P.M.S. Blackett,

April 1956.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND DEFENCE:
COMMENTS ON KISSINGER, KENNAN AND KING-HALL

1. In view of the millions of words which have already been, and are still being both written and spoken on all aspects of Nuclear Weapons, some justification is required for adding still more. Almost every aspect has been ably argued and equally ably refuted. It is not unusual to find oneself convinced one week by an advocate of some specific policy, only later to remember that the week before one had been equally convinced by some advocate of its exact opposite. So when I hear the words the Great Deterrent, Massive Retaliation, Graduated Deterrence, Limited Nuclear War, etc., I sometimes share the feelings of Eliza in 'My Fair Lady': 'Never let me hear another word again! There isn't one that I haven't heard: say one more word and I'll scream.' Unfortunately, the extreme importance of this highly complex subject demands endless further discussion. As the White Queen knew so well, it is sometimes better to scream before one is hurt than after.

My objective today is diagnosis rather than cure. If sudden incineration or lingering radiation death is to be our lot, let us at any rate try to understand why. When a physician diagnoses a disorder of the body, he draws on his own clinical experience supplemented by what he can

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learn from textbooks. Luckily, the world has had little
direct experience of nuclear weapons so we have to rely on
theory: a good beginning is to consult what theoretical text-
books are available. In fact, there are not very many, for
the subject is an intimidating one, both by its great com-
plexity and by the horror of its subject matter. It is easy
to see the historic reasons why most of the serious textbooks
on nuclear weapons and their political implications are of
few
American authorship. It is regrettable how British contribu-
tions are available. For a country which has fought a record
number of wars we are reluctant to study war seriously, in
between fighting wars.

The three authors enumerated in the sub-title of this
address have been chosen as having written the three books
which seem to me to be the most suitable now available to
stimulate a critical diagnosis of our present defence position
and to discuss its implications for the future. (The allitera-
tion of the sub-title is, of course, purely coincidental!)
If the authors of these three books were here today, I would
tender my apologies for any unintentional imputation that
they thought alike. They do not, on many vital issues: that
is why I have chosen these books for detailed comment. In a
real sense, however, they are complementary to each other.

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger's book 'Nuclear Weapons and Foreign
Policy' merits attention not only because of its great length,

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wide erudition and keen analytic power--few, I think, would rate it a great book, but few who succeed in getting through its 430 pages would fail to rate themselves great readers--but also because it grew out of the serious deliberations over many months of a study group sponsored by the American Council of Foreign Relations, the opposite number of this Institute. In this group were many of the most distinguished American military and political writers, and its Chairman was Gordon Dean, former Chairman of the American Atomic Energy Commission. Thus the arguments in the book must be taken as commanding a substantial amount of influential support in the United States, and so are more than the personal views of a brilliant young academic historian.

The main conclusion of Kissinger's argument is that America can only break the desperate impasse resulting from over-reliance on total war, with the consequential almost complete divorce of power from policy, by reliance on tactical nuclear weapons in limited war. This conclusion is emphatically rejected by Mr. George F. Kennan in his little book 'Russia, the Atom and the West', based on his Reith Lectures broadcast by the B.B.C., and by Sir Stephen King-Hall in his recent book 'Defence in the Nuclear Age'.

Kennan does not elaborate in great detail his ideas as to what medicine to prescribe, in view of his belief that Kissinger's prescription would prove fatal, but he said enough

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to raise a storm of criticism, the legitimacy of which it
will be necessary for us to examine. His past experience as
Russian scholar, one-time American Ambassador in Moscow and
State Department expert on Soviet affairs, together with the
unexampled impact made by his lectures, are sufficient to
make us study very closely what he said.

Sir Stephen King-Hall has had a very different experience
to the other two, having been a professional sailor, one-time
M.P. and a well-known publicist. His book contains much
which I think is important and courageous, though I also
think it has much that is untenable. Of the three authors,
he is the only professional fighting man with actual experi-
ence of war--on this ground alone it would be a great error
(or so I naturally think) to dismiss him entirely as just
another of these cranky ex-naval officers!

By singling out these books as pegs on which to hang my
argument, I by no means want to set them above all other
contributions to the subject. Of these there are many, among
which in this country are books by Sir John Slessor, by Capt.
Liddell Hart, Richard Goold-Adams and two by myself. Another
American book of importance is R.E. Osgood's 'Limited War',
which over its more limited field is the superior of Kissinger.

The problems which I intend primarily to discuss, in as

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professional a way as an amateur like myself can hope to do,
are just the problems of military planning which I presume
our professional military planners are in fact studying. The
factual background assumed will be the real world of today,
as it is, with vast strategic nuclear destructive power in
the hands of the United States and the Soviet Union and with
no mean destructive power in the hands of Britain. Moreover,
I will restrict my discussion to the situation in Europe and
will assume that both the NATO and the Soviet land forces
are already armed with tactical atomic weapons or soon will
be. I will not be mainly discussing what weapons we ought
to have or ought not to have, but I will discuss the limited
but highly important problem of how we should use, or not
use, those we have got; I will therefore pay most attention
to those parts of the three books which deal with these
matters. In particular, when discussing King-Hall's book, I
will leave aside many of the things which he thinks we ought
to do now, with many of which I disagree, and I will concentrate
on some of the things which he thinks will happen, with
which I largely agree.

2. Kiseimen's his first thesis amounts to a total dethronement of the concept of the threat of Total War as an effective instrument of policy, in any but the most unlikely of all circumstances. As one who has himself fired a salvo or two at this concept (which has been the guiding theme of American defence policy

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for a decade) I admire the efficiency and completeness of the demolition. Of great interest is the emphasis on the lengths to which the doctrine of all-out war, divorced from political consideration, was carried by the American armed forces, particularly by the Air Force. 'Alone among the services the Strategic Air Command has been able to maintain the "pure" doctrine, the secret dream of American military thought: that there exists a final answer to our military problem, that it is possible to defeat the enemy utterly, and that war has its own rationale independent of policy.' However, all three services accepted tacitly that if a global war came, it would be by a surprise Soviet nuclear attack on America. A basic assumption behind this view was that America would never start an aggressive war. Memories of Pearl Harbour played their part. 'The notion that a new war would inevitably start with a surprise attack on the U.S. has been basic to post-war United States strategic thought.' This must be met by building up the maximum possible strategic nuclear power to be able to strike at Soviet vitals and so to deter such an attack.' Kissinger accepts, with most other writers on this subject, the necessity of having such capability of all-out war, but emphasises over and over again the extreme limitation of this doctrine, except in the most unlikely event of a 'pure' case of all-out aggression.

Since the doctrine of total war included little or no

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provision for any threats less than the almost wished for
case of 'pure' aggression, it left the United States almost
powerless to use its great military power, in any less vital
circumstances. Of the period of atomic monopoly, when
Kissinger implicitly assumes that the United States could
have destroyed the U.S.S.R. easily and cheaply, he writes
'We never succeeded in translating our military superiority
into a political advantage.' This passage shows a naivety of
thought unexpected in so sophisticated a thinker. It is
indicative of the almost mystical American belief in what
technology can achieve: its implication is that it was
reasonable to expect that the United States should have been
able to use its monopoly of the bomb to gain permanent poli-
tical advantage, without having to wage war or even threaten
it. In particular, Kissinger points out that the American
monopoly did not prevent the U.S.S.R. from producing its own
atomic bombs in 1949 and so profoundly altering the balance
of power, to America's detriment. 'No conceivable acquisition
of territory--not even the occupation of Western Europe--
could have affected the strategic balance as profoundly as
did the Soviet success in ending our atomic monopoly.'

The divorce between planning and policy became still more
flagrant with the outbreak of the Korean War. America was
forced to fight a war limited in terrain, limited in weapons
and limited in aims, and to accept an armistice far short of

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even local victory. Thus America had to fight to a stalemate
the first major limited war in the present nuclear age with
inadequate military equipment, even less adequate military
training and without nuclear weapons. Never was the contrast
greater between the humdrum exigencies of the real world and
the dream world of American military thought.

Kissinger gives a valuable analysis of the reactions of
the American armed services to the experiences of the Korean
War and regretfully concludes, on what seems good evidence,
that they subsequently made few, if any, changes in the
doctrine of the primacy of preparations for total war to be
waged for total victory. With arguments very familiar here
to those who have followed the discussions on limited war and
graduated deterrence, Kissinger emphasises the vital neces-
sity to develop strategic methods and weapons systems which
do not paralyse the will by the horror of putting them into
effect. He is at his most convincing and even passionate
when castigating the pure doctrine of total war and the
associated policy of massive retaliation, and is most eloquent
when he pleads with his countrymen to find some workable way
of exerting power, between all-out destruction on the one
hand and appeasement on the other.

His second main thesis is that a way out of the impasse
can only be found by the West relying on tactical nuclear
weapons to eke out its deficiencies of mobilised manpower. He

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elaborates possible 'rules' for the waging of limited nuclear war, to which he believes the West can make the U.S.S.R. conform by the threat of all-out nuclear war. This leads us to the well-known and endlessly discussed problem as to whether limited nuclear war is or is not possible, say, in Europe against the U.S.S.R., without it spreading to all-out strategic war. More precisely, the problem for the West is whether NATO could safely initiate the use of tactical nuclear weapons if the Soviet Government did not do so.

Very similar conclusions are reached and questions formula-
ted by Osgood. He stresses the view that the idea of limited
war is profoundly antithetical both morally and emotionally
to the American way of thinking, but asserts his own opinion
that 'the deliberate, scrupulous limitation of warfare (is)
an indispensable condition of American security.' Gordon
Dean, in the preface to Kissinger's book, expresses the same
view.

Thus there appears to be almost unanimous agreement among serious writers on the subject that total war as an instrument of policy paralyses the will on any occasion but the least likely one (that of total aggression), encourages nibbling and indirect attack, deters local defence and resistance and plays into the hands of an enemy commanding more flexible military power. All agree equally that Russian, and even more Chinese, military theory is as compatible with

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the waging of limited war for limited objectives as official
American doctrine is not. This opens up to the Soviet
numerous possibilities of using force locally to advance
their interests without approaching anywhere near the point
where the West would react by threatening total war.

Since to impose a policy of unconditional surrender on a
nuclear Power in a limited war could be suicide for the
imposer, it is clear that limited war must essentially be
fought for limited war aims: thus unconditional surrender,
even outright victory, is excluded as a war aim. Some think
that limitation of war aims is 80% of the problem of waging
limited war. The importance of achieving a plausible and
understandable doctrine of limited war is rammed home
repeatedly by Kissinger, who considers the survival of NATO
as an effective military organisation depends on doing so.
He emphasises the well-known contradiction that Western
policy at present attempts to convince the U.S.S.R. that any
attack on Western Europe would bring on an all-out war and
at the same time tries to persuade the Continental Powers
that it won't--that is, that a Soviet attack can be contained
on the ground.

3. When the tactical use of nuclear weapons in land warfare was first seriously canvassed in the United States about 1950, it represented a militarily feasible policy and in a certain sense an advance on the previous doctrine. During this

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period J.R. Oppenheimer incensed the Strategic Air Command
by the slogan 'Bring the battle back to the battlefield.' It
was then a feasible policy for the West because the U.S.S.R.
had very few atomic bombs to use in reply, and it could be
held to be sensible because it was at least a step away from
the rigidity and all-or-none character of all-out war.

Discounting its political disadvantages, it remained perhaps
a possible military policy for a few years more; while in
fact the West had such a numerical preponderance of nuclear
weapons that it could be argued that the threat of massive
retaliation by the United States Strategic Air Force was
adequate to make the U.S.S.R. conform to the West's own set
of rules for waging limited atomic war. However, even during
this period of numerical superiority, detailed studies made,
for instance, by Sir Anthony Buzzard and summarised and
analysed in the Chatham House Pamphlet 'On Limited War' of
1956 written by Goold-Adams, and in my nearly contemporary
book 'Atomic Weapons and East-West Relations', revealed the
complex and arbitrary nature of the rules required. As one
of the participants in the discussion which took place before
the Chatham House Pamphlet was written by Goold-Adams, I came
more and more to the conclusion that the power of the American
Strategic Air Force to force Soviet compliance with the West's
own set of rules was probably then a thing of the past and
would certainly soon be so. Now, with effective parity for

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planning purposes, of mutual destructive power, I think it has
vanished. Furthermore, I believe that the Soviet superiority
in land forces combined with atomic parity may even put them
in a position to try and force the West to comply with their
own set of rules for limited war, which might well exclude
the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

It is clear that the significance of the doctrine of the
use of nuclear weapons in limited war has undergone a change
as the period of Western atomic monopoly gradually became
transformed into the present period of atomic parity. In the
United States this doctrine evidently still commands wide
support, if for no other reason than that it provides seemingly
a course of action which might restore to the United States
the possibility to exercise flexibly its military power, while
avoiding the twin horrors of America being atom-bombed, on the
one hand, and of the necessity of raising bigger armies, on
the other.

Europeans cannot but look on the matter rather differently.
The doctrine of limited nuclear war as opposed to the older
d doctrine of massive retaliation might deflect the bombs from
both America and the U.S.S.R. but it would certainly bring
them down on Europe. This fact undoubtedly explains the
~~great reluctance of European~~ Governments to leave the shelter,
however exiguous, of the old policy of preparation for total
war. Nevertheless, tactical nuclear weapons have become

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accepted in NATO forces, even though no rational theory of
their use exists.

For limited war in Europe with tactical atomic weapons to
be a policy which the West should initiate, clearly the
following conditions would have to be fulfilled.

Firstly and most obviously, the West must be convinced
that the war could be kept limited and that the chance of it
spreading to all-out war and so to the destruction of European
cities must be negligibly small. Secondly, the initiation of
the use of such tactical nuclear weapons must be reasonably
likely to give some military advantage to the West.

Only if these two conditions are satisfied, would the
initiation of the use of tactical nuclear weapons by SHAPE
serve the avowed purpose of the Western peoples, which is to
reap the benefits accruing from military power without having
to maintain large armies.

Unless these two conditions are satisfied, the initiation
of the use of tactical nuclear weapons by the West in a
limited war would either hasten military defeat or lead to
the destruction of Europe by H-bombs--or both. When we
remember that the forces of NATO are in fact provided with
and are being trained in the use of tactical atomic weapons,
the urgency of settling these vexed questions is immense.

As already mentioned, Kennan and King-Hall, though widely
differing in many respects, agree in this: the use of tactical

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nuclear weapons does not provide for the West a possible
alternative policy to all-out strategical nuclear warfare.
Moreover, both authors agree that the rejection of limited
nuclear war in Europe as a deliberate Western policy forces
a return to conventional warfare without nuclear weapons,
even though this may lead to military defeat. They both have
had the courage to discuss what happens afterwards.

It is clear that the question as to who is right, Kissinger
on the one hand, or Kennan and King-Hall on the other, is
absolutely vital. I will therefore consider Kissinger's
arguments in some further detail.

It is one of his major theses that the West should use
tactical nuclear weapons in limited wars even if the enemy
does not. The issue is to important that I will quote his
actual words: 'We should leave no doubt that any aggression
by the Communist bloc may be resisted with nuclear weapons
but we should make every effort to limit their effect and to
spare the civilian population as much as possible....that we
would not use more than 500 kilotons explosive power (25 times
that at Hiroshima) unless the enemy used them first; that we
would use "clean" bombs with minimal fall-out effects for any
large explosive equivalent unless the enemy violated the
understanding; that we would not attack the enemy retaliation
force or enemy cities located more than a certain distance
behind the battle zone...say, five hundred miles; that within

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this zone we would not use nuclear weapons against cities declared open and so verified by inspection, the inspectors to remain in the battle zone even during the course of military operations.' It will be noticed that on Kissinger's proposed rules, American and Soviet cities would be excluded as targets, but nearly all European cities would be legitimate targets--unless declared open and verified by inspection.

Kissinger believes that the West has a reasonable chance of inducing the enemy to conform to our own set of rules, because the West holds the ultimate sanction of threatening all-out nuclear war if it does not. In my view this is incorrect today even if perhaps once true in the past. For the demand in the West for limited nuclear warfare arises only because the deterrent effect of threatening all-out war to stop a limited aggression is not now effective. If it were still effective, tactical nuclear weapons would not be needed, because a limited aggression could be stopped by the threat of all-out war. Since the threat of all-out nuclear war is now not effective, it cannot be relied on to force the enemy to conform to our set of rules for waging limited nuclear war.

Kennan holds that the attempt to find a more discriminating alternative to the H-bomb as a basis for national defence may have been a step in the right direction at least, in the sense that it recognised the bankruptcy of a policy relying only on H-bombs and long-range missiles. However, he

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vigorously attacks the advocates of limited atomic war in the
following sentences: 'It appears to be their hope that by
cultivation of the tactical weapon we can place ourselves in
a position to defend the NATO countries successfully without
resorting to the long-range strategic one; that our adver-
saries can also be brought to refrain from employing the
hydrogen bomb; that warfare can be restricted to whatever the
tactical weapon implies and that in this way the more apoca-
lyptical effects of nuclear warfare may be avoided.'

'It is this thesis that I cannot accept. That it would
prove possible, in the event of an atomic war, to arrive at
some tacit and workable understanding with the adversary as
to the degree of destructiveness of the weapons that would be
used and the sort of target to which they could be directed,
seem to me a very slender and wishful hope indeed.'

I agree with Kennan on this essential point, that is, I
believe that it would be extremely dangerous for the West to
initiate the use of tactical nuclear weapons at least in any
vital area such as Europe, because of the danger of their use
spreading out towards all-out nuclear attack on cities.

Suppose, however, that tactical atomic weapons were used
in Europe by both sides, what would be their military effect?
It is customary to assume that their use would favour the side
which is strategically on the defensive--that is, according
to the common assumption in the West. This argument has

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always seemed to me rather weak, particularly where, as in Europe, or for that matter in Korea, the Western military effort must be supplied through a few ports. For these would, on almost any set of rules for limited war, be allowed as targets for tactical nuclear weapons. As Sir Ralph Cochrane emphasised at the Brighton Conference, the use in Korea of tactical nuclear weapons by both sides would probably have been fatal to the West, because of the vulnerability of the ports on which their military effort depended.

On the battlefield itself, atomic weapons may perhaps favour the side which is tactically on the defensive, since they would make too dangerous the massing of large numbers of troops for a conventional type of attack. It is not at all clear, however, that tactical atomic weapons could not be integrated very effectively into a tactical offensive: according to reports from neutral observers, this is being done in the Soviet Army, and no doubt also in the NATO forces.

As a matter of fact, Kissinger, in his advocacy of limited atomic war does not rely on the argument that their use would favour the defence, and so the West. He is logical in doing so, for he envisages limited nuclear war as a fast moving affair of small independent units acting largely on their own initiative. In such a war, of course, the units on the side with an overall defensive strategy will, as often as not, take the tactical offensive.

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He is led therefore to look for some other factor which will make the use of tactical atomic weapons of more value to the West than to the East. He finds this in the belief that Western soldiers will be much better at tactical nuclear warfare than Soviet soldiers. He contrasts the flexibility and self-reliance of the American officer corps, 'drawn from a society in which individual initiative has traditionally been encouraged', with the rigidity of Soviet military organisation. 'The Soviets may be able to train units for limited war, but the pattern of operation for such a conflict would not come "naturally" because the Soviet human material would possess no instinct for this kind of warfare.'

From the point of view of NATO military planners, it is easy to see the fallacies of such an argument. Though Soviet tactics on the main fronts in the last War may at first have been rather rigid, they became much more flexible later on. Moreover, thirteen years have gone by--plenty of time to train the army in any new tactics required. Then SHAPE knows only too well that much of the main land forces in Europe facing a Soviet attack would not be American. Thus SHAPE would not be able, at any rate in the earlier phases of limited war in Europe, to rely too much on the natural flexibility and self-reliance of the American soldiers. Moreover, in the essential early stages of a limited nuclear war even the American troops might be relatively untrained. If the U.S.S.R. is able to

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raise more troops than the West, it seems likely that she may
possibly be able also to train them better.

To be quite frank, I think this argument of Kissinger is,
from the planner's point of view, plain poppycock and very
dangerous. To one who remembers similar beliefs about
British personal and technical superiority current before the
First World War, and remembers the outcome, I can only comment
'This is where I came in.' First we rely on our atomic
monopoly to offset the greater number of Soviet soldiers;
when the atomic monopoly is lost, we rely on having more bombs;
when numbers become unimportant, we rely on better bombs;
when this technical superiority is lost, we rely on the
superiority and quality of the few individual soldiers we do
have. Superiority in character, like superiority in weapons,
is something to be trained for and hoped for. When achieved
it should come as a welcome windfall profit, but it should
not be counted upon.

I conclude from this analysis that it is by no means certain that if tactical atomic weapons were used by both sides in Europe, they would favour the West. Personally I would go farther and hold that the NATO forces even in their present state would probably put up a better defence if neither side used them than if both did. But this must remain a matter of conjecture.

We see therefore that neither of the two conditions which

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must be satisfied if the West is to gain by the initiation of
limited nuclear war can be proved true: it cannot be shown
that the war could be kept limited, and it cannot be shown
that the use of tactical atomic weapons would favour the West.

Something must be said of the statistical effects of using
tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Since they have
never been used in real war, reliance must be placed on exer-
cises, of which two have been reported in the press, both in
1955. In operation Sage Brush in Louisiana, 275 tactical
nuclear weapons of from 2 to 40 kilotons (one-tenth to twice
that of the Hiroshima bomb) were exploded in a limited mili-
tary operation. The assessors reported that the destruction
was so great that no such thing as limited or purely tactical
nuclear war was possible in such an area. In a similar exer-
cise, Carte Blanche in Western Europe, 335 bombs were used in
48 hours, and the estimated civilian and military casualties
were 1.7 million Germans killed and 3.5 million wounded. One
lesson of importance was that, given military equality in all
fields, between opponents in atomic war, an aggressor could
always defeat a defender.

We see, therefore, that even if limited nuclear war in
Europe could be kept limited, and even if it did militarily
favour the West, the reluctance of Continental people, espe-
cially West Germans, who live in the area where the battle
would be fought, to entrust their safety to such a destructive

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means, is easily understandable.

4. King-Hall's attacks on the official Western, and British, policy of total war and massive retaliation do not differ in essentials from those of Kissinger and many others who have discussed the matter. He differs flatly from Kissinger, but in fact agrees with Kennan, in his complete disbelief in the feasibility of limited war with nuclear weapons in essential areas such as Europe. His arguments are framed in a realistic manner as they could appear to military planners.

'If a conflict started between the Soviet Union and the West, the Soviet Union might say: "We do not intend to use nuclear weapons of any kind unless they are used on us." It would be to their advantage to say this because they have a superiority in non-nuclear forces, and the NATO powers would be in an awkward position. Are we to suppose that they would reply: "We intend to use nuclear tactical weapons in order to counter-balance your superiority in non-nuclear forces"? This would mean that the West was deliberately making the war a nuclear event and this would have a serious disadvantage from the Western point of view. First, it would put the West in the wrong with uncommitted world opinion; secondly, it would lead to a split of opinions in the Western countries; thirdly, it would open the United Kingdom to nuclear attack and this is a form of attack against which we are defenceless. My

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surmise is that if the Soviet Union were clever enough to
make a statement about not using nuclear weapons and live up
to it, we should have to follow suit, even though today we
claim that we must and will use tactical weapons in a NATO
war.'

King-Hall proceeds to discuss the following specific hypothetical case. A rising occurs in East Germany and the East German Government alleges that it is being organised from West Berlin, and calls on the U.S.S.R. for help. The Soviet forces declare that to hold East Berlin it is necessary to occupy West Berlin, but that the occupation will be temporary and is only to put down illegal activities against the Government of East Germany. The U.S.S.R. might tell the small Allied forces in West Berlin to keep out of the way or to evacuate themselves to West Germany under safe conduct. What does the West do? Is this a major aggression to be met by all-out war against the U.S.S.R., with the resulting destruction of European cities? There is little doubt that no all-out attack on the U.S.S.R. would be threatened: in other words, the Great Deterrent would not deter. Moreover, the use of tactical nuclear weapons would be quite impossible. Further, one might well expect a passionate plea from West Berlin and from the insurgents in East Germany that they should not be used.

It is thus clear that there are a number of perfectly

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possible and even likely disturbances in Europe which might be the starting point of a limited war, in which the land forces of NATO would engage probably superior Soviet forces. Current Western doctrine suggests that SHAPE would at once use tactical nuclear weapons. If there were any serious intention of keeping the war limited, it would certainly be necessary to make some announcement to the enemy of just what the West intended to do. Since no one has agreed what ought to be announced on such occasions, there would be endless wrangling and confusion. By the time agreement has been reached, the enemy would have achieved their limited objective.

For such reasons as these I am convinced that it is on the whole unlikely that Britain or America would in fact initiate the use of tactical nuclear weapons if a limited war broke out in Europe. I believe this in spite of the official statements to the contrary, in spite of the conventional status which tactical nuclear weapons have achieved in SHAPE and in spite of the fact that the training of the troops is being largely based on their use. I do not think they would be used for much the same set of reasons which led to them not being used in Korea, Indo-China and Suez. In these three campaigns, stalemate, partial defeat and complete withdrawal respectively were accepted by nuclear powers without nuclear weapons being used.

In the event of a limited war breaking out in some such

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circumstances as are outlined above, I think it is highly
probable that the NATO High Command would be forced to pro-
hibit the use of nuclear weapons, even if only at the last
moment, and so have to leave the ground forces to fight
without them.

If through some circumstances some NATO forces did use a
few tactical atomic weapons in Europe, I believe the British
Government would immediately announce to the world that it
was taking active steps to try to stop any more being used
and that no strategic nuclear weapons would be launched from
British bases against the Soviet Union under any circumstances
other than that several British cities had already been des-
troyed by Soviet bombs. This may seem startlingly at
variance with officially stated policy. However, there would
seem to me to be no alternative course of action--except the
impossible one of immediately evacuating the cities and put-
ting a large part of the population underground before
launching the nuclear weapons. It seems to me impossible to
imagine a limited nuclear war in progress in Europe without
the overwhelming British concern being not what happened in the
battle but to prevent Britain being destroyed. In such a
tactical nuclear war there would be many Western aircraft
with nuclear bombs in the air and in the sole control of
individual men who might mistake their targets, misread their
orders, or deliberately ignore them. If one such man attacked

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a major Soviet city, it would appear to the U.S.S.R. as deliberate aggression and a violation of the assumed rules of limited nuclear war. Could the British Government leave London at the mercy of one such man? Moreover, just in such a case of Western violation of their own rules for limited nuclear war, Europe could not rely on the power of the S.A.C. to deter Soviet attacks on European cities.

I think it is a most salutary exercise to think out the circumstances under which the British Chief of Staff would agree to SHAPE initiating the use of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. They would know that no set of rules for the conduct of such a war had been agreed between the allies, far less with the U.S.S.R., that British cities are quite undefendable against atomic attack by rockets if not by aircraft. They would have to reckon with the likelihood that the assumed Soviet threat would be posed in a highly ambiguous form, making it quite uncertain whether, for instance, the United States would risk its own destruction by launching the S.A.C.

It is important, even if obvious, that a decision to initiate nuclear weapons would not be taken by an anonymous 'they' but by individuals--perhaps someone here today. May I talk for a moment to such an imaginary person. Under precisely what circumstances would you initiate the use of nuclear weapons in a limited war in Europe? If you did, what

would/

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Insertion p.25

25(a)

It seems clear enough that the American Government is extremely unlikely in fact to use the threat of all-out war by the S.A.C. in order to assist NATO in a limited war in Europe. This is because of the risk of Soviet nuclear attack on the U.S.A. It has been estimated by an American writer that in the first two days of an all-out war between America and Russia about 100 million Russians might be killed--but also about 20 million Americans! Another recent estimate is that 250 Soviet H-bombs reasonably placed on their targets would kill 70 million Americans. The figures may well be quite wrong, but the effect of their publication can only be to prevent the threat of total war being used effectively by America to keep a limited nuclear war limited. In such calculations it is becoming customary for convenience in the United States to make use of a new unit of numbers of killed--this is the Mega-death.

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would you say to the country?

'There is no danger at all of the war spreading: carry on work and living as usual.' Or alternatively: 'I fear there is an imminent risk of the war spreading to British cities. Unfortunately, we have not found it politically possible to make any serious preparations for atomic attack on Britain, so you will have to fend for yourselves. I am glad to announce that the Government is issuing free to every householder an excellent pamphlet on Civil Defence, from which you will be able to discover the best statistics available as to how many of you will be killed and how. I may add that the Government has set up a Committee under Professor to consider, following Mr. A.J.P. Taylor's interesting suggestion in a recent letter to the Times, whether cyanide pills are to be issued through the Health Service to anyone who may want them.'

In fact, when one considers the actual circumstances in which a British Government would have to consider whether the threat to the Western way of life was great enough to justify the tactical use of nuclear weapons to avoid military defeat at the risk of having British cities destroyed, one finds, of course, that the British people could not be consulted in the time available. If they were consulted previously, say now, by referendum or poll, on the well-known democratic principle of 'no annihilation without representation', there would

certainly/

27

certainly be a substantial fraction who would vote against
taking such an immediate risk of annihilation to avoid some
other fate which, however grim, would not be so immediate.
Supposing there was a majority vote for taking the risk,
would it be practical politics to force this policy on a
substantial minority?

Such arguments amount to asserting that the inhibition
which Britain must have against authorising the use of tacti-
cal atomic weapons in Europe seems to me to be nearly, if not
quite, as strong as are its inhibitions about launching a
strategic attack on the Soviet Union. It can never be quite
certain that a tactical nuclear war would, in fact, not turn
into a strategic one; but the likelihood is sufficiently high
to make it absolutely necessary to plan for the probability
that it would. Failure to do so would seem to me extremely
dangerous.

So far, I have discussed the situation as it is today,
with the main NATO forces beginning to be trained in the use
of tactical atomic weapons, but with the nuclear warheads
remaining under American and British control. The policy
recommended by Kissinger and, as far as one can learn, likely
to be carried out if the present policy is maintained, is to
train the land forces of all the fourteen nations of NATO in
the use of tactical nuclear weapons. This implies that the
warheads will have eventually to be put under the control of

the/

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28

the local national commanders. One remembers Kissinger's
emphasis on the essential requirements of local initiative
and rapid decisions required to fight successfully a tactical
nuclear war. So any system of central control of tactical
nuclear warheads would be inconsistent with their successful
use.

As soon as it is clear that the control of tactical nuclear
warheads is already in peace time in the hands of the armies
of the majority of the fourteen NATO powers, or that they
would be immediately put in their control on the outbreak of
a limited war, then all the already strong inhibitions
against SHAPE authorising their use will be greatly magnified.
For now the possibility of any set of rules for limited nu-
lear war being maintained will be much reduced, due to the
increased likelihood of the major cities of contestants being
attacked, either by mistake or deliberately. Britain, for
instance, might find her national survival hazarded by any
one of many fanatical fingers on hundreds of nuclear triggers.
It should never be forgotten that the numbers of tactical
nuclear weapons likely to be required in a moderate sized
limited war runs into many hundreds.

As the tactical nuclear armament of NATO forces progresses,
I am convinced that the increasing concern of each member
state at a time of international tension will become less and
less with the military intention of the Soviet bloc and more

and/

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with the
and more/dangerous consequences of possible individual action
by other NATO countries. When this happens NATO ceases to
exist as a unified military force and becomes an uneasy
agglomeration of nucleary armed states relapsing into
frightened isolationism, not inconsistent perhaps with the
contemplation of the use of nuclear weapons to try to settle
some local and possibly colonial problems.

Moreover, if and when tactical nuclear weapons become conventional among the fourteen NATO powers, it is hard to imagine that they will not be found to have spread to non-NATO powers, for instance, all over the Middle East. When this happens, it is easy to predict that both the Western and Eastern blocs will become less worried about each other's intentions and more and more worried about the possible activities of other nations. They may well find themselves forced together into joint attempts to keep general order in the world.

In one of his most moving passages Kennan implores the
West to realise the extreme danger of its present policy of
spreading tactical nuclear weapons around the world.

5. The logic of this argument is that on strictly military grounds Western countries have to face the fact that tactical nuclear weapons provide little hope, at any rate in Europe, of compensating for the West's disinclination to mobilise its superior/

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superior manpower to produce adequate land forces. It follows that in certain circumstances Western countries will have to accept military defeat and thereafter possible occupation.

Both Kennan and King-Hall have made courageous contributions to the problems that then arise. In studying what they say, it is well to remember that they are not speaking only of Britain, but implicitly also of the other European NATO countries. Some Britishers may well prefer to contemplate now the thought of British national suicide rather than that Britain should be occupied. Far fewer will be found to prefer British national suicide rather than, shall we say, that Turkey should be occupied. The Turks might well share reciprocal feelings.

Kennan states clearly that circumstances could arise in which European countries would have to accept defeat and occupation. This follows from his view that the West is unwilling to provide enough soldiers, and will be found to be unable to remedy this deficiency by the use of tactical nuclear weapons. '...the problem of defence for the continental nations would be primarily one of the internal health and discipline of the respective national societies, and of the manner in which they are organised to prevent the conquest and subjugation of their national life by unscrupulous and foreign imposed minorities in their midst. What is needed is a strategic doctrine addressed to this reality.' Then come

the/

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the much criticised remarks about the possibility of relying
more on territorial militia type of forces, on the Swiss
model, as contrasted with the regular military units of the
last War. 'It is on the front of police realities, not on
regular military battlefields, that the threat of Russian
Communism must primarily be met. The training of such forces
ought to be such as to prepare them not only to offer what-
ever overt resistance might be possible to a foreign invader
but also to contribute the core of a civil resistance move-
ment on any territory that might be over-run by the enemy.'

I agree to some extent with many of the critics of Kennan
that he tends to place too much emphasis on para-military
forces rather than on strengthening conventional forces. I
do not believe that the West could not find it politically
possible to increase its conventional strength if the need
was realistically put. But the present confusion of policy
as to what nuclear weapons can or cannot do must be cleared
up first. If massive retaliation really is official British
policy, why have conventional forces? But even if the West's
conventional forces were increased, one would still have to
agree with Kennan that the problem of what happens after
possible defeat needs urgent study.

King-Hall also recognises clearly that under certain cir-
cumstances European countries must face the possibility of
military defeat and so be faced with the possibility of

occupation/

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occupation. 'It is an open question whether Britain could
rely on the Americans to make the war nuclear to save us from
occupation and whether it would be in our interests to ask
them to do so, and I am sure that the British Government
would think twice before taking such a step. My vote would
be against it because I am convinced that as between Britain
being occupied by the Russian army and a Britain a smoking
radioactive charnel-house the former is the lesser of two
great evils.' He continues: 'The people of the United King-
dom must recognise that they are liable to invasion to a
greater extent than ever before in their history. This is a
strange idea to most Englishmen, but the notion that one's
country is liable to be invaded is familiar to Continental
Europeans, Middle Easterners, Africans and Asians. We are
unique among nations, and in the Western hemisphere, in not
reckoning invasion of our homeland as one of the normal
hazards of international life. We are no longer amongst the
privileged class in this respect and should face this fact
and take it into account in our defence plans.' As far as I
can judge, King-Hall's and Kennan's views on this matter are
in substantial agreement.

King-Hall proceeds to elaborate possible methods of carry-
ing on the struggle after military defeat and occupation,
using in a most interesting and critical manner the experience
of successful and unsuccessful resistance movement, in France,

Denmark/

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Denmark, Norway against Germany, and in Egypt and India against Britain, Hungarians first against Austrian rule and recently against the U.S.S.R. His conclusions are, briefly, that active resistance is unlikely to pay, and resort must be had to some form or forms of passive resistance which may have to last years or decades. Finally, he advocates the study of, and the training in peace-time for the carrying out of passive resistance.

There is one general criticism of King-Hall's book with which I am entirely in agreement. He places much too much hope on the efficacy of propaganda and political warfare, except in rather special circumstances.

The gravamen of most of the attacks on both King-Hall and Kennan is that the peoples of Western Europe are not heroic enough or impervious enough to Communist pressure to sustain a long passive resistance. This highly defeatist view may perhaps prove true, if ever put to the test. However, it seems to me clear that they are even less likely to be heroic enough to will their own certain destruction to avoid the possibility of occupation. When it comes to the critical moment, the admittedly heroic tasks of passive resistance may seem less formidable and farther distant than that of embarking on all-out war. The policy of those critics who decry beforehand the possibilities of continued resistance and refuse to think about its problems, seems well designed to

make/

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make Quislings of most Europeans.

Some may feel that the discussion of such grim situations
and the pin-pointing of such appalling national and personal
dilemmas is not in the national interest: that it is better
to leave things vague and undefined: that any attempt to
analyse in detail the sort of situation with which one may be
faced will only raise doubts as to the national will to
survive. I respect this view, but cannot share it. To me it
has too big an ingredient of bluff and of the attitude 'It
will be all right on the night' to form the basis of a
rational military policy. Perhaps too I am influenced, as no
doubt Sir Stephen King-Hall is, by a professional training
and service as a sailor. Pre-eminently the sailor's training
is to anticipate in detail the emergencies which may occur,
and to have a drill ready and trained for to meet each one of
them. In my view, one of the greatest contributions Britain
can make to its own great future and that of the world as a
whole is to chart realistically the dangers ahead of us, and
so to provide the basis for working out a realistic defence
policy which does not put the Ship of State in hazard of
extinction.

My three selected authors, Kissinger, Kennan and King-Hall,
have all, in their very different and often contradictory
ways, exposed some of the foundations on which such a policy
could be based. But there is much further study and hard

work/

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work to be done. I am convinced that unless we face realistically and in all grim detail the possible situations which we may encounter, Britain may find herself led by events beyond her control into political and military fiascos compared with which Munich will appear to future historians as a monument of courage and Suez as a triumph of military planning and political wisdom.

Kissinger's greatest achievement lies just in his greatest failure. If such ability, such knowledge and such dedication can only make so fragile a case for limited nuclear war as a policy for the West in Europe, then we can safely reject it: and, incidentally, forgo the tedium of reading other writers on the subject. Kennan and King-Hall have had the courage to face up to the implications of the end of the great illusion that a now non-existent technological superiority is a match for men.

6. Let me leave this grim prospect and end on a somewhat flippant note. When grappling with these important but intricate arguments as to the role of nuclear weapons in Western defence policy, it is useful to keep in mind a few numerical facts and certain deductions from them. One remembers that the main argument for spreading tactical nuclear weapons among the nations of NATO is that they would enable the West to use its superior technology to defeat the hordes

of Soviet/

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of Soviet soldiers. On the other hand, Osgood quotes the actual population of the NATO countries as 430 million, which is over 50% higher than the 280 million in the U.S.S.R. and her European satellites. Thus the role of the assumed superior technology, which certainly existed ten years ago, was to compensate not for a deficiency of manpower but for the disinclination of Western peoples to serve as soldiers. Today no important degree of military technological superiority can safely be planned for, and military planners must revert to traditional practice of assuming technological parity. It must be further assumed that both East and West have many hundreds of H-bombs, that is, quite enough to inflict vast damage on the other side: one H-bomb could destroy almost the whole of Greater London and kill more than half its inhabitants. In addition, both have much more than enough smaller tactical nuclear weapons to fight any conceivable limited war in Europe.

Unless present tendencies are changed, technological superiority may well pass to the U.S.S.R., since they are training more engineers and applied scientists than the whole Western world, and have shown a marked aptitude of concentrating their efforts on to a limited number of important targets, such as nuclear weapons, TU 104 aircraft and the Sputniks. So future military planners may (taking an optimistic view, which I share, that the world is rather unlikely to blow itself up)

be/