CLASSICAL MILITARY STRATEGY AND BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE

Air University Review, May-June 1984

Classical Military Strategy
and Ballistic Missile Defense

Major Owen E. Jensen

The application of lessons of the past to current and predicted military issues always required a proper appreciation of changed technological conditions, but not until the latter half of the nineteenth century did the problem of adjustment offer any difficulties. In the twentieth century it became increasingly critical, and with the advent of nuclear weapons the entire value of past military experience as a guide to the future was called basically into question.

Bernard Brodie1

THIS seems to be conventional wisdom: nuclear weapons have changed everything. Yet in many respects the nuclear age can be seen not as a break with past strategic theory but as the culmination of the evolution of strategy--the latest (and perhaps final) stage of military thought. While many tactical principles--whether of a general nature, such as the benefits offered by holding "interior lines," or of a specific nature, such as Frederick the Great's "oblique order of march"--may indeed by outdated, principles of grand strategy have continued to evolve.

Military thinkers of the past were not necessarily wrong in their identification of underlying elements of grand strategy, but they may have been wrong in seeing those elements as constant and unchanging. Similar themes, ideas, and principles have seemed to recur in every conflict, but their recurrence over time was on a constantly ascending scale. In this article, I shall discuss specific instances to support this thesis, but at this point one other general thought needs to be considered. That is the idea that grand strategy developed differently in what we now call the Western nations (particularly in the United States) than it did in the Soviet Union. Although both are equally rooted in classical strategic theory and both are valid expressions of grand strategy, the strategies of today's East-West rivals, like races of men evolved from a single ancestor, gradually acquired distinctive features. With this in mind, let us examine the origins of U.S. nuclear strategy, then consider options to that strategy, and, finally, assess the impact of opposing choices on decisions for or against ballistic missile defense.

Nuclear Strategy:
Links with the Past

As the magnitude of war increased, the need for political control over the initiation, the extent, and the cessation of hostilities also increased.

Today . . . with truly cosmic forces harnessed to the machines of war, we have a situation for the first time in history where the opening event by which a great nation enters a war--an event which must reflect the preparations it has made or failed to make beforehand--can decide irretrievably whether or not it will continue to exist. Obviously, therefore, we cannot go on blithely letting one group of specialists decide how to wage war and another decide when and to what purpose, with only the most casual and spasmodic communication between them.2

War . . . is an act of policy. Were it a complete, untrammeled, absolute manifestation of violence (as the pure concept would require), war would of its own independent will usurp the place of policy the moment policy had brought it into being; it would then drive policy out of office and rule by the laws of its own nature. . . . It is clear, consequently, that war is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means.3

Clausewitz began his treatise On War with an exploration into the nature of war and examined it as a totally violent experience. To him, that was an abstract concept. With the present state of weapons evolution, it has become reality.

He then qualified his concept, however, and allowed that wars were not theory but reality, and in reality they are not fought merely for the sake of violence but to achieve political goals. Clausewitz also stressed that military aims had to be subjugated to political goals and that "this conception would be ineluctable even if war were total war."4 Today, in an era in which a first strike may be the entire war, domination of military aims by political goals is paramount not only in theory but in reality as well. In no nation today is the military given advance approval for first use of nuclear weapons. Historically (and even today regarding conventional weapons), military commanders have been authorized to fire back if fired upon. However, this authorization does not apply to nuclear weapons. For almost every contingency, advance approval for even second (or responsive) use of nuclear devices has been withheld. Because the destructive capacity of weaponry has increased to the point where policy controls military imperatives, Clausewitz's dictum has reached its purest form.

The main question, however, is whether there are any political goals that may be achieved by nuclear weapons. Hasn't the awesome power of such weapons canceled out any possibility that war can even be considered as a political instrument? That answer may also be found in Clausewitz and an examination of the evolution of military history, expressed as:

Political goals themselves must be realistic and not overreach military capabilities.

Clausewitz defined war as an "act of force to compel our enemy to do our will"5 and pointed out that mere destruction of forces or occupation of territory was sometimes insufficient to accomplish that goal. He noted his own native Prussia as an example where complete defeat and occupation (by Napoleon) nevertheless failed to effect a lasting change of will. To the contrary, Napoleon's overambitious political goals eventually led to significant, permanent changes mostly for his own country, France. The lessons of this are twofold: If an attacker realizes that by prosecuting a total war (versus a limited war) it may be in danger of allowing political goals to exceed military capability and thereby risking the destruction of itself, the very society it is attempting to impose or protect, then the attacker would be foolish to initiate the war at all; and if a defender is faced with the complete uprooting of the essence of its society, then it has nothing to fear by fighting to the bitter end--accepting total war as having no worse consequences than surrender.

History is replete with examples. Athens had every prospect of maintaining its empire ad infinitum until it decided to attempt complete hegemony in the middle of the Peloponnesian War by invading Sicily. By thus overreaching its military capability, the empire was lost.6 Likewise, Carthage had the strength to maintain its territory versus Rome, but by resorting to total war, it lost totally. When the third Punic War was over, "nine-tenths of the [Carthaginian] population had perished. . . . By order of the Roman Senate . . . [Carthage] was completely destroyed, and the survivors sold as slaves."7 The reason why no decisive "Napoleonic" victories were achieved in the American Civil War while they were won in the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars was not that weapons technology had given a decisive advantage to the defense (for the defending Europeans had weapons of equal destructive power), but that the North was attempting to impose a totally new order on the South, which caused an escalation to total war. In Europe, on the other hand, Bismarck and Moltke made it plain that their objectives were much more limited and not worth complete mutual destruction. In contrast, Napoleon and Hitler risked all and lost all by allowing political goals to exceed military capability in the face of adversaries who were fighting for the preservation of their very societies.

My point here is to suggest that because nuclear war today has evolved into what would be an act of total violence (a concept that for Clausewitz was merely abstract), it has crystallized the ultimate consequences, and therefore the choices, involved in total war. Where it was possible for Athens, Carthage, Napoleonic France, or Nazi Germany to mistakenly contemplate victory or at the worst (if defeated) a maintenance of the prewar status quo, such error in thought is no longer possible. By evolving to its pure form, war has identified its own consequences with absolute clarity. An attacker today does risk total destruction if it attacks a defender that can retaliate massively.

Recall that Clausewitz held that if war were a "complete, untrammeled, absolute manifestation of violence (as the pure concept would require), war would of its own independent will usurp the place of policy the moment policy had brought it into being."8 That is obviously true today and was equally true in the past. Certainly for Carthage and to a lesser extent for both Germany and Russia in World War II, the consequences of war rivaled the possible results of nuclear holocaust. The lesson is that war has not changed from being a practical political instrument into an impractical political instrument in the nuclear era, but that at its extreme it was always impractical. The difference is that as war's destructiveness has evolved in magnitude, this lesson has, been made obvious where before it was obscured. The only way to use war as a policy instrument now (as before) is by limiting its application--either by restraining political objectives or by increasing the effectiveness of defense.

U.S. Strategy: A Preference
for the Offensive

Bernard Brodie instructs that "military doctrine is universally, and has been since the time of Napoleon, imbued with the 'spirit of the offensive.' "9 While the universality of his, statement may be criticized, it has certainly held true with regard to U.S. strategic thought. At the beginning of the Civil War, "the image of Napoleonic war with its brief, climactic battles had impressed itself upon the popular mind as well as upon soldiers . . . and it stimulated the usual popular impatience [especially in America] to have wars over with promptly."10 Nearly every one of the leading generals on both sides in the Civil War had been educated at West Point during an era when the strategic thought of Jomini, Napoleon's Swiss expositor, provided the bedrock of military instruction. Jomini made no secret of his preference for the offensive over the defensive and stressed that the whole purpose of strategy was to bring forces into battle with the object of destroying an enemy's army. Jomini called for boldness in warfare: "I would make [war] brisk, bold, impetuous, perhaps sometimes even audacious."11

As U.S. military strategy began to be employed beyond its own borders, it was embodied in the Navy; and naval thought at the time for all of the great naval powers focused almost exclusively on the ideas of Alfred Thayer Mahan.

Mahan pored through the pages of Jomini in his effort to formulate a new science of naval strategy, and many of the principles of naval war which he suggested are naval applications of Jomini's precepts. 12

Jomini's dictum that the organized forces of the enemy are the chief objective pierces like a two-edged sword to the joints and marrow of many specious propositions. . . . the enemy's ships and fleets are the true objects to be assailed on all occasions.13

As air power entered into U.S. strategic thought it was borne in the writings of Italian Brigadier General Giulio Douhet, a total proponent of the offensive. "His basic argument is two-fold: first, the nature of airpower requires that 'command of the air' be won by aggressive bombing rather than by aerial fighting, and second, an air force which achieves command thereby ensures victory all down the line."14 He saw no hope for air defenses and every likelihood of rapid, total victory through bombardment of an enemy's cities and resources. It may be safely stated that there was not an atom of support for defenses in all his work.

The connection of Douhet to U.S. strategy was direct, via members of the Bolling Commission, who were considerably influenced by his concepts on a fact-finding tour examining military aviation during 1917;15 and indirect, in that Douhet merely expressed what was generally a consensus of knowledgeable Western opinion of that time. Subsequently, U.S. air doctrine "adopted Douhet's de-emphasis of fighters, whether for defense or for escort of bombers, and a corresponding emphasis on destroying the enemy's air force at its bases."16 Even General William "Billy" Mitchell's writing (although it is largely tactical and probably not derived from the Italian) is "pure Douhet"17 where it discusses the strategic use of air power.

As the United States entered the nuclear era, its choices seemed almost preordained. Although at first, both air defense and strategic bombing progressed together under Eisenhower's New Look strategy, clearly it was the offensive side that received the primary emphasis; and whatever balance existed did not survive the transition to the missile age. It was not the balanced offensive and defensive force structure advocated by Bernard Brodie in his 1959 book, Strategy in the Missile Age, that was chosen, but rather the course advocated by Oskar Morgenstern in The Question of National Defense (also 1959), which advocated reliance on the creation of powerful strategic offensive forces.18 During the Kennedy-Johnson McNamara years, defenses against bombers were almost totally scrapped; and in the Nixon-Ford-Schlesinger years, antiballistic missile systems were given up as well.

As a result, the United States was left with an unnerving and rather absurd reliance on a strategy of mutual assured destruction (MAD), trusting the fate of American society to the rationality of nuclear adversaries. It was said to be in our U.S. interest to forgo defenses totally in favor of the offense, making the nation vulnerable so that the other side would not suspect it of planning a first strike. To many observers, however, the MAD strategy was shortsighted. It ignored the possibility of technological breakthroughs that could render offensive forces themselves vulnerable and lead to dangerous consequences. Only in North America, where the ravages of war were largely unknown, could vulnerability have been conceived as an asset. As Henry Kissinger observed:

One reason [behind this strategy] was the growth of the school of thought to which I, myself, contributed . . . which considered that strategic stability was a military asset, and in which the historically amazing theory developed that vulnerability contributed to peace and invulnerability contributed to risks of war. Such a theory could develop and be widely accepted only in a country that had never addressed the problem of the balance of power as a historical phenomenon. And . . . only also on a continent which was looking for any excuse to avoid analysis of the perils it was facing and that was looking for an easy way out.19

Adopting the MAD strategy, the United States consciously and willingly entrusted the fate of the nation to the Kremlin's self-restraint. For other nations such a policy would truly be considered "mad." "Since emphasis on active defense was nearly nonexistent, official policy [also] considered civil defense almost pointless. In short, U.S. nuclear decision-makers strove to retain sharp swords, but defensive shields were foregone."20

Alternative Evolutionary Patterns

While U.S. strategic thought has focused almost entirely on the offensive over the past century, options recognizing the benefits of defensive strategy have evolved in other societies, most notably in the Soviet Union. These options were also rooted in past strategic theory and practice.

In the middle of the fourteenth century, the Battle of Crécy between forces under Edward III of England and Philip VI of France demonstrated the ability of the English longbow to penetrate armor and overcome the theretofore unassailable dominance of mounted knights. For the first time in nearly a thousand years, defensive infantry gained the upper hand against mounted troops.21 Previously heavy cavalry, employed exclusively on the attack, had dominated warfare; and armies unfortunate enough to find themselves on the defensive had been forced to retreat inside fortresses and suffer the starvation and privation of siege. Thus, technological change opened a new era of military history; and since Crécy (with its verdict solidly reaffirmed 70 years later at Agincourt), "infantry has remained the primary element of ground combat forces."22

Change indicated at Crécy, however, spread slowly to the armies of Europe. Decades passed before it began to impact military development in the Russian Empire, which at the time of Crécy was still being ravaged by mounted Mongolian armies. Nevertheless, the ascendancy of common infantry, emphasizing the strength of Russian numbers, along with defensive advantage offered by possession of vast territory for retreat and maneuver, was to have profound influence on the development of strategy in Russia.

In 1708-09, the tactical genius of Charles XII of Sweden took him into combat deep in the Ukraine, where Russian retreat, maneuver, and scorched-earth strategies brought the Swedish army to exhaustion and total defeat by a huge army under Peter the Great.23 A pattern of Russian strategy was thereby established. It accepted severe sacrifices in territory and lives while maintaining a strategic defensive to exhaust an adversary until he could be overwhelmed. That strategy continues to this day.

Even the great Napoleon, on whose campaigns offensive doctrine rests, experienced efeat from this simple but effective Russian strategy when he marched to Moscow in 1812. Although his final defeat was averted for some time; the final demise of his empire began when he crossed the Russian frontier and began pouring the resources of France upon empty steppes. The implications of this lesson were largely ignored by one great Napoleonic interpreter, Jomini, who chose instead to emphasize the magnificence of Napoleon's conquests. However, another interpreter, Clausewitz, understood the inherent strength of defensive strategy and chose to stress heavily that "defense is a stronger form of fighting than attack."24 Thus a divergence in strategic theory began that emphasized the differing geopolitical realities in East and West and evolved to the distinctly different military postures of today. These differences are particularly clear now that weapons for strategic defense are considered separately from those of strategic offense and conscious choices must be made regarding which type of system will receive budgetary allocations.

Defeat for Russia in World War I was inextricably intertwined with internal political collapse and revolution, but the civil war that followed found foreign expeditionary forces once more swallowed up by the vastness of the territory and the numerical superiority of a peasant army. In the Second World War, traditional Russian strategy was classically employed yet again as Hitler met a fate nearly identical to that of Charles XII and Napoleon. By accepting losses in both land and manpower that would have been disastrous for smaller nations, the Soviets absorbed the Nazi offensive thrust and husbanded its strength until a killing counterblow could be delivered. Clausewitz may not have approved of the crudity and inefficiency of the campaign, but he would have accepted the conclusion as inevitable.

In the nuclear age, the only change in fundamental Soviet strategy is that the counterblow will not be delayed. While great sacrifices undoubtedly will have to be made, this prospect is not a new idea. And at the same time that punishment is being accepted, it will be returned with overpowering force. However, aware that their nation has experienced the ravages of invasion many times in its history, the Soviets are not content to entrust their fate merely to the rationality of their adversary and the ability of their empire to accept and survive an onslaught. They intend to mount an active defense-in-depth and think it insane to do otherwise.

In the mid- to late-1950s, when the soviets were assessing what kind of strategy and matching capabilities were required for war in the nuclear age, an interlocking defense network composed of antiaircraft/antiballistic missile systems and adequate protection for the civilian population and industry was high on the list of priorities. . . . [A decade later, as Kosygin confessed to Lyndon Johnson, the Soviets were] palpably mystified by the lack, after more than two decades of strategic competition, of a coherent American doctrine and strategy for attaining a meaningful victory out of nuclear war.25

. . . the U.S. must look at Soviet defensive capability in terms of ballistic missile defense, air defense, and civil defense. A recent Central Intelligence Agency Study determined that Soviet civil defense efforts cannot neutralize the U.S. response with nuclear weapons to a Soviet first strike. That study is absolutely correct as far as it goes . . . but it misses the whole point. If the Russians can achieve an antiballistic missile technology breakthrough and add that to their active air defense capability, then civil defense takes on an entirely different role. This is one reason why development of high-energy-laser and charged-particle-beam weapons has become so important. . . . The USSR does not have to have an air-tight defense but only the capability to limit damage to an acceptable level as it perceives it.26

Thus Soviet strategy has developed on historically sound experience, yet in a way different from U.S. strategy. The Soviets do not dismiss war and the huge loss it will bring as "unthinkable." They accept that it might occur, make plans to keep the damage to acceptable levels (by their standards), and build weaponry capable of delivering a killing blow to their opponent.

Prescriptions for Change

History seems to show that a balance between offensive and defensive capability is needed. As a Royal Air Force officer, reflecting on Douhet's theories after the Battle of Britain, commented: "If it is true that 'the bomber will always get through,' as it is popularly stated, it is equally true that 'not all the bombers will get through' against adequate defenses."27 With proper emphasis and investment in research, the same observation could be made regarding strategic missiles. And as the various elements of both active and passive defense are brought together, the contribution of each will be multiplied. It is only by looking at the "whole" effect of defense along with the effects from offensive action that strategic possibilities can be examined realistically.

A second historical lesson applicable to today's choices between strategies and their associated specialized weapons systems is the realization that military means must be related to political ends. This fundamental Clausewitzian precept has often been forgotten at great cost in the past. In World War I, for example, "Foch gives little indications in his writings of having thought about the matter at all.... Yet if the total war of the future is fated to be one where victory is pursued blindly, and therefore at wholly incommensurate costs which destroy its meaning, it will be more akin to the first than the second of the two world wars."28 Once a nation is equipped with sufficient offensive arms to obliterate its potential adversaries, further increases in offensive weaponry add little to security or the advancement of political goals. The cost of multiplying this offensive firepower is simply disproportionately high to the benefits derived.

But that is not true of defensive investment--particularly in the United States where so little defense exists. In fact, initial expenditures on defensive measures would probably bring the highest return for U.S. military dollars because there is so much room for investment before the onset of diminishing returns.

In the first place, active defenses could help protect U.S. strategic offensive weapons, hopefully destroying a portion of any Soviet attack capability launched against counterforce targets and preserving U.S. retaliatory might. Results following a Soviet first strike might therefore not reflect such a gross asymmetry in favor of the U.S.S.R. as is currently contemplated. To Bernard Brodie, this point constitutes a basic principle about defense in general:

Known ability to defend our retaliatory force constitutes the only unilaterally attainable situation that provides potentially a perfect defense of our homeland. Conversely, a conspicuous inability or unreadiness to defend our retaliatory force must tend to provoke the opponent to destroy it; in other words, it tempts him to an aggression he might not otherwise contemplate.29

Second, active defense offers a realistic possibility--perhaps the only realistic possibility--of reducing or eliminating the frightening specter of nuclear holocaust that has haunted most of the world for over three decades. One approach might be for both sides to develop massive and highly effective defenses on a scale of both quantity and quality that could meet and destroy any combination of nuclear attack launched against them. By using various weapons and tactics, such defenses would reduce the effectiveness of offensive systems so drastically that a climate and a motive conducive to disarmament could result. Such a development, however, envisions a highly optimistic evolution of defensive versus offensive weaponry, which is historically and logically questionable. It would be better to assume that if both offensive and defensive weaponry continue to be developed, each will contain elements of strength and weakness with neither achieving total dominance. In such an event, defenses would contribute to deterrence only to the extent that greater uncertainty was introduced to offensive planning. Nuclear attack would be forestalled by eliminating certainty of destruction and replacing it with less quantifiable probabilities.

Another (more realistic) way of eliminating the specter of nuclear war would be for defensive strategies to be employed along with negotiated arms reductions. Assuming that reductions in strategic nuclear weapons will be approved eventually by both the United States and the Soviet Union, it is obvious that ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems would multiply the effect of such reductions. It is generally held that the primary problem with BMD is the sheer mass of incoming missiles that would have to be faced in a short time. If the numbers were reduced, associated defensive solutions would be more viable. Even first-generation ABMs (Sprint/Safeguard) were touted as possessing good capability against limited or Nth-country (China) attacks.30 Eventually, if both sides drew down to, say, 200 launchers, defensive weapons might begin to achieve virtually certain protection. Furthermore, any reluctance to take the final step beyond reductions to total nuclear disarmarnent, stemming from a desire to retain at least limited options to employ weapons of mass destruction in times of crisis, might be overcome. Where without defenses there could be great misgivings about total nuclear disarmament, if it could be shown that small offensive weapons reserves were useless in the face of effective defenses, incentives would exist to continue the arms reduction process. In other words, defensive weapons would promote both a climate and a motive for disarmament by eliminating any threat of surprise. Such prospects however, depend on the development of defensive systems on both sides before they are needed. Obviously, the sooner development can begin, the better.

IN summary, then, one can see that the fundamentals of current grand strategies are deeply rooted in past strategic theory and, in fact, represent the culmination of classical theory in its purest form. A distinct difference between U.S. and Soviet strategic doctrine exists, with the United States preferring to stress the offensive while the Soviets pursue a more balanced approach. To remove Soviet temptation to strike at vulnerable U.S. weapons and to serve as a "multiplier" to any arms reductions, U.S. adoption of some elements of defensive strategy and development of associated weaponry seem reasonable and worthwhile.

Admittedly, there are those who claim that BMD is destabilizing. They point out that if either nation perceives the other to be gaining a technological breakthrough--deploying defensive systems unilaterally and gaining protection that the other cannot obtain--it may feel forced to launch a preemptive strike before such defenses could be set in place. Such arguments, however, do not militate against U.S. development of BMD but only against the manner and timing of deploying such systems.

If the United States finds itself facing a numerically superior nuclear force capable of destroying two legs of its triad (ICBMs and bombers), Soviet temptation to strike at this area of vulnerability, as pointed out by Bernard Brodie, might provide a motive for attack. If such a Soviet force were augmented by comprehensive antimissile defenses, that motive would be even stronger because the means of negating a substantial portion of the remaining U.S. weapons, the SLBMs, would be in hand. The United States would, in effect, face forceful cancellation of its strategic forces altogether by the offensive and defensive combination of Soviet arms.

If, on the other hand, the United States pushed ahead as rapidly as possible with research and development, then unilateral deployment of BMD systems by the Soviets would be obviated by U.S. ability to deploy similar systems apace. Once both nations have defensive systems in place, those systems will begin to produce the beneficial, stabilizing effects discussed earlier. The issue is how to get safety from here to there. Clearly, however, if the United States attains the capability to deploy effective BMD weapons, then it can set the pace for mutual deployment; if it is not in a position to keep up with the Soviets, however, the United States will be faced with the uncomfortable possibility that the Soviets may not be willing to modify or restrain their deployment schedule.

In the end, however, the debate could be moot. Given the present state of research and development of various forms of BMD on both sides and the investment emphasis placed on pushing those programs ahead, defensive systems for both of the superpowers could be developed at about the same time. If the United States accepts the importance and logic of strategic defenses as the Soviets have, it might only be necessary for each nation to pursue diplomatic contacts and intelligence gathering to ensure themselves that no short-term, unilateral disadvantages developed. Regardless of the likelihood of concurrent timing, it is clear that the United States should pursue antimissile defense as vigorously as possible, recognizing that it is the only type of strategic program still capable of matching political goals with military aims. The inertia of U.S. preference for offensive strategy, whether disguised as theories such as mutual assured destruction or pseudoscientific investigations such as cost-benefit analysis, must be overcome.

Naval Postgraduate School
Monterey, California

Notes

1. Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 149.

2. Ibid., p. 7.

3. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 87.

4. Ibid., p. 605.

5. Ibid., p. 75.

6. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Introduction by John H. Finley, Jr. (New York: Random House, 1951).

7. R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy, The Encyclopedia of Military History from 3500 B.C. to the Present (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 89.

8. Clausewitz, p. 87.

9. Brodie, p. 42.

10. Russell F Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1973), p. 93.

11. A.H. Jomini, Summary of the Art of War, edited by Lieutenant Colonel J.D. Hittle (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Military Service Publishing Co., 1947), p. 103.

12. Weigley, p. 174.

13. Alfred Thayer Mahan, From Sail to Steam: Recollection of Naval Life (New York: Harper & Company, 1907), p. 283.

14. Brodie, p. 82.

15. Ibid., pp. 71-72.

16. Ibid., p. 74.

17. Ibid., p. 77.

18. Oskar Morgenstern, The Question of National Defense (New York: Random House, 1959).

19. Henry A. Kissinger, "The Future of NATO," The Washington Quarterly, Autumn 1979, pp. 5-6.

20. John M. Collins, U.S.-Soviet Military Balance: Concepts and Capabilities 1960-1980 (Washington: Library of Congress, 1980), p. 122.

21. Dupuy and Dupuy, p. 357.

22. Ibid.

23. Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great: His Life and World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981), Part Three: The Great Northern War, pp. 289-516.

24. Clausewitz, p. 84 and Book Six. It must be acknowledged, however, that his rational on this point was derived primarily from the wars of Frederick the Great rather than the Russian defensive campaign of 1812.

25. Mark E. Miller, "Soviet Strategic Thought: The End of an Era?" International Security Review, Winter 1980-1981, pp. 8 and 2.

26. Clarence A. Robinson, "Missile Defense Gains Support," Aviation Week & Space Technology, 22 October 1979, p. 16. This quote was taken largely from remarks attributed to John M. Collins, senior research for the Library of Congress, Emphasis added.

27. Brodie, p. 105.

28. Ibid., pp. 53-55.

29. Ibid., p. 185.

30. Jerome H. Kahan, Security in the Nuclear Age (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1975), pp. 150-55.


Contributor

Major Owen E. Jensen (B.A., University of Illinois; M.P.A., University of Oklahoma; M.A., Naval Postgraduate School) is Assistant Air Attaché to Canada. Prior to becoming an AFIT pipeline student, he served in a wide variety of assignments connected with are defense at the squadron, air division, and MAJCOM levels. He has flown the T-33A, F-102, and F-106. Major Jensen is author of several published articles and is a graduate of Squadron Officer School and Air Command and Staff College.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.


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