Real War (28 page)

The effort to deploy the neutron warhead was a first, tentative step in this direction. That weapon would have been very effective against the huge Russian tank armies. But its main virtue was that it would have reduced the yield and the blast component of battlefield nuclear weapons, as well as the radioactivity problem; therefore, it would have very little effect on those not in the immediate area of its prompt radiation: its collateral damage effects would be minimal, so that political authorities would be more inclined to authorize its early use against invading tanks than they would the older and more damaging battlefield nuclear weapons now in NATO's inventory. Its deployment would have increased the credibility of our deterrent and made war less likely.

In any case, our government's political handling of the neutron bomb issue was clumsy. We told our allies we would deploy it, they took steps to prepare their publics for its deployment, and then we pulled the rug out from under them by changing our minds and declining to deploy it. This about-face was a major cause of the lessened confidence we now enjoy among those who depend on us for their protection. The episode is one of the main reasons we now have to be so careful, and so thorough, in repairing and restoring the “seamless web” of American deterrence.

•  •  •

In the aftermath of the neutron bomb fiasco the most important principle in dealing with all theater nuclear issues—doctrine, design, deployment, and negotiation—must be the protection of allied unity. Without NATO unity, and the restoration of greater mutual confidence, the deployment of a modern theater nuclear force will probably be impossible. Certainly any force we manage to assemble under these conditions would not impress or deter the Soviets, either militarily or politically.

The tentative alliance decision to go ahead with the deployment of the longer-range Pershing missile and the ground-launched cruise missile has political value to the extent that it represents an instance of alliance unity in the face of Soviet pressure. However, the deployment has been linked to arms control objectives, and this raises questions about its military
merit. Some allies have been persuaded that the systems are needed; others see them as instruments of future arms control. This difference in perception is a potential source of alliance confusion that the Soviets can exploit.

Modernization must take place on its own merits. If we rationalize a system even partly on the basis of its arms control negotiating value, we raise justifiable doubts not only about its military importance but also about our determination to go through with the program. The military situation in NATO must be improved
before
there are any major arms control agreements with the Warsaw Pact. If we enter into arms control agreements first, we run a serious risk—approaching certainty—that those agreements will merely reflect and help perpetuate the existing imbalance.

•  •  •

The most important matter to be resolved is not the technical question of which new weapon is the most cost effective, but rather the doctrinal division within the alliance. Some—mostly Europeans—see theater forces as a way to “give a signal” of readiness to escalate and as an automatic link to U.S. strategic forces; others—mostly Americans—see theater forces as a way to defend Europe, and at the same time to control and contain a war in Europe without necessitating a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Ways must be found to reconcile these two concepts in accordance with the new realities of the strategic balance. The “European” concept plays down or ignores the fact that giving a political signal requires real military operational capabilities. Moreover, it presumes that U.S. strategic forces would immediately make up for any deficiencies in NATO theater forces. Yet the growing vulnerability of the U.S. land-based ICBM force, the proliferation of Soviet targets, and the limited growth expected in U.S. strategic force programs, together with the SALT constraints on American forces, mean that until these trends are reversed the ability of U.S.-based strategic nuclear systems to cover European military targets will continue to decrease.

In the view of many Europeans, the “American” concept puts too much emphasis on limited nuclear warfare confined to Europe, which is anathema to Europeans, and not enough on the political necessity to maintain the strongest possible link to
all
American strategic systems. For this reason many American proposals to improve NATO's theater nuclear forces—even to the extent necessary to carry out the “European” concept—appear to West Europeans to be evidence of U.S. readiness to consider a nuclear exchange in Europe without escalation to the strategic level.

Both sides should understand that the common and overriding goal is
deterrence,
both of an actual attack and of the ability of the Soviets to exploit the military situation politically. Deterrence strategies in a multinational alliance may never conform neatly to strategic military logic, but they cannot endure if they do not conform to reality. While the link to American strategic forces is not, and cannot be, as strong as in the past, it remains. The present
degree
of reliance on those forces, however, must be supplanted by a stronger in-theater defense. Deterrence of a Warsaw Pact attack aimed at seizing Western European territory must be based more on the ability to prevent the Soviets from achieving such an objective, and much less on the less credible threat of retaliation by American strategic forces. This is not American nuclear decoupling—in fact, battlefield and theater nuclear forces will remain predominantly American; nor is it merely an attempt to restrict nuclear conflict to Europe. Rather, it is an effort to strengthen deterrence.

The United States and its European allies must work out the outlines of such a doctrine and the specifics of modernization in accordance with it, with a firm grasp of our common objectives but also of the reality of the strategic situation. Certain things can be agreed upon: While there must be some deemphasis of reliance on the American
strategic
force umbrella, there must be no decoupling. In compensation, the
theater
and battlefield part of the nuclear umbrella must be strengthened. A new forward defense strategy and doctrine must be fashioned to meet modern Warsaw Pact combined arms capabilities. The starting point is to recognize the true nature of Warsaw Pact doctrine. That doctrine is oriented toward defeating NATO's defenses and rapidly seizing territory, using tactical nuclear and chemical as well as conventional weapons.

To counter this strategy we need a theater nuclear force deployment doctrine that will make absolutely clear the new relationship of theater forces to U.S.-based strategic nuclear
forces at one end of the spectrum of deterrence, and to the alliance's conventional military forces deployed in Europe at the other.

At the central strategic end of the spectrum U.S. forces together with longer-range theater systems must neutralize the threat of such Soviet forces. Only the President of the United States can spell out the doctrine of limited and selective use that is needed to ensure the vital connection necessary to such neutralization.

At the battlefield end of the spectrum a modernized theater nuclear force will provide the main deterrent to massive Soviet conventional or tactical nuclear attacks. This will be so even if NATO's conventional forces are greatly improved. NATO cannot realistically expect to contain such attacks with conventional forces alone. But to be effective, the theater deterrent must be clearly able to halt a large-scale attack by the forces of the Warsaw Pact, and to prevent the loss of territory. It will require an ability to locate and destroy military targets in the field, and their support in the rear.

This requires modernization of our posture across the board: nuclear weapons and other critical military assets in the theater must be made more survivable against surprise attack; nuclear weapons must be modernized to enhance their defense capability and reduce the collateral damage from their use (battlefield variations of the neutron bomb are essential for this purpose), theater-range systems might be introduced to meet the threat of the Backfire and SS-20, but not at the expense of modernizing battlefield nuclear weapons; conventional forces need to be modernized, taking advantage of new technologies; deployment plans for combined nuclear and conventional arms must be fashioned to make credible a deterrent based more strongly on the ability to deny an aggressor his objectives. Above all, a doctrine to guide modernization and to preclude piecemeal force decisions must be devised.

All of this will be extremely difficult; more alliance cooperation than we have recently seen will be necessary. The United States will have to lead, but to do so wisely it will first have to organize its own approach. This does not mean a repetition of the mistakes of the 1960s, when our tendency was to force a strategy on our allies; the solutions must be worked out together
with our allies. But wise leadership is impossible without a sense of direction, and one of the major reasons for NATO's strategic confusion today is that the United States lacks a firm sense of direction. Our tendency in recent years has been to approach alliance military decisions piecemeal. This must stop. A cooperative effort to renew and restore the reality and credibility of deterrence in Europe can help build allied unity as well as military and political strength.

•  •  •

The accession of Spain to NATO is vitally important. If Spain's rapidly modernizing forces and key strategic location were combined with France's growing cooperation within the alliance, NATO would have the military depth it now lacks. The United States has advocated Spanish membership since the early days of the Eisenhower administration. With the passing of the Franco regime and the evolution of democracy in Spain, the West Europeans should now be prepared to incorporate Spain into NATO. The Spanish people are hardworking, courageous, and able. The United States and the West need them as friends and allies, especially since it is NATO's political unity even more than its military posture that discourages Soviet tests and adventures.

Turkey is a time bomb that, if allowed to explode, could have a more devastating impact on NATO than even the upheaval in Iran. Turkey has no oil but it shares borders with Iran, Syria, Iraq, and the Soviet Union. It controls the entrance to the Black Sea and the eastern entrance to the Mediterranean. It provides one third of NATO's sixty-six divisions. Its 500,000-man armed forces are second in size in NATO only to those of the United States. For centuries it has been a target of Russian aggression.

Turkey's economic problems are staggering. It faces what Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel calls “the gravest economic crisis in Turkey since we set up the republic” in 1923. It is torn by religious strife and imperiled by radical political groups. Riots and assassinations are rife. Its government has long been weak and unstable. For purely political reasons, the U.S. Congress has been niggardly in providing military and economic aid. If Turkey collapses, the south hinge of NATO will be torn away and the effect on its oil-producing neighbors will be incalculable.
The NATO countries, including the United States, must urgently develop a program for military and economic assistance to ensure that this does not happen.

Sixty percent of Europe's oil moves by sea from the Persian Gulf. Europe, like Japan, is far more dependent on oil from Arab countries than we are. It was this consideration as much as any other that led most of our NATO allies to see the rights and wrongs of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 differently from us. Except for the Dutch, who were hit by an oil embargo for opposing the Arabs, and the Portuguese, who at that time had African colonies with oil, they were reluctant to help us help the Israelis, for fear the Arabs would punish them by withholding vital oil supplies. Thus most NATO countries denied landing and overflight rights to our air transports carrying supplies to Israel, and resisted the diversion of military equipment from central Europe.

The situation facing our Western European allies with regard to their oil supply was admittedly difficult, and their concern over diversion of NATO military stocks had legitimacy. However, in retrospect, neither consideration justified their lack of support of the United States. It is not only that their reluctance to support us in 1973 has gained them no appreciable or permanent advantage with the Arab states. Nor is it that their policies were shortsighted concerning the strategic relationship of Israel to Western European security. Their failure to support the United States when it was acting in accordance with what it believed to be a major national interest—and one common to its allies—has ominous implications for the health of the alliance. How viable is NATO if we cannot have a concerted policy to deal with major security problems beyond Europe? Economic and geopolitical considerations, particularly in the Persian Gulf, are raising problems that, while beyond the normal confines of NATO, without question concern NATO as an alliance. And so far NATO has shown itself incapable of responding
as an alliance to such problems. It is urgent that we develop coordinated, effective means of dealing with such problems.

The key challenge here is not procedural or technical: it is political. The Europeans' vital and legitimate interests in the Middle East and the Gulf are more immediate to them than American interests in the region are to the United States. The United States, Western Europe, and Japan will remain heavily dependent on oil imported from the Middle East and the Persian Gulf for the remainder of this century, and the Soviets know it. Soviet oil reserves are running low and they too will soon need Mideast oil. They have an avid interest in the region for these and other reasons. As James R. Schlesinger, who was my Defense Secretary, said in his farewell address as President Carter's Energy Secretary, NATO is “insufficient” today because “it offers no protection for the energy resources on which our collective security depends.” The threat is “stark,” he said. “Soviet control of the oil tap in the Middle East would mean the end of the world as we have known it since 1945 and of the association of free nations.”