Chapter 16

From Effects-Based Operations to Effects-Based Deterrence: Military Planning and Concept Development

Edward A. Smith, Jr.

The concept of globalization and its potential for changing the world rest on an enormous and routinely ignored assumption: that conflict between nations and within nations will not impede globalization from taking place.¹ Conflicts, whether economic, political, cultural, or military, are the antithesis of globalization and can be its undoing. Conflict can halt or reverse progress in crucial areas and can be used by those who oppose globalization to do just that. Also, and perhaps of greater concern to the United States and the West, free trade and travel, a vital element of globalization, both make countries and regions beyond the conflict area vulnerable in ways that they have never been before.

In this new emerging global environment, deterrence becomes ever more important. It is no longer sufficient for military forces to be able to “fight and win” the wars. The potential impacts and fallout from conflicts in such a tightly linked world could well be so great that fighting and winning could be too little, too late. Rather, globalization will shift the focus of military efforts to preventing wars from occurring, containing those conflicts that do occur, and discouraging the emergence of a hostile peer competitor.

Forward Engagement

For the United States, deterrence in the new global environment has two dimensions: homeland defense and forward engagement. The question of U.S. homeland defense is under closer scrutiny today than ever before because of the potential for terrorist use of weapons of mass effect and because globalization has made threats easier to conceal and our ocean buffers less effective. Accordingly, forward engagement and its component military missions of presence and crisis response have emerged from its Cold War “containment” mentality to become a primary and increasing focus of military efforts.² The two are closely related. For decades, our national security strategy has maintained that a forward defense is the best way to defend the homeland. Simply put, challenges and unrest are best met and dealt with far from our shores. However, in the turmoil of the post-Cold War and of an expanding globalization, this strategy of forward engagement has taken on new meaning.

Our national strategy of forward engagement has rested on three interlocking pillars: economic, political/cultural, and military. Over the decades of the Cold War, our national security strategy often described these pillars in terms of U.S. efforts to promote free enterprise, democracy, and regional stability. But, amid accelerating globalization, especially in the period since the end of the Cold War, it has become particularly apparent that the reality is somewhat different.

The expansion of free market economies in the post-Cold War period was not so much a function of U.S. efforts to promote any ideology of free enterprise as it was of the attraction that such an economic model held. The reason is simple. The free market economy is essentially a complex adaptive economic system that has proven to be a much more efficient producer of goods and services than command economies or more traditional economies. Moreover, the continuing introduction of new information technologies stands to enhance further the flexibility and efficiency of the system. Since economic efficiency manifests itself in the form of expanded quantities of goods and services, the free market system visibly translates into not so much “mass consumption” as into “consumption by the masses,” the idea that everyone can aspire to material goods and some semblance of “the American dream.” It was this prospect that drew Eastern Europe from its Soviet tutelage, and it is this prospect that is laying the foundation for fundamental changes in China and elsewhere. It is worth noting that the driving force for this change is not any American effort to proselytize an ideology of free enterprise. It is rather a self-sustaining movement driven by the hope of a better life.

Similarly, democracy, the equivalent complex adaptive political system, has proven attractive to a changing and more knowledgeable world. Democratic forms of government have demonstrated the flexibility both to cope with the accelerating pace of change that accompanies the free market and information-driven globalization and, at the same time, to ameliorate the potential abuses of the free market system. The idea of a continuing “revolution at the ballot box,” thus, is no longer the luxury of the affluent countries. It has become a political necessity in a world whose pace and awareness of change have been accelerated by information technology. Yet it is not just democracy that has proven attractive. A globalization of the free, mass culture of the West has been fostered by pervasive media whose reach has also been rapidly expanded by the revolution in information technology. This media revolution not only has heightened demands for more open government but also has reinforced the demand for the goods that a more efficient free market economy can bring. Once again, it is not an American effort to create democratic bastions and a free press that drives the change, but rather the spread of information and an increased awareness of how life might be different and how governments might be better.

These changes are accepted as a matter of course in the United States and the West where they have long since taken place. However, the farther away from the North American and Western European epicenter we proceed, the more likely the “revolutions” are to produce changes in cultures and institutions that can be destabilizing. Eastern Europe’s transition to a free market economy, for example, caused major economic difficulties spanning a full decade, while the states of the former Soviet Union continue to grapple with an economic aftermath that is still far from resolved. Similarly, the progressive Westernization and secularization of Arab culture has evoked a violent reaction by many in the Arab world who see it as a threat to their very identity, a reaction that lies at the root of the anti-Western terrorism of an Osama bin Laden. Finally, in areas such as China, there is an uneasy combination of an economic revolution-in-progress and a political stagnation that has yet to be resolved and that may prove destabilizing in the decades to come. In general, the further we move toward the periphery, the greater the change in other societies is likely to be, the greater the degree of instability likely, and the further they will probably be from completing the transition that we have begun.

Put in this light, our forward-engagement strategy takes on a somewhat different character. It presents a paradox. It seeks both change and stability. Free market economies and democracy require some modicum of both internal and external stability to succeed. Yet those same changes tend to produce instability both inside the countries experiencing the transition and in the region in general. In fact, we might hypothesize that the greater the instability a country must confront during the transition, the longer it is likely to take to complete and the more unrest it is likely to propagate both to the countries surrounding it and to the world as a whole. This latter threat, most apparent in the attacks of terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, underlines what is perhaps the most basic rationale for our espousal of forward engagement. The United States is clearly the prime target for any antiglobalization backlash, a problem that directly menaces not only the American diaspora overseas but the homeland as well. Thus, by adopting regionally focused strategies aimed at aiding the needed transition to a successful and speedy conclusion, we lessen the danger that we ourselves face at home and abroad.

...And the Military Role?

How do military forces contribute to this strategy? Obviously, the long-term solutions to the unrest must derive from the economic and political transformations that are now taking place. In other words, the economic and political/cultural pillars of our forward engagement—not the military pillar—are the source of any ultimate solution. Only they can deal with the root cause of the instability. They aid the transformation to the degree that American and Western businesspersons, teachers, diplomats, and journalists are free to play an active role. But this role, like the transformation itself, demands stability to succeed and is retarded by instability such as the threat of anti-Western terrorism, particularly that directed at overseas Americans.

This is where the military role in forward engagement really comes into play. We have been looking at the military role in forward engagement in terms of reactive operations, such as the evacuation of American nationals threatened by local terrorism or crisis responses to block local aggression, whether internal or external. However, these are at best operations to deal with the symptoms of the instability that we have been discussing, and they do not reflect the most fundamental and essential role of our forward and forward-deployable military power. That role is to act as the guarantor of stability. It is to buy time for peaceful change to succeed, and—to the degree that military power can do—to ensure that peaceful change remains peaceful. In this equation, military power is not itself the solution; the solutions lie instead in the economic and sociopolitical domain. The military pillar enables those solutions to be effective by promoting stability and keeping the peace. Stated in more formal terms, the role of military forces in forward engagement is to establish a local regime of conventional deterrence within which the needed economic and political changes can take place.³

How do these economic, political, and military roles combine to carry out forward engagement? Based on the above discussion, we can conceive of forward engagement in terms of three overlapping economic, political, and military circles, as depicted in figure 16–1. The overlaps are instructive. For example, by opening new markets, businesspersons also engage in people-to-people contacts that help to expand cultural and political frontiers. Yet, despite the overlap, the role of the businessperson clearly remains economic. Similarly, a diplomat might aid the business in opening new markets while remaining still a diplomat advancing U.S. policy. The same is true of military power. One role of a military force in forward engagement, for example, may be to take up a position permitting it to evacuate American nationals. Or that force may keep the seas safe for commerce or engage people-to-people contacts such as exercises with local militaries. However, we need to be clear that each of these examples do not describe the entire military role but only the areas in which military operations overlap the economic and political spheres (that is, where military forces are used to support directly the actions of sociopolitical or the economic pillars). In this sense, they are missions that are peripheral to the actual and most critical military role: creating and maintaining local stability. It is this conventional deterrence role with its forward presence and crisis response components that is the true focus of the military pillar of forward engagement. It is also the hinge upon which a peaceful globalization process turns.

Deterrence

After 40 years of the Cold War, when issues of strategic nuclear deterrence loomed large, there is a natural tendency to think of the word deterrence with an implicit strategic nuclear in front of it. It is, therefore, useful to understand how that strategic nuclear aspect has shaped our thinking in order to distinguish how conventional or nonstrategic nuclear deterrence differs.⁴

Strategic Nuclear Deterrence

The strategic nuclear deterrence with which we have become so familiar rested on the threat of retaliation. It worked because each nuclear-armed power could threaten its opponent(s) with consequences that were so catastrophic that the opponent was deterred from taking action, a so-called balance of terror. As secure second-strike capabilities emerged, this threat of retaliation even became the security of mutually assured destruction, in which the ability to retaliate with horrendous consequences was guaranteed, even if one side managed to deliver the first blow. Despite numerous crises and a number of tense military confrontations between the great powers during the Cold War, the consequences of a nuclear exchange combined with the acknowledged difficulty of controlling the escalation of even a tactical nuclear exchange made a strategic nuclear conflict unlikely.

Deterrence worked—or so it seemed at the time. In reality, the scale of the consequences involved had another dimension embodied in the failure of the Dulles Doctrine.⁵ In effect, the horrendous scale and scope of the consequences involved in nuclear warfare set a credibility threshold. A nuclear war that would result in the annihilation of a large portion of the populations on both sides could only be credibly threatened to the degree that the issue at hand threatened the very existence of the nuclear powers qua nations.⁶ The greater the risks incurred by the threat, the more important the interest threatened had to be if the threat were to be plausible.

Beneath this sliding and uncertain threshold, conflicts occurred in which the vital interests of the superpowers were not directly threatened, and, thus, strategic nuclear capabilities appeared irrelevant. The list of such Cold War substrategic non- nuclear conflicts included everything from conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan, to the Czech and Hungarian revolutions, to the Grenada operation. To some extent, the United States attempted to deal with this threshold by evolving variants on the strategic nuclear deterrence concept, such as graduated response or flexible response. However, in actuality, the United States resorted to a second, parallel level of conventional deterrence centered on forward presence and rapid response to crises through global power projection.

Conventional Deterrence

For purposes of this chapter, the term conventional deterrence is used to encompass everything but strategic deterrence (that is, nuclear, weapons of mass destruction or mass effect). Perhaps in a reflex left over from Cold War strategic nuclear deterrence thinking, we tend to think of conventional deterrence as a miniature version of strategic deterrence, that is, in terms of destroying predetermined lists of targets, but simply using conventional rather than nuclear weapons. However, there are really two aspects to this conventional deterrence: the threat of retaliation and prevention.

Threat of Retaliation

Like its strategic nuclear counterpart, conventional deterrence uses threats of retaliation.⁷ Even though this retaliation may be executed with conventional weapons, the deterrent value of the threat follows much the same logic as strategic nuclear deterrence. It threatens by holding at risk something an enemy holds dear. However, where strategic nuclear arms may hold whole societies at risk, the conventional threat is limited to finite targets or actions that only in some vast aggregate might purport to hold a society as a whole at risk.

Nevertheless, over the years, the potential impact of that conventional threat has been multiplied by a succession of developments. First, the development of precision weapons made it possible to destroy very specific targets reliably without a large-scale effort. Then, nodal targeting bolstered the impact of precise weapons further by enabling warfighters to focus destruction where it would create the greatest impact. Finally, the introduction of cruise missiles into the equation meant that these precisely targeted strikes could be accomplished without risking personnel—a change that made the political credibility of military action far greater.

However, retaliation-based conventional deterrence runs into some of the same problems encountered in retaliation-based strategic nuclear deterrence. In accordance with international law, the general principle of repelling attack is well accepted, but the legality of retaliation after attack is not. The threat of retaliation, too, has a credibility threshold. The same sort of logic applies to conventional threats as to those at the strategic nuclear level. The less direct a challenge is to the interests of the state retaliating, the less credible a threat of a large-scale retaliation is likely to be—just as in the case of the doctrine of massive response.⁸ But there is a second, almost catch-22 aspect to this. The less the magnitude of the damage threatened, the lower the consequences and risks attached to the conduct that is to be deterred. The lower the risks, the more likely the deterrence is to be tested—time and again—just as long as, from the adversary’s perspective, the risks remain manageable and do not outweigh potential gains.

To make matters worse, this risks-versus-gains calculation is likely to be heavily colored by what the adversary wants to see and by a consequent tendency to rationalize away the possibility of retaliation entirely or to minimize its impact. The more intellectually isolated adversary decisionmakers are, the more such rationalization is likely to occur.⁹ In short, conventional-level threats of retaliation cannot be counted upon to be very effective deterrents.

Prevention

The more successful approach to conventional deterrence appears to revolve instead around prevention (that is, the foreclosure of a reasonable prospect of success for a potential adversary). Logically and quite apart from any risks-versus-gains calculation, if protagonists perceive that they simply cannot succeed in the action being contemplated, then the action becomes pointless, and they probably will not proceed.¹⁰ The idea of prevention and specifically its military corollary, foreclosure, creates a very different arena for the use of military power as a deterrent.¹¹

What type of conduct are we trying to deter, and how might an adversary use the capabilities at his disposal to that end? The central thesis in these questions is that if we know what a challenger is attempting to do and how he intends to do it, we can array the capabilities to prevent him from succeeding and thus deter him. This thesis is open-ended on several levels. It does not necessarily imply a military-on-military confrontation or a formal campaign of any sort, though both may be part of an effort to foreclose. It does not necessarily imply a violent use of military force, though the actions of military forces are very likely to be part of any response. And it may be either an active foreclosure in which specific moves are countered or a passive foreclosure in which a continuing local security calculus discourages the development of challenges.¹²

In essence, prevention focuses on one specific kind of effect: the idea of foreclosure. We bring an observer to conclude that a challenge to stability simply cannot succeed. As the above discussion of foreclosure indicated, there are two types of foreclosure to be considered, passive and active.

Passive Foreclosure

Passive foreclosure is embodied in Mahan’s concept of a “fleet in being,” that is, a force or capability that cannot be ignored by observers and whose very existence shapes what the observers do. In the context of forward engagement, this would mean becoming a key and unavoidable part of a local security calculus as the player whose intervention would change the entire risks-gains assessment in any given situation. This kind of deterrence would likely be played out at two levels. At its most basic level, it would be represented by all of the challenges to local stability that would not be made even though potential local challengers might otherwise have had the capability and will to do so. At a more advanced level, it might be reflected in decisions not to develop the military or other capabilities to threaten stability in the first place.¹³ Stated simply, because the fleet in being was there and able to intervene, neither the capabilities nor the strategy that they were to support could have failed. Forward-presence forces and alert crisis-response forces such as an airborne division or an air expeditionary force are examples of forces whose very existence becomes part of a local security calculus and thus who contribute to passive foreclosure.

Active Foreclosure

Active foreclosure centers on the actions taken by forces to block or negate an emerging challenge to stability or one already in progress. It is, thus, the form of deterrence that occurs when passive foreclosure fails. Active foreclosure is evident in the active positioning of forces either to ensure that a challenge cannot succeed or to raise the level of risks to the point that continuing the challenge no longer makes sense. Such foreclosure can involve combat operations as well as maneuver.

Active foreclosure is embodied in crisis-response operations, whether by forces already forward deployed at the onset of a challenge or by those readily deployed from distant bases outside the region. Indeed, the history of crisis responses by U.S. military forces—more than 500 over the past 50 years—is an illustration of active foreclosure at work. In many of these responses, especially those in the Mediterranean in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was in fact a conscious effort by participants to follow a strategy of interposition.¹⁴

We can define conventional deterrence in terms of threat of retaliation and prevention, but how do we describe what is going on, and how might we better use our military forces to build a stable local regime of conventional deterrence? This is the core challenge for the emerging concepts of network-centric and effects-based operations.

Effects-based Operations

In studies of both network-centric operations and effects-based operations, the emphasis has been on combat operations. This is certainly understandable; after all, the only military force worth having is one that can fight and win. Yet in the context of globalization and the requirement to deter conflict, to focus solely or almost exclusively on combat operations would be a mistake. If the mark of a truly successful 21st-century military force is the ability to win without fighting or to prevent the combat in the first place, then clearly network-centric and effects-based operations must be examined in that light. A concept of effects-based operations that is focused on actions rather than weapons or targets enables us to do just this and to take a theoretical and conceptual look at the use of military forces and network-centric operations not only in combat but in peace and crisis as well. If we conceive of effects-based operations in terms of operations in the cognitive domain, we can take a step in this direction and provide the basis for looking at how military operations might best be orchestrated to shape behavior so as to keep the peace and prevent war. Finally, by understanding the role of network-centric operations in this same context, we can assess the applicability of network-centric warfare to the core military problem of deterrence.

In the context of globalization, the ideas of effects-based deterrence, effects-based forward engagement, and effects-based presence all seem eminently reasonable. After all, deterrence is inherently a question of human behavior, and behavior is the ultimate focus of effects-based operations. Any concept of effects-based deterrence, then, must address the question of how the actions we take, military or otherwise, influence behavior in peace and crisis with or without the violent use of military or other force. Not only is deterrence a logical focus of any study of either network-centric or effects-based operations, but it is also a reflection of the operational realities of our current world. Deterrence has been a core mission of our military forces, and it is the mission toward which most of their day-to-day activity is directed. Moreover, if we consider that deterrence is far from being a peacetime-only mission that disappears when combat begins but is instead a fundamental facet of military operations in combat as well, then understanding the role of effects-based operations in deterrence becomes even more essential.

What are effects-based operations? The concept itself is not new. It is certainly reflected in the focus both of Sun Tzu and of Carl von Clausewitz on decisions and outcomes. It is also reflected in nodal targeting that seeks to create second- and third-order effects from the destruction of targets. However, the previous discussion suggests that effects-based operations need to be considered in a context that is much wider than targeting and that points to the utility of a broad definition along the following lines: Effects-based operations are coordinated sets of actions directed at shaping the behavior of friends, neutrals, and foes in peace, crisis, and war.¹⁵

The actions that may be undertaken by military forces certainly include combat and specifically strike operations, but military forces clearly do a great deal more. They shape the behavior of observers by their actions or by their very presence in a particular area. These actions and presence often are deliberately planned to create a particular effect that usually is not limited to overwhelming and confounding enemies, but extends equally to supporting friends and reassuring neutrals. The basic building block for creating effects is what might be termed an action-reaction cycle (see figure 16–2), that is, a two-sided interaction in which each side tries to persuade its opponent to adopt a particular course of action while dissuading it from alternate, unacceptable courses of action.¹⁶

These action-reaction building blocks can be seen at each level of interaction—tactical, operational, military-strategic, and geostrategic—and appear to be operative in a long chain of military operations in peace, crisis, and war, but especially in the crisis responses of U.S. military forces over the last 50 years. In fact, a closer examination of the history of those operations points to six basic rules of thumb that define an effects-based operation. The first three of these basic rules are analogous to those of a game of chess, while the last three point to a degree of complexity that is well beyond that of a chess game—specifically because they center on the human dimension of the interaction. This human dimension is where the nonlinear payoff for effects-based operations occurs and is the same focal point that we must address in trying to create a regime of conventional deterrence.

Rule One: All actions create effects; some create more than others.

In a chess game, it is not necessary to take a piece to have an effect on the game (for example, putting an opponent into check). Many or indeed most of the moves undertaken during a game probably do not involve taking an opponent’s pieces, but instead are directed at foreclosing a future move threatening a future move, or positioning a piece for a future move that we might like to take. Similarly, in an effects-based operation, it is not necessary to destroy an opponent’s capabilities to have an impact or to create an effect. Action-reaction cycles need not involve combat, and even those effects-based operations that do include combat can consist primarily of the noncombat operations. This does not exclude destruction of capabilities and targets. It says rather that there is much more to creating an effect than striking a target and that effects-based targeting is but one way to accomplish our ends.

During many of the crisis responses of the last 50 years, particularly those involving some form of military confrontation, opposing sides maneuvered for tactical advantage while avoiding actual combat. During responses by naval forces in particular, the coordination of participating ships, aircraft, and submarines bore all of the marks of maneuver warfare because of the agility, flexibility, and responsiveness of action required. In many respects, they resembled nothing so much as a modern version of 18th-century positional warfare in which the object was not necessarily to destroy the opposing army but to outmaneuver it so much as to foreclose any possibility of success and, thus, force its cession.¹⁷ The encounters were, in essence, maneuver warfare—without the warfare.

Rule Two: Interactions are likely to be multiple and produce a cumulative effect.

A chess game is comprised of a series of moves by two players that continue to capitulation, checkmate, or a draw. Moves do not occur in isolation. Pieces may be lost, formations dispersed, and gambits foreclosed in each move with the effect of that move setting the cumulative parameters for succeeding moves. This effect may be felt either immediately by forcing a reaction in the next move, such as putting a king into check, or it may not be felt until later in the game, such as in the impact of the loss of a powerful piece. As the latter implies, the ultimate effect of a move cannot be entirely known. Thus, a move undertaken at one point in the game may well produce serendipitous or unintended consequences in subsequent moves.

The action-reaction cycles of crisis reactions follow a similar pattern. The effect of an action may be immediate, an impact that either independently or when added to what has gone before causes a change in the current mode of operation. Or it may be long term, a part of a continuing effect that will ultimately produce an aggregate impact. This indicates that, just as in a chess game, the action-reaction cycles in an effects-based operation cannot be isolated. The effects created are likely to be multiple and to multiply over time with the effects created by each cycle carrying over into the next cycles to create a cumulative overall effect.

Rule Three: Any action-reaction cycle will have both active and passive participants.

The idea of cumulative effect can be taken a step further. Consider that, in tournament chess, the impact of a move is not confined to an individual game but may influence the play in succeeding games. Each move or series of moves may be studied for the novel way in which they deal with a given situation on the board or for what they say about an individual player’s thinking. These lessons can then be carried over to other encounters. But this learning process is not confined to the two active agents; rather, it applies to all those who can observe the game or who can study it in some fashion. In this manner, the impact of a move may extend not only to rematches of the same two players but also to all who can put the knowledge to use for their own ends, whether in future competition with one of the two players or with a different player.

The same principle applies to effects-based operations. The actions undertaken stand to have an impact upon the active participants in a given action-reaction cycle and over the course of their interaction and upon any other party who can see them. Again, this impact may be immediate, as in the case of the next challenger in line, or over the longer term by influencing the way in which military or political strategists assess an encounter and adjust their own thinking for future interactions. Thus, the effect of an action may assume many different dimensions that stretch far beyond the initial battlespace and the original players, and over the longer term may have an impact, in fact, that greatly exceeds the original effect on either of the active players.

Whereas the above rules have clear analogies to a chess game, they also hint at a more complex interaction that transcends the kind of competition reflected therein. This dimension is reflected in the remaining three rules that focus on the human dimension of the interactions, that is, the way in which each action-reaction cycle is seen and understood by both active and passive observers.

Rule Four: Action-reaction cycles occur simultaneously in multiple dimensions.

Crisis interactions by military forces typically demonstrate three degrees of complication that are not reflected in the chess game used to illustrate the first three rule sets.

First, the action-reaction cycles in crises occur at four different levels: tactical, operational, military strategic, and geostrategic. At the tactical level, for example, there may be air-to-air intercepts or maneuvers and countermaneuvers by ships. At the operational level, there may be a face-off between an entire fleet and an opponent’s air and sea forces in the area. At the military strategic level, there may be some form of confrontation between the two opposing militaries as a whole with each alerting and/or drawing assets from outside the immediate geographic area of the interaction. And at the geostrategic level, the military interactions will likely be paralleled by a standoff between the two governments that stretches into the domestic and international political arena and, perhaps, the economic arena as well.

Second, as this latter point suggests, action-reaction cycles are not limited to the military arena but will extend at a minimum to the political dimension. At the diplomatic-strategic level of the international arena, for example, the Department of State will need to formulate a plan for explaining operations and U.S. policy to area allies and neutrals. At the State Department’s operational level, the foreign policy apparatus would coordinate the execution of this plan in international forums, such as the United Nations (UN) and individual embassies. At the tactical diplomatic level, different action officers in each venue would be called upon to act. On the domestic political front, similarly, the White House would be obliged to present the situation to Congress, the press, and the American public. Where either the tools of the interaction or its results might be economic in nature, that too must be coordinated.

Finally, as the above implies, this military, political, diplomatic, and economic chess game must be played simultaneously on all levels.

Thus, in place of a single chess game, we have multiple, complex interactions on four levels and in three or more arenas. This only stands to reason, since the objects of the effects we seek to create—the actors and the behavior to be shaped—also reside on four different levels of a military arena and at multiple levels of the political and economic arenas.

Rule Five: All actions and effects at each level and in each arena are interrelated.

If we consider, further, that actions and effects cannot be isolated but, as noted in rule two, produce cumulative effects, then all of the above interactions—at each level, from one level to the next, and from one arena to the next—must also be treated as interrelated and cumulative. In crisis operations, for example, the impact of an aircraft being shot down and its pilots captured is instantaneously felt from the tactical through the geostrategic level in the military arena and spreads just as quickly into the political and diplomatic arenas. Moreover, in this already complex interrelationship, we must consider that, again as indicated in rule two, effects are cumulative over time. By extension, all these interrelated effects at each level and in each arena are cumulative over time. Thus, it is not only what we do now that might create an effect on another level or in another arena, but also how that action (or actions) appears in the context of what we have done in the past—again at each level and in each arena. The effect of any individual action stands to be enhanced or diminished by the cumulative context within which they were undertaken.

If we combine these last two rule sets, what emerges is something akin to a nesting of actions and effects as shown in figure 16–3. An air intercept, for example, would appear as an interaction between two active players, but that interaction takes place in the context of an air picture that might include other, for the moment, passive aviation players in the area. Moreover, these passive air players might be paralleled by other passive ground, surface, and subsurface players who constitute the land and sea maneuver forces for the operations, or they might be paralleled by the reconnaissance and communications assets that present a space context. When all of these elements are taken together, they comprise the operational picture of the joint commander. That operational picture in its turn is but one theater picture that, when combined with the situations presented by supporting commanders and other theaters of operation, comprises the military strategic dimension of the U.S. response.¹⁸ Finally, this entire military picture is but one facet of the overall national problem that must be considered at the level of the President and his senior advisers.

The decisionmaking problem is further complicated by the fact that effects overlap from one arena to the next, as illustrated in figure 16–4. In the example given, not only would the Department of State have been left to explain the nature of a tactical action in the event of a shoot-down, but its actions in other areas might well have affected the access to allied ports and airfields that Joint Task Force units enjoyed during the interaction. Thus, actions by an Embassy action officer in one country might well have an impact on tactical actions undertaken by military forces off the coast of another country entirely.

The challenge is to coordinate the interrelated actions of all of a nation’s actors at each level and in each arena so as to create the desired overall effect. Since no level of the nest can be isolated or ignored so long as its actions can be observed, this coordination is at best complex. The decisionmaking challenge is especially great as it involves coordinating diverse and often seemingly unconnected actions in three arenas so as to create a coordinated effect. As if this were not complicated enough, the actions that can be undertaken by the military, political, and economic instruments of national power have vastly different time lines associated with their exercise. If political, economic, and military actions must be timed to occur either simultaneously or in some specific sequence, then no matter how fast the military operations may be in theory, they will still be held hostage to the slower pace at which governing action, usually political, can take place. For example, a military response may be held pending the presentation of the U.S. case at a meeting of the UN Security Council or, even longer, pending international enforcement of a quarantine. But the reverse can also be true. Political actions such as the announcement of a quarantine may be held up pending the arrival of the military forces needed to enforce it.

Rule Six: Effects have both physical and psychological dimensions.

It should be readily evident that the effects discussed above are both physical and psychological in nature. In the context of attrition-based warfare, the word effects implies physical effects that are usually measured in terms of capabilities destroyed, such as the degree of target destruction or, more narrowly still, in the sense of weapons effects. However, this physical destruction clearly can have another dimension beyond straightforward attrition. The destruction of a particular set of capabilities can cause a cascade of impacts as, for example, the destruction of a rail junction might translate into a blockage of rail lines of communications and, in turn, into a decrease in the production of war matériel. Even more, that physical destruction might cascade into an impact on how the enemy thinks and acts, for example, by disrupting his plans and forcing him to look for alternatives. That is, the physical action might produce a psychological effect—one of the central ideas in nodal targeting efforts. In this cascade from the physical to the psychological, the destruction of the rail junction might become a stimulus that the foe must take into account in his decisionmaking process.¹⁹ The physical effect thus takes on a human dimension. If the destruction and subsequent disruption are particularly sudden or severe, or if there are no good alternatives, then the physical destruction may shock the opponent. Or it may induce an incapacitating despair either immediately or over a period of time. The physical destruction creates a psychological effect that can stretch far beyond the immediate tactical impact of the targets destroyed.

The earlier rule sets provide additional dimensions in this cascade of effects from the physical to the psychological.

First, they suggest that physical actions at the tactical level can create a chain of physical and psychological effects that will echo at the operational, military strategic, and geostrategic levels of the military arena and that may extend to the domestic and international political arena as well as into the economic world.

Second, they indicate that effects are not restricted to the active participants in the physical action but extend to anyone who can observe it.

Lastly, they indicate that the actions that create this rippling effect do not have to involve destruction of physical capabilities; they merely need to be observable.

The effect, then, derives not only from what physical destruction is meted out but also how an audience perceives the action, which stretches far beyond the immediate battlefield.

From Observations to Perceptions to Effects

Our starting definition of effects-based operations proposed that they were directed at shaping behavior. Destroying forces and capabilities obviously can shape behavior by foreclosing options that an actor might have otherwise exercised. But both the definition and the rule sets just discussed indicate that this is a rather narrow view of effects somewhat colored by attrition-based thinking. Moreover, such shaping presupposes the existence of a state of conflict that would countenance the destruction. If we are to understand how effects-based operations might apply to peacetime operations and deterrence, much less to realize their full potential, we must instead think in terms of actions or stimuli to which an opponent might react. Such actions encompass the destruction of forces and capabilities and extend as well to all observable military force moves and thus serve as a stimulus. In this context, the question of how actions are perceived is critical. But how does this process of perception and reaction occur?

The transition from the physical to the psychological effect is the result of observations made, of the perceptions that those observations in turn create, and the decisions made—consciously or unconsciously—as a result of those perceptions. In this chain, the physical action is only the first step. If the behavior of the observer is to be affected, obviously, he must “see” what has been done and this process of “seeing” will itself be shaped by the sensors or other means available to discern what is going on. Given that neither sensors nor displays of sensor data are ever perfect, the observer is unlikely to see exactly what the action was. Rather, he will be reacting to some variation of that action as presented through the filters of his sensors, his displays, and his doctrine and organization for conducting surveillance and relaying data and information.²⁰ The better his sensors and surveillance system, the closer to reality the observations are likely to be. Then, the observer will need to correlate what he has observed with other observations so as to create a bigger picture of the situation. This picture may fuse inputs from other levels of conflict and other arenas, each of which will have its own variation on reality. Then, the observer will attempt to contextualize the observation, comparing it with other actions and any known history of previous actions. Finally, he will attempt to make sense of the observation in light of a personal experience base shaped by culture, education, and position in an organization. This process of making sense of the external stimulus and assessing the options open, in turn, will lead to a decision as to a course of action.²¹ In this entire process, there are only two inputs over which we may exert any control—the initial action or stimulus and the history of our own previous actions in the same geographic or operational area. Our challenge in creating a stable deterrence regime is to orchestrate both sets of actions to produce the deterrent state we desire, recognizing that each action we take will be filtered both by what our target decisionmaker can and cannot observe and by his individual predilections. The observations, perceptions, and decisions we seek, thus, are a function not only of what destruction might have been meted out or what action taken, but also of what was observed, that is, how it was done. This implies that, from the standpoint of an observer, our physical actions have at least six different attributes, each of which may contribute to shaping perceptions.

Focus. There is of course the question of the physical nature of the action itself. For the observer, this what is the aspect of the stimulus that should provoke a specific line of questions. What was done? What capability was destroyed? How does it affect my options? In short, this what encompasses most of the reactions on which nodal targeting or a carefully crafted target list might focus.

Force Applied. However, not only what is done, but also how it is done—that is, what kind of force was used—will affect an observer’s reactions. Was the stimulus primarily political, economic, or military? Did it demonstrate a willingness to take risks and undertake a commitment (for example, “boots on the ground”)? Or was it a relatively risk-free surgical missile strike? The what also extends to the kinds of questions toward which maneuver warfare might be directed. Where did the force interpose itself? What action did it take, and how might that action inhibit my operations? As these latter questions imply, the what need not involve destruction but must be something that the observer would have to take into account in his decisionmaking.

Scale. The scale of the action has two dimensions: the scale of the effort involved in the action and the scale of the impact. Together, they set the quantitative size of the problem that the adversary must deal with. Obviously, a single missile might destroy a target and create an effect, but it seems evident that the use of 100 missiles on the same target will—for good or bad—create a different impression upon the observer. Similarly, using 100 missiles against one target has a different significance from the use against 100 different targets. Moreover, the effect created by the same scale action will vary from one observer to the next and from one situation to the next. Was a 100-missile strike a disproportionate response? Was it sufficient to induce shock and to deter future actions, or were a greater scale of effort and impact required? Would a strike by a single missile against a single target convey an impression of weakness or of confidence in an ability to detect and strike exactly the right target at exactly the right time? While these questions underline how separate the question of scale is from that of focus, they also point to the need to tailor the scale to a particular set of observers and a particular situation.

Scope. Scope encompasses two dimensions, one geographic and the other operational. The geographic scope of the action defines the physical area within which the foe may be obliged to act or within which he may be vulnerable. The broader the area, the greater his problem is likely to be. For example, a barrage of 100 missiles aimed at a single target will be observed to present a different challenge in many respects than a similar scale strike directed at 100 separate targets spread across the breadth of a country.

The operational scope defines the battlespace—air, sea, undersea, ground, space—and warfare environments in which the foe might be challenged. However, it also defines those warfare areas in which the foe is not likely to be challenged and in which opportunities might be provided to counter or balance a challenge, such as mine warfare. In general, the greater the number of warfare environments, the more stressing a threat is likely to be seen to be. A complex, multiple threat simply will tax an adversary’s assets and command and control to a greater degree and is more likely to leave him guessing where the full weight of an attack or maneuver will be placed.

Timing. Timing encompasses three different dimensions: speed, duration, and what might be called synchronicity.

Speed is the ability to execute an action or reaction rapidly enough to create a desired effect. This may mean creating an operations tempo so overwhelmingly fast as to allow no coherent response and, perhaps, to induce shock or chaos. Or it may mean being able to react quickly enough to changes in either the warfare environment or the political arena to foreclose courses of action that the foe might wish to take.

Duration (or the period of time over which an operation can be sustained) is how long a foe might have to endure an action. An action that can only be initiated once or cannot be repeated very often invites the foe to ride it out and then return to previous behavior, whereas an operation that has no such limitation means that the pressure is not going to end before the unacceptable behavior ceases.

Synchronicity (or the ability to cause actions to occur at exactly the right time or in exactly the right sequence) is the level of difficulty of the military problem that the potential foe faces. The wider the diversity of closely timed operations the foe might face, the more difficult it will be for him to counter them and the more likely it is that they will result in a cascade of problems that he will be unable to control.

Visibility. Any action that is observed, whether intended or part of our effects-based plan, will create some effect. Conversely, any actions that are not observed, no matter how carefully orchestrated, will create no psychological effect.²² The visibility of our actions is key. If the foe cannot see the scale, scope, and timing of our actions—including virtual actions—or cannot get a report of the actions in a manner that is timely enough to enter his decisionmaking process, then these actions will have no effect beyond their attrition value, if any. But that is not all. If the dimensions of our actions are misreported and misperceived, the observer may overreact—a particularly dangerous prospect when confronting a foe armed with weapons of mass destruction. Knowing what the foe or observer is likely to see, therefore, is a critical factor in effects-based planning.

While there is clearly a need to appreciate what observers are likely to see and react to, there is also an opportunity in having an ability to do so because it provides one more variable that can be manipulated and controlled to create the desired effect. If our knowledge of the observer’s sensor system and how it operates is sufficient, for example, we may be able to orchestrate our actions so as to control what is observed and when.

Keeping the Peace in Peaceful Global Change

How do the effects-based operations that we have been describing translate into an effects-based deterrence that can simultaneously thwart would-be aggressors and reassure friends and neutrals? It should be clear from the preceding discussions that deterrence itself is inherently effects-based. After all, it is in great measure about shaping human behavior and the use of physical actions to create psychological effects, a process that takes place in the minds of regional decisionmakers and local publics. The decisions made and courses of action pursued arise from an aggregation of economic, political, cultural, and military perceptions (both rational and emotional components) that may take place over a period of years or even generations. In part, the perceptions reflect assessments of physical capabilities such as the economic and military power of local and extraregional contenders and of patterns of past behavior by these actors that might indicate how the physical capabilities may or may not translate into action. In part, they reflect human elements such as national pride, trust, and friendship. It is within this context that we must consider conventional deterrence and its twin components of presence and crisis response.

How do military forces build a deterrence regime? We need to recognize from the start that all conventional deterrence is local; it is about the balance of power and threats in a given area, that is, about a local security calculus. Our challenge is to create a local constellation of military capabilities that would force a would-be aggressor to ask a series of hard questions about his intended course of action and then bring him to conclude that aggression could not succeed. The effects-based discussions above provide some key insights as to the nature of this local security calculus.

First, any deterrence regime will rest on local perceptions of our action, actions observed in the past, actions undertaken on a day-to-day basis, and actions that might potentially be taken in the future. The key words in shaping a local security calculus are actions and perceptions. Having a capability to thwart or reassure is not sufficient to deter. We must also demonstrate both the capability and a willingness to use it in such a way as to be readily observed by all concerned. Also, we must do so on a regular basis if we are to translate a past history of action into a current and continuing expectation of future action whenever and wherever needed.

Second, as this implies, building local deterrence is a continuous process. Effects are cumulative over time. There is no sharp dividing line between peace and war but rather a continuous chain of observed interactions that stretches from routine peacetime presence to combat operations. Effects-based operations do not begin with combat or even target planning. Peacetime actions are critical to wartime success—as well as to avoiding conflict in the first place. It is the peacetime actions that condition observers as to what to expect in the face of a threat. The history of those actions constitutes the experience base upon which crisis and wartime perceptions and, thus, effects are built. If we wait for a crisis or war before beginning to shape perceptions, we are likely to discover either that it is too late or that we must first overcome a local perception of inaction before our crisis actions will be taken seriously.

Third, the military components of deterrence do not exist in isolation. All actions—tactical, operational, military strategic, and geostrategic, as well as political, military, and economic—are interrelated and will be seen by others as a whole.

Fourth, choosing the right actions to undertake and creating the right effects depends on knowing the observer sufficiently to have some idea of how those actions will be perceived by the intended audience and a larger world audience.

To shape the security calculus of a would-be foe, therefore, we must first understand how our capabilities and actions constrain or fail to constrain would-be local aggressors. Then we must force home the perception by demonstrating repeatedly both the capability and willingness to act. It is this combination of capability and willingness that constitutes the credibility of any form of deterrence. In short, forward-engagement forces must by their makeup and actions define the military problem that a would-be foe must overcome in order to achieve a successful outcome. The five attributes of an action examined earlier provide the framework for setting the dimensions of the local military problem. For example, the focus on what we and our allies can do collectively or separately forces the would-be aggressor to address the kinds of risks entailed by aggression. The scale of military power we collectively can bring to bear forces him to question whether he has sufficient numbers either to reach his objectives or to defend his homeland. The scope of what we can do forces him to assess just how far he is likely to have to spread his efforts. The speed of what we can do, especially how fast additional forces can be brought to bear, sets his time line and thus increases or decreases the challenge involved. The duration of the effort we can sustain forces him to assess the “what-ifs” of an operation that is not swiftly concluded and his own ability to withstand a long war.

Designing Forces that Deter Aggression

If these are the general dimensions of the perceptions that we are trying to create, then what do they say about the forces we might need? That is, based on the above discussion, what kinds of military power and in what combinations could prevent successful aggression?

Logically, the military power making up our deterrent relies on a balance of both the forces and capabilities of local allies ²³ and those of the nonregional players that demonstrably would be applicable to a local crisis. The half-century history of real-world crisis responses by U.S. military forces indicates that these latter forces are really of two kinds. The first is the visible forward military presence by which the physical capabilities become an insistent part of local perceptions and thus the local security calculus. The second is the crisis response by which these capabilities and the still greater extraregional capabilities of major powers are brought into the balance. All three of these forces play roles in shaping the local security calculus and must be thought of in terms of interlocking capabilities. For example, the greater the capabilities of the local allies and the greater their will, the less reinforcement will be required from nonregional players to maintain the same level of deterrence. The greater the capabilities of the forward-deployed forces, the less dependent the deterrence will be either on local capabilities or those deployed from distant bases. Finally, the greater the forces that can be rapidly deployed, the less reliant the deterrence will be on either local or forward-deployed forces. In this equation, the local forces component is the independent variable. That is, the amount of outside intervention required to maintain deterrence and stability in the area will depend on the level of local capabilities rather than the reverse. The United States, for example, might encourage local allies to take a greater part in their own defense, but in the last analysis it cannot control what they actually do or the proficiency and will that they bring to the task.

However, as the discussion of shaping the would-be aggressor’s challenge points out, there are several additional dimensions that must be added to the equation.

First, as previously identified, there is the question of speed, that is, of shaping a would-be aggressor’s time line for military or other operations. How immediate must a response to aggression be in order to collapse the aggressor’s time line to the point that his objectives can no longer be realized? For the aggressor, there will probably be a trade-off between the scale of the objectives and consequent scale of operations on the one hand and the time required to achieve those objectives on the other. The bigger the required operation, the longer the operation will take to mount, thus the more warning opposing forces are likely to have and the more likely it is that heavy forces stationed outside the region will enter into the balance. The smaller operations and more limited objectives will require less time, thus the less warning opposing forces will have and the more likely that any response will depend on forces already in the region and those lighter forces that can be readily deployed. This is where the balance in the local deterrent comes into play. If smaller operations by a would-be aggressor (for example, cross-border or guerrilla operations) could be met immediately and decisively with some combination of local forces and forward-deployed forces,²⁴ then the aggressor is likely to conclude that aggression cannot succeed. If he were to increase the size of the operations so as to overwhelm the forces in the region but, in so doing, were to increase the warning time to the point that a decisive intervention by forces from outside the region became possible, then he would lose again. By contrast, if our deterrent were to rely heavily upon a very large force from outside the region, but the endeavor took 6 months to accomplish, then there would be a high probability that the aggressor could achieve his objectives before we could act effectively and the deterrent effect would be minimal.

Second, the key to the deterrence equation is not forces, but capabilities that are applicable to particular warfare challenges. Capabilities that cannot or will not ²⁵ be brought to bear do not figure in the local security calculus. Capabilities that cannot be used against the threats at hand (for example, long-range cruise missiles in an urban conflict) will likewise be discounted in any local security calculus. This aspect of the equation is made all the more important by the likelihood that the would-be foe probably will have based his calculations on an identified capabilities and political niche within which he believes he can compete with local and nonregional forces. This means he will have tried to identify warfare areas in which our collective capabilities are lacking or weak. Mine warfare and urban warfare are obvious examples. To this end, the regional deterrent must include diverse capabilities from low end to high end that permit local, forward-deployed or forward-deployable elements to deal with such threats. Then, these diverse capabilities must be constantly adapted and demonstrated as the opponent continues to seek new niches for competition.

Third, the question of applicability extends likewise to simply getting forces to where they can be effective. If the potential adversary can impede or deny access to needed facilities or to the local battlespace, then the capabilities that are subject to denial are also likely to be discounted. The potential impact on deterrence here is threefold. If the foe calculates that his denial efforts can impede either the arrival of forces from outside the region or the movement of forces within the region for some amount of time, then that time will be added to his operational time line, giving him extra latitude and a greater probability of success. If he calculates that he can restrict access to local bases and, thus, force nonregional forces to operate from distant areas, he will likely discount the scale, speed, and, perhaps, duration of those capabilities in his balancing of risks. Finally, if he can either deny access entirely or inflict sufficient damage to force the nonregional powers to withdraw or reconsider their involvement, then capabilities that can be so denied are not likely to deter. The converse of this calculation is that, to the degree that we can demonstrate an ability to deal with area denial threats, our deterrent is made more credible.

As the above should make clear, there is no one size fits all or cookie-cutter combination of military capabilities and actions that adds up to a stable local conventional deterrence regime. Asymmetry in the stakes of the contending parties must be evaluated and included in the calculus. The requirements will also vary from one region to the next, and they will vary over time to reflect the changing constellation of potential adversaries and allies in each region. Perhaps the two most critical factors in the creation and maintenance of deterrence are the knowledge of friends, foes, and neutrals who let us adapt the deterrent to the changing challenge, and the visibility of our responses to that changing challenge. Friends, foes, and neutrals must see what local allies and we can and will do if the capabilities are to enter into their security calculus and become part of the deterrence regime. Moreover, they must see those capabilities demonstrated repeatedly enough to become a norm in their perceptions and thinking.

Conclusions

The scale and scope of the changes now going on in the world are so vast that we cannot really hope to control them. These changes have been destabilizing to the point that one of the greatest challenges of forward engagement will be to keep the peace in a peaceful change. Thus, although we tend to think of globalization in economic or perhaps political and cultural terms, it in fact rests on a critical military mission: to maintain local and regional stability by deterring those who would either disrupt a peaceful change or turn instability to their own advantage.

The military task of creating and sustaining a broad regime of conventional deterrence to support globalization is essentially about shaping and reinforcing behavior. That is, it is inherently effects-based. The long history of presence and crisis response operations by U.S. forces points to a series of effects-based rules of thumb to guide us in this task:

• Actions, rather than weapons, do most shaping. The effects wrought by destroying a foe’s forces and capabilities, however good these might be, are confined to combat operations, whereas the effects created by actions both span the spectrum from peace to crisis to war and determine in large part how wartime weapons effects will be seen and understood.
• The effect of actions is continuous and cumulative. There is no sharp break between effects-based operations in peacetime and those in war. Rather, each move contributes to or detracts from the overall effect we seek to create: a stable local conventional deterrence.
• Our actions will have an effect on all who can see them, not only upon a would-be foe but also upon friends and neutrals.
• Actions to add to or detract from deterrence can take place on four levels of military operations—tactical, operational, military strategic, and geostrategic—and with actions in the international and domestic political arenas and the economic arena as well.
• Actions at any level or in any arena cannot be isolated from those in other levels or arenas. Observers will tend to look at all of the actions in all of the arenas and on all levels, whether intended or unintended, supporting or contradictory, as a whole. To create a coherent overall effect, coordination is imperative.
• Our challenge is to translate physical actions from simply being there to conducting combat operations into the psychological effect of deterrence and an expectation of stability. The psychological effect is the fruit not of our actions themselves but of what observers see and perceive those actions to be and to mean. To shape behavior rather than react to it, therefore, we must orchestrate not only what we do but also how we do it.

All these considerations apply to shaping a local security calculus that will prevent aggression. However, prevention hinges on confronting adversaries with a military problem that they cannot solve. The United States and its local allies must present a capability to pose so many risks as to outweigh any possible gain; a speed of reaction that affords no opportunity to attain military objectives; a balance of diverse capabilities that leaves no warfare niche to be exploited; and a certainty that all capabilities will be brought to bear regardless of any effort to deny access.

In practice, this is an interlocking threefold task. Local partners provide the basic capabilities to defend themselves and deal with internal instability. Balanced forward-deployed forces provide the ability to deal with smaller, swiftly moving threats, a capacity to multiply the capability of local forces (for example, with information and sensors), a means of ensuring or obtaining access for heavier forces, and a day-to-day presence to reinforce deterrence continually. Forward-deployable forces, in turn, provide both a wider array of capabilities and the scale and endurance to overwhelm an adversary’s efforts. The key to this whole endeavor is visibility. What an adversary cannot see or has not seen recently will probably not enter his calculus. Thus, it is not sufficient only to have capabilities; they must be demonstrated time and again if they are to be a continuing part of the calculus we wish to shape.

The tasks outlined above are not new; nor is the concept of effects-based operations. What is new, rather, is a change in the emphasis in how we approach the tasks that underline the interrelationship of the political, economic, and military elements of forward engagement, and, perhaps, a new urgency generated by both the promises and perils of globalization. Both demand a new attention to an old problem: how to prevent wars and shape a more stable peace.

Edward A. Smith, Jr., is a senior defense analyst in the Boeing Company’s Washington Studies and Analysis Office. Before retiring as a captain in the U.S. Navy, he served in combat and on numerous planning staffs. He was one of the principal authors of the U.S. Navy’s seminal...From the Sea (1992) and wrote the Navy’s Anytime, Anywhere vision (1997). He recently completed a book on effects-based operations, entitled Effects-Based Operations: Applying Network Centric Warfare in Peace, Crisis, and War, Po be published by the Department of Defense Cooperative C4ISR Research Project.

Notes

¹ The relative stability of the last decade has become the foundation for incipient globalization, much as the Pax Britannica became the foundation for the globalization of commerce that occurred in the 19th century. BACK

² This does not detract from the need to deal with eventual peer or near-peer opponents. Rather, it indicates that, over the next few decades, the day-to-day operation of the forward-engagement strategy is likely to focus on a succession of local and regional crises. Furthermore, the history of the Cold War underlines that, even in the midst of peer competition, a substantial proportion of military efforts remains focused on dealing with local crises—a task that may be worsened by a peer opponent’s efforts to foment further unrest to its own ends. BACK

³ A frequent criticism of military crisis responses is that 6 months or so later, there is no discernible change in the local situation as a result of the intervention. However, if we consider the military role not as one of solving the underlying problem but of buying time for an economic or sociopolitical solution, the intervention and its outcome take on a new perspective. It may not be the intervention that failed at all, but the inability of the political and economic tools to provide a lasting solution in the period allotted. BACK

⁴ See Edward Rhodes, “Conventional Deterrence,” Comparative Strategy 19, no. 3 (July-September 2000), 221–254. BACK

⁵ The 1953 proposal by the Eisenhower administration Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was that the United States would meet conventional attacks with a massive—read nuclear—response. BACK

⁶ This was the essence of the French argument for an independent force de frappe, which was deemed a credible response to any threat to France where a U.S. response that endangered American cities might not be. BACK

⁷ Given the United Nations charter injunction against retaliatory warfare, such retaliation is usually couched in terms of self-defense, but the logic remains the same. BACK

⁸ In the case of conventional deterrence, most probably the unacceptable result will not be the annihilation of society, but rather a political fallout that can be counterproductive and that would negate the effect that the using power had sought. Obviously, this sets up a sliding scale. The more important the interest to be defended, the more likely any negative fallout is to be acceptable. The less important the interest, the more likely it is that possible negative repercussions will outweigh any gains to be made from successful deterrence. BACK

⁹Although it can be postulated that such a rational process of calculation would have little to do with the reaction of an irrational decisionmaker, it is probably more precise to say that any senior-level decisionmaker is, by virtue of having attained that position, rational. This does not mean that the rationality would match Western notions of a rational decisionmaker, but simply that some form of rational calculation will almost inevitably be involved in perceiving and reacting to the threat of retaliation. It is upon that calculation, in whatever form it takes, that deterrence relies. BACK

¹⁰ Rhodes, 222–223. BACK

¹¹ The concept of foreclosure bears resemblance to the new preemptive approach to national security outlined by President George W. Bush in his speech at West Point on June 1, 2002. In encountering the emerging enemies of the 21st century, the President maintained, “If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.” However, U.S. defense policy has yet to develop and describe this approach fully. It may be assumed that significant differences may exist between the concept of foreclosure discussed in this chapter and the new U.S. defense concept. On President Bush’s speech, see Elisabeth Bumiller, “U.S. Must Act First to Battle Terror, Bush Tells Cadets,” The New York Times, June 2, 2002, 1,6; and Mike Allen and Karen DeYoung, “Bush: U.S. Will Strike First at Enemies,” The Washington Post, June 2, 2002, A1, A8. BACK

¹² While prevention is likely to rest on the political as well as the military components of that local calculus, the focus here is on the military dimension and specifically how effects-based operational concepts might help us better use military forces to deter. BACK

¹³These are both negative events, that is, actions that did not take place because they were deterred. Since one cannot logically prove a negative, the perennial difficulty with passive foreclosure is proving that deterrence did in fact take place. BACK

¹⁴ This occurred most notably in the Soviet-American confrontations during the 1967, 1970, and 1973 Middle East wars. BACK

¹⁵ This is a definition of effects-based operations. Effects-based warfare would be a subset of these operations applying to wartime operations, while effects-based targeting would be in turn a subset of effects-based warfare. BACK

¹⁶ In the draft book from which this essay is drawn, the author uses a detailed example drawn from the January-April 1986 operations off Libya, omitted here for brevity. BACK

¹⁷ According to the Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan study, this figure stood at 331 as of 1978. As later updated by Siegel and the Center for Naval Analyses using the same methodology, the figure had reached more than 400 crisis responses by U.S. military forces by the end of 1996. See Blechman and Kaplan, Force Without War: U.S. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution Press, 1978). BACK

¹⁸ In response to the Libyan crisis, for example, the Saratoga carrier battlegroup was dispatched from the Pacific theater and later, the America battlegroup reinforced the operation from the Atlantic theater. BACK

¹⁹ See Edward A. Smith, Jr., “Network Centric Warfare: What’s the Point?” Naval War College Review 54, no. 1 (Winter 2001), 64. BACK

²⁰ The latter determine how sensors are deployed and used, what is collected, and how it is handled. BACK

²¹ As this implies, the course of action decided then becomes a reaction or set of events that we in turn will have to consider as a stimulus proceeding through our own sensors and cognitive process to another decision and reaction in what can be seen as a spiral of actions and reactions. BACK

²² This was expressed in one wargame in the comment, “What if the other guy doesn’t know he has lost?” BACK

²³ These local capabilities include both those applicable to conflicts with would-be external aggressors and those to deal with internal unrest. BACK

²⁴ This combined capability might rest, for example, principally on local forces but with U.S. forward-deployed forces providing more sophisticated support such as sensors and communications to enhance those capabilities. BACK

²⁵For example, forces that require access to ports and airfields to operate or that require overflight permission to reach an area are only a factor to the degree that the necessary permissions can be assured. Similarly, a vast strategic nuclear arsenal matters little in a local security calculus if the perception by would-be aggressors is that it will not be used short of a WMD attack on the nuclear power’s homeland. BACK