CONFIDENTIAL

THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS IN ARMAMENTS ON STRATEGY AND DIPLOMACY BOTH NATIONAL AND COLLECTIVE

by

Henry A. Kissinger

I

In his whimsical essay "Perpetual Peace" written in 1795, the German philosopher Kant predicted that world peace could be attained in one of two ways: by a moral consensus which he identified with a republican form of government, or by a cycle of wars of ever-increasing violence which would reduce the major Powers to impotence.

There is no evidence that Kant's essay was taken seriously in his lifetime, or indeed for a century and a half afterwards. But much of current thought about the impact of the new weapons of today carries a premonition of Kant's second proposition. We respond to every Soviet advance in the nuclear field by what can best be described as a flight into technology, by devising ever more fearful weapons. The more powerful the weapons, however, the greater becomes the reluctance to use them. At a period of unparalleled military strength, the President has best summed up the dilemma posed by the new weapons technology in the phrase "there is no alternative to peace."

It is only natural, of course, that an age which has known two world wars and an uneasy armistice since should have as its central problem the attainment of peace. It is paradoxical, however, that so much hope should concentrate on man's most destructive capabilities. For the impact of the new weapons -- as every revolution -- has not only a technical but a conceptual side. Until power is used, it is, as Colonel Lincoln from West Point has wisely said, what people think it is. But except for the two explosions of now obsolete bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no nuclear weapons have ever been set off in wartime; there exists, therefore, no previous experience on which to draw. To a considerable extent the impact of the new weapons on strategy, on policy, indeed on survival, depends on our interpretation of their significance.

Moreover, this significance has been shifting; nuclear weapons had one meaning during the period of our atomic monopoly. Their impact on strategy and tactics has changed radically since the development of the Soviet nuclear stockpile and Long-Range Airforce and has caused a re-assessment of strategic thought both in the United States and abroad. It is with this transformation of strategic relationships that this paper deals.

During the period of our atomic monopoly, it was possible to believe that the chief deterrent to Soviet aggression resides in United States nuclear superiority. The corollary was that the United States must not exhaust itself in a "war of attrition" in peripheral areas or by keeping in being a force so large as to drain our economy without adding to our effective strength on A-Day (the hypothetical date of the outbreak of nuclear war). Since the threat of "massive retaliation" was thought the chief deterrent to Soviet aggression, major reliance was placed on the development of our Strategic Air Force and on increasing the power of our nuclear arsenal. Since the Soviet bloc possessed a superiority in manpower, local defense was considered a strategically wasteful operation. Instead, it was held that aggression was best inhibited at its source by the threat of general war.

But however efficacious the threat of a general war may have been during the period of American nuclear monopoly or near-monopoly, it has taken on a different aspect when we consider the rapidly growing Soviet nuclear stockpile. For the increasing Soviet nuclear capability has transformed power relationships not only quantitatively, but qualitatively. While the United States enjoyed an absolute atomic monopoly, even a small number of nuclear weapons had a powerful deterrent effect. But as the Soviet capability to retaliate grows, a new dimension is added to the strategic problem of all-out war. No matter how vast the remaining margin in number and technological refinement of nuclear weapons of the Free World, henceforth every objective in all-out war must be weighed in terms of the destruction of American cities. It is not that we will refuse to fight for what we consider our vital interests, it is that the line between what is essential and what is peripheral will shift if we must weigh all objectives against the obliteration of Chicago, New York or Washington.

Moreover, even if we are willing to pay the price, it is doubtful whether victory in an all-out war retains any concrete meaning. The purpose of war can be equated with total victory only if, at the end of the war, the victor possesses an unambiguous advantage in strength and sufficient physical resources to make this margin effective. And the

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margin has to be great in proportion as the defeat sought to be imposed
is total. The objective of 19th century warfare was to bring about a
calculus of risks according to which continued resistance would appear
more costly than the conditions sought to be imposed. The more moderate
the peace terms, the smaller the margin of superiority required to reach
this point. The war ended when a sovereign government agreed to the
victor's terms and thereby assumed responsibility for their execution. The
victor's tasks in these circumstances was to supervise the actions of a
government which in turn retained control over its own population.

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

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

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

The essence of the strategic equation for all-out war, then, is that it enables the two super-powers to keep themselves from losing an all-out war by forcing the opponent to pay an exorbitant price for victory. All-out war has thus turned into a paradoxical relationship: a contest, the only outcome of which can be that both contenders lose. This stalemate should not be confused with nuclear parity; it is brought about precisely by the fact that after a certain point increments in destructiveness no longer pay strategic returns. Under almost any conceivable circumstances an upper limit of destructiveness is reached before attrition can become effective, and the forces-in-being on both sides will be able to inflict losses out of proportion to any objective likely to be in dispute. In such a situation, deterrence becomes a complex relationship. For the threat of all-out war deters not only aggression, but also resistance to it, not war as such, but all-out war. It may prevent a sudden onslaught on a major Power; it will not prevent other forms of conflict. In fact, it may encourage them. From now on, the decision of peace or war, which is never an easy one, is complicated by the consciousness that all-out war risks national catastrophe. Obviously, no power will start a war which it thinks it is going to lose. But it will also be reluctant to start a war if the prize may be its national substance. All-out war is therefore likely to turn into a last resort: an act of desperation to be invoked only if national survival is unambiguously threatened.

All-out war has ceased to be an instrument of policy. It cannot be used against the minor powers for fear of the moral implications and also because its intricate strategy is not appropriate for dealing with peripheral situations. And it cannot be used against a major power for anything except negative ends: to prevent the opponent's victory. This is not to say that we can do without a capability for fighting an all-out war or that maintaining the conditions which make such a war seem

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unattractive will be easy. Obviously without a capability for massive retaliation, the Soviet bloc might consider it worth the gamble to launch a surprise attack. It does mean, however, that if we behave effectively we can always make the risks of all-out war seem prohibitive. The control over whether there is going to be a thermo-nuclear war therefore depends to a large extent on us. But although these conditions are in our control, they will not be easy to achieve. At the current rate of technological change, the side which has conceded the first blow to its enemy will always live on the verge of catastrophe, for an adverse technological breakthrough is always possible. It must plan its development and procurement over an indefinite period while its opponent can aim for a target date. Thus, the stalemate is always precarious; it will impel a continuous race between offense and defense; it will require a tremendous effort simply to stay even.

It is the complexity of maintaining the nuclear stalemate for all-out war which gives its esoteric quality to so much of our military thought. Because all-out war is so intricate and so sophisticated, and because its risks are so fearful, the necessary concern with it leads to a psychological distortion: it tends to transform the modes of a war which can only be a last resort into a doctrine for the only feasible strategy; it leads to an identification of every technological advance with strategically significant progress. In every crisis short of direct Soviet attack, it furnishes arguments for a policy of minimum risk not only because of the dangers of all-out war, but also to reserve the all-out capability either against a principal enemy or against a more unambiguous challenge.

## II

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

In the great periods of European cabinet diplomacy between the Treaty of Westphalia and the French Revolution and between the Congress of Vienna and the outbreak of the First World War, wars were limited because there existed a political framework which induced the major Powers to conduct a diplomacy of limited objectives. This political framework was due to several factors. There was, to begin with, a conscious decision that the upheavals of the Thirty Years' War and of the Napoleonic Wars should not occur again. More important was the fact that the international order did not contain a revolutionary Power. No state was so dissatisfied with the peace settlement that it sought to gain its ends by overthrowing it and no Power considered that its domestic

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notion of justice was incompatible with that of other states. Again, the domestic structure of most governments set a limit to the proportion of the national resources which could be devoted to war. Not even the most absolute ruler by the grace of God could think of conscripting his subjects or confiscating their property. Finally, in an era of stable weapons technology, both the strength of the Powers and their assessments of those strengths were relatively fixed and as a result the risks of surprise attack and of unforeseen technological developments were relatively small.

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

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

But if neither an agreed legitimacy nor a stable power relationship exists today, they may be outweighed by the third factor in the equation; the fear of thermo-nuclear war. Never before have the consequences of all-out war been so unambiguous, never have the gains seemed so incommensurable with the sacrifices. What statesman who declared war in 1914 would not have recoiled had he known the shape of the world in 1918? Today every weapons test augurs much worse horrors. There exists, therefore, a limiting condition to every diplomatic move. The distinction between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons may be nebulous in military terms, but every state has a powerful incentive to make some

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distinction, however tenuous its logic. The awareness by all major
powers that an all-out thermo-nuclear war might lead to the disintegra-
tion of the social structure should be utilized to set the"limits" of war
and diplomacy.

The key problem of our present-day strategy is therefore to devise
a spectrum of capabilities to resist Soviet challenges. To the extent that
we are able to defeat aggression locally, the Soviets would face a
situation from which they can extricate themselves only by the thermo-
nuclear war which our retaliatory force can make highly unattractive.
Such a course would overcome the Soviet strategy by which they have
tended to frustrate the Free World by facing it with challenges which in
themselves did not seem "worth" an all-out war, but which it was unable
to deal with by an alternative strategy. We refused to defeat the Chinese
in Korea because we were unwilling to risk an all-out conflict; we saw
no solution to the Indo-Chinese crisis without dangers we were reluctant
to confront. A doctrine for the graduated employment of force might reverse
or at least arrest this trend. Graduated deterrence is thus not an
alternative to massive retaliation, but its complement, for it is the
capability for "massive retaliation" which provides the sanction against
expanding war.

A doctrine for the graduated employment of force would enable us
to escape the vicious circle in which we find ourselves paralyzed by the
implications of our own weapons technology. The idea that the most
effective strategy is the thermo-nuclear bombardment of cities is a legacy
of World War II, when we could attack production centers without fear
of retaliation. Because the destructive power of individual weapons was
then relatively small, a decisive victory on the battlefield could be
achieved only by using quantities too large to stockpile; munitions and
weapons had to be supplied out of current production. Under these
circumstances it made sense to attempt to win through attrition, by
bombing production facilities. The destructiveness of modern weapons,
however, makes attrition the most wasteful strategy. Under conditions
of nuclear plenty, existing stockpiles will probably suffice to achieve
a decision; nuclear weapons may therefore be more decisively employed
on the battlefield or against military installations such as airfields than
against production centers.

Moreover, while the growth of the Soviet strategic air force and
atomic stockpile should cause us to revise our concepts regarding air
warfare, the introduction of nuclear weapons on the battlefield will
shake the very basis of Soviet tactical doctrine. No longer will the
Soviets be able to rely on massed manpower and artillery as in World War II.
On a nuclear battlefield, dispersion is the key to survival, and mobility

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the prerequisite of success. A great deal depends on leadership of a
high order, personal initiative and mechanical aptitude, all qualities
in which our military organization probably excels that of the U.S.S.R.
To be sure, there are many types of aggression to which nuclear weapons
offer no solution, either for political or military reasons -- civil war and
guerrilla actions, for example -- and we must retain a conventional
capability to deal with them. The fact remains that the most fruitful
area for current strategic thought is the conduct and efficacy of
limited nuclear war, the "war gaming" of situations in which nuclear
weapons are used by both sides, and a consideration of what would
constitute victory in such a war.

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

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

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III

What of the significance of coalition policy in such a strategy?
Perhaps the best way of approaching a discussion of alliances in the
nuclear age is to analyze the historic role of coalitions. In the past,
coalitions have generally been held together by a combination of three
motivations: (1) To discourage aggression by assembling superior power
and to leave no doubt about the alignment of forces -- this in effect is
the doctrine of collective security; (2) To provide an obligation for
assistance. Were the national interest unambiguous and unchangeable,
each power would know its obligations and the alignment of its potential
opponents without any formal pact. But the national interest fluctuates
within limits; it must be adapted to changing circumstances. An alliance
is a form of insurance against contingencies, an additional weight when
considering whether to go to war. (3) To legitimize the assistance of
foreign troops or intervention in a foreign country.

An alliance is effective, however, only to the extent that it
reflects a common purpose. The mere assembling of overwhelming strength
is meaningless if it cannot be brought to bear on the issues actually in
dispute. The strongest purpose will prove ineffective if it cannot find a
military expression in terms of an agreed strategic doctrine. Thus the
French system of alliances in the inter-war period broke down when put
to the test because its political purpose and the military doctrine on
which it was based were inconsistent with each other. The political
purpose of the French system of alliances was to assure the integrity
of the small states of Central and Eastern Europe. Militarily this implied
an offensive strategy on the part of France because only by forcing Germany
into a two-front war could its pressure on the Central European Powers
be eased. But with the building of the Maginot Line the condition of
military cooperation between France and her allies disappeared. For
when France adopted the strategic defensive, Germany was enabled to
defeat her opponents in detail. In every crisis, France was torn between
her political and her military commitments; and France's allies were
forced to choose between suicidal resistance or surrender. In the event,
whatever course they chose -- whether surrender as Czechoslovakia, or
resistance as Poland -- proved equally disastrous. The French system of
alliances, so imposing on paper, could not survive any of the tests for
which it was designed. It did not discourage aggression because its
strategic doctrine made it impossible to assemble superior power and
its calls for assistance went unheeded because a legal obligation by
itself will not impel common action if the requirements of national

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survival seem to counsel a different course. In short, it is not the fact
of alliance which deters aggression, but the application it can be given in
any concrete case.

Since the end of World War II, a vast and complicated system of alliances has come into being with the United States at its core. The chief purpose of this intricate structure is to make clear that an attack on any part of it will always confront an aggressor with an alignment of Powers which would make him hesitate. But an alliance can produce deterrence only if the aggressor believes in its capability for decisive action. An alliance will add to the power of its individual members only to the extent that it reflects an agreed strategic doctrine. An agreement on a strategic doctrine has been beset however by a conflict of motivations among the allies and a difficulty in establishing priorities among them. Since NATO represents the strongest alliance in which we participate and because it represents so cardinal an element in our security, its problems can be considered as symptomatic of the problems of alliance policy in the nuclear age.

All NATO partners have been torn between the desire to pose a maximum threat for purposes of deterrence but for a strategy of minimum risk should deterrence fail, between a wish for the greatest measure of security and an attempt to escape the economic burdens of armaments. The desire to pose the greatest threat implies an all-out strategy; but such a course also produces the greatest inhibitions should deterrence fail. The quest for economy leads to an emphasis on the most powerful weapons, in more "bang for the buck"; but the desire for security includes not only the ability to inflict punishment but also protection against being overrun by the Red Army. The more the alliance has emphasized an all-out strategy, the more difficult has it been to establish a common purpose. A gap was created between the belief of our allies that their protection resided in our thermo-nuclear capability to which they felt they had no contribution to make and their terror of its consequences which made them reluctant to invoke it as the actual strategy for fighting a war. And the problem has been complicated by the fact that Great Britain and the United States, alone of the NATO Powers, have possessed the nuclear weapons around which so much of NATO strategy has been built.

Part of the difficulty of NATO is therefore caused by the fact
that we and our Allies have never been able to decide how to protect
threatened areas: whether to defend them locally or whether to treat
an attack on them as the _cause_ of war. The former strategy would require
resisting aggression where it occurred, at least in areas we wished to
deny to the Soviets. The second strategy would treat aggression as a
cause of war, but it would involve no commitment about the area where
the war would be fought -- it is in effect the doctrine of massive

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retaliation "at places of our own choosing." Because massive retaliation
offers no protection against Soviet occupation it removes any incentive
for allied assistance. The theory of deterrence through maximum
retaliatory power, on the other hand, has never felt comfortable with a
doctrine of local defense particularly in Europe. The result has been a
compromise which has sought to combine two incompatible courses of
action: in order to show their determination, Great Britain and the
United States have built up a force in Western Europe which is redundant
in an all-out war, and insufficient for local defense. The Continental
Powers, in turn, impelled by motives of economy and unclear about the
strategic implications of nuclear technology have made just enough of a
defense effort to induce us to keep our forces on the Continent but not
enough of one to constitute an effective barrier to Soviet aggression.
There has occurred a proliferation of military establishments on the
Continent, too strong to serve as a "trip wire," too weak to resist a
Soviet onslaught, and in any case, not really designed for that purpose.
The result of all these half-measures has been the stationing of sub-
stantial ground-forces in the one area where the strategic doctrine of the
Alliance explicitly rejects the possibility of local war; while in the
peripheral areas of Asia and the Middle East where the possibility of local
war is admitted, we possess neither local forces nor a capability to get
them into position quickly.

The implications of the growing Soviet nuclear capability would
seem to impose a measure of harmony, however, between the exclusive
possession by the United States of the capability for conducting all-out
war and the concern of our allies with local defense. For the end of our
invulnerability has altered our strategic options: until the development
of the Soviet Long Range Air Force and thermo-nuclear stockpile we had
a theoretical choice between a strategy of massive retaliation and a
strategy of local defense. The only inhibition to our action was then
produced by the range of our heavy bombers. But in the face of the
horrors of thermo-nuclear war, it is in our interest as much as to that
of our allies, to seek to defend Eurasia by means other than all-out war:
to devise a strategy which will enable us to achieve our objectives at
less fearful cost than a thermo-nuclear exchange. In fact, the
destructiveness of modern weapons has made all-out war a most costly
strategy - to be invoked only if all else fails. Thus our thermo-nuclear
capability should be used as a shield behind which we and our allies
organize local defense.

This applies even to the defense of Europe. NATO has insisted
for so long that an attack on Europe would be the signal for an all-out
war that it may well find itself engaged in the most wasteful kind of
struggle because other alternatives have never been considered.

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It may be true that Europe is the chief strategic prize, but it does not follow that a strategy must inevitably be adopted in its defense which is certain to drain the national substance of all partners at the beginning of any struggle over it. It is not simply that there are inherent limitations to the credibility of the threat of suicide, it is above all that the most wasteful and cataclysmic strategy should not be the only possible riposte of NATO.

A strategy looking to the local defense of Europe should not be considered as a device to hold our alliance together, however. On the contrary, the alliance should be conceived as a means to insure the defense of all partners by measures which do not involve national catastrophe. Such a strategy is impossible without a better understanding by our allies of the nature of nuclear technology and therefore of the nature of limited nuclear war. One of the banes of our alliance policy has been the exclusion of the Continental Powers from the nuclear race, in part because of the restrictions imposed on the exchange of information by the American Atomic Energy Act. It will not prove possible to maintain for long a strategy the chief weapon of which is in the exclusive control of two allies geographically remote from the first line of Soviet advance. One of the chief tasks of NATO will therefore have to be to overcome the trauma attached to the use of nuclear weapons. Unless the Continental Powers become familiar with the use of nuclear weapons, they will be subject to Soviet atomic blackmail and their own defensive effort will lack a sense of direction. Nothing will dispel the air of mystery which surrounds nuclear weapons than possession of them by the Continental Powers. Nothing would help more to restore consistency to Allied planning.

The United States must take the initiative in developing a capability and a doctrine for the local defense of Europe and in making available the necessary weapons. Our allies, in turn, must face the military reality that a defense of Europe is impossible without a more substantial military effort on their part. Otherwise, the military effort of NATO will be beset by inconsistencies in peacetime and ineffective in a crisis. There is no sense in a logistics system of World War II vintage based on a few supply centers completely vulnerable to nuclear attack, if our strategy envisages the possibility of the employment of nuclear weapons. The present cumbersome structure of NATO is hardly suitable for the rapid reaction required by nuclear war. The conventional armies of our Continental allies may actually prove an impediment on a nuclear battlefield. NATO will therefore have to be adapted to the nuclear period both doctrinally and organizationally. The armies of our allies, or at least that part of them, earmarked for Europe,

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should be equipped and trained for nuclear war. And the alliance should
strive for a strategic doctrine which does not identify nuclear war with
all-out war. NATO, in short, must seek to escape its ambiguities: it
is either a device to defend Europe locally or an instrument to unleash
the British and American strategic air force. It cannot be both and it
cannot be the former without a more realistic defense effort by our
European allies and a greater understanding on our part of their special
concerns.

IV

One of the difficulties in the nuclear period has been our tendency
to treat its problems primarily as technical. But power is meaningless
in the absence of a doctrine for employing it. Our dilemma is caused by
the fact that the enormity of modern weapons makes the thought of war
repugnant, but a refusal to run any risk would amount to giving the
Soviets a blank check. This dilemma has been defined as the alternative
of Armageddon or defeat without war. We can overcome the paralysis
induced by such a prospect only by creating other alternatives both in
our diplomacy and in our military policy. Such measures require strong
nerves. We can make the graduated employment of force stick only if
we leave no doubt about our readiness to face a final showdown; its
effectiveness will depend on our willingness to face up to the risks of
Armageddon.

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