CHAPTER I

THE NATURE OF THE ISSUES

The most constructive American policy since the end of World War II
has been the development of Atlantic relationships. Starting with the
Greek-Turkish aid program and the Marshall Plan, the United States com-
mitted itself to the reconstruction of Europe. Every post-war Administration
has promoted European unity. More recently, the United States has advanced
the "Grand Design" based on a partnership between an integrated Europe and
the United States. Partly as a result of these far-sighted policies, Europe
today is more prosperous than ever. Significant steps towards European
integration have been taken. The Common Market is a going concern. Until
President de Gaulle's veto of Britain's entry into the Common Market, a form
of political union seemed the logical next step. The Atlantic Alliance has
survived many crises and withstood many pressures.

The promises, then, are great. In the Atlantic area we are dealing with
countries of similar cultural background, sharing comparable values and in-
stitutions and with a high level of economic activity. In the relationship
of the peoples bordering the North Atlantic if anywhere, free peoples should
be able to demonstrate a unity which thrives on voluntary association and a

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dynamism unimaginable within the frame-work of a narrow conception of
the national interest. Western Europe and the United States, which gave
the concept of the nation state to humanity, could take the lead in pointing
the way to the more embracing associations which a technology of global
impact has made essential.

Yet in recent years the promise has been flawed by increasingly
sharp disputes among the allies. The absence of agreement on major policies
is striking. It is rare to find the major countries of NATO taking a similar
view on crucial issues. For a while Great Britain and the United States
favored a more "flexible" policy on Berlin than France and Germany did.
More recently the United States has moved closer to the German position. On
disarmament, the U.S.-British view is rejected by France and greeted with
distrust and fear by the Federal Republic. The United States finds little
support for its policies outside of Europe: the issue of trade with Cuba
and the Communist world is a glaring example. The United States has made
a major effort to obtain allied support for its policies in South East Asia

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but the European support has been token. The United States and France are at loggerheads about the role of the United Nations. From Suez to the Congo, from Yemen to Malaysia, the Western allies have failed to agree on a common policy towards what has come to be called the Third World.

European integration has been slowed while various schools of thought debate the relative merits of abstract constitutional concepts like federation and confederation. Basic issues of strategic doctrine have gone unresolved for years. The need to maintain a facade of unity has compounded frustrations.

This impasse has produced some ugly accusations on both sides of the Atlantic. President de Gaulle has been charged by some of his American critics with deliberately wrecking allied unity for the sake of old-fashioned notions of *grandeur*. His policy is described as being animated by nothing higher than a 19th century concept of nationalism. French spokesmen-- with limited support elsewhere in Europe--charge the United States with hiding hegemonial aspirations behind vague notions of Atlantic community.

United States strategic views are said to mask a desire to keep open the

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option of a strictly bilateral settlement between the United States and
the Soviet Union over the heads of our European allies.

A debate conducted on this level makes it impossible to face the
real issues. Of course, in an alliance of sovereign states a measure
of disagreement is inevitable. But current disputes do not concern the
tactics for reaching an agreed goal. What is at stake is basic assumptions
about the nature of Atlantic relationships, the future of Europe and the
relative influence of the various partners. For the first time since
the war there exists an open challenge, not just to the technical imple-
mentation of American plans but to the validity of American conceptions.
The nations bordering the Atlantic have been brought face to face with
two questions not unlike those which each Western society has had to
deal with in its domestic affairs: How much unity do we want? How much
pluralism can we stand? Too formalistic a conception of unity risks
destroying the political will of the members of the Atlantic area. Too
absolute an insistence on national particularity must lead to a fragmenta-
tion of any common effort.

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There is no question that the abrupt tactics of the French President have severely strained the pattern of allied relationships which emerged after the war. Also, the United States has often been slow to adapt itself to the changed circumstances of a world transformed in part by the success of previous policies. United States actions have been highly ambivalent. On the one hand, we have been proclaiming the need for adaptation, on the other most United States remedies have involved primarily a modernization of familiar patterns. We have been slow to accept that fundamental changes have been taking place in the nature of alliances, in the character of strategy and in the relative weights of Europe and the United States. A new conception of allied relationships would have been necessary no matter who governed in Paris or in Washington. No one man could have disrupted the Alliance by himself. The impact of particular statesmen aside, a farsighted policy will gear itself to dealing with these underlying forces. Reality demands close association between Europe and the United States whatever the vagaries of individual statesmen. But it has happened often enough in Western history that an underlying

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## II. The Change in the Nature of Alliances

Since the end of World War II an important change has taken place in the nature of alliances. In the past, alliances have been created for three basic reasons: (1) To provide an accretion of power. According to the doctrine of collective security, the wider the alliance, the greater its power to resist aggression. (2) To leave no doubt about the alignment of forces. It has often been argued that had Germany known at the beginning of both World Wars that the United States--or even England--would join the Allies, war would have been averted. (3) To provide an incentive for mutual assistance beyond that already supplied by an estimate of the national interest.

To be sure, even before the advent of nuclear weapons, there was some inconsistency among these requirements. The attempt to combine the maximum number of states for joint action occasionally conflicted with the desire to leave no doubt about the collective motivation. The wider the system of collective security, the more various were the motives animating it and the more difficult the task of obtaining common action

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proved to be. The more embracing the alliance, the more intense and direct
must be the threat which would produce joint action.

This traditional difficulty has been compounded in the nuclear age.

The requirements for tight command and control of nuclear weapons are to some degree inconsistent with a coalition of sovereign states. The enormous risks of nuclear warfare affect the credibility of traditional pledges of mutual assistance.

As a result, many of the theories of nuclear control now current
within the Western Alliance have a tendency either to turn NATO into a
unilateral U.S. guarantee or to call into question the utility of the
Alliance altogether. American strategic thought verges on the first
extreme; some French theorists have hinted at the second.

As for the United States, official spokesmen have consistently
emphasized that the European contribution to the over-all nuclear strength
of the Alliance is negligible. European nuclear forces have been described

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as "provocative," "prone to obsolescence" and "weak."¹ For a considerable period after the advent of the Kennedy Administration, some high officials held the view that on nuclear matters the President might serve as the Executive Agent of the Alliance. Since then, the United States has made various proposals for nuclear sharing, the common feature of which has been the retention of the United States veto over the nuclear weapons of the Alliance. The proposed NATO Multilateral Force is a good example.

However sensible such schemes may appear from the point of view of the division of labor, they would perpetuate American hegemony in nuclear matters within the Alliance. Allies are considered necessary not so much to add to over-all strength as to provide the possibility for applying power discriminately. In such a structure, American decisions must continue to be paramount. The policies of our allies must continue to be directed towards gaining influence over essentially American positions.

In other words, the predominant United States view is a sophisticated

¹For the classic indictment of Europe's national nuclear forces see Secretary McNamara's speech at Ann Arbor, June 16, 1962, _DOSE_, July 9, 1962, Vol. XLVII, No. 1202, pp. 64-69.

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adaptation of conditions of the late Forties and early Fifties. It is
designed to make our hegemony more bearable, not to alter it.

According to the opposing view, alliances have lost their significance
altogether. The French theorist, General Gallois, has argued, for example,
that nuclear weapons have made alliances obsolete. ¹ Faced with the risk
of total destruction, no nation will jeopardize its survival for another.
Hence, he maintains, each country must have its own nuclear arsenal to defend
itself against direct attack, while leaving all other countries to their
fate.

This formula would mark the end of collective security and would
be likely to lead to international chaos. In the face of the growing
nuclear arsenals of the major protagonists, it would be idle to deny that
the threat of nuclear retaliation has lost some of its credibility. The
Gallois theory would, however, transform a degree of uncertainty into a
guarantee that the United States would *not* come to the assistance of its

¹Pierre M. Gallois, "U.S. Strategy and the Defense of Europe", ORBIS, VII:2 (Summer 1963), pp. 226-249.

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allies, thus greatly simplifying an aggressor's calculation.

Moreover, in order to protect itself in this new situation, each
country would need to develop not only a nuclear arsenal of its own but
also foolproof procedures for assuring the Soviets that a given nuclear
blow did not originate from its territory. If Gallois is right, and each
country is unwilling to risk nuclear devastation for any ally, it will also
want to prevent itself from being triggered into nuclear war by a neighbor.
Thus each country will have a high incentive to devise methods to protect
itself against attacks based on misinformation. The Gallois theory would
lead to a multiplication of national nuclear forces side by side with the
development of methods of surrender or guarantees of non-involvement.

When views such as these carry influence on both sides of the
Atlantic, it is no accident that much of the debate on nuclear matters
within NATO turns on the issue of confidence. The United States tends
to ask those of its allies possessing nuclear arsenals of their own: If
you trust us, why do you need nuclear weapons of your own? The allies reply:

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If you trust us why are you so concerned about our possession of nuclear weapons? Since the answer must inevitably emphasize contingencies where either the goals or the strategy would be incompatible, the debate on nuclear control within NATO has been inherently divisive.

The concentration of nuclear power in the hands of one country poses one set of problems; the range of modern weapons raises another. In the past, a threatened country had the choice either of resisting or of surrendering. If it resisted, it had to be prepared to accept the consequences in terms of physical damage and loss of life. A distant ally could be effective only if it was able to bring its strength to bear in the area of conflict.

Modern weapons have changed this. What each member country wants from the Alliance is the assurance that an attack on it will be considered a *casus belli*. It strives for deterrence by adding the strength of a distant ally to its own power. But, equally, each state has an incentive to reduce damage to itself to a minimum should deterrence fail. The range of modern

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weapons for the first time provides the technical possibility to combine
these objectives. In 1914 Belgium could not base its defense on a strategy
which transferred to Britain the primary risks of devastation. In the age
of intercontinental rockets this is technically feasible.

Part of the strategic dispute within the Alliance, therefore, involves
jockeying to determine which geographic area will be the theater of war
if deterrence fails (though this obviously cannot be made explicit). A
conventional war confined to Europe must appear in a different light to
Americans than to Europeans who remember the casualty lists of two world
wars and on whose territory such a war would be fought. A nuclear exchange
which spares their territory may appear to Europeans a more attractive
strategy and the threat of nuclear retaliation a more effective deterrent.
The interests of the Alliance may be indivisible in an ultimate sense. But
this does not guarantee the absence of sharp conflicts on methods to reach
these objectives.

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The destructiveness of modern weapons compounds this problem. In the past, a nation would come to the assistance of an ally because the ultimate consequences of inactivity were considered to be worse than the immediate risks of assistance. This was because it was feared that defeat of the ally would precipitate a relative decline in its world position and ultimately the nation's own defeat. In short, the consequences of resistance seemed preferable to the risks of inaction. With modern weapons it is not self-evident that the ultimate results of passivity will be worse than the immediate penalties of conflict. If the strategic doctrine of the Alliance relies on the threat of general nuclear war, the outbreak of a war involves risks which previously were associated with total defeat. But if an attempt is made to create a more flexible response, fuel is added to suspicions inseparable from a coalition of sovereign states. Color is lent to the argument that the senior partner takes his allies' interests less seriously than his own.

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In short, the destructiveness and range of modern weapons have a tendency to produce both extreme nationalism and neutralism. A wise alliance policy must take care that in dealing with one of these dangers it does not produce the other.

Indeed, the deepest problem of NATO, is that the pressures of the new technology run counter to traditional notions of national sovereignty. The risks of nuclear warfare may be too great to be reliably combined with what has heretofore been considered a key attribute of sovereignty; the unilateral right of a sovereign state to alter its strategic or political views. Unless a more embracing political structure is devised for the countries bordering the North Atlantic area, a gradual erosion of Allied cohesion seems inevitable.

The nature of alliances has changed in yet another way. In the past, one of the reasons for joining an alliance was to impose an additional obligation for assistance in time of need. Were each country's national interests completely unambiguous, it would know precisely on whose assistance it could count; a formal commitment would be unnecessary. Both

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the aggressor and the defender would understand what they would confront
and could act accordingly. Wars could not be caused by a misunderstanding
of intentions. They would occur only if the protagonist calculated the
existing power relationships differently.

Traditionally, however, the national interest has not been unambiguous.
Often the aggressor did not know which countries would ultimately be lined
up against it; Germany in 1914 was genuinely surprised by the British
reaction to the invasion of Belgium. Occasionally the defenders could
not be certain of the extent of their potential support--as was the case
with the Allies in both wars regarding U.S. participation. Historically,
the existence of an understanding on this point, tacit or explicit, has
often been the determining factor in the decision to go to war. In the
decade prior to World War I, the staff talks between Britain and France,
which led to the transfer of the French fleet to the Mediterranean, were
one of the key factors in Britain's decision to enter the conflict in
August 1914. (Thus the talks achieved one objective of traditional

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alliances: to commit Britain to the defense of France. They failed in
another: to make the opposing alignment clear to the potential aggressor.)

One of the distinguishing features of the nuclear period is that
the national interest of the major powers has become less ambiguous. Neither
of the major nuclear countries can permit a major advance by its opponent
regardless of whether the area in which it occurs is formally protected by
an alliance or not. Neutral India was no less assured of American assistance
when the Chinese attacked than allied Pakistan would have been in similar
circumstances. In these conditions, the distinction between allies and
neutrals is likely to diminish. A country gains little from being allied
and risks little by being neutral.

This inevitably results in the weakening of allied cohesion, producing
what some have described as polycentrism. But polycentrism does not reflect
so much the emergence of new centers of physical power as the attempt by
allies to establish new centers of decision.

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The gap in military strength between the United States and its European allies has in fact widened, not narrowed, in the past decade. What *has* changed is the use to which this power can be put. The paradox of modern weapons technology is that states have a high capacity to destroy, but only a limited credibility for threats. And those issues where nuclear threats *are* credible are so clear-cut as to leave little doubt about the commitment of the major partner.

Polycentrism is virulent not because the world has ceased to be bipolar, but because with respect to nuclear weapons it essentially remains so. President de Gaulle is convinced that those circumstances in which the United States might be prepared to resort to its nuclear weapons cannot be fundamentally affected by his actions. In other words, the United States commitment need not be purchased by being conciliatory and cannot be hazarded by intransigence--within very wide limits at least.

Thus President de Gaulle sees little risk and considerable potential gain in political independence. In a curious way, it is possible for him

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to add American power to his own in pursuit of policies. Policies often
contradictory to those of the United States are thus in a sense supported
by the American nuclear umbrella--a fact which adds to the irony of the
situation and to the annoyance of some American policy-makers. Although
traditionally a state's diplomatic influence corresponded roughly to its
military strength, this is no longer inevitably the case. Influence
can now be achieved by using another country's protection even for policies
not in accord with the ally's preferences.

The frequent insistence of United States officials and commentators
that in the nuclear age an isolated strategy is no longer possible misses
the central point: it is precisely because of this that allies have un-
precedented scope for the pursuit of their own objectives. And the more
the detente--real or imaginary--proceeds, the more momentum these tendencies
will gather. We live in a curious world where neutrals enjoy most of the
protection of allies and allies aspire to have the same freedom of action
as do neutrals.

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### III. The Abstractness and Novelty of Modern Power

The destructiveness of modern weapons gives the strategic debate unprecedented urgency. The speed with which they can be delivered complicates the problem of command and control in a way unimaginable even a decade and a half ago. Doctrinal and technical disputes occur within each government. It is not surprising, then, that they should rend the Alliance as well.

The destructiveness of modern weapons has put into question traditional notions of the relationship between military power and diplomacy. Some argue that if the risks have become incomparably greater, the essential principles of strategy have stayed the same. For others, war has become unthinkable, and they ask that diplomacy settle all conflicts through the exercise of negotiating skill.

Each view has its difficulty. If massive quantitative changes can bring about qualitative ones, then the increase in destructiveness threatened by nuclear weapons must be considered crucial. A basic discontinuity is

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established when a statesman is compelled to risk tens of millions of lives instead of thousands, when his decision no longer involves the loss of a province but the survival of society itself. Even if the classic principles of strategy are not entirely outmoded, the statesman will inevitably be reluctant to put them to the test.

However, to say that the unqualified reign of diplomacy has begun is an equal oversimplification. If nuclear war has become the last resort of desperate men, this has not made diplomacy any easier. On the contrary, it has made it more intractable. In the past, unsuccessful negotiations never returned matters to their starting point; they called other pressures into play. But many of these pressures are no longer available, and thus diplomacy, too, has become less flexible. Where no penalty for non-compliance exists, there is no incentive to reach agreement. As statesmen have become increasingly reluctant to resort to war, negotiations have become more and more ritualistic.

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This situation reflects the basic paradox of the nuclear age: power has never been greater; it has also never been less useful. In the past the major problem for strategists was how to assemble superior strength; in the contemporary period the problem more frequently is how to apply power discriminately. But, no matter what spectrum of power the major contenders may have at their disposal, the fear of escalation is inescapable. The major nuclear powers have the capacity to destroy each other. But this fact works to reduce their ability to employ power because the threat is not credible and the risks are too great.

Consequently the primary purpose of modern weapons is deterrence: to prevent an undesirable course of action by a specific threat. However, even the nature of deterrence has been changed by the enormity of modern weapons.

In the past, a military threat was based on the possibility of victory. Under contemporary conditions, the primary problem is to convince the opponent that certain actions may lead to a war which *neither* side can win, rather than one which the aggressor is certain to lose. Diplomacy and strategy

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turn into a test of will. Deterrence becomes as much a psychological as a military problem. It depends on the aggressor's assessment of risks, not the defender's. A threat meant as a bluff but taken seriously is more useful for purposes of deterrence than a "genuine" threat interpreted as a bluff.

Moreover, if deterrence is successful, aggression does _not_ take place. It is impossible, however, to demonstrate why something has _not_ occurred. It can never be proved, for example, whether peace has been maintained because NATO pursues an optimum strategy or a marginally effective one. Finally, the longer deterrence lasts, the more credible becomes the argument that perhaps the Communists never intended to attack in the first place. An effective NATO deterrent strategy may thus have the paradoxical consequence of strengthening the arguments of the quasi-neutralists.

Another element of discord is produced by the novelty of modern weapons. Never before in history has so much depended on weapons so new, so untested, so "abstract." Nuclear weapons have been exploded in wartime

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only on Japan, which did not possess means of retaliation. No one knows
how governments or people will react to a nuclear explosion under conditions
where both sides possess vast arsenals.

Moreover, modern weapons systems are relatively untested. During the
debate over the nuclear test ban treaty, a great deal of attention was
focused on the adequacy of nuclear warheads. In fact, the other components
of modern weapons systems contain many more factors of uncertainty. The
estimated "hardness" of Minuteman silos depends entirely on theoretical
studies. Of the thousands of missiles in our arsenal, relatively few of
each category have been tested under operational conditions. There is little
experience with salvo firing. Air-defense systems are designed without any
definite knowledge of the nature of the offense. A high proportion of the
phenomena discovered in nuclear testing have been "unexpected'.!"

The novelty of modern weapons gives disputes an abstract, conjectural,
almost metaphysical, cast. How does one threaten with solid-fuel missiles?
As these are always in an extreme state of readiness, how does one demonstrate
an increase in preparedness such as historically served as a warning? From a