Townsend Hoopes

OCT 4 - 1968

JAN 4 1968

October 3, 1968

Personal and Confidential

Mr. Bryce N. Harlow
Director of Governmental Relations
Procter and Gamble Company
1730 K Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20006

Dear Bryce:

I thought it regrettable, but not at all surprising, to find you unreachable a week or so ago. I am sure you are totally peripatetic at this point, and operating at full throttle. As a citizen, I am deeply reassured by the knowledge that you are doing what you are doing.

I would seriously hope we could spend an hour together soon, as I believe I have some useful perspectives to offer on Vietnam. They are not immediately relevant to the candidate's pre-election position, but would bear directly on a considered approach to solution of the problem, which will, I assume, be formulated in the interval between November and January. In essence, the points I have to make relate to (1) the genuine infeasibility of military victory in Vietnam; (2) the grave maldeployment of our military and psychic resources represented by our present force level and rate of expenditure in Vietnam; (3) the seriously erosive effects these factors are having on our force posture in other areas of the world and on the development and procurement of modern equipment (see Senator Russell's remarks in presenting the DOD appropriations bill); and (4) the impossibility of maintaining the present South Vietnamese Government in power, if we recognize and take actions to redress and correct any of the foregoing points.

Townsend Hoopes

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I am going to Asia for two weeks on October 10 and would put myself at your convenience between now and then. If this is not feasible, perhaps we could meet immediately after the election. Meanwhile, I offer you some light reading on the strategic nuclear equation. Perhaps the most significant lines of argument relate to the limited diplomatic leverage provided by nuclear striking power (pages 10-11), and the limited utility of the ABM (pages 16-18).

You have, as ever, my highest esteem.

Enclosure

REMARKS BY
HONORABLE TOWNSEND HOOPES
UNDER SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE
COMMONWEALTH CLUB OF CALIFORNIA
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
SEPTEMBER 13, 1968

Strategic Forces and Related Issues

Speaking in this city just a year ago, Mr. Robert McNamara
reminded us not only that we live in an atomic age, but also
that every future age of man will be atomic. He said "if man
is to have a future at all, it will have to be a future over-
shadowed with the permanent possibility of thermonuclear
holocaust." This is a prospect which most of us would prefer
not to contemplate, yet the either-or choice is no longer ours;
there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. Our only
freedom on the question lies in facing the matter rationally
and realistically, and discussing lines of action that can be
taken to minimize the danger.

As we approach with cautious hope the prospect of official
talks with the Soviet Union, with regard to limiting offensive
and defensive strategic nuclear weapons, it may be timely to
restate the central facts and to place the major issues in
perspective.

As Mr. McNamara put it in that same San Francisco speech:
> "The cornerstone of our strategic policy continues to be to deter deliberate nuclear attack upon the United States or its allies by maintaining a highly reliable ability to inflict an unacceptable degree of damage upon any single aggressor, or combination of aggressors, at any time during the course of a strategic nuclear exchange--even after our absorbing a surprise first strike. This can be defined as our assured destruction capability. This is the very essence of the whole deterrence concept."

To this end we maintain large and strong strategic forces, comprising a judicious mix of missiles and manned bombers: 1,000 MINUTEMAN and 54 TITAN missile launchers carefully protected below ground; 41 POLARIS submarines carrying 656 missiles, with the majority of these hidden beneath the seas at all times; and over 600 strategic bombers, approximately 40% of which are always in a high state of alert (by which we mean that they will be airborne in 15 minutes after the order to go). At present, the bomber force is composed of B-52s and a few B-58s. All of the B-58s and about half of the B-52s will be replaced by the bomber version of the F-111 beginning in 1970.

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These forces provide effective deterrence because they can assure the destruction of our potential adversaries. We define "assured destruction" as the ability to destroy 20%-25% of the Soviet population and 50% of its industry after absorbing a first strike on our own forces, our own headquarters, our own cities. But given the wide range of uncertainties inherent in the equation, we make our calculations on very conservative premises and thus build forces whose capabilities give us in fact a greater margin of destructive power. At the present time, we estimate that we could eliminate over **two-fifths** of the Soviet population after absorbing a first strike, and it is possible that the damage would actually be greater knowing, as we do, that powerful, near-simultaneous blows rained upon a highly interrelated society would be likely to cause multiplying catastrophes.

We thus continue to maintain such strong strategic forces that no aggressor could hope to gain any advantage by initiating strategic war. And given our effective intelligence gathering, the realities of Soviet leadtime from technological breakthrough to operational readiness, and the strength, diversity and resilience of our technology and industry, there is no doubt of our capability to maintain this relative position, irrespective

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of what the Soviets or others might do to improve their own
offensive and defensive strengths.

There is of course some difficulty in predicting far in advance just what kind of forces will be necessary to deter under a variety of possible future conditions. But given the uncertainties, we strive to maintain a posture that will appear self-evidently unassailable to rational men. Maintaining nuclear deterrence is, in a real sense, an exercise in persuasion, for success rests ultimately on a state of mind--that is to say, on a calculation by our potential adversaries that an attack on the United States would be suicidal, that an attack on the United States would bring on a reprisal so powerful that, in the aftermath, their society could no longer expect to exist in a meaningful 20th Century sense. I would like to explain how we address this problem of retaining demonstrable deterrence.

In the continuing task of determining the optimum composition of our strategic forces, we study available information in an effort to discern trends in Soviet strategic developments. We are aggressive in basic research because this is a means of maintaining our world leadership in technology. Good research gives us a high probability of being the first to discover any major new concept in strategic weaponry, and makes it more likely

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that we can quickly offset any particular advance that others
may make. Our research efforts uncover relevant possibilities,
a few of which we convert into development projects; these in
turn provide a basis for a range of possible new weapons, or
of improvements to existing weapons. We select for actual pro-
curement and deployment only those systems that show great promise
of improving our forces.

It is, I am sure, apparent that much here depends on
calculations of what is scientifically feasible within a given
time frame, on interpretation of intelligence data, and on
judgments of the adversary's psychology. This is a situation
which imposes unprecedented burdens on the skill and judgment
of both technical analysts and policy-makers.

We are continuously refining and upgrading our existing
deterrent forces in response to new technological developments
and to what we see as changes in the threat. Our weapon improve-
ments would relate to items such as missile warheads, devices
for penetrating defenses (like decoys and chaff clouds designed
to mislead enemy radars), and stand-off missiles that can be
fired by bombers outside the range of city defenses. They also
would include harder, stronger silos for land-based missiles,

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wider dispersal for the bomber force, greater speed for missile-
carrying submarines, better and longer-range radar coverage,
improved interceptor aircraft, and possibly local anti-missile
defenses for our strategic forces.

A point of underlying importance is that strategic weapons
(like the MINUTEMAN and POLARIS missile systems, for example)
are so complicated that it takes a long time after their initial
deployment before all of the reliability wrinkles are ironed out.
For this reason, it is often sounder, in both financial and
military terms, to go on improving and refining a good basic
system, than to jump into an entirely new system. Given the pace
of technological change, this method of incremental improvement
is not always and everywhere possible, but it has a good deal
to commend it.

The posture I have just described is designed to ensure a
secure _second strike_ capability through the maintenance of
relatively large, highly diversified, very modern retaliatory
forces. It represents a considered middle position in the
spectrum of possible US strategic force postures, and it thus
raises legitimate questions from advocates of both greater and
smaller force postures. A number of experienced veterans of the

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Cold War claim we are lagging behind in strategic weapons
development and will be risking attack upon the United States
unless we greatly enlarge our own striking power. Other equally
thoughtful and concerned people believe we are already possessed
of "overkill," that we are indeed the victims of a relentless
weapons culture which buys more bombs than we need.

As usual, the extreme positions have attractive aspects.
It would be comforting to know that we could enjoy decisive
nuclear dominance in the world, and thus total security, merely
by enlarging and improving our strategic forces; on the other
hand, it would be soothing to our nerves and satisfying to our
sense of the ideal ratio of expenditure between arms and education,
for example, if safety could be found in the maintenance of a
very small strategic force.

Let me try to deal briefly with each of these seemingly
plausible propositions, taking the latter first. The critical
fallacy of a very small deterrent force--say, a few large
missiles, 50 bombers, and a few POLARIS submarines--lies in
the truth of the maxim that "there is safety in numbers."
Individual bombers **can** be destroyed on the ground; individual
missiles **can** be destroyed before launch if the enemy attacks
each one with several large missiles of his own; and both our

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bomber and missile force <u>would</u> be subject to attrition by
defensive systems encountered on the way to the target. When
we conclude with great certainty that our retaliatory forces
could ride out an attack and still respond with lethal con-
sequences for the attacker, that judgment rests heavily on the
fact that our forces are so large, diversified, and well dispersed
that even the largest enemy attack <u>under the worst circumstances</u>
<u>for us</u> could not cripple them.

We could not make such a judgment if we had a much smaller,
simpler force. A minimum strategic posture would seriously erode
our confidence in our ability to deter; moreover, it would almost
certainly invite a major adversary to develop a first strike capa-
bility against us--both because it would seem feasible and because,\-once achieved, such a capability could be used as an instrument
of political blackmail even if a bomb were never dropped.

Numbers, diversity, a large enough critical mass are thus
vital factors in effective deterrence today and will remain so
for years to come, even if we can reach highly desirable agree-
ments with the Soviet Union and other powers to arrest the
further upward movement of strategic arms. But if this is true,
why isn't it wise, by logical extension, to go on enlarging
and improving our strategic forces until we achieve clear nuclear

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dominance--by which I mean an ability to strike with impunity or relative impunity at any other nation?

There are three answers. The flattest, most certain one is that such a first strike capability is an illusion. I explained a few moments ago why we were sure we could respond to any Soviet development in such a way as never to lose our second strike, assured destruction hitting power. We must acknowledge quite simply that the Soviets are in a similar position. They too have today the necessary intelligence, technology, and productive resources to maintain lethal second strike power, even in the face of a major effort to build a first strike capability against them.

The second reason relates to the democratic character of American society and to our moral purposes in the world. In the broadest sense, the fundamental goal of US foreign policy since 1945 has been to bring into being a new framework of world order to replace the old one so thoroughly smashed by the Second World War. To that end we have been laboring now for 23 years, through the United Nations, NATO, the Agency for International Development, the World Bank and a hundred other institutions composed of earnest and concerned people. With a combination of firm resistance, selective counterforce, and sustained

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restraint, we have contained the outward thrust of communism
and thereby altered both its external prospects and its internal
attitudes. We have rendered decisive assistance to the restora-
tion of European strength and self-confidence, and we have
helped to absorb the passions and disorder in underdeveloped
areas unleashed by the ending of the colonial period.

These years have been arduous--years of strain and relentless
demand on our strength, steadiness and patience; but viewed in
perspective they have been years of relative success: mankind
has been preserved from the awful tragedy of thermonuclear war,
and the areas of freedom around the world have been greatly
enlarged. If the US were now to attempt development of a first
strike capability, it would raise deep fears throughout the world;
many would see our vast power as incapable of restraint; our
decision would stimulate to second thoughts all the nuclear-
capable nations whose outright renunciation of nuclear weapons we
are seeking through the Nonproliferation Treaty; we would find
ourselves engaged in a new arms race of enormous proportions,
without any visible point of termination, and without hope of
achieving the clear-cut dominance we presumably sought.

There is a third reason why we should not pursue unlimited
nuclear power. It lies in the fact--a crowning irony of our era--

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that vast nuclear striking power does not, in and of itself,
provide significant diplomatic leverage. This is a truth which
has been repeatedly demonstrated in the Cold War struggles of
the last quarter century. The challenge to Greece and Turkey
in 1947, the Berlin blockades of 1948 and 1961, the attack on
Korea of 1950, the Lebanon Crisis of 1958, the confrontation
in the Formosan Straits that same year, the Cuban missile crisis
of 1962, and the US decision to intervene in Vietnam--all of
these events possessed two common denominators: first, an
American realization that general nuclear superiority did not
provide effective leverage in a local situation; and second,
the American instinct to find a *firm* response which nevertheless
did the least violence to the delicate fabric of world peace.

The Cuban confrontation has frequently been interpreted as
a conclusive victory for US nuclear superiority, but that is not
the whole story. If we play out the scenario as it might have
unfolded had the Soviets refused to remove the missiles from
Cuba, we see the operative relationship between strategic nuclear
and conventional strength on both sides. This is what we find:
(1) for many reasons, we would *not* have attacked Russia with
nuclear weapons in the first instance; (2) it is far more likely

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(10)

that we would have gone into Cuba and neutralized the missiles
by conventional means; (3) the Soviets could not have directly
prevented this by conventional means; (4) they could have created
diversions in Berlin or elsewhere, but only at grave risk of
escalation; (5) they could have chosen to attack us with nuclear
weapons, but only if they had been willing to accept overwhelming
retaliation by superior US nuclear forces already arrayed in a
high state of readiness. As they thought their way step by step
along this perilous course, they concluded that the US possessed
clear-cut deterrent power at each of several levels of possible
armed conflict, and that they were checkmated.

Our nuclear power was thus only one of the several advantages accruing to us in that situation. Two others were of equal importance: the first was that Cuba, being located close to our borders, was intensely felt by us and acknowledged by the world to be a vital US interest; the second was our possession of overwhelming superiority in local conventional power. It was this combination of factors that permitted us to surmount an acute crisis and that taught both ourselves and the Soviets a profound lesson in the dangers of confrontation between two heavily armed nuclear powers.

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(c)

For these three reasons, the US view of appropriate strategic forces has come to rest on a considered middle ground. As we see the situation, it is the underlying condition of mutual capability and mutual vulnerability that gives both sides the strongest possible motive to avoid nuclear war, to move toward agreements and understandings that will arrest the buildup and then, having stabilized the relationship, to move toward carefully considered reductions on both sides.

The basic condition of mutual jeopardy also makes the concept of "superiority" far from a simple matter. The Soviets, for example, now have about 720 operational land-based intercontinental missile launchers, and their gradual buildup continues. They have over 100 submarine-based ballistic missile launchers, about 150 heavy bombers and a much larger medium bomber force. They have deployed a small defensive anti-missile system around Moscow and they maintain large anti-bomber defenses. They can claim superiority in gross megatonnage (or payload) and are approaching parity in the number of land-based ICBMs. We on the other hand can claim a _marked_ _superiority_ in long-range bombers, in submarine-launched missiles, in devices for penetrating missile defenses, and in missile accuracy. Precisely because the two

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opposing force structures are not symmetrical, it is difficult
to compare them in meaningful detail.

We believe however that, if the Soviets should ever make
the mistake of attacking us, thus forcing a nuclear exchange,
the ratios of surviving population and industry would be in our
favor. This is probably the most meaningful measure of nuclear
"superiority" today, but I emphasize the point that its practical
benefits are heavily constrained by the central brute fact that
neither side would be likely to survive such an exchange in
recognizable form.

The Cuban confrontation was a kind of watershed in US-Soviet
relations, sobering to both sides. Out of its lessons, President
Kennedy was able to fashion the Limited Test Ban Treaty of August
1963. President Johnson's serious pursuit of this same goal of
useful limited agreements with the Soviet Union has achieved both
the Space Treaty (which prohibits weapons in outer space) and the
Nonproliferation Treaty which 78 nations have now signed. It is,
I believe, correct to view any talks on strategic arms limitations
as a new opportunity to make another important advance along the
road to stabilizing what has been called the "delicate balance of
terror." This must be an unceasing effort.

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For it is fundamental to an understanding of the strategic equation to be clear that the nuclear arms race involves a dynamic interaction. The Soviet Union and the United States mutually influence each other's strategic plans and force deployments; the actions of one side definitely trigger reactions on the other side. This means that, in the absence of explicit agreements or tacit understandings, there is a dynamic at work which propels both sides toward ever larger and more powerful forces.

The US, for example, embarked upon a substantial buildup of its intercontinental missile force in 1961, in the light of Soviet missile and space achievements and of the knowledge that the USSR possessed the technological and industrial capacity to enlarge its arsenal very substantially in the years ahead. As it happened, the Soviets did subsequently deploy significant numbers of ICBMs with large payload, and a greater number of medium range missiles. Since we could not be certain of Soviet intentions, we adopted the prudent course of undertaking a responsive deployment of MINUTEMAN and POLARIS forces. The Soviets have continued to increase their offensive forces, and we should accept a Soviet desire to surpass us as a possibility; nevertheless we must, I think, acknowledge that Soviet actions have been in part

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a reaction to our own. Our intention has been to assure that
the Soviets would not in fact outdistance us. Their intention
may have been quite similar. This is the painful crux of the
action-reaction phenomenon.

We would hope to have an opportunity, in any new talks that
may now take place, to end or greatly to modify this state of
affairs which makes both parties victims of a dynamic that works
against the interests of them both. We cannot be certain as to all
of the reasons why the Soviets accepted the offer to discuss
strategic arms limitations, but one or two may be suggested.

They may at last have perceived the dynamic relationship
between offensive and defensive developments; that is, they may
have recognized that, if they were to build a large-scale defensive
anti-missile system, it would not buy them protection, for the
United States could overcome its theoretical benefits by further
improving or expanding US _offensive_ forces. Accordingly, they
may have begun to see that billions spent on an ABM system would
be billions lost to more productive allocations.

We have essentially the same perception of a large-scale
defensive missile system: namely, that it is unlikely to buy us
any real security against the Soviet Union. Were we to deploy a

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"heavy" ABM system throughout the United States, the Soviets would be motivated to increase their offensive striking power. There is no doubt of their ability to do so in a way that could largely cancel out our new defensive advantage. It is therefore futile, as Mr. McNamara suggested, for the two parties to spend "$4 billion, $40 billion or $400 billion if at the end of all the spending, all the deployment, and all the effort, we were both relatively at the same point of balance on the security scale as now."

I stress the point that, in military terms, the most effective counter to a large-scale defensive anti-missile system is an improvement or expansion of _offensive_ capacity--and that the offense can regain the upper hand at lesser cost than is involved in developing the defense. This is important to remember because there are those, including some who should know better, who make the argument that if the Soviets should deploy a great number of anti-missile missiles, our logical counter would be to build a similar system.

The essence of a stable agreement on arms limitation reached today or soon will be the certainty and visibility of assured destruction striking power on both sides. Broadly speaking, the

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requisite condition of mutual deterrence exists today, and the
task of negotiators on both sides will accordingly be to build
constructively upon it. At the heart of the matter is the need
to recognize that any serious move by one side to build a "heavy"
defensive anti-missile system in an effort to evade or remove
the other side's assured destruction capability would be
destabilizing, and could lead quickly to emasculation of the
agreement through a renewal of the compulsive action-reaction
phenomenon.

The world has now lived with nuclear power for just under
a quarter century, and there are grounds for the statement that
those who have borne the responsibility of its possession have
learned caution. Fanatics in both camps, whether Kremlin hard-
liners or the superhawks of our own aviary, may still insist on
total victory in the ideological crusades of our day, but responsible
political leaders know better. Presidents Truman, Eisenhower,
Kennedy and Johnson have all summed up in one way or another
the truth that "there is no alternative to strategic peace."
And Khrushchev in his famous eight-hour speech of 1961 said, "Is
there a madman or a clever man who could tell what would happen
after a nuclear war? It's stupid, stupid, stupid. Yet, there are

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people among communists who believe that war is good for
revolution. Those who call for war now should go to see a
psychiatrist." This evidence that leaders of great and heavily
armed nations understand and acknowledge the constraints imposed
by the immutable realities of their own power is, I submit, a
hopeful augury for mankind.

Recognizing that we do not yet know how Chinese policy will
be affected by the possession of nuclear striking power, and
acknowledging that the dangers of miscalculation are ever present,
I am optimist enough to believe that the odds are still very
good that the world is not going to blow itself up, that through
human wisdom and restraint the genie of atomic power can be
harnessed to the peaceful and constructive impulses of mankind.

Thank you.

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