Higher-Level Rationality Versus Lower-Level Irrationality (2021)

Intuitively, it appears somewhat surprising that states’ foreign policies are fairly rational, for why should we expect sub-state politics, bargaining and decision-procedures to translate into “rational” decisions and policies. Of course, one might take issues with the premise that decisions taken by, or policies pursued by, states are reasonably (that is, on average, in the long run, and so on) rational. Then it is perhaps still surprising that foreign policies are not much more “all over the place”, namely substantially more irrational than they are. Admittedly, this is all somewhat, or even more than somewhat, subjective. So let’s try to disentangle these issues – conceptually.

Rationality is a slippery, ambiguous concept. Rationality can be defined as a means-ends relationship. A decision is irrational if it seeks ends that are not achievable given available means. A decision is also irrational if it has verifiably suffered from cognitive to affective biases. A policy is irrational if it is maintained in spite of evidence strongly supporting the need for a change in policy and such a policy is available at an acceptable cost. Inevitably, evaluating individual decisions will often involve a certain degree of subjective judgment, even if one agrees on all the facts.

Rationality should not be evaluated in terms of the success or failure of a decision or policy. A decision or policy that ends in failure need not have been irrational. A policy that turns out to be successful may have been deeply irrational. Virtually all decisions rely on assumptions and presumptions, and decision-makers often suffer from misperception (which may or may not be due to systemic biases and therefore irrational). Neither should the question be whether things could have gone differently (they almost always could have), but whether a better decision could have been taken – not in hindsight, but in view of what was known (or should have been known or could have been known) at the time. Again, this leaves no doubt significant room for disagreement when it comes to evaluating the rationality of a decision.

For example, the Battle of Midway could have gone differently than it did had the Japanese navy had a different carrier doctrine, invested more in intelligence and reconnaissance, or had a Japanese patrol plane had not failed to spot US carriers due to cloud coverage, or had the task force been less confident that their attack would come as a complete surprise to the US. This raises an important question about an individual decision and the context in which a decision is taken. The individual decision may have been irrational, but the context within which irrational decisions was taken may itself have been due to “irrational” decisions earlier on. These decisions, in turn, may have been due to political or bureaucratic comprises. flaws in the decision-making process or cognitive biases. Changing any of these decisions may plausibly suggest that a successful outcome might have been achieved. But hindsight bias needs to be avoided. The question about “how far back” an irrational decision reaches is nonetheless an important one and deserves greater exploration.

Decisions are determined by personal, bureaucratic (organizational process) and political (governmental politics) interests, and they are affected by decision-making procedures. Graham Allison (1971) famously made this point famously in his study of the Cuban missile crisis. This may translate into irrational policies (however ascertained) due to the need for political or bureaucratic compromises or the failure to correct for cognitive and affective biases. It may also lead to important issues not being raised as well as important questions not being asked. Japan arguably lacked a grand strategy because foreign policy and military intervention were the consequences of bureaucratic compromises rather than a high-level, political-strategic decision-making process.

The reality is that many of a state’s decisions (and bureaucratic, non-decisions) do not have dramatic consequences, and the costs of irrational decisions are often limited, or such decisions can be reversed once they begin to reveal their “irrationality”. As Jon Maynard Keynes quipped: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”. At the highest decision-making level, this requires deciders to ignore the sunk cost effect. At the policy implementation level, bureaucracies (often, not always) need to be “learning organizations” in order to adjust (as opposed to simply reverse) policies. Battles may not be refought, but tactics can be adjusted. So can strategy, in principle. Put differently, often there is room for maneuver, adjustment and recovery. Not always. In the face of German military aggression in 1939/ 40. Britain managed to recover, while France could not. 

Allison’s organizational and governmental politics model may have been somewhat oversold (Krasner 1972). But both models provide heuristically valuable frameworks for analysis. And they no doubt help explain curious and important facts, such as why the Soviets did camouflage the construction of their missile bases in Cuba, or even why German and Japanese intelligence was sub-par compared to their respective operational skills. (Cultural and geo-strategic accounts may also help explain the latter.) But high-level decision can often (but not always) be adjusted or reversed, and (often, not always) the bureaucracies prove sufficiently adept at adjusting or reversing course. 

Admittedly, these are broad, largely conceptual statements, supported by (at best) anecdotal evidence …. This handful of paragraphs is less an argument than food for thought and a call to revisit aforementioned “intellectually neglected perspectives”. The intention is to revisit this question and the concomitant analytical framework in greater detail at some point.

Further Thoughts on Cinema and War (2021)

War has always featured in literature and film, starting with Homer’s Iliad and Shakespeare’s History Plays (or indeed Troilus and Cressida) to the early days of cinema. Just think of The Birth of a Nation (1915), Napoléon (1927) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) to recent documentaries, including Ken Burn’s The Vietnam War (2017) or Sebastian Junger’s Restrepo (2010) and Korengal (2014).

There are war films, and there are war films. In this respect, the recent remake of Midway (1976) starring Henry Fonda and Charlton Heston called, unimaginatively, Midway (2019) also including an all-star cast is not particularly interesting, artistically or historically. The inside joke of depicting John Ford in a scene will be lost on most viewers. As a matter of fact, Ford’s footage of the battle (Battle of Midway) is in many ways more artistically valuable than the 1976 and 2019 cinematic renderings of the same event – even though it consists merely of original footage. For better or worse, many of the movies shot during World War II – whether staged or based on original footage, whether propagandistic or humanistic – raise many more interesting questions about reality and fiction, propaganda and documentary filmmaking etc. It is worth checking out Five Came Back (2017).

Hollywood war movies more often than not continue to bet on clichés. Midway is also full of tired clichés. As in so many Hollywood movies, Japanese characters are largely depicted as caricatures. (Only Yamamoto, the “good Japanese” who, at least initially, had opposed war with the United States, is partly exempt.) The Americans (and the Americans played by British actors .... why? To tap the British market?) are depicted as individuals, often heroic and valorous and always individualistic, while the Japanese characters are largely “ciphers”. In this respect, Midway 2.0. does not represent any improvement on Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), shot half a century ago. Midway 2.0. even fails to resist unnecessary, but marketable human-interest stories, doing only slightly better on this account than the über-hollywoodized Pearl Harbor (2001). Midway 2.0. stands in a long line of big-budget, all-star cast productions, capturing pivotal moments of World War II, such as A Bridge Too Far (1977) or The Longest Day (1962). But it certainly does not improve on them artistically or in terms of historical accuracy, not even in terms of cinematography (in spite of all the extra technology available today).

Such are the limitations of the movie/ entertainment complex. Historically accurate and detailed renderings of key historical events such as Downfall (2004) or, at a lower level of command, Das Boot (1981) just do not sell as well. (It is worth watching Downfall and Darkest Hour (2017) side-by-side.) The fact that a surprisingly large number of the better war movies are German or French may be explained by the fact that movies in these countries need to be produced on smaller budgets and therefore can afford to be less entertainment- and action-movie-oriented. This may be beginning to change somewhat following the commercially oriented German production Generation War (2013), and who knows what Netflix and German entertainment companies will do next. Small budgets may be conducive to greater artistic quality. The nature and type of funding often affects the nature and quality of war movies, including differences in historical accuracy vs. entertainment vs. semi- or full-on propaganda. Just compare German Stalingrad (1993), American Stalingrad (aka Enemy at the Gates (2001)) and Russian Stalingrad (2013) as well Eisenstein’s wartime epics – though Eisenstein also proves that state-backed propaganda and artistic value are not mutually exclusive, while, perhaps, artistic value and entertainment-oriented productions are. Check out Alexander Nevsky (1938) or Ivan the Terrible I and II. 

Journey’s End (2018) is an example of a compelling and plausible, artistically valuable, haunting low-budget war movie. It depicts a company of British soldiers during World War I bracing themselves for the last German offensive in 1918, and it is told them from the same vantage point as Dunkirk (2017) or Lebanon (2009) – that of the infantry (or tank) man facing a largely faceless enemy. It is also a comment on the senselessness of military bureaucracies, reminiscent of older movies such as Paths of Glory (1957). Relatedly, They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) is another recent thought-provoking, haunting film about World War I making the events more emotionally immediate due to the transformation of the original black and white documentary footage into colour. 

War often forces humans to confront the extremes of human experience, including absurdity, courage, sometimes heroism, fear, terror, but also humanity and camaraderie, and almost always seeming senselessness and extreme violence. Some films capture aspects of the breadth and depth of such experiences, while others barely do so, often sacrificing artistic value in the pursuit of monetizable entertainment.

US Isolationism and German Nuclear Deterrence (2021)

Ø In the event of the United States retreating into isolationism, Germany would be deprived of the US’s implicit nuclear guarantee. All other things equal, this would weaken Germany’s security and force Berlin to make difficult decisions with respect to its security and nuclear policy.

Ø In such a scenario, Germany has three basic options: (1) Forego a nuclear deterrent altogether; (2) enter into some sort of renewed and credible nuclear sharing arrangement with a third country (or group of countries); or (3) create a robust, independent national nuclear deterrent.

Ø All three options generate varying strategic and political costs and benefits. Combining a latent (potentially enhanced) nuclear capability with a credible nuclear sharing arrangement (with France) would help minimize costs, while largely preserving the strategic benefits of nuclear deterrence. 

What if the United States pulled out of NATO and Germany had to do without the US nuclear deterrent? Although this would (arguably) be a major unforced error on the part of the United States, such a scenario cannot be dismissed out of hand after the Trump administration – bluff or no bluff – threatened to leave NATO. In a recent paper[1], we explored three scenarios with respect to future US grand strategy, one of which outlined the possible consequences of a US turn towards isolationism. In such a scenario, the United States would end the forward deployment of its military forces in Europe (and East Asia), leave NATO and terminate its commitment to European security, including extended nuclear deterrence. However unlikely such a scenario may (or may not) appear[2], its implications are worth examining. A withdrawal of the US nuclear guarantee would force Germany to review both its conventional military posture and its stance towards nuclear deterrence.

Historical background

Nuclear deterrence was a crucial pillar of West German security during the Cold War. While Germany never acquired an independent nuclear deterrent, and multilateral nuclear deterrence proposal came to naught after the failure of the Multilateral Force (MLF) [3], it benefitted from US (and UK) extended nuclear deterrence. West German security hinged on a US commitment to respond to a conventional or nuclear attack on Germany with nuclear retaliation. This was arguably crucial in view of USSR and Warsaw Pact conventional superiority. While counterfactuals cannot be proved one way or the other, extended deterrence – it can be argued on logical grounds – contributed to the absence of armed conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and thus benefitted West German security enormously[4]. After all, West and East Germany would have been the main battleground in case of both a conventional and nuclear conflict. 

In the 1970s, the credibility of the nuclear guarantee was being undermined by the deployment of Soviet nuclear intermediate-range missiles. The NATO double-track decision, namely, the deployment of Pershing-II missiles, sought to shore up nuclear credibility by preserving credible deterrence at the sub-strategic level, while eliminating the risk of potential nuclear blackmail. All of this is to say that nuclear deterrence was a key element of West Germany’s security strategy and nuclear policy was always an issue that German decisionmakers had to wrestle with (e.g. Adenauer/ Strauss). Although the Cold War ended three decades ago and Germany is today surrounded by allies, Germany continues to benefit from US extended deterrence in the guise of the so-called nuclear sharing agreement that provides Germany with have access to nuclear weapons in case of an armed conflict. Through NATO, Germany also continues to benefit from at least an implicit US nuclear guarantee in the guise of collective security. Extended deterrence, including the nuclear sharing agreement with the United States in the context of NATO, would become obsolete in case of an American retreat into isolationism. After all, the UK nuclear deterrent is highly dependent on the US and therefore, arguably, of limited credibility[5].

Strategic Background, Rationale and Logic

The crucial question is (1) whether, strategically, Germany needs a nuclear deterrent and, in case the United States withdraws from NATO, (2) if such a deterrent can be made effective and credible and, if so, (3) at what strategic, political and economic cost. During the Cold War, Western nuclear deterrence initially sought to offset Warsaw Pact conventional superiority and, once the USSR acquired an increasingly potent nuclear arsenal, maintain mutually assured destruction (aka nuclear balance). In the 1980s, NATO strategy increasingly looked to nuclear weapons as deterrence as well as war-fighting instruments[6]. Today, Russian conventional forces represent less of a threat to German security than during the Cold War – in spite of recent Russian military modernization. The rationale for a German nuclear capability would therefore be somewhat less to deter a conventional attack on Western Europe, but rather – following the logic of the nuclear revolution – to deter any attack, whether conventional or unconventional, and thereby eliminate the security dilemma altogether[7]. Full disclosure: the so-called stability-instability paradox posits that mutually assured destruction, while preventing direct armed conflict between nuclear powers, raises the likelihood of minor, indirect, conventional armed conflict between them.

If and to what extent non-nuclear states face the possibility of nuclear coercion by nuclear states is a crucial question in this context. The “coercionist school” posits that nuclear blackmail works (or can work), as it increases both the likelihood of coercion on the part of the nuclear-armed state vis-à-vis a non-nuclear state and creates incentives for brinkmanship on the back of escalation dominance[8]. An opposing school of thought regards the use of nuclear weapons as a coercive instrument as tactically redundant, costly and, ultimately, as lacking in credibility given the necessarily limited issues at stake. Whichever side one comes down on in this debate, it is difficult to dispute that a non-nuclear state is at least potentially weaker and more vulnerable than a nuclear state, particularly if the nuclear state can exploit the other side’s conventional inferiority[9] - now or in future. While a nuclear power cannot be coerced militarily by another nuclear power, let alone by a non-nuclear power, a non-nuclear power may be at risk of coercion attempts. Either way, a credible nuclear deterrent definitely helps preempt the possibility of nuclear coercion by another nuclear state as well as exploitation of one’s conventional military inferiority by such a state. Strategically speaking, minimum, narrow deterrence[10] would suffice to eliminate the risk of nuclear and conventional military coercion by another nuclear state.

Of the four reasons to acquire military capabilities – deterrence, compellence, defense, swaggering – nuclear weapons certainly lend themselves to deterrence and swaggering[11]. The strategic rationale underpinning minimum deterrence is, again, less to coerce (compellence) another state or even to actually retaliate (defense) in response to a conventional or nuclear attack than to deter such an attack in the first place. Again, minimum deterrence helps limit strategic vulnerability that is at least a potential source of influence for an opposing, nuclear-armed state. Ultimately, the underlying strategic rationale for the acquisition of a nuclear deterrent is the elimination of the security dilemma between two states with robust nuclear deterrence – the stability-instability caveat notwithstanding. 

Costs and Benefits of Various Options

In light of these strategic considerations, Germany has three broad options, and each comes with different costs and benefits attached: (1) retain a latent nuclear capability, that is, retain the ability to produce and deploy on relatively short notice an effective nuclear deterrent; (2) replace the US guarantee with another guarantee and/ or renewed nuclear sharing with another country or group of countries; (3) deploy an independent national deterrent. 

All three options generate varying costs and benefits, risks and opportunities. Option 1 fails to address Germany’s actual or potential strategic vulnerability vis-a-vis nuclear powers and it fails to eliminate the security dilemma. Option 2 limits strategic vulnerability but, at a minimum, raises the issue of credibility. If in a bilateral or multilateral arrangement Germany does not control an independent nuclear deterrent and continues to depend on somebody else’s permission to use them, the credibility of the nuclear deterrence may be constrained (much obviously depends on the details). The country offering extended deterrence needs to have a robust and credible nuclear deterrent itself. Otherwise extended nuclear deterrence lacks credibility in the first place. Option 3 offers the greatest degree of credibility, provided a robust nuclear posture, including effective second-strike capability, can be put in place. It is also going to be the costliest option in international and domestic political terms as well as economic terms[12].

How these costs are assessed and weighted will in part be a function of the international security environment. Roughly speaking, the domestic and international political costs increase from option 1 through option 3, while the strategic benefits in terms of credible and effective nuclear deterrence increase. The potential international political costs depend on the reaction of other countries to a German nuclear capability, including second-round effects such as the spread of nuclear weapons[13]. Last but not least, deploying an independent national nuclear deterrent would obviously create the greatest challenges in operational, technical and domestic (aka widespread opposition, potentially undermining credibility) and international (aka violation of existing treaties committing Germany not to develop, produce or deploy nuclear weapons) political terms[14]. Decision-makers facing difficult choices in the event of a US turn towards isolationism need to weigh these costs and benefits carefully.

A sensible compromise might be to opt for option 2 (nuclear sharing, joint deterrence) given its limited domestic and international costs, limited technical and operational challenges and manageable international security environment. Essentially this would maintain the status quo. A nuclear sharing agreement with France would be slightly weaker than the present NATO/ US arrangement, but it should be sufficient to guarantee minimum deterrence. It would also avoid the violation of international treaties and would be more palatable for third countries, including France, Germany’s Eastern European partners and Russia – even the United States. Again, it would largely be an extension of the status quo.

Option 2 could be combined with option 1 (aka enhanced, latent capability) if policymakers are concerned about a substantial deterioration of the international security environment. In this case (aka increased risk of nuclear coercion and mounting conventional inferiority vis-à-vis a nuclear-armed power) as well as in case the credibility of extended deterrence diminishes for whatever reason, putting in place the conditions to produce and deploy a robust (!) and credible (1) nuclear deterrent on short notice would provide a strategic hedge. Naturally, technical (technology) and operational (training, posture) problems would need to be sorted out. A necessary second-strike capability would likely require the deployment of nuclear warheads on submarines geared towards counter-value strikes. Enhancing Germany’s latent nuclear capability would violate German commitments under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Two-Four Treaty, and hence generate an international and domestic political backlash.

Hedge nuclear (multilateral) sharing with independent option

The details of any future scenario where the US turns towards isolationism will matter. The specific relative strategic and political costs and benefits associated with the three options may therefore vary. Strategically, much will (and should) hinge on how vulnerable Germany would be to conventional and non-conventional security threats, following a US withdrawal, how credible and reliable nuclear sharing would be relative to the domestic and international political costs and operational challenges related to the creation of an independent national nuclear deterrent. An enhanced latent nuclear capability that can be operationally deployed on short notice, is both robust and credible, combined with a credible nuclear sharing agreement appear to be sufficient to guarantee Germany security for the time being. A substantial deterioration of the international security environment might change that assessment and associated political-strategic cost-benefit calculus. Whatever moral taboos attach to the making of nuclear policy in the eyes of the general public, German policymakers and planners cannot avoid thinking in greater detail about what Germany is to do in case the US withdraws from NATO.

References:

[1] DGAP, The logic (and grammar) of US grand strategy (Berlin, 2021)

[2] For what it’s worth, some Washington think tanks are increasingly calling for an adjustment of the US global military presence and a restructuring of its security alliances (Cato, Quincy, to name just the most prominent ones).

[3] Nicolas Miller, Stopping the bomb: the sources and effectiveness of US nonproliferation policy (Ithaca, 2018); Alexander Lanoszka, Atomic assurance: the alliance politics of nuclear proliferation (Ithaca, 2018); Mark Trachtenberg, The Cold War and after (Princeton, 2012); Gene Gerzhoy, Alliance coercion and nuclear restraint, International Security 39 (4), 2014

[4] Fred Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford, 1991)

[5] Politico, How Washington own the UK’s nukes, 2015

[6] See footnote 3

[7] Robert Jervis, The meaning of the nuclear revolution (Ithaca, 1989). For a contrarian view, see Keir Lieber, The myth of the nuclear revolution (Ithaca, 2020)

[8] Todd Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, Nuclear weapons and coercive diplomacy (Cambridge, 2017); for a critical view of empirical evidence supporting coercion thesis, see Francis Gavin, Nuclear weapons and American grand strategy (Washington DC, 2020)

[9] Matthew Kroenig, The logic of American nuclear strategy (Oxford, 2018)
[10] RAND, Understanding deterrence, Perspective (Santa Monica, 2018)
[11] Robert Art, To what ends military power, International Security (4), 1980
[12] Carnegie, Tracking the German nuclear debate, August 15, 2018 (last updated March 5, 2020)
[13] Scott Sagan, The spread of nuclear weapons (New York, 2003)
[14] “Strategies” include hedging, sprinting, sheltering pursuit, and hiding, see Vipin Narang, Strategies of nuclear proliferation, International Security 41 (3), 2016