Dear Henry:

I have begun to read the chapters you gave me and I'll comment as I go. I have just finished your first chapter and have three or four specific comments and a general one. The general one has to do with the purpose of the alliance and our interest in Europe. For most of the time since the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, and particularly with NATO, the Atlantic Alliance has been considered a security arrangement. We wanted a strong alliance because we had a strong enemy. We wanted a unified alliance because we might have to face Communist enemies with unity. We wanted strong commitments to the allied countries so that they could rely on military assistance so that the Soviets would take for granted that the alliance was involved if they put pressure on Greece, Germany or Norway. Is that still the problem? I cannot tell from your first chapter whether our primary interest is to achieve security from the Communist threat by having a strong Atlantic Alliance, or to build a strong alliance for the same reason we want a civilized world or a strong country, namely, it's our part of the world and we want it properly organized.

Crudely stated, the question is whether we are mainly concerned with internal problems or external problems. Are we mainly concerned with the development of German democracy, of Franco-German relations, of Britain's role in the Western world, of our economic and political relations to Western Europe, with the future of Spain and Portugal, and all that? Or are we mainly concerned with keeping the Soviet Bloc confronted with a strong West? Much of what you say suggests to me that the difference between you and recent American administrations is not so much the difference between this special American engineering approach to strategic problems and the more profoundly psychological or historical European approach to security, but a difference between an American government that always thinks of the alliance as a defense arrangement, as part of the Cold War between East and West, and Europeans who are concerned with their role in the world, even the Western world, and to whom the Soviet threat is secondary. Even the

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word "alliance" implies a coalition against some enemy, and the question can be phased: to what extent is NATO or the Atlantic Partnership an "alliance" and to what extent is it a self-contained political arrangement?

Maybe there is no satisfactory answer. But I do find that when you discuss the American approach to these problems it is always military or defensive, and when you discuss the European approach it is almost as though the Russians were really not there. I'm exaggerating, but there is that difference, and I suspect it may largely be the difference between the American and the European approach. At least, it may be the difference between the American government's approach and those of some European governments.

This is important because it has to do with the relative merits of American arguments and European arguments. You imply at many places that the Americans are too concerned to have correct strategic doctrines and an efficient military establishment, or the Europeans are more concerned with profound non-military developments. If the crucial thing is defense against a military threat from the East, then the Americans may be quite right, and it's just too bad that the Europeans have to suffer the shocks of changing American strategic doctrine and have to recognize their subordinate military role. If instead the problem is not the Soviet threat but rather how to organize our own world, then it may matter less whether strategic doctrine is right or wrong, whether the defense arrangements are efficient, and the American government is treating secondary considerations as though they were dominant.

I have no particular suggestion for what to do with your chapter, but if you see what I'm driving at you may want to look at it again to see whether my question ought to be accommodated in your chapter.

On page 14 you refer to a more "flexible response" and you imply that a more flexible response lends color to the argument that the senior partner takes his allies' interests less seriously than his own. I think you should define what you mean by flexible response, otherwise the connection is just not apparent. I should think the strongest argument for a flexible response in the event of strategic intercontinental war is that nothing else will save the Allies, though direct action might save the United States. An inflexible response of the kind that Steven Possony and Edward Teller would like, based on active and passive defenses of the United States as well as a strong offensive capability, might save us but could not save Europe. Only a flexible response that perpetuates deterrence into war itself, inducing the Soviets not to destroy Europe with the weapons that could destroy Europe, could possibly save the Europeans. A "no cities" strategy is terribly important for the United States but utterly essential for Europe. At other levels of "flexible response" there may be a tendency to save

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[M]

ourselves at the expense of the Europeans, but on the whole it
seems to me that the Europeans need flexibility more than we do.
Limited nuclear war in Europe, contrasted with successful
conventional intervention, may bring similar risks of total
war to us and to them but, total war aside, would make emently
more difference to the Europeans in sheer destruction than to
us. If our only problem were to deter the Soviets, an automatic
local nuclear response might serve the American interest perfectly
well; paradoxically, the Americans seem to think that it would not
serve the European purpose equally well. Anyway, since there are
many vague suggestions, especially in what the French say, that a
flexible response is one that favors the United States, and since
on balance the opposite tends to be true, I think you should
specify what you mean and be sure it's quite right rather than
just hint at it.

Page 36 you refer to self-righteous and short-sighted policies best epitomized by the Suez fiasco but you give me no hint at what would have been long-sighted and unself-righteous policies. The matter is so important that I think you ought to say what you think was wrong about U.S. policy during the Suez fiasco, and particularly what we should have done right. Suez was going to be a fiasco no matter what, and I cannot see anything President Eisenhower might have done to have made the whole affair anything less than a miserable disaster. There may be ways we could have performed that in retrospect would have made us better, but I have never been quite sure what they were, or whether we really can be criticized for having behaved that way on short notice. My point is not to justify us during Suez, but only to raise the genuine question, what might we have done that would have made such a difference, and what in particular was wrong with American policy at the time. I raise this honestly and not rhetorically, I don't think you should let anything as important as Suez be accounted for in less than one complete sentence.

Page 40 and 41 you talk about the different background of
the Europeans compared with the Americans, and why they see
things very differently from us. Descriptively, you must be
quite right. There is still the question of whether the
European historical experience, particularly one that makes
them suspicious of cold-blooded engineering analysis on the
American side, is a source of great wisdom to them, or a source
of neurosis. Are they right or wrong? Are we supposed to be
sympathetic and understanding because, having lived through
what they lived through, we cannot expect them to think straight,
to focus on the present and the future, and to get things in
proper perspective, and we must therefore compromise what might
have been correct policy? Or are we to be a little more humble,
genuinely less confident of our own analysis, because the
Europeans know something we don't know, and our analysis is
lopsided for that reason? I think you ought to commit yourself,
not simply point out that the two sides of the alliance disagree
because their backgrounds are different. There's a difference

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between chiding the Americans for using poor psychology on a bunch of bewildered Europeans, and chiding the Americans for not taking more seriously the advice of their elders.

On page 43 you are a little too gentle with Germans to suit my prejudiced taste. You say they are a divided country, a society which has lived through two disasterous defeats and four domestic upheavals in forty years. Does alliance diplomacy really require such a euphemism for German participation in the last forty years? They did not just live through some domestic upheavals, they perpetrated the disasters you were talking about, and while the first war can possibly be blamed on Prussian militarists and a neurotic kaiser, truly the Nazi upheaval in World War II was a massive display of the worst character traits a country has ever shown. I will not sympathetically describe the John Birch Society as having suffered the trauma of an election defeat next month, or feel sorry for the Ku Klux Klan when the F.B.I. finally makes it take integration lying down. Germany produced the Nazi Party and supported it. Even if I am to forgive them, I think we should recognize that the psychological problems of dealing with reconstructed criminals is a little different from dealing with the psychological problems of their victims who survived. They are a country that proved a capability for ugliness of a kind that civilized society hadn't seen for centuries, and they did it with mass participation, and a great many of those who were part of it are still alive and active. I am not proposing that you accuse them of their Nazi past in your first chapter, only that you may go too far in making it sound as though the poor Germans, the Belgians, the Chinese and the Norwegians share a common background of disaster and upheaval. They don't.

On page 44 you refer to the removal of IRBM's from Italy and Turkey as though it were on a par with removal of troops from Germany and other terribly important decisions that might be taken without inadequate consultation. Here is a case in which something was quite inconsequential militarily, I believe, and in which the formalities of consultation might have been handled more successfully, nevertheless they would have been without regard to the Allies; it was a minor strategic decision on which they really had a good deal of forewarning, and maybe they should have helped to keep it from being as misrepresented as it was. I do not mean that we were right in the way that we did it, only that this is an illustration of the need to hold somebody's hands for awhile, not a genuine need for strategic consultation. If they had chosen not to take it seriously, it need not have been serious. The way we did it may have been a diplomatic blunder, but it was not a genuine case of failing to take their genuine interests into account on a matter of strategic importance.

That's all for chapter I, which on the whole I found persuasive and valuable and very well written.

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[M]

I have now read chapter II, and I think it is a quite good
analysis of the debate that has been going on. I have some
specific comments which I'll get to in a moment. I had a rather
continual difficulty determining when you were simply stating
the arguments been used, and when you believe the arguments your-
self. And I occasionally had difficulty deciding whether, when
you quoted Administration Spokesman, you really meant to take
at face value what they said as a complete characterization of
their actual policy, and were criticizing their policy, or meant
that their remarks were part of the debating process and they
had expressed themselves unwisely. I think this is bound to be
a problem whenever you discuss other peoples' arguments, rather
than argue youself, or do a little of both at the same time. I
suggest you reread the chapter carefully, making clear that you
imply agreement with an argument only when you really mean to
agree with it, and therefore make your own position clear, or
else be sure that it is written in such a way that nobody thinks
you have in any way given your own position, and they must wait
for that till a later chapter.

For example, on page 14 you say that tactical nuclear weapons
do not really fit into the Administration's strategic concept.
And then you quote McNamara in 1961, Gilpatrick the same year,
Antovan in 1963 but on a somewhat different question, and again
McNamara in 1963 on something that is a little off the point.
My impression is that tactical nuclear weapons do tend to fit
into the Administration's strategic concept, to the extent that
the Administration has a strategic concept, that the exact fit
is very hard to discern from high level statements, which tend
to be responsive to budgetarial requirements, inter-service
disputes, NATO debates, political campaigns, and everything else.

Page 23 you say that the real issue is not that the Europeans
fail to understand the notion of flexible response. They simply
reject it. I think it's both. I think most of them do in fact
completely fail to understand it. They also reject it. Whether
they reject it for valid reasons is never clear, but they surely
fail to understand it, especially when applied to strategic
warfare. I think not many Americans understand it either, but
Americans understand it a good deal better than Europeans do.
Most of them that I have talked to seem to think of flexible
response in ways that simply correspond to what they would
mean by the term if they had invented it.

is

Page 24 you say that the problem that most Europeans refuse
to consider an attack on Europe as confined to limited objectives.
I think you ought to say Germans and French, even though they may
be "most Europeans" the Greeks and the Turks, the Danes and the
Norwegians, probably the British sometimes, are quite ready to
think of various kinds of aggression against Greece, Turkey,
Norway, Cyprus, or interferences in North Africa, as serious
contingencies. The problem is really that most Europeans and most

Americans have never been interested in anything but a deliberate Soviet attack launched across the central plain. And it is about as hard to consider an attack of that sort confined to limited objectives as to fine plausible such an attack as not confined to limited objectives. NATO also always assumes that the Russians will start the war, not NATO. They assume that the war could not involve Austria or Finland, Spain or Yugoslavia. So they have a more single-minded military obsession than any country I think of in history. I guess they are not even allowed to discuss things more realistically.

You say that throughout the '50's the United States was in a position to win a general war whether it struck first or second. I have always thought that the Gaither Committee came to the opposite conclusion. And if in fact we were in that position, most of us did not know it. There was ample testimony starting in 1954 to the effect that at least three quarters of all enemy bombers could reach American cities no matter what we did, and by 1957 there was increasing acute concern that our retaliatory force was vulnerable. It was really only in about 1961 or '62 that American spokesmen began to act as though they believed that we were in a position to win a general war whether we struck first or second. As best I can recall it, the fear of devastating nuclear consequences inhibited the United States by the middle 1950's if not sooner, and the notion that only recently we have begun to worry that we might get nuclear weapons in the continental United States in return seems to me to be a contrived one. Some European spokesmen like to pretend that things have changed for the worst in the last few years, and since about 1960 the Americans have to consider that they might get badly hurt in a nuclear war. It was more likely early 1950's when that feeling became powerful. On page 27 you say throughout its history the security of NATO depended essentially on an American counterforce strategy. No, I think it depended on a belief that the United States would destroy Russia badly no matter what, and the Russians were afraid to attempt it. I do not remember even Air Force officers ever testifying that we had, or were relying on, a counterforce strategy during that period. We talked about retaliation, and very little else. The Europeans may not know how concerned Americans were in the 1950's, but they should find out because it affects their argument.

Page 30 you refer to the credibility of a counterforce strategy. I think you should make clear that the "counterforce strategy" that you are talking about is a strategy that expects to disarm the Soviets very satisfactorily and that places main reliance on destroying enemy capabilities, not deterring his use of residual forces. If by a counterforce strategy you mean a strategy of perpetuating deterrence, holding cities hostage, inducing enemy restraint to surrender, and all of that, I believe the credibility of that will rise continually for the next fifty years. Even the Europeans will catch on to it sooner or later.

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Top of page 31 you say "when nuclear war risks the lives of tens of millions," and this is what I was talking about two paragraphs ago. Most Americans have taken it for granted that nuclear war risked the lives of tens of millions at least from about 1955 on.

Page 32, you say the hot line is in operation only between Washington and Moscow. If you mean this metophorically, O.K. In other words, with or without the actual leased cable and other arrangements, figuratively the "hot line" would be Russian-American. I think that's probably right. Technically, I'm not sure that the statement is correct about the real hot line. I believe I once learned that at least one other country had had a hot line to Moscow for so many years they couldn't remember when they started it. It did not actually go to the Kremlin with cerilic alphabet teletypes, but in terms of communication in warfare, that might not matter. As far as I know, nobody has taken steps to see that the actual hot line facilities would survive the outset of the war anyhow, so its relevance to the termination of war may be figurative and symbolic rather than technical.

Page 34 you asked what was gained by increasing the number of NATO divisions, if the Soviets would never dare to defeat NATO's ground forces anyway. Is this a serious question of your own, or are you simply expressing a question that arises in the dialogue? One good reason for having adequate forces is to make sure that NATO's ground forces have to be defeated, and cannot be simply bypassed. Another good reason you've already given, some of the forces might be politically unavailable, requiring some margin for defections at the last minute. This argument makes the whole thing sound like a kind of football lineup, as though there was a single enemy team that will show up on a particular field, advance to the line of scrimmage, look at the opposing lineup, and decide either to go for a touchdown or to go home, in a game that allows no forward passes, no punts, no end runs, and no interference from the crowds in the stadium.

Page 37 you refer to some United States analysts who make an assumption about the need for a three to one offensive superiority. Did you mean to imply that this is behind Administration thinking, or did you mean to relate it to the "American claims about feasibility of conventional defense." I don't know anybody who uses this three to one assumption, and I don't recall ever having heard it from anybody that I associate with in the Defense Department. People like Acheson, Kaufman, Antovan and Rowen, and others, always sound much more ambitious than this assumption would imply.

Page 38 you say that an alliance can be no stronger than its weakest link. I don't know whether it matters, but I doubt whether

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[Y]

that's true. In the Second World War the Axis seemed to be
about as strong as its strongest link. I don't think the
Germans worry about whether the Turks and the Greeks will stay
with us, and I'm not sure it matters much to the Greeks whether
the Germans stay with us. The Europeans furthermore seem to
believe that an alliance is as strong as its strongest link,
and that is the United States, and not much else matters. So
I think maybe the principle is a poor one.

Same page, same paragraph, you say that some form of nuclear
autonomy is likely to suggest itself to these Europeans. It will
to some of them, but I think you ought to be clear whether such
nuclear autonomy is just a possibility that any country would
actually consider, or a strongly appealing one. Some form of
accommodation to the Soviets is likely to suggest itself, but
that does not mean they will all ease their way into the Soviet
bloc if our alliance doesn't hold together. What you seem to imply
is that nuclear autonomy makes obvious good sense for them, and
I'm not sure that it does. At least, not until somebody has
worked out the details of nuclear armament and doctrine that
would make sense for a country like France or Germany that had
to defend itself.

This is as good a place as any to remark that the Général
Thesis is genuinely self-defeated. If France will not go to
war to defend an ally, if nuclear destruction is at stake, France
will probably not go to war to defend France, if nuclear destruction
is at stake. The notion that national nuclear forces can be relied
on when Allied nuclear forces cannot is an extremely questionable
notion. The idea that Americans won't commit suicide to save France
but the French will commit suicide for no purpose but to avoid
accommodating the Soviets is to me so questionable that nobody
should be allowed to get away with it. I imagine one could argue
that national nuclear forces for the French and the British make
a good deal of sense as long as they can count on the United States,
but not otherwise. I don't really want to win this argument,
just to see that nobody wins the other side by default.

Page 39 you say that the issue of conventional forces has
been muted since 1964 because of revised intelligence estimates.
I thought those intelligence estimates, which were becoming
available by late 1962, were behind the interest in conventional
forces, and supported the interest. I didn't know that the
issue had been muted recently, but if so I doubt whether it's
because of these intelligence estimates, which, as I said,
I think had the opposite effect.

Page 42 you sum up the problem in what seems to me to be a
very flat form. I should say that exclusive U.S. control of
nuclear strategy is somewhat incompatible with the strategy of
multiple choices, and that a European refusal to assign a
meaningful mission to its force is somewhat incompatible with

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the indefinite retention of large U.S. forces there. If the United States prizes a conventional response sufficiently, maybe it will have to concede some European autonomy in nuclear control, but I don't really see how that's going to get the conventional response that the United States wants anyhow. At the end you refer to increasing disarray within NATO, and I would just anticipate continuing disarray of the kind that we have had on and off since 1951. If I were sure that in later chapters you were going to have a good solution to all these problems I wouldn't mind your making the dilemmas appear more stark than they are. But since I really doubt whether there's a solution, I think it's important not to make the contradictions sound completely hopeless unless they really are. And I'm not sure that they really are.

Page 48 you say it is far from evident that the Soviets would have the incentive to spare United States cities. It seems to me completely evident that they would. Maybe they wouldn't have the sense to perceive it, but in the circumstances you describe any other course for them is absolutely hopeless; sparing United States cities might conceivably leave something in Russia that the Soviet leaders value, even themselves. The strategy outlined by McNamara, if it means using cities as hostages, not inviting automatic reprisal by going all out against enemy cities, is probably an optimum strategy for both sides, but certainly for the side that is weaker. If we have as good a counterforce capability as McNamara and Gilpatrick have sometimes implied that we have, we may not need to leave Soviet cities alive to induce them to restrain themselves; they absolutely need to leave our cities alive if they are going to have any hope of even being able to surrender. You say that the Soviet denials would not be decisive if they were not in accord with the realities of the strategic equation. They are not decisive because they are not in accord with the realities of the strategic equation. You admit that they might "control" their response by destroying some smaller towns "first". That is exactly flexible response there, the "no-cities" strategy. I am not sure what you mean by a "saturation point" but if you mean that after a few cities have been destroyed on both sides nobody would have any further interest in restraint, and nobody should have any further interest in restraint, I just don't see how you say that. You can surely argue that things would blow up and get out of hand and that people would behave foolishly. You can argue that foolish strategists, not perceiving the value of avoiding cities, may design automatic systems that they can't control once the war starts. You can argue that it took the Americans so long to see the obvious that maybe the Soviets haven't seen it yet. But to imply that it is sensible for the Soviets to have a strategy of automatic all-out destruction in a war that either we start or they start is probably just plain wrong. There is both a left wing and a right wing that believes a war must be made as horrible as possible so that nobody will ever think of starting it. It can

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[4]

be made as horrible as possible by guaranteeing that both sides
have adopted the worst possible strategy for conducting it. But
if you want to get all the pre-war deterrence you can by having
the worst possible strategy for conducting a war, at least let's
be honest enough to acknowledge that it is the worst possible
strategy and shouldn't appeal to anybody once deterrence has
failed, if there's any possibility of changing his mind at that
point.

I look forward to chapter four now and will try to get to
it as soon as you provide it to me. I hope these remarks are
some help. I have been reading chapter three but am doubtful
whether I can be of enough help to make it worth while trying to
give it a careful analysis at this point.

Sincerely yours,

EMJ

CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON

1530 P STREET, NORTHWEST
WASHINGTON 5, D. C.

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

November 4, 1964

Dear Henry,

Long before now I had expected to write about the manu-
script that you have let me see and that I have had the privilege,
now, of reading twice. This long delay, unforgiveable enough,
was not voluntary! It was forced by a series of circumstances,
in which the Chilean trip predominated. I only hope that it does
not come, now, too late to be of any help!

But as I finished the second reading, this morning, my
first and overwhelming reaction was, as always, of intense
admiration for the whole manuscript. Parts of it, of course,
were familiar from my earlier reading, and there were elements
which I recognized (and had particularly admired at the time)
from the Johns Hopkins Institute talk here last year. But these
and the other new and expanded ideas which are introduced make
this manuscript, it seems to me, of a different order of magni-
tude from its predecessor, fine as that was. Its scope and the
vividness of its message are much greater.

As in each of the manuscripts that you have let me read,
I started out with the idea of making marginal notes for comment
as I went along, and then collecting them at the end. I did do
this, and you will find many "scratched" notes among the pages,
the reference to which are collected on the first page of Chapter 1.
But this time the manuscript is so mature and finished, and pre-
sents so well-knit a theme, that I have found it very hard indeed
to make any constructive comments at all! The great majority
of them, therefore, either express particular agreement or
notation of a thesis or an idea that seemed especially striking
and important to me, or, at the other extreme, merely refer to
some typographical or sentence-construction omission that you or
your editor would have caught in any event. When I factor these
out, there are precious few notes left that bear repetition here.
Let me assemble these few, however, for whatever they are worth,
presented *seriatim*:

- 2 -

P. 1-17: "But polycentrism does not reflect..."

There is obviously a very important general principle embedded
here, which I think I understand in part. But only in part. Would
it not be worth expanding this thought a bit?

P. 1 - 18: Paragraph beginning "Polycentrism is virulent not only because..."

This is a particularly powerful point. In thinking about it, I could
not help trying to project how the realization of many N'th country
situations could (or will) bear upon it. Possibly this will be an
average reader's reaction. Would it be worth a paragraph or so
(or more) of discussion or speculation?

P. 1 - 21: "In the past, unsuccessful negotiations never returned matters to their starting point; they called other pressures into play. But many of these pressures are no longer available, and thus diplomacy, too, has become less flexible."

In reading this I asked instinctively "Pressures such as...?"
Would it be worth naming one or two representative ones?

P. 1 - 29. "To many of them the face to a challenge to American preeminence is almost as irritating as its content."

I think something may be missing here. The sentence was
unclear to me.

Pp. 1 - 30-31. "But equally many other Europeans have muted views not too different from those of the French President, because they object to his style of government and his diplomatic methods."

I am unclear about the meaning of this last phrase, because it
does not seem to follow precisely from the preceding. Is some-
thing missing?

P. 1 - 37. "This illustrates that the penalties in foreign policy while inevitable are often deferred and must be paid by people different from those bearing the major responsibility." Does this mean different in time or place or both? Perhaps this should be elaborated a little.

P. II - 1. "Structural problems inevitably emerge as policy issues."

This is a bit cryptic, I think, and I was not sure that I understood
the full meaning. Worth expanding a bit?

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[4]

P. II - 20. "The *opposite* is likely to be more nearly correct."
My comment here is essentially identical to the preceding. What
follows in exposition is very clear, but I am not clear as to
precisely "opposite to what"?

P. II - 37. "The attacker does not require a three to one superiority all along the front." I only want to cheer the clear and strong emphasis on this important point, so often missed!

Chapter III. General Comment. I think this chapter is the high
point of the whole book. You are almost uniquely qualified, I think,
to formulate the subtle points that it contains, which are so much
a product of a sensitive and profound understanding of the "ethos"
on both sides. Fine as the whole book is, I think it would be
worth while, even if of much lower quality, for this outstanding
chapter alone. Perhaps you ought to think of publishing it
separately also. I am extraordinarily enthusiastic about it!

P. III - III - I et seq. Another general comment to the effect
that this is the most stimulating and, I think, insightful, evalua-
tion of De Gaulle and his policies that I have read.

P. Va - 10. "They consider joint planning the conduct of day to
day diplomacy..." "Joint planning and the conduct of..."? Or
is there another meaning here? If so, it probably should be
clarified.

P. Vb - 12. "Conversely, many European states maintained
overseas interests when their resources were much smaller than
they are today." Evidently, this is true in an absolute sense.
But I was led to wonder whether it is in fact true in a relative
sense: i.e. in the relations of the resources available to the
commitments required - either in terms of the greatly expanded
costs of overseas commitments themselves, or in terms of the
extreme material demands of domestic needs or fancied needs,
including those of expanded defense even if non-nuclear. Is the
proposition still true from this standpoint? Perhaps that question
would be worth a sentence or two of elaboration.

P. Vb - 17. "A parliament emerging from such a process of
direct elections may be completely correlated to the calm
deliberative body envisaged by so many European federalists."
May *not* be completely correlated? Or other meaning?

- 4 -

Pp. Vb - 21-22. Discussion beginning in the middle of the page with "Our concern thus returns to the somewhat out-of-scale figure of President de Gaulle." and ending with the third line on p. 22. It seems to me that there is a proposal here that is both important and challenging. (And it goes on, of course, into the next paragraph.) Would it be worth setting it out typographically for special notice - say by separating it from the text, or in italics, or some similar fashion? It seems to me that special attention should be called to it.

These are meagre enough comments, Henry, as you will see. But the very excellence of the manuscript precludes more, marking the limits of the imagination of this reader at least!

It has been a very special pleasure and privilege to read the text at this stage, and I enjoyed it immensely. Now I shall look forward to seeing it in print!

We must get together soon. Do let me know when there is a chance, in New York or in Washington.

With every best wish,

P.S. The ms. is going forward to you, registered, today.

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger,
The Harvard Center for International Affairs,
Divinity Avenue,
Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Oct 19

Henry:

I've lokked over chapter V very quickly and have but a few comments, so will type them myself. On page V-14 I find another HAK-type dilemma, either NATO falls apart or we break the political will of our allies, if we insist on our freedom of action while "depriving our allies of theirs." This seems to me an artificially strong cleavage, based on an exaggerated interpretation of how much we may "deprive them of their freedom". These stark choices appear so often that I become allergic to them; they have a rhetorical quality that, when so many appear in succession, detracts from their credibility.

Another purely rhetorical argument occurs on V-b-13. It sounds good; but, being now allergic, I turn it around and find the contrary equally compelling. One can grow tired of a responsibility but an interest cannot be shed. Or is it that one can grow tired of an interest but a responsibility cannot be shed. It's like the old business of the shield and the sword: I can never remember whether SAC is the "shield" that permits NATO ground forces to cut like a sword, or SAC is the sword that works while the ground-force shield holds. I think the USA is good at shedding interests but finds responsibilities cling like relatives. I think probably neither is true, and the aphorism can be abandoned. You are so damned eloquent that you persuade even your most reluctant readers, up to a point; when they become sensitive to your eloquence they may become oversensitive. I sometimes wonder whether you don't sometimes pull the wool over your own eyes by arguments stated so eloquently that the sheer poetry overwhelms the logic.

That's all for this chapter.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

ROBERT R. BOWIE, Director
ALEX INKELES
HENRY A. KISSINGER
EDWARD S. MASON
THOMAS C. SCHELLING
RAYMOND VERNON

6 DIVINITY AVENUE
CAMBRIDGE 38
MASSACHUSETTS

To: Henry Kissinger

From: Bob Erwin RE

Date: 10/19/64

Herewith the notes I made as I read through your manuscript on Atlantic partnership. That they are almost entirely critical and concerned with details results from the nature of an "editorial reading." A full response would include more appreciative comments than critical ones--as, for example, where you make the illuminating synthesis of Mazzini, Bismarck, and De Gaulle in Chap. 3 and where, at several points, you observe that conventional warfare hardly looks as "limited" to Europeans as to American strategists. When arrangements for publication have been made and a publication date set, will you please let me know so that I can include the book in the roster of Center publications.

## Chapter 1

p. 1, 1. 1: _foreign_ policy? 1. 2 from bottom: repetition of "peoples" awkward, and rhetorical strength of "free" diverts emphasis from what should be the main point--coherence.

2, 11. 3, 4 from bottom: sentence constructed so as to make it ambiguous whether support or policy outside Europe.

4 and _passim_: presumably world readership for your book--do not use "we" and "our" for U.S.? Cf. p. 19, where "we" means we contemporaries.

5 and _passim_: over-use of "have" in close succession.

7: subhead numbered II, but none precedes it. Cf. III-II-1.

9-10 and _passim_: in citations give full title at first occurrence--e.g., DOSB. Number notes by chapter rather than page. N.B. inconsistent handling of vol., no., date, and other elements throughout MS. Cf. II-25, II-38, II-48.

13, 1. 11: an exchange which spares their territory will _certainly_ appear more attractive to Europeans? last line: which or what objectives?

19, 1. 2: _support_ by an _umbrella_ bad metaphor--protected, sheltered?

21, 1. 1: perhaps some qualification of "risk"--insofar as weapons were used, the lives would not be risked, they would be expended?

.../...

To Henry Kissinger from Bob Erwin

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October 19, 1964

24, 1. 13: why quotes around "'unexpected'"--literally so?

29-31: might enrich the text to add some brief but concrete examples, perhaps through quotation--of Americans who find it difficult to adjust, of differences among European allies, of U.S. self-righteousness?

44 and *passim*: at first occurrence, spell out in parentheses what abbreviations such as IRBM stand for?

47: either here or earlier, make point that U.S. takes engineering approach to psychology itself?

48, 1. 2: "ing," "ing" grates--how about "disparagement" of national sovereignty? 11. 10-11: concrete example of U.S. sovereignty issue? 11. 15-16: "while" not strong enough to make contradiction immediately apparent--how about a say-one-thing-but-do-another construction?

50, 1. 8: word "idea" too closely links constructiveness with rationality (expediency sometimes constructive--e.g., U.S. Emancipation Proclamation)--"project" in philosophical sense would be exact here but too specialized; how about "intention"?

## Chapter 2

1: I don't understand 2d sentence. Comma after "Debates" has the effect of making "Debates" seemed to be used generically. What is "strategic challenge"--formal provocation of an opponent as part of design for worsting him?

2, 2d para. ff.: switch to past and past perfect tenses confusing--you need the date 1961 here to orient the narrative?

4, 1. 15: you need an adjective such as "full" or "genuine" before "consultation" to balance the contraries.

5, 1. 3: "specter" already raised by Yalta, Czechoslovakia, etc.?

9: "fluctuated" and "not consistent" redundant; for lay readers explain counterforce and countervalue?

12: say Under Secretary of what?

13-15: account for simultaneous increased deployment and disparagement of weapons?

24, quote: italics missing.

26, 1. 14: logically, "invulnerability," like perfection, cannot be "improved."

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October 19, 1964

33, 1. 9: "tendency" already used 3 or 4 times in nearby passages.

40: You have already called Robert Bowie "eloquent."

floating: a point gone by rather quickly which might be expanded somewhat is
the present lack of a mission for U.S. ground troops in U.S. European strategy
even if the allies agreed with the strategy.

## Chapter 3

II-9: "of the same cultural root" awkward and not grammatically tied to rest of sentence.

II-10, 1. 5: comma needed after "economically."

II-12, 11. 1-3: chronological signal needed for transition to past and conditional tenses--deep phrase within dashes and following "integration" say "after the rise of De Gaulle one question could no longer be postponed"?

III-2, 1. 5: a straight-out noun such as "unit" in place of "serving as" would strengthen this sentence?

III-5, quote: something missing from 3d last line.

III-9, 1. 5: circumlocution-just "the nature of international cooperation" would do; last line: "dialogue of the deaf" used previously (and I think as "among" deaf).

III-16, 1. 1: double negative awkward--"as to back away from using their veto"?

III-24, 11. 1-2: did De Gaulle say would extend or _does_ extend--cf. previous page? 1. 5: take account of school of thought (e.g., Berdyaev) which holds that U.S.S.R. has always been simultaneously nationalistic and ideological?

III-27 (or else III-30): what did De Gaulle say after test-ban treaty was signed?

III-31, 11. 1-5: repeats point clearly established earlier.

III-32, 1. 9: "it" ambiguous--"a unified, active France"?

IV-4, 1. 9: by "minimum" don't you really mean fundamental or vital?

IV-7, 1. 1: either under the guns or by gunmen.

V-3: Concrete example of new type of leadership?

V-4, 1. 3: comma after "Market."

.../...

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October 19, 1964

V-8: short explanation of Skybolt cancellation?

## Chapter 4

3, 1. 3: awkward to have a monopoly safeguarding concerns--restate?

7, 11. 3-4: circumlocution "disputes which . . . first place [ ]--restate?

11, 1. 3: which campaign? 11. 10-11: would instead of will; more idiomatic to raise doubts instead of uncertainties?

II-1, 1. 7: clarify "at least . . . existed"?

II-13, 1. 2: *about* the ease rather than *of*?

II-14: name dropped at end of page.

II-15, 11. 3, 8: *its* rather than *his*--a command, not a commander? 1. 11: is *equivalent* to less?

II-29, 1. 1: question mark instead of period.

II-31, 1. 14: awkward to make a road disruptive--restate?

II-32: awkward for decades to submerge--restate?

III-4, 11. 13-15: "a continent covered with ruins" etc. used in a previous chapter.

III-5: insert solidus between either/or.

III-7, 1. 3: De Gaulle was quoted before as saying one "degree" of death--"kind" better, *but once is enough*?

III-22, 1. 1: either imputations against or impugnations of.

III-23, 1. 3: change wal to war; 1. 6: "three grounds" awkward--restate in form of three questions?

## Chapter 5

1, 11. 7, 9: cannot be both problem and problems.

1-6: four formal enumerations in five pp.--(1), (2); (a), (b)--stiff?

3, 1. 8: "such as these" or "these attitudes have."

5, 11. 13-16: "it" ambiguous.

.../...

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October 19, 1964

8, 1. 8: Labour and Labor have both been used--stick to former?

11. 10-11: awkward to pose an "answer" as a question, and "Like whose voice" too abrupt--restate?

b-1: reduce this page to a sentence or two, since concepts of partnership just discussed on pp. 12-13 as well as earlier?

b-6, 11. 9-10: elaborate Monnet method paradox?

b-12, 11. 3-4: better to say recent history--America a colony for first 150 years, weak and thinly populated for next 75.

b-22, 11. 13-15: repeats, just a shade off verbatim, an earlier dual formulation.

Title

I am intrigued by the possibility of titling your book ATLANTIC PARTNERSHIP. For the unknowing--gathered in the basements of Unitarian churches throughout the land--this would connote sentimental good will. For the knowing--gathered in committee rooms and faculty clubs--it would stimulate curiosity about H. Kissinger going soft on brotherly love. For those who read the book, it would in the end restore the neutral meaning of "partnership" as a political, legal, and business arrangement with its own dynamics.

Scope

The book is about the internal contradictions of the Atlantic Alliance as a member of the species coalition diplomacy. What I miss is any notion of how the Alliance looks to other members of the species. What do the Communist bloc and the Third World think about, expect from it, do about it? What might the Alliance do if internal contradictions were resolved? How would the component states be affected if it fell apart?

be like

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, INC.

THE HAROLD PRATT HOUSE 58 EAST 68TH STREET
NEW YORK 21, N. Y.
LEhigh 5-3300

HAROLD VAN B. CLEVELAND
Director, Atlantic Policy Studies Program

October 23, 1964

Professor Henry A. Kissinger
Center for International Affairs
Harvard University
6 Divinity Avenue
Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

Dear Henry:

I have been reading your manuscript with great interest and pleasure. This letter offers a few comments and suggestions on Chapter 1 only. I'll send along comments on other chapters as soon as I can collect my thoughts sufficiently.

First a general comment on the direction and organization of Chapter 1. I understand the purpose of the chapter to be the presentation of certain structural factors or conditions which affect basically, and largely unalterably, the extent of cohesion and discord in the alliance -- particularly as between the United States and Europe. Three main structural conditions are distinguished: (1) modern weapons; (2) Europe's political, economic and psychological recovery; (3) certain differences in perspective and in values as between the United States and Europe. It would help the reader if you would make the purpose of the chapter explicit at the beginning, and if you would return to this theme periodically, especially at the beginning of each of the main sections.

A second general point. Although the chapter title refers to "issues", the chapter does not state precisely the policy issues with which the rest of the book deals. (On page I-4, you put the question very generally in terms of unity versus pluralism -- generally to let the reader know what the rest of the book is about.) What might be useful is a transitional section at the end of Chapter 1 which states the issues with which the book is concerned and (more important) shows something of their relationship to the structural factors so well explained in Chapter 1. The transitional section might also suggest how far the sources of harmony and discord in the alliance are within the reach of policy and how far they are the product of structural conditions which policy makers must somehow live with. (You may recall that you made this useful distinction at an early meeting of the Steering Committee. It has stuck with me.)

The following are more specific suggestions. In some cases they are also indicated in marginal notes on the attached draft.

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[Y]

The first five pages of the chapter sound as though you felt that the increasingly sharp disputes among the allies were in the main the result of mistaken policies or attitudes, whereas the bulk of the chapter is concerned with things not essentially of this chapter. Perhaps you could indicate at this point how you feel about the balance between these two quite different sources of discord in the alliance.

On page I-7, the term "collective security" is used in a way somewhat unfamiliar to me. The Wilsonian version of collective security is hostile to all forms of blocs, alliances and partial systems of collective security. I recall statements of this kind by Cordell Hull at the time of the San Francisco Conference.

Point (3) on the same page speaks of an alliance as supplying "incentive" for mutual assistance. Do you mean simply that an alliance is a specification of a previously inchoate mutual interest in military assistance -- i.e., a commitment which renders that mutual interest precise, turning it into an obligation? I suppose an obligation is a form of incentive but I find the terminology confusing. Also, the treaty obligation does not necessarily go beyond, in the sense of enlarging the scope of, the national interest. It simply makes its implications for action more precise.

On page I-9, the point that the Atlantic alliance provides the U.S. with the possibility "for applying power discriminately" is a most interesting one, but it needs a little spelling out for the reader's benefit. I take it you mean the alliance is useful to the U.S. in order to apply American power against the U.S.S.R. by means other than SAC.

Page I-13. The relation of the main paragraph on this page to the general purpose of the chapter would be clearer if you pointed out that disputes among allies about strategy, arising out of the question of whose territory will be most exposed to damage, are not peculiar to the nuclear age. It is only that the enormous destructiveness of modern weapons and their great range have greatly sharpened this kind of issue as a source of discord among allies.

Page I-15. I found the transitions to the first paragraph on this page, and between the first and second paragraphs, a little elliptical. Also, the second sentence of the middle paragraph is so important to your whole argument that I think it needs a little more emphasis and spelling out. As the paragraph now stands, it sounds as though you accepted the somewhat extreme view that due to nuclear weapons, the fate of the Western alliance is inevitably to separate or to federate. The rather vague phrase "embracing political structure" adds to this impression. Whereas nuclear weapons do raise serious problems for the Atlantic alliance, or for any alliance, I would not assume either that a real solution will be found for these problems, or that the allies will be forced to choose between sacrificing large elements of their military sovereignty and the disintegration of the alliance. In other words, the paragraph has a somewhat extreme tone, which is not consistent with your conclusions in later chapters.

- 3 -

Page I-17. I had trouble with the paragraph beginning "one of the distinguishing features". The points made do not seem to be due essentially to nuclear weapons but rather to other characteristics of the present international system. Neither the U.S. nor the U.S.S.R. can permit a major advance by its opponents because of the ideological and the global character of the confrontation: the global reach of American and Russian power and the fact that any shift in the ideological frontier of the confrontation has large psychological-political repercussions. It is these features of the international system which makes it impossible for either of the major opponents to view with equanimity a significant change in its power or prestige position or that of the opposing coalition. The loss of a thin slice of India to the Chinese Communists, or of South Vietnam to the Vietcong, would reverberate around the world, because of the ideological character of the confrontation and because both American and Chinese Communist power are more or less actively engaged. This condition is in part the result of the reach of modern weapons, but conventional weapons, as much as nuclear weapons had never been invented.

Page I-20. I take it that the heading on this page belongs at the end of the first full paragraph on page I-23.

The discussion beginning with the first full paragraph on page I-20 and continuing down through the second full paragraph on page I-22 is not integrated into the main flow of the discussion. As I read it, the point most relevant to the argument is the effect of the destructiveness of modern weapons on the nature of deterrence, and thus on the nature of a defensive alliance like NATO whose purpose is deterrence. The point is made very well, beginning with the second full paragraph on page 22 on down through the first full paragraph on page I-23. The material beginning with the second full paragraph on page I-20 and down to the end of the first full paragraph on page I-22 seems parenthetical. It is very good and ought not to be sacrificed, but its parenthetical nature might be indicated.

Page I-24. The material within pencilled brackets beginning on the bottom of the page and on through the middle of page I-25 also seems parenthetical. I think the relevant point here is the effect on the alliance of the abstract and conjectural character of strategic disputes, which results from the novelty and pace of technological advance of modern weaponry.

Page I-26. The material beginning with the second sentence of the first full paragraph I found a little too detailed for an introductory chapter. It might better be in Chapter 2.

Page I-29. I found the material on this page on through page I-34 too familiar to deserve this much space. The main point, I take it, is simply that Europe's recovery has created new conditions for which old American and European attitudes are no longer appropriate and are, indeed, an important source of discord within the alliance, -- though one which may be a bit less structural and easier to ameliorate than is true of the effect of nuclear weapons.

Page I-29 through I-39 treat of three distinct questions: the effect

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[4]

of European recovery; the effect of decolonization; the effect of the detente.
Perhaps you could find a heading or headings which would be more descriptive
of this content than the present heading on page I-29.

Page I-39. I was a little confused by the material near the bottom of
this page. It seems to suggest that the problems you have been discussing
up to this point are less structural than you have implied they are. It sounds
as though the United States had deliberately chosen to deprive its partners
of the capacity for autonomous action, whereas what mainly restricts their
freedom of action is their military weakness and dependence on the American
deterrent. More generally, I wonder if the last two sentences state policy
alternatives which are real. Is the range of policy choice open to the United
States and to Europe as wide as these statements seem to suggest? In my recent
contacts with Europeans I have been impressed by the absence of a genuine will
to military and diplomatic autonomy, even among Frenchmen, coupled with an
increasing tendency to justify that state of affairs by complaining about U.S.
hegemony and the inequality of the alliance.

Part V of Chapter I is very interestingly done. I find the heading
a little misleading, however, since the section deals not only with basic
differences in outlook, which may with justice be called historical, but also
(beginning on page I-44) with the effect of disparity in strength on the attitudes
of the two sides and on their perceptions of each other. Section V would also
benefit, I think, from a more conclusive final paragraph, suggesting to what
extent these sources of discord are inevitable or relatively unchangeable, and
to what extent they may be subject to conscious modification. The present last
paragraph of the section (page I-46) dangles a bit.

With respect to the last sentence of the chapter, beginning on page I-47,
I have the feeling that its material would be more appropriate in the con-
cluding chapter of the whole book. As suggested above, what may be needed
at this point is a transition in the form of a statement of the principal
issues and how they relate to the structural factors which are the subject
of Chapter 1.

I hope these few thoughts will be of some slight help, Henry. Please
take them as quite tentative and wholly informal. I shall send along comments
on the other chapters as soon as I can.

Warmest regards.

HvBC:ec

P.S. I am forwarding the draft of Chapter 1 with my marginal notes under separate cover.