The events of the past three weeks have caused shock and disbelief. Despite a consciousness that the continuing presence of U. S. forces in South Vietnam could lead to a resumption of hostilities by the other side, there had grown within our people a patience for this crusade and a belief that the record of Soviet forbearance, though increasingly reluctant, would prevail as a matter of mutual interest. Differences between us over the past few years, in Eastern Europe, Berlin, Korea, and the Middle East had been accommodated without resort to arms and there had been no reason to judge that the balance of power had altered unfavorably over that period. This nation had maintained a large defense budget, higher than many thought proper at a time of domestic need, and a larger proportion of resources were being applied to strategic nuclear forces than at any time since the mid-1950s. Though the Soviet Union maintained their own defense capabilities at a high level, for their own reasons or in response to our programs, there was no information that suggested the arms race had produced a power disparity. That the Soviet Union chose to evaluate these events and trends differently, and to create a direct confrontation with the United States, establishes the Soviet view that the power advantage, at least at sea, now lies on their side.
At no time except in the Cuban crisis of 1962, has the world been so close to nuclear war. There is uncertainty in the government and throughout the country as to our ability to cope with the Soviet aggression against our ships and worldwide sea lines of communication. Nor are we yet certain whether the Soviets are willing to risk a nuclear conflict.
The huge outlays of U. S. funds and technological resources over the past five years have maintained the nuclear stalemate of the late 1960s although the United States has not achieved the strategic superiority intended. The President personally refuted the disquieting report of a fortnight ago that the Soviets had in place a number of new mid-course intercept ABMs that could blunt a significant proportion of ICBMs fired from continental U. S. positions.
Our government has stated that nuclear war means the destruction of both countries. Certainly there can be no hope or sense in the situation that has developed unless we can accept our leaders’ assurances that strategic nuclear exchange can serve no rational purpose for either the United States or the Soviet Union.
If this is so, what apparently lies before us is yet another clash of conventional arms.
The stated purpose of the Soviet Union is to cause the United States to withdraw all its forces from Southeast Asia and Korea. The careful formulation of their most recent official pronouncements implies a readiness to extend the war at sea to all the oceans. Soviet actions—the sinking by submarine of three U. S. merchant ships in the western Pacific, the four separate incidents of freighter losses north of the Azores during the subsequent ten days, and the destruction of a large tanker in the South Atlantic last week—support that policy. Their intent to force an early U. S. decision to withdraw forces from the Asian mainland was emphasized by the torpedo attack on an American destroyer two nights ago in the South China Sea, and the announcement that a blockade of that Sea would be established in four days.
The United States is marshalling its ships and forces, a time-consuming task, to defend its shipping at sea. The Soviets are using all forms of intelligence, including reconnaissance by long range aircraft over the North Atlantic and Western Pacific oceans, to locate our oceangoing ships. Similar U. S. measures are underway to find and destroy Soviet ships, but it is apparent that the Soviet Union has placed the largest part of her shipping and surface naval forces in safe havens in preparation for this initial phase of the war at sea. The problem for the United States is to deploy suitable air and surface antisubmarine forces to detect Soviet submarines, particularly in the approaches and vicinity of sea lines of communication that must be maintained, so that our shipping can be defended. As an important part of this strategy, we must deploy ASW aircraft carriers or obtain rights to use a number of foreign air and logistical bases.
In exploratory consultations initiated by the United States, friendly governments generally expressed a desire to assess Soviet intentions and U. S. capabilities before risking their own access to the sea which, for many, is critical to their survival.
The Soviets took the war to sea in a way designed to exploit an international consensus that has never shown either sympathy or understanding for U. S. objectives and armed presence on the Asian mainland.
They have assiduously avoided any overt intrusion of Soviet power into a foreign land and their announced purpose is to terminate a U. S. presence that is contrary to the spirit of the 1970 Paris Agreement and which is sparking a resumption of hostilities in Vietnam and Korea. These are areas of conflict and dispute that have worried and dismayed large parts of the world for the better part of two decades. The ultimate Soviet will to continue a direct confrontation with the United States is ambiguous and, misplaced optimism or not, other nations, including many in NATO are hopeful that the conflict can be restricted to the sea and resolved short of nuclear war. More, they hope that such a resolution will exert influences for future peace.
It is one of the ironies of the situation that it may be more advantageous to the United States, in this conflict at sea, not to join forces with all or part of her allies. Only now are we beginning to draw together our merchant fleet which was in all corners of the world when the Soviet aggression was initiated. These ships must be brought under the control of the Navy if protecting forces are to be used efficiently. To provide similiar [sic] defense of Allied merchant shipping would require months of preparation if it were possible at all. Also, with U. S. ships as the sole maritime target, the Soviet Union is faced with the clumsy problem of identifying the nationality of each ship before launching an attack. In oceans and seas filled with 20,000 or more merchant ships, of which less than one-twentieth are U. S. flag, this is a large task. The wide employment of Soviet aircraft for reconnaissance already is being countered by U. S. forces. It was two of these bombers, ordinarily assigned to strategic forces, that were shot down by U. S. Navy attack carrier interceptors near the Philippines and north of Midway over the past week.
If the Soviet Union were tempted to attack all Western shipping, regardless of nationality, they would run the risk of war, in Europe and in those peripheral areas of Asia from which they seek U. S. withdrawal and where recent Soviet policies have sought stability. Countries now reluctant to provide support to the United States would be compelled to. Worse from the Soviet standpoint, such countries would have been drawn into a conflict for which they were ill-prepared to fight except in another environment—and by other than naval means.
Another counterproductive result of such indiscriminate attacks would be that, even those nations not exposed at sea, likely would reverse the recent trend against the granting of foreign base rights. The United States, of course, has been the principal victim of this trend. In 1970, the base rights at Sangley Point and Clark Field were terminated after U. S. presence became a key issue of the Philippines presidential campaign; in 1972, America turned over its large air and naval base complex in Japan to that nation in exchange for Japanese guarantees to assume important political and security responsibilities in the Far East; and, in 1973, as a result of mutual agreement reached with the Spanish government earlier, the U. S. air and naval bases in Spain were closed.
Here at home, uncertainty as to the state of our antisubmarine capability, and the amount of Allied assistance that might be necessary, is polarizing opinion—there are those who favor escalation and those who argue for immediate withdrawal of our forces from Asia. The policies of the U. S. government and the events of the past five years have not prepared the country for what has occurred and there is confusion and divided counsel.
We have expanded our Chinese-oriented ABM system, increased the numbers of ICBM, hardened Minuteman silos, commenced development of an SSBN to follow the Poseidon submarine, and initiated production of the AMSA (advanced manned strategic aircraft) to replace the B-52. The cost of this over-all strategic program has tripled the forecast by the Johnson administration for the same FY71-75 period to maintain an assured destruction capability.
Just as the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the later upheaval in Romania led to an increase in strategic forces for nuclear war, the stabilizing of the situation in Vietnam in late 1969 and 1970—and the subsequent reduction of U. S. forces there, from over half a million to about 50,000—provided a rationale for a reduction in forces and expenditures for conventional warfare. A rising fear of Soviet intentions in Europe, caused what resources that were authorized for limited war to be channeled toward NATO. Funds were concentrated on modernizing tactical air forces, with the F-15 and AX, and on battlefield equipment for our ground units and, as they increased manpower committed to NATO in 1970 and 1971, for our allies.
This defense program of the new administration, set forth first in the FY70 Budget and carried forward in succeeding years into the current second term, was a compromise of several competing influences and needs that succeeded in making no one but our enemies happy. During this five-year period, the country continued to face important economic problems made up of an adverse balance of payments and inflation which only now are beginning to be solved. The decision to expand nuclear strategic forces, however, led in the next years to only minor decreases in the inherited FY70 defense budget of $82 billion despite the agreement to halt the conflict in Vietnam which freed some $15 billion for other defense or national needs.
The military supported strengthening the nation’s strategic forces to provide a hedge against plausible improvements the Soviets might make in their own strategic capabilities and of which we might not obtain timely warning. The assumption was that the Soviet purpose was to achieve strategic superiority rather than accept a nuclear stability that depended on trust in U. S. intentions. It rejected the view of the Johnson administration, expressed by Robert McNamara, that a capability for assured destruction was a feasible objective, that a decisive first strike strategy was not, and that anything in between was extraneous. The Congress shared the administration’s judgment that prudence called for a broader program and there were those who saw no end to the nuclear arms race until America employed conventional power to persuade the Soviet Union that aggression and the breaking of agreements was not profitable.
There was a feeling in some quarters that the minimum conventional power required to deter the Soviets from using their own conventional arms was not being provided. The military, defense industry, and others objected to the emphasis on NATO alone and to the decisions to reduce conventional strength below that built up during the Vietnam War and to continue the slow rate of weapons system modernization that characterized the war budgets of FY67-70. The Joint Chiefs of Staff stressed that what the Soviets might do was their choice, not ours. U. S. forces should be designed to deter any capability the Soviets possessed, the JCS argued, and not just the one we thought most likely. For, if we concentrated on countering a single Soviet capability, the Soviets would simply not pursue it and, instead, turn to forms of aggression for which we were not prepared. The President continued to support the limited war strategy of the 1960s, with the general statement that we would be more selective in the range and type of commitments we undertook, without agreeing that the forces provided were not balanced relative to Soviet strength. The Administration’s argument on this matter was less clear than that set forth by the JCS at the congressional hearings. Faced with pressing economic and domestic problems, and uncertain as to the risk involved, Congress ratified the Administration’s proposal. The likely contingency points were in Europe and Asia. Measures were taken to provide suitable armed strength in Europe and it was easy to rationalize that a buildup of forces for another Asian Vietnam was undesirable.
Internationally, the past decade was influenced primarily by actions the Soviet Union took to remedy their restricted strategic situation. As seen from Moscow, the Soviet Union was being denied access to land areas beyond her own borders.
To the east, an increasingly hostile relationship with the Chinese Communists all but eliminated the communication link with Southeast and Southwest Asia via the mainland of China. Similarly, even the Pacific base at Vladivostok depended on passages adjacent to the Japanese islands and the Korea Strait.
In Eastern Europe, the trend to liberalism, particularly in the geographically central state of Czechoslovakia, in Romania, and more subtly in Poland and Hungary, threatened the security of Soviet land lines of communications leading to Western Europe. The credibility of the Soviet threat to NATO was degraded and, consequently, the defense of the Soviet Union was in jeopardy. Yugoslavia and Albania, for different reasons, had separated themselves from the Soviet orbit and the penalty of not opposing this process was clear to the Moscow hierarchy.
Access to the west through Eastern Europe is of the highest importance to the Soviet Union. The alternate route from the Barents Sea to the North Atlantic is long and subject to hostile sea barrier. Egress from the Baltic and Black seas is dependent on the acquiescence of nations not under their control. If the Soviets hoped to ameliorate the latter restrictions, they were discouraged by the strong mandate given the pro-Western Swedish Socialist Party in 1968 and the unwavering allegiance of Turkey to NATO in the resurgence of that alliance at the turn of the decade.
While the Soviets established a routine presence in the Mediterranean in the middle and late 1960s, the use of this strategic sea was subject to interdiction at Gibraltar and the routes to the east were barred by the closure of the Suez Canal in 1967.
The Soviet Union moved to correct these strategic disadvantages with actions designed to complement the attitudes and preoccupations of the United States and to avoid provoking hostile counteractions.
It was the Soviet initiative to guarantee the security of North Vietnam, and its isolation from the South, that brought forth similar U. S. pledges toward South Vietnam and paved the way to the 1970 Paris Agreement and the placement of a U.N. truce force along the 17th Parallel. At the time the Soviet Union acted, the erratic negotiations at Paris were on the verge of breakdown.
Although the basic issues in Southeast Asia were set aside rather than solved, the agreement was acceptable to the United States in order to halt the conflict. On the Soviet side, a cease-fire appeared to be a means to a closer relationship with North Vietnam rather than a step towards a stable peace. The Soviets resisted a U. S. proposal to retain combat units in South Vietnam for an indefinite period, but compromised by agreeing to the omission of any reference in the Paris Agreement to foreign forces in-country. The subsequent retention of U. S. forces in the South triggered Soviet military and technical assistance to North Vietnam much like that given to the U.A.R. and North Korea.
Having established a role as peacemaker in Vietnam, the Soviets in mid-1970 signed an agreement with North Korea that promised new levels of economic and military assistance to Pyongyang and set forth Soviet assurances to safeguard the security of that country against any aggression. Despite questions in the West as to Soviet purposes, the Pact gained international support as another step toward peace in Asia and its promise gave the Soviet Union new influence in the Korean peninsula.
In the Middle East, the Soviets turned—by actions rather than formal announcement—to a moderate policy to foster stability in that distraught area. Military assistance to the U.A.R. levelled off in 1970 and, at the same time, the Soviet Union expanded its already significant naval presence in the Mediterranean to leave no doubt of their interest in the security of Egypt. Logistical bases, to support this larger force for long periods away from home ports, were established at Port Said, Alexandria, and Mers-el-Kebir. Under Soviet pressures, the U.A.R. opened the Suez Canal in 1971, with compromise concessions on Israeli use of that waterway that were generally unpalatable but accepted by Nasser.
In contrast to what appeared to be moderate actions elsewhere, though there was concern with the extension of Soviet power that it involved, Moscow policy in Eastern Europe continued to be arbitrary and aggressive. An occupation force was retained in Czechoslovakia following the invasion of 1968, and a similar force was introduced into Romania in mid-1970 after the contrived overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu.
The Soviet Union had correctly anticipated that the United States would accept their actions on the basis that NATO already was being strengthened and no other response was feasible or desirable. However, if the Soviet Union, at that time, thought a war at sea against the United States was a future possibility, one must wonder if there was not some anxiety in Moscow that the United States might initiate such a conflict to turn back Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe. With the advantage of surprise, and the relative naval superiority then prevailing, the United States was capable of exerting strong pressures against the Soviet Union.
This series of moves broadened the Soviet capability for strategic mobility, while avoiding a hostile response from the West, and met the dominant Soviet objective to assure access to all parts of the world. The defense buffer zone in Eastern Europe was placed under strict control and the Soviet Union maintained positions proximate to the feared West Germany and the strong central area of NATO. The resultant strengthening of NATO forces and the increasing political unity of that organization were acceptable side effects for the Soviets knew that it was not difficult to distract NATO countries from heavy defense outlays that they pursued with reluctance anyway. Until that distraction became desirable from the Soviet viewpoint, there might be advantage in encouraging the emphasis on central Europe that was contributing to weaknesses in conventional arms available to the West for other purposes. By placing positive restraints on Nasser, there was every prospect that an uneasy peace could be maintained in the Middle East and the Soviet Union obtained forward bases with unprecedented access to the oceans and to Africa and Asia. From Vladivostok and from the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal, Soviet naval units ranged along the southern crescent of Asia giving persuasion to political policy and credence, in the Indochina and Korea peninsulas, to the Soviet will to protect their adherents in the Communist world.
The security guarantees accorded North Vietnam and North Korea drew the enmity of Red China, but initially gave the Soviet Union dominate [sic] influence in those countries. In less than two years, however, the continuing presence of U. S. forces near the borders of North Vietnam and North Korea worsened these countries’ relationships with Moscow because of the pretext that grew for increasing Soviet presence in both Communist nations. The essential forms of the threat that existed before the agreements were made with the Soviet Union still prevailed and the apparent limits on the effect of Soviet power began to erode the anticipation upon which the agreements were undertaken. A situation developed that the Chinese Communists could exploit to ridicule the Soviets and substitute their own influence in the littoral states of Asia.
The relationship with Communist China was a principal preoccupation of the Soviet Union in the years preceding her initiation of the conflict with the United States. In mid-1968, the Soviets were aware that strong military rule was emerging from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. The Red Chinese Army, seeing a splintered and undisciplined country, established a close relationship with civilian leaders in the provinces and began to exert power designed to unify disparate groups and regions and reject the objective of the Revolution to create a new society. The nature of military rule in China increasingly was evident in 1969 and 1970 and, with the death of Mao in October 1970, became a fact with the assumption of power by a military clique. Through the influence of their new role, the military accelerated the development of strategic missiles. The first IRBMs became operational in late 1971 and now are in a force of an estimated 250 missiles including 20 ICBM introduced over the past year.
It is only since 1972 that the disruption in China was under sufficient control to tempt the military to look outward with their new power. Initial pressures were launched against North Vietnam and North Korea, successively in the form of political threats, economic and cultural embargoes and, most recently, border intrusions. Over the past few months, a similar campaign has been underway against Outer Mongolia. With this resurgence of Red Chinese aggressiveness has come an increasing exchange of polemics and threats with the Soviet Union. Border clashes along much of their contested frontier have become commonplace, though apparently pursued with relative restraint by both sides. There are reliable reports that each power has reinforced further his ground and tactical air forces in the border areas and has deployed strategic forces for use against the other.
The Soviet Union has shown deep concern for holding the loyalties of North Vietnam and North Korea, to minimize the breach in the Communist ranks and to head off any Red Chinese move to expand outward to achieve the geographical and psychological power advantages that action would give her. This task was facilitated by improved strategic mobility in the Indian and Pacific Oceans which the Soviets used to create political opposition to China in both Communist and non-Communist nations. Within the Communist camp, Soviet policy followed the theme that Red China would not be allowed to spread a philosophy contrary to that of Moscow. With the coming of strategic forces in China and the physical threat to the Soviet Union that followed, the need to deal with Communist China took on urgency.
Over these years, the United States was perplexed by the unevenness of Soviet foreign and security policy. There were extremes of uncompromising hardness in Europe and apparent moderation in the Middle East and Asia. The Soviet Union reiterated a desire to discuss limitations on strategic arms although the timing of such talks was left ambiguous. We responded alternatively with distrust and hope, maintaining the direction of our own defense structure and strategy just as Soviet policy was designed to make us do. It is now apparent that the strategy of the Soviet Union served a single immediate purpose—to isolate Communist China and to lay the strategic groundwork for a Soviet attack on that hostile Communist nation while minimizing the possibility of a land war on another front. The Soviets worked to avoid U. S. involvement in this campaign. At the same time, their strategy to gain mobility as well as their assessment of U. S. prejudices against involvement in Asia gave them a means to persuade the United States without increasing the chances of a land war elsewhere which they could not sustain while in conflict with China.
Thus, Communist China, and the Asia which ran along her perimeters, was relevant to U. S. security all the time, though our attention to it was less than it deserved. During the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution there was no external Chinese aggression, for there was no time or energy for it, but the hostility to the West, and to the Soviet Union for different reasons, went on unabated. America noted the advent of nuclear power in China and its progress toward a strategic missile force by constructing a Chinese-oriented ABM system and deploying Polaris submarines to the Pacific Ocean. There was no practical U. S. foreign policy toward Communist China except to increase diplomatic and other contacts with the objective of alleviating differences or to employ power for containment. The first option never was possible because of Chinese enmity and the second required conventional forces and a risk of another conflict in Asia that economic problems and discouragement over Vietnam have not permitted. Had we seen the advantage in exploiting the estranged relations between the Soviet Union and Communist China, it would have had to be done by forcing Soviet attention and resources to Europe and the Middle East and working to minimize Soviet influence in the littoral of Asia. From hindsight, we now know that, had such a policy been successful, the Soviet Union would have been under heavy economic and military strain and a conflict with Communist China would have shaken the basic structure of the Communist system.
But the Soviets have patterned a different situation for conflict with Communist China. They have consolidated their landward rear and flanks through a strategy of power, diplomacy, and persuasion. There is no reason to expect aggression at these points because the potential enemies react only to provocation which is a Soviet option. Worldwide lines of communication are developed and a supporting war at sea is in progress to remove the remaining obstruction to the isolation of Communist China. This conflict was initiated to exploit Soviet strength and U. S. vulnerability and to settle an issue of less than vital interest to the United States and thus not a dispute that should breach the shoreline. Soviet readiness for a war at sea, against the world’s leading naval power, is a natural product of the strategy pursued over the past decade.
To support that strategy, the Soviet Union placed priority in funds and industrial capacity on naval forces. Their underseas fleet includes some 380 attack submarines of which about 120 are nuclear-powered and capable of long duration operations of unrestricted range and minimum reliance on bases. The surface combatant force centers around ten ASW amphibious helicopter carriers and a group of missile-equipped frigates and destroyers that provide a high measure of defense capability for fleet operations independent of land-based weapons systems. In addition to the provisions for self-defense, the mobility of surface forces is assured by logistical support ships whose numbers have almost tripled in the past six years.
As the naval expansion went forward, Soviet ground and tactical air forces were reduced and modernization was restricted to new aircraft and battlefield equipment developments which were observed by the Western powers as far back as 1967. The Soviet Union apparently made choices that were designed to pattern the Army and Air Force for one-front wars while working diplomatically and with naval forces to give assurance to this assumption.
As the Soviet Union constructed a Navy that moved out upon the open seas in strength and with a reach that was unprecedented, U. S. naval force was reduced as priorities in a tight budget left the improvements in naval force to the other members of NATO. The Johnson administration began the process during the Vietnam War and made important cuts in the budgets of FY69 and FY70 as the transition to the new administration commenced and as the Congress demanded defense expenditure cuts. In the intervening years, carrier striking forces were denied new aircraft and previously programmed nuclear powered escorts and a nuclear powered attack carrier were deferred indefinitely. Similar deferrals were made in planned construction of amphibious ships and mobile logistical support ships. Reductions in personnel led to some 150 ship inactivations or sharply reduced operating capabilities. These actions removed both existing and planned ships with ASW equipment and weapons. It was in the Fleet antisubmarine capability that defensive power was cut most arbitrarily and with the greatest effect. The number of ASW carriers and embarked aircraft was reduced by more than 50 per cent, while the goal for land-based ASW patrol aircraft was cut by over 20 per cent. These cutbacks came as fiscal restraints were most binding, but were justified by the argument that new equipment, either not yet in the Fleet or not operationally tested, would be of such increased operational capability to be an effectiveness match for the forces deferred or inactivated. Later events showed that this optimism was misplaced. There appeared to be an obvious requirement for more, rather than less, ASW force to meet the challenge of a rapidly increasing Soviet submarine capability to prowl the seven seas. Nevertheless, these actions were followed by the delay and reduction of the carefully prepared and earlier approved plan for a large, new ASW escort shipbuilding program originally set to commence in FY69. By this decision, there was projected into future years an escort force already inadequate to convoy merchant shipping and defend naval task groups against submarine attack. And, beyond this, the construction program for nuclear powered attack submarines— perhaps the most versatile of all ASW platforms—was held at a sustenance level that provided for new classes but permitted no progress in building up a force large enough to carry out appropriate tasks. Now, in 1974, the United States has 71 of these submarines at sea, two more than planned in FY68 before the reduction in other ASW forces was decided and carried out.
The new administration and Congress in 1969 found it convenient to endorse the hard decisions already made rather than reopen the contentious issues of budget priorities, defense strategy, and the enemy threat. The bulk of defense resources went to the Strategic Forces and to NATO over the next five years and there was a continuing deterioration of U. S. naval power at the same time the Soviet Union was turning to the sea. This trend was challenged unsuccessfully in the Congress in 1970 and 1972 as the U. S. base complex in the Pacific was sharply reduced with closures in the Philippines and Japan. The argument then that mobile, sea-based naval striking and ASW forces were required to substitute for forward land bases no longer available was debated, but rejected under the combined influence of the Soviet occupation of Romania, the national relief at the recent steps toward full disentanglement from Vietnam, and still unsolved economic and domestic problems which affected the budget.
Against this background, the United States faces the question of how to defeat the Soviets without restricting the options either to nuclear war or to the withdrawal of some 100,000 men from Asia, a choice which would lead inevitably to a Soviet victory, and subsequent world-wide power adjustments of high importance.
It is known that there are intermediate courses of action which the government is considering:
- To draw the Soviet Union into a limited land conflict in Europe which could be settled in exchange for a termination of hostilities at sea, or
- To conduct naval air strikes against Soviet bases which are supporting the war at sea, or
- To pursue a defensive strategy at sea for the extended period required to develop the means to fight offensively against Soviet submarines.
The first possibility requires the participation of the NATO organization. There is neither the sense of threat, nor the desire, to motivate the NATO allies to invoke the treaty and place their own shipping in hazard. If the United States is unable to meet the Soviet naval challenge at sea, a land war is not a rational alternative since its logistical support across the Atlantic Ocean would depend on the same sort of antisubmarine protection.
If the second course of action were followed, the United States would signal the Soviet Union that it was not prepared to wage a war restricted to the sea. If successful, these strikes would be an act of escalation that the Soviets would find difficult to match in kind. Since there is evidence that a large part of the Soviet submarine fleet is deployed, it is doubtful that air attacks would affect the war at sea in the critical initial stage. Tactically, there is the question whether the naval attack carrier striking forces could be defended sufficiently against Soviet submarines and aircraft to sustain the series of attacks required for long term effect. In the probable case that this form of escalation is not decisive, any next step moves close to nuclear conflict.
The third possible course of action looks to a period of heavy U. S. shipping losses, reduced over time as antisubmarine carriers, escorts, and aircraft are activated from the reserve and, to some uncertain degree, forces are increased through new construction. It is a strategy similar to that of 1942 and 1943 as American industry was mobilized to turn back the German submarine. There are important differences. The antisubmarine battle then was part of a world war which placed multiple demands on German resources. Air attacks from the United Kingdom damaged German industry, bases, and ports, all of which handicapped the submarine campaign. The submarine threat was restricted to the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea and the movement of enemy submarines was predictable by range limitations and by the need to cycle in and out of port. Soviet nuclear-powered submarines are able to operate with much greater freedom and to unrestricted ranges. While World War II involved many countries on either the Allied or Axis side, and the remainder assumed the legal status of neutrals, the conflict defined by the Soviets gives sanctuary to land areas and opens up temporary safe havens all over the world to submarines and ships. The Germans relied on the sea, particularly in the Mediterranean and Baltic basins, to a degree that the Soviets are not forced by events to do and the United States assumes a relative vulnerability from shipping losses that is greater than in the early 1940s.
The third possible course of action offers the best initial hope to steer clear of the extremes of nuclear war or withdrawal. The prospect of success turns on whether the losses which occur are acceptable to the United States over the period required to develop the means to shift from the defense to an offensive strategy. Since the United States starts from an unfavorable power relationship, it is possible that the replacement of ships sunk alone will extend the recovery period beyond the time when America can continue to sustain losses without turning to an alternative course of action. The Soviet Union is making obvious its objective to obtain an early decision in this conflict to increase its prestige at the least cost and to prepare the way to the defeat of Communist China. If the war at sea should drag on without decision, the Soviet purpose would not be met, its own ships would be in hazard as they returned to sea, and the chances of eventual U. S. victory would be on the rise. The Soviet Union has the capability to meet this eventuality promptly by intensifying the action in areas of their choice at a time when the United States is least ready to oppose them.
Whatever course the United States chooses to take, there will be high risk. It is ironic that this dilemma turns more on frictions within the Communist world than it does on the Cold War which has engaged our attention for almost three decades. But our policies have fallen short on both accounts. We have done little to affect the arguments embroiling the Soviet Union and Communist China, or to profit from that dispute, because we did not understand the trial to which the Soviets were subjecting themselves. And though we claimed to pursue a limited war strategy, the requisite resources were not provided for we confused our understanding of Soviet objectives with their own view of their interests and the means which were plausible to achieve the desired end.