"OUR NATIONAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS POLICY
AND ITS RELATION TO NATO"

Henry A. Kissinger

Harvard University

Transcript of an extemporaneous

speech delivered at:

Sandia Corporation
Sandia Base
Albuquerque, New Mexico

July 29, 1963

by HENRY A. KISSINGER

I will talk to you for a while about the problems of NATO as I see them, dealing particularly with the relationship between political and military doctrine. Today, to design weapons in a vacuum or purely on the basis of technical characteristics is futile. All the weapons being designed today have to be used in a political context. They need, therefore, to be assessed in terms of their political impact. One of the disagreements I have with current thinking in the Defense Department is that while a great deal of highly competent analysis of technical considerations is going on, there is not always equally competent or equally detailed analysis of the political implications of some of the technical decisions being taken.

Even within our own government, it is useless to have a very complicated, very esoteric, very brilliant, strategic theory if, when the chips are down, the people who have developed the theory and the men who have to use the weapon systems cannot walk into the office of a President who has confidence that these things will really operate the way they have been described to him. The best strategic theory is useless if the President does not believe in it, and it may be useless even if the President does believe it, if the other side doesn't understand what we are trying to do. The most important work within our own country needs to be done on the interplay between weapons design and strategic doctrine on the one hand, and political and psychological factors on the other. I will not presume to tell you what kinds of weapons to design; I am not competent in that field. But I do want to make some observations about the impact of some of our strategic thinking on our alliance policies.

In a way, it was brought to a focus for me a few weeks ago when the Center for International Affairs at Harvard invited a group of senior officials

-2-

from all NATO countries to Harvard. It was thought that the reason we are
having difficulty in our NATO policy is that the Europeans do not under-
stand the subtlety of our strategic thought. It was our hope to expose
responsible officials of the various foreign and defense departments to
the thinking of high officials in the Pentagon and the White House and the
State Department, as well as to some of the more advanced theories of the
RAND Corporation. It was thought that then, suddenly, the obstacles we
had found (for example, those having to do with multilateral force) would
disappear.

The conference lasted for about eight days. For four days the mind
boggled at the briefings that were being presented. One day we had had a
particularly heavy briefing about how we would apply the "no cities" doctrine,
about who would go in the first wave, who would go in the second, who would
go in the third, and so on. Now, at this point, the head of the Dutch NATO
office, who had arrived at Harvard almost embarrassingly pro-American, got
up and said, "Nobody can ever convince me of the French point of view. I
have not been convinced of the French point of view in the four days I have
spent at Harvard. But if anything could convince me of the French point of
view, the briefings which I have heard here would."

The theories presented were genuine theories, giving a correct de-
scription of our strategic view. However, the impression left with the
Europeans was that a group of city slickers had developed a very complicated,
very clever theory with the sole purpose of keeping the Europeans from par-
ticipating in nuclear weaponry. The theory of avoiding cities in nuclear
war appeared to the Europeans to have been designed solely to preclude them
from doing anything in the nuclear field, because, the terrain in Europe
being what it is, none of the Europeans really believe that if nuclear war
occurs their cities will be spared. In any case, if sparing cities really

-3-

is our pre-eminent strategic objective, then many Europeans fear that they
are in deep trouble, because, when the chips are down, we might decide to
place the requirement of saving our cities above all other concerns.

I am not saying that these European interpretations were correct; I
am saying that under the best possible circumstances, the most honest
interpretation of our strategic doctrine simply did not have the political
effect that we wanted it to have. The notion that we are having so much
difficulty because the Europeans don't understand us should be re-examined
very seriously. I would assert the contrary. I would assert that maybe we
are having so much difficulty because the Europeans understand us only too
well, and simply don't agree with us. This doesn't make them right, but it
means that we are in political trouble.

One could probably summarize our strategic views in four propositions.
The first is that general nuclear war should be fought on the basis of some
pattern of flexible response. Now "flexible response" has many inter-
pretations. Some people would argue that we should not attack cities under
any circumstances. Others would say that we should try to spare cities, but
hit all military targets (if they are close to cities, then cities are
destroyed). Others would say that we should avoid ambiguous targets such
as airports near cities, and still others would say that we should go only
after value targets; that is, military targets other than the strategic
forces of the opponent (this because if the strategic forces of the op-
ponent are attacked, he will at some point retaliate in a way that may be
unacceptable to us). But whichever of these nuances is developed, I think
the basic theory is that we ought to have several options for the conduct
of general war.

It follows that we have very strongly opposed national nuclear forces. The official argument often given is that these forces are not suitable for flexible response. It is said that they cannot survive a first strike, and that therefore they have to be used in an early wave; that their systems design is such that they are not suitable for discriminating targeting, and that therefore they have to be used against cities; that if they are used against enemy cities (to use one of McNamara's standard phrases) the opponent would then in his ensuing "rage and frustration" attack our cities and our whole doctrine would be out the window. We stalled on any effort to cooperate with the French. There would be few broken hearts in Washington if the British came to us and told us they had decided not to implement the Nassau agreement. I would even go further; I would say that there are many who hope that if we can maneuver properly through the next election in Great Britain, we can give them an incentive to substitute consultation in our planning for the development of their own nuclear forces.

The third aspect of this strategic thought has been that tactical nuclear weapons are dangerous and useless because they would certainly escalate to general nuclear war. One of the chief proponents of flexible response once said at a meeting, "Tactical nuclear weapons are the worst way to start a war -- that no one has yet figured out a good way to start." There is, I believe, considerable hostility to tactical nuclear weapons in the Pentagon today. I do not doubt that you can find 20 quotations that prove the contrary. I know that we have increased our tactical nuclear arsenal in Europe since the Kennedy Administration came into office. But I will still maintain that people in key positions are opposed to the use of tactical nuclear weapons. They do not believe that they can be used without escalation; they do not believe that this is the best way to use nuclear weapons. This fact has dawned on many Europeans. Too many RAND Corporation

-5-

people and defense department officials have lectured the Europeans on why it is absolutely foolish to rely on tactical nuclear weapons, why tactical nuclear weapons cannot serve as a substitute for manpower, and on why, in fact, if there were to be a nuclear war it should be fought as a general nuclear war rather than as a tactical nuclear war on the battlefield. As a result, occasional statements by the Secretary of Defense and by the President to the contrary do not really change the impression that has been created.

Finally there has been great pressure to increase our conventional forces and this has been done with three arguments. One is that the size and power of the enemy field forces in Eastern Europe have been vastly exaggerated. It is said, for example, that under the Eisenhower Administration we estimated the number of Russian divisions in Eastern Europe at, I think, around a hundred and the total number of Russian allied divisions at around 180. This estimate has gone down, first to 120, then to 90, and now to around 60. The assumption is that 30 well-equipped, well-trained NATO divisions can stop the Russian field army deployed in Eastern Europe. There are some who say it could stop the entire Russian field army. These people argue that 30 divisions would give NATO an option for a full-scale conventional defense of Europe. Others maintain we could resist a full-scale conventional Russian attack on Western Europe for 90 days, and still others are talking about resisting for six months. Germans are told that if we build up to 30 divisions, it will be possible to defend forward of Hamburg and Munich.

These propositions, right or wrong, have led to an enormous feeling of uneasiness among our allies. This uneasiness is not always apparent, however, for a number of reasons. First of all, we are still the strongest

-6-

country in the alliance and no one can afford to antagonize us too much. Those in power in Washington today bruise rather easily, and foreign statesmen have to be very careful about what they say because they can get into enormous difficulty. Secondly, in every allied country there are oppositions that have a good chance of taking over the government. Although several of these parties have opposed NATO, or any step toward Western unity, they are now in the position of being able to attack the government in power for undermining the American alliance. So, the leaders of many foreign countries are very careful not to give public expression to their disquiet.

Let me try an analogy. If the captain of a ship loaded with high explosives starts lighting cigars right on top of the high explosives, you don't yell at him, because he might drop his match. Instead, you try to quiet him down. I think this has been the attitude of many Europeans. This became apparent in the wake of Secretary McNamara's Ann Arbor speech. What Mr. McNamara said at Ann Arbor was really a declassified version of what he had said at the Athens Ministerial Council, a meeting on NATO defense for foreign ministers, held a month previously. If you looked at the newspapers at the time of the Athens conference, you will have read that the European defense and foreign ministers were very impressed by the brilliance and cogency of Secretary McNamara's presentation. You will have read that he again removed any doubts that might have existed in people's minds about the wisdom of our defense policy. This is what every American newspaper reported. And that was essentially what these defense ministers did say, because they were not going to take on the Secretary of Defense of the United States in a public diplomatic forum.

However, when he said exactly the same thing at Ann Arbor, an uproar arose in Europe. The political leaders were now freed of their restraints and able to feed their thoughts to the press. They could get the news commentators to say the things that they really thought. The almost universally negative reaction to the Ann Arbor speech (again I am not saying that Europeans were right) was a better reflection of what the Europeans really think than the public statement the defense ministers made at Athens.

Let me turn now to some of my views on "flexible response", first considering its intrinsic merit, and then its political impact in Europe. This can serve as a backdrop to the question of strategic nuclear weapons for Europe, one of the issues that has divided the alliance.

First, then, the question of the intrinsic merit of flexible response. We are a rich country. We can afford many different weapon systems. We can afford to protect ourselves against even remote contingencies. We are able to adopt strategies that may be usable in only one case in a thousand. A capacity for flexible response in a general nuclear war is undoubtedly an asset for us: it cannot hurt us, and it may help us.

Nevertheless, I would not put too much reliance on our capacity for flexible response, either as regards military utility or as regards political planning. I do not believe that our intelligence of the Soviet Union is sufficiently accurate to enable us to pinpoint all their missile sites. Moreover, if the strategists of the Soviet Union are halfway intelligent, they will take the same measures to protect their delivery vehicles that we do. They will be making some of them mobile, hardening

-8-

some of them, and putting some of them at sea. Our capacity to pinpoint
Soviet military targets is bound to diminish. If we tie ourselves to a
theory based on pinpointing targets, then in hours of crisis, when it be-
comes apparent to us that we cannot really pinpoint with confidence, the
results may be neutralism and resignation. This is the psychological
price one pays for theories that are too complicated.

In fact, the second concern I feel derives from a study of military
history. Military history seems to teach us that the mass use of even
uncomplicated weapon systems has always revealed snags that no one had
thought of before. In World War I, the Germans had exercised the Schlieffen
plan very carefully. Most technical breakdowns had been ironed out. But
psychological breakdowns did occur. It turned out that the political
leaders were not able to carry out the plan that the military people had
designed. The German plan was predicated on allowing the Russians to
enter East Germany and permitting the French to penetrate South Germany.
The German army would then wheel on Paris and trap the French army in
Southern Germany by cutting off its communications, meanwhile ignoring the
Russians. Then, once they had defeated the French, they would throw the
whole German army east against the Russians. Well, it turned out dif-
ferently. First of all, the Bavarian army that was supposed to hold the
south thought it inconsistent with its honor to stay on the defensive.
When the French didn't attack as fast as had been expected, the Bavarian
army kept pleading for permission to attack. The whole deployment was
thrown off. The French army was further back than it should have been. (The
Bavarians, or part of the German army, should have retreated so that the
lateral movement of the French units would become more difficult.) Meanwhile,
the nerves of the German General Staff snapped and they pulled two army
corps out of their right wing and moved them to East Germany. (As it happened,
these corps were in transit during both decisive battles so that they weren't

-9-

able to be active in either place.) Then, when the French did attack Southern Germany, the Germans suddenly decided that they couldn't give up German territory so they pulled some more units away from the right wing and put them into Southern Germany. In short, there was no technical breakdown at all, it was simply that the political and military leadership lost its nerve. And there was a communications breakdown as well. The headquarters were too far behind the front to exercise effective control.

The point I'm trying to make is that the actual large scale use of weapons is always different from the test use. You will know better than I how many MINUTEMEN we have tested compared to the number that we have installed. It is a ridiculously small fraction in terms of the previous history of weapons. The salvo firing of MINUTEMAN or any other weapon will probably have not been exercised in anything near the numbers that we are planning on strategically. This fact, in my judgment, will diminish the confidence of political leaders in the weapons system.

In addition, I have the most serious doubts as to whether the Russians can understand what we are up to. Suppose that we drop 20 nuclear weapons on what we consider military targets. Are the Russians likely to have a communications system that, with the best will in the world, will enable them to understand that we are engaged in a counterforce campaign? What is likely to be their reaction, considering that we're bound to be wrong about some of the targets? Can they be depended upon to know exactly what we are doing?