The Problem of Intervention

A theme that is emerging again and again in our conversation and in your lectures is the extent to which a strategy is embedded in a polity in a society. And in your lectures, addressing the question of military strategy, the "how," you propose several criteria for how we should intervene when that choice is made. I wonder if you might go over those points with us now?

Well, this was with reference to the ways in which we should use military force. It seems to me that, as you say, the use of military force is something that is and has to be rooted in a nation's society and its culture. There are some societies and cultures, I suppose -- Sparta or Rome or Prussia -- that were highly militaristic societies. Our country isn't like that at all, and I think we have to reflect that fact. Efforts to try to get us to act in a way in which the Germans may be able to act or indeed the way in which the Israelis may be able to act, in terms of having a very tough, highly maneuverable type of military force and employing it with great skill and precision, we aren't that sort of country. We are a very large, lumbering, pluralistic sort of country, and our strategy has to reflect that.

It also has to reflect the fact that if it is a question of intervening with force, American troops in a conflict in a Third World area, the tolerance of the American public is going to be limited. This is something which is generally true of democracies. General George Marshall once said that a democracy can't fight a seven-years war. I think that is very true, and it's proved by our experience in Korea and Vietnam, as well as the French experience in Indochina and Algeria. Consequently, if we are going to have to go in to a Third World area in order to secure a legitimate objective, we should go in with as much force as we can muster, and go in quickly and decisively in an attempt to achieve a resolution.

One can look at the two interventions in Lebanon. In 1958, when we intervened in Lebanon, we very quickly deployed something like 17,000 troops into the Beirut area. In 1983, when we went in, we deployed less than one-tenth that number of troops. The 1958 intervention turned out to be a success, we were able to achieve the goals we wanted. The 1983 intervention ended up in a tragedy and retreat.

Now, I'm not arguing that the difference in size of the intervention was the only factor involved. It clearly wasn't. But it was, certainly, a significant factor in the differences in outcome.

PROF. SEABURY: Sam, could I turn to a point that you raised in your first lecture, and I hope I interpret what you said correctly. I think you were making the point that a military force invariably mirrors the character of its own society, and they interact. Since you have this peculiar America society, it is therefore inevitable that the characteristics of fighting, then, will be to some extent a reflection of what is transpiring in that society.

Now, you could make, to the contrary, a point that this could lead to a certain amount of catastrophe, depending upon the qualities of the society at a given moment in time. During the seventies, for example, when the general cultural revolution was happening in the United States and it was said that the 82nd Airborne Division was, you recall, the "jumping junkies," one would not particularly like the addictions of American culture to be displayed fully in our armed forces. And that was a very serious time.

Now, my query to you is, where do you draw the line on this question of mirroring? You might say to put the best tone on it that America is a civilian society, it's a commercial society, it's a highly individualistic society, and that if those qualities then are manifest in the armed services, you have a little problem on your hands when you are combating people who have grown up in systems that do not share those values. How do you solve the problem?

I don't know that you can really solve the problem, because it seems to me you have two very legitimate sets of values that are in conflict here and have been in conflict since the beginning of the American republic. It took us a much longer period of time than it took any of the other major European powers to develop a military profession, a professional officer corps, in this country, because we had the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian idea that civilians could command armies and run them perfectly well.

We learned during the Civil War, when we had a mixture of some professional officers who had been trained at West Point, and other amateur, civilian-type officers, that you needed professionals to have an effective military operation. That was true in the leadership of both the Confederate armies and the Union armies. There clearly is a major conflict between many of the American liberal, individualistic, democratic values on the one hand, and the values which, in some measure, have to exist in any military force on the other, if it's going to be a decent military force, because you have to have some measure of discipline, hierarchy, to some extent, unquestioning obedience to orders. And those are, in some respects, un-American characteristics.

That creates a continuing tension which, it seems to me, we just have to live with. On the other hand, when it comes to using military force, one can make, perhaps, some higher demands that the ways in which we use military force or our strategies for employing military forces may themselves be organized on somewhat un-American lines. But our strategy for employing military forces, in many respects, will have to reflect more of the character of our society.

Both of you were touching on points that relate to this debate as to who is to blame with regard to our capacity to intervene. Is it the politicians, who don't mobilize public opinion and put constraints on the military, or is it the military itself? Hence the arguments of the military reformers who say that our army is not lean, mean, and tough enough to do what it has to do.

PROF. SEABURY: I think there's one feature of that which is maybe a transitory one, and that is the fact that the professional military today have all too deep a remembrance of what happened in Vietnam. That is to say, with respect to Weinberger's position on the use of force in his talk last November, he was reflecting views within the military that are very, very chary about having a repetition of experiences in which they were abandoned by the public and did not receive the proper strategic authority to win a war once it was started. That element is a very, very pervasive one. Is not a matter of public constraint, but it's an internalized view.

So the pacifists are now in the military, is that a harsh way to restate what you just said?

PROF. SEABURY: Yes, it's military pacifism. But that leads down a corridor of a problematical nature. For example, I remember Colonel Harry Summers's book on strategy. Summers was involved in the Vietnam operation very deeply. And Summers' book reflects, I think, a characteristic military view today that you will not want to engage in military operations unless you know that you have public support behind you. Now, that's a very unusual kind of a doctrine to emanate from the military, who may be called upon to act in times when that public support is still very, very unclear, or even where they may be great opposition to it.

Yes, it seems to me that it is erroneous to think that you can, in some way, guarantee public support. Secretary Weinberger, in the speech you referred to, said that we should not commit our forces to conflict overseas, unless there was prior assurance of public support, and that, it seems to me, is just something that cannot be guaranteed. As I indicated, with an initial commitment of U.S. forces abroad, there's almost always an immediate rallying around and public backing. But that can very quickly drain away, and the only way in which you could prevent it from draining away is to achieve a relatively quick military success in achieving whatever objectives there may be.

One of the lessons to be learned is that we should be very leery of getting involved in situations where we have indefinite, defensive objectives, such as were defined for the military by the Johnson and in the Nixon administrations in Vietnam. The military wasn't allowed to go out and apply maximum military pressure on North Vietnam. They were put in a defensive position, and there was no way in which the North Vietnamese, who wanted to unify their country under their rule, were going to persuaded, short of a maximum exertion of military power, no way in which they were going to persuaded to desist from trying to achieve that objective.

PROF. SEABURY: In the long history of debates in military strategy, you've always had that debate between people who prefer a direct strategy as opposed to an indirect strategy. This was a matter that came up in strategic planning in World War II. The American view on the direct as opposed to the indirect led to the Normandy invasion, for example. I remember Dean Rusk once told me that he once had a long talk with General Marshall during the war when the planning for Normandy was going on. Rusk said, "Why are you planning this extraordinary gamble, which may cost tremendous numbers of lives?" And Marshall said to him, "Because the American people cannot stand a long war."

Now, the problem is, then, does that mean what you were saying, that because of these qualities of the democracy, you are locked into a particular mode of strategic behavior, the sharp thrust in winning fast?

I think so. I think so. You have to go in and win fast.

PROF. SEABURY: And what are the implications of this? What are the implications of that?

It has a whole variety of implications, it seems to me, in terms of the way in which we should think about using military force. Overall, it raises very real questions about the whole theory of limited war strategy and the theories of compellance that were developed by civilian strategists in the 1950s and 1960s. Because while those are very elegant in a certain eighteenth century Clausewitzian way about rational use of force to achieve objectives, it's quite clear -- and I think there, Harry Summers has a point -- that we cannot use force effectively that way. The people will not support it. Consequently, it seems to me, we should design our plans for the use of military force to achieve a quick victory, and our military forces should not be committed to achieve goals where that is not possible. We have to recognize that politicians have to recognize that there are some things, many things, that cannot be achieved through the use of military force.

PROF. SEABURY: Is that always up to you, though? This is one of the problems when you're involved with an adversary. I think it was Churchill who once said that occasionally, from time to time, you have to consider what the plans of your enemy are.

Oh, absolutely, yes.

PROF. SEABURY: And that, in an odd way, if it were routed around that these were our alternatives, of not acting or acting with swiftness, our adversary could easily devise strategies to confound this situation.

Well, I would think we'd want to talk about our adversaries in the plural. And clearly, there are many situations in which groups which are opposed to the United States have created and can create situations which will involve long, unpleasant types of struggles. I mean, we have a situation in El Salvador with an insurgency against the government in El Salvador, the government which we support. And one of the conclusions I would draw from that is that we ought to give all the support that we possibly can to that government in the way of advice, and assistance, and equipment, and so forth, and so on. But I don't think we should get involved with American troops there because, as Kennedy said with respect to our involvement in Vietnam, "In the end, it is their war and they're going to have to win it." Deploying American troops to fight in that war would not, I think, contribute a great deal towards winning it, and it is certainly something which would have very little support in American society, and which, as you pointed out, the American military would not want to become involved in, precisely for that reason.

PROF. SEABURY: If we look at our main adversary, the Soviet Union, through time, and our own experience with war since 1945, it's very interesting that the Soviets have been able to conduct most of their operations by proxy and we have not. The two times that we're up front, in Vietnam and Korea, were times of very great pain for us. In one case, we stood our reputation on the line, and we lost. The Soviets have been very loathe to do that, and at the same time, they've been very expert in the manipulation of proxy operations, as we found out, for example, in the Grenada documents when they were published. You had this gigantic impact on everybody -- the Libyans, the PLO, North Korea, Vietnam, Soviet Union, Cuba, and so forth. Would one way out of this dilemma, then, of these wars -- which are certainly not central theater wars, but can be very dangerous -- be to take a look at the question of how we can develop effective surrogate forces that we can employ in those circumstances? We've not been very good at this, you know.

There is a difference between the Soviets and us in that connection, because while, as you say, the Soviets have been every effective in many cases employing proxy forces, and we do not or have not been able to use proxies; on the other hand, we do have allies which the Soviets, in any meaningful sense, do not have. We do have allies like Great Britain and France, and other countries, whose interests do not always converge precisely with our own, but who can take action and, at times, have taken action. The French have intervened many times in their former colonies in Africa. So have the British. The British won an anti-guerrilla war against Marxist-Leninists in Malaysia. One has to recognize that there are many parts of the world, there are many countries, where to a considerable extent we have to rely upon our allies playing a leading role.

PROF. SEABURY: On the other hand, though, as we see in Central America today, they are very, very loath to, in any way ...

Well, that's a part of the world where, clearly, we have to play the leading roles in our backyard, not in their backyard.

PROF. SEABURY: Perhaps what I was saying is that we have to look elsewhere. I think our European allies are very loyal. As far as we are concerned with their common turf in Europe, they're not particularly active. In fact, they're very loath to take formidable action outside of the region.

But they both have taken action. I mean, both British and the French certainly have. And the French maintained a substantial fleet in Indian Ocean.

PROF. SEABURY: Oh sure, right. What I'm saying is that if ... I'm focusing upon this current problem in Central America, because one could then say since they are not going to help us there, can we draw upon other surrogate forces that could help us in that region?

For example?

Well, this administration attempted to do so.

PROF. SEABURY: I know. I know.

But a change in government has not made that impossible.

PROF. SEABURY: But you lose that one, and I think that would have been a great embarrassment if that had been consummated. But it's a conceptual problem that one has to begin now to think through. Given this dilemma that we have, is it not necessary for us to think much more systematically about the way in which we can involve surrogates? Otherwise, we may get back to where we were again and the troops will be there in El Salvador.

Based on your experience in government, Professor Huntington, and your scholarship, what kinds of reforms would you like to see in the national security process that might help us deal with these problems of strategy-making in this country?

I don't think, as I said, that there's any real way in which we can hope to put together a comprehensive and coherent national strategy. I think each of the recent administrations that has come in has defined its priorities with respect to military policy and military strategy. I think there are grave difficulties, however, in attempting to implement those priorities and attempting to put them together in a much more detailed and coherent military plan, which is the responsibility of the Department of Defense. As many people have pointed out recently, we do not have a well structured Defense Department. There is a great weakness, particularly, on the military side in the Defense Department. We have a Joint Chiefs of Staff system in which for anything to happen you need the approval of the heads of the four services. This means you get negotiating and compromise on the one hand, or you get very unrealistic plans being drawn up, because only by accepting unrealistic assumptions can the heads of the four services then agree. There are a variety of proposals now which have been advanced and which are before Congress to attempt to change that somewhat, and to attempt to enhance the authority of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and attempt to convert the Joint Staff, which now works for the Joint Chiefs in their collective capacity, into a staff that would work for the Chairman.

Now, of course, some people say, well, won't that lead us to a German general staff? And I think the answer to that is clearly no, because all that this would do would be to add an additional voice to the policy-making process, but an independent military voice, one that was divorced from service interests. At present, no secretary of defense, no president, is able to turn to anybody and get independent military advice in any sort of systematic way that does not reflect service interest. These proposals for change would simply give the presidents and secretaries of defense that advice and make it available to them, if they want to turn to that advice. I think most presidents and secretaries of defense clearly do, and indeed, the most recent proposals for reform come with the endorsement of six former secretaries of defense.

One final question. Do you think we'll ever have a situation, given this political context that we've been talking about, where there will really, again, ever be one foreign policy voice, whether it's the Secretary of State or the National Security Advisor? Is that not on the horizon?

I don't think you can have a foreign policy czar, because, again, foreign policy is just too diverse, too many interests and groups and goals are involved. The only thing you conceivably can have is a president, who, if he is very much interested in foreign policy and wants to play a central role in foreign policy, and if he knows what he wants, then, it seems to me, you can approximate the situation of a foreign policy czar, as was the case in the first Nixon administration when President Nixon clearly knew what he wanted in foreign policy. What he wanted very closely reflected the views of Henry Kissinger over the years, and the two of them were able to work very closely together. And, in fact, centralized in the White House, they were able to make key decisions and initiatives, very important initiatives in foreign policy.

Professor Huntington, thank you very much for joining us today. Professor Seabury, thank you for this very informative discussion. And thank you very much.

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