213

strategy is efficacious only if not put to the test and if put to the test
and if put to the test it may produce either a cataclysm or surrender. The
argument in favor of "measured retaliation" is its attempt to relate the need
for posing an adequate sanction to the willingness to act that it seeks to
escape the inconsistency of a policy of deterrence whose major sanction is
national catastrophe. To be sure from the point of view of power, an inter-
mediary use of nuclear weapons would reduce the effectiveness of the deterrent
because it does not pose the maximum sanction. But from the aspect of
psychology, it may reduce the probability of war by enhancing the credibility
of the threat and the willingness to act. Graduated deterrence then represents
a realization that it is no longer possible to combine the advantage of
every course of action, of a deterrent based on a threat of maximum destructive-
ness and a strategy of minimum risk.

In fact the argument for graduated deterrence falls down at the precise
point where its advocates succumb to the temptation to combine incompatible
courses. It fails when it is advanced as a cheaper strategy for winning an
all-out war. It has been argued for example that a form of graduated deterrence
could be employed to deprive an enemy of his nuclear capability. According

214

to this strategy even an all-out war could be confined to military targets
such as airfields because the bombing of cities would be unwise in the early
stages of a war and unnecessary after air superiority has been achieved through
the destruction of the installations of the opposing air force. 3) But in
practice this distinction will probably not prove very helpful. To begin
with most military installations, such as airfields, are for logistic reasons
located close to cities. Any war fought explicitly to destroy them may there-
fore involve almost as many casualties as a war fought without limitations.
Even an attempt to define a concept of "open cities" and to move air force
installations a certain distance from centers of population would not solve
this difficulty necessarily. The problem of fall-out would remain indeed
an enemy could plan his attack to produce a maximum of casualties from

3. See Paul Nitze, "Atoms, Strategy and Policy," *Foreign Affairs*, January 1956.
p.

215

fall-out. The reliance would therefore have to be placed on mitigating the
consequences of all-out war either by using "clean" bombs or by employing
lower-yield weapons of below a megaton whose fall-out is generally not of
major proportions.

In a strategy aiming for total victory, the psychological equation which
makes it profitable for both sides to carry out these restrictions no longer
holds, however. The purpose of an all-out war is to render the enemy defenseless;
or in such terms of nuclear technology to deprive the enemy of his nuclear
capability. Such a strategy is tantamount to a quest for unconditional
surrender; for an enemy deprived of nuclear establishment will be reduced to
impotence. It would, therefore, be the most rational strategy for the side
which has a strategic advantage either in base-structure or in weapons systems,
for it would put the enemy at its mercy at minimum cost. But, as we have seen,
war is not only an instrument for imposing one's will on the defeated; it is
also a tool for frustrating this intent by making victory too costly. For
the side which stands to lose the air battle and which seeks to exact a
maximum price for its own defeat, the most rational strategy may therefore
Rattle then fight an air battle if it may concentrate its population and its
consist of maximum destructiveness in order to deprive the enemy of the

48. Ibid., p.

Saw,

216

fruits of his victory or to make it too costly for him to seek total victory.

Thermo-nuclear weapons coupled with an adequate delivery system confer precisely this possibility. The transformation brought about by the thermo-nuclear stalemate is therefore not that victory in an all-out war has become technically impossible, but that it can no longer be imposed at acceptable cost. Graduated deterrence cannot be used as a subterfuge to impose unconditional surrender or for depriving the enemy of his nuclear capability, which amounts to the same thing, and any attempt to do so may bring on a nuclear holocaust. As a result, many cherished doctrines of air warfare will have to be abandoned: one of the cardinal principles of aerial strategy is that the air is indivisible, that wars can be won only by dominating it completely. 5)

But any attempt to deprive the opponent of his retaliatory force would bring an all-out war, whatever the means used. A power without a retaliatory capability is at the mercy of its opponent and it will not accept this without using all weapons at its disposal. Thus air-doCTRINE will have to find applications for its power which do not drive an enemy to this extremity. The principle of the doctrine of complete air-superiority represents

217

prove ineffective in setting bounds to the devastation of all-out war, it may be the means to establish the framework for what may prove the greatest challenge to strategy in the nuclear age: the problem of limited war.

IV

VI- 217

[Y]

Is limited war a conceivable instrument of policy in the nuclear period?

Here we must analyze precisely what is meant by limited war.

It is a historical accident reflecting the nature of our foreign involve-
ments that we should have come to consider limited war an aberration and that
we have paid little attention to its strategic opportunities. In a sense
this is due, too, to the manner in which we legitimized the limited wars we
have fought. For every war in which we engaged in the Western Hemisphere
was a limited war in the sense that it did not involve a mobilization of all
our material resources. But since we generally justified them as expeditions,
punitive or txr otherwise, they rarely entered our national consciousness as
part of the phenomenon of limited war.

Our wars in the Western Hemisphere illustrate, however, that limited
wars have been both more frequent and more productive than the disputes
produced by the Korean war indicated. The disputes tended to confuse the
issues, moreover, because they did not sufficiently distinguish between the

218

various forms of limited war. Some wars are inherently limited, for example, because of the disparity in power between the protagonists. A war between the United States and Nicaragua even if it engaged the full resources of Nicaragua would not require more than a fraction of our strength ×∞ whatever the objectives we set ourselves. Such a war would be all-out in relation to Nicaragua but limited with respect to us. Another variation of this form of limited war occurs if the stronger power is restrained from exerting its full potential by moral or political or strategic considerations. This was the case in the Korean war in which the Chinese probably made the maximum military effort of which they were capable while we limited our commitment for a variety of reasons. Still another kind of limited war is one between the difficulty of supplying major powers in which logistics prevent one side from making a total effort.

An example of this kind of war is the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 in which the Russian commitment was limited to the forces that could be supplied over a single-track railway. Finally there are limited wars which result not from limitation of technology or logistics or from a disparity in power but from a conscious policy decision. Limited wars thus fall into three broad categories: those which are to the present situation distinguished by their present situation.

219

a) Wars involving either the Western powers or the Soviet bloc against powers which are clearly outmatched and where outside intervention is not likely. Examples would be Soviet intervention in the satellites, or U.S. military action in the Western Hemisphere or perhaps Chinese absorption of positions of Central Asia such as Tibet.

b) Conflicts which are initially directed against a minor power or a peripheral area but which involves the prospect of spreading to include one or more of the major powers, such as China, the Chinese move into the region directed against the off-shore islands or the Anglo-French "police action" against Egypt or a Soviet military move into the Middle East.

c) Finally there is the problem of limited war which begins explicitly as a war between the major powers. It is clear that this is the most explosive situation. If a war between major powers can be kept limited, it is clear that the first two situations would stand a good chance of being kept from spreading as well.

Of course, limited wars between major powers have been frequent in the history of warfare. For a long time they were due to technological limitations. Before the industrial revolution the productive processes of a country yielded

such a relatively small increment above bare subsistence, that wars tended to remain limited for lack of resources: mapower would not be kept in the field indefinitely so that a state had the choice either to hire mercenaries or to see its armies disband as the harvesting season approached. In neither case could the homefront produce sufficient weapons to sustain the kind of continuous campaign which characterized the two World Wars. Thus considerations of domestic policy, if not a strategic concept, combined to keep wars limited. In the 17th century, for example, Louis XIV employed almost his whole army constantly for a period of close to twenty-five years. But his military establishment utilized only a small proportion of the national resources. This was not due to self-restraint but to the nature of his domestic structure which made it impossible for him to conscript his subjects or to levy income taxes or to confiscate property.

His military establishment was therefore limited by the availability of resources and with it the wars he fought. On the other hand, the wars of Prussia while they did not exceed those of France in scope involved an incomparably greater mobilization of national resources. This came about because Prussia's inferiority in resources enabled her to survive as a major power only by a domestic tour

222

What then is a limited war under modern conditions? One can think of
many models: a war confined to a geographic area, a war that does not utilize
the whole weapons system (such as eschewing the use of thermo-nuclear weapons),
a war which utilizes the whole weapons system but limits its employment to
specific targets. But none of these military definitions seems adequate: a
war may be confined geographically or in terms of targets and yet be total
in the sense of draining the national substance, as happened to France in
World War I. The fact that the most destructive weapons are not employed,
or that the destructive capability of the existing weapons is small, is no
more a guarantee against excessive suffering. In the Thirty Year's War the
power of weapons was negligible compared to modern armaments and the number
of men in each army was small by present-day standards -- in fact the Austrian
Field Marshall Montecuccoli put at 15,000 the absolute maximum number of men
which would be efficiently commanded in one army. 7) Yet it is estimated
that at least 30 per cent of the population of Germany died during the course
of it. 7 And a new world war fought with what have come to be known as conven-
tional weapons would also produce appalling casualties because the destructive-
ness of these weapons has increased between five and tenfold over World War II.
7. Montecuccoli, p. 74 (He insisted that not even Wallestein's armies exceeded
15,000 men).

223

In short, there exists no way to define a limited war in purely military terms; the end result of a reliance on purely military consideration is certain to be all-out war, the attempt to render the enemy defenseless, to deprive him of any possibility of establishing a relationship between cost of continued resistance and the terms sought to be imposed. The goal of such a war is to bring about a situation in which the conditions of peace are dependent entirely on the victor's will.

A strategy based on purely military considerations is therefore an attempt to solve by force one of the dilemmas of international relations: the incommensurability between a nation's approach to domestic and to foreign policy. Domestic policy is limited only by technical feasibility and by the sense of justice of the majority of the citizens, at least in a democracy. (Even totalitarian regimes are limited by the sense of justice of their citizens. To achieve acquiescence they institute elaborate propaganda machines to achieve a consensus and a secret police apparatus to liquidate dissenters). But foreign policy adds another dimension: the sovereign will of other states which may have different criteria of justice.

as justice domestically becomes an object of negotiation. It is little
wonder that the reaction of a nation like ours which has never experienced
the limits of its domestic possibilities is a rebellion against this double
standard which treats what is defined as absolute domestically as contingent
abroad. Our prediction for all-out war is a symptom of our quest to transform
foreign policy into an aspect of domestic policy, to bring about a situation
abroad where the will of other nations, or at least of the enemy, is no
longer a factor to be considered. A limited war, by contrast, is fought for
a specific objective which, by its very existence, will establish a certain
commensurability between the force employed and the goal to be attained. It
reflects an attempt to affect the opponent's will, not to crush it; to
make the conditions to be imposed seem more attractive than continued resistance,
but to strive for conditions and not for complete annihilation.

Limited war presents the military with particular difficulties, however.
An all-out war is relatively simple to plan because its limits are set by
military considerations and even by military capacity. The targets for an
all-out war are relatively fixed; the force requirements determined by the
need to assemble overwhelming power. The characteristic of a limited war
on the other hand, is the existence of ground-rules which define the relationship

226

of military to political objectives. Planning here becomes much more
conjectural, much more subtle and much more indeterminate, if only because
a war against a major enemy can be kept limited if both parties desire it--
and this alone tends to introduce a factor outside the control of planning
officers. The military can therefore never be certain how many forces the
opponent will in fact commit to the area in dispute and since they will wish
to guard against every contingency, they will relate their force levels they
request to the capabilities of the enemy, which in practice means forces
adequate to fight an all-out war. The military, therefore, tend to resist
limited war as outside their scope either on grounds of military doctrine
or by stating force levels inconsistent with a policy of limited war. And
from the purely military point of view they are correct, for in limited war
is essentially a political act. Its distinguishing feature is precisely that
it has no purely military solution: the political leadership must for this
reason assume the responsibility for defining the framework within which the
military are to develop their plans and capabilities. To demand of the military
that they set their own limits is to set in motion a vicious circle of over-
stated requirements which paralyze action of military planning on the basis

of crushing the enemy and political planning which becomes increasingly defensive. The prerequisite for a policy of limited war is the reintroduction of the political element into our concept of warfare and the surrender of the notion that policy ends when war begins or that war has goals different from those of national policy.

V

This raises the question to what extent the nuclear age permits a policy of intermediary objectives. Do any of the factors apply today which in the past made possible a diplomacy of limited objectives and 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 led to a general consciousness of limited risks. This political framework was due to several factors: There was, to begin with, a conscious decision that the upheavals of the Thirty Year's War and of the Napoleonic wars should not occur again. This decision proved most effective in the period immediately following the wars, but it gave the

international orders created by the Treaty of Westphalia and the Congress
of Vienna the breathing spell necessary to convince the major powers that
none of the outstanding disputes involved their survival. 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
NOTE notion of justice was incompatible with that of the other states. Finally,
in an era of stable weapons technology, both the strength of the powers and the
assessment of it were relatively fixed, the risks of surprise attack and of
unforeseen technological developments were relatively small. All this did
not make conflicts impossible, but it limited them to disputes within a given
framework; wars occurred, but they were fought in the name of the existing
framework and the peace was justified as the better arrangement of a basically
unchanged international order. 9
10)

If we inquire which of these factors--fear of war, legitimacy and a
stable power relationship is present today, little cause for optimism remains.
None of the major powers accept either the present framework of the international
10.3. For a fuller discussion, see the author's *A World Restored*. London: Houghton
Mifflin, 1957.

229

order or the domestic structure of the other states. On the contrary, we
are confronted by a power which for over a generation has proclaimed the
incompatibility of its domestic notion of justice with that of other states,
and which has built an internal control system on the myth of a permanently
hostile world. Every agreement with the Soviet bloc has proved temporary
because it has been considered by it as a tactical maneuver to prepare
positions for the inevitable showdown. The slogan of "peaceful coexistence"
cannot obscure the fact that we are living in a revolutionary period. For
the justification of peaceful coexistence advanced by the Soviets is precisely
their conviction that it will enable them to subvert the existing structure
by means other than an all-out war. (14)

Nor is the nature of power relationships more reassuring. Even with
a less volatile technology a two-power world would have an inherent element
of 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. Moreover, the weapons technology is far from stable.

For an expansion of these ideas, see below Chapter ____

Almost up to the outbreak of World War II a weapons system would be a good
for a generation at least, while today it may be out-dated when it has barely
passed the blue-print stage, Yet the failure to plan on the basis of these
"prematurely aged" weapons might at any given point of time create a vital
weakness. In the technological race, moreover, the side which has adopted
the military doctrine that its opponent can always strike the first blow is
at a distinct disadvantage, for it cannot afford a single mistake; it cannot
afford to fall behind even for an instant. It must phase its planning and
procurement over an indefinite period while its opponent, if he is determined
on a show-down, can plan for a target date and need prepare only for the war
he is planning to fight.

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 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 horror. The miscalculation of a short, inexpensive war which produced

231

World War I is therefore no longer possible. And even a leader of Hitler's deranged frame of mind would hesitate before the consequences of thermo-nuclear devastation. One of the arguments against limited wars asserts that they offer no inherent guarantee against their expansion and that they may gradually merge into an all-out war. On purely logical grounds, the argument is unassailable.

But it assumes that the major protagonists will be looking for an *excuse to*, expand the war while in reality both sides will probably grasp at every excuse, however illogical, to keep a thermo-nuclear war holocaust from occurring. It is clear that a war cannot be limited unless both sides wish to keep it limited.

The argument for limited war is precisely that both sides have a common and overwhelming interest to prevent it from spreading. The fear that an all-out thermo-nuclear war might lead to the disintegration of the social structure should be used to guarantee the "limits" of both war and diplomacy.

The key problem of present day strategy is therefore to devise alternative capabilities to confront the opponent with contingencies from which he can extricate himself only by thermo-nuclear war, but to deter him from this step by our retaliatory capacity. We have seen that the most difficult decision for a statesman is war whether to risk the national substance for the objective in dispute by unleashing an all-out war. Thus the psychological advantage

232

will always be on the side of the power which can shift to its opponent the decision to initiate all-out war. All Soviet moves in the post-war period have had this character; they have faced us with problems which by themselves did not seem worth an all-out war but with which we could not deal with an alternative capability. 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 strategy of limited wars might reverse or at least arrest this trend. Limited war 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 the war.

The conduct of limited war has two prerequisites, however: a doctrine and a capability. As long as we consider limited war as an aberration from the "pure" use we will not be able to grasp its opportunities and we will conduct such wars as we may engage in hesitantly and ambiguously, oscillating between temptations of expanding it (that is bringing it closer to our notion of what war should be like) or ending it at the first enemy overture.

Such a doctrine would have to surrender any illusions of what is attainable

by limited war. It is not a cheaper substitute for massive retaliation;
on the contrary, it involves the realization that with the end of our atomic
monopoly the possibility of imposing unconditional surrender at an acceptable
cost has disappeared. At the same time a strategic doctrine which admits the
possibility of fighting a limited war and the renunciation of unconditional
surrender should not be confused with the acceptance of a stalemate. For the
notion that there is no alternative between unconditional surrender 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 all-out war or
surrender, he might accept local withdrawals without resorting to all-out war.
In the face of our retaliatory capacity amputation may seem preferrble to
suicide. Even should limited war give us no more than the possibility of a
local stalemate it would represent a strategic improvement for at the moment our
problem is precisely our inability to defend major areas except by the threat

THE THERMOWINDUCLERWAR HOLOCAUST
of all-out war which we should strain every effort to avoid.

There exist two reasons, then, for a strategy of limited war: that limited
war represents the only means to prevent the Soviet bloc from overrunning
the peripheral areas of Eurasia and at an acceptable cost and that it offers

234

our best chance to obtain strategic transformations in our favor. But why must we prevent the hostile domination of Eurasia? Would our retaliatory power not protect us even if we were confined to "Fortress America?"

The argument usually advanced for retaining a foothold in Eurasia is couched in military terms. It is said that we must maintain in friendly hands some areas in on the Continent of Eurasia and above all in Western Europe because of the facilities which our allies provide for our Strategic Air Force. But we have a strategic interest in Eurasia independent of the range of our heavy bombers which will soon be increased to intercontinental range and which may in time be made obsolescent by missiles: the geopolitical fact that in relation to Eurasia the United States is an island power at present only in manpower, but later on even in industrial capacity. Thus we are confronted by the traditional problem of an "island" power--of Carthage with respect to Italy, of Britain with respect to the Continent--that its survival depends on preventing the opposite land-mass from falling under the control of a single power, above all one avowedly hostile. If Eurasia were to fall under the control of a single power or group of powers and if this hostile power were given sufficient time to exploit its resources, we should confront an

overpowering threat. For the loss of Eurasia would involve the loss or the upheaval of Africa and were this to happen, the strategic relationship described in the previous chapter would be reversed. Then we could be attacked from around a perimeter, then the U.S.S.R. might make good a surprise attack--and it would not be inhibited by moral scruples as we have been from exploiting its strategic advantage. At best we would be forced into a military effort not consistent with what is now considered the American way of life. At worst, we would be neutralized and cease being masters of our policy.

If this is true, we cannot cast off the peripheral areas of Eurasia without dire consequences. If the United States ever became too confined to "Fortress America" or even if Soviet expansion went far enough to sap our allies' will to resist, the Western Hemisphere would be confronted by three-quarters of the human race and not much less of its resources and our continued existence would be precarious.

But there is no necessity for this to occur. It should not be forgotten that the defense of the Free World is a problem not only of power, but of will. In 1941, Germany alone nearly defeated the U.S.S.R. and today the combination of the United States and Western Europe should be able to contain it. The

236

industrial resources of the Free World still exceed those of the U.S.S.R.
by a considerable margin and in Asia, China appears strong at least partly
because of the irresolution of her opponents. The task of creating a balance
of power would therefore be far from hopeless if one considered nothing
but the available resources. But the will to use this strength is lacking
because of the memory of two world wars, the ambiguities of nuclear technology,
and the almost uninterrupted expansion of Soviet influence. While a balance
is attainable therefore along existing lines on the Eurasian Continent, it
will always remain tenuous. As long as Soviet armies are poised on the
Elbe, Western Europe will be insecure. As long as China strides unopposed
through Southeast Asia, the uncommitted Powers will seek their safety in
neutralism. The Soviet bloc presents to the outside world a vision of ruthless
strength allied with artful cunning, of a constant readiness to utilize force
coupled with the diplomatic skill to secure the fruits of such use. The
United States, therefore, faces the task not only of stemming the Soviet tide
but also of reducing the Soviet sphere and demonstrating the limitations of
Soviet power and skills. The last is almost as important as the reduction
of the Soviet sphere and demonstrating the limitations of Soviet power and

skills. The last is almost as important as the reduction of the Soviet-
sphere, for to the extent that the Free World, now swayed by a sense of
its impotence, realized that the Soviet bloc, too, behind its facade of
monolithic power shrinks from certain consequences, its resolution and its
policy will both become stronger.

A strategy which admits the possibility of fighting limited actions
is more likely to achieve this objective than the threat of a total nuclear
war. The threat of an all-out war will be either considered bluff or it will
transform every dispute into a question of prestige which will inhibit
any concessions. Actions short of total war, on the other hand, may help
restore fluidity to the diplomatic situation, particularly if we analyze pre-
cisely what is meant by reduction of the Soviet sphere. The Sino-Soviet bloc
can be reduced short of waging general war in two ways: by a voluntary with-
d withdrawal or by an internal split. The former is unlikely and depends on many
factors outside of our control but the latter deserves careful study. While
it is impossible to predict the precise circumstances of such a split; its
general framework can be traced: the U.S.S.R. may be induced to loosen its
hold on its satellites if it finds that the effort to hold them in line absorbs

238

ever more of its strength. And this effort may become increasingly
difficult if the satellites should become convinced that Soviet policy forces
them to shoulder risks of no benefit to their own country. A split between
the U.S.S.R. and its satellites can come about then through the creation
of contingencies which accentuate potential differences within the Soviet
bloc. It was not easy for Britain to risk all-out war for Northern Indo-China
it
but/is doubtful whether Poland would willingly engage in a "Russian" war, or
how much the U.S.S.R. would risk to increase the power of China. Similarly,
Tito's break with Moscow was due at least in part to his disenchantment over
the Soviet Union's lukewarm support on the Trieste issue which in turn was
caused by the unwillingness of the U.S.S.R. to risk an all-out war for a
peripheral objective. Thus one of the most fundamental indictments of the
exclusive reliance on all-out war is that its inability to differentiate
its pressures may actually contribute to the consolidation and the unity of
the Soviet bloc.

It is therefore misleading to attack the little war thesis on the
ground that it does not offer a military solution to our strategic problem,
for its merit is precisely that it may provide a political solution. Had

241

retaliatory force would stand a good chance of becoming all-out. Similarly
other transformations which _seem_ to threaten national survival, would make
the threat of invoking all-out war more plausible. Thus paradoxically, the
psychological equation in a limited war is constantly _shifting against_ the
side that seems to be winning. The greater the transformation it seeks, the
more credible the threat by its opponent of all-out war will become, and the
less prepared psychologically will the winning side be to best test the credibility
of the threat. While the winning side is staking the chance for a favorable
transformation, the losing side is risking an adverse change of position.
The better the position of the winning side, the more secure it will feel
and the fewer the risks of all-out war it will be willing to take.

The more precarious the position of the loser, the more insecure he will feel
and the more likely it is for him to increase its commitment above all else if the
winning side pushes its advantage too far. Thus the U.S.S.R. could intervene
with impunity in Hungary because in any calculation of risks of the consequences
of attempting to stop them we could only gain what we never had, while
the U.S.S.R. stood to lose territory it had possessed since World War II.

The psychological problem of limited war, therefore, becomes under what circumstances one side may be willing to pay a greater price for winning than the other to avoid losing. Otherwise the result is almost certain to be a

stalemate.

242

Thus limited war has the same psychological complexity as A a policy of deterrence. In some areas, a power will have a considerable psychological potential for limited war apart from its force levels because the region matters to it a great deal or is thought by its opponent to matter to it a great deal. This was the case with China in Korea for example; it may be true of the United States in Central America. There may even be areas which are thought so important to one of the contenders that they will be protected by the belief of the opponent that any attack on them will lead to a general war. In such a case, protection for the areas will be achieved less by local defense than by the over-all strategic balance. This would be the case with Western Europe with respect to the United States or the satellite regions with respect to the U.S.S.R. As the horror of thermo-nuclear war grows, however, the over-all strategic balance will be a less and less adequate protection to threatened areas because fewer and fewer regions will seem worth an all-out war. As the consciousness of the nuclear stalemate grows the psychological balance can increasingly be achieved only by the capability for local action.

Limited war would therefore become a test for the determination of both sides, a gauge of the importance they attach to disputed issues. If one side attaches

greater importance to an area or an issue and is willing <u>and able</u> to pay a
higher price it may achieve a strategic transformation.

In any case, the key to a policy of limited war is to keep the challenge
to the opponent below the threshold which would unleash all-out war. The
greater the risk in relation to the challenge, the less total the response
is likely to be. The possibility of local adjustments therefore depends on
three conditions: a) the ability to generate pressures other than the threat
of thermo-nuclear war, b) the ability to create a climate of opinion in which
survival is not thought to be at stake in every issue, c) the ability to keep
control of public opinion should a disagreement arise over whether national
survival is at stake. The prerequisite for a policy of limited war, then,
is not only the capability for it, but its plausibility to the other side.
Soviet reactions to our measures will depend more on what we are thought to
intend to do, than what we really intend.

But is it possible to bring about a climate in which national survival
is thought not to be at stake? Pressures severe enough to cause withdrawal
may, after all, be severe enough to be thought to threaten survival, especially
in a regime like that in Soviet Russia. On the other hand, the problem is
not how to reassure the Soviets, which is probably a wall-nigh impossible

244

effort, but how to give effect to the one extent we presumably have in common:
that we both wish to avoid all-out thermo-nuclear war. Given this attitude,
total war is likely in only two contingencies: if the Soviets see an opportunity
to achieve hegemony in Eurasia by peripheral actions which we are not able
to deal with by a graduated employment of force; or if the U.S.S.R. should
misunderstand our intentions and treat our every military move as if it were
the prelude to an all-out war.

It therefore becomes the task of our diplomacy to convey to the Soviet
bloc that we are capable of courses other than all-out war or inaction, and
that we intend to use this capability. Fortunately, the imbalance in our
national strategy has been caused less by our diplomacy than by our military
policy. Indeed, our difficulty has been precisely the fact that our moderate
pronouncements have seemed incongruous in the face of an all-or-nothing military
policy and that our diplomacy has been deprived of flexibility because
"massive retaliation" has had as its logical corollary the slogan "there is no
alternative to peace." A modification of our military doctrine would therefore
go a long way towards creating a framework of limited objectives; the next
step would be to convey this change to the outside world and to the Soviet bloc.

245

This raises immediately the question which has been at the root of many of our pronouncements with respect to the course of action we propose to follow in case of Soviet aggression: the degree of ambiguity desirable. There has been a general belief that a degree of ambiguity about our intentions is a factor of deterrence because the aggressor cannot be certain that an attack will not involve an all-out response. We have therefore carefully refrained announcing which areas we proposed to defend locally or what strategy we would pursue in case we did engage in limited war. But the ambiguity of our statements which seeks to keep our options open may cause us to inherit the **maximal** worst of both worlds. It may cause the aggressor to believe that aggression will involve only local resistance for why else would we qualify our announcements of massive retaliation? If then we react totally, our ambiguity will have encouraged a perhaps unnecessary all-out war. On the other hand, an aggressor interprets our ambiguity as a token of our reliance on an all-out **strategy**, he may treat every U.S. counter-move to aggression as a prelude to all-out war and deal with it accordingly. The ambiguity of our pronouncements therefore introduces an element of instability no matter how it is interpreted. As a result, just as we have to moderate, the sanctions of deterrence in order to mitigate the consequences of war should deterrence fail, we may have to make our intentions explicit to avail the penalties of misunderstanding.

To be sure, a diplomatic program which seeks to sketch the political and psychological framework of limited war will not inevitably prevent an all-out war. If the Soviets feel strong enough to knock us out by surprise attack, they will presumably do so--and no effort should therefore be spared to maintain the level of all-out war capability described in the previous chapter. But it may prevent an all-out war caused by our failure to develop alternatives or by Soviet miscalculation or misunderstanding of our intentions.

The same program which may reduce the danger of miscalculation would
educating OPINION,
also go a long way towards <u>reducing</u> the public in the realities of the
nuclear period. This is of course less of a problem in the Soviet bloc
where the absolutism of dictatorship confers a much greater freedom of action.

P43

In the Western world, however, and particularly in the United States,
a considerable change in the concept of war is required. It is important
not only for our leadership to understand that total victory is no longer
possible but also for the public to become aware of the dangers of pressing
for such a course. A long history of invulnerability causes our public opinion
to look at war more in terms of the damage we can inflict than in terms of
the losses we might suffer and to react to frustration abroad by a demand
for absolute solutions. It is the essence of a policy of limited war, on
the other hand, that there are no final answers; and this is not the result
of a policy but of necessity. The public must therefore be made aware
that our real option is not between a strategy of all-out or of limited war,
but between a strategy of limited war or inaction. It would be tragic if
our government were deprived of its freedom of maneuver by the ignorance
on the part of the public of the consequences of a course of action before

247

which they would recoil were they aware of all its implications; all the
more so as the same ignorance which underlies the demand for all-or-nothing
solutions may also produce panic in the face of the unexpected consequences
of thermo-nuclear war. Conversely a public made aware of the dangers confronting
it and given a measure of security by an adequate civil defense program will
furnish a better support for the measures our leadership deems necessary.

VII

But whatever the theoretical advantages of peripheral actions, are they
practically feasible? Does not a policy of limited war run counter to the
geographic realities, specifically that the Soviet bloc possesses interior
lines of communication and can therefore assemble a superior force at any
given point? Can we afford a policy of limited war or will it not exceed
our resources as surely as all-out thermo-nuclear war? Does not this concern
with local resistance mistake the real problem in major areas which is internal
development and political instability?

It must be admitted that we alone cannot possibly defend the Soviet
periphery by local actions and that the present period of revolutionary change
will not be managed by a military doctrine alone. Our task must continue to

248

Our task is to shake up the indigenous will to resist which in the underdeveloped third of the world means all the measures on which a substantial consensus seems to exist: a political program to gain the confidence of local populations and to remove the stigma of colonialism from us, together with the degree of economic assistance which will help bring about political stability.

But though a political program may be essential, it will prove useless without an increase in our capacity for local defense. We always seem in danger of focussing so much attention on the current Soviet threat that we are taken unaware by the Soviet Union's frequent changes of tactics. During the period

of Soviet militancy we were so preoccupied with building defensive barriers that we neglected the supporting political and psychological framework. And with the Soviet emphasis on more indirect methods of penetration, we stand in danger of forgetting that economic development presupposes a modicum of security against foreign invasion. Few political leaders will run the risk of foreign occupation even though liberation is to follow eventually. The promise of exit victory in a general war will mean little to the leader of a country which meanwhile is Sovietized. For us the crucial victory is the last, but for the leaders of the countries around the Soviet periphery the fate of their countries will seem to hinge on the first battle. This was well expressed

in an *xxixx* editorial in a leading German newspaper: "We must oppose any
strategy, the basic postulate of which involves giving up our territory. Our
partnership in the Atlantic alliance means more to us than that our 12 divisions
represent a strategic asset for the West; it includes a demand for the protection
of the German people... A substantial retreat is equivalent to our moral and
physical destruction." ¹⁹) The argument thus runs in a circle: Can the
peripheral areas be defended, assuming the willingness of the countries
concerned to resist and our readiness to help them? To support a negative
answer such factors are cited as the "unlimited" Soviet manpower or the vast
distances of the threatened areas from the centers of our strength. But while
underestimating an adversary may be disastrous, overestimating his resources
may lead to a needless paralysis of policy. Absolute numbers are important,
but only the part which can be utilized effectively is strategically significant.

In these terms *Chinese* manpower is limited by the Soviet-Chinese capacity to equip and train it, and Chinese effectiveness by the difficulty of communications and supply. The vision of hordes of Chinese or even Soviet soldiers streaming into what has come to be known as the "grey areas" is unrealistic. If it
10. *Frankfurter Allgemeine*. December 2, 1954.

were possible to develop indigenous armies of moderate size but substantial firepower these should be able to fight delaying actions until the arrival of reinforcements, particularly if American air power (perhaps carrier-based) were hampering Chinese movements. Nor can the Soviets keep pouring in men and supplies so far from their own centers of production, despite the seemingly paradoxical contrary lessons of the war in Korea. After the beginning of the armistice negotiations, the Korean war was fought under conditions nearly ideal for an army with inferior technology and air power; actions were always confined to a small segment of the front; they could be delayed until there had been an adequate build-up; they could be broken off when stocks were depleted. The risks were always tactical and not strategic; the penalty for failure was limited by the self-imposed restrictions of the armistice.

the attempt of our air force to interdict Chinese negotiations. "Operation Strangle" therefore did not represent a fair test of the Chinese ability to sustain a major effort over a considerable period of time and in the face of superior air power. The only continuous drain on Chinese supplies occurred after the front was stabilized in March 1951, and from then until the beginning of the armistice negotiations in June the Chinese were much closer to a decisive defeat than we. Had we committed even four more divisions, indeed even if we had put a time limit on the truce negotiations, we might have achieved a substantial military victory.

251

To be sure, the limitations imposed on the Chinese freedom of manoeuvre
by the narrow peninsula and the proximity of our bases in Japan gave us an
advantage in Korea which probably could not be duplicated in other areas.
On the other hand, certain circumstances were propitious for the Chinese also.
Korea was close to their main production centers and the Russian supply lines,
and communications between Korea and China were good. Neither of these
conditions would be duplicated in, for example, Southeast Asia. We thus
might say that these are two prerequisites of effective local action by the
United States: indigenous governments of sufficient stability so that the
Soviets can take over only by open aggression, and indigenous military forces
capable of fighting a delaying action. If these conditions are met, the
<u>to the defense of the "grey areas" will involve the creation</u>,
<u>American contribution</u> of a strategic reserve capable of redressing the balance
and of a weapons system capable of translating our technological advantage
into local superiority.

*end of preceding*

The most difficult problem will be to develop the weapons system appropriate
for a limited war. For with the complexity of modern weapons limited war
can generally not be fought by using a part of the strategic retaliatory force.
Even if technically feasible, this would be weakening the main deterrent
against expanding the war. Thus the fact that our forces had been reduced

252

in the immediate post-war period to levels barely able to undertake retaliatory
blows against the U.S.S.R. were the chief reasons advanced by General Vandenberg
against expanding the Korean war. Moreover, the nature of the weapons, the
training and the concept for their employment differ radically between forces
useful for an all-out war and those which should be ready for a limited war.

The weapons system for all-out war is designed to inflict maximum destruction
and to do so in the shortest possible time. In a limited war, on the other
hand, the weapons system should exhibit discrimination and flexibility. In
an all-out war the targets are known in advance, in fact our SAC crews are
training with mock-up of Soviet targets in their bomb sights. . . . . .
depends on the efficiency with which a pre-planned strike can be launched.

But in a limited war neither the locale of the conflict nor the targets can
be predetermined; everything here depends on the rapidity with which planning
can adjust to a developing situation. In an all-out war, the chief problem
is to deliver the largest increment of destruction as rapidly as possible in
order to eliminate the enemy's retaliatory force before it has done too much
damage. But the problem in limited war is to be able to apply graduated

11. Richard S. Meryman, Jr. "The Guardians," *Harper's Magazine*. October 1955, p. 39.

253

increments of destruction in phased amounts to keep the war limited and also to permit the necessary breathing-spaces for political contacts.

A weapons system for limited war is therefore a more complex and subtle problem than to develop a retaliatory force. The requirement for limited wars is not one all-purpose force which will always be rightly tempted to serve for a major show-down, but units of high mobility and considerable firepower which can be moved to trouble spots. Given the power of modern weapons and the speed of movement of military units everything depends on establishing a position as rapidly as possible because it will be very difficult to dislodge an enemy once he has become entrenched. Moreover the capability for rapid deployment is crucial for psychological reasons as well. In a real sense, a limited war is a gauge of the determination of the contenders; in fact, it is unlikely to occur unless either side doubts either the capability or the willingness of its opponent to resist. An ability to intervene rapidly even with relatively small forces can serve as such a gauge and afford the possibility of reestablishing an equilibrium before either side becomes too heavily engaged. It is therefore imperative that each service develop units capable of fighting local actions and that these units are not considered by

12.15. See Chapter below.

254

the strategic doctrine as part of the over-all retaliatory force. To be sure, as missiles become operative, the distinction between weapons suitable mainly for strategic operations and those of a local nature will diminish in significance. But in the intermediary period the biggest gap in our defense structure is for forces capable of fighting local actions. The army is too small and its organization too cumbersome; the Air Force too preoccupied with all-out war and with a doctrine of complete air superiority; only the Navy possesses a force capable of sufficient discrimination, but it is in the nature of a supporting element, but its very nature the Navy will be most effective in aiding the other services to establish an equilibrium on land.

Our army at this moment is too small and too cumbersome to fight a limited war and it will probably not be needed in an all-out war. The army consists of 19 divisions; allowing for trainees only 14 can be said to be ready for combat. It may be argued that this force does not absolutely preclude fighting limited wars (from the purely military point of view, valid as this contention is in the abstract it is unrealistic psychologically. A limited war of any size would absorb so great a proportion of the present army that it would lose a great deal of flexibility to deal with any other threat. The unlikelihood

254

that any Chief of Staff would commit an army of the present size is shown
by the attitude of the then Chief-of-Staff General Ridgway with regard both
to Indo-China and the Chinese offshore islands. And the doubts of the military
will reinforce the inhibitions of the political leadership. Thus another
vicious circle is set up: the civilian leadership will tend to make its partici-
pation in a limited war dependent on military advice, but XXX the pressure
of the military will in all good conscience have to be against involvement
either be cause they do not possess adequate forces or because they lack an
adequate doctrine or both. The circle is broken in practice only if a
strong President assumes the responsibility for defining the limits of the
conflict and the nature of our commitment as happened in the Korean war.

Nevertheless the inadequacy of forces is relatively easily remedied
if we can adjust our notion of war to new conditions. We reacted to the
frustrations of the Korean war with a determination never to be caught in such
a predicament again. Accordingly, we set about to reduce the deployment of
our troops overseas and to create a strategic reserve in the United States.
As a concept this is UNACCEPTABLE. A strategic reserve, however, implies
the precise meaning of the term: a reserve for a force which is holding

256

or we can keep the major portion of our strategic reserve in the United States, but give it the requisite mobility. The first alternative is politically difficult and strategically risky; the second presupposes two conditions, however: an organization of army units less cumbersome than the present division geared to relative slow cross-country movement and an airlift which will enable us to intervene in threatened areas within a time span that will be strategically effective. The reorganization of army units is required because our tactical organization has been based essentially on a doctrine of a war of position, geared to the speed of the internal combustion engine and the availability of roads. Such a division may prove too large, too cumbersome to fight an effective action in a situation which is not likely to have a stabilized front. Above all, it is too complicated to be transportable efficiently by air. The current infantry division weighs approximately 28,000 short tons. It would require the entire available U.S. airlift, including the civil reserve fleet thirty days to move one such division from the United States to the Middle East. Even the combat element of such a division weighs 7,000 short tons, and could therefore not be moved in less than 10 days.

It is clear that one means for improving mobility is to reduce the weight of army units. Fortunately substantial steps in this direction are taking place. The army has given up its traditional organization of a division on

257

the basis of three regiments and has substituted the Pentana concept: a division composed of five combat teams. This increases the number of self-supporting commands and thereby the flexibility of maneuver; it enables the application of a more discriminating increment of force. In addition a new type of airborne division has been created designed for rapid air-transport.

It would weigh 14,300 short tons and its combat element would weigh 5,000 short tons. This would halve the time required to move one division to the Middle East from the United States even with existing airlift.

But the existing airlift places us in a precarious situation from the point of view of limited war. Unless the combat element of a division can be lifted almost simultaneously it may arrive too late to affect events or in such small driplets that it can be defeated in detail. But to lift the combat element of a new type division would require a fleet of 200 C-133's; to move the entire division within a period of 10 days would require a fleet of 272 C-133's at a cost of 2.6 billion dollars. After this unit were in position it would require 9,438 short tons of supplies to be airlifted over a 30-day period, at the end of which time surface transports would probably take over most of the logistics. To be sure, as the high speed nuclear powered ships which are being planned by Navy become operative in a decade or so, the requirement

for airlift may decline. But in the interim period airlift is our only
means for attaining strategic mobility for limited war.

The dispute about the need for airlift has been one of the cardinal
disagreements between the Army and the Air Force. It is not the purpose of
this book to attempt to resolve a conflict which has occupied the Joint Chiefs
of Staff for several years. For the significance of the dispute resides
not so much in the contentions advanced by either side as in the fact that
under the present definition of missions it is insoluble and the present orga-
nization for arriving at decisions can only exacerbate it. In terms of existing
missions both the Air Force and the Army position are unassailable. The Key
West agreement gives the Air Force the primary mission of defeating the enemy
air arm. To invest 2.6 billion dollars in planes of no combat effectiveness
which will add neither to the strategic nor to the tactical capability of
the Air Force must to any responsible Chief of the Air Staff appear a diversion
of resources. This will be particularly true when each service is operating
under a fixed budgetary ceiling, and when the rapid rate of technological change
requires large outlays for the introduction of missiles and the reequipping
of most units. But to the Army, charged with destroying its enemy counterpart,
its strategic mission becomes meaningless if it cannot get into position to fight.

259

To the Army the airlift is not a marginal requirement but the condition of all effective action. The rigid division of functions among the services, therefore, inhibits the consideration of airlift in terms of over-all strategy.

The Army, to which the airlift is essential, is ~~unlimited~~ precluded by the Key West agreement from developing it, and Secretary Wilson's latest clarification of missions reinforces the prohibition against an Army air arm. <sup>(3)</sup> The Air Force, which has primary responsibility for air transport must in turn consider it a marginal requirement in terms of its primary mission; indeed, the Key West agreement in effect <sup>53</sup> precludes the Air Force from considering the airlift in the only terms which are most meaningful to the Army and to the over-all situation: that of over-all strategic mobility.

Thus our process of arriving at strategic decisions breaks down at the precise point where the rigid division of functions causes one service to be assigned a capability which is technically in its area of competence, but which is subsidiary to its primary mission, although essential to the primary mission of another service. These situations illustrate how all the pressures in our military establishment work against considering either force levels or doctrine in terms of an over-all strategy; how the intimate connection between primary mission and budgetary awards impels our service chiefs with the best intentions in the world into becoming essentially advocates of a service point of view. To be sure, the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are not considered as representing a service while they sit on <sup>13</sup>

13. Department of Defense Press Release, November 26, 1956.

261

in the light of the over-all requirements of United States strategy an
expenditure of 2.6 billion dollars to increase our strategic mobility does
not seem too high. It may be objected that airlift presupposes bases close
enough to the combat zone to be useful. But for the foreseeable future we
should be able to count on Okinawa as a staging area for the Far East, on
Cyprus as a staging area for the Middle East and on Britain as a staging area
for Europe. Thus once we possess strategic mobility, it is not at all obvious
that the Soviet bloc could utilize its interior position to assemble an
overwhelming force at any given point around its periphery, particularly in
areas where we can count on a measure of indigenous resistance or Allied support.

But can we counter even the forces they are able to assemble? If we
admit the local war thesis, do we not run the risk of having our army always
at the wrong place? To be sure, the Soviet bloc can pick the initial point
of attack, but the greater mobility of its interior position is illusory because
of the difficulties of communication. Once the Soviet armies are committed
in an area, they cannot be shifted at will against our air power or with greater
speed than we shift ours by sea. The Chinese, for example, cannot draw us
into Indo-China and then attack in Burma with the same army. They can, of
course, build up two armies, but we should be able to learn of this in time

284

attempt to make the enemy fight with the weapons system most advantageous to us would actually favor an *MMW* policy of limited war. A limited war is the only method to achieve a continuous drain of resources without exhausting both sides. It is therefore the best means to derive a strategic benefit from our industrial potential. For the prerequisite for utilizing industrial potential in a strategy of attrition has been defined in the previous chapter as a weapons system sufficiently complex to require a substantial production effort but not so destructive as to leave the victor no effective margin of superiority. It may be objected that if it is to our advantage to fight a limited war, it must be to the disadvantage of the other side and that for this reason the Soviet bloc will have no incentive to keep a conflict limited. But it does not follow that because the Soviets stand to lose by an *RKA* limited war, that they would be able to calculate a gain from all-out war.

As long as we maintain a substantial military force, the U.S.S.R. confronts the same strategic dilemma as we: that all-out war is useless as an instrument of policy except for acts of desperation. Thus the argument that limited war might turn into a contest of attrition is in fact an argument in favor of a strategy of limited war. A war of attrition is the one war the Soviet bloc would not win.

VIII

We have thus reached perhaps the most serious question connected with
limited war: whether one of the limitations on the use of force should be
to refrain from the use of nuclear weapons. Are nuclear weapons consistent
with a policy of limited war? The problem resolves itself into two parts:
whether it is possible to use nuclear weapons without the war spreading and
whether it is wise to do so.

The argument against the use of nuclear weapons start from the premise
that it is now possible to make nuclear weapons of any kind desired size ranging
from below one kiloton to several megatons. As long as this is true there
exists no natural cut-off point in the use of nuclear weapons even remotely
as sharply defined as that between conventional and nuclear weapons. The
losing side will therefore have every incentive to redress the balance by
using a weapon of greater power and this in turn will provoke counter-retaliation.
Thus a limited nuclear war would spread by a series of progressive steps towards
an all-out war without any clarity as to which side took the crucial step
which caused the war to become total. A distinction between conventional
and nuclear weapons would have the advantage of making the "atomic aggression"
unambiguous. Moreover, so the argument runs, since the factor that limits

286

a limited war is the risk of all-out thermo-nuclear war a limited nuclear
war does not avoid the problem of thermo-nuclear devastation and may even
accelerate it.

These arguments have great force. No one even generally familiar with
the destructiveness of modern weapons can regard the prospect of any kind
of nuclear war with equanimity. Yet the prospect of nuclear war is with us NOT YET.
BUT BECAUSE
CHOICE
because of the facts of modern technology. The only question for strategy
therefore is which course will make all-out war less likely; whether limited
nuclear war will add to our dangers or diminish them. It must be admitted
that at the outset it is not possible to draw sharp dividing lines in
the employment of nuclear weapons, that either side has therefore the technical
possibility of expanding its commitment gradually until total war is reached.
But the crucial point is surely not whether it can do so technically but

whether it will be able to do so psychologically. The distinction between

tactical and strategic use of nuclear weapons may be difficult to draw ON THE BASIS
but every state will have a powerful incentive to make some distinction, however
tenuous its logic: the fear of all-out war. It is not likely that a war becomes

17. 19. Some of these arguments have been presented in an unpublished paper by James E. King, Jr., "Graduated Deterrence," Operations Research Office, October 1956. Foreign Affairs, January '57, pp. —

287

all-out because of a logical syllogism. Korea should demonstrate the eagerness of both sides to draw limits, however arbitrary and however contrary to military logic. No one "WARGAMING" the Korean war in advance would have assumed it possible that a war with such ground rules could be fought, ~~As it turned out~~, not even retaliate against air bases from which attacks on our forces would be leveled.

Nor is it a foregone conclusion that the losing side, if its defeat is kept within limits which do not threaten its retaliatory capacity, will lightly resort to all-out war. But if it is a foregone conclusion that the losing side will seek to escape its dilemmas by resorting to all-out war, then it is difficult to see why it would be restrained by a distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons. For what precisely would be achieved by a distinction between conventional nuclear weapons? It is clear that it would make nuclear aggression unambiguous, but the consequences that flow from this are much less apparent. Would the side which is prepared to unleash an all-out thermo-war nuclear war avoid defeat in a limited nuclear war be less willing to do so if it should suffer a setback in a struggle fought with conventional weapons?

Conversely what would be the sanction against introducing low-yield nuclear weapons in a war that started as a conventional war? If the reply is to be

288

all-out thermo-nuclear war, reliance on conventional weapons would have brought on what it is designed to prevent. If the response is to use nuclear weapons in turn, but not resort to all-out war, a limited nuclear war would be taking place albeit at the second stage of the conflict.

A limited conventional war could be kept non-nuclear only by the threat of all-out retaliation should any kind of nuclear weapon be introduced. But this will be effective only to the extent that the threat will be credible. Is the rise of low-yield nuclear weapons a sufficient provocation to overcome the tremendous inhibitions against all-out war? It is difficult to be certain about reactions to contingencies which have never taken place. It is hard to believe, however, that the introduction of low-yield nuclear weapons or even more powerful weapons confined to military targets into a limited war would be considered the last resort which would induce a power to stake its national substance. It would be both implausible and unwise. For an all-out thermo-nuclear war which was started for such a provocation would have brought on catastrophe before all possibilities of avoiding it had been exhausted. And because this is true, there will be every incentive to test the possibility of limited nuclear war before taking the irreversible last step that President Eisenhower has called the "ultimate war."

A limited nuclear war, moreover, which grows out of a conventional war may be more difficult to limit than a war which *starts* as a limited nuclear war because it would be breaking out under the worst possible conditions. The sudden introduction of nuclear weapons during the course of a war would force the Powers to confront the problem of limitation in the confusion of combat when the possibilities of misunderstanding the opponent's intentions are greatest. And this may be compounded by bureaucratic inertia if war plans postulate the explosion of any nuclear device anywhere as the start of thermonuclear conflict.

The only advantage of limiting war to conventional weapons then would be to make the atomic aggressor unambiguous and *in practice* the consequence of this would either be meaningless or it would make all-out war more likely. Moreover, limited conventional war even if it could be fought would not represent our most effective strategy. For limited war can be compared to a curve plotted on a graph one of the axis of which measures risk and the other measures commitment. At every point on this curve, the calculus of risks changes and every additional commitment forces the opponent to reevaluate the costs of continued war against the goals to be achieved. Somewhere on this curve there is a point for both sides at which they consider the risk of all-out

290

war too great to commit an additional increment of force. If that point is
the same for both sides, they will both be willing to run approximately the
same risks and the fear of all-out war becomes a mutual deterrent. If one
side is willing or able to operate further up on the curve, if, in other words,
it is willing or able to increase its commitment further than its opponent,
it will gain an advantage. Thus during the Korean war we had an advantage
we did not press: that we could better afford an all-out war than our opponents
and that the inhibitions against initiating an all-out war should therefore
have been greater on the part of our opponents than with us. At the lower
end of the curve an increased commitment will only force the opponent to
decide whether he will assume an additional risk; as the point of all-out
war is approached all calculations will be overlaid by the real or imagined
danger of all-out war.

For this reason one of the problems of limited war is to decide on which
part of the curve measuring commitments and risks to operate. The dispute
between those who identify limited war with conventional war and those who
believe in the possibility of limited nuclear war resolves itself into a
question whether it is safer and more productive to operate at the lower
or on the upper part of the curve, whether a limited war is kept limited better

291

by a strategy of minimum risk or by starting it with an initially larger commitment. Liddell Hart has argued for example, that deterrence is best achieved by a light screen of token conventional weapons for the enemy would know that overrunning them would be tantamount to a declaration of all-out war because we would not accept defeat without resorting to it. ¹⁸ But this is in effect another version of massive retaliation which interjects one small step—a limited conventional war—between peace and a thermo-nuclear holocaust. And it is subject to the same criticism as massive retaliation. It is simply not credible that a defeat of a few conventional divisions should unleash a thermo-nuclear holocaust, nor is a strategy which would go through with such a threat a responsible one. Thus at the lower end of the scale where the destructiveness of weapons is low, deterrence may be ineffective because the and the threat all-but are not plausible. risk for the Soviet bloc is small. Conventional war, moreover, permits the opponent to substitute manpower for materiel on the battlefield. It enables him gradually to increase his commitment and to force us to decide at every stage of military operation whether to follow suit. It therefore gives the enemy the benefit of initiative in expanding the war by increments so small, including the jump from conventional to low-yield nuclear weapons, that none will seem a sufficient provocation for all-out war. Conversely, it will be

18. 26. Saturday Review of Literature, May?

very difficult on this basis to maneuver the enemy into a position from
which he can extricate himself *only* by all-out war--the condition for winning
or stalemating a limited war. *At the upper end of the scale, deterrence may
be ineffective because the threat of all-out war may not be credible and*
*because the strategy for fighting a war poses exorbitant risks.* The best
balance between deterrence and an effective strategy is in the intermediary
range of risk and commitment: the area of limited nuclear war. Here a
substantial risk is posed for the opponent and one that has the advantage of
credibility. The Soviet bloc moreover will be deprived of the advantage of
initiative in expanding the war because both sides will be operating close
to the upper limit of risk. In short, in a policy of limited war it is safer
and more effective to begin with an intermediary rather than a minimum
commitment because the threat of all-out war which is the chief limiting
condition of war will be more credible here and because the most difficult
decision--whether to resort to all-out war is passed on to the enemy most
effectively in this manner.

This is not to say that limited nuclear war is always the best or the
wisest strategy; it is simply to indicate that it is possible and that

293

flexibility is increased not by attempting to establish a line between conventional and nuclear war, but by creating a smooth curve of non-nuclear and nuclear capabilities. In a limited war against a non-nuclear underdeveloped country, in a civil war, in a minor police action, the use of nuclear weapons may be unnecessary or unwise either for psychological or political reasons. In some circumstances too, it may be desirable to understate the response against a major power by using conventional weapons. But in a war against a nuclear power or in a war against an enemy whose resources of manpower would enable him to keep increasing his commitment by small increments, a limited nuclear war affords the best strategy for fighting a limited war effectively and for keeping it limited. The advantage of lower-yield nuclear weapons is that they shift the contest to a plane where our technological superiority over the Soviet bloc is at a premium. When the destructiveness of individuals weapons is small, the significant attrition of war is in manpower and conversely an increment of manpower introduced into a war may affect the strategic balance. If the destructiveness of weapons is too large, a relatively few weapons will suffice to establish an equilibrium. But in an intermediary range of destructiveness, weapons are sufficiently complex to require highly trained manpower yet discriminating enough to permit the establishment of

294

a significant margin of superiority. Thus while the growth of the Soviet strategic air force and nuclear should cause us to revise our concepts of all-out war, the introduction of nuclear weapons on a battlefield will shake the very basis of Soviet tactical doctrine. No longer will the Soviet bloc be able to rely on massed manpower as in World War II and in Korea. On a nuclear battlefield, dispersion is the key to survival and mobility 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 attempt to defend a perimeter like that of the Soviet bloc with conventional forces would impose a staggering drain on our manpower and would likely produce casualties far exceeding those of a short sharp nuclear war. Moreover, in a limited war the ability to establish an equilibrium rapidly is itself a factor of limitation. Small, highly mobile units of very great firepower which impose a large measure of dispersal on the enemy offer a better means of achieving this than the much more cumbersome conventional forces.

It may be true, as is frequently argued, that a nuclear war also requires substantial manpower and that its net effort may well involve an expansion of our military establishment. The significant point, however, is not the

quantity of manpower, but where this manpower is utilized: in a conventional war manpower is required to establish an equilibrium on the battlefield. In a nuclear war, it is needed in supporting technical units. Nuclear war would therefore enable us to utilize our large reservoir of technically trained manpower to best advantage; for despite great strides the U.S.S.R. has made in the training of scientists and technicians in recent years, there can be little doubt that on the over-all balance the Free World possesses an infinitely larger pool of technically trained manpower; and the disparity in the familiarity with technology on the part of the mass of the population which prove even more important is more pronounced still. To be sure, our technological superiori~~t~ may be fleeting; with the spread of nuclear power technology many nations may come to possess plutonium and thereby the werewithal to make nuclear weapons. But it is one thing to master the manufacture of nuclear weapons; it is quite another to develop the whole range of supporting paraphenalia: the electronics for control, the light planes for maneuverability, the complex interrelationship between fire and movement. Even should a rough balance in technical manpower and competence exist in time, this would do no more than establish an equilibrium; nuclear war favors the defensive and is therefore to our net advantage since we are more likely to

296

The history of the Soviet arms deal with Egypt illustrates the difficulty of technologically backward nations in operating even complicated conventional equipment. Even should a rough balance in technical manpower and competence exist in time, this would do no more than establish an equilibrium; nuclear war favors the defensive and is therefore to our net advantage since we are more likely to resist than to initiate aggression. The possibility of a military stalemate all around the Soviet periphery would represent a net strategic advantage for us.

Nuclear war favors the defensive not only because it facilitates the establishment of an equilibrium but also because it may deprive aggression of one of its objectives: to control territory. The same esoteric quality which we have seen to characterize all-out thermo-nuclear war, will tend to distinguish limited nuclear war as well. Small, highly mobile units will be excellent tools for fighting their enemy counterparts; they are not efficient means for controlling territory or for rapid strikes to destroy important objectives.

The experience of the Hungarian revolution demonstrates the difficulty of a highly mechanized army of controlling even against a practically unarmed population. In the event the Red Army had to concentrate fifteen armored divisions to occupy a territory without modern arms. Such a concentration against an

army equipped with nuclear weapons would be disastrous, however. Thus if
nuclear units of high mobility to control the countryside are supported
by more stationary types of organizations to man hedgehogs and to prevent a
sudden coup against the cities a very difficult problem is posed for an aggressor.
From the military point of view he requires highly mobile, small units.
From the point of view of controlling territory against a hostile population
or even one covered with fortified hedgehogs he requires massive forces. Against
a determined enemy it will be very difficult to combine these two objectives;
a determined defensive should be able to keep the aggressor constantly off-
balance by never permitting him to consolidate any gain. And if this is
coupled with rapid thrusts by small units deep into enemy territory which,
in Europe at least, can be assumed to be hostile to the U.S.S.R. the Soviets
might soon face a perhaps untenable situation. The purpose of mobile units
in a limited nuclear war would be to disorganize the enemy's rear through the
sudden destruction of key installations and the creation of centers of resis-
tance. Our technological superiority, the superior initiative of our people,
and the greater social cohesiveness of the Free World should give us a decided
advantage in a limited nuclear war. Limited nuclear war would therefore
be conducted by small, highly mobile units; its analogy is not traditional
land warfare, but naval warfare where self-contained units of high firepower
gradually achieve domination by destroying their enemy counterpart in a war
of maneuver without physically occupying the terrain.

In any case, the discussion about the advisability of limited nuclear
war is somewhat beside the point. Our whole planning, procurement, research
and development has been built around nuclear weapons to an extent that a
change would put Eurasia at the mercy of the U.S.S.R.'s conventional forces
at least in an intermediary period while we readjusted our planning and procurement.

suddenly introduced nuclear weapons against a conventional defense how could weep all before him before effective retaliation were possible. In short, not using nuclear weapons in a limited war seems more risky than using them both for fighting the war effectively and for preventing its spread. It is not for nothing that Soviet propaganda has played on two related themes: there is no much thing as limited nuclear war and ban the bomb. For both emphasize the corollary "there is no alternative to peace," and both deprive our policy of flexibility and sap our resistance to the preferred forms of Soviet aggression: peripheral war, subversion and atomic blackmail.

But assuming its theoretical feasibility is a limited nuclear war practical? Will it not cause devastation which at least in the battle area would create a degree of devastation almost as complete as of a thermo-nuclear war? Again it is difficult to reply with certainty for many intangibles are involved.

in technology

It must be emphasized at the outset that the revolution, as every technological revolution before it, must be accompanied by a revolution in tactics and that it can be understood only in these terms. If nuclear weapons are added to World War II tactics as merely another more efficient explosive the casualties will be appaling, just as they were when medieval knights first charged 20. See below Chapter for an expansion of these ideas.

299

cross bows with the tactics of the feudal period. It seems that many of the predictions of exorbitant casualties are based on the assumption that a nuclear war would resemble World War II with the addition of nuclear weapons. In fact, nothing is more improbable. For nuclear war requires tactics of an entirely different order. With conventional weapons, it was necessary to mass large bodies of troops in order to achieve the required firepower. With nuclear weapons, much smaller units can achieve an incomparably greater firepower. As a result, a much greater degree of dispersion will be required to prevent one nuclear weapon from inflicting exorbitant casualties. And dispersion must be coupled with a high degree of mobility so that a target is not stationary long enough to invite attack. The army is currently thinking in terms of battalions spaced more than two miles apart so that a Hiroshima-type bomb would not be able to destroy more than one batallion at a time.

Two consequences result: the great dispersion of a nuclear battlefield makes it impossible to think any longer of a continuous front. The task of denying territory to an enemy must be accomplished by preventing him from assembling sufficient force to control it. Dispersal henceforth must be not only between units but also in depth, with small detachments capable of

300

making rapid penetrations and equally rapid departures. The second conclusion involves the consequence of mobility. Current army planning envisions helicopters capable of carrying ____ men and small field guns, the "flying platform" which enables an individual to move through the air in a rudimentary fashion for a distance of ____ miles at a speed of ____ miles. Vertical take-off aircraft will confer tactical mobility independent of the availability of airfields. Every combat team will be equipped with missiles of ranges between 10 to 400 miles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. And sophisticated communications systems permit coordinated action of widely dispersed units.²¹

These measures, while useful, only constitute a beginning. The ultimate aim must be to create units which carry the analogy of naval warfare even further. They should be self-contained both with respect to their supply and their maintenance. Since they will operate without a logistic system in the traditional sense and often deep inside enemy territory, they should be able to repair their own equipment and to support themselves from their own supplies. They would therefore approximate a naval vessel as a tactical formation and like a naval vessel they should be able by their very existence and mobility to deny the control of vast areas to an enemy. Since they will

²¹ Symington Hearings, p. (Lt. General Gavin).

300a

be operating in populated regions they will also have to be trained in an
understanding of political relationships, hitherto thought outside military
concerns. To the extent that they are able to distinguish friend from foe
and to draw the consequences from it, they will complicate enemy moves and
the reverse would equally be true. The experience of Hungary has shown the
difficulty of sustaining warfare ¤ against determined civilian resistance.
A few U.S. units with the fire-power, mobility and discrimination described
here might have made the Soviet position untenable. 22)

In this type of warfare many of the targets of traditional warfare
have ceased to be strategically productive. One of the reasons for the
estimates of high casualties is the belief that in a nuclear war cities would
be hit with atomic weapons. But this literal application of the tactics
appropriate to conventional war does not follow. In conventional war the large
number of troops, their cumbersome equipment and the complicated logistic
system confined most movement to road or rail. In these circumstances, it
made sense to attempt to interdict maneuver by bombing transportation centers.
But when units achieve the degree of mobility envisaged by the armies of
both the United States and the U.S.S.R. the bombardment of communication centers

22. I am indebted to Dr. Edward Teller for some of these ideas.

301

may prove unnecessary and militarily unproductive. And on the battlefield,
dispersion and mobility should be used to set an upper limit to the size of
weapons it is profitable to emply. Military formations can thus be protected
by the uncertainty of the enemy regarding their location.

It may be objected that whatever the rate of casualties among troops
the losses suffered by the civilian population will be enormous because of
the necessity of gaining air superiority and the proximity of airfields to
centers of population in densely populated Western Europe. Neither the need
for air supremacy nor the bombing of airfields are as inevitable as *in class*
air strategy maintains, however. The concept of air supremacy by bombing
air fields is itself a symptom of an obsolescent strategy. It was valid only
so long as it was more economical to destroy a plane on the ground than in
the air, as long, in short, as planes had to be concentrated on a relatively
few bases for efficient operation. But the concurrent development of vertical
take-off aircraft and anti-aircraft missiles seem to make the destruction
of planes in flight at least as economical as the destruction of airfields.
Against vertical take-off aircraft there will be no runway left to crater
or concentration of planes to hit; it will be possible to achieve almost the
degree of disperion where one weapon can destroy only one plane (which is
exactly the relation which obtains in attacking a plane in flight). And within
ten years anti-aircraft missiles can make the life of any manned plane exceedingly
difficult. In such a situation, tactical air support will have changed its
meaning: it will either be accomplished by missiles or by vertical take-off
aircraft. It will then become meaningless to speak of air supremacy in the
traditional sense. Missile launching sites can be so dispersed and they can
be made so mobile that it will be very difficult to locate them and

30la

impossible to destroy them all. This is not to say that nuclear war will not be costly, only that its cost should be weighed against the tactics appropriate to it. In any case, compared to the casualties of an all-out thermo-nuclear war those produced by a limited nuclear war would still appear mild. Limited nuclear war becomes attractive only compared to the cataclysm which a total war would produce.

One other aspect of limited nuclear war must be considered: the premium it places on surprise attack both for psychological as well as for strategic reasons. It is important psychologically because if the fighting can be transferred into the opponent's territory, his inhibitions against using nuclear weapons will be magnified by the concern for his own population.

The psychological balance in the use of nuclear weapons thus favors the aggressor--a point explicitly recognized in Soviet doctrine.²³) And the psychological importance is reinforced by considerations of strategy. In an all-out war

23. See below, Chapter

302

a superior attack will prove strategically unproductive if it cannot reduce the counterblow to unacceptable proportions. And as we have seen this will become increasingly difficult to accomplish. But in limited war a sudden thrust and a rapid consolidation may permit the aggressor to assume the defensive to hold what he just captured. And the defensive in a limited nuclear war has a decided advantage. The rewards for initiative are therefore greater in limited nuclear war than even in conventional war. For this reason, the side whose doctrine yields the first blow to its opponent must pay particular attention that both its military capability and its process for arriving at decisions permit it to act rapidly enough to prevent the aggressor from consolidating his gain. It is the paradoxical consequence of a period when technology has never been more complicated that its effectiveness depends to such an extent on intangibles: on the subtlety of the leadership and on its conception of alternatives.

## IX

Thus our discussion of strategy leads to these conclusions: war between major powers is likely to be a nuclear war. (b) Nuclear war should be fought as something less than all-out war. Only in this manner will it be possible

303

to escape the dilemma of the nuclear age defined above as the choice between
Armageddon and defeat without war. The flexibility of our diplomacy depends\onal the adaptability of our strategy and the adaptability of our strategy
depends on our ability to alter doctrines developed in a more secure past.
The identification of deterrence with maximum retaliatory power which has
been the basis of our entire post-war military thought no longer holds:
Because it is not credible in most of the disputes actually at issue and because
it poses exorbitant risks should deterrence fail. A policy of deterrence
one should shrink from implementing as a strategy for fighting a war is a
contradiction in terms.

As a result, the challenge to strategy has become much more subtle and
complicated. At every point of tension and in every military contingency,
strategy must seek to harmonize political, psychological and military considerations
to relate military capability to psychological readiness. It cannot strive
to combine the best of all possible worlds to pose a maximum threat in its
policy of deterrence and yet conduct a policy of minimum risk. The main
decide the problem is what price one is willing to pay for deterrence, but then to make
certain that this price will be paid if the need arises. Nor are the vistas
which are opened by this discussion of this chapter simple or easy to contemplate.

But this is the penalty for living in a nuclear period, a penalty we consciously accept when we permitted our atomic monopoly to be broken in the absence of international control. The strategy described in this chapter must be considered against the perils of all-out thermo-nuclear catastrophe. It is designed to give us a gamut of options so that the alternative to peace need not always be to stake the national substance, and the dilemma of initiating all-out war--the most difficult decision of our period--can be passed on to our opponent. A strategy of limited war thus is an application of the five principles discussed at the beginning of the chapter. It takes account of the preferred mode of action of the Soviet bloc with its preference for indirect methods of penetration and solutions short of all-out war. It affords the possibility of channeling these efforts by creating a smooth curve of capabilities from conventional to nuclear war and it supplies the flexibility to confront the enemy with unforeseen contingencies. It uses America's assets, the industrial potential and reservoir of technology to best advantage and it achieves its ends at much less cost than all-out war.

To be sure, it offers no final solutions and stalemates are more likely than complete victories. But in many areas, now overshadowed by the Soviet threat, the possibility of a stalemate represents a strategic advance.

305

It may be argued that a strategy which is based on the mutual fear of thermo-nuclear devastation is inherently unstable. In the past new discoveries often have been greeted with prophesies of impending doom or assertions that they had made war impossible and in every case they were used to the limit of their effectiveness. Why should this be different now? It cannot be denied, of course, that many new discoveries have been taken to augur the end of war and concluded by adding to the horror of war. Yet it is equally true that no new discovery has ever added the increment of destructive power to armaments that is represented by nuclear weapons, or ever came into existence so suddenly. Gunpowder, for example, was introduced gradually over a period of centuries. In ________ --over a century after it became widely known-- Machiavelli could still argue against its use because it was less efficient than the then "traditional" armaments. ________24 ________25 And as late as 1825, the British War Office could still seriously discuss a proposal to reintroduce the crossbow to replace the musket. Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, have brought with them an increase in the scale of destructiveness which amounts to a qualitative change. When one side in a war used shrapnel or dum-dum bullets ________24.25. Machiavelli. *Principles of War*. p.

306

were used, as (despite international prohibitions against their use, this) demonstrated that international treaties will not restrain antagonists engaged on a mortal struggle unless they are reinforced by common interest. (In this respect, they are not different, of course, from other treaties between sovereign partners). These weapons were used because one side or the other promised itself a net advantage from their employment. The essence of the nuclear stalemate for all-out war, on the other hand, is that neither side can gain from its employment--it can only keep the other side from winning. To be sure, should one side ever achieve a net strategic advantage in the all-out war equation, the balance of interests would no longer hold and all efforts must be made to prevent this contingency. The purpose of a policy of limited war is not to provide a substitute for all-out war, but to create a range of options where the response could be brought into balance with the provocation and where capability and the will to use it will therefore be in greater harmony than in the stark case of all-out war.

Another argument against limited war is based on its effect on the economy. It is asserted that every limited war must be accompanied by preparations for all-out war and that a constant cycle of mobilization would

strain our economy to the limit. Apart from the fact that it seems safer
to risk the effects of mobilization on the economy than the consequences of
all-out war, this argument too shows the persistence of a World War II pattern
of thinking. It is fallacious both with respect to a strategy for all-out
war as well as with respect to the psychological framework for limited war.

The all-out war capability cannot be created by mobilizing during the course
of a limited war--this has been the pattern of our history and it ended
with the growth of the Soviet nuclear stockpile and the development of a Soviet
Long-Range Air Force. If our all-out capability is not in-being at all times,
we not only cannot be able to fight a limited war, we will also risk being subjected to
an all-out surprise attack. Moreover, substantial mobilization during a
limited war could be interpreted by the opponent as the prelude to a show-down
and may therefore induce him to anticipate it by unleashing all-out
war himself. Thus limited war, just as all-out war, will have to be fought
largely by the forces-in-being. This underlines the necessity of a military
establishment capable of fighting a gamut of actions rapidly and to do so
without substantial mobilization.

While it is difficult to define force levels in the abstract, these

308

considerations would seem to cast some doubt on the efficacy of a large
reserve program, particularly for nuclear war which requires a degree of
training and discipline unattainable by part-time training. As a result the
major use of reserves may be to replace regular units in home defense and
for disaster relief in case of all-out war.

Withal a strategy for limited wars will not eliminate the precariousness
of our situation. The best strategy in this period can confer only a relative
security and seek to prevent defer the worst ravages of all-out war as a
last resort. Moreover, as nuclear technology becomes diffused other, and
perhaps less responsible powers will enter the nuclear equation. The fear
of mutual destruction which is the chief deterrent to all-out war for the
major powers may be less effective with nations which have less to lose;
indeed, whose negotiating position tends to be improved by their threat to
commit suicide. Even in the relations among the major powers the strategy
outlined in this chapter will not be easy to implement. It presupposes a
diplomacy which can make its options clear to the other side and which can
keep conflicts from being considered as a prelude to a final showdown. Above
all it requires strong nerves. For we can make the graduated employment of

309

force stick only if we leave no doubt about our readiness to confront a final
show-down; its effectiveness will depend on our willingness to face up to
the risks of Armageddon.

The American strategic problem can therefore be summed up in these
propositions:

1. Thermo-nuclear war must be avoided, except as a last resort.

2. No power possessing thermo-nuclear weapons is likely to accept unconditional surrender without employing them and no nation is likely to risk thermo-nuclear destruction except to the extent that it believes its survival to be at stake.

3. It is the task of our diplomacy, therefore, to make clear that we do not aim for unconditional surrender, to create a framework in which the question of national survival is not involved in every issue. But equally we should leave no doubt about our determination to achieve intermediary objectives and to resist by force any Soviet military move.

4. Since diplomacy which is not related to a plausible employment of force is sterile, it must be the task of our military policy to develop a doctrine and a capability for the graduated employment of force.

The problem of limited war is therefore not simply a question of
military capability or even of strategic doctrine. Before we turn to the
consideration of the diplomacy to give it effect it is important to take
account of the fact that national policy does not take place in a vacuum.
It is important to consider the reactions of our allies, the uncommitted
and of the Soviet bloc to the challenge of the nuclear age.