THE CRAZIES PROBLEM Clever Briefers, Crazy Leaders, and Myopic Analysts

...For example, in the mid-1960s the U. S. decided to begin deploying MIRVs, a decision justified, and in part impelled, by intelligence predictions that the Soviet Union might be deploying one or two large ABM systems and enlarging its force of strategic offensive missiles...

...But the strike-first argument might be taken seriously in a special case-an international crisis occurring after both sides had equipped themselves with large anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems and deployed multiplewarhead rockets, MIRVs...

...Another sort of policy myopia may have affected the Soviet decis’on to send military forces into analysts assumed, on the whole, that the Soviets would base their decisions on cold calculations of national interest in Eastern Europe, and that American behavior would not influence them...

...The last few decades have seen many other examples of costly misperception...

...but both sides may be willing to negotiate agreements that reduce strategic capability on each side but still leave them with adequate retaliatorylfores...

...An American statement hinting at possible American involvement might well have altered the balance within the Soviet leadership...

...therefore, we must avoid situations in which such an argument can be made...

...The second half has to do with the political leadership and its susceptibility to the case for a launch...

...The American military has advocated the use of nuclear weapons, if necessary, in such areas as the Taiwan Straits (1958), Indochina (1 954), and Thailand ( 196 1 ). Military leaders on both sides have sought the development of weapons systems and capabilities which would permit them to engage in a classic military activity-destroying not the enemy’s civilian population but his military forces...

...As these deployments went forward, ABM proponents on both sides might argue that revolutionary technological changes had taken place since the mid-1 960s, when the United States concluded that it was not feasible to build an effective area ABM system...

...One other way to deal with the myopic analyst problem is to increase direct communication between the two countries on the meaning of a new weapons system or on a particular deployment of forces...

...They were making the classic mistake of the myopic analyst: treating the opposing nation as if it were a single rational individual...

...For example, a sophisticated person might, in a certain situation, understand a complicated argument that a first strike would be successful...

...this would increase reaction time but, since submarines are relatively invulnerable, would not diminish retaliatory capability...

...Recent agreements have called for the creation of a special commission which would allow each side to inquire into the meaning and purpose of the other side’s strategic moves...

...As we have seen, development of war-fighting capabilities may lead military officers to lean more strongly toward a nuclear attack than they otherwise would...

...These few missiles will fall prey to our ABM system...

...Critics have argued that such programs, particularly the proposed improvements in missile accuracy, would lead the Russian leaders to suspect that the United States was seeking a “first-strike” capability...

...The chance that the leader, too, might be unbalanced creates an additional weak link in the chain of restraint within the war command...

...The first two or three thousand incoming warheads would be shot down by the enemy’s ABMs, but the rest of our warheads would go right in and, with their great accuracy and reliability, destroy many of the enemy’s missiles as well as his centers for command, control, and communication...

...At the same time, he would have to argue that, if his side does not strike first, the other country probably will, causing devastation and suffering no serious damage itself...

...Moreover, the development of these capabilities and the consequent plausibility of arguments for nuclear war reduce the degree to which a leader has to be crazy to decide that he should attack...

...Many of these cases are at least partly explicable by one side’s failure to recognize that the other side consists of powerful and competing organizations and leaders...

...nerable points where a mad leader-or a “clever” but deranged adviser determined to advocate nuclear war-could lead us to destruction...

...It may also be worth exploring measures that increase the reaction time of strategic forces, in the hope that between the time the decision to launch a nuclear strike is made and when the strike is actually launched, saner influences would have a chance to intervene...

...One reason why concern about crazy leaders has waned in the years since Dr...

...After this, the enemy will be able to respond only in a weak and ragged fashion, using a fraction of its offensive forces...

...In any case, it takes only one man, for a brief period of time, to make the crucial...

...And the single most important criterion for the offensive agreement should be to create the necessary political climate in the United States and the Soviet Union to permit both countries to abide by the ABM treaty...

...During the early days of the missile crisis former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, among others, favored a “surgical strike,” in which the United States would attack only the Soviet missile sites then under construction in Cuba...

...But a careful examination of the bureaucratic politics of nuclear destruction shows that there are vulMorton Halperin is a former member of the National Security Council staff...

...But if we wait -the enemy will almost certainly make the same calculation, and he will act first and turn the tables...

...Despite the appeal of this option and the strong support for it within the “Ex-Com” group making the decisions, it never got off the ground...

...To reduce the risks of war...

...They have tended to view nuclear weapons as essentially “conventional” military forces which should be used whenever they would be militarily effective...

...The great destructive power of nuclear weapons, and the very large nuclear forces on both sides assure that both sides will be destroyed no matter who fires first...

...One clear need is for the United States to substantially increase its research on Soviet military organization and on the style of Soviet decision-making...

...It also means that the highest priority in future SALT negotiations should be to create a situation in which both sides will continue to observe the ABM treaty...

...Twenty years ago one of the two major powers was ruled by Joseph Stalin, who in his worst moments verged on a Hitler-like madness...

...He has also asked Congress for funds to improve the accuracy of our long-range missiles...

...From the other point of view, the U. S. should make some effort to consider how our own strategic deployments will look to the Soviet Union’s myopic analysts...

...As for the other major power, the examples of Lyndon Johnson during the months immediately after Tet, and Richard Nixon at several points in his career, raise at least the suspicion that, in times of stress, America’s nuclear forces might be under the direction of a less than fully rational and cautious leader...

...They assumed that Soviet strategic decisions grow directly from clear strategic purposes and therefore indicate Soviet military objectives...

...It points our attention away from excessive concern with the technical calculations of likely war outcomes, and towards consideration of the kinds of simple arguments and simple logic which can and cannot be presented...

...The Dangers of Simplicity Assume, then, that there is an intense international crisis some time after both sides have finished deploying ABM systems with several thousand launchers each...

...Analysts pointed out that the United States was not building this bomber, but was deploying a very large strategic offensive missile force...

...In 1956, the Hungarian Freedom Fighters appear to have believed that Radio Free Europe broadcasts were a clear signal that the United States would come to their aid...

...Early in the 196Os, the Soviet government began deploying a large system of surface-to-air missiles in an arc beginning in the Estonian city of Tallinn...

...If military commanders get what they want-forces necessary for this kind of war-fighting capability-and if they are permitted to draw up contingency plans for using such forces, they are likely to take the contingency planning for nuclear war more seriously than if they are restricted to forces designed and justified for retaliation against cities...

...wait and we will be destroyed and lose...

...Gradually, both sides may come to accept permanently a level of destruction much lower than the present level, provided, of course, that their smaller retaliatory force assures them that the other side could not get away with a successful first strike...

...That situation would be less dangerous than one in which a relatively simplistic argument could be made for a first strike even if that argument were less soundly based on technical and strategic analysis...

...Opponents might be able to show substantial weaknesses in the proposed case, particularly if they questioned the briefer’s high confidence that our ABM system will work...

...The Race is to the Swift What result will a clever briefer representing the military have to promise in order to stand a chance of convincing the political leadership to launch a nuclear attack...

...Thus the second half of the clever briefer problem calls for avoiding the situation in which a first strike appears desirable because it means victory at little or no cost...

...The Soviets, it has been argued, will respond by stepping up their own programs...

...The major powers’ settlement on the Berlin question, for example, has substantially reduced the probability of a clash in the center of Europe...

...But these predictions were wrong, and they illustrate how myopic analysts can fuel the arms race...

...Clever Briefers, Crazy Leaders and Myopic Analysts by Morton Halperin In his one-week reign as president of Cyprus, Nikos Sampson may have provided an educational service of far greater significance than his immediate influence on world affairs...

...Durin the Korean War, the American co $and seemed not intervene, while the Chinese read signals from the U. S. as indicating that we were actually going to cross the Yalu and invade China...

...Even though the United States provides Soviet intelligence with substantial information about what we plan to do and the official reasons why, we do not really know how the Soviets view this information and what conclusions they draw...

...Although we are postulating events during a period of intense crisis, even the promise of a relatively favorable outcome-a “victory” if you will-would probably not convince a sane political leadership to consider seriously a nuclear attack...

...When American intelligence officials spotted the first deployments, they immediately directed their attention to the potential capability and functions of the system...

...He would also point out that both sides have large and effective ABM systems...

...Although Cyprus is haidly a major power, and does notyetpossess nuclear weapons, the Sampson case forces us to confront again the unpleasant question of whether madmen could lead us into a nuclear war...

...In the course of justifying public expenditures on the system, executive branch officials might convince them selves, and later substantial segments of the Congress and the public, that large ABM systems would work, that they could shoot down a large number of incoming Soviet missiles...

...In the end, we will destroy the enemy’s strategic forces, while suffering almost no damages ourselves...

...The danger of developing a warfighting capability, then, is that it increases the odds that in a crisis the operational military commands will propose launching a nuclear attack...

...It is not often enough recalled that only 30 years ago a large proportion of the world’s military power was under the control of the most prominent madman of recent history...

...Assume, too, that at the same time both sides have equipped their offensive missiles with MIRVs, so that they have two or three times as many MIRV warheads as the total of ABM launchers...

...In the current political climate, each side would probably reject measures that appear to reduce its ability to retaliate...

...As long as bombers are an integral part of attack and are intended to arrive on target simultaneously with the missiles, there will be a substantial delay time...

...After arguing for a war-fighting capability and having been given the forces and the flexibility they think necessary, the military may feel obliged, when a crisis arises, to come up with a proposal to use these war-fighting capabilities...

...But since it is now clear that Tallinn is an air defense system and not an ABM, this should raise some doubts about conventional strategic analyses...

...Because we cannot rule out the possibility that a crazy leader will in fact come to power in the United States or the Soviet Union, and because large systems can get out of control, we cannot ignore the danger of maintaining for the indefinite future a posture in which both the United States and the Soviet Union have the overwhelming power to destroy each other...

...This possibility would involve an abrogation of the existing treaty which limits ABMs-perhaps because of a negotiating impasse over future limitation issues...

...Crazy Leaders So far, the calculations about a clever briefer’s influence have assumed that the leader himself is sane...

...We also should consider steps to reduce the destructive power available to both sides...

...So far, criticism of this doctrine has been based on its implications for the arms race...

...Costly Misperception History is full of examples of myopic analysis...

...So if, for one reason or another, a “clever briefer” wants to entice the nation toward the holocaust, he improves his chances by finding or creating situations where military commanders favor large offensive strikes...

...Keep in mind that the question of launching a nuclear war would arise only during a major crisis, when the President and his principal advisers and the members of the Soviet Politburo would be focusing virtually all of their attention on the crisis, either political or military, then at hand...

...More important, and in some ways easier to accomplish, is the need to induce political leaders and strategic analysts to frame their questions in terms of organizational patterns and bureaucratic decision-making...

...The key to preventing these situations may well lie in the kind of war-fighting capabilities the U. S. and the Soviet government develop...

...These criticisms are undoubtedly important...

...However, they overlook the greater danger that these programs make it easier for a clever briefer to influence events during a crisis...

...Perhaps they can be explained in ways which will reduce the chance of misperception...

...Myopic Analysts The “clever briefer” and “crazy leader” problems focus attention on what can go wrong with split-second decisions made during a crisis...

...This analysis proceeded, as is typical, at two levels -collecting physical evidence, and deducing strategic purpose...

...Rather, the clever briefer would have to promise virtual immunity from destruction if he wants his firststrike proposal taken seriously...

...But, in a political crisis where all the other options look bad and where everyone is desperate, the political leaders may well choose to believe the briefer...

...Strangelove may be a vague public belief that one man could only do so much-that the “fail-safe’’ systems and the complicated chains of command would detect and remove a madman before he managed to push the button...

...If one side renounced the ABM treaty, both countries would be virtually compelled to proceed wj th very large ABM systems...

...We know very little about how the Soviets interpret America’s strategic planning...

...Assume, finally, that both sides believe that their own ABM systems will perform well the first time they are used-that is, the first time a large nuclear strike is launched...

...In the long run, the scope and pace of American strategic weapons decisions are significantly influenced by our predictions about Soviet plans...

...In fact, the broadcasts were the result of decisions by the Radio Free Europe staff and did not reflect highlevel policy...

...To state it the other way, the clever briefer is almost certain to be rejected if he cannot rest his case on a promise of minimal damage for his side...

...The structure of the nuclear war bureaucracy also suggests why some of the proposals now being put forth by Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger would enormously increase the chances for lunatic-indu ced nu clear war...

...This is the first half of the clever briefer problem-how weapqns systems can make a “launch” recommendation from the military more likely...

...mistake...

...Schlesinger has advocated developing a new war-fighting capability, by designing new options for existing forces and improving our command and control capability...

...This approach might help us understand the considerable gap that often separates the strategic intentions, and the actual force deployments that result after the complicated interplay of bureaucratic interests and political leadership...

...During the Suez crisis, England and France fundamentally misunderstood American intentions...

...The myopic analyst problem directs attention to reducing the costs and risks of the arms race as they affect decisions to build and deploy strategic forces...

...It has long been understood that nuclear war is unlikely to break out during a period of relative tranquility...

...It is doubtful the Soviets would decide to launch a nuclear attack without the active support of the head of the strategic offensive rocket forces or the commander of the submarinelaunched missiles...

...These might permit analysts on each side to get a better reading of the other side’s intentions and take us all one step further from the risk of unintentional or miscalculated annihilation...

...The hazards of myopic analysts .point up the need for improved bnderstanding of the other side’s strategic decisions, if the arms race is to be brought under control and if both sides are to avoid periodic scares...

...However, the solution often proposed for this problemdeveloping war-fighting capabilities which target the missiles at the other side’s weapons rather than its peoplemay create more dangers than it removes...

...It should also suggest another kind of analysis, which would take into account the organizational norms, the bureaucracies, and the domestic politics of the Soviet Union...

...In most cases, the argument would simply be implausible...

...The physical evidence, limited and ambiguous as always, suggested that the system was an air-defcnse system designed to shoot down the kind of high-flying long-range bomber the United States had considered building in the late 1950s and early 1960s and then had rejected...

...The Cuban missile crisis is an apt example...

...He would point out that both sides have substantial MIRV capability, and that presumably the MIRVs are accurate enough to “kill” missiles in hard targets...

...Even as evidence piled up that Tallinn was not an ABM system, some of the military and intelligence agencies resisted resting their case primarily on their apparently “logical” strategic analysis...

...similarly, it is doubtful that an American President would act without the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...

...One way is to reduce the likelihood of conflict which might lead to strategic nuclear war...

...The second World War also reveale d serious misper ce p tions- Hitler’s failure to pursue a coherent bombing campaign against Britain, the American failure to anticipate Pearl Harbor, the Soviet unwillingness to prepare for a German invasion, etc...

...But unless one or more people with access to the top leadership recommended the option of a major nuclear attack, that option would not be considered...

...In the case of submarines, we should consider keeping them out of waters from which they are capable of launching an attack against enemy targets...

...Operational military commanders on both sides have shown a distaste for strategies which merely destroy enemy populations...

...In short, the clever briefer will have to say, “Strike and we will destroy the other fellow and win the war...

...This line of argument would not be foolproof...

...Given the destructive power of nuclear weapons and the likely annihilation of both sides, the surprise attack coming out of the blue is extremely improbable...

...Even if the formal sessions of such a commission were too starchy to go into real motives, one can hope that private conversations and contacts among members would yield to frank exchanges about bureaucratic and organizational motivations...

...First, how would a decision to launch a nuclear attack actually be made, and second, what results would one have to promise to convince the political leaders to launch a nuclear attack...

...They argued that the Soviet Union simply would not waste money building an air defense system against a nonexistent bomber force...

...For this reason it is important to actively pursue proposals for the gradual reduction and phasing out of the strategic forces of both sides...

...Focusing on the problem of the clever briefer does not yield criteria for arms control significantly different from those producedby other methods of analysis, but it does provide an alternative point of view and suggests some different nuances of interpretation...

...Nuclear conflict, in their view, should be primarily a duel between the strategic forces of the two sides, each seeking to destroy the other’s military capabilities...

...Indeed, unless these military groups have worked out a specific plan for a nuclear attack and were prepared to put it forward, any political leaders who supported the option would be ineffective...

...In fact, it now appears that the Politburo was very sharply split on the Czech question, apparently along bihkeaucratic lines...

...The modern day Stalins and Hitlersthe Nikos Sampsons and the Idi Amins-have so far risen to prominence only in the smaller countries, a distinction that will be of less importance as nuclear materials spread more and more widely...

...Military leaders prefer to see nuclear conflict as simply an extension of war by more devastating means...

...This is the context in which some recent proposals by Secretary Schlesinger need to be reevaluated...

...The attempt to determine Soviet strategic purposes went in a very different direction...

...The “crazy briefer” becomes a danger during an international crisis depending on the answers to two questions about how the national leadership makes its decisions...

...On the other hand, if their earlier entreaties have been ignored, in a crisis they are more likely to sulk and say that they lack the capability to launch a nuclear attack - precisely because their requests were turned down...

...And so, he would argue, if we attack first, we will saturate the enemy’s ABM system simply by firing more incoming warheads at it than the enemy has defensive launchers...

...This is why the ABM treaty was so significant to reducing the probability of nuclear war...

...If our own experience in trying to understand Soviet decisions is any indication, their understanding is imperfect at best...

...That is to say, the informed guess that “only” 20 million of one’s people will be killed if we launched an attack, while 80 million of the enemy are destroyed, is not likely to look even remotely interesting to the political leadership of the United States, Soviet Union, China or any other nuclear power...

...A Middle East settlement would be another important step toward stability...

...Under these circumstances, the clever briefer’s task would be considerably easier...

...The situation would have been very different if the tactical air command had favored a surgical strike, had developed effective plans for such a strike, and had put those plans forward vigorously within the Pentagon and with the Ex-Com...

...Thus, they suggested that this new Soviet deployment was more likely an ABM system...

...How can we reduce the problems posed by the potentially crazy leader...

...The reason was that the military leadership, in particular the head of the tactical air command, consistently said that the idea was not feasible and that the military had no plans which would enable them to carry it out...

...The brief ascendancy of this former hitman for the Cypriot nationalist execution squads (in his cover role as a “news photographer” Sampson always seemed to scoop his competitors with photographs of street killings) re?minded us once more that unstable characters can wind up on top of governments...

...Thus deterring a nuclear war becomes the problem of deterring an attack in a period of intense crisis, arising out of either a conventional war or a period of great international tension...

...In the case of Tallinn, these two methods of analysis produced very different conclusions...

...Some leaders and advisers would be unhappy about the options being pursued and would seek to introduce new ones...