The United States has announced that its military strategy in future wars will be shaped around the use of atomic weapons in the event of enemy attack. While some may harbor the thought that this is primarily intended to deter aggression by posing a threat of massive retaliation and that the country’s actual intentions remain a clouded issue, recent trends in defense appropriations indicate otherwise. It seems evident at this stage in the drift of affairs that not only does the United States intend to employ atomic weapons, if attacked, but that it is committing itself in advance to their use by developing atomic capabilities to the detriment of others. Few could argue that the possession of a strong atomic capability is unjustified in view of the threat, but from the standpoint of national policy there is room for doubt.
The nature of the problem involved here requires that military strategy be considered in its proper relationship to the other methods by which a national policy is pursued. Together with economic, social, and diplomatic efforts, military efforts are but one component of the several which together form the nation’s “grand strategy.” Obviously, the prime requisite of these components is that they be parallel. When brought into play in a given situation, each must aim to produce the same situation aimed at by the whole effort. And they must be mutually supporting. Each must advance rather than nullify or impede the success of its partners.
Unavoidably, one is led to a consideration of the basic national policy of the United States, for one cannot test a proposed strategy without knowledge of the effect desired. Unfortunately, current concepts of the national policy too often rest upon a pattern of American thought which I believe urgently requires reshaping.
We have come to regard war as a challenge offering vital problems which are unrelated to those problems of the peace existing at the instant before war, or to those which will arise when war ends. For example, in World War II we stripped Japan of her Empire in utter disregard of the fact that the creation of this Empire was the result of natural forces which we as victors could hardly hope to alleviate.
As a result of this habit of mind, we have come to postulate two sets of national policies, one in terms of peace, the other for war. This is to operate from a gross fallacy. War is a continuum of peace, marked only by a different method of solving human problems. Both ends of war are joined to peace, at one end by the conditions in peace which bring war about and at the other by the conditions which war itself transmits to the peace which follows. To think otherwise about war, to compartment it from peace, and to postulate one national policy for each is to vitiate the nation’s efforts in both peace and war by destroying the relationship between the two. A war policy which is not bound lock, stock, and barrel to a peace policy may so derange the course of human affairs as to bring on a drastically altered set of circumstances, entailing a vital change in the national needs, requiring in turn a complete reappraisal of the national interest and necessitating a repostulation of national policy. It is the parent of literally generations of doing, undoing, and redoing.
Therefore, in our consideration of a military strategy, we must first postulate a national policy which is sufficiently broad to enclose the whole spectrum of our problems, from those problems of peace, through those of war, and on into those of peace again. Is this possible? I believe it is, because of two conclusions to which we should have been led by our own experiences. First, the development of human society, and particularly the development of governments which are compatible with our own by reason of a similar public philosophy, is dependent upon stability in international affairs. Second, although all wars temporarily upset at least a part of international stability, even though they may ultimately be necessary to improve it, it is really in the aftermaths of large wars fought with total means that this essential stability is most seriously upset. If this is so, I believe that the policy of the United States becomes simply this: to promote international stability by the maintenance of peace through deterrent power and through arbitration, and, failing this, to prosecute war with the aim of achieving a favorable settlement with minimum damage to the essential elements of international stability.
Now if this is a reasonably correct statement of the continuing policy of the United States in peace and war, we have a criterion against which the components of grand strategy can be tested. Let us test the present concept of “Atomic Strategy.”
As it is generally understood, the atomic strategy of the United States entails the extensive use of atomic weapons in two ways —first, their use against the armed forces of the enemy; second, their use against the sources of the enemy's military strength. It is towards this second use that our atomic strategy is most heavily emphasized and from which the greatest yield is expected. In fact, one would not be far wrong to say that at heart our atomic strategy is basically atomic strategic air warfare.
The following definition of strategic air warfare is to be found in “Functions of the Armed Forces and the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” a paper issued by the Secretary of Defense in December, 1953:
“Strategic Air Warfare.—Air combat and supporting operations designed to effect, through the systematic application of force to a series of vital targets, the progressive destruction and disintegration of the enemy’s war-making capacity to a point where he no longer retains the ability or the will to wage war. Vital targets may include key manufacturing systems, sources of raw materials, critical material, stock piles, power systems, transportation systems, communications facilities, concentrations of uncommitted elements of the enemy armed forces, key agricultural areas, and other such target systems.”
This then is what is at the heart of the military strategy which is to be used to carry out the continuing basic policy of the United States. If it is a suitable strategy, atomic strategic air warfare must faithfully serve the ends of that policy. It must assist in maintaining peace through deterrent power. It must also, if war comes, achieve a favorable settlement with minimum damage to the elements of international stability.
Maintaining peace through deterrent power is dependent upon a number of conditions. One condition is the possession of a military advantage that would clearly be decisive in war. Atomic strategic air power may give us that advantage at this time, but when a condition of parity is reached in a few years, the advantage disappears. If, when parity occurs, we still persist in considering our atomic strategic air power as a decisive advantage we will be doing a very foolish thing. We will, in effect, be wagering our physical and institutional structure against the enemy’s.
Another condition upon which deterrent power is dependent is the clearly established will to act with that power. Atomic strategic air power is not a military force which can easily be committed to a degree appropriate to the extent of the provocation. By definition, to be effective it must be extensively applied. Needless to say, its effects would be cataclysmic to an enemy. At what point in “creeping aggression,” or in “internal aggression,” or in “aggression by proxy” would such drastic countermeasures be applied? Surely the possession of such a fearsome capability will produce a paralysis of the will to direct its use, by demanding that every other means of solution be thoroughly explored. How much deterrence remains, then, in a capability whose use would be sanctioned only in an extremis situation?
From these two considerations my own conclusion is that our atomic strategic air power is not the military force best suited to promote international stability by the maintenance of peace through deterrent power. How well would it, in war, achieve a favorable settlement with minimum damage to the essential elements of international stability? There are really two questions here.
First, could atomic strategic air power achieve a favorable settlement? If we mean by this simply a military victory, probably it could, but it would at best be a Pyrrhic victory. Given atomic weapons on both sides, it is hard to believe that there could be only one-sided use of the capability both enjoy. The process has the flavor of a suicide pact.
Finally, let us look at the other requirement which our national policy imposes: that a favorable settlement be achieved with minimum damage to the essential elements of international stability. Considering this requirement, is our strategy acceptable?
Here we must consider what are the essential elements of international stability. Again it is necessary that we delve deep for fundamentals. We must first answer the question, what is stability? Our knowledge strongly suggests that human relations, and especially the relations of nation states, are basically unstable. But unstable societies can and do reach states of equilibrium, which Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines as “a state of balance, or even adjustment, between opposing influences, interests, etc.” I submit that this is what is entailed in a situation of international stability. It is not necessarily the maintenance of the status quo, but rather the continual evolution of a new status quo without the occurrence of violent upheavals that mean catastrophe to some or all of the nations concerned. Nor does it imply the absence of conflict. What is implied is the absence of conditions which would force or encourage any nation to resort to the extremes of total war. What, then, are the essential elements of this condition?
I will certainly not presume to answer this question with authority. I can only suggest a possible answer. Consider it basically as a matter of the regulation of needs. I believe it can be shown that equilibrium is reached when nations that are the world’s power centers have achieved a balance of needs, a condition in which needs have ceased to be so desperate that they can be satisfied only by desperate measures. They will remain in equilibrium as they grow only if each becomes in effect both customer and supplier to the other. Disputes, even conflicts, between them in teaching accommodation does not necessarily mean disequilibrium. But disputes or conflicts which threaten to destroy the pattern of accommodation will produce severe disequilibrium. Accordingly, it is essential to a condition of equilibrium that none of the powerful nations should be so damaged or threatened that it can no longer function in the above manner. Therefore I would suggest this as an essential element of international stability: the physical preservation of the world’s power centers, and the continuance of their basic functions.
In war, then, if the policy of this country is to achieve a favorable settlement with a minimum of damage to the essential elements of stability, how suitable is our atomic strategy? I think the answer is self-evident.
I can only conclude that an atomic strategy is an effective insurance policy protecting us from such a strategy in the hands of others. It is not a strategy suitable for supporting the policy of the United States of America, in peace or in war. Understanding this, the urgent challenge to military men is to devise other means on which a suitable strategy can be constructed.