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The solidity of the worlds longest-lived alliance rested on harder stuff than words. In the
shadow of cataclysmic nuclear war, the forward-deployment of a single US soldier was a
quantit ngligeable. To raise the risk to the Russians and to bestow peace of mind on the
allies, it had to be divisions, air armies, and nuclear weapons. This strategy was known
as tripwire, forward defense, and layer cake. All three were to make sure that the
Soviets would have to attack all, above all the United States, when attacking one. Hence,
America deployed up to six divisions plus six thousand tactical nuclear weapons to the
Central European theater, close to the intra-German border. For good measure, the alliance
added the layer cake consisting of US, German, British, Dutch, Belgian, and, farther back,
Frenchforces.
Thus was dArtagnans motto, All for one, and one for all, implemented with steel and
men. And powerful the deterrent was. As the Cold War unfolded, the Fulda Gap turned into
the worlds most stable border. Crises erupted aplenty, but they were self-limiting. By bloody
contrast, the Korean War broke out a few months after the United States had excluded
SouthKorea from its defense perimeter.
Add the nuclear dimension of extended deterrence. The silent signal of intermediate-range
nuclear forces (INF), deployed in 1983, spelled out to the Soviets in so many words:you
cannot count on limiting nuclear war to Europe. In attacking our allies, you will have
to strike those American PershingII and cruise missiles that are de facto strategic forces
because they can reach Soviet lands. By dint of their range, they are part and parcel of
our entire retaliatory potentialjust like our intercontinental MinutemenIII back home.
If you lob nukes at them, you cant help but turn a limited attack into a general nuclear
exchange by triggering Americas strategic forces. Hence, if you want to preempt, you cant
just go for the Euromissiles. You must strike at Americas entire arsenal. This was called
coupling back in the day. In short, an attack on Europe will be an attack on America.
The Soviets had calculated that they could intimidate Europe with a low-risk separate threat
when deploying SS-20 missiles and Backfire bombers, neither of which could reach the
United States. The counter-deployment in 1983 brought about the opposite: the fusion of
Americas and Europes fates, and hence the reassertion of extended deterrence. Three years
later, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev conceded the point by agreeing to scrap his INF
along withAmericas Euromissiles.
Josef Joffe A Single British Soldier: On Extended Deterrence and Security Guarantees for Americas Allies
opposite of President Jeffersons entangling alliances with none. This is the stuff from
which reassurance is made.
Two, the guarantor has to present himself to the would-be aggressor as a victim among
victims, signaling that his own and his wards fates are fused: hit the weak, and you will hit
the strongest member of the alliance. Thus, the credibility of deterrence soars.
Three, the most important part of the message derives from the guardians forces in situ.
In the nuclear age, being there rather than coming from afar is the essence of deterrence.
Being therejust sitting tight while demonstrating ready and ample powersignals to the
potential aggressor: you will have to fire the first shot and escalate from there. The onus of
starting a war with incalculable risks is on you. Is grabbing a piece of real estate really worth
it to you when compared to your own survival? Better not take that first, fateful step into
anexistential gamble.
To protect the status quo in the shadow of all-out war is morally legitimate and militarily
cost-effective. Yet lunging across the line comes with neither legitimacy nor economy.
Breaking the status quo brands the assailant as aggressor. Nor is it cheap, given therule
of thumb that the offense requires a three-to-one advantage over the defense. The
psychological and moral burden weighs on the assailant, not on the defender who confronts
the invader with deadly choices just by being in place. Conversely, this burden falls on the
shoulders of the status quo power when it has to counter-attack to dislodge the aggressor.
Now, the onus of escalation is on the formernot a pretty position to be in. Better to
concede than suffer major war.
Lets put these abstractions in historical terms. The Kennedy administration did not strike
at Cuba when it discovered Soviet missiles there. Instead of taking the momentous first step
into war with the Soviets, it threw up a quarantine around the island, drawing a line in the
Caribbean waters. Now, the Soviets would have to escalate by breaking the blockade. That
was too much for Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, and so he beat a face-saving retreat by
demanding, and getting, the removal of obsolete US Jupiter missiles in Turkey. Note that
no American or Soviet soldier ever fired a shot in anger at each other during the Cold War.
Thehigh-pitched confrontation remained ultra-stable.1
Farther back into history: defying the rules of effective extended deterrence, Britain and
France validated them e contrario. Deterrence failed because British and French forces were
far away, not in place. London and Paris had not tied their hands by positioning themselves
in harms way. Nor were they mentally and militarily prepared for the kind of force
projection that would have sobered up Hitler. So he well understood that the destinies of
Britain, France, and Poland were not one, calculating that they were neither able nor willing
to cross vast distances to man the line, let alone drive him back. The rest, as they say, is
history.
Josef Joffe A Single British Soldier: On Extended Deterrence and Security Guarantees for Americas Allies
The rapprochement will not divert the Islamic Republic from its expansionist drive
stretching from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean or turn Iran from a revolutionary
into a responsible regional power.
So, Saudi Arabia has been gathering the Sunni nations from Cairo to Kuwait into a subtly
woven anti-American coalition. There goes half a century of continuity during which
Riyadh acted as a pillar of American strategy in the worlds most dangerous arena. Vexed
by Washingtons human rights agenda, the other pillarEgyptbegan to angle for
Russianarms.
True, security guarantees breed free-riding. But tattered umbrellas have worse strategic
consequences for a great power, as they discourage bandwagoning and prompt clients to go
shopping for new partners. The extreme model is Israel. Never quite sure of Washingtons
reliability, it long ago acquired the ultimate guarantee of nuclear weapons while building
a world-class arms industry. Now, it is in a silent alliance with key Sunni powers. In short,
shed the burden of alliance, and your clients will go their own way, as they must.
Will that path lead them to national nuclear deterrents? Saudi Arabia and Egypt are hardly
more backward than were Pakistan and North Korea. So the option exists. With their
sophisticated technological bases, Japan and South Korea could build nuclear weapons
tomorrow. Whether they will be ready to face the backlash from China and East Asia
depends on how they assess the longer-term credibility of US guarantees. The critical
measuring rod will be the size of the American military presence in their countries and
throughout the region.
From Eastern Europe to the Pacific: In both areas, international security has been
weakened by Americas retraction. Once numbering 300,000, US forces in Europe have
dwindled to one-tenth that number. Surely, Russian leader Vladimir Putin must have
noted the vacuum when weighing a lunge into the Crimea, followed by the de facto
dismemberment of Ukraine by Russian surrogates in the southeast. Farther west, Putin
could see opportunities beckoning on NATOs eastern flankthe Baltics, Poland, Bulgaria,
Romaniawhere no US troops are manning the line, as they once did in Germany.
Symbolic NATO contingents moved forward in 2015, but they number in the hundreds
aslender tripwire indeed. Putin can also read the 2012 Defense Stategic Guidance, as
reasserted in 2014. The gist is that US ground forces should no longer be sized for largescale prolonged stability operations. However the battle of the budget turns out, the
USArmy will not be able to carry out such operations. Counting in the Marines, the Army
is already smaller than Chinas or North Koreas. Not to put too fine a point on it, but
Americas adversaries are looking at a force structure that spells isolationism with drones
and specialforces.
Maybe America need not contemplate large-scale war in the twenty-first century in the ways
of the twentieth century. Iraq II may have been the last one of its kind, replaced by hybrid
warfare and opportunistic forays promising more gain than risk. But the oldest military
principle continues to hold: deterrence beats defense, that is, war-fighting. Deterrence, alas,
requires sizable fighting forces in place to reassure allies and to discourage rivals. What goes
for Eastern Europe goes for the Pacfic, where China has been occupying or building islands
in a kind of hare-and-tortoise gambit. While the furry Lepus was napping, the plodding
leatherneck was already over the finish line. Try to dislodge the winner after waking up.
Aesop delivers yet another lesson. As the turtle kept forging ahead, the other animals
were cheering. In strategic terms, they began to bandwagon with the winning contestant.
Translated into Pacific terms, this fable signals that the Pacific powers wont necessarily
balance against China, but throw in their lot with the Middle Kingdom as they watch
America falling behind. The vaunted pivot has not brought new American military assets
into the Pacific theater. Yet there is no profit in containment without investing lots of men
and materiel.
America is the mightiest Everything: the largest economy, technological top-dog, and
wellspring of cutting-edge science, with unmatched cultural magnetism and the worlds
most sophisticated armed forces. Yet all of these wondrous assets dont undo the oldest
lawsof grand strategy:
Deterrence is better than defense, let alone re-conquest.
Allies are better for deterrence than going it alone.
Keeping allies requires credible commitments, which rest on forces in place,
notacrossthe sea.
Being there is better than going back, because a police force is better than a
firebrigade. Firefighters can only douse, not prevent, the conflagration.
NOTE
1 The Cuban model is difficult to generalize, as the advantages were all on the United States side. The
balance of strategic power, regional power, and interests (close to the American heartland) massively
favored America, and the Kremlin knew it.
Josef Joffe A Single British Soldier: On Extended Deterrence and Security Guarantees for Americas Allies
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Copyright 2015 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
JOSEF JOFFE
Josef Joffe, a research fellow
at theHoover Institution, is
publisher/editor of the German
weekly Die Zeit. His areas of
interest are US foreign policy,
international security policy,
European-American relations,
Europe and Germany, and the
Middle East. A professor of
political science at Stanford, he is
also a senior fellow at Stanfords
Freeman-Spogli Institute for
International Studies. In 199091,
he taught at Harvard, where he
remains affiliated with the Olin
Institute for Strategic Studies. His
essays and reviews have appeared
in the New York Review of Books,
Times Literary Supplement,
Commentary, New York Times
Magazine, New Republic, Weekly
Standard, Newsweek, Time, and
Prospect (London).