A limited war, by definition, is a war undertaken to accomplish a limited objective, in which the national survival of a major power is not in jeopardy.
A nation which undertakes a limited war can expect to find allies, if at all, only among those states whose national interests will be served by the accomplishment of the limited objective in view.
The United States is now engaged in one limited war in which the support of several allies whose interests correspond with our own in Southeast Asia has proven to be of considerable military as well as political and psychological value. Since it is highly probable that we shall in the future be confronted with other contingencies requiring limited military operations, considerations of foresight may suggest some thinking-through of just where we might reasonably look for allies in specific circumstances which come within the perimeter of possibility. The point is that this thinking-through should be done on a selective basis rather than depending on alliance structures which may have little relevance to the particular contingencies to be anticipated.
Some degree of official Washington discontent with our NATO allies has been indicated from time to time because none of them have shown much interest in helping us in Southeast Asia. The French, indeed, have expressed open opposition to our Vietnam operations, and others have been more or less critical. NATO itself is in disarray because of the resurgence of French nationalism under General Charles de Gaulle, added to British economic troubles and West German political chaos. Yet, we might do well to reflect, as Don Cook points out in his brilliant book Floodtide in Europe, that “there are limits to the usefulness of allied diplomacy, which tend to reduce actions to the lowest common denominator, and there are advantages in a certain freedom of action and political flexibility.” Freedom of action, indeed, is the key element in our global strategy. It is a maritime strategy, relying on the use of the sea and the air spaces above the sea; its instruments are carrier-based air forces and amphibious assault forces, supported and supplemented as necessary by long-range, land-based air power and by the sealift and airlift of ground troops. Our capabilities in these military elements are formidable indeed, and possession of those capabilities confers upon our government a degree of freedom of action to meet distant emergencies which is possessed by no other nation on earth. It must also be admitted that we have hardly been scrupulous in consulting our allies in reaching military decisions in which they have a perfectly legitimate concern.
Thus, President John F. Kennedy in 1961, alarmed at the discovery that NATO planning called for the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the early stages of any Soviet ground offensive in Europe, established the “pause” strategy which contemplated initial resistance to such a Soviet move by conventional weapons only, leaving the decision to employ nuclear arms even for tactical purposes to further determination by the President of the United States as the latter might view the emerging situation. This decision was taken without consulting either the British-French- American “Standing Group” in Washington, which is supposed to deal with NATO strategy, or the larger NATO Military Committee, also in Washington. Nor were these NATO organs consulted on a later occasion when Mr. Kennedy, having dealt so gallantly and effectively with the Cuban missile crisis, decided to withdraw all U. S. intermediate- range ballistic missiles from Europe. The former decision was much more important than the latter, but in both cases the failure to consult was not well received by our Allies. Our subsequent failure to sell our NATO Allies on the multilateral nuclear force (MLF), a mixed-manned fleet of disguised merchant ships armed with Polaris missiles— which we intended as a substitute for the withdrawn land-based missiles—was not wholly due to doubts as to the efficacy of the proposal; part of the trouble was dislike of our offhand manners, accentuated by the high- pressure salesmanship with which we tried for two years to ram the MLF down European throats.
In all this unhappy business, the feelings of our British friends suffered especially painful laceration, since Britain had clung hopefully and with good reason to the idea of a “special relationship” with the United States, rooted in the four years of close and loyal wartime collaboration when Anglo-American strategy was directed by the Combined Chiefs of Staff: the most successful and fruitful military alliance known to history. Unhappily, the British were to suffer yet another unannounced slap—as they saw it—from their American friends. From the very beginnings of our nuclear weapons program, we had worked hand-in-hand with the British nuclear scientists, in the closest and most confidential relationship. While postwar Britain was not able to pursue a nuclear arms program anything like as massive as ours, the British wanted to maintain their status as a nuclear power, and for that reason were, in 1962, seeking a means by which they might extend into the 1970s the nuclear capabilities of their powerful V-class bombers. They thought they had found such a means in the U. S. Skybolt missile, an air-launched ballistic weapon capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. It was, however, a controversial weapon with a good many uncertainties, and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara decided that its promise was insufficient to justify moving it ahead into the production stage. We sprung this decision on the British out of a clear blue sky, with no warning and no consultation about possible alternatives, to the public humiliation of the British government of the day. The result was almost as disastrous to Anglo-American relations as our previous conduct during the Suez crisis of 1956 when we self-righteously forced the abandonment of a perfectly reasonable British-French military attempt to recover the Suez Canal from Nasser of Egypt on the ground that “aggression should never be rewarded.”
There is no doubt that this British experience convinced General Charles de Gaulle that his doubts as to American reliability were justified, and contributed to his decision to insist on France creating a nuclear deterrent under French national control. His subsequent unilateral dismantling of the NATO establishment in France was consistent with his reasoning that the integrated structure of the NATO alliance, under what seemed to him an American domination which took small account either of the pride or the national interests of our allies, was outdated.
Now the hard, strategic fact is that France, due to her geographical position, is the cornerstone of any defense of Western Europe against attack from the east, especially if the success of that defense must depend on timely and massive reinforcement from across the Atlantic. De Gaulle is too capable a soldier not to realize that this is so. There is therefore some reason to believe that his repeated assertion that the alliance still endures and that France will honor its obligations are sincere, though he may—as do many other Europeans—feel that the threat of such a Soviet attack is receding. That feeling is, of course, subject to change whenever a change in the Soviet government produces a new set of Soviet intentions. It is of vital importance that the disarray of NATO should be repaired as far as possible before any such change takes place; indeed while the disarray continues it may provide some stimulus for a Soviet shift toward greater intransigence.
The United States, as already recounted, is not without responsibility for the current NATO disarray. We have been gravely insensitive to the pride of our allies, and we have tended to put far too much faith in huge integrated structures without realizing that alliances composed of sovereign states do not last forever without adequate motivation which each government concerned can align with its domestic politics.
What can we do now to repair the damage?
Perhaps we should do well to think less in terms of hasty recobbling of the NATO structure itself, and more in terms of seeking areas of co-operation with individual states of the alliance whose national interests correspond with ours in particular sets of circumstances. We might also allow ourselves to be influenced by the degree of compatibility of existing national military establishments with the requirements of a global strategy based on freedom of action and a maritime policy.
It might be a very good idea to make a start by an earnest effort to restore and develop the old “special relationship” with Britain.
We have already seen in Vietnam the value of a few allies even to the world’s greatest military power. In that part of the world, we could hardly have a more valuable ally than Australia, for one example; and we might remember that Australia and New Zealand came valiantly to the assistance of Britain in suppressing the Communist-supported “war of national liberation” in Malaya, and later in dealing with Sukarno’s attempt to wreck the Federation of Malaysia. To the success of the latter effort, and perhaps also to the collapse of Sukarno’s effort to align Indonesia with the Communist bloc, our own determined defense of South Vietnam has assuredly contributed.
But it was the British who really accomplished the defeat of the guerrillas in Malaya and who held the line against Sukarno’s probes and provocations until he was overtaken by domestic difficulties, which doubtless had their origin in the obvious failure of his confrontation policy. The result has been the turn-about of Indonesia from alignment with Communist China and hostility to the West.
Nothing could be much more important, once we have assured our success in rescuing South Vietnam from Communist aggression, than to consolidate this gain in terms of Indonesian acceptance of normal international responsibilities and (if and as desired) of Western economic assistance toward development of the great economic potential represented by Indonesian mineral and agricultural resources. In this matter, the national interests of the United States, of Britain, and of Australia and New Zealand, are closely concerned—economic recovery and political stability for Indonesia mean that Indonesia’s future interests should lie with the great trading nations of the West. Strategically, a glance at the map shows how the Indonesian archipelago covers the ocean gap between Australia and the Asian continent and commands the narrow waterways which connect the Indian and Pacific Oceans, of which the most important is the Strait of Malacca. But we should beware of hasty action, especially unilateral American action. The long British experience in this area, their operational naval and air rights at Singapore (where we are regarded with some suspicion by the local government), their close association with Australia and New Zealand, and their economic and maritime interests, all are invaluable assets and/or incentives suggesting how helpful Britain might be as a collaborator in a concerted, soft-sell program directed toward the gradual stabilization of Indonesia—not necessarily or even desirably as a military ally of the West, but as a great country of 100,000,000 people beginning a new course of independent self-support and of non-interference with its neighbors. Our part in such a policy is much more likely to be effective if we work closely and not too obtrusively with Britain and the Anzac states, and with our allies in Southeast Asia, than if we try to run the show all by ourselves. One ham-handed blunder could set the whole effort back— perhaps irreparably.
Directly associated with this immediate question of stabilizing Indonesia is the security of the Indian Ocean area as a whole, to which Indonesia holds the northeastern sea-gates.
Britain’s century and a half of dominance in the Indian Ocean was based on two strategic principles: control of the oceanic entrances (the Suez-Red Sea route, the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Malacca), and the exclusion from the Indian Ocean itself of bases held by potentially hostile powers. Within the oceanic basin, Britain thus had complete freedom of action to deal with local contingencies, for which the Indian Army provided a theater reserve, while a handful of cruisers and lesser warships were ample to assure control of the sea-lanes. The geography of the Indian Ocean has not changed very much save in the political sense; a naval force of relatively modest size, with both carrier-air and amphibious capabilities, is still adequate to ensure freedom of movement and to cope with minor contingencies, provided hostile access continues to be denied by control of the entrances. At present Britain maintains such a force—normally including two attack carriers (CVAs), a commando carrier (corresponding to our LPH), and a battalion-type unit of Royal Marines, together with escort and amphibious warfare squadrons. In the Singapore-Malaya area, Britain has maintained both troops and tactical air power— some 50,000 men all told, including contingents from Australia and New Zealand, and eight battalions of Gurkha mercenaries from Nepal which were formerly units of the Old Indian Army. At the northwestern entrance to the Indian Ocean, a British garrison holds the fortified base and airfield at Aden, and there are other British troops in the Persian Gulf at Bahrain. Finally, at the southwestern entrance, Britain retains by agreement the joint use with the Union of South Africa of the naval base at Simonstown.
But all these British capabilities and lodgments are now in danger of being overtaken by events. With the apparent fading-out of the confrontation threat, a marked reduction in the British force-levels in the Malaya sector is foreshadowed, made more urgent by the rising need for rigid economy in defense expenditure—especially overseas. Britain has already agreed to the independence of Southern Arabia (Aden and adjoining sheikdoms) in 1968, which almost certainly involves the withdrawal of British troops. Nor is it certain how long British joint use of Simonstown will remain politically consistent with British policies in the rest of Africa, of which the current Rhodesian imbroglio may serve as an example. Moreover, also in the interests of economy, the Royal Navy has abandoned plans for laying down a new aircraft carrier and has announced that the old carriers will be kept in service into the 1970s but will not be replaced. If, thereafter, British interests in the Indian Ocean require reinforcement, it is planned to use shore-based aircraft operating along a chain of small island bases—though just how these planes are to reach Indian Ocean bases without involving the problem of overflight rights somewhere in Africa or the Middle East is not quite clear.
Readers of the U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings will be familiar with proposals for establishing an American naval presence in the Indian Ocean, either in support of a reduced British force or on its own. Yet, the distances from existing American bases are such that the maintenance of one or more attack carriers and of large amphibious ships in the Indian Ocean would be a heavy strain, as most writers on this subject admit: the net result in some future contingency might be to degrade our capabilities for effective action by our deployed fleets in either the Mediterranean or the South China Sea. The present strains on ships and personnel of the Vietnam operations are significant.
The fact is that the existence of a British carrier force of five ships (three of which can properly be classed as CVAs) is in almost any foreseeable set of emergent circumstances a definite asset to the United States, and so—- until it was washed out—was the prospect of the completion of a new British CVA in the early 1970s.
If some reasonable and workable arrangement, consistent with British dignity, could be found by which we could offer financial or other economic assistance to Britain in maintaining her carrier force and even augmenting it as originally planned, it would for the United States be considerably less expensive than undertaking the construction of carriers beyond the planned level of 15 for the 1970s, and considerably less risky than trying to stretch a 15-carrier fleet to cover the Indian Ocean “gap” between Singapore and Aden. Perhaps the vehicle for such an arrangement might be found in the formal or informal resurrection of the old “special relationship,” based on the point so sharply made by Lieutenant Commander John E. Withrow, U. S. Navy, in the March 1966 Proceedings: “The Indian Ocean is still essentially a Western ocean—the problem is not to let it become otherwise by default.”1
In pursuing such an objective, the national interests of both countries are certainly in parallel. It is indeed the natural extension of a maritime strategy, familiar to both peoples and instinctively relied upon by both. It should be approached on that basis—as future insurance in an uncertain world. We could hardly do anything worse, it should be added, than to suggest active British aid in our present Vietnam operations, which would be politically impossible for any British government to entertain. What we should now be foreseeing is the follow-up for eventual success in Vietnam, and for continued freedom of action and of military and commercial mobility on the high seas—remembering that the British merchant marine is still the largest in the world and that Great Britain’s economic dependence on her shipping is fundamental.
Certainly no such arrangement seems likely to work well, at present, within the NATO framework. Indeed, the revival of the “special relationship,” which General de Gaulle particularly dislikes, would earn neither the United States nor Britain any additional favor at the Palais Elysee at present. The General is said to have made the abandonment of the “special relationship” one of his preconditions for admission of Britain to the European Common Market.
Yet, if it were re-established, the net result in terms of practical accomplishment in peacekeeping could very well start a small fresh breeze blowing through the corridors of the new NATO headquarters. There are other areas of the world in which the freedom of narrow waterways from the danger of irresponsible or hostile interruption could become attractive to other sea-trading nations besides America and Britain. There is also to be considered the growth of the Soviet nuclear submarine fleet, and the steady expansion of the areas in which that fleet is active. It is by no means impossible that a Soviet purpose may be crystallizing to use the nuclear submarine as a means of restricting the oceanic freedom of action of the sea powers; not so much by overt acts as by the existence of a means by which—for one example—forcible resistance might be offered to the establishment of blockades in the absence of a declared state of war.
The possibility of an Anglo-American naval agreement for combined action in defense of common interests and responsibilities in the Indian Ocean is based in part on the compatibility of the existing capabilities of both navies for acting together in the use of carrier- based air power and amphibious assault techniques. That the Royal Navy now possesses such capabilities is the military fact which makes sense of such an arrangement. Perhaps it should not be overlooked that the only other major navy also having such capabilities in some degree is the French, with their two small but new carriers and new amphibious ships, and their specially trained “division of intervention” with its paratroopers and landing forces. Should circumstances arise, perhaps in the Middle East (where the United States, Britain, and France are still the joint guarantors of the frontiers established by the armistice conditions of 1948-49) in which it might become appropriate for all three powers to join in limited- warfare actions designed to preserve interests agreed upon as being mutual, NATO itself might be inspired by a new sense of unity and of purpose even though no other member of the Alliance took direct part. The erosive memories of Suez might also find, at last, a quiet resting place.
1. See John E. Withrow, Jr., “Needed: a Credible Presence,” U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, March 1966, pp. 52-61.