Bush administration strategic policy: A reality check

Journal of Strategic Studies

Volumn 28, Issue 5, 2005, Pages 775-787

  Payne, Keith B ^a,b  

^a National Instit Public Policy   (United States)

^b MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

FOREIGN POLICY; GEOPOLITICS; POLICY STRATEGY;

NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 30844458995     PISSN: 01402390     EISSN: 1743937X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01402390500393928     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. Remarks by the President to Students and Faculty at National Defense University, Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, DC, 1 May 2001.
2. Reprinted in, 'Documentation', Comparative Strategy 20/4 (2001) pp.425-8.
3. See, Statement of the Honorable Douglas J. Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Senate Armed Services Hearing on the Nuclear Posture Review, 14 Feb. 2002, prepared text;
4. Assistant Secretary of Defense, J.D. Crouch, Special Briefing on the Nuclear Posture Review, DoD News Briefing, 9 Jan. 2002, slides 4-5. Available at , accessed 15 July 2003;
5. Statement John A. Gordon, Undersecretary for National Security and Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration, US Department of Energy, Before the Committee on Armed Services, US Senate, 14 Feb. 2002, prepared text;
6. Statement of Admiral James O. Ellis, USN, Commander In Chief, US Strategic Command, Before the Senate Armed Services Committee, on the Nuclear Posture Review, 14 Feb. 14, 2002, prepared text.
7. See also, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Department of Defense Annual Report to the President and the Congress, 2002, Ch. 7, p.1, at accessed 19 Aug. 2002;
8. and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Keith B. Payne, The Nuclear Posture Review: Key Organizing Principles (Unclassified) DoD Briefing on the NPR, 30 July 2002.
9. Lawrence Freedman, Deterrence (Malden, MA: Polity Press 2004) p.2.
10. Freedman (note 3) p.84. Professor Freedman is not alone in this interpretation. Ivo Daalder observes, 'Throughout the nuclear age, the fundamental goal has been to prevent the use of nuclear weapons. Now the policy has been turned upside down. It is to keep nuclear weapons as a tool of war-fighting rather than a tool of deterrence'.
11. Quoted in, Michael Gordon, 'Nuclear Arms: For Deterrence or Fighting', The New York Times, 11 March 2002.
12. Freedman (note 3) p.20.
13. The White House, National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD-23 (Unclassified), 16 Dec. 2002, pp.1-3.
14. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: The White House, Sept. 2002) p.14.
15. Remarks by the President to Students and Faculty at National Defense University (note 1) p.426.
16. Statement of the Honorable Douglas J. Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Senate Armed Services Hearing on the Nuclear Posture Review, 14 Feb. 2002, prepared text.
17. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (note 7) p.6.
18. M. Elaine Bunn, 'Preemptive Action: When, How, and to What Effect?', Strategic Forum, No.200 (July 2003) p.1.
19. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (note 7) pp.6, 14, 29.
20. Quoted in Bunn (note 11) p.10.
21. And, indeed, in a recent review of Deterrence, the reviewer passes along as authoritative Professor Freedman's misassessment that the Bush administration has abandoned deterrence. See, A.T.S., 'On the Nuclear Question', Current History 104 (April 2005) p.189.
22. Freedman (note 3) pp.55-8, 67, 99.
23. Freedman (note 3) p.117. Over three decades ago, Alexander George and Richard Smoke pointed to this limitation of deterrence theory, 'Substantively, deterrence theory is seriously incomplete, to say the least, for a normative-prescriptive application'.
24. See Deterrence in American Foreign Policy (NY: Columbia UP 1974) p.83.
25. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Department of Defense Annual Report to the President and the Congress, 2002, Ch. 7, p.1, at , p.4.
26. Stephen A. Cambone, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Prepared Statement Before the Armed Services Committee, US Senate, 7 April 2004, p.5.
27. Freedman (note 3) p.99.
28. See the lengthy discussion of this in Keith B. Payne, 'The Nuclear Posture Review: Setting the Record Straight', Washington Quarterly (Summer 2005), forthcoming.
29. 'To Cap the Volcano', Foreign Affairs 48/1 (Oct. 1969) p.10.
30. Professor Freedman cites another classic description of existential deterrence by McGeorge Bundy. See Freedman (note 3) p.18.
31. Freedman (note 3) pp.29, 98-100.
32. Feith (note 9) p.2.
33. Department of Defense, Strategic Deterrence Joint Operating Concept, Feb. 2004, p.10, available at .
34. President George W. Bush, National Security Presidential Directive -23, 16 Dec. 2002, p.2. US Strategic Command's unclassified report.
35. Ibid;
36. see also, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Foreword to the NPR, p.3, at .
37. Freedman (note 3) pp.120-1.
38. The argument that active defense is unnecessary because deterrence will not fail was a staple of the Cold War, and continues to be voiced by those who cling to the notion that nuclear deterrence is existential. See, for example, Thomas Graham, 'Sixty years After Hiroshima, A New Nuclear Era', Current History 104 (April 2005) p.148.
39. As reported in a recent discussion of the challenges to shaping behavior, Alan Deutschman, 'Change or Die', Fast Company 94 (May 2005) pp.52-62.
40. See Keith B. Payne, The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky 2001) pp.40-57.
41. Freedman (note 3) p.4.
42. Ibid., p.58.
43. Ibid., p.104.
44. Statement of John A. Gordon, Undersecretary for National Security and Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration, US Department of Energy, Before the Committee on Armed Services, US Senate, 14 Feb. 2002, p.3, prepared text.
45. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, unclassified Foreword to the NPR, p.3, at .
46. Remarks as delivered by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington, DC, Thursday, 31 Jan. 2002, available at .
47. See Colin S. Gray, The Sheriff: America's Defense Of The New World Order (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky 2004).
48. Report of a speech delivered by Herr Von Bethmann Hollweg, German Imperial Chancellor, on 4 August 1914. Text available at www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/papers/germwhit.html Accessed 21 November 2005.
49. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Volume I, The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1985) p. 492.
50. See a seminal discussion of this in Edward H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939 (NY: Palgrave 2001), especially Part 4.