# MILITARY STRATEGY, MILITARY FORCES AND ARMS CONTROL

## I

The fundamental aim of American military policy since the end of the second World War has been defensive: to prevent the advance of Communist power led by the Soviet Union. From our promise of military and economic assistance to Greece and Turkey in early 1947, this aim has led us to steadily widening commitments and to deployments of American forces over most of the globe. Over the same period, revolutionary changes in military technology have drastically altered the old geographic parameters of warfare, and led us - and the Soviets to create vast new forces of entirely novel kinds.

Both the international political scene and the technology of warfare have been changing rapidly in the recent past; both can be expected to go on changing in the near future. Changes already experienced and those in prospect require a reexamination of the goals of our military policy and the purposes and nature of the forces and deployments related to them. It is the argument of this essay that the proper conclusion of such a reexamination is that our security interests and needs require great changes in both the underlying rationale of our military policy, and the force structures and deployments which express that rationale in concrete military terms. The new political and technical realities point to the futility of a quest for security primarily through increased military strength, and to the increasing importance of political factors and arms control arrangements and agreements in meeting the security needs of the United States. Indeed, by giving weight to these factors in the

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next five years, we have a better prospect of achieving higher levels of real security; i.e. facing lower risks of harm to the United States and its vital interests, with armed forces and military budgets as much as a third lower than they are now than we do by continuing to follow the line of our past policy in a radically altered situation. In plain words, the course of arms limitation, restrictions in deployments, and arms control is not only cheaper than that of continuing competition in arms and military confrontation, it is safer.

Our military strategy in the past has been shaped by three chief goals, all interrelated, but nonetheless of different importance. First, was to deter and defend against a direct attack on the United States. Second, was to deter and defend against both a direct attack on Western Europe, and the use of the threat of military force, including the threat of attack on the United States, as a weapon in the indirect conquest by political means of some or all of Western Europe. Third, and both later in time and lesser in importance, was to oppose expansion of Communist power in any part of the world, especially when it took the form of the "takeover" by Communists, with overt or covert assistance from the Soviets, of the government of a previously non-Communist state. This policy had its origins in the events in Europe in the first years after the end of the war; by the end of the Korean war in 1952, it had settled into a hard mold from which it is only just now shaking loose. It has been given formal expression in the series of multilateral and bilateral treaties binding the United States in mutual defense pacts with nearly 50 nations, several of which are involved in more than one treaty, beginning with the Rio pact of 1947 covering 19 Latin American powers, and including NATO, with 15 members (1949), SEATO, 8 members and 2 protocol states (1954), CENTO, 4 members and U.S. "association" (1955), and bilateral defense treaties with Japan,

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Taiwan and South Korea.

Each of the three major goals can be associated with a corresponding aspect of the level, structure and deployment of U.S. forces, though this correspondence is somewhat artificial, since the various elements of our forces are interrelated and serve more than one goal. The first has led to the creation and maintenance of a long-range strategic striking force, equipped with thermo-nuclear weapons, and capable of world-wide action. We have also created defensive forces against enemy strategic attack, but our main reliance has been on the offensive force. The size and composition of our offensive force has been shaped by the concept of U.S. strategic superiority. In its crudest form this has meant a larger and more effective force than that of the Soviet Union, which even now remains the only other nation with significant long-range striking power. The subtler meanings of the notion of strategic superiority will be explored below. The second goal is reflected in the sizeable long-run deployment of U.S. forces in Europe under the North Atlantic Treaty, though the strategic forces make a vital contribution to it as well. These forces constitute a major military establishment in all arms: the equivalent to nearly 5 divisions of combat ground forces, several battalions of medium and short-range missiles with nuclear warheads plus support troops; an air force of some 900 tactical aircraft and 85,000 men, disposing of a very large number of tactical nuclear weapons, and the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, a major fleet, built around two carrier task forces, of some 50 ships, 200 aircraft, and 25,000 men. In addition, the back-up forces for NATO in the United States amount to nearly 4 army divisions trained and equipped for European service, a sizeable portion of the 475 ships, 2,500 planes, and 240,000 men of the Atlantic Fleet, and some part of the tactical air strength in the United States. Indeed, the combined U.S. forces in Europe form a more powerful military establishment than that of any nation save the Soviet Union.

Reflections of the third goal in our military deployments are more dif-

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fuse, and have been more variable in time and are thus less easy to specify precisely. The very size of the total forces we maintain other than strategic offensive and defensive forces and those committed to NATO, is perhaps the most important expression of this third goal. So are such specific deployment as two divisions and some air force units in Korea, a marine division scattered throughout the Pacific; so are the size and far westward patrol range of the Seventh Fleet in the Pacific; the existence and mission of Southern Command - formerly CINC South - in Panama; the restructuring of the U.S. strategic reserve under CINC Strike, in order to create a capability for rapid response with "conventional" ground and tactical air forces on minimum notice any place in the world; the worldwide network of military assistance agreements and military training missions both within and without the framework of mutual defense treaties. The great spread of U.S. air bases, communication facilities, and related installations around the world in part reflect this same purpose; in part they serve as support for forces deployed in Europe and the United States as well. Finally, of course, the most recent powerful and pointed expression of this third goal has been our commitment of more than half a million American troops to a war in South Vietnam, to halt and reverse the partly political, partly military process by which the joint forces of the guerillas in South Vietnam, and the Communist government of North Vietnam had begun to take over the South, and to discourage further Communist penetration in South-East Asia.

## II

The greatest changes in the international political scene have been those affecting the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is no longer the unchallenged leader of a unified bloc of thirteen Communist governments - all but Cuba forming a contiguous mass from Eastern Europe to East and South-East Asia. Nor is it still the political headquarters of a single world-wide Communist movement controlling a network of

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legal and illegal Communist parties, exercising significant political influence
in many important countries in both the third world and the U.S. Alliance system.
The political and ideological split between the Soviet Union and China has not
simply bifurcated the Communist world, it has shattered it into fragments. And
even the largest and most powerful fragment in both economic and military terms -
the Warsaw pact grouping (minus Albania) - though still led by the Soviet Union,
no longer shows the unity of purpose and unquestioning submission to Soviet
leadership it once did. On the other side, of course, our own dominant role
within the American Alliance system has also receded, though it never equalled
that of the Soviets in terms of command. The result is that the edge of the
U.S.-Soviet confrontation is much less sharp, as allies on both sides take a
political stance between those of the two superpowers.

On the military side of the confrontation, there has been an increas-
ing mutual recognition by both superpowers of the sharp limitations on their
ability to use military forces directed at each other to achieve or advance
political goals. The succession of crises involving some greater or lesser
degree of Soviet-American confrontation, Berlin in 1961, Cuba in 1962, the Middle
East in 1967, has underlined the reality and strength of the political constraints
on the direct use of military force. These constraints are essentially the
product of the nuclear age; their working will be examined in some detail in the
discussion of strategic forces below.

Profound as these changes are, they have by no means removed the forces
of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Mutual ideological
hostility still exists on both sides, but it is especially important in the
Soviet Union, where it has a much more significant role in the internal political
process than the United States. Direct U.S.-Soviet conflict of political inter-
est over the German settlement in all its ramifications remains, although it too
has become less sharp. Neither side publicly accepts the legitimacy of the role

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and activities of the other in the underdeveloped world, but the tendency, respectively, to interpret every action in terms of Communist aggression and conspiracy, or capitalist encirclement and neo-imperialism has diminished somewhat in intensity, again perhaps more here than there. Many of these conflicts, moreover, are becoming those traditional among great powers, and losing their intense flavor of religious war.

These changes are the result not only of mutual appreciation of the political implications of the facts of military technology; they also reflect deeper currents within both the United States and the Soviet Union, currents that are flowing with equal or perhaps greater strength within the other NATO and Warsaw Pact countries as well. In any modern industrialized nation in which the government is responsive to popular will - whether through the mechanisms of democracy or through other less sure and sensitive means - the primary pressures of popular opinion will ordinarily be focussed on internal problems of economic and social welfare. Extraordinary events and circumstances are required to sustain wide public interest in foreign policy. Even the governments of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, far as they are from democracy, are gradually becoming subject to and responsive to popular pressures and demands, and so the same political forces that give primacy to internal problems are operating to some degree on them. Expensive and risky foreign and military policies demand political justification in popular terms, a demand that becomes increasingly difficult to meet, even on the Soviet side.

These trends are both deep and slow-acting; it cannot be asserted with any confidence that they will not be reversed for a shorter or longer term. Between the early and final drafts of this paper, Soviet and other Warsaw pact forces invaded Czechoslovakia to reverse the Czechs' unacceptably rapid program of liberalization in internal politics and economics. It is difficult to assess the full results of this venture now; yet several

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preliminary conclusions can be set down. First, the operation was defensive in character, and provides no basis for inferring an increase in Soviet readiness to act against NATO or the United States directly. Second, the slowness with which the Soviets are pressing their demands on the Czechs, and the restraint they are showing in the face of the stubborn resistance of Czech leaders and public - as compared with Soviet behavior in Hungary in 1956 - appear to indicate some Soviet reservations on the political effectiveness of using military force to achieve their goals. Third, disunity within the Warsaw alliance and between the Soviet-oriented Communist parties and the Soviet Union has increased sharply. Thus, on the basis of present evidence (mid-September), it seems no more correct to view these events as a reversal in the trends sketched above than as a confirmation of them; yet they could presage such a reversal.

On the United States side, a hardening of our own policy toward the Soviet Union and the Communist world, shown by, say, an attempt to achieve "military victory" in South Vietnam and to make concrete in terms of military deployments the notion of maintaining U.S. "military superiority" are all possible paths of policy choice that might also reverse these trends. The political future is unpredictable; but from our own perspective of the analysis of alternatives for United States policy, our own policy choice is a major independent variable in the system. If we ourselves can choose to de-emphasize military means in foreign policy, we can hold back further increases in our military forces, and in some cases (as we shall detail below) reduce them uni-laterally. We can actively seek arrangements and agreements, both bilaterally with the Soviet Union and multilaterally, that permit still further reductions in military forces on both sides. Choice of such a course can make a major contribution to a general movement in the preferred direction of more security. Though this is obviously not a risk-free course, the argument to be developed below is that it is in fact less risky than its alternatives.

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In pursuing this path, we should not expect that the Soviet Union will quickly and simply forego all efforts to project its power in diplomatic, economic, and military terms into the non-Communist parts of the world. No more will it abandon its determination to maintain the borders of the present Communist world, or continue to seek whatever degree of unity under its own leadership over whatever part of it that appears feasible. Quite the contrary, we should anticipate continuing evidences for some time of Soviet efforts at playing the role of world power: furthering deployments of Soviet ships outside the waters adjacent to its territory, such as have recently been observed in the Mediterranean; wider patrols of Soviet missile-launching submarines; continued arms shipments on credit terms and military training missions dispatched to countries of the third world. Many of these actions can be seen as responses to earlier similar ones on our side. In none of these areas would the level of increasing Soviet activity reach the level of our own for some time, even if that had already begun to decline. What can be anticipated is that first, those forces which have increasingly limited the political effectiveness of our own activities in these directions will operate in the same way on the Soviet efforts. And second, that the Soviet leadership, which - for all its ideological commitments - appears to be a group of rational men capable of attending to the facts of experience, will learn from this experience, however slowly, even as we have ourselves.

The relations of East and West in Europe have displayed the same tendencies toward softening, perhaps to an even greater degree than bilateral U.S.-Soviet relations. Two points have been central in this change. The first is the increasingly low probability assigned to the prospect of a massive Westward military movement by the Soviets and their Warsaw pact allies by European government on either side of the dividing line through Germany. Even the understandably nervous and dissatisfied government of the Federal Republic, with the strongest cause to be discontented with the European status quo, does not act in

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terms of military budgets and force levels as if it gave high priority to the
Soviet military threat. The second is the decline in the belief in "negotiating
from strength" in Europe. This change, which has come about fairly gradually
over the last decade, is of fundamental importance. Some of the NATO partners,
especially the U.K., never believed that the pressure of Western military power
could bring about a new settlement that would reunify Germany; some of them,
including the Scandinavian countries and perhaps France, were content with the
status quo. But Germany and the United States, which both desire a change in
the status quo, have come slowly to the recognition that any change can come
safely only through political means, and that such change was least likely when
the two alliance systems confronted each other as if at the brink of war. This
change in point of view, in turn, is the product of a number of factors. First,
is the great success of U.S. and NATO policies over the two postwar decades:
the nations of Western Europe are prosperous and confident; despite a variety
of internal troubles they feel successful and secure as they hardly expected to
in the first years after the end of the Second World War. On the other side,
the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe are more disunited and more torn by
internal pressures than the most confident observer would have predicted a
decade ago. The Communist parties of Western Europe have become increasingly
cautious in their attempt to survive and retain political relevance in an
atmosphere of economic growth and even some increase in economic equality and
social mobility. All these changes have robbed Communism of the dynamism it
appeared to possess in the first decade after the War, and increased the con-
fidence of the Western European nations in themselves and in their capacity to
deal with the Soviets and their allies in political terms. Another consequence
of the success of our policies, of course, is the increasing assertiveness of
European governments, and their decreased willingness to accept American leader-
ship unquestioningly.

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None of this has changed the vital U.S. interest in Western Europe, nor the disproportion between the present military power of the Soviet Union and its allies and that of the Western European nations apart from the United States. But it has changed the immediacy and character of the military element in U.S.-European relations in a way that is highly relevant for our military policies.

The Chinese-Soviet split and the expansion of the American commitment to South Vietnam to the level of a major ground war have highlighted the position of China in U.S. security policy. Old feelings and anxieties arising out of the "loss" of China in 1949 have been revived, and a variety of semi-official pronouncements in recent years interpreting our role in the war in Vietnam as a necessary step in the containment of the aggressive, expansionist foreign policy of the Peoples' Republic has reinforced these sentiments. This essay is written on the assumption that, in the near future the war in Vietnam will be on the road to settlement. The details of such a settlement are impossible to predict with any confidence, but will probably not include any close continuing military relations between South Vietnam and the United States. It is from this assumption that we view the evolution of international relations and U.S. security interests in South and East Asia. A major feature of the Asian scene will continue to be the presence and voice of Communist China, by far the largest power in the area or the world in terms of population, located centrally so that it borders on a great number of other states, the strongest militarily of all the regional states and the only one possessing even a few nuclear weapons. Yet, despite its central position and its relative military strength in comparison to its neighbors, China, during the near future, will remain a basically weak nation, inferior in economic potential to Japan, and in no way comparable to the two superpowers. China will undoubtedly continue to build up her nuclear forces, and develop a modest missile capability, at a pace determined to some extent by internal political events. But at the most anxious projection, these forces will not in the near future to

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which we are looking, reach a level in terms of size and survivability, to permit
a Chinese government however faintly rational to run even a small risk of inviting
attack by the strategic forces of the United States or the Soviet Union. For this
period, both will maintain a credible first strike capacity against China. The
limitations of Chinese military strength go much farther than this: large as her
army is, she has only a low capacity to project her power much beyond her own
territory and the areas immediately adjacent to it. With a tiny Navy, made up
mostly of coastal defense vessels, and an air arm whose major element is a
defensive fighter force, China's military power is important chiefly in a defen-
sive or internal context, or very close to its borders. Chinese foreign policy
since the effective end of the Soviet alliance reflects no different estimate of
her own strength; she has been as cautious in deed as she has been violent in
exhortation and denunciation.

Even after the settlement of the war in Vietnam, major points of con-
flict between China and the U.S. will remain, which are unlikely to be settled
soon. Chief among them is the issue of Taiwan, and what China views as the
occupation of Chinese territory by a puppet government managed and supported by
the United States. Even if we can stop pretending that Taiwan is China, and move
to a "two-Chinas" policy, or even beyond that to a "China plus independent
Taiwan" policy, and try simply to avoid for as long as possible facing the prob-
lem of China's right to a Security Council seat, it is unlikely that China will
change its position. But it is equally or more unlikely that China will try to
reoccupy Taiwan by force, as long as elements of U.S. forces are deployed in and
near the Formosa Strait.

Further, China will certainly continue to exercise propaganda and
political pressure against the non-Communist states of Asia, and even occasional
military pressure on the vulnerable borders of such adjacent ones as India and
Burma. Her influence on the large overseas Chinese communities in Singapore,

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Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines will continue to provide a means of creating political unrest in all those countries; she will continue to hold Hong Kong under threat.

Nor are the prospects for untroubled peace in Asia, aside from the activities of the C.P.R., good. North Korea will probably continue border harassment and infiltration against South Korea. North Vietnam will continue to seek to expand its influence in South Vietnam and Laos, probably successfully, and in Thailand and perhaps Cambodia, with much less certain prospects of success. Peace between India and Pakistan will continue to be uneasy; so may it be among the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Despite these alarums and excursions, the fundamental questions for the United States remain two. The first is whether such conflicts, at the scale we have depicted, involve the security interests of the United States to an extent that they must be settled favorably to us at whatever cost. The second is, short of such a broad commitment, what, if anything, can we do about controlling or preventing them by military means. Our answer to the first question is, No; and accordingly, the second can be answered in the course of considering future military deployments in the Western Pacific and Asia. There are, of course, some contingencies in Asia that we would and should view as threats to vital U.S. interests. The most important of these are a direct attack on Japan or a massive invasion of India. Both seem impossible for the Chinese to undertake alone, and highly unlikely as joint Soviet-Chinese enterprises. The continued independence of South Korea and Taiwan, unless they should choose otherwise, are also vital in view both of our past commitments, and our success, after long and expensive efforts, in building up both into viable, self-supporting states. But here again, neither the repetition by North Korea of the 1950 invasion, this time without Soviet and probably even Chinese help, nor the invasion by China of Taiwan in the face of the Seventh Fleet seems more than a remotely possible contingency.

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In the rest of the world, only Latin America shows a reasonable prospect of relative peace and this only in terms of international wars. Coups and revolutions will probably be as frequent in the next eight years as they have in the past eight, and there is no guarantee that they will not be more violent. Africa will probably continue to display coups, civil wars, and guerilla struggles against the white powers of the Southern tip. It is not unlikely that some of these will erupt into international wars. But here as in Latin America, we must answer the double question: Are our interests sufficiently involved so that we must insure by whatever means an outcome of such struggles that we favor? Short of that, what can we accomplish by what kind of military force?

Only in the Middle East are the prospects of renewed war so high, and the degree of American commitment clearly so great as to raise the prospect of U.S. military intervention, if all else failed, and the Arab countries were really about to overrun Israel. Perhaps, by the end of the four to eight year period we have in prospect, military struggles between black majorities and white minorities in Southern Africa might arouse the profound and widespread emotions among the American public that the defense of Israel does now. But, with these exceptions, the general answer to the first of our two key questions appears to be in the negative for the rest of the third world.

This discussion of contingencies in the rest of the world should not be read as arguing that only Europe matters. It does underline the point that, aside from the remote possibility of an attack on Japan, no single contingency in other areas is of the same order of importance. Further, it emphasizes the limitations in many cases of U.S. military force in preventing developments that we would clearly view as undesirable. Thus, to take a sharp example, suppose Brazil were "going communist," as a result of internal strife and the appearance of a left-wing faction in the army as well as among the populace. American military intervention on a large scale might be capable of preventing the

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particular group from succeeding at that time, but only at very large costs in
terms of our longer-run relations in all of Latin America, and with consider-
able likelihood that the "successful" result would prove unstable.

In sum, if we compare the likely prospects in the next presidential
term of, say eight years, with the experience of the past eight years, we see
a significant change. It is not, alas, that the prospects for disorder on the
international scene in general are less, and for world-wide peace greater.
Rather it is that there is a prospect for less U.S. involvement in violence,
that in turn arises directly from the prospect that the U.S.-Soviet confronta-
tion can be less salient in both international politics and in the internal
politics of both great powers.

III

The changes in the world political picture we have sketched in the
preceding pages affect our whole military posture, since they alter its under-
lying political rationale. The most striking changes in military technology,
current and prospective, are those that affect primarily the capabilities of
the strategic forces of the United States and the Soviet Union, both offen-
sive and defensive. These changes call more sharply into question the con-
cept of "strategic superiority," which has long had wide currency, if not
official standing, as the basis of our military policy. Further, even apart
from this question, these technological changes are making more delicate and
difficult for both sides the task of maintaining an effective deterrent balance.

Over the past decade both the United States and the Soviet Union have
each, more or less, become increasingly aware that the chief utility of his
strategic force was to prevent his adversary from using his own. This result
was achieved primarily by offering the adversary the prospect that any attack
by his strategic forces would be met by a counterblow so devastating as to

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convert a decision to attack into a suicide pact. So the strategic equilibrium commonly termed "mutual deterrence" was recognized.

For our (or the Soviets') strategic forces to provide effective deterrence, they must be in such numbers, of such nature and so deployed as to be capable of delivering the required counterattack after the other side has struck; thus effective deterrence is measured by the usable strength of the survivable second-strike force. We were perhaps earlier than the Soviets in recognizing this, but we were far from perceiving it from the first. Once we recognized the need, we sought survivable forces in different ways as technological possibilities changed over the period. Increase in the size of the force, geographical dispersal to increase the number of targets presented by a given force, active defense, hardening to survive attack, warning and movement capability to take advantage of warning, all played a part in the quest for a secure second-strike force. If surviving forces are to be usable, equally essential requirements are imposed for ensuring the survival of a complex network of reporting and communication facilities, command organization and commanders, all of which occasion their own technical and organizational problems. With missiles having displaced aircraft as the most important component of the second-strike force for both sides, hardening to ensure survival through an attack, combined with concealment and mobility for the sea-based portion of our force, provide our main means of ensuring survivability. The Soviets, with - at this moment - smaller and less effective seaborne forces, depend more heavily on hardening.

Only the United States and the Soviet Union have built up large strategic forces with significant second-strike capabilities; in comparison, the forces of the small nuclear powers are insignificant. The United States and Soviets can be expected to retain their unique position for some years to come: no other nation seems both willing and able to commit resources on the required scale. This, and the more general disproportion between the military power of

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all kinds of these two superpowers and that of other nations or groups of nations
leads us to concentrate the discussion of strategic forces on the bilateral re-
lations between the two. This neglects possibilities that the small nuclear for-
ces of the three other countries now possessing them, France, Britain, and China
may be used in ways that trigger great power conflict. If the number of nuclear
powers grows further, these possibilities will clearly become more important,
and directly relevant to the stability of the relations of the two great powers.
For the present and the near future, we can pass them over without damage to our
argument.

Strong and survivable long-range striking forces provide each super-
power with something more in relation to the other than deterrence against direct
nuclear attack, though the precise specification of the extra effect is difficult.
First, they provide a substantial incentive for each nation to refrain from in-
itiating any military action against the other, lest the conditions under which
rational calculation can be expected to dominate decision and action disappear
in one or both. These incentives become stronger the larger the forces and
interests involved, thus leading to a kind of built-in brake on the growth of
military incidents in situations where the military forces of the superpowers
face each other directly, or could readily do so in their worldwide movements.
By extension, the same incentives operate with respect to political confronta-
tions that might in turn lead to military action, but more weakly the more remote
the military steps appear to be in the chain of potential actions and reactions.
Together these effects add up to a kind of indirect or second-order deterrence,
which could tend to stabilize the behavior of the two superpowers in relation to
each other over a wide range of actions, and deter unilateral attempts by either
to change the status quo forcibly or suddenly.

However, the history of the last two decades makes the strength,
steadiness and symmetry with which these incentives have operated questionable,

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and emphasizes their relation to broader military and political contexts. In the earlier part of the period, the Soviets seem to have acted at a higher margin of risk than the United States; more recently, the reverse appears to be true. These changes are not the simple consequence of shifts in the balance of strategic forces; on the contrary, any shift has probably moved steadily against the United States over most of this period.

In analyzing the concept of effective deterrence and trying to understand on what relation of forces it depends, it is conventional and useful to examine it in the context of a spectrum of possible strategic purposes and the striking forces appropriate to them, that stretches from what might be termed a credible first-strike at one end, to a minimum deterrent at the other. A first-strike force would be one whose size, reliability, accuracy, control arrangements, etc. were such, in relation to the adversary's forces, as to make possible an attack that would, with a high degree of assurance, destroy essentially all of the adversary's force and still leave the attacker a substantial unspent reserve force. In this context, the sense of "essentially all" of the adversary's force is that whatever residual might escape destruction could not inflict major damage on the attacker or prevent his reserve force from being used to a very substantial extent. For a first strike to be further characterized as "credible," the relation of forces described above would have to be clearly perceived by both adversaries, and the "high degree" of assurance involved might have to be set at 99 percent or more. In such circumstances, it is just conceivable that the superior adversary could use this power for what has been termed "compellance," as opposed to deterrence: the threat of a strike used as a means of compelling specified behavior by the adversary.

At the other end of the spectrum, a minimum deterrent force would be one which would provide high assurance of the survival, for use in a second-strike, of an effective, usable force large enough to inflict unacceptable

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damage on the adversary, defined in terms of some level of expected casualties, urban and industrial destruction, etc.

Since 1961, our strategic forces have been programed in terms of deterrence-plus. We have never sought a first-strike capacity, and indeed from his first budget message, the Secretary of Defense denied both the possibility and desirability of attaining one: secure Soviet striking capacity was, and would be maintained at a high enough level to make a U.S. first-strike irrational. But, in the first two full budgets of the Kennedy Administration - which laid down guidelines governing the size of the strategic striking forces that are still in effect today - the programed missile and long-range bomber forces were larger in relation to projected Soviet forces than would have been required for minimum deterrence alone, even allowing for a generous margin of uncertainty on the growth of Soviet forces, their effectiveness and the post-attack performance of our own programed forces. The margin over deterrence was justified in terms of the idea of "damage limitation," should deterrence fail - a contingency that could not be ignored. Were sufficient warning of preparations for a Soviet strike or actual launching of one to be available, U.S. missiles could be launched against Soviet missile sites and airfields, thus limiting to an extent depending on warning time the damage that the Soviet strike would inflict. A large enough effort at "damage limitation" of course shades off into a first-strike posture; a small enough one becomes indistinguishable from the safety margin for deterrence.

The decisions of 1961 and 1962 called for the build-up by 1965 of a U.S. strategic force of nearly 1,800 missiles capable of reaching Soviet targets; somewhat more than a third were to be submarine-launched. In addition, some 600 long-range bombers would be maintained. This was projected against an expected Soviet force of fewer than a third as many missiles and a quarter as many bombers capable of reaching the United States. Further, the Soviets were expected

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to possess an equal number of shorter-range missiles and a much larger number of medium bombers that could be used against European targets, and possibly, against the United States as well. Unknown, and unknowable, at least for some time to come, is whether the Soviets' original force goals in 1961-1962 were as modest as our estimates of them at the time - or even more so - and whether their rapid recent build-up, discussed immediately below, was a response to the tremendous acceleration in the growth of our long-range striking forces that the Kennedy Administration brought about. In any event, until last year it was possible for the Administration to deny any wider aim for its strategic posture than deterrence, to argue the futility of seeking to achieve a first-strike force, and yet to avoid the sharp edge of the question of whether we were maintaining "strategic superiority" over the Soviets, as that term is used in Congressional and public discussions.

Recent changes in Soviet deployments have given a new bite to this question; anticipatory changes in our own have raised even broader questions of how stable our deterrent posture will be in the years ahead.

The last two years have shown significant changes in the Soviet strategic forces. The number of their intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles has grown rapidly. As of late 1967 - as estimated by Secretary McNamara in his 1968 budget presentation - the number of land-based missiles had grown to 750, or nearly half our total, and most of the growth had taken place in the previous year. This indicates that the number might well continue to grow rapidly, and by mid-1969 numbers of Soviet ICBM's might be as large as of ours. The total number of Soviet missiles targetable against both the United States and NATO countries is already nearly equal to the total number of U.S. missiles that can reach Soviet targets. Further, the Soviets are currently building up their missile submarine fleet both qualitatively and quantitatively, so as to achieve - like the United States - a substantial force

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protected from a first strike by concealment and mobility. In addition to these
changes in their offensive forces, the Soviets have been slowly deploying an
anti-ballistic missile defense system around Moscow.

So far, we have not responded to these developments by planning an in-
crease in the number of our missile launchers. Rather, we have concentrated on
programs for upgrading our present forces by replacing existing missiles with new
ones designed to use present launching platforms. The new missiles will be
superior to the old in three respects. First, they will be significantly more
accurate, which means that a smaller warhead can be used to achieve a particular
level of destruction against a specified target, a fact which is significant for
the attack of hard targets. Second, they will contain a variety of decoys and
other penetration aids which will make more difficult the defensive task of an
ABM system. Finally, and most significant, they will ultimately contain several
independently aimed warheads within a single missile (MIRVs or multiple independ-
ent reentry vehicles). These, in turn, again make the task of the defensive ABM
more difficult. In addition, they raise a new, and as we shall see, somewhat
frightening possibility of multiplying greatly the number of warheads which one
or the other side can launch, without changing the number of visible missile
launchers.

In addition, of course, we have made the decision to deploy a "thin"
ABM system, emphasizing primarily area defense against light attacks, such as
might be within the capacity of China in the near future; but not capable of
effectively defending against a major Soviet attack. However, the debate in the
Senate on the appropriations for this system (June, 1968) cast serious doubt on
the continuance of this as the governing rationale for deployment.

While the recent and projected changes in Soviet and American strategic
forces have not altered the fundamental strategic situation from one of mutual
deterrence, they may have set in motion forces which can undermine the stability

-21-

of the relation in coming years. Within the Congress, pressures are already
beginning to mount for action to offset the large increase in numbers of Soviet
missiles, so as to maintain a margin of "strategic superiority," rather than
accepting "parity." As the planned deployment of the ABM system goes forward,
Congressional and public pressures to upgrade it can be expected to rise; this
would be done by adding local defenses of missiles and cities to the present
area-defense system. We will then face the task of publicly and explicitly
accepting strategic "parity" with the Soviets, or in the alternative, giving in
to these pressures and beginning a new set of developments in our strategic for-
ces, with consequences that are unpleasant to contemplate.

The core of the case for accepting "parity" has already been put, but
it bears repetition, and a little elaboration. In essence, we cannot expect
with any confidence to do more than achieve a secure second-strike capacity, no
matter how hard we try. This capacity is not usefully measured by counting war-
heads or megatons or, above some level, expected casualties. Whether the re-
sult comes about with twice as many American as Soviet delivery vehicles - as
has been the case in the past - or with roughly equal numbers, or even with an
adverse ratio, does not change its basic nature. Further, any significant
change in deployments by either major adversary requires a long period of time,
and announces itself either explicitly or through intelligence means, in its
early stages. The other, therefore, has notice and time within which to respond.
The present level of research, development and production capacity for weapons
of both superpowers is such that each has the power to respond to a change in the
deployments of the other in a way that leaves it "satisfied" with its new
position in relation to the adversary. Each, accordingly, must anticipate such
a response. And so the arms race would go on. The expected result of the pro-
cess can be no more than a new balance at higher force levels, larger expendi-
tures and, most likely, even more unthinkably high levels of destruction in the

-22-

event that the forces were ever used; it could also be much less.

The other and even more troubling consequence of following the com-
petitive path is that the stability of mutual deterrence becomes far less cer-
tain. First, a rapidly changing situation itself creates problems. Deterrence
is at bottom a political and psychological concept. It rests on the perception
and interpretation of the military situation by political decision-makers; and
it is as much open to influence by changes in their operating environment or
the attitudes they bring to their perceptions as by changes in the hard tech-
nical facts. This inevitably marks it with a certain elusiveness. How great
a capacity to wreak death and destruction on an adversary is enough? Can it be
measured in absolute terms in millions of dead and acres of destruction, or
only in the fractions of his population, industry and urban area? If one rival's
destructive capacity grows while the other's remains constant at a high level,
does this reduce the effectiveness of the latter's deterrent? Questions such as
these clearly have no unique, well-defined answers that hold for all decision-
makers in all circumstances. What is clear is that constant or slowly changing
force structures, whose technical performance characteristics are reasonably well
understood - subject, of course, to the important fundamental limitation that no
one has experienced their use in war - provide a much more stable basis for
mutual reliance on and acceptance of deterrence than a rapidly moving process of
qualitative and quantitative competition.

Second, the current technical developments in weaponry present the
possibility of introducing significantly new elements of uncertainty into the
situation, which in themselves, even in the absence of further continuing change,
would diminish the stability of deterrence. Anti-ballistic missile defenses and
multiple independently aimable warheads carried by a single missile both have
this effect. At present, each adversary has a reasonably clear idea of the
other's deployments, with enough detail to permit a confident estimate of the
balance of forces. Once MIRVs become widespread, it becomes much more difficult

-23-

for each side to know how many warheads, as opposed to launchers, the other has.
How great the uncertainty will be depends, of course, on the specific technical
possibilities: two warheads per missile would create one situation; ten, quite
another. Further MIRV's increase the asymmetry between first and second strikes,
moving us toward the instability inherent in a situation in which neither side
has a survivable second-strike force. The mutual deployment of large ABM systems
will make much more uncertain the adequacy of each side's second strike force,
and generate strong impulses to compensate for uncertainty by building still
larger offensive forces.

The combination of both ABM's and MIRV's leads to an even more alarming
situation. If both are reasonably effective, then each side could believe it
has a first-strike capability, using its MIRV's to attack the adversary's fixed
missiles launchers, and relying on his defenses to intercept weapons launched
from the adversary's mobile systems. The deterrent stability permitted by our
present technology of relatively invulnerable offensive forces and no defense
will vanish.

These frightening possibilities still lie in the future. For the
next several years, nothing that is currently happening or in prospect justifies
anxiety for the continued effectiveness of the U.S. second-strike capability, or
its continued power to perform its primary function of deterring the Soviets
from using their nuclear forces against us. None of the evidence on the Soviet
build-up points beyond an effort to move close to a crude equality with us in
numbers of offensive missiles, nor is there evidence of a wide program of ABM
deployment, or a Soviet MIRV program.

The rapidity of the recent build-up in Soviet forces tempts some to
project that build-up into the future, and see it as a race for "strategic
superiority." The absence of official announcements of force goals by the Sov-
iets - such as the Secretary of Defense makes in his annual budget presentations -

-24-

reinforces the temptation; and the demonstration of the illusory nature of such a goal seems an insufficient response. Yet our past experience with the projected "defense gap" of the early fifties and the "missile gap" of 1959-61 shows the problems of such interpretations. In both these cases we clearly overreacted. In the first, the result was our concentration on the creation of a large, expensive, not very effective, and soon to be obsolete defense system against Soviet bombers while the Soviets moved on to missiles. In the second, the scale of our reaction may have been an important factor in stimulating the current Soviet build-up. If our aim remains that of maintaining deterrence, we can clearly afford to wait for the event, rather than begin now to respond to our projections of the future.

However, technical developments point to the coming of a time when mutual deterrence can no longer rest reliably on mutual watchfulness and forbearance without explicit arms-control agreements over the deployment of strategic forces. The decision (July, 1968) of both our own and the Soviet governments to initiate talks on a levelling off in the deployment of strategic weapons speaks for an acceptance of something like the line of argument above by both governments. Yet it is clear that an agreed freeze would present a host of difficult political and technical problems. First would be the question of how much reliance we would be willing to place on unilateral i.e. intelligence - verification of Soviet deployments, rather than seeking agreed inspection procedures. Second, equally important and even more difficult to resolve, is the question of whether and to what extent to seek control over technical improvements in existing warheads and vehicles and the research and development efforts leading thereto. No risk-free solution to these problems is likely to be found even in conceptual terms, much less in terms of negotiable arrangements between the two countries. Third, and probably most important and most difficult is our political problem in accepting a Soviet claim to some kind of "equality"

-25-

in strategic forces, under a freeze, however defined. There is among us a widely
shared popular feeling that our wealth, our power, and our virtue entitle us to
be "first," and any claim to equality by the morally and economically inferior
Soviet Union is presumptuous if not dangerous. The new administration must con-
quer this sentiment, since it is difficult to see how we can expect to persuade
the Soviets to accept a freeze under which their position is defined as "inferior."
This counsel is easier to give than to execute; but peace and security are widely
and deeply desired, and strong Presidential leadership can mobilize these de-
sires in support of the proposition that since in matters of strategic systems
we cannot be usefully and effectively "first," we must be prepared to be safely
"equal."

Yet difficult as these problems are, the alternative prospects arising
from the uncontrolled forward thrust of technical change in weaponry that we
have sketched above are much grimmer. Arms-control agreements may then become
much more difficult to reach, since an atmosphere of mutual distrust and fear
will hardly promote the success of what will at best always be difficult
negotiations, and the results of any particular agreement may be much more
difficult to calculate.

The present and near future offers a peculiarly favorable period for
such a discussion. A freeze at something like next years' numbers of offen-
sive missiles - agreement on modest ABM deployments on each side, combined with
a ban on new systems - specifically MIRV's and new launching platforms or vehicles,
would allow each side fixed, hardened land-based and mobile sea-based offensive
systems, and some sharply limited defensive deployments; yet would prevent the
introduction of MIRV's, the widespread deployments of new land-and sea-based
systems that would otherwise be likely to occur as the natural counter to MIRV,
and the move to "thick" ABM systems of very high cost. Large scale deployments
of mobile missiles in turn, because of the problems they would create for uni-
lateral surveillance, or even for effective agreed inspection, would act as a

-26-

further destabilizer in the strategic competition.

Beyond the prospect of new technologies with destabilizing consequences, the problem of containing the further spread of nuclear weapons argues for pressing negotiations with the Soviets on the deployment of strategic weapons. Even the initiation of such negotiations would give an important stimulus to the completion of the non-proliferation treaty. Success in them will make much more likely wide adherence to the treaty, especially by those nations with the technical and industrial capacity to make nuclear weapons who have criticized the one-sided character of its restraints. On the other hand, a failure to initiate the discussions followed by a visible acceleration of U.S.-Soviet competition in new deployments of strategic weapons is likely to have the effect not only of killing the treaty, but of stimulating more nations to "go nuclear," as they lose hope of great-power restraint. This, of course, would add a further destabilizing process to the international scene.

The technical complexities of the subject and its political sensitivity in the Congress, the military services and large segments of the public, mean that for there to be any prospect of a useful negotiation, the new President and his Secretaries of State and Defense must place a very high priority on the task, and give it a significant and continuing share of their personal attention.

Therefore, this should be made the major arms-control effort, and one of the major foreign policy initiatives of a new administration.

Even if the negotiations get under way, they are likely to prove long and difficult. There may be some virtue during their course - especially if they are not progressing - in exploring the possibilities of simpler measures of arms-control that could contribute to the domestic and international sense of forward motion in this area, as well as having some significance in themselves. Among these especially worth considering are a cut-off of fissionable material production, a complete test-ban treaty, a ban on placing nuclear weapons in the

-27-

sea-bed, and a no-first-use of nuclear weapons declaration, either in unconditional form or limited to no-use against non-nuclear powers. Each has its problems. For the first two, they involve the difficulties of negotiating meaningful inspection versus the magnitude of risks entailed in reliance on unilateral verification. For the second two, they revolve around the possible weakening of deterrence against conventional attacks in force, and the consequent problems of allies' confidence in our security guarantees, especially West Germany and South Korea. A thorough discussion of these problems would be too lengthy for this paper. It is sufficient to say that the values gained in arms control are increasing, and of enough importance to justify a reexamination of the balance of advantage and risks in each case.

## IV

Next to our strategic forces, our commitment to NATO is our most important military commitment. It too has been affected by a changing political context, and, though to a much less important extent, by changes in military technology.

Currently, NATO forces on the Central Front are roughly in balance with the opposing Warsaw Pact forces west of the Soviet Frontier, measured in terms of capacity to fight a conventional ground war; indeed, the NATO forces immediately available probably have some qualitative superiority on the Central Front, especially in terms of aircraft. This has now been the case for several years. Further, the total forces and total military budgets of the NATO powers (excluding U.S. forces in Vietnam and the expenditures in support of them) are greater than those of the Warsaw Pact nations. Table 1 below gives a selection of the most important relevant measures.

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TABLE 1

NATO AND WARSAW PACT DEFENSE BUDGETS AND MILITARY STRENGTHS *

1968 DATA

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>NATO <sup>+</sup></th><th>WARSAW PACT <sup>++</sup></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Total defense budget (U.S. prices<br>$ billions)</td><td>$ 75</td><td>About $50 (or 2/3<br>of NATO budget)</td></tr></tbody></table>

I. <u>Armed Forces Manpower</u>

<table><tbody><tr><td>Total men under arms (000s)</td><td>6,300</td><td>About 4,300</td></tr><tr><td>Total Army personnel (000s)</td><td>3,600</td><td>About 2,900</td></tr><tr><td>Troops in division forces combat-<br>available in</td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;a. the Center Region on M-day<br>(000s)</td><td>680</td><td>About 620</td></tr><tr><td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;b. all European Regions on<br>M-day (000s)</td><td>900</td><td>About 960</td></tr></tbody></table>

II. <u>Aircraft</u>

<table><tbody><tr><td>Inventory value of tactical combat<br>aircraft; nominal cost (U.S. prices<br>$ billions)</td><td>27</td><td>About 16</td></tr><tr><td>Tactical aircraft inventory</td><td>11,000</td><td>9,000</td></tr></tbody></table>

* Source - Department of Defense, Office of Assistant Secretary for Systems Analysis.

+ Does not include U.S. costs in Vietnam.

++ For this purpose the PACT comprises USSR, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Rumania.

On the critical Central Front region, the largest component of NATO's ground forces is German, followed by those of the United States. In tactical airpower, the United States has the largest force, with Italy and Germany next. In addition, of course, the United States forces in NATO dispose of a vast array of tactical nuclear weapons, currently some 7,000 in number. The Soviet forces also have a sizeable nuclear component at the tactical level, but its precise magnitude is not known, Together, there are clearly enough nuclear explosives deployed in tactical formations to destroy most of Europe, without

-29-

the assistance of strategic forces on either side.

The balance represented by the figures on Table 1 has not been signifi-
cantly changed by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. On the one hand, the
Soviets have called up some reserves, and moved troops from Western Russia into
the Soviet Union. On the other, the Czechs can hardly be counted among the avail-
able forces, and indeed, if any allowance is made for the minimum Soviet forces
required for occupation duties inside Czechoslovakia, the net change is probably
negative. Further, the movement represented no particular surprise in military
terms. Some two to three months for preparation was available to the Soviets,
and NATO was well aware of Soviet moves during the period. Only the immediate
political decision was a surprise.

If we consider not only the statistics of military deployment, but also
the less measurable but more important factors of political will, the advantages
on the side of NATO viewed in terms of its defensive purpose are even stronger.
For all their disagreements and divisions, the will to self-defense of the
European members of NATO is clear. By contrast it is difficult to conceive of
enthusiastic Czech, Hungarian, and Polish participation in offensive operations
directed westward across the frontiers of the Federal Republic. Of course, the
same could be said of the corresponding problem for an opposite move by the West;
but it is the essence of a wise NATO policy to emphasize the Treaty's defensive
purpose, and present the Soviets with the alternatives of peace or the offensive.

The large NATO deployments reflect two different sets of politico-
military concerns: the desire of the Germans for a "forward strategy," so that
any attack is met, and if possible, repulsed at the borders of the Federal
Republic before the attackers can occupy any substantial part of its territory,
and the anxieties of U.S. and British defense planners - especially the political
chiefs of defense departments - about the consequences of the use of tactical
nuclear weapons in Europe.

The first of these has been more or less constant since the Germans have
found their political voice in the alliance. The second, however, represents a
more recent development, and a turn away from a previous policy of relying on the

-30-

heavy use of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, which was initiated in the mid-
fifties, and, at the time, with only grudging acceptance by our allies. As we
came to recognize that the game of tactical nuclear weapons was a two-sided one,
and both to calculate the consequences of their bilateral use and contemplate
the difficulties of drawing the line between large-scale use of nuclear weapons
in Europe and general strategic warfare, we tried, beginning with the 60's, to
deemphasize nuclear weapons. We set an example for the alliance in building up
conventional strength, and urged the others, especially the Germans, to follow
it.

Over the same period, however, and indeed beginning rather earlier,
the likelihood of a massive Soviet attack, as perceived by politicians and pub-
lics in Western Europe, declined sharply to very low levels. Parliaments became
increasingly unwilling to vote increases in military budgets, or to extend
periods of military service. We have argued above that this perception is cor-
rect, and accordingly, the current strategy must be evaluated in the light of
it. To be sure, the need for deterrence remains; but the means are no longer
the same. Three necessary elements remain: first, the American commitment em-
bodied in the Treaty; second, enough involvement of American troops on the
Central front to make it clear to the Soviets that the commitment will be hon-
ored, and that no military action on any significant scale in Europe is possible
without engaging the United States in war; third, a large and capable enough
U.S. strategic striking force, in relation to that of the Soviets, to continue
to rule out the rational choice of a major war by them.

In addition to their role in continuing to deter a massive Soviet
attack, no matter how unlikely, the U.S. troops in Germany have at least three
other important functions. First, is that of assisting in maintaining ground
access to West Berlin and Western rule in West Berlin. The availability of
properly deployed American forces in enough strength so that "incidents" on the

-31-

[LC]

Autobahn or at the Berlin boundaries can be met with a proportionate, but not an undue response, and so that the response is clearly American, provides an ever-present reminder to the Soviets of the dangers of attempting to change the situation of West Berlin by force. The Americans in West Berlin serve a corresponding function with respect to the possibility of incursions by East German police or troops, the use of Soviet forces for political intimidation, and the like. These functions will remain vital until the political arrangements governing the relations of West Berlin, the Federal Republic, and the G.D.R. are clearly accepted by all the parties involved. Second, is that of maintaining a presence and a forward deployment sufficient to reassure the Germans in particular and Western Europe in general of our continued commitment to their defense. While this is inseparably connected with their prime task of representing our commitment to the Soviets, it, so to speak, plays to a different audience. Finally, U.S. troops in Germany assure other members of NATO that immediate management of the alliance's confrontation with the Soviets is not solely in the hands of the West Germans, and keep German forces integrated into the NATO command system. This is an important element in alliance solidarity, whose value even the German government itself accepts.

While all these functions are separable for analytical purposes, the demands they made for U.S. forces are by no means additive. The tasks of garrisoning West Berlin and providing enough mobile force to make clear that access to West Berlin cannot be closed off without a major military confrontation require about two and one-half U.S. divisions: one-half in Berlin, one and one-half for deployment at the Autobahn approaches, and as a general reserve. Another division added to this would make possible enough forward deployment of U.S. troops in Southern Germany to provide assurance to the Germans and the other NATO members on the seriousness of our commitment. We now have almost twice as large a ground combat force in Germany as this. General supporting forces and air forces

-32-

are probably less than proportionally larger than necessary, while units now manning a large variety of tactical nuclear weapons could usefully be viewed as even more redundant. Altogether, at a crude estimate, present U.S. forces in Europe may be on the order of 30 to 40 percent larger than would strictly be needed to meet the current strategic requirements of the Alliance, if these were defined in politically realistic terms.

If U.S. force reductions of any sizeable magnitude were made, they would almost certainly be paralleled by some reduction - though not necessarily a proportionate one - of force levels and budgets by the European members of NATO, occasioned by the inability of the U.S. to continue its customary pressure in NATO for large budgets and stronger forces. Thus, any changes that are made must be considered in terms of their total effects on NATO's deployments.

Three kinds of arguments can be made for sizeable reductions in U.S. forces in Europe. First, and probably most persuasive is a budgetary one. At present levels of defense and total Federal expenditures, any deployment that is not strictly necessary is a luxury. In particular, our paying for extra insurance that the Europeans do not themselves believe necessary, as shown by their own expenditures, is most inappropriate. To realize significant budgetary savings, forces must not only be withdrawn from Europe to the United States, they must be scaled down in total. Second, the shifting to the now prosperous Europeans more responsibility for their own defense cannot be accomplished by exhortation, which we have tried for some year with little success. It can only be done by facing them with the facts of our decisions. Third, there are significant possibilities force reductions could open up for arms control arrangements affecting Europe.

These are of two kinds. First is the parallel reduction of forces on the Central Front, matching U.S. troop reductions with withdrawal of Soviet forces stationed west of the Soviet borders, and those of other NATO members with

-33-

those of the Eastern European countries. Second is the creation of a denuclearized zone taking in some substantial part of the area on both sides of the dividing line in Germany. Both of these are items which, in one shape or another, have long figured in Soviet arms control proposals and propaganda, and which we have steadfastly rejected. Our past attitude rested on both military and political grounds. Militarily, these changes appeared to undermine the forward strategy by removing from the Central Front both the troops and weapons on which it was based. Further, our removal of troops across the Atlantic could not be compared with a Soviet removal to just behind its own Western borders, some 700 miles from the dividing line. Politically, they were viewed as threatening the unit of the NATO alliance at two levels. Until fairly recently, discussing them would have appeared to be a sharp reversal of U.S. strategic doctrines; in a dangerous situation such a reversal would have been alarming, especially to the Germans. On a more ideological level, the negotiations that such proposals would have required were viewed as "equating" NATO and the Warsaw Pact, or involving the recognition of East Germany.

Today the military grounds are no longer relevant to our current strategic concepts and the appraisal of the military balance which they embody. While the particular political objectives raised in the past are not now apposite, there are significant political problems that discussion of such proposals would raise. They turn essentially around the role of the Federal Republic in any arms control negotiations involving troop reductions and nuclear free zones. It has always been difficult for Germans to accept bilateral U.S.-Soviet discussions on matters that concern it so intimately; it is also difficult for them to negotiate a forum in which the G.D.R. appears as a legitimate party, and it is difficult to see how negotiations of the requisite sort could be carried on if all the Alliance members on both sides participated. This is not to say that a process of negotiation cannot be found, but to emphasize the important role of

-34-

the relations between the Federal Republic and the United States, and the views
of the F.R.G. government in any such process.

Further, there is the difficult problem of how far it is wise for the
United States and NATO to move unilaterally on force reductions and redeployments
of tactical nuclears, and how far changes should be restricted to those on which
there are reciprocal undertakings by the Warsaw Pact nations. A case for some
unilateral action exists because such action may provide an important or even a
necessary initial impetus to the negotiating process, both for the Soviets and
by stimulating the Europeans to a sharper grasp of the question of how much
defense they need and want to pay for. Yet, if there are to be negotiations, we
cannot simply give away our bargaining position, and too much unilateral change
can make negotiation appear unnecessary to the Soviets.

In the area of strategic nuclear forces, bilateral U.S.-Soviet dis-
cussions are clearly appropriate, and the arms control issues themselves are
central to the discussions. In the area of European military deployments, arms
control problems are inevitably closely linked to the larger political issues of
the German settlement, and their character and pace depend heavily on the views
in the Federal Republic about how to regulate its relations with the G.D.R. in
particular, and the Communist governments of Eastern Europe in general. There-
fore, negotiation on the arms control issues cannot be separated from broader
political negotiations on Germany and European settlement. These in turn will
bear heavily in the political relations between the German Federal Republic, the
United States, and the other members of NATO.

Further, the interests of the other side in such arms control negotia-
tions are not clear. The westward deployment of Soviet troops has always been
at least as much for their value as a political instrument in dealing with the
bloc countries as for their need to confront the forces of NATO. The invasion
of Czechoslovakia underlines this point; and it is doubtful that the Soviets

[d]

-35-

would want to discuss troop withdrawals or reductions now. For opposite reasons, neither would the Western Europeans. Thus, unlike negotiations on the deployment of strategic weapons, these are more probably an item for the future than the present agenda; nonetheless, they should not be dropped out of sight.

V

The foregoing discussions of the strategic military balance and the needs of NATO dealt with situations in which the basic military and political considerations governing the possible use of force can be translated into the kind of quantitative terms necessarily involved in decisions on force levels and budgets on the basis of a reasonably coherent and explicit rationale, dominated neither by arbitrary political assumptions nor by forecasts of complex chains of future contingencies, though to be sure, neither can be entirely dispensed with. When we consider the level of military forces required for other purposes, however, namely the general purpose forces for world-wide use and strategic reserves, and the supporting level of air-lift, sea-lift, general overhead, training and reserve forces, we move to an area much more difficult to deal with in quantitative terms. However, we can make some progress by dividing the problem in two, and considering first East and South Asia, and second the United States strategic reserve and whatever can be said about other supporting forces.

At the present, of course, our deployments in Asia are dominated by the war in Vietnam. We have some 550 thousand military personnel in South Vietnam, and nearly 100 thousand more in Thailand, in SAC units engaged in bombing Vietnam, and naval personnel in South East Asian waters. This total is a little short of 20 percent of our total armed forces; it is also only a little short of the whole increase - 700 thousand men - in the size of the forces since the levels planned for 1964, the last year before we began the sharp increase in our military commitments in Vietnam.

-36-

In addition, we still maintain two army divisions in South Korea, some-
what less than one division elsewhere in the Pacific, some air force units in
Japan, Okinawa and the Philippines, and Seventh Fleet forces over the whole of
the Western Pacific.

Assuming that the Vietnam war is settled in a way that involves the
total withdrawal of all American forces from the country - at some near future,
but unspecified time - what do the political prospects outlined above demand in
the way of military commitments? One division in South Korea will certainly
suffice for deterrence purposes, it may not even be necessary as South Korean
forces are adequate for defense against the possibility of another invasion.
The second, which we have considered withdrawing for some time, now functions
essentially as a trade for South Korean troops in Vietnam. Considerable naval
and air deployments in the Western Pacific will still be needed to perform the
general function of deterrence and low-key political support of neutral and
allied countries against Communist threats of the use of force, and the par-
ticular one of protecting the independence of Taiwan. These functions, of course,
involve not only the direct presence of the Seventh Fleet, but also the less
visible total power of the United States. Deterrence on this basis can be ex-
pected with high confidence to continue to be effective in relation to Japan,
Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia, as far as ex-
ternal threats go, in view of the low capability of the military forces of the
Asian Communist nations for overseas or long distance operations and their over-
all strategic weakness.

Given a fair degree of internal unity and economic growth, the same
can be said about India. Its own military capabilities for defending its border
with China are not negligible, and the logistical problems for the Chinese of
mounting an invasion of India that reaches at all deeply into the plains beyond
Himalayan foothills are formidable. With sufficient political will, it can make

-37-

unattractive to China a reputation of the frontier attack of October, 1962, as long as American, and perhaps even Soviet assistance seems possible in the offing. Without the political underpinning, of course, even a large U.S. force would be of little help. There is a case for extending the patrol range of some Seventh Fleet forces westward into the Indian Ocean, and the Bay of Bengal, simply to make the American military presence more visible. The question of what basing problems this would present must be faced; and if it cannot be done without forward land bases at all, or using only bases involving no political problems, such as Australia, it is doubtful if the gains would compensate for the problems created by the bases.

On the other hand, the effectiveness of such peripheral deterrent forces for Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, and Singapore is less certain, and depends very much on the course of internal political developments in those countries, as well as in China and North Vietnam. But the lesson of Vietnam is that even much larger and more immediately present forces may be incapable of restoring a political balance that has once tipped far enough in favor of insurgent forces of the Left, especially when they can draw on outside encouragement and support. The further lesson of Vietnam is that the nation does not believe we have a vital interest in trying to redress such a balance with whatever means. To say this is not at all to condemn the countries of the South East Asian peninsula to Chinese or North Vietnamese domination, or even to Communist governments. It is merely to recognize the limitations on the instruments available to the United States to affect the result, in one way or another, and, above all, the weakness of military force in this respect.

The only area outside of Asia in which we have recognized a more than marginal possibility of U.S. military action on short notice is in the Middle East. A renewal of the Arab-Israeli conflict might conceivably occur in circumstances that would generate a strong demand for U.S. military action to save

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Israel. But such action, to be effective, must be as much symbolic as forceful: it must warn the Arab states and their Soviet supporters not to take or allow a next military step, and return the conflict to the political and diplomatic level. As long as we maintain sizeable naval forces in the Mediterranean, we will have that capability; it seems most unlikely that we would in advance deploy forces to do more. Further, the general state of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States will be an important factor in determining the likelihood of renewed major conflict in the Middle East; if the whole perspective of this paper is correct, that likelihood will be diminishing rather than increasing.

Prior to the large troop commitments to Vietnam, the United States maintained about ten active divisions in the continental United States, in addition to forces occupied in logistic, training, and administrative functions. Four-plus of these were specifically earmarked as NATO reinforcements; the rest formed a general strategic reserve. In addition, of course, this general reserve force contained tactical air and naval units. The size of this force was rationalized in terms of the need to meet, on short notice, the contingency of three military involvements at once: one in Europe, one in South or East Asia, both on a substantial scale, and a small third one elsewhere in the world.

The foregoing discussion suggests that we should determine our force needs on the basis of more modest plans. The capability of meeting simultaneously on short notice a large requirement in Europe, and a small one elsewhere in the world would be a standard corresponding roughly to the view of our needs and capabilities presented above. On top of the reductions of overseas commitments suggested above, amounting to between 3 and 4 divisions, these more modest contingency requirements might permit altogether 5 to 6 division reduction in the total of active organized ground combat forces. To allow for a somewhat increased capability of reinforcing Europe, in view of the proposed reduction of deployed forces there, we can cut this figure for the total reduction to between 4 and 5

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divisions, with corresponding, or perhaps proportionately somewhat smaller reductions in naval and tactical air forces. This would leave a reserve in U.S. of five plus divisions to back up NATO, plus nearly 4 divisions available for other simultaneous contingencies.

In addition, of course, there would remain a mobilization base of ready reserve units, which at present stands at 8 divisions, with one to two months interval required to bring them to active status.

This level of forces would be more than adequate for whatever non-European contingencies might demand a show of force. But it rules out the notion that we should be capable of emergency interventions in substantial force on short notice on a world-wide basis, and, more particularly, in the two areas far from the deployments we have considered: sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

In both these areas, arguments against such a conception exactly parallel to those made above with regard to Asia are applicable, only more strongly, since neither is near a large or Communist power. This reduction in our force would in no way prevent us from making some force contributions under U.N. or other international peacekeeping auspices, should these provide a basis for our so doing.

Another element in our overseas deployments that could usefully be greatly reduced is our world-wide structure of military bases. Many of these were originally sought to accommodate the relatively short range B-47 bombers when these formed the major part of our strategic striking force. Though the bombers grew obsolete, the bases were retained and new functions found for them: air transport, communications and intelligence installations, association with training missions. Changing technologies in communication and related fields, and the increasing political costs associated with bases in countries outside the European world argue for a stringent reevaluation of their continuing utility.

[L]

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VI

The change in the appreciation of the balance of costs and advantages of U.S. military action outside of Europe and the corresponding changes in deployments sketched above would themselves reduce the potential for American involvement in violent conflicts. However, with some few exceptions, they would not work toward reducing the likelihood and level of violence along with the prospects of our own participation in it. Yet, the expectations of combined violent conflict all over the world is sufficiently high to make it an important problem to devise means to reduce and control it. The significance of the problem depends only in part on the risks that violent conflicts may spread, and that ultimately the superpowers may become partisans of one or another side. But beyond that, international order and peace are important ends in themselves – though not always all-important ones – and the United States has some responsibility for attempting to shape its policies to serve these ends.

Unfortunately, useful specific prescriptions in this area are few indeed; but two areas of possible value are worth mentioning. One is the control of the international traffic in arms; especially the larger conventional weapons such as tanks, heavy artillery, combat aircraft, combat ships and the like. Only the United States, the Soviets, and a few of their allies, especially the United Kingdom, France and Czechoslovakia, have so far had major roles as suppliers in this trade; the Chinese have played only a small part. Much of the supply, especially that provided by the United States and the Soviet Union, has been a by-product of military assistance agreements, alliances, and the like; little of ordinary commercial transactions. The most promising measure of arms control applicable to most of the world outside the major alliances is the regulation and limitation of this trade. At the outset two steps commend themselves: a reporting scheme for registering with the United Nations transactions

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in some defined categories of arms; and a large reduction in our own part of
credit sales, military assistance programs, and the like. On balance and with
some exceptions the effect of these programs outside NATO has been such as to
recommend a sharp reduction simply in our own interest, irrespective of wider
agreements. The record of return on similar investments by the Soviets is
equally or more dismal; whether they have learned the lesson remains to be
seen. The competitive element on both sides has been sufficiently strong,
however, to justify some hope that our initiative might have wider effects.

The other measure, or rather set of measures, is the strengthening
of the peacekeeping capacities of the United Nations. A variety of ways of
doing this has been discussed at great length. All depend on the political
agreement of the great powers; so far this has been lacking. But clearly, an
important use of *detente* is to renew these efforts, perhaps with a greater
realization on both sides of their potential significance. Assuming such
agreement, a particular path that seems promising enough to explore is the
earmarking by a large number of member nations of specific formations for
United Nations duties, and their training to this end. The Canadians and
Scandinavians have pioneered along these lines, and they can offer much use-
ful experience. Joint training exercises of such contingents drawn from
several nations could be a valuable next step in the process of moving toward
the creation of usable international peace-keeping forces.

VII

In summary, the proposals we have sketched here in varying degrees
of detail look to a substantial reduction of the role of military force in
our foreign policy, and consequent and corresponding reductions in the scale of
our military establishment. In part, they are offered as a recognition in our

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[Lc]

force structure of what have already become the facts of international politics. In part, particularly in respect to the control of strategic weapons and deployments of both nuclear weapons and conventional forces in NATO, they are offered as areas for important U.S. initiatives in foreign policy, on the grounds that our policies should determine our weapons, and not vice versa.

Ideally, it would be desirable to measure our proposals in terms of their effects on future force structures and military budgets. It is extremely difficult to do this with any pretense of accuracy on the basis of publicly available figures, since they do not, as a matter of principle, show either the details of deployments, in terms of men and weapons, or the costs associated with particular elements and deployments of the forces. Nonetheless, the figures presented in the unclassified part of the annual military posture statements made each year since 1961 by the Secretary of Defense to the relevant committees of the Congress provide a basis for some crude estimates.

First, we have tried to translate the scattered estimates of changes for particular areas into an integrated figure for the total number of men in the armed forces. To do this, we start with the planned size of the force for FY 1964, before the dispatch of U.S. combat troops to South Vietnam, as a standard, some 2.7 million men. That figure corresponded to active organized combat forces of nineteen-plus divisions. We are proposing to reduce that by between 4 and 5 divisions, or about 21 percent. If the whole force were reduced in this proportion it would go down to 2.1 million men, or 1.4 million less than its previous level. However, we have suggested that other arms should probably be reduced by a smaller proportion, suggesting a total force level of some 2.2 to 2.4 million men as the goal to be sought.

To do a corresponding estimate on the budget, two sets of figures have been used as bench marks: the proposed budget for FY 1969, and the actual budget (in terms of Total Obligational Authority) for FY 1964, with costs

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classified by military programs. FY 1964 was the last year in which the budget
did not reflect heavy commitments in South East Asia. Based on these and other
data presented in the FY 1969 document, Table 2 (p.45) was constructed. It offers
two alternate bases for estimating future outlays. The total of column 3, 1964
expenditures in 1969 prices, is $62 billion; this could serve as a crude estimate
of the post-Vietnam level of expenditures. Further, since the major increases in
1969 compared with 1964 are those in accounts strongly associated with the war in
South East Asia, the plausibility of this figure is reinforced. A somewhat more
refined and much more speculative set of figures is set down in column 6, to rep-
resent expenditures in 1969 prices for some future year when the reductions and
redeployments suggested above have come into effect. Four items show substantial
reductions as compared with 1964: strategic forces, general purpose forces, supply
and maintenance, and military assistance. The 40 percent reduction in the costs
of strategic forces is set down to reflect the institution of a freeze, and the
beginning of force reductions via the phasing out of obsolete weapons. The costs
of general purpose forces, and supply and maintenance, going chiefly to them, are
reduced 20 percent, roughly in proportion to the reduction in total force levels
shown above. The military assistance program is reduced to a nominal level.
Four accounts show small reductions, 10 percent or less. That in intelligence
and communications reflects the assumed reduced needs of smaller and less widely
deployed forces; that in research and development the sharp slowing down of efforts
to create new strategic weapons systems. With a smaller active force, guard ex-
penditures are left at 1969 levels to allow for higher readiness and greater man-
ning levels. Finally, air/sea lift is left unchanged, as mobility relative to
smaller forces assumes more importance. The total is more than $11 billion (in
1969 prices) less than the 1964 figure, a very considerable saving, and the
smallest defense budget in more than a decade.

The total figure for 197X presented in Table 2 is obviously a crude one.

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It reflects no examination of the detailed composition of each of the individual accounts which make it up, and the inevitable changes in that composition from what it was in the base year of FY 1964. Thus, for example, new weapons of any particular kind tend to be both more complicated and more expensive than those they replace, and also more effective in performance. In some cases, as a consequence, smaller numbers of weapons, and smaller numbers of men to operate them are required as one generation of weapons replaces another. Then the relations between numbers of men, of dollars, and of military units (battalions, squadrons, etc.) changes, so simple projections of past figures or the use of overall price indices can be misleading. Further, any year's figures in each particular account may involve different mixtures of expenditure on procurement of new weapons and on operation of existing ones than those for another year. Precise figures require detailed consideration of just what new procurement programs are under way and planned in each functional category. Nonetheless, despite their crudity, and their lack of realism in any detailed sense, these figures are still useful as indicating plausible and achievable orders of magnitude.

Ideally, the table should have several more columns, each showing a different synthetic budget for the same future year, 197X, calculated on alternate assumptions about military policy. In particular, the budgetary consequences of maintaining or even increasing our overseas deployments (e.g., in South Asia), and of embarking on the next round of development and procurement in strategic weapons, both offensive and defensive, should be examined. Without trying to compute these combinations in detail, it is clear that presently authorized programs for new strategic offensive and defensive weapons, including Minuteman III, Poseidon and Sentinel, could add in the neighborhood of $5 billion per year in procurement to the budget levels shown. Beyond that, new weapons which have been seriously proposed by the services, including a new

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strategic bomber, a new land-based missile, a sea-based ABM, a new undersea long-range missile, and a new surface-ship based long-range missile system, could add, first, several billions per year to the research and development budget and then, $5 billion or more per year for procurement. An expansion of the ABM system to provide a "thick" defense could move its annual procurement cost from $1 to $2 billions per year to as much as four times that amount. It is unlikely that all these things will be done, or all done at once, but it is not implausible to add $7 or $8 billion per year to the total of the research and development and strategic weapons figures shown in column 6 to allow for the consequences of a decision to maintain our "strategic superiority" in the coming years. The large differences between columns (3) and (4) in the general purpose forces amount give some idea of what larger overseas deployments and force sizes might mean.

If the estimates in Table 2 be taken as having some validity, then the question naturally arises, how soon might we be able to reach 197X and what do we have to do to get there. In part, of course, it depends on what happens in Vietnam: what kind of settlement is achieved and how soon. Decisions on redeployments in the Pacific cannot readily be made until the shape of settlement begins to be visible; reductions in the total size of the general purpose forces probably also must wait. In part it may depend on the progress of arms control negotiations, though these may prove to be more relevant to keeping future budgets at low levels than to moving sharply in the direction of lower budgets now. The initial steps in holding down expenditures on strategic weapons can be taken immediately, since they depend only on the proposition that there is no urgency in beginning either deployment or procurement on further new systems of offensive and defensive weapons. However, this position probably cannot be maintained for more than a few years in the face of a continued failure to make progress in reaching understanding with the Soviets on mutual limitations in strategic weapons. With respect to force redeployments in

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Europe, timing depends primarily on the diplomatic tactics of dealing with our NATO allies, especially the Germans, but, as we observed above, some prior initiative on our part may be indispensable to beginning the process. All in all, the budget set down is not an unreasonable target for the new Administration to aim at before the end of its first term.

But if it is to do so, the "how" becomes all important. Radical change in our military policy will cut across all kinds of vested interests, emotional, bureaucratic, political, and economic. Only determined and persistent efforts by the political leadership of the Administration can bring about such changes. The President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of State must make this goal a major concern in all their actions, and direct their efforts equally at creating public understanding of their course of action, at persuading the Congress of its wisdom, and guiding the civil and military bureaucracies of the National Security establishment along this path.

Finally, it can be asked, does not the whole structure of argument that has been erected in these pages really depend on a fundamental assumption of Soviet benevolence and good faith that does not correspond to the facts? To which the answer is, reliance on neither benevolence nor good faith - in the sense of sheer moral obligation - is involved. Rather, it is the expectation that both the Soviets and ourselves are capable of recognizing shared interests in an increase in international stability, a decrease in the prospects of the use of force, especially when either of us is involved, and a relief from the economic burdens of rising military budgets. Both sides have already begun to make this recognition, and guide their policy by it. What is here urged is that its importance is so great, and the consequences of the alternative course of our seeking military superiority and relying on the use of force as the chief instrument of our foreign policy so grim as to demand our putting the direct pursuit of these interests at the center of our security policy for the next period ahead.

CARL KAYSEN

September 30, 1968

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### III. Major issues in aid

1. How well have we been doing?

2. The aid rationale--simple purpose or multi-purpose economic or political--to affect foreign policy or domestic effectiveness

3. A new look at stabilization of existing policy

4. Time perspective--annual authorizations or longer term policies and procedures

5. Magnitudes: how much is enough? How do results vary with amounts?

6. Resource effects vs. incentive effects

7. Bilateral-multilateral

8. Title IX

9. Selection of countries-criteria

10. Sector emphasis-project vs. program

11. Loan terms

12. Administration: split functions among other government agencies or strengthen unified control in AID

13. Ways to promote private capital and technical assistance involvement

14. Tied aid and the balance of payments

15. Food and population

### IV. Trade issues

1. Universal MFN vs. preferences

2. Attitude toward preferential regional arrangements

3. Stabilization of commodity prices

Trans-Pacific Relations¹

I. Major Historic Themes of U.S. Trans-Pacific Policy²

A. Trade-missionary activity -- the "open door" -- vulnerability of our Philippine involvement: period of non-vital interests.

B. Japan's threatened hegemony.

C. Postwar dream of a friendly China as the stabilizing force.

D. Renewed concept of threats of hegemony: Communism or China.

E. Realization of a failure of a policy: the search for a new concept.

II. The Spectrum of Possibilities³

A. The Vietnam War

1. Continued or expanded war: continued military stalemate; war with China; nuclear holocaust.

2. Negotiated settlement: non-Communist but neutral South Vietnam; Communist-leaning South Vietnam; papered-over Communist take-over.

3. American unilateral withdrawal: collapse of Saigon; collapse of U.S. home front; measured ending of a stalemated situation.

4. American isolationism toward Asia: unconcern; the end of aid.

5. Break-up of security relations: Japan; nuclear proliferation.

B. The Future of China

1. Stability and growth.

2. Foreign policy: psychological pressure on China; Chinese military aggression; economic dominance, or subversion (hegemony).

3. Relaxation of tensions: containment; isolation; reconciliation.

4. The problem of Taiwan.

5. The role of Japan.

C. South (including Southeast) Asia

1. The danger of external domination (hegemony): the domino theory (the spectrum from Laos to India or Philippines).

2. Internal growth and stability.

3. U.S. defense role: the nuclear umbrella; defense options; limitations of U.S. defense role; the Korean, Indian, or Indonesian patterns.

4. Regionalism; neutrality.

5. External aid role: international instrumentalities; Japan.

D. Japanese Relations

1. Vital interests: trade importance (and trade problems); the potential "hegemon;" the major "partner."

2. Defense cooperation: the "Security Treaty" balance of roles; the Japanese urge to go it alone.

a. leftism and the 1970 crisis

b. nationalism and rearmament

c. contributing issues: Vietnam War, China policy, and Okinawa

d. the alternatives to the Security Treaty: the special case of Korea

3. Development role in Asia.

4. Pivotal role: regionalism and the Pacific group; a bridge to China and a U.S., Soviet, Japan, China balance.

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### III. Policy Preferences⁴

A. The "low posture:" less effort to "control" and more to move with dominant forces (judo style).

B. Relaxation of pressure on China: reconciliation.

C. Less military involvement in South Asia and more involvement in long-range development efforts: nationalism and neutralism (non-alignment); a reserve military role.

D. Larger Japanese role in own interests: adjustment of Security Treaty relationship to Japanese tastes; more dependence on Japanese aid efforts.

E. A balance of forces between: U.S., Soviet, Japan, China, and South Asian nationalism (a multi-powered answer to the threat of hegemony).

#### Notes

1. The proposed title "China and Asia" is not parallel to "Europe and Atlantic Relations" (which says the same thing twice) and tends to skew the focus in one direction.

2. This will be a very brief section designed to help sort out what are our vital interests by looking at the problems historically.

3. Since there are such imponderables in the trans-Pacific situation over which we have very little "policy" control, an analysis of policies must be subordinated to an analysis of possibilities and probabilities.

4. This will be a brief summary of what should already be obvious from the analysis of possibilities.

Edwin O. Reischauer

June 26, 1968

Marshall D. Shulman
Preliminary outline

AGENDA FOR THE NATION

Policy Toward the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
(provisional title)

I. Significance of choices to be made

1. Communism not main problem of US foreign policy; nor are US and SU able to control main political currents of the period ahead. Area of choice for each country, although limited, of considerable significance.

2. Main requirement for US: to clarify conceptual basis for relations with SU, absence of which has resulted in drift, with spasmodic lurches between "cold war" and "detente."

3. Dual character of US relations with the SU, involving the political conflict of rival powers, and some elements of overlapping interests. Necessary to clarify each.

4. Relation of short-term policy problems to desired direction for longer-term evolution.

5. Some apparent contradictions:

a) between policy objectives in relation to Soviet Union and policy leading toward encouragement of greater autonomy for EE states.

b) between policy toward SU and EE, and desire for closer relations with Western Europe.

6. US-Soviet relations as function of other variables:

a) weapons development

b) political turbulence in underdeveloped areas

c) Chinese developments

d) growth of nationalism; fragmentation of blocs

e) internal political developments in SU and US.

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## II. How we arrived at our present situation.

1. Containment as a strategic concept, and as a policy. Short history. Its assumptions, intentions and limitations.

2. Some elements of change, and their effect upon policy thinking: subsidence of emotional climate; decline of ideologies in communism and anti-communism; development of technology -- military, transportation, communication, etc.; local variants of communism, and relation to anti-Western political movements; emergence of period of internal preoccupations.

3. Recent political trends in US-Soviet relationship:

a) heightening of political rivalry; characterization of political maneuver for greater relative influence in Europe, Middle East, and elsewhere. Causal factors.

b) intensification of arms race, at both strategic and local levels. Causes and effects.

c) emergence and partial codification of tacit restraints, and limited measures of cooperation.

d) ferment in Eastern Europe: uneven trends toward greater autonomy and liberalization; development of relations between Eastern and Western Europe.

4. Summary characterization of present limited adversary relationship, in environment marked by great fluidity, less polarization, blurred allegiances.

## III. Policy alternatives

### A. Re SU

1. Emphasis upon military containment; effort to strengthen NATO, maintain military superiority, minimum traffic with SU. Assumptions and intended consequences.

2. Emphasize steps toward enlarging detente; seek tension-reduction measures, arms reduction, (or stabilization), multiply trade, cultural and other contacts, and seek cooperative action where possible. Assumptions and intended consequences.

JUN 25 1968

AGENDA FOR THE NATION

a) weapons development

c) Chinese developments

[d]

## III. Policy alternatives

### A. Re SU

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[L]

## B. Re EE

1. Maximum support for Eastern European autonomy, mobilizing political, economic, cultural contacts with Western Europe and US. Effort to obtain Soviet troop removal from Central and Eastern Europe. Assumptions and intended consequences.

2. Subordination of EE policies to desired objectives toward SU; acceptance of "spheres" settlement. Assumptions and intended consequences.

3. Some additional questions: domestic liberalization in EE as desired objective; relation to German problem and political currents in Western Europe.

# IV. Recommended policies

## A. Re SU

1. Weighting of considerations adduced in previous section.

2. Differentiation of specific measures required by each aspect of dual policy, intended to respond effectively to political rivalry, to requirements for military equilibrium, to seek reduction in hazards and costs of arms race, and to enlarge areas of tacit or explicit cooperation, consistent with longer-term objectives. To include possibilities and limitations of East-West trade, cultural contacts, diplomatic channels, etc.

## B. Re EE

1. Weighting of considerations adduced in section III.

2. Specific measures required (in trade, cultural relations and political actions) to work toward a European settlement, creating a framework within which greater autonomy and liberalization may be encouraged, without sharpening E-W tensions.

## C. Description of longer-term objectives for relations with SU and EE, in the light of general US interest in movement toward strengthened international system.

### ##

HARVARD UNIVERSITY
INSTITUTE OF POLITICS
JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT

SEP 18 1968

LITTAUER CENTER

MEMORANDUM

DATE: 9/17/68

To: Prof. Kissinger

FROM: F. M. Bator

Henry:

I attach the revised draft.

Revised Draft 9/16/68

# THE POLITICS OF ALLIANCE: THE UNITED STATES AND WESTERN EUROPE

## I. A TIME OF TROUBLE?

Some of the severest tests of statecraft come with the waning of great
fears which have called forth and disciplined great cooperative enterprises.
The present state of Atlantic affairs is a case in point. The very success
of Western Europe since the dark days of 1945-47 has eroded the foundations
of trans-Atlantic cooperation and weakened the impulse for closer West Euro-
pean integration. The new Administration will inherit an almost implausible
quarter century record of achievement. It will also inherit an atmosphere
of apprehension and unease among the community of men concerned about Atlan-
tic relations. And the new Administration will certainly make, if only in
the negative, choices affecting the Atlantic future as subtle as they are
important -- choices made the more difficult because they lack the clarity
and drama which marked the great decisions of the late 1940's.

The cause of our trial is familiar enough, and far from unwelcome in its
own terms. It is the wide-spread change in perceptions of the threat of
Soviet domination in Western Europe, powerfully reinforced by the failure of
Moscow to create a monolithic empire in Communist Eastern Europe. The appre-
hensions of the middle forties are largely fading memories -- I do not believe
that the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia will reverse the trend -- yet they
have not really been replaced as a vital part of the bedrock underlying the
whole structure of Atlantic cooperation and, more important, the most power-
ful and consistent goad to push ahead with the building of community.

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Revised Draft 9/16/68

Gone too are the peculiar conditions which gave shape and manageability
to the Atlantic community. A partnership between one very large, very strong
nation and several smaller damaged ones imposes a certain natural hierarchy.
It is by no means necessarily a hierarchy of merit. But it assures that the
strong nation -- in this case the United States -- will be, though hardly
the last word, the preponderant force on questions of both ends and means,
as well as a powerful arbiter of quarrels in its own camp. With the success
of European performance and American policy in the rebuilding of Western
Europe, the question of leadership has become much more complicated.

The waning of a shared fear and of the semblance of hierarchy have
contributed to an array of symptoms of change and unrest which tend often
to concern Americans more than the basic dilemmas they reflect. Britain is
shedding Asian burdens and, some believe, reverting to an insular perspective.
France has adopted a policy calculus which assigns positive value to diver-
gence from the United States, and she seems to project for herself a solo
role in Europe and the world which, while not in keeping with the raw facts
of power, has a divisive effect on Atlantic politics. West Germany, still
unsure of herself, feels obliged periodically to prove her independence.
While many judge this to be all to the good, for Americans it is certainly
a change. Finally, NATO -- the most elaborate of our joint enterprises --
is showing all the signs of stale middle age.

One effect of all this has been to persuade many observers of Atlantic
affairs on both sides of the ocean that the Alliance is now at a crossroads
where hard and fundamental choices must be made on pain of imminent or
eventual -- and, it is fair to say, not generally precisely specified --

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[LJ]

Revised Draft 9/16/68

disaster. Consider a random selection of titles of recent writings in the field: "Troubled Partnership," "End of Alliance," "Gulliver's Troubles," "Last Chance in Europe," "Is the European Idea Dying?" "The Fading Alliance." These works reveal more than an occupational misanthropy, sensible enough among writers on international affairs. They reflect a common conviction that we are in trouble.

The new Administration cannot chart its course by reference merely to symptoms. It will need to re-examine basic questions which define the American stake in Western Europe: What are the really essential United States interests in Western Europe? In what way are those interests threatened by the current malaise? Are there any ways to solve the basic problems or to make them tolerable? Most important, the new Administration must formulate an American position which recognizes the limits of American influence, but which also reflects the central importance of Western Europe to the American future -- for our security; because of our need for an environment conducive to the good health of the American body politic; and because of the role Europe must play if the chances of relative peace and of a decent high civilization are to be kept alive on a globe where we, the Europeans -- and indeed the Russians -- constitute a small, rich minority surrounded by an enormous, desperately poor majority.

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Revised Draft 9/16/68

What Do We Really Need From Western Europe?

Twenty years ago our objectives in Western Europe were plain: to prevent expansion of the Communist empire through military conquest or internal takeover, and to promote political and economic stability. With Soviet armies in the center of Europe, Stalin in the Kremlin, Western Europe in a state of collapse, and powerful communist parties in France and Italy benefiting from the spurious legitimacy conferred on them by the brave role the Communists played in the partisan resistance to the Nazis, the danger seemed real enough. The extraordinary American response -- one forgets that less than thirty years passed between the defeat of the League and the passage of the Marshall Plan -- was informed both by the geopolitical notion that the United States could not afford to see Europe dominated by a single hostile power and by aversion to Communism. It also reflected an underlying sense of community with Western Europe, built up through our involvement in two great European wars.

Relative to the fears of the '40's, we have been enormously successful. The prospect of a Moscow-dominated Communist Western Europe is nil. Indeed, tight Soviet control of even established Communist governments has turned out in several cases to be a fleeting thing, and, in any event, impossible to sustain without periodic resort to naked force. (Even our revisionist historians have not claimed that it was Soviet policy to build up strong and independent friends.)

To an extent rare in international politics, the solutions of the

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Revised Draft 9/16/68

the late '40's solved the most pressing problems of the late '40's.

But these solutions have revealed and posed a new set of problems, and it is in this context that one must raise the question: what are American interests in Western Europe in the late 1960's?

Though many formulations are possible, our central interests appear
to be as follows:

(1) Benign and constructive relations between the nations of Western Europe. At a minimum, we do not want Germany attacking France, or France attacking Germany.

(2) Reasonably constructive, cooperative and community-minded behavior with respect to those many issues of Atlantic relations where interdependence is not just a speechwriter's crutch but an economic and cultural fact. An important adversary component in our relations is unavoidable, particularly in economics. The need is for a politics that exploits possibilities for gain to all parties concerned, and at the same time settles conflicts in ways that do not drive any party to conclude that the game is not worth the candle. At a minimum, Atlantic relations must not degenerate into harsh, beggar thy neighbor, tit for tat economics and political relations to match.

(3) A wary, but open-minded and probing stance toward Moscow and Eastern Europe, with special sensitivity for those who have most at stake. This implies neither a rigid cold-war posture, nor complete relaxation. It certainly does not mean failure to insure against a lapse of sanity in the East; defense is still a problem. (At this writing it is impossible to foretell with certainty the net outcome of the Czech crisis.

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Revised Draft 9/16/68

My own view of the evidence so far is that it demonstrates defensive anxiety
in Moscow and not offensive hubris, and that this will become clear in Western
Europe and even Germany in a matter of months. If I am wrong -- if it turns
out that Moscow is now ruled by hard-liners ready to risk aggressive moves
against Berlin and Western Europe -- then the question of alliance priorities
will recede. I myself would give long odds the other way. Nevertheless, our
military position must remain appropriately hedged, in part to reassure the
Germans, and in part because defensive anxiety could conceivably turn into
aggressive paranoia.)

(4) Last, and for the near term I think least, we would like Western Europe to fill an American need for company in the world. This means more than sharing the material burdens in helping India or Latin America to grow. It certainly does not mean unquestioned support for every specific American action. For balance in our own politics, and good sense in our conduct, we need neither straight men nor yes-men but responsible partners and critics who view the world in the round and can therefore advise, help, and on occasion restrain and reprove us.

It is relevant to ask what such conduct in foreign affairs implies for the
domestic politics of the nations of West Europe. No certain generalizations
follow deductively. But as an empirical matter, tolerably effective welfare
democracies -- defined more in terms of responsiveness to popular will and
safeguards for minorities than in terms of specific machinery -- are more likely
to generate external behavior congenial to our interests than closed, less
responsive, inner-directed governments. This is certainly true in relation to
the first three tests above. At the very least, governments subject to pop-
ular opinion in prosperous industrial countries are less likely to indulge in
a foreign policy of madness.

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## Why Are We Troubled?

Measured by these standards -- benign cooperation among nation states, organization for collective security and internal prosperity, and cooperative problem solving -- this decade of Atlantic politics looks not at all bad, certainly as compared with the first eight years of any preceding decade in this century. It is a guage of the progress we have made that it is a truism that the probability of any West European nation resorting to military force against its neighbors is, perhaps for the first time in modern history, literally nil.

(To be sure, judgment of performance inevitably reflects the hopes and fears of the judge, and I should confess to a prejudice that it is better to judge international politics in terms of the avoidance of nightmares than in terms of progress toward some trouble-free golden age. The Abbé Sieyès' report of his doings during the French Revolution: "I survived," has always seemed to me a success story.)*

*Measured by the test of company in the world, the conventional impression is that we have not done well. But this impression stems in important part from European reluctance to support America in Vietnam -- at best an oblique test of companionship. Whatever one's view of Vietnam, many if not most Europeans appear to think that the U.S. failure to provide "company" to France in Indo-China or Algeria, and to France and Britain in Suez is an apt parallel. But that too misses the point, which is not how either party stands on a particular issue but that it stands at all, as distinguished from an insular posture of non-involvement. And there is a more powerful test: aid to the development-capable nations of the "third world." Here American failure during recent years overshadows whatever blame the Europeans deserve. We tend to forget that, while Europe is rich, it is not nearly as rich as the U.S. Measured by the standards of the American personal income tax, it is not clear that we have borne a disproportionate share of the burden of common defense and aid to the poor. In any event, it is not at all certain that a fast uniting Europe -- as against a fully united Europe -- would do better. It is a good bet that the process of unification would tend fully to engage all Europe's political energies for a great many years.

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Why then are we troubled? Much of the anxiety stems from a sense that none of the over-arching visions designed to settle the Second World War and prevent a third is moving toward fulfillment. Early notions of Atlantic political integration have lost their hold. West European political integration, the abiding faith of some of the best of our public men on both sides of the Atlantic, is at a standstill. Nor is there any immediate prospect of a final settlement of World War II which would heal the division of Germany. Measured against hopes and expectations of rapid movement in the direction of a Grand Design -- not to speak of peaceful liberation of Eastern Europe and an East-West settlement on our terms -- the present architecture of Europe and the Atlantic is disappointing.

It is tempting but wrong to dismiss such disappointment as the mere consequence of naivete about the pace of change that is possible in the architectural relations between nations old and proud and deeply scarred. It is wrong, too, to take refuge in the belief that American interests depend not on structural arrangements among nation states but rather on their external conduct -- that there is no necessary correspondence between structure and behavior. No doubt we have at times become over-committed in our enthusiasm for particular architectures, both with respect to our vital needs and to tactical efficacy. But to leave it at that is to dodge the hard problem: The existing relations between the countries of West Europe, between West Europe and East Europe, and between West Europe and the United States are not in a state of long-run equilibrium. The existing architecture is not stable. Even where it appears most rigid, it may be all too brittle.

What are the sources of disequilibrium? Fundamentally, they lie in the failure of present structures to meet important aspirations of important constituencies:

- The Germans are deeply dissatisfied. However one measures it, whether by their wish for formal German unity, or their desire for a humane polity in

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East Germany which would allow easy intercourse between Germans on the two sides of the line, there is a large gap between what is and what the majority of Germans believe ought to be. German politicians will continue to regard this as an issue to which they must address themselves as a matter of high priority. And the politicians of other nations will be forced to respond. (This is not to say that the average German spends long hours brooding about these problems, or will soon take to the barricades if nothing is done. It is to say that this is a deep, abiding dissatisfaction which will be a potent issue in German politics as long as there is no sense of progress toward solving it. And it will amplify the political effects of other dissatisfactions.)

-- Many other Western Europeans are deeply frustrated. Some in positions of power and influence, including some Germans, believe that the existing structural arrangements among themselves -- and (the Gaullist view) between the U.S. and themselves -- condemn Europe to an excessive dependence on America. They believe that it is neither fully safe, nor dignified, nor good for Europe's vitality to remain a security ward of the United States for the indefinite future. Many are concerned about American economic penetration, and worry that Europe's unique and ancient cultures will be submerged in a sea of Coca Cola. And many more are concerned about how best to adjust to the harsh facts of scale in modern technology and defense, which raise basic questions about the future of the nation state.

-- Britain is becalmed, seemingly drifting in the course of a painful transition from paramount world power to important and influential island kingdom. And there is a wide-spread sense that in order to find a new role, she must make new connections.

-- Many Americans too are dissatisfied. They regard as disproportionate the American share of the burden of joint defense in Europe and elsewhere. They

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see us stalemated in our attempts to encourage a European system which will
eventually preserve European security without major cost to us and guarantee
an economically open West Europe. And they too find it easy to blame the
atomized architecture of Europe as the basic cause.

-- Responsible Europeans, Americans and, we can be certain, Russians understand the hazards of a status quo which requires a continuing military confrontation between the United States and the Soviets in the center of Germany, with Berlin a perpetual irritant and potential trigger point. (This concern is balanced by a vivid sense of the risks we would incur if American and Soviet troops were largely replaced in policing that line by two German armies under the command of hostile governments, neither of which recognized the right of the other to exist.)

-- Last, and a matter of no small moment for Atlantic and East-West politics, the shape of Eastern Europe is in flux. The Russian action and its aftermath in Czechoslovakia proved both that the Soviets are prepared to take strong, unpopular actions to maintain the status quo, and that even those actions will not assure stability if the subject people is sufficiently skillful and united. The resulting insecurities in the minds of Soviet and Eastern European leaders will be major factors in the stability of the entire continent.

In short, whatever the quality of Atlantic politics in the past, the many who are content with the status quo must beware of the political weight of those who are not. The more so, because there is a strong strain in the politics of modern bourgeois societies that tends to encourage change for change's sake. I believe it was the historian R. A. Nisbet who once suggested that boredom is one of the most underrated social forces in history. In domestic affairs,

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bread and butter interests tend sharply to constrain choices. But foreigners don't vote and hence foreign affairs are a fertile field for politicians in search of issues, journalists in need of stories, foreign and defense ministers and their speech writers looking for "policies," and even for satisfied publics with a weakness for drama. Except perhaps in Scandinavia, there is a streak of schizophrenia even in propserous and satisfied welfare democracies. Six days of the week we act and vote as though the best foreign policy is no foreign policy at all. But on the seventh, our very leisure and prosperity is likely to give rise to a receptivity if not an outright demand for novelty, even at considerable risk. Where such a thirst for drama reinforces genuine grievances about existing structures and genuine pressures for change among important political constituencies in an open international society, it is foolhardy to predict that things tomorrow will be the way they are today. It may or may not be right to despair because certain specific visions have not turned out. But it is right to be concerned about the dangers -- as well as the opportunities -- inherent both in incipient change and in prolonged rigidity.*

The sense that we are not in a stable and satisfactory equilibrium explains much, but not all, of our malaise. After all, we have faced painful and knotty problems before. The root of the trouble lies rather in a growing sense on both sides of the Atlantic that Americans and Western Europeans no longer share a plausible vision of the future on which we can all agree and which would provide us with a guide to action. Lack of a shared vision, of a concept of how to guide the forces which are at work, is at bottom what

*Whether one should worry because rigid structures in the face of desire for change will yield malignant political behavior and/or whether structures will change too quickly and abruptly, or be replaced by something worse is, at this level of abstraction, a semantic game.

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troubles people. For those who like to think of Atlantic political relations
in terms of NATO, it is a case of an alliance in search of a purpose -- a pur-
pose which goes beyond what many have come to regard as mere guard duty. In
terms of the broader political relations between the Atlantic nations, it is a
matter of a search for a shared view about what to do and what to avoid with res-
pect to the unsolved internal and external problems of Europe and the Atlantic.

In Search of a Vision

Three grand visions of the future have at various times captured the politi-
cal imaginations of various of our leading public men: Jean Monnet's united
Western Europe; the Atlantic Community; and, least congenial to most, a settle-
ment of World War II through some scheme of U.S.-Soviet disengagement in Europe
which would allow the unification of Germany. Each vision touched on the struc-
tural relations between Western Europe (ex Germany) and Britain, West and East
Germany, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United States. But the Monnet
vision singled out as its defining theme the internal architecture of Western
Europe and emphasized the search for a new European political identity. The
Atlantic view stressed the American-West European relationship and collective
security. And the third vision was mainly concerned with the relations between
East and West in Europe and the unification of Germany.

It is now clear that none of these three prescriptions is by way of being
fulfilled -- not even Monnet Europe, at least not in its strong form as an
agenda for early, cumulative movement toward political unity:*

*It is not my purpose to score specious points against the distinguished men who held these visions. In most cases, their hopes were balanced by a skeptical sense of reality. And enthusiasm, which in hindsight renders a man vulnerable to the charge of naivete, is an essential ingredient of the quality which, in case of success, one is wont to call genius.

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-- Starting with the last: the idea of settlement through an East-West bargain entailing a unified Germany on terms short of a Soviet surrender, never really caught on, least of all in Germany. Settlement by "compellence" -- liberation and all that -- was never a real possibility, even if we sometimes acted as though we believed in it. And settlement by purchase, offering the Soviets neutralization of the Federal Republic in return for unity under a freely elected government, was thought by most people almost equally unsafe. Not enough people ever thought that any such arrangement could provide either security or a sufficient anchorage for a united but constrained, less-than-equal Germany. At the least, it would involve, indeed require, the indefinite active presence of the two giants in the center of Europe and their tacit cooperation as the senior guarantors and enforcers of the arrangement, a condition which has struck many people as neither likely nor desirable. The leaders of post-war Germany have shown even less interest in this plan than governments elsewhere.

The idea of a neutralization bargain has revived from time to time. And it might revive again; one can find hints of something like it in some recent speeches by senior Germans. But until now, it has not caught on in the West. One suspects it never caught on in the East either, although at times during the past two decades there has been some elaborate dropping of handkerchiefs.

-- The conception of an Atlantic Community was and still is real enough in the sense of a defensive alliance among nations increasingly mixed up with each other in their economics and in the lives of their citizens and institutions. And the Atlantic nations remain, though one of them would deny it, by and large agreed on the need for collective defense against an external danger which is

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much diminished but still greater than zero.* (It is likely that events in Czechoslovakia will increase people's sense of the threat in the near term, but, in my view, only in the near term. I do not believe that Moscow's grotesque reaction in Prague suggests a new taste for offensive adventure.)

Yet, as a motivating ideal in Atlantic politics, the vision of an increasingly comprehensive and institutionalized political structure -- an Atlantic Commonwealth -- was never quite plausible either. Neither we nor the Europeans have been ready for it. Though many Americans are convinced of the long term need for a delegation of power to supra-national entities, few members of Congress would today vote for any grant of sovereignty to an Atlantic Council. This is not just a matter of habit and history; it also grows out of the lurking concern about whether effective governance of even fifty states, all on one continent, is feasible. (The fact that the boundaries of the security community explicitly defined do not coincide with the economic or the cultural community would also pose problems. Cases in point: Sweden, Japan, Portugal.)

The Atlantic idea has been no more plausible on the Eastern shore of the Atlantic. While a great deal of the talk about what is not possible between partners of different square mileage or population is moonshine -- neither Delaware nor Maine appear to feel disadvantaged by their partnership with New York or California -- there is no doubt that close political integration between the United States and the separate nations of West Europe would violate the deep will to autonomy of too many Europeans, whether nationalist or "European." To borrow Barbara Ward's affectionate image, the idea is too much like sharing a

*The French are not a real exception. They are simply aware that there is no way in which the U.S. can withdraw nuclear protection from France and still provide it to West Germany.

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bath with a genial elephant.*

-- The original prospects of the third vision: a united Western Europe, are especially hard for a sympathetic American to gauge in retrospect. Certainly it commanded the energy and enthusiasm of many of the great men of post-war Atlantic politics. And one wonders what might have happened if Britain had taken an early and strong lead, or if General de Gaulle had retired after extricating France from Algeria. Some might wonder (though I am not among them) whether things might have gone differently if the United States had not been preoccupied with centralized control of nuclear weapons. But in the end, it is not unreasonable to doubt whether rapid movement toward Monnet-Europe was in the cards, short of some prior cataclysm or highly risky American shock treatment by abandonment. This is in important part a matter of definition and tempo. Quite clearly, remarkable progress has been made in terms of some very political economics. But in the light of the very slow progress toward the strong,

*It is a different matter that some Americans, indeed some Europeans, are attracted by the idea of an Atlantic Community precisely because of the intrinsic imbalance. Defining the American objective as maximum U.S. influence, and taking off from the minor premise that U.S. influence is an increasing function of European dependence on the U.S. strategic umbrella, they would have us try to sustain that dependence as long as possible, and not just because of the technical case for centralized command and control. This is not a matter that can be settled by resort to logic. However, I believe that both premises are wrong. For one thing, one must distinguish between mere power and useable power. For another, what matters to us is not our influence as such, but how Europe behaves. If one cares about the position of the football on the field, one must be interested not merely in how far one's team has moved the opposition, but where the play started. For both reasons, the notion that it is dependence on American strategic defense which will yield cooperative West European conduct strikes me as a bad bet. In any event, this version of Atlantic Community could hardly be expected to serve as a unifying ideal. It would have little attraction even for most Americans, and not merely because of an inclination to be soft-headed about power. Rather, because of a hard-headed understanding that even in international politics -- and as long as the fundamental interests of the parties are congruent -- a gross asymmetry of direct power is likely to produce either apathy in the weaker partner, or hubris. In either case, irresponsible behavior is the likely result.

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near term political version of "Europe," it is fair to infer that Monnet and
the three other great West Europeans -- Schuman, De Gasperi, and Adenauer --
under-estimated the force of the separate European nationalisms and the diffi-
culty of maintaining momentum in an enterprise aimed at a Carolingian Europe
with its eastern borders on the Elbe. In the last few years at least, the
salient fact about West European politics seems to be French resistance to any
weakening of national sovereignty and a general shifting of attention to the
East. Even the Germans, who for a long time and with good reason were most re-
luctant to look over their shoulders, have begun to turn towards the East.

In any event, it is not explanation of the past which must concern us, but
the search for a vision to goad and guide Atlantic politics in the future. For
that, none of the three visions will quite do -- at least not today. None is
sufficiently responsive to both of the two great problems of Western Europe
which make current arrangements unstable: (1) the problem of European identity
and autonomy; and (2) the problem of healing the division of Germany and Europe.
At least, none will solve both problems on terms which will satisfy the need of
Western Europe for security and, at the same time, conceivably command early
Soviet agreement on points where Moscow has a veto.

Settlement by neutralization would recreate a very large Germany, discrim-
inated against and hence twice unequal. To be acceptable to Russians and Euro-
peans, especially Germans, such an arrangement would have to engage the United
States and the Soviets in the heart of Europe, and hence preclude the kind of
autonomy both West and East Europeans want.

An Atlantic Europe would give security from the East, and provide an anchor
for West Germany, but at the price of a very unequal partnership and no plausible

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prospect either for an autonomous Europe or for reunification.

The case of Monnet-Europe is more complicated. And, for the long term, the answer is surely open. In partnership with the United States -- the terms of which would be a function of practical need and would reflect an increasingly symmetrical interdependence -- it would meet the aspiration of "European" West Europeans for identity and autonomy, as well as for some secondary advantages of larger scale. It would provide a safe haven for West Germany. Where it fails -- other than in denying the nationalist ideas of the Gaullists -- is in dealing with German unification at all concretely and explicitly, save after the cold war is so truly past history that the Soviets might simply give away East Germany free, letting it join an organized, militarily self-sufficient Western Europe.

Ten years ago the school solution to this dilemma lay in the judgment, shared by a great many Germans, that the adventure of building Western Europe would provide for West Germans a sufficient psychic and political substitute for unification. It was also judged, rightly at the time, that the closing of the option of unification-by-neutralization would not in any case cause Germans great pain -- they thought it too dangerous.

During the next few years, the dilemma may dissolve in a different way. In the past year or so, influential West Germans have begun to redefine what they mean by a solution to the German problem. There is underway a shift of emphasis, from the goal of one nation-one flag, to the more modest assurance of a decent life for East Germans and open intercourse between all Germans. To the extent that this redefinition sinks firm roots in West German politics -- this must remain a matter for Germans, not a subject of outside prodding --

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the basic flaw in the Monnet vision will disappear.* But for the present, a blunter variant of the dilemma is still too sharp for it to serve as a unifying guide for alliance politics. Inertia and Gaullist nationalism combine with the spectacle of at least intermittent movement in Eastern Europe to eclipse a vision which calls for an enormous burst of focused energy on the building of political West Europe as the priority task. Or so it seems now. The more so, since many Europeans believe, whatever the truth, that a speeding up of the movement toward coalescence in West Europe might impede that loosening in East Europe which is important to most Europeans, and essential if the West German's redefinition of their purposes is really to take hold.**

If for the time being none of the three classic visions will serve to give West Europeans and Americans a clear sense of where we are headed and how to get there, is there some other vision which will do? I believe not. The truth is, there does not exist today a design drawn in comparably sharp, architectural terms and within even a generous range of feasibility, which will resolve the underlying problems and hence command the allegiance of a large majority of Western Europeans. It is important to recognize that this is not a consequence of American requirements or preconditions. It follows, rather, from the deep aspirations and concerns of Western Europeans -- Germans and non-Germans -- and from the fact of a Soviet veto over the fate of East Germany.

*I do not believe that the Soviets would be so frightened by the prospect of a truly united Western Europe as to try to head it off by offering a bona fide unification-by-neutralization deal. Put another way, I suspect such a bargain would scare them even more. To be sure, they might just dangle it in front of anxious German noses hoping that their bluff will never be called. But if challenged to put up, they are likely to turn hard of hearing.

**If events in Prague were to produce a serious and prolonged freeze throughout Eastern Europe, the mood in Western Europe could easily change. Then only the Gaullists would stand in the way.

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Yet among men who care about Atlantic politics, the search for a vision goes on. Not many believe that large moves or great choices requiring an agreed blueprint are likely or possible in the near future. But many do believe that, precisely because no near term solutions to big problems are likely, we must fix on some conception which will soothe frustrations and help us hold onto each other in our workaday tasks. The fear is that in the absence of a sense of shared goals, the adversary element in our relations will tend to dominate internal Atlantic politics and produce a dangerous splintering in our external affairs.

In response to this strong demand, there has emerged during the past few years a rather different "vision" of the Atlantic future, expressed for the United States by President Johnson in his European policy speech of October 7, 1966. It defines its goals not in terms of a concrete, architectural outcome, but rather in terms of maximizing piecemeal movement in certain loosely defined directions, as opportunity presents itself. It is a vision exceedingly flexible in terms of both structural outcome and tempo. It allows for political integration in Western Europe but does not require it, and emphasizes the practical arrangements and the increasing closeness needed for efficient problem-solving. It allows, but only at the end of a very long process, for some sort of growing together of the two parts of Germany, but in the meanwhile calls only for a further opening of relations between West and East Europe, and an improvement in the quality of life in East Germany and in the possibilities of intercourse between the two sets of Germans. It allows for increasing autonomy in Western Europe's relations with the United States, even in defense, but only in step with the European capacity to manage

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a credible deterrent of its own -- credible in the context of a prudent view of the risks (a function in part of U.S.-Soviet progress in bilateral arms control). It allows for some institutionalization of Atlantic politics, but looks mainly to increasingly close ad hoc cooperation on specific problems.

The premise of this view is that by working on a variety of concrete tasks, and moving forward in small steps in directions only broadly defined, we will gradually resolve the larger structural problems, both by changing people's goals, habits, and tolerances, and by an evolutionary change in the environment. The theory is that problems will become soluble either because they will have been redefined, or because arrangements now unacceptable become acceptable, and that the experience of solving small problems will make it easier eventually to solve big ones.*

The difference between this *process* "vision" and the structural visions lies in large part in the specificity of priorities and of institutional outcomes, and -- though here the distinction is less clear -- in tempo.** The advantage of a focus on process, as against structural blueprints, is that painful choices are postponed and dilemmas are bypassed. But there is a price. A picture of the future, even if it is widely shared and approved, which evokes only a blurred, romantic-abstract image of the architectural

*The three most recent short expositions of what I have called the "process vision" can be found in Theo Sommer's "Will Europe Unite?", an address made at the Banff Conference on World Affairs, Aug., '67, and reprinted in summary in *The Atlantic Community Quarterly*, Winter, '67-'68; Brzezinski, "The Framework of East-West Reconciliation," *Foreign Affairs*, Jan., '68; and, from a still different perspective, a brilliant essay by Miriam Camps, "Is 'Europe Obsolete,'" *International Affairs*, July, '68, which, if it had reached me before completion of the first half of this paper, would have saved me a lot of work.

**In one respect, the process vision is more demanding than the others; it implies a greater synchronization, for instance between progress toward West European integration and East European autonomy.

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shape of Europe and the Atlantic -- a vision, moreover, which indefinitely postpones any structural solutions and provides no basis for concerted action on a grand scale -- will not generate that sense of shared purposes, of elan and camaraderie, which would make the divisive strains in Atlantic relations easy to bear.

This, in my judgment, defines the central problem and central task of contemporary Atlantic relations: how to hold together and manage a constructive internal and external politics at a time when there exists no great shared conception of dominating and powerful purposes and when no such conception seems possible within the practical constraints which currently prevail.

## Prospects and Tasks, and the American Role

If large choices and movement were necessary or possible, the lack of a map with a clearly marked destination would be serious indeed. But the fact that there now exists no shared vision of structural solutions implies -- almost in the strict sense of that word -- that for the near term no major moves are in sight. The world could change, and quickly: one cannot discount the possibility of radical and wholly unexpected movement in international affairs: we must be ready to respond.* But for the present, it would appear that the time is not ripe for significant structural change: for major movement toward settlement in Europe, or in the

*For instance, it is not totally inconceivable, though in my judgement it is exceedingly unlikely in the near future, that developments in Eastern Europe will produce an agonizing reappraisal in Moscow about what is and is not tolerable. The outcome could be good or bad. Either way, it would force the pace of soul-searching among West Germans, and might require all of us, particularly the West Europeans, to face some of the large choices that a rapid telescoping (positive or negative) of one variant or another of the process vision would require.

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political organization of Western Europe, or in the institutional arrangements
between Western Europe and the United States.*

What then are the tasks facing Atlantic politics -- leaving aside for the
moment the two great and special global problems: strategic arms control and
the relations between the poor and the rich?

There is still defense. Guard duty it may be, in the absence of a revival
of a taste for West European adventure in the Kremlin; but it is an exceedingly
serious and sophisticated and expensive kind of guard duty. There is East-West
"bridge-building," and all the questions it raises about the proper balance
between national enterprise and coordinated approaches. Third, there is
the political management of our internal economic affairs, both European and
Atlantic.

Each set of tasks offers opportunities for constructive and cooperative
action. And each presents dangers. The second part of this chapter attempts
to explore these opportunities and dangers in concrete terms. But there is a
prior, general question about the proper role of the United States. If we are
to avoid both imprudence and rigidity in defense, immobility and splintering
in Atlantic external relations -- and if we are to manage our internal politi-
cal economics sensibly -- a lot will depend on how the United States plays its
part.

Much of the recent writing on Atlantic politics has laid the blame for
the prevailing mood of anxiety on a lack of American leadership. On

*For the proposition to be strictly true one must rule out large, unilateral
moves by one or another of the participants not on the basis of agreement. More
on this later. Suffice it here to assert only that the French couldn't pull it
off; the Germans wouldn't and couldn't; and the United States wouldn't. The
notion of a U.S.-Soviet condominium bargain over Europe is grotesque. It would
be deeply damaging in terms of the most selfish American interests. And it is
inconceivable in terms of our politics.

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the face of it, there is a puzzle here: the list of recent practical achievements in Atlantic affairs is long. For instance, neither the Kennedy Round nor the intense and fruitful negotiations about international money should be dismissed as mere economics. They reflect political progress of a major sort, and American initiative has played a central role.

The puzzle turns on the definition of "leadership." We are faulted not for failing to pull our weight in solving a host of practical problems in Atlantic relations. If anything, some of our friends in Europe feel that the United States has pulled rather too hard in its own preferred directions. Rather, the charge is that we have failed to generate that sense of momentum, of movement in pursuit of joint purposes, which the alliance must have to avoid falling apart. On this view, the only way the United States can demonstrate leadership is to take the lead in generating a new, unifying vision which is addressed to the large problems of Atlantic politics.*

In my judgment, both the charge and the prescription miss the point. As we have seen, there exists no unifying vision which would provide the basis for early movement and action, or even for agreement in principle on how the great architectural dilemmas might best be resolved. Nor, in my judgment -- and this is a minority view among writers on Atlantic affairs -- would it serve the balance and cohesion of Atlantic politics if the United States took the lead in stimulating a great debate on what we are about, an attempt at group therapy designed to clarify and blueprint the choices. A debate which cannot lead to action, and yet is bound to dramatize a host of painful dilemmas for Germans, postponements for "Europeans," and frustrations for Europe-minded Englishmen

*A still different charge is that the U.S. has vacillated on some specific proposals of its own making, e.g., the ill fated multilateral nuclear force. Better to vacillate than to persist in a mistake.

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and nationalist Frenchmen, is not likely to produce a healthy catharsis.*

The truth is, there is no occasion for immediate definitive choice with respect to such questions as how fast to get on with West European political integration and in what form; how, if it should come to that, the West Germans might weigh tying themselves irreversibly into a political and self-defending Western Europe, as against keeping open some options for unity which would be closed if unity meant a complete East German switch from East to West; or even how fast it is right for Germans to redefine their purposes in the East. There is no way to act on the conclusions if the choices are made; as of now, no cross-roads are in sight. And when and if we do get to any cross-roads, neither our relatively secondary stake in many of these questions nor our limited margin of influence would justify our trying to play a paramount role.

It is not that the United States has no interest in how these issues

* The case for a debate is sometimes made in the hope that it will lead to agreement in the Alliance to put a proposal to the Russians involving early self-determination for East Germans and agreement now on unification in a decade or two or three. The purpose would be to demonstrate on whose back the monkey sits. The notion that an American initiative in support of so transparent a ploy could unify the Alliance strikes me as implausible on its face. We couldn't possibly get an agreed position out of Bonn, London and Rome, never mind Paris. Serious governments are not willing to expose themselves to the charge that they are playing games.

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may eventually be resolved. We have a stake, a large stake, And on those
questions which touch us directly -- for instance, the military arrange-
ments surrounding any change in the status of the two Germanies -- we also
have ample power to protect that stake. But in general, our interest is at
once congruent with that of the large majority of the Western Europeans, and
not of the same magnitude. Cheer leading and bullying -- and proposing non-
solutions to problems which are insoluble in the near term and, in any event,
more West Europe's business than ours -- would not advance American in-
terests.*

What then is the appropriate American role in Atlantic affairs for the
near term? Should we retire from center stage? The truth is we cannot. But
we should resign ourselves to a role short on heroics. To be sure,
we must continue to associate ourselves with the aspirations of our friends in
Western Europe on the large issues, if only to quiet as best we can the natural
fears about any unilateral American bargain with Moscow which would damage the
chances for German unity or European autonomy. But at bottom our performance
should be measured by progress on the many narrow issues where, in accord with
the "process vision", movement is possible, and by success in striking compo-
mise solutions which will strengthen the fabric of Atlantic politics.**

*When over-sized mothers-in-law try to become relevant where they are not,
the most likely product is irritation. (In any event, conceptual
thought about foreign policy, of the analytic variety, must distinguish between pre-
ferred outcomes, less-than-preferred but still tolerable outcomes, and feasible
outcomes in the light of the limits of one's power or influence. Going for broke
is not generally the best way to minimize regret.)

**On the first point, Americans should remember that the minor anxieties we
may suffer about independent French initiatives toward the East are bound to be
larger by an order of magnitude when it comes to European worries about exclusive
Washington-Moscow dealings. The more so, since the United States must retain a re-
latively free hand to carry on separate business with the Soviets on strategic arms
control and third world questions -- questions on which Europe is not yet in a posi-
tion to play a leading role. As a corollary we must make (contd. next page)

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Much of this is a matter of style. In an environment of stalemate and frustration on the large issues, we must expect a considerable *internal* sensitivity to even secondary external issues. It follows that -- apart from associating ourselves with Western Europe's larger purposes -- we should maintain a flexible, light-footed target of opportunity posture on the many fronts of Atlantic relations. The object is to avoid overloading the internal politics of any member of the alliance to the point where serious politicians are tempted or forced to question the basic articles of the trans-Atlantic connection for domestic political reasons.

This is not a prescription for standing still. It is a prescription for keeping a healthy tension between tranquility and advance. On many problems there will be no movement at all in the absence of a strong American lead -- this part of the theory about the need for American leadership is right. Internal political strain among our friends will often be a necessary cost. But we should always calculate how hard we push which government on which issues, and avoid becoming prisoners of our own blueprints. The accent should be on the political procedures by which issues are faced and compromises reached. Atlantic politics should be seen not as a series of discrete one-shot encounters, but as a permanent multi-party engagement in which progress may often be indirect, but the ball is kept in play and the game goes on.

every effort to inform our friends, and to expose ourselves to their influence, always recognizing that since both they and we know that we cannot on those special issues give them a veto, no amount of consultation will still their fears. It is painful to have no place at the table where the action is.

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## II. ISSUES AND CHOICES

### Defense

Atlantic defense will present the new Administration with frequent and important choices. The number of American troops in Germany is only the most visible issue. Decisions will also be needed on alliance nuclear arrangements (tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, nuclear relations with Britain, France, Germany et.al., the role of the Nuclear Planning Group, etc.); and on the future role and shape of NATO. All such decisions will be full of traps, particularly if the question is viewed in terms of narrow military criteria alone. To stay out of them we will need to keep sharply in mind what the problem of Atlantic defense in the late 1960's is all about:

(1) The threat of a premeditated Soviet invasion of Western Europe is no longer real to most Europeans, and -- unless there is powerful new evidence that Moscow is about to go mad -- it cannot be made to seem real. An American attempt to give NATO a boost by rekindling the old fears, citing the Soviet performance in Czechoslovakia, will only make us look foolish.

(2) Nevertheless, defense is still necessary. Even a prudent, risk-avoiding Soviet policy in Western Europe -- a good but less than sure bet: we must remain hedged against sudden changes of mind and men in the Kremlin -- must have some risk to avoid. And it must be risk sufficient to outweigh any conceivable gain, as well as the pain of a Western roll-back of any East German move to alter the status quo. Both the Soviets and our

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friends will measure that risk in important part by the West's military
capacity for a credible response.

(3) The danger lies not in a Soviet invasion in cold blood but in a
sequence of escalation triggered by events in and around Berlin, where
there is a direct U.S.-Soviet confrontation and where each country is likely
to risk nuclear war to prevent a shift in the status quo in favor of the
other. Our defense decisions must reflect both the generally low proba-
bility of serious military trouble, and the generally disastrous consequences
if serious trouble were to occur. We should also take into account the indirect
effects on the arms race. Throughout, we should remember that in the real
world, there exist no options altogether free of risk.*

(4) An American role is still necessary. The truth that Western
Europe is rich and populous enough to take care of itself would have more
force if there existed a politically coherent United States of Europe. But
it would miss the point even then. The most hard-headed definition of
American interests, as reflected and reinforced by our commitment to the

* Much of the conversation in these matters is confounded by ambiguity in defining "risk". Doves have in mind the low probability of trouble; sensible hawks, the disastrous consequences. Both are relevant to any judgment about how much to spend on defense. Since most people who emphasize low probability have in mind an invasion and/or an open-ended arms race; while those who worry about consequences are thinking, if they are sensible, about complicated situations triggered by risings in East Germany and troubles around Berlin, it is no wonder that conversations fail to converge. Yet it is important that they do converge. There are enough real uncertainties and perplexities: e.g., what to do when extra "insurance" moves the probability and the disutility of trouble in opposite directions (many of the arguments about defense versus deterrence raise just that issue); how to account for the intrinsic uncertainty even about the direction in which a change in doctrine or force levels will move the probability and the disutility of trouble in a world of response and counter response, where most of the future is at best only dimly forseeable and it is the better part of wisdom to count on being surprised.

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safety of West Berlin and West Germany, establishes that Americans and West Europeans share, in Thomas Schelling's formulation, a common frontier. With respect to the security of Western Europe, we and the West Europeans are in the same boat. Arguments about burden sharing, or who should man which oars, are necessarily secondary. Since we cannot jump overboard without certain capsize, our safety demands that the oars be adequately manned.* The more so, since the American nuclear force is at present the only strategic force on our side capable of a "second strike" sufficient in certainty and scale to assure Americans and West Europeans that, as long as American intentions are credible, the Soviets will be deterred from any offensive venture in Western Europe.

(5) A substantial American conventional force in Germany is still necessary. Without it, the NATO order of battle is likely to become inadequate for the kind of graduated response necessary if strategic deterrence is to remain both credible and tolerably safe. But even if it were not so -- it is a matter of political judgment what the West Europeans would do if the U.S. pulled out -- a large American contingent is still needed for other important reasons: (i) So that Russians and West Europeans will know that any trouble on the frontier or in Berlin would inextricably engage the United States; (ii) To assure in advance that such American entanglement would be on a large enough scale to make the U.S.

* Which is not to assert that if the boat should sink everyone's survivability would be the same.

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strategic force a vividly credible counter in everyone's calculations despite
the vulnerability of American cities; (iii) To give the United States suffi-
cient direct power in the management of any crisis; (iv) To provide, together
with British, French and other allied forces, sufficiently close company for
German forces so that the Germans will not be burdened with the possibility of
managing alone a crisis in the middle of their country, and to render harmless
any charges from the East, and allay atavistic fears in the West, that the
Federal Republic is in a position to play a solo military role.

(6) The central proposition is this: at least as long as there is no
stable settlement -- and, it may be, as a necessary aspect of any such settle-
ment -- the military situation in the center of Europe must remain a matter of
international politics and multi-national management. And the American nuclear
force must remain manifestly relevant.

(7) It is evident from the above that the North Atlantic Treaty is still
necessary. It follows, also -- despite the French -- that it must continue to
be embodied in some kind of living institution. A conventional pact of mutual
defense would not provide an adequate political frame for the continued pres-
ence of American, British and other allied forces in Germany: it would smack
too much of an occupation, or a Washington-Bonn axis.* It would not meet the
need, vital to the political health of Europe, for the institutionalized com-
pany the rest of us must provide for the dozen German divisions. It would
fail to provide the smaller allied countries with a locus and a procedure of

*Happily it works with the French alone, but the rather fuzzy arrangement
between Paris and Bonn simply could not support the full weight of close to
300,000 British and American troops for any length of time.

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consultation and a vehicle for their small but important military contribu-
tions. Last, it would foreclose a great many opportunities for coordination
in planning and management.

Yet none of the above propositions answer the tough operational questions:
how much defense, tailored to what kind of strategic doctrine, requiring how
many American troops? Nor do they suggest answers to questions about the future
shape of NATO, and, in particular, about the European role in nuclear matters.
Carl Kaysen's chapter addresses some of these questions in detail. Suffice it
here only to say that:

-- There is nothing sacrosanct about the current level of American forces
in Europe, but decisions on changes should take into account their political
as well as military implications. Obviously, much depends on the Warsaw Pact
order of battle. If after things settle down in Czechoslovakia it reverts
to the pattern of 1965-67, then, on the basis of personal involvement with
the problem at that time, I think our security position, _narrowly defined_,
could stand an appreciable reduction even if, as is likely, it would be
followed by some reductions by others. But a judgment in terms of deterrence
and conventional war-fighting capacity alone cannot settle the matter. Changes
in American deployments -- and American proposals pertaining to strategy --
cast long shadows on European perceptions of American intentions and de-
pendability. Ideally, we should be able to adjust the NATO order of
battle, and the American contribution, on the basis of a shared assess-
ment of the effects on deterrence, defense, arms control and burden sharing.
But that is easier said than done. And whatever the rights and wrongs of the
present distribution of the burden, the dollar cost to the United States of

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reducing forces later rather than sooner -- of temporarily foregoing money
savings that may be militarily justified -- is exceedingly small when measured
against the American defense budget (not to speak of GNP), and negligible when
measured against the importance to the United States of confidence in the
American commitment to the defense of Europe. In the absence of such confi-
dence, the chances for a benign and cooperative Atlantic politics are slim.

That is not to say that we must not cut ever, or -- if Eastern Europe is
really quiet and there is no increase in the Warsaw Pact order-of-battle (net
of the appropriate discount it is now safe to apply to Czech divisions) -- to
cut even quite soon. But before doing so, we should apply at least three tests
which go beyond the military calculus: How can we maximize the chances for a
mutual reduction on both sides of the line? How can we assure the Europeans
(especially the Germans, who are on the firing line) that we are moving
to a safe plateau which will then be held, subject to agreed changes in the
military situation? Any serious doubt about the credibility of the U.S. de-
terrent, which is a sensitive function of the U.S. conventional presence, is
bound to stimulate a deadly serious argument among Germans about their commitment
to remain dependent for nuclear defense on NATO, and hence on the U.S. Third,
is the timing right, taking into account all the issues on the table between ourselves
and the Federal Republic, or do we risk so overloading German politics
that an issue of military management turns into a domestic squarrel about
the American connection. Whatever we do, much will depend on how we do it:
on style and procedure.*

*I think, for example, that we made a mistake in the spring of 1966 in link-
ing the question of troop levels to a rigid, restrictive balance-of-payments off-
set arrangement. It was a mistake not only because there were available
flexible schemes more palatable to the Germans and sufficient for the protection
(contd. next page)

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-- There is nothing sacrosanct about the present structure of NATO (the organization). On the contrary, the new Administration will have to deal with a host of suggestions for reform. There will also arise the larger question of role and purposes: Should NATO enlarge its political role? Should Atlantic external relations be coordinated and managed through the NATO machinery? If, as I believe, the answer must be in the negative, even with respect to European affairs central to NATO's agreed purposes, what reforms will keep it vigorous for its vital defense tasks? I would judge potential answers in the light of five rules of thumb: (1) No reform will work which fails to take into account that by the test of political appeal, NATO is middle-aged: necessary, important, but no longer right for the ingenue role in Europe (assuming no sharp change in Soviet behavior). (2) No reform is likely to entice General DeGaulle to rejoin the fold. (3) Changes in defense arrangements should be judged in precise, operational terms; we should beware of slogans ("integration," "independence"). (4) No reform will work unless it reflects genuine European wants and needs, as revealed by their national politics without prodding from Washington. (5) Any change likely to command a consensus in Western Europe is not likely to damage the United States. On the contrary, we should be sympathetic and responsive to European ideas for a greater European role in NATO, whether it be through a European caucus in the Council,

of our balance-of-payments. It was a mistake mainly because 1966 was the year of the NATO crisis, and of predictable internal strain in German politics; the year in which we needed German support on international money and the Kennedy Round; and the year in which we were going to administer a severe jolt to German politics in any case by going ahead (rightly, in my judgment) with the non-proliferation treaty. The fact that we managed to extricate ourselves from a deep hole by a precarious but on the whole successful diplomatic exercise (the so-called Trilateral Negotiations during 1966-67) is no defense for the initial mistake. Nor is there much defense, although there is explanation, in the fact that Germans among other continentals have taken an active part in lecturing the United States about living in balance-of-payments sin.

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or evolution toward a full-fledged European Defense Community. We must not
let secondary American interests stand in the way (e.g., procurement from
the United States: there are better ways for us to protect our balance of
payments). Responsible European behavior in matters of Atlantic affairs is
likely to increase with Europe's sense of mastery of her fate.

Two specific questions touching on Europe's role are likely to come up:
First, should the next NATO commander be a European, with an American deputy
for nuclear forces? This would give Europe a greater voice; the price would be
the loss of the implicit but direct link between the principal military agent
of the alliance and the American President who disposes of the paramount nuclear
force. My prejudice would be to respond to any consensus in Europe. Second,
what should be the U.S. stance toward the British and French nuclear forces?
There are no easy answers. My own view is that we should continue to provide
Britain with the technical help she needs to maintain the existing force of
Polaris A-s, but to support London's present decision against trying for Posei-
don with its MIRV-s. As to France, it would be a mistake (as well as politi-
cally infeasible given the present French position on NATO) to offer General
de Gaulle comparable technical help at this stage -- at best, it would look
like a bribe ten years too late. On the other hand, if Britain and France should
ever decide to get together and then to come to us for technical help, we would
face some difficult choices. In terms of internal command and control, a small
but hard, tightly managed joint force, benefiting from American technical help,
would be far better than any separate national force -- although there would
remain a question about coordination with SAC. But the problem would be compli-
cated by American politics and the McMahon Act. And it would raise with sharp
force the question of discrimination against Germany.

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The right response, in my judgment, would be to tell London and Paris that we would be prepared to provide a joint force with technical assistance as long as they can somehow engage the Germans, the Italians, and perhaps others, in a way which would not violate the non-proliferation treaty and would reflect a careful German decision to associate themselves with such a force despite the cross-cutting effect on their Eastern policy and the general nervousness on both sides of the line about any German role in nuclear defense. It seems to me the U.S. should be prepared, if asked, to provide support for any European nuclear force which is consistent with the treaty, is technically sound, has built into it the right sorts of command and control (on the technical side our help can be most useful), and which is judged by a responsible German Government as a good thing for them without any pushing and pulling by the United States.

We should not try to dream up new solutions to the problem of nuclear management in the alliance; there are no good solutions. The right policy for the United States is neither to propose that the Europeans get together, nor to resist if they, including the Germans, decide that that is the way they want to go. In the meanwhile, we should bend every effort to push forward with the Moscow negotiations on bilateral strategic arms limitations. The more progress we make, consistent with safety, the less painful and urgent will become the nuclear problem in Europe.

## Economics

Much more than ever before, the economics of each touches on the prosperity of all. And because jobs and pocketbooks are directly at risk, it is both important and difficult for governments to put first things first.

The paramount task is to press on with the post-war effort to develop and strengthen practices and procedures, habits and institutions, which are both

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efficient in serving compatible economic goals and effective in resolving conflict. The important empirical truth which should inform each nation's conduct is that coordinated policies will generally advance everyone's goals better than any rule of devil take the hindmost. Every unilateral action with consequences abroad (a change in interest rates or in customs procedures), and every international bargain (a new trans-Atlantic air route or a tariff) must be judged, especially by the biggest player, not merely in terms of the particular outcome, but also in terms of the likely effect on the strength and efficiency of rules and practices. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is far more important to us than any particular set of tariffs as such, or any marginal change in the GATT rules themselves. The creation of a new reserve asset, internationally managed through the IMF, is far more important than whether that asset is called a new "unit" or a "drawing right." Some brinksmanship is unavoidable in negotiating bread-and-butter issues. But it should be kept within safe limits except where absolutely essential rules and structures are at issue. To argue that the U.S., because it is so powerful, can stand the jungle better than most, is to miss the point. Jungle economics breeds jungle politics and that we cannot stand.

What is the near term economic agenda?

First, the central problem of international money and balance-of-payments, the subject of Richard Cooper's chapter. It is central not because it should matter as such. It shouldn't; it is mere machinery. It is central because the post-war Bretton Woods system has developed serious flaws which -- save for the "liquidity" provided to the rest of the world by the American payments deficit -- would already have exerted severe deflationary pressures throughout the world, with protectionist warfare the likely international result.

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We have made great progress since 1965 in reforming the international money rules. The United States Government has played a distinguished role, particularly in getting agreement on the new Special Drawing Rights (SDR-s) and in helping to introduce the two-tier system for gold. But more needs to be done. The only long term answer is more intensive and binding coordination in the management of international finance, based on rules and practices less biased against deficit countries, and better suited to our shared stake in prosperity and trade. "Money is a good servant but a bad master."

If we wish to promote benign politics, as well as sensible economics, we must also sustain the momentum toward world-wide free trade. Protectionist pressures are as powerful as ever, and as pernicious in their results. The danger over the medium term lies in the hardening of two large trading blocs, one centered on the United States and the other on the European Economic Community, each relatively free within itself but in a state of economic warfare with the other. Whatever the economic costs, the politics would be poisonous. Thus, as the EEC expands, with its common external tariff and internal free trade, we shall have to keep up to speed in achieving mutual tariff cuts, or slip backwards toward the jungle we all should want to avoid. The need is for cutting all tariffs (oh an accelerated, non-reciprocal schedule toward the poor countries) and -- increasingly important as tariffs go down -- the thick underbrush of non-tariff barriers as well. The implication is another ambitious round of trade negotiations starting in 1970 at the latest.

As the new Administration moves toward that encounter, it should keep in mind three special considerations:

First, the political dangers of an allegedly benign version of the two-bloc world. If the Europeans won't go along with the financial reforms needed to

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allow adequate internal growth and increasingly free trade on a world-wide
basis, we should, so the argument goes, settle for a dollar bloc to include
anyone who cares to join, letting those who stay outside organize a gold bloc
and float their currencies against the dollar. The economic consequences would
not be too bad. But for Atlantic politics and the American political interest
it would be terrible, except as a short-lived transitional arrangement de-
signed to bring the gold-minded to their senses.*

-- Second, the demands of the poor countries for help in their exports of manufactures. We have an enormous stake in the economic growth of the poor countries, especially those capable of development, and their export earnings will play a critical role. Yet we must avoid bloc economics and politics. Letting each industrial country give trade preferences only to its own less developed clients would be a great mistake. The recently developed American policy of support for temporary tariff preferences on the manufactures and semi-manufactures of all less developed countries by all industrial countries is, I think, the right answer. But we should beware of the notion that such a system, designed to stimulate poor country exports, can substitute for any significant quantity of aid. "Trade-not-aid" is an appropriate objective for the long term: once a low-income country has reached per capita income levels of several hundred dollars per year, it can manage adequate growth without extraordinary outside help. But as a strategy to speed the growth of countries whose incomes run at $80-200 per head, "trade-not-aid" is a mirage.

-- Third, agriculture. It will be the most difficult problem in Atlantic

* For a view of this entire range of issues, see "The Political Economics of International Money," *Foreign Affairs*, Oct., 1968.

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trade relations and the United States will have to exercise great patience.
Europe is at a stage of its agricultural revolution where supply is bound to
outrun demand at prices tolerable in terms of domestic politics, even though
people are leaving agricultural employment in droves. The U.S. will constantly
be tempted to cut off its nose to spite its face by slowing down trade liberali-
zation in industry in the forlorn hope of getting Europeans to build still
more warehouses and pay still more tax money in order to add some of our agri-
cultural surpluses to their own. We should certainly push them to grant food
to the underdeveloped poor, but that won't ease the pressure much, particularly
as the poor get better at growing their own food. Happily, prospects will change
in time. The United States does have a long-term comparative advantage in highly
capitalized, land-intensive high-protein agriculture. And that is the wave of
the future, at least until the chemical industry takes over.

A final large item on the economic agenda is the so-called "technological
gap" and the political problem of American investment in Europe. Here the
United States must tread lightly. On the one hand -- in terms of risks for
people's livelihoods -- this is strictly second order business. Measured in
terms of income, jobs, and productivity, West Europe has shown superb economic
performance during the past two decades. Whatever technological inferiority
she may suffer relative to the United States does not impinge on the conditions
which distinguish the political prospects of the late 1960's and early 70's
from those of, say, the 1930's. These questions are just not of the same im-
portance for the future of Atlantic politics, as, for instance, the issue of
international monetary reform, which directly affects the prospects for domestic
prosperity and for movement toward an open world.

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Nevertheless, the advantage of the United States in the new, science-
based industries is a significant political issue. So is American ownership
and control of industry in Europe. Americans, with economists in the lead,
tend often to forget that Europeans no less than Americans want circuses as
well as bread, especially circuses widely regarded as symbols of status and
prestige and power.

It is a different matter to know what to do. On the "technological gap" --
a question of management and social mobility, of general education and econo-
mic scale much more than of science as such -- there is not much the United
States can do. In general, we should be sympathetic and reasonable in respond-
ing to sensible non-protectionist European attempts better to organize for
exploiting economies of scale.

On American investment in Europe, there is more need for action, if only
because direct investment in Europe has been our Achilles heel in the inter-
national politics of balance-of-payments. There is some truth to the European
charge that, in a fit of absent mindedness, the U.S. has been using short term
money borrowed in Europe to buy up Europe. There are no easy answers. To
emphasize the case for multi-national corporations, or for giving market
forces free reign, only begs the problem of national control and influence.
The near term answer lies again in procedure: we and our European friends
should get together to sort out our partly conflicting and partly compatible
interests: their desire for long-term money, advanced American technology and
management; our need for balance of payments protection and for fair treatment
of past investments made in good faith; and their legitimate concern about the
ownership and control of their advanced industries.

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## Politics

There is more to politics than defense and economics. And as in economics, the politics of one touches the politics of all. The American objective is a benign politics, where no nation is forced by the circumstances of its foreign relations to divide on basic questions of national existence and, in particular, on the question of the American connection. This holds for all the countries of the Atlantic. But the new Administration will have to pay special attention to a number of well-defined problems in our relations with Britain, France, and Germany:

**Britain** faces two critical questions: Can she at long last get her economy right? Should she remain committed to joining the EEC or seek some other connections? The United States has a major stake in the answers. A frustrated and footloose Britain will do no one any good. In contrast, a prosperous and vigorous Britain, playing an active role in Europe and a limited but satisfying role in the outside world, would be a great source of strength to the United States -- and not because she would play Trojan Horse.

On the economic side there are strong grounds for optimism. Theories of what ails the British economy abound. Most of them make the mistake of Karl Marx made in his labor theory of value: they assign exclusive influence to a single cause, be it the old school tie, the unions, not enough taste for risk or too much for a civilized life, or merely poor fiscal management. The truth is that a great many factors are at work. The right question is whether skillful economic engineering -- effective use of the fiscal and regulatory instruments available to a modern government in a mixed enterprise economy -- is sufficient to shift the British economy from the roller coaster of stop-and-go

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to a track of reasonably steady 3.5-5% growth, with the balance of payments
in good order.

My own view is that, despite the drag exerted by some of the underlying
social characteristics, reasonably skillful economic policy will do the job.
The requirements are plain: Demand must be kept in balance with capacity,
with enough slack to give wages policy a chance to keep British prices from
running ahead of prices in Europe and America, but not so much slack as to
produce intolerable numbers of unemployed or to kill off incentives to invest;
the investment component of demand must be both allowed and stimulated to rise
from 10-15% of GNP to 20-25%, with priority for exports and import substitutes
and for activities with a potential for fast productivity growth; redistribution
of income through the budget and other means must meet the tests both of incen-
tive and of tolerable fairness as judged by the electorate; and, above all,
the exchange rate must be right.

Following the devaluation of last November, none of this is impossible,
or even unlikely. With sterling at the old rate of $2.80, no amount of defla-
tion could be expected to provide a cure, not without years of waiting for foreign
prices to catch up with British prices. With the pound at $2.40 -- and suffi-
cient restraint on domestic demand to release the resources needed to meet the
new, price-induced demand for British goods abroad and for import substitutes
at home -- the prospects are bright. It will take a while until speculators
get used to the idea that sterling is not a dirty word. In the meanwhile, the
major central banks may have some work to do in supporting the pound (as well as
in dealing with overseas sterling balances as a part of longer term monetary re-
form, and in stretching out some short term British debt). But barring any major

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continental devaluations -- which would open the entire structure of exchange rates for negotiation, though not the dollar price of gold -- the $2.40 rate is likely to work fine in helping to fix Britain's basic payments position. Britain may well be on the threshold of her own economic "miracle." Miracle it would not be, only skillful economic management and a slightly undervalued currency.*

What about Britain and Europe? Here the story is more complicated. For the time being, the De Gaulle veto is a fact of life, and it is not clear whether time will make it easier or harder for Britain to become a full-fledged member of the EEC. In any event, there is bound to be a lot of talk in the interim about an alternative: perhaps a North Atlantic Free Trade Area (NAFTA), joining the Old Commonwealth and the United States as the founding members.

The search for an alternative -- already underway -- reflects a wide-spread sense that Britain must make some new connection in order to cure her economic ills, and that an overseas, Anglo-Saxon arrangement might well be more attractive than joining up with the Old Continent.

* I do not mean to suggest that it is all clear sailing. It is not certain that, with labor and product markets organized as at present, a semi-voluntary wage-price policy can contain the rise in unit labor costs without intolerable levels of unemployment. If there is reason for being optimistic about the British case, it is in good part because the rest of us are not likely to do well either; and here it is relative performance that counts. For a full-fledged miracle, progress will also be necessary in market organization, in the training and mobility of skilled labor and of management, and the like. But there is no need for "fundamental" changes in British society or in the British character simply in order to permit a comfortably adequate economic performance. (It is hard to exaggerate the enormous burden imposed by an over-valued currency. Both the German and the French "miracles" were preceded by their getting their exchange rates right.) For a first-rate analysis of the British economic situation, see the new Brookings volume, Richard E. Caves and Associates, *Britain's Economic Prospects*, 1968

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Neither proposition seems to me defensible. The notion that a new
connection is essential to make the economics work is sheer nonsense. It
is not necessary and it would not be sufficient. Indeed, it's an open ques-
tion which way it would move the odds.*

What about the case for NAFTA on its own terms? If it could be divorced
from the larger question of Britain's political future -- if it were merely
an open ended commercial venture, designed to enlarge the area of free trade
and to put pressure on the more protectionist remainder to join the
rest of us in a move toward world wide free trade -- it would represent a
dangerous but thinkable strategy: dangerous because we would risk getting
stuck enroute in a two-bloc world. But short of a major change in the political
environment, or clear prior evidence that the European option is really out,
the economics cannot be divorced from the larger questions of politics. A
British initiative in favor of NAFTA would reflect a sharp turning away from
Europe. The possible economic gain would fail to balance the certain political
cost. For over the long term Britain does need to make a political connection.
And as a new political entity, NAFTA would be badly askew. Few Englishmen want
their country to become the largest American state. And we, on our part, need
no new states, and cannot afford to lose Britain as an independent source of
vitality and influence in Europe. The fact that a close American political
connection would soon produce either frustration or lethargy in London, or both,
should be sufficient to rule it out. But there is more to it: Europe without
Britain playing an active role is much less likely to produce the kind of

*The only reservation I would make concerns the future course of tariffs.
If the world should go protectionist, then being a member of some relatively
large free-trade club would become important.

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external and internal politics which is a vital American interest.

Diagnosis is easy; prescription is harder. Playing a waiting game will
take considerable restraint on the part of London. No outsider can
really judge, but my guess would be that it is politically work-
able: if the internal economics is right (there is no contradiction:
investors are perfectly capable of living with uncertainty), and if it encom-
passes an active engagement in all kinds of dealings with the other Europeans.

What about the American role? On the economics, in the short run we must
join in helping to hold the $2.40 rate. Even more important, we must avoid --
for Britain's sake, as well as our own and that of the rest of the world --
letting the American economy go slack. That in turn implies pressing on
fast with international monetary reform.

On the political side we should politely discourage the people in London
who will be drawing up schemes for an alternative to Europe, and to continue
associating ourselves, quietly with no cheerleading, with Britain's view of
herself as a European power, albeit one which looks at the world in the round.
This will require restraint in Washington. We must expect London to generate
a fair amount of anti-American rhetoric, and that she will line up with the
other Europeans on a variety of bread-and-butter issues. Here too, it will
be important for us to put first things first.*

That is not to say that we must not take advantage of any political openings
in Britain for a change in, for instance, her decision to abandon Singapore in the
early 70s. But American requests for continued British involvement East of Suez
and elsewhere outside of Europe should be carefully tailored to British economic
and political possibilities, and balanced by our priority stake in British solvency
and her management of her relations on the continent. At the margin, a
British soldier is more valuable to us in the Far East than an American soldier,
even if we foot the bill. But in my judgment British soldiers in Germany are
even more valuable.

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France presents two major traps for American policy. The first, shallow and not very dangerous, is to underestimate General De Gaulle's resolve and delude outselves that if we are nice to him he will be nice to us. The other, much more hazardous, is to overestimate how much damage he can do and react with hostility toward France and all her works.

The first error may be largely behind us. Most Americans have learned that De Gaulle's commitment to his own special vision of France's needs and proper due is as fixed as any of Euclid's theorems. But the second is both more important and harder to avoid. To do so we must keep in mind that:

(1) France's capacity for damage to fundamental Atlantic security is exceedingly limited. Whatever the General may do -- even if he should denounce the North Atlantic Treaty in 1969 -- NATO can and will survive for as long as most Europeans feel the need for American help in maintaining their defense -- unless, that is, we lose our heads and withdraw. (It is a reasonable conjecture that if the other Western Europeans were suddenly to take a Gaullist line on NATO and American troops Frenchmen would be among the most dismayed.)

(2) As long as Washington and London refuse to play, the French simply do not have the chips to deliver on any bargain with Moscow touching on the status of Berlin or the future of Germany. It is no insult to France to say that it is not in her power to act for the West either in legitimizing the division of Germany or in trying to negotiate German unity. It is not merely that American and British troops are in Germany by law. It is simply a fact of life that, until the cold war is really past history, neither the West Europeans nor the East Europeans nor the Soviets would join in a settlement which would recreate a unified German state without very close ties with its neighbors and/or the United States. Unless such a state were politically and

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and militarily integrated with West Europe, the Europeans would bend every effort
to keep us from opting out even if we wanted to. A Paris-Moscow hegemony in
Europe is not in the cards. (That is why we should be relaxed about the talk
of a European security conference without the United States. The Europeans
would almost certainly not let it happen; and if they did, nothing much would
come of it.)

(3) That is not to say that French policy has been harmless in its effects on Western European and Atlantic politics. One can hope that the Germans have developed sufficient antibodies to remain relatively immune to the nationalist contagion. But even so, De Gaulle has effectively put a stop to progress toward Western European political integration. Perhaps even more important, he has hindered the growth in close working relations between Paris, Bonn, London and Rome on which, lacking a Monnet Europe, a healthy European and Atlantic polity ultimately depends.

(4) Nothing will more greatly multiply the price exacted by present French policy than American over-reaction. The more we cooperate with De Gaulle in forcing Bonn, London, Rome and the others to make a sharp choice between Washington and Paris on broad issues of "principle", the greater the risk that we will end up with a balkanized Western Europe, an isolated Germany neurotically dependent on the United States, and a Britain with no place to turn. It will be of small comfort then that more often than not Gaullist manners and U.S. power will have caused our friends to side with us.

(5) It does not follow that we should simply appease Paris and let her have her way. But we must choose our ground with the greatest of care. We should fight only on concrete, specific issues where France does not have a

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veto by right of law or possession, and where we have a good chance of winning because: (i) we can win without help and without damage to other Europeans; (ii) the others are likely to see things our way for their own reasons, without heavy U.S. pressure; or (iii) -- and a rare case -- where the importance to us of winning is so large that it justifies use of American leverage even at the risk of turning the American connection into a serious internal issue in Britain, Germany, Italy, or elsewhere.

(6) Applying these tests, I think we were right to force a choice on international money and gold last year, and right also in pressing for large industrial tariff cuts in the Kennedy Round. The bread-and-butter interests of the majority of Europeans made those winning issues. We were also dead right not to respond to the French defection from NATO by trying to line up support for reading France out of the treaty proper and threatening to deny her the protection that her geography confers as long as we defend Germany. And it was right not to press the Germans to set conditions unacceptable to De Gaulle on the continued stationing of French troops in Germany. Doing so would have caused a damaging fight in Bonn about whether to thwart the U.S. or eject the French soldiers from German soil thereby risking serious harm to reconciliation with France which is one of Germany's great psychic needs. Last, it has been right to restrict ourselves to soft and hopeful words about Britain's entry in the EEC. Here the French veto is absolute. We would do no one any good, and we could do considerable harm, by trying to bully the others into challenging it*

*In both instances involving NATO the credit for American good sense belongs personally to President Johnson.

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(7) Here again, style is almost as important as substance. We must always remain polite. Where possible, we must let the Europeans take the lead in fact as well as in appearance. And we must keep in mind the capacity of the present French government to overplay its hand and isolate itself. On the positive side, we should keep making it clear that we will always keep an empty chair waiting for France.

In the end, Americans must remind themselves that a stable, confident France is likely to be better for us than a weak, turbulent France, even if she keeps stepping on our toes. We should be self-confident enough to ignore the anti-American rhetoric, particularly where it serves a therapeutic purpose in reviving the French spirit after a most painful century. We should be ready to acknowledge the elements of truth and validity in any French position. We should never forget the wide-spread support in France and in Europe for many Gaullist policies -- support which will outlast the General. Last, we should show not condescension, but genuine understanding for the enormous pain caused to proud and great nations by the brutal facts of scale in defense and technology. In sum, except where our vital and specific interests are at stake, we should show the grace and forbearance which behoove a great power.

_Germany_ is the one major country in the West with an external grievance of the first magnitude, and she is on the frontier. The danger is not that history will repeat itself; neither 1933 nor 1939 will come again. The danger is rather that external frustration will combine with a rise in activity by the small but vocal right-wing minority. This may not be so serious as it looks; we will all have problems with the old right as well as with the new left in the

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next decade. But the German right is harder to tolerate both for Germans and for others. The risk is a level of anxiety about Germany among Germans and others which would make useless one of the great nations of West Europe in the sensible management of Atlantic politics, and would make much more difficult a sensible evolution in East Europe.

Beyond the general arguments already advanced, the following seem to me the right guidelines for U.S. policy:

(1) We must avoid actions which would dilute German faith in American defense capacity and intent. We cannot and should not give in to every German whim. But we should think twice before encouraging irresponsible politicians and journalists in Europe who would try to profit by preying on German fears. And we should scrupulously apply the rules set out in the preceding section concerning issues where we force Bonn to choose between Paris and Washington. German dependence on Washington is a very mixed blessing. In nuclear defense, there is no alternative. But for healthy German politics, and necessary freedom of American maneuver on questions of strategic arms which do not touch on German safety or unity, it is in our interest that Paris and London should play an increasing role.

(2) It is not our part to take the lead in formulating strategy and tactics toward East Germany on matters which do not involve defense. We should make clear in Bonn that we stand prepared to play a strong supportive role: to help and counsel, and, if the Germans wish, even to take the diplomatic lead. We should ask that they keep us and the others sufficiently informed. But the prime burden of deciding how to deal with East Germany should rest on Bonn.

(3) Conversely, we should keep the lead on questions of strategic arms. We should always make a point of consulting on the large questions, especially

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those which could be thought by Germans to affect the prospects for German
settlement. But we must retain control of tactics toward Moscow, and that
includes responsibility for deciding precisely when to consult, given the
danger of leaks. Responsible Germans will understand this. They will be
anxious; they would not be human if they were not. But it is an anxiety that
both we and they must learn to live with.

(4) In cases where arms control and the German future intersect, the particulars must govern how we and Bonn and others play the hand. There are no general rules except a presumption that anything which significantly reduces the danger of nuclear war must be assigned a very high value indeed. Happily, I do not believe that there are many "either/or-s."*

Above all, we should beware of so burdening German internal politics as
to turn the American connection into a first order of domestic contention. We
have a great stake in sensible and balanced German conduct in internal Atlantic
affairs, and in the Federal Republic's explorations toward the East. Steady and
sensitive American policy on matters of concern to Germany cannot guarantee such

*Neither of the two instances often cited to the contrary bear scrutiny.

(1) The notion that an open nuclear option for Germany, of the sort ruled out by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, would constitute material for negotiating German unity or change in East Europe is silly. Few things would so worsen the prospects for East Europe, or for a German solution, than even a hint that Bonn was considering that particular ploy. (2) The notion that Europeans would be differently affected than the U.S. by strategic weapons limitations which would reduce American nuclear "superiority," flies directly in the face of the elementary logic of deterrence. No feasible amount of American strategic superiority would make American cities safe from a Soviet second strike. A prime purpose of the large American conventional force in the center of Europe is to make the American strategic force credible in relation to Europe despite that fact.

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conduct; but it will sharply improve the odds.

********

It is not lack of interest, or even lack of space alone, which explains the lack of discussion of Italy. Ten or fifteen years ago, she would have required full treatment. But in the interim, Italy has been a model friend and partner, both to us and to her neighbors in Europe. By putting first things first, and behaving the way a sensible welfare democracy should behave, she has managed to pull off a remarkable economic and indeed political feat. Yet, it is important that the United States exercise great care to accord Rome the attention she deserves.

Much the same could be said about a number of the other nations of Western Europe. The old rule about the squeaky wheel getting the grease is not appropriate for a paper of limited length. But it is not a good rule for American policy. The new Administration should take care that it does not come to regard European policy as exclusively a matter of London, Paris, and Bonn.*

*There is one important organization and there are two countries of special significance on which I have not touched at all. The European Economic Commission has a vital part to play in European and Atlantic affairs. We should not forget, for instance, that if it had not been for the Commission the Kennedy Round probably would not have succeeded. American relations with Canada require a separate chapter; they demand careful attention by Washington. And it would be farsighted for us to take a hard look at Spain.

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### III. GROUNDS FOR OPTIMISM

Where does all this leave us? What are the prospects in the Atlantic world? Clearly, there is no shortage of problems and troubles. Yet I think, in broad terms, there are powerful reasons for optimism:

> The central truth is that the United States and Western Europe will for the foreseeable future enjoy a harmony of interests on the issues of peace and war. All of us share a commitment to avoid nuclear war which far surpasses a mere instinct for self-preservation. Violence against any of us would be enormously damaging to the high culture which we share and prize. For this reason, as well as our need for safety, we have a common interest in helping each other, and the Soviets and East Europeans, grow out of the cold war. And we share a deep long-term interest in ground rules for an international community which will provide for safe progress towards international objectives, while leaving most of our energies for urgent tasks at home.

One cannot of course count on objective interest to govern the behavior of governments; the modern world has known only too well the possibility of madness. But there exist powerful safeguards in Western Europe today which did not exist twenty or thirty years ago. Each nation has evolved into a welfare democracy of one sort or another. All exhibit a political and economic system which is more or less open and is responsive to popular will, if not always popularly directed. These are not friendly surroundings for madmen, for grand schemes of domination, or even for the traditional man on horseback. Evidently, not all hates and fears are gone. But we have so organized our societies that it is very much less likely now than ever before that a narrow and hostile view of interest or ambition can take over the machinery of any major state and undo

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the progress of the past two decades.

Underlying that judgment are some large qualitative changes in the economic facts of life in Western Europe and the United States. Here, too, it is wise to hedge one's bets. None of us have solved the problems of affluence and some, particularly the most affluent of all, have failed even to solve the problems of extreme poverty; the New Left has a powerful point. But it is a fair conjecture that the life of most Western Europeans is by now simply too good for serious trouble to arise. Although per capita incomes are still well below our own, they are I think well above the threshold at which concern for their preservation and growth begins to exert very strong pressure against political actions which could threaten them. And the distribution of income in most of Western Europe is not so skewed that the calculation of large interest turns around as one moves up and down the economic scale. (This is in some contrast with the situation in the United States.)

Finally, there now exists the technical capacity and the institutional machinery in most of the countries of the Atlantic to avert the catastrophic economic fluctuations that so often nourished extremist politics in the past. This is important not only because it removes one large source of ferment, but also because it has resulted in the development of habits of cooperation and experience over the past twenty years which themselves act as stabilizers.

In short, whatever impact economics has on political behavior will, despite the adversary components, weigh heavily against any kind of nightmare politics. Even if one is not an economic determinist one must recognize that this is important. When combined with the political and cultural facts of current Atlantic

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life, it reduces the probability of really serious trouble generated within the
Atlantic world to a point as low as the inheritance of man permits.

It does not follow that we and the West Europeans face a comfortable and
safe future. There are two great problems which transcend the difficulties
of internal Atlantic relations: growing out of the cold war and effectively
controlling nuclear arms, and ensuring the economic and political advance of the
poor countries. We must face them together. The real nightmare, for all of us --
not over the next few years but over the next twenty-five -- consists in a
world split between a rich minority and an enormous majority of semi-indus-
trialized poor, colored, angry, and equipped with modern strategic arms.

The internal dangers are simply not of the same order. They consist in
irritation and mistrust, in short-sighted moralizing, recrimination, and estrange-
ment. In avoiding this, much will depend on American behavior, and, indeed, on
the image cast by our domestic politics. A stable, dependable, reasonable line
of American policy can go very far to limit turbulence in Atlantic affairs and
to assure safe passage of the present period of transition.

September 16, 1968

Cambridge, Massachusetts

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F. M. Bator
Very Preliminary Outline
6/26/68

# AGENDA FOR THE NATION

## THE POLITICS OF ALLIANCE: UNITED STATES - WEST EUROPEAN RELATIONS

### A.

#### I. A Time of Trouble?

- Evidence of malaise

- Could it have been avoided?

- How serious?

- Back to fundamentals

#### II. U.S. Objectives (1): What is it we really need from Western Europe?

- Classical "minimum" objectives

- How badly have we done?

- What are the prospects?

- The case for a minimaxing, nightmare-avoidance, we-have-survived view

#### III. Why then are we troubled?

- World not in stationary state

- Felt need for progress towards a structural vision

- Failure with respect to vision we have pursued?

#### IV. U.S. Objectives (2): Alternative visions of the future

- Visions as ultimate states of bliss

- Visions as process and priorities

- Emphasis on West-European integration

- Emphasis on Atlantic solidarity under U.S. leadership

- Emphasis on settling World War II

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-- How do they differ (paths and destinations)?

## V. The Heart of the Matter: The German Problem

-- What kinds of outcomes do we prefer?

-- What kinds of outcomes does it pay for us to work for?

-- What kinds of outcomes can we live with?

-- The limits of U.S. influence

## VI. A necessity for choice?

-- At the level of rhetoric and image: The need for a broad general vision

-- At the level of action: any forks in the road in sight? One needs to look at concrete problems

## B. PROBLEMS AND STRATEGIES

### I. U.K.

-- NAFTA: an alternative to going into Europe?

-- Nuclear role

-- The special relationship

### II. Economics

-- Money

-- Direct investment

-- Technological gap?

-- Trade relations

### III. Defense

-- The treaty

-- NATO structure

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