Like images in a distorting mirror, two topical problems in this nineteenth year of the atomic age—the stoppage of nuclear tests and the proliferation of nuclear weapons—emphasize the grotesque dimensions of the so-called stalemate of terror in which we live.
The treaty ban on all nuclear tests, except those underground, a tangential and oblique approach to the major military problem of our times and the spread of nuclear weapons —to Communist China, to France or to a NATO multilateral force—will increase, not diminish, the complexity of the parent problem—the problem of what kind of nuclear strategy will strengthen national security without increasing international tensions.
The central problem is the same old problem the world has faced since the atomic age dawned—the problem of how much is enough, of defining—from the various strategic alternatives—First Strike; Counterforce; No- City; Pre-emptive Attack, and so on—the kind of strategic concept best calculated to discourage or deter all-out war, or to “win” it, with minimum casualties, if it should come.
The problem, though usually discussed in the esoteric semantics and cold vocabulary of the nuclear age, postulates the life or death of millions and the viability of modern civilization.
There have been, within the past year or so, several major developments in the Soviet Union and in the United States in the continuing attempts by these great protagonists to define nuclear grand strategies calculated to strengthen their security. These have included both military developments and theoretical expositions.
Russian Strategic Concepts. The continuing conflict between Soviet ground generals and the exponents of the new missile and air age Was punctuated recently by the publication of the first official discussion of Soviet strategy to many years. The book, Military Strategy, Prepared by a team of Soviet officers headed by Marshal V. D. Sokolovsky, former Chief of the General Staff, has been hotly debated and “interpreted” within and outside the Soviet Union. It is already being revised—and future editions may further clarify Rushan thinking about the use of nuclear weapons. But the volume, while providing redundant evidence of an unconcluded strategic debate between Kremlin political leaders and Soviet military leaders, and between the old line traditionalists and the modern global and space strategists, stresses strongly the advantages and dangers of surprise and of a first (nuclear) attack. In fact, it does so more emphatically than any prior official Soviet statement. It recognizes inferentially what Premier Khrushchev has been saying: that no complete defense against missile-nuclear attack is possible and that both sides will suffer heavily in any nuclear war. Yet it reinforces an opinion already expressed by H. S. Dinerstein (in his book, War and the Soviet Union) that “the Soviet leaders believe . . . that in some circumstances it might be desirable to strike an initial nuclear blow. ...”
Second, though Mr. Khrushchev (at sharp variance with the Chinese Communists) continues to proclaim the mutual dangers of nuclear war and to claim the ultimate triumph of Communism primarily through economic and political means, Moscow continues to employ at times and places of its own choosing “rocket-rattling” as a weapon of aggressive diplomacy. Threats of nuclear destruction, which the Russians obviously think have some political and psychological advantages, have been accompanied intermittently by a new aggressiveness, and a willingness to take risks, as evidenced by the installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba, and the Russian patrol plane overflights of U. S. aircraft carriers.
Third, with one major divergence, Soviet military technological development (though generally less advanced than our own) appears to be following a more or less parallel path. The Russians have commenced to provide hardening—or concrete-and-steel protection—for some of their long-range missile sites. They have constructed nuclear-powered and missile-firing submarines. Moscow, like Washington, is attempting to achieve a greater degree of invulnerability against first attack for its strategic nuclear delivery weapons, while maintaining a conventional and nuclear capability for wars by proxy; wars of national liberation and all other kinds of military reaction.
In two aspects of this attempt to provide an invulnerable deterrent, Russia may be ahead of the United States. An anti-missile installation—perhaps the first operational one of its kind—appears to be either in operation, or almost operational, near Leningrad and may be followed by others. The Russians in their last series of nuclear tests are believed to have destroyed two incoming missiles with a single very powerful nuclear explosion. It is probable that the Russians are no more technically advanced in an anti-ICBM system than our own Nike-Zeus, which has been installed experimentally on Kwajalein Island and is still under development. But Moscow appears to be moving, despite the limitations of the present anti-ICBM systems, towards faster deployment of available defensive weapons than we are. In space, too, Moscow appears to have a capability not yet matched by the United States, a capability of orbiting huge multi-megaton weapons, which could be brought down on command upon the United States. At present, we could orbit considerably smaller weapons, but we have no capability of destroying or intercepting any Soviet weapons that might be placed in orbit.
Finally, there is no indication, so far, that the U.S.S.R. is attempting to match the United States in numbers of ICBMs, or in long-range (intercontinental) bombing aircraft, or delivery systems. Their counter to our superiority in nuclear delivery capability appears to be considerably fewer ICBMs but more powerful ones. The Soviet ICBMs with far greater thrust than our Atlas, Titan, Minuteman or Polaris missiles, can carry warheads of far greater power than U. S. warheads. The Soviet nuclear tests, which have emphasized packaging great power into relatively small weight and bulk, appear to indicate the development of an armory of bombs and missile warheads in the 30-to-100- megaton range, capable of area destruction. Some observers even believe that Russia may, in time, develop 500-to-l,000-megaton weapons (equivalent to 500 million to one billion tons of TNT). These would be so-called “giga- ton” bombs—that could devastate entire U. S. counties and states.
“Super-bombs” are political and psychological terror weapons, but their purely military utility should not be discounted. The development of such weapons has already forced a revision of Minuteman’s electrical system, and it is clear that so gigantic an explosion would have incalculable effects upon radar and electronics, both of which are essential to any nuclear delivery system, over a very wide area.
U.S. Strategic Concepts. Preventive war, massive retaliation, and even the counterforce, or so-called No-Cities doctrine enunciated by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara a year ago, have been brief semantic milestones on the road to the development of present U. S. nuclear strategy.
That strategy, which was considerably confused until recently by various and conflicting administration statements, has recently been clarified in a talk delivered by Alain C. Enthoven, formerly a Rand Corporation scientist and now an influential member—as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense—of Mr. McNamara’s “Kitchen cabinet.”
Mr. Enthoven defined three related themes as basic to present defense policies: “deterrence of aggression; freedom for the President to select and apply the amount and kind of force appropriate to the threat at hand; and third, the controlled use of force.” He stressed the necessity of conventional power to meet the threat of “piecemeal aggression” and to make the punishment fit the crime.
Instead of a “spasm of massive retaliation,” Present policies, he said, stress “options, deliberation, flexibility and control.”
Instead of deciding ahead of time “which targets must be hit by which weapons . . . our approach is to give the President a range of choices so that he can select the plan whose targets and timing of attacks are most appropriate to the circumstances at hand. . . .”
Superior and invulnerable nuclear forces. . . are basic to this concept of deterrent nuclear strategy. Thus, survivable forces—capable of living through a massive enemy surprise attack—and then of being used “with deliberation and control” against any selected type of targets are the key to our present nuclear policies.
This description of our nuclear strategy ’hakes it clear that we are not wed either to a first strike or to a Counter-Force strategy—a strategy keyed to knocking out only the enemy’s military forces. Nor are we wed to a finite strategy—one aimed at the enemy’s cities and control centers.
We must maintain a force capable of surviving a first attack by the enemy, but this does not necessarily mean that this force will not be used in pre-emptive attacks—or attacks delivered against enemy missile and air bases to blunt enemy attacks, known to be impending or already partially delivered. U. S. military procurement and technological developments support what has been called this strategy of choice, or flexible strategy.
Today, the United States possesses a quantitative and qualitative nuclear-delivery capability so much greater than that of the U.S.S.R. that even if Russia should strike us first by surprise attack with her full nuclear strength, we would retain enough retaliatory strength so that the Soviets would be “destroyed ... as an operating military power.”
It could not—in the words of Secretary McNamara, “exist as a nation capable of national operations in any sense of the word.”
Our principal nuclear-delivery weapons systems are either invisible and hidden (the Polaris submarines) or heavily protected in concrete and steel silos buried deep in the earth (the Minuteman missiles).
Our command, control, and communications facilities are “redundant and inter- netted,” with various alternative command posts established around the country and abroad (some of them buried deep in the earth), in a plane in the sky, aboard various command ships at sea (even a submarine could be fitted for the job), and elsewhere. The communications systems are being double-and-triple banked, so that if one is knocked out of action it is hoped that a firm control might still be possible.
The United States has not built the superbombs the Russians apparently are stockpiling, but our armory of many varied weapons includes bombs (in their largest sizes) with yields of more than 30 megatons, enough to wipe out any city on earth. We have a more flexible system of nuclear delivery than the Russians, with numerous alternatives, including stand-off long-range bombers, submarines, aircraft carriers, land-based missiles and tactical bombers.
Stalemate—Or? Today, the two opposing strategic concepts appear to have established a so-called nuclear stalemate, a “balance of terror,” of mutual deterrence, of two “scorpions in a bottle,” which was forecast when the nuclear age was young.
But it is an uneasy stalemate and stability is by no means insured. At the lower end of the spectrum of conflict, Cuba, South Vietnam, and a score of other hot spots demonstrate the wisdom of maintaining and strengthening the U. S. capability for conventional response, for making the punishment fit the crime. Yet any of these conflicts, as Cuba showed, carries a danger of escalation, of a small war becoming a big one, of a nuclear confrontation.
Does our nuclear strategy promise to: (1) deter such a war by the threat of unacceptable damage; (2) provide maximum national security at minimum international tension; (3) “win” a war if deterrence fails by minimizing our own casualties and damage while at the same time destroying the enemy’s military power as rapidly as possible?
Certainly a strategy of flexible response with a choice of options in both target objectives and methods of delivery is a sound concept.
It would be a fundamental mistake in the age of missile-firing submarines, and concealed and hardened land-based missile sites to base all our plans on a Counterforce strategy and to lift the nuclear sword of Damocles from the skies above Soviet cities. A deterrent is fundamentally based upon fear of the consequences; if Mr. Khrushchev knew that Soviet cities would not be prime targets in a future war, would he be more, or less, inclined to practice nuclear brinkmanship? The answer is obvious in the Soviet superbomb program; the “gigaton” weapon postulates to the United States in future years complete urban devastation if nuclear war should come, a fact that would “deter” any President.
Yet, a so-called finite capability limited to the destruction of the principal Soviet cities clearly is inadequate to the preservation of a stable deterrent. For it would imply that the United States had abandoned any attempt to blunt—or reduce the force of an impending Soviet nuclear strike by pre-emptive attack. It would also mean a very major reduction in the numbers of U. S. nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, and would probably cede to the U.S.S.R., with dangerous political and psychological consequences, a lead in numbers as well as in power of atomic arms.
Yet, a strategy of flexible response, supported by the number and kind of weapons systems (invulnerable or hidden) that can survive a massive enemy surprise attack and knock out any selected Soviet target system— military or urban or both—can have a double- edged effect. It certainly poises the sword of retribution—of fear—above the Kremlin more clearly and emphatically than any other strategy. And, to the extent that fear of the consequences is a deterrent, it has an inhibiting and a stabilizing effect, as the Cuban crisis has shown. Moreover, as both sides build weapons systems that are hidden or more and more invulnerable to surprise attack, deliberation becomes possible, and the necessity for split-second reaction and hair- trigger warning is of less importance. For this reason, too, the accent upon a survivable and selective second-strike capability is a stabilizing factor in a tense international world.
On the other hand, such a strategy, if it is to be credible, means a major and continuing U. S. nuclear delivery superiority. If we are to be able to destroy any type of military or other target system after suffering losses in a surprise attack, it is obvious that we shall have to build X times as many missiles as Russia does, and conceal or protect them far better than Russia has done. The arms race Would not only continue but would be speeded up. From this point of view, a strategy of flexible response, while unquestionably providing the maximum deterrence, may actually increase international tension and foster instability.
Michael Brower emphasized this point in the October 1963 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists when he wrote
... as we continue to present to the world this picture of our overwhelming nuclear supremacy, far in excess of the minimum needed to deter the Soviets from using their nuclear weapons, what will be the impact of our efforts to convince the world that the U. S. poses no threat to any nation, that we are the purely defensive power in the cold war? And what effect will it have on our efforts to persuade all peoples ... to rely less on armed force . . . and more ... on methods of peaceful change?
Thus, a strategy of flexible response does not settle the old argument of how much is enough. It does not provide any automatic answer to the problem of how to combine optimum deterrence with minimum tension, or, to put it another way, how to combine maximum national security with minimum international instability.
Many critics today believe, with justification, that the United States has programmed far more than enough power to meet the requirements of a strategy of flexible response.
The United States has already built, is building or has planned so many missiles, bombers, submarines and other nuclear- delivery systems, and has actually produced so many nuclear bombs and warheads that it has the capability of overkilling—or destroying—the Soviet Union, as a military and political power, many times. In theory, the Soviet Union has enough nuclear weapons—- though its delivery capability is more doubtful—to overkill the United States, though not to the same extent.
For quite a few years, many military men have been emphasizing that because of our tremendous overkill capability, our nuclear build-up should be defined and limited. In the past few months, serious consideration has been given, for the first time, by both executive and legislative departments, to a sizeable cutback in the production of nuclear warheads and bombs. The production of atomic weapons has apparently had little relation to actual requirements; the Pentagon accepted as many weapons as the AEC could produce. Now, “with nuclear bombs and warheads running out of our ears,” as one observer has put it, there is a likelihood that production of atomic explosives—or at least of atomic weapons—will be limited.
Such a limitation would be only a first step in providing an answer to how much is enough. Indeed, it is unlikely that any final and fixed answer will ever be possible; there are too many unknowns and uncertainties in the equation of power to arrive at a finite answer. Nor can a strategy of flexible response or any other strategy reconcile the irreconcilables. To achieve optimum deterrence, there must be maximum threat; yet minimum tension and maximum threat are not compatible. Here the only guidepost can be a reasonable compromise between two divergent aims. We shall continue to require a superiority in numbers and in quality of nuclear delivery systems, but there is a numerical limit to these needs, which we have already exceeded in our total production of fissionable material, and which we are approaching in our total number of delivery vehicles.
There is the final yardstick against which our strategy of flexible response must be judged—the yardstick of war. If deterrence fails, can such a strategy provide “victory”?
Despite the best efforts of Herman Kahn and the Office of Civil Defense to paint a picture of a United States—devastated by multi-megaton weapons and poisoned with radioactive fall-out, rising phoenix-like from the ashes within a few years—“victory” in an all-out nuclear war has a hollow ring, and at best a relative meaning. We might have fewer millions dead than our opponent; we might, conceivably, survive as a political and economic entity. Certainly a strategy of flexible response would contribute to this end as much as any strategy can do. But it cannot guarantee “victory” in any conventional meaning of the word, or in the sense of immunity from devastation. And one element of this strategy "deliberation and control—might well be impossible if the bombs started to fall. For it presupposes not only the most complex, responsive, and instantaneous system of communications and control ever envisaged (something that we do not yet have but are trying to achieve), but also a coldly objective rationality, a superhuman control of human emotions. Even if only one nuclear bomb were dropped on U. S. soil, the reflex reaction Would almost certainly be to “clobber” the enemy.
“You can’t crank anger,” as one senior official in the Pentagon put it, “into a calculating machine.”
The mass restraint, the careful selection of targets, the choice of alternatives required by a strategy of flexible response when holocaust begins may well be impossible to achieve, not only technically but emotionally. Spasm response, so much criticized today by the Pentagon’s “whiz kids,” may be the end result of all our analytical labors, if war comes.
There is, in all the current discussions of strategic alternatives, a continuing and vital caveat. The technological revolution has not ended. Any pragmatic strategy must be built around the weapons that support it. And those weapons are still in a major process of change. A Buck Rogers “death ray,” like a laser—a beam of concentrated, powerfully amplified light—might overturn overnight all present concepts. A real defense against missiles, the military utilization of space, a breakthrough in sonar or the science of under- water-sound detection—any of these developments (and many others) could alter the world’s power equations and invalidate our present strategic concepts.
Neither the strategy of flexible response nor any other strategy “whiz kids” or calculating machines or plodding minds may conceive can provide anything like absolute security in the atomic age. For the immediate future, the more invulnerable we make our strategic delivery forces to attack, the more stable the balance of power will become. The transference of our missile-launching platforms to the sea—far away from cities—or to the air and space (with nuclear-propelled carriers) can be a major contributing factor to increased security for our people in the foreseeable tomorrows.
But the greatest deterrent to war will be not merely and not only a clear-cut U. S. nuclear superiority. The will to use it in defense of vital interests is an essential element of the deterrent, and it must include a demonstrable—in fact, an obvious—superiority by the United States in military technology and in other forms of power throughout the military spectrum.