CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON

1530 P STREET, NORTHWEST
WASHINGTON 5, D. C.

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

February 7, 1957.

Dear Henry:

I have now had the very great privilege of completing
Chapters VII, VIII, IX, and X that you so kindly let me see.
It has been a truly great experience!

As I wrote several days ago, I think that these last
chapters are, if anything more sweeping and exciting in con-
tent than the earlier ones. Also, in the nature of the case
they are far more decisive than the opening chapters, with
their huge task of the laying of background, could—or should—
attempt to be. Finally, they are of course much more "finished
products" than the carbon drafts of the first ones, with any
detailed lacks of clarity of ambiguities for the lay or casual
reader eliminated.

They represent the most powerful presentation of their
main theses that I have ever seen. And since these theses—
especially with respect to the ambiguity and turbidity of our
attitudes toward total vs. limited war, toward non-nucleonic
vs. nucleonic war, toward the appropriate and effective con-
cepts of the overwhelmingly important role of limited war in
the future, and toward the immense questions of psychology in-
volved: the role of certainty and will vs. power and the in-
hibition produced by it—cannot, I believe, be exaggerated in
their significance, I feel, as I said, that this work will be
a crucially significant one for our times.

The net result of all this, however, and of my enthu-
siastic agreement with the theses, is that my comments on this
group of chapters will have to be sparse indeed. I do have a
very few specific and detailed comments, which I will arrange,
if I may, by chapter and page as I did before, but they are
very incidental, as you will see.

My only general comment is a very minor one. The ex-
traordinary power of the argument chain derives in part from
the absolute brilliance of its insights, but in part also from
the richness and perfectly extraordinary breadth and variety

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of the evidence which will support it. Now for the general
reader, I believe, the insights will be often somewhat diffi-
cult to grasp, because they are derived from a basic way of
looking at the world which is not familiar to a considerable
proportion of people. Further, unless the reader is both a
philosopher and a historian of stature, a good part of the
highly relevant historical evidence will be new and he may
have difficulty with some of it at first in seeing just how
it corroborates the argument chain. What is perhaps more
likely is that, by the time he has finished, his effort to
grasp and appreciate the whole on these two planes may have
lost him some of the argument-chain and the conclusions in
the very evidence which demonstrates them so powerfully. I
wonder, therefore, whether it might be possible somewhere to
summarize the main points of the argument, and perhaps some
of the evidence supporting it. Possibly this could best be
done as a running summary, chapter by chapter, or perhaps as
a series of synopses at the end. Or perhaps suitable epi-
grammatic quotations could be found for each chapter that
would tend to condense its particular meaning. But it does
seem to me that it would be valuable if the reader could see
the whole trend of the argument, with its ramifying implica-
tions, somewhere in brief, lest the junctions between some of
its aspects in the earlier and later chapters, which mesh and
amplify each other so beautifully, be lost in the interven-
ing evidence. Forgive the presumption of this suggestion:
but I don't want to see any of the power of this presentation
lost on any reader!

Now let me proceed to the few detailed matters that I
have, which are little more than random comments.

## Chapter VII

1. The argument presented on pp. 1, 2, 3, involving the differing proportion of a decision between all-out and limited wars for ourselves and our allies is most powerful, and is just the kind of situation to which we are inclined to be blind—a reflection, I am sure, of several generations of prosperity and basic security. The analogy of the French alliances and the Maginot line is devastatingly apt. Our policy makers, indeed, have too often not been habitual risk-consumers in their general orientation.

2. "As long as the challenge is not overwhelming, an aggressor may therefore actually be aided by a world-wide system of collective security." (p.6) This will be an unfamiliar idea to many!

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3. "The difference in effectiveness between the United Nations in Egypt and in Hungary illustrates this point.... This symbolic act was effective towards Britain and France primarily because it involved no assumption of substantive risk." et seq. (pp.6, 7) Does not this distinction of substantive risk, essentially, mean that the United Nations, as a body, is an organization designed for, and functioning in, the non-revolutionary framework of the west and bears nothing save a formal relationship to the revolutionary powers? "The fact and not the consequences of world opinion" in such instance, of course, becomes the fact of the admitted framework, and, in this context, entirely irrelevant to the framework of the totalitarian revolutionary powers in the sense that you set that concept out elsewhere. I doubt that this basic limitation on the whole frame of reference of the UN is considered as often as it should be.

4. P.11, second paragraph. The whole development of the "plate glass" notion, as it recurs through the chapter, is most powerful. There is only one argument for it which it seems to me is not considered (to be refuted, I suspect)—the argument that a plate-glass window serves the political function of alerting a whole people in the great powers (especially the U.S.) after the fashion of Pearl Harbor and so widening the immediate scope for action of their leaders. This of course is not a telling argument—one could contend just as well that the political aspect might tend to force hasty or rash action, such as all-out nuclear war—which would not take place were more opportunity offered for modulation. But I wonder if it is worth raising in order to slay, simply because it is likely enough to occur in our own national context of thinking. (Of course this has no bearing on the size of the reserve—far too great for such a purpose, or upon the essential ambiguity of our present thinking.)

5. P. 13. First paragraph. On page 65 and again on page 81 you discuss the future contingency that our allies—and smaller intermediate nations in general?—possess significant stores of atomic weapons. Is that contingency worth raising in connection with the discussion in this paragraph? It seems to me another powerful argument against the possibility of relying on all-out wars, but offers some interesting variants, of course, in the limited-war theatre.

6. P. 15, second paragraph. This seems to me a most powerful argument! Its essential basis, I take it, is to make all-out wars essentially impossible, and then to make the alternative of limited wars as costly as possible by means of the

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device of alliances. Thus alliances, as you point out else-
where, take on a function which is not only real and strategic,
but is related to the direct interests of all concerned in
them. There could be no more realistic approach, I am sure.
The analogue in the tactical-technical warfare arena, I sus-
pect, is so to alternate non-nuclear with limited nuclear war-
fare in combat that the groupings of the enemy are always in-
herently vulnerable to the next stroke. This device of keep-
ing incompatibles constantly juxtaposed may be one of the most
important weapons in both our diplomatic and military arsenals,
I suspect.

7. P. 19, first paragraph. What of the recent Sandys-Wilson conversations in the light of this terribly important and devastating truth?

8. "But even if it should be argued that either of these contingencies would immediately bring the United States into the field...." This raises again that issue of the political alerting function of the plate-glass strategy, and perhaps makes the argument against it worth marshalling again, as on p. 11, since the phrase may seem to give it substance.

9. P. 23, first paragraph, concluding sentences. Here again the Sandys conversations may have a possible bearing, as also at the top of p. 25.

10. "The most convincing argument in favor of stationing British troops on the Contingent is the proposition that the U.S.S.R. might seek to hold Western Europe for ransom in negotiations following a thermo-nuclear exchange." (p.28) This and the discussion on p. 29 open a whole concept which for me was entirely novel—the idea of limited peripheral war after all-out thermonuclear exchange. One can imagine that the role of the ground forces (surviving) becomes truly crucial after the thermonuclear destruction of main centers has been completed. This picture, however, must be gravely distorted by the (I suspect inevitable) movement of ground forces of intermediate nations, still adequately supplied from base, into the devastated territories as soon as they can be occupied. It would be surprising if the succeeding battles were not between the depleted ground forces of one or the other original combatants and those of their relatively intact neighbors, rather than with each other, for it is hard to imagine, if there were relatively intact neighbor survivors (assuming this to be possible) the general breakdown of social structure would not attempt effective piratical incursions fairly shortly. Perhaps this would be even more true if the neighbors already had a nuclear arsenal. In any event, the whole concept of limited wars after all-out wars seems so novel and important as to tempt further discussion.

STRANSMORE LAND

(Y)

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11. "'There are no strategic or tactical weapons....only strategic and tactical targets'. In their view a unilateral declaration that the West would retaliate only against military targets explicitly defined and that only targets in a battlezone of specified width would be attacked, would suffice to limit a war." (p.32) This course, as you point out, amounts to a strategy of limited nuclear war in the defense of Europe. This is much to its credit, but I believe that there is a large unrecognized hazard that perhaps should be noted. By the efficient destruction of military targets while civilian ones are left intact, there will be a tendency to conserve the productive potential of the combatants at the expense of their combat facilities. Will this not tend to return the combatants to conventional, non-nuclear war which, while avoiding the holocaust, to be sure, will also tend to return the conflict to the zone of greatest relative capability of the USSR? Somehow I tend to prefer limitation by megatons rather than by targets.

12. "The bases afforded us by Britain are more important for our strategy and more useful to British diplomacy than the British strategic air force." (p.35) Here again the Sandys conversations might prove significant.

13. "But while the French military may have been more realistic than their political colleagues...." (p. 52) I am a bit unclear about the meaning of this sentence. Possibly a phrase is missing?

14. "Moreover the argument in favor of a strategy of limited nuclear war is precisely...." *et seq.* (p.62) I agree thoroughly with this paragraph, but it raises again the issue of the approach to targets of industrial production in view of the contingency of a return to all-out conventional war if these are left intact. Perhaps this should be considered?

15. "The price of our power may well be leadership: for what else is leadership except the willingness to stand alone part of the time? The failure to exercise leadership will not result in a consensus of humanity; it will lead to the creation of a vacuum." (p.74) I think these are two of the very great and enduring expressions in the book!

16. pp.74-85. I think that the discussion of the revolutions in the newly independent states of the East is completely masterly. There is such overwhelming evidence to drive home the immensely important point you make—the gulf

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which separates the truly revolutionary nations which are
outside the world-system and those which are merely making
a belated and enthusiastic, if often inept, entry into it.
This distinction, I think, is often blurred, and this expo-
sition of it is of the greatest importance.

17. "It is the revolution occurring in these countries, however different in its nature, which makes the quest for popularity such a treacherous course." (p. 77) I think I understand the meaning here—"makes our search for popularity such a treacherous course"—but perhaps it might be clarified a little.

These are very trivial comments indeed. There are so
many of the much finer points on which I agree thoroughly but
wish I could discuss! Perhaps there will be a chance to after
the work is finished.

There is only one more general comment that I have on
the chapter. In view of the superb discussion of the semi-
independent eastern nations on the one hand, and of the view
toward nuclear technology in the western European nations on
the other, would it add anything to comment on the attitudes
of Japan?

From here on, for the last three chapters, I can make
scarcely any comment that can be of significance against the
close-knit and important argument and the intensely inter-
esting analysis of Soviet structure that unrolls. Perhaps
you will permit me to record a few marginal comments as I read,
which are merely in the nature of running commentary and add
little or nothing to the substance or the argument.

## Chapter VIII

The general argument here, of course, was more familiar
to me both from the *Foreign Affairs* paper and from our dis-
cussions, and I think you know my enthusiasm for it.

1. "But while this changed function of diplomacy may be clear enough in retrospect, an understanding of it in the face of revolutionary challenge is inhibited by the very factors which make for the spontaneity, indeed the existence of a legitimate order." (p.3) This is a statement of profound importance, and normally well understood only by those who are outside the stable order!

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2. "The quest for absolute security inevitably produces a revolutionary situation." (p.3) Does not this very same factor ultimately become a principal liability to effective modulation in a revolutionary situation itself?

3. "The world will never know what horrors it was spared from revolutions that were stifled in their infancy or indeed whether the repression of them was justified." (p.5) I think I see how this fits and follows from what precedes, but the reasoning is so concentrated here that I wonder if it would not be worth expanding by a sentence or two?

4. "The Free World believes that peace is a static condition and that all things being equal economic advance is a more rational objective than foreign adventures." Profoundly telling statements of this kind, at once comprehensive and intensive, are the sort of thing that I thought might supply the summaries of argument that I mentioned earlier. Such a single sentence contains a volume!

5. "To the non-Soviet world, peace often appears as an end in itself and its manifestation is the absence of struggle. To the Soviets, by contrast, peace is a form of struggle." (p.14) Another of the same kind!

6. p. 16, second paragraph. This, to me, deepens the impression earlier created of how thoroughly the League of Nations belonged, and the UN belongs, to the western world.

7. p. 17, second paragraph. Is the flexibility of the west sufficient to eventually permit it to learn here, rising above its predeliction to fit revolutionary situations into the existing order? What situations will best promote or accelerate such learning?

8. "For to Soviet thought a settlement is not achieved by the process of negotiation, rather it is ratified by it." (p. 19) I could not help thinking how impressively this is documented by the Soviet attitudes repeatedly expressed at the Nuremburg trials.

9. "Many of the gains of the Soviets have been due to a considerable extent to a superior moral thoroughness...." Another epigrammatic sentence which will, I am sure, "pick up the other end of the stick" of the world for many readers!

[Y]

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10. P. 23, first paragraph. I think this discussion of the limitations inherent in our tendency to legalism, which has of course been mentioned earlier, is both extremely important and extremely illuminating. Even more important is the discussion with respect to the symbolic content on the following page. Here again I found that I had come to a parallel conclusion by a very different route, noting the extraordinary consistency with which more complex modes of communication are condensed and reduced to a symbolism tailored to secure high evocation in evolution on a broad scale. The result outlined on p. 25 is a vivid example indeed of the consequence of evading this truth.

11. "Therefore the most substantial Communist contribution to the theory of war has been in the area of limited war—the conflict in which power and policy are most intimately related, in which everything depends on gearing the psychological to the physical equation." (p.31) I was most struck by this, and with the extraordinarily interesting relation between this theoretical competence and the Soviet relative practical incompetence of execution in the same area which you point out in Chapter IX (pp.44 et seq.) I wonder whether this may not relate to the "two kinds of leadership" and the proneness to brilliant theoretical insight and initiative in a small proportion of the population, not matched by corresponding initiative in the bulk of it, which is so brilliantly outlined later and which, I am sure, lies at the base of much of Soviet history and present-day social structure?

12. P. 35, last sentence. Mao's sixteen-word epigram essentially sums up, does it not, the basic concept of Far Eastern guerrilla warfare as normally practiced from Korea to the Philippines?

13. pp.36-38. I was much struck by the degree to which these concepts of limited war based on force groupings are in fact actually rooted in essentially old notions of conventional wars and how little basic originality they contain— a further tribute, of course, to the notions later developed concerning the radical threat to the framework of thinking that could be posed by the challenge of limited nuclear conflict. The concept of a strategy based on unlimited patience and flexibility both in time and space highlighted on p.38 (and of course further developed later) is of the utmost importance, I am sure.

[Y]

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14. "Such an assumption is tantamount to asserting that the Soviets have ceased being Bolshevik." (p.42) This whole discussion is most important to drive home, for there is every reason grounded in "wishful thinking" (as you have pointed out so powerfully) for us to believe otherwise and we shall tend to do so unless jarred out of it. This sentence seems to me another epigram of the kind that, removed from its context, carries great impact.

15. "The consciousness of impending catastrophe has impelled the capitalist powers....to resort to the inevitable expedient of forming aggressive military pacts to restore their positions by military means." (pp.44-45) How interestingly this sets off the discussion of our web of defensive pacts earlier in the volume!

16. p. 45, second paragraph. This gives the clearest emphasis to the real function of the neutralist world in Soviet eyes (and the exceeding importance to the USSR of enlarging it as much as possible) that I have seen. I wonder if the importance which Japan must necessarily assume in this context is a further reason for discussing briefly Japanese attitudes toward a nuclear world?

17. "Kruschev was at pains to point out that this change of tactics did not imply a modification of revolutionary goals:...." (p.46) Why does one find the Soviets so constantly at excessive pains to point out publicly that their goals have not changed? Why also was Hitler so constantly at such similar pains? Obviously, as you have said, it made little difference to the non-totalitarian world that the dictators so constantly reasserted their aims, so that the adaptive value of the process from the standpoint of external consumption was essentially neutral, and the dictators must have known this. Was it then done primarily for home consumption, and if so, why? A constant threat of internal insecurity or lack of internal conversion to or understanding of the process?

18. I think the discussion on page 47 is exceedingly valuable, to counter a tendency all too tempting to reason wishfully from dangerously partial historical analogies.

19. "....we should have few illusions about the degree to which these can be promoted by conciliatory American policy." (p.49) Another key sentence! As also the comment on p.50 that nothing can reassure the Soviets.

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20. "An all-out attack is the least likely form of Soviet strategy either politically or militarily." (p. 50) This key sentence, of course, outlines much of the argument and carries great impact out of context. If it were so used, however, I do think that it should be coupled with the statement that adequate preparedness in the total nuclear field is an essential pre-condition—not in any way a sufficient condition—for dealing with all the subtler issues, so that these two ideas remain firmly conjoined.

21. The discussion at the bottom of p. 51 and p. 52 brought home to me most forcibly how much more flexible and daring as a nation we are probably inherently capable of being than the Soviet, despite the superficial rigidities of our approach.

## Chapter IX

This extraordinary outline of Soviet views toward the nuclear world was essentially wholly new to me, and I can make virtually no comment on the substance, except to say that reading it was a rarely educative and exciting experience.

1. "The resentment against their colonial past causes many of the newly independent states to be almost desperately ready to believe the best of the Soviet Union and the worst of the West;...." (p.16) I have wondered whether another contributing reason might not be this. In those countries which were firmly under western colonial rule and in which the civil service was, for the most part, westernized, as you say, the potential leaders not only were taught the bases of western democracy at home, but were also called on to accomplish a most difficult psychological feat—the synthesis of two systems of philosophies which were not only very different but which, in the case of more highly evolved Eastern systems, were often in fundamental conflict at very important points—some of them so deep and basic in their value structure that continuing conflict or uncertainty about them may be sufficient to generate a lifelong uncertainty at very deep levels in the individual. I think this kind of imperfect synthesis, with resultant deep and enduring conflict, must have occurred—and be still occurring—in many outstanding Eastern leaders in the uncommitted countries. The tensions so generated, of course, must seek an outlet, and the most natural "cause" of the difficulty is the former colonial powers of Europe. Furthermore, the systems of these western ex-colonial powers, by virtue of the very freedom of choice accorded the individual, must exacerbate these uncertainties and further heighten the

[4]

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hostility. Against this background, the monolithic, tyrannical, terribly certain Soviet structure may appear in the guise of an actual protector to which one is tempted to flee—especially if one can do it in theory while being saved by that same West from the worst practical consequences of such flight.

2. "The West German Parliament in effect was being asked to go on record as favoring atomic warfare in its own country." (p.17) I have had trouble understanding exactly how this follows from what precedes. Would it be worth elaborating the connection a little?

3. "But a society finds it nearly impossible to surrender its myth, for to do so would be tantamount to giving up its image of itself; it would mean an overthrow of what has come to be considered 'legitimate'". How powerfully this suggests, once again, how much more basically rigid the Soviet fabric may be than our own!

4. "...of vulnerability because it may indicate Soviet difficulties in mastering the strategy and tactics of limited nuclear war and of danger because it may induce the Soviets to treat the explosion of any nuclear weapon anywhere as the prelude to all-out war." This and the following discussions on pp.36-48 surely underline powerfully the Soviet press reactions to our recent Middle East policy announcements.

5. "In fact, one of the chief concerns of Soviet propaganda seemed to be that the United States might seek to escape Soviet retaliatory power by a doctrine of limited nuclear war or...." (p.36) This, on the other hand, suggests that at least a part of Soviet policy thinking is of a more detached and sophisticated character, treating the matter on the plane of propaganda and from the standpoint of escape of the enemy from USSR retaliatory capacity rather than the threat of all-out retaliation on the Soviet. If this is correct, may it mean a gradually approaching modification in the Soviet notion that any nuclear war must be an all-out nuclear war? The same conclusion seems to be suggested by the enormously provocative discussion on p. 42.

6. The discussion on pages 44-48 brought home to me as I had never realized it before the sharp division in the structure of Soviet society between a highly flexible and imaginative minority (to which we are most accustomed in this country) and a remarkably committed and stereotyped majority, and the

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profound extent to which this has always been realized in
the structure of Russian society, and most intensely and
effectively, of course, by the Soviets—a major cause and
a major measure, perhaps, of their unparalleled internal
success, as a truer reflection of the inherent nature of
Russian society than has been historically achieved before.
It seems to me that this is vividly brought home on a
"laboratory" scale by the Russian exploratory and coloniza-
tion efforts—contemporary as well as historical—in the
palearctic regions and in the northwestern American con-
tinent especially.

This of course raises the key question of what and
how far-reaching may be the political effects of such a
military decentralization of command and structure as might
be forced by the continuing threat of limited nuclear warfare.

7. "...the best strategy for exploiting the rigidity of the Soviet command structure is that of the limited nuclear war." This key sentence certainly "epigrams" the argument if the political connotations are also added.

8. "It has often been noted that the possession of a large navy does not guarantee success in sea battles.... even a substantial navy may be doomed to sterility as Germany experienced in World War I and Japan in World War II." (p. 46) This is obviously intended primarily as an illustration for the argument with respect to limited nuclear warfare. I wonder, however, whether it may have a direct bearing also on the argument with respect to the effectiveness of the Soviet submarine fleet in international waters? This point is set forth in relief in the discussion at the top of p. 48.

## Chapter X

In many ways I think this may be the most striking
chapter of all (an ultimate superlative!) partly of course
because of the way in which it climaxes the thinking of the
whole book, but in part also because of the brilliance of
its treatment of the questions of disarmament and armaments
inspection and the supra-national authority idea (with all
of which I could not be in more enthusiastic agreement) and
the perfectly extraordinary importance of its general conclu-
sions about limited war and limited diplomacy and their in-
terrelations. This last, I feel, is a message of crucial
importance for our age.

[Y]

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My detailed comments, as usual, are trivial and largely running commentary, but let me enter them again in any case.

1. "The inhibitions with respect to the use of force therefore do not abolish the revolutionary contest; they transform it into an armament race and into a struggle for the allegiance of those areas of the world as yet uncommitted." (p. 3) On first reading I had entered in the margin "armaments race in terms primarily of weapons for limited or conventional war (because of overkill)" before I discovered that this is essentially the heart of the argument!

2. "...many of the newly independent states are tempted to play an international role out of proportion to their strength...." (p.3) raising again the interesting question of the situation when their strength is increased by nuclear stockpiles.

3. "...to prevent this contingency can be avoided only by a wise military policy and not by diplomacy" (p.6). I am more than ever struck by the reality of this transfer of an essential diplomatic function in our age from conventional diplomatic to military channels.

4. "And a misunderstanding because the Soviets may mistake what is an American decision to resist locally as a prelude to all-out war and react accordingly." (p.6) Which suggests the acquisition by the conventional diplomatic channels of the function of communication in unprecedented measure, as you have elsewhere suggested. In this context, does it imply a possible profit in public emphasis on our capabilities for limited nuclear war (as we acquire them)—a conclusion which also, it seems to me, may elsewhere be indicated? Should limited nuclear war, in fact, be actually stressed—suggested possibly by the paragraph at the top of p.7?

5. "The notion that armaments are the cause and not the reflection of conflict is not new"...."Nevertheless it is open to serious doubt." I think the demonstration of the fallacy of this deeply rooted and current illusion which follows is more than a brilliant and invaluable contribution. To me the notion—which is so widely prevalent—seems a direct and dangerous fallacy.

[y]

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6. "The other Powers can escape the pressure only by making concessions, (a dangerous course for it may whet appetitites and establish a method for settling future disputes.)" (p.10) I am a little unclear about the precise meaning of the portion underlined.

7. The argument on pages 12 and 13 suggests once again the possibility of emphasizing our capability for limited nuclear warfare (as we acquire it), *provided* the other contingency (suggested on p. 13) does not also apply—that such emphasis will tend to hasten Soviet parity in the limited nuclear field also. Perhaps even this is a not wholly undesirable end result if it tends to transfer the emphasis as a whole from the arena of total nuclear war.

8. "Yet it is not knowledge of an impending attack which deters or defeats it but the known capability and the willingness to resist." (p. 24) I wonder whether, on the technical plane, this does not once again suggest the possibly important role of a fairly extensive American shelter program.

9. "The idea of escaping the tensions of international relations by an analogy to domestic police powers has come up repeatedly in the past...." and following argument on p. 27. It seems to me _most_ important to scotch this dangerous illusion!

10. The argument on p. 28 not only brought home to me forcibly once again how much the UN, with its legalistic features, is in fact a creature of the psychology of the west, but how much its organization reflects the same basic emphasis on sectionalism that characterizes our own government structure (as you have elsewhere pointed out) and how dangerously easy it would therefore be to overload it.

11. "...the more total the peace sought, the more total the consequences of violating an agreement." (p. 32) This is another of those utterly remarkable sentences that I wish could stand alone somewhere! The following argument is surely profoundly important.

12. "Under present conditions, the sudden introduction of nuclear weapons in war might have devastating effects on world opinion or it might unleash an all-out war." (p.34) It is not the task of this argument, but some time I should like

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to see weapons of chemical and biological warfare considered
in a similar context. I wonder if any one has really ex-
plored at all profoundly the meaning of the Chinese campaigns
about bacterial warfare, or the underlying motives and evalua-
tions behind the business of "no flies in Peking?"

13. "Moreover, a diplomatic program designed to convey our understanding of the nature of limited war to the other side.... (p. 35)—and also, again, the western capabilities?

14. "On the contrary, it is important to develop a concept of military operations conducted in phases which permit the assessment of risks and possibilities for settlement at each stage before recourse is had to the next phase of operations." (p. 38) A critical—and gigantic—challenge!

15. "Rather (direct) diplomatic contact is never more necessary...." (p.39) And I suspect that we still have to learn that this applies not only to hot, but also to the severest kind of cold, war, and in even greater measure.

16. "Lack of secrecy may be a military weapon" (p. 39)—an important and little recognized concept.

17. "....battles will approach the stylized contests of the feudal period which served as much as a test of will as a trial of strength." (p. 40) This is an absolutely brilliant insight! I was startled by it for here once again I had come somewhat to the same feeling (though much more vague and ill-defined) by the trend of infra-human evolutionary courses which, in literally numberless cases, converge on this same solution in roughly similar model situations! The coincidence here is most remarkable.

18. "In turn as the targets grow smaller in size there will be less incentive to use the most powerful weapons whose primary utility is the destruction of large areas." (p.42) Here again I would some day like to see the notion of non-nuclear agents integrated.

19. "The term military installation should be liberally defined and not extended to industrial plants." (p.43) But there is of course the hazard of a return in mid-conflict to limited or all-out conventional warfare, with its shifts in parity relations.

20. Once again, in the argument on p. 46, might the U.S. not even emphasis capabilities in these directions with some profit, if it were done with the utmost care and modulation?

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

MERLE FAINSOD
Professor of Government

LITTAUER CENTER M-18
CAMBRIDGE 38, MASSACHUSETTS

February 11, 1957

Mr. Henry A. Kissinger
Council on Foreign Relations
58 East 68th Street
New York 21, N.Y.

Dear Henry:

I have now read your chapters on The Strategy of Ambiguity and The Soviets and the Atom, and both seem to me to be superlative jobs. I am afraid, however, that my credentials as a critic are somewhat suspect since I largely share the point of view from which you write. If I have any single quarrel with you, it is that you seem to me to tend to ascribe a degree of omniscience and far-sightedness to the Soviet policy makers which I would be inclined to qualify by putting rather more emphasis both on their improvisations and on the degree to which they must adjust the pursuit of their aims to the circumstances which confront them. Particularly in the chapter on The Soviets and the Atom, it seems to me that you may be making too much of Garthoff's point on the extraordinary rigidity of the lower echelons of the Soviet army and the handily proposed which this may generate in conducting a limited nuclear war. One of the impressions which I carried away from my visit of this last summer was that the Soviet leaders are well aware of the dangers of overcentralization in all spheres of Soviet life and, while their system obviously tends in that direction, they seem, nevertheless, to be struggling hard to achieve a far greater degree of administrative decentralization of operations than was possible under Stalin. There are obvious barriers to complete success in the fulfillment of this tendency, but I suspect that these barriers would operate least of all in the area of technical military activity.

There are some trivial corrections which you may want to make. On page 8, you refer to Florinsky as an eminent political scientist. I

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

January 28, 1957.

Dear Henry:

Copies of Chapters VIII, IX, and X have just arrived, and I am more than grateful to have them. I have finished the first series of readings on Chapter VII and hope to have it read finally, and comments on it, within a week or so. It is deeply impressive, and a great privilege to study!

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger,
The Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.,
58 East 68th Street,
New York 21, N.Y.

WILLIAM A. M. BURDEN

630 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK 20, N.Y.

January 29, 1957

Dear Henry:

Many thanks for your letter of January 17th. I
will try to find time to go over the manuscript within the
next two weeks and send you my comments.

May I congratulate you on having prepared the
manuscript of this major work in such a very short time.

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
58 East 68th Street
New York 21, N. Y.

ef

[M]

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

OFFICE OF THE DEAN

5 UNIVERSITY HALL
CAMBRIDGE 38, MASSACHUSETTS

February 5, 1957

Dear Henry:

I have had a look at Chapter Seven of your study, and
while any comments of mine must be considered in the light of
the fact that I have not seen what comes before and after, I
do have some reactions.

First, and most generally, I think I agree with the basic
argument which you are making. I think you are right in say-
ing that alliances must be less than world-wide, for most pur-
poses; right in your view that there ought to be levels of force
and capability between the old-fashioned World War II ground
force and the strategic bombing command; and right in your view
that we ought not to be too nervous about the uncommittedness
of the uncommitted. It is just because I do agree with the
basic argument as I understand it that I am troubled about some
of the specific points you make, and more generally by a tone
of certainty and of critical superiority to the policy-makers
of nearly every country which does not seem to me to advance
the argument. Moreover, I think that this particular chapter
is a great deal too long as it stands; it is full of repetition
and of arguments pressed beyond the necessary level of detail.

I have noted in the margins various small points as they
have occurred to me, and I have also marked with letters run-
ning from A to I a number of points at which I would like to
argue with you. The marginal comments speak for themselves,
so let me turn to the lettered points of difference.

At A on page one, I really do not feel like arguing,
because I assume that you are summarizing an argument which
has been developed before. If this is not so, then the state-
ment is somewhat too bald.

At B on page one, you refer to a dual dilemma; the same
phrase occurs somewhat later in the chapter in another context.
In both cases it seems to me that the dilemma is really a single
one, since a dilemma, by its very nature, has two points.

- 2 -

[M]

At C on page two and again at H on page forty-six, and indeed in a number of other places, you place great emphasis upon the need for an unambiguous policy on the part of the United States and its allies. In considerable measure, I agree with this argument, although it is pressed with a kind of ruthlessness that does not seem to me always persuasive. What does trouble me is that you frequently point out what an advantage it is to the Soviet Union that its own policies are *not* unambiguous. It seems to me at least possible that from the point of view of policy-makers in the Kremlin the atmosphere of uncertainty which we have created may have real value. I admit the dangers of policies which are mutually ambiguous, but I think the reason why we should fear the lack of clarity of the enemy and equally insist on clarity in our purposes should be developed somewhere. My own hunch is that completely unambiguous policies are never possible, and that your argument sharpens somewhat unnecessarily what is basically a good point.

At D on page two, it seems to me that your argument about the breakdown of the French system of alliances after World War I is sound, but slightly overstated. If in fact the French had chosen to reconcile her political and her military commitments, she could have done so with the forces at hand at any stage up through 1936, and some would say even later. The conclusion is right, but the argument seems to me to omit a point which is important. In the case of the United States at present, the danger is that we really will not have at hand the force we need for our real interest; it is not so clear that we shall lack the will to use forces which would in fact be adequate for the occasion, which was the trouble with France.

On page six, I remarked on what seems to me a case of "misplaced concreteness." The governments of Britain and France took roughly the view that you suggest, but very large sections of opinion, at least in Great Britain, took a quite different view, and this division of sentiment, in the United Kingdom and among important Commonwealth allies, had a great deal to do with the suspension of the fighting. I think it may be important not to give the impression that in this instance either Britain or France was really a single unitary force in international affairs.

At E on page eight, I agree with the conclusion but not quite with quite the sweeping way in which it is stated, and I am not at all clear that I know how this difficulty can be avoided. I notice that at a later stage in the chapter you talk of the importance of giving people free hands where their interests

- 3 -

are greatest, but this is a point on which it would be impor-
tant to know just what kind of free hand is intended and in
what area. If the argument were to be taken as a suggestion
that we should have encouraged or at least condoned a resort
to force by Great Britain and France in the Suez case, I for
one should have to disagree quite strongly.

At F on page eleven, you comment on what you consider to
be the foolish policy of stationing nearly half the strategic
reserve of the Western Alliance near the sources of Soviet
strength. I agree that this is no longer a useful policy, but
it does seem to me important to recognize its historic origin.
Possibly we ought never to have got into a position in which
the dispatch of troops to Europe would have the enormous signi-
ficance that it did in late 1950 and early 1951, but this parti-
cular situation can be understood, it seems to me, only in terms
of its history. As you of course remember, it was very much a
matter of heavy pressure from our European allies that lay behind
our decision to send troops to Europe at that time. In the con-
text of the kind of capability for limited war which I believe
you are advocating, it seems to me likely that there will be a
need for such troops, in considerable number if not perhaps at
full present strength, for some time to come.

I am not really sure I agree with your analysis of the
British decision to develop the retaliatory nuclear capability.
I find it extraordinarily unlikely that a country of Great Brit-
tain's size and responsibilities, even in 1957, should be able
to have got the notion of not having a nuclear capability. It
is of course somewhat a different question whether this nuclear
capability is wisely committed to some form of small scale stra-
tegic bombing force, but this is really a lesser included ques-
tion, and if I were the British I would certainly wish to have
a final ability to deter an attack upon the British Isles them-
selves by an ability to retaliate. Even if this ability is
limited and fragmentary, compared to our own, it will belong
to the British, and you have yourself a number of impressive
arguments to the effect that our own strategic bombing capa-
bility does not really give full protection to allies whom in
a pinch we might not defend at the cost of our own civilization.
And in your argument against the French policy of not develop-
ing a nuclear capability, it seems to me that you make a number
of points which bear against your critical view of the British
position. Perhaps the real center of your argument is against
the current opposition of British policy to the doctrine of
graduated deterrents. This is really a different question,

- 4 -

[4]

and your whole argument I think would be improved if you were
to concentrate on that point and not upon the British decision
to have nuclear power, in and of itself. This is rather a
brief statement of a rather complicated program of argument
and analysis, but I really do hope that you will be willing
to reexamine your sections on Britain and France from the point
of view of mutual consistency and from the point of view of
limiting your argument to what is really necessary.

Finally, at I on page seventy-two and in the pages just
following I find myself uncertain about the argument on the
definition of aggression. I think the basic reason for the
current and prevalent doctrine of aggression as armed attack
across some form of boundary is simply that any other defini-
tion is so hard to manage, and that it is of such very great
importance to have clearly defined rules limiting the resort
to war. I myself would cling to this definition, but would
of course suppose that in the event of grave dangers that did
not have the character of aggression, there should be forms
of reaction, short of armed attack, which would help to cope
with the situation. It is possible that there are situations
in which there would be nothing to do but fight, and in which
there would be no aggression by the existing customary defini-
tions. But I should like to know precisely which those situa-
tions were, and whether in fact there was no other alternative
before I accepted the notion that a doctrine built up for con-
siderably wider and deeper reasons than those which you give
should be abandoned out of hand. It seems to me that here as
in some other parts of the chapter the argument is unduly
affected by recent events in the Middle East. And even in the
Middle East, in my view, we have not any where near exhausted
the use of ways and means that fall short of the use of force
where there has been no aggression. Possibly I am quite wrong
about this, but I feel confident that the point of view I am
expressing will be very widely held, and that the arguments
you have developed in these few pages will not be regarded as
sufficient except by those who already share your view. I
recognize that there are able and experienced men who do.

Having made all these rather energetic comments, I am
inclined to close by pointing out what you will surely have
recognized already, that these are reactions from a relatively
quick single reading, and that on further reflection I might
well not agree with them myself. Perhaps the most that I would

[Y]

YALE UNIVERSITY
NEW HAVEN II, CONNECTICUT

SOCIAL SCIENCE PLANNING CENTER
214 HALL OF GRADUATE STUDIES
THE DIRECTOR

February 4, 1957

Mr. Henry A. Kissinger
Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
58 East 68th Street
New York 21, New York

Dear Henry:

I have just received your note of 17 January and your chapter VII. Since I am on the point of leaving for Geneva and Bern for a series of lectures and knowing that my comments will be useless to you unless they reach you soon, I shall simply think aloud and send my notes to New Haven to be typed there and mailed directly to you.

I hardly need tell you that I am delighted at what I gather is your chief
point. Somewhat to my surprise, you come out for a strategy of limited nuclear
war in Europe and contend that such a strategy is practical. When I first put
forward this proposition at the Council and followed it up with my article,
"Can a War in Europe be Limited?", I thought you were among the majority that
remained skeptical, to say the least. Knowing how widespread such skepticism
is, everything seems to me to depend on whether you can put across to your
readers, including the chief planners in Britain and the U.S., and to the
headliners the almost revolutionary idea that NATO should and still could be
gear ed to the local defense of Europe. (I am assuming that you are right in
your contention that the NATO strategists, General Gruenther included, have
remained convinced the NATO forces even equipped with atomic weapons and
missiles are hopelessly inadequate to fight off a Soviet ground attack.) If
this is your most important point and if it has not been elaborated in other
chapters, I regret that it appears here between discussions about collective
security and aggression which although important and of concern to our allies
tend to divert attention. Those who disagree with these discussions may be
led to assume that they must therefore reject your limited nuclear war thesis,
too, although you show little connection between them and in the case of the
uncommitted fail to do so at all.

I would ask you to consider, therefore, whether the chapter should not
bear some title like "The Impact of a Strategy of all-out War on Allied and
Uncommitted Nations" and start off with your excellent discussion of the
prevailing--and obsolescent--air and all-out war strategy of the U.S., Britain
and NATO. Your discussion on pp. 1-10 on what you call a world-wide system
of collective security and your later discussions of aggression and the un-
committed nations could follow and be tied in with the chief argument.

May I address myself to the "local defense of Europe" problem first.
Much hinges here on the possibility not only of limiting a war to Europe and
to the tactical use of atomic weapons but on the validity of your contention
that such a war could be kept less devastating for Europe than an all-out
nuclear war. I have always felt bothered about this point in talking to

Lans, Tyrol, Austria

Cables: INNSBRUCK 940053

February 6th 1957

Dear Mr Kissinger,

I won't forget the Hungarian article by April. The truth about the Hungarian Revolution is MOST complex, but I am now quite familiar with it. Everything looks different from this short distance !

Here are two passages which ought to be included in my article on the ARTIST AND INTELLECTUAL IN ANGLO-SAXONRY !

Add to page 17, second line from the bottom:

...visually sticks out like a sore thumb. ADD IN BRACKETS. (This, minimum obviously, also happens if the artist or intellectual tries to represent the very opposite of the minimum popular cliche, if he overemphasizes his male-ness as, for instance, Mr Ernest Hemingway.) There is something particularly......

Add to page 21, first line:

...replaces the court. We must admit, though, that even East of the Iron Curtain the intellectuals and artists have been fighting gallant rear-guard actions which mutatis mutandis are unimaginable in the English-speaking countries. The tremendous role which literary societies have played in the Polish and, even more so, in the Hungarian resistance, is a wonderful and effective survival of a more glorious past. Of one thing....

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
BOARD OF SCIENTIFIC AND ENGINEERING RESEARCH

ROOM III, PYNE ADMINISTRATION BUILDING
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

HENRY D. SMYTH
CHAIRMAN

February 18, 1957

Professor Henry A. Kissinger
Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
58 East 68 Street
New York 21, N Y.

Dear Professor Kissinger:

The past month has been so crowded that until yesterday I had no
time to read your chapter on "Diplomacy and the Limitation of Armaments ".
I read it with great interest and do have a few general comments which may
be of help to you. I shall not attempt any detailed suggestions. I should
also mention that Page 35 is missing in my copy and this is just at the point
where your presentation seems to me to weaken.

My general feeling is that the discussion up to P. 32 is excellent. It is clear, logical and covers the ground fully. In fact I wonder if you are not too comprehensive, if your central arguments need to be so thoroughly spelled out and supported by marshaling so many considerations, some of which are not very important. Is not this first part essentially in the nature of a ground clearing operation to make room for your constructive suggestions which begin on Pages 32 and 33? Up to that point you have been talking about what we cannot do and should not try to do.

I would suggest that the transition from the ground clearing
operation to the positive suggestions should be emphasized.

It is in the latter part of the limited war argument that I get
really disturbed. Having convinced the reader of the impracticality and
futility of inspection for disarmament you then seem to make inspection a
vital part of your argument for limited war. It is not clear to me whether
you consider inspection vital or not. If you do, your arguments do not con-
vince me. If you do not, the inspection idea should be mentioned less
prominently and with greater emphasis on how it differs from the type of
inspection discussed in the earlier part of the chapter.

My reading of your material has hardly been careful enough to justify
so long a letter. I submit my comments as rather superficial criticisms
which you probably have good reasons to disregard.

With warmest regards.

HDS:evr

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

January 18, 1957.

Dear Henry:

I have been delayed far too long in my comments on—and in returning to you—the copies of Chapters II, III, IV, V, and VI that you gave me the privilege of reading. The difficulty was that I began by reading them through in straightforward fashion, but soon found them so extraordinarily rich in important and key notions that were entirely new to me that the only way to comprehend them at all adequately—let alone be in any way critical—was to write out and re-study these key sentences in each chapter, and make a reading outline, chapter by chapter, as I went along. Since there are a great many key sentences and ideas, this has taken a bit of time! So I hope you will forgive me.

First let me say that I cannot recall any writing in this area that I have seen that seemed to me so very good, or nearly so penetrating. Reading it—and especially the privilege of reading it in manuscript—I count one of the high points of the last two years. I am exceedingly grateful to you to have had the opportunity. In its sweep and balance, in its sense of history and its general perspective, and in the depth of its insights this manuscript has been to me quite unique. Selfishly, I emerge from the experience with a much more thorough working philosophy in the area than I have had before. This is, I think, a truly remarkable book.

Because I am so much in agreement with the basic arguments—especially those concerned with graduated deterrence, with the role and the importance of an adequate concept of limited wars and, more specifically, with the essential error and impossibility of equating a distinction between non-nuclear and nuclear weapons with limited vs. all-out conflict, there is really little that I can comment on in the broader philosophy of the paper, except to cheer at every major turn of the argument—for I do agree very emphatically with essentially all its basic postulates. What comments I can make relate only to the presentation of some points, to a few matters of minor detail. Perhaps you will allow me, however, to list these points. Possibly the best way to do it will be to itemize them chapter by chapter. They are little more than reflections on what you have already said.

[4]

## Chapter II

1. "Our past makes us more comfortable with technology than with doctrine." (p. 25)

This point I think is of great importance. It may have even broader significance. It seems to me that the history of the fashion in which "underdeveloped" countries have rapidly grasped western technology and applied it skillfully to their problems, contrasted with the much slower rate and lower accuracy in the "invasion" of other areas—philosophy or motivation-patterns of western nations, for example—suggests that new concepts of technology in general are more easily and superficially fitted into an old framework of thought without strain to that framework than new concepts in other areas, such as those of causality. This attempt to substitute technological innovation for philosophical innovation may be a general characteristic of populations of human minds, until external events force a more profound effort.

2. "A power with large material resources can afford to let a threat become unambiguous; less favored powers cannot .... Any nation not in this position must follow a precautionary policy. A precautionary policy resists any change in the existing balance, *not the use to which it is put*." (p. 34) What is the meaning of the underlined phrase?

The next sentence explains it to me a little but not completely. Possibly, in view of the importance of the conclusions drawn at the top of p. 35, it might be worth spelling out a bit more for the general reader. I think I follow the argument, but am not quite sure.

3. "Nuclear technology for the first time in history makes it possible to shift the balance of power entirely through developments *within* the territory of another sovereign state." (p. 36)

This was poignantly true, with respect to Soviet technology in ending our atomic monopoly in the immediate past, as you point out. I question, however, (and from the very arguments which you marshall in connection with the inapplicability of total war and the meaning of armaments races in the future) whether this can happen again with respect to the great powers, even assuming another technical breakthrough as great as the thermonuclear weapon (on the probability of which estimation is exceedingly difficult). But

[Y]

-3-

it is of course most evident (and you point it out later) that for the immediate future similar developments entirely within the territories of minor states might again introduce an exceedingly important variable. Would it be worth making that point now, to introduce the dimension of a world in which small powers are well equipped in nucleonics early in the discussion?

4. "Thus the more we protested our horror of war, the more we removed Soviet inhibitions in expanding their influence."

I think this simply *cannot* be said often enough and emphatically enough. There is a great lack of comprehension of this overwhelmingly important strategic point in Washington.

5. "The task of diplomacy was to attempt to settle disputes by the process of negotiation....(which) was conceived as a legal process in which force played a small role." (p.58)—and preceding and following argument to the same effect, and conclusions with respect to containment, pp.58, 59, etc.

This immensely important point has made me wonder whether one of our cardinal blind spots in dealing with revolutionary powers is not the degree to which we have historically—and uncritically—accepted and become accustomed to, as a basic tenet of the structure of the human universe, the most spectacular product of the last great revolution—the Anglo concept of the rule of law. Perhaps in our early history we recognized this framework as itself a revolutionary one, affecting only a small portion of mankind. It seems to me that our appreciation of its revolutionary and partial character has so long become dulled that we find it difficult even to conceive that this notion is so local for human society both in space and time. How much I wish that we could remember that the normal condition for mankind as a whole is one where legality in the western sense has no intrinsic meaning whatever!

6. "Our strategy....conceived its task as primarily technical: to achieve an adequate defense. Actually it was primarily psychological....to bring about a climate of opinion to accept such a defense." (p.61)

It seems to me that this point, which of course comes out in succeeding chapters even more forcibly, simply cannot be made often or emphatically enough. It is not an easy one, either, for an American to grasp.

[Y]

-4-

7. "But the test of a doctrine is the marginal case; it is successful to the extent that the marginal case is in fact unusual and that it provides for common occurrences." (p.62)

I have a purely mechanical difficulty of understanding here. I think I see the meaning, but it took a bit of puzzling. Could it be spelled out a bit more?

I have had to make only these detailed comments because I am so enthusiastically in accord with all the basic theses of this exceedingly provoking chapter—the discussions of superiority in strategic doctrine and the criteria of proper doctrine, the nature of the division between the services and its causes, the discussions of all-out solutions, the persistence of World War II notions, the idea that nucleonics are merely an appendage to a World War II strategy (though this, I think, is beginning to recede a little in some quarters) and the difficulties in our concepts of power all seem not only essentially right, but, to me at least, brought a host of new insights which have the quality of fine poetry—obvious when brought to attention, never explicitly perceived before.

## Chapter III

1. (a) "The impossibility of imposing unconditional surrender should not be confused with the inevitability of a stalemate." (p.76)

(b) "For the first time in history there exists the possibility of a stalemate despite absolute superiority in numbers and technology. It is a stalemate not so much in power as in assessment of risks." (p.98)

I am not sure exactly how these two statements fit together. I agree absolutely with the second one; my feeling about the first is conditioned a little by the precise meaning of stalemate—I am not sure that a stalemate, in a certain sense, is not inevitable when unconditional surrender becomes impossible. As you point out so clearly later, it is a "stalemate of equilibrium"—which of course can shift from time to time. In any case, perhaps a word of elaboration might be worth while to connect the two approaches a bit more closely. Is it stalemate in assessment of risks which need not follow? (This of course matches the thesis developed on p.132 et seq.) If so I agree.

[M]

-5-

2. "It is the temptation of military planning....to substitute power for conception." (p.71)

I can't help singling this generalization out for special mention, not only because I am sure it is so important but because its application is so wide in any areas, military or non-military, where power and conceptual approaches must be coordinated. It is nearly a universal, I think!

3. "The disagreements of the military experts magnify the insecurity of the policy makers because they emphasize the contingency of any proposed solution." (p.95)

One gets vivid evidence continually of the truth of this, and I think the situation is even worse. The contingency of the proposed solutions not only magnifies the uncertainty. It gives "living room" for rigid, over-conservative, and even, on occasion, actually bad judgments which could not, I think, survive were the technical contingency less marked. The fundamental difficulty, of course, is that the contingency is not only a function of rapidly expanding weapons technology *per se*. It is most of all a consequence of the inherent characteristic that no weapons of warfare can ever be effectively tested except on the battlefield, when it is already too late. This has important implications, I think, for future wars where battlefield testing even *during* conflict will become impossible—a concept difficult for some planning and some military minds to grasp fully in advance of the event.

The basic doctrine of this chapter, with all that it introduces for the later ones, seems to me of the highest importance. The relation of lack of doctrinal coordination as the basis for division in our own armed services and between our military establishment and those of our allies, especially Britain, strikes at the very heart of the whole problem of duplication and irrelevance in our own military program. As you point out, this can only be remedied by a complete revolution in the thinking about what are now so patly called "roles and missions" in the services. This kind of mental revolution will take time and unceasing effort to bring about. This book bids fair, I really think, to be a significant weapon in that struggle.

-6-

The continuing stress (here and later) on the role of
nuance and of the psychological factors of planning is vital.
I think this one of the most important chapters.

## Chapter IV

I have some minor technical suggestions with respect
to this chapter, so will return to it at the close.

## Chapter V

1. "It was forgotten that the rapid decisions of nineteenth century warfare had been due above all to the readiness with which defeat was acknowledged....Defeat was acknowledged relatively easily because the consequences did not threaten national survival." (p. 134)

This troubles me a little. You have made the powerful and clear point that a large proportion of the wars of the nineteenth century were wars of limited objectives, concerned primarily with the maintenance or relatively slight modification of existing power balances, and conceivably deliberately designed to avoid a repetition of earlier holocausts—wars of diplomacy in the true sense, perhaps. But was this true of the Napoleonic wars, or were they waged for unlimited objectives, where decision was not reached quickly or easily? Probably they are not to be considered "nineteenth-century" wars, but would it be worth specifically excluding them here (as they are later) if this is correct?

2. "For the strategy of the two world wars presupposed two related factors: a productive process which yielded a substantial surplus above bare subsistence and weapons of relatively small destructiveness so that any increment in the strength of one side could prove strategically significant."

This is both true and exceedingly important, I think, in distinguishing all-out wars of the World War I - II types from any future all-out wars. But I wonder if it distinguishes these wars from earlier all-out efforts, such, notably, as the French and Spanish large-scale wars of conquest. In these, of course, the margin for survival was secured by limiting the military action to a much smaller fraction of

[Y]

-7-

the total resources in both manpower and materiel, but this
seems to me a difference of degree rather than of kind. And
on the weapons side, it seems to me the situation you de-
scribe has held pretty well through the all-out wars of his-
tory *up until* the advent of nucleonics. Is this legitimate?
Should a word of such distinction be added?

3. Discussion of technological advance vs. technological breakthrough—pp.172-174.

I wonder whether this discussion—intensely illuminat-
ing in itself—is really helped by trying to make the dis-
tinction between "breakthrough" and "advance"? It does not
affect the main argument or conclusions in any way, but I
found myself diverted and a little bit "bothered" in reading
it by various cases which came to mind which seemed marginal
and hard to categorize. Are the categories really needed in
any case? I am a little unclear about the precise meaning of
the last phrase on p. 174—"....that we cannot use any tech-
nological breakthroughs we may achieve to obtain a strategic
transformation."

4. "But apart from the fact that any substantial move-
ment of Soviet submarines could hardly escape detection...."

I have a prejudice of fact here, which is probably no
more than a personal one, but let me "ride" it for a moment
in any case. I am more concerned about the Soviet submarine
menace (rightly or wrongly) than I think is usual, for this
reason. Suppose that at a point in the future the Soviets
have developed a really substantial fleet of long-range, quiet,
nuclear-powered submarines, capable of operating away from
base and without surfacing for prolonged periods. Suppose
also that they use these fleets in peaceful contexts—for
probably uneconomical but perhaps subsidized goods transport,
for example, or even, on one pretext or another, for limited
passenger transport (of Soviet citizens). In this context,
large numbers of them come to ply fairly regularly off our
coasts just outside continental limits on "normal" peaceful
missions—and do the same, say, for Britain, Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand. I don't see how there can be any valid ob-
jection to such a practice, and all detection equipment of
"surrounded" nationals thus becomes saturated, on a daily,
routine basis. Are not these fleets then in effect "unde-
tected" for any war mission to which they might be designated

[Y]

-8-

(irrespective of its effectiveness)? Further, though I too
am inclined to look dimly at such vessels as significant
vehicles for all-out nuclear attack in a relative sense, I
don't see why they cannot be exceedingly effective weapons
of interdiction for island fortresses in more conventional
wars.

5. "Although the margin of superiority of the industrialized over the underdeveloped nations has never been greater, it has also never been less effective." (p. 185)

A most profound and telling point! What happens in future as underdeveloped nations acquire nucleonics?

## Chapter VI

1. The five principles of strategy—pp.194 et seq.

In the moment that we had to discuss the book on Mon-
day you questioned the retention of the Five Principles and
even expressed concern that they might be commonplace. I
feel strongly the other way. They may seem so to the author
because he has been dealing with them for a long time and is
building much of the book around them. I can testify that to
this uninitiated reader, at least they are anything but com-
monplace—rather they are profound and exceedingly key state-
ments.

The only suggestion I would have would be for some
"tightening" of statements on (1) and (2). I think both con-
tain some repetition of ideas and could with profit be short-
ened somewhat. This will no doubt be a normal part of re-
writing. But I think them excellent, and feel they should
be retained. The third postulate seems to me particularly
important for repeated emphasis.

2. "....there can be little doubt that on the over-all
balance the Free World possesses an infinitely larger pool
of technically trained manpower; and the disparity in the
familiarity with technology on the part of the mass of the
population....is more pronounced still." (p.295)

I would disagree somewhat with the magnitude of this
disparity—now, and still more for the future. I feel that
we must assume a much greater equivalence of scientific com-
petence at the higher levels at present, and doubt that we
can count on very great disparity even in the bulk of the
populace in another generation. I think that we must assume

-9-

that technological superiority, even across the broad front
of nucleonics, is likely to be fleeting—at least to the
point where, in this as in other aspects, relative superiority
loses much of its significance..

"It is the paradoxical consequence of a period when
technology has never been more complicated that its effective-
ness depends to such an extent on intangibles: on the subtlety
of the leadership and on its concept of intangibles." (p. 302)

This is important and true, but is it not the primary
consequence rather of weapons parity than of weapons complexity—
and does it not emphasize anew, therefore, the importance of
the *relative* and the comparative unimportance of the *absolute*
characteristics of weapons in terms of complexity (and effect-
iveness)? Is the case not equally true for simple weapons?
This of course does not lessen the paradox—it merely explicitly
points the lesson.

3. P. 309. I wonder whether it is worth emphasizing one
point again in this final summary, which has been mentioned
many times but never, I think, as an explicit statement: That
the capabilities for the graduated employment of force, in-
cluding graduated nuclear weapons, must be developed to the
full and deployed against a constant background of potential
capability for all-out war. Perhaps this is worth reiterating
specifically as a fifth point.

These are trivial and detailed comments, indeed, to
make against the background of the superb array of new insights
and powerful arguments with which the chapter is replete. They
represent the only small points where I can find anything to
add!

Let me now return to Chapter IV, which we discussed
very briefly. A re-reading since our talk has left me with
a changed feeling about it. I think that this technical dis-
cussion should be retained, essentially as it is, to give the
uninitiated reader some concept of the scope and magnitude of
destructiveness of all-out nuclear war. This is most
effectively, and the detailed discussion adds impressively.
I have only one or two comments of specific wording to add,
and they refer only to factual elements.

1. "Unlike the atoms of familiar substances such as gold or oxygen, the atoms of radioactive substances disintegrate, i.e. they change their composition." (p. 115)

[4]

-10-

I would suggest either omitting the examples of gold or oxygen, or adding the word "spontaneously" after "disintegrate," or both, to avoid the confusion of disintegration under bombardment, with the production of radioactive products, which applies to familiar elements which do not disintegrate spontaneously.

2. "The rising fireball sucks up this debris and coats it with the radioactive material created by the fission process." (p. 116)

Would it not be well to alter to"....and converts it to radioactive material"—to cover both the process of coating of nuclei, and of the conversion of non-radioactive earth elements—like the silicon you mention below—to radioactive forms, which also takes place, and is likely to be the predominant process?

3. "Alpha and beta rays cause burns and lesions but cannot do internal damage unless they enter the system by means of contaminated food or water supplies."

This needs a bit of modification, I think. Beta rays can do direct damage—quite extensively—if of sufficiently high energy—though they are not the usual agents. The relevance of the contaminated food or water supplies is that they act as sources of alpha and beta rays, thereby enabling lower-energy fission products to cause greater tissue damage simply by virtue of their proximity.

4. "Any radiation which reaches the reproductive organs will cause changes in the cells governing heredity, which are called genes." (p. 124)

Change "cells" to "units"—genes are not cells, but submicroscopic units within individual cells. One could say—"will cause changes in the genes of the reproductive cells governing heredity."

5. p.204. The last sentence in that paragraph needs some modification, since present indications are that all the genes with which a person starts out are probably not kept unchanged as the cells divide and the person's body is elaborated. Perhaps substitute: "Changes in the genes of these reproductive cells, though usually causing no detectable damage to the person concerned if the dosage is fairly low, may profoundly affect the following and subsequent generations."

6. p. 125—Discussion of quantitative effects of radiation dosage.

[Y]

STRATHMORE

-11-

I would be inclined to omit the discussion of the relation of dosage and numbers of mutations. This relation for estimating the genetic damage by radiation exposure depends upon a principle which is quite generally accepted and widely used as a "rule of thumb"—that radiation dosage in terms of genetic effects is strictly additive over time. I don't think this has been firmly enough demonstrated to generalize about it with complete certainty—and so it seems to me that one might as well avoid the specific commitments involved in that part of the discussion—since they are quite unnecessary for the main argument. For the same reason, I would tend not to emphasize the "direct proportion to exposure" statements on p. 126—I, at least, do not feel confident enough about recovery and synergistic effects. Similarly, while cosmic radiation and chemical effects are both known to produce "spontaneous" mutations, there may be other, intracellular, causes—so perhaps the first two, while they should be referred to explicitly, should not be called the *only* ones.

These are very small and detailed comments. They do not touch the main stream of this really magnificent book—but I cannot do much here for the reason that the argument seems so good to me. It is obvious that some re-organization, regrouping, and condensation of ideas will occur in Chapters V and VI, in rewriting, as could not fail to be the case where so very many new and basic ideas are introduced at once. But this, of course, is the merest matter of mechanics—and I expect had been done long before this belated letter went out!

It has been a rare privilege and a part of education to read this manuscript, and I am very grateful to you. I suspect that many of the consequences of the scaffolding of reasoning which these chapter have built will appear in Chapter VII. If you would care to let me see this whenever you are ready, I should be more than grateful.

With every best wish,

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger,
Council on Foreign Relations,
58 East 68th Street,
New York, N.Y.

THE INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR

16 May 1957

Dear Gordon:

Thank you for your good letter of March 27th. George Franklin
sent me the page proofs of Kissinger's book a little while back, while
I was at Harvard. I have now had a fair chance to examine it, though
there are parts that I shall want to read with more care.

It is, as you say, a masterful and potentially very important
beginning. I am deeply impressed by how well Kissinger has managed to
learn the whole complex of relevant technological lore. Often I am
left in doubt by his advocacy, as where he differs from James King.
My suspicion here is that there is no universal answer, either on
King's side or on Kissinger's. Of course, Kissinger is right in
conceiving the problems of policy planning and strategy in terms of
national power, in rough analogy to the national struggles of the 19th
century; yet I have the impression that there are deep things abroad
in the world, which in time are going to turn the flank of all struggles
so conceived. This will not happen today, nor easily as long as Soviet
power continues great and unaltered; but nevertheless I think in time
the transnational communities in our culture will begin to play a
prominent part in the political structure of the world, and even affect
the exercise of power by the states. Having said this, I still think
Kissinger's book far and away the best thing I have seen in public,
and enormously better than anything that existed in the official
papers during the years when I had to look at them. I hope that it
will be widely and carefully read, and that everyone will remember
your injunction to regard it as the beginning of thought, and not the
end.

It seems that both George Franklin and you might want something
publicly quotable, to promote the book. Here it is:

Dr. Kissinger's history-making book is extraordinarily
well informed, and in this respect quite without
precedent in the field of nuclear armament. It is

Chapter III

The Fires of Prometheus

The legend of Prometheus, who sought to steal the fire from the
神们 and who for his presumption was forced to spend the rest of his
life chained to a rock, has for two millenia been the symbol of the in-
which attach to man's inherent ambitions. To the gods, the
herent limitations of human striving. It was not understood that the
punishment of Prometheus was an act of compassion; it would have been
a much more severe penalty had the gods permitted their fire to be
stolen. Our generation has succeeded in stealing the fire of the gods,
has not yet come to terms
and it is doomed to live with the horror of its achievement.

Any analysis of the strategic revolution which has taken place
must start, with a discussion of the increased destructiveness of
modern weapons. Since our strategic doctrine assumes that the targets
will include industrial facilities, air bases, ports, and similar
installations and since most of these are located in or near big cities,
the first consideration must be the effect of thermo-nuclear weapons when used
on urban concentrations.

The growth of the city is perhaps the distinguishing charac-
teristic of modern civilization: it is the symbol of its abstractness
because in it the individual is meaningful only as a specialized skill;
It is also the expression of its power and its vulnerability. In a
primitive society the basic unit is the family, which is largely self-
sufficient; it produces its own food (supply and it containing the
necessary skills required for its survival. Its margin of subsistence will

## Chapter IV
### The Fires of Prometheus

The legend of Prometheus who sought to steal the fire from the gods and who for his presumption was forced to spend the rest of his life chained to a rock has for two millenia been the symbol of the inherent limitations of human striving. It was not understood that the punishment of Prometheus was an act of compassion; it would have been a much more severe penalty had the gods permitted their fire to be stolen. Our generation has succeeded in stealing the fire of the gods and it is doomed to live with the horror of its achievement.

Any analysis of the strategic revolution which has taken place must start with a discussion of the increased destructiveness of modern weapons. Since our strategic doctrine assumes that the targets will include industrial facilities, air bases, ports and similar installations and since most of these are located in or near big cities, the first consideration must be the effect of thermo-nuclear weapons on urban concentrations.

The growth of the city is perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of modern civilization: it is the symbol of its abstractness because in it the individual is meaningful only as a specialized skill; it is also the expression of its power and its vulnerability. In a primitive society the basic unit is the family which is largely self-sufficient; it produces its own food supply and it contains the skills required for its survival. Its margin of subsistence will

IV - 2

generally be low, but it is more vulnerable to natural catastrophes which affect its food supply than to events which merely affect the performance of its neighbors.

A modern city, on the other hand, is made possible by specialization. Because of it, the individual in modern society develops a substantially greater proficiency in his skill; but by the same token his dependence on other units of the society becomes more pronounced. He is less vulnerable to natural catastrophes, but more vulnerable to events which affect the performance of his fellows. This specialization extends not only to individuals but to organizations as well: Its expression professionally is the institution which relates various experts to each other and makes them available to the society at large; its counterpart in business is the vertical organization which assembles highly specialized individuals and machinery in a mechanism for the production of goods and services. A city will, therefore, contain a great specialization in the skills of its inhabitants and conversely most of the skilled population of a modern country will be found in cities. Most of the leading hospitals and medical schools, many of the universities, most of the banks and credit institutions, most of the exchanges which form the essential links of modern society are concentrated in cities. A city, therefore, exhibits highly organized group activity, a great elaboration of mutually dependent management forms. The city is thus the repository of most of nations' capital and skills.

IV-3

Since it requires for its survival a highly articulated transportation system, it also contains the contact-point with other countries and the hub of domestic transport.

Specialization makes possible a greater degree of material well-being than is even conceivable in primitive societies. But it also defines the vulnerability of a city both physically and psychologically. Any breakdown in one of the innumerable links of a city's "nervous system" can produce paralysis: an elevator failure, a subway strike, even a stoppage of traffic signals, can materially slow down the economic machine. More serious still is a failure of essential supplies. The whole economic life of the city is dependent on the uninterrupted supply of energy of which fuel energy is the single most important item. Finally, the life blood of a city is an intangible quality: the confidence of its inhabitants that this highly articulated mechanism will continue to function; the belief of its specialists in the meaning of their effort; the conviction of the individual that the machine will serve and not destroy him. The highest expression of this confidence is the degree to which the machine appears 'natural,' and it appears inconceivable that the intricate relationships which define it could ever be otherwise. The penalty of a loss of confidence is illustrated by the depression of 1929: the physical plant of our society did not shrink; the skills of the people did not grow less, yet production fell by

IV-4

more than 40% and millions were unemployed. It is the paradox of
modern life that the greater the power, the more complex and in-
tangible is the condition of its use.

In planning for the contingency of an attack on our cities
the Federal Civil Defense Authority in 1955 made the following
assumptions: (1) The U.S.S.R. has the capability of striking any
target within the United States with nuclear weapons, including
thermo-nuclear types delivered through the air and detonated above
ground during normal working hours. Targets will be our centers of
industry and population. (2) Initial attacks will include suffi-
cient nuclear weapons to hit all of our critical target areas;
to be followed by other less heavy attacks. (3) Bomb sizes will
vary from a few thousand to millions of tons of TNT equivalent.
Any city attacked, with very few exceptions, can be substantially
destroyed by one bomb. (4) The principal city in each Critical
Target area will be hit. The day time centers of population will
be the aiming points within the city. (5) Any city attacked will
need outside help to meet the emergency. (6) A warning time of
one hour in most areas is expected but cannot be guaranteed.

(7) Evacuation of people from downtown areas in cities is to
commence upon the first warning. Such peoples are expected to have

1.

IV-5

moved two miles from their offices when the attack becomes imminent.

A later chapter will discuss how realistic these assumptions are. For present purposes they suffice to describe the magnitude of the threat: The Federal Civil Defense Authority has identified 92 critical target areas with a total population of 68 million. The Air Defense Command has described 170 standard metropolitan areas of 50,000 or more population. These areas contain 55% of the population and 75% of the industry of this country. An attack on the most important 50 of them would bring under fire 40 per cent of the population, 50 per cent of the key facilities and 60 per cent of the industry of the United States. Nuclear technology,

2. Symington Hearings, p. 239, p. 307.

moreover, has advanced to a point where weapons of any desired explosive power can be produced: the atomic bombs of the Hiroshima type now range from the equivalent of below 1 kiloton TNT equivalent to close to 1 million ton (megaton) TNT equivalent (or 50 times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb). Thermo-nuclear weapons have no inherent upper limit. The U.S.S.R. will therefore have the capability to strike each standard metropolitan area in such a pattern that one or at most two nuclear weapons would bring about its destruction. Since a 10 megaton weapon is by no means the most powerful weapon available a description of the damage caused by it will err, if

IV-6

anywhere, on the side of conservatism. The effects of such a weapon can be classed under three headings, blast and heat; radiation and fall-out; genetic effects.

The destruction due to heat and blast of a 10 megaton weapon would extend over three circles of decreasing damage: within a radius of three miles there would occur total destruction of all buildings and a mortality rate of 75% with all the survivors severely injured. Within a radius of 7 miles, all buildings would be heavily damaged and the most conservative estimates indicate a 30 per cent mortality rate with at least 40 per cent of the remainder injured with varying degrees of severity. Heavy damage is defined by the Federal Civil Defense Authority as structure damage that would result in the collapse of the buildings. Beyond this there would extend a circle of light damage with a radius of 10 miles. At the edge of this circle the heat and radiation would be sufficient to kill or injure severely individuals outside of shelters and to set fire to buildings. Since the suburbs of most American cities are of wood construction, a devastated city may therefore find itself encircled by a wall of flames. 3

3. It must be repeated that a 10 megaton weapon represents by no means the upper limit of possible weapons. The device set off at Eniwetok in 1954 was 20 megatons and its radii of destruction would be 10 and 14 miles respectively.

IV-7

The proportions of the disaster for a city thus become fairly clear. A 10 megaton bomb exploded over New York City, at 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, would include in its three mile radius of total destruction all of Manhattan south of 96th Street, parts of Jersey City, all of the cities on the West bank of the Hudson up to Hudson Heights, and in Queens, Long Island City, Hunter's Point and Williamsburg. The daytime working and residential population in this area is at least 4 million. A mortality rate of 75 per cent would produce three million deaths and the remainder would be so severely injured that they could survive only if hospitalized immediately. The 7 mile radius of heavy damage would include Manhattan Island to just north of the George Washington Bridge, a third of the Bronx, half of Queens and Brooklyn and all of Jersey City. A conservative casualties estimate would be 900,000 dead and at least 600,000 injured. To be sure, New York is more vulnerable than most cities because of its great density of population. On the other hand, it contains large unpopulated areas such as Central Park, the rivers, the Upper Bay, and the Jersey Meadows, which would be built-up areas in other cities. In any case, the attacker can always step up the power of his weapon to cover the desired area. The following table illustrates the vulnerability of major U.S. cities.

IV-9

Thus a successful attack on the 50 most important urban centers listed by the Air Defense Command, containing 50 per cent of the U.S. population would by the most conservative estimates produce 15 to 20 million dead and 20 to 25 million injured. Such a casualty rate produces almost insuperable medical problems.

Under normal conditions, a hospital requires five persons to care for one patient. It has been estimated that in Nagasaki under the most primitive medical conditions, each survivor required two persons to care for him. The whole surviving population of an affected area would therefore either be injured or engaged in caring for the injured or both. Even then, medical assistance to the injured will be inadequate. For most hospitals and doctors are themselves within the target area and will suffer the same proportion of damage and casualties as the rest of the population.

In any case, there are in this country only 100,000 medical doctors or 160,000 medically trained personnel if one adds veterinarians and trained nurses -- a number which is marginal even under peace-time conditions. Since eight nurses working under favorable conditions can administer only 10,000 infusions a month it is apparent that infusions for casualties measured in the millions would be out of the question. The medical picture is further complicated by the almost certain disappearance of hygienic conditions of life, leaving survivors of the attack open to a whole range of epidemic diseases which might be caused by the destruction

IV-10

of water purification machinery, exhaustion of chlorine supplies,
breakdown of sanitary disposal systems and putrification of normal-
ly refrigerated food.

A thermo-nuclear attack on an urban center, therefore, differs
fundamentally from World War II types of bombing. In World War II
the attacks were cumulative; one 10 megaton weapon represents
<u>five times the explosive power of all</u> the bombs dropped on Germany
during four years of war and one hundred times those on Japan.
In World War II, the population could get used to the gradually
increasing tempo of bombardment; a thermo-nuclear weapon would
produce all the casualties at once. All the raids on Germany
combined killed 300 to 330 thousand people; a single 10 megaton
weapon exploded over any of the larger U.S. cities will kill several
times that number. A World War II type attack left no residual
dangers except for mines which could be identified fairly easily.
A thermo-nuclear attack will contaminate the blast area with severe
radiation and thus add to the psychological burden of survivors.

A disaster of such magnitude might prevent even a trained
person from responding with efficiency and organization. Survivors
of the raid on Nagasaki have reported the sense of shock which
seized them after the attack; it was seven days before organized
rescue operations began. And a 20 megaton thermo-nuclear bomb
represents the same order of increase in explosive power of the

IV-11

atomic bomb exploded at Nagasaki as the Nagasaki bomb did over the largest blockbuster of World War II, i.e., a thousand-fold increase.

Moreover in World War II even the largest raid affected only a limited area within a city; it never paralyzed the entire urban area. The parts of the city which were not under attack could come to the assistance of the stricken portion and mitigate the worst effects of a raid often while it was in progress. Even within the section under attack, essential services, such as hospitals could frequently be maintained. World War II, therefore, still represented the marginal case where the highly elaborated organism which is a city could profit from its specialized functions. But confronted with a thermo-nuclear attack, the modern city may carry within itself the seeds of its own destruction. The specialization of functions presupposes a high order of managerial skill and the technical ability to utilize the interlocking components of an organization. Since most telephone exchanges, hospitals, institutions of municipal government and their administrators are within the target area, however, it may be days before any coordinated activity is technically possible. In the meantime, the food and water supplies will have been contaminated with radioactive material and rescue operations for some time will be inhibited by the fact that the zones of heaviest damage are also most heavily radioactive.

IV-12

What happens to a society in such circumstances is almost unpredictable. The specialization of functions which is the condition of high productivity may create paralysis when the machinery for coordinated effort collapses. The elaboration of services which define a highly articulated city may become a burden when the energy on which they depend suddenly is no longer available. A city without electricity, without water supply, without communications is a contradiction in terms; a jungle in which nature does not offer even the barest means of survival. A country as dependent as ours is on the internal combustion engine can be paralyzed by the destruction of its oil refineries and distribution centers, most of which are located in or near big cities. Even our agriculture is unthinkable without tractors.

The effect of such a catastrophe cannot be measured only in the loss of material wealth or even in the collapse of the subtle relationships which make up a city. The psychological impact on the country of the sudden disappearance of even 25 population centers is incalculable. Since these centers will contain most of the technically skilled and professional cadres, the engineers, the doctors, the lawyers, etc., a society can lose most of its store of capital and skills in one blow. And the psychological impact of the loss will be compounded by the fact that the radiation which produces many of the casualties cannot be seen

IV-13

or felt even while it is most pervasive and that the symptoms of radiation sickness may not appear for periods ranging from 1 to 3 weeks. A thermo-nuclear attack may thus turn into a symbol of the tensity of all human striving; it may shake to the core confidence in the economy, the government and the national purpose.

## II

Even should the national morale withstand the disappearance of its centers of control and of the symbols of its power, it will be put to another test. For the cities which are attacked cannot count on drawing support from the surrounding countryside, as the Federal Civil Defense Authority plan assumes. While the city is subjected to heat and blast, the surrounding countryside, for distances varying from 100 to 400 miles of an elliptical cone will be subjected to a collateral effect of the explosion weapons: 4 the radioactive fall-out.

4. For excellent technical discussions of the fall-out problem, see: Ralph E. Lapp, "Radioactive Fall Out," *Bulletin of Atomic Scientists*, February 1955, p. 454; J. Rotnerat, "The Hydrogen-Uranium Bomb," same, May 1955, p. 171; Willard F. Litby, "Radioactive Fall-Out," same, September 1955, p. 256 ff.

IV-14

When the first megaton weapon was exploded over Eniwetok,
the degree of fall-out was unanticipated, although the phenomenon
was well understood. In retrospect, it appeared inevitable. In a

5. See AEC Handbook, *The Effects of Atomic Weapons*, p. 35.

sense this is the dilemma of the nuclear period: each technological
breakthrough liberates forces so much beyond all previous expe-
rience, that most of the experts are at a loss to interpret the
consequences. Indeed, the scale of experience where their
expertise was formed, may inhibit their understanding of the
significance or the implications of new developments. This is the
case in the military field where the addition of thermo-nuclear
weapons to traditional doctrine often creates a distortion; it
was so with the first explosion of the so-called hydrogen bomb
in the Pacific.

The fall-out of thermo-nuclear weapons results from two
factors: the power of the explosion and the nature of the weapon.
The power of nuclear explosions is caused by two processes: fission
which in lay terms represents the force liberated by the break-up
of atoms and fusion which is the process of combining atoms. Fission
produces highly radioactive materials; fusion yields little
radioactivity. Radioactivity is the property of unstable atoms.

IV-15

Unlike the atoms of familiar substances such as gold or oxygen, the atoms of radioactive substances disintegrate, i.e., they change their composition. In the process they emit high energy rays capable of penetrating the human tissue and of producing chemical, biological and genetic changes in the cells they traverse. Radioactivity is measured in half-lives: the amount of time it takes for a given quantity of radioactive material to decay to half its initial value. Were the thermo-nuclear weapon a "real" hydrogen bomb, there would be little or no radioactivity because the fusion of hydrogen atoms produces either stable substances or radioactive particles of very short half-lives measured in seconds or minutes. But a thermo-nuclear device operates in three stages: fission which is then used to produce fusion which in turn is used to produce a much more powerful fission reaction. In colloquial terms, an atom bomb is used to trigger a hydrogen reaction, which in turn is used to trigger a super-atom bomb reaction. Thus the thermo-nuclear bomb produces fissionable materials in the same proportion as its explosive power. The bomb exploded over Hiroshima, equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT, yielded about two pounds of radioactive material. A 10 megaton weapon will produce about 1,000 lbs. of radioactive products and a 20 megaton bomb, 2,000 lbs.

The difference in explosive power of the two weapons accounts for the different radiological effects. The fire-ball of a 20

IV-16

kiloton weapon has a diameter of 1½ miles. The fireball of a 10
megaton thermonuclear weapon has a diameter of 6 miles. Unless
exploded at very high altitudes (above 16 thousand feet), it will
therefore come in contact with the ground below. As it does so,
the blast of the explosion dislodges millions of tons of the sur-
face. The rising fireball sucks up this debris and coats it with
the radioactive material created by the fission process. The
debris is then swept up into the stratosphere and deposited down-
wind. As a result, there takes place over a period of hours a
continual "fall-out" of radioactive material over an elliptically
shaped area. The nature and distribution of the fall-out depends
on meteorological conditions and the constitution of the surface
above which the bomb exploded: the material will fall out according
to the weight of the debris, the heavier materials falling out
first, the lighter drifting further downwind, the very light ma-
terial remaining in the stratosphere for some time thereby affecting
the background radiation of the globe. If the target is a city
where brick is a common building material, fall-out is aggravated
because the silicon in the brick and the lime in the mortar will
themselves become radioactive.

The ellipse of the fall-out will vary with meteorological
conditions. The U.S. test of March 1, 1954 dangerously contami-

IV-17

nated an area of 7,000 square miles (or an area of the size of
the state of New Jersey). Dr. Libby, a member of the Atomic

7. AEC release, February 15, 1955.

Energy Commission has described a possible contamination of 100 thousand square miles (or an area of the size of the states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania combined).

8. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1955.

The effect of fall-out is determined by the amount of radiation to which an area is subjected. In general the damage caused by radiation is two-fold: (a) direct damage leading to illness, death or reduced life expectancy, (b) genetic effects.

The direct damage is caused generally by gamma rays which penetrate the skin and affect the molecules of the cell structure. Alpha and beta rays cause burns and lesions but cannot do internal damage unless they enter the system by means of contaminated food or water supplies. Because gamma rays damage the constituents of the blood, there will occur a greater susceptibility to infection and they may induce spontaneous bleeding. Nausea will be caused by a disturbance of the gastro-intestinal tract. There is strong evidence that exposure to radiation may induce leukemia and cataracts months after exposure. The following table gives some indication

IV-18

of the effects of exposure to radiation. Its estimates are con-
servative and disregard genetic effects entirely. The measurements
are in roentgen which is an arbitrary standard for radiation.

TABLE II

Damage from Roentgen Dosage

Direct Effects of Whole Body Dose on Individual

<table><thead><tr><th>Roentgen (r)</th><th></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>0-25</td><td>No obvious injury</td></tr><tr><td>25-50</td><td>F possible blood damages but no serious injury</td></tr><tr><td>50-100</td><td>Blood cell damages, some injury, no disability</td></tr><tr><td>100-200</td><td>Injury, possible disability</td></tr><tr><td>200-400</td><td>Injury and disability certain, death possible</td></tr><tr><td>400</td><td>Fatal to 50%</td></tr><tr><td>600</td><td>Fatal</td></tr></tbody></table>

9. Chart 11.23, Atomic Energy Commission Handbook, Effects of Atomic Weapons, p.

What then will be the likely exposure to fall-out? Exposure
varies of course with the degree of radioactivity and this in
turn depends on the area covered by fall-out. On the basis of the
figures given by Libby, the 7,000 square miles contaminated by
the U.S. test of March 1, 1954, would have received an average

IV-19

10. exposure during the first 24 hours of 938 r's.

10. libby assumes an average dose of 67 r's over 100 thousand square miles. This is a conservative figure. After the March 1, 1954 explosion the dosage 100 miles away was 2300 r's during the first 36 hours. See Bulletin of Atomic Scientists May 1955, p. 132 (Testimony of Dr. Bingen at Refanver Hearings).

Such an exposure is twice a lethal dose and even granting a falling off of radioactivity at the outer edges of the ellipse, it will still be powerful enough to produce disability. To be sure, after the first twenty-four hours, radioactivity drops rapidly: roughly tenfold for every sevenfold increase in age. Thus at the end of a week the radioactivity assumed above would have dwindled to 93.8r's. This is still a dangerous dosage, however, and exposure to it over any length of time would have serious consequences. Moreover, the radioactivity is persistent: the residual dosage for the period from one week to one year would equal the dosage received during the first week or about 1500 r's.

The casualty rate will depend on a considerable extent on the awareness by the civilian population of the danger facing it. If the nature of fall-out is not understood, or if there are no preparations to deal with it, the casualty rate from the fall-out

IV-20

pattern will approach that produced by the heat and blast of the explosion. If precautionary measures are taken, the casualty rate will be reduced but it will still involve a significant percentage of the population of the affected area. Precautionary measures include shelter of any kind particularly underground shelters with very small openings. Basements will reduce exposure and foxholes will be more effective still. As soon as radiation has dropped to a relatively safe level, say below 100 r's, decontamination can be started by sweeping radioactive ash from rooftops and streets, flushing them with water or even raking the earth. If these decontamination measures are not taken, the area may be uninhabitable for several months.

The danger from fall-out has been rather cavalierly treated. General le May at the Symington Hearings testified that a person covered by three feet of dirt would be relatively safe.

## 11. Symington Hearings, p.

But the point is surely whether millions of inhabitants of a 7,000 square mile area (not to speak of a 100 thousand square mile area under a different set of meteorological conditions) can remain underground for the first 48 hours of intense radioactivity and function with proper precautions afterwards. Since the fall-out pattern is so dependent on meteorological conditions, it is relatively unpredictable in any given attack. It can be assumed for this reason that fall-out will catch a substantial proportion of the population of the affected area above ground. Given the fact that communications will probably have been destroyed by the detonation, concerted action will be extremely difficult; indeed even informing the population of radiation levels

IV-21

or organizing effective measures for the simplest public health function will not be an easy matter. Moreover, the fall-out will contaminate crops and water supply and since animals will not take shelter, livestock will either be killed or contaminated by eating radioactive matter. Thus even in the best circumstances, fall-out after an attack in the 50 most important metropolitan areas in the United States is likely to produce about 30% of the casualties produced by the explosion or 5-10 million dead and 7-15 million injured. More importantly, very few undamaged areas would remain to give assistance to the stricken parts of the country. Indeed, an enemy could plan to detonate his weapons as to blanket the greatest possible area. Thus all energies of every affected area would have to be directed toward the sheer problem of survival, preventing epidemics, caring for the injured and avoiding in so far as possible exposure to radiation.

This will strain the recuperative powers of the country to the utmost. The cities will not be able to count on assistance from the surrounding countryside and the effort of the surrounding area to deal with its fall-out problem will be inhibited by the fact that communications are likely to have been destroyed in the explosion. Evacuation of cities even when feasible may not reduce casualties for it may simply move the evacuees into a fall-out area. And the fall-out area would not be able to support a large influx of refugees in the face of the destruction of all food supplies. When the question of survival is posed in such elementary form, organized activity will tend to be reduced to the local level and directed to meeting immediate needs.

More refinements could be added, but at this level of catastrophe even minimum estimates suffice to make the basic point that a society which suffers a disaster of this magnitude would of necessity have to undergo a fundamental

N-22

transformation. If it is to survive as an organized society, it will have to
adopt the most extreme form of direction; it is equally possible that it will
break up into local units, concerned primarily with the barest problems of sur-
vival. Europe has never recovered either from the bloodletting or from the
shock of World War I. For World War I did more than destroy an elite, it
undermined a faith. On the battlefields of France disappeared the hopes of
the Golden Age, of the inevitable Progress, of the triumphant reasonableness
that were as cardinal principles of 19th century Europe as they are of current
America. Ever since the shock of World War I, strong government in Europe has
been difficult because confidence in leadership was lacking and because the
leaders themselves had lost faith in themselves. The same reactions can be
expected in a society which has undergone a sustained thermo-nuclear attack.
For a society operates through confidence in an ordered appearance of events
either natural or social. A catastrophe is an interruption in what has come
to be considered natural and the panic it often produces is the reaction of an
organism which lacks a framework to react to an unexpected situation and which
wishes to flee as rapidly as possible into a familiar and therefore predictable
environment. If a familiar environment remains, some confidence can be restored.
Most natural catastrophes can be dealt with because they affect only a very
small geographic area or a very small proportion of the population. Thus the
remainder of the society can utilize its machinery for assistance; indeed such
action tends to increase its cohesiveness because it becomes a symbol of the
value and efficiency of society. The essence of the catastrophe produced by
an all-out thermo-nuclear attack, however, is the depth of the dislocation it
produces, and the consequent impossibility of escaping into familiar relation-
ships. When all relationships or even most relationships have to be

IV-23

reconstituted, the society we know today will have been fundamentally transformed.

### III

An all-out thermo-nuclear exchange as described in this chapter would, therefore, have drastic consequences for the social structure and the material well-being of the warring nations. In addition, it would produce genetic effects which might affect all humanity.

12. The best study of the genetic effects is the Report of the Genetics Committee of the National Academy of Sciences. See also *Bulletin of Atomic Scientists*, November 1955. Muller, "How Radiation Changes the Genetic Constitution," M. Westergaard, "Responsibility for his Genetic Heritage."

The same gamma rays which in larger doses produce radiation sickness are at all levels of exposure capable of producing genetic effects. Any radiation which reaches the reproductive organs will cause changes in the cells governing heridity, called genes. A gene which becomes permanently altered is said to mutate. Since all the genes with which a person starts out are in general kept unchanged as the cells divide and the person's body is elaborated, changes in cell structure will affect not only the individual concerned, but his progeny as well.

Geneticists believe this mutations which are large enough to be measured are generally harmful. In the genetic sense, relatively minor mutations, moreover, may have as severe consequences as more drastic ones. A serious dosage of radiation may produce sterility and thus work itself out in one generation; a less critical exposure might cause the offspring to be obviously handicapped and not likely to reproduce; it would, therefore, work itself out

IV-24

in two generations; other dosages might produce handicaps which are transmitted for many generations and which become part of the biological inheritance of the race. Thus a mutation need not necessarily or even usually produce freaks. The commonest mutations, in fact, are only slightly detrimental in any one generation. As a result, the genetic damage by radiation exposure depends on a factor produced by multiplying the dosage rate and the number of exposed individuals. Ten thousand individuals exposed to a dosage of 200 r might produce perhaps one hundred substantially handicapped children. On the other hand, if the whole population of the United States were to receive an exposure of 1 r there would occur mutations resulting in handicaps to several thousand children although the handicap might not be apparent in any one generation.

Of course, there are so-called spontaneous mutations not induced by radiation, but by heat, chemical action and similar factors. Others are induced by radiation which is part of the natural background, as for example cosmic rays. These two causes, in fact, produce the mutation which supply the mechanism of evolution. Additional radiation produces mutations in direct proportion to the exposure. Moreover, the genetic effect of radiation is cumulative: 1 r received yearly over a period of 30 years is genetically as significant as 30 r received at one time. Thus there is no such thing as a genetically safe dose although some dosages may not produce statistically noticeable short-term effects. Since half the U.S. children are born to parents below the age of 30, the significant dosage from the genetic point of view is the accumulated exposure over a 30 year period. At present the population of the United States is exposed to radiation from three sources: (a) general background radiation from cosmic rays -- the 30 year dosage averages about 4.3 roentgens, (b) x-rays and fluoroscopes -- the 30 year

IV-25

dosage amounts to about 3 roentgens, (c) fall-out from weapons tests.

The effects from fall-out in turn are of three types( (a) close in fall-out occurring over an area of several thousand square miles where the radioactive material descends within a period of 10-20 hours, (b) intermediate fall-out where radioactive material descends within several weeks after the explosion usually by providing a nucleus for the condensation of rain or snow, (c) delayed fall-out composed of material that remains in the air over a period of months or even years. It is composed of very tiny radioactive particles which are swept up into the stratosphere and dispersed by the prevailing winds. They become, in effect, part of the background radiation. If weapons tests were continued at the rate of the two most active years, 1953-55, they would produce an average thirty year dose of about 0.2 roentgens in the Northern Hemisphere. ¹³

13. The Genetics Committee of the National Academy of Science estimates that this figure may be off by a factor of five. That is, it may vary from .04 r's to 1 r.

While any increase in radiation should be avoided, the indicated dosage from weapons tests is not of itself likely to produce statistically significant mutations.

It would be different, however, with an all-out thermo-nuclear war. If even present weapons tests could raise the background radiation, it is clear that there must be a theoretical point where thermo-nuclear war could produce a level of background radiation which would have serious genetic effects even in the short term; indeed it is theoretically possible, although less likely,

IV-26

so to contaminate the atmosphere as to wipe out life in the Northern Hemisphere. The background radiation that is of immediate concern to geneticists is the "doubling dosage": the radiation which would cause the present rate of genetic defects which is 2% to be doubled. Of the 100 million children which are expected to be born to the presently alive population of the United States, 4 million would then have inherited genetic defects of which 200 thousand would appear in tangible form in the first generation. Geneticists have not agreed on the amount of radiation required to produce a doubling dosage, estimates varying from 5 r's to 150 r's. The report of the National Academy of Science placed the dosage at between 30-80 r's over a 30 year period. Even a 10 r exposure would involve 500 thousand additional genetic defects to the children to be born to the presently alive population of the United States and 50 thousand of these would appear in the first generation in tangible form. These levels of background radiation can be produced by a relatively small number of high yield thermo-nuclear weapons as is shown by the following table:

TABLE III
Degree of Background Radiation
Produced by Different Types of Nuclear Weapons

<table><thead><tr><th>R</th><th>50 MT</th><th>20 MT</th><th>10 MT</th><th>1 MT</th><th>50 KT</th><th>20 KT</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>0.2</td><td>2</td><td>5</td><td>10</td><td>100</td><td>2,000</td><td>5,000</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>30</td><td>75</td><td>150</td><td>1,500</td><td>30,000</td><td>75,000</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>100</td><td>250</td><td>500</td><td>5,000</td><td>100,000</td><td>250,000</td></tr><tr><td>30</td><td>300</td><td>750</td><td>1,500</td><td>15,000</td><td>300,000</td><td>750,000</td></tr><tr><td>80</td><td>800</td><td>2,000</td><td>4,000</td><td>40,000</td><td>800,000</td><td>2,000,000</td></tr><tr><td>400</td><td>4,000</td><td>10,000</td><td>20,000</td><td>200,000</td><td>4,000,000</td><td>10,000,000</td></tr></tbody></table>

IV-27

Thus 750 20-megaton bombs exploded in the Northern Hemisphere over a 30 year period would produce in all likelihood a doubling dosage. Even 250 such weapons -- a figure well within the combined capabilities of the United States and the U.S.S.R. -- would increase the background radiation by 10 r's. This does not take into account the radiation produced either by close-in fall-out or by that in the intermediary zone. Most individuals in these two zones would suffer severe genetic damage in addition to other radiological damage. In the 7,000 mile fall-out pattern described in the Atomic Energy Commission release of February 12, 1955, the accumulated dosage at the end of one week would have been close to 2,000 r's. With the best precautions, shelter program and decontamination, it is unlikely that the exposure would be reduced to much below 100. This would avoid the worst symptoms of radiation illness; it would, however, almost certainly constitute a doubling dosage genetically. Even the 100 thousand square mile fall-out pattern described by Libby would have an accumulated dosage by the end of one week of close to 200 r's. Since decontamination of so vast an area is next to impossible, it would even with a good shelter program be difficult to avoid a dosage which has serious genetic consequences.

IV

Enough has been described to make clear that an all-out war with thermo-nuclear weapons will have consequences for transcending anything experienced previously. The blast and heat effects of thermo-nuclear explosions can paralyze the intimate inter-relationships of modern urban life; the immediate fall-out can reduce large areas to subsistence levels; and the genetic effects could threaten the whole human race.

In such a situation, it is futile to speak of "purely" military considerations because the collateral effects of thermo-nuclear weapons far

IV-28

transcend the primary mission for which they are designed. From a purely
military point of view nothing is more efficacious for cratering airfields,
destroying port facilities or eliminating transportation centers than a megaton
weapon. But we have seen in the previous chapter that the crucial problem of
strategy is the relationship between power and the willingness to use it,
between the physical and the psychological components of national security
policy. Faced with the knowledge of the consequences of a thermo-nuclear
war, policy makers will be reluctant to engage in a strategy the penalty for
which may well be social disintegration.

The new technology thus increases our dangers at the precise moment when
our commitments have never been greater. For the first time in our history
we are vulnerable to a direct hostile attack: no remaining margin of
industrial and technological superiority can remove the consciousness of our
increasing vulnerability from the minds of policy-makers who have to make the
decision of peace or war. Nor can we count, henceforth on other powers to
hold a line while we mobilize. The weakening of the European powers has
forced us to assume the burden of maintaining the balance of power. For a
two-power world has little margin of safety; any relative strengthening of
one side is tantamount to an absolute weakening of the other.

But perhaps our dangers offer us at the same time a way out of our dilemmas.
As long as the consequences of all-out thermo-nuclear war appear as stark to
the other side as to us, they may avert disaster not through a reconciliation
of interests but through mutual terror. Perhaps our identification of
deterrence with retaliatory power, however faulty its historical analogies,
provides the basis, after all, for achieving a durable peace? What about
nuclear stalemate?