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The Challenge

A widely advocated view regarding the significance of the 1955 Geneva "Summit" meeting was that both the United States and the Soviet Union, recognizing the catastrophic horrors of thermo-nuclear conflict, made a de facto agreement to eschew nuclear war. By this reckoning Churchill's prediction that the world might attain a "peace of mutual terror" may be approaching realization. This kind of peace, if it comes, will not bring a cessation of conflict, but at best a mutual reluctance to permit the struggle between Communism and the Free World to extend into an all-out nuclear war.

The conflict will assume complex forms, exasperating to the West. Even if the direct danger of thermo-nuclear war should be reduced the Communists will continue to pursue an indirect pattern of aggression. And, as Prime Minister Eden told the United States Senate in 1956, the consequences of the indirect threat "can equally be mortal."

Despite much wishful thinking to the contrary, pursuit of the aggressive Communist aim of world domination is a constantly growing danger to the rest of the world. The two blocs are now roughly equal in population. Although the free world still remains superior in many material factors, the Communist bloc devotes a far greater effort to winning the world conflict. Not directly aligned with either power bloc, the so-called uncommitted areas are more open than ever to direct or indirect forms of Communist pressure or seduction. As a primary goal, the Communist bloc is seeking by all means to incorporate the uncommitted areas into its orbit.

The United States, as the leader of the Free World, must obviously check

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the transfer of further areas into the Communist bloc if it is to forestall a
decisive shift in the world balance of power. Any major additions to the Com-
munist holdings would tip the power balance against the United States. The
American system cannot flourish as a bastion in a largely Communist world.

Since in Communist strategy all forms of conflict are interconnected and comprise
elements of one overall operation the Communist bloc can achieve its objectives
either by general nuclear war or by creeping expansion.

Perhaps the only discernible mutual self interest existing between the
Communist bloc and the United States is to avoid a general nuclear war. If this
is true, the Soviets are likely to give greater emphasis to creeping expansion,
which already has brought them astonishing success in the face of United States
superiority in nuclear power.

Thusly viewed, the strategic problem of the United States is to prevent
the absorption into the Communist bloc of the remaining free areas in Eurasia.
The solution of this strategic problem requires a comprehensive understanding of
the Communist threat. Among the main threats which the Soviet bloc presents to
the security of the United States are: first, the danger that the Soviets will
win the technological race, thereby nullify our deterrent posture, and in this
way acquire a capability either for waging a "sure-fire" war against us or of
forcing us into surrender without war. A sub-threat to this is the possibility
that our deterrents will prove ineffective for many types of Soviet operations
and that, conversely, the Soviets will be able to establish powerful deterrents
against U. S. actions in a crisis.

The second threat is that the alliances of the United States will be
disrupted in the triple manner: political disruption (including that resulting
from local revolutions), military ineffectiveness (because of low efforts at

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armaments and technology, and poor command structures, as well as easy surrender
to nuclear blackmail), and disruption of the American base structure.

The third threat is posed by the big political-military gap stretching
from the Near and Middle East to the Far East and extending to areas of Africa
and Latin America coupled with our lack of mobile forces which could be thrown
into this gap and, above all, our *weakness in concept* for the handling of this
kind of threat situations.

There has been growing awareness that the full range of conflict can be
potently exploited by the Soviet bloc. An equivalent recognition that additional
measures are needed to check the intermediate range of Communist expansion does
not yet exist.

Instead, in the United States there is widespread unanimity among members
of both major political parties that we need no special efforts to stop limited
Communist aggression provided we are fully ready to meet the threat of all-out
nuclear war. President Truman's Secretary of the Air Force, Thomas K. Finletter,
expressed it in "Power and Policy," "Our military sanction in the Gray Areas
comes down to the warning of Vice President Nixon as he interpreted the massive
retaliation policy in his reply to Governor Stevenson. If we are to rely on
U. S. military might, that is war, to hold the Gray Areas, it will be war with
the 'main source of aggression.' For that we do not need U. S. military power in
the Gray Area, we need stronger forces in Nato, especially in the Nato Atomic-
Air."

This prescription has been pursued for the past ten years with indifferent success. Yet, if new antidotes are required, they will not be forthcoming until there is a better understanding of the role of intermediate conflict in Communist strategy and the technological, psychological, and political problems

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involved in meeting it.

The reluctance of the West to face up to the fact that it can be de-
strained by creeping Communist expansion may help explain why preparations to
meet the intermediate range of Communist conflict have lagged behind. As of now
we are able to cope with the Communists in all-out conflict. Similarly, we are
willing to meet with the Communists in the verbal plane of negotiations. But in
the in-between range of conflict, stretching from limited wars of "national lib-
eration" to Communist infiltration veiled behind the banners of Nationalism,
Anti-Colonialism, Anti-Imperialism, Patriotism, and "Genuine" Democracy, we are
still searching for a solution. In view of the nature of our Communist antagon-
ist, greater effort should be made to understand the full range of Communist con-
flict in order to develop adequate operational capabilities against all kinds
of Communist aggression.

A wide range of problems must be examined to find clues as to how best to cope with the danger. Some of these include: the Communist doctrine of limited warfare; warfare in different areas (jungle, temperate, Asia, Western Europe, etc.), colonial uprisings, guerrilla operations; and conventional warfare, i.e., large-scale military operations without employment of nuclear weapons; intercontinental war between the Soviet Union and the United States which is fought without nuclear weapons; the employment of air power in limited wars; the various limitations on nuclear weapons; and U. S. force requirements, including "Freedom Forces" to fight limited wars; and lastly the interrelationships between preparations for full-blown and limited warfare.

War aims provide another category of issues which should be considered.
Should we adopt limited or unlimited war aims insofar as the overall conflict is
concerned? Within a limited war, should we fight for victory or for some kind

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of compromise solution?

This leads into another broad category: where do we draw the line be-
tween various actions permissible within a strictly limited war? Under what
conditions will we have to add intensity to our military operations, yet try to
stay within pre-determined limitations? How can a limited war get out of hand?
In other words, what are the problems of "sanctuary"? What would have happened
if we had authorized hot pursuit in Korea, the bombing of the Yalu Bridges,
the bombing of the Manchurian airfields, or the blockade of the Chinese coasts?
And how are such concrete questions decided best and on what yardstick?

Any serious examination of these problems reveals that Communist opera-
tional strategy represents a confluence between the Western political-military
thinking as developed by Marx and applied by Bolshevik leaders from Lenin through
Kruschev and the Chinese doctrine of war as it was developed and employed over
the centuries separating Sun tsu and Mao Tse Tung.

Accordingly it is proposed to examine the patterns of military thinking;
the significant aspects of Soviet, Chinese and American experience with regard
to limited conflict; those elements of Soviet and Chinese action-patterns which
are pertinent to Western counter-action; the inadequacies of current American
proposals for coping with limited aggression; and, finally, conditions of
Western success in an era of limited conflict.

The European Tradition and the Communist Concept

The term "limited war" is open to many misunderstandings. The concept
was first introduced into the Western world by the Roman writer Vegetius with
his admonition that it is necessary to build "golden bridges" for the vanquished
foe lest he turn around and continue to fight in desperation. This concept was
rarely applied in Roman times or during the Barbarian invasions. However, during

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the subsequent Middle Ages there were periods when only limited wars were fought, in the sense that the competing armies were small and led by commanders who relied more on maneuver than on battle. Then, it was accepted practice to avoid battle, and, once it had to be joined, not to press it to the bitter end. Stringent limitations were imposed on warfare between the Tenth and the Twelfth Century when, for three days out of the week, many installations and many professions were exempted from fighting. During the Fifteenth Century, if we are to believe Machiavelli, battles occasionally were fought with no casualties whatsoever. Although there are some reasons to assume that the situation was not this idyllic -- it is none the less true that even as late as the Eighteenth Century wars were of "limited character."

This "limited character" was due to severe restrictions of various types, such as insufficient manpower, crude weapons, poor logistics, undeveloped winter warfare capabilities, and, above all, lack of money due to the inefficiency of fiscal systems. These various restrictions imposed on the strategist the necessity to economize on force and therefore prevented the emergence of what Clausewitz called "absolute war." However, there also were limitations of a moral type, such as the "Truce of God," the common interests of the feudal nobility even in war, similarity of intellectual outlook, absence of crusading spirit, military professionalism versus conscription, lack of motivation among soldiers, and the practical inability, as well as the moral reluctance to pursue radical war aims.

Following the Roman period there was a paucity of Western military writing until about the Eighteenth Century. When speculation on war resumed most military writers advocated "limited war," at least implicitly: Vattel

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argued that force was to be the arbiter where a rational decision could not be made, and that force was to be employed under the supreme rules of rationalism. The minimum effort needed to obtain the decision was the right effort.

In the Twentieth Century the concept of limited war was given a new version by the German historian, Hans Delbrueck, who contrasted wars of annihilation with wars of attrition. According to Delbrueck, Napoleon was the master of the former and Frederick the Great the master of the latter type of war. A war of attrition is not necessarily a limited war, but the attrition strategist avoids the showdown battle and therefore eschews those tactics which force upon the opponent such a fight to the finish. Delbrueck viewed the presumed advantages of a war of annihilation skeptically, partly because the risk is great and partly because the risk is rarely rewarded: "decisive battles" usually are not decisive. By contrast, a war of attrition is a form of war which evens the odds for the weaker side and which even the vanquished can fight in order to stall the victor and incline him to more lenient conditions.

Among contemporaries, B. H. Liddell-Hart developed a new version of limited war. He combined the thoughts of earlier writers, placed them in the context of a democratic strategy of defense, and initially based his theories on the assumption that the defensive is superior in strength to the offensive. Obviously, if the defense is the stronger form of war, then the doctrine of the war of annihilation is incorrect, dangerous, and self-defeating, unless the attacker is many times stronger and sure of success. Liddell-Hart's models include Fabius Cunctator, Scipio Africanus, Wellington and Lenin. From the latter's writings, Liddell-Hart chose the following (apocryphal) quotation: "The soundest strategy in war is to postpone operations until the moral disintegration of the enemy renders the delivery of the mortal blow both possible and

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easy" -- almost identical with Sun Tzu.

Hart's most significant contribution, however, was to emphasize the following principles: (1) Peripheral war, as exemplified by Wellington's campaign in Spain, allows the weaker side to engage the opponent under favorable logistical conditions at the point of contact, and hence to engage the opponent where he is weakest, where it is most difficult for him to fight, and where oneself is the strongest. (2) The "indirect approach" is the most promising type of operation since it pays to catch the opponent at eccentric locations rather than attack him at his strongest positions, or, if we may paraphrase Liddell-Hart, the "indirect approach" pays off, because it is better to confuse the enemy than to terrorize him. Dislocation is essentially a mental event which usually follows surprise of some kind. Consequently, the strategy of "indirect approach" does by no means exclude the utilization of extreme weapons and tactics in any given operation.

In contrast to the concept of limited or regulated warfare stands a long history of wars of annihilation, the lessons of which were eventually incorporated into military theory. Clausewitz developed the concept of "absolute warfare" in which war is defined as "an act of violence pushed to its utmost bonds." Although Clausewitz recognized the limitations which political factors imposed on "absolute war," the concept remained for him the unifying ideal of strategy. Subsequent writers were to expound on the virtues of a strategy of annihilation. Ludendorff was the proponent of total war. Douhet and Mitchell almost concurrently advocated maximum violence in military operations.

Strictly speaking, Douhet and Mitchell cannot be classified as exponents of a strategy of annihilation. The strategic air war concept which they fathered does not necessarily involve a strategy of annihilation. In the pre-atomic

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period, strategic bombing, like blockade, was a classical application of a
strategy of attrition. Likewise, although the Germans were great believers in
battles of annihilation, also of often-called decisive battles (Vernichtungs-
oder Entscheidengschlacht), they were not all proponents of total war. The
"annihilation" concept was introduced into modern warfare by Napoleon, and Moltke
and Schlieffen were its foremost proponents (Hannibal before them, of course).
This concept is completely compatible with a strategy of attrition and it is
related to Mao's concept of winning tactical battles through tenfold superiority.
It does not necessarily imply total war or total destruction of the enemy
nations. Oddly enough the Democracies during World War II were more prone than
the Axis powers to wage war, when possible, with maximum violence. A calculating
aggressor like Hitler endeavored to win booty with the last possible destruc-
tion. The 1940 Nazi campaign against France was a classic in this respect.

Western sledge-hammer strategy did not come about because the Democ-
racies were particularly prone to the maximum violence concept. Mostly the people
living in the Democracies had no real opinions about this matter. They were
merely in favor of the full punishment of the aggressor, often without thought
of the consequences. Yet the efforts toward maximum violence, even though
imperfectly implemented on the battle fields of World War II, left a deep im-
print on many American military thinkers. The central idea held by this group
is that war is inevitable, it will be total in character, and that consequently
preparations must be made to fight it that way. The relation of this doctrine
to U. S. reluctance to wage or participate in limited conflict is obvious.

Marx and Engels were the first Communists to concern themselves with
military theory. They skillfully developed a radical concept of conflict syn-
thesis integrating into one operational pattern appropriate violence, adroit

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feints and political maneuvers. This basic concept was subsequently expanded and developed by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and many others, among them Frunze and Tukhechevsky, two of the principal founders of the Soviet Red Army.

Some kind of limited war is implicit in Frunz's writings. In a lecture delivered on March 1, 1922, Frunze laid down the following guide lines:

> The Red commander must learn to the fullest extent to master those methods of thinking and that art of the analysis of phenomena which is provided by Marxist teaching. The substance of this method comes to this, that for us there cannot be anything absolute or ossified; everything flows and is changing, and every means, every method must find its application in certain circumstances. The proficiency of the commander manifests itself in the ability to select, from the variety of means at his disposal, those which give the best results in a given set of circumstances and at a given time.*

Tukhachevsky, along with other Soviet military theorists, was an advocate of the annihilation of the enemy's armed forces, but he also thought in terms of stages. For example, in discussing coalitions against the USSR and the task of turning imperialist war into civil war, he outlined the following approach:

> The defeat of individual links in a coalition, and sometimes those that do not play an independent important role, can bring about massive changes in the distribution of forces and means in the coalition and can provoke a breach in the basic disposition of its forces. The defeat of a major link can sometimes overthrow the whole coalition. The contradictions between capitalist states, even those that are in one and the same coalition, the struggle of the working class against itsbourgeoisie -- all of this complicates extremely the systematic utilization of the forces of the coalition.**

## The Chinese Background

Limited wars were not unknown in Asia. In fact a highly sophisticated

*M. V. Frunze, Izbrannye proizvedeniya (Moscow: Voennoye izdatel'stvo Voennogo ministerstva Soyuza SSR, 1951), p. 190.

**M. N. Tukhachevsky, "Kharakter sovremennykh voin v svete reshenii VI kongressa Kominterna," Vestnik Kommunisticheskoy Akademii, Vol. 39 (1930),

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and modern concept of limited conflict was spelled out thousands of years ago by Sun Tzu, when he advanced the theory that it is most advantageous to defeat the enemy without battle. His principles of war are germane to the subject and implicit in much current Chinese Communist thinking.

The compatibilities of Communist thinking and traditional Chinese thinking have already been noted by various scholars. The Confucianist society was humane, but its humanity depended on continued success; in retreat or surrender, the Chinese were capable of inhumanities fully as bestial as those of their European contemporaries.

The concept of social and political control through thoroughgoing ideological control is wholly compatible with traditionalist Chinese thinking.* The Chinese Communists inherited a society ideally ready-made for an advanced development of the Communist techniques of mass entrapment through rapture of the few and terror of the many, intimidation of outsiders, the fervent perversion of hitherto known words, and the organizational extension of their machinery to the outside. A perusal of Sun Tzu's writings will show some of the classic foundations of contemporary Chinese military practices.

The terse military classic, *On War*, was written by Sun Tzu about the Fifth Century B.C. The theory of war presented by Sun Tzu is highly sophisticated, deeply and sensitively associated with the political and moral background of war, and keenly appreciative of the role played by brains in the

*For one of the most recent good books on the subject, see H. G. Creel, *Chinese Thought from Confucius to Mao Tse-tung*, Chicago: University of Chicago sketched in Paul M. A. Linebarger, *The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen*, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1937, especially pages 10-57, while the international implications of Chinese traditional habits are brilliantly outlined in H. F. MacNair, *The Real Conflict Between China and Japan*, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938, especially pages 9-90.

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manipulation of violence.

Cardinal in Sun Tzu's teaching is the principle that the most effective strategy can either avoid the use of force altogether, or can employ force only to consummate a victory already won in political, moral, espionage, logistic, and territorial terms. Sun Tzu showed his appreciation of the limited character of war in Chinese antiquity by urging that under no circumstances an enemy be faced with annihilation: Such an enemy would fight to the utmost and inflict more damage on the victor than the annihilation of his forces would be worth. It was fundamental to Sun Tzu's thinking that the enemy at any given point should be allowed to retreat to a position of further disadvantage. Successive retreats to worse and worse positions would eventuate in the loss of all further military effectiveness by the enemy.

The Chinese Communists applied a great deal of Sun Tzu's military thinking to their own victories in the Chinese civil war, 1922-1949. It was when they followed European principles that they lost. Reversion to traditional Chinese methods of warfare brought them victory against the Nationalists, against the Japanese, and against the Nationalists again.

Fundamental to all of Sun Tzu's thinking was the concept of posture. Sun Tzu realized that war is always a very intimate relationship and that the association of the victor and the defeated is necessarily as close as any partnership. To be sure, the two parties are hostile at the time the war is being waged. This hostility does not preclude a sensitive and intense attention to the behavior, the morale, and the intentions of the antagonists. The victor is characterized by resoluteness, expectation of his own victory, unremitting cleverness, and the ceaseless application of brain power to the avoidance of mere bludgeoning.