Bjorn Moller - Non-Offensive Defence for the Twenty-First Century

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Non-Offensive Defence for the Twenty-First Century

Non-Offensive Defence for the Twenty-First Century

Edited by
Bjrn Mller
and Hkan Wiberg

First published 1994 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1994 by Taylor & Francis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Non-offensive defence for the twenty-first century / edited by
Bjrn Mller and Hkan Wiberg.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8133-2073-9
1. Deterrence (Strategy) 2. Military policy. 3. World
politics1989- I. Mller, Bjrn. II. Wiberg, Hkan, 1941
III. Title: Non-offensive defence for the 21st century.
U 162.6.N657 1994
355'.0335dc20
93-48369
CIP

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-00944-1 (hbk)

Contents

1. PART ONE
   NOD and Security Policy
2. PART TWO
   NOD and Military Planning
3. PART THREE
   Regional Applications

Guide

The present anthology constitutes an attempt to take stock of the debate on non-offensive defence (NOD) after the Cold War. It thus concludes a research project that was initiated in 1985 at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Research in Copenhagen.

All contributions were discussed at an authors symposium held in Denmark in May 1992, and were subsequently revised in the light thereof.

Bjrn Mller
Hkan Wiberg
Copenhagen
September 1993

Bjrn Mller and Hkan Wiberg

What is NOD?

The guiding idea of non-offensive defence (henceforth NOD) is simple: that armed forces and military postures should be (re) structured with a view to maximizing their defensive while minimizing their offensive capabilities. The purpose thereof is at least threefold:

to facilitate arms control and disarmament by eliminating one element in competitive arms build-ups, namely reciprocal fears. If A's arms and any increment thereof are strictly defensive, they will constitute no threat to its adversary B, who therefore will not have to follow suit;

to strengthen peace by ruling out preemptive and preventive wars. If A can strengthen its defence capabilities, say in times of political crisis, without thereby posing an increasing threat to B, B will not have to reciprocate (say, by mobilizing) and a vicious circle (reminiscent of 1914) of competitive mobilization can be averted. At the same time, if a state feels threatened, it will feel free to take defensive precautions, i.e. it will escape "self-deterrence";

to provide effective, yet non-suicidal defence options. The general impression is that had NATO ever been forced to actually defend itself, i.e. had deterrence broken down, the use of nuclear weapons envisaged under both Massive Retaliation and Flexible Response would, at least, have virtually annihilated Europe. For the same reason. NATO might well have been self-deterred, hence an easier target for aggression.

The case for NOD rests on two basic assumptions:

that a meaningful distinction can be made between offensive and defensive postures, strategies and tactics. Not (as often alleged by critics) a distinction between offensive and defensive weapons, but between complete formations and postures, due account taken of synergies and geographical and other particularities;

that the defence is inherently (i.e. as a general rule, with allowance for exceptions) stronger than the offence, as postulated by Clausewitz (1832, Book VI. 1.2), i.e. by virtue of specialization and of taking advantage of all options of advance preparation.

The History of NOD

One can identify a number of precursors of the modern NOD idea, including Liddell Hart of the 1920s and 1930s, and various post-World War II planners.

The modern NOD debate has, however, been Intimately linked to the fate of Germany (see the chapters by Bjrn Mller and Siegfried Fischer). During the reunification-versus-rearmament debate of the 1950s it was pointed out (by Colonel Bogislav von Bonin and others) that reunification would be postponed indefinitely unless rearmament was made strictly defensive, hence non-threatening seen from a Soviet view-point. However, the ensuing debate died out by the late 1950s, as a result of the SPD's (Social Democratic Party of Germany) endorsement of the rearmament and NATO membership plans of the Adenauer government.

It resurfaced in the mid-1970s and first half of the 1980s, in response to what was perceived as dangerous new developments with regard to nuclear weapons: the "neutron bomb" and the INF deployment plans. NOD was thus conceived as a possible contribution to rendering nuclear deterrence superfluous, or at least to reducing its rationale to that of minimum deterrence. The most prominent advocates of NOD were Horst and Eckhard Afheldt, Jochen Lser, Franz Uhle-Wettler and the SAS (Study Group Alternative Security Policy, see the chapter by Lutz Unterseher).

Gradually, the notion of NOD was adopted, albeit only in very general terms, by the SPD and to some extent also by the party of Foreign Minister Genscher, the FDP. It was, however, rejected by the CDU/CSU of Chancellor Kohl and then Defence Minister (present NATO Secretary General) Manfred Wrner.

From Germany, the idea spread to the rest of Western Europe, specially to the U.K., Denmark and the Netherlands. In the U.K. academic groupings such as Just Defence and the Alternative Defence Commission paved the way for the endorsement of the notion of "defensive deterrence" by the Labour Party and (with certain reservations) the Alliance, consisting of the Liberals and the Social Democrats. In Denmark, the idea was promoted by researchers at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Research as well as by the late Anders Boserup. In the Netherlands, academics such as Egbert Boeker and others advocated the idea and eventually persuaded the Christian and the Labour parties to endorse it.

All along, the Euro-neutrals (Switzerland, Austria, Sweden and Finland) played the passive role of real-life examples of NOD postures and strategies, seemingly without having much of a debate themselves (see the chapter by H&kan Wiberg).

In the USA, a certain Interest in defensive restructuring had existed for several years in the academic community, among others personified by Robert Jervis, George Quester and Steven Canby (represented with a chapter in the present volume). It grew as a corollary of the debate on no-first-use (spearheaded by McNamara, Kennan, Bundy and Smith, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Brookings Institution) and especially of the impending conventional arms control negotiations. Whereas NOD thus had only a few advocates in the USA, to an increasing extent it was indirectly and partly receiving some support from the "arms control community".

What placed NOD on the International agenda was the unexpected adoption of the idea by the Soviet Union in 1986-87, Until then. Western NOD proponents had only hoped for achieving an NOD-like defensive restructuring of the (extremely offensive) Soviet forces in an indirect way: by first persuading Western states to restructure and subsequently forcing the USSR to emulate, for instance through arms control negotiations.

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