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First of the four grand strategies: Do not want to cut off from the world economically or diplomatically, just militarily, Goals: Defend the US homeland, and perhaps the Persian Gulf, withdraw bases and infrastructure from Europe and Asia. Why? Few threats to homeland, no point to policing the world, underneath that, this school has high confidence in the nuclear revolution. Policy: Stay engaged economically and diplomatically, but withdraw all the troops from Europe/Asia, to return our military to the pre-World War II level, with an army of about 100,000. Second of the four grand strategies: Goals: Defend the American homeland, to prevent wars among the world's major power, by maintaining the ability to defend a power from any other power, ie. to prevent the rise of a regional hegemon, in Asia, Europe, or the Persian Gulf. School had medium confidence in the nuclear revolution, also saw that even small states could develop robust enough nuclear capabilities for a stability at the nuclear level that would enable them to fight wars at the conventional level. Acknowledged risks of imperialist over-stretch, wants to minimize risk by limiting the number of forces on foreign forces Policy: Withdraw some overseas forces, keep a large Navy, Air Force, Marines to maintain super power range if need be. o Resistance = Benefits x (Probability of Getting Them) - Costs x (Probability of Having Them Inflicted)
o Coercion must be a function of changing one of these four variables
o Not all of these are subject to the coercer - ie. the Benefits cannot usually be manipulated
o The main benefits of any given dispute for a target state are usually fixed, at least during the dispute
• Two different states may, however, put a different value on the same benefit
• But during the dispute, the benefit value for one state does not change
o So, in order to manipulate B, you would have to convince the US, for example, that California is not part of the US
• Example: Many people would like to convince Iran not to build a nuclear weapon. Iran wants one, we posit, for security. To manipulate B in Iran's case, we would have to persuade them that the nuclear weapons would provide no security.
o The other variables can change.
o The Costs corresponds to immediate punishment strategies, ie. civilian casualties and deaths
• C is a traditional bombing strategy
• Firebombing of Japan, for example.
o The p(C) is to raise the credibility of the punishment, incrementally, causing the government to surrender to avoid the threatened future costs implied by the incremental increase of risk (the Schelling strategy)
o The p(B) is to threaten the opponent with future military failure. Once they know the objective cannot be achieved, they don't want to expend costs pointlessly. • 1. Conventional munitions rarely kill more than a small percentage of the population. Ie. For six months, we firebombed Japanese cities, and we killed 800,000 people, before we dropped the atomic bombs.
• 2. Modern economies are not very brittle. Modern states can often minimize their vulnerability by evacuating and rapid adjustment to economic dislocation. They can also abandon luxury production to continue basic production of goods. This is the point that policymakers often underestimate.
• We want to make anti-government forces stronger.
• But these dynamics certainly exist, but Olsen says that as you impose economic sanctions on a functioning government, the government still functions to reallocate inside the government - they can shift the costs of the sanctions on their opponents, who are then facing decreasing wealth. They then become more loyal to the government than they were before.
• 3. The rise of nationalism: In the past two centuries, nationalism has risen. When you see this, the key point is that it is working against punishment as a coercive tool. In international disputes, territory is usually related. It often constitutes an intolerable injury to nationalists interests. It endows personal attachment to people who belong to national identities. Allows higher costs (up to 2% of population). Fast destruction of a military target, Developed by a handful of officers at Maxwell Air Force Base, seemed to be about attacking the enemy's war economy, attacking the military production, what the officers were thinking about attacking Germany, started to lay out a conventional, on-going war on the European continent. Asked how US air power can help - they saw that the heart of the war would be military production. Had to hit the workers. Looking at a network analysis and their idea was that they could identify the critical nodes of that network that would make the whole economy collapse, which was both civilian and military. Those critical nodes were providing food, water, and transportation for the civilian population. Begins to look like civilian punishment.
Industrial Web: Social disintegration, not exactly a popular revolt. • Victory by changing or paralyzing enemy senior leadership
• Core assumptions are not only about technology and weapon
• Also make assumptions about the nature of the enemy
• States rely on commands from national leaders
• These leaders rely on communication systems from elite to elite
• As they become more sophisticated, they become more brittle
• National command posts, television stations, radio transmitters are prominent, stationary targets
• Since the 1990s, leaders have focused on leadership decapitation
• Plan to incapacitate Saddam Hussein before the First Gulf War
• Wanted to go for "head of the snake," ie. Milosevic
• For modern air power advocates, decapitation has the advantage of minimizing collateral damage and focusing on just a critical target set
• Warden's target set for the first Gulf War had 84 targets
• Decapitation with precision air power has failed or backfired in all 8 cases in which it has ben tried
• Qaddafi in 1986
o We accidentally killed his 3 year old daughter
• Hussein in First Gulf War
o First in 1991, Instant Thunder
• Hussein in 1998
o Desert Fox, attacked 100 targets in and around Baghdad
o Wanted to go back with better intelligence
o CIA gave eavesdropping equipment to the UN Inspection Team
• Hussein in 2003
o Opened the war when we thought we had Saddam in our gunsites
o We killed the CIA agent
• In April 1996, the Russians assassinated the Chechyan leader
o Yeltsin said he wanted to negotiate a ceasefire over the phone
o Dudayev gets killed while he's on the cell phone which was beaming out a signal
o They get a new leader and kick the Russians out
• March 1999 US launched a three day air war to coerce Milosevic some peace accords
o Three day air war did not work
o 40,000 troops move into Kosovo to displace 900,000 Kosovar Albanians
• 2001 Opening Strikes in Afghanistan
o Tried to topple a Taliban leader
• 2006 Israel tries to kill the Hezbollah leader
• In each of these, failure or backfire.
o There are several core problems in decapitation.
• The ability to destroy a target is not the central problem.
• The target sets are small.
• Decapitation is primarily a function of highly accurate intelligence.
• Killing the leader under these circumstances is relatively easy.
• Everyone assumes they're being wiretapped.
• Its impact is really on denial. • 1. Local ground threat (KLA) and NATO Tactical Air Power
• Although the KLA grew stronger during the course of the war, there is no evidence that the KLA could seize and take control of territory anytime soon.
• No offensive victories.
• Serb army had a lot of heavy artillery and troops, all in good condition.
• This is a non-starter.
• 2. Threat by NATO to inflict punishment on Serbian civilian
• Has some plausibility.
• Kosovo may be an exception to the general rule.
• Strategic air power was in fact in the process of destroying Serbia's economic infrastructure.
• We had destroyed bridges and oil refining capability.
• On May 23, we knocked out 70% of Serbia's electric power (a carbon fiber attack).
o "a cool , neat, new attack"
• Ultimately fails:
o 1. We did not inflict a lot of pain. We had killed 500 civilians. Pretty low.
o 2. We know something about the structure of the bombing that we were hitting week by week. After the war, Serbia came out with a 500 page damage assessment with every target we had hit. The air campaign peters out after the Chinese embassy bombing, right when the coercion should have been ramping up.
o 3. 50% of economy gone, with no concessions offered.
o 4. No evidence of popular revolt against Milosevic.
• 3. Threat of NATO ground invasion + a Russian carrot
• Russia's willingness to help Serbia seize a portion of Serbia, this could only happen if he surrendered immediately
• Starting in early May, there were efforts to negotiate with the Finns and the Russians
• Clinton would have approved ground options if Milosevic had not surrendered, 37,000 NATO troops are mobilized
• Russian came to Belgrade with a carrot
o Russians had a plan to partition Kosovo whether NATO liked it or not
o Pape thinks:
• 1. It's implausible that Milosevic surrendered due to the KLA.
• 2. Possible because of strategic attack.
• 3. The best option is the threat of NATO ground forces with Russian carrots. ;
