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Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Order Number 8922650 Increm ental decision-making: U.S. m ilitary presence in the TriHian Ocean, 1977—1981 Hahn, Kâth Dennis, Ph.D. The American Univeisity, 1989 UMI 300 N. Zeeb R4 Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INCREMENTAL DECISIONMAKING: O.S. MILITARY PRESENCE IN THE INDIAN OCEAN, 1977-1981 by Keith Dennis Hêüin submitted to the School of International Service of The American University in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in International Relations Committee:Signatur Chairman: Dean of the School Date5 it i V 7 1989 The American University Washington, D.C. 20016 MS'S" TEE AMRBICAE DHIVERSITY LIBRARY Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INCREMENTAL DECISIONMAKING t U.S. MILITARY PRESENCE IN THE INDIAN OCEAN, 1977-1981 by Keith Dennis Hahn ABSTRACT Since the mid-1970s, U.S. decisionmakers have often focused their attention on events in the northwestern Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. During the four year period between early 1977 and early 1981, which roughly corresponded to the Carter Administration, U.S. responses to a series of crises and conflicts determined the nature of subsequent U.S. policy toward the region. At the outset of his administration. President Carter sought to minimize the confrontational relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union by proposing that both countries lower their military presence in the Indian Ocean. Between his initial proposal to "demilitarize" the Indian Ocean in 1977 and his declaration that the region was "vital" to the U.S. in 1980, President Carter made a number of incremental decisions which facilitated a significant shift in policy, including the sale of arms to Somalia and North Yemen, the formation of the Rapid 11 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Ill Deployment Joint Task Force, negotiations for access to regional port and air facilities, and efforts to include U.S. allies in responses to regional crises. This study uses open source literature, declassified documents and a measure of deductive, as well as inductive reasoning, to trace the evolution of U.S. policy toward the region through the Indian Ocean Arms Limitation Talks, the Somali/Ethiopian conflict of 1977-1978, the Yemen "crisis" of 1978, the Iranian Revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to identify those incremental steps that led to the declaration of the Carter Doctrine. It also poses three questions that decisionmakers might ask — the incremental, sequential, and analytical questions — during an extended series of crises to best apply the incremental approach to decisionmaking. The study concludes that incremental decisionmaking is not only inevitable during an extended crisis, but in many respects it is also desireable. The Carter Administration's transition from arms control to a major military presence in the Indian Ocean provides several examples of both the advantages and the hazards associated with the incremental approach to decisionmaking. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. VITAE Commander Keith D. Hahn was born in Van Nuys, California on October 23, 1948. He graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (1970) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and from the University of Texas - Arlington (1971) with a Master of Arts degree in Government. He entered the U.S. Navy through the Aviation Officer Candidate Program and received his wings in Corpus Christi, Texas in April 1973. He was initally assigned to Training Squadron TWENTY- EIGHT as an Instructor Pilot until 1975 when he reported to Patrol Squadron TWENTY-TWO in Barbers Point, Hawaii. During this tour of duty he deployed to Japan and the Philippines, with two extended detachments to Guam and one to Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territories, where he served as Assistant Officer-in-Charge and Air Intelligence Officer. In October 1978 he reported to the Chief of Naval Operations Strategy and Concepts Group where he served as Indian Ocean and Middle East strategist, representing the Navy on Joint Staff, Department of Defense, and Interagency studies and crisis action groups. IV Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. V He was selected to be a Federal Executive Fellow in August 1980 and assigned to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research where he instituted a series of seminars with top defense officials and edited a book entitled National Securitiy Policy in Perspective. He reported to the staff of the Commander of Carrier Group THREE in Alameda, California in December 1981 where he served as Aide/Flag Secretary, and deployed to the Northern and Western Pacific and Indian Oceans onboard the OSS ENTERPRISE. In September 1983 He was assigned to Patrol Squadron FIFTY at NAS Moffett Field, California, deploying to Japan and Diego Garcia. He reported to Patrol Squadron THIRTY-ONE as Executive Officer in January 1986 and subsequently to Patrol Squadron FORTY as Executive Officer. He assumed command of Patrol Squadron FORTY in October 1987, making two additional deployments to Japan. Commander Hahn is currently the Assistant for Long Range Planning on the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel in Washington D.C. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. PREFACE In October 1975, I reported to my first operational aviation squadron, which was then deployed to Okinawa, Japan. Within a week of my arrival in Japan, I found myself on an airplane bound for the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Like many Americans, I had paid little attention to either the political or the geographical environment in the Indian Ocean. Over the next three years, however, I had the opportunity to visit the region on several occasions, including an extended stay in Bandar Abbas, Iran. In 1978, I was transferred to the Chief of Naval Operations Strategy and Concept Group in Washington, D.C. where, by virtue of being the only officer in the group with operational experience in the Indian Ocean, I was assigned responsibility for issues involving the employment of U.S. naval forces in the region. Within months, if not weeks, the series of crises described herein began to increasingly focus the attention of the Administration, and by extension, the U.S. Navy chain of command, on the region. At the time, it seemed ironic that the U.S. and the vi Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. vil Soviet Union were negotiating a limit on the presence of their respective naval forces in the Indian Ocean precisely at the moment when the West (as a result of the growing impact of the OPEC cartel) was becoming more vulnerable to oil supply^disruptions, and this source of oil was increasingly a factor in national security calculations of the U.S. and its allies. At the same time, the Soviet Union was expending considerable effort and resources to gain a political and military foothold in the region. Among the files that I inherited from my predecessor were the minutes of the Indian Ocean Arms Limitations Talks which, needless to say, were viewed with some suspicion by the Navy hierarchy. Despite an auspicious beginning. President Carter decided in 1978 to forgo further talks on the subject because Soviet naval operations in support of the Soviet Union's political activities in the Horn of Africa in 1977 and 1978 suggested that there was no common understanding as to how the Indian Ocean Arms Limitation Talks would actually affect the behavior of the United States and the Soviet Union in the region. For the next two years, as a relatively junior participant, I was able to observe the process of policy formulation toward the region at the U.S.