The Unstable Balance of Terror

...And the terrible doubt about whether too much pressure at any point might not tempt the opponent to a desperate gamble may be one of the underlying causes of a detente which seems to consist so largely in postponing issues of conflict...

...bases for strategic bombers and intermediate range missiles on the territory of America's allies, which have alreadv suffered some loss of importance by being so vulnerable and by the development of U.S...

...capacity to deter any aggression short of all-out war has been greatly reduced, and will not be restored unless there is a major unilateral technical change in America's favor—such as the invention of an "anti-missile-missile...

...As he has indicated, the cuts will in the first place affect the Air Force and the surface Navy, and will thus hardly diminish the potential pressure exercised by the Soviet Army against the far inferior Western forces in Europe and in the Middle East...

...The impact of this on the world balance of power is greatly strengthened by the second fact—the continued superiority of the Soviet Union and of the Soviet bloc in the numbers and firepower of its ground forces...

...This was based on the geographical RICHARD LOWENTHAL writes on Soviet affairs frequently in these pages...

...but the fact that they might have used it in case, say, of an attack on Turkey, probably had a calm and stabilizing influence in the autumn of 1957...

...The unilateral cuts in Soviet conventional forces announced by Khrushchev, far from removing that superiority, are based on its secure possession...

...But now that U.S...

...has lost its former advantage in strategic nuclear retaliation...

...The third major fact is not yet accomplished, but is a tendency— yet it is as clearly visible now as was the coming loss of onesided invulnerability two years ago...

...When that development becomes fully effective, America's strictly military interest in the defense of any of her allies will be correspondingly diminished...

...Neither of them, of course, admits it...

...The Soviets have retained their advantage in the exercise of local pressure on the ground...

...advantage of the world-wide ring of U.S...

...There was always such a threshold for political reasons—i.e., it was never true that the U.S...

...The detente, it would seem, to the extent that it is real, is a by-product of that shift...

...Unless local efforts to strengthen local self-defense are so much increased as to give a real chance to hold the line with the locally available U.S...

...help, this tendency to leave everyone to his own devices (including, presumably, his own nuclear bombs) may then well become overwhelming...

...To sum up, the U.S...

...The political implication of this fact is that the "threshold of retaliation" has steeply gone up...

...The Russians may have an advantage in concealment, the Americans in dispersion, but neither side can know all the other may have hidden up its sleeve...

...bases abroad offer the advantage of dispersion...

...As the risks of defending them by strategic retaliation have already vastly increased, the tendency toward a withdrawal of U.S...

...That is now an accomplished fact...

...But until the number of mobile launching bases at sea, which cannot be found by a surprise blow, has much increased on both sides, neither side can be completely sure...

...allies or outposts, regardless of the means used by the aggressor or the importance of the area...

...And the "balance of terror" is temporarily unstable owing to uncertainty over the advantages one or the other side might gain from a surprise blow...

...Its disappearance was inevitable sooner or later, and was closely foreseeable since the first Sputniks proved the Soviet capacity to launch intercontinental rockets more than two years ago...

...By now, however, it is possible even for the layman to sort out some of the major political implications of established military facts...

...It is the really serious long-term background to the "crisis of NATO...

...This is not yet true, because the submarine-based Polaris missiles are not yet operational and will take time to become so in effective numbers, and because in the meantime even vulnerable U.S...

...this is a short-run situation until sea-based missiles become decisive, but in the meantime neither side can be quite sure whether there would not be a decisive advantage in striking first...

...The loss of the former invulnerability does not, of course, depend on the Russians being ahead with intercontinental missiles: It is sufficient that they have them in adequate numbers to cause unbearable destruction...

...side is likely to be greater reliance on mobile bases, and the safest form of mobility is to make the missile-launches seaborne, particularly nuclear submarine-borne...

...It follows that the "balance of terror" is at present unstable...

...The first of these facts is the end of the one-sided invulnerability formerly enjoyed by the United States...

...bases, and on the lack or inferiority of truly intercontinental weapons compared with medium-range weapons...

...retaliatory power in return for the granting of European bases to the U.S., is obsolescent...

...Thus, they did not use it in Korea, or Indo-China...

...defense...

...Because both nuclear world powers must consider the danger of having their bomber and missile bases knocked out in an all-out surprise blow by the other, it is becoming increasingly important for both to have these bases either highly protected, effectively concealed or mobile...

...But it is only a question of a few years...

...In other words, the U.S...

...it depends on the unwillingness of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization powers to create adequate ground forces of their own—an unwillingness which is meant to be increased by the Soviet announcement of "unilateral disarmament...

...could have used its nuclear retaliatory power to answer any local aggression anywhere against U.S...

...forces to the "fortress America"—to unilateral disengagement—may then become correspondingly stronger...

...Moreover, discussion of these facts in the country that is most well-informed and outspoken, i.e., the United States, is by now strongly colored by the partisan bias of those who wish either to blame the present Administration for falling behind in the arms race, or to defend its record...

...The structure of NATO, founded on the protection of Europe by U.S...

...As this transformation proceeds, the highly vulnerable U.S...

...The calculations of the balance of power made by military experts have come to depend on so much technical information that it is increasingly difficult for the layman to follow them, let alone to judge their realistic value...

...In a situation where the threat of strategic nuclear retaliation is no longer usable in local conflicts, this superiority in ground forces is bound to prove a powerful instrument of diplomacy in any crisis, even if the forces are not actually used in aggressive action...

...By Richard Lowenthal The Unstable Balance of Terror Uncertainty about success of surprise attacks is responsible for Far-West detente SOVIET PREMIER Nikita Khrushchev's recent report to the Supreme Soviet lends support to the view, held by a growing number of critical minds in the West, that the most important international development of the past year has not been the detente in East-West relations, but the shift in the balance of world power in favor of the Soviets...

...territory is directly vulnerable to nuclear, long-range attack, an aggression elsewhere in the world would have to be seen as a vital challenge, in fact as proof of Soviet willingness to risk all-out war, in order to provoke "massive letaliation...

...That is the power background to the "first of a series of summit conferences" due in May...

...Since protection is a relative term and may only invite heavier attack, and effective concealment is next to impossible in a democracy, the main tendency on the U.S...

...intercontinental missiles, are bound to lose most or all of their value for U.S...

...This article is published by agreement with the London Observer, for which he is a roving correspondent...

...Finally, there is a fourth fact that ought to be mentioned: the temporary uncertainty of even the two giants about their capacity to survive all-out surprise attack...

...This superiority is not technically inevitable...

...each assures its own subjects and the world that even if the other went berserk and tried a "nuclear Pearl Harbor," enough of its own retaliatory capacity would survive to wreak terrible revenge...