arms-d@ucbvax.ARPA (04/24/85)
From: Moderator <ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 3 : Issue 24
Today's Topics:
First Strike Plans
Cut/Choose Strategy (3 msgs)
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Date: 14 Apr 85 23:03 PST
From: CAULKINS@USC-ECL.ARPA
Subject: First Strike Plans
To: arms-d@MIT-MC.ARPA
In the April 8 issue of The New Yorker is a long article (the second
of two parts) by Daniel Ford on C**3I and nuclear war policy. I
recommend reading the whole thing, but here are some quotes:
"United States civilian and military leaders have stated in solemn and
unqualified terms that they would never use the country's nuclear
forces in a general offensive - a preemptive first strike - against
the Soviet Union. In private, officials refer to this not as an
inflexible principle, but merely as part of the nation's 'declaratory
policy'. They distinguish, that is, between formal reassurances made
for political purposes and the Pentagon's real contigency plans for
using nuclear weapons.
Most Americans reject the idea of a first strike as morally
indefensible, supporting instead a policy of retaliation - of
counterstrikes after a Soviet attack on our homeland. Public
declarations by civilian and military leaders against the use of
nuclear weapons for offensive purposes are intended to reflect such
scruples, but the statements do not indicate what Pentagon planners
regard as military reality. The actual United States preparations for
nuclear war are, of course, highly sensitive and never discussed in
public, but, from waht can be learned about them, the plans appear to
attach secondary importance to retaliation. The primary emergency
plan - the one that seems more likely to be executed if the Pentagon
was convinced that a Soviet nuclear strike was inevitable - involves a
preemptive attack on military targets in the Soviet Union. One of its
principal aims would be to kill Soviet leaders and thereby prevent
them from launching their missiles.
The priority assigned to killing Soviet leaders is made clear in the
documents that summarize the results of two Internal Conferences on
War Aims and Strategic Forces which took pl;ace in 1979 - 80 under the
auspices of TRW, a major defense contractor. (The documents, like all
the others quoted in this article, are unclassified.) The
participants in these private sessions included General Bruce K.
Holloway, the commander-in-chief of the Strategic Air Command, or SAC,
from 1968 to 1972; Colin S. Gray, a leading arms advisor to the Reagan
Administration; Benson D. Adams, a Pentagon expert on nuclear policy;
William Schneider, the Under-Secretary of State for Security
Assistance, Science, and Technology; and a number of technical experts
on nuclear-force targeting, the MX missile, and Soviet politics. Francis
X. Kane of TRW was the coordinator of the conferences; he said in an
interview that the meetings were organized atthe request of Richard
DeLauer, a TRW executive who later became the Reagan Administration's
Under-Secretary of Dfense for Research and Engineering.
General Holloway, in a memorandum to Kane dated March 31, 1980, just
after the second conference, discussed his views on the 'conclusions
shared by most of the group' and also some of his own 'impressions'
concerning the issues that had been discussed. The United States 'war
aims', he wrote, included 'prevention of the loss of our way of life,'
'damage limitation,' and the 'degradationof the Soviet State and its
control apparatus to such an extent as to make successful negotiation
possible.' In achieving these objectives, 'the importance of
crippling the [Soviet] command and the command control
system...assumes extraordinary proportions.' The memo goes on to
describe the kind of offensive against the Soviet leadership that he
believes must be the focus of the United States war plans.
'Degradation of the over-all political and military control apparatus
must be the primary targeting objective. Irrespective of whether we
strike first or respond to a Soviet strike (presumably counterforce),
it assumes the importance of absolute priority planning. Striking
first would offer a tremendous advantage, and would emphasize
degrading the highest political and military control to the greatest
possible degree.' As for the feasability of killing Soviet leaders
and thereby paralyzing their war machine, General Holloway wrote, 'I
am convinced that in the Soviet system there is such centralized
control that it would be possible to degrade very seriously their
military effectiveness for nuclear or any other kind of war if the
command control system were severly disrupted. Major damage would be
difficult to achieve and would require better intelligencethan now
possible (better reconnaissance and better clandestine inputs), but it
can be done. Moreover it must be done, because there is no other
targeting strategy that can achieve the war aims that underwrite
survival.'
General Holloway said in an interview last month that he thought
nuclear war was very unlikely but if it did come attacking the Soviet
command-and-control system 'has a lot of proponents, including me.
It's the only targeting that makes sense.' ...
What is particulary clear from [Holloway's] memo is that the notion
of fighting a long nuclear conflict and controlling its escalation
is not really the point of current American strategy - at least as far
as many in the military are concerned. 'Official policy suggests we're
moving toward long-term-war-fighting,' a member of a government panel
that reviewed recent developments in Pentagon war-planning told
me. 'But in reality we're moving toward first strike.'...
'If there is a nuclear war, the United States will be the one to
start it,' and Air Force strategist who has worked on the United
States war plan (known as the Single Integrated Operational Plan,or
SIOP) told me. This officer noted, with pride, that elaborate Air
Force 'timing studies' in which he had participated showed how certain
forms of precisly coordinated attacks on the Soviet Union could
greatly reduce American casualties from the level they would reach if
the Soviets made the first move. ... Thus, contrary to all the
statements about responding to a Sovietattack, the actual war plans,
including all versions of the SIOP that have been developed since
1960, give the United States the option of launching a first strike
against the Soviet Union if war appears to be unavoidable. ...
The system on which the Pentagon depends for warning of a nuclear
attack is extremely fragile; the communications network for issuing
orders in the wake of an assault is equally vulnerable. These
technical problems are important. They influence - deeply - how
responsible leaders might have to act in a crisis, because the less
certain the United States is of its ability to retaliate the greater
its temptation to strike first.
The President's most frustrating problem in making preparations to
command United States forces after a Soviet attack is that he may be
among the first to die. ...
KIlling the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Joint Chiefs
of Staff before they boarded the [National Emergency Airborne Command
Post] plane, or destroying the plane before they got to it, would be a
relatively trivial task. The 5-to-8 minute flight time of missiles
launched from Soviet submarines stationed off the East Coast would
allow the bombs to fall before [the plane's] passengers could be
assembled and helicoptered to Andrews [Air Force Base]. The practical
difficulties in evacuating the President were demonstrated in 1977,
when Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national-security
advisor, staged a mock exercise. The drill ended up as 'a nightmare,
just a complete disaster,' according to a White House aide who
participated in it. ...
Top Russian leaders, despite their greater efforts to protect themselves,
would also have difficulty surviving a direct UntedStates attack against
their capital. ...
The Soviets have built some two thousand underground bunkers capable
of housing more than a hundred and ten thousand Soviet military
officials and Communist party leaders. ... If the Soviet leaders do
reach their designated sanctuaries, they may find that high-yield
weapons exploded at ground level - and earth-penetrating warheads
which burrow into the ground and then explode - can readily excavate
the shelters and kill those inside. ...
Without central commands, the United States and Soviet military
establishments would be reduced to the staus of pea-brained dinosaurs.
Each might still have giant thermonuclear claws but no sure means of
deciding how to use them, or even of knowing whether they were still
there. It seems unreasonable to expect that two essentially headless
creatures, in their death throes, would be able to carry on much of a
dialogue about how they might conclude hosilities. Yet their ability
to negotiate is presumed by the present United States policy of
controlled escalation. ...
There is also a strong military tradition that provide further reason
fo deemphasizing the command-and-control systemssuitable for striking
back at the Soviet Union. Down through the ages, commanders have
always favored offense over defense: seizing the initiative rather
than ceding it to the enemy; looking for the opportunity to land a
Sunday punch instead of waiting for the other side to let go with one.
Permitting the United States to be destroyed by the Soviets and then
retaliating is a completely unmilitary notion. The common operating
premise among United States war planners, therefor, is that the United
States would never permit itself to be hit first. ...
The Strategic Air Command simply does not plan to be in a retaliatory
mode, and if United States leaders want to push the button first they
do not need to use cumbersome antennas or other such devices. They
can just phone their orders in. ...
A SIOP that put the priority on submarine attack-response plans would
provide a basis for the deterrent posture most consistent with
long-term United States security. ...
To demonstrate the switch to a purely retaliatory SIOP, the United
States' fixed, land-based Minuteman missiles with multiple warheads
must be phased out and replaced - if at all - only by mobile,
single-warhead missiles that do not pose a first-strike threat. A
second factor undermining stable deterrence is the plan to deploy the
D-5 missile on future Trident submarines. This program, which
converts the submarines into potential frist-strike weapons, must be
cancelled if there is to be any hope of preserving the major
contribution that submarines can make to preserving the peace. ...
General Scowcroft referred to 'a real dilemma here that we haven't
sorted out.' The use of 'controlled nuclear options' to force
concessions form the Soviets means that we 'presume communication with
the Soviet Union,' he said. 'And yet, from a military point of view,
one of the most efficient kinds of attack is against leadership and
command-and-control systems....This is a dilemma that, I think,
we still have not completely come to grips with.'
General Scowcroft did not say when, or how, the United States
strategists were going to resolve this question, but the lack of an
answer has not stopped the United States from moving ahead with the
weaponry for making a first strike against the Soviet leadership. The
question of whether it is better to kill Soviet leaders or to keep
them around to negotiate with has simply been left open. The subject
has been handled in the way Pentagon planners customarily handle
important problems about nuclear-war fighting which they are unable to
resolve. The official attitude is that we will fall off that bridge
when we come to it."
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Date: Thu, 18 Apr 85 8:50:59 EST
From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin@BBNCCH.ARPA>
Subject: I cut, you choose
To: ARMS-D@mit-mc.ARPA
Cc: bboard@BBNCCH.ARPA, bn@BBNCCH.ARPA
When a piece of cake is divided for two children, the youngsters
typically argue over which is the larger. At some point, a clever child
or parent devised an elegant solution sometimes called "I cut, you
choose."
One cuts the cake as accurately as possible. The other gets to choose
first, thereby turning any imprecision into an advantage.
As early as 1963, the strategy was proposed in print as a possible
approach to disarmament. The idea was developed in three papers in the
1970s.
Now a University of Edinburgh professor, Stephen H. Salter, has taken it
a step farther. In a 17-page proposal, "Some Ideas to Stop World War
III," Salter lays out a careful, largely mathematical approach to the
problem. The proposal has been critiqued by a number of specialists and
refined in turn by Salter.
The approach avoids many of the pitfalls of other disarmament proposals
and even turns them to advantage. It is a way entities that do not
trust each other at all can cooperate while having a minimum of dialogue.
In Salter's proposal, the superpowers evaluate elements of their own
weaponry and give them proportionate values. Each side then chooses a
minute percentage of the other side's weapons for dismantling. The
reduction proceeds in tiny increments as the two sides determine that it
is satisfactory.
Mathematicians, studying the "I cut, you choose" strategy, have
discovered that when there are irregularities in the cake--more icing on
one part, more cherries on another--the cake-eaters' opinions may differ
further as to the values of the differences. Both choosers can believe
they got the better of the deal. And be correct in that belief!
A cake-sharing disarmament strategy would work in this way:
o Each side writes a list of all weapons in its inventory. Each
is numbered with a "military value percentage," which signifies
its usefulness in the eyes of its owner. The total percentages
equal 100.
For instance, if one side had 25,000 warheads of equal usefulness, the
military value percentage of each would be 0.0004.
It would be unusual if the feeling of threat induced by every weapon in
its potential victim matched the feeling of security that it provided
its owner.
Salter gives an example: a mobile, forward-based quick-launch unhardened
missile with accurate terminal-guidance can very easily be mistaken for
a first-strike deterrent destroyer without providing much protection for
its land of origin. On the other hand, a less-accurate submarine-based
weapon, which is safe from detection and could be used at leisure for
retaliation as a second-strike weapon, is a splendid protection for its
owner without appearing too threatening to the target.
o Each side picks weapons to some agreed-upon small total military
value percentage--such as one percent--FROM THE LIST OF ITS
OPPONENT, and asks that these be dismantled in return for a
similar amount chosen by the other side from its own list.
Each side will have to pretend to be indifferent about which of its own
weapons are selected. Supposedly it chose the numbers to make all
possible choices equal.
"Because there was a difference of opinion about values of security and
threat, both choices will now feel that they have gained an advantage,"
says Salter. "They have removed the nastiest-looking devices
threatening them, paying for this with standardized reduction."
The perceived gap between them has been narrowed: Side A thinks that
its own inventory is now 99 percent of the original. But Side A also
thinks that Side B's new inventory is less than 99 percent of Side B's
original BY AN AMOUNT THAT DEPENDS UPON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
PERCEIVED VALUES OF SECURITY AND THREAT.
The number of weapons in the world will have decreased. Moreover, the
process will have selectively reduced weapons that have a high threat
value while leaving behind those with a high security value. The side
arguing that the other has a larger quantity of weapons will have the
satisfaction of knowing that the absolute reduction in its opponent's
armory will be larger than its own.
Only a side that secretly knew it had supremacy and was determined to
retain it could have any logical reservations.
The mix of weapons presumably was carefully designed to fulfill the
perceived defense needs of the owners. The first reductions may have
produced a slight alteration in that balance. At the end of the first
step, there should be a pause to enable the military value percentages
to be reconsidered in the light of the remaining inventory and the new
knowledge of the opponent's feelings.
"Each side must feel quite confident that it cannot be forced into the
position of having an insecure mix of weapons," says Salter.
The chance for adjustment between rounds prevents one side from making
excessive selections from one section of its opponent's list. If it
did, the military value percentages of the remaining weapons would be
raised so that fewer of them would be lost at each reduction. Balance
is therefore preserved.
A variation: each side determines the military value percentages for
the OTHER'S weaponry. The outcome is still symmetrical.
Salter is a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of
Edinburgh. He specializes in designing renewable sources of energy.
In an interview with Leading Edge, he said "I had not been particularly
involved in the nuclear issue. I'm an inventor. I thought I ought to
try to invent a solution."
His usual approach to an invention is first to write out the
difficulties. "I saw that accurate comparison of arms was the greatest
difficulty. A lot of my work has been involved in measurement. I knew
it couldn't be done.
"So I asked: `How can we get away from the measurement problem?'"
That is when he thought of the cake-sharing strategy. Later he found
that it had been raised earlier, first as a mathematical theory, then as
an unconventional approach to disarmament.
He has circulated his paper mainly among people in the defense
community. He also sent it to the U.S. Embassy in London and to a
number of United States senators.
One of his most helpful respondents was Richard Garwin, who helped
engineer the first hydrogen bomb.
"It's a SOUND new idea, not a flaky one," said Garwin, now at IBM's
Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y.
Gerwin said he gave an earlier draft of Salter's paper to a Russian
diplomat in 1983. "I haven't heard what the USSR thinks of it, but at
least the concept has been introduced."
For a complete version of the proposal: Stephen Salter, Mechanical
Engineering Dept., University of Edinburgh, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh 9,
Skotland, U.K. Tel: 031-667-1081, ext. 3276.
I have adapted this from the lead article in the 4/1/85 issue of Leading
Edge, devoted to this proposal. For a copy, send $1.50 and a SASE to
Box 42050, Los Angeles 90042. This issue includes references to other
resources, including the papers that broached the notion in embryo in
the 1960s and 70s. (Bulk copies 50 cents each plus $2 shipping per 50;
subscriptions $25/year for individuals, a biweekly.)
Bruce Nevin
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Date: Thu, 18 Apr 85 10:17:11 EST
From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin@BBNCCH.ARPA>
Subject: more on cut/choose strategy
To: arms-d@mit-mc.ARPA
Cc: wsalter@bbng.ARPA
----BEGINNING OF FORWARDED MESSAGES----
Date: 18 Apr 85 10:01 EST
Sender: WSALTER@BBNG.ARPA
Subject: Cut/Choose
From: WSALTER@BBNG.ARPA
To: BNevin@BBNCCH.ARPA
Cc: WSalter@BBNG.ARPA
I did research on drug abuse treatment programs in the mid-70's
and was surprised to find that this is a standard strategy for
sharing among that population, too: that is, when two people
purchase drugs together, one cuts and the other chooses. (Note
that this is less workable for >2 people; it loses symmetry.)
You might be interested in a book called "The Evolution of
Cooperation," by Robert Axelrod, a political scientist at
Michigan. He looks at the iterated prisoner's dilemma as a model
for various domains where participants are in competition and yet
must cooperate somewhat; he makes a very strong case that
cooperative strategies can evolve, and what is needed for that is
good communication and small steps. There is no surface
similarity between what Salter talks about and Axelrod's stuff,
but I bet that there are deep similarities. I would be
interested in further communication on this topic; I have the
Axelrod book.
Billy Salter (WSalter@BBNG; x2651; despite the strong
similarities between my last name and Stephen S's, we are not, as
far as I know, related.)
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