FOREIGN AFFAIRS

AN AMERICAN QUARTERLY REVIEW

APRIL 1955

<table><tr><td>The Atom Bomb and NATO</td><td>Paul-Henri Spaak</td></tr><tr><td>United States Foreign Policy and Formosa</td><td>Arthur Dean</td></tr><tr><td>How "New" is the Kremlin's New Line?</td><td>Philip E. Mosely</td></tr><tr><td>Germany Between East and West</td><td>Lord Strang</td></tr><tr><td>Japan Reconsiders</td><td>Lily Abegg</td></tr><tr><td>Military Policy and Defense of the "Grey Areas"</td><td>Henry A. Kissinger</td></tr><tr><td>The Future of Democracy in Latin America</td><td>Frank Tannenbaum</td></tr><tr><td>African Dilemmas</td><td>Cornelis W. de Kiewiet</td></tr><tr><td>British Party Programs: The Miracle and the Mirage</td><td>Thomas Balogh</td></tr><tr><td>Denmark's Creeping Crisis</td><td>Gunnar Leistikow</td></tr><tr><td>Report on Czechoslovakia</td><td>Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart</td></tr><tr><td>Tribulations of a Party Line:</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>The French Communists and Indo-China</td><td>Bernard B. Fall</td></tr><tr><td>Recent Books on International Relations</td><td>Henry L. Roberts</td></tr><tr><td>Source Material</td><td>Ruth Savord</td></tr></table>

HAMILTON FISH ARMSTRONG
*Editor*

Editorial Advisory Board

JOHN W. DAVIS
ALLEN W. DULLES
GEORGE F. KENNAN

WILLIAM L. LANGER
JOHN J. McCLOY

CHARLES H. MCILWAIN
PHILIP E. MOSELY
HENRY M. WRISTON

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Copyright 1955, Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
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# MILITARY POLICY AND DEFENSE OF THE "GREY AREAS"

By Henry A. Kissinger

It is surprising how little affected American strategic thinking has been by the fact that within just a few years the U.S.S.R. will have the capacity to deliver a powerful attack with nuclear weapons on the United States. To be sure, advocates of radical solutions propose to cut the Gordian knot by a policy of preventive war. But there has always been an air of unreality about a program so contrary to the sense of the country and the constitutional limits within which American foreign policy must be conducted. For the rest, there seems to be such general agreement about the main lines of American strategy that some of the recent transformations in our strategic position are rarely publicly debated.

Whether these postulates of American strategic thought are interpreted in Secretary Dulles' "massive retaliation" speech and subsequent article,¹ in Vice-President Nixon's reply to Adlai Stevenson of March 13, 1954, or in Mr. Finletter's lucid book, "Power and Policy,"² they amount to the assertion that the chief deterrent to Soviet aggression resides in United States nuclear superiority. The corollary is that the United States must not exhaust itself in a "war of attrition" in peripheral areas or keep in being a force so large as to drain our economy without adding to our effective strength on A-Day (the hypothetical date of the outbreak of nuclear war).³ Since only the threat of "massive retaliation" can deter Soviet aggression, major reliance must be placed on the development of our Strategic Air Force and on increasing the power of our nuclear arsenal. Since the Sino-Soviet bloc possesses interior lines of communication and is therefore able to choose the point of attack, we must not let them lure us into areas where we would be strategically at a disadvantage. Instead, we should inhibit aggression at its source by the threat of a general war. To be sure, there are some areas where we shall resist aggression on the ground, the NATO region for example, and for the defense of these it is considered that conventional

1 "Policy for Security and Peace," by John Foster Dulles, *Foreign Affairs*, April 1954.

2 Thomas K. Finletter, "Power and Policy." New York: Harcourt, 1954.

3 Finletter, *op. cit.*, p. 231.

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forces perhaps backed by nuclear weapons are essential. But in
the remainder of the world, the part which Mr. Finletter calls the
"grey areas," Sino-Soviet moves can be prevented only by the
threat of a general war. This in substance seems to be the ra-
tionale for our present military policy.

The argument is persuasive. It has the advantage of fitting in
with the historical experience of a nation which, for over a cen-
tury, felt secure from hostile attack. And it is reinforced by the
memory of the Korean conflict which has come to symbolize the
frustration experienced in waging peripheral wars. But one of a
nation's most difficult tasks is to interpret its past correctly. How-
ever efficacious the threat of a general war may have been during
the period of American nuclear monopoly or near-monopoly, it
takes on a different aspect when we consider the soon-to-be
atomic stalemate. And however costly the Korean war may have
been, it still may prove a better model for our future strategy
than an all-out atomic conflict. For the increasing Soviet nuclear
capability has transformed power relationships not only quanti-
tatively but qualitatively. While the United States enjoyed an
absolute atomic monopoly, even a small number of nuclear
weapons had a powerful deterrent effect. But as the Soviet capa-
bility to retaliate on American cities becomes imminent a new
dimension is added to the United States strategic problem. No
matter how vast our remaining margin in number and technologi-
cal refinement of the ultimate weapons, henceforth not only they
but we must fear them. In these circumstances a major or ex-
clusive reliance on general war as a deterrent to Sino-Soviet ag-
gression may come dangerously close to a Maginot mentality—
a belief in a strategy which may never be tested but which mean-
while prevents the consideration of any alternative. If we accept
an all-or-nothing military policy we may well find ourselves
paralyzed in the years ahead, when the increasing Soviet nuclear
capability undermines our willingness to run the risk of a general
war for anything less than to counter a direct attack on the
United States.

And it would seem the height of folly for the Soviet Union to
attack the United States directly and thereby unleash S.A.C. The
Soviets can achieve their ultimate goal, the neutralization of the
United States, at much less risk by gradually eroding the periph-
eral areas, which will imperceptibly shift the balance of power
against us without ever presenting us with a clear-cut challenge.

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DEFENSE OF THE "GREY AREAS"

3

It may be argued, of course, that they will not attempt to absorb the peripheral areas if it means the destruction of Moscow or Peking. But this is merely begging the principal question—whether as the Soviet supply of nuclear weapons grows, as well as the capacity to deliver them, nuclear war does not become a double-edged sword? The more fearful the weapons, the more risky their use. And the more risky their use, the more the Soviet strategic problem is reduced to presenting its challenges in such a manner that the pressures for solutions short of war will be maximized not only with our European allies but in this country also. If we refused to fight in Indo-China when the Soviet nuclear capability was relatively small because of the danger that a limited war might become general, we shall hardly be readier to risk nuclear bombing for the sake of Burma or Iran or even Jugoslavia. On the contrary, as Soviet nuclear strength increases, the number of areas that will seem worth the destruction of New York, Detroit or Chicago will steadily diminish.

There is no doubt that we must have a powerful nuclear arsenal and the best strategic air force, if only to discourage an attack on us. But the power of these should not blind us to their limitations as instruments of the cold war, particularly to the fact that exclusive reliance on them runs counter to a coalition policy even within the NATO area and that there must be a point beyond which development of them will yield diminishing returns. What will be the advantage of accumulating a greater store of fission weapons than would be necessary to destroy every Soviet manufacturing center? Or of improving them to the point where one bomb can destroy an average city twice over? Nor should we overlook that certain technological advances—the atomic submarine, for example—will add much less to our effective strategic strength than to that of the Sino-Soviet bloc. Thus for the first time in military history there is the possibility of a stalemate despite an absolute superiority in number of weapons and in technology; and when this point has been reached the American strategic problem is transformed. The Red Army may have been immobilized by the American atomic monopoly, but it may be liberated by the Soviet capacity to retaliate on Washington. It is argued by some that the atomic stalemate is nothing new, that it has in fact existed on the Eurasian continent since 1949. But this is surely not the same as saying that it has been part of the American consciousness since then, and this is the crucial factor

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in determining willingness to engage in a general war. The stalemate on the Eurasian continent has been maintained solely by the relative freedom of action of the United States. That is precisely why our nuclear arsenal is no better than our willingness to use it, and this is in danger of being reduced as the Soviet nuclear capacity grows.

An all-or-nothing military policy will also sap the vitality of our system of alliances. If we assert that nuclear weapons represent the only deterrents to Soviet aggression, one of two consequences becomes almost inevitable: either our Allies will feel that any military effort on their part is unnecessary, or they may be led to the conviction that peace is preferable to war almost at any price. With the end of the American monopoly of nuclear power our demonstrations of weapons in that field may actually work to Soviet advantage. Thus our explosion of the hydrogen bomb was certainly a factor in deterring British action in Indo-China. Our only policy consistent with a policy of alliances, therefore, is one which minimizes (or seems to minimize) the risks of nuclear war and at the same time offers protection against Soviet occupation through the use of conventional armies.

In short, the strategic problem of the United States has two aspects: to create a level of thermo-nuclear strength to deter the Soviet bloc from a major war, or from aggressions in areas which cannot be defended by an indigenous effort; but to integrate this with a policy which does not paralyze the will to resist in areas where local resources for defense do exist.

## II

But is there any deterrent to Sino-Soviet aggression other than the threat of general war? Does not a policy of peripheral actions run counter to the geographic realities of the situation, specifically to the fact that the U.S.S.R. possesses interior lines of communication and can therefore assemble a superior force at any given point?

It must be admitted that we alone cannot possibly defend the Soviet periphery by local actions; nor can we intervene without the cooperation of the local governments. Our immediate task must be to shore up the indigenous will to resist, which in the "grey areas" means all the measures on which a substantial consensus seems to exist: a political program to gain the confidence of local populations and to remove the stigma of colonialism from

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DEFENSE OF THE "GREY AREAS"

5

us, together with a measure of economic assistance and similar steps. But though a political program may be essential it will prove useless without an increase in the capacities for local defense. Few political leaders will run the risk of foreign occupation even though liberation is to follow eventually. The promise of victory in a general war will mean little to the leader of a threatened country which is meanwhile to be Sovietized. The strength of this feeling even in the NATO area is best expressed in an editorial in a leading German newspaper which has supported Chancellor Adenauer's foreign policy: "We must oppose any strategy the basic postulate of which involves giving up our territory. Our partnership in the Atlantic alliance means more to us than that our 12 divisions represent a strategic asset for the West; it includes a demand for the protection of the German people. . . . A substantial retreat is equivalent to our moral and physical destruction."⁴

The argument thus runs in a circle: Can the peripheral areas be defended, assuming the willingness of the countries concerned to resist and our readiness to help them? To support a negative answer such factors are cited as the "unlimited" Chinese manpower or the vast distances of the "grey areas" from the centers of our strength. Now to underestimate an adversary may be disastrous, but to overestimate his resources may lead to a needless paralysis of policy. Absolute numbers are important, but only the part which can be utilized effectively is strategically significant. In these terms Chinese manpower is limited by the Soviet-Chinese capacity to equip and train it, and Chinese effectiveness by the difficulty of communications and supply. The vision of hordes of Chinese streaming into the "grey areas" is unrealistic. If it were possible to develop indigenous armies of moderate size but substantial firepower these should be able to fight delaying actions until the arrival of reinforcements, particularly if American air power (perhaps carrier-based) were hampering Chinese movements. Nor can the Chinese keep pouring in men and supplies so far from their centers of production, despite the seemingly contrary lessons of the war in Korea. After the beginning of the armistice negotiations, the Korean war was fought under conditions nearly ideal for an army with inferior technology and air power: actions were always confined to a small segment of the front; they could be delayed until there had been an ade-

⁴ Frankfurter Allgemeine, December 2, 1954.

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quate build-up; they could be broken off when stocks were de-
pleted. The risks were always tactical and not strategic; the
penalty for failure was limited by the self-imposed restrictions of
the armistice negotiations. "Operation Strangle" therefore did not
represent a fair test of the Chinese ability to sustain a major effort
over a considerable period of time and in the face of superior air
power. The only continuous drain on Chinese supplies occurred
after the front was stabilized near Suwon in March 1951, and
from then until the beginning of the armistice negotiations in
June the Chinese were much closer to a decisive defeat than we.
Had we committed even four more divisions, indeed even if we
had put a time limit on the truce negotiations, we might have
achieved a substantial military victory.

To be sure, the limitations imposed on the Chinese freedom of
manœuvre by the narrow peninsula and the proximity of our
bases in Japan gave us an advantage in Korea which probably
could not be duplicated in other areas. On the other hand, certain
circumstances were propitious for the Chinese also. Korea was
close to their main production centers and to the Russian supply
lines, and communications between Korea and China were good.
Neither of these conditions would be duplicated in, for example,
Southeast Asia. We thus might say that these are two prerequi-
sites of effective local action by the United States: indigenous
governments of sufficient stability so that the Soviets can take
over only by open aggression, and indigenous military forces
capable of fighting a delaying action. If these conditions are met,
the American contribution to the defense of the "grey areas" will
involve the creation of a strategic reserve (say in the Philippines,
Malaya or Pakistan) capable of redressing the balance and of a
weapons system capable of translating our technological advan-
tage into local superiority.

This is difficult but not impossible. Of the countries around the
Soviet periphery, only five possess insufficient forces to put up
an initial defense: Iran, Afghanistan, Burma, Thailand and Indo-
China. India and Pakistan are protected by a difficult mountain-
barrier and still more by the fact that an attack on them would
almost certainly lead to a general war. As for the other countries,
the defense of Afghanistan depends on the strength of Pakistan;
an attack on Iran would have to reckon with the flanking posi-
tion of Turkey; India would not look on an attack on Burma with
equanimity and might intervene; while the fate of Thailand will

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DEFENSE OF THE "GREY AREAS"

7

be decided in Indo-China, where an all-out American effort may
still save at least Laos and Cambodia. It should not be beyond
our capabilities, then, to create nucleus defense forces in the three
critical countries: Iran (to help Turkey and Pakistan cover the
Middle East), Pakistan (to strengthen Afghanistan and to back
up Iran and Burma), and the Indo-Chinese states (to protect
Malaya and Thailand). If concurrently we develop a supply sys-
tem perhaps based on existing British facilities in Malaya, and
develop a political program capable of enlisting the support of
the countries concerned, we could bring about situations in which
American local action is physically and psychologically possible.
And once a certain level of indigenous power exists, a Chinese
or Soviet attack can occur only after a period of build-up in the
border areas which an effective intelligence system should be able
to discover and which should give time for us to concentrate our
forces or take political steps to avoid the conflict.

It is not at all obvious, therefore, that China or even the
U.S.S.R. could utilize its interior position to assemble an over-
whelming force at any given point around its periphery. But can
we counter even the forces they are able to assemble? If we admit
the local war thesis, do we not run the risk of having our army
always at the wrong place? To be sure, China can pick the initial
point of attack, but the greater mobility of her interior position
is illusory because of the difficulties of communication. Once the
Chinese are committed in an area, they are not able to shift their
troops at will against our air power or with greater speed than we
shift ours by sea. They cannot, in short, draw us into Indo-China
and then attack in Burma with the same army. They can, of
course, build up two armies, but we should be able to learn of this
in time and then decide to defend one or the other area, or
neither, depending on the strategic situation. In any case, the
two armies cannot support each other (the classic advantage of
interior lines). And this still leaves out of consideration the uti-
lization of tactical nuclear weapons which would further increase
the Sino-Soviet risk.⁵

But assuming its feasibility, should we permit ourselves to
be drawn into a "war of attrition" with China? The ultimate
answer will have to depend on local conditions and on the precise

⁵ For a useful discussion of a tactical nuclear weapons system see "Counter-Force Strategy," by T. F. Walcowicz, *Air Force*, February 1955; and "No Need to Bomb Cities to Win War," by Richard Leghorn, *U. S. News & World Report*, January 28, 1955.

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circumstances in which the Chinese challenge is presented. But it seems clear that the "war of attrition" argument mistakes the crucial indices of modern war. The significant attrition of modern war is in matériel, and there would appear to be little likelihood that a state with a steel production of less than 10,000,000 tons annually could win a contest with the United States. Soviet help could certainly redress the balance to a degree, but we do not know to what extent the U.S.S.R. is prepared to go to save its Chinese allies in a crisis, above all if Chinese requests for help involve a sacrifice of its own economic goals. Soviet and Chinese difficulties would be increased if we coupled our intentions with face-saving devices and guarantees of the integrity of metropolitan China. Even with Soviet assistance, a protracted, large-scale military effort may lead to the stagnation, if not the exhaustion, of the Chinese régime. A war of attrition is the one war China could not win.

### III

The ultimate argument for the little war thesis, however, must be in terms of the over-all requirements of United States security. The most frequent argument in favor of our maintaining a foothold on the Continent of Eurasia, and specifically in Western Europe, is, in military terms, that our whole strategy depends on the refueling facilities which our allies provide for our strategic air force. But we have a strategic interest in Eurasia independent of the range of our heavy bombers (which can, after all, be increased by technical advances), namely, the geopolitical fact that in relation to Eurasia the United States is an island Power with inferior resources at present only in manpower, but later on even in industrial capacity. Thus we are confronted by the traditional problem of an "island" Power—of Carthage with respect to Italy, of Britain with respect to the Continent—that its survival depends on preventing the opposite land-mass from falling under the control of a single Power, above all one avowedly hostile. If Eurasia were to fall under the control of a single Power or group of Powers, and if this hostile Power were given sufficient time to exploit its resources, we should confront an overpowering threat. At best we would be forced into a military effort not consistent with what is now considered the "American way of life." At worst we would be neutralized and would no longer be masters of our policy.

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DEFENSE OF THE "GREY AREAS"

9

If this is true, we cannot cast off the "grey areas" without dire consequences. We may be able to win a war without their assistance, but we cannot survive a long period of peace without denying them to the U.S.S.R. If the United States ever became confined to "Fortress America," or even if Soviet expansion in the "grey areas" went far enough to sap our allies' will to resist, Americans would be confronted by three-quarters of the human race and not much less of its resources and their continued existence would be precarious.

But there is no necessity for this to occur. It should not be forgotten that the defense of the Free World is a problem not only of power but of will. In 1941 Germany alone nearly defeated the U.S.S.R. and today the combination of Western Europe and the United States should be able to contain it. The steel production of Western Europe still equals that of the U.S.S.R. In Asia, China appears as strong as she does at least partly because of the irresolution of her opponents. The task of creating a balance of power would therefore be far from hopeless if one considered nothing but the available resources. But while a balance is attainable along existing lines on the Eurasian continent, it will nevertheless always remain tenuous. As long as Soviet armies are poised on the Elbe, Western Europe will be insecure. As long as China strides unopposed through Southeast Asia, the uncommitted Powers will seek their safety in neutralism. The Soviet bloc presents to the outside world a vision of ruthless strength allied with artful cunning, of a constant readiness to utilize force coupled with the diplomatic skill to secure the fruits of such use. The United States, therefore, faces the task not only of stemming the Soviet tide but also of reducing the Soviet sphere and demonstrating the limitations of Soviet power and skills. The last is almost as important as the reduction of the Soviet sphere, for to the extent that the Free World, now swayed by a sense of its impotence, realizes that the Soviet bloc, too, behind its façade of monolithic power shrinks from certain consequences, its resolution and its policy will both become stronger.

A strategy which admits the possibility of fighting limited actions is more likely to achieve this objective than the threat of a total nuclear war. Since the destructiveness of strategic nuclear weapons has made them useless except for acts of desperation, the threat of massive retaliation will have two consequences: either the Sino-Soviet bloc will consider it a bluff and thus con-

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front us again with the dilemma of Dienbienphu, or it will transform all contests into questions of prestige which will inhibit any concessions. An all-or-nothing military policy therefore makes for a paralysis of diplomacy. By leaving no alternative between total nuclear war and an uneasy armistice, it prevents attempts to ameliorate the situation progressively and supports the Soviet bloc's pose of moderation.

Actions short of total war, on the other hand, may help restore fluidity to the diplomatic situation, particularly if we analyze what is implied by the term "reduction of the Soviet sphere." The Sino-Soviet bloc can be reduced, short of waging a general war, in two ways: by a voluntary withdrawal or by an internal split. The former is unlikely and depends on many factors outside our control, but the latter deserves careful study. A great deal has been written about it, but this much seems clear: the rift will not come by itself. Too much is to be gained by unity, too many prizes are still to be won, the memory of Tito is still too fresh in the Kremlin, for us to be able to count on Soviet mistakes. A split between the U.S.S.R. and its satellites, and even more a split with China, can come about only through outside pressure, through the creation of contingencies which may force a divergence of views into the open. Thus Tito's break with the Cominform was due at least in part to his disenchantment over Molotov's lukewarm support on the Trieste issue, which in turn was caused by the U.S.S.R.'s unwillingness to risk a major war for a peripheral objective. The most fundamental indictment of our present military policy, then, is that its inability to differentiate its pressures may actually contribute to the consolidation and the unity of the Soviet bloc.

It is therefore misleading to attack the little war thesis on the ground that it does not offer a military solution to our strategic problem, for its merit is precisely that it may provide a political solution. Had we defeated the Chinese army in Korea in 1951 we would have confronted the U.S.S.R. with the dilemma whether to risk everything for the sake of increasing the power of China; and had we followed our victory with a conciliatory political proposal to Peking we could have caused it to reflect whether American good will might not represent a better protection than blindly following the Soviet line. But even if we had failed in our primary task of dividing the U.S.S.R. and China, we would have greatly improved our position towards our allies and even more

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DEFENSE OF THE "GREY AREAS"

II

towards the uncommitted nations in Asia. The best counter-
argument to the charge of colonialism is political moderation after
a military victory. Indo-China gave us a similar opportunity, if
under less favorable circumstances, although the Indo-Chinese
problem would hardly have assumed its present dimensions had
China suffered a decisive reversal in her first military encounter
with the United States. Thus, if limited actions are implemented
as part of a policy which offers the other side a way out short of
total surrender or total war, they may bring about local reversals
which may start chain reactions difficult to control and might
magnify the tensions within the Soviet bloc. In such a strategy
our nuclear superiority and our strategic air force would become
a means to permit us to fight local actions on our terms or to shift
the opus for a general war onto the Soviet bloc.

IV

But what if the local war should become general? Would we
then not have isolated ourselves? To pose the question in the
abstract is to prejudge the issue because it assumes that the
present course will not lead to our isolation, albeit slowly. Some-
thing more fundamental is involved—a misapprehension of the
nature of collective security. It is often said that the two world
wars would have been avoided if the aggressors had been aware
of the forces which would eventually be aligned against them.
But even granting this proposition, it would be paradoxical if
the Power strong enough to resist local aggressions *alone* were
prevented from doing so by a doctrine of collective security.

An alliance represents an increase in strength only when its
members agree on the nature of the danger. For it is not the fact
that an alliance exists which deters an aggressor but the spirit
of determination which animates it, as the fate of the French
system of alliances in the inter-war period showed. To ask un-
stable NATO governments which are hard put to play a European
rôle to make themselves responsible for what we do in Asia is to
demand the impossible. Even if we are able to induce them to
support us by economic pressure and by considerations of long-
range strategy, we shall certainly undermine their domestic
support. Thus it becomes important to consider whether the
military assistance they can give us in peripheral wars is worth
this price. The only contingency in which an allied military con-
tribution is essential is a general war or an attack on the NATO

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areas, which amounts to the same thing. In local wars we do not need them and should not insist on their assistance if they have no direct interest at stake. This is not to argue that "going it alone" is a virtue in itself. We must in any case be able to count on the support of Britain and the Commonwealth in Southeast Asia. Only we cannot permit the balance of power to be overturned for the sake of maintaining the form of allied unity.

The way in which a policy that does not exclude the possibility of fighting local wars affects our strategy in a general war therefore depends on two factors: (a) how the local war comes about; (b) how the general war develops from it. Clearly, the little war thesis is no better than the policy into which it is integrated and clearly American intervention can never take place ad hoc. The efficacy of the little war thesis depends, then, on the nature of our leadership. If we demonstrate that we are able to use our strength with moderation, that we know alternatives other than to talk nuclear war or surrender, we might bring about the psychological climate which will make limited actions supportable.⁶ If such local wars as we may fight come about not as acts of truculence but as a last resort, they need not undermine our relations with our allies; and if then it were the other side which opted for general war the moral basis of our diplomacy would not have been badly prepared.

Thus our capacity to fight local wars is not a marginal aspect of our effective strength; it is a central factor which cannot be sacrificed without impairing our strategic position and paralyzing our policy. The risks involved in an all-or-nothing military policy are so fearful that if we follow it our resolution will weaken and leave the initiative to the other side. A military policy which cannot offer the uncommitted nations protection against Soviet occupation will defeat our attempts to rally them to our side and in time it will even demoralize the NATO alliance. This would be true even if it should be maintained that our present force levels do not absolutely preclude local actions; valid as this contention may be in the abstract it is unrealistic psychologically. The unlikelihood that a chief-of-staff would commit an army of the present size in peripheral actions is demonstrated by General Ridgway's attitude with regard both to Indo-China and the Chinese offshore islands.

⁶ For a discussion of the diplomacy consistent with this conception of the American rôle see the author's "American Policy and Preventive War," *The Yale Review*, Spring 1955.

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DEFENSE OF THE "GREY AREAS"

13

The impact of our military policy on Sino-Soviet calculations may prove even more pernicious. The destructiveness of nuclear weapons having made it unlikely that any responsible statesman will lightly unleash a general war, the greatest danger of war—unless the Soviet leaders have become totally reckless—will lie in a miscalculation on their part. This is the only war which it is within our power to avoid, assuming that we leave no doubt about our capabilities and determination. But even this "avoidable" war may break out if the other side becomes convinced that we cannot interfere locally and that our threats of instant retaliation are bluff. If that should happen, the other side may then decide, as its nuclear arsenal grows, to absorb the "grey areas" and confront us with the choice between relinquishing them or risking the destruction of American cities. And because the Sino-Soviet leaders may well be mistaken in their assessment of our reaction when faced with such an alternative, our present military policy may bring about the total war which it seeks to prevent. An improvement in our capacity for local war is therefore indicated not only by considerations of national strategy but as our best chance to preserve the peace.

U. S. MILITARY POLICY AND THE DEFENSE OF THE GREY AREAS

It is surprising how little affected American strategic thinking has
been by the fact that in just a few years now the U.S.S.R. will have the
capacity to deliver a powerful attack with nuclear weapons on the U.S. To
be sure, there have emerged advocates of radical solutions who propose to
cut the Gordian knot by a policy of preventive war. But there has always
been an air of unreality about a program so contrary to the sense of the
country and the constitutional limits within which American foreign policy
must be conducted. For the rest, there exists an area of agreement about the
main lines of American strategy so pervasive that some of the fundamental trans-
formations about to prepare themselves are rarely publicly debated. Whether
these postulates of American strategic thought are interpreted in Secretary
Dulles' "massive retaliation" speech, in Vice-President Nixon's reply to
Adlai Stevenson of March 13, 1954, or in Mr. Finletter's lucid book Power
and Policy, they amount to the assertion that the chief deterrent to Soviet
aggression resides in U.S. nuclear superiority, that the U.S. must not exhaust
itself in a "war of attrition" in peripheral areas, or in keeping in being a
force so large as to represent a drain on our economy without adding to our
effective strength on A-day: the hypothetical outbreak of nuclear war. 2
Since only the threat of "massive retaliation" can deter Soviet aggression,
major reliance must be placed on the development of S.A.C. and on increasing

1. Finletter, Thomas K. *Power and Policy*, New York, 1954

2. Finletter, op. cit. p. 231.

the power of our nuclear arsenal. Since the Sino-Soviet bloc possesses in-
terior lines of communication and is therefore able to choose the point of
attack, we must not let them lure us into strategically unproductive areas.
Instead, we should inhibit aggression at its source by the threat of a general
war. To be sure, there are some areas where we shall resist aggression on the
ground, NATO for example, and for their defense conventional forces perhaps
backed by nuclear weapons are considered essential. But in the remainder of
the world, the part which Mr. Finletter calls the "grey areas" Sino-Soviet
moves can be prevented only by the threat of a general war. This in substance
is the rationale for our present military policy.

The argument is persuasive. It has the advantage of fitting in with the
historical experience of a nation which, for over a century, has felt secure
from hostile attack. And it is reinforced by the memory of the Korean con-
flict which has become the symbol of the frustration of peripheral wars. But
the most difficult task a nation confronts is to interpret its past correctly.
However efficacious the threat of a general war might have been during the
period of American nuclear monopoly or near-monopoly, it takes on a different
aspect during the soon-to-be atomic stalemate. And however costly the Korean
war, it may prove a better model for the strategy of the future than an all-out
atomic conflict. For the increasing Soviet nuclear capability has transformed
power relationships not only quantitatively but qualitatively. While the U.S.
had an absolute atomic monopoly, even a small number of nuclear weapons had a
powerful deterrent effect. But with the imminent Soviet capability to retaliate
on American cities, a new dimension has been added to the U.S. strategic problem.

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No matter how vast our remaining margin in the number of weapons and in their technological refinement, henceforth not only _they_ but _we_ must fear the ultimate weapons. In these circumstances a major or exclusive reliance on general war as a deterrent to Sino-Soviet aggression may come dangerously close to a Maginot mentality, a belief in a strategy whose power may never be tested, but whose existence prevents the consideration of any alternative. The insistence on an all-or-nothing military policy may well paralyze the U.S. in the years ahead because the increasing Soviet nuclear capability _may undermine the U.S. willingness to run the risk of a general war for anything less than a direct attack on the U.S._

And it would be the height of folly for the U.S.S.R. to attack the U.S. directly and thereby unleash S.A.C. The ultimate goal of Soviet strategy, the neutralization of the U.S., can be achieved at much less risk by a gradual erosion of the peripheral areas which will imperceptibly shift the balance of power against the U.S. without ever presenting a clear-cut challenge. It may be argued, of course, that the absorption of the peripheral areas will not be attempted if the alternative is the destruction of Moscow or Peking. But this is merely begging the principal question, that as the Soviet nuclear capability grows and the capacity to deliver it, nuclear war becomes a double-edged sword. The more fearful the weapons, the more risky their use. And the more risky their use, the more the Soviet strategic problem is reduced to presenting its challenges in such a manner that the pressures for solutions short of war will be maximized not only with our European allies but in the U.S. as well. If we refused to fight in Indo-China at a time when the Soviet nuclear capability was relatively small, because of the danger that a limited war might become general, we will be hardly more ready to risk nuclear bombing for Burma or Iran or even Yugoslavia. On the contrary, with the increasing Soviet

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strength in ultimate weapons, the number of areas that will seem worth the destruction of New York, Detroit, or Chicago will steadily diminish.

There is no doubt that we must have a powerful nuclear arsenal and the best strategic air-force, if only to discourage an attack on the U.S. But their power should not blind us to their limitations as instruments of the cold war, particularly that an exclusive reliance on them runs counter to a coalition policy even within the NATO area and that there must be a point beyond which a further refinement of our nuclear capacity will yield diminishing returns. What will be the advantage of accumulating a greater store of fission weapons than necessary to destroy every Soviet manufacturing center? Or of improving them to the point where one bomb can destroy an average city twice over? Nor should we overlook that certain technological advances, the atomic submarine for example, will add much less to our effective strength than to that of the Sino-Soviet bloc. There is thus, for the first time in military history, the possibility of a stalemate despite an absolute superiority in weapons and in technology. And when this point has been reached the American strategic problem becomes transformed. The Red Army might have been immobilized by the U.S. atomic monopoly, but by the same token it may be liberated by the Soviet capacity to retaliate on Washington. It is argued by some (including Walter Lippman) that the atomic stalemate is nothing new, that it has in fact existed on the Eurasian continent since 1949. But this is surely not the same as saying that it has been part of the American consciousness since that time and that is the crucial factor in determining the willingness to engage in a general war. Precisely because the stalemate on the Eurasian continent has been maintained only by the relative freedom of action of the U.S., the U.S.

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The impact on our Allies of an all-or-nothing military policy will prove
even more pernicious. If we assert that ultimate weapons represent the _only_
deterrents to Soviet aggression, one of two consequences becomes almost in-
evitable: either our Allies will feel that any military effort on their part
is unnecessary, or else it may lead them to the conviction that peace is prefer-
able to war almost at any price. In the absence of a U. S. monopoly of nuclear
weapons, U.S. demonstrations of nuclear power may actually work to the ad-
vantage of the U.S.S.R. Thus the explosion of the U.S. hydrogen bomb did
more to paralyze British action in Indo-China than any threat on the part of
the U.S.S.R. The only U.S. policy consistent with a policy of alliances is,
therefore, one which minimizes (or seems to minimize) the risks of nuclear
war while giving reasonable protection against Soviet occupation through the
use of conventional armies. In short, the U.S. strategic problem has two
aspects: to create a level of thermo-nuclear strength to deter the Soviet
bloc from a major war, or from aggressions in areas which cannot be defended
by an indigenous effort; but to integrate this with a policy which does not
paralyze the will to resist in areas where there exist indigenous resources
for defense.

II

But is there any other deterrent to Sino-Soviet aggression than general
war? Does not a policy of peripheral actions run counter to the geographic
realities of the situation, specifically to the fact that the U.S.S.R. possesses
interior lines of communication and can therefore assemble a superior force at

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any given point? It must be admitted that the U.S. alone cannot possibly
defend the Soviet periphery by local actions; nor can we intervene without
the cooperation of the indigenous governments. Our immediate task must be
to shore up the indigenous will to resist, which in the "grey areas" means
all the measures on which there seems to exist a substantial consensus: a
political program to gain confidence and to remove the stigma of colonialism,
a measure of economic assistance, and similar steps. But however essential,
a political program will prove useless unless local defence can be made
meaningful. Few political leaders will run the risk of foreign occupation
even at the price of eventual liberation. Victory in a general war will mean
little to the leader of a threatened country after his country has been
Sovietized. The strength of this feeling even in the NATO area is best ex-
pressed in an editorial in a leading German newspaper which has supported
Adenauer's foreign policy: "We must oppose any strategy whose basic postulate
involves giving up our territory. Our partnership in the Atlantic alliance
means more to us than that our 12 divisions represent a strategic asset for
the West; it includes a demand for the protection of the German people ....
a substantial retreat is equivalent to our moral and physical destruction."³

The argument thus runs in a circle: can the peripheral areas be defended
assuming an indigenous willingness to resist and a U.S. readiness to lend its
support? The obvious answer is to invoke such factors as the "unlimited"
Chinese manpower or the vast distances from the centers of the U.S. strength.

3. Frankfurter Allgemeine No. 280, December 2, 1954.

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But while underestimating an adversary may be disastrous, overestimating his resources may lead to a needless paralysis of policy. And while absolute numbers are important, only the part which can be effectively utilized is strategically significant. In these terms Chinese manpower is limited by the capacity to equip and to train it and Chinese effectiveness by the difficulty of communications and supply. The vision of hordes of Chinese streaming into the grey areas is unrealistic. If it should prove possible to develop indigenous armies of moderate size but substantial fire power, they ought to be able to fight delaying actions until the arrival of reinforcements, particularly if American air-power (perhaps carrier-based) hampers Chinese movements. Nor can the Chinese keep pouring in men and supplies so far from their centers of production. Even in Korea, once the front had stabilized the Chinese were much closer to a decisive defeat than we. Could the Chinese have matched our build-up in the face of our air-power, had we committed even four more divisions to the Peninsula? Indeed, what would have happened had we pressed our advantage in 1951 with the forces in being put a time limit on the truce negotiations? Had we defeated the Chinese army in Korea, it is more than doubtful that the Indo-Chinese problem would have assumed the proportions that ended with Geneva. And the effect on the Chinese regime domestically would have been incalculable.

To this it may be replied that what was possible in Korea need not apply in Iran and Burma and that in any case we would not waste our substance on a war of attrition with China. To be sure, we possessed advantages in Korea impossible to duplicate in other areas, the limitations imposed on the Chinese freedom of maneuver by the narrow peninsula and the proximity of our bases in

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Japan. But by the same token, our real strength was very much smaller than
today and the indigenous army impotent in the initial phases. And if cir-
cumstances were propitious in Korea for American intervention, they were
no less so for the Chinese. For Korea was close to their main production
centers and to the Russian supply lines, its communications with China were
good, neither of which condition would be duplicated in South-East Asia. The
prerequisites of effective local action by the U.S. can therefore be defined
as two-fold: indigenous governments of sufficient stability so that the Soviets
can take over only by open aggression and indigenous military forces capable
of fighting a delaying action; while the American contribution to the defense
of the "grey areas" will involve the creation of a strategic reserve (say in
the Philippines, Malaya, and/or Pakistan) capable of redressing the balance.
This is not a hopeless task. Once there exists a certain level of indigenous
power, a Chinese or Russian attack can occur only after a period of build-up
in the border areas which an effective intelligence system should have no diffi-
culty in discovering and which should give time for concentrating our forces,
or for political steps to avoid the conflict.

It is not at all obvious, therefore, that China or even the U.S.S.R. could
utilize its interior position to assemble an overwhelming force at any given
point around their periphery. But can we counter even the forces they are
able to assemble? If we admit the local war thesis, do we not run the risk
of having our army always at the wrong place? To be sure, the Chinese can
pick the initial point of attack, but the greater mobility of their interior
position is illusory because of the difficulties of communication. Once
the Chinese are committed in an area, they cannot shift their troops at will

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[y]

against our air-power or with greater speed than we can by sea. They cannot, in short, draw us into Indo-China and then attack in Burma with the same army they committed to Indo-China. They can, of course, build up two armies, but we should be able to learn of this in time and then decide to defend one or the other area, or neither, depending on their strategic productivity. In any case, the two armies cannot support each other (the classic advantage of interior lines).⁴ And this still leaves out of consideration the utilization of tactical nuclear weapons which would further increase the Soviet risk.

But assuming its feasibility, should we permit ourselves to be drawn into a "war of attrition" with China? The ultimate answer will have to depend on local conditions and on the precise circumstances in which the Chinese challenge is presented. But this much seems clear: that the "war of attrition" argument is based on indices nearly meaningless in modern war. The significant attrition of modern war is in material and it seems impossible

4. Moreover, the choice of a point of attack is not entirely indeterminate. If we look at the countries around the Soviet periphery we find only five where a Soviet attack is not certain to unleash a general war, or which do not now possess sufficient indigenous resources for an initial defense: Iraq, Iran, Burma, Thailand and Indo-China. An attack on India and Pakistan in addition to the problem of supply would almost certainly lead to a general war. As for the other countries, only a limited number of troops can be maintained by the U.S.S.R. in Mesopotamia or by China in Burma; while an attack on Burma would involve the flanking position of Turkey, and an attack on Indo-China might have to reckon with the British army in Malaya plus whatever indigenous forces we are able to train. It should not be beyond the realm of our capabilities to develop the indigenous forces in those countries to a point where the conditions for direct American intervention outlined above are met.

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that a state with a steel production of less than 10 million tons could win
such a contest with the U.S. On the contrary, a protracted military effort
along a stabilized front might lead to the exhaustion, or at least the stagna-
tion, of the Chinese regime. A war of attrition is the <u>one</u> war China could
not win.

III

The ultimate argument for the little war must be in terms of the require-
ments of over-all U.S. strategy and of U.S. security, however. What then are
elements of U.S. security? What power can be balanced against the Soviet
colossus to prevent U.S. neutralization? All thinking on this topic has to
start from the geopolitical fact that in relation to Eurasia the U.S. is an
island power with inferior resources, at present only in manpower but in time
even in industrial capacity. Were Eurasia to fall under the control of a single
power or group of powers and were this group given sufficient time to exploit
its resources, the U.S. would be neutralized, that is, it would not be master
of its own policy any longer. The U.S. can, therefore, never permit the re-
sources of Eurasia to be organized by one power, even less by a power avowedly
hostile to the U.S. And as an island power the influence of the U.S. should
be particularly strong in the peninsulas accessible to sea power: Korea, South
East Asia, the Indian Sub-Continent, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Spain and Western
Europe. If this is true, the U.S. cannot cast off "the grey areas" without dire
consequences. It may be able to win a war without their assistance, but it can-
not survive a long period of peace without denying them to the U.S.S.R. If the
U.S. ever became confined to the "Fortress America," or even should Soviet
expansion in the "grey areas" sap the will to resist of our Allies, the U.S.

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would be forced into a military effort not consistent with what is now considered the "American way of life." And even at that price the existence of the U.S. confronted by three-quarters of the human race and not much less of its resources would be precarious.

But there is no necessity for this to occur. It should not be forgotten that the defense of the Free World is a problem much less of power than of will, that the industrial capacity of the Free World now and in the foreseeable future far exceeds that of the Soviet bloc. In 1941 Germany alone nearly defeated the U.S.S.R. and the combination of Western Europe and the U.S. should be able to contain it. The steel production of Western Europe still equals that of the U.S.S.R. and in Asia, China appears so strong at least in part because of the irresolution of her opponents. The task of creating a balance of power would therefore be far from hopeless, if one considers nothing but the available resources. But while a balance is attainable along existing lines on the Eurasian continent, it will nevertheless always remain tenuous. As long as London is within the range of Soviet guided missiles, British policy will be tentative. As long as Soviet armies are poised on the Elbe, Western Europe will be insecure. As long as China strides unopposed through South East Asia, the uncommitted powers will seek their safety in neutralism. The Soviet bloc presents to the outside world a vision of ruthless strength allied with artful cunning, of a constant readiness to utilize force coupled with the diplomatic skill to secure its fruits. The task confronting the U.S. is, therefore, not only to stem the Soviet tide, but also to reduce the Soviet sphere and to demonstrate the limitations of Soviet power and skills. In this equation the latter term, the demonstration of the limitations of Soviet power, is almost as important as the reduction of the Soviet sphere. To the extent that the Free World, now obsessed by a sense of its impotence, realizes that the other side, too,

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can know hesitation, that behind the facade of monolithic power the Soviet bloc, too, shrinks from certain consequences, to that extent its resolution will be strengthened and its policy emboldened. The U.S. strategic goal should therefore be thus defined: (a) In the short term, to prevent a further extension of the Soviet sphere at any cost (b) in the long term, to reduce the Soviet bloc to an extent from which it cannot win an aggressive conventional war while it will be deterred from a nuclear war by the U.S. superiority in ultimate weapons.

A strategy which admits the possibility of fighting limited actions is more likely to achieve these objectives than the threat of a total nuclear war. "Massive retaliation" besides furnishing propaganda material for the other side, will have two consequences: either the Sino-Soviet bloc will consider it a bluff and thus confront us again with the dilemma of Dienbienphu; or it will transform all contests into questions of prestige which will inhibit any concessions. But actions short of total war may avoid these difficulties and should enable us to obtain a strategic advantage from our nuclear superiority. If implemented as a part of a policy of determined objectives and coordinated with a flexible diplomacy which offers the other side a way out short of total surrender or total war, we may be able to achieve local reversals in the strategic situation which might start chain reactions difficult to control and which would, at a minimum, magnify the tensions within the Soviet bloc. In these terms our nuclear superiority and our Strategic Air Force would become a means to permit us to fight limited actions on our terms and to shift the option of a general war to the other side.

This becomes particularly significant if we analyse precisely what is implied by the term "reduction of the Soviet sphere." The Sino-Soviet bloc

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can be reduced short of a general war in two ways: by a voluntary withdrawal or by a split within it. The former eventuality is unlikely and depends on many factors outside of our control, but the latter deserves careful study. A great deal has been written about it, much of it conjectural. But this much is clear: the rift will not come by itself. Too much is to be gained by unity, too many prizes are still to be won, the memory of Tito is still too fresh for the U.S. to be able to count on Soviet mistakes. A split between the U.S.S.R. and its satellites or even more with China can only come about through outside pressure, through the creation of contingencies which may force a divergence of views into the open. Just as the Western system of alliances has been severely strained by Soviet moves in areas of peripheral interest to our allies, so the U.S. should attempt to bring about contingencies which accentuate potential differences within the Soviet bloc. It was not easy for Britain to risk nuclear bombing for Northern Indo-China, but it is more than doubtful whether the U.S.S.R. would have risked everything for the sake of increasing the power of China, particularly if U.S. intervention had been accompanied by a face-saving formula for a settlement (perhaps including a guarantee of China's southern boundary to be supervised by a commission of Asian powers). And should the Soviet satellites or China ever become convinced not only that they are pawns but that they are sacrificeable, the results would be incalculable. It must not be forgotten that Tito's disenchantment over Molotov's luke-warm support on the Trieste issue was one of the reasons for his split with the Cominform.

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IV

But what about the impact of the local war thesis on our system of alliances? Could it withstand the strain of another Korea? To pose this question in the abstract is to prejudge the issue. For the little war thesis obviously can be no better than the policy into which it is integrated. It is beyond dispute that American intervention can never take place ad hoc. If coordinated with a more flexible diplomacy, however, it may achieve the acquiescence, if not the enthusiasm, of our Allies.

In charting this diplomacy it is above all necessary to get clear about the nature of the process in which we are involved, above all that we are engaged in a revolutionary contest. This means that normal diplomatic patterns are transformed. In a "legitimate" international order demands once made are negotiable; in a revolutionary order they are programmatic. To formulate minimum demands in a stable order is to surrender the advantage of flexibility in negotiation. To present maximum demands to an antagonist who will in any case reject them is to compound the chief difficulty of a revolutionary period: To convince the uncommitted that the revolutionary is, in fact, a revolutionary, that his objectives are unlimited. And it yields him the advantage of the advocacy of moderation without the risk of its accomplishment. For these reasons we should not permit the Soviet bloc to legitimize its policy by the most basic fact of political life all over the world: the quest for peace. On the contrary, only by forcing the Soviet bloc to reduce the "peace-offensive" to concrete terms can we expose its hollowness; only thus can we rally the Free World. We should not be afraid of conferences, above all if we prepare them well; for a conference that fails, far from returning things to the starting point, can be used as a springboard for more decisive action. The tone of U.S. policy since the collapse of EDC goes a long way towards meeting these requirements.

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But a more fundamental issue is raised by the concern with the reaction
of our Allies: the meaning of Allied unity. If an alliance is equated with the
consensus of its members, its policy will be shaped by its weakest component.
And if we insist that every action has to be *preceded* by the agreement of every
last Ally, an intolerable strain will be placed on the domestic support of weak
governments. It is too much to ask a French Government, hard put to play a
European role, to make itself responsible for the defense of South-East Asia.
Skillful Soviet diplomacy has been able to exploit this dilemma: by means of
peaceoffensives it has paralyzed any decisive action in areas where there existed
a community of interests and the power to make it effective, such as in Europe.
And by confining its aggressive moves to areas of only peripheral concern to our
Allies, the Soviet bloc has put a great strain on Allied unity. Korea is a case
in point: It is safe to say that the only interest of our European allies in the
Korean war was symbolic, to commit the U.S. to the principle of collective security.
Beyond that, any bold policy was inhibited by the reluctance of our Allies to run
major risks in areas of only the remotest concern to them. This is not to say
that our allies were "wrong"; simply that they tended to look at the Korean war
from a perspective which inhibited long-range thinking.

The root fact of the strategic situation, then, is that only the U.S. is
strong enough to take a global view and the difficulty within the alliance has
been precisely the absence of American long-range thinking, or at least our in-
ability to project our objectives abroad. The uneasiness of our Allies, more-
over, concerns less specific American measures than the whole nature of American
leadership. Could we give assurances that ours is not a march into infinity,
that we know other alternatives than nuclear war, we might bring about the psy-
chological climate which would make local actions supportable. Still we should

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have no illusions that to ask our allies to join physically in the defense of
the "grey areas" simply because they are our allies, is to demand the impossible.
And it reveals a misunderstanding of the real aim of the alliance. The only con-
tingency in which an allied military contribution is essential is a general war
or an attack on the NATO area, which amounts to the same thing. In local wars
we do not need and should not insist on assistance from countries whose major
interest is not at stake. This is not to argue that "going it alone" is a virtue
in itself—we should in any case be able to count on the support of Britain and
the Commonwealth in South-East Asia; only that we cannot pay the price of permitting
an overturning of the balance of power for the form of allied unity. The primary
task of the U.S. is therefore less to solicit a consensus than to create the con-
ditions which make a consensus possible, if necessary by an act of leadership
which permits no further equivocation.

But what if the local war should become general, should we then not have
isolated ourselves? This would depend on two factors: (a) how the local war
came about, (b) how the general war developed from it. If we have restored con-
fidence in our leadership, if we present the local war not as an act of truculence
but as a last resort, it need not undermine relations with our allies. And if
our diplomacy should leave no doubt that it was the other side which opted for
general war, its moral basis would not be badly prepared. Moreover, just what
is meant by a local war developing into a general war? We have seen that the
Chinese commitment in South-East Asia cannot be expanded at will, that they will
always require substantial forces in other border areas, precisely because the
Soviet bloc does not have the classic advantages of interior lines. The only
area where they can employ and supply their superior manpower is the NATO area

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and the NATO powers will hardly refuse to defend themselves because they are
displeased with U.S. policy in South-East Asia. But even if we conceive a
total war between the U.S. and the Soviet bloc which excludes the NATO area,
there would still be a powerful incentive for the assistance of our European
allies. For while the precise location of the front-line in a local war may
not be of great concern to our NATO partners, the defeat of the U.S. in a
general war is another matter: then their choice will not be between war and
the freedom of Korea, but between war and their own enslavement. And their
choice will reflect whether the Alliance had any meaning in the first place. Far
from undermining our system of alliances, a local war may therefore prepare the
ground psychologically for a general war. A policy of limited actions coupled
with adequate guarantees that their objectives are finite might be a means to
demonstrate our moderation, to shift the onus of total war to the other side
and still to obtain a reversal of the strategic situation in our favor.

To be sure, the advocates of "massive retaliation" and of our present
military policy would not necessarily oppose this program. They might even
maintain that whatever merit it has is achievable by our present force levels.
Theoretically this may be so. Twenty-six divisions (including the Marine divi-
sions) may in fact suffice although some of the army divisions are far from
ready for combat and others exist as administrative units only. But from the
psychological point of view no Chief of Staff will commit such a force as is
indicated by Ridgway's attitude both with respect to Indo-China and the off-
shore islands. It is like a $2,000 bank account usable only in extreme emer-
gencies. And we are not in a strong position to urge other nations to expand
their military establishment while we reduce ours. The U.S. gamble on an all-
or-nothing military policy may therefore actually encourage the U.S.S.R. to

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undertake local actions. As long as the Soviet General Staff knows we _cannot_ interfere on the ground and in proportion as their nuclear capacity grows they may become even more ready to risk local adventures, confronting the U.S. with the dilemma whether peripheral objectives are "worth" the destruction of New York or Washington. And since the Soviet leaders may well underestimate the resolution of the U.S. or our reaction when faced with the alternative of surrender, our present military policy may bring about what it is designed to prevent: a total war.

It may be well to conclude with a number of reservations: this article has dealt primarily with military policy and only secondarily with the national strategy which can make it effective. This is due entirely to limitations of space and the confined subject-matter. The fundamental problem for the U.S. remains to define its national objectives, to devise a diplomacy to attain them and to integrate its military policy into this frame-work. Nor should this article be taken as asserting that local actions are preferable to a general war in _all_ circumstances; only that we should not _exclude_ fighting a local war where we can translate our technological advantage into local superiority, and that we should have a military establishment adequate for this task. And the final reservation is perhaps the most important: the program sketched here is not an easy way out of our strategic dilemma; indeed, it will require additional sacrifices. It would involve greatly increased military expenditures, a substantial proportion of which would have to go to the Army. This will not be possible without strong leadership. To survive the period just ahead the nation must be told its dangers frankly, above all that there exist no simple solutions to our problems and that

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