Limits of Deterrence

...Incidentally, Brodie does not even hint at the possibility of our non-retaliation except, perhaps, by implication in mentioning in another context the "unsolved problem of modern total war," namely, "how to stop it quickly...

...The side initiating attack, he writes, "may be able to keep down the amount of damage it receives to a tolerable minimum while heaping militarily critical destruction on the enemy...

...Our retaliation strategy would be "disastrous as well as futile...

...first strike at the Soviet Union, a strategy that Brodie believes runs counter to the basic tenets of U.S...

...If a high degree of strategic stability or of mutual deterrence were reached, it would no longer be the opprobrium attached to the initiation of war that would prevent SAC from using its first-strike capacity...

...The likelihood of growing strategic stability—and thus of a decline in our ability to deter overseas aggression by the threat of massive retaliation—lends particular importance to Brodie's careful and imaginative analysis of limited wars, wars in which "there is no strategic bombing between the United States and the Soviet Union...

...According to Brodie, never before have nations been known to refrain from using their most efficient weapons, once they have undertaken the effort of making these weapons available...

...In a chapter entitled "Is There a Defense...

...he comes to the conclusion that "the minimum of expected fatalities in an enemy strategic bombing attack probably has to be reckoned in tens of millions," despite all that can and should be done to defend our populations...

...Yet, unless we were prepared not to retaliate at all he asserts that we have no choice but to direct our second strike against the enemy strategic force, although it has done most of the harm it can do and although its unused remainder will be difficult, "if not impossible," to locate...

...If the U.S...

...It is unlikely, he argues, that nations would deliberately hobble a tremendous power that is already mobilized...

...He also agrees with the Air Force strategists that a first strike offers enormous advantages...

...instead American foreign and military policies would have to be adjusted to SAC's inability to cripple its Soviet counterpart sufficiently to make a first strike "effective...

...Newcomers to the field who are seeking enlightenment on the disturbing and perplexing problems raised by the weapons revolution of the mid-century will find his book an invaluable guide...

...He suggests, therefore, that we seek to "retain control of decisions": that is, the capacity to make a new target selection once the shooting starts...

...As he focuses on strategic views prevailing today, particularly in the Air Force, he sees a dangerous trend in the U.S...

...The result has been military preparations directed chiefly at a U.S...

...Such an outcome," he continues, "spells total victory for the initial attacker...

...Few have given as much thought as Brodie, however, to the question of the form retaliation should take if deterrence fails...

...By implication, he gives further support to this thesis in advocating an adequately protected retaliatory force as "potentially a perfect defense of our homeland...

...Many have joined Brodie in urging that, for the defense of America, top priority be given to the security of our strategic retaliatory forces...

...Limits of Deterrence By Arnold Wolfers Director, Washington Center of Foreign Policy Research THOSE WHO HAVE benefited over the last 12 years by Bernard Brodie's penetrating analyses and hard hitting criticism of United States nuclear strategy will welcome his Strategy in the Missile Age as a comprehensive and advanced presentation of his views on the subject...

...concern for what the enemy may do to us, form a significant part of that process by which our military thinking—with the "stimulus from outside the profession" which Brodie advocates in his introduction—can progressively be adjusted to the momentous facts of nuclear life...

...The assumption here seems to be that the use of the most destructive available weapons is rational from a military point of view no matter what enemy response would be provoked...

...to enjoy a monopoly of deterrence through the retaliatory threat...

...While he reasons with scholarly detachment, Brodie does not conceal his passionate concern over the implications of the weapons revolution...

...On the contrary, the U.S...

...In the first place, not under all circumstances would a strategy of "hitting first" run counter to American foreign policy...

...Maximum deterrent effect can be attained, he points out, "by assigning the hard core elements in our retaliatory force to the enemy's major cities," which would make the threat "as horrendous as possible," and by providing for the maximum automaticity of such a city-busting response...

...His comments on the value of exercising restraint in order to keep a war limited, particularly restraint in the initiation of tactical nuclear war, are most illuminating...

...In the second place, a situation may arise—if it has not arisen already—in which the first strike will become militarily self-defeating and therefore anything but attractive...

...strategy of deterrence, or of massive retaliation should deterrence fail, as applied to Soviet non-nuclear aggression overseas, presupposes not an American initiation of war, it is true, but nevertheless an American strategic first-strike retaliatory blow at the Soviet Union...

...toward an "exaltation of the offensive" which, despite the sad experience of Pearl Harbor, implies that a healthy respect for enemy capabilities is "defense-minded and hence ignoble...

...I would merely suggest that he exaggerates the difficulty of applying the necessary degree of restraint...

...Brodie doss not quarrel with those who recognize "the fantastic degree to which the coming of the A-bomb gave a lead to the offense over the defense...

...But the fact is, as Brodie himself asserts, that the moment we visualize the reciprocal use of nuclear weapons, their use ceases "to look overwhelmingly advantageous," which is surely an understatement...

...Although he qualifies his assumption of the attractiveness of hitting first under future conditions, this assumption leads him to ask why it should not be rational to prepare for an offensive strategy that would assure "total victory" if "our present strength is much more nearly adequate to the task of knocking out the Soviet Union quickly than it was when we enjoyed a monopoly of atomic weapons...

...He is worried less about the new weapons themselves to which "truly cosmic forces [have been] harnessed" than by their possible employment for misguided, illogical or self-defeating military strategies...

...Brodie cautiously hints at this possibility when he points to a condition of stability in which "each nation believes that the advantage of striking first is overshadowed by the tremendous cost of doing so...

...Brodie's thoughtful treatment of nuclear strategy in its many ramifications will not end controversy on such matters as target selection, the amount of counterforce capability needed under conditions of relative stability or the use of tactical nuclear weapons, But his strong and well-reasoned insistence on protected retaliatory power, on careful target selection, on psychological preparations for restraint in war, on subordination of military policy to political objectives and on greater...

...Brodie's answer, which is convincing as far as it goes, is that the attitude of the American people precludes a preventive war, the most effective way to initiate hostilities, as a "genuinely available policy alternative," while a pre-emptive strike, also a first strike but after we are "provoked by an imminent and certain enemy attack," is quite unlikely to work in practice...

...However, if the threat failed to deter an enemy attack, "our hitting at enemy cities would simply force the destruction of our own and in substantially greater degree...

...can discourage a Soviet first strike by creating a retaliatory force so invulnerable that an attack would be futile and self-destructive, the Soviets, who have a lead in missiles which they can easily conceal and harden, will not permit the U.S...

...For two reasons Brodie's answer is not entirely satisfactory...

...If rational conduct prevails, it is hard to see why it should be so difficult, or novel, to hobble not "tremendous power" but power that, instead of bringing victory nearer, invites destruction by the enemy...

...foreign policy and therefore to the missions with which the Strategic Air Command is or will be entrusted...

...If "the chances are high that we will receive rather than deliver the first blow," our national survival depends, he argues, not on our ability to annihilate the enemy if we hit him first, but on "absolutely essential"' preparations "to defend our retaliatory force, or a substantial portion of it," against his first strike...