The Denaturing of Deterrence: A Crisis of Authority in National Security

THE DENATURING OF DETERRENCE: A CRISIS OF AUTHORITY IN NATIONAL SECURITY Steven Fleischmann OR FORTY YEARS THE DEFENSE OF THE UNITED STATES has been inextricably bound to a new and radical image of power: the immense destructiveness of nuclear weapons. The concept of national security has evolved largely as a response to that image, a bureaucratic means of contending with the immediate problems of national defense in the nuclear age. Through the invocation of the urgency that becomes a matter of national security, the new prerogatives and parameters of military posture are translated into authoritative formulations of policy. Hence, the bureaucracy of national security is authorized as the embodiment of a nuclear-based national defense. In the development of this bureaucracy, national defense has grown dependent upon increasing the risk of national suicide for both sides. The ineluctable conjunction between defense and suicide forces a diffusion of the concept of national defense, leaving national security without guiding objectives. Despite its bureaucratic origins, the definition of U.S. national security has developed into a constitutional problem and involves the structure of national political authority. National security, under the ever present threat of nuclear war, is deeply insecure. We know, on the one hand, that our survival is at stake, yet on the other hand, we are unable to agree on a position from which to address the question of sacrifice. Our tattered national security consensus is beset by cacaphonous consensus-seekers attempting to direct our doubts about a deterrence-based defense. The current debate over The author is an M.A. candidate at SAIS and will be a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. 81 82 SAIS REVIEW the nature of nuclear deterrence reveals a crisis of authority in national security because it implies a rejection of present national security policy. The discomfiture of the political leadership in recognizing the crisis has caused it to rely upon patchwork attempts to symbolize security instead of setting the priorities for national defense. Thus the process of restoring consensus cannot begin until the role of nuclear weapons in national defense is at least clarified. The current debate must widen, for customary political analysis is limited by the causal assumptions required to assess policy. We must look beyond the question of success in policy if the methods authorized by "national security" are dissonant with the goal of national defense. Therefore, attention must be directed to the context in which policy is developed. The crisis of authority in national security cannot be contained by the struggle of proponents and their opinions, since the crisis is most pronounced in imperatives that conflict with national security policy. Those imperatives, often recognized as the unique political realities of the nuclear era, defy the stubborn experimentalism of traditional policymaking: If the launching of the U.S. nuclear arsenal against the Soviet Union or vice versa would result in self-destruction, then an awareness of this might interdict war between the two superpowers. One result of this awareness was the effort to replace the actual demonstration of military power with a symbol of that power, one which was intended to deter war, yet not directly threaten destruction. In the symbolic presentation of force that characterizes national security, the state seeks to avoid war by preparing for it. Despite the fact that making full use of available means—in the tradition of Machtpolitik—runs counter to "the interdictory demands of the nuclear age," the core of national security policy is to prepare for war. That war has already begun as a war of symbols. Both superpowers operate within traditions of state politics that threaten to push the practice ofMachtpolitik to the center of the strategic standoff by making full use of available force in launching a strategic nuclear strike. Deterrence as national security policy requires that this force be available at a moment's notice. The tension between avoiding a nuclear war and defending the national interest makes itself felt in the debate as the need to reduce the risk of nuclear war through maintenance of a stable deterrent. To this end, the military has been nuclearized at nearly every level of command, beginning with the infantry, as...