The fruits of the information revolution, however, will not be automatically transferred from the private sector to the very different applications required by the security needs of the market-state. To realize their full potential, these technologies must be combined with new tactics executed by new organizational structures. A military establishment content to fine-tune existing operating strategies, enhancing them only with superaccurate weapons of somewhat greater range and making these weapons smaller, cheaper, and more manageable, will scarcely reap the benefits of the developments that are underway.33
Not every application of the RMA is suitable to a market-state strategy for the United States. As Richard Betts has pointed out, the RMA runs the risk of reinforcing a high-tech, large-unit way of thinking in the armed services that was given such impressive validation in the Gulf War but which is less useful in unconventional conflicts saturated with civilians, and which invites asymmetrical attack. Most terrifyingly, because the United States is so well placed to exploit a high-tech RMA, conflict with a power such as Russia (over a dispute in Eastern Europe or one of the states of the former Soviet Union) or China (over Taiwan)—that is, with a great power whose vital interests are at stake in a territorial conflict—invites resort to nuclear weapons on the part of the American adversary, because almost no other option would be effective against a United States armed with advanced twenty-first-century technology. Considerations such as these prompted Eliot Cohen to observe, “the revolution in military affairs may bring a kind of tactical clarity to the battlefield, but at the price of strategic obscurity.”34
In the present, post – Cold War period, the enhanced power of conventional weapons—that is, nonnuclear weapons—will be of paramount importance, and indeed it is striking how little discussion there is in the RMA debate about the role of nuclear weapons. I believe this aversion to nuclear warfare has to do with the nature of the market-state and its evolution in response to the strategic innovations, including the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons, that won the Long War. We can anticipate that
the post cold war era… is likely to put a political (and military) premium on such non-nuclear means. Only further progress in integrating advanced technologies will provide the strategic reach, striking power, and maneuverability necessary to address the theater level of war without resort to nuclear weapons…35
The market-state, with its emphasis on efficiency and economy, demands that the military act within tight budgets, accept fewer casualties (even among enemy civilians), and not involve itself in potentially recrim-inative hostilities. Nuclear weapons haunt such a state because they are too devastating, and too imprecise; kill too many civilians; and, above all, because of their genetic and environmental consequences, make war into the state-destructive, revanchism-creating sort of conflict from which there is no return and, ironically in light of their lethality, no end. A state struck with nuclear weapons will never get over it, whereas the market-state wants to conduct a transaction and then to move on. The market-state depends upon bargaining, which an actual nuclear attack renders almost impossible. There is an apocalyptic savagery about a nuclear attack that calls forth all the atavistic bitterness that the cosmopolitan market-state wishes to be free of. These factors drive the market-state toward new technologies that promise an escape from the reliance on nuclear weapons.
Moreover, the market itself, from which much innovation derives, enhances the drive for technological advancement. While there is ample scope for U.S. defense expenditures on research, the market-state is nevertheless dependent on the private sector to create these technologies; this dependence will accelerate the pace of the RMA36 because the marketplace will quickly make obsolete communications technologies for which the U.S. government is the only purchaser.
The arrival of the market-state has imposed severe budget restraints on defense expenditures. The result is that the United States is tempted to simply define away the problems of a large conflict (and of small interventions) in favor of conflicts with states that greatly resemble Iraq. One wonders how many defense intellectuals and planners are thinking about major-state competition and conflict.37 If the United States is to sustain its competitive advantage, to put this in market-state terms, it will have to determine how best to reinvent a force structure that has hitherto been supremely successful—a difficult assignment. Yet this must be done in order to take advantage most efficiently of the options that new technology and the market are making available to that force structure and to its competitors. A radical restructuring of the armed forces may well prove to be our best means of sustaining its current primacy because the United States, as a culture, is relatively adaptable to change (even if the military subculture is less so). Doubtless it is also true that U.S.-led alliances and coalitions can prevent another military superpower from emerging in Europe or Asia, but it is unlikely that the United States will be called to such leadership unless it is clear that we are fitted by a wide margin, militarily and in other ways, for the role. In an era in which our marginal economic advantage may be increasing but our share of world GDP is declining, this will require astute strategic planning. It is the very antithesis of this planning to assume that our main competitors in the world are Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Libya.
Many states will strive for primacy in their regions or in the world at large in the coming period. Some will do so pursuing the strategy of nation-states, like France, whose policies sometimes appear driven by a mixture of hauteur and reactionary anti-Americanism. Some will pursue the strategies of market-states, which can vary greatly. I believe the successful market-state strategy for the United States will be one that studiedly avoids both mercantile and managerial market approaches, which have the potential for alienating trading partners and heightening xenophobia, in favor of pursuing a goal of providing “collective goods” to the world. Joseph Joffe has prescribed this course with great insight:
The United States must produce three types of collective goods: First, act as regional protector by underwriting the security of those potential rivals—Japan, China, Western Europe—who would otherwise have to produce security on their own by converting their economic strength into military assets; [s]econd, act as a regional pacifier; [t]hird, universalize [security] architecture [by which the United States acts with various regional players in concert against regional threats].38
As long as the U.S. provides precious collective goods the Europeans or Asians cannot or will not produce for themselves—building coalitions and acting universally through regional cooperation, implementing anti-missile, anti-proliferation, and pro-environmental regimes, organizing humanitarian intervention—there will remain an important demand for U.S. leadership.39
Joffe contrasts this course favorably with a balance-of-power approach that I would be inclined to describe, in market terms, as a mixture of the managerial and the mercantile. These approaches are not well-suited to producing collective goods, such as mutual security, political unity within an alliance in the face of external threats, or stability in environmental and economic relations beyond the state or regional group. There is an intense debate within the United States, however, about whether the United States should become a more mercantile market-state and avoid some of the costs of producing collective goods. And there has always been a strong lobby in the United States for the beguiling prospects of burden sharing available to managerial market-states.
What would such a policy of producing collective goods look like? What programs serve that policy?
Consider the following seven possible programs to enhance the security of the United States in a world of market-states. These seven are analogous to the various programs that served the policy of containment (intervention in the Third World, nuclear deterrence at the central level, etc.) that applied the American paradigm in the context of the Soviet threat. They are examples of how, through the means of exercising leadership—for which the experience of the Long War has capitalized the United Sta
tes with a reputation for relatively benign intent—the United States could be the principal provider of the most significant collective goods to the world community and in so doing, resolve its current intellectual stalemate over strategy.
(1)
The United States can take the lead in reforming NATO to give it a mission relevant to the twenty-first century. The North Atlantic Council, the decision-making body in NATO, would provide the framework within which intervention forces will be mustered. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry and Assistant Secretary Ashton Carter make this proposal:
NATO's principal strategic and military purpose in the post–cold war era is to provide a mechanism for the rapid formation of militarily potent “coalitions of the willing” able to project power beyond [Europe. These] “coalitions of the willing”… will include some—but not necessarily all—NATO members, and will generally include nonmembers drawn from the Partnership for Peace [former Warsaw Pact states].40
This is not to suggest that NATO fundamentally change its national command protocols, but it does imply that member states would be able to organize peacekeeping forces without a unanimous vote in the North Atlantic Council. Perhaps the most promising objective of such a NATO-plus coalition is a low-intensity, high-intelligence war against international terrorism.
The United States should also take the lead in organizing G-8 activities that go beyond the mere conferencing of its members (e.g., providing aid to stricken countries, mustering coalition-supported U.S. forces to resist aggression and to halt campaigns of ethnic cleansing). In organizing “coalitions of the willing,” the United States should place great emphasis on linking up with Russian forces. Joint professional activities with the Russian military should be given the highest priority. Russian units should be trained in NATO tactics, which include the use of nonlethal means for coping with contending local parties, 41 how to secure a town with a minimum use of force, how to man a checkpoint as part of a multinational force, even how to deal with the press.42* Russia has the potential to be a uniquely valuable security partner and, moreover, the experience of military-to-military cooperation in joint peacemaking enterprises could pay dividends in a more cooperative political relationship.
(2)
The United States could manage the world community's efforts to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of hostile powers—either by maintaining nonhostile relations with those powers (like China) that have nuclear weapons, or by preventing hostile states (like Iraq) from acquiring them, or by inducing friendly states (like Japan and Germany) to rely on the United States rather than set in motion regional competitions to acquire nuclear arms, or by bribing hostile states (like North Korea) that have nuclear weapons programs to give them up. This role implies that the United States should not constantly reassess its demands for internal liberalization in China, but at the same time should continue to protect Taiwan, which will otherwise go nuclear itself, setting off chain reactions in Australia and Indonesia; and that it should take especial care to maintain the security guarantees with Japan and South Korea—and not press its trade disputes with these states so aggressively as to arm anti-U.S. parties in those states; that it should use intensified covert means to sabotage the weapons programs of “rogue states” and insist on the continuing sanctions against Iraqi rearmament (even while setting up generous infrastructure funds from the controlled sale of Iraqi oil to pay off Russian and French creditors and revive the Iraqi middle class); that it should proceed with NATO expansion as a way of maintaining the importance of the security guarantee to Germany; and purchase outright intact nuclear weapons from Russia, a more effective market-state method than the legally negotiated, treaty-mandated handover of dangerous and negotiable fissile material favored by nation-states; and fully implement the North Korean reactor exchange (to take a few contemporary examples).
(3)
The United States could organize a North Asia Security Council, anchored in Tokyo and including Japan, Russia, China, and South Korea. This Council would provide a forum for regional discussions, joint military exercises, and information sharing. It would emphasize that the United States is a Pacific power and offer a framework for our nonproliferation efforts. No two states have as great an interest in preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as do Russia and China. If the Chechens, for example, who have bloodied the Russian army with little more than small arms and antitank weapons, were to acquire such weapons, then surely the Tajiks and Azeris would not be far behind, with incalculable risks for the survival of the Russian state as it is now constituted. If Taiwan were to acquire nuclear weapons and thus force a stalemate, China would be hard pressed to maintain the threat that conventional force could mount a successful amphibious invasion. Yet without the incentive of this tacit threat, unification may be decades away. In these efforts the United States can find no more potentially helpful partner than China. China is a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (in 1992). It has signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (in 1996) and has affirmed (in 1992) and reaffirmed (in 1994) its commitment to abide by the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). Yet there is ample evidence that China sold Pakistan ring magnets for use in a gas centrifuge to enrich uranium (for a nuclear weapon), and, despite the MTCR, transferred M-11 short-range missiles to Pakistan. There is further evidence that China has passed materials and equipment for uranium enrichment to Iran, as well as cruise missiles, ballistic missile technology, and chemical weapons precursors.44 Why should we try to enlist such a partner?
China has more recently undertaken to halt this trade. More than any other state in the world, it has grounds for alarm at the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Only by enlisting U.S. cooperation in a nonproliferation regime can China ensure itself against this possibility. China is increasingly dependent on Middle East oil, and is at least partly responsible for provoking India's weaponizing its nuclear technology. Yet China ought to move to the forefront of enforcing a nonproliferation regime.
(4)
The United States might resist the regionalization of trade because it is a global power with global interests. No other power can speak for world trade cooperation with the legitimacy of the United States so long as the latter pursues free trade convincingly and exercises leadership in pursuit of international financial stability. This suggests that the United States should attempt to gain access to the markets of more than one regional trading pact; that it should resist efforts to have the euro replace or augment the dollar as the world's common currency; that it should tolerate wider swings in its currency than other states wish to permit; and, finally, that it should prefer virtual regional trading groups, which are united by cultural and business attitudes rather than by mere physical proximity. There is no reason why Sweden would not be a more appropriate partner in such a virtual union than, say, Guatemala. Proximity and contiguity should not be the decisive determinants of the perimeters of an economic union when the perimeters of economic life are unbounded on the World Wide Web. A nonexclusive free-trade zone between the United States and the United Kingdom makes far better sense than an anti-competitive hemispheric fortress for either state.
(5)
The United States could provide warranties for the security of important regional states vis-à-vis each other by offering an open bargain to aid any state that is attacked—bearing in mind, of course, that American assistance can take the many forms discussed above that are appropriate to a market-state—and to mediate any significant dispute. Warranties could even be brokered or factored by various state guarantors. This implies that the ongoing and costly role of American diplomacy in brokering foreign disputes is a good investment of time and energy. (For such a course to succeed, Congress would have to resist adopting measures like the Pressler Amendment, which embargoed Pakistani arms purchases, and the Glenn Amendment, which requires economic sanctions against a nuclear India, with no provision for a national security waiver. Taken together s
uch laws can paralyze U.S. action on the subcontinent, to take one example.)
(6)
The United States could develop an action program of lease-hire security insurance, licensing some forms of defense technology and emphasizing the U.S. role in providing information, missile defense, and even intervention for hire.
Consider, therefore, a vertical coalition in which the United States supplies intelligence and systems assistance to a beleaguered [state], which in turn, uses such help to organize its own sources of information, increase its battlespace illumination and support its own command-and-control, operational planning and rapid reaction… Vertical coalitions have several uses. In October 1994, Iraq massed its tanks looking southward to Kuwait, and the United States responded by shipping over 35,000 troops at a cost of nearly a billion dollars. What if Kuwait could have defended itself in the first crucial week with medium-range point-guided PGMs [precision-guided munitions] guided by the System (with in-place sensors) so that assault forces could be converted into real-time aimpoints? By revealing, for instance, precisely where opposing artillery is firing from, illumination could help one side (e.g., Bosnian Muslims) without risking American troops or impelling powerful countries to intervene on behalf of others (e.g., Bosnian Serbs). Border illumination could dissuade a U.S. ally from feeling the need to undertake problematic cross-border actions (e.g., Turkey's 1995 pursuit of Kurdish rebels into Iraq). Unlike a formal alliance, illumination could be offered in finely graded doses depending on the degree of trust between the United States and others. Such applications could increase countries' confidence in their ability to see across their borders even without formal alliance commitments.45
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