The Last Warrior

by Andrew F. Krepinevich

7. Donald H. Rumsfeld, Annual Defense Department Report FY 1978, January 17, 1977, 105–20.

  8. Ibid., 178.

  9. A. W. Marshall, “1973–1980,” interview by Kurt Guthe, April 8, 1994, 6–13.

  10. A. W. Marshall, “Thinking About the Navy,” OSD/NA memorandum for the secretary of defense, March 1, 1976, 5.

  11. Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York: Sentinel, 2011), 224–25.

  12. Ibid., 228.

  13. Ibid., 229.

  14. CIA, NIE 11–3/8–74, Soviet Forces for Intercontinental Conflict in Intentions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet Strategic Forces, 1930–1983, Donald P. Steury, ed. (Langley, VA: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1996), 330–31.

  15. The associate members of Team B were Professor William Van Cleave, Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham (USA, Ret.), Thomas Wolfe from RAND, and General John Vogt (USAF, Ret.). CIA, “Soviet Strategic Objectives: an Alternative View: Report of Team ‘B,’” December 1976, iv.

  16. CIA, “Soviet Strategic Objectives: an Alternative View: Report of Team ’B,’” 6. There were three teams, one each to examine Soviet air defenses; Soviet ICBM accuracy; and Soviet strategy, policy, and objectives. This last subject, studied by Team B, generated the greatest debate.

  17. Murrey Marder, “Summit Clouded by Watergate,” Washington Post, July 4, 1974.

  18. Richard Pipes, “Why the Soviet Union Think It Could Fight and Win a Nuclear War,” Commentary, July 1977, 21–34.

  19. John G. Hines and Daniel Calingaert, “Soviet Strategic Intentions, 1973–1985: A Preliminary Review of US Interpretations,” RAND WD-6305-NA, December 1992, v–vii. Hines was a member of Marshall’s staff during the mid-1980s.

  20. A. W. Marshall, “The Future of the Strategic Balance—INFO,” OSD/NA memorandum for the secretary of defense, August 26, 1976, 1.

  21. Marshall, “The Future of the Strategic Balance—INFO,” 1.

  22. A. W. Marshall, “The Future of the Strategic Balance,” OSD/NA memorandum for the secretary of defense, August 26, 1976, 2.

  23. Marshall, “The Future of the Strategic Balance—INFO,” 2.

  24. Ibid., 2.

  25. Marshall, “The Future of the Strategic Balance,” 4.

  26. Ibid.

  27. Ibid., 5–6.

  28. Ibid., 6, 8.

  29. Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir, (New York: Sentinel, 2011), 237.

  30. Ibid., 233, 235.

  31. Marshall and Roche, “Strategy for Competing with the Soviets in the Military Sector of the Continuing Political-Military Competition,” 34.

  32. Tim Hindle, Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus (London: The Economist with Profile Books, 2008), 299. In December 2008 Rumelt was highlighted in The Economist as one of the fifty most influential strategic management “gurus.”

  33. Richard P. Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy, 30.

  34. Ibid., 29.

  35. “Interview with Harold Brown,” January 27, 2006, in Barry D. Watts, “Interviews and Materials on the Intellectual History of Diagnostic Net Assessment,” 77–78.

  36. Ibid., 80.

  37. Von Hardesty, Red Phoenix: The Rise of Soviet Air Power 1941–1945 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982), 15. By contrast, Luftwaffe losses during the first week of Barbarossa came to around 150 aircraft.

  38. Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace, 182.

  39. By 1974 Schlesinger had begun phasing out all the Nike-Hercules surface-to-air-missiles and reducing the fighter interceptor force to twelve squadrons. James R. Schlesinger, Annual Defense Department Report FY 1975, March 4, 1974, 68.

  40. OSD/NA memorandum, “B-1 DSARC [Defense Systems Acquisition Review Council] III Decision,” 1976, 2.

  41. “Carter’s Big Decision: Down Goes the B-1, Here Comes the Cruise,” Time, July 11, 1977, available at http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,919040,00.html, accessed January 7, 2014.

  42. Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs, Department of State, “History of the National Security Council 1947–1997,” August 1997, available at http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/NSChistory.htm#Nixon.

  43. Jimmy Carter, Presidential Review Memorandum/NSC-10, “Comprehensive Net Assessment and Military Force Posture Review,” February 18, 1977, 1–2.

  44. Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations,” Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993, 45–48.

  45. Brian Auten, Carter’s Conversion: The Hardening of American Defense Policy (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2008), 157; Lieutenant General (Ret.) William Odom, interview by Barry Watts, November 3, 2004.

  46. A. W. Marshall, “Net Assessment Products,” OSD/NA memorandum for David E. McGiffert, March 11, 1977.

  47. A. W. Marshall, “1989–1993,” interview by Kurt Guthe, January 25, 1995, 9–30; and William Odom, interview by Barry Watts, November 3, 2004.

  48. PRM/NSC-10, “Military Strategy and Force Posture Review: Final Report,” June 1977, 1.

  49. Harold Brown, “PRM-10 Force Posture Study,” June 5 1977, 1.

  50. PRM/NSC-10, “Military Strategy and Force Posture Review: Final Report,” 8.

  51. “US National Strategy (Presidential Directive/NSC-18),” August 24, 1977, 2.

  52. Jimmy Carter, “Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy,” PD/NSC-59, July 25, 1980, 2.

  53. Ibid.

  54. Summaries of interviews with Harold Brown and Andrew W. Marshall in Soviet Intentions 1965–1985, vol. 2, Soviet Post–Cold War Testimonial Evidence, by John G. Hines, Ellis M. Mishulovich, and John F. Shull (McLean, VA: BDM Federal, September 22, 1993), 13–14, 118.

  55. Marshall in Soviet Intentions 1965–1985, by Hines, Mishulovich, and Shull, vol. 2, 18.

  56. “US National Strategy (Presidential Directive/NSC-18),” August 24, 1977, 2.

  57. A. W. Marshall, interview with Barry Watts and Andrew May, April 9, 2010.

  58. Fritz W. Ermarth, “Contrasts in American and Soviet Strategic Thought,” International Security, Autumn 1978, 138.

  59. Jasper Welch, e-mail to Barry Watts, May 24, 2007.

  60. Andrew W. Marshall, “Improving Analysis Methods for Strategic Forces,” memorandum for the SecDef, April 17, 1979, 1.

  61. Brown’s handwritten comments on the OSD/NA’s file copy of “Improving Analysis Methods for Strategic Forces.”

  62. Paul K. Davis and James A. Winnefeld, “The Rand Strategy Assessment Center: An Overview and Interim Conclusions about Utility and Development Options,” RAND, R-2945-DNA, March 1983, v.

  63. Barry D. Watts, “AWM Comments on the 1st Draft of Chapter I, Methodology Essay; RSAS,” telephone discussion with A. W. Marshall, April 14, 2005, 3.

  64. Bruce W. Bennett, “Project Description: Improving Methods of Strategic Analysis: Evolutionary Development of the RSAS,” draft, September 13, 1988, 1.

  65. Marshall, “Improving Analysis Methods for Strategic Forces,” 1.

  66. Bruce Bennett, “Reflecting Soviet Thinking in the Structure of Combat Models and Data,” RAND, P-7108, April 1985, 4.

  67. A. W. Marshall, letter to Paul K. Davis, December 20, 1985, 1.

  68. Diego Ruiz-Palmer in Mie Augier and Barry D. Watts, “Conference Report on the Past, Present, and Future of Net Assessment,” 2009, 83.

  69. CAA, Weapon Effectiveness Indices/Weighted Unit Values (WEI/WUV), vol. 2, Basic Report, April 1974, II-2, III-1. WEI/WUV II appeared in 1976, and WEI/WUV III in 1980.

  70. Ibid., I-1.

  71. ONA, “The Military Balance in Europe: A Net Assessment,” March 1978 (declassified December 31, 1988), 48–49.

  72. Phillip A. Karber, Grant Whitley, Mark Herman and Douglas Komer, “Assessing the Correlation of Forces: France 1940,” BDM Corporation, BDM/W-79–560-TR, June 18, 1979.

  73. Karber et al., Assessing the Correlation of Forces: France 1940, 4–9.

  74. Paul K. Davis, “Influence of Trevor Dupuy’s Research on the Treatment of Ground Combat in RAND’s RSAS and JICM Models,” International TNDM New
sletter 2, no. 4 (December 1988): 6–12.

  75. Ibid., 2.

  76. Andrew F. Krepinevich, “RAND Symposium—A Discussion with Dr. Vitaly Tsygichko,” June 27, 1990, 1–2.

  77. See Steven Zaloga, “Soviets Denigrate Their Own Capabilities,” Armed Forces Journal International, July 1991, 18, 20.

  78. Gerald Dunne in Augier and Watts, “The Past, Present, and Future of Net Assessment,” 116.

  79. Ibid., 118.

  80. Gerry Dunne, “Cold War Net Assessment of US and USSR Military Command, Control and Communications (C3),” 2008, draft, unpublished.

  81. Andrew W. Marshall, “Comparisons of US and SU Defense Expenditures,” letter to Richard F. Kaufman, Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress, September 18, 1975, 2; also table A, 4.

  82. Office of Soviet Analysis, CIA, “A Comparison of Soviet and US Gross National Products, 1960–83,” SOV 84–10114, August 1984, 3, 5.

  Chapter 7: Cold War End Game, 1981–1991

  1. James Mann, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (New York: Viking, 2009), 23–24.

  2. Ronald Reagan, speech to the House of Commons, June 8, 1982, available at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1982reagan1.html, accessed October 10, 2013.

  3. Ronald Reagan, “U.S. National Security Strategy,” NSSD 32, May 20, 1982, 1, 2.

  4. Peter W. Rodman, Presidential Command, 152.

  5. Ronald Reagan, “U.S. Relations with the USSR,” NSSD 75, January 17, 1983, 1.

  6. Ronald Reagan, “Strategic Forces Modernization Program,” NSDD 12, October 1, 1983, 1.

  7. Reagan, “U.S. Relations with the USSR,” NSSD 75, 7.

  8. Douglas Brinkley, ed., The Reagan Diaries (New York: Harper, 2007), 135.

  9. Pavil Podvig, ed., Oleg Bukharin, Timur Kadyshev, Eugene Miasnikov, Igor Sutyagin, Maxim Tarasenko, and Boris Zhelezov, Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 2001), 137, 218.

  10. A. W. Marshall, “1981–1984,” interview by Kurt Guthe, July 26, 1994, 7–46.

  11. A. W. Marshall, “1985–1988,” interview by Kurt Guthe, December 16, 1994, 8–22.

  12. A. W. Marshall, “Long-Term Competition with the Soviets: A Framework for Strategic Analysis (U),” RAND R-862-PR, April 1972.

  13. Marshall, “1981–1984,” interview by Guthe, 7-15.

  14. Ibid., 7-24.

  15. William H. Taft IV, Deputy Secretary of Defense, “Director of Net Assessment,” DoD Directive 5105.39, September 27, 1985, 1.

  16. Ibid., 1–2.

  17. A. W. Marshall, “Secretary of Defense/DCI Net Assessment,” ONA memorandum for record, August 24, 1981, 1, 2.

  18. A. W. Marshall, “A Program to Improve Analytic Methods Related to Strategic Forces, Policy Sciences 15, no. 1 (1982): 48.

  19. Barry D. Watts, Notes from discussion with A. W. Marshall and Dmitry Ponomareff, October 17, 2003. US experts have generally been skeptical about the idea that there could be differences between the two sides over the physical effects of nuclear detonations.

  20. Marshall, “1981–1984,” interview by Guthe, 7-21.

  21. NIE 11-3/8-83, “Soviet Capabilities for Strategic Nuclear Conflict, 1983–93,” vol. 1, “Key Judgments and Summary,” CIA, March 6, 1984, 1.

  22. NIE 11-3/8-82, “Soviet Capabilities for Strategic Nuclear Conflict, 1982–92,” vol. 1, “Key Judgments and Summary,” CIA, February 1983, 5.

  23. NIE 11-3/8-83, “Soviet Capabilities for Strategic Nuclear Conflict, 1983–93,” vol. 1, 13.

  24. John G. Hines, Ellis M. Mishulovich and John F. Shull, Soviet Intentions 1965–1985, Vol. II, Soviet Post–Cold War Testimonial Evidence (McLean, VA: BDM Federal, September 22, 1993), 5–6. At the time of this interview in February 1991 Akhromeyev was the personal national security adviser to Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.

  25. Rick Atkinson, “Project Senior C.J.: The Story Behind the B-2 Bomber,” Washington Post, October 8, 1989, A39.

  26. Thomas B. Allen, “Run Silent, Run Deep,” Smithsonian Magazine, March 2001, abstract at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/sub-abstract.html.

  27. Marshall, “1973–1980,” interview by Guthe, 6-38.

  28. A. W. Marshall, “How to Organize for Strategic Planning,” memorandum for the deputy secretary of defense, April 6, 1981, 3.

  29. Phillip Karber in Mie Augier and Barry D. Watts, “Conference Report on the Past, Present, and Future of Net Assessment,” Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments, Contract HQ0034-07-D-1011-0006, 2009, 55.

  30. Paul Bracken, The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics (New York: Henry, Holt and Company, 2012), 88.

  31. Phillip A. Karber, “Re: Net Assessment and Proud Prophet,” e-mail to Barry Watts, September 7, 2008.

  32. Karber in Augier and Watts, “Conference Report on the Past, Present, and Future of Net Assessment,” 55.

  33. Bracken, The Second Nuclear Age, 89.

  34. Karber, “Re: Net Assessment and Proud Prophet.”

  35. General Bernard W. Rogers, interview by Anthony H. Cordesman and Benjamin E. Schemmer, Armed Forces Journal International, September 1983, 74.

  36. OUSD/Comptroller, “National Defense Budget Estimates for FY 2014,” May 2013, p. 92.

  37. Ibid., 110.

  38. Bill Keller, “Pentagon; Thinker-in-Residence Brought from Harvard,” New York Times, August 15, 1985.

  39. Caspar W. Weinberger, “US Defense Strategy,” Foreign Affairs, Spring 1986, 681.

  40. Bill Keller, “Pentagon; Passing the Cerebral Ammunition,” New York Times, February 11, 1986.

  41. David J. Andre, “New Competitive Strategies Tools and Methodologies,” vol. 1, “Review of the Department of Defense Competitive Strategies Initiative 1986–1990,” Science Application International Corporation, SAIC-90/1506, November 1990, 2.

  42. Caspar W. Weinberger, Annual Report to the Congress, Fiscal Year 1986 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, February 5, 1986), 87.

  43. Andre, “New Competitive Strategies Tools and Methodologies,” 9.

  44. A. W. Marshall, “Competitive Strategies—History and Background,” March 3, 1988, 1.

  45. Ibid., 2.

  46. Caspar W. Weinberger, Annual Report to the Congress, Fiscal Year 1988 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, January 1, 1987), 65–66.

  47. Andre, “New Competitive Strategies Tools and Methodologies,” 13–14.

  48. Ibid., 15.

  49. Ibid., 29.

  50. Ibid., 46.

  51. Ibid., 36–37, 47, 52.

  52. Charlie Pease and Kleber S. “Skid” Masterson, “The US-Soviet Strategic Balance: Supporting Analysis, a Retrospective,” unpublished conference paper, September 30, 2008, 14. At the time Masterson, a navy admiral, had recently retired from the Joint Staff’s Strategic Analysis and Gaming Agency.

  53. Ibid., 10–12.

  54. Ibid., 15. Assuming 90 percent effectiveness of each interceptor missile, firing two at an incoming missile or its warhead would yield an effectiveness of 99 percent. Yet even at this level, a hundred or more Soviet nuclear warheads would strike the United States in an all-out exchange. Moreover, the USSR could increase its nuclear forces at far less cost than the United States could offset them with more defenses, putting the United States on the wrong side of a cost-imposing strategy.

  55. Ibid., 15.

  56. Pease and Masterson, “The US Soviet Strategic Balance: Supporting Analysis, a Retrospective,” Ibid. 15.

  57. A typical example is Lieutenant Colonel Yu. Kardashevskiy, “Plan Fire Destruction of Targets by Fire Creatively,” Voennyi Vestnik (Military Herald), July 1978, 64–67.

  58. Pease and Masterson, “The US Soviet Strategic Balance: Supporting Analysis, a Retrospective,” 16.

  59. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 539.

  60. Tom Z. Collina, “Ne
w START in Force; Missile Defense Looms,” Arms Control Association, March 2011 available at http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2011_03/NewSTART_MissileDefense, accessed on November 10, 2013.

  61. Noel E. Firth and James H. Noren, Soviet Defense Spending: A History of CIA Estimates, 1950–1990 (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1998), 25.

  62. Ibid., 21, 23.

  63. Ibid., 25–26.

  64. Ibid., 42.

  65. CIA and DIA, “The Soviet Economy Under a New Leader,” March 19, 1986, 6.

  66. CIA, Office of Soviet Analysis (SOVA), “A Comparison of Soviet and US Gross National Products, 1960–83,” SOV 84-10114, August 1984, 5.

  67. A. W. Marshall, “Commentary,” in Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, Gorbachev’s Economic Plans, vol. 1, Study Papers (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1987), 483.

  68. A. W. Marshall, letter to Thomas C. Reed, September 27, 2001, 3.

  69. David F. Epstein, “The Economic Cost of Soviet Security and Empire,” in The Impoverished Superpower: Perestroika and the Soviet Military Burden, Henry S. (“Harry”) Rowen and Charles Wolf Jr., eds. (San Francisco, CA: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1990), 130–39, 153.

  70. Firth and Noren, Soviet Defense Spending, table 5.10, 129–30.

  71. Robert W. Campbell, A Biobibliographical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Economics (London, Routledge, 2012), 37–39.

  72. Igor Birman, “Who Is Stronger and Why?” Crossroads, Winter/Spring 1981, 117–26. A shorter version of this article, entitled “The Way to Slow Down the Arms Race,” appeared in the Washington Post on October 27, 1980.

  73. “Igor Birman,” The Telegraph, June 8, 2011, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/8564376/Igor-Birman.html, accessed November 11, 2013.

  74. “Conversion of Soviet Military Industry: An Interview with Igor Birman,” Perspective 1, no. 2, December 1990, available at http://www.bu.edu/iscip/vol1/Interview.html, accessed November 13, 2013.

  75. A. W. Marshall, “Estimates of Soviet GNP and Military Burden,” Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense Through the Assistant Secretary of Defense (ISA),” August 2, 1988. Carlucci succeeded Weinberger as defense secretary in 1987 and Richard Armitage was then the assistant secretary of defense (international security affairs).