Reassessing Net Assessment

Correspondence Reassessing Net Assessment The Tank Gap Data Flap John J. Mearskeimer Barry R. Posen Eliot A. Coken Steven J. Zaloga Malcolm Ckalmers and Lutz Unterseker Reassessing Net Assessment To the Editors: D u r i n g the past decade , discussion of the conventional balance in Europe has divided into two distinct debates-the real debate among serious analysts, conducted largely in scholarly publications, and a propaganda debate, conducted mainly in the media. At one end of the real-debate spectrum are qualified opfirnists like myself who believe that current NATO forces can probably thwart a Soviet blitzkrieg, but are not strong enough to warrant removing nuclear weapons from NATO’s deterrent p0sture.l At the other end are qualified pessimists, John Mearsheimer is a Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Conventional Deterrence (2983) and Liddell Hart and the Weight of History 12988). 1. For full citations of my relevant works and those of Joshua Epstein and Barry Posen, two other qualified optimists, see Eliot A. Cohen, ”Toward Better Net Assessment: Rethinking the European Conventional Balance,” International Security, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Summer 1988), p. 51 n. 2. (This article is hereafter cited in the text as “Cohen” with page numbers.) For other examples of qualified optimism, see inter aha Anthony H. Cordesman, ”The NATO Central Region and the Balance of Uncertainty,” Armed Forces Journal International, July 1983, pp. 18-58; Brigadier General Christian Krause, ”The Balance between Conventional Forces in Europe,” working paper (Bonn: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, December 1982);William P. Mako, U.S. Ground Forces and the Defense of Central Europe (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1983);John Stokes, Threat Assessment, Report submitted to Western European Union (WEU)Assembly by WEU Committee on Defense Questions and Armaments (Pans, November 2, 1987);and Soviet Readiness for War: Assessing One of the Major Sources of East-Wesf Instability, Report of the Defense Policy Panel of the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. House of Representatives, 100th Cong., 2d sess., International Security, Spring 1989 (Vol. 13, No. 4) 01989by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 128 Correspondence:Net Assessment I 129 who argue that NATO will probably lose, but grant NATO a significant chance of defending successfully. For example, Andrew Hamilton concludes that ”current NATO conventional forces might be able to thwart a Pact attack, but their margin of safety is woefully thin and the possibility of a NATO defeat is quite real.”2No participants in this debate argue that NATO has a robust conventional deterrent; all concede the real possibility of NATO defeat . Nor do any participants seriously argue that NATO is hopelessly outnumbered . Even Kim Holmes of the hawkish Heritage Foundation wrote in his recent contribution to International Security that ”if NATO receives adequate warning and promptly mobilizes its forces, it has a good chance of stopping a Warsaw Pact invasion without resorting to nuclear weapon^."^ Thus, analysts in the real debate agree that NATO has a force that might be able to defend successfully; they disagree on matters of degree. The media debate bears little resemblance to the real debate. It is dominated by defeatists, who assert that the Warsaw Pact enjoys crushing conventional superiority over NATO and who therefore expect a quick and decisive Pact victory in the event of war. Defeatists have not produced a single serious analysis to support their claims. Thus the defeatist view is a school without scholarship, an opinion asserted without proof. Nevertheless, this view is often parroted by politicians and less-informed members of the press.4 The December 5, 1988. Also see Malcolm Chalmers and Lutz Unterseher, ”Is There a Tank Gap? Comparing NATO and Warsaw Pact Tank Fleets,” International Security, Vol. 13, No. 1(Summer 1988),pp. 5-49, an important analysis of the tank balance on the Central Front. 2. Andrew Hamilton, ”Redressing the Conventional Balance: NATO’s Reserve Military Manpower ,” International Security, Vol. 10, No. 1(Summer 1985),p. 111. Other examples of qualified pessimism include Pat Hillier and Nora Slatkin, U.S. Ground Forces: Design and Cost Alternatives for NATO and Non-NATO Contingencies (Washington, D.C.: Congressional...