II - Report

December 4, 1957

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

<table><tr><td>A Word By The Panel</td><td>i</td></tr><tr><td>I - Framework Of The Study</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>II - The Nature Of Our Strategic Problem</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>III - Missions</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>IV - Developing Power Trends</td><td>15</td></tr><tr><td>V - The Strategy Equation</td><td>22</td></tr><tr><td>VI - The Problem of Nuclear Weapons</td><td>26</td></tr><tr><td>VII - Defense Organization</td><td>30</td></tr><tr><td>VIII - Alliances and the Role of Force</td><td>44</td></tr><tr><td>IX - The Special Problem of NATO</td><td>50</td></tr><tr><td>X - Disarmament</td><td>56</td></tr><tr><td>XI - Civil Defense</td><td>61</td></tr><tr><td>XII - Budget For National Security</td><td>66</td></tr><tr><td>XIII - Conclusion -- The Problem of Power</td><td>72</td></tr></table>

II - Report

December 4, 1957

(Revised)

A WORD BY THE PANEL

This Report is the result of a group effort by Panel II of the Special Studies Project of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Although not every member subscribes to every detail, it reflects our substantial agreement.

We were charged with exploring the International Security Objectives of the United States, the strategies most likely to attain these objectives and, generally, the problems and opportunities in this field which may face the country during the next ten to fifteen years. We have had the benefit, in committee, of the thoughts of numerous experts in relevant security areas through the media of many conversations and specially prepared papers. We have sought to make our report as specific as possible, for most of the tough problems will always be specific as they become critical. On the other hand, too much of the raw material of our consideration will be shaped by events in science and human affairs which have yet to happen for us to have attempted to blueprint every detail of our military posture.

It is our judgment that all is not well with present U. S. security policies and operations. The overall U. S. strategic concept lags behind developments in technology and in the world political situation. Defense organization in major ways is unrelated to critically important military missions. Governmental systems of budgets, appropriations, and financial management

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are painfully out of gear with the radically accelerating flow of military developments.

We are convinced that sizeable corrective steps can be taken now.

We would like to stress, what is surely unnecessary, that our comments are aimed at concepts and procedures, not at individuals. We have been heartened by the vigorous U. S. reaction to the dramatic advent of the Soviet earth satellites. The country has given clear indication that it does not intend to be left behind in the development of long-range missiles and space flight.

Neither does there seem to be any lack of recognition that the Sputniks are evidence of real momentum in Soviet science and technology generally, and of the magnitude and integrated nature of the Soviet power challenge. Our Panel therefore hopes that the most important result of the Soviet technical demonstration may be that it will serve as a catalyst for a genuinely deep review of all of the important basic U. S. attitudes and policies affecting the security of our country.

For the U. S. lag in missiles and space machines, however worrisome, is a symptom and not a cause. It reflects a general complacency over the past dozen years. It is now vitally important to the U. S. as ever it was to the U.S.S.R. to calculate its strategy and security requirements on an integrated and long-range basis, and to set about correcting all significant deficiencies.

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December 4, 1957

# I - FRAMEWORK OF THE STUDY

The world is living through a period of swift and far-reaching upheavals. Standards and institutions which have remained unchanged for centuries are breaking down. Millions who have hitherto accepted their place in life without question are clamoring for a new and meaningful existence. Western Europe, the fountainhead of our civilization has lost its position of pre-eminence in world affairs. Across the great land-mass of Eurasia and on the continent of Africa new nations are rising in the place of colonial empires.

The world is yearning to realize its aspirations in peace. But it is faced by two somber threats: the Communist thrust to exploit all dissatisfactions and to exacerbate all tensions; and the new weapons technology capable of obliterating civilization.

The United States thus has been placed into a fateful position. Our whold tradition impels us to desire peace. Relatively invulnerable behind two great oceans, we have in the past asked nothing of the world save to be free to work out our destiny undisturbed. But we have been forced to realize that our security is inextricably bound up with the safety of the rest of the non-Communist world and that freedom everywhere depends on our strength and resolution.

Force will not supply the answer to the hopes of humanity. Yet our power can help bring about a framework of security in which these aspirations may be realized without foreign interference.

Looking at the world from the perspective of our past isolation perhaps the most difficult thing for us is to accept the reality of our peril. But we are

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in mortal danger. Modern weapons can traverse intercontinental distances in
minutes and wipe out whole cities at one blow. The penalty for miscalculation
is national catastrophe. And the military strength of our opponents is growing
ominously. The U.S.S.R. has closed the gap in some strategic categories and
it has surpassed us in others.

Should the U.S.S.R. and Communist China attain a strategic superiority
we can be certain that events will be brutal and unforgiving. For over a gener-
ation now -- the last time in the Moscow declaration of all Communist states
on November 16, 1957-- these powers have proclaimed the irreconcilability of
their system with that of the free world. Of course "peaceful co-existence" has
reappeared periodically as a Soviet slogan. But it has never had more than
tactical significance. After World War II, it did not stand in the war of Soviet
domination of the satellite orbit and the breaking of the most solemn wartime
pledges. After the Geneva "summit" conference it did not restrain the Soviet
Union from selling arms to Egypt, thereby inviting a crisis in the Middle East
that has not ended to this day. In 1957 it did not keep the Soviet Union from
threatening nuclear attacks on Norway, Denmark and Turkey. Both their doctrine
and their internal dynamism will impel the Soviet Union and Communist China to
try to fill every vacuum and to encourage every dissatisfaction. Paradoxically
the prospects of peace depend on the strength and firmness of the United States
on our ability to relate our power to our purpose, on our willingness to act reso-
lutely in the face of continuing peril and ambiguous challenges.

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December 4, 1957

II - THE NATURE OF OUR STRATEGIC PROBLEM

But the effort to harmonize our power and our policy is handicapped
by many factors including the nature of our historical experience. Tradition
impels us to believe that peace is the "normal" relation among states. As
a result we have conceived it to be the task of our military policy to assemble
overwhelming power to "punish" the disturber of the peace -- the aggressor.
Aggression has appeared to us as an unambiguous act and we have tended to
identify it with something as vague as a quest for world domination. Because
we have been geographically remote from the major centers of world affairs
we have been able to rely on relatively small forces-in-being and to mobilize
our resources only *after* a war had started. Because many other powers
would be threatened before the danger to our security became explicit, we
could count on allies to hold a forward line while we rallied both our physical
and psychological resources. And we could identify strategy with a superior
offensive effort because with conventional technology the side able to in-
flict more damage than its opponent generally would retain sufficient
resources at the end of a war to impose its will.

All of these ideas have been overthrown by the technological develop-
ments since World War II and the emergence of the United States in the
forefront of world affairs. Soviet strategy, which can be described as a
strategy of deliberate ambiguity, has been so calculated that the risks of
resisting any given advance always seem out of proportion to the objective

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or else it is designed to appeal to what the Free World has come to consider "legitimate." It has become clear that the recognition of aggression may prove as difficult as finding the means to resist it. A symptom of the difficulty is that a United Nations committee charged with the task of defining aggression was forced to give up.

At the same time that the forms of aggression have multiplied and become more ambiguous, we have lost the safety indicators of a more secure past. We can no longer think of our military effort as designed for a conflict which we enter only after the issues have become clear beyond any doubt in order to tip the scales of victory as was the case in World War I and II.

Since the smaller powers have lost either the strength or the willingness to resist alone, the international equilibrium will depend on our ability, psychological and military, to engage our forces in the early stages of a conflict.

The importance of forces-in-being is magnified by the altered significance of industrial potential. As long as there prevailed a certain balance between the destructiveness of weapons and the complexity of their means of manufacture, victory in war could be achieved only through a quantity of equipment too large to stockpile. Then, an attack on production facilities was a highly effective strategy. But with modern technology industrial potential must be used *before* a war breaks out. Each major power is able to destroy the production facilities of its opponents with a few weapons relatively simple to manufacture in a matter of hours. And long before

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attrition can set in the social structure is likely to have collapsed. Modern war, particularly all-out war, will have to be fought with the forces-in-being available at the outset.

The destructiveness of the new weapons has also fundamentally affected the concept of the margin of superiority needed for victory. In the past victory could be assured by a superior offensive effort because the margin of destructiveness reflected a real difference in strength. Even then an insistence on total victory often produced a degree of exhaustion which undermined the position of <u>all</u> the contenders relative to other powers, as happened to Europe in World War I. The destructiveness of modern weapons has removed any doubt on this score. Today, victory in an all-out war may have no meaning because even the side which inflicts greater devastation than its opponent may not retain sufficient resources to impose its will.

Thus our military problem has two aspects: potential power is less important than actual power and even total power is no index of actual strength if it can not be applied to the actual issues in dispute. It is not enough to proclaim that we are opposed to peace at any price. For the price of peace cannot be determined in the abstract. If there is lack of clarity about our purpose in the world we shall have difficulty deciding whether a given issue is worth contending for. If our military doctrine poses impossible alternatives, policy makers will be disposed either to inaction or improvisation. If our military strength cannot be applied to

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the situations most likely to arise we shall find ourselves paralyzed no
matter how vast our over-all strength. As a result, one important test of
the adequacy of our military establishment is the ability to make the
response fit the challenge.

These two factors -- the importance of forces-in-being and the
necessity of a balanced military establishment -- impose on policy makers
an unparalleled problem of choice which is further complicated by the ex-
plosive rapidity with which technology is developing. Almost up to the
outbreak of World War II a weapons system would be good for nearly a
generation; the equipment of a U.S. rifle company hardly changed between
1919 and 1940. Today a weapons system begins to be obsolescent when it
has barely gone into production. The B-17 "Flying Fortress" remained in
operational use for a decade; the B-36 intercontinental bomber was
obsolescent in less than seven years; and the B-52 jet bomber is beginning
to be outdated even before all wings of our Strategic Air Command are fully
equipped with it.

This technological race places an extraordinary premium on the
ability to assess developing trends correctly and to back decisions firmly
over a period of time. It also places the side which is on the defensive at
special disadvantage. The aggressor needs prepare only for the war he pro-
poses to fight. But the side which concedes the first blow must gear its
planning and procurement to an indefinite period and in such a manner that
no strategic weakness is created at any given point.

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December 4, 1957

Moreover, it is impossible to achieve security by attempting to purchase all possible weapons systems, because such a course would invite financial disaster. The F-51, a late World War II fighter plane required 151,000 engineering man-hours and cost $21,000. The F-100, its 1957 equivalent, requires 404,000 engineering man-hours and costs $486,000 to perform a similar strategic mission. Even if it were possible to procure every weapon that can be developed it would not solve our strategic problem. It would merely shift the issue from procurement to utilization. It would overwhelm policymakers with a multiplicity of possible courses which because of their very number would paralyze action.

The basic problem of American strategy then is the ability to make effective choices. The test of our military policy is its relevance to the tasks our military forces likely will be called on to perform. It is to these that we must now turn.

III-1

III - MISSIONS

The types of conflict by which we may be challenged pose particular
problems because they tend to overleap the traditional boundaries between
the military services. With modern weapons the distinction of land, sea
and air warfare has lost its meaning. The criteria by which any future wars
can be distinguished turn on the nature of the conflict, the issues in dispute,
the geographical area of hostilities rather than on means of locomotion.

Among the possible challenges we may confront, three stand out most
starkly: all-out war, limited war and a kind of war new to the twentieth
century -- the disguised or obscure war concealed as internal take-over or as
civil war.

All-Out War

Of the threats to our security, all-out war is the most overwhelming.
It can be defined as an attack of such magnitude that our survival would be
directly and immediately at stake. It is therefore the ultimate war, in which
no inhibitions would apply and in which both sides would resort to every
weapon in their arsenal.

With modern weapons such a war would involve catastrophic casualties.
It is doubtful that civilized life as we know it could withstand the carnage.
Even the nominal victor would have suffered losses which would shake its
social fabric. This is particularly true for the side which concedes the first
blow. Whatever the hope of success of the aggressor, the victim will have

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suffered a devastating blow at the outset. In an all-out war, the side which is on the defensive can use its military power only to stave off defeat, not to impose its will.

For this reason the purpose of our capability for all-out war is above all to prevent war from breaking out; it is effective to the extent that it deters sudden onslaught. At the same time, our capability for all-out war is the essential requisite for all other measures. For as will be seen below, the more discriminating applications of our military force presuppose an adequate deterrent posture: limited war can be kept limited only if an opponent must consider expansion of the war highly unattractive.

But what is an adequate deterrent posture? No more difficult problem confronts American strategic planning. In the early post-war period, deterrence was thought to result from the ability to pose an overpowering offensive threat to the Soviet homeland. With the end of our invulnerability, we have been forced to concern ourselves with active defense against attacking planes in order to inflict the maximum degree of attrition. As attacking vehicles have become speedier and weapons ever more destructive, increasing attention will have to be paid to passive defense which seeks to blunt the enemy offense by reducing the damage as much as possible. A power which has succeeded in protecting its population at least to some degree is in a stronger psychological position than an opponent totally vulnerable to attack. In the age of the long-range missile, the known ability of a society to withstand attack will become an increasingly important deterrent.

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Thus the capability for all-out war must be composed of a combination of three factors: (a) A retaliatory force sufficiently powerful and well-protected so that no matter what the scale of the enemy attack, the aggressor must have to contend with a return blow which will inflict an unacceptable amount of damage; (b) An active defense which can provide effective warning for the retaliatory force and which is able to inflict sufficient attrition to reduce the enemy blow to the smallest possible proportions; (c) A passive defense which reduces the value of the enemy offense and the incentive for it.

The importance of defensive measures is that they force the enemy to increase his investment of resources in his offensive effort without adding to its strategic effectiveness. The necessity of a crushing retaliatory force is that it can deprive the aggressor of the fruits of a surprise attack. The task of strategy is to decide on the relative emphasis to be given to offensive and defensive capabilities and the "mix" which will provide the greatest flexibility. A later section will indicate the shortcomings in our posture for all-out war and the disturbing fact that we are losing ground both offensively and defensively.

In looking at the over-all strategic equation there is reason for serious concern. Our strategic striking power, on which we have heretofore relied as the major element of our security, is imperiled by Soviet missile developments and the inadequate dispersal of our Strategic Air Command. Our assumption that we could substitute technology for manpower has been exposed as tenuous. Soviet technological skill is growing rapidly and with it the capacity to deliver

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a mortal blow against the United States.

We can deter a sudden onslaught only by maintaining a retaliatory force so powerful and so well protected that whatever the Soviet blow, we will be able to inflict an unacceptable amount of damage in return. As long as our retaliatory force is composed of manned planes, this places a premium on the dispersal of our airbases. But the base construction of our Strategic Air Command has long been out of phase with other parts of its program. As missiles take over many of the tasks of long-range bombers, the dispersal of launching sites may become simpler particularly for short and medium range missiles. At the same time the possibilities of active defense will be more complicated and increasingly expensive. And the need for civil defense will grow with the destructiveness of weapons and the speed of the means of delivery.

## Limited War

The effort to keep up our capability for all-out war will by itself require a greater military effort on our part. Unfortunately, it does not exhaust our strategic problem. For no matter how vast our over-all strength, we face the dilemma that the magnitude of the total does not assure its sufficiency in any particular situation. Even with a military posture which causes all-out war to carry with it the threat of mutual destruction, our peril remains. Until the development of a Soviet nuclear stockpile and the means to deliver it, our

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retaliatory force could serve as the major deterrent to Soviet aggression. But as the Soviet capability to attack American cities increases, it will raise the threshold of provocation which would unleash our retaliatory force. And with the increasing horror of weapons technology this threshold is constantly rising. It is not that we will not fight if our national survival is threatened; it is simply that we shall interpret the requirements of our survival increasingly stringently if we must weigh all objectives against the destruction of New York or Washington or Chicago. If all-out war becomes our only riposte to aggression, the Soviet Union will be enabled to use its strategic striking force as a shield behind which to expand by more limited methods and to confront us with the alternative of surrender or a world-wide holocaust. As a result, we face the strategic problem of limited war, the form of conflict which overturns the balance of power by installments, any one of which does not seem to warrant a final show-down.

The distinctive feature of limited war is that its outcome does not involve or seem to involve national survival. It is for this precise reason that we have had such difficulty in coming to grips with it. For any peripheral Soviet move has raised doubts whether this particular encroachment warranted a final show-down. Another difficulty has been caused by our lack of mobile forces capable of intervening rapidly and decisively and of restoring a local situation before matters get out of hand. Thus we have been forced into the position of choosing between Armageddon and defeat without war. In each

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crisis our inhibitions have tended to exceed those of the Soviet Union.

To a certain extent, of course, the forces designed to deter all-out war will also be useful in preventing or stifling limited war. It would be dangerous, however, to rely too heavily on an all-purpose weapons system. The deterrent force for all-out war should be designed to inflict maximum destruction in the shortest possible time. The weapons system for a limited war should be flexible and discriminating; it requires units of high mobility which can be moved to trouble spots at a moment's notice.

Moreover, since the chief sanction against the expansion of a limited war resides in a crushing capability for retaliation, the deterrent force must be kept at a state of the highest readiness particularly during periods of limited conflict. An aggressor who could tempt us to utilize our strategic striking force for limited war would gain an advantage however military operations ended. To consider our strategic striking force as a dual-purpose force would weaken the deterrent precisely when it should be strongest.

It is imperative that we develop forces which can intervene rapidly and which are able to make their power felt with discrimination. We require more airlift to get them rapidly into trouble spots. These forces it must be emphasized are not a substitute for the capacity to conduct all-out war, but its complement: A strong and well protected retaliatory force is the prerequisite for limited war. It is the guarantee that an enemy cannot profit from an expansion of hostilities.

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The effective conduct of limited war thus depends on the ability to relate power and policy. It requires forces graduated to the objective under dispute and a diplomacy which can show the opponent a way out short of unconditional surrender. It provides a test of our maturity; of our willingness to run risks in the face of ambiguous challenges and of our ability to make peace on the basis of less than total victory. And once we possess this military and political capability, it may keep the peace by removing the motive for aggression.

The Obscure War

Perhaps the most difficult military challenge we have to face is one which is made to appear, insofar as is possible, to be no war at all. The "obscure war" may break out in the form of internal revolution or civil war; it may be instigated by outside forces or merely be exploited by them. Greece has furnished one example; Vietnam another; the Middle East still another. Whatever the degree of initial Soviet responsibility, one of the greatest threats to the security of the Free World is gradual Soviet infiltration and domination of vital areas through steps each of which is so small and seemingly so "legitimate" that it does not seem to justify overt intervention.

Thus the "obscure war" represents the conflict with which in terms of our preconceptions and the structure of our forces we are least prepared to deal. It is the essence of the obscure war that its nature is ambiguous. A civil war has not traditionally been thought to justify foreign intervention

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however much its outcome may affect the international balance. The gradual
subversion of a government is difficult to deal with from the outside, even
though the fate of millions may depend on it. Even should we overcome these
psychological obstacles and wish to make our influence felt, we will not find
it easy to do so. The typical form of influencing the obscure war is by assist-
ance to local forces which share our values or interests. But our over-all strength
is extremely difficult to apply to this form of conflict. Superiority in strategic
striking power vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, even if it could be maintained, does
not guarantee effective action in situations of great ambiguity. A multi-
megaton weapon is not a fit instrument for a civil war. A complicated nuclear
establishment may be unnecessary for resisting a revolutionary upheaval and
the local forces on which we must so largely depend may not be able to utilize
it.

Thus the obscure war is symptomatic of our entire military problem. Its
dilemma can be defined as follows: the horror of modern weapons causes
statesmen to recoil before the consequences. Yet the unwillingness to run
any risks amounts to giving the Soviet leaders a blank check. We can escape
the paralysis presented by such prospects only by developing a degree of
flexibility in our strategy: by planning a maximum number of steps between
doing nothing and doing everything, between surrender and suicide.

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The effectiveness of our power depends on our unmistakable ability
and willingness to oppose force with force at whatever level of intensity may
be required. We do not now possess that capability. The greatest point of
concern about the U. S. strategic position is that our distaste for limited risks
may ultimately lead us into surrender or into the ultimate risk at a rate
determined not by us but by Communist policy.