On Meaning of Victory - Essays on Strategy

311 Pages·1986·18.381 MB·English

by  Edward N. Luttwak

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ESSAYS STRATEGY
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Edward N. Luttwak's The Pentagon and the Art of
War confirmed his reputation as the most brilliant
and controversial defense analyst and military
^
historian writing today. Now, in On the Meaning of
Victory, Luttwak examines the strategic and for-
eign-policy problems and possibilities facing the
United States in the 1980s and beyond.
—
In a series of incisive essays some reprinted
from Commentary, The Washington Quarterly, and
elsewhere; others published for the first time in
—
this volume Luttwak analyzes the threat of
nuclear war; the poverty of strategic thinking
among the American defense establishment; the
economic and political dimensions of military
strategy; and the delicate interplay of politics,
personality, and history in the making of policy.
Always provocative, Luttwak ranges over a wide
—spectrum of topics:
"Although both the superpowers have been
deploying new weapons and modifications of
older weapons, there is no 'arms race!"
—"It is not by accident...that all the loose talk
about fraud in defense spending is rarely deco-
rated with any case histories."
—"What
this republic badly needs in its defense
establishment is the wisdom of strategy and cer-
tainly not better 'management' or yet more 'effi-
* ///
ciency.
—"Victory always has its price, and... is often a
terrible thing for the victors. Only defeat is worse
still."
In this far-reaching exploration of the meaning
of strategy for America and its allies, Luttwak
issues a bold challenge to Western societies that
have become comfortably habituated to defeat.
Other Books by Edward N. Luttwak
The Pentagon and the Art of War
The Question of Military Reform
The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union
Strategy and Politics
Collected Essays
The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire
From the First Century A.D. to the Third
The Army
Israeli
(with D. Horowitz)
The Political Uses of Sea Power
Dictionary of Modern War
Goiip d’Etat
ON'
MEANING
OF VICTORY
ESSAYS ON STRATEGY
SIMON AND SCHUSTER New York
Copyright © 1986 by Edward N. Liittwak, Inc.
All rights reserved
including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form
Published by Simon and Schuster
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Simon & Schuster Building
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New New
York, York 10020
SIMON AND SCHUSTER and colophoii are registered trademarks of
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Rueith Ottiger/Levavi & Levavi
Manufactured in the United States of America
987654321
10
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Luttwak, Edward.
On the meaning of victory.
Includes index.
1. Strategy—Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Military
art and science—History—20th century—Addresses,
essays, lectures. 3. World politics—1945— —Ad-
Modern—
dresses, essays, lectures. 4. Military history.
20th century-Addresses, essays, lectures. 5. United
States—Military policy—Addresses, essays, lectures.
I. Title. .
U162.L868 1986 355'.02 85-26145
ISBN 0-671-61089-9
To MY WIFE, DaLYA
CONTENTS
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Preface 9
8.
HOW TO THINK ABOUT NUCLEAR WAR
I.
I. Ten Questions About SALT II 15
Is There an Arms Race? 39
A New Arms Race? 46
How to Think About Nuclear War 64
THE POLITICS OF DEFENSE
II.
We ^
Whi/ Need More ‘‘Waste, Fraud Mismanagement’
in the Pentagon 85
Deus Ex Missiles 116
THE WIDER CONTEXT OF STRATECY
HI.
The East-West Struggle {Barry M. Blechman, Co-editor) 123
The Economic Instrument in Statecraft 142
7
CONTENTS
8
9. A Geopolitical Perspective on the US-Soviet Competition
{Barrt/ M. Blechman, Co-editor) 155
10. A Historical Precedent: The Bomans in Dacia 212
A
11. Record of Failure 224
13. 12. Of Bombs and Men 230
1O4.N THE MEANING. OF STRATEGY
IV.
15.
On the16M.eaning of Strategif for the United States
. . .
in the IQSOs 243
After Afghanistan, What? 254
Intervention and Access to Natural Resources 275
On the Meaning of Victorij 289
Acknowledgments 301
Index 303
PREFACE
The
peculiar instability of world politics in our days has, no
many
doubt, causes but surely one of the greatest is the inconstancy
of American conduct on the international scene. Small powers can
change policies abruptly without causing any great disturbance, and
they certainly need to be agile when threatened. A very great power
such as the United States, by contrast, should not need to maneuver
rapidly to preserve its security, and unless any major alteration is
very gradual, in its course, it must cause great instability. There was
much continuity in the substance of American policy, to be sure,
but in the short span of seven years that passed between the resig-
nation of President Nixon and the inauguration of President Reagan,
the stance of the United States on the world scene underwent two
great and contrary transformations.
In the first, the dissipation of military strength caused by the
Vietnam War was compounded by drastic reductions in the armed
forces to much below pre-war levels, by the mutilation and paralysis
of the Central Intelligence Agency, and by the perceptible loss of
9
PREFACE
10
nerve manifest in Congress as well as the Executive branch, in the
quality media, and among the nation’s academic and professional
elites. The Soviet Union, in the meantime, preserved a most remark-
able continuity of governance while accumulating military strength
of unique dimensions.
The second transformation was just as profound, and just as abrupt.
In place of willful disarmament, and the' reductions of strength ex-
acted by inflation, by 1980 a definite recovery of military strength
was underway, which was destined to accelerate during the next six
years until this writing. In foreign policy, the reversal was even
more drastic, as the declared activism manifest from 1981 displaced
the imposed passivity of the Ford interval, and ideological “non-
power” politics of the Carter years. In comparison, Soviet military
and foreign policies evolved at a positively glacial rate.
At the lowest point of those years of upheaval, it seemed only
natural to a great many Americans, the President included, that the
overriding goal of foreign policy should be to avoid the use of force
at any price, as if American pledges of protection issued to allies
large and small round the world would not be undermined as a re-
sult. When American diplomats with full rights of immunity were
held captive in Iran, it seemed just as natural, at first, that the un-
precedented outrage should become the subject of protracted nego-
tiations, timid pleadings by way of dubious intermediaries, and piti-
ful ceremonies of remembrance, instead of evoking a drastic Great
Power response.
Just as the vital connection between the readiness to use force,
the validity of American alliance guarantees and the stability of
world politics was disregarded, so also the danger to all diplomats
everywhere caused by an exclusive concern for the safety of some
was seemingly overlooked: the subsequent mass attacks against
American diplomats in Libya and Pakistan actually came as a sur-
prise. The inordinate delay, unrealistic planning, and clumsy failure
of the rescue attempt finally made in 1980 to liberate the diplomats
in Iran, was perfectly consistent with the image that America pre-
sented to the world by then.
The recovery of means and morale that was to follow was aston-
ishingly rapid, and its impact on world politics was magnified by an
accidental coincidence with the degeneration of Soviet governance,
whose continuity had plainly become a fossilized inertia. In the new
conjunction, the Reagan administration could ride the momentum
of success scarcely embarrassed by occasional failure, in Lebanon,
for example—just as during the previous years even the large success