[c]

II - Report
(DC Draft 4)

July 28, 1957

XI - 1

XI. THE STRATEGIC STAND-OFF AND LIMITED WAR

Since World War II, the United States has gone far toward accepting a responsibility for maintaining a reasonable balance of power in the rest of the world as a requisite of our own security.

A free Greece and a Nationalist China on Taiwan survive because of U. S. assistance. Our leadership and military strength saved the Republic of Korea. The communist aggression in Viet Nam would not have been stopped at the present limits without our help. Our firm determination to defend the NATO countries has been the critical factor in catalyzing their necessary rebirth of strength and confidence. Through our world-wide system of mutual defense pacts and our vast program of international economic and military aid we have assisted in the stabilization of many other non-communist governments.

Having consented to his government implementing all these measures and shouldering all these burdens, it is reasonable for an American to ask why there then now be cause for serious concern or substantial complaint. If we will maintain our retaliatory power at a level adequate to leave the Kremlin no temptation to attack us, if we will maintain some 3,000,000 men under arms and continue to spend some $40,000,000,000 a year on defense, what else can be demanded of us?

Our Panel is concerned over a threat not neutralized by the above

[L]

II - Report
DC Draft 4)

July 28, 1957

XI - 2

actions: the United States is inadequately prepared, militarily or psychologically, for the most likely conditions of "peace" in this era of the strategic stand-off.

Beyond any question, the existence of U. S. strategic air power since 1945 has considerably restrained Russo-Chinese ambitions and has furnished a sanction against reckless spreading of lesser wars as well as against deliberate decision for general war. Opinions vary on how much has come from other forces at work in the world, but the possibility of U. S. air atomic retaliation has supplied the crucial element needed to restrain communist promotion during a critical decade, and it is as certain as any power trend can be in a time of rapid world change that the last wish of the Communist Block would be to see such a satisfactory strategic power balance end in full-scale thermonuclear war which could destroy its regimes and its treasured physical accomplishments.

On the other hand, as the communist aggressions against Czechoslovakia, Greece, South Korea and Viet Nam have demonstrated, U. S. strategic power held in reserve as a retaliatory threat does not deny to the Kremlin a wide range of military actions short of general war. And the total of such actions can powerfully support the long term communist program of political expansion which has the minimum objective of dominating Europe and Asia, and undoubtedly hopes to achieve much more.

[L]

II - Report
(DC Draft 4)

July 28, 1957

XI - 3

The communist ability to wage limited war will improve with the growth of the Soviet strategic capability.

At the same time, this growth of Kremlin military capability will constantly increase the cost to the U. S. of all-out war, thereby tending to raise the threshold of provocation which might invoke the final sanction of U. S. retaliatory force. To the communists, this is the real meaning of strategic power sufficiency: it permits them to enforce a condition of stalemate in the primary power field while they go on to capitalize on their atomic blackmail with vigorous expansionist tactics while keeping the level of risk sufficiently high to restrain timid opposition.

Thus the U. S. can anticipate being confronted with limited war; fought for limited objectives. Some risk of general war will remain but, if the communists are successful in their new tactic, this will be considerably less than likely.

The problem is as old as history but curiously new to us as a nation. We have been on the small, though victorious, end of such wars in 1776 and 1812 and on the controlling end of others in 1848 and 1898. But never before Korea had the U. S. been jockeyed into fighting a war on the tacit admission that it was limited by other than logistic considerations. And we instinctively decided the Korean war was a humiliation for it is inherent in our democratic value system to consider the sacrifice of a large number of lives for incomplete victory in war as a shabby proposition.

[L]

II - Report
(DC Draft 4)

July 28, 1957

XI - 4

But if it has become unrealistic to attack aggression at its source, if we do not believe communist expansion can be brought to a halt by peaceful pressures, if we are unwilling to become reconciled to piecemeal defeat of the non-communist world, then we must recognize to face up to the consequences implicit in the possibility the U. S. may have to fight more limited wars.

Ignoring this challenge will not make such wars less likely. Struggle is endemic in every era. Our own is burdened with the most powerful and best organized proponent of force-as-the-final-arbiter that the world has known. It is debatable whether peace was ever the normal condition of relations between nations; in our day the theory of the communist state has ruled out peace as even an acceptable condition.

Of course Moscow and Peiping are not free agents. Their power rests on masses of humans whose individual aspirations are not different from those of free men and who, to the extent that they are able to conceive of freedom as we know it, vastly prefer it to slavery. The Communist Bloc is not the cemented monolith of nations its leaders pretend. A great deal of effort will always be required to hold it together, and in the end it is doomed because it represents an unnatural attempt to turn back the clock on human liberty. But its discipline and cohesion are adequate to the Kremlin's present plans, and our expectations that it will eventually disintegrate are no substitute for the ability and will to so act that in the meantime our own system prospers.

[L]

II - Report

(DC Draft 4)

July 28, 1957

XI - 5

The United States is confronted by a powerful and subtle enemy who regards the presence or absence of open hostilities, at anytime or place outside his own power center, as a tactical decision determined by the opportunities that peace or non-peace offer him. The only peace he will permit is that which he finds necessary or expedient. The limited wars he foments -- or takes over and supports -- are no longer local, in the accustomed sense of the word, but parts of a pattern of world conquest.

Consequently, limited wars that cannot be prevented will have to be fought to limited victories, a simple post-bellum restoration of some kind of a state of peace will not be enough. We must therefore assume the U. S. will continue to be faced with "unpeaceful" tasks if it is to maintain strength sufficient to deter international communism into the only kind of peace it will tolerate, the absence of all-out war. Considered in this light, despite its total magnitude, the total U. S. military progress has certain deficiencies in important areas. It is unprepared to respond to possible military contingencies for which a prudent nation must be ready. More especially and more fundamental, in a period likely to be marked by communist readiness to raise the level of apparent risk in limited aggression and militant subversion, we need to re-examine our own attitudes toward risk-taking.

The effectiveness of our force as a contribution to the deterrence of limited aggression depends on our unmistakable ability and willingness to

[L]

II - Report
(DC Draft 4)

July 28, 1957

XI - 6

use our force, with discrimination yet decisively, at whatever level of intensity may be required. We are not now unmistakably so able or willing. The fact is demonstrated by our present deficiency in physical capabilities for the flexible application of power. More critical is our lack of a concept of the requirements of limited war, convincing to ourselves and the Kremlin.

Thus the greatest point of concern about the U. S. power position is that our distaste for minor commitments in risk may lead us further into defensiveness, at a rate determined not by us but by communist policy.

A U. S. policy which solely defends, which declines to use power for molding events to our advantage, cannot, in the face of hostile power on the move, lead other than toward complete dependence on the strategic stand-off. Such a policy forces us to rely on the precarious hope of total peace as the only available alternative to all-out war.

If the United States should continue to depend on such a strategic policy, then it will in fact have arrived at the condition which more worried counsels would have us believe already exists: an unstable equilibrium of terror, continuously involving the ultimate in risk.

(TO BE CONCLUDED WITH THE HOPEFUL SIDE OF THE U. S. SITUATION: MORALE OF ALL MEN ETC. ETC.)