Note on the Strategic Papers

As a contribution to ORO strategic thinking it is proposed to circulate,
from time to time, papers that bear on the national strategic problem. Some
of them will be products of research in the ordinary sense. Some will origi-
nate within ORO. Others will be the products of outside speculation. These
papers are for circulation within ORO only. They may not be communicated to
outsiders without the express permission of the Chief of the Strategic Divi-
sion. Moreover, the fact that they are being circulated should not be taken
as an indication that ORO or the Strategic Division endorses what they say.
The sole object of the series is to add to our information and to stimulate
our thinking on strategic problems. A file of this series should eventually
comprise a very useful source of background and orientation reading.

Note on SS-1

Henry Kissenger is an ORO consultant and editor of *Confluence*, a quarterly journal of international opinion published under the auspices of the Harvard University Summer School. His paper was written after the collapse of the European Defense Community and before the partial rehabilitation of that idea under the mantle of the Brussells Treaty. The reader is, therefore, free to speculate that the author might have taken a somewhat different line had he written later.

# THE IMPASSE OF AMERICAN POLICY AND PREVENTIVE WAR

## I. The Problem

That U. S. policy has reached an impasse hardly requires restatement. The collapse of South-East Asia, the hesitations of our Western Allies, the rumblings in Japan, the changing weapons balance, all point to a crisis nonetheless serious for being denied in official pronouncements from Washington. Within the past fifteen months, the USSR has managed to capture the peace offensive so that all over the world the U.S. increasingly appears as the obstacle to peace; it has made great strides in the development of its nuclear weapons and thus confronted Western Europe at least with imminent neutralization; it holds the diplomatic initiative in every corner of the globe with the U. S. vacillating between bombast and pliability but in any case reduced to relative ineffectiveness. EDC designed to protect Europe has become a mortgage on American prestige, and the present line-up of the projected South East Asia Pact indicates that its major function will be to add weakness to weakness.

In these circumstances, it is not surprising that thoughtful people should reflect about the measures to arrest this trend. Nor that the proposed remedial steps should assume an apocalyptic quality commensurate with the dangers facing us. Confronted with possible neutralization, war may appear as the preferable alternative and preventive war the means to force a showdown before the cards become hopelessly stacked against us. But war is too serious a matter to be undertaken in a fit of frustration. And before admitting the bankruptcy of policy it may be wise to analyze the causes of our present dilemma and the minimum elements of U. S. security thereby to determine the range of possible alternatives.

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## II. The Causes of the Present Impasse

It would be a mistake to assume that the present paralysis is a recent
development. Many of our difficulties are of long standing, although recent
policies heightened the tensions within the Free World while giving the diplo-
matic initiative entirely to the other side. The causes of the present impasse
will therefore be discussed under two headings: (a) those attributable to U.S.
policy since the war, and (b) those peculiar to the measures of the past two
years.

### (a) The Long-term Problems of the U.S.

The long-standing difficulties of U.S. policy reflect the defects of its
virtues. It was only natural that a nation which in less than a decade trans-
formed itself from an insular into a world power and in the process took on a
range of commitments almost unique in history, that such a nation should become
fascinated by the process of its involvement and not its underlying causes.
The pacts, the alliances, the aid programs, and above all the Soviet threat
came to seem as self-evident guideposts along an unalterable route, as ends in
themselves requiring no further justification. Above all, was this true of the
Soviet threat. Having wrenched itself loose from its dreams of isolation, the
U. S. has come to regard the Soviet colossus as ominous in proportion as the
U.S. yearning for peace was great. Just because the U.S. policy-makers were
aware of the purity of their motives in the immediate post-war period, they
reacted to Soviet intransigeance in a mood of outraged innocence and self-
righteous indignation. So it came about the Soviet threat became a basic postu-
late of U. S. policy, the final "legitimization" on its system of alliances.

But however correct this view, it came increasingly to miss the point
abroad, for policy like myth justifies itself not by its truth but by its
acceptability. And the basic fact all over the world has been the reluctance

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of the other powers to believe in unbridgeable schisms. This can be variously
explained, by the fear of nuclear destruction, the memory of two World Wars and
of foreign occupations; but it is a fact of political life. The desire for
peace is the predominant feature of the domestic situation in almost all the
countries of the world, and any attempt to act counter to it was bound to erode
the domestic support of the governments involved. The primary U.S. policy should
have been constantly to demonstrate Soviet intransigence and thereby create
a climate of opinion for common action. Instead, it has been assumed that the
chief U.S. task was to bring about a certain level of military strength and that
this depended almost entirely on U.S. policy and U.S. pressure.

Communist strategy has thus had an unnecessarily easy task. Since the U.S.
coalition effort was justified by a threat which was not felt as such by the
public opinion of our Allies, Soviet "peace offensives" have had a fertile
ground for cheap victories. U. S. pressure could be represented to seem al-
most as pervasive as that of the USSR, and U. S. intransigence has become the
shibboleth of the very people who would blanch at the prospect of being left
alone in Eurasia with the USSR. U. S. strategy had put the cart before the
horse. It had assumed Soviet bad faith and had conceived its task as primarily
technical, the creation of an adequate defense force. But in fact the problem
proved principally psychological: the bringing about of a climate of opinion
which would support such a force. By acting with a rationalistic matter-of-
factness, the U. S. had laid the groundwork for the present impasse: the
governments of our Allies, knowing the facts of life, formally agreed to U.S.
proposals; but this very act of agreement made them lose domestic support
leading to the paradoxical situation that present-day foreign ministers enjoy
considerable popularity in every country save their own. Thus Titoism as a
phenomenon of the cold war has been a major problem for the West as well as
for the USSR. The real danger to the U. S. system of alliances may well prove

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to be not communism but reverse Titoism — nationalist governments which,
to prove their independence of the U. S. will lean increasingly on the USSR.

This has been magnified by the U. S. view of the Alliance as exemplified
by Secretary Acheson's article in the *New York Times Magazine*. Its major
thesis that everything that "strengthens" an alliance is good while its
opposite is detrimental cannot be questioned. But if in practice it leads
to a conception of unity as an end in itself, it becomes self-defeating.
For if an alliance is equated with the consensus of its members, its policy
is shaped by its weakest component. And if every action has to be *preceded*
by the agreement of every last ally, an intolerable strain will be placed
on the domestic support of weak governments. Skillful Soviet diplomacy
could exploit this dilemma: by means of peace offensives it paralyzed any
decisive action in areas where there existed a community of interests and the
power to make it effective, such as in Europe. And by confining its aggressive
moves to areas of only peripheral interest to our Allies, the USSR has put a
great strain on Allied action. Korea is a case in point: it is safe to say
that the only interest of our European Allies in the Korean war was symbolic,
to commit the U. S. to the principle of collective security. Beyond that any
decisive action was inhibited by the reluctance of our Allies to run the risk
of nuclear war in a theatre of only the remotest concern to them. This is
not to say that our Allies were "wrong;" simply that they tended to look at
the Korean war from a perspective which did not make for long-range thinking.
Similarly, to make intervention in Indo-China dependent on prior Allied agree-
ment was to admit futility. In short, unity is not an end in itself but a
consequence of certain acts and decisions. It will emerge whenever there
is a community of interests either evident or demonstrated. It is the task
of the member of the coalition freest in his decision to bring about that
community if necessary by an act of leadership which permits no further

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equivocation. That there may be disagreement within the Allied camp *before*
such steps is less important than what there will occur *afterwards*. A U. S.
offensive in Korea in 1951, for which all our commanders on the spot thought
the chances excellent, might have been objected to by our allies. But if
successful and if followed by a moderate peace offer on our part, it would
have done more to establish U. S. leadership and conciliatoriness than any
number of soothing pronouncements which left open the question whether they
were not impelled by naivete or by weakness. (A later section will discuss
the limits of unilateral U. S. action.)

To summarize: even before the change of administration certain trouble-
spots in the position of the free world had become apparent. The psychological
basis for the military effort projected by U. S. policy was slipping away, as
was evidenced by the difficulties already experienced by EDC. In addition,
the insistence on formal unity had caused Allied relationships to be conducted
in a never-never land of formal agreement and lagging implementation, of a
mutual reluctance to antagonize the other party coupled with lawyer-like
evasions and a sacrifice of the substance of action to the form of agreement.
In the process the domestic support of all governments of the Western
coalition was being eroded, setting the stage for the reaction to the events
of the past two years in which energy has been increasingly absorbed in a
diplomatic civil war: a sterile effort to hold our Allies in line.

(b) **Events of the Past Two Years**

But the real deterioration of the U. S. position has occurred in the past
two years and paradoxically during a period of maximum strain for the USSR,
when it had to change its leadership, put down satellite revolts, and gear
its economy to a greater production of consumer's goods. Although U. S.
policy is not alone responsible for this deterioration, it has contributed

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to it through two sins of commission and one of omission, apart from the general confusion engendered by the plethora of conflicting statements emanating from Washington. Two of these failures have to do with U.S. defense policy, the third with the failure to take advantage of a great opportunity, the death of Stalin. Each of these problems will be discussed in order.

1. The "New Look" Military Policy. The real difficulty with the "New Look" is that it cannot decide whether it is a strategy for fighting the cold war or a means of winning a shooting war. If the latter and insofar as it pursues the doctrine that the U. S. must choose the theatre of conflict of a major war for its own maximum advantage, it is unexceptionable. But if it is conceived as a means of winning the cold war without a major conflict, it runs counter to any coalition policy, and, far from deterring Soviet agression, it may actually encourage it. The New Look inhibits a coalition policy because it tends to magnify the sense of impotence which is already one of the chief banes of America's Allies. Since the U. S. maintains a monopoly of atomic know-how and even more of production, since it alone has the capacity to deliver nuclear weapons, everything tends to encourage irresponsibility on the part of our allies, domestically by the amalgamation of anti-Americanism and the quest for peace and internationally by the advocacy of "peaceful coexistence" even on terms akin to surrender. (The visit of the delegation from the British Labour Party falls at least partly into that category). Moreover, the U. S. no longer possesses a monopoly of nuclear weapons, and in its absence the chief aim of our Allies will always be to avoid, not to win, a nuclear war while U. S. demonstrations of nuclear power may actually work to the advantage of the USSR. Thus the explosion of the U. S. hydrogen bomb did more to paralyze British action in Indo-China than any threat on the part of the USSR.

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The strain on the U. S. system of alliances has been compounded by the frequent announcements that the U. S. will no longer engage in local actions. But one of the major concerns of the leaders of those parts of Eurasia not yet under Soviet domination has been to prevent another foreign occupation. They know that the country which would emerge from such an ordeal, even in the most favorable contingency, would be so transformed as to make the running of major risks seem ludicrous. Nor will they be reassured by the fact that as a consequence of a Soviet move which engulfs them nuclear devastation may be visited on Moscow. As has often been pointed out, particularly by European leaders, it is not the last battle which concerns them but the first, and present U. S. military policy does not augur too well for it. If it is true that most foreign governments are caught in the dilemma that they are aware of the extent of Soviet power while their public refuses to believe in the reality of this danger, then an announced policy of total nuclear war or nothing may serve to erode completely public support for any bold policy. And it will induce hesitation even in those who have few illusions about the Soviet threat but who cannot be blind to their own vulnerability. (See Churchill's recent attitude.) Finally, the strategic problem for the Soviet bloc becomes vastly simplified. With nineteen divisions, some of them under-strength, the U. S. is clearly in no position to fight local wars. The Soviet bloc knows, therefore, that as long as it confines itself to peripheral moves and in areas where their own superiority in conventional weapons is over-whelming, it is relatively safe. By gradually engulfing the weaker peripheral countries and by refusing to present a clear-cut challenge, the USSR may therefore present the U. S. with a series of contingencies we are powerless, or at least unwilling, to stop. Many factors led to the collapse of Indo-China, not all of them of the making of the U.S. But it remains true that American

8

weakness in conventional weapons limited Soviet risks. And the same may
occur in other areas.

In short, the U. S. strategic problem has two aspects: to create a
level of thermo-nuclear strength to deter the Soviet Union from a major
war or from agression in areas which cannot be defended by an indigenous
effort; but to integrate this with a policy which does not paralyze the
will to resist in areas where there exist indigenous resources for defense.
This does not mean that we must fight wherever the Soviet High Command seeks
to deploy our strategic reserve; only that we must retain the capacity to
intervene locally and adopt a diplomacy which entertains the possibility,
at least, of limited wars for determinate objectives. If we assert that
ultimate nuclear weapons represent the *only* deterrent to Soviet aggression,
one of two consequences become almost inevitable: Either our Allies will
feel that any military effort on their part is unnecessary or else it may
lead them to the conviction that peace is preferable to war almost at any
price. For this reason, the only U. S. policy consistent with a policy
of alliances is one which minimizes (or seems to minimize) the risks of
nuclear war while giving reasonable protection against Soviet occupation
through the use of conventional armies. If the U. S. wants to derive political
benefits from its nuclear superiority, it must emphasize the tactical not the
strategic aspect of recent technological developments, the aspect, in short,
which can arrest a conventional army on the ground.

2. **The Meaning of the Changing Weapons Balance.** Nothing less than the above is implied by the change in the weapons balance. As long as the U. S. possessed a monopoly of atomic weapons and the willingness to use them, instant retaliation was a workable strategic concept. But with the Soviet

9

development of its own nuclear system plus a strategic air force plus guided missiles, a point will be reached almost mathematically where the USSR will have attained a measure of parity in weapons development with the U. S. which will permit it to start a conventional war (for example, "to disarm Germany") and to dare us to retaliate with nuclear weapons. What will then be the U. S. position vis-a-vis its Allies? Would we then dare to unleash the horrors of a thermo-nuclear war or would we be forced into a conventional war, having however first lost our Allies through our military policy? No system of alliances is better than the strategy to make it effective, as the experience of the French system of alliances in the inter-war period demonstrates. No political progress can be made by the U. S. until it adjusts its military policy to the technological facts of life, above all that the period of our nuclear monopoly is over.

3. **The Missed Opportunity.** The situation, then, is serious. Our Allies seem on the verge of neutralization by the preponderant strength of the USSR in conventional weapons and their new-found capacity for nuclear war. While the U. S. oscillates between soothing declarations and frantic efforts to build a security wall by means of mutual defense agreements, South East Asia is disintegrating, and with it the whole power-balance will be in jeopardy. A bloc extending from the Elbe to Malaya, if given sufficient time to develop its resources in manpower and raw materials, may soon test the resolution of the Free World to the utmost and will always represent an overpowering threat to the free nations of Eurasia which have been almost reduced to peninsular appendages to the huge land-mass. In this situation, it may be useful for purposes of contrast to recall two crucial points of maximum Soviet weakness, which a skillful Western diplomacy might have exploited -- the first in 1946, when the USSR was emerging from an unparalleled blood-letting, and the second

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in 1953, after the death of Stalin. But on both occasions the Soviet Union
transformed its weakness into an asset and thus emerged stronger for its
difficulties: in 1946 by bluffing a non-existent strength, in 1953 by means
of a peace offensive which bids fair to split the Free World. In 1946
America was still too close to the period of intimate wartime relations with
Russia to adopt a bold and flexible policy. And in any case the constellations
as well as the power relationship of that period are irretrievably gone. But
we are still suffering from our sins of omission in 1953. It would require
a separate paper to deal with our possibilities at that moment and it can
never be proved that an alternative policy would have in fact succeeded. But
if ever there was a time when it might have been possible to drive a wedge
between the USSR and its satellites, to reduce the Soviet sphere or to commit
the USSR to a nationalist instead of an imperialist policy, the time was
propitious after the death of Stalin. The Politbureau is not staffed by
supermen and anybody less might have been hard put to change the government,
put down internal schisms, defeat satellite revolts, increase the production
of consumer's goods, and withstand a determined U. S. diplomatic offensive.
It would not have been wise to be intransigent, since this might have con-
solidated the Soviet leadership. But the USSR should under no circumstances
have been permitted to gain the benefits from the advocacy of peace without
running any of the risks of its accomplishment. The task of U. S. strategy
was to reduce the Soviet peace offensive to concrete terms as quickly as
possible in order to gain a moral basis for continuing the cold war if
necessary. In May 1953, in discussing a possible U. S. strategy, the present
writer argued: "A conciliatory attitude on the part of the USSR which is
permitted to remain largely formal is more dangerous than a continuation of
the cold war. By relaxing the pressure, it permits the completion of internal

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consolidation and leaves the ultimate choice of policy and its timing in
the hands of Soviet leaders. Thus, the USSR would obtain at little or no
cost its maximum objective — gaining time and disrupting the U. S. system
of alliances." This in fact has happened. We wasted nearly a year by for-
malistic indecision while the Soviet leadership consolidated itself. When the
USSR re-emerged on the diplomatic scene, we permitted a European conference,
in which we held most of the cards, to be transformed into an Asian one in
which we held none without obtaining a single equivalent. In the process,
by a series of bluffs we have undermined our prestige, while EDC, for which
presumably all these sacrifices were brought, has collapsed so completely that
it is useless even as a negotiating weapon versus the USSR. The period of
weakness of the USSR is over; we knew nothing better to do with our opportunities
than to distribute food packages in Berlin — a useful gimmick, but no more than
that. Indeed, the USSR appears to have been strengthened by the death of Stalin.
Its policy is more flexible; even the satellite revolts have proved advantageous
for they have led to the identification of some of the anti-communist under-
ground organizations. Everywhere the USSR holds the diplomatic initiative;
the power balance is changing in its favor, while the U. S. threatens a re-
appraisal of its policy, not towards the USSR, but towards its Allies.

### III. The Conditions of U. S. Security

This then is the situation confronting the U. S., without doubt the nadir
of its post-war position. It is not surprising that at this juncture there
should appear advocates of radical solutions, who propose to cut the Gordian
knot at one blow by a policy of preventive war. There are many things that
can be said against such a policy, above all that it is not feasible with
the present Administration; and by the time a new Administration comes into
office the Soviet atomic capability may have improved so much that preventive

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war no longer seems attractive. But even were the policy feasible, its advocates would have the burden of demonstrating that no other course was open. For preventive war is not an act of policy but of desperation. It would be justified only if the U. S. were confronted by imminent neutralization and then only if the neutralization were absolute, that is, if the total power balance were on the point of shifting irrevocably against the U. S. Before discussing the wisdom of such a step, therefore, it will be necessary to examine the minimum and the optimum conditions of U. S. security to determine whether they can be realized only by preventive war.

Every international system must have some inherent safeguards in the balance of forces within it. To become completely dependent on the continued goodwill of another sovereign state is tantamount to an abdication of policy whose task it is to provide for the worst contingency. No major power can voluntarily accept neutralization, therefore; nor can peace as such be an objective of policy. Whenever peace becomes a direct objective of policy the international system is at the mercy of its most ruthless member. Whenever a power or group of powers achieves physical preponderance, self-restraint disappears. A peace which does not contain a relative balance of forces will prove ephemeral regardless of the domestic structure of the component states -- at least history offers no example to the contrary.

But in a world of two super-powers such an equilibrium is peculiarly difficult to attain. The classic balance of power implied that no power or combination of powers would be able to defeat its opposite grouping totally. But the fewer the factors to be balanced the greater the penalty for miscalculation and the more inflexible the contending positions. Soviet - U. S. relations would therefore be difficult at best, but they are given a peculiar urgency

13

by the dynamism of a revolutionary ideology which causes its disciples to
regard the entire non-communist world as potential enemies.

What, then, are the elements of U. S. security? What power can be
balanced against the Soviet colossus to prevent U. S. neutralization? All
thinking on this topic has to start from the geopolitical fact that in
relation to Eurasia the U. S. is an island power with inferior resources, at
present only in manpower but in time even in industrial capacity. Were
Eurasia to fall under the control of a single power or group of powers and
were this group given sufficient time to exploit its resources, the U. S.
would be neutralized, that is, it would not be master of its own policy any
longer. The U. S. can, therefore, never permit the resources of Eurasia
to be organized by one power, even less of a power avowedly hostile to the
U. S. And as an island power the influence of the U. S. should be particularly
strong in the pensinsulas accessible to sea power: Korea, South East Asia,
the Indian Sub-Continent, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain and Western Europe. If
this is true, the U. S. cannot cast off Western Europe in a fit of frustration.
It may be able to win a war without the assistance of Western Europe, but it
cannot survive a long period of peace without denying Western Europe to the
USSR. If the U. S. ever became confined to the "fortress America," it would be
forced into a military effort not consistent with what is now considered the
"American way of life." And even at that price the existence of the U. S.
confronted by threequarters of the human race and not much less of its resources
would be precarious. The basic question for the U. S., therefore, becomes
first whether Western Europe and the peninsulas of Eurasia can be made secure
against the Soviet threat and second, whether, assuming they can be made secure,
this will prevent the neutralization of the U. S.

However dismal the present outlook, it should not be forgotten that the

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crisis is one not only of power but of will, that the industrial capacity
of the Free World now and for the foreseeable future far exceeds that of the
Soviet bloc. In 1941, Germany alone nearly defeated the USSR, and the combi-
nation of the U. S. plus Western Europe should certainly be able to contain it.
The steel production of Western Europe should still equal that of the USSR, and
in Asia, China appears so strong at least in part because of the irresolution
of her opponents. The task of creating a balance of power would therefore
be far from hopeless, if one considers nothing but the available resources.
What the advocates of preventive war mean, however, when they speak of the
increasing neutralization of the U. S., is something else: that the present
balance of military strength on the Eurasian continent is so uneven that the
peninsulas are not only at the mercy of the Soviet bloc but conscious of it;
that the Soviet development of nuclear weapons and guided missiles paralyze
their action and that therefore the U. S. stands in imminent danger of isolation
while the USSR holds the diplomatic initiative and bides its time for ultimate
military action. All this is true, but the real question arises whether it
requires a total nuclear war to reverse this trend or whether intermediary
steps are possible.

It must be said at once that there is an air of unreality about the
argument for preventive war, an assumption that all options are equally open,
and that there are no limits set by public opinion or Congress to U. S. action.
Moreover, the policy of preventive war is not an alternative to the "New Look"
but its reverse side, an assertion that now is the time for instant retaliation.
And just because it poses such fearful risks and impossible alternatives, it
leads to an atrophy of policy. But quite apart from its domestic feasibility,
one does not start a global war with 19 divisions and without allies. Under
present circumstances, such a step would be an act of frivolity whose consequences

15

might prove more terrible than the conditions it seeks to allay. Even a policy of maximum risks would consequently have to move through some inter-mediary phases to prepare public opinion, to strengthen America's military power, and to rally our Allies, if possible. The real question confronting the U. S. in the short term, therefore, is the nature of these intermediary steps. If carefully planned and boldly executed, they might improve the pattern of world relations and minimize the dangers of a total war. And if they failed, the question of total war could be reexamined in a healthier climate and from a stronger posture. Both the advocates and the opponents of preventive war might therefore agree on a course of action which takes them part of the way together. But first they must agree on the direction in which they are heading, on a definition of the optimum conditions of U. S. security, and the long-term goal of U. S. strategy:

While a balance is attainable along existing lines on the Eurasian continent, it will nevertheless always remain precarious. As long as London is within the range of Soviet guided missiles, British policy will be tentative. As long as Soviet armies are poised on the Elbe, Western Europe will be insecure. As long as China strides unopposed through South East Asia, the uncommitted powers will seek their safety in neutralism. The vision the Soviet bloc presents to the outside world is one of ruthless strength allied with artful cunning, of constant readiness to utilize force coupled with the diplomatic skill to secure its fruits. The task confronting the U. S. is twofold, therefore: (1) in the short term, to stem the Soviet tide; (2) in the long term, to reduce the Soviet sphere and to demonstrate the limitations of Soviet power and skills. In this equation the latter term, the demonstration of the limitations of Soviet power, is almost as important as the reduction of the Soviet sphere. To the extent that the components of the Free World,

16

now obsessed by a sense of their impotence, realize that the other side, too,
can know hesitation, that behind the facade of monolithic power the Soviet
bloc, too, shrinks from certain consequences, to that extent their resolution
will be strengthened and their policy emboldened. And only the U. S. is in a
position to make this demonstration.

The U. S. strategic problem can therefore be summarized as follows:
there is less danger of physical neutralization of the U. S. than of moral
isolation. The Free World, even in its present extent, should be able to
muster enough resources in the foreseeable future to contain any Soviet
aggression. But the problem is serious precisely because the will to use this
strength is lacking through a combination of a sense of impotence produced
by the memory of foreign occupations and Soviet superiority in conventional
weapons. The Soviet acquisition of nuclear weapons gives the situation
a particular urgency, although not for the reason usually alleged. The real
danger in the Soviet nuclear arsenal resides not in the Soviet capacity to
neutralize the U. S. but in the fact that with both sides possessing ultimate
weapons the risk of their use becomes to indeterminate as to be prohibitive.
Thus, the Soviet nuclear arsenal may have the paradoxical result that nuclear
weapons will not be used at all, at least strategically. And if this is true,
the Soviet preponderance in conventional weapons again becomes a factor. The
Red Army on the Elbe might have been restrained by the fear of an atomic
bombardment of Moscow, but by the same token it may be liberated by the new-
found Soviet capacity to retaliate on Washington. The U. S. strategic goal
should be thus defined: (a) In the short term, to prevent a further extension
of the Soviet sphere at any cost. (b) In the long term, to reduce the Soviet
bloc to an extent from which it cannot win an aggressive conventional war
while it will be deterred from a nuclear war by U. S. technological superiority.

17

The next section will deal with a possible U. S. strategy to attain these objectives.

## IV. <u>Principles of a U. S. Strategy</u>

Nobody is in a position to chart the details of U. S. policy -- particularly from the outside. It will always be conditioned by unexpected happenings and the events of the day. But it should be possible to establish certain principles which would shape the day-to-day decisions. But first it will be necessary to deal with an objection to the long-term goal of U. S. strategy postulated above, that the reduction of the Soviet sphere to the extent is tantamount to a neutralization of the USSR and therefore unattainable without a nuclear war. It may be that the reduction is not possible without a nuclear war, but the reason will not be that a contraction would leave the USSR at the mercy of the U. S. For the USSR reduced even to the boundaries now comprising its metropolitan territories will still be a formidable enemy, even after it lost the capacity to win an aggressive war. The very vastness of its territories would inhibit attack, and its nuclear capacity would still exist for defensive purposes. A Russia incapable of winning an aggressive war but unassailable within its territories would merely have returned to its traditional posture vis-a-vis Europe.

But this has a corollary, if nuclear war is to be avoided. The USSR should not only be reduced to its metropolitan territories, but it should be made to feel secure within them, for otherwise no contraction of its sphere without desperate measures is conceivable. To be sure, the USSR is not likely to withdraw voluntarily at any price. Its insecurity derives, after all, from the existence of the U. S. as a non-communist power not from U. S. policy. Nevertheless a reversal of present U. S. tactics of tough talk and soft action to tough action and flexible diplomacy would substantially alter the pattern of international relations. At a minimum it would rally the Free World.

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At a maximum, it might strengthen the "peace parties" within the Soviet bloc, the groups not willing to risk everything for peripheral objectives. And even if a Soviet withdrawal cannot be induced, the Soviet sphere could contract as the consequence of a rift within it. A great deal has been written about this, and all such discussion is conjectural. But this much is clear: the rift will not occur by itself. Too much is to be gained by unity, too many prizes are still to be won, the memory of Tito is still too fresh for the U.S. to be able to count on Soviet mistakes. A split between the USSR and its satellites can only come about through outside pressure, through the creation of contingencies which may force a divergence in views into the open. And this is a problem for the U.S. Only the U. S. is strong enough to adopt a world-wide strategy; only the U. S. can pose the ultimate alternative. But what diplomacy can harmonize the minimum objective of rallying the Free World with the maximum objective of reducing the Soviet sphere? What is implied by the term "outside pressure?"

The first principle for U. S. policy is to become aware that we are engaged in a revolutionary contest, a contest, that is, about the nature legitimacy or what is considered "reasonable." This means that normal diplomatic patterns are transformed. No longer do conferences attempt to settle disputes by the adjustment of differences but they become elaborate stage plays for the benefit of those yet uncommitted, to attach them to one or the other of the contending parties. In a "legitimate" international order demands once made are negotiable; in a revolutionary order they are programmatic. To formulate minimum demands in a stable order is to surrender the advantage flexibility in negotiation. To formulate formalistic or self-righteous demands to an antagonist who will in any case reject them is to

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[x]

[y]

compound the chief difficulty of a revolutionary period: to convince the uncommitted that the revolutionary is, in fact, a revolutionary, that his objectives are unlimited. And it yields him the advantage of the advocacy of moderation without the risk of its accomplishment. In Berlin, the real problem was not to "get it over with" nor the contest as such between Dulles and Molotov but the impact of that contest on France and to a lesser extent on Germany. And Geneva proved who had better understood the domestic situation of our Allies; Dulles who agreed to Geneva as a means to force the ratification of EDC or Molotov who converted it into an aspect of the Soviet peace offensive.

Self-righteous formalism has been the bane of American post-war diplomacy. Instead of impatiently rejecting proposals for a 4-power conference as delaying our efforts to build a defense community, we should have sought it as the best means of strengthening our alliance and of bringing pressure on the USSR. Instead of taking the Soviet's bad faith, for granted, we should lose no opportunity for demonstrating it. We should never reject Soviet proposals, however propagandistic in intent, so preemptorily that, as happened with the Russian proposal to join NATO, they are turned down before they officially reach Washington. Instead, we should give the appearance of considering them and, if at all possible, answer with a counterproposal which shifts the onus for the failure of the negotiation to the other side. We should not be afraid of conferences, for a conference that fails does not return things to the starting point but can be used as a springboard for more decisive action.

This is another way of saying that the U. S. must restore a greater flexibility to its diplomacy. A policy is a means to achieve an objective. However meritorious, it should never become an end in itself. A too rigid commitment can only increase the determinacy of calculation of the other side and will cause a repetition of the debacles of EDC and Geneva. EDC might

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have collapsed in any case, but the rigidity of U. S. policy certainly did not help matters. If EDC could be sold at all, it should have been presented as a European and not an American policy. And the most efficacious means to speed it up might have been to use it as a negotiating weapon towards the USSR by offering to forego it in return for certain concessions such as the unification of Germany. In any case, the U. S. should have had an alternative policy ready and activated as the prospects for EDC grew dimmer. EDC is not, after all, the only way to rearm Germany, as Mendes-France correctly insisted. The basic problem in the rearming of Germany is to accomplish it without alienating our other European allies -- a difficult but not insoluble task. Anything beyond that should occur with the approval but not under the pressure of the U. S.

A third consideration involves the nature of U. S. leadership. As the strongest power by far in the world, U. S. leadership is inescapable and cannot be avoided by an act of will. And the failure to lead merely serves to create a vacuum. It is being said that Geneva and the fate of EDC indicate the limits of U. S. leadership, that in fact the illusion of American omnipotence has been more baneful than the recognition of limits. But Geneva and EDC prove merely the limitations of oscillating and formalistic leadership.

Geneva reached an impasse because it was badly prepared, because the U. S. did not get clear about its own objectives, and in a last-minute frenzy of indecision shifted the responsibility for action to Allies hard put to make a decision even in their own primary sphere of interest. And EDC should never have been given such importance in the first place. The U. S. can go far in setting common objectives; it cannot prescribe all the means to attain them.

EDC was one of the policies to achieve German rearmament -- which in turn was the only really essential objective for U. S. leadership and one it bids fair to achieve.

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[x]

[y]

The difficulty with American leadership has been that in the previous administration it was concerned with the form of inter-Allied relationship, and in the present administration it has been ineffective because it has been impossible to tell what the U. S. really wanted. It can never be the task of leadership to solicit a consensus, but to create the conditions which will make a consensus possible. A leader, if he performs his true function, must resign himself to being alone part of the time, at least while he charts the road. To demand of Britain that it run the risk of nuclear bombing to save Hanoi is to ask the impossible. Decisive U. S. leadership and unilateral intervention in Indo-China could have demonstrated that the other side does not face nuclear bombing with equanimity either and that the neutralists cannot escape their dilemma by inhibiting U. S. action. And had this unilateral action been accompanied by a political proposal, such as a political trusteeship for Indo-China under Indian or Pakistani or Indonesian chairmanship and a guarantee of China's southern boundary, it would have done more to demonstrate U. S. determination and moderation than any number of formalistic declarations. Had this action succeeded without a general war -- as is likely -- it would have given just as much heart to our European allies as Geneva convinced them of their impotence. And had a general war developed after the U. S. had given sufficient guarantees of limited objectives, its moral basis would not have been badly prepared. Similarly, it is beside the point to argue that an offensive in Korea, say in 1951, was unwise because it had no military objective. This may be true militarily, but it did have a political objective: (a) to discourage future Chinese aggression (Indo-China was best defended in Korea), and (b) to give the U. S. an opportunity to demonstrate its political leadership by a show of moderation thereby to rally the Free World and perhaps to split the Soviet bloc. (The same was still true in 1953.) In short, it should be the task of U. S. leadership,

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unilaterally if necessary, to pose the contingencies which make united
action more than a drain on America's freedom of maneuver. By unyielding
perseverance under pressure and by moderation where we have the upper
hand, we may give courage to our Allies and, in the best circumstances,
bring about a split in the Soviet bloc.

The importance of a diplomacy of determinate objectives cannot be
over-emphasized but neither can the importance of achieving them. Uni-
lateral U. S. action should never be a march into infinity but related to
concrete political goals and always tied to a conciliatory gesture which
permits a translation of whatever strategic advantage is gained into political
terms. Or at least larger goals should be approached in finite stages, for
then they lose their terror — and their temptation. Only in this manner
can we rally our wavering allies in Europe and the uncommitted in Asia.
The basic fact of political life all over the world is the quest for peace.
It is the U. S. task to utilize this yearning to legitimize its policy and
thereby attach to it all those now confused by the skill of the Soviet peace
offensive. This is not to say that we should give up our efforts to build
defensive barriers, only that these barriers will be more efficiently built
if they are placed in a wider perspective. Military strength is essential
but it cannot legitimize itself. It is incumbent on the U.S. to find a
political framework for its military goals. (1)

(1) How a more flexible diplomacy could increase the pressure on the USSR might perhaps be illustrated by the analogy of a bull-fight: There is no doubt that the bull is stronger, but this strength is generally ineffective because his actions are determinate, his moves predictable. As long as the matador dominates the bull, his movements seem masterly, his maneuvers daring, all of which is only a reflection of the bull's blind impetuosity. But as soon as the bull does something unexpected, when he no longer permits himself to be paralyzed by his own impatience, his superior strength becomes effective. Then the certainty will leave his antagonist; then the matador will not only have to think about his own moves but those of the bull and the more indeterminate the bull's actions, the more telling the disparity in power will become.