguous. When the Wall went up the West was able to construe its obligation as not obliging forceful opposition. The Soviets probably anticipated that, if the West had a choice be- tween interpreting its obligation to demand forceful opposition
and interpreting the obligation more leniently, there would be a temptationtoelectthelenientinterpretation. Ifwecouldhave made ourselves obliged to knock down the wall with military force, the wall might not have gone up; not being obliged, we could be expected to elect the less dangerous course.
The second thing that Berlin illustrates is that, however precisely defined is the issue about which we are committed, it is oftenuncertainjustwhatwe are committed to do. The commit- ment is open-ended. Our military reaction to an assault on West Berlin is really not specified. We are apparently committed to holding the western sector of the city if we can; if we are pushed back, we are presumably committed to repelling the intruders and restoring the original boundary. If we lose the city, we are perhaps committed to reconquering it. But somewhere in this sequence of events things get out of hand, and the matter ceases to be purely one of restoring the status quo in Berlin. Military instabilities may arise that make the earlier status quo meaning- less. A costly reestablishment of the status quo might call for some sort of reprisal, obliging some counteraction in return. Just what would happen is a matter of prediction, or guess.
What we seem to be committed to is action of some sort com- mensurate with the provocation. Military resistance tends to de- velop a momentum of its own. It is dynamic and uncertain. What we threaten in Berlin is to initiate a process that may quickly get out of hand.
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? The maneuver in Lebanon in 1958- the landing of troops in a developing crisis- though not one of the neatest political- military operations of recent times, represented a similar strat- egy. Whatever the military potential of the ten or twelve thousand troops that we landed in Lebanon- and it would de- pend on who might have engaged them, where, over what issue - they had the advantage that they got on the ground before any Soviet adventure or movement was under way. The landing might be described as a "preemptive maneuver. " From then on, any significant Soviet intervention in the affairs of Lebanon, Jordan, or even Iraq, would have substantially raised the likeli- hood that American and Soviet forces, or American and Soviet- supported forces, would be directly engaged.
? ? In effect, it was Khrushchev's turn to cross a border. Iraq or Jordan might not have been worth a war to either of us but by getting troops on the soil- or, as we used to say, the American
? flag -
we probably made it clear to the Kremlin that we could not gracefully retreat under duress. It is harder to retreat than not to land in the first place; the landing helped to put the next step up to the Russians.
Coupling Capabilities to Objectives: TheProcess of "Commitment"
In addition to getting yourself where you cannot retreat, there is a more common way of making a threat. That is to incur a political involvement, to get a nation's honor, obligation, and diplomatic reputation committed to a response. The Formosa resolutionof 1955,alongwith the military assistance agreement then signed by the United States and the National Government of the Republic of China, should probably be interpreted that way. It was not mainly a technique for reassuring Chiang Kai-shek that we would defend him, and it was not mainly a
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THE ART OF COMMITMENT 51
quid pro quo for something he did for us. It was chiefly important as a move to impress a third party. The primary audience for the congressional action was inside the Soviet bloc. The resolution, together with the treaty, was a ceremony to leave the Chinese and the Russians under no doubt that we could not back down from the defense of Formosa without intolerable loss of prestige, reputation, and leadership. We were not merely communicating an intention or obligation we already had, but actually enhancing the obligation in the pro- cess. Thecongressionalmessagewasnot,"Sinceweareobliged to defend Formosa, we may as well show it. " Rather: "In case we were not sufficiently committed to impress you, now we are. We hereby oblige ourselves.
It hardly seems necessary to tell the Russians that we should fight them if they attack us. But we go to great lengths to tell the Russians that they will have America to contend with if they or theirsatellitesattackcountriesassociatedwithus. Sayingso, unfortunately, does not make it true; and if it is true, saying so doesnotalwaysmakeitbelieved. Weevidentlydonotwant war and would only fight if we had to. The problem is to demon- strate that we would have to.
It is a tradition in military planning to attend to an enemy's capabilities, not his intentions. But deterrence is about inten- tions- not just estimating enemy intentions but influencing them. The hardest part is communicating our own intentions. War at best is ugly, costly, and dangerous, and at worst disas- trous. Nations have been known to bluff; they have also been known to make threats sincerely and change their minds when the chips were down. Many territories arejust not worth a war, especially a war that can get out of hand. A persuasive threat of war may deter an aggressor; the problem is to make it persua- sive, to keep it from sounding like a bluff.
Military forces are commonly expected to defend their home- lands, even to die gloriously in a futile effort at defense. When Churchill said that the British would fight on the beaches no- body supposed that he had sat up all night running once more
through the calculations to make sure that that was the right
35
2
THE ART OF COMMITMENT
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THE ART OF COMMITMENT 37
policy. Declaring war against Germany for the attack on Po- land, though, was a different kind of decision, not a simple re- flexbutamatter of "policy. " Some threats are inherently persua- sive, some have to be made persuasive, and some are bound to look like bluffs.
This chapter is about the threats that are hard to make, the ones that are not inherently so credible that they can be taken for granted, the ones that commit a country to an action that it might in somebody's judgment prefer not to take. A good start- ing point is the national boundary. As a tentative approxima- tion-a very tentative one-the difference between the national homeland and everything "abroad" is the difference between threats that are inherently credible, even if unspoken, and the threats that have to be made credible. To project the shadow of one's military force over other countries and territo- ries is an act of diplomacy. Tofight abroad is a military act, but to persuade enemies or allies that one would fight abroad, under circumstances of great cost and risk, requires more than a military capability. It requires projecting intentions. It requires having those intentions, even deliberately acquiring them, and communicating them persuasively to make other countries be- have.
Credibility andRutionulity
It is a paradox of deterrence that in threatening to hurt some- body if he misbehaves, it need not make a critical difference how much it would hurt you too-ifyou can make him believe the threat. People walk against traffic lights on busy streets, de- terring trucks by walking in front of them.
The principle applied in Hungary in 1956. The West was deterred by fear of the consequences from entering into what might have been a legitimate altercation with the Soviet Union on the proper status of Hungary. The West was deterred not in the belief that the Soviet Union was stronger than the West or that a war, if it ensued, would hurt the West more than the Soviet bloc. The West was deterred because the Soviet Union was strong enough, and likely enough to react militarily, to make
Hungary seem not worth the risk, no matter who might get hurt worse.
Another paradox of deterrence is that it does not always help to be, or to be believed to be, fully rational, cool-headed, and in control of oneself or of one's country. One of Joseph Conrad's books, The Secret Agent, concerns a group of anarchists in London who were trying to destroy bourgeois society. One of theirtechniques was bomb explosions;Greenwich Observatory was the objective in this book. They got their nitroglycerin from a stunted little chemist. The authorities knew where they got their stuff and who made it for them. But this little purveyor of nitroglycerin walked safely past the London police. A young man who was tied in with the job at Greenwich asked him why the police did not capture him. His answer was that they would not shoot him from a distance-that would be a denial of bour- geois morality, and serve the anarchists' cause-and they dared not capture him physically because he always kept some "stuff" on his person. He kept a hand in his pocket, he said, holding a ball at the end of a tube that reached a container of nitro- glycerin in his jacket pocket. All he had to do was to press that little ball and anybody within his immediate neighborhood would be blown to bits with him. His young companion won- dered why the police would believe anything so preposterous as that the chemist would actually blow himself up. The little man's explanation was calm. "In the last instance it is character alone that makes for one's safety . . . I have the means to make myself deadly, but that by itself, you understand, is absolutely nothing in the way of protection. What is effective is the belief those people have in my will to use the means. That's their impression. It is absolute. Therefore I am deadly. " '
We can call him a fanatic, or a faker, or a shrewd diplomatist; but it was worth something to him to have it believed that he would do it, preposterous or not. I have been told that in mental institutions there are inmates who are either very crazy or very wise, or both, who make clear to the attendants that
1. Joseph Conrad. The Secr. erA,genr (New York. Doubleday, Page and Company, 1923). pp. 65-68.
? ? 38 ARMS AND INFLUENCE
they may slit their own veins or light their clothes on fire if they don't have their way. I understand that they sometimes have their way.
Recall the trouble we had persuading Mossadegh in the early 1950sthat he might do his country irreparable damage if he did not become more reasonable with respect to his country and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Threats did not get through to
him very well. He wore pajamas, and, according to reports, he wept. And when British or American diplomats tried to explain what would happen to his country if he continued to be obsti- nate, and why the West would not bail him out of his difficul- ties, it was apparently uncertain whether he even compre- hended what was being said to him. It must have been a little like trying to persuade a new puppy that you will beat him to death if he wets on the floor. If he cannot hear you, or cannot understand you, or cannot control himself, the threat cannot work and you very likely will not even make it.
Sometimes we can get a little credit for not having everything quite under control, for being a little impulsive or unreliable. Teaming up with an impulsive ally may do it. There have been serioussuggestionsthatnuclearweaponsshouldbeputdirectly at the disposal of German troops, on the grounds that the Ger- mans would be less reluctant to use them- and that Soviet lead- ers know they would be less reluctant- than their American colleagues in the early stages of war or ambiguous aggression. And in part, the motive behind the proposals that authority to use nuclear weapons be delegated in peacetime to theater com- manders or even lower levels of command, as in the presidential campaign of 1964,is to substitute military boldness for civilian hesitancy in a crisis or at least to make it look that way to the enemy. Sending a high-ranking military officer to Berlin, Que- moy, or Saigon in a crisis carries a suggestion that authority has been delegated to someone beyond the reach of political inhibi- tion and bureaucratic delays, or even of presidential responsi- bility,Someonewhosepersonalreactionswillbeinaboldmilitary tradition. The intense dissatisfaction of many senators with President Kennedy's restraint over Cuba in early 1962, and
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 39
with the way matters were left at the close of the crisis in that November, though in many ways an embarrassment to the Pres- ident, may nevertheless have helped to convey to the Cubans and to the Soviets that, however peaceable the President might want to be, there were political limits to his patience.
A vivid exhibition of national impulsiveness at the highest level of government was described by Averell Harriman in his account of a meeting with Khrushchev in 1959. "Your gener- als," said Khrushchev, "talk of maintaining your position in Berlin with force. That is bluff. " With what Harriman describes as angry emphasis, Khrushchev went on, "If you send in tanks, they will burn and make no mistake about it. If you want war, you can have it, but remember it will be your war. Our rockets will fly automatically. " At this point, according to Harriman, Khrushchev's colleagues around the table chorused the word "automatically. " The title of Harriman's article in Life maga- zine was, "My Alarming Interview with Khrushchev. "z The premier's later desk-thumping with a shoe in the hall of the General Assembly was pictorial evidence that high-ranking Russians know how to put on a performance.
GeneralPierreGallois,anoutstandingFrenchcriticofAmeri-
can military policy, has credited Khrushchev with a "shrewd understanding of the politics of deterrence," evidenced by this "irrational outburst" in the presence of Secretary H a ~ ~ i r n a n . ~ Gallois "hardly sees Moscow launching its atomic missiles at Washington because of Berlin" (especially, I suppose, since Khrushchev may not have had any at the time), but apparently thinks nevertheless that the United States ought to appreciate,
as Khrushchev did, the need for a kind of irrational automaticity and a commitment to blind and total retaliation.
Even granting, however, that somebody important may be somewhat intimidated by the Russian responsive chorus on automaticity, I doubt whether we want the American govern- ment to rely, for the credibility of its deterrent threat, on a corresponding ritual. We ought to get something a little less
2. July 13, 1959, p. 33.
3. Revue de DCfense Nationale, October 1962.
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idiosyncratic for 50 billion dollars a year of defense expendi- ture. A government that is obliged to appear responsible in its foreign policy can hardly cultivate forever the appearance of impetuosity on the most important decisions in its care. Khru- shchev may have needed a short cut to deterrence, but the American government ought to be mature enough and rich enough to arrange a persuasive sequence of threatened re- sponses that are not wholly a matter of guessing a president's temper.
Still, impetuosity, irrationality, and automaticity are not en- tirely without substance. Displays can be effective, and when President Kennedy took his turn at it people were impressed, possibly even people in the Kremlin. President Kennedy chose a most impressive occasion for his declaration on "automatic- ity. " It was his address of October 22, 1962, launching the Cuban crisis. In an unusually deliberate and solemn statement he said, "Third: it shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the So- viet Union. " Coming less than six months after Secretary Mc- Namara's official elucidation of the strategy of controlled and flexible response, the reaction implied in the President's state- ment would have been not only irrational but probably- depending on just what "full retaliatory response" meant to the President or to the Russians- inconsistent with one of the foundationsofthePresident'sownmilitarypolicy,afoundation that was laid as early as his first defense budget message of
196
1, which stressed the importance of proportioning the re-
sponse to the provocation, even in war i t ~ e l fN. ~evertheless, it
4. Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter have evaluated this statement of Kennedy's in "Controlling the Risks in Cuba," Adelphi Papers, 17 (London, Institute for Strategic Studies, 1965). They agree that, "This does not sound like a controlled response. " They go on to say, "The attempt, it appears, was to say that the United States would respond to a missile against its neighbors as it would respond to one against itself. " And this policy, they say, would leave open the possibility of a controlled, or less than "full," reaction. Even if we disregard
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 41
was not entirely incredible; and, for all I know, the President meant it.
As a matter of fact it is most unlikely- actually it is incon- ceivable- that in preparing his address the President sent word to senior military and civilian officials that this particular paragraph of his speech was not to be construed as policy. Even if the paragraph was pure rhetoric, it would probably have been construed in the crisis atmosphere of that eventful Monday as an act of policy. Just affirming such a policy must have made it somewhat more likely that a single atomic explosion in this hemisphere would have been the signal for full-scale nuclear war.
Even if the President had said something quite contrary, had cautioned the Soviets that now was the time for them to take seriously Secretary McNamara's message and the President's own language about proportioning military response to the provocation; if he had served notice that the United States would not be panicked into all-out war by a single atomic event, particularly one that might not have been fully premeditated by the Soviet leadership; his remarks still would not have elimi- nated thepossibility that a single Cuban missile, if it contained a nuclear warhead and exploded on the North American conti- nent, could have triggered the full frantic fury of all-out war. While it is hard for a government, particularly a responsible government, to appear irrational whenever such an appearance is expedient, it is equally hard for a government, even a responsible one, to guarantee its own moderation in every circumstance.
the word "full," though, the threat is still one of nuclear war; and unless we qualify the words, "any nuclear missile," to mean enough to denote deliberate Soviet attack, the statement still has to be classed as akin to Khrushchev's rocket statement, with allowance for differences in style and circumstance. The point is not that the threat was necessarily either a mistake or a bluff, but that it did imply a reaction more readily taken on impulse than after reflection, a "disproportionate" act, one not necessarily serving the national interest if the contingency arose but nevertheless a possibly impressive threat if the government can be credited with that impulse.
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All of this may suggest that deterrent threats are a matter of resolve, impetuosity, plain obstinacy, or, as the anarchist put it, sheer character. It is not easy to change our character; and becoming fanatic or impetuous would be a high price to pay for making our threats convincing. We have not the character of fanatics and cannot scare countries the way Hitler could. We have to substitute brains and skill for obstinacy or insanity. (Even then we are at some disadvantage: Hitler had the skill and the character- of a sort. )
If we could really make it believed that we would launch gen- eral war for every minor infraction of any code of etiquette that we wanted to publish for the Soviet bloc, and if there were high probability that the leaders in the Kremlin knew where their interests lay and would not destroy their own country out of sheerobstinacy,wecouldthreatenanythingwewantedto. We could lay down the rules and announce that if they broke any one of them we would inflict the nuclear equivalent of the Wrath of God. The fact that the flood would engulf us, too, is relevant to whether or not the Russians would believe us; but ifwe could make them believe us, the fact that we would suffer too might providethemlittlecon~olationI. f~wecouldcrediblyarrangeit so that we had to carry out the threat, whether-we wished to or not, we would not even be crazy to arrange it so if we could be sure the Soviets understood the ineluctable consequences of infringing the rules and would have control over themselves. By
5. This is why Gandhi could stop trains by encouraging his followers to lie down on the tracks, and why construction-site integrationists could stop trucks and bulldozers by the same tactic; if a bulldozer can stop more quickly than a prostrate man can get out of its way, the threat becomes fully credible at the point when only the operator of the bulldozer can avert the bloodshed. The same principle is supposed to explain why a less-than-mortal attack on the Soviet Union by a French nuclear force, though exposing France to mortal attack in return, is a deterring prospect to the Soviet Union; credibility is the problem, and some French commentators have proposed legally arranging to put the French force beyond civilian control. American tanks in an anti-riot role may lack credibility, because they threaten too much, as the bulldozer does, even in the use of machine guns to protect each other; so a more credible-
a less drastic and fully automatic- device is used to protect the armed steel monsters: a mildly electric bumper,
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 43
arranging it so that we might have to blow up the world, we would not have to.
But it is hard to make it believed. It would be hard to keep the Soviets from expecting that we would think it over once more and find a way to give them what my children call "one more chance. " Just saying so won't do it. Mossadegh or the anarchist might succeed, but not the American government. What we have to do is to get ourselves into a position where we cannot fail to react as we said we would- where we just cannot help it- or where we would be obliged by some overwhelming cost of not reacting in the manner we had declared.
Coupling Capabilities to Objectives: Relinquishing the Initiative
Often we must maneuver into a position where we no longer have much choice left. This is the old business of burning bridges. If you are faced with an enemy who thinks you would turn and run if he kept advancing, and if the bridge is there to run across, he may keep advancing. He may advance to the point where, if you do not run, a clash is automatic. Calculating what is in your long-run interest, you may turn and cross the bridge. At least, he may expect you to. But if you burn the bridge so that you cannot retreat, and in sheer desperation there is nothing you can do but defend yourself, he has a new calculation to make. He cannot count on what you would prefer to do if he were advancing irresistibly; he must decide instead what he ought to do if you were incapable of anything but resisting him.
This is the position that Chiang Kai-shekgot himself into, and us with him, when he moved a large portion of his best troops to Quemoy. Evacuation under fire would be exceedingly diffi- cult; if attacked, his troops had no choice but to fight, and we probably had no choice but to assist them. It was undoubtedly a shrewd move from Chiang's point of view-coupling himself, and the United States with him, to Quemoy- and in fact if we had wanted to make clear to the Chinese Communists that Quemoy had to be defended if they attacked it, it would even have been a shrewd move also from our point of view.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Coupling Capabilities to Objectives: Relinquishing the Initiative
Often we must maneuver into a position where we no longer have much choice left. This is the old business of burning bridges. If you are faced with an enemy who thinks you would turn and run if he kept advancing, and if the bridge is there to run across, he may keep advancing. He may advance to the point where, if you do not run, a clash is automatic. Calculating what is in your long-run interest, you may turn and cross the bridge. At least, he may expect you to. But if you burn the bridge so that you cannot retreat, and in sheer desperation there is nothing you can do but defend yourself, he has a new calculation to make. He cannot count on what you would prefer to do if he were advancing irresistibly; he must decide instead what he ought to do if you were incapable of anything but resisting him.
This is the position that Chiang Kai-shekgot himself into, and us with him, when he moved a large portion of his best troops to Quemoy. Evacuation under fire would be exceedingly diffi- cult; if attacked, his troops had no choice but to fight, and we probably had no choice but to assist them. It was undoubtedly a shrewd move from Chiang's point of view-coupling himself, and the United States with him, to Quemoy- and in fact if we had wanted to make clear to the Chinese Communists that Quemoy had to be defended if they attacked it, it would even have been a shrewd move also from our point of view.
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Thisideaofburningbridges- of maneuveringintoaposition where one clearly cannot yield- conflicts somewhat, at least semantically, with the notion that what we want in our foreign policy is "the initiative. " Initiative is good if it means imagina- tiveness, boldness, new ideas. But the term somewhat disguises the fact that deterrence, particularly deterrence of anything less than mortal assault on the United States, often depends on get- ting into a position where the initiative is up to the enemy and it is he who has to make the awful decision to proceed to a clash.
In recent years it has become something of a principle in the Department of Defense that the country should have abundant "options" in its choice of response to enemy moves. The prin- ciple is a good one, but so is a contrary principle- that certain op- tions are an embarrassment. The United States government goes to great lengths to reassure allies and to warn Russians that it has eschewed certain options altogether, or to demonstrate that it could not afford them or has placed them out of reach. The commitment process on which alAmerican overseas deterrence depends- and on which all confidence within the alliance depends- is a process of surrendering and destroying options that we might have been expected to find too attractive in an emergency. Wenotonlygivethemupinexchangeforcommit- ments to us by our allies; we give them up on our own account to make our intentions clear to potential enemies. In fact, we do it not just to display our intentions but to adopt those inten- tions. If deterrence fails it is usually because someone thought he saw an "option" that the American government had failed to dispose of, a loophole that it hadn't closed against itself.
At law there is a doctrine of the "last clear chance. " It recog- nizes that, in the events leading up to an accident, there was some point prior to which either party could avert collision, some point after which neither could, and very likely a period between when one party could still control events but the other was helpless to turn aside or stop. The one that had the "last clear chance" to avert collision is held responsible. In strategy when both parties abhor collision the advantage goes often to the one who arranges the status quo in his favor and leaves to
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 45
the other the "last clear chance" to stop or turn aside. Xenophon understood the principle when, threatened by an attack he had not sought, he placed his Greeks with their backs against an impassable ravine. "I should like the enemy to think it is easy-going in every direction for him to retreat. " And when he had to charge a hill occupied by aliens, he "did not attack from every direction but left the enemy a way of escape, if he wanted to run away. " The "last chance" to clear out was left to the enemy when Xenophon had to take the initiative, but de- nied to himself when he wanted to deter attack, leaving his enemy the choice to attack or retire. 6
? ? ? ? ? ? An illustration of this principle- that deterrence often de- pends on relinquishing the initiative to the other side- may be found in a comparison of two articles that Secretary Dulles wrotein the 1950s. His articleinForeign AfSairs in 1954(based on the speech in which he introduced "massive retaliation") proposed that we should not let the enemy know in advancejust when and where and how we would react to aggression, but reserve for ourselves the decision on whether to act and the time, place, and scope of our action. In 1957 the Secretary
? ? wrote another article in Foreign Aflairs,this one oriented mainly toward Europe, in which he properly chose to reserve for the Soviets the final decision on all-out war. He discussed the need for more powerful NATO forces, especially "tactical" nuclear forces that could resist a non-nuclear Soviet onslaught at a level short of all-out war. He said:
In the future it may thus be feasible to place less reliance upon deterrence of vast retaliatory power. . . . Thus, in
6. The Persian Expedition, pp. 136-37, 236. The principle was expressed by Sun Tzu in China, around 500 B. C. in his Art of Wart "When you surround an army leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard. " Ptolemy, serving under Alexander in the fourth century B. C. , surrounded a hill, "leaving a gap in his line for the enemy to get through, should they wish to make their escape. " Vegetius, writing in the fourth century A. D. , had a section headed, "The flight of an enemy should not be prevented, but facilitated," and commends a maxim of Scipio "that a golden bridge should be made for a flying enemy. " It is, of course, a fundamental principle of riot control and has its counterparts in diplomacy and other negotiations.
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contrast to the 1950decade, it may be that by the 1960decade the nations which are around the Sino-Soviet perimeter can possess an effective defense against full-scale conventional attack and thus confront any aggressor with the choice between failing or himself initiating nuclear war against the defending country. Thus the tables may be turned, in the sense that instead of those who are non-aggressive having to rely upon all-out nuclear retaliatory power for their protec- tion, would-be aggressors will be unable to count on a successful conventional aggression, but must themselves weigh the consequences of invoking nuclear war. 7
Former Secretary Dean Acheson was proposing the same principle (but attached to conventional forces, not tactical nuclear weapons) in remarkably similar language at about the same time in his book, Power and Diplomacy:
Suppose, now, that a major attack is mounted against a Western Europe defended by substantial and spirited forces including American troops. . . . Here, in effect, he (our potential enemy) would be making the decision for us, by compelling evidence that he had determined to run all risks and force matters to a final showdown, including (if it had not already occurred) a nuclear attack upon us. . . . A de- fense in Europe of this magnitude will pass the decision to risk everything from the defense to the offense. *
The same principle on the Eastern side was reflected in a remark often attributed to Khrushchev. It was typically agreed, especially at summit meetings, that nobody wanted a war. Khrushchev's complacent remark, based on Berlin's being on his side of the border, was that Berlin was not worth a war. As thestorygoes,hewasremindedthatBerlinwasnot worthawar to him either. "No," he replied, "but you are the ones that have
7. "Challenge and Response in U. S. Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs,36 (1957), 25-43. It is interesting that Secretary Dulles used "nuclear war" to mean something that had not yet been invoked when "tactical" nuclear weapons were already being used in local defense of Europe.
8. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1958, pp. 87-88.
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THE ART OF COMMITMENT 47
to cross a frontier. " The implication, I take it, was that neither of us wanted to cross that threshold just for Berlin, and if Berlin's location makes us the ones who have to cross the border, we are the ones who let it go though both of us are similarly fearful of War.
How do we maneuver into aposition so it is the other side that hastomakethatdecision? Wordsrarelydoit. Tohavetoldthe Soviets in the late 1940sthat, if they attacked, we were obliged to defend Europe might not have been wholly convincing. When the Administration asked Congress for authority to station Army divisions in Europe in peacetime, the argument was explicitly made that these troops were there not to defend against a superior Soviet army but to leave the Soviet Union in no doubt that the United States would be automatically in- volved in the event of any attack on Europe. The implicit argument was not that since we obviously would defend Europe we should demonstrate the fact by putting troops there. The reasoning was probably that, whether we wished to be or not, we could not fail to be involved if we had more troops being run over by the Soviet Army than we could afford to see defeated. Notions like "trip wire" or "plate glass window," though oversimplified, were attempts to express this role. And while "trip wire" is a belittling term to describe an army, the role is not a demeaning one. The garrison in Berlin is as fine a collection of soldiers as has ever been assembled, but excruciatingly small. What can 7,000 American troops do, or 12,000 Allied troops? Bluntly, they can die. They can die heroically, dramati- cally,andinamannerthatguaranteesthattheactioncannotstop there. They represent the pride, the honor, and the reputation of the United States government and its armed forces; and they can apparently hold the entire Red Army at bay. Precisely because there is no graceful way out if we wished our troops to yield ground,andbecauseWestBerlinistoosmallanareainwhichto ignoresmallencroachments,WestBerlinanditsmilitaryforces constitute one of the most impregnable military outposts of modemtimes. TheSovietshavenotdaredtocrossthatfrontier.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Berlinillustratestwocommoncharacteristics ofthesecom-
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mitments. The first is that if the commitment is ill defined and ambiguous- if we leave ourselves loopholes through which to exit- our opponent will expect us to be under strong temptation to make a graceful exit (or even a somewhat graceless one) and he may be right. The western sector of Berlin is a tightly defined piece of earth, physically occupied by Western troops: our com- mitmentiscrediblebecauseitisinescapable. (Thelittleenclave of Steinstucken is physically separate, surrounded by East Ger- man territory outside city limits, and there has been a certain amount of jockeying to determine how credible our commit- ment is to stay there and whether it applies to a corridor con- necting the enclave to the city proper. ) But our commitment to the integrity of Berlin itself, the entire city, was apparently weak or ambiguous. When the Wall went up the West was able to construe its obligation as not obliging forceful opposition. The Soviets probably anticipated that, if the West had a choice be- tween interpreting its obligation to demand forceful opposition
and interpreting the obligation more leniently, there would be a temptationtoelectthelenientinterpretation. Ifwecouldhave made ourselves obliged to knock down the wall with military force, the wall might not have gone up; not being obliged, we could be expected to elect the less dangerous course.
The second thing that Berlin illustrates is that, however precisely defined is the issue about which we are committed, it is oftenuncertainjustwhatwe are committed to do. The commit- ment is open-ended. Our military reaction to an assault on West Berlin is really not specified. We are apparently committed to holding the western sector of the city if we can; if we are pushed back, we are presumably committed to repelling the intruders and restoring the original boundary. If we lose the city, we are perhaps committed to reconquering it. But somewhere in this sequence of events things get out of hand, and the matter ceases to be purely one of restoring the status quo in Berlin. Military instabilities may arise that make the earlier status quo meaning- less. A costly reestablishment of the status quo might call for some sort of reprisal, obliging some counteraction in return. Just what would happen is a matter of prediction, or guess.
What we seem to be committed to is action of some sort com- mensurate with the provocation. Military resistance tends to de- velop a momentum of its own. It is dynamic and uncertain. What we threaten in Berlin is to initiate a process that may quickly get out of hand.
ARMS AND INFLUENCE
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 49
? The maneuver in Lebanon in 1958- the landing of troops in a developing crisis- though not one of the neatest political- military operations of recent times, represented a similar strat- egy. Whatever the military potential of the ten or twelve thousand troops that we landed in Lebanon- and it would de- pend on who might have engaged them, where, over what issue - they had the advantage that they got on the ground before any Soviet adventure or movement was under way. The landing might be described as a "preemptive maneuver. " From then on, any significant Soviet intervention in the affairs of Lebanon, Jordan, or even Iraq, would have substantially raised the likeli- hood that American and Soviet forces, or American and Soviet- supported forces, would be directly engaged.
? ? In effect, it was Khrushchev's turn to cross a border. Iraq or Jordan might not have been worth a war to either of us but by getting troops on the soil- or, as we used to say, the American
? flag -
we probably made it clear to the Kremlin that we could not gracefully retreat under duress. It is harder to retreat than not to land in the first place; the landing helped to put the next step up to the Russians.
Coupling Capabilities to Objectives: TheProcess of "Commitment"
In addition to getting yourself where you cannot retreat, there is a more common way of making a threat. That is to incur a political involvement, to get a nation's honor, obligation, and diplomatic reputation committed to a response. The Formosa resolutionof 1955,alongwith the military assistance agreement then signed by the United States and the National Government of the Republic of China, should probably be interpreted that way. It was not mainly a technique for reassuring Chiang Kai-shek that we would defend him, and it was not mainly a
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THE ART OF COMMITMENT 51
quid pro quo for something he did for us. It was chiefly important as a move to impress a third party. The primary audience for the congressional action was inside the Soviet bloc. The resolution, together with the treaty, was a ceremony to leave the Chinese and the Russians under no doubt that we could not back down from the defense of Formosa without intolerable loss of prestige, reputation, and leadership. We were not merely communicating an intention or obligation we already had, but actually enhancing the obligation in the pro- cess. Thecongressionalmessagewasnot,"Sinceweareobliged to defend Formosa, we may as well show it. " Rather: "In case we were not sufficiently committed to impress you, now we are. We hereby oblige ourselves.
