MILITARY HISTORY

Clausewitz and the Search for Limited Nuclear Options – 1975-1980

by Hans Christian Breede

Captain Hans Christian Breede, MA, CD, Royal Canadian Regiment, an infantry officer, is a PhD candidate in War Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada.

Introduction

Clausewitz is often misunderstood.¹ In the first chapter of the first book of his classic work On War, Clausewitz constructs an abstract notion of war – a war of extremes. He describes extremes of will and exertion, along with extremes of force, which, if in “…the abstract world, optimism was all-powerful and forces us to assume that both parties to the conflict not only sought perfection but attained it,”² leads to a concept of absolute war. For Clausewitz, however, the notion of absolute war was not applicable to reality, and the concept of absolute war was to remain a theory. When taken into the realm of reality, the laws of probability rule and replace the certainty that underpin absolute war.³ With certainty removed, each of the three extremes needs to be modified, and principal among them, the reason for going to war. Clausewitz’s classic notion that the “…political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation...,”⁴ confirms the notion that absolute war is an abstraction, and that war, once applied, creates a connection between the people, the military, and the government.⁵
 
With the advent of nuclear weapons and the gradual development of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) as a policy for preventing nuclear war,⁶ many of the arguments laid out by Clausewitz were regarded as obsolete. Starting in the late-1960s, specifically after being briefed on the U.S. Nuclear War Plan, then-President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, sought to modify the extreme strategic options about which they just been informed.⁷ They sought to insert Clausewitz into U.S. nuclear war planning, and to prove that “War does not consist of a single short blow.”⁸ They sought what became known as limited nuclear options (LNOs). However, the search for those options was tainted by inter-service and inter-departmental rivalries, ultimately leading back to a de facto posture of a massive nuclear exchange.

This article will outline the historical context of the decision to develop limited nuclear options, and will then explain the impact that inter-departmental and inter-service rivalries exerted upon these options. Finally, it will demonstrate that limited nuclear options ultimately led back to the reality of a massive response imperative for the United States.

Context

The Single Integrated Operating Plan 4 (SIOP 4), although more detailed and thorough than the SIOP originally conceived in 1962 under the Kennedy administration,⁹ remained a rather blunt tool with which to wage war. When briefed to Nixon and Kissinger in 1969, both reacted negatively to the gravity of the decision with which they would be faced, should a crisis erupt between the superpowers. As Nixon remarked, “No matter what [the Soviets] do, they lose their cities…what a decision to make.”¹⁰ Options were needed.

The SIOP, as briefed in 1969, contained three separate “functional tasks”¹¹ that could then be either combined or used in isolation, as required. Each task was given a simple letter for identification. ALPHA targeted all the Soviet nuclear forces, while BRAVO targeted Soviet conventional forces. CHARLIE targeted urban and industrial sites. Employing ALPHA and BRAVO only – it was believed – should minimize collateral damage. CHARLIE was the task that targeted the cities.¹² The tasks were further subdivided into pre-emptive and retaliatory packages. A pre-emptive Task ALPHA involved the launching of 1 750 warheads, while all three options initiated together would have entailed the release of over 3000 bombs and warheads. In the event of retaliation, Task BRAVO only called for 454 nuclear weapons. The fewest of all, 351 such weapons, were “… slated for task CHARLIE.”¹³ In all cases, targets were identified and assigned in both the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.¹⁴ Regardless of whether retaliatory or pre-emptive, the tasks called for many megatons of nuclear ordnance to be delivered to the Eurasian continent, to say nothing of the inevitable Sino-Soviet retaliation. The SIOP, although a plan, was one that could not be exercised without unimaginable global cost. Nixon recognized this, and following the brief, he directed Kissinger to come up with alternatives.¹⁵
           
Considered a rite of passage for new presidents, “the briefing on the SIOP”¹⁶ is the first time that sitting Presidents of the United States become fully aware of their responsibilities regarding use of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. This briefing “…gives a terrible, practical reality…,”¹⁷ and given the technological advances available by 1969, Nixon felt more options could be generated. By the late-1960s and early-1970s, the technology surrounding nuclear weapons had advanced to the degree that it had begun to influence nuclear policy in three ways. First, as warheads became smaller, more accurate, and more efficient, the idea that a nuclear weapon could be discretely targeted added credence to the idea of using them in a limited way to achieve certain policy goals.¹⁸ Related to this, the improvements in command and control now included nascent information technologies, best illustrated by the change in the acronym from C2 to C3I.¹⁹  These advances suggested to some strategic planners that limited exchanges could be controlled.²⁰ Secondly, the introduction of improved conventional munitions (ICMs), as well as the concept of precision guided munitions (PGMs), began a move that some thought would raise the threshold upon which the decision to employ nuclear weapons would be made. It was felt that ICMs – to some extent – equalized the conventional forces with nuclear weapons.²¹ Finally, some expectations for options were inadvertently raised with the new ability to alter the effects of nuclear weapons. The much-debated neutron bomb was “…misleadingly characterized as a weapon that killed people and left property intact.”²² Rather, it was designed to enhance radiation (blast and other such effects remained) so as to penetrate armoured vehicles and to kill or disable the crews.²³  Taken together, these technological advances – incorrectly perceived or otherwise – added weight to the desire and argument for options to use nuclear weapons in a manner other than simply a massive exchange with concomitant mutual annihilation.

Cleavages

Surprisingly, despite the dramatic reaction by both Nixon and Kissinger towards the SIOP, both revision and the production of options were slow in coming. Agency, departmental, and service cleavages provide a framework for understanding why it took almost ten years to develop some form of options that could be employed short of a ‘full-blown’ nuclear exchange.²⁴ The eminent British historian Sir Lawrence Freedman identified agency cleavages at the beginning of his chapter on nuclear options in his The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. He argues that the concept of nuclear weapons parity “…was a concept which Congressman and diplomats could readily understand… It was not, however, a concept which naturally appealed to the community of professional strategists.”²⁵ 

Politicians and strategists were concerned with fundamentally different ideas. Where the politicians seemed to seek some form of stability through numbers (the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks - SALT), the strategists were more inclined to examine capabilities, and they sought realistic ways to fight with nuclear weapons. Strategists saw little value in SALT. Rather, they sought to find ways to build credibility through the development and signaling of a real set of nuclear options that would avert an Armageddon.²⁶ At the highest levels within the United States – between the elected officials and the intellectual elites interspersed on Interstate 495 in Washington – there was a divide with respect to the utility of limited nuclear options. 
           
Departmental cleavages formed the second obstacle to Nixon and Kissinger’s initiation of limited nuclear options. As under previous administrations, civil-military relations were strained as the military saw the direction Nixon gave to Kissinger as “… another attempt by civilians to meddle in force planning.”²⁷ As a result, Kissinger’s initial calls to develop nuclear options went unanswered. Between the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), General Wheeler, and the Secretary of Defense, Melvin Laird, Kissinger’s repeated request to examine options were either ignored or answered with “… cryptic charts providing capsule summaries of “representative” military plans…,”²⁸ which also ruled out sub-SIOP employment of weapons because such employment ran counter to doctrine – the very doctrine that Kissinger was trying to change. Furthermore, the Joint Chiefs felt that nuclear options would actually undermine American credibility with respect to a willingness to employ nuclear weapons against a broad target set.²⁹ In short, “… the high command had little interest in working with the White House in rethinking the war plan.”³⁰ It was not until seven months later that the pressure applied by the White House to the Department of Defense started to bear fruit. In July 1969, “…faster procedures for selective options”³¹ were implemented, and the options that Kissinger sought finally began to emerge.³² Despite the JCS misgivings with respect to nuclear options, the air force had been working on just such a set of options with the Rand Corporation. One key player in the development of these options was James Schlesinger,³³ and he would play a key role in a future administration.

The third and final cleavage, again consistent with the history of the development of nuclear policy, was between the air force and the navy. With the refinement of the submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs – a navy asset), the air force’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) were feared to be going the way of the strategic bomber – too vulnerable to continue to be relevant as a threat for deterrence.  Columnist and author Fred Kaplan characterized the conflict between the navy and the air force as an intense rivalry, asserting that both services fought for control of U.S. nuclear policy. Although missing the point of the nuclear triad,³⁴ Kaplan does make an interesting argument that this rivalry could also be seen as proliferating nuclear weapons broadly across the services. That such proliferation also makes strategic sense seems to have escaped (or was ignored by) Kaplan. ³⁵ More pointedly, a report released in 1975 by a widely-quoted analyst at the Rand Corporation, Carl H. Builder, and others, but only recently declassified and released through George Washington University’s National Security Archive, began to formalize the case for the ICBM. The report argued that the ICBM’s superior accuracy and relative cost-effectiveness lent itself to a series of unique roles to include a reserve or an elite-strike capability.³⁶ More provocatively, however, the report began to argue in favour of first strike counterforce employment – something that ran completely counter to the underlying philosophy of U.S. nuclear policy of no first use.³⁷ These three cleavages, between agencies, departments, and the services themselves, slowed the development of limited nuclear options as demanded by Nixon in 1969 upon first taking office. The cleavages however, like other rivalries in the past, centred upon the issue of nuclear policy, also served to add vigour to the debate, and they certainly had a net positive impact upon the final product. That product would finally see implementation under a new Secretary of Defense and former Rand strategist.

Commitment

Regarded as the first professional strategist to become the United States Secretary of Defense,³⁸ James Schlesinger took office in 1973, replacing Elliot Richardson, who had been in office for less than a year.  Kissinger now had an ally with respect to the reforms he sought. At this time, there was a “…unique opportunity…”³⁹ that Schlesinger capitalized upon in order to put his theories into practice – namely, the theory that escalation in nuclear war could be controlled, and nuclear war could be essentially fought to a victory, avoiding “…widespread collateral damage.”⁴⁰ He agreed that Clausewitz could be inserted into the concept of nuclear war. He also argued that, should the United States be forced to resort to the use of nuclear weapons, realistic options had to be presented to his Commander-in-Chief, the President.

…we want to have the planning flexibility to be able to respond selectively to the attack in such a way as to (1) limit the chances of uncontrolled escalation, and (2) hit meaningful targets with a sufficient accuracy-yield combination to destroy only the intended target and to avoid widespread collateral damage…reserving our “assured destruction” force and persuading, through intra-war deterrence, any potential foe not to attack cities.⁴¹

His policy developed further to include three key military objectives. First, nuclear weapons could be employed in aid of conventional forces. Second, nuclear weapons would be employed in a retaliatory counterforce role, and third, they would be used as a tool for escalation dominance. This dominance implied an ability to attain a level of military superiority to control further escalation.⁴² It was ‘a tall order.’

Four criticisms of Schlesinger’s new doctrine powerfully underscore its shortcomings. The first relates to the concept of controlling nuclear war. The distinguished New York Times foreign correspondent, Drew Middleton, reported that the notion of controlling nuclear war was impossible.  Based upon an “… extensively documented study…”⁴³ by the Australian professor of strategic and defence studies, Desmond Ball, he suggested “… [that] the superpowers, “rather than devoting further resources” to pursuing “the chimera” of controlled nuclear war, should devote more effort to other means of satisfying the objectives.”⁴⁴ One needs to once again recall Clausewitz, who stated that war has a tendency to escalate.⁴⁵ Although referring to his experience during the Napoleonic wars, Clausewitz’s caution is equally applicable to nuclear war. A second criticism suggested that with options for limited use, the likelihood of such use now also increased. The critique – although originating from comments against the Defence Program Review Committee – still held true for Schlesinger’s new doctrine. Should a crisis erupt, limited nuclear options could make the weapons more desirable to use than conventional forces, and “… flexibility would increase the danger of a nuclear catastrophe.”⁴⁶ The threshold for the use of nuclear weapons would be lowered with the introduction of options. 

A third criticism relates to the idea of misinterpretation. National Security Archive analyst Dr. William Burr indicated that if the Soviets where to employ a doctrine of launching upon the detection of incoming nuclear missiles, they might interpret this signal as an attempted first strike, thereby causing them to retaliate massively to what was otherwise a limited American attack.  It was never clear to the United States what the Soviet response would be to a limited strike.⁴⁷ Finally, a fourth criticism was technical, and it was centered upon the issue of command and control. Bluntly, “…the U.S. ‘Command Centers do not possess the combination of survivability and capability which is required for the conduct of limited strategic nuclear war.’”⁴⁸ These four criticisms, combining technical concerns with strategic and policy concerns, illuminate some of the challenges of fighting a nuclear war consistent with a notion of war conceived of by Clausewitz.

Despite these criticisms, President Jimmy Carter, in 1980 and after an 18-month review that was initiated upon his entrance into office,⁴⁹ signed Presidential Directive (PD) 59 that codified Schlesinger’s doctrine as policy.⁵⁰ In essence, the directive allowed the United States the flexibility to respond in kind should the Soviets “…move up the escalation ladder…[and be able to]…respond effectively at each level.”⁵¹ More precisely, the directive targeted military and political targets, rather than the traditional urban and industrial targets normally associated with such weapons of mass destruction.⁵² The directive broke the strategic force into target sets of Regional Nuclear Options, Limited Nuclear Options, and Economic Recovery targets, and it also directed the maintenance of a strategic reserve.⁵³ In keeping with the new political and military imperative, the targets now included “… second-echelon military and political leaders.”⁵⁴ It did not target senior leadership, insuring that there was someone with whom to negotiate the escalation. Although it took seven years and two more secretaries of defense⁵⁵  to revise, what President Carter signed in 1980 was consistent with the doctrine first refined by Schlesinger. The United States now possessed a policy with which to attempt a controlled nuclear war.

Consequences

Although the Secretary of Defense at the time (1977-1981), Harold Brown, is said to have doubted whether limited options would avoid escalation,⁵⁶ some empirical work on the subject actually suggested that limited nuclear options could work. Using game theory techniques, Robert Powell concluded that “…states prefer to have relatively smaller, less-destructive limited options…”⁵⁷ and that “…as the crisis continues, the states become less and less likely to escalate further.”⁵⁸ But despite this somewhat overly rational vote of confidence from a game theorist, the question of how a nuclear strike – notwithstanding its degree – would be interpreted by the Soviet Union left too many questions. Specifically, if the Soviets employed a launch-under-attack policy – meaning that they would only retaliate upon confirmation of a nuclear detonation on their soil – even a single nuclear detonation could potentially trigger a massive retaliation.⁵⁹ Just because one side adopts a certain policy does not automatically mean the other side will adopt it as well.

This ultimately led to a paradox in that through the search for limited nuclear options, a policy that would invite and even leave the United States vulnerable to a Soviet strike was created. In essence, by attempting to control escalation, even if the United States did not strike first – for example as a limited (albeit escalated) response to a limited attack – they could find themselves in a position to be the first to strike at cities.  By doing so, the Soviet forces would be able to retaliate in kind and thereby destroying U.S. cities.⁶⁰ This nuance was not lost on either side, and as such, the U.S. would be hesitant to strike at cities first, but the Soviets would also appreciate this constraint, and could actually find it empowering to strike the U.S. in a limited nuclear manner.⁶¹ Further complicating matters, should the Soviets strike only American ICBMs, the President would lose his only hard target – or ALPHA task-suited (in the language of the SIOP) - systems and be left only with systems suitable to striking cities. The Americans could be forced through circumstances, even without the justification of escalation, to be the first to strike at Soviet cities. In either case, it was a situation that did not offer any immediate solutions, and it was deemed unacceptable.⁶²

According to Freedman, the solution turned out to be a return to “… the crude political science of early airpower theorists…who believed that strategic bombardment could detach the elite from the mass and thus cause swift social breakdown.”⁶³ This came about through an assessment that, given the Soviet Union’s centralization of power, striking at elements of it would achieve early capitulation. This policy was articulated in PD 59,⁶⁴ but it failed to indicate that much of this “Soviet political culture”⁶⁵  would be most likely located in urban areas.

As this debate was unfolding, Carl Builder continued to release reports and articles advocating, not only a specialization in roles for the ICBM fleet, but also the development of a genuine (and declaratory) first-strike counter-force capability, insisting that is was not a destabilizing policy.⁶⁶ His logic was persuasive as he indicated that a second-strike counterforce capability (which the U.S. possessed at the time) was only appropriate if accompanied with a conventional force advantage (which the U.S. did not have at the time). He therefore argued that, in order for American nuclear policy to align with the conventional force realities, it had to adopt a credible first-strike counterforce posture.⁶⁷ Whether Builder was writing this out of an honest belief in the value of counterforce postures, or out of a desire to maintain a credible role for ICBMs can be debated, but his assertions were nonetheless provocative. In many ways, the search for limited nuclear options also continued the advocacy of massive strikes.

Conclusion

Initiated by Nixon and Kissinger, refined by Schlesinger, and finally implemented by Carter and his Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, nuclear war fighting has always been considered a difficult endeavour. Beset by rivalries and competing visions, the success of the development of nuclear options short of a massive exchange remains unclear. The efforts by the various administrations to insert Clausewitz into nuclear policy were successful in that options were created, but their efficacy remains clearly in doubt. Leaders and analysts alike during the Cold War found the concept of massive retaliation lacking, and, as such, eagerly sought an approach of flexible response, such as that offered by Schlesinger’s concept of limited nuclear options. American nuclear military strategist Bernard Brodie makes the interesting point that Clausewitz’s dictum of only fighting wars that have political goals is lost within concepts that seek to cause “… so much greater damage to its industrial plants than [does the US].”⁶⁸ For Brodie, such thinking has caused war to lose its political relevance as it becomes simply about destruction on a cataclysmic scale. Limited nuclear options seemed to offer a way to keep the political goals alive in the contemplation of a nuclear exchange. However, in this writer’s opinion, any attempt to actually fight a nuclear war probably would have been more like ‘whistling past the graveyard’ – unnecessarily risky. 

This article has outlined the historical context of the decision to examine limited nuclear options, as well as the inter-departmental and inter-service rivalries that affected this option’s development. With respect to its application to the realities of the Cold War and the human factor in general, Clausewitz appears to have fallen out of step yet again. However, if one more carefully interprets the Prussian’s classic relationship between politics and war, Clausewitz remains relevant. War, without political goals, is senseless – nuclear weapons simply made the divide between war and politics that much more narrow. In this writer’s opinion, this is as true today as it was during the Cold War.

NOTES

1. The conflicting points of view and interpretations of Clausewitz and On War range from issues of translation to analysis.  For example, quality of translations vary drastically, from the thorough and objective (Peter Paret’s and Sir Michael Howard’s version), to the abridged and biased (Anatol Rapoport’s version).  “Which Translation of Clausewitz’ On War Do You Have?” www.clausewitz.com, accessed 27 October 2010.  Further, many Clausewitz followers misinterpret his teachings, such as Joseph Greene, who, in a foreword to an English edition, cited Clausewitz as an advocate of total war. Bernard Brodie, “A Guide to the Reading of On War,” Carl von Clausewitz, On War. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, (Eds., Trs) Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976, p. 646.

2. Clausewitz, p.78.

3. Ibid, p. 80.

4. Ibid, p. 87.

5. Ibid, p. 89.

6. The concept of mutual assured destruction evolved over time after the Second World War. Beginning with a state of a nuclear weapons monopoly, the United States developed concepts such as massive retaliation and then later, flexible response.  Furthermore, the concept of deterrence was not without its detractors, initially within the military itself, and then later – with Regan – within the realm of politics.  From a military perspective, deterrence was found objectionable as it was seen to cede the initiative to the enemy, a strategic posture that military officers found abhorrent.  See Bernard Brodie, “The Development of Nuclear Strategy.” in International Security, Vol. 2 (1978), p. 68, and Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003.  Also, see Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999.

7. William Burr, “The Nixon Administration, the ‘Horror Strategy,’ and the Search for Limited Nuclear Options, 1969-1972,” in Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3. (Summer 2005), p. 34.

8. Clausewitz, p. 79.

9. William Burr, (Ed.) “The Creation of SIOP 62: More Evidence on the Origins of Overkill,” in National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 130, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB130/index.htm, accessed 2 October 2010.

10. Ibid, p. 34.

11. Ibid, p. 42.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid, p. 45.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid, p. 36.

16. Freedman, p. 395.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid, pp. 360-361.

19. Where C2 stood for Command and Control, C3I now stands for Command, Control, Communications and Information. The current doctrine now uses C4I meaning Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Information.

20. Burr, p. 61.

21. Freedman, p. 366.

22. Ibid, p. 367.

23. Ibid.

24. If we take the SIOP briefing of 1969 as the start point, a codified policy with nuclear options was not implemented fully until 1979 under the Carter administration.  “Current US Strategic Targeting Doctrine” 3 December  1979, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB43/doc20.pdf, accessed 27 October 2010.

25. Freedman, p. 355.

26. Desmond Ball and Robert C. Toth, “Revising the SIOP: Taking War-Fighting to Dangerous Extremes,” in International Security, Vol. 14. No. 4. (Spring 1990), p. 66.

27. Freedman, p. 359.

28. Burr, p. 51.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid, p. 59.

32. Ibid, p. 56.

33. Ibid.

34. The nuclear triad is in reference to multiple delivery systems for nuclear weapons. The triad includes bombers, submarines, and land-based launch sites. Freedman, p. 326.

35. Fred Kaplan, “Bureaucracy and the Bomb: The Hidden Factor Behind Nuclear Madness,” in Washington Monthly, Vol. 15, No. 6. (July 1983), pp. 48-53.

36. Carl H. Builder et al. “The U.S. ICBM Force: Current Issues and Future Options,” a report prepared for United States Air Force Project RAND, October 1975, pp. 83-84.

37. Ibid.

38. Freedman, p. 360.

39. This opportunity refers to the confluence of the right technology (increasingly more sophisticated delivery systems) with the right people (key White House and Defense Department officials of like minds) in the right place (in office) at the right time (together), which allowed for theory to be put into practice. Ibid, p. 361.

40. Ibid.

41. James R. Schlesinger, “Strategic Forces,” in Air Force Magazine, 4 March 1979, p. 2.

42. Freedman, p. 365.

43. Drew Middleton, The New York Times, 18 November 1981.

44. Ibid.

45. Uwe Hartmann, Carl von Clausewitz and the Making of Modern Strategy, Postdam: Miles-Verlag, 2002, p. 41.

46. Burr, p. 67.

47. Ibid, p. 66.

48. IDA analysts L. Wainstein et al. in Ibid, p. 61.

49. Mossberg.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid.

53. Ball and Toth, p. 68.

54. Mossberg.

55. Schlesinger was replaced as Secretary of Defense by Donald Rumsfeld, who then turned the post over to Harold Brown under the Carter Administration.

56. Mossberg.

57. Robert Powell, “Nuclear Deterrence and the Strategy of Limited Retaliation,” in The American Political Science Review, Vol. 83, No. 2. (June 1989), p. 517.

58. Ibid.

59. Burr specifically quotes Wainstein et al. in suggesting that there existed a “…fundamental uncertainty concerning Soviet responses to limited nuclear strikes on the USSR.” Burr, p. 66

60. Freedman, p. 371.

61. Mossberg.

62. Freedman, p. 372.

63. Ibid, p. 377.

64. Mossberg.

65. Freedman, p. 376.

66. Carl H. Builder, “The Case for First-Strike Counterforce Capabilities,” at the 41st Symposium of the Military Operational Research Society, July 1978.

67. Ibid, p. 18.

68. Brodie, The Development of Nuclear Strategy, p. 79.