The Last Warrior

by Andrew F. Krepinevich

  In the past the U.S. 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 defense problem solution[s], and on carefully calculated risk taking.41

  Such assessments were particularly important, Marshall contended, given claims that there were areas of military competition in which the USSR had or was moving toward superiority. There was a belief within the government and among US political elites that the Soviet Union was approaching parity in nuclear arms, while possibly enjoying an advantage in conventional forms of military power.42 The trends at that time suggested the situation would only worsen over time. The United States had poured enormous resources in men and materiel into a seemingly endless war in Southeast Asia, and the American people’s growing opposition to the war had metastasized into opposition to national defense in general. The Soviet Union, it seemed, was not only beginning to outspend the United States militarily but was also catching up technologically with Western weaponry in a number of areas. These circumstances argued, in Marshall’s judgment, for undertaking net assessments to devise strategies for competing more effectively with the Soviets. If the US military could no longer prevail by outspending the Soviets, it would have to outthink them.

  Marshall’s life had been a journey in self-education: there was always something new to learn, always a way to arrive at a better understanding of how the world really works. So it is perhaps not surprising that, in “The Nature and Scope of Net Assessments,” he exhibited a reluctance—which he would demonstrate time and again over the next four decades—to produce anything approaching a methodology that could be mechanistically applied to produce net assessments. Instead he was content to describe what he sought to do rather than suggest how: “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 [emphasis added].”43 But simple as that statement seems, these comparisons had to be comprehensive, encompassing, among other factors, operational doctrines and practices, training regimes, logistics, known or conjectured effectiveness in various environments, design practices and their effect on equipment costs and performance, procurement practices and their influence on cost and lead times, and the political and economic aspects of the competition. “They should evaluate the status of the competition in terms of outcomes of potential conflicts and confrontations. They should compare the efficiency with which the various powers, including the U.S., are conducting the competition.”44

  In insisting that net assessments had to be “comprehensive” Marshall clearly wanted to separate them from systems analysis, which had dominated the Pentagon’s decision making since Defense Secretary McNamara had introduced this methodology in 1961. Marshall knew full well that there were problems with the standard systems analysis studies. “For various reasons,” he wrote, “systems analysis tends to focus on weapons systems choices in a simplified context. The results of these studies were often 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. . . . ”45 Here Marshall was arguing for a holistic approach to comparing US and foreign militaries, not the reductionist kind of thinking typically found in systems analyses. To emphasize the point, he wrote that rather than being prescriptive in their character (as systems analyses typically are), “The use of net assessment is intended to be diagnostic. It will highlight efficiency and inefficiency in the way we and others do things, and areas of comparative advantage with respect to our rivals. It is not intended to provide recommendations as to force levels or force structures as an output.”46 His reason for stopping short of recommendations is compelling. To use a medical analogy, a physician can only prescribe the proper treatment for a malady when he or she has an accurate diagnosis. Without that, the patient might end up with a “cure” that does more harm than the disease. Marshall intended to focus on the former—the diagnosis—as the best way of informing, albeit indirectly, the strategic prescription.

  Finally, the August 1972 memo acknowledged the difficulties involved in crafting net assessments, difficulties that he had broached as far back as his 1966 paper on the problems of estimating military power. “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 [emphasis added].”47 The parallel between crafting good net assessments and crafting good strategy is revealing. President Eisenhower’s view was that while the basic principles of strategy “are so simple that a child may understand them,” determining “their proper application to a given situation requires the hardest kind of work. . . . ”48 Years later one of the private sector’s foremost business strategists, Richard Rumelt, came to the same conclusion, declaring, “Good strategy is very hard work.”49 From the outset Marshall recognized that the same was true of net assessment.

  Marshall’s observations regarding the difficulties of crafting good net assessments may appear obvious. Yet in an environment like the Pentagon where the bulk of the activity, then and now, concerns process—how something is to be done (or, more often the case, how to prevent something from being done)—the need for sustained intellectual effort to get to the truly important problems and opportunities in a competitive situation often goes unappreciated, if not ignored entirely. Perhaps just as sobering, Marshall warned, “The methodologies for doing net assessments are virtually nonexistent.”50 They would have to be developed as the new enterprise unfolded. At the same time data problems abounded, as he had realized during his assessment for Kissinger’s Special Defense Panel: “Some aspects of Soviet forces important to net assessments have not had high priority in current intelligence efforts, in particular logistics and operational practices. Data on U.S. 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.”51 Consequently, he cautioned, “The initial assessments are bound to be crude, tentative, and controversial.” It would take time, the right people, new methods, much in the way of data collection, and sustained hard thinking to accomplish the task before them. Yet Marshall concluded, “Whether difficult or not, the need for net assessments is clear.”52

  The year 1972 ended with Nixon’s landslide victory in the November presidential election, whereupon he decided to reshuffle his cabinet. Melvin Laird stepped down as defense secretary. He was succeeded by Elliot Richardson, who had been the secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). Jim Schlesinger was informed that he would be leaving his position as head of the Atomic Energy Agency (where he had gone following his stint at OMB) to become the director of central intelligence. Soon after Schlesinger moved to the CIA in January 1973, Marshall started sending him papers on intelligence issues. The two began spending Saturdays together discussing how to stimulate the Agency to be more productive.53

  Kissinger, for his part, was nominated to serve as secretary of state in addition to his role at the NSC. With Laird out of the picture he moved to put Marshall and his small staff to work conducting actual assessments. On March 29, 1973 he signed National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM) 178, “Program for National Net Assessment.” It directed an ad hoc group, chaired by Marshall, to prepare a paper defining the national net assessment process, suggesting appropriate methodologies for a range of topics, and establishing reporting and coordination procedures.54 Marshall convened the group on April 13, 1973, and it was soon working
on guidelines and procedures for conducting national net assessments.55 Kissinger approved the group’s recommendations on June 28, 1973, in National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) 224, “National Net Assessment Process, NSSM 178.”

  Finally, on September 1, 1973, Kissinger signed NSSM 186, which initiated the first national net assessment. Its objective was to compare the costs, capabilities, and performance of US and Soviet ground forces. Given Marshall’s paucity of resources, the assessment would be prepared by the Department of Defense in consultation with the NAG, with the assistance of the Department of State and Schlesinger at CIA.56 Rather than performing the net assessment itself, the NAG had the far more modest role of overseeing an interagency process.

  Events then took an unexpected and, from Marshall’s perspective, fortuitous turn insofar as the future of net assessment within the US government was concerned. Beset by the growing scandal over the break-in at the Democratic Party’s national headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in June 1972, Nixon nominated Elliot Richardson, his new defense secretary, to the position of attorney general as part of a general shakeup.* The president then gave Richardson’s vacated post to Schlesinger.

  During Schlesinger’s transition to the Defense Department he and Kissinger discussed the fledgling net assessment effort. With his confirmation as secretary of state in addition to being the national security adviser, Kissinger found his responsibilities expanding substantially.57 Schlesinger wanted to bring Marshall to the Pentagon to establish a net assessment function there. In early July Schlesinger began urging Marshall to join him at the Defense Department. The Marshalls had long planned to return to California, and accepting the Pentagon post would extend their time in Washington. In the end, however, Schlesinger prevailed upon Marshall to become his director of net assessment. Schlesinger then engaged Kissinger, who agreed to allow the national net assessment function to be transferred to the Pentagon.58

  Schlesinger had several motives for acquiring the net assessment portfolio and securing Marshall’s services. He wanted a trusted colleague, one with whom he shared a strong intellectual bond, to help him with the formidable task of charting a course to sustain the nation’s defenses in a difficult time. To accomplish this he needed the kind of comparative analysis Marshall had been advocating and in which he, Schlesinger, was a strong believer. While understanding and appreciating the value of the systems analysis approach that RAND’s Whiz Kids had brought to the Pentagon under McNamara, he and Marshall were also intimately familiar with the limitations of this approach. Both saw the potential of net assessment, with its comprehensive and diagnostic approach, as a distinctly different form of analysis—one with more of a strategic as opposed to a programmatic focus.

  Marshall would later come to see Schlesinger as the “Father of Net Assessment.” It was Schlesinger who persuaded Kissinger to transfer net assessment from the NSC to the Department of Defense; Schlesinger who understood net assessment’s potential value; Schlesinger who knew that Marshall was the only person (other than Schlesinger himself) who knew enough about this sort of analysis to give it life. Had it remained at the NSC, Marshall concluded, it would have “degenerated into the kind of process that dominates so much in our government—common-denominator, bland bunkum, in terms of analysis” rather than he and his staff acquiring “the freedom that we’ve had to kind of tell the truth as we saw it.”59

  The fact that he would be working for a close friend and intellectual colleague undoubtedly influenced Marshall’s decision to move to the Pentagon. He certainly had not planned for his “temporary” move to Washington to turn out to be as permanent as it eventually proved to be. The Marshalls had rented a modest apartment in Washington on Virginia Avenue near the Watergate in the belief that their time in the nation’s capital would be relatively brief, a few years at most. Mary Marshall only began to stay full-time at the Washington apartment in January 1973.

  For years afterward, when asked how long he intended to remain as director of the Office of Net Assessment, Andrew Marshall’s stock answer was, “Maybe a year so.” But the Marshalls never returned to their home in California. When Mary Marshall passed away at the age of eighty-five in December 2004, she and her husband were still living in their small Virginia Avenue apartment, a home-away-from-home still furnished with rental furniture.

  *The CIA’s consistent tendency to underestimate the magnitude of Soviet defense spending, while overestimating the size of the USSR’s economy relative to US GNP, is an important reason that Marshall, Schlesinger, and many others initially mistakenly judged the Soviets to be more cost-effective.

  *In addition to his other activities, Kaufmann also taught graduate-level security studies courses at MIT. One of this book’s authors (Krepinevich) took several of Kaufmann’s courses when a student at Harvard in the late 1970s.

  * Richardson succeeded Richard Kleindienst, who resigned on April 30, 1973, the same day that the president’s counsel, John Dean, was fired and his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, and his assistant for domestic affairs, John Ehrlichman, quit.

  5

  MOVING TO THE PENTAGON 1973–1975

  I need data!

  —ANDREW MARSHALL

  On the morning of October 2, 1973, Marshall met with Defense Secretary Schlesinger and formally agreed to leave the National Security Council staff and move to the Pentagon to establish a net assessment program there.1 Eleven days later Schlesinger signed a memorandum formally appointing Marshall as the Pentagon’s director of net assessment effective October 15. In that moment, the Office of Net Assessment (ONA) was born.

  The mandate for Marshall’s new office was broad. The memorandum stated that Marshall would formulate and recommend the topics for assessments, supervise the conduct of the assessments and, where appropriate, obtain the participation and inputs of other government staff elements to support the effort. Marshall would also represent the Defense Department on interagency committees dealing with national net assessments.2

  Marshall’s status was codified on November 27, when Kissinger signed National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) 239, “National Net Assessment Process.”3 NSDM 239 formally transferred responsibility for the national net assessment program to the Defense Department.* It also specified that the study of US and Soviet ground forces required by NSSM 186 would be completed under Schlesinger.

  NSDM 239 did more than transfer a function—net assessment—from one part of the government to another. It also enabled Marshall to begin developing an approach to net assessment that was very different than that envisioned for the NSC’s Net Assessment Group. NSSM 186 limited the NAG’s role to simply overseeing the work of the DoD-led interagency working group tasked to conduct the assessment of US and Soviet ground forces. Under Schlesinger, Marshall and his staff would do the net assessments themselves.

  This change was important because, despite their undeniable brilliance, Kissinger and Schlesinger held very different views regarding the state of the world, America’s future in it and, by extension, how best to undertake net assessments. Since Marshall’s views were far more closely aligned with Schlesinger’s than with Kissinger’s, he could count on a powerful ally as he began to establish the new organization and determine the assessment topics of greatest interest to Schlesinger. He and Schlesinger were already of one mind in thinking that the US-Soviet competition in strategic nuclear arms was the most important balance to assess.

  The more profound difference in outlook between Kissinger and Schlesinger concerned the possibilities of the United States’ winning the Cold War. As President Nixon’s national security adviser, Kissinger had been confronted daily for over four years with the image of a United States whose power appeared to be waning, whose domestic environment was punctuated by growing economic uncertainty, antiwar demonstrations, and the erosion of traditional social and moral values.4 It was, simply, a country whose people—and leaders—appeared determined to avoid foreign adventures and were anxious to pursue a less active
role in the world.

  This semi-isolationist mood was reflected in American politics. In 1968 Richard Nixon had campaigned successfully on a platform of ending the war in Vietnam. His opponent in the 1972 election, Senator George McGovern, had gone further, brandishing the slogan “Come Home America!” advocating a major retrenchment in US engagement, not only in Southeast Asia but around the world. In that environment, Kissinger sought to create breathing space for the United States to reduce the geopolitical and military competition with the Soviet Union through détente (a reduction of tensions) and arms control. To many observers, Kissinger’s approach not only made sense but was also achieving results.

  In May 1972, after over two years of negotiations, the United States and Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT, or SALT I) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in Moscow. While to some the treaties ushered in a hopeful period of détente between the two superpowers, others saw it as the means by which the Soviets would encourage US restraint while continuing to build up their armaments. Kissinger’s critics proved right. As President Jimmy Carter’s secretary of defense, Harold Brown, later observed regarding offensive nuclear forces, “Soviet spending . . . has shown no response to U.S. restraint—when we build, they build; when we cut, they build.”5

  Kissinger also served as point man for the Nixon administration’s negotiations with the Vietnamese Communists to achieve a US withdrawal from the war in a manner that would ensure, in the president’s words, “peace with honor.”6 In January 1973, following a series of negotiations involving Kissinger and the North Vietnamese politburo member, Le Duc Tho, punctuated by a brief but massive US bombing campaign against North Vietnam in December 1972 (known as Operation Linebacker II), an agreement was reached enabling the United States to extricate itself from the war while also securing the release of US prisoners of war held captive by the North Vietnamese. Although the agreement won Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize, critics nonetheless viewed it as abandoning America’s Southeast Asian ally, particularly as the peace settlement enabled North Vietnamese forces to remain in South Vietnam while all US forces were withdrawn. Equally ominous, the communist regime in Hanoi would continue receiving aid from Moscow and Beijing to support its efforts to conquer South Vietnam, whereas the US Congress would prove increasingly unwilling to provide military assistance to protect the beleaguered nation.