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Finally, assuming that they do know what we are doing, and assuming
that they interpret it correctly, and assuming that our President has
confidence in what he is doing, and assuming that we then begin a slow war
of attrition, what makes us think that because this strategy is best for
us, it is also best for the Russians? What makes us assume, as Secretary
McNamara seems to assume, that it will also seem best to the Soviets to
hit military targets? If they remain numerically inferior to us, why
should they play our game? Why should they go after our missile sites?
It would be sheer folly; it would be the best way for them to exhaust
their force. In fact, if we were sure that this was what they were going
to do, I would put a lot of unprotected ATLAS's out in the open and let
them hit them. They would soon use up their strategic force, and after
that we would have won.

It seems to me that if the Russians did engage in a controlled
response the only way they could keep from losing would be to shock us
into stopping. This would require them to hit something of great value to
us, but not quite of such decisive value as to make us feel that we have
nothing more to lose. It would be much more likely in such a situation
that the Soviet Union would hit, say, Albuquerque or Duluth, or some
other medium-sized American town located in an area where collateral
damage would be relatively small, and then offer to stop if we stop. The
one thing I am reasonably sure of that they would not do is engage in a
tit-for-tat hitting of military targets.

Let me repeat: it is, of course, an asset to us to have a capability
for flexible response. One never knows when it may come in handy. It was,
for example, a great comfort to us during the Cuban crisis last year. But
a flexible, complicated, very esoteric strategy for us does not preclude

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that some other kind of strategy may be useful for somebody else. Our tendency in talking about the British and French nuclear forces is to argue that their forces cannot withstand a surprise attack, that they cannot wipe out the Soviet retaliatory force, and so on.

Such analyses, however, are based on the assumption that these forces exist in a vacuum. Looking at the problem from the Soviet point of view, could the Soviets really launch an attack on the British or French retaliatory forces without running a very heavy risk of American retaliation? Could we really afford to let the Russians destroy every French airport without retaliating? In short, the retaliatory forces of other countries do not have to be as well protected as our own. (This holds true even for parts of the same force. If you have a large force, all parts of it do not need to be equally invulnerable so long as you have one invulnerable part in which you have great confidence. It becomes very risky for the opponent to attack the vulnerable parts for fear of triggering the whole thing.) It is true that the British and French could not take out the Soviet retaliatory force, but they would not be trying to do that.

Again, the Soviets would have to determine the risk to them of having a few nuclear weapons exploded on their territory. The example I gave of the shock to the United States of, let's say, an attack on Albuquerque indicates the kind of shock the Soviets might get if one or two British or French nuclear weapons exploded on their territory. It would not be something that they could afford very easily. Whether this would be the best use of British and French resources in terms of the whole complex of NATO strategy is a different question, but I think we have overstated our case by trying to demonstrate to the Europeans that their national nuclear forces would have no significance whatever.

[L.C]

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As far as its psychological impact is concerned, the insistent United
States argument that cities have to be spared under almost all circum-
stances, has given some of our allies an enormous feeling of insecurity.
It makes them feel that the Soviets can always put us in the position of
not being able to use our strategy merely by threatening to attack our
cities. If it is really true that cities are the pre-eminently valuable
asset that we are trying to protect, then Europeans fear that circumstances
can arise in which this desire overrides all other considerations.

Now let me say a word about the conventional force argument, both
about its intrinsic merit and about its political impact, and then at last
I will get on to discussing strategic weapons.

We might be able to implement a purely conventional defense of Europe
under very fortunate circumstances. But a special case should not become
the chief focus of our strategy. I favor an improvement in the conventional
capabilities of the forces now in Europe, or even a numerical increase --
if the Europeans are willing. As my friend Bernard Brodie has argued,
a free good does not have to be examined for its utility. But if we ask
what these divisions are going to do, or how much American prestige ought
to be invested in building them up, then my doubts multiply. First of all,
I cannot conceive by what reasoning the Soviets would launch a full-scale
conventional attack against Western Europe without using nuclear weapons,
for we have said repeatedly that we would not accept a conventional defeat
in Western Europe.

If the Russians attack they would undoubtedly assume that they would
win. They would then have to assume that we would use nuclear weapons at

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some point and they would have to protect against that threat. This means taking out at least our nuclear establishment in Europe. I do not believe that the Soviets would launch a full-scale conventional attack without counting on a nuclear response. So the hypothesis of a full-scale conventional Soviet attack on Europe seems to me extremely unlikely.

Now there are people who say that if you have 30 divisions, the Russians will not think they can win and therefore will not attack, whereas if you have less than 30, they will think they can win and will attack. This may be true. On the other hand if the Soviets became convinced that we plan a full-scale conventional defense in Europe, we may increase deterrence in Europe, but will diminish it in Greece, Turkey, Iran, and elsewhere. For, if we are not going to use nuclear weapons in the defense of Western Europe how are we going to convince the Soviets that we will use them in other areas which we cannot defend by conventional means? In that case, the sensible Soviet strategy would be, not to attack Western Europe, but to attack somewhere else. Going from 22 to 30 divisions would give us a marginal increase in our capability, but the increase in capability would not be in proportion to our investment of prestige.

Moreover, when we talk of 30 conventional divisions in Europe, we are apt to fall into the fallacy of simply adding numbers. The divisions in Europe are not uniformly equipped. Many of them are mere paper divisions. It is simply not correct to assume that 30 divisions in Europe are equivalent to 30 American divisions or even 30 British or French divisions. Each has its own chain of command, each its own logistic system.

In addition, their present deployment is not very good. The best unit, the American Army, is in the south, which is strategically the least

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important area. The least dense deployment is in the north, which is
strategically the most important area. There are many plans to shift things
around in case of an attack. But once a Soviet attack started, German
refugees would be on the roads and it would not be so easy to move five
divisions to some of the positions that people are now talking about. The
fog of war would be very heavy.

Thirdly, I do not believe the 3 to 1 ratio that is always mentioned. I
do not believe that 30 Western Divisions could stop 90 Soviet Divisions.
In military history the 3 to 1 ratio has never applied all along the front;
it applies only at the point where you want to break through. The Germans
broke through in the Ardennes when we had a 5 to 1 superiority in manpower
all along the front. They defeated the French in 1940 despite an inferiority
in manpower and even in number of tanks, merely by concentrating their units
at the point where they wanted to break through.

Finally, I am dubious about the argument that the Russians are going
to try to take Hamburg, and that, if we have 30 divisions, we are going to
put some in front of Hamburg. By what reasoning would the Russians take
Hamburg? What could possibly move them to run the fantastic risk of nuclear
war merely to get Hamburg or Hanover or any German city? But if that's what
they wanted to do, we shouldn't kid ourselves that we could stop them by
putting three divisions in front of Hamburg, because at will they could
increase the size of their attack from five to eight divisions. I do not
believe either that we would be able to defend Hamburg or that it would be
wise for us to try a major defense right at the frontier. Historically, units
have been trapped often when they try to defend a whole frontier. This is
how the Russians lost most of their army in 1941.

To conclude this part of my remarks, let me raise a psychological point.
In nuclear war we have a conceptual advantage over the Europeans; in con-

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ventional war we do not. For better or worse, they have fought plenty of
conventional wars in their history, and they just don't believe our argu-
ments. We may be right, but we haven't convinced the Europeans that a con-
ventional defense in Europe is possible, or that if possible, it is desirable.
They know that in a conventional war the fortunes of battle fluctuate.

All this has brought the nuclear issue in Europe to an acute head. On
the one hand the Europeans are worried about the doctrine of strategic
nuclear war, and on the other hand they are concerned with our doctrine of
conventional war and our downgrading of tactical nuclear weapons. If there
is a full-scale Soviet attack in Europe, the choice as to which weapons are
used will not be up to us. To an important extent, it will rather be up to the
Soviets. Therefore, it seems to me that we have no option but to prepare
ourselves for the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons. Knowing that we
are prepared for this gives the Soviets an incentive, in case of full-scale
attack, to be ready for it, too. So you have a built-in incentive of es-
calation towards tactical nuclear war. I don't believe that 30 divisions
are going to be able to hold the Soviets, and if they are not, we will have
to decide whether to use tactical nuclear weapons or strategic weapons. I
cannot be convinced that it is possible to fight a flexible general nuclear
war, but not a flexible tactical war. In a time of crisis, when communica-
tions may be disrupted, an opponent ought to comprehend better the intent
to use nuclear weapons in a limited zone in which an advance is being at-
tempted than he might comprehend their use in a general attack.

I have heard briefings which demonstrate that the NATO military es-
tablishment cannot survive a tactical nuclear war. These briefings never
touch on what is happening to the Soviet establishment during the same
tactical nuclear war. I would say two things about these briefings. First,

[L]

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if the NATO nuclear establishment is not capable of surviving a tactical
nuclear war, then the distribution of nuclear weapons in the world is very
odd; maybe we ought to revise it so as to make NATO able to survive.
Secondly, the survival of military units has not in the past been considered
the primary objective of warfare. If our units can't survive, maybe the
Soviet units can't survive either. In fact, I would say that it is quite
likely that they cannot. And if the Soviet units can't survive, that's,
after all, what we want: i.e., for the Soviets to stop military operations.

In order to talk the Europeans out of reliance on tactical nuclear war,
I have heard eloquent presentations from my friends at the RAND Corporation
and others explaining how many hundreds of millions would be killed in
Europe in a tactical nuclear war. Well, if we convince the Europeans of this,
they may surrender because the choice of whether or not there is to be a
tactical nuclear war is not up to us. If the Europeans become convinced
that nuclear war is the worst possible contingency, then all the Russians
have to do in order to win is threaten nuclear war. We could have 50 con-
ventional divisions there and it wouldn't change this particular fact.

We run the great risk of becoming so intent on selling a particular
theory that we lose sight of the policy that we want NATO to have over a
10-year period. As a matter of fact, we have no choice but to plan for a
posture in which we can fight a tactical nuclear war. If on top of that
we want to invest money in conventional forces, I am for it.

Now, let me say something about strategic weapons in Europe. It is be-
coming clear that whether we are right or wrong (and in many of our analyses
we are more right than the Europeans), we still have a serious political and
psychological problem. Our constant insistence that we are reliable, that
our interests are indivisible, betrays a certain lack of historical under-
standing. You and I know that we are the most reliable people in the world,

[L.C]

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but the Europeans obviously cannot consider us more reliable than they are themselves. And every European country remembers that at some point in its history it has let down allies when the chips were down. It is meaningless to say "your interests are our interests, your cities are our cities", because unforeseen things can happen in the actual decision-making process. What we really mean is, "if 30 Russian divisions cross the boundary you can count on us". And I think that if 30 Russian divisions crossed a border in Europe they could count on us. If five American divisions got engaged in battle we would not simply write them off. However, you can distinguish at least five different kinds of situations that would happen. There is ordinary diplomacy, the day-to-day exchange of communications between governments. There is crisis diplomacy, which involves clarifying what risks an aggressor is running and what risks the threatened country is incurring. You have the outbreak of a war and defining the *casus belli*. You have what is called intra-war deterrence; that is, how the war is to be fought: what targets are important and what kinds of destruction will not be accepted without escalation. And finally, you have the termination of the war.

It would be unrealistic for us to pretend that in all these situations our interests are always identical to those of the Europeans. We simply can't know what we think in some of them. For example, we can't know what we would think about the termination of a war in which nuclear weapons had gone off around the world. I don't think the President himself can know it. Daily we have demonstrations of how different the approaches of different countries can be, even in what would rate as ordinary diplomacy. After all, last week, Harriman and Hailsham were in Moscow and the French and the Germans were not in Moscow. British and American negotiators were in Moscow and the others were not because their countries possess nuclear weapons. From this sort of thing, one may draw the conclusion that the only way to participate in important diplomatic decisions is to have nuclear weapons.

-18-

Now, of course, we keep saying that we'll do nothing without consulting our allies. But anybody who has seen the flow of cables in Washington knows that once we have made a decision and have a tentative agreement with the Russians, it becomes an almost unbearable responsibility for any ally to reject it. Which German Chancellor, or which French President (other than DeGaulle), would have the nerve or the courage to say he would not go along with something to which the United States and the Soviet Union have already agreed?

Or take crisis diplomacy. It may be absolutely true that we are going to take everybody else's interests as seriously as we take our own. But the reaction of a threatened country will depend importantly on what it thinks we will do and on what the Russians think we will do. The Russians cannot be completely uninfluenced by the fact that they may trigger a retaliatory blow if they press a country too hard. And in the gray area of what threats may get made, and of what responses various countries may dare, something depends on what power various countries may think they have available.

The same pattern exists throughout the spectrum, including, at the outbreak of the war, what kinds of targets it is considered permissible to hit (that is, which are tactical and which strategic). All of this seems to me to be influenced in part by the strategic balances that various countries or regions can establish. This being so, is it really in our interests to pretend that strategy around the world is indivisible? That our interests and the Europeans' can never diverge? If we look at the possibilities 5 to 10 years from now, it is not in our interests to pretend that, because in recompense for the veto we now insist on having over European strategy, the Europeans may one day insist on a veto over our strategy.

-19-

One of the formulae often advanced is that the Europeans give up
their nuclear weapons in return for the right of consultation in Washington
and the right of participation in SAC targeting. But we should look ahead to
the crises that this country is likely to face. We are certain in the next
15 years to have a major crisis with Communist China and we are likely to
have crises with Latin America and in the Middle East. And in none of these
areas, except the Middle East, can we count on European support. If we now
create a structure of generalized vetoes, we are likely to be paralyzed later
in some areas which are of prime interest to the security of the world, but
in which the Europeans, for a number of reasons, no longer have any interest.

Is it really to our interest, if we do get into a war with China, to
involve the Europeans in it and thereby give the Russians a front on which
they can exercise blackmail? I do not think it is correct or desirable for
us to maintain that allied strategy is indivisible and that the interests
of all the NATO countries always run parallel. Moreover, when we say that
the Europeans should have the right of consultation with us, what are we
really talking about? As far as consultation in the targeting of SAC is
concerned, I have no objection. But let's not kid ourselves. Actually, the
Europeans have little contribution to make to that problem.

Military consultation is only the tip of the iceberg. How about
political consultation? What are we really prepared to allow them in the
policial area? Will they have the influence of the JCS, or the influence of
the ACDA, or merely the influence of the Fish and Wildlife Service? Everybody
in Washington knows that the Defense Department has great influence, and that
the ACDA has next to none except on disarmament plans (and even there, I think,
the Defense Department has more influence). By the same token, the Defense
Department very often has more influence than the State Department. The reason