Texas National Security Review Print: ISSN 2576-1021 Online: ISSN 2576-1153

CLARITY & QUAGMIRE

Volume 2 Issue

MASTHEAD TABLE OF CONTENTS

Staff: The Foundation

Publisher: Managing Editor: 04 Reviewing Blues Ryan Evans Megan G. Oprea, PhD Assistant Editor: Francis J. Gavin Autumn Brewington Editor-in-Chief: Associate Editors: William Inboden, PhD Galen Jackson, PhD Van Jackson, PhD Stephen Tankel, PhD The Scholar

10 When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal Editorial Board: from Beirut, 1983–1984 Alexandra T. Evans and A. Bradley Potter Chair, Editorial Board: Editor-in-Chief: 40 How to Think About Nuclear Crises Francis J. Gavin, PhD William Inboden, PhD Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald

Robert J. Art, PhD Beatrice Heuser, PhD Patrick Porter, PhD Richard Betts, PhD Michael C. Horowitz, PhD Thomas Rid, PhD John Bew, PhD Richard H. Immerman, PhD Joshua Rovner, PhD Nigel Biggar, PhD Robert Jervis, PhD Brent E. Sasley, PhD The Strategist Philip Bobbitt, JD, PhD Colin Kahl, PhD Elizabeth N. Saunders, PhD Hal Brands, PhD Jonathan Kirshner, PhD Kori Schake, PhD 68 After the Responsible Stakeholder, What? Debating America’s China Strategy Joshua W. Busby, PhD James Kraska, SJD Michael N. Schmitt, DLitt Hal Brands and Zack Cooper Robert Chesney, JD Stephen D. Krasner, PhD Jacob N. Shapiro, PhD Eliot Cohen, PhD Sarah Kreps, PhD Sandesh Sivakumaran, PhD 82 Crossroads: Counter-terrorism and the Internet Audrey Kurth Cronin, PhD Melvyn P. Leffler, PhD Sarah Snyder, PhD Brian Fishman Theo Farrell, PhD Fredrik Logevall, PhD Bartholomew Sparrow, PhD 102 The End of the End of History: Reimagining U.S. Foreign Policy for the 21st Century Peter D. Feaver, PhD Margaret MacMillan, CC, PhD Monica Duffy Toft, PhD Sen. Ben Sasse Rosemary Foot, PhD, FBA Thomas G. Mahnken, PhD Marc Trachtenberg, PhD Taylor Fravel, PhD Rose McDermott, PhD René Värk, JD Sir Lawrence Freedman, PhD Paul D. Miller, PhD Steven Weber, PhD James Goldgeier, PhD Vipin Narang, PhD Amy Zegart, PhD Michael J. Green, PhD Janne E. Nolan, PhD Kelly M. Greenhill, PhD John Owen, PhD The Roundtable Feature 116 The Persistence of Great Power Politics David M. Edelstein Policy and Strategy Advisory Board:

Chair: Adm. William McRaven, Ret.

Hon. Elliott Abrams, JD Hon. Kathleen Hicks, PhD Dan Runde Stephen E. Biegun Hon. James Jeffrey David Shedd Hon. Brad Carson Paul Lettow, JD, PhD Hon. Kristen Silverberg, JD Hon. Derek Chollet Hon. Michael Lumpkin Michael Singh, MBA Amb. Ryan Crocker Hon. William J. Lynn, JD Adm. James G. Stavridis, Ret., PhD Hon. Eric Edelman, PhD Kelly Magsamen Hon. Christine E. Wormuth Hon. John Hamre, PhD Gen. David Petraeus, Ret.

Designed by We are Flint, printed by Linemark Reviewing Blues

The chairman of our editorial board, Frank Gavin, introduces Vol. 2, Iss. 2 of TNSR and discusses the joys and pains of the review process, giving some advice for both reviewers and those submitting their work for review.

am sorry to report that I do not I have countless more stories like this, but simply like this manuscript much.” As recalling them is generating a cold sweat! Francis J. Gavin academics, we have all received At the Texas National Security Review, we have such a note (and if you haven’t yet, and will continue to think long and hard about how you“I will at some point). And the negative reactions to encourage best practices in the review process. to our papers and books don’t ever go away, no We have incorporated a number of measures, matter how long you are in the profession or how including paying our reviewers on a sliding scale distinguished your title. This was the first line of depending upon how comprehensive the review is a referee report I received just last month for my and how quickly it is returned. This has made these latest book manuscript. reviews even more rigorous than the typical review. There is probably no harder part of scholarly life Believe me, I know. You may have noticed that I did than sending our work out for anonymous peer not write an introduction for the last issue. You may review. We pour our heart and soul into our work, have also noticed that an article of mine appeared in nurturing, digging, re-shaping our articles and our pages. This generated a whole lot of discussion books until we believe they are perfect. We carry and concern in our journal — how would it look for around the arguments we make and the evidence a new journal to publish an article by the chair of we’ve collected in our heads throughout the day, the editorial board? Did we have a process in place evaluating them at all hours, from when our heads to treat my article in as demanding, ethical, and hit the pillow at night to when we get into the shower thorough a way as anyone else’s? the next morning. As scholars, our arguments and To my (not always pleasant) surprise, we did. I can research both reflect who we are and how we see honestly say that my article went through the most the world. While we are intellectuals and pretend rigorous review process I have ever experienced we are completely objective, we (understandably) in over two decades of academic life. There were become deeply and personally attached to our four anonymous reviews, each well over two pages work. Our articles and books are like our children long, as well as intense internal review. All of the — we love them fiercely and, at times, irrationally, reviews were sharp and penetrating, with a raft often blind to the flaws that others see. This is what of (not always welcome) suggestions, but one in makes receiving negative reviews so unsettling, particular was especially harsh. I confess I may not especially for the young scholar. have handled the criticism in the most mature way. Stay in the business long enough, and you collect I pouted and suggested I might pull the piece and stories. Years ago, I submitted an article, “The Myth send it somewhere else, arguing that I had gotten of Flexible Response,” to a prestigious journal. One to a point in my career where I shouldn’t have to “anonymous” review was by someone who said he deal with this. Who was the “obvious” idiot TNSR was involved in the Kennedy administration policy had found to stand in judgment of my “obvious” process I was writing on and suggested that I had expertise? It was not my best moment, to say the no idea what I was talking about. The review was least. Ryan Evans — who in addition to being the handwritten and the journal forgot to remove the publisher is also one of my best friends — never initials — “CK” — at the end of the document. blinked. My piece, he stated calmly, would have to Since I had based much of my argument on the address all the criticisms if TNSR was to publish it. papers of Carl Kaysen and was quite familiar with And no, I would never find out who had reviewed his handwriting, the review was not especially my piece. After putting the article aside for a few anonymous. The journal passed on the piece. weeks, I swallowed my pride and went through Another review, which I later learned was written the critiques line by line and made the changes. by our most accomplished Cold War historian (note: Ryan and his outstanding team of editors worked no matter how hard we try not to, we all attempt to with me closely to improve the effort. The piece figure out the identity of our reviewers), asked, “Are was much better for it. And I still have no idea we sure the author does not suffer from dyslexia?” who the reviewers were, though I am grateful for

4 5 Introducing Vol. 2, Iss. 2 of TNSR: Clarity & Quagmire Reviewing Blues

their extraordinary willingness to offer me honest to advance knowledge? Is the current system too Does your review offer helpful advice, demonstrate criticism and helpful recommendations (although easily gamed, or does it encourage scholars — empathy, and provide the author with guidance that reviewer number four would be an unlikely addition especially young thinkers at the height of their can help them move their project forward? And if to my holiday card list, as petty as that may be!). intellectual powers — to be risk-averse, to play the answers to these questions are “no,” might it be I tell this story for a few reasons. First, the small-ball, to write papers and books with the goal time to ask yourself some hard questions about who process of being evaluated and assessed never of getting through review, rather than expanding you are and why you are in this business? Truth be ends, no matter how long you stay in the academy. our understanding of the world? We all know the told, following the adage “don’t be a jerk” involves It is important for young people entering the reasons we have the current system, but I think it is no sacrifice of standards or smarts or rigor. Quite academy to know this. Criticism hurts deeply fair to ask whether it can be improved. Isaac Newton the contrary, in fact. and often feels unfair. To have your best work and Albert Einstein changed our understanding of Rest assured that the excellent scholarly dismissed by an unknown, anonymous voice can the world without it. Is double-blind peer review contributions in this volume went through such be devastating. The key is to remember that, no the worst way of evaluating scholarship, except all a process, and that we at TNSR are committed matter how unpleasant, the reviewer took the time the others? Or are there ways we can improve the to embracing the highest standards of scholarly to read your manuscript and take it seriously. No system? At TNSR we don’t know the answer but review. Enjoy! matter how painful and even wrong-headed, almost are very interested in hearing from our audience — every review I’ve received has been useful, if only both readers and authors. We are willing to break Francis J. Gavin is the chairman of the editorial to help me better understand how my arguments current norms and practices if and when we find board of the Texas National Security Review. He is and evidence are received. Bear in mind, too, that better ways of doing things. We encourage you to the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and just because an article is rejected does not mean send us your thoughts. the inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger it is wrong or the scholarship poor. As I think The final reason is a plea to all future reviewers, Center for Global Affairs at SAIS-Johns Hopkins about my own work, it is often the pieces that for this journal and all others: Be comprehensive, University. His writings include Gold, Dollars, and were rejected once or twice (and in one case, four be rigorous, but don’t be a jerk. The benefits of Power: The Politics of International Monetary times before being published) that ended up being anonymity are obvious, but so, too, are the pitfalls. Relations, 1958–1971 (University of North Carolina much better and more influential works than the We live in an age where our social media culture often Press, 2004) and Nuclear Statecraft: History pieces that sailed through review on a first pass. prizes snark over substance, the witty cut over the and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Cornell While you should take criticism seriously, if you empathetic suggestion, the pithy phrase over deep University Press, 2012). believe in your ideas, arguments, and evidence, and reflection. When writing a review, try to imagine the have pursued your quest with rigor, honesty, and scholar on the other side of the process, a person integrity, then never give up. Keep plodding, never who has no doubt invested a good part of their let the critics get you down, and keep improving heart, soul, and mind in the work you are reading. and pressing. Do this and you will get published This is not a plea to go easy — quite the contrary. and your work will — eventually — be recognized. At TNSR, we want our reviewers to bring their The second reason I have related this story is sharpest, most constructive insights, criticisms, and because TNSR is new and is working to establish its recommendations. Many reviewers, however, often reputation as the best venue for rigorous, innovative forget the constructive part. If you are recommending scholarship on the most pressing questions of a rejection, ask yourself, was your decision made strategy, statecraft, and international relations. We because the ideas, methods, and evidence are want to be accessible and engage the world beyond lacking, or because it doesn’t comport with your academics, to include policymakers, without long-held views (or those of your discipline or field)? sacrificing the highest standards of scholarship. Early in my career, I learned from my mentor, Marc It is very easy for a new journal to be seen as an Trachtenberg, that evidence and arguments that outlet for insiders or close friends. The great challenge your deepest beliefs are “like gold in your journal International Security is often — and to my hands” — they should be embraced, encouraged, and mind, quite unfairly — seen as an outlet reserved relished. That is how we become smarter. We aren’t largely for scholars within a certain self-contained in this business to reify our own opinions, but to network in security studies. It was very important gain better understanding of enormously complex, to us that we implement the most demanding often consequential issues. Does the article or book standards for review so that we could establish you are reviewing give us more purchase on a new the highest scholarly credentials. My painful, if question, new insight, even if the answer does not ultimately enormously helpful, experience with the comport with how you understand the world? Will TNSR review process convinced me we are doing publication lead to energetic debate and discussion, well on this score. even if you are somewhat skeptical of the claims? The third reason I mention this is that we all And if the answers to these questions are “yes,” wonder about the efficacy and fairness of the are your critiques and suggestions oriented toward current system. Is the double-blind, peer-reviewed strengthening the piece, to helping the author make process that has become the norm the best way their strongest argument in the best possible way?

6 7 8 The Scholar 9

The Scholar

This section is dedicated to publishing the work of scholars. Our aim is for articles published in this journal to end up on university syllabi and policy desks from Washington to Tokyo, and to be cited as the foundational research and analysis on world affairs.

8 9 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

Why did the United States withdraw from Lebanon in February 1984? How did new information shape policymakers’ proposals to expand, maintain, or terminate the intervention? Drawing upon declassified records, we challenge the conventional narrative that the October 1983 barracks bombing precipitated the American withdrawal from Beirut. Rather than encouraging a consensus around the need to terminate the mission, the significant casualties strengthened senior leaders’ determination to stay the course and deepened the divisions within the Reagan administration. Ultimately, only the collapse of the Lebanese national army in early February 1984 — an event unrelated to Alexandra T. Evans and A. Bradley Potter the October truck attack — forced the intervention’s advocates to adjust their expectations for the mission’s success and compelled Ronald Reagan to order the Marines’ redeployment. By demonstrating the durability of established theories of success and their effect on the interpretation of new information, this history of the Reagan administration’s deliberations over the winter of 1983–84 provides insight into presidential decision- making and contributes to our understanding of elite support for costly but limited U.S. military interventions.

crowd gathered on the shores of and their operations had steadily expanded as Beirut’s Green Beach on Feb. 26, 1984 the security situation in the country deteriorated. to watch as the last company of U.S. Then, on Oct. 23, 1983, a suicide bomber affiliated Marines departed from Lebanon. with a pro-Iranian Shia faction detonated his truck RemnantsA of a 1,800-strong peacekeeping mission, within the Marine barracks at Beirut International the Marines had arrived 18 months earlier to help Airport, killing 241 Americans.1 The memory of the restore stability and encourage the withdrawal attack hung over the troops four months later, and of Israeli and Syrian forces from the country. their redeployment was widely seen as a retreat. The Reagan administration maintained that the “No more wounded, no more killed,” one gunnery peacekeepers’ presence was vital to national sergeant explained to a New York Times reporter, reconciliation and ending Lebanon’s civil war, summarizing the prevailing sentiment. “All these

1 A near-simultaneous attack on the French military headquarters in Beirut would bring the day’s death toll to 299. For a description of the attack, see: Benis M. Frank, U.S. Marines in Lebanon, 1982–1984 (Washington, DC: History & Museums Division, U.S. Marine Corps, 1987), 1–3, 93–96; Timothy J. Geraghty, Peacekeepers at War: Beirut 1983–The Marine Commander Tells His Story (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2012), 91–95.

11 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

people want us to do is go home.”2 failure and order the marines to redeploy. Nearly three decades later, the image of the Our findings imply that policymakers’ responses withdrawing marines has been fixed in the minds to casualties are conditioned by their existing of academics, policymakers, and the general theories about an operation’s probability of success public alike as an integral element of the popular or failure. We find that individual policymakers who refrain that U.S. foreign policy is constrained already opposed the U.S. intervention in Lebanon by an extreme sensitivity to casualties.3 Like interpreted the violence of the barracks attack as the Nixon administration in Vietnam and the evidence for their previously established views on Clinton administration in Somalia, the argument the feasibility (or infeasibility) of the peacekeeping goes, the Reagan administration was driven from mission. Similarly, the attack hardened the position Lebanon because policymakers feared the political of intervention advocates, who continued to push repercussions of mounting losses. More generally, for an expansion in U.S. military involvement scholars still differ over whether the withdrawal was despite the mounting human and political danger. a shrewd political calculation designed to safeguard In both instances, public attitudes toward the the president’s re-election chances, an impulsive intervention did not determine policymakers’ reaction to a human tragedy, or a strategic course support for expanding, maintaining, or terminating correction that foreshadowed Defense Secretary the peacekeeping mission. We therefore conclude Caspar Weinberger’s eponymous doctrine on the that the barracks bombing was not the determining use of force. But they all agree, as Israeli historian factor in the U.S. withdrawal from Lebanon as many Benny Morris writes, that the “massive loss of life have presumed. Rather than lend clarity about … instantly broke Washington’s resolve.”4 the appropriate course of action, the bombing Yet, these conventional arguments cannot heightened divisions within the administration as explain the timing or the character of the U.S. policymakers integrated the attack into their pre- departure from Lebanon. In fact, they obscure existing but competing theories of success (or more than illuminate how policymakers responded failure) of the Lebanon mission. to an unanticipated high-casualty event. Drawing This article addresses two related questions: First, upon newly accessible government records, this why did the United States withdraw from Lebanon? article argues that the Beirut barracks bombing did Second, and more broadly, how did policymakers construct, and assess alternative causal pathways foreign policy and the role of public opinion in not, as is widely believed, precipitate a decision use new information from Beirut in decisions for explaining the withdrawal. A brief history of the crafting that policy. The barracks bombing was the to withdraw. Although the attack strengthened about expanding, maintaining, or terminating the U.S. military withdrawal from Lebanon constitutes U.S. military’s first major casualty event since the a pre-existing movement for withdrawal, it did intervention? The opening two sections briefly the fifth section, followed by a counterfactual end of the Vietnam War, and for some it played the same for a second, more influential faction survey the literature on the relationship between assessment to test our theory and assess American into a growing literature highlighting the public’s within the administration that pushed successfully casualties, public opinion, and U.S. foreign policy, decision-makers’ calculations between the October power to curtail military commitments when for an expansion and hardening of U.S. military highlighting how elite decision-makers weigh 1983 bombing and the Marines’ departure in confronted with evidence of growing human costs.6 involvement in Lebanon even as popular and public pressure and interpret new information February 1984. Finally, the conclusion returns to Weinberger’s 1984 announcement of a new military congressional opposition to the intervention from the field when considering withdrawal from the question of why the Reagan administration doctrine defining, among other criteria, the need mounted. Ultimately, only the collapse of the limited military interventions. The third section terminated the peacekeeping mission and considers for “reasonable assurances” of public support for Lebanese national army in early February 1984 — details alternative explanations for the U.S. the implications this case has on popular, scholarly, future interventions seemed to provide additional an event unrelated to the October truck attack — response to the barracks bombing. Next, we outline and policy debates about military withdrawals. confirmation of this thesis. Media and academic compelled Ronald Reagan to accept the mission’s the counterfactual method we employ to identify, discourses about Lebanon conform closely with the theory that the barracks bombing catalyzed the 5 7 2 Michael Kennedy, “U.S. Shelves New Aid for Lebanon: Last Marines Leave Beirut for Safety of Ships,” Feb. 27, 1984, Los Angeles Times. Weighing the “Bodybag Effect” Marines’ departure. 3 Surveying the literature on U.S. casualty sensitivity, Louis Klarevas notes that the concept of public opinion as the “‘essential domino’ of Three decades later, Beirut remains a popular American foreign policy took on a more permanent and overt cast” after the U.S. withdrawal from Lebanon. See: “The ‘Essential Domino’ of Military The history of the Reagan administration’s case study of the effects of casualties on U.S. Operations: American Public Opinion and the Use of Force,” International Studies Perspectives 3, no. 4 (2002): 418–19, https://doi.org/10.1111/1528- 3577.t01-1-00107. intervention in Lebanon has played a fundamental foreign policy, contributing to a vast literature that 4 Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001, Reprint (New York: Vintage, 2001), 552. See also: Charles F. role in shaping popular and academic attitudes frames public opinion as the “essential domino” Brower IV, “Stranger in a Dangerous Land: Reagan and Lebanon, 1981–1984,” in Reagan and the World: Leadership and National Security 1981–1989, toward the effect that casualties have had on U.S. in decisions to maintain, expand, or terminate ed. Bradley Lynn Coleman and Kyle Longley (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017), 238, 256–87; David C. Brooks, “Cutting Losses: Ending Limited Interventions,” Parameters 43, no. 3 (Autumn 2013): 102–03, https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/issues/Autumn_2013/9_ Brooks.pdf; Gail E.S. Yoshitani, Reagan on War: A Reappraisal of the Weinberger Doctrine, 1980–1984 (Texas A&M University Press, 2011); Robert 5 Lawrence Freedman, “Victims and Victors: Reflections on the Kosovo War,” Review of International Studies 26, no. 3 (2000): 338, http://dx.doi. Timberg, The Nightingale’s Song (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 342–44; H.W. Brands, Into the Labyrinth: The United States and the Middle org/10.1017/S0260210500003351. East, 1945–1993 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994); Robert J. Lieber, “The Middle East,” in Looking Back on the Reagan Presidency, ed. Larry Berman 6 John E. Mueller, “Trends in Popular Support for the Wars in Korea and Vietnam,” American Political Science Review 65, no. 2 (June 1971): 358–75, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 50–70; Andrew J. Bacevich, America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (New https://www.jstor.org/stable/1954454; Mueller, War, Presidents and Public Opinion (New York: Wiley, 1973); Jeffrey Milstein, “The Vietnam War York: Random House, 2016), 73–75. For domestic political explanations, see: William B. Quandt, Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab- from the 1968 Tet Offensive to the 1970 Cambodian Invasion,” in Mathematical Approaches to Politics, ed. H.R. Alker Jr., K.W. Deutsch and A.H. Israeli Conflict Since 1967, 3rd ed. (Brookings Institution Press and University of California Press, 2005), 259; Peter L. Hahn, Crisis and Crossfire: The Stoetzel (New York: Elsevier Scientific, 1973); Klarevas, “The ‘Essential Domino’ of Military Operations,” 418–19. United States and the Middle East Since 1945 (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2005), 80; William B. Quandt, “Reagan’s Lebanon Policy: Trial and Error,” Middle East Journal 38, no. 2 (Spring 1984): 237–54, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4326797. This argument was disseminated widely at the 7 For recent illustrative examples in the public discourse, see: Peter Beinart, “Think Again: Ronald Reagan,” Foreign Policy, June 7, 2010, https:// time as well. See: Francis X. Clines, “James Baker: Calling Reagan’s Re-Election Moves,” March 20, 1984, New York Times. Douglas Kriner’s work is a foreignpolicy.com/2010/06/07/think-again-ronald-reagan/; Micah Zenko, “When Reagan Cut and Run,” Foreign Policy, Feb. 7, 2014, https:// rare exception in that he acknowledges the administration’s intention to expand, rather than retract, U.S. involvement in the wake of the bombing. foreignpolicy.com/2014/02/07/when-reagan-cut-and-run/; Anthony Elghossain, “The Unlearned Lessons of the Beirut Barracks Bombing,” New See: Douglas L. Kriner, After the Rubicon: Congress, Presidents, and the Politics of Waging War (University of Chicago Press, 2010), 193–231. Republic, Nov. 7, 2018, https://newrepublic.com/article/152071/unlearned-lessons-beirut-barracks-bombing.

12 13 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

military interventions.8 In one camp, scholars have under certain circumstances.10 soured over the winter of 1983–84, the decline in combine new information from the field with expanded upon John Mueller’s landmark theory Both views are united, however, by the common support was neither as precipitous as is commonly prior expectations to adjust their outlooks on of a reflexive and casualty-sensitive American position that popular attitudes function as a strong argued nor as influential. Indeed, when the White the future. In the context of a military operation, electorate, contending that popular support brake on the use of force.11 If the public is willing House announced its decision to withdraw in early positive information like a battlefield success for an intervention declines — and the risk of to punish elected leaders for the costs of a military February 1984, public support for the intervention might encourage policymakers, governments, or political backlash grows — as the costs of an intervention, the argument goes, U.S. presidential was “not significantly different from what it was populations to expand their political objectives intervention accumulate.9 Conversely, a second administrations can be expected, once presented in early October 1983, before the truck bombing or to adjust their strategy to seek desired ends school of thought emphasizes the public’s capacity with evidence of declining popular support, to occurred.”12 Moreover, the Reagan administration more efficiently. If new information suggests that to make rational calculations and weigh the costs terminate interventions in hopes of avoiding an continued to expand and harden U.S. military an adversary is stronger than expected or that of an intervention against its perceived strategic electoral backlash. The Beirut example has emerged involvement in Lebanon for several months after the costs of success are higher than anticipated importance and the odds of success. Informed by as a common demonstration of this dynamic. the tragedy, even as the perceived danger of future — a devastating attack on one’s military forces, the United States’ post-Cold War humanitarian Researchers have seized upon the fact that the losses increased. Rather than distance himself for example — decision-makers should narrow operations and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Reagan administration announced its withdrawal from a growing political liability — as both the their objectives and begin seeking an end to the shortly after reflexive and rational public models anticipate a operation. These calculations depend largely on the the president savvy political leader would do — the president actor’s prior assessments; even the most damning formally vociferously defended the intervention both in information from the battlefield may only slowly Closer analysis of public and White declared his public and private. And even as the announcement overcome deeply held expectations that events intention to run for of his re-election campaign neared, and despite will ultimately work out as originally anticipated.15 House polling data reveals that national re-election. worsening poll numbers, Reagan continued to tie Nonetheless, a Bayesian perspective suggests that Yet, the complete himself to the imbroglio. new negative information from the field should attitudes did not decline uniformly in history of the U.S. reliably and consistently degrade expectations for, experience in Lebanon and thus approaches to, an intervention. response to the barracks attack. challenges both of these Weighing a Strategic At first glance, this framework provides an public opinion models. Course Correction appealingly simple explanation for the Reagan Closer analysis of public administration’s behavior in the wake of the and White House polling A second popular interpretation of the withdrawal Beirut barracks bombing: Since the cost of the this literature suggests that a variety of contextual data reveals that national attitudes did not decline from Lebanon upholds the case as a rare example intervention — namely, the loss of 241 Americans factors, including the type of operation, elite uniformly in response to the barracks attack. To of prudent course correction. Skeptical of the — and the expectation of future attacks exceeded framing of the conflict, and the perceived the contrary, support for the U.S. intervention in peacekeeping mission, those subscribing to this the benefits of maintaining the mission, withdrawal probability of victory, help inform the public’s Lebanon grew in the wake of the bombing and explanation argue that the bombing forced Reagan was consequently in order. A surprise injection of tolerance for casualties and provide opportunities continued to fluctuate over the intervention’s to acknowledge that the costs of maintaining the negative information from the field precipitated for decision-makers to sustain costly interventions remaining four months. Even as public attitudes intervention outweighed the anticipated benefits. careful strategic reassessment. Avoiding the temptation to double down on a losing Yet, a closer examination of the Reagan 8 Klarevas, “The ‘Essential Domino’ of Military Operations,” 418–19. mission, the president chose to cut his losses and administration’s deliberations reveals that 9 See, for instance: Edward N. Luttwak, “Where Are the Great Powers?” Foreign Affairs 73, no. 4 (July/August 1994): 23–28, https://www. terminate the mission before additional American policymakers did not uniformly interpret the foreignaffairs.com/articles/1994-07-01/where-are-great-powers-home-kids; “Toward Post-Heroic Warfare,” Foreign Affairs 74, no. 3, (May/June 13 1995): 109–22, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/yugoslavia/1995-05-01/toward-post-heroic-warfare; and “A Post-Heroic Military Policy: The lives were lost. attack and update their expectations as the New Season of Bellicosity,” Foreign Affairs 75, no. 4 (July/August 1996): 33–44, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-america/1996-07-01/ This view hews closely to theoretical arguments Bayesian model might predict. Instead, officials post-heroic-military-policy-new-season-bellicosity; John Mueller, “The Iraq Syndrome,” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 6 (November/December 2005), within the literature on bargaining models of war, retreated into their pre-established camps and https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-korea/2005-10-01/iraq-syndrome. especially notions of Bayesian updating.14 Such offered two diverging understandings of the 10 Although the scope and emphasis varies across theories, the notion of a deliberative and discerning American public underlines each of the following: Eugene R. Wittkopf, Faces of Internationalism: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990); updating occurs when rational political actors tragedy’s significance. Opponents of the U.S. Bruce W. Jentleson, “The Pretty Prudent Public: Post Post-Vietnam American Opinion on the Use of Military Force,” International Studies Quarterly 36, no. 1 (March 1992): 49–74, https://doi.org/10.2307/2600916; John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge University Press, 1994); Alvin Richman, “When Should We Be Prepared to Fight?” Public Perspective 6, no. 3 (April/May 1995): 44; Bruce W. Jentleson and 12 Burk, “Public Support for Peacekeeping in Lebanon and Somalia,” 65–67. Here, we expand upon Burk and Douglas Kriner’s earlier work, which Rebecca L. Britton, “Still Pretty Prudent: Post-Cold War American Public Opinion on the Use of Military Force,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 42, no. used public polling and survey data, by evaluating polling data and reports commissioned by the White House, Reagan’s re-election campaign team, 4 (August 1998): 395–417, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002798042004001; Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver, and Jason Reifler, “Success Matters: and the Republican National Committee. These are available in boxes 685 and 687 of the Edwin Meese collection at the Hoover Institution Library Casualty Sensitivity and the War in Iraq,” International Security 30, no. 3 (Winter 2005/06): 7–46, https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.2005.30.3.7; Scott and Archives in Stanford, California. See also: Kriner, After the Rubicon, 193–231. Sigmund Gartner, “The Multiple Effects of Casualties on Public Support for War: An Experimental Approach,” American Political Science Review 13 Aspects of this argument are reflected in: Beinart, “Think Again: Ronald Reagan”; Zenko, “When Reagan Cut and Run.” 102, no. 1 (February 2008): 95–106, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27644500; Christopher Gelpi, Peter D. Feaver, and Jason Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). For the role of 14 For a useful overview of the logic behind bargaining models of war and their reliance on the logic of Bayesian updating, see: Dan Reiter, political elites and the media in shaping popular attitudes, see: James Burk, “Public Support for Peacekeeping in Lebanon and Somalia: Assessing “Exploring the Bargaining Model of War,” Perspectives on Politics 1, no. 1 (2003): 27–43, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3687811; James D. Fearon, the Casualties Hypothesis,” Political Science Quarterly 114, no.1 (Spring 1999): 53–78, https://doi.org/10.2307/2657991; William A. Boettcher and “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization 49, no. 3 (1995): 379–414, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2706903. Relevant to Michael D. Cobb, “Echoes of Vietnam? Casualty Framing and Public Perceptions of Success and Failure in Iraq,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 50, our argument, recent research has adopted Bayesian models focused on different political actors updating expectations as they relate to war no. 6 (December 2006): 831–54, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002706293665; Adam J. Berinsky, “Assuming the Costs of War: Events, Elites, and termination. See: Sarah E. Croco, Peace at What Price? Leader Culpability and the Domestic Politics of War Termination (Cambridge: Cambridge American Public Support for Military Conflict,” Journal of Politics 69, no. 4 (November 2007): 975–97, http://web.mit.edu/berinsky/www/war.pdf; University Press, 2015); Elizabeth A. Stanley, Paths to Peace: Domestic Coalition Shifts, War Termination, and the Korean War (Stanford, CA: Scott S. Gartner, “On Behalf of a Grateful Nation: Conventionalized Images of Loss and Individual Opinion Change in War,” International Studies Stanford University Press, 2009); Dan Reiter, How Wars End (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009). Quarterly 55, no. 2 (June 2011): 545–61, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23019702; Matthew A. Baum and Philip B.K. Potter, War and Democratic 15 On this point, see: Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, New Edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, Constraint: How the Public Influences Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015); Alexandra Guisinger and Elizabeth N. 2017), xlvii–lii. Related work by Jeffrey Friedman suggests that political actors rationally may stick to their military approach despite negative Saunders, “Mapping the Boundaries of Elite Cues: How Elites Shape Mass Opinion Across International Issues,” International Studies Quarterly 61, battlefield information if this information is consistent with their initial expectations. If a president expects to incur significant casualties before no. 2 (2017): 425–41, https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqx022. ultimately achieving success, then the realization of those casualties should not necessarily dissuade him from pressing on. Still, this model requires 11 Because of the character of the U.S. intervention in Lebanon, in which the debate concentrated on casualties rather than lost treasure, we an actor to hold a consistent set of expectations, present at the start of an intervention and maintained throughout, and the theory does not evaluate only the impact of human losses. For a theory of public responses to financial costs, see: Benny Geys, “Wars, Presidents, and Popularity: refute the need for consistent evaluation of new information. See: Jeffrey Friedman, “Cumulative Dynamics and Strategic Assessment: U.S. Military The Political Cost(s) of War Re-Examined,” Public Opinion Quarterly 74, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 357–74, https://dx.doi.org/nfq001. Decision Making in Iraq, Vietnam, and the American Indian Wars” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2013).

14 15 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

military intervention, notably Defense Secretary government’s efforts with its goals. form the consensus necessary to persuade Reagan strategic reassessment on the administration’s Weinberger and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of In the case of the U.S. intervention in Lebanon, to order the redeployment. The collapse of the decision-making. Staff Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., seized upon the policymakers’ established theories of success Lebanese forces provided conclusive evidence that To control against indefensible extrapolations, Marine losses as a confirmation of their prior or failure informed their immediate reaction the president’s theory of success, which posited we draw upon multiple related analytical belief that U.S. objectives in Lebanon could not be to the barracks bombing and their policy that the Lebanese government could, with sufficient frameworks.21 We blend inductive historical and achieved at an acceptable cost. Most interestingly, recommendations in the months that followed. U.S. support, reassert control without a wider theory-guided analysis to “describe, explain, however, advocates of the intervention drew the Unlike in pure Bayesian models, the attack American ground presence, was no longer viable. interpret, [and] understand a single case as an inverse conclusion, construing the bloodshed as produced a range of interpretations among What occurred was not a thoughtful withdrawal or end in itself.”22 We employ theory as a guide evidence that the U.S. military presence was vital decision-makers because this new information was a maneuver to placate domestic electoral pressures to identify causal pathways and to help select to preserving hopes for a negotiated settlement filtered through the lens of their prior views. Those in the face of disconfirming evidence. Rather, likely or feasible counterfactual scenarios. Deep to the Lebanese civil war. President Reagan, who supported the intervention and believed confronted with the decision to either terminate or analysis of the historical record is also necessary Secretary of State George Shultz, and National that the United States could still achieve its aims massively escalate U.S. involvement, Reagan finally to identify potential turning points, assess realistic Security Adviser Robert “Bud” McFarlane each viewed the attack as further evidence of the need conceded defeat. alternatives, and weigh the probability of potential upheld the bombing as an additional reason to to maintain or expand the peacekeeping mission. consequences. As a historically-minded political maintain — or even expand — U.S. involvement in Conversely, those who opposed the deployment scientist and a historian versed in political theory, the country and reassert Washington’s resolve.16 of U.S. forces to Lebanon saw the casualties as A Counterfactual History we aim to conduct an interdisciplinary study that Reagan reassured the American people that “The confirmation of the intervention’s futility and as an draws equally from both traditions. multinational force was attacked precisely because additional reason to disengage. To assess the effect that the Marine barracks Toward this end, we conducted archival work it is … accomplishing its mission.”17 Everyone agreed the bombing was a tragedy, but bombing had on U.S. policy in Lebanon, we combine to build a rich case study of decision-making with If neither pressure from a casualty-adverse public not everyone took the attack as evidence that the historical analysis of the Reagan administration’s regard to Lebanon between October 1983 and nor reflexive strategic reassessment explains the United States had faced a setback calling its mission internal deliberations with counterfactual February 1984.23 Declassified government records, Reagan administration’s reaction to the bombing into question. Indeed, by providing added evidence examination of three inflection points that occurred oral histories, memoirs, and contemporary news and the decision-making surrounding the ultimate for their preferred courses of action, and thereby between the Oct. 23, 1983, attack and the Feb. 7, 1984, reporting allowed us to reconstruct the Reagan withdrawal, what does? deepening the fractures within the administration, decision to terminate the peacekeeping mission. administration’s internal debates and to trace the bombings increased the “stickiness,” or Once derided by historians and political scientists changes in that debate across time.24 By carefully durability, of policymakers’ theories of success alike, counterfactual analysis offers a Theories of Success, (or impending failure). Thus, the outcome of powerful qualitative tool to test theories Theories of Failure the Reagan administration’s deliberations in the of causality.20 Because it challenges months after the barracks bombing was not pre- researchers to envision alternative The divergent interpretations of the bombing ordained by the scale of the losses or expectations unrealized futures, counterfactual were largely conditioned on policymakers’ previous of domestic political backlash. It was, however, analysis also illuminates flaws in beliefs regarding the efficacy and value of the increasingly influenced by theories U.S. leaders established narratives and provides U.S. intervention in Lebanon. We call these views already held about the mission. a safeguard against confirmation their “theory of success” or “theory of failure.” A counterfactual analysis of the events leading to bias, making it a valuable method We use theory of success and theory of failure in the U.S. military withdrawal from Lebanon reveals to re-evaluate the popular Lebanese reference to the causal logic underpinning why a an alternative explanation for the administration’s example. By comparing possible outcomes against following a causal chain from origin to outcome, particular action is expected to lead, or not lead, ultimate decision to disengage from the country. actual events, we seek to “weigh” the bombing’s we can identify policymakers’ assumptions, isolate to a desired political objective.18 Beliefs of this kind Until the very end, optimists like Reagan and significance as a driver of U.S. decision-making and points of contention, and delineate a range of animate each facet of policymakers’ deliberations Shultz maintained their conviction that the to judge the effect of public opinion and rational alternative outcomes that were possible at the — including definition of priorities, assessment Marine presence would help bring stability to the of risk, and evaluation of potential instruments of troubled region, even as the security situation in power — by providing a unifying framework to bind Lebanon deteriorated and negotiations faltered. 19 specific decisions to more general political aims. Only in early February 1984, when a series of local 20 Here, we join a burgeoning effort to reevaluate the methodological utility of rigorous counterfactual analysis. See: Francis J. Gavin, “What If? Functionally, theories of success determine the crises threatened and ultimately overwhelmed the The Historian and the Counterfactual,” Security Studies 24, no. 3 (2015): 425–30, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2015.1070610; Jack S. Levy, shape of action, providing the sinew connecting a Lebanese Armed Forces, did the Cabinet finally “Counterfactuals, Causal Inference, and Historical Analysis,” Security Studies 24, no. 3 (2015): 378–402, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2015.1 070602; Richard Ned Lebow, Forbidden Fruit: Counterfactuals and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2001), 395–415; James D. Fearon, “Counterfactuals and Hypothesis Testing in Political Science,” World Politics 43, no. 2 (1991): 169–95, https://www.jstor. 16 Our study’s dependent variable is the status of U.S. forces from Lebanon. Our intervening variable is the “theory of success” or “theory of org/stable/2010470. failure” applied to the American military presence in Lebanon. Our independent variable is new information from the field. Information is filtered through the various theories of success and theories of failure held by different camps within the administration, making the intervening variable 21 We draw primarily on those proposed by Jack Levy, who compiled and adapted several earlier studies of counterfactuals. See Levy, the one of most interest. Casualty-sensitivity arguments use public opinion as the intervening variable of interest while strategic course correction, “Counterfactuals.” as presented here, has new information directly leading to a choice about withdrawal. 22 Jack S. Levy, “Case Studies: Types, Designs, and Logics of Inference,” Conflict Management and Peace Science, 25, no. 1 (2008): 1–18, https:// 17 Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation on Events in Lebanon and Grenada,” broadcast speech, Oct. 27, 1983, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/ doi.org/10.1080/07388940701860318. For an application of this method to counterfactuals, see: Levy, “Counterfactuals,” 383. research/speeches/102783b. 23 Archival records were collected between June 2014 and May 2018 from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, George H.W. Bush 18 We adjusted the more common term “theories of victory” in order to include all aspects of a state’s power brought to bear during an Presidential Library and Museum, Princeton University Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, intervention. On theories of victory, see: Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command (New York: Free Press, 2002) 33; J. Boone Bartholomees, “Theory of National Records and Archives in College Park, MD, and George Washington University’s National Security Archive. The U.S. State Department’s Victory,” Parameters (Summer 2008): 25–36, https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/parameters/Articles/08summer/bartholo.htm. Virtual Reading Room, the CIA Records Search Tool (CREST) database, and the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training’s oral history collections were also invaluable. 19 Eliot A. Cohen, “What’s Obama’s Counterinsurgency Strategy for Afghanistan?” Washington Post, Dec. 6, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost. com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/04/AR2009120402602.html. 24 Levy, “Counterfactuals,” 385–86.

16 17 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

time.25 Tracing the decision-making process this causal path (e.g., because the Lebanese government intent to comply with the provisions of the War the withdrawal of Syrian and Israeli forces from way serves as a check against common cognitive remained stable, American officials could still argue Powers Act. Under the terms of the Lebanese Lebanon; (2) to strengthen the Lebanese national distortions like hindsight bias, or the tendency to for supporting it).29 government’s invitation, U.S. forces were authorized army; and (3) to assist the central government’s see past occurrences as obvious and the future as to participate on a “limited and temporary basis” efforts to restore stability.36 predictable. It also forms a foundation from which not to exceed 30 days, and they were equipped Over the next year, Reagan authorized gradual to build realistic alternatives.26 Withdrawing from Lebanon, with unloaded weapons consistent with a non- expansions in the Marine mission even as In identifying turning points during this period a Brief History combat mission. “I want to emphasize that there is negotiations for the withdrawal of foreign forces for counterfactual comparison, we prioritized no intention or expectation that U.S. Armed Forces stalled and efforts to strengthen the Lebanese instances in which: (1) the Reagan administration Lebanon forced its way onto the Reagan will become involved in hostilities,” Reagan wrote Armed Forces faltered.37 Determined to dispel the engaged in a high-level debate over whether to administration’s agenda in April 1981, when a to Congress, underscoring that Habib had secured memory of Vietnam, and confident in what he saw expand, contract, or terminate the peacekeeping confrontation between Israeli-backed Christian guarantees from all armed parties in the city.33 as America’s unique obligation to promote peace mission in Lebanon; (2) the ultimate outcome was militants and Syrian deterrent forces stationed The first marines arrived ashore on Aug. 24, 1982. abroad, Reagan envisioned the troops playing an contingent on specific, isolatable variables (e.g., the in the Bekaa Valley nearly provoked a fifth Arab- The Palestine Liberation Organization evacuation indispensable role in promoting a lasting peace presence of an individual or the occurrence of an Israeli war. To avert a regional conflict, the was completed quickly and without incident, in Lebanon. His convictions were encouraged by event); and (3) an alternative could be extrapolated president dispatched career diplomat Philip Habib and on September 8 — nearly two weeks before optimistic assessments from Shultz, his secretary with minimal speculation. To avoid what historian to broker a new framework delineating Syrian, the mission’s scheduled end — the Pentagon of state, and National Security Adviser William Francis Gavin has termed the “fallacy of focusing Palestinian, and Israeli zones of operations in announced the Marines’ early departure. They Clark. Reagan approved Lebanese government on the last out,” we also selected examples from Lebanon. Habib’s tireless mediation succeeded in sailed from Lebanon two days later under banners requests to expand the Marines’ patrol zone across the four-month period in question.27 defusing a series of confrontations over the next reading “Mission Accomplished Farewell.”34 and launch an ambitious military modernization Broadening our temporal lens allows us to account 16 months. Nevertheless, Israeli preparations for Their withdrawal proved premature. Within program over the fall of 1982.38 By January 1983, the for fluctuations over time, to consider cumulative a major ground offensive continued despite U.S. days, President-Elect Bashir Gemayel, leader of marines could be seen serving alongside Lebanese effects, and to build a rich causal narrative that protests.30 Lebanon’s far-right Christian Phalange militia, soldiers at observation posts and checkpoints accounts for individual learning, the dynamics of On June 6, 1982, the long-planned Israeli invasion was assassinated and the Israel Defense Forces throughout the capital.39 decision-making, and the “stickiness” of theories began. Within one week, the Israel Defense Forces re-entered Beirut, where they allowed Maronite These new responsibilities chipped away at of success or failure over time. had laid siege to Beirut in an effort to evict and fighters to massacre hundreds of Palestinian U.S. claims of neutrality in the country’s civil Three moments satisfied our criteria. First, the destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization and refugees.35 Horrified by the carnage, and eager war, eroding Lebanese popular support for the October 23 bombing, which required many things thereby secure Israel’s northern border region. to dispel accusations of U.S. complicity, Reagan peacekeeping presence and bringing American to go right for the attackers, including acquiring After inconclusive negotiations, the Reagan ordered the Marines to return to Beirut as part diplomats and marines into the crosshairs. Attacks the explosives and securing a determined suicide administration announced in July of that year that of a reconstituted multinational force tasked with on the Multinational Force ticked upward in bomber, and many to go wrong for the United the president had agreed, in principle, to deploy U.S. three expanded political objectives: (1) to facilitate February and March, compelling the Marines to States and its allies, namely, an overabundance marines to Lebanon. In August, the first contingent of intelligence and the inability to interdict the disembarked in Beirut as part of the Multinational truck.28 Second, the botched December 3 raid Force tasked with overseeing the evacuation of 31 33 Letters to House Speaker Thomas O’Neill and President Pro Tempore of the Senate Strom Thurmond from President Reagan, Aug. 24, 1982, against Syrian targets that led to the death of one Palestinian and Syrian fighters from the city. Box 91451, I290676, National Security Council System Files, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum (hereafter Reagan Library). The American pilot and the capture of a second. And Despite the ferocity of the fighting in Lebanon, Marines’ commander, Col. James Mead, reiterated the point in comments to reporters, emphasizing that he did “not anticipat[e] any need for us to use our weapons. We came here as peace-keepers.” See: Loren Jenkins, “800 Marines Take Positions In Beirut Port,” Washington Post, Aug. third, the mass defection of the Lebanese Armed the congressional reaction to Reagan’s commitment 26, 1982, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1982/08/26/800-marines-take-positions-in-beirut-port/fb0bd991-2f57-4fbe-947a- Forces in February 1984, an outcome contingent on of U.S. forces was mixed. Senate Majority Leader 6f5de9e80c04/. the success of a risky anti-government offensive. Howard Baker expressed private reservations, and 34 Boykin, Cursed Is the Peacemaker, in particular 60–265. In evaluating each example, we define a clear the House Foreign Affairs Committee convened an 35 Schiff and Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War, 254–56. On the Israel Defense Forces’ reentry, see: Cable from Embassy Beirut to Department of State, counterfactual antecedent (e.g., the Lebanese emergency session to review the administration’s “Draper Mission: IDF Military Actions in Beirut Sept. 15,” Sept. 15, 1982; Cable from Embassy Tel Aviv to Department of State, “The IDF in Beirut: 32 Foreign Ministry Views,” Sept. 15, 1982; Cable from Washington to Embassy Tel Aviv, “Secretary’s Meeting with Israeli Ambassador on IDF Move into forces did not collapse), a set of hypothesized proposal. The White House averted more West Beirut,” Sept. 16, 1982, all accessed in State Department Virtual Reading Room. Evidence of the massacres reached Washington at 5:45 a.m. consequences (e.g., the U.S. decision to stay), and a sustained opposition, however, by insisting on its on Sunday, Sept. 18, after embassy officials gained entrance to the camps and transmitted a live report of the devastation over transmitter radio. 36 France and Italy agreed to contribute forces to the second Multinational Force. In addition, the British contributed a symbolic force. While 25 In so doing, we borrowed from the political scientific method of process tracing and the historical subdisciplines of diplomatic and military history. representatives of the four peacekeeping missions met regularly to coordinate their efforts, share intelligence, and mediate disputes, each Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 6. operated autonomously and under national command. Cable from Department of State to Embassy Beirut, “Draper Mission: Exchange of Notes on Participation of US Forces in Second Beirut MNF,” Sept. 23, 1982, Box 90317, Arab-Israel Peace Process/Cables Sept 1982 (2/4), Geoffrey Kemp 26 Lebow, Forbidden Fruit, 38. Files, Reagan Library; Robert C. McFarlane, Special Trust (New York: Cadell & Davies, 1994), 211; Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven 27 Gavin, “What If?” 428. Critical Years in the Pentagon (New York: Warner Books, 1990), 138–52. 28 For a comprehensive assessment from an American perspective, see: “Report of the DOD Commission on Beirut International Airport Terrorist 37 In a demonstration of its confidence in the administration’s policy, the State Department initially predicted that a complete withdrawal of Act, October 23, 1983,” Dec. 20, 1983, https://fas.org/irp/threat/beirut-1983.pdf. all foreign forces could be achieved within two months. Memorandum for William Clark from L. Paul Bremer, “Diplomatic Strategy—Approximate Timetable,” Nov. 4, 1982, Box 91286, National Security Decision Directive 64 (1), National Security Council Executive Secretariat records (hereafter 29 Levy, “Counterfactuals,” 388–89; Lebow, Forbidden Fruit, 54. NSC Executive Secretariat records), Reagan Library. See also: Memorandum for Shultz from Clark, “Next Steps in Lebanon,” Nov. 8, 1982, Box 4, 30 John Boykin, Cursed Is the Peacemaker: The American Diplomat Versus the Israeli General, Beirut 1982 (Belmont, CA: Applegate Press, Chron September 1982 [09/16/1982–09/22/1982], Robert C. McFarlane Files, Reagan Library. 2002); Fadi Esber, “The United States and the 1981 Lebanese Missile Crisis,” Middle East Journal 70, no. 3 (Summer 2016): 441–43, https://doi. 38 Memorandum for Reagan from Clark, “President Gemayel’s Request for the Deployment of MNF Mobile Patrols into East Beirut,” Oct. 30, 1982, org/10.3751/70.3.15. Box 90496, Middle East—MNF [Multinational Force], Kemp Files, Reagan Library; “Announcement on Participation of U.S. Marines in MNF Patrols 31 In addition to the U.S. contingent, France and Italy contributed forces to the first Multinational Force. For discussion of Israeli and Palestinian in East Beirut,” c. Oct. 30, 1982, Box 4, Chron-November 1982 (McFarlane)(1), McFarlane Files, Reagan Library. For an insightful evaluation of the military operations, see: Rashid Khalidi, Under Siege: PLO Decisionmaking During the 1982 War, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, military modernization effort, see: Mara E. Karlin, Building Militaries in Fragile States: Challenges for the United States (Philadelphia: University of 2014); Ze’ev Schiff & Ehud Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984). For U.S. negotiations, see: Boykin, Cursed Is the Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 108–205. Peacemaker. 39 Frank, U.S. Marines in Lebanon, 36–70; For an assessment of the Lebanese army, see: Joseph A. Kechichian, “The Lebanese Army: Capabilities 32 Kriner, After the Rubicon, 198. and Challenges in the 1980s,” Conflict Quarterly 5, no. 1 (Winter 1985): 15–39.

18 19 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

tighten coordination with Lebanese government the region.48 “Our whole policy, including the MNF demonstrated a willingness to cut his political forces.40 On April 17, 1983, Shia militants supported presence and the buildup of the [Lebanese Armed losses and reverse course on a range of domestic by both Iran and Syria detonated a car bomb Forces], was premised on achieving a diplomatic matters, a strategy that his advisers described outside the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing 58.41 success. … Absent this, there was no military as “damage limitation” and that commentators The attack precipitated a final push to secure an action that could succeed, unless we declared viewed as a signature “tactical realism.”52 He Israeli-Lebanese withdrawal arrangement, but war and tried to force the occupying troops out of worried about escalating the crisis, and he listened the resulting written agreement was stymied by Lebanon,” Weinberger later wrote. “Our position to Weinberger’s warnings. Yet Shultz, Clark, and Syrian opposition.42 Denouncing the continued was becoming increasingly dangerous, and was in McFarlane’s arguments appealed to the president’s U.S. presence, Syria increased its support for fact useless.”49 deeply held conviction that diplomacy worked Druze and Shia factions in the mountainous Yet Secretary of State Shultz, National Security best when backed by demonstrations of strength. Shouf District overlooking Beirut, intensifying a Adviser Clark, and Bud McFarlane, who replaced Reagan still believed that the United States could simmering standoff over Phalange encroachment.43 Clark in early October 1983, contended that the secure a negotiated withdrawal of Syrian and As the fighting spread over the summer, attacks administration’s objectives remained within Israeli forces from Lebanon, and he continued to on Americans spiked. From August 4 to September reach. This camp expressed confidence in view the Marine presence as an important symbol 7, clashes killed four marines and wounded America’s capacity to promote peace in Lebanon, of American staying power. another 28, more than a threefold increase in total and espoused a theory of success in which the But Reagan was characteristically disinclined to casualties over the previous 10-month period.44 peacekeepers’ presence would bolster confidence mediate between his advisers, and he deferred the A series of pitched confrontations in September in the Lebanese government, encourage Israeli and question of whether to augment the peacekeeping between the Lebanese Armed Forces and militias Fuller warned the agency’s deputy director, John Syrian concessions, and accelerate the process of mission during repeated National Security Planning in the mountains prompted expansions to the McMahon. “We must be ready to face the fact that national reconciliation. Appealing to Reagan’s fear Group meetings in early October.53 As a result, rules of engagement for U.S. forces, which now we have reached the end of the road.”47 that his predecessors, cowed by the U.S. failure the national security leaders were already deeply directly supported the government of Lebanon Policymakers recognized that they had arrived in Vietnam, had neglected American alliances and divided over Lebanon when news of the barracks with artillery and naval fire.45 at a decision point, but they disagreed bitterly undermined the country’s reputation, they upheld bombing reached Washington. By the fall of 1983, progress toward all three over how, or whether, a continued U.S. military Lebanon as a litmus test for American power U.S. objectives in Lebanon had stalled. Congress presence could accelerate a negotiated settlement in the world. The conflict, this camp argued in The Marine Barracks Bombing — Oct. 23, 1983 authorized an 18-month extension to the Marines’ in Lebanon. In one camp, Defense Secretary memoranda and private conversations, was both a mandate in September, but public attitudes toward Weinberger and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of “historic opportunity” to secure America’s position Early on the morning of Oct. 23, 1983, Marine the already-unpopular intervention declined as the Staff Gen. Vessey, who had opposed the decision to in a strategic region and a gamble that placed U.S. sentries stationed at Beirut International Airport security situation worsened — by mid-September deploy the Marines a year earlier, pushed Reagan “credibility as a great power [at] stake.”50 The world observed a yellow Mercedes truck circling a public only 17 percent of adult Americans favored to draw down the U.S. presence, arguing that the was watching to see what the United States would parking lot south of their compound. The Marines continued U.S. participation.46 Intelligence analysts administration’s initial theory of success was, do when tested, and Shultz, Clark, and McFarlane had suffered an unusual spate of casualties over cautioned that the opportunity for a negotiated by now, strategically bankrupt. The intensifying urged the president to deploy additional marines the previous two weeks, and the sentries had been withdrawal of foreign forces had passed and that conflict, they argued, demonstrated the mission’s as part of an expanded mission to support the instructed to watch for suspicious vehicles. But Lebanon’s de facto partition was all but inevitable. futility and increased the odds of a miscalculation Lebanese Armed Forces in reasserting government there had been so many warnings — and the details “All the indicators are now moving the wrong way or confrontation that might alienate Arab opinion control beyond the capital.51 were so sparse — that the guards dismissed the on our policy commitment,” CIA analyst Graham and strain the U.S. military’s limited resources in The impasse deepened the administration’s circling truck until, at 6:22 a.m., the driver picked internal fractures, and the debate stretched on up speed and turned toward the compound. As without resolution into October. As governor of the marines scrambled to load their weapons, the California and later as president, Reagan frequently driver maneuvered past the guard post and crashed

40 Frank, U.S. Marines in Lebanon, 55–59. 48 Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 160 n7; Diary of Deputy Secretary of State Kenneth Dam, Oct. 23, 1982, State Department Virtual Reading Room; Gail E.S. Yoshitani, “National Power and Military Force: The Origins of the Weinberger Doctrine, 1980–1984” (PhD diss., Duke University, 2018), 41 Situation Report, “Embassy Explosion,” April 18, 1983, Beirut Explosition [Sic] April 18–May 12 1983(1), NSC Executive Secretariat Cable Records, 203. Weinberger proposed that the marines be kept on Navy ships 400 to 500 yards offshore. They would be safer but still available to support 1982–1985, Reagan Library. The attack decimated the embassy’s CIA station, crippling American intelligence efforts in Lebanon. For a thoughtful President Gemayel if necessary. See: Ralph A. Hallenbeck, Military Force as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy: Intervention in Lebanon, August assessment of its impact, see: Kai Bird, The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames (New York: Crown, 2014), 304–18. 1982–February 1984 (New York: Praeger, 1991), 91–92. 42 Cable from Draper, “Habib/Draper Mission: Test [sic] of Israel-Lebanon Agreement,” May 13, 1983, State Department Virtual Reading Room. 49 Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 155–57; Caspar Weinberger, interview, Frontline, PBS, undated. 43 Cable from Embassy Tel Aviv, “Meeting with Defense Minister Arens—Deepening Israeli Concern about Syrian and PLO moves in Lebanon,” 50 A desire to demonstrate resolve and build Arab partners’ confidence in the United States motivated the decision to intervene in Lebanon. The May 12, 1983, State Department Virtual Reading Room; Memorandum for William Casey and John McMahon from Graham Fuller (NIO/NESA), “US Reagan administration anticipated that progress in Lebanon would revitalize the peace process and encourage strategic cooperation against the Vulnerability in Lebanon,” May 6, 1983, CREST. On Syria’s motivation, see: Patrick Seale, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East (London: I.B. Soviet Union and other radical forces in the region. Memorandum for Secretary of State George Shultz from National Security Adviser William Clark, Taurus, 1988), 394–96. “Next Steps in Lebanon,” Nov. 8, 1982, Box 4, Chron September 1982 [09/16/1982–09/22/1982], McFarlane Files, Reagan Library; Memorandum for 44 David Crist, The Twilight War: The Secret History of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict With Iran (New York: Penguin, 2012), 129–35. Reagan from Clark, “National Security Planning Group Meeting,” April 22, 1983, CREST. 45 National Security Decision Directive 103, “Strategy for Lebanon,” Sept. 10, 1983, and “Addendum to NSDD 103 On Lebanon of September 10, 51 Memorandum, “Lebanon: Litmus Test for U.S. Credibility and Commitment,” Oct. 18, 1983, Box 91290, National Security Decision Directive 103 1983,” Sept. 11, 1983, CREST; Paper, “Near-Term Lebanon Strategy,” Sept. 6, 1983, CREST; Memorandum for Reagan from Clark, Sept. 3, 1983, Box (1), NSC Executive Secretariat National Security Decision Directive Records, Reagan Library; Memorandum for Reagan from Shultz, “Our Strategy in 91306, NSPG0068 and 0068A 03 Sept 1983 (1), NSC Executive Secretariat Records. Lebanon and the Middle East,” attached to Memorandum for Reagan from Clark, Oct. 13, 1983, Box 91306, NSPG0072 14 Oct 1983, NSC Executive Secretariat Records. 46 Memorandum from Richard Wirthlin, “The Situation in Lebanon,” Sept. 21, 1983, Box 688, Folder 13, Meese Collection, Hoover Institution. On congressional and popular attitudes toward the intervention from September 1982 through October 1983, see: Kriner, After the Rubicon, 200–9. 52 Hedrick Smith, “Reagan’s Crucial Year,” New York Times Magazine, Oct. 16, 1983, https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/16/magazine/reagan-s- crucial-year.html. 47 Memorandum for the Acting Director of Central Intelligence from Graham E. Fuller (NIO/NESA), “Downward Spiral in Lebanon,” Aug. 16, 1983, CREST. For later warnings, see: “Talking Points on Lebanon for the DCI,” Oct. 3, 1983; Special National Intelligence Estimate, “Prospects for Lebanon” 53 Ronald Reagan, The Reagan Diaries, vol. 1 (New York: Harper Collins, 2009), 275–76; Ronald Reagan, news conference, Oct. 19, 1983, https:// (SNIE 36.4-83), Oct. 11, 1983, CREST, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85M00363R000701600031-8.pdf. www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/101983e.

20 21 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

into the barracks building, where he detonated feared that a confrontation might drag the Marines course, cautioning his advisers that adversaries typically sensitive to partisan winds, urged the truck’s explosive load. The blast leveled the deeper into a quagmire. Dismissing the intelligence were watching the administration’s next steps.62 continuity. “Stability in the Middle East — and structure, killing 241 Americans.54 linking Syria and Iran to the attack, Weinberger Within days, he approved a series of presidential progress toward peace there — is vital to world The attack shocked the Reagan administration. and Vessey insisted that there was still insufficient directives reasserting the importance of a U.S. peace,” Edwin Meese III, one of the president’s McFarlane, a week into his new role as national evidence to justify military action.60 Emboldened, military presence security adviser, recalled that the president was the defense secretary renewed his campaign to in Lebanon and stricken by early reports of American casualties. persuade the president to bring the Marines home.61 modifying the But Reagan’s grief was soon replaced by anger. In retrospect, these officials’ reactions to the Marines’ rules of “Those sons of bitches,” he swore as the first Beirut bombing were emblematic of a pattern engagement to allow reports of casualties trickled back to Washington. of behavior that persisted over the course of U.S. forces to support “Let’s find a way to go after them.”55 Within days, the the Marine mission in Lebanon. Rather than re- Lebanese Armed Forces intelligence community had gathered conclusive evaluate their positions, policymakers instead operations outside Beirut, evidence of Syrian and Iranian culpability, sought to fit the new information into their pre- including positions “in including intercepted communications and an eye established theories of the intervention’s viability. danger of being overrun witness who shadowed the explosive-laden truck New information often served to reinforce their by hostile forces.”63 Notably, after it left the Iranian embassy in Beirut.56 “If there arguments, worsening divisions within the these directives were based ever was a 24-karat gold document, this was it,” a administration and decreasing the possibility of on drafts circulated in advance participant close to the process recalled. “This was compromise or consensus. When reports from the of the October 23 bombing and not something from the third cousin of the fourth field did not conform with their prior expectations, were signed after only minor corrections.64 In closest confidants, wrote to Reagan the day after wife of Muhammed the taxicab driver.”57 Weinberger and others disputed the news and addition, he dispatched Marine Commandant the bombing, reiterating the president’s concern But while McFarlane, Shultz, and the National doubled down on their already established P.X. Kelley to assess efforts to fortify American that the U.S. commitment to Lebanon had become Security Council staff pressed for rapid reprisals positions. positions and evaluate whether additional security a litmus test of America’s reliability as an ally. to deter further attacks,58 Weinberger and Vessey The defense secretary eventually succeeded measures were needed.65 With these actions, “If we are driven out of Lebanon, the radicals, urged the president to defer a decision until after in persuading Reagan to defer a decision on Reagan demonstrated his intention to maintain the the rejectionists, the violent will have won,” he a scheduled trip to East Asia in early November.59 retaliation until he returned to Washington in U.S. presence in Lebanon, regardless of the risks. warned, suggesting that a failure of resolve would If advocates of the Multinational Force viewed the mid-November. Yet, the president’s confidence “What the President did not want to do, above be interpreted as a green light to challenge U.S. bombing as evidence of the need for a peacekeeping in the Marines’ mission in Lebanon deepened all, was … to be seen as running away,” recalled interests elsewhere.68 Shultz echoed Meese’s force in Lebanon, the Department of Defense in the days after the bombing. In conversations McFarlane. “To the contrary, the barracks bombing warning in nearly identical terms during briefings interpreted the attack as further confirmation that with his advisers and public statements, Reagan seemed to strengthen his resolve to stay.”66 on Capitol Hill, adding that “the presence of our the Marines’ objectives were unattainable and underscored the importance of maintaining the Reagan was not alone in this view. Neither Marines has been a crucial pillar of the structure of Shultz nor McFarlane wavered in his support for stability that is needed to make a political solution the intervention, and both pushed the president possible.”69 Implicit in both arguments was an to demonstrate his continued commitment to the understanding that the attack threatened to derail cause.67 Even the president’s political advisers, the administration’s broader effort to establish a 54 A near-simultaneous attack on the French military headquarters in Beirut would bring the day’s death toll to 299. For a description of the attack, see: Frank, U.S. Marines in Lebanon, 1–3, 93–96; Geraghty, Peacekeepers at War, 91–95. For initial reaction, see: CIA report, “Terrorism Review,” Oct. 27, 1983, CREST; Cable, “Major Bomb Attack on U.S. and French Contingent—Situation as of 0830 Local,” Box 91353, Lebanon Bombing/Airport Oct. 23, 1983, NSC Executive Secretariat Country Files, Reagan Library; Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Spot Report, Oct. 23, 1983, Box 110, Lebanon Situation (10/23/1983), NSC Executive Secretariat Cable Files; Cable, “Lebanon Situation/DIA INTSUM NBR 8 (As of 231600Z Oct 83),” Oct. 24, 1983, CREST. 62 Talking Points on Lebanon, c. Oct. 24, 1983, Box 91353, Lebanon Bombing/Airport Oct. 23 1983, NSC Executive Secretariat Country Files; 55 Quoted in: Timberg, The Nightingale’s Song, 337. See also: McFarlane, Special Trust, 263. For a similar, albeit less colorful, vow, see: “Presidential Remarks: Regional Broadcasters Luncheon, Monday, October 24, 1983,” Box 1, Airstrike 12/04/1983, Philip Dur Files, Reagan Library. Memorandum of Telephone Conversation between Reagan and French President François Mitterrand, Oct. 24, 1983, Box 52, Memorandums of The president’s confidence stretched through his departure for Asia in early November. See: Message from Reagan for Margaret Thatcher, Nov. 6, Conversation — President Reagan (October 1983), NSC Executive Secretariat Subject File, Reagan Library. 1983, 8391397, Office of the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Files, Reagan Library. 56 DIA Spot Report, Oct. 23, 1983; Note for McFarlane from Howard Teicher attributing blame for Beirut International Airport attack, Oct. 27, 63 National Security Decision Directive 109, “Responding to the Lebanon Crisis,” Oct. 23, 1983; National Security Decision Directive 111, “Next 1983, and Telegram from Edward W. Hickey Jr. to McFarlane, Oct. 27, 1983, Box 91353, Lebanon Bombing/Airport Oct. 23, 1983, NSC Executive Steps Toward Progress in Lebanon and the Middle East,” Oct. 28, 1983, both in Box 91354, Lebanon Chronology (1), NSC Executive Secretariat Secretariat Country Files; Memorandum for Reagan from Gen. P.X. Kelley, “Visit to Beirut, 25-26 October 1983,” Nov. 2, 1983, Box 2, Security for Country Files, Reagan Library. the U.S. Multinational Forces (MNF) Contingency in Beirut, John Poindexter Files, Reagan Library. For a thorough accounting of the unclassified and declassified evidence linking Iran and Syria to the attack, see: David C. Wills, The First War on Terrorism: Counter-Terrorism Policy During the 64 Memorandum for Shultz, Weinberger, Casey, Vessey from McFarlane, “National Security Decision Directive on Lebanon and the Middle East,” Reagan Administration (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 69–71; Crist, Twilight War, 134–42. Oct. 29, 1983, Box 91354, Lebanon Chronology (1), NSC Executive Secretariat Country Files, Reagan Library. 57 Quoted in: Crist, Twilight War, 142. 65 See also: National Security Decision Directive 111; Memorandum for McFarlane from Teicher, “Draft NSDD on Lebanon and Middle East,” Oct. 26, 1983; Memorandum for McFarlane, “Additional Security Measures at Beirut International Airport,” c. Oct. 23, 1983, all in Box 91353, Lebanon 58 Memorandum for McFarlane from Teicher, “Draft NSDD on Lebanon and Middle East,” Oct. 26, 1983, Box 91354, Lebanon Chronology (1), NSC Bombing/Airport Oct. 23 1983, NSC Executive Secretariat Country Files. Executive Secretariat Country Files; Action Memorandum, “Deterrent Action Against Perpetrators of 23 Oct Bombing US Marines in Beirut,” Nov. 4, 1983, Box 23315, 8391354, NSC Executive Secretariat System File, Reagan Library; Wills, First War on Terrorism, 65; Crist, Twilight War, 144–47. 66 McFarlane, Special Trust, 268. 59 Wills, First War on Terrorism, 65–73. Reagan’s determination to strike lasted through Nov. 7, when he wrote in his diary that “we have a fix on 67 McFarlane, Special Trust, 268–69; Memorandum for Reagan from McFarlane, “NSDD: Lebanon and the Middle East,” Oct. 28, 1983, Box a headquarters of the radical Iranian Shiites who blew up our Marines. We can take out the target with an air strike & no risk to civilians.” A 7 a.m. 91354, Lebanon Chronology (1); Memorandum for Reagan from Shultz, “Sentiment in Congress with Respect to the Bombing in Beirut and our National Security Council meeting the next day, however, led him to change his mind, and he reported to his diary that he’d decided “we don’t have Policy in Lebanon,” Oct. 26, 1983, 91666, Howard Teicher Chron. October 1983, Howard Teicher Files, Reagan Library. For a summary of the State enough intelligence info yet.” Reagan, Diaries, 284–85. Department’s position, see: “Testimony of Rear Admiral Jonathan T. Howe” (director of the State Department Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs), Nov. 2, 1983, Box 8, National Security Decision Directives (NSDD) 109/111–Lebanon and the Middle East, Dur Files, Reagan Library. 60 Milton Coleman, “Identity of Attackers Eludes U.S. Probers,” Washington Post, Nov. 7, 1983, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ politics/1983/11/07/identity-of-attackers-eludes-us-probers/26304c1f-7705-49c3-9ba3-f91f34c3f189/. 68 Memorandum for Reagan and Adm. John Poindexter from Edwin Meese III, “The Stakes in Lebanon,” Box 91353, Lebanon Bombing/Airport Oct. 23, 1983. 61 Weinberger and Vessey also sought to undermine popular support for retaliation by sowing uncertainty about the quality of U.S. intelligence. During a Meet the Press interview on Nov. 6 — days after he reviewed the signals intelligence linking the Iranian embassy to the bombers — Gen. 69 Excerpted in “‘We Will Stay, And We Will Carry Out Our Mission,’” Washington Post, Oct. 25, 1983, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ Vessey insisted that U.S. analysts “really don’t know who did it.” Crist, Twilight War, 140. politics/1983/10/25/the-beirut-massacre/7831420f-de61-4681-b6a9-c9c6a40b8235/.

22 23 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

reputation for resolve, one manifested in the figure to both the Lebanese government and its army.” surveys also showed that the U.S. public was in perpetrators of the bombing who had been linked of the marines themselves.70 The efforts of the Multinational Force had already “strong agreement” with the president’s assertion to Iranian bases in the Bekaa Valley. Deliberations The documentary evidence reveals that concern moved Lebanon a step closer to stability and order, “that the U.S. peacekeeping force in Lebanon resumed on November 14, when Reagan returned for public attitudes played almost no role in he argued, claiming that “with our assistance and was attacked precisely because it was doing its to Washington from a lengthy trip to East Asia. decision-makers’ arguments for retaliation or the training” the Lebanese government had “set up its job” and generally supported a long-term U.S. Over the next two days, he and his advisers president’s decision to defer military action. Official own army … able to hold the lines and maintain the role in Lebanon. Although “the vast majority of debated the wisdom of launching a joint operation deliberations, whether during National Security defensive perimeter around Beirut.”75 the electorate express concern that the situation with the French against two Iranian installations Council meetings or in written memoranda, Yet, Reagan did more than seek to justify in Lebanon might plunge the U.S. into another linked to the attack. The administration was concentrated on the continued prospect of his administration’s past actions. He also used Vietnam, there is also a strong feeling that the divided along familiar lines: Shultz and McFarlane, success and the effects that both retaliation and the speech to outline a powerful argument for outcome there is important to the defense interests now backed by Director of Central Intelligence withdrawal could have on U.S. credibility abroad. expanding the U.S. role in Lebanon, a process laid of the United States,” Wirthlin’s report concluded, William Casey, urged the president to order a In fact, Reagan dismissed media speculation that out in a classified directive he signed the next affirming Reagan’s impulse. “The idea of yielding to strike, arguing that retaliation was the only way to the bombing would harm his political future as the day.76 Emphasizing the Middle East’s strategic terrorist action is offensive to the American public, protect the negotiating process and deter future work of “whining” journalists, suggesting it was importance, he described Lebanon as the fulcrum even to save American lives,” it added.79 attacks. However, Weinberger, worried that further a ploy to retaliate for the Defense Department’s of his administration’s efforts to roll back Soviet Notably, White House confidence in the escalation might trap the Marines in Lebanon, decision to limit access to Grenada, where U.S. influence, preserve and expand the Middle East administration’s ability to either shape or dug in his heels. Stressing the danger of collateral troops had landed on October 25. “The press is peace process, and restore American credibility withstand changes in public attitudes held even damage that could erode local support for the trying to give this the Vietnam treatment but don’t abroad. The crisis in Lebanon, he argued, reflected as media speculation intensified in November peacekeeping mission and imperil U.S. diplomats think the people will buy it,” he wrote in his diary.71 a broader, global struggle to rebuild American over the Lebanon imbroglio’s potential effect on and servicemembers in the country, he persuaded To the contrary, Reagan believed that the power and persuade the country’s enemies that the the president’s re-election chances. White House Reagan to defer his decision for two more days.81 American public would support the Marines’ United States remained willing to use force despite staffers chafed, for instance, at a November 30 On November 16, Reagan and his advisers mission if they understood its global importance its humiliation in Vietnam. “If terrorism and Washington Post article conjecturing that mounting gathered to make a decision. What exactly and were presented with evidence that progress intimidation succeed … [i]t won’t just be Lebanon political pressure would force an early withdrawal, happened in this meeting remains mired in was being made. “We must show that the cause sentenced to a future of chaos,” he warned. The dismissing the suggestion in a Senior Staff Action controversy. Some participants later claimed that was worth dying for,” he insisted to his advisers.72 strength of the United States rested, he argued, Items List as not only “inaccurate” but also Reagan approved a joint strike with the French, A presidential directive elaborated on this logic, in its willingness and ability to assume the risks “harmful to our policy objectives.”80 That neither only to have his order ignored by his defiant forecasting that the appearance of passivity — inherent to promoting stability. “We’re not Weinberger nor other Defense Department officials defense secretary. For his part, Weinberger particularly during an election season — would somewhere else in the world protecting someone emphasized the danger of declining popular maintained that Reagan either never issued an undermine American security interests and else’s interests; we’re there protecting our own,” he support in their arguments against the intervention order or retracted it in a private call later that encourage foreign adversaries by signaling that the cautioned.77 provides additional evidence that this factor held evening.82 Whatever the reason for U.S. inaction, administration was vulnerable at home.73 To avert Reagan’s gamble paid off. The president’s address little sway over the White House deliberations. The the French decision to act alone on the morning of this outcome, Reagan hand-drafted an address, produced, in his words, a “complete turnaround” most serious outstanding question was whether November 16 resolved the administration’s internal televised on Oct. 27, 1983, making the case for in popular attitudes, and Republican National and how the United States would strike back. debate. With its intended targets destroyed, and continuing the peacekeeping mission.74 Staring Committee polling showed general support for without alternative locations to strike, the Defense straight into the camera, he rebuffed accusations the administration’s efforts in Lebanon lasting A Botched Raid — Dec. 3, 1983 Department canceled its reprisal plans in favor of that his administration lacked a coherent strategy through early November.78 The administration’s defensive initiatives to mitigate future attacks and and emphasized his confidence in the prospects favored pollster, Richard Wirthlin, emphasized the Little serious discussion of withdrawing from prepare the Lebanese Armed Forces for an eventual for success, insisting that the goal of a stable and upward trend, noting that surveys indicated two- Beirut occurred in the days and weeks after the transfer of responsibility.83 secure Lebanon remained within reach so long as thirds of the electorate agreed that “Americans barracks attack. Instead, attention remained Scholars have seized on the U.S. failure to the “physical presence of the marines lends support should not be driven out of Lebanon.” These focused on whether to retaliate against the retaliate as evidence that the Reagan administration

70 We use the term “credibility” as Reagan and many of his advisers did at the time: to suggest that one’s past actions might influence an 79 Memorandum from Richard B. Wirthlin to Meese, James Baker, and Michael Deaver, “Lebanon,” Nov. 9, 1983, Box 688, 1, Meese Collection, adversary’s expectation for future actions. This definition differs from most scholars’ use of the term and instead equates to the notion of Hoover Institution. “reputation for resolve.” See: Keren Yarhi-Milo, Who Fights for Reputation: The Psychology of Leaders in International Conflict (Princeton, NJ: 80 “Senior Staff Meeting Action Items, 11/30/83,” Box 73, 1, James A. Baker III Papers (MC #197), Box 73, Princeton University. Princeton University Press, 2018), 5–11; Shiping Tang, “Reputation, Cult of Reputation, and International Conflict,” Security Studies 14, no. 1 (2005): 38, https://doi.org/10.1080/09636410591001474. 81 For a summary of the National Security Council position, see: Memoranda, “Points To Be Making Before Congress,” c. Nov. 10, 1983, and “Improving Security Training Readiness and Visibility of the MNF,” c. November 1983, both in Box 7, Lebanon (6), Fortier Files, Reagan Library. The 71 Reagan, Diaries, 281. National Security Council and State Department went so far as to draft a presidential statement, letters to regional leaders and NATO allies, and 72 Quoted in Crist, Twilight War, 141. an information cable for all diplomatic posts detailing a naval airstrike on the Bekaa Valley training site. See: Box 91306, National Security Planning Group 0076 23 11/07/1983 [Iran-Iraq; October 1983 Lebanon Marine Bombing] (1 of 2), NSC Executive Secretariat Records. For the Pentagon’s 73 National Security Decision Directive 111, Oct. 28, 1983. opposition and a summary of the debate, see: McFarlane, Special Trust, 268–69; Crist, Twilight War, 144–45; Wills, First War on Terrorism, 73. For 74 Reagan, Diaries, 280–81. Reagan’s resolve, see: Reagan, Diaries, 288. 75 Reagan, Diaries, 280–81. 82 For a balanced review of the available evidence supporting both claims, see: Crist, Twilight War, 147; Wills, First War on Terrorism, 73–75. In his diary entry that day, Reagan noted that U.S. officials “contacted [the] French about a joint operation in Beirut re the car bombings” but does 76 National Security Decision Directive 111, Oct. 28, 1983. not specify his decision. Reagan, Diaries, 288. Weinberger goes even further in his memoir, where he omits any discussion of retaliation and alleges 77 Reagan, “Address to the Nation on Events in Lebanon and Grenada,” Oct. 27, 1983. For his intentions, see: Reagan, Diaries, 280–81. that he learned of the potential for a joint operation when the French minister of defense called to report that a unilateral French airstrike was imminent. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 161–62. 78 Reagan, Diaries, 280–81. Some have suggested that the rally in public support for the president’s policy was a side effect of the U.S. invasion of Grenada and not the president’s rhetoric. See: Kriner, After the Rubicon, 212. The timing of the two events makes it difficult to assign responsibility. 83 Note from McFarlane, “Decision Memo on Next Steps in Lebanon.” The president reported a similar decision in a letter to Downing Street. See: Ultimately, the president believed his rhetoric had bolstered public attitudes, and he interpreted the polling bump as evidence that he could Message from Reagan for Thatcher, Nov. 19, 1983, Chron File 8391397, Office of the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Files, weather future criticism. Reagan Library.

24 25 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

was already preparing to draw down operations. such events were not “unusual or surprising”89 Indeed, Weinberger and Vessey redoubled their — but this incident coincided with the president’s The president, sticking campaign to withdraw the Marines in the wake approval of new rules of engagement authorizing of the French strike and urged the president to the Marines to practice “vigorous self-defense.”90 reverse his decision to authorize more permissive A plan for rapid retaliation was therefore ready with his long-held rules of engagement.84 But analysis of the Reagan when news of the attempted downing reached administration’s decision-making in November the president. Without any of the hesitation reveals that this encouragement was not indicative that had characterized his earlier deliberations, of a wider policy shift. Buoyed by optimistic Reagan, frustrated by the Syrians’ continued theory of success, assessments from Shultz and McFarlane, who intransigence and determined to demonstrate continued to advocate for an assertive U.S. America’s commitment to Lebanon, wasted little presence in Lebanon, the president overruled his time ordering the Defense Department to plan military advisers and signed a second directive and execute a retaliatory airstrike.91 The president, was confident that reiterating the importance of “aggressive self- Secretary of the Navy John Lehman later explained, defense.”85 Anticipating future casualties, he also was certain that the United States “would kick the ordered the Defense Department to “develop target shit out of the Syrians.”92 a demonstration of data and arrangements” to facilitate “a future Early the next morning, 28 bombers took off attack on short notice against suitable targets” and from the U.S.S. Kennedy and U.S.S. Independence authorized new defensive measures to harden the with orders to strike three Syrian sites near Beirut, Marines’ position.86 “I happen to believe taking out including a surface-to-air missile installation, resolve would promote a few batteries might give [the Syrians] pause to an ammunition depot, and a radar system. The think,” he remarked in a diary entry on Dec. 1, 1983.87 mission was straightforward, but a combination The president, sticking with his long-held theory of miscommunications, technical challenges, of success, was confident that a demonstration of and human errors caused the operation to go progress in Lebanon. resolve would promote progress in Lebanon. awry. Aided by Soviet surveillance, Syrian forces Reagan’s words were tested only two days quickly identified, tracked, and fired on the U.S. later, when a Syrian anti-aircraft unit fired at U.S. planes, destroying two aircraft and killing one reconnaissance planes over eastern Lebanon.88 pilot. A second pilot, Lt. Robert Goodman Jr., It was not the first Syrian attempt to target U.S. was captured and detained by the Syrians for aircraft — a similar incident on November 10 had nearly a month, until the Rev. Jesse Jackson, an prompted Weinberger to assure the media that outspoken critic of the Reagan administration,

84 See, for instance: Memorandum for Weinberger from John A. Wickham Jr. (acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), “NSDD-111 on Lebanon and the Middle East,” Nov. 4, 1983, Box 91354, Lebanon Chronology (1); George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Scribner, 1993), 228; Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York: Penguin Random House, 2011), 14–16; Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 166; Crist, Twilight War, 150. The Defense Department’s concerns were debated publicly. Michael Getler, “Lebanon Role Worries U.S. Military,” Washington Post, Dec. 18, 1983. 85 McFarlane wrote to Reagan shortly after the French operation: “There has been progress, and the trends suggest more progress is in the offing.” Quoted in Crist, Twilight War, 150. The National Security Council staff concurred, warning the national security adviser that “our continuing failure to conduct military action against terrorists in Lebanon will erode our credibility in the Middle East and beyond.” Memorandum for McFarlane from Teicher, “Weekly Report,” Nov. 18, 1983, Box 6, Chron (Official) November 1983, McFarlane Files, Reagan Library; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 228. For similar arguments, see: “Talking Points for Robert McFarlane,” Dec. 1, 1983; Memorandum for McFarlane from Kemp, “NSPG Meeting,” Dec. 1, 1983; Note for McFarlane from Poindexter, Nov. 30, 1983, Box 91306, NSPG 0077 14 Nov 1983, NSC Executive Secretariat National Security Planning Group Records, Reagan Library. 86 Note from McFarlane, “Decision Memo on Next Steps in Lebanon.” The president reported a similar decision in a letter to Downing Street. Message from Reagan for Thatcher, Nov. 19, 1983, Chron File 8391397, Office of the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Files, Reagan Library. 87 Reagan, Diaries, 293. 88 Timothy Naftali, Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 135. 89 Quoted in: Thomas L. Friedman, “Damascus Says Its Guns Fired At U.S. Planes,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 1983, https://www.nytimes. com/1983/11/11/world/damascus-says-its-guns-fired-at-us-planes.html. 90 Reagan approved the changes during a National Security Council meeting on Dec. 1 but did not sign the directive until Dec. 5. National Security Decision Directive 117, “Lebanon,” Dec. 5, 1983, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/archives/reference/scanned-nsdds/nsdd117.pdf; Wills, First War on Terrorism, 76. 91 Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 166. 92 John F. Lehman, Command of the Seas (New York: Scribner, 1988), 322. Notably, Lehman had opposed Vessey and Weinberger and had supported retaliation for the barracks bombing.

27 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

flew to Damascus to negotiate his release.93 The December, an interagency working group “trigger-happy and reckless,” according to Sen. Alan to eye on our problems in Lebanon,” he noted in operation was an unequivocal failure. As Defense prepared a detailed plan of action to transition Cranston, one of five Democratic Party challengers.99 his diary.103 Intelligence Agency analysts summarized, “the authority to the Lebanese government and Yet, neither McFarlane’s reversal nor the turn in Thus, while the Defense Department prepared damage inflicted by the airstrikes probably gradually draw down the U.S. military presence. public opinion compelled Reagan to change course. plans for withdrawal, the president continued will not cause the Syrians to alter their present The proposal envisioned an accelerated training Although the president intended to launch his re- to authorize plans to harden and expand U.S. policies” on withdrawal and is “unlikely to deter program to expand the Lebanese Armed Forces’ election campaign shortly after the new year, he involvement in Lebanon. On Dec. 5, 1983 — Syria and its Lebanese allies from attacking US area of operations and allow the Marines to move appeared unfazed by the prospect of an electoral just a day after the failed air raid — Reagan reconnaissance aircraft and marine positions.”94 to more defensible positions along the southern backlash. Just as he had in the immediate aftermath overruled, for a second time, his military advisers’ McFarlane had stuck to his theory of success border, where they would operate under of the barracks bombing, Reagan dismissed public recommendations and signed a presidential during the weeks of deliberation after the barracks expanded rules of engagement and continue criticism of his administration’s policy as slander directive explicitly reaffirming his decision to bombing, but the failed December raid forced him to to respond aggressively to any threats to their by a hostile press corps, and he insisted that the modify the rules of engagement for the deployed re-evaluate his support for the Marine mission. The presence. With the enticement of an American United States had an obligation to maintain its marines. This time, he stipulated that the Marines national security adviser’s endorsement of the U.S. withdrawal — the working group decided against peacekeeping efforts until internal stability was be provided naval surface and tactical air support to intervention had been premised on his confidence setting a strict deadline — and the threat of a established and the withdrawal of foreign forces carry out “vigorous self-defense” against either the that the United States could, with sufficient long-term U.S.-Israeli presence in Lebanon, secured.100 He had great faith in the psychological source of enemy fire or “discrete military targets application of military pressure, force Syria to make U.S. negotiators hoped to extract concessions power of the Marine presence and still believed that in unpopulated areas which are organizationally concessions for the simple reason that Damascus from the Syrians and secure at least some of a few well-placed shells from the U.S.S. New Jersey’s associated with the firing units.”104 To reassure could not afford a direct confrontation. McFarlane Washington’s objectives.97 16-inch guns would force a political resolution.101 In European partners, he dispatched Shultz to recognized that the Defense Department’s These preparations for an incremental drawdown short, his theory of success remained unchanged. Brussels a few days later with a message affirming opposition precluded any possibility of a larger in U.S. military involvement coincided with a decline The president’s confidence in his chosen path in America’s commitment to Lebanon and orders military operation, but he had held out hope that in public support for the peacekeeping mission. Lebanon was sustained by optimistic assessments to discuss plans to strengthen the peacekeeping targeted reprisals, with their implicit threat of The “comfortable margin of approval” Reagan had from Shultz, who maintained that U.S. objectives mission’s support for the Lebanese government.105 escalation, might serve as a reasonable alternative.95 secured with his October address winnowed over were viable and that congressional and public U.S. forces would remain in the country, despite Meanwhile, reconciliation negotiations among time, and by December 12 campaign pollsters began support for the intervention could be secured the danger, until a political resolution was reached Lebanon’s diverse factions had stalled, threatening to warn of “a sharp reduction in the number of through concerted outreach. Reagan and Shultz or “there was such a collapse of order that it was to spark a new bout of major fighting that was likely Americans who approve of the job the President is had grown closer over the fall, and the president absolutely certain no solution to the problem” in to overwhelm the already strained Lebanese army doing in Lebanon.” The downward trend mirrored took to meeting privately with his secretary of Lebanon would be reached, he told reporters later and reverse the limited gains painstakingly made a simultaneous “dramatic shift” in public approval state to discuss each week’s events. Although in the month. He remained confident, however, that over the previous year. “There were three loci of of the president’s handling of foreign affairs, with they discussed a range of topics, Shultz’s advice success was possible, adding that “we’re making that strategy,” he concluded, “and in each one we a majority of Americans reporting for the first followed a general theme: the need to stay firm more progress than appears on the surface.”106 appeared to be failing.”96 time that they disapproved of his response to the and demonstrate American mettle. Even as Syrian McFarlane’s reversal broke the deadlock Beirut barracks bombing.98 Sensing an opportunity, opposition hardened and factional fighting around The Deterioration of the Lebanese Armed and provided the Defense Department with an Reagan’s political challengers seized on the failed Beirut intensified, Shultz maintained that the Forces: Feb. 4–7, 1984 opportunity to initiate an interagency discussion raid as evidence that the administration was driving United States could achieve its objectives if it of possible withdrawal options. Throughout the United States toward war. Reagan looked persevered and presented a unified, unyielding The fractures within the Reagan administration front.102 Reagan agreed. “We see pretty much eye deepened in December and January. “There seem

99 The media reported heavily on the airstrikes and their aftermath. See, for example: “Five Democratic Candidates Criticize Reagan For Air Strikes,” New York Times, Dec. 5, 1983, https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/05/world/five-democratic-candidates-criticize-reagan-for-air- strikes.html; Steven V. Roberts, “Critics in Congress Declare Reagan Is Heading for War,” New York Times, Dec. 6, 1983, https://www.nytimes. 93 Geraghty, Peacekeepers at War; Memoranda for Reagan from McFarlane, “Ground and Air Situation in Lebanon 5 December 1983, 0930,” and com/1983/12/06/world/critics-in-congress-declare-reagan-is-heading-for-war.html; Hedrick Smith, “Lebanon Rekindles U.S. Foreign Policy Troubles,” “Lebanon: Details of Weekend Strikes and International Relations,” Dec. 5, 1983, RAC Box 8, Lebanon Documents (2 Dec 83 (Rumsfeld Cables) I (4), New York Times, Dec. 11, 1983, https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/11/weekinreview/lebanon-rekindles-us-foreign-policy-troubles.html. National Security Council Crisis Management Center Records, Reagan Library. For a firsthand account of the confusion aboard the carriers, see: 100 Reagan, Diaries, 294–95; “Shultz Defends U.S.-Israel Policy as Ceasefire Holds in Lebanon,” Associated Press, Dec. 11, 1983; Steven R. Weisman, George C. Wilson, “The Day We Fouled Up the Bombing of Lebanon,” Washington Post, Sept. 7, 1986, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ “Reagan Predicts Role Till Beirut Stands or Falls,” New York Times, Dec. 15, 1983, https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/15/world/reagan-predicts- opinions/1986/09/07/the-day-we-fouled-up-the-bombing-of-lebanon/90b613a9-8fdd-4a8f-9261-40e53f4183c1/. role-till-beirut-stands-or-falls.html. 94 National Intelligence Daily for Dec. 5, 1983, CREST 101 Reagan, Diaries, 298–99. Reagan mentioned the New Jersey often in his diary, praising its perceived ability to police the cease-fire in Lebanon. 95 In the days before the Dec. 3 raid, McFarlane had sought to leverage his personal relationship with the president to force the Joint Chiefs in 102 Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 228–31; Memorandum for Reagan from Shultz, “Deputy Secretary Dam’s Meeting with Speaker O’Neill and his Ad line with his position on Lebanon. By all accounts, the meeting failed. Note for McFarlane from Poindexter (Eyes Only), Nov. 30, 1983, and “Talking Hoc Group on Lebanon,” Jan. 4, 1984, Box 91666, Chron–Howard J. Teicher, January 1984 [1], Teicher Files, Reagan Library; Memorandum for Reagan Points for Robert McFarlane,” Dec. 1, 1983, both in Box 91306, NSPG 0077 14 Nov 1983, NSC Executive Secretariat National Security Planning Group from McFarlane, “Putting the Marines Back Aboard Ships,” Dec. 21,1983, The Reagan Files, https://www.thereaganfiles.com/831221-secdef-to-rr.pdf; records. Reagan, Diaries, 298, 301. For more on the Shultz-Reagan relationship, see: Leslie H. Gelb, “Shultz, With Tough Line, Is Now Key Voice in Crisis,” New 96 McFarlane, Special Trust, 272. York Times, Nov. 7, 1983, https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/07/world/shultz-with-tough-line-is-now-key-voice-in-crisis.html. 97 Memorandum for McFarlane from Fortier, “Lebanon Political-Military Working Group,” Dec. 8, 1983, RAC Box 7, Lebanon (6), Fortier Files, Reagan 103 Reagan, Diaries, 295, 298–300. Library; Note from McFarlane, “Informal Group on Lebanon,” Dec. 10, 1983, Box 6, Chron (Official) December 1983 (3), McFarlane Files, Reagan 104 National Security Decision Directive 117, “Lebanon,” Dec. 5, 1983. Library; Memorandum for McFarlane from Fortier, Dur, and Kemp, “Working Luncheon on Lebanon,” Dec. 16, 1983, Box 7, Lebanon (7), Fortier Files, Reagan Library; Draft Memorandum for the President from John M. Poindexter, “Informal Discussion Papers on Lebanon Strategy,” c. January 1983, 105 Alex Brummer, “Shultz says US sticks to Lebanon role,” Guardian, Dec. 6, 1983; Lou Cannon and David Hoffman, “Use of Force Viewed Necessary Box 7, Lebanon (9), Fortier Files, Reagan Library; Cable to Donald Rumsfeld from the State Department, “Short-Term Strategy for Lebanon,” Dec. for Solution,” Washington Post, Dec. 8, 1983; David Ignatius, “Europeans in Peacekeeping Force Seem Willing to Back U.S. Strategy in Lebanon,” Wall 28, 1983, Box 7, Lebanon (8), Fortier Files, Reagan Library. A resulting non-paper is described in additional detail in Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, Street Journal, Dec. 8, 1983. 168–69. 106 Weisman, “Reagan Predicts Role Till Beirut Stands or Falls”; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 228–29. In his weekly radio address a few days earlier, 98 Memorandum for Meese, Baker, and Deaver from Wirthlin, “The Situation in Lebanon,” Dec. 12, 1983, Box 685, Meese Collection, Hoover Reagan pledged to “redouble” U.S. efforts to resolve the situation in Lebanon, vowing that the Marines would withdraw only “once internal stability Institution. Republican National Committee pollsters concluded that Reagan’s address had “reversed” public opinion, with 58 percent of Americans is established and the withdrawal of all foreign forces is secured.” See: Reagan, “Radio Address to the Nation on the Situation in Lebanon,” Ronald surveyed after the speech reporting that they approved of the U.S. mission in Lebanon. Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, Dec. 10, 1983, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/121083a.

28 29 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

to be at least two opposing hypotheses about how inquiry into the October barracks bombing.110 The resume session until January 24, allies on the army, and “lay the foundation for a future peace.” we are doing,” one National Security Council staffer Long Commission, named for its chairman, Adm. Hill cautioned that the Democratic leadership It would be hard, he acknowledged, but America’s wrote, summarizing the prevailing sentiment. Robert Long, identified systemic failures across the was already preparing to reopen the War Powers goals in Lebanon were worth the cost.119 command chain but concluded that the tragedy debate.115 This was more than savvy political rhetoric. One is optimistic in flavor; it assumes that was a direct result of the peacekeepers’ mandate.111 All the while, popular support for the intervention Reagan’s public statements were consistent things are naturally falling into place and Weinberger, who had requested the investigation continued to plummet. The media reported with his long-held theory of the mission and his that with a little perseverance extensively on the Long Commission’s findings personal conviction that the crisis presented a test we will be able to achieve our and the administration’s infighting, compounding of American resolve. His political aides, worried broad objectives. … The other the sense that the White House had stumbled into that a congressional standoff might harm the is fundamentally pessimistic, a quagmire.116 Approval of the president’s overall president’s re-election campaign, implored Reagan assuming that the situation performance in Lebanon sank 10 points over four to distance himself from the operation. By late continues to be structured weeks, dropping to 33 percent by January 30. For January, White House Chief of Staff James Baker, unfavorably, and that the most that the first time since the Marines’ deployment 18 who previously had supported the decision to we can hope for is an implicit set months earlier, a White House-commissioned intervene, had gone so far as to urge the president of understandings between Israel poll found a majority of Americans favored “an to disengage the United States from the messy and Syria … and a face-saving way immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces” over the conflict.120 But Reagan was determined to see the to get out of Lebanon.107 status quo.117 mission through. Encouraged by optimistic reports Yet, none of these things — not the from his new special envoy to the Middle East, Indeed, evidence that the administration’s efforts in part to bolster his arguments for withdrawal, intelligence community’s dreary assessment, Donald Rumsfeld, and conversations with Shultz, were failing continued to accumulate. On December seized upon its conclusions as further evidence of the Long Commission report, or the popular the president resolved to buy time for the ongoing 23, the CIA published a Special National Intelligence the mission’s futility.112 As he explained in a letter to and congressional uproar — persuaded Reagan negotiations to succeed.121 Estimate summarizing the intelligence community’s Reagan summarizing the findings, the investigation to change course.118 Three days after the Long Reagan also recognized, however, that he assessment of the quandary. “Despite recent air confirmed “the near impossibility of carrying Commission report was released, the president could no longer ignore the criticism mounting on attacks and naval gunfire on Syrian positions,” out the assigned mission without risking such a convened a news conference to silence rumors Capitol Hill. To stave off a War Powers Act debate, the report noted, “Syria appears unwilling to back catastrophe.”113 The administration’s best option, that his administration was preparing to leave he dispatched senior officials to build support down.” Although the State Department theorized he insisted, would be to withdraw. The commission Lebanon. “If there is to be blame, it properly rests for an open-ended U.S. military role in Lebanon, that robust American action would inspire political was one more tool the secretary of defense used to here in this office and with this president,” he told following a political strategy first employed in progress, the report argued that Syrian President propagate his theory of failure regarding Lebanon, reporters, putting his reputation on the line. But the wake of the October bombing. Throughout Hafez Assad appeared confident that he could though its report offered few details about how he refused to second-guess the value of the Marine January, McFarlane, Shultz, Undersecretary of “afford to pay a higher price than either the United and when a withdrawal should take place even as it presence, chiding naysayers for not realizing the State Lawrence Eagleburger, and even Reagan States or Israel” and predicted that he would questioned the wisdom of the deployment. “problem … will not disappear if we run from it.” himself met with leading members of both respond to any effort to expand U.S. involvement Weinberger’s message was soon amplified on Reiterating the message he had espoused in the houses of Congress to stress the importance of with a new round of terrorist attacks. Worse still, Capitol Hill, where congressional critics of the days after the bombing, he asked the American the Marines’ mission and push back against calls the intelligence estimate forecast that further U.S. intervention seized on the Long Commission’s public to allow the marines time to complete their for a precipitous withdrawal.122 Their efforts were reprisals would exacerbate Lebanon’s confessional findings as evidence that Reagan was driving mission, which had already, he stressed, helped to persuasive: As House Minority Leader Robert H. polarization, opening new opportunities for Syria the United States toward war with Syria.114 Even protect the Lebanese government, strengthen its Michel told reporters after one session, he was to exploit local grievances against the government once-sympathetic leaders, such as Charles H. and quickening the country’s partition.108 The Percy, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations report concluded that a continued U.S. military Committee, and House Speaker Tip O’Neill, who 115 Margaret Shapiro and John Goshko, “Reagan Moves to Bolster Hill Support on Lebanon,” Washington Post, Jan. 5, 1984; Philip Taubman, “O’Neill Considers Backing a Change in Marine Mission,” New York Times, Dec. 30, 1983, https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/30/world/o-neill-considers- presence could only worsen the crisis, not resolve had helped the White House avert a War Powers backing-a-change-in-marine-mission.html; Memorandum and Attachments from McFarlane for Reagan, “NSPG Meeting on Next Steps in Lebanon, it.109 Act debate over the Marines’ deployment, returned Tuesday, January 3, 1984, White House Situation Room,” Reagan Files; David C. Martin and John Walcott, Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of The same day the CIA published its intelligence home for the holiday recess to find constituents America’s War Against Terrorism (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988), 147; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 229. estimate, an independent Defense Department angry and confused about the purpose of the 116 Tama, Terrorism and National Security Reform, 82–84. investigation released its findings from a two-month Marines’ mission. Although Congress would not 117 Memorandum by Wirthlin, “The Situation in Lebanon,” Jan. 30, 1984, Box 685, 11, Meese Collection, Hoover Institution. 118 Reagan described a meeting to discuss the Long Commission report as an “easy” day, noting he was only “worried about the effect of this on families that lost loved ones.” Reagan, Diaries, 301–2. For his views on public polls, see page 311. 107 National Security Council, “Taking Stock in Lebanon,” Dec. 15, 1983, Box 7, Folder “Lebanon (9),” Fortier Files, Reagan Library. 119 Reagan, “Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session with Reporters on the Pentagon Report on the Security of United States Marines in 108 “Confessional” refers to the factional communities within Lebanon, which were divided along important historical, social, and religious bonds of Lebanon,” Reagan Library, Dec. 27, 1983, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/122783a. affiliation. 120 Lou Cannon and Carl M. Cannon, Reagan’s Disciple: George W. Bush’s Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), 109 Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE), “Implications of the Military Balance of Power in Lebanon,” SNIE 11/35/36-38, Dec. 23, 1983, 151–52; Kriner, After the Rubicon, 224–25. CREST, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86T00302R000701080010-8.pdf. 121 Reagan, Diaries, 298, 301, 304–5; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 228–31. 110 On the Long Commission’s origins and composition, see: Jordan Tama, Terrorism and National Security Reform: How Commissions Can Drive Change During Crises (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 75–88. 122 Memorandum for Reagan from Shultz, “Deputy Secretary Dam’s Meeting with Speaker O’Neill and his Ad Hoc Group on Lebanon,” and Memorandum for Reagan from McFarlane, “Ken Dam’s Meeting with Speaker O’Neill and Other House Leaders,” c. Jan. 6, 1984, both in Box 91666, 111 “Report of The DOD Commission on Beirut International Airport Terrorist Act, October 23, 1983”; Memorandum for Reagan from McFarlane, Chron–Howard J. Teicher, January 1984 [1]; Memorandum for McFarlane from Fortier, “Your Hill Briefings on Lebanon,” Jan. 3, 1984, RAC Box 7, Folder “Long Commission report on October 23 Bombing,” Dec. 23, 1983, RAC Box 7, Lebanon (8), Fortier Files, Reagan Library. Lebanon (9), all Fortier Files, Reagan Library. Memorandum and Attachments for Reagan from McFarlane, “NSPG Meeting on Next Steps in Lebanon, 112 Tama, Terrorism and National Security Reform, 79–80. Tuesday, January 3, 1984, White House Situation Room,” Reagan Files. National Security Council staff followed up with meetings and background papers to clarify U.S. policy and explain the “consequences of a precipitous withdrawal.” Memorandum for McFarlane from Fortier, “Maintaining the 113 Memorandum for Reagan from Weinberger, “Long Commission report on October 23 Bombing,” Dec. 23, 1983, RAC Box 7, Lebanon (8). Speaker’s Support on Lebanon,” Jan. 5, 1984, RAC Box 7, Lebanon (9); Memorandum for McFarlane from Teicher, “Weekly Report,” Jan. 27, 1984, Box 114 For more on the congressional reaction, see: Tama, Terrorism and National Security Reform, 81–85; Kriner, After the Rubicon, 218–20. 91666, Chron–Howard J. Teicher, January 1984 [1], Teicher Files, Reagan Library.

30 31 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

“satisfied with what I have heard today that what message to adversaries if it cut and ran. Reagan to surrender, but I’m not.”129 his attention now focused on his re-election we’re doing is the right thing.”123 Reagan had won agreed, and he instructed Rumsfeld to fly to Beirut Just as Reagan announced his intention to campaign, was stumping through the Southwest. other tough congressional battles, and he saw no for consultations, insisting the drawdown plan stay in Lebanon, the National Salvation Front, a Undersecretary of State Eagleburger fought a reason why a reasonable compromise could not could not be implemented unless the Lebanese coalition of anti-government militias, launched a losing battle to keep the Marines in Beirut, but be secured. government approved.125 Determined to maintain coordinated assault on Lebanese army positions in he was overruled quickly by Weinberger and Vice To further assuage congressional concerns, the administration’s flexibility to defend U.S. and around Beirut.130 By February 3, the coalition President George H.W. Bush, who chaired the and to refute allegations that the administration interests in Lebanon by force if the need arose, the had seized control of Beirut’s southern district session in the president’s absence. planned to deploy U.S. troops indefinitely, Reagan White House continued to fight a House resolution and made significant gains in the capital’s eastern An early supporter of the intervention, Bush had directed Shultz, Weinberger, and Vessey on calling for withdrawal. Meanwhile, the State and center sectors. That day, Nabih Berri, leader been affected deeply by the October bombing.132 January 26 to prepare a timetable for the phased Department and National Security Council staff of the Amal militia, called on all Muslim leaders to He visited the marines shortly after the attack, drawdown of the marines deployed in Lebanon. Six explored a range of options to increase pressure resign from the government and for all nationalist an experience he described as “one of [the] most days later, he signed a national security directive on Syria and improve U.S. targeting abilities.126 soldiers in the Lebanese Armed Forces to abandon difficult and emotional assignments” of his long approving, in principle, preparations to replace Looking back on the February 1 decision to approve, their posts. Others had issued similar calls to career. He returned to Washington convinced the Marines with a smaller, more mobile anti- in principle, a smaller replacement force, Rumsfeld little avail, but the message was now underscored that future attacks were likely, that the Lebanese terrorist force operating under more permissive compared the administration’s options to those of by the country’s heaviest fighting since 1976. An government was unable or unwilling to manage the rules of engagement. Paired with an accelerated a pilot of a damaged plane: “We could either crash entire brigade deserted at once, allowing Shia problems ahead, and that a plan for the withdrawal military modernization program for the Lebanese land with a precipitous withdrawal or gradually and Druze militias to occupy West Beirut. Soon of U.S. forces was needed urgently.133 Sensitive to Armed Forces, the residual force was intended reduce our presence in a controlled landing.”127 In after, the militias seized the finance ministry and the limitations of his office, Bush usually demurred to demonstrate U.S. staying power and maintain this, the intervention’s advocates were aided by national radio station, wresting control from the from intervening in other Cabinet members’ the administration’s ability to strike at Syrian or an inadvertent gift from the Joint Chiefs of Staff few remaining government units. As the militias debates, but he now backed Weinberger’s surrogate forces as needed. To further enhance the who, for reasons that remain unclear, dallied in advanced, desertion rates skyrocketed. Within a recommendation to disengage. That afternoon, he safety of the marines in the interim, the directive preparing timetables for withdrawal, even as week, the Lebanese army was shattered.131 called Reagan to report that all except the State granted U.S. naval forces the authority to provide Weinberger urged them to set a deadline for the After months of debate, the collapse of the Department believed the Marines should redeploy Marines’ immediate Lebanese army provided decisive evidence that from Lebanon.134 departure.128 the U.S. strategy in Lebanon had failed. The The collapse of the Lebanese Armed Forces cast Against this reconstruction of the Lebanese Armed Forces the president’s options in a new light. Without a backdrop, Reagan’s had formed the foundation of the Reagan local partner, Reagan’s preferred strategy of gradual, After months of debate, the collapse request for withdrawal administration’s strategy since September 1982, incremental pressure paired with an accelerated options appears to have and its collapse provided critics of the intervention training program was no longer feasible. He was left of the Lebanese army provided been part of a political with concrete evidence that U.S. objectives in with only two options: a massive expansion of the strategy designed to Lebanon were no longer viable. Amid reports of U.S. ground commitment in Lebanon, a prospect decisive evidence that the U.S. preserve the administration’s escalating fighting, McFarlane convened a meeting that would shatter the illusion that the Marines maneuverability by pre-empting of the National Security Policy Group on February were neutral in the civil conflict and provoke a strategy in Lebanon had failed. a congressional effort to impose 7 to discuss the prospect of a complete and rapid grueling fight with Congress over presidential a strict deadline for the Marines’ withdrawal of U.S. forces. The conversation was war powers, or a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces. departure. In comments to the dominated by the intervention’s critics. Shultz, Even in the best of circumstances, Reagan, wary of media, Reagan continued to resist now the Multinational Force’s lone advocate repeating the errors of Vietnam, had little stomach gunfire and air support against any units conducting calls to set a timeline, claiming that the Marines in the Cabinet, was in Grenada, and Reagan, for the first option. Now, after months of resistance, a hostile attack on U.S. or Multinational Force would remain in Lebanon until the withdrawal of personnel and facilities, stretching the definition foreign forces had been secured and the Lebanese of self-defense.124 government proved capable of maintaining security Still, the president was not ready to abandon independently. “As long as there is a chance for his goals in Lebanon. Shultz continued to stress peace, the mission remains the same,” he snapped at 129 Quoted in: Rich Jaroslovsky and Albert Hunt, “Digging In: Reagan Toughens Line on Troops in Lebanon And Chides His Critics,” Wall Street the dangers of a premature withdrawal, warning reporters on February 2, just days after announcing Journal, Feb. 3, 1984. For illustrative examples demonstrating Reagan’s consistency, see: Benjamin Taylor, “Reagan Shrugs Off Lebanon Pullout Call,” Boston Globe, Feb. 2, 1984; Leslie H. Gelb, “Aides Say Reagan Foreign Policy Will Survive Democrats’ Attacks,” New York Times, Feb. 3, 1984, that the United States would send the wrong his re-election campaign. His critics “may be willing https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/03/us/aides-say-reagan-foreign-policy-will-survive-democrats-attacks.html; “Reagan, O’Neill Trade Barbs Over Lebanon Troops,” Feb. 4, 1984, Chicago Tribune. 130 Edgar O’Ballance, Civil War in Lebanon, 1975–92 (New York: St. Martin’s Press: 1998), 136; Elie A. Salem, Violence and Diplomacy in Lebanon: 123 Shapiro and Goshko, “Reagan Moves to Bolster Hill Support on Lebanon.” The Troubled Years, 1982–1988 (London and New York: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1995), 135–46; Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 27; Reagan, Diaries, 124 Memorandum for the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Director of Central Intelligence, Director of the Office of Management and 306–7. Budget, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from Robert McFarlane, “Next Steps in Lebanon,” Feb. 1, 1984, CREST, https://www.cia.gov/ 131 This assessment draws on: O’Ballance, Civil War in Lebanon, 137; Oren Barak, The Lebanese Army: A National Institution in a Divided Society library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP10M00666R000200480001-7.pdf; Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 230. (Albany: SUNY Press, 2009), 131; Yosef Olmert, “Lebanon,” Middle East Contemporary Survey 8 (1986): 551; Omri Nir, Nabih Berri and Lebanese 125 Reagan, Diaries, 312; David Hoffman, “Administration Credibility Under Strain: Plans, Pronouncements on Mideast Contradictory,”Washington Politics (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), 50–52; and Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon (London: Pluto Press, 2012), 231. Post, Feb. 12, 1984. 132 Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 436. 126 Cable from Donald Rumsfeld to Lawrence Eagleburger, “Next Steps in Lebanon,” Jan. 31, 1984; Cable from Donald Rumsfeld to Bud McFarlane, 133 George H.W. Bush, All The Best, George Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings (New York: Scribner, 1999), 331. The importance of the James Poindexter, and Lawrence Eagleburger, “Middle East Mission–Draft NSDD–Rumsfeld Comments,” Jan. 31, 1984, all in the Rumsfeld Papers, moment was evident to those observing Bush in the field. Marine commander Timothy Geraghty later recalled that while presenting Purple Hearts http://papers.rumsfeld.com/library/. Each were marked “eyes only”. to wounded men, the vice president “was obviously moved by their sacrifice.” Geraghty, Peacekeepers at War, 111–12. 127 Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 28. 134 Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 230–31; Wills, First War on Terrorism, 8; Howard Teicher and Gayle Radley Teicher, Twin Pillars to Desert Storm: 128 In his memoir, the defense secretary goes on at length about his efforts to hurry the Joint Chiefs. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 168–69. America’s Flawed Vision in the Middle East from Nixon to Bush (New York: William Morrow, 1993), 291.

32 33 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

he bowed to his advisers’ apparent consensus and bring a peaceful resolution to the Lebanese session to review the rules of engagement were interest may have sapped his resistance to Defense agreed to bring the marines home.135 conflict. Even as U.S. public and congressional underway when the barracks were attacked.138 Had Department proposals to dial down U.S. operations Preparations for a complete and rapid support waivered, Reagan remained confident the third meeting occurred, and had the bombing incrementally. A similar dynamic had allowed disengagement were completed quickly. On in his ability to sustain the operation, and he not taken place, the discussion likely would have Weinberger to order the Marines’ premature February 9, the Marines began to evacuate support dismissed signs of a future political backlash as remained gridlocked. Weinberger and Vessey still withdrawal in September 1982. Having succeeded elements and equipment from the Beirut airport, and media manipulation. Only in February 1984, when would have opposed the mission as unsustainable, in this tactic before, the defense secretary likely the collapse of the Lebanese government and while the rest of the president’s senior national would have attempted it again as the deployment the disintegration of its armed forces made clear security aides would have continued pushing for faded against the backdrop of success in Grenada that success was unlikely, did Reagan ultimately an expansion. and an upcoming election campaign. This relent to the Defense Department’s pressure to In the absence of a cataclysm like the Beirut possibility challenges the notion that the bombing withdraw. In short, the outcome of the Reagan barracks bombing, Reagan would probably have catalyzed a decision to terminate the American administration’s deliberations in the months continued to postpone a decision on whether to mission, and it suggests that U.S. losses may have following the barracks bombing was in no way expand or terminate the U.S. intervention. While compelled the intervention’s established advocates preordained by the scale of the Marines’ losses or he remained committed, in principle, to achieving to accept a higher risk of future casualties. expectations of political backlash. America’s objectives in Lebanon, the president was Consider a second counterfactual: Would a more Indeed, the barracks bombing may have had the preoccupied in October by preparations for a U.S. successful (and less costly) raid in December immediate counterintuitive effect of hardening invasion of Grenada and heightened tensions with have altered the timing or character of the U.S. the president’s resolve. Consider what might have the Soviet Union.139 Reagan’s distaste for mediating withdrawal? At minimum, such an operation the final withdrawal commenced on February 18. At unfolded had the Marine sentries disabled the truck between his advisers, particularly over issues would have confirmed America’s presumed air 6 a.m. on Feb. 26, 1984, control of the Marines’ final before it reached the gates of the barracks, or if the unrelated to U.S.-Soviet relations, is well recorded. superiority, strengthened Shultz’s hand in the position was turned over to the Lebanese Armed detonator had failed. What if the driver, confronted Moreover, he had already avoided repeated efforts event of future reprisals, and offered temporary Forces.136 The next day, administration officials with certain death, had instead driven away? to redefine the U.S. mission in Lebanon despite encouragement to Reagan. Had it succeeded in announced that the United States would no longer The similarities between the policymakers’ sustained pressure from his closest advisers. coercing Syria to suspend its harassment of U.S. play an active role in efforts to promote political deliberations before and after the bombing suggest Indeed, the president had approved only two forces, as past punishments had, it may also have reconciliation in Lebanon. An announcement soon that the Reagan administration likely would have significant modifications in the Marines’ posture delayed McFarlane’s defection. As a demonstration followed that military equipment deliveries would defaulted to maintaining the status quo. For weeks over the mission’s first 13 months: the first, in April of American military might, it may also have be suspended.137 Eighteen months after it had before the attack, Reagan’s foreign policy team had 1982, was implemented in the wake of the deadly rallied the public and bolstered support for the started, and four months after the deadly truck grappled with the question of whether to sustain embassy bombing, and the second, in September intervention, thereby mitigating, or even reversing, bombing, the U.S. intervention in Lebanon ended, the Marine mission in Lebanon or withdraw forces 1983, came only after McFarlane submitted dire the December polling results. On the other hand, its aims unmet. offshore. Just as they were after the bombing, senior reports (mocked by other officials as a “Sky is a successful operation might have strengthened officials had been divided into two factions: One, Falling” approach) suggesting the imminent Weinberger and Vessey’s arguments against led by Shultz and McFarlane, advocated expanding collapse of the Lebanese government. expanding the Marines’ ground presence by Three Counterfactuals the Marines’ responsibilities; and a second, led Rather than precipitating a withdrawal, demonstrating that offshore naval assets offered a by Weinberger and Vessey, pushed for rapid the October 23 bombing may have had the sufficient deterrent against Syrian obstructionism. This new history of the final months of the U.S. disengagement. They presented contradictory unexpected consequence of hardening the U.S. The raid may, therefore, have provided the Defense intervention in Lebanon reveals that Reagan’s assessments of the situation and the prospects military presence in Lebanon. By heightening the Department with additional evidence that the faith in the Marines’ mission was remarkably for success. Their arguments before the bombing Multinational Force’s perceived significance — administration could redeploy the Marines offshore resilient. Even as public attitudes toward the differed little from their arguments in the wake of and magnifying the perceived credibility costs of at little reputational cost. intervention soured — and the announcement of the attack: While the State Department, worried withdrawal — the attack dramatized Shultz and Ultimately, a successful air raid is unlikely to his re-election campaign neared — the president about Syria’s assertiveness, pushed for limited McFarlane’s warnings and convinced Reagan of the have changed the trajectory of U.S. policy toward continued to support proposals for an open-ended strikes to encourage concessions and establish need to demonstrate resolve. Indeed, the bombing, Lebanon significantly. It may have sustained U.S. military presence in Lebanon. Bolstered by clear “red lines,” the Defense Department remained in which an unknown assailant killed sleeping McFarlane’s support, but it would not have optimistic assessments from Shultz and others, fundamentally pessimistic about prospects for peacekeepers, played into Reagan’s theory of the altered the overall balance of opinion within the Reagan retained trust in his established theory a negotiated settlement. The National Security conflict as a test of U.S. ability and willingness to administration, where senior officials were wedded of success: that U.S. troops would stabilize the Policy Group failed to reach consensus at meetings promote peace, and it deepened his conviction that to their established theories of the mission’s country, revitalize the central government, and on October 14 and 18, and preparations for a third his administration had both a moral and a strategic success. Yet, this counterfactual does highlight imperative to act. In an alternative scenario in how the negative repercussions of the botched

135 Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 230–31; Wills, First War on Terrorism, 8; Teicher and Teicher, Twin Pillars to Desert Storm, 291. Whether Reagan which the bombing failed, the president’s waning raid were insufficient on their own to compel the understood that he had authorized the complete and rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces, rather than the phased transition outlined in the Feb. 1 National Security Decision Directive, is unclear. Although transcripts of Bush’s call to Reagan remain classified, evidence that similar proposals 138 For an illustration of the continuities, see: Memorandum for Reagan from Shultz, Oct. 5, 1983; Memorandum for Reagan from Clark, Oct. were studied in the days after the National Security Policy Group decision suggest the president may have held out hope of maintaining a limited 13, 1983; and Memorandum for Reagan from McFarlane, Oct. 17, 1983, Box 91306, NSPG0073 18 Oct 1983, NSC Executive Secretariat records; military presence in Beirut. Indeed, White House press guidance distributed over the next several days described the administration’s decision as a Memorandum for McFarlane from Weinberger, “US Policy in Lebanon and the Middle East,” Oct. 21, 1983, RAC Box 7, Lebanon (5), Fortier Files, phased drawdown that would stretch “over the next several months depending on the situation.” Memorandum to Shultz, Weinberger, and Vessey Reagan Library. from McFarlane, “Memorandum for the Record: Decisions Taken and Actions Required at SSG Meeting Thursday, February 9, 1984–5:15-7:25 p.m.,” Box 91834, William Burns Files, Reagan Library; “Senior Staff Meeting Action Items, 2/08/83,” and “Senior Staff Meeting Action Items, 2/09/83,” Box 139 Some have speculated that the administration’s concurrent intervention in Grenada, which commenced two days after the bombing, was 72, Action Items 1984 January–June, James A. Baker Papers, Princeton University Library. designed to distract the public from the disaster in Beirut. This theory ignores the facts that the president had authorized the Grenada operation before the attack in Lebanon and that lead military elements were already en route to the island when the bombing occurred (which complicated 136 Frank, U.S. Marines in Lebanon, 135–38. efforts to relieve the shaken marines in Beirut). If Operation Urgent Fury’s success may have dampened the public’s reaction to the bombing in 137 Karlin, Building Militaries in Fragile States, 143–44. Lebanon, it was by chance, not design.

34 35 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

withdrawal of the Marines. That dubious credit would have dramatized advocates’ claims that the Staff Vessey, who interpreted the bloodshed as Bringing these strands of research together may belongs to another event. Marines were indispensable to the goal of stabilizing evidence of the mission’s futility. Yet, their attempts yield a more comprehensive theory about how Finally, imagine what might have occurred if the Lebanon and appealed to the president’s desire to to disengage the United States from Lebanon were entrenched values, beliefs, and psychological traits Lebanese Armed Forces had repelled the February kick the “Vietnam Syndrome” and demonstrate blocked by the intervention’s erstwhile advocates, inform elite learning and decision-making during offensive. By that point, U.S. policymakers the value and reliability of partnering with the in particular Secretary of State Shultz and National military interventions.144 harbored few illusions about the Lebanese Armed United States.142 Confronted with a choice between Security Adviser McFarlane, who saw the violence Additionally, the Lebanon example may inform Forces’ strength, which was weakened by endemic rapid disengagement and a phased transfer of as further evidence of the importance of the Marine policymakers’ efforts to manage future crises corruption, virulent sectarian divisions, and poor responsibility, Shultz and Eagleburger would have presence. Confronted with a divided Cabinet, Reagan by promoting systematic questions for probing leadership and training. Nevertheless, Reagan thrown their support behind the national security chose to maintain, harden, and even, at times, the progress of an intervention and processing and Shultz had held out hope that, with sufficient adviser, establishing a majority opinion that expand U.S. military involvement, decisions that new information from the field. Such questions U.S. support, it might still serve as a stabilizing Reagan would have been unlikely to refute. In this were in line with his prior views about the efficacy may be essential at a time when the increasing force. Looking back years later, U.S. Ambassador scenario, the U.S. departure from Lebanon would and significance of the peacekeeping mission. In frequency of sub-state conflicts may spur to Lebanon Robert Dillon stressed that “the Army have stretched into the spring and been paired other words, the bombing caused two parties in the additional U.S. force commitments.145 In particular, was one of the few places where there was still with an accelerated training effort to prepare the administration to double down on their pre-existing this history demonstrates the importance of cooperation between Maronites, Shiites, Sunnis, Lebanese Armed Forces to assume the Marines’ theories of success or failure in Lebanon. bringing assumptions about how and why a Druze, Greek Catholics and others,” even if the former positions. The timing and character of the The implications of this corrective should not military intervention is likely to proceed to the balance of power was misaligned. With sufficient withdrawal would have been quite different. be exaggerated. The Reagan administration’s fore; articulating clear theories of success; and training and better leadership, U.S. officials hoped, Of course, none of these possibilities came to experience cannot prescribe future decisions, developing processes to test, update, and revise the Lebanese military could overcome its internal pass and therefore we cannot know for certain and it cannot alone disprove the role of domestic these theories over time. Policymakers must define divisions and serve as a beacon for national what this alternative history may have yielded. political pressure in other cases of U.S. intervention. early on, and clearly, what success or failure looks reconciliation.140 Nonetheless, analysis of the historical record Moreover, the limited character of the Lebanese like and identify demonstrable metrics that align Two scenarios are therefore conceivable. In provides strong evidence to reconsider the causal intervention, which involved a relatively small with the ultimate political goals of an intervention. the first, Reagan, reluctant to abandon a partner link between the Marine barracks bombing and the number of U.S. forces, likely informed public Conversely, leaders must also consider what that he had, only days earlier, publicly pledged ultimate U.S. departure from Lebanon. Instead, and congressional attitudes toward government information from the field, if it were to appear, to support, might have expanded U.S. assistance the record suggests that the loss of a viable local decision-making. Future research is needed to would indicate that the political objectives cannot to the Lebanese Armed Forces, just as he had in partner was the true motivation for the ultimate determine whether public opinion may play a be met. Integrating these considerations into previous instances when he feared they were decision to leave Beirut. greater role in influencing the timing and character contingency and operational planning would, in nearing exhaustion. In September 1983, for of a decision to terminate missions that involve turn, aid policymakers’ ability to evaluate new instance, he authorized the use of U.S. naval gunfire larger troop deployments or more sustained information and help to structure analysis of an in support of embattled Lebanese units fighting in Conclusion operations. Nonetheless, by highlighting the intervention’s execution, especially if revisited the Shouf, and noted the army’s resurgence with tendency of scholars to over-emphasize the effects frequently over the course of a military deployment. pride in his nightly diary entries.141 So long as there This new history of the U.S. military withdrawal of public opinion in this popular case study, this The U.S. government does have tools for probing appeared to be a viable ally on the ground, Reagan from Lebanon challenges the common emphasis new history may also be relevant to other lines of assumptions and evaluating change over time. But believed his objectives were feasible and progress on casualties as the determining factor in American inquiry in the literature on peacekeeping and war answering the questions above requires more than was being made, albeit incrementally. And so long decisions to correct course or terminate military termination, the efficacy of limited interventions, designating a red team or devil’s advocate, tactics as a semblance of a central government apparatus interventions. Contrary to established narratives, and elite views of public opinion. For instance, the often implemented in government but ones that remained, he retained hope that the United States neither the October 1983 truck bombing nor the new evidence of policymakers’ divergent reactions are frequently ineffective due to an air of defeatism, might promote national reconciliation without perceived fluctuations in public attitudes toward to the Beirut barracks bombing suggests a need to bureaucratic isolation, or Peter and the Wolf- incurring direct responsibility for the resolution of the peacekeeping mission in Lebanon were modify Bayesian learning models to better reflect like disregard.146 To promote clearer thinking will the Lebanese factions’ grievances. significant factors in the Reagan administration’s the empirical record of individual and group require encouraging the next generation of foreign Alternatively, the intensity of the fighting in decisions of whether, when, or how to end the decision-making. Our findings indicate that such policy professionals to develop the analytical skills February might have persuaded the president peacekeeping mission. The loss of 241 marines modifications may be found in the literature on and historical sensibility to wield established tools that the Marines were, as Weinberger and Vessey heightened policymakers’ perceptions of the human anchoring, motivated, and attribution biases.143 more effectively.147 As the United States confronts had long argued, ill-equipped to implement their and political costs of a continued military presence mission in an increasingly hostile environment. in Lebanon, but it also deepened divisions within 143 For a discussion of relevant psychological biases, see Jack Levy, “Psychology and Foreign Policy Decision-Making,” in The Oxford Handbook of Yet, even if the National Salvation Front offensive the administration over future U.S. involvement in Political Psychology, ed. Leonie Huddy, David O. Sears, and Jack S. Levy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast had compelled Reagan to consider withdrawal, the country. and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011); Rose McDermott, “The Psychological Ideas of Amos Tversky and Their Relevance for Political Science,” Journal of Theoretical Politics 13, no.1 (2001): 5–33, https://doi.org/10.1177/0951692801013001001; James M. Goldgeier and Philip E. the Lebanese Armed Forces’ success in repelling In particular, the attack emboldened those who Tetlock, “Psychology and International Relations Theory,” Annual Review of Political Science 4, no. 1 (2001): 67–92, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev. the attackers would have bolstered McFarlane’s opposed the effort, most notably Defense Secretary polisci.4.1.67. plan to taper operations gradually. Such an event Weinberger and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 144 For an excellent example, see Yarhi-Milo, Who Fights, in particular chap. 7. 145 James D. Fearon, “Why Do Some Civil Wars Last So Much Longer Than Others?” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (2004): 275–301, https:// doi.org/10.1177/0022343304043770; James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 140 Interview of Robert S. Dillon by Charles Stuart Kennedy, May 17, 1990, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. For the importance 97, no. 1 (2003): 75–90, https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/publications/ethnicity_insurgency_and_civil_war. placed on the U.S. modernization effort, see: Karlin, Building Militaries in Fragile States, chap. 4. 146 For a history of the perils and promise of red teaming and other related practices, see Micah Zenko, Red Team: How to Succeed by Thinking 141 National Security Decision Directive 103 and “Addendum to NSDD 103 On Lebanon of September 10, 1983”; Reagan, Diaries. Like the Enemy (New York: Basic Books, 2015). 142 Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson, eds., Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan that Reveal His 147 Francis J. Gavin, “Thinking Historically: A Guide for Strategy and Statecraft,” War on the Rocks, Nov. 17, 2016, https://warontherocks. Revolutionary Vision for America (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 481. com/2016/11/thinking-historically-a-guide-for-strategy-and-statecraft/.

36 37 The Scholar When Do Leaders Change Course? Theories of Success and the American Withdrawal from Beirut, 1983–1984

the prospect of future intervention scenarios, there is an urgent need to rethink how to train the next generation of policymakers to better challenge assumptions during debates, to process information during crises, and to think systematically about policy consequences. A careful study of the U.S. experience withdrawing from Lebanon offers a modest step toward this ambitious goal.

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank the Johns Hopkins University–SAIS Kissinger Center, the Boston International Security Graduate Conference, and the Middle East Studies Association for their kind invitations to present earlier versions of this project. Our colleagues at each event offered invaluable feedback. In particular, we benefited from insightful comments from James Benkowski, Alex Bick, Hal Brands, Chris Crosbie, John Gans, Frank Gavin, Julie Garey, Jeffrey Karam, Akram Khater, Alice Pannier, Sarah Parkinson, Elizabeth Saunders, and James Wilson, as well as two anonymous reviewers and the editorial team at TNSR.

Alexandra T. Evans is a postdoctoral fellow with the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her PhD in history at the University of Virginia in 2018.

A. Bradley Potter is a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a predoctoral research fellow in the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government.

38 The Scholar How to Think About Nuclear Crises

How dangerous are nuclear crises? What dynamics underpin how they unfold? Recent tensions between North Korea and the United States have exposed disagreement among scholars and analysts regarding these questions. We reconcile these apparently contradictory views by showing the circumstances in which different models of nuclear crises should be expected to hold. Nuclear crises should be expected to have different dynamics depending on two variables: the incentives to use nuclear weapons Mark S. Bell and Julia Macdonald first in a crisis and the extent to which escalation is controllable by the leaders involved. Variation across these two dimensions generates four types of nuclear crises: “staircase,” “stability- instability,” “brinkmanship,” and “firestorm” crises. These models correspond to well-established ways of thinking about nuclear crises, but no one model is “correct.” Different models should be expected to apply in different cases, and nuclear crises should therefore be interpreted differently according to which model is most appropriate. We demonstrate the utility of our framework using the cases of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, 1999 Kargil War, 2017 Doklam Crisis, and ongoing U.S.-North Korean tensions.

ow dangerous are nuclear crises? in academic debates. Different scholars offer What determines who wins and who interpretations of nuclear crises that appear to be loses? And what dynamics underpin at odds with each other. For some, the threat of how they unfold? Recent tensions nuclear use is generally so remote that nuclear- betweenH North Korea and the United States have armed states can enter a crisis with little fear of it exposed disagreement regarding these questions. crossing the nuclear threshold. For others, nuclear While some analysts view escalations in rhetoric escalation is highly plausible and the presence of and hints of war between the United States and nuclear weapons profoundly affects the way crises North Korea as “disastrous” and “so dangerous,”1 play out. Policymakers seeking to pursue their others suggest there is little to worry about and political goals within a nuclear crisis or reduce that the “threat of war with North Korea may the risk of nuclear escalation will thus find little sound scarier than it is.”2 This disagreement about guidance in the existing scholarship. how to understand nuclear crises is also reflected We argue that different interpretations of

1 Ankit Panda and Vipin Narang, “Why Trump’s Threat of ‘Fire and Fury’ Against North Korea Is So Dangerous,” The Diplomat, Aug. 11, 2017, http:// thediplomat.com/2017/08/why-trumps-threat-of-fire-and-fury-against-north-korea-is-so-dangerous/. 2 Max Fisher, “Trump’s Threat of War with North Korea May Sound Scarier than It Is,” New York Times, Aug. 9, 2017, https://www.nytimes. com/2017/08/09/world/asia/trump-north-korea-nuclear-war.html.

41 The Scholar How to Think About Nuclear Crises

nuclear crises are not — as they initially appear highlighting tensions between existing studies. share an underlying logic, but disagree about what reasons. First, policymakers (or anyone, for that — mutually exclusive. Rather, nuclear crises have We then develop our framework, describing the that logic is.8 For example, according to advocates matter) seeking to understand how nuclear crises different dynamics depending on two variables: the two variables and four models of nuclear crisis of the theory of the “nuclear revolution,” nuclear unfold, how dangerous they might be, and how incentives to use nuclear weapons first in a crisis and discussing the implications of each for the weapons suppress the temptation to escalate crises one might pursue a state’s political interests within and the extent to which escalation is controllable dynamics of this type of crisis. We demonstrate the at all levels. The destructive capacity of nuclear such a crisis, will struggle to gain insights from a by the leaders involved. Identifying these variables utility of this framework by showing how it sheds weapons casts a long shadow over all interstate literature that offers contradictory findings and is not new: First-use incentives and crisis light on the Kargil War between India and Pakistan, crises, restricting the range of behaviors that states implications. Second, by seeking a single logic that controllability are widely understood to be factors the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Doklam crisis between can reasonably engage in.9 As John Mearsheimer explains nuclear crises, existing work downplays the that affect how nuclear crises play out. However, India and China, and current tensions between the notes, “Nuclear weapons, because of the horror variety among them.13 A simple historical reading, they have not previously been incorporated into United States and North Korea. We conclude with associated with their use, really are the ultimate for example, suggests profound differences between a single framework that can shed light on the implications for current and future research. deterrent” and make “states more cautious about the dynamics underpinning the 1995 Taiwan Straits heterogeneity of nuclear crises. Variation across using military force of any kind against each other.”10 crisis, the various Berlin crises, the war in Angola, these two dimensions generates four models For scholars of the nuclear taboo or advocates of and the 1970 Cienfuegos submarine base crisis, all of nuclear escalation, which correspond to Our Understanding Of Nuclear Crises the “stability-instability paradox,” however, the of which are typically identified as “nuclear crises.”14 established ways of thinking about nuclear crises. difficulty of credibly threatening to use nuclear Indeed, common understandings of the different We label these models the “staircase” model, the In this study, we employ the definition of crisis weapons, and the bright line distinguishing nuclear dangers involved in different crises — that the “stability-instability” model, the “brinkmanship” used by the multi-decade International Crisis use from non-nuclear use, ought to reduce the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, was the “most model, and the “firestorm” model. In contrast Behavior project: A nuclear crisis is an interaction influence that nuclear weapons have within a dangerous” Cold War crisis — reflect a heterogeneity to recent literature, we argue that no one model between two nuclear-armed states in which there is crisis.11 Recent empirical scholarship also suggests that existing theories do not account for. of nuclear crisis is “correct” — different models a “change in type and/or an increase in intensity” of that crises operate according to a certain logic, simply apply in different circumstances. In disruptive or hostile behaviors with a “heightened while disagreeing as to what that logic is. For specifying the various types of nuclear crisis more probability of military hostilities” that “destabilizes example, Kroenig argues that a state with nuclear Models Of Nuclear Crises clearly and the dimensions that underpin them, their relationship” and begins with a “disruptive act superiority is more likely to achieve its goals in a we offer a way to unite divergent interpretations or event.”4 Studying nuclear crises is fraught with nuclear crisis, while Todd Sechser and Matthew In this section, we describe two variables that of nuclear crises within a broader framework. the same methodological challenges as studies of Fuhrmann conclude that nuclear weapons do not affect the ways in which nuclear crises unfold: In doing so, our framework helps make sense of other crises short of war, including deciding which help states compel others to do what they want the strength of incentives to use nuclear weapons inconclusive empirical findings in the international cases to examine, grappling with selection effects, during crises.12 first in a crisis, and the degree to which the relations literature. For example, different studies and identifying appropriate counterfactuals.5 This disagreement is concerning for several actors involved are able to control escalation of have found nuclear weapons to have either no, Despite these challenges, the significance of limited, or substantial effects on the outcomes of nuclear crises to contemporary international 8 See, for example, Barry Nalebuff, “Brinkmanship and Nuclear Deterrence: The Neutrality of Escalation,”Conflict Management and Peace Science crises.3 Because different nuclear crises operate politics is widely understood. Matthew Kroenig, 9, no. 2 (1986): 19–30, doi.org/10.1177/073889428600900202; Betts, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance; Robert Powell, “Nuclear Brinkmanship with Two-Sided Incomplete Information,” American Political Science Review 82, no. 1 (March 1988): 156–178, doi.org/10.2307/1958063; Robert Powell, according to different logics, it is unsurprising that for example, writes that “the nuclear crisis [is] the “Nuclear Brinkmanship, Limited War, and Military Power,” International Organization 69, no. 3 (2015): 589–626, doi.org/10.1017/S0020818315000028; existing findings are sensitive to differences in primary arena in which nuclear-armed states settle Richard Ned Lebow, Nuclear Crisis Management: A Dangerous Illusion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987); Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of 6 Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Beardsley and Asal, ‘‘Winning with the methodological approach, case selection, modeling important international disputes.” Indeed, for Bomb,’’ Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve,” Sechser and Fuhrmann, “Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail”; Todd S. Sechser strategies, or coding choices. Finally, the framework many, the replacement of great power wars with and Mattew Fuhrmann, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Benoît Pelopidas, “The Unbearable Lightness of Luck: Three Sources of Overconfidence in the Manageability of Nuclear Crises,” European Journal of International Security 2, no. 2 (2017): provides analysts and policymakers with a tool nuclear crises is one of the defining features of the 240–62, doi.org/10.1017/eis.2017.6. to assess the relative dangers of potential future post-1945 international system.7 9 See, for example, Bernard Brodie, ed., The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1946); Robert Jervis, nuclear crises, the feasibility of signaling political Despite a shared recognition of the importance “Why Nuclear Superiority Doesn’t Matter,” Political Science Quarterly 94, no. 4 (1979): 617–33, doi.org/10.2307/2149629; Robert Jervis, The interests or resolve within a crisis, and the of nuclear crises, there is little agreement on the Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984); Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989); Charles L. Glaser, “Why Even Good Defenses May Be Bad,” International Security 9, no. 2 (1984): 92–123, doi. advantages of nuclear superiority. dynamics that underpin them. Scholars tend to org/10.2307/2538669; Charles L. Glaser, Analyzing Strategic Nuclear Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990); Kenneth N. Waltz, We first review the research on nuclear crises, view “nuclear crises” as a group of events that The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better, Adelphi Paper no. 171 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981); Kenneth N. Waltz, “Nuclear Myths and Political Realities,” American Political Science Review 84, no. 3 (September 1990): 730–45, doi.org/10.2307/1962764; John J. Mearsheimer, “Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence in Europe,” International Security 9, no. 3 (1984): 19–46, doi.org/10.2307/2538586. For recent 3 See for example, Marc Trachtenberg, “The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” International Security 10, no. 1 (Summer 1985): critiques of the theory of the nuclear revolution, see Daryl G. Press and Kier A. Lieber, “The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the 137–63, doi.org/10.2307/2538793; Richard K. Betts, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1987); Rosemary Future of Nuclear Deterrence,” International Security 41, no. 4 (2017): 9–49, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00273; Brendan R. Green and Austin Long, “The J. Foot, “Nuclear Coercion and the Ending of the Korean Conflict,” International Security 13, no. 3 (1988/1989): 92–112, doi.org/10.2307/2538737; MAD Who Wasn’t There: Soviet Reactions to the Late Cold War Nuclear Balance,” Security Studies 26, no. 4 (2017): 606–41, doi.org/10.1080/09636 John Mueller, “The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons: Stability in the Postwar World,” International Security 13, no. 2 (1988): 55–79, doi. 412.2017.1331639; Mark S. Bell, “Nuclear Opportunism: A Theory of How States Use Nuclear Weapons in International Politics,” Journal of Strategic org/10.2307/2538971; Kyle Beardsley and Victor Asal, ‘‘Winning with the Bomb,’’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 53, no. 2 (2009): 278–301, doi. Studies 42, no. 1 (2019): 3–28, doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2017.1389722. org/10.1177/0022002708330386; Matthew Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve: Explaining Nuclear Crisis Outcomes,” International Organization 67, no. 1 (2013): 141–71, doi.org/10.1017/S0020818312000367; Matthew Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy: 10 Mearsheimer, “Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence in Europe,” 20; John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, Why Strategic Superiority Matters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, “Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear 2001), 129 (emphasis added). Blackmail,” International Organization 67, no. 1 (2013): 173–95, doi.org/10.1017/S0020818312000392; Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (New 11 Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, York: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 2008); Glenn Snyder, “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” in Balance of Power, ed. Paul Seabury (San Francisco, CA: Chandler, 1965). 4 Michael Brecher and Jonathan Wilkenfeld, A Study of Crisis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 4–5. We focus on crises between 12 Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve”; Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy; Sechser and Fuhrmann, “Crisis pairs of nuclear-armed states, although whether the framework we propose also applies to crises between nuclear and non-nuclear states would be Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail”; Sechser and Fuhrmann, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy. These debates echo prior disagreements. See, an interesting avenue for future research. for example, Trachtenberg, “The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis”; Betts, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance; Mueller, “The 5 See, for example, James Fearon, “Selection Effects and Deterrence,” International Interactions 28, no. 1 (2002): 5–29, doi. Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons.” org/10.1080/03050620210390. 13 Partial exceptions include Betts, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance; and Robert Powell, “The Theoretical Foundations of Strategic Nuclear 6 Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve,” 142. Deterrence,” Political Science Quarterly 100, no. 1 (1985): 75–96, http://doi.org/10.2307/2150861, which distinguish between crises that exhibited different levels of risk and different types of nuclear threat, respectively. 7 See, for example, Stanley Hoffman, The State of War: Essays on the Theory and Practice of International Politics (New York: Praeger, 1965), 236; John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 14 See, for example, Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve,” 154.

42 43 The Scholar How to Think About Nuclear Crises

escalation” posture — will be characterized by deliberate strategic calculation to escalate at every greater incentives to use nuclear weapons first.17 stage. Controllability instead refers to the process These two factors contributing to incentives for by which escalation occurs — to whatever level.18 first use are objective features of a given crisis. We code crisis controllability on the basis of a However, they can only affect the dynamics of a number of features of a crisis. These features are crisis if they are perceived to exist by the leaders not intended to be an exhaustive list of factors contributing to crisis controllability, but rather a series of indicators that can be observed and that influence crisis controllability in important ways. First, different states have different command and control arrangements, which means that leaders exercise different levels of control over nuclear use.19 For example, a crisis in which both leaders have exclusive authority to make decisions about the crisis. These two variables are determined by first. Such incentives may emerge in at least two nuclear use, and robust institutions exist that the objective features of a given crisis, although distinct ways. enforce that authority even in crisis situations, we incorporate the possibility that the crisis First, the dynamics of a possible nuclear war may thereby minimizing the risk of accidental or participants’ perceptions of these variables may mean that first nuclear use could meaningfully affect inadvertent use, is more controllable than one diverge from reality in ways that influence how the final outcome of the conflict. In particular, if without such checks. Second, clear and mutually they behave. Incentives for first nuclear use and there is a large disparity in capabilities between the involved. If leaders do not perceive that first use understood red lines for nuclear use, if they exist, the degree of controllability are well understood nuclear forces of the participants in the crisis, there could provide significant political advantages in a can increase controllability, since they reduce to affect how a nuclear crisis plays out, however, will be stronger incentives for both sides to use crisis or conflict, those incentives will not affect the likelihood that a state will accidentally cross they have not previously been incorporated into a nuclear weapons first. For the weaker state, having crisis dynamics. We therefore code crises in which another state’s red line for nuclear use.20 Third, if a single framework that sheds light on the diversity a vulnerable and small nuclear force may generate either side lacks a secure second-strike capability state’s conventional forces are likely to target forces of nuclear crises. Examining these two dimensions doubts about the ability of that state’s nuclear and/or has an asymmetric escalation posture relevant to the adversary’s ability to use nuclear leads to four possible “ideal type” models of nuclear arsenal to survive a first strike, thereby creating and in which one or both leaders perceive that weapons, or if forces relevant to conventional crisis: the “staircase” model, the “brinkmanship” pressure for states to “use them or lose them,” and nuclear first use may offer substantial political and nuclear operations are likely to interact with model, the “stability-instability” model, and incentivizing aggressive nuclear postures and first benefits within the crisis as being characterized by each other in a crisis or military operation, crisis the “firestorm” model. These models, in turn, nuclear use. As Peter Feaver argues, a state with incentives to use nuclear weapons first. That is to controllability will likely be lower.21 Fourth, states correspond to prominent ways that scholars and a vulnerable nuclear arsenal has an “incentive to say, crises in which either side has and perceives have varying abilities to communicate with each analysts have thought about nuclear crises. The posture its forces for an early use in a crisis, before incentives for nuclear first use are coded as having other during crises: A crisis in which the two states framework demonstrates that different models its nuclear option is curtailed.”15 For the state with incentives for first nuclear use. have well-established avenues through which to of nuclear crisis should be expected to operate the more powerful arsenal, meaningfully limiting The second dimension is the extent to which communicate, or in which a third party can reliably under different circumstances. This insight holds damage through engaging in offensive nuclear a crisis is controllable by the actors participating convey information between two states in a crisis, important implications for how to understand counterforce missions might be tempting, as might in the crisis. Controllability refers to the ability of may be more controllable than crises in which existing scholarship on nuclear crises, as well as be the possibility of a splendid first strike — the leaders to make conscious and strategic decisions states communicate through unreliable or ad hoc variation among these crises across time. ability to completely take out an opponent’s nuclear to determine the level of escalation in a given crisis. channels or exclusively through public signaling. Table 1 summarizes the indicators of the variables capabilities.16 Crises characterized by significant It is important to note that crisis controllability Further, the ability to communicate is not simply that we examine in the case studies below. Each nuclear asymmetry — in particular, where one side does not refer to the level of escalation that occurs. institutional: For example, certain pairs of leaders of these variables is itself the aggregation of other plausibly lacks a secure second-strike capability A crisis can escalate to (and beyond) the nuclear may better understand or empathize with each variables. Grouping them in this way, however, — will therefore feature greater incentives to use threshold in a controlled fashion, i.e., in a process other than others, improving crisis controllability.22 allows us to impose some conceptual order on the nuclear weapons first than crises characterized by in which each leader makes a conscious and It is worth noting four potential objections ways in which nuclear crises can vary, and thus a greater degree of symmetry, in which meaningful begin to shed light on the diversity of this class damage limitation and/or a splendid first strike 17 Vipin Narang, “Posturing for Peace? Pakistan’s Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability,” International Security 34, no. 3 (2009/10): 38–78, doi.org/10.1162/isec.2010.34.3.38; Vipin Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict (Princeton, N.J.: of events. are less plausible. Second, nuclear first use may Princeton University Press, 2014). The first variable we examine is the extent to be threatened as part of the bargaining process 18 For a critique of the claim that nuclear crises can ever be controllable, see Pelopidas, “The Unbearable Lightness of Luck.” which either side faces incentives to use nuclear within a crisis or war. Crises in which one (or 19 Feaver, “Command and Control in Emerging Nuclear Nations;” Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era. weapons first in a crisis. This variable asks whether both) states has a nuclear posture designed to 20 This factor can be hard to observe empirically, since red lines need not be publicly articulated if they are implicitly understood, and publicly the crisis is one in which either side would gain credibly threaten the first use of nuclear weapons articulated red lines are not necessarily clear or may not be believed by other states. For recent work on red lines, see, Daniel W. Altman, Red Lines and Faits Accomplis in Interstate Coercion and Crisis (Ph.D dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015); Daniel W. Altman and Nicholas substantial advantages from using nuclear weapons — what Vipin Narang refers to as an “asymmetric L. Miller, “Red Lines in Nuclear Nonproliferation,” Nonproliferation Review 24, no. 3-4 (2017): 315–42, doi.org/10.1080/10736700.2018.1433575; Dan Altman, “Advancing without Attacking: The Strategic Game Around the Use of Force,” Security Studies 27, no. 1 (2018): 58–88, doi.org/10.1080/0963 6412.2017.1360074. 15 Peter D. Feaver, “Command and Control in Emerging Nuclear Nations,” International Security 17, no. 3 (1992/93): 165, doi.org/10.2307/2539133. 21 Barry R. Posen, Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991); Caitlin Talmadge, “Would For a critique of the concept of “use them or lose them,” see Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy, 137–42. China Go Nuclear? Assessing the Risk of Chinese Nuclear Escalation in a Conventional War with the United States,” International Security 41, no. 4 (2017): 50–92, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00274. 16 For recent debates on the feasibility of damage limitation and counterforce, see Charles L. Glaser and Steve Fetter, “Should the United States Reject MAD? Damage Limitation and U.S. Nuclear Strategy Toward China,” International Security 41, no. 1 (2016): 49–98, doi.org/10.1162/ 22 See, for example, James G. Blight and Janet Lang, “When Empathy Failed: Using Critical Oral History to Reassess the Collapse of U.S.-Soviet ISEC_a_00248; Press and Lieber, “The New Era of Counterforce.” Détente in the Carter-Brezhnev Years,” Journal of Cold War Studies 12, no. 2 (2010): 29–74, doi.org/10.1162/jcws.2010.12.2.29.

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way a crisis plays out? As we discuss below, the provoke the Kargil War had it known that the crisis stakes of the crisis can be incorporated within would be primarily determined by the conventional our framework. This is because we expect that balance of forces, which favored India. states would be willing to enter different types of As shown in Figure 1, these two variables create crises to protect different interests. For example, a conceptual space within which existing models because stability-instability crises pose relatively of nuclear crisis can be situated. We highlight four little risk of nuclear escalation, we expect that models that correspond to the quadrants of this policymakers will be more willing to enter them conceptual space. Of course, each model represents even over relatively unimportant stakes. By an “ideal type.” More types of crisis exist in the contrast, firestorm crises have a much higher risk conceptual space between these four possibilities. of nuclear escalation, and we therefore expect The four models we identify offer very different that policymakers would only enter such crises interpretations of nuclear crises. Indeed, they if the most vital national interests were at risk. suggest different answers to four basic questions This has implications for understanding existing, about such crises: How likely is nuclear use contradictory empirical findings, which we discuss within a crisis? Does the conventional or nuclear more fully in the following sections. balance have a stronger effect on the outcome? Is Third, some might ask if these are the only two nuclear superiority valuable within a crisis? And variables that matter. Probably not. As mentioned how feasible is signaling within a crisis? Table above, this framework represents a first step in 2 summarizes the differences between these exploring the variation among nuclear crises, but four models. The following sections of the paper additional variables likely affect how individual describe these differences in more detail. crises play out, including perceptual, bureaucratic, normative, and technological variables. Exploring Stability-Instability Crises whether adding additional variables sheds greater light on the heterogeneity of nuclear crises would Crises that are controllable and have limited be a valuable avenue for future research and one incentives for nuclear first use are “stability- that we return to in the conclusion. instability” crises. This model approximates Glenn A fourth objection could concern the fact that Snyder’s view of nuclear weapons. Snyder famously these variables are determined by objective suggested that “the greater the stability of the features of a given crisis, which may be imperfectly ‘strategic’ balance of terror, the lower the stability known or misperceived by participants at the of the overall balance at its lower levels of violence. time of the crisis: Is this not problematic for our …Thus firm stability in the strategic nuclear balance analysis? The framework we offer allows for an tends to destabilize the conventional balance.”24 initial disaggregation of nuclear crises that permits Jervis describes the same idea: “To the extent that us to begin exploring their diversity and includes the military balance is stable at the level of all-out leaders’ perceptions of incentives for nuclear nuclear war, it will become less stable at lower first use. This represents an advance on prior levels of violence.”25 We should not expect nuclear literature, but is only a first step. While these powers, according to this view, to fight all-out objective features of the crisis should be expected nuclear wars, but they may engage in more lower- to exert a profound influence on the nature of level conflicts. Similarly, for scholars who argue the crisis, even if they are not known or fully that a powerful taboo inhibits nuclear use, crises understood by policymakers, further incorporation between nuclear states will be characterized by a of policymakers’ perceptions and misperceptions clear prohibition against nuclear use, and relative could add richness to our framework and would freedom to engage in conventional escalation.26 at this point. First, it might be objected that the crises that are controllable — where there is firm be a productive next step. Indeed, policymakers’ The possibility of nuclear escalation within two variables are not independent of each other. control over nuclear assets, clear red lines, etc. — misperceptions of (or uncertainty about) these stability-instability crises is low. Even in stability- For example, one reason why a crisis might lack but in which incentives to use nuclear weapons variables may add explanatory power to our instability crises that escalate significantly, actors controllability is if there are incentives to use first are nonetheless strong. These two dimensions framework by allowing us to better account for are likely to remain confident that the nuclear nuclear weapons first and battlefield commanders are therefore appropriately considered separately miscalculations that states make within crises. For threshold will not be breached. Since the risk of are therefore given pre-delegated authority to because each exerts an independent effect on the example, Pakistan might have been less willing to nuclear use is low and relatively constant across use nuclear weapons.23 However, the relationship character of nuclear crises. between these two variables is not determinative A second potential criticism is that neither 24 Snyder, “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” 198–99. (as discussed above, there are many other sources variable accounts for how high the stakes of the 25 Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, 31. For an empirical test of the implications of the stability-instability paradox, see Mark S. of crisis controllability), and one can conceive of crisis are: Shouldn’t the stakes involved affect the Bell and Nicholas L. Miller, “Questioning the Effect of Nuclear Weapons on Conflict,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 59, no. 1 (2015): 74–92, doi. org/10.1177/0022002713499718. 23 See Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era. 26 Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo.

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crises of this sort, we expect the nuclear balance to use plausible. However, we expect the degree to but more common than firestorm crises. We argue control.”32 For Schelling, this possibility is what be unrelated to the outcomes of stability-instability which nuclear weapons weigh on the minds of below that the 1999 Kargil War between India and gives nuclear-armed actors political leverage even crises, and nuclear weapons will not regularly participants in staircase crises to vary according Pakistan is best categorized as a staircase crisis. in the absence of incentives for nuclear first use. enter the calculations of leaders in these crises. to the level of escalation reached: Because of the For scholars in the “nuclear revolution” camp, the The outcomes of stability-instability crises will significance of nuclear use and the many less Brinkmanship Crises possibility of uncontrolled nuclear escalation is instead be determined by other factors, such as escalatory options states typically have available why nuclear-armed states should avoid challenging the conventional military balance. Finally, signaling to them before resorting to this extreme level of We label crises that are characterized by limited each other’s vital interests. is feasible within stability-instability crises, since force, a staircase crisis is unlikely to suddenly incentives to use nuclear weapons first and low What dynamics underpin a brinkmanship crisis? the two sides can calibrate their forces and level of levels of controllability as “brinkmanship” crises. First, as with the staircase model, all brinkmanship conventional escalation to send signals about their This model approximates the views of Thomas crises involve some risk of nuclear escalation. political interests. However, since nuclear use is Schelling, who emphasized the political utility of However, nuclear escalation is only likely as part viewed by both sides as unlikely, making nuclear “threats that leave something to chance” under of a process of uncontrolled escalation. What threats will not generally be credible within this circumstances in which deliberate first nuclear use determines the outcome of a brinkmanship type of crisis. is not credible.29 Similarly, scholars of the “nuclear crisis? Because the manipulation of the risk of Stability-instability crises are therefore relatively revolution,” such as Kenneth Waltz, Charles uncontrolled escalation is the primary source safe, at least in terms of the risk of nuclear escalation, Glaser, and Robert Jervis, also view nuclear crises of political leverage within brinkmanship crises, and we therefore expect to see statesmen being in this way, although such scholars tend to be outcomes are determined by “competitions in more willing to enter this type of crisis than others more cautious than Schelling about the possibility risk taking” and by the “balance of resolve” rather that pose greater risk of nuclear escalation. We also of using the political leverage that comes from the than by the conventional or nuclear balance (the expect stability-instability crises to be relatively manipulation of nuclear risk. conventional or nuclear balance could affect common within datasets of crises, a point that In this model, states may take steps to escalate crisis outcomes by affecting resolve).33 Signaling has implications for interpreting contradictory a conflict, but those steps are unlikely to involve and escalation are possible, but we should empirical findings in existing literature. We argue deliberate first nuclear use, which is not typically expect significant conventional escalation within below that the recent Doklam crisis between escalate across the nuclear threshold without credible in brinkmanship crises given low incentives brinkmanship crises to be accompanied by fear India and China is best categorized as a stability- prior conventional escalation. For this reason, to use nuclear weapons first. As Schelling argued, that uncontrolled nuclear escalation might occur. instability crisis. staircase crises that do not escalate close to the “There is just no foreseeable route by which the Nuclear crises of this sort are therefore dangerous nuclear level may be determined almost entirely United States and the Soviet Union could become for statesmen to enter into, but they may be willing Staircase Crises by the conventional balance of power, while those engaged in a major war.”30 Similarly, for scholars of to do so when the stakes are high, i.e., to secure that escalate closer to, or beyond, the nuclear the “nuclear revolution” school, because achieving important national interests. We should therefore We term a crisis that is controllable but in threshold are likely to be determined more by a reliable first-strike counterforce capability is expect that brinkmanship crises will occur less which there are incentives for nuclear first use a the nuclear balance. Because crises that operate extremely difficult compared to the relative ease of frequently than stability-instability crises, but more “staircase” crisis. This model approximates the according to the staircase model are, by definition, achieving a second-strike capability, the incentives frequently than firestorm crises, as we discuss view of escalation that Hermann Kahn offers in his characterized by high levels of controllability, for using nuclear weapons first in a crisis are next. We argue below that the Cuban Missile Crisis book, On Escalation, and emphasizes deliberate, escalation and de-escalation within such a crisis small. States will not lose the ability to retaliate by unfolded according to this logic. calibrated escalation. Despite the deliberate and is possible: Escalation levels can be controlled and delaying the use of nuclear weapons, and can still conscious way in which escalation occurs according calibrated, and signaling by using both nuclear cause enormous destruction even after absorbing a Firestorm Crises to this model, escalation to and beyond the nuclear and conventional forces is feasible. Lastly, because first strike. The lack of incentives for nuclear first threshold is possible given that states may have a staircase crisis may be determined by the use, however, “does not mean that a major nuclear We label crises where there are both incentives incentives to use nuclear weapons first, or to nuclear balance, and because limited nuclear use war cannot occur.”31 Schelling describes the process for nuclear first use and low levels of controllability use them in a deliberately limited way. In Kahn’s is plausible, both nuclear superiority and limited of escalation as one in which “either side can take as “firestorm” crises. A firestorm crisis is the most formulation, the first use of nuclear weapons nuclear options may well be of value to states steps—engaging in a limited war would usually be dangerous and volatile type of crisis: Both deliberate can serve a range of political purposes, including engaging in a crisis of this sort. Indeed, calls for such a step—that genuinely raise the probability of and uncontrolled escalation to the nuclear level “redressive, warning, bargaining, punitive, fining, or “escalation dominance” by policymakers — that a blow-up. …What makes [these steps] significant might occur even in the absence of significant deterrence purposes.”27 Even apparently accidental is, the ability to deter an adversary at every rung and usable is that they create a genuine risk…that prior escalation. The fear of a firestorm crisis has nuclear use may, in fact, be deliberate, resulting of the escalation ladder — draw implicitly on the the thing will blow up for reasons not fully under played an important role in public discourse and from a desire to “give the impression that [nuclear] staircase model since they assume that escalation use was unintentional.”28 In short, according to the occurs as a conscious and strategic choice at each 29 Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960); Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New staircase model of nuclear escalation, deliberate level of escalation. Staircase crises are dangerous Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966). For other interpretations of nuclear crises using the brinkmanship framework, see, Nalebuff, “Brinkmanship and first nuclear use is highly plausible. and states are therefore unlikely to enter them Nuclear Deterrence,” Trachtenberg, “The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of What determines victory in a staircase crisis? over trivial matters, although they may be willing Resolve”; Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy. All staircase crises have a nuclear dimension: to enter them when important national interests 30 Schelling, Arms and Influence, 94. Escalation to the nuclear level is always feasible are at stake. We would therefore expect staircase 31 Schelling, Arms and Influence, 94. and may be deliberately chosen, making nuclear crises to be rarer than stability-instability crises, 32 Schelling, Arms and Influence, 104. 33 An extreme version of this argument is offered by Barry Nalebuff, who argues that because nuclear crises involve competitions in risk taking, and crisis participants will generate as much risk as is required to communicate their political interests and resolve, crisis outcomes are independent of 27 Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Strategies (London: Pall Mall Press, 1965), 45. a state’s military or nuclear position or posture. See Nalebuff, “Brinkmanship and Nuclear Deterrence.” For the argument that nuclear superiority is 28 Kahn, On Escalation, 44. important within the brinkmanship framework because it affects resolve, see Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve.”

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policy discussions throughout the nuclear age. Historical Crises: The Cuban India with a fait accompli.38 Initial Indian attempts At the time of the Kargil War, Pakistan had the For example, the fear of nuclear “sneak attacks” Missile Crisis and the Kargil War to dislodge Pakistani troops proved ineffective, capability to use nuclear weapons. The 1998 tests had strong domestic political salience during the and the Indian government granted Gen. Ved had confirmed its nuclear status, and by May 1999, early years of the Cold War.34 Indeed, early U.S. We first examine the utility of our typology using Prakash Malik, Chief of the Army Staff, the right to Pakistan had credible delivery systems: several assessments of the political implications of nuclear the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis between the United employ airpower in support of ground operations.39 dozen tactical nuclear warheads that could be weapons viewed them as offensive weapons that States and Soviet Union, and the 1999 Kargil War On May 26, the Indian military forces initiated a mated with missiles, a smaller number of short- would be used to land the first blows of any potential between India and Pakistan. In each case, we combined air and ground campaign resulting in and medium-range ballistic missiles, and delivery- third world war. The desire to prevent a “nuclear analyze incentives for first nuclear use and crisis intense combat.40 By early July, Pakistan was on the capable aircraft.44 Both Pakistani and Indian leaders Pearl Harbor” was one motivation for the United controllability to show which model of nuclear brink of defeat. Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Nawaz recognized Pakistan’s incentives for nuclear first States abandoning its isolationist tendencies in the crisis best applies, and the insights that it provides Sharif, travelled to Washington D.C. to meet with use. Upon the initiation of Indian air attacks, the aftermath of World War II. Similarly, “worst-case” into the crisis. We use these cases because both are U.S. President Bill Clinton, who demanded that Pakistani foreign secretary publicly warned New scenarios in which “rogue states” acquire nuclear widely considered among the most important in Pakistan unconditionally withdraw and restore Delhi that his country “would not hesitate to use weapons draw on the possibility that irrational the history of nuclear crises, both involved national the ante bellum status quo. Sharif conceded to any weapons in [Pakistan’s] arsenal to defend [its or religiously motivated states might attack interests that participants considered important, Clinton’s demands, calling for the withdrawal of all territorial] integrity.”45 According to Bruce Riedel, a other states out of the blue — for example, that both involved an attempted fait accompli by one troops from the disputed region on July 12.41 senior adviser to Clinton, U.S. intelligence was aware Iran might seek to “wipe Israel off the map” if it side followed by efforts by the other to reverse that the Pakistani army was readying its nuclear- acquired nuclear weapons. it,35 and both crises reached high levels of military Coding the Kargil War tipped missiles in preparation for an Indian attack How do firestorm crises unfold? First, the escalation. Furthermore, recent work on nuclear across the border.46 Indian leaders also understood possibility of nuclear escalation is high: A firestorm crises explicitly seeks to account for the dynamics The Kargil War was characterized by incentives Pakistani incentives for making the first nuclear crisis could escalate at any moment and without of these two cases with a single explanation.36 As to use nuclear weapons first. Specifically, Pakistan’s move.47 When Malik told Prime Minister Atal Bihari significant prior escalation, which, in turn, a result, we might expect that these two crises nuclear posture threatened first nuclear use in order Vajpayee that opening a second front at the border encourages crisis participants to be deeply fearful would be more likely than most pairs of nuclear to compensate for its relatively weak conventional might be militarily necessary, Vajpayee looked and increases the temptation to take pre-emptive crises to share similar dynamics. If we can show military force.42 Facing a conventionally stronger shocked and responded, “but General Sahib, they action. Signaling is likely to be difficult given the that even these two crises — ostensibly more enemy, Pakistan had adopted a nuclear posture have a nuclear bomb!”48 Indian National Security instability of such a crisis and the speed with similar than many others — differed in ways that that integrated nuclear weapons into its military Advisor Brajesh Mishra confirmed this fear, stating which it can escalate. Indeed, crisis participants our framework sheds light on, it would provide forces in order to credibly threaten a first strike that while the Indian leadership was “95 percent should be well aware that early blows in any crisis significant validation for our approach. against advancing Indian conventional forces.43 sure” that its army would not need to cross the might in fact be nuclear. Because this type of crisis

is prone to escalate to the nuclear level swiftly, the The Kargil War 38 S. Paul Kapur, “India and Pakistan’s Unstable Peace: Why Nuclear South Asia is Not Like Cold War Europe,” International Security 30, no. 2 (2005): nuclear balance is likely to ultimately determine the 137, doi.org/10.1162/016228805775124570; Christopher J. Watterson, “Competing Interpretations of the Stability-Instability Paradox: The Case of the outcome to a greater degree than the conventional The disputed region of Kashmir has been a Kargil War,” Nonproliferation Review 24, no. 1–2 (2017): 90–91, doi.org/10.1080/10736700.2017.1366623; Sumit Ganguly, “Nuclear Stability in South Asia,” International Security 33, no. 2 (2008): 45–70, doi.org/10.1080/10736700.2014.1072991. For more details on the war, see P.R. Chari, Pervaiz balance. Thus nuclear superiority may be useful to source of friction between Pakistan and India since Iqbal Cheema, and Stephen P. Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007), chap. 5; S. Paul Kapur, states. Crises of this sort are extremely dangerous, their partition in 1947.37 Control over the territory Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), chap. 6; Bruce Riedel, American Diplomacy and 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Center for Advanced Study of India, 2002); Ved and we therefore expect that statesmen will only is split, with a Line of Control (LoC) demarcating Prakesh Malik, Kargil: From Surprise to Victory (Delhi: Harper Collins, 2006); Peter R. Lavoy, ed., Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia: The Causes and enter them to achieve absolutely vital national the territorial status quo. India has long viewed the Consequences of the Kargil Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). interests. Because of these dangers, we also territory as an integral part of the Indian Union, 39 Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 268–69. expect that firestorm crises will be the most rarely while the Pakistani government contends that 40 S. Paul Kapur, “Ten Years of Instability in a Nuclear South Asia,” International Security 33, no. 2 (2008): 73–74 doi.org/10.1162/isec.2008.33.2.71; observed type of nuclear crisis. We argue below Kashmir’s accession to India was unlawful and has Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process, 121–22. that future crises between the United States and sought the eventual “liberation” of Indian Kashmir. 41 Sumit Ganguly and Harrison Wagner, “India and Pakistan: Bargaining in the Shadow of Nuclear War,” Journal of Strategic Studies 27, no. 3 (2004): 490, doi.org/10.1080/1362369042000282994; Ganguly, “Nuclear Stability in South Asia,” 58. North Korea would likely unfold according to this In May 1999, one year after Pakistan and India 42 As discussed above, only one side in the crisis has to have incentives for nuclear first use for the crisis as a whole to be characterized by model’s logic. publicly tested nuclear weapons, the Pakistani North incentives for first use. Light Infantry, backed by guerrillas, mounted an 43 Narang “Posturing for Peace?” 56, 66; Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 259. In 1999, India had an active-duty force double that incursion along the LoC, with the aim of presenting of Pakistan, enjoyed a 2:1 advantage in combat aircraft, and a 1.7:1 advantage in main battle tanks. Taken at face value, these figures somewhat overstate the degree of India’s conventional military advantage over Pakistan given that India must focus significant military attention on the Sino-Indian border in addition to the India-Pakistan border. Nonetheless, there is little question that India had the capability to assemble a larger conventional military force on the Pakistani border than Pakistan would be able to. Because of this imbalance, even though Pakistan had a local tactical advantage in Kashmir due to the Pakistani military’s early defensive positioning and the region’s difficult terrain, India retained the ability to 34 Technically, one could see sneak nuclear attacks under the staircase model if the incentives for first use were strong enough to outweigh even deploy a superior conventional force to the region. Kapur, “India and Pakistan’s Unstable Peace,” 139; “Central and South Asia,” The Military Balance high levels of controllability in incentivizing a state to cross the nuclear threshold as a first move in a crisis. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1999), 151–70, doi.org/10.1080/04597229908460132; Anthony H. Cordesman and Arleigh Burke, point. The India-Pakistan Military Balance (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2002). 35 On faits accomplis in international politics, see Schelling, Arms and Influence, 44–45; Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in 44 Narang “Posturing for Peace?” 57. Indeed, Pakistan may have had the ability to deliver nuclear weapons by aircraft as early as 1995. See Narang, American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 536–40; Daniel W. Altman, “By Fait Accompli, Not Coercion: Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 267; Watterson, “Competing Interpretations of the Stability-Instability Paradox,” 91–92. How States Wrest Territory from their Adversaries,” International Studies Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2017): 881–91, doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqx049. 45 Quoted in P.R. Chari, “Reflections on the Kargil War,” Strategic Analysis 33, no. 3 (2009): 363, doi.org/10.1080/09700160902790019. See also 36 See, for example, Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve,” 150–51; Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy, 84–94, Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process, 139–41. 106–113; Powell, “Nuclear Brinkmanship, Limited War, and Military Power,” 590–91; Sechser and Fuhrmann, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy, 46 Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House,” 11. 147–55, 200–210. 47 Ganguly and Wagner, “India and Pakistan,” 492; Ganguly, “Nuclear Stability in South Asia,” 59; Sumit Ganguly and Devin Hagerty, Fearful 37 On the Kashmir dispute see Alastair Lamb, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, 1946-1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Lars Blinkenberg, Symmetry: India-Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 161. India-Pakistan: The History of Unsolved Conflicts (Odense: Odense University Press, 1997); Robert Wirsing, India and Pakistan, and the Kashmir Dispute: On Regional Conflict and Its Resolution (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); Sumit Ganguly, Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions Since 48 Quoted in Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 272. Malik confirms that Pakistani nuclear weapons ruled out full-scale conventional war 1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). with Pakistan. See Kapur, “Ten Years of Instability in a Nuclear South Asia,” 79.

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LoC, the use of “nuclear weapons would have been First, consider Pakistani and Indian command even though it would have been to their military As predicted, the conventional military balance risked if we did.”49 Reports of Pakistani nuclear and control institutions, which have contrasting advantage to do so. does appear to explain the outcome of the mobilizations exacerbated these fears. During the implications for controllability. On the Pakistani Third, the limited geographic range of the conflict: Pakistan was on the verge of conventional crisis, India received intelligence reports indicating side, delegative command and control increases the conflict meant that the likelihood of nuclear and military defeat when Pakistani leaders acceded Pakistani missiles were “being readied for possible credibility of nuclear first use and thus increases conventional forces interacting was low. While to U.S. demands to withdraw their forces, launching,”50 and the chief of the Indian army the deterrent power of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, both sides took steps to increase the alert status of and once India was able to build up its forces staff after the Kargil War, Gen. Sundararajan but also raises the risk of accidental nuclear use and their nuclear forces, neither sides’ nuclear forces, sufficiently, it experienced increasing success in Padmanabhan, stated that Pakistan had “activated reduces crisis controllability.54 Indian command and nor the command and control centers necessary pushing Pakistani forces back toward the Line of one of its missile bases and…threatened India control, by contrast, increases the controllability to use nuclear weapons, were close to the conflict Control.60 This occurred despite India restraining with a nuclear attack.”51 Because of these reports, of a crisis. Indian leaders, fearful of granting the zone. As long as India eschewed opening a second its conventional operations in various ways in some of India’s missiles were “dispersed and military too much influence over nuclear matters, front in the war, or invading Pakistani territory, the order to prevent crossing Pakistan’s red lines for relocated,” and India’s nuclear forces placed on have consistently maintained high levels of control possibility of Indian conventional forces placing nuclear use. By contrast, and as anticipated by the “Readiness State 3,” which involved the assembly over the decision to use nuclear weapons. Indian Pakistani commanders under pressure to “use or framework we offer, neither the nuclear balance and deployment of nuclear warheads near delivery nuclear weapons are maintained in a manner lose” their nuclear assets was low. nor the balance of resolve appears to satisfactorily vehicles.52 that limits inadvertent or unauthorized use: The Fourth, the existence of official and back-channel explain India’s ability to prevail in the crisis. The civilian department of negotiations between India and Pakistan, along with balance of resolve likely favored Pakistan given its atomic energy controls the involvement of numerous outside countries consistently more risk-acceptant and revisionist fissile materials, while — the United States, China, Russia, France, the foreign policy preferences, as evidenced by delivery vehicles are United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia — seeking to Pakistan’s decision to initiate the crisis in the first held in separate locations facilitate a negotiated solution also enhanced place. The nuclear balance was highly ambiguous Both Pakistani and Indian and controlled by the controllability. Regular calls between Indian and at the time of the war and it is unlikely that either military.55 Pakistani leaders, a hotline link between the two side could have known its opponent’s nuclear leaders recognized Pakistan’s Second, Pakistani red lines directors of general military operations, and the capabilities with much certainty. The Kargil War for nuclear use were relatively additional channels of communication provided by took place in the immediate aftermath of both incentives for nuclear first use. clear. Specifically, as long as outside parties created many opportunities for de- countries conducting nuclear tests. Assessments at Indian forces did not cross escalation during the crisis.58 that time acknowledged the difficulty of estimating the LoC, the risk of Pakistani the India-Pakistan nuclear balance, with continued nuclear use would remain low. The Predictions debate about whether India’s thermonuclear test Pakistani army’s director of strategic “fizzled,” how much fissile material both states Despite incentives for nuclear first use, the Kargil plans division, Khalid Kidwai, had publicly outlined The Kargil War was characterized by incentives possessed, and how many weapons both sides had War was relatively controllable for four reasons: scenarios in which first use would occur: “If India for first nuclear use and high levels of crisis developed.61 Even Kroenig, who argues that India India’s strong command and control institutions, conquered a large part of Pakistan’s territory, controllability, and is therefore best understood had nuclear superiority and that this mattered in relatively clear Pakistani red lines that India did not destroyed a large part of its military forces, as a staircase crisis. Based on this assessment, the crisis, acknowledges that “it is difficult to know seek to cross, a limited geographic zone of conflict strangled Pakistan economically or caused large what dynamics should we expect to see in the the precise nuclear balance of power” in this case.62 that reduced the risk of conventional and nuclear scale internal subversion in Pakistan.”56 Former case? First, because the crisis did not come close Indeed, the evidence that Kroenig uses to support forces interacting, and well-established avenues Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf claims that to the nuclear threshold, we should expect that his claim that the balance of nuclear power mattered of crisis communication. This controllability was whenever he met with a foreign leader, “I asked him the conventional balance would determine the for the outcome is that Pakistan ultimately backed enhanced by the active involvement of the United to convey my message…that if [Indian] troops took outcome of the war, rather than the nuclear down in the crisis, and that Indian officials stated States in the crisis, providing additional avenues of even a step across the international border of the balance or balance of resolve. Second, the primary subsequent to the war that Pakistan would be hurt communication and clarifying the red lines of both LoC…it will not remain a conventional war.”57 This danger of nuclear use should be expected to have more by a nuclear exchange than India. However, sides.53 Only Pakistan’s delegative command and message was well understood by Indian leaders. come from deliberate first nuclear use rather than Indian officials would have strong incentives to control institutions indicate a lack of controllability As we discuss further below, India was careful not uncontrolled escalation. Third, signaling should make such public statements about the effects of in the crisis. to cross Pakistan’s key red line for nuclear use, have been feasible within the crisis.59 a hypothetical nuclear exchange whether or not

49 Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 272. 58 John H. Gill, “Provocation, War and Restraint Under the Nuclear Shadow: The Kargil Conflict 1999,” Journal of Strategic Studies 42, no. 5 (2019): 701–26, doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2019.1570144; Lavoy, “Why Kargil Did Not Produce General War.” 50 Quoted in Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 270–71. 59 We leave aside assessing the prediction of the model regarding the probability of nuclear use, since this is hard to evaluate within a single case. 51 Quoted in Chari, “Reflections on the Kargil War,” 363. 60 As discussed previously, Pakistan may have been less willing to enter into the war had it known that the outcome would be determined by the 52 Quoted in Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 270–71; Chari, “Reflections on the Kargil War,” 363; Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace conventional balance. Pakistan may have miscalculated the effects of nuclear signaling on Indian decision-makers and underestimated the number (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2000), 437. of conventional forces that India would marshal in response. Incorporating these miscalculations into the framework we offer would be a productive 53 On the role of the United States in the crisis, see Peter R. Lavoy, “Why Kargil Did Not Produce General War: The Crisis-Management Strategies avenue for future research. of Pakistan, India, and the United States,” and Bruce Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House,” both in Asymmetric 61 For differing assessments, see David Albright, “India’s and Pakistan’s Fissile Material and Nuclear Weapons Inventories, End of 1999,” Institute for Warfare in South Asia, ed. Lavoy. Science and International Security, Oct. 11, 2000, https://www.isis-online.org/publications/southasia/stocks1000.html; Robert S. Norris, William M. 54 Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, chaps. 3, 10. Arkin, Hans M. Kristensen, and Joshua Handler, “India’s Nuclear Forces, 2002,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 58, no. 2 (2002): 70–72, doi.org/10.10 80/00963402.2002.11460559; Robert S. Norris, William M. Arkin, Hans M. Kristensen, and Joshua Handler, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Forces, 2001,” Bulletin 55 Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 101. of the Atomic Scientists 58, no. 1 (2002): 70–71, doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2002.11460540; Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, “Global Nuclear 56 Quoted in Ganguly and Wagner, “India and Pakistan,” 483. Weapons Inventories, 1945–2013,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69, no. 5 (2013): 75–81, doi.org/10.1177/0096340213501363. 57 Quoted in Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 268. 62 Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy, 107.

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they were true.63 Moreover, Pakistan’s behavior in the Indian side, policymakers deliberately chose Coding the Cuban Missile Crisis crisis.74 However, this superiority was not absolute, the crisis is also consistent with the conventional not to open a second front of the war or cross the and, crucially, the key leader — Kennedy — was balance determining the outcome. Overall, it is LoC, signaling their limited political goals and lack We argue that the Cuban Missile Crisis was not skeptical both that U.S. nuclear superiority granted hard to make a strong case that nuclear superiority of interest in a broader war. characterized by incentives for deliberate first such benefits and that nuclear first use would offer played a key role in determining the outcome of the Overall, therefore, viewing the Kargil War as a nuclear use, despite the United States possessing the United States meaningful damage limitation, Kargil War. staircase crisis accounts for the key dynamics of significant nuclear superiority. In the early 1960s, stating, “What difference does it make? They’ve got The key danger of nuclear use was seen by the case. the United States could have launched 1,000 to enough to blow us up now anyway.”75 participants on both sides to be Pakistan’s 2,000 nuclear warheads at the deliberate first use rather than uncontrolled or Cuban Missile Crisis Soviet Union, the majority unauthorized nuclear use. As mentioned above, a of which would have been key dynamic of the conflict was India ensuring that The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is widely delivered by over 500 bombers its forces did not cross the LoC to avoid provoking considered the most dangerous crisis of the Cold and 200 intercontinental Pakistan’s deliberate first use of nuclear weapons. War. After detecting the movement of Soviet ships ballistic missiles. The Soviet Upon granting the Indian army authority to use toward Cuba and the development of missile Union, on the other hand, Indian air force assets at the end of May, the Indian sites, President John F. Kennedy called up 150,000 had only 160 bombers to government stipulated that “the air force refrain reservists and issued statements on Sept. 4 and carry around 260 nuclear from crossing the LoC in pursuit of its goals.” India Sept. 13, 1962, warning that the United States warheads, 38 intercontinental was clear that the Indian army not enlarge “the “would do whatever must be done” to protect its ballistic missiles, and 48 nuclear-missile-armed Similarly, the Soviet Union had little incentive theater of operations beyond the Kargil sector or… security.68 On October 22, Kennedy announced submarines.71 Despite America’s nuclear superiority, to use nuclear weapons first. A first strike by the attack Pakistani forces, staging posts, and lines that a naval quarantine would be established it was not clear that either a disarming first strike Soviets aimed at damage limitation was implausible: of communications across the LoC, despite the around Cuba.69 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev or politically meaningful damage limitation was A speech delivered by Deputy Secretary of Defense fact that this…entailed the acceptance of heavier responded by issuing a stern note to Kennedy and possible. The U.S. government did not know where Roswell Gilpatric on Oct. 21, 1961, confirmed that casualties.”64 This restriction remained in place instructing Soviet ships headed for Cuba to run the all of the Soviet warheads were located, and there the Soviet Union was behind the United States in despite substantial Indian casualties and the fact blockade. By October 26, however, Khrushchev’s were concerns that U.S. forces were too inaccurate the nuclear arms race, and that the United States that it would have been tactically useful for India resolve had waned. Kennedy received a letter from to successfully target the Soviet arsenal. According could endure a Soviet surprise attack and still inflict to enlarge the conflict zone to spread out Pakistani Khrushchev offering to remove the missiles from to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, by 1962 mass damage on the Soviet Union.76 U.S. superiority forces.65 This restraint is especially notable given Cuba in exchange for an end to the blockade and the United States knew that it could not deliver a was not, however, sufficient to cast doubt on the previous Indian responses to Pakistani incursions a U.S. assurance that it would not invade Cuba, “splendid first strike,” and that a U.S. first strike Soviets’ own ability to inflict significant destruction in both 1965 and 1971, when Indian forces showed with a second letter the next day adding a further “would have led to unacceptably high casualties on the United States after absorbing a first strike. little hesitation in invading Pakistan.66 condition: the removal of U.S. Jupiter missiles both in Europe and in the United States” and Moscow was therefore unlikely to face pressures to Both sides in the war were also able to signal from Turkey. Kennedy publicly accepted the “destroyed us as well as the Soviets.”72 McNamara’s “use them or lose them” during a crisis. “Missiles their limited intentions, as our framework would terms of the first letter, while in private agreeing recollection is consistent with a briefing that are not cucumbers,” Khrushchev quipped, “one anticipate in a staircase crisis. On the Pakistani to Khrushchev’s demand to remove the Jupiter Kennedy received in 1961 from the Chairman of the cannot eat them and one does not require more side, the military took a number of measures to missiles.70 On October 28, Khrushchev notified Joint Chiefs of Staff, which assessed that “under than a certain number in order to ward off an signal limited intentions: Pakistan withheld reserve the United States that he had ordered work on any circumstances—even [in the case of] a pre- attack.”77 forces, refrained from the use of air power across the Cuban missile sites to cease and all equipment emptive attack by the U.S.—it would be expected The Cuban Missile Crisis was, however, the LoC, and did not attempt to cut off the Indian shipped back to the Soviet Union. The blockade that some portion of the Soviet long-range nuclear characterized by low controllability. Indeed, each highway in Kargil on the assumption that taking was lifted on November 20, marking the end of force would strike the United States.”73 of our four indicators of this variable suggests low such action “would have far-reaching strategic the crisis. Whether such advantages were perceived as levels of crisis controllability. effects” and risk Indian escalation.67 Similarly, politically meaningful within the Cuban Missile First, both U.S. and Soviet command and Pakistan made clear nuclear threats to signal to Crisis itself is debateable. Certainly, several key U.S. control institutions governing nuclear weapons India that they should avoid broad retaliation. On leaders believed that nuclear superiority conferred suffered from significant shortcomings. On the political advantages to the United States within the U.S. side, a series of breakdowns of command and

63 Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy, 108–110. 71 Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leads Assess Military Threats (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 121. 64 Quoted in Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 271. 72 McNamara quoted in Press, Calculating Credibility, 124. 65 Chari, “Reflections on the Kargil War,” 362; Ganguly and Wagner, “India and Pakistan,” 491. 73 Quoted in Press, Calculating Credibility, 123–24. At this meeting, Kennedy did raise the possibility of a surprise nuclear strike against the Soviets, 66 Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process, 139; Kapur, “India and Pakistan’s Unstable Peace,” 147. commenting that since “the use of nuclear weapons was bound to escalate...we might as well get the advantage by going first.” Quoted in Francis J. Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 37. In the end, these deliberations 67 Quoted in Watterson, “Competing Interpretations of the Stability-Instability Paradox,” 97. This restraint presents a puzzle for the stability- amounted to little in terms of U.S. defense planning and by mid-1962 there is little evidence that Kennedy considered a first strike against the Soviet instabilty model of nuclear crises, of which the Kargil War is often believed one manifestation. Instead of escalating further, as would be expected by Union feasible. the stability-instability logic, Pakistan chose to acquiesce rather than open additional fronts and divert the superior Indian forces. Under the staircase model, however, this behavior makes more sense. See Chari, “Reflections on the Kargil War,” 364. 74 See, for example, Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve,” 150–51; Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy, 84–106. 68 Ernest R. May and Philip Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: W.W. Norton and 75 Quoted in Trachtenberg, “The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 148. See also James Cameron, The Double Game: The Company, 2002), 189. Demise of America’s First Missile Defense System and the Rise of Strategic Arms Limitation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), chap. 1; Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, George W. Ball, Roswell L. Gilpatric, Theodore Sorensen, and McGeorge Bundy, “The Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 69 Michael Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev 1960-63 (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 414, 423–35; Aleksandr Fursenko and Time Magazine, Sept. 27, 1982, 85; Schelling, Arms and Influence, 94. Timothy Naftali, ‘One Hell of a Gamble:’ Castro, Kennedy, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1958-1964 (London: John Murray, 1997), 206, 227. 76 Betts, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance, 105. 70 David Holloway, “Nuclear Weapons and the Escalation of the Cold War, 1945-1962,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, volume 1, ed. Odd Arne Westad and Melvin Leffler (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 393–94. 77 Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft, 68.

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communication could have led to accidental nuclear on board a ship carrying nuclear weapons.83 The use or other actions that could have triggered authorization to use nuclear weapons appears to escalation. As Scott Sagan concludes, Kennedy have been granted to commanders and included “did not…have unchallenged final control over the instructions, “if you get…a hole in your hull… U.S. nuclear weapons.”78 For example, navigational use the nuclear weapons first, and then you will errors by U.S. pilots led one B-52 to come close to figure out what to do after that.”84 The Soviets penetrating Soviet airspace and possibly coming may also have believed that their submarines were within range of Soviet interceptors.79 Similarly, less likely to provoke escalation than they really the U-2 incident at the height of the crisis could were since the Soviet leadership was unaware that easily have led to nuclear escalation: After the the deployed submarines were the noisier and American U-2 reconnaissance plane strayed into slower diesel submarines in their fleet that were Soviet airspace, U.S. F-102s armed with nuclear- more likely to be located. Indeed, nuclear launch tipped missiles and possessing the authorization came close to occurring: The commander of one to use them were sent to defend the U-2 from submarine, which was being targeted with depth Soviet fighter jets. At that point, the “decision charges by U.S. anti-submarine warfare ships, about whether to use a nuclear weapon was in interpreted the explosions of the depth charges 26 of the tightening “knot of war” and the difficulty forces raised the risk of inadvertent escalation and the hands of a pilot.”80 Beyond these institutional as an attack and ordered his officers to ready the of de-escalating hostilities.88 Khrushchev’s concern reduced the controllability of the crisis. deficiencies, many of the safety features that now submarine’s nuclear torpedoes for use, apparently increased further on October 27 with news that Fourth, crisis communication between the United exist to prevent accidental explosions had not yet screaming that “we will die but we will sink them a Soviet commander in Cuba had shot down an States and Soviet Union was widely recognized to been developed. Benoît Pelopidas notes that in the all.”85 America’s understanding of these risks was American U-2 plane without his authorization, and be problematic, leading to the establishment of early 1960s, merely “pull[ing] the arming wires out limited. The United States was unaware that Soviet that Cuban leader Fidel Castro was advocating a the U.S.-Soviet “hotline” in 1963. Official messages of a Mark 7 nuclear warhead” would trigger the submarines were armed with nuclear missiles, nuclear strike against the United States.89 Similarly, took six hours to deliver, while unofficial channels arming sequence, and that “if the X-Unit charged, and lacked certainty about Soviet command and the United States was unsure what military actions were prone to miscommunication. The confusion a Mark 7 could be detonated by its radar, by its control more broadly. During a conversation with might trigger Soviet escalations: U.S. officials were that resulted from contrasting letters sent by barometric switches, by its timer, or by falling…and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense divided over the significance the Soviets attached Khrushchev on October 26 and 27 exemplifies landing on a runway.”81 Moreover, readiness was Robert McNamara acknowledged not knowing to missiles in Cuba, and what the Soviets might be the problematic nature of crisis communication. privileged over safety during the Cuban Missile “what kinds of communications the Soviets have willing to risk to avoid removing them. Similarly, Kennedy received a letter offering to remove the Crisis. For example, when Strategic Air Command with those sites…what kinds of control they have U.S. officials assumed that the Soviet Union would missiles from Cuba and to cease further shipments went to DEFCON 2, safety rules had not yet been over the warheads.”86 respond if the United States attacked Cuba but in exchange for ending the quarantine and a non- approved for the B-53 gravity bomb. Strategic Air Second, the U.S. and Soviet red lines for nuclear were unsure what form those reprisals would take invasion pledge. This message took twelve hours Command (with the support of the Air Force Chief escalation were unclear to both sides at the outset and whether they might lead to general war or a to receive and decode. By the time a reply had of Staff) nonetheless requested approval for these of the crisis. The Soviet Union misjudged America’s more limited Soviet response. Indeed, officials in been drafted, a second letter had arrived in which non-approved bombs to be loaded onto bombers.82 red lines by placing missiles in Cuba in the first the Executive Committee of the National Security Khrushchev added a further condition: the removal Command and control arrangements on the place. Khrushchev initially believed that once the Council made a range of arguments regarding the of Jupiter missiles in Turkey. Puzzled by the shifting Soviet side also led to the possibility of unauthorized missiles were installed in Cuba the United States relative likelihood of different Soviet responses demands, Kennedy publicly accepted the terms of nuclear use. Most notably, Soviet submarines would be unwilling to risk war to remove them.87 should the United States invade Cuba.90 the first letter, while privately agreeing to remove were loaded with nuclear-tipped torpedoes and This belief was overturned, however, as Khrushchev Third, conventional and nuclear forces interacted the Jupiter missiles.91 at least one captain reported that the Cuban became deeply concerned by U.S. mobilizations during the crisis on multiple occasions in ways that Missile Crisis represented his first experience and nuclear alerts, writing to Kennedy on October reduced the controllability of the crisis and raised Predictions the risk of nuclear use. As discussed above, Soviet submarines could have launched nuclear weapons The Cuban Missile Crisis exhibited few incentives while under pressure from conventional U.S. anti- to use nuclear weapons first and low levels of crisis 78 Sagan, The Limits of Safety, 72–73. submarine warfare assets unaware that they were controllability. It is therefore best understood as 79 Sagan, The Limits of Safety, 74. engaging nuclear-armed Soviet submarines. On a “brinkmanship” crisis. What dynamics should 80 Pelopidas, “The Unbearable Lightness of Luck,” 246; Sagan, The Limits of Safety, 135–38. the U.S. side, the F-102s sent to retrieve and escort we therefore expect to see in this case? First, we 81 Pelopidas, “The Unbearable Lightness of Luck,” 246–47; Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the U-2 inadvertently flying into Soviet airspace should expect the crisis to have been primarily the Illusion of Safety (London: Penguin, 2013), 261. could have launched their own nuclear weapons characterized by the manipulation of risk, with the 82 Sagan, The Limits of Safety, 72–73. while under pressure from Soviet fighters. This conventional or nuclear balance affecting the crisis 83 Svetlana Savranskaya, “New Sources on the Role of Soviet Submarines in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Journal of Strategic Studies 28, no. 2 (2005): interaction between nuclear and conventional outcome in less direct ways. Second, the primary 238, doi.org/10.1080/01402390500088312; Scott D. Sagan, “Nuclear Alerts and Crisis Management,” International Security 9, no. 4 (1985): 112–18, doi.org/10.2307/2538543. 84 Savranskaya, “New Sources on the Role of Soviet Submarines,” 240. 88 Within our framework, it is plausible that U.S. alerts and mobilizations may have led Khrushchev to better understand U.S. red lines over the course of the crisis, contributing to its resolution. 85 Savranskaya, “New Sources on the Role of Soviet Submarines,” 247. 89 Fursenko and Naftali, ‘One Hell of a Gamble’, chap. 19; Sheldon M. Stern, The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis 86 Trachtenberg, “The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 154. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 157. 87 Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence (New York: Random House, 1995), 52; Sergei Khrushchev, Creation of a Superpower (Philadelphia, PA: Penn State 90 Trachtenberg, “The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 153–54. University Press, 2000), 565; Oleg Troyanovsky, “The Making of Soviet Foreign Policy,” in Nikita Khrushchev, ed. William Taubman, Sergei Khrushchev, and Abbott Gleason (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 236. 91 Holloway, “Nuclear Weapons and the Escalation of the Cold War,” 393–94.

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danger of nuclear use should be expected to have American strategic nuclear superiority as well as come from uncontrolled nuclear escalation rather U.S. conventional superiority in the region. Instead, The brinkmanship than deliberate first nuclear use. Third, signaling as Schelling argues, the crisis is best understood as a should have been feasible within the crisis.92 case of states manipulating risk: “The Cuban Crisis These predictions are, indeed, confirmed. First, was a contest in risk taking, involving steps that model, by emphasizing scholars have often been skeptical that U.S. nuclear would have made no sense if they led predictably or conventional military superiority in the region and ineluctably to a major war, yet would also have affected the outcome in a direct way, and if it did made no sense if they were completely without affect the outcome, that it did so by affecting U.S. danger.”99 Our argument does not require nuclear the dangers of resolve and willingness to manipulate risk.93 There superiority to have had no effect during the is indeed evidence that some of Kennedy’s advisors crisis. For example, as discussed above, nuclear believed that U.S. nuclear superiority should factor superiority could affect risk tolerance or resolve into their calculations.94 However, as discussed within the framework of brinkmanship crises. uncontrolled above, Kennedy himself seems to have been Nonetheless, the brinkmanship model accurately disinclined to draw comfort (or courage) from U.S. captures the key dynamic — the manipulation of nuclear advantages. Historians have largely shared risk — of the Cuban Missile Crisis. escalation, sheds this assessment: Marc Trachtenberg concludes Second, historians, political scientists, and that “there is no evidence that President Kennedy participants in the crisis agree that the primary and his advisers counted missiles, bombers, and danger of the Cuban Missile Crisis was uncontrolled warheads, and decided on that basis to take a escalation rather than deliberate first nuclear use. light on why luck was tough line,” while James Cameron shows that, As a group of former officials from the Executive despite Kennedy having come to power railing Committee of the National Security Council later against the (fictional) missile gap with the Soviet recalled, “The gravest risk in this crisis was not Union, once in office, he viewed U.S. nuclear that either head of government desired to initiate required to peacefully superiority as largely useless.95 As veterans of the a major escalation but that events would produce crisis McNamara, Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, Ted actions, reactions, or miscalculations carrying the Sorensen, Roswell Gilpatric, and George Ball later conflict beyond the control of one or the other commented, “American nuclear superiority was or both.”100 Similarly, scholars have repeatedly negotiate the Cuban not in our view a critical factor…Not one of us ever emphasized the importance of luck in preventing reviewed the nuclear balance for comfort in those nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. For hard weeks. The Cuban missile crisis illustrates… example, Sagan writes that “good luck [was] Missile Crisis. the insignificance of nuclear superiority.”96 involved in avoiding accidental war in October Although the United States succeeded in achieving 1962”, while Dean Acheson concluded that the its goals once the crisis had begun, and is therefore peaceful resolution of the crisis came down to often (and reasonably) understood to have “won” “dumb luck.”101 Len Scott and Steve Smith write that the crisis,97 the actual result of the crisis — a quid “the fact that the crisis did not lead to nuclear war pro quo that left the Soviets better off than the pre- was due…to good luck,” while Pelopidas concludes crisis status quo98 — seems inconsistent with both that the “peaceful outcome cannot be reduced to

92 Again, we leave aside assessing the prediction of the model regarding the probability of nuclear use, since this is hard to evaluate within a single case. 93 See, for example, Trachtenberg, “The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis”; Cameron, The Double Game, chap. 1; Rusk et al., “The Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 85; Schelling, Arms and Influence, 94. For the argument that U.S. nuclear superiority affected U.S. resolve, see Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve,” 150–51. 94 Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve,” 150–51; Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy, 84–106. 95 Cameron, The Double Game, chap. 1. 96 Rusk et al., “The Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 85. These statements should be taken with a grain of salt given the political context in which they were made: by officials from a former Democratic administration opposed to the Reagan administration arms buildup. 97 See, for example, Kroenig, “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve.” 98 In exchange for the removal of missiles from Cuba, the Soviet Union received two new concessions from the United States: the withdrawal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey and a commitment not to invade Cuba. 99 Schelling, Arms and Influence, 94. 100 Rusk et al., “The Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 85. 101 Sagan, The Limits of Safety, 154. For a thorough examination of the role of luck in the Cuban Missile Crisis, see Pelopidas, “The Unbearable Lightness of Luck.”

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successful, fully informed crisis-management.”102 Contemporary and Future Crises: dynamics of this case. Despite the relatively high faced with the prospect of a U.S.-led invasion, The brinkmanship model, by emphasizing the Doklam and U.S.-North Korea levels of military escalation — hundreds of troops Pyongyang’s conventional inferiority dangers of uncontrolled escalation, sheds light on were deployed to the region — there was little requires it to degrade the United States’ why luck was required to peacefully negotiate the Our framework therefore sheds light on prominent fear by either side that nuclear weapons would ability to sustain the attack against it. This Cuban Missile Crisis. historical crises. Accounting for the heterogeneity be used. Signaling took place using conventional means it essentially has no option but to use Third, as anticipated, both sides engaged in of nuclear crises allows us to understand key troop deployments but without using nuclear nuclear weapons first against targets such signaling and escalation using conventional military differences between the Cuban Missile Crisis and threats. The outcome of the crisis — a return to as Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, which forces and the alerting of nuclear forces, behaviors the Kargil War better than a single model of nuclear the status quo desired by India and Bhutan — stations American bombers, and a variety of that the brinkmanship model would anticipate. crisis. What, then, does the framework offered here appears consistent with the conventional balance allied bases in Japan and South Korea. North American officials “were willing during the crisis to suggest about more contemporary crises? In this given India’s “unique hard power advantages in the Korea has to use nuclear weapons there accept a certain risk of nuclear war; and…the risk section, we briefly use our framework to shed light Himalayan region.”112 Finally, viewing the Doklam because it does not have enough conventional of nuclear war was consciously manipulated.”103 on the 2017 Doklam crisis between India and China standoff as a stability-instability crisis provides warheads to damage the bases meaningfully; Military deployments and alerts were ordered less and a potential U.S.-North Korean crisis. an explanation for why China was prepared to a conventional response would not slow or because of their narrow military utility but more provoke a crisis with another nuclear-armed state stop a U.S. onslaught.115 as measures to signal U.S. intentions and raise The Doklam Crisis over relatively low stakes: Stability-instability the risk of war. For example, McNamara argued crises are relatively “safe” in terms of the risk of The United States may also face temptations for that the point of the blockade “was not to shoot The 2017 Doklam crisis between India and China nuclear escalation, and states should therefore be first nuclear use.116 A nuclear counterforce strike Russians but to communicate a political message — a standoff over disputed territory where the willing to provoke them to secure even relatively might be crucial to removing North Korea’s ability from President Kennedy to Premier Khrushchev.”104 borders between China, India, and Bhutan intersect limited interests. to retaliate against South Korea or Japan (or the Throughout the crisis, the United States used — would be classified as a stability-instability United States): The imperative to destroy North escalatory measures as signaling mechanisms: crisis according to our framework.109 First, neither A Possible U.S.-North Korean Crisis Korean offensive capabilities could thus lead to the When Kennedy addressed the nation on October side had strong incentives for first nuclear use: temptation to use nuclear weapons first and early 22, for example, U.S. nuclear forces were placed Both India and China had relatively small nuclear Finally, what does our framework suggest about in a conflict. As David Barno and Nora Bensahel on DEFCON 3 alert, Polaris submarines moved arsenals, geographically large territories and a potential U.S.-North Korea crisis? argue, only a “surprise nuclear strike provides a out of their ports to pre-assigned stations, and dispersed populations, longstanding no-first-use Both sides in a potential U.S.-North Korea nuclear decisive option. There is simply no other way to U.S. military commands throughout the world policies, and nuclear postures that are designed crisis might be incentivized to use nuclear weapons destroy North Korea’s nuclear capabilities while increased levels of readiness for war.105 On October to credibly threaten retaliation in the aftermath first.113 This is both because North Korea appears to minimizing the risk of massive conventional or 24, Kennedy made the unprecedented decision of a nuclear attack rather than first use.110 Second, be adopting an asymmetric escalation posture and nuclear retaliation.”117 Barry Posen, in arguing to raise the nuclear threat level to DEFCON 2 — the crisis was characterized by high levels of because of the significant disparities between the against a U.S. war with North Korea, acknowledges one level short of general war.106 On October 27, controllability: Neither sides’ nuclear weapons were nuclear capabilities of the two sides, which means that “a surprise American nuclear attack would Minuteman solid fuel missiles were placed on close to the conflict zone, both countries’ nuclear that North Korea plausibly lacks a secure second- offer the greatest chance of eliminating the alert at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.107 postures made unauthorized or accidental nuclear strike capability. For North Korea, using nuclear North Korean nuclear arsenal and of preventing a As Gen. David Burchinal, the director of plans on use unlikely, high levels of communication between weapons early in a conventional conflict might conventional counterattack,” making it a potentially the Air Staff, recalled in an oral history, “All these the two sides existed throughout the crisis, and be the only way to prevent a conventional defeat attractive option if war was deemed inevitable or moves were signals the Soviets could see and we each country’s declaratory no-first-use policy made by a far more powerful enemy or to make the necessary by U.S. planners.118 Moreover, recent knew they could see them.”108 it highly unlikely that either side would accidentally United States think twice about pursuing regime scholarship has suggested that some impediments Overall, viewing the Cuban Missile Crisis as stumble over the other’s red lines for nuclear use.111 change.114 As Vipin Narang argues, North Korea’s to U.S. nuclear use may be weaker than anticipated. a brinkmanship crisis accurately captures key Indeed, viewing the crisis as a stability-instability nuclear strategy appears to be one of asymmetric For example, the U.S. public may, in fact, be willing dynamics of the case. crisis appears to correctly account for key escalation: threatening nuclear first use to degrade to endorse nuclear use under a wide range of a conventional invasion while retaining longer- scenarios.119 Similarly, Daryl Press and Kier Lieber range nuclear missiles to deter nuclear retaliation argue that a nuclear counterforce attack against 102 Len Scott and Steve Smith, “Lessons of October: Historians, Political Scientists, Policy-Makers, and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” International Affairs 70, no. 4 (1994): 683, doi.org/10.2307/2624552; Pelopidas, “The Unbearable Lightness of Luck,” 244. by the United States. Narang notes that, North Korea could potentially be conducted with 103 Trachtenberg, “The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 140. 112 Panda, “Disengagement at Doklam.” 104 Sagan, “Nuclear Alerts and Crisis Management,” 110. 113 Van Jackson, On the Brink: Trump, Kim, and the Threat of Nuclear War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 197. 105 Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 51–52. 114 Vipin Narang, “Why Kim Jong Un Wouldn’t be Irrational to Use a Nuclear Bomb First,” Washington Post, Sept. 8, 2017, http://wapo. 106 Sagan, “Nuclear Alerts and Crisis Management,” 109. See also “Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962,” Strategic st/2gRxIdm?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.20ae71c09a9b; Jackson, On the Brink, 158, 197. See also Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The Nukes We Need: Air Command Headquarters, History and Research Division, Historical Study no. 90, volume 1 (1963), https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/ Preserving the American Deterrent,” Foreign Affairs88, no. 6 (November/December 2009): 39–51, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20699714. dobbs/SAC_history.pdf. 115 Narang, “Why Kim Jong Un Wouldn’t be Irrational to Use a Nuclear Bomb First,” 107 “Strategic Air Command Operations in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 97. 116 On U.S. senior policymakers’ public support for preventive war options, see Jackson, On the Brink, 137, 158–61, 163. 108 Quoted in Trachtenberg, “The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” 157. 117 David Barno and Nora Bensahel, “The Growing Danger of a U.S. Nuclear First Strike on North Korea,” War on the Rocks, Oct. 10, 2017, https:// 109 For analyses of various aspects of the Doklam crisis, see Simon Denyer and Annie Gowen, “Who Blinked in the India-China Military Standoff,” warontherocks.com/2017/10/the-growing-danger-of-a-u-s-nuclear-first-strike-on-north-korea/. Washington Post, Aug. 30, 2017, https://wapo.st/2wRCH4x?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.75e6447451b4; Ankit Panda, “The Political Geography of the 118 Barry R. Posen, “The Price of War With North Korea,” New York Times, Dec. 6, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/opinion/north-korea- India-China Crisis at Doklam,” Diplomat, July 13, 2017, http://thediplomat.com/2017/07/the-political-geography-of-the-india-china-crisis-at-doklam/; united-states-war.html. Ankit Panda, “Disengagement at Doklam: Why and How Did the India-China Standoff End,” Diplomat, Aug. 29, 2017, http://thediplomat.com/2017/08/ disengagement-at-doklam-why-and-how-did-the-india-china-standoff-end/. 119 Daryl G. Press, Scott D. Sagan, and Benjamin A. Valentino, “Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons,” American Political Science Review 107, no. 1 (2013): 188–206, doi.org/10.1017/S0003055412000597; Scott D. Sagan and Benjamin 110 Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, chaps. 4 and 5. A. Valentino, “Revisiting Hiroshima in Iran: What Americans Really Think About Using Nuclear Weapons and Killing Noncombatants,” International 111 Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era. Security 42, no. 1 (2017): 41–79, doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00284.

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minimal casualties and limited environmental implications and contributions of our argument. biases and misperceptions into our framework to consequences.120 In short, both sides in a potential First, the framework offered here provides a further problematize policymakers’ perceptions U.S.-North Korean crisis could plausibly perceive simple way to assess the relative danger and likely of the concepts we identify.126 Third, it would incentives for first nuclear use. dynamics of a potential nuclear crisis in a way that be valuable to explore in greater depth how Furthermore, a crisis between the United States may be useful for analysts and policymakers. This knowledgeable policymakers are about various and North Korea would likely have low levels of framework would suggest, for example, that any features of our framework. One could imagine, for controllability:121 The robustness of North Korea’s crisis between the United States and North Korea example, that some factors, like the conventional command and control systems is unknown and would be more likely to lead to nuclear escalation balance or an adversary’s nuclear force posture, would likely be aggressively targeted in the initial and be more volatile than a crisis between the may be more easily known by decision-makers stages of any military confrontation; there are few United States and China, in which there would than others, such as an adversary’s threshold for institutionalized avenues for crisis negotiation be fewer incentives for either state to use nuclear nuclear use. Similarly, it would be interesting to or communication between the two sides; North weapons first and higher levels of controllability. explore the implications when adversaries lack Korea’s or America’s red lines for nuclear use are Similarly, nuclear superiority may grant the United a common understanding of the features of a unclear and ambiguous; and while any nuclear States benefits in a crisis with certain opponents, nuclear crisis — when “mismatches” emerge in use would likely be limited on the U.S. side given such as North Korea, but offer limited benefits in a adversaries’ assessments — and whether these the small geographic territory of North Korea, crisis with another state, like Russia. Such insights beliefs can change over time. There may also be North Korea’s small arsenal makes it more likely are likely to be more tailored and, therefore, more other variables that profoundly affect the dynamics that it would have to quickly use all weapons at useful to policymakers than inferences drawn from of nuclear crises that could be profitably added to its disposal in order to try to respond to any U.S. analyses that do not take into account the variation the role nuclear weapons play in nuclear crises our framework to produce a richer understanding first strike.122 If our assessment of incentives for among nuclear crises. might be accounted for if the Militarized Compellent of these cases. Finally, while this paper focuses first use and controllability are correct, a potential Second, our framework has implications Threat dataset that Sechser and Fuhrmann use on the dynamics of nuclear crises rather than the crisis between the two countries would likely for scholars conducting both theoretical contains a greater number of stability-instability substantive issues that underly them (for example, unfold according to the logic of the firestorm model and empirical research on nuclear crises. crises (in which nuclear weapons should be disputed territory in the Doklam Crisis or Kargil — the most volatile and dangerous of the four Theoretically, it demonstrates that seemingly expected to be unrelated to conflict outcomes) War, or Soviet missiles in Cuba in the Cuban models and one in which sudden and significant divergent understandings of nuclear crises can and fewer staircase or firestorm crises (in which Missile Crisis), it is possible that crises in the escalation across the nuclear threshold is possible. be incorporated within a broader framework nuclear superiority may be consequential) than nuclear age may occur over different issues than U.S. policymakers should therefore be under no that specifies the circumstances under which the International Crisis Behavior dataset that in prior eras. Further research exploring the extent illusions that a conventional war with North Korea each type of crisis should be expected to occur. Kroenig employs.124 More broadly, crisis dynamics to which nuclear weapons affect the issues that will reliably remain conventional — rapid nuclear This framework also allows scholars to make should differ systematically across different types states compete over would be theoretically and escalation is highly possible. Given the costs of such better sense of the historical diversity of nuclear of crises. Seeking to find, for example, the average empirically useful. a war, avoiding any crisis with North Korea that crises and of conflicting findings by scholars. It effect of variables on crisis outcomes may be Thus, while our study offers an initial framework could quickly escalate should be a higher priority makes sense that the Cuban Missile Crisis and unrepresentative of the likely effects in any given to allow scholars, analysts, and policymakers to for U.S. policymakers than if a potential U.S.-North Kargil War unfolded according to different logics. crisis. Scholars should therefore be cautious about begin incorporating the historical richness of Korean crisis were likely to unfold according to one Similarly, we should not expect that other events drawing conclusions about a specific crisis from nuclear crises into their analyses, it is far from the of the other models of nuclear crisis. commonly coded as nuclear crises, such as the scholarship that analyzes all nuclear crises without last word on the subject. Much more remains to 1970 Cienfuegos Crisis, the 2001 Indian parliament taking this variation into account.125 be done to fully understand the complexity and attack, or the various Berlin crises, should have Finally, the framework presented above opens variety of nuclear crises, and the different risks and Conclusion unfolded in the same way. up a number of avenues for future research. First, dangers that they involve. For empirical scholars, the framework may we only offered an initial examination of the utility Nuclear crises do not operate according to a provide a way to make sense of apparently of our framework using four cases. Future work Acknowledgements: For helpful suggestions single logic. Instead, the presence of incentives to contradictory findings. Conclusions drawn from could more systematically assess the extent to and comments, we thank the anonymous reviewers use nuclear weapons first in a crisis and the degree one or two cases should not necessarily be which our variables explain variation across all and editors at the Texas National Security Review. of crisis controllability significantly affect both the expected to apply to crises of a different type.123 For nuclear crises, and the relative frequency with We also thank Stephen Biddle, Austin Carson, way in which nuclear crises unfold and the dynamics quantitative researchers, because different types which different types of crises occur. Second, the Cosette Creamer, Fiona Cunningham, Raymond that underpin them. Furthermore, historical crises of crises may be represented to varying degrees in framework offered here provides an initial effort Duvall, Rebecca Hersman, Sumit Ganguly, Francis exhibit variation on these dimensions, suggesting different datasets, it is not surprising that scholars to explore the heterogeneity of nuclear crises. Gavin, Charlie Glaser, Avery Goldstein, Brendan that the varieties of nuclear crises we identify drawing on different sources reach different Further disaggregating nuclear crises could reveal Green, Sameer Lalwani, Austin Long, Sean Lynn- above are not merely of hypothetical interest. conclusions. For example, the disagreement additional insights. For example, it would be Jones, Martin Malin, Ronald Krebs, Andrew Kydd, In our concluding remarks, we highlight some between Kroenig and Sechser and Fuhrmann over useful to incorporate literature on psychological Nicholas Miller, Alex Montgomery, Reid Pauly, Benoît

124 Kroenig “Nuclear Superiority and the Balance of Resolve”; Sechser and Fuhrmann, “Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail.” Kroenig proposes a 120 Lieber and Press, “The New Era of Counterforce,” 31. different explanation for the differences in their findings based on selection effects. See Kroenig, The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy. 121 For example, Jackson notes that a U.S.-North Korea crisis would be “much less controlled” than the Cuban Missile Crisis — a crisis already 125 For a similar point on the literature on the causes of nuclear proliferation, see Mark S. Bell, “Examining Explanations for Nuclear Proliferation,” coded as having low controllability in our framework. Jackson, On the Brink, 159. International Studies Quarterly 60, no. 3 (2016): 527, doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqv007. 122 On these points, see Jackson, On the Brink, 164–65, 197, 207. 126 See, for example, Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976); Robert 123 See, for example, Trachtenberg, “The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis”; and Foot, “Nuclear Coercion and the Ending of Jervis, Ned Lebow, and Janice Stein, Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); Keren Yarhi-Milo, Knowing the the Korean Conflict.” Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence, and Assessment of Intentions in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).

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Pelopidas, Joshua Rovner, Elizabeth Saunders, Jennifer Spindel, Stephen Walt, Jessica Weeks, Sharon Weiner, Ketian Zhang, and audiences at George Washington University, Harvard Kennedy School, Princeton University, Sciences Po, the Stimson Center, the University of Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin, and annual meetings of the International Studies Association and the American Political Science Association. For excellent research assistance, we thank Sooyeon Kang.

Mark S. Bell is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota.

Julia Macdonald is an assistant professor of international relations at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver.

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The Strategist

This section is dedicated to publishing the work of current and former senior policymakers, members of the military, and civilian national security practitioners. The Strategist After the Responsible Stakeholder, What? Debating America’s China Strategy

Now that the responsible stakeholder approach to China AFTER THE is essentially defunct, how should America respond? There are four options — accommodation, collective balancing, RESPONSIBLE comprehensive pressure, and regime change. he Trump era has upended many aspects downright dangerous. of U.S. statecraft, not least among them The real debate involves the two middle options: America’s China policy. For 25 years collective balancing and comprehensive pressure. after the Cold War, the United States Collective balancing would rely on U.S. cooperation STAKEHOLDER, WHAT? executedT a largely bipartisan approach to managing with allies and partners to prevent China from a rising China. This strategy was based on the constructing a regional sphere of influence idea that a combination of persistent engagement or displacing the United States as the world’s and prudent hedging would ultimately socialize leading power. Comprehensive pressure would Beijing into the American-led international order. go further, attempting not simply to counter- DEBATING AMERICA’S In recent years, however, that strategy unraveled balance Chinese influence overseas but to actively as China became more repressive internally and erode China’s underlying political, economic, and grew stronger and more assertive externally. military power. These options, in turn, rest on In response, the Trump administration has different fundamental assumptions. Collective proclaimed the “responsible stakeholder” strategy balancing accepts that Chinese power is likely to CHINA STRATEGY dead and argued that Washington must get serious expand but assumes that it is possible to prevent about competing with Beijing. Beijing from using its power in destabilizing ways. Hal Brands and Zack Cooper Yet, competition is not an end in itself. Despite Comprehensive pressure assumes that China’s the emerging consensus that Washington’s old power must be limited and even diminished, strategy has failed, there is little agreement despite the risk that doing so will sharply escalate on what should replace it. What, exactly, tensions. Probing the logic of these strategies, and does America seek to achieve vis-à-vis China? assessing their various strengths and weaknesses, Should U.S. leaders indefinitely contain Chinese is critical to going beyond “competition” and geopolitical influence? Force the “breakup or adopting a new approach. The alternative — mellowing” of Chinese power? Pursue a grand practicing tactics without strategy — is no way to bargain with the Chinese Communist Party? confront the daunting geopolitical challenge that These are fundamental questions, which the China presents. administration has yet to answer. There are four basic options for resetting America’s China policy: accommodation, collective The Rise and Fall of the balancing, comprehensive pressure, and regime Responsible Stakeholder change. These options are ideal-types: They illustrate the range of possible approaches For decades, U.S. leaders undertook a largely and capture distinct analytical logics about the consistent, bipartisan approach to China. The nature of the China problem and the appropriate United States sought to integrate China into response. At one extreme, Washington could seek the global economy by opening its markets an accommodation with Beijing in hopes of striking and welcoming China into the World Trade a grand bargain and establishing a cooperative Organization. Washington also pushed Beijing long-term relationship. At the other extreme, the to assume a greater role in regional and global United States could seek regime change or even affairs. U.S. leaders hoped that their efforts would precipitate a military showdown to prevent China illustrate the benefits of membership in the from growing more powerful. Both of these options existing order and induce China, as Robert Zoellick assume that America must take urgent action explained in 2005, to “work with us to sustain the to “solve” the China challenge. Yet, neither of international system that has enabled its success.”1 these approaches is realistic, and, in fact, each is In the meantime, the United States committed to

1 Robert Zoellick, “Whither China? From Membership to Responsibility,” Remarks to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Sept. 21, 2005, https://www.ncuscr.org/sites/default/files/migration/Zoellick_remarks_notes06_winter_spring.pdf.

69 The Strategist After the Responsible Stakeholder, What? Debating America’s China Strategy

maintain the military capabilities and alliances that challenge American interests: supporting necessary to dissuade China from taking a more authoritarian regimes, engaging in widespread confrontational path.2 corruption, pursuing predatory trade practices The responsible-stakeholder paradigm offered a and major geo-economic projects meant to coherent “theory of victory”: It identified a desired project Chinese influence further afield, seeking outcome and employed all elements of American to stifle international criticism of its human rights power to bring about that outcome. Over time, abuses, practicing massive intellectual property the strategy produced greater Sino-American theft, and striving for technological dominance cooperation on a range of issues, from counter- in critical emerging fields, such as artificial piracy to climate change. It is increasingly clear, intelligence. Recently, China’s confidence has however, that the responsible-stakeholder strategy been on display, with Xi stating in 2018 that “no failed. Two of its core assumptions now appear one is in a position to dictate to the Chinese misplaced: the idea that China’s intentions would people,” after declaring in 2017 that China is ready become more benign over time, and the belief to “take center stage in the world.”4 Rather than that Washington had the power to keep Chinese becoming a responsible stakeholder in a U.S.-led ambitions in check until that shift occurred. system, China appears increasingly determined What happened instead was that, as China to compete with Washington for primacy in the rose, the Chinese Communist Party became more Indo-Pacific and beyond. willing to use its newfound power in coercive and These more assertive policies have been made disruptive ways.3 Confounding Western hopes that possible by China’s surprisingly rapid growth. China would liberalize, the Chinese Communist Between 1990 and 2016, China’s constant-dollar Party embraced more repressive policies, especially gross domestic product increased roughly twelve- after Xi Jinping became general secretary in fold and its military spending grew ten-fold.5 The People’s Liberation Army rapidly developed the tools — anti-ship missiles, quiet submarines, to U.S. values and interests” and declared the defense strategy focused on countering China.7 advanced fighter aircraft, and integrated air failure of China’s “integration into the post-war But these moves were accompanied by a warm, defenses — needed to contest American supremacy international order.”6 sometimes fawning, personal relationship between in the Western Pacific and give China greater In particular, China’s behavior increasingly President Donald Trump and Xi, by persistent ability to shape events in its region and beyond. threatens three enduring U.S. interests. First, hopes that Beijing would help deliver an agreement Surging national wealth also led to an explosion the United States seeks to maintain a favorable to denuclearize North Korea, and by speculation of Chinese trade, lending, and investment abroad, balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region and to that the Trump administration might yet resolve which enabled far more ambitious geo-economic deter a military conflict — over Taiwan, Korea, or its trade disputes with China through some sort statecraft. All told, this expansion of Chinese maritime Asia — that could undermine the regional of economic grand bargain. Meanwhile, the U.S. national power is unprecedented in modern history. order and cost American or allied lives. Second, withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership left It has dramatically narrowed the gap between China U.S. leaders have an interest in ensuring an open the United States without a credible strategy for and the United States and made it far more difficult international economy conducive to American combating China’s regional economic influence, 2012. Meanwhile, Beijing sought to control the for Washington to shape Beijing’s behavior. prosperity and competitiveness. Third, the and separate trade disputes with Japan and South Indo-Pacific region by coercing its neighbors, No strategy can survive the invalidation of United States seeks to preserve an international Korea rattled some of Washington’s key regional undermining U.S. alliances, practicing mercantilist its central premises: By the end of the Obama environment in which democracy, human rights, relationships. These conflicting actions feed the policies, steadily increasing its presence and presidency, the responsible-stakeholder concept was and the rule of law can flourish, and it seeks to perception that Trump is an unreliable partner, not influence in the South China Sea, and modernizing living on borrowed time. The Trump administration strengthen — where possible — the prevalence just for China but for allies as well. its military. drove the final stake through the concept in its 2017 of those practices abroad. As Chinese power has In short, the responsible-stakeholder strategy In the Indo-Pacific and beyond, moreover, National Security Strategy. The document slammed grown and Chinese behavior has become more may be dead, but U.S. leaders have not settled on China has engaged in a range of behaviors Beijing for attempting to “shape a world antithetical assertive, U.S. policymakers have come to see all an alternative. In conversations with experts, we three of these interests as being imperiled. have found that most scholars and policymakers 2 The logic of post-Cold War strategy toward China is discussed in Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner, “The China Reckoning: How Beijing Defied So far, however, the Trump administration’s efforts fall into one of four camps, based largely on American Expectations,” Foreign Affairs97, no. 2 (March/April 2018), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-02-13/china-reckoning; Hal Brands, “The Chinese Century?” National Interest no. 154 (March/April 2018), https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-chinese-century-24557. to protect these interests have been inconsistent. assumptions about China’s intentions, regional 3 On Chinese assertiveness, see Nien-Chung Chang Liao, “The Sources of China’s Assertiveness: The System, Domestic Politics or Leadership The administration levied tariffs on Chinese reactions, and the sustainability of U.S. primacy. Preferences?” International Affairs 92, no. 4 (July 2016): 817–33, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12655. goods, attacked China’s “predatory economics,” These four ideal-type options are outlined in Figure 4 Quotes from Gordon Watts, “President Xi Warns ‘No One Will Dictate to Chinese People,’” Asia Times, Dec. 18, 2018, https://cms.ati. announced a strategy to preserve a “free and 1 above and assessed in the sections that follow. ms/2018/12/president-xi-warns-no-one-will-dictate-to-chinese-people/; “Xi Jinping: ‘Time for China to Take Centre Stage,’” BBC.com, Oct. 18, 2017, open” Indo-Pacific region, and unveiled a national https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-41647872. See also Elizabeth Economy, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); China Military Power: Modernizing a Force to Fight and Win (Washington, DC: Defense Intelligence Agency, 2019); Aaron L. Friedberg, The Authoritarian Challenge: China, Russia, and the Threat to the Liberal International Order (Washington, DC: 6 National Security Strategy of the United States, December 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS- Sasakawa Peace Foundation, 2017), https://www.spf.org/jpus-j/img/investigation/The_Authoritarian_Challenge.pdf. Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf. 5 The figures can be found at World Bank, “GDP (constant 2010 US$),” https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD?locations=CN-RU; 7 “Advancing a Free and Open Indo-Pacific Region,” U.S. Department of State, Nov. 18, 2018, https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Military Expenditure Database, https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/1_Data%20for%20 ps/2018/11/287433.htm; “Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America,” U.S. Department of Defense, January all%20countries%20from%201988%E2%80%932017%20in%20constant%20%282016%29%20USD.pdf, both accessed January 2019. 2018, https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf.

70 71 The Strategist After the Responsible Stakeholder, What? Debating America’s China Strategy

The Risks of Accommodation hesitate to conclude grand bargains because they authoritarian system, and if China’s rulers can would almost certainly backfire. It is doubtful that fear that the rising power might simply seek to sustain high levels of economic growth and the United States could overthrow the Chinese Although the Trump administration has pushed renegotiate the deal later, when the balance has political stability long enough to make a serious Communist Party short of major war — after all, the relationship toward greater competition, shifted further in its favor. So even if the United bid for geopolitical dominance in the Indo-Pacific U.S. sanctions have failed to topple far weaker some experts believe that the United States and States cut a deal that satisfied China in the short and beyond, there is potentially an argument for governments — and efforts to do so might provoke China should manage their differences by striking term, there is little guarantee that Beijing would adopting drastic measures to avert this outcome. Beijing to lash out. Even if the United States a “grand bargain.” Charles Glaser suggests that remain satisfied if its influence continued to grow. If a confrontation between Washington and succeeded in deposing the party, there is no the United States should end its commitment to In fact, accommodation could incentivize greater Beijing is inevitable, this thinking goes, better to guarantee that a new government would be better. Taiwan in exchange for China peacefully resolving Chinese revisionism by signaling declining U.S. have that confrontation its maritime disputes and accepting a long-term willingness to defend its interests or by giving while it can still be U.S. military presence in the Indo-Pacific.8 Lyle Beijing control of valuable territory — such as won. To this end, U.S. Goldstein argues that the two countries should Taiwan — that could serve as a springboard officials could seek work together to encourage the development of to future aggression.10 Chinese leaders are also regime change in Beijing “cooperation spirals.” Chinese leaders, for their likely to be skeptical of a grand bargain given that through covert action or Forcing an all-out confrontation part, have touted “win-win” solutions and a new the United States has walked away from major all-out economic warfare. model of great-power relations.9 agreements signed in recent years — most notably The United States could even would be a strategy born The attraction of accommodation is obvious. the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord. provoke a military showdown If successful, it would avoid the costs associated Finally, perhaps because of the reasons listed in the hopes of crippling and of panic, not realism. with prolonged political, economic, military, previously, leaders in Washington and Beijing perhaps destroying the Chinese technological, and ideological competition, and appear averse to a grand bargain. Although Trump Communist Party. it would facilitate compromise on issues such as vaguely floated the idea in the months after his Radical as it sounds, such now- climate change, where joint U.S.-Chinese action is election, and there remains the possibility of a or-never thinking has influenced sorely needed. The logic of this approach is equally broad economic deal to deescalate the bilateral U.S. policy debates before. During the late 1940s, The collapse of Communist Party rule could lead straightforward: If the United States has failed to trade war, his administration recently and publicly an array of American strategists and informed to the rise of a radical nationalist military clique shape Chinese behavior through a combination dismissed a broader strategy of accommodation observers argued that Washington should just as easily as it could the emergence of a stable of engagement and hedging, then it should seek aimed at a comprehensive settling of differences.11 wage preventive war against the Soviet Union democracy. Nor would the emergence of such a to defuse the emerging confrontation before the Future U.S. administrations are likely to do the before Moscow acquired the bomb. The Truman democracy necessarily solve America’s problems. balance of power becomes even less favorable. same, given that both Republicans and Democrats administration rejected this option, but it pursued Young democratic governments are often more Unfortunately, accommodation is a bad bet for have strongly criticized China’s security activities, provocative policies of destabilization — such as warlike than their predecessors, and any successor several reasons. economic practices, and human rights violations. fomenting violent resistance in Eastern Europe and regime would have good reason to be angry with First, the United States cannot simply “make Meanwhile, Xi Jinping has provided few indications the Soviet Union — meant to weaken and perhaps the United States.15 a deal” on many core issues since those issues that he is willing to make serious compromises in cripple the Soviet empire before it became even Provoking war with Beijing would risk even more have to do with the territory and interests of U.S. pursuit of a deal. Quite the opposite: His recent more dangerous.13 These policies largely failed, cataclysmic effects: heavy American casualties and allies and partners. Washington does not itself speeches on both foreign and domestic policy however, and the idea of forcing a showdown with equipment losses, severe economic costs, cyber claim the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, Scarborough have been strident and confident.12 Even if a grand China also suffers from fatal defects. attacks against critical domestic infrastructure, Shoal, or Taiwan, so it cannot relinquish those bargain is theoretically possible, it is probably not First, although Beijing is sure to be a formidable and the potential for nuclear escalation.16 Starting claims. Entering negotiations with Beijing over in the cards. competitor, it would have to become far more such a war would also rupture American alliances the heads of leaders in Tokyo, Manila, and Taipei powerful — and aggressive — to constitute the and levy intense global condemnation upon the would undermine the U.S. network of alliances sort of existential threat that would justify such United States. Even if America were to win a and partnerships. U.S. leaders would thus find it The Dangers of Regime Change an extreme response. And while China may grow military conflict, any such victory would be Pyrrhic difficult to strike a grand bargain unless they are stronger, its own internal vulnerabilities — a in the extreme, for it would jeopardize the very also willing to entertain withdrawing from the If the quest for a comprehensive settlement of growing debt burden and accumulating economic security and influence a more competitive strategy Indo-Pacific. differences is likely to prove quixotic, so is another challenges, an aging population and festering is meant to protect. Second, neither U.S. nor Chinese leaders can extreme option rooted in a sense of great urgency: social instability, as well as simmering ethnic have much confidence that a bargain struck now bringing the competition to a head in hopes of tensions — suggest that its continued ascent is would hold in the future. At times of flux in the conclusively resolving the China problem. If not foreordained.14 Forcing an all-out confrontation international hierarchy, established powers often aggression and expansion are baked into China’s would be a strategy born of panic, not realism. Second, such an aggressive American strategy 8 Charles L. Glaser, “A U.S.-China Grand Bargain? The Hard Choice between Military Competition and Accommodation,” International Security 39, no. 4 (Spring 2015): 49–90, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00199. 13 See Marc Trachtenberg, “A ‘Wasting Asset’: American Strategy and the Shifting Nuclear Balance, 1949–1954,” International Security 13, no. 3 9 Lyle Goldstein, Meeting China Halfway: How to Defuse the Emerging US-China Rivalry (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015). (Winter 1988/89): 5–49, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538735. 10 See, on the general logic of this assertion, Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 194. 14 For example, Nicholas Eberstadt, China’s Demographic Outlook to 2040 and Its Implications (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 2019), https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/China%E2%80%99s-Demographic-Outlook.pdf. 11 Josh Rogin, “Pence: It’s Up to China to Avoid a Cold War,” Washington Post, Nov. 13, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/ wp/2018/11/13/pence-its-up-to-china-to-avoid-a-cold-war/. Also see Ely Ratner, “There Is No Grand Bargain With China,” Foreign Affairs, Nov. 27, 15 Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War,” International Security 20, no. 1 (Summer 1995): 5–38, http:// 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-11-27/there-no-grand-bargain-china. muse.jhu.edu/article/447386. 12 Chris Buckley and Steven Lee Myers, “4 Takeaways from Xi Jinping’s Speech Defending Communist Party Control,” New York Times, Dec. 18, 16 Providing for the Common Defense: The Assessment and Recommendations of the National Defense Strategy Commission (Washington, DC: 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/world/asia/xi-china-speech-takeaways.html. U.S. Institute of Peace, 2018), https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/2018-11/providing-for-the-common-defense.pdf.

72 73 The Strategist After the Responsible Stakeholder, What? Debating America’s China Strategy

Collective Balancing closer security relationships with the United States. stand by its commitments. Instances of the United deploying additional military capabilities to man- Time is therefore on America’s side, advocates of States failing to help its friends beat back gray-zone made Chinese islands or declaring an Air Defense If U.S. leaders accept that China poses a collective balancing argue, so long as the United coercion — such as the Scarborough Shoal incident Identification Zone covering the South China Sea. formidable challenge without a decisive solution, States adequately supports and encourages the in 2012 — have undermined perceptions of U.S. By showing that Washington is fully committed they are left with two primary options: collective resistance that Chinese assertiveness provokes. reliability in the region and discouraged allies and to sharper competition with China, advocates of balancing and comprehensive pressure. Where And if the United States and its allies and partners partners from taking a harder line toward Beijing.20 collective balancing argue, this strategy would these two strategies differ is in their approach to hold the line and show that China cannot overturn Conversely, since President Barack Obama stated rally the region and ensure that Beijing faces a the changing balance of power. Comprehensive the regional and international order, Beijing may multilateral coalition it cannot overwhelm. pressure seeks to reverse the ongoing power shift. eventually adopt more acceptable policies. Yet, a strategy of collective balancing has Collective balancing accepts that shift as a fact Collective balancing, then, would hinge on weaknesses. First, even a stronger American of life — and does not attempt to significantly America’s ability to maintain a coalition of approach might not be sufficient to pull together disrupt the economic relationship with China — countries sufficient to deter or counteract Chinese a diverse region and prevent China from altering but maintains that Beijing can be deterred by a revisionism. Doing so would require undertaking the status quo in significant ways. Close U.S. coalition of like-minded states. an array of enhanced measures to demonstrate that allies — namely South Korea and Japan — remain China has already surpassed the United States Washington can prevent Beijing from dominating at odds due to historical animosities.22 Similarly, in GDP (adjusted for purchasing power parity), the region politically, economically, and militarily, despite their common interest in resisting Chinese but advocates of collective balancing assert that and to assure regional states that the United States aggrandizement, the other South China Sea America still has the upper hand. After all, the will reliably back countries that stand up to Beijing. claimants are more divided than they were five United States retains treaty alliances with more In practice, this would necessitate significant years ago. China has proven adept at splitting than half of the world’s 20 largest economies and investments in new U.S. military capabilities regional organizations, such as the Association of has close partnerships with many others. Talk of to reverse the deteriorating regional balance of Southeast Asian Nations, by bribing or bullying U.S.-China rivalry therefore misses the larger point: power. The United States would also support vulnerable states.23 If China’s economic and The competition is not between China and the countries from Japan to Vietnam as they develop military power grows, so will its ability to peel off United States but between a comparatively isolated their own anti-access/area denial capabilities to that the Senkaku Islands fell within Article 5 of weaker members of any balancing coalition. Rather China and a broad-based, U.S.-led coalition. keep China at bay. Washington would use military the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty in 2014, Beijing has than hanging together, regional states might end Accordingly, the center of gravity for a strategy sales, training, exercises, and other tools to bolster avoided a major confrontation.21 up hanging separately. of collective balancing is the alignment decisions countries confronting Chinese coercion. U.S. Collective balancing thus requires closer Second, if China can sustain robust economic of states in the Indo-Pacific region. If Indo-Pacific leaders would simultaneously intensify efforts cooperation with allies and partners to determine growth, even a multilateral balancing strategy countries align with the United States in a firm to provide Indo-Pacific states with alternatives and demonstrate the extent of U.S. commitments. may ultimately be untenable. Former Treasury balancing coalition, then Washington would have to deepening economic dependence on China by Lingering questions about U.S. alliance guarantees Secretary Lawrence Summers predicts that the political, economic, and military power to rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (or a similar — namely, whether the U.S.-Philippines Mutual China’s economy will be twice the size of America’s resist Chinese efforts to alter the status quo in replacement) and working with key allies and Defense Treaty covers the islands and reefs that by 2050.24 Well before that, China may attain destabilizing ways. And if China cannot dominate partners to offer loans and capital to vulnerable Manila controls in the South China Sea — would sufficient military power to make U.S. (or U.S.- the Indo-Pacific, it would not be able to mount a countries. Good first steps include the recently be clarified, with the understanding that the risk plus-allied) intervention in areas such as Taiwan serious hegemonic challenge to the United States. passed BUILD Act, which will substantially increase of giving America’s friends license to engage in prohibitively expensive.25 If the balance continues Beijing would not be able to dictate the terms of U.S. development financing in the Indo-Pacific, and irresponsible behavior is dramatically outweighed to shift, problems of collective action would plague trade in the region in a way that gives it decisive the U.S.-Australia-Japan Trilateral Partnership for by the danger that unchecked Chinese salami- opponents of Chinese expansion, shrinking the economic advantages over the United States; it infrastructure development.18 slicing would hollow out America’s alliances number of regional states willing to stand up would not have the regional springboard necessary Collective balancing would also feature stronger on the installment plan. Any Chinese efforts to to Beijing. And if a changing balance of power to project significant military power on a truly efforts to delineate acceptable Chinese behavior acquire control of new or disputed territory, or makes the Chinese leadership more accepting of international scale. In other words, by keeping from unacceptable activity, and to inflict harsher to restrict freedom of navigation or overflight, risk, even an impressive balancing coalition may China constrained and off-balance within the Indo- penalties on Beijing when lines are crossed. To would need to be met with a forceful response. not be sufficient to deter greater aggressiveness. Pacific, collective balancing prevents China from date, many U.S. positions regarding China have Diplomatic or economic costs would also have to Put simply, it may prove impossible to accept reshaping the world beyond the Indo-Pacific.17 been murky, such as Washington’s ambiguous be imposed for other destabilizing actions, such as the ongoing U.S.-China power shift while still As the logic of collective balancing would approach to application of the U.S.-Philippines predict, Beijing’s coercive actions already appear Mutual Defense Treaty.19 China has often 20 Ashley Townshend, “Duterte Deal with China over Scarborough Shoal exposes US failure,” CNN, Oct. 31, 2016, https://www.cnn. to be facilitating greater cooperation among some challenged these commitments using “gray zone” com/2016/10/31/opinions/philippines-china-us-scarborough-shoal-south-china-sea/index.html. regional states, such as Japan, India, and Australia, coercion — incremental expansion designed to 21 Zack Cooper, “Flashpoint East China Sea: Potential Shocks,” Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, Center for Strategic and International while also causing those and other countries to seek probe when and where Washington is willing to Studies, April 27, 2018, https://amti.csis.org/flashpoint-east-china-sea-potential-shocks/. 22 “Japanese PM Abe’s Adviser Says China Could Gain, US Lose from Japan-South Korea Feuds,” Straits Times, Jan. 24, 2019, https://www. straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/japanese-pm-abes-adviser-says-china-could-gain-us-lose-from-japan-south-korea-feuds. 17 This interpretation of the relationship between regional hegemony and global primacy follows John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2014). 23 Brahma Chellaney, “Divided Asean Spins Its Wheels as Great Powers Become Back-Seat Drivers in Southeast Asia,” South China Morning Post, Aug. 19, 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2160250/aseans-limits-are-display-effort-build-robust-southeast. 18 On the importance of the BUILD (Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development) Act and reforming U.S. development finance efforts, see Daniel Kliman, “To Compete with China, Get the New U.S. Development Finance Corporation Right,” Center for a New American Security, 24 Lawrence H. Summers, “Can Anything Hold Back China’s Economy?” Washington Post, Dec. 3, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ Feb. 6, 2019, https://www.cnas.org/publications/commentary/to-compete-with-china-get-the-new-u-s-development-finance-corporation-right. opinions/can-anything-hold-back-chinas-economy/2018/12/03/9140fc06-f726-11e8-8c9a-860ce2a8148f_story.html?utm_term=.489611680d48. 19 Gregory Poling and Eric Sayers, “Time to Make Good on the U.S.-Philippine Alliance,” War on the Rocks, Jan. 21, 2019, https://warontherocks. 25 Eric Heginbotham et al., The U.S.–China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the Evolving Balance of Power 1996–2017 (Santa Monica, com/2019/01/time-to-make-good-on-the-u-s-philippine-alliance/. CA: RAND Corp., 2015), https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR392.html.

74 75 The Strategist After the Responsible Stakeholder, What? Debating America’s China Strategy

maintaining an acceptable regional balance. War I, lamenting that his allies and partners were Third, key Trump administration policies dropping away “like rotten pears.”28 And because have undermined America’s alliance edge. The collective balancing deals only with the outward alignment decisions of regional states would take manifestations of Chinese power — as opposed to center stage in a collective-balancing approach, putting greater pressure on the underlying sources and the wisdom of U.S. policies would be viewed of that power — it takes a great deal of U.S. leverage through this lens. Yet, the administration’s off the table. Consequently, it might be necessary withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership for the United States to take a sharper posture damaged U.S. relationships in the region, leaving toward China by adopting a comprehensive many countries more dependent on and vulnerable pressure strategy reminiscent of Washington’s to China. Trump’s application of tariffs on steel and containment of Moscow during the Cold War. aluminum for purported national security reasons In some ways, a comprehensive pressure strategy has hurt many allies and partners. Finally, as the would look a lot like collective balancing. It would Trump administration’s first secretary of defense, include intensified military, diplomatic, and geo- James Mattis, suggested in his resignation letter, economic initiatives meant to stymie China’s bid for Trump does not appear to believe in “maintaining primacy in the Indo-Pacific and perhaps beyond. In strong alliances and showing respect to those addition, comprehensive pressure would feature allies.”26 In all these ways, the administration has initiatives meant to give the United States greater made it more difficult to execute a strategy of strategic autonomy vis-à-vis China and to reduce collective balancing. Chinese power over time. At a minimum, the United States would disentangle itself from China in sectors where the existing level of economic Comprehensive Pressure interdependence threatens America’s ability to resist Chinese advances — for example, by ending The limitations of collective balancing raise an the practice of sourcing critical components of U.S. obvious question: What if cooperation with allies military capabilities from Chinese companies.29 and partners proves insufficient to check China’s At a maximum, comprehensive pressure might momentum and preserve peace in the Indo-Pacific? entail weakening China’s economy by imposing After all, America has long sought to inhibit the broad-based tariffs, excluding China from trade malign expression of Chinese power but has had agreements, restricting allied trade with and Budgetary Assessments suggests.31 The goal would and ideological warfare to weaken the foundations diminishing success as Beijing’s capabilities and investment in China, and undermining China’s role not be to overthrow the regime but, rather, to of the Soviet empire during the Cold War. ambitions have grown. in global supply chains.30 weaken China’s geopolitical potential by diverting Although the Trump administration’s approach The RAND Corporation reports that the military Comprehensive pressure could also feature its attention and resources to domestic challenges. to China has been muddled, the administration balance in the Western Pacific is rapidly nearing efforts to politically and ideologically undermine A proposal with parallels to containment has undertaken some initiatives consistent with a series of “tipping points” at which America’s the Chinese Communist Party. This could include immediately meets with derision from some a comprehensive pressure strategy. Most notably, superiority and ability to deter Chinese aggression sanctions against Chinese leaders involved in American critics (and Chinese spokespersons), the administration has attempted to address the against Taiwan or even in the South China Sea repression, stronger condemnation of Chinese who argue that the strategy reeks of “Cold War glaring contradiction at the heart of America’s might rapidly erode.27 China also has extensive human rights violations, and even attempts to thinking.” Yet, there are real advantages to this post-Cold War strategy toward China: the fact economic ties with all the countries of the Indo- undermine the legitimacy of the regime by releasing approach. If the United States cannot effectively that the United States has long sought to contain Pacific, including every U.S. ally. If these trends files on corruption by top party leaders and their fight a prolonged war against China because — China’s ability to challenge the American-led world continue, holding the line may prove impossible: families. It might also involve efforts “to introduce as a recent Defense Department report explains order while simultaneously helping China build The United States could find itself in the position new information into relatively closed societies,” — the Pentagon relies on Chinese suppliers for the economic and military wherewithal to mount of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II before World as a recent report by the Center for Strategic and “a number of critical energetic materials used such a challenge. In a stark change of approach, in munitions and missiles,” then Sino-American a faction within the administration has supported economic integration has gone too far.32 There is the president’s trade war with China not as a no question, moreover, that China’s economic and bargaining tactic but as a way of weakening China’s political strains constitute strategic vulnerabilities economy.33 Furthermore, Vice President Mike 26 James Mattis, “Resignation Letter as Secretary of Defense,” Defense Department, Dec. 20, 2018, https://media.defense.gov/2018/ Dec/20/2002075156/-1/-1/1/LETTER-FROM-SECRETARY-JAMES-N-MATTIS.PDF. that the United States could exploit for competitive Pence’s October 2018 speech on China, which advantage, just as America used economic denial indicted Beijing for an array of foreign and domestic 27 Heginbotham et al., U.S.-China Military Scorecard. 28 Trachtenberg, “Wasting Asset,” 41. 31 Thomas Mahnken, Ross Babbage, and Toshi Yoshihara, Countering Comprehensive Coercion: Competitive Strategies Against Authoritarian 29 See Derek Scissors and Daniel Blumenthal, “China Is a Dangerous Rival, and America Should Treat It Like One,” New York Times, Jan. Political Warfare (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2018), 60–61; Hal Brands and Toshi Yoshihara, “Waging Political 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/opinion/us-china-trade.html; Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Warfare,” National Interest no. 159 (January/February 2019). Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States, Department of Defense, September 2018, https://media.defense.gov/2018/ Oct/05/2002048904/-1/-1/1/ASSESSING-AND-STRENGTHENING-THE-MANUFACTURING-AND DEFENSE-INDUSTRIAL-BASE-AND-SUPPLY-CHAIN- 32 Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States, Defense RESILIENCY.PDF. Department. 30 For consideration of the range of options, see Aaron Friedberg, “A New U.S. Economic Strategy toward China?” Washington Quarterly 40, no. 4 33 David Chance and Roberta Rampton, “Death by China’ Economist Ascendant as Trump Pushes Tariffs, Hits China,” Reuters, March 8, 2018, (Winter 2018): 97–114, https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2017.1406710. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-trump-navarro-analysis-idUSKCN1GJ2TU.

76 77 The StrategistScholar After the Responsible Stakeholder, What? Debating America’s China Strategy

misdeeds, seemed designed as a call to arms in the (as well as U.S. universities) are still heavily manner of Winston Churchill’s 1946 “Iron Curtain” invested in Beijing.36 Opposition from allies and Consequently, it might speech or Harry Truman’s 1947 “Truman Doctrine” domestic critics might be overcome, of course. And address. Likewise, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo if, as seems increasingly likely, China emerges in used the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square the coming decades as a global military challenger be necessary for the massacre to highlight the coercive nature of the as threatening as the Soviet Union once was, then Chinese Communist Party and proclaim American the United States will probably have to move to a solidarity with Chinese citizens seeking greater more confrontational policy eventually. But doing political freedoms and human rights.34 so would require, at a bare minimum, concerted United States to take a Yet, the Trump administration’s periodic embrace public education and diplomatic campaigns laying of tougher China policies has triggered three out the case for why such a stark shift in policy core criticisms. First, embracing comprehensive is merited. If the Trump administration pivots sharper posture toward pressure means pushing U.S.-China relations into to comprehensive pressure without laying the a new and potentially more dangerous phase. groundwork at home and abroad, the result could The United States would no longer be able to be to weaken American competitiveness rather claim the moral high ground by saying that it than to strengthen it. China, by adopting a does not oppose China’s emergence on the world stage. Instead, it might face accusations of being the more aggressive party in the dispute. This Toward a Collective Pressure Strategy comprehensive pressure approach would certainly increase the difficulty of cooperation on issues such as climate change and Dealing with an increasingly confident, assertive management of future economic crises. Beijing, China is arguably the most difficult geopolitical moreover, would probably not remain passive challenge America has faced in a generation. It strategy reminiscent while the United States applied pressure. It might will prove more difficult still if Washington cannot respond in ways that would further ratchet up decide what it is ultimately trying to accomplish. tensions and raise the chances of outright conflict. We have outlined four strategies: accommodation, Given that China’s long-term power trajectory collective balancing, comprehensive pressure, of Washington’s is deeply uncertain in light of looming political, and regime change. The extreme strategies of economic, and demographic challenges, prudence accommodation and regime change are overly may counsel delaying such a decisive rupture in risky and likely to fail, perhaps catastrophically. containment of Moscow the relationship for as long as possible.35 The middle two strategies, collective balancing and Second, although some U.S. allies — such as comprehensive pressure, are more promising, but Japan — might quietly applaud the shift in U.S. each still involves significant challenges and risks. policy, many others would hesitate to embrace So how should America proceed? It bears during the Cold War. such an approach. Most U.S. allies and partners repeating here that these strategies are ideal- would fear that Washington was forcing them to types. They illustrate the range of options and choose sides in a U.S.-China confrontation. They clarify the logics and assumptions underpinning might well resist a strategy that requires them them. But they are not straightjackets, and a real- to significantly constrict their economic dealings world strategy might end up occupying the space with their largest trading partner, especially given between certain options or even combing aspects their vulnerability to Chinese economic coercion of them. This is particularly likely because the real and political meddling. If the United States goes world is messy and the future is hard to foresee. too far, too fast, it might inadvertently damage Both collective balancing and comprehensive relationships that will be critical to keeping China’s pressure rest on plausible logics, but they hold ambitions in check. different assumptions about the sustainability Third, domestic politics in the United States may of U.S. primacy. Informed experts hold diverse not be ready for comprehensive pressure. Hawkish opinions on this topic, so we can only make rhetoric toward China is becoming ever more informed guesses about which will ultimately be commonplace among U.S. officials and politicians, borne out by events. but the American technology and financial sectors Political and diplomatic constraints complicate

34 Brendan Cole, “Mike Pompeo Tells China to Own Up to How Many It Killed in Tiananmen Massacre,” Newsweek, June 4, 2018, https://www. newsweek.com/mike-pompeo-tells-china-own-how-many-it-killed-tiananmen-massacre-956468. 35 Daniel Blumenthal, “The Unpredictable Rise of China,” Atlantic, Feb. 3, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/how- americans-misunderstand-chinas-ambitions/581869/. 36 Zack Cooper and Annie Kowalewski, “The New Washington Consensus, ” Asan Forum, Dec. 21, 2018, http://www.theasanforum.org/the-new- washington-consensus/.

79 The Strategist After the Responsible Stakeholder, What? Debating America’s China Strategy

things further. Even if one believes, for example, A third step — essential to accomplishing the Implementation of collective pressure would be that comprehensive pressure is the ideal strategy, second — would be to situate the United States metered by how far and how fast critical domestic it may not be possible to get the domestic and itself to compete more effectively with China. and international audiences can be persuaded to international buy-in necessary to make that Washington should refocus its military, particularly go. Ultimately, if Beijing grows significantly more strategy effective, at least in the short term. the U.S. Navy and Air Force, on preparing for accepting of risk and its power markedly increases, Strategic analysis requires clearly delineating potential contingencies with China. This includes then collective pressure leaves the door open for options and the ideas behind them, but strategy making critical investments in long-range strike, a toughening of China policy — and prepares the must be implemented even when clarity is wanting. undersea warfare, active and passive missile ground for doing so. A hybrid approach is thus For these reasons, we favor a hybrid approach defenses, shore-based anti-ship missiles, and other appealing because it offers greater competitive fusing elements of collective balancing and capabilities that will be critical to defeating Beijing’s pressure than a pure strategy of collective balancing comprehensive pressure. This strategy, which anti-access/area denial strategy and honoring U.S. can provide, while avoiding the most escalatory, we call collective pressure, would seek to build security commitments in a crisis. Meanwhile, diplomatically counterproductive, and politically a coalition of allies and partners strong enough the United States would move to protect against divisive elements of comprehensive pressure. to deter or simply hold the line against Chinese Chinese intellectual property theft (or impose Reasonable observers can disagree about where revisionism until such a time as the Chinese greater economic and diplomatic costs in response to strike the balance between collective balancing Communist Party modifies its objectives or loses to such theft) and avoid defense industrial and comprehensive pressure. They may even prefer its grip on power. If China continues to challenge dependence on China. The U.S. government altogether different strategies. What is essential critical elements of that order, and if Chinese power would also need to improve interagency processes now is that this debate be more structured and continues to grow in dangerous ways, the United to address cross-cutting challenges, such as rigorous than it has been to date. Competition States would gradually intensify the pressure. It China’s United Front activities and support for itself is not a strategy. Advocates of any strategy would lead the coalition in efforts to reduce China’s authoritarian governments abroad.37 Finally, should make clear what they aim to achieve, how geopolitical, economic, and ideological influence; the United States would undertake a bipartisan they intend to do it, and what the accompanying weaken its power potential; and exacerbate the public education campaign about the need to take risks are. We believe a collective-pressure strategy strains under which Beijing operates. the China challenge seriously by reinvesting in offers the best way forward. But regardless of the The first step in such a strategy would be a massive American education and innovation. approach advocated, it is past time to stop circling transparency campaign designed to publicize the As with the other options, a hybrid strategy of the China problem and start a more analytically Chinese Communist Party’s coercive activities, this sort carries risks. Even a modest shift toward rigorous debate over what to do about it. unfair economic practices, growing military comprehensive pressure would raise bilateral capabilities, political repression, and human rights tensions and force difficult discussions with some Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger violations. A transparency campaign would aim to international partners and domestic stakeholders. Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the make clear that the United States remains a friend And because this strategy is still rooted in Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International of the Chinese people but is concerned about the collective balancing, it carries some of the risk Studies, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic party’s covert, corrupt, and coercive behavior. inherent in that approach, especially the possibility and Budgetary Assessments, and a Bloomberg Most importantly, such a campaign is essential to that Washington will find it impossible to build a Opinion columnist. His most recent books are building both the international support necessary coalition sufficient to deter Chinese revisionism. A American Grand Strategy in the Age of Trump for effective balancing and the domestic support hybrid strategy, critics could claim, would be akin and The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World necessary for a stronger pressure campaign. to leaping halfway across a chasm. Order (co-authored with Charles Edel). The second step in a collective-pressure strategy Yet, a strategy of collective pressure also would be a concerted effort to rally a broad, winning addresses some of the weakness in each of the Zack Cooper is a research fellow at the American coalition in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Changing ideal-type approaches it combines. Although Enterprise Institute, an associate at Armitage the alignment decisions of regional states is difficult collective pressure assumes that the Chinese International, and an adjunct assistant professor given relative power trends. It would, therefore, Communist Party is unlikely to become a at Georgetown University. He is writing a book on require a new U.S. approach. Simply highlighting responsible stakeholder, it leaves the door open strategic competition that explains how militaries Beijing’s malfeasance is not enough. Washington for Beijing to adopt more cooperative approaches, adapt during periods of rise and decline. must provide an attractive and reliable alternative. or for dynamics within China to bring about a To this end, the United States would clarify its mellowing of its external behavior. Moreover, this alliance commitments, including to the Philippines; strategy would still be rooted in America’s greatest reenergize efforts to build greater regional military asymmetric advantage — its global network of capability; rejoin the Trans-Pacific Partnership; allies and partners — but does not rely on them and actively support efforts by regional states to entirely. It also has the benefit of gradually making defend their sovereignty. Rather than criticizing American officials — and American society — allies and partners, this approach would seek to accustomed to a harder-edged strategy, rather attract and empower America’s friends. than asking them to make that shift suddenly.

37 Alexander Bowe, “China’s Overseas United Front Work,” U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Aug. 24, 2018, https://www. uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/China%27s Overseas United Front Work - Background and Implications for US_final_0.pdf.

80 81 The Strategist Crossroads: Counter-terrorism and the Internet

Brian Fishman, who leads the effort against terrorist and hate organizations at Facebook, argues that counter-terrorism researchers need to tailor their recommendations to the corporate policymakers inside tech companies who want to do far more than the bare minimum.

ublic policy is traditionally thought experience at the company. of as the work of governments, For the most part, tech companies have however, private actors — including voluntarily initiated their counter-terrorism universities, health care providers, and efforts. Nonetheless, there is an ongoing debate a Prange of other private infrastructure operators about what governments should require of private Brian Fishman — have long played important roles in shaping companies when it comes to matters of counter- both society and national security. And while terrorism. But focusing on regulation as the primary these institutions have typically operated under mode through which society can address terrorist regulatory frameworks that set basic operating activity online is misplaced. Indeed, the singular standards and compel information sharing with focus on government as the only actor in counter- governments, they also make important choices terrorism operations online is outdated. Many tech on their own that affect millions of lives. Now, companies actively counter terrorists online — tech companies are counted alongside these and the effects of that work are almost certainly institutions, but with a scope that is far wider broader and more important to overall online — spanning the globe and crossing innumerable counter-terrorism efforts than anything required by governmental jurisdictions — even if it is effectively government regulation. The question of whether or virtual and doesn’t involve driving specific not governments should require tech companies to healthcare decisions or determining security at conduct counter-terrorism operations is, of course, a particular power plant. Such dynamics raise politically important. However, the voluntary important questions both for how governments efforts made by these companies are likely to have should interact with tech companies to set a far greater impact on addressing the problem of behavioral guidelines as well as for the companies terrorist exploitation of the Internet. For example, themselves, which will inevitably determine how in the first nine months of 2018, Facebook removed to manage social challenges outside of a strict 14.3 million pieces of content related to the Islamic regulatory framework. One of the most important State, al-Qaeda, and their affiliates, only 41,000 of of these policy areas is counter-terrorism. which were flagged by external sources, primarily Private actors have long taken part in counter- regular users. The overwhelming majority of the terrorism efforts: Banks, critical infrastructure content removed came as a result of Facebook’s operators, and airlines are important elements voluntary internal efforts. Regardless of the future in societal efforts to protect against terrorism. regulatory environment, these efforts are likely to But terrorist use of the Internet has brought an remain critical. This is why the most important entirely new class of private actors to the forefront counter-terrorism questions involving Internet of the fight. Social media companies, both technology companies are what the scope of those individually and in concert with one another, have voluntary activities should be and the best ways to developed robust operations to prevent terrorists implement them. from abusing their platforms. Like all counter- Despite the importance of company actions, terrorism programs, these efforts are imperfect, counter-terrorism experts tend to focus their but they represent a significant new component recommendations narrowly to government actors of the societal response to terrorist violence. As rather than addressing tech companies directly. the head of Facebook’s effort to counter abuse by One reason for this is that very few counter- terrorists and hate organizations, I have a unique terrorism policy professionals have experience vantage point on the intersection of social media working in social media companies, whereas many and counter-terrorism, and the following essay, of them have experience working in government. though it does not argue for Facebook’s position These individuals therefore have relevant domain on any particular issue, certainly reflects my expertise about violent groups and about how

83 The Strategist Crossroads: Counter-terrorism and the Internet

government counter-terrorism efforts function, understanding the ways that terrorists use the how generic Internet functionality that is usually platform each uses for developing its audience. but they have little knowledge about corporate Internet and how that manifests on different used for positive social purposes can be abused Organizations like ISIL aim to recruit en masse, policymaking processes, the backend of web types of digital platforms. They also need a shared by bad actors.1 but smaller organizations looking to establish an technology, or operating at the scale of today’s understanding of the scope of the policy questions elite core of actors may instead concentrate on social media companies. Companies, for their part, faced by tech companies and the tradeoffs inherent Content Hosting audience development within a target population. have been too slow to disclose information about in those policy choices. This essay endeavors to Despite the glaring lack of studies comparing how their counter-terrorism efforts, which is crucial provide both, with the hope that the framework Modern terrorist organizations produce a wide terrorists use social media versus mass media, to closing the knowledge gap and enabling the will help policymakers in technology companies, range of propaganda in the form of imagery, videos, traditional mass media is likely still a critical counter-terrorism policy community to offer more improve interactions between tech companies and and audio files. Prior to broadband Internet, this method for conducting audience development. useful guidance. The failure of tech companies to the traditional national security community, and sort of material was distributed manually, either Nonetheless, new digital platforms are clearly be more transparent about their ongoing efforts inform government policymakers considering how in the form of printed material or pressed into useful to these groups. also reinforces the outdated belief among counter- to structure a productive regulatory framework. video tapes, cassettes, or DVDs. Since the advent This essay does not argue that certain solutions of broadband, terrorist organizations have moved Brand Control are better across the board than others, but it does those repositories online, first via file-sharing highlight key questions, illustrate tradeoffs, and sites where users could download media and, Terrorism has famously been called “propaganda encourage the counter-terrorism policy community subsequently, via services that enable large-scale of the deed.” The desire of terrorist groups to to address some of the specific questions faced by file-sharing and video-streaming. Groups like control their political messages creates a need for people working on counter-terrorism inside social ISIL still use a variety of cloud services as media well-branded information conduits that can be used media companies. repositories and consistently use video-streaming to validate the initial distribution of propaganda. services to distribute propaganda material. Others, Thus, spokespeople, dedicated media production like Hamas and the Atomwaffen Division, have houses, and reliable information-distribution The Problem: How Do their own websites. Not every Internet platform channels online are critical. Modern terrorist groups Terrorists Use the Internet? is well suited for hosting content. Video and audio have used dedicated web forums (e.g., al-Hesbah), streaming sites are used for this purpose, as are official web pages (e.g., Atomwaffen, Hamas, and While it is tempting to think of terrorists as cloud-based file repositories. Some offer unique Hezbollah), Twitter handles, and, most recently for using the Internet as if it were a monolithic entity, capabilities including the ability to livestream video ISIL, Telegram channels to help cue to their target terrorism policy experts that they are not taking such thinking is counterproductive. The reality from a phone or camera. Social media platforms audience that the materials being distributed there any action or simply do not care about the problem. is that terrorists use a wide range of different that facilitate easy video and image hosting can are authentic. Maintaining brand control requires The counter-terrorism policy community has digital platforms for different purposes. Analysts also be used for this purpose. consistency, which gives technology platforms a been understandably slow to recognize the shift know this, of course, and should lean into this particularly important role to play in disrupting within tech companies to more aggressively address granularity to drive a much more nuanced Audience Development this effort among terrorist groups. terrorist content online, in part, because these conversation about the threat posed by specific companies were late to address the threat. During online behavior on particular platforms, and the Terrorists need an audience for all sorts of Secure Communication that period of prevarication, counter-terrorism techniques companies can employ to manage it. reasons: to directly engage the population they policy experts urged companies to do more and, in The following is both a typology for thinking about want to influence, to attract media attention in Despite occasional “lone wolf” attacks, terrorist many cases, urged governments to force companies terrorist use of the Internet and a lexicon for order to indirectly engage the population they want violence is usually conceived of, planned, and to do more. But in the wake of the Islamic State of breaking down the activities terrorists engage in on to influence, and to identify potential recruits. ISIL executed as part of a group. As such, secure Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) aggressive exploitation various types of technology platforms. famously used Twitter for this purpose in 2014 and communications between conspirators are of the Internet, many companies began to tackle 2015 because the platform offered a vast audience for paramount. The ubiquity of encrypted messaging the problem, and thus the important questions Terrorist Functions Online ISIL’s sophisticated propaganda and easy access to tools has lowered the bar for communicating facing the counter-terrorism policy community journalists who, in writing about that propaganda, securely and thus prompted increased scrutiny have shifted. Rather than continuing to simply Generally speaking, terrorists use the Internet served as inadvertent enablers. Terrorist groups of platforms that provide encrypted services. call for companies to do more, it’s important for in much the same way as other people: They send think about audience development differently However, terrorists have long used a variety of the counter-terrorism policy community to speak messages, coordinate with people, and share depending on their goals, their ideology, and their techniques to ensure secure messaging on the directly to the policymakers inside companies images and videos. The typology below attempts theory of victory. Although ISIL is ideologically Internet. Al-Qaeda famously employed “email dead to inform and influence how they approach to describe terrorist behavior online in terms of rigid, it imagines itself as the vanguard of a vast drops,” in which users would share account log-in counter-terrorism. Leaders at all levels inside tech the generic functions the underlying technology populist movement, whereas ISIL’s ideological information and leave messages for one another as companies are making critical decisions about how facilitates. So, instead of “attack planning” or cousin, al-Qaeda, is less ideologically stringent but drafts, thereby avoiding scanning while messages to define, identify, and take action against terrorist “propaganda distribution,” the framework below conceives of its near-term audience more narrowly. were in transit. Obscurity is often a tool for security: actors. These decisions have tremendous reach uses terms like “content hosting” and “audience These differences influence the groups’ respective It can be facilitated via fake accounts, multiple and, in many cases, are without precedent. Counter- development.” Here’s why: Technology companies rhetoric but may also drive the type of digital accounts, and secret web forums only accessible to terrorism policy experts should tailor analysis and never build products to facilitate “attack recommendations to these decision-makers within planning,” but they do think about how to enable 1 For other frameworks, see: The Use of the Internet for Terrorist Purposes, (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime: New York, 2012), https:// tech companies and to the challenges they face. “secure communication.” To build a terminology www.unodc.org/documents/frontpage/Use_of_InternetInternet_for_Terrorist_Purposes.pdf; Maura Conway, “Determining the Role of the Internet in Violent Extremism and Terrorism: Six Suggestions for Progressing Research,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 40, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 77–98, https:// In order to do that, policy experts and bridge between the counter-terrorism and tech doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2016.1157408. policymakers need a shared lexicon for communities, we need language that speaks to

84 85 The Strategist Crossroads: Counter-terrorism and the Internet

invited members. Counter-terrorism professionals Financing securely if the recruit showed promise. on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. might breach these techniques, if they know where There are broader ways to think about platform For example, ISIL has embraced unofficial media to look. Steganography, or the practice of leaving a Sustained terrorist campaigns cost money. preferences as well. For example, community groups producing pro-Islamic State propaganda hidden message in plain sight, is often overlooked. Digital tools offer mechanisms for both fundraising maintenance does not require a mainstream more so than al-Qaeda. Over time, ISIL came to Such messaging might come in the form of using and financial transfers. The core problem with social platform because adherents are already understand the importance of brand control and a pre-determined but innocuous code word to electronic money transfers is security, which has interested in the group’s ideology and therefore has embraced Telegram as a core tool for achieving send a message or obliquely referencing some driven many terrorists to use cash or to transfer are likely willing to adopt a new tool. But audience that goal. shared experience to authenticate oneself online. money via criminal networks, in the form of illicit development requires utilizing platforms with an Policymakers, in both government and corporate For example, consider senior al-Qaeda commander goods, or through traditional money-changing audience or active users already in place. Telegram, settings, and the wider counter-terrorism policy Atiyah abd al-Rahman’s instruction in 2005 to networks like hawalas. But some groups do for example, has become a key tool for many research community must understand how the commander of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Mus’ab use electronic transfers, either hoping to avoid terrorist organizations, but it is effectively only terrorists use specific platforms in order to al-Zarqawi, on how to identify one another on scrutiny via obscurity or, in recent years, by using useful for brand control, community maintenance, effectively prescribe countermeasures. For example, Islamist chat forums: “I am ready to communicate crypto-currencies. In the digital space, terrorist and secure communication. It is not ideal for platforms used for content hosting should prioritize via the Internet or any other means, so send me groups may use traditional financial senders such audience development or content hosting. mechanisms to identify terrorist propaganda — your men to ask for me on the chat forum of Ana as Western Union, electronic transfers between The challenge for my platform, Facebook, is that various techniques for content matching are likely al Muslim, or others. The password between us banks and online payment systems (e.g., Paypal a user can credibly perform all of these functions to prove useful. But these techniques will not be is that thing that you brought to me a long time or Venmo), direct fundraising for charities, or there. This is primarily a testament to Facebook’s as important for platforms used to maintain a ago from Herat.”2 American officials ultimately person-to-person transfers using platforms like success at building a suite of tools that everyday group’s community, communicate securely, and captured Atiyah’s letter to Zarqawi, but they likely GoFundMe or Messenger Payments. Terrorists users want to use. But it creates challenges because organize financing. For those platforms, identifying did not know what Zarqawi’s present to Atiyah had may also facilitate financial transfers online by that suite of tools can be used in various nefarious behavioral signals or information-sharing with been and thus would be unable to determine which sharing account numbers and digital passwords for ways by bad actors. Consider the following assets partners may be more important. Platforms that chat thread on a crowded forum was important. more traditional exchanges. Facebook provides: no platform has a bigger user- support numerous functions will need to develop set for audience development; it is easy to create a variety of techniques. There is no one-size-fits-all Community Maintenance Information Collection and Curation specialized groups for community maintenance solution to this problem and the counter-terrorism purposes; most (but not all) forms of media can policy community must not make the mistake of Terrorist groups often rely on “in-group” social Terrorist groups also use the Internet to collect be uploaded for content hosting; and persistent suggesting otherwise. Tech company decision- dynamics to reinforce antipathy to “out-group” information. Militants use online mapping tools to accounts can be used for brand control. Among makers are well aware of the differences between members. As such, restricted spaces where propaganda plan attacks, monitor news, and identify potential other implications, this suite of functionality means platforms and, in a very different way, so too are can be shared, watched in unison, and discussed, are recruits. Various platforms can be used for these Facebook needs a wide range of countermeasures the terrorist groups that use them. often critical. In the real world, terrorist groups use purposes, including social media, traditional media, to prevent misuse. meetings, meals, religious sermons, and rallies to build search engines, and specialized tools for identifying Just as platforms vary in their utility for various this sort of in-group cohesion. Online, closed groups critical infrastructure and other sensitive targets. functions, terrorist groups vary in the value they Counter-Terrorism Questions in messaging applications, restricted spaces on social All of these tools are used by everyday people to place on specific functions. Al-Qaeda has always for Technology Companies media platforms, and branded online forums serve to find grocery stores, old friends, and the quickest conceptualized itself as a smaller, more elite separate in-group participants from outsiders. In some ways to get across town. organization than ISIL, thus it was slow to abandon Companies developing a counter-terrorism policy cases, community maintenance can be accomplished the use of web forums that were well suited to need to build a strategy that is adaptable enough in more open digital environments using symbols and What About the Platform? community maintenance and brand control, even to keep pace with changing dynamics in the real phrases that denote in-group membership. Making world and evolving technical realities. They must such public signs is much easier, however, after the It is important to recognize that some online consider the tactical implications both to terrorists basic in-group lexicon has been established in more platforms are better suited for some of the and to their far more numerous benign users. They closeted environments. These closed spaces also functions listed above than others, which means also must consider how their choices will impact offer a way to reinforce and normalize an ideological that terrorists often use multiple platforms for more traditional counter-terrorist actors, whether worldview that endorses violence as a means to an their activity online. For example, in 2014, Twitter in government or nonprofits. The purpose of this end. This function may be particularly important was widely used by ISIL for audience development section is to focus on some of the key challenges for less institutionalized radical movements, such and brand control, but because Twitter does not counter-terrorism policymakers at technology as white supremacists, as opposed to the more allow users to upload long videos or create content companies face. It is crucial for counter-terrorism structured organizations jihadists tend to create. repositories, ISIL propagandists used YouTube, policy experts to understand the variety of factors Such environments serve not only active terrorists, Justpaste.it, or other platforms for content that shape how a company responds to terrorism but also a circle of potential supporters who may hosting. They would then post links to the content on its platform. These factors vary widely, and some day serve as recruits. Dedicated salafi-jihadi and hosting site on their chosen audience-development include the following: white supremacist web forums are often used for this platform. Likewise, a terrorist might use Facebook after the rise of social media networks. ISIL, purpose, but closed groups in social media platforms for audience development, but convince a target for by contrast, long aimed to build a broad social • The balance between freedom of speech or messaging applications are also used. recruitment to shift to Telegram to communicate movement and encourage so-called lone wolf and the privacy and safety of users and attacks. Compared to al-Qaeda, it historically risked society writ large. These principles are not

2 “Atiyah’s Letter to Zarqawi,” Dec. 11, 2005 (10 Dhu al-Qida 1426), Combating Terrorism Center Harmony Program, https://ctc.usma.edu/ its brand control as a result of focusing so heavily on always directly at odds, but the tension harmony-program/atiyahs-letter-to-zarqawi-original-language-2/. audience development and content hosting, relying between them cannot be fully resolved

86 87 The Strategist Crossroads: Counter-terrorism and the Internet

without tradeoffs. Some platforms Strategic Choices How to Structure Basic Content Standards? have historically sought to encourage unfettered speech. Others endeavor How to Determine Who Is a Terrorist? It may seem easy for a company to simply to foster community by encouraging “prohibit terrorism” on their platform, but putting users to reflect themselves authentically One of the most fundamental policy decisions in place a robust policy is far more complex. online while attempting to enforce a technology companies face is how to determine Companies must, for example, determine whether stronger set of community rules. who is a terrorist. There are several options, each to construct restrictions at a content, account, or • The particular functions, as described with its own pros and cons. user level, as well as what sort of engagement with above, that terrorists seek to conduct One option is to rely on international designation terrorist content or groups is acceptable and what on a particular platform. lists, such as those maintained by the United is not. • The degree to which a company Nations or European Union. This approach allows Content-level restrictions proscribe support understands the manner in which companies to lean on institutions that theoretically for terrorism within individual pieces of material terrorists are misusing its tools. The reflect the global community’s collective wisdom online. “Content” differs by platform, but on Twitter reality is that some companies simply and allows a technology company to avoid making it would be a tweet; on Facebook, a post, comment, do not understand the ways in which decisions that may be perceived as political. The or similar piece of user-generated information; and Fein during an earlier time period. Platforms may their platforms are being misused. problem with this approach is that international on YouTube, a single uploaded video. also choose to allow terrorist content when it is • The resources available to the company. organizations, and the lists they generate, in reality Even at the content level, companies must shared for purposes of counter-speech — pushing Technology companies have vastly different reflect a politicized consensus developed after determine what sort of material violates their back against the narrative of terrorist groups — or resources to address online ills such as much political wrangling. Moreover, the lists are rules. One mechanism is simply to prohibit formal by mainstream media or academics. Content clearly terrorist activity. Policymakers often updated very slowly, and often reflect a lowest- propaganda produced or explicitly designed to condemning terrorism, raising awareness about conceptualize Silicon Valley companies common-denominator approach. This generally advance the message of a terrorist or terrorist terrorism, or advancing the study of these groups as behemoths with vast resources, but means that such lists include the most prominent group. This is a powerful approach against groups has obvious social value, but allowing even this terrorist groups exploit a wide range global terrorists but exclude militant groups that like ISIL that produce a high volume of branded content carries risks. Adversarial terrorist groups of technology platforms, the smallest receive less global attention or are only relevant in formal propaganda, but it is less valuable to counter may use such policy carve-outs to obfuscate their of which can count their employees on specific locales. informal propaganda, which is common among a true intent when posting content, and terrorist one hand and do not have the resources Companies that want to address a wider range of range of terrorists, including white supremacists supporters may still engage dangerously with to hire counter-terrorism specialists terrorists using their platforms might instead decide and localized ISIL supporters in some areas of the content when it is shared by a legitimate actor for or dedicate large engineering and to rely on designation lists maintained by various world. However, targeting informal propaganda legitimate purposes. Moreover, any complexity in operational teams to counter-terrorism. governments around the world. This approach may create implementation challenges as this a policy regarding terrorist propaganda will slow • The willingness to address political avoids the lowest-common-denominator issue and material is more difficult to identify. enforcement decisions. conflicts. In general, technology companies can align a company with legal authorities around Removing content produced by terrorist Some companies may determine that it is endeavor to set policies that will apply the globe. The problem is that some government organizations may seem straightforward, but inefficient or ineffective to simply prohibit terrorist globally, regardless of country. This urge actors designate non-violent political groups as companies must also determine how far to take content from being shared on their site. Rather, they for universality is very different from the terrorists, so this approach may lead a company to that approach. For example, should they remove deem it better to remove accounts that represent way governments approach geopolitical censor groups based on a regime’s political agenda. praise and support for terrorist groups, even if it terrorist entities or that demonstrate support for questions, where modulating policy A company may try to rely only on terrorism lists seems to come from people without any official terrorism. The most straightforward way to do according to each country is common. from specific governments, for example, from their ties to the group or people who support a group’s this is simply to remove an account after a certain home country or from other democratic states. political goals but not its violent tactics? Removing number of content violations. The benefit of this Against this backdrop, online platforms must But this approach forces companies to determine such support from social media will tend to produce approach is simplicity. It also ensures the account make a series of strategic policy choices and which countries are suitably democratic. In more equity across organizations, including those is judged directly on its own online behavior. operational decisions for addressing terrorist addition to risking that a government will block a with less formal support structures, but it also Some companies may want to assess accounts activity online, with far-reaching policy impacts. particular service from operating in its jurisdiction, generates ambiguity. What exactly does “praise” using a broader set of indicators to determine The purpose of describing these issues is not to this approach would also mean that companies, mean? Does it apply even when the terrorist whether removal is warranted. This might include argue for any one particular solution. Rather, it not political institutions, would be making key group is doing something seen as positive for a the account’s IP address, its engagement with is to illustrate how these choices may manifest decisions globally about which governments are community — for example, providing disaster other dangerous accounts, patterns of friending for policymakers within tech companies so that legitimate. relief or negotiating a ceasefire? This approach behavior, or other account-level metadata, as the traditional counter-terrorism community can A final option is that companies can designate may also implicate regular users in complex well as technical signs gathered with anti-spam consider and, hopefully, better advise this new crop terrorist organizations themselves. This political situations who may express support for techniques that indicate an account was created of policymakers emerging within tech companies. approach offers companies a mechanism to resist a group widely understood globally as a terrorist disingenuously or reflects a previously removed This list of questions, and potential solutions, government pressure to crackdown on peaceful organization, like Hezbollah, that nonetheless account. Importantly, metadata-based tools may is not intended to be comprehensive. However, opposition groups, but it requires companies to maintains local political legitimacy. work even when content is encrypted, making them it is illustrative of the key strategic and do extensive analytical work, come up with a clear Companies must also determine whether to potentially very valuable for encrypted platforms. operational issues and potential solutions definition of terrorism, and assert a designation allow some content from terrorist groups on their The most aggressive approach to imposing facing technology companies as they construct role traditionally reserved for governments. platforms in specific circumstances. This might content standards focuses on the user directly. counter-terrorism strategies. come in the form of political campaigning by groups This means that a real-world person is simply not like Hezbollah or the Milli Muslim League, or Sinn allowed to use a platform, regardless of who they

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interact with or what they post. This approach the possibility of missing genuinely dangerous of missing dangerous content since governments Operational Choices is straightforward for notorious terrorists like content on the platform. It also increases the — which maintain expertise on terrorism — are Osama bin Laden but is more complicated when it risk that a government may sanction or block more likely than regular users to refer actual The policy choices discussed above are comes to more obscure terrorists like, for example, that platform, which obviously has important terrorist content to companies. foundational, but good outcomes require more members of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party. User implications both for the business and for the A middle-ground approach would require than just policy — that policy must be applied level restrictions also raise important practical ability of citizens to express themselves. This reviewing government referrals against the effectively. The operational counter-terrorism questions. Should a prohibition extend only to approach does not require extensive resources, company’s own terms of service. This limits the choices facing technology platforms vary leaders of a terrorist organization or to all members? however, which is a major advantage for dramatically. They depend How should those categories be defined and what is companies with limited capacity. on the nature of the product the evidentiary standard for determining whether A middle-ground approach is to review all itself, how terrorists use the someone falls into either category? Moreover, government referrals against the company’s own product, and the resources even in the best of circumstances, a company terms of service, assuming they exist. This limits a company has to invest in will not be able to create, or reasonably enforce, the risk of both facilitating government censorship countering the problem. And, a comprehensive list of the world’s terrorists. and leaving up dangerous content, but it requires as with many problems, it is Despite this final problem, establishing stringent time and internal resources that may only be not always clear that throwing restrictions at the user-level does offer a consistent available to larger companies. It could also lead to more resources at combatting standard for removing terrorist users on a given the company opposing a government legal order, terrorist activities online will platform if the company becomes aware of them. which may involve extensive litigation or result in risk of government censorship and of leaving up dramatically improve outcomes. the platform being blocked in that country. dangerous content, but it requires time and internal The broader counter-terrorism community How to Manage Government Content Removal Tech companies may also try to apply a resources that, again, may only be available to often fails to consider the operational tradeoffs Orders? legitimacy standard to take into account human larger companies. Companies may also decide to facing companies developing online counter- rights and adherence to rule-of-law in an effort to split the difference and abide by legal orders to terrorism programs. This problem is heightened Governments often report content to social media distinguish legitimate legal orders from illegitimate remove content but review administrative referrals by the techno-utopianism long touted by Silicon companies if they deem it illegal or unacceptable ones. In order to operationalize this approach, against their terms of service. These more nuanced Valley, which has created the misconception that per the company’s terms of service. The differences companies would likely have to evaluate orders at approaches typically require more sophistication simple technical solutions exist for most problems. between the two types of requests are important the country level — meaning orders from certain from the company, including legal, policy, and Unfortunately, that does not reflect reality. In and result in very different kinds of referrals to countries would be respected while orders from operations teams working in concert at a global truth, decision-makers inside tech companies must a technology company. The former, if legitimate, other countries would be ignored. They would level. This kind of coordination may be feasible for balance different counter-terrorism priorities and is a legal order that carries the weight of law and also assess the legal validity of the order itself. larger companies but is very difficult for smaller make bets on the utility of investing in various usually comes from a judge. The latter is simply This approach will inevitably create controversy platforms. programs with uncertain outcomes. an administrative referral that may come from a when a company rejects certain legal orders while When a company receives a legal order or communications regulator or Internet referral unit. accepting others. referral from a government, it must also determine The operational issues facing tech companies can Companies must determine how to respond to whether removals should be applied only within the be broken down into four broad categories: these referrals, with each approach carrying pros Administrative Referrals boundaries of that country or globally. Removing and cons. content globally will likely satisfy the government 1. How to find potential terrorist material? Companies have similar options for responding more fully and avoids the odd scenario of data 2. What to do when potential terrorist Legal Orders to administrative referrals from governments, accessibility varying by location or via a Virtual material is found? although the legal implications here are obviously Private Network. But this approach effectively 3. Should appeals be allowed and, if so, The simplest approach for social media different. As knowledge about terrorist use of the gives any country the ability to project its own how should they work? companies is to abide by government declarations Internet has grown more prominent, both states legal framework onto other countries, which may 4. Should counter-speech efforts be that the flagged content on their platform is and bodies like the European Union have developed result in content that is legal in many places being supported? If so, how? illegal and remove it. This approach may appeal specialized programs to identify terrorist content removed because of the dictates of more repressive to smaller companies in particular that do not online and refer it to tech companies. systems. Only removing content locally prevents At a high level, these questions may seem simple. have the resources to make in-house judgments Some companies may treat government referrals governments from imposing a global censorship In practice, they are more complex. The most about potential terrorist content or a legal team in the same way they do legal orders and remove the regime based on local law. But this creates obvious important, over-arching operational challenge for to validate that an order is legally binding. The content in question immediately. This approach is workarounds through Virtual Private Networks tech companies is scale. Facebook took action on downside, however, is that it risks potentially valuable for small companies with limited capacity, or other techniques that will allow the proscribed 14.3 million pieces of content related to ISIL or allowing governments to censor unpopular but opens the door to extensive, and potentially content to still be accessed within the country al-Qaeda in the first nine months of 2018, finding political views online. It also raises the possibility politicized, government censorship because such demanding removal. Reviewing referrals against 99 percent of that content itself. Facebook’s of companies erroneously taking action on orders administrative orders do not require legal review. internal terms of service helps obviate this issue policy team writes exacting rules and rigorous from entities that do not actually have the legal Likewise, companies could decide to ignore because if the content does violate a company’s implementation guidelines for identifying and standing to order content removal. government referrals entirely, either by refusing terms of service, it is reasonable to apply that removing content but does not take part in most A company may also simply decide to ignore to accept such referrals or deciding not to act decision globally. removals. Instead, machine-learning classifiers government legal orders. This approach on such information. This would limit the ability and a team of more than 15,000 reviewers — 200 limits, for example, the ability of authoritarian of a government to use companies as a means of of whom are specialists on terrorist groups and governments seeking to censor content, but raises exercising censorship, but creates the genuine risk other dangerous organizations — take action on

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falling into two sub-categories: human approaches they can usually be produced in higher volume and automated approaches. Human approaches than government referrals. Nonetheless, these have the advantage of flexibility: People can adjust reports are still relatively small in scale and tend what they are looking for and quickly identify to focus solely on content hosting and audience new behavioral patterns by terrorists. Automated development functions of terrorist groups. techniques are valuable in that they scale to a For many technology platforms, user reports are a global audience. However, they are not as nimble critical way of maintaining a relationship with users as human approaches and can potentially be concerned by material they see on the platform. circumvented by adaptive adversaries. Many of the These reports provide a method of redress that, bigger tech companies, Facebook included, utilize at best, provides both useful information to the both human and automated techniques. platform and gives the user a sense of ownership and responsibility. In the real world, counter- Human Approaches terrorism programs remind citizens, “If you see something, say something.” User reports reflect As discussed above, referrals of terrorist content the same general instinct online. Moreover, users from governments and inter-governmental in the aggregate see far more content than either organizations can be fruitful. Relative to user governments or external teams. The problem with reports, government referrals are generally precise user reports is twofold: First, users often report — meaning they actually point to terrorist content benign content or information they simply do not — but they are low in volume. A company may like. This means that the platform must invest use government reports to identify and remove significant resources to identify which reports are terrorist content, and in doing so may mitigate useful, a process that is costly, time-consuming, external pressure from those governments, but this and may distract from higher-value efforts. approach is extremely limited in scope. Moreover, Second, users must be motivated to report things. government referrals almost always focus on This is unlikely in closed spaces where terrorists content hosting, audience development, and brand conduct community maintenance or communicate maintenance functions. Governments may be securely because only individuals likely to support aware of other activities conducted by terrorists the terrorist cause will be present in such spaces. online, but generally do not want to squander The human approach does not always rely on valuable intelligence sources or reveal the methods external information sources. Platforms can also they use to identify such behavior. use internal teams of specialists to identify terrorist content. These teams may have better technical tools than outside sources, which allows them to identify a wider range of terrorist behavior than the content hosting and audience development identified by governments, users, content. But achieving consistency and accuracy users do not like rather than to actual terrorist and external teams. Nevertheless, is challenging when these processes play out content. Flagging content internally is a far more they cannot match the scale of globally with all the complexities of culture, accurate and efficient way to identify terrorist user reports, let alone the scale of language, and political context, not to mention content online. This creates what amounts to a automated techniques described simple human error. Even if mistakes only occur customer-service problem: Facebook obviously below. Given the limitations on in a small percentage of cases, the massive scale of wants to be responsive to the concerns of users, Tech companies may also work with external how much content these internal experts can the Internet means there will nevertheless still be but focusing on external reports — from both teams to identify terrorist content. For example, identify, platforms have to determine whether a high number of errors. users and governments — means focusing on the YouTube uses a “Trusted Flagger” program while investing in these teams makes sense or whether Likewise, sometimes seemingly obvious solutions lowest scale, least precise methods of identifying Facebook contracts with a range of vendors to employee time should be reserved for other tasks. do not pan out. Facebook, for example, allows users terrorist content. provide targeted referrals of terrorist content.3 A to report terrorist material they encounter, but this company could decide to provide specialized tools Automated Approaches is a very inefficient way to find terrorist content. How to Find Potential Terrorist Content? or API access to facilitate the work of such partners. Only 41,000 of the 14.3 million pieces of content Like government referrals, referrals from these There are many automated methods that can against which action was taken were the result of The best methods for identifying terrorist external teams tend to be high quality. Importantly, be used to identify potential terrorist content, reports that originated outside Facebook. Though content largely depend on how a platform it might seem like Facebook should prioritize user defines terrorism and the content that violates its 3 For more information, see: “YouTube Trusted Flagger Program,” Help Center, YouTube, accessed March 10, 2019, https://support.google.com/ reports of terrorist content, the reality is that standards, as well as how the platform itself is built. youtube/answer/7554338?hl=en; Monika Bickert and Brian Fishman, “Hard Questions: Are We Winning the War on Terrorism Online?,” Facebook these reports often simply point to content that It is useful to think about detection methods as Newsroom, Nov. 28, 2017, https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2017/11/hard-questions-are-we-winning-the-war-on-terrorism-online/.

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and all of them have costs and benefits. Some are mainstream conversations. ISIL, for example, often only useful with certain types of content while coordinates “raids” using hashtags on specific Most techniques to others are unreliable unless used in conjunction platforms. Platforms can identify these hashtags in with human reviewers. While such techniques are various ways, for example, by monitoring terrorist critical to a robust counter-terrorism effort online, communications where hashtags are discussed, identify terrorist content they are not foolproof. by systematically identifying hashtags commonly Content matching is one of the simplest associated with terrorist content and then using automated detection techniques available. This them to search for other content, or by identifying approach creates a “digital fingerprint” of known key themes and issues targeted by terrorist actors are implemented by bad files, whether images, video, audio, or text. and searching for related hashtags. The benefit These digital fingerprints, known as “hashes,” of hashtag tracking is that it allows quick tactical manifest as unique strings of numbers, letters, disruption of terrorist propaganda distribution. single companies on and symbols that correspond to a given file. Those But hashtags are used on some platforms more hashes can then be matched against hashes created than others and can easily be changed by terrorist when content is uploaded to a particular platform. organizations. Hashtag-based detection also Many hashing techniques allow a company to requires strong coordination with a team of human their own platform. catch an image or video that has been altered, but experts to be sustainable. these techniques do sometimes miss content that a Text classification, another automated approach human being would recognize as fundamentally the to flagging terrorist content, uses machine learning However, some same. Content matching is particularly effective in techniques to identify text that is similar to countering terrorist groups that regularly release content already determined to support terrorists. formal propaganda. The technique does have Text classification can be very useful for detecting limitations, however: It requires creating hashes potential terrorist content, but because of nuances companies have from content uploaded to a platform and will not in language it may not be precise enough to reliably work on content that has been encrypted. It also delete content without some human oversight. does not work for newly created content, whether Such approaches also require a large corpus of live-streamed or otherwise produced in the real training data, which may be difficult to acquire for begun sharing signals world and then uploaded. Content matching also smaller companies. requires making a range of policy choices, most All of the approaches above rely on assessments notably setting thresholds for how similar a piece of content itself, which is only possible if it is not of potential terrorist of content must be to another known piece of encrypted. But some platforms may be able to bad content to which it has been algorithmically identify dangerous accounts based on account- matched in order for it to be removed or reviewed. level behavior, such as having relationships with Setting a lower threshold will capture more bad suspect accounts, using worrisome IP addresses, content with one another. content but is more likely to result in false positives, using bots to auto-create accounts, or acting while setting a higher threshold will result in fewer in conjunction with other accounts that have false positives but is more likely to miss some demonstrated similarly problematic behavior. terrorist content. Because platforms differ, these behavioral signs Optical recognition technology allows platforms are likely to vary significantly by platform. One to scan for logos, weapons, and other potentially advantage of this behavioral approach to tracking worrisome indicators in an image or video — even and countering terrorist activity online is that it if the overall image or video does not match a can be used on some encrypted platforms because known digital fingerprint. This technique is more it does not rely on content. But such an approach sophisticated than content matching and thus can generate high rates of both false positives harder to deploy for small companies. Like content and false negatives — and those rates cannot be matching, optical recognition also generates verified in an encrypted setting. confidence scores that rate the likelihood that Most techniques to identify terrorist content something identified by the algorithm is, in fact, are implemented by single companies on their worrisome. However, this technology can only own platform. However, some companies have scan content that has been uploaded to a platform, begun sharing signals of potential terrorist requires extensive training data, and will not work content with one another. The most notable on encrypted content. example is the Global Internet Forum to Counter Many terrorist organizations use hashtags to Terrorism’s hash-sharing database, which allows identify their content or insert propaganda into companies to benefit from their colleagues’ work

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in other companies.4 This is particularly important first, a discussion of the relative pros and cons of What Actions Should Companies Take? obligations to protect user information, except when terrorist groups use multiple platforms in allowing human beings or automation to “decide” in extenuating circumstances. So, companies coordination with one another. Such collaboration when to take action on a given piece of digital material; In addition to determining who or what should must determine a standard for when to refer an offers small companies a quick way to develop and, second, to assess those actions themselves. make the final decision about a suspected account account to law enforcement. Should they limit a relatively sophisticated counter-terrorism or piece of content, companies must also determine such referrals to accounts associated with specific program, but it is not a panacea for the reasons Human Beings and Automation what action to take. The simplest choice is to groups? Should they have clear evidence of an described above. remove the flagged content or account. Removal is imminent attack? What does “imminent” really The most sophisticated efforts to identify Human beings assess context far better than also appealing because it constitutes a consistent mean? Should they refer individuals coordinating terrorist content rely on machine learning that computers, particularly when considering the and visible action against terrorist material. propaganda? Should they provide information looks at a variety of signals to determine whether linguistic breadth of the Internet and cultural However, when it comes to account removals, about individuals when the only reasonable real- a piece of content supports terrorism. These specificities related to terrorism. Companies can companies must determine how many instances world action would have to come from the military techniques develop a confidence score indicating hire people with specialized language and cultural of content violation should trigger removal. Should rather than law enforcement? How certain should the likelihood that a piece of content supports skills, who can apply some level of judgment or it be one? What about false positives? That could a company be that the account-holder in question terrorism. These tools are very powerful because cultural nuance in reviewing content. But human lead to immediate account removal. Perhaps it poses an actual threat? they can holistically assess content. However, judgment carries costs as well. Many companies should be two or three? Or five or 10? Should some they require extensive training data as well as simply do not have the resources to hire large violations be deemed more egregious than others, Should Appeals Be Allowed? difficult policy decisions to set thresholds for teams of human reviewers, and those that do must or is every instance of support for terrorism equal? taking action based on the confidence scores struggle to ensure that those teams apply policy If removal does not seem appropriate, platforms Even the best policies are still fallible because produced by the algorithm. These tools must consistently at scale. Moreover, human beings are can instead limit the visibility of the content or there will always be errors that result from both also be carefully maintained to sustain accuracy, fallible, they get tired, they have personal biases, account. This may be a useful tactic in situations false positives and false negatives. A company which means human beings continuing to train and the work of reviewing the intense content that when a human or algorithm is not completely must, therefore, decide whether and how to allow and retrain existing algorithms. In short, even the terrorist groups often produce can be exhausting confident that the material in question supports for redress by users. Appeals systems create policy most sophisticated machine-learning techniques and disturbing. terrorism. Such limitations could even be questions of their own, however. How long should require continued human maintenance to work Automation avoids many of these pitfalls: employed on a temporary basis until a more a user have to appeal? How difficult should it be to as intended. Computers do not get tired or make “mistakes” definitive judgment can be made. Once again, these appeal? Should the user be able to introduce new in the traditional sense. Algorithms, perhaps techniques, especially the more nuanced ones, will evidence to an appeals process in order to justify What to Do After Finding Potential counterintuitively, also have some advantages be much easier to implement for larger companies that their intent in posting violating content was Terrorist Content? for small companies because, once trained, they than smaller ones. actually benign? Should the same review teams do not require the large human teams necessary The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism that made the potential error assess the appeal, or In the real world, deciding how to take action for human review. But automated systems are maintains a database of more than 100,000 visually should companies establish an independent review on content depends on various factors, including only as good as the training data and labeling distinct images and 10,000 visually distinct videos body? These tricky questions are made harder the context under which it was uploaded and the exercises used to program and maintain them. that can be used by participant companies to because appeals of decisions involving terrorist confidence with which an algorithmic classifier A poorly trained algorithm may have a systemic identify dangerous material on their own platforms. content put a company in the uncomfortable suggests it supports terrorism. This paper does bias around certain types of content or certain But companies not capture all of that variation. It does, however, organizations and, as a result, can produce false must decide describe an assortment of actions that can be positives and false negatives, just as humans do. whether to taken and discusses the variety of circumstances This carries real risk: Counter-speech campaigns utilize this in which those actions might be used. Inherent sometimes purposefully emulate the visual style database. It may to this discussion is the notion that terrorist and language of terrorist propaganda, which might seem like a no- How certain should a company content might be shared for legitimate reasons confuse some automated detection techniques, brainer, but smaller by academics, activists decrying extremism, or but not a human being. companies have to be that the account-holder in journalists. The notion that there are legitimate In other words, enabling an algorithm to remove make difficult decisions reasons to share terrorist propaganda significantly content does not obviate the need to make difficult about where to apply question poses an actual threat? distinguishes this kind of content from other types policy decisions. It just changes how those policy limited engineering of harmful content found online, most notably choices manifest. A policymaker must decide resources. Even if they child pornography. Legal regimes proscribe whether the computer should remove content when decide to focus on counter- sharing or possessing such content regardless of the confidence indicates a particular likelihood that terrorism, they may determine circumstance. As a practical matter, this means that it supports terrorism. Is a 95 percent likelihood that other techniques will be more fruitful and so position of potentially communicating directly with reviewing terrorist material by a company often the right threshold? How about 90 percent? Eighty decide not to spend the resources to contribute to a terrorist group or their agents during the course requires a more nuanced assessment of context percent? Fifty percent? Those decisions all lead to this hash-sharing database. of the appeal. Indeed, at the scale of the Internet, than when it comes to child pornography, which the inevitable result that benign content will be Finally, companies must determine whether to not only are erroneous removals inevitable, so can slow down the review process and increase the removed erroneously. The question is how many of refer a potentially dangerous account or piece of too is the erroneous reinstatement of terrorist likelihood of human mistakes. those “false positives” are acceptable. Ultimately, content to law enforcement. Not every violation content and accounts after having been removed This section is therefore broken into two parts: people set these standards, not computers. of a company’s terms of service deserves law correctly. A company must decide whether the enforcement attention and companies have risk of inadvertently reinstating terrorist behavior 4 For more information, see the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism website: http://www.gifct.org/.

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is worth the value of giving the larger digital Redirect program, for example, introduces counter- paper and has already been widely discussed in the engagement between larger platforms and community the ability to seek redress. speech messages when users search for terms that other venues. Regardless, the counter-terrorism the policy community. As large platforms push suggest they are interested in extremist groups.6 policy community can and should productively terrorists deeper into the shadows of the web, Should Companies Support Counter-speech Efforts? Finally, tech companies might also develop ad- weigh in on all of these issues. smaller platforms will be a more important part of If So, How? targeting tactics for non-profits engaged in Indeed, the counter-terrorism research the counter-terrorism effort. It should be everyone’s counter-speech efforts just as they would with a community should not accept the categorizations goal to bring these platforms into the conversation, Counter-speech programs have a long and small business trying to reach new customers. The in this paper as fixed. They should be interrogated not scare them away. We must convince them that complex history in counter-terrorism. Critics challenge in this case is determining which users and improved on. That said, any critique must such engagement is productive rather than just an question their effectiveness and suggest that efforts are potentially at risk of radicalization, which could account for the tradeoffs inherent in choosing exercise in exposing a digital platform to criticism to “counter violent extremism” are used as cover easily lead to bias. specific counter-terrorism approaches and the or penalty. to monitor minority communities.5 And yet, the differences between technology platforms and the Digital counter-terrorism efforts are daunting and promise of counter-speech efforts that proactively companies that run them. Failure to acknowledge, therefore humbling. The scale of the challenge is turn people away from radicalization is compelling. Conclusion for example, that scanning content contains massive, and every success is mitigated by adaptive Many Internet companies were founded to privacy tradeoffs, that growing review teams adversaries working to circumvent new rules and empower and promote speech, thus counter- This essay has developed a new typology for leads to management challenges and inconsistent enforcement efforts. Tech companies should have speech work has an obvious appeal compared to thinking about how terrorists use the Internet enforcement, that small companies have vastly humility in the face of such a monumental challenge censorship. The challenge for technology platforms and has illustrated some of the strategic- and different capabilities than large ones, and that and reach out to the traditional policy and counter- is twofold: Tech companies cannot communicate operational-level decisions that policymakers specific technical solutions are better suited for terrorism community for advice and guidance. credibly directly against violent extremist at technology companies face as they develop some platforms facing specific types of counter- Policymakers and academics must have a sense organizations, and companies often have legal counter-terrorism programs. In doing so, it terrorism challenges than others may produce of humility as well. Studies of terrorism online and political incentives not to favor one political hopefully has established parameters that will satisfying rhetoric, but little else. Counter-terrorism are hampered by incomplete data and usually ideology over another. Nevertheless, there are a help produce fruitful conversations between the policymaking online, like most policymaking, is only measure content-hosting and audience- range of options for supporting counter-speech traditional counter-terrorism policy community about balancing tradeoffs. The counter-terrorism development functions, which can mislead the efforts short of simply producing and distributing and a new crop of policymakers within technology community must acknowledge those tradeoffs to public and policymakers about where companies messages directly. companies. productively influence real-world decision-making. should focus their efforts. To put it bluntly, It is worth briefly pointing out The importance of having constructive discourse researchers cannot reliably measure how much some areas this essay has not about digital threats cannot be overstated. The content terrorists post online because of the addressed: This discussion has not, tech community was regrettably slow in taking confounding effect of platform countermeasures. for example, wrestled with how counter-terrorism efforts seriously. But basing Researchers do not see what terrorists post. companies should communicate policy recommendations on that historical Rather, they see what is left after platform with their users about counter- tardiness rather than on the contemporary countermeasures are employed. For the major terrorism work, transparency more challenge of how best to respond is worse than platforms, this is usually a small subset of what generally, the value of various unhelpful — it is counterproductive. The largest was posted originally, and it means that there is a metrics for measuring success, technology platforms have made great strides fundamental bias in nearly all studies of terrorist structures and dynamics for sharing countering terrorist content and, although they content online. This bias was not nearly as severe information with academics and can still do better, have genuinely committed to in the years before platforms began to respond other researchers, or the utility (or addressing the problem. In order to improve, they to ISIL’s broad exploitation of their platforms, lack thereof) of broader concepts need specific guidance from the counter-terrorism but that situation has now changed. If counter- like deterrence in digital counter- policy community on how to improve. Researchers terrorism analysts fail to mention this dynamic in terrorism. This essay has only simply demanding that tech companies “do more” their research, they mislead themselves and their The simplest approach is that companies can partially raised critical issues like encryption and is no longer helpful. It suggests limited practical readership about what terrorists are doing online support civil society groups — students, non- the persistent tension between privacy and security. knowledge about the issues and should be seen and what platforms are doing to counter terrorist governmental organizations, and activists — to It does not wrestle with the specific challenges for what it is — a surface-level political argument activity. develop their own campaigns against extremism. raised by a host of emerging technologies, including rather than useful policy guidance. At the same time, companies need to be This might mean providing financial support but crypto-currencies, live-streaming, online video Of course, outdated policy analysis can also more transparent about their policies and their could also include providing training and resources gaming, and virtual reality. It also sidesteps an issue spill into counterproductive regulatory efforts. enforcement of those policies. Whenever possible, as well. Offering advertising credits is a simple way that can be central for tech companies developing Regulatory policy that explicitly constrains or they should provide access to data that researchers to empower non-profits to expand their reach. Tech counter-terrorism programs: the perception that implicitly disincentivizes voluntary counter- cannot otherwise get a hold of. But researchers companies may also decide to introduce counter- an aggressive program against non-state militant terrorism efforts by tech companies — even if it must recognize that such sharing creates privacy speech to users when they engage with particularly actors effectively benefits state actors. This is a compels some forms of productive engagement risks of its own and, in some cases, is directly worrisome content or concepts online. The Jigsaw key issue, but one that is outside the scope of this between companies and government — risks restricted by existing privacy constraints on tech making the terrorism environment online worse, companies. Tech companies and researchers not better. should also endeavor to utilize shared terminology 5 For a useful review of the various critiques of countering violent extremism programs, see: Robin Simcox “Can America’s Countering Violent Extremism Efforts Be Salvaged?,” War on the Rocks, Dec. 17, 2018, https://warontherocks.com/2018/12/can-americas-countering-violent-extremism- Perhaps even more importantly, smaller and conceptual frameworks, such as the typology efforts-be-salvaged/. technology platforms are carefully watching presented above. 6 For more information on the Jigsaw Redirect program, see, https://redirectmethod.org/.

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Digital counter-terrorism efforts will not and should not be driven primarily by governments, even in a more aggressive regulatory environment. Regulation may eventually set some baselines for these efforts but treating regulation as a panacea is a mistake. Indeed, regulatory efforts that compel companies to focus on narrow aspects of the problem may actually create more problems than they resolve. Regardless, companies will continue to be primary actors in the counter-terrorism effort. The operative question is notwhether they should work to improve, it is how, precisely, they should go about doing so. Counter-terrorism researchers should recognize this, and tailor their recommendations not just to regulators working to set baselines, but to the corporate policymakers who want to do far more than the bare minimum.

Brian Fishman leads efforts against terrorist and hate organizations at Facebook. He is the author of The Master Plan: ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory (Yale University Press, 2016), and is the former director of research at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. The views expressed in this paper are Mr. Fishman’s alone.

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Americans lack a shared vision of what the role of the United States ought to be in the world. It’s time for America to start asking itself some tough questions about the future of American leadership and for U.S. leaders to rethink how to persuade the American people of the value of an American- led, American-powered global order.

Editor’s note: This essay is adapted from a speech way, it has to have a shared reservoir of ideas, a delivered at the Fifth Annual Texas National Security shared vision, a shared imagination of what its Forum held in Austin, Texas, on Nov. 30, 2018. role on the global stage should look like. That’s a big challenge, especially at a time of intense merica is facing a crisis in its foreign disagreements in domestic policymaking, stoked policy imagination. This is not just by a media that profits from polarization. But in Sen. Ben Sasse a crisis among academics, although spite of that — or perhaps because of it — America they are obviously a vital part of needs a vision that is big enough to hold across theA conversation. Nor is this crisis restricted to election cycles. career foreign policy hands. And it is definitely not I am an unstinting advocate for American limited to politicians. This is a crisis among the engagement in the world, and I think the American people. impulse to withdraw from America’s important, The American people do not have a shared sense longstanding commitments is a very bad thing. of what America is trying to accomplish in the U.S. global leadership is indispensable, not only world with its foreign policy. And if U.S. politicians for the security of America’s friends and partners, and practitioners don’t recognize that reality here but for protecting America’s own interests. When at home, then the United States cannot effectively hell breaks loose on the other side of the world, advance its agenda abroad. it inevitably boomerangs home. When the United Properly diagnosing this crisis — and locating a States doesn’t lead, chaos inevitably follows. solution — means making some strong criticisms If America continues to drift toward global of recent American foreign policymaking. The goal disengagement, it will be sucked into all sorts of is not to lay blame. Rather, it is to answer an urgent troubles that it can’t envision right now. question: How did the United States get to a place The lesson of the two World Wars and of the where so many Americans seem open to taking an Cold War is that the United States cannot avoid the isolationist posture toward the world? Why is there world. America ultimately must lead a system of such a strong impulse to disengage? alliances. When it does otherwise, the consequences One of the clear lessons of 2016 is that the for the United States and its partners are much public hasn’t wholly embraced America’s major worse than policymakers are liable to anticipate foreign-policy decisions over the last several years in the short term, when disengagement can seem — and perhaps even the last few decades. Many appealing. Americans believe that, since the end of the Cold I have four objectives in this essay. First, I want War, the United States has failed to articulate a to examine why so many Americans, on both sides shared foreign-policy vision that’s bigger than this of the political aisle, seem to be open to a U.S. or that administration’s re-election plan. In fact, policy of retreat. most Americans have come to treat foreign policy Second, I want to begin the work of “translating” as just another Republican-versus-Democrat issue. the next era of U.S. engagement. Every acronym- In fairness, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the agency report that has come out over the last 18 American people have had some luxury to do so. In months has talked about the “return of great- this respect, America is a victim of its own success. power conflict,” and they are right. But there has It takes a big foreign-policy vision to draw 320 been a failure to communicate that reality in terms million people spread across a continental nation that will persuade and build the support of millions together into a common, enduring commitment. If of Americans. For example, America is clearly in America is going to send its children into harm’s a long-term tech race with China. But it’s just as

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clear that the American people either defense. American troops are currently stationed foreign policy upended in important ways every don’t realize it or are not convinced that in more than three-quarters of the countries on time one party takes over from the other. it matters. the planet — more than 160 out of 195 — including When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union Third, I want to suggest a few many nations that have very significant economic collapsed, it was heralded as the “end of history” concrete steps that America can pursue and military resources.4 Many of my constituents — the final triumph of liberal democracy over other as it continues to think about how to ask, “Why are we there? Why aren’t they paying political and economic systems and the vindication modernize U.S. intelligence, defense, their fair share?” of the American way of life. and diplomacy for the digital era. In the eyes of many American citizens, the The 1990s enjoyed the peace dividend of the Lastly, I want to offer some global financial system that the United States built Cold War: economic growth, worldwide stability, encouragement, because despite the increasingly seems not to be working in their favor. and a military drawdown. Under President George fact that the United States faces big Again, that system is regularly exploited by free- H.W. Bush, the United States waged a quick and challenges, I’m confident that America riders, but especially — and more importantly — relatively painless war to push Saddam Hussein out can rise to meet them. by bad actors like China. Outsourcing has upended of Kuwait, and over the following decade America’s There is a lot of talk about the longstanding job paths, and many American most significant military engagements were in “unprecedented” nature of the threats workers think that the financial system benefits a places like Bosnia and Serbia — tiny, perennially America faces today. Human beings tend class of elites — a top 1 percent, or 10 percent, or dysfunctional corners of Eastern Europe. There to emphasize the discontinuity between 25 percent — whose interests are not those of the were individual tragedies and hardships, to be sure, historical periods, because we’re median worker. but overall — and against the backdrop of a bloody narcissists and we think, “We’re here, America has a broken immigration system and 20th century — this was an unbelievable decade so this must be the inflection point of weak border security. The inability to assimilate of peace and prosperity, and many American all history!” But it’s usually not true, and new immigrants in a lawful, orderly way is policymakers began to talk as if (and perhaps it’s the job of the historian to step in and undermining America’s national cohesion. I am a believe that) the happiness of the post–Cold War say, “Sorry, everyone, but in fact there’s defender of America’s immigration tradition, but peace dividend would last forever. far more continuity than discontinuity it’s important to recognize that there is a higher A single event ended that fantasy. On Sept. at this moment.” percentage of foreign-born residents living in the 11, 2001, America found it had a new enemy: not However, there’s a case to be made United States than at almost any time in American a great power, but pockets of fanatics associated that this is, in fact, one of the turning points in leadership. Many U.S. citizens aren’t exactly sure history — about 13 percent. The high-water mark with no state, wearing no uniform, willing to kill in 230 years of American history, akin to America’s what they get out of America’s continued global was 14.5 percent between 1890 and 1920, a period of the name of religion, and dedicated to the death of opening to global engagement at the beginning of engagement or what America’s goals are in the massive economic, political, and social disruption. ordinary Americans. the 20th century, or to the emergence of the Cold world. And perhaps it’s not so hard to see why they America needs to have a national conversation Quite understandably, American foreign policy War. America’s complex security considerations feel that way. about whether it’s making it possible for millions was reoriented toward this real and urgent threat. are downstream of the digital revolution that the America has endured nearly two decades and millions of newcomers to become a part of the Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and, later, the Islamic State world is living through right now, which truly of war, and there’s little end in sight to its single American community. posed a unique concern to American security, and is changing everything. For all of human history, involvement in the Middle East, the president’s Moreover, the refusal to secure the U.S. border to U.S. friends and allies. Political, national-security, economics has been about atoms; looking forward, recent announcements of troop withdrawal is a refusal to take seriously the national-security and intelligence-community conversations turned economics is going to be largely about bytes. notwithstanding.1 In Afghanistan, the Taliban is implications of a porous border. America’s to the challenge of non-state actors. But, as became And that change has all sorts of implications for so bold that late last year they attacked the head adversaries around the world know that the U.S. apparent, this reorientation was done to the intelligence, defense, and diplomacy. of the American forces.2 Three American soldiers border is penetrable. People in Washington tend exclusion of almost everything else, and it took for There is as much opportunity as chaos in this were wounded in that ambush. A few weeks later, in to exaggerate particular threats, but the United granted that the American people were committed revolution. But only if America leads. a separate attack, four American servicemen were States has plenty of adversaries that are well aware to this new mission. The public broadly supported killed.3 Some have hailed the ongoing negotiations that its unsecured northern and southern borders more engagement, it’s true. Unfortunately, however, between the United States and the Taliban, but and its shrugging approach to visa overstays are that effort to combat non-state actors was never The Rush to Retreat given the Taliban’s refusal to negotiate directly weaknesses to be exploited. integrated into any long-term vision of America’s with the government in Kabul, they are unlikely to This is just a sampling, but the takeaway is plain role in the world, or of America’s responsibilities To begin, it’s important to look sympathetically be fruitful in the long term. to see: The dissatisfaction of so many millions for managing the international system as a whole. at the position of the many American citizens who American allies increasingly choose to free- of Americans is a result of a failure by American The public lost the thread, and the United States are increasingly skeptical of the post–World War II ride under America’s security umbrella, instead leaders to persuade them that the United States took its eye off the threat posed by rising powers consensus position on U.S. global engagement and of contributing meaningfully to their collective has a coherent, long-term foreign-policy vision like China and resurgent powers like Russia. that gathers all the different parts of its national- So now, America, as a nation, finds itself caught security apparatus into one clear, definable whole. off guard yet again. 1 Dan Lamothe and Josh Dawsey, “Trump Wanted a Big Cut in Troops in Afghanistan. New U.S. Military Plans Fall Short,” Washington Post, Jan. 8, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/new-plans-for-afghanistan-would-have-trump-withdrawing-fewer- To understand how this has come about, take a America has been surprised by Russia’s aggressive troops/2019/01/08/ddf2858e-12a0-11e9-a896-f104373c7ffd_story.html?utm_term=.bb2d0a11731f. look at recent history. Since the end of the Cold expansionism, not only in its own neighborhood 2 Pamela Constable and Sayed Salahuddin, “U.S. Commander in Afghanistan Survives Deadly Attack at Governor’s Compound that Kills Top War and the fall of America’s last great adversary, but across Europe and the Atlantic. It is also Afghan Police General,” Washington Post, Oct. 18, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/gunfire-erupts-in-afghan-governors- compound-after-meeting-with-us-commander/2018/10/18/109fc5e0-d2ce-11e8-b2d2-f397227b43f0_story.html?utm_term=.c7984c5eca35. the American people have seen their country’s surprised by China’s heavy hand over not only its 3 Ryan Browne, “Fourth U.S. Service Members Dies After November IED Attack in Afghanistan,” CNN, Dec. 3, 2018, https://www.cnn. com/2018/12/03/politics/pentagon-afghanistan-ied-explosion-fourth-death/index.html. 4 “Our Story,” Department of Defense, accessed April 23, 2019, https://www.defense.gov/our-story/.

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Pacific neighbors but far afield — in places like United Nations, that were dedicated to securing Africa, where an increasing number of countries diplomatic solutions to simmering conflicts. It could be considered Chinese vassal states, and established new financial institutions and trading The United States even in Central and South America. Who, in recent regimes to secure the global financial order. The years, predicted the need for an updated Monroe General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ensured a Doctrine? rules-based trading order that endures to this day needs to prepare for America has been distracted with its own political in the form of the World Trade Organization. Most short-termism. The country stumbles from agenda importantly, America formed security alliances to agenda, seized by candidates’ and officials’ short- such as NATO — arguably the most important term political interests. There isn’t a shared sense and significant military alliance in two millennia — another long contest of what America is doing in the long term, and why. with friends who were dedicated not just to shared On the whole, there are only those in power and interests but to shared principles. those trying to displace those in power, and that’s At the heart of all these efforts was the not enough reason for Americans to support larger recognition that a peaceful and prosperous world of nation-versus- outlays or send their kids into harm’s way. would redound to the benefit of Middle America. America has lost any sense of a shared vision If the United States had not created that world, no of its role on the global stage. Ultimately, this is one would have created it, and all nations would nation, and the only way unsustainable, and the American people are right have suffered — including America. to say that the inchoate status quo is not working. Everyone involved in American foreign To his credit, President Donald Trump has policymaking needs to think again about how to intuited some of these problems. Because he persuade the American people of the value of an to prepare for a contest thinks his mandate is, in part, to disrupt, he has American-led, American-powered global order. been willing to call out the tendency of some foreign-policy experts to recycle old, tired rhetoric and ideas, and to pretend that old framings of The Return to Great of that kind is by problems are eternally valid — that the same Power Competition appeals can be used in 2018 that were used in 1988. Candidate Trump sensed that a lot of Americans The contours of the era in which America now wanted someone to stand up to a foreign-policy finds itself become clearer by the day. The “end of persuading Americans establishment that, in their eyes, had grown lazy history” has come to an end.5 and distant. The world is returning to the great power Unfortunately, I don’t think President Trump competition that for so long defined international that it’s necessary. has solutions to the problems he has identified. relations. The United States needs to prepare for He wants to disrupt, but toward no clear end. The another long contest of nation-versus-nation, and suggestion that the United States should return the only way to prepare for a contest of that kind to isolationism should prompt Americans to ask: is by persuading Americans that it’s necessary. But “What has happened when we’ve tried isolationism America’s leaders have not been doing that. in the past?” The plain answer is that it has never It is clear that Russia is on the move. President been good for the American people, let alone for Vladimir Putin is hard at work trying to make his America’s allies and neighbors. “America First” is country great again. He and his circle of kleptocrats a 1920s slogan for a 1920s policy. It didn’t work are looking for opportunities to reassert Russia’s then, and it won’t work today. The great lesson traditional role as the hegemon that can dictate of America’s interwar isolationism 100 years ago the fate of Europe and the Far East. Over the past — when the United States won the “Great War” decade, Putin has proven himself willing to take and then retreated, failing to secure the peace — is big risks to make that happen: annexing Crimea, that it left the country woefully unprepared when invading Ukraine, facilitating the Assad regime’s another war broke out. atrocities in Syria (and committing some of Russia’s America has a better historical example to guide own atrocities), launching cyber attacks across its path today: the period following World War II. Europe, and of course deploying the campaign of In the 1940s, America won a war, but then decided disinformation and hacking that disrupted the 2016 to “win the peace” as well. Instead of retreating elections in America — something that will surely after victory, America set out to build a new global be resurrected for the 2020 elections. order designed to prevent yet another catastrophic Putin is an evil man. But let’s not overstate war. It established and led institutions, such as the his powers. He presides over a shrinking, aging

5 See, Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).

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population and a collapsing economy that is built China doesn’t want to end up in an open 25 or 50 years. China has no such problem. Hybrid Warfare largely around a single resource. But he is playing competition with the United States. Its goal is The last century of American engagement in the his bad hand very well, and he will be able to rather to win the battles of the future before they world led to an extraordinary period of peace and In an age of hybrid warfare, more and more increase his winnings if the United States forgoes reach the battlefield. China is willing to play a prosperity. America’s refusal to continue to lead of America’s contests will take place on servers its role in Europe. America can no longer afford to decades-long, maybe even century-long, game to will threaten those achievements. A world in which and digital networks, rather than on traditional be reactive to Putin’s aggressions — the time has reclaim what it sees as its historic position as the America withdraws is a world in which America battlefields. This means the United States needs come to be proactive. “Middle Kingdom” — that is, to make itself once and its allies are in ever-present and increasing to rethink and reorient on multiple fronts. That said, U.S. leaders need to turn the attention again the center of the world. danger. Every alternative to American leadership There is not one single place to start. Often, the of the American people to the coming long-term Right now, most countries don’t want to be on will put U.S. interests in jeopardy, threaten U.S. debates about bureaucratic reorganization in struggle with China. Xi Jinping and the Chinese “team China.” They know that it is bad for them. security, and endanger America’s freedom to live by the intelligence community (which I support) Communist Party leaders have created a hybrid But many of them are telling American leaders that and promote its values. A world where the United incapacitate substantive policy discussion, and system of communism and techno-mercantilism they can’t hold out for long. They know that the States sits on its hands is a world where China, prevent any forward progress. What the entire that brings together almost absolute state control future in the Pacific — as well as globally — is going Russia, and others will exploit its weaknesses. That national-security apparatus should be able to do and enormous economic power. It has been said to be either America-led or China-led, and they’re will be bad for America. Eventually, hell abroad will is take steps across different domains at the same that present-day China is what Stalin always beginning to place their bets. When the United find its way to America’s shores. time, rather than first figure out the exact proper intended to create, but was never able to manage. States abandons the world stage, it strengthens sequence of every incremental change. China is already making increasingly expansive China’s hand. It’s clear that the American intelligence territorial claims. Its navy is taking control of It’s worth pointing out that China is not The Need for Imagination community is not adequately equipped to meet strategically important sea lanes and trade routes, doing this alone. It’s getting a leg up from many the challenges of the next century’s great power in an effort to exercise control over more than $5 American companies in Silicon Valley. These America needs a new way forward. It can’t retreat, competition. trillion of global annual trade, as well as military companies have shown a willingness to help the but the above-mentioned problems people sense One potential step toward readiness would routes used by neighboring countries and the U.S. Chinese Communist Party perfect its security are real and can’t be ignored. U.S. policymakers be to establish a Hybrid Threat Center, perhaps Navy. Beijing is making massive investments in the state in exchange for access to Chinese markets. can’t pretend the American voters will go along housed within the Office of the Director of National developing world, especially across Asia and Africa, This should be stated clearly: There are American with a program of vigorous engagement without Intelligence (although those specifics are best left but — as mentioned above — increasingly also in companies that are tacitly undermining America’s being persuaded, courted, and wooed. The for a future bureaucratic tussle). Like the National Central and South America, in an effort to crowd national-security community at precisely the challenge, then, is for policymakers to be honest Counterterrorism Center, the Hybrid Threat out American economic power.6 China wants to time when public-private, digital-technology about American foreign-policy failures — and Center would bring together experts from across make itself the partner of choice in the developing partnerships are becoming essential for America’s also to make clear the opportunities available to different domains in the intelligence community world, especially in those parts of the world that economy, security, and politics. America, as a nation, if together it is clear-eyed. — cyber, finance, info-ops, and more — to provide have historically been understood In short, American foreign policy is suffering policymakers with an aggregated view of how as falling within America’s sphere of from a failure of imagination. The policymaking China and Russia in particular, but also North influence. class has failed to get the American people to really Korea and Iran, are using asymmetric tools to The massive Belt and Road Initiative imagine the possibilities of American leadership influence the United States and undercut U.S. is not only a project to expand Chinese — or to imagine a world without it. The United interests — including in domains that typically are economic power, but a way of fracturing States need a foreign-policy imagination that is not seen as political. This center would not replace the sovereignty of nearby states and broader, more adaptive, and more creative — an the work being done at China and Russia desks. turning them into outposts of Chinese imagination suited to the digital age and to an era Rather, it would concentrate dispersed resources interests. in which threats are more complex than they were in an urgent direction. In the Western world, China uses in 1941, 1950, 1963, 1988, or 2001. America needs a The Hybrid Threat Center would emphasize its Confucius Institutes as propaganda foreign-policy imagination that can comprehend open-source analysis and technological trends like outlets for party interests. In the United the new era of challenges it faces. the spread of “deepfake” technology. It won’t be States, these institutes are present on a number of I don’t want to paint a picture of doom and gloom I’m a rookie in politics. I’ve only been in my long before hackers with relatively simple tools university campuses, and many academic leaders — and I’ll explain why below — but I do think office for three and a half years, and I’m one of will be able to fabricate convincing audio or video have been very naïve about the strings that are America is in a critical period, and it doesn’t have only eight people in the Senate who has never of things that were never said or didn’t happen. attached to them. a vision to guide it through the challenges that it is been a politician before. So I want to suggest a This is going to cause enormous chaos. It’s going China has dedicated itself to being the world’s about to face. The United States has an adversary few ideas, although I don’t pretend that this is a to destroy lives and roil financial markets — and go-to high-tech manufacturer by 2025, and its that is willing to move quickly, quietly, and cleverly, sufficient menu. Nevertheless, I think these are it might well spur military conflicts. America will leader in artificial intelligence by 2030. If China can as well as operate on a very long timeline. China examples of creative, concrete ways that those of need the resources to assess and react urgently. gain an edge in artificial intelligence research, as knows what it wants the world to look like in 25 us specially tasked with thinking carefully about It will also need people who retain some public many experts believe it can, it will hold the whip and 50 years. Does America? America’s role in the world might move forward, trust, who can say with authority what is real and hand over the next-generation tools that will be The answer is clear: No. The American people and my hope is that they will spark other ideas what isn’t. Some of them will have to come from necessary for America’s national economic growth, have not been brought into a conversation about and further discussion. the national-security world. It will be important as well as for its military and national security. what the world might look like, for good or for ill, in to think about what that entails for how these institutions operate day-to-day, amid so much

6 Kartik Jayaram, Omid Kassiri, and Irene Yuan Sun, “The Closest Look Yet at Chinese Economic Engagement in Africa,” McKinsey & Company, political polarization. June 2017, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/middle-east-and-africa/the-closest-look-yet-at-chinese-economic-engagement-in-africa. The center would be a key intelligence resource

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to help policymakers address the challenges address it is not part of any public discussion. operations across the globe. for the U.S. public sector to encourage private- America faces more swiftly. There are many areas The most recent National Defense Authorization If there’s anything America’s adversaries hate, it’s sector investment across Asia, as a counterweight right now where America is superior to China Act established a Cyberspace Solarium Commission transparency. The United States should make Xi’s to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. in theory but not in operational effectiveness, modeled after President Dwight Eisenhower’s and Putin’s finances unmistakably clear to their America needs to rethink its Pacific engagement because America’s bureaucratic and legal cultures Solarium Commission, which brought together people and to the world. It should use government in terms of multilateral institutional relationships, are messy and slow. public- and private-sector experts to formulate agencies’ social-media reach to amplify the work rather than the default hub-and-spoke Additionally, given that there is no widespread defense policy for the nuclear age.7 America needs of non-governmental organizations and other configuration. China and Russia are flexing their agreement in U.S. intelligence and national- that kind of initiative for the cyber age, and it’s my groups and actors that expose the corruption of muscles in the Pacific and the United States needs security communities about the security and hope that the new commission will be just that. something more like a “NATO for Asia” that could military implications of China’s Belt and Road The current administration’s new National turn America’s bilateral alliances into multi-party Initiative, America needs a National Intelligence Security Presidential Memorandum 13, which partnerships. Estimate that can shape that kind of consensus. replaces Presidential Policy Directive 20, delegates The bottom line is that many of the institutions During the Cold War, these estimates about the authority to the military and other agencies America helped to create or has used to safeguard Soviet Union were hardly perfect, nor wholly to conduct cyber operations, allowing quicker its interests abroad, such as the U.N. Security immune from politicization, but they performed responses to cyber threats.8 The Cyberspace Council, have grown sclerotic. That’s undeniable. the crucial task of helping thoroughly inform Solarium Commission will hopefully forge But the solution is not to scrap institutional policymaking conversations, and so they became consensus about taking more steps like this solutions altogether. The conversation that ought a launch-point for meaningful debate. A National that can empower the people doing the frontline to take place is about what kinds of new institutions Intelligence Estimate on the Chinese initiative fighting in cyberspace. can be built in the present circumstances to serve could be a valuable tool to spur and inform debates It’s clear that efficient lines of communication to America’s long-term goals. The word “reset” has that have so far been avoided, or conducted largely inform the president about cyber issues have not become a bad word, but America does, in fact, as political point-scoring exercises. yet been established. This president and future need a sort of institutional “reset,” because right presidents need to have ready, regular access now many Americans think the choice is between Cyber Warfare to cyber intelligence. How to fix this problem authoritarian regimes. America has a giant bully retreating or clinging to every existing institution ought to be part of a broader delayering inside pulpit — it should use it. The U.S. government with a death grip. That’s a false choice. If they’re The Hybrid Threat Center would, of course, the intelligence community as a whole — where, should fast-track asylum claims by whistleblowers smart, America’s leaders ought to do three things touch deeply on cyber security policy, but much again, a clumsy bureaucracy limits operational who expose corruption in authoritarian regimes, at the same time, and as part of one coherent more than that is needed. We are a quarter-century effectiveness. and it should figure out ways to reward more of strategy: stop investing in any institutions that are into the era of cyber war, and America has only just China is extorting intellectual property from that work by America’s friends abroad. obsolete or counterproductive, revamp institutions begun to think about what this means for its long- American companies, especially in the tech sector. The National Counterintelligence and Security that are useful but need an update, and create term strategic interests and how that will guide The U.S. Government Accountability Office should Center should produce an unclassified report on new institutions where they are needed. It’s not America’s current operational and tactical posture. assess all collaborative technology initiatives China’s influence and propaganda activities in the necessary to embrace the idea that the only two Russia’s exploits in the 2016 election demonstrated between the United States and China to better United States, especially on American campuses. choices are a reflexive defense of every jot and how vulnerable America’s critical infrastructure understand what America is losing and how rapidly, And it should be publicized far and wide, so the tittle of the current order, or global retreat. is to attack. No one in the U.S. government was and where the biggest exposures are. Lawmakers American people know. These are just a handful of possibilities. None of thinking about election systems as part of critical should direct the chief information security officer them is a silver bullet. Many of them would likely infrastructure even just a few years ago. at the Office of Management and Budget to provide Alliances, Old and New require serious tweaking, and some of them may There are many more failures of imagination annual reports on where China is intentionally sound good in theory but would prove impractical. like that. America faces the prospect of modes of causing vulnerabilities in U.S. supply chains. Finally, policymakers need to communicate more That’s okay. What the country needs is more information warfare that it has not taken the time thoughtfully with U.S. citizens about the value of debate about new institutions that can support even to attempt to imagine. The United States needs Political Warfare alliances. In the last couple years, there has been a global engagement. It needs to start imagining new to be able not just to parry but to go on the offense lot of talk about the costs of alliances. Yes, it’s true, ways of seeing and organizing the world that are against China and other sophisticated actors who For years, the United States has only reacted they are expensive. But, to invoke former Defense conducive to advancing U.S. interests. won’t just be posting Facebook ads, but will use to a combination of cyber and information Secretary James Mattis, the only thing more costly their capabilities to undermine America’s defense operations. That is unsustainable. America must than having alliances is not having them.9 capabilities and to (quite literally) change numbers be on defense and on offense. To that end, the U.S. The United States needs to rebuild the institutions America: Imagination as a Resource inside U.S. financial institutions. Imagine the chaos government should make better, more robust use that support these alliances. When America pulled when middle-class Americans’ checkbooks stop of organizations like the U.S. Agency for Global out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it ceded I have spilled a lot of ink pointing out the balancing — even by just a few dollars. That kind Media and establish some sort of political-warfare economic influence to China. It should re-engage. failures of imagination in the U.S. foreign-policy of attack is not at all hard to imagine, but what agency that can serve as a coordinating hub for Nobody was happier about America’s retreat from establishment — how it has grown beholden to the resulting turmoil would look like and how to American offensive activities and information that trade agreement than Beijing. stale approaches and has defended confusion and Despite some technical concerns about the BUILD incoherence and therefore ended up unprepared. It 7 “H.R. 5515 – John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019,” 115th Congress (2017–2018), https://www.congress.gov/ Act, America should continue to find creative ways has not done anything to build a consensus about bill/115th-congress/house-bill/5515/text - toc-HEDF86C877B1B46F49F2D9039A895923D. 8 Ellen Nakashima, “White House Authorizes ‘Offensive Cyber Operations’ to Deter Foreign Adversaries,” Washington Post, Sept. 20, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-authorizes-offensive-cyber-operations-to-deter-foreign-adversaries-bolton- 9 “Remarks by Secretary Mattis on the National Defense Strategy,” U.S. Department of Defense, Jan. 19, 2018, https://dod.defense.gov/News/ says/2018/09/20/b5880578-bd0b-11e8-b7d2-0773aa1e33da_story.html. Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1420042/remarks-by-secretary-mattis-on-the-national-defense-strategy/.

110 111 The Strategist The End of the End of History: Reimagining U.S. Foreign Policy for the 21st Century

America’s role in the world over the next 25, 50, and We the people — Americans at every level — 100 years. are tasked with renewing that leadership in each Nonetheless, I am very confident in the American generation. And so, the questions Americans imagination, because it’s an inexhaustible resource. should be wrestling with today are: Will we hand In very practical, down-to-earth ways, America the reins to someone else? Will we retreat? Or will has unquestionably the greatest entrepreneurs, we do the hard work of re-envisioning American innovators, and creative thinkers on the earth. leadership for the 21st century and beyond? People who grow up in America grow up in an environment where they’re supposed to challenge Ben Sasse is a Republican U.S. senator from the received wisdom — where they’re supposed to Nebraska. build the new mousetrap, the revolutionary app. People across the world — the 96 percent of the world that doesn’t live in the United States — know that if you’re an entrepreneurial, innovative thinker, America is the place to be. If the U.S. government can apply that cultural and economic power to the challenges America faces, it can win — just as it won the industrial race and the space race against the Soviet Union. But the American imagination is extraordinary in another way. America is the only modern nation founded on the idea that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights. The country hasn’t always lived up to that belief, but over 230 years it has managed to steward it pretty well. And in the process, it has helped millions upon millions of people around the world realize that they don’t have to live under the thumb of tyrants. Continually striving to meet U.S. commitments to liberty and justice under changing circumstances has been a source of promise to the world. That’s still true today. That is why people suffering under repression still look to the United States as a beacon — and not to Russia or China. It isn’t a coincidence that just before the tanks rolled in, that group of students in Tiananmen Square in 1989 had built their own Statue of Liberty in the middle of the square. They didn’t do that because they wanted to go to Silicon Valley to build a new company. They did that because they knew that American principles hold not just for 320 million Americans, but for every person across the globe. There are important debates to be had about where American foreign policy ought to be situated along the idealist/realist continuum, but when the rubber meets the road, the single greatest asset for deploying a realist foreign policy continues to be the idealist commitment America has to universal human dignity. The American moral imagination elevates every human being. When America chooses to lead, peace, prosperity, liberty, and dignity follow — maybe not immediately, and maybe not easily, but eventually. But U.S. leadership is not an inherent law of the world. U.S. leadership isn’t guaranteed by fate or destiny.

112 113 The Roundtable

Roundtables are where we get to hear from multiple experts on either a subject matter or a recently published book. This issue features a roundtable essay by David M. Edelstein, who discusses the return of great power competition and its effects on the global order. Roundtable The Persistence of Great Power Politics

This issue’s featured roundtable essay is from a roundtable on global order, great power competition, and the likelihood of war, which emerged from a colloquium hosted by Perry World House in September 2018 on the current state of the global order.

he next decade is likely to bring Why Has Great Power an intensification of great power Competition Returned? competition. This is not a new or recent development, although Donald Over the last few decades, the United States and Trump’sT approach to national security has drawn China have cooperated more than many theorists attention to it:1 Chinese assertiveness in the of international relations might expect.3 Forging South China Sea was evident during the Obama extensive economic ties has been in the interest presidency and Russia’s occupation of Crimea, of of both countries. However, those ties have also David M. Edelstein course, predates Trump’s election.2 served as the foundation for Chinese economic Nevertheless, understanding what this growth — growth that has effectively translated burgeoning competition means for global order into military might. As I have argued elsewhere, the requires answering three questions. First, what is particular combination of American and Chinese the prognosis for great power competition in the time horizons has allowed this cooperation to foreseeable future? Second, is war among great flourish.4 While Washington was focused on other powers becoming more likely or do structural or short-term threats to its security, Beijing was normative considerations mean the risks are being patiently “biding its time,” recognizing that its exaggerated? Third, what is the likely evolution of brightest days as a great power lay ahead.5 the international order in East Asia where China In recent years, this dynamic has shifted. Most is reasserting itself? To answer these questions importantly, for a mix of both domestic and briefly: Great power competition is, in fact, likely international reasons, China has become more to intensify in the coming years. Moreover, the risk assertive in the South China Sea, prompting of limited war during this period of competition questions about its long-term intentions.6 In turn, will be moderately high but, nevertheless, nuclear Washington has become increasingly nervous about weapons will continue to limit the likelihood that a the consequences of China’s economic growth major war will break out. Finally, the combination and military expansion, and policymakers inside of a rising China and a relatively declining United the Beltway are now asking whether America’s States creates the possibility for much uncertainty strategic approach to China has been misguided.7 and potential conflict in East Asia. The consequence has been heightened tensions with rising concerns about the prospects for a military clash between the two countries. A more

1 National Security Strategy of the United States of America, The White House, December 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/ uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf.

2 “Stirring Up the South China Sea: A Fleeting Opportunity for Calm,” International Crisis Group, May 7, 2015, https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/ north-east-asia/china/stirring-south-china-sea-iii-fleeting-opportunity-calm; Jeffrey Mankoff, “Russia’s Latest Land Grab: How Putin Won Crimea and Lost Ukraine,” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2014), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2014-04-17/russias-latest-land- grab. 3 Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis, Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China Council on Foreign Relations, Council Special Report, no. 72 (March 2015), https://www.cfr.org/report/revising-us-grand-strategy-toward-china; John J. Mearsheimer, “Can China Rise Peacefully?” National Interest, Oct. 25, 2014, https://nationalinterest.org/commentary/can-china-rise-peacefully-10204. 4 David M. Edelstein, Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017). 5 Denny Roy, Return of the Dragon: Rising China and Regional Security, ed. David C. Kang and Victor D. Cha (Columbia, NY: Columbia University Press, 1960), 31, chap. 2. 6 Gabriel Dominguez, “USS Decatur Has ‘Unsafe’ Encounter with Chinese Destroyer During South China Sea FONOP,” IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly, Oct. 2, 2018, https://www.janes.com/article/83508/uss-decatur-has-unsafe-encounter-with-chinese-destroyer-during-south-china-sea-fonop. 7 Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner, “The China Reckoning,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2018), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united- states/2018-02-13/china-reckoning.

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way.14 At some point, expanding Chinese interests tempted to define its interests more narrowly even will encounter the remnants of American interests as it recognizes the risk posed by a rising China. The (shrinking though they may be) and it is in these result is a higher likelihood of American entrapment spaces that competition will occur.15 One could in conflicts it might otherwise prefer to avoid. tell a similar story about Russia. While Russia’s Such entrapment is a particular risk for great relative power has not been increasing at the same powers like the United States that remain absolutely rate as China’s, the country has been emboldened powerful but are arguably in relative decline. The to pursue its interests in ongoing disputes such as United States has an interest in not seeing China the Syrian civil war.16 Where those interests butt become a hegemonic power in East Asia. At the up against American interests — for example over same time, the United States is not likely to confront Iran — is where we ought to expect to see the most China directly over its growing interests and intense competition in the coming decade.17 aspirations in the region. The anticipated costs of direct conflict between the two countries are likely sufficient to dissuade either side from initiating Competition Turning Into Conflict such a war. Instead, conflict is more likely to emerge when a friend or ally of the United States — such as Is this competition likely to lead to war between Vietnam, the Philippines, or Japan — finds itself in the United States and China, Russia, or other a crisis with Beijing. Washington will be tempted to countries? In short, the probability of great power intervene on behalf of these friends in order to put war is higher now than it has been in some the brakes on any growing Chinese influence in the time, but nuclear weapons continue to limit the region. Dangerously, smaller powers may be tempted likelihood of a systemic great power war breaking to provoke China precisely to generate this American out. However, as the United States becomes more response. Military clashes in the waters of East and concerned about Chinese intentions and as Beijing Southeast Asia are relatively easy to envision, and becomes more focused on short-term targets have already occurred in recent decades — consider, of opportunities in the South China Sea and for example, the Mischief Reef disputes in the 1990s, elsewhere, the probability of conflict rises.18 Where or the Scarborough Shoal incident in the 2000s.20 war is most likely to occur is through a process of Fortunately, such clashes are likely to remain alliance entrapment, a potentially volatile scenario limited in scale. While some worry that innovations that has been underappreciated by advocates of an in nuclear weapons technology have made such cooperative relationship might be restored if either well produce fear in the United States, but the two American-led, global international order. Skeptics of weapons more usable and more practical in the America’s or China’s time horizon were to shift countries can manage this shift in power dynamics entrapment have typically pointed to the experience conduct of warfare, the dynamics of escalation from back to what it was, but all signs at the moment in ways that will make war and peace more or less of the Cold War to argue that the likelihood of great the use of a small, low-yield nuclear weapon are still point to continuing growth in Chinese ambitions likely.11 As the relative power of the United States powers becoming entrapped by their weaker allies difficult to predict.21 The dangers of a catastrophic and concomitant growth in American concern.8 declines, it may become less willing and able to is limited.19 During the Cold War, however, both the nuclear conflagration will continue to place a lid on While shifting time horizons are critical to defend previously defined American interests United States and the Soviet Union defined their any possible future conflicts between the United understanding the evolution of Sino-American around the globe.12 Recent history gives us two interests globally, making it difficult for either to be States and China. Importantly, however, the risks of relations, a real and perceptible decline in American examples of this: Chastened by his experience in entrapped into a conflict it had not defined as part of continuous crises and skirmishes are significant — relative power together with a relative rise in Libya, Barack Obama grew increasingly reluctant its interests. Today, the United States may be more and escalation is possible.22 China’s power is crucial to understanding why about projecting American power abroad, while 9 great power competition has returned. Simplistic Donald Trump has signaled a reticence about 14 Derek Lundy, “How to Respond to China’s ‘Salami Tactics’ in South China Sea,” National Interest, July 11, 2016), https://nationalinterest.org/ arguments about the “Thucydides Trap” ought to American involvement in international affairs and blog/the-buzz/how-respond-chinas-salami-tactics-south-china-sea-16914. be rejected,10 but the simple dynamics of relative organizations.13 Meanwhile, as China continues to 15 Jennifer Lind, “Life in China’s Asia,” Foreign Affairs(March/April 2018), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-02-13/life-chinas-asia. power in the international system can explain grow it has slowly been expanding its presence 16 “Russia Says 63,000 Troops Have Seen Combat in Syria,” BBC News, Aug. 23, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-45284121. a great deal. China’s increase in power may very throughout Asia, meeting little resistance along the 17 Peter Layton, “To Engage China, or Balance It?” War on the Rocks, July 20, 2018, https://warontherocks.com/2018/07/to-engage-china-or- balance-it-lessons-from-a-failed-grand-strategic-exercise/. 18 Edelstein, Over the Horizon. 8 “The Belt and Road Initiative,” The State Council, The People’s Republic of China, http://english.gov.cn/beltAndRoad/. 19 Michael Beckley, “The Myth of Entangling Alliances: Reassessing the Security Risks of U.S. Defense Pacts,” International Security 39, no. 4 (Spring 2015): 7–48, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00197; Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, America Abroad: Why the Sole 9 Michael Auslin, et al., “Policy Roundtable: Are the United States and China in a New Cold War?” Texas National Security Review, May 15, 2018, Superpower Should Not Pull Back from the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). https://tnsr.org/roundtable/policy-roundtable-are-the-united-states-and-china-in-a-new-cold-war/. 20 Steve Mollman, “Photos: How a ‘Fishermen’s Shelter’ on Stilts Became a Chinese Military Base” Quartz, Dec. 15, 2016), https://qz.com/863811/ 10 Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (New York: Mariner Books, 2018). mischief-reef-how-a-fishermens-shelter-on-stilts-became-a-chinese-military-base-in-the-south-china-sea/; Richard Heydarian, “How the Scarborough 11 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Shoal Came Back to Haunt China-Philippines Relations,” South China Morning Post, June 23, 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy- defence/article/2151923/how-scarborough-shoal-came-back-haunt-china-philippines. 12 Barry R. Posen, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015). 21 Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the Future of Nuclear Deterrence,” International 13 Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” Atlantic (April 2016), https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama- Security 41, no. 4 (Spring 2017): 9–49, https://doi.org/10.1162/ISEC_a_00273. doctrine/471525/; Griff Witte and Michael Birnbaum, “A Year of Trump’s America First Agenda,” Washington Post, Jan. 20, 2018, https://www. washingtonpost.com/world/a-year-of-trumps-america-first-agenda-has-radically-changed-the-us-role-in-the-world/2018/01/20/c1258aa6-f7cf-11e7- 22 Aaron Miles, “Escalation Dominance in America’s Oldest New Nuclear Strategy,” War on the Rocks, Sept. 12, 2018), https://warontherocks. 9af7-a50bc3300042_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f5af12940129. com/2018/09/escalation-dominance-in-americas-oldest-new-nuclear-strategy/.

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The Future of the Asian Order Conclusion

An emerging structure of the Asian international In short, great power competition has never gone order may take some time to become evident, away in the way that many had hoped in the years but what might that order look like? First, the following the end of the Cold War.24 Such competition U.S. commitment to East Asia is more likely to was certainly muted during this era, when American weaken than to strengthen. If America’s relative power was predominant, Russia was in decline, and power continues to decline compared to China’s, China’s rise was in its nascent stages. But all of that it will be difficult for the United States to sustain a has changed now. The United States is in relative presence in East Asia that is more reassuring than decline, Russia is resurgent, and China has acquired it is dangerous.23 Second, China is likely to become the capabilities to act more assertively. At the same a more dominant presence in the region. While time, the time horizons of all of these powers may smaller powers may pursue various strategies be shifting in foreboding ways: The United States to constrain assertions of Chinese power, their is becoming more attentive to the long-term threats options will be limited, especially if the United of these great powers, while both China and Russia States signals that it is unwilling to be drawn into a become more assertive in the short term, which war in East Asia. One ought to expect to see efforts will, in turn, provoke more long-term concerns in by some smaller powers in the region to balance Washington. The implications are likely to be more against an increasingly assertive China, but other competition and, indeed, the possibility of great countries may also pursue opportunities to benefit power war.25 Nuclear weapons may very well provide from cooperation with China, despite the threat insurance against the outbreak of a catastrophic war, China might pose over the long term. but the dangers of smaller conflicts — and the ways Just how much China would seek to disrupt in which they might escalate — are significant and the existing international order remains unclear. worrisome. How to prevent great power competition China has certainly benefited from an international from escalating to great power conflict is sure to be order that has allowed it to prosper from relatively one of the significant challenges of the coming years open trade with other countries. At the same time, for policymakers and scholars alike. China is less enamored of other aspects of the so- called “liberal international order,” including the David M. Edelstein is vice dean of faculty at promotion of democracy. While China may desire Georgetown College and an associate professor a dominant position in East Asia, it is unclear how of international affairs at the Center for Security concerned Beijing might be about the prospects Studies, the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign of South Korea or Japan were they unconstrained Service, and the Department of Government at by their American ally. In short, reactions to a Georgetown University. He is the author of Over the Chinese revision of the international order may Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great be enthusiastic in some areas, but they may be Powers (Cornell University Press, 2017). He tweets more reluctant in others. Beijing’s ability to carry at @dmedelstein. through such revisions to the order will depend on its ability to combine coercion and persuasion in its This publication was made possible (in part) by a relations with other countries in Asia and beyond. grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The The more it has to rely on coercion, the more likely statements made and views expressed are solely the conflict between China and its neighbors — as well responsibility of the author. as other great powers — becomes. In short, little is foreordained about the nature of a Chinese-led international order. How such an order is likely to evolve depends on Chinese preferences and behavior, but also on how others react to its efforts to shape the East Asian order.

23 Michael Beckley, Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018). 24 Jessica Tuchman Mathews, “Redefining Security,” Foreign Affairs 68, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 162–77, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20043906. 25 Peter Mattis, “From Engagement to Rivalry: Tools to Compete with China,” Texas National Security Review 1, no. 4 (August 2018), https://tnsr. org/2018/08/from-engagement-to-rivalry-tools-to-compete-with-china/.

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