INSTITUTE FOR LAW, SCIENCE & GLOBAL SECURITY

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

Military Balancing & Strategy Development The Path Toward a National Net Assessment

Dr. Phillip A. Karber 31 October 2010

The author is Scholar in Residence at Georgetowns Government Department and founding Chair of its graduate Institute for Law, Science & Global Security. This paper was prepared as part of a series of studies on the evolution of Net Assessment and its relationship to Strategy Development. In the 1970s the author served as Director of NSSM/Project-186, the first National Net Assessment, and in the early 1980s as founding Director of the Strategic Concepts Development Center established to support the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Vol. I. Origins of National Net Assessment

Introduction A. Need for a National Net Assessment B. Net Evaluation Subcommittee C. Systems Analysis as Surrogate D. Demise of Net Evaluation E. The 1970 Blue Ribbon Defense Panel F. Lairds Search for a Strategy Dialectic G. The Pentagon versus the NSC H. Net Assessment Method and Process at the NSC I. National Net Assessments J. Lessons Learned 8 24 47 58 77 89 98 106 119 125

FUTURE REPORTS

Vol. II. Project Management & Balance Methodology Vol. III. Theater Assessment & Strategic Impact


Strategy is the great Work of the Organization. In Situations of life or death, it is the Way of survival or extinction. Its study cannot be neglected. the Five Strategic Arts are: First, measurements; Second, estimates; Third, analysis; Fourth, balancing; Fifth, triumph.
Sun Tzu1

On the 23rd of June, 1973, the National Security Advisor to the President, Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, signed National Security Decision Memorandum 224 authorizing a Program for National Net Assessment,2 followed several months later by the first and only implementing action: National Security Study Memorandum 186 commissioning a National Net Assessment of Comparative Costs and Capabilities of US - USSR Military Establishments.3 Thus began a major sustained effort to address the changing quantitative and qualitative balance in general purpose forces between the rival superpowers and their respective alliances during what became known euphemistically as the second Cold War.4 The kind of input needed for strategy development when facing a long-term rivalry with a hostile major power is different than that for traditional multi-polar military contingency planning or normal foreign relations. For a quarter of a
1

These are the opening lines of Sun Tzus classic, The Art of Strategy: A New Translation of Sun Tzus Classic The Art of War, (translated by R. L. Wing; New York, NY: Doubleday, 1988), chpt. I, sec. 1. The Wing translation, which the author prefers including re-naming the work as the art of strategy rather than the art of war is used throughout this paper. 2 Henry A. Kissinger, National Security Decision Memorandum: NSDM 224 -- National Net Assessment Process re NSSM 178, (Washington, DC: National Security Council, 28 June 1973). 3 Henry A. Kissinger, NSSM 186 -- National Net Assessment of Comparative Costs and Capabilities of US - USSR Military Establishments, (Washington, DC: National Security Council, 1 September 1973). 4 See the chapter: Ronald Reagan and the Second Cold War, in Norman A. Graebner, Richard Dean Burns, and Joseph M. Siracusa, Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev: Revisiting the End of the Cold War, (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008); the section: The Second Cold War, in Julian Lindley-French, The North lantic Treaty Organization: The Enduring Alliance, (Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2007): p. 47; Fred Halliday, The Making of the Second Cold War, (London, UK: Verso, 1983); and Simon Dalby, Creating the Second Cold War: The Discourse of Politics, (New York, NY: Guilford Press, 1990).

century, the American National Security establishment struggled to find a mechanism by which the senior leadership of the country could receive the information necessary to formulate a national strategy that was not only viable in the short term, but competitively sustainable over an enduring rivalry with another superpower.5 The term Net Assessment as a process and method of thinking has evolved to represent the kind of foundational material necessary for the implementation of a successful national military strategy in a long-range competition;6 but it neither came quick nor easy. While the term net assessment has been used to describe a variety of functions by a variety of interpreters, to be of help in developing competitive national strategy it necessarily involved: not merely intelligence gathering but the comparative evaluation of forces and military establishments; not only the critical appraisal of fighting assets but the systems the produced, trained maintained and sustained them; not just as a snapshot in time but a developmental stream combining past trends with future projections; not as a single point bottom line but as a process that involved innovative approaches, heuristic thinking7 and a willingness to provoke the kind of constructive debate that comes with challenging status quo assumptions.8 After multiple attempts and no small amount of
5

The concept of an enduring rivalry is one that has drawn increased interest from the disciplines of history, strategic studies, and international relations, see for example: The Dynamics of Enduring Rivalries, edited by Paul F. Diehl, (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998); and Paul F. Diehl and Gary Goertz, (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 6 By strategic questions we mean those surrounding the Clausewitzian conception of strategy, which is the use of military campaigns to obtain the political goals of the nation, but also those questions involving the peacetime problem of obtaining nations goals by military competition short of war. Stephen Peter Rosen, Net Assessment as an Analytical Concept, in On Not Confusing Ourselves: Essays on National Security Strategy in Honor of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, edited by Andrew W. Marshall, J. J. Martin, and Henry S. Rowen, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991): p. 284. 7 Strategizing is the application of heuristic frames to analyze the world and to generate normative evaluations of potential avenues of implementation. A good heuristic has four qualities: it is easy use, easy to communicate, provides a better direction than ones currently employed, and motivates people who have to implement the strategy. Bruce Kogut and Nalin Kulatilaka, Strategy, Heuristics, and Real Options, in The Oxford Handbook of Strategy, edited by David O. Faulkner and Andrew Campbell, (Oxford Handbooks; Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003): pp. 908, 910. 8 Anthony D. Konecny, Net Assessment: An Examination of the Process, (MA Thesis; Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, December 1988), provides a good descriptive summary: Net Assessment is a systematic method of analysis that fulfills the need for an indirect decision support system and provides a major input to the strategic planning/management system in the Department of Defense.

bureaucratic controversy this Gordian Knot of strategic consciousness was cut by the personal perseverance of Andrew W. Marshall. His contributions in establishing and developing the Office of Net Assessment have been documented elsewhere,9 but what has not been addressed is the challenge he faced creating the first National Net Assessment, what motivated it, and how it transpired. Thus, this volume is focused on the Origins of National Net Assessment because the need for comparative balance assessments did not arrive out of the blue and in full bloom in 1973 but were preceded by seventy years of evolutionary effort. It is the argument of this paper that to appreciate what came after we need to be grounded in both the substantive concerns and methodological experiments that went before.

Through an established process of appraising two or more competitors as objectively as humanly possible, an analyst is guided to examine factors normally overlooked. Asymmetries that exist among competitors and the ability of a competitor to achieve its objectives in various conflicts are examples of some of these factors. 9 The most authoritative work, has been by those associated with the Office of Net Assessment in the Pentagon, as staff and/or contract researchers: Stephen Peter Rosen, Net Assessment as an Analytical Concept, in On Not Confusing Ourselves, op cit; George E. Pickett, James G. Roche, and Barry D. Watts, Net Assessment: A Historical Review, in ibid; Paul Bracken, Net Assessment: A Practical Guide, Parameters, (Spring 2006); and Jeffrey S. Mckitrick, Adding to a Net Assessment, Parameters, (Summer 2006); Barry Watts, Scientific Methods and Net Assessment, (conference paper; Washington, DC: Conference on Net Assessment, 28 March 2008); and Barry D. Watts, Against Method: Diagnostic Net Assessment (U), (Paper No. 6, Office of Net Assessment Intellectual History Series; Washington, DC: OSD/NA, 22 July 2005). The following courses on Net Assessment are taught in Washington area Universities by former office alumni: Tom Ehrhard, Net Assessment, (syllabus; Washington, DC: Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Spring 2008), at < http://saisauth.nts.jhu.edu/academic_affairs/course_syllabi/spring2008/strategicstudies/660. 756_Ehrhard_Net%20Assessment.pdf > [accessed 1 March 2008]; Andrew F. Krepinevich, Net Assessment and Planning for National Security, (PIBP 710-008; Arlington, VA: George Mason University, no date), < policy.gmu.edu/syllabi/2007_1/files/PUBP710-008.pdf > [accessed 1 March 2008]; Thomas G. Mahnken, Net Assessment, (syllabus 660.756; Washington, DC: Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Spring 2006); and Barry D. Watts and Andrew May, Net Assessment and Strategic Planning, (SEST-515; Washington, DC: Georgetown University, 2010).

A. Threat Assessment in National Strategy

For senior statesmen and their advisers, the task of evaluating external security threats and identifying strategic opportunities is a perennial challenge. This process is an exercise familiar to all states and is the antecedent of effective national strategy and policy. It requires significant intellectual effort, curiosity, creativity, and a tolerance for uncertainty in the exploration of alternative futures. But this task has vexed statesmen throughout history, who have frequently misperceived the threats and behavior of their competitors.10

From the founding of the Republic up to the late 1880s the assessment of foreign threats,11 anticipation of long-terms trends impacting on American security, and/or the development of national strategy tended to be on an ad-hoc spur-of-the-moment basis. The approach for addressing potential US military operations against foreign opponents was neither institutionalized nor based on any high-level, long-range, strategic planning, but just happened.12 The Spanish-American War not only introduced the US to global force deployments but raised the need to consider conflict with other great powers outside the North American hemisphere and the first Service offices dealing with problems of national strategy were formed.13
10

Thomas M. Skypek, Evaluating Military Balances Through the Lens of Net Assessment: History and Application, Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, vol.12, no. 2, (Winter 2010): p. 1. 11 During the Civil War, the Union strategy was based on the Anaconda Plan developed by Commanding General of the US Army, Winfield Scott. See: Timothy D. Johnson, Winfield Scott: The Quest for Military Glory, (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998): p. 226; also see Chapter on The anaconda Plan and Bull Run, in: John S. D. Eisenhower, Agent of Destiny: The Life and Times of General Winfield Scott, (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997): p. 402, notes that Scotts plan came to be known as the Anaconda because it visualized squeezing the Confederacy like a giant snake. John F. Marszalek, Where Did Winfield Scott Find His Anaconda? Lincoln Hearld, (Summer 1987): pp. 77-81. Scott believed his strategy was abandoned after the Battle of Bull Run and his resignation, but others have argued that Grant resurrected and enlarged it on a scale far beyond what anyone at the beginning of the war would have dreamed. See: Charles P. Roland, An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War, nd (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 2 edition 2004)): p. 170. 12 Curtis H. OSullivan, Review: The Road to Rainbow: Army Planning for Global War, 1934-1940, Air Power History, vol. 50, no. 4, (2003): p. 58. 13 Three institutions came into existence during this period that contributed to the prior-planning process: the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Naval War College, and the Army's Military Intelligence Division. It is uncertain how McKinley used his cabinet and senior military officers in deciding on the global strategy of three corps-sized expeditions in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Following that war, four more institutions were created that strengthened the planning system: the Navy General Board (1900), Army War College (1901), Army General Staff (1903), and Joint Army and Navy Board (1903). But

For the first half of the twentieth century, the United States had neither a strong tradition of strategic assessment nor a coherent method of integrating it with long-range planning or strategy development.14 The Army had borrowed the Prussian15 applicatory system16 which had been developed for tactical training of field grade officers.17 Subsequently adopted by the US Navy18 under the better known rubric of Estimate of the Situation (EoS), it became the driving methodology for War Plan Orange -- the dominant American theater strategy of the interwar period19 -- and was based on four reasoned elements: Step 1: Statement of the Mission; Step 2: Assessment of Enemy forces and intentions;
the US had little chance to influence the grand strategy of World War I. Our Army fit into what the Allies were doing. Previously, the Navy had started significant work on Plan Orange (especially after Japan's rise in 1904-1905), but our sailors were generally relegated to the unplanned and unsought missions of convoy escort, anti-submarine warfare, mine laying, Grand Fleet reinforcement, and several operations ashore. After the Armistice, the Navy gladly returned to massaging and updating Orange, while the Army centered its training on preparing for a rerun of the World War I American Expeditionary Force Plan Black (though I remember in 1932 an Army-wide rehearsal of Plan Crimson--another invasion of Canada!). Ibid. 14 For two very insightful and thoroughly researched works on this topic, see: Henry G. Gole, The Road to Rainbow: Army Planning for Global War: 1939-1940, (Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 2003); and Edward S. Miller, War Plan Orange: The US Strategy to Defeat Japan: 1897-1945, (Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007). 15 Jay Luvaas, Influence of German Wars on the United States, in On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and The German Wars of Unification: 1861-1871, edited by Stig Forster and Jorg Nagler, (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 605, citing: Capt. Eben Swift, The Lyceum at Fort Agawam, JMSIUS, issue 20, (1887), pp. 236-277, he notes Swift was responsible for introducing the applicatory system at Leavenworth And Jay Luvaas, The Military Legacy of the Civil War - The European Inheritance, (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1988); and T. R. Brereton, Educating the US Army: Arthur L. Wagner and Reform, 1875-1905, (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), pp. 59-64. 16 Col. William Balck, Tactics, Vol. I, (translated by Walter Kruger; Fort Leavenworth, KS: US Cavalry Association, 1911), pp. 10, considered General Julius von Verdy du Vernois, one of the demigods of Moltkes General Staff as the creator of the applicatory methods which not only involved an appreciation of the situation but a critical appraisal of the successive decisions involved. Von Verdy du Vernois was also the inventor of the free style type of wargaming known as Kriegspiele. See: Julius von Verdy du Vernois, Studies in Troop-Leading, (London, UK: H. S. King & Co., 1972). 17 The solution of practical problems in tactics, either on the map or on the terrain, constitutes what is known as the applicatory method of instruction. P. S. Bond and M. J. McDonough, Technique of Modern Tactics: A Study of Troop Leading Methods in the Operations of Detachments of All Arms, (for the rd US Cavalry Association; Menasha, WI: George Banta Pub., 3 edition 1914), p. 19. 18 Charles W. Cullen, From the Kreigsacademie to the Naval War College: The Military Planning Process, Naval War College Review, vol. 23, (Janauary 1970): pp. 6-18. 19 The last of which was: BG Sherman Miles, Supplementary Brief Periodic Estimate of the Situation December 1, 1941-March 31, 1942, (memorandum for the Chief of Staff; Washington, DC: G-2, US Army, 5 December 1941), at < http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/411205amie.html > [accessed 1 April 2008].

Step 3: Assessment of Own forces; and Step 4: Evaluation of possible Courses of Action. 20 These elements were addressed in sequential steps from top to bottom that, despite the appearance of inductively bringing external information into the process, nonetheless reflected a linear deductive reasoning process. This deductive method was imbedded in US Army and Navy contingency and war planning in the early twentieth century,21 and the strategic estimate process became endemic to the American Way of War.22 As a method it demonstrated three positive aspects. First, it showed sensitivity to the Clausewitzian primacy of the political with the national policy (mission) as the starting point of strategic logic23 and as defined by the Commander in Chief24 or his Cabinet level representatives the Secretary of War and the Secretary of Navy.25 Second, the emphasis upon comparative assessments of relative force generation in a context

20 21

Miller, War Plan Orange, op cit., p. 16. Col. Adolf Carlson, Joint US Army-Navy War Planning on the Eve of the First World War: Its Origins and Its Legacy, (monograph; Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 16 February 1998), p. 13, at < http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB351.pdf > [accessed 4 April 2008]: In Aril 1904, in response to a recommendation made by Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Adna R. Chaffe, Secretary of War William Howard Taft directed the Joint Army Navy Planning Board to agree upon a series of practical problems (Taking them in the order of their assumed importance) which involve cooperation of the services, and for the execution of which in time of emergency the two staffs will be responsible. The Joint Boards solutions to these practical problems would become war plans signed by the two service secretaries. This was the first joint deliberate planning system in American history. See also: Henry G. Gole, War Planning at the US Army War College, (dissertation; Philadelphia, PA: Temple University, 1991). 22 Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1977, p. 172. 23 Statement of a Proper Military Policy for the United States, (Washington, DC: Army War College, Government Printing Office, 1915); and Emory Upton, The Military Policy of the United States, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1917). 24 Howard White, Executive Influence in Determining Military Policy in the United States, (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 1925). 25 The secretaries of war and the navy and their assistant secretaries rarely injected themselves into the planning work of their uniformed subordinates. Their correspondence on the subject was sparse (although they may have communicated verbally). Between the world wars the service secretaries signed about half a dozen Orange Plans or major amendments. They regarded war plans as national policy instruments available for the presidents orders in a crisis. Occasionally they reorganized procedures or nudged the planners to make revisions because of treaties or changes in the balance of power. Usually, however, the planners presented themselves innovations for their endorsement. Miller, War Plan Orange, op cit., p. 12.

that required national mobilization26 and trans-oceanic deployment became a staple of the planning.27 Third, the system legitimized the brainstorming of innovative and relevant strategic concepts, including utilization of the intellectual resources of the national War Colleges of the Army28 and Navy,29 as well as debating alternative courses of action based on the comparative assessment.30 On the other hand, the strategic estimate process as institutionalized in the American military Services evidenced at least seven serious sins. Preeminent among them: political guidance was generally a fiction.31 Few politicians were able to articulate the kind of clear guidance that mission-driven planning required.32
26

Harry B. Yoshpe, Bernard M. Baruch: Civilian Godfather of the Military M-Day Plan, Military Affairs, vol. 29, no. 1, (1965): pp. 1-15; Albert A. Blum, Roosevelt, the M-Day Plans, and the Military- Industrial Complex, Military Affairs, vol. 36, no. 2, (1972): pp. 44-46; and Miller, War Plan Orange, op cit., p. 13: For the Pacific, Army Orange Plans consisted primarily of timetables for mobilization and embarkation in support of navy-designed offensives. The army also prepared narrow tactical plans for defendeing the Philippines, Hawaii, and the Panama Canal that were complete and workmanlike, but as to wide-angle strategy it was reactive, not innovative. 27 For an early example, see Statement of a Proper Military Policy for the United States, op cit., p. 5. 28 In 1920, the Army General Staff added a fifth (though unnumbered) division to G-1 through G-4- -the War Plans Division. The [Army] War College became an auxiliary think tank for that division. OSullivan, Review: The Road to Rainbow, op cit. p. 58. 29 Miller, War Plan Orange, op cit., p. 16, gives an interesting background to the development of war planning at the US Naval War College in the beginning of the century: Many of them found war planning a congenial exercise of comparative analysis and scholarly deduction. About 1910 the colleges president Raymond P. Rodgers adopted the applicatory system, better know as the Estimate of the Situation. It was thinking process recommended by his kinsman Captain William Ledyard Rodgers, who learned it at the Army War College. A great white light broke on the service when through this system plans were presented as four reasoned elements. The system was used by other naval entities long after the college left the planning scene in 1912. 30 Charles A. Beard, America Debates War Plans, Current History, vol. 42, (June 1935): pp. 290- 294. 31 During the 1930s the US had a range of color coded War Plans that were only replaced in 1939 by the Rainbow Plans. These included 23 different colored plans for military activities against as many different countries. The major ones included: Britain Red; Germany Black; France White; Spain Yellow; Japan Orange; Italy Grey; Russia Purple and/or Green; and China Saffron and Violet. Others were either part of a campaign with a major power or intervention, In conjunction with Red: Ireland Emerald; Canada Crimson; India Ruby; Australia Scarlet and New Zealand Garnet. As an adjunct to Orange: Defense of China vs. Japan Yellow. Interventions: Central American Republic Purple (note same color for Russia); French Caribbean Gold; Iceland Indigo; Portugal Lemon; Spain Olive; Tan Cuba; Green Mexico Green (note conflict same color for Russia); Brazil Citron; and China Violet. Steven T. Ross, American War Plans: 1890-1939, (London, UK: Frank Cass, 2002), p. 38. 32 Almost until the outbreak of World War II the civil government paid scant attention to war planning. Strategy was the domain of uniformed officers who neither got nor expected guidance from their civilian masters. Such lack of coordination between the military and the civil persisted even during the war. Other great powers had integrated their foreign and domestic policies with military strategy,

Moreover, once confronted with the derivative plans attempting to implement his long-range strategy, the Commander in Chief: Not infrequently ignored them;33 Revised the objectives without realigning resources;34 Gave them only cursory attention or endorsement;35 Made changes that were incompatible with the existing plan;36 and/or Inhibited serious contingency planning for real threats.37

Top down policy guidance for long-range military planning tended to come in sound bites from the White House38 and telegrammed reporting from the State
sensible behavior because a major war in Europe could threaten the very survival of nations. For the United States the security of ocean moats, distrust of militarism, and a foreign policy based on assuring the sanctity of the Western Hemisphere and the shunning of alliances all fostered civilian disinterest. Although planning was formalized as a US military function a the start of the twentieth century, politicians usually either knew nothing about the war plans or maintained a discreet pretense. Miller, War Plan Orange, op cit., pp. 2, 10. 33 Woodrow Wilson was overtly hostile to war planners. He curtailed their work in 1913. Miller, War Plan Orange, op cit., pp. 10, 22: Angered at plotting of steps for mobilization behind his back, he suspended the Joint Board from all war-planning activity. 34 Jeffery A. Engle, Cold War at 30,000 Feet: The Anglo-American Fight for Aviation Supremacy, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 18-20, quoting Ed Cray, General of the Army: Soldier and Statesman, (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1990), p. 166, notes that President Roosevelt overrode the national industrial mobilization plan as well as the advice of the Secretary of War and the Army Chief of Staff in pledging that the US would produce fifty thousand planes a year for rearmament of the Allies. This was an awesome figure, demanding that an industry that had strained to produce two thousand planes during the whole of 1939 now churn out more than four thousand a month. The total amount of aluminum ... exceeded America's entire annual production.... Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, Roosevelt's most venerable military adviser, thought his commander's goal a shortsighted folly given what he considered the country's more pressing needs. 35 No Orange Plan was ever enacted by Congress or signed by a President; even in mid-1941 Franklin Roosevelt gave only o9ral approval to Plan Rainbow Five, the fundamental policy guideline for World War II. The secretaries of war and navy had signed forma Orange Plans from 1924 onward; previously they were endorsed only by the senior military officers responsible for planning. Miller, War Plan Orange, op cit., Pp. 2, 10: The three Republican presidents of the 1920s were disinterested in war plans and preparations. Governing during a time of Japanese passivity, they put their trust in treaties that restricted navies and bases. 36 In 1940, at the same time President Roosevelt made the decision for an Atlantic first strategy he deployed the Pacifica Fleet forward to Pearl Harbor and reinforced the US presence in the Philippines even though he knew the former was provocative and the latter could not be rescued in time. See: Chief of Naval Operations memo to the Secretary of the Navy, Plan Dog, November 12, 1940, in US War Plans: 1938-1945, edited by Steven T. Ross, (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002), pp. 55-66. 37 Even though the US had fought its most recent war against Germany and would fight another within twenty years, intense domestic pressure emerged for the Army to halt when it became known that the Army was constructing a plan for a war with Germany. This may have encouraged the Army to focus on more speculative scenarios for planning purposes. United States Color-coded War Plans, Wikipedia, 2008, at < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Color-coded_War_Plans > [accessed 11 February 2008]; and Ross, American War Plans: 1890-1939, op cit.

Department, with policy and strategy either so general or timidly narrow as to be useless demonstrating the link between policy and strategy more in the breach than observance.39 If politics had primacy, there were also secondary but serious problems within the military side of the strategy development process -- particularly inconsistent and asymmetrical assumptions buried in war plans not subject to civilian oversight or critical review. While balance assessment was a critical link in the deductive chain between guidance and options, the bifurcated process of G-2 evaluating the threat and G-3 appraising its own relative capabilities produced a dangerous weakness in the process they were often neither truly comparative in the metrics they used nor objective in diagnosing strengths and weaknesses of both sides.40 Third, where the German training system had stressed initiative and
38

From the business strategy community, comes some real insight: A common view today is that the formulation of strategy is easy, but the real issues and problems are those of implementation, and that the conventionally prescriptive approach to strategy ignores the degree to which strategy in real businesses is emergent rather than directed. We accept that this a justified critique of standard approaches to strategy, but that these approaches are themselves based on a misconception of what strategy for a business really involves. Such criticisms are appropriately directed at a wish-driven view of strategy which emphasizes leadership, visions, and missions. If this is strategy, then it should be no surprise that formulation is easy and implementation difficult, and also unsurprising that such strategy has limited impact on what operating businesses actually do. Meaningful strategy is not a statement of corporate aspirations, but is rooted in the distinctive capabilities of the individual firm. When strategy is emergent in this sense, the distinction between formulation and implementation becomes far less. John Kay, Peter Mckiernan and David Faulkner, The History of Strategy and Some Thoughts about the Future, in The Oxford Handbook of Strategy, edited by David O. Faulkner and Andrew Campbell, (Oxford Handbooks; Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003): pp. 27-28. 39 American war plans from 1890 to 1939 demonstrate the vital requirement for a close and continuous linkage of policy and strategy. When such linage was weak or absent, war plans became divorced from reality and turned into mere exercises an annual ritual for staff officers. When a linkage existed, war plans approached reality. The Joint Board had attempted to obtain continuing advice from the State Department but it was not interested. The Board, therefore, had to devise war plans in a political void. The planners were aware of the world around them and tried to make plans conform to reality. The Joint Board and Joint Planning Committee often produced plans that conformed to the nations policy, but the military organization frequently devised plans, especially plans for a large-scale war, that had little to do with national policy or diplomatic reality. In a negative sense then, American war plans between 1890 and 1939 demonstrate the importance of continuous interactions between policy and strategy. Ross, American War Plans: 1890-1939, op cit., p. 183. 40 In his classic work, Balck, Tactics, Vol. I, op cit., pp. 10, cautions that: One danger of using nothing but the applicatory method must be noted. The instructor, as representative of a definite theory, finds it comparatively easy to select the conditions governing a specific case in such a way that the theory which he represents necessarily appears to be the correct one. This is especially true when the director of an applicatory problem determines the action of the opposing side. Contrary to popular perception, at least in the inter-war period, there were as many examples of best case planning as there were threat

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imagination in developing alternatives, the American system gravitated to a school solution that reduced rather than expanded the range of creative options41 -- for example boiling everything down to a simplistic naval Maritime or army Continental strategy42 -- and cross service coordination was incomplete at best, and not infrequently inconsistent.43 Fourth, at the peak of the industrial revolution and at a time of epic technological innovation, American national planning assumed that technology was something to be addressed by Service armament bureaus rather than viewing new systems with radically new capabilities as a form of strategic breakthrough.44 Fifth, there was little systematic recognition of
hyping worst case salesmanship. Ross, American War Plans: 1890-1939, op cit., pp. 182-183, notes that in assessing contingencies versus Japan, Joint Board planners did not take the imbalance of resources between Japan and the United States into account and consequently planned a war that the United States could not lose and that Japan could not wage. 41 The weakness of the whole applicatory system of instruction lies in the fact that a textbook based upon it, although written by a master hand, can portray only isolated examples, and that these, studied again and again, soon lose their value in the same manner as a maneuver terrain that has become too well known. For, although we ordinarily find principles represented in a connected form, this method of instruction can only convey them in a fragmentary manner in connection with the details of the events described. Balck, Tactics, Vol. I, op cit., pp. 10. 42 The American Navy tended to view future conflict as a come as you are party which put emphasis on their role as a force in readiness for Maritime defensive protection; while the small US Army required extended mobilization for Continental offensive projection. Frank E. Jordan, III, A Strategic Approach to the Maritime Continental Strategy Debate, (research paper; Washington, DC: Naval War College, February 1987), views the maritime-continental strategy debate as a conflict between two divergent approaches to national strategy development in terms of the strategic criteria of definition of the strategic problem, strategic purpose and approach, escalation control, and the strategic center of gravity. This competing Continental versus Maritime framework was not untypical of island countries, with Japan and Great Britain having similar inter-service planning asymmetries. Michael I. Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, (London, UK: Routledge, revised edition 2000), pp. 292-294, points out that Englands Admiral Percy Corbett had attempted to reconcile them, but in doing so, recognized an inherent incompatibility in their respective views on limitability. 43 The secretaries as well as the admirals and generals were often lax in informing their opposite numbers about departmental plans. Miller, War Plan Orange, op cit., pp. 12-13, observes that Army planning was also inconsistent. Sometimes its viewpoint harmonized with the navys, sometimes it prodded the navy to adopt more aggressive programs, and sometimes it prescribed caution. Its schizophrenia arose from the incompatible objectives of supporting the garrison of the Philippines and conserving power for more vital interest in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific. 44 Points made in: Stefan T. Possony, Tomorrows War: Its Planning, Management and Cost, (London, UK: W. Hodge and Co., 1938); and Stefan T. Possony, Strategic Air Power: The Pattern of dynamic Security, (Washington, DC: Infantry Journal Press, 1949); I. B. Holley, Jet Lag in the Army Air Corps, pp. 123-153, and Col. Alan L. Gropman, Air Force Planning and the Technology Development Planning Process in the Post-World War II Air Force the First Decade (1945-1955), in Military Planning th in the Twentieth Century, edited by LtCol. Harry R. Borowski, (Proceedings of the 11 Military History Symposium, 10-12 October 1984; Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, USAF, 1986), p. 154, We found that before the end of World War 11, the Air Force had acknowledged that advanced technology

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uncertainties,45 treatment of entropy46 or appreciation of an opponent that reacts to threat reaction.47 Sixth, the assumption that the process was linear and could be addressed in successive steps ignored the iterative nature of most strategic problem solving where there is a constant interplay between deduction and induction.48 Lastly, because the whole planning system essentially involved scaling up to the theater level what was basically a tactical approach, a number of issues unique to strategy either got left out or were not addressed coherently. Tactical thinking does not include or tends to ignore disconnects between ends and means,49 key asymmetries between major rivals,50 problems of prioritization between

had become a key to victory, but we also discovered (through reading official histories) that there were difficulties in establishing the processes for developing technology, and, more to the point, there was no formal nexus between the Headquarters Directorate of Plans and other Pentagon or field technology development organizations. We believe two devices-doctrine and long-range or strategic planning-might have unified the headquarters efforts, had they been in existence during the decade under review. 45 Arthur J. Alexander, The Linkage Between Technology, Doctrine, and Weapons Innovation: Experimentation for Use, (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1981), pp 5, 12, notes that military bureaucracies often plan as though the world were certain, although that is far from reality. 46 Complicating the planners mission of influencing the programmers and budgeters is the enormous uncertainty in which they must operate. Planners themselves, uncomfortable with attempts to see through the dense fog, find it easier to make assumptions about the future than to live with ambiguity. Programmers and budgeters deal with a threat they see, and they are uncomfortable with planners assumptions in the face of uncertainty. Gropman, Air Force Planning and the Technology Development Planning Process in the Post-World War II Air Force, op cit., p. 159; and Merton J. Peck and Frederick M. Scherer, Weapons Acquisition Process: An Economic Analysis, (Boston, MA: Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1962), pp 17-54, 581-582, note that there are substantial uncertainties permeating the weapons acquisition process and the dominant unknowns are internal uncertainties, which originate largely in the strategic environment. 47 Gropman, Air Force Planning and the Technology Development Planning Process in the Post- World War II Air Force, op cit., p. 159: The American military planner deals with an adversary who operates from a closed society, who is extremely stingy about providing information, and who, most disconcertingly, reacts to planning initiatives. American military planners rely on intelligence to tell them about the relevant future thereafter, actions proposed by the American military planner to achieve national objectives change the future with which planners thought they were dealing because [the opponents] actions are responsive to American initiatives. 48 The two methods (the applicatory, or inductive, and the deductive) must be so supplemented that the lesson in tactics clearly illustrates the purpose of and object of a tactical operation and allows of the attainment of a thorough knowledge of the means necessary to gain that object. Balck, Tactics, Vol. I, op cit., pp. 11. 49 Gole, The Road to Rainbow: Army Planning for Global War, op cit., commenting on the US Army planning in the 1930s that there is something surreal in a third-rate military thinking first-rate global schemes. 50 A general theme in: Kent Roberts Greenfield, American Strategy in World War II: A Reconsideration, (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963).

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different fronts,51 the contribution of allies and alliance management,52 or the manipulation of strategic postures to induce inefficient resource expenditure by the opponent.53 Strategy is not just tactics writ large because the latter, focused on the immediate engagement with the opponent, provide no coherent foundation for a long-range competitive approach trying to avoid direct conflict. Strategy has long been recognized as a critical element in national security. The Commander in Chief has a prime responsibility in its articulation but this does not take place in a vacuum, and is frequently impacted by broader issues of foreign policy, Congressional funding and popular support. When new threats arise and are recognized with plentiful resources, the discussion of strategy tends to take back seat to issues of modernization and execution, but when enemies are distant, small or multiple, the strategic choices that a country must make and the risks associated with them take on renewed importance. The surprise at Pearl Harbor has tended to mask the abject failure on the eve of World War II of American strategic assessment: both in substance and process.54 Strategic change -- the rise of new challengers under the pressure of
51

On the issues of a two-front war and priorities between the Pacific and the Atlantic, see: Samuel Eliot Morison, American Contributions to the Strategy of World War II, (two lectures; London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1958). 52 A major point in Part II Participation with Allies and Two-Front War, of Gole, The Road to Rainbow: Army Planning for Global War, op cit., pp. 39-80. See also: Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Grand Alliance, and US Strategy in World War II, (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000)). Starting in 1934, the Army War College always set its problems as wars fought in participation with Allies, and in most years, against coalitions of foes; but serious US-Anglo staff talks did not begin until the London meeting of August 1940 and culminated with the ABC-1 Report of late March 1941 an unrealistic plan that placed primary emphasis on bombing and blockade as a means of sapping Axis strength before a final conventional assault. 53 The Pentagon planning we are dealing with is neither operation nor contingency planning, but it is force structure planning a term not defined in military dictionaries (in fact, planning itself as an activity is also not defined). For our purposes, force structure planning means directing the building and putting in place the forces (and their support) necessary to achieve national security objectives in the future (which many be relatively near or distant but is never the present). Whereas operation or contingency planning is largely a science *strategically allocating know forces to meet an expected or probable situation), force structure planning is an art because it deals with unlimited unknowns. Some operation planning has been done in the Pentagon, but the majority of the planning has always been force structure planning. Given the length of the development cycle, all force structure planning has long- range implications, but that is certainly not to say that force structure planning in the era we are addressing was coherent, long-range planning. Gropman, Air Force Planning and the Technology Development Planning Process in the Post-World War II Air Force op cit., p. 155. 54 Steven Ross, American War Plans, 1941-1945: The Test of Battle, (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1997).

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receding resources has not infrequently been associated with a Strategy Gap where the continuance of an old strategy may be irrelevant to a new environment but a new plan may also have blind spots or be unrealistic on what is needed to implement it. The problem of strategic failure is not just one of embarrassment or expensive remediation; in a multi-polar nuclear world a failed strategy can endanger the nation and imperil the survival of allies. Although bad strategy is fairly evident after it fails, there has been little attention given to how to diagnose it or prevent its consequences pro-actively.55 Strategicide means death by failed strategy. It describes a situation where a plan of action is a self-inflicted wound on the organization that developed it.56 The term is a construction of the Greek stratgos (commanders intent) and Latin caedere (to kill) and literally means a leaders plan that is more deadly for its inventor than the opponent. In plain English, Strategicide describes an institutional defeat where mistakes in systematic planning are endemic to the casual chain of disaster. Particularly stark in Americas pre-war misconception was a political strategy that encouraged the forward deployment of US forces and their symbolic deterrent posture in the Philippines. This indictment applies not only to the political leadership but the gross inadequacies in planning by the uniformed military. In short, there was a fundamental breakdown in the joint planning process within and between the institutionalized services, not to mention the upstart Air Corps.57 For the US, like others hiding behind oceanic barriers, there was a real danger that, as Lord Tedder once remarked about the tendency of strategists to draw conclusions from the later stages of wars, when after some years of lavish

55

Strategy books routinely look at successes and suggest how readers can emulate them. But no one looks as failures and lays out methods for how not to emulate them. Paul B. Carroll and Chunka Mui, Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures, (New York, NY: Penguin, 2008), p.2. 56 The phrase self-inflicted wound is from: Michel Robert, The New Strategic Thinking, (New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2006), p. 21. 57 See: James Gason, Planning the American Air War: Four Men and Nine Days in 1941, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).

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expenditure; the Commander knows that he can more or less count on a blank cheque.58 One of the leading planners of the era, Vannevar Bush admitted:
We have done military planning of actual campaigns in time of war well, and we have done military planning of a broad nature in time of peace exceedingly badly. Yet both have been done largely by the same individuals. Why the striking contrast? First, peacetime planning deals with facilities and techniques of the future rather than the present. Second, the bond that holds men in unison under stress of war becomes largely dissolved when peace returns. Third, peacetime planning is done in a political atmosphere.59

The danger of learning from the wrong end of a war is an important point, because, if the old von Moltke dictim is true that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy,60 then success, even survival, in the initial period of war puts a premium on getting strategic assessment as right as possible under conditions of uncertainty in the fog of peace.61 As with most human phenomenon, the explanations for Americas Strategicide of the intra-war period are complex and multi-variate, but five key components particularly relevant to the modern environment suggest five hypotheses: That the rise of a National challenger in a region where the stabilizing powers are overcommitted and understrength put a premium on depending upon political deterrence that, because it increasingly looks

58

W. N. Medlicott, Review: Grand Strategy, English Historical Review, vol. 74, no. 292, (1959): p. 509, quoting General Arthur Tedder, British Air Marshall. 59 This is not planning; it is a grab bag. It will lead us to waste our substance. It will lead to strife between services of a nature that can destroy public confidence. It will render us vulnerable to a hostile world. Vannevar Bush, Modern Arms and Free Men, A Discussion of the Role of Science in Preserving Democracy, (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1949), pp 250-261. 60 Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Wikiquote, 15 December 2007, at < http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Helmuth_von_Moltke_the_Elder > [accessed 12 April 2008]. 61 For one of the few studies of this topic, see: The Fog of Peace and War Planning, edited by Talbot C. Imlay and Monica Duffy Toft, (Taylor & Francis, 2005). In Tofts and Imlays chapter on Strategic and Military Planning under the Fog of Peace, p. 1, they note that prudence alone dictates that states and their militaries plan for the possibility of interstate war. But if the task of military planning is indispensable it is also fraught with an uncertainty rooted in three basic problems: that of identifying friend and foe, that of understanding the nature of future war; and that of determining its timing. Imlay and Toft, conclude with Seven Lessons Learned About the Fog of Peace, pp. 249-257, which include: 1. Effective war planning requires as many inputs as possible; 2. Balance short-term and long-term perspectives in planning; 3. Hedge Your Bets in Terms of the development of weapon systems; 4. The need for flexibility in identifying Friends and Foes; 5. Formal Allied planning requires effective preparation; 6. Balance of power within an Alliance may undermine planning; and 7. Be flexible for effective military and strategic planning. These seem obvious and simplistic, until one considers how much they are violated.

15

like a con not a commitment, was asymmetrically perceived and actually gave an incentive for prevention rather than precaution. That Depression Economics and the national mood of isolationism eviscerated the best efforts of planning, and thus produced a charade at home and provocation abroad.62 That multilateral Arms Control the strategic Naval Arms Limitations on Capital Ships -- produced an environment where unilateral self-constraint was more pressing, in order to save resources, than hanging tough to enforce opponent observance.63 That the fog of peace64 including a State Department led politicized strategy of symbolic forward deployment for deterrent purposes and the need to appease Alliance politics65 -- overrode and papered-over deep concerns in military planning about the disconnect between capabilities and expectations. That discontinuities in Military Service institutional interests and differences in interpretation of how to implement them (where the Army was gearing up for a long forward deployed campaign in Europe and the Navy was trying to back out of exposed forward vulnerability in the Pacific) made realistic planning a farce.66

None of this excuses Japanese culpability in starting an aggressive war, but the extent to which Americans were shocked at the disastrous turn of events during the first six months has much more to do with a failure of a planning system that not only did not anticipate the danger, but actually provoked preemption. Large institutions do not like blank slate strategic planning, and the military even less its a lot of effort that frequently goes to naught. In the words of
62

For example: Jonathon Marshall, To Have and Have Not: Southeast Asian Raw Materials and the Origins of the Pacific War, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995); Haruo Tohmatsu and H.P. Willmott, A Gathering Darkness: The Coming of War to the Far East and the Pacific, 1921-1942, (Lanham, MD: SR Books, 2004); and Edward S. Miller, Bankrupting the Enemy: The US Financial Siege of Japan Before Pearl Harbor, (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007). 63 Richard W. Fanning, Peace and Disarmament: Naval Rivalry & Arms Control, 1922-1933, (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 1995); Emily O. Goldman, Sunken Treaties: Naval Arms Control between the Wars, (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994); and Robert Gordon Kaufman, Arms Control During the Pre-Nuclear Era: The United States and Naval Limitation between the Two World Wars, (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990). 64 The Fog of Peace and War Planning: Military and Strategic Planning under Uncertainty, edited by Talbot C. Imlay and Monica Duffy Toft, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006). 65 John Costello, Days of Infamy: MacArthur, Roosevelt, Churchill the Shocking Truth Revealed, (New York, NY: Pocket Books, 1994); Mark A. Stoler, Allies and Adversaries: The Joint Chiefs of Staff, The Grand Alliance, and US Strategy In World War II, (Raleigh, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 66 This contrast between the Army and Navy is well documented and demonstrated in: Gole, The Road to Rainbow: Army Planning for Global War, op cit. for the former, and Miller, War Plan Orange, op cit. for the latter.

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one senior British military officer on receiving request from the Foreign Office to participate in post-World War II strategic guidance: I am afraid that it means more work for the Joint Planners, but I do not see how we can get out of it.67 But the military are even more uncomfortable operating in the absence of strategic intent. 0Despite recognized deficiencies in Services planning prior to World War II, the U.S. military ended the conflict without any clearer peacetime planning structure than they started with. In fact, as of V-J Day the Joint Chiefs of Staff had received no specific directive to continue to address basic military problems jointly in peacetime as they had during the wartime years.68 In 1945 Life Magazine declared in headlines: We are in a different league now. How large the subject of security has grown, larger than a combined Army and Navy.69 Despite a broad recognition of the need for unified military

67

Comment of General Sir Hastings Ismay, Chief of Staff Officer to the Minister of Defense, on receiving request from the Foreign Office for post-war strategic guidance; quoted in Julian Lewis, Changing Direction: British Military Planning for Post-war Strategic Defence, 1942-1947, (London, UK: Sherwood Press, 1988), p. 1. 68 This stemmed from a policy approved by the President in late 1943. In November of that year, President Roosevelt had instructed the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare a study for him indicating the general postwar air base requirements of the United States around the world. They had assigned this task to the JSSC. During development of their report, the JSSC, in an unusual action, had drafted what it termed a recommended Policy on Post-War Military Problems, completely unrelated to the air base study. The JSSC appended this Recommended Policy to its report and sent it forward to the Joint Chiefs of Staff along with its recommendations for air bases. At their meeting on 15 November 1943 the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved all the JSSC recommendations and forwarded them, including the policy statement, to President Roosevelt who approved the entire package on 23 November. The operative portions of the statement of policy regarding the JCS role in postwar policymaking were contained in the first three paragraphs, as follows: 1. The Joint Chiefs of Staff should be represented in important groups concerned with post-war planning, as may be necessary to insure that military considerations may be integrated with political and economic considerations. 2. The Post-war military problems should be studied as an integrated whole rather than as separate problems for the ground, naval and air forces. 3. They must be examined from the points of view of national defense, of prospective international military commitments and related national commercial interests. While in the last analysis national security must dominate, we must be prepared to make concessions to the international organization. Presidential approval of these statements, while not a specific directive to the Joint Chiefs of Staff to engage in postwar planning, was construed as authorizing them to do so. On this basis, the Joint Chiefs of Staff began the process of developing military policy and strategy for the postwar period. James F. Schnable, The History of the Joint Chief of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy: Vol. I, 1945- 1947, (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1979): pp. 135-136. 69 Cited in David Jablonsky, The State of the National Security State, Parameters, (Winter 2002- 2003): p. 5.

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organization to replace the bi-service divide,70 and acceptance of greater peacetime civilian oversight as articulated by the Eberstadt task force on National Security Organization,71 it was not until passage of the National Security Act of 1947 that there was an attempt to articulate a National Security Strategy72 and structure a competitive assessment process to support it.73 The purpose of this legislation that created the first integrated National Military Establishment74 was not just for
Service rivalries for the budget were such that the Chiefs, even with a strong Chairman added, could not really develop a coherent set of strategic plans. Admiral Denfeld, who, as Chief of Naval operations, had been a member of the JCS, claimed that on nine-tenths of the matters that come before them, the Joint Chiefs reach agreement among themselves. Normally the only disputes are on strategic concepts, the size and composition of forces, and budget matters. That, unfortunately, was the point. On the critical 10 percent of their business, the Chiefs could not agree. Quoted in: William W. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy, (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 19. 71 Report to the Hon. James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy by Ferdinand Eberstadt, Unification of the War and Navy Departments and Postwar Organization for National Security, (Washington, DC: US Senate, committee on Naval Affairs, 22 October 1945): pp. 47-54. For an interesting perspective on how trusted friendships can produce both valuable critique and complimentary impact in strategy development, see: Jeffery M. Dorwart, Eberstadt and Forrestal: A National Security Partnership, 1909- 1949, (College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 1991). 72 The President shall transmit to Congress each year a comprehensive report on the national security strategy of the United States. and shall include a comprehensive description and discussion of the following: (1) The worldwide interests, goals, and objectives of the United States that are vital to the national security of the United States. (2) The foreign policy, worldwide commitments, and national defense capabilities of the United States necessary to deter aggression and to implement the national security strategy of the United States. (3) The proposed short-term and long-term uses of the political, economic, military, and other elements of the national power of the United States to protect or promote the interests and achieve the goals and objectives referred to in paragraph (1). (4) The adequacy of the capabilities of the United States to carry out the national security strategy of the United States, including an evaluation of the balance among the capabilities of all elements of the national power of the United States to support the implementation of the national security strategy. (5) Such other information as may be necessary to help inform Congress on matters relating to the national security strategy of the United States. Annual National Security Strategy Report, National Security Act of 1947, (Washington, DC: US Congress, 26 July 1947), Sec. 108, at < http://www.intelligence.gov/0-natsecact_1947.shtml > [accessed 1 April 2008]. 73 By mid-1947, they had approved a military policy, a strategic estimate, and a supporting strategy. The preparation of implementing war plans had begun, albeit at a low level, and had continued within the JCS supporting structure. No approved war plans emerged prior to 1948, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while not formally addressing the efforts of their planners, were aware of their efforts and maintained a close interest in the planning going on. Schnable, The History of the Joint Chief of Staff, op cit. 74 The breadth of the National Security act was remarkable. it not only created the NSc, it created a National Military establishment (NME), a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a National Security Resources Board (NSRB), the Departments of army, Navy, and air Force, a War council, a Joint chiefs of Staff (JCS), a Munitions Board, and a Research and Development Board. Many of these institutions, and
70

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efficiency but to insure effective unified strategic direction of the combatant forces.75 And along with strategy came recognition of the need to assess the potential military power of the United States which was declared the first duty of the National Security Council.
for the purpose of more effectively coordinating the policies and functions of the departments and agencies of the Government relating to the national security, it shall, subject to the direction of the President, be the duty of the Council to assess and appraise the objectives, commitments, and risks of the United States in relation to our actual and potential military power, in the interest of national security, for the purpose of making recommendations to the President in connection therewith.76

Thus, the first provision specified for the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the 1947 National Security Act was the mandate to prepare strategic plans and to provide for the strategic direction of the armed forces.77 Despite its sweeping nature, the 1947 act did not, however, create a holistic enterprise;78 civilian participation in competitive strategy and oversight of contingency planning remained weak.79 Its roots lay in the British Committee of Imperial Defense, a cabinet agency for coordinating national security matters, but this arrangement was more suited to Cabinet than to presidential government.80 The raising of the traditional Army staff system of G-2 Intelligence/G-3 Operations
others, became core components of the modern national security system. Cody M. Brown, The National Security Council: A Legal History of the Presidents Most Powerful Advisers, (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of the Presidency, 2008): p. 5. See also: James S. Lay, Organizational History of the National Security Council during the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Library, 1988). 75 to provide for the unified strategic direction of the combatant forces, for their operation under unified command, and for their integration into an efficient team of land, naval, and air forces but not to establish a single Chief of Staff over the armed forces nor an overall armed forces general staff. Ibid., Sec. 2. 76 Title I Coordination for National Security: National Security Council, Ibid., Sec. 101(b)1. 77 Major Changes in the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: 1942-1969, Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Staff, (23 January 1970) in Appendix A, Mechanisms for Change Organizational History, to Report to the President and the Secretary of Defense on the Department of Defense, Report to the President and the Secretary of Defense on the Department of Defense by the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel, (Washington, DC: Assistant Secretary of Defense, Administration, 9 February 1970), p. 196. 78 Brown, The National Security Council, op cit: p. 5. 79 Much of this is covered in the classic: Samuel P. Huntington, The Common Defense: Strategic Programs in National Politics, (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1961). 80 Stanley L. Falk, The National Security Council under Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, Political Science Quarterly, vol. 79, no. 3, (September 1964): pp. 403-434.

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system to a national level and for joint application made the process of strategy development both rigid and turgid.81 Thus, as early as 1949, what would be the first of many reorganizations, argued for broader civilian participation in the higher realms of strategy development:
Much has been written and said about the incapability of civilians to deal with military matters. Military science, it is said, can be the province only of the military. That may be true on the battlefield: it is not true in the realm of grand strategy. Modern war cannot be left solely to the generals.82

This issue was compounded as the Secretary of Defense took on more and more responsibility for grand strategy83 that required understanding of strategic concepts as well as the ability to critically evaluate them relative to other options in order to make prudent decisions on budgets, force structure tradeoffs, and major weapons system procurements, let alone issues of overseas campaigns, alliance war planning, nuclear deterrence or considerations of negotiated arms control.84

81

For a useful description and history of this planning approach, see: Walter S. Poole, The Evolution of the Joint Strategic Planning System, 1947-1989, (Special Historical Study; Washington, DC: Historical Division, Joint Secretariat, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1989). 82 National Security Organization: A Report with Recommendations, (prepared for the Commission on Organization of the Executive Brand of the Government by the Committee on the National Security Organization; Washington, DC: GPO, January 1949), p. 57. 83 Defined as concerned both with purely military strategy and with politics and diplomacy; also, it should be added, with a wide range of civilian and economic activities from food supply and manpower to shipping and blockade. 84 For a useful summary of this overload, see: Charles A. Stevenson, SECDEF: The Nearly Impossible Job of Secretary of Defense, (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2006). For detailed institutional histories, see: Steven L. Rearden, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. 1, The Formative Years, 1947- 1950, (Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, GPO, 1984); Doris M. Condit, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. 1, The Test of War, 1950-1953, (Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, GPO, 1988); Richard M. Leighton, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. 3, Strategy, Money, and the New Look, 1953-1956, (Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, GPO, 2002); Robert J. Watson, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. 4, Into the Missile Age, 1956-1960, (Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, GPO, 1997); Lawrence S. Kaplan, Ronald D. Landa, and Edward J. Drea, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Vol. 5, The McNamara Ascendancy, 1961-1965, (Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, GPO, 2006); and Roger R. Trask and Alfred Goldberg, The Department of Defense, 1947-1997: Organization and Leaders, (Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1997).

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 B. Net Evaluation Subcommittee

The group involved was called the Net Evaluation Subcommittee of the National Security Council. And it was a quite interesting group, because it had been established during Eisenhowers time to do reviews of the results of a thermonuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The net assessment, in other words, was what happens to each country in the event of that kind of a war.85

The creation of the absolute weapon changed both the nature of war and the role of civilians.86 In the conventional era military leaders could treat the initial period of war as indeterminate, buying time to convert peacetime resources into a mass instrument of an intra-war strategy designed to meet and defeat the opposing forces. But, in the nuclear age three millennia of recorded military art was turned upside down -- the early strikes were likely to be decisive, with the national mobilization base could be destroyed before most military assets were ever deployed, and the destruction of opposing forces was secondary to the slaughter of the society that they were to protect. Strategy came to mean a plan of enforced inaction and indecision what some called the end of strategy87 -- a nuance as strange to traditional military thinking as it was important to civilian leaders and therefore imperative for their intervention both on the decision to use nuclear weapons and in the planning process to prevent being confronted with that contingency.88

85

Charles Stuart Kennedy, Interview with James E. Goodby, (The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection; Arlinton, VA: The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 10 December 1990) at < http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mssmisc/mfdip/2004/2004goo04.sgm > [accessed 1 July 2010]. 86 The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order, edited by Bernard Brodie, (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1946). 87 Bernard Brodie, Strategy Hits a Dead End, Harpers, num. 209, (October 1955), pp. 33-37: There is a stark simplicity about an unrestricted nuclear war that almost enables it to be summed up in one short sentence: Be quick on the draw and the trigger squeeze, and aim for the heart. One then has to add: but even if you shoot first, you will probably die too. This brings us a long way from the subtleties of a Clausewitz, Jomini, or a Mahan. It brings us, in short, to the end of strategy as we have known it. 88 Steven Ross, American War Plans, 1945-1950, (New York, NY: Garland, 1988); and David Kaiser, US Objectives and Plans for War with the Soviet Union, 1946-54, in The Fog of Peace and War Planning, op cit., pp. 205-223.

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It has become accepted wisdom that the nuclear age introduced and legitimized the rise of non-military strategists and with them a new era of methodological innovation in forecasting and assessment beyond traditional military planning. But for the first post-war decade civilian grand strategists were few, their impact ephemeral, with little evidence of a coherent strategy process. The newly formed Department of Defense had trouble grappling with service integration and its own role in adjudicating resource allocation vice operational requirements. The Joint Chiefs created a structure to go through the motions of strategy development89 but this represented more of a political forum for internecine battle and budgetary bargaining than a unified vision of to how address the Soviet Union as a rising challenger.90 Various luminary committees addressed pieces of the nuclear problem, but produced more controversy than consensus. The one civilian led effort at integrated assessment, long-range planning, and strategy articulation NSC 68 was first sidelined as too ambitious, then in less than six months, with the outbreak of war in Korea, superseded as insufficient.91 As the nuclear era evolved into second-generation technology jet bombers, hydrogen bombs, ballistic missiles, SAMs, and tactical nuclear warheads -- it brought
89 90

Poole, The Evolution of the Joint Strategic Planning System, 1947-1989, op cit. Through the Korean War, the JCS stressed emergency war planning, although efforts were made to institutionalize mid- and long-range planning as well. In the summer of 1952, the Joint Chiefs authorized creation of a new family of war plans: the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP) designed to govern the wartime operations of US forces-in-being during the current fiscal year; the Joint Strategic Objectives Plan (JSOP) which established force and mobilization requirements for the next three to five years or longer as a guide to research and development. These plans were supposed to be completed annually, but the two were often delayed by interservice debates and appeared somewhat more irregularly. In the 1950s, the JSOP became increasingly a wish list rather than a realistic estimate of requirements. Nevertheless these three efforts provided a permanent structure for organizing strategic planning into the 1970s. The JSCP and the operational plans it guided, including the SAC Emergency War Plan, were generally prepared on an annual basis. They fostered a process of intensive interservice debate and analysis which, in the absence of real global conflict, served as a kind of a surrogate war for generating and testing forces concepts. Each new planning effort built on the tradeoffs and compromises endorsed by the preceding war, thereby creating a dynamic which tended to discourage radical changes. David Alan Rosenberg, The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945- 1960, International Security, vol. 7, no. 4 (Spring 1983): pp. 25-26. 91 NSC-68: Forging the Strategy of Containment: with Analyses by Paul H. Nitze, edited by S. Nelson Drew, (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 1994); American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68, edited by Ernest R. May, (Boston, MA: Beford Books of St. Martins Press, 1993); Samuel F. Wells, Sounding the Tocsin: NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat, (monograph; Washington, DC: International Security Studies Program, Wilson Center, 1979).

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with it increased appreciation of the need for netting of a much more complex balance: the interaction of very asymmetric offense and defense weaponry; the gray area overlap of nuclear and conventional forces represented by dual capable systems; and the potential of damage limiting counter-force preemption versus apocalyptic counter-value targeting. Thus, in the late stages of the Truman Administration, with the Korean War dragging on and with growing concern of Soviet military buildup, including their development of atomic weapons, the National Security Council sought a comparative analysis of the emerging offensive threat relative to American defenses. On 31 August 1951 the NSC directed that:
the Director of Central Intelligence prepare, in collaboration with the Interdepartmental Committee on Internal Security (ICIS), the Interdepartmental Intelligence Conference (IIC), and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), a summary evaluation of the net capability of the USSR to injure the Continental United States, as of mid-1952.92

The title of the NSC Directive clearly indicated its need: A Project to Provide a More Adequate Basis for Planning for the Security of the United States.93 The intelligence side of the studies were completed in October of 1951 and distributed but the JCS report was not finished until 1952, and because of the sensitive nature of the JCS study, it was not distributed outside the JCS organization and members of the working group which drafted the summary evaluation were briefed orally on its contents.94 While there was recognition that the summary evaluation represents a step forward in planning for the security of the United States and it was hailed as an an example of the caliber of work currently to be expected, it was also criticized as a study that falls far short of supplying the estimates essential to security planning95
92

Walter B. Smith, Memorandum From Director of Central Intelligence to the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council (Lay), (14 October 1952), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950- 1955 The Intelligence Community, 1950-1955, Document 131, pp. 341-350. 93 Ibid, Tab A. 94 The IAC study was published on October 23, 1951 as Special Estimate 14, Soviet Capabilities for 3 a Military Attack on the United States before July 1952. The IIC study dated October 10, 1951, and the ICIS study of May 15, 1952 Ibid. 95 These shortfalls included the following critiques: An evaluation of the USSR's capability to injure the United States should contain a plain statement of the estimated percentage of reduction in US capabilities likely to result from Soviet attack; specifically, percentage reduction in the fields of: US military strength in being,

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in several important areas.96 There were also identified structural problems -- three primary reasons why -- the work failed to meet the NSC requirement:
We lack knowledge of Soviet plans and intentions and our knowledge of Soviet capabilities cannot be considered complete. The basic underlying studies required to produce the statement mentioned in paragraph 3-a do not exist. There is at present no machinery to plan, guide, coordinate and produce an appraisal or estimate based on the integration of national intelligence with military, political and economic operational data dealing with our own capabilities.97

Senior Staff recommendations from the NSC and CIA98 to correct these deficiencies and continue the effort me met serious opposition by the JCS who just submitted to the Secretary of Defense a lengthy memorandum on the subject arguing that no additional machinery is needed to produce Commander's Estimates, the JCS being the agency responsible for and capable of producing such estimates.99 This sparked a serious debate on the very nature of how red and blue information is aggregated, assessed, and converted into the kind of input necessary for long-term strategy development. In the subsequent NSC debate on this issue, President Truman pushed General Smith, Director of the CIA, to address the JCS complaint and make the case for a net approach:
The Joint Chiefs, said General Smith, do not believe that the production of such estimates requires the creation of any new machinery. With this view General
atomic counterattack capability, industrial production, and ability to produce new weapons of critical importance. To provide guidance in current planning for US security, evaluations on this subject should be projected into the future and contain an estimate of prospective developments in USSR's offensive capabilities. A more adequate and realistic evaluation would cover the probable Soviet capabilities to injure US facilities and strengths in all parts of the world, and not merely the capability of USSR to injure the Continental United States. Such an evaluation should include some estimate of Soviet intentions in the light of net capabilities. Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Enclosure A: Senior Staff Recommendations for NSC Action, to Robert Amory, Jr., Memorandum From the Acting Deputy Director for Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency to Director of Central Intelligence Smith, (25 November 1952), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950- 1955 The Intelligence Community, 1950-1955, Document 137, pp. 366-368. 99 Amory, Memorandum From the Acting Deputy Director for Intelligence of the Central Intelligence Agency to Director of Central Intelligence Smith, ibid.

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Smith said he could not agree, but added that if the present evaluation actually met all the requirements of the President and the Council there was, of course, nothing more to be done. General Smith then noted that the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not believe that the Director of Central Intelligence was the appropriate official to prepare Commander's Estimates. With this view General Smith found himself in agreement, but he went on to say that he did not think that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were, themselves, the appropriate body to prepare the kind of estimate which the President and the Council required. The data which must be amassed to provide the kind of report that was required would by no means be purely military data. Those agencies of the Government which were concerned with passive defense, civilian defense, sabotage and the like, were also directly or indirectly involved in the preparation of such estimates. Plainly, he continued, the problem was too large and too complicated for any one Government agency to solve by itself. It seemed obvious to General Smith that the National Security Council alone was the proper agency to guide and coordinate such studies. Obviously it could not do this directly, but it could do so by calling on the instrumentalities available to it. With all deference to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concluded General Smith, the problem which concerned the Council transcends the purely military sphere, although General Smith conceded that it might well be possible, as suggested by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to have that body monitor such a study provided the National Security Council was assured that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would make use, in its preparation, of the resources of all the Government agencies which were required.100

While others chimed in, at the Presidents request, it was General Omar Bradley, JCS Chairman, who explained the service position:
General Bradley stated that he did not differ fundamentally with the views expressed by General Smith. On the whole he was inclined to believe that the NSC Staff was the group best fitted to undertake studies such as these in the future. No single agency could do such studies and no single agency should try. As to the furnishing of information on United States capabilities and possible courses of action in the military field, General Bradley emphasized that the Joint Chiefs were wholly in favor of the need to know rule on sensitive material. Within this reservation, however, the Chiefs were prepared to reveal whatever was necessary for the preparation of such studies. In point of fact, there were too many people who were curious about our war plans and had no legitimate interest in them. General Bradley promised that the Joint Chiefs would do anything in their power in order to achieve the kind of estimate needed, but would only monitor the effort as a last resort.101

With the Presidential election and imminent change of Administrations, it would

100

Memorandum for President Truman of Discussion at the 126th Meeting of the National Security Council, (26 November 1952), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950-1955 The Intelligence Community, 1950-1955, Document 138, pp. 369-374. 101 Ibid.

25

have been easy and expected if the issue had been allowed to slide forward to the next watch, but Truman felt strongly enough about the issue that one of the last acts of his White House tenure was to set up an ad hoc Special Evaluation Subcommittee102 to provide the future President and his senior leadership with a comparative assessment of the relative nuclear balance between the US and the Soviet Union.103 It is in this context that the origins of net assessment within the United States government can be traced to the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.104 As an experienced practitioner of old-school theater campaigning and the first Commander-in-Chief facing the imminent vulnerability of American civilization, Eisenhower realized that nuclear war was too important to be left to traditional planning.105 Intercontinental delivery systems and multi-megaton warheads brought the prospect of decisive surprise attack to the forefront of security demands for immediate decision-making where there would be no time for consideration of unexplored and unprepared options:

102

On August 30, 1951, the Council directed that the Director of Central Intelligence, in collaboration with the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the Interdepartmental Committee on Internal Security (ICIS), and the Interdepartmental Intelligence Conference (IIC), prepare a summary evaluation, covering 4 Soviet net capability against the continental United States as of mid-1952. After considerable delay and difficulty, such an evaluation was submitted to the Council on October 14, 1952, with an accompanying memorandum by the then Director pointing out shortcomings of the report and recommending that he, DCI, be directed to examine into the creation of new and better machinery to integrate operational data 5 with intelligence in this field. On November 25, 1952, the Secretary of Defense forwarded to the Council 6 the views of the JCS on the question, and there ensued negotiations in which JCS, CIA, ICIS, and IIC participated and which eventuated in the directive set forth as NSC 140, approved by the President on January 19, 1953. Preparation of Coordinated Evaluation of the Net Capabilities of the USSR to Inflict direct Injury on the United States, (25 March 1954), paper prepared in the Central Intelligence Agency, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950-1955 The Intelligence Community, 1950-1955, Document 173, pp. 481-487. 103 James S. Lay, Jr., Directive for a Special Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council Report no. 00312 (19 January 1953); at (Washington, DC: The Digital National Security Archive, accessed 14 March 2010). 104 Skypek, Evaluating Military Balances Through the Lens of Net Assessment, op cit: p. 10, ignores the predecessor activity in the Truman Administration and acts as if it started in the Eisenhower Presidency. I believe this is misleading on two grounds: first, it misses the Truman paternity for the Special Evaluation Subcomittee; and second, it does not give credit to Eisenhower for not aborting it. 105 For an insightful perspective, see: Douglas Kinnard, President Eisenhower and Strategy Management, (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1977).

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 the problem of the total decision. no executive can undertake the responsibility for altering the face of our world unless he has strategic and tactical information of the highest reliability.106

With little or no time to make new plans, the strategic nuclear era introduced the come as you are war, and total decision brought with it with it the need for anticipatory crisis management, the pre-consideration of a wide-range of strike options and laying the groundwork for post-war recovery ahead of time. Rather than relying on the joint military planning system that he knew well, Eisenhower looked to a fine group of fellows from the scientific and business community to address issue of revolutionary technologically and long-term competitive posturing.107 Military aid Andrew Goodpaster described the Presidents style:
He wanted to get, as we came later to express it, all of the responsible people in the room, take up the issue, and hear their views. If somebody didnt agree, he was obliged to speak his mind and get it all out on the table or in the Oval Office; and then in light of all that, the President would come to a line of action, he wanted everybody to hear it, everybody to participate in it, and then wanted everybody to be guided by it.108

As Commander-in-Chief, he ultimately drew on this own net appreciation of the various inputs for strategy development, but behind these considerations were detailed comparative assessments that served as the basis for desiderata.
While the new Administration was at pains to differentiate themselves from their predecessors, on this issue President Eisenhowers National Security Council adopted continuity rather than change for change sake.109 Thus, as approved by Truman, the ad

106

Technological Capabilities Panel, set up by Eisenhower in July 1954 to study how science and technology might be harnessed to guard against surprise attack Killian Report observed: 107 Valerie L. Adams, Eisenhowers Fine Group of Fellows: Crafting a National Security Policy to Uphold the Great Equation, (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006). 108 General Andrew J. Goodpaster, ibid: pp. 1-2. See also: Andrew Jackson Goodpaster, The Eisenhower Administration Project, edited by Dillon Anderson, (oral history collection; New York, NY: Columbia University, 1977). 109 When General Smith's recommendations were forwarded by the Secretary of Defense to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for comment, the JCS responded by a sharply critical memorandum, dated November 7 21, 1952. There ensued negotiations, which were limited to the terms of reference and procedure for a new study, but which also gave an opportunity for General Smith to clarify his ideas to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the overall problem. In the light of the change of administrations then in process it was finally decided to let the overall recommendation (subparagraph c. quoted above) lie over, while proceeding with a new net evaluation on the basis of an entirely novel procedure. The Net Estimates Problem,

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hoc Special Evaluation Subcommittee (SEC) operated under the aegis of the NSC with
an interagency membership that included the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Interdepartmental Intelligence Conference (IIC) and the

Interdepartmental Committee on Internal Security (ICIS). Using an interagency staff temporarily assigned for just four months, the SEC was located in the Pentagon and chaired by a direct Presidential appointee, Lt. General Idwal H. Edwards, USAF (Ret.)who was in fact nominated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff under a gentlemen's agreement with General Smith.110 The initial effort was tasked to evaluate Soviet capabilities to inflict direct injury on the United States up to July 1955111 and was chaired by Lt. General Idwal Edwards,112 with representatives from the above agencies and a small but full-time active military staff.113
Studying the initial phase of war, or when it was assumed the Soviets atomic or nuclear stockpile was likely to be unleashed, the Committee utilized reports from each of the agencies represented by its members and had full access to relevant classified reports.114

paper prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency, (25 August 1954), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950-1955 The Intelligence Community, 1950-1955, Document 189, pp. 523-530. 110 When General Smith's recommendations were forwarded by the Secretary of Defense to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for comment, the JCS responded by a sharply critical memorandum, dated November 7 21, 1952. There ensued negotiations, which were limited to the terms of reference and procedure for a new study, but which also gave an opportunity for General Smith to clarify his ideas to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the overall problem. In the light of the change of administrations then in process it was finally decided to let the overall recommendation (subparagraph c. quoted above) lie over, while proceeding with a new net evaluation on the basis of an entirely novel procedure. This procedure, embodied in NSC 8 140, was approved by President Truman on January 19, 1953, and accepted by the Eisenhower Administration without change. 111 th Memorandum of Discussion at the 148 Meeting of the National Security Council, Foreign Relations of the United States: 1952-1954, vol. 2, (no date): p. 369. 112 Lt. General Idwal Edwards post-war career had included commanding general of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe from March 1946 to August 1947. He then served Deputy Chief of Staff, Personnel and subsequently Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations, Air Force headquarters in Washington, D.C., until 1951, when he was appointed Commandant of the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., where he remained until he retired from active duty Feb. 23, 1953. Lieutenant General Idwal H. Edwards, US Air Force Biographies, (no date) at < http://www.af.mil/information/bios/bio.asp?bioID=5329> [accessed 7 May 2010]. 113 In addition to Edwards, other interagency representatives included: Lt. Gen. Harold Bull (CIA); W. Barrett McDonnell (ICIS; Maj. Gen. Robert Webster (JCS); Lish Whiston (IIC). Lt. General Idwal Edwards, Memorandum by the Chairman of the Special Evaluation Subcommittee of the NSC to Lay, Foreign Relations of the United States: 1952-1954, vol. 2, (15 May 1953): pp. 329-330. 114 Adams, Eisenhowers Fine Group of Fellows, op cit: pp. 89-90.

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The Edwards committee reported its conclusions to the NSC on 18 May 1953 with considerable emphasis on the danger of surprise attack and warning that deployment of multi-megaton thermonuclear weapons in the Soviet arsenal would dramatically change the military balance.115 Although there was a significant difference of opinion between them and the President on actual Soviet bomber pilot ability to navigate intercontinental missions -- and the Chairman was called back again on 4 June to continued to debate the implications of deficiencies in US continental defenses that made the surprise appear more effective.116 The Edwards Subcommittee received high praise for the quality and thoughtfulness of its analysis. It differed from earlier attempts:
in that (1) it was projected for two years into the future, through mid-1955; (2) in addition to the continental United States, defined key installations overseas were considered; (3) instead of using maximum estimates of Soviet strength, as had been substantially done before, the evaluation used a probable estimate level in this regard, and assumed a Soviet strategy regarded as being consistent with these estimated capabilities.117

The results of the Special Evaluation Subcommittee were shared with other high level study efforts which added to the usefulness of the Edwards Report.118 The results of the ad hoc committee raised issues serious enough for President Eisenhower to commission a separate Continental Defense Committee headed by Special Evaluation Subcommittee member and its CIA representative Lt. Gen. Harold Bull. As part of his study, the general requested the views of various NSC members on the desirability of institutionalizing the kind of work done by the first ad hoc Special Evaluation Subcommittee. With the added advantage of seeing the results of the Edwards Subcommittee, the new CIA Director, Alan W. Dulles, responded with thoughtful insight, that is worth recording at length:
In response to your request of June 15, for the views of this Agency on organizational arrangements to provide the best possible continuing production of Net Capability Estimates, the following thoughts are submitted:
115

Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: Americas Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947-1956, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000): p. 156. 116 th Memorandum of Discussion at the 149 Meeting of the National Security Council, Foreign Relations of the United States: 1952-1954, vol. 2, (11 June 1953): pp. 370-371. 117 Preparation of Coordinated Evaluation of the Net Capabilities of the USSR to Inflict direct Injury on the United States, (25 March 1954), op cit. 118 Ibid.

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There is no need to argue the necessity for reliable estimates of net capabilities as the basis for national policy formulation. These can only be prepared by careful integration of gross-capability intelligence of the enemy with our capabilities and plans, so that the net result of the interplay may be forecast as accurately as possible. This need is not confined to the problem of defense of North America but is equally inescapable for planning US requirements and commitments in any part of the globe. The President and the NSC in practice and pursuant to statutory authority depend on the Director of Central Intelligence, representing the coordinated views of the Intelligence Agencies, for foreign intelligence estimates, and on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking as their representative, for military advice. Thus what is required to furnish the President and Council with guidance in the most useful and complete form is the effective amalgamation of the functions of the two. Responsibility for such combined analysis cannot rightly be assigned to one of these advisers to the exclusion of the other, for both are coordinate staff officers serving the same commander. Each must consider the factors developed by the other in order to eliminate reliance on arbitrary assumptions and produce valid and realistic forecasts. It is my view, therefore, that the President and Council should establish a permanent subcommittee on Net Capability Estimates to be composed of: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; The Director of Central Intelligence and that this subcommittee be charged with providing, on its initiative or as requested by the Council, estimates of net capabilities as needed to support the formulation of national policy. The manner in which this subcommittee would discharge its function should be left flexible and might very well differ substantially according to the nature of the estimate undertaken. It should have authority to secure support and information from all executive branches of the government and should be required to consult with such agencies and interdepartmental committees as may be able to contribute significantly to any estimate. The subcommittee should take such action as may be necessary to preserve the security of highly sensitive information such as U.S. war plans and intelligence sources.119

The Bull led Continental Defense Committee issued a prescient 80 page report in July and on 12 August the Soviets detonated their first hydrogen bomb.120 As a result of the Edwards Subcommittee work, interagency participants and
Personnel and Facilities. If it is accepted that a tightly-knit operating group is the appropriate method of operation, questions of personnel and facilities
119

NSC observers recorded a number of lessons learned:

Allen W. Dulles, Letter From Director of Central Intelligence Dulles to the Chairman of the Continental Defense Committee (Bull), (30 June 1953), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950- 1955 The Intelligence Community, 1950-1955, Document 150, pp. 428-429. 120 Adams, Eisenhowers Fine Group of Fellows, op cit: pp. 90-107.

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become important. In the case of the Edwards Subcommittee, these were handled by the furnishing of facilities in the JCS area of the Department of Defense and by the furnishing of secretarial and other personnel by the JCS and CIA. It is believed that these arrangements were satisfactory, and that they could be repeated without strain on the contributing agencies. Target Date. Since national policy in the field of continental defense is now laid down comprehensively in NSC 5408,13 with programs extended for some years into the future, it appears unlikely that there will be a major overhauling of this policy during 1954, barring drastic changes in the intelligence picture of Soviet capabilities or intentions. The Edwards Subcommittee completed its work in four months, but found that this was too short a period in which to go into all of the important aspects.121 To allow six months or more for a new evaluation would throw the completion after 1 October 1954, and would eliminate its usefulness as a supporting element for work on the FY 1956 budget. However, this disadvantage appears outweighed [by above argument] Scope. The Edwards Report considered not only the continental United States but also key US installations outside the US, considered in terms of the usefulness of such installations to US counteroffensive action. There was some difficulty about the definition of such overseas installations, leading to a misunderstanding affecting the JCS submission. Apart from avoiding a repetition of this, the scope of the Edwards Report appeared workable. Projection. The Edwards Report projected its conclusions forward for two years, and General Edwards recommended that future studies adopt a projection period not greater than this. For planning purposes it would be desirable to have a longer projection period, since many policy decisions cannot bear fruit for three or more years. However, from a working standpoint, it would be extremely difficult to get a firm enough picture of either Soviet or US capabilities, in order to do the war-gaming exercise. The Planning Board should consider whether the policy considerations should outweigh working difficulties and limitations.122

The combined weight of these lessons argued for converting the ad hoc nature of the Edwards Subcommittee example into a more permanent process.

121

The Edwards Subcommittee had particular difficulty with the question of Soviet strategy in the event of war, whether the Soviets would allocate the bulk of their stockpile to the US or a large part of it against non-US targets. A successor group may find it desirable to submit this question to thorough intelligence consideration, based on the material on capabilities and damage developed by the group. This question was referred to by General Edwards in a personal memorandum to the Executive Secretary, NSC, 14 dated 19 May 1953. General Edwards also referred to the desirability of covering the extent of strategic warning that might be expected, of a vulnerability study, and of a psychological study of the effects on the people of the US of assumed levels of atomic attacks. In view of the complexity of these problems, it appears highly desirable that the new study be allowed at least six months, and if possible longer, for completion. Dulles, Letter From Director of Central Intelligence Dulles to the Chairman of the Continental Defense Committee (Bull), op cit. 122 Ibid.

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External exigencies and the positive example of the Edwards Subcommittee

combined to demonstrate not only that traditional Commanders estimates were inadequate but that there was an alternative method.
Importance of the Net Evaluation In view of the usefulness of the Edwards Report and the subsequent recommendations of the Bull and Jackson Committees, the importance and desirability of continuing net evaluations of Soviet capability to injure the United States may be regarded as established. For purposes of Council consideration of problems relating to continental defense or the defense of US installations overseas, it is meaningless to have gross estimates of Soviet nuclear capabilities, air strength, etc., unless these are merged with existing US and Allied defensive capabilities so as to produce an evaluation of the net Soviet capability, present and prospective. Organizational Problems. Method of Operation. Experience with the 1951 52 project demonstrated emphatically that it was not satisfactory to conduct a net evaluation on the basis of one-shot contributions by several agencies, melded by one agency or by a group. The Edwards Subcommittee operated on the basis of continuing exchange of material by a tightly-knit operating group producing in effect successive approximations leading to a final refined product. Wherever the responsibility may be placed, and on whatever basis agencies participate, this method of operation is essential. Moreover, this method of operation can also be employedas it was by the Edwards group to minimize the security problem involved in the handling of sensitive information that must be supplied particularly by JCS, CIA, and FBI.123

Thus, the ad hoc group was not disbanded but continued in limbo while interagency debate shifted from what and how to whom? As the JSC and CIA debated organizational structure and prerogatives124 it became obvious that the addition of the word net was neither accidental nor unimportant.

123 124

Ibid. Memorandum for the Record: Meeting in Office of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Tuesday, 4 May 1954, with Admiral Radford (Mr. Amory, and General Bull were present with the DCI and Rear Admiral Layton, General Porter, and two other officers were also present), (4 May 1954), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950-1955 The Intelligence Community, 1950-1955, Document 176, pp. 493-494. Mr. Dulles explained that there was a dual responsibility shared equally by the Director of CIA and the JCS for advising the NSC on the intelligence and operational features respectively of an appraisal of the net capabilities of the USSR to inflict direct injury on the US. He noted that other agencies would have responsibility also but only in limited areas requiring only part time participation to the extent necessary to insure that their responsibilities are fully met but not to the extent requiring a disclosure of war plans, or the extensive use of other highly secret documents. He emphasized also that CIA participation would be on a very limited high level basis, and that the few CIA representatives involved would be professional men who could be trusted to protect all information made available to them. He did not expect that revelation of war plans as such would be found necessary but that operational information would be required. He pointed out that he could not carry out his full responsibility as DCI

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Admiral Radford and others infer that all they need is the normal estimate of gross capabilities which they in the Defense Department can then use in working out the net capabilities. This view is not only an oversimplification of the problem but it puts the Director in the position of abdicating his responsibilities for estimating for The Commander the Bloc's probable intentions and probable courses of action. This the Director cannot do in a satisfactory and useful manner in a vacuum, excluded from knowledge of our own deployments and our own capabilities. If the Director's estimates are done in this manner he is asked to estimate the thinking of the Kremlin leaders which is based on their intelligence of our capabilities which they most certainly know in great detail, whereas the Director in his estimate is permitted to have no such comparable knowledge. The Director's knowledge of US and allied capabilities and dispositions must be at least comparable to the intelligence possessed by the Kremlin leadership. To think, as I believe Admiral Radford and the military in general do, that the Commander's estimate is made by G3 after receiving a G2 contribution overlooks the sound procedures which govern all good staff operations in the G2/G3 field. No G2 makes his estimates of enemy capabilities, probable courses of action, or probable intentions or advises his Commander in an operational vacuum. By the closest hour by hour contact and joint daily or more frequent briefings, he is always able to make his estimate of probable hostile courses of action based on not only the enemys new capabilities in manpower, weapons, organization, training, leadership, dispositions, etc. but also from his estimate of what the enemy probably knows concerning our own strengths, dispositions and intentions. The Director as our National G2 should have the same rights and duties as any G2 in the lower echelons has. Otherwise he cannot fulfill his legal responsibilities. Although I recognize that a case can be made that the national level presents different problems with a justified restriction on revelation of war plans, certain planned courses of action, certain dispositions, weapons development, etc. should be made available to DCI and IAC on a very strict need-to-know
without such knowledge of our own capabilities. Admiral Radford replied that he frankly didn't understand why there was any necessity for this high level organization to make a commanders estimate. He felt that if CIA made its coordinated intelligence estimate, the JCS and the Defense Department were, with this estimate available, competent to do the rest of the evaluation for the NSC and the President, based on their own knowledge of and responsibility for operational matters and war plans. He saw no need for setting up another coordinating agency. He didn't see this need as recently carried out in the Continental Defense field. General Bull pointed out that a single intelligence estimate of gross capabilities was not the final word on intelligencethat it was necessary to work by phases in a process of comparing gross intelligence estimates with our operational capabilities. This procedure would result in new intelligence estimates based on a knowledge of our own strengths and dispositions such as the Kremlin is believed to have to guide its decisions. This knowledge is not now available to our own national intelligence agency. Such a procedure for comparing capabilities on both sides, we believe, is essential and is a shared responsibility of DCI and Defense. In response to Admiral Radford's expressed desire to give it more thought, the Director, in leaving, stated he would be pleased to discuss the problem further and felt sure they could work it out.

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basis, I believe a clear definition of intelligence requirements in the operational field could be worked out jointly and I doubt that a knowledge of detailed war plans would be necessary. In general, DCI should get only operational information which it is reasonable to expect the enemy to have in whole or in part. We have no present mechanism to meet our minimum needs. We are blocked by self imposed departmental restrictions or ground rules which severely limit our intelligence investigation of our own force a handicap not imposed on our enemies.125

By 23 June 1954126 the basis of compromise had been reached the ad hoc approach became institutionalized with the same remit and structure albeit a new title: Net Capabilities Evaluation Subcommittee.127 The focus remained on directed the preparation of a report assessing the net capabilities of the USSR, in the event of general war, to inflict direct injury upon the continental United States and key U.S. installations overseas.128 The actual work was still to be done at the Pentagon employing assigned interagency temporary staff129 integrating inputs from a broad array of sources under the direction of a retired three-star general officer chosen by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of Central Intelligence.130 The process was to be supervised by the interagency Subcommittee consisting of expanded representation from relevant

125

H.R. Bull, Memorandum From the Chairman of the Continental Defense Committee (Bull) to Director of Central Intelligence Dulles, (5 May 1954), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950- 1955 The Intelligence Community, 1950-1955, Document 177, pp. 495-496. 126 NSC 5423: National Security Council Directive for a Net Capabilities Evaluation Subcommittee, (23 June 1954), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950-1955 The Intelligence Community, 1950- 1955, Document 182, pp. 505-507. 127 S. Everett Gleason, Directive for a A Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council Report no. 00413 (23 June 1954); at (Washington, DC: The Digital National Security Archive, accessed 14 March 2010). 128 NSC 5423: National Security Council Directive for a Net Capabilities Evaluation Subcommittee, op cit. This net capabilities report will cover the period through July 1, 1957 and should be submitted to the Council on or before November 1, 1954. It will cover all types of attack, direct or clandestine, and will deal primarily with the initial phases of war, i.e., the period during which all or most of the Soviet stockpile of nuclear weapons might be expended. It will include consideration of the several courses of action which the USSR is capable of executing and in support of which the Soviet nuclear weapons stockpile might be expended. In determining the net effect of an attack, the report will take into account the mid-1957 status of presently approved defense programs. 129 The Subcommittee will have a temporary staff, composed of individuals assigned by the participating agencies. It is expected that members of this staff will be assigned to this project as their primary duty during the period of preparation of the net capabilities report. Ibid. 130 Ibid.

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departments131 but the most notable innovation was the naming of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs as the titular head of the Subcommittee a compromise that allowed the JCS to retain their primus inter paris dignity while bringing in the external data and expertise necessary to make it a net evaluation.132 The CIA had been particular frustrated in producing meaningful reports about the threat posed by potential enemies without having the data and insight into the strengths and weakness of friendly forces. In addition to the strategic threat of intercontinental attack, this issue had been particular problematic in the theater context of NATOs fledgling efforts where US forces remained in the minority.
experience has subsequently highlighted the vacuity of estimates prepared without clear knowledge of our own capabilities. With respect to Soviet Bloc capabilities to attack Western Europe, all estimates through 1950 had been able to proceed on the assumption of virtually no Western opposition. From 1951 onward, this assumption became increasingly less valid, and in the preparation of the estimates there were prolonged discussions leading finally to the use of a fairly meaningless formula that the Soviet Bloc could launch a lot of campaigns, including a full-scale offensive in Western Europe. Whether any meaningful answer could have been provided in Washington without duplicating the activities of SHAPE is doubtful, but the fact is that no machinery existed even for getting and incorporating (with proper credit) the current conclusions of SHAPE. As they finally stood the estimates were certainly not helpful to anyone on this point.133

While the focus of the 1950s evaluations were on intercontinental attack, the challenge of placing the US-USSR long-term competition in the context of a war in Europe and the need to consider allied capabilities was a perennial concern that would go on for decades.

131

In addition to the JCS and CIA, these included: The Chairman of the Interdepartmental Intelligence Conference and the Chairman of the Interdepartmental Committee on Internal Security for matters relating to internal security; b. The Director, Office of Defense Mobilization, for matters relating to continuity of government, sufficiency and continuity of industry, and urban vulnerability; c. The Federal Civil Defense Administrator for matters relating to civil defense; and d. The Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, for matters relating to Atomic Energy Commission activities. 132 For an extremely interesting appraisal of the net issues, see: The Net Estimates Problem, op cit. The CIA had been challenged to address this issue since the fall of 1950 to meet this problem, in three contexts: (1) National Intelligence Estimates handled through regular machinery; (2) specific net estimates or net evaluations handled by special machinery; (3) the Watch Committee, handling intelligence from the warning standpoint. 133 Ibid.

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Finally, President Eisenhower weighed in on Valentines Day 1955, with a

Pursuant to the recommendations of the National Security Council in NSC Action No. 1260b (November 4, 1954) and my subsequent approval thereof,2 I hereby establish a permanent procedure to provide integrated evaluations of the net capabilities of the USSR, in the event of general war, to inflict direct injury upon the continental U.S. and key U.S. installations overseas, and to provide a continual watch for changes which would significantly alter those net capabilities. Each integrated evaluation should: a. Cover all types of attack, overt or clandestine; b. Include consideration of the several courses of action which the USSR is capable of executing; and c. Take into account the estimated future status of approved military and non-military U.S. defense programs. Each integrated evaluation report should estimate from the practical standpoint the extent and effect of direct injury, including radioactive fall-out, upon the continental U.S. and key U.S. installations overseas, resulting from the most probable types and weights of attacks which the USSR is capable of delivering during approximately the first thirty days of general war, taking into account the effect of U.S. counterattacks during this period. Integrated evaluations should be submitted to the Council on or before October 1 of each year, and relate to the situation on a critical date normally about three years in the future. In addition to these annual integrated evaluations, an integrated evaluation should be submitted to the Council at such times as the Subcommittee feels that a change has become apparent that would significantly alter the net capabilities of the USSR to inflict direct injury upon the continental U.S. and key U.S. installations overseas. Subcommittee members are designated to act as individuals, but each shall have the right to consult, at his discretion and under appropriate security safeguards, with his agency or committee prior to Subcommittee action on matters normally within the cognizance of his committee or agency. The Subcommittee will have a staff, composed of individuals assigned by member agencies, as required by the Director, and under the direction of a Director whom I shall designate. The Director may be compensated through the National Security Council from contributions by the member agencies. The Net Evaluation Subcommittee hereby established is empowered under the terms of this Directive to call on any agency of the Government for relevant information, evaluations, and estimates, subject only to establishment of appropriate security regulations and procedures for the handling of highly sensitive information as provided under paragraph 5, above. Distribution of each completed Subcommittee report will be determined at the

get it done directive for a retitled Net Evaluation Subcommittee (NES):

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time by me.134

In a footnote to the Directive, the President explicitly addressed the JCS hot button issue in stating that access included Information such as that relating to war plans, new weapons and equipment, techniques and tactics for their employment, the vulnerability of U.S. defenses, and domestic and foreign intelligence sources and methods. The Eisenhower Directive not only institutionalized the process, but created a long-lasting precedent in terms of how a national net assessment should be organized. The initial NES assigned professional staff consisted of two Army Colonels, a Navy Captain, an Air Force Colonel, a Marine Colonel, a Phd. CIA officer, at least one other civilian (probably FBI)135 and a number of supporting staff.136 By 1958 an all new staff had rotated into the NES and the mix was two Army Colonels, two Navy Captains, two Air Force Colonels, one Marine Colonel and one CIA Phd.137 Five years later, the staff had doubled to sixteen: three Army Colonels, four Navy Captains, three Air Force Colonels, one Marine Colonel, four CIA and one State Department civilian.138 The Director was a three-star retired general officer, backed up by a two-star Deputy Director, a brass heavy pattern that reflected Presidential importance and continued throughout the life of the NES:

134

Dwight D. Eisenhower, National Security Council Directive NSC 5511: Directive on a Net Evaluation Subcommittee, (14 February 1955), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950-1955 The Intelligence Community, 1950-1955, Document 207, pp. 599-601. This Directive was the subject of discussion at the subsequent NSC meeting on 17 February 1955. Memorandum of Discussion at the 237th Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, February 17, 1955, Foreign Relations of the United States, Foreign Relations of the United States, 19551957 Volume VI, American Republics: Multilateral; Mexico; Caribbean, Document 2, pp. 2-5. 135 At this time J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, was Chairman of the IIC and thus had a statutory position on the Subcommittee, had an interest in the work of the Subcommittee. 136 The make up of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee senior professional is taken from: National Security Council meeting agenda and attendance, Eisenhower Archives, (27 October 1955), at < http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/digital_documents/Appt_Books_Pres/1955/October%201 955.pdf > [accessed 20 July 2010]. 137 th Discussion at the 387 Meeting of the National Security Council, (20 November 1958) is available at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, (Eisenhower Papers, 1953-1961, Ann Whitman file). 138

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Lt. General Harold L. George, (USAF retired): 1955-1956;139 Lt. General, Gerald C. Thomas, (USMC retired): 1956-1958;140 Lt. General Thomas F. Hickey, (US Army retired): 1958-1961;141 and Lt. General Leon W. Johnson, (USAF retired): 1961-1963.142

Over the eight years of the Eisenhower Administration, the Subcommittee produced at least one report a year,143 and had no less than 37 Presidential level meetings.144

139

Lieutenant General Harold L. George, US Air Force Biographies, (no date) at < http://www.af.mil/information/bios/bio.asp?bioID=5516 > [accessed 20 July 2010]. After the war he served for a while as director of information for the Air Force and as senior Air Force representative of the military staff of the United Nations. He retired from active duty Dec. 31, 1946, with rank of lieutenant general dating back to March 1945. In 1955 Harold George was recalled to active duty for eight months as special consultant to the Air Force Chief of Staff and relieved from active duty Nov. 4. 140 Allan Reed Millett, In Many a Strife: General Gerald C. Thomas and the US Marine Corps, 1917- 1956, (Anapolis, MD, Naval Institute Press, 1993): pp. 346, 433. 141 Thomas Francis Hickey (General), Wikipedia, (18 February 2010), at < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Francis_Hickey_(general) > [accessed 27 Feb. 2010]. See also: Norman A. Graebner, The National Security: Its Theory and Practice, 1945-1960, (1986): p. 192; and History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Volume 5, (Washington, DC: US Department of Defense Historical Office, 1984): p. 316. 142 General Leon W. Johnson, Arlington National Cemetery Website, (20 October 2008), at < http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/lwjohnsn.htm > [accessed 15 Jan. 2010], retired July 31, 1961. 143 NSC 5423 - Directive for Net Capabilities Evaluation Subcommittee, in Box 11, White House Office, Office of the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs: Records, 1952-61, NSC Series, Policy Papers Subseries, Eisenhower Archives, < http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/Research/Finding_Aids /PDFs/WHO,%20OSANSA/NSC_Series_Policy_Papers_Subseries.pdf > [accessed 11 Nov. 2009].Examples include: NSC 5511 - Net Evaluation Subcommittee [study of USSR capabilities], in Box 15; NSC 5605 - A Net Evaluation Subcommittee [Soviet nuclear capabilities], in Box 17; NSC 5728 - Net Evaluation Subcommittee, in Box 23; NSC 5816 - Net Evaluations Subcommittee [study of Soviet attack capabilities], in Box 23. 144 Meeting Date, Agenda Topics at NSC Meetings Eisenhower Administration (1953-1961), (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Library, no date) at < http://www.lib.umich.edu/files/libraries/govdocs/pdf/nscmeet2.pdf > [accessed 30 Feb. 2010]: 11 Mar. 53 -- Nuclear Matters; 6 May 53 -- Nuclear Matters; 4 Jun 53 -- USSR, Nuclear Matters; 25 Jun 53 -- Nuclear Weapons; 7 Oct. 53 -- Nuclear Weapons; 3 Dec 53 -- USSR, Nuclear Matters; 23 Jun. 54 -- Nuclear Matters; 5 Nov. 54 -- Nuclear Weapons; 10 Feb. 55 -- Nuclear Weapons; 3 Mar. 55 -- Nuclear Weapons; 24 Mar. 55 -- Nuclear Weapons; 14 Jul. 55 -- Nuclear Weapons; 27 Oct. 55 -- Nuclear Weapons; 5 Apr. 56 -- Nuclear Weapons; 20 Dec. 56 -- Nuclear Weapons; 11 Jan. 57 -- Nuclear Weapons; 7 Feb. 57 -- Nuclear Weapons; 16 May 57 -- Nuclear Defense; 13 Jun. 57 -- Nuclear Weapons; 20 Jun 57 -- Nuclear Weapons; 1 Aug. 57 -- Nuclear Weapons; 31 Oct. 57 -- Nuclear Defense; 7 Nov. 57 -- Nuclear Defense; 12 Nov. 57 -- Nuclear Weapons; 27 Mar. 58 -- Nuclear Defense; 29 May 58 -- Nuclear Defense; 26 Jun. 58 -- Comparative Evaluation Group; 14 Jul. 58 -- Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Defense; 6 Nov. 58 -- Comparative Evaluation Group; 20 Nov. 58 -- Net Evaluation Subcommittee; 15 Oct. 59 -- Comparative Evaluations Group; 16 Dec. 59 -- Nuclear Defense; 28 Apr. 60 -- Net Evaluation Subcommittee; 24 Mar. 60 -- Nuclear Weapons; 25 Aug. 60 Nuclear Matters; 13 Oct. 60 -- Comparative Evaluations Group; and 29 Dec. 1960 -- Nuclear Defense.

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In addition to the controversy and creative compromise that created it, several other factors stand out about the success of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee. First, their work was marked by subtle distinctions, an emphasis on comparative data, and operational context.145 Second, they not only informed the Commander-in-Chief, but had a dramatic impact on his own evaluations.146 Third, they were able to address some of the most sensitive and controversial areas of US national security in the 1950s and did so with high discretion and a complete absence of leaks.147 Fourth, their work continually stimulated additional questions, which were then referred to other organizations or used as the terms of reference for a new committee dedicated to that follow-on topic. One example of this, was the famous Technological Capabilities Panel that produced the Killian Report, which itself was a major contribution to the art of competitive strategy.148 Last but not least, the NEC established a precedent in justifying the need for a national net assessment, developed a model of how to do it and set expectations of expected output.

145

Although most of the NES reports of the 1950s remain classified, a summary of the Top Secret 1958 study focused on counter-force versus counter-value targeting tradeoffs is available at: Discussion th at the 387 Meeting of the National Security Council, (20 November 1958) op cit. For a critical commentary on the substance, not the analysis, see: Gerald C. Smith, Memorandum for the Secretary [of State]: Oral Presentation of the Annual Report of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, (25 November 1958), reacting to 100 megatons targeted on Moscow, observed: We used to be advised that a doctrine of restraint governed the planning of our strategic bombing operations. It is difficult to see any fruits of any such doctrine in this briefing. 146 Writing in his diary on 23 January 1956, Eisenhower reacted to a report on two nuclear war scenarios studied by his Net Evaluation Sub-Committee that: the United States experienced practically total economic collapse, which could not be restored to any kind of operative conditions under six months to a year. Members of the federal government were wiped out and a new government had to be improvised by the states. Casualties were enormous. It was calculated that something on the order of 65 percent of the population would require some kind of medical care and, in most instances, no opportunity whatsoever to get it. The Eisenhower Diaries, edited by Robert H. Ferrell, (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company 1981): p. 311. 147 Academic treatment of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, its role and contribution is very slim, but some commentary can be found in: Saki Dockrill, Eisenhowers New-Look National Security Policy, (New York, NY: St. Martins Press, Inc., 1996): p. 130; Norman A. Graebner, The National Security: Its Theory and Practice, 1945-1960, (1986): p. 192; History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Volume 5, (Washington, DC: US Department of Defense Historical Office, 1984): p. 316; and Chpt 12, in Robert R. Bowie and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy, (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 148 For a good description of their use of balance timelines and how they helped in developing counter-strategies, see: Adams, Eisenhowers Fine Group of Fellows, op cit: pp. 123-124.

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It has been widely observed that as President, Eisenhowers background

made him his own secretary of defense and he left strategic planning to the military and looked to his political appointee managers to implement budgetary guidance rather than strategize.149 But by the end of his Administration, Eisenhower himself noted that the traditional coordinating committee approach as set up by the Naval and War departments, and carried over into the Department of Defense, was too slow and too cumbersome for the atomic age. In an address to a special session of
Congress he argued that: Strategic and tactical planning must be completely unified, combat forces must be organized into unified commands, each equipped with the most efficient weapons systems that science can develop. We must strengthen the military staff in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in order to provide the Commander in Chief and the Secretary of Defense with the professional assistance they need for strategic planning and for operational direction of the unified commands.150

This meant that a Secretary of Defense could no longer be content to focus merely on force generation but had to get educated on and involved with force design and application. In the Defense Reorganization of 1958 the JCS were pushed to drop their traditional coordinating committees in exchange for an integrated operations division utilizing the traditional line numbered J-Directorates of a conventional military staff in order to effectively interface with the unified and specified commands.151 Thus, the coordinating Strategic Plans Committee was divided to form the nucleus of the new J-3 Operations and J-5 Plans and Policy Directorates.152

149

He did not need politico-military advice from his defense secretaries. He looked ot his defense secretaries to implement a defense budget unpopular with the armed services, to carry out his decisions, to bear the weight of military objections to ceilings on defense spending, and to force the services to develop military policy within those ceilings, not to suggest alternative policies. Geoffrey Piller, DoDs Office of International Security Affairs: The Brief Ascendancy of an Advisory System, Political Science Quarter, vol. 98, no. 1, (Spring 1983): p. 61. 150 The date of Eisenhowers speech was 3 April 1958. Ibid., pp. 219-220. He added for effect: I think it is important to have it clearly understood that the Joint Chiefs of Staff act only under the authority and in the name of the Secretary of Defense. I am, therefore, issuing instructions that their function is to advise and assist the Secretary of Defense in respect to their duties and not to perform any of their duties independently of the Secretarys direction. 151 Poole, The Evolution of the Joint Strategic Planning System, 1947-1989, op cit. 152 Major Changes in the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: 1942-1969, op cit., pp. 224-226.

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Ironically, the more the JCS moved toward a Command orientation,153 the more the planning, forecasting and assessing functions154 of the Joint Strategic Objectives Plan (JSOP)155 became caught up in the narrowly defined linear programming and budgeting rather than thinking out of the box in terms of alternative options or long-range competition.156 While President Eisenhower was more than willing to delegate traditional military matters to the military and let civilian appointees manage budgets, he recognized the centrality of nuclear weapons to US foreign policy as well as in defense157 and was not willing to delegate the authority of the Commander-in-Chief to be mentally prepared in thinking through the unthinkable. The vehicle by which the Administration attempted to both develop and propagate its strategy was a

153

For a useful summary, see: Historical Background of the Organization and Functions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Organization and Functions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, (JCS Pub. 4; Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 15 July 1963), pp. 3-6. 154 That these three function are intimately related is well argued in: Alan Gropman, Long Range Planning-A New Beginning, Air University Review, (Nov-Dec, 1979): p 50. He notes that planning is the systematic process of formulating objectives for the future and developing strategy and resource allocation alternatives for reaching those goals. Intrinsic to this process is a system for monitoring the implications, in an uncertain future, of the chosen decision alternative. Gropman, Air Force Planning and the Technology Development Planning Process in the Post-World War II Air Force, op cit., p. 156. 155 The JSOP was developed in 1955 and is a document of two volumes that assesses the threat and then prescribes the military forces that the JCS believe are required to carry out our military strategy and national objectives. Lawrence J. Korb, The Budget Process in the Department of Defense, 1947-1977: The Strengths and Weaknesses of Three Systems, Public Administration Review, vol. 37, no. 4, (July/August 1977): p. 335. See also: Lawrence J. Korb, The Joint Chiefs of Staff: The First Twenty-five Years, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1976). 156 As of 1963, the generic planning within J-5 was divided into three unique branches each covering a separate function in the overall process: Short-Range Branch prepare the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP); and provide basic planning data and make recommendations concerning force requirements, assignments and deployments for strategic planning in the short-range period, based on actual Service capabilities. Mid-Range Branch prepare the Joint Strategic Objectives Plan (JSOP) and collaborate, as may be required, with the Personal Directorate (J-1) and the Logistics Directorate (J-4) in the development of concepts for military mobilization and the phased expansion of active and Reserve forces to support the strategic concepts and objectives of JSOP. Long-Range Branch prepare the Joint Long-Range Strategic Study; and provide strategic guidance concerning world-wide or overall base rights and requirements in support of joint plans, estimates, studies and appraisals for the long-range period. The responsibility for reviewing and preparing JCS comments on Basic National Security Policy (BNSP) was in a separate General Planning Branch. Historical Background of the Organization and Functions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in Organization and Functions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ibid., pp. 67-76. 157 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953-56, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1963), p. 180.

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National Security Council document staffed across all relevant agencies known as the Basic National Security Policy (BNSP).
Issued annually, and purporting to set forth the basic strategic concept for the United States, BNSP has been described as a detailed outline of the aims of US national security strategy and a more detailed discussion of the military, political, economic elements to support the over-all national strategy. In it, the Eisenhower Administration announced that the United States henceforward would place main but not sole reliance on nuclear weapons. With this guidance, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were expected to prepare a Joint Strategic Objectives Plan (JSOP)which would project force requirements five years into the future.158

However, because there was continued disagreement within the Administration and between the services over the meaning and comprehensiveness of a Massive Retaliation doctrine, in the absence of Commander-in-Chief clarity, the military were not getting clear guidance in this area.159
The end product has thus far been a document so broad in nature and so general in language as to provide limited guidance in practical application. In the course of its development, the sharp issues in national defense which confront our leaders have been blurred in conference and in negotiation. The final text thus permits many different interpretations. The protagonists of Massive Retaliation or of Flexible Response, the partisans of the importance of air power or of limited war, as well as the defenses of other shades of military opinion, are able to find language supporting their divergent points of view. The Basic National Security Policy document means all things to all people and settles nothing.160

The effect of widespread dissatisfaction with the loose generality of the BNSP language, was not to focus on clarity and specificity at the National Security Council but rather ridicule and dismiss the whole idea of top down deductive articulation entirely. Over at the Pentagon the historic American phobia over a General Staff nonetheless remained,161 and the results showed. But despite legislative authority and responsibility for both DoD strategy as well as resource planning, the Secretary
158 159

Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy, op cit: pp. 23-24. Former Army Chief of Staff (and later CJCS), Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, testimony, in Organizing for National Security, (Washington, DC: Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery, Committee on Government Operations, US Senate, 1961), vol. I, p. 795. 160 Maxwell D. Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet, (New York, NUY: Harper and Brothers, 1960): p. 82. 161 The Joint Staff shall not operate or be organized as overall Armed Forces General Staff and shall have no executive authority. Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 6 August 1958).

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of Defense lacked the diagnostic and prognostic talent necessary to make informed strategic judgments.
Under the postwar organization of the military establishment the Secretary of Defense presumably had the authority to establish a strategic concept and require agreement on force size and composition. But he labored under several severe handicaps. He lacked any independent basis on which to assess what the Services were demanding. And, in the American tradition, he tended to assume that it was impossible for him to understand, much less learn, the art of military planning. That was a mystery that could only be performed by the military staffs themselves. To argue with veteran commanders in these circumstances seemed presumptuous and dangerous. Military judgment was sacrosanct.162

Up until 1961, this was a bi-cameral culture, with the Secretary of Defense having limited ability to bridge the two worlds of military strategy and civilian resource allocation, and raised a fundamental question as to whether his role was Umpire or Leader?163

162 163

Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy, op cit: pp. 19-20. Arthur D. Larson, The Secretary of Defense: Umpire or Leader? Polity, vol. 4, no. 4, (Summer 1972): p. 557.

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 C. Systems Analysis as Surrogate

His flair for quantitative analysis was exceeded only by his arrogance. Enthoven held military experience in low regard and considered military men intellectually inferior. He likened leaving military decision-making to the professional military to allowing welfare workers to develop national welfare programs.164

With respect to the coordinative versus command style, President Kennedy addressed this decisively.165 He needed and wanted a Secretary of Defense who, unlike Eisenhowers Pentagon chiefs, would not only implement the administrations decisions but also vigorously initiate policies regarding weapons selection and strategy.166 It is probably not too much to say that in less than three years, McNamara brought about two revolutions within the Department of Defense. He redesigned the military strategy and forces of the United States. At the same time, he installed an entirely new method of making decisions within the Pentagon.167 Kennedys SecDef aggressively pursued what he believed to be a new, but necessarily revolutionized,168 proper role of the Secretary of Defense to grasp the strategic issues and provide active leadership in developing a defense program that sensibly relates US foreign policy and military strategy with defense budgets, and the choice of major weapons and forces.169 There were several reasons behind the management revolution, and they primarily had to do with the new Administrations negative attitude toward the Joint Staff approach to planning:
164 165

H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 19. Paul Y. Hammond, The National Security Council as a Device for Interdepartmental Coordination: an Interpretation and Appraisal, American Political Science Review, vol. LIV, (1960): p. 899. 166 Piller, DoDs Office of International Security Affairs, op cit., pp. 63, 65, also contrasts Secretary of State Rusks view of himself as a judge versus McNamaras activist initiative. 167 Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy, op cit: p. 3. 168 For contemporary evaluation, see: Stewart Alsop, Master of the Pentagon, The Saturday Evening Post, (5 August 1961); Joseph Kraft, McNamara and His Enemies, Harpers Magazine, (August 1961); and Charles J.V. Murphy, The Education of a Defense Secretary, Fortune, (May 1962): p. 102. 169 Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969, (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 32, 106.

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Their advice was perceived at the White House to be the product of consensus among the services rather than what was best for national security;170 Another was that the Joint Chiefs also produced analyses and recommendations at a tortuously slow pace;171 And, they frequently seemed opposed to major Administration initiatives and contemptuous of their strategic wisdom.172

With this attitude at the top, selecting an activist SecDef who was not in awe of military experience and giving him the mandate to introduce innovative strategy frequently at odds with Service preferences,173 combined to structure the SecDef as chief strategist.174

170

For a contrast in attitudes toward the uniformed military, see: Richard A. Aliano, American Defense Policy from Eisenhower to Kennedy, (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1975). 171 Ibid., p. 65, quoting Paul Nitze as saying of the JCS, that it would take them three days to blow their nose. 172 In interviews with the senior military officers of the period, one historian quotes Air Force Lieutenant General David Burchinal (U.S.A.F. Chief of Staff LeMay's Deputy for Operations), speaking about the value of strategic superiority and the Cuban Missile Crisis: It [value of superiority] was totally missed by the Kennedy administration... They did not understand what had been created and handed to them... Fortunately, there was enough panic in Washington when they saw those missiles going in... they gave only the broadest indication of what they wanted in terms of support for the President. So we were able at the military level, from the JCS on down (without involving the politicians) to put SAC on a one- third airborne alert, to disperse part of the force to civilian airfields [and take other alert measures] ... These were things that would be visible to the Soviets... We could have written our own book at the time, but our politicians did not understand what happens when you have such a degree of superiority as we had, or they simply didn't know how to use it. They were busily engaged in saving face for the Soviets and making concessions, giving up the IRBMs, the Thors and Jupiters deployed overseas -- when all we had to do was write our own ticket. A few moments later in this interview, U.S.A.F. General Leon Johnson (Chairman, Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council) said about the political leadership: They were very good at putting out brave words, but they didn't do a bloody thing to back them up except what, inadvertently, we did. To which LeMay confirmed: That was the mood prevalent with the top civilian leadership; you are quite correct. Dan Lindley, What I Learned since I Stopped Worrying and Studied the Movie: A Teaching Guide to Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, Political Science & Politics, vol. 34, no. 3, (2001): pp. 663-667. 173 For a variety of descriptions of McNamaras attitude and approach, see: Deborah Shapley, Power and Promise: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara, (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1993); Clark A. Murdock, Defense Policy Formation: A Comparative Analysis of the McNamara Era, (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1974); Ralph Sanders, The Politics of Defense Analysis, (New York, NY: Dunellen, 1973); Henry L. Trewitt, McNamara: His Ordeal in the Pentagon, (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1971); and James Michael Roherty, Decisions of Robert S. McNamara: A Study of the Role of the Secretary of Defense, (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1970). 174 One of President Kennedys most fascinating attributes was his ability to attract able men and women to the service of his Administration. At his side, and deeply committed to his service, stood Robert S. McNamara. If Kennedy was the patron of new departures in the realm of national security, McNamara has been their architect and engineer. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy, op cit: p. xi.

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The Secretary of Defense and I am talking about any Secretary of Defense must make certain kinds of decisions, not because he presumes his judgment to be superior to his advisors, military or civilian, but because his position is the best place from which to make these decisions.175

Much to the dismay of critics of defense intellectuals,176 a corollary of this positional vantage-point, was the belief that modern-day strategy and force planning has become largely an analytical process.177 Secretary McNamara correctly viewed the DoD as a bilineal organizational structure,178 and, impressed with the controlling dual chain management system he had experienced at Ford Motor, tried to introduce that approach in the Pentagon.179 During his tenure the Systems Analysis Office operated as analytic policemen180 keeping military advice honest and as a surrogate means of both option planning and performance assessment. While it was recognized that the

175

Robert S. McNamara, Address before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, (Press Release No.548-63; Washington, DC: 20 April 1963), pp. 1-13, in Public Statements by the Secretaries of Defense: Part 3, The Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, (1961-1969), Robert S. McNamara, January 21,1961-February 29,1968, edited by Paul Kesaris, (microfilm; Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1983), reel VI, frames 0165-0177. 176 For example: General Thomas D. White, Strategy and the Defense Intellectuals, Saturday Evening Post, vol. 236, (4 May 1963): p. 10. 177 Enthoven and Smith, How Much is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969, op cit: pp. 32, 106. 178 The operational control and direction of the combat forces extend down through one chain of command and the direction and control of the supporting activities down through another. Robert S. McNamara, The Essence of Security: Reflections in Office, (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 96. 179 Following BDMs acquisition by Ford Motor in 1988, I spent a significant part of my time for the next two years in Dearborn serving as an international strategic planning adviser to Fords Chairman and CEO. It was not until then that I realized what had conditioned McNamaras approach. Ford had a long culture of strong leaders in the operating and production parts of the company. In the 1950s, when they realized that the company had to be brought under modern fiscal discipline with a comprehensive budgeting system similar to PPBS, a parallel line of Finance Officers was introduced at every level of line organization. They served as implicit deputies to help the line managers prepare and stay within corporate budgets, but they had their own independent reporting chain (and guardian) up the ladder to the Corporate Finance Officer. We called them the KBG of Ford, but a closer parallel would probably have been the political officer in the Soviet military. It is my belief, that when McNamara realized he could not duplicate this level of intrusion into the JCS and Services (although the latter became more permeable over time), the Systems Analysis Office was used as surrogate vehicle to police the system. 180 An important implication of the increasingly analytical nature of the force planning process is the need for an analytic policeman. It its role as analytic policemen, the Systems Analysis office tried to make sure that the methods of analysis used in various studies, and the assumptions that went into them, were both explicit and consistent. Enthoven and Smith, How Much is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969, op cit., pp. 106, 108.

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uniformed military could, in theory, present a range of alternative strategies, nevertheless, inventing creative options was not a recognized JCS strong suit.181 Nor was a passive position in the strategy development process practical for the SecDef. The following retort is worth revisiting because the argument still fuels a relevant debate:
It would limit the Secretary of Defense to the role of judge rather than leader. Though he could select one of the alternatives presented in the JCS list, he would be unable to challenge the particular objectives and alternatives which the JCS chose present. He would be unable to get independent evaluation of the JCS estimate of the amount of military force required to attain a particular objective with a given degree of confidence. He would be unable to probe for and suggest an alternative mix of forces which might achieve a given objective at a lower cost. Challenging, testing, probing, checking, and suggesting alternatives in an informed and responsible way are more than any one man can do by himself. He would have to have a staff to help him, and that staff would have to become deeply involved in the matters in the province of the military professionals. This is the only way the Secretary of Defense can exercise initiative and avoid becoming a captive of the information generated by the military staffs. In the most direct sense, it is the only way the country can be assured of achieving a significant degree of civilian control.182

Thus, the issue was not so much the development of alternative options, although there were certainly cases where that need was articulated, and few challenged the responsibility of the SecDef to be the Pentagons Chief Strategist. Rather, the question raised by McNamara and his team was the due diligence the Secretary would give in thinking through the inputs to the strategic choices he would make and his need to have access to independent and sophisticated analysis that would enable him, not to ignore institutional factors, but to see them in proper perspective in making operational, management and

181

Ibid., p. 115: If the Secretary wants a wider range of alternatives alternatives that include less as well as possible nonmilitary solutions he will need civilian analysts possessing the necessary analytical skills and with the charter to cut across Service institutional lines jurisdictions and integrate forces and mission contributions from all the Services. This does not mean that alternatives offered by civilian analysts are necessarily better than those of the military. But they are likely to be more broadly based, balanced, and concerned with getting the most from available resources. In any event, some kind of counter-vailing power is clearly needed if the Secretary of Defense is to sort out the desirable and the undesirable changes. 182 Ibid., p. 196.

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policy decisions.183 As the Clausewitzian personification of the one chosen to address strategic questions,184 the Secretary of Defense is the bridge185 between the Presidential policy vision and the direction of the Armed Forces in their development of contingency planning.186 This dialectical187 interface is normally called strategy development and, if asked, most Americans would likely believe that having a dedicated organization assist the Secretary of Defense in pulling together a comprehensive assessment of US and potential adversaries is not just common sense,188 but essential to getting an important task done, and building public confidence that it is being done right.189
183 184

Larson, The Secretary of Defense: Umpire or Leader? op cit., p. 561. Rosen, Net Assessment as an Analytical Concept, op cit: p. 284. 185 Richard K. Betts, The Trouble with Strategy: Bridging Policy and Operations, Joint Forces Quarterly, (Autumn/Winter 2001-02), pp. 23-30. 186 It is commonplace to cite the Clausewitzian dictim of war as continuation of political activity by other [violent] means; but too little attention has been given to how political guidance interacts with, in fact links to, military contingency planning through the use of long range planning and/or balance assessments as anticipatory feedback in adjusting both political ends and military means, in a recursive and reflective way. Clausewitz himself, makes a point of this, immediately before his classic definition: If we keep in mind that war springs from some political purpose, it is natural that the prime cause of its existence will remain the supreme consideration in conducting it. That, however, does not imply that the political aim is tyrant. It must adapt itself to the chosen means, a process which can radically change it; yet the political aim remains the first consideration. Policy, then, will permeate all military operations, and, in so far as their violent nature will admit, it will have a continuous influence on them. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 87. 187 The dialectic in strategy is emphasized in: Andre Beufre, An Introduction to Strategy, with Particular Reference to Problems of Defense, Politics, Economics, and Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age, (New York, NY: Praeger, 1965), p. 22, defines strategy as the art of the dialectic of two opposing wills using force to resolve their dispute. The dominance of the dialectic as a mode thought and argument in Clausewitz is from Part II, The Dialectic, in Raymond Aron, Clausewitz: Philosophy of War, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985), pp. 89-94. Also on this theme: Peter R. Moody, Clausewitz and the Fading Dialectic of War, World Politics, vol. 31, (April 1979); and Hew Strachan, Clausewitz and the Dialectics of War, in Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Hew Strachan and Andreas Herber-Rothe, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 14-44; and Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Claausewitzs Puzzle: The Political Theory of War, (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, English edition 2007), pp. 120-122. 188 For an interesting take on how everyday citizens think and reason about strategy. see: James DeNardo, The Amateur Strategist: Intuitive Deterrence Theories and the Politics of the Nuclear Arms Race, (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 1-17. The point is not that amateur intuitive common sense is correct, but that when expert strategic intellectualizing becomes widely disconnected from it, the danger of losing national consensus and thus support for sustaining the military strategy becomes politically problematic. 189 James Madison said that a popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. As a principal guarantor of US national security, the Department of Defense has a special obligation to keep the nation informed. Harold Brown, Secretary of Defense, Foreword, to The Department of Defense: Documents on

48

If it is admitted that a Secretary of Defense has the requirement to take on

the role of evaluator rather than just a ladler of resources and, in making those decisions, has a fiduciary responsibility to consider long-range trends, assess US and potential adversary postures, and develop alternative strategic concepts to cope with change then the need for immediate and confidential staff support to the SecDef as Chief Strategist was axiomatic in its logic and unchallengeable as common sense. The most basic argument for the PPBS approach to strategy rested on six major arguments: Decision-making on the basis of openly debated National Interest; Considering needs and costs simultaneously rather than sequentially; Explicit consideration of alternatives rather than as straw men; Active use of an analytical versus accounting staff; A multiyear rolling force and financial plan versus fixed budget ceiling; and Open and explicit analysis rather than implicit and intuitive assumptions.190

This was a real improvement and, whatever the complaints, few argued for a return to the old system, and McNamara pushed it to the extreme: I equate planning and budgeting and consider the terms almost synonymous, with the budget being simply a quantitative expression of the operating plans.191 Practically, however, there were several problems in the McNamara approach. First, unlike at Ford Motor where the analyst policemen were actually embedded at every level of every organization, Enthovens Systems Analysts were, like a sophist watching the shadows on Platos cave, outside the military organization looking in with surrogate measures of effectiveness.192 Second, and
Establishment and Organization, 1944-1978, (Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1978), p. iii. 190 For a good summary description, see: Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy, op cit: pp. 32-48. 191 Robert S. McNamara, testimony, in Organizing for National Security, (Washington, DC: Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery, Committee on Government Operations, US Senate, 1961), vol. I, p. 1197. 192 James R. Schlesinger, Defense Planning and Budgeting: The Issue of Centralized Control, (RAND paper 3464; Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, June 1967); James R. Schlesinger, Defense Planning and Budgeting: The Issue of Centralized Control, (RAND paper 3813; Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1968); Wesley W. Posver, Dispersion of the Strategy-Making Establishment, in American Defense Policy, edited by Mark E. Smith III and Claude J. John Jr., (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968); and William A. Niskanen, Defense Management After McNamara, (IDA N-589; Arlington, VA:

49

more subtle, having hooked the Pentagon on the PPBS with its linear programming so helpful to careful auditing193 -- it reinforced the military predisposition to favor material force structure over ethereal strategizing.194 As illustrated in the figure below,195 although the PPBS system depended upon Strategy input to initiate it and incorporated opportunities for Assessment feedback, its sequential multi-year cumulative linearity made the process rigid and the strategy unreflective. Fig. 1

Institute for Defense Analysis, 1968); and William A. Niskanen, Coherent Decentralization of US Defense Force Planning, in Interorganizational Decision Making, edited by (Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1972), pp. 277- 286. 193 A Modern Design for Defense Decision: A McNamara-Hitch-Enthoven anthology, edited by Samuel A. Tucker, (Washington, DC: Industrial College of the Armed Forces, 1966). 194 Alluded to in both James R. Schlesinger, The Changing Environment for Systems Analysis, (RAND paper 3287; Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1965); and Harold Brown, Planning for Military Forces, Foreign Affairs, vol. 45, (January 1967). 195 The Joint Staff Officers Guide 2000, (JFSC Pub. 1; Norfolk, VA, 2000), Fig. 2-3.

50

However, turning planning into an administrative auditing process196 came at a cost of imagination and creativity.197 In the extreme, the approach of PPBS in the late 1960s carried the danger that strategy would emerge de facto from a stream of acquisition decisions, rather than independently providing the basis for those decisions.198 Third, with analytic policemen tending to treat the military as planning criminals and all the resultant years of open warfare between OSD and the Services, animosities were so deep that basic cooperation, let along joint brainstorming, took more effort than it was worth.199 It is easy to dismiss the McNamara era gap between civilians and uniforms by demeaning clichs like military mindset or effete intellectuals.200 However, on closer examination the difference is not whether one side was thinking correctly and the other idiots, but rather that they were thinking differently.201 This essay
196

For a critique of this administrative audit mentality, see: Ida R. Hoos, Systems Analysis in Public Policy A Critique, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972); Allen Schick, A Death in the Bureaucracy: The Demise of Federal PPB, Public Administration Review, vol. 33, (March-April 1973): pp. 146-156; and Aaron Wildavsky, The New Politics of the Budgetary Process, (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1987). 197 The ascendancy of management and the decline of policy, the elaboration of structure and technique, and the faltering of innovation and bargaining mark the McNamara years. It is clear that while imagination and flexibility are vital in the determination of policy and strategy, the thrust of the new management has made for increasing rigidity. It is clear that while a creative, reinforcing tension between military and civilian professionalism is indispensable to national security policy, the thrust of the new management has been to neutralize such pluralism. James M. Roherty, Decisions of Robert S. McNamara: A Study of the Secretary of Defense, (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami, 1970), pp. 20-21. 198 Pickett, Roche, and Watts, Net Assessment: A Historical Review, op cit., p. 165; and Gregory Palmer, The McNamara Strategy and the Vietnam War: Program Budgeting in the Pentagon, 1960-1968, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978). 199 James Schlesinger, "Uses and Abuses of Analysis," Hearings, (Washington, DCL US Senate Committee on Government Operations, Planning Programming Budgeting, Government Printing Office, 1970); and Hanson W. Baldwin, Slow-Down in the Pentagon, in Defense, Science, and Public Policy, (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1968). 200 While Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy, op cit: pp. 242-245 was a pains to downplay the downgrading of the military, other respected commentators made it their point of departure in a critique of both the strategy and the method used to analyze it; for example, the long-time military editor for the New York Times: Hanson W. Baldwin, Strategy for Tomorrow, (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1970): p. 15 quoting Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Jr., where civilian authorities dominate the decision-making process in matters exclusively military then national catastrophe may result. 201 This was recognized by Enthoven and Smith, How Much is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969, op cit: p. xii: the differences we describe between independent civilian analysts and career military officers, between the Systems Analysis office and the Military Services, between concern for the national interest and concern for parochial interests, though real and important, are difference of degree, not of kind. However, our point here is that, the mental starting points for strategizing were in fact at opposite ends of abstraction and logic.

51

started with Sun Tzus epigram definition of the strategic arts and his list of five key attributes is not random but reflects both a hierarchy of abstraction and differing forms of reasoning.202 As illustrated in Figure 2, the five elements are actually sequential and can be hierarchically placed on an ordinal scale that ranks deductive logic on one end and inductive empiricism on the other. Fig. 2

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This Sun Tzu approach was first applied experimentally in my 1975 briefing of the TAC Air Net Assessment, then discussed in the 1979 TRADOC Battlefield Development Plan, first presented as a coherent argument in Secretary Weinbergers Counter-Offensive and Competitive Strategy studies of 1982-1983, and most well known with Ambassador Abshire in our NATO Net Assessment for the US Congress where this paradigm was used as the organizing principle for the report; see: P.A. Karber, Battlefield Leverage: Hierarchy and Transition in Central Battle, (paper presented at symposium on Battlefield Development Plan, Ft. Monroe, VA: TRADOC, Spring 1979); P.A. Karber, The Counter- Offensive, (briefing for SecDef; Washington, DC: Strategic Concepts Development Center, December 1982); P.A. Karber, Competitive Strategy, (briefing for SecDef; Washington, DC: Strategic Concepts Development Center, January 1983); and Amb. David M. Abshire and Phillip A. Karber, NATO Net th Assessment, (testimony before full Committee Hearings, 100 Congress Daily Digest; Washington, DC: Committee on Armed Services, Senate, US Congress, 27 January, 1988), pp. D23-D28. For useful insight into the depth of Sun Tzus meaning, see: Gary Gagliardi, Sun Tzus The Art of War and Its Amazing Secrets the Keys to Strategy, (Seattle, WA: Science of Strategy Institute, Clearbridge Publishing, 1999); and Chow Hou Wee, Sun Zi: Art of War: An Illustrated Translation with Asian Perspectives and Insights, (Singapore, SI: Pearson-Prentice Hall, 2003).

52

Traditional military thought treats the lower order empirical issues as the common sense part of the appreciation of the situation that comes with experience based judgment, but the area they tend to emphasize is deduced guidance from political superiors articulating National Interests, definition of threats and allocating resource commitments.203 The systems analysis perspective starts at the other end of the spectrum focused on collecting and measuring as much information as possible in order to inductively derive their comparisons and conclusions.204 The senior military leaders are afraid of uncertainty in national objectives and political will, while the civilian strategists sought to avoid subjective qualitative judgment. But neither of these two approaches can cover the range of thought required for sound strategy development. If intuitive experience is weak without structured empirical verification, the danger of quantified systems analysis is introuvable data205 and, even worse, not knowing what is missing. The more rigorous and empirically dependent the measurement, the greater the chance of its significance being distorted or overwhelmed by the unknown.

203 204

See the earlier discussion above, p. 10. When asked to give an example of quantitative measurements applied to nuclear strategic forces, McNamara gave this extended example: A major mission of these forces is to deter war by their capability to destroy the enemys war-making capabilities [deleted]. With the kinds of weapons available to us, this task presents a problem of reasonably finite dimensions, which are measurable in terms of the number and type of targets or aiming points which must be destroyed and the number and types of weapon delivery systems required to do the job under various sets of conditions. The first step in such a calculation is to determine the number, types and locations of the aiming points in the target system. The second step is to determine the numbers and explosive yields of weapons which must be delivered on the aiming points to insure the destruction or substantial destruction of the target system. The third step involves a determination of the size and character of the forces best suited to deliver these weapons, taking into account such factors as 1. The number and weight of warheads that each type of vehicle can deliver. 2. The ability of each type of vehicle to penetrate enemy defenses. 3. The degree of accuracy that can be expected of each system, i.e., the CEP. 4. The degree of reliability of each system, i.e., the proportion of the ready operational inventory that we count on getting off successfully within the prescribe time. 5. The cost/effectiveness of each system, i.e., the combat effectiveness per dollar of outlay. Etc. Robert S. McNamara, Testimony, Hearings on Military Posture, (Washington, DC: House Armed Services Committee, 1962): p. 3171. 205 Important, balance determinative variables, for which hard, comparative, reliable empirical data is not available.

53

This highlights the value of net evaluation or assessment efforts. Because

they employ abductive reasoning inference to the best explanation206 they can avoid some of the major pitfalls of linear deduction or entropic induction making conscious estimates to plot trend data, analyze asymmetries, as well as explore the interactions of strengths and vulnerabilities. Another advantage of abduction is that it offers a bridge that spans the spectrum from induction to deduction; and is thus a useful integrative device in contrast to strategy inferred from either first principles or a data dump. Compared to the command presumptions of SAC or the quantified data of the Systems Analysts, the work of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee provides an excellent example of the value of an abductively driven methodology one that uses empirical data where available, but does not shrink from hypothesizing expectations where it is not.

206

Robert Burch, Inference to the Best Explanation, in A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, edited by W.H. Newton-Smith, (London, UK: Blackwell, 2000): pp. 184-193. Abductive reasoning typically begins with an incomplete set of observations and proceeds to the likeliest possible explanation for the set. Abductive reasoning yields the kind of daily decision-making that does its best with the information at hand, which often is incomplete. A medical diagnosis is an application of abductive reasoning: given this set of symptoms, what is the diagnosis that would best explain most of them? Likewise, when jurors hear evidence in a criminal case, they must consider whether the prosecution or the defense has the best explanation to cover all the points of evidence. While there may be no certainty about their verdict, since there may exist additional evidence that was not admitted in the case, they make their best guess based on what they know. While cogent inductive reasoning requires that the evidence that might shed light on the subject be fairly complete, whether positive or negative, abductive reasoning is characterized by lack of completeness, either in the evidence, or in the explanation, or both. A patient may be unconscious or fail to report every symptom, for example, resulting in incomplete evidence, or a doctor may arrive at a diagnosis that fails to explain several of the symptoms. Still, he must reach the best diagnosis he can. The abductive process can be creative, intuitive, even revolutionary. Deductive, Inductive, and Abductive Reasoning, Paul Thagard and Cameron Shelley. "Abductive Reasoning: Logic, Visual Thinking, and Coherence," (Waterloo, Ontario: Philosophy Department, University of Waterloo, 1997) at. < http://cogsci.uwaterloo.ca/Articles/Pages/%7FAbductive.html> [accessed 10 February 2010]. The term abduction was coined by American philosopher, C.S. Peirce: Now, that the matter of no new truth can come from induction or from deduction, we have seen. It can only come from abduction; and abduction is, after all, nothing but guessing. We are therefore bound to hope that, although the possible explanations of our facts may be strictly innumerable, yet our mind will be able, in some finite number of guesses, to guess the sole true explanation of them. That we are bound to assume, independently of any evidence that it is true. Animated by that hope, we are to proceed to the construction of a hypothesis. C. S. Peirce, "On the Logic of drawing History from Ancient Documents, Especially from Testimonies", MS c. 1901, published 1958 in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, v. 7, paragraph 164-231.

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D. Demise of Net Evaluation

Secretary McNamara was a very powerful man. He just felt he had enough trouble in trying to overcome resistance in NATO and he didnt need any more resistance, especially from within his own building So he arranged with the President that that was the end of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, which in a way was too bad, because something like that was needed, and still is needed.207

There were two prime areas during the Kennedy Administration where the method of comparative force balances had an impact on strategy, and where strategy had an impact on method. The first was strategic forces; and the second was the conventional balance in Central Europe. Both topics were hotbeds of politico- military controversy, both issues were debated utilizing the leading edge analytical tools of the day. The methodology and studies of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, and the NESC itself, were at the center of both controversies President Kennedy had campaigned on closing the missile gap, and both the 1961 Berlin Crisis and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis underscored the importance of strategic balance.208 Although there was no shortage of controversy, this was an area where refined Force-on-Force analytical techniques had been in development for over a decade and one of the leaders in using them to inform the political leadership was the Net Evaluation Subcommittee. A major initiative of Secretary McNamara was in developing a robust but not open ended rational for American strategic force levels particularly the fielding of the new generation Minuteman ICBMs to offset the growing vulnerability of manned bombers.209 In his memorandum to the President, the SecDef based much of his initial targeting
207 208

Kennedy, Interview with James E. Goodby, op cit. Desmond Ball, Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile Program in the Kennedy Administration, (Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1981). 209 The first requirement is clearly to maintain our nuclear strike power as a realistic, effective deterrent against Soviet initiation of major wars. We can no longer hop to have such a deterrent merely by maintaining a larger stockpile of nuclear weapons. Our weapons must be hardened, dispersed, and mobile so that they can survive an enemy attack, and they must be equipped with the most sophisticated devices necessary to penetrate enemy defenses. Robert S. McNamara, Address before the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, (Chicago, IL: 17 February 1962), quoted in Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy, op cit: pp. 74-75.

55

priorities and missile allocation derived from studies performed in June 1961 by the Staff of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, under the direction of Lieutenant General Thomas Hickey.210 Likewise, when the JCS responded, they also deferred to NESC data and analysis.211 In theory, the strategic analysis of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee should have continued to provide common ground between the civilian strategists and military leadership, but all too soon those in the middle of the road got hit from both directions. First, the JCS used the unfinished research of the NESC as an excuse to prevaricate;212 and then OSD responded with a 17 page attack on Subcommittee methodology in the snide condescension that came to characterize whiz kid critique.213 The underlying issue was fundamentally not one of force structure, resources or NESC methodology but the philosophy of controlled response strategy.
With a December 22 memorandum to McNamara, Charles J. Hitch, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), enclosed a 17-page evaluation of the Hickey Report. In the memorandum Hitch stated that his evaluation concluded that the requirements for a controlled response strategy were exaggerated in the Hickey study, and its feasibility underestimated. I see no reason why we cannot have a satisfactory posture for a controlled response strategy by 1964 if not sooner. I reject the suggestion implicit in the Hickey Study that all of these advanced capabilities must be achieved before it makes sense to abandon the spasm war concept. There was nothing in the Hickey study

210

Robert S. McNamara, Draft Memorandum From Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Kennedy, (23 September 1961), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963 Volume VIII, National Security Policy, Document 46, pp. 138-152. The cited Net Evaluation Subcommittee work was: A Study of Requirements for U.S. Strategic Systems: Preliminary Report, dated June 1961. (Washington National Records Center, RG 330, OSD Files: FRC 65 A 3463, 381 Hickey Report 19 Apr 61). 211 General L.L. Lemnitzer, Chairman , Joint Chiefs of Staff, Memorandum From the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense McNamara, (17 November 1961), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963 Volume VIII, National Security Policy, Document 54, pp. 195-197. 212 Since a final report of General Hickey's group is expected in December, it is assumed that a more definitive exposition of target destruction requirements can thereby be expected. Ibid. 213 The final Net Evaluation Subcommittee was titled: A Study of Requirements for U.S. Strategic Systems: Final Report, (1 December 1961) which concluded that controlled response strategy could not be implemented until late in the 1960s because a number of necessary advanced weapons systems such as Advanced Minuteman and a manned reconnaissance strike aircraft would not be available until then. (National Archives and Records Administration, RG 218, JCS Records, JMF 4700 (1 Jun 61) Sec 1A). The critique was authored by: Charles J. Hitch, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), Memorandum to McNamara, (22 December 1961), (Washington National Records Center, RG 330, OSD Files: FRC 65 A 3463, 381 Hickey Report 19 April 61), ibid.

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necessitating a change in the decisions you have already made for FY 1963 procurement.214

The Kennedy Administration wanted to reduce the spasm effect of a full strategic strike by introducing various options of numerical restraint and target withhold short of Armageddon while the JCS believed that the best chance of limiting damage to the US homeland and saving American lives was to go ugly early.215 In retrospect this was not an issue that was going to be decided by sharp pencils and simulations: no matter which way it went, both sides were literally playing with fire in making assumptions about human nature in a nuclear exchange.216 For the next three years the issue of controlled response strategy was at the heart of the internal American strategic debate. In early 1963, President Kennedy issued the following Directive: The NESC will develop studies of a series of general wars initiated yearly during the period 1963 through 1968. Comparative results in each year war will be determined with emphasis on the degree of damage sustained by the US and an analysis will be made to identify significant trends in national defense capabilities.217 Based on Presidential tasking, the NESC laid out a careful research program focused on attempts to limit the mass casualty effects of an initial US/Soviet strategic nuclear exchange.218 In the words of the only civilian assigned to the NESC:
214 215

Hitch, Memorandum to McNamara, op cit. In the infamous words of Lt. General Ray Sitton, who had served as Strategic Air Command Deputy Chief for Plans and Deputy Chief for Operations, and latter J-3 Director for Operations, Joint Staff, JCS. In context the quote was: Look Karber, civilian strategists in peacetime ask how many Russians can we hold hostage but in wartime military operators are going to be asked by the President: how many American lives can you save. The answer to that question is not to play games with limited strike options, but throw the kitchen sink at them in one mass strike go ugly early. Gen. Sitton to P.A. Karber during DoD CPX Proud Prophet, March 1983, where the former played CJCS stand in for JCS Chairman Jack Vessey and the latter was surrogate for SecDef Caspar Weinberger. 216 A point made by Thomas C. Schelling, Assumptions about Enemy Behavior, in Analysis for Military Decisions: The RAND Lectures on Systems Analysis, edited by Edward S. Quade, (Chicago, IL: Rand McNally, 1966): pp. 199-216. 217 Presidential tasking cited in: Oral Report, Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council, (227 August 1963), [Excised copy, FOIA release, formerly TOP SECRET], NARA, Record Group 218. Joint Chiefs of Staff Records (RG 218), Chairman's Files, Records Of Maxwell Taylor, box 25, 381 Net Evaluation, as 8. A Period of Nuclear Stalemate, In Special Collection: Some Key Documents on Nuclear Policy Issues, 1945-1990, edited by William Burr, National Security Archive, (15 June 2007), at < http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/special/index.htm#9 > [accessed 12 March 2010]. 218 Defined as the complete exchange of strategic nuclear offensive weapons in their initial attacks and does not include restrike, reserve, or residual capabilities. Ibid: p. 6.

57

 there was a feeling, particularly among the top people in the Kennedy administration, that Eisenhower had let the whole nuclear weapons issue get too much out of hand, and that there were a lot of nuclear weapons around, and that the idea of a nuclear war was just kind of a spasm war -- everything lets fly and you dont know how to stop it. And there were a lot of people in the Cambridge group, Harvard and MIT, that thought that should change. And one of them was a man named Thomas Schelling, quite a prominent figure in academic circles, who had done a lot of work on games and modeling of various diplomatic situations as well. He persuaded Walt Rostow that there ought to be a study of what was called war management and termination. And the basic idea was to try to get away from the idea of just sort of a massive, all-out attack on the Soviet Union and try to think about a more managed kind of conflict, and especially how do you stop that kind of a nuclear war. Walt persuaded Maxwell Taylor, who was then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs at that point, to use an NSC apparatus [the Net Evaluation Subcommittee], over which the Joint Chiefs had control, to do this study of war management and termination. According to Goodby, the military staff on the NESC were very skeptical of this idea of war management and termination. And I think they had good right to be, at that particular point, because we couldnt do it; there wasnt the command and control capacity to manage a nuclear war. And they didnt really feel that nuclear war was something that you ought to treat as a conventional war. And, on that issue, I shared their point of view one hundred percent. In other words, the idea that you would consider nuclear weapons the same as kind of a nuclear artillery and plan to use it in increments did not really appeal to me, at least at that point. And, at that point, it simply wasnt feasible to do it anyway, because we just didnt have the tools to do it with. To me, this whole idea of, well, if we send a message by one explosion here that takes out a city of 50,000, theyll do this. these things are so terribly destructive that I cant imagine a military commander, once it started, saying, Well, gee, they sent a better signal than we did, therefore were going to quit. I think there was a feeling among the military that these were horrendous weapons that really would come close to destroying civilization. their basic idea was that if you get into a war, you do not hold back, you do not give the enemy the initiative. And their worry was that, okay, you send a signal by a nuclear weapon, and you give the enemy the initiative, and he comes back with everything he has. And their preference would be, if were going to get into a nuclear war, then lets go in it with everything we have and hope for the best. And that was the basic philosophy.219

219

Kennedy, Interview with James E. Goodby, op cit.

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On this issue, the uniformed military were generally on one side, the Administrations civilian strategists on the other, with the Net Evaluation Subcommittee in the middle. Thus, the net evaluation project for 1963 was directed to study The Management and Termination of War with the Soviet Union.220 The terms of reference were developed by an interagency panel headed by Walt W. Rostow, Counselor and Chairman, Policy Planning Council, Department of State, and were based on the report of an interdepartmental group under Mr. Thomas C. Schelling which examined certain long-range aspects.221 The NESC did a thorough job of studying the issues and concluded that full consideration must be given to the problems of war management and termination in all planning for war and that doing so will increase the likelihood of a successful application of political actions and military forces to deter the Soviet Union from intensifying a war should one occur as well as cause Soviet leaders to seek to end the war under conditions acceptable to the US.222 The study was very balanced in its assessment and in differentiating what was desirable from what was likely. What the general issue of limited nuclear war raised, and the NESC was uncovering, was the radical redefinition of the role and
220

A Study of the Management and Termination of War with the Soviet Union, (Washington, DC: The Staff of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee of the National Security Council, 15 November 1963). 221 Walt W. Rostow and Thomas C. Schelling, Terms of Reference, (undated), Appendix, ibid: pp. 73-76: It is US policy to develop a capability so that, in the event of war with the USSR, military force can be used in a discriminating manner, to bring about a cessation on terms acceptable to the United States, to deter Soviet anti-population attacks on the USA and its allies, and to avoid unnecessary damage in enemy countries. Terms for cessation could be both political and military. The US war aim would not be unconditional destruction. Detailed plans for the coordination of military forces with war objectives and negotiations appear neither feasible nor desirable. Detailed planning can help to assure that military forces, information and communication, operational plans, decision procedures, and possibly enemy expectations, are adapted to this concept of war conduct. The ways in which this concept might be carried out should be expected to vary over time. The following planning tasks are essential to the concept. 1. The possible stopping points in war with the USSR; 2. The information and communications that would be available, and that can be developed, to support this concept; 3. Criteria for targeting; 4. The forces best suited for the terminal stage of war, for secure policing of a truce, and for post- war security and support of war aims; 5. Decision and negotiation in war. 222 A Study of the Management and Termination of War with the Soviet Union, op cit: pp. 67-72.

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responsibility of the Commander-in-Chief in the nuclear age.223 It highlighted the uncertainties involved in trying to fight a limited nuclear war, but constructively identified ways of reducing them. These included: Anticipatory Planning;224 Creation of a National Command Center;225 Establishing a Reconnaissance system for pre-war, intra-war and post-war monitoring and its direct link to the National Command Center.226

If the United States was going to fight a nuclear war, let alone attempt a controlled response strategy these would be essential, and their absence reinforced the impression that promotion of limited options was way ahead of the ability to execute them.227 The NESC study ran afoul of the Administration in three areas. First, in asking for clearer strategy guidance228 and recommending an expansion of the NSC to
223

In an escalating war situation, there are inherent stopping points which could be exploited to US advantage by deliberate war management practices. However, the problem of deciding between alternative course of action at these important turning points would be complex. To be effective, they would have to be supported by an evaluation of military actions relative to political aims. Since the most critical of these decisions would involve consideration of changing the level or intensity of warfare they would require Presidential action. In all the situations examined it was clear that the President must exercise his role as Commander-in-Chief in a manner not previously required. The President must be supported by a mechanism which can bring to rapid focus those political and military factors which relate to the existing situation as well as to provide previously considered judgements [sic] of the possible consequences of the courses of action being considered. In particular, he must have available his chief political and military advisors who can be supported at the command center by staff and a continuing flow of information. Such an organization should not be assembled on an ad hoc basis, but rather must have existed prior to the need arising and have been operating in an integrated political-military environment. Ibid: p. 70. 224 Increase sophistication in the control and management of wars involving the threat of nuclear escalation will require an extraordinary degree of anticipatory planning in order to ensure that the President is provided with the means to make timely, considered decisions and the assurance that a wide range of possible decisions can be properly carried out. Such anticipatory planning would encompass specific actions such as: Adoption of procedure to acquaint the President with examples of the types of decisions he may be called upon to make under conditions of extreme urgency and adoption of means to ensure that his principal advisors are continuously able to provide the most accurate and timely joint evaluation of his military, political and economic consequences of alternative course of action. Ibid: pp. 70-71. 225 Adopt the concept of a National Command Center organized, staffed, and equipped wherein the President and his key advisors, both civilian and military, assemble for managing a war. Ibid: p. 72. 226 Ibid. 227 A point made repeatedly by Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960). 228 What is sought is war planning which is more effective because national objectives and war aims are more precisely defined. What is also sought is a common understanding by political and military

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provide the Commander-in-Chief with his own war planning staff in peacetime229 it clashed with the Secretary of Defense who responded with intense antagonism.230 In trying to honestly develop controlled response options, the NESC brief-out231 managed to unintentionally convince President Kennedy that whatever window of opportunity may have made limited nuclear war feasible or desirable, it was rapidly closing.232
General Taylor presented the Net Evaluation Subcommittee report2 and introduced General Leon Johnson, with the suggestion that the President might wish to question him about the report. The President asked whether, even if we attack the USSR first, the loss to the
planners of the possible effects of alternative courses of action once war has begun. The latter process could be of most importance since it could be a means whereby the President and his principal advisors, in review such plans, could be made aware of the nature of decisions which would confront them should contingency plans be implemented. A Study of the Management and Termination of War with the Soviet Union, op cit: pp. 67-68. 229 Recommendation. That a subcommittee of the National Security Council be formed which would have the overall responsibility for the integration of political and military factors in the provision of guidance for war planning at the national level. This subcommittee, which would be composed of senior members of agencies represented on the NSC, would operate on a permanent basis to the end that the President is provided with the means to make timely considered decisions on the basis of a full appreciation of all of the political-military aspects which may result from adoption of alternative courses of action. Ibid: p. 72. 230 Walt W. Rostow, Memorandum From the Chairman of the Policy Planning Council and Counselor of the Department of State to Secretary of State Rusk, (23 July 1963), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963 Volume VIII, National Security Policy, Document 136, pp. 489-490. I should report to you the state of the BNSP [Basic National Security Policy] in the Pentagon. You will recall that, at Secretary McNamara's request, you referred the draft BNSP back for another round of work which would give the JCS a chance to thrash out its views with DOD. After that work had gone forward nearly to resolution Secretary McNamara shifted his earlier favorable view to a judgment that the BNSP was not necessary for the conduct of his business. Thus, so far as the Pentagon is now concerned the BNSP is dead. Whatever the limitations inherent in any such document, I doubt that it will redound to the credit of our Administration that we failed to thrash out any successor document. A BNSP obviously cannot substitute for specific policy judgments; and it should not tie the President's hands. But it can provide an occasion for debating and defining the bone structure of policy and communicating it to the troops. For further discussion of the BNSP strategy guidance debate, see: Walter S. Poole, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, Vol. VIII: 1961-1964 Part I, The Structure of National Defense, (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 1998): p. 18. 231 Gen. Leon Johnson, USAF, Director, Net Evaluation Subcommittee, Oral Report, Net Evaluation Subcommittee, National Security Council, (27 August 1963), [Excised copy, FOIA release, formerly TOP SECRET], NARA, Record Group 218. Joint Chiefs of Staff Records (RG 218), Chairman's Files, Records of Maxwell Taylor, Box 25, 381 Net Evaluation, as 8. A Period of Nuclear Stalemate, in Special Collection: Some Key Documents on Nuclear Policy Issues, 1945-1990, edited by William Burr, National Security Archive, (15 June 2007), at < http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/special/index.htm#9 > [accessed 12 Mar. 2010]. 232 The NESC briefing for President Kennedy was one of the most important turning points in his Administrations nuclear strategy.

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U.S. would be unacceptable to political leaders. General Johnson replied that it would be, i.e. even if we preempt, surviving Soviet capability is sufficient to produce an unacceptable loss in the US. The President asked whether then in fact we are in a period of nuclear stalemate. General Johnson replied that we are. The President said these fatality figures were much higher than those he had heard recently in Omaha.4 As he recalled it, SAC estimated 12 million casualties. General Taylor said these were higher casualty figures than the President had ever seen. Today's figures include two new factors: 1. Soviet weapons were targeted on U.S. cities. 2. The use by the Soviets of huge megaton weapons was included in the computations for the first time. General Johnson replied that no matter what we do we can't get below 51 million casualties in the event of a nuclear exchange.233 PresidentI have been told that if I ever released a nuclear weapon on the battlefield I should start a pre-emptive attack on the Soviet Union as the use of nuclear weapons was bound to escalate and we might as well get the advantage by going first. SpeakerGen. JohnsonStated he did not consider this necessarily true under the circumstances which exist.234

A period of nuclear stalemate was in direct contradiction with NATOs declaratory MC-14/2 Deterrent Strategy which depended upon American willingness to initiate early strategic strikes in the event of a failing conventional defense. Thus, the NESC briefing brought to a head the nuclear linkage between US intercontinental strategic forces and NATO committed assets at the theater level particularly the role and vulnerability of forward based strike aircraft at a time the administration was trying to create a firebreak between Europes conventional defense and nuclear deterrence. Of the wide variety of strategic issues addressed during the McNamara tenure, with topics ranging from intercontinental nuclear exchange to the Vietnam War, none cut to the core of strategy development like the debates associated with the Administrations push to convert NATO war plans to Flexible Response.
233

Bromley Smith, Summary Record of the 517th Meeting of the National Security Council: Report of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, (12 September 1963), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961- 1963 Volume VIII, National Security Policy, Document 141, pp. 499-507. 234 Resume of Discussion during the NESC Briefing of 12 September 1963, attached to ibid.

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One of the first major policy changes ought by the Kennedy administration in 196` was to reduce the reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence and defense and increase the reliance on conventional forces, especially in NATO. This change in strategy was not officially adopted by NATO unit May 1967. During the interval, millions of words were written and spoken, both in this country and in Europe, regarding the merits and implications of this change.235

Under Secretary McNamaras direction, the Enthoven Systems Analysis group had been attempting to measure the Central European convention balance, in part to identify the prospects for conventional defense, and in part to generate support for the idea. Fig. 3
148 How Much ls Enough? M-Day Land Forces in the European Central Region in Mid-1968

Table 3. M-Day Land Forces in the European Genler Regiono in Mid-1968 Force Divisions Manpower in Divisions Manpower in Division Forces Riflemen (NATO as percent of Pact) Equipment (NATO as percent of Pact): Tanks Antitank Weapons Armored PersonnelCarriers (APC's) Artillery and Mortars (number of tubes) Divisional Logistic Lift Total Vehicles Engineers NATO 28-2/3b 389,000 677,O00 l0AVo 55Vo l50Vo 730Vo l00Vo l50Vo 135Vo l37Vo Warsaw Pact
460

368,000 619,000

Notes: " Center region includes West Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, and France for NATO; East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakiafor the Pact. DIncludes five French divisions. o Twenty-two of which are Soviet, and twenty-four of which are East European, including eight Czech.

These types of static side-by-side comparisons popularized by Systems Analysis L0,000 men, while a West German division has 20,000 men. The throughout the 1960s hdivisionpositive and negative aspects haserms of assessing a average NATO ad both force in the center region in t about 23,600 men (actual peacetime strength), compared with about 1.3,500 for major theater military balance. On the constructive side, they made a contribution the average Pact division force. The average U.S. division force has by: about 19.Q00 men. In the face of such enormous differences in size, 235 on either Program, 1 only lead to discussionsSmith, How Much is Enough? Shaping the Defense side can 961-1969, op cit: p. Enthoven and of the number of divisions 117. gross misunderstanding of the situation and, more seriously, to strategiesof despair. l' The fact of roughly equal manpower is particularly significant. A 63 I, soldier, unlike a division, i, u relatively equivalent unit, if he is simi|larly trained and equipped by either NATO or the Pact. Also, as

b o

Defining different categories of weaponry and not relying on the traditional division counts that had been quite misleading; Trying to compare apples to apples by differentiating active versus low ready and reserve forces; Carefully delimiting the geographic scope of the comparison; and where military assets were being counted; Contrasting the different approaches to logistics and support; and Highlighting anomalies and inconsistencies. A tendency to downplay or paper over disturbing asymmetries for example, the Warsaw Pact advantage in offensive tank and armored formations; A tendency to tip the scales in counting for example, including quarter ton Jeeps in NATOs truck count, which made 30% difference for blue, but was not a factor for red; A tendency to make optimistic assumptions about NATO mobilization and reaction time; A tendency to highlight differences between American forces and Soviet, but ignore equal or even greater anomolies between US and NATO units; A tendency to pretend that Nuclear Weapons were out of the equation, when in fact both sides had thousands deployed and dual capable systems were a major feature of the forces as well as future contingency plans; and, A tendency to treat side-by-side comparisons as if they reflected military face-to-face combat and with it the utter disregard of military operational planning.

On the other hand, there were also serious flaws in the approach;

Unfortunately for the credibility of the comparative process, most of the negatives appeared to not just be issues associated with bean counting but reflected a less than honest effort to load the analytical dice and use weighted scales to sell a political message. The Net Evaluation Subcommittee study plan for 1964 focused on the NATO- Warsaw Pact military balance in Central Europe. This was the first time the NESC had focused on a major theater where the complexity of conventional, tactical nuclear and strategic nuclear forces overlapped. Secretary of State found the study interesting;
There are some findings of the report on which I should like to comment. First, I agree completely that political and psychological factors will be important, and in some situations may be determining, in the decisions to release nuclear

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weapons. It is for this reason that I have always felt that we need not only a wide range of options, but also effective means for exercising initial and continuing control by the President, over the use of all types of nuclear weapons. I believe it would be helpful, if it has not already been done, to brief the President on what can and cannot be accomplished with existing systems and procedures in exercising selective control over the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. We should then seek means of remedying deficiencies in pres-ent control systems. Second, I was impressed by the description of the restrictions of SACEUR's flexibility in the use of NATO forces in limited aggression situations. I concur in the judgment that situations may arise in which the risk inherent in degrading NATO's general war posture in Europe is more than offset by the advantages of bringing decisive conventional forces to bear in a limited conflict. While we must exercise considerable care to avoid the impression among our allies that we are prepared to contemplate a World War II conventional hostility limited to Europe, or that we would not carry out our nuclear commitments, it is important that we place our emphasis on the more likely sort of contingencies, with the expectation that in time our allies will agree with the wisdom of such action. This suggests that SACEUR should prepare, by the way of planning or training, more than he has in the past for contingencies in which some degrading of his general war posture is permitted by higher authority in order to cope with a limited conflict. In particular, I would hope additional effort would be directed at the problem of unpremeditated conflict arising from the present unsettled situation in Central Europe. I understand that this, and other ideas to improve SACEUR's capabilities for situations less than general war are under continuing discussions among Ambassador Thompson, Mr. McNaughton and General Goodpaster. I hope that we will be able to reach a considered judgment about this matter at an early date. Third, I fully endorse the position that there should be continuing inter-agency work on improving our crisis management capability, to include a timely development of contingency plans identifying the politico-military courses of action in anticipation of a crisis. Pursuant to an exchange of correspondence between the Secretary of Defense and me, we have established a small senior level coordinating committee precisely to fill this need. Fourth, I am entirely in accord with the suggestion that there should be close State-Defense collaboration in developing the portions of the JSCP and JSOP having to do with national and military objectives and strategic concepts.236

Rusk concluded by assuring the JSC that we will make every effort to avoid creating delays in the JSCP and JSOP timetables as a result of Department of State participation.
236

The most recently completed NESC study was an evaluation of a war

Dean Rusk, Letter From Secretary of State Rusk to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Wheeler), (23 November `964), Foreign Relations of the United States, 19641968 Volume X, National Security Policy, Document 62, pp. 180-181.

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conducted in 1964 between the US, its Allies, and the Soviet Bloc based on current U.S. war plans with the overall purpose to evaluate the validity and feasibility of this type of analysis as a basis for providing guidance for political-military planning.237 As one of the participants remembers, I stayed with the Net Evaluation Subcommittee for another study, and the next one was on NATO. But:
there we also ran into a disagreement with the top people in the Kennedy Administration; not over fundamentals, but over implementation mainly. What Kennedy wanted to do was to change NATO strategy away from the idea of heavy reliance on nuclear weapons, which was the Eisenhower notion, and to what was called Flexible Response, something that Maxwell Taylor had been advocating for a long time and that Kennedy felt was the right approach. That doctrine said that you do not use nuclear weapons automatically, you try first to see what you can do with conventional, in effect. I supported the basic policy and hoped, in a study that we were asked to do in that Evaluation Subcommittee, that it would be shown that that was a feasible policy. Well, we traveled to Europe and talked to a lot of military commanders and concluded that in order to have a successful conventional defense, there was a great deal of work that needed to be done. You just couldnt adopt that kind of a strategy without making some pretty significant changes in the way the military was structured, and basically said that in our report to the NSC. Briefed Maxwell Taylor on it, who was a little taken aback, but not nearly as taken aback as Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense. We briefed him on the findings of the report one morning, and he was highly critical and said we hadnt taken various things into account. And of course there were some things we hadnt taken into account. Our basic stance, though, was not that we were quarreling with the idea that we ought to have a good conventional defense in Europe, but that we were moving too fast in trying to persuade the NATO countries that it should be done basically overnight. The result of that was that the Net Evaluation Subcommittee was essentially discontinued.238

Lest the intent be missed, the interviewer asked: What was the motivation behind McNamaras disagreeing? And: Was it because you were running against what was essentially a political decision and you were coming up with, say, the hard facts, that this wont [work]? Answer: Yes, essentially thats what it was. Thus, in the name of maintaining the Pentagon on message, McNamara fired for effect in a Memorandum to President Johnson:
Having studied the 1964 Report, I do not feel that a brief survey of this type qualifies as a basis for planning guidance. As a broad survey of the problem, it
237

Robert S. McNamara, Draft Memorandum From Secretary of Defense McNamara to President , Johnson (undated), Foreign Relations of the United States, 19641968 Volume X, National Security Policy, pp. 201-203. 238 Kennedy, Interview with James E. Goodby, op cit.

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is not without merit; but our strategic planning today is increasingly based upon more detailed studies of specific problem areas, such as those included on the Secretary of Defense's annual Project List and other studies conducted by the Joint Staff and military departments.239 The economy involved in eliminating a major study group is obvious. We can, I feel, make better use of our limited study skills while simultaneously improving the product delivered to the consumer. Participation in DoD studies by other government agencies is, of course, welcomed when warranted by the subject matter. Similarly, we remain responsive to requests for study reports from other interested agencies of the government. In summary, while the annual study program of the NESC had value and relevance in 1958, its contribution today is marginal when compared to the battery of specific studies which have become major functions of the JCS and DoD during the intervening years. It therefore appears logical to terminate the requirement for the NESC.240

The final coup d gras was the last sentence: Attached is a draft implementing directive for signature. The response of the JCS was telling and ironic. Originally, in the mid-1950s, they had felt that a special study group reporting to the Commander-in-Chief infringed on their prerogatives. However, throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Net Evaluation Subcommittee had done yeoman service and been a very constructive process of reconciling military strategy with national policy in a reflective and recursive process. Where the JCS had been a major force at the beginning of the Kennedy Administration and often a source of contention within it, by the mid-1960s:
The Joint Chiefs of Staff were composed primarily of men little known to the public me with no real public image. The were not yes men, but they were selected by the president and Mr. McNamara because if was felt they would not kick over the traces. The were not men who would pound the table. They were not strong Chiefs of Staff in the tradition of Ernie King or George Marshall.241

In this light, it is interesting to note the reaction of the JCS Chairman to McNamaras
239

For example, the Special Studies Group (SSG) of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has developed a broader base of expertise than that of the NESC staff. Both groups have explored similar issues, used the same sources of input, obtained the same computer support and have performed the same type of analysis. Because of the close relationship of strategic studies to forces, the budget, and other on-going Defense Department studies, the usefulness of the SSG studies has been understandably greater than the annual survey of the NESC. McNamara, Draft Memorandum From Secretary of Defense McNamara to , President Johnson op cit. 240 Ibid. 241 Baldwin, Strategy for Tomorrow, op cit: p. 13.

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ditching of the NESC:

The Joint Chiefs of Staff have reviewed the 1964 NESC Report2 pursuant to our meeting with you on 6 July 1964. This memorandum covers only those questions relating to national planning. Issues regarding NATO defenses were dealt with in JCSM865, dated 8 January 1965, subject: Issues Concerning NATO Raised by the 1964 NESC Report (U).3 The 1964 NESC Report raised three major questions regarding planning: a. Do the Joint Chiefs of Staff lack guidance for the preparation of military plans which could be provided by a Basic National Security Policy or other compilation of strategic planning guidance having national endorsement? (Pages 23, 33, NESC Report) b. Should JSOP and JSCP sections dealing with national and military objectives and strategic concepts be discussed among planners of the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and other appropriate agencies? (Pages 4, 3334, NESC Report) c. Should US military and political departments undertake more extensive cooperation in identifying specific potential crisis situations and examining them in the light of the political-military measures which they might require? (Page 34, NESC Report) With respect to the requirement for a Basic National Security Policy, its compilation into a single document is desirable in principle, but, at the present time, the Joint Chiefs of Staff do not lack policy guidance for the preparation of military plans. Necessary guidance is obtained through both face-to-face meetings and a continuing exchange of written memoranda with the Secretary of Defense. Guidance also results from meetings with the President, National Security Council meetings, National Security Action Memoranda, National Country Policy papers, and National Planning Task papers. Lack of a Basic National Security Policy has not handicapped the Joint Chiefs of Staff in developing basic short-range (JSCP), mid-range (JSOP), and long-range (JLRSS) plans, as well as specific contingency plans. Finally, there are in existence some 200 contingency plans prepared by unified and specified commands as a result of both broad and specific directives in the JSCP. These plans represent the military planning for crisis situations in a wide variety of situations and a large number of countries and areas. There is no evident need to provide additional organizations for crisis planning.242

Thus, on 18 March 1965, the Net Evaluation Subcommittee was dissolved by

242

Earle G. Wheeler, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, Issues Regarding National Planning Raised by the 1964 NESC Report (U), (4 February 1965), Memorandum From the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense McNamara.

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Presidential order with little fanfare, no eulogy for its long existence and many contributions -- no one attended the funeral.243 There was a post-script however. Even though the Administration finally won its political battle to have Flexible Response adopted by the Alliance, the adoption of a new strategy did not satiate the need for net evaluation. In fact, three post-mortem examples underscore that point. First, the ink was not even dry on the NESC death warrant when the State Department, noting that similar issues related to conventional-nuclear forces and strategic issues of targeting restraint were associated with the rise of new nuclear power in Asia, asked for a similar type of project be established related to China.244 Second, as the US attempted to revive arms control discussions with the Soviet Union, various intelligence issues that could impact the strategic balance kept recurring, and it was not uncommon for observers to note: There is no agreed-upon or disagreed-upon net evaluation
243

Bromley Smith, Memorandum From the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council (Smith) to All Holders of NSC 5816, (23 March 1965), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964 1968 Volume X, National Security Policy, Document 82, pp. 228: The President on March 11, 1965, 2 approved the recommendation of the Secretary of Defense that NSC 5816, A Net Evaluation Subcommittee, be rescinded. The Subcommittee, having served its purpose with distinction, was 3 discontinued on March 18 by National Security Action Memorandum No. 327. The type of study which the Subcommittee has conducted since 1958 will be accomplished by other means. Copies of NSC 5816 now in the custody of the member agencies may be destroyed or otherwise disposed of in accordance with the regulations of the member agency relating to the custody and destruction of 4 5 classified materials and with Executive Order 10501, as amended by Executive Order 10964. 244 Dear Bob: The Department of State has no objection to your raising with the President the question of discontinuing the Net Evaluation Subcommittee (NESC) of the National Security Council. The 2 case you present in your draft memorandum of December 23 to the President is a persuasive one and the Department believes the President would be well advised to consider whether he wishes to retain the Subcommittee, at least in its present form. The participation of representatives of this Department in the preparation of strategic studies at the working level has been useful to this Department. Therefore, it is hoped that arrangements can be made to continue such participation. Moreover, although surveys such as the last NESC study may not qualify as a basis for planning guidance, the Department believes that a similar broad survey of a possible major conflict between the United States and Communist China could serve a useful purpose in clarifying issues and highlighting areas which could usefully be the object of more detailed consideration. If you agree, we suggest that Ambassador Thompson meet soon with Mr. Vance and General Wheeler to discuss these matters. George W. Ball, Memorandum From Acting Secretary of State Ball to Secretary of Defense McNamara, (28 January 1965), Foreign Relations of the United States, 19641968 Volume X, National Security Policy, p. 205. In fact, a State-Defense working group was set up on China, with at least one overlapping member of the NESC on it, but the focus remained at the political level and there was no serious military balance analysis of the conventional- nuclear issues raised by the PRCs new status as an Nth power. Kennedy, Interview with James E. Goodby, op cit. the next thing we did was an interagency study, more or less the same framework, on China.

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within the US Government.245 Third, a case could be made that having adopted a new NATO strategy in advance of the material assets necessary to make it viable, the real work (as opposed to salesmanship) had only just begun. In short, the more serious the desire to reduce NATO dependence upon nuclear deterrence, the greater the need for: Detailed balance diagnosis as a reflective monitoring mechanism to calibrate progress (or lack of it); Prognostic trend analysis, to identify key vectors in both sides rapidly changing conventional technology; Prescriptive identification of key transformational technological, force structure and arms control proposal would be needed to first establish a capable conventional defense and then convert it into a credible deterrent.

The fundamental mistake McNamara and President Johnson made was to assume that because Systems Analysis had done a couple of studies in the mid-1960s, this would be enough to break Alliance drift and Pentagon institutional inertia: it wasnt. Indeed, toward the end of the Johnson Administration, when McNamara was

gone and NATO had already adopted Flexible Response, General Maxwell Taylor, now Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, sent an interesting recommendation to the President:
In the course of the Board's continuing appraisal of the adequacy of our Government's intelligence coverage of Soviet plans and actions affecting U.S. national security, we have had discussions of the desirability of reinstituting a periodic examination of the relative strategic strength of the United States and the USSR. We have noted that the Net Evaluation Subcommittee of the National Security Council which had been charged with this work was inactivated in 1963 and that no other agency in the government has been given the responsibility for continuing an interdepartmental analysis of this matter.2 Meanwhile, from the intelligence point of view, we see the increasing need for reliable information on the status of Soviet advanced strategic military capabilities, and on related Soviet research and development efforts. Based on discussions with former members of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, our conclusion is that the former evaluation procedure would hardly be adequate to cope with the current problem which is now far more
245

Memorandum From Spurgeon Keeny of the National Security Council Staff to the President's Special Assistant (Rostow), Subject: CIA Intelligence Report on the Status of the Anti-Missile Defense System for Moscow, (31 May 1966), Foreign Relations of the United States, 19641968 Volume X, National Security Policy, Document 130, pp. 402-405.

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complex than the one which confronted us in the past. These complexities arise from the growing sophistication of strategic offensive and defensive weapons systems, the many unknown factors with regard to the performance of these new weapons and the sensitivity of the kind of study which we have in mind. The kind of analysis we envision would call for an evaluation of the composition, reliability, effectiveness and vulnerability of the strategic offensive and defensive forces of both sides, to include their command and control systems. It would also call for a close study of the urban-industrial structure of both nations in order to assess the probable effects of strategic attacks on urban-industrial targets. These analyses should be based upon the best available information and foreign intelligence. A by-product of the kind of new study we are discussing would be to focus attention on the gaps in the intelligence data and to accelerate measures to collect the missing pieces. After the development of the best possible understanding of the likely performance of the opposing strategic forces, it should then be possible to construct one or more scenarios for war game purposes in order to measure the interactions of these forces in nuclear war. The results would then permit our best military and scientific minds to draw pertinent conclusions as to the relative strength of our forces and the considerations which should influence future decisions and actions in the strategic field. The agencies interested in such a study and with a contribution to make to it include the White House, State, Defense, JCS, CIA, Justice and AEC. Since the study would draw heavily upon the scientific community, the President's Science Advisory Committee should be included as a participant. Taking into account this breadth of governmental interest, the question arises as to the best way of organizing it. The old Net Evaluation Group did not have adequate scientific support to carry on a study of the scope which we are proposing. Furthermore, it reported through a committee chaired by the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff to the National Security Council. Under present conditions, the Board believes that the proposed study could best be done under the Secretary of Defense acting as executive agent for the President.246 Their bottom line: It is the recommendation of your Board that the Secretary of Defense be directed to prepare proposed terms of reference whereby he would undertake the net

evaluation studies in collaboration with the appropriate other government agencies, along the lines suggested above. The new Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, after consulting with JCS
In response to your request that we look into Max Taylor's suggestion for a resumption of the sort of study last conducted by the Net Evaluation Subcommittee of the NSC in 1963, I have had my staff review existing studies to
246

Chairman Wheeler, formally demurred:

Maxwell D. Taylor, Memorandum From the Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (Taylor) to President Johnson, (9 August 1968), Foreign Relations of the United States, 19641968 Volume X, National Security Policy, Document 211, pp. 732-734.

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determine whether a new NES-type effort would be worthwhile. Needless to say, the NES studies were initiated in the 1950's at a time when our strategic capabilities were far less than they are today and more significantly for purposes of a new study, we lacked the analytical capability to assess relative U.S. and Soviet performance in various scenarios. General Wheeler and I find that existing current material fully covers the ground of the Net Evaluation studies. Our intelligence in regard to Soviet capabilities has vastly improved, as reflected in periodical NIEs on Soviet strategic offensive and defensive systems, updated versions of both of which will be forthcoming shortly (NIEs 118 and 113). Each year the Joint War Games Agency writes a Soviet objectives plan (RISOP) which they game against our SIOP. These results give us a very detailed evaluation of our near-term capabilities against the Soviets and their capabilities against us. When dealing with capabilities over the next ten years, the DOD strategic force and effectiveness tables, last revised on August 7, 1968, consider relative strengths in a number of different strategic situations, and we have the capability of readily preparing additional tables for any particular scenario not covered. The forthcoming DPM on U.S. strategic and defensive systems also covers much of the same ground. In the light of the availability of this material General Wheeler and I are convinced that it would not be desirable to proceed with a new net evaluation study.

However, in a personal note to Gen. Taylor, the SecDef was not so negative:
Dear Max: Thank you for sending me a copy of the memorandum you propose to send to the President in regard to the FIAB proposal for a new Net Evaluation Study.2 In general you have done justice in presenting my views, although there are many more evaluations going on than I mentioned in my letter to Walt Rostow3 or than you mention in your memorandum to the President. I would like to emphasize, however, that while I believe a new administration might wish to have a hand in initiating as far-reaching a study as you propose, my main point is that existing studies and existing coordinating mechanisms for bringing information to bear on the problem are adequate to do the job. This is not to say that there are no intelligence gaps, or that we intend to rest on the merits of studies we have already completed. I am convinced, however, that our current efforts are able to identifyand take steps to fill any gaps in our intelligence, our research and development, and our analysis. I believe that our current efforts have the interdepartmental inputs that you feel would be the main benefit of your proposed study. What is lacking most in our current efforts is the relaxed, long-range view that could best be supplied by studies at IDA, Rand, etc. I have been promoting such studies and would appreciate your help in focusing such studies on the pertinent issues. I have enclosed brief descriptions of a few of the more important continuing efforts that we are making to evaluate the relative strategic strength of the

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United States and the USSR. I would be glad to provide briefings on any of these efforts to you personally or to the FIAB.247

The areas of study underway referenced by the SecDef included: 1. Political-Military War Games; 2. RISOP-SIOP War Games; 3. Post-Nuclear Attack Study; 4. Strategic Forces Draft Presidential Memorandum; 5. DoD Strategic Force and Effectiveness Tables; 6. Study of Sub-SIOP Options; 7. National Intelligence Estimates and Projections.248 What was not on that list, is where the NESC had left off the interrelationship between the Conventional force balance in Europe, its relationship with dual- capable and theater nuclear forces, and the continued dependence of NATOs new strategy of Flexible Response upon nuclear options. Thus, while Maxwell Taylor and the FIAB appreciated the work being done as outlined by Clifford,249 it was not an accident, that, following the election, they reported:
Comparative Evaluations of Military Capabilities. The Board believes that national security interests would benefit from the establishment of an interagency mechanism (representing civilian and military departments and agencies) for making periodic, comparative evaluations of the military offensive and defensive capabilities of the U.S. and the USSR. It is important that this be an interdepartmental effort involving as participants all appropriate elements of the Executive Branch. We envisage that from time to time this body would evaluate the composition, reliability, effectiveness and vulnerability of the offensive and defensive forces of
247

Letter From Secretary of Defense Clifford to the Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (Taylor), (20 September 1968), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964 1968 Volume X, National Security Policy, Document 215, pp. 739-743. 248 Major DoD Efforts to Evaluate the Relative Strategic Strength of the United States and USSR, enclosure to: Letter From Secretary of Defense Clifford to the Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (Taylor), ibid. 249 2 Dear Clark: Your letter of 20 September will be most helpful to your old colleagues of the FIAB in dealing with the intelligence aspects of its central theme. Although aware of some of them, I found the tabulation of DOD efforts in the field most impressive and would like to take advantage of your offer of a briefing on some of them. With regard to the use of IDA, Rand, etc. for studies in this field, speaking under my IDA hat I can assure you of IDA's readiness to work on any aspect of these problems which are within its competence. Sincerely. Maxwell D. Taylor, Letter From the Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (Taylor) to Secretary of Defense Clifford, (24 September 1968), Foreign Relations of the United States, 19641968 Volume X, National Security Policy, Document 216, p. 744.

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both sides, thus providing an informed basis for national policy decisions. An anticipated by-product of such studies would be the identification of significant gaps in the intelligence community's coverage of the USSR.250

250

Maxwell D. Taylor, Report Submitted by the Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (Taylor) to President Johnson, (25 November 1968), Foreign Relations of the United States, 19641968 Volume X, National Security Policy, Document 222, pp. 758-770.

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E. The 1970 Blue Ribbon Defense Panel

There is no mechanism within the Department to provide an integrated analysis which systematically places existing or proposed programs in the context of the capabilities and limitations of the United States and its allies versus possible antagonists.251

The conduct of Net Assessments for the Secretary of Defense originated in the early 1970s. This was a period when the national security consensus had eroded during an expensive and frustrating military intervention, it was a climate of economic pressure where military budgets were headed toward fiscal constraint, and at a time when new threats appeared on the horizon. Net Assessment was viewed by a few far-sighted leaders as a method of helping the US remain competitive in a changing security environment. This then was the environment in the first year of the Nixon Administration when the President commissioned a number of outside efforts to examine government organization and propose more effective and efficient structures. In April the Ash committee252 began its work on The Presidents Council on Executive Organization. Only three months later, in the summer of 1969, the Fitzhugh Commission253 started studying the organization and management of the Pentagon,254 and there were similar, if less known, efforts directed at State and the CIA.255 This one-year effort became know as the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel (BRDP),
251 252

Fitzhugh, Report to the President, op cit., p. 31. Named after its Chairman Roy Ash, appointed 5 April 1969. A number of scholars have observed that the Presidents reasons for creating Government reform commissions are unknown, the motivations behind the Nixon administrative strategy are unclear, there is no question that the strategy involved some important institution changes within the Executive branch. David McKay, Domestic Policy and Ideology: Presidents and the American State, 1964-1987, (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 100. 253 Fitzhugh, Report to the President, op cit.. 254 They were commissioned 1 July 1969 and submitted their report exactly one year later. Fitzhugh, chairman of the Board of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, complained about fragmentation of responsibility for decisions, excessive size of staffs, the constant thrusting of minor issues to the top for decision, and the delays in making decisions through committees and staff co-ordination. 255 In November 1971, the Office of Management and Budget's James Schlesinger, conducted a secret review of the intelligence community and the Nixon Administration announced "a number of management steps to improve the efficiency and effectiveness" of US intelligence. OMB had been

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consisting of sixteen distinguished members, including a number of CEOs with defense related executive experience, supported by a large staff of 46, a majority of whom were focused on researching the problems. Most of the Blue Ribbon Panels focus was on the Pentagons mismanagement
The Department of Defense presents an unparalleled management challenge. Many factors contribute to the scope of this challenge, including: the size of the defense establishment; the variety and diversity of its activities, all of which are closely interrelated; its technological dependence; the annual authorization-appropriation cycle; the political sensitivity of its operations; the obscurity of any quantitative standards for measurement of success or failure; the diverse origin and broad sweep of its policy guidance; the internal divergences of interests within the Department; and the variances of its objectives due to changing threats, shifting potentials for crises and fluctuating national commitments.258

of the unmanageable256 by an un-managing management.257

Four issues were raised by the BRDP of direct relevance to our interest the failure to control escalating costs as the US depended upon qualitative system performance, the lack of realistic planning in the budgetary process, the need of the Secretary of Defense to be directly supported by long-range planning and net assessment, and growing concern that America was being overtaken by the Soviet Union in several key areas of military balance. Major issues addressed by the Blue Ribbon Panel were the failure to control waste and cost overruns as well as the inability of the Defense planning process to forecast accurate budgetary performance. Although the PPBS is the major planning, programming and budgeting procedure in the Department, the BRDP concluded

significantly empowered by the Ash Council recommendations, and interestingly, Schlesinger would a year later be named Director of the CIA to implement his own recommendations but his four-month tenure was too short to bring about any large-scale change. 256 Fitzhugh declared at a July 1970 press conference that his investigation showed that the Pentagon was "an impossible organization to administer in its present form, just an amorphous lump. Shaping the Amorphous Lump, Time, 10 August 1970, at < http://time- proxy.yaga.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,876725,00.html > [accessed 13 October 2005] 257 Fitzhugh was quoted as personally concluding that: There is nobody you can point your finger at if anything goes wrong, and there is nobody you can pin a medal on if it goes right, because everything is everybody's business. What is everybody's business is nobody's business. Ibid.; for a contemporary commentary, see also: Timothy H. Ingram, The Corporate Underground, The Nation, vol. 213, issue 7, 13 September 1971, at < http://www.nationarchive.com/Summaries/v213i0007_08.htm > [accessed 10 November 2005]. 258 Fitzhugh, Report to the President, op cit., p. 111.

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that it has more practical use as a budgeting device than as a planning and programming procedure.259 Fig. 3

While the PPBS had brought consistency and discipline to the frontside creation of DoD budgets, there was a growing trend where the backside performance the discipline to match output with the plan -- was breaking down.260
259 260

Ibid., p. 114. Franklin C. Spinney, Statement, (testimony in Hearings; Washington, DC: Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations, Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, 4 June 2002), at < http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/spinney_testimony_060402.htm > [accessed 1 April 2008], notes that the disconnect begins in the late 1960s with alternating swings in under/over estimation of budgets. The overages are driven by front-end downplaying of system lifecycle costs, which ultimate lead to overruns, drops in production, and subsequent high unit prices. The low-balled cost projections made during the pre-production phase of a weapons life cycle permit too many new programs to get stuffed into the out years of the FYDP. This sets the stage for repeated increments of cost growth and ever rising pressure to grow the entire defense budget. But the budget cannot grow as fast as the unit costs of front-loaded programs increase and eventually a retrenchment sets in. At the same time, the effects of political engineering paralyze decision-makers and induce them to absorb the cost growth through inefficient expediencies, like repeated production stretch-outs in lieu of terminations. The lower rates of production naturally decrease the rate of inventory turnover, which increases the age of weapons and makes them more expensive to operate, thereby driving up the

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 Subsequent studies over the last thirty years have shown how prescient the Fitzhugh panels concern was.261 Figure 2 above illustrates the historic disconnect between the FYDP projected plans and the actual budgetary performance. Depending on the cycle, the FYDP was wrong when budgets were increasing, wrong when they were in decline, and in fact, only one out of thirty years plans corresponded with what actually happened. This breakdown in financial discipline is not only inefficient but produces a disconnect where the budget takes on an alternate reality, one divorced from the external environment and driven instead by internal constituents.262

operating budget. But the increasing age of the equipment also increases the pressure to transfer money from the operating budget to the modernization budget, while the rising cost of operating the older weapons makes it more difficult to do so. Consequently, cost pressure builds up rapidly over time, and a kind of boom and bust cycle is born: Budget retrenchments like those in the 1970s and 1990s make problems worse, which are followed by budget expansions that naturally overreach when the front loaders and political engineers plant the seeds for anther round of outyear underfunding problems. Over time, the cycle of decay takes the form of the so-called death spiral of shrinking combat forces, decreasing rates of modernization, aging weapons inventories, with the rising cost of operations creating continual pressure to reduce readiness.: 261 Defense Acquisitions: Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs, (GAO-08-467SP; Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, March 2008); and press summary: Dana Hedgpeth, GAO Blasts Weapons Budget, Washington Post, 1 April 2008, p. A-1, reports that GAO auditors found that of 72 major systems GAO examined in detail, none had met all of the standards for best management practices during their development stages. Auditors said the Defense Department showed few signs of improvement since the GAO began issuing its annual assessments of selected weapons systems six years ago. It's taking longer and costing more." 262 Without reliable information, there can be no confidence that the required matchup between the Defense organism and its environment has been or will be achieved. When such a condition of uncertainty persists, the interaction of chance with necessity guarantees that it is only a matter of time before dangerous mismatches creep insensibly into the relationship between organism and its environment. When this occurs, the unreliable information in the database creates a kind of virtual reality that disorients decision makers, yet keeps them busy, thereby blocking corrective action, while the internal activities shaped by their decisions become progressively disconnected from and vulnerable to the threats and constraints in the real world. Moreover, without decisive action to correct the source of the disorientation i.e., the corrupted information the disorientation will grow worse over time, leading inevitably to a growing sense of confusion and disorder that feeds back into and magnifies the disorientation even further. Eventually the breakdown in the goal seeking process will produce paralysis, and the activities of the organism will be directed more by inner workings of its constituent factions than by the requirements of the environment. Naturally, such a self-referencing process would become far more dysfunctional if the external environment changed suddenly and unexpectedly. Spinney, Statement, op cit..

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In an extended Appendix, Mechanisms for Change Organizational

History,263 the Blue Ribbon Panel recognized that many traditional aspects of foreign relations had become strategic. First, the declining distinction between peace and war converted mobilization time from weeks to minutes and with it brought standing armies, fleets in being and, with hair-trigger forces, the danger of strategic surprise. Second, the introduction of weapons of mass destruction combined with intercontinental range, not only created an environment of reciprocal fear of surprise, but held entire nations in delicate balance of terror one in which they could be destroyed. And third, the increasing communicability and complexity of international relations produced a security environment involving a much wider range of professional expertise in science as well as a number of social disciplines. As a result, the image of an expert military profession, unchallengeable in its field, began to fade in the strategy of the atomic age -- military advice had to be tempered with a wide range of civilian expertise.264 The Blue Ribbon Defense Panel picked up on the observation that in a Cold War military advice was essential but seldom determining,265 and they focused on

263

Appendix A, Mechanisms for Change Organizational History, to Report to the President and the Secretary of Defense on the Department of Defense, (Washington, DC: Blue Ribbon Defense Panel, 1 July 1970). 264 The argument was not that these disciplines could not be taught in officer schools or mid-career graduate education, but rather, that truly developing a professional level of expertise in an analytical area whether economics or physics, arms control or the methodology of long-range planning involved continued participation in the field through research, publication and peer exchange. Obviously, a military officer could be assigned to an area of expertise for more than cumulative decades worth of experience, but then as they would become substantive experts in another occupation over time they would be military in name only a pattern evidenced in a number of officers assigned to the civilian side of Pentagon planning, including Net Assessment. The author remembers fondly a promotion party for a long-time assigned military officer to OSD/NA who, having not donned his uniform in years, not only had trouble buttoning his jacket, but could not remember which direction his Colonels eagles mounted. 265 No longer could military professionals plan in isolation and expect to take over after the diplomats failed. The validity of military plans, policies and requirements depended more and more on the extent to which they were in tune with foreign, economic, and other policies than on their own merits although the law still called for purely military advice. Moreover, military experience lost much of its value as the effect of nuclear weapons could be measured only in theoretical war games and civilians invented new and imaginative computer techniques for determining probabilities. In the atomic age, a major war was no longer a continuation of policy but annihilation. Deterrence was as much a political, diplomatic, and economic problem as a military one. OSD Historian, R. A. Winnacker, The Historical Framework, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, Administration, (9 Feb. 1970) in Ibid. pp. 5-6.

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the inadequate civilian contribution to strategy development without mincing words: The Secretary of Defense does not presently have the opportunity to consider all viable options as background for making major policy decisions because important options are often submerged or compromised at lower levels of the Department of Defense. A need exists for an independent source of informed and critical review and analysis of military forces and other problems particularly those involving more than one Service, or two or more competitive or complementary activities, missions, or weapons.266 There is no organizational element within OSD with the assigned responsibility for objectively making net assessments of US and foreign military capabilities. There is no organizational element within OSD that is charged with the responsibility for long-range planning for the structuring and equipping of forces for other similar purposes.267

The emphasis was not on replacing uniformed advice on military strategy, or even changing their primacy, but in providing the national security leadership with options, independent assessments, and non-canonical planning that did not get inhibited, diluted or suppressed on their way to the top. In order to address this perceived vacuum two quite different methodologies were proposed diagnostic comparative analysis and prognostic, diachronic trend projection. Not insignificantly, as illustrated in Figure 4, two of the Blue Ribbon panels 113 recommendations called for the creation of special offices for these respective foci with both reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense. Office of Net Assessment; Office of Long-Range Planning.

The BRDP argued that each of these functions was so unique that they not only required their own separate organizations but also so important that they had to be immediately reported to the top without interference from any of the other subordinate organizations that might try to influence the independent analysis and projections of these two functions.
266 267

Fitzhugh, Report to the President, op cit., p. 29. Ibid., p. 3.

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Fig. 4

The report also recommended a third group to serve as a SecDef coordinating function, which would presumably have been the tasking and agent for these two proposed offices.268 The case for an Office of Net Assessment was made with considerable
Major program and policy decisions in the Department of Defense tend to be based on an assessment of individual factors, such as the apparent threat, the technological capability of the United States and possible opponents, and cost
268

passion in the report:

No formal mechanism exists within OSD to assure adequate coordination among the various elements of the Department. There is a need for a Coordinating Group in the immediate office of the Secretary of Defense, to assist in coordinating the activities of the entire Department and in the scheduling and follow-up of the various activities. The Coordinating Group should be headed by a civilian Director, who should also serve as executive assistant to the Secretary of Defense. Fitzhugh, Report to the President, op cit., pp. 31, 59-60. Under then Secretary of Defense Laird, this tasking and integrating role, along with a lot of other functions, was handled by his special (executive) assistant Bill Baroody Jr. and his E-ring staff. Thus, this recommendation was merely formalizing and broadening the authority of what was already happening and Laird was comfortable with.

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effectiveness criteria. The Defense intelligence community is concerned with foreign developments, but does not make assessments of US capabilities. Threat assessments are made for comparison with the projected capability of some proposed new US development. There is, however, no mechanism within the Department to provide an integrated analysis which systematically places existing or proposed programs in the context of the capabilities and limitations of the United States and its allies versus possible antagonists. The Secretary of Defense should have available, on a continuing basis, the results of comparative studies and evaluations of US and foreign military capabilities, to identify existing or potential deficiencies or imbalances in US military capabilities.269

Thus, there was the perceived need for the comparative evaluation of both US and enemy capabilities conducted by the same agent reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense. The BRDP was concerned that no one ever put the strategic picture together and that this was a vital function now performed by no one.270 They argued that Secretary of Defense needed someone close to him who would be an unbiased advisor about where the US military balance stood relative to competitors.
A way was needed to bring enemy and friendly data together with no restrictions on the information used and no limits on questions as to its accuracy or relevance. Real diagnosis was needed, not just assessments of the potential impact on the enemy in order to justify military programs that the services had already decided to pursue.271

This in turn led to the unusual staffing recommendation, at least for then, that a Net Assessment Group should consist of individuals from appropriate units in the Department of Defense, along with consultants and contract personnel appointed from time to time by the Secretary of Defense, and the OSD/NA office should report directly to him.272 The Blue Ribbon panel proposed that the trend projection and critical review of strategy functions would be performed by a parallel Long-Range Planning Group, similarly composed and likewise reporting directly to the Secretary

269 270

271 272

Fitzhugh, Report to the President, op cit., p. 31. Shaping the Amorphous Lump, Time, op cit.. Pickett, Roche, and Watts, Net Assessment: A Historical Review, op cit., p. 166. Fitzhugh, Report to the President, op cit., p. 59.

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of Defense with the responsibility for planning which integrates net assessments, technological projections, fiscal planning, etc.273
There is no organizational element within OSD that is charged with the responsibility for broadly supporting the Secretary of Defense in long-range planning which integrates net assessments, technological projections, fiscal planning, etc. Force planning is currently initiated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Military Departments within the constraints of fiscal guidance to each Service and for each major mission and support effort. In order to provide an overall balance of forces, to prevent wasteful duplications, and to develop effective but more economical alternatives to those conditioned by traditional approaches of the Military Services, OSD requires an internal long-range planning capability. The development of alternative solutions should include consideration of all relevant political, economic, and technological and military factors. To the extent to which such a capability exists in the current OSD organization, it is too fragmented and too limited by the pressure of more immediately urgent assignments to be effective.274

Co-equal in design and chain of report with diagnostic Net Assessment, the Long- Range Planning Group had two quite distinct functions. One was prognostic to identify major factors (domestic and foreign) potentially influencing the security of the nation, project alternative vectors, track changes in these trends and alert the Secretary of Defense to those which (for good or ill) might change the assumptions that the national military strategy was predicated on. The other function was prescriptive to identify new approaches and/or create alternative courses of action, including different military options, in order to both enlighten the deliberations and empower the decisions of the SecDef. On the surface, the integrative function of the Long-Range Planning Group would put it higher on the food chain as a consumer of Net Assessment products. But there was also a reciprocal and recursive feedback loop, where unexpected or newly emergent trends would be fed back to Net Assessment in order for them to evaluate the impact of this impending change. There was some dissent as to whether these two functions Net Assessment and Long-Range Planning should be treated as two separate offices, each reporting to a third coordinating officer in the immediate SecDef staff or whether the functions should be integrated into an

273

Ibid., p. 7.

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Assistant Secretary of Defense with an overall mandate encompassing Strategic Assessment. BRDP member Robert C. Jackson, who as Chairman of Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical had substantial DoD experience and insight, felt so strongly about the need to integrate the three functions long range planning, net assessment and strategy development into an ASD level position that he took the extraordinary step of issuing a Dissenting Statement arguing that the position required confidentiality and access that could only be achieved with a direct report to the SecDef.
The Panel recommends a Long Range Planning Group to provide support to the Secretary of Defense with responsibility for long range planning which integrates net assessment, technological projections, fiscal planning, etc. The Panel further recommends a coordinating group to assist the Secretary in coordinating the activities of the entire Department. The Panel also recommends a Net Assessment Group to conduct and report on net assessment of United States and foreign military capabilities and potentials. I believe these three groups should be assembled under an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Long Range Planning, Coordination, and Net Assessment. This Assistant Secretary would report directly to the Secretary/Deputy Secretary of Defense.275

The proposed elevation from the BRDP slot of two Directors to Jacksons integrated Assistant Secretary had a strong precedent in another SecDef advisory position Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs which had similarly been upgraded from a Directorate to ASD.276 What is interesting about BRDP member Jacksons proposal for an Assistant Secretary of a combined office of Net Assessment and Long Range Planning, is that his version of other aspects of DoD organizational structure was at once not as radical as the BRDP (in terms of having multiple DepSecDefs, with the Services and the Operational Commands reporting through them) and far more prescient of what
274 275

Ibid., p. 31. Robert C. Jackson, Chairman, Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical and BRDP Member, Dissenting Statement, in Fitzhugh, Report to the President, op cit., p. 204. 276 Prior to the fall of 1949, the Secretary of Defense, or his predecessor, the Secretary of War, had had no explicitly mandated civilian politico-military affairs advisor. Under President Truman a Special Assistant to the Secretary was created and outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Lovett recommended to Eisenhowers first secretary of defense, Charles E. Wilson, that the Special Assistant for ISA be upgraded to the assistant secretary level. Piller, DoDs Office of International Security Affairs, op cit., p. 60. The upgrading from advisory Special Assistant to ASD occurred in 1953.

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actually became implemented over the 1970s. This was true in particular with the retention of a real deputy in the form of a DepSecDef with Under Secretaries as an intervening layer of management for the growing number of Assistant Secretaries being created in OSD. Just as Jackson correctly forecast the trend toward functional Under Secretaries, he argued that the position of ASD for Assistant Secretary of Defense for Long Range Planning, Coordination, and Net Assessment had to be autonomous and report independently to the SecDef as illustrated in Figure 5. Fig. 5

Thus, despite differences among the BLDP as to how to organize the unique functions, among all of the members there was universal belief in and strong endorsement that the Long-Range Planning Council and a Net Assessment Group has merit. Likewise there was universal agreement that they should report directly to the Secretary/Deputy Secretary of Defense as special staff groups.277
277

Wilfred J. McNeil, Director, Fairchild Hiller Corporation, President of the Tax Foundation and BRDP Member, Dissenting Statement, in Fitzhugh, Report to the President, op cit., p. 207.

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Unfortunately, in the succeeding thirty-eight years since the need was articulated, rarely has Long-Range Planning and/or Strategic Concept Development278 actually had the high level position or institutional resources envisioned by the BRDP. Net Assessment is an exception, but its position has also vacillated widely.279

278

In 1981, SecDef Caspar W. Weinberger set up a Strategic Concepts Development Center with its Director reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense as Strategy Advisor. A position held by the author, but whose SecDef access did not survive institutionally a year after my departure. 279 From direct report to the SecDef, to a Deputy SecDef, to an Under Secretary for Policy, to proposals for it to be shipped over the National Defense University.

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 F. Lairds Search for a Strategy Dialectic

Net Assessment is a comparative analysis of those factors, military, technological, political, and economic which impede or have a potential to impede our national security objectives with those factors available or potentially available to enhance the accomplishment of those objectives.280

The idea of having some type of assessment and planning functions performed in the Pentagon was neither new nor particularly controversial,281 but having a split portfolio, with each reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense was.282 As the Blue Ribbon Panel recognized, some of the functions of the proposed Long-Range Planning Group already existed, albeit fragmented and dispersed in various parts of OSD.283 However, this was not the case with Net Assessment which had to be created from scratch, and thus there were at least two precursors to its formal establishment in Defense. Lairds long time special assistant, Bill Baroody Jr., established a Net Assessment cell within the Secretariat284 temporarily assigned to an existing Long-Range Planning unit headed by Col. Don Marshal.285 Baroodys files
280

Melvin R. Laird, National Security Strategy of Realistic Deterrence: Annual Defense Department Report, FY 1973, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1972), p. 26. 281 The JCS had long thought they were doing this through their PPBS process called JLRSA (Joint Long-Range Strategic Appraisal). 282 Defense Organization: The Need for Change: Staff Report to the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate. (Washington, DC: Committee on Armed Services, Senate, US Congress, GPO, 1985), p. 114, authored by James Locher, critiqued the Fitzhugh recommendation that the Net Assessment Group should report directly to the Secretary of Defense on the grounds too many direct reports and thus too broad a span of control. This report also suggested that the products of Net Assessment not be integrated with trend projections by a Long-Range Planning Group, but rather by a proposed Coordinating Under Secretary. This study had a major formative impact upon the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reform Act of 1986. 283 Robert W. Welsh, The Report of the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel: A Case for a Staff Management Doctrine for OSD, (monograph; Carlisle, PA: Army War College, February 1972). 284 More than a year after the report was submitted to Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird only one recommendation was acted upon: creation of the Director of Net Assessment in OSD. Major Greg H. Parlier, The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986: Resurgence In Defense Reform and the Legacy of Eisenhower, (War in the Modern Era seminar; Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Command and Staff College, 15 May 1989), at < http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1989/PGH.htm > [accessed 15 November 2005]. 285 Dr. Donald S. Marshall, had an Anthropology degree from Harvard and had conducted research with Margaret Mead in the South Pacific prior to the Second World War. In late 1972 or early 1973 he left

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suggest an interest in the Net Assessment function that arose in 1969, simultaneously, if not antedating, the creation of the Fitzhugh Commission analysis.286 The Blue Ribbon Defense Panel had placed a high stress on the importance of understanding both technological trends and the increasing evidence that the Soviet Union was closing Americas qualitative lead in a number of areas. Because Johnny Foster was seen as part of a triad running the Pentagon consisting of the Secretary, his Deputy David Packard and the DDR&E therefore some have drawn the conclusion that the net technical assessment function which the BRDP suggested should lie directly with the Secretary of Defense. Instead lies with Foster and with his deputy for Research and Advanced Technology.287
Department of Defense leadership needed a higher level of analysis, recalled Stephen J. Lukasik, who served as the Deputy Director and then Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from 1967 1974.40 The recognition of this demand within the Department of Defense led the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), John S. Foster, to establish the Office of Net Technical Assessment, which was led by Fred Wikner. The office focused on technical comparisons of U.S. and Soviet systems but did not address the grand strategic policy questions of American power in the context of its ongoing competition with the Soviet Union. The Office of Net Technical Assessment was eventually eliminated during the Carter administration. Still, in the early 1970s, the need for a higher level of analysis persisted.288

Based on my involvement with NTA,289 the types of projects they were undertaking290 and contemporary discussion with the people running it at the time,
Baroodys office to set up and manage the new office held by Fred Wikner, as Strategic Arms Control Adviser to the Secretary of Defense. The Long-Range Planning role was adopted ad hoc by others in the SecDef office front office, but with the demise of Col. Marshall the Net Assessment activity remained an orphan. 286 Net Assessment, 1969-1972 (1)-(2), Box A82 Department of Defense Papers: Baroody Subject File, (Melvin R. Laird Papers- Container List - Part 1: Boxes Open to Research); Ann Arbor, MI: Gerald R. Ford Library, no date), at < http://www.ford.utexas.edu/library/guides/Finding%20Aids/Laird,_Melvin_- _Papers_ftl1.htm > [accessed 16 November 2005]. 287 James M. Roherty, The Laird and McNamara Styles, in New Civil-Military Relations: The Agonies of Adjustment to Post-Vietnam Realities, edited by John P. Lovell and Philip S. Kronenberg, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1974), pp. 237-238. 288 Skypek, Evaluating Military Balances Through the Lens of Net Assessment, op cit: p. 12. 289 In 1973 BDMs Tactical Warfare Department run by John Bode was assigned to my National Security Programs Directorate. John had several contracts with the NTA office, and we visited there often. 290 All of the ones I remember were very detailed technical and technologically detailed studies, such as counter-battery radar evaluation or Bodes development of the P001 model to evaluate hit

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it is my strong opinion that this office was set up in reaction to the ideas of the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel, but was never intended to either implement or substitute for the BRDP recommendation for the SecDef level Office of Net Assessment. Lairds long personal interest in trying to square the circle of Americas Strategy Gap291 and create a Strategy of Realistic Deterrence292 naturally brought the topics of Net Assessment and Planning together both substantively and organizationally. The defense Report in which this combination was introduced was viewed as the best defined and most widely distributed statement yet of the meshing of foreign policy and national security policy and strategy.293 In his annual posture statement, he identified five axes on which to assess military strategy. An identified spectrum of conflict ranging from political agitation to strategic nuclear warfare with insurgency, guerrilla warfare, sub-theater conventional warfare, theater conventional, and theater nuclear in between; The national security strategy as articulated by the Commander in Chief;

probability of the ZSU-23/4 air defense gun. Following the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, NTA was DDR&Es lead in assessing the relative technological state of captured Soviet equipment; as it became evident that the US had significantly underestimated the other sides qualitative level, it could be said that this offices work took on competitive significance, but the analytic focus itself was tactical and technical. 291 Melvin Laird, A House Divided: America's Strategy Gap, (Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery, 1962). The view that his interest in strategy development was not a passing or shallow interest is shared by Douglas Kinnard, Secretary of Defense, (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1980), p. 120. Lairds recognition of both the importance of strategy as well as gaps in its conceptual development and implementation are still continuing interest of his: Melvin Laird, Purse Strings and Pragmatism, Washington Post, 17 January 2007, p. A19: cutting off funding is not a plan. Holding hearings to excoriate the executive branch is not a plan. Emotional oratory about casualties is not a plan. Such is the stuff of dinner-party debates and protest rallies. It is not what the American people need from their elected representatives, and it is not what they voted for. America needs a broad national security strategy. 292 This was the title of his 1971 Defense Posture statement that clearly showed an attempt to bridge the gap between nuclear massive retaliation and conventional flexible response by adding more options to the former and more deterrence (with less US manpower) to the later. The new strategy was designed not to manage crises but to prevent wars yet operate across the full spectrum of possible conflict and capabilities. positive and active as compared to previous strategy which was responsive and reactive. Laird argued that realistic deterrence had to be developed to deter not only nuclear war but all levels of armed conflict. But at the same time we had to develop this new strategy in a way that faces up to the realities [strategic nuclear parity] of the 1970s. Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird, Toward a National Security Strategy of Realistic Deterrence, (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 9 March 1971), pp. 1-20. 293 Raymond S. Blunt and Thomas O. Cason, Realistic Deterrence, Air University Review, (May-June 1973), at < http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1973/may-jun/blunt.html > [accessed 19 Sep. 2007]; and from the academic side: Douglas Kinnard, The New Defense Literature, Polity, vol. 5, no. 4, (Summer, 1973): pp. 517-530.

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National resources inputs measured in budget levels, active manpower and foreign assistance; Military force posture output indices for General Purpose Forces, Theater Nuclear and Strategic Forces; and Strategic concepts covering defense and deterrence based on alliance partnership, military strength, and negotiated restraint.294

Laird viewed strategy as the great work of the organization, and he was the first Secretary to go beyond sound bite comparisons and methodically juxtapose the Pentagons changing military strategy on an explicit set of relational criteria plotted over time. Addressing those five areas into a comprehensive appraisal was a monumental task, but it fit Lairds definition of Net Assessment. In his FY 1973 Annual Posture Statement, Secretary Laird introduced the construct by giving Net Assessment its own section in his report and underscoring its importance:
I said at the beginning of this Report that the business of peace is a complex one. Net Assessment in National Security Planning is an indispensable tool for coping with these complexities. In simple terms, Net Assessment, in conjunction with Total Force Planning, tells where we are, what we need to do, and how to get there. To put it more fully, Net Assessment is a comparative analysis of those military, technological, political, and economic factors: -- which impede or have a potential to impede our national security objectives available or potentially available to enhance the accomplishment of those objectives.295

with those factors: --

A dialectical process of strategic thought through which we are able to determine how to apply our resources more effectively to accomplish our national security goals.296

294 295

Laird, Toward a National Security Strategy of Realistic Deterrence, op cit., pp. 155-162. Melvin R. Laird, National Security Strategy of Realistic Deterrence, (Statement of Secretary of Defense on FY 73 Defense Budget and FY 1973-77 Program; Washington, DC: Senate Armed Services Committee, US Congress, 15 February 1972), p. 6. The term Net Assessment and the juxtaposed with were both underscored in the original. 296 Ibid..

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Where others, then and now, use the term net to refer to the juxtaposition

of ones own v. opposing forces, Lairds definition went much further than military balancing.297
Assessment and planning in the nuclear age are intimately related to understanding of international relations on the one hand and to weapons technology and possible use on the other hand. There is, of course, nothing new in this dependence. What is new is the enormous complexity that has entered into force planning since World War II, compounded by dramatic technological advances, major world economic adjustments, and a fragmenting of the past bi-polar world structure. The international environment is dynamic, confusing and in some aspects disconcerting. The rate of change political, economic, social and technical is perhaps the greatest we have ever known. Net assessment offers a valuable tool for understanding and responding to these challenges. It is important to re-emphasize that any realistic assessments and resulting plans for military forces and new weapons systems must include political, economic and social considerations. Net Assessment plays a critical role in our Total Force Planning and in the development of forces necessary to maintain our national security. In these assessments we weigh the capabilities of potential enemies against our capabilities and those of our allies. At the same time, we must give careful consideration not only to the strengths of potential adversaries, but also to the deficiencies in their capabilities and the various constraints with which they must cope.298

Although the above was stated in a special section entitled Net Assessment and the Threat, this was not merely red baiting in the guise of objectivity nor was it narrowly focused on military comparisons.
297

This is not to say that he did not include military aspects, but tended to view them as a piece of the larger assessment. Thus, Laird noted: the momentum of Soviet weapons development and deployment demands examination in relation to what we and our allies and friends must do about it. And, in conjunction with my Defense Report, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, will present to Congress and the American people a comprehensive military assessment of the threat and of our force capabilities. Our combined presentations this year will represent another step forward in our new emphasis on Net Assessment. Ibid., pp. 6-7. Concerning the military posture statement by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the first such formal statement was United States Military Posture for FY 1972, issued on 9 March 1971 by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, USN. The Secretary of Defense is required by law to present an annual report/posture statement to the Congress; the Chairman is not. The Chairman has, however, always accompanied the Secretary when he presented these statements to the Congress. Initially, the Chairman made no statement at these appearances, but he was usually called upon by the Secretary of Defense to answer certain questions. Consequently, the Chairman began to prepare an informal statement of his own, and over the years it evolved into the formal document it is today. The first one formally bound and issues as United States Military Posture was the one for FY 1972. Academic Intelligence,: Military Affairs, vol. 43, no. 1, (February 1979): p. 47. 298 Ibid., p. 29.

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Lairds perspective had a much broader and more long-range evaluative ring

to it like what would later be called competitive strategy -- reflectively assessing the environment one is in, relative to where one wants to be. Looking back, it would not be inaccurate to describe Lairds view of Net Assessment as a form of strategic sociology systemically integrating cultural, economic, technological, and political trends299 upon which planning would be based and against which new concepts could be analytically tested.300 In the SecDefs view, the leader of the Defense Department had the responsibility to be the synthesizer of military needs and civilian resources; a challenge befitting a statesman, one that could not be delegated but had to be taken personally:301
We intend to accomplish this through a more coordinated emphasis on Net Assessment in my immediate office and throughout the Department of Defense. It is important to bear in mind, however, that Total Force planning must be carried out both in terms of immediate as well as longer-range phased objectives. However, this will be a difficult task since the apparent demands of the moment may sometimes have adverse impact on what we hope to accomplish in the future.
299

One is reminded here much more of the then contemporary work of Harvard sociologist Talcott Parsons than any particular effort in IR Theory or Strategic Studies. See for example: Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers, (New York: The Free Press, 1939); Talcott Parsons, Edward A. Shils, and James Olds, Values, Motives, and Systems of Action, in Toward a General Theory of Action, Talcott Parsons and Edward A. Shils, ed., (New York: Harper and Row, 1951); Talcott Parsons and Neil Smelser, Economy and Society, (New York: The Free Press, 1956);Talcott Parsons, Structure and Process in Modern Societies, (New York: The Free Press, 1960); Talcott Parsons, An Outline of the Social System, in Theories of Society: Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory, ed. by Talcott Parsons, et. al. (New York: The Free Press, 1961); Talcott Parsons, Some Reflections on the Place of Force in Social Process, in Internal War: Problems and Approaches, ed. by Harry Eckstein (New York: The Free Press, 1964); Talcott Parsons, Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966); Talcott Parsons, Politics and Social Structure, (New York: The Free Press, 1969); and Talcott Parsons, On Building Social System Theory: A Personal History, Daedalus, (Fall, 1970); Talcott Parsons, The System of Modern Societies, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971); Talcott Parsons, The Evolution of Societies, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977). 300 Laird, National Security Strategy of Realistic Deterrence, (1972) op cit., p. 30: emphasized that there were four major areas we must take into account in any comprehensive Net Assessment related to national security planning. They are the Strategic Reality, the Political Reality, the Fiscal Reality and the Manpower Reality. 301 Several months after the announcement of the new strategy, he said that to be perfectly frank successful implementation of the strategy of realistic deterrence is the most difficult and challenging national-security effort we have ever undertaken in this country. Laird quoted in US News and World Report, 17 May 1971, p. 29.

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In order to minimize this often troublesome problem, my Director of Net Assessments will be supported by and work closely with the Office of my Assistant for Long-Range Planning, whose task it will be to assure effective coordination of the Net Assessment and Total Force planning functions of the Secretary of Defense. As a former member of Congress, I am confident that our new approach, with its emphasis on Net Assessment and Total Force planning, will permit the Department of Defense in coming months and years to be even more responsive to the Congress as we share the responsibility for assuring our national security.302

The target audience of this message was clearly the Congress, and Laird was using Net Assessment to forge a better relationship with them and was willing to make the process an extension of his immediate office and direct staff in order to demonstrate his commitment. Thus, for a Secretary of Strategy, the tools of Net Assessment and Long Range Planning were the left and right hands (brains) of strategy development303 -- respectively diagnostic and prognostic -- that, in combination would provide prescriptive input for strategy development as well as negative feedback for course correction.304 It would be through this dialectical process that the Department of Defense would be able to determine how to apply our resources most effectively in order to improve our total capability to accomplish our national security goals.305 It could be argued that McNamara had also had a dialectical process: JCS and Services proposed; the Systems Analysis policemen opposed; and the Secretary disposed. But Lairds model of Net Assessment was different. And the following seem to
Net Assessment is based on an intellectual approach that differs substantially from the modern examples. At the highest level it is for the use of the Secretary of Defense, and the questions that it tries to answer are those that
302

capture his intent:

Laird, National Security Strategy of Realistic Deterrence, (1972) op cit., p. 26. Bolding emphasis added. The term Net Assessment was underscored in the original. 303 Net Assessment and Long Range Planning, 1972, Box A82 (Open to Research), op cit.; and Key Points Rationale for Strategy, Undated, Boxes B1-B3 (Not Yet Reviewed for Opening to Research), op cit., Baroody to Secretary Laird, Concerning Net Assessment and Long Range Planning Effort (1)-(2), Memo, 1972, Boxes B1-B3 (Not Yet Reviewed for Opening to Research), op cit., 304 As in steering which could be either reinforcing or corrective as opposed to inherently critical. For this distinction drawn from cybernetic control theory, see: William W. Kaufman, Who is Conning the Alliance? Brookings Review, vol. 5, no. 4, (Fall 1987): pp. 10-17. 305 Laird, National Security Strategy of Realistic Deterrence, (1972), op cit., p. 26. Note, this sentence was in the context of his paragraph defining net assessment.

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arise when the overall capabilities and future shape of the American military are considered. It is not intended to provide a day-to-day management tool to review the efficiency with which existing missions are executed nor is it designed to alert the Secretary of Defense to the danger of an imminent war.306

In short, Lairds model of Net Assessment was not the beginning of a linear process of programming and budgeting process, but an off-line device with which to think strategically about theater balances and long-range competitive challenges that might undermine the results. Trends uncovered in Long-Range Planning or Net Assessment conclusions could serve as a thesis that something may be amiss in US strategy or that there may be a competitive advantage in doing something new.307 As illustrated in Figure 5, the Pentagon with all the inertia of the Queen Mary -- military services, Joint Staff and organizations in DoD -- can respond to the assessment with a proposed remedy that is then debated; and SecDef, with the advice of the JCS Chairman and others, has the opportunity to create a new synthesis.308 Lairds point was that given the totality of the Pentagons planning activity, a process that takes several years for each cycle and involves an enormous amount of built up momentum, it makes it difficult for the SecDef to ask questions he does not know the answers to, to innovate in rapidly changing environments in real time, or to explore alternative options (in order to remain competitive or exploit an unexpected advantage) that are outside institutional boxes. In order not to disrupt the massive mainline planning machine or be held hostage by its inertia, the Secretary thus adopted the BRDP position that it was prudent to have a strategic assessment unit reporting directly to his office. Without this direct access, his inquires could not be asked or answered in
306

Rosen, Net Assessment as an Analytical Concept, in On Not Confusion Ourselves, op cit., pp. 290-291. 307 The end product of Net Assessment provides a basis for judging whether, in the case examined, we and our allies will be able to sustain our national objectives and protect our vital interests, or if not, where there are problem areas. Laird, National Security Strategy of Realistic Deterrence, (1972), op cit., p. 26. 308 There was considerable thought that went behind the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel focused on the "dialectic" between Net Assessment diagnosis and Strategic Planning prescription as evidenced in: Net Assessment, 1969-1972 (1)-(2), Box A82 Department of Defense Papers: Baroody Subject File, (Melvin R. Laird Papers, Ann Arbor, MI: Gerald R. Ford Library); see particularly: Net Assessment and Long Range Planning,1972; and Baroody to Secretary Laird, Concerning Net Assessment and Long Range Planning Effort (1)-(2), Memo, 1972).

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confidence; or without some intervening office putting their spin on the question or trying to grade, let alone influence, the answer. Fig. 6

On the other hand, while this small planning cell or group was clearly expected to engage the various services, departments, or components in discussion and dialogue on emerging issues, the intent was NOT to create another bad experience similar to McNamaras Systems Analysis Office, where they were used as front line combatants in the bureaucratic and budgetary wars. As a dialectic, it was informative and intellectual, providing a perspective outside the formal planning process for SecDef to be exposed to dissonant views and make his own synthesis; it was NOT an antithetical battering ram with which to assault Service POM positions.309
309

Laird did not depart abruptly from the McNamara-Clifford management system, but rather instituted gradual changes. He pursued what he called "participatory management," an approach calculated to gain the cooperation of the military leadership in reducing the Defense budget and the size

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 G. The Pentagon versus the NSC

National policymakers want to know how the US stands in various types of international competition. They are interested in our relative position and any trends that may affect it. Further, it is most important to know what causes the trends.310

It has become Net Assessment folklore that Secretary Laird had chose not to implement the Fitzhugh Panels recommendations to create a net assessment function.311 But that interpretation not only is contradicted by the evidence above but also ignores the then ongoing policy conflict between the Pentagon and the National Security Council that involved both personalities,312 process,313 and policies.314 Inadvertently caught up in the middle and stimulating a net assessment
of the military establishment. While retaining decision-making functions for himself and the deputy secretary of defense, Laird somewhat decentralized policymaking and operations. He accorded the service secretaries and the JCS a more influential role in the development of budgets and force levels. He revised the PPBS, including a return to the use of service budget ceilings and service programming of forces within these ceilings. The previously powerful systems analysis office could no longer initiate planning, only th evaluate and review service proposals. Biography: Melvin R. Laird, 10 Secretary of Defense, Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Melvin R. Laird, Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2007, at < http://www.medaloffreedom.com/MelvinLaird.htm > [accessed 31 March 2008]. 310 A.W. Marshall, The Nature and Scope of Net Assessments, (memo for the record; Washington, DC: National Security Council, 16 August 1972), p. 1. 311 Pickett, Roche, and Watts, Net Assessment: A Historical Review, op cit., p. 166. 312 Kissinger was obsessed with undermining the influence of Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers by denigrating them behind their backs and excluding them from major policy matters. "Cutting out Mel Laird is what we did for a living," says former Kissinger Staffer Laurence Lynn. Walter Isaacson, Hay Corey and Peter Stoler, Two of the Presidents Men, Time, 26 April 1982. 313 For over a year, between the fall of 1970 and December 1971, a Navy Yeoman posted to the National Security Council had been copying thousands of pages of sensitive NSC memos and secretly passing them to the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the direction of the Chairman of the JCS, Admiral Moorer. For a variety of interpretations, see: Len Colodny, Excerpt of an Interview of Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, NixonEra.com Library, (Beckley, WV: Mountain State University, 2009), at < http://www.nixonera.com/media/audio/transcripts/moorer.asp > [accessed 1 Sep. 2010]; and David R. Young, Memorandum for the Record: Interview of Admiral Robert O. Welander on December 22, 1971 by John D. Ehrlichman and David R. Young, (Washington, DC: The White House, 23 Dec. 1971), at < http://nixontapes.org/welander/197112223_Ehrlichman_Young_Welander.pdf > [accessed 3 Sep. 2010]. Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: A Biography, (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2005)): pp. 380-387. 314 As JCS chairman under Nixon and Kissinger, Moorer only hardened in his view of the civilian command. According to a Defense Department study, the chairman often found his and the chiefs advice disregarded by the president and the secretary of defense.... Enlisted in devious end-runs around others, like Laird, the chiefs knew better than to imagine they were not also being played.... And for what? Despite Nixons reputation as a staunch anticommunist, his foreign policy as president withdrawal from

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organizational competition was a supplementary report on the changing balance between the US and the USSR from the Blue Ribbon Panel effort. From the perspective of the NSC it was business as usual, with assessment interest stemming from strategic competition. Here are two somewhat different versions: In November 1969, Kissinger had initiated Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) with the Soviets. By the following spring he had begun worrying that the Soviets might begin dragging their feet or otherwise misbehave regarding the negotiations. He therefore convened a special defense panel under K. Wayne Smith to explore programmatic steps the United States might take to pressure the Russians should that prove necessary in order to reach a SALT agreement. During the deliberations of Kissingers special defense panel, Charles Herzfeld pressed Marshall and Schlesinger to assess where the United States stood in the principal areas of military competition between the two Cold War adversaries. In response, Marshall focused on the Soviets and where they were headed, while Schlesinger concentrated on the two sides military budgets. Marshall, however, ended up doing most of the drafting of this first net assessment because of Schlesingers commitments at the Bureau of the Budget. 315 Or. By 1970, however, it was beginning to be clear that the US defense budget would decline after the Vietnam War was over, while the Soviets apparently were expanding their strategic nuclear forces with an intensity that seemed both unbounded and directed toward establishing clear superiority over the United States. The dominance of US forces was eroding and a long term question was how well the United States was equipped to compete with the Soviet Union in military matters. The National Security Council appointed a study group that worked on a net assessment in the last half of 1970. Its report not only speculated on long-term developments in US and Soviet forces, but recommended establishing a more permanent effort to conduct net assessments in

Vietnam, engagement with China, detente with the Soviets alarmed the chiefs as did the heavy hand of Kissinger.... Certain facts on the ground fueled this alarmism. Every day of the Nixon presidency, it seemed, fresh headlines heralded the Soviets ascendancy in strategic weapons production, and Washingtons attendant retreat from postwar hegemony. American Power Margin is Slipping cried the Washington Post. Parity became the eras grim watchword. James Rosen, The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate, (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2008): p. 167. 315 Barry Watts, Scientific Methods and New Assessment, (conference paper; Washington, DC: Conference on Net Assessment, 28 March 2008), p. 4:

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order to develop a picture of how the competition was going over time.316 Differences over positions in the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks became intertwined with varying degrees of alarm over the changing balance with the Soviets as well as a personality turf war between Laird and Kissinger. Across the Potomac in September 1970, just three months after the Blue Ribbon Report, seven of the sixteen panel members, led by Lewis Powell,317 produced a Supplemental Statement318 as a 35 page Report on the Shifting Balance of Military Power,319 derisively called the Red Book around the NSC for the color of its cover and Russians are Coming! tone.320 However, the reports call for public discussion of converging trends and the need to assess the threat to technological superiority and the contribution of negotiated limitations on the arms race, underscored the need for some type of assessment that would not only function as the basis for military strategy, but also be addressed to Congressional and public audiences.321 The Red Book highlighted three specific areas of major concern about the convergence of a number of trends indicating a significant shifting of the strategic military balance against the United States and in favor of the Soviet Union; with particular concern over: The growing Strategic superiority in ICBMs coupled with convincing evidence that the Soviet Union seeks a preemptive first-strike capability;

316 317

Pickett, Roche, and Watts, Net Assessment: A Historical Review, op cit., p. 166. The pivotal role in this balance supplement played by Lewis Powell, who would be sitting on the Supreme Court within a year is detailed in: John C. Jeffries, Jr., Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 217-220. 318 Blue Ribbon Defense Panel - Supplemental Statement, 9/30/1970, Box D5 Department of Defense Papers: Subject File, Baroody Planning Files (Melvin R. Laird Papers - Container List - Part 2: Boxes Not Yet Reviewed for Opening to Research); (Ann Arbor, MI: Gerald R. Ford Library, no date), at < http://www.ford.utexas.edu/library/guides/Finding%20Aids/Laird,_Melvin_-_Papers_ftl2.htm > [accessed 17 November 2005]. 319 The Shifting Balance of Military Power, (Supplemental Statement to Report of Blue Ribbon Defense Panel submitted to the President and the Secretary of Defense signed 30 September 1970; Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1971). 320 Net Assessment - US vs. Soviet Union (Comments/Notes Red Book, ca. October 1970 (1)-(2), Boxes B1-B3 (Not Yet Reviewed for Opening to Research); Ann Arbor, MI: Gerald R. Ford Library, no date), op cit.. 321 The Shifting Balance of Military Power, op cit., p. x.

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The rapidly expanding Soviet naval capability; and The possibility that present US technological superiority will be lost to the Soviet Union. 322

Johnny Foster, one of the most influential leaders to hold the position of DDR&E, was held in high esteem by the Blue Ribbon Defense Panel and quoted extensively in the Supplemental The Shifting Balance of Military Power report. In particular, he stressed concern about the long-range effects of Soviet R&D investment and concern that the US was losing its competitive advantage in industrial base long-range competitive themes picked up by the Blue Ribbon report.323 The authors of the supplemental Report on the Shifting Balance of Military Power admitted that it does not purport to be an exhaustive assessment of the comparative military capabilities and emphasized that it had a public education purpose.324 But one side effect was to sensitize the Kissinger NSC that some type of net effort at assessing the US v. Soviet strategic balance was going to happen whether they liked it or not and that, rather than defensively critiquing the failings of others, they should get ahead of it, and take the lead.
Although its avowed purpose was to rally public opinion behind a strong defense, the report was immediately buried. Nothing was heard of it for six months. The White House intervened through Henry Kissinger, who asked the Deputy Secretary of Defense to have his staff review the Report in some detail for substantive accuracy and for consistency with our other public statements before further consideration is given to releasing it to the public. In other words, never was soon enough.325

Despite a cold shoulder from the National Security Council,326 this pioneering US- Soviet side-by-side comparison also popularized, even within the DOD/NSC
322 323

Ibid., pp. vii. US qualitative superiority in weapons, due to its advanced technology, has afforded a decisive advantage over the past years. This advantage is now being eroded away, as the US falls behind the Soviet Union in the support of R&D and in the training of scientists and engineers. There is an ever present risk of disastrous technological surprise in major weaponry where an open society is in competition with a closed Communist society. We are neglecting, by inadequate support and planning, to minimize this risk. Ibid., pp. v and 22: In addition to talented leadership and the necessary industrial base, the essential ingredients of a vital and competitive technology are skilled manpower and adequate R&D funding." The US is falling behind the Soviet Union in both of these respects. 324 Ibid., p. v. 325 Jeffries, Jr., Justice Lewis F. Powell, op cit., p. 218. 326 Finally, on March 12, 1971, the statement was released without fanfare by low-level defense officials and given almost no circulation. Even Blue Ribbon Defense Panels members were not sent

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community, the concept of a balance that should be periodically watched and weighed via a methodology called net assessment.327 Because the Red Book intermixed description and prescription, subsequent NSC emphasis would separate them with an emphasis upon the diagnostic nature of net assessment. In the fall 1970, the Nixon Administration began taking the possibility of meaningful conventional arms control in Europe serious. In an NSC Senior Review Group meeting, chaired by the National Security Advisor, contrasted the opening position, or more accurately, non-position with the past attention given to strategic forces:
This will be a brief meeting to review where we stand on MBFR and agree where we go from here. We have identified a number of approaches: 1) an approach that is basically political; 2) an arms control approach which attempts to preserve or enhance our military position through asymmetrical cuts. I have the impression from our work on NSSM 84 and the NSC meeting that there is a general consensus that symmetrical cuts of any significant size are not very desirable from the security point of view. The only symmetrical cuts that would not be undesirable would be so small as to be symbolic, and even these might run counter to attempts to improve our posture. This leaves us with an attempt to develop an asymmetrical approach. Conceptually an asymmetrical approach represents a tough problem. Contrary to the SALT exercise, we have developed no criteria for comparison we have no yard- sticks. Nor have we worked out questions of collateral restraints, either symmetrical or asymmetrical. Our biggest problem is related to the mobilization date. Ideally, we should develop constraints designed to give maximum warning or to impede mobilization and reinforcement. We haven't yet worked out what specific constraints would be most effective. (to Mr. Helms) We haven't had a systematic analysis of how our intelligence capabilities could be strengthened to help us monitor an agreement. This is a tough problem.328

After discussion of substantive issues, the topic turned to the question of how to proceed:
Mr. Kissinger: (to Wayne Smith) Let's get a working panel to work on this, chaired by CIA with DIA representation. Mr. Packard: That's a good idea. Also, we have some new capability which we
copies. Powell expected President Nixon and Secretary Laird to applaud his statement. He failed to realize that his alarming attack on strategic preparedness against the Soviet threat was as unwelcome to the administration as it was to their liberal critics. Jeffries, Jr., Justice Lewis F. Powell, op cit., p. 218. 327 Net Assessment - US vs. Soviet Union (Comments/Notes Red Book, ca. October 1970 (1)-(2), Boxes B1-B3 [Not Yet Reviewed for Opening to Research], op cit.. 328 Minutes of a Senior Review Group Meeting, Subject: Military [Mutual] Balanced Force Reductions, (23 November 1970), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976 Volume XXXIX, European Security, Document 39, pp. 99-105.

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are looking at as an independent matter. Mr. Kissinger: We need a compilation of all the sources of our information, what sort of information we get and what sort we need. For example, I noticed a reference to the fact that if the Soviet forces were returned to the Moscow and Kiev Military Districts this wouldn't help us. Why would it not help us somewhat to have Soviet forces moved 1000 miles back? Why would it be necessary for them to go beyond the Urals? I can see the relationship of a move 1000 miles back by the Soviets to a 3000 mile move by the U.S., but it should help some. (to Wayne Smith) Let's get this compilation. Mr. Irwin: At least we would get an idea of the time span of our uncoverage. Mr. Helms: The idea of a task force is first class. Dr. Smith: Has anyone done any work on the recent Warsaw Pact exercises in this regard? We could learn something from it. Mr. Packard: We have done some work but nothing very detailed. Mr. Kissinger: We must try to be as concrete as possible. For example, we speak of troops being disbanded. Do we mean that these troops would go into reserve status; would their weapons be destroyed; if not, where would their weapons be moved? We must know what we are talking about.

Over the next six months, the need for Net Assessments of US and Soviet forces, and the role of doing it from the NSC as an interagency process began to take hold.329 There is some evidence that a contemporary paper Net Assessment of US and Soviet Force Posture, prepared in 1970 by Andrew Marshall, then a NSC consultant, was either viewed as countering the supplemental Red Book report, or at a minimum recommending further follow-up to it.330 In any case it was relevant to a whole new area of interest in the balance of General Purpose Forces. Thus in a Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations, prepared for National Security Advisor Kissinger, he highlighted the following:
There is considerable importance to having better, more finely tuned net assessments of the relative position of US and Soviet force postures. Crude measures were acceptable in the past, but are no longer so. Moreover, the question of how we are doing relative to the Soviets will be increasingly raised
329

Ray Cline, Information Memorandum From the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Cline) to the Under Secretary of State (Irwin): Subject: Factors in Making a Net Assessment of US and Soviet Strategic Forces, (8 March 1971), Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969- 1976 Volume II, Organization and Management of U.S. Foreign Policy, 1969-1972, Document 228, pp. 487- 490. 330 Various files refer to the following National Security Council memo: A. W. Marshall, Net Assessment of US and Soviet Force Posture: Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations, (Washington, DC: National Security Council, 1970).

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as a more important political question than has been in [sic] the case in the past. A case can be made that in the areas that we cared most about, namely, Naval forces, military R&D, and strategic offensive forces, we have been until recently, rather far ahead of the Soviets. They have now caught up in almost all of these and may be on the point of passing us. All of this suggest that it will be important to find some regular way to get better, more refined assessments.331

In short Marshall was admitting that in the same areas that the Red Book had highlighted, there were noticeable and negative changes in American competitive standing. Recognizing that in the past there had been a subcommittee led by a three star general that prepared net assessments, Marshall recommended to Kissinger that the NSC:
begin by organizing and conducting a major national study to produce a net assessment of US and Soviet force postures as of end 1972. Since this will be the first net assessment made in some time using the mechanism of a national study will allow one to bring in whoever seems to be the most suitable and best able to contribute to such an assessment. Such a study ought to run about a year to eighteen months. The time will be needed to get the Intelligence community up to speed in many areas now lacking adequate data. The virtue of this effort also would be that it could bring to bear absolutely first-rate people who would perform not only the function of producing the initial estimate, but set standards for future estimates to come. Moreover, a number of methodological improvements will need to be developed. Subsequent assessments could be undertaken by an organization within the government, institutionalized in whatever seemed to be the most appropriate way. Indeed, one could draw on the experience of having the national study to come up with recommendations as to how best to organize and conduct future net assessments within the standard bureaucracy.332

In conclusion Marshall recommended that Kissinger consider organizing a national study to produce a net assessment by end 1972. Moreover, he suggested that this group be asked to produce a plan for the regular supply of such assessments and tasked with the development of appropriate methodologies and data bases for making such assessments.333 President Nixon had struggled with the organization of US intelligence, and with the organizational recommendations on defense by the Blue Ribbon Defense

331 332

333

Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid..

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Panel,334 he directed James Schlesinger (then Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget) in December 1970 to recommend options on how the organizational structure of the Intelligence Community could be changed to bring about greater efficiency and effectiveness. Completed in March 1971, Schlesinger produced A Review of the Intelligence Community,335 focused on consumer views336 and found a fragmented effort with unnecessarily competitive and redundant collection activities, a disorganized and ineffective management, costly inefficiency, and analytical products that often suffered in timeliness or quality.337 Although the report received most attention for its reform of the management structure with a strong DCI who could bring intelligence costs under control, it also focused on improving analytic quality338 and, at the end, recommended: Periodic review by outsiders of intelligence products, of the main working hypotheses within the community, and of analytical methods being used. A net assessment group established at the national level which, along with the NSSM process, will keep questioning the community and challenging it to refine and support its hypotheses.339

334

Woodrow J. Kuhns, Intelligence Failures: Forecasting and the Lessons of Epistemology, in Paradoxes of Strategic Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Michael I. Handel, edited by Richard K. Betts and Thomas G. Mahnken, (London, UK: Frank Cass, 2003), p. 99, footnote 19, attributes Nixons interest to unhappiness with the intelligence community, especially its convoluted organization and followed on the heels of a similar review by the BRDP. 335 James R. Schlesinger, A Review of the Intelligence Community, (report; Washington, DC: Office of Management and Budget, 10 March 1971), at < http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB144/document%204.pdf > [accessed 12 March 2008]. 336 Kuhns, Intelligence Failures: Forecasting and the Lessons of Epistemology, op cit.. 337 st For background, see: Harold Brown and Warren B. Rudman, Preparing for the 21 Century: An Appraisal of US Intelligence, (Washington, DC: Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the US Intelligence Community, 1 March 1996), Appendix A. The Evolution of the US Intelligence Community An Historical Overview, at < http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/int022.html > [accessed 15 March 2008]. For a contemporary commentary on the Schlesinger report, see: Comments on A A Review of the Intelligence Community, (Langley, VA: CIA CREST Collection, NARA II, no date), at < http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB144/document%205.pdf > [accessed 13 March 2008]. 338 Schlesinger, A Review of the Intelligence Community, op cit., p. 12: Despite the richness of the data made available by modern methods of collection and the rising costs of their acquisition, it is not at all clear that our hypotheses about foreign intentions, capabilities, and activities have improved commensurately in scope and quality. This is also a point stressed by Kuhns, Intelligence Failures: Forecasting and the Lessons of Epistemology, op cit., pp. 84-85. 339 Schlesinger, A Review of the Intelligence Community, op cit., pp. 45-46.

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 After half a year of internal review and debate, the President incorporated much of the Schlesinger study in a major reorganization of the American intelligence community that also had significant implications for net assessment.

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H. Net Assessment Method & Process at the NSC

How would net assessment studies be different in methodology and style of analysis from other forms of analysis now undertaken to assist top level decision-makers? The focus on comparison with rival powers is not entirely new, but new methods of making such comparisons need to be developed. As improved methods of comparing the US and our competitors are developed, they will provide further differentiation for net assessment as a particular type of analysis.340

In November 1971, President Nixon issued a Presidential Memorandum on the Organization and Management of the US Foreign Intelligence Community,341 focused on more efficient use of resources and improvement in the intelligence product. The Director of Central Intelligence was made responsible for planning, reviewing, and evaluating all intelligence programs and activities and in the production of national intelligence as well as setting up an interagency Intelligence Committee, chaired by the National Security Advisor, and consisting of the Attorney General, the Under Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the DCI.342 As part of the intelligence community reorganization the President also
that a Net Assessment Group be created within the National Security Council Staff. The group will be headed by a senior staff member and will be responsible for reviewing and evaluating all intelligence products and for producing net assessments of US capabilities vis--vis those of foreign governments constituting a threat to US security.343

directed:

This represented a virtual mirroring of the above Schlesinger recommendations and equally interesting, combined both functions within one office, and Andy Marshall

340 341

Ibid., p. 7. Richard M. Nixon, Organization and Management of the US Foreign Intelligence Community (Memorandum; Washington, DC: The White House, 5 November 1971), p. 6. 342 Appendix A. The Evolution of the US Intelligence Community An Historical Overview, op cit.. 343 Ibid. This Memorandum was superceded by Gerald R. Fords Executive Order 11905 on United States Foreign Intelligence Activities, of 18 February 1976, which makes no mention of Net Assessment function or office anywhere in the six agencies making up the intelligence community or the NSC.

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was recruited to lead the NSCs NAG344 an acronym that became popular with those who resented having someone grade their intelligence products. Following the NSCs lead,345 in December 1971346 Laird formally implemented the first and only Blue Ribbon Defense Panel recommendation up to that time, and established an Office of Net Assessment reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense.347 However, trying to use the SecDef office as the E-ring strategic coordinator was one thing, but for it to also serve as surrogate lead for Long-Range Planning as a part-time activity while ground-breaking a new methodology of Net Assessment, all without a dedicated staff, was neither implementable nor sustainable. The very breadth of Col. Marshalls histrionic interest, indeed preoccupation with Vietnam and its lessons learned, seemed to invert these assessment efforts from a relevant forward looking center-stage to a retrospective backwater.348 Moreover, the position remained unfulfilled and the function unaddressed while an intense OSD v. NSC dialogue on the subject of Net Assessment went on between late 1971-mid 1972.349
344

Richard Nixons reorganization of the national intelligence community established a Net Assessment Group (NAG) on the NSC, which Marshall was asked to head. Watts, Scientific Methods and New Assessment, op cit, p. 4. 345 Douglas Kinnard, The Secretary of Defense, (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1980), p. 236, footnote 42: suggests that the original motivation may have been to counter Kissingers net assessment activity within the National Security Council staff. The timing of events would not contradict that, but there is substantial weight that Laird had a commitment to implementing that part of the BRDP recommendation since the fall of 1970. 346 The date given is from Watts, Scientific Methods and New Assessment, op cit, p. 4. 347 The position was set up as a Schedule C appointment positions in which the incumbent serves at the pleasure of the agency head. These positions are excepted from the competitive service by law, by Executive order, or by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) based on their responsibility for determining or advocating agency policy or their confidential character. Transition to a New Presidential Administration: Employment Guidance for Agencies, (Washington, DC: United States Office of Personnel Management, August 2000). 348 Lt. Col. Donald S. Marshall, Summary of Observations and Recommendations Resulting from a Visit to Vietnam and the PACOM Area, February 1971, Boxes B1-B3 (Not Yet Reviewed for Opening to Research); and Preliminaries to a Net Assessment of the Vietnam Conflict, 1972 (1)-(2), Box A101 (Not Yet Reviewed for Opening to Research), Ibid.. 349 Net Assessment - White House, 1972, Box A82 (Open to Research), op cit. T.H. Moorer (CJCS), Concerning Capabilities Assessment, Memo, 11/2/71, Boxes B1-B3 (Not Yet Reviewed for Opening to Research), op cit.; Net Assessment - Study Effort, March-April 1972, Ibid; and Nature and Scope of Net Assessments, 4/26/72, Ibid. The latter is close to the same title of an Andrew Marshall memo dated 4/26/72, and may in fact have been a copy or critique of a version of a for comment draft. See: Andrew W. Marshall, The Nature and Scope of National Net Assessments, (draft NSC memorandum; Washington, DC: National Security Council, 16 August 1972), pp. 1-12.

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This delay in filling a position that Laird wanted and had invested

considerable personal political capital in getting established, was not unique to the Net Assessment function. For example, in October 1972 Congress passed legislation creating a second deputy secretary of defense position, which was a proposal Laird strongly supported, even though he never filled the position.350 Laird was not the only one side-tracked by the politics. Over at the White House:
bureaucratic tension between the NSC and the Pentagon over who would be in charge of national net assessments prevented Marshall from getting any started in 1972.351

The departure of Secretary Laird early in 1973352 and the dispersal of his Long- Range Planning staff, compounded the departmental disorganization produced by the short tenure of Elliott Richardson (three Secretaries within six months) left the Net Assessment office stillborn, albeit with a heroic mandate waiting to be filled. In April 1972 Andrew W. Marshall arrived at the National Security Council as a full time employee to head up the Net Assessment Group.353 After getting the office organized with both assigned military assistants and secretarial support he laid out the analytical mission:
In the past the US held a clear edge in nearly every aspect of international competition; certainly we did so in military forces and military R&D. Where and when we were challenged we were always able to divert enough resources to the problem area to restore our superiority. That is, we were able to buy solutions to our problems. This is no longer the case. There is severe pressure to reduce military expenditures, and this pressure is likely to continue. Thus there is a high premium on thoughtful and inventive approaches to the defense problem solution, and on carefully calculated risk taking. To make this work, we must have a very clear description of the comparative situation of ourselves and our rivals.354

It is not clear who this was written for, but the message was clear, it was time to
350 th

Melvin R. Laird, 10 Secretary of Defense, op cit., notes that by 1972 Laird was a lame-duck: Because he had stated repeatedly that he would serve only four years it came as no surprise when President Nixon on 28 November 1972 nominated Elliot L. Richardson to succeed him. 351 Watts, Scientific Methods and New Assessment, op cit, p. 4. 352 Announced on 28 November 1972 and formally succeeded by Elliot L. Richardson on 29 January 1973. Secretary of Defense Melvin R. Laird, SecDef Histories, DefenseLink, undated, < http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/secdef_histories/bios/laird.htm > [accessed 20 November 2005]. 353 Background on Attached Memorandum, op cit., p. 2. 354 Marshall, The Nature and Scope of Net Assessment, op cit., p. 1.

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play smart, not rich.355 In the memorandum, Marshall explicitly recognized that to make this work, we must have a very clear description of the comparative situation of ourselves and our rivals.356 Although at this stage the function was not called competitive strategy,357
The long-term competitive position of the US military establishment compared with its counterpart should be analyzed and evaluated. Since many of the basic assumptions of US foreign and defense policy are in question and transition, the scope of even military net assessments should be broadened to include political and economic aspects.358

that is the descriptor that best captures what he intended.

Particularly noteworthy here, was the warning against bipolar simplicity and a rejection of the deductive policy driven Estimate of the Situation approach so typical of past American military strategy analysis.359 Whether intentional or accidental, this was putting meat on the bare bones of Lairds view of Net Assessment as a form of strategic sociology360 systemically integrating cultural, economic, technological, and political trends and the vehicle for doing so would be Net Assessment at the National Level.361 Marshall came uniquely prepared, having spent the previous decade addressing most of the problematic issues that would drive a comparison of rival strengths and weaknesses. This experience and reflectivity covered issues of: long range planning for analytical organizations,362 treating uncertainty,363 problems of

355

Play smart, not rich. was my phrase, trying to describe what I believed was the dominant theme of the Marshall competitive strategy approach. See: Abshire and Karber, NATO Net Assessment, op cit., pp. D23-D28. 356 Marshall, The Nature and Scope of Net Assessment, op cit., p. 1. 357 This was the theme of his last paper as a RAND employee: A.W. Marshall, Long-Term Competition with the Soviets: A Framework for Strategic Analysis, (R-862-PR; Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1972), pp. 1-61. 358 Marshall, The Nature and Scope of Net Assessment, op cit., p. 1. 359 See earlier discussion in section I. Strategy Development and the Need for Assessment. 360 See earlier discussion in section III. Lairds Search for a Strategy Dialectic. 361 William Baroody to [Henry Kissinger] the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Concerning Net Assessment at the National Level, (9/1/1972), Boxes B1-B3 Department of Defense Papers: Baroody Planning Files, Gerald R. Ford Library. 362 Bernard Brodie, Charles J. Hitch, A.W. Marshall, The Next Ten Years, (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corp., December 1954). 363 A.W. Marshall, A Treatment of Uncertainty, (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corp., May 1955).

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estimating military power,364 addressing cost and delays in procurement,365 technological forecasting,366 employing special intelligence to gain insight into opponent decisions and structures,367 using organization behavior to improve intelligence,368 asymmetries in opposed force design,369 comparing rival research and development strategies,370 using bureaucratic behavior to get a deeper appreciation of various balances,371 as well as thinking about long-term competitive frameworks.372 The combined breadth and depth of this body of work, led him to be skeptical about single point comparative methods and facile claims of quick fixes, particularly those pitched by technological salesmen. If, within a year, Schlesinger would bring the most relevant resume to the position of Secretary of Defense,373 Marshall would equal it in breadth and depth of related analytical experience applicable to strategy development, long-range planning and net assessment. One of the first things Marshall did upon arriving at the NSC, was to lay out a foundational game plan for what he called the Nature and Scope of Net Assessment. Again, he went back to the same areas of alleged growing imbalance that had been highlighted in the Red Book eighteen months earlier. Areas in which the Soviet Union is alleged to have or be moving toward
364

A.W. Marshall, Problems of Estimating Military Power, (P-3417; Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 1966). 365 A.W. Marshall and H. W. Meckling, Predictability of the Cost, Time, and Success of Development, (p-1821; Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corp., 1959). 366 A.W. Marshall and J. E. Loftus, Forecasting Soviet Force Structure: The Importance of Bureaucratic and budgetary Constraints, (p-1821; Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corp., July 1963). 367 Project Sovoy was an effort at RAND led by A.W. Marshall and Joe Loftus, where selected RAND analysts would provide interface with the intelligence community, acquiring a deeper appreciation on what was known on the Soviet Union, thus giving them a measure of their own entropy in order to provide better forecasts. Based on interview with Marshall by Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 217-218. 368 A.W. Marshall, The Improvement in Intelligence Estimates Through Study of Organizational Behavior, (paper for Board of Trustees Meeting; Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corp., April 1968). 369 Marshall, Net Assessment of US and Soviet Force Posture: Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations, op cit.. 370 A.W. Marshall, Comparisons, R&D Strategy, and Policy Issues, (RAND Working Note WN-7630- DDRE; Santa Monica, CA: RAND, October 1971). 371 A.W. Marshall, Bureaucratic Behavior and the Strategic Arms Competition, (paper presented at the Southern California Arms Control & Foreign Policy Seminar; Los Angeles, CA: October 1971). 372 A.W. Marshall, Long-Term Competition with the Soviets: A Framework for Strategic Analysis, (R-862-PR; Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1972). 373 Work at RAND as well as head of national security programs at the Bureau of the Budget, Director of the Atomic Energy Commission, and Director of the CIA.

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superiority, such as naval forces, strategic nuclear forces, or R&D require investigation.374

The idea was neither to counter nor mirror the Red Book hyperbole, but rather substitute a diagnostic approach, and Marshall was candid about the challenge.
Net assessment in the sense we propose is not an easy task. The single most productive resource that can be brought to bear in making net assessments is sustained hard intellectual effort. The methodologies for doing net assessments are virtually non-existent. Data problems abound.375

Nevertheless, alluding in the same paragraph to the concerns raised in the Red Book, he concluded that whether difficult or not, the need for net assessments is clear. Admitting that clearly the term net assessment is not well defined, nonetheless in this memo that launched the formal NSC Net Assessment activity, Marshall succinctly articulated the basic principles of a Net Assessment approach, which emphasized seven significant themes:376 1. Multi-disciplinary comparative breadth:
Our notion of a net assessment is that it is a careful comparison of US weapon systems, forces, and policies in relation to those of other countries. Net assessments should aim at a broad and comprehensive examination of the area of interest. They are concerned with national security in its broadest sense, embracing political, economic, and technological problems as well as purely military ones.377

2. Focus on interactive action-reaction dynamics and trends:

They should look comprehensively at rivalries and the various types of competition that ensue. It is comprehensive, including description of the forces, operational doctrines and practices, training regime, logistics, known or conjectured effectiveness in various environments, design practices and their effect on equipment costs and performance, and procurement practices and their influence on cost and lead times. Relevant trends in the international rivalries examined will generally be of interest in net assessments. This will mean that more attention to the recent past, in order to establish a basis for the description and understanding of

374 375

376 377

Marshall, The Nature and Scope of Net Assessment, op cit., p. 2. Ibid: p. 2. Ibid. Ibid.

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trends, will be needed than is usual in the current style of analysis.378

3. Side-by-side comparisons should be placed in an operational environment, theater of conflict, or contingent scenario:
They should evaluate the status of the competition in terms of outcomes of potential conflicts and confrontations. Net Assessments, in contrast to other analyses, are the most comprehensive, and in principle concern themselves with actual outcomes of combat or of competitions.379 work done in the past, in systems analysis studies and some NSSMs tends to focus on weapons systems choices in a simplified context. The results of these studies tend to be expressed in terms of outputs of various force levels and structures, such as submarines sunk, warheads delivered, fatalities caused, etc. The assumptions which are made in achieving the needed simplification may bias assessment outcomes in the more likely contingencies.

4. Conclusions about combatant effectiveness needed to be modulated in terms of production and support efficiencies which were key to sustaining a long-term advantage:
They should compare the efficiency with which the various powers, including the US, are conducting the competition. Where there are areas of apparently great efficiency, or inefficiency net assessments should explain them.380

5. Claimed competitive efficiencies needed to be deconstructed so they could be better understood, borrowed, and/or targeted:
Where there are areas of apparently great efficiency, or inefficiency net assessments should explain them. It will highlight efficiency and inefficiency in the way we and others do things, and areas of comparative advantage with respect to our rivals.381

6. Include a range of potential competitors, not just the US-Soviet relationship, and include both allies and enemies of our enemies:
The implications of multiple rivalries and balances, rather than bipolar simplicity, should be examined.

378 379

Ibid. As such, they raise severe problems of data and of analysis methodology. Marshall, Letter to Col. Harold L. Hitch Hitchens, (HQ USAF; Washington, DC: National Security Council memorandum, 26 March 1972), p. 1. Recognizing that elaborate combat simulations and models or warfare scenarios should be avoided initially because of their dependence upon implicit assumptions and opaque processing of outcomes, he concluded that generally, at least in the first instance, the comparison of interest between forc4es, postures, and programs will by side-by-side rather than face-to-face. 380 Ibid. 381 Ibid.

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It can be focused to deal with real or at least credible adversaries, rather than the fictitious, highly abstracted and oversimplified antagonists found in present study efforts.382

7. To be of maximum benefit to security policy and defense planning Net Assessment should be descriptive, not prescriptive:
Aim at providing diagnosis of problems and opportunities, rather than recommended actions. The focus on diagnosis rather than solutions is especially significant. The use of net assessment is intended to be diagnostic. It is not intended to provide recommendations as to force levels or force structures as an output.383

Although these seven themes were never articulated as formal rules, they were reflected in both Marshalls frequent questions and guidance to anyone tasked with running a balance or competitive assessment who bothered to ask. A number of the OSD/NA staff have reflected on what they perceived as a lack of methodology for Net Assessment and Marshalls reticence in trying to inculcate a school solution in the staff or promulgate a cookie-cutter approach.384 Too many of them, who served in his office as Military Assistants with overlapping service from the mid-1970s to the 1990s, subscribe to this view to challenge it, or suggest that there was an early versus late Marshall. Nevertheless, for the two-decades of near continuous interaction I had with him, I found it not only easy to get Marshalls methodological guidance but concluded that he seemed to welcome discussing it. Certainly, the number of times he referenced the need to work on methodologies between 1970 and 1974 while architecting what would become Net Assessment argues heavily against the thesis that he was against method.385

382 383

Ibid. Ibid. 384 Watts, Scientific Methods and New Assessment, op cit, p. 5, makes a point of later reading the Nature and Scope of Net Assessment paper and having been frustrated that it Marshall had not made an effort to show it to him before he did his balance work: Andrew May and I immediately recognized that this short document contained a conceptual blueprint for diagnostic net assessment that Marshall was still following three decades later. Somewhat miffed and perplexed, I asked Marshall why he had never shown this seminal memo to meor to any of the other military and civilian assistants who had worked in his office since the late-1970s. With a slight smile he said that he would have gladly shown it to me or anyone else in ONA if they had asked to see it. 385 Marshall, The Nature and Scope of Net Assessment, op cit., p. 2.

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Like most others, Marshall defined Net Assessment as a comparison

between the US and some rival nation in terms of some aspect of our national security activity, but explicitly noted that the term had two connotations of equal importance. The second meaning being that Net Assessment was the most comprehensive form of analysis in the hierarch of analysis. Admitting that at present, net assessment as a distinctive form of analysis is not clearly defined, nevertheless he argued that it is possible to indicate the general nature of the analysis desired, and its objectives.386 Net assessment as a specific form of analysis will become more fully defined as various net assessments are produced, and specialized methods of analysis evolve. New analytical tools are needed to identify problems and trends, and to assist in shaping changes. We see a number of ways in which net assessment can achieve major advances in the art of analysis.387 These are hardly the admonitions of one against method. Rather it is recognition that there are different of levels of analysis, each requiring their own unique methodologies; a candid recognition that the state-of-the-art needed to be improved, as well as a commitment to help develop relevant approaches. As mentioned earlier Sun Tzus Five Strategic Arts388 measurements, estimates, analysis, balancing, and triumph provide the components of a comparative evaluation or what is termed, in todays intelligence jargon, net assessment.389 As a check list of important things to consider these items hardly seem innovative. However, they take on more meaning if viewed as a series of sequential steps, each with its own unique method, successively and cumulatively building on the steps of their predecessor and adding a different set of unique intellectual tasks.

386 387

Marshall, The Nature and Scope of Net Assessment, op cit., p. 2. Ibid., pp. 3-5. 388 We originally used the version translated by Samuel Griffith: Sun Tzu, The Art of War, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1963); but later moved to the R. L. Wing version: Tzu, The Art of Strategy, op cit., book IV, section 16, pp. 62-63. 389 Handel, Masters of War, op cit., p. 237.

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The situation give rise to measurements. Measurements give rise to estimates. Estimates give rise to analysis. Analysis give rise to balancing. Balance gives rise to triumph. Therefore, a winning Strategy is like a pound balanced against an ounce. While a losing Strategy is like an ounce balanced against a pound.390 Like Sun Tzu, Marshall defined the ultimate form of triumph as dissuading the opponent to drop out of a long-term competition391 rather than fighting a real war to annihilation.392 As I reviewed the various memos and writings on Net Assessment, it appeared to me that Sun Tzus Five Strategic Arts were a virtual index of Marshalls multi-tiered analytical framework: Measurements collecting empirical data in a comparable format; Data is not available in important areas because US Intelligence has not focused on some aspects of Soviet posture needed to make net assessments. For many force components, intelligence is skimpy on matters concerning logistics, general levels of readiness, etc.393 Data on US allies is incomplete and inaccurate. Data on our own forces and programs is frequently not available in a form which permits ready comparison with that available on the Soviets.394 Estimates discovering, describing and distinguishing those elements that are unmeasurable but important and not overly depending upon quantitative measurements that are incomplete; There are many difficulties in providing a good net assessment of the current military balance and future likely trends. For one thing the Intelligence evaluation of the Soviet posture frequently does not focu son some of the key aspects for making such a comparison. The emphasis in US Intelligence has tended to be on order of battle, and
390 391

Tzu, The Art of Strategy, op cit., book IV, section 16, pp. 62-63. Marshall, Long-Term Competition with the Soviets: A Framework for Strategic Analysis, op cit.; and Marshall, The Nature and Scope of Net Assessment, op cit., p. 2. 392 The ideal Strategy, therefore, is to thwart a Plan. The next best is to thwart a Negotiation. The next best is to thwart a Strategy. Tzu, The Art of Strategy, op cit., book III, section 9, pp. 44-45: Those who are skilled in executing a Strategy, Bend the strategy of others without conflict; Uproot the fortifications of others without attacking; Absorb the organizations of others without prolonged operations. 393 Marshall, Net Assessment of US and Soviet Force Posture: Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations, op cit., p. 1. 394 Marshall, The Nature and Scope of Net Assessment, op cit., p. 2.

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upon the technical characteristics of individual weaponry. Very little effort has been put in to understanding Soviet military organizations, their operational practices, and the basic military economics of the Soviet military establishment. If the President is interested in establishing a good net assessment capabilities [sic], a substantial Intelligence effort will have to be put on a number of areas that so far have not been studied in depth. What follow is my best judgment as to what the state of the current balance is and what trends exist. Hypotheses about what the situation is provide a framework within which further work could progress.395 Hypotheses about what the Soviets might be doing are just as important to the inference process as the data itself. This leads, however, to a biasing problem. Repeatedly in the history of Intelligence, especially in the technological area, there has been excessive mirror- imaging.396 Analysis evaluating competitive strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and opportunities and their change over time: there are many cases where the sorts of comparisons that we are able to make now probably do not give the US forces enough credit. They are higher cost, but have more capability than the Soviet forces. There are numerous cases where the Soviets in the economical operational practices, their lower readiness levels, etc., give us significant advantage in certain circumstances. In most evaluations, the evaluators are not able to feel sure enough to this kind of assessment because intelligence on crucial aspects of Soviet forces is missing. Moreover, the US military services consistently have an incentive not to give themselves credit for superior capabilities in implicit comparisons made in the course of military planning exercises for operations or for force posture budgeting and programs.397 Balancing anticipating opportunities for the application of strength to vulnerability in juxtaposed postures over time: Differences in US and Soviet force postures make any simple blancing by specific weapons categories inadequate. We need, but [do] not have, adequate means of assessing capabilities of ne force to deal with another in
395

Marshall, Net Assessment of US and Soviet Force Posture: Section B. Facts and Trends in the Current Military Forces, op cit., p. 2. 396 Ibid., p. 3. 397 Marshall, Net Assessment of US and Soviet Force Posture: Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations, p. 2.

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specific contingencies. War gaming and other techniques would have to be used in any more systematic effort to make such evaluations.398 I think, that there is some reason to believe that there is a danger of the US pricing itself out of the military competition with the Soviets. Are the comparative economics of military forces running against us if so in what areas?399 The objective should be to supply the President and the NSC with answers to such questions as: Do we have a problem? If so, how big is it? Is it getting worse or better? What are the underlying causes?400

Triumph identifying and projecting into the future opportunities for the conversion of favorable balances (i.e., imbalances) into political outcomes: What follows is also deficient in not dealing systematically with Hertzfelds point that it would be highly important to try to assess peace outcomes. I think that is absolutely true, and indeed essential. The net assessment that seems must crucial to me is how do the US and Soviet look in terms of their capabilities for the long-term political and military competition they will be waging in the world.401 Some months ago Dean Acheson. talked about the very late 40s when in their view current basic US national strategy became fixed in its essentials. The essence of the strategy was alleged to be the notion that by building up our forces and putting some military pressure on the Soviets, and containing them in the shortrun, that the resource strain would tell on them much before it did ourselves. The Soviets would not have the will and the dedication to persist with their policies. What seems to have happened, at least in Achesons eyes, is that the opposite has taken place. They have persisted, and it is we who now say that we cannot afford to spend the required resources. This highlights the key role an assessment of the comparative economics and of the comparative effectiveness of the weapons acquisition process and operation of practices can play in planning future US strategy and forces.402

398 399

Ibid., p. 1. Marshall, Net Assessment of US and Soviet Force Posture: Section B. Facts and Trends in the Current Military Forces, op cit., pp. 20, 22. 400 Marshall, The Nature and Scope of Net Assessment, op cit., p. 2. 401 Marshall, Net Assessment of US and Soviet Force Posture: Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations, p. 2. 402 Ibid., pp. 22-23.

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Here was a relatively simple formula for an enormously complex thought process. Sun Tzus parsimony allowed one to see it sequentially while Marshalls commentary took it out of the realm of philosophy and grounded it in contemporary strategic issues. Whether discussing how Net Assessment should be approached thematically, or in comments in the above Sun Tzu cumulative research paradigm above, there was a definite thematic underpinning evidenced in Marshall commentary. Just as Sun Tzu ends his classic work on the importance of knowing what we do not know, Marshall was brutally honest about the quality of data and the level of entropy not knowing what we do not know involved at all levels of the assessment process. Many aspects of the rivalries in which the US is engaged are frequently neglected in decision oriented studies, and have also not had high priority in our intelligence efforts. Thus the identification of gaps in our intelligence data is likely to be an early by-product of the net assessment process.403 Even more, Marshall viewed Net Assessment as a long-term research program, so highlighting weakness is actually a means of potentially improving the process. Moreover, he not only exercised this level of candor with his superiors, but promoted explicit entropy recognition by all who worked for him. Admittedly the Sun Tzu approach was my adaptation and juxtapositioning of Marshalls thinking into a framework around which we could organize inter- agency research.

403

Marshall, The Nature and Scope of Net Assessment, op cit., pp. X-8

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 I. National Net Assessments

The President has directed the preparation of a series of national net assessments under the guidelines approved in NSDM 242. The first national net assessment will evaluate the comparative costs to the US and the USSR to produce, maintain, and operate comparable military forces. It will assess the status of the competition between the US and USSR in maintaining such forces, trends in the competition, significant areas of comparative advantage or disadvantage to the US and the nature of opportunities and problems implied. 404

The existence of a National Net Assessment office and their interests are only documented four times at interagency level via the prime policy action vehicles405 of that day: the National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) which commissioned cross-departmental research and response; and the National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) which recorded NSC formal positions. The authorizing memorandums were: NSSM-178 -- Program for National Net Assessment, (29 March 1973);406 NSDM 224 -- National Net Assessment Process, (28 Jun 1973).407

The first and only action memorandum commissioning the first and only interagency National Net Assessment was debated for over a year408 before being signed out by Henry Kissinger:

404

Henry A. Kissinger, NSSM 186 -- National Net Assessment of Comparative Costs and Capabilities of US - USSR Military Establishments, (1 September 1973). 405 For a helpful survey of the evolution of the Kennedy/Johnson Administrations policy action vehicle to the Nixon/Ford Administrations division of labor between study (calling for relevant inter- agency input) and decision (notifying the inter-agency community that a Presidential decision had been made) memoranda, see: Harold C. Relyea, Presidential Directives: Background and Overview, (98-611 GOV; Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, revised 7 January 2005), at < http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/98-611.pdf > [accessed 24 July 2005]. 406 Henry A. Kissinger, National Security Study Memorandum: NSSM 178 -- Program for National Net Assessment, (29 March 1973). 407 o Henry A. Kissinger, National Security Decision Memorandum: National Security Decision Memorandum: NSDM 224 -- National Net Assessment Process re NSSM 178, (28 Jun 1973). 408 Alexander Haig to Daniel Murphy, Concerning National Security Study Memorandum on National Net Assessment of the Comparative Efficiency and Effectiveness of the US and Soviet Military Establishments, Memo, 8/17/72, Boxes B1-B3 (Not Yet Reviewed for Opening to Research), op cit.; and

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NSSM-186 -- National Net Assessment of Comparative Costs and Capabilities of US - USSR Military Establishments, (1 September 1973).409

The transfer of the office from the National Security Council to the Department of Defense was made in memorandum: NSDM 239 -- National Net Assessment Process, (27 November 1973).410 These four Memoranda written over seven months and representing in toto only four pages not only bracket the short happy life of the NSC NAG but more importantly represent the rescue of the Blue Ribbon Defense Pane and Secretary Lairds vision of Net Assessment at the Pentagon. Combined with personal changes, they ended the NSC v. OSD feud, they filled the vacuum left in DoDs Net Assessment Office, and brought the function into the immediate proximity of the Secretary. Apparently NSSM-178 was personally drafted by AWM as a remit for creating a Program for National Net Assessment. There were several interesting features about this short NSSM. First it was explicitly treated as a fulfillment of Nixons 1971 Memorandum on Organization and Management of the US Foreign Intelligence Community.411 Second, it noted the President had directed the initiation of a program for the preparation of a series of national net assessments. The words series and national took on special significance: the former suggested this would be an extended process not a one time product; the latter meant that it would be interagency and not limited to one department.
As a first step in this process, the President has directed that a paper be prepared which would: -- Define the national net assessment process, and discuss the range and types of topics that would be addressed. -- Discuss methodology appropriate for use in preparing net assessments. -- Establish reporting and coordination procedures for the program.412

the apparent response: Baroody to the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Concerning Net Assessment at the National Level, Memo, 9/1/72, Ibid. 409 Kissinger, NSSM 186 -- National Net Assessment of Comparative Costs and Capabilities of US - USSR Military Establishments, op cit. 410 Henry A. Kissinger, National Security Decision Memorandum: NSDM 239 -- National Net Assessment Process, (27 November 1973). 411 Henry A. Kissinger, NSSM 178 -- Program for National Net Assessment, op cit., p. 1. 412 Ibid. Note, the NSSM specified a deadline, with the report of the Ad Hoc Group completed by May 15, 1973.

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NSSM-178 gave Marshall the opportunity to write his own NSC mission statement as well as lay out a game plan for how to proceed, not just with the coordination but cooperation of an ad hoc group comprising representatives.413 The response to NSSM-178 by the Ad Hoc Group was submitted on time,414 commented on by the NSCIC Principals,415 and reviewed by the President.416 NSDM 224 implied that there would be multiple National Net Assessments. Likewise, it ratified the interagency nature of the process under the direction of a representative of the National Security Council Staff and specified that requests for net assessments will be issued as National Security Study Memoranda. The only national net assessment to be formally undertaken while Marshall was at the NSC was National Security Study Memorandum 186. For over a year the NSC had discussed the need for and content of a National Security Study Memorandum on National Net Assessment of the Comparative Efficiency and Effectiveness of the US and Soviet Military Establishments,417 Where NSSM-178 and NSDM 224 had dealt with process, NSSM-186 was the vehicle of substance. Finally, on 1 September 1973, Henry Kissinger signed out NSSM-186 calling for a National Net Assessment of the Comparative Costs and Capabilities of US and Soviet Military Establishments.
The President has directed the preparation of a series of national net assessments under the guidelines approved in NSDM 242. The first national net assessment will evaluate the comparative costs to the US and the USSR to produce, maintain, and operate comparable military forces. It will assess the status of the competition between the US and USSR in maintaining such forces, trends in the competition, significant areas of comparative advantage or disadvantage to the US and the nature of opportunities and problems implied.

413

Ibid. Consisting of representatives from State, Defense and CIA, chaired by the Director, Net Assessment Group, of the National Security Council staff. 414 The actual report has not been found, the following statements, were all referenced in the subsequent document: Kissinger, National Security Decision Memorandum: NSDM 224 -- National Net Assessment Process re NSSM 178, op cit. p. 1. 415 National Security Council Intelligence Committee. 416 This was a lot of action for a period of less than six weeks between 15 May and 28 June. Kissinger, National Security Decision Memorandum: NSDM 224 -- National Net Assessment Process re NSSM 178, op cit. p. 1. 417 For example the Haig memo Concerning National Security Study Memorandum on National Net Assessment of the Comparative Efficiency and Effectiveness of the US and Soviet Military Establishments, went back to 17 August 1972.

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The President has directed that the analyses and comparisons required by this net assessment be prepared by the Department of Defense, in consultation with the Net Assessment Group/NSC, and with the assistance of the Department of State and the Director of Central Intelligence. The complete assessment will cover all aspects of US and Soviet military forces, and will take place over a long period of time. The initial part of the net assessment will focus specifically on the ground forces on each side. Comparisons of interests will include the costs and performance of comparable military units. The analysis should highlight the major determining factors in costs and performance on each side, and any evident trends. A first report on the net assessment of US and Soviet ground forces should be forwarded to the Chairman, NSCIC, by 1 November 1973.418

As originally mandated in NSDM 224,419 NSSM-186 reiterated that the various National Net Assessments would be managed by the head of the NAG with final acceptance contingent upon review of the NSCIC. There were several interesting aspects about NSSM-186 from the outset. First, as it had become increasingly evident with NSDM 224 and NSSM-186 that the focus of the initial National Net Assessments would involve comparisons of military establishments, it was natural that the primary lead should be taken by the Pentagon. But it was somewhat surprising that while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been copied on the tasking,420 the JCS were neither directly invited to participate in the production nor comment on the process.421 Second, there had been a subtle shift in the title from Comparative Efficiency and Effectiveness to Comparative Costs and Capabilities. The former were very subjective terms: efficiency relative to requirement and resources; effectiveness relative to mission and opposition. The latter were ostensibly fixed in terms of objective scale.
418

Kissinger, NSSM 186 -- National Net Assessment of Comparative Costs and Capabilities of US - USSR Military Establishments, op cit. 419 Kissinger, National Security Decision Memorandum: NSDM 224 -- National Net Assessment Process re NSSM 178, op cit. p. 1. 420 This was the case with National Security Decision Memorandum: NSDM 224 and NSSM 186, where the Chairman, JCS has been cc, but not with the original NSSM 178. 421 This was surprising in that just the year before, JCS Chairman had initiated a formal assessment presentation to much fan fare. See: Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, United States Military Posture for FY 1972, (Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 9 March 1971); Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, United States Military Posture for FY 1973, (Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 8 February 1972); and Adm. Thomas H. Moorer, United States Military Posture for FY 1974, (Washington, DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 28 March 1973).

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A third feature was also out of the norm. As had already been implied in

NSDM 224, NSSM-186 now made it explicit that this comprehensive assessment would involve multiple successive efforts and take place over a long period of time. As such, it had an implied variance with the typical NSC standard operating procedure for NSSMs which had focused on producing a timely and tightly argued response a tasking with a definite built in sunset clause. But under NSSM-186, these National Net Assessments would be incremental, iterative and potentially infinite422 taking successive bites of the apple as opposed to trying to swallow it whole in one culminating gazumpt final report and closure of the Study, as was typical with NSSMs. A last unique feature at the very start of NSSM-186 was the abrupt change in the reporting channel in the middle of the effort. Per NSDM 224 and NSSM-186, the NSC Net Assessment Group would be responsible for both producing the requirements and tasking for the National Net Assessments as well as monitoring their progress and evaluating their final product.
In the White House the Net Assessment Group was a casualty of several factors: the overwhelming demands on top-level decision makers to focus on near-term foreign policy issues; the realization that the Department of Defense had the depth of resources needed to support a long-term net effort; and a fuller recognition of how difficult it was and how long it would take to develop a net assessment effort in the executive branch.423

The credibility of James Schlesinger as one of the most prepared Secretaries of Defense, his personal role in defining the need for Net Assessment two years earlier424 and strong personal relationship with Marshall425 all combined to make this a smooth transition. Within six weeks of the start of NSSM-186, Marshall moved from the NSC and
By the time Schlesinger had succeeded Eliot Richardson as defense secretary in July 1973 and appointed Marshall to be his Director of Net Assessment on
422

joined the OSD staff being assembled by Secretary James Schlesinger.

Up to that point, NSSMs had the general characteristics of being intended to cover the assigned topic comprehensively (rather than incrementally); were a one shot activity (rather than iterative); and had a definitive end date (rather than being temporally infinite). 423 Pickett, Roche, and Watts, Net Assessment: A Historical Review, op cit., p. 167. 424 Schlesinger, A Review of the Intelligence Community, op cit.. 425 A close working relationship that went back more than a decade when Schlesinger had been assigned to Marshalls department when he had originally joined RAND and then also became a social relationship in the 1960s. James R. Schlesinger, Comments,

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October 13th, a further concern had arisen that undermined definitional clarity. Marshalls brief from Schlesinger was to establish a viable net assessment function in the Department of Defense (DoD). But aside from Melvin R. Lairds December 1971 directive establishing the position in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), little progress had been made on clarifying the nature of net assessment or what it might produce, especially within the Pentagon. In fact, neither Laird nor Richardson had appointed anyone to fill the new position.426

Scarcely had Marshall arrived at the Pentagon, and within another six weeks, Kissinger signed out NSDM 239 on the National Net Assessment Process which recorded that the President had directed that the responsibility for the national net assessment program be assigned to the Secretary of Defense.427 This was not just the transfer of an individual but the entire Net Assessment Group428 to a three-room office on the A-ring. Importantly, the intent of the mission that Marshall had written for himself in NSSM-178 and secured with NSDM 224 was neither given over to someone else in the NSC to pick up that portfolio nor was the mandate materially changed with his move to the Pentagon.429 Marshall was now responsible for conducting the Net Assessment he himself had commissioned but he would not be reporting to himself to grade his own work. The structure that had been established but unfilled gave James Schlesinger the opportunity to not only set up the office but create and reinforce the precedent of the Director of Net Assessment reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense. With its arrival, Net Assessment initiated a new era in Pentagon thinking, one that would make a significant difference over the next thirty-five years. But thats another story.

426 427

Watts, Scientific Methods and New Assessment, op cit, p. 5. With NSDM 139, the previous National Security Decision Memorandum: NSDM 224 and NSSM 186 were rescinded but the study required by NSSM 186 the National Net Assessment of the Comparative Costs and Capabilities of US and Soviet Military Establishments which was still ongoing should be completed under the supervision of the Secretary of Defense and it, along with all future completed net assessment studies should be forwarded to the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. Kissinger, National Security Decision Memorandum: NSDM 239 -- National Net Assessment Process, op cit., p. 1. 428 Which consisted of two military assistants that had been assigned to the NSC: Captain Chip Picket and Lt. Commander Robin Pirie; and even transferred the NSC secretaries: Joan Hunerwadel and Irene Parkhurst. 429 For example, NSSM 186, the first interagency tasking under the original organization mantel, had been let before the move occurred its tasking was not modified in any way other than the transfer of reporting authority.

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J. Lessons Learned
Today, there is no rational system whereby the Executive Branch and the Congress reach coherent and enduring agreement on national military strategy, the forces to carry it out, and the funding that should be provided-in light of the overall economy and competing claims on national resources. Better long-range planning must be based on military advice of an order not now always available - fiscally constrained, forward looking, and fully integrated. This advice must incorporate the best possible assessment of our overall military posture vis-a-vis potential opponents, and must candidly evaluate the performance and readiness of the individual Services and the Unified and Specified Commands.430

The strongest supporters of an independent and high level Net Assessment function seem to fall into two groups former Secretaries of Defense and former staffers in OSD/NA. Unfortunately, the former have said little publicly about the utility and importance of having this kind of confidential strategic advice; and the over-selling of the latter have made it sound more like a cult than a critical national security function. However, when we review the early origins of Net Assessment the years of path breaking work by the Net Evaluation Subcommittee, the proposals of the Blue Ribbon Defense as well as Secretary Laird, the methodological and organizational development by Andrew Marshall both the problem and the solution are much clearer. So, when contemplating the future of the enterprise, the evidence and arguments assembled for this paper suggest five lessons should be drawn from the early origins of the Net Assessment concept. LESSON 1: For over a century, there has been a growing recognition by those who have made the effort to think about how American military strategy is developed, that an indispensible ingredient is the availability of some type of comparative diagnostic trend analysis of US and rival forces placed in the context of operational battlespace. Whether one calls this an assessment or evaluation;
430

David Packard, Interim Report: Presidents Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management, (with cover letter; Washington, DC: Presidents Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management, 28 February 1986), p. 9. Bold emphasis upon assessment in the original.

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whether the term net is used are not is unimportant. What is critical however, is that the effort include five primal characteristics: Comparative deconstruction of the combatant, supporting and force generating assets; Examined as they have temporally developed over time with future vectors not plotted any further in the out years than historical data traces back; Operational analysis in a real theater of potential conflict against a real, not hypothetical opponent; Contrasting not merely like versus like, but juxtaposing strength to weakness, offense to defense, and opportunities to vulnerabilities; Ultimately viewed, not in terms of trying to predict which side will win a specific engagement, but rather projecting the factors that will make one side prevail over the long-run.

A special caveat must also be registered, in the second nuclear age where nuclear assets and powers are increasingly distributed throughout potential conflict regions, the assessments cannot ignore the interrelationship between conventional and nuclear war. LESSON 2: There is a coherent and reasonably clear methodological approach that can be applied in the conduct of Net Assessments. It is not mystical, it is not arcane; it evolved over a several year period in the early 1970s, and taken as a whole, it can be teased from the writings of Andrew Marshall in that period. Although never formally stated as such, that method can be summarized in five sequential steps: Measurements collecting empirical data in a comparable format; Estimates discovering, describing and distinguishing those elements that are unmeasurable but important; Analysis evaluating competitive strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and opportunities; Balancing anticipating opportunities for the application of strength to vulnerability in juxtaposed postures; Triumph identifying and projecting into the future opportunities for the conversion of favorable balances (i.e. imbalances) into political outcomes.

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The successful implementation of these steps can be as complex in application as they are simple in articulation but this method is as relevant to todays emerging challenges of strategic rivalry as it was 2,500 years ago when so elegantly laid out by Sun Tzu. The success of this approach has been demonstrated in the productive application of that methodology over the last thirty-five years by the Net Assessment staff. Its value is not diminished by the fact that many of the those who successfully applied it, did so as a product of sub-conscious enculturation and the guiding hand of their mentor in trailblazing new intellectual territory rather than using a cookie cutter formula or realizing that the approach had high strategic pedigree. LESSON 3: The Blue Ribbon Defense Panel had it right, the office of Net Assessment has to be independent and report directly to the Secretary of Defense. Thus, going back to the need for Net Assessment and the cogent organizational arguments for its structure as an independent advisory office reporting directly to the SecDef:
The Office of the Secretary of Defense and the armed services of the United States have many agencies that measure current military performance against current military goals. That is not the purpose of net assessments. Each net assessment concludes, not with a statement about whether we would win or lose a war today or with recommendations for new programs, but with a discussion of the issues and problems about which the Secretary of Defense may wish to think, because they affect the future of American national security. Net Assessment is a tool for the Secretary of Defense that may better enable him to do strategic planning for the American military, if that is desired.431

Not every Secretary may want or value having Net Assessment as a direct report, but then that is a pretty good indication that they are not planning on taking their role as chief strategist seriously. LESSON 4: The recommendations of Blue Ribbon Defense Panel member Robert C. Jackson need to be reconsidered specifically that long-range planning, net assessment and strategy development should be combined into an Assistant Secretary of Defense level position. The reason for this has more to do with the effectiveness of OSD than it does Net Assessment. An independent and intellectually
431

Rosen, Net Assessment as an Analytical Concept, in On Not Confusion Ourselves, op cit., p. 300.

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driven Net Assessment office, with sufficient research resources and reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense can do its own thing. But, as the BRDP suggested, there is a need, at the Secretary level for a group also to be conducting Long-Range Planning, Likewise, as Secretary Laird and later Cap Weinberger found out, there is great value in having Strategy Development also working in close proximity to the Secretary. These are three different functions. Net Assessment is diagnostic; Long-Range Planning is prognostic; and Strategy Development is prescriptive. Nonetheless, they all share some common attributes, need to work closely together, and could efficiently utilize some of the same resources. Thus, as Jackson originally recommended, creating a combined office under an Assistant Secretary addressing these functions could be a very powerful and effective combination. LESSON 5: When the collective consciousness of the national security cognoscenti recognizes the rise of a potential challenging power, one that can be a serious rival in an important region and has the potential to build strike forces that threaten Allies, forward-based US forces, and ultimately the American homeland there is real value in the creation of an interdepartmental (cross-service if not cross- agency) ad hoc study team to conduct an analysis of the implications arising from that potential rival. The point here is that this is NOT merely an intelligence issue and thus solved by focusing more assets on the challenger. Inevitably, this is a balance issue, that will require the examination of US and Allied capabilities it therefore has to be netted. Undoubtedly, if done right, this ad hoc team will trip over conventional wisdom or rattle the comfort level of strategic crockery they are not doing there job if they dont, and the sponsor needs to appreciate and protect that function.

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