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The 34th IFPA-Fletcher Conference on
National Security Strategy and Policy:
Security Planning and Military Transformation

December 2-3, 2003
U.S. Chamber of
Commerce Building
Lafayette Square, 1615 H Street, NW
Washington, D.C.

Address by Dr. Stephen M. Younger, Director, Defense Threat Reduction Agency

Good afternoon, everyone, and let me welcome you to the panel on "Dissuading and Deterring 21st Century Threats: Operationalizing the New Strategic Triad." In a few minutes, I'll introduce several distinguished individuals, who have been taking leading roles in reshaping the strategic defense of the United States. Before that, I'd like to say a couple of words to set the stage. First of all, it's appropriate that the title of our panel connects threats and strategy, for indeed they are inexplicably linked. An effective response to a threat requires a strategy. But on the other hand, it's difficult to craft a strategy unless one has a good understand of the threat. I think that we do indeed live in exciting times. We are midway through a transition, both in the strategic threat environment and in our national security response to that environment. Let me comment briefly on the environment itself.

For the 40 plus years of the Cold War, the global strategic environment was dominated by two superpowers, each espousing an ideology, each shepherding a cadre of other states with shared interests. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, of course this picture changed in a breathtaking way. Democracy has swept the nations of Europe and much of the rest of the world. Countries that were former members of the Soviet bloc are now members of NATO. Russia itself is no longer considered a threat to the United States, and the President has announced deep reductions in the numbers of deployed nuclear weapons. Weapons, that more than anything else, characterized the tensions of the Cold War.

But, much as some might have hoped, the end of the Cold War did not usher in a time of global peace, prosperity, and cooperation. On the contrary, the global security environment has become more complex than it was during the second half of the 20th century, and arguably more complex than it's ever been before. Communications and transportation technologies are increasing at an astonishing rate. Weapons of mass destruction have proliferated to new states over the past decade, and sub-state groups have indicated their interest in acquiring them. Together, these developments mean not only that things can happen quickly, but that those things can have history-changing consequences. We no longer have the luxury to wait for a threat to realize itself before we prepare a response. The speed with which that threat can occur, and its consequences, are too great. Nor does America have the option of retreating behind our borders. The tragic events of September 11, 2001, eliminated that option forever.

To secure our future, it's vital that we construct, in cooperation with our allies and others, a new global strategy that deters aggression, and if necessary, can defeat it anywhere, anytime. Over the past several years, the United States has begun to craft just such a new approach to our strategic forces. The Nuclear Posture Review was a watershed in that process, in redefining the very nature of our strategic forces. No longer are strategic weapons defined merely as nuclear weapons. Strategic now includes nuclear and non-nuclear, precision global strike, defense, and the supporting infrastructure and technology to support all of those.

Let me talk for a minute about the transformation in strategic kinetic weapons, explosive warheads projected across great distances. In the past, great explosive energy was required for such weapons because they could not be delivered with great accuracy, and because many of the targets were either very hard, or very deeply buried. That's why our nuclear weapons had the high yields that they had, in the range of hundreds of kilotons, or even megatons. In the future, we will be able to project explosive warheads to great distances, with almost perfect accuracy. Some targets that formerly required the explosive force of a nuclear weapon will be able to be held at risk by conventional weapons. If nuclear weapons are required, their required yields will be less than those in our current arsenal.

Let me hasten to add that this does not, as some say, blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons. In my opinion, there is no such thing as "battlefield usable nuclear weapons". The nuclear threshold should be made greater, and not less, and for important practical reasons for the United States. It is in the interest of the United States to keep any conflict conventional, where the superior capabilities of our advanced technology can be brought to bear. It is not in our interest to justify the use of the only weapon that can cause significant damage to our forces and to our interests. However, we do need to look at the nuclear arsenal, which was designed for a set of conditions that no longer exist, and determine what we will need for the future.

Let me say a word about advanced conventional weapons. I believe that we're at the leading edge of a revolution in conventional weapons design. Operation Iraqi Freedom clearly demonstrated the ability of precision weapons to inflict devastating damage while minimizing collateral damage. My agency, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, has demonstrated the ability to supply new weapons of that type in a short period of time, on the order of 30 days to a year, much faster than we've been able to in the past. Knowing the target, we can design a weapon to defeat it with minimum residual consequences.

However, weapons technology is not enough. To hold a target at risk with any type of weapon, one must first know the location of that target, or indeed whether that target exists at all. I believe that a key factor in future battle supremacy will be determined less by the explosive force of our weapons than the quality of our intelligence. If we know where a target is, we'll have the capability to destroy it.

The United States is crafting a new approach to strategic weapons, one designed to meet the needs of an uncertain and potentially dangerous future. We have here with us today some of the principal architects of that approach, people who have crafted new policy, and people who are transforming our nation's capability to implement that policy.

The first speaker is Admiral James Ellis, Commander, US Strategic Command. His previous assignments include Commander in Chief, Allied Forces, Southern Europe, Commander in Chief, US Naval Forces, Europe, and numerous other positions. Relevant to today's discussion, Commander Ellis has taken a leading role in reshaping thinking in our strategic forces as Commander in Chief of Strategic Command. I ask you to welcome Admiral James Ellis.

Questions and Answers

Dr. Younger: We have time for questions, if the people with questions would identify themselves, and please wait for the microphones.

Audience: Thank you. It seems that the idea of deterrence by--

Dr. Younger: Could you identify yourself, please?

Audience: I'm Carey Mullis [?]. And I don't really belong here, but I got invited, and I've been really enjoying it. But I'm involved in trying to solve the bioterrorist kind of problems from the biological side. But the thing that occurs to me, the idea of deterrence by blowing up the whole country, or setting up a really large bomb in a country, that worked fine when we were talking about a country that we were going to perhaps go to war with. But it seems like a lot of times in the present, we're really just mad at the guy who's running the place, right? And we've sort of gotten over this notion that it's illegal to assassinate somebody, right? But if we had a way to irritate him worse and worse every day until he did what we wanted him to do, it would be better, in my opinion, than saying, "If you don't do this, we're finally going to have to run out of patience with you and blow you up."

For instance, if we could have heated up Baghdad by one degree centigrade every day, by having mirrors like the kind that Gerard O'Neill (?) proposed that we build years ago in space that would focus light on little generators and make—I mean, this might sound crazy, but we have the capacity to do that. We could focus light from space on some palace, and say, "It's never going to get dark there until you do this, until you let us do our inspections. Every night, you're going to have a sun, what's going to look like a sun, and your place is going to get hotter and hotter. Your place, not the whole city, but your place, or some other place. We've decided we don't like this building. We want to see what's inside of it. We're eventually going to burn it up." I mean, I think we should think in terms of, some of the time, we're not really against the whole country.

Dr. Younger: I'm wondering if you can get to a question, please.

Audience: Oh, the question? The question I had, I guess, was, why, instead of just concentrating on what sort of nuclear deterrence we could have, is, how can we exert powerful influence on people, decision makers, in various countries that we're having problems with? I guess that would be the question. I'm just suggesting a few.

Dr. Younger: Who would like to address that. Keith?

Dr. Payne: Without commenting on the specific proposal about heating up Baghdad, let me just suggest that your basic question was, why, instead of concentrating on nuclear weapons, should we not be concentrating on a broader array of approaches to deterrence, to influence behavior? What you have just described, in this latter part of your question, is exactly what one of the points that the NPR recommends, and is widely recognized as a new approach to thinking about deterrence in this post-Cold War period. As I said earlier, as Dr. Crouch pointed out earlier, one of the recommendation of the NPR was to put together and integrate a much broader array of threat options, conventional and nuclear, so that whatever the local conditions require with regard to deterrence, we're more likely to have the type of threat option that's most effective for deterrence on that occasion. So, the heart of your point is, why don't you look at broader approaches than just nuclear? All I can say is, in fact, we are, and that's at the heart of the NPR.

Audience: John Kayes (?), National Defense University. Al-Qaeda with a nuclear weapon is viewed by many people as a nightmare scenario, mainly because, as many believe, it's not deterrable. If they get it, they'll attempt to use it. You can try to prevent them from using it, but to persuade them not to attempt to do it, many consider not doable. Admiral Ellis, you expressed a lot of confidence that deterrence works, as a general statement, including against non-state actors. Do you think in fact there are ways to deter this type of scenario? And if you have any specific ideas in that regard, I'd be very interested in them.

Admiral Ellis: Well, with apologies to my fellow panelists, the point to be made here is that, as I talked in general terms about IO and the real opportunity we have to bring together all elements of national influence, the idea that the act that you described could occur in complete and total isolation I think probably is not one that most of us would believe possible. In other words, there's got to be some element of support. There's got to be monies transferred. There's got to be at least a sanctuary of some type identified and supported, either openly or tacitly, by leadership and the like.

My point is not to make a blanket pronouncement that deterrence will always work. I just think it's inappropriate to write it off. I kind of follow the Keith Payne school here, that it may work, and it may not, and we need to have an understanding of that. I think there are broader elements to it, and that's the point I would raise. And so, the idea that we would influence and shape those who support this on a nation-state basis, those who offer sanctuary, those who fund and resource—But it's even broader than that. I mean, when you think about it, there are societal and cultural issues that are in play as well, that people who subscribe to suicidal efforts and the like have some image of rewards that await them, if not in this world, certainly the next. And how do you disabuse them of that through mechanisms that address on a more reasoned scale what the world's religions are really all about?

Those types of things that build a part of a more complete and comprehensive campaign are the elements that I was alluding to when I said, "Let's not be too quick to write off deterrence." It is broader than just the narrow focus that I would argue we have pursued, as Dr. Payne described, during the Cold War. And while the tools are not all in place to do that, nor are the mechanisms to coordinate it, I think it has tremendous potential. And it's that effort that needs to be aggressively pursued.

Audience: Alex Ellerman [?] from Systems Planning and Analysis over in Alexandria. This is the second time this week I've heard somebody talk about putting a conventional warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile. And I have a question about that, which is, how do you fire a conventional intercontinental ballistic missile at Pyongyang without having the Russians thinking that it's a nuclear weapon headed for Vladivostok, or the Chinese thinking that it's a nuclear weapon headed for, say, Dayang [?]?

__: There's a number of ways that you can do that. The most obviously, of course, is to communicate with the Russians so that they know what they are doing. I mean, you can imagine using, say, a D-5 missile with, say, a 25,000-pound front end of high explosive. It won't have a long range, but it may turn out to be an excellent bunker buster that would be useful against hard and deeply buried targets, and it would have a much different trajectory than an ICBM that was flying at ICBM distances. So, there's a number of ways in which that problem can be managed. But the nature of the relationship with Russia is now drastically different, and that I think makes it more practical to have a force that will more seamlessly mix advanced conventional and nuclear capabilities, so that they can be used depending on the requirements of the circumstances.

Audience: Thanks. David Roof (?) with Global Security News Wire. This is for the panel, but in particularly Admiral Ellis. Do you believe, as J.D. Crouch has suggested, that in the future the US is going to increasingly be the initiator of conflicts, and that our strategic forces that we're developing now, including missile defense and whatever, will better enable us to do that?

__: I'm no better at predicting the future than anyone else, and so I certainly wouldn't go down that path. As we talk about capabilities, as we talk about the options, and the flexibility, and the broader spectrum of tools that we can provide the nation's leadership, I think that's the direction we're going. Given that we can't predict the future, just as we cannot predict accurately the success or lack thereof with regard to deterrent concepts in and of themselves, I think it would behoove us to hedge our bets against an alternative future which may not be the one that we anticipate.

The other thing I tell the War College is, we will plan for 100 contingencies, and fate will deal you the 101st. And it is how you reassemble the elements and the preparation that you've gone through in satisfying the needs of that first 100 that allow you to respond appropriately, adequately, proportionally, and in a timely manner to that 101st contingency. And so that's what we're talking about here. A broader range of options, more non-nuclear and even non-kinetic options, a more pervasive ability to know what's going on, and to act appropriately and precisely, those are the types of capabilities that we're looking for for future systems across the full range. And the future in which we see them serving is as much your guess as it is mine.

Audience: Bill Jones from Executive Intelligence Review. A related question. There was much discussion about a year ago with regard to the introduction to the so-called mini-nukes as bunker busters. This is an idea that has been around for at least a decade, but has gained some momentum with the Nuclear Policy Review, and raised a lot of questions with people. Particularly, I'd like-- Dr. Younger had mentioned the fact that battlefield nuclear weapons do not exist. We don't have them today. It's a good thing we don't. But by introducing the mini-nukes into the active armory, does this not set a bad precedent in terms of the many other nuclear powers that now exist today, not all of which are rogue states? They also have to make decisions: At what point do we use our nuclear weaponry if the United States sets kind of a precedent, saying "We can do this with these smaller nuclear weapons--"

END OF SIDE 2, TAPE 3

TAPE 4

Audience: —form of a nuclear weapon in a conflict situation. Does that represent a problem or not?

Dr. Younger: No, I don't think so. What I said was, I don't believe in the concept of usable battlefield nuclear weapons. I think any nuclear weapon is strategic by its very nature. I don't believe that the introduction of lower yield systems would reduce the nuclear threshold. Indeed, as I said at the beginning, I think if anything the nuclear threshold for the United States and all countries should be going up for the simple, practical reason that the United States will prevail in any conventional conflict. So it's in our best interest to keep nuclear weapons off the table. So I don't see the introduction of lower yield systems making nuclear weapons more usable. And I find it curious that people will object to the introduction of less destructive systems, and insist that we maintain high yield systems that were developed for quite a different time. I'm missing that logic. We should apply the appropriate force in terms of achieve the objective, always recognizing that crossing the nuclear threshold is an enormous step.

Audience: Eric McVaden [?] with IFPA. Dr. Payne, you painted a very complex picture of deterrence. It dawned on me that the picture may even be more complicated than you suggested, because what I'm thinking of are—We have now certainly put deterrence into the minds of, maybe in a more serious way, of many, many other countries who are now looking to deter us. And I wonder if that complexity-- I'm thinking all the way from China to North Korea to Iran and so forth. Is that truly, as it has just struck me, an added dimension to this, or am I making something of nothing?

Dr. Payne: No, it's a good point. And what it means is that that deterrence function that you just described may be more of a challenge than the deterrence functions we hope to fulfill during the Cold War. In fact, Dr. Crouch touched on this earlier. In fact, one of the questioners said that Dr. Crouch was proposing that we will be the initiators of conflict, and that wasn't the point at all. It fits right in with this particular question. The notion is that, in the past, the United States was in the guardian role of deterring attacks on allies and deterring attacks on ourselves. In the future, it may well be that the United States is compelled to deter escalation by a regional aggressor as the United States is confronting that aggressor in its own territory. That's not initiating conflict. That's trying to deter an aggressor from escalating while we are in that area possibly defending our allies and defending our interests.

Does that make deterrence more of a challenge? You bet it does. Because what it means is that, instead of in the past our threatening escalation as we did to the Soviet Union under flexible response, we may be in a regional contingency where our goal is to protect an ally or protect our interests. And that may cause us to have to be in a confrontation or a war with a regional aggressor, and actually deter that regional aggressor's escalation simultaneously while we are combating them conventionally. That's a very tough deterrence challenge, and it's a new challenge for this post-Cold War period.

Audience: Admiral Ellis, in the not-too-distant past, there was some discussion on deconfliction of authorities between the Combatant Commanders with regard to theater, regional, as well as global missile attack. Does your new mission as the global missile defense czar, so to speak, resolve that problem?

Admiral Ellis: I think to a large degree, it has. The role that we fulfill is one of creation of the architecture, the integration, the assessment, and the provision of those capabilities to the regional Combatant Commanders, so that they in turn can execute their statutory responsibilities for the defense of their area of responsibility. It's that simple. We are charged with operationalizing this. MDA is doing a magnificent job, but it's called Missile Defense Agency, but it might as well stand for Missile Development and Acquisition Agency, because that's what they're doing. How we operationalize that, I think, is going to be critically important. And somebody needs to do that so that it's consistent from one AOR to another, that there aren't operational concepts and plans and communication architectures and procedures that differ from one AOR to another.

There's a logical global element to this, and indeed, the Secretary of Defense has noted that there is no such thing as theater missile defense anymore. There's only missile defense on a global scale, and with various elements and layers of that. So our role is relieving Ron Kadish (?) of that burden of operationalization, and providing those capabilities in a timely manner to the regional Combatant Commanders, and they welcome that level of support. But I certainly would defer to other panelists who have had considerable experience in that discussion as well.

__: One quick thing I'd add to that. I agree that I think it has resolved a lot of those problems. But we are about, let's say, a year from now to have the first missile defense capability to defend the United States since, I think, what, 1975. So I would expect that while it has resolved problems, we're going to learn a lot between now and then, and indeed, that capability is going to evolve. And when it evolves, as we add to it and change it, we're going to have to change the relationships. For example, how does space-based ISR fit into that architecture, and who controls it, things like that. So I think a lot of those things are being worked out, but this will be a work in progress for many years.

Audience: Thank you. Sharon Weinberger (?) from Defense Daily. My question would be mostly for Dr. Younger. Returning to the question of low yield nuclear weapons, could you address for a minute how low yield nuclear weapons would fit into deterrent value? How would it provide more of a deterrent, for instance, in the current nuclear arsenal, and what would be the basket of targets that a low yield nuclear weapon would be aimed at, for example.

Dr. Younger: First let me say that I believe that nuclear weapons are weapons of to be used only in extremis. That is, if you have no other solution to a problem, and the problem is imminent, and the consequences of that problem are unacceptable, that's when a nuclear weapon can be considered. If you were in that situation, you would still like to use the least amount of force possible. And that is the driver for looking at lower yield systems. There is a concept that's been bandied of self-deterrence. That is, our weapons are of sufficiently high yield that he adversary believes that we would never use them. It is an implicit part of deterrence that the adversary believes that we might use them if we are pushed too far. So, does that make them more usable in a battlefield sense? No. Because you want to keep that threshold high. But at the same time—and unfortunately in human affairs, contradictions often reign, and this is a case where that happens—it is also true, where you want the adversary to believe that if he did drive you into a corner, that you would have a weapon suitable to remove the threat.

Audience: Kurt Canelli [?], National Defense Fellow at Harvard. In light of where our world's headed, much more global, does the concept of combatant command divided by regions make sense, in light of global strike and ISR, for Admiral Ellis?

Admiral Ellis: I think it does. There are clearly some tremendous benefits from a regional perspective that can't be replicated any other way. I mean, the presence there, the relationships, the exercises, the regional planning, even for contingencies and the like, the long-term efforts such as recently were undertaken in Iraq and elsewhere, all of those are appropriate for regional addressal (?). So in no way is it an either/or proposition. And we talk very candidly at STRATCOM that it's not about ownership. It's about providing a capability to the nation's leadership that it needs for scenarios that are likely to confront us in the future. And whether we are supported or supporting is immaterial, as long as we've got mechanisms that clearly enable us to do both. So, that's the important thing. What kind of capabilities do we need to address for this new world?

Because quite frankly, there are things that are global in character. We have capabilities as a nation that are global in character, and they lend themselves to oversight in a global manner, even as they are provided and applied with a regional focus when that's appropriate.

Audience: My name's Bryce Harris [?]. I'm with OSD Seed Sue Policy (?). My question is for Admiral Ellis. You mentioned earlier that as we approach success in warfare that it's important that we certainly not only achieve success, but that we be perceived as winning in war. How do you reconcile that in an age where we are increasingly employing precision munitions, short of doing a demonstration with a larger munition such as a daisy cutter, MOAB, or certainly a nuclear weapon.

Admiral Ellis: Well, I don't think we ever would want to get into a situation, much as Dr. Younger was addressing on the nuclear side, and certainly applicable on the conventional side, where we fail to understand and appreciate the need for proportionality in the efforts that ultimately we might be called upon to undertake in the nation's defense. So, again, you don't want to colloquially blow a bigger hole just so it's more visible to everyone. My remarks were more linked to the realities of today's environment. I mean, the proof is in recent conflicts, whether it's in my experience in Kosovo, or the recent experience in Iraq. Very little goes on that is not known very quickly on a global scale. Very little, if it's of sufficient interest, remains tactical for very long. It quickly becomes operational, and sometimes strategic and political. My point is, in this networked environment in which we operate, it's not just us that are operating, our forces that are operating in a network-centric environment. Indeed, the world is. It's one of the consequences of globalization, and the omnipresence of the communication nodes and the like. So, I don't think that it would be necessary to shape the weapons on a general scale for visibility rather than effectiveness and proportionality.

Audience: My name's Eric Kerr [?]. I'm at Brookings as a National Defense Fellow. Admiral Ellis, General Everhart (?) defends the air, and he pretty much works with FAA, has his own radars, pretty clear lines. Information operations with FCC, Commerce, Treasury, Justice, where does that stand? Are you the guy who has the button to defend our communications infrastructure?

Admiral Ellis: Well, my lane in the road is pretty broad, but it's not that broad. Remember, I characterized it fairly carefully as Department of Defense information operations, is the portfolio that we were handed by the president on the 10th of January this year. For those of you that are not aware, that's very precisely defined in Department of Defense documents. It includes computer network attack and defense. It includes psychological operations. It includes electronic warfare. It includes operational security. And it includes military deception. Those are the pillars, if you will, of Department of Defense IO. I believe personally, as I think I said in my remarks, that IO is obviously much broader than that. In fact, I joke with, again, the War College classes, no matter how you define it, it's not broad enough. It ought to involve everything that we can bring to bear as a nation.

Someday, I believe, as IO tools mature, and those capabilities and coordination mechanisms mature, we will reverse the way we do business today. Today, we write IO annexes to military war plans. I believe that someday we may write military annexes to IO plans, which may put things in perspective.

Audience: Other questions? Okay. If there are no other questions, then we will declare victory. I thank the panelists, and I thank the audience for your attention.