Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Mearsheimer
A Strategic Misstep:
The Maritime Strategy and
Deterrence in Europe.
Useful definitions
• “Deterrence stability”: the stability caused by your
ability to threaten your adversary with a
formidable military posture so that he recognizes
that he cannot use force to upset the status quo.
• “Crisis stability”: it is applied in cases where
neither side is firmly committed to aggression and
is a function of the structure of the rival deterrent
postures. It depends of each side’s perceptions of
the other’s aggressiveness, the degree of military
advantage accruing to the side striking first and
the tendency of peacetime military operation to
activate the opponent’s ROE.
What NATO was afraid of;
• Soviet Union’s attempt to sever the Atlantic
SLOC by using SSN.
• Early deployment of Soviet SSBN.
• Soviet blitzkrieg in the Central Front (Europe)
Conclusion
The Soviets could not be confident of winning the
SLOC war, much less winning it in a reasonably
short period of time, if NATO pursued a defensive
sea control posture.
Counterforce coercion
Use of US SSNs to eliminate significant numbers of
Soviet SSBNs. This strategy requires a large scale
insertion operation as well as a rollback operation. It
will enhance deterrence in two ways:
• Sink enough SSBNs to shift the strategic balance
against the Soviets.
• Produce deterrence simply by generating the risk of
nuclear war, even if it didn’t necessarily change the
strategic balance.
Problems
• Risky strategy because of the threat of nuclear
escalation.
Mearsheimer’s view
This strategy could be quite destabilizing in a crisis
because it provides very little deterrence stability and
promotes crisis instability.
Problems
• If US SSNs position themselves into the Barents
Sea, Soviets would certainly make worst case
assumptions about US intentions.
• Soviet Union will deploy SSNs and a deadly game of
cat and mouse would ensue with unpredicted results.
• Also it is possible that some US SSNs would be lost
because of mines forcing the US to respond.
• An American anti-SSBN campaign would generate
risk too early and with less credibility.
Mearsheimer’s Final conclusions
• A defensive sea control strategy would satisfy
NATO’s needs in protecting the SLOCs.
• The force structure demands of defensive sea
control are more modest than those of offensive sea
control.
• More resources for the ground and air forces on the
Central Front, which represent the core of NATO’s
deterrent.
• By building a large Navy and not increasing the
ground and air forces in Europe, Reagan
administration missed an excellent opportunity to
improve NATO ‘s deterrent posture.
My own conclusions
• I am sure that Mearsheimer wasn’t voting for
Reagan.
• He is a huge fun of the Navy.
• As a neutral reader I believe that his arguments are
very convincing.
• I am happy that we didn’t have the chance to test
his arguments.
Questions;;;;