United States. National War College. Course 1, Syllabus

Title: United States. National War College. Course 1, Syllabus - Block D: Integrating Strategy

"Every American foreign policy setback . . . has resulted from the failure to define objectives, to choose means appropriate to these objectives and to create a public opinion prepared to pay the necessary price over the requisite period of time."

Henry Kissinger

Having considered the essential elements of national security strategy - that is, national interests, the international and domestic environments, power and the instruments for exerting it - we now turn our attention to the challenge of integrating these various elements into a coherent strategic framework. To help us learn how to do this, this Block will focus directly on what has only been implicit so far in the structure of this course but what is the most important body of knowledge you can take away from it: a sense of strategic logic.

The concepts we have been considering so far are only useful to the strategist if they can be operationalized, used to help figure out what's going on in the world, what it means to the United States, and what to do about it. Hence, the best definitions of these terms are operational ones, definitions that tell how the term is used conceptually, and especially how it fits with other terms to make logical sense. You may recall, for example, that we defined the concept of "interest" as answering the question, "why?", "why are we doing this?" Its role in strategic logic is to provide the justification for policy actions by giving us a standard against which to judge their desirability.

But concepts like interests, objectives, threats and opportunities, and power are most useful, indeed only make real sense, in their relationships to each other. This course is based on the idea that these relationships have a logic to them that is enduring and constant regardless of the level of strategy or the issue being considered, that, for example, the relationship between interests and threats, costs and risks, ends and means follows a pattern that can be used by the strategist to find his way to effective action whatever the issue and regardless of whether it has to do with national strategy, national security strategy, military strategy, or another strategic problem.

As some of the readings below show, that such a strategic logic transcending time and circumstance exists is not entirely accepted in either academic or policymaking circles. Some smart and experienced people argue that each instance is sui generis, that the best the statesman can do is to improvise based on intuition and experience. This course takes the opposite view: that strategic logic exists, that it can be learned and practiced, and that doing so will improve the quality of policy options and, ultimately, the effectiveness of government action.

This Block teaches strategic logic in three ways. First, it offers an explicit framework for strategic thinking in Topic 12, Thinking Strategically, along with the opportunity in seminar to consider whether that or some other framework best represents your sense of strategic logic. Next, in Topic 13, we read and discuss a historical account of how U.S. administrations from Truman through Nixon thought through the problem posed by the Soviet Union and how their strategic reasoning led successively to five different strategies of containment: George Kennan's, that of NSC-68, the Eisenhower New Look, Kennedy's Flexible Response, and Nixon's detente. Having "watched" strategic logic operate across the entire Breadth of U.S. foreign policy over a period of several decades, students are then asked to apply strategic logic themselves to a specific crisis as it evolves over a few months. Topic 14 provides materials describing the situation before and after the crisis caused by Iraqi's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and asks students to analyze the probable strategic logic behind the Bush administration's actions.

Throughout this part, our purpose is not to convince you that there is only one proper way to think about the relationships among the various elements of national security strategy, for there clearly are many ways to do so. Rather, our intent simply is to persuade you of the need to have some disciplined, coherent way of thinking about the elements of national security strategy. We challenge you to start developing your own disciplined, coherent approach to strategic thinking that will guide your analysis throughout the remainder of the curriculum at the National War College and beyond.

Block D Objectives

Consider how decision-makers in the past have attempted to relate available means to ends.

Understand and internalize the logical relationships that lie at the heart of national security strategy.

Construct or modify your own strategic framework as a guide to policy analysis.

TOPIC 12: THINKING STRATEGICALLY

"The most difficult challenge for a policymaker in foreign affairs is to establish priorities. A conceptual framework - which 'links' events - is an essential tool."

Henry Kissinger

"Strategy" is probably the most frequently used term at the National War College, applied at many levels and for many purposes. At its most basic, strategy answers the question, "How?" Strategies describe the way in which something is proposed to be done; they are plans for doing things.

Any plan for action involves applying resources to achieve objectives. Indeed, a major purpose of strategy is to ensure the most efficient and effective use of resources so that goals are attained, and with as little waste as possible. Strategy thus encompasses both goal setting and resource management. For national security strategy the task is to determine what the nation's goals in the world arena should be, and what forms of national power --what tools or instruments of policy-- are needed and how they should be used. But national security strategy involves much more than that, for to make such determinations, policymakers have to make assumptions about the values national objectives should promote --that is, what the national interest is-- and about the context, both international and domestic, in which the plan will be carried out. Then, because there are always far too many desirable objectives for the available resources, the strategist must set priorities, putting first things first and coordinating policies on various levels.

In the first three parts of this course, you have been introduced to all these concepts -- the national interest, objectives, power, instruments, and others -- and have had the opportunity to consider how they relate to today's international and domestic environments. This lecture and its accompanying frameworks and readings are designed to explore how these elements interrelate logically and to offer one perspective on strategic logic. Be cautioned, however, that our objective is not to offer a 'school solution' to the problem of strategic analysis that will end debate; rather, it is to offer an initial, integrating approach that seminars should discuss, debate, and rework in any way that may better capture their growing understanding of the subject.

The readings below provide both academic and official thoughts about national security strategy and strategic logic. First, printed in this syllabus are two representations of the strategic framework that will be the subject of today's lecture. Next is an article by historian John Gaddis that makes the case for strategic logic and describes its essence; it is also a nice distillation of the lessons taught by his book, assigned for Topic 13. The piece by Edward Luttwak, on the other hand, argues (not totally tongue in cheek) that a real national security strategy properly executed would be dangerous for the U.S. in its current circumstances. Finally there are two expamples of official strategic thinking from the Clinton administration: the latest National Security Strategy of the United States, and the Strategic Plan for Foreign Affairs developed by the Department of State. Students are urged to review and critique each (most of the former will already have been read for prior topics) for their structure and strategic logic.

Topic Objectives

Clarify and sharpen your understanding of strategic concepts.

Explore some of the basic interrelationships of strategic logic.

Begin to develop an integrated, coherent pattern of thinking about national security strategy.

Questions for Discussion

Are there major differences between strategic logic as applied on the military and the national levels? If so, what are they?

What kinds of assumptions about the national and international environments must the national security strategist make? Why is it important to re-examine them continuously?

What are the major categories of the national interest? Of what use is the term in strategic logic?

What is meant by threats or challenges to the national interest? How does the strategist take threats into consideration?

What are the various forms of national power? What key decisions must the national security strategist make regarding national power?

What considerations must be kept in mind when setting national objectives? Is reference to available power, to cost and risk, or to the national interest the most important among them?

Why is the setting of priorities vital to a successful national security strategy?

Required Readings

* Terry L. Deibel, "A Design for National Security Strategy," Lecture Outline and Graphic Matrix, 1998 (Syllabus, pp. 73-75.)

* John Lewis Gaddis, "Containment and the Logic of Strategy," The National Interest 10 (Winter 1987-88): 27-38. (Reprint)

* Edward N. Luttwak, "Why We Need an Incoherent Foreign Policy," Washington Quarterly 21 (Winter 1998): 21-31. (Reprint)

* "United States Strategic Plan for Foreign Affairs," Department of State (February 1999), Internet at www.state.gov (Reprint)

* "Advancing U.S. National Interests," Part II in A National Security Strategy for a New Century (Washington, D.C: The White House, October 1998), pp. 5-35. (Student Issue)

Supplemental Readings

* Davis R. Bobrow, "Complex Insecurity: Implications of a Sobering Metaphor" (excerpts), International Studies Quarterly 40 (December 1996): 442-448.

* Terry L. Deibel, "Strategy, National Security." International Military and Defense Encyclopedia, Vol. 5. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's (US), Inc., 1993, pp. 2577-2581.

* Gregory D. Foster, "A Conceptual Foundation for a Theory of Strategy," Washington Quarterly 13 (Winter 1990): 29-42.

* Whittle Johnson, "The Containment of John Gaddis," The National Interest 6 (Winter 1986-87): 85-94.

* Paul Kennedy, ed., Grand Strategies in War and Peace. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.

* P. H. Liotta, "A Strategy of Chaos," Parameters 26 (Spring 1998): 19-30.

* Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. Cambridge, MA: Harvard/Belknap, 1987.

A DESIGN FOR NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY

LEVEL 1: Assumptions About the Nation and the World

facts

intelligence

international system

domestic system

trends

LEVEL 2: The National Interest(s) and Threats to It

welfare

value

values

threats

opportunities

risk

LEVEL 3: Foreign Policy Objectives

desirability

feasibility

LEVEL 4: Power and Resources

assessment of latent or potential power

availability of actual or mobilized power

cost of using resources

LEVEL 5: Plans and Priorities

the relationship of ends to means

the plans of action

timeframe

short run

long

run

priorities

Explanatory Note: This framework has five levels, beginning with basic assumptions about the domestic and international context, continuing with the key concepts of interests, threats, objectives, and power, and tying them together with specific plans for the application of means to ends (in a national security strategy rather than a military strategy sense). The term "priorities" is there to remind us that almost any strategy tends to be functional or geographically specific, raising the need to integrate (or at least consider the relationship of) each policy with all those under consideration for other locales or subjects. Thus the model (or pieces of it) must be repeated for each policy area and geographic region. Moreover, while the process may look sequential, every part really depends on every other part; all the relationships must somehow be assessed (hence the non-linear model which follows). And the process is further complicated by the fact that the levels are three-dimensional: i.e., a strategy to serve one objective may well establish a series of subsidiary objectives which themselves have resource implications, impact on other areas of policy, and require implication strategies.

Terry L. Deibel
Professor of National Strategy
National War College

TOPIC 13: STRATEGIES OF CONTAINMENT

". . . a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterablecounterforce at every point where they show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a peaceful and stable world."

George F. Kennan

In this topic we will read and discuss John Lewis Gaddis's masterful Strategies of Containment, a conceptual history of American statecraft in the Cold War from Truman to Carter. In it Gaddis applies a framework very like the one elaborated in Topic 12 to the strategies used by successive U.S. administrations to deal with the threat posed by Soviet power and ideology. He describes how each saw American national interests, the Soviet threat to those interests, the extent of American power, and the instruments of policy that might be most effective to counter those threats to those interests. As you read, pay particular attention to the changes between strategies, and try to understand how strategic logic led statesmen from one strategy to another.

Kennan and NSC-68

The quote beginning this topic is from "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," without question the most influential article published on American foreign policy during the last half-century. In it, George F. Kennan not only described a new approach to U.S. relations with the Soviet Union, he also named it: containment.

In many ways, to be sure, the doctrine was hardly revolutionary; it was, as John Gaddis points out, merely a balance of power policy adapted to the world situation that existed after World War II. But Kennan's timely piece crystallized developments that had been in progress over a year, giving coherent form to the contemporary movement of official policy while at the same time providing a rationale for its continuation and solidification. Thus, George Kennan became the intellectual father of the main tradition of U.S. foreign policy in the postwar era. "It was at that time," he wrote of this and other experiences during his stay at the National War College, "that some of the ideas were conceived that have been basic to my views on American policy ever since."

But George Kennan's was only the first national security strategy applied by the United States in the postwar era and, in the event, it was hardly implemented as Kennan would himself have directed. Moreover, the North Korean attack on South Korea of June 21, 1950, radically changed the strategic and psychological environment of the Truman administration, paving the way for the adoption of the very different approach outlined in NSC-68. One of a long line of National Security Council summations of American national security strategy, NSC-68 remains perhaps the most famous of them all, a clarion call to Cold War which continued to affect American statecraft well into the 1980s.

It is important to note, as we review the beginning of the Cold War era, that the period after War World II was hardly typical in American or indeed world history. On the one hand, the United States faced a severe disappointment of its hopes for postwar international harmony and a wrenching shift in its entire strategic outlook as it prepared to meet yet a third hegemonic enterprise on the Eurasian landmass. On the other hand, though, no state had ever before exercised such a monopoly of power worldwide as did the United States in those immediate post-World War II decades. Nor did any state ever work as positively (or successfully) at erecting competing, allied centers of power, both in the Far East and Western Europe. Thus, even as the U.S. stepped up to the Soviet threat, American strategists began to shape the international system which their successors in the post-Cold War era would inherit.

Topic Objectives

Consider the evolution of the Truman administration's thinking regarding Soviet behavior and intentions.

Understand and assess the central organizing precepts of the first two post-World War II strategies of containment.

Appreciate how the shift from Kennan's strategy to that of NSC-68 illustrates the tradeoffs inherent in strategic logic.

Questions for Discussion

How did Kennan conceptualize the objective of containment?

Were the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan consistent with Kennan's original concept of containment? Did military force and nuclear weapons have a role?

How feasible was Kennan's strategy of containment in terms of American domestic politics, the perceived needs of our allies, and Soviet behavior?

To what extent did the Truman administration really adopt Kennan's strategy from 1947-1950, and why did it do what it did?

How did NSC-68 differ from Kennan's strategy of containment? What was its view of interests and the resources available to protect them?

Do you agree with Gaddis that NSC-68 was "deeply flawed?" Why or why not?

What does Gaddis mean by symmetrical and asymmetrical strategies of containment? Which was NSC-68? Which was Kennan's strategy?

What were the multiple impacts of the Korean War on the strategy of containment called for in NSC-68?

What criticisms were made at the time of the logic behind NSC-68 and its implementation during the Korean War? Do you think any of these critiques were valid, or not? Why?

Required Reading

* John Lewis Gaddis, "George F. Kennan and the Strategy of Containment," "Implementing Containment," and "NSC-68 and the Korean War," Chapters 2-4 in Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 25-126. (Student Issue)

Supplemental Readings

* Seyom Brown, The Faces of Power. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.

* Michael Carver, "Korea," Chapter 9 in War Since 1945. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1980, pp. 151-171.

* S. Nelson Drew, ed., NSC-68: Forging the Strategy of Containment. Washington, D.C.: NDU Press, 1994.

* Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1992.

* Wilson D. Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

* Glenn D. Paige, The Korean Decision. New York: The Free Press, 1968.

* John W. Spanier, The Truman-MacArthur Controversy and the Korean War. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1965.

The New Look and Flexible Response

Seminar

"Massive retaliation," "pactomania," "brinkmanship," "rollback" --the statecraft of Dwight David Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles seems to ring with the combativeness of the high Cold War. Yet President Eisenhower was one of America's best-loved presidents, and somehow his two terms in office passed without either significant losses internationally for the United States or major war. In fact, historians have recently come around to the view that the Eisenhower administration knew what it was doing when it designed American national security strategy in the 1950s, though its success may have owed a great deal to the favorable relative power position this country enjoyed during his presidency.

As Gaddis shows, Eisenhower returned to an asymmetrical strategy, closer by far to Kennan's original conception than that of NSC-68 but with its own very distinctive characteristics. But the fourth strategy of containment undertaken by the United States since the end of World War II was symmetrical in nature-- and also the one that led the country into the morass of the Vietnam War. It was the strategy known as "flexible response," the idea that undifferentiated interests required (and unlimited means allowed) a precise,, calibrated application of military and non-military means to serve the ends of policy. The United States would "pay any price, bear any burden, support any friend, oppose any foe" because it could do so, because --as for the authors of NSC-68-- Keynesian economics seemed to make all things possible. The result, as Professor Gaddis points out, was that the concentration on means led to a neglect of ends, the apparent lack of the need to set priorities brought in its train a negation of strategic logic, and a war fought to sustain containment ended by discrediting it at home and abroad.

As you read about the Eisenhower and the Kennedy-Johnson national security strategies be sure to take the time to compare them with each other and with those of Kennan and NSC-68. By now Gaddis's own framework for understanding and evaluating strategy should be clear, a design very similar to that set forth in Topic 12.

Topic Objectives

Understand and assess the central organizing precepts of the third and fourth post-World War II strategies of "containment."

Appreciate how the shift from NSC-68 to the New Look, and from it to Flexible Response, illustrates the dilemmas posed by strategic logic.

Questions for Discussion

To what extent was the "New Look" the product of Eisenhower's or Dulles's thinking? How would you define each man's particular views, and what was the nature of the relationship between them on foreign policy matters?

What was Eisenhower's definition of the American national interest, and how did it differ from that of NSC-68? Was it based on threats, or independent of them?

What role did ideology play in the Eisenhower administration's sense of the Soviet threat? How did it affect American national security strategy?

What views did Ike hold on the expendability of American power, of the means available for national defense? How did those views affect his strategy of containment?

What were the advantages and disadvantages of reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence across the spectrum of combat and geography? Do you agree with the criticisms advanced against the "New Look," by contemporaries or by Gaddis? Why or why not?

How did the Kennedy administration conceive American interests in the world? What was its view of the threats to them? What were the advantages, and disadvantages, of these perceptions?

In what sense was the Kennedy strategy one of symmetrical response? What was the implication of symmetry for the instruments of policy, and what initiatives did the administration take there? What was intended by the emphasis on calibration and integration?

What were the effects of Kennedy's national security strategy on conventional and unconventional military forces? On strategic nuclear forces? On alliance politics? On resource management? On efforts to negotiate with the Soviets?

Required Readings

* John Lewis Gaddis, "Eisenhower, Dulles, and the New Look," "Implementing the New Look," "Kennedy, Johnson, and Flexible Response," Chapters 5-7 in Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 127-236. (Student Issue)

Supplemental Readings

* Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.

* Piers Brendon, Ike: His Life and Times. New York: Harper and Row, 1987.

* Seyom Brown, ''The Eisenhower Era," and "The Kennedy-Johnson Years," Parts III and IV in The Faces of Power, pp. 65-317.

* Robert L. Gallucci, Neither Peace Nor Honor. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.

* Leslie H. Gelb with Richard K. Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1979.

* Fred I. Greenstein, The Hidden Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader. New York: Basic Books, 1982.

* David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest. New York: Random House, 1969.

* Townsend Hoopes, The Devil and John Foster Dulles. Boston: Little, Brown, 1973.

* George Herring, America's Longest War. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979.

* "JFK: The Contested Legacy," Diplomatic History 22 (Fall 1998): 642-662.

* Douglas Kinnard. President Eisenhower and Strategy Management. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1977.

* Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

* Herbert S. Parmet, Eisenhower and the American Crusades. New York: MacMillian 1972.

* Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1965.

* Harry G. Summers, On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1983.

Détente and After

The year 1968 was filled with dramatic international and domestic events, from the Pueblo affair and the Tet offensive to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and from the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King to the bloody Democratic national convention in Chicago. Perhaps better than any other, that year marked a turning point between the post-World War II period and the post-Vietnam era. After 1968, a new strategic environment faced American policymakers, in at least three critical respects. First, although the Soviet threat still commanded first place among U.S. strategists' concerns, American statecraft increasingly had to deal with new, non-Russian concerns, like OPEC; containment was no longer the only game in town. Second, with the recovery of its allies and former enemies from the devastation wrought by World War II the United States relative power in the international system had declined from the unnatural prominence the country had enjoyed immediately following that conflict. Third, Vietnam shattered forever American's habitual trust in government and the broad consensus that supported U.S. foreign policy in the first two decades of the Cold War.

Presidents Nixon, Carter, and Reagan thus faced a more challenging world with reduced power and a less united people behind them, hardly a recipe for success. The three evolved quite different strategies to deal with the new situation. Nixon's, known as détente, attempted to blunt Soviet adventurism by combining positive incentives for cooperation with vigorous resistance to encroachments, at the same time compensating for the country's reduced relative power by welcoming the People's Republic of China into the system as a counterweight to the Soviets, and bypassing the dissensus at home through a centralized and secretive statecraft. President Carter focussed on improving the moral content of American foreign policy by deliberately reducing American power, eschewing the harder tools of statecraft, moving rapidly toward cooperation with the Soviets, championing human rights and Third World conflict resolution, and inviting the post-Vietnam dissensus into his administration, only to find that Moscow's advances and the infighting of his lieutenants made such a policy untenable. This set the stage for Ronald Reagan's outsized efforts to restore American power in all its dimensions, challenge Soviet pretensions frontally, and lead the country to a new consensus through rhetoric, a policy that led first to renewed Cold War and to fiscal disaster but that probably also made its contribution to the collapse of the Evil Empire.

Covering two decades and three so different approaches to containment in a single seminar will require each to make some choices. Some may wish to focus exclusively on the Nixon-Kissinger policy, arguably the most sophisticated of the three and perhaps the best example of a realist strategy in American diplomatic history. Those doing so may wish to read not only the chapter assigned from Strategies of Containment below, but also those preceding and following it. Gaddis's book was written during the Carter administration and ends with a brief but necessarily incomplete critique of its strategy; seminars focusing on Carter will probably want to read it as well as the retrospective by Robert Osgood assigned below. Finally there are two articles on the Reagan administration. The first by Fareed Zakaria is explicitly patterned after Gaddis's analysis, while the second is a superb and balanced view of how Reagan thought through policy issues, written by the New York Times Washington bureau chief in the middle of Reagan's time in office.

Topic Objectives

Understand and assess the central organizing precepts of the three post-Vietnam national security strategies.

Appreciate how the shifts from each to the next illustrates the tradeoffs inherent in strategic logic.

Questions for Discussion

What were the intellectual reasons for, and elements of, the policy known as détente? Was it at root a good or a bad idea?

How does the opening to China illustrate classic realist, balance of power diplomacy? Were its premises sound?

How does the Nixon-Kissinger strategy differ from that pursued in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan?

It has been said that Jimmy Carter understood the modern international system better than any of his predecessors or his successor. Yet others would argue that he failed to understand its basic elements at all. In what sense are both statements true?

What was the Carter administration's initial attitude towards the decline of American power? How did its attitudes towards power differ from those of Kissinger or Reagan?

Was the national security strategy of the Reagan administration symmetrical or asymmetrical? What was its perception of means?

Why did Reagan have so few international agreements to its credit until the last 18 months or so of his time in office? Was that outcome a result merely of circumstance or does it say something about his national security strategy and statecraft?

Required Readings

* John Lewis Gaddis, "Nixon, Kissinger, and Détente," Chapter 9 in Strategies of Containment (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 274-308. (Student Issue)

* Robert E. Osgood, "The Carter Policy in Perspective," SAIS Review 1 (Winter 1981): 11-22. (Reprint)

* Fareed Zakaria, "The Reagan Strategy of Containment," Political Science Quarterly 105 (Fall 1990): 373-395. (Reprint)

* Leslie H. Gelb, "The Mind of the President," New York Times Magazine (October 6, 1985): 21, 23-24, 28, 30, 32, 103, 112-113. (Reprint)

Supplemental Readings

* Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Advisor, 1977-1981 (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983).

* Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1982).

* Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991).

* Terry L. Deibel, Presidents, Public Opinion, and Power, Headline Series #280 (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1987).

* Terry L. Deibel, "Reagan's Mixed Legacy," Foreign Policy 75 (Summer 1989): 34-55.

* Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1985).

* Stanley Hoffmann, "Requium," Foreign Policy 42
(Spring 1981): 3-26.

* Henry Kissinger, White House Years, Years of Upheaval, and
Years of Renewal (New York: Little, Brown, 1979, 1983, 1999).

* Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset and Dunlop, 1978).

* Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990).

* George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1993).

* Robert W. Tucker, "Reagan's Foreign Policy," Foreign
Affairs: America and the World 1988/89 68 (1989): 1-27.

* Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983).

TOPIC 14: THE GULF CRISIS: BUSH'S STRATEGY BEFORE THE COUNTERATTACK

"Lasting and meaningful peace must be founded upon principle. Iraq cannot be rewarded for its blatant aggression."

George Bush

The case materials listed below have been organized on the premise --certainly open to dispute-- that several successive strategies can be found in the Bush policy leading up to the war; that is, that the administration's estimate of the international and domestic environments, its goals (perhaps even its view of American interests), the instruments it selected to pursue its objectives, and the way it used those policy tools-- that all of these elements shifted within an evolvingsituation. Four periods can be discerned in the Bush strategy, listed below with the major events marking each:

I. Deterrence and Surprise (period up to August 2, 1990)

2/24 Saddam blasts U.S. in Arab Cooperation Council speech

4/2 Saddam threatens chemical attack on Israel

7/17 Saddam Revolution Day speech threatens Kuwait and UAE

7/24 Saddam moves armored divisions to Kuwait border

7/25 U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie meets Saddam

7/31 Assistant Secretary Kelley tells Congress U.S. has no defense treaties with any Gulf country 8/2 Iraq invades Kuwait

II. Defense and Counterattack

8/4 Bush at Camp David decides to send troops to defend Saudi Arabia

8/8 UN imposes mandatory economic sanctions

8/25 UN authorizes use of force to back sanctions

9/5-8 Secretaries Baker and Brady travel abroad to solicit funds for Desert Shield

10/28 Budget deficit reduction compromise reached.

III. Buildup and Ultimatum (October 30 - December 1990)

10/30 Bush decides to double troop strength in Gulf and seek UN ultimatum

11/6 U.S. mid-term elections

11/8 Bush announces doubling of troop strength

11/29 UN adopts resolution 678 setting January 15 deadline for Iraqi withdrawal

11/30 Bush offers to talk to Iraq directly

IV. Decision for War (January 1991)

1/9 Baker meets with Tariq Aziz in Geneva

1/12 Congress authorizes use of force

The first reading below is a broad piece which sets the context for and offers an overview of the crisis. A section of it is the first reading in each of the four groups of readings which follow, divided according to the periods sketched above. With the help of Faculty Seminar Leaders, each seminar will also divide into four groups, each of which will read one of those groups of readings and focus its analysis on the one period of the crisis it covers.

Using concepts from the Design for National Security Strategy (Topic 12) and knowledge of the non-violent instruments of foreign policy and generic strategies for their use (Block C), students in each group will analyze the national security and statecraft of the Bush administration during their period of the crisis. Before the full seminar convenes, each group should arrange to meet to sketch out its strategic analysis and come to seminar prepared to present it. Together with the concepts and principles presented in the course so far, the questions below may help in that work.

Topic Objectives

Apply your preferred strategic analytical framework to the Bush administration's strategy in one of the four periods of the Gulf Crisis preceding the coalition counterattack on Iraq.

Learn to use the Course 1 framework presented in Topic 12 (or a similar device of your own creation) to analyze national security strategy in a crisis.

Questions for Discussion

Why did Saddam attack Kuwait? Did U.S. diplomacy in any way contribute to his decision? Could the U.S. have deterred the attack? What lessons does the pre-invasion phase of the crisis have to teach about the later choice of a deterrent or defensive strategy to protect Saudi Arabia?

Once the invasion came, what were the reasons that led Bush to commit the United States by saying, within three days, that "this aggression will not stand?" What pressures operated on him?

What national security strategy did Bush follow for dealing with the crisis-- how did he apply resources to achieve his objectives? How did he conceptualize the U.S. national interest, what was his view of the constraints and opportunities in the international system, how did he estimate U.S. relative power in the situation, what objectives did he set, and so forth?

Did Bush's strategy have different phases, or turning points? Or was the president determined from the outset to go to war against Iraq, as some have charged?

Which instruments of policy did Bush choose at the various stages of the crisis, and why? Consider, among others, sanctions, the UN, international law, diplomacy and coalition building, foreign assistance, public diplomacy, and force without war.

In using these instruments, was Bush attempting pure persuasion, bargaining with incentives, or coercive diplomacy?

Looking ahead to Course 5603, what dynamics of the administration's decision making process and bureaucratic politics influenced the U.S. strategy?

Were there alternative strategies that Bush might have used? For example, if the Bush strategy could be characterized as initially defensive and then offensive, could he have instead pursued a deterrent strategy? What would such a strategy have looked like? How would its costs and risks have been different from those of the strategy Bush actually chose?

Did the Bush strategy succeed or fail according to its own objectives? What lessons can be learned from it?

Required Readings

* Roland Dannreuther, "The Gulf Conflict: A Political and Strategic Analysis," Adelphi Paper #264 (London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, Winter 1991/92), pp. 3-45. (Overall survey: each group's section reassigned below)

Group I: Deterrence and Surprise

* Roland Dannreuther, "The Gulf Conflict: A Political and Strategic Analysis," Adelphi Paper #264 (London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, Winter 1991/92), pp. 13-22.

* Caryle Murphy, "Iraq Accuses Kuwait of Plot to Steal Oil, Depress Prices," Washington Post (July 19, 1990): A25.

* Caryle Murphy, "Persian GulfCrisis Swells as Iraqi Gets New Title," Washington Post (July 20, 1990): A12.

* Patrick E. Tyler, "Iraq's Hussein Acts to Ease Gulf Crisis as U.S. Debates Commitment," Washington Post (July 26, 1990): A34.

* David Hoffman, "U.S. Policy Wavered on Saddam," Washington Post (October 1, 1990): A17, A18.

* James A. Baker, III, "Prelude to an Invasion," Chapter 15 in The Politics of Diplomacy (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995), pp. 261-274.

* George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), pp. 307-314.

* Paul A. Gigot, "A Great American Screw-Up," National Interest 22 (Winter 1990/91): 3-10. (Reprints)

Group II: Defense and Sanctions

* Roland Dannreuther, "The Gulf Conflict: A Political and Strategic Analysis," Adelphi Paper #264 (London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, Winter 1991/92), pp. 23-35.

* Paul Taylor and Richard Morin, "Poll Finds Americans Back U.S. Response, but Warily," Washington Post (August 10, 1990): Al, A2.

* Thomas L. Friedman, "U.S. Gulf Policy: Vague 'Vital Interests'," New York Times (August 12,1990): 1, 10.

* Rich Atkinson and David Hoffman, "For U.S., Task is Now to Sustain Fragile Unity," Washington Post (August 2O, l990): Al, Al9.

* Miles Benson, "U.S. Spells Out Military Moves In an Effort to 'Psych Out' Saddam," Newark Star-Ledger (September 5, 1990): 11.

* Thomas L. Friedman, "Signal Loud and Unclear," The New York Times (September 10, 1990): Al, A6.

* Elaine Sciolino and Eric Pace, "How U.S. Got U.N. Backing for Use of Force in the Gulf," New York Times (August 3O, 1990): Al, Al5.

* James A. Baker, III, The Politics of Diplomacy (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995), pp. 276-281.

* Colin Powell, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 462-467, 469-471, 478-480.

* George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), pp. 302-304, 315-318, 321-325, 329-330, 332-333, 349-355, 374-375 (Reprints)

Group III: Buildup and Ultimatum

* Roland Dannreuther, "The Gulf Conflict: A Political and Strategic Analysis," Adelphi Paper #264 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, Winter 1991/92), pp. 35-41.

* George J. Church, "Raising the Ante," Time (November 19, 1990): 48-51.

* E.J. Dionne, Jr., "Odd Alliance Questions Gulf Policy," The Washington Post (November l3, 1990): Al, A20.

* Paul Lewis, "U.N. Gives Iraq Until January 15 to Retreat or Face Force," The New York Times (November 30,1990): Al, A10.

* "Resolution Sets January 15 Deadline for Withdrawal," Washington Post (November 30, 1990): A23.

* Thomas Friedman, "How U.S. Won Support to Use Mideast Forces," New York Times (December 2,1990): Al, A19.

* George Bush, "Why We Are in the Gulf," Newsweek (November 26, 1990): 28.

* Steven Mufson, "Justifying War on Grounds of Economics," Washington Post (December 2, 1990): Hl, H5.

* Richard Morin and E. J. Dionne, Jr., "Vox Populi: Winds of War and Shifts of Opinion," The Washington Post (December 23, 1990): C1, C2.

* James A. Baker, III, The Politics of Diplomacy (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995), pp. 300-304.

* Colin Powell, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 487-489.

* George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), pp. 380-384, 388-402, 416-420. (Reprints)

Group IV: Decision for War

* Roland Dannreuther, "The Gulf Conflict: A Political and Strategic Analysis," Adelphi Paper #264 (London: International Institute of Strategic Studies, Winter 1991/92), pp. 41-45.

* James A. Baker, III, The Politics of Diplomacy (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1995), pp. 353-365.

* Les Aspin, "The Military Option: The Conduct and Consequences of War in the Persian Gulf," Committee on Armed Services, U.S. House of Representatives (January 8, 1991): 1-3, 12-24.

* Richard Morin, "How Much War Will Americans Support?" Washington Post (September 20,1990): B1, B3.

* Colin Powell, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 497-499, 502, 504-505.

* George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), pp. 432-438, 446-449.

* David Hoffman, "Aims of Allies Likely to Expand With War," The Washington Post (January 24,1991): A23, A27.

Supplemental Readings

* Dan Goodgame, "What If We Do Nothing?" Time (January 7, 1991): 22-26.

* John M. Goshko and R. Jeffrey
Smith, "State Department Assailed on Iraq Policy," Washington Post (September 19,1990): Al, A19.

* Owen Harries, "Drift and Mastery, Bush-Style," The National Interest 23 (Spring 1991): 3-7.

* David Hoffman, "George Bush: The Statesman, The Pol and War," Washington Post (December 30,1990): Cl, C2.

* Don Oberdorfer, "Missed Signals in the Middle East," Washington Post Sunday Magazine (March l7,1991): 19-23, 36-41.

* Lally Weymouth, "How Bush Went to War", Washington Post (March 31, 1991): Bl, B4.

* Bob Woodward, The Commanders. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.