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Let me also isolate out the doctrine of discriminate general war, or
of counterforce strategy that really means what the term says--the doctrine
now appropriately identified primarily with people like Dan Ellsberg, Fred
Hoffman, and formerly Bill Kaufmann. Basically, this too is not a new idea.
One contributor, for example, was Colonel Richard Leghorn, who published
some eight or nine years ago an article in U.S. News and World Report entitled
"No Need to Bomb Cities to Win a War." Thoughts, incidentally, like "contin-
uing deterrence into the hostilities period" were also being urged some ten
years ago.

On the other hand, I cannot see that the doctrine of discriminate general
war is at all necessarily bound up with the doctrine of large-scale con-
ventional limited war. I personally have no question about the intrinsic
merit of the latter doctrine, at least so long as the choices remain roughly
similar to those we are making today; for it has sufficient justification
in the elementary and familiar proposition that enemy cities have much
more strategic significance as hostages than as ruins.

What I criticize is the doctrine which states: not only is limited,
non-nuclear war possible and feasible in Europe as well as elsewhere, but
we ought to prepare for it and plan to wage it even on a scale involving the
whole of the in-being forces available to the other side. This, I think

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is a fair which is to say a restrained way of putting it.

The phrase "ought to prepare for it" obviously implies extra effort, which is to say extra expenditure by us and pressure and persuasion by us on others to do at least as much and probably a good deal more--on the old division-of-labor principle which recognizes our disproportionate contribution to general war (nuclear) capabilities. No one, I am sure, is opposed to letting the United Kingdom, Belgium, and other NATO nations provide more conventional forces to NATO if they want to. Certainly no one in those countries would starve as a result. A free good does not have to be scrutinized for its utility. Naturally, American additions to conventional capabilities are never free goods for us; we always have important alternative military uses for our resources, as well as the same non-military alternative uses that all our allies have for theirs. But the cost to us of divisions raised by the U.K. et al (apart from dependence on military assistance) is the political credit we use up in pressing the issue, which may be quite considerable, and, more to the point, may be and I think is likely to be quite futile. Perhaps this is too pessimistic a view, but all our allies except the Germans have been dragging their feet on almost every major commitment they have made, and this large built-in resistance

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to further efforts is not going to be alleviated by a philosophy which they
find it hard to accept. Moreover, I should want to be sure I can accept it
before I were to begin to proceed urging it upon them.

The answer that is offered takes the form partly of minimizing the magnitude of the extra effort needed. And here is where we begin to encounter a series of propositions, and of spoken and unspoken assumptions, that I believe to be in some instances highly questionable and in the aggregate dangerous. The argument tends in brief to take the following form: (a) the size and power of enemy forces in the field in Eastern Europe have been generally (and often deliberately) exaggerated; (b) we are ourselves already almost near the point where we ought to be; and (c) therefore only a little extra push would be enough to attain the goal of a non-nuclear fighting force adequate to withstand, at least for a time, the onslaught of the whole Soviet Army in being in Eastern Europe. (In figures the goal usually cited is thirty _well-equipped_ and _full-strength_ divisions, which is not what will accrue to NATO in the normal course of events.)

It is no doubt desirable to cut down the Soviet ground forces to proper size. Obviously, we want to evaluate _any_ forces at their proper size and power. One has to be careful, however, about doing so in pursuit of confirmation of a theory about which one feels a certain missionary zeal.

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The question of whether we are really "almost there" is quite crucial.

Our conventional-strategy advocates tend to exaggerate enemy inherent weaknesses and to gloss over our XXIX own: e.g., they rarely advert to the fact that our divisions are scattered over a multi-national (not a supernatural) force structure, with an allocation of commands designed largely to accomplish political rather than military ends. Even if we were to achieve thirty individually good divisions in the line, the ¤ fighting strength resulting, stemming from fifteen nations, would no doubt fall short in some degree to being comparable to a good/uni-national army of the same number of divisions. The most obvious aspects of the weakness today are in the area of logistics, but that is by no means the only weakness.

The issue becomes even more dubious when we observe a readiness to resort to such historically questionable and hazardous assumptions as that which supposes that a three-to-one superiority is necessary for any successful offensive. Here is where a decent respect for military history or experience--in almost the only area today where such history and experience are still applicable--is thrown to the winds. We need not go back earlier than World War II to find Hitler conquering France, and nearly succeeding inconquering the Soviet Union--where he certainly penetrated very deeply--without enjoying in either case any conspicuous superiority. The whole issue of

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the function of the counterattack in waging a successful defense, which
of course depends upon reserves, is ignored.

There is a quite critical difference between achieving, on the one
hand, superiority or even rough parity, and, on the other hand, settling
for a clear inferiority in the hope that it will nevertheless be enough
if one stands on the defensive. This issue is highlighted in the phrase
used several paragraphs earlier with respect to the objective being to
withstand "at least for a time" the onslaught of the ~~½~~ whole Red Army.

The questions here are: for how long? And, what happens next? This brings
us finally to the critical and overriding issue: to what end do we attempt
to achieve all this? Notice, we are asked to make, and to press our allies
to make, an effort which while admittedly within our means is far from incon-
siderable, with the object of achieving a force which _at best_ can hope to
stem for a short time a Soviet non-nuclear attack which is all-out in the
sense of using forces in the field but not reserves available through
*militiation* mobilization.

But of course the whole philosophy is based on the clear proviso that we
will not allow ourselves to be beaten. The Soviet will know this--at least we
will have done our best to persuade him that it is so. Thus we come to the
well-known "pause, " which is to say the opportunity for the opponent's
*reassessment* and reconsideration. The enemy has been given a great

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A demonstration that we really are serious. He knows that he must now
cease and desist, and _withdraw_, or it is nuclear weapons all the way.

The concept of the pause undoubtedly means one thing when we are
referring to limited and local hostilities involving at most a very few
divisions--though even that is streching things a bit. But it must certainly
mean qjite another thing when it refers to an attack by the whole field
army of the Soviet Union. The least we can say about the latter is that it
could hardly have been unpremeditated. For that matter, why should we
assume that, in a developing crisis, the Soviet Union will not have
mobilized substantial portions of its reserves?

But an even more critical point remains: where is the inducement
to the Soviet Union to play the game that way? We have made as clear as
we can (because we really mean it) that we will not accept a loss. We may
in fact think differently after a limited loss, or the enemy may think we
will, which is one of the things wrong with the philosophy and certainly
one important reason why Germany, for example, is not likely to accept it.
Reassessment is a two-way street, and if we think we are immune to it our
allies, and our enemy, may not. But if we mean what we say and we do what
we mean, we will be ready to bring in our nuclear weapons--not in tactical
but in discriminate strategic action.

To repeat: where is the inducement to the Russians to play the game

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that way? They will either refrain from large-scale aggression altogether, or they will proceed towards it in something other than a U.S. - preferred way. And if they refrain, which is what we want them to do, it is of course our strategic nuclear forces, not our local conventional forces, which have obliged them to do so. That is exactly where we stand now. What then will we have gained by the further conventional build-up?

Is this not one of those cases against which the economists above all have been warning us, that is, the case where we confuse the barely conceivable with the probable and are willing to spend a good deal of extra money to cope with it? I should regard a large-scale non-nuclear attack by a Russian field army which had not mobilized its reserves as 1 only barely conceivable, and certainly not worth special isolation as a case deserving the primary orientation of our defensive plans.

Some additional considerations are in order. We are talking now about an area of strategic thought in which we have no esoteric advantage over the Europeans--that is, where they are perfectly capable of doing their own thinking. Such areas are in fact widening rapidly. The Germans are aware that not much territory has to be yielded before they have yielded all of theirs. The French have already shown their readiness to point to our new philosophy as evidence of an American nuclear withdrawal from

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Europe. They regard this as confirming their foresight in aspiring for
a national *force de frappe*.

Thus, what appears when measured in percentage of GNP as an economically
feasible effort is very likely to prove a political impossible one. Politicians
always reckon in absolute numbers, both in terms of money and of men. General
Norstad is certain that what he cannot drag out of the U.K., Belgium, et al,
no successor of his is going to be able to drag out of them--f certainly
not on the basis of the new philosophy. This may be egotism, or it may
be simple good sense. We should want to know which it is before we commit
ourselves.

When the point is made that what we are offering the Europeans looks
like a new version of ¤ World War II, the answer is usually that that
is still albeit better for the Europeans than a tactical nuclear war, the
implication being that they should therefore jump at the chance. I think
we may safely say that the Europeans will not look at it that way. They
will very likely have a different way of looking at the present choice
of alternatives.

For them to contribute more men and money in order to have the possibility
of being able to enjoy another World War II will seem to strike them, at
the very least, as an excessive relinquishment of the nuclear deterrent.

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They are abundantly convinced that, so long as it lasts, our threat of nuclear
intervention is quite enough to keep the Russians off their backs. My
own feeling, on the evidence thus far available, is that they are com-
pletely right. If that threat is watered down or withdrawn, they are
likely to choose in preference to a "conventional strategy" either (a)
accommodation with the Russians or (b) independent nuclear strategic
forces. Perhaps in the future that threat will be substantially less
credible than it is now (is not that supposition itself debatable?) but
it is possible to rush too fast, and in a wrong direction, in anticipating
that situation.

I do not question the desirability of having good divisions in Europe
able to function in a non-nuclear combat environment--though I still
think the United States is likely to have more combat use for such
divisions elsewhere than in Europe. Nor have I any objection to the
number of Allied divisions in Europe being thirty, though the best and almost
the only justification I have seen for that figure thus far is that it
represents the number already committed and there is no reason for letting

[y]

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up on that commitment. Concerning the idea of withholding nuclear weapons from tactical use altogether, especially in Europe, I feel the sagest remarks I have seen on that subject are (as is so frequently the case) by Thomas Schelling in his "Nuclear Strategy in Europe," *World Politics*, April, 1962. To quote one small portion of his remarks: "... the *purpose* of introducing nuclears in a tactical war that we would otherwise lose is not just, or mainly, to redress the balance on the battle field. It is to make the war too painful to continue. Even a limited tactical use of nuclears would be so designed as to maximize the pressure on the other side to call off the war." Implicit here and emphasized elsewhere in the article is the idea that the chief object of tactical use of nuclear weapons is as a warning of impending strategic use.

In that connection I have to question also the emphasis which is put on the *unity* between Europe and America implicit in the new philosophy. Statements like "we are in it all the way," and "we will not use Europe as an area for exchanging nuclear weapons while keeping a sanctuary status for ourselves" suggest that that is the one and only way in which the Europeans will view or can have a view that change which many of them have in fact already referred to as our "nuclear withdrawal." Inasmuch as *unity* is what we have been emphasizing all along, it is difficult for us to adopt the position of "now we really mean it", especially while we are displaying

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a newly enhanced sensitivity to the dangerousness of nuclear weapons.

Incidentally, when we talk of Europeans, and also the Russians, being
resistant to the new philosophy, we are talking about a situation in which
such resistance is an absolutely essential ingredient in our assessment of
the value of that philosophy. In the past certain ideas have developed
which were necessary to advance even when we were certain of strong resis-
tance.