Preventive Defense Strategy

Post–Cold War guide to national-security strategy that emphasizes the absence of a major, traditional military threat on the scale of the Soviet Union and seeks to prevent similar threats from emerging in the future. Articulated in the late 1990s by former Secretary of Defense, William J. Perry, and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, Ashton B. Carter. Although preventive defense is defined as a broad politico-military strategy that draws on political, economic, and military instruments, the role of the Defense Department, and of contacts between military establishments, is central.

[Page 595]Preventive defense acknowledges the post–Cold War status of the United States as the dominant military force in the world and stresses the need for American foresight and vision in planning for the prevention of future threats to national security. To fulfill its mission, preventive defense focuses on nurturing cooperative security relationships with Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union, engaging a rising China, reducing and safeguarding nuclear arsenals, and countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Preventive defense stresses prevention over the Cold War objectives of containment and deterrence, and argues for maintaining an important peacetime military establishment and diplomatic engagement.

According to Perry and Carter, preventive defense strategy hierarchically outlines different types of threats to U.S. national security. The A-list threats are described as imminent military threats, on the scale of the former Soviet Union, that could threaten the survival of the United States. Preventive defense strategy recognizes five dangers that, if ignored and mismanaged, have the potential to become A-list threats: a chaotic, unstable, and potentially aggressive Russia; loosening of control over nuclear arsenals by Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union resulting in nuclear proliferation among rogue states and terrorists (loose nukes); an emerging and potentially adversarial China; proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and “catastrophic” terrorism.

Threats to U.S. interests, but not necessarily to American survival, constitute a B-list of dangers and include contingencies such as the Persian Gulf and North Korea. The C-list of threats is defined as important contingencies that indirectly affect U.S. national security but that do not directly threaten U.S. interests. These third-tier threats include conflicts such as those in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, and Haiti. Preventive defense calls for continuing to maintain a strong military to deal with these important B-and C-level threats while focusing mainly on A-level dangers.

Preventive defense strategy is based on strong interpersonal relationships between political and military leaders and makes use of a nongovernmental track-two dialogue to promote international cooperation and security partnerships. Track-two dialogue includes efforts to influence public opinion among the civilian populations of countries in conflict so that political leaders can more easily make compromises. Military-to-military contacts, in the form of joint training and exercises, confidence-building measures, and consultations, are central to the preventive defense strategy. According to Carter and Perry, in their book Preventive Defense: A New Security Strategy for America, defense cooperation with the Russian, Chinese, and European militaries through military-to-military relationships can lessen their propensity to threaten U.S. national interests. Carter and Perry also maintain that military-to-military links can help resolve difficult diplomatic and political issues. A main mechanism for engaging Russia according to preventive defense strategy is the complete and unfettered implementation of the military provisions of both the Partnership for Peace and the NATO-Russia Founding Act. The centrality of the Defense Department in the formulation and implementation of such broad security policies, and the “defense diplomacy” advocated by preventive defense, raises the issue of civil–military relations.

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