The RAND Corporation

1700 MAIN ST. • 3/20 March 1959 • A • CALIFORNIA

L-5701

Dr. Philip E. Mosely
Director of Studies
Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
58 East 68th Street
New York 21, New York

C
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P
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Dear Phil:

The following list of questions are relevant to the discussion on this
coming Wednesday, April 1st. I hope to treat a small subset of this
rather formidable list in my talk. In particular, I expect to focus
on the requirements of a program to secure an effective deterrent in
the early Sixties. The first question, then, is:

What can be done to secure an effective capability to strike
second in the early Sixties?

The rest follow:

2. Is the problem of securing such a deterrent adequately characterized by the notion of a "missile gap?" And is it therefore to be solved simply by an increase in missile production?

3. Will the airborne alert of SAC bombers suffice?

4. How does what needs to be done differ, if at all, from the official program? Or from the recommendations of the principal critics of the official program in Congress?

5. What can be said today about the problem of securing an effective deterrent in the mid- and late-Sixties?

6. What would the roles of mobility, hardness, dispersal and concealment be in this period? Are the same measures in roughly the same mixture appropriate for the later periods as for the earlier?

Dr. Philip E. Mosely

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3-20-59

7. What are the costs of a program to secure an objective basis for deterrence in the early Sixties? Can such a program be financed within a fixed budget, that is to say, by surrendering some other items which are less important (or possibly not important at all)? If it is possible to make economies in other parts of our defense program, should we make the protection of our capability to strike second contingent on our effecting economies elsewhere?

8. Supposing we do have an effective deterrent in the form of a high confidence capability to strike second, in what sense is this stabilizing?

9. If we do have such a deterrent, does this make the probability of general war negligible?

10. What does the answer to the latter question imply as to the need for an ability to fight a general war -- that is to limit damage to our cities in case the war occurs and to conclude the war in terms as favorable as possible for ourselves?

11. What weight can we attach to the influential current view that the USSR rejects preventive war on doctrinal grounds?

12. Is there a place for a counterforce consistent with a program of deterrence? What is the role of counterforce and of the active and passive defense of cities in a general war?

13. Can we get a deterrent which is proof against unexpected large technological changes?

14. What are the problems of political control of the weapons of retaliation?

15. Can we separate the problem of "calculated" and "miscalculated" attack?

16. How are various arms control proposals related to a program of deterrence?

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, INC.

THE HANOLD PRATT HOUSE
58 EAST 68TH STREET
NEW YORK 21, N. Y.
CABLE ADDRESS: FOR AFFAIRS, NEW YORK

March 24, 1959

Professor Henry A. Kissinger
Center for International Affairs
6 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

Dear Henry:

On Wednesday, April 1, Jim Perkins and I hope that you will be able to meet with us and Albert Wohlstetter at 4:45 P.M., in my office, to discuss the arrangements for the meeting and perhaps one or two later topics. I hope very much you can do it, but we all realize that this is contingent upon certain very important events in the Kissinger home!

I have very much missed the opportunity for a good talk with you ever since December, and I hope you will be sure to let me know when you are coming to New York. I now expect to be away between April 10 and May 5, so I would be especially happy to see you by April 10.

With best wishes to you both,

March 3, 1959

Dear General Bomeesteel:

The problems of maintaining a diversified deterrent and of relating it to its effective use in achieving our foreign policy objectives raise a number of very difficult issues. There often seems to be a gap between technological developments, strategic planning as understood even by an informed public, and the conduct of foreign policy. This field of study, as you know, has been of central and continuing importance in the program of the Council on Foreign Relations, and I am writing you now to enlist your cooperation in a new phase of its effort.

The Council on Foreign Relations is planning to undertake a brief but intensive review of the interrelationships between deterrence and foreign policy. The Research Director of the new Discussion Group will be Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, author of Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, which was published by the Council in 1957, and now Associate Director of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. Because of my own long concern as a citizen with this problem, I have agreed to serve as Chairman of a small Discussion Group on "Political and Strategic Problems of Deterrence," and I hope that you will be able to accept this invitation to be a member of it.

At its first meeting, to be held on Wednesday, April 1, at 5:30 p.m., we plan to center the discussion on the problem of preserving and extending the effectiveness of our present strategic deterrents in the period of transition to the full capability of the intercontinental ballistic missile. Dr. Albert Wohlletter, of the RAND Corporation, has agreed to serve as Discussion Leader.

Subject to the Group's own decision on further topics, it may wish to take up several interrelated problems, such as U.S. limited war capability and the deterrence of local aggressions; the role of allies in both our strategic and limited-war deterrent programs; the role of U.S. military

THE HAROLD PRATT HOUSE

NEW YORK 21, N. Y.

CABLE ADDRESS: FORAFFAIRS, NEW YORK

58 EAST 68TH STREET

March 25, 1959

TO MEMBERS OF THE DISCUSSION GROUP ON THE
POLITICAL AND STRATEGIC PROBLEMS OF DETERRENCE:

Enclosed you will find the following material, in connection with the first meeting of the Discussion Group on the Political and Strategic Problems of Deterrence of which Dr. James A. Perkins is chairman and Dr. Henry A. Kissinger research director: a reprint of Mr. Albert Wohlstetter's article, "The Delicate Balance of Terror," from the January issue of *Foreign Affairs*, and a set of questions which he has prepared to serve as the basis for discussion at the meeting. Mr. Wohlstetter will serve as discussion leader at that time.

As you know, the meeting will be held here at the Council House on Wednesday, April 1st. Tea will be served at 5:15, and the meeting itself will begin at 5:30. Dinner will be served at 7:00, and the discussion will continue thereafter until around 9:30 or 10:00 o'clock.

Lorna Brennan
Administrative Secretary

For meeting of
April 1, 1959.

CONFIDENTIAL:
Not for Publication

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

Discussion Group on

<u>Political and Strategic Problems of Deterrence</u>

Problems of an Effective Deterrent
<u>in the Early 1960's</u>

by Albert Wohlstetter

1. What can be done to secure an effective capability to strike second in the early Sixties?

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9. If we have such a deterrent, does this make the probability of general war negligible?

The first meeting of the Discussion Group on the Political and Strategic Problems of Deterrence was held at the Harold Pratt House on Wednesday, April 1, 1959, at 5:30 p.m. Present were: Albert Wohlstetter, Discussion Leader; James A. Perkins, Chairman; Henry A. Kissinger, Research Director; Ciro Elliott Zoppo, Rapporteur; Frank Altschul; Robert Amory, Jr.; Major General Charles H. Bonesteel, USA; Melvin Conant; Major General Harold C. Donnelly, USAF; John S. Fischer; William C. Foster; George S. Franklin, Jr.; H. Rowan Gaither, Jr.; Roswell L. Gilpatric; Rear Admiral William Miller, USN; Hans Morgenthau; Philip E. Mosely; Courtland D. Perkins; Philip W. Quigg.

* * * * * * * * * * *

James A. Perkins, chairman, opened the meeting of the discussion group. He stressed the confidential nature of the topic on the agenda, pointing out that the freedom of expression of future study groups would depend to a considerable degree upon the discretion shown by the current group. He indicated, however, that these precautions, although required away from the meetings, should in no way curb discussion at the meetings themselves.

The Council hopes that at least four meetings take place. They are scheduled for Friday, April 24, Tuesday, May 19, and Monday, June 15. Herman Kahn will lead the discussion at the next meeting by presenting the major aspects of passive (i.e., civil) defense and its role in military security. The May meeting will be led by Henry A. Kissinger, who will discuss Type Two Deterrence with particular reference to NATO and the special problem of keeping that area "inviolate."

Albert Wohlstetter, discussion leader, then introduced the topic of discussion with an analysis of "The Problems of Determining and Fighting a General War."

The upshot of the article called "The Delicate Balance of Terror" was that deterrence of general war will not come about automatically in the 1960's; it will be feasible, but difficult. And, while vital to achieve, by itself it will be inadequate since it is only part of a viable military posture. It will most obviously be inadequate to deter or to meet limited aggression. But it will also be inadequate, as I shall try to show more clearly tonight, for fighting a general war, as distinct from making general war less likely.

The discussion tonight turns on what can be done to assure deterrence in the 1960's, and specifically the relation of what needs to be done to what we have so far committed ourselves to and to current public controversy on our future military posture. As for the public controversy, I shall say something about two popular views. The first is the notion of the missile gap and the second is the theory of "minimum" or "finite" deterrence. These considerations, I hope, will help clarify not only the question of deterring general war or fighting one if it occurs, but also the role that counterforce and city defense may be expected to play in either eventuality.

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Let me make explicit some of the limits of the present talk. First, I shall not talk of the year 1959, or even 1960, and this for several reasons. To begin with, these current years are, naturally enough, the most touchy. I'm not sure I know how to talk about them usefully. More importantly, we are interested primarily in a future that we can affect. Since our own posture, beginning in 1961 or 1962 or thereabouts, is in crucial respects still indeterminate, it seems both safer and more fruitful to begin our discussion at that point.

Second, I shall not say much about the late '60's, but will concentrate on the period roughly between 1961 and 1965. It is important to stress that the requirements for deterrence change with the years. During the whole course of the '60's a good deterrent posture necessarily involves a mixture of many elements, but the relative weight of the elements in that mixture -- say, the proportion of mobile and fixed vehicles -- is very likely to change. To pursue the example cited, it seems quite plausible that mobile water and airborne platforms will play an increasing role throughout the decade.

Third, I shall be talking of matters which are essentially quantitative, though I shall be forced to treat them only very grossly. I can only describe the kinds of things I believe need doing, along with a few illustrations and some coarse indications of how they might work. I shall call them programs for "systems survival" as opposed to mere "vehicle survival" -- or to the even more primitive "vehicle matching." I shall defer attempting to explain the meaning of these mysterious labels. One of the purposes of this talk as a whole is to clarify these broad distinctions.

Dealing with quantitative matters but treating them only in a very gross fashion, I am forced to ask you to accept a good deal without the full support of the evidence. This puts me in a rather awkward position. I make it a principle myself to do otherwise in the field of defense policy. Therefore, if at times you prefer doubt to belief, I can only sympathize, and hope that you will doubt the alternatives, too, and that you will have the opportunity to weigh them. I believe the commonly accepted alternatives have less evidence to support them.

## I. The Missile Gap

Those who talk of a missile gap hold that at some date early in the '60's the Russians will have several times as many missiles as we. To avoid this peril, they urge that we accelerate production of our own first-generation missiles. Waiting for the improvements that a second-generation missile will provide, they continue, will leave us exposed for a significant period of time to the superior strength of the Russians.

The standard counter-argument to this states that the sum of our missiles and bombers will more than balance the combined force of Russian missiles and bombers in the period in question. While I agree that there is a grave problem, I believe that neither side of the argument is strictly to the point on the question of deterrent strength. It was discouraging to find the

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article, "The Delicate Balance of Terror," identified in the public press with the thesis of the "Gap." This suggests that columnists look for declarations of allegiance rather than analysis, even in *Foreign Affairs*. I have two short comments. First, while the level of criticisms of defense policy has advanced considerably over that of previous years, none the less both sides make their comparisons essentially in terms of the size and capability of the U.S. and Soviet forces in their undamaged states. That is to say, they match first-strike capabilities. But a good deal of the article, "The Delicate Balance of Terror," was devoted to showing that such comparisons are not strictly relevant. Second, the term "gap" suggests that the period of "inferiority" is only a transient one, that the hole will be filled by our second-generation missiles. This, however, is not necessarily so. Whether or not we have the capability to strike second will depend, in the case of both first- and second-generation missiles, on a variety of considerations that have not so far been given nearly enough attention.

The problem of maintaining a second-strike capability involves a serious consideration of much more than merely the size of our forces in advance of an attack. We must ask: How are they disposed, on how many points, and how easy are they to find? What degree of protection have they against blast, radiation and other weapons effects? What arrangements have been made for detecting and identifying the large variety of attacks feasible and for recognizing them as attacks when they occur? What mechanism has been set up for decision on the response? What means of transmitting the orders decided on? How well protected are these channels of communication to and from centers of decision? What provisions are there for coordinating a retaliation under conditions of attack, and for penetrating enemy active and passive defenses? Such considerations very considerably affect the size of our forces *after* an attack and their realistic capability for response.

The tendency to identify the deterrent with a first-strike capability has a long history. The identification is a fallacy when, as today, it is a nuclear surprise attack we mean to deter. In the beginning, it was not a fallacy. Our strategic forces aimed at deterring, not a nuclear attack on the United States, but a conventional land attack in Europe. There were no nuclear forces to deter. For this reason alone (and there are others), it is not surprising that the conditions for deterring a nuclear attack were not well understood, and that our response to Soviet advances in manned strategic bombers or unmanned strategic missiles was as invariably conditioned as Pavlov's dogs: more B-52's to match their Bears and Bisons, more IRBM's to match their first intercontinental ballistic missiles, and so on. Actions taken in recent times to protect our forces, as distinct from those aimed simply at increasing them proportionately, have tended to be sporadic rather than systematic and to stress one single device at a time. First it was dispersal. Then "ground alert." Then "fail-safe." Now it is air alert. While all of these have a use and some are critically important, none is a panacea. Nor should we hope for a panacea. The problem is too hard for gimmicks.

Those who are alarmed about the "gap" are on the side of the angels in feeling there is a grave problem. Many of the measures they urge, moreover,

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need doing. But because the problem cuts deeper than they say, satisfactory solutions will be more complex than those so far announced.

This assessment runs sharply counter to a second very popular sort of view -- the theories of "minimum" or "fixed" deterrence. I turn now to a consideration of these theories.

## II. "Minimum" or "Finite" Deterrence

Such theories have three elements. Two, I believe, are quite wrong. One I think essentially right, and of great and neglected importance. The sound element of the theory has it that our retaliation should be controlled, with some strategic power reserved beyond our first response in order to help conclude the war. This component of the theory, as will be shown, is not strictly compatible with the other two. Consider, to start with, the two elements of the minimum deterrence theory with which I differ. The first is the belief that deterrence is fairly easy to come by, that it involves assuring only small damage to an aggressor -- which is taken to mean that we need only small, inexpensive forces for the purpose and in fact that our large, expensive ones will needlessly "overkill" the targets. ("There is no need to kill your opponent more than one time," we are reminded.) The second element has it that the capability to deter general war is all that we require of our strategic power and in fact all that we need as preparation in the line of general war. Let me comment on each of these.

First, on the ease of deterrence. It will not astonish a careful reader of "The Delicate Balance of Terror" to learn that its author is not moved by the argument that deterrence is a simple job, nor by the suggestion that an excessive amount of retaliation is guaranteed by our future planned forces. Most of that article was devoted to showing why deterrence will be hard. The calculations of huge overkills neglect, in general, the distinction made there between a first- and second-strike capability, or make only a formal allowance for the difference. *

But it might be argued, if we cannot overkill with all that expensive strategic capability, perhaps it is because we have been rather stupid. The problem, it is sometimes contended, is easy. It is soluble simply by moving. ("Solvitur ambulando," according to Lewis Carroll; that is what Achilles said to the tortoise to prove that he could come to the end of another race course.) And in fact mobility is even held to be able to take us out of the arms race entirely. A finite number of fixed points of the defender can be matched by

* Sometimes the overkill argument is a more technical one concerning appropriate or best target allocation, assuming the weapons are delivered. I am not making a brief for the current target allocation. However, with perfect target assignment, "kills" enough to form an objective basis for deterrence are not guaranteed in the '60's. If the target assignment is less than perfect, the inadequacy would be greater.

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some finite number of offensive vehicles of the aggressors, and if the defender tries to outmatch the prospective aggressor by building more points, this leads into the spiral of the arms race. On the other hand, moving points on air, ground, or water are presumed by this argument to be invulnerable -- or relatively invulnerable, which is both more cautious and more obscure.

Now I believe that mobility will be an increasingly important component of the deterrent posture. I think a B-52 air alert should be flown as soon as possible; that Polaris is a most important weapon in research and development, and our plans for it should be expanded; and that there are exciting possibilities for a long-endurance chemical airborne mobile system -- and indeed have myself been concerned with the germination of a version of this last idea which has been incubating for over a year at RAND.

However, mobility does not end the game. Even a moving platform that launches ballistic missiles in sequence against an urban target system is subject to countermeasures. The platform might be tracked, or hunted and killed before launching any birds. Or it might be killed after a first launching has revealed its position and before it has expended all its birds. Or the birds themselves -- especially in penetrating singly and with little aid -- might be killed by active defense. Or the population which is aimed at might itself move, help solve its problems by walking --upwind and perhaps into shelter.

But it may be objected that this could be very costly to the enemy, force him to great and possibly infeasible expenditure. Precisely. So it may. But that would mean that the race would favor us, not that there would be no race. Our object is to select measures that force infeasibly expensive countermeasures. Whether or not we have a mixture of measures that will accomplish this is an empirical matter. In the case of many of the newer systems, which are still in R&D (or, worse, in the egg), the outcome depends on many variables that are not yet known.

Finally, mobility cannot solve all of the problems because the weapons carrier and the launching platforms, which are the prime candidates for movement in the suggested measures, are only parts of a system for retaliation. Most important, the elements of political control, the key decision-makers, their instruments for obtaining information and transitting decisions, cannot all be kept afloat or in the air. I will return to this point because it is central, not only in the business of assuring retaliation, but also in the problem of avoiding accidental outbreak of war or miscalculation, and in the problem of fighting a war in case deterrence fails. There is no better way to glimpse the real complexity of the problem of deterrence than to consider carefully the problem of preserving political and military command and control.

The preceding remarks have all been directed at the first element of the theory of "minimum" or "finite" deterrence, namely, the notion that deterrence is easy, and that there is some simple device that will provide it.

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The second element of the theory has it that the ability to deter a general war is the only general war capability needed: the counterforce mission is not needed, since we can deter the enemy's attack by threatening his cities; in any case, if he did attack, the counterforce mission would still be useless, since his missiles and bombers would already have been launched. Similarly, active and passive defense of cities is regarded as unnecessary and infeasible.

Can we dispense with a counterforce capability and with the active and passive defense of cities? I think not. But the argument does perceive correctly that counterforce and active and passive urban defense are analogous. They require analogous justification. What is the justification?

If we give any credence to the possibility that deterrence may fail, if we are not completely certain that there will be no war as the result of either a correct or incorrect calculation by the aggressor, we must insure ourselves against this contingency. The disaster, if it occurs and we are totally unprepared to diminish it, may well be upwards of 150 million dead. Moreover, the less certain we are that war will not occur, the more insurance we require.

But even if at some given state of the art we have a high confidence deterrent, war may still come. First, because even if the state of technology is unchanged, high confidence is not the same as certainty, and second, the technology may change, making deliberate attack a likely event. And, finally, even if a deliberate attack is unlikely, accidental war, or an attack by miscalculation, cannot be excluded. Nothing I have said, of course, is intended to disparage the importance of the deterrent. Deterrence is vital. It reduces the likelihood of general war, but it does not eliminate the possibility. Therefore, we must both insure against the contingency of war, and try to limit the damage in case it comes.

But can counterforce and urban defense do any good? Against an intelligent and serious enemy possessing the great advantage of secrecy possible for a dictatorship, I do not think these measures can prevent catastrophic damage with any assurance. On the other hand, even if the enemy attack is well planned, I believe they can limit the damage. Contrary to many statements current now, a study of sensible Russian strategies of surprise attack shows that generally such strategies involve using very much less than the total of Russian forces in the first wave. This is important among other reasons to avoid giving warning. For this reason alone it is unlikely that, given a rational enemy strategy, all the birds will have flown, that all the bomber and missile bases will be empty. There is another reason. As we shall discuss in connection with the third element of the "finite deterrence" theory, a rational strategy, both for ourselves and for the enemy, requires the ability to pose a military threat not only before the opening strike but after it. Since this means reserving some military force, there is likely to be something to counter for this reason alone.

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But the enemy's strategy may not be rational, and this too could provide an opportunity for counterforce. For example, the enemy bases might be poorly protected, and while we should not count on this, we should be able to exploit such errors if they occur. Even if his missile bases are very much better protected than his bomber bases, the elimination of the bombers alone has considerable significance, since it can be shown that the use of bombers in conjunction with missiles by him can result in especially extensive and heavy damage. The attack also may be poorly planned and coordinated, in which case it will be especially liable to disruption and attrition by both our offense and our defense. This is particularly likely, moreover, in the event of outbreak as the result of accident or miscalculation, one of the eventualities that cannot be excluded by the deterrent. Under any of these circumstances, a well designed cooperation of counterforce and active and passive defense can make a significant difference in the size of the disaster suffered by our population. When I say this I have in mind the difference, say, between 50 and 150 million dead. I know this difference will seem much too modest to impress some of you. Just what, I have been asked, is the difference between two such unimaginable disasters as 50 and 150 million Americans dead? The only answer to that is 100 million. And this magnitude does seem to me to be a justification for an attempt to reduce the damage to our population.

Some of the current confusion about the counterforce stems from a failure to distinguish, once again, between the demands of a first strike and those of a second strike. To strike first deliberately calls for the ability to destroy a high proportion of the enemy's retaliatory forces, leaving only remnants which might be contained within acceptable bounds by active and passive defense. But a second-strike counterforce has more modest goals. Here we want simply to come out as well as we can. To prevent this making ferry trips and dropping bombs at leisure on the countryside, we need an ability to disrupt his attacks and maintain some semblance of defense, which is itself well enough protected to last as long as his attacks are coming.

The argument I have outlined is quite different from the one put forward by defenders of the counterforce who regard counterforce capability as simply part of the deterrent to general war, in fact, its foundation. "Deterrence" is definitely an okay word, and therefore we tend to include under this head almost anything we might want to advocate -- even some things that work against the deterrent. Both counterforce and the active and passive defense of cities carry with them some danger of destabilizing the balance. It may appear paradoxical that city defense could under some circumstances introduce an element of instability, increase, in some degree, the probability of being attacked. On the other hand, it is more widely understood that a counterforce capable of preventing the enemy's retaliation might provoke him to aggression unless we could assure our own retaliation. However, the same reasoning suggests that an active or passive defense substantial enough to play a key role along with counterforce in precluding retaliation might also have a key role in upsetting the balance. Our retaliatory strike, since it would be launched after his aggression, will damage him less than if we struck first. Stability depends, therefore, not only on the relative degree of damage that he would suffer, but also on his belief as to the relative

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likelihood of these two events, his assessment of the odds on whether we will strike first or wait to strike back. He may think that we are less likely to wait if, by striking first, we can preclude his doing extensive damage. Up to now in these remarks I have not emphasized this very troubling problem.

Insofar as we can limit the damage to ourselves we reduce his ability to deter us and, therefore, his confidence that we will not strike first. But since striking first is nearly always preferable to striking second, decreasing his confidence in *our* not striking increases the likelihood of *his* doing so. And so any attempt to limit the catastrophe if it comes also, in some degree, invites it, that is, introduces a destabilizing element.

We need a combination of counterforce, active defense and civil defense of cities as insurance, in case deterrence fails. At the same time this contingent capability places an extra burden on the deterrent itself. This is just one other example of the complexity of the problem of war in the thermo-nuclear age. But if such a contingent capability can be large enough to be worthwhile, as I believe it can be, might it *not* be large enough to remove his power to deter us? I have said that counterforce and a hardened urban defense might make the difference between 50 and 150 million dead. The answer to the question of destabilization is that the lower limit of some 50 million to which we might aspire is still a catastrophe so large that we would hardly undertake it lightly. If, as I believe, it is factually the case that an intelligent and serious enemy, bent on maintaining his power to deter us, still can make sure that the catastrophe to us will lie in the interval of 50 to 150 million dead, then the amount of instability introduced by the counterforce and by city defenses is no more than tolerable. Furthermore, it increases the credibility that in the event that we are attacked we will actually use a significant part of our retaliatory force to destroy what the enemy values most if our retaliatory force is large enough and well protected enough to do this and also to limit to some extent the destruction of what we value. Suppose we were to have a marginal capability barely able to damage his cities beyond an amount which he regards as tolerable. Would he believe that we would divert none of this force to limit the size of the catastrophe to ourselves? And that we would reserve none of it? Perhaps. But it would be safer if we made it clear to him that we have some capability to do all three. To sum up, a counterforce capability and the active and passive defense of cities is compatible with the ability to deter a well planned surprise attack. This is true in part because the insurance it provides is limited. It does not really remove his ability to deter us except in extreme circumstances. Second, as a supplement to our ability to attack cities, it can make our deterrent threat more credible by suggesting that we can threaten him without completely abandoning all attempt to limit the size of the disaster to ourselves. Third, counterforce and urban defense are vital because deterrence may fail.

Advocates of the finite deterrence theory sometimes have made another point quite distinct from the two principal ones that I have discussed so far. I am thinking of the view that retaliation should be controlled in the sense that we should leave some of the enemy's cities undamaged by our first

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responses so that we can threaten the remainder as a means of concluding the war. I agree with this view and think it extremely important. The war may start by accident or design, and we have to take seriously the problem of terminating it, just as we must face the problem of limiting damage to ourselves in the event that war occurs. Moreover, it will be obvious that I consider a policy of controlling retaliation against enemy cities quite compatible with a sensibly administered strategy of limiting damage to our own cities by means of counterforce and urban defense. In fact, the process of bringing the war to an end as favorable as possible for ourselves will depend on the comparative ability of each side to do further damage to the other. Destroying part of his military force while maintaining a continuing capability to defend ourselves against the rest of it will improve our bargaining position in terminating the war. Belief in the need to control retaliation is entirely compatible with advocating counterforce and urban defense. (On the other hand, it is not consistent with the arguments made by the theorists of finite deterrence that an enemy presumed also to be rational will have expended his entire force in an opening blow and therefore will leave nothing to attack.)

But in the requirement to control retaliation the problem of preserving control is most evident. By definition, controlled retaliation implies continuing control. As I have suggested, this is a critically difficult problem. The problem of preserving control over our own forces is grave even for the minimal function of an initial retaliatory strike. It is still more serious for the problem of fighting the war to an end. One unnoticed part of the latter problem is the need to preserve not only our own control but elements of the enemy's control over his forces if the termination of the war is to be made effective. All of this has implications for the problems of target selection and war planning. The simple contrast between city busting and counterforce as rational alternatives will not bear up under examination. We cannot pick one of these alternatives and develop a reasonable plan for any single set of conditions at the outbreak of war, still less under the large variety of circumstances of outbreak that are possible. To deter a well planned surprise attack, we must be able to threaten his cities. To conclude the war on the best terms possible, we need to preserve some of his cities at the outset so that we can continue to threaten until war is concluded. That the termination of war may be effective, we have to think of the problem of communicating with his decision centers and his vehicles. To limit damage to ourselves as well as to conclude the war, we must make his military forces and specifically his delivery vehicles our target. Finally, we need the ability to control our response so that we can act on broadly different plans adaptable to broadly different circumstances of outbreak.

It will be evident from the preceding that the problem of controlling retaliation to help conclude the war complicates quite a bit the already hard task of assuring enough retaliation to deter the initial surprise attack. More than anything else, it makes it apparent that deterring general war is not easy.

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One upshot of this consideration of the finite deterrence controversy, then, is that we have other objectives in the general war area besides deterring general war. If deterrence fails, we want to limit damage and to conclude the war as favorably as we can. In what follows I shall concentrate on the problem of deterrence, but I shall also mention some of the requirements in achieving these other two goals.

A second outcome: enemy counters are always "finite." Some are too large to be feasible. It is important to test our programs against all enemy counters which are feasible -- that is, within his capacity to choose.

It follows from this analysis that, both for deterring and fighting a general war, relatively more emphasis must be placed on what are usually considered the supporting parts of the system rather than on the vehicles themselves -- on the basing and protection of the vehicle by mobility or hardening or concealment or dispersal and, in particular, on the problem of preserving for the duration the flow of information to and from centers of decision. For the counterforce mission, we need a bolder effort to obtain intelligence before the outbreak about the number and location of enemy forces, including a greatly increased reconnaissance effort.

In both the early and late 1960's we will have to spend a lot more money for communications, command, and control than we do now. Our soft, fixed control centers will need replacement by mixtures of extremely hard and mobile centers; our soft land-lines and radio at frequencies subject to blackout need replacing by mixtures of hardened land-lines and line-of-sight radio back-ups, both airborne and in space, using radio frequencies that cannot be blacked out. At the same time, to reduce the chance of accident, control over the increasing number of increasingly dispersed weapons should be made more effective and subject to responsible decision -- perhaps by the extensive use of locking devices requiring coded combinations from responsible military commands for their release.

In the early period, to improve the deterrent, we should disperse the highly concentrated B-47's to domestic fields on an emergency basis, in an operation modeled on SAC's overseas "Reflex," fly an emergency airborne alert of B-52's, and, both to deter and to fight a general war, we will need to increase the number of hardened delivery vehicles more rapidly than is presently intended. This can be accomplished in several ways. One of several would include a sharp acceleration in the production of hardened Atlas missiles and the sheltering of some of our bombers. Moreover, we should expand the Polaris program. For the purpose of fighting a war and limiting damage to the United States, our defenses need to be protected from attack. This means, in particular, that vehicles, data processing, and communications for defense need to be hardened and dispersed.

Three sorts of programs were outlined by Mr. Wohlstetter. One, the program committed so far by the government. Two, the sorts of program usually recommended by critics of the government program, which, however, are essentially minor perturbations in that program: a proportional increase in one

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or the other favored parts of the force or help at one of the half-dozen or so hurdles to retaliation. Three, programs for "systems survival" -- to get over all the hurdles. Mr. Wohlstetter stated he would present two variants of such a systems survival program, a small and a large. As for the first two sorts of program, (1) that so far committed will not meet some expected future threats, (2) programs that make only minor perturbations in what has so far been committed can be countered by reallocation of Soviet effort which are within the bounds of uncertainty as to his projected capability. On the other hand, the system survival programs, which can be described only very grossly, can, it appears, at a cost feasible to ourselves, force in-feasibly large Soviet expenditures to counter.

What makes the problem severe and excludes any very simple remedy is that there are large and intrinsic uncertainties in our expectations of enemy force structure and performance. It is our practice to take some single number as indicating the amount of the given vehicle type the enemy may have. Sometimes a small range is allowed for error on either side. But we do not face up to the full range of uncertainty in these numbers. Many of them are still subject to his future choice which can confound a posture of ours designed on the assumption that he would not make this choice. We must look at the choices open to the Russians to interpose difficulties at each of all the half-dozen barriers to retaliation which I have enumerated.

Several such Russian choices were outlined. (1) An expansion of their offensive ballistic missile force -- this would effectively counter any program of ours which simply increased the number of points which the Russians would have to hit by a proportionate increase in our own force or by simple dispersal. (2) An expansion of their local defense surface-to-air missile capability -- this is an effective counter to a program of ours which sacrificed most of our bombers in order to get a small number over Russian territory. The Russian equivalent of a Nike, Hercules or Hawk program costing $800 million a year was described as having an interesting kill potential against a small bomber force penetrating singly. (3) The development of an anti-ballistic missile defense for the first 125 cities in the Soviet Union, costing the equivalent of $2 billion a year, might have an interesting kill potential against our own early ballistic missiles, given a modest offensive force of our own subjected to disruption and problems in coordination unless a vigorous program of penetration aids had been pursued. (4) A patrol of aircraft, using air-to-surface missiles with infrared and radar ranging, might locate submarines after the first firing in time to prevent the completion of the firing of most of the remainder. (5) A variety of simple measures of civil defense are available to the aggressor, some at very little cost. If the Russians simply have their urban population start walking at the scheduled time of explosion of their own bombs in our country, this is a quite effective counter to many of our simple programs.

Mr. Wohlstetter then sketched a smaller and a larger program for systems survival. The smaller program, which may be only marginally adequate, if adequate at all, would add about $2 billion a year. The larger program would add costs of some $2 1/2 to $3 billion a year on the average of a

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four-year period. The smaller program would increase current plans for ICBM procurement by about 40 per cent by 1963, disperse these missiles, one to a site, and at least double the planned degree of blast resistance. This would nearly quadruple the number of hard ICBM points. The larger program would nearly double the ICBM force projected by 1963 and would increase the Polaris program. Both the small and large programs would involve an airborne alert and shelters for the heavy bombers with modification of these bombers for short take-off. In the larger program, up to almost two-thirds of the heavies would be protected. Both programs involve cutting the B-47's by 1963 to something less than one-third of the current force but dispersing the remainder so as to put the B-47's on nearly triple the number of points on which they are now stationed. The larger program would, among other things, put in place by 1963 a very great number of vehicles constituting about 7 or 8 times as many independent points as are presently planned -- most of them very hard. Mr. Wohlstetter outlined several measures to harden political and military control centers and the communication to and from these centers, but stressed that this program as described was only partial and the problem was not yet completely solved even in principle. Both programs would involve an increased use of aids to penetration of enemy defenses.

## Discussion

**Mr. Quigg:** How are cost calculations of Soviet posture made?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** In a very gross way, by analogy with U.S. costs for corresponding military systems and with some gross adjustments for major differences in U.S. and Soviet circumstances. For example, some adjustments are made for differences in cost associated with the pay and housing of personnel. The costs may be first estimated in dollars and then in rubles.

**Mr. Amory:** The dollar-ruble ratio most often used is that of 4 1/2 to one.

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** At RAND we have found that in most cases the comparisons analyzed are not very sensitive to the dollar-ruble ratio used. This is so because we are analyzing alternative Russian resource allocations which might be made to counter some specific posture of our own. And since the alternative Russian programs compared invariably have large industry components in common, they are not greatly affected by industry-to-industry variations in the dollar-ruble ratio.

**Mr. J.A. Perkins:** How about anti-ICBM's? Where do they fit into these programs?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** I am talking now only of systems survival, and here anti-ICBM's do not play a substantial role. The issue is problematic. It's still in the "idea stage." Further, one ought to have some sort of defense without warning. A zero-warning case has recently become a realistic possibility.

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The anti-ICBM problem does not play a vital role in the problem we have discussed tonight. It is surprising how pervasive the inclination to think solely in terms of a second strike is. The situation is more complex than the requirements of a second retaliatory strike. Defense against a retaliatory strike is a very different thing.

**Mr. J.A. Perkins:** The discussion tonight would be greatly stimulated, I'm sure, if the most important questions raised in our minds by Albert Wohlstetter's incisive talk were formulated at this point.

**Mr. C.D. Perkins:** I should like clarification of the "small" and "large" programs. Would the "small" programs suffice for now? Should other elements be added. (Answer: "Yes.")

**Mr. Conant:** The panel could profitably discuss the political consequences, especially insofar as they affect our allies, of the United States decision to rely on a "second strike strategy."

**Mr. Fischer:** Is any system of alliances dependable, given the necessity of the defense systems here envisioned? I should like to discuss more fully the administrative and political obstacles to the programs just discussed.

**Admiral Miller:** I would be interested in a more detailed discussion of the problem of communication.

**Mr. Morgenthau:** A clearer definition of the problems of control, command and particularly intelligence is vital. What kind of intelligence is needed to keep the programs up to date?

**Mr. Altschul:** Shouldn't we address ourselves to the problem of how to reduce the catastrophic casualties incurred even in a successful program?

**Mr. Foster:** The problem of communication seems one of the most crucial and should be discussed fully. How do we decide to decide?

**General Bonesteel:** I should like to raise the question of whether we ought to ponder these problems -- whether it is within the compass of this group to fruitfully do so, given the relative lack of information vital to the discussion. Perhaps we should explore the avenues through which informed public opinion such as that represented here can reach the decision-makers and therefore become immediately effective.

**Mr. Quigg:** I would like to have further amplification on whether we possess a balanced system. Are these systems, as they were presented here tonight, complete?

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**Mr. Mosely:** I think that it is important to fully analyze the gap between first- and second-strike capabilities not only as things stand now, but also in terms of 1965. Will this gap narrow? What predictions can be made accurately?

**General Donnelly:** It will help to clarify the essential differences between "small" and "large" programs. What will each actually do?

**Mr. Gilpartic:** I question such a total reliance on the statistical method in our approach to this approach. What weight should be given to psychological and political factors? What of the human element in decision-making? These points ought to be amplified.

**Mr. Kissinger:** It would be profitable to discuss the degree of certainty the attacker must have before successful aggression can prove relatively successful. What degree of psychological certainty must he have? Further, how does this analysis relate to problems of a) diplomacy, b) disarmament?

**Mr. J.A. Perkins:** How much of our deterrent capability and to what degree and in how much detail should we allow the Kremlin to know, or rather how much of it should we make sure that the Soviets _do_ get to know?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** Three basic themes seem to develop from the questions directed at my remarks:

1. The need to add to the examples of necessary measures already offered.

2. From the point of view of the services, do the programs now being contemplated include the items discussed in number one?

3. How can control and command be properly examined?

Lastly, how can these points be considered adequately so that the programs envisioned for 1961-1965 improve our deterrent posture?

**Mr. J.A. Perkins:** Has the matter of missile detection been discussed?

**Mr. Foster:** Much of this discussion has dealt in "absolute." I am much concerned with "relatives." They should be discussed.

**Mr. C.D. Perkins:** We must have not only a deterrent posture, but a winning program also.

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** Almost anything which is done in deterrence will also help to build a "winning" program. However, some things are required for the prosecution of the war and to aid its termination favorably to ourselves in addition to those things we do merely to assure retaliation. My remarks have been focused primarily on deterrence. And in fact, have been deliberately incomplete even on this subject. This is the answer to Mr. Quigg's question about the completeness of the systems I sketched. As I

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warned at the outset, I could only describe the kinds of things that need
doing and illustrate them. But even if I had given a completer description
of the programs needed to assure an objective basis for deterrence, it is
important to keep in mind, as Mr. Perkins suggests, that more is involved
in an adequate posture for general war than simply deterrence.

**Mr. Kissinger:** Are you then just discussing second-strike capability and first-strike defense posture only?

**Mr. Gaither:** You are not discussing post-war political conditions? my

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** In/answer to the finite deterrence theory, I describe some of the objectives of our military posture for general war in addition to the goal of maintaining a posture which is calculated to make a deliberate enemy attack less probable. In the category of additional objectives, I included limiting the size of the disaster to our civil society in case deterrence failed and bringing the war to as favorable a conclusion as possible from the standpoint of the United States. My description of the requirements for these other objectives was considerably less complete than my description of the requirements for deterrence itself -- and I have already stressed that my description of the deterrence program was only an outline.

**Mr. J.A. Perkins:** Nevertheless, could you amplify your remarks in general terms?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** The larger program involves roughly doubling the ICBM force by 1963, dispersing it singly, and hardening to a degree double that presently planned. The Polaris program would be increased. The B-47's would be cut by two-thirds and dispersed in an operation modeled on the current SAC reflex method. The latter is used overseas; this would be used within the United States on emergency fields. Other elements of the program include short take-off for the B-52's; zero launch for the B-58's; for up to two-thirds of the B-52's, keeping some airborne and the remainder on the ground alert in shelters, with some two clusters of hard points per base. Other elements of the program include an added emphasis on penetration aids for both our bombers and our ballistic missiles and, in particular, penetration aids that work under the unfavorable conditions of retaliation. Under the head of command and control, more hardened control centers, the hardening of some 30,000 route miles of the existing telephone network, using underground repeater points, switching points, and eliminating overhead river crossings. The hardened control centers will need more facilities for displaying the evolving situation and the decision-makers will require prefabricated alternative plans adapted to the grossly different circumstances of the outbreak and development of the war. Finally, for the problem of getting word to mobile forces not connected by land-lines, there are several alternatives in R&D that may help.

**Mr. Morgenthau:** Is it technologically possible to receive reports from a Polaris-carrying submarine about its target "kills"? And in terms of human factors?

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**Mr. Wohlstetter:** As I have stressed, the problem of communication with mobile forces of all sorts is extremely difficult. Suggestions have been made for its solution and there is a large program of research at the present time directed at this problem. However, there are large uncertainties as of this date.

**Mr. J.A. Perkins:** This seems a logical point in the discussion to seek the opinions of the three services represented on the panel.

**Admiral Miller:** It would seem that Albert Wohlstetter is suggesting a high degree of survival across the whole board. The retaliatory force is what is left after the first attack, right?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** What I have tried to emphasize is that it is important not merely to consider the problem of having vehicles survive the enemy offensive. Considering this problem is something of an advance on previous discussion, but it is still only part of the problem, just one of the hurdles to successful retaliation. It is important to get over **all** the hurdles.

**Admiral Miller:** It should be pointed out that there should be enough left over to stop a third party from getting the spoils afterwards.

It seems that in principle at least the question of survival is more important than "hardening." Is it possible, for example, to "harden" an airfield?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** Yes, it is. Let's take the B-58's. It's possible to shelter a B-58 for less than $1 million in a shelter that is simpler than one required for an ICBM. This kind of shelter involves no elevator but a ramp from which the craft can be zero-launched, so that it takes off like a missile.

Secondly, ground shock problems, which are serious for both bombers and missiles are actually somewhat easier to solve for bombers. There are other problems in common to both bombers and missiles, but, by and large, there is no reason to believe that missiles can be hardened and bombers cannot.

**Mr. J.A. Perkins:** How near to the program outlined by Albert Wohlstetter is the program projected by the Navy? Both Polaris and the submarine must be increased, I take it. Command and control is also relevant.

**Admiral Miller:** We do not plan to double the Polaris program. It could be done but it is currently impracticable for it would interfere with other plans. However, it could be possible to turn out more Polaris missiles and put them on surface crafts as well as on submarines without increasing the latter's numbers. This might be feasible.

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Command and control has always been a problem for the Navy. It used to be traditional that we could operate without immediate orders, but today this picture is changing rapidly. There is a shift toward very great control by the center.

In absence of orders, indoctrination is the only thing to fall back on. Does this bring us back to political aims? Hence great flexibility of plans is necessary in the absence of communication. This should be discussed.

**General Donnelly:** The degree of deterrence depends on how effective our degree of vulnerability is. The higher the confidence capability of a United States second strike, the less likely a Russian first strike. We must have a deterrent force capable of absorbing the damage inflicted by an enemy first strike and still retaliate with an effective second strike.

In order to accomplish this, more intelligence and more warning are needed. More funds should be allocated for this aspect of deterrence. Currently this is at a critical stage for ICBM's. Many programs now under consideration are still flexible.

Bombers and airborne alert is under consideration by the Air Force, but the procedure is rather expensive and is carried out only when the Air Force feels that it is necessary.

B-47's are getting to be rather obsolescent vehicles. The "heavies," on the other hand, have many attractive features.

**Command and control:** The crucial thing is for us to get the decision. When do you press the button? Intelligence warning and decision are the two critical unknowns.

**General Bonesteel:** The problem seems to me much more profound than gadgets or decision. Survival will depend greatly on our moral fiber. Another fundamental problem is revision of the budget system. Inter-service rivalry is the most dangerous thing for survival of the free world. This problem should be tackled in Washington, D.C. All through this problem are to be found factors of parochial interest that really get down to fundamental issues.

Wouldn't it be better for this group to do something about the political aspect of the problem, both in the Capital and abroad? For example, should the United States let Iraq go Communist?

This group might contribute significantly if it viewed and analyzed the total problem of leadership in our body politic.

**Mr. J.A. Perkins:** The panel is now open to the discussion of general questions.

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**Admiral Miller:** I agree with Charles Bonesteel. How do we get rid of the "sacred cows"? We might work it out in forty or fifty years or blast it out now. You can deter with missiles and airplanes, but the great deterrent is the will and the loyalty of the people.

**Mr. Fischer:** I hope that we might bring into focus some of the more crucial political problems, but the problem is so complex that it's difficult to know where to start.

**General Donnelly:** We are really confronted with a struggle for men's minds. We must have clear national objectives. We must know what we are dying for. Otherwise we will always be forced to take a defensive attitude. First we must decide what our ideals are clearly, then we must attempt to sell them.

**General Bonesteel:** Men also die without a clear-cut objective if they have good leadership. Our problem is one of re-evaluation of our basic ideals. One of the more indispensable future problems is the analysis of our goals. Aren't we doing the right program at the wrong time?

**Mr. Gilpatric:** The cogent problems within our military establishment will not be resolved until the problems of political leadership itself are solved first. Let's not become so obsessed with technological problems that we lose sight of fundamentals.

**Mr. J.A. Perkins:** Can we summarize the response of the military as making a plea for ironing out the bottlenecks operating in the public machinery first?

**Admiral Miller:** I don't want to mislead. My view is that the military services could do the job better if they knew what they were supposed to do. To return to tonight's main topic of discussion presented by Albert Wohlstetter -- isn't dispersal more important than "hardening"?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** It is not a question of choosing dispersal or hardening. The program that I outlined involves both. The additional missiles were to be singly dispersed as well as hardened to twice the planned resistance. The B-47's are suggested for dispersal without hardening. But there are limits to the amount that can be accomplished by dispersal alone, and limits to the amount of dispersal that can be obtained for vehicles such as the B-47. The latter has a problem of runways. Hardening and dispersal complement each other. For example, the hardening of the ICBM's reduces the amount of separation required to make two such missiles two independent targets. Hardening therefore makes unit dispersal very much less expensive.

**Mr. Kissinger:** Is it possible to create a second-strike capability which does not look to the opponent like a first-strike posture?

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**Mr. Wohlstetter:** It's difficult. A force with a second-strike capability can be used in general to strike first. On the other hand, a force which has no capability for striking second can only be used to strike first. Such a force, therefore, looks or may look quite different to the opponent.

**Mr. Morgenthau:** Is there a great difference, technologically, between a first- and second-strike capability?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** Yes, there is. It's possible to have a first-strike capability without having a second-strike capability at all.

**Mr. Morgenthau:** Can one have a second-strike capability without having a first?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** Yes, with cooperation from one's opponent. I take it you mean here a capability to strike first so as effectively to eliminate the defender's retaliatory force. If the defender is sufficiently careless, you can have an effective first-strike capability. On the other hand, it is quite possible, if both sides are careful, that both sides might have an effective second-strike capability in the sense that they might administer great damage in retaliation and yet neither side might have the capability by striking first to prevent retaliation. In this sense, both would have a second-strike capability without an effective or preclusive first-strike capability. The Soviet Union is aware of the value of the iron curtain in concealing its military installations. On the other hand, we do know quite a deal about the location of some of their offensive forces.

**Admiral Miller:** Doesn't it bear directly on target problems?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** Quite true! But we do know that the Soviet Union has a large medium bomber force which takes a lot of staging to attack the United States, and it is not hard to figure out what staging areas are important to make this medium bomber force effective against us. We know many other things, too.

**Mr. J.A. Perkins:** Isn't it possible that first- and second-strike talk is just the kind of thing that goes with "war gaming"? Aren't the situations which you cited in your talk frequently cases in which the war starts as the result of miscalculation, or in which one side attempts to forestall a blow which has just been getting started or has not yet started?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** In answer to your first point, I think that you are quite correct in saying that there are a large variety of contingencies in which it would be difficult to say that one side is striking first and the other second. There are many cases in which one might strike "almost" first and surely many in which the opening strike was abortive or poorly planned. However, the cases of a pure, deliberate first strike (which of course implies as a converse for the other side a pure retaliatory or second strike) are real and have a unique significance. The distinction between the first- and second-strike capability is an important one in fact, and not

- 20 -

just for games. We can find historical examples of well-planned first strikes which eliminated large parts of a retaliatory force. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is an example of a deliberate first strike that accomplished its purpose. The forces that we deployed at Pearl Harbor could have done harm if they had struck first, but were extremely vulnerable to attack. What gives the deliberate first strike case its unique importance is that, in an obvious sense it is the case whose occurrence we can most influence by our own posture. We want to select a posture which, when our enemy makes a series of calculations on the possibility of attack, forces him to a negative conclusion. And we would like his calculations *always* clearly to indicate that the consequences of his attack would be worse than the consequences of any of several other alternatives open to him. If on the contrary we adopt a posture which makes attack at some juncture look like the least risky of several unpleasant alternatives, we increase the likelihood of his actually adopting such a course. In answer to your second point about how this affects our posture, the existence of both the extremes of "pure" first- and second-strike capabilities and the "in-betweens" means that on the one hand we want to be sure that we have a protected power to strike back to discourage a pure, calculated first strike and, on the other hand, we also want to have a capability, in the in-between cases in particular, for using counterforce and active and passive defense to limit damage.

**Mr. Gaither:** What is your working definition of deterrent?

**Mr. Morgenthau:** What is the difference between a counterforce capability and a second-strike capability?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** By a deterrent, in context of this discussion of general war, I mean an objective capability, visible to the enemy, to survive a deliberately planned thermonuclear attack and to respond to it by inflicting damage greater than any likely gain from the attack. I use the word "damage" here. I do not restrict the prospective damage, as is commonly the case, to the aggressor's civil society. Specifically, the damage promised may include elements of his military power since the aggressor values these as well. What is essential to a deterrent is that it involves a second-strike capability to damage something the aggressor values greatly and that this capability be such as to make the risks of aggression worse than the risks of any alternative course of action that may present itself to the enemy.

As for the distinction between a counterforce and a second-strike capability, "counterforce" refers simply to the objects of the attack, namely military forces and specifically strategic forces. The phrase "second-strike capability" has to do with the order in which the opposing countries strike and has nothing to do in essentials with the targets of attack. In fact, it is usual to associate striking second, or retaliation, with attacks on cities and to associate counterforce with striking first. Neither of these associations is essential, in fact; as I have stressed in the talk, a second-strike capability to attack military forces can limit the damage to one's own civil society. This is especially true in the event of a war in which the opening attack was the result of miscalculation.

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**Mr. J.A. Perkins:** Then vehicles needed for military and civilian targets are the same?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** The vehicles used in military and civilian targets, despite some opinion to the contrary, I believe would be largely the same. Different plans for their use are involved, naturally, but I believe that a weapons system which is specialized for use against cities might be subject to countermeasures of various sorts, for example in the form of civil defense. For this reason I doubt very much that optimal systems will be pure counterforce or pure city-busting. In any case, today I think it is fairly clear that our current weapons systems, both missiles and aircraft, would have a use to attack both sorts of targets.

**Mr. Altschul:** Would you explain the misinterpretation of Soviet military doctrine which you mentioned earlier?

**Mr. Wohlstetter:** One support for the view that deterrence is not very difficult is found in a new version of the Balance of Terror theory, which has it that even if the Soviets could deliver a surprise attack which precluded our effective response, they would not -- essentially because Soviet doctrine excludes preventive war. Much of this analysis of Soviet doctrine is based on a rather literal reading of Russian unclassified texts. Of this it can be said that it seems naive to take at face value any distinction made between "preemption" and "prevention," even if it were made in much more closely guarded texts than any available to us. One could hardly expect an explicit avowal of an intention to wage preventive war. But in any case, these predictions of Soviet behavior are suspect because they are unconditional. They do not envision circumstances in which unpleasant alternatives are thrust upon the Russians. However, predictions of enemy intentions must be contingent on the alternatives confronting him. They will also depend strongly, though not exclusively, on the specifics of our posture and that of the enemy.

The meeting adjourned at 10:00 p.m.

Ciro Elliott Zoppo

Rapporteur

Meeting of
April 24, 1959.

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

Discussion Group on
Political and Strategic Problems of Deterrence

Questions for Discussion

1. Have passive defense measures a significant role in this country's strategic deterrent?

2. In view of widespread apprehension of the effect of a nuclear exchange, would a substantial passive defense program convince the public of a high survival rate?

3. What evidence is there of Soviet passive defense programs and are these related to their doctrines of "deterrence"?

4. Is there any passive defense program undertaken by NATO or one of our major allies?

5. Is it a risk for the United States to implement a passive defense program in view of a possible Soviet military reaction?

6. In the relationship of passive defense to the strategic deterrent, would an American program without a NATO counterpart be significant?

7. Passive (including civil) defense programs usually have a nuclear exchange in view; how useful would current suggestions be against a chemical or biological attack?

Meeting of
April 24, 1959.

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

Questions for Discussion

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

Discussion Group on

Second Meeting

April 24, 1959

James A. Perkins, Chairman - Carnegie Corporation of New York
Herman Kahn, Discussion Leader - Princeton University
Henry A. Kissinger, Research Director - Harvard University
Ciro E. Zoppo, Rapporteur - Columbia University

Frank Altschul - General American Investors Corporation
Robert Amory, Jr. - Central Intelligence Agency
Brigadier General Charles H. Bonesteel - Department of the Army
Melvin Conant - Council on Foreign Relations
Major General Harold C. Donnelley - Department of the Air Force
George S. Franklin, Jr. - Council on Foreign Relations
Roswell L. Gilpatric - Cravath, Swaine & Moore
Townsend Hoopes - Cresap, McCormick & Paget
Joseph E. Johnson - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Rear Admiral William Miller - Department of the Navy
Hans Morgenthau - Institute for Advanced Study
Philip W. Quigg - Foreign Affairs
Dean Rusk - The Rockefeller Foundation
Albert Wohlstetter - The RAND Corporation

THE HAROLD PRATT HOUSE 58 EAST 68TH STREET
NEW YORK 21, N. Y.

April 29, 1959

The next meeting of the Discussion Group on the Political and Strategic Problems of Deterrence will take place on Tuesday, May 19th. Dr. Henry A. Kissinger will lead the discussion, and the subject will be U.S. Alliances and Deterrent Strategy. As usual, the meeting will begin at 5:30, with tea at 5:15, and will continue, with a break for dinner, until around 9:30 or 10:00. Would you please let us know whether to expect you?

Dr. Kahn has provided reprints of his article, "How Many Can Be Saved?" from the January 1959 (no. 1) issue of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for distribution to those who were present at the meeting on April 24th. A copy is enclosed herewith.

Please return enclosed card or
call Miss Stein at LEhigh 5-3300.

# How Many Can Be Saved?

HERMAN KAHN

THE general belief persists today that an all-out thermonuclear war would inevitably result in mutual annihilation, and that nothing can be done to make it otherwise. Even those who do not believe in total annihilation often do believe that the shock effect of the casualties, the immediate destruction of wealth, and the long-term deleterious effects of fallout would inevitably jeopardize the survival of civilization.

A study recently carried out by the author and a number of his colleagues at RAND, and privately financed by The RAND Corporation, has reached conclusions that seriously question these beliefs.¹ While a thermonuclear war would be a catastrophe—in some ways an unprecedented catastrophe—it would still be a limited catastrophe. Even more important, the limits on the magnitude of the catastrophe might be sharply dependent on what prewar measures had been taken. The study suggests that for the next ten or fifteen years, and perhaps for much longer, feasible combinations of military and nonmilitary defense measures can come pretty close to preserving a reasonable semblance of our prewar society.

As long as we think of a thermonuclear war as a sort of end of history, we may not feel acutely uncomfortable about placing all of our reliance either on deterrence or on measures to alleviate tension, as this seems to be all we can do. We may also feel that if war auto-

*Herman Kahn is in the Physics Division of the RAND Corporation.*

matically means mutual annihilation surely no one would start one. However, as soon as we realize that it is technically and economically possible to alleviate the consequences of a war, then some of these psychological blocks to consideration of additional actions should disappear. The measures suggested by this study are not substitutes for adequate deterrent forces nor for sensible attempts to alleviate tension. They are insurance against the possible failure of these first priority measures and a complement to them.

Our study was not a large effort. It was done by a team of about 20 professionals, drawn from various fields, who worked an average of four months on this problem. We tried to answer or define all the serious questions about nonmilitary defense. Obviously we could not examine these questions in great depth and detail; thus, the numbers the study produced might well change with further investigation. The results, however, are plausible and should be far better than most intuitive feelings and preconceptions about this critical subject.

## Description of the Possibilities

Our analysis has brought forth the following results. While it is suggested that these be re-examined by a more complete study, we have sufficient confidence in them to suggest a 500 million dollar program, described later. Roughly we decided that:

> There are a number of combinations of military and nonmilitary measures which could provide valuable levels of protection in a nuclear war. The level of protection depends on the size of the program and the nature and magnitude of the attack. Inexpensive measures designed to insure national survival in an all-out war of the early '60's might be fairly cheap and relatively reliable—something of the order of a billion dollars or a fraction thereof should be sufficient. More complete programs,

¹ Report on a Study of Nonmilitary Defense, the RAND Corporation Report R-322-RC, July 1, 1958.

30

designed to protect more than the most easily protected people, would be more expensive. Because such programs cost in the tens of billions of dollars, they are automatically controversial. However, we believe that at least the inexpensive programs should be carried out—so that if a war should occur the majority of our population would not only survive the war but would be able to restore some semblance of prewar society quite rapidly. In a war of the early '70's, even minimum measures to insure survival might be expensive (in the tens of billions) and probably less reliable. (Cost and performance change with time because the enemy threat changes.) However, at least a start should be made in preparing such measures.

Oversimplifying a bit, one can say that during this 1960-70 period against a premeditated all-out surprise attack, moderate nonmilitary defense programs, if combined with reasonable military programs, should protect about half the population with high confidence, an additional one-fourth with medium confidence, and a final one-fourth with low confidence. A phased program might start with relatively cheap measures for 1960, develop into a minimum fallout program, and then possibly later into a quite adequate or "luxurious" program which included blast shelters. While the planning should be done on this basis, there need be no irrevocable commitments to go ahead with the next phase if for any reason it seemed desirable to slow the program down or stop it.

It should be noted that wars can start in a manner other than a premeditated all-out surprise attack, and in many of these cases even the incomplete programs might be very effective. Therefore, even if we are not willing to pay the cost for complete preparedness, we might be willing to initiate partial programs. These partial programs could be combined with prewar mobilization capabilities designed to put in an adequate program in a few years if the international situation deteriorates. It is plausible to consider such prewar mobilization capabilities because a country with a gross national product of about $500 billion and a construction industry whose capacity is close to $100 billion can contemplate doing things in a hurry if cheap but time-consuming preliminaries such as those involved in research, development, planning, analysis, design, programming, and legal hurdles have been eliminated.

In addition to protecting people from the immediate effects of the war, it is necessary to insure their survival in the postwar environment and then to restore prewar standards of living if possible. Our study also indicated that:

* Shelters with long occupancy time and the use of known anti-contamination techniques should make it possible to handle the acute radiation problem (during the first three months) from even severe attacks.

* With only moderate preparations in the early period

and more elaborate ones in the later, it should be possible to handle short-term (3-24 months) survival, patch-up, and repair problems.

Combinations of military and nonmilitary measures could protect enough capital to enable the economy to be restored to about half the prewar levels in the first year. The recuperation to prewar levels might be much faster (5-15 years) than has been generally supposed. In any case, if reasonable measures were taken the economy, on a per capita basis, would in all probability not drop below 1930-1940 levels, except perhaps in the first postwar year.

Long-lived radioactivity problems, while serious, could be alleviated to the extent that, in comparison with the direct effects of the war, they would have a relatively minor impact on the economy or personal life of the population. Subject to uncertainties, the same should be true of the genetic effects. Even though these may last for a thousand years, the burden on any single generation should only be a fractional increase over the current normal burden of congenital defects.

## Implications for Deterrence

U.S. national policy rests on a deterrent strategy. Presumably, deterrence of Soviet attack depends upon Soviet calculations of their risks vs. their chances of success. Our study distinguishes three types of deterrence in examining the implications of nonmilitary defense:

*Type I—Deterrence of a Direct Attack on the U.S.*
In this case any calculation the Soviets might make would assume they have the first strike and the U.S. strikes back with a damaged force. (Calculations ignoring the effects of the first strike and therefore based on the preattack inventory of forces can be very misleading.) The Soviets then ask themselves what damage they are likely to suffer before hostilities end. Here the Soviet Union's estimate of the effectiveness of their passive defense preparations may play a crucial role, and the U.S. should examine these to see what questions they raise. Presumably since the Soviets can count on warning, and because they need only defend themselves against a damaged force, even moderate preparations might be considered effective under some circumstances. It is not that the Soviets could reliably expect to be untouched, but that a situation might arise in which the Soviets might feel that going to war was the least risky of the available alternatives.

U.S. nonmilitary defense programs will probably have only a marginal effect on U.S. Type I deterrence. Be cause the war will almost undoubtedly be short and fought with existing stocks, civilian production and morale are unimportant to the military course of events. The chief importance of U.S. nonmilitary defense in this case resides in more or less accidental by-products such as protected communications, survival of off-duty personnel, greater ability to improvise and augment

31

SAC-type forces for second and later strikes, and possi-
bly most important of all, a resistance to post-attack
blackmail tactics which might otherwise succeed in at
least partially disarming our surviving SAC forces.

Type II—Deterrence of Extremely Provocative Behavior. The Soviets now ask themselves if they can force the U.S. to accept peacefully the consequences of some extremely provocative action (say a large-scale attack on Europe or a Munich-type crisis). They presumably ask themselves, “What is the U.S. risk-gain calculation?”—crediting the U.S. with the first strike. Under these circumstances, in which there has been a tense situation, the Soviet Union strikes second with a damaged force; and when U.S. warning problems have been simplified, even modest civil defense programs relying mainly on evacuation and improvisation might perform impressively enough to make it clear to the Soviet planner and to our allies that there is a good possibility, if not a certainty, that the U.S. would not accept the provocation peacefully. If the Soviets were not deterred then the U.S. might actually carry out an evacuation to try to persuade them to desist. If the evacuation did not persuade the Soviets to desist, then in this last resort the U.S. might decide that it was less risky to go to war than to acquiesce.

The ability and willingness of the U.S. to engage in
Type II deterrence activities will be strongly affected
by our Type I deterrence capabilities. Because using
Type II deterrence automatically strains our Type I de-
terrence (particularly if we try the evacuation maneu-
vers), we now need more of it. Almost all of the re-
marks made about Type II deterrence carry over to our
ability to wage and limit "limited wars."

Type II deterrence is, of course, symmetrical. There
is an enormous difference in the bargaining ability of a
country which can, for example, put its people in a
place of safety on 24 hours' notice, and one which can-
not. If it is hard for the reader to visualize this, let him
imagine a situation where the Russians had prepared for
exactly that and we had not. Then let him ask himself
how he thinks we would come out at a subsequent
Munich-type conference.

Type III—Deterrence of Moderately Provocative Actions. In this case it would be wishful thinking to expect deterrence to work most of the time. However, Soviet calculations which contemplate provoking the U.S. might be influenced by the existence of a U.S. plan for a crash nonmilitary defense program. If a Soviet provocation touched off such a U.S. program, then the Soviets would probably be forced either to match this program, accept a position of inferiority, or possibly even strike immediately. In all cases, the costs and risks to them of their provocation are increased. If this possibility is made clear and probable, the Soviets should include these costs and risks in their calculations. Our Type III deterrence is also af-

fected by Soviet nonmilitary defense programs be-
cause their willingness to be aggressive and their bar-
gaining ability may be influenced by the risks they run.

A converse effect may be an important additional
bonus of even a modest start toward a realistic U.S.
civil defense program. Such a program makes more
"rational" a strong foreign policy (when a strong
foreign policy might seem desirable) by decreasing the
immediate risks. Making a stronger foreign policy
more "rational" may or may not make it more prob-
able, but at least it is made more credible. This should
help in deterring some minor as well as extreme provo-
cations. Even an explicit mobilization capability can
be important because it should make it credible to our
allies that we will at least be able to put ourselves
soon into a position where we can rationally back them.

Impact on Military Missions

The study made a superficial investigation of the
components of nonmilitary defense and their relation-
ship to complete and balanced defense and deterrence
systems. For example, nonmilitary defense provides a
new perspective for studies of active air defense and
offense. Most air defense studies have tried to devise
systems to protect the U.S. mobilization base—econom-
ic resources and population—with a high level of cer-
tainty. Actually, this goal can be made to seem attain-
able only if unrealistically optimistic assumptions are
made. The result is either a dangerous over-optimism
about the power of defense or an equally dangerous
apathy and despair. Similar remarks can be made about
our strategic offense insofar as it is designed only to
deter and not to fight a war. Such viewpoints tend to
ignore the very important role our defense and offense
systems can have between these two extremes in al-
leviating the consequences of war.

Because a nuclear war would be horrible, it takes an
act of imagination to visualize one starting; but it
should not take a further act of imagination to believe
that such a war would end. As part of the study we
considered various ways in which a war might termi-
nate. If one or both sides were improperly prepared,
such a war might end in a few hours by the almost
total destruction of the military forces of one side by
the other. If, however, both sides had made even
moderate (but realistic) preparations to fight a "long"
war—a war of at least a few days duration—then ap-
preciable military forces should be left on both sides
after the initial onslaught. And this in turn means
that there are advantages to both sides in ending the
war by negotiation.

Certain tactics facilitate a quick and favorable end
by negotiation. For example, one side can avoid some
large fraction of the other side's cities and use the
threat of destruction of these cities both as a hostage
for the enemy's good behavior and as an inducement

32

to negotiate. Similarly, the other side can adopt a sim-
ilar tactic and use the threat of his surviving forces to
compel the enemy to offer "reasonable" terms. As in
classical warfare, the "reserves" may play a central role.

No matter what sequence of events is imagined, the
possibility that the offense and defense could survive
for some days is important. Nevertheless, most discus-
sions of new strategic systems appear overly concerned
with wars that last less than one day. If we are seriously
interested in alleviating the consequences of a war, then
we are interested in having military capabilities—both
offensive and defensive—on the second and third days
of the war. In fact, sensible military planning would
provide for wars lasting from 2-30 days, though the
first day—or even hours—of the war is still likely to be
of the utmost significance.

## Interactions with Disarmament

The most obvious effect of civil defense on disarma-
ment is the reduction in the vulnerability of the civilian
targets. This has only an indirect effect on the military
situation of a potential defender since most civilians
and their buildings are not really military targets. How-
ever, a reduction in civilian vulnerability may be of
major importance in reducing the risk that a potential
aggressor faces. Presumably he can contemplate accept-
ing a larger retaliatory strike if he has a reasonable non-
military defense program than he could if he didn't
have one. To this extent a civil defense program con-
flicts with some of the objectives of a disarmament
program.

There are, however, two very important ways in
which civil defense programs may help a disarmament
program. First, the civil defense programs make a na-
tion somewhat less vulnerable to blackmail or a break-
down of the disarmament agreement. If a nation is
totally vulnerable to an attack, then it is also totally
vulnerable to blackmail and the fact that it might be
able to destroy the blackmailing nation does not nec-
essarily help. It is just not credible that a nation such as
the United States will consciously and deliberately
choose suicide while there is any hope of life. In other
words, pure disarmament programs without any civil
defense make no allowance for Type II or Type III
deterrence. It is extremely wishful thinking to believe
that such things will never be necessary. It may be
positively dangerous deliberately to weaken our Type
II or Type III deterrence to the point where it is an
invitation to a potential aggressor. Furthermore, even
a disarmament program will not completely exclude the
possibility of accidental or unpremeditated war. Final-
ly, even the best disarmament agreement might be
repu>dated or violated—possibly initiating a sequence of
events which lead to war. It is, therefore, always neces-
sary either to have capabilities to alleviate the conse-
quences of a war or at least to be able to create capabil-

ities in a short period of time. In general, adequate civil
defense capabilities cannot be created in a short period
of time unless extensive preparations have been made.

A rather important and valuable effect of a realistic
civil defense program (and one that is often over-
looked) is a psychological one. If one is designing his
military establishment to terminate a war, rather than
just to deter one (by punishing the enemy with a re-
taliatory strike), one is much less likely to indulge in
wishful thinking. Even today, without any disarmament
schemes, Western military organizations and their gov-
ernments have psychological and motivational difficul-
ties in maintaining a high operating state of readiness
and adequate combat capabilities. This is partly be-
cause many feel both that such weapon systems will
never be used, and that if they were used they would be
so destructive that you don't really care if they operate
well or badly. If this attitude is combined with the
moral onus on military preparations and planning that
a disarmament agreement might bring, one could al-
most confidently predict an undue and possibly dan-
gerous degradation of Western military capabilities. If
one is emotionally committed to the belief that de-
terrence is foolproof, there is not much of a step from
being satisfied with a system which is objectively capa-
ble of destroying the enemy in a retaliatory blow to a
system which can only hurt the enemy, and from there
to a system which might hurt the enemy, and finally
to one for which there are circumstances in which it is
conceivable that the enemy will be hurt. The capacity
of Western governments and peoples, under propitious
circumstances, to indulge in wishful thinking in the
military field is almost unlimited. An official aim
which calls for an objective capability to terminate a
war in a reasonably satisfactory fashion might have a
salutary effect in restraining fancies. (W. W. Marseille
has suggested to the author that "this is putting the
cart before the horse. The psychological factors are
what cause us not to have a realistic civil defense pro-
gram in the first place." However, the author has
found-to his surprise-that once people start thinking
in terms of alleviating a war it is possible to success-
fully make points which it should have been possible
to make if one were only arguing deterrence, but which
were not taken seriously in this latter context.)

## Immediate Program

Once one accepts the proposition that it is possible
to alleviate, to some extent, the consequences of a
thermonuclear war, one is faced with the question, "Is
it worth spending money on such a capability?"²

As much as one would like to have it otherwise, it
seems implausible to imagine that war has been abol-

² Discussed in more detail in RM-2206, *Some Specific Sugges-
tions for Getting Early Nonmilitary Defense Capabilities and Ini-
tiating Long-Range Programs*, (to be published).

33

ished by the invention of fission and fusion weapons. Wars can start not only by deterrence failing: they can start as a result of accident, miscalculation, illogic, irresponsibility, or because events get out of control. The study has, in fact, gone into some detail to indicate why fighting a war, or at least being able to stand up to the threat of war, is of greatest importance. Given the need, we suggest that it would be reasonable for the U.S. to spend about $500 million in the next two or three years, over and above current budgets, to achieve the following objectives.

1. Creation of incomplete but worthwhile capabilities, by reorienting and strengthening the current civil defense programs to achieve feasible capabilities utilizing evacuation, improvised fallout protection, damage control measures, modest preparations for recuperation and, given those other measures, a vigorous program of education and technical assistance to private parties and organizations. Some very cheap measures might save from 20 to 50 million lives, limit the contingent damage to property, markedly facilitate our ability to recuperate, and provide an environment in which private people can do sensible things on their own to increase their chances of survival.

2. Research and development on all important aspects of the art of nonmilitary defense. Unlike research and development on military matters, nonmilitary defense has received comparatively little money and effort. In particular, the little work this study did indicated that imaginative work could not only result in large improvements in the effectiveness of defense measures, but would uncover many unsuspected problems that would otherwise be very unpleasant surprises.

3. Accompanying the research and development work there should be a vigorous effort on the systems design of various combinations of military and nonmilitary defense. The effort should end up with the specification and phasing of many alternative programs. These should be detailed enough to be costed and to permit the performance to be calculated over time under many circumstances. Paper planning and design should be undertaken for a number of the alternatives specified

so that any program finally adopted would be less costly and have its lead-time reduced (by perhaps 3 to 5 years over conventional methods of proceeding).

4. While it is technically feasible to start a large-scale program of nonmilitary defense now, there are many uncertainties and gaps in our knowledge. After objectives 2 and 3 (Research and Development and Lead Time Reducing Measures) have been accomplished, the proper balance between military and non-military expenditures can be studied. The government could then make much wiser decisions and some of the difficulties resulting from a combination of ignorance and uncertainty would be eliminated or decreased. The decision to go ahead or not go ahead with a multi-billion-dollar program should not be made until objectives 2 and 3 have been carried out.

5. There seem to be many possibilities for inexpensive preparatory actions, which could result in the creation of very important capabilities in the 1965-70 time period. Again irrespective of any decision to go or not go into multi-billion dollar program, these should be studied; if and when such actions are found desirable they should be put into practice. A possible allocation for an additional $500 million dollars to be spent on civil defense might go as follows:

<table><tbody><tr><td>Radiation Meters<sup>a</sup></td><td>$100,000,000+</td></tr><tr><td>Utilization of existing structures for fallout protection<sup>a</sup></td><td>100,000,000+</td></tr><tr><td>Preliminary phase (including research and development) of a spectrum of shelter programs</td><td>100,000,000</td></tr><tr><td>Movement, Damage Control, and Anticontamination, etc.<sup>a</sup></td><td>75,000,000+</td></tr><tr><td>Systems Studies and Planning</td><td>40,000,000</td></tr><tr><td>Other Research and Development</td><td>40,000,000</td></tr><tr><td>Prototype Shelters</td><td>20,000,000</td></tr><tr><td>Education and Technical Assistance</td><td>25,000,000</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td></td><td>$500,000,000+</td></tr></tfoot></table>

a The reason for the "+" is that it is expected that these federal government expenditures would be supplemented by large private and municipal expenditures stimulated by the program.

M

34

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

Discussion Group on

Third Meeting

May 19, 1959

Discussion Leaders:

Henry A. Kissinger - Harvard University

Brig. General Charles H. Bonesteel, USA - Department of the Army

William C. Foster, Acting Chairman - Olin-Mathieson Chemical Corporation

Ciro Zoppo, Rapporteur - Columbia University

John S. Fischer - Harper's Magazine

Klaus Knorr - Princeton University

Rear Admiral William Miller, USN - Department of the Navy

Hans J. Morgenthau - Institute for Advanced Study

Philip E. Mosely - Council on Foreign Relations

James A. Perkins - Carnegie Corporation of New York

May 19, 1959

Council on Foreign Relations

DETERRING LIMITED WARS

Brigadier General Charles Bonesteel, USA

1. Can credibility be retained for a U.S. deterrent based on a nihilistic approach? If our deterrent be challenged, our answer will be total nuclear annihilation: mutual suicide.

2. How effective is such a deterrent in terms of each of Type I, Type II and Type III aspects of deterrence as presented by Dr. Kahn?

Type I: the deterrence of direct attack.

Type II: the deterrence of extreme provocation.

Type III: the deterrence of a moderate provocation.

3. Taking "lead time" into account, including time consumed in the decision-making process and the budget process, as well as the research, development and procurement process, how many years must intervene before a major change in national strategy is reflected in capabilities "in being"?

4. In the light of the answer to Question 2, and taking into account the profound influence which the long-range ballistic missile will have on the continuing stability of the power balance, can the United States afford to decide now to depend on a single strategy (form of deterrence) for the future?

5. What are the "building blocks" which could be created and which could be used to construct alternative strategies as we move into the future?