Changing Roles

...All this is too bad...

...On the tactical level (with or without nuclear weapons), the increasing effectiveness of air defense, the increasing vulnerability of tanks and other armored offensive vehicles, and the increasing danger of concentrating troops for an offensive breakthrough-all render impracticable the normal procedures of battlefield offense or amphibious assault...

...On the other hand, those areas which we are best able to defend with conventional weapons-primarily Europe and the Western Hemisphere -are the very areas where massive retaliation is most credible and where conventional attack is least likely...

...The absence of British spellings indicates that someone at least read the manuscript before it was published...

...Supposedly, this was done at the Institute for Strategic Studies in London...

...But to little effect...

...Strategic Mobility suggests that the West should pay less attention to the likelihood of nuclear attack on itself and more attention to avoiding America's having to resort to nuclear weapons because of defeat in conventional or guerrilla war in the Middle East or in South and Southeast Asia...

...To say this is not to deny the acute feelings of discomfort that various combinations of low temperature and high winds can induce...

...The American publisher disclaims any hand in the editing...

...Since Brown never makes a point without qualifying it almost out of existence, any synopsis will perforce oversimplify his thoughts...

...but local American weakness leads us to consider a nuclear response to possible aggression in Iran and existing indirect aggression in Southeast Asia...

...The subject has not been treated well elsewhere, and Neville Brown exhibits considerable diligence and insight...

...it is congested with unexplained statistics and specialized military jargon...

...This sort of thing goes on for pages...

...in other cases, of great importance, such as the changing relationship of offense to defense on the tactical level...

...But those areas which Brown judges us to be most incapable of defending from conventional attack-among them, India, Pakistan, Iran and Southeast Asia -are precisely the areas where such attack is most likely and massive retaliation least credible...

...It is replete with long tangles of incoherent prose, orphaned pronouns and vagrant clauses...

...But at the end the author is likely to make some relevant and interesting observations: in this case, fairly trivial, concerning the utility of overseas bases...

...Although he does not deal with the problem of guerrilla warfare, it may be observed that at present we are both militarily and politically unprepared for this growing threat...

...Brown thinks that our current effort in this respect is inadequate but improving...

...In other words, we are capable of flexibility where we need it least and incapable of flexibility, or successful conventional defense, where a nuclear response is most egregiously inappropriate...

...And for those who might wish to use the book as a reference work-for it is exhaustively researched-there is neither index nor bibliography...

...This change in the balance between the two battlefield roles has important implications for Western defense...

...It is widely assumed that we have effectively replaced the Eisenhower strategy of "massive retaliation" with an alternative of "flexible response.' This is nominally true...

...For as Brown's study demonstrates, the advantage of defense makes it enormously more difficult and expensive to reverse a conventional defeat than to deter a conventional attack...

...he amasses six pages of physiological evidence, for example, before venturing the axiom that acclimatization is necessary before moving troops to tropical or polar areas: "However, optimum adaptation to cold normally occurs more quickly than it does to heat...

...Thus, American strength makes it possible for Secretary of Defense McNamara to speak of conventional defense of Europe...

...It may be said, however, that he believes defense is growing increasingly effective on the tactical level, with or without nuclear weapons, while offense is growing increasingly dominant, though never peremptorily so, on the strategic level...

...While it reduces the difficulty of our strategy of military containment, it also greatly enhances the significance of standing armies and their strategic mobility...

...Reviewed by GEORGE GILDER Editor, "Advance" Having read this book, I can assure those dauntless few who may also try to that it gets more readable as it slogs along, that there is less rhetorical underbrush and statistical quicksand toward the end than at the beginning...

...Because a successful aggression would leave the West on the tactical defensive, in order to deter such aggression we must have the capability of responding rapidly to its initiation anywhere in the world...

...Certainly any facile would-be master of war-gamesmanship will be edified by its endlessly detailed examination of the distance between the current theories and capabilities of limited war...

...The observation, made but not fully substantiated by other strategists, helps explain the increasing spread of guerrilla warfare as a mode of modern aggression...

...He is not one to jump to unfortified conclusions...

...Yet the book itself is unpardonable...

...Indeed, in the future it may be the only mode of aggression which affords a feasible advantage to offense: an advantage, often quoted conditionally as 30 anti-guerrillas to a single guerrilla, which must be extremely inviting to a prospective aggressor...

...Those who are deeply interested in the technicalities of delivering military power to far points of the globe may even find sections of the book illuminating and perceptive...

...Brown's over-all observations on the problems of strategic mobility indicate a curious anomaly in our current deterrence strategy and its credibility...