CONTROLS, INSPECTION AND LIMITED WAR

By Henry A. Kissinger

The remarkable aspect of the nuclear age is the separation it
has brought between strategy and diplomacy. The goal of strategy
is thought to be victory in war, that of diplomacy peace and each is
thought to begin where the other ends.

The result has been a penchant for absolute solutions. In
strategy, its manifestation has been our theory of deterrence which
identifies deterrence with the threat of maximum destruction, In diplomacy,
its symptom has been the quest for total peace of which our approach to
disarmament negotiations is the most notable example. During the same
month that Great Britain pressed the implications of our own strategic
doctrine to their most rigorous conclusion and staked its security on
the threat of national suicide, the major powers negotiated about disarma-
ment as if the perils of the nuclear age could be avoided at one fell swoop
by a diplomatic instrument.

It is not that the elimination of the danger of war by reducing the
level of armaments and the danger of surprise attack is not a desirable
goal; it is rather that it addresses itself to the most intractable and
the most unusual problem: intractable because disarmament negotiations
as heretofore conceived force the major powers to stake their survival

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on the observance of agreements in an international order in which the breach of agreements has become commonplace and unreal because surprise attack while it carries with it the most severe penalties is in fact the least likely threat. From Korea, to Indo-China, to the Middle East the real security problem has proved to be the Communist strategy of ambiguity designed to multiply the hesitations and doubts of its opponents and graduating its challenges to a point well below that which is likely to provoke a final show-down.

Instead of bridging the gaps between strategy and diplomacy the current emphasis of disarmament negotiations therefore reinforces it. By leaving no middle ground between total war and total peace both our strategic doctrine and our approach to disarmament prevent the attainment of a less diametric but perhaps more realizable objective: the establishment of a frame-work, both military and diplomatic, which would cause war, if it does come, to take less absolute forms and which might spare humanity, if not nuclear conflict, at least the worst horrors of it.

The possibility of war does not even have to assume bad faith on the part of the major protagonists. The revolution taking place in so many parts of the globe will provide its own impetus; it will create its own tensions not necessarily sought by any of the major Powers.

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The conflict over the Suez Canal was hardly foreseen by the Western Powers and perhaps not even by the Soviet Union. And the Hungarian revolution came as a rude shock to the Kremlin. Both upheavals resulted in military action which with the prevailing strategic doctrines might easily have spread to become all-out. And similar Soviet moves in East Germany or Poland would be fraught with even more serious danger.

The absence of any generally understood limits to war undermines the psychological framework of resistance to Soviet moves. Where war is considered tantamount to national suicide, surrender may appear the lesser of two evils. A gap is thus opened between the quest for total peace and the military doctrine of total war within which the Soviet leadership can operate with relative impunity. Both strategy and diplomacy should therefore seek to pose less absolute alternatives: the farmer by developing a doctrine for limited war, the latter by using disarmament negotiations to obtain an understanding of it by other powers.

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II

The gap between strategy and diplomacy cannot be bridged by dis-
armament negotiations as heretofore conceived. For the always difficult
task of disarmament negotiations is made virtually impossible by the in-
stability and complexity of weapons technology, which has made it difficult
to agree either on reduction of forces or on control over the development
of new weapons.

A reduction of forces is difficult to negotiate because it seeks to
compare incommensurables; what, for example, is the relation between the
Soviet ability to overrun Eurasia and American air and sea power? If the
United States weakened its Strategic Air Command it would be years before
it could be reconstituted. If the Soviets should reduce their ground forces
the strategic impact would be much less and they could be reassembled in
a matter of weeks. Even a substantial reduction of Soviet forces would
not eliminate the availability of large reserves of trained and rapidly
mobilizable manpower.

Even should a scale of comparison of different weapons systems be
negotiable among Powers which have been unable to agree on much less
complicated issues, it would still not remove the real security problems:
the rapid rate of change of modern technology. Disarmament plans of the
past were based on the assumption of a relatively stable weapons technology.
Once the proposed reduction of forces was implemented, strategic relationship

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would remain constant. But under present conditions the real armaments race is in the laboratories. No reduction of forces, however scrupulously carried out, could protect the Powers against a technological breakthrough. Even were strategic striking forces kept at fixed levels and rigidly controlled, an advance in air-defense sufficient to contain the opposing retaliatory force would upset the strategic balance completely.

The rate of technological change, in fact, has outstripped the pace of diplomatic negotiations. Because stockpiles have usually accumulated before negotiators could agree on the nature of their problem, efforts to control the development of new weapons have proved futile. Since each scientific advance opens the way to innumerable others, it is next to impossible to define a meaningful point at which to 'cut off' weapons developments. At the beginning of the atomic age, a strict inspection system might have succeeded in stopping the elaboration of nuclear weapons. By 1952, it might still have been possible to 'control' the development of thermonuclear weapons, albeit with great difficulty. For the hydrogen bomb developed so naturally out of research and production of nuclear weapons that a foolproof inspection system would have been infinitely complicated. In any case, by 1957, the production of thermonuclear devices had so far outstripped any possible control machinery that the emphasis of disarmament negotiations turned from eliminating stockpiles of thermonuclear weapons to methods of restraining their use.

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Moreover, once a weapon is developed, the next stage is to elaborate its applications until ever wider realms of strategy become dependent on it. A nation may be willing to forego the offensive use of nuclear weapons, but it will be most reluctant to give up its defensive applications, as in anti-aircraft or anti-missile weapons. But in advanced stages of elaboration, weapons often find a dual purpose: the launching site for anti-aircraft missiles can be used as well for attacking ground targets; a nuclear weapon launched from a plane against enemy bombers will be equally useful against supply centers. In short, weapons can be kept from being added to stockpiles only at their inception when their implications are least understood. By the time their potential is realized, the possibility of preventing their addition to existing arsenals by means of inspection or control will have disappeared. Thus if missiles are to be controlled, it will have to be within the next two years before they go into mass production.

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The difficulty of developing meaningful control machinery to end the production and development of new weapons has caused most disarmament negotiations since 1955 to concern themselves with means to prevent surprise attack. It is argued that since one of the causes for present tensions is the insecurity produced by the fear of imminent catastrophe, an inspection system which reduced the danger of surprise attack would

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also remove some of the urgency from international relationships. This
was the reasoning behind President Eisenhower's proposal at the Geneva
summit conference to exchange military blueprints with the Soviet Union
and to permit aerial reconnaissance of each other's territories. The princi-
ple that inspection may prevent surprise attack has been accepted in the
Soviet counterproposal for stationing ground observers at strategic points
in the territory of the other nation and in the recent offer to open part of
Soviet territory to aerial inspection.

It cannot be denied that the danger of surprise attack contributes to
the tensions of the nuclear age even if it does not cause them. It is less
clear, however, that uncertainty about the opponents's intentions would be
significantly reduced by aerial inspection; or that the inspection schemes,
if implemented, would add a great deal to existing warning methods and
intelligence information. Because a strategic striking force cannot afford
to be caught on the ground, it must be prepared to attack from its training
bases at a moment's notice. If properly prepared, it should require no
noticeable mobilization to launch its blow. An enemy should not be able to
tell whether a given flight is a training mission or a surprise attack until
his early warning line is crossed.

To be sure, the Soviet Long Range Air Force has not yet reached
this stage of readiness. Because it probably does not possess a capability

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for aerial refueling, it would have to transfer its planes to advance bases
on the Kola or Chukotski peninsulas before it could attack. A system of
inspection would inform us of this move and it might therefore increase our
warning time. Nevertheless, the gain would be only a relative one, because
any substantial movement of the Soviet Long Range Air Force to advance
bases could hardly escape high altitude detection or general intelligence
surveillance even in the absence of inspection. And the next family of
Soviet planes will be able to launch an attack on the United States from
training bases.

Because of the greater range of our planes and the nature of our base
system, the Soviet Union would gain very little either from ground inspection
or from aerial surveillance. It knows the location of most of our air bases
and, since it will presumably strike the first blow in an all-out war, it is
assured of maximum warning in any case. It can be argued, of course, that
the U.S.S.R. may not evaluate the danger of a United States surprise attack
so low and that it would therefore gain added security from an inspection
system. But unless most planes are grounded all the time and both sides
are certain that no substantial installations are hidden, there is no guarantee
that planes on so-called training flights will not be used for surprise attack.
Even filing flight plans in advance will not eliminate this danger. Given
the speed of modern planes, by the time inspectors realize that a violation

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of a flight plan has occurred and can communicate this information to their home government, the planes will probably have reached the opposing early warning lines in any case. Moreover, if flight plans are cleverly arranged - and every incentive would seem to exist for doing this - it will be very difficult to discover whether a given flight is a move to advance bases or a prelude to an all-out attack.

Inspection could, of course, be coupled with the grounding of all planes, except perhaps a very small number insufficient to inflict a catastrophic blow. Such a course would be highly dangerous, however. It would be difficult to maintain the readiness or the morale of the retaliatory force without constant training. Since our strategy is more dependent on its strategic striking forces than that of the Soviet Union, the grounding of all planes will work to the advantage of the other side. Even should we develop a capability for limited war equal to that of the Soviet Union, the grounding of our strategic air force would stand to benefit our opponent. It would tell him the precise deployment of our retaliatory force and enable him to concentrate his attack and his defenses against it. To be sure, we would have the same information about the Soviet Long Range Air Force. But it would be much less useful to us. Since we concede the first blow, information about the deployment of the Soviet Long Range Air Force will not help a great deal: the Soviet bomber force presumably will have left its bases by the time we become aware that an attack is imminent.

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The maximum warning achievable by even a perfect inspection
system is the interval between the time planes leave their bases and when
they would have been detected by existing warning systems. With the
present family of airplanes this would amount to perhaps three hours for
the state which is being attacked. The aggressor would gain no additional
warning time from an inspection system because he would, in any case,
alert his defenses before mounting his blow. To be sure, three hours is
not negligible. But since the victim of aggression cannot be certain what
the apparent violation of inspection means he may have difficulty utilizing
the additional warning effectively. He will be tempted to delay his counter-
blow until the aggressor crosses the early warning line, which is precisely
the situation today.

Moreover, as the speed of planes increases, the warning time
afforded by even a perfect inspection system, correctly interpreted, will
be progressively reduced. In the age of the Intercontinental Ballistic
Missile - in less than ten years - the maximum warning time possible,
assuming perfect communication between the inspector and the home govern-
ment, would be thirty minutes; the period of time the missile would be in
transit. In the age of the missile and the supersonic bomber, even a
foolproof inspection system will tell the Powers only what they already know;
that the opponent possesses the capability of launching a devastating
attack at a moment's notice and with a minimum of warning.

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The extreme readiness of the forces-in-being also reduces the use of aerial reconnaissance. Since flying time from the interior of the U.S.S.R. to our early warning line is about three hours with the present family of airplanes, each base of the Soviet Long Range Air Force would have to be photographed at least every three hours. If the reconnaissance occurred at longer intervals, the Early Warning Line would provide a better indication of a surprise attack because an attack launched immediately after an aerial inspection would reach the Early Warning Line before the next reconnaissance sortie discovered that the opposing force had left its base. As the speed of planes increases, the frequency of reconnaissance missions would also have to be increased so that in practice reconnaissance planes would probably have to hover over enemy airfields almost constantly. And in the missile age aerial reconnaissance would be fortunate if it could discover launching sites; it would not be able to warn of impending attack.

It is therefore difficult to imagine that present vigilance could be reduced or that insecurity would be removed by an inspection system now in prospect. The machinery required would be so formidable and the benefits relatively so trivial or uncertain that an inspection system may actually have pernicious consequences. It may give a misleading impression of security and therefore tempt us into relaxing our preparedness. More likely, however, it would induce both sides to place their striking forces

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into an even greater state of readiness in order to compensate for the loss
of secrecy by a demonstration of power.

Indeed, unless designed with extraordinary care, a system of
inspection may well make a tense situation more difficult. The value of
inspection depends not only on the collection but also on the interpretation
of the facts. But the information produced by inspection systems is
inevitably fragmentary and is likely to be most difficult to obtain when it
is most needed: when international tensions are at their height. On the
other hand, the only meaningful reaction to a seeming violation is to launch
an immediate retaliatory attack because protests could not begin to be
effective before enemy planes had reached their target. The knowledge
that all-out war is the sanction for seeming violations may well add to
the tenseness of international relations. Instead of reducing the danger of
thermonuclear conflict, an inspection system may make an all-out war
based on a misunderstanding of the apparent intentions more likely. From
the point of view of preventing an all-out war, ignorance may be preferable
to partial knowledge. Disarmament negotiations, as heretofore conceived,
may therefore cause war - if it does come - to take the most absolute
form. In their quest for total solutions they may prevent the achievement
of intermediary goals which are attainable.

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IV

One such attainable goal is to mitigate the horrors of war. One of the most important tasks of disarmament negotiations should therefore be to establish a common understanding of the possibilities and mutual advantages of limiting warfare. There has been a shrinking away from this effort, as if the admission that war may occur could itself be a factor in bringing it one, or perhaps because of lack of clarity about the possibilities of war limitation in the nuclear age.

A program to mitigate the horrors of war would help overcome the impasse in which we find ourselves paralyzed by the implications of our deterrent strategy. It would have the advantage of focussing thinking on things to accomplish rather than those which should not be done. It would relate disarmament to strategy and thus help to bridge the gap between force and diplomacy. It would overcome a situation in which the Soviet leaders can conduct atomic blackmail in the guise of disarmament negotiations and transform conferences into a fertile ground for paralyzing the will to resist by evoking the most fearful consequences of such a course.

Above all, a program to mitigate the horrors of war could be used to clarify insofar as diplomacy is able, the intentions of the opposing sides and thereby prevent the catastrophe of an all-out war caused by miscalculation. Even a unilateral declaration of what we understand by limited war

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would accomplish a great deal because it would provide a strong incentive to the Soviet Union to adopt a similar interpretation. Finally, given the likelihood that any war which involves the two major blocs will be nuclear even if it should not be all-out, it will be imperative to establish in advance the psychological and political framework of such a conflict. Under present conditions, the sudden introduction of nuclear weapons in a war might have devastating effects on world opinion or it might unleash an all-out war.

It has been argued that the deliberate ambiguity of our present position, which refuses to define what we understand by limited war, or under what circumstances we might fight it, is in itself a deterrent because the enemy can never be certain that military action on his part may not unleash all-out war. But if we wish to pose the maximum deterrent, an explicit declaration of massive retaliation would seem by far more advantageous. The purpose of our ambiguity is to combine the advantage of two incompatible courses: to pose the threat of all-out war for purposes of deterrence, but to keep open the possibility of a less catastrophic strategy should deterrence fail. Ambiguity, however, may have precisely the contrary effect; it may give rise to the notion that we do not intend to resist at all and thus encourage aggression. Or it may cause an aggressor to interpret resistance which we intend to localize as a prelude to an all-out war.

Instead of strengthening the deterrent and giving scope for a non-catastrophic strategy, the deliberate ambiguity of our position may weaken the deterrent and bring on the most catastrophic kind of war.

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Moreover, a diplomatic program designed to convey our understanding of the nature of limited war may be important because it is not certain that the Soviet leaders have fully analyzed all the options of the nuclear period. Marshall Zhukov and other Soviet leaders have denied the possibility of limited nuclear war both at the Twentieth Party Congress and afterwards. If this represents their real conviction and not simply a form of psychological warfare, an energetic diplomacy addressed to the problem of war limitation might stimulate some second thoughts on the part of the Soviet general staff. In these terms one diplomacy may have to substitute for lack of imagination on the part of Soviet leadership.

Before we can convey our notion of war-limitation to the other side, however, we have to admit its possibility to ourselves and we have to be clear in our own mind about its nature. At present no such clarity exists either among our military or among our political leaders. Our services are operating on the basis of partially overlapping, partly inconsistent doctrines, some of which deny the possibility of limited war while others define it so variously that even from a strictly military point of view we can hardly be said to be able to conduct limited war either physically or conceptually.

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If our military staffs could become clear about a doctrine of limited war, we could then use disarmament negotiations to seek some acceptance of it by the other side. It would not be necessary that such a concept be embodied in an international treaty or even that the Soviets formally adhere to it. There should be no illusions, in fact, about the ease with which the Soviets might be induced to forego the advantages of atomic blackmail. The primary purpose of such a program would be to convey our intentions to the Soviet bloc and to encourage it likewise to consider a limitation of war in its own self-interest.

Limited war should not be conceived as a cheaper substitute for massive retaliation. On the contrary, with a doctrine of limited war, many of the long cherished notions of strategy will have to be modified or abandoned. One of the cardinal principles of air strategy is that wars can be won only by dominating the air space completely. But any attempt to deprive an enemy of his retaliatory force would inevitably bring on all-out war, because a major Power without a retaliatory force is at the mercy of its opponent. Even control of the air over the combat zone will be difficult to achieve. As the range of planes increases, the doctrine of complete air superiority would require deep penetrations of enemy territory. But a deep penetration may unleash a retaliatory blow. An enemy, observing a flight of planes on his radar screen, cannot know whether they intend to attack a "tactical" or "strategic" target and in the face of the risk of having his retaliatory force caught on the ground, he

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may launch his counterblow. And within ten years when missiles take
over much of the tactical support, air superiority over a combat zone
will be meaningless. For launching sites, especially of medium range
missiles, can be so dispersed that they will be hard to locate and even
more difficult to destroy.

Thus the minimum condition for limiting war will be the immunity
of the enemy's retaliatory forces. In any war between major nuclear
Powers sanctuary areas immune to attack will be almost essential.

Against this background, it is possible to visualize a diplomatic
program designed to bring about a tacit, if not a formal, understanding of
the frame-work of limited war.

The details of such a program would require detailed technical
study. Some tentative ideas will nevertheless be advanced. Even if
on closer examination some of these proposals appear not to be feasible
they may indicate a general direction mostly of serious attention.

Without damage to our interest we might announce that while
Soviet aggression will be resisted with nuclear weapons, we would
make every effort to limit their effect and to space the civilian popula-
tion as much as possible. To this end, we could propose that both
sides list the bases of their strategic airforce. These bases would be
immune from attack if located more than a certain distance from the
combat zone (say 500 miles) and if they admitted inspectors. Equally

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all cities the same distance from the combat zone would be immune.
Within that zone cities could purchase immunity by being declared
open and admitting inspectors. An open city would be one which did
not contain, within a radius of 30 miles from the center, any installa-
tions that could be used against military forces. The term military
installation should be literally defined and not extended to industrial
plants. Although the inspectors might be provided by neutral nations,
it would be preferable if they were experts of the opposing side because
their reports would then have a much higher credibility. The inspectors
would have their own communication system and would operate even
during hostilities.

The elimination of area targets will place an upper limit on the
size of weapons it will be profitable to employ. While it will be im-
possible to control effectively the explosive power of various weapons
there is one self-policing dividing line: that between weapons producing
significant fall-out effects and those which do not. The former are de-
vices above 500 kilotons explosive power exploded close to the ground,
the latter are weapons of a smaller size or higher yield weapons exploded
in the air or so-called "clean" bombs, a new development which eliminates
fall-out even in high-yield weapons. We could therefore announce that
we would not resort to the fall-out effects of nuclear weapons. Any
weapon above 500 kilotons exploded close to the ground would be a

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clean bomb -- unless the opponent violated this understanding.

Such a program would have several advantages over disarmament schemes designed only to prevent surprise attack. The objection to inspection as a bar to all-out war is not that it will not work but that even if effective the information it produces does not address itself to the real security problem. Given the high state of readiness of strategic striking forces and their increasing speed, even a perfect inspection system will not add significantly to the existing warning time. Moreover, in all-out war, the aggressor, having already staked his national existence, will lose every incentive to make the inspection system as soon as he decides on a surprise attack. In limited war, on the other hand, the aggressor can be assumed to remain anxious to avoid a thermonuclear holocaust; this indeed is why the war remains limited. He would therefore be eager to continue to observe limitations - at least as long as the other side possesses a sufficient retaliatory force to make all-out war seem unattractive. And both protagonists will presumably be eager, not reluctant to overlook occasional violations.

An additional advantage of the plan is that the inspectors could serve as points of political contact. Thus the mechanics of arms limitation would also improve the opportunity for a rapid settlement should the contenders desire it. And by relating disarmament negotiations to military strategy it would force the opposing staffs to consider

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options other than the stark alternative of total peace (which may mean
total surrender) or total war.

It may be objected that the program outlined here would in effect neutralize cities and seriously interfere with military operations. From the military standpoint, however, it would seem to make little difference whether a city is neutralized by the presence of inspection teams or through the explosion of megaton weapons. As for impairing military operations, the handicap would be the same for both sides. The military will have to accept the fact that short of a thermonuclear holocaust, purely military decisions are no longer possible and that they must adapt their tactics to the new technology.

Other criticisms assert that a program for limiting war assumes
a degree of human rationality for which history offers no warranty.
But history offers no example for the extraordinary destructiveness of
modern weapons either. A program that seeks to establish some
principles of war limitation in advance of hostilities would seem in
any case to make fewer demands on rationality than one which attempted
to improvise the rules of war in the confusion of battle.

Still others argue that any attempt to convey our understanding
of limited war to our opponent would tell him the price to be paid for
aggression and therefore weaken the deterrent. But the notion that de-
terrence is achieved only by the threat of maximum destruction deserves

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close scrutiny. It is an understandable outgrowth of our desire to enjoy
our existence without interference from the outside world. As a result,
aggression has, for us, always had the quality of an immoral art under-
taken for its own sake and we have come to think of resistance to it
more in terms of punishment than in terms of balancing risks.

But the usual case of aggression has a specific objective. It
is not necessary to threaten destruction of the home base of the
enemy to inhibit it; it is sufficient to prevent the aggressor from attain-
ing his goal. An aggressor would seem to have no motive for an attack
if he cannot calculate with a reasonable chance of success.

The United States should therefore shift the emphasis of dis-
armament negotiations from the technically almost impossible problem
of preventing surprise attack to an effort to mitigate the horror of war.

We would lose nothing even if we announced a program of war
limitation unilaterally. If the Soviet Union begins a war by an all-out
surprise attack, nothing will have been lost by elaborating a doctrine
of limited war; we would react by using every weapon in our arsenal.
If it begins hostilities on a limited scale, a limited war could be fought
according to rules established well in advance. And the inspection
system sketched here would serve a threefold purpose - as a warning
against surprise attack, as an instrument for keeping the war limited,
and as a device to maintain contact with the opponent so that a political

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settlement is made possible at any point in the military operations.

The limitation of war described here is impossible, however, without a strategic doctrine adapted to the nuclear weapons. It presupposes an ability to use force with discrimination and to establish political goals in which the question of national survival is not involved in every issue. It also requires a public opinion which has been educated in the realities of the nuclear age. A program of war limitation, in short, cannot be used as a cheaper means for imposing unconditional surrender. Limited war and the diplomacy appropriate to it reflects the recognition that in the nuclear age the possibility of total solutions exists no longer.