In the camp of Freedom today are found two schools of idealism, the one declaring that there must not be another war, the other reasoning that there cannot be. To the former, military men offer their own prayers and assistance in those missions which are supposed to prevent war. With the latter, however, they must argue intelligently, convincingly, and incessantly; just as does a doctor with a man complacently wearing an extra ten inches of girth which may shorten his life by that many years. While it is a gross misuse of God-given intellect and will to conclude cynically that war is inevitable, there is, on the other hand, great danger in the unwarranted assumption that man, since he now possesses the means of destroying himself, will never again resort to large-scale armed force to resolve his differences.
It should be agreed that all the forces and tensions which breed war are rampant in the world today, leaving mankind encased in a tinderbox of universal proportions. Within this highly inflammable enclosure are the giant arsenals of Freedom and Communism, and the friction necessary for the fateful ignition is prevented only by a tremulous curtain separating the two.
In America life is geared to a rapid, sometimes hysterical pace. There is a ceaseless din caused by the clash of idealism and materialism, with the result that many citizens swirl about in a whirlwind of contradiction and indirection. The most noteworthy of the contributory air currents originate among those 20th-Century phenomena, the “experts” and “analysts,” who have converted communications media into a veritable wind tunnel.
One of the favorite topics of the “analysts” is war—the probability or impossibility of it. The “experts,” in an endless parade of feature articles, provide the public with a wide variety of super-weapons and grand strategy for avoiding, containing, or destroying an enemy. The opinions chanted daily run the long, twisting gauntlet between the extremes of preventive war on one hand and peace-at-any price on the other. Under such onslaughts by divergent “expert” views, perspective tends to give way to uncertainty and numbness.
Military and naval men are not immune to the confusion or resignation that can result from an overdose of theory and speculation. While there has been considerable official debate over the best weapons and strategy to use in a future war, extemporaneous discussions have generated enough emotional heat to vie with nuclear energy. Of particular interest to the Navy and Marine Corps is the prevalent attitude toward the common mission given them by tradition and legislation. This attitude is best expressed by the question, “Is amphibious warfare dead?”
Or, to put it more bluntly, “Where do we go from here?”
These questions are asked, of course, because the United States, Soviet Russia, and other nations have perfected atomic weapons, whose potential is so awesome that even the powerful armaments of World War II are now filed under the mild title of “Conventional Warfare.” Fundamentally, there are two broad considerations underlying the conclusion that future warfare and amphibious operations are incompatible. First, it is argued, if a joint expeditionary force converges on an amphibious target, it will be obliterated by one or more thermonuclear explosions (hydrogen bombs) or a series of nuclear detonations (atomic bombs). Secondly, if such an amphibious force maintains the wide dispersion necessary to avoid destruction by atomic weapons, it will have reached a point so low on the scale of diminishing returns that a decisive landing would be impossible. Even supposing that, by some miracle, an effective landing force did get ashore—or that the enemy purposely allowed this—the tremendous logistical effort required to sustain the operation would fall prey to the same two prohibitive considerations just mentioned
Thus, in one case the amphibious troops are envisioned disappearing at sea in radioactive vapor, while in the other they are seen isolated on an enemy shore, either to wither on the vine or be defeated in detail.
The arguments are essentially that brief. On the surface they appear quite convincing, especially after reflection on the fearsome statistics of the latest atomic tests in the Pacific. In reaction to sensational reports and predictions, it is not unnatural for a wide-eyed citizen to imagine the future war as a nightmare of screaming bombs and rockets whose cataclysmic detonations erase vast areas of the earth’s surface. That slow- moving ships and Marine divisions could be fitted into this picture seems incredible.
Despite blinding flashes and howling winds, the object of this essay is to show that amphibious warfare is not dead, and that the mission of the Navy and Marine Corps in a future conflict will be just as vital as in the past. The subject will be pursued by studying the possibility and nature of war and the conditions which indicate that landing operations are by no means a thing of the past.
Clausewitz rolled war into a neat package: “ . . . the continuation of state policy with other means.” Under this sweeping but accurate definition, he classified two types of armed conflicts: those which are designed to destroy an enemy politically or to force him to the will of the victor; and those whose purpose is to achieve limited objectives for their intrinsic worth or for use in bargaining at the peace table. World War II stands out as a recent example of absolute or all-out war, the first type cited by the German military philosopher. The second type is illustrated by the Korean conflict which, though beginning as an all-out struggle for the entire little nation, gradually emerged and ended as a limited war—from both the Communist and United Nations standpoints. Another classic example of a fight kept within bounds by tacit agreement is the recent Indochina clash which, like Korea, ended with an uneasy truce.
These fish-bowl wars are the continuation of present-day state policy “with other means.” Frustrating struggles, they are highly unpopular with an American public which enjoyed glorious victories in two global conflicts; yet the people of the United States, like those of Russia, Britain, and other nations, are loath to risk peace and progress at home in an all-out drive to settle an outpost battle decisively. Moving cautiously as though in a colossal chess game, and laying away more powder kegs in the cellar, nations will accept stalemate and limited concessions by rationalizing a “wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”
Undoubtedly, there still exist other “wrong places” in the world. Since history has bequeathed to the United States the military leadership of the free world, it is indeed possible that the “next war” has already begun, characterized by limited peripheral clashes from time to time. While all agree that such a prospect is extremely distasteful, none of the great powers appear willing to take the dreadful alternative.
At the time of this writing, there is speculation that the United States is developing a new hydrogen superbomb with an almost inconceivable explosive energy of 45 megatons (45,000,000 tons of TNT equivalent). It has become common to regard missiles stamped with such astronomical figures of destructive potential as a deterrent to aggression and all-out war. Americans must beware, however, lest quite the opposite prove to be true. For if they place too much faith in such awesome weapons, they may unwittingly set the stage for strategic blackmail.
There is evidence that the Kremlin is breeding a group of brilliant scientists whose accomplishments, particularly in the atomic field, can hardly be considered indications of stunted brainpower or lack of imagination. If, in years to come, both Communism and Freedom possess the means to flatten each other completely, simultaneously, and irreparably, the vast stores of superbombs would have only negative value. To think of nuclear warfare in terms of the original atomic missiles was bad enough on the human nervous system; but to calculate a world conflict in multiples of 45 megatons per explosion is completely out of the question. Regardless of ideals, hatreds, or state policies, the leaders of nations and humanity itself will never knowingly resort to planetary suicide. The champions of democracy could never touch off the holocaust because of their belief in the inherent dignity of man. Communists would not dare, since to them materialism is the end which, if utterly destroyed, leaves absolutely nothing.
In such a probable atomic impasse lies the great danger of that blackmail technique so typical of Red leaders. The surprise maneuver by Communist nations could very well be a declaration of “conventional war” that would find the Free World devoid of adequate military means, yet unable to use weapons which, if countered in kind, would bring on the obliteration of civilization.
The above theory may seem unsound only because nations are too close to the hard historical facts that lend it credence. A brief review of the past fifteen years, therefore, may serve to place the matter in focus.
During World War II, a sound concept of balanced land, sea, and air forces proved to be the formula for Allied victory. The war ended, however, in the first brilliant flashes of the “Atomic Age,” and many people were to conclude that science had rendered the old formula obsolete. Wise voices were heard saying that an amphibious operation on the scale of the Normandy invasion was no longer possible, that the massing of great field armies was a thing of the past.
A host of humanitarians, eager to believe that most of the human element could at long last be removed from the tragedy of combat, interpreted the words of experts to mean that all types of amphibious and land warfare were outmoded. Even many conservative thinkers swung to this outlook, after those terrifying experimental detonations in the Pacific were answered by similar rumblings from the plains of Siberia.
The Korean conflict came as a shocking heresy to the new academy of wishful thinkers. Exploding through the Iron Curtain, a tough little peasant army with a hundred tanks smashed into the South Korean constabulary force and sent it reeling. American planes and ships went into action and took control of the air and sea with ease. They pounded the aggressor ceaselessly, leveling his communications centers, ripping his rails and roads, destroying his bridges, and blasting his convoys. Yet the world looked on in astonishment and disbelief; for the dogged Reds bore southward like ants and soon had American divisions as well as South Korean forces with their backs to the last defensible wall.
Mars could laugh in scorn at those who hopefully believed man had been replaced on the scales of war by an electronic tube and nuclear reactor. During the desperate defense of the Pusan Perimeter, humanitarians watched combat in its raw, elemental form: man versus man and the elements.
In September, 1950, the United Nations commanders turned the tide of the struggle by employing at Inchon that “conventional” maneuver: envelopment by amphibious assault. Still later, another historic amphibious operation marked the resurgence of the Communist tide in Korea, when the Hung- nam evacuation was successfully accomplished after Red China’s intervention. Thus, two of the most dramatic and decisive scenes of the first far-reaching military challenge of the “Atomic Age” revolved around ship-to-shore techniques perfected by the United States Navy and Marine Corps before and during World War II.
It may be recalled that America had to act with desperate haste in 1950 to restore the vital balance of land, sea, and air forces in the Far East. Only after this was done did the United Nations position in Korea become tenable. Here is a lesson that should never be forgotten by those who were once blinded by jet blasts, cathode rays, and nuclear explosions.
The disappointing outcome of the Korean struggle frequently is laid to the fact that the United Nations did not bomb Red bases and lines of communications in Manchuria. It is not unreasonable to counter this complaint with the comment that Communist China’s impressive jet fleet did not strike at Japan and Okinawa, both vital bases for the United Nations. There were even those who believed that atomic destruction should have rained down on strategic targets throughout the whole of China as an appropriate answer to that nation’s treachery. The danger of this plan, of course, was that it might have activated the Red satellite’s treaty with the Kremlin. Few people desired to provoke Russia into sending her massive air armada on atomic missions over Europe and the United States. Few reacted happily to the thought of Soviet armies joining with Red China’s hordes to smother Eurasia.
This is not to say that the Communist empire could have succeeded. The point is that the Free World, regardless of its capacity to block an all-out attack, was not willing to subject humanity to the nightmare of total war.
It must not be presumed that the above discussion advocates or condones a “soft policy” line, which today is as sure a way to ruin as any. Its purpose is to show that military men can operate only within those technical and strategical boundaries drawn by civil authority. It should at least hint of the shortsightedness in planning a future war by abstractly equating the earth’s acreage with multiples of a 45-megaton destructive force.
Korea and Indochina are irrefutable proof that limited wars can be as much a form of state policy to the nations of the “Atomic Age” as they were to 19th-Century Europe. It should follow, therefore, that amphibious warfare is neither dead nor dying; for the missions assigned to the United States Navy and Marine Corps in the Korean conflict were a reflection of youth and vigor, not of old age and decrepitude.
At this point, one might bring up the timely question of the possibility of limited atomic war and its effect on amphibious operations. Since the world powers were reluctant to employ atomic weapons in Korea and Indochina for a combination of political, military, and humanitarian reasons, it is more than likely that the same would hold true for other fish-bowl wars. This lone presumption, however, many appear as an evasive or inadequate answer to the query, so that a plunge into fundamentals might be more appropriate.
A few years ago, a quick limited war with the atomic weapons at hand was within the scope of reality. Nuclear missiles were then terribly destructive, but their power, nevertheless, was still comprehensible. There could have been a measurable degree of control. The future limited war, however, will find atomic storage bins filled with thermonculear weapons whose devastating potential, though tagged with a computation for the record, is practically incalculable. Where the original atomic missiles could destroy large cities, the latest devices can wreck whole provinces.
If another Korea boils on the world map, what would either side gain by using thermonuclear weapons? Retaliation in kind would be swift and certain, and the area of conflict would shortly become a wasteland. Taking the Korean struggle itself, this turn of events would have meant the destruction of a whole national and cultural entity. Neither side would have won a political victory, and certainly no economic gain could be claimed from scorched desolation. No effective military force could have occupied the ruined land before a peace settlement without inviting even more wholesale cremation. The fact that Communist aggression had been dissipated in a radioactive vacuum would be completely overshadowed by the despair, disgust, and fear of a panic-stricken world.
Unless it had expanded to envelop the entire globe with flame, an atomic Korean War would have ended in stalemate, probably accompanied by the same type of grinding negotiations that characterized the actual impasse of 1951-1953. In the wake of truce by thermonuclear paralysis would have come the first “replacement” drafts of both sides to stand guard at the 38th Parallel in the ashes of their predecessors. The Koreans, as a people, would be dead.
This is the picture of limited atomic war painted by modern science. While it precludes amphibious landings, there is little or no room for any other type of operation. Even the last handful of bomber pilots on one side or the other might be hard pressed to find an airfield on which to land after their final strike.
It is no wonder, then, that world leaders decided on a non-atomic limited war in Korea. The probability for the future is the same. The alternative, involving thermonuclear holocaust, would extend state policy beyond “other means” and headlong into bleak nothingness. Since nations do not set their sights on absolute zero, it can be concluded again that the Navy and Marine Corps must stand ever ready with proven amphibious techniques.
Multiply the case against limited atomic war a hundred or a thousand times and one reaches identical conclusions for all-out war. The means to so multiply are already being worked out at a rapid pace in the laboratories and testing grounds of the United States, Russia, and other nations. Within the foreseeable future, the camps of Freedom and Communism each will have enough thermonuclear weapons to smash the civilization of the other.
The world is just small enough to allow for such destruction but just big enough so that one side cannot hope to knock the other unconscious before retaliatory attacks are launched. The surprise pulverization of industrial areas in the United States, for instance, would not prevent American bombers and guided missiles from obliterating similar targets in Russia and China a few hours later. Both sides simply have too much territory and too many bases for either to bank on a single strategic haymaker. The total number of planes, airfields, submarines, and missile-launching sites involved would be so large that even the most coldly calculated formula for demolition is studded with variables.
It might be argued that some international agreement will leave atomic weapons powerful enough to prevent amphibious operations but not sufficiently destructive to wreck civilization. The possibility is remote, however, that Marquis of Queensberry niceties can ever apply in a megaton slugfest. If explosions can kill an amphibious force by churning huge ocean areas and miles of shoreline, similar detonations cannot destroy strategic and tactical targets on land without engulfing a critical portion of humanity and its sustenance. Then, too, one can no more imagine Communists virtuously abiding by megaton restrictions than visualize them scrupulously honoring some agreement to release only a stipulated volume of nerve gas per day. As with poison gas, it will be all or nothing in the case of atomic weapons.
With the thermonuclear deadlock at hand, amphibious warfare still stands as a potent implement of strategy. Whether as raids, demonstrations, denials, patrols, or full- scale invasions, landing operations will retain their significance as long as armed conflicts are defined as wars and not suicide pacts.
Seven-tenths of the earth’s surface is water, dotted with myriad islands and set off by thousands of miles of vulnerable shoreline. It is almost inconceivable that a future global war would restrict this vast expanse to all traffic save that of fish. Soviet Russia obviously does not suffer from any such illusion, judging by the number of warships and submarines which have slid down her ways since the end of World War II.
If navies can operate in the next war, landing operations are almost a certainty. Now that the old insular empires are gone, sea power, like air power, is essential for victory only in that it paves the way for and supports the ultimate meeting of man with man.
The crusty Field Service Regulations of the United States Army offer this timely philosophical note:
“Man is the fundamental instrument of war; other instruments may change but he remains relatively constant. In spite of the advances in technology, the worth of the individual man is still decisive. The open order of combat (caused by the influence of modern weapons) accentuates his importance.”
Korea and Indochina should be sufficient proof that technology alone will never win a war. Amphibious operations are one means by which applied science aids man in closing with and defeating an enemy; they form the bridge over which decision advances from air and water to land and victory.