Second Thoughts on Nuclear Weapons

...Al the same meeting, a German Socialist put into words what is implicit in the actions of loo many European governments...

...it also foresees the decision to use nuclear weapons as falling initially on the threatened peripheral country rather than on the United States itself: "As nuclear weapons become more tactical in character and thus more adaptable to area defense, there will inevitably be a desire on the part of those allies which are technically qualified to participate more directly in this defense and to have a greater assurance that this defensive power will in fact he used...

...Thus, the tables may be turned, in the sense that, instead of those who are non-aggressive having to rely upon all-out nuclear retaliatory power for their protection, would-be aggressors will be unable to count on a successful conventional aggression, but must themselves weigh the consequences of invoking nuclear war...

...Dulles refers to the possibility of "violent eruptions" in Eastern Europe...

...The most dangerous consequence of the doctrine of massive retaliation is that, by leaving all the physical and political responsibility to the United States, it has fostered an apathetic utopianism about defense problems among America's allies...

...Not only does it envisage the limited use of nuclear weapons for local defense rather than their indiscriminate use for massive retaliation...

...Indeed, how can he hope to produce any strategy at all when the deliberate ambiguity of Western policy has left him with forces which are too large to be a tripwire and too small to form a shield...

...The article justifies this revolutionary shift in policy purely by the scientific development of nuclear weapons "the destructiveness and radiation effects of which can be confined substantially to predetermined targets...

...Bightly appreciating America's growing reluctance to commit suicide for the sake of allies who will not defend themselves, it has decided that Britain should herself invest in the machinery of massive retaliation, cutting her European ground forces in favor of nuclear striking power...

...But Dulles appears to have learned the lessons of Suez and Hungary—namely, that it is possible for fighting to break out somewhere near the periphery independently of Soviet or American volition, and to develop in such a way as to bring the two Great Powers into direct conflict...

...if America can make the profound adjustments of attitude and organization required to reconcile military strength with national policy in the nuclear a»e...

...It is, of course, even more urgent to develop a diplomacy which will minimize the possibility of such outbreaks occurring at all...

...Paul-Henri Spaak, the new Secretary-General of NATO, felt that it was dangerous to draw any distinction between small wars and big wars...

...Indeed, experience may show that it came at least six months too late—after the British Defense White Paper...

...It is certainly no more than a first step...

...This implies a double revolution in existing U.S...

...Almost all the current discussion about Western strategy concerns itself with the problem of deterring or resisting acts of aggression which are deliberately initiated by the Soviet or Chinese Governments...

...The general reaction to the new policy was highly unfavorable...

...Indeed, Dulles himself spelled out their implications in absolute terms by announcing the doctrine of "massive retaliation" soon after he took office in 1953...

...To take one obvious example, how on earth can the NATO commander develop a strategy for the defense of Germany when his American and British divisions are armed and organized for nuclear ground warfare while the German divisions he counts on to fill the gap remain doggedly conventional...

...Whatever validity massive retaliation may have as a means of deterring deliberate Soviet aggression, it has neither moral nor practical justification as a means of dealing with local explosions of this type...

...In both Congress and the Pentagon there are powerful forces which will fight against any modification of existing American policy...

...His latest article, on the face of it, presages a complete turnabout...

...Indeed, some of the Government statements suggest a belief that Britain can inherit America's present position as the nuclear protector of Western Europe—as the sole atomic power in a new Third Force...

...The immediate reaction of America's allies shows that Dulles's bombshell was dropped not a moment too soon...

...There is, however, another reason for the shift of policy which is hinted at in the Dulles article, though it has so far played little part in the public debate about massive retaliation...

...But this, though a necessary condition of the new policy, is not what has produced it...

...It is to be hoped that Secretary Dulles's article is the first step in compelling all the NATO governments to resolve these contradictions and to produce a military doctrine and organization compatible with the revolution wrought by nuclear weapons...

...On the contrary, the abandonment of massive retaliation as the first line of Western defense became inevitable with the growth of Russia's nuclear striking power...

...This argument certainly makes sense of the German Socialist party's opposition both to conscription and to the stationing of atomic weapons in Germany, though it is difficult to reconcile with a policy which envisages the withdrawal of a united Germany from NATO altogether...

...The doctrine of limited nuclear warfare implies, before all else, an acceptance of limited political aims in peace as well as war, which runs counter to the whole trend of American thinking on world affairs...

...Washington begins to rethink massive retaliation' Second Thoughts on Nuclear Weapons By Denis Healey John Foster Dulles's article in the October issue of Foreign Affairs may well mark the first great turning point in America's postwar foreign policy...

...Only the British Government so far has shown any realism about the intolerable burden which massive retaliation throws upon the United States—but it has drawn the wrong conclusion...

...One of the most valuable chapters in Kissinger's book describes the Communist "strategy of ambiguity," by which the military challenge is normally presented in such a way that it does not seem to justify an adequate response from the West...

...Such factors are already leading to study of a so-called "atomic-weapons stockpile' which could be established by the United States in the European NATO area and, as becomes appropriate, made available to NATO...

...Strategic Air Command, is held outside NATO, responsible to him alone...

...ability to saturate Russia with atomic bombs...

...The background to the Dulles decision is well described in such recent books as Henry A. Kissinger's Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy and Robert Osgood's Limited War...

...It has become terribly obvious in the last few years that, unless she can make these adjustments, she will soon have no allies at all...

...policy...

...All this is true enough...

...Who could possibly accept the responsibility for deciding whether a particular aggression fell into one or the other category...

...He strongly deprecated any attempt to achieve local defense in Europe, on the ground that this might cast doubt on America's readiness to blow up the world in case of war...

...It is significant that, after Defense Minister Duncan Sandys visited Canberra, the Australian Prime Minister expressed the hope that no fourth country would ever follow America, Russia and Britain in seeking nuclear weapons—though he cast an odd light on his views by adding that "the possession of these violent forces is in the case of these great nations a deterrent—not only to prospective enemies but to themselves...

...For the last twelve years, the West has considered as its main protection against Soviet aggression the "great deterrent" contained in U.S...

...Yet, the fact is that, at present, the President of the United States does carry this responsibility—and carries it alone...

...Instead of relying on America's ability to deluge the Soviet Union with thermonuclear annihilation, "it may be that by the 1960 decade the nations which are around the Sino-Soviet perimeter can possess an effective defense (in limited nuclear warfare) against full-scale conventional attack and thus confront any aggressor with the choice between failing or himself initiating nuclear war against the defending country...

...her allies will be compelled to follow suit...

...The fact is that, taken as a whole, Western defense policy is a tangle of contradictions which could be revealed as catastrophic by the first real crisis...

...I took part last week in a semi-public discussion about the Dulles article with members of the NATO Council and leading Western journalists...

...The United States has, till now, accepted without misgiving these awful and unique responsibilities...

...When massive retaliation means annihilation for the United States no less than Russia—and untold suffering for the whole of humanity for generations to come— America's reluctance to employ this supreme sanction becomes so great that it is an unreliable deterrent against anything but the most unlikely threat of all: a direct Soviet attack on the territory of the United States...

...Thus, it is essential that the West develop a strategy which will enable it to smother, or at least to control, such an outbreak without lurching into the thermonuclear holocaust...

...For the instrument of massive retaliation, the U.S...

...They are just as likely in the Middle East...

...he asked...

...In the immediate future, this sort of war is far more likely than any other...