Draft Chapter VI - Overall Report

November 26, 1957

# CHAPTER VI
## THE NATURE OF THE MILITARY CHALLENGE

### I

One of the ironical aspects of the contemporary international scene is the fact that at the precise moment when international schisms have never been deeper mankind confronts the chastening prospect that it is now capable of destroying itself. Nothing could have demonstrated better the finiteness of the human scale than the enormity of the technology which is now unfolding before us. For centuries humanity concentrated all its energies on increasing the supply of its power and the refinements of its destructiveness. But at the moment of its greatest technological triumph, humanity finds itself doomed to live with the horror of its achievement. Henceforth statesmanship must be conducted against the background of the ominous threat that miscalculation may involve the end of civilized existence.

The enormity of modern weapons is best described not by adjectives but by facts. The largest conventional bomb of World War II had an explosive power of 20 tons of TNT. The atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima represented a thousandfold increase over this "blockbuster": its explosive equivalent was 20 thousand tons (20 kilotons). By 1953 thermonuclear weapons had been developed which increased the destructiveness of weapons another thousandfold to 20 million tons (20 megatons). Moreover, there are no upper limits: nuclear or thermonuclear devices can be constructed of almost any desired power. As

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the weapons have become more powerful it has also become possible to make them more discriminating. As a result, the spectrum of nuclear weapons ranges from those of only 100 tons TNT equivalent to others capable of eradicating a city.

The explosive power of a weapon is not very meaningful unless it is translated into some comparative magnitudes. The Hiroshima bomb had a radius of total destruction of 1 1/2 miles. Within this area the fatality rate was 75 per cent. The blast and heat effects destroyed or set fire to buildings within an area of 4.4 square miles. The explosions killed 70 thousand in Hiroshima and 35 thousand in Nagasaki. In addition there were 100 to 180 thousand casualties in Hiroshima and between 50 and 100 thousand in Nagasaki. The effects of radiation may not become fully apparent for several decades.

For all their horror the weapons exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "small-yield" by current standards. A 20-megaton weapon would have a lethal radius of 8 miles; its area of total destruction would be 48 square miles. Detonated over Manhattan, such a weapon would produce at least 4 million deaths and maybe two million injured from heat and blast alone; it would level all of Manhattan south of 96th Street and seriously damage the remainder. Moreover, the fireball of a megaton weapon if it touches the ground sucks up particles of earth and buildings and deposits them downwind as radioactive material. The ellipse of the fall-out of the Eniwetok test in 1953 covered an area of 10 thousand square miles or a territory larger than the state of New

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Jersey. A successful attack on 50 of the most important metropolitan areas of the United States -- and this will soon be well within Soviet capabilities, if it is not already -- would bring under fire 40 per cent of our population, 50 per cent of our key facilities and 60 per cent of our industry.

This is the ominous background against which policy must be framed in the nuclear age. It is not surprising in these circumstances that there has grown up the notion that war is no longer a proper instrument of policy and that the maintenance of peace overrides all other concerns.

There is no doubt that war in the nuclear age would be an extreme disaster. The attainment of a stable peace reflects not only the deep aspirations of the American people but the hopes of the world-at-large. Still the attainment of peace is not as easy as the desire for it. In the face of a power or group of powers prepared to run major risks, peace can only be maintained by the willingness to forego it, or by surrender. In the face of explosive situations in many parts of the globe, the inability or unwillingness to intervene may lead to the demoralization or subversion of the international order. The issue then is not the desirability of peace but the price we should pay for it; it is therefore a test of our convictions as much as a test of our strength.

For we may be certain that international developments will sternly test our resolve and our willingness to sacrifice. We are confronted by two powers, the USSR and Communist China, which have based their domestic control apparatus on the myth of a permanently hostile outside world and to which

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protestations of peaceful intentions unrelated to an adequate posture of
strength appear as either hypocrisy or stupidity. To be sure the Soviet Union
and Communist China have alternated periods of intransigence with eras of
conciliation. But the slogan "peaceful coexistence" has never in the past had
more than a tactical significance. After World War II, it did not stand in the
way of Soviet domination of the satellite orbit and the breaking of the most
solemn wartime pledges. After the Geneva Summit conference it did not restrain
the Soviet Union from selling arms to Egypt, thereby inviting an upheaval that
has not ended to this day. In 1957 it did not keep the Soviet Union from
threatening nuclear attacks on Norway, Denmark and Turkey. Both their doctrine
and their internal dynamism will impel the Soviet Union and Communist China
to fill every vacuum and to exploit every dissatisfaction. The unwillingness
to resort to force in the face of such a challenge will lead to a series of with-
drawals and eventually either to surrender or to a cataclysmic war.

Moreover the possibility of war does not have to assume deliberate
intents on the part of the Soviet bloc. There are sufficient tensions around
the Soviet periphery and indeed within the Soviet orbit which might flare up
into violence even without outside encouragement. The leaders of many new
states may find foreign adventures an outlet for domestic frustrations. Rabid
nationalism may make impossible the peaceful solution of other disputes. In
such circumstances the two great power centers may be involved even against
their will and the fate of the world may depend on their willingness to run risks.

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Paradoxically the prospects of peace depend to an important extent on the firmness and ability of the United States and the non-communist world to elaborate the principles and interests they are willing to defend by force if necessary.

Equally important is the ability to develop the appropriate degree of force to resist encroachments. For the decision of peace and war depends as much on psychological as on physical factors. It is all very well to assert that we are opposed to peace at any price. But the price of peace cannot be determined in the abstract. If there is lack of clarity about our purpose in the world, we shall have difficulty in deciding whether a given issue is "worth" contending for. If our military doctrine poses alternatives policy makers are unwilling to confront, it will induce either inaction or improvisation. If our military strength cannot be applied to the situation most likely to arise, we shall find ourselves paralyzed no matter how powerful our over-all military establishment. The dilemma of the nuclear age can therefore be summed up as follows: The horrors of modern war cause statesmen to recoil—and properly — before its consequences; but the unwillingness to run any risks amounts to giving the Soviet leaders a blank check. This alternative has been described as the choice between Armageddon and defeat without war. We can escape the paralysis presented by such prospects only by developing a high degree of flexibility both in our diplomacy and in our strategy, by placing a maximum number of steps between doing nothing and doing everything, between surrender and suicide.

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Everything depends on our ability to relate our strength to our purpose, on
our ability to act resolutely in the face of continuing peril and ambiguous
challenges.

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II

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

All these preconceptions have been overthrown by the technological
developments since World War II and the emergence of the United States in
the forefront of world affairs. In the face of the Soviet strategy of ambiguity
carefully calculated so that the risks of resisting any given encroachment
always seem out of proportion to the objective or designed to appeal to what
the Free World has come to consider "legitimate," it has become clear that the

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recognition of aggression may prove as difficult as finding the means to resist it. At the same time that the forms of aggression have multiplied and become more ambiguous, we have lost the safety-indicators of a more secure past. We can no longer think of our military effort as being designed for a conflict which we enter after the issues have become clear beyond preadventure in order to tip the scales of victory as was the case with our participation in World War I and II. The smaller powers having lost either the strength or the willingness to resist alone, the international equilibrium will depend on our ability, psychological and military, to engage our forces in the early stages of a conflict.

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

The destructiveness of new weapons technology has also fundamentally affected the concept of the margin of superiority required for victory. In the

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past victory could be equated with a superior offensive effort because the margin of destructiveness reflected a real difference in strength. Even then the insistence on total victory often produced a degree of exhaustion which undermined the position of _all_ the contenders relative to other powers, as happened to Europe in World War I. The destructiveness of modern weapons has removed any doubt on this score. It deprives victory in an all-out war of its historical meaning because even the side which inflicts greater devastation than its opponent may not retain sufficient resources to impose its will.

Thus our military problem has two aspects: potential power is less important than actual power and even total power is no index of actual strength if it can not be applied to the actual issues in dispute. These two factors -- the importance of forces-in-being and the necessity of a balanced military establishment -- impose on policy makers an unparalleled problem of choice which is further complicated by the explosive rapidity with which modern weapons technology is developing. Almost up to the outbreak of World War II a weapons system would be good for almost a generation; the equipment of a U. S. rifle company hardly changed between 1919 and 1940. Today a weapons system begins to be obsolescent when it has barely gone into production. The B-17 "Flying Fortress" remained in operational use for a decade; the B-36 intercontinental bomber was obsolescent in less than seven years; and the B-52 jet bomber is beginning to be outdated even before all wings of our Strategic Air Command are fully equipped with it.

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

Moreover, it is impossible to achieve security by attempting to purchase all possible weapons systems, because with proliferating technology such a course would invite financial disaster. The F-51, a late World War II fighter plane required 151,000 engineering man-hours and cost $21,000. The F-100, its 1957 equivalent, requires 404,000 engineering man-hours and costs $406,000 to perform a similar strategic mission. Even if it were possible to procure every weapon that can be developed it would not solve our strategic problem. It would merely shift the issue from procurement to utilization; it would overwhelm policy makers with a multiplicity of possible courses which because of their very number would paralyze action.

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

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III

The types of conflict by which we may be challenged pose particular problems because they tend to overleap the traditional boundaries between the military services: with modern weapons the distinction of land, sea and air warfare has lost its meaning. The criteria by which any future wars can be distinguished turn on the nature of the conflict, the issues in dispute, the geographical area of hostilities rather than on means of locomotion. Among the possible challenges we may confront, three stand out most starkly: all-out war, limited war and a kind of war new to the twentieth century: the disguised or obscure war concealed as internal take-over or as civil war.

All-Out War

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

With modern weapons such a war would involve catastrophic
casualties. It is doubtful that civilized life as we know it could withstand
the carnage. Even the nominal victor would have suffered losses which
would shake its social fabric. This is particularly true for the side

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which concedes the first blow. Whatever the hope of success of the aggressor, the victim will have suffered a devastating blow at the outset. In an all-out war, the side which is on the defensive can use its military power only to stave off defeat, not to impose its will.

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

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

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psychological position than an opponent totally vulnerable to attack. In
the age of the long-range missile, the known ability of a society to withstand
attack will become an increasingly important deterrent.

Thus the capability for all-out war must be composed of a combination
of three factors: (a) A retaliatory force sufficiently powerful and well protected
so that no matter what the scale of the enemy attack, the aggressor must have
to contend with a return blow which will inflict an unacceptable amount of
damage; (b) An active defense which can provide effective warning for the
retaliatory force and which is able to reduce the enemy blow to the smallest
possible proportions. (c) A passive defense which reduces the value of the
enemy offense and the incentive for it. The importance of defensive measures
is that they force the enemy to increase his investment of resources in his
offensive effort without adding to its strategic effectiveness. The necessity
of a crushing retaliatory force is that it can deprive the aggressor of the fruits
of a surprise attack. The task of strategy is to decide on the relative emphasis
to be given to offensive and defensive capabilities and the "mix" which will
provide the greatest flexibility.

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## Limited War

But while all-out war represents the greatest danger it does not constitute the most likely threat. In fact, the complexity of maintaining the strategic balance for all-out war creates a psychological distortion. It transforms the mode of preparing for one kind of war into a doctrine for the only possible strategy; it gives use to the illusion that protection against one danger exhausts the range of our possible peril. But as all-out war opens ever more terrible vistas, as the complexity of its strategy makes victory ever more difficult to calculate, a threshold is created below which a given provocation does not seem "worth" an all-out war. And with the increasing horror of weapons technology this threshold is constantly rising. As a result, we face the strategic problem of limited war, the form of conflict which overturns the equilibrium by increments any one of which does not seem to warrant a final show-down.

The distinctive feature of limited war is that its outcome does not involve or seem to involve national survival. And in the face of the calamity posed by all-out war we have tended to interpret the requirements of national survival more and more stringently. Part of our difficulty has been caused by our lack of mobile forces capable of intervening rapidly and decisively and of restoring a local situation before matters get out of hand. Thus we have been forced into the position of choosing between Armageddon and defeat without war and in each crisis our inhibitions

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have tended to exceed those of the Soviet Union.

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

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

The effective conduct of limited war thus depends on the ability to relate power and policy. It requires forces graduated to the objective under dispute and a diplomacy which can show the opponent a way out short of unconditional surrender. It provides a test of our maturity; of our willingness to run risks in the face of ambiguous challenges and of

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our readiness to make peace on the basis of less than total victory.

And once we possess this military and political capability, it may keep
the peace by removing the motive for aggression.

The Obscure War

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

Thus the "obscure" war represents the conflict with which in
terms of our preconceptions and the structure of our forces we are least
prepared to deal. It is the essence of the obscure war that its nature
is ambiguous. A civil war has not traditionally been thought to justify
foreign intervention however much its outcome may affect the international
equilibrium. The gradual subversion of a government is difficult to deal
with from the outside, even though the fate of millions may depend on it.

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Even should we overcome these psychological obstacles and wish to make our influence felt, we will not find it easy to do so. The typical form of affecting the course of events of the obscure war is by assistance to local forces with whom we share a community of interests. But our over-all strength is extremely difficult to apply to this form of conflict. Superiority in strategic striking power vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, even if it could be maintained, does not guarantee effective action in situations of great ambiguity. A multi-megaton weapon is not a fit instrument for a civil war. A complicated nuclear establishment may be unnecessary for resisting a revolutionary upheaval and the local forces on which we must so largely depend may not be able to utilize it.

Of course our ultimate aim must be to prevent such situations from arising. An effective and imaginative policy should be able to keep matters from getting out of hand. But equally an effective ability to assist our friends may be an important factor in their decision to resist and maintain their freedom. In this respect the obscure war is symptomatic of our entire military problem. Force will never supply the answer to humanity's aspirations. But it may provide the framework of security within which these aspirations may be worked out in freedom.

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IV

It is against the background of the missions which will likely have to be performed that we must examine the over-all strategic balance. Its outstanding characteristic is a military technology in a state of spectacular proliferation. Starting with World War II scientific research has produced military equipment and new patterns of military operations at an ever accelerating pace. During the war, trucks and tanks were developed which were able to swim as well as to operate on land; rocket weapons and electronic fuses became commonplace; new equipment and techniques of air support for surface forces were introduced. Improvement in the means of land, sea and air transportation considerably lessened the difficulty of achieving a concentration of military force at great distances from the home base and across amphibious defenses.

Radar, which at the time of Pearl Harbor was a rudimentary and untrusted device, had by 1945 become an indispensable tool of all major weapons systems. New aircraft with improved performance and navigation and bombing systems added powerful new strategic offensive capabilities. And uranium, a scientific curiosity in 1941, had by 1945, become the core of a weapon to stagger the imagination.

And the curve of military technology continues to rise: The crude U.S. bomb of 1945 has been outmoded by a broad range of highly developed weapons. Energy releases have risen from the original 20,000 tons of TNT equivalent to many million tons. The Hiroshima bomb required a large aircraft and crew.

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Equally powerful warheads have been reduced in size and simplified to the point where they can be employed effectively in anti-aircraft rockets. And with the increasing capacity for the production of fissionable materials nuclear and thermonuclear weapons have become available in very large quantities.

Aircraft will be capable of cruising at several times the speed of sound, of bombing from altitudes of a dozen miles and more, and of carrying air-launched missiles so that they need not pass directly over heavily defended target areas. New high energy fuels can give them greatly increased range and performance. Nuclear power may even remove the problem of aircraft range entirely.

Within a very short time, a major role in both offense and defense will be played by missiles and their offshoots such as each satellites. It will be possible to produce missiles of almost any desired range from very short distances analogous to traditional artillery to intercontinental ranges of five thousand miles or more. Because these weapons require much less elaborate installations than airplanes, it will be possible to disperse them more easily and they will therefore be more invulnerable to surprise attack.

Earth satellites which are a special adaptation of missiles will be able to accomplish a great deal of uninterrupted reconnaissance.

As nuclear propulsion comes of age submarines will be of increasing importance. They will insure use of the sea where surface ships could not

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hope to survive. They can pose a threat to our harbors and to our allies by interrupting sea communications. As a platform for missiles they can generate a constant threat of a sudden, devastating blow from unpredictable directions.

Powerful light-weight weapons and air transport will make possible rapid application of military power, at any place in the world. These are not dreams of the far distant future; even the most remote among them is attainable within the next 10-15 years and many of them will be in the hands of several nations.

V

## Soviet Capabilities

In the past the United States has suffered from a tendency to underestimate the military technology of the USSR. When the Soviet Union produced their first long-range bomber we comforted ourselves with the thought that it was a copy of our B-29. When it developed jet fighters, we ascribed it to imitation of a British design. When our atomic monopoly was ended we took it as a reflection on our security methods rather than as an indication that our technological lead was inherently ephemeral.

In the meantime the Soviet Union has demonstrated that its achievements in the immediate post-war period were far from accidental. Today Soviet science is at least equal to our own in most strategically significant categories. The total Soviet technological capability is increasing at a pace

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obviously faster than that of the United States. If not reversed this trend
alone will place the free world in dire jeopardy.

The Soviet technological skill is matched by a high order of managerial ability at least at the level of over-all national priorities. Several times in recent years the USSR has demonstrated a striking ability to surpass the United States in reducing "lead times": the interval between drawing board and operational weapon. This seems to be due to two factors: first, the Kremlin's decisions on new weapons are made with firmness and prosecuted by a system of effective priorities. And second, the Soviet Union has placed a much greater emphasis on science, particularly on basic science, than the United States.

The result of the Soviet concentration on military technology is an impressive military establishment which already poses a mortal threat to the free world and which is growing larger. Its main features can be summarized as follows:

The U.S.S.R. has a preponderance of conventional ground forces compared to any similar forces around its periphery and well able to maintain political control inside the Soviet orbit.

The Soviet shipbuilding program has long concentrated on submarines.
A fleet of over 400 is already in operation. This number is greatly in excess
of the German force which crippled Allied surface shipping during the early
years of World War II. There is no doubt about the capability of the U.S.S.R.

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to develop atomic power plants for its navy or to adapt ships and submarines
to launch short and medium-range missiles.

Soviet missiles are ahead of our own. This is due, at least in part to the fact that the Soviet Union has given high priority to guided missiles for at least 10 years and that during part of this period our own missile program was dormant. As a result, the Soviet Union already possesses missiles capable of reaching all of Western Europe, Japan and Taiwan from Russian or Chinese bases. Intercontinental ranges will soon follow. Launched from submarines, even short-range missiles can pose a serious threat to the continental United States.

Soviet airplane development has been impressive and in some respects at least as advanced as our own. Soviet air defense is based on a good radar detection and tracking system, supported by a large number of all-weather interceptor aircraft, an increasing proportion of which is supersonic. Ground-to-air missiles are a major element in it and are likely to gain in effectiveness relative to the manned bomber. In short, Soviet military strength is already enormous and growing rapidly.

## U.S. Capabilities

As compared with the U.S.S.R., the United States now has three principal military advantages:

We have superior operational experience in the use of long-range
manned airplanes and geography favors our system of advanced bases.

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We have superior and more flexible naval power, especially surface
naval power.

We have more atomic weapons, and a greater variety of them.

However, some aspects of these advantages must be qualified, and
others are only temporary. Thus our superiority in long-range bombers is not
static. It is always in competition with improving defenses, and in any case
missiles will increasingly take over missions heretofore performed by manned
planes. In the interval many U.S. forward bases will be exposed to the politi-
cal instability of the areas in which they are located and all of our air bases
are vulnerable to surprise attack, particularly from Soviet missiles.

Nor can our present superiority at sea be assumed as a continuing
advantage. The aircraft carrier, around which our naval power is built, is
limited in its capability for sustained heavy action by the availability of re-
fueling facilities, particularly for its aircraft complement. The value of its
freedom from the political uncertainties of foreign bases is therefore a matter
of degree. So also is the value of its mobility for escaping attack since a
large surface ship can be detected over great distances by airborne radar.
Moreover, our anti-submarine capability is not adequate to deal with the
growing Soviet underwater threat.

The third point of present U.S. military advantage is in the number
and variety of atomic weapons. But the U.S.S.R. can make good any stra-
tegically meaningful advantage well within the 10-15 years under consideration
here.

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Thus it appears that the U.S. is losing its lead over the U.S.S.R. in the race of military technology. Unless the trend is altered, our margin of superiority in this respect will inevitably vanish. If that happens subsequent events will be harsh and unforgiving.

VI

What is the implication of these trends for United States strategy?

No more momentous question faces the non-communist world, for its security and freedom are inextricably bound up with U.S. strength and determination.

Without U.S. assistance, Greece and the Republic of Korea despite their heroism would have succumbed to communist aggression. Our firm resolve to defend Western Europe may have prevented a Soviet onslaught on our NATO allies. Our programs of economic and military aid have been a stabilizing factor in many other regions. And at home we have assumed the burden of a military expenditure in the neighborhood of $40 billion and we have maintained almost three million men under arms.

Against a background of these measures, can there by any basis for concern with U.S. security? Unfortunately, our achievement cannot be measured against the magnitude of our sacrifice; it must be weighed against the vastness of the challenge.

And in these terms there is reason for serious concern. Our strategic striking power, on which we have heretofore relied as the major element of our

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security, is imperiled by Soviet missile developments and the inadequate dis-
persal of our Strategic Air Command. Our assumption that we could substitute
technology for manpower has been exposed as tenuous.

To be sure, our over-all strength has never been greater. But the
difficulty of our situation arises precisely from the fact that the magnitude of
the total does not assure its sufficiency. Even with a military posture which
causes all-out war to carry with it the threat of mutual suicide, our peril
remains. Until the development of a Soviet nuclear stockpile and the means
to deliver it, our retaliatory force could serve as the major deterrent to Soviet
aggression. But as the Soviet capability to attack American cities increases,
it will raise the threshold of provocation which would unleash our retaliatory
force. Thus the Soviet Union will be enabled to use its strategic striking
force as a shield behind which to expand by more limited methods.

The fundamental problem is as old as history but new to us as a nation.
We have been on the small, though victorious, end of limited wars in 1776
and 1812 and on the controlling end of others in 1848 and 1898. But never be-
fore Korea had the U.S. been obliged to fight a war on the tacit admission
that it was limited by other than logistic considerations. Nevertheless, if
the range and power of modern weapons have made it unrealistic to meet any
but the most dire threat by all-out war, and if we are unwilling to become
reconciled to piecemeal defeat of the non-communist world, then we must face
up to the consequences implicit in the possibility the U.S. may have to fight
limited wars.

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The reliance on all-out war as the sole deterrent to Soviet aggression is pernicious not only for our own resolution but for that of our allies as well. Our allies realize that in an all-out conflict their major contribution will be to furnish bases; they therefore have little incentive to make a contribution of their own. They will either feel themselves already protected by our strategic striking force which in any case is outside their control. Or else they will be so appalled by the prospects of all-out war that they may seek peace almost at any price. A reliance on all-out strategy is ultimately demoralizing both for ourselves and for our allies.

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

VII

Another source of major concern is the organization of our Defense Department. The power and range of modern weapons has overleapt the traditional boundaries among our military services producing endless friction and dispersion of energy. The organizational expression of our strategic

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doctrine has been the assignment of roles and missions among the services -
Army, Air Force and the Navy. Each of these services has had the mission
of defeating its enemy counterpart; the Army had primary responsibility for
the land battle, the Navy for control of the seas and the Air Force for the
control of the air. These missions were based, in effect, on means of loco-
motion with everything moving by water assigned to the Navy, everything
moving by land assigned to the Army and everything moving through the air
assigned to the Air Force.

Originally this assignment of roles represented distinguishable
strategic tasks; the Army was powerless on the sea beyond the range of its
coastal artillery, and the Navy was unable to project itself far inland. The
Air Force was not yet independent, and the range of its planes was sufficiently
short to permit the division of functions between the Navy and Army air arms
to follow roughly that between the senior services. Each service was, there-
fore, able to control all the weapons it considered essential for achieving
its mission. It could in effect develop its own strategy without too much
concern with that of the sister service or without too much dependence on the
interpretation of a sister service as to what constituted an essential target.

But the long-range airplane, the ballistic missile and the incomparable
destructiveness of weapons have almost obliterated the traditional boundaries
among the services. Today, no service can achieve its primary mission with-
out either trespassing on the role of the other services or calling on them for

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assistance. And cooperation among the services is difficult unless there is an agreement on doctrine, the practical manifestation of which would be that all services hold the same view as to what constitutes an essential target. Is the sea controlled by bombing shipyards from carriers or by destroying the enemy's industrial potential? Is a land battle possible without having won air supremacy, and is it necessary after the air battle has been won?

In the absence of an agreed strategic doctrine, each service will give its own reply. So long as each service has the primary mission of defeating its enemy counterpart, and so long as there does not exist an agreed strategic doctrine, no service can afford to relinquish control over a weapon which it considers essential for the performance of its mission. For the Navy's conception of what is essential to win control of the seas may conflict with the Air Force's notion of its requirements for winning the air battle. And in view of the necessity for quick reaction imposed by the increasing speed and power of modern weapons, each service will seek to escape this dilemma by hoarding as many weapons as possible.

A duplication of weapons systems and a proliferation of partially conflicting doctrines is inevitable. The division of functions which worked relatively smoothly for a century and a half has become a source of bitter rivalry in the nuclear age. Each new weapon has led to a bitter wrangle as to which service should control it. It was thus with the A-bomb: it is now the case with missiles. And in each instance the doctrinal issue was evaded by permit-

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ting each service to develop its own weapon even if it duplicated the efforts of a sister service.

Such a solution is costly. It prevents us from drawing the full benefit from our military expenditures and in every crisis it confronts our policy makers with conflicting advice. It fosters a tendency to create doctrine as a tool in the interservice battle for appropriations; the incentive it provides is for the theoretical elaboration of a service view and not of an over-all approach to strategy.

The setting of force levels on the basis of each service's primary mission, when this mission represents no clearly distinguishable strategic option inhibits the development of over-all doctrine and leads to an enormously wasteful duplication of effort. The primary missions of the services become ends in themselves; new weapons are placed into the strait jacket of obsolescent missions instead of fitting missions to revolutionary departures in technology. Given the range and power of modern weapons the attempt by each service to hoard all weapons that can affect a service's primary mission must lead to a tendency for each service to develop a capability for winning a war by itself. Its efforts will be directed toward reducing its reliance on other services.

As a result our Joint Chiefs of Staff have become, with the best will in the world, essentially advocates of a service point of view. The Joint Chiefs have risen to their position through a lifetime of dedication to one

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service. They are a product of its problems, its training schools, its environment. Maintaining the morale of their service can never be far from their minds. And mastering the primary mission of each service is becoming so difficult that all effort almost inevitably inhibits a consideration of its relationship to an over-all mission; or, more accurately, it leads 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 its most severe challenges. There is little in the organization of our national defense establishment that impels the service chiefs in a spontaneous fashion to consider over-all strategic doctrine.

The difficulty of over-all planning by the military has its counterpart in the office of the Secretary of Defense. At present, the Secretary of Defense is at best an arbiter of doctrinal disputes. He possesses neither the staff nor the organization to shape them.

Because of the primary tasks of the Office of the Secretary as now constituted are the adjudication of interservice rivalry very few of the civilian assistants of the Secretary of Defense have duties actually relevant to the conduct of a war. In the event of large-scale hostilities, the bulk of the civilian echelon of the Department of Defense could serve only by abdicating.

To be sure, a violent shift of mission of our military headquarters when a war starts is part of our national history. But the speed and destruc-

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tiveness of modern weapons may cause our survival as a nation to depend on a degree of instantaneous efficiency in our military commands beyond the capacity of an organization in the process of changing gears.

VIII

No aspect of America's problems presents a deeper challenge than the field of national security. It is not because the technical problems are so complex, though a proliferating technology will test severely our wisdom and our ability to make choices. Nor is the economic challenge the most complicated one we face, though the price of security in the nuclear age is high and likely to increase. It is not even the field of strategic doctrine which presents our deepest problem though military strength is sterile without a doctrine for employing it.

Rather our chief difficulty resides in our whole approach to the problem of power and it reflects some of the most attractive qualities of American society. We like to believe that reasonable men can settle all disputes through good-will

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and compromise and that power should be invoked only as a last resort. We
therefore tend to think of diplomacy and force as successive and discreet
phases of national policy. Unfortunately the position in which we find our-
selves does not permit such absolute distinctions. In a revolutionary period
the ability and willingness to use force is in itself a factor of stability. To
a world threatened by aggression and infiltration, American strength and
resolution is a guarantee of security.

To be sure, this may not always be apparent in public declarations.
To countries primarily concerned with domestic development foreign aggres-
sion may seem unreal and the measures required to resist it may appear as
irritating interruptions of more primary tasks. But while we should have full
understanding for the psychology which produces these reactions, we would
be wrong to gear our policy to it. Force will not solve the problems of this
period but the willingness to use it may afford the breathing spell in which
nations can work out their own destiny without foreign interference. We must
not forget that the neutrality, or the development of many regions is possible
only as long as we are strong. Many of our most vocal critics would be deeply
troubled were our military protection suddenly withdrawn.

Our power is a fact which imposes responsibilities. We will show our
moral principles not by abdicating our power, but in the humility and com-
passion with which we exercise it.