expected efficiencies of US hard-target or “counterforce” operations over time.expected efficiencies of US active defenses over time.expected efficiencies of North Korean active defenses over time.expected schedule of North Korean nuclear weapons deployment.expected costs of North Korean first-strikes.expected probability of North Korean first-strikes.In turn, this vital determination would then depend upon a number of critical, interpenetrating and possibly synergistic security factors, including: To proceed rationally in any such uncharted strategic territory, he would first need to determine whether any non-nuclear expressions of “anticipatory self-defense” could succeed operationally. support of conventional preemptions against enemy-state non-nuclear assets andĪt some point in the future, President Trump may need to leverage US nuclear weapons in order to support certain forms of American conventional preemption.support of conventional preemptions against enemy-state nuclear assets.preemption of enemy-state nuclear attacks.deterrence of all levels of unconventional attack by enemy states.deterrence of large-scale conventional attacks by enemy states.Going forward, whatever the ultimate outcomes of the summit, this basic strategy must remain rooted in one or several of the following six national security functions: Whatever the results of the Singapore summit (a meeting that Donald Trump felt would be best managed through attitude rather than preparation), America’s general strategy will remain embedded in various forms of deterrence, including nuclear deterrence. Such an escalation could prove uncontrollable. Preventing a conventional conflict with Pyongyang is imperative not only because such an engagement could prove starkly injurious to US forces and nationals in South Korea and also to certain US regional allies, but because it could quickly escalate towards the nuclear threshold. Ultimately, the US summit imbroglio with North Korea was about implementing necessary dissuasions from future war, conventional as well as nuclear. To deal correctly with such inevitable complexity, what is needed is not attitude but preparation. President Trump could learn from Sun Tzu’s “Tao of Warfare” that the military world, like the world in general, “is what it is.” Any contrived reduction in analytic complexity could result in a too risky distortion of strategic choices. In science and mathematics, proper assessments of event probability must be based upon the determinable frequency of relevant past events. Because there has never been an actual nuclear war, nothing can reliably be said about determining such a conflict’s probability. The August 1945 US bombings of Japan were not instances of nuclear war, but rather singular and non-replicable atomic attacks in a conventional war. Their examination of the text ought to focus on maximizing the credible range of America’s nuclear deterrent and on shaping the Pentagon’s correlative order of battle.Īny nuclear war would obviously be unprecedented. The strategic postulates first laid down by Sun Tzu could be referenced usefully by the current architects of US nuclear strategy, especially with reference to an already nuclear North Korea, and to a plausibly future nuclear adversary in Iran. These first principles could be applied to US ally Israel, in consequence of their direct impact on US policies, and to ongoing North Korean military activity in Syria or the wider Middle East.Īncient Chinese general and military strategist Sun Tzu’s The Art of War should be studied by US President Donald Trump’s senior military advisors. 885, July 6, 2018ĮXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Although nuclear strategy must, by definition, be shaped without historical precedent, it should contain certain ancient core concepts.
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