2.

to overthrow the enemy leadership. This has not only transformed every war into a variety of civil war, it has also increased the margin of superiority required to impose the victor's will. For success in overthrowing the enemy government has in effect forced the victor to assume the responsibility for the civil administration of the defeated. But at the scale of catastrophe produced by an all-out thermo-nuclear war it is doubtful whether any society will retain either the physical or the psychological resources to project itself abroad. When energies will be absorbed in problems of bare survival, it is difficult to conceive a sustained effort to assume responsibility for the government of an enemy country, where, moreover, the social disintegration and physical destruction is likely far to exceed that of Germany and Japan after World War II. And in the absence of physical occupation, victory may prove illusory. It may create a vacuum exploited by powers whose position relative to the contenders has been improved by the thermo-nuclear exchange.

Thus the destructiveness of modern weapons deprives victory in all-out war of its historical meaning because even the side which inflicts a greater devastation than its opponent may not have a sufficient margin left to impose its will. And the same exorbitant destructiveness has altered the significance of the industrial potential on which we have traditionally relied for victory. When weapons are very simple and easy to manufacture and when their destructive power is low, trained manpower is scarcer than military equipment. Under such circumstances the significant attrition is in manpower and military superiority depends on human rather than material resources. Thus Russia became a major power in the 19th century despite an almost complete lack of industry; therefore, too, the decisions in war until the middle of the 19th century reflected superior manpower or superior strategy, rarely a superior industrial capacity. In order to put a premium on industrial potential, weapons must be sufficiently complex to require a substantial production effort, but not so destructive as to drain the national substance before industrial mobilization can make itself felt.

As a result, industrial potential proved strategically most significant when there existed a balance between the destructiveness of weapons and the complexity of means of delivery. Then any increment either in the power of weapons or in their number could be translated into a strategic advantage. But when weapons become extremely powerful there is an upper limit beyond which increased destructiveness pays diminishing returns. When both sides are capable of inflicting catastrophic losses on each other with their forces-in-being, any increment of destructive power may be strategically insignificant. Moreover, the greater the power of individual weapons, the greater the relative advantage of the side with the weaker delivery system. When one plane can carry a weapon capable of destroying a city, the side with the larger number of planes will derive little benefit from them if its opponent has a quantity sufficient to inflye a devastating blow.

The essence of the strategic equation for all-out war, then, is that it enables the powers which can afford its complex weapons systems to keep themselves from losing an all-out war by forcing the opponent to pay an exorbitant price for victory. All-out war has thus turned into a paradoxical relationship: a contest, the only outcome of which can be that both contenders lose. This stalemate should not be confused with nuclear parity; it is brought about precisely by the fact that after a certain point increments in destructiveness no longer pay strategic returns. Under almost any conceivable circumstances an upper limit of destructiveness is reached before attrition can become effective, and the forces-in-being on both sides will be able to inflict losses

4.

II

But are there alternatives to all-out war? Is limited war a conceivable instrument of policy? Do any of the factors apply today which formerly led to a diplomacy of limited objectives and a military policy of limited wars?

In the great periods of European cabinet diplomacy between the Treaty of Westphalia and the French Revolution and between the Congress of Vienna and the outbreak of the First World War, wars were limited because there existed a political framework which induced the major powers to conduct a diplomacy of limited objectives. This political framework was due to several factors. There was, to begin with, a conscious decision that the upheavals of the Thirty Years' War and of the Napoleonic Wars should not occur again. More important was the fact that the international order did not contain a revolutionary Power. No state was so dissatisfied with the peace settlement that it sought to gain its ends by overthrowing it and no Power considered that its domestic notion of justice was incompatible with that of other states. Again, the domestic structure of most governments set a limit to the proportion of the national resources which could be devoted to war. Not even the most absolute ruler by the grace of God could think of conscripting his subjects or confiscating their property. Finally, in an era of stable weapons technology, both the strength of the powers and their assessments of those strengths were relatively fixed and as a result the risks of surprise attack and of unforeseen technological developments were relatively small.

If we inquire which of these factors -- fear of war, legitimacy, limits on the domestic exercise of power and a stable power relationship -- is present today, little cause for optimism remains. Under conditions of nuclear plenty, no major power will be forced to adopt a policy of limited objectives because of insufficient resources. Moreover, for over a generation the U.S.S.R. has proclaimed the incompatibility of its domestic notion of justice with that of other states and has built an internal control system on the theory of a permanently hostile outside world. Peaceful coexistence, too, is justified by the Soviets on the basis that it will enable them to subvert the existing structure by means other than all-out war.

Nor is the nature of power relationships more reassuring. Even with a less volatile technology, a two-power world would have an inherent instability because an increase in strength of one side cannot be made up by superior political dexterity but is tantamount to an absolute weakening of the other side. Actually, the weapons technology is far from stable. Almost up to the outbreak of World War II a weapons system would be good for a generation at least, while today it may be outdated when it has barely passed the blueprint stage. In this technological race, moreover, the side which has adopted a policy of letting its opponent strike the first blow is at a distinct disadvantage. It must phase its planning and procurement over an indefinite period while its opponent, if he is determined on a showdown, can plan for a target date.

But if neither an agreed legitimacy nor a stable power relationship exists today, they may be outweighed by the third factor in the equation; the fear of thermo-nuclear war. Never before have the consequences of all-out war been so

6.

[y]

a conventional capability to deal with them. The fact remains that the most fruitful area for current strategic thought is the conduct and efficacy of limited nuclear war, the "war gaming" of situations in which nuclear weapons are used by both sides, and a consideration of what would constitute victory in such a war.

The graduated employment of force, however, presupposes a capability which is really "graduated." If we build our whole strategy around "absolute" weapons of megaton size, professions of limited objectives will be meaningless and any use of nuclear weapons is likely to touch off an all-out war. The possibility of keeping a limited nuclear war limited depends on our ability to extend the range of low-yield weapons of a kiloton and below, and to devise tactics for their utilization on the battlefield.

At the same time, a doctrine for the graduated employment of force and the renunciation of unconditional surrender should not be confused with the acceptance of a stalemate. The flexibility of our diplomacy will increase as our military alternatives multiply. And militarily, the notion that there is no alternative between total victory and the status quo ante is much too mechanical. If the military position of an enemy became untenable and if he were offered choices other than unconditional surrender, he might accept local withdrawals without resorting to all-out war. If S.A.C. retains its retaliatory capacity, the other side may decide that amputation is preferable to suicide. In these terms the calculus of risks by which a limited nuclear war is expanded into an all-out thermo-nuclear exchange is almost the same as that by which a limited conventional war is expanded into an all-out war. Whether we are able to inflict a defeat on Soviet aggression will thus depend on: (1) the ability to generate pressures other than the threat of thermo-nuclear war; (2) the ability to create a climate of opinion in which national survival is not thought to be at stake in every issue; (3) the ability to keep control of public opinion should a disagreement arise over whether national survival is at stake.

10.

inconsistencies in peacetime and ineffective in a crisis. There is no sense
in a logistics system of World War II vintage based on a few supply centers
completely vulnerable to nuclear attack, if our strategy envisages the possi-
bility of the employment of nuclear weapons. The present cumbersome structure
of NATO is hardly suitable for the rapid reaction required by nuclear war.
The conventional armies of our Continental allies may actually prove an impedи-
ment on a nuclear battlefield. NATO will therefore have to be adapted to the
nuclear period both doctrinally and organizationally. the armies of our
allies, or at least that part of them, earmarked for Europe, should be equipped
and trained for nuclear war. And the alliance should strive for a strategic
doctrine which does not identify nuclear war with all-out war. NATO, in short,
must seek to escape its ambiguities: it is either a device to defend Europe
locally or an instrument to unleash the British and American strategic air
force. It cannot be both and it cannot be the former without a more realistic
defense effort by our European allies and a greater understanding on our part
of their special concerns.