Table Of ContentTHROUGH
A GLASS DARKLY
THROUGH
A GLASS DARKLY
Looking at Conflict Prevention,
Management, and Termination
Stephen J. Cimbala
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Cimbala,StephenJ.
Throughaglassdarkly:lookingatconflictprevention,management,and
termination/StephenJ.Cimbala.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0–275–97184–8(alk.paper)
1.UnitedStates—Militarypolicy. 2.Militarypolicy—Casestudies. 3.Military
history,Modern—20thcentury. 4.Internationalrelations—Casestudies. 5.Cold
War. 6.Worldpolitics—1989– I.Title.
UA23.C5435 2001
327.1'6'0904—dc21 00–064953
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationDataisavailable.
Copyright(cid:1)2001byStephenJ.Cimbala
Allrightsreserved.Noportionofthisbookmaybe
reproduced,byanyprocessortechnique,without
theexpresswrittenconsentofthepublisher.
LibraryofCongressCatalogCardNumber:00–064953
ISBN:0–275–97184–8
Firstpublishedin2001
PraegerPublishers,88PostRoadWest,Westport,CT06881
AnimprintofGreenwoodPublishingGroup,Inc.
www.praeger.com
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction ix
I. Past Cases 1
1. Bargaining at the Brink: Otherness and the Cuban Missile
Crisis 3
2. Wilderness of Mirrors: The 1983 ‘‘War Scare’’ and U.S.–
Soviet Relations 23
3. Operation Desert Storm: A Truncated Triumph 53
II. Present and Future Cases 77
4. Information Warfare and Nuclear Weapons: Back to the
Future? 79
5. Armageddon by Osmosis: Must Nuclear Weapons
Spread? 119
6. Small Wars and Peace Wars: Disarming the Devil 139
Conclusion 161
For Further Reading 193
Index 195
Acknowledgments
I gratefullyacknowledgethefollowingpersonsfortheirintellectualcon-
tributions to my understanding of issues covered in this manuscript
and/or for critiquing parts of it: John Arquilla, Pavel Baev, Paul Davis,
BenFischer,WilliamFlavin,RaymondGarthoff,LesterGrau,ColinGray,
Jacob Kipp, Edward Kolodziej, Peter Rainow, James Scouras, Timothy
Thomas, Graham Turbiville, and Col. Peter Vercruysse.
I am especially grateful to Dr. James Scouras for permission to make
use of his analytical model and some of his data. He bears no respon-
sibility for their application here nor for any of my arguments or opin-
ions.
I am also especially grateful to Gen. Peter Schoomaker, Commander-
in-Chief (CINC), U.S. Special Operations Command, for his permission
tomeetwithpersonsatUnitedStatesSpecialOperationsCommand(US-
SOCOM) for very enlightening exchanges of information and perspec-
tive. James Majors made me feel especially welcome in Tampa.
Ben B. Fischer’s contributions to my understanding of pertinent Cold
War history deserve special mention. He has been generous with his
insights and cues for important sources.
Col. William Flavin, U.S. Army (Ret.), has patiently shared with me
his expertise on U.S. special operations and low-intensity conflict, his
experience in planning special operations for the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, and his considerable grasp of military history and civil-
military relations. I shall never be able to repay his forced march over
thebattlefieldsofWaterlooaccompaniedbyhisexpertplay-by-playdur-
ing it.
I gratefully acknowledge administrative support for this project from
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Penn State Delaware County Campus staff members Charele Raport,
George Franz, and Edward Tomezsko.
The encouragement and support for this project by Dr. James Sabin,
Greenwood Publishing Group, is very much appreciated.
This book is for Betsy, Chris, and David, whom I love and cherish
beyond the ability of words to convey.
Arguments and opinions expressed in this study do not represent
those of the U.S. Department of State, the Department of Defense, the
Pennsylvania State University, or any persons named above.
Introduction
War, crisis, and peacekeeping are both objective and subjective experi-
ences. They are objective in the sense that some event, variously de-
scribed by observers and participants, actually took place. War, crisis,
andpeaceoperationsarealsosubjective.Howparticipantsandobservers
understand the experience of war, crisis, or peacekeeping depends on
theperspectivethattheybringtobearonit.1Ineverydayexperience,we
all know that two people, having seen the same thing, will report it
differently.Forexample,PresidentJohnF.Kennedyoncesenttwosenior
advisers to Vietnam to assess the situation there and required that they
reporttohimimmediatelyupontheirreturntoWashington.Oneadviser
reported that all was going well in Vietnam and that future prospects
fortheprosecutionofthewarbythegovernmentofSouthVietnamwere
bright. The second adviser expressed little confidence in the ability of
the South Vietnamese regime to fight the Viet Cong or to maintain the
allegianceofmostofthepeopleunderitsrule.Kennedyremarked:“You
two did visit the same country, didn’t you?”
How participants in a decision or event comprehend and report that
experiencealsovariesthroughtime.Thepastisseendifferentlyfromthe
present and the future. For example, leaders’ memoirs are not as bur-
dened by the time and attention span limitations as are their contem-
poraneous notes. On the other hand, memoirs written long after an
experience has occurred are subject to selective and biased recall.Inthis
study, we examine three cases of conflict prevention, management, or
termination that took place during the Cold War. After reviewing these
past cases, we consider three issue areasrelated tonationalsecuritythat
will challenge the conflict prevention, management, and terminationca-
x INTRODUCTION
pacities of the U.S. government inthetwenty-firstcentury.Havingcom-
pleted both tasks, we will infer certain lessons learned for theorists,
policymakers, and military planners from these cases. Thus the study
combines retrospective with prospective policy analysis.2
The past cases include one from the early Cold War years (the Cuban
missile crisis of October 1962); the1983 nuclear “warscare”betweenthe
United States and Soviet Union; and the Gulf war (Operation Desert
Storm) of 1991. The present or future cases include the possibly malign
side effects of the overlap of an old war form (mass destruction) with a
newer one (information-based warfare); nuclear proliferation, or the
spread of nuclear weapons to currently nonnuclear countries or even to
nonstate actors such as terrorists; and third, the conduct of military
peacekeeping and other “operations other than war” in order to putout
the fires lit by failed or failing states. Each of the cases corresponds to a
particular type of problem (conflict prevention, management, or termi-
nation) in the past or in the present and future. Thus:
Past Cases
1. Conflict Prevention:the Cuban missilecrisis.
2. Conflict Management:the 1983 nuclear “war scare.”
3. Conflict Termination:the Gulf war of 1991.
Present/FutureCases
4. Conflict Prevention:nucleardeterrenceand informationwarfare.
5. Conflict Management:nuclearweapons spread.
6. Conflict Termination:militaryoperations“other than war.”
The terms conflict prevention, conflict management, and conflict termina-
tion can be defined as follows, for purposes of this study:
Conflict prevention is the avoidance of an outbreak of war that is (1)
undesiredby policymakersoneitherside;(2)tosomeextentunexpected
in the way in which it develops; (3) involves a very short time for de-
cision on the part of the disputant parties before political disagreement
spills over into actual fighting. Note that conflict prevention, as in the
caseofconflictmanagementandtermination,candescribebothaprocess
or set of actions toward an intended purpose and an outcome or result
of a decision-making process. Of course, conflict prevention is a matter
of degree. If the July crisis of 1914 had been contained as a dispute
between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, World War I would have been
avoided (at least temporarily), although fighting between Austria and
Serbia took place.3
Conflict management is the control and limitation of a set of disagree-
ments among state or nonstate actors in order to (1) mitigate the extent
