On Theories of Victory, Red and Blue BRAD ROBERTS Livermore Papers on Global Security No. 7 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Center for Global Security Research June 2020 ON THEORIES OF VICTORY, RED AND BLUE | 2 ON THEORIES OF VICTORY, RED AND BLUE | 4 On Theories of Victory, Red and Blue BRAD ROBERTS Livermore Papers on Global Security No. 7 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Center for Global Security Research June 2020 ON THEORIES OF VICTORY, RED AND BLUE | i Livermore Papers on Global Security # 1 Lewis Dunn Redefining the U.S. Agenda for Nuclear Disarmament (2016) # 2 Yukio Satoh U.S. Extended Deterrence and Japan's Security (2017) # 3 Dave Johnson Russia's Conventional Precision Strike Capabilities, Regional Crises, and Nuclear Thresholds (2018) # 4 John K. Warden Limited Nuclear War: The 21st Century Challenge for the United States (2018) # 5 Michael Nacht Strategic Competition Sarah Laderman in China-US Relations (2018) Julie Beeston # 6 Newell L. Highsmith On the Legality of Nuclear Deterrence (2019) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is operated by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. ISBN: 978-1-952565-01-4 LCCN-2020908296 LLNL-MI-808139 TID-59187 ii | BRAD ROBERTS Table of Contents About the Author .................................iv Preface .......................................... v Introduction...................................... 1 Defining the New Strategic Problem ................. 7 Defining a Theory of Victory........................ 26 The Red Theory of Victory ......................... 42 Toward a Blue Theory of Victory .................... 59 Red and Blue and the Gray Zone.................... 82 Conclusions..................................... 91 Next Steps...................................... 95 ON THEORIES OF VICTORY, RED AND BLUE | iii About the Author Brad Roberts is director of the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a position he assumed in 2015. From 2009 to 2013, he served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy. In this capacity, he served as policy co-director of the Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review and Missile Defense Review. From 2013 through 2014, Dr. Roberts was a consulting professor at Stanford University and Wil- liam Perry Fellow at the university’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. While there, he authored The Case for U.S. Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century (Stanford University Press, 2015), which was subsequently recognized with a Choice Award for outstanding aca- demic publication of the year. From 1995 to 2009, he was a member of the research staff at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia. From 1983 to 1995, he was a research fellow at the Center for Strategic and Inter- national Studies, where he also served as editor of the Washington Quarterly from 1986 to 1995. He holds a B.A. from Stanford University, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Ph.D. from Erasmus University, Rotterdam. iv | BRAD ROBERTS Preface The Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) created the Livermore Paper series in 2017 to inform and encourage new strategic thought about emerging challenges of deterrence, assurance, and strategic stability, and about strategies to reduce nuclear and other strategic dangers. The series is a response to the widespread perception that the United States has passed through a period of “strategic atrophy,” in which strategic issues were neglected while attention shifted to other urgent problems, such as counter-insurgency. Those issues include the renewal of major power rivalry, the emergence of new regional challengers and challenges, the need to think in an integrated way about the means and ends of deterrence, long-term cooperative strategies to reduce nuclear and other significant dangers, and long- term competitive strategies. By strategic thought, CGSR is referring to thought that is exploratory, systematic, and long-term and that aims to develop new insights into the means and ends of national security and international stability. Strategic atrophy and neglect are nowhere more evident than in the under-development of new strategic thought about the kinds of conflicts brought to the United States by a security environment de- fined by major power rivalry and the revisionist agendas of America’s major power rivals. The focus of U.S. defense policymakers began to shift onto these problems with the disappointing returns on the 2009 “re-set” with Russia and the 2011 “pivot to Asia,” intensified with Sec- retary of Defense Ash Carter’s call for “a new playbook” on Russia in 2014, and was consolidated with the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy of 2017.* But the shift of focus has been slow to gen- erate a shift in thinking. As the 2018 report of the bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission makes clear, the United States has done very little of the needed thinking about the new strategic circum- stance. The result is a dangerous over-reliance on strategies of conflict * Citations for these and other items referenced in this preface will appear later in the body of the essay. ON THEORIES OF VICTORY, RED AND BLUE | v that are likely to prove unsuccessful and costly in various ways. This small volume is intended to serve as a catalyst to new strate- gic thought on this problem. It draws on five years of effort at CGSR to understand Russian and Chinese strategic thought, their approaches to conflict with the United States and its allies, and the requirements of integrated strategic deterrence. It also builds on some arguments I first made in my 2015 book, The Case for U.S. Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century and constructive feedback from readers. I am grateful to all who have sparred with me on these topics over the last few years. I am grateful also for the research support of many able assistants over the years as we have plied these waters. I am especially grateful to readers of earlier drafts of this essay, who offered many constructive reactions: Ivanka Barzashka, Lewis Dunn, Dave Johnson, and Tom Mahnken. The views expressed here are my personal views and should not be attributed to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, its sponsors, or any other institution with which I have been affiliated. vi | BRAD ROBERTS Introduction In its November 2018 report, the National Defense Strategy Commis- sion rang an alarm bell—loudly: The country’s margin for strategic error has become distressingly small. Doubts about America’s ability to deter and, if necessary, defeat opponents and honor its global commitments have proliferated. Previous congressionally mandated reports . warned that this crisis was coming. The crisis has now arrived . a crisis of American power. Should war occur, America will face harder fights and greater losses than at any time in decades. Americans could face a decisive military defeat. Put bluntly, the U.S. military could lose.1 What accounts for this crisis of American power? In the judgment of the commission, it has been at least three decades in the making. The commission points to many factors: important competing demands in Afghanistan and Iraq, a prolonged budget crisis, unexpected changes in the security environment, and a lack of top-level political focus on the potential for war with Russia or China. But their analysis of the National Defense Strategy (NDS) points in another direction as well, as the fol- lowing citations from their report attest.2 Although the NDS states that deterring adversaries is a key objective, there was little consensus among DOD leaders with whom we interacted on what deterrence means in practice, how escalation dynamics might play out, and what it will cost to deter effectively. 1 National Defense Strategy Commission, Providing for the Common Defense: The Assessment and Recommendations of the National Defense Strategy Commission (November 2018), p1-2. The commission is cochaired by Eric Edelman and Gary Roughhead, respectively former undersecretary of defense for policy and former chief of naval operations. 2 All citations from ibid. ON THEORIES OF VICTORY, RED AND BLUE | 1 Deterring and, if necessary, defeating Russia’s potential reliance on nuclear escalation to end a conflict on its own terms is both a particularly difficult and an extremely important operational problem. .DOD leaders had difficulty articulating how the military would defeat major-power adversaries should deterrence fail. Potential adversaries are increasingly blurring lines between conventional, unconventional, and nuclear approaches; the United States needs concepts that account for an adversary’s early reliance on nuclear means and the blending of nuclear, space, cyber, conventional, and unconventional means in its warfighting doctrine. Due to the increased complexity of evolving domains such as cyber and space, the challenges of dealing with multiple rivals, and the reliance of countries such as Russia on highly escalatory approaches, which may include use or threatened use of nuclear weapons, the requirements for deterrence are significantly different today than during the Cold War or the early post-Cold War era. .The commission recommends. .a serious study of escalation dynamics. “How” is as important as “how much” in setting U.S. defense strategy. .developing innovative operational approaches that can overcome difficult