Nuclear Forces; Post 1994
SAG Paper to CINCSTRAT Chiles, July 12, 1994 |
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The 1994 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) never produced a
final report. Instead, the Strategic Advisory Group produced what
amounted to a blueprint for the review following an internal revolt
against the elaborate study group process spearheaded by Ashton Carter,
then the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Security and
Counterproliferation.
Half way through the NPR, the study group process
collapsed following what appears to have been an internal revolt. Only a
few months into the review process, in January 1994, Major General John
Admire from Joint Staff sent his NPR co-chair Ashton Carter
a memorandum in which he expressed concern with the NPR process and
how the findings of the working groups would be reviewed and approved.
This same concern, he said, "has been expressed to me by the Services
and CINCs based on input from their working group members." (copy of
memorandum is available from the right-hand bar)
Four days later, Carter issued a joint
letter with Admire to the NPR Steering Group that outlined the "way
ahead." The Steering Group's activity would intensify, the letter said,
and laid out a work plan for the six working groups that aimed at
completing a preliminary draft NPR guidance by mid-February. But the
letter failed to resolve the dispute and immediately triggered an angry
response from STRATCOM which complained over the lack of progress and
the tight schedule. Carter's plan “imposes a schedule that will backfill
the vacuum with grab-bag thinking and then ask the Secretary for his
blessing," Retired Admiral Bobby Inman complained to CINCSTRAT Admiral
Chiles. "This would be comical if we didn’t have so much at stake,”
Inman warned. (copies of Carter's and Inman's letters are available from
the right-hand bar)
As the working group process collapsed in the early
summer of 1994, STRATCOM commander Admiral Chiles instead ordered his
SAG to prepare a paper on the future development of the nuclear posture.
The six-page document, entitled "Nuclear
Forces; Post 1994," outlined the main policy and force assumptions
and much of it appears to have been carried forward into the final NPR
decision.
A Nuclear Vision
The paper started with formulating a new nuclear
rationale: "The nation's security should not be premised on piecemeal
nuclear reduction in unrelated increments to satisfy a sense that we do
not need as much as before the Cold War ended, or to save scarce defense
dollars." Consensus has to be constructed around the following issues:
1) the new role of nuclear deterrence in U.S.
national security
2) the role of U.S. nuclear force in assuring our allies
3) the relation of U.S. nuclear forces structure and doctrine to
arms control negotiations, and
4) fiscal status.
Central to the future nuclear posture, the SAG paper
concluded, was "hedging" against an uncertain Russian future. "So long
as the nuclear strike forces of the former Soviet Union remain largely
intact, U.S. strategy must guard against their being put to use by a
government hostile to the United States and its allies." Hedging as a
strategy meant that the U.S. should 1) maintain enough nuclear forces to
match those in Russia, and 2) maintain a high enough readiness level "to
respond to the rapid pace at which adverse political change could take
place." This meant shifting focus to a potential rather than an
immediate existing threat.
SAG also argued strongly for a role of nuclear weapons
to deter other forms of weapons of mass destruction than only nuclear
weapons. "Those who argue that biological and chemical threats can
always be safely deterred without requiring the last resort of U.S.
nuclear force must bear the burden of proof for their arguments. Until
they make a compelling case that nuclear force is not necessary for
successful deterrence, it is not in the nation's interest to foreswear
the uncertainty as to how we would respond to clear and dangerous
threats of other weapons of mass destruction." SAG concluded that
"measured ambiguity" remained a powerful tool for the President.
The SAG paper also predicted that the pace of
bilateral U.S.-Russian arms control to slow down during 1994-2004 as
START I and START II were implemented. Surprisingly, less than three
years after unilateral arms reductions were used by the Bush
administration to jumpstart the arms control process, the SAG paper
concluded that unilateral force reductions below the START limits "do
not serve to encourage the Russians to move to future negotiations."
Further reduction would also require an assessment of when and how
strategic nuclear reductions should be expanded beyond only Russia and
the United States. "Until some sense of that issue is obtained," SAG
concluded, "there is no basis for assessing the military or political
sufficiency of [the] remaining U.S. nuclear forces."
The extraordinarily cautious tone of the paper was
further underscored by SAG's warning against cutting too deep too fast
in the nuclear forces. The SAG members seemed to be more alarmed by the
post Cold War world than by the post World War II world. "It is even
more imperative today than it was in the late 1940s that we adjust our
nuclear force structure wisely and with careful forethought to arms
control regimes. Otherwise we run the very real danger of creating a
less stable world."
The reduced but largely intact nuclear force with an
increased readiness and flexibility would, together with the strategy of
hedging, provide what SAG saw as a credible deterrent against Russia,
assurances to allies and friends, but without giving "to future Saddam
Husseins the dangerous impression that American nuclear weapons are not
credible deterrents to dangerous provocations, or that we are self
deterred." It was, SAG said in paraphrasing an earlier JCS Chairman,
"the right strategy, at the right time, against the right set of
potential adversaries."
CINCSTRAT Chiles forwarded the SAG paper to CJCS
Chairman Shalikashvili,
who replied that the paper would be useful as the Joint Staff
evaluated the conclusions and recommendations on the NPR. "In
particular," Shalikashvili said, "I appreciate your perspective on
hedging against future uncertainty while we grapple with near-term
resource requirements." Chiles later thanked the SAG for the paper,
which he said was "particularly effective" in preparing the NPR. (copies
of the SAG study and Shalikashvili's letter are available from the
right-hand bar)
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