De-Escalation and War Termination in Multi-Domain Regional Wars

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DE-ESCALATION AND WAR TERMINATION IN MULTI-DOMAIN REGIONAL WARS

Workshop Summary

May 25 and 26, 2021

Date of workshop 16 pt

Center for Global Security Research LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY

Workshop Summary

DE-ESCALATION AND WAR TERMINATION IN MULTI-DOMAIN REGIONAL WARS

Center for Global Security Research Livermore, California, May 25 and 26, 2021

Prepared By Brian Radzinsky with contributions from Veronica Chinchilla, Harrison Durland, Jacek Durkalec, Spencer Erjavic, Luke Radice and Hilary Reininger

On May 25 and 26, 2021, the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) hosted a workshop on “De-Escalation and War Termination in Multi- Domain Regional Wars.” The workshop brought together government and non-governmental expert participants from the United States, NATO, and allied countries. The workshop reviewed the extant thinking on de-escalation and war termination in modern regional wars involving nuclear-armed regional powers. Although this general problem of deterrence and escalation in such conflicts has received extensive attention in the United States and elsewhere, far less attention has been dedicated to the challenge of de-escalating hostilities and ending such wars. The same cannot be said for Russian and Chinese thinkers, who have placed escalation and counter-escalation strategies at the center of their ways of war. Recognizing this challenge, the workshop sought to identify gaps in current thinking and sketch the contours of future research and conceptual development.

Key take-aways

1. The paucity of sustained, systematic thought on the challenges of de-escalation and war termination in modern strategic conflict is striking. This may have something to do with the fact that wars that might go nuclear are widely seen as inherently unpredictable and unthinkable. It may also have to do with the hubris that lingers from the unipolar moment and the conviction that adversaries “wouldn’t dare” cross major U.S. escalation red lines. Whatever its sources, the apparent absence of such thinking is not just striking—it is dangerous. As the National Defense Strategy Commission concluded in 2018, the U.S. could well lose a war again Russia or China because it has failed to understand how and why such wars might escalate or how to respond without incentivizing nuclear catastrophe.

2. History provides many useful insights into the challenges of de-escalation and war termination. It illustrates the often-poisonous effects of wars begun without clear

objectives, the constraining effects of the need to sustain domestic and international coalitions, the differences between winning wars at the operational level and winning the peace that follows, and the strong American preference for decisive wars and unconditional enemy surrender. It also illustrates the difficulty of bringing an enemy via escalation to a “culminating point” where they choose to no longer accept the costs and risks of continued war, as escalation may only deepen the enemy’s resolve. In Fred Iklé’s famous short-hand, “those with the power to start a war often find that they lack the power to stop it.”

3. The situation today is without obvious precedent. Escalation and counter-escalation strategies are at the heart of the new approaches to war of Russia and China, who count on an asymmetry of stake (favoring them, as they perceive it) to induce U.S. de-escalation. They have built up and integrated multi-domain means of doing so. They cast a growing nuclear shadow over regional conventional wars. Moreover, technology has helped arm them (and the U.S.) with the means to strip away the strategic depth and operational cohesion of their enemies and to attempt early, decisive action in the service of “active defense” strategies. War between two nuclear-armed major power rivals would necessarily conclude as a catastrophe for both or require concessions by both.

4. De-escalation and war termination present separate but linked challenges. An enemy may choose to de-escalate or not escalate further but not abandon war aims or ongoing multi- domain operations. A separate choice is required to terminate a conflict. That may or may not depend on whether political conditions acceptable to the conceding state are available.

5. Decisions to de-escalate and terminate wars could generate civil-military friction. Major concessions often have significant domestic and international political consequences. Significant debates can be expected about whether further operational degradation or punishment of the enemy is necessary as a condition of the subsequent peace, even if military victory has been assured.

6. The “shadow of the future” is likely to be long over de-escalation and war termination decisions for the U.S. in a war against a nuclear-armed major power rival. Such wars will raise fundamental questions about America’s future role as a global or regional power and its credibility as a security guarantor, and about the utility of nuclear weapons for deterrence, defense, and offense.

7. In recent years, the USG has made some important progress in coming to terms with the challenges of escalation and de-escalation in modern strategic conflict. DoD leadership has a shared understanding of the problem and of Red’s theory of victory. It has responded in various ways—with updated planning guidance and new plans, with a new focus on multi- domain deterrence, with various reforms enabling the Chairman to more effectively integrate for these purposes. The national defense strategy review process, now unfolding, is taking this as a central problem. Embedded within it is an integrated strategic deterrence review, which is charged with thinking through the requirements of deterrence in such conflicts and of restoring deterrence if it fails.

8. Progress has also been made in developing improved and/or new capabilities for multi- domain, trans-regional conflict. Some in the technology community hold to the idea that the next new technology will be the silver bullet that will solve for us the problems of modern strategic conflict. There will be no silver bullets.

9. There are signs that a Blue theory of victory is emerging—with the emphasis on “emerging.” Today we see a growing collection of ideas, approaches, hypotheses, even policies and strategies for shaping the behaviors of challengers involved in conflicts of vital interests with the U.S. and its allies and capable of significant multi-domain escalation. What we do not yet see is a coherent theory of victory in modern strategic war that goes beyond the ambition to positively affect the adversary’s deterrence calculus to a core set of propositions about how means and ways can be linked to ends to incentivize an escalation- capable adversary to instead settle on terms acceptable to the US and its allies. When it comes to explaining to ourselves how the imposition of increased violence on our enemies would produce the political choices we would desire of them, we find liberal sprinklings of wishful thinking and favorable historical analogies.

10. The emerging Blue theory is built in part on the idea that deterrence can be restored if it has once failed through responses designed to impress upon the enemy that he/she has miscalculated the stake and resolve of the U.S. and its allies. Various war-games suggests that this short-hand misses two key points: (1) strategic deterrence has already failed with the enemy’s decision to step onto the road to war with the U.S. and (2) subsequent US deterrent threats or military action did nothing to persuade the enemy from taking a second significant step. To change the enemy’s “deterrence calculus” may require changing the enemy’s underlying assessment of American “strategic personality”, which may only be possible with time and a campaign of activity in war involving high cost and risk for the U.S.

11. The emerging Blue theory of victory is also built in part on the idea that multi-domain operations can be exploited to effectively manipulate the enemy’s calculus of the benefits, costs, and risks of different courses of action. In the words of military doctrine, “it is the artful combination of multiple dilemmas, rather than a clear overmatch in terms of any particular capability, that produces the desired advantage.” War-gaming often suggests that such “artful combinations” will prove elusive and may not produce the desired effects. With its multiple conventional-nuclear, offense-defense, and regional-transregional dimensions, modern strategic warfare is inherently complex—and that complexity is only made more onerous with the emergence of cyber space and outer space as new military domains. Escalation and de-escalation are all about signaling and such signals may well be lost as the fog of war grows even more dense at the strategic level of war.

12. China’s strategic thought on de-escalation focuses on de-escalation by its enemies and seems not to concern itself with the possibility that China may face difficult choices about whether and how to de-escalate. China’s strategists differentiate between wars that have gone nuclear and wars that have not. In a war that has gone nuclear, China expects to

counter-attack and re-attack until the enemy chooses to stop its nuclear attacks (whether China’s leaders believe that China has the nuclear posture adequate to this task is a matter of debate among outside scholars). In a war that has not gone nuclear, China expects to be able to put the burden of escalation and de-escalation onto its enemies, through (future) dominance at the conventional level of war and implementation of its “war control” strategies. In a war with the US over Taiwan, China would draw on a limited war theory of victory that relies on the escalatory threat of large-scale space, cyber, and conventional missile weapons to coerce adversary decision-makers by targeting their “societal functions.”

13. Russia’s strategic thought on de-escalation focuses on adversary de-escalation and little on war termination. Russia’s military strategy differentiates between three types of war: local, regional, and major wars invoking questions of survival and integrity of the state. Russian military doctrine envisions the integrated employment of multi-domain means to exert psychological pressure over enemy publics and leaders aimed at persuading them to de- escalate regional wars rather than cross the threshold to major war. Russian strategists spend more time thinking about how to de-escalate regional war than about how to persuade NATO to terminate a regional war in Europe on terms acceptable to Moscow.

14. Further study of the ways of war of China and Russia, especially of their thinking about the strategic level of conflict (whatever that might mean to them), would help to catalyze and inform the further development of the Blue theory of victory. It would also help to tailor that theory to the somewhat different deterrence challenges posed by China and Russia.

15. In a regional war against a major power rival, U.S. decisions about escalation, de-escalation, and war termination will touch in a fundamental way on the interests of US allies. Those interests may have a constraining effect on U.S. decisions, as allies seek to avoid both escalation that threatens them directly and concessions that may jeopardize their security in the long term. Friction can be expected over the necessary and appropriate response to a limited enemy first nuclear use, whether and how to conduct strikes deep into the territory of a major power rival, whether punishment is necessary to ward against future dangers, and over who is to blame for an escalating war that might have been avoided.

16. Alternatively, political convergence between the US and its allies would lend credibility to deterrence by adding weight to their communications about their stake in a politically acceptable outcome. The prospects for future convergence in crisis are improved through steady cooperation in peacetime to understand and prepare for modern strategic conflict.

17. In a NATO context, while Russia may think that the allies are weak and can be easily divided in crisis, convergence is more likely than divergence in war. In the absence of a clear threat, there are many reasons for allies to disagree; in the presence of such a threat, their capacity and intention to draw together are striking. Indeed, this is the alliance’s core deterrence asset. Moscow should beware the risks of miscalculation. It should understand that escalatory steps to induce de-escalation are likely to have the contrary result, resulting in

new costs and risks for Russia and increased demands to punish Russia as a condition of war termination.

18. In an East Asian context, both China and North Korea face the same challenge. Alliances built on both shared interests and shared values are not easily broken; indeed, they grow stronger when reminded of those things they share. But both Japan and South Korea are today increasingly sensitive to the risks they would run in war with their nuclear-armed neighbors and to perceptions that the U.S. might choose not to defend them if doing so puts its own homeland at nuclear risk.

19. As the US develops a theory of victory for modern strategic conflict, it needs a clear idea of what victory requires. It is not clear that victory is the right organizing concept, given the need to manage escalation rather than dominate it and the likely need to compromise and otherwise find common ground with the enemy in defining a politically acceptable outcome. Thus, “theory of success” may be a preferable organizing concept. But as a concept, it downplays the political and moral requirement to clearly demonstrate to U.S. and allied publics that the costs of war were justified and worth the risks that were born.

20. Wars have both outcomes and consequences, and war termination strategies are about both. At the operational level of war, victory or success equates with outcomes that are consistent with US military objectives. At the strategic level of war, victory or success equates with creating the conditions for a durable peace. It is difficult to find much evidence that U.S. strategic thought about modern strategic conflict has come to terms with this dichotomy. But this is hardly a new factor. To again cite Fred Iklé (1971): “It can happen that military men, while skillfully planning intricate operations and coordinating complicated maneuvers, remain curiously blind in failing to perceive that it is the outcome of the war, not the outcome of campaigns within it, that determines how well their plans serve the nation’s interests.”

21. The requirements of successful war termination are context dependent. There would be vast differences for the U.S. and its allies between the requirements in a war with China over Taiwan and a war with Russia over a NATO Article 5 contingency. And between a regional war that has gone nuclear and one that has not. But there would also be some common requirements, among them: that the sovereignty and integrity of U.S. allies be ensured and that the conditions be set for an enduring peace. “Victory” would mean gaining both of these; “success” might mean gaining only one.

22. In doing the needed strategic thought on these questions, it is not just or even primarily “military men” who remain “curiously blind.” The civilian perspective has been largely absent. More precisely, it has been relegated to trying to think through potential “off- ramps” as part of the de-escalation process (an especially challenging task, as these are almost entirely context dependent). War-gaming again suggests that this reflects far too narrow a view of the political dimension of modern strategic conflict. Such conflict is waged over interests that are politically defined. Stake is also framed by political leaders. Decisions about whether and how to escalate, de-escalate, and terminate such wars are

inherently “a continuation of politics by other means.” Questions of reputation and justice that would be invoked in a war with nuclear dimensions are also inherently political. The political requirements of victory and success have not been defined. The civilian side of the needed discourse is largely missing in action.

23. On this topic, improved civil-military cooperation is also needed. Civil-military leadership must be well joined together in thinking through the potential dynamics of such conflicts and how to shape them. This involves much more than developing a “play book” of escalation options. It requires preparations of various kinds to make strategically sound decisions under great complexity and stress.

24. Some re-thinking of “civil” in the civil-military relationship is also warranted, given the scale, breadth, and potential longevity of the competition with China and Russia and the likelihood of persistent probing on their part. Usually associated with a president’s political appointees providing oversight, in this case “civil” must also mean something much broader. U.S. and allied societies must be well aligned with these challenges—meaning they must understand the stakes and both support and enable national responses.

25. Much can be done to accelerate the refinement and implementation of the emerging Blue theory of victory and to improve its grasp of the requirements of successful de-escalation and war termination. Some concrete recommendations would be the following: • Accelerate the adaptation of wargaming to the strategic level of modern multi- domain warfare. • Study Red, study Blue, and study their interactions. • Go at least as far as Russia and China in defining a taxonomy of potential conflicts and the principal attributes of those conflicts that are most plausible with them. • Work on core concepts and the strategic lexicon (many of the terms in common usage are legacy terms, ill-suited for current purposes and sometimes undefined). • Work on the culture: embrace realism, complexity, humility, and wisdom over knowledge. • Accept that many of the challenges to further progress are of our own making. • Get allies to the table, keep them there, empower them to help lead. • Do not mistake positive steps (e.g., the Joint Warfighting Concept) for solutions. • Sustain military focus through leadership transitions. • Improve political leadership focus by using the 2021 national defense strategy review process to illuminate the problem for leaders and to bring home the burdens they would have to bear in possible future conflict—and, more fundamentally, our collective stake in ensuring that deterrence will be effective for 21st century requirements.

Panel 1: Framing the Issue

• What were the findings of the NDS commission bearing on this topic? • What interim work has been done? • What can the 2021 DoD policy and posture reviews contribute to advancing thinking?

A principal recommendation of the National Defense Strategy Commission was that the Defense Department should undertake serious study of the escalation dynamics of multi- domain conflicts against potential nuclear-armed regional powers. Since the NDSC’s report in 2018, the Defense Department has made some progress. There is now a basic understanding of the scale and nature of the problem. The Joint Staff and the Combatant Commands are exploring concepts for de-escalation through “off ramps.” Recognizing that the adversary’s escalation calculus may be shaped by the need to avoid appearing weak or humiliated the Joint Staff is investigating capabilities and concepts that would be detectable only to the adversary. Discreet capabilities could allow the U.S. to send signals and generate effects in ways that do not place the adversary in the position of having to save face. This opens up the possibility of a “backstage” environment for political negotiations to take place.

At the strategic level, however, there is much more to do. While leaders recognize the need for capabilities and concepts to facilitate de-escalation, there has been less effort to understand the conditions under which adversaries would be induced to de-escalate. For instance, it is not clear that the discreet capabilities would convince a highly resolved adversary to de-escalate. Having accepted the costs and risks of war, could such capabilities present the adversary with a sufficiently impactful set of additional costs? It is also not clear whether such capabilities would be an appropriate response to an adversary’s limited use of nuclear weapons. Should we expect discreet capabilities to de-escalate or terminate a conflict, particularly if the effects of such capabilities are less severe than those of nuclear weapons or other more overt capabilities?

A second challenge surrounds the distinction between military and political forms of victory. Ultimately, war termination results from a political solution rather than a decisive military outcome, although military victories can contribute to political victories. Historically, the United States has had more success in achieving military victories than political victories. In the first Gulf War, for instance, the United States routed the Iraqi army but failed to bring about a political settlement that would ensure a stable long-term relationship with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. While the United States successfully prosecuted a limited aims war, Saddam Hussein continued to engage in lower-level provocations up until he was overthrown in 2003. Others, however, argued that the outcome of the first Gulf War was the best political solution that the United States could have realistically achieved. Any more of a military commitment by the United States could have risked the collapse of the Iraqi regime and the emergence of the same kind of instability that followed the disbanding of the Iraqi army after the U.S. invasion. The exact terms of a political victory may be hotly debated.

Drawing on the historical record, participants identified several reasons for the observed lack of progress toward an understanding of de-escalation and war termination within the U.S.

government. These were characterized in terms of pathologies that allow people and organizations to avoid the uncomfortable work of developing solutions to hard problems.

First, when confronted with difficult challenges like de-escalation and war termination in great power wars, many organizations tend to dismiss the problem. For instance, some might argue that the United States would never fight a war with a nuclear-armed adversary, so the challenge of war termination is not worth considering. Second, organizations can respond with unjustified pessimism about the existence of a solution to the problem. For example, some might argue that it is impossible to terminate a nuclear war, so there is no use trying to contemplate it. Pessimism justifies dismissal of the problem. Third, organizations can argue that success is only possible under the right combination of rare or unlikely conditions. Militaries might argue that, “victory is only possible if we are given the authority to fight the ‘right’ way.” Finally, organizations can argue that the problem is solvable with the right resources or capabilities. This too represents a failure to consider the problem realistically, making success a product of discovering a mythical silver bullet.

How might organizations overcome these pathologies? The first step is to become aware of these avoidance habits. Organizational leaders need to think concretely, tangibly, and rationally about the challenges the U.S. would face in a great power war, especially one with a nuclear adversary. Effective civil-military relations are also crucial. Civilian leaders must define the political objectives of a conflict and clearly communicate those to the military. Military leaders, in turn, must be clear about their ability to contribute to a political victory with existing military tools. Additionally, accurate intelligence is crucial to help decision-makers define and set ideal conditions. In the Gulf War, for instance, civilian and military leaders needed accurate information on the stability of Saddam’s rule and potentially effective forms of pressure.

In general, participants noted that for successful war termination, the United States needs to be clear on how much military force it is willing to bring to bear and what political concessions it seeks from its adversary. In general, these two questions are related: greater political demands will often require a deeper military commitment. The prospect of a nuclear-armed adversary imposes limits on the United States’ ability to both use force and seek concessions. A better understanding of the stakes in a potential conflict can help begin to clarify where the military and political limits might be with respect to particular adversaries. Given that any conflict with another nuclear power are likely to involve significant stakes, the United States needs to better understand how to de-escalate and terminate wars, despite the presence of high stakes and deep mutual commitment.

Panel 2: Understanding the Blue Theory of Victory

• How does U.S. nuclear strategy envision restoring deterrence after it has failed? • How does U.S. strategy for multi-domain deterrence envision successfully influencing the adversary’s deterrence calculus? • What are the different contributions of military and political means?

U.S. planners and strategists now recognize the “new strategic problem” of deterring and defeating aggression by nuclear-armed adversaries while avoiding catastrophic escalation. This is a significant challenge given the asymmetries between the U.S. and its potential adversaries. Several efforts are under way as a result, including the integration of operations across domains, with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs serving as the global integrator; a shift in the relationship between the combatant commands from “collaborative” to “integrated”; and the completion of a new National Defense Strategy process, which would include an integrated review of strategic deterrence capabilities.

The U.S. response to these challenges builds on its long-standing approach to strategic deterrence. First, in keeping with past approaches to deterrence, the emerging Blue theory of victory holds that deterrence of major war requires convincing the adversary their “theory of victory” is unlikely to work, and risks incurring costs that far exceed what they might gain. Second, if deterrence of armed conflict were to fail, deterring adversary escalation in war requires convincing the adversary that escalation does not provide a path to victory and instead risks a far more damaging outcome than they would face if they chose the path of restraint. Finally, the emerging Blue theory of victory is premised on the idea that deterrence of major war depends on the U.S. ability to successfully deter escalation in war.

In particular, deterrence of nuclear escalation in war depends on convincing adversaries that they cannot succeed by escalating their way out of failed conventional aggression. If nuclear deterrence were to nonetheless fail, the U.S. would have several aims. The first would be to convince adversary leaders that they have profoundly miscalculated and would not gain by escalating further. This would require convincing adversary leaders that limited nuclear use did not bring about the expected military advantage or U.S. or allied capitulation. The U.S. would then signal to adversary leaders that in crossing the nuclear threshold, they have incurred significant unanticipated costs and significantly misjudged the United States and its allies. The U.S. would also attempt to convey that further escalation would eventually, and perhaps quickly, result in an uncontrollable chain of events culminating in disaster. Commensurate with this realization, adversaries should also come to recognize that there are alternatives to further escalation, though these may not be necessarily desirable. Through all of this, the U.S. requires a “sustained willingness” to both impose and accept risk, potentially over multiple stages of a conflict.

Many barriers remain to credibly implementing this strategy, especially in the context of a multi-domain, high intensity conflict. In multi-domain deterrence, the U.S. aims to artfully

combine effects from multiple domains to present novel dilemmas to adversary decision makers. The intent is to overcome the adversary’s ability to make coherent decisions and instead impose increasing psychological pressure. Yet it is not clear how the ability to create dilemmas translates into strategic advantage against a committed near-peer adversary. Rather, greater reliance on multi-domain operations is likely to add to the fog of war. Inevitably, signals will be missed, misinterpreted, or intercepted.

A properly calibrated response requires significant knowledge of adversary aims and what they initially expected. The U.S. would also have to convince the adversary that uncontrolled escalation is credible without bringing about such escalation. In presenting adversaries with alternatives, the U.S. must identify an “offramp” that is consistent with U.S. war aims but also satisfies enough adversary interests as to make de-escalation a least bad option and make further escalation not worth trying. This, too, is difficult. Given that the adversary was sufficiently risk-tolerant to go to war in the first place, it is not clear what the United States could offer that would satisfy the adversary enough to stop fighting. In addition, each of these requirements vary significantly across contexts and circumstances, making pre-planning exceptionally difficult.

Therefore, U.S. ambitions as yet fall short of a coherent theory of victory. Russia and China have observed the United States closely and are familiar with its way of war and the repertoire of responses that it could pursue to deter further escalation in a conflict. Convincing a highly resolved adversary to de-escalate before it achieves its war aims might therefore require changing Red’s perception of Blue’s entire strategic personality, cultivating the belief that the United States is not as risk adverse or cost-intolerant as it may seem.

A potential way out of this impasse is to better appreciate the relationship between political and military means. The U.S. approach has been for military professionals to develop military options while looking to civilian leaders for war aims, the maintenance of wartime coalitions, and guidance on the acceptable political resolution to a conflict (so-called “offramps”). Yet panelists observed that while the services and Joint Staff are deeply engaged in developing military means, there has not been a commensurate effort on political means from civilian leadership in and out of the department. Civilian leadership has not yet articulated a set of war aims, seems to lack an appreciation of the challenges of holding together coalitions and has not considered what offramps would be acceptable to U.S. interests.

A proper appreciation of political means is especially important in considering a U.S. response to adversary nuclear use. Any U.S. response to a violation of the nuclear taboo would raise fundamental questions of reputation and justice and would require a close calibration of military and political objectives. In contrast, Russia and China have a more sophisticated view of the relationship between military and political forms of struggle, leveraging information confrontation and psychological pressure as essential tools of escalation management.

Panel 3: Anticipating Red’s De-Escalation Calculus

● Is it possible to conceive of a “culminating point” or points at which adversary leaders choose not to continue to pay the costs and tolerate the risks of continued war? ● In an escalating conflict, how might Moscow and Beijing calculate the benefits, costs, and risks of taking “off-ramps” offered by Washington? ● Is it possible to conceive of blocking their “up-ramps” by creating dilemmas for them? ● What role might a threat to regime survival play?

Russia and China have developed a sophisticated set of ideas for how to use coercive methods to manage escalation in regional disputes with the United States. Both work toward the goal of bringing the United States to a culminating point, with de-escalation as a direct result of achieving a coercive victory over Washington. Neither country appears to have engaged in extensive consideration of the possibility that they may have misjudged the United States and may themselves face difficult choices between whether to escalate or seek a way out of a conflict. This may be the result of each side’s political system, which may discourage this kind of defeatist discussion in the open. Participants also noted a contrast between the depth of thought that has gone into Russian and Chinese thinking on escalation control and the dearth of thought that has appeared to have gone into overall war termination.

Russia’s theory of conflict separates wars into local, regional, and global conflicts, and the concept of regional war is the area of greatest focus for Russian thinking on escalation. Regional wars are larger than local conflicts involving Russia and one of its weaker neighbors. Regional wars are defined by the involvement of another major military power or opposing coalition, significant conventional force employment alongside non-military means, and the threat of nuclear escalation. Russia also distinguishes between existential and non-existential regional wars, with the former defined by threats to the survival of the Russian state and involving greater emphasis on nuclear capabilities. Russia’s approach to achieving its political objectives in regional conflicts is to leverage a range of means to apply calibrated damage on the opponent until it is induced to capitulate. Coercion and de-escalation are therefore related concepts in Russian thought: de-escalation results from coercive success. This requirement places significant importance on calculating and then applying the required level of damage, as well as the creation of operational pauses that create opportunities for the other side to capitulate.

Apparently missing from the Russian approach to escalation management is an understanding of the possibility that Russia, rather than its opponents, may be placed in a position where it must choose between backing down or embarking down an escalatory path that it would prefer to avoid. Also missing from Russian military writings is an understanding of how successful war termination would result from a period of de-escalation.

China’s approach to conflict distinguishes between low-intensity local wars, high-intensity local wars, and general wars. Local wars are defined as limited in geographic scope, war aims, methods, and scale. Low-intensity local wars might include operations or conflicts along China’s

borders with India, North Korea or Russia whereas high-intensity local wars are more likely to involve disputes over Taiwan or features in China’s neighboring seas.

China’s conception of “high-intensity local wars” resemble Russian concepts of regional wars. The concepts are not identical, however: China defines local wars as those involving less-than- existential stakes, while Russia concedes the possibility for a regional war with existential stakes. The Chinese concept for an existential struggle is general war, which involves threats to state survival, a nationwide mobilization effort, and the removal of restrictions on the kinds of weapons and targets that might be used. Chinese strategists also distinguish between conventional and nuclear wars, expressing significant skepticism about the ability of any party to manage nuclear escalation; in contrast, Russia consider nuclear threats or selective employment to be a feature of regional wars. Unfortunately, Chinese writings do not offer clear markers of when one of local wars become general wars. It is also not clear how the conventional-nuclear distinction maps on to the local-general war distinction.

Like Russian writings, Chinese writings suggest that war termination is the culmination of a coercive campaign to defend Chinese interests. Chinese thinkers are cognizant that at various stages of a crisis or conflict, political leaders will have to consider whether to stop fighting and seek a political settlement. Indeed, Chinese concepts of war control make explicit that one way to limit escalation and terminate conflicts is to pursue limited political as well as military aims. Chinese thinkers have also developed a range of concepts under the heading of “war control” for how to manage escalation in regional conflicts. China’s writings on escalation control highlight two intra-war deterrence goals: preventing an adversary from opening up secondary fronts of the conflict and preventing third party intervention. Both suggest potentially important escalatory thresholds for China.

Chinese leaders are extremely sensitive to regime threats even in peacetime. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sees itself facing a persistent threat to regime security from societal instability and unspecified external forces seeking to destabilize China. It is therefore not yet clear how U.S. actions in a conflict, deliberate or inadvertent, could affect China’s perception of regime security. Given the already high level of perceived threat, U.S. actions that implied unlimited aims (rather than purely regional objectives) could ramp up CCP threat perceptions. Conversely, given China’s persistent sense of regime insecurity, it is possible that any dispute would involve a heightened sense of regime vulnerability regardless of U.S. actions. It is also not clear that China would see escalation in an interstate conflict as the right way to manage regime insecurity unless Beijing saw a direct link U.S. military actions and regime threats.

Panel 4: Anticipating the Interests of Allies • What interests would guide their approach to de-escalation and war termination? • Where might those interests converge and diverge from those of the U.S.?

Each U.S. ally (or allies, in the case of NATO) is likely to view de-escalation and war termination considerations through the lens of their core security interests. These views may also depend significantly on the circumstances of the conflict in question, and specifically whether certain critical thresholds had already been crossed.

In NATO, those critical thresholds are the collective defense provision in Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty and the nuclear threshold. Both are high. NATO has undertaken a range of adaptations to respond to hybrid threats, cyber-attacks, and other challenges, and to provide members and the alliance with options for managing escalation above and below the collective defense threshold across NATO’s area. To deter nuclear use and manage nuclear escalation, NATO maintains its status as a nuclear alliance with sufficient nuclear capabilities and the political will to use nuclear weapons should the circumstances require.

NATO’s principal approach to ensuring that competition and conflict remain below both thresholds is premised on a mix of deterrence and credible defense. As articulated by the Secretary General, NATO’s vision for a modern alliance is to avoid war through political unity, a global focus, and an appropriate mix of capable conventional, nuclear, and defensive forces. Panelists also stressed that the circumstances in which NATO would cross the nuclear threshold are extremely remote. Another source of escalation control for NATO is the alliance’s commitment to tight political control over nuclear use, and alliance procedures and capabilities are structured to ensure that any such decision is deliberate and consensus-based.

The alliance interests are most likely to diverge in conflicts and disputes that do not meet the “Article V” threshold. Allies’ individual economic, political, and military-security interests are likely to affect how NATO manages provocations below Article V,, such as hybrid warfare challenges and cyber threats. The allies’ interests are likely to converge significantly if a clear and unambiguous threat arises that justifies a collective defense response, such as a direct nuclear threat or major conventional attack.

Nevertheless, NATO’s response to a nuclear provocation could strain the alliance, dividing allies concerned about escalatory risk from those concerned about a credible deterrent response. Such divisions could be overcome through consultative/consensus-building practices. Some of these potential sources of strain are reflected in the response of NATO allies to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Even though NATO members have rejected the treaty, some members also face significant public support for the nuclear ban and have felt pressure to show greater support. To overcome this problem, the member states could benefit from greater honesty with publics about the need for NATO to remain a nuclear alliance.

On the Korean peninsula, critical thresholds include nationwide military mobilization and large numbers of civilian casualties. From South Korea’s perspective, day-to-day escalation management is a national rather than an alliance-level responsibility. Seoul feels confident in its ability to manage disputes and conflicts that fall below the threshold of major deterrence failure, as it has since the Korean War armistice. Instead, Seoul views the U.S. role as primarily to provide nuclear and major conventional deterrence and to provide warfighting support if deterrence fails.

This division of labor implies that a principal escalatory threshold for Seoul is a major deterrence failure that triggers a national transition to a wartime posture, including the mobilization of reservists and the activation of wartime command structure. Both outcomes involve significant cost and risks for South Korea. National mobilization would bring most economic activity to a halt while the activation of the wartime command structure, headed by a U.S. general officer, would represent a partial loss of South Korean sovereignty. As such, both outcomes would fundamentally change Seoul’s understanding of a conflict.

Given these unique burdens, Seoul is likely to view the sunk costs of conflict differently than the U.S.. For Seoul, the burden of mobilization is likely to add to a ledger of 70 years of division and military burdens. Seoul may demand from the U.S. a solution to the conflict that either involves significant demilitarization of the North or an outright reunification of the Korean peninsula.

This perspective may also extend to South Korea’s views of nuclear use. Seoul’s priorities in a war will likely shift.. With a greater focus on minimizing civilian losses, Seoul may be more willing to accept limited counterforce nuclear use by North Korea, depending on the circumstances. In contrast, the U.S is likely to face strong pressure to respond to any violation of the nuclear taboo regardless of the civilian casualties, and the U.S. may accept more risk in responding to North Korean nuclear use.. By the same token, Seoul and the United States may have divergent views of a potential Chinese intervention in a Korean peninsula conflict. Under some circumstances, Seoul may view Chinese intervention in a Korean conflict as a potential stabilizing force while the United States may view Chinese intervention through a great power competition lens.

Japan’s thresholds are harder to discern, but one particularly salient threshold may be Chinese actions that cause significant loss of life in Japan or in the broader region. In a U.S.-China conflict, Japan’s interests would likely depend on the nature of the conflict. A maritime dispute would likely take place in the gray zone and involve competing incentives by both sides to keep the conflict limited. In contrast, a dispute over Taiwan that resulted in significant damage and loss of life in Taiwan would change Japan’s perception of the stakes at play in a conflict. Japan’s interest in terminating such a war would involve a strong desire to contain China’s future offensive potential. This desire is in tension with the emerging consensus in Washington that a denial strategy is the best response to a Chinese threat against Taiwan. The U.S. is likely to view such a strategy as the least escalatory option, while Japan may view a denial strategy ass inherently passive and unlikely to affect China’s ability to reconstitute a military threat to the region in the post-war period.

Panel 5: Defining Victory

• What would winning mean, politically and operationally? • If it is not possible to achieve preferred political objectives, what outcomes might still be considered a success for the U.S. and its allies? • What would victory mean and require? Would there be a meaningful distinction between the requirements of winning the war and winning the peace to follow?

The United States is likely to pursue at least some long-standing political objectives in a notional conflict with a nuclear-armed power. These are likely to include limiting the scale and scope of violence and damage to the United States and its allies; the realization of a stable peace; the preservation of key norms, including those against nuclear use; and the preservation of the independence and political orders of the U.S. and its allies. Beyond these broad goals, however, U.S. objectives—and therefore how it defines political “victory”—may vary with the specific aspects of the conflict.

In Europe, the political and operational definitions of victory for each side might depend on how NATO and Russia interpret any crossing of the nuclear threshold. In the event of nuclear use, restoring deterrence and limiting the scale and scope of the U.S. response, even a nuclear response, would be the preferred outcome. This desire may force difficult tradeoffs. NATO may find itself considering whether lost territory is not worth the price that it would pay to regain it. In turn, this desire to avoid further nuclear damage would create perverse incentives for Russia in the future. This possibility highlights the importance of alliance cohesion to avoid a perceived choice over “Warsaw for Washington.”

Successful outcomes also require NATO to understand Russian war aims. A scenario where Russia seeks to break the alliance but not gain territory makes de-escalation and a political settlement far easier. However, if Russia’s war aims shift mid-conflict, NATO must be prepared to have a fluid response. Attaining victory and the peace that follows requires a unified NATO set clear political objectives. At the operational level, NATO forces should be responsive to political goals. The efforts should be made to align operational incentives so that they are compatible with war termination rather than escalation.

A political victory for NATO would also involve a public component. The United States and NATO must be seen as defenders, not aggressors, by the public. This requires persistent public engagement from NATO members with their publics, particularly as disinformation campaigns continue to evolve in complexity and capability. If applicable, this may involve seeking to avoid an outcome the resembles a frozen conflict, such as persists in the Donbas. A status quo ante settlement may be the best that NATO could hope for. If a settlement cannot be reached, NATO should at least have a coherent explanation for the public about why it secured the most favorable agreement possible. Finally, changing the adversary’s cost-benefit perceptions of resorting to conflict in the future can contribute the United States and its allies “winning the

peace.” This may require implicit or explicit threats of nuclear escalation if the adversary attempts a challenge in the future.

De-escalation and war termination dynamics in East Asia can be illustrated by two potential scenarios involving China, one over maritime commerce in the South China Sea and another over Taiwan. In both scenarios, successfully shaping perceptions and the norms of conflict can lead to a winning scenario, particularly if the United States can convince China that further escalation, particularly above the nuclear threshold, is not worth the perceived benefits. Successful outcome is likely to depend on two variables: the importance of the territory in question, and the clarity of the drivers of the conflict. A conflict over Taiwan’s independence, for instance, would be both of high clarity and high importance, with both sides having much at stake and with both sides having clear perceptions of the potential gains and losses. As a result, such a conflict is more likely to escalate than a comparatively low clarity and low importance conflict, such as an accidental naval collision in the South China Sea.

Peacetime preparations and alliance cohesion would be served by crafting a common understanding between allies about potential conflict scenarios. To some extent, the alliance unity is itself a good to be maintained in a conflict. If the United States and its allies lost a conflict, but emerged more united, this could minimize the costs of a military defeat, especially if China’s victory were pyrrhic and resulted in further isolation. Nevertheless, this type of theory of victory, in which an operational defeat was matched with a strategic draw, would be difficult to sell to allies and partners, particularly any that would directly lose something in the conflict.

There is a relatively poor understanding of the emotional dimensions of war termination, particularly how feelings of indignation, vengeance, humiliation and fear could influence the kinds of aims that belligerents in a conflict pursue. Emotions could drive both sides to misperceive attempts at de-escalation, foment greater escalation, create disincentives for war termination, and generally make it difficult for analysts to use a rational frame to understand future wars. Guilt and shame could also play a role in shaping war termination processes. On the other hand, a degree of emotional volatility could also be a strategic asset.

Looking back on U.S. history, feelings of fear, anger, and betrayal allowed the United States to respond forcefully to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the invasion of South Korea in 1950. On the other hand, participants noted that the United States is strategically unpredictable. The United States of December 8, 1941 or September 12, 2001, was not necessarily the same United States that responded to the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. While Russia and China have perhaps developed a mistaken view of the United States as a paper tiger, it is not clear which America respond to a future potential Russian or Chinese provocation.

Panel 6: Getting to Victory

• What are the challenges to the development of more robust concepts for de-escalation and war termination? • What should be done to address those challenges? • What roles should allies play in the further development of strategic thought on these questions?

Many challenges remain to understanding the nature of the de-escalation and war termination problem set, making it difficult to develop concepts to address this problem. First, much about the de-escalation and war termination challenge is speculative and context-dependent, but the community of interest appears to have a limited (albeit growing) appreciation of the complexity and nuance of the problem. Some argued the likely course of any war with another great power is just too unpredictable to think that we can develop any kind of playbook that could be used as written or wargame a realistic and representative war termination process. Inevitably, a real-world encounter with a de-escalation problem will require some improvisation.

Nonetheless, there is a need for trying to make basic progress toward better understanding the range of forms that war termination would take. This would require overcoming the organizational pathologies identified earlier in the workshop that make it hard to think realistically about the problem. Even though there is a literature on war termination overall, there is very little use of the term or exploration of the concept in Department of Defense circles. Warfighters are focused on the operational level of war termination: on deterring initial aggression and defeating the adversary comprehensively if deterrence fails. The workshop’s discussion suggested that an operational victory as such might not necessarily translate into a political victory, however. This points to a need within the operational community of a more complete and nuanced understanding of the problems posed by the kinds of wars that the United States might face, as well as military considerations could shape, and be shaped by, political considerations. It is clear that in some corners of the Defense Department, there is significant understanding of the de-escalation and war termination challenge, but it is less clear whether this understanding is widely and deeply shared across the Department.

The Department of Defense civilian leadership also has a long way to go in appreciating the challenge. Given that military leaders will look to civilian leaders, including the Office of the Secretary of Defense, for guidance on political aims and constraints in warfighting, it is crucial that civilian leaders begin to understand the nature of the problem as it stands today. Developing this understanding would necessarily require civilian leaders to improve their “operational IQ” - their understanding of the content and implications of warfighting concepts and plans, expectations for operational tempo and timelines for achieving key operational goals, key rules of engagement, and so forth. The alternative is that civilian leaders and advisors would orient themselves to these challenges in real time as they contemplate off-ramps, war termination, and the bargaining that might be needed for both.

The community of interest also has work to do in appreciating particular aspects of the problem. One area for further work is a deeper appreciation of how Russia and China—and key communities within each state apparatus—think about war termination. Some scholars have begun to investigate how these countries might approach war termination, but more work remains to be done.

There also seems to be an absence of consensus in strategic community on the meaning and implications of the basic terms at the heart of the discussion, including “de-escalation,” “victory,” “off-ramp.” This lack of conceptual clarity is especially challenging considering the potential modern conflicts in the nuclear shadow to present decision makers with the possibility of an operational victory that nonetheless amounts to a political defeat. What happens if a war being fought over ostensibly limited objectives in fact becomes highly destructive—more than expected? How would this outcome impact the timing and nature of off-ramps and the overall resolution of the conflict? What kinds of non-nuclear escalation can we imagine that would be sufficiently impactful—strategically, operationally, materially, psychologically—to compel U.S. leaders to change political or military objectives and their overall approach to war termination? Given the potential for such choices, a clearer definition of victory is necessary, ideally one that also engages with the concept of “success.” Indeed, war termination is likely to be central to any consideration of U.S. use of nuclear weapons, regardless of the circumstances. An American president being advised to consider nuclear employment will almost certainly ask whether the contemplated use of nuclear weapons would directly enable the end of the war.

Addressing these challenges is largely a matter of sustained and growing effort by the community of interest, as well as an expansion of that community to include civilian stakeholders in government, a broader cross-section of the operational community, and analysts working directly on the challenges identified above. A more integrated community of interest within government should also begin to consider pre-planning efforts to better anticipate war termination and de-escalation challenges. These efforts should include the requirement to sustain communication with allies and adversaries throughout a conflict, the identification and creation of pauses to support bargaining, the recognition that such pauses are necessary, the need to maintain some strategic and operational leverage to support negotiations and insure against their potential collapse, and the military and non-military capabilities to support the negotiation and verification of any settlement.

There is also a need for moving beyond the military sphere to consider key communities frequently left out of the discussion in U.S. circles: allied governments and the publics in the U.S. and allied countries. Given the strong possibility that future wars will take place in a contested information environment, societal resilience and other measures are necessary to ensure that war termination efforts stand a chance at succeeding. For an offramp to be politically appealing, it may be necessary to convince key communities that things “are not as bad as they seem.” This may require significant efforts to frame the settlement as a net benefit for both sides, even if one side faces the possibility of further pain and defeat.

CGSR

Center for Global Security Research Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory P.O. Box 808, L-189 Livermore, California 94551 https://CGSR.llnl.gov

This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. LLNL-MI-824911 1