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Volume 40/No. 1/Spring 1998
The US dual-containment policy of Iraq and Iran is faltering. Efforts to preserve the post-Gulf War status quo of 1991 are failing, as both Western and Arab allies repudiate US rigidity in the face of changing political circumstances. On Iraq, the US must find a balance between security and humanitarian objectives. On Iran, the goal should be to integrate the Islamic Republic into the international economic and security environment in return for Tehran abandoning its weapons-of-mass-destruction programmes and support for violent terrorist operations. Washington’s attempts to pursue a more flexible diplomatic strategy have been thwarted by five years of sanctions legislation and public sloganeering, but change is essential if the US is to avoid a collision with its most important allies.
Gulf security necessitates a modest US presence to deter aggression in the Persian Gulf while awaiting the collapse of the Iraqi and Iranian regimes. By reducing the resources with which these regimes can buy arms, sanctions are a more cost-effective threat-reduction tool than the alternative, which would be a more robust US military presence. While isolating the more aggressive Iraq, US policy seeks a dialogue with Iran that can be combined with continuing sanctions, much like the Cold War combination of détente and deterrence in the West’s approach to the Soviet Union. Gulf security policy should be set by those who put their forces at risk, principally the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, rather than in acrimonious UN debates.
For the half century of its existence as an independent yet besieged state, Israel has had a coherent and generally effective national-security doctrine, predicated upon the existence of a mass, reserve-based army, and an offensive operational style. Despite a well-deserved reputation for innovativeness in the tools and techniques of war, the Israeli defence establishment has generally been conservative in its outlook, preferring aggressive incremental change to wholesale reform or transformation. Today, however, new geopolitical conditions, a changing technological environment, evolving threats and, perhaps most important of all, profound changes in Israel’s society and economy, have come together to force just such dramatic change.
Criticism of Israeli military-technology transfers to China is largely unfounded. The sales actually enjoyed tacit American support when they started in the 1970s (to Taiwan) and 1980s (to China). Washington’s recent accusations of illegal transfers of US technologies reflect changed political considerations more than actual facts. Military sales to China have helped mitigate the economic crisis facing Israel’s defence-industrial complex, have promoted political and strategic relations between Israel and China, and have had only a limited impact on the Asian balance of power. Israel’s arms-export control mechanisms, moreover, have been tightened considerably in recent years, while military transfers to China and Taiwan have drastically declined.
Diverse sources of cruise-missile proliferation already exist. And, unlike the incremental way in which the ballistic-missile threat has unfolded, land-attack cruise missiles with stealth capabilities could emerge rapidly and at the same time as cruder, first-generation cruise missiles. Indeed, compared with the predictable features of planning against the Cold War’s monolithic adversary, the emerging cruise-missile threat may well represent the prototype of twenty-first-century defence-planning challenges—multiple acquisition paths, uncertain development cycles and opaque monitoring environments. To avoid being caught unprepared for a future regional contingency, defence planners need to develop far better hedging strategies against this threat than they did against that of ballistic missiles in the 1980s. A critical near-term challenge is deciding upon an appropriate mix of defence investments and improved arms-control policies.
Proponents of nuclear disarmament argue that it will decrease the probability of deliberate nuclear war, is necessary to eliminate the possibility of accidental nuclear war, and will contribute to the prevention of nuclear proliferation. The first argument is wrong—disarmament is more likely to increase the probability of deliberate nuclear war. The second argument exaggerates the benefits—measures far short of disarmament can greatly reduce the dangers of accidental use. The third argument is correct, but for reasons overlooked by proponents—disarmament would make nuclear proliferation so threatening that the major powers would become willing to launch large preventive conventional wars. Although disarmament would bring some benefits, for the foreseeable future the major powers will be more secure in a nuclear world.
The term ‘virtual nuclear arsenals’ has recently entered the lexicon of nuclear strategy, arms control and non-proliferation. Virtual-nuclear-weapons capabilities are, to some degree, a reality of physics that inevitably results from the spread of nuclear-energy technologies and programmes. But an examination of the cases of South Africa, Israel, Japan, Belarus, Khazakstan and Ukraine suggests that virtual arsenals will have limited appeal for most states. Their potential value will be for countries that have decided to reduce or eliminate their nuclear arsenals and wish to reduce, if not eliminate, any residual risks of doing so. While virtual capabilities will not be the ultimate factor determining nuclear issues in the Middle East, South Asia or other crisis regions, they could offer important reassurance to states willing to forego their nuclear capacities in the context of broader regional political-military agreements or arrangements.
Some principles of strategy are so basic that when stated they sound like platitudes: treat former enemies magnanimously; do not take on unnecessary new ones; keep the big picture in view; balance ends and means; avoid emotion and isolation in making decisions; be willing to acknowledge error. And yet, the Clinton administration’s single most important foreign-policy initiative—NATO enlargement—somehow manages to violate every one of these principles. Perhaps that is why historians so widely agree that NATO enlargement is ill-conceived, ill-timed, and ill-suited to the realities of the post-Cold War world.