Evolution of Strategic Doctrines

1. EXAM NOTES:
1. UGC-NET & SET
2. UPSC
SYLLABUS COVERED for UGC
NET/SET
Subject: INTERNATIONAL
AND AREA STUDIES - Unit
IV
Subject: DEFENCE AND
STRATEGIC STUDIES
(partly): UNIT – II, III, and IV
Subject: POLITICAL
SCIENCE (partly): Unit V
SYLLABUS COVERED for
UPSC
PAPER 2, UNIT - 5
2021
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3. EVOLUTION OF STRATEGIC DOCTRINES
MASSIVE RETALIATION:
The deterrence doctrine of the Eisenhower administration, that the United States
would feel free to use nuclear weapons at the time and place of its choosing to
prevent any further expansion of communist rule achieved by military aggression.1
On 12 January 1954, in a speech delivered to the Council on Foreign Relations in
New York, Dulles for the first time as secretary expounded a strategic doctrine that
will forever be associated with his name-massive retaliation. In his opening
paragraphs, Dulles argued that the foreign-policy actions of the Truman
administration, such as the Marshall Plan, the Berlin airlift, and the commitment of
forces to Korea, while praiseworthy, were ultimately inadequate because they were
"emergency" reactions to Soviet initiatives.2
The diminishing credibility of a nuclear strategy and the consequent
advisability of a more conventional approach impressed the Truman
Administration, but not its successor, the Administration of General Dwight
Eisenhower. A year after taking office, in January 1954, in a speech to the Council
on Foreign Relations, Eisenhower‘s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles,
outlined a change of direction from the strategic doctrines that had been
developing under Truman. This new doctrine, known as one of ‗massive
retaliation‘, was widely assumed to be founded on an undiscriminating threat to
respond to any communist-inspired aggression, however marginal the
confrontation, by means of a massive nuclear strike against the centres of the
Soviet Union and China.
Massive Retaliation &William W. Kaufmann
He assessed the efficacy of the United States' strategy of massive retaliation on
three areas: capability, cost, and intention.3
In the mid-1950s, Mr. Kaufmann wrote ―Limited War,‖ an influential paper that
called for rebuilding conventional armies in Western Europe rather than relying on
nuclear weapons. Along with other leading nuclear strategists, Mr. Kaufmann
developed the concept of counterforce. Instead of an all-out nuclear attack if the
Soviets invaded Western Europe, counterforce called for precision bombing of
1
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100138902
2
https://www-jstor-org.pdpu.remotlog.com/stable/pdf/2149675
3
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01495933.2017.1379837?journalCode=ucst20

4. military targets coupled with warnings that cities would become the next targets of
missiles launched from submarines and underground missile silos if the Soviet
forces did not retreat. To Mr. Kaufmann, it would be a way of perhaps controlling
nuclear war instead of igniting the cataclysm.4
DETERRENCE
During the Cold War, deterrence often served as shorthand for nuclear deterrence
with US nuclear forces playing a primary role in US deterrence strategies.
Deterrence is the practice of discouraging or restraining someone— in world
politics, usually a nation-state—from taking unwanted actions, such as an armed
attack. It involves an effort to stop or prevent an action, as opposed to the closely
related but distinct concept of ―compellence,‖ which is an effort to force an actor to
do something.5
After World War 2, nuclear weapons began to be the center of military research
and with this growth came the idea of Deterrence theory. Thomas Schelling was
one of the first to analyze this idea of deterrence theory and he wrote that military
strategy was now much more dependent on deterrence, intimidation, and coercion.
The amount of damage that a country could possibly do was now seen as a very
influential factor for a country's decision-making and in order to deter another
nation, the nation must expect violence and understand that it can be eluded. He
says, "It can therefore be summarized that the use of the power to hurt as
bargaining power is the foundation of deterrence theory, and is most successful
when it is held in reserve." This theory is centered on the idea that the possibility of
unleashing nuclear weapons of mass destruction upon a country is enough to cause
them to keep peace and deter a nation from doing anything aggressive.6
Extended deterrence involves discouraging attacks on third parties, such as allies
or partners. During the Cold War, direct deterrence involved discouraging a Soviet
nuclear attack on U.S, territory; extended deterrence involved preventing a Soviet
conventional attack on North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members.7
4
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/washington/22kaufmann.html
5
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE200/PE295/RAND_PE295.pdf
6
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/baggett2/
7
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE200/PE295/RAND_PE295.pdf

7. Further reading:
Modern Deterrence Theory: Research Trends, Policy Debates, and Methodological
Controversies:
https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935307.001.0
001/oxfordhb-9780199935307-e-39?rskey=KJomPi&result=8
FLEXIBLE RESPONSE
Military doctrine developed under the Kennedy administration in the United States,
providing a conventional warfare strategy for NATO alongside that of massive
retaliation and mutual assured destruction.8
The Kennedy administration inherited the containment doctrine of the 1940s and
1950s, and maintained the belief that Communism was a threat to the United
States. However, the brinksmanship of the Eisenhower era seemed archaic to the
Kennedy idealists in their new international vision. Kennedy implemented the
―flexible response‖ defense strategy, one that relied on multiple options for
responding to the Soviet Union, discouraged massive retaliation, and encouraged
mutual deterrence.9
Announced in 1962, first at a meeting of NATO defence ministers in
Athens...McNamara‘s new strategy of flexible response marked a fundamental
change...10
The strategy, which focused largely on the Soviet threat to Western Europe, was,
and is, seen as a radical change which supposedly enhanced deterrence by pro-
viding the president with flexible nuclear options and increased conventional
capabilities to deal with a variety of military crises.11
General Taylor was one of the most influential figures in the American military
and diplomatic presence in Southeast Asia. It was General Taylor's view, which he
expressed with increasing frustration, that the nation's military policy should be
based on ''flexible response.''12
8
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095823798
9
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/foreword
10
Warfare in the Twentieth Century, Theory and Practice, By G. D. Sheffield · 2021
11
: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40108839
12
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/21/obituaries/maxwell-d-taylor-soldier-and-envoy-dies.html

8. https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/The_Dictionary_of_Military_Terms/XyqC
DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=flexible+response+fdo+military&pg=PT344&p
rintsec=frontcover
MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION – MAD
A military doctrine, also known as the doctrine of mutually assured destruction,
which states that when two adversaries possess nuclear weapons, neither of them is
likely to use them. This is because both sides are likely to suffer severe losses from
a nuclear attack, irrespective of who attacks first. The MAD doctrine is considered
an application of the Nash equilibrium, wherein the threat of a strong retaliatory
attack prevents both sides from initiating a conflict. The result is lasting prevention
of a nuclear attack. The doctrine has been criticised for assuming that the victim of
the first attack will possess sufficient capabilities after the attack to retaliate
strongly.13
In 1962, the concept of mutually assured destruction started to play a major part in
the defence policy of the US. President Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, Robert
McNamara, set out in a speech to the American Bar Foundation a theory of flexible
nuclear response.
In essence it meant stockpiling a huge nuclear arsenal. In the event of a Soviet
attack the US would have enough nuclear firepower to survive a first wave of
nuclear strikes and strike back. The response would be so massive that the enemy
would suffer "assured destruction".
In the 1960s, Donald Brennan — an analyst at the conservative Hudson Institute,
who was making the case for ballistic missile defense — used the acronym MAD
13
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/mad-doctrine/article19259265.ece

9. to ridicule the idea that in a nuclear war, or even a large conventional conflict, each
side should be prepared to destroy the other‘s cities and society.14
Thus the true philosophy of nuclear deterrence was established. If the other side
knew that initiating a nuclear strike would also inevitably lead to their own
destruction, they would be irrational to press the button.15
STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE (SDI), 198316
In1983 in a televised address to the nation, U.S. President Ronald Reagan
announced his intention to embark upon groundbreaking research into a national
defense system that could make nuclear weapons obsolete. The research took a
number of forms which collectively were called the Strategic Defense Initiative, or
SDI.
The SDI had been brought out by the Heritage Foundation and prepared by the
former Director of the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Lt. General Daniel
Graham.17
The heart of the SDI program was a plan to develop a space-based missile defense
program that could protect the USA from a large-scale nuclear attack. The proposal
involved many layers of technology that would enable the United States to identify
and destroy automatically a large number of incoming ballistic missiles as they
were launched, as they flew, and as they approached their targets. The idea was
dependent on futuristic technology, including space-based laser systems that had
not yet been developed, although the idea had been portrayed as real in science
fiction. As a result, critics of the proposal nicknamed SDI "Star Wars" after the
movie of the same name.
There were several reasons why the Reagan Administration was interested in
pursuing the technology in the early 1980s. One was to silence domestic critics
concerned about the level of defense spending. Reagan described the SDI system
as a way to eliminate the threat of nuclear attack; once the system was developed,
its existence would benefit everyone. In this way, it could also be portrayed as a
peace initiative that warranted the sacrifice of funds from other programs.
14
https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/11/09/the-dustbin-of-history-mutual-assured-destruction/
15
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17026538
16
https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/rd/104253.htm
17
https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/sa/sa_jan01chk01.html

10. Privately, Reagan was quite adamant that the goal of U.S. defense research should
be to eliminate the need for nuclear weapons, which he thought were
fundamentally immoral. In terms of the Cold War conflict with the Soviets, a
successful defense system would destroy the Soviet ability to make a first strike,
which in turn would undermine the USSR's ability to pose a threat to the United
States at all. So success in this area, supporters of SDI argued, could potentially
also bring an end to the Cold War.
Criticism of the SDI initiative was widespread, however, and it took several forms
beyond general skepticism about the feasibility of the technology.
First, research and development for such a complicated project inevitably
came with a very high price tag. Many critics of SDI wondered why the Reagan
Administration was willing to spend so much money on a defense system that
might never work, and expressed alarm that the funding for SDI came at the cost of
social programs like education and health care. Moreover, there was no way to test
such a system without exposing the world to a very dangerous attack.
Second, the very idea of guarding against nuclear attack struck at the heart
of the theory of deterrence. If one nuclear power no longer had to fear nuclear
attack, then there would be no fear of retaliation to stop it from making the first
strike against another. In fact, if the Soviet Union thought that the United States
was on the verge of deploying a comprehensive defense system, some argued, it
might feel forced to attack before the United States could complete the system; this
possibility meant that developing the system could actually contribute to U.S.
insecurity, not the other way around.
Third, critics both in the United States and around the world called the SDI
initiative a clear violation of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. That treaty had
committed the United States and the Soviet Union to refrain from developing
missile defense systems in order to prevent a new and costly arms race. The
Strategic Defense Initiative appeared to be a missile defense system by another
name.
The Soviet Union expressed its concerns about SDI almost as soon as it learned of
it, and the prospect of the United States developing the defense system thus
became a hindrance in the pursuit of future arms negotiations between the two
powers. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev linked his demands that the United
States drop SDI to the negotiations for the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces
Treaty (INF Treaty) and the Strategic Arms Reductions Talks (START). Over the
course of the 1980s, Reagan's refusal to give up SDI became the sticking point that

11. prevented the two countries from reaching a deal on other arms control measures,
and it was only when the two sides agreed to delink defense and intermediate-
range forces discussions that they managed to sign the INF Treaty. START was
completed after Reagan left office, and government commitment to the SDI project
waned.
NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE (NMD)
The idea for an US NMD came about in the late 1950's and has, over the years,
grown from strength to strength. Succeeding US administrations have been faced
with the question–to deploy or not to deploy. Deployment would mean a violation
of the terms of the ABM Treaty of 1972 which would directly affect US relations
with Russia–vis-à-vis–strategic arms control.
The‘ NMD is part of a larger Ballistic Missile Defence ( BMD) programme which
also includes Theatre Missile Defence (TMD).
It was in the late 1950's that the idea for a national missile defense began when US
President Dwight Eisenhower, faced with the prospect of Soviet missile fleets,
embarked on a secretive crash programme of antimissile research which included
ideas for space-based arms. The Lyndon Johnson administration, in an effort to
seize a Republican issue before the 1968 presidential election, proposed plans for
deploying ground-based interceptors. However, it was the Richard Nixon
administration that actually built them. In October 1975, the Safeguard system was
switched on in North Dakota and it was meant to shield nearby missile fields from
a disarming first strike.
After Nixon, important move was President Ronald Reagan's Star Wars plan. By
1987, the original mission was implicitly dropped as being unrealistic and the
focus shifted from protecting cities to enhanced deterrence by protecting US
nuclear weapons from a disarming first strike. Between 1989-1991, under
President George Bush, a space-based layer of "Brilliant Pebbles" interceptors,
hailed as being so cheap and small that 100, 000 of them could be shot into orbit
where they were to ruin rising enemy missiles by force of impact, was added to the
plan. However, the end of the Cold War saw such plan initiatives evaporating.
In July 1998, the report of the 9-person "Rumsfeld Commission" was published,
with the key judgment that North Korea, Iraq, or Iran, with foreign technology
transfer and an urgent and well-funded program, could develop an ICBM within
five years, and for several of those years, the United States might be ignorant of
that program. The result of the program could be the deployment of a few
inaccurate, unreliable ICBMs. The unanimous report of the Rumsfeld Commission

12. also noted that any of those countries could more readily and sooner build more
accurate short-range cruise missiles or ballistic missiles, perhaps to be launched
from third-party cargo ships against U.S. coastal cities. It is important to note that
the Rumsfeld Commission did not discuss or urge deployment of any missile
defense; its task was to assess the threat-not what to do about it.
Before the Rumsfeld Commission submitted its report on 1998, the Clinton
Administration's NMD plan consisted of the "3 + 3" programme which was
designed to conduct three years of development and test activities, leading to an
integrated system test of the NMD elements in Fiscal Year 1999.
The fundamental document of the National Missile Defence Act which was passed
by the US Congress in 1999 called for the US to deploy NMD
The NMD system would be a fixed, land-based, non-nuclear defence system with a
space-based detection system, consisting of five elements:
1. Ground Based Interceptors (GBIs);
2. Battle Management Command, Control, and Communications (BMC3),
which includes BMC2 AND In-Flight Interceptor Communications System
(IFICS);
3. X-Band Radars (XBRs);
4. Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR);
5. Satellite/Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS)
NMD Feasability...?
Not available now necessary technological capabilities for building an
effective anti-missile shield.
However, the United States today possesses a potential ace in its hand to defeat
such an attack. The U.S. Missile Defense Agency‘s Ground-based Midcourse
Defense (GMD) interceptors would attempt to knock them out of the sky.
The GMD system‘s ability to potentially destroy an ICBM is exceptionally rare.
But Washington shouldn‘t grow overconfident about its ballistic-missile shield: it
is only designed to protect against very limited-scale attacks. Furthermore, the
interceptors so far have, when tested, only hit their targets about half the time.
GMD is one of only two operational midcourse ballistic-missile interceptors that
can tackle ICBMs; the other is the Israeli Arrow-3. A midcourse intercept can take
out ballistic missiles in the exosphere—after they have expended their rocket fuel,
but before they have begun their descent on the target. This allows the GMD

13. interceptors to provide continent-wide defense and affords the defenders up to
twenty minutes‘ time to intercept the incoming ICBMs.18
Both Russia and China have vigorously opposed a likely US NMD deployment in
the past and their objections have been well-documented. From the beginning,
Russia had vehemently opposed the US NMD, saying that it would be a violation
of the ABM Treaty.
China already possessed certain capabilities for midcourse anti-ballistic missile
(ABM) defense, which is similar to anti-satellite in technology.19
Further Reading
https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/sa/sa_jan01chk01.html
https://fas.org/rlg/010301-aspen.htm
COLD START DOCTRINE
The Cold Start doctrine is essentially an operational plan proposed by the Indian
army in 2004. It is designed to make a rapid and limited penetration into Pakistani
territory to punish Pakistan for terror attacks or proxy war and is not proposed to
be of a scale that either would threaten Pakistan's survival or be seen as crossing
the traditional nuclear threshold of Pakistan. In response, Pakistan introduced
TNWs that lowered its nuclear threshold to a level that made the employment of
CSD difficult for India. The aim of CSD is to reorganize the three large strike
corps of India into eight smaller battle groups.20
BOOK AUTHOR
Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy HENRY A. KISSINGER
The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy
(1989)
Lawrence Freedman
18
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-missile-defenses-against-north-korea-have-big-20872
19
http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/2013-02/04/content_27882947.htm
20
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01495933.2017.1379837?journalCode=ucst20

14. TEST YOURSELF: QUESTIONS
1. Who made the case that a nuclear Iran would enhance rather than detract from the stability of
the Middle East?
2. Organski is related to _____theory
3. ―The more horrible the prospects of war, the less likely it is to occur.‖ This statement by
4.
Assertion: Mearsheimer argued that a German nuclear capability was ―the best hope for avoiding
war in post-cold war Europe‖
Reason: Structural deterrence theorists support the ―selective‖ proliferation of nuclear weapons
5. Realist theorists see anarchy, power transition theorists see order. This is true or false?
6. The formal acceptance of ‗flexible response‘ by NATO in
7. Announcement of US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty in
8. ‗Safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.‘ This
statement by
9. Todd Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann used statistical analysis to see whether nuclear-armed
states were more successful than conventional countries in coercing their adversaries during
territorial disputes in the book
10. Who wrote in the margin of a government document that: ‗Even if we are destroyed, England
at least will lose India.‘?21
Answers
1. Kenneth Waltz (2012)
2. Power transition
3. Mearsheimer
4. Assertion & Reason are correct; R is correct explanation for A also
5. True
6. 1967
7. 2001
8. Winston Churchill
9. Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy
10. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany
21
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/14/nuclear-deterrence-myth-lethal-david-barash