General Maxwell Taylor, a great combat soldier who became a horrible Washington DC general, brought the theory of proportional response to our national security. He convinced the Kennedy and Johnson administrations of its merit and they embraced it – Vietnam was partly the result. The essence of the theory is that when some other country (or group – it works (more accurately, it doesn’t work) with any sized enemy) does something damaging to or threatening the US, the US retaliates with a measured, balanced response that is “in proportion” to what was done to the US.

The intellectual basis of the theory rests firmly in the Cold War, the idea being the US didn’t want to do anything that might startle the Soviet Union and lead to escalation, and eventually nuclear exchange. In short, we’d use proportional response to send a signal to the Soviets that the nature and extent of any response would be known by them; we wouldn’t escalate a small crisis into a larger one.

Contrast this with the theory of deterrence. Deterrence is best described by Sean Connery, in his role as Jim Malone in “The Untouchables,” the tough Chicago cop who joins Eliot Ness’s team in pursuit of Al Capone (Malone is a composite character of several real members of Ness’s team). Malone describes the essence of deterrence perfectly with his lesson on the Chicago Way: “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun; he puts one of yours in a hospital, you put one of his in the morgue.”

Just so. Deterrence exists when a possible enemy understands that he doesn’t control the nature or the extent of your response. So, if he does “X,” he doesn’t know what you will do, but he’s certain that you’ll do more than “X,” and it may well be “10X.” It may also be “10 Y,” that is, it won’t be the same kind of thing that he did. 

So, deterrence means the other guy has to know 1) you can do all sorts of things to him, and MUCH worse than what he did to you; and 2) he has to firmly believe you are ready, willing and able to do just that. Capability and credibility equals deterrence; and makes him hesitant to do things to you.

The Establishment views this as “Cold War” and “Neanderthalic” thinking. Rather, a limited, measured response, a sophisticated, “nuanced” approach that carefully controls our response and seeks to contain our and their actions inside a tightly controlled set of parameters is the preferred approach among the establishment cognoscenti.

The White House, the President and his team, and Mrs. Clinton, view this as the responsible option. It is… In fact, if you thought Vietnam was a great way to fight a war, it’s the perfect response.

Thus the incredible reporting that the White House is preparing to respond to Russian cyber activities with our own cyber activities.

There are so many things wrong with this that it’s hard to know where to begin.

But two points need to be made: first, this release is for public consumption, “leaked” to show to the citizenry that the Administration (and the Establishment) is tough and knows how to handle this kind of thing. But, cyber, of all things, isn’t a type of warfare that benefits from open discussion of capabilities or intentions. Yet, we’ve now served notice to the Russians that they need to be more vigilant in their network defense. And more deceptive in their offensive cyber operations. But second, we’ve told them we’ll be responding in kind; it’s “proportional.” In reality, we’re telling them they can set the size and scope of the threat to them: if you do “X” to us, we’ll do “X” to you. As Vietnam showed, that doesn’t give you less “X,” it just gives an enemy the opportunity to “control the dial,” the opportunity to dial up and dial down the level of attacks on us with the sure knowledge that the response won’t exceed his acceptable level of pain.

“Deterrence” thus gives way to never-ending low level attacks, in this case, a never-ending cyber “insurgency.”

Swell. Another “victory” for the establishment.