Strategic stability and the proliferation of conventional precision strike: a (bounded) case for optimism?

ABSTRACT

What are the potential deterrence advantages for new states seeking to acquire long-range conventional precision strike (LRCPS)? Using the case of Poland, this article argues that such LRCPS proliferation offers two possible deterrent benefits. First, LRCPS strengthens its possessors’ ability to threaten aggressors with costs in the form of both counterforce denial and countervalue punishment, thereby reducing dependence on great-power allies’ extended-deterrence commitments. Second, it provides a new center of retaliatory decision proximate to the threat, thereby strengthening the credibility of great-power allies’ extended-deterrence commitments. However, while LRCPS capabilities may indeed bring certain advantages, they may also exacerbate political hostilities, incentivize escalation, and lack the survivability and penetrability needed to generate the envisioned deterrence effects. Thus, the overall consequences of such proliferation for strategic stability and associated international security are ambiguous, meriting a case-by-case analysis. If LRCPS is pursued nonetheless, meanwhile, then a countervailing combination of operational and strategic measures may be employed to reduce both first-strike temptations and adversaries’ broader fears.

KEYWORDS:

• long-range conventional precision strike
• strategic stability
• deterrence
• Poland
• Russia
• NATO

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgements

I thank Andrea Berger, Rhianna Kreger, Jamie Kwong, Tom Plant, Joshua Pollack, Patrick Porter, and the anonymous reviewers for invaluable help and feedback on this article. I also thank the Royal United Services Institute, the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York for their support of the workshop that enabled its development.

Notes

1 Such proliferation encompasses the acquisition by new operator states of long-range, high-precision land-attack missiles tipped with penetrative high-yield (but non-nuclear) warheads, along with the associated launch and targeting infrastructure.

2 This SimEx was part of an Expert Judgement Workshop hosted by the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), as part of a collaborative research program between RUSI and the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, with financial support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Participants included a mix of government policy makers, think-tank analysts, and academic experts from a range of NATO states. For details, see <https://rusi.org/event/expert-judgement-workshop-long-range-precision-strike-and-strategic-stability-europe>.

3 Such an outcome was arguably unsurprising: if one party lacks the ways and means of escalation, then their options for escalation are (obviously) zero; if that party does not lack the ways and means of escalation, then their options for escalation are (obviously) not zero.

4 The SimEx scenario selected on the dependent variable, in short, and, while it subsequently shed important light on intra-crisis escalatory dynamics, it also left a crucial half of the question over the merits of such capability proliferation—whether their presence in new possessors’ hands might strengthen inter-crisis deterrence—unanswered.

5 Seoul is indigenously developing a series of increasingly long-range ground-/naval-/air-launched conventional strike missiles that will enable it to threaten strategic targets throughout its region. See, in this issue, Joshua H. Pollack and Minji Kim, “South Korea's missile forces and the emergence of triangular strategic (in)stability,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 27, Nos. 1–2 (February–March 2020), <www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10736700.2020.1809156>; Richard Sisk, “New South Korean Missile Would Target North’s Bunkers, Long-Range Artillery,” Military.com, October 25, 2017, <www.military.com/defensetech/2017/10/25/new-south-korean-missile-target-norths-bunkers-long-range-artillery>; John Pike, “GLCM—Hyunmoo III/ALCM—Boramae/SLCM—Chonryong/Cheon Ryong/Ch’onnyong (Sky Dragon),” GlobalSecurity.org, September 9, 2017, <www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/rok/chonryong.htm>. Thus, South Korea is certainly one of the important regional powers currently engaged in LRCPS proliferation in the belief that such capabilities will enhance national security. But, while it is an apposite case, and the article’s findings may transfer to the East Asian regional context, the analysis is specifically bounded to the Polish lens for clarity.

6 It is thus about horizontal proliferation (i.e., new LRCPS operators) rather than vertical proliferation (i.e., pre-existing LRCPS operators increasing the quantity, quality, and utilization of such systems).

7 In 2014, Poland acquired the US-made Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM)—a reportedly ∼370-mile-range weapon used by several other US allies—and achieved initial operational capability in 2017. But, more significantly, in 2016, Warsaw gained US-government approval to purchase seventy units of JASSM’s extended-range variant (JASSM-ER)—an air-launched deep-strike missile with a reported range of >925 km—making Poland JASSM-ER’s first non-US operator. Jakub Palowski, “70 JASSM-ER Missiles for the Polish Fighters: US State Department Issues a Consent,” Defense 24, November 29, 2016, <https://www.defence24.com/70-jassm-er-missiles-for-the-polish-f-16-fighters-us-state-department-issues-a-consent>. Warsaw is also seeking a modest submarine-launched LRCPS capability, as discussed subsequently. That said, although Warsaw is procuring standoff missiles, it would still need its own long-range intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaisance (ISTAR) systems to achieve a fully independent LRCPS capability. Maksymilian Dura, “Poland needs Satellites and Targeting System for JASSM Missiles,” Defense 24, January 10, 2017, <https://www.defence24.com/poland-needs-satelites-and-targeting-system-for-jassm-missiles>.

8 Łukasz Kulesa, “Operationalizing the 'Polish fangs': Poland and long-range precision strike,” Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 27, Nos. 1–2 (February–March 2020), <www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10736700.2020.1788779>.

9 Poland is modernizing its air force via the acquisition of a thirty-two F-35As, which—while still not a bespoke long-range ISTAR platform—will bring an upward step change in ISTAR capability (as well as enhanced penetrability and survivability) compared with the current F-16 fleet. Jarosław Adamowski, “Poland Inks $4.6 Billion Contract for F-35 Fighter Jets,” Defense News, January 31, 2020, <www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/01/31/poland-inks-46-billion-contract-for-f-35-fighter-jets/>. Nonetheless, overall Polish ISTAR capability remains rudimentary by the standards of states seeking to conduct >1,000-km standoff strike missions. Submarine-launched LRCPS also remains a long-term aspiration rather than an imminent achievement.

10 The article therefore combines inductive and deductive inference; it starts from a real (and important) empirical puzzle, before tracing forward the logical possibilities. David Blagden, “Induction and Deduction in International Relations: Squaring the Circle between Theory and Evidence,” International Studies Review, Vol.18, No.2 (2016), pp. 195–213.

11 For seminal discussion of such dynamics, see Robert Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics, Vol. 30, No. 2 (1978), pp. 167–214.

12 John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 30.

13 Ivan Arreguín-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

14 Justyna Pawlak and Kacper Pempel, “In Training with Poland’s Volunteer Militia,” Reuters, October 18, 2018, <https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-poland-nationalism-militia/in-training-with-polands-volunteer-militia-idUKKCN1MS1R8>.

15 On the value of air power in denying adversaries the successful implementation of their preferred military strategy—to which precise, long-range ground-strike capabilities have made an increasingly significant contribution as technology has advanced—see Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 69–79.

16 For a valuable summary overview of Poland’s own policies to strengthen its military posture, including the centrality of deterrence therein and the manifested effects thereof, see (for example), Dominik P. Jankowski, “Beyond Air and Missile Defense: Modernization of the Polish Armed Forces,” ForeignPolicyBlogs.com, September 18, 2013, <https://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2013/09/18/beyond-air-and-missile-defense-modernization-of-the-polish-armed-forces/>. For the major policy review that set many of these developments in progress, see White Book on National Security of the Republic of Poland (Warsaw: National Security Bureau, 2013), <https://en.bbn.gov.pl/en/news/332,White-Book-on-National-Security-of-the-Republic-of-Poland.html>. For the latest update to official Polish national security strategy at the time of this article’s acceptance (July 2020), see National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland (Warsaw: National Security Bureau, 2020), <www.bbn.gov.pl/ftp/dokumenty/National_Security_Strategy_of_the_Republic_of_Poland_2020.pdf>.

17 John J. Mearsheimer, “Precision-Guided Munitions and Conventional Deterrence,” Survival, Vol.21, No.2 (1979), pp. 68–76.

18 On escalation equivalence as a refinement of the early notion of escalation dominance, i.e., achieving deterrence through potential aggressors’ expected benefits never exceeding their expected costs, see Charles L. Glaser, Analyzing Strategic Nuclear Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 50, 55–57. On the general limitations of conventional air power in delivering sufficient punishment to cause a state to fundamentally change strategy, given the stakes typically motivating such strategies and states’ capacity to absorb and adapt to aerial bombardment, see Pape, Bombing to Win, pp. 59–66, 86.

19 Bringing about the end of the US alliance guarantee due to fears about its future reliability would be like committing suicide due to fear of death.

20 Even in a nightmare scenario of US abandonment, the conventional forces of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and others would be mobilized while the UK and French nuclear arsenals would remain salient.

21 LRCPS thus does not go as far as certain other NATO powers’ assessment of the requirements to deter a conventionally superior Russia. Kristan Stoddart, “Maintaining the ‘Moscow Criterion’: British Strategic Nuclear Targeting 1974–1979,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol.31, No.6 (2008), pp. 897–924.

22 Based on measuring the distance to Moscow (919.7 km) from the northeastern Polish border village of Hołny Majera via the online DistanceFromTo.net tool: <www.distancefromto.net/>.

23 This article is not the place to debate the merits of such claims, but it is an argument that some advance (and that could conceivably influence the calculus of policy makers in Warsaw). Ben Judah, Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and out of Love with Vladimir Putin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).

24 Russian early-warning radar may be an example, although “blinding” a fearful adversary during a crisis in this way would be an escalatory and potentially self-jeopardizing move.

25 On the nuclear and non-nuclear elements/interactions of Russia’s contemporary deterrence posture, see Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, “The Myth of Russia’s Lowered Nuclear Threshold,” WarOnTheRocks.com, September 22, 2017, <https://warontherocks.com/2017/09/the-myth-of-russias-lowered-nuclear-threshold/>.

26 The credibility of any deterrent or coercive posture is a function of (a) states’ power/capability and (b) sufficient interest (leading to sufficient resolve) to make good on their threats/promises. Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), pp. 8–9.

27 For a seminal discussion of the credibility challenge in making deterrence commitments, see Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966 [2008]), pp. 35–91. For discussion of the contemporary NATO situation, see David S. Yost, “Assurance and US Extended Deterrence in NATO,” International Affairs, Vol.85, No.4 (2009), pp. 755–80.

28 Schelling, Arms and Influence, p. 47.

29 Avery Goldstein, Deterrence and Security in the 21st Century: China, Britain, France, and the Enduring Legacy of the Nuclear Revolution (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 179–80; Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 3rd edn. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 296; Jeremy Stocker, The United Kingdom and Nuclear Weapons (Abingdon, UK: Routledge/IISS, 2007), p. 21.

30 This is not to say that they are invulnerable, merely that their most pressing external major-power threat is not so proximate.

31 Russia already has good reason to believe that NATO is a “greedy” revisionist, of course, given that it expanded to encompass former Soviet allies and territories through the 1990s and 2000s, as well as pledging to do the same to even more vital states of the Russian periphery (Ukraine and Georgia). NATO, “Bucharest Summit Declaration,” April 3, 2008, <www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm>; Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson, “Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion,” International Security, Vol. 40, No. 4 (2016), pp. 7–44.

32 For discussion of Russia’s own proliferating LRCPS arsenal and expanding range of associated operational tasks, see Roger N. McDermott and Tor Bukkvoll, Russia in the Precision-Strike Regime: Military Theory, Procurement, and Operational Impact (Kjeller, Norway: Norwegian Defence Research Establishment, 2017), <www.ffi.no/no/Rapporter/17-00979.pdf>.

33 While nothing can be ruled out completely in international politics, a sudden “bolt from the blue” Russian conventional assault on Poland is an unlikely starting point for a Russo-Polish crisis, given the credibility of NATO’s Article V in such clear-cut circumstances, Polish forces’ own ability to inflict pain on aggressors (with or without LRCPS), and the limited Russian strategic gains to be had from such an attack. Escalation of a lower-level confrontation somewhere on the NATO periphery is more plausible, however.

34 Of course, positing a “hybrid” scenario from which a conventional confrontation subsequently emerges creates a false binary. The very “hybridity” in such scenarios refers to the use of subversive and deniable activities with conventional and nuclear capabilities. The strengthening of conventional deterrence can reduce the likelihood of a “hybrid” contingency unfolding by changing a potential aggressor’s calculus of how much subversion, covert action, proxy warfare, disinformation, and so forth they think they can get away with under the cover of their own conventional/nuclear deterrent. Nonetheless, in acquiring such benefits, there are inevitable downside risks.

35 Barry R. Posen, Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). Note too that this is a pressing concern vis-à-vis longstanding LRCPS operators now expanding the quantity, quality, and utilization of such systems, as well as prospective new users.

36 Obviously, the whole edifice of extended deterrence rests on just such a threatened “chain-gang,” and there are many conceivable scenarios in which all NATO member states could and would wish to come to the defense of another. But if Poland misconstrued or overreacted to a limited Russian incursion—possibly emboldened by the knowledge of its security guarantee from NATO’s nuclear powers—the outcome could be deeply counterproductive for the states extending such a guarantee in the belief that the alliance bolsters their own security.

37 Poland has indeed been seeking new submarines equipped with land-strike cruise missiles (the Orka program) to replace its aging Kilo-/Kobben-class boats (which lack LRCPS capability). Jarosław Adamowski, “3 European Producers Bid for Polish Sub Deal,” Defense News, January 3, 2018, <www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/01/03/3-european-producers-bid-for-poland-sub-deal/>. As of early 2020, following Orka delays, Warsaw was reportedly negotiating the acquisition of two secondhand Swedish boats to preserve submarine capability until a new class can be procured. Defense World, “Swedish Parliamentary Approval Sought to Sell Poland Used Submarines,” April 15, 2020, <www.defenseworld.net/news/26752/Swedish_Parliamentary_Approval_Sought_to_Sell_Poland_Used_Submarines#.XwRaaTOZM9c>. Either way, however, Orka’s three mooted hulls will be insufficient to sustain continuous at-sea deterrence (especially if the boats are also expected to fulfill other tasking, and especially if any more than a tokenistic weight of retaliatory firepower is sought).

38 Magnus Nordenman, “The Incredible, Shrinking Modern Military,” The Atlantic, November 12, 2012, <www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/the-incredible-shrinking-modern-military/264989/>.

39 Two JASSMs were reportedly retrieved undetonated by regime forces—and subsequently transferred to Moscow for analysis—following the US strike against Syria’s Barzah chemical-weapons research center in 2018. RIA Novosti, “Ekspert rasskazal, kak Rossiya ispol’zuyet naydennyye v Sirii rakety SSHA” [Expert tells how Russia uses the US missiles found in Syria], April 19, 2018, <https://web.archive.org/web/20180419104144/https://ria.ru/syria_chronicle/20180419/1518959404.html>. If true, this may mean that—moving from hypothetical LRCPS to the particulars of Poland’s nascent system—the full utility of JASSM-ER in such deep-strike scenarios against Russia is not as extensive as it otherwise might have been, given the tailored air defenses that Moscow may now be able to put in place.

40 Marcin Goclowski and Lidia Kelly, “Poland Says U.S. Missile Shield Site Delayed until 2020,” Reuters, March 22, 2018, <www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-defence-usa/poland-says-u-s-missile-shield-site-delayed-until-2020-idUSKBN1GY2RE>.

41 Charles L. Glaser and Steve Fetter, “National Missile Defense and the Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy,” International Security, Vol.26, No.1 (2001), pp. 40–92.

42 Of course, not all LRCPS systems are created equal, with marked variation in their capabilities.

43 On the self-referential Anglo-American affinity for omitting others’ own politics/preferences when offering strategic explanations/prescriptions, see Patrick Porter, “Libya and Iraq Were Never the West’s to Lose,” National Interest, November 2, 2016, <https://nationalinterest.org/feature/libya-iraq-were-never-the-wests-lose-18266>.