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# CHAPTER IV
## THE NATURE OF THE STRATEGIC DEBATE

### A. American Strategic Doctrine and NATO Policy

When the Atlantic Alliance was formed in 1949, Soviet aggression was believed to be imminent. As a result, there was a natural preoccupation with military security. Allied cohesion grew greatest with respect to strategic matters. An integrated headquarters staffed by officers of various nationalities was set up near Paris (SHAPE). A joint defense plan was developed. Some agreement about the nature of the common defense has always been central to the cohesiveness of NATO.

In recent years, such agreement has been difficult to achieve and for good reasons. Weapons are novel and untested--and everything depends on them. Offensive power has far outstripped defensive power. Every ally--no matter how powerful--faces a level of destruction which in the past would have been considered catastrophic. Finally, modern technology makes available more choices than the Alliance can afford to implement. High risk combines with multiple choice to produce controversy.

Whether the allies choose land or sea-based missiles, whether they emphasize nuclear or conventional weapons depends less on technology than on strategic doctrine. Strategic doctrine, as here used, does not connote something abstract or dogmatic. In the absence of any relevant experience, its role is to define the likely dangers and how to deal with them, to project feasible goals and outline plans for attaining them. It must furnish a mode of action for the circumstances it defines as "ordinary."

1. See also, Chapter I, p. 1.

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Its adequacy will be demonstrated by whether these events do in fact occur and whether the forces and procedures developed in anticipating them are adequate to deal with the real challenges.

In the inter-war period French strategic doctrine exalted the value of the strategic defensive and built its plans around the Maginot Line. However, the likely German attempts to overthrow the Treaty of Versailles could be prevented only by French offensive action. The Maginot Line could prove useful, in other words, only after the Versailles settlement was already overturned. Thus French strategic doctrine contributed to the paralysis of French foreign policy. When German armies reoccupied the Rhineland and attacked France's allies in Eastern Europe, French power remained passive and French diplomacy stood impotent. Even when the long-awaited attack in the West finally came, it took place in an area which had not been fortified.

If a mistaken strategic doctrine absorbs energy in reconciling what happens with what is expected, an excessively complicated or esoteric doctrine can break down under the stress of decision-making. The Schlieffen Plan, Germany's military design for World War I, provided for every contingency except the psychological strain on the commander. It failed largely because the German leaders lost their nerve. In the face of Russian advances into East Germany--which were foreseen by the Schlieffen Plan--the Germans rushed reinforcements from the West and thus weakened their offensive thrust at the crucial moment. It adds to the irony of the situation that these reinforcements were in transit when the decisive battles in both the East and the West were being fought.

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But if there is no doctrine at all and a society operates
pragmatically, solving problems "on their merits" as the saying goes,
every event becomes a special case. More energy is spent on deciding
where one is than where one is going. Each event is compartmentalized
and dealt with under pressure by experts in the special difficulties it
involves without an adequate consideration of its relation to other
occurrences. American policy has been prone to this approach.

The problem of agreeing on strategic doctrine is difficult within
each government. The difficulty has been magnified within the Alliance
because disputes about strategy become symbols for larger disagreements
on policy. To be sure, differences of opinion about strategy have been
real enough. But their urgency is due to the fact that something deeper
than the analysis of weapons systems is involved. Disputes have become
exacerbated because the United States and its European critics have rarely
been talking about the same thing.

The United States has stressed the technical adequacy of its
strategic views and the analytic accuracy of its strategic assessments.
Our European critics have emphasized the political and psychological
framework within which these decisions will have to be implemented. The
United States has reiterated its formal commitment to the defense of
Europe--as if a legal clause could settle the problem of credibility in
the nuclear age once and for all. Our European allies consider even the
most solemn undertakings less conclusive. Too many of them have betrayed
allies of their own not to be concerned over the impact of the unprecedented
stress of nuclear war on obligations incurred many years before under
completely different circumstances.

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our European allies has been confined in effect to the technical
implementation of American views. No specifically European concept
of defense--and no real European sense of responsibility--developed.

This state of affairs had many causes. At the beginning of
NATO, our allies, remembering our tradition of isolationism, actively
encouraged a predominant United States military role. A hegemonial
position for the United States seemed the best guarantee of our commitment
to the defense of Europe. Later on many allies used our dominant
position as an excuse to avoid difficult domestic choices. They
encouraged us to assume the burden of defense expenditures and the stress
of difficult strategic decisions. We acquiesced because we were
psychologically more deeply engaged in the military than in the economic
field. A military occupation of Europe was rightly considered a challenge
to our survival. Most importantly, the United States possessed a monopoly
of nuclear weapons on which the security of the West was believed to
depend.

However valid the reasons, the disequilibrium in responsibility
between us and our European partners could not be healthy in the long
run. It was unprecedented that the defense of an area so rich and
potentially so powerful as Europe should be left to a country three
thousand miles away and with a recent history of isolationism. The result
has been that many of our allies have seen their role primarily as that
of lobbyists trying to sway decisions not their own.

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This attitude contributes to Allied discord. Charged with the major responsibility for the common defense, the United States has been obliged to adapt its strategy to a rapidly changing technology.

Many of our European allies, on the other hand, the status quo as seemed the best guarantee of our reliability. Unilateral change of our strategic views have a symbolic quality for them. If we are able to alter our views about strategy, might not the same be true of more fundamental commitments? If our allies were primarily concerned with the technical aspects of strategy, they should be worried if we rigidly continue existing doctrine when circumstances change. It has been a measure of Europe's sense of impotence that the opposite has been the case.

The United States, in turn, has fallen into the habit of dealing with its European allies, except Great Britain, almost psychotherapeutically. It has tended to confuse periodic briefings and reassurance with consultation and it has sought to muffle expressions of concern, rather than deal with the underlying causes. This is the psychological background for the strategic debate which has been taking place since the beginning of NATO and with particular intensity since 1961.

In order to understand the impact on our allies of the change in United States strategic concepts in 1961, it is necessary to examine briefly the doctrine which was replaced. When the Korean War first raised the specter of a Soviet attack on Europe, NATO developed the Lisbon goals, which envisaged a largely conventional defense of Europe. These provided for some thirty-five to forty regular and some fifty-five to sixty reserve divisions. It soon became apparent, however, that no European ally was prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to raise these forces.

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The advent of the Eisenhower Administration in 1953 led to a new defense policy--called the New Look--which placed much greater emphasis on nuclear forces. In 1957 the United States submitted to NATO what came to be known as the Radford Plan--initially to the dismay of the Europeans. This plan started from the premise that NATO was permanently inferior in conventional strength to the hordes of easily mobilized Soviet manpower. To base NATO's strategy on resisting a Soviet attack with conventional weapons was to emphasize Communist superiority. Therefore, the defense of NATO should depend on nuclear weapons. Any attack on Europe would involve general nuclear war. The purpose of the military establishment on the Continent was primarily to delay a Soviet advance long enough for the effects of nuclear war to make themselves felt. The ground forces were to be a "trip wire" or a "plate glass window."

As a result, large numbers of tactical nuclear weapons were shipped into Europe under the so-called double-veto system. This required the consent of both the United States and the host country for a nuclear weapon to be used. Moreover, the definition of "tactical" was such that the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) was to be able to destroy all Soviet weapons capable of attacking Europe. The nuclear arsenal in Europe thus included weapons of a range and destructiveness indistinguishable from some of those in the arsenal of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). They could be called "tactical" only in the sense that they were stationed in Europe and not in the United States and that they were controlled by SACEUR rather than the commanding general of SAC.

According to this strategic concept, conventional weapons played a minor role. Their function was to deal with minor incursions; they were

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to act as a screen to determine that a full-scale Soviet attack was taking place. Though there was some talk of a "pause" before nuclear weapons might be used, the logistic system of NATO left little doubt about the real emphasis of NATO strategy. None of NATO's conventional forces had supplies for more than two weeks, and several national contingents were considerably worse off. In case of large-scale Soviet attack, nuclear weapons would have to be used practically from the outset.

"The pause," General Norstad was reported to have observed, "will probably take place *before* the outbreak of hostilities." NATO doctrine described conventional weapons as the "shield" and nuclear weapons as the "sword" of the Alliance.

Almost concurrently with the disclosure of the Radford Plan in 1957, the United States came to believe that it was inferior to the Soviet Union in long-range missiles. In order to close this "missile gap," the United States pressed its NATO allies to permit the installation of intermediate-range ballistic missiles on their territory. These were thought to be essential to the over-all strategic posture of the West. The concern of some of our allies regarding the vulnerability of these missiles was rejected. It was argued that the Soviets would not be able to launch a blow against our European bases without an unacceptable risk of an all-out United States counterblow and that a coordinated Soviet attack against U.S. overseas and domestic bases would prove technically difficult to stage. In pursuit of these policies, intermediate-range missiles were stationed in Greece, Turkey and Great Britain.

2

The IRBM's in Greece and Turkey were under SACEUR; those in Great Britain were not part of NATO.

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Whatever the validity of the judgments that led to the stationing of these missiles in Europe, they tended to establish an inextricable link between the defense of Europe and that of the United States. As long as the United States believed that its European bases were essential to redress the strategic balance, an attack on Europe would threaten the survival of the United States immediately rather than indirectly. Deployment rather than a judgment to be taken in the circumstances of the moment would dictate the decision to go to nuclear war.

With the advent of the new United States administration in 1961, these policies were drastically and suddenly changed. Starting early in 1961, the Kennedy Administration developed a four-pronged strategic theory which has remained essentially unchanged under President Johnson.

1. **Flexible Response:** When it took office, the Kennedy Administration found itself confronted with a strategy for general war which emphasized a single all-out response. If general nuclear war proved inevitable, the goal was to be to destroy the opposing society essentially in one blow.

The Kennedy Administration sought to replace this conception with an approach which offered more alternatives. It attempted to develop the maximum number of options even for the contingency of general nuclear war--a strategy summed up in the phrase "flexible response." This strategy was described by Secretary of Defense McNamara in 1962 as follows:

> . . . our forces can be used in several different ways. We may have to retaliatiate with a single massive attack. Or, we may be able to use our retaliatory forces to limit damage done to ourselves, and our allies, by knocking out the enemy's bases before he has had time to launch his second salvos. We may seek to terminate a war on favorable

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terms by using our forces as a bargaining weapon--by
threatening further attack.

In any case, our large reserve of protected firepower would give an enemy an incentive to avoid our cities and to stop a war. Our new policy gives us the flexibility to choose among several operational plans, but does not require that we make any advance commitment with respect to doctrine or targets. We shall be committed only to a system that gives us the ability to use our forces in a controlled and deliberate way, so as best to pursue the interests of the United States, our Allies, and the rest of the Free World.³

Official explanations about how this capability for flexible
response would be used have shifted from time to time and have not always
been consistent. Criticizing the nuclear forces of Britain and France,
Secretary McNamara argued that the United States proposed to rely on a
counterforce strategy and confine its initial attacks to military targets:

> The U.S. has come to the conclusion 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 regarded 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.⁴

Throughout 1962 Secretary McNamara insisted that the United States
had the capability to destroy the entire Soviet military target system
even *after* absorbing a first blow. The corollary was, of course, that the

³ Robert S. McNamara, Address before the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation Dinner, Chicago, Illinois, February 17, 1962, Department of Defense, Office of Public Affairs, News Release No. 239-62, February 17, 1962, pp. 6-7. Cited in William W. Kaufmann, *The McNamara Strategy* (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 75.

⁴ McNamara, Address at the Commencement Exercises, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 16, 1962, Department of Defense, Office of Public Affairs, News Release No. 980-62, June 16, 1962, p. 9. See also statement on RS-70, *New York Times*, March 16, 1962.

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U.S. would be able to overwhelm Soviet strategic forces by striking first, for instance in response to an attack on Europe. But if this assessment was correct, the purpose of building up conventional forces in Europe was far from obvious. If Soviet strategic forces were indeed so much more vulnerable than ours, a Soviet conventional attack on Europe would be too risky to be at all probable. NATO strategy would be able to rely primarily on United States strategic nuclear power.

More recently Secretary McNamara has been less sanguine about the prospects for a counterforce strategy. He has argued that the growing size of the opposing strategic forces requires us to define more modest objectives than the original counterforce doctrine had seemed to imply. He now maintains that no matter how large our strategic forces, they will not be able to prevent vast damage. The strategy of flexible response is not designed to achieve victory in the traditional sense; its function is to limit damage by destroying as many of the weapons held in reserve by an aggressor after he has launched an initial blow:

> "... a "damage-limiting" strategy appears to be the most practical and effective course for us to follow. ...
> 
> While there are still some differences of judgment on just how large such a U.S. strategic force should be, there is general agreement that it should be large enough to ensure the destruction, singly or in combination, of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and the Communist satellites as national societies, under the worst possible circumstances of war outbreak that can reasonably be postulated, and, in addition, to destroy their warmaking capability so as to limit, to the extent practicable, damage to this country and to our allies."

5

McNamara, Hearings, Department of Defense, Appropriations for 1965, House Appropriations Subcommittee (88th Cong., 2nd sess., Part 4), pp. 27-8.

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Under-Secretary Ball has criticized these nuclear forces because "the road toward nuclear proliferation has no logical ending."

At first, these criticisms were directed against the French nuclear program alone. However, they could be applied with equal logic to the British strategic force, although it has been in existence with American support for over a decade. Robert Bowie, one of the most eloquent defenders of official nuclear policy, has made this explicit. In short, the requirement of central control is interpreted by the Pentagon to mean the integration of strategic nuclear forces in a way that forecloses the technical possibility of independent use. If any of our allies are to have nuclear forces of their own--and the clear United States preference is that they do not--these must be an adjunct to United States strategic forces and under what amounts in practice to American control.

3. **Tactical Nuclear Weapons:** United States strategic doctrine has shown considerable ambivalence about tactical nuclear weapons which were previously considered the key element of the military establishment on the Continent. On the one hand, the number of tactical nuclear weapons on the Continent has been considerably increased--according to official

7 George Ball, "NATO and World Responsibility," *The Atlantic Community Quarterly*, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Summer 1964), p. 211.

8 Robert Bowie, "Tensions Within the Alliance," *Foreign Affairs*, Vol. 43, No. 1 (October 1963), p. 66.

_______, *Strategy and the Atlantic Alliance*, *International Organization, Special issue on the Atlantic Community*, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Summer 1963), pp. 722-726.

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Pentagon estimates by some sixty per cent. On the other hand, tactical, nuclear weapons do not really fit the Administration's strategic concept.

Tactical nuclear weapons in the hands of front line units are extremely difficult to subject to the central command and control envisaged by the new doctrine. If used for local defense, they would be likely to pass rapidly beyond the control of governments or high level commanders. The Administration has repeatedly stressed the danger of such escalation. As Deputy Secretary of Defense Gilpatric put it, "I, for one, have never believed in a so-called limited nuclear war. I just don't know how you build a limit into it once you start using any kind of a nuclear bang." And in the spring of 1961, Secretary McNamara said that, in his concept, limited war in effect excluded the use of any nuclear weapons. "I think by 'limited' war we simply mean war that is carried on for the most part with non nuclear weapons." Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Alain C. Enthoven said on February 10, 1963:

> There has been, in recent years, the development of small nuclear weapons having yields equivalent to a few thousand tons of TNT or less. The day will come, if it has not already, when there will be nuclear weapons of smaller yield than the largest high explosive weapons. When that day comes, will there no longer be a distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons? Some have argued to that effect. But they are mistaken. There is and will remain an important distinction, a "firebreak". If you like, between nuclear and non-nuclear war, a

New York Times, June 7, 1961.

McNamara, Department of Defense, Appropriations for 1962, Hearings, Committee on Appropriations, House Subcommittee (87th Cong., 1st sess., 1961, Part 3), p. 136.

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recognizable qualitative distinction that both combatants
can recognize and agree upon, if they want to agree upon
one. And in the nuclear age they will have a very powerful
incentive to agree upon this distinction and limitation,
because if they do not there does not appear to be another
easily recognizable limitation on weapons--no other obvious
"firebreak"--all the way up the destructive spectrum to
large-scale thermonuclear war.¹¹

In sum, if any use of nuclear weapons is likely to lead to an
uncontrolled general nuclear exchange, it follows that the Administration's
strictures against independent nuclear forces apply to a considerable extent
to tactical nuclear weapons on the continent of Europe as well.

Administration statements have made clear that the tactical nuclear weapons
in Europe were too vulnerable to serve as reliable second-strike weapons,
and thus were not needed to deter or to fight a general nuclear war:

> There is no question but today our strategic retaliatory forces of bombers, missiles and Polaris are fully capable of destroying Soviet targets, even after absorbing an initial nuclear suprise attack. Allowing for losses from an initial enemy attack we calculate that our forces would destroy virtually all Soviet targets without any help from deployed tactical air units of carrier task forces which, of course, have the capability of attacking these targets with nuclear weapons.¹²

If official doctrine is ambivalent about tactical nuclear
weapons, it is hostile to the overseas deployment of strategic delivery
systems. Accordingly, intermediate-range ballistic missiles have been

11
Alain C. Enthoven, U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Military Procurement Authorization: Fiscal Year 1964; Hearings on H.R. 2440 (88th Cong., 1st sess., 1963), p. 168.

12
McNamara, Address to the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, Chicago, February 17, 1962, op. cit., p. .

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withdrawn from Britain, Italy and Turkey. This has been justified by
the argument that the new weapons such as the Polaris missiles are more
effective and by assertions (which incidentally had been rejected four
years earlier) that land-based missiles are too vulnerable.

4. Conventional Defense: If European national nuclear forces are irrelevant or worse and tactical nuclear weapons are overvalued, it follows that American strategic doctrine considers Europe's optimum contribution to be in the field of conventional defense. This argument has been pressed insistently. "The decision to employ tactical nuclear weapons," testified Secretary McNamara before the House Armed Services Committee in January 1963, "should not be forced upon us simply because we have no other way to cope with a particular situation."

The corollary for United States doctrine is that the most desirable
objective is to resist a Soviet conventional attack with purely conventional
means. Secretary McNamara added that existing 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. This view was made explicit by Alain C. Enthoven a
little later that year:

> . . . 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.

13

McNamara, Statement before the House Armed Services Committee,
The Fiscal Year 1964-68, Defense Program, 1964 Defense Budget, January 30,
1963, p. 18.

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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.¹⁴

This feature of the new United States strategic doctrine was
vividly symbolized in the Nassau Agreement which reversed the traditional
concepts of "shield" and "sword" in NATO doctrine. This change, decided
bilaterally by Great Britain and the United States, described the nuclear
weapons as the "shield" and the conventional weapons as the "sword" of
the Alliance--implying that the United States envisaged an essentially
conventional defense of Europe.

The new strategic doctrine made a sharp debate almost inevitable.
The drastic change of views within the space of less than five years cast
into question either our steadiness or our judgment. Those allied leaders
who had staked their prestige on supporting the American view of the
Fifties found themselves in the embarrassing position of seeing some of
their opposition's arguments vindicated by a change of heart in Washington.
This explains much of the bitterness of the debate.

Moreover, many of the changes tended to decouple deployment for
general war from the defense of Europe. With American strategic forces
located in the United States or at sea, the former military necessity to
respond to an attack on Europe with nuclear retaliation was reduced. And
this was made explicit by the emphasis placed on conventional defense.

14

Enthoven, Address to the Loyola University Forum for National Affairs, Los Angeles, February 10, 1963. Cited in *Survival*, Vol. V, No. 3 (May-June 1963), p. 98.

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This raised issues of sovereignty which had been muted when American
nuclear retaliation had been believed to be automatic.

This is not to say that a reconsideration of NATO strategy was
unnecessary. On the contrary, it was unavoidable. It would have been
inexcusable not to adapt NATO strategy to the obvious fact that the
opposing nuclear forces were increasing with every year. The American
mistake was a failure to understand that this reassessment was bound to
lead to a debate in which the traditional notions of self-defense would
loom very large. The European mistake was to attempt to ensure our
constancy by freezing us into a posture rendered obsolete by the growth of
Soviet retaliatory power and improvements in its invulnerability. But
tactical errors of either side should not affect the judgment that a
change in NATO strategy had become overdue--even if the remedies proposed
were not always wise.

As it was, the advent of a new, highly analytical Administration
in the United States coincided with the deliberate policy of President
de Gaulle to assert a more independent role. This made disputes more
urgent, particularly with respect to the role of conventional forces and
the issue of nuclear control.

B. The Nature of the Debate: Nuclear or Conventional Defense?

The strategic debate in the alliance was at first given a slightly
unreal quality by the desire of Washington to maintain an appearance of
continuity. When the Kennedy Administration early in 1961, sought to
convince NATO to strengthen its conventional forces, our allies inquired
whether the United States was reducing its reliance on nuclear weapons.

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We replied that the proposed build-up did not involve any lessened
confidence in what had come to be called "The Deterrent." On the
contrary, United States strategic forces were being expanded and made
more invulnerable. The non-nuclear build-up, far from diminishing
the credibility of our nuclear power, would actually enhance it.
According to official American statements, the NATO policy being
promulgated was not new. We were simply asking our allies to live up to
their previous commitments. The goal was flexibility of response.

This curious dialogue, in which a change of emphasis in United
States policy was defended in terms of traditional doctrines of NATO,
produced new misgivings. Our allies asked why if the reliance on nuclear
deterrence remained unimpaired, conventional forces had to be strengthened.
Did not American efforts to build up conventional strength involve a risk?
Since even thirty divisions would probably not be enough to stop a full
scale Soviet attack, a build-up might raise doubts about the American
nuclear commitment and thus might make aggression more likely. The result
was a paradoxical argument about whether an increase in NATO's strength
would weaken its over-all defensive posture. The emphasis on conventional
weapons had the strange consequence of exacerbating the issue of nuclear
control.

15 McNamara, Speech to the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation, Chicago, February 17, 1962, op. cit., p. 8.

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This was no accident. As long as NATO strategy was nuclear and the United States had no obvious alternative to nuclear retaliation, the Europeans were ready to acquiesce in the hegemonic position of the United States. They reasoned that this was the price which had to be paid for an automatic American nuclear response. However, one of the essential characteristics of the doctrine of flexible response is that American nuclear reaction will occur--if at all--deliberately and in stages. The very qualities that have made the new doctrine desirable for Americans raise questions for Europeans of how the American commitment will be interpreted under the stress of nuclear war. This, in turn, has brought to a head a difference in perspective between the American and the European conception of NATO which has always existed.

Ever since the beginning of NATO, the military establishment on the Continent has been seen in symbolic terms by the Europeans and in military terms by the United States. When the Korean War seemed to indicate that Soviet aggression might be imminent, serious efforts were made to turn NATO into a more effective military instrument. However, given the enormous disparity in military and economic strength between the United States and Europe, the primary concern of the European countries was to commit the United States to their defense. They considered NATO above all a means to obtain American protection, by which they meant American nuclear protection.

At the same time, Europeans have had too much experience with the tenuousness of formal commitments not to strive for more tangible guarantees. This led to pressures for the stationing of American troops in Europe.

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European reasoning was similar to that ascribed to a French marshal in 1912 when he was asked how many British troops he wanted for the eventuality of a European war. He is reported to have replied: "We need only one, who we will make sure is killed on the first day of the war." In the nuclear age, the price of a guarantee has risen to something like five divisions.

With so many American troops permanently stationed in Europe, it was only sensible to try to give them some meaningful military mission. Even in the heyday of the doctrine of massive retaliation in the Fifties, NATO forces were larger than the prevailing strategic concept seemed to demand. Indeed, the number was somewhat inconsistent with it. Despite the United States commitment to a retaliatory strategy, we constantly pressed for a European contribution of ground forces. The Europeans, though they agreed to a succession of NATO force goals, never really believed in the doctrines used to rationalize them. Rather they considered their military contribution a fee to be paid for United States nuclear protection. Our allies agreed to our requests. But they tried to make certain that their actual contributions would be only large enough to induce us to keep a substantial military establishment in Europe, yet not so high as to provide a real alternative to nuclear retaliation. They were opposed to giving the conventional forces a central military mission; but they also resisted any hint of American withdrawal.

This ambivalence was brought into the open by the shift in United States strategic doctrine in 1961. The American attempt to strengthen conventional forces brought

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the issue of nuclear control which for many Europeans had always been
the crux of the matter. For the first time, U.S. strategic views were
publicly challenged, at first hesitantly, then ever more explicitly. Europe
had by now gained sufficient self-confidence so that the mere enunciation
of an American policy no longer guaranteed its acceptance. The pre-emptory
way in which the United States proceeded added ruffled feelings to
substantive disagreements. And France compounded these problems by giving
European doubts their most extreme formulation.

But while European concerns were understandable and inherent in
the relationship which had grown up between Europe and the United States
in the strategic field, by 1961 a changing technology had made a reassessment
of NATO doctrine essential. Traditional NATO strategy assumed United
States strategic preponderance. This superiority enabled us not only to
prevent an attack on the United States but also to protect our allies by
what amounted to a unilateral American guarantee. The Soviet Union did
possess superior conventional strength. But it could not use it for fear
of triggering the Strategic Air Command. It could not attack the United
States at the same time as Europe--even after it became technically able
to do so--because, while this would have increased American losses, a
Soviet defeat would nevertheless have been inevitable. Until the middle
Sixties, the security of NATO had thus depended essentially on the ability
of the United States to destroy the Soviet retaliatory power--technically
speaking, on the American capacity to conduct a counterforce strategy.

Any prudent planning for NATO in the 1960's was bound to start
from the assumption that the utility of a counterforce strategy--in the
sense of an ability to disarm the opponent--for the defense of Europe is