Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

36th Annual IFPA-Fletcher Conference on
National Security and Policy
Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Forces in 21st-Century Deterrence: Implementing the New Triad

December 14-15, 2005
Grand Hyatt Washington Hotel
Washington, D.C.

Sesion 3 - Thinking about Regional Deterrence

Address by the Hon. Paula A. DeSutter, Assistant Secretary for Verification and Compliance, U.S. Department of State

Thank you, Jim. Usually when somebody says that they’re honored to be able to speak before a group, they're just kind of saying it. But when I was emailed by Dr. Pfaltzgraff inviting me to speak, I got so excited, I told my kids, “I'm so cool.” [laughter] And then when I looked at the list of panelists that are speaking, not only on this panel but also on some of the others, I told my staff this morning, “You guys don't appreciate how cool I am.” [laughter] So I'm more than honored to be here, I'm just delighted. And especially because in my current position in the State Department, I worry about deterring non-compliance and that has been something that I’ve worried about for a long time. I was able to be detailed from the Arms Control and Disarm Agency a long time ago, to work at the National Defense University at the Center for Counter Proliferation Research under the guidance of Ambassador, now Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and National Security, Bob Joseph, who I know many of you know.

What he asked me to do was to look at how we could adapt deterrence concepts to the deterrence of rogue states. And particularly to their use of weapons of mass destruction and how to apply the adaptive concepts to Iran, North Korea and Iraq. At that time I said, “Oh Bob, I'm sure that's been done.” And he said, “Go out and do a literature search.” I said, “Okay,” I was sure it had been done, and it hadn't. Keith Payne, whom you heard from earlier today, was one of the only articles I had found that said, “We must do this,” but I hadn't found a direct application.

I completed my efforts on Iran, which resulted in a small book called, “Denial in Jeopardy: Deterring Iranian Use of MDC Weapons.” And I finished the research and analysis on North Korea which resulted in the publication of a small NDU paper which they call a strategic forum. I never got to Iraq because I took so long with Iran. But what I’ll be putting here today is basically the general concept approach that I developed and it’s presented in the book, “Denial and Jeopardy.”

The questions I tried to answer were are existing U.S. deterrents, approaches and forces adequate to deter MBC weapons use by regional states? If current approaches and forces are inadequate, why are they? What makes certain regional states hard to deter? And can U.S. deterrence approaches and forces be strengthened? And if so, how? I just remembered, one of the first drafts that I had of one of the chapters of the book I took home and some of you know my husband, Joe DeSutter, and I gave it to him to read, and I was really impressed with myself. And he said, “You need to re-title the chapter.” And I said, “What?” He said, “You got to call it Stuff Paula knows about Iran.” And I said, “Thank you, dear.” [laughter]

But it really was a fascinating project to step back and try to say what is it that we need to think about? How do we think about it, and how do we think about them? After identifying in the book some consequences of getting the deterrent strategy wrong, I noted that deterrent strategies ought to be based on more than an assumption or an assertion that states will be adequately deterred by U.S. conventional superiority, or by the direct or implied threat of nuclear retaliation. In the course of the research on the book, I went to one of the commands and I said, “How are you thinking about it?” And I was talking to one of the analysts, and he said—I said, “How are we going to deter Iran from using chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons? And what would we do?” And he said, “Well, if they used any of those, we would turn Iran to glass.” And I said, “What you’ve told me is you haven’t given this three nano seconds of thought because you haven’t said here's why that would work, here's how that’s going to make a difference, what that's going to do to their war aims and how we’re going to think about it.”

They didn't invite me back. [laughter] What my research and analysis led me to conclude was that in depth strategic profiles were needed to enable tailored deterrent strategies to effect the opponent’s cost benefit analysis. As a part of that, I strongly advocate what I call denial strategies, the combination of active and passive defenses, as well as counterforce attacks, to diminish an enemy’s offensive capabilities. Given, however, that a determined foe would certainly employ mobility and concealment to hide or diminish the effectiveness of our counterforce attacks and try to evade our active and passive defenses, this probably isn’t going to be sufficient. If an opponent may rationally conclude that their ability to circumvent our active or passive defenses and counterforce capabilities, might enable them to attain their war aims at an acceptable cost. The risk of deterrence failure is high. The denial strategies must be supplemented by a reverse effort to identify and put in jeopardy those elements that could most effectively affect the opponent’s cost benefit of calculation. So how do we understand what their cost benefit calculation is, what those things we need to put at risk.

I believe that the elements of what we need to put at risk are best considered as Clausewitzian Centers of Gravity. As Clausewitz advises, “The ultimate substance of enemy strength must be traced back to the fewest possible sources, and ideally to one alone.” He then said the centers of gravity identify, “the hub of all power and movement on which everything depends, the point against which all our energies should be directed. Centers of gravity should be the targets that the destruction of which increases the probability that the cost to the enemy of initiated war will be unacceptable, and ultimately makes it impossible for the opponent to continue execution of the war.” Putting the centers of gravity in jeopardy combined with denial strategies, that is active and passive defenses and counterforce capabilities to diminish his offensive effectiveness, clearly communicated, would maximize our probability of successful deterrence.

If you do not do that, if you’ve not done an analysis to say what are the centers of gravity, what is it that we can do to change the cost benefit calculation and ultimately to disable their ability to conduct the war, then you're going to succeed potentially in what I would call anti-deterrence. If you attacked Tehran, for example, and Tehran isn’t the hub of where the center of gravity resides, what have you done? If, for example as I concluded, the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, is the focal point for use of weapons of mass destruction, and you’ve blown up some people or you’ve hit the Mahjlis or whatever you’ve done, you may then increase the likelihood that they would expand their use of weapons of mass destruction against you, your population, your allies in the region.

If we don’t get this right, if we don’t consider it carefully and apply by evaluating and developing strategic profiles for each country to determine what their centers of gravity are, we are, I believe, not likely to be able to succeed in deterring these countries. There's no guarantee of success in either case, but certainly the effort is not going to be as likely to be as successful.

So again, I think it’s a matter of examining who your foe is. Sun Tzu said “Know the enemy and know yourself, and in a thousand battles you’ll be successful.” I think that that’s critically important and it’s important to get it right. So I’d be happy to answer any questions later.
[Applause]

Questions and Answers

Audience: Miss DeSutter, Jim Miller from DePaul University. You spoke of centers of gravity. I was wondering if you could share with us some of the ones that you found for Iran?

Ms. DeSutter: Yeah, what I concluded was that with regard to WMD use, that the Iranian revolutionary guard was the center of gravity to try to deter WMD use. Leadership and regime survival is important, but what my assessment took me through was the IRGC saw itself as sort of the vanguard of the revolution and the Islamic revolution could continue so long as the IRGC continued to exist and be a viable entity. So that was the center of gravity.

When I was looking at North Korea, I came to the conclusion that, not surprisingly, that the center of gravity was the leadership survival. But again, I'm trying to think now about what are the centers of gravity that we could try to target in trying to deter the Iranian nuclear program from going forward? I mean, the idea of who are they, what are they that you need to target so that you can then think about specifically how do you target? What are the tools that are available to you, in whatever context? I mean, in the world I live in, we don’t think about whether it’s nuclear/conventional, we think about whether it’s sanctions or a Presidential statement, okay? So we use a little bit softer tools generally speaking. So again, those were the centers of gravity that we looked at.