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The assumption that the United States operates from a position of strength relative to its potential enemy underpins U.S. deterrence theory. This perceived strength has emboldened American administrations to take serious tactical risks, such as the positioning of aircraft carriers in the Eastern Mediterranean during the 1973 Yom Kippur War in order to dissuade Soviet intervention in that conflict. This tacit assumption, facilitated and entrenched by overwhelming U.S.conventional military superiority in the post-Cold War era, forms the foundation both for the relatively recent developmentof tailored deterrence and for the “Flexible Deterrence Options” (FDO) that now constitute a routine aspectof the joint military planning process. This article argues that the tacit assumption of strength is too narrow and can promote the implementation of deterrent policies and actions that have the opposite effects of those intended. Deterrence, rightly understood, is a component of a conflict management strategy which implies a degree of weakness on the part of the statethat employs it. This condition must be recognized and then incorporated into policies and plans for deterrence.

The rise of nations has always occasioned alarm and tension, and frequently produced wars. Existing powers interpret a rising nation’s accretion of economic and military power as a threat, and take measures to hedge against it. The rising nation sees such measures as an existential threat and makes greater efforts to overcome them. Thus ensues a continuous cycle of strategic challenge and response that may spiral out of control until a war breaks out. China and the United States potentially find themselves in such a situation. Although China has pursued what it terms a “peaceful rise” strategy and has adopted a number of policies aimed at reassuring its neighbors and indeed all nations of its benign intent, its maritime territorial claims that conflict with those of others, as well as the buildup of its navy, have spawned alarm and reaction. Many analysts in the United States are convinced that China’s strategic aims are indeed limited and peaceful, and that the extensive economic links between China and the rest of the world make war highly unlikely. Others see the picture very differently. In their view, China will not be selflimiting. It will develop its military and economic power and seek territorial expansion until some nation or group of nations impose on it constraints from the outside. Given the complexities of national grand strategy, the vast and diverse nature of China’s society, and the dynamic nature of even a highly structured and ostensibly stable governing bureaucracy like the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it is likely that the thinking within Chinese policy elites is not entirely settled on the matter. The danger is that without intending to, the United States and China may stumble into a future war that neither wants, but which arrives via a pathway of strategic challenge and response cycles; individual actions andpolicies, each of which are intended to increase security. Thus, some intellectual methodology for escaping the so-called security dilemma of spawning alarm and distrust in others through efforts to make oneself more secure must be found. This chapter will propose a modest start down that road by proposing the adoption of a particular organizing principle for maritime strategy: defense of the global system of commerce and security. This principle has already been recognized and adopted by the United States Sea Services2 and has also been proclaimed by the Chief of the Canadian Navy.3 Although not a replacement for strategic hedging in war planning and force development, system defense as an organizing principle changes the context in which these functions take place, and may moderate the way each nation sees the other’s efforts. This is not a complete solution to the problem of avoiding the security dilemma, but it is a small step that involves little in the way of strategic risk on the part of either nation, and could, if it proves useful in the maritime cooperation realm, mark the way for more ambitious measures of strategic reassurance. The notion that some such measure is worthwhile was clearly indicated by Dr. Wang Jisi, dean of the School of International Relations at Peking University, at a conference on maritime strategy between Chinese scholars and a group from the U.S. Naval War College. He said that a good relationship in the maritime domain between China and the U.S. must be approached both from a bottom up perspective, by which he meant mechanisms such as an incidents at sea agreement, hot lines, etc., and from a top down perspective.4 With respect to the top down perspective, he mentioned what he called “strategic reassurance.” There are a number of ways to interpret such a term, or perhaps better put, a number of facets to it. As the conference proceeded, one Chinese scholar complained that a recent exercise between the navies of the U.S., India, and Japan indicated the U.S. was trying to “encircle” China. Clearly, some Chinese at least, believe the U.S. has a particular strategic organizing principle or approach that it has used before in the defeat of the Axis powers as well as against the Soviet Union. Conversely, many in the U.S. see the Chinese as expansionistic, attempting to build continental style buffer zones, even at sea. If each nation persists in thinking the other is pursuing one of these traditional strategic approaches, strategic reassurance cannot be achieved. Just as clearly, each nation would like to have some assurance that the other is indeed not doing so. Although the articulation of a strategic organizing principle is simple, its instantiation is another matter. While it is easy in retrospect to identify the strategic plan, approach or principle a nation used in a war, struggle or era, it is harder to ascribe a specific strategic approach based on any particular policy or action. Grand strategy emerges from a pattern of decisions and actions over time and frequently across several administrations or regimes. Individual leaders may or may not act in specific cases onthe basis of a formally articulated principle or strategy. Often, patterns of decision-making over time exhibit coherency not from adherence to a plan but in the cumulative responses to a set of incentives, pressures, values, and ideas that constitute the decision-making environment. Professor Walter A. McDougall said recently:In other words, was Auguste Comte correct when he insisted that demography is destiny or Robert Strausz-Hupe when he insisted that you cannot argue with geography? We quote such lines to good effect, but are they operationally true in the sense of being impersonal forces that move events? One need not be a rigid determinist to grant that, especially in retrospect, there is often a logic to strategic interactions that the players sensed, if at all, by sheer instinct.5

Wargames are a staple technique of military research, but various inherent characteristics have prevented their use as rigorous analytic tools. Traditional gaming has long employed C2 among players, however, C2 has been generally regarded as a necessary adjunct to generating player moves, not as an element of independent scrutiny or play. Games that explore network-centric warfare necessarily focus precisely on player C2. Beyond their traditional exploratory function, wargames can constitute the basis for valid C2 experimentation. Harnessing wargames for C2 experimentation is possible if we conceptually divide them into two layers: the simulation layer and the command and control layer. Traditional wargames have consisted solely of the simulation layer, whose limitations with respect to experimentation are well documented. By separating out player C2 we have a different situation. C2 in a wargame can be real, not simulated, because it is what players actually do to each other and therefore is subject to valid experimental treatments. Such conceptual separation also allows the C2 experiment to ride on a relatively simple game that can be iterated more easily than traditional wargames. An example of a recent joint Naval War College / Center for Naval Analyses C2 experiment using a wargame is provided.