3

torn by the problem of whether it really represented a
necessity to accumulate additional strength or whether it
was a device to guarantee the automaticity of the American
nuclear response. Even during the period of unquestioning
American nuclear superiority, our allies insisted on an
American military establishment on the continent, because
to put it crudely, they wanted to have a trigger that deprived
the American political leadership of any effective choice.
So in the 1950s, when there was no reason to believe that
Europe should be defended locally, there grew up a substantial
American military establishment on the continent, whose primary
purpose was political. On the other hand, one could not
ask for a large American military establishment on the continent
without having a European contribution. And this led to the
classical pattern of NATO. The Europeans had an incentive
to contribute forces large enough to give us an incentive
to keep our triggering forces on the continent but not so large
as to give us an alternative to a nuclear response. And therefore
from the earliest days of NATO, any attempt to give the NATO
forces on the continent a military significance in terms of
the defense of Europe has run up against political resistance,
because it was perceived by our allies as weakening the joint
defense. In this respect, NATO has been an unprecedented alliance,
in which the proposal to add to the joint strength on the continent
were interpreted as weakening the overall capacity for resistance.
Our allies were convinced that if we had an option other than

4

general nuclear wars, we could take it and therefore sub-
consciously and consciously most of the NATO debates in the
last twenty years or so have founded on the dilemma that
there has been no consensus about the nature of the military
establishment on the continent and the debate has been
all the more intractable because neither side could ever
say what it really had in mind. And when I attempted to say
what I thought was fairly obvious in Brussels a few years
ago, which is, that under conditions of large nuclear stock-
piles on both sides the readiness to go to general nuclear
war had a different significance than it had in the late 1940s--
a fact which I take to be self evident, and which we cannot
avoid by denying its reality. I was accused of undermining
nuclear
confidence in the American/guarantee. I will not repeat
the arguments I made at that time, which I know are indelibly
imprinted in your minds. But I simply want to repeat the
guarantee
fundamental point as an unsolved question. Nuclear/of what?
With what strategy? With what purposes? To what ends?
Carried out against what targets? Triggered by what actions?
Unless we can answer these questions to ourselves with some
conviction, we will continue to face what are becoming two
of the fundamentally wearisome trends in the alliance. On the
one hand, a conviction that the threat has become so over-
whelming that the alliance is no longer a protection because
the individual countries are impudent to accept its fate and
because nothing could be worse than the consequences of war.

5

Or that the threat has become so ambiguous, has shifted into
so many other fields that it can be dealt with psychiatrically
by massive demonstrations of good will, so that the alliance
is no longer necessary, or is defended as an instrument of
detente which if it has an operational meaning is absurb.
I can accept the argument that a strong alliance contributes
to peace, but I cannot accept the proposition that the alliance
is itself a political instrument for detente. Now let me
therefore emphasize, once again, that in the military field,
it is absolutely imperative that we face the facts of life.
That we have to get our military purposes straight. I do not
believe that general nuclear war with the present weapons
and present targetting system can be an answer to every challenge.
I do not believe that NATO can survive in its present form if
that remains its military doctrine. I do not understand the
arguments which say on the one hand, there is a nuclear balance,
there must be TNF negotiations to achieve a local balance.
But that below that threshhold, we must not attempt to achieve
equilibrium. The objective tendency of modern weapons--of
nuclear weapons--is towards political equilibrium in the sense
that the risks for statesmen will look increasingly out of
proportion to the cause in many forseeable circumstances, not
in all, but in many. The stated purpose of every arms control
negotiation by those who accept SALT as well as those who
criticize particular SALT agreements is also towards equilibrium.

6

The debate within the United States has not taken the form
of attacking the desirability of SALT except that the margins
it has been whether SALT II adequately achieves a military
balance. But however you define military balance, and what-
ever the final outcome of SALT and TNF negotiations, their
stated purpose is some form of defined parody under those
conditions. How is it possible not to have some equilibrium
in conventional forces? Or conversely, how can we avoid
catastrophes without building some equilibrium in conventional
forces. Maybe there is an answer to that question. In that
case, let us give it to ourselves. But I do not see with
the forces that are now forseeable in the decade of the '80s
how that question can be indefinitely avoided. And if that
question is begged, if therefore the alliance has no military
rationale, then the creeping conceptual crisis with which it
is now afflicted will get worse and worse. Some allies will
deny that there is a threat. Other allies will insist that
there is nothing that can be done about the threat. And yet
other allies will insist that they have a special key to
dealing with the threat, which is in the non military field.
So the issues that were raised theoretically in the '50s and
'60s about the implications of nuclear parody are now upon
us, unavoidably. It is not a way for the Untied States to
back out of its responsibilities. It is the only way for
the United States to implement its responsibilities. It
requires us to ask ourselves some very difficult questions.

7

If what the General mentioned last night, about the need for
equipping our army is correct, and I don't know the numbers
but it certainly is true that there is this necessity--I do not
believe we can do it with a volunteer force, indeed I don't
think we can morally do it with a volunteer force even if it
were practically possible. And I think our European allies
have to face the fact that the alliance is now returning to
more classical proportions. That is to say only by the joint
efforts of all countries can the defense of Europe be accomplished.
And that the contributions of our allies is not as a guarantee
of our nuclear response, but in terms of a defense of the area,
though there is obviously some point at which the threat of
so nuclear war becomes overwhelming and the challenge becomes so
great that the threat of nuclear war must be involved. Now
I have stated more or less the same argument in 1978, or
whenever the last conference was, '79, and then Hal Sonnenfeldt
then ran around for two days saying I didn't mean it, and
that I was misunderstood and I'm sure that there are many of
friends in this room who will tranquilize you all and say that
I get carried away by groups of Europeans who know I really
don't mean what I say, but if I'm wrong I hope somebody during
the course of this conference states a strategic alternative
and tells us exactly what we are suppose to do in foreseeable
crisis.

Now let me now go on to two other problems, which I did
not address at that time. Now I would like in connection
with military defense to make one other point, and it is this.

8

_______ Simonet yesterday said, we shouldn't be threatening
the Europeans with withdrawing forces from Europe unless they
met a three percent goal. I agree, incidentally, that we
shouldn't state a goal in percentage terms--nobody knows what
the base line is. I have seen too many percentage goals stated
in which then the percentage was fullfilled by doing all the
things that countries were going to do anyway by lowering the
baseline by making allowances for inflation. I think percentage
increases are not the way to deal with this. The way to deal
with this problem is to develop an agreed strategy and an
agreed number of forces, and then measure our success or failure
by these forces: When I was in office, I tried to get out of
our Pentagon, if the General will forgive me, a statement--
theoretically we are suppose to have 90 days of supplies in
Europe--I tried to find/the answer to two questions. One was
what is the minimum critical item that we have in Europe, because
we are not going to be fighting with average supplies, we
are going to be fighting with actual supplies. And secondly
I tried to get a clear statement of the various consumption
rates of the alliances. I never could get an answer to the
first question from which I assume it is too horrifying, or
it was then too horrifying to communicate to the White House.
I could get an answer, finally, to the second question after
several years of badgering, and it was clear that the consumption
rates are not standardized, that what we consider 90 days is
56 days for the Germans, 14 days for the British--that was
the case four years ago, and I don't know what has happened

9

since. But all it indicates is that there has not been a
conclusive effort to develop a coherent strategy. But let
me get to the final point I want to make about military
strategy, which is this. In the light of the global responsibilities
that are rushing in upon us, it will not be possible in my
judgement, and I'm speaking for myself and there are many
members of transition teams here that will rush to tell you
that I represent nobody else, that it will not be possible
for an indefinite period of time to keep large American ground
forces in Europe with no stated military purpose while there
are other areas in the world of nearly equal vital importance,
which have no American ground forces. This is not a threat.
This is a reality. It cannot go on that our largest military
contingence in an area in which we can describe to them
no precise military function, while there are other areas for
precise
which you can describe/military functions have practically
no American ground forces. This is a fact of life, which a
friend has to tell our European allies not as a threat. This
is something that we must face in the next four years, and
it won't be hard to get me to disavow it if anybody is uneasy
about what I'm saying.

Now this gets me to my second point, which is: the
relationship of the political to the military objectives of
the alliance. As long as one conceives the threat to be
a Hitlarian attack by large military forces across well defined

10

national frontiers in largely military terms. There is no problem, because the attack will define its own necessities. But if we are in a geopolitical contest of indefinite duration in which we confront an opponent who will not launch a large scale attack against the most heavily defended area, but seeks to erode the international equilibrium by ambiguous threats, by peripheral attacks, and by the demoralization of the members of the alliance by creating a sense of irresitability of the forces he is supporting. Then it is absolutely imperative that some political agreement be reached on the nature of the threat, the division of roles in meeting the threat or on how the threat should be met on a joint basis. It is not supportable in the long run that all allies, including us, insist that they have their own perception of how to deal either with problems in Third World areas, such as the Persian Gulf, or in East-West relations, and expect that the alliance can remain operationally cohesive. This doesn't mean that every area must be defended jointly by every ally. But it does mean that there has to be some agreement as to what the danger is, and how we are going to deal with it. Why is it that the Persian Gulf is assigned to the United States for its exclusive defense when Europe is infinitely more dependent on Persian Gulf oil than the United States is. And when our interest in it is partly derivitive because the control of the Persian Gulf by hostile forces would lead to the blackmailing of other industrial democracies long before it

11

leads to our blackmailing. Now I'm actually less concerned
with how the Persian Gulf area is defended at this particular
moment than I am about the joint perception of what is at
stake. Is it an Arab-Israeli problem primarily to be solved
by bringing pressure on west bank negotiations? Is it that
some countries are radical because we have disappointed them
and they can therefore be placated by forthcoming policies of
various nations? Is it a Soviet threat? Or is it a combination
of all of these factors? For the better part of the period
since the first oil price rise in 1973, it has been next to
impossible to get joint consumer actions that had a confrontational
character. The only joint consumer actions it was possible
to get were those by which we could ease the impact on each
other of decisions we were not prepared to challenge taking
by the oil producing nations. And every attempt, while I was
in office and I don't know whether many attempts were made
after that, but at any rate there has never been a serious
consideration to a joint western strategy in the Persian Gulf
area regardless of who carries it out. I don't believe that
that situation can be maintained. Nor can I accept the
proposition that in the Middle East in the Arab-Israeli negotiations,
there is an overwhelming need for a European position different
from ours in order to provide a fall back or a bridge or a
filling of the vacuum. Maybe our position is wrong. But I
do not understand how we can benefit each other by having
two or three different positions on a matter that will affect
the future evolution of the area, and how we can do anything

12

other
than to produce temptations to play off the various elements
of the alliance against each other. This gets me to one
other problem and then I will say a few words about East-
West relations and then subside.

The problem has to do with perceptions of the balance
of power. In classical periods, or in traditional diplomacy,
it was always understood that the balance of power changes
when it does more often through incremental adjustments than
through overwhelming transformation. The art of statesmanship
therefore has always been considered to resist marginal
adjustments at an early phase before the momentum became over-
whelming. If you look at the history of the last five years
from
at a minimum, and watch what has happened--/Angola to Ethiopia
the
to South Yemen to Afghanastan to collapse of Iran to the
creation of Libya as a major military base to Central America,
to the attacks on Morrocco--whether it has been part of an
overall design or whether it simply happened this way through
the momentum of events and through our own abdication is really
not so important. But the fact is that the United States,
largely for domestic reasons, and the alliance largely for because of a
refusal to face reality, has not been prepared to resist
seemingly marginal changes whose cumulative effect will neverthe-
less be disasterous. And yet this is exactly our problem
all over the world. The issue in the Middle East today is not
simply a negotiaton between Arabs and Israelis, but the relative
balance between moderate and radical forces throughout the
region, and I frankly do not believe that it can be restored
unless there is some conspicuous demonstration that there is

13

a limit to the radical challenge the West will tolerate.

The problem in Central America is the impact of these changes on countries like Mexico, Venezuela, and the idea that somehow the masochistic idea that somehow the United States has to deal with these trends by a masochistic admission of its past sins is only going to accelerate these trends. But equally the idea that the Europeans can create groups of fraternal parties that will have a special influence there and provide an alternative to us is probably even more dangerous there than it is in the Middle East.

Now let me say a few words about East-West relations and conclude. East-West relations have become extremely controversial in all of our countries. When the last Republican Administration came into office, it was widely accused of being excessively military stake, bellicose, and other bad things. It then confronted a profound split in our society on the issue of who was for peace and who was for war, which it attempted to deal with in its own way, which became highly controversial, and so it has in other countries of the alliance. Now the problem of East-West relations presents itself to me in the following way. We confront a nation in the Soviet Union, ideologically irreconcilably hostile, and insisting on that irreconcilable hostility. Second, it has always in theory, and in the last decade in practice pursued policies that objectively will undermine the global equilibrium, and which if pursued another five to ten years must lead not only to the erosion of all restraints, but to the gradual demoralization of all free societies. Third,

14

I also believe that as a historical phenomenon it is a society beset by contradictions and while today it faces us with a threat of potential hogemity, it does not seem to me absurb that by the year 2000 it will be the sick man of Europe. And maybe even before the dilemma of communist societies is that there is no role for the communist party paradoxically in developed communist societies so that they become super-numeraries like Buddhist monks in Tibid living on domestic and foreign vigilance but performing no other socially or productively useful function. Their economies are impossible to manage. Now we have the problem in all of our societies that we have to resist the geopolitical offensive. What has happened in the past five or more years cannot be permitted to continue. We also have to demonstrate to our own people that we are dedicated to peace. We have to resist Soviet aggressiveness, we have to leave open the possibility that either through changes in the Soviet system, or through weakening of Soviet potentials, or through the emergence of other powers that will become increasing counterweight, there are possibilities be for real negotiation. It will/argued that it is impossible to do all of this simultaneously. And that the attempt to do all of this simultaneously is bound to lead to the demoralization of our societies, and therefore in many countries choices are being made on one side of that dividing line or another.

In some countries, the argument is that detente defined in largely psychiatric terms is an end in itself. And that we can never give up contact with the Soviet Union, negotiations with the Soviet Union, and economic relations with the Soviet Union.

15

Union. In other countries there is a tendency to insist that confrontation is an end in itself. I tend to believe that we must find the solution in a willingness to confront, and a willingness to negotiate, that the answer to detente or to the problems of detente is not to deny that there is some necessity for it, but to give it some concrete operational content on which we can all agree. In this respect, I believe that the alliance since Afghanistan, that the conduct of the alliance since Afghanistan, has been close to scandalous. There is no inherent reason why Afghanistan is more of a threat to the United States than to Europe. It is even further away from the United States than it is from Europe. The fact of the matter was that for the first time, the Soviet Union used organized military forces to occupy a country that had not been a part of its sphere since the immediate post-war period. The Brezhnev doctrine was given an aggressive, and not simply a defensive connotation. Now we face the problem of Poland. Now we all think we are fairly clear about what we are going to do in case they go into Poland. But let me raise two questions. If they do not go into Poland do we pay them for not doing what they should never have threatened to begin with. Will we then be told that the Soviets have shown such exemplary restraint that we must now rush forward with some negotiating package. And if they do go in to Poland, and we take some measures with more or less good grace, I suspect rather less than more, how are we going to get out of this? Where will we be two years down that road? What is

16

of
our definition/how the condition of the occupation of Poland
will be ended; after every previous Soviet military move within
a year we were right back into the negotiations that had been
temporarily interrupted. I personally felt if we were going
to cancel something this year, it would have been more important
to cancel the European security conference than the Olympic
games. But I will not pursue that particular subject except
to say we have to know what penalties we want to impose. And
also we have to have some idea of what we will demand when we
have completed the periods of stress, if it is to be completed.
It has become fashionable to say that we must go back to
containment. I don't question that proposition. But if you
read the extensive literature of containment you will find
that first, you could argue that in the conditions of the
1940s it was really a time-wasting strategy. But leaving aside
that point, you will look in vain in the literature of containment
of the '40s and the early '50s for any definition of what we
will do when the magic moment had arrived, the position of
strength had been achieved, the Soviets would now be prepared
to negotiate on the basis of the position of strength. Then
what? What were we going to do? What were we going to ask?
What was our definition of a peaceful international environment
to which we wanted to hold the Soviet Union. This is something
we will have to settle in our own country, and it is something
we will have to settle with our allies. Somewhere in the
next decade there are bound to be negotiations with the

17

Soviet Union, to put it mildly. Even on arms control. What is it that we are trying to accomplish? What is the price we are willing to pay? As I said at the beginning, we cannot insist on balance in the nuclear field and not be willing to pay the price of increasing conventional forces. I, for one, have always believed in linkage. We are in danger of having arms control negotiations used as safety valves for aggressive political conduct. But having defined/desirability of linkage which means that there must be some understanding of what rules are permissable, we will have to define how to carry forward link negotiations, and above all, we should put an end to the debates in all of our countries in which SALT suddenly acquires symbolic quality. On the one hand people are saying any SALT agreement is desirable, and on the other are saying any SALT agreement is undesirable, and on the other hand, people/attacking any SALT agreement because they are afraid it will lower our guard. Now I have not given answers to many of the questions that are raised, and I have obviously talked for more than the 20 minutes assigned/ I would just like to conclude with one general observation. With all the difficulties that I have mentioned, with all the rifts in the alliance, with all the unfavorable trends that we confront, nobody from coming into this world and looking into the this world and looking at the relative capabilities and resources of the two sides would conclude that we cannot manage these difficulties. The long-term historical trends

18

in the communist world are infinitely more complicated than
ours. And as far as the United States is concerned, we have
for the first time in decades a government in which there is
unity between the executive and the legislative branches.
And in which the public has expressed itself that it wants an
end to American abdication, that it wants an end to American
flagelation, that it wants us to defend our purposes. Now
it is the role of leaders to give this operational meaning,
and having a mandate does not guarantee that it will be fullfilled.
But it does mean that we in America, however painful some of
the manifestations may be to those use to more traditional
patterns, we in America are now in a unique position to reassert
some definition of national interest, some leadership with
respect to common purposes, And I would urge our European friends
to look at that opportunity and not to get again into the
endless guerrilla war about specific manifestations of this
or that point. Because the fundamental purpose and necessity
of our alliance is to achieve a degree of common political
aims, and of a common military strategy, and that means that
the solution of our difficulties is largely in our own hands.