CHAPTER XI

The Requirements of American Security

Whatever the problem then, whether it concerns questions of military strategy, of coalition policy or of relations with the Soviet bloc, the nuclear age demands above all a doctrinal clarification. At a moment when technology has put in our grasp a command over nature never before imagined, we are driven to realize that Power depends above all on the purpose for which it is used. It is as if Nemesis were bent on demonstrating the finiteness of the human scale by fulfilling the aspirations of mankind too completely. For centuries, humanity has suffered from a shortage of power, so that all human striving has concentrated on developing new sources and special application of it. It would have seemed unbelievable even fifty years ago that there could ever be an excess of power, that everything would depend on the ability to use it subtly and with discrimination.

Yet this is precisely the challenge of the nuclear age. At a moment of unparalleled strength it teaches that in the absence of concepts which define its nature, its relation to policy and its purpose, power may simply serve to paralyze the will. All the difficult choices of the nuclear period, the nature of its weapons systems, the risks diplomacy can run, the issues for which to contend presuppose a doctrinal answer before they can find a technical one.

Their research and development programs will soon overwhelm our services with a variety of complex weapons. And the usual answer that a service can never possess a too varied capability will no longer do, for it is prohibitively expensive. In the 1930's, the Air Force had to select among perhaps four plane

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types; during World War II, this had risen to eight to ten, in the 1950's the number is over a hundred and in the 1960's it will be in the thousands. Only a doctrine which defines the purpose of these weapons and the kind of war in which to employ them permits a rational choice. The problem of survival will have to be solved above all in the minds of men. In this task the fate of the dinosaur and the mammoth may serve as a warning that brute strength does not always supply the mechanism in the struggle for survival.

The basic requirement of American security is therefore the fitness of our governmental process for producing the doctrinal decisions on which our survival may depend. It is not so much a matter of adopting a particular doctrine, because if haphazardly arrived at, even the best doctrine will prove difficult to apply consistently. The fundamental problem is how naturally our governmental processes and our leadership groups are brought to think in terms of over-all strategy. If a society possesses a leadership capable of thinking in over-all terms, policy disputes concern the implementation of generally understood objectives within a conceptual framework about the nature of power, of the national interest and a country's international obligations. In the absence of such a framework, conflicting proposals will compete with each other without any effective basis for their resolution. Each problem as it arises will seem novel and will absorb energies in an analysis of its nature rather than in constructive solutions. Even proper policies will lose effectiveness because they come about accidentally and cannot be related in a meaningful sequence. Many of our problems have been produced by our tendency to emphasize the technical aspects of our problems at the expense of doctrine. It is a temptation produced by our history, because our expansion and development presented itself as overcoming a series of physical obstacles, so much so, that it has overlooked that only a strong sense of purpose could impel men into an unexplored continent -- a doctrine of independence and

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colonization, so much taken for granted, that it was never made explicit.

The problems of a United States strategic doctrine appear most sharply in three areas: that of the natural budget of government organization and of the attitudes of our people and above all our leadership groups. Each will be discussed in turn.

## II

The budgetary process reveals perhaps most immediately the problem of reconciling doctrine and technology; the danger that in the absence of a strategic doctrine meaningful choices are almost impossible. Our budgetary process still reflects the categories of thought of a period when our problems were primarily domestic. The chief concerns of the government were fiscal policy and a sound economy was thought to depend on a balanced budget. Strategic problems did not loom very large both because of our seeming invulnerability and because of the slow rate of technological change. Because we believed that we could remain aloof from foreign involvements, no incentive existed for developing a distinctive strategic doctrine. As a result the government through much of our history was absorbed by fiscal policy; it was the field above others in which the relationship between purpose and policy was best understood. Foreign policy and military policy, even more, were conceived in defensive and essentially technical terms; as the solution of problems imposed by the outside world.

But conditions have now changed. Our most immediate problems are no longer domestic, but foreign; the great danger to our security is not so much economic collapse, as military defeat. We no longer have the choice of staying aloof from foreign involvements. On the contrary, whenever we have attempted to dissociate ourselves from the immediate impact of events,

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$26,000; the F-86 - $121,000; the F-100 costs $48.6,000. The first B-17 costs $500 thousands for research and development and production; it was developed as a private risk by the Boeing Aircraft company. The first B-52, our latest jet bomber, cost $50 million and all research and development had to be underwritten by the government. The B-17 weighed 35 thousands pounds, the B-52 weighs 400 thousand pounds.

And concurrently with the development of ever more complex and costly planes the new missiles are going into production partly duplicating the strategic mission of existing weapons and raising new problems of cost, development and strategic employment.

The task of strategy, however, is not simply to provide the tools of war, but also to utilize these tools for the purpose of war. Indeed without a concept of the purpose and the nature of war, it is impossible to make an effective choice among the new weapons, technology produces. The problem is complicated because not only do different weapons systems compete within each service, but also because the services compete among each other for the control of different weapons systems. Thus in the absence of an agreed doctrine all pressures make for a resolution of problems on the basis of administrative decisions or for a proliferation of weapons systems with no clear conception of the use to which they would be put in case of war - in fact, the absence of a clear strategic doctrine is one of the reasons for the proliferation of weapon systems.

compounds

Our budgetary process/these difficulties. Until 1921, each department of the government made its requests directly to the Congress and Congress exercised its control through a highly detailed system of appropriations. As government grew more complex, it became evident that review by Congressional Committees did not suffice even to control departamental expenditures effectively, much

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less to establish a relationship among them. The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 therefore directed the President to submit a comprehensive budget for the executive Branch and the Congress; the same act created the Bureau of the Budget as the President's staff agency for the preparation and coordination of the budget. The original motivation behind the Budget and Accounting Act was to resell reduce expenditure which were thought to have been unnecessarily inflated by the war. Thus the impetus to the Bureau of the Budget was the same attitude which has historically animated Congressional review of Federal expenditures: to keep government spending to a minimum. And the original bias has continued; in some respects it has been magnified by the increasing complexity of the programs under review. Because neither the Bureau of the Budget nor the Congress are equipped to pass judgement on the merit of programs they tend to identify coordination with the control of expenditures; their emphasis has had to be almost inevitably on fiscal consideration rather than on the substantive aspects of the budgetary requests. They play the role of critics of existing programs in terms of assuring efficient operation; they are not and cannot be the initiators of doctrine.

The emphasis on fiscal policy tends to exaggerate the biases already inherent in our strategic planning; it puts a premium on technical aspects of weapons systems because they are the simplest to justify and it leads to a slighting of strategic doctrine because in terms of our present budgetary process it cannot bring any immediate return in the form of appropriations. Since the role of the Bureau of the Budget is essentially that of critic of existing programs, it may actually promote a subtle form of waste; the proliferation of partially overlapping partially inconsistent weapons systems. Because to relinquish a weapons system may be interpreted as an admission of

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inadequate planning, each service has a powerful incentive to hold on to all
the weapons it can, even after they have outlived their usefulness. A weapons
system no matter how obsolete, represents a budgetary category; this is no
guarantee that a replacement will find acceptance among the budgetary authorities
and in any case the justification of it is a long process fraught with serious
danger of budgetary reduction. Because the Bureau of the Budget is not equipped
nor designed to pass on the doctrinal aspect of military requests, it may there-
fore address itself to the relatively least important source of waste: excessive
procurement usually reflecting inadequate accounting procedures, such as the
familiar horror story of the Navy purchase of anchors to last 100 years. And
it may overlook the significant area of confusion: the proliferation of different
weapons systems within and among the services.

In this manner, our present budgetary process becomes a device to escape
difficult choices in order to establish a claim for future appropriations; each
service pushes weapons development in every category without too much regard for
the program of other services, and each service seeks to obtain control over as many
different weapons as possible as a form of insurance against drastic budget reduc-
tions in the future. This confirms our predilection for size and power, for the big-
gest weapons of most destructive capability which offer total solutions at minimum
cost.

The predominance of fiscal considerations is not even always a question of
deliberate choice. It is in part produced by the fact that because of our
tradition of greater concern with fiscal policy, the Treasury position tends to
be the most coherent and consistent of the points of view within the Interdepart-
mental committees which seek to arrive at strategic decisions. Because of inter-
service rivalry, no clear competing Department of Defense position exists. On the
contrary, each service is tempted to enlist the support of the Treasury Department

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in favor of its strategic views on grounds of economy. The fiscal view-point therefore often comes to predominate by default. Whatever the reason, every Administration since World War II, has at some time held the view that this country could not afford more than a certain sum for military appropriations, overriding the question of whether we can afford to be without an adequate military capability and inhibiting a consideration of what such a capability might be. It is not that the establishment of a budgetary ceiling is inevitably pernicious; a removal of all budgetary restrictions would equally inhibit doctrine, because it would lead each service to seek to protect itself against every contingency and to hoard weapons for every eventuality - as occured to some extent during the Korean war. And the proliferation of weapons systems unrelated to doctrine will cause strategic decisions - which always involve choices - to be made in the confusion of battle. The difficulty with our present budgetary process is that by giving priority to cost over requirement, it subordinates doctrine to technology. Budgetary appropriations are not justified in terms of strategic doctrine; rather doctrine is tailored and if necessary invented to fit budgetary requests.

The predominance of fiscal considerations makes for doctrinal rigidity because it causes each service to be afraid that a change in doctrine will lead to a cut in appropriations. This is illustrated by a violent dispute in 1950 between advocates of strategic airpower and a group of scientists at the Lincoln Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who were accused of advocating a cut in our retaliatory force in order to build up air defense. The remarkable thing about this dispute was that the M.I.T. group explicitly denied underrating the importance of strategic airpower; they insisted that their recommendations had been solely concerned with building up our air defense. Yet

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the partisans of strategic air force had psychology, if not logic, on their side, for with a fixed ceiling on defense expenditures it was clear that any new appropriation was bound to lead to the reduction of existing forces; a new capability could in practice be developed at the expense of an existing one. As a result, budgetary pressures compound the inherent conservatism of the military and leads to the subordination of doctrine to the battle for appropriations.

Moreover, while it is true that there is an upper limit of defense spending beyond which the injury to the economy outweighs the gain in military strength, it is also the case that this theoretical ceiling has consistently been underestimated. In 1949, during the B-36 hearing, it was generally agreed that a military budget of $14.7 billion was insupportable in the long run and yet within a year military expenditures reached four times that amount. Since 1953 the military budget has been stabilized at around $35 billion with the same argument used for a much smaller budget in 1949, that additional expenditures might have a deleterious effect on the economy, in view of the fact that the Gross National Product has been steadily rising since 1953, the percentage devoted to defense expenditures has actually declined. To be sure there is no imperative that defense expenditures should rise with the Gross National Product; such an argument is as mechanical an approach to strategic doctrine as that which led to the imposition of a budgetary ceiling in the first place. It does indicate, however, that even according to the strictest cannons of fiscal orthodoxy, the ceiling is not as rigid as its advocates maintain.

The imposition of a rigid budgetary ceiling will actually involve a decreasing defense effort, even in absolute terms and far from promoting efficiency, it may make it more difficult to attain. In a period of expanding economy,

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rising prices will cause each defense dollar to purchase less equipment all the more so as their increasing complexity increases the cost of each successive family of weapons. A fixed budgetary ceiling therefore causes constant pressure to reduce force levels and their sensitivity to economy pressures in turn will tempt the services to overstate their needs. In order to be certain that they will obtain what they consider their minimum requirements. Thus it will be impossible to maintain even present force levels without an increase in the budget both because of inflation and because the replacement for each weapon costs several times the amount of its predecessor. In fiscal year 1957, (July 1, 1956 - June 30, 1957) the $35 billion ceiling was maintained only by a series of non-repeatable savings such as a reduction of $400 million in the Air Force Maintenance and Operation funds and deferring the purchase of new equipment. As a result, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in their testimony before the Symington Committee stated that their minimum requirements to maintain present force levels for fiscal year 1958 as $48 billion or an increase of thirty-three per cent. Although these figures are not conclusive and the final defense budget was held down to $38 billion by again deferring major new procurement, every deferred expenditure will increase the pressure on future years either to increase the budget or to reduce forces.

Moreover, it is no longer possible to wait with the procurement of new equipment until the preceding weapons system has become completely obsolescent. At the present rate of technological change new weapons systems have to begin to be procured within a year of the existing one. Thus at the precise moment when we are buying the new heavy jet bomber, the B-52, we must start procuring

5. This broke down as follows: Air Force - $23 billion, Symington Hearings, p. 1494. (General Twining) Navy - $13 billion, Ibid, p.1358 (Adm. Burke) Army - $12 billion, Ibid, p.1280 (Gen. Taylor).

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missiles and support research programs for the next family of airplanes.
And every new offensive weapon carries with it a requirement for an additional
defensive outlay. Our present air-defense system designed to defeat manned
bombers will be barely completed before it will have to be supplemented by a
defensive system which will give a measure of warning against missiles. The
greater the power and speed of offensive systems, the more stress will have to
be laid on passive defense measures, on dispersal, warning and communication,
and deep shelters. Conversely, as the Soviet air defensive system gains in
effectiveness, our strategic striking force will have to be improved simply to
maintain our present offensive capabilities.

Thus a steadily rising defense budget is indicated even if we want to do
no more than maintain our present relative strategic position vis-a-vis the
U.S.S.R. There can be no doubt that the unimpaired power of our retaliatory
force must remain the first charge on our defense budget. But this will be no
simple task either technically or within present budgetary limitations. The
planned increase of the number of B-52's in heavy bomber wings of the Strategic
Air Command from thirty to forty-five will involve an expenditure of $1.5 billion
for procurement alone. And it should be supplemented by the construction of
additional bases and warning installations. The Air Defense System presently
programmed against manned planes will cost $61 billion over a fifteen year period
from 1951-1965 and the largest expenditures will commence in fiscal year 1958.
3)
The growing Soviet naval threat will force us to pay increasing attention to
anti-submarine warfare. As the Soviets develop missile-firing submarines pro-
pelled by nuclear energy--and they cannot be far behind us in this field--our
naval budget can be expected to increase.

3. Symington Hearings, op. cit., p. 298 (General Partridge).

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Moreover, present capabilities are, as we have seen, not sufficient to meet the range of challenges we are likely to confront. While a surprise all-out blow is the most serious danger, local war is the most likely threat and the form of conflict which offers the most immediate strategic opportunities to either side. And here we possess neither an adequate doctrine, nor an adequate capability. Our present army organization is too cumbersome and is in the process of change. Re-equipping one army division costs between $175 and $200 million dollars; for our current force of 19 divisions this would amount to a minimum of $3.3 billion dollars. After the expensive task of re-equipping is concluded our army will still lack mobility: given the rapidity of operation of modern war, a strategic reserve should be able to get to potential danger spots rapidly because an enemy possessing nuclear weapons who is given a chance to consolidate territory may establish a well-nigh impregnable position. A minimum requirement would seem to be the ability to airlift 2 divisions within a period of 10 days. To airlift the assault echelon of one division to the Near East over of period of 10 days would require 200 C-133's at a cost of $1.9 billion and perhaps an increase of $100 million in operating costs. To airlift two entire divisions simultaneously would require an additional capital investment of $5.2 billion and a $1½ billion increase in operating costs.

Finally as the Soviet Union adds long-range missiles to its strategic arsenal, our present air defense system will become less and less effective. It will then be necessary to think seriously of the construction of deep shelters to conserve as much of our human resources as possible even in the face of a devastating attack. Such a program which has not yet passed the blue-print stage might cost as much as $20 billion over a ten-year period.

4. For a fuller discussion of these points, see above Chapter VI, p.

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jurisdictional disputes. Nor can this problem be avoided by administrative
fiat as has repeatedly been attempted. The interservice rivalries are inherent
in the definition of missions; they result inevitably from a division of roles
on the basis of means of locomotion in the face of a technology which makes
a mockery of such distinctions.

The disputes among the services have grown so bitter morever because force
levels, which determine appropriations, are set on the basis of a service's
primary mission. Since the primary mission is unachievable in purely military
terms without defeating the enemy completely, each service will always consider
its force levels inadequate and each service will be convinced that one reason for
this inadequacy is a transgression by a sister service on its field of
jurisdiction. Thus the setting of force levels on the basis of the primary
mission of a service, when this primary mission represents no clearly separable
strategic option, inhibits an over-all approach to questions of doctrine. The
disputes between the Army and the Airforce regarding the importance of airlift
for the army can serve as an illustration. The significance of their dispute
resides not in the arguments advanced on either side, but in the fact that in
terms of the primary mission of each service it is insoluble. The airforce c
charged with defeating the enemy air arm must consider an investment in planes
of no tactical or strategic combat effectiveness a diversion of resources.
The Army, on the other hand, charged with destroying its enemy counterpart,
cannot not carry out its primary mission if it cannot get into position to
fight. To the Army airlift is the condition of all effective action.

The rigid division of functions among the services, therefore inhibits the
consideration of airlift in terms of over-all strategy. The Army, to which
the airlift is essential, is precluded by the Key West agreement from developing

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it, and Secretary Wilson's latest clarification of mission reinforces the prohibition against an Army air arm.⁵)

The Air Force, which has primary responsibility for all weapons which depend on the air as a means of locomotion is almost impelled by its primary mission to consider airlift a marginal requirement.

In fact the Key West Agreement in effect precludes the Air Force from considering the airlift in the only terms which are most meaningful to the Army and to the over-all situation: that of over-all strategic mobility. Thus our process of arriving at strategic decisions breaks down at the precise point where the division of functions on the basis of means of locomotion causes one service to be assigned a responsibility which is subsidiary to its primary mission, although essential to the primary mission of another service. In such a situation all the pressures in our military establishment work against considering either force levels or doctrine in terms of an over-all strategy. The intimate connection between primary mission and budgetary rewards impels our service chiefs, with the best intentions in the world, to become essentially advocates of a service point of view.

The doctrinal handicap imposed by the predominance of fiscal considerations is not compensated for by an increase in civilian control either within the Executive Branch or within the Congress. The difficulty of effective control over military programs, particularly by Congress is due to two factors: the fiction of the yearly review and the technical complexity of the subject. The yearly review is increasingly out of place with the substantive realities of defense planning. The hiatus between development and procurement is several years in the case of most weapons; and financial provision for the entire program must be made at least by the time that they are made available to combat units.

5. Department of Defense Press Release, November 26, 1956.

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Thus the first order for B-52's logically carried with it the obligation to continue the program until the Strategic Air Command was completely equipped with heavy jet bombers. Similarly, the beginning of construction on an aircraft carrier makes almost inescapable future appropriations to complete its construction. This difficulty is not confined to the field of defense policy although it is perhaps most evident there. The European Recovery Program (ERP) for example was launched by an authorization for the expenditure of $15 billion over a five year period. Although Congress was not legally bound thereby to appropriate this amount or indeed any amount in subsequent years, the moral obligation to continue appropriations was considerable. As a result, a new Administration and a new Congress discover very often that a large part of the current budget is already preempted by decisions made in previous years.

In these circumstances a yearly review does not bring about effective control; it does ensure however, that no dispute is ever finally resolved. Each year the same arguments about the efficacy of limited war, airlift and the relative merits of carrier and strategic aviation are repeated and they are not settled until some technical development outstrips the dispute or an administrative fiat allocates roles and missions which the losing service accepts only because it has every prospect of reopening the issue in the following year. In the absence of doctrinal agreement, interservice disputes can be resolved only by compromises which may define only the least unacceptable strategy or by a proliferation of missions and weapons systems which obscures the underlying disagreements and transfers them from the procurement of weapons systems to the conduct of military operations.

The technical complexity of most disputes complicates civilian control and particularly Congressional control even further. Within the Department of

13

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Defense the multiplication of civilian officials, often in office for only a year or two, causes the Secretaries and Assistant Secretaries to become less organs of control than organs to legitimize interservice disputes. Their short term in office makes it difficult if not impossible for the civilian secretaries and assistant secretaries to become familiar with the subtleties of the strategic problems. Instead of being able to establish a unified concept, they are therefore largely dependent on the advice of their professional staff. If anything, the civilian officials tend to exacerbate the disputes of the services, because, but for exceptional cases, relative unfamiliarity with strategic problems causes them to be more accessible to simplified all-out solutions than to the differentiated, complicated doctrine the situation requires.

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As for Congressional control, the only form where the over-all defense program can be considered is in the Appropriations Committee. But the form of the budget and the manner of its presentation inhibit a consideration of the national defense effort in terms of an integrated strategic doctrine. A meaningful judgment by the Congress on the defense budget would presuppose an assessment of the military strength achieved by a given expenditure and the relationship of this strength to a set of national security objectives. Neither condition is met by current practice. To be sure, the budget is introduced by testimony of the service chiefs and their civilian superiors regarding the gravity of the international situation. But no attempt is made to show the relationship of strategy to the developing international situation beyond the general implication that the proposed program would ensure the security of the United States. In turn, the Congressional Committees can make their judgments only in terms of a vague assessment of the international situation: they will be hesitant to reduce the budget if they feel the situation to be serious and they will be disposed to pare request drastically when they think the situation not to be as serious as represented.

In this manner another vicious circle is set up: in order to create a favorable climate for their budgetary requests, the services tend to emphasize the most ominous aspects of the United States security problem. Because of their awareness that there exists a greater receptiveness for programs which seem to offer total solutions each service is encouraged to stress the part of its mission which poses the most absolute sanctions. Thus the Army, in 1951 produced the "atomic Cannon", a cumbersome, hybrid and

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already obsolescent weapon, in part to obtain access to the nu-
clear stockpile. Therefore the Navy, after the B-36 hearings,
abandoned its opposition to the identification of deterrence with
maximum retaliatory power; in fact, it adopted the theory as its
own and in its budgetary presentations, at least, it has empha-
zized its contribution to the strategic striking force more than
its less dramatic task of anti-submarine warfare. And Congress-
ional hearing leave little doubt that even within the Airforce
budget, the Strategic Air Command has the most prestige value.

Thus the budgetary process places a premium on the weapons
systems which fit in best with the traditional preconceptions of
American strategic thought. It is not that the belief in the im-
portance of strategic striking forces is wrong in itself; indeed,
the Strategic Air Command must continue to have the first claim on
our defense budget. It is simply that the overemphasis on total
solutions reinforces the already powerful tendency against supple-
menting our retaliatory force with subtler military capabilities
which address themselves to the likelier dangers and involve a less
destructive strategy.

An examination of the classification of the budget makes
clear that Congress has little opportunity for coming to grips with
questions of doctrine. For the budget as now presented makes it
almost impossible to determine the relationship between the forces
requested and the national objectives. The Army budget can serve
as an illustration of problems which in greater or lesser degree
are presented by all service budgets. Until 1950 the Army budget
was broken down by technical services. (The Airforce follows al-
most the identical presentation as the Army.) Since this break-down

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clearly bore little relationship to the actual performance of
strategic missions, it was changed in 1950 to an accounting pro-
cedure which was thought to reflect programs and goals more accur-
ately. The classifications for the 1950 budget and the 1955 bud-
get are as follows:

1950 Budget

Office of the Secretary of the Army
General Staff Corps
Finance Department
Quartermaster Corps
Transportation Corps
Signal Corps
Medical Department
Corps of Engineers
Ordnance Department
Chemical Corps
Army Field Forces
Departmental Salaries & Expenses

1955 Budget

Military Personnel
Maintenance & Operations
Military Construction
Research & Development
Procurement & Production

While the new budgetary categories are in terms of functions
rather than of technical services, it is doubtful whether they af-
ford a better opportunity for estimating the over-all effectiveness
of the defense program. It will be difficult for even a well-
informed Congressman to relate a fluctuation in the Maintenance
and Operations item to the effectiveness of the Strategic Air Com-
mand, for example. Undoubtedly the Committee's service send brief-
ings about the planned composition of forces; the point is that
the classifications of the Budget do not show the relationship of
the budget to the level of defense effort they will produce. A
Congressman looking through the Airforce Budget would search in
vain for even a description of its major commands and their compos-
ition. And the same is true of the other services. As a result,
Congressmen will concentrate on individual items of waste, such as
the use of official planes for pleasure trips or the supply of

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6/ gas-masks to the Pentagon. These investigations while important address themselves only to the marginal examples of waste, they do not deal with the more significant problem of overlapping roles and missions which impair the over-all performance of our defense establishment.

Because the budgetary process compounds the predilection for technology over doctrine, such Congressional consideration of strategic concepts as does take place, is usually produced by the dissatisfaction of some service with its budgetary allocations. Thus the B-36 hearings in 1949 resulted from the cancellation by Secretary Johnson of the Navy's giant carrier and the Symington Committee hearings on airpower were the consequence of the budgetary ceiling imposed on the Airforce (and other services too) by Secretary Wilson. But such a procedure has the disadvantage of emphasizing the problems of one particular service and to obscure the real difficulties which occur in the area of overlapping strategies. Moreover, even the hearings explicitly addressed to the problems of roles and missions tend to be conducted in the familiar technical categories. Thus during the Symington hearings, relatively little attention was paid to the strategic concepts of the services; on the whole the Committee was content to take the services at their own valuation of themselves. But a great deal of time was spent on the relative numbers of the Soviet and United States heavy bomber force and the relative thrust of jet engines. These figures are important, to be sure, but their meaning derives from a strategic doctrine. Without a concept of war -- or at least of air-war -- comparative number mean little and the relative thrust of jet engines means less. Without an idea of the priority of various types

6. I am indebted to Professor Arthur Smitters of Harvard University for many of the observations regarding the impact of the budgetary classifications on strategic thought.

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warfare, judgments about force-levels will be haphazard. The quest
for numbers is a symptom of the addiction of doctrine.

Thus the budgetary process is one of the factors which in-
hibits strategic thought. The frequency of review, the increasing
complexity of the weapons systems, the difficulty of analyzing
budgetary requests all combine to put a premium on technical con-
cerns. Because the budget constantly looms above them, the services
tend to substitute the categories of its justification for an in-
terpreted strategic doctrine. Because the service chiefs must
spend such a disproportionate share of their time in preparing or
justifying the budget, and because the morale and the role of their
service depend on the share they obtain for it, all the pressures
tend to tranform the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff into ad-
vocates of a service point of view. Because the passage of the
budget is facilitated by the appearance of interservice harmony,
there occurs just sufficient compromise to insure the perpetuation
of all disputes.

The lack of attention paid to strategic doctrine inhibits
not only the formulation of military policy but also the conduct
of diplomacy: in order to justify appropriations before an economy-
minded Congress and Bureau of the Budget, there is a tendency to
paint the strategic problem in the darkest terms. Thus a vicious
circle is set up: the more terrible we paint Soviet strategy, the
more confirmed we become in our predilection for an all-out strategy.
But the more fearful the sanctions posed by strategy, the more
reluctant will the political leadership be to invoke it. In every
crisis, we are obliged to gear our measures to the availability of
forces instead of having in advance geared our forces to the most

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likely danger. And even with respect to the forces we have avail-
able our hesitations are multiplied because the services do not
agree among themselves about strategy either for limited or for
total war, but particularly for the latter.

It may be argued, of course, that we do possess a strategic
doctrine expressed in decisions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
resolutions of the National Security Council on the basis of which
the force levels of our Armed Forces are determined by Congress.
But the decisions of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National
Security Council give a misleading impression of unity of purpose.
The officials composing these bodies are either service chiefs in
the case of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or heads of Executive de-
partments in the case of the National Security Council. They are
consequently overwhelmed with administrative concerns; the impetus
of their actions comes from the service or the department they
represent and not from a preoccupation with questions of over-all
strategy. [They do not stand above the battle of the bureaucracy;
instead they are spokesmen for it. The process in which they are
engaged has less the characteristic of a deliberation than of a
negotiation among sovereign entities.] As a result, the conclusions
of both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council
are in the nature of a compromise; they reflect the attainable con-
sensus and not a sense of direction. Because their implementation
is up to departments or services whose differences have prevented
the development of doctrine in the first place, decisions of the
National Security Council or the Joint Chiefs are either too gener-
alized to be meaningful or they shift disputes to an interpretation
of their meaning with each service or department choosing the exege-
sis closest to their original point of view. The decisions of our

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policy-making bodies are therefore deceptive and often purposely
so. The seeming unanimity merely defers the doctrinal dilemma until
some crisis or the requirements of the budgetary process forces a
reconsideration under the pressure of events.

III

It is easier to describe difficulties than to propose reme-
dies. Many of the obstacles to the development of doctrine are in-
herent in the complexity of the problem and in the novelty of the
challenge confronting us. No previous generation has had to master
so many revolutions occurring simultaneously, in ideology, in emerg-
ing new nations, in the existence of an irreconcilably hostile bloc
of powers and in the rapidly changing weapons technology. The con-
cern with technology is understandable in a situation where the
penalty for a wrong guess about weapons systems may be national
catastrophe. The predilection with all-out war stems almost in-
evitably from the fact that it is our gravest, if not our most
likely danger, and therefore rightly the first priority of our de-
fense effort. Provision for it is so complicated, moreover, that it
can easily obscure all other concerns. (The fact remains that sur-
vival will depend on our ability to overcome these obstacles. Pos-
terity will not judge us by the vastness of our challenge but by
our ability to surmount it.)

Many of our difficulties are a question of emphasis. No one
can object to the fact that fiscal policy is considered in the pro-
cess of formulating military policy. The problem is rather that
fiscal policy tends to play a disproportionate role, importantly
because of the categories of thought which our budgetary process

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XI-25

produces. Since the services are on the defensive and since the budgetary cycle
is practically unending, fiscal considerations inevitably become predominant,
particularly in an economy-minded Administration. The test of the validity of
a doctrine is in part the impetus that produced it. In our military establish-
ment the impetus almost invariably comes from the budgetary cycles; as a
result doctrine is geared to the battle for appropriations. While this does
not necessarily preclude profound conception, the direction of the pressures
is indicated by the speeches of General Bradley defending Secretary Johnson's
$14.6 billion defense budget on fiscal grounds and also by Admiral Radford's
concern with fiscal policy before the Symington Committee.

Any attempt to channel military thought towards doctrine might therefore
begin by relieving the pressure inherent in the almost incessant effort of
either preparing, negotiating or justifying budgets. The yearly budget
review encourages irresponsibility because the review must almost inevitably
concentrate on items which are peripheral to the basic strategic problem
and because it causes the justification of the budget to be in terms which
flatter prevailing predilections. No large corporation could operate if it
were forced to justify its entire program every year, and if every expenditure
were considered only as a cost and not as an investment. Considerable relief
would therefore be afforded if the budget cycle could be extended. Other
constitutions which had a yearly review of the budget by Parliament have
made exceptions in the case of the military budget -- in Imperial Germany for
example the military budget was fixed for seven years, although the remainder
of the Budget had to be approved each year. Seven years is of course far too
long a period. But it would be a great advance if the military budget cycle
could be extended over a two-year period. Thus the military budget would
coincide with the term of the House of Representatives.

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XI-26

To be sure, in its initial stages such a procedure might sharpen inter-service rivalries because the prize now would be longer-term and therefore more fundamental commitments. But bringing the inter-service disputes to a head would leave healthy consequences in the long run. The failure to resolve current doctrinal disagreements, and the pretense of harmony at each budgetary hearing cause the conflict to rage by subterfuge, by planned leaks to newspapers or to Congressmen. A two year budgetary cycle would free the service chiefs from the constant pressure of short-term considerations; it might encourage planning to turn from the essentially defensive task of justifying force-levels to the consideration of the purpose of force-levels. In turn, Congress could play a more effective role in review and in gaining public support for the strategy eventually adopted.

Nevertheless reforms of the budgetary process can only be palliatives. The basic challenge of any society is how it can bring its leadership to think naturally and spontaneously about the problems of greatest over-all concern. An administrative mechanism charged with producing (over-all decisions) will be ineffective if nothing in the daily experience of the individuals comprising it leads them naturally to reflection about the problems of general strategy. The more fact that a certain amount of time and effort is spent in administrative charges, with little or no benefit to the nation, shows that leadership is not achieved by an apportionment of time; it is above all a question of categories of thought. Its profundity depends not on the ability to compromise but on the capacity to think in conceptual terms beyond the technical requirements of the moment.

Leadership is therefore an aspect of a more general problem faced by any society; the need to strike a balance between the requirements of organization and the need for inspiration. Organization expresses the importance of continuity; it is achieved by means of a routine which can operate on average

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performance; it represents a recognition that a society must be able to assimilate mediocrity. Inspiration, on the other hand, is the mechanism of growth; it is the ability to transcend a framework which has come to be taken for granted. The stability of a society depends on its skill in organization which enables it to react mechanically to "ordinary" problems and to utilize existing resources to best effect. Without organization every problem becomes a special case; it must be dealt with by a procedure which exhausts energies in analyzing and identifying at the expense of constructive thought. The greatness of a society, however, derives from its capacity of inspiration on its willingness to go beyond the confines of routine. The experience of a people tends to be confined to the level of its average performance; it tends to identify the requirement of organization with the possible range of motivations. Leadership is the refusal to confine action to average performance; it is the willingness to define purposes perhaps only vaguely apprehended by the multitude. A society learns only from experience: it "knows" only when it is too late to act. But a leader must act as if his inspirations were already experience, as if his aspiration were "truth". A statesman must therefore be an educator. He must bridge the gap between a society's experience and his vision, between its tradition and its future.

In this task his possibilities are limited because there is an inherent tension between the mode of action of a bureaucracy and the pattern of statesmanship. A smoothly-working bureaucracy creates the illusion that it is running by itself; it will therefore seek to reduce all problems to administrative terms. The basic motivation of a bureaucracy is its quest for safety; the necessary emphasis on routine creates a bias in favor of a policy of minimum risk. A bureaucracy therefore has a tendency to emphasize the technical complexit.

[lc]

A-1-23

of its problems, and to seek to reduce questions of judgment to a minimum. Technical problems are susceptible to "objective" analysis which is the equivalent of a standard of average performance. Because questions of judgment cannot be so classified, they tend to be resisted as being too indeterminate. An administrative mechanism always tends to favor the status quo, however arrived at. Short of an unambiguous catastrophe, the status quo has the advantage of familiarity; no "objective" criteria can prove that a change of course will yield superior results. Thus the inclination of a bureaucracy is to deny the possibility of great conception by classifying it as "unsound," "risky" or other terms inaccessible to exceptional performance.

National strategy can be confined to the mode of understanding of an administrative mechanism only at great peril. For profound policy thrives on creativeness; administration on an avoidance of deviation. Policy is judged by its grasp of opportunities, bureaucracies by their skill in avoiding dangers. It is no accident that most great statesmen were opposed by the "experts" in their foreign offices, for the very greatness of the statesmen's conceptions tends to make it inaccessible to those whose primary concern is with safety and minimum risk.

A society owes its vitality to its ability to establish a balance between the requirement of organization and the need for inspiration. The danger of too much stress on organization is bureaucratization and lack of imagination. The peril of excessive emphasis on inspiration is a tour de force exceeding the ability of the society to assimilate

[10]

XI-28a

change. The best balance is produced by a bureaucracy which runs
sufficiently smoothly to take care of ordinary problems as a matter
of routine; but not so pervasive as to inhibit the creative thought
which is inseparable from statesmanship.

The complexities of contemporary life inhibit the establishment
of this balance, however, For the mastery of any one field whether
it is politics, science, or industry, is so difficult that it
discourages reflection about its relationship to other activities.
The structure of most organizations is growing so intricate that
the effort to learn to manipulate it, tends to leave (go to p. 29)

[lc]

XI-29

little energy for a consideration of its purpose. Bureaucratization comes about when the internal problems of an apparatus approach in complexity the problems with which the administrative mechanism was designed to deal, a condition rapidly being reached in many aspects of modern life.

Thus at a moment when the capacity to think conceptually was never more important, technical problems have become so complicated that they tend to pre-empt all attention. At a time when our society needs "generalists" above all, individuals with a wide orbit and universal interests, all pressures tend to restrict the orbit of the individual and to narrow interests. A strong leadership group is developed when the qualities which are encouraged in reaching the top approximate the qualities required for effective over-all guidance. But the structure of a modern society tends to run counter to developing these abilities. The skill required in attaining eminence within a large administrative mechanism is essentially manipulative; it is the ability to adapt to prevailing standards and to improve efficiency within a frame-work which is given. But the qualities required for leadership are primarily creative; it is to set the framework within which administration operates. The patterns of thinking developed in the rise to eminence may therefore inhibit effectiveness when eminence is reached; the anonymity of working up through a bureaucracy may be inconsistent with the flair and sense of style of effective leadership. The incentives of an organizations is specialized skill; the imperative of leadership is scope and vision which in turn may be unrecognized at lower levels because of the insufficiency of the challenge.

Many of the difficulties of our governmental apparatus are therefore only symptoms of challenges faced by our society at large. Their solution will ultimately depend on developments within American life; whether we can maintain

[Lc]

XI-31

of a service point-of-view. To be sure, in their capacity as members of the Joint Chiefs theoretically represent an over-all, not a service point of view. During the B-36 Hearings, Secretary of the Air Force Symington went so far as to insist that the Chief of the Air staff was not responsible to him for his discussions in the Joint Chiefs and did not consult him with respect to them. 7

But this subtle distinction is meaningless in practice. The service chiefs have risen to their position through a lifetime of dedication to one arm. They are a product of its problems, its training schools, its environment. The qualities of loyalty and single-mindedness which were encouraged in their rise to the top may be precisely the qualities which inhibit over-all thought at the pinnacle. Maintaining the morale of their service can never be far from their mind. And the problems of mastering the primary mission of each service are becoming so complex that they almost inevitably inhibit a consideration of their relationship to an over-all mission; or more accurately, they lead to a psychological distortion in which over-all strategy tends to be equated with a service's primary mission. The test of an organization is how naturally and spontaneously it enables its leadership to address itself to the problems of greatest over-all concern; there is little in the organization of our National Defense Establishment that leads the service chiefs naturally to a consideration of over-all strategic doctrine.

Whenever the service chiefs dissent from prevailing policy they are accused of "parochialism" -- as if their attitude were a matter of choice and not an almost inevitable consequence of the system which produced them. It is difficult to escape the habits of a life-time and the effort to do so may merely inhibit spontaneous thought. The manner in which traditional categories of thought determine reactions to new situations is illustrated by the attitude of both the

7. See P.

(Testimony of Secretary Symington). B-36 Hearings.

[lc]

XI-32

German and American staffs to the emergence of missiles. In both Germany and the United States the Airforce concentrated initially on developing what was in effect an unmanned bomber; the V-1 guided missile in Germany, TALOS and SNARK in the United States. In both Germany and the United States, the army developed the closest approximation in the missile field to an artillery projectile: the V-2 rocket in Germany, the Honest John, Nike and Redstone missiles in the United States. In developing these weapons the services were not being consciously parochial; they simply concentrated on the things they knew best; they were doing what came naturally.

The only manner in which an administrative mechanism can aid strategic thought is to create a structure which leads officers to reflect spontaneously about questions of over-all concern, not only by fiat when they have reached the top but throughout their careers. And this is impossible as long as exists a division of functions among our services based essentially on a means of loco-motion, the distinction between which is growing increasingly ephemeral. A strategy utilizing missiles is not necessarily analogous to air strategy because missiles fly through the air any more than a 1,500-mile missile is a tactical weapon because it is fired like an artillery projectile. The pressures should therefore be in the direction of greater unification among the services and above all between the Airforce and the Army whose roles and missions most overlap. This unification moreover would be as important at the lower and intermediary echelons where views are formed than at the top where often little can be done except to provide a forum for already formed views.

It may well be the case that the separation of the Army and the Airforce in 1948 occurred two decades too late and at the precise moment when the distinction between ground and air strategy was becoming obsolescent. Instead of

[10]

XI-33

making the Army Air Corps independent it would have been sounder to mix the two organizations more thoroughly and to develop a single service neither focussed on exclusive ground nor on exclusive air strategy. Instead, the separation of the two services was achieved to the detriment of both; different service academies, training schools and war colleges inevitably emphasize a particular aspect instead of a total strategy in which traditional distinctions should be disappearing, in which the army should begin to approach the mobility of the Airforce and the Airforce to develop the relative discrimination of ground warfare.

It would still be the wisest course to move in the direction of a single service initially by amalgamating the Army and the Airforce; the strategic problems of the Navy in an intermediary period may still remain sufficiently distinct not to require integration and in any case resistance to complete unification in the Navy would be so bitter as to obviate its advantages. A unified service with a single system of service schools would force officers at a formative stage of their careers into a framework less narrowly addressed to the concerns of a particular service. The loyalty to the organization which is one of the most attractive traits of the military and which now necessarily produces a rigid adherence to a service point-of-view would in this manner be utilized to help produce an over-all strategic doctrine. It may be argued that the officers of all services attend each other's war colleges even now. But it is one thing to attend a service school as an outsider to learn the point of view of another service, at a stage of the officer's career when his general attitude in matters of strategy is well settled; it is quite another that there exist incentives from the earliest stages of an officer's career to consider problems of

[lc]

XI-33a

strategy unmixed with questions of the interests of a service. The
quality of a staff officer would then be judged less on the basis of
his skill in defending a service's interests in the coordinating
procedure of the Pentagon as by his contribution to an over-all
doctrine or at least by his ability to operate within it. In a
single service, loyalty to the organization would be identical with
the requirements of doctrine. Doctrine would no longer be a tool
of interservice rivalry but a subject to be considered on its own
merits. (go to p. 34)

[c]

XI-34

Complete unification among the services is probably out of the question. The persistence of bureaucratic forms and the traditions from which each service derives its strength alone would insure overwhelming resistance to the concept of a single uniform and a single system of service schools. But it may be possible to create a structure which better reflects distinguishable strategic missions than the present system. Since the division of functions according to means of locomotion has become meaningless, the services could be reorganized on the basis of actual strategic missions that have to be performed. The Army, Navy and Airforce would continue to exist as administrative and training units, much as the training commands *within* the various services function today. But for all other purposes two basic organizations would be created: the Strategic Force and the Tactical Force. The Strategic Force would be the units required for all-out war; they would include the Strategic Air Command; the Air Defense Command; those units of the army required to protect overseas bases and the unit of the navy which are to participate in the retaliatory attack. The Tactical Forces would be the units required for limited war. The Strategic Forces would probably be under an Airforce command, the Tactical Forces under an army officer.

Such a division would reflect the realities of the strategic situation. While the Tactical Forces might be required in an all-out war and for such a purpose would come under the command of the Strategic Forces, the Strategic Force should not be utilized for limited war and should be as self-contained as possible even for all-out war. The Strategic Forces should not be utilized for limited war not only because by training and doctrine they are not suited for it but above all because their unimpaired power represents the only guarantee for the war remaining limited. An enemy able to achieve a significant attrition of the Strategic Forces by means of a limited war would tilt the strategic balance in

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XI-35

his favor however the limited war ended. And both the Strategic and the
Tactical Forces should be self-contained because if the Tactical Forces are
considered an auxiliary to an all-out strategy, the temptation will always be
great to conserve them for a final show-down. Finally the Strategic as well as
the Tactical Forces should be able to accomplish their missions with the forces-
in-being. It is evident that a Strategic Force must be ready to meet a surprise
attack. But the Tactical Force, too, should not have to rely on substantial
mobilization because large-scale mobilization might be taken by the enemy as a
prelude to an all-out show-down and thereby unleash a retaliatory blow.

The division of our forces into a Strategic and a Tactical Force would
reflect the real nature of the strategic problem we confront: the imperative
of being protected against all-out war as the condition of all other measures
and the capability to fight limited war as the form of conflict where the cost
is commensurate with the issues actually under dispute. The training and doc-
trine of each Force should be uniform and its officers should attend the same
technical and service schools. The schools would continue to be administered
by a parent service but the curriculum and student body should be determined by
the Force commander.

In such an organization, too, the Joint Chiefs of Staff would change their
character. They would be composed of a Chairman, the Chief of the Tactical Force
the Chief of the Strategic Forces, the Chief of Naval Operations (since the Navy
will probably resist complete integration and to represent operations such as
anti-submarine warfare which do not fit into any of the above categories). Such
a group would in its very nature be more oriented towards doctrine than the
present Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Chief of each Force would represent an integ-
rated strategic mission and not a means of locomotion. Since service chiefs

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XI-36

would continue to administer the traditional services, the Chief of each Force would be freed of many of the routine problems which as Admiral Radford pointed out before the Symington Committee make the Chairman the only member of the present group who can give his full attention to problems of over-all strategy. Coupled with a budgetary cycle of two years and even without it, the proposed organization would make for a much more spontaneous and natural consideration of doctrinal questions. To be sure, there would be a possibility of a contest over appropriations between the Chiefs of the Strategic and the Tactical Force. And the temptation to use doctrine as a legitimization of budgetary requests or even to invent it for that purpose would remain powerful. But with each Force in an integrated, self-contained organization, self-interest and requirements of strategic doctrine would be in harmony. The bane of current strategic doctrine is not so much the competition among the services as the fact that the primary missions they seek to justify represent no distinguishable strategic option. Given the range of modern weapons the effort to control all the weapons they consider essential for their primary missions almost impels the traditional services into a duplication of weapons systems; in the new organizations such an effort would reflect exactly the task assigned each Force and the task in turn would represent a strategic option.

The advantage of this proposed organization for the conduct of military operations is demonstrated by the fact that joint commands reflecting the same basic concept have been set up in every recent war in which we have been engaged. Our present procedure has the disadvantage of deferring a doctrinal show-down until a crisis forces an adjustment of roles under the pressure of events. Because no service can be certain that its interpretation of an essential target is the same as that of its sister services -- the practical manifestation of a

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XI-37

doctrinal split -- it is tempted to hoard as many capabilities as possible; or
else it leads to endless disputes about the nature, indeed the feasibility, of
limited war; about airlift, about the right of the army to its own airforces
and about the role of naval aviation in the strategic air battle. The proposed
organization would create in peace-time the structure which is inevitable in
war in any case.

The change of organization of the services should be supplemented by
strengthening the organization for strategic decisions of the civilian side of
the Department of Defense. At present the Secretary of Defense is at best an
arbiter of doctrinal disputes. He possesses neither the staff nor the organiza-
tion to guide them. This reflects the notion implicit in the present organization
that strategic doctrine reflects "purely" military considerations embodied in
the organization of the Joint Chiefs whose Chairman reports directly to the
President and attends meetings of the National Security Council. But separation
of strategy and policy cause both to become increasingly abstract. The emphasis
on purely military solutions has as its counterpart a predilection with pure
diplomacy and an overconcern with finesse. The difficult problems of national
policy are in the area where political, economic, psychological and military
factors meet, however. The Secretary of Defense would therefore gain greatly
from instituting some form of Strategic Advisory Council either composed of the
service secretaries or preferably a group of eminent individuals from private
life or by strengthening the functions now exercised by the Assistant Secretary
of Defense for National Security Affairs, perhaps by raising him to the level
of Under Secretary, and by relating him more closely to the deliberations of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff.

XI-38

With the Department of Defense thus strengthened the whole process of formulating security objectives within the Executive Branch would gain in balance. One of the reasons for the relative emphasis of fiscal policy and technology over doctrine has been the fact that whatever its merits fiscal policy has been explicit and whatever their complexity the pressures of technology brooked no delay. In the process of coordinating diverse policies which is the primary function of the National Security Council there always exists a clear fiscal policy largely because only one agency - the Treasury Department - has been responsible for it. But there is rarely, if ever, a clear National Security Policy to oppose it. On the contrary, the contending services have been tempted to add the pressures of the Treasury Department, and the Bureau of the Budget, to their own by advocating their strategy as contributing to governmental economy. The relative predominance of the fiscal view-point is therefore produced at least in part by a form of inertia; in a conceptual vacuum the side with the clearest and most consistent doctrine will predominate.

## IV

It would be a mistake, however, to expect too much from purely organizational remedies. For many of the difficulties described in this chapter and in this book have been caused by national traits which are deeply ingrained in the American experience. As in all tragedies, many of our problems have been produced in spite of our good intentions and have been caused not by our worst qualities but by our best. What is at issue, therefore, is not a policy but an attitude.

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XI-39

Foremost among the attitudes affecting the making of our policy is American empiricism and its quest for certainty: nothing is "true" unless it is "objective" and it is not "objective" unless it is part of experience. This makes for the absence of dogmatism and for the ease of social relations on the domestic scene. But in the conduct of policy it has pernicious consequences. Policy is the art of weighing probabilities; mastery of it lies in grasping the nuances of possibilities. To attempt to conduct it as a science must lead to rigidity. For only the risks are certain; the opportunities are conjectural. One cannot be "sure" about the implications of events until they have happened and when they have occurred it is too late to do anything about them. Empiricism in foreign policy leads to a penchant for *ad hoc* solutions; the rejection of dogmatism inclines our policy-makers to postpone committing themselves until all facts are in; but by the time the facts are in, a crisis has usually developed or an opportunity has passed. Our policy is therefore geared to dealing with emergencies; it finds difficulty in developing the long-range program that might forestall them.

A symptom of our need for certainty is the vast number of committees charged with examining and developing policy. The very multiplicity of committees makes it difficult to arrive at decisions in time. It tends to give a disproportionate influence to subordinate officials who prepare the initial memoranda and it over-whelms our higher officials with trivia. Because of our cult of specialization, sovereign departments negotiate national policy among each other with no single authority able to take an over-all view or to apply decisions over a period of time. This results in the hiatus previously noted between grand strategy and particular tactics, between the definition of general objectives so vague as to be truistic and the concern with immediate problems. The gap is bridged only

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when a crisis forces the bureaucratic machinery into accelerated action, and
then the top leadership has little choice but to concur in the administrative
proposals. In short, we are trying to cope with political problems by adminis-
trative means.

Our inward doubt makes for vulnerability to Soviet maneuvers in two ways:
on the one hand, every Soviet change of line is taken at least in part at face
value, for we cannot be certain that the Soviets may not "mean" it this time
until they have proved they do not; and they will try their best not to prove
it until the tactic has served its purpose. On the other hand, we have found
it difficult to adjust our tactics to new situations, so that we always tend
to speak in the categories of the most recent threat but one. Moreover, we
hesitate not only in the face of Soviet blandishments but also before Soviet
intransigence. Every Soviet aggressive move finds us debating its implications
and creates pressures for deferring a show-down for the "clear" case of aggres-
sion the Soviets are trying very hard not to present. The paradoxical result is
that we, the empiricists, appear to the world as rigid, unimaginative and even
somewhat cynical, while the dogmatic Bolsheviks exhibit flexibility, daring and
subtlety. This is because our empiricism dooms us to an essentially reactive
policy that improvises a counter to every Soviet move, while the Soviet emphasis
on theory gives them the certainty to act, to maneuver and to run risks. The
very fact of action forces us to assume the risks of countermoves and absorbs
our energies in essentially defensive measures.

The willingness to act need not derive from theory, of course, Indeed, an
overemphasis on theory can lead to a loss of touch with reality. In many soci-
eties -- in Great Britain, for example -- policy developed from a firmly held
tradition of a national strategy. Throughout the nineteenth century it was a

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XI-41

tenet of British policy that Antwerp should not fall into the hands of a major power. This was not backed by an elaborate metaphysics but simply by a tradition of British sea power whose requirements were so generally understood that they were never debated. It is the absence of a tradition of foreign policy which exaggerates the biases of our empiricism and makes it difficult to conduct our policy with a proper regard for the timing of measures. It causes us to overlook the fact that policy exists in time as well as in space, that a measure is correct only if it can be carried out at the proper moment. To be sure, our cumbersome administrative mechanism adds immeasurably to the problem. But in addition, our deliberations are conducted as if a course of action were eternally valid, as if a measure which might meet exactly the needs of a given moment could not backfire if adopted a year later. For this reason our policy lacks a feeling for nuance, the ability to come up with variations on the same theme, as the Soviets have done so effectively. We consider policy-making concluded when the National Security Council has come to a decision. And in fact, the process of arriving at a decision is so arduous and a reappraisal is necessarily so "agonizing" that we are reluctant to reexamine policies after they have outlived their usefulness.

But a written statement of policy is likely to amount to a truism; the real difficulty arises in applying it to concrete situations. And while we have often come up with proper measures we have not found it easy to adapt our approach to the requirements of the situation over a period of time. The different uses made by the Soviets of the time interval between the "summit conference" and the Geneva conference of foreign ministers illustrates this point. The Soviets established diplomatic relations with the German Federal Republic and thus placed themselves in position to deal directly with both German governments; they used the peace offensive to undermine the cohesiveness of NATO and concluded the arms

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XI-42

deal with Egypt. By the time we returned to Geneva, we found ourselves confron-
ted by a series of faits accomplis and the conference foredoomed.

Another factor shaping our attitude toward foreign affairs is our lack of
tragic experience. Though we have known severe hardsbips, our history has been
notably free of disaster. Indeed, the American domestic experience exhibits an
unparalleled success, of great daring rewarded and of great obstacles overcome.
It is no wonder, therefore, that to many of our most responsible men, particularly
in the business community, the warnings of impending peril or of imminent disas-
ter sound like the Cassandra cries of abstracted "egg-heads". For is not the
attribute of the "egg-head" his lack of touch with reality, and does not American
reality show an unparalleled wealth coupled with an unparalleled growth?

There has been much criticism of Secretaries Humphrey and Wilson for their
defense economies. But in fairness the psychological background of their
decisions should be understood; despite all the information at their disposal,
they simply cannot believe that in the nuclear age the penalty for miscalculation
may be national catastrophe. They may know in their heads, but they cannot
accept in their hearts, that the society they helped to build could disappear as
did Rome or Carthage or Byzantium, which probably seemed as eternal to their
citizens. These characteristics make for an absence of a sense of urgency, a
tendency to believe that everything can be tried once and that the worst con-
sequence mistakes can have is that we may be forced to redouble our efforts later
on. The irrevocable error is not yet part of the American experience.

Related to this problem is our reluctance to think in terms of power. To
be sure, American expansion both economic and geographical was not accomplished
without a judicious application of power. But our Calvinist heritage has re-
quired success to display the attribute of justice. Even our great fortunes,

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XI-43

however accumulated, were almost invariably held to impose a social obligation; the great foundation is after all a peculiarly American phenomenon. As a nation, we have used power almost shamefacedly as if it were inherently wicked. We have wanted to be liked for our own sakes and we have wished to succeed because of the persuasiveness of our principles rather than through our strength. Our feeling of guilt with respect to power has caused us to transform all wars into crusades, and then to apply our power in the most absolute terms. We have rarely found intermediary ways to apply our power and in those cases we have done so reluctantly.

But international relations cannot be conducted without an awareness of power relationships. To be sure, the contemporary revolution cannot be managed merely by an exercise of force. An imaginative diplomacy and bold programs are required if we are to identify ourselves with the aspirations of humanity. But unless we maintain at least an equilibrium of power between us and the Soviet bloc we will have no chance to undertake any positive measures. And maintaining this equilibrium may confront us with some very difficult choices. We are certain to be confronted with situations of extraordinary ambiguity such as civil wars or domestic coups. Every successful Soviet move makes our moral position that much more difficult: Indochina was more ambiguous than Korea; the Soviet arms deal with Egypt more ambiguous than Indochina; the Suez crisis more ambiguous than the arms deal with Egypt. There can be no doubt that we should seek to forestall such occurrences. But once they have occurred, we must find the will to act and to run risks in a situation which permits only a choice among evils. While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

XI-44

The reverse side of our reluctance to think in terms of power has been our notion of the nature of peace. We assume that peace is the "normal" pattern of relations among states, that it is equivalent to a consciousness of harmony, that it can be aimed at directly as a goal of policy. These are truisms rarely challenged in our political debate. Both major political parties maintain that they work for a lasting peace, even if they differ about the best means of attaining it. Both make statements which imply that on a certain magic day, perhaps after a four-power conference, "peace will break out".

No idea could be more dangerous. To begin with, the polarization of power in the world would give international relations a degree of instability even if there were no ideological disagreement, and the present volatile state of technology is likely to compound this sense of insecurity. Whenever peace -- conceived as the avoidance of war -- has become the direct objective of a Power or a group of Powers, international relations have been at the mercy of the state willing to forego peace. No statesman can entrust the fate of his country entirely to the continued good will of another sovereign state, if only because the best guarantee for the will remaining good is not to tempt it by too great a disproportion of power. Peace, therefore, cannot be aimed at directly; it is the expression of certain conditions and power relationships. It is to these relationships -- not to peace -- that diplomacy must address itself.

A Power can survive only if it is willing to fight for its interpretation of justice and its conception of vital interests. Its test comes in its awareness of where to draw the line and for what issue to contend; its adequacy to meet the challengers it faces depends on the alternatives it poses for itself. Are we opposed merely to the forcible expansion of Communism or is the existence of a Communist regime in some areas a threat to our security however the regime is established? Can we afford to lose the Middle East or Southeast Asia to a quasi-legitimate revolution? It may be objected that neither of these areas is ours to/lose and that force has

XI-45

proved a weak tool in stemming a revolutionary tide. But the problem is not
susceptible of such abstract treatment. Measures to restore a situation must
be preceded by an attitude and a set of concepts which define our interest in
the world. Do we resist Communist expansion because it is illegal or because
the domination of Russia by Communism would upset the strategic balance against
us? If the former we would resist only the *manner* of Communist expansion; if
the latter, we would resist the *fact* of Communist expansion. It may happen, of
course, that in either case we may find ourselves unable to arrest developments.
To the extent that this is the case we still suffer a defeat. If we are clear
about our purpose, the form of resistance and indeed whether we resist at all is
a technical question. Without such concepts, our actions will lack relationship
no matter how carefully planned.

Therefore, it is important for the United States to become clear about the
nature of our strategic interest in the world. It would be comforting if we
could always act where our moral, legal and military positions are completely
in harmony and where legitimacy is most in accord with the requirements of
survival. It is highly desirable that we forestall situations in which recourse
to force is the only remedy by an imaginative attempt to identify ourselves with
the aspirations of humanity. But as the strongest Power in the world we will
probably never again be afforded the simple moral choices on which we could
insist in our more secure past. The thrust of Soviet aggression will always be
directed at the weak points in our armor and on issues where our psychological
inhibitions to either are at a maximum. To deal with circumstances of such
ambiguity presupposes above all a moral act: a willingness to run risks on
partial knowledge and for less than perfect application of one's principles. To
insist on purity either of motive or of provocation is a prescription for inaction.

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XI-40

To be sure, / to unleash nuclear war without a prayerful awareness of its consequences is to open the box of Pandora. But to permit the Soviets to overturn the strategic balance because it has been placed in jeopardy by our own lack of imagination or by the absence of spiritual elan is to compound shortsightedness by dogmatism. The price we will have to pay for failure to take action in time may be the kind of measure which does no more than gain us a breathing spell for more positive steps. The refusal to do so will ensure that the next contest will be fought on even more difficult ground.

In the process of defining our strategic interest we cannot avoid facing another fact of the nuclear age little in accord with our predilections: the difficulty if not impossibility, of holding a perimeter of twenty thousand miles entirely on the defensive either politically, militarily or spiritually. A major part of the perimeter covers countries whose traditional situations are in rapid flux. Even if we were omniscient and were not propelled into a situation more complicated and more confused than anything for which our national experience prepares us, it would seem inevitable that in some countries forces hostile to our interests will gain power. To be sure, Communism has never come to power anywhere by peaceful means. But the line between peace and war is steadily being eroded; and Communism may well have a different meaning for the newly independent nations of Asia and the Middle East than for the countries of Western Europe. If then every addition to the Soviet orbit becomes immune to overt United States pressure while the Soviet bloc remains free to exacerbate all tensions of the non-Soviet world the result will be almost mathematically our expulsion from Eurasia or at least from Asia and the Middle East. This does not mean preventive war. It does mean that we should be as ready to profit from opportunities in the Soviet orbit as the Soviet bloc feels free to exploit all the difficulties of the non-Soviet world. If the occasion demands we should be prepared to run similar risks within the Soviet orbit as the Soviets have been in the Middle East.

XI-47

Such a course presupposes a more dynamic conception of world affairs. A great historical movement which is represented by the coming together of Communism and the anti-colonial revolution cannot be mastered only by negative motives. A policy impelled primarily by a desire to prevent an expansion of the Soviet sphere ensures that we will be foreed always to fight at the point of our greatest weakness; that diplomatically we shall always contest issues of maximum embarrassment to us; that spiritually we convey an impression of uncertainty. In any conflict the side which is animated by a desire for victory will have a decided advantage over an opponent who wishes above all to preserve the status quo; it will be prepared to even greater risks because its purpose will be stronger. The argument that the Soviet orbit will disintegrate of itself if contained long enough reveals a dangerous penchant for easy solutions. No more explicit form of disintegration than the Hungarian revolution is likely to occur; and it found the Free World without the concepts and without the will to exploit it. History can only present opportunities; resolution and insight are indispensible for exploiting them. In foreign policy courage and success stand in a causal relationship.

We thus return to the problem raised earlier: the adequacy of our leadership groups for dealing with the challenges to our society. And here our sudden emergence as the major Power in the free world presents particular difficulties. The qualities of our leadership groups were formed during the period when our primary concerns were domestic. Politics was considered a necessary evil and the primary function of the state was the exercise of police powers. Neither education nor incentives existed for our leadership groups to think in political or strategic terms. This was compounded by our empiricism with its cult of the expert and its premium on specialization. The two groups which are most dominant

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XI-48

in the higher levels of government, industry, and the law, can serve as an illustration. The rewards in industry, particularly large-scale industry, are for administrative competence; they therefore produce a tendency to deal with conceptual problems by administrative means, by turning them over to committees of experts. And the legal profession, trained to think in terms of discrete individual cases, produces a penchant for ad hoc decisions and a resistance to the "hypothetical cases" inherent in long-range planning. Our leadership groups are therefore better prepared to deal with technical than with conceptual problems, with economic than with political issues. Projected on the Washington scene, they often lack the background to cope with a developing political and strategic situation: each problem is dealt with "on its merits", a procedure which emphasizes the particular at the expense of the general and bogs down planning in a mass of detail. The absence of a conceptual framework makes it difficult for them even to identify our problems or to choose effectively among the proposals and interpretations with which our governmental machinery is overloaded.

This explains many postwar Soviet successes. Whatever the qualities of Soviet leadership, its training is eminently political and conceptual. Reading Lenin or Mao or Stalin, one is struck by the emphasis on the relationship between political, military, psychological and economic factors, the insistence on finding a conceptual basis for political action and on the need for dominating a situation by flexible tactics and inflexible purpose. And the internal struggles in the Kremlin ensure that only the most iron-nerved reach the top. Against the Politbureau, trained to think in general terms and freed of problems of day-to-day administration, we have pitted leaders overwhelmed with departmental duties and trained to think that it was a cardinal sin to transgress on

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XI-49

another's field of specialization. To our leaders, policy is as a series of
discrete problems; to the Soviet leaders it is an aspect of a continuing
political process. As a result, the contest between us and the Soviets has had
many of the attributes of any contest between a professional and an amateur;
even a mediocre professional will usually defeat an excellent amateur, not
because the amateur does not know what to do, but because he cannot react
sufficiently quickly or consistently. Our leaders have not lacked ability,
but they have had to learn while doing and this has imposed too great a handi-
cap.

To be sure, many of the shortcomings of our leadership groups reflect the
very qualities which have made for the ease of relationships in American society.
The condition for our limited government has been the absence of basic social
schisms, the regulation of many concerns not by government fiat but by "what
is taken for granted". A society can operate in this fashion only if disputes
are not pushed to their logical conclusions, and if disagreements are blunted
by the absence of dogmatism. And in fact the fear of seeming dogmatic permeates
our social scene. Most opinions are introduced with a disclaimer which indicates
that the proponent is aware of their contingency and also that he claims no
superior validity for his own conclusions. This produces a preference for
decisions by committee, because the process of conversation permits disagreements
to be discovered most easily and adjustments made before positions have hardened.
Our decision-making process is therefore geared to the pace of conversation;
even departmental memoranda on which policy decisions are ultimately based are
written with an eye to eventual compromise and not with the expectation that any
of them will be accepted in its entirety.

XI-50

It would be wrong to be too pessimistic. No one would have believed when World War II ended that the United States would assume commitments on such a world-wide scale. Our shortcomings are imposing only because of the magnitude of the threat confronting us. Moreover, the performance of the United States, for all its failings, compares favorably with that of the other nations of the non-Soviet world. Our difficulties are therefore only a symptom -- and by no means the most obvious -- of an inward uncertainty in the free world. To be sure, democracies by the nature of their institutions cannot conduct policy as deviously, change course as rapidly or prepare their moves as secretly as dictatorships. But the crisis of the non-Soviet world is deeper. The tragic element in foreign policy is the impossibility of escaping conjecture; after the "objective" analysis of fact there remains a residue of uncertainty about the meaning of events or the opportunities they offer. A statesman can often escape his dilemmas by lowering his sights; he always has the option to ignore the other side's capabilities by assuming it has peaceful intentions. Many of the difficulties of the non-Soviet world have been the result of an attempt to use the element of uncertainty as an excuse for inaction. But certainty in foreign policy at least as much by philosophy as by fact; it derives from the imposition of purpose on events.

This is not to say that we should imitate Soviet dogmatism. A society can survive only by the genius that made it great. But we should be able to leaven our empiricism with a sense of urgency. And while our history may leave us not well enough prepared to deal with tragedy, it can teach us that great achievement does not result from a quest for safety. Even so, our task will remain psychologically more complex than that of the soviets. As the strongest and perhaps

XI-51

the most vital power of the free world we face the challenge of demonstrating
that democracy is able to find the moral certainty to act without the support
of fanat icism and to run risks without a guarantee of success.