25

continue to suffer the process of attrition. Luckily for me the Chairman has passed me a little note, urging me to conclude. Therefore I can stop without having to come up with any complete proposals.

I can only say that I don't think there is a nuclear problem in the military sense, but there is a problem of which the nuclear issue was the symptom in the political sense.

Moderator: Thank you very much. I think that we will take our coffee break now, if you so desire and then we will resume in a few minutes.

Discussion:

Question: Well, we won't let Mr. Kissinger take refuge behind coffee. I would like to return to this matter of consultation. I think he is quite right in saying that too much attention was given to the formal process of getting into war and too little to reconciling... trying to reconcile basic differences of interest, or at least to identify what our basic interests are. Certainly one of the major questions regarding the future of NATO, and the whole Atlantic Community, is the extent to which the Atlantic structure and process, to the extent it survives at all, can be useful. If at all, with regard to dealing with these basic interest matters. I wonder what you would say to that?

26

Answer: First of all, on the purely organizational level it seems to me that it would be amazing if a structure which was developed in the early 1950's would remain valid for all eternity. That would be rather unprecedented in history. And, an organization that was intended originally to symbolize the American commitment to the defense of Europe may not be the best organization to address the questions of interest. But, I don't think it is primarily an organizational question. One of the remedies that is always being talked about for the state of affairs is to increase the process of consultation. On one level I agree with this. I think it would have been better, if one had discussed the nonproliferation treaty more fully, earlier, and the nuclear test ban treaty--there would have been a greater degree of participation. On the other hand, it seems to me, there are organic limits to inherent limits--to the process of consultation. One, the domestic experience of our government indicates that the government operates not only by consultation but also by decision. And, it isn't true that when a decision is reached that there is a consensus then of all the interested parties. We've had enough Senate hearings that were produced by the appeal of the losing party to some other forum to make clear that even relatively full consultation, that is afforded by a domestic process, does not guarantee agreement.

Secondly, there is the problem in consultation that already exists within each government, namely the problem of (cough)

2

with respect to the subject matter being discussed. That isn't simply a question of technical knowledge, it is also a question of the choices which the participants have in this. Much...I have some sympathy, for example, for the DeGaulle view which relates cooperation not only to the ability to be heard but to the options possessed by the party participating in the process of consultation. For example, in our own government, in every matter—including disarmament matters—the defense department is much more influential than, say, the disarmament agency. Partly because the Defense Department can do certain things; you simply cannot ignore it. And, no matter how brilliant the argument of the disarmament agency might be, the fire power of...the weight of the Defense Department, bureaucraticly, is closely related to the things it can do. And, this seems to me to be true internationally as well.

Finally, no process of consultation can avoid real differences in perspective or interest. It can only make them explicit. Some of the difficulties in the Alliance are caused not because the countries don't understand each other but because they understand each other only too well. I think we can consult as much as we want on Viet Nam and we will not get European support, certainly not for our bombing policy and not for many other aspects of Viet Nam. In the future, I think, we are living in a world in which the Europeans may take commercial interests outside of Europe but do not identify

28

their security with the security of most of the underdeveloped world.

Whether we are always correct in our judgments about the nature of
the security problem there, whatever judgments we make we will
probably have to make largely in isolation. So the problem that is
faced now is to create a structure which makes it possible to articulate
close common interests which exist but we do not try to freeze everything
to the attainment of consensus. And, that requires something subtler
than strengthening the process of consultation as it existed in the
1950's.

Question: What do you think of the future of NATO and its possible
role in the western world? People talk about, well for instance, some
people talk about a geographic expansion of NATO. You can open end
it, you can take in more countries who might want to join the common
effort in the defense of the so-called free world, but it's difficult to
see who would become members of NATO--with the possible exception
of Malta. I think Malta has indicated interest. Others I believe are
concerned, let's say, less than they affiliate themselves with an obvious
alliance directed against communism. They don't want to choose up
sides in that fashion. Another would be to give more economic acti-
vities to NATO; let it undertake certain economic functions. We've
got the machinery for that, the OECD and so on--community machinery,
the Common Market and so on. I'm a little perplexed when I look at
the future to see just what direction NATO should take. Suppose we

29

[LC]

should decide to abandon NATO. Do you think that would be serious to the interest of the western world at this stage? You can argue, just for the sake of being the Devil's advocate, that the basic purpose for which NATO was created has disappeared. That is, there is no imminent threat, at least, of Soviet aggression and that perhaps we can go back to 1949 and the framers of the Vandenberg Resolution in 1948, and the NATO treaty in 1949, certainly didn't envisage the kind of infrastructure that we developed in Western Europe in the 1950's. Suppose you take the French view that let the Alliance stand but let's do away with all of the machinery and let's more or less abandon the framework and the shell of NATO, let the spirit remain. What would happen in the western world?

Answer: There is one point I would like to make in relation to the treaty question, which also can be made to this one. Which is, also that essentially 50 nations is a very unwieldy instrument for consultation in any event, which combines the disadvantages of of domestic... of various domestic process, and really widely different perspectives--ranging from Luxembourg to the super power. Now, for your question, if it was about expanding NATO I would be violently opposed to it. I think that it is already too large if anything. The reason that Turkey and Portugal don't really fit organically into the NATO structure. And if one were to devise NATO again, one would not imagine a central commander who is trying to conduct military

30

[LC]

operations all the way from the north Cape to Asia Minor. And, one would probably try to find another grouping for the Mediterranean powers. So I really don't see what would be achieved by adding to NATO. I really can't see any candidates for this, so that is not really an important option.

Now, should we abandon NATO. Before I get into the merits of this I would think that one other sudden shift, major shift, of American policy--but the last thing we need is another major shift in American policy--and that whatever I thought about NATO, I would be--even if I were convinced it should die--I'd let it gradually die.

But for the United States to go from exaltation of Atlantic Community--identifying Atlantic Community with NATO--to abandonment, after all the other changes we've made in the last decade and a half, would undermine our international credit it seems to me to a dangerous degree.

**Question:** I wasn't suggesting that we do it abruptly...

**Answer:** But, now what seems to me to be necessary is to, not to answer every challenge by "strengthening" the existing situations of NATO. I see nothing magic about a supreme commander controlling all the forces of the Alliance. And, if the evolution were to lead to three separate commands on the purely military side--one for northern Europe, one for the central front and one for Southern Europe --I would not consider that a disaster. In fact militarily it would be much more

31

sensible than what exists now. I would not answer every NATO crisis by strengthening the military integration--or trying to strengthen the military integration--because I don't think the military field is anymore the area which produces cohesiveness. I wouldn't go out of my way to abolish it, but I think that over a period of time a more rational policy would be to turn the military commands into primarily fighting commands which, in my view, would mean reducing the role of

and making him less a government and creating commands just as we had to do in our government, in which the missions were more relevant--where the organizational missions overlapped. Now what I think is necessary, though, is a more flexible organization of the political process. And, we have to find a way by which countries with comparable interests can talk and get away from the notion that unless everybody talks, nobody can talk. Or from another notion that unless there is a European partner of equal strength we can't really talk at all. This seems to me the only way we can maintain an Atlantic Community in the next decade. I don't think we can keep it by spelling Community with a capital "C" or by trying to force everything into the decision making process by which everybody cooperates on every issue. But, try to identify those problems on which some consensus exists and get the countries that are willing to participate into arrangements. This doesn't mean the NATO council has to be abolished, but I don't think the NATO council in its present form can handle the entire process of

32

political consultation.

Question: I wonder if you would go back a step and give a little further comment on strategic debate. You outlined a situation between, say, '61 and '65 in which there was a debate between the United States and various countries in Europe on the Alliance's strategic policy, and it was a very corrosive debate originating, as you outlined, in terms of the American doctrine of that period. And yet, I wonder what you see as the prospect of this, because, for example, General DeGaulle's position, as you outlined it, had a good deal of substance in it from the point of view of Europeans arising from the geographic situation above all. And yet it seems finally not to have won the kind of support in Europe that one might have thought, in the early '60's, that it would in face of the American position. It seems to have, except for France, not to have struck a responsive chord. The American doctrine itself, somewhat modified now, has been at least acquiesced juridically by NATO finally, for whatever that might be worth. The Germans after a fleeting interest in these matters, drew back after the MLF and, Mr. Schmidt said last night and I suppose he speaks not only for; his party but for the government that the McNamara Committee in its modest constructive way now satisfies as much interest as the present German government has in these matters. Is it possible then that this period of corrosive debate is now over and will not be resumed--not

33

[LC]

because it was settled but because the thing was burnt out in some way,
the interest has declined to such a point that we are just going to leave
these questions unanswered for the indefinite future. Or, would you
think that it might revive again?

Answer: Well, first let me say in defense of the American position,
that intellectually we had the better of the argument. If one conceived
of NATO as a single state with a rational division of labor, then we
clearly had the best of the argument; so my criticism is not that our
point of view was intellectually wrong but that it was politically counter-
productive. And, that it didn't fit the reality of the situation--moreover
it committed us to a policy which we ourselves were not prepared to
sustain. After all we were not prepared to maintain large, the size
of forces that we were putting into Europe for an indefinite period. A
reassessment of the American situation might have told us that.

Now the situation in Europe--this is really a question of
judgment. I think the reason that DeGaulle has not swept the field is
that he has refused to develop a European notion. If DeGaulle had
developed a concept which was larger than French national interest,
or a concept which--one can argue that his present concept is larger
than French national interest--but it cannot be implemented in a very
brief period of time. If he had not given every one of his parterns the
feeling--not only us but the Germans as well--that finally he would
act arbitrarily and for the best of his own government. It is not at all

34

clear to me that he could not have united Europe on an alternative con-
ception. And, in fact, this would be my most severe criticism of
DeGaulle, that he has not used the opportunity of what he has destroyed
to build something permanent. That's a question of judgment.

Now, on the German situation--I don't believe there every
was an interest in the possession of nuclear weapons in Germany unless
you psychoanalize German political leaders. Every German political
leaders--I did not know a single political leader in Germany who came
out, privately or publically, that he wanted nuclear weapons. Now this
seemed to me a rather desirable situation to maintain. The combination
of MLF and nonproliferation treaty has changed that. They don't argue
now that they don't want nuclear weapons, but they are now advocating
things which in fact are bound to produce a nuclear option. The German
peaceful program has received ten times the resources, after the non-
proliferation treaty, as it had before. And, I must say that Helmut
Schmidt, that many of the statements in this respect are at least
ambiguous. It is still true that they don't want nuclear weapons, but
they are now working toward a nuclear option which they may not take
up. And you must remember that the French in '54 also announced
that they didn't want nuclear weapons, when they started their peace...

Comment: The Germans would have to decide quite soon, because if
the treaty as now drafted is set before them that option would be closed
out within the foreseeable future, unless you would foresee that they...

35

[LC]

Answer: I think that (A) the nonproliferation treaty is not going to be signed very quickly. It is (B) not going to be ratified very quickly. And, (C) if it's both signed and ratified, it's at best going to be an underground test ban; and I would wonder--it's an interesting analysis-- whether the nonproliferation treaty has hindered or spurred proliferation.

In fact, that I would argue that it has spurred proliferation because it has made it legitimate within each government to consider the strategic implications of nuclear weapons, Where they could have gotten on before that, year after year, by simply burying the issue. Now it has become not only legitimate but, indeed, necessary to examine it, and I think--I must say--I didn't foresee this so I'm not one of those who warned against a nonproliferation treaty all along. But, if I had to analyze it now I would say that on the whole what will happen, even if it is signed and ratified, is that every country will work as close to getting nuclear weapons as it can and that one the whole the effect is more likely to be spurring proliferation than the opposite. Therefore

I wouldn't consider what Schmidt said yesterday the final word on this issue. The Germans are now in a complicated situation. Every policy

they have tried since the war has really failed. NATO integration has failed. European integration has failed. The old notion of German

unity has failed. Now they are trying the opposite. Every choice they now make is going to have to put German unity against further integration. The rootlessness of the German situation seems to me to be such

36

[LC]

that I would not take any statement of any German political leader as
a permanent expression of the German direction. In the next ten years
I would think that we would have more troubles with the Germans than
with the French.

Question: I was going to ask Professor Kissinger to apply what he said about the nuclear problem--the problem of community control to the work of the NPG. It does seem to be fashionable these days to consider that the work of the NPG has been rather successful--the MCNamara Committee--and does seem to approach the problems on the military plane rather than the political plane. In other words, it seems to be satisfying whatever psychological requirement there is for consultation on this particular problem. Is this all, do you think, just a kind of charade or does it help?

Answer: I think the McNamara Committee is performing the some-
what useful function. I don't think it satisfies all the concerns. For one
thing it is rather unfortunate, for example, that we announced the
ballistic missile defense a week before there was a meeting of this
committee--this is after all the decision of some consequence. Secondly,
we have the tendency that if we make briefings and don't get contradicted
at the briefings, to assume that this means the Europeans agree with
us. It just as often may mean that they acquiesce in something that they
cannot change, that it's really too painful to go through the whole pro-
cess. But the McNamara Committee is performing a useful function.

37

[LC]

It doesn't solve the political problem but on the military level it performs a function of informing our allies about our plans. It does not solve the deeper problem of whether we will, in fact, implement these plans. Because by definition we cannot reassure people of them. I favor the committee. I don't think it's the kind that will solve the problem of...

**Comment:** Apparently its success has been in trying to work out the ground rules that would govern the use of tactical nuclear weapons, rather than the rules for strategic...the use of the...

**Answer:** After all this is one area in which concerns would be commensurate, even to the tactical weapons it cannot, in its nature, give an assurance that we will, in fact, do what we promised. I don't say that this is a criticism of the committee--no committee could do it.

**Mr. Aron:** May I speak for a few minutes without putting a question? (everyone talking) I would like to make a few remarks to explain why the discussion about nuclear business was so intense between '61 and '64, and is of interest today to nobody but the specialist--because it's a curious aspect of postwar history that during four years

was a key factor in the Atlantic Alliance and today nobody takes it so seriously. I believe that the nuclear discussion came from the convergence of three or four different factors. The first one is in the European discovery of American

38

vulnerability. It started in 1957, with the first Soviet Sputnik, and the over reaction of the Americans to the first Sputnik, which was absolutely illogical, was to say that the Americans are in such danger that they need to have a medium range missile in Europe, Italy and Turkey, so the Americans themselves created a feeling of a possible American

vulnerability. And during the electoral battle of '60, one of the main arguments of the opposition was the missile gap, and it is asking very much from the Europeans to believe that it was all nonsense created by American public discussion. So the first very important factor is the feeling that if American superiority, which has been in doubt in Europe, has been destroyed by Russian improvements (?) it is a new problem for Europe.

The second fact was the Berlin threat. Namely the threat of the Russians to do something about Berlin, which will not be a sort of massive conventional invasion of Western Europe, but which would be limited aggression to which the answer--to which the response by massive retaliation was almost inconceivable. That we could at the same time imply some degree of cooperation between the Europeans.

The third factor is that suddenly the American statesmen became so and clever. We were used in Europe during the Eisenhower administration...(laughter)...where the statesmen did speak some common sense language, which was intelligible to everybody and which did not require to be very expert in the Rand Corporation theory.

39

[lc]

And, suddenly from the end of the 60 to the beginning of
'61, everything was changed. So, I spoke with the expert of Kennedy
when I was in and having

an old edifice, an old structure of strategic thinking, they
the thinking to Kennedy-McNamara and for the first time the president
of the United States, without being a military man, and the Secretary
of Defense, without being a military man, spoke in a strategic arti-
culated manner and so they terrified everybody in Europe. Because
before these articulated people came to explain all the subtlety that
you can never know how to deter the enemy, how, when, by what means
should you deter, and you need a , you need an option.
Such a confusion there in Europe. For some years it was really extreme,
and there was a lack of understanding about all these things. Certainly
in intellectual terms the McNamara doctrine was much better than the
massive retaliation, but, of course, nobody had taken seriously the
doctrine of massive retaliation in Europe. It was only agreed that the
American superiority was such that the threat of massive retaliation
was enough to prevent any aggression... so it was a very simple doctrine.
Then came the man who explains that it was all so complicated that you
never knew what to do in any circumstances, that it has to be decided
at the last time, do the result to all the European began to take rather
seriously--the danger of the limited aggression to which there would be

40

limited response, which would mean that Europe would become the
battlefield, America would be saved by devastation. All that is part
of the situation, but it was not realized before that. It was so tragic
because the people did not believe that they were in such a danger of
Russian and they were in confidence of the American deterrence. That
was changed in '61, partly by the situation and partly by the people
being too clever. Then came the last factor, which was the French
atomic force and the over reaction of the Americans to the French
nuclear problem. When I spoke with George Bundy and with his people
Wisner and all these people in Harvard, before they came to the White
House, I told them, whatever you do, whatever you say, DeGaulle will
produce an atomic force. So it's nonsense to make a case of explaining
to the French that they are wrong, because they will do it in any case.
And, I sent one of my books on the atomic debate to DeGaulle and Henry
knows the answer I got. I got the answer--the only real question is,
will France remain France and the rest is pure

So...(laughter)...still there is the letter in my files and it was abso-
lutely predictable. I explained that. Henry in the memories I have of
these discussions with all these people telling them they were quite
foolish to make a case against the French force, because even if it was
wrong for the French to produce a force--which is disputable in the
long run--they had no chance of convincing the French. So first they
indicate to the French that they were stupid--which is never very

41

pleasant to the people concerned and then they said that they must do
something for the poor Germans, who would be discriminated against
if the French had nuclear forces and the Germans not. To that the
French, with their logic, answered--but the British had a nuclear force
and you found it all right that there would be a discrimination against
the French. So why does the discrimination begin when the French had
one. So then came the MLF and the discussion was
extremely confused because you offer the Germans some form of nuclear
forces in which they were not interested. After a few years you said
that you were no longer interested in the force you have offered to them.
So the result was an extraordinarily lively discussion which did occupy
diplomats for some years, but without very serious consequences
because there was no great danger of Russian aggression. There was
really only one case which was serious--the Berlin case--and curiously
in an unknown way there was a great deal of consultation about what
to do in case something would happen in Berlin. And, the doctrine of
flexible response in the case of Berlin, was accepted by everybody.
You know the French, as long as they are only a small force, are
obliged to have a doctrine of massive retaliation. When you have only
a few bombs, what can you do? You must say, we will bluff and we
will use the absurd doctrine of massive retaliation. But when it came
to the special case of Berlin, they were just as logical as anybody else.
They knew they could not answer to Russian grenadiers entering into

42

[LC]

West Berlin by bombing Moscow. It makes no sense, so in the special case of Berlin there was really consultation in large degree of what to do in case something would happen. So, after four years and with great excitement everywhere among people, among experts, specialists, professors, and the rest all the argument had been explained to everybody and then came the Cuban crisis. The Russians said they had no interest anymore in Berlin. It was clear that there was no danger of Russian aggression, so nobody was anymore interested in the atomic discussion. Because (A) quite clearly there is no good technical answer to the problem to what degree can we have full confidence in somebody else to protect us--because, of course, in abstract terms there is no ideal solution. And the worst aspect of the discussion about nuclear strategy was that all the discussion was about what would happen in case of the failures of the deterrence. Because, once the people said "suppose" for example--it was the wrong way of presenting the American case. If the American had said the reenforcing of conventional forces is a way of reenforcing the deterrence, it would have been much more acceptable. But the American experts came to Europe and said, if the fighting begins we need to have many options, we need to have a poll before using nuclear weapons, all that was rather terrifying for the Europeans because it means Europe is the battlefield. But, now it has become relatively clear to everybody that (A) there is no real danger of Russian aggression in the present context; (B) if

43

[LC]

something happens nobody can say what will be the Western reaction.
And, everybody knows that the Americans will decide--we have no way
of committing the Americans to any... to the battle if they don't want
to do it. But, at the same time, we know that the American interest in
Europe is such ... and the importance of the American troops in Europe
is such that in all probability the Russians have not the slightest inten-
tion of any sort of invasion into Western Europe. So, my conclusion
in the form of a necessary question is, don't you not think in spite of
everything that the main function of NATO now is just made possible
the maintenance of an American army in Western Europe, outside of
her bilateral treaty with West Germany in Europe. And the main func-
tion of NATO is to cover the special arrangement between Western
Europe and the United States, that you have an American army in
Europe. And, you know, about the American acceptance of DeGaulle's
doctrine, there is a very strong argument against that it is DeGaulle's
doctrine.

Answer: I agree with this, but we don't have to tie ourselves to any
one organizational formula for achieving this objective. But, otherwise
I agree with everything that Raymond has said.

Question: I just have a question regarding a brief comment you made
after the coffee hour and that is, you have one criticism of General
DeGaulle and that is that he did not put something in place of what he
destroyed. If I understood your previous pre-coffee hour presentation

44

[LC]

correctly, I am under the impression that what he allegedly destroyed was in effect already dead. At least it was certainly technically obsolescent--this is my first point. And, secondly, could realistically one say that anything could have been put in place of what he is alleged to have destroyed? To which one could not really apply the same arguments that are applied to what he has destroyed.

Answer: What he has destroyed within NATO I don't consider of the first consequence, and I think that if we don't make theological issues out of it the forms of cooperation for the primary purpose that Raymond Aron has pointed out can be worked out. What I think he has destroyed, however, in Europe is that I was opposed to the...

End of Tape #2, Side #2.

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Tape #3, Side #1 - Continuation of Nato and the Problem of Nuclear Weapons

Question: I would try to do more testing around the conclusion that Mr. Kissinger more or less reached on the more flexible organization of the political process in NATO, and especially where he spoke about detente. And, to a certain extent, this brings us back to the rather famous issue of consultation, which we also discussed yesterday--what always strikes me when speaking about consultation that we are working on two assumptions. The first one, that consultation is not taking place enough. And, the second one, that if it would take place more often then we would reach more consensus. I think these two assumptions are wrong in the first place because, it may be interesting to remark that NATO consultation machinery so far is the best one we ever devised in any Western European organization in a community's or in Western European unionists...

than it is in NATO. But, the question is especially in what direction Mr. Kissinger thinks we could develop this consultation. I may probably give one example in which I feel lost especially. Again it is on the nonproliferation treaty. One of the remarks often being made, and it's a pity Mr. Schmidt is not here anymore because he made it yesterday as well, is that on the nonproliferation treaty there has been insufficient consultation and my conclusion from looking through the debates

46

on the nonproliferation issue is not that there has been insufficient
consultation, but that the more consultation took place the more the
Europeans disagreed with the American line. So it's not a matter of
lack of consultation, it's lack of consensus which is the problem with
this... in NATO. Which brings me to a further conclusion which is this
one--and that's more or less the same as this with NATO--that appar-
ently in actions in which we would basically agree anyhow, consultation
works--like the Berlin issue--and in other things in which we should
agree it doesn't work at all. So, my question is, what do you think...
how would you think could we develop some system of consultation
which is useful and necessary in NATO and especially how do you think
that NATO could be used in achieving more consensus of detent. Which
I understood you suggested in the end, but at the same time in the
beginning you said that you thought that NATO would not be a good organ-
ization for carrying out diplomatic tasks, which would mean that
consultation should take place somewhere completely outside NATO.

Answer: I thought I... I certainly meant to say that consultation is
not the magic cure of all the problems. When there are conflicting
interests, consultation can only make them more explicit but can't,
necessarily, remove them. On the nonproliferation treaty I quite
agree with you. There is a difference of perspective between us and at
least some of the Europeans, which no amount of consultation is going

4

[LC]

to remove. But, the one thing that consultation might have done, on
the nonproliferation treaty--I had lunch last January with a group of
senior Germans, when Bonn was going through this orgy of self-pity
with respect to the nonproliferation treaty, and everyone was making
the most violent comments about the United States including the man
who was handling the disarmament negotiations. And I said that the
one thing I find so perplexing is that three quarters of the criticisms
you made have nothing to do with the provisions of the treaty, but have
to do with the fact of the treaty. Why is it that we never heard this
from you when the treaty was being negotiated? Well, he said, we
never thought you would actually go through with it. Which--however,
seems to me though outlines one of the major difficulties of contemporary
policy making. It seems to me that more and more a type of political
leader comes to the forefront in every country--partly because of the
pressures of the bureaucratic process, partly because of sociological
and cultural factors--which avoids every difficult problem by making
the most favorable assumptions about the future. And, therefore, in
which in fact is psychologically incapable of acting unless it has pro-
duced a crisis, because only crisis can make it clear that there is any
need for action. One of the reasons for DeGaulle's impact is that he
is the only man in the West who rightly or wrong is willing to act on
some conception of the future--however wrong headed it is. Now, with
types as these, which seem to me to be governing in every country, and

48

[LC]

there was one article by my good friend George Bundy--who is certainly a brilliant man--in foreign affairs a few months ago which seemed to say: If you have a choice between alternatives, do both. You know, it attacked a notion of idle (?) war--that was even the title of the article. Now, Bundy is a brilliant man who will know the pitfalls of the application of this doctrine, but it seems to me that this is at the basis of many of the difficulties. I don't know any Western government in which more than lip service is paid to really long range problems, and therefore consultation, when it takes place, tends to take place under mechanically--

I would guess that the NATO framework as such... I don't think the detent problem, for example, can be solved simply by consultation.

What I would like to see is an explicit facing of the fact that interests are not commensurable in the Alliance, and that those who have commensurable interests try to get together on some vision of the future. And then this process where what is intellectually conceivable then becomes possible, probable, certain, and everybody acts on this.

This is... one can conceive many evolutions in Eastern Europe and at the end of the process suddenly what one has conceived as a possibility becomes a reality because it's the easiest way on which to conduct problems. I would... you know you could get me off on a long topic of discussion of the nature of leadership in the modern bureaucratic state, I would have to say that I am beginning to doubt seriously that any large bureaucratic state, East or West, is capable of conducting a really

49

creative policy. And, this being true, consultation between a group
of the essentially bureaucratic is stagnating... it isn't going to produce
a great deal. So, I don't know... I know this is clearly not a satisfactory
answer but if one could conceive... if it's a consultation issue, it would
have to try to group those nations that have comparable conceptions, or
at least make explicit what the differences are. Unless one deliberately
chooses not to make them explicit...

Question: I'd like to make one point and ask a question on another thing that you said. And, that is: It struck me that one of the ties that is likely to restore some kind of community, though it may lead to abrasiveness as well, is the development of what we have wrongly focused on as the European technology gap. The fact that the science-based industries of Europe, which are vital to maintain both ways, are becoming more and more interdependent and the principle of interdependence goes across the Atlantic. This was in an article in *Foreign Affairs* in July,

The fourth largest economy in the world was the American economy overseas, a major part of which is in Europe, and where the expansion for instance in the European aircraft industries, electronics, automobiles, has been very heavily influenced by American technology and capital and that this is likely to become... the significant relationship is the relationship between East and West Europe. Which is the other consequent of detent conditions, and I think that what we need to look at

50

[LC]

in the future is not only the perennial military and security problem, but the development of this interdependency in the new form of technology.

The question that I would particularly like to put to you is your statement about Germany... because I too was dissatisfied with the answer that Helmut Schmidt gave last night on developments within Germany in the 1970's. I was guilty of a sort of Pollyannaish approach when I had to give a paper in Washington--the group included people like General and Claus --as to what was Europe going to look like in the '70's. And, I suggested that nuclear proliferation was not likely to take place. A great deal of dissent took place on the grounds that certain things were likely to develop which would be of great concern to any new German government. One was the level of discussion between Britain and France of a joint nuclear force, perhaps as a way of seeking a British entry into the Common Market. By going back to the military question. The second was in terms of the status orientation of a Germany that remained perhaps with as a fairly exposed, vulnerable, not very influential power, without nuclear weapons in a world in which nuclear weapons were attempting to spread. It's true that Mr. Schmidt did say that if nuclear proliferation took place outside Europe this would tend to work against German interest. I would say that there is a fairly great chance that proliferation will take place outside of Europe, and that Germany will look in the plural (?)

51

position, perhaps to Japan, India, Israel, were it to remain non-
nuclear. This then raises the problem of whether Germany can be
kept away from any nuclear aspirations by the kind of consensus that
we are arriving at here, that really NATO is, as you described it, a
kind of bilateral agreement on keeping American troops in Germany.
And that this takes care of a security problem so that we can pay much
less attention to any mythologies of nuclear balance and strategic stand-
off, especially in a world in which there are

much less credible than
it would have been in the '50's. But, at the same time, even this under-
pinning is not a very secure one in that there is a pretty direct desire
for American commitment in Germany to be reduced--the number of
authorities that want to cut back on the Seventh Army, strengthen
Germany and the realization that this is not a permanent indefinite
commitment that we have. The United States should get involved in
more Viet Nams, the Seventh Army becomes increasingly expendable.
All of which brings us, I suppose, to the question of . . . I think we are
arriving at a very complacent view of the Europe of the '50's; it's one
that I would very much like to believe in. It's one that one can see
great grounds (cough) for hoping that it will materialize, but at the
same time there is a strong chance that it won't. That leaves us with
the realization that letting NATO die, that it may be inevitable, is some-
thing that we shouldn't look forward to with too great a complacency.

52

Moderator: The only way I can see of going through my list and
having lunch, in which I have a strong interest, is to go to Mr. Grimond,
to Mr. Cleveland, then to Mr. Organski, and then back to you.

Mr. Grimond: , , , , , lunch...

my views of the world. First of all just a word on President DeGaulle.
I fully accept that there is a great deal admirable in what President
DeGaulle has done and in even some things which are even

But, I think that my view of General DeGaulle is that he is apt to spread
in Europe. I believe there is a folly de grand (?) here which is all too
acceptable to some European states and other countries as well, in
which if it became common throughout the continent would be disastrous.

And, to some extent, he lives in a world of unreality in which he is
buoyed up by the dependence on his allies -- particularly the Americans.

But there again I don't think it's necessarily that everyone knows the
limitations of DeGaulle's position, and it is confined to France. But
if Germany and Britain began to take on Gaullist lines it would be, I
think, extremely damaging internally and externally. Internally, par-
cularly, because it does give a certain cynicism about politics, and

this is, to my mind, a very sinister and widespread attitude in Western
Europe. And I would agree with the last speaker that I think it is very
difficult to foretell the pattern of Western Europe in the '60's. Part of
this is that disillusion with our politics and policies and institutions of
all sorts. It is important that they should be got back to reality and to

53

be seen to be doing things effectively within the sort of sphere in which
they can operate.

As far as consultation is concerned, I certainly feel it is
disasterous to extend NATO and I would not be at all adverse to the view
that it might gradually decrease in importance. But, one of the things
I thought we ought to have learned is that none of us, and particularly
not the Americans, should float off so to speak--an interesting idea--
without taking into account of what the forces might be and stirring up
alot of political reactions

The multilateral force was not an utterly bad idea. It was an utterly
bad idea to float off at the time that it was floated off. American

which we all look forward

to...

I do agree that I don't think it's any good having consulta-
tion and then

But, I do not think

it was a great triumph for Western diplomats--we do employ very large
diplomatic services partly to avoid this impression which was, in fact,

54

widely given, not only to Germany but to many other countries. For
instance, Israel was deeply offended by her treatment in the

situation. But if the major atomic powers are going
to behave like Alcoholics Anonymous, and say that no one else must
get drunk so long as they keep their bottles (?). We must tell other
people what the alternative offer is. If they're not going to be allowed
nuclear weapons are they going to be offered some security? How do
they visionize the situations of Israel vis a vis hostile on nuclear

Egypt. None of this was done and I think with great
failure of Western diplomacy. Therefore, to my mind, the sole con-
sultation which should go on should go on in private through diplomatic
channels and should be very largely negative, about the sort of things
which the Western Alliance should not do. And the sort of questions

which (cough) prepared to raise... if you raise the question
of the mission of NATO, you cannot avoid then raising the whole question
of Germany. As long as Germany is to some extent bound into NATO,
it is possible to keep some accurate time--I

fairly stable. The slower we are in raising these big questions

other questions to which the West has
no answer. It has no answer, to my mind, of the German situation.

That's

as long as you can. But having consultations on a negative basis about
what the West cannot act in concert about, and partly about possible

55

longer terms solutions and developments, which might then make it
more possible to raise these difficult questions on nuclear control.
I very much don't (?) agree with Mr. Aron about the effect of Americans
suddenly appearing in Europe with marvelously sophisticated theories
and indeed with language which has a great fascination for professors,
but when translated by simple politicians like me
we were told that the threshold had been raised and now must expect
to be totally wiped out instead of mildly wiped out.

56

Mr. Cleveland: A remark, really taking off from Henry's comment about the death of the European idea, or at least its moribund character--I think it is very hard, it's very hard for me and for many of us here, to think of the international system of the Atlantic world or the Atlantic world cum Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union without the notion of Europe--without the notion of a unifying Europe in some sense. Yesterday John Holmes did do some thinking about such an Atlantic world, and it seemed to rest on the premise that inspite of the fact that each nation was pursuing essentially its national objectives and its policy was not informed by any sense of direction toward unity or integration on any level, European or Atlantic, nevertheless such a world would not be too bad because some how the nation's views and behavior would be moderate. Their objectives would be carried out within a framework of recognized security, dependence, interdependence, and certainly economic interdependence. So that the system would somehow be workable, although the political consensus would be missing, there would be all sorts of ad hoc sorts of cooperation along the political level but no sort of sense of direction toward unity.

I wonder, this is really much the question that your raised too, whether we can take this view about Europe--whether it is safe for policy makers, particularly American policy makers, to take this view of the system that we're talking about...the system of international relations. The problems that are up in Europe--the problem of East-

5

West relations, or detent, the problem of German reunification, the problem, ultimate problem, of the desire of the United States to limit its burdens and commitments to some extent--at least in Europe. All these problems; it's hard to see how these national aims can be achieved in a context in which Europe has not achieved a somewhat greater degree of unity. At least how they can be achieved safely in such a way as to preserve the capacity of Western Europe to resist Soviet power and pressure, and to maintain also something which is sufficiently attractive to Eastern Europe that it would want to join. This vision of a kind of emasculated or impotent Europe, in which national goals are limited and moderate and which the American protectorate is accepted more or less docilely, doesn't seem to me to fit with the kind of feelings that I have from Europeans about what in the long run they are really interested in. And, I really am genuinely raising this as a question without an answer, although with the kind of hope that somebody would provide it--a new design or vision which one could nail to the mast.

Answer: Well yes...I would just like to point out two things which really stem from Mr. Aron's intervention before some of the things Henry has said and some of the other interventions since. One of them is the fact of carrying on sophisticated discussion of security problems in the political area, which I think is extremely dangerous. I think the only equivalent I have ever felt to that was the patients who listened to doctors discussing what could happen to him and what the probabilities

58

are to his survival. Now the patient is not interested in having the
doctor tell him that the chances are not so bad if the liver goes then
the heart may not go, and so on and so forth, he's interested in getting
well. So the doctor's obligation, really, is (1) of telling the patient at
all times--don't worry, everything will be all right, leave everything
in my hands. The doctor taking the responsibility for the eventuality,
and I think the political leaders, speaking strictly to people who make
a living being political leaders, have that obligation of translating these
very sophisticated things. And, in this sense I think that the Kennedy
administration mobilized a tremendous amount of harm, because by
pouring all of this discussion into the public arena I think has raised
questions that obviously there are no answers to. And, all of sudden
we did find out... or the public did find out, on both sides of the Atlantic,
that these things were... that we were living in a very dangerous age.

Which because everything
was just nice. This is the first point that I wanted to make. I am not
sure that there is any way that this can be controlled because the
ascendency of the universities and intellectuals is to continue with it,
because universities are going to expand, we are going to become more
and more busy. The papers which we used to write for each other and
have mimeographed are now being published and read by the mass
publics, and consequently I think that this is going to continue--if you
are going to project forward this is going to be a major problem.

59

[LC]

Now, the second thing--it is my impression from the discussion, generally, that the major patterns in Europe and in the Atlantic world really were foreseeable. The fundamental social, economic changes that have occurred in Europe have been foreseeable. There is the position of France relative to England and Germany, this is something that we have been discussing for 25 years and many economists and many sociologists have

The problem is the psychological adjustment to reality. And here, I think, to some extent political leadership is extremely threatened, because one of the major expressions of political leadership is the ability of the political leader to make you accept what, in reality, everybody is going to accept anyhow--eventually. And, in some way, Henry I don't know whether you want to comment on this, with all the arrangements we have made--all the structures that we have created, NATO included--has tried to freeze situations that were really quite unrealistic into times when it has become increasingly clear that they are unrealistic and people are less to accept it. This is all I have to say.

Comment: That is a pretty wide range.

Answer: I see the housekeeper beckoning. I can say that I can agree with everything that Mr. Grimond said and there's really no comment I want to make on that. I agree with the problem as stated

60

by Van, but I think it's a European problem, not an American problem,
and the notion that the United States must come up with a recipe for
every ill in the world is one of our failings. By insisting that there is
only one solution, as developed by Washington, and then becoming a
passionate defender of one particular form of European unity we have
done as much damage as by any other single thing we've done. So, I
would agree with you that this is the way I would like to see it come
about. I would encourage it in so far as we can, but the essential
leadership for European unity cannot come from us--it must come from
the Europeans.

Now, the first point--I would say this also about the techno-
logical gap, I think that's a European problem. I don't see why the
Europeans can come to us and ask us to solve the problems produced
by their failure to cooperate. There are other resources--I mean there
are many areas in which we can exercise more restraint. Now,
(noise) back to the first intervention--I am not so sure
that interdependence necessarily produces political cooperation. No
foreseeable world could be more interdependent that it was before 1914.
And, it didn't produce... it didn't prevent World War I. I recognize
the facts of interdependence but to translate that into cooperative
effort requires an act of political leaders.

On the issue of nuclear weapons for Germany, I have a
brutal point of view, which I would have stated equally brutally if

61

Mr. Schmidt had been here--which is that the international system
as I foresee it, will not tolerate nuclear weapons for Germany. And,
any discussion of it has to start out from that. I know no country in
the world, certainly no country in Europe, that would go to war if the
Soviet Union created a Cuban type crisis over the issue of German
possession of nuclear weapons. I do not believe this will be a casus
belli for anybody, probably not even the United States. And, any other
sophisticated approach to this problem only confuses the German
leadership about the ranges of choice that they have in front of them.
The more clearly and brutally this can be said, the more easily we can
go on to other problems. Now, I foresee--what bothers me about the
German situation is that it is not that the scope of German action is so
wide, but that the frustrations, the insecurity of the leadership groups
of a generation which has seen so many transformations and which has
this lack of continuity, coupled with the tendency to go to extremes,
may undermine the domestic cohesiveness of Germany and create a
profound malaise with unforeseeable consequences. Not so much of a
resurgence of Nazism but a kind of nihilistic attitude which would make
it very difficult to conduct constructive policy.

Now, again I agreed with everything that Mr. Organski
said. I'd just like to elaborate the last point about the role of political
leaders to say that this is really in a way our tragedy, because no one
can question American good will or American idealism. But, we are

62

[LC]

the products of a stable society. We can't conceive irrevocable mis-
takes. When there's a passion for novelty, which is in itself under-
mining--whenever I'm asked to consult in Washington the most frequent
single question one is asked is, have you had any new ideas lately. Now,
when you look at the great statesmen in history, not that I am one of
them, you ask yourself how many new ideas did they have. Also the
passion for the organizational devices, constitutional formula, techno-
logical solutions, all of these may be the American tragedy of this
period. The inability to see things in the dimension of time and of
historical evolution...

Chairman: All of the potential chairmen seem to develop administra-
tive duties, which put me into this role. We have a slight change in
format. With your permission and unless there are violent objections,
I think we can dispense with the coffee break and go straight through.

Mrs. has told us that we absolutely have to evacuate
the room to have cocktails at five. So we've got to (cough)
at that time, if not before. My function, I think, is mainly to keep the
list of speakers.

Henry A. Kissinger
Professor of Government
Harvard University

NATO AND THE PROBLEM OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

The question of nuclear control in its military sense, which agitated the Alliance so much two or three years ago, is really pretty much a dead issue, as are some of the problems of central command and control which seemed so paramount in our strategic thinking. Therefore, what I should like to consider is the interrelationship between the political and the strategic problem, especially in the nuclear field, and to introduce the nuclear problem as a catalyst for the more fundamental alliance difficulties that have existed and exist today. These are not problems for which neatly packaged solutions are available.

Let me begin by describing several phases of Atlantic relationships on the political side, then discuss some phases of strategic thought, and, finally, attempt to mesh the two.

First, there are essentially three major periods of the Alliance. In the period of the acute challenge, which lasted roughly from 1948 to 1960, the Alliance was based on a number of assumptions: (1) that the solidarity of the Allies against a common threat should override all other considerations; (2) that the European continent was essen-

2

[Y]

tially divided by an iron curtain and that *this* division
was likely to *remain* permanent as long as communism existed
in its present form; (3) that a final settlement with the
Soviet Union was distant and, paradoxically, if it came
it would be a Western victory with the Western frontier
moving at least to the Western frontier of the Soviet Union -
so that the unification of Germany was conceived as essen-
tially a negotiating problem; and (4) that Alliance policy
was dependent upon the United States' leadership and ini-
tiative - so much so that all of the strategic conceptions
and most of the political ones really were an outgrowth
of plans developed in Washington. Throughout this period
there were several trends which were not absolutely con-
sistent with this. There was always a certain ambiguity
about the purposes of West European integration in this
kind of structure because the overriding Soviet threat
gave an incentive for an Atlantic community rather than
an autonomous West European partner. But this ambiguity
was covered over with various phrases such as the proposi-
tion that the partnership would actually be eased by
strengthening the other partner. I consider this to be one
of the few times in history that a country believed that
it would be easier to deal with a partner by making it
stronger.

3

Secondly, there were a number of tensions arising primarily out of the European involvement in colonial and postcolonial adventures, of which the Suez crisis was an acute example, where the United States sided with the declared enemy of the Alliance, against its, not only traditional, but formal allies. Suez made clear that the identity of interest which was postulated stopped at colonial problems, or at least stopped at the geographic boundaries of Europe. Today we see this problem again with Vietnam.

The second period was the Kennedy period which marked the transition to the place in which we are now. Extending from roughly 1961 to 1966, it was characterized by an uneasy oscillation between the slogans of Atlantic partnership and the necessities of detente. This is symbolized by the fact that in June 1962, President Kennedy warned the Berliners against believing that one could deal with the communists, at the precise moment that we were dealing with the communists about a nuclear test ban treaty. When we were dealing with the communists about a nuclear test ban treaty, we attempted to paper over the latent inconsistency between the assumptions of the 1950's, which really presupposed an irreconcilably hostile communist world, and the emerging assumptions of the 1960's, which postulated the possibility of a detente, by arguments that the detente would be furthered by common action in the area of the detente in East-

4

[Y]

West relations. But this did not work very efficiently for two reasons: (1) military alliances are not good instruments for diplomatic settlements; and (2) most of the efforts at detente were carried out essentially bilaterally, first by the United States and later individually by every other member of the Alliance. Whatever one may think about the substance of the nuclear test ban treaty, the non-proliferation treaty, and other measures, the method by which they were achieved tended to throw into question the unity of the Alliance which had been postulated in the 1950's, and really undermined the strategic assumptions upon which the military policy of the Alliance was based. On the one hand we were asserting that in the case of conflict everything had to be under central command and control, but in the diplomacy preceding the conflict we were proceeding essentially bilaterally. This is not a criticism of these arrangements as such. It is a criticism of the procedure by which they were achieved. We were, on the one hand, attempting to build an alliance structure and, on the other, we were dealing with the opponent on a bilateral basis. Raymond Aron drew attention to this inconsistency as early as 1959. There were other problems which in the early 1960's still took the form of American opposition to European colonialism, and which in the 1960's developed into the form of European opposition to American overseas involvement. Also, in the Kennedy period it first

5

[N]

became apparent that an autonomous integrated Europe would not necessarily see any purpose in carrying out prescriptions developed in Washington. This was faced at first with chagrin, and led to an intense American-French rivalry which took the form, at least on our side, of pretending to woo the Germans into a new structure through the multi-lateral force, and of getting a more or less irrevocable commitment from them against what we considered to be French hegemonial aspirations.

Since about 1966, the Alliance has been in its third period, in which the tensions between Allied solidarity and efforts at detente are beginning to be resolved in favor of the latter. While Allied solidarity and detente are not necessarily inconsistent, they are inconsistent with the assumptions of the 1950's. There has begun a process of military disengagement on the continent on the part of all the major contributors. France has left the so-called integrated military structure. The United States has reduced its forces, Britain has reduced to some extent and would like to reduce more. Germany is in the process of reducing its forces, but much of the military structure that in the 1950's tended to symbolize solidarity, is itself in the process of change. Some of this has been accelerated by the breath-taking speed by which American policy seems to change -- moving from conventional build-up to conventional reductions in the space of three years -- moving from the MLF to a non-proliferation treaty, again

6

in the space of three years. Without arguing now the
merit of any of these policies, I suggest that it is very
difficult to lead an Alliance and expect others to stake
their policies and expectations on a certain degree of
consistency when one's policies are in such a constant
state of flux. Reliance on American leadership can often
have the result of undermining the domestic position of
those who have geared their policies to ours, whatever
the merit of either the first or the second American policy
might be. One must look with sympathy at the succession
of European leaders who have found themselves criticized
by their opposition, which at first criticized them for
following the American lead and then five years later
criticized them for jeopardizing the American relationship
by pursuing policies that had been advocated by us pre-
viously, but which we had since abandoned.

I have run through these phases of NATO because they
have to be matched with certain phases of military thought
within the Alliance to understand why the nuclear problem
took the dimensions that it did a few years ago, and why
it has now receded into the background as a purely strategic
problem. American strategic thought went through a number
of phases. There was the phase of the immediate postwar
period when nuclear weapons were added to the existing
strategy as a more efficient explosive. If one reads the

7

military testimony before the relevant Senate and House committees of the late 1950's, one really finds a description of this strategy plus nuclear weapons.

The Korean war broke out soon after NATO was born and the American reaction was to adopt a policy of massive retaliation. This expressed our reluctance to be engaged again in inconclusive traditional war and asserted our right to intervene at times and places of our own choosing. The factor of massive retaliation has had such massive critique that I won't repeat the standard strategic arguments of the 1950's. I will simply try to point out an anomaly that existed throughout the 1950's. The United States asserted that its nuclear arsenal was sufficient to deter aggression every place in the world except the most important, namely, Europe. In every other place in the world we were going to resist at places of our own choosing. In Europe we were going to resist on the ground. In no other place in the world did we try to set up a trip wire, except in Korea where it was a legacy of the Korean war. In Europe we stationed four divisions. This produced a misunderstanding which has been at the root of much of NATO's strategic debate. The Europeans wanted American divisions on the continent, not because they wanted to defend Europe locally but because their own history had taught them that the decision to go to war

8

does not depend only on the legal commitment, but on more
tangible guarantees. Every European country in the last
hundred years has been forced to disassociate itself, or
has felt compelled to disassociate itself, from some ally
in a crisis. The reason why American divisions were
stationed in Europe was expressed by Marshal Foch in 1914,
when he was asked how many British soldiers he wanted. He
was reputed to have said in effect, "Give me one and I'll
make sure that he gets killed on the first day of the war."
Thus, the European incentive in getting American troops
to the continent was, in fact, to take away the American
president's choice. They wanted to make sure that any
attack on Europe would be organically as much a Soviet-
American war as they could possibly make it. On the other
hand, as soon as the United States had four divisions on
the continent, we began to elaborate a strategy - even at
the height of massive retaliation - for some degree of
local defense. The misunderstandings between us and the
Europeans were due to the fact that our incentives were
entirely different. To repeat, we thought that our divisions
would be an incentive to the Europeans to create large
forces of their own, and quite frankly I do not think that
to this day Secretary McNamara has understood why it is,
from a European point of view, perfectly fair to keep the
American proportion as high as possible, given the European
objective of obtaining assurance of American commitment
to the defense of Europe.

9

In the 1950's this tension between American and European conceptions was not so apparent, because the goals were rather remote and because it was assumed that the strategic defense of the United States was so integrally coupled with the defense of Europe that even on the level of pure American self-interest we would have no choice except to respond more or less automatically. As long as American bomber and missile bases were located in Europe, whether they were ever necessary or not, it could be argued that the United States could not afford to have its strategic forces overrun without putting itself at a rather severe disadvantage. The very vulnerability of these bases thus created a motive for the United States to respond more or less automatically. To be sure, all the defense plans of NATO in the 1950's were essentially American plans, and NATO consultation was really a discussion of the level of contribution to American conceptions that other countries could make. That was bearable to the Europeans, as long as they thought that a military attack was at least a possibility. This lasted as long as the political picture that I drew for the period of 1948-60 was the dominant one, and as long as the German problem remained as frozen as it seemed in the 1950's. But then in the late 1950's American strategic thinkers, perhaps a little prematurely, developed theories, first of limited war, and then of stra-

10

tergic war, emphasizing the differences between first and
second strike capabilities, and the advantages of central
command and control. These theories stressed the necessity
for a maximum number of options and for discriminating
operations in the event of nuclear war. Concurrently,
there developed various theories of arms control, which
essentially depended on an understanding between the Soviet
Union and the United States. In these, our European allies,
with the possible exception of Great Britain, were really
the objects of and not the prime participants in the process
of negotiations.

All of this culminated in the strategic doctrine of
the Kennedy administration, which whether it was intellectu-
ally right or not, organically produced what came to be
known as the nuclear problem. The strategic doctrine
of the Kennedy administration was based on a number of
assumptions. (1) It stressed the doctrine of flexible
response in case of general nuclear war. What was meant
by "flexible response" went through many phases. At one
stage it was defined as meaning that one could conduct
a general nuclear war according to traditional maxims
of military operations, to the end of a clear victory.
More recently, it has meant that one would engage in dis-
criminating targeting without, however, being able to
achieve a military victory.

11

(2) The essential attribute was central command and control of all the nuclear forces of the Alliance. With this as a postulate, obviously the United States' policy became hostile to the national nuclear forces of our allies, specifically and first to the French but really also to the British nuclear forces. Every argument which has been made against the French force applied with equal cogency to the British nuclear force.

(3) We downgraded the significance of tactical nuclear weapons on the continent, which had been one of the chief elements of the strategy of the 1950's, but in order to quiet European complaints about the theoretical downgrading, we increased the number of tactical nuclear weapons on the continent. So the stockpiles of tactical nuclear weapons increased, while the doctrine for using them became more and more amorphous.

(4) The notion developed that conventional forces of the Alliance had to be built up in order to create additional options. Again, I will not go into these issues on a purely military ground. What I want to stress is that organically they were bound to produce what is today called the nuclear problem. Whatever the ambiguity about the notions of flexible response, whatever the target system that one was going to attack - and one can win many debating points in showing the purely military ambiguity in the notion

12

of flexible response - there are at least two key elements
that stand out. The first is that the very qualities that
make central command control and flexible response desirable
for Americans make it questionable for our allies. The
key element of the doctrine of flexible response is that
the American president shall have freedom of decision in
the circumstances of general nuclear war, to adapt his
response to the contingencies as they arise. In other
words, inherently the doctrine of flexible response took
away the automatic American guarantee which made American
hegemony in the 1950's bearable. No theoretical assurance
could substitute for the fact that no one could really be
certain how an American president would react in the stark
contingencies of nuclear war. I am struck, for example,
when I read Secretary McNamara's testimony before the
House Armed Services Committee over a period of years, since
the early 1960's, how his estimate of American fatalities
in a nuclear war is constantly mounting and has now reached
the level of anywhere from 50 to 80 million fatalities in
a general nuclear war. Nevertheless, he reiterates the
ritualistic assertion that the nuclear guarantee to NATO
has remained unimpaired. This invites skepticism. It must
make some difference to a president of the United States
whether he faces the kind of casualties one had to count
in 1949, or 80 million dead. It is not to downgrade the

13

reliability, the devotion to alliances, or the sturdiness
of American leadership, to say that in the face of such
a level of damage a president of the United States may
be moved by other considerations than the urge to fulfill
alliance commitments. So, in a way, the more the United
States attempted to preserve freedom of decision, the more
questions - unanswerable questions - it was found to raise.
The tragedy of the problem lies in the fact that these un-
answerable questions are also unavoidable ones.

The American attack on the national nuclear forces
of our allies compounded this uncertainty. The British,
who are the only Europeans who understand the American
decision-making process, do not feel constrained to react
to every doctrinaire statement made in Washington. But,
the French have the tendency to outdo us in doctrinaire
counterassertions. In any case, it was probable that an
attack on a program to which governments have devoted
major resources for ten years would be likely to produce a
not too friendly response. Political leaders are notori-
ously slow in recognizing the intellectual merits of argu-
ments that make them look silly. Therefore, our rather
doctrinaire systems of military contingencies that were
hard to imagine sometimes produced an even more absurd
response.

14

I will not speak about the problem of the oscillations
with respect to tactical nuclear weapons which compounded
this disagreement, and the emphasis on conventional build-
up which gave added ammunition. The arguments used to
justify the conventional build-up - that it would raise
the threshold at which nuclear weapons would have to be
used and that it would induce a pause which would permit
the consideration of the larger issues involved - lent
themselves very well to the kind of debating points that
would be made. It was not self-evident that the United
States, being unwilling to use nuclear weapons before its
units were defeated, would be more willing to use them after
it had already been defeated on the ground. If it would
be more willing to use nuclear weapons after it had been
defeated, then, in a curious way, for some of the Europeans
it seemed more reassuring to hasten that moment rather than
to delay it, not because they like the use of nuclear
weapons, but because they believe that this would remove
any ambiguity in the Soviet mind. Similar arguments
could be made about pause.

I want to return to the political issue, which is
that the nuclear problem in NATO was really a debate about
changed political and strategic conditions and not at all
a military problem. In the 1950's American predominance

15

was so great, the fear of Soviet attack was so overwhelming, the memory of European impotence at the end of the Second War so recent, that American leadership came to be taken for granted. The NATO Alliance in the 1950's was not at all an alliance in any traditional sense, and was not really conducted by the maxims of foreign policy. It was more akin to the operations of the domestic system, where European leaders established their domestic position by proving that they had great influence in Washington, and where lobbying in Washington was really more crucial than what had come to be known as diplomacy in the past. But in the 1960's as Europe regained some strength, as the fear of Soviet attack began to recede, and as the United States tended to complicate the situation by arguments which were intellectually more respectable than those of their opponents but which politically were not necessarily very acute, several of the latent problems of the Alliance became apparent.

One of these problems, characteristic of all alliances, is that there are differences between the conceptions of interests of the various members, produced by the very notions of sovereignty. One of the standard American responses to European concerns about what America might do is to say that Germany is as important to us as Alaska and the Germans can therefore count on us as much as the

16

citizens of Alaska can - or those of Maine. The problem
about this is that no one is going to ask Alaska or Maine
how it is going to be defended. It is perfectly conceivable
to the United States in a war to give up Alaska and hope
to recover it in a peace settlement. The citizens of
Alaska will not know what strategy we are pursuing in order
to defend them. But it is not possible to get the citizens
of Germany, or even less the government of Germany, to
acquiesce in a strategy which they will identify with
destruction of their society, in the hope that an eventual
peace settlement will restore the situation. Therefore,
there are pressures within the Alliance which cannot be
assessed on the pure military rationality of the Alliance,
if the Alliance is conceived as one superstate. Deployment
in the Alliance has always had a symbolic significance,
and the symbolic significance is overlooked at . . . .

Secondly, the range of modern weapons has created a
situation which is unprecedented. In the past, a country
threatened with attack had the choice of resistance or
surrender. It could not make its resistance dependent
upon a strategy which spared it but shifted the risks
of devastation to some other country. In 1914, Belgium
could not insist that it would fight only if Britain was
guaranteed equal devastation with Belgium. In the present

17

period, however, the technical possibilities of using
an alliance to elaborate a cause of war, and then of
shifting the theater of operations to the territory of
some other ally means that the interests of the allies are
not strictly speaking, equal. They may be equal in elab-
orating a *causus belli*. They are not equal with respect
to the conduct of military operations. From the American
point of view, a war confined to Europe is relatively more
tolerable than a general nuclear exchange. From the point
of view of some European countries, a war fought over
their heads, in which the United States and the Soviet
Union are devastated but Europe is spared, is more attractive
if war is inevitable than some of the options of flexible
response. And, of course, there is the subsidiary argu-
ment about what best produces deterrence. This is com-
plicated by the fact that deterrence is essentially a psycho-
logical problem. What deters depends on the calculations
of the aggressor, not on the calculations of the defender.
A threat which is intended as a bluff but which is taken
seriously is more useful for purposes of deterring than
a threat intended seriously but taken as a bluff. In a
situation of constantly changing technology, there is
infinite debate - even within each government - as to what
constitutes deterrence. There is, to my mind, the un-
precedented situation that the gap between experts and

18

[Y]

policy makers within each government is so enormous that
it is very difficult to achieve a consensus. This diffi-
culty on the domestic level is compounded in relations with
allies, making-- curiously... a less severe problem with our
chief opponent. But, in any case it means that the subject
matter that is being discussed becomes more and more
abstruse as a theory and dependent on the prime consideration.

The enormity of the risks of the nuclear age has
created a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, the
reasons for supporting an ally may become overwhelming;
on the other hand, there may be many issues with respect
to which formal guarantees are no longer meaningful. The
paradox is that on the one hand a president confronted
with the kind of casualty estimates that can be found in
our Secretary of Defense's statement, faces a situation
which is quite unprecedented. In the past, a country which
was faced with the problem of honoring an alliance more
usually than not could decide whether not honoring it would involve
consequences more serious than honoring it,
in terms of international reputation, in terms of having
to fight later under less advantageous circumstances, and
so forth. Confronted, however, with what must amount to
the destruction of the society as one now conceives it,
is it difficult (the loss of international reputation may
not weigh so seriously) to demonstrate that one will have
to fight under more disadvantageous circumstances later on.

19

So there must be a whole range of issues with respect to
which the nuclear guarantee is no longer as credible as
it was before, a range of issues which tends to be balanced,
however, by a similar restraint on the other side. Those
issues, however, with respect to which the nuclear guar-
antee remains credible, may, in the minds of one's allies,
be so overwhelmingly clear that they do not need to be
reinforced by a formal commitment. In other words, the
United States will defend its allies, not because it has
a treaty that obliges it to do so, but because these allies
are so important to it that it has no choice except to
defend them.

From this point of view President DeGaulle's views
may be perfectly rational. Far from doubting the American
commitment to the defense of Europe, he may feel that in
fundamental issues of national survival the United States
has no choice except to support France. On this basis,
he can conduct a policy which in the past would be close
to (provocative)? Curiously enough it is the tightness
of the alliance with respect to fundamental issues, and its
ambiguity with respect to marginal issues, that produces
many of the problems in nuclear control. For this reason,
it seems to me that many of our efforts in the last three
or four years to "solve" the nuclear problem have missed
the central point. We have sent briefing teams all over

20

Europe as if the difficulty was a lack of understanding
by a less advanced society of the sublety of our strategic
thought. We have attempted to construct a symmetry with
respect to flexible response, which even intellectually
does not exist. As Raymond Aron has pointed out, two
sides cannot be interested in playing chess in the nuclear
field; if one side plays chess the other one must play
poker. It cannot be in the interest of both sides to
conduct discriminating operations and it cannot be in the
interest of the losing side to conduct discriminating
operations and let itself be nibbled to death.

But apart from this problem, we have tended to identify
unity of the Alliance with command arrangements. We have
seen in the integrated command a guarantee of allied co-
hesiveness. In fact, in the 1950's the integrated command
was a symbol of allied cohesiveness, not a cause of it.
An American commander in Europe was important to the
Europeans because he represented an additional direct channel
to the president, with a vested interest to go to war in
case of attack. But, the legal situation in these inte-
grated commands was far from automatic. We concen-
trated on motivating forces, such as the late multilateral
force. Again, I do not think there is much point in going
into a discussion of the multilateral force, except to say
that its spirit has caused us for a number of years to argue

21

about irrelevancies. It diverted attention from what is
the main problem in the Alliance, namely, whether it is
indeed possible to get comparable conceptions of national
interest in this situation, to an essentially technical
problem of how one should go to war. The period of diplo-
macy prior to the outbreak of the war was given next to
no attention, but the military command for the conduct of
military operations received central attention. Secondly,
it focused discussions on something which was inherently
misleading. None of the political leaders engaged in
these discussions, no matter how serious or how dedicated,
really could be sure that he knew what he would do when
a general nuclear war occurred. I can imagine no issue
in which assertions of governments as to what they will
do are less reliable than the contingency of the conduct
of nuclear operations. It led to discussions as to how
one would enter a nuclear war, as if it were conceivable
that an American president, having decided that a particular
issue was not worthy of a nuclear war, would let himself
be voted into a nuclear war by a majority of his allies.
It deflected attention from the fact that we are now in
a new political situation - a political situation which
returns closer to traditional maxims concerning the relations
of states with each other. Three years ago I would have
said a political situation which produced an autonomous

22

Europe was desirable and possible. Today I think that under the impact of French policy, detente policy, and reawakened German interest in the national problem, a West European unity has become much less probable than I would have thought a few years ago. This is a situation in which the conditions of the 1950's are reversed; in which the United States is engaged in extra-European enterprises and is asking for support from its European allies - a support which is no more concertable than was American support for European efforts in the 1950's. It is a situation in which the Soviet threat has taken on a different significance and where there are vague notions of all-European settlements, whose lack of precision does not prevent them from exploding the old notions of a tight Atlantic community.

One of our problems with respect to this new situation is that we have a tendency to deal with it in the category of the 1950's. Most of the American NATO experts identify a vital Atlantic community with the vision of the 1950's and there is a constant proclamation of American leadership without any very clear notion about what this American leadership would actually do if it were exercised.

Let me conclude simply by saying that it seems to me that the kind of cooperation that is conceivable will depend on some common conception of a political future,

23

[N]

with some areas in which no agreement is possible and some
areas in which cooperation is conceivable. I do not believe
the United States will get European support for extra-
European efforts, which does not make every extra-European
effort incorrect. But, I do not think we can create a
structure in which all allies will act uniformly in every
part of the world at every moment. On the other hand,
in some areas such as East-West relations, a greater degree
of consensus as to how one visualizes the evolution is
necessary if the alliance is not to continue to suffer
the process of attrition.

25

continue to suffer the process of attrition. Luckily for me the Chairman has passed me a little note, urging me to conclude, Therefore I can stop without having to come up with any complete proposals.

Discussion:

26

Answer: First of all, on the purely organizational level it seems to me that it would be amazing if a structure which was developed in the early 1950's would remain valid for all eternity. That would be rather unprecedented in history. And, an organization that was intended originally to symbolize the American commitment to the defense of Europe may not be the best organization to address the questions of interest. But, I don't think it is primarily an organizational question. One of the remedies that is always being talked about for the state of affairs is to increase the process of consultation. On one level I agree with this. I think it would have been better if one had discussed the nonproliferation treaty more fully, earlier, and the nuclear test ban treaty--there would have been a greater degree of participation. On the other hand, it seems to me, there are organic limits--inherent limits--to the process of consultation. One, the domestic experience of our government indicates that the government operates not only by consultation but also by decision. And, it isn't true that when a decision is reached that there is a consensus then of all the interested parties. We've had enough Senate hearings that were produced by the appeal of the losing party to some other forum to make clear that even relatively full consultation, that is afforded by a domestic process, does not guarantee agreement.

Secondly, there is the problem in consultation that already exists within each government, namely the problem of ______ (cough)

27

[Y]

with respect to the subject matter being discussed. That isn't simply a question of technical knowledge, it is also a question of the choices which the participants have in this. Much...I have some sympathy, for example, for the DeGaulle view which relates cooperation not only to the ability to be heard but to the options possessed by the party participating in the process of consultation. For example, in our own government, in every matter—including disarmament matters—the defense department is much more influential than, say, the disarmament agency. Partly because the Defense Department can do certain things; you simply cannot ignore it. And, no matter how brilliant the argument of the disarmament agency might be, the fire power of...the weight of the Defense Department,ocr militarily, is closely related to the things it can do. And, this seems to me to be true internationally as well.

28

their security with the security of most of the underdeveloped world.
Whether we are always correct in our judgments about the nature of
the security problem there, whatever judgments we make we will
probably have to make largely in isolation. So the problem that is
faced now is to create a structure which makes it possible to articulate
close common interests which exist but not to try to freeze everything
to the attainment of consensus. And, that requires something subtler
than strengthening the process of consultation as it existed in the
1950's.

Question: What do you think of the future of NATO and its possible
role in the western world? People talk about, well for instance, some
people talk about a geographic expansion of NATO. You can open end
it, you can take in more countries who might want to join the common
effort in the defense of the so-called free world, but it's difficult to
see who would become members of NATO--with the possible exception
of Malta. I think Malta has indicated interest. Others I believe are
concerned, let's say, less they affiliate themselves with an obvious
alliance directed against communism. They don't want to choose up
sides in that fashion. Another would be to give more economic acti-
vities to NATO; let it undertake certain economic functions. We've
got the machinery for that, the OECD and so on--community machinery,
the Common Market and so on. I'm a little perplexed when I look at
the future to see just what direction NATO should take. Suppose we

29

should decide to abandon NATO. Do you think that would be serious to the interest of the western world at this stage. You can argue, just for the sake of being the Devil's advocate, that the basic purpose for which NATO was created has disappeared. That is, there is no imminent threat, at least, of Soviet aggression and that perhaps we can go back to 1949 and the framers of the Vandenberg Resolution in 1948, and the NATO treaty in 1949, certainly didn't envisage the kind of infrastructure that we developed in Western Europe in the 1950's. Suppose you take the French view that let the Alliance stand but let's do away with all of the machinery and let's more or less abandon the framework and the shell of NATO, let the spirit remain. What would happen in the western world?

30

Now, should we abandon NATO. Before I get into the
merits of this I would think that one other sudden shift, major shift,
of American policy--but the last thing we need is another major shift
in American policy--and that whatever I thought about NATO, I would
be--even if I were convinced it should die--I'd let it gradually die.
But for the United States to go from exaltation of Atlantic Community--
identifying Atlantic Community with NATO--to abandonment, after all
the other changes we've made in the last decade and a half, would under-
mine our international credit it seems to me to a dangerous degree.

Question: I wasn't suggesting that we do it abruptly...

Answer: But, now what seems to me to be necessary is to, not to
answer every challenge by "strengthening" the existing situations of
NATO. I see nothing magic about a supreme commander controlling
all the forces of the Alliance. And, if the evolution were to lead to
three separate commands on the purely military side--one for northern
Europe, one for the central front and one for Southern Europe --I would
not consider that a disaster. In fact militarily it would be much more

31

[N]

32

[y]

political consultation.

33

34

Now, on the German situation--I don't believe there every
was an interest in the possession of nuclear weapons in Germany unless
you psychoanalize German political leaders. Every German political
leadership--I did not know a single political leader in Germany who came
out, privately or publically, that he wanted nuclear weapons. Now this
seemed to me a rather desirable situation to maintain. The combination
of MLF and nonproliferation treaty has changed that. They don't argue
now that they don't want nuclear weapons, but they are now advocating
things which in fact are bound to produce a nuclear option. The German
peaceful program has received ten times the resources, after the non-
proliferation treaty, as it had before. And, I must say that Helmut
Schmidt, that many of the statements in this respect are at least
ambiguous. It is still true that they don't want nuclear weapons, but
they are now working toward a nuclear option which they may not take
up. And you must remember that the French in '54 also announced
that they didn't want nuclear weapons, when they started their peace...

35

Answer: I think that (A) the nonproliferation treaty is not going to be signed very quickly. It is (B) not going to be ratified very quickly. And, (C) if it's both signed and ratified, it's at best going to be an underground test ban; and I would wonder--it's an interesting analysis-- whether the nonproliferation treaty has hindered or spurred proliferation. In fact, I would argue that it has spurred proliferation because it has made it legitimate within each government to consider the strategic implications of nuclear weapons, Where they could have gotten on before that, year after year, by simply burying the issue. Now it has become not only legitimate but, indeed, necessary to examine it, and I think--I must say--I didn't foresee this so I'm not one of those who warned against a nonproliferation treaty all along. But, if I had to analyze it now I would say that on the whole what will happen, even if it is signed and ratified, is that every country will work as close to getting nuclear weapons as it can and that one the whole the effect is more likely to be spurring proliferation than the opposite. Therefore I wouldn't consider what Schmidt said yesterday the final word on this issue. The Germans are now in a complicated situation. Every policy they have tried since the war has really failed. NATO integration has failed. European integration has failed. The old notion of German unity has failed. Now they are trying the opposite. Every choice they now make is going to have to put German unity against further integration. The rootlessness of the German situation seems to me to be such

36

[Y]

3

[N]

38

39

40

So...(laughter)... still there is the letter in my files and it was abso-
lutely predictable. I explained that. Henry in the memories I have of
these discussions with all these people telling them they were quite
foolish to make a case against the French force, because even if it was
wrong for the French to produce a force--which is disputable in the
long run--they had no chance of convincing the French. So first they
indicate to the French that they were stupid--which is never very

41

42

43

44

End of Tape #2, Side #2.

45

46

47

[4]

48

there was one article by my good friend George Bundy--who is certainly a brilliant man--in foreign affairs a few months ago which seemed to say: If you have a choice between alternatives, do both. You know, it attacked a notion of idle (?) war--that was even the title of the article. Now, Bundy is a brilliant man who will know the pitfalls of the application of this doctrine, but it seems to me that this is at the basis of many of the difficulties. I don't know any Western government in which more than lip service is paid to really long range problems, and therefore consultation, when it takes place, tends to take place under mechanically--I would guess that the NATO framework as such...I don't think the detent problem, for example, can be solved simply by consultation. What I would like to see is an explicit facing of the fact that interests are not commensurable in the Alliance, and that those who have commensurable interests try to get together on some vision of the future. And then this process where what is intellectually conceivable then becomes possible, probable, certain, and everybody acts on this. This is...one can conceive many evolutions in Eastern Europe and at the end of the process suddenly what one has conceived as a possibility becomes a reality because it's the easiest way on which to conduct problems. I would...you know you could get me off on a long topic of discussion of the nature of leadership in the modern bureaucratic state, I would have to say that I am beginning to doubt seriously that any large bureaucratic state, East or West, is capable of conducting a really

49

Question: I'd like to make one point and ask a question on another thing that you said. And, that is: It struck me that one of the ties that is likely to restore some kind of community, though it may lead to abrasiveness as well, is the development of what we have wrongly focused on as the European technology gap. The fact that the science-based industries of Europe, which are vital to maintain both ways, are becoming more and more interdependent and the principle interdependence goes across the Atlantic. This was in an article in *Foreign Affairs* in July,

50

The question that I would particularly like to put to you is your statement about Germany... because I too was dissatisfied with the answer that Helmut Schmidt gave last night on developments within Germany in the 1970's. I was guilty of a sort of Pollyannaish approach when I had to give a paper in Washington--the group included people like General and Claus --as to what was Europe going to look like in the '70s. And, I suggested that nuclear proliferation was not likely to take place. A great deal of dissent took place on the grounds that certain things were likely to develop which would be of great concern to any new German government. One was the level of discussion between Britain and France of a joint nuclear force, perhaps as a way of seeking a British entry into the Common Market. By going back to the military question. The second was in terms of the status orientation of a Germany that remained perhaps with as a fairly exposed, vulnerable, not very influential power, without nuclear weapons in a world in which nuclear weapons were attempting to spread. It's true that Mr. Schmidt did say that if nuclear proliferation took place outside Europe this would tend to work against German interest. I would say that there is a fairly great chance that proliferation will take place outside of Europe, and that Germany will look in the plural (?)

51

position, perhaps to Japan, India, Israel, were it to remain non-nuclear. This then raises the problem of whether Germany can be kept away from any nuclear aspirations by the kind of consensus that we are arriving at here, that really NATO is, as you described it, a kind of bilateral agreement on keeping American troops in Germany. And that this takes care of a security problem so that we can pay much less attention to any mythologies of nuclear balance and strategic stand-off, especially in a world in which there are

much less credible than it would have been in the '50's. But, at the same time, even this underpinning is not a very secure one in that there is a pretty direct desire for American commitment in Germany to be reduced--the number of authorities that want to cut back on the Seventh Army, strengthen Germany and the realization that this is not a permanent indefinite commitment that we have. The United States should get involved in more Viet Nams, the Seventh Army becomes increasingly expendable. All of which brings us, I suppose, to the question of...I think we are arriving at a very complacent view of the Europe of the '40's; it's one that I would very much like to believe in. It's one that one can see great *gounds* (cough) for hoping that it will materialize, but at the same time there is a strong chance that it won't. That leaves us with the realization that letting NATO die, that it may be inevitable, is something that we shouldn't look forward to with too great a complacency.

52

[Y]

But there again I don't think it's necessarily that everyone knows the
limitations of DeGaulle's position, and it is confined to France. But
if Germany and Britain began to take on Gaullist lines it would be, I
think, extremely damaging internally and externally. Internally, partic-
cularly, because it does give a certain cynicism about politics, and
this is, to my mind, a very sinister and widespread attitude in Western
Europe. And I would agree with the last speaker that I think it is very
difficult to foretell the pattern of Western Europe in the '50's. Part of
this is that disillusion with our politics and policies and institutions of
all sorts. It is important that they should be got back to reality and to

53

which we all look forward
to...

54