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Comments from Dr Lederberg on Discriminate Deterrence--For CISAC members only.
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Comments to accompany: "Discriminate Deterrence” The Report of the Commission on
Integrated Long Range Strategy, chaired by Fred Ikle and Albert Wohlstatter. released 1/12/88

General appraisal: “Discriminate Deterrence” is an excellent account of the strategy that
should govern our rnilitary posture. It gave limited consideration, as out of its charge, to
many other important areas: notably foreign policy, diplomacy, alliance building, international
economic and cultural relationships, and arms control. The outcomes of these will, of course,
feed back importantly to the implementation of military strategy.

Of course, I firmly endorse the view that arms control must be fully integrated with our
Strategic policy. Consistent with that, I would place more emphasis than does the report on
opportunities to meet certain goals that we share with the Soviet Union in respect to
substantial reduction in strategic arms, subject of course to well established principles of
verification, enforcement, and leaving each side more secure than it is before.

The report repeatedly insists that the deterrence of war is vastly preferable to fighting it. It
may b: impossible to stress this sufficiently. In a clear minded way, the report shows how we
must build capabilities we would prefer never to have to use; and that capabilities are not very
credible unless coupled with the reliable intention to use them when circumstances demand:
they cannot be sheer bluff and still deter. Any use of military force has unsavory
consequences that most people would prefer not to think about. Obviously, it is the task of
our military establishment to be prepared to make that use; and it is the burden of our policy
to sustain our military in a state of capable readiness, without their having to fire their
weapons in unger.

The most valuable contribution of the report is its pointer to two related themes: 1) lessening
our reliance on nuclear weapons -- which we are the most unlikely to use short of central
challenges to survival, and 2) recognizing that there are many dangers in the world, and will
be more in future, that are not immediately connected with constraining the expansion of the

Soviet empire.