invite pre-emptive attack or have to be used precipitately because of their vulnerability.

(b) These forces should possess an effective command and control system so that they are at all times responsive to political direction.

(c) They should be a part of a strategy that includes the possibility of flexible response.

(d) They should become an instrument to foster European integration.

(e) They should be co-ordinated with our forces.

All these objectives are more likely to be achieved by offering assistance to Great Britain and France in enhancing the invulnerability of their forces and improving their command and control than by the so-called NATO multilateralism. We could make the scale of our assistance depend on the British and French ability to develop common programs and a common strategy. We could encourage Britain and France to put their nuclear forces into the service of Europe, perhaps by associating other countries in the control mechanism. We could strongly urge that the savings accomplished by our assistance in the nuclear field be devoted to a build-up of conventional power.

Such a program would maintain the principle of flexible response (though not perhaps of counterforce general war). It would grow organically out of existing European nuclear programs. It would avoid the necessity of organizing the presently non-nuclear powers into their own separate nuclear force and thus in the long run represent a smaller diffusion of nuclear power. It would make Britain's entry into Europe inevitable. And it would lay the basis for a more natural association between Europe and the United States than the so-called multilateralism.

It may be argued that once we help Britain and France, every European country will want its own national nuclear force. The President has mentioned even a Belgian nuclear force as a possibility. We must distinguish, however, between the possession of some nuclear weapons and the development of an indigogenous nuclear program. The latter is beyond the present capability of

any European country, for either political or economic reasons or for both.

West Germany is prohibited by the Paris treaties from manufacturing nuclear weapons. While treaties have been broken before, in this particular instance the international repercussions are apt to be so serious as to give any German government pause. At the moment and for at least the next legislative period—that is, until about 1969—there are in any event no signs of any domestic pressures in Germany for a national nuclear-weapons program. This may change, however, after the multilateral force has whetted appetites.

Italy has neither the resources nor the domestic support for a national nuclear program. As for Belgium and other smaller countries, it can hardly be argued that the French program exceeds France's resources but that we must gear our NATO nuclear policy to preventing the development of similar programs by much poorer countries.

To be sure, a joint Franco-British program would probably lead to efforts by West Germany and perhaps other European countries for a de-

gree of participation in at least the control mechanism. But in this way the Franco-British effort could become a spur to European political integration. France and Britain would have a high incentive to foster European unity before the issue of

nuclear weapons under German national control becomes acute.

Whatever is done in the military field, the current crisis underlines the urgent need for greater political cohesion in the Western Alliance. We are now in the curious position of pressing for military integration while practicing political bilateralism. On a variety of issues from Berlin to the test ban, we have claimed the right for independent approaches to the Soviets.

HOWEVER, unity in the security field is bound to be ephemeral without a common diplomacy. We cannot have different conceptions of a possible casus belli—which is at least one implication of different negotiating positions—and insist at the same time that the resulting strategy must be unified. If we want to spur integration, the political field would seem much more promising than the military. If the nations of the Atlantic Community follow common policies, the existence of different centers of military decision would present primarily a problem of technical co-ordination, not a challenge to allied unity.

The Atlantic Alliance requires urgently a political body to define common objectives and the means to achieve them. It might be useful to begin by developing a common position on such issues as Berlin, disarmament, or the test ban. If it should be argued that this is impossible, the emptiness of nuclear multilateralism is patent. Nations that cannot agree on common negotiating positions on such matters are not likely to be able to devise a common strategy for an apocalypse.

Withal, it is important to keep the difficulties of the Western Alliance in proper perspective. Deep as the divisions are, they are the result of the success of previous policies. They testify to the emergence of a strong and self-confident Europe—a consistent goal of U.S. policy in the last three administrations. Few of the recent fissures in the West have been produced by Soviet actions. This is another way of saying that the West is less imperiled by outside pressures than by a tendency to waste its own substance. It also means that the remedies are still within our own control.

March 28, 1963

37

AT HOME & ABROAD

A Return to the Frontier

EILEEN CHANG

WHEN I got off the plane in Taipei on my way to Hong Kong, I did not expect to see anyone I knew. I had asked the Chus not to meet me, knowing they were busy just then. But it was possible that they would get somebody else to come in their stead, so I was not surprised when an efficient-looking man in neat western clothes approached me. "You are Mrs. Richard Nixon?" he said in English.

I had seen many photographs of the blonde Mrs. Nixon and never imagined I resembled her. Besides, he should be able to tell a fellow Chinese even behind her dark glasses. But with a woman's inability to disbelieve a compliment altogether, no matter how flagrantly untrue, I remembered that she was thin, which I undoubtedly was. Then there was those glasses. "No, I am sorry," I said, and he walked away to search among the other passengers.

It struck me as a little odd that Mrs. Nixon should come to Formosa, even if everybody is visiting the Orient just now. Anyhow there must have been some mix-up, as there was only this one embassy employee to greet her.

"Did you know Mrs. Nixon is coming today?" I asked my friends Mr. and Mrs. Chu, who had turned up after all.

"No, we haven't heard," Mr. Chu said. I told them about the man who mistook me for her and what a joke

that was. "Um," he said unsmiling. Then he said somewhat embarrassedly, "There's a man who is always hanging around the airport to meet American dignitaries. He's not quite sane."

I laughed, then went under Formosa's huge wave of wistful yearning for the outside world, particularly America, its only friend and therefore in some ways a foe.

"How does it feel to be back?" Mr. Chu asked. Although I had never been there before, they were going along with the official assumption that Formosa is China, the mother country of all Chinese. I looked around the crowded airport and it really was China, not the strange one I left ten years ago under the Communists but the one I knew best and thought had vanished forever. The buzz of Mandarin voices also made it different from Hong Kong. A feeling of chronological confusion came over me.

"It feels like dreaming." And taking in all the familiar faces speaking the tones of homeland, I exclaimed, "But it's not possible!" Mr. Chu smiled ruefully as if I had said, "But you are ghosts."

MRS. CHU told me as we left the airport, "This is an ugly city, but the minute you get out of town it is beautiful."

They lodged me in a mountain inn. I got the Generals' Suite, where the generals stay when they come

uphill to report to the Generalissimo, who lives a few steps away across the road. The suite was reached through a series of deserted little courtyards, with its own rock garden and lotus pond. In the silence there was just the sound of the evening drizzle on the banana palm and in the bathroom a tap of sulphur water constantly running out of a stone lion mouth and splashing over the rim of the cement tank. There were rattan furniture on the tatami flooring and a wardrobe and bed with stained sheets. I told myself not to be fastidious. But there were bedbugs. Finally I had to get up near dawn to sleep on the ledge of the honor recess, where in Japanese living rooms the best vase and picture scroll are displayed. The maid was frightened when she came in the morning and could not find me.

It was plain that the generals had feminine companionship while spending the night awaiting audience with the Generalissimo. I wondered at the ease of procuring girls almost next door to that Christian and Confucian founder of the New Life Movement. Surely it was unusually with "Heaven's countenance only a foot away," as we used to describe an audience with the emperor. After I left Taipei for the countryside, I realized that prostitution was more open on this island than perhaps anywhere else in the world. In a small-town newspaper five or six advertisements of this type appeared in one day: "Joy and Happiness Prostitutes' Domicile, 1st Class. 124 Shin Ming Road. Swarms of pretty girls like clouds, offering the best service."

IN THE COUNTRYSIDE Formosa peels back, showing older strata. There were more native Formosans than refugees. The mixed emotions of my homecoming of sorts gave way to pure tourist enthusiasm.

From time to time Mrs. Chu, sitting next to me in the bus, whispered urgently, "Shandi, shandi!" I just caught a glimpse of a shandi, or mountain dweller, a gray little wraith with whiskers tattooed on her cheeks carrying a baby on her back and loitering outside a shop along the highway. "Shandi, shandi!" Again the breathless little cry and a nudge. I saw gypsylike children in ragged

38

THE REPORTER

The RAND Corporation

1700 MAIN ST. SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA

19 March 1963

L-5848

Mr. Max Ascoli
The Reporter
660 Madison Avenue
New York 21, New York

Dear Max:

The galley proof of Henry Kissinger's article arrived yesterday, but I did not get a chance to read it before last night. I am tremendously impressed with it. It is a brilliant article, comprehensive, and well-written, on an important subject. What impact it will have in the Pentagon and the State Department I don't know, but it should hearten and arm with arguments those who already question the wisdom of the existing policy.

I am happy to have to take back the remarks I made in my letter of March 15. Henry's sole reference to RAND (on page 23), though it still wants something in accuracy, was not inappropriate. It did not have the kind of broadside quality I was afraid it might have from your telephone references and also from my recollection of what he said at UCLA.

Concerning overlapping with my paper, I think there is nothing to worry about. There were one or two places where I think he showed the results of some influence, but I am very proud of that and there is certainly nothing the slightest bit illegitimate about it. I really think my paper and his supplement each other remarkably well, and both being published in the same journal will, I think, have far more influence than either one could have separately. A person who stands quite alone can too easily be labeled a crackpot. People might shrug off Henry, or me, who are less likely to shrug off both of us together.

Mr. Max Ascoli

-2-

3-19-63
L-5848

Let me say also I admire your pluck in wanting to publish both these articles in view of their length. You are quite right in assuming that your publishing Henry's in toto (I think his is longer than mine) gives me added courage about standing on equal treatment. I really think that very little of mine is dispensable. If it were going to be published in *Foreign Affairs* or *World Politics*, you might be interested in having an alternate shorter version; but it is not going to be published in those places. On the other hand, I suspect that journals like the *Air University Quarterly* and the British journal *Survival* will be asking you for permission to reprint it.

My cleared final version, marked "printer's copy" (and copyrighted by RAND) is enclosed herewith. There are several revisions in the manuscript from the copy you got previously, which you should now discard or at least handle in a way which will prevent its being confused with the present copy. This morning I did some final editing in ink, but that is not the whole sum of the changes from the previous copy.

I must entreat you to give it minimal treatment so far as further editing is concerned. The previous article I published with you was a long time ago, but I must tell you now that one reason it was so long ago has to do with the editing it received. I hope you have since then entered into a regime of milder editorial treatment.

With best wishes.

BB:mtm

Enclosure: P-2696, "What Price Conventional Capabilities in Europe"

The RAND Corporation

1700 MAIN ST. • SANTA MONICA • CALIFORNIA

15 March 1963

L-5665

Dear Max:

I have not yet received the galley of Henry Kissinger's
article that you were going to send me, and I shall there-
fore hold off sending you a somewhat revised copy of my
paper, which of course has now been cleared.

But let me now say a word concerning Henry's references to
RAND, which you mentioned over the phone. When he gave
his speech at our neighboring UCLA a few weeks ago, he made
similar references to RAND as being the fountainhead for
the ideas he is criticizing. Henry should know that this
is inaccurate and unfair. Actually, since he is himself
a consultant of RAND, which makes him officially a member
of the organization, he should know that RAND is not that
monolithic. He knows also that I, a full-time staff member
of RAND, share his basic opinions and am opposed to those
ideas he criticizes. I can assure him that most of RAND
does likewise.

Actually, he has a few specific persons in mind. Why doesn't
he mention them by name? Then he would be choosing a legiti-
mate target, and not merely firing broadside. It is not that
RAND doesn't deserve or cannot stand criticism; it is that it
deserves to be criticized fairly, especially over issues on
which its special client, the Air Force, is very sensitive.

You may quote me with Henry as you see fit.

BB:mtm

Albert Wohlstetter
2805 Woodstock Road
Los Angeles 46, California

March 29, 1963

To The Editor:

I cannot in the space of a letter comment on the merits or the
meaning of Mr. Kissinger's proposal for helping the French and the
British build nuclear strategic force. However, I would like to
correct the false impression that he creates, I am sure unwittingly,
about the series of studies that I led beginning in 1951 on the
problems of deterrence. Mr. Kissinger suggests that these studies
had to do principally with what he calls "controlled-counterforce
general war" and "nuclear superiority...in the age of nuclear plenty."
In this way he identifies these studies with the current inflamed
and confused debate.

In fact, the studies focussed on the complex and at that time
urgent and unsolved problem of securing an adequate deterrent force
in the face of a growing nuclear threat. They mainly concerned ways
of making our own forces less vulnerable to attack rather than methods
of attacking enemy bombers. The concept of a "second-strike capability"
was worked out in connection with the task of reducing the likelihood
of deliberate or "accidental" war, not with the problem of moderating
damage in case, in spite of our best efforts to avoid it, war comes.
These studies and the thesis of "The Delicate Balance of Terror,"
published at the end of 1958, were directed at an important part, but
very far from the whole of the question of national and alliance defense.

It is quite true, and not inconsistent to say that, if deterrence
fails, it is sensible to have a plan for limiting the damage we and
our allies would suffer; and, along with many others, I have, more
recently, done some analysis of the requirements of such plans. On
the other hand, the mixture of many elements involved in a useful
policy for reducing such a catastrophe would include, among other things,
active and passive defenses; it is not adequately conveyed by the
phrase "controlled-counterforce general war." Moreover, I have never
been able to make any sense at all out of the stereotypes, "Nuclear
superiority in an age of nuclear plenty"; or for that matter, "No
nuclear superiority in an age of nuclear plenty"; or anything similar.
In any case, I have never used these phrases.

Finally, whatever the content of what Mr. Kissinger munificently
calls "The Wohlstetter Doctrine," its connection with what he describes