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Invulnerable Retaliatory Capability and Arms Control

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Seyom Brown
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

A consensus seems to have emerged among government decision-makers, military strategists, and scholars that an invulnerable nuclear retaliatory capability is a national goal of high priority, if not top priority. The Kennedy Administration, to a much greater degree than its predecessor, has given indication that the rationale and ingredients of a “second-strike” nuclear strategy are understood and being concretely programmed into defense planning. The agreed-upon goal is for the United States to be able to launch a devastating retaliatory nuclear attack against the enemy regardless of the size of the enemy's first strike against the United States. “As a power which will never strike first,” explained President Kennedy in his March 28 defense budget message, “our hopes for anything close to an absolute deterrent must rest on weapons which come from hidden, moving, or invulnerable bases which will not be wiped out by surprise attack. A retaliatory capability based on adequate numbers of these weapons would deter any aggressor from launching or even threatening an attack—an attack he knew could not find or destroy enough of our force to prevent his own destruction.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1961

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References

1 Even analysts of the Kahn, Herman (On Thermonuclear War, Princeton, N.J., 1960)Google Scholar persuasion, who point to the need of maintaining a credible nuclear first-strike capability, consider an invulnerable retaliatory force a necessity. They tend, however, to stress its insufficiency (even with a conventional force build-up) for dealing with the total spectrum of likely military threats.

2 Schelling, Thomas C., The Strategy of Conflict, Cambridge, Mass., 1960, p. 237.Google ScholarKissinger, Henry accepted and elaborated-upon this hypothesis in his “Arms Control, Inspection, and Surprise Attack,” Foreign Affairs, XXXVIII, NO. 4 (July 1960), pp. 561–62Google Scholar, and in The Necessity for Choice, New York, 1961, pp. 216–18.

3 Schelling, ibid., p. 241. For Schelling's ideas on unilateral programs for weapons systems which might tacitly convey our abandonment of a first-strike capability, see his “Reciprocal Measures for Arms Stabilization,” Daedalus, LXXXIX, No. 4 (Fall 1960), pp. 905–8.

4 Such as contained in the Eisenhower proposals to the UN General Assembly on September 22, 1960, urging, a system for terminating, under verification procedures, all production of fissionable materials for weapons purposes.” New York Times, September 23, 1960, p. 14.Google Scholar

5 A less widely acknowledged but nonetheless important reason for giving NATO a “tactical” nuclear capability has been to renew the credibility of the massive retaliation doctrine against conventional aggression in Europe. This approach looks with favor upon the blurred line between “tactical” and “strategic” nuclear weapons, stresses the likelihood of any limited war in Europe “escalating” into a total war, and wants to remind the Russians continually of this likelihood.

6 Terms used by the British strategist Hart, B. H. Liddell in his most recent book, Deterrent or Defense, New York, 1960, pp. 229–35.Google Scholar Liddell Hart comes out strongly for disengagement in this book, preferably for an atom-free zone in Central Europe with a reduced level of conventional armaments, comprising countries not in alliance with the nuclear powers on either side. This he feels might eventually be extended to make “a Trans-Eurasian safety belt that would stretch from Spitzbergen to the Himalayas.”

7 Teller, Edward, “The Issue of Peace,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, XVI, No. 6 (June 1960), p. 204.Google Scholar

8 Ralph E. Lapp, “Nuclear Weapon Systems,” ibid., XVII, No. 3 (March 1961), pp. 99–102.

9 Brodie, Bernard, Strategy in the Missile Age, Princeton, N.J., 1959, p. 295.Google Scholar

10 The latter was the argument most stressed by the Atomic Energy Commission and many Defense Department officials in the Eisenhower Administration, according to Baldwin, Hanson W., New York Times, March 30, 1960.Google Scholar Former Atomic Energy Commissioner Murray, Thomas E. also took this position in his Nuclear Policy for War and Peace, Cleveland, 1960.Google Scholar

11 See especially Burns, Arthur L., Power Politics and the Growing Nuclear Club, Policy Memorandum No. 20, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, 1959Google Scholar, and his The Rationale of Catalytic War, Research Monograph No. 3, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, 1959.

12 Iklé, Fred Charles, “Nth Countries and Disarmament,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, XVI, No. 10 (December 1960), pp. 391–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Thornton Read maintains that this adverse effect could be avoided by a treaty restricting nuclear weapons to the US and USSR, outlawing any first use, and making nuclear reprisals mandatory against any first use. (A Proposal to Neutralize Nuclear Weapons, Policy Memorandum No. 22, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, 1961).

14 Gallois, Pierre M., “New Teeth for NATO,” Foreign Affairs, XXXIX, No. 1 (October 1960), p. 75.Google Scholar

15 See, for example, chap. IV (”The United States and Europe”) in Kissinger's The Necessity for Choice, op.cit. An intensive analysis of the complex of problems involved in attempts to secure greater military integration within NATO will be found in Robert E. Osgood's forthcoming book, NATO: The Entangling Alliance.

16 Morton Kaplan's discussion of the essential characteristics of these two systems is instructive here. See his System and Process in International Politics, New York, 1957.

17 The Necessity for Choice, op.cit., pp. 222–27. Kissinger is fully aware of possible kinks in the proposal, and has discovered some himself (particularly the likelihood that the system would be cumbersome in adapting to technological breakthroughs); but even if it serves only as a kind of arms-control gaming exercise, it is highly suggestive of how imaginative students of the problem may shatter many of our prematurely rigid notions of the narrow possibilities for new approaches.

18 Except that a mutual system could not be objected to by one side as being “provocative.”

19 New York Times, September 23, 1960, p. 14.

20 Schelling, Thomas C., “Arms Control: Proposal for a Special Surveillance Force,” World Politics, XIII, No. 1 (October 1960), p. 6.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., p. 16. See also his “Surprise Attack and Disarmament,” in NATO and American Security, edited by Klaus Knorr, Princeton, N.J., 1959; reprinted in slightly modified form in Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, op.cit., pp. 230–54.

22 As, for example, President Eisenhower's proposal that “We agree, subject to appropriate verification, that no nation will put into orbit or station in outer space weapons of mass destruction” (UN speech, September 22, 1960).

23 International Political Implications of Activities in Outer Space, The RAND Corporation, Report R-362-RC, 1960. See especially the paper by Klaus Knorr, pp. 133–156; the statement by Thomas Schelling, pp. 36–48; and the statement by Paul Kecskemeti, pp. 95–97.