Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume IV, National Security Policy

83. Memorandum From the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Jones) to Secretary of Defense Brown¹

JCSM–284–78

Washington, August 23, 1978

SUBJECT

• Defense Programs and the Military Balance (U)

1. (S) The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the pending decisions on the FY 1980 Defense Budget will exert a pivotal influence on the national security options available through the 1980’s and beyond. Collectively, therefore, we wish to expand on observations made individually to you during the recent Program Review process and to draw upon the memorandum the Chairman forwarded to you on 12 August 1978.²

2. (S) We believe that US (and Allied) and Soviet (and Allied) military postures are generally in balance today. However, we also believe that a contemporary snapshot of the current balance is misleading unless placed in the wider perspective of long-term trends. Leaving aside arguments about specific growth rates, percentages of GNP, or intentions and recognizing the Soviets’ “China Problem” as well as their many shortcomings and reverses in political and economic spheres, there is no escaping the fact that the Soviets have been able to pull abreast of us militarily through a systematic and protracted investment in both numbers and quality of weaponry. In relative terms, there can be little doubt that the strategic balance has shifted, that the margin of US military capability relative to that of the USSR is narrower today than it has ever been, and that these adverse trends are continuing.

3. (S) The Joint Chiefs of Staff see the present consequences and implications of these trends as follows:

Strategic Nuclear Forces: In the space of a few years, the United States has moved from a position of clear-cut superiority to our current position of essential equivalence. However, while the present balance might appear superficially static, the trends are divergent. The Soviets are modernizing virtually every component of their strategic nuclear force structure behind the momentum of new systems which are in the field and in production. In contrast, a decade or more of slips, reductions, and cancellations has retarded US modernization appreciably and our ability to accelerate production enough in the short term to keep pace in the event of an unrestrained competition is questionable.

Moreover, we agree with the conclusion of NIE 11-4-78 (“Soviet Goals and Expectations in the Global Power Arena”) that the Soviets may expect to achieve a margin of superiority in the strategic field in the early 1980’s.³ Statistically, the margin may not be great, but any significant overall edge would have a profound influence, not only on the perceptions and apparent options open to decisionmakers in Washington and Moscow, but also on the policies and alignments of other nations.

Our situation can be likened to skating on thin ice with the ice getting thinner. Any sudden and dramatic Soviet achievement could cause a precipitous change in world perceptions, just as Sputnik electrified the world in October 1957 with the impression that the Soviets were far ahead of the United States in space technology. In the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, it took a “catch-up” program costing many billions of dollars and years of concentrated effort to correct that impression; in the more perilous area of strategic weaponry in the 1980’s, the consequences could be much more serious.

We believe it is also important to bear in mind that Soviet doctrine does not mirror the widely held view in the United States that nuclear war is unthinkable. Soviet doctrine treats nuclear conflict as undesirable, but also as both possible and winnable. We do not believe this doctrine can be dismissed as declaratory posturing, for they suit the action to the word. Across the whole range of strategic capability—force structure, command and control, hardening, dispersal, civil defense, etc.—we see evidence of a nation which takes seriously the possibility of nuclear conflict.

Tactical Nuclear Forces: The formal clear-cut US lead in tactical nuclear capability has been overtaken by the Soviets. The implications of this vanished edge are particularly serious in a NATO context.

The previously cited NIE 11–4–78 makes a persuasive case for the Soviet expectations of a better-than-even chance of gaining a quick conventional victory in Europe. Many of our European allies share this view and consider a credible threat of escalation as an indispensable element of the NATO deterrent. Our NATO Allies have long viewed tactical nuclear weapons as both an essential leg of the “NATO Triad” (general purpose, theater nuclear, and strategic nuclear forces) and a key element in assuring the credibility of the escalation option within NATO’s MC 14/3 flexible response strategy. However, given the state of essential equivalence in US–USSR strategic nuclear forces and clear Warsaw Pact numerical superiority in conventional forces, the absence of an Allied edge in tactical nuclear capability is an added source of deep concern especially to defense planners in NATO capitals.

General Purpose Forces: The United States and its allies have never attempted to match the Soviet predilection for mass and numbers in conventional warfare. Rather, we have tended to rely upon the force multiplier effect of technologically superior forces to offset more numerous but relatively unsophisticated forces of potential opponents.

In recent years, however, Soviet quantitative advantages have persisted or widened while many of the key US qualitative advantages have been systematically overtaken. This qualitative erosion is a consequence of an extensive Soviet R&D effort and a reequipment program that has outpaced our own by a wide margin.

Soviet progress has been evident across the board. They are modernizing their ground forces with improved armor (new main battle tank), firepower (artillery with superior range and rate of fire), battlefield mobility (new armored personnel carrier) and air defense weapons, all of which match or exceed the sophistication of similar US weapons. The Soviet Navy has grown from essentially a coastal protection fleet to a highly effective blue water surface and subsurface force, supported by a growing force of modern, land- and sea-based naval aircraft and an increasing amphibious capability. Similarly, the character of Soviet air forces has changed from primarily an air defense force with limited offensive capability into a long range, high performance, high payload, offensively oriented air arm.

These Soviet advances are particularly worrisome in a NATO context, in that the steadily growing Soviet edge in conventional and chemical warfare capability has for years been concentrated against Western European defenses. NATO deployments are thin and uneven, our allies are short of munitions, interoperability problems persist, sea lines of communication are critical, and, even with increased POMCUS, US augmentation is slowed by the limitations in our strategic airlift and sealift capability.

The picture is not altogether negative. The Long Term Defense Program is a step in the right direction and we believe it is critical to maintain this encouraging momentum through continued Alliance-wide modernization of conventional forces.⁴ However, we also believe that these measures must be recognized as but a beginning in redressing a regional imbalance which has been shifting for more than a decade and that the likely global nature of a NATO conflict must be borne in mind when assessing our progress.

Power Projection: This is one key military area in which the United States retains a substantial lead. We believe it essential to maintain this lead in view of the many political, economic, and military interests abroad which, if threatened, would have to be defended or reinforced with CONUS-based forces.

Much of our lead is based on global interests and an alliance system which motivated our developing both the technology and expertise required for power projection. We have long maintained a balanced mix of mobile ground forces, naval and airlift forces, and flexible amphibious and tactical air capability for rapid reaction to any level of threat worldwide.

At present, our superior ability to bring such forces to bear in a distant crisis area provides significant deterrent leverage, and we see compelling evidence that the implications of this imbalance have not been lost on the Soviets. They are embarked on a determined campaign both to increase their own projection capability and to deter or neutralize ours. Their increased emphasis on a quasi-military role for the Soviet merchant and civil air fleets, the growth of long-range offensive surface and submarine forces, growing amphibious capability, progress in wide-body aircraft technology, and pressures to obtain access to ports and airfields in Third World countries are some of the key signs that the Soviets appreciate the utility of power projection and intend to narrow our lead.

Additionally, the change in character of Soviet conventional forces, combined with Western dependence on imported oil, has expanded the area of potentially critical US/Soviet confrontation into a region—the Persian Gulf—which possesses little in-place deterrent.

Therefore, we believe it is essential to continue to modernize all aspects of US offensive and defensive power projection capability.

Breakout Potential: US industries are clearly more efficient, productive, diverse and technologically sophisticated than their Soviet counterparts. On the other hand, the Soviet near term capacity to produce military hardware exceeds ours by a substantial margin. With a determined effort, there is no doubt that the United States could eventually overtake and surpass the Soviet Union if forced into an accelerated arms buildup. However, given their “running start” and the time it would take us to reorient, retool, and expand our military production base, the overtake point is open to some question. The decisive issue could be whether the nature of the race were a 100-yard dash or a marathon. We believe this asymmetry in production base wields significant influence in the calculus of the strategic balance.

4. (S) Placing the above sobering military judgments into the broader context of the total power balance, the Joint Chiefs of Staff conclude:

• The Soviet system has neither the political appeal nor the economic vitality of the United States; the USSR derives the majority of its influence in the world from the actual or potential use and deployment of its military power.

• The Soviets have experienced political setbacks and reverses in their efforts to exert influence abroad where the application of military pressure (direct or proxy) was either inappropriate or foreclosed.

• Although the Soviets traditionally have been very cautious in the direct use of their own military forces outside their immediate sphere of control, their present position of strategic nuclear equality, with accelerating momentum toward a margin of overall military superiority, could create further incentives for greater risks. We believe that the greater the Soviet perception of freedom of action in the military realm, the greater the danger that they might attempt to exert the leverage of military power (threatened or used) in extending their economic, diplomatic, or ideological influence, miscalculate our will or ability to resist pressures, and precipitate a conflict which neither side wants or intends.

• In sum, the Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the central security challenge of the 1980’s—and the fundamental issue which the FY 1980 Budget must confront directly—will be to deny the Soviets any such real or perceived incentive to pursue options based on a preponderance of military strength.

5. (S) In our view, the first step should be an explicit and visible commitment that, until and unless Soviet military expansion becomes restrained, the United States will maintain at least the present balance through sustained and substantial growth in our own defense programs. We should also do everything possible to persuade our allies to follow suit. In the context of the 5-year budget levels as specified in the Consolidated Guidance, the Joint Chiefs of Staff regard the decremented level as a “reduce and withdraw” budget, the basic level as a “perpetuate the current trends” budget, and the enhanced level as a “retain the balance” budget.⁵ Recognizing that, in a constrained resource environment, the judgment on the size and allocation of limited defense dollars becomes fundamentally a risk assessment, we believe the enhanced level of funding is well justified by both the objective and perceptual considerations discussed above.

6. (S) The Joint Chiefs of Staff further believe that increased US defense spending should be only one element in a more confident and assertive national strategy. Without being arrogant or provocative in the use of our national power, we believe that the United States has the material and moral resources to arrest and reverse the dangerous trends discussed earlier, to force the strategic competition with the Soviet Union away from the military sphere and toward areas where the risks of violence are less and the incentives for negotiated force reductions are greater, and to support our national policy of eventual reduction of tensions. We will continue to study new alternatives for contributing to the military component of such a strategy.

For the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

David C. Jones

1. Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Agency File, Box 5, Defense Department: 9/78. Secret. Thor Hanson sent the memorandum to Aaron under cover of a September 8 handwritten note that reads, “Dave, This is the memo Dr. Brown mentioned to you. He has passed a copy of it directly to the President.” (Ibid.) Brown gave the memorandum to Carter at Camp David on September 8. (See Document 87.)
2. Jones presented his views in an August 12 memorandum to Brown. (Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Brzezinski Office File, Subject Chron File, Box 87, Defense Budget: 1–8/78)
3. See Document 62.
4. Reference is to the conclusions reached at the May 1978 Washington meeting of NATO heads of state to preserve NATO as an effective deterrent to the Warsaw Pact. A key outcome of the meeting was the agreement that NATO members annually increase their defense budgets by at least 3 percent in real terms.
5. For Brown’s summary of the Consolidated Guidance, see Document 54.