Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Student report -- Air Command and Staff College, Air University, Maxwell AFB, AL, 1988. Submitted to the faculty in partial fulfillment of requirements for graduation; Sponsor, Col Robert J. Courter, Director, Force development, HQ/DED; Faculty advisor Lt Col Rober L. Peters, ACSC/3823 Stus / "Apr 1988" "Report number 88-2300"

Thesis (M.S. in Operations Research)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): W. Matthew Carlyle, Donovan Phillips. Includes bibliographical references (p. 67). Also available online.

No description available.

Even with the end of the Cold War, the question, Were the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in an action-reaction arms race? remains important and controversial. The bulk of empirical mathematical arms race research suggests that the US and USSR were not so engaged. Indeed, most such research into the matter suggests that US arms acquisitions were driven overwhelmingly by internal or domestic forces, as were Soviet arms acquisitions. Given the longstanding political, economic and military rivalry, between the US and USSR, the finding that they were not engaged in an arms race is perplexing. This is particularly so with respect to nuclear weapons acquisitions. Orthodox nuclear deterrence theory clearly posits that the attempt by each side to maintain a balance of nuclear forces with the other and hence deter the other from launching a first-strike should result in an action-reaction nuclear arms race. Why, then, does the overwhelming mass of quantitative research suggest that the opposite was true, in practice, in the US-Soviet case? The problem, in part, has been that researchers have been using underspecified mathematical models of action-reaction arms race interaction. The most famous of these models is Richardson’s 1960 action-reaction model. Researchers have long been aware that Richardson’s model is underspecified and as such that it may not be capable of revealing the true nature of US-Soviet military interaction. Since the late 1960s, arms race researchers have attempted to move beyond Richardson’s simple arms race specification. Several new approaches to arms race analysis have subsequently emerged: the game theoretic approach, the economic (stock adjustment) approach, and the expectations (adaptive, extrapolative, and rational) approach. Taken individually, neither of these approaches has, however, yielded much fruit. In this dissertation, the game, stock adjustment, and rational expectations approaches were combined for the first time into a single, more comprehensive, analytical approach and a new action-reaction arms race model was derived, which we have named the GSR Model. In addition, it was argued that a new approach was needed for testing arms race models. Arms races are generally seen as competitions of total armed versus total armed might. Arms race models have, accordingly, been tested against data on states’ annual military expenditures. We argued instead that an arms race is made of several subraces, the object of each subrace being a specific weapons system and a specific counter weapons system, deployed by an opponent and designed to thwart the former’s political and military effect. Models should, then, be tested for each subrace in a given arms race, that is, against data on weapons system-counter weapons system deployment levels. Time frames for the analysis of a given weapons system-counter weapons system competition should be set to accord with the period in which those systems were dominant in the military calculations of the competing states. In effect, we have specified an alternative approach to mathematical arms race analysis, the micro approach to mathematical arms race analysis. The GSR Model was tested against data on annual US and Soviet strategic nuclear warhead deployment levels, — specifically, those onboard ICBMs (1960-71) and submarines (1972-87). The GSR model was also tested against annual US-Soviet aggregate strategic nuclear warhead deployment data (ICBM, SLBM and bomber based totals), 1967-84. Estimates of the GSR model suggest that the US and USSR were in fact engaged in an action-reaction arms race over submarine launched nuclear warheads. Regression analysis also indicates that the US and USSR strongly interacted, asymmetrically, over ICBM based nuclear warheads. There appears to have been no interaction over aggregate warhead deployments. Finally, the implications of these findings for the maintenance of a stable nuclear deterrent were discussed.

This study examines the use of graduated escalation in Vietnam under the Administration of President Lyndon Johnson and attempts to discover the underlying causes that led to the enactment and the continuation of this policy throughout his administration.Factors studied include Johnson's perception of his place in history, his personal style of control, his dual loyalties to expanding "The Great Society" as well as stopping communism through military pressure, and his limited cultural understanding of the needs of the Vietnamese people and the intentions of their leaders.The conclusion is that, while Johnson was a canny politician in his own arena, his controlling personality probably prevented him from considering all of the options open to him in resolving the Vietnam problem and his simplistic, frontier type of diplomacy closed other doors and forced him along a path of frustration and defeat. / Department of Political Science

Project (D. Min.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 201-205).

Thesis (M.S.)--Naval Postgraduate School, 2002. / Cover title. "June 2002." AD-A404 869. Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-79). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1999. / Pocket material includes a plan and a view of Camp Lewis. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 351-367).