Tag: Kissinger

Presidential Power – Richard Nixon

Synopsis:

Diplomacy signals the sine qua non of Richard Nixon’s vision of presidential power. Within Nixon’s diplomatic power construct, unpredictability, informal negotiations, as well as so-called linkage tend to sub-unify and amplify presidential power-projection vis-à-vis international politics. Similarly, Nixon advances ten diplomatic guide-posts to anchor presidential power.

Excerpts:

“When saying ‘always’ and ‘never,’ always keep a mental reservation; never foreclose the unique exception; always leave room for maneuver. ‘Always’ and ‘never’ are guideposts, but in high-stakes diplomacy there are few immutables. A President always has to be prepared for what he thought he would never do.

“Diplomacy often requires a delicate and intricate balancing of ambiguity and straight talk, the unpredictable and the very predictable. A complex game is played out between adversaries, a game that involves, or should involve, the least amount of guesswork on the part of the other side.

“The United States is an open society. We have all but one of our cards face up on the table. Our only covered card is the will, nerve, and unpredictability of the President – his ability to make the enemy think twice about raising the ante.

“Diplomacy can be used either as a sword or as a needle – as a weapon or an instrument of union. In dealing with allies the President is chiefly engaged in mending tears and strengthening seams.

“The difference between meeting with friends and meeting with adversaries can best be summarized this way. When you talk to your adversaries you learn about them. When you talk to your friends you learn from them.

*All excerpts have been taken from The Real War, Warner Books Inc.

Strategies of Deterrence and of Action: The Strategy Intellectuals – Russell F. Weigley

Synopsis:

The immediate post World War Two strategic landscape in the United States was dominated by the development of nuclear weapons, and their application. In his book on American strategic thought, Russell Weigley includes a chapter on the ascendancy of the civilian national security establishment amid the primacy of the early nuclear age. As the Cold War progressed, civilian ‘strategy intellectuals’ became influential on American strategic doctrine.

Excerpts:

“Choosing among weapons systems, however, necessarily required judgments among various possible strategies. Making choices among future weapons systems and strategies would necessarily also involve choices among forms of military organization. And choices involving strategy and organization would carry the analysis far into the realms of policy. The expanded form of operations analysis which began with the effort to analyze the uses of future as well as existing weapons came to be called ‘systems analysis.’

“As Kissinger saw it, the strategy of deterrence when expressed as the doctrine of massive retaliation was the strategy that really forswore the diplomatic and strategic initiative. It amounted to a renunciation of the use of force except to counter the most unambiguous forms of aggression, because the weapons to be employed were too horrendous to be fired in any less circumstances.

“The search for a new strategic doctrine must not be confused with the search for a better weapons technology and with technical answers to technical questions. To seek refuge in technology from hard problems of strategy and policy was already another dangerous American tendency, fostered by the pragmatic qualities of the American character and by the complexity of nuclear-age technology.

“More than Ridgway, Taylor renewed the argument that without adequate capacities for limited war, America not only would face defensive disadvantages but would be unable to seize initiatives, unable to secure positive advantages that must be won in the battle for a better world. Massive retaliation, General Taylor reiterated, ‘could offer our leaders only two choices, the initiation of general nuclear war or compromise and retreat.’ A strategy of flexible response, in contrast, ‘would recognize that it is just as necessary to deter or win quickly a limited war as to deter general war.

“Therefore Morgenstern recommended a new application of sea power: to use sea power to ensure an invulnerable capacity for nuclear retaliation against the enemy’s homeland. He recommended the acceleration and enlargement of the Polaris program, so that nuclear submarines in constant movement could serve to launch the American missile force…The endurance capacity of nuclear engines would minimize the dependence of both submarines and seaplanes on fixed bases; except for occasional refueling, their supplies could be replenished from ships themselves moving in random patterns.

*All excerpts have been taken from The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy, Russell Weigley, Indiana University Press.