Why is it that the United States has not been more successful in halting Communist aggressions? Why do we often appear to be on the defensive, apprehensive and uncertain, even though we possess all the elements of greatness. There is every reason for implicit faith in our destiny on the basis of our native assets.
First, geography favors us with what is truly the world’s promised land. No nation on earth can match our territory for location, with warm water ports at the edge of great oceans to the east and west, and with friendly neighbors to the north and south. No nation can match our natural agricultural abundance, with superb soil and climate for a wide spectrum of basic crops. No nation can match the degree of self-sufficiency we enjoy, with considerable indigenous resources conveniently located near logical industrial areas and markets.
Secondly, few populations can match the size and vigor of ours, and none can match its versatility. We have assimilated the best of the innate talents of most of the world’s great peoples, and the best of the cultures they brought with them.
Third, there seems to be literally no foreseeable limit to our ingenuity and productivity. We are the industrial and economic envy of all, as is eloquently evidenced by the universal scorn of our materialism.
Finally, and certainly not the least important, we are blessed with a political system which has the flexibility to steer between extremes and endure. There are critics who will take exception to one or more of these assertions; but, taken over the long view of total potential to meet the challenge of the future, it is impossible to disprove our aggregate advantage.
Why, then, don’t we have greater self- confidence? In large measure, the root of our travail has lain in a military establishment which is technologically marvelous but politically ineffectual. To be sure, one cannot prove that it has not averted a nuclear war up to this point. But this bears examination, at least insofar as the era of nuclear parity, or near parity, is concerned.
It is a natural impulse to integrate the tense moments of the past ten years into a vague sense of having been repeatedly near the brink of World War III. This period has been specified advisedly, because the Soviets are not known to have detonated an atomic device until August, 1949. Even if they had had delivery systems, which they did not, they could not have been credited with a reasonable operational stockpile (near parity) until some time after the maneuver phase of the Korean episode.
When we review the record in retrospect, removed from the influence of strident daily headlines, there is reason to wonder just how close to the brink of total war we really were: 1954—Indochina; 1955—Formosa Straits; 1956—Hungarian Revolt, Suez; 1957—Syria; 1958—Lebanon; 1959—Laos. It is not at all clear that there was a direct conflict of U. S.- Soviet interests in any of these incidents (including Berlin prior to the mass exodus from East Germany and the “wall”) so vital as to prompt either ourselves or the Soviets to consider all-out war. It seems more accurate to say that we periodically approached the threshold of limited war, rather than the brink of total war.
Despite the exhortation heard so often around the country, “We must put a stop to this continued Communist nibbling,” we actually crossed the threshold only once, in Lebanon. [This article was written before the President ordered the naval and air blockade of Cuba on 22 October 1962.] The Lebanon crisis evaporated before our eyes when we did so. In one other case—those incidents involving the Formosa Straits—we approached the threshold boldly and our readiness to cross was clear to the world. Significantly, there were large ground forces at our disposal in this arena—the Chinese Nationalist Army.
As regards Indochina, Hungary, Suez, Syria, and Laos, however, the record reveals that the tone of U. S. conduct was less assured. At the same time, the record strongly suggests that with success coming their way so easily, the Soviets have had no need to contemplate nuclear war. This is not by any means to deprecate the deadly seriousness of the cold war. On the contrary, it is a striking illustration of how we can go on losing the cold war little by little, year by year, while the Communists are astute enough to keep the issue just sufficiently limited so that the threat to the security of the United States will not be clear. In sum, perhaps we have been deterring the Soviets from a nuclear war they have not wanted anyway, but we have deterred them from little else.
The missing ingredient in our posture is plain to see—manpower. Lacking adequate ground troops and still smarting from the Korean experience, we have been hesitant. Except in the Formosa Straits and Lebanon, we simply have not adjudged the margin of strength sufficient to make the risk of reversal commensurate with the gain. As we have seen in 1961, the habit of success has emboldened the Soviets to press more closely on direct U. S. interests in the squeeze upon Berlin. In response, we did at last take steps to augment our conventional strength. But even in this critical instance, the temper of the nation required a tentative approach, and the build-up was instituted on the basis of a year’s term.
Such national irresolution about manpower vis-a-vis nuclear weapons has been contrived by the interaction of two diametrically opposing forces, both deeply rooted in our society. First, is the historical U. S. belief in the citizen army, mobilized in time of crisis. As we have been thrust into the unfamiliar arena of world power politics, tactical nuclear weapons have played irresistibly upon our aversion to large standing armies. All too eagerly we have grasped at the atom as a substitute for manpower. The second force is our national abhorrence of nuclear war. The vivid memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki fills a vast segment of the population with misgivings about what ends justify nuclear means. National survival certainly does.
But where does transitory limited defeat end and national survival begin? We have not arrived at anything like unanimity on this question, and it is doubtful that we ever will in the absence of the most direct and immediate threat to the continental United States. Torn by these divisive forces, we are paralyzed with indecision. It is not surprising, therefore, that the veteran of Korea, finding his units undermanned, inclines toward the niceties of tactical nuclear weapons for winning campaigns. As a result of bitter personal experience, he interprets “limited war” loosely as those wars which are somewhat less than unlimited. Moreover, the emphasis on nuclear weapons in place of manpower has emphasized the operational aspects of limited war maneuver and has beclouded the issue of the political utility of arms.
To demonstrate the thesis that manpower is the key to political utility of armed force in the cold war and limited war, it is necessary first to recall an immutable tenet of international relations, to wit: coercion among great powers is possible only through the use of unlimited force. While such a statement is perhaps startling at first glance, it is nothing more or less than a paraphrase of the principle of sovereignty. A sovereign nation is supreme unto itself. Unless persuaded to accommodate, it will pursue its national objectives with every resource at its disposal. Consider this carefully. It means that we cannot compel the Soviets to do our bidding against their will without thermonuclear weapons. The colossal struggle between us can end in only one of two ways: coercion or accommodation. We certainly do not intend to accommodate ourselves to erosion by international Communism, nor to be coerced by it. Hence, the possibilities are narrowed. Either we coerce the Soviets, or they accommodate us, and it goes without saying that we would insist upon true accommodation, not “coexistence,” Khrushchev-style. This in turn means either a war of survival, or, the other alternative, a long cold war, perhaps interspersed with limited campaigns, to manuever them into an accommodation. It is incontrovertible that there is indeed “no substitute for victory” in either of these wars. Whereas coercion is a prerequisite to victory in a war of survival, however, it is anathema to cold war or limited campaigns, which it can spontaneously transform into a war of survival.
The implication is assuredly not that we should approach limited war with timidity; nor that we should not be prepared to win them with the best technological tools we can devise. Rather, the implication is that we must carefully evaluate each limited war before going all-out to win it. We must guard against preoccupation with victorious employment of limitless and near limitless force, and devote more thought toward how to avoid escalation. Obviously, we do not undertake limited wars to lose them, but neither do we undertake them to precipitate a showdown if it can be avoided. We must be alert to ascertain whether it is just a campaign in the cold war, or whether the hour of survival is at hand. Until we are convinced that it is the latter, conventional forces are best calculated to create a stalemate or to achieve a limited victory short of coercion.
At this point of the argument, the Korean veteran is apt to snort, “What did manpower get us in Korea except a bloody nose?” He has misinterpreted the lesson of Korea. That action preceded nuclear parity, and the unlimited force available to the Communists was manpower. By pushing to the Yalu, we in fact attempted coercion—and we evoked unlimited response. As it turned out, we were able to hang on and were not required to face the choice between being driven from the peninsula or using our own unlimited force (nuclear weapons) in turn. Had we consolidated near the 38th parallel after Inchon, without attempting to push to the Yalu, however, we would have achieved our real objective of denying the Communists South Korea. In a line naturally difficult to penetrate, we would have achieved stalemate with a far stronger bargaining position than we ultimately had after an ignominious retreat from the Yalu. Given that experience if, in the future, under nuclear parity, we are hopeful of manipulating the Soviets into an accommodation acceptable to us in the long term, and if we do become engaged in further limited wars, it is to our interest to avoid escalation and gratuitous showdown before we will it.
Even more important is to avoid any engagement in the first place, because once blood is aroused on both sides, reason may not prevail despite our best efforts. Thus, while manpower is important in the execution of limited war, it is vital in deterring it in a positive sense, in giving us the political muscle to win cold war victory without firing a shot, as in Lebanon. Manpower’s effectiveness in this regard arises from the great paradox of our times: the utmost refinement in capability to win wars is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to deter wars. This is a point at which our national thinking goes astray. For example, Mr. Henry A. Kissinger, in a recently published reappraisal of whether limited war should be nuclear or conventional, sums up the arguments of the proponents and the opponents of tactical nuclear weapons as turning on the question of deterrence with them, versus preferred fighting strategy without them.1 Quite the reverse is actually true. Reliance upon tactical nuclear weapons is well calculated to gain campaign victories if and when we are convinced that the hour of a showdown is at hand. But is such reliance without manpower a credible threat to the Soviets in deterring them from initiating aggression? No matter how we ourselves rationalize our willingness to use them, do the Soviets really believe that we will? Whether or not we actually would is beside the point—the point is what they believe before hand. If we weigh the impact upon the Soviet leaders of the universal dread of nuclear warfare which exists throughout the Free World, we must conclude that they are confident of our reluctance to initiate it unless we are truly desperate. The men in the Kremlin will be tempted to concede themselves the ability to overrun our inadequate troops easily and quickly, while we, in their estimate, writhe in indecision and finally decide to accept a fait accompli.
The corollary of the paradox, then, is that although conventionally armed ground forces are not the ideal mechanism with which to win wars, they are a vital deterrent against limited aggression. Here again, Mr. Kissinger’s words reflect how we have missed the point. He states that the frequency of warfare since the Middle Ages attests the inadequacy of conventional force as a deterrent.2 Such was the case, however, before nuclear parity while unlimited force was conventional force without the “shield” of thermonuclear power. It was the case before the price of coercing a major power was probable world devastation. The thermonuclear shield, in the shadow of the tenet that coercion leads to unlimited force, renders conventional force a mandatory piece in the game of chess to forestall further Communist nibbling, a piece which makes possible a fine distinction between deterrence with manpower and coercion with nuclear weapons. The passionate appeal that we not be drawn into abandoning our advantage in tactical nuclear weapons for reliance upon conventional strength is sound—when it comes to coercion. But nothing can take the place of massed infantry and armor as a totally unambiguous deterrent, not susceptible of misinterpretation by the Soviets. They are after world domination for profit, but they understand infantry and armor, and they recognize that to engage large conventional forces is likely to limit severely their margin of profit. It is a tangible deterrent, whereas tactical nuclear weapons without adequate manpower is an imponderable which they can explain away.
As we look back, we can well ponder upon whether the Korean incident would have taken place had we had ten divisions suitably deployed in the Pacific beforehand. Would North Vietnam have fallen if we could have landed four divisions to help the French in time? Would the Pathet Lao have been so successful in 1959 had we committed two divisions to Laos in the initial stages? In Europe, would the Soviets have been so brutal in Hungary or so brash over Berlin if the West had had something like 60 full strength divisions on hand? Obviously, there is no categorical answer, but it can hardly be denied that weakness in Free World ground troops must have been considered an important factor of strength for themselves in each Communist estimate of the situation. Even if one will not accept the positive argument supporting conventional strength, neither can one refute the negative argument which runs as follows. We have been losing far too many encounters in the cold war. The one major element lacking in our military posture has been ample conventionally armed ground forces. It cannot be demonstrated that lack of ground forces did not influence our losses. Therefore, the very least one can reasonably concede is that an increase in ground forces is a possibility worth trying.
Again it must be stressed that this does not mean that we should not have nuclear weapons. Nor does it mean that we must not respond in kind if the Soviets use them; nor even that we should not resort to them if the Soviets do threaten to engulf us with conventional forces despite our build-up. In these cases, we have progressed through a mere cold war campaign and are approaching the showdown wherein nuclear weapons are indispensable. The argument here is that the presence of infantry and armor serve far clearer notice of our determination in advance, and thus tend to forestall incidents which may deteriorate into a showdown. The Washington Post and Times Herald reported that the Berlin build-up was deliberately circumscribed in order to avoid any provocation of the Soviets. If this were the case, it is the most direct, and ironical, demonstration one could ask of (a) the utility of conventional forces in giving the Soviets pause to consider, (b) the inadequacy of the level of conventional strength we have been maintaining, and (c) the danger in letting the Soviets become so accustomed to their winning ways.
How much conventional ground force is enough? This is manifestly a matter for detailed Pentagon study. It does seem reasonable to postulate as a general principle, however, that for a starting point the Free World should possess at least enough to deny the Communists the device of operating through remote control. This is to say that we should have in being forces clearly superior to the combined satellites, east and west, in order to convince the Soviets and the Chinese Communists that confrontation of their own national troops with ours would be the price for conventional aggression. How much beyond this we can go in matching them man for man is problematic, but certainly we can afford no less. It should be noted as regards the upper scale that a near match with the Soviets is not out of the question on the basis of population. With the Chinese Communists, numerical matching is impossible, but the matter of matching effectives, adequately supported, is not clearly hopeless in the light of Red China’s apparent economic plight. In any case, our latent potentiality does not justify the gloomy outlook that we can never cope with the “Communist hordes.” Whatever our strength, surely each division should have tactical nuclear weapons available in range and depth. Some have doubted the practicability of a dual purpose force, but it is difficult to see the impracticability of nuclear-equipped reserves attached to each division, ready and on call when needed.
The bill for such a standing army would very probably entail both an increase in taxes and a whittling away of the fat in other programs. But what do we gain in the bargain? A plentiful conventional force, with tactical nuclear weapons in reserve, all under the shield of invulnerable retaliatory strength, could revolutionize U. S. policies. Our leaders could have confidence that several divisions could be dispatched to any given trouble spot on short notice without hurting or even straining our over-all position. We could cease to worry about squeaking through on a shoestring, and could assume the diplomatic offensive (called for so long by so many) with enlightened self-interest. We could meet, and even anticipate, militant Communism with militant self-interest. The Communists have had us on the run these ten years. In our search for the cause, we have turned to moody introspection and destructive self-criticism. Voices of doom decry our educational system, the softness of our youth, our moral bankruptcy, our materialism, our cradle-to-grave security, etc., etc., ad infinitum. Voices in positive defense are few. With resurgent self- confidence, we can put the crosses we bear into proper perspective as aberrations normal in any human society, and far less serious in our own than in most. We can begin to count our blessings. It may well turn out that this latter inventory will be found to include automation as making possible a larger standing army without detriment to production. For while automation is a substitute for manpower on the assembly line, there is no substitute for military manpower in international power politics. Recall that Khrushchev has repeatedly asked who would be silly enough to think that the Americans would risk nuclear war over a trouble spot not directly involving U. S. territory. We might. He could miscalculate and push us too far. Before he does, let us hasten to develop a limited war deterrent he will believe—large conventional ground forces, with tactical nuclear weapons in reserve, all under a shield of invulnerable retaliatory strength—as a matter of permanence, not just for the term of each crisis as it arises.
1. Donald G. Brennan (ed.). Arms Control, Disarmament, and National Security. (New York: George Braziller, 1961), p. 142.
2. Ibid., p. 150.