Incremental decision-making: United States military presence in the Indian Ocean, 1977--1981

Since the mid-1970s, U.S. decisionmakers have often focused their attention on events in the northwestern Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. During the four year period between early 1977 and early 1981, which roughly corresponded to the Carter Administration, U.S. responses to a series of crises and conflicts determined the nature of subsequent U.S. policy toward the region. At the outset of his administration, President Carter sought to minimize the confrontational relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union by proposing that both countries lower their military presence in the Indian Ocean. Between his initial proposal to "demilitarize" the Indian Ocean in 1977 and his declaration that the region was "vital" to the U.S. in 1980, President Carter made a number of incremental decisions which facilitated a significant shift in policy, including the sale of arms to Somalia and North Yemen, the formation of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, negotiations for access to regional port and air facilities, and efforts to include U.S. allies in responses to regional crises. This study uses open source literature, declassified documents and a measure of deductive, as well as inductive reasoning, to trace the evolution of U.S. policy toward the region through the Indian Ocean Arms Limitation Talks, the Somali/Ethiopian conflict of 1977-1978, the Yemen "crisis" of 1978, the Iranian Revolution, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to identify those incremental steps that led to the declaration of the Carter Doctrine. It also poses three questions that decisionmakers might ask--the incremental, sequential, and analytical questions--during an extended series of crises to best apply the incremental approach to decisionmaking. The study concludes that incremental decisionmaking is not only inevitable during an extended crisis, but in many respects it is also desireable. The Carter Administration's transition from arms control to a major military presence in the Indian Ocean provides several examples of both the advantages and the hazards associated with the incremental approach to decisionmaking.