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MILITARY POLICY PAPERS

CORRECTIONS

p. 18 Paragraph 3, line 4 should read: 30 divisions

p. 43 Paragraph 1, line 11 should read: No one argues against the Strategic Air Command . . .

p. 45 Last line: "combining" instead of "combing"

p. 50 The footnotes 19 and 20 should read: 19. On NATO strategy see Roger Hilsman p.1 ff., above; 20. On obstacles in the way of greater European military effort see Arnold Wolfers, p. 63 ff., below.

p. 52 4th line from bottom should read: and that it is he who can play at brinkmanship.

p. 53 Paragraph 4, line 6 should read: Berlin though militarily defended against Russian divisions . . .

p. 63 Line 13: "consultations" instead of "conciliations"

p. 71 Paragraph 3, line 6 from bottom: drop "a" before "conceivable"

b. 31 Paragraph 3, line 9 from bottom: drop "in" before "conceivable"

b. 33 line 13: "concentrations" instead of "concentrations"

against Mexican divisions ...

b. 33 Paragraph 3, line 9 should read: "Berfin through militarily defended

printership

b. 25 line 9 from bottom should read: and that it is he who can best at

European difficulties exist see Anrufa Mollere, b. 03 ll. 11, p. 10.

Hilzmann b. f. 1c., p. 50. On oppositions in the way of Greater

b. 20 The economies 13 and 50 should read: 13. On NATO strategy see Refer

b. 12 Last time: "computing" instead of "computing"

VIR Command ...

b. 13 Paragraph 1, line 1 should read: No one signs against the Strategy

b. 18 Paragraph 2, line 1 should read: 30 divisions

## CORRECTIONS

## MILITARY POLICY PAPERS

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INTRODUCTION

The Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research takes pleasure in bringing to the attention of a limited number of interested persons the following five Military Policy Papers prepared by members of its Research Staff. It hopes to contribute, thereby, to the on-going critical analysis and development of American and NATO military policy.

Most of the views expressed in these papers have been discussed at round table meetings of the Center but no attempt has been made to resolve differences of opinion which the reader will discover. Each author bears sole responsibility for views and recommendations contained in his paper. It should not go unnoticed, however, that the authors agree on a number of basic issues pertaining particularly to the character of war in a nuclear age and to the military requirements following therefrom.

The papers of Mr. Hilsman and Mr. King will appear in print in a book by the Center on American alliance policy which the Johns Hopkins Press plans to publish in the spring; the paper of Mr. Wolfers was prepared for the Autumn issue, 1958, of *International Organization*.

December 15, 1958

Washington, D. C.

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ON NATO STRATEGY

by
Roger Hilsman

When NATO was first established, in 1949, it was not intended to be the integrated coalition army it now is, with the combined headquarters, common supply lines, and detailed war plans that make it unique in the history of peacetime alliances.¹ Its functions were those of the traditional alliance: to ensure maximum, pooled strength in the event of war, and to deter a potential enemy by putting him on notice that if he upset the balance he would have to face not one enemy, but the combined strength of several. Article 5 of the Treaty states that the "Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all; and consequently they agree that if such an armed attack occurs, each of them,...will assist the Party or Parties so attached by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force,..." In Congressional hearings and in public statements, the responsible American officials described the Treaty as being designed both to strengthen European confidence and determination and to prevent the Soviets from making the mistake that Hitler did of assuming that he could commit aggression piecemeal, without interference from the United States.²

I

So long as NATO remained purely a traditional alliance, it had little, that could be called a military strategy. But a change was not long in coming. It was the United States Congress that provided the initial impetus, by insisting that there be fully developed war plans as a condition for further military aid. Their purpose was to ensure that aid would not be diverted to purely national purposes, unrelated to the needs of collective defense, but this led to an expansion of the military liaison committees of the Brussels Pact into something resembling a planning staff and to more participation by the American observer group.

Other events that had a more direct effect on the transformation of NATO were the Soviet success in developing nuclear weapons and, following soon after, the Communist attack on South Korea. Immediately after we discovered that the Soviets had exploded an atomic weapon in 1949 the United States plunged into a reappraisal of its military and foreign policies. One result of this reappraisal was the decision to accelerate the attempt to build an H-bomb; the second was NSC 68, a paper approved by the National Security Council pointing toward rearmament at a pace that required, in effect, partial mobilization.

But there is room for doubt whether the provisions of NSC 68 would have been carried out if it had not been for the second event, the attack on South Korea. If the atomic explosion in the Soviet Union brought a change in our evaluation of Soviet capabilities, to borrow the classic terms of military intelligence, then the war in Korea brought a change in our evaluation of their intentions. It seemed certain that the Soviets had known and approved of the attack on South Korea and very likely that it had been launched at their direction. Thus what the attack seemed to mean was that the Soviets, having broken our monopoly of the atomic bomb, had decided that the time had come to test both our defenses and our will.

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The assumption in the West was not so much that the Soviets had established a timetable for conquest as that they were now willing to adventure. Rightly or wrongly--and it may well have been wrongly--the West assumed that this willingness to adventure applied not only to Asia, where the attack had actually occurred, but also to Europe. The fear, indeed, was that among the several motives for the attack was the hope that it would draw our troops from other parts of the perimeter of defense and so leave Europe weakened or even defenseless.³

The West began to put its European defenses on a war footing. Prior to 1950, NATO had neither a commander nor a true headquarters; what troops it disposed of were still scattered about in Germany on occupation duty. It had only a tenth of the tactical airfields needed to support those troops and many of the airfields it did have were forward of the forces they were to support. Its more important supply lines ran not across France perpendicular to the front, but from Hamburg and Bremenhaven across Germany parallel to it and within easy reach of Soviet tanks. The first step was to increase the troops on the line. After the Senate had debated and passed its resolution in 1951, the United States undertook to send four additional divisions to Europe, and at the same time agreements were signed to provide bases for American air forces in allied territory. By the end of 1952, there were the equivalent of six American divisions in Europe, and there were American bomber and fighter bases in North Africa, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

The second step was to provide an effective command and logistical structure. It was also in 1951 that Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe (SHAPE) was established and General Eisenhower appointed Supreme Commander. His first task was to make the command operational, and by 1952 well over 100 airfields for tactical support aircraft had been built, new supply lines were established across France, pipelines and communications nets were installed, supply bases were established and stocked with food and ammunition--a good beginning had been made, in sum, in all the complex preparations that stand behind an army ready to fight. NATO had completed its transformation from a traditional alliance, with little more than a mere commitment to stand together, to its new form, an integrated coalition army.⁴

## II

Having arrived at this new form, NATO found itself confronted with an entirely new situation. Not only did the Soviet Union build nuclear bombs and a strategic air force of their own, but a whole range of nuclear weapons were developed on both sides of the Iron Curtain and integrated into ground and naval forces as well as air forces. Europeans began to translate E = MC² into local terms, and they found themselves wondering how even this integrated coalition army could defend them without bringing down devastation so widespread that it would amount to annihilation. The only protection that the coalition army can offer seems to carry with it the very destruction that defense forces are intended to guard against. In an all-out war, Europe would be doubly devastated--by long-range bombers and missiles from the air and by battlefield nuclear weapons on the ground. The most that Europeans could hope for would be that Europe would not be occupied, which might be a questionable benefit in view of what they would suffer, not only from Soviet bombs but from the backlash of our own. In General Gavin's words, "Current planning estimates run on the order of several hundred million deaths that would be either way depending upon which way the wind blew. If the wind blew to the southeast they would be mostly in the U.S.S.R., although they would extend into the Japanese and perhaps down into the Philippine area. If the wind blew the other way they would extend well back up into Western Europe."⁵

In the event of a limited aggression the dilemma would be even sharper. The official policy is "massive retaliation"--an attempt to deter both the Soviet Union and its satellites by threatening that any aggression at all will mean the intervention of the American Strategic Air Command and all-out war. Here again, the

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Europeans fear destruction. But they also wonder whether the United States would actually come to their defense at all if the attack was very clearly limited or launched in ambiguous circumstances, since a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union would undoubtedly bring down a counter-retaliation on the United States with death and destruction for many millions of Americans.

Yet the alternative of resisting without relying on a nuclear reprisal seems equally unattractive. With its present force of only 16 to 18 divisions, NATO could probably cope with a limited conventional war of only the smallest dimensions, at the most a police action against a satellite aggression. In any action involving the Soviet forces in Eastern Germany, it would have little hope of holding the enemy without using battlefield atomic weapons, at the least.⁶ But for the Europeans, this might be as bad as all-out war. In Exercise *Carte Blanche*, a NATO maneuver designed as the name implies to study the effects of a battle in which tactical nuclear weapons were used without restriction, 335 simulated atomic bombs were used by the maneuvering forces in 48 hours. It was estimated that over one and a half million Germans would have been killed and some three and a half million wounded. In Exercise Sagebrush, conducted by United States forces in the Louisiana maneuver area, 275 simulated nuclear weapons with yields of from 2 to 40 kilotons were dropped, and the umpires concluded that the resulting destruction and fall-out would have been so high as to make it difficult for the civilian population of the region to survive.⁷ What makes the choice more doubtful still is that there seems to be only grim chance of holding the Soviet forces even if NATO does use battlefield atomic weapons, since the Soviets would undoubtedly use them, too. There is no reason to believe that either our weapons or our troops can be made so superior in quality as to give us a decisive advantage.⁸

Thus the dilemma NATO faces is one of strategy, and the question it pushes forward so insistently is whether the NATO coalition army can continue to serve useful military and political purposes. Is there a strategy open to NATO that will enable it to meet the range of possible aggressions from all-out to limited wars and also offer the hope that Europe will survive?⁹

The original strategic problem facing NATO was a familiar one. The two areas to be defended were the old western front from Basle to the mouth of the Rhine-Issel and the Brenner-Trieste area, and Western staff officers had been all but weaned on the problem. They knew the different routes of approach so well they could almost recite by heart the numbers of troops that could be brought through them. On the assumption that a major war would take a form similar to that of World War II, as modified mainly by the existence of atomic bombs in only limited quantities, the calculations rested on covering each of the approaches with the number of divisions indicated by applying established rules of thumb for division fronts, on lightly screening the intervening areas, and on providing a reserve of roughly one-third the total force. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that what was needed was a force of about 100 divisions.

With a force of about 100 divisions, NATO could hope to hold off an enemy two or even three times as large. The issue would then turn on training, skill, morale, leadership, and the other intangibles of war. With a force substantially less than 100 divisions, however, --say, 70 divisions--one or another approach would have to be left uncovered or the reserve cut so heavily as to eliminate its power to make its intervention felt. A force that is adequate to the terrain it must defend, with its flanks anchored on natural obstacles, may hope for success even if it cannot match the enemy man for man. But neither skill nor luck is likely to save a numerically inferior force that is also inadequate to the demands of the terrain.

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It was this force goal that was approved at the Lisbon Conference in 1952, the figure actually chosen being 96 divisions. But this decision had no sooner been taken than the strategic situation began to change, and radically. The sources of the change were two. The first was "nuclear plenty"--the development of a wide range of different kinds of nuclear weapons on both sides of the Iron Curtain and a substantial increase in the numbers available. After the Soviet Union exploded an atomic weapon in 1949, it rapidly developed a strategic air force comparable to our own. It was not long before both sides had built an H-bomb and begun to produce a range of battlefield atomic weapons suitable for supporting troops on the ground.

The second source of change in the strategic situation was the increasing reliance the West itself put on nuclear weapons and the policy of deterring war through the threat of nuclear reprisal. The motives behind this policy were understandable. First the new weapons piled on top of the cost of maintaining conventional forces made for a fabulous expense. Second, there was revulsion at the blood-letting in the "limited" Korean war. Third, the Communist bloc did not follow the attack on Korea with other aggressions, which, led to the feeling that our defense effort had been successful in deterring aggression and, paradoxically, that international relations had achieved a measure of stability. All these contributed to an increasing discontent with existing strategy and a search for a way to provide military security at some less formidable cost. At the same time, the awesome destructive-ness of nuclear weapons seemed to offer a way of substituting firepower for armies. The result was Secretary Dulles' doctrine of "massive retaliation"--that we would meet aggression by retaliating "by means and at places of our choosing", thus permitting "a selection of military means instead of a multiplicity of means."¹⁰ This statement of policy was understood to mean that the United States would rely on the threat of nuclear air power to deter aggression of any kind and that the policy would permit the United States to cut down on ground and naval forces. In the public debate that followed, Dulles seemed to modify his doctrine under two basic criticisms. The first was that the consequences of meeting any kind of aggression at all, even a conventional, clearly limited attack, with nuclear weapons would present an unacceptable risk of general war. The second was that denying ourselves a range of military means would put a straitjacket on future policy. But in spite of Mr. Dulles' careful qualifications, that the United States would not automatically make little wars into big ones, the "new look" decision to emphasize nuclear air power at the expense of ground and naval power remained. In 1952, for example, the United States had 20 divisions; in 1958, it had 15 and there was still a further reduction to 14 planned for 1959. Britain, in which the "new look" idea of concentrating on nuclear weapons had actually had its beginnings, was not long in following suit. The British White Paper of 1957 announced their decision to reduce their forces from the 690,000 they then had to 375,000 by 1962 and to equip those forces remaining with "atomic rocket artillery." Their forces stationed in Germany, the British Army of the Rhine, were cut from 77,000 men to 64,000 immediately, with further reductions to follow.

As these developments unfolded, the military commanders of NATO became increasingly concerned to make it clear that in the event of war nuclear weapons would have to be used at the outset. What they feared was that war might find them with neither troops nor atomic weapons or that out of political considerations they might be ordered to resist without using nuclear weapons only to be given permission after the battle had been lost. If nuclear weapons were to substitute for manpower, their war plans had to be altered accordingly. Accordingly, in December, 1954, anticipating the cuts to come, the North Atlantic Council granted permission to the military to base their planning on nuclear weapons.¹¹

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Thus the strategic situation facing NATO changed completely, and to this new situation there has still been no solution. Nuclear weapons of a range of types are present on both sides of the line in substantial numbers, and Western preparations have not allowed for any wars but nuclear ones. NATO forces along the line in Germany number no more than 16 to 18 combat-ready divisions, the actual number depending on how one defines "combat-ready". The Soviet Union, on the other hand, has 22 divisions in Eastern Germany, which might be increased without attracting attention to about 30 with Eastern German troops or other divisions stationed nearby. Further back, in the Soviet homeland, is the remainder of their regular army of 175 divisions and reserve forces that could bring their total strength after mobilization to something well over 300 divisions. To these must finally be added the armed forces of the satellites, though there is some question as to their political reliability.

### III

What can be done about NATO's strategic dilemma? There seem to be three alternatives. The first would be not a military strategy but a political arrangement that would either make NATO's strategic problem more susceptible to solution or eliminate it entirely --some form of negotiated settlement with the Soviets about the status of Europe or a withdrawal on the part of Europeans from the Great Power struggle. The second would be to help the European members of NATO acquire enough independent strength either to stand alone or to meet certain kinds of threats more effectively. The third would be to strengthen the NATO army, as its Commander General Norstad has proposed, so that it would no longer be so dependent on nuclear weapons in defending Europe against less-than-total aggressions.

The first possibility, as suggested above, is not a military strategy but a political arrangement. Recent Soviet statements seem to indicate that it might soon be possible to arrive at some sort of negotiated agreement about the status of Europe. And even if the Great Powers did not arrive at such an agreement, the Europeans might themselves decide on a policy of neutrality, choosing both the role and limited political objectives usually associated with only very small powers. The result would be the neutrality of Europe and its partial demilitarization, a possibility that seems outlandish at first glance but one that the Europeans might conceivably come to view as not only wise but even inevitable. Certainly there is truth in the general proposition that there are conditions in which a whole region may sit outside the Cold War arena with no greater risk of being the victim of aggression than if it participates as a member of one of the great blocs. The question is whether these conditions now exist in Europe or are likely to emerge as a result of impending developments.

One scheme that cannot be ignored is George Kennan's proposal for "disengagement," a negotiated neutralization of Europe agreed to by both the United States and the Soviet Union.¹² What Kennan proposed was, first a mutual withdrawal of Soviet and American troops; second, a reunification of Germany; and, third, the demilitarization of Europe as a whole. Although Kennan and the other advocates of disengagement are not so naive, the appeal of this proposal is its suggestion that the Cold War can be settled and the satellites liberated in a singly stroke. There seems to be no disagreement on the general proposition that Soviet troops are essential to the maintenance of Soviet control over the satellites and that if those troops are ever withdrawn in circumstances that make the withdrawal seem genuine, political changes are bound to follow. In some of the Eastern European countries these changes would undoubtedly be on the model of recent events in Poland--a gradual liberalization carried out with one eye cocked for Soviet reactions and the end result a Communist

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state still basically friendly to the Soviet Union. This pattern of only partial
change would seem especially likely in countries in which the fear of a new German
Reich parallels fear of the Soviets. But just as surely as political change in
some of the liberated countries would be moderate, in others it would be violent.
Once the Soviet troops were gone, the people might not remain content with a mere
liberalization of the Communist regime and might rise to sweep it away entirely.

Seen in this light, disengagement is basically an aggressive policy. Certainly
Khrushchev would so regard it. In his Minsk speech in January of 1958, Khrushchev
referred to Eisenhower's request that the agenda for a summit meeting include the
question of the Eastern European countries and the reunification of Germany. Khrushchev then said, "What then do Messrs. Eisenhower and Dulles want? Evidently they
wish to meet us and have a talk about the liquidation of the people's democratic
regime in the people's democracies. They evidently wish that we should give up
socialist building and that we should restore the capitalist order." For a summit
conference to yield positive results, he said, "the status quo should be recognized;
that there are two systems of states in the world, the capitalist and the socialist
...... If the status quo is not recognized, if the socialist states are ignored, their
sovereign rights violated, and their domestic affairs interfered in, then it is, of
course, absolutely impossible to come to terms." Such a policy, says Khrushchev, is
a "policy of war."

The assumption behind the hope that disengagement would settle everything is
that the principal motive force behind Soviet foreign policy is fear, this may well
be true, but the significant question is not whether the fear exists but whether it
can be erased by some dramatic change in Western foreign policy. The Soviet Union
is and thinks of itself as a revolutionary force aimed precisely at upsetting the
old order and remaking the world in its new image. It seems reasonable to suppose
that they know that upsetting the world order is the logic of revolutionary movements; that they know that it is their intention to remake the world if they can;
and that they therefore expect the West to oppose them and thus to be a threat to
them. It would probably be an absurdity to the Soviets, knowing themselves and
their own goals, if the West did not. As a result, it seems idle to suppose that
we might remove their fears by an act of foreign policy no matter how dramatic. Indeed, the more dramatic and radical the act, the more it would be likely to alarm
them.¹⁴ Unilateral disarmament, for example, would undoubtedly be viewed as a trick
of some kind, all the more alarming because of its "true" goal being so well hidden.
The point is simply that the basic Soviet attitudes, both their ambitions and their
fears, do not seem to be the kind that can be changed by negotiation. For the Soviets
to accept a general and final settlement is to give up their ultimate goals and the
driving force of their society. Peaceful coexistence in the sense that the Christians
and the Mohammedans or the Catholics and the Protestants finally came to accept it
means that neither side can continue to entertain ideas of one world ideologically
united. For the Soviets, peaceful coexistence in this sense would mean finding some
new goal around which both their movement and state could be oriented. And no re-
appraisal could be more agonizing; indeed, so fundamental a reorientation would be in
itself a form of self-destruction.

Ironically, indeed, far from settling the Cold War, disengagement might well
create a more unstable situation in Europe than the present one. Some have argued
that the Soviets would not agree to withdraw their troops if they intended immediately to return. This may be quite correct, but could the Soviets discipline themselves
into standing by while a Communist regime was overthrown and the security system they
have built out of the fruits of their victory in World War II was destroyed? It seems
unlikely. Even the United States, after all, found it impossible to accept the political and diplomatic consequences that would have flowed from the loss of South

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Korea and rushed to meet the Communist attack in spite of its earlier decision that Korea was a strategic liability not worth including within the perimeter of defense. It seems obvious that a Soviet intervention following a mutual withdrawal would create a level of tension that intervention before it, as in Hungary, would never do.

However, as Kennan and the other advocates of disengagement point out, there are several sets of possible circumstances in which a mutual withdrawal might be both stable and desirable to both sides. The Rapacki plan, the Soviet decision to turn Berlin over to the East Germans, and Khrushchev's hints that he might be willing to withdraw his troops from Eastern Germany all indicate that the Soviet Union's attitude towards Germany may be in the process of change. Certainly the Soviets have reason to be uneasy about the course of events in the Germanies, although it is also possible that the change in Khrushchev's attitude is due not so much to the course of events in Germany as to his growing confidence that he will soon be able to accomplish with the threat of missiles what he now must do with troops. For the West, on the other hand, there are considerable benefits in even a partial withdrawal of Soviet troops and perhaps even more in the reunification of Germany. Indeed, the benefits may be great enough to justify our agreeing to German neutrality, with certain safeguards. Such an arrangement would not solve NATO's strategic dilemma, but it might make it more susceptible to solution.

The possibility must also be considered that the Europeans might decide that conditions had so changed that it was both possible and desirable for them to adopt neutrality as their policy. If this decision were rational, at least three conditions would have to be met so long as the rivalry continues between East and West. First, the neutral country or region could not be a center of potential power that could threaten the Soviet Union or that would provide sufficient additional power if incorporated into the Soviet bloc to shift the world balance. Second, it could not be located geographically so as to be for one side of the other an essential base or so as to be the inevitable battlefield given the existing level of military technology. Third, there must be a willingness in the particular nations to withdraw from world political affairs, either accepting the inconsequential role of a very small power or at least pursuing the kind of "active neutralism" India follows, which itself requires a special geographic and political situation. Finland, Sweden, Austria, Afghanistan, and India all meet these prerequisites, and it is not really surprising that the Soviet Union has not violated their neutrality. The Soviet goal of a world system in its own image does not require that it physically occupy every country in the world, but only that it eliminate all rival centers of power. Once the elimination of competing power centers were accomplished, all else would follow naturally. If the Soviets defeated and occupied the United States, for example, they would have no need to occupy South America or even to insist that all the South American countries adopt the Communist form of government. The world political system would be on the Soviet model; and, secure from threat to that system, the Soviets would have no need to shoulder the burdens of enforcing conformity in what would be inconsequential detail. It follows that if a country neither contributed to a rival power center nor was an element in the struggle between the big two, it might well come to regard neutrality as a feasible policy for it to pursue.

At present, it seems clear that Europe meets none of these conditions. Taken as a whole, the European economy--with its productive plant, resources, and highly skilled population--is a center of potential power rivaling the big two. If integrated and organized as a single political entity, it would itself constitute a potential threat to the Soviet Union. On the other hand, a defenseless Europe would be a great temptation since it would, if incorporated into the Soviet system, shift the world balance of power radically. At the present level of military technology, Europe also remains a strategic area. The limitations in range of present aircraft and operational missiles make it essential that we have SAC bases in North Africa and the United Kingdom,

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if not on the European continent proper; and it is not entirely certain that in an all-out war fighting would cease after each side had expended its strategic bombers and missiles. European attitudes, finally, though shaken by the decline in Europe's relative power and by horror at the devastation that an atomic war would wreak are not yet so neutralist as to permit their countries to abdicate their place in world affairs. France and Western Germany in particular seem determined to continue having a voice.

But it is also true that all this might change. The doubts that have arisen because of Europe's declining power and the threat of atomic destruction may be only the first step. The increasing burdens of the arms race are a powerful incentive to neutralism. Then, too, if Europe falls too far behind, it seems unavoidable that their views will be given less and less weight in allied councils. This will contribute still more to their feelings of helplessness and the tendency to resign to what might seem inevitable anyway. The principal reservation here concerns the division of Germany. A movement towards neutrality in Western Europe, since it would not require a Soviet withdrawal from all of Eastern Europe, might change the Soviet attitude towards reunification and present a new Western German government with an opportunity to negotiate. But so long as Germany is divided it seems unlikely that its people would be content with the silent and passive role a successful policy of neutrality would require.

On the question of strategic position, the coming of the polaris and intercontinental missiles will probably change the significance of Europe's geographical location sharply. If it then appears that the intercontinental battle of missiles will indeed be decisive without a land battle of any consequence and if radar warning is accomplished by earth satellites or some other means not requiring European installations, from the European point of view still another prerequisite for neutrality would have been met.¹⁵ The factor that seems least likely of all to change radically is Europe's potential power. Although it seems unlikely that the Europeans themselves will in the foreseeable future be able to integrate Europe and so organize its great potential, Europe's attraction remains strong for the Soviets, who undoubtedly could organize it. In addition, Europe, with its long history as the center of Western power and dominance, is a political symbol of great potency. The only reservation to a conclusion that Europe will retain its importance as a power center would appear to lie in the overwhelming destructiveness of nuclear weapons. If it turns out that a finite number of these weapons and their carriers is sufficient to accomplish the certain and complete destruction of either side and that this level of armaments is well within the capabilities of both the Soviet and American economies, then an additional increment of economic potential may no longer have any significance to the balance of world power. Changes so radical as to lead the Europeans to adopt neutrality as a policy seem remote, but they are not incontrollable.

## IV

The second alternative is a policy designed to make the European members of NATO not only strong, but independently so, which might permit some alteration in the role of NATO including a decentralization of the responsibility for meeting certain of the threats confronting it. Since Europe seems unwilling or unable to integrate, as a practical matter making Europe independently strong would require the United States to help at least the larger members of NATO acquire nuclear weapons and missiles. Presumably the weapons to be included in a nuclear arms aid would not be the liquid-fueled IRBM's, which are so vulnerable and take so long to launch, but the solid-fueled polaris, when it becomes available, and battlefield atomic rockets like the Honest John and the Little John.¹⁶

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With both battlefield and intermediate range missiles, what kinds of threats could the European members of NATO reasonably be expected to meet? Even when they had nuclear arms, the European countries would presumably have to maintain conventional ground forces at least as large as they do now. This would mean that they could be expected to meet aggression from one of the Eastern European satellites, and to meet it in exactly the same terms in which the attack was mounted. Western Germany, for example, with the conventional forces it is already building could be expected to meet a conventional assault from either Eastern Germany or Czechoslovakia, or even a combination of the two. With atomic arms, it could also be expected to meet an atomic assault launched by the satellites alone.

But it is doubtful whether a single country could by itself stand up to an attack by the Soviet Union, even a conventional attack. In a conventional attack, the 22 Soviet divisions in Eastern Germany by themselves could probably defeat the 12 division force Western Germany is now building, and even if Germany succeeded in fielding a larger force, the Soviets could more than match it by bringing up divisions from their almost unlimited reserves. And atomic weapons would be of little help. If Western Germany initiated the use of battlefield atomic weapons, the Soviet Union would undoubtedly respond in kind. It would be Western German territory that would suffer, and the superior Soviet manpower would probably be decisive in a limited atomic war as it would in conventional war.

It also seems doubtful whether Western Germany could meet a clearly limited challenge by threatening atomic reprisal on the Soviet homeland. If the Soviet attack is quite clearly designed to occupy the whole of Western Germany or to destroy it from a distance with missiles, nuclear reprisal may make sense for the Germans, although not for the rest of NATO. But a challenge at this peculiar level, total for the particular country but limited for the rest of NATO, is a special case to be discussed below. If the attack clearly does not threaten German survival--if, for example, the Soviets charge Western Germany with fomenting a revolt in Eastern Germany from a base in Bavaria andsieze the area in a punitive action confined solely to conventional forces--then Germany will probably find it difficult to respond by threatening the Soviet homeland even if it has the means to do so. In the first place, even with a very large supply of nuclear weapons and intermediate range missiles at its disposal, Germany could not hope to hurt the Soviet Union as badly as the Soviets could hurt Germany. In the second place, in this case when the threat is just as clearly limited for the Germans as it is for the rest of NATO, the German government will face the same dilemma confronting NATO as a whole. If the Western Germans retaliated by attacking cities in the Soviet Union, their action would undoubtedly bring down a counter-retaliation on Bonn and the Ruhr. The force used, and the consequences of using it, would be grossly inappropriate to the need. The conclusion would seem to be that nuclear weapons would not help the Europeans very much in meeting a limited attack by the Soviet Union, even if the Soviets confined their attack to conventional weapons. For limited wars, and perhaps especially those in which only conventional weapons are used, the Europeans will probably continue to need American help.¹⁷

To summarize, then, sharing nuclear weapons and missiles with our NATO allies would enable them to meet limited nuclear attacks by the Soviet satellites and would also, of course, permit them to fight more effectively alongside American troops in an all-out war, assuming that ground forces have a role in all-out war. On the other hand, nuclear weapons of their own would probably not enable the European members of NATO to cope by themselves with a Soviet aggression, whether conventional or nuclear, that is clearly limited--an attack that does not threaten the particular country with either annihilation or conquest.

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But there may be other benefits. As suggested above, one of the most persistently stubborn questions facing the West is how to respond to a Soviet attack limited so far as NATO as a whole is concerned but total for the particular member against whom the attack is directed. How can the West meet the threat of missile blackmail against France, for example, or Western Germany? If the United States threatened massive retaliation, France or Western Germany might well be encouraged to resist, and the Soviets might back down. But, as suggested earlier, it will be difficult to make this threat credible to the Soviet Union, especially when the further development of missiles makes the United States less dependent on bases overseas. The question is bound to be raised whether an American President would find it possible to carry through the threat, knowing that doing so would bring on the deaths of many millions of Americans and devastation to the continental United States from which it might never recover. And the mere existence of the question casts doubt on the credibility of our threat, which is the essence of its effectiveness as a deterrent.¹⁸ The Soviets will also see opportunities for posing the challenge in ambiguous terms calculated to divide the West on the moral and legal justifications for retaliation--in the midst of a revolt in Eastern Germany, for example, and after the Soviets have built up a case charging Western Germany with intervention. The tactics of long-range attack are enormously complex; but there seems to be a reasonable probability, provided that both sides take certain measures to protect the means of reprisal, that the nation initiating a nuclear strike will have its own vitals ripped to pieces.¹⁹ At the same time, the greatest hope of escaping with a level of damage from which recovery is possible lies in being the first to strike. This means that using nuclear reprisal as a deterrent, that is, to threaten retaliation to check the enemy and so give him the opportunity to launch a first strike himself, is very dangerous. For all these reasons, it will be difficult to keep the Soviets convinced that the United States will indeed find it reasonable to launch a thermonuclear reprisal for anything less than an attack that threatens its own survival.

Thus it seems probable that over time the only threats of nuclear reprisals the Soviet Union will find consistently credible are those that come from the nations whose own survival is at stake.²⁰ For example, if in some future crisis the Soviet Union threatens an attack that is clearly designed to re-unite the two Germanies as a Soviet satellite but is just as clearly designed to be limited to that purpose, the only nation that may be able to convince the Soviet Union that it will meet this peculiar challenge that is total for Western Germany but limited for the rest of NATO is probably Western Germany itself. And the threat of nuclear reprisal seems to be the only way that even Western Germany can meet it.

What the country attempting to deter the Soviet Union has at stake is thus the first element determining whether its threat of nuclear reprisal will be credible to the Soviets. The second element would be the effectiveness of the retaliatory forces the country actually had at its disposal. Could Western Germany, for example, be equipped with and could it maintain a retaliatory force large enough to be a credible threat to the Soviet Union? Certainly it would be difficult to equip each of the European allies with a manned bomber force large enough for that purpose or for them to maintain it.²¹ It would also seem unlikely that the purpose could be met with a force of liquid-fueled missiles, which are difficult to maintain, require a dangerously long time to launch, and are very vulnerable. The only possibility, as we have said, would seem to be solid-fueled missiles of the polaris type. These are not yet operational, but assuming that when they are they do have these characteristics of easy maintenance and launching and also lend themselves to underground installation, there still remains the question of whether they would constitute a serious threat to the Soviets. There

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is no doubt that in a thermonuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and a country like Western Germany it would be Western Germany that would suffer most. Its territory is relatively so small, its people and industry so concentrated, that one must assume that even if they institute a shelter program, their casualties would be enormous, perhaps on the order of 50 percent of their population or more, and that the bulk of their industry would be destroyed. On the other hand, the most that the Germans could hope for would be to destroy a few of the Soviet Union's largest cities--perhaps five or ten. These contain only a small proportion of either the Soviet population or its productive plant, and their destruction would hardly constitute a crippling blow. In the first few weeks after Hitler's attack in World War II, for example, the Soviet Union lost a much higher proportion of both its population and plant by occupation--40 percent of its population and 60 percent of its coal, iron, and aluminum output--but fought on, eventually to win. But even five or ten cities would be a high price to pay for a limited victory--one, as in our example, that destroyed Western Germany but left the United States unharmed. On balance, the capacity to destroy five to ten Soviet cities would seem to be an effective deterrent against this particular level of missile intimidation.

There may also be another kind of threat against which a modest but independent nuclear strength would be an effective deterrent. At present, an assault that is obviously directed towards the conquest of the whole of Europe is probably the one kind of aggression other than an attack on the continental United States itself that would be most likely to trigger an American reprisal on the Soviet homeland. We will continue for some time to be dependent on SAC bases in North Africa and the United Kingdom, if not Europe proper, and both sides must also assume that at present the incorporation of Western Europe into the Soviet bloc would radically shift the balance of world power, as we have said. The advantages of being the first to strike with nuclear weapons are so great that the Soviet Union could not afford to risk the kind of attack that threatens American survival in this way without combining that attack with a strike on the American means of reprisal. Similarly, these same advantages of a first strike would be a compelling argument to the United States in the face of an attack that would not only shift the balance but would be regarded by much of the world as a justifiable provocation. For all these reasons, it would seem that the Soviet Union is unlikely to launch a massive conventional assault on the whole of Europe without combining it with a strike on the continental United States, at least for the moment.

On the other hand, when the United States is no longer dependent on overseas bases, the Soviets might feel that an attack on the whole of Europe would be less certain to bring down American reprisal. They might be very wrong in this conclusion: the psychological stake the United States has in Europe's survival is very high and America could hardly survive as the kind of society it is except in a wider world of which Europe is an essential part. But the Soviets may not see this, and the question is one of making the threat of reprisal credible to the Soviets. Here again, it might be an independent nuclear strength in Europe that would turn the trick. Although the Soviets might doubt that the United States would respond with a nuclear reprisal, they could not be so sure about the Europeans and would again have to consider whether the price was not too high for a limited gain.

An independent nuclear strength in Europe, in sum, may go a long way in helping to meet the threat of missile intimidation against a single country and in deterring the Soviets from an assault on the whole of Europe. But the case need not be put solely in terms of a showdown. In the first place, a relationship of dependency in an alliance is a source of resentment and instability, and it is

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important that all the NATO members retain the dignity of a substantial role in their own defense. In the second place, there is a whole range of crises less stark than a Soviet missile threat in which events may well turn on the self-confidence and steady nerves of the NATO countries on the forward line. The danger, in other words, lies almost as much in the political discounting of a Soviet attack as in the attack itself. If the European members of NATO are completely dependent on the United States to counter a Soviet threat against themselves at all levels, any doubt about the willingness of the United States to come to their defense with means appropriate to the particular level of threat will leave them with what will appear to be no alternative to submission. The point is simply that a measure of independent strength in each of the NATO allies is likely to contribute to the cohesiveness of the alliance in several sets of circumstances, ranging downward from the ultimate threat even though that strength may not be completely adequate for meeting the ultimate threat itself.

The possibility of meeting missile and other forms of Soviet blackmail is a persuasive argument for nuclear sharing. But there are also disadvantages. The cost of developing and maintaining a missile force appropriate to these purposes for each of the NATO allies would undoubtedly be high. There is not only the initial cost of the missiles, but also the cost of their emplacements (which would probably have to be underground) and of the electronic warning and control systems needed to operate them. Just how high this cost would be is a technical question that only those on the inside can answer.

There are also other kinds of cost. There is no question that increasing the number of countries armed with nuclear weapons will add to the risks that some local outbreak of violence will spiral into all-out war. Still, the danger is not really so crude and direct as it is sometimes pictured. For example, it will not be as easy as it may seem for a small nation to use atomic weapons to trick the big two into destroying each other. If Argentina sets off an atomic bomb in New York's Grand Central Station, no one is going to be fooled into triggering retaliation against the Soviet Union. Of one thing we can be sure; if the Soviets ever do decide to launch a thermonuclear strike on the continental United States, there will be no trouble whatsoever in recognizing it for what it is. If the Soviets ever do decide to strike, they could risk nothing less than a full-scale, coordinated attack. Thus there will not be one bomb, but hundreds--coming as nearly simultaneously as the Soviets can manage it, and from as many different directions. The danger in the spread of nuclear weapons is more the greater power the leaders of the irresponsible smaller nations--the petty dictators and uncompromising nationalists--would have to do more effectively what they can already do in part. These leaders already have the power to start wars that might drag in the big two and so start a spiral into a world struggle. With atomic weapons at their disposal, they might be more than ever tempted to adventure, and the wars they fight will be incomparably more destructive. But the greatest difference would seem to lie in the fact that the line between conventional and nuclear weapons would have already been passed before the great powers get drawn into the fighting and in the difficulties this would create in confining it.

Another cost is the obverse of the advantage in the possibility that nuclear weapons might enable a country like France or Western Germany to stand up to a Soviet missile threat. If one of these countries had enough nuclear strength to threaten reprisal for an attack on itself, it could conceivably so manipulate events as to commit the United States to a war it did not want. Here again, the problem is not so crude as it is sometimes pictured. Even with a substantial force of missiles and nuclear warheads, Western Germany will not be so powerful that it can have much hope of accomplishing the reunification of Germany by force. There

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is certainly danger here; of that there can be no doubt. But our experience with both Chiang Kai-shek and Synghman Rhee indicates that it is a danger we can manage if we are determined to manage it. The greater danger would seem to lie in circumstances in which it is the Soviet Union that is making the aggressive moves and our ally is, perhaps, entirely too self-confident and determined. If through accident or miscalculation events did come to a showdown, could the Soviet Union afford to suffer a nuclear blow and the consequent weakening of her strength without making sure that the United States, which is the principal enemy, suffered an equal reduction of strength? If not, sharing nuclear weapons with our European allies will also mean sharing the power of deciding the great question of war and peace. And this is a possible effect of nuclear sharing the United States would wish to ponder long and carefully.

On the other hand, there is some question whether the United States actually has the power to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Nuclear technology is apparently progressing very rapidly, becoming simpler and more economical every day. Reading between the lines of the scientific periodicals, one suspects that this may be particularly true of thermonuclear weapons. France will soon become a nuclear power. Sweden has announced that it has the technical capacity to be one, and unless the prospects of a world-wide disarmament agreement improve, domestic opposition to a decision either to manufacture or purchase the weapons is not likely to prevail. And Switzerland, which already has a short-range missile, will not be far behind. It is a long distance between having a few first-generation atomic bombs and having a full thermonuclear capacity with the long-range missiles and electronic control and warning systems that make a nuclear power in the full sense, but the trend is there even if it takes two or three decades to reach its culmination. Barring an international agreement for a test ban and a limitation on production and trade in nuclear weapons, we are faced with a trend that is apparently going to pick up speed rather rapidly. In such circumstances wise statesmanship may consist not in trying to hold back the tide but in anticipating and channelling it to positive purposes. It is worth considering whether it might not be better to approach the nuclear age gradually, building up precedents, experience, a sense of responsibility, and, possibly, some wider political organization. There are obvious risks in a policy of attempting to pick and choose the members of the atomic club, but there may be even greater ones in attempting to hold things exactly as they are only to have fifteen or twenty nations suddenly acquire the weapons overnight.

V

The final alternative is that proposed by General Lauris Norstad as Supreme Allied Commander of the NATO forces. Norstad has called for a force of 30 divisions, armed with both conventional and nuclear weapons. These divisions are to be a standing force, ready and on the forward line at all times.²³ Behind them would presumably be a certain number of divisions manned principally by reservists, though not so many as was envisioned in the Lisbon force goals. The Norstad proposal calls for a total force about 25 percent less than the 96 divisions approved at Lisbon. In addition, in the Norstad proposal a higher percentage of the total would be standing forces and the reserve divisions could be mobilized on shorter notice.

As Norstad describes them, the purposes this force of 30 divisions is to serve are three. The first purpose is to hold the frontier in an all-out war while the nuclear retaliatory force does its work--which would take, it is apparently assumed, no more than three or four weeks at the most.

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The second purpose of the 30 division force, according to Norstad, is to give NATO the means of dealing firmly with a probing action to achieve a political advantage or with a swift movement designed, for example, to seize a bit of Western Germany and so face the West with a *fait accompli*. With 30 NATO divisions on the line, the Soviets could not accomplish this without using a substantial force, which would raise the question of nuclear reprisal. Thus the 30 divisions act as a deterrent against minor aggressions and blackmail by probing actions and at the same time provide enough resistance to clarify the meaning of an attack. They would give the NATO commanders and governments the time needed to assess the situation and to decide upon the appropriate response.

The third purpose is a partial answer to the need for an intermediate response between nuclear reprisal on the one hand and a skirmish to confine a border incident. In Norstad's words, "Should we fail to maintain reasonable shield strength on the NATO frontier, then massive retaliation could be our only response to an aggression, regardless of its nature. There is real danger that inability to deal decisively with limited or local attacks could lead to our piecemeal defeat or bring on a general war. If, on the other hand, we have means to meet less-than-ultimate threats with a decisive, but less-than-ultimate response, the very possession of this ability would discourage the threat, and would thereby provide us with essential political and military maneuverability."²⁴

Norstad has denied that he means by this that a limited war in Europe is possible.²⁵ But this denial is probably to be explained by the fact that his public pronouncements on NATO strategy must be addressed not only to the Western audience but also to the Soviet one. While he puts forward his reasons to support a goal of 30 divisions, he cannot forget that he has only 16 to 18 divisions on hand. This is not sufficient strength to fight a limited war involving the Soviets, and he must be careful to put them on notice that at the moment even a limited action may bring down nuclear reprisal. Norstad clearly recognizes and fears the fact that in the face of a limited attack designed to present the West with a *fait accompli* we would have only the choice between acquiescing to the seizure or invoking nuclear reprisal. It also seems clear that he fears that in the event the disadvantages in a nuclear response might throw the decision against their use. He must argue for a force that will enable him to meet a limited attack with a limited response, but he cannot forget his other audience and so must leave the matter in some doubt--enough, it is hoped, to operate as a deterrent.²⁶

The thinking behind this proposal obviously takes into account the greater mobility and firepower of present-day divisions as compared with those of World War II. But it also seems to be based on two other propositions. The first is that a Soviet assault on the whole of Europe, even if it were limited geographically to just Europe and in weapons to conventional types, would still require the West to call down nuclear reprisal on the Soviet homeland. The second proposition is that a war involving the use of strategic nuclear weapons would be very short.

The first of these propositions might be open to argument. If the Allies had a standing force of 30 divisions, the 22 Soviet divisions in Eastern Germany would require substantial reinforcement before they could launch a successful attack. But moving a division with its equipment and supplies requires an impressive amount of road or rail transport, and the more troops forward the more transport is required to support them. Indeed, the logistics problem is such that it is doubtful if the Soviets could bring up any more than 30 or 40 divisions in a 30-day period. Although the Soviets might be able to bring in a few divisions--say, half a dozen--without attracting attention, any further movement of troops could hardly go unnoticed. If the Soviets attempted this reinforcement before initiating

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hostilities, the allies would probably have about 3 weeks warning in which they, too, could mobilize and even bring troops from the central reserve in the United States. If the Soviets attacked first, and then began their build-up, the Allied situation might be even better, depending on how the initial battle went. In either case, the NATO nations would have time to bring up their own reinforcements. There is some reason to believe, in other words, that a 30 division force on the line might be able to cope with a massive conventional assault without calling down reprisal, after all. What would make it possible would be first of all more plentiful means of transport for the reinforcements and a modest number of divisions manned by reservists to be mobilized after D-day in addition to the standing army divisions which are already planned.

It is sometimes suggested that although there is some doubt about holding the Soviets in a conventional war with a force of 30 divisions, General Norstad could defend Europe without calling for an attack on the Soviet homeland if he met the attacking force on the ground with battlefield atomic weapons. The proposition is that even though the Soviets would then use battlefield nuclear weapons, too, the advantage would be with NATO.

The question is whether nuclear weapons do indeed permit the substitution of firepower for manpower when both sides are using them. If there is a case for relying on battlefield nuclear weapons, even if it means raising the level of fighting from conventional, it must offer the possibility of holding off a force that is actually superior in numbers, as the 96 division force of Lisbon could have held off a much larger force at the time that it was proposed. What would happen in a limited nuclear war if the Soviets reinforced their present 22 divisions from their great reserves? There is no doubt that atomic weapons are bringing about a revolution in tactics, in the way a division will fight as well as in its size and composition. Current thinking emphasizes firepower and mobility, much smaller divisions and a higher level of mechanization. It is thought that division fronts will be about twice what they were in World War II, but that they will be greater in depth by a factor of as much as four. About the same proportion of reserves are assumed to be necessary, but a much greater number of replacements for casualties. And these replacements will probably have to be not by individual soldiers but by whole battle groups (a new unit larger than the old battalion but smaller than the old regiment), since in atomic warfare a hit will probably wipe out the unit as a whole. If this thinking is correct, atomic weapons would not reduce the requirements for manpower, but may actually increase them, as General Ridgway has contended.²⁷

There is nothing to indicate, in other words, that a good, big atomic army would not be able to defeat a good, little atomic army. What may be even more significant for the defense of Europe, however, is the suggestion implied in these tactics that it may no longer be possible to fight a battle successfully with a static defense of terrain, the tactics which made it possible to plan on the 96 divisions of the Lisbon force goals holding off a force of several times that size. Although atomic weapons seem to favor the defense in that a force massing for an attack would make a vulnerable target, they may favor the attacking force even more if the defense is a static one. This indicates that the defense, too, must be mobile--in all probability a further development of the mobile defense tactics used in Korea at the time of the fighting around Pusan. Here the "line" was defined by outposts and active patrolling, and an attack was met not so much by a static defense as by a counterattack from reserves that were larger than usual and more mobile. With these tactics a highly mechanized, better trained and equipped force can undoubtedly hold off a force numerically superior but not so well equipped and trained. Even when the forces are equal in equipment and training, a defense using these tactics could probably hold off a force superior in numbers

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for a time. But given the blanket destructiveness of nuclear weapons, the time is likely to be rather short, and then the superior numbers seem certain to carry the day. It may well be, in sum, that the NATO forces will have a better chance of equalizing the Soviets' superiority of forces in being through superior technology in a conventional war than in a nuclear one. In nuclear war the destructive-ness of the weapon is overwhelming. But in conventional war, flexible and sustained power--moving men and materials and concentrating and shifting fires in mass-depends upon an ability to orchestrate a vast intricacy of tools, gadgets, skills, and administrative techniques. If there is an advantage to be gained from our more highly skilled population, it would seem to be here. Although Soviet troops are undoubtedly better trained than Chinese or North Koreans, it is worth pondering the fact that at one time during the Korean war 12 UN and South Korean divisions were on the offensive against what was the equivalent, even when differences in size are considered, of several times as many enemy divisions.

There is also a possibility of using nuclear bombs and missiles to interdict the Soviet lines of communication and so prevent them from bringing up their reserves. In an all-out war, of course, interdiction might play an important role. But the argument here is that the possibility of preventing reinforcement would justify raising the level of conventional war to nuclear. The point is that using nuclear weapons to bomb the supply lines running across Poland and Eastern Germany would still not raise the war to the ultimate level because Soviet territory itself would remain inviolate. Here again, the Soviets would undoubtedly retaliate by bombing our supply lines across France, with all the additional destruction this would bring to Europe. Then, too, if the Soviets began their build-up as a" "normal rotation of troops" before launching an attack, it would pose a nice question for the West--whether and when to initiate hostilities itself. But the most formidable doubt is whether interdiction would work effectively enough to justify changing the level of the war. Successful interdiction requires extremely accurate and up-to-date intelligence and high-precision strikes. It is much more than a one-shot affair, requiring repeated attacks and sustained pressure over the whole campaign. It seems doubtful whether our intelligence, our manned aircraft, which would have a reconnaissance if not a bombing role, or our present missile systems are up to these requirements. And even when all the factors are favorable for interdiction, a determined and ingenious enemy can find ways of dribbling through a build-up of almost any given size if he has enough time, as we learned in Korea.

By way of summary, then, it seems unlikely, on the one hand, that Norstad's 30 division force would do any better with battlefield atomic weapons than it would with conventional. On the other hand, against the purely conventional attack, its chances are uncertain, and one's judgment may be mixed. But in spite of these qualifications, a 30 division force may still make sense. Although we cannot be certain that in an all-out war the devastation of the Soviet and American homelands would not be followed by a land battle in which the vastly greater number of Soviet divisions would be decisive, there is a strong probability that such a war would be a short one in which 30 divisions could protect Europe from occupation. This may be a questionable benefit after the devastation of an all-out exchange of H-bombs, but a larger force could not stop the bombs and missiles either.

A 30 division force could also deal with a probing action, as General Norstad says, and prevent a swift movement designed to present us with a *fait accompli*. Since it roughly matches the force the Soviets would be able to gather without a large-scale troop movement, the 30 division force would also seem to be completely adequate for the functions of clarifying the meaning of an outbreak of violence and giving us time to assess the situation and decide on an appropriate response.

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But there is still another possible benefit. Even though the 30 division force might not be able to meet successfully a massive conventional assault on the whole of Europe launched as a coordinated attack at the outset of an aggression, it would seem to have a good chance of enabling us to meet a limited war that grew slowly into a war for the whole of Europe, which might be the more likely contingency. The argument mentioned above that a 30 division standing force plus a modest number of reservist divisions might cope with a massive, conventional assault after all applies here with even greater force. If the Soviets had only their present force of 22 divisions when the fighting started and then began to reinforce it, a 30 division NATO force with skill and luck might well delay the Soviet advance until the West, too, could bring up additional forces.

Here again, it must be added, there would seem to be little advantage in initiating the use of battlefield atomic weapons. Ground atomic warfare would appear to be so fluid, so far-ranging and destructive, that it seems doubtful whether the NATO forces could hold long enough for reinforcements to be brought to bear, or that the communications, port, and logistical facilities needed to land and transport reinforcements could be preserved sufficiently intact to handle them. And it seems to make even less sense to try to use battlefield atomic weapons as a way of bailing us out if we lose in the opening conventional battle. Crippled and disorganized, we would probably be in a worse position trying to survive an exchange of nuclear weapons than we would in continuing to fight in conventional terms.

Most of the benefits of a 30 division force derive from the fact that it is roughly equal to the force that the Soviets now have on the forward line or could put there quietly, without large-scale troop movements. So long as the Soviets maintained this force at its present level, as they have done since just after the end of World War II, a NATO force of 30 divisions would retain its validity. But if the Soviets increased their forces on the forward line, the NATO forces would also have to be increased.

VI

Having examined these three possible solutions to NATO's dilemma--Europe's withdrawal from the Great Power struggle through disengagement or a policy of neutrality; the development of independent nuclear strength in the European members of NATO and a corresponding decentralization of NATO's responsibilities for meeting certain kinds of threat; and strengthening the NATO coalition army as proposed by General Norstad--having examined these, the first comment that one must make is that they are not true alternatives. We have distinguished five contingencies: first, all-out war in which an attack on Western Europe is combined with an attack on the United States and nuclear and thermonuclear weapons are used by both sides without restriction; second, a massive, coordinated assault, with either conventional or battlefield nuclear weapons, on the whole of Europe but clearly limited to Europe; third, a limited war that does not begin as an attack on the whole of Europe but grows into a war for Europe; fourth, missile or other blackmail singling out a particular member of the NATO alliance and posing a threat that is total for that country but limited for the rest of NATO; fifth, a probing or punitive action which is clearly limited for all concerned, both the particular country against whom the attack is directed and for NATO as a whole.

Norstad's 30 division force has a possible utility in all-out war in that if the war is very short, 30 divisions might prevent the occupation of Europe although not its destruction. Except for this possibility of preventing occupation but not

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destruction, it is uncertain whether the 30 division force would contribute any more to meeting a massive conventional assault on the whole of Europe than the present force of 16 to 18 divisions. Although it can be argued that it could hold until reinforcements could be brought up, the policy would apparently be to rely on nuclear reprisal anyway. In a limited war that does not begin as a war for Europe but grows slowly into one, the 30 division force would have utility so long as the West also provided some reservist divisions and so long as the Soviets did not increase their standing force in Eastern Germany much beyond its present size of roughly 22 divisions. For missile blackmail, the 30 division force would have no utility at all beyond being an earnest of our determination. But for probing or punitive actions, it would be entirely appropriate, at least so long as the Soviets did not increase their forces in Eastern Germany. Thus Norstad's 30 divisions would be most helpful at the two ends of the scale, in all-out war and especially in limited, conventional war.

The second possibility, helping Europeans build a modest but independent retaliatory force of their own would contribute nothing at all to the capacity to meet probing or punitive actions. By itself, neither would it seem to contribute very much to our capacity for meeting an attack confined to conventional weapons-- except for the possibility, dangerous to the rest of us, that a nation threatened with conquest and occupation anyway might from that threat find the courage to risk its existence in another way, by threatening nuclear reprisal and risking a counter-reprisal. On the other hand, independent nuclear strength might do a great deal in helping to meet other kinds of threat. It would bring some improvement in our capacity to fight an all-out war, mainly through dispersal of our force. More importantly, it would make the threat of reprisal in response to an attack on Europe, whether conventional or nuclear, much more credible to the Soviets. In addition, independent nuclear strength might be the only way of meeting the fourth contingency, that of missile blackmail against a single member of the alliance.

The only true alternatives would therefore appear to be Europe's withdrawal from the Great Power struggle through disengagement or a policy of neutrality, on the one hand, and, on the other, some combination of independent nuclear strength in the European members of NATO and Norstad's 20 division goal, including some reservist divisions and improved transport.

It seems doubtful whether a policy of neutrality for Europe would serve our goals any better than the present tentative and uneasy gamble. A viable "disengagement", on the other hand, is not ours alone to choose, and there are peculiar dangers in our seeking it too eagerly. But we do have the power to strengthen both the European members of NATO individually and NATO as a whole.

Actually, we may not be so far from the combination of independent nuclear strength in the Western European nations and Norstad's 30 division force as it may seem. We have moved a long way towards sharing nuclear weapons by our decision to furnish our allies with missiles of various types while we keep the nuclear warheads nearby under American control. It is not much of a step to turn the warheads over, and it may be doubtful whether we could resist the pressure to do so if an ally were under a threat to its survival. Indeed, there is also the possibility that in the face of a threat to its survival an ally might seize them anyway. Even so, our present compromise on sharing weapons probably does not fulfill the requirements for independent strength. It could, in fact, turn out to be one of those compromises that brings not the best but the worst of both possible worlds, since it spreads the weapons but does not contribute to the dignity of an independent role or to increased responsibility.

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There is also a possibility for improvement in NATO's division strength. If there is a settlement in Algeria, the French divisions taken away from NATO could be returned. With these and what will be produced by Germany as her planned rearament goes forward, NATO might build up to as many as 25 divisions, provided always that there is a halt in the trend toward reliance on nuclear air power at the expense of ground forces, as typified by the United States' "New Look" and the British policy outlined in the 1957 White Paper on Defence.²⁸

Since we are already taking these steps towards sharing nuclear weapons and increasing NATO ground forces, it seems worth considering whether we ought not to take the additional steps to provide the full 30 divisions and independent nuclear strength that offers a hope of breaking NATO's strategic dilemma by permitting it a full range of responses to the different levels of threat confronting it. Certainly the risks of continuing as we are will be high. The consequences of having no more than this grim and narrow choice, of meeting limited aggression with massive realiation and all-out war on the one hand or battlefield atomic weapons on the other, would seem to be an increasing tendency towards a corrosion of European will and the cohesiveness of the alliance. As the mass of the European population comes to understand still better the nature of the strategic choice facing NATO, the pressures on the European governments will undoubtedly increase. In some future crisis, when the Soviet Union attempts to blackmail or intimidate the Western Europeans with a threat to use either its massive ground strength or its missiles, as it did at the time of the Suez crisis, some of the European governments will probably face insistent demands to seek from the Soviets whatever separate deal they can.

All these difficulties seem likely to be magnified by the coming of missiles. When the submarine-based polaris and ICBM's are common, Europe's importance for the defense of at least the continental United States is likely to diminish sharply, as we have said. One can expect, if not a revival of isolationist sentiment in the United States, at least weakened support for maintaining American ground forces in Europe and even greater obstacles to be overcome in a decision to order nuclear reprisal in the case of limited or ambiguous aggression against a European member of NATO. In the circumstances, the doubts in Europe whether the United States will actually come to their defense can also be expected to grow and these in turn will in some future crisis feed the pressures to make a separate deal. The Soviets can be expected to make the most of the situation, pursuing a waiting game for the moment and then when the crisis is upon us playing upon the doubts, the feats, and disunities, making ominous threats and being emboldened by our dilemma to back them up with concrete moves mobilizing and concentrating military force at the points of weakness.

But we ought to be clear that even the combination of Norstad's 30 division force and independent nuclear strength will not be entirely satisfactory as a solution to NATO's dilemma. In the first place, there are the very grave risks in the wider spread of nuclear weapons. In the second place, although the combination of independent nuclear strength and a ready force of 30 divisions might serve rather well in meeting the threat of missile blackmail and most of the possible range of limited aggressions, it does not guarantee that we can avoid widespread destruction to Europe in all contingencies. Our response to either a missile attack on a single member of the alliance or, according to present policy, a massive, coordinated assault on the whole of Europe, even if it were confined to conventional weapons, would require the particular country under threat in the one instance and the whole of NATO in the second to launch a nuclear attack on the Soviet homeland and to suffer their reprisal. The fact that the only alternative for the Western countries in these cases would be to suffer conquest

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may make their threat of reprisal more credible, but we have not avoided the risk of widespread devastation, which was the other horn of the NATO dilemma. And the Soviet always have the option of making their aggression nuclear in the first place. The question is whether there is any way at all of avoiding the risk of devastation, so long as nuclear weapons still exist.

Regarding this question of whether nuclear weapons will be used in future wars, there are two schools of thought that claim to be based on hard-headed realism. One is that the damnable things are here, that they cannot be "undiscovered," and that it is inevitable that they will be used. The argument is that even in a war that starts out as limited, at least a war that involves the Big Two, the stakes would be too high for either side to accept a defeat or even the possibility of a defeat without using all the strength at its command. If either side began through attrition to lose its capacity to launch an all-out attack or if it saw a strategic position necessary to launching that attack under threat, it would feel impelled to use its full strength while it still was able to. The argument is reinforced by the difficulty of maintaining both a nuclear posture and a conventional one simultaneously. It is difficult enough to do, when there are none of the pressures of battle; once the shooting started, maintaining both postures simultaneously might be very nearly impossible. Even more important may be the fact that we have gone so far towards nuclear war that it may already be impossible to turn back. We have, for example, replaced our artillery with missiles, which justify their expense by the vastly increased effectiveness of their warheads.

The other view is that just as the power of nuclear weapons is unprecedented, so is the attitude of nations toward them. In the future, nations in war will approach each other as do porcupines in love--carefully. Since the consequences of nuclear war are incalculable, no nation will use nuclear weapons except in what it feels is a last resort, and at the same time all nations will undoubtedly be exquisitely careful to avoid putting an enemy into a situation of last resort. The fact that we have relied so heavily on nuclear weapons in our military preparations does not negate the point. Indeed, it would not be the first time we have made a decision in a period of calm only to reverse ourselves when faced with the political and military realities of the event. We placed Korea outside the perimeter of defense, but when it was attacked we neither abided by the decision nor initiated the use of atomic weapons but scraped together what forces we could to meet the attack in the terms in which it was posed.

The truth is probably that both views are correct, depending on the circumstances. It seems very likely that a limited war in Europe may become nuclear for any one of several reasons, not all of which lie within our own power to decide. But it may also be true that in most circumstances the waste of life would be to avoid using nuclear weapons--or that we may have to avoid using them, --consequences would bring even greater disaster still.

It is the function of military strategy to serve political goals. If our political goal is to maintain the present balance of world power, a policy of preserving an existing world, then the strategy we seek is defensive, designed to protect what exists and by being able to protect it to deter those who would upset it. It has always been the aim of defensive strategy to demonstrate by one's military posture that an enemy could not win and that one could keep him from winning at less than prohibitive cost to oneself. Our dilemma is that modern weapons have cast doubt on the second condition, that one keep an enemy from winning at less than prohibitive cost to oneself.

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NOTES

1. I am grateful to the following for comments and criticisms: Arnold Wolfers, Warner Schilling, Louis Morton, Howard Wriggins, and Ernest Lefever.

2. See *Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 81st Congress, 1st Session, The North Atlantic Treaty*, Washington, D.C., 1949. The text of the Treaty is contained in *American Foreign Policy, 1950-1955*. Department of State, Washington, D. C., Vol. I, P.812.

3. See, for example, the testimony of General Omar Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the MacArthur hearings. *Military Situation in the Far East, Hearings Before the Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 82nd Congress, 1st Session*, Washington, D. C., 1951, pp. 731-732.

4. There was some coordination of plans between Britain and France in the period prior to World War I, but this was primitive as compared to what has taken place in NATO.

5. See Testimony of Lt. General James M. Gavin, *Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Air Force of the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, 84th Congress, 2nd Session*, Washington, D. C., 1956.

6. "Battlefield" atomic weapons are not necessarily small or low-yield weapons. By the term "battlefield: is meant only that the weapons are used in the theatre of war and not on the Soviet and American homelands. On this point, see Bernard Brodie, "Nuclear Weapons: Strategic or Tactical?", *Foreign Affairs*, January, 1954.

7. This conclusion, however, may be questioned, both as to the extent of fall-out from weapons of this kind and as to the implication that casualties could not be reduced through civil defense measures.

8. It is on this argument that the West is technically superior that Henry Kissinger ultimately rests his case for relying on tactical nuclear weapons in limited wars, although a fairer statement would probably be that he argues not so much that there is an advantage to the West in using nuclear weapons as that it is only through nuclear weapons that we can overcome the disadvantage placed on us by Soviet superiority in forces in being. See his *Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy*, New York, 1957. For a discussion of the possibility that our technological advantage may actually lie not in nuclear war but conventional, see below and my "Coalitions and Alliances," in *Military Policy and National Security*, (Wm. W. Kaufmann edited) Princeton, 1956.

9. For discussions of limited war and the strategic and political implications of the nuclear revolution in military strategy, see the following:
Bernard Brodie, "Nuclear Weapons: Strategic or Tactical?", *Foreign Affairs*, January, 1954; "Strategy Hits a Dead End", *Harpers Magazine*, October 1955; "Unlimited Weapons and Limited War", *The Reporter*, November 18, 1954; "Some Notes on the Evolution of Air Doctrine", *World Politics*, April 1955; "More About Limited War," *World Politics*, October 1957; and "The Anatomy of Deterrence", *World Politics*, January 1959; chapters by Wm. W. Kaufmann, Klaus Knorr, and Roger Hilsman in *Military Policy and National Security*;

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Henry A. Kissinger, *Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy*; W. W. Kaufmann's review, "The Crisis in Military Affairs", *World Politics*, July, 1958; Robert E. Osgood, *Limited War*, University of Chicago Press, 1957; Paul Nitze, "Atoms, Strategy, and Policy", *Foreign Affairs*, January 1956; Malcolm Hoag, "NATO: Deterrent or Shield", *Foreign Affairs*, January 1958; Arnold Wolfers, "Europe and the NATO Shield", *International Organization*, 1958; "Could a War in Europe be Limited?", *Yale Review*, Winter, 1956; James E. King, Jr., "Nuclear Plenty and Limited War," *Foreign Affairs*, January 1957; Klaus Knorr, "The Crisis in U. S. Defense," special section of the *New Leader*, December 30, 1957; Anthony Buzzard, "Massive Retaliation and Graduated Deterrence", *World Politics*, January 1956; Royal Institute of International Affairs Pamphlet, *On Limiting Atomic War*; Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research, School of Advanced International Studies, *East-West Negotiations*, 1958.

10. John Foster Dulles, "The Evolution of Foreign Policy", Department of State Bulletin, Vol. XXX, No. 761, January 25, 1954, p. 108.

11. For the text of the communique, issued at Paris on December 18, 1954, by the North Atlantic Council, see Department of State Bulletin, Vol. XXXII, January 3, 1955, p. 10.

12. George F. Kennan, Russia, the Atom, and the West. New York, 1958. For a fuller treatment of "disengagement", see my "Some Requirements for East-West Settlement," *Social Science*, October, 1958, which this discussion parallels.

13. See Dean Acheson, "The Illusions of Disengagement," *Foreign Affairs*, April, 1958.

14. Of the many works on the Soviet Union on which I have relied, I am most indebted to those by the following: Nathan Leites, Frederick Barghoorn, Raymond L. Garthoff, and Robert C. Tucker.

15. For a discussion of the possibility that an all-out war might entail a substantial land battle, see my "Strategic Doctrines for Nuclear War," in Military Policy and National Security, already cited. It is interesting that the Soviet Union has apparently hedged against this possibility. See Raymond L. Garthoff, *Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age*, New York, 1958; and Peregine Worsthorne, "Our Bomb and Theirs; How the Russians See It," *Encounter*, July, 1958.

16. The United States is already supplying certain of its allies with both intermediate and battlefield missiles while keeping the atomic warheads under United States control.

17. This same point is made by George W. Rathjens, Jr. See his "Notes on the Military Problems of Europe," *World Politics*, January, 1958.

18. For a discussion of the role of credibility in deterrence, see William W. Kaufmann, "The Requirements of Deterrence", in *Military Policy and National Security*, already cited.

19. The measures to protect the means of reprisal would include "hardening" for SAC bases, that is, providing underground hangers for the airplanes with extremely thick concrete roofs. So far the United States does not seem to have taken these measures. See Bernard Brodie, "The Anatomy of Deterrence," *Loc. cit.*

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20. On this point, see also Raymond Aron, "NATO and the Bomb", *Western World*, June, 1957.

21. The United Kingdom, however, has built such a force in its V-bomber force, which numbers 200 planes, presumably armed with thermonuclear weapons.

22. See Raymond L. Garthoff, *op. cit.*

23. General Lauris Norstad, "NATO--Deterrent and Shield", address to the American Council on NATO, New York, January 29, 1957; text in *NATO Letter*, V, No. 2, February 1957, pp. 27-30; address at Cincinnati, November 12, 1957, text in *NATO Letter*, V. No. 12, December 1957, pp. 26-28; and "Interview with General Lauris Norstad," *NATO Letter*, IV, No. 12, December 1, 1956, pp. 34-37.

24. General Lauris Norstad, *NATO Letter*, V, No. 12, December 1957.

25. *New York Times*, July 21, 1958

26. For a discussion of the divergencies between NATO's declaratory and operational policies, see Robert E. Osgood, "NATO's Strategic Troubles", Center for the Study of Foreign and Military Policy, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.

27. Matthew B. Ridgway, *Soldier*, New York, 1956, p. 296.

28. In the United States, at least, the trend seems to be continuing. See the statement by Secretary of Defense Neil H. McElroy, the *New York Times*, November 14, 1958.

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COLLECTIVE DEFENSE:
THE MILITARY COMMITMENT

by
James E. King, Jr.

The growth of the United States network of collective defense arrangements has occurred in surges, propelled by contemporary political events. Until 1947 we continued to avoid "entangling alliances" with individual countries; we based our hopes for the future on the agreement of the victors in World War II to maintain "peace and security" through the machinery of the United Nations. The rapid pace of transition from peace to cold war, which became apparent in that year, produced the Truman Doctrine of March 1947, an ambiguous offer of unilateral support to "free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure".¹ The offer was made good at first only in the cases of Greece and Turkey. But our deep concern for the security of those parts of Europe not yet under Russian domination increased until we had committed ourselves, in the North Atlantic Treaty of April 1949, to the proposition that a military attack upon the countries of Western Europe was tantamount to an attack upon our homeland, and therefore joined "the first peacetime military alliance entered into by the United States since the adoption of the constitution".²

Along the way to this ultimate surrender to the demand that the American people assume the rights and obligations of a great power, which they so long and so persistently had tried to avoid, we concluded, in September 1947, with our sister republics in the Western Hemisphere another arrangement, the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance. The Rio Treaty, while not commonly regarded as a military alliance, accomplished two purposes. It transformed the historic Monroe Doctrine into a collective arrangement, thus giving permanent effect to joint defensive agreements made during the war. It provided for the settlement of inter-American disputes, including armed conflict, without resort to the United Nations--or at least before such resort--thus giving formal and collective expression to the United States policy of the Good Neighbor.

The Rio and North Atlantic treaties completed the first phase of a process development that was carrying the United States towards the revolutionary policy of national security based upon collective defense. The second surge in this process came in 1951, when the United States decided to push through a treaty of peace and reconciliation with Japan despite opposition from behind the iron curtain. The Japanese Treaty, signed in San Francisco on September 8, 1951--but more particularly the U.S.-Japanese Security Treaty, signed at the same time--aroused the fears of some of the victims of Japanese aggression in World War II by anticipating the rearmament of Japan. In order to calm these fears, and in application of the policy of containing Communist expansion, the United States consented to formalize the heavily precedented but hitherto informal commitment to their defense by entering into the Philippine-American Defense Pact, of August 30, and the Security Treaty between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States--known as the ANZUS treaty--of September 1, 1951. After the conclusion of the Korean Armistice in the summer of 1953, the pattern established in the case of the Japanese treaty was repeated in a treaty of mutual defense with the Republic of Korea (October 1, 1953). These treaties of 1951 and 1953 may be regarded, from the

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