INNOVATOR

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# NATO's Nuclear Dilemma

HENRY A. KISSINGER

THE ATLANTIC ALLIANCE is going through another of those critical re-examinations which over the past two years have been recurring at ever shorter intervals. Once again there is wide debate over the relative emphasis to be given to nuclear as against conventional arms, the nature of nuclear war, and the relationship of various national nuclear forces to each other. The United States has resurrected its proposal for a multilateral NATO force and is urging it as the touchstone of Atlantic solidarity.

The discussions are complicated by the fact that the domestic politics of some key allies give a tentative and unreliable quality to the expressions of their present leaders. What with the imminent succession to the chancellorship in Germany, the elections pending in Britain, and the political realignment being pursued in Italy, the voice of Europe reaches us in an extremely distorted manner.

This makes it all the more essential for us to understand what is involved. For the issue before NATO far transcends military strategy.

What is at stake is the organization of Europe, the domestic stability of major allied governments, and the future of the Atlantic Community.

A redefinition of relationships was inevitable, and it would be unfair to attribute to the United States the sole responsibility for the current impasse. It is equally of no help to blame the present state of affairs entirely on our European allies. We can in any event do less about the policy of other countries than that of our own. In order to understand why we have acted as we have, it is important to analyze the assumptions behind our NATO policy.

## I. The U.S. Strategy

Four major elements can be discovered with various degrees of explicitness in the U.S. strategy for NATO:

(a) "Flexible Response." The first component has been identified with the phrase "counterforce strategy." There have been many variations of this theme. It has been argued by Secretary McNamara that even after

absorbing a Soviet surprise attack, our strategic retaliatory forces would be able to destroy the entire Soviet target system. In other words, we would be able to "win" a general war—even after conceding the first blow—in the sense that after the nuclear exchange we would still possess reserves of nuclear firepower while the Soviets had expended theirs.

In his more recent pronouncements Secretary McNamara has been more modest. Now the argument is that our reserve of protected firepower will enable us to conduct a "centrally controlled" nuclear war which provides the opponent a maximum incentive to spare the civilian population by giving us the option to do likewise.

(b) *Antagonism to National Nuclear Forces.* Our concern with the ability to fight a centrally controlled general war against a single (though unspecified) target system has caused us to be extremely hostile to the existence of national nuclear forces (other than our own) within the Alliance. President Kennedy has described the French *force de frappe*

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as inimical to NATO, and Secretary McNamara's epithets have been equally blunt.

Our opposition to the British retaliatory force has been less explicit. Yet the arguments used against the French apply here as well. In both cases, the requirement of central control is interpreted to mean that the strategic nuclear weapons of the Alliance must be "integrated" and "responsive to a single chain of command"; in other words, that they must be an adjunct to the U.S. strategic forces.

(c) *Tactical Nuclear Weapons.* Similar hostility has been shown to tactical nuclear weapons. It might seem that if a general nuclear war can be fought with restraint, it should be possible to limit the employment of tactical nuclear weapons to a geographically confined area. However, Secretary McNamara and his associates have held the contrary view. Secretary McNamara has repeatedly pointed out that tactical nuclear weapons involve a grave risk of escalation and should not be considered a substitute for conventional defense.

At the same time, the tactical nuclear weapons deployed overseas are said not to be really necessary for the kind of strategic exchange envisaged by the McNamara theory. They are not well enough protected and not easily susceptible to central control. In Secretary McNamara's statements they are therefore described as a "bonus" which our strategic planning cannot really count on.

(d) *Conventional Defense.* If our leaders consider European national nuclear forces irrelevant and tactical nuclear weapons overvalued, it follows that the European contribution to NATO should be in the field of conventional defense. This argument has been pressed insistently. "The decision to employ tactical nuclear weapons," Secretary McNamara said in his report to the House Armed Services Committee in January of this year, "should not be forced upon us simply because we have no other way to cope with a particular situation."

The corollary is that the most desirable objective would be to resist a Soviet conventional attack with purely conventional means, a task which,

it is often said, is well within the capabilities of the West. Secretary McNamara in his recent testimony indicated that present NATO conventional capabilities were adequate to deal with any "major incursion." Nevertheless, he urged that they be strengthened to give us "capabilities for dealing with even larger Soviet attacks"—in other words, a massive, sustained Soviet offensive.

To UNDERSTAND the European reaction to these propositions it is important to compare them with what has heretofore been traditional NATO doctrine. Until the advent of the Kennedy administration the ground forces in Central Europe had been considered the "shield" and the nuclear forces the "sword." It was part of NATO doctrine that a massive Soviet attack on Central Europe would be met with some form of nuclear retaliation practically from the outset; the conventional forces were to deal only with minor probes. It was never considered that a full-scale conventional defense of Europe should be attempted. Most Europeans have been convinced—in large part by the previous U.S. policymakers—that deterrence would be enhanced by confronting the Soviets with the strong likelihood that major aggression against Europe would mean nuclear war.

In the light of this, it is not easy to understand the repeated expressions of outrage by administration spokesmen about European doubts with respect to the continued validity of our nuclear guarantee. For the rationale of the new strategy is precisely that the traditional NATO doctrine has lost some of its validity. Why else did the Kennedy-Macmillan Nassau communiqué reverse the original significance of sword and shield, calling the nuclear weapons the "shield" and the conventional weapons the "sword"? It is not easy to see what other interpretation can be made of the following statement by Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Alain C. Enthoven on February 10: "... We will have no sensible alternative to building up our conventional forces to the point at which they can safely resist all forms of non-nuclear aggression. Our forces will be adequate if we can never be forced because of weakness to be the first to have to resort to nuclear weapons."

Though neither the doctrine of "flexible response" nor the build-up of conventional forces need have produced the present crisis of confidence, they have been so handled as to produce that result.

## II. Second Thoughts On Flexible Response

One of the most important efforts of the Kennedy administration has been to subject military strategy—and particularly nuclear weapons—to political control not only before hostilities but during military operations as well. The previous notion had been that if deterrence failed there was no logical stopping place.

The Kennedy administration has rightly insisted that when the lives of tens of millions are at stake, military operations cannot be left to their own momentum. It has sought by various devices to ensure that strategy would remain at the service of policy even during hostilities. "... We are now arranging our forces, and making our strategic plans," said the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, McGeorge Bundy, on February 16, "on such a basis that even if ... there should be some nuclear exchange, we might be able to make such choices of action that it would still be deeply in the interest of the other side to refrain from further attack."

The important objective of flexible response has, however, been pushed by the Defense Department and in our NATO policy to such extreme and one-sided conclusions that it threatens the cohesion of the Western Alliance. In the process, it has become identified with another strategic notion—that of controlled-counterforce general war. This theory is the product of a series of studies conducted at the RAND Corporation during the 1950's under the direction of Albert Wohlstetter and his colleagues effectively argued that there was nothing automatic about the nuclear stalemate. On the contrary, the balance of terror was "delicate," depending on such factors as the vulnerability of the bases of the retaliatory force,

March 28, 1963

23

the relative state of active and passive defense, and the ability to reach enemy targets.

Nuclear superiority was a meaningful concept even in the age of nuclear plenty. A general war could be won or lost by the destruction of the opposing retaliatory force. This goal would be significant even if we suffered a surprise attack. In that case, by destroying the weapons earmarked for a second attack we could reduce damage and greatly improve our bargaining position.

This subtle theory has been accepted almost completely by Secretary McNamara—and not by accident. For many of his key advisers are RAND “alumni” and had helped work out the Wohlstetter doctrine.

By October, 1961, Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell L. Gilpatric asserted that we possessed nuclear superiority. In January, 1962, Secretary McNamara spelled this out to the Senate Armed Services Committee: "We conclude there is no question but that today our strategic retaliatory forces—bombers, missiles, and Polaris—are fully capable of destroying the Soviet target system even after absorbing an initial nuclear surprise attack . . . and without any help from the deployed tactical air units or carrier task forces which, of course, have the capability for attacking those targets with nuclear weapons."

This statement had two implications: (1) it was possible to win a general war even by striking second; (2) nuclear weapons deployed overseas were not essential to our strategy. The skepticism toward nuclear weapons deployed overseas extended to tactical nuclear weapons as well. "I, for one, have never believed in a so-called limited nuclear war," said Mr. Gilpatric. "I just don't know how you build a limit into it once you start using any kind of nuclear bang."

WITH ANY nuclear war likely to be all-out, what was the U.S. strategy for such a conflict? "Our forces can be used in several different ways," said Secretary McNamara early in 1962. "We may have to retaliate with a single massive attack. Or we may be able to use our retaliatory force to limit damage to ourselves before [the enemy] have

launched his second salvos. We may seek to terminate a war on favorable terms by using our force as a bargaining weapon—by threatening further attack ..." These pronouncements culminated in Secretary McNamara's famous speech at Ann Arbor in June, 1962, where he declared that "to the extent feasible, basic military strategy in a possible general nuclear war should be approached in much the same way that more conventional military operations have been conducted in the past. That is to say, principal military objectives ... should be the destruction of the enemy's military forces, not of his civilian population."

To pursue this strategy, all nuclear weapons of the Alliance had to be under tight control, indeed under a single command, which in effect meant U.S. command. "... We have consistently stressed the importance of a single, integrated strategic nuclear force responsive to a single chain of command, to be employed in a fully integrated manner against what is truly an indivisible target system," Secretary McNamara reported to the House Armed Services Committee on January 30, 1963.

The McNamara doctrine, for all its subtlety, contained many ambiguities. For example, Secretary

McNamara has never clarified which he considered more important: the attempt to spare cities or the effort to destroy the Soviet retaliatory force. He could mean that in case of general nuclear war we would attempt to spare cities but would destroy known strategic bases located near them. Or else he could have in mind that we would avoid hitting even military targets if attacking them involved a probability of heavy civilian casualties.

If the first interpretation is accepted, the practical difference between the McNamara strategy and

the traditional notions of massive retaliation may be relatively slight, for it is likely that many Soviet strategic bases are located close to nearby populated cities. At the same time, a Soviet disarming attack would have to seek to destroy all airports capable of handling strategic bombers, including civilian airports. Vast civilian casualties would therefore be inevitable. This in turn is bound to affect our own choice of targets.

If, on the other hand, the McNamara doctrine implies that we would spare Soviet cities in all circumstances provided that the Soviets do likewise, a nuclear stalemate is the likely consequence. If the Soviets spare our cities, they will not be able to destroy our retaliatory force. If we spare Soviet cities, a great part of their force may survive.

THE MOST PLAUSIBLE interpretation of the McNamara theory, then, is that the need to disarm the opponent will transcend the incentive to spare cities. However, during the 1960's, the reliability of even such a notion of counterforce strategy is certain to decline. As the retaliatory forces multiply and become more dispersed, it will grow increasingly difficult to pinpoint the targets precisely or to give the President enough confidence that their exact location is known, which amounts to the same thing.

Moreover, as missile systems become more diversified and sophisticated, some will be hardened as underground installations, some will be mobile on land, others at sea. This will enormously complicate the problem of co-ordinating an attack.

Thus, even if the proportion of the Soviet retaliatory force we were able to destroy were to remain constant—an unwarrantedly optimistic assumption—the absolute number remaining is bound to increase. Whatever its technical feasibility, there are bound to be increasing political and psychological obstacles to a strategy that is based on fragmentary intelligence and that depends on large numbers of weapons for which there is no operational experience in wartime.

Moreover, the early formulations of the McNamara doctrine had the curious consequence of casting into

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doubt our nuclear commitment to NATO—particularly among those Europeans who accepted Mr. McNamara's assurances of our strategic superiority. If our nuclear superiority was as overwhelming as Secretaries McNamara and Gilpatric maintained, the traditional doctrine of the nuclear "sword" and the conventional "shield" would continue to be effective. The Soviet Union would be deterred from a massive attack on Europe, for this would trigger a decisive blow by the U.S. strategic forces. The Soviet Union could not escape this dilemma by means of a simultaneous attack on the United States, for—by Secretary McNamara's hypothesis—this would still lead to the destruction of the entire Soviet target system. If, nevertheless, we reversed the definitions of the "sword" and the "shield," the implication that we were reluctant to use our nuclear superiority in the face of a massive Soviet attack on Europe was, to say the least, conceivable. Our ambivalence about the significance of our proclaimed nuclear superiority was a major factor in creating confusion about our purposes.

The awareness of those ambiguities, both technical and political, has led Secretary McNamara to reformulate his counterforce theory. In his statement to the House Armed Services Committee on January 30, he emphasized that even under conditions of controlled response, a general nuclear war would still produce casualties numbered in the tens of millions. This was because "even if we were to double or triple our forces we would not be able to destroy quickly all or almost all of the hardened ICBM sites. And even if we could do that, we know no way to destroy the enemy's missile-launching submarines at the same time." Secretary McNamara went on to say that our strategic forces were designed to destroy virtually all of the soft and semi-hard military targets in the Soviet Union and a portion of the hardened sites. No significant capability for destroying missile-carrying submarines would be developed.

With respect to other NATO nuclear forces, Secretary McNamara emphasized that they would have to be integrated into a single command

with ours in order to make possible an instant response. The President reiterated these requirements in his press conference of February 14 and added that the decision to retali ate might have to be made in five minutes.

The new version of the McNamara strategy has removed some of the previous ambiguities, but it has raised a host of new ones. For it is not clear now just what the purpose of our retaliation is to be. Secretary McNamara mentions only one "scenario" for general nuclear war. This, significantly, is not a full-scale attack on Europe, but a nuclear attack on the United States.

Given the disparity in the size of strategic forces between the Soviet Union and the United States, it is hard to see what would induce even a rash Soviet planner into so reckless a course. According to Secretary McNamara's testimony of January 30, our capability after absorbing a first blow should be sufficient "to strike back first at the Soviet bomber bases, missile sites, and other military installations associated with their long-range nuclear forces to reduce the power of any follow-on attack—and then if necessary, strike back at the Soviet urban and industrial complex in a controlled and deliberate way."

A U.S. strategic force that can absorb a Soviet surprise attack, strike back at Soviet military targets, and still be sufficiently strong to attack urban centers in a deliberate way must be enormously superior to the Soviets'. Moreover, most of our ICBMS will be in hardened sites and the Polaris will be mobile at sea. It is almost impossible to imagine circumstances in which the Soviets would launch an all-out attack on such a force. It is not conceivable that the Soviets will act with reckless foolishness; but it is not wise to base all of U.S. and NATO strategy on what might easily be a very special contingency.

But assuming the unlikely eventuality of a Soviet first strike against the United States, Secretary McNamara's latest testimony leaves the targets of our retaliatory blow far from obvious. He has emphasized that we could not destroy many of the hardened Soviet sites and prac-

tically none of the missile-carrying submarines. Presumably, however, the Soviets would have launched their missiles from the soft sites in their first attack. This would leave empty airbases for our retaliatory "counterforce" blow—and airplanes will not for long constitute a major portion of the Soviet retaliatory force.

Moreover, Secretary McNamara implies that because we are numerically superior and therefore in a position to spare Soviet cities, the Soviets will have what he calls an "incentive" to spare ours. Of course, Soviet military theorists have consistently denied the possibility of the kind of war outlined by Secretary McNamara. This would not be decisive were it not in accord with the realities of the strategic equation. For a war of attrition, even if it were technically feasible, cannot be in the interest of the weaker side. As we reduced the Soviet retaliatory force, the sensible strategy for the Soviets would be to begin attacking our cities, perhaps "controlling" their response by destroying some smaller towns first. To be sure, we could retaliate in kind. But whatever the significance of the notion of superiority in a war confined to military targets, there can be little doubt that a saturation point is soon reached when civilian populations become the objective.

This is why our allies have been so unenthusiastic about Secretary McNamara's argument that national nuclear forces are dangerous because they are unsuitable for discriminating targeting. As he has frequently pointed out, the Soviet delivery vehicles aimed at Europe far exceed in number those deployed against the United States. He has also emphasized that even a "controlled" nuclear war would produce far greater casualties in Europe than in the United States—in other words, casualties exceeding the tens of millions estimated for North America. In these conditions, the prospect of "controlling" general war cannot be an incentive to the Europeans to give up their own nuclear programs; the contrary is likely to be the case.

In short, what started out as a quest for maximum flexibility has produced a new form of rigidity. We have polarized options between con-

March 28, 1963

25

ventional war and a kind of general war that with every passing year will acquire the very characteristics of uncontrollable massiveness we have tried to avoid.

The McNamara doctrine in fact confuses the highly desirable objective of invulnerability and effective political control with a strategy that has as its chief objective the destruction of the opposing retaliatory force. If both sides achieve the kind of invulnerability that Secretary McNamara has postulated, the counterforce strategy envisaged in our public pronouncements will become less and less reliable. In such circumstances, Secretary McNamara's "szenario" is much too one-dimensional. With a well-protected force, there should be much more time available than the five minutes mentioned by the President to respond to Soviet moves. Quick time of delivery should not be confused with hair-trigger response. On the contrary, it is to our interest-apart from considerations of Alliance policy-to give policymakers the maximum amount of time for considering their response. Political control over nuclear weapons does not require U.S. hegemony over all nuclear weapons within the Alliance.

A rich country like ours may be able to afford protection against even remote contingencies. If there is even a small possibility of saving millions of lives, it should be taken. But it is one thing to develop an option for controlled general war; it is quite another to subordinate all our NATO policy to preparation for this contingency.

The insistence on a single nuclear force under U.S. control for the entire Alliance has come to appear as a U.S. effort to dictate not only allied strategy once war has started but also the decision of when and where to fight a nuclear war. The tendency to treat the members of the Alliance as subsidiaries of a large corporation has turned interallied dialogue into a shrill debate over abstractions. Our quest for technical options-reflecting the subordination of the State Department to the Defense Department-has limited the range of our political choices. This is why the new strategy has led to what is probably the most serious crisis in NATO's history.

### III. The Case for National Nuclear Forces

The nature of the crisis is underlined by the inability of the two sides to agree on what really is in dispute. We have called national nuclear forces-particularly the French effort-divisive, inimical to the West, based on distrust of the United States, and prone to obsolescence. It has been said that the French nuclear program is based on a rejection of the interdependence of the Atlantic Community.

The French have not helped matters by pressing their own arguments with a kind of Cartesian rationalism that sometimes threatens to turn valid arguments into parodies. It is one thing to argue the undeniable fact that in the age of nuclear plenty the old notions of nuclear protection must be modified and that a redistribution of responsibilities on nuclear matters is required. It is quite another to insist that this ends all possibility of one country's coming to the assistance of another. Both sides have had a tendency to set up straw men for debating purposes: the French, the bogy of our complete unreliability; the United States, the futility of the French quest for complete self-sufficiency. In demonstrating that France-or Great Britain-cannot win a nuclear war by itself, we have neglected to examine the more sensible arguments on behalf of European nuclear power. And we have shown little understanding of the political and psychological mo-

tives behind the French and British nuclear programs.

Our new strategic doctrine, for all its subtlety, does confront our allies with serious dilemmas. It is difficult to decide at what point the effort to develop a tolerable strategy not only

enhances the credibility of the response but also lowers the risks of the aggressor to an acceptable level.

Few Europeans agree with our judgment about the feasibility of a purely conventional defense. Most of them believe that a great gap in conventional power exists and that we have adjusted our intelligence estimates to fit our strategic preference. Their judgment may be mistaken, but we must remember that we have no advantage in experience over the Europeans in the analysis of conventional war.

In any event, Europeans have too many memories of the defeat of supposedly adequate conventional forces not to ask what happens if our assessment turns out to be mistaken. Even those who favor as a more modest goal a "pause" before nuclear weapons are used-and they are not in a majority-must be concerned about the options available at the end of that pause.

But the acceptance of our goal of non-nuclear defense and the theory behind it still does not remove all pressures for the development of European nuclear strength. Europeans are bound to want to have a share in determining their fate if the Soviets do not follow the strategy preferred by the United States. What if the Soviets use nuclear weapons on Europe only? Even more, what if they use them on Europe in the controlled, flexible way recommended by Secretary McNamara? It is a great deal to ask of the Europeans to concentrate all their military efforts on weapons that can be overcome by the introduction of nuclear arms while the United States reserves control over the weapons at any level of conflict that is not purely conventional. Such a situation would be made to order for Soviet "nuclear blackmail."

WORDS like "nuclear interdependence" should not obscure the fact that there is an inevitable difference of perspective between ourselves and some of our allies. If the NATO area is looked on as a unit, a strategy that exposes a limited territory to the fluctuations of conventional combat may seem eminently

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