An Essay on Strategy: as it Affects the Achievement of Peace in a Nuclear Setting

175 Pages·1990·15.425 MB·English

by  Robert Neild (auth.)

AN ESSAY ON STRATEGY
Also by Robert Neild
PRICING AND EMPLOYMENT IN THE TRADE CYCLE
THE REFORM AND MEASUREMENT OF BUDGETARY POLICY
(with T. S. Ward)
HOW TO MAKE UP YOUR MIND ABOUT THE BOMB
THE FOUNDATIONS OF DEFENSIVE DEFENCE (edited with Anders
Boserup)
An Essay on Strategy
as it Affects the Achievement of Peace in a
Nuclear Setting
Robert Neild
Professor Emeritus of Economics, Cambridge
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
M
MACMILLAN
©Robert Neild 1990
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990
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First published 1990
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LT O
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Neild, R. R. (Robert Ralph), 1924--
An essay on strategy as it affects the achievement of
peace in a nuclear setting.
1. Peace, Maintenance, Role of weapons
I. Title
327.1'72
ISBN 978-0-333-52987-4 ISBN 978-1-349-20634-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20634-6
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 Introduction 1
The importance of theory 2
2 The Political Level 5
Political aims and military means 5
Different settings 6
Ends and means in the classical setting 6
Ends and means in a nuclear setting 8
Stability 10
Feedback 11
Terminology 12
Alternative strategies: non-nuclear forces 14
The distinction between offence and defence 15
The choice between offensiveness and defensiveness 16
The interaction of defensive and offensive strategies 18
The implications for balance and force levels 20
Ways to Mutual Defensive Superiority 21
The more-than-two country problem 23
Nuclear weapons on one side 25
The nuclear setting 25
Balance and nuclear weapons 28
Conclusion 28
3 The Nuclear Level 29
The acceptance of stalemate and its implications 30
The pursuit of political advantage 33
Nuclear weapons only 34
Game theory 35
Escalation 36
Raising the risk 38
Escalation dominance 39
Nuclear plus non-nuclear weapons 40
Extended deterrence 42
More than two countries 44
Conclusion 45
v
vi Contents
4 The Sub Nuclear Level 46
Origins 46
The trend of technology and firepower 48
The implications of increased accuracy 50
Area weapons 51
Classical laws 52
The requirements of a defensive structure 52
Air forces 57
Navies 59
Evidence from non-aligned countries 60
Evidence from modelling 63
The efficacy of denial and retaliation 63
The transition to defensiveness 65
The one-sided case: conclusion 66
The two-sided case 67
The approach to restructuring 70
The out of area problem 72
5 The Implementation of a Strategy 74
Three methods of implementation 74
The primacy of strategy 77
The objectives of negotiation 78
Obstacles to change 82
Offensive aims 84
6 Interpretation of the Period since 1945 85
Military doctrine 85
Soviet and WTO non-nuclear doctrine 86
United States/NATO non-nuclear doctrine 91
Nuclear doctrine 96
The United States 98
Strengthening deterrence 101
The pursuit of balance 102
The Soviet Union 103
The lesser nuclear powers 105
Disarmament and arms control 106
7 The Present Position and the Policy Alternatives 111
Soviet and WTO policy 111
NATO policies 113
Arms negotiations 114
Contents vii
Appendix: Disarmament Negotiations before 1945 118
A Negotiations before 1914 118
The background 118
The naval arms race 122
The disarmament movement 129
The Hague Conferences 130
B Inter-war negotiations 133
The background 133
The approach to disarmament 135
Naval disarmament 136
General disarmament 137
Qualitative disarmament 138
The lessons 142
Notes and References 145
Index 157
To my children
Preface
I must first acknowledge an unusual debt. It is to Anders Boserup.
He and I set out to write this book together about five years ago.
After more than a year of often intense work, when we had produced
the core of the first few chapters, we decided to give up the
collaboration and work separately. We did not disagree over any
major point of substance, but gaps remained to be filled, and there
was too wide a gulf between our approaches, between his instinct and
astonishing capacity to carry the process of logical and methodolo
gical dissection always a stage further and my English instinct to halt
when I feel I have reached a formulation that is logically adequate to
the problem in hand. After an interval of about two years, we both
felt that a book setting out this body of ideas was badly needed, and I,
with his encouragement, decided to go ahead on my own, making full
use of the work we had done together. I had hoped that when he had
seen the resulting draft he might feel able to add his name to mine as
co-author, but his reservations about my treatment of some points
were such that he felt he could not do so, and it was too late to start a
new attempt at an agreed text. Anders Boserup contributed many of
the most important ideas to the chapters on theory in the first part of
the book. My debt to him is immeasurable.
He and I are together editing a collection of papers, including some
by each of us, which deal more fully with some of the issues raised in
this essay. The papers are drawn principally from the Pugwash
Workshop on Conventional Defence in Europe. The collection,
entitled The Foundations of Defensive Defence, is also published by
Macmillan.
I have benefitted from many discussions of one of the main topics
addressed in this essay - alternative strategies for non-nuclear
defence in Europe - with civilian and military experts from East and
West whom I have met at the Pugwash Workshop, at seminars in
Moscow convened by Professor Andrey Kokoshin and Dr Evgeni
Silin, and at seminars in Bavaria organised by Dr Albrecht von
Miiller under the auspices of the newly-formed European Centre for
International Security.
I am indebted to Field Marshal Lord Carver and Dr Oliver
Ramsbotham, who read the whole of this essay in draft, and to
Professor Norman Stone and Mrs Darrah, who read the Historical
ix