# ALL HORIZONS DEFENCE ? YES BUT

## A three-point doctrine

In December 1967 an interesting article defined our military doctrine under the title "All Horizons Defence".

This article may be summed up in three points :

a) The time is past, it is said, when France could orient its effort with respect to a principal menace such as the one that German Armies, before 1914, or the Hitlerian Armies in 1939, laid heavy on our Eastern frontier.

The menace which emanated from Stalin's imperialismand after the Second World War justified our joining NATO and the partial integration of our defensive means and those of our allies into the NATO Command. However, since then, the situation has changed. We acquired a national nuclear armament. At the same time with the decreased probability of Soviet aggression, the collective security system set up within NATO had become, to our eyes, dangerous because of its integrated nature and of the excessive influence wielded by the United States. France, anxious to completely recover the autonomy of its defense and its true independence, therefore left NATO.

b) However, the state of general insecurity into which the world was plunged had to be recognised. The Soviet and American -

2.

and Chinese within a few years - atomic rockets could intersect in our skies. Fires of war risked being lighted in Asia, in Africa, in South America. We must be able to answer these threats looming up from any corner of the Earth by equivalent threats. Now, our first generation strategic nuclear force based on "MIRAGE" airplanes and having too small a radius of action could not meet this requirement. Nor could, in a few years our strategic nuclear means of the second and third generation, the power and range of which will nevertheless be greater.

c) Consequently, a natural conclusion was reached. France must not hesitate to take the road leading to the most powerful planetary arms. It must "give the best of itself to have, and in significant quantities, inter-continental balistic missiles, an omnidirectional Megaton thermonuclear force capable of reaching any point of the Earth and which may be extrapolated to a space force".

This doctrine, so moderately set forth, did not entirely satisfy our point of view. Not because of circumstantial reasons, because we could not, for instance, acquiesce unreservedly to political considerations - decrease in the Soviet threat, break-off from NATO - that it invoked as justification, but for more profound reasons. We became aware of disproportions in the military edifice raised by the doctrine and we wondered if the architects of our defence, in the attachment they vowed to their work, did not run the risk of failing to recognise the existence of certain subtle equilibria made compulsory in any human society by sociology, economy and military science itself, between this society and its army.

3.

We did not imagine, however, that scarcely five months after
the doctrine was published, revolutionary events were going to
break out in Paris, which were to throw a disquieting light on the
difference which risked arising between the colossal external power
we wanted to give our country and the vulnerability of its internal
order.

Such an adventure deserves meditation. It leads us to a more
profound discussion of our military policy. Our study will be composed
of two chapters :

1 - New dimensions of the defence systems.

2 - Internal order and European Federalism.

1. New dimensions of the defence systems

The internal unbalance of the French "All Horizons Defence"
doctrine

The Armed Forces Minister, speaking of this policy,
said: "It is founded on an axiom, i. e. a truth which is self-
evident but not demonstratable", the axiom of French independence (1).
This being laid down, the doctrine develops entirely with perfect
logic and great clarity. An autonomous defence would obviously
be worthless if it were incapable of being exercised under
all circumstances, of playing its role in all forms of conflict.
It must therefore possess a complete armament endowed with
all the offensive and defensive instruments that modern technique

(1) Article by Mr. Pierre Messmer: "The Atom, Cause and Means of an Autonomous Military Policy". (Revue de Défense Nationale - March 1968)

4.

has created for combat at the various levels of power : guerilla weapons, conventional weapons, atomic weapons. Our "All Horizons Defence" doctrine therefore first puts the accent on the major armament, the thermonuclear strategic weapons, but it nevertheless does not contest the necessity for other weapons. Beneath the strategic forces some "battle forces" subsist equipped with tactical atomic weapons capable of acting offensively even outside our borders if we were attacked. If these battle forces were defeated and our territory invaded, we would have, as a last resort, the guerilla operations of our territorial operational defence.

No expert could disapprove of the theoretical bases of such a coherent system. But the question arises as to whether its realisation for France alone can lead to a balanced system. While we are just beginning to have a few atomic bombardiers and we have just exploded our first H-bomb last August 24 at Fangataufa, the strategic forces alone already absorb a large part of the Army credits. Because of this, the volume of our battle forces must undergo such a reduction that these forces are no longer capable of defending their territory. If NATO doesn't protect us to the East, how could we cover a 700 kilometer border for example between the North Sea and the Alps, with only five divisions ? As to our interior protection and defence, no one is unaware of the poverty of the resources which may be devoted to them.

Is this a criticism ? No, of course not. The military system that we are realising, which is extraordinarily "stretched out towards the top", clearly oriented towards the nuclear force,

5.

is inspired both by a need for security and a desire for prestige. It enables France to take its place among the greatest in the very select club of atomic power, to be better heard and, on the worldwide level, to defend its interests with more vigour. With respect to our partners in the Common Market, the possession of an atomic armament endows us with an authority and particular responsibilities which will give us, when we so wish, an increased influence on the destiny of our continent. But the obvious advantages that our present military policy obtains for us must not, however, lead us to close our eyes to the inevitable disadvantages it includes and the difficulties that it is perhaps, preparing for us. Vigilance is all the more necessary since the "All Horizons Defence" doctrine is presented to us as a wide extrapolation of this policy, which incites us to seriously examine the roads towards which it is leading us.

To want to go, by ourselves, from atomic weapons having a let's say, continental range which we are in the process of obtaining, to the development, within a few years of planetary weapons and, later on, space forces is to go towards a considerable increase in the effort devoted to our nuclear armament. The relative decrease of our means at lower levels, i. e. of the battle forces and of interior defence could therefore only be aggravated and we must ask ourselves what dangers, if we are not careful, will come out of the distortion thus introduced into our military organisation.

In their desire to better defend the priority given to our strategic forces, certain voices throw a doubt on the existence of any difficulty. They present, to public opinion, a certain vision

6.

of military reality. Let us follow them in their demonstrations. Modern warfare, they say, would no longer oppose numerous forces. It would be fought with materials and these materials, moreover, would be so complicated and so costly that they should preferably be entrusted to professional soldiers. Hence the acceptance of a small army dotted with specialists, the human content of which could be allowed, without inconvenience, to shrink like untanned leather before the great sun of Technique. The nuclear weapons which would be committed in major conflicts would have, they add, such a capacity for destruction that the conflicts would scarcely last as long as a straw fire. Consequently, it would no longer be necessary to keep forces on the battlefield for a long time, to call up numerous classes and to mobilise industry. In brief, short wars, wars without soldiers, these are the prospects which would give a supplementary justification to the doctrine.

## The vision of a disembodied war

We cannot accept these theses without some reservations. They give too much emphasis, in our opinion, to the constructions that the pure theoreticians of nuclear war are striving to edify, aided by their ordinators. However, these constructions may be lacking solidity.

First of all, they are based upon no experience. How could it be otherwise? Nuclear weapons are, in fact, deprived of use for the simple reason that, due to their excessive power and range, they are as poorly adapted to the conflicts of our age as the torpedo shell and rifled artillery would have been as combat means in the Middle Ages.

7.

In the second place, these theoretical constructions generally over-estimate the security that the simple possession of atomic weapons can confer on an average power. Dissuasion has degrees. It has the power to exclude, in almost all circumstances nuclear combats but it cannot prevent the other forms of war. If one were to offer to two armies on the point of fighting, weapons so terrifying as to make all their fighting men flee, would they not both reject them to settle their quarrel with other arms ?

Lastly, in modern warfare, there are not only armies which fight. There is also public opinion. Most nuclear war technicians neglect the social phenomena which are at the basis of the conflicts of our era. The purely material data introduced into their calculations do not take sufficiently into account the psychology of people who are more and more sensitised by modern means of information and the passional relationships which are set up, at the time of great strain, between the people and their governments.

For these reasons, the nuclear strategy is being elaborated in a certain atmosphere of unreality. Let us not lay too much blame on the authors, Atomic armament represents much too great a jump ahead in military evolution. Its total integration into an art of rational warfare is completely impossible in our day. It can only come out of a transformed humanity, that of a nuclear age which has not yet come out of Limbo. This is why, in their inability to imagine the social, political and economic conditions which would serve as a framework to this future humanity, our experts are irresistably led to excluding it

(i)

8.

from their reasoning. Whereas daily news show them, in the
four corners of the Earth, innumerable human masses, shaken
by the most violent and most profound revolutionary currents,
who never cease tearing one another apart by interminable
conflicts, their minds, fascinated by the problems of
construction and use of nuclear and thermonuclear arms,
announcers of the new century, are drawn towards the mathematics
of a war of machines, totally disembodied.

Indeed, is it not disembodied, this future war that some
present to us as a princely game ? How many times, during the
great crises which stand out in the course of the Cold War,
have we not been given to understand that the unleashing of
the nuclear Apocalypse depended on the uncertain humour of
some Heads of State ? They hold the strategic forces in their
hands. They are the silent and secret masters of their unleashing.
We are given the impression that they are demiurges gambling
for the destiny of their people, the life of entire nations thrown
up to the chance of poker parties the rules of which are codified by
subtle dialecticians of nuclear dissuasion. The latter do not
hesitate to imagine the role that bluff could play in this macabre
game. To raise the value of their stakes, the second rank
powers would declare that at the smallest aggression, their
nuclear weapons would not use the campaign armies, too spread
out and insufficiently vulnerable, as targets, but rather the
cities and first of all the largest ones which are so favourable -
are they not - to the cremation of innocent masses.

Let us dismiss such theories. First of all, they neglect
the fact that the Heads of State placed by destiny at the head of
nuclear powers are not ordinary gamblers, free to indulge.
in their passions and capable of abandoning themselves to
irresponsible impulses. Attached to their nations, they cannot

9.

fail in the duty of faithfully translating, by their acts, the profound
will of their people. In the second place, these theories have
a pernicious effect on public opinion. National defence in
modern States is based upon the unanimity of their citizens.
The concepts inspiring it must be understandable and acceptable
by all. The "All Horizons Defence" doctrine cannot escape this
law. We are going to see how it can be reconciled with a sense
of measure and with Reason.

The aristocratic concept and the democratic concept of defence

There is one well-established fact : those in charge of
our defence, attentive to the sombre reality of our times, cannot
forego commitment to the road which leads the greatest powers
towards planetary armaments and the conquest of space. The
"All Horizons Defence" doctrine springs entirely from this
affirmation. But another fact generally misunderstood but just
as important, compels recognition. The irruption of nuclear
warhead missiles overthrows world balance and inevitably calls
for social and political transformations which must be seized
and mastered.

Two fields of observation and manoeuvres are thus offered
to our defence policy, between which the latter must keep and
equal balance : technique and sociology. Let us consider, for
example the balance between the strategic forces on one hand
and the battle corps units and the O. D. T. (Operational Defence
of the Territory) on the other hand. The technique governs
the former. The human factor is preponderant in the latter.
We discover with surprise that the ratio of one to the other raises
one of the most fundamental problems of polemology (1).

(1) Polemology : Science of war.

(i)

10.

As far back as we can go in history, the way to raise armies
is presented as a two-sided coin. One side is aristocratic and
the other democratic. According to the aristocratic concept,
the army is created by the prince. It is a professional army
used to subject the people inside and to wage war outside. The
military power resides in the specialised war apparatus. The
people have the smallest part of it. That is the direction in which
we would be led, if we were not careful, by a greater and greater
priority given to strategic weapons.

According to the democratic concept, the army is raised
by the people themselves. The military power takes its source
in the nation. From then on, the first defence measure consists
in first arming the greatest number of citizens by giving them
quite simple individual weapons. The collective arms are added
to the former insofar as the arsenals make them available,
like a superstructure of weapons whose power increases by
stages: machine guns, bazookas, mortars, cannons, tanks,
batteries of rockets, aircraft and missiles. In the escalation
of this pyramid of arms which rises to dizzy heights since it is
crowned with thermonuclear bombs, each nation stops where
it can, depending on the state of its fortune and the capacities
of its industry (1). Thus, no democracy could, without the risk
of detaching the army from its people, build its military
system like an upside-down house. The nuclear panoply has
little value when there is nothing underneath it but too small an
army and a people resigned to entrusting its defence to a few
pyrotechnists of the atom.

(1) The Vietnam war offers us a good example of this.

(c)

11.

If we wanted to guarantee this defence concept by a glorious example, we should invoke the memory of our great Carnot. He was one of the most skilful military engineers of his time. No-one knew the model 1777 rifle and Gribeauval artillery better than he. What, however, did he ask the National Assembly for as main arms, at the hour when the country was in danger ? :"Pikes because, he said, the pike is in a way the arm of freedom ..... because finally they are not very costly and can be made quickly. "And he added : "Moreover there do not exist at the present time in France and cannot exist for a long time yet, enough fire-arms for all the citizens to be equipped with them. "

The military experts of the period could very well be indignant about the decree of August 1, 1792 drawn up by Carnot on the manufacture of pikes. If they had had ordinators, they would undoubtedly have proved that one hundred thousand pikes are not as good as a few thousand rifles supported by a few cannons. But they would not have been able to calculate the magic quality of the appeal to the people, to the conquerers of the Bastille and of the great days of the revolution, to the "sans-culottes" who were, later, better equipped, to hustle all the European armies.

By evoking, as we have just done, the duality of the two aristocratic and democratic concepts, we did not wish to choose one and refuse the other. As a matter of fact, they are associated and complete each other in modern defence systems. Two phenomena combine in the evolution of large armies. By the development of the strategic forces, there grows in their midst a kind of aristocracy of long-range trajectories, giant bombs and space combat (1), while in parallel, the development of large

(1) Hasn't the expression "Knights of the Sky" been popularized" ?

12.

industrial and political concentrations and the progress in
electronics give the means to mobilise ever-more numerous
popular forces to throw them into combat.

Thus, professional army and people's army, far from
excluding one from the other, are indissolubly bound together.
We even believe that, due to the modern conditions of development
of societies, they are destined to grow together. If this
were the case, the higher go the pyramids of weapons whose
top is crowned with nuclear missiles, the larger must be, at
their base, the armies or the coalitions of armies associated
with them. We are going to make a closer study of this phenomenon
so as to know to what extent it contradicts the opinion according
to which the great planetary weapons can be hand in hand with
small armies.

## Influence of the atomic weapons on the size and power of the States

Political, economic and military reasons permit thinking
that the more powerful are the weapons and the wider their range,
the greater should be the demographic potential and the richness
of the nations claiming to use them, and the more extensive
their territory.

### Political reasons first

War between civilized nations does not have the goal to
annihilate people but to settle by force differences their
diplomacy cannot solve and to obtain a peace which protects
their common survival. The result is a certain proportionality
between the dissuasive value of the threats that a nuclear

13.

power can exert over its adversaries and the importance of
the means of all sorts of which it disposes to sustain the combat
and take the blows. Security in the nuclear age is founded
solidly only on the immensity of the resources of the nation
and of its space.

Economic reasons next

A certain equilibrium must be obtained between the
effort and the resources the people devote to constructive works
in peacetime and those they are willing to reserve to war. The
more disastrous the war, the more necessary it is to get into
it only if an immense production apparatus and enormous
resources accumulated in peacetime are available. This
could baffle the affirmation that nuclear weapons could only
shorten wars. For the moment, they lengthen them since the
fear of nuclear war involves, with the limited war, the persistence
of the disputes and the rotting of the conflicts. Later on, when the
political and social transformations demanded by the atomic
age are carried out, it is not sure that the wars of the 21st
century will be of short duration if they are made between nations
or federations of nations or alliances capable by their size,
their power, the development of their defence techniques, of
resisting for a long time to the assault of nuclear missiles. In
any hypothesis, only large concentrations of economic and
industrial power could, it seems to us, hold their rank in a world
in which space forces and planetary armaments are confronted.

14.

Military reasons lastly

It is not enough to ask the engineers for the biggest
bombs and rockets with the longest trajectory. They must also
be integrated into a coherent defence system. Some have said :
"Planetary weapons and All Horizons Defence ? Why not ?
Vauban fortified all the frontiers of the Kingdom." This is
true, but Vauban also took care to adapt the fortifications and
the arms of his time to the ground.

Defensive art has seen numerous transformations
throughout the ages : Middle Age fortified castles with look outs
in their towers, Vauban's fortified cities with bastioned outlines,
the polygonal plans of Cormontaigne and Montalembert with
their long-range artillery casemates, vast entrenched camps of
1870 in which an army could already find refuge, even more
extensive fortified regions of Séré de Rivières, continuous
fronts of 1914 - 1918 and the Maginot and Siegfried lines of
pre-1939. During this long history, the spread of defence
systems never ceased to amplify while the near defence and
far action always kept the same importance. In our days,
the air interception forces, the batteries of ground-air
missiles associated with the air-ground battle corps attempt to
ensure the inviolability of the borders and of the national air
space ; the strategic forces with the observation satellites,
their huge radar chains, their intercontinental rockets, launched
from the ground or by submarines, hit the distant bases of the
enemy. But, in the end, a law remains throughout all these
changes, the range of the arms always sovereignly decides upon
the dimensions to give to the radius of the fortresses or to the
size of fortified areas.

(c) 15.

Because every defence must have its retreat. Any State which
claims an independent defence must have places for its armies
to manoeuver, and refuge and storage areas where a part of
its population may work and live in safety, and escape from the
blows of the enemy. The result of this is that the great nuclear
powers attempt by all means to extend their influence around
them, to impose it by force if necessary (O, unhappy
Czechoslovakia), to set themselves up in the centre of vast
alliances so that their external defence lines are located far
from their retreats and at a distance proportionate, if possible,
to the range of the enemy batteries. There again results the
feverish intensification of their search to erect barriers
impenetrable by rockets and to install, around all the sensitive
points, active and passive means of protection the cost of
which tends to rise to dizzy heights. The gigantic outlays made
by the United States and the USSR for the creation of anti-
missile defence systems, as imperfect as they are at the present
time, are only responding to a very antique necessity.

These remarks do not at all weaken the interest we must
give to the progress of our military techniques and our desire
to see French engineers advance boldly, and as far as possible,
along the road towards planetary weapons. But they make us
understand that it is not sufficient to demand rockets of an
intercontinental range for France. It is also necessary to
recognise the environment and the servitudes of their use. Our
planetary weapons will have a value only if they are inserted into
a coherent defence system. The dimensions of this system will
greatly exceed those of our nation and the question will thus arise
concerning a permanent defence association between France and
its neighbours.

16.

If the all-horizons defence doctrine were to put this problem into the background, it would not resist the realities of our age. It would appear as a fleeting mixture of archaism and futurism leading to the illusory attempt to put a veneer of of tomorrow's revolutionary arms on a military policy whose style and inspiration would remain attached to the past centuries. The time is over when our military architects could easily house our fortifications and our arms inside the natural boundaries that Richelieu conceived. The new art of warfare towards which the century is bringing us will be less and less satisfied with projects which would base the security of our nation on a few rockets of intercontinental range erected, as on an islet, right in the middle of our little national domain. We shall, therefore, sooner or later, have to develop with our neighbours, a vaster defence apparatus. "To overstep our boundaries or to decline", that is actually the alternative for our external defence. We shall see in the second part of this study that it is the same thing for the maintenance of our internal order and we shall raise the question of European federalism, a necessary accompaniment to the development of planetary weapons.

## 2. Interior Order and European Federalism

### The defence policy and interior order

If the will to fight is the primordial condition of any military power, our defence policy cannot be based only on calculations of the range and the power of our nuclear missiles and on the number of our divisions. It must also consider the French people

17.

themselves, their feelings, the goals they wish to give their
fighting instincts, the reactions of impatience and anger
that the obstacles opposing their most profound aspirations
can create. Furthermore, if the future calls upon us to associate
our defence with that of our nearest neighbours, we must also
consider their feelings and their problems and find by what
bonds they could unite with us and for what common destiny
they would do so.

To exceed oneself, to widen the frontiers, to protect
oneself in a world threatened with a nuclear apocalypse is much
more than a material problem, it is also a moral problem
and the problem No. 1 of our time. We are perfectly conscious
of the fact that we are entering into a world where Man will
have to dominate colossal forces which could, at any moment,
turn against him to crush him. The science of the atom puts
lightning and thunder in our hands capable of staggering vast
regions of the globe. Ordinators endow our brain with a
really superhuman power of analysis, of calculation and of synthesis.
The physics of radiation amplifies to the extreme our faculties of
detention and of observation and puts us into direct contact
with the infinitely distant, the infinitely large, the infinitely
small. The techniques of space open up the road to the conquest
of outer space.

We want to move towards this future but through what
should we go to reach it? A tunnel crowded with obstacles and
in which we drag along with us the intolerable weight of
inextricable contradictions born from the inadaptation to the
future world of our political, economic and social structures.

18.

These contradictions which threaten our liberty, our happiness, our prosperity, our internal and external security concern the relations between the individual and the society, between work and capital, States and Federations of States, the beneficient science of men and the science, purveyor of death machines. All these contradictions rise before us a sphinxes ready to devour us if we do not give them an answer.

To create a harmonious society which reconciles economical planning with liberty and justice, local and regional freedom with the wisely measured prerogatives of central power, the supranational requirements and the will of each people to conserve the immaterial heritage of its language, its customs, its traditions its history, its soul, is an immense, almost superhuman task, all the more difficult since in the climate of "snarls and growls" born out of the discomfort of the past, the destructive spirit develops, a generator of turbulence, violence, nihilism, adventurism and anarchy.

As always, at all the perilous turning-points of history, the young generation is the most sensitive to the seductions of disorder. It was born at the end of the Second World War. The growth of the demographic expansion which, in our country, followed the war and occupation years, swelled its number. A singular force animates it, a "bellicose" impulse overflowing with vitality. This youth wouldn't like anything better than to go out in quest of new frontiers, guided by a grand civilising ideal, creative of freedom and great heights. Since it does not see any offer of this possibility, it wants to break the bars of its cage to run towards the epopee, whatever shape it takes, revolution

(LC)

19.

or crusade, like the young "madmen" of 1789 who threw themselves, with the same whole-heartedness, into the idyllic Revolution which Jean-Jacques Rousseau prophesied, then into the Civil War and the "Terror" to end up in the hecatombs of the Napoleonic War.

What bed have we prepared for this torrent? A France cut off from its ex-colonies, from its Algerian departments, cut off from its overseas enterprises. A France that so many gifts, so much talent predestine to work towards the birth of Europe and which would seem to want to be involved in it only for questions of pure economy, becoming disquieted concerning any progress towards the joint development of social, juridical, military and political institutions. A France whose imagination risks, for lack of space, being slowly smothered. Thus we have recently had the spectacle of a part of our youth unpaving the streets, building barricades and dreaming of the most violent subversions. And if this youth were one day to yield completely to the demon of adventure, if because of this the national cohesion were to dissolve into great domestic quarrels, if the psychosis of disorder attained our neighbours and allies, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Germany, if the Slavic imperialism awating us, menaced in its turn by the contagion of anarchy, were to throw itself into the Western void thus created, what would become of our external defence and what would become of our greatest country, the only one left to build, Free Europe ?

20.

## Strategy and the limits of French independence

Under the protection of the North Atlantic Treaty, Western Europe has already begun to be built under our eyes. We, the French people, have participated in the creation of the Common Market which has broadened our economic space. The admission of the other States, and especially of England, is capable, someday, of enlarging it still more. But political and military evolution has not followed the same movement. Certainly, the maintenance of our troops in Western Germany abundantly proves that in spite of our withdrawal from NATO and our claims for independence, we do not keep the European Community out of our defence plans. But the temporary character of the Atlantic treaty, the imprecision of the obligations of this Treaty, the failure of the first E. D. C. (1) endeavour, leaves unsolved the problem of the progressive widening of our strategic space. This strategic space is, in fact, American and the fragility of our structures is such that it would be Sovietic tomorrow if the United States were to withdraw their support from Free Europe.

To open up, to our continent, the ways to an independent strategy which is not purely illusory, will it therefore be necessary to come back to the idea of a federal or confederal Europe to which the implementation of strategic defence means would be transferred little by little. Will the European federalism declared Utopic today for reasons of political divergencies become, tomorrow, for strategic reasons, an inherent necessity ? This is an obscure question which is most

(1) European Defence Community.

21.

perplexing. Is it not vain to want to discuss it at the European
political level since such a level is pure fiction as long as no
embryo of a federal political kind has been created ? And is
there not a misconception in examining it under a strictly
French angle since our national defence solicits total independence
and consequently rejects any idea of permanent military
interdependence ? However, we do feel that the question exists
and that the evolution of our techniques will make it more and
more urgent.

Perhaps it is in the nature of things that during periods
of great change, policy loses little by little the power to totally
embrace realities because it floats like a phantom between the
decrepit and powerless structures of the past and the yet
unformulated structures of the future. In these periods when the
people are disoriented, strategy must, in our opinion, take a
new turning. It is usually seen subordinated to the policy, limited
to directing the action of the various elements of material and
moral force to reach the goals set by the policy. But in the
exceptional situations in which the policy finds itself committed,
it is obvious that, in an impass from which it has no issue, it
is up to strategy to re-tune the means and the ends by considering
the policy itself. Let us try to submit, to strategic thought,
the problem of the adaptation of our society and of our sphere
of defence ot the demands of new times..

Strategy is not lacking in analogy with the cyberneticist's
blackbox. It is a hermetically closed box filled with numerous
invisible and very complicated mechanisms of which the cyberneticist
knows nothing concerning their lay-out and their interconnections.

22.

Only certain "inputs" and "outputs" are accessible. The inputs are the levers or the buttons on which the cyberneticist can work. The outputs are the terminals to which he has connected, for instance, the measurement instruments which he uses to observe the result of his manipulations. The whole problem for him is to discover the usable properties of the contents of this mysterious box, i. e. by what combination of manipulations on different levers it could be of use to him. The burglar does the same thing when he tries all sorts of keys and combinations to open a safe. The child does the same thing when, ignoring the lock-and-key mechanism, he learns how to open the door by turning the knob. The difficulty for the strategist lies in the fact that modern sociological systems on which he exercises his art are presented to him as large black boxes endowed with an ever-increasing number of inputs and outputs. All the art resides in the discovery of the combinations of levers and manipulations which will enable him to obtain the desired effects.

For centuries and centuries, since France has been France, the central concept of our strategy has naturally been that of a sovereign France, totally independent of its neighbours, fighting against some and allying itself with others depending on the circumstances and the interests of the moment. This simple key has been used often and to it our nation owes its greatness and its glory, but we must learn to recognise that, because of the enormous upheavals of our age, the strict French independence is no longer usable, as sole postulate, except in well-defined fields and that there are other fields in which it is no longer sufficient to open the paths of the future.

23.

We mentioned, earlier, the contradictions raised by the disordered world surrounding us. It seems to us that a totally independent French strategy would have too little power over these contradictions. This strategy would suggest to us for instance that they should be attacked one by one. We would pronounce the anathema against the colossal nuclear powers that reciprocal fear incites to share the management of the world. We would revolt against the schism which divides Western Europe and the Soviet block and we would preach the impossible marriage of the two ideologies. Of what use would it be? Aside from a small applause, we do not believe that success would crown these noble undertakings.

To enter into the future age, France must have another strategy which transcends politics and opens new roads. This strategy must discover, in the infinitely complex development process of all the contradictions which surround us, that one which we must hold as the principal contradiction, which plays, for us, the dominant role and compared to which the others are only subordinate. This contradiction is, we think, the one which opposes the dawning European Community to the national powers which divide it as, in the old days, the feudal system divided the kingdom of France. Let us be sure that we can resolve it and that having done so, we will have no trouble in reducing the others.

Overstepping or decline, we said earlier. To efficiently defend our national heritage, the richness of our civilisation, our language, our culture, our influence in the world, we must, of course, preserve to the maximum and if necessary defend our Freedom and our independence foot by foot, but we must also

(LC)

24.

work with all our strength to progressively set up a broadened
political and military space in which first of all our partners in the
Commun Market must take their place and which will later be
extended to all of Western Europe, up to the boundaries behind
which freedom disappears.

Thus, the Atlantic Alliance will find a better equilibrium.
We will better resist the pressures that the Russo-American
duel causes in our old world. We shall show, in the facts,
what a federal power must be in our day, democratic
and liberal, preoccupied only by the safeguard of the general
interests of its people, anxious to develop their various cultures
and their spiritual and material enrichment by cooperation and
sharing, respectful of their local, regional, and national liberties.
For the construction of the future society, we shall liberate the
productive forces from their shackles, as well as those of
industry, of commerce, of agriculture, of art. We shall ring
the bell for scientific renaissance by raising to a suitable level
the means, powers, responsibilities, programmes of private
or State laboratories, national or federal, which work towards
the development of our most advanced techniques: physics,
nuclear, electronic, biology and conquest of space.

(c)

25.

## European Federation and "All Horizons Defence"

We are not unaware of the vigorous opposition that the federative movement will encounter. Some will declare as heretic the introduction of the smallest grain of supranationality into a field they consider as "reserved", that of the foreign policy and the military policy of France. What reason would we have, however, to refuse, in this field, the national "overstepping" whereas we find it acceptable and necessary in the field of economy which is just as important. Others will say that the edification of a Western European Federation would lead us to a national resignation. It should on the contrary, provide the opportunity for an offensive of the French spirit determined to make its mark on the Europe of tomorrow.

The European unification strategy is, finally, the necessary accompaniment of a defence policy determined not to shrink before the acquisition of planetary weapons. Neither France, nor Italy, nor Germany and even less so Benelux countries - we could also add England - could in the future, if they remain separate, have a coherent defence system. This is particularly true for Western Germany. The prohibition to possess its own atomic weapons, the limitations of sovereignty which result, can, in the long-run, only undermine its morale and alter its policy. But this is also true for us. The solitary and independent French atomic effort, indefinitely prolonged, introduces into our national defence a distortion which, if it were to be accentuated, would become prejudicial to the political, military, scientific, industrial equilibrium of the nation.

26.

**Political equilibrium** because too narrow a nationalism would corrupt the impetus of the new generations that the movement of the century carries towards a greater motherland.

**Military equilibrium** because no modern defence system can find its limits inside our national territory.

**Scientific equilibrium** because our scientists cannot direct too great a part of their efforts towards military realisations without neglecting the eminently social role of their work.

**Industrial equilibrium** because the principal task of industry is to manufacture useful products and to conquer markets and not exhaust the best of its resources in the realisation of colossal arms and of non-productive equipment.

The "All Horizons Defence" doctrine is not condemned for this. Founded on a prospective view of the evolution of armament techniques, it will take on all its value as a common defence doctrine of Western Europe. If it is more and more difficult to speak of independent strategies for the nations composing it, on the other hand, these strategies will find a meaning by being integrated like particular strategies in a broadened federal strategy. Such a transfer will obviously call upon a profound fusion of interest of the federated nations and an agreement on their common foreign policies because without this, the unicity of the command of the great nuclear forces could not be resolved.

The question of the relations to be established with the USSR is obviously the major question. We must have the wisdom

27.

to settle this at the European level and in perfect harmony with
our American allies since the particular responses that one or
the other of our States would attempt to give without the
agreement of its partners would have little influence. They
may even risk being clumsy and dangerous for Peace. The
constraints that the government and the control of its colossal
nuclear power impose on Russia must not be taken lightly. The
brutality with which the Red Army repressed, in Czechoslovakia,
the first bursts towards freedom is perfectly demonstrative of
this. It shows us with what discretion we must surround the
attempts of our propaganda to thaw out the Soviet block.

The same wisdom must inspire the relations between
Western Europe and its great American allies. The trouble in
the Latin Quarter during which the good people of France saw,
with alarm, the pro-Russian and pro-Chinese commandoes argue
for the leading roles in the insurrectional agitation, revealed
the fragility of our defences against subversion. Let us not
forget that the Atlantic solidarity remains a good rampart
against Slavic imperialism. Let us know how to profit from
the protection it gives us to organize the union of free people
of our continent and to lay down the foundations of an independent
European strategy. And, especially, let us not turn our back
on American friendship. We would, ourselves, saw off the
branch by which all the West is suspended.

28.

Conclusion

At the end of this analysis, several conclusions may be drawn.

The "All Horizons Defence" doctrine is based essentially on two ideas:

1) The technical necessity of extending the realization of the nuclear weapons of the first three generations by scientific and industrial developments leading to intercontinental ballistic missiles and to the conquest of space.

2) The political affirmation of the French will to survive in a more and more dangerous world, which implies that the security and the independence of our country be waged on the possession of the most powerful arms.

This doctrine is perfectly coherent. It can guide our military policy for the time being on condition :

1) that the effort accomplished for the equipment of our strategic forces does not introduce excessive distortions in our military organisation and does not harm the social and economic equilibrium of the nation ;

2) that we resist the temptation to justify the priority given to nuclear armament by too "mechanistic" theories of modern warfare.

If we consider our military policy over a longer term ; new necessities will intervene, the first of which is born from military science, the second from sociology.

29.

1) The necessity of enlarging our strategic space. The irruption of planetary weapons will overthrow the equilibrium of States. Any modern defence system will greatly exceed the limits of France. Our future planetary weapons will have no value if they do not take their place in an organisation associating with our armies those of the European community and, if possible, all the forces of Free Europe.

2) The correlative need to broaden our political space. The internal defence, from which military science cannot be abstracted, requires an adaptation to the new conditions of our political, economic and social structures. This can only be done in a European framework.

However, opposition is being raised to the federal tendencies. The national policies appear powerless to take the step which separates them from supranationality. In face of this failure, the forces of disorder see their hopes of submerging our continent grow. In such circumstances, strategy must transcend politics. It can intervene to show the new roads which we must resolutely follow and the errors we must not commit. To lay the foundations of a Western European Federation is the necessary accompaniment of the "All Horizons Defence" system.

SUBJECT: The U.S. National Security Council System

I have given a great deal of thought to your request that I give you some of my ideas on how to restructure, reorganize and, perhaps, restaff, the National Security Council system. I do not believe that I can, or should, attempt to produce an exhaustive blueprint on this topic. What I would like to do instead is set forth a few principles, delineate some of the problems, and suggest how the matter should be pursued after the election. My remarks are addressed solely to structure and procedures for handling national security and foreign policy problems; domestic issues fall in the province of others. At the outset, however, I should like to suggest a paradox. This is the far greater leeway the President has in the conduct of foreign policy than he has over the handling of domestic issues. At the same time, the manner in which the President handles our relations with other countries has a greater short-run effect on the fortunes of this country than the adequacy or inadequacy of his response to domestic crises.

According to Reston and others, including the candidate, America's standing in the international prestige poll has never been lower. There is no need to discuss here why this is so. On the other hand, this appraisal indicates that more than words will be needed to change American influence. The next President will have to take certain actions, shortly after he assumes office, if he is to have any chance whatsoever of establishing a position of psychological respect from which he can subsequently act with more leisurely calculations. At a minimum, concrete actions will be required in Vietnam, in Europe and in the Middle East, and perhaps with respect to the space program and to the issue of strategic superiority. These actions, if they are to be effective, must be taken in the context of an integrated world view. They must not appear to be capricious, and they must have the enthusiastic support of the American Executive Branch.

The American bureaucracy, with all its faults, is a loyal bureaucracy once it gets the word and acts upon it.

...2...

It can be likened to an immense ship which moves through the ocean by the propulsion of a relatively small propeller and by the guidance of a relatively small rudder. The bulk of the bureaucracy will respond to a new sense of purpose and a new sense of direction. The problem is: how does one apply the power generated by the American system to the propeller, and how does one establish the guidance that the new rudder gives the bureaucratic system. In communications language, there are a few crucial power and guidance distribution points which are needed to transmit the rules and guidelines of the new President into the bureaucracy that should serve him. These points need to be identified and the reliability of the transmission nodes needs to be established. This is not just a matter of hierarchical level. In certain instances, and in certain departments and agencies, a critical position might be at a third or fourth rung and others might be at a first or second. The important thing, however, is that a line, once it is established, must be transmitted with clarity and exactness and supervised with sophistication.

The matter of staffing, therefore, is most important with respect to these critical junction positions. There is no need for a widespread house-cleaning. There are many men in the present structure who are as deeply concerned as the outsiders with the way things have been going. These men should be identified and used. There are many excellent men who are essentially technicians and who could serve honorably provided they receive proper guidance from their superiors. Such men should be identified and used. On the other hand, there are a number of men whose fundamental conceptions regarding the emerging world order are such that they cannot be entrusted with influential transmission positions. These men should be identified and eliminated, or else should be reorganized into futility. These are the most dangerous men of all and great care should be taken in knowing who they are and in determining how they can best be neutralized. In this context, the Office of Systems Analysis in the Department of Defense is one which the new defense secretary could well do without.

I believe the new President would do well to re-establish the organizational structure defined by Eisenhower. Kennedy broke up this system and put together an administration held together by bailing wire. LBJ did little to improve the National Security Council structure. The ship, the United States, is far too complicated a vessel to be sailed by

...3.

committee and by cabal. The charts must be read, the course planned, the complexities and hazards of the course understood and the inherent capacity and limitations of the vessel taken into account. No modern President can sail by instinct. He needs an experienced staff, one capable of taking into account both the tangible and intangible limits of power. It appears to me that the restoration of the National Security Council structure and a competent Planning Board is indicated. At the same time, complete overhaul of the structure is neither warranted nor would it be efficient. The existing structure should be used to the upmost. This is particularly true of the structure designed to deal with day by day operations. Two years ago, General Taylor and Alexis Johnson designed a system of interdepartmental coordination -- a Senior Interdepartmental Group (SIG) headed by the undersecretary of state, the Inter-Regional Group (IRG) designed to coordinate regional activity. This system has merit and should be preserved. This task, under Eisenhower, was handled by the Operations Coordinating Board. Again to return to my analysis of the rudder and the propeller, this mechanism, at least at the initial period, should not be destroyed but preserved to insure the day by day coordination of the many-sided operations of the federal government in foreign policy. It could be conducted by this instrument provided that clearly delineated policies are established by the National Security Council structure aided by a competent Planning Board.

The principal offices which must be considered are those in the Department of State, the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. The critical influence of the balance of payments upon the ability to conduct an effective foreign policy may argue for the inclusion also of the Secretary of the Treasury. Beyond that there are many other agencies which have an instrumental role in the conduct of our foreign policy, such as: AID, USIA, ACDA, The Peace Corps, the Commerce Department, etc. How to utilize these offices and agencies in the conduct of a more effective national security and foreign policy is a major question. There are many detailed questions which should be asked with respect to the current effectiveness of these agencies. How to go about this review is another matter. My own suggestion is that after the election a team be brought together, composed of people who have had top level experience in the government in sensitive security areas prior to 1960. These should be men who know the ropes and

...4...

who are committed to a different course of action than that
currently being employed. They should meet for at least two
weeks soon after the election to survey and analyze the problem
and to come up with specific recommendations. These recommenda-
tions should be in the hands of the new President not later than
Thanksgiving, 1968.

Simultaneously, another committee should be organized
to review personalities both in and outside the existing
Executive Branch for the 60 or 70 key executive positions
which will enable the new President to transmit his guidance
down to the good ship United States. After organizational
structure and personalities are merged, which should be no
later than mid-December 1968, the key members of this group
should meet with the new President and decide his new "tack."
An effective plan of implementation should be designed so
that after January 20, 1969, the sequence of coordinated
steps required to make visible a new course in American
foreign and security policy could be conveyed to the world.

I do not believe that it is possible for a lone
individual outside the system to make more specific
recommendations. But I do believe that the procedure which
I have suggested could be effective.

16 October 1968

WRK/mr