Military and Political Policy: Maritime Strategy vs. Coalition Defense

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The United States is in the throes of another fundamental reexamination of defense strategy and posture comparable to that leading to primary reliance on nuclear deterrence in the early 1950s. This culminates a process which began over 20 years ago, as U.S. planners first began to grapple with the implications of likely Soviet catching up in nuclear capabilities. Now that nuclear stalemate is a fact of life, U.S. attention is turning to alternative strategies relying even more on conventional capabilities than the current strategic doctrine of flexible response. While crucial nuclear issues must still be addressed, this article will focus chiefly on the leading non-nuclear alternatives now under debate.

To oversimplify, one is a maritime supremacy strategy which tacitly acknowledges Soviet military predominance on the Eurasian landmass and stresses U.S. exploitation of the medium which we can most readily dominate-the sea. The other calls for trying harder to generate a credible conventional defense of such high priority areas as Western Europe, Northeast Asia, and the oil-rich Persian Gulf littoral, primarily via greater coalition burden sharing and a more efficient collective effort. At present the Reagan Administration is trying to ride both horses. Since conventional capabilities are so much more expensive than nuclear, however, economic constraints may force on it the necessity for choice.

II

The chief factor impelling the United States toward a new strategy has been the gradual improvement of Soviet nuclear capabilities, to the point where they make a U.S. deterrent strategy based primarily on nuclear retaliation lose a great deal of its earlier utility and appeal. Of course, from the dawn of the nuclear age there have been voices arguing that nuclear weapons of mass destruction were too terrible ever to be used, hence that adequate conventional strength was also essential to deterrence. Nor has fear of U.S. nuclear retaliation stopped Soviet exploitation of vulnerable targets in the Third World, although it has no doubt helped deter any Soviet designs on major U.S. allies. Indeed, the United States itself has been self-deterred by the awesome nature of the atom it unleashed. Though the United States fought two major limited conflicts at a time when it enjoyed massive nuclear superiority, it never seriously contemplated nuclear escalation...