Denying Denial

A Squabble Over Conventional Deterrence

I apologize again to those who subscribe to this site looking for social commentary and droll storytelling, as there is a matter of national security theory that needs immediate attention.

I awoke this morning to an essay in the national security press that really got my juices flowing, and I feel that it ought to be addressed with dispatch. I therefore apologize in advance for whatever failures in spelling, usage, and grammar may follow. The article is entitled “Six Reasons the Pentagon Should Retire Deterrence By Denial” by Bryan Clark and Dan Patt. The headline alone (in a Tweet) got my attention, and so I clicked on it 1) because I support “denial” as a conventional deterrence approach and 2) and I really wanted to see who was writing in a manner so decidedly orthogonal to that holding. I do not know Mr. Patt, but I know the other author (Bryan Clark) very well, and I consider him a friend. To see that he not only is as wrong as he is in the logic he applies, but that he has had an ideological transformation from previously being a supporter of the role of denial (in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary) was surprising. I will move forward in my criticism of their article as is my custom, taking there statements in the order they are presented. Direct quotes of the essay are bold and italicized.

The idea, which gained favor after the Cold War, still enjoys the loud support of defense officials, think-tank studies, and government strategies. But events of the past decade suggest their faith is misplaced.

Not mentioned here is the “loud support” of a “think-tank study” led and co-authored by Bryan Clark (ably assisted by me as a co-author). This fleet architecture study—which appeared two weeks after the Trump Administration took office—has the adoption of deterrence by denial (as opposed to one relying on “punishment”) as one of its foundational ideas. I will not speak for Mr. Clark, but I was thrilled that the Trump national security team decided to feature denial in its national security strategy nine months later. The fleet architecture put forward in the study Clark and I worked on created an entire naval force posture dedicated to denying aggression against limited objectives in the near-abroad of opportunistic adversaries and with the continuing threat of punishment from over the horizon (see: China). Here are just a few quotes from the study that address what Clark and I believed then (and I continue to believe):

Instead of responding to aggression after the fact, to deter increasingly revisionist great powers U.S. forces will need the capabilities and operational concepts to deny them the objectives of their aggression or to punish them until the aggression stops.

To support deterrence by denial or punishment, American naval forces will need to operate and fight in proximity to an adversary.

The overriding importance of deterring great power conflict in the coming two decades and the concomitant shift to a concept based upon denial and punishment will drive changes in U.S. maritime strategy.

A deterrence concept of denial and punishment will require amphibious forces to be postured inside contested areas to interdict aggression; it will also require that they can safely conduct amphibious operations at longer ranges and over wider areas.

I am perfectly happy to believe that Bryan Clark’s thinking has evolved on the effectiveness of denial as a tool for conventional deterrence. This is what smart people do in response to facts and information. My problem is that what he puts forward in this piece as evidence of the failure of denial is not persuasive.

Russia was not deterred by risks of denial or punishment before invading Ukraine; China continues to reshape the security environment of the South and East China Seas through largely uncontested “gray-zone” activities; and the Pentagon’s own wargames suggest completely denying an invasion of Taiwan is likely infeasible.

There’s a lot to unpack here. First of all, Russia invaded Ukraine a year after the Biden Administration took over touting an approach to deterrence (“integrated deterrence”) that seriously downplayed denial. Suggesting that deterrence by denial (and punishment) failed in Ukraine presupposes it was tried. And it wasn’t. If what Mr. Clark means is that the existing US and NATO deterrence structures in Europe did not work, he needs to explain why Russia has not invaded any NATO countries. That Putin invaded a country without a security agreement with the West is hardly a repudiation of conventional deterrence writ large, especially when one considers the flaccid Western response to events as January and February 2022 played out.

As for China, while Clark and I argued in 2017 for a naval force posture and structure designed to buttress denial, the suggestion that anything close to what was recommended was achieved is laughable. Deterrence by denial as we laid out then was never resourced, and the Navy that exists today is no better at denying Chinese aggression over Taiwan than it was then.

Finally, SOMETHING is restraining China’s hand in Taiwan. It could be that China does not believe re-integrating Taiwan is worth the cost of the attempt. It could be that China is not ready. It could be that China has no INTENTION of invading Taiwan, but is enjoying watching the U.S. suboptimize its force globally chasing the possibility of an invasion. But to suggest that continuing gray zone activities by China is a broad failure of American conventional deterrence seems a bit much.

At the same time, the proposed U.S. defense budget reduced spending in real terms, with each of the U.S. military services accepting troop cuts to pay for future high-tech weaponry. Far from a “ring of steel” around allies like Taiwan, these developments suggest the DOD is pursuing a more sophisticated strategy to convince China’s leaders that aggression is risky and could cost more than it gains. 

This is the bet the Biden team is making—that it can spend less on defense, rely more heavily on the network of friends and allies, build up other instruments of national power (other than military), and spend more on its domestic agenda. It is a strategic approach, and if one were to track defense budget submissions (not what the Congress eventually passed) in the first two years of the Biden Administration, you would see a tightly coupled relationship between strategy and resources. “Integrated Deterrence” (what is alluded to here as “…a more sophisticated strategy…”) has always been envisioned as a means to control Pentagon spending, and by relying on technology and advanced concepts, we can do so AND be more effective in deterring China. Bound up closely in this approach is the suggestion that “whole of government” approaches national security were invented by the Biden team, and that mass and capacity are meaningless because we have chosen to make them so.

Clark and Patt move on to there six reasons:

It is vague. On its face, “denial” implies U.S. and allied forces will stop or reverse the efforts of aggressors, as they did against Iraq during Operation Desert Storm.

and

advocates often argue that “denial” means creating uncertainty for the aggressor, which is opposite of the certainty a denial strategy should convey.

No, on its face, denial implies that an effort is made to create doubt in the minds of Chinese leadership that their aggression—invasion of Taiwan, seizure of disputed islands, etc.—will succeed, or that it will succeed along a desirable timeline. The concept of sowing doubt was not disputed in the 2017 work Clark authored which states “A delay could be complemented by the threat of trans-regional operations to deny an adversary’s access to resources and lines of production to further sow doubt about the adversary’s ability to achieve its objectives.”

It is aimed at the wrong audience. If its goal is actually to shake the potential aggressor’s confidence and reshape its risk calculus, the DoD should pursue capabilities, tactics, and posture that maximize uncertainty based on assessments from the U.S. intelligence community about opponents’ concerns.

And if DoD took Clark’s (and my) advice put forward in the 2017 Fleet Architecture, it would be doing this. Again—Clark and Patt are aiming at a straw man. The Department of Defense from 2017-2021 had denial by deterrence and punishment as its stated approach, but it did not resource or implement this approach. It was then replaced by an administration that repudiated the approach in favor of one of its own that it IS resourcing. To say that denial failed is wrong. It was not implemented. I can hear titters from some of you, thinking about the whole lament of the dedicated leftist that “real Communism has never been tried” when you read the previous two sentences. But nothing even approaching deterrence by denial has been implemented by the United States.

It distorts U.S. force design.

Please, Bryan Clark. I’m begging you on my knees. What did we get wrong in 2017? The force design that we created was a masterpiece of capability, capacity, readiness, operations, and posture. If it had been implemented, if the “Deterrence Force” and the “Maneuver Force” were realities today, would you still believe that deterrence by denial had distorted the force design? Here’s how we put things then:

In place of the single presence force of Figure 18 (the current force posture) that is organized into broad CCDR AORs, this study proposes dividing the deployed fleet into two main groups: “Deterrence Forces” that are organized into discrete regions rather than CCDR AORs and a “Maneuver Force” that is assigned broadly to the Indo–Asia–Pacific theater. Separating the deployed fleet into these two main forces enables Deterrence Forces to be tailored to their region, since they will not “swing” to another theater in a conflict. And because Deterrence Forces will remain in their region, the Maneuver Force is able to respond to tensions and conflict in any part of the Indo–Asia–Pacific, including the Middle East, without leaving an opening for opportunistic aggression by an adversary seeking to exploit the shift in U.S. focus to the area of conflict

We recognized that the fleet required to do the job we laid out above was larger. That it would cost more money. This continuing dream of more for less makes us decidedly less ready.

It may not be feasible against new forms of aggression…In China’s case, this will likely require the U.S. military to engage in gray-zone confrontations and take actions that influence leaders in Beijing to steer away from escalation. 

Denial encompasses these things.

It undermines U.S. credibility. Denial demands the infliction of rapid, massive losses that could lead to catastrophic escalation against a nuclear-armed opponent. Based on the U.S. government’s reticence to provoke Russia through more robust support to Ukraine, U.S. leaders could be expected to avoid implementing a denial campaign, which weakens deterrence.

No, denial does not demand the infliction of rapid, massive losses. It demands the force posture and architecture necessary to inflict rapid, massive losses, and the will to impose them. By again pointing at US reaction to the invasion of Ukraine—a country with whom we have and had no treaty alliance—as an exemplar of how we will act in a region where there are several treaty allies and the Taiwan relations act in force—is incorrect. And if the actions of US leaders in the run-up to Ukraine ARE to be mined for indications of what kind of deterrence posture would be supportable elsewhere, we might as well pack up and bring the troops and ships home.

It imposes disproportionate costs on the U.S. military. Sustaining the overseas posture needed for short-notice strikes against hundreds of ships or thousands of vehicles is expensive and challenging for a military already at the breaking point. Exacerbating this problem, it is cheaper for an opponent like China to field targets than it is for the current U.S. military to field effective shots on target. 

The word “disproportionate” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence, as spending on national defense is low compared to post WWII averages (as a function of GDP). That “function of GDP” phrase is a tough one for some to swallow, because if you look closely, you see that we have more than ever worth protecting, and we are spending less on protecting it. Secondly, YES. SUSTAINING THE OVERSEAS POSTURE NEEDED FOR SHORT-NOTICE STRIKES AGAINST HUNDREDS OF SHIPS OR THOUSANDS OF VEHICLES IS EXPENSIVE AND CHALLENGING FOR A MILITARY ALREADY AT THE BREAKING POINT. So spend more. Recognize that we have a generational threat to contend with, one that deserves as much attention, focus, and resources as the Soviet Union did. Stop lulling yourself into thinking that if we just had the right capability, or we just had the right concept of operation, we could do the job. The job is gigantic, it is all-encompassing, and it will not be cheaply completed.

The time has come to retire deterrence by denial. It had a good run when the U.S. was dominant…

Six years ago, Mr. Clark and I extolled the virtues of denial in no small measure BECAUSE we were no longer dominant, because we could not in good conscience support a posture of punishment that was no longer credible in the changed power dynamic.

In denial’s place, DoD leaders should more fully embrace the approach implied by their 2022 National Defense Strategy. Its lines of effort for Integrated Deterrence, Campaigning, and Building Enduring Advantages are focused more on targeting adversaries’ vulnerabilities and undermining their confidence than perpetuating denial as a basis for defense planning. 

The basis for denial as a means to deter is the creation of doubt by undermining confidence, which is what the authors believe a deterrence strategy should do.

The Pentagon’s recent successes in the Indo-Pacific reflect Integrated Deterrence in action.

I’m sorry. If the recent “successes” in the Indo-Pacific reflect Integrated Deterrence in action, why was the invasion of Ukraine by Russia not considered a failure of Integrated Deterrence? I do not believe that the invasion of Ukraine was a failure of deterrence, integrated, or otherwise. Because I do not believe the United States demonstrated either the will or the capacity to deter. It issued statements. It moved troops into the region.

Deterrence is a tricky thing. It is not always obvious why things do not happen. Deterrence by punishment (the pre-denial modality) assumes overwhelming force can be applied, but then only after the objective of aggression has been attained. Deterrence by denial seeks to keep the aggression from occurring by diminishing the likelihood of its success.

Deterrence by denial as a concept is limited in its pretentions. It applies only to the application of hard power by conventional forces. That it is not the Brand Name anymore for our approach to deterrence does not mean that it is a failure. Spend enough time with a Biden national security type talking about integrated deterrence, and you will find that its pretentions are grand. But contained within it, is the space for conventional deterrence by denial when applied to the hard power slice of integrated deterrence. What is missing are the resources to implement it.