ARMS AND INFLUENCE

Written under the auspices of the

Center for International Affairs
Harvard University

Delivered in part as the

Henry L. Stimson Lectures
Yale University
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 ARMS
AND
INFLUENCE
With a New Preface and Afterword

BY THOMAS C. SCHELLING

NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Preface to the 2008 edition © 2008 by Yale University.
Copyright © 1966 by Yale University

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part,
including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by
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Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008925430

ISBN 978-0-300-14337-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

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 CONTENTS

PREFACE TO THE 2008 EDITION vii

PREFACE xiii

1. THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE1

2. THE ART OF COMMITMENT 35

3. THE MANIPULATION OF RISK 92

4. THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 126

5. THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 190

6. THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 221

7. THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 260

AFTERWORD: AN ASTONISHING SIXTY YEARS:

THE LEGACY OF HIROSHIMA 287

INDEX 305
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 PREFACE TO THE 2008 EDITION

The world has changed since I wrote this book in the 1960s.
Most notably, the hostility, and the nuclear weapons surround-
ing that hostility, between the United States and the Soviet
Union — between NATO and the Warsaw Pact —has dissolved
with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of
the Warsaw Pact. A somewhat militarily hostile Russia survives
the Cold War, but nobody worries (that I know of) about nu-
clear confrontations between the new Russia and the United
States.
The most astonishing development during these more than
forty years — a development that no one I have known could
have imagined — is that during the rest of the twentieth century,
for fifty-five years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered the
world's first nuclear bombs, not a single nuclear weapon was
exploded in warfare. As I write this in early 2008, it is sixty-two
and a half years since the second, and last, nuclear weapon
exploded in anger, above a Japanese city. Since then there have
been, depending on how you count, either five or six wars in
which one side had nuclear weapons and kept them unused.
After two terms of the Eisenhower presidency, during which
nuclear weapons were officially declared to have become "con-
ventional," President Lyndon Johnson, asked in a press con-
ference in 1964 whether nuclear weapons might be available in
Vietnam, replied, "Make no mistake. There is no such thing as a
conventional nuclear weapon. For nineteen peril-filled years no

vn
viü PREFACE TO THE 2008 EDITION

nation has loosed the atom against another. To do so now is a

political decision of the highest order."
Those nineteen peril-filled years have now become more
than sixty. Nuclear weapons were not used in the United Na-
tions' defense of South Korea. They were not used in the suc-
ceeding war with the People's Republic of China. They were
not used in the U.S. war in Vietnam. They were not used in
1973 when Egypt had two armies on the Israeli side of the Suez
Canal. They were not used in the British war with Argentina
over the Falkland Islands. And, most impressively, they were
not used by the Soviet Union when it fought, and lost, a pro-
tracted, demoralizing war in Afghanistan.
This "taboo," as it has come to be called, is an asset to be
treasured. It's our main hope that we can go another sixty years
without nuclear war.
The nonproliferation program has been more successful than
any student of the subject would have thought likely, or even
possible, at the time this book was written. There are, in 2008,
nine, possibly going on ten, nations that have nuclear weapons.
When this book was being written, serious estimates suggested
that three or four times that number would have nuclear weap-
ons within the century. This outcome partly reflects successful
policy and partly reflects the loss of interest in nuclear electric
power, especially after the explosion in Ukraine of the Cher-
nobyl reactor complex in 1986.
Terrorism has undergone a change since I wrote the book.
Except for some airplane hijackings, most unrelated to larger
conflicts, terrorism used to be mostly a phenomenon of civil
conflict, as in Algeria and Vietnam. Since 2001 it has assumed
larger proportions and more varied motives, in both violence
and objectives. Does this book provide any guidance for think-
ing about policy toward terrorists?
A related question: would I want this book to fall into the
hands of terrorist leaders? Would I especially welcome, or de-
plore, attention to this book on the part of anyone associated
with terrorist nuclear weapons? I've been thinking about this
question for a few years.
PREFACE TO THE 2008 EDITION ix

A somewhat related question: do I hope that people of influ-

ence in North Korea, Iran, or any other nation that may acquire
nuclear weapons in the coming years will read this book and
become the wiser?
On both these questions — terrorists and new nuclear nations —
I have come to the conclusion, not with complete confidence but
with enough to state my conclusion, that I want them, "rogue
nations" or terrorists, to appreciate the likely value of the diplo-
matic use of potential violence compared with whatever value
they may attach to pure destructive use. Smart terrorists — and
the people who might assemble nuclear explosive devices, if
they can get the fissionable material, will have to be highly
intelligent — should be able to appreciate that such weapons
have a comparative advantage toward influence, not simple de-
struction. I hope they might learn to appreciate that from reading
this book.
In the forty years since Arms and Influence was first pub-
lished, the People's Republic of China has become an altogether
different kind of nation, a conservative nuclear power with a
burgeoning quasi-capitalist economy, still determined that Tai-
wan not become, or be recognized as, an independent entity. Its
nuclear forces are modest by American standards and declared
not to be for "first use." It was clear, I thought when I wrote this
book, that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Peo-
ple's Republic of China had split from each other in an irrecon-
cilable way, but not everybody recognized that — especially not
the Lyndon Johnson administration or the Richard Nixon ad-
ministration in their assessments of the stakes in the Vietnam
War. But there is no longer a Soviet state, and China is con-
nected to Russia only in a shared border.
Some may wonder, rightly, whether parts of this book have
become irrelevant, or obsolete, with the evaporation of the Cold
War, the advent of India-Pakistan nuclear competition, the iden-
tification of "rogue states" in U.S. foreign policy, and the pos-
sibility of nuclear materials coming into the hands of terrorists
who have access to people who know how to make explosives
with the stuff. My expectation is that Indians and Pakistanis
x PREFACE TO THE 2008 EDITION

who think about these things will find the book quite pertinent;
my hope is that North Koreans and Iranians who think about
these things will find the book illuminating. I naturally, in prep-
aration for this new printing, looked at every chapter for things
so dated as to be either irrelevant or incomprehensible to read-
ers in the twenty-first century.
Actually, I found the first sentence of the original preface to
be even more portentous than I could make it in the 1960s.
"One of the lamentable principles of human productivity is that
it is easier to destroy than to create." That principle is now the
foundation for our worst apprehensions.
I had to coin a term. "Deterrence" was well understood. To
"deter" was, as one dictionary said, to "prevent or discourage
from acting by means of fear, doubt, or the like," and in the
words of another, "to turn aside or discourage through fear;
hence, to prevent from action by fear of consequences," from
the Latin to "frighten from." Deterrence was in popular usage
not just in military strategy but also in criminal law. It was,
complementary to "containment," the basis of our American
policy toward the Soviet bloc. But deterrence is passive; it
posits a response to something unacceptable but is quiescent in
the absence of provocation. It is something like "defense" in
contrast to "offense." We have a Department of Defense, no
longer a War Department, "defense" being the peaceable side
of military action.
But what do we call the threatening action that is intended
not to forestall some adversarial action but to bring about some
desired action, through "fear of consequences"? "Coercion"
covers it, but coercion includes deterrence — that is, preventing
action — as well as forcing action through fear of consequences.
To talk about the latter we need a word. I chose "compellence."
It is now almost, but not quite, part of the strategic vocabulary. I
think it will be even more necessary in the future as we analyze
not just what the United States — "we" — needs to do but how
various adversaries — "they" —may attempt to take advantage
of their capacity to do harm.
We have seen that deterrence, even nuclear deterrence,
PREFACE TO THE 2008 EDITION xi

doesn't always work. When North Korea attacked the South, it

wasn't deterred by U.S. nuclear weapons; nor was China de-
terred from entering South Korea as U.S. troops approached the
Chinese border (and the United States was not deterred by Chi-
nese threats to enter the fray). Egypt and Syria in 1973 were not
deterred by Israeli nuclear weapons, which they knew existed.
Maybe Egypt and Syria believed (correctly?) that Israel had too
much at stake in the nuclear taboo to respond to the invasion by
using nuclear weapons, even on Egyptian armies in the Sinai
desert with no civilians anywhere near.
But "mutual deterrence," involving the United States and
the Soviet Union, was impressively successful. We can hope
that Indians and Pakistanis will draw the appropriate lesson. If
this book can help to persuade North Koreans, Iranians, or any
others who may contemplate or acquire nuclear weapons to
think seriously about deterrence, and how it may accomplish
more than pure destruction, both they and we may be the better
for it.
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 PREFACE

One of the lamentable principles of human productivity is that it

is easier to destroy than to create. A house that takes several
man-years to build can be burned in an hour by any young
delinquent who has the price of a box of matches. Poisoning
dogs is cheaper than raising them. And a country can destroy
more with twenty billion dollars of nuclear armament than it
can create with twenty billion dollars of foreign investment.
The harm that people can do, or that nations can do, is impress-
ive. And it is often used to impress.
The power to hurt—the sheer unacquisitive, unproductive
power to destroy things that somebody treasures, to inflict pain
and grief—is a kind of bargaining power, not easy to use but
used often. In the underworld it is the basis for blackmail,
extortion, and kidnapping, in the commercial world for boy-
cotts, strikes, and lockouts. In some countries it is regularly
used to coerce voters, bureaucrats, even the police; and it
underlies the humane as well as the corporal punishments that
society uses to deter crime and delinquency. It has its nonvio-
lent forms like the sit-ins that cause nuisance or loss of income,
and its subtle forms like the self-inflicted violence that sheds
guilt or shame on others. Even the law itself can be exploited:
since the days of early Athens, people have threatened lawsuits
to extort money, owed them or not. It is often the basis for
discipline, civilian and military; and gods use it to exact
obedience.
The bargaining power that comes from the physical harm a
nation can do to another nation is reflected in notions like
deterrence, retaliation and reprisal, terrorism and wars of
xiii
xiv PREFACE

nerve, nuclear blackmail, armistice and surrender, as well as in

reciprocal efforts to restrain that harm in the treatment of
prisoners, in the limitation of war, and in the regulation of
armaments. Military force can sometimes be used to achieve
an objective forcibly, without persuasion or intimidation;
usually, though—throughout history but particularly now—
military potential is used to influence other countries, their
government or their people, by the harm it could do to them. It
may be used skillfully or clumsily, and it can be used for evil or
in self protection, even in the pursuit of peace; but used as
bargaining power it is part of diplomacy—the uglier, more
negative, less civilized part of diplomacy—nevertheless,
diplomacy.
There is no traditional • name for this kind of diplomacy. It
is not "military strategy," which has usually meant the art or
science of military victory; and while the object of victory
has traditionally been described as "imposing one's will on the
enemy," how to do that has typically received less attention
than the conduct of campaigns and wars. It is a part of diplo-
macy that, at least in this country, was abnormal and episodic,
not central and continuous, and that was often abdicated to the
military when war was imminent or in progress. For the last two
decades, though, this part of diplomacy has been central and
continuous; in the United States there has been a revolution in
the relation of military to foreign policy at the same time as the
revolution in explosive power.
I have tried in this book to discern a few of the principles
that underlie this diplomacy of violence. "Principles" may be
too pretentious a term, but my interest has been in how countries
do use their capacity for violence as bargaining power, or at
least how they try to use it, what the difficulties and dangers
are and some of the causes of success or failure. Success to
some extent, failure even more, is not an exclusively competitive
notion; when violence is involved, the interests even of
adversaries overlap. Without the overlap there would be no
bargaining, just a tug-of-war.
But this is not a book about policy. I have not tried to re-
organize NATO, to contain Communist China, to liberate Cuba,
PREFACE xv

to immobilize the Vietcong, or to keep India from wanting

nuclear weapons; I have not tried to support or to depreciate the
manned bomber, nuclear-powered vessels, or ballistic-missile
defenses; I have not tried to choose between death and surrender,
or to reorganize the armed services. Principles rarely lead
straight to policies; policies depend on values and purposes,
predictions and estimates, and must usually reflect the relative
weight of conflicting principles. (Policies ought to be consistent,
but interesting principles almost always conflict.) At the same
time, I am sure I have not evenly disguised my prejudices; at
some points they obtrude blatantly, at some the reader may
share them and not notice them, and at some points I have
undoubtedly bent so far backward as to be credited with views I
do not hold.
I have not included much on arms control. I wrote, with
Morton H. Halperin, a little book on arms control in 1960-61;
I still like it and saw no reason either to repeat it or to rewrite
it here. There is little on insurgency, revolt, or domestic terror-
ism; that will have to be another book. There is little or nothing
specifically on a "depolarized" world of many nuclear powers,
although what I have written, if valid in a polarized world, is
probably just as valid in a world of several competing powers,
as pertinent to French or Chinese policy as to American or
Soviet. And if what I have said is pertinent to the present, it
ought to be pertinent in the future, just more incomplete.
I have used some historical examples, but usually as illustra-
tion, not evidence. For browsing in search of ideas, Caesar's
Conquest of Gaul is rich reading and Thucy dides' Peloponnesian
War the best there is, whatever their historical merits—even if
read as pure fiction. I have often used recent examples to
illustrate some point or tactic; mention does not mean approval,
even where a policy was successful. The several pages examin-
ing the 1964 bombing in the Gulf of Tonkin do not mean that I
approve of it (though, in fact, I do); the several pages on
coercive aspects of the bombing of North Vietnam in 1965 do
not mean I approve of it (and, in fact, I am not sure yet); the
several pages on the tactic of cultivating irrationality at the
highest level of government, to make otherwise incredible
xvi PREFACE

threats sound credible, do not mean that I approve of it (and, in

fact, I do not).
I have had so much help in writing this book that I am tempted
to break the rules and let others share the blame as well as any
credit. Forceful critics have had a good deal of influence on its
shape and style. Two of them, Bernard Brodie and James E.
King, Jr., out of great dissatisfaction with the manuscript and
even greater affection for its author, took extraordinary pains
with every chapter and I must not only thank them here but
record that they remain dissatisfied. Others who unhesitatingly
told me where I was wrong, or my language unclear, or my book
badly structured, or who added ideas and lent me examples
were Robert R. Bowie, Donald S. Bussey, Lincoln P. Bloom-
field, Thomas C. Donahue, Robert Erwin, Lawrence S. Finkel-
stein, Roger Fisher, Robert N. Ginsburgh, Morton H. Halperin,
Fred C. Iklé, William W. Kaufmann, Henry A. Kissinger,
Robert A. Levine, Nathan Leites, Jesse Orlansky, George H.
Quester, and Thomas W. Wolfe. This enumeration does not
absolve still others from influence over the character and
contents of the book.
I have integrated into some of the chapters, in revised form,
parts of some articles that were earlier published by the Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, The Virginia Quar-
terly Review, World Politics, the Center for International
Studies, Princeton University, the Center for Strategic Studies,
Georgetown University, the Institute of International Studies,
University of California, Berkeley, and the Institute for Strate-
gic Studies, London. I appreciate their permission to do this.
A loyal group at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Wash-
ington spent eleven weekly seminars with me while the first
draft was taking shape. The final draft was put together while I
was a guest at the Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
In the spring of 1965 my former colleagues at Yale University
invited me to inaugurate, with lectures drawn from this book,
the Henry L. Stimson Lectures.
T.C.S.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
November 15,1965
ARMS AND INFLUENCE
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 l
THE DIPLOMACY
OF VIOLENCE

The usual distinction between diplomacy and force is not

merely in the instruments, words or bullets, but in the relation
between adversaries—in the interplay of motives and the role
of communication, understandings, compromise, and restraint.
Diplomacy is bargaining; it seeks outcomes that, though not
ideal for either party, are better for both than some of the
alternatives. In diplomacy each party somewhat controls what
the other wants, and can get more by compromise, exchange, or
collaboration than by taking things in his own hands and
ignoring the other's wishes. The bargaining can be polite or
rude, entail threats as well as offers, assume a status quo or
ignore all rights and privileges, and assume mistrust rather than
trust. But whether polite or impolite, constructive or aggres-
sive, respectful or vicious, whether it occurs among friends or
antagonists and whether or not there is a basis for trust and
goodwill, there must be some common interest, if only in the
avoidance of mutual damage, and an awareness of the need to
make the other party prefer an outcome acceptable to oneself.
With enough military force a country may not need to
bargain. Some things a country wants it can take, and some
things it has it can keep, by sheer strength, skill and ingenuity. It
can do this forcibly, accommodating only to opposing strength,
skill, and ingenuity and without trying to appeal to an enemy's
wishes. Forcibly a country can repel and expel, penetrate and
occupy, seize, exterminate, disarm and disable, confine, deny
access, and directly frustrate intrusion or attack. It can, that is, if
it has enough strength. "Enough" depends on how much an
opponent has.
1
2 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

There is something else, though, that force can do. It is less

military, less heroic, less impersonal, and less unilateral; it is
uglier, and has received less attention in Western military strat-
egy. In addition to seizing and holding, disarming and confin-
ing, penetrating and obstructing, and all that, military force can
be used to hurt. In addition to taking and protecting things of
value it can destroy value. In addition to weakening an enemy
militarily it can cause an enemy plain suffering.
Pain and shock, loss and grief, privation and horror are al-
ways in some degree, sometimes in terrible degree, among the
results of warfare; but in traditional military science they are in-
cidental, they are not the object. If violence can be done inci-
dentally, though, it can also be done purposely. The power to
hurt can be counted among the most impressive attributes of
military force.
Hurting, unlike forcible seizure or self-defense, is not uncon-
cerned with the interest of others. It is measured in the suffering
it can cause and the victims' motivation to avoid it. Forcible ac-
tion will work against weeds or floods as well as against armies,
but suffering requires a victim that can feel pain or has some-
thing to lose. To inflict suffering gains nothing and saves noth-
ing directly; it can only make people behave to avoid it. The only
purpose, unless sport or revenge, must be to influence somebody's
behavior, to coerce his decision or choice. To be coercive,
violence has to be anticipated. And it has to be avoidable
by accommodation. The power to hurt is bargaining power.
To exploit it is diplomacy—vicious diplomacy, but diplomacy.
The Contrast of Brute Force with Coercion
There is a difference between taking what you want and making
someone give it to you, between fending off assault and making
someone afraid to assault you, between holding what people are
trying to take and making them afraid to take it, between
losing what someone can forcibly take and giving it up to avoid
risk or damage. It is the difference between defense and deter-
rence, between brute force and intimidation, between conquest
and blackmail, between action and threats. It is the difference
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 3

between the unilateral, "undiplomatic" recourse to strength,

and coercive diplomacy based on the power to hurt.
The contrasts are several. The purely "military" or "undiplo-
matic" recourse to forcible action is concerned with enemy
strength, not enemy interests; the coercive use of the power to
hurt, though, is the very exploitation of enemy wants and fears.
And brute strength is usually measured relative to enemy
strength, the one directly opposing the other, while the power to
hurt is typically not reduced by the enemy's power to hurt in
return. Opposing strengths may cancel each other, pain and
grief do not. The willingness to hurt, the credibility of a threat,
and the ability to exploit the power to hurt will indeed depend
on how much the adversary can hurt in return; but there is little
or nothing about an adversary's pain or grief that directly re-
duces one's own. Two sides cannot both overcome each other
with superior strength; they may both be able to hurt each
other. With strength they can dispute objects of value; with
sheer violence they can destroy them.
And brute force succeeds when it is used, whereas the power
to hurt is most successful when held in reserve. It is the threat
of damage, or of more damage to come, that can make someone
yield or comply. It is latent violence that can influence some-
one' s choice—violence that can still be withheld or inflicted, or
that a victim believes can be withheld or inflicted. The threat of
pain tries to structure someone's motives, while brute force tries
to overcome his strength. Unhappily, the power to hurt is often
communicated by some performance of it. Whether it is sheer
terroristic violence to induce an irrational response, or cool
premeditated violence to persuade somebody that you mean it
and may do it again, it is not the pain and damage itself but its
influence on somebody's behavior that matters. It is the expec-
tation of more violence that gets the wanted behavior, if the
power to hurt can get it at all.
To exploit a capacity for hurting and inflicting damage one
needs to know what an adversary treasures and what scares him
and one needs the adversary to understand what behavior of his
will cause the violence to be inflicted and what will cause it to
4 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

be withheld. The victim has to know what is wanted, and he

may have to be assured of what is not wanted. The pain and
suffering have to appear contingent on his behavior; it is not
alone the threat that is effective—the threat of pain or loss if he
fails to comply—but the corresponding assurance, possibly
an implicit one, that he can avoid the pain or loss if he does
comply. The prospect of certain death may stun him, but it
gives him no choice.
Coercion by threat of damage also requires that our interests and
our opponent's not be absolutely opposed. If his pain were our
greatest delight and our satisfaction his greatest woe, we would
just proceed to hurt and to frustrate each other. It is when his pain
gives us little or no satisfaction compared with what he can do for
us, and the action or inaction that satisfies us costs him less than
the pain we can cause, that there is room for coercion. Coercion
requires finding a bargain, arranging for him to be better off doing
what we want—worse off not doing what we want—when he
takes the threatened penalty into account.
It is this capacity for pure damage, pure violence, that is usu-
ally associated with the most vicious labor disputes, with racial
disorders, with civil uprisings and their suppression, with rack-
eteering. It is also the power to hurt rather than brute force that
we use in dealing with criminals; we hurt them afterward, or
threaten to, for their misdeeds rather than protect ourselves
with cordons of electric wires, masonry walls, and armed
guards. Jail, of course, can be either forcible restraint or threat-
ened privation; if the object is to keep criminals out of mischief
by confinement, success is measured by how many of them are
gotten behind bars, but if the object is to threaten privation,
success will be measured by how few have to be put behind bars
and success then depends on the subject's understanding of the
consequences. Pure damage is what a car threatens when it tries
to hog the road or to keep its rightful share, or to go first through
an intersection. A tank or a bulldozer can force its way
regardless of others' wishes; the rest of us have to threat-
en damage, usually mutual damage, hoping the other driver
values his car or his limbs enough to give way, hoping he
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 5

sees us, and hoping he is in control of his own car. The threat of
pure damage will not work against an unmanned vehicle.
This difference between coercion and brute force is as often
in the intent as in the instrument. To hunt down Comanches and
to exterminate them was brute force; to raid their villages to
make them behave was coercive diplomacy, based on the power
to hurt. The pain and loss to the Indians might have looked much
the same one way as the other; the difference was one of
purpose and effect. If Indians were killed because they were in
the way, or somebody wanted their land, or the authorities
despaired of making them behave and could not confine them
and decided to exterminate them, that was pure unilateral force.
If some Indians were killed to make other Indians behave, that
was coercive violence—or intended to be, whether or not it was
effective. The Germans at Verdun perceived themselves to be
chewing up hundreds of thousands of French soldiers in a
gruesome "meatgrinder." If the purpose was to eliminate a
military obstacle—the French infantryman, viewed as a mili-
tary "asset" rather than as a warm human being—the offensive
at Verdun was a unilateral exercise of military force. If instead
the object was to make the loss of young men—not of imper-
sonal "effectives," but of sons, husbands, fathers, and the pride
of French manhood—so anguishing as to be unendurable, to
make surrender a welcome relief and to spoil the foretaste of an
Allied victory, then it was an exercise in coercion, in applied
violence, intended to offer relief upon accommodation. And of
course, since any use of force tends to be brutal, thoughtless,
vengeful, or plain obstinate, the motives themselves can be
mixed and confused. The fact that heroism and brutality can be
either coercive diplomacy or a contest in pure strength does not
promise that the distinction will be made, and the strategies
enlightened by the distinction, every time some vicious enter-
prise gets launched.
The contrast between brute force and coercion is illustrated
by two alternative strategies attributed to Genghis Khan. Early
in his career he pursued the war creed of the Mongols: the van-
quished can never be the friends of the victors, their death is
6 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

necessary for the victor's safety. This was the unilateral exter-
mination of a menace or a liability. The turning point of his
career, according to Lynn Montross, came later when he dis-
covered how to use his power to hurt for diplomatic ends. "The
great Khan, who was not inhibited by the usual mercies, con-
ceived the plan of forcing captives—women, children, aged
fathers, favorite sons—to march ahead of his army as the first
potential victims of resistance."1 Live captives have often
proved more valuable than enemy dead; and the technique dis-
covered by the Khan in his maturity remains contemporary.
North Koreans and Chinese were reported to have quartered
prisoners of war near strategic targets to inhibit bombing at-
tacks by United Nations aircraft. Hostages represent the power
to hurt in its purest form.
Coercive Violence in Warfare
This distinction between the power to hurt and the power to
seize or hold forcibly is important in modern war, both big war
and little war, hypothetical war and real war. For many years
the Greeks and the Turks on Cyprus could hurt each other in-
definitely but neither could quite take or hold forcibly what they
wanted or protect themselves from violence by physical means.
The Jews in Palestine could not expel the British in the late
1940s but they could cause pain and fear and frustration
through terrorism, and eventually influence somebody's deci-
sion. The brutal war in Algeria was more a contest in pure
violence than in military strength; the question was who would
first find the pain and degradation unendurable. The French
troops preferred—indeed they continually tried—to make it a
contest of strength, to pit military force against the nationalists'
capacity for terror, to exterminate or disable the nationalists
and to screen off the nationalists from the victims of their vio-
lence. But because in civil war terrorists commonly have access
to victims by sheer physical propinquity, the victims and their
properties could not be forcibly defended and in the end the
1. Lynn Montross, War Through the Ages (3d ed. New York, Harper and Brothers,
1960), p. 146.
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 7

French troops themselves resorted, unsuccessfully, to a war of

pain.
Nobody believes that the Russians can take Hawaii from us,
or New York, or Chicago, but nobody doubts that they might
destroy people and buildings in Hawaii, Chicago, or New York.
Whether the Russians can conquer West Germany in any mean-
ingful sense is questionable; whether they can hurt it terribly is
not doubted. That the United States can destroy a large part of
Russia is universally taken for granted; that the United States
can keep from being badly hurt, even devastated, in return, or
can keep Western Europe from being devastated while itself de-
stroying Russia, is at best arguable; and it is virtually out of the
question that we could conquer Russia territorially and use its
economic assets unless it were by threatening disaster and in-
ducing compliance. It is the power to hurt, not military strength
in the traditional sense, that inheres in our most impressive mili-
tary capabilities at the present time. We have a Department of
Defense but emphasize retaliation—"to return evil for evil"
(synonyms: requital, reprisal, revenge, vengeance, retribution).
And it is pain and violence, not force in the traditional sense,
that inheres also in some of the least impressive military capa-
bilities of the present time—the plastic bomb, the terrorist's
bullet, the burnt crops, and the tortured farmer.
War appears to be, or threatens to be, not so much a contest of
strength as one of endurance, nerve, obstinacy, and pain. It
appears to be, and threatens to be, not so much a contest of
military strength as a bargaining process—dirty, extortionate,
and often quite reluctant bargaining on one side or both—
nevertheless a bargaining process.
The difference cannot quite be expressed as one between the
use of force and the threat of force. The actions involved in
forcible accomplishment, on the one hand, and in fulfilling a
threat, on the other, can be quite different. Sometimes the most
effective direct action inflicts enough cost or pain on the ene-
my to serve as a threat, sometimes not. The United States threat-
ens the Soviet Union with virtual destruction of its society in the
event of a surprise attack on the United States; a hundred mil-
8 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

lion deaths are awesome as pure damage, but they are useless in
stopping the Soviet attack—especially if the threat is to do it all
afterward anyway. So it is worthwhile to keep the concepts
distinct—to distinguish forcible action from the threat of pain
—recognizing that some actions serve as both a means of forci-
ble accomplishment and a means of inflicting pure damage,
some do not. Hostages tend to entail almost pure pain and
damage, as do all forms of reprisal after the fact. Some modes of
self-defense may exact so little in blood or treasure as to entail
negligible violence; and some forcible actions entail so much
violence that their threat can be effective by itself.
The power to hurt, though it can usually accomplish nothing
directly, is potentially more versatile than a straightforward
capacity for forcible accomplishment. By force alone we can-
not even lead a horse to water—we have to drag him—much
less make him drink. Any affirmative action, any collabora-
tion, almost anything but physical exclusion, expulsion, or ex-
termination, requires that an opponent or a victim do some-
thing, even if only to stop or get out. The threat of pain and
damage may make him want to do it, and anything he can do is
potentially susceptible to inducement. Brute force can only
accomplish what requires no collaboration. The principle is
illustrated by a technique of unarmed combat: one can disable
a man by various stunning, fracturing, or killing blows, but to
take him to jail one has to exploit the man's own efforts.
"Come-along" holds are those that threaten pain or disable-
ment, giving relief as long as the victim complies, giving him
the option of using his own legs to get to jail.
We have to keep in mind, though, that what is pure pain, or
the threat of it, at one level of decision can be equivalent to
brute force at another level. Churchill was worried, during the
early bombing raids on London in 1940, that Londoners might
panic. Against people the bombs were pure violence, to induce
their undisciplined evasion; to Churchill and the government, the
bombs were a cause of inefficiency, whether they spoiled trans-
port and made people late to work or scared people and made them
afraid to work. Churchill's decisions were not going
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 9

to be coerced by the fear of a few casualties. Similarly on the

battlefield: tactics that frighten soldiers so that they run, duck
their heads, or lay down their arms and surrender represent
coercion based on the power to hurt; to the top command, which
is frustrated but not coerced, such tactics are part of the contest
in military discipline and strength.
The fact that violence—pure pain and damage—can be used
or threatened to coerce and to deter, to intimidate and to
blackmail, to demoralize and to paralyze, in a conscious
process of dirty bargaining, does not by any means imply that
violence is not often wanton and meaningless or, even when
purposive, in danger of getting out of hand. Ancient wars were
often quite "total" for the loser, the men being put to death, the
women sold as slaves, the boys castrated, the cattle slaugh-
tered, and the buildings leveled, for the sake of revenge,
justice, personal gain, or merely custom. If an enemy bombs a
city, by design or by carelessness, we usually bomb his if we
can. In the excitement and fatigue of warfare, revenge is one of
the few satisfactions that can be savored; and justice can often
be construed to demand the enemy's punishment, even if it is
delivered with more enthusiasm than justice requires. When
Jerusalem fell to the Crusaders in 1099 the ensuing slaughter
was one of the bloodiest in military chronicles. "The men of
the West literally waded in gore, their march to the church of
the Holy Sepulcher being gruesomely likened to 'treading out
the wine press' ...," reports Montross (p. 138), who observes
that these excesses usually came at the climax of the capture of
a fortified post or city. "For long the assailants have endured
more punishment than they were able to inflict; then once the
walls are breached, pent up emotions find an outlet in murder,
rape and plunder, which discipline is powerless to prevent."
The same occurred when Tyre fell to Alexander after a painful
siege, and the phenomenon was not unknown on Pacific
islands in the Second World War. Pure violence, like fire, can
be harnessed to a purpose; that does not mean that behind every
holocaust is a shrewd intention successfully fulfilled.
But if the occurrence of violence does not always bespeak a
10 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

shrewd purpose, the absence of pain and destruction is no sign

that violence was idle. Violence is most purposive and most
successful when it is threatened and not used. Successful
threats are those that do not have to be carried out. By European
standards, Denmark was virtually unharmed in the Second
World War; it was violence that made the Danes submit.
Withheld violence—successfully threatened violence—can
look clean, even merciful. The fact that a kidnap victim is
returned unharmed, against receipt of ample ransom, does not
make kidnapping a nonviolent enterprise. The American vic-
tory at Mexico City in 1847 was a great success; with a
minimum of brutality we traded a capital city for everything we
wanted from the war. We did not even have to say what we
could do to Mexico City to make the Mexican government
understand what they had at stake. (They had undoubtedly got
the message a month earlier, when Vera Cruz was being
pounded into submission. After forty-eight hours of shellfire,
the foreign consuls in that city approached General Scott's
headquarters to ask for a truce so that women, children, and
neutrals could evacuate the city. General Scott, "counting on
such internal pressure to help bring about the city's surrender,"
refused their request and added that anyone, soldier or noncom-
batant, who attempted to leave the city would be fired upon.) 2
Whether spoken or not, the threat is usually there. In earlier
eras the etiquette was more permissive. When the Persians
wanted to induce some Ionian cities to surrender and join them,
without having to fight them, they instructed their ambassadors
to
make your proposals to them and promise that, if they aban-
don their allies, there will be no disagreeable consequences
2. Otis A. Singletary, The Mexican War (Chicago, University of Chicago Press,
1960), pp. 75-76. In a similar episode the Gauls, defending the town of Alesia in 52
B.C., "decided to send out of the town those whom age or infirmity incapacitated for
fighting. . . . They came up to the Roman fortifications and with tears besought the
soldiers to take them as slaves and relieve their hunger. But Caesar posted guards on
the ramparts with orders to refuse them admission." Caesar, The Conquest of Gaul,
S. A. Handford, transí. (Baltimore, Penguin Books, 1951), p. 227.
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 11

for them; we will not set fire to their houses or temples, or threaten
them with any greater harshness than before this trouble oc-
curred. If, however, they refuse, and insist upon fighting, then
you must resort to threats, and say exactly what we will do to
them; tell them, that is, that when they are beaten they will be sold
as slaves, their boys will be made eunuchs, their girls carried off
to Bactria, and their land confiscated.3
It sounds like Hitler talking to Schuschnigg. "I only need to
give an order, and overnight all the ridiculous scarecrows on the
frontier will vanish . . . Then you will really experience
something. . . . After the troops will follow the S.A. and the
Legion. No one will be able to hinder the vengeance, not even
myself."
Or Henry V before the gates of Harfleur:
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villainy.
If not, why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beard,
And their most reverent heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds ...
What say you? will you yield, and this avoid,
Or, guilty in defence, be thus destroy'd?
(Act III, Scene iii)
3. Herodotus, The Histories, Aubrey de Selincourt, transí. (Baltimore, Penguin
Books, 1954), p. 362.
12 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

The Strategic Role of Pain and Damage

Pure violence, nonmilitary violence, appears most conspicu-
ously in relations between unequal countries, where there is
no substantial military challenge and the outcome of military
engagement is not in question. Hitler could make his threats
contemptuously and brutally against Austria; he could make
them, if he wished, in a more refined way against Denmark. It
is noteworthy that it was Hitler, not his generals, who used this
kind of language; proud military establishments do not like to
think of themselves as extortionists. Their favorite job is to
deliver victory, to dispose of opposing military force and to
leave most of the civilian violence to politics and diplomacy.
But if there is no room for doubt how a contest in strength will
come out, it may be possible to bypass the military stage
altogether and to proceed at once to the coercive bargaining.
A typical confrontation of unequal forces occurs at the end
of a war, between victor and vanquished. Where Austria was
vulnerable before a shot was fired, France was vulnerable
after its military shield had collapsed in 1940. Surrender
negotiations are the place where the threat of civil violence
can come to the fore. Surrender negotiations are often so one-
sided, or the potential violence so unmistakable, that bargain-
ing succeeds and the violence remains in reserve. But the fact
that most of the actual damage was done during the military
stage of the war, prior to victory and defeat, does not mean that
violence was idle in the aftermath, only that it was latent and
the threat of it successful.
Indeed, victory is often but a prerequisite to the exploitation
of the power to hurt. When Xenophon was fighting in Asia
Minor under Persian leadership, it took military strength to
disperse enemy soldiers and occupy their lands; but land was
not what the victor wanted, nor was victory for its own sake.

Next day the Persian leader burned the villages to the ground,
not leaving a single house standing, so as to strike terror into
the other tribes to show them what would happen if they did
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 13

not give in. ... He sent some of the prisoners into the hills
and told them to say that if the inhabitants did not come
down and settle in their houses to submit to him, he would
burn up their villages too and destroy their crops, and they
would die of hunger.4

Military victory was but the price of admission. The payoff de-
pended upon the successful threat of violence.
Like the Persian leader, the Russians crushed Budapest in
1956 and cowed Poland and other neighboring countries. There
was a lag often years between military victory and this show of
violence, but the principle was the one explained by Xenophon.
Military victory is often the prelude to violence, not the end of
it, and the fact that successful violence is usually held in reserve
should not deceive us about the role it plays.

What about pure violence during war itself, the infliction of

pain and suffering as a military technique? Is the threat of pain
involved only in the political use of victory, or is it a decisive
technique of war itself?
Evidently between unequal powers it has been part of war-
fare. Colonial conquest has often been a matter of "punitive ex-
peditions" rather than genuine military engagements. If the
tribesmen escape into the bush you can burn their villages with-
out them until they assent to receive what, in strikingly modern
language, used to be known as the Queen's "protection."
British air power was used punitively against Arabian tribes-
men in the 1920s and 30s to coerce them into submission.5
4. Xenophon, The Persian Expedition, Rex Warner, transí. (Baltimore,
Penguin Books, 1949), p. 272. "The 'rational' goal of the threat of vio-
lence," says H. L. Nieburg, "is an accommodation of interests, not the
provocation of actual violence. Similarly the 'rational' goal of actual
violence is demonstration of the will and capability of action, establishing
a measure of the credibility of future threats, not the exhaustion of that
capability in unlimited conflict." "Uses of Violence," Journal of Conflict
Resolution, 7 (1963), 44.
5. A perceptive, thoughtful account of this tactic, and one that empha-
sizes its "diplomatic" character, is in the lecture of Air Chief Marshal
Lord Portal, "Air Force Cooperation in Policing the Empire." "The
14 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

If enemy forces are not strong enough to oppose, or are

unwilling to engage, there is no need to achieve victory as a
prerequisite to getting on with a display of coercive violence.
When Caesar was pacifying the tribes of Gaul he sometimes
had to fight his way through their armed men in order to subdue
them with a display of punitive violence, but sometimes he was
virtually unopposed and could proceed straight to the punitive
display. To his legions there was more valor in fighting their
way to the seat of power; but, as governor of Gaul, Caesar could
view enemy troops only as an obstacle to his political control,
and that control was usually based on the power to inflict pain,
grief, and privation. In fact, he preferred to keep several
hundred hostages from the unreliable tribes, so that his threat of
violence did not even depend on an expedition into the country-
side.
Pure hurting, as a military tactic, appeared in some of the
military actions against the plains Indians. In 1868, during the
war with the Cheyennes, General Sheridan decided that his best
hope was to attack the Indians in their winter camps. His
reasoning was that the Indians could maraud as they pleased
during the seasons when their ponies could subsist on grass, and
in winter hide away in remote places. "To disabuse their minds
from the idea that they were secure from punishment, and to
strike at a period when they were helpless to move their stock
and villages, a winter campaign was projected against the large
bands hiding away in the Indian territory."6
These were not military engagements; they were punitive
attacks on people. They were an effort to subdue by the use of
violence, without a futile attempt to draw the enemy's military
forces into decisive battle. They were "massive retaliation" on a

law-breaking tribe must be given an alternative to being bombed and . . . be told in the
clearest possible terms what that alternative is." And, "It would be the greatest mistake
to believe that a victory which spares the lives and feelings of the losers need be any less
permanent or salutary than one which inflicts heavy losses on the fighting men and results
in a 'peace' dictated on a stricken field." Journal of the Royal United Services Institution
(London, May 1937), pp. 343-58.
6. Paul I. Wellman, Death on the Prairie (New York, Macmillan, 1934), p. 82.
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 15

diminutive scale, with local effects not unlike those of

Hiroshima. The Indians themselves totally lacked organization
and discipline, and typically could not afford enough ammuni-
tion for target practice and were no military match for the
cavalry; their own rudimentary strategy was at best one of
harassment and reprisal. Half a century of Indian fighting in the
West left us a legacy of cavalry tactics; but it is hard to find a
serious treatise on American strategy against the Indians or
Indian strategy against the whites. The twentieth is not the first
century in which "retaliation" has been part of our strategy, but
it is the first in which we have systematically recognized it.
Hurting, as a strategy, showed up in the American Civil War,
but as an episode, not as the central strategy. For the most part,
the Civil War was a military engagement with each side's
military force pitted against the other's. The Confederate forces
hoped to lay waste enough Union territory to negotiate their
independence, but hadn't enough capacity for such violence to
make it work. The Union forces were intent on military victory,
and it was mainly General Sherman's march through Georgia
that showed a conscious and articulate use of violence. "If the
people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will
answer that war is war . . . If they want peace, they and their
relatives must stop the war," Sherman wrote. And one of his
associates said, "Sherman is perfectly right . . . The only
possible way to end this unhappy and dreadful conflict... is to
make it terrible beyond endurance."7
Making it "terrible beyond endurance" is what we associate
with Algeria and Palestine, the crushing of Budapest and the
tribal warfare in Central Africa. But in the great wars of the last
hundred years it was usually military victory, not the hurting
of the people, that was decisive; General Sherman's attempt to
make war hell for the Southern people did not come to
7. J. F. C. Fuller reproduces some of this correspondence and remarks, "For the
nineteenth century this was a new conception, because it meant that the deciding factor
in the war—the power to sue for peace—was transferred from government to people, and
that peacemaking was a product of revolution. This was to carry the principle of
democracy to its ultimate stage " The Conduct of War: 1789-1961 (New Brunswick,
Rutgers University Press, 1961), pp. 107-12.
16 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

epitomize military strategy for the century to follow. To seek

out and to destroy the enemy's military force, to achieve a
crushing victory over enemy armies, was still the avowed pur-
pose and the central aim of American strategy in both world
wars. Military action was seen as an alternative to bargaining,
not ^process of bargaining.
The reason is not that civilized countries are so averse to
hurting people that they prefer "purely military" wars. (Nor
were all of the participants in these wars entirely civilized.) The
reason is apparently that the technology and geography of war-
fare, at least for a war between anything like equal powers dur-
ing the century ending in World War II, kept coercive violence
from being decisive before military victory was achieved.
Blockade indeed was aimed at the whole enemy nation, not
concentrated on its military forces; the German civilians who
died of influenza in the First World War were victims of
violence directed at the whole country. It has never been quite
clear whether blockade—of the South in the Civil War or of the
Central Powers in both world wars, or submarine warfare
against Britain—was expected to make war unendurable for the
people or just to weaken the enemy forces by denying economic
support. Both arguments were made, but there was no need to
be clear about the purpose as long as either purpose was
regarded as legitimate and either might be served. "Strategic
bombing" of enemy homelands was also occasionally rational-
ized in terms of the pain and privation it could inflict on people
and the civil damage it could do to the nation, as an effort to
display either to the population or to the enemy leadership that
surrender was better than persistence in view of the damage that
could be done. It was also rationalized in more "military" terms,
as a way of selectively denying war material to the troops or as a
way of generally weakening the economy on which the military
effort rested.8
8. For a reexamination of strategic-bombing theory before and during World War II,
in the light of nuclear-age concepts, see George H. Quester, Deterrence before Hiroshima
(New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1966). See also the first four chapters of Bernard Brodie,
Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1959), pp. 3-146.
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 17

But as terrorism—as violence intended to coerce the enemy

rather than to weaken him militarily—blockade and strategic
bombing by themselves were not quite up to the job in either
world war in Europe. (They might have been sufficient in the
war with Japan after straightforward military action had brought
American aircraft into range.) Airplanes could not quite make
punitive, coercive violence decisive in Europe, at least on a
tolerable time schedule, and preclude the need to defeat or to
destroy enemy forces as long as they had nothing but conven-
tional explosives and incendiaries to carry. Hitler's V-l buzz
bomb and his V-2 rocket are fairly pure cases of weapons whose
purpose was to intimidate, to hurt Britain itself rather than
Allied military forces. What the V-2 needed was a punitive
pay load worth carrying, and the Germans did not have it. Some
of the expectations in the 1920s and the 1930s that another
major war would be one of pure civilian violence, of shock and
terror from the skies, were not borne out by the available
technology. The threat of punitive violence kept occupied
countries quiescent; but the wars were won in Europe on the
basis of brute strength and skill and not by intimidation, not by
the threat of civilian violence but by the application of military
force. Military victory was still the price of admission. Latent
violence against people was reserved for the politics of surren-
der and occupation.
The great exception was the two atomic bombs on Japanese
cities. These were weapons of terror and shock. They hurt, and
promised more hurt, and that was their purpose. The few
"small" weapons we had were undoubtedly of some direct
military value, but their enormous advantage was in pure
violence. In a military sense the United States could gain a little
by destruction of two Japanese industrial cities; in a civilian
sense, the Japanese could lose much. The bomb that hit
Hiroshima was a threat aimed at all of Japan. The political target
of the bomb was not the dead of Hiroshima or the factories they
worked in, but the survivors in Tokyo. The two bombs were in
the tradition of Sheridan against the Comanches and Sherman
in Georgia. Whether in the end those two bombs saved lives or
18 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

wasted them, Japanese lives or American lives; whether puni-

tive coercive violence is uglier than straightforward military
force or more civilized; whether terror is more or less humane
than military destruction; we can at least perceive that the
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki represented violence against
the country itself and not mainly an attack on Japan's material
strength. The effect of the bombs, and their purpose, were not
mainly the military destruction they accomplished but the pain
and the shock and the promise of more.
The Nuclear Contribution to Terror and Violence
Man has, it is said, for the first time in history enough military
power to eliminate his species from the earth, weapons against
which there is no conceivable defense. War has become, it is
said, so destructive and terrible that it ceases to be an instrument
of national power. "For the first time in human history," says
Max Lerner in a book whose title, The Age of Overkill, conveys
the point, "men have bottled up a power... which they have thus
far not dared to use."9 And Soviet military authorities, whose
party dislikes having to accommodate an entire theory of
history to a single technological event, have had to reexamine a
set of principles that had been given the embarrassing name of
"permanently operating factors" in warfare. Indeed, our era is
epitomized by words like "the first time in human history," and
by the abdication of what was "permanent."
For dramatic impact these statements are splendid. Some of
them display a tendency, not at all necessary, to belittle the
catastrophe of earlier wars. They may exaggerate the historical
novelty of deterrence and the balance of terror.10 More impor-

9. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1962, p. 47.

10. Winston Churchill is often credited with the term, "balance of terror," and the
following quotation succinctly expresses the familiar notion of nuclear mutual deter-
rence. This, though, is from a speech in Commons in November 1934. "The fact re-
mains that when all is said and done as regards defensive methods, pending some new
discovery the only direct measure of defense upon a great scale is the certainty of
being able to inflict simultaneously upon the enemy as great damage as he can inflict
upon ourselves. Do not let us undervalue the efficacy of this procedure. It may well
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 19

tant, they do not help to identify just what is new about war
when so much destructive energy can be packed in warheads at
a price that permits advanced countries to have them in large
numbers. Nuclear warheads are incomparably more devastat-
ing than anything packaged before. What does that imply about
war?
It is not true that for the first time in history man has the
capability to destroy a large fraction, even the major part, of the
human race. Japan was defenseless by August 1945. With a
combination of bombing and blockade, eventually invasion,
and if necessary the deliberate spread of disease, the United
States could probably have exterminated the population of the
Japanese islands without nuclear weapons. It would have been a
gruesome, expensive, and mortifying campaign; it would have
taken time and demanded persistence. But we had the economic
and technical capacity to do it; and, together with the Russians
or without them, we could have done the same in many pop-
ulous parts of the world. Against defenseless people there is not
much that nuclear weapons can do that cannot be done with an
ice pick. And it would not have strained our Gross National
Product to do it with ice picks.
It is a grisly thing to talk about. We did not do it and it is not
imaginable that we would have done it. We had no reason; if we
had had a reason, we would not have the persistence of purpose,
once the fury of war had been dissipated in victory and we had
taken on the task of executioner. If we and our enemies might do
such a thing to each other now, and to others as well,

prove in practice—I admit I cannot prove it in theory—capable of giving complete

immunity. If two Powers show themselves equally capable of inflicting damage upon
each other by some particular process of war, so that neither gains an advantage from
its adoption and both suffer the most hideous reciprocal injuries, it is not only possible
but it seems probable that neither will employ that means." A fascinating reexamina-
tion of concepts like deterrence, preemptive attack, counterforce and countercity
warfare, retaliation, reprisal, and limited war, in the strategic literature of the air age
from the turn of the century to the close of World War II, is in Quester's book, cited
above.
20 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

it is not because nuclear weapons have for the first time made it
feasible.
Nuclear weapons can do it quickly. That makes a difference.
When the Crusaders breached the walls of Jerusalem they
sacked the city while the mood was on them. They burned
things that they might, with time to reflect, have carried away
instead and raped women that, with time to think about it, they
might have married instead. To compress a catastrophic war
within the span of time that a man can stay awake drastically
changes the politics of war, the process of decision, the possibil-
ity of central control and restraint, the motivations of people in
charge, and the capacity to think and reflect while war is in
progress. It is imaginable that we might destroy 200,000,000
Russians in a war of the present, though not 80,000,000 Japa-
nese in a war of the past. It is not only imaginable, it is imagined.
It is imaginable because it could be done "in a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet."
This may be why there is so little discussion of how an all-out
war might be brought to a close. People do not expect it to be
"brought" to a close, but just to come to an end when everything
has been spent. It is also why the idea of "limited war" has
become so explicit in recent years. Earlier wars, like World
Wars I and II or the Franco-Prussian War, were limited by
termination, by an ending that occurred before the period of
greatest potential violence, by negotiation that brought the
threat of pain and privation to bear but often precluded the
massive exercise of civilian violence. With nuclear weapons
available, the restraint of violence cannot await the outcome of
a contest of military strength; restraint, to occur at all, must
occur during war itself.
This is a difference between nuclear weapons and bayonets.
It is not in the number of people they can eventually kill but in
the speed with which it can be done, in the centralization of
decision, in the divorce of the war from political processes, and
in computerized programs that threaten to take the war out of
human hands once it begins.
That nuclear weapons make impossible to compress the fury
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 21

of global war into a few hours does not mean that they make it
inevitable. We have still to ask whether that is the way a major
nuclear war would be fought, or ought to be fought. Neverthe-
less, that the whole war might go off like one big string of
firecrackers makes a critical difference between our conception
of nuclear war and the world wars we have experienced.
There is no guarantee, of course, that a slower war would not
persist. The First World War could have stopped at any time
after the Battle of the Marne. There was plenty of time to think
about war aims, to consult the long-range national interest, to
reflect on costs and casualties already incurred and the prospect
of more to come, and to discuss terms of cessation with the
enemy. The gruesome business continued as mechanically as if
it had been in the hands of computers (or worse: computers
might have been programmed to learn more quickly from
experience). One may even suppose it would have been a
blessing had all the pain and shock of the four years been
compressed within four days. Still, it was terminated. And the
victors had no stomach for doing then with bayonets what
nuclear weapons could do to the German people today.
There is another difference. In the past it has usually been the
victors who could do what they pleased to the enemy. War has
often been "total war" for the loser. With deadly monotony the
Persians, Greeks, or Romans "put to death all men of military
age, and sold the women and children into slavery," leaving the
defeated territory nothing but its name until new settlers arrived
sometime later. But the defeated could not do the same to their
victors. The boys could be castrated and sold only after the war
had been won, and only on the side that lost it. The power to hurt
could be brought to bear only after military strength had
achieved victory. The same sequence characterized the great
wars of this century; for reasons of technology and geography,
military force has usually had to penetrate, to exhaust, or to col-
lapse opposing military force—to achieve military victory—
before it could be brought to bear on the enemy nation itself.
The Allies in World War I could not inflict coercive pain and
suffering directly on the Germans in a decisive way until they
22 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

could defeat the German army; and the Germans could not
coerce the French people with bayonets unless they first beat
the Allied troops that stood in their way. With two-dimensional
warfare, there is a tendency for troops to confront each other,
shielding their own lands while attempting to press into each
other's. Small penetrations could not do major damage to the
people; large penetrations were so destructive of military orga-
nization that they usually ended the military phase of the war.
Nuclear weapons make it possible to do monstrous violence
to the enemy without first achieving victory. With nuclear
weapons and today's means of delivery, one expects to pen-
etrate an enemy homeland without first collapsing his military
force. What nuclear weapons have done, or appear to do, is to
promote this kind of warfare to first place. Nuclear weapons
threaten to make war less military, and are responsible for the
lowered status of "military victory" at the present time. Victory
is no longer a prerequisite for hurting the enemy. And it is no
assurance against being terribly hurt. One need not wait until he
has won the war before inflicting "unendurable" damages on
his enemy. One need not wait until he has lost the war. There
was a time when the assurance of victory—false or genuine
assurance—could make national leaders not just willing but
sometimes enthusiastic about war. Not now.
Not only can nuclear weapons hurt the enemy before the war
has been won, and perhaps hurt decisively enough to make the
military engagement academic, but it is widely assumed that in
a major war that is all they can do. Major war is often discussed
as though it would be only a contest in national destruction. If
this is indeed the case—if the destruction of cities and their pop-
ulations has become, with nuclear weapons, the primary object
in an all-out war—the sequence of war has been reversed.
Instead of destroying enemy forces as a prelude to imposing
one's will on the enemy nation, one would have to destroy the
nation as a means or a prelude to destroying the enemy forces. If
one cannot disable enemy forces without virtually destroying
the country, the victor does not even have the option of sparing
the conquered nation. He has already destroyed it. Even with
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 23

blockade and strategic bombing it could be supposed that a

country would be defeated before it was destroyed, or would
elect surrender before annihilation had gone far. In the Civil
War it could be hoped that the South would become too weak to
fight before it became too weak to survive. For "all-out" war,
nuclear weapons threaten to reverse this sequence.
So nuclear weapons do make a difference, marking an epoch
in warfare. The difference is not just in the amount of destruc-
tion that can be accomplished but in the role of destruction and
in the decision process. Nuclear weapons can change the speed
of events, the control of events, the sequence of events, the
relation of victor to vanquished, and the relation of homeland to
fighting front. Deterrence rests today on the threat of pain and
extinction, not just on the threat of military defeat. We may
argue about the wisdom of announcing "unconditional sur-
render" as an aim in the last major war, but seem to expect
"unconditional destruction" as a matter of course in another
one.
Something like the same destruction always could be done.
With nuclear weapons there is an expectation that it would be
done. It is not "overkill" that is new; the American army surely
had enough 30 caliber bullets to kill everybody in the world in
1945, or if it did not it could have bought them without any
strain. What is new is plain "kill"—the idea that major war
might be just a contest in the killing of countries, or not even a
contest but just two parallel exercises in devastation.
That is the difference nuclear weapons make. At least they may
make that difference. They also may not. If the weapons them-
selves are vulnerable to attack, or the machines that carry them, a
successful surprise might eliminate the opponent's means of
retribution. That an enormous explosion can be packaged in a
single bomb does not by itself guarantee that the victor will
receive deadly punishment. Two gunfighters facing each other
in a Western town had an unquestioned capacity to kill one
another; that did not guarantee that both would die in a gun-
fight—only the slower of the two. Less deadly weapons, per-
mitting an injured one to shoot back before he died, might have
24 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

been more conducive to a restraining balance of terror, or of

caution. The very efficiency of nuclear weapons could make
them ideal for starting war, if they can suddenly eliminate the
enemy' s capability to shoot back.
And there is a contrary possibility: that nuclear weapons are
not vulnerable to attack and prove not to be terribly effective
against each other, posing no need to shoot them quickly for
fear they will be destroyed before they are launched, and with
no task available but the systematic destruction of the enemy
country and no necessary reason to do it fast rather than slowly.
Imagine that nuclear destruction had to go slowly—that the
bombs could be dropped only one per day. The prospect would
look very different, something like the most terroristic guerilla
warfare on a massive scale. It happens that nuclear war does not
have to go slowly; but it may also not have to go speedily. The
mere existence of nuclear weapons does not itself determine
that everything must go off in a blinding flash, any more than
that it must go slowly. Nuclear weapons do not simplify things
quite that much.
In recent years there has been a new emphasis on distinguish-
ing what nuclear weapons make possible and what they make
inevitable in case of war. The American government began in
1961 to emphasize that even a major nuclear war might not, and
need not, be a simple contest in destructive fury. Secretary
McNamara gave a controversial speech in June 1962 on the
idea that "deterrence" might operate even in war itself, that
belligerents might, out of self-interest, attempt to limit the
war's destructiveness. Each might feel the sheer destruction of
enemy people and cities would serve no decisive military
purpose but that a continued threat to destroy them might serve
a purpose. The continued threat would depend on their not
being destroyed yet. Each might reciprocate the other's re-
straint, as in limited wars of lesser scope. Even the worst of
enemies, in the interest of reciprocity, have often not mutilated
prisoners of war; and citizens might deserve comparable treat-
ment. The fury of nuclear attacks might fall mainly on each
other's weapons and military forces.
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 25

"The United States has come to the conclusion," said Secre-

tary McNamara,
that to the extent feasible, basic military strategy in a possible
general war should be approached in much the same way that
more conventional military operations have been regarded in
the past. That is to say, principal military objectives... should
be the destruction of the enemy's military forces, not of his
civilian population . . . giving the possible opponent the
strongest imaginable incentive to refrain from striking our
own cities.11
This is a sensible way to think about war, if one has to think
about it and of course one does. But whether the Secretary's
"new strategy" was sensible or not, whether enemy populations
should be held hostage or instantly destroyed, whether the
primary targets should be military forces or just people and their
source of livelihood, this is not "much the same way that more
conventional military operations have been regarded in the
past." This is utterly different, and the difference deserves
emphasis.
In World Wars I and II one went to work on enemy military
forces, not his people, because until the enemy's military forces
had been taken care of there was typically not anything decisive
that one could do to the enemy nation itself. The Germans did
not, in World War I, refrain from bayoneting French citizens by
the millions in the hope that the Allies would abstain from
shooting up the German population. They could not get at the
French citizens until they had breached the Allied lines. Hitler
tried to terrorize London and did not make it. The Allied air
forces took the war straight to Hitler's territory, with at least
some thought of doing in Germany what Sherman recognized he
was doing in Georgia; but with the bombing technology of
World War II one could not afford to bypass the troops and go
exclusively for enemy populations—not, anyway, in Germany.
With nuclear weapons one has that alternative.
To concentrate on the enemy's military installations while
deliberately holding in reserve a massive capacity for destroying
11. Commencement Address, University of Michigan, June 16, 1962.
26 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

his cities, for exterminating his people and eliminating his soci-
ety, on condition that the enemy observe similar restraint with
respect to one's own society, is not the "conventional ap-
proach." In World Wars I and II the first order of business was to
destroy enemy armed forces because that was the only prom-
ising way to make him surrender. To fight a purely military
engagement "all-out" while holding in reserve a decisive ca-
pacity for violence, on condition the enemy do likewise, is not
the way military operations have traditionally been approached.
Secretary McNamara was proposing a new approach to warfare
in a new era, an era in which the power to hurt is more impres-
sive than the power to oppose.
From Battlefield Warfare to the Diplomacy of Violence
Almost one hundred years before Secretary McNamara's
speech, the Declaration of St. Petersburg (the first of the great
modern conferences to cope with the evils of warfare) in 1868
asserted, "The only legitimate object which states should en-
deavor to accomplish during war is to weaken the military
forces of the enemy." And in a letter to the League of Nations in
1920, the President of the International Committee of the Red
Cross wrote; "The Committee considers it very desirable that
war should resume its former character, that is to say, that it
should be a struggle between armies and not between popula-
tions. The civilian population must, as far as possible, remain
outside the struggle and its consequences."12 His language is
remarkably similar to Secretary McNamara's.
The International Committee was fated for disappointment,
like everyone who labored in the late nineteenth century to
devise rules that would make war more humane. When the Red
Cross was founded in 1863, it was concerned about the disre-
gard for noncombatants by those who made war; but in the
Second World War noncombatants were deliberately chosen

12. International Committee of the Red Cross, Draft Rules for the Limitation of the
Dangers Incurred by the Civilian Population in Time of War (2d ed. Geneva, 1958), pp.
144, 151.
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 27

as targets by both Axis and Allied forces, not decisively but

nevertheless deliberately. The trend has been the reverse of
what the International Committee hoped for.
In the present era noncombatants appear to be not only
deliberate targets but primary targets, or at least were so taken
for granted until about the time of Secretary McNamara's
speech. In fact, noncombatants appeared to be primary targets
at both ends of the scale of warfare; thermonuclear war threat-
ened to be a contest in the destruction of cities and populations;
and, at the other end of the scale, insurgency is almost entirely
terroristic. We live in an era of dirty war.
Why is this so? Is war properly a military affair among
combatants, and is it a depravity peculiar to the twentieth
century that we cannot keep it within decent bounds? Or is war
inherently dirty, and was the Red Cross nostalgic for an artifi-
cial civilization in which war had become encrusted with
etiquette—a situation to be welcomed but not expected?
To answer this question it is useful to distinguish three stages
in the involvement of noncombatants—of plain people and
their possessions—in the fury of war. These stages are worth
distinguishing; but their sequence is merely descriptive of
Western Europe during the past three hundred years, not a
historical generalization. The first stage is that in which the
people may get hurt by inconsiderate combatants. This is the
status that people had during the period of "civilized warfare"
that the International Committee had in mind.
From about 1648 to the Napoleonic era, war in much of Wes-
tern Europe was something superimposed on society. It was a
contest engaged in by monarchies for stakes that were mea-
sured in territories and, occasionally, money or dynastic claims.
The troops were mostly mercenaries and the motivation for war
was confined to the aristocratic elite. Monarchs fought for bits
of territory, but the residents of disputed terrain were more
concerned with protecting their crops and their daughters from
marauding troops than with whom they owed allegiance to.
They were, as Quincy Wright remarked in his classic Study of
War, little concerned that the territory in which they lived had a
28 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

new sovereign.13 Furthermore, as far as the King of Prussia

and the Emperor of Austria were concerned, the loyalty and
enthusiasm of the Bohemian farmer were not decisive consid-
erations. It is an exaggeration to refer to European war during
this period as a sport of kings, but not a gross exaggeration.
And the military logistics of those days confined military
operations to a scale that did not require the enthusiasm of a
multitude.
Hurting people was not a decisive instrument of warfare.
Hurting people or destroying property only reduced the value of
the things that were being fought over, to the disadvantage of
both sides. Furthermore, the monarchs who conducted wars
often did not want to discredit the social institutions they shared
with their enemies. Bypassing an enemy monarch and taking
the war straight to his people would have had revolutionary
implications. Destroying the opposing monarchy was often not
in the interest of either side; opposing sovereigns had much
more in common with each other than with their own subjects,
and to discredit the claims of a monarchy might have produced a
disastrous backlash. It is not surprising—or, if it is surprising,
not altogether astonishing—that on the European continent in
that particular era war was fairly well confined to military
activity.
One could still, in those days and in that part of the world, be
concerned for the rights of noncombatants and hope to devise
rules that both sides in the war might observe. The rules might
well be observed because both sides had something to gain from
preserving social order and not destroying the enemy. Rules
might be a nuisance, but if they restricted both sides the
disadvantages might cancel out.
This was changed during the Napoleonic wars. In Napoleon' s
France, people cared about the outcome. The nation was mobi-
lized. The war was a national effort, not just an activity of the
elite. It was both political and military genius on the part of
Napoleon and his ministers that an entire nation could be
mobilized for war. Propaganda became a tool of warfare, and
war became vulgarized.
13. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1942, p. 296.
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 29

Many writers deplored this popularization of war, this in-

volvement of the democratic masses. In fact, the horrors we
attribute to thermonuclear war were already foreseen by many
commentators, some before the First World War and more after
it; but the new "weapon" to which these terrors were ascribed
was people, millions of people, passionately engaged in na-
tional wars, spending themselves in a quest for total victory and
desperate to avoid total defeat. Today we are impressed that a
small number of highly trained pilots can carry enough energy
to blast and burn tens of millions of people and the buildings
they live in; two or three generations ago there was concern that
tens of millions of people using bayonets and barbed wire,
machine guns and shrapnel, could create the same kind of
destruction and disorder.
That was the second stage in the relation of people to war, the
second in Europe since the middle of the seventeenth century.
In the first stage people had been neutral but their welfare might
be disregarded; in the second stage people were involved
because it was their war. Some fought, some produced materi-
als of war, some produced food, and some took care of children;
but they were all part of a war-making nation. When Hitler
attacked Poland in 1939, the Poles had reason to care about the
outcome. When Churchill said the British would fight on the
beaches, he spoke for the British and not for a mercenary army.
The war was about something that mattered. If people would
rather fight a dirty war than lose a clean one, the war will be
between nations and not just between governments. If people
have an influence on whether the war is continued or on the
terms of a truce, making the war hurt people serves a purpose. It
is a dirty purpose, but war itself is often about something dirty.
The Poles and the Norwegians, the Russians and the British,
had reason to believe that if they lost the war the consequences
would be dirty. This is so evident in modern civil wars—civil
wars that involve popular feelings—that we expect them to be
bloody and violent. To hope that they would be fought cleanly
with no violence to people would be a little like hoping for a
clean race riot.
30 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

There is another way to put it that helps to bring out the

sequence of events. If a modern war were a clean one, the
violence would not be ruled out but merely saved for the postwar
period. Once the army has been defeated in the clean war, the
victorious enemy can be as brutally coercive as he wishes. A
clean war would determine which side gets to use its power to
hurt coercively after victory, and it is likely to be worth some
violence to avoid being the loser.
"Surrender" is the process following military hostilities in
which the power to hurt is brought to bear. If surrender negotia-
tions are successful and not followed by overt violence, it is
because the capacity to inflict pain and damage was successfully
used in the bargaining process. On the losing side, prospective
pain and damage were averted by concessions; on the winning
side, the capacity for inflicting further harm was traded for
concessions. The same is true in a successful kidnapping. It only
reminds us that the purpose of pure pain and damage is extortion;
it is latent violence that can be used to advantage. A well-
behaved occupied country is not one in which violence plays no
part; it may be one in which latent violence is used so skillfully
that it need not be spent in punishment.
This brings us to the third stage in the relation of civilian
violence to warfare. If the pain and damage can be inflicted
during war itself, they need not wait for the surrender negotiation
that succeeds a military decision. If one can coerce people and
their governments while war is going on, one does not need to
wait until he has achieved victory or risk losing that coercive
power by spending it all in a losing war. General Sherman's
march through Georgia might have made as much sense, possi-
bly more, had the North been losing the war, just as the German
buzz bombs and V-2 rockets can be thought of as coercive
instruments to get the war stopped before suffering military
defeat.
In the present era, since at least the major East-West powers are
capable of massive civilian violence during war itself beyond
anything available during the Second World War, the occasion for
restraint does not await the achievement of military victory
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 31

or truce. The principal restraint during the Second World War

was a temporal boundary, the date of surrender. In the present
era we find the violence dramatically restrained during war
itself. The Korean War was furiously "all-out" in the fighting,
not only on the peninsular battlefield but in the resources used
by both sides. It was "all-out," though, only within some
dramatic restraints: no nuclear weapons, no Russians, no Chi-
nese territory, no Japanese territory, no bombing of ships at sea
or even airfields on the United Nations side of the line. It was a
contest in military strength circumscribed by the threat of
unprecedented civilian violence. Korea may or may not be a
good model for speculation on limited war in the age of nuclear
violence, but it was dramatic evidence that the capacity for
violence can be consciously restrained even under the provoca-
tion of a war that measures its military dead in tens of thousands
and that fully preoccupies two of the largest countries in the
world.
A consequence of this third stage is that "victory" inad-
equately expresses what a nation wants from its military forces.
Mostly it wants, in these times, the influence that resides in
latent force. It wants the bargaining power that comes from its
capacity to hurt, not just the direct consequence of successful
military action. Even total victory over an enemy provides at
best an opportunity for unopposed violence against the enemy
population. How to use that opportunity in the national interest,
or in some wider interest, can be just as important as the
achievement of victory itself; but traditional military science
does not tell us how to use that capacity for inflicting pain. And
if a nation, victor or potential loser, is going to use its capacity
for pure violence to influence the enemy, there may be no need
to await the achievement of total victory.
Actually, this third stage can be analyzed into two quite
different variants. In one, sheer pain and damage are primary
instruments of coercive warfare and may actually be applied, to
intimidate or to deter. In the other, pain and destruction in war are
expected to serve little or no purpose but prior threats of sheer
violence, even of automatic and uncontrolled violence, are
32 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

coupled to military force. The difference is in the all-or-none

character of deterrence and intimidation. Two acute dilemmas
arise. One is the choice of making prospective violence as
frightening as possible or hedging with some capacity for
reciprocated restraint. The other is the choice of making retalia-
tion as automatic as possible or keeping deliberate control over
the fateful decisions. The choices are determined partly by
governments, partly by technology. Both variants are charac-
terized by the coercive role of pain and destruction—of threat-
ened (not inflicted) pain and destruction. But in one the threat
either succeeds or fails altogether, and any ensuing violence is
gratuitous; in the other, progressive pain and damage may
actually be used to threaten more. The present era, for countries
possessing nuclear weapons, is a complex and uncertain blend
of the two.
Coercive diplomacy, based on the power to hurt, was impor-
tant even in those periods of history when military force was
essentially the power to take and to hold, to fend off attack and
to expel invaders, and to possess territory against opposition—
that is, in the era in which military force tended to pit itself
against opposing force. Even then, a critical question was how
much cost and pain the other side would incur for the disputed
territory. The judgment that the Mexicans would concede
Texas, New Mexico, and California once Mexico City was a
hostage in our hands was a diplomatic judgment, not a military
one. If one could not readily take the particular territory he
wanted or hold it against attack, he could take something else
and trade it.14 Judging what the enemy leaders would trade—
14. Children, for example. The Athenian tyrant, Hippias, was besieged in the
Acropolis by an army of Athenian exiles aided by Spartans; his position was strong and
he had ample supplies of food and drink, and "but for an unexpected accident" says
Herodotus, the besiegers would have persevered a while and then retired. But the children
of the besieged were caught as they were being taken out of the country for their safety.
"This disaster upset all their plans; in order to recover the children, they were forced to
accept... terms, and agreed to leave Attica within five days." Herodotus, The Histories,
p. 334. If children can be killed at long distance, by German buzz bombs or nuclear
weapons, they do not need to be caught first. And if both can hurt each other's children
the bargaining is more complex.
THE DIPLOMACY OF VIOLENCE 33

be it a capital city or national survival—was a critical part of

strategy even in the past. Now we are in an era in which the
power to hurt—to inflict pain and shock and privation on a
country itself, not just on its military forces—is commensurate
with the power to take and to hold, perhaps more than commen-
surate, perhaps decisive, and it is even more necessary to think
of warfare as a process of violent bargaining. This is not the first
era in which live captives have been worth more than dead
enemies, and the power to hurt has been a bargaining advan-
tage; but it is the first in American experience when that kind of
power has been a dominant part of military relations.
The power to hurt is nothing new in warfare, but for the
United States modern technology has drastically enhanced the
strategic importance of pure, unconstructive, unacquisitive
pain and damage, whether used against us or in our own
defense. This in turn enhances the importance of war and
threats of war as techniques of influence, not of destruction; of
coercion and deterrence, not of conquest and defense; of
bargaining and intimidation.
Quincy Wright, in his Study of War, devoted a few pages
(319-20) to the "nuisance value" of war, using the analogy of a
bank robber with a bomb in his hand that would destroy bank
and robber. Nuisance value made the threat of war, according to
Wright, "an aid to the diplomacy of unscrupulous govern-
ments." Now we need a stronger term, and more pages, to do the
subject justice, and need to recognize that even scrupulous
governments often have little else to rely on militarily. It is
extraordinary how many treatises on war and strategy have
declined to recognize that the power to hurt has been, through-
out history, a fundamental character of military force and
fundamental to the diplomacy based on it.
War no longer looks like just a contest of strength. War and
the brink of war are more a contest of nerve and risk-taking, of
pain and endurance. Small wars embody the threat of a larger
war; they are not just military engagements but "crisis diplo-
macy." The threat of war has always been somewhere under-
neath international diplomacy, but for Americans it is now
34 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

much nearer the surface. Like the threat of a strike in industrial

relations, the threat of divorce in a family dispute, or the threat
of bolting the party at a political convention, the threat of
violence continuously circumscribes international politics.
Neither strength nor goodwill procures immunity.
Military strategy can no longer be thought of, as it could for
some countries in some eras, as the science of military victory.
It is now equally, if not more, the art of coercion, of intimidation
and deterrence. The instruments of war are more punitive than
acquisitive. Military strategy, whether we like it or not, has
become the diplomacy of violence.
 2
THE ART
OF COMMITMENT

No one seems to doubt that federal troops are available to de-

fend California. I have, however, heard Frenchmen doubt
whether American troops can be counted on to defend France,
or American missiles to blast Russia in case France is attacked.
It hardly seems necessary to tell the Russians that we should
fight them if they attack us. But we go to great lengths to tell the
Russians that they will have America to contend with if they or
their satellites attack countries associated with us. Saying so,
unfortunately, does not make it true; and if it is true, saying so
does not always make it believed. We evidently do not want war
and would only fight if we had to. The problem is to demon-
strate that we would have to.
It is a tradition in military planning to attend to an enemy's
capabilities, not his intentions. But deterrence is about inten-
tions—not just estimating enemy intentions but influencing
them. The hardest part is communicating our own intentions.
War at best is ugly, costly, and dangerous, and at worst disas-
trous. Nations have been known to bluff; they have also been
known to make threats sincerely and change their minds when
the chips were down. Many territories are just not worth a war,
especially a war that can get out of hand. A persuasive threat of
war may deter an aggressor; the problem is to make it persua-
sive, to keep it from sounding like a bluff.
Military forces are commonly expected to defend their home-
lands, even to die gloriously in a futile effort at defense. When
Churchill said that the British would fight on the beaches no-
body supposed that he had sat up all night running once more
through the calculations to make sure that that was the right
35
36 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

policy. Declaring war against Germany for the attack on Po-

land, though, was a different kind of decision, not a simple re-
flex but a matter of "policy." Some threats are inherently persua-
sive, some have to be made persuasive, and some are bound to
look like bluffs.
This chapter is about the threats that are hard to make, the
ones that are not inherently so credible that they can be taken
for granted, the ones that commit a country to an action that it
might in somebody' s judgment prefer not to take. A good start-
ing point is the national boundary. As a tentative approxima-
tion—a very tentative one—the difference between the
national homeland and everything "abroad" is the difference
between threats that are inherently credible, even if unspoken,
and the threats that have to be made credible. To project the
shadow of one's military force over other countries and territo-
ries is an act of diplomacy. To fight abroad is a military act,
but to persuade enemies or allies that one would fight abroad,
under circumstances of great cost and risk, requires more than a
military capability. It requires projecting intentions. It requires
having those intentions, even deliberately acquiring them, and
communicating them persuasively to make other countries be-
have.
Credibility and Rationality
It is a paradox of deterrence that in threatening to hurt some-
body if he misbehaves, it need not make a critical difference
how much it would hurt you too—//you can make him believe
the threat. People walk against traffic lights on busy streets, de-
terring trucks by walking in front of them.
The principle applied in Hungary in 1956. The West was
deterred by fear of the consequences from entering into what
might have been a legitimate altercation with the Soviet Union
on the proper status of Hungary. The West was deterred not in
the belief that the Soviet Union was stronger than the West or
that a war, if it ensued, would hurt the West more than the Soviet
bloc. The West was deterred because the Soviet Union was
strong enough, and likely enough to react militarily, to make
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 37

Hungary seem not worth the risk, no matter who might get hurt
worse.
Another paradox of deterrence is that it does not always help
to be, or to be believed to be, fully rational, cool-headed, and in
control of oneself or of one's country. One of Joseph Conrad's
books, The Secret Agent, concerns a group of anarchists in
London who were trying to destroy bourgeois society. One of
their techniques was bomb explosions; Greenwich Observatory
was the objective in this book. They got their nitroglycerin from
a stunted little chemist. The authorities knew where they got
their stuff and who made it for them. But this little purveyor of
nitroglycerin walked safely past the London police. A young
man who was tied in with the job at Greenwich asked him why
the police did not capture him. His answer was that they would
not shoot him from a distance—that would be a denial of bour-
geois morality, and serve the anarchists' cause—and they dared
not capture him physically because he always kept some "stuff
on his person. He kept a hand in his pocket, he said, holding a
ball at the end of a tube that reached a container of nitro-
glycerin in his jacket pocket. All he had to do was to press that
little ball and anybody within his immediate neighborhood
would be blown to bits with him. His young companion won-
dered why the police would believe anything so preposterous as
that the chemist would actually blow himself up. The little
man's explanation was calm. "In the last instance it is character
alone that makes for one's safety . . . I have the means to make
myself deadly, but that by itself, you understand, is absolutely
nothing in the way of protection. What is effective is the belief
those people have in my will to use the means. That's their
impression. It is absolute. Therefore I am deadly." l
We can call him a fanatic, or a faker, or a shrewd diplomatist;
but it was worth something to him to have it believed that he
would do it, preposterous or not. I have been told that in mental
institutions there are inmates who are either very crazy or very
wise, or both, who make clear to the attendants that
1. Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent (New York, Doubleday, Page and Company,
1923), pp. 65-68.
38 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

they may slit their own veins or light their clothes on fire if they
don't have their way. I understand that they sometimes have
their way.
Recall the trouble we had persuading Mossadegh in the early
1950s that he might do his country irreparable damage if he did
not become more reasonable with respect to his country and the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Threats did not get through to
him very well. He wore pajamas, and, according to reports, he
wept. And when British or American diplomats tried to explain
what would happen to his country if he continued to be obsti-
nate, and why the West would not bail him out of his difficul-
ties, it was apparently uncertain whether he even compre-
hended what was being said to him. It must have been a little
like trying to persuade a new puppy that you will beat him to
death if he wets on the floor. If he cannot hear you, or cannot
understand you, or cannot control himself, the threat cannot
work and you very likely will not even make it.
Sometimes we can get a little credit for not having everything
quite under control, for being a little impulsive or unreliable.
Teaming up with an impulsive ally may do it. There have been
serious suggestions that nuclear weapons should be put directly
at the disposal of German troops, on the grounds that the Ger-
mans would be less reluctant to use them—and that Soviet lead-
ers know they would be less reluctant—than their American
colleagues in the early stages of war or ambiguous aggression.
And in part, the motive behind the proposals that authority to
use nuclear weapons be delegated in peacetime to theater com-
manders or even lower levels of command, as in the presidential
campaign of 1964, is to substitute military boldness for civilian
hesitancy in a crisis or at least to make it look that way to the
enemy. Sending a high-ranking military officer to Berlin, Que-
moy, or Saigon in a crisis carries a suggestion that authority has
been delegated to someone beyond the reach of political inhibi-
tion and bureaucratic delays, or even of presidential responsi-
bility, someone whose personal reactions will be in abold military
tradition. The intense dissatisfaction of many senators with
President Kennedy's restraint over Cuba in early 1962, and
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 39

with the way matters were left at the close of the crisis in that
November, though in many ways an embarrassment to the Pres-
ident, may nevertheless have helped to convey to the Cubans
and to the Soviets that, however peaceable the President might
want to be, there were political limits to his patience.
A vivid exhibition of national impulsiveness at the highest
level of government was described by Averell Harriman in his
account of a meeting with Khrushchev in 1959. "Your gener-
als," said Khrushchev, "talk of maintaining your position in
Berlin with force. That is bluff." With what Harriman describes
as angry emphasis, Khrushchev went on, "If you send in tanks,
they will burn and make no mistake about it. If you want war,
you can have it, but remember it will be your war. Our rockets
will fly automatically." At this point, according to Harriman,
Khrushchev's colleagues around the table chorused the word
"automatically." The title of Harriman's article in Life maga-
zine was, "My Alarming Interview with Khrushchev."2 The
premier's later desk-thumping with a shoe in the hall of the
General Assembly was pictorial evidence that high-ranking
Russians know how to put on a performance.
General Pierre Gallois, an outstanding French critic of Ameri-
can military policy, has credited Khrushchev with a "shrewd
understanding of the politics of deterrence," evidenced by this
"irrational outburst" in the presence of Secretary Harriman.3
Gallois "hardly sees Moscow launching its atomic missiles at
Washington because of Berlin" (especially, I suppose, since
Khrushchev may not have had any at the time), but apparently
thinks nevertheless that the United States ought to appreciate,
as Khrushchev did, the need for a kind of irrational automaticity
and a commitment to blind and total retaliation.
Even granting, however, that somebody important may be
somewhat intimidated by the Russian responsive chorus on
automaticity, I doubt whether we want the American govern-
ment to rely, for the credibility of its deterrent threat, on a
corresponding ritual. We ought to get something a little less
2. July 13, 1959, p. 33.
3. Revue de Defense Nationale, October 1962.
40 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

idiosyncratic for 50 billion dollars a year of defense expendi-

ture. A government that is obliged to appear responsible in its
foreign policy can hardly cultivate forever the appearance of
impetuosity on the most important decisions in its care. Khru-
shchev may have needed a short cut to deterrence, but the
American government ought to be mature enough and rich
enough to arrange a persuasive sequence of threatened re-
sponses that are not wholly a matter of guessing a president's
temper.
Still, impetuosity, irrationality, and automaticity are not en-
tirely without substance. Displays can be effective, and when
President Kennedy took his turn at it people were impressed,
possibly even people in the Kremlin. President Kennedy chose a
most impressive occasion for his declaration on "automatic-
ity." It was his address of October 22, 1962, launching the
Cuban crisis. In an unusually deliberate and solemn statement
he said, "Third: it shall be the policy of this nation to regard
any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in
the Western hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the
United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the So-
viet Union." Coming less than six months after Secretary Mc-
Namara's official elucidation of the strategy of controlled and
flexible response, the reaction implied in the President's state-
ment would have been not only irrational but probably—
depending on just what "full retaliatory response" meant to the
President or to the Russians—inconsistent with one of the
foundations of the President's own military policy, a foundation
that was laid as early as his first defense budget message of
1961, which stressed the importance of proportioning the re-
sponse to the provocation, even in war itself.4 Nevertheless, it

4. Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter have evaluated this statement of Kennedy's

in "Controlling the Risks in Cuba," Adelphi Papers, 17 (London, Institute for
Strategic Studies, 1965). They agree that, "This does not sound like a controlled
response." They go on to say, "The attempt, it appears, was to say that the
United States would respond to a missile against its neighbors as it would
respond to one against itself." And this policy, they say, would leave open
the possibility of a controlled, or less than "full," reaction. Even if we disregard
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 41

was not entirely incredible; and, for all I know, the President
meant it.
As a matter of fact it is most unlikely—actually it is incon-
ceivable—that in preparing his address the President sent word
to senior military and civilian officials that this particular
paragraph of his speech was not to be construed as policy. Even
if the paragraph was pure rhetoric, it would probably have been
construed in the crisis atmosphere of that eventful Monday as
an act of policy. Just affirming such a policy must have made it
somewhat more likely that a single atomic explosion in this
hemisphere would have been the signal for full-scale nuclear
war.
Even if the President had said something quite contrary, had
cautioned the Soviets that now was the time for them to take
seriously Secretary McNamara's message and the President's
own language about proportioning military response to the
provocation; if he had served notice that the United States
would not be panicked into all-out war by a single atomic event,
particularly one that might not have been fully premeditated by
the Soviet leadership; his remarks still would not have elimi-
nated impossibility that a single Cuban missile, if it contained a
nuclear warhead and exploded on the North American conti-
nent, could have triggered the full frantic fury of all-out war.
While it is hard for a government, particularly a responsible
government, to appear irrational whenever such an appearance
is expedient, it is equally hard for a government, even a
responsible one, to guarantee its own moderation in every
circumstance.

the word "full," though, the threat is still one of nuclear war; and unless
we qualify the words, "any nuclear missile," to mean enough to denote deliberate
Soviet attack, the statement still has to be classed as akin to Khrushchev's
rocket statement, with allowance for differences in style and circumstance. The
point is not that the threat was necessarily either a mistake or a bluff, but
that it did imply a reaction more readily taken on impulse than after reflection,
a "disproportionate" act, one not necessarily serving the national interest if the
contingency arose but nevertheless a possibly impressive threat if the government
can be credited with that impulse.
42 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

All of this may suggest that deterrent threats are a matter of

resolve, impetuosity, plain obstinacy, or, as the anarchist put it,
sheer character. It is not easy to change our character; and
becoming fanatic or impetuous would be a high price to pay for
making our threats convincing. We have not the character of
fanatics and cannot scare countries the way Hitler could. We
have to substitute brains and skill for obstinacy or insanity.
(Even then we are at some disadvantage: Hitler had the skill and
the character—of a sort.)
If we could really make it believed that we would launch gen-
eral war for every minor infraction of any code of etiquette that
we wanted to publish for the Soviet bloc, and if there were high
probability that the leaders in the Kremlin knew where their
interests lay and would not destroy their own country out of
sheer obstinacy, we could threaten anything we wanted to. We
could lay down the rules and announce that if they broke any
one of them we would inflict the nuclear equivalent of the Wrath
of God. The fact that the flood would engulf us, too, is relevant
to whether or not the Russians would believe us; but z/we could
make them believe us, the fact that we would suffer too might
provide them little consolation.5 If we could credibly arrange it
so that we had to carry out the threat, whether we wished to or
not, we would not even be crazy to arrange it so—if we could be
sure the Soviets understood the ineluctable consequences of
infringing the rules and would have control over themselves. By
5. This is why Gandhi could stop trains by encouraging his followers to
lie down on the tracks, and why construction-site integrationists could stop
trucks and bulldozers by the same tactic; if a bulldozer can stop more quickly
than a prostrate man can get out of its way, the threat becomes fully credible
at the point when only the operator of the bulldozer can avert the bloodshed.
The same principle is supposed to explain why a less-than-mortal attack on
the Soviet Union by a French nuclear force, though exposing France to mortal
attack in return, is a deterring prospect to the Soviet Union; credibility is the
problem, and some French commentators have proposed legally arranging to
put the French force beyond civilian control. American tanks in an anti-riot
role may lack credibility, because they threaten too much, as the bulldozer does,
even in the use of machine guns to protect each other; so a more credible—
a less drastic and fully automatic—device is used to protect the armed steel
monsters: a mildly electric bumper.
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 43

arranging it so that we might have to blow up the world, we

would not have to.
But it is hard to make it believed. It would be hard to keep the
Soviets from expecting that we would think it over once more
and find a way to give them what my children call "one more
chance." Just saying so won't do it. Mossadegh or the anarchist
might succeed, but not the American government. What we
have to do is to get ourselves into a position where we cannot
fail to react as we said we would—where we just cannot help
it—or where we would be obliged by some overwhelming cost
of not reacting in the manner we had declared.
Coupling Capabilities to Objectives:
Relinquishing the Initiative
Often we must maneuver into a position where we no longer
have much choice left. This is the old business of burning
bridges. If you are faced with an enemy who thinks you would
turn and run if he kept advancing, and if the bridge is there to run
across, he may keep advancing. He may advance to the point
where, if you do not run, a clash is automatic. Calculating what
is in your long-run interest, you may turn and cross the bridge.
At least, he may expect you to. But if you burn the bridge so that
you cannot retreat, and in sheer desperation there is nothing you
can do but defend yourself, he has a new calculation to make.
He cannot count on what you would prefer to do if he were
advancing irresistibly; he must decide instead what he ought to
do if you were incapable of anything but resisting him.
This is the position that Chiang Kai-shek got himself into, and
us with him, when he moved a large portion of his best troops to
Quemoy. Evacuation under fire would be exceedingly diffi-
cult; if attacked, his troops had no choice but to fight, and we
probably had no choice but to assist them. It was undoubtedly a
shrewd move from Chiang's point of view—coupling himself,
and the United States with him, to Quemoy—and in fact if we
had wanted to make clear to the Chinese Communists that
Quemoy had to be defended if they attacked it, it would even
have been a shrewd move also from our point of view.
44 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

This idea of burning bridges—of maneuvering into a position

where one clearly cannot yield—conflicts somewhat, at least
semantically, with the notion that what we want in our foreign
policy is "the initiative." Initiative is good if it means imagina-
tiveness, boldness, new ideas. But the term somewhat disguises
the fact that deterrence, particularly deterrence of anything less
than mortal assault on the United States, often depends on get-
ting into a position where the initiative is up to the enemy and it
is he who has to make the awful decision to proceed to a clash.
In recent years it has become something of a principle in the
Department of Defense that the country should have abundant
"options" in its choice of response to enemy moves. The prin-
ciple is a good one, but so is a contrary principle—that certain op-
tions are an embarrassment. The United States government goes
to great lengths to reassure allies and to warn Russians that it
has eschewed certain options altogether, or to demonstrate that
it could not afford them or has placed them out of reach. The
commitment process on which all American overseas deterrence
depends—and on which all confidence within the alliance
depends—is a process of surrendering and destroying options
that we might have been expected to find too attractive in an
emergency. We not only give them up in exchange for commit-
ments to us by our allies; we give them up on our own account
to make our intentions clear to potential enemies. In fact, we do
it not just to display our intentions but to adopt those inten-
tions. If deterrence fails it is usually because someone thought
he saw an "option" that the American government had failed to
dispose of, a loophole that it hadn't closed against itself.
At law there is a doctrine of the "last clear chance." It recog-
nizes that, in the events leading up to an accident, there was
some point prior to which either party could avert collision,
some point after which neither could, and very likely a period
between when one party could still control events but the other
was helpless to turn aside or stop. The one that had the "last
clear chance" to avert collision is held responsible. In strategy
when both parties abhor collision the advantage goes often to
the one who arranges the status quo in his favor and leaves to
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 45

the other the "last clear chance" to stop or turn aside.

Xenophon understood the principle when, threatened by an
attack he had not sought, he placed his Greeks with their backs
against an impassable ravine. "I should like the enemy to think
it is easy-going in every direction for him to retreat." And when
he had to charge a hill occupied by aliens, he "did not attack
from every direction but left the enemy a way of escape, if he
wanted to run away." The "last chance" to clear out was left to
the enemy when Xenophon had to take the initiative, but de-
nied to himself when he wanted to deter attack, leaving his
enemy the choice to attack or retire.6
An illustration of this principle—that deterrence often de-
pends on relinquishing the initiative to the other side—may be
found in a comparison of two articles that Secretary Dulles
wrote in the 1950s. His article inForeign Affairs in 1954 (based
on the speech in which he introduced "massive retaliation")
proposed that we should not let the enemy know in advance just
when and where and how we would react to aggression, but
reserve for ourselves the decision on whether to act and the
time, place, and scope of our action. In 1957 the Secretary
wrote another article in Foreign Affairs, this one oriented
mainly toward Europe, in which he properly chose to reserve
for the Soviets the final decision on all-out war. He discussed
the need for more powerful NATO forces, especially "tactical"
nuclear forces that could resist a non-nuclear Soviet onslaught
at a level short of all-out war. He said:
In the future it may thus be feasible to place less reliance
upon deterrence of vast retaliatory power. . . . Thus, in
6. The Persian Expedition, pp. 136-37, 236. The principle was expressed by
Sun Tzu in China, around 500 B.C. in his Art of War: "When you surround an
army leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard." Ptolemy, serving
under Alexander in the fourth century B.C., surrounded a hill, "leaving a gap
in his line for the enemy to get through, should they wish to make their escape."
Vegetius, writing in the fourth century A.D., had a section headed, "The flight
of an enemy should not be prevented, but facilitated," and commends a maxim
of Scipio "that a golden bridge should be made for a flying enemy." It is, of
course, a fundamental principle of riot control and has its counterparts in diplomacy
and other negotiations.
46 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

contrast to the 1950 decade, it may be that by the 1960 decade

the nations which are around the Sino-Soviet perimeter can
possess an effective defense against full-scale conventional
attack and thus confront any aggressor with the choice
between failing or himself initiating nuclear war against the
defending country. 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 protec-
tion, would-be aggressors will be unable to count on a
successful conventional aggression, but must themselves
weigh the consequences of invoking nuclear war.7
Former Secretary Dean Acheson was proposing the same
principle (but attached to conventional forces, not tactical
nuclear weapons) in remarkably similar language at about the
same time in his book, Power and Diplomacy:
Suppose, now, that a major attack is mounted against a
Western Europe defended by substantial and spirited forces
including American troops. . . . Here, in effect, he (our
potential enemy) would be making the decision for us, by
compelling evidence that he had determined to run all risks
and force matters to a final showdown, including (if it had
not already occurred) a nuclear attack upon us. ... A de-
fense in Europe of this magnitude will pass the decision to
risk everything from the defense to the offense.8
The same principle on the Eastern side was reflected in a
remark often attributed to Khrushchev. It was typically agreed,
especially at summit meetings, that nobody wanted a war.
Khrushchev's complacent remark, based on Berlin's being on
his side of the border, was that Berlin was not worth a war. As
the story goes, he was reminded that Berlin was not worth a war
to him either. "No," he replied, "but you are the ones that have
7. "Challenge and Response in U.S. Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs, 36
(1957), 25-43. It is interesting that Secretary Dulles used "nuclear war" to
mean something that had not yet been invoked when "tactical" nuclear weapons
were already being used in local defense of Europe.
8. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1958, pp. 87-88.
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 47

to cross a frontier." The implication, I take it, was that neither of

us wanted to cross that threshold just for Berlin, and if Berlin's
location makes us the ones who have to cross the border, we are
the ones who let it go though both of us are similarly fearful of
war.
How do we maneuver into a position so it is the other side that
has to make that decision? Words rarely do it. To have told the
Soviets in the late 1940s that, if they attacked, we were obliged
to defend Europe might not have been wholly convincing.
When the Administration asked Congress for authority to
station Army divisions in Europe in peacetime, the argument
was explicitly made that these troops were there not to defend
against a superior Soviet army but to leave the Soviet Union in
no doubt that the United States would be automatically in-
volved in the event of any attack on Europe. The implicit
argument was not that since we obviously would defend Europe
we should demonstrate the fact by putting troops there. The
reasoning was probably that, whether we wished to be or not,
we could not fail to be involved if we had more troops being run
over by the Soviet Army than we could afford to see defeated.
Notions like "trip wire" or "plate glass window," though
oversimplified, were attempts to express this role. And while
"trip wire" is a belittling term to describe an army, the role is not
a demeaning one. The garrison in Berlin is as fine a collection
of soldiers as has ever been assembled, but excruciatingly
small. What can 7,000 American troops do, or 12,000 Allied
troops? Bluntly, they can die. They can die heroically, dramati-
cally, and in a manner that guarantees that the action cannot stop
there. They represent the pride, the honor, and the reputation of
the United States government and its armed forces; and they can
apparently hold the entire Red Army at bay. Precisely because
there is no graceful way out if we wished our troops to yield
ground, and because West Berlin is too small an area in which to
ignore small encroachments, West Berlin and its military forces
constitute one of the most impregnable military outposts of
modern times. The Soviets have not dared to cross that frontier.
Berlin illustrates two common characteristics of these com-
48 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

mitments. The first is that if the commitment is ill defined and

ambiguous—if we leave ourselves loopholes through which to
exit—our opponent will expect us to be under strong temptation
to make a graceful exit (or even a somewhat graceless one) and
he may be right. The western sector of Berlin is a tightly defined
piece of earth, physically occupied by Western troops: our com-
mitment is credible because it is inescapable. (The little enclave
of Steinstücken is physically separate, surrounded by East Ger-
man territory outside city limits, and there has been a certain
amount of jockeying to determine how credible our commit-
ment is to stay there and whether it applies to a corridor con-
necting the enclave to the city proper.) But our commitment to
the integrity of Berlin itself, the entire city, was apparently weak
or ambiguous. When the Wall went up the West was able to
construe its obligation as not obliging forceful opposition. The
Soviets probably anticipated that, if the West had a choice be-
tween interpreting its obligation to demand forceful opposition
and interpreting the obligation more leniently, there would be a
temptation to elect the lenient interpretation. If we could have
made ourselves obliged to knock down the wall with military
force, the wall might not have gone up; not being obliged, we
could be expected to elect the less dangerous course.
The second thing that Berlin illustrates is that, however
precisely defined is the issue about which we are committed, it
is often uncertain just what we are committed to do. The commit-
ment is open-ended. Our military reaction to an assault on West
Berlin is really not specified. We are apparently committed to
holding the western sector of the city if we can; if we are pushed
back, we are presumably committed to repelling the intruders
and restoring the original boundary. If we lose the city, we are
perhaps committed to reconquering it. But somewhere in this
sequence of events things get out of hand, and the matter ceases
to be purely one of restoring the status quo in Berlin. Military
instabilities may arise that make the earlier status quo meaning-
less. A costly reestablishment of the status quo might call for
some sort of reprisal, obliging some counteraction in return.
Just what would happen is a matter of prediction, or guess.
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 49

What we seem to be committed to is action of some sort com-

mensurate with the provocation. Military resistance tends to de-
velop a momentum of its own. It is dynamic and uncertain.
What we threaten in Berlin is to initiate a process that may
quickly get out of hand.
The maneuver in Lebanon in 1958—the landing of troops
in a developing crisis—though not one of the neatest political-
military operations of recent times, represented a similar strat-
egy. Whatever the military potential of the ten or twelve
thousand troops that we landed in Lebanon—and it would de-
pend on who might have engaged them, where, over what issue
—they had the advantage that they got on the ground before
any Soviet adventure or movement was under way. The landing
might be described as a "preemptive maneuver." From then on,
any significant Soviet intervention in the affairs of Lebanon,
Jordan, or even Iraq, would have substantially raised the likeli-
hood that American and Soviet forces, or American and Soviet-
supported forces, would be directly engaged.
In effect, it was Khrushchev's turn to cross a border. Iraq or
Jordan might not have been worth a war to either of us but by
getting troops on the soil—or, as we used to say, the American
flag—we probably made it clear to the Kremlin that we could
not gracefully retreat under duress. It is harder to retreat than
not to land in the first place; the landing helped to put the next
step up to the Russians.
Coupling Capabilities to Objectives:
The Process of "Commitment"
In addition to getting yourself where you cannot retreat, there is
a more common way of making a threat. That is to incur a
political involvement, to get a nation's honor, obligation, and
diplomatic reputation committed to a response. The Formosa
resolution of 1955, along with the military assistance agreement
then signed by the United States and the National Government
of the Republic of China, should probably be interpreted that
way. It was not mainly a technique for reassuring Chiang
Kai-shek that we would defend him, and it was not mainly a
50 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

quid pro quo for something he did for us. It was chiefly
important as a move to impress a third party. The primary
audience for the congressional action was inside the Soviet
bloc. The resolution, together with the treaty, was a ceremony
to leave the Chinese and the Russians under no doubt that we
could not back down from the defense of Formosa without
intolerable loss of prestige, reputation, and leadership. We
were not merely communicating an intention or obligation we
already had, but actually enhancing the obligation in the pro-
cess. The congressional message was not, "Since we are obliged
to defend Formosa, we may as well show it." Rather: "In case
we were not sufficiently committed to impress you, now we are.
We hereby oblige ourselves. Behold us in the public ritual of
getting ourselves genuinely committed."9
9. There is also sometimes available an internal technique of commitment.
It is, in the words of Roger Fisher, "to weave international obligations into the
domestic law of each country, so that by and large each government enforces
the obligation against itself." Fisher discussed it in relation to disarmament
commitments; but it may apply to the use of force as well as to the renunciation
of it. A Norwegian directive (KgI res 10 Juni 1949) stipulates that, in event of
armed attack, military officers are to mobilize whether or not the government
issues the order, that orders for discontinuance issued in the name of the government
shall be assumed false, and that resistance is to continue irrespective of enemy
threats of retaliatory bombing. Similarly a Swiss order of April 1940, distributed
to every soldier in his livret de service, declared that in event of attack the Swiss
would fight and that any order or indication to the contrary, from any source,
was to be considered enemy propaganda. The purposes appear to have been internal
discipline and morale; but the possible contribution of such internal arrangements
to deterrence, to the credibility of resistance, is worth considering. Many governments
have had constitutional or informal provisions for increasing the authority of the
armed forces in time of emergency, thus possibly shifting government authority
in the direction of individuals and organizations whose motives to resist were
less doubtful. As mentioned in an earlier footnote, legal automaticity has sometimes
been proposed for the French nuclear force. Internal public opinion can be similarly
manipulated to make accommodation unpopular. All of these techniques, if appreciated
by the enemy to be deterred, are relevant to the process of commitment. They
can also, of course, be quite dangerous. Fisher's discussion is in his chapter, "Internal
Enforcement of International Rules," Disarmament: Its Politics and Economics,
Seymour Melman, ed. (Boston, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1962).
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 51

That kind of commitment is not to be had cheaply. If Con-

gress passed such a resolution for every small piece of the world
that it would like the Soviets to leave alone, it would cheapen
the currency. A nation has limited resources, so to speak, in the
things that it can get exceptionally concerned about. Political
involvement within a country is not something that can be had
for the price of a casual vote or a signature on a piece of paper.
Sometimes it comes about by a long process that may not
even have been deliberately conceived. As far as I can tell, we
had only the slightest commitment, if any, to assist India in case
of attack by the Chinese or the Russians, if only because over
the years the Indians did not let us incur a formal commitment.
One of the lessons of November 1962 may be that, in the face of
anything quite as adventuresome as an effort to take over a
country the size of India, we may be virtually as committed as if
we had a mutual assistance treaty. We cannot afford to let the
Soviets or Communist Chinese learn by experience that they
can grab large chunks of the earth and its population without a
genuine risk of violent Western reaction.
Our commitment to Quemoy, which gave us concern in 1955
and especially in 1958, had not been deliberately conceived;
and it appeared at the time to be a genuine embarrassment. For
reasons that had nothing to do with American policy, Quemoy
had been successfully defended by the Nationalists when Chiang
Kai-shek evacuated the mainland, and it remained in National-
ist hands. By the time the United States assumed the Commit-
ment to Formosa, the island of Quemoy stood as a ragged edge
about which our intentions were ambiguous. Secretary Dulles
in 1958 expressed the official view that we could not afford to
vacate Quemoy under duress. The implication seemed to be
that we had no genuine desire to take risks for Quemoy and
might have preferred it if Quemoy had fallen to the Communists
in 1949; but our relations with Communist China were at stake
once Quemoy became an issue. So we had a commitment that
we might have preferred not to have. And in case that commit-
ment did not appear firm enough, Chiang Kai-shek increased it
52 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

for us by moving enough of his best troops to that island, under

conditions in which evacuation under attack would have been
difficult, to make clear that he had to defend it or suffer military
disaster, leaving it up to the United States to bail him out.

Some of our strongest commitments may be quite implicit,

though ritual and diplomacy can enhance or erode them. Com-
mitments can even exist when we deny them. There is a lot of
conjecture about what would happen if the NATO treaty lapsed
after its initial twenty years. There has recently been some
conjecture whether the developing community of Western
Europe might be inconsistent with the Atlantic Alliance. It is
sometimes argued that the Soviet Union would like Europe so
self-reliant that the United States could ease itself out of its
commitments to the present NATO countries. I think there is
something in this—our commitment to Europe probably dimin-
ishes somewhat if the NATO treaty legally goes out of force—
but not much. Most of the commitment will still be there. We
cannot afford to let the Soviets overrun West Germany or
Greece, irrespective of our treaty commitments to Germany or
to the rest of Western Europe.
I suspect that we might even recognize an implicit obligation
to support Yugoslavia, perhaps Finland, in a military crisis.
Any commitment we may have had toward Hungary was
apparently not much. But Yugoslavia and Finland have not
quite the status that Hungary had. (Conceivably we might cross
the border first, under invitation, and leave it up to the Soviets to
decide whether to incur the risk of engaging us.) I wonder
whether the Kremlin thinks that, if it should get genuinely
impatient with Tito or if there were some kind of crisis of
succession upon Tito's death, the Red Army could simply
invade Yugoslavia or the Kremlin present an ultimatum to the
country without any danger of a counter-ultimatum from us or
another preemptive landing of troops as in Lebanon. I can only
wonder; these are all matters of interpretation, both as to what
our commitments really would prove to be and what the Soviets
would believe them to be.
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 53

Actually, our commitment is not so much a policy as a

prediction. We cannot have a clear policy for every con-
tingency; there are too many contingencies and not enough
hours in the day to work them all out in advance. If one had
asked in October 1962 what American policy was for the
contingency of a Communist Chinese effort to destroy the
Indian Army, the only answer could have been a prediction of
what the American government would decide to do in a contin-
gency that probably had not been "staffed out" in advance.
Policy is usually not a prefabricated decision; it is the whole set
of motives and constraints that make a government's actions
somewhat predictable.
In the Indian case, it turns out that we had a latent or implicit
policy. For all I know, Mr. Nehru anticipated it for ten years. It
is conceivable—though I doubt it—that one of the reasons
Nehru was so contemptuous of the kinds of treaties that the Thai
and Pakistani signed with us was that he felt that his own
involvement with the West in a real emergency might be about
as strong without the treaty as with it. It is interesting that any
"commitment" we had to keep India from being conquered or
destroyed by Communist China was not mainly a commitment
to the Indians or their government. We wanted to restrain Com-
munist China generally; we wanted to give confidence to other
governments in Asia; and we wanted to preserve confidence in
our deterrent role all the way around the world to Europe.
Military support to India would be a way of keeping an implicit
pledge but the pledge was a general one, not a debt owed to the
Indians. When a disciplinarian—police or other—intervenes
to resist or punish someone's forbidden intrusion or assault, any
benefit to the victim of the intrusion or assault may be inciden-
tal. He could even prefer not to be fought over; but if the issue is
maintenance of discipline, he may not have much say in the
matter.
This matter of prediction may have been crucial at the start of
the Korean War. There has been a lot of discussion about
whether we were or were not "committed" to the defense of
South Korea. From what I have seen of the way the decision to
54 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

intervene was taken, first by participation of American military

assistance forces, then by bombing, then with reinforcements,
and finally with a major war effort, one could not confidently
have guessed in May 1950 what the United States would do.
One could only try to estimate the probable decision that the
President would take, depending on what it looked like in
Korea, who was advising him, and what else was going on in the
world.
You will recall discussion about the importance of a particu-
lar speech by Secretary of State Acheson in suggesting to the
Soviets that South Korea was outside our defense perimeter.
(As far as I know, there is no decisive evidence that the
Russians, Chinese, or Koreans were particularly motivated by
that statement.) His stated position was essentially that we had a
defense perimeter that excluded South Korea, that we had
various other obligations, especially to the United Nations, that
would cover a country like South Korea. Apparently the Soviets
(or Chinese, or whoever made the decision) miscalculated; they
may have thought we were damning our commitment with faint
praise. They got into an expensive war and a risky one and one
that might have been even more dangerous than it was. They
may have miscalculated because the language of deterrence,
and an understanding of the commitment process in the nuclear
era, had not had much time to develop yet. They may interpret
better now—although the missile adventure in Cuba shows that
the Soviets could still misread the signals (or the Americans
could still fail to transmit them clearly) a decade later.
And we seem to have misread the Chinese warnings during
our advance toward the Yalu River. Allen Whiting has docu-
mented a serious Chinese Communist attempt to warn the
Americans that they would engage us militarily rather than let us
occupy all of North Korea.10 Whatever we might have done had
we understood them, we manifestly did not understand.The one
thing we would not have done, had we received their warnings
correctly, was to extend our forces as vulnerably as we did. We
either did not get their message, did not comprehend it, or
10. China Crosses the Yalu (New York, Macmillan, 1960).
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 55

did not find it credible, though the Chinese Communists may

have been doing the best they could to get the message to us and
to make it credible. When communication fails, it is not easy to
decide whether the transmitter is too weak for the receiver or the
receiver too weak for the transmitter, whether the sender speaks
the receiver's language badly or the receiver misunderstands
the sender's. Between the two of us, Americans and Commu-
nist China, we appear to have suffered at least one communica-
tion failure in each direction in 1950.11
The Interdependence of Commitments
The main reason why we are committed in many of these places
is that our threats are interdependent. Essentially we tell the
Soviets that we have to react here because, if we did not, they
would not believe us when we say that we will react there.
By now our commitment to Berlin has become so deep and
diffuse that most of us do not often have to think about whom
our commitment is to. The reason we got committed to the de-
fense of Berlin, and stayed committed, is that if we let the So-
viets scare us out of Berlin we would lose face with the Soviets
themselves. The reputation that most matters to us is our repu-
tation with the Soviet (and Communist Chinese) leaders. It
would be bad enough to have Europeans, Latin Americans, or
Asians think that we are immoral or cowardly. It would be far
worse to lose our reputation with the Soviets. When we talk
about the loss of face that would occur if we backed out of For-
11. It is not easy to explain why the Chinese entered North Korea so secretly
and so suddenly. Had they wanted to stop the United Nations forces at the level,
say, of Pyongyang, to protect their own border and territory, a conspicuous early
entry in force might have found the U.N. Command content with its accomplishment
and in no mood to fight a second war, against Chinese armies, for the remainder
of North Korea. They chose instead to launch a surprise attack, with stunning
tactical advantages but no prospect of deterrence. It may have been a hard choice
with the decision, finally, a pessimistic one; if so, it was probably a mistake.
It may have been based on an overriding interest in the territorial integrity of
a Communist North Korea; if so, accommodation was probably impossible anyhow.
Or it may have been just a military obsession with tactical surprise, at the expense
of all deterrence and diplomacy.
56 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

mosa under duress, or out of Berlin, the loss of face that matters
most is the loss of Soviet belief that we will do, elsewhere and
subsequently, what we insist we will do here and now. Our
deterrence rests on Soviet expectations.
This, I suppose, is the ultimate reason why we have to defend
California—aside from whether or not Easterners want to.
There is no way to let California go to the Soviets and make
them believe nevertheless that Oregon and Washington, Florida
and Maine, and eventually Chevy Chase and Cambridge cannot
be had under the same principle. There is no way to persuade
them that if we do not stop them in California we will stop them
at the Mississippi (though the Mississippi is a degree less
implausible than any other line between that river and, say, the
continental divide). Once they cross a line into a new class of
aggression, into a set of areas or assets that we always claimed
we would protect, we may even deceive them if we do not react
vigorously. Suppose we let the Soviets have California, and
when they reach for Texas we attack them in full force. They
could sue for breach of promise. We virtually told them they
could have Texas when we let them into California; the fault is
ours, for communicating badly, for not recognizing what we
were conceding.
California is a bit of fantasy here; but it helps to remind us that
the effectiveness of deterrence often depends on attaching to
particular areas some of the status of California. The principle
is at work all over the world; and the principle is not wholly
under our own control. I doubt whether we can identify our-
selves with Pakistan in quite the way we can identify ourselves
with Great Britain, no matter how many treaties we sign during
the next ten y ears.
"To identify" is a complex process. It means getting the
Soviets or the Communist Chinese to identify us with, say,
Pakistan in such a way that they would lose respect for our
commitments elsewhere if we failed to support Pakistan and we
know they would lose that respect, so that we would have to
support Pakistan and they know we would. In a way, it is the
Soviets who confer this identification; but they do it through the
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 57

medium of their expectations about us and our understanding of

their expectations. Neither they nor we can exercise full control
over their expectations.
There is an interesting geographical difference in the Soviet
and American homelands; it is hard to imagine a war so located
that it could spill over by hot pursuit, by interdiction bombing,
by inadvertent border violation, by local reprisal bombing, or
even by deliberate but limited ground encroachment into Ameri-
can territory. Our oceans may not protect us from big wars but
they protect us from little ones. A local war could not impinge
on California, involving it peripherally or incidentally through
geographical continuity, the way the Korean War could impinge
on Manchuria and Siberia, or the way Soviet territory could be
impinged on by war in Iran, Yugoslavia, or Central Europe.
One can argue about how far back toward Moscow an "interdic-
tion campaign" of bombing might have to reach, or might
safely reach, in case of a limited war in Central Europe; and
there is no geographical feature—and few economic features
—to present a sudden discontinuity at the Soviet border. A
comparable question hardly arises for American participation in
the same war; there is one discontinuity leading to submarine
warfare on the high seas, and another, a great one, in going in-
land to the railroad tracks that carry the freight to the Baltimore
docks. The vehicles or vessels that would have to carry out the
intrusion would furthermore be different in character from those
involved in the "theater war."
Possibilities of limited, marginal, homeland engagement that
might be logically pertinent for California or Massachusetts are
just geographically inapplicable. This gives the American home-
land a more distinctive character—a more unambiguous
"homeland" separateness—than the Soviet homeland can have.
The nearest thing to "local involvement" one can imagine might
be Florida bases in case of an air war with Cuba; that would be
a possible exception to the rule, while for the Soviet Union most
of the hypothetical wars that they must have to make plans
about raise the problem of peripheral homeland involvement of
some sort (including intrusive reconnaissance and other air-
58 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

space violations even if no dirt is disturbed on their territory).

The California principle actually can apply not only to terri-
tories but to weapons. One of the arguments that has been
made, and taken seriously, against having all of our strategic
weapons at sea or in outer space or even emplaced abroad, is
that the enemy might be able to attack them without fearing the
kind of response that would be triggered by an attack on our
homeland. If all missiles were on ships at sea, the argument
runs, an attack on a ship would not be quite the same as an at-
tack on California or Massachusetts; and an enemy might
consider doing it in circumstances when he would not consider
attacking weapons located on our soil. (An extreme form of the
argument, not put forward quite so seriously, was that we ought
to locate our weapons in the middle of population centers, so
that the enemy could never attack them without arousing the
massive response that he could take for granted if he struck our
cities.)
There is something to the argument. If in an Asian war we
flew bombers from aircraft carriers or from bases in an allied
country, and an enemy attacked our ships at sea or our overseas
bases, we would almost certainly not consider it the same as if
we had flown the bombers from bases in Hawaii or California
and he had attacked the bases in those states. If the Soviets had
put nuclear weapons in orbit and we shot at them with rockets
the results might be serious, but not the same as if the Soviets
had put missiles on home territory and we shot at those missiles
on their home grounds. Missiles in Cuba, though owned and
manned by Russians, were less "nationalized" as a target than
missiles in the U.S.S.R. itself. (One of the arguments made
against the use of surface ships in a European Multilateral
Force armed with long-range missiles was that they could be
picked off by an enemy, possibly during a limited war in which
the Multilateral Force was not engaged, possibly without the
use of nuclear weapons by an enemy, in a way that would not
quite provoke reprisal, and thus would be vulnerable in a way
that homeland-based missiles would not be.)
The argument can go either way. This can be a reason for de-
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 59

liberately putting weapons outside our boundary, so that their

military involvement would not tempt an attack on our home-
land, or for keeping them within our boundaries so that an attack
on them would appear the more risky. The point here is just that
there is a difference. Quemoy cannot be made part of California
by moving it there, but weapons can.
Actually the all-or-nothing character of the homeland is not
so complete. Secretary McNamara's suggestion that even a
general war might be somewhat confined to military installa-
tions, and that a furious attack on enemy population centers
might be the proper response only to an attack on ours, implies
that we do distinguish or might distinguish different parts of our
territory by the degree of warfare involved. And I have heard it
argued that the Soviets, if they fear for the deterrent security of
their retaliatory forces in a purely "military" war that the Ameri-
cans might initiate, may actually prefer a close proximity of
their missiles to their cities to make the prospect of a "clean"
strategic war, one without massive attacks on cities, less prom-
ising—to demonstrate that there would remain little to lose,
after an attack on their weapons, and little motive to confine
their response to military targets. The policy would be a
dangerous one if there were much likelihood that war would
occur, but its logic has merit.
Discrediting an Adversary's Commitments
The Soviets have the same deterrence problem beyond their
borders that we have. In some ways the West has helped them to
solve it. All kinds of people, responsible and irresponsible,
intelligent and unenlightened, European and American, have
raised questions about whether the United States really would
use its full military force to protect Western Europe or to
retaliate for the loss of Western Europe. Much more rarely did I
hear anyone question—at least before about 1963—whether
the Soviets would do likewise if we were provoked to an attack
against the homeland of Communist China.
The Soviets seem to have accomplished—and we helped
60 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

them—what we find difficult, namely, to persuade the world

that the entire area of their alliance is part of an integral bloc.
In the West we talked for a decade—until the Sino-Soviet
schism became undeniable—about the Sino-Soviet bloc as
though every satellite were part of the Soviet system, and as
though Soviet determination to keep those areas under their
control was so intense that they could not afford to lose any
of it. We often acted as though every part of their sphere of
influence was a "California." In the West we seemed to concede
to the Soviets, with respect to China, what not everybody con-
cedes us with respect to Europe.
If we always treat China as though it is a Soviet California,
we tend to make it so. If we imply to the Soviets that we con-
sider Communist China or Czechoslovakia the virtual equiva-
lent of Siberia, then in the event of any military action in or
against those areas we have informed the Soviets that we are
going to interpret their response as though we had landed troops
in Vladivostok or Archangel or launched them across the Soviet-
Polish border. We thus oblige them to react in China, or in
North Vietnam or wherever it may be, and in effect give them
precisely the commitment that is worth so much to them in de-
terring the West. If we make it clear that we believe they are
obliged to react to an intrusion in Hungary as though we were
in the streets of Moscow, then they are obliged.
Cuba will continue to be an interesting borderline case. The
Soviets will find it difficult politically and psychologically to
get universal acquiescence that a country can be genuinely
within the Soviet bloc if it is not contiguous to them. The Soviet
problem was to try to get Cuba into the status of a S o viet''C alif or-
nia." It is interesting to speculate on whether we could add
states to the Union, like the Philippines, Greece, or Formosa,
and let that settle the question of where they belong and how
obliged we are to defend them. Hawaii, yes, and by now Puerto
Rico; but if we reached out beyond the areas that "belong" in
the United States we could probably just not manage to confer
a genuinely plausible "statehood" that would be universally
recognized and taken for granted.
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 61

And Cuba does not quite "belong" in the Soviet bloc—it is

topologically separate and does not enjoy the territorial integrity
with the Soviet bloc that nations traditionally enjoy. India could
take Goa for what are basically esthetic reasons: a conventional
belief that maps ought to have certain geometrical qualities, that
an enclave is geographically abnormal, that an island in the
ocean can belong to anyone but an island surrounded by the ter-
ritory of a large nation somehow ought to belong to it. (Algeria
would, for the same reason, have been harder to disengage from
metropolitan France had it not been geographically separated
by the Mediterranean; keeping the coastal cities in "France"
while dividing off the hinterland would similarly have gone
somewhat against cartographic psychology.) There are many
other things, of course, that make Cuba different from Hungary,
including the fact that the United States can surround it, harass
it, or blockade it without encroaching on Soviet territory. But
even without that it would be an uphill struggle for the Soviets
to achieve a credible togetherness with the remote island of
Cuba.
Additional "Cubas" would cost the Soviets something. That
does not mean we should like them; still, we should recognize
what happens to their deterrence problem. It becomes more like
ours. They used to have an almost integral bloc, a geographical
unit, with a single Iron Curtain separating their side from the
rest of the world. One could almost draw a closed curved line
on a globe with everything inside it Soviet bloc and everything
outside it not. Yugoslavia was the only ambiguity. It in turn
made little Albania an anomaly—only a small one, but its
political detachment in the early 1960s confirms the point.
Cuba has been the same problem magnified. "Blocness" no
longer means what it did. In a geographically tight bloc,
satellites can have degrees of affiliation with the U.S .S .R. without
necessarily spoiling the definition of the "bloc." Distant satel-
lites, though, not only can be more independent because of
Soviet difficulty in imposing its will by violence but they further
disturb the geographical neatness of the bloc. "Blocness" ceases
to be all-or-none; it becomes a matter of degree.
62 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

This process can then infect the territories contiguous with

the U.S.S.R. And if the Soviet Union tempers its deterrent
threats, hedging on the distant countries or on countries not
fully integrated, it invites examination of the credibility of its
threats everywhere. Certain things like honor and outrage are
not meant to be matters of degree. One can say that his
homeland is inviolate only if he knows exactly what he means
by "homeland" and it is not cluttered up with full-fledged states,
protectorates, territories, and gradations of citizenship that
make some places more "homeland" than others. Like virgin-
ity, the homeland wants an absolute definition. This character
the Soviet bloc has been losing and may lose even more if it
acquires a graduated structure like the old British Empire.
We credited the Soviets with effective deterrence and in
doing so genuinely gave them some. We came at last to treat the
Sino-Soviet split as a real one; but it would have been wiser not
to have acknowledged their fusion in the first place. In our
efforts to dramatize and magnify the Soviet threat, we some-
times present the Soviet Union with a deterrent asset of a kind
that we find hard to create for ourselves. We should relieve the
Soviets as much as we can of any obligation to respond to an
American engagement with China as to an engagement with
Soviet Russia itself. If we relieve the Soviets of the obligation,
we somewhat undo their commitment. We should be trying to
make North Vietnam seem much more remote from the Soviet
bloc than Puerto Rico is from the United States, to keep China
out of the category of Alaska, and not to concede to bloc
countries a sense of immunity. Events may oblige us—some of
these very countries may oblige us—to initiate some kind of
military engagement in the future;12 and we would be wise to
decouple those areas, as much as we can, from Soviet military
forces in advance.13
12. Events evidently caught up with this sentence!
13. Possibly the single greatest consequence of the nuclear test ban—and I see
no evidence that it was intended in the West, or that it motivated the final negotiations
—was to exacerbate the Sino-Soviet dispute on security policy and bring its military
implications into the open. What a diplomatic coup it would have been, had it
been contrived that way!
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 63

Escaping Commitments
Sometimes a country wants to get out of a commitment—to
decouple itself. It is not easy. We may have regretted our
commitment to Quemoy in 1958, but there was no graceful way
to undo it at that time. The Berlin wall was a genuine embarrass-
ment. We apparently had not enough of a commitment to feel
obliged to use violence against the Berlin wall. We had undeni-
ably some commitment; there was some expectation that we
might take action and some belief that we ought to. We did not,
and it cost us something. If nobody had ever expected us to do
anything about the wall—if we had never appeared to have any
obligation to prevent things like the wall, and if we had never
made any claims about East Berlin that seemed inconsistent
with the wall—the wall would have embarrassed us less. Some
people on our side were disappointed when we let the wall go
up. The United States government would undoubtedly have
preferred not to incur that disappointment. Diplomatic state-
ments about the character of our rights and obligations in East
Berlin were an effort to dismantle any commitment we might
previously have had. The statements were not fully persuasive.
Had the United States government known all along that some-
thing like the wall might go up, and had it planned all along not to
oppose it, diplomatic preparation might have made the wall less
of an embarrassment. In this case there appeared to be some
residual commitment that we had not honored, and we had to
argue retroactively that our essential rights had not been violated
and that nothing rightfully ours had been taken from us.
The Soviets had a similar problem over Cuba. Less than six
weeks before the President's missile crisis address of October
22,1962, the Soviet government had issued a formal statement
about Cuba. "We have said and do repeat that if war is
unleashed, if the aggressor makes an attack on one state or
another and this state asks for assistance, the Soviet Union has
the possibility from its own territory to render assistance to any
peace-loving state and not only to Cuba. And let no one doubt
that the Soviet Union will render such assistance." And further,
64 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

"The Soviet government would like to draw attention to the

fact that one cannot now attack Cuba and expect that the
aggressor will be free from punishment for this attack. If this
attack is made, this will be the beginning of the unleashing of
war." It was a long, argumentative statement, however, and
acknowledged that "only a madman can think now that a war
started by him will be a calamity only for the people against
which it is unleashed." And the most threatening language was
not singled out for solemn treatment but went along as part of
the argument. So there was at least a degree of ambiguity.
President Kennedy's television broadcast of October 22 was
directly aimed at the Soviet Union. It was so directly aimed that
one can infer only a conscious decision to make this not a
Caribbean affair but an East-West affair. It concerned Soviet
missiles and Soviet duplicity, a Soviet challenge; and the
President even went out of his way to express concern for the
Cubans, his desire that they not be hurt, and his regret for the
"foreign domination" that was responsible for their predica-
ment. The President did not say that we had a problem with
Cuba and hoped the Soviets would keep out of it; he said we had
an altercation with the Soviet Union and hoped Cubans would
not be hurt.
The Soviet statement the following day, circulated to the Se-
curity Council of the United Nations, was evidently an effort to
structure the situation a little differently. It accused the United
States of piracy on the high seas and of "trying to dictate to
Cuba what policy it must pursue." It said the United States
government was "assuming the right to demand that states
should account to it for the way in which they organize their de-
fense, and should notify it of what their ships are carrying on
the high seas. The Soviet government firmly repudiates such
claims." The statement also said, "Today as never before,
statesmen must show calm and prudence, and must not counte-
nance the rattling of weapons."And indeed there was no rat-
ling of weapons in the Soviet statement. The most they said
was, "The presence of powerful weapons, including nuclear
rocket weapons, in the Soviet Union is acknowledged by all the
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 65

peoples in the world to be the decisive factor in deterring the

aggressive forces of imperialism from unleashing a world war
of annihilation. This mission the Soviet Union will continue to
discharge with all firmness and consistency." But "if the
aggressors unleash war, the Soviet Union will inflict the most
powerful blow in response." By implication, what the United
States Navy was doing, or even might do, was piracy so far, and
not war, and the "peace-loving states cannot but protest."14
The orientation was toward an American affront to Cuba, not
a Soviet-American confrontation. The key American demand
for the "prompt dismantling and withdrawal of all offensive
weapons in Cuba" before the quarantine could be lifted—that
is, the direct relation of President Kennedy's action to the
Soviet missiles—was not directly addressed. The Soviets chose
not to enhance their commitment to Cuba by construing the
United States action as one obliging a firm Soviet response;
they construed it as a Caribbean issue. Their language seemed
designed to dismantle an incomplete commitment rather than to
bolster it.
But just as one cannot incur a genuine commitment by purely
verbal means, one cannot get out of it with cheap words either.
Secretary Dulles in 1958 could not have said, "Quemoy? Who
cares about Quemoy? It's not worth fighting over, and our
defense perimeter will be neater without it." The United States
never did talk its way cleanly out of the Berlin wall business.
Even if the letter of our obligations was never violated, there are
bound to be some who think the spirit demanded more. We had
little obligation to intervene in Hungary in 1956, and the Suez
crisis confused and screened it. Nevertheless, there was a
possibility that the West might do something and it did not.
Maybe this was a convenience, clarifying an implicit under-
standing between East and West. But the cost was not zero.
If commitments could be undone by declaration they would
be worthless in the first place. The whole purpose of verbal or
14. David L. Larson, ed., The "Cuban Crisis" of 1962, Selected Documents
and Chronology (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1963), pp. 7-17, 41-46, 50-54.
66 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

ritualistic commitments, of political and diplomatic commit-

ments, of efforts to attach honor and reputation to a commit-
ment, is to make the commitment manifestly hard to get out of
on short notice. Even the commitments not deliberately in-
curred, and the commitments that embarrass one in unforeseen
circumstances, cannot be undone cheaply. The cost is the
discrediting of other commitments that one would still like to be
credited.15
If a country does want to get off the hook, to get out of a
commitment deliberately incurred or one that grew up unin-
tended, the opponent's cooperation can make a difference. The
Chinese Communists seemed not to be trying, from 1958 on, to
make it easy for the United States to decouple itself from
Quemoy. They maintained, and occasionally intensified, enough
military pressure on the island to make graceful withdrawal
difficult, to make withdrawal look like retreat under duress. Itis
hard to escape the judgment that they enjoyed American dis-
comfort over Quemoy, their own ability to stir things up at will
but to keep crises under their control, and their opportunity to
aggravate American differences with Chiang Kai-shek.
Circumventing an Adversary's Commitments
"Salami tactics," we can be sure, were invented by a child;
whoever first expounded the adult version had already under-
stood the principle when he was small. Tell a child not to go in
the water and he'll sit on the bank and submerge his bare feet;
15. The most eloquent rebuff I have come across is the answer the Romans
received from the Volciani in Spain, whom they tried to unite with other Spanish
cities against Carthage shortly after Rome had declined to defend the allied Spanish
town of Saguntum against Hannibal and it had been terribly destroyed. "Men of
Rome," said the eldest among them, "it seems hardly decent to ask us to prefer
your friendship to that of Carthage, considering the precedent of those who have
been rash enough to do so. Was not your betrayal of your friends in Saguntum
even more brutal than their destruction by their enemies the Carthaginians? I suggest
you look for allies in some spot where what happened to Saguntum has never
been heard of. The fall of that town will be a signal and melancholy warning
to the peoples of Spain never to count upon Roman friendship nor to trust Rome's
word." The War With Hannibal, Aubrey de Selincourt, transí. (Baltimore, Penguin
Books, 1965), p. 43.
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 67

he is not yet "in" the water. Acquiesce, and he'll stand up; no
more of him is in the water than before. Think it over, and he'll
start wading, not going any deeper; take a moment to decide
whether this is different and he'll go a little deeper, arguing that
since he goes back and forth it all averages out. Pretty soon we
are calling to him not to swim out of sight, wondering whatever
happened to all our discipline.
Most commitments are ultimately ambiguous in detail. Some-
times they are purposely so, as when President Eisenhower and
Secretary Dulles announced that an attack on Quemoy might or
might not trigger an American response under the "Formosa
Doctrine" according to whether or not it was interpreted as part
of an assault, or prelude to an assault, on Formosa itself. Even
more commitments are ambiguous because of the plain impos-
sibility of defining them in exact detail. There are areas of doubt
even in the most carefully drafted statutes and contracts; and
even people who most jealously guard their rights and privi-
leges have been known to settle out of court, to excuse an honest
mistake, or to overlook a minor transgression because of the
high cost of litigation. No matter how inviolate our commit-
ment to some border, we are unlikely to start a war the first time
a few drunken soldiers from the other side wander across the
line and "invade" our territory. And there is always the possi-
bility that some East German functionary on the Autobahn
really did not get the word, or his vehicle really did break down
in our lane of traffic. There is some threshold below which the
commitment is just not operative, and even that threshold itself
is usually unclear.
From this arises the low-level incident or probe, and tactics
of erosion. One tests the seriousness of a commitment by
probing it in a noncommittal way, pretending the trespass was
inadvertent or unauthorized if one meets resistance, both to
forestall the reaction and to avoid backing down. One stops a
convoy or overflies a border, pretending the incident was
accidental or unauthorized; but if there is no challenge, one
continues or enlarges the operation, setting a precedent, estab-
lishing rights of thoroughfare or squatters' rights, pushing the
68 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

commitment back or raising the threshold. The use of "volun-

teers" by Soviet countries to intervene in trouble spots was
usually an effort to sneak under the fence rather than climb over
it, not quite invoking the commitment, but simultaneously
making the commitment appear porous and infirm. And if there
is no sharp qualitative division between a minor transgression
and a major affront, but a continuous gradation of activity, one
can begin his intrusion on a scale too small to provoke a
reaction, and increase it by imperceptible degrees, never quite
presenting a sudden, dramatic challenge that would invoke the
committed response. Small violations of a truce agreement, for
example, become larger and larger, and the day never comes
when the camel's back breaks under a single straw.
The Soviets played this game in Cuba for a long time,
apparently unaware that the camel's back in that case could
stand only a finite weight (or hoping the camel would get
stronger and stronger as he got used to the weight). The Korean
War may have begun as a low-level incident that was hoped to
be beneath the American threshold of response, and the initial
American responses (before the introduction of ground troops)
may have been misjudged. Salami tactics do not always work.
The uncertainty in a commitment often invites a low-level or
noncommittal challenge; but uncertainty can work both ways.
If the committed country has a reputation for sometimes,
unpredictably, reacting where it need not, and not always
collaborating to minimize embarrassment, loopholes may be
less inviting. If one cannot get a reputation for always honoring
commitments in detail, because the details are ambiguous, it
may help to get a reputation for being occasionally unreason-
able. If one cannot buy clearly identifiable and fully reliable
trip-wires, an occasional booby trap placed at random may
serve somewhat the same purpose in the long run.
Landlords rarely evict tenants by strong-arm methods. They
have learned that steady cumulative pressures work just as well,
though more slowly, and avoid provoking a violent response. It
is far better to turn off the water and the electricity, and let the
tenant suffer the cumulative pressure of unflushed toilets and
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 69

candles at night and get out voluntarily, than to start manhan-

dling his family and his household goods. Blockade works
slowly; it puts the decision up to the other side. To invade
Berlin or Cuba is a sudden identifiable action, of an intensity
that demands response; but to cut off supplies does little the first
day and not much more the second; nobody dies or gets hurt
from the initial effects of a blockade. A blockade is compara-
tively passive; the eventual damage results as much from the
obstinacy of the blockaded territory as from the persistence of
the blockading power. And there is no well-defined moment
before which the blockading power may quail, for fear of
causing the ultimate collapse.
President Truman appreciated the value of this tactic in June
1945. French forces under de Gaulle' s leadership had occupied
a province in Northern Italy, contrary to Allied plans and
American policy. They announced that any effort of their allies
to dislodge them would be treated as a hostile act. The French
intended to annex the area as a "minor frontier adjustment." It
would have been extraordinarily disruptive of Allied unity, of
course, to expel the French by force of arms; arguments got
nowhere, so President Truman notified de Gaulle that no more
supplies would be issued to the French army until it had
withdrawn from the Aosta Valley. The French were absolutely
dependent on American supplies and the message brought
results. This was "nonhostile" pressure, not quite capable of
provoking a militant response, therefore safe to use (and effec-
tive). A given amount of coercive pressure exercised over an
extended period of time, allowed to accumulate its own mo-
mentum, is a common and effective technique of bypassing
somebody's commitment.
The Distinction Between Deterrence and "Compellence"
Blockade illustrates the typical difference between a threat
intended to make an adversary do something and a threat
intended to keep him from starting something. The distinction
is in the timing and in the initiative, in who has to make the first
move, in whose initiative is put to the test. To deter an enemy' s
70 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

advance it may be enough to burn the escape bridges behind me,

or to rig a trip-wire between us that automatically blows us both
up when he advances. To compel an enemy's retreat, though, by
some threat of engagement, I have to be committed to move.
(This requires setting fire to the grass behind me as I face the
enemy, with the wind blowing toward the enemy.) I can block
your car by placing mine in the way; my deterrent threat is
passive, the decision to collide is up to you. But if you find me in
your way and threaten to collide unless I move, you enjoy no
such advantage; the decision to collide is still yours, and I still
enjoy deterrence. You have to arrange to have to collide unless I
move, and that is a degree more complicated. You have to get up
so much speed that you cannot stop in time and that only I can
avert the collision; this may not be easy. If it takes more time to
start a car than to stop one, you may be unable to give me the
"last clear chance" to avoid collision by vacating the street.
The threat that compels rather than deters often requires that
the punishment be administered until the other acts, rather than
if he acts. This is because often the only way to become
committed to an action is to initiate it. This means, though, that
the action initiated has to be tolerable to the initiator, and
tolerable over whatever period of time is required for the
pressure to work on the other side. For deterrence, the trip-wire
can threaten to blow things up out of all proportion to what is
being protected, because if the threat works the thing never goes
off. But to hold a large bomb and threaten to throw it unless
somebody moves cannot work so well; the threat is not believ-
able until the bomb is actually thrown and by then the damage is
done.16
There is, then, a difference between deterrence and what we
16. A nice illustration occurs in the movie version of A High Wind in Jamaica.
The pirate captain, Chavez, wants his captive to tell where the money is hidden
and puts his knife to the man's throat to make him talk. After a moment or two,
during which the victim keeps his mouth shut, the mate laughs. "If you cut his
throat he can't tell you. He knows it. And he knows you know it." Chavez puts
his knife away and tries something else.
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 71

might, for want of a better word, call compellence. The

dictionary's definition of "deter" corresponds to contemporary
usage: to turn aside or discourage through fear; hence, to
prevent from action by fear of consequences. A difficulty with
our being an unaggressive nation, one whose announced aim
has usually been to contain rather than to roll back, is that we
have not settled on any conventional terminology for the more
active kind of threat. We have come to use "defense" as a
euphemism for "military," and have a Defense Department, a
defense budget, a defense program, and a defense establish-
ment; if we need the other word, though, the English language
provides it easily. It is "offense." We have no such obvious
counterpart to "deterrence." "Coercion" covers the meaning
but unfortunately includes "deterrent" as well as "compellent"
intentions. "Intimidation" is insufficiently focused on the
particular behavior desired. "Compulsion" is all right but its
adjective is "compulsive," and that has come to carry quite a
different meaning. "Compellence" is the best I can do.17
Deterrence and compellence differ in a number of respects,
most of them corresponding to something like the difference
between statics and dynamics. Deterrence involves setting the
stage—by announcement, by rigging the trip-wire, by incurring
the obligation—and waiting. The overt act is up to the oppo-
nent. The stage-setting can often be nonintrusive, nonhostile,
17. J. David Singer has used a nice pair of nouns, "persuasion" and "dissuasion,"
to make the same distinction. It is the adjectives that cause trouble; "persuasive"
is bound to suggest the adequacy or credibility of a threat, not the character of
its objective. Furthermore, "deterrent" is here to stay, at least in the English
language. Singer's breakdown goes beyond these two words and is a useful one;
he distinguishes whether the subject is desired to act or abstain, whether or not
he is presently acting or abstaining, and whether he is likely (in the absence of
threats and offers) to go on acting or abstaining. (If he is behaving, and is likely—
but not certain—to go on behaving, there can still be reason to "reinforce" his
motivation to behave.) Singer distinguishes also "rewards" and "penalties" as well
as threats and offers; while the rewards and "penalties" can be the consequences
of threats and offers, they can also be gratuitous, helping to communicate persuasively
some new and continuing threat or offer. See his article, "Inter-Nation Influence:
A Formal Model," American Political Science Review, 17 (1963), 420-30.
72 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

nonprovocative. The act that is intrusive, hostile, or provoca-

tive is usually the one to be deterred; the deterrent threat only
changes the consequences z/the act in question—the one to be
deterred—is then taken. Compellence, in contrast, usually
involves initiating an action (or an irrevocable commitment to
action) that can cease, or become harmless, only if the opponent
responds. The overt act, the first step, is up to the side that makes
the compellent threat. To deter, one digs in, or lays a minefield,
and waits—in the interest of inaction. To compel, one gets up
enough momentum (figuratively, but sometimes literally) to
make the other act to avoid collision.
Deterrence tends to be indefinite in its timing. "If you cross
the line we shoot in self-defense, or the mines explode." When?
Whenever you cross the line—preferably never, but the timing
is up to you. If you cross it, then is when the threat is fulfilled,
either automatically, if we' ve rigged it so, or by obligation that
immediately becomes due. But we can wait—preferably for-
ever; that's our purpose.
Compellence has to be definite: We move, and you must get
out of the way. By when? There has to be a deadline, otherwise
tomorrow never comes. If the action carries no deadline it is
only a posture, or a ceremony with no consequences. If the
compellent advance is like Zeno's tortoise that takes infinitely
long to reach the border by traversing, with infinite patience, the
infinitely small remaining distances that separate him from
collision, it creates no inducement to vacate the border.
Compellence, to be effective, can't wait forever. Still, it has to
wait a little; collision can't be instantaneous. The compellent
threat has to be put in motion to be credible, and then the victim
must yield. Too little time, and compliance becomes impos-
sible; too much time, and compliance becomes unnecessary.
Thus Compellence involves timing in a way that deterrence
typically does not.
In addition to the question of "when," Compellence usually
involves questions of where, what, and how much. "Do noth-
ing" is simple, "Do something" ambiguous. "Stop where you
are" is simple; "Go back" leads to "How far?" "Leave me
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 73

alone" is simple; "Cooperate" is inexact and open-ended. A

deterrent position—a status quo, in territory or in more figura-
tive terms—can often be surveyed and noted; a compellent
advance has to be projected as to destination, and the destina-
tion can be unclear in intent as well as in momentum and
braking power. In a deterrent threat, the objective is often
communicated by the very preparations that make the threat
credible; the trip-wire often demarcates the forbidden territory.
There is usually an inherent connection between what is threat-
ened and what it is threatened about. Compellent threats tend to
communicate only the general direction of compliance, and are
less likely to be self-limiting, less likely to communicate in the
very design of the threat just what, or how much, is demanded.
The garrison in West Berlin can hardly be misunderstood about
what it is committed to resist; if it ever intruded into East Berlin,
though, to induce Soviet or German Democratic Republic
forces to give way, there would be no such obvious interpreta-
tion of where and how much to give way unless the adventure
could be invested with some unmistakable goal or limitation—
a possibility not easily realized.
The Quemoy escapade is again a good example: Chiang's
troops, once on the island, especially if evacuation under fire
appeared infeasible, had the static clarity that goes with com-
mitment to an indefinite status quo, while the commitment just
to send troops to defend it (or air and naval support) according
to whether a Communist attack there was or was not prelude to
an attack on Formosa lacked that persuasive quality, reminding
us that though deterrent threats tend to have the advantages
mentioned above they do not always achieve them. (The
ambiguous case of Quemoy actually displays the compellent
ambiguity, seen in reverse: a "compellent" Communist move
against Quemoy was to be accommodated, as long as its extent
could be reliably projected to a terminus short of Formosa; if the
Communists thought we meant it, it was up to them to design an
action that visibly embodied that limitation.) An American or
NATO action to relieve Budapest in 1956—without major
engagement but in the hope the Soviets would give way rather
74 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

than fight—would have had the dynamic quality of

"compellence" in contrast to Berlin: the stopping point would
have been a variable, not a constant. Even "Budapest" would
have needed a definition, and might have become all of Hun-
gary—and after Hungary, what?—if the Soviets initially gave
way. The enterprise might have been designed to embody its
specific intent, but it would have taken a lot of designing backed
up by verbal assurances.
Actually, any coercive threat requires corresponding assur-
ances; the object of a threat is to give somebody a choice. To
say, "One more step and I shoot," can be a deterrent threat only
if accompanied by the implicit assurance, "And if you stop I
won't." Giving notice of unconditional intent to shoot gives
him no choice (unless by behaving as we wish him to behave the
opponent puts himself out of range, in which case the effective
threat is, "Come closer and my fire will kill you, stay back and it
won't"). What was said above about deterrent threats being
typically less ambiguous in intent can be restated: the corre-
sponding assurances—the ones that, together with the threat-
ened response, define the opponent's choice—are clearer than
those that can usually be embodied in a compellent action.
(Ordinary blackmailers, not just nuclear, find the "assurances"
troublesome when their threats are compellent.)18
They are, furthermore, confirmed and demonstrated over
time; as long as he stays back, and we don't shoot, we fulfill the
assurances and confirm them. The assurances that accompany a
compellent action—move back a mile and I won't shoot (other-
wise I shall) and I won't then try again for a second mile—are
18. The critical role of "assurances" in completing the structure of a threat, in making
the threatened consequences persuasively conditional on behavior so that the victim is
offered a choice, shows up in the offers of amnesty, safe passage, or forgiveness that
must often be made credible in inducing the surrender of rebels or the capitulation of
strikers or protesters. Even libraries and internal revenue agencies depend on parallel offers
of forgiveness when they embark on campaigns to coerce the return of books or payment
of back taxes. In personal life I have sometimes relied, like King Lear, on the vague
threat that my wrath will be aroused (with who knows what awful consequences) if good
behavior is not forthcoming, making a tentative impression on one child, only to have
the threat utterly nullified by another's pointing out that "Daddy's mad already."
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 75

harder to demonstrate in advance, unless it be through a long

past record of abiding by one's own verbal assurances.
Because in the West we deal mainly in deterrence, not com-
pellence, and deterrent threats tend to convey their assurances
implicitly, we often forget that both sides of the choice, the
threatened penalty and the proffered avoidance or reward,
need to be credible. The need for assurances—not just verbal
but fully credible—emerges clearly as part of "deterrence" in
discussions of surprise attack and "preemptive war." An
enemy belief that we are about to attack anyway, not after he
does but possibly before, merely raises his incentive to do what
we wanted to deter and to do it even more quickly. When we do
engage in compellence, as in the Cuban crisis or in punitive at-
tacks on North Vietnam that are intended to make the North
Vietnamese government act affirmatively, the assurances are a
critical part of the definition of the compellent threat.
One may deliberately choose to be unclear and to keep the
enemy guessing either to keep his defenses less prepared or to
enhance his anxiety. But if one wants not to leave him in doubt
about what will satisfy us, we have to find credible ways of com-
municating, and communicating both what we want and what
we do not want. There is a tendency to emphasize the commu-
nication of what we shall do if he misbehaves and to give too
little emphasis to communicating wtobehavior will satisfy us.
Again, this is natural when deterrence is our business, because
the prohibited misbehavior is often approximately defined in the
threatened response; but when we must start something that
then has to be stopped, as in compellent actions, it is both
harder and more important to know our aims and to communi-
cate. It is particularly hard because the mere initiation of an en-
ergetic coercive campaign, designed for compellence, disturbs
the situation, leads to surprises, and provides opportunity and
temptation to reexamine our aims and change them in mid
course. Deterrence, if wholly successful, can often afford to con-
centrate on the initiating events—what happens next if he mis-
behaves. Compellence, to be successful, involves an action that
must be brought to successful closure. The payoff comes at the
end, as does the disaster if the project fails.
76 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

The compellent action will have a time schedule of its own,

and unless it is carefully chosen it may not be reconcilable with
the demands that are attached to it. We cannot usefully threaten
to bomb Cuba next Thursday unless the Russians are out by
next month, or conduct a six weeks' bombing campaign in
North Vietnam and stop it when the Vietcong have been
quiescent for six months. There will be limits, probably, to how
long the compellent action can be sustained without costing or
risking too much, or exhausting itself or the opponent so that he
has nothing left to lose. If it cannot induce compliance within
that time—and this depends on whether compliance is physi-
cally or administratively feasible within that time—it cannot
accomplish anything (unless the objective was only an excuse
for some act of conquest or punishment). The compellent ac-
tion has to be one that can be stopped or reversed when the
enemy complies, or else there is no inducement.
If the opponent's compliance necessarily takes time—if it is
sustained good behavior, cessation of an activity that he must
not resume, evacuation of a place he must not reenter, payment
of tribute over an extended period, or some constructive activity
that takes time to accomplish—the compellent threat requires
some commitment, pledge, or guarantee, or some hostage, or
else must be susceptible of being resumed or repeated itself.
Particularly in a crisis, a Cuban crisis or a Vietnamese crisis,
there is strong incentive to get compliance quickly to limit the
risk or damage. Just finding conditions that can be met on the
demanding time schedule of a dangerous crisis is not easy. The
ultimate demands, the objectives that the compellent threat is
really aimed at, may have to be achieved indirectly, by taking
pledges or hostages that can be used to coerce compliance after
the pressure has been relieved.19 Of course, if some kind of
19. Lord Portal's account of the coercive bombing of the villages of recalcitrant
Arab tribesmen (after warning to permit evacuation) includes the terms that were
demanded. Among them were hostages—literal hostages, people—as well as a fine;
otherwise the demand was essentially cessation of the raids or other misbehavior
that had brought on the bombing. The hostages were apparently partly to permit
subsequent enforcement without repeated bombing, partly to symbolize, together
with the fine, the tribe's intent to comply. See Portal, "Air Force Cooperation in
Policing the Empire," pp. 343-58.
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 77

surrender statement or acknowledgement of submission, some

symbolic knuckling under, will itself achieve the object, verbal
compliance may be enough. It is inherent in an intense crisis
that the conditions for bringing it to a close have to be of a kind
that can be met quickly; that is what we mean by an "intense
crisis," one that compresses risk, pain, or cost into a short span
of time or that involves actions that cannot be sustained indefi-
nitely. If we change our compellent threat from slow pressure to
intense, we have to change our demands to make them fit the
urgent timing of a crisis.
Notice that to deter continuance of something the opponent
is already doing—harassment, overflight, blockade, occupation
of some island or territory, electronic disturbance, subversive
activity, holding prisoners, or whatever it may be—has some of
the character of a compellent threat. This is especially so of the
timing, of who has to take the initiative. In the more static case
we want him to go on not doing something; in this more dy-
namic case we want him to change his behavior. The "when"
problem arises in compelling him to stop, and the compellent
action may have to be initiated, not held in waiting like the de-
terrent threat. The problems of "how much" may not arise if it
is some discrete, well defined activity. "At all" may be the obvi-
ous answer. For U-2 flights or fishing within a twelve-mile limit,
that may be the case; for subversive activity or support to in-
surgents, "at all" may itself be ambiguous because the activity is
complex, ill defined, and hard to observe or attribute.
Blockade, harassment, and "salami tactics" can be interpreted
as ways of evading the dangers and difficulties of compel-
lence. Blockade in a cold war sets up a tactical "status quo"
that is damaging in the long run but momentarily safe for both
sides unless the victim tries to run the blockade. President Ken-
nedy's overt act of sending the fleet to sea, in "quarantine" of
Cuba in October 1962, had some of the quality of deterrent
"stage setting"; the Soviet government then had about forty-
eight hours to instruct its steamers whether or not to seek
collision. Low-level intrusion, as discussed earlier, can be a way
of letting the opponent turn his head and yield a little, or it can
be a way of starting a compellent action in low gear, without the
78 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

conviction that goes with greater momentum but also without

the greater risk. Instead of speeding out of control toward our
car that blocks his way, risking our inability to see him and get
our engines started in time to clear his path, he approaches
slowly and nudges fenders, crushing a few lights and cracking
some paint. If we yield he can keep it up, if not he can cut his
losses. And if he makes it look accidental, or can blame it on an
impetuous chauffeur, he may not even lose countenance in the
unsuccessful try.
Defense and Deterrence, Offense and Compellence
The observation that deterrent threats are often passive, while
compellent threats often have to be active, should not be
pressed too far. Sometimes a deterrent threat cannot be made
credible in advance, and the threat has to be made lively when
the prohibited action is undertaken. This is where defense and
deterrence may merge, forcible defense being undertaken in
the hope, perhaps with the main purpose, of demonstrating by
resistance that the conquest will be costly, even if successful,
too costly to be worthwhile. The idea of "graduated deterrence"
and much of the argument for a conventional warfare capability
in Europe are based on the notion that if passive deterrence
initially fails, the more active kind may yet work. If the enemy
act to be deterred is a once-for-all action, incapable of with-
drawal, rather than progressive over time, any failure of deter-
rence is complete and final; there is no second chance. But if the
aggressive move takes time, if the adversary did not believe he
would meet resistance or did not appreciate how costly it would
be, one can still hope to demonstrate that the threat is in force,
after he begins. If he expected no opposition, encountering
some may cause him to change his mind.
There is still a distinction here between forcible defense and
defensive action intended to deter. If the object, and the only
hope, is to resist successfully, so that the enemy cannot succeed
even if he tries, we can call it pure defense. If the object is to
induce him not to proceed, by making his encroachment painful
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 79

or costly, we can call it a "coercive" or "deterrent" defense. The

language is clumsy but the distinction is valid. Resistance that
might otherwise seem futile can be worthwhile if, though in-
capable of blocking aggression, it can nevertheless threaten to
make the cost too high. This is "active" or "dynamic" deter-
rence, deterrence in which the threat is communicated by pro-
gressive fulfillment. At the other extreme is forcible defense
with good prospect of blocking the opponent but little promise
of hurting; this would be purely defensive.
Defensive action may even be undertaken with no serious
hope of repelling or deterring enemy action but with a view to
making a "successful" conquest costly enough to deter repeti-
tion by the same opponent or anyone else. This is of course the
rationale for reprisals after the fact; they cannot undo the deed
but can make the books show a net loss and reduce the incen-
tive next time. Defense can sometimes get the same point
across, as the Swiss demonstrated in the fifteenth century by the
manner in which they lost battles as well as by the way they
sometimes won them. "The [Swiss] Confederates were able to
reckon their reputation for obstinate and invincible courage as
one of the chief causes which gave them political importance.
. . . It was no light matter to engage with an enemy who would
not retire before any superiority in numbers, who was always
ready for a fight, who would neither give nor take quarter."20 The
Finns demonstrated five hundred years later that the princi-
ple still works. The value of local resistance is not measured
solely by local success. This idea of what we might call
"punitive resistance" could have been part of the rationale for
the American commitment of forces in Vietnam.21
"Compellence" is more like "offense." Forcible offense is
taking something, occupying a place, or disarming an enemy or
a territory, by some direct action that the enemy is unable to
block. "Compellence" is inducing his withdrawal, or his ac-
20. C.W.C. Oman, The Art of War in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, Cornell University
Press, 1953), p. 96.
21. An alternative, but not inconsistent, treatment of some of these distinctions
is in Glenn H. Snyder, Deterrence and Defense (Princeton, Princeton University
Press, 1961), pp. 5-7, 9-16, 24-40.
80 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

quiescence, or his collaboration by an action that threatens to

hurt, often one that could not forcibly accomplish its aim but
that, nevertheless, can hurt enough to induce compliance. The
forcible and the coercive are both present in a campaign that
could reach its goal against resistance, and would be worth the
cost, but whose cost is nevertheless high enough so that one
hopes to induce compliance, or to deter resistance, by making
evident the intent to proceed. Forcible action, as mentioned in
Chapter 1, is limited to what can be accomplished without
enemy collaboration; compellent threats can try to induce more
affirmative action, including the exercise of authority by an
enemy to bring about the desired results.
War itself, then, can have deterrent or compellent intent, just
as it can have defensive or offensive aims. A war in which both
sides can hurt each other but neither can forcibly accomplish its
purpose could be compellent on one side, deterrent on the other.
Once an engagement starts, though, the difference between
deterrence and compellence, like the difference between de-
fense and offense, may disappear. There can be legal and moral
reasons, as well as historical reasons, for recalling the status quo
ante; but if territory is in dispute, the strategies for taking it,
holding it, or recovering it may not much differ as between the
side that originally possessed it and the side that coveted it, once
the situation has become fluid. (In a local tactical sense,
American forces were often on the "defensive" in North Korea
and on the "offensive" in South Korea.) The coercive aspect of
warfare may be equally compellent on both sides, the only
difference perhaps being that the demands of the defender, the
one who originally possessed what is in dispute, may be clearly
defined by the original boundaries, whereas the aggressor's
demands may have no such obvious definition.
The Cuban crisis is a good illustration of the fluidity that sets
in once passive deterrence has failed. The United States made
verbal threats against the installation of weapons in Cuba but
apparently some part of the threat was unclear or lacked
credibility and it was transgressed. The threat lacked the autom-
aticity that would make it fully credible, and without some
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 81

automaticity it may not be clear to either side just where the

threshold is. Nor was it physically easy to begin moderate
resistance after the Russians had crossed the line, and to
increase the resistance progressively to show that the United
States meant it. By the time the President determined to resist,
he was no longer in a deterrent position and had to embark on
the more complicated business of compellence. The Russian
missiles could sit waiting, and so could Cuban defense forces;
the next overt act was up to the President. The problem was to
prove to the Russians that a potentially dangerous action was
forthcoming, without any confidence that verbal threats would
be persuasive and without any desire to initiate some irrevers-
ible process just to prove, to everybody's grief, that the United
States meant what it said.
The problem was to find some action that would communi-
cate the threat, an action that would promise damage if the
Russians did not comply but minimum damage if they com-
plied quickly enough, and an action that involved enough
momentum or commitment to put the next move clearly up to
the Russians. Any overt act against a well-defended island
would be abrupt and dramatic; various alternatives were appar-
ently considered, and in the end an action was devised that had
many of the virtues of static deterrence. A blockade was thrown
around the island, a blockade that by itself could not make the
missiles go away. The blockade did, however, threaten a minor
military confrontation with major diplomatic stakes—an en-
counter between American naval vessels and Soviet merchant
ships bound for Cuba. Once in place, the Navy was in a position
to wait; it was up to the Russians to decide whether to continue.
If Soviet ships had been beyond recall, the blockade would have
been a preparation for inevitable engagement; with modern
communications the ships were not beyond recall, and the
Russians were given the last clear chance to turn aside. Physi-
cally the Navy could have avoided an encounter; diplomati-
cally, the declaration of quarantine and the dispatch of the Navy
meant that American evasion of the encounter was virtually out
of the question. For the Russians, the diplomatic cost of turning
82 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

freighters around, or even letting one be examined, proved not

to be prohibitive.
Thus an initial deterrent threat failed, a compellent threat was
called for, and by good fortune one could be found that had
some of the static qualities of a deterrent threat.22
There is another characteristic of compellent threats, arising
in the need for affirmative action, that often distinguishes them
from deterrent threats. It is that the very act of compliance—of
doing what is demanded—is more conspicuously compliant,
more recognizable as submission under duress, than when an
act is merely withheld in the face of a deterrent threat. Compli-
ance is likely to be less casual, less capable of being rationalized
as something that one was going to do anyhow. The Chinese did
not need to acknowledge that they shied away from Quemoy or
Formosa because of American threats, and the Russians need
not have agreed that it was NATO that deterred them from
conquering Western Europe, and no one can be sure. Indeed, if
a deterrent threat is created before the proscribed act is even
contemplated, there need never be an explicit decision not to
transgress, just an absence of any temptation to do the thing
prohibited. The Chinese still say they will take Quemoy in their
own good time; and the Russians go on saying that their
intentions against Western Europe were never aggressive.
The Russians cannot, though, claim that they were on the
point of removing their missiles from Cuba anyway, and that
the President's television broadcast, the naval quarantine and
22. Arnold Horelick agrees with this description. "As an initial response the
quarantine was considerably less than a direct application of violence, but considerably
more than a mere protest or verbal threat. The U.S. Navy placed itself physically
between Cuba and Soviet ships bound for Cuban ports. Technically, it might still
have been necessary for the United States to fire the first shot had Khrushchev
chosen to defy the quarantine, though other means of preventing Soviet penetration
might have been employed. But once the quarantine was effectively established—
which was done with great speed—it was Khrushchev who had to make the next
key decision: whether or not to risk releasing the trip-wire." "The Cuban Missile
Crisis," World Politics, 16 (1964), 385. This article and the Adelphi Paper of
Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter mentioned in an earlier note are the best strategic
evaluations of the Cuban affair that I have discovered.
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 83

threats of more violent action, had no effect.23 If the North

Vietnamese dramatically issue a call to the Vietcong to cease
activity and to evacuate South Vietnam, it is a conspicuous act
of submission. If the Americans had evacuated Guantanamo
when Castro turned off the water, it would have been a con-
spicuous act of submission. If an earthquake or change in the
weather had caused the water supply to dry up at Guantanamo,
and if the Americans had found it wholly uneconomical to
supply the base by tanker, they might have quit the place
without seeming to submit to Castro's cleverness or seeming
afraid to take reprisals against their ungracious host. Similarly,
the mere act of bombing North Vietnam changed the status of
any steps that the North Vietnamese might take to comply with
American wishes. It can increase their desire, if the tactic is
successful, to reduce support for the Vietcong; but it also
increases the cost of doing so. Secretary Dulles used to say that
while we had no vital interest in Quemoy we could not afford to
evacuate under duress; intensified Chinese pressure always led
to intensified determination to resist it.24
If the object is actually to impose humiliation, to force a
showdown and to get an acknowledgement of submission, then
the "challenge" that is often embodied in an active compellent
threat is something to be exploited. President Kennedy un-
doubtedly wanted some conspicuous compliance by the Soviet
Union during the Cuban missile crisis, if only to make clear to
the Russians themselves that there were risks in testing how
much the American government would absorb such ventures.
In Vietnam the problem appeared the opposite; what was most
23. The tendency for affirmative action to appear compliant is vividly illustrated
by the widespread suspicion—one that could not be effectively dispelled—that
the U.S. missiles removed from Turkey in the wake of the Cuban crisis were
part of a bargain, tacit if not explicit.
24. Almost everyone in America, surely including the President and the Secretary
of State, would have been relieved in the late 1950s if an earthquake or volcanic
action had caused Quemoy to sink slowly beneath the surface of the sea. Evacuation
would then not have been retreat, and an unsought commitment that had proved
peculiarly susceptible to Communist China's manipulation would have been disposed
of. Such is the intrinsic value of some territories that have to be defended!
84 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

urgently desired was to reduce the support for the Vietcong

from the North, and any tendency for the compellent pressure of
bombing to produce a corresponding resistance would have
been deprecated. But it cannot always be avoided, and if it
cannot, the compellent threat defeats itself.
Skill is required to devise a compellent action that does not
have this self-defeating quality. There is an argument here for
sometimes not being too explicit or too open about precisely
what is demanded, if the demands can be communicated more
privately and noncommittally. President Johnson was widely
criticized in the press, shortly after the bombing attacks began
in early 1965, for not having made his objectives entirely clear.
How could the North Vietnamese comply if they did not know
exactly what was wanted? Whatever the reason for the Ameri-
can Administration's being somewhat inexplicit—whether it
chose to be inexplicit, did not know how to be explicit, or in fact
was explicit but only privately—an important possibility is that
vague demands, though hard to understand, can be less embar-
rassing to comply with. If the President had to be so explicit that
any European journalist knew exactly what he demanded, and if
the demands were concrete enough to make compliance recog-
nizable when it occurred, any compliance by the North Viet-
namese regime would necessarily have been fully public,
perhaps quite embarrassingly so. The action could not be
hidden nor the motive so well disguised as if the demands were
more privately communicated or left to inference by the North
Vietnamese.
Another serious possibility is suggested by the North Viet-
namese case: that the initiator of a compellent campaign is not
himself altogether sure of what action he wants, or how the result
that he wants can be brought about. In the Cuban missile case it
was perfectly clear what the United States government wanted,
clear that the Soviets had the ability to comply, fairly clear how
quickly it could be done, and reasonably clear how compliance
might be monitored and verified, though in the end there might
be some dispute about whether the Russians had left behind
things they were supposed to remove. In the Vietnamese case,
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 85

we can suppose that the United States government did not know
in detail just how much control or influence the North Vietnam-
ese regime had over the Vietcong; and we can even suppose that
the North Vietnamese regime itself might not have been alto-
gether sure how much influence it would have in commanding a
withdrawal or in sabotaging the movement that had received its
moral and material support. The United States government.may
not have been altogether clear on which kinds of North Viet-
namese help—logistical help, training facilities, sanctuary for
the wounded, sanctuary for intelligence and planning activities,
communications relay facilities, technical assistance, advisors
and combat leaders in the field, political and doctrinal assis-
tance, propaganda, moral support or anything else—were most
effective and essential, or most able to be withdrawn on short
notice with decisive effects. And possibly the North Vietnam-
ese did not know. The American government may have been in
the position of demanding results not specific actions, leav-
ing it to the North Vietnamese through overt acts, or merely
through reduced support and enthusiasm, to weaken the Viet-
cong or to let it lose strength. Not enough is known publicly to
permit us to judge this Vietnamese instance; but it points up the
important possibility that a compellent threat may have to be
focused on results rather than contributory deeds, like the fa-
ther's demand that his son's school grades be improved, or the
extortionist's demand, "Get me money. I don't care how you
get it, just get it." A difficulty, of course, is that results are more
a matter of interpretations than deeds usually are. Whenever a
recipient of foreign aid, for example, is told that it must elimi-
nate domestic corruption, improve its balance of payments, or
raise the quality of its civil service, the results tend to be uncer-
tain, protracted, and hard to attribute. The country may try to
comply and fail; with luck it may succeed without trying; it may
have indifferent success that is hard to judge; in any case com-
pliance is usually arguable and often visible only in retrospect.
Even more than deterrence, compellence requires that we
recognize the difference between an individual and a govern-
ment. To coerce an individual it may be enough to persuade
86 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

him to change his mind; to coerce a government it may not be

necessary, but it also may not be sufficient, to cause individuals
to change their minds. What may be required is some change in
the complexion of the government itself, in the authority, pres-
tige, or bargaining power of particular individuals or factions or
parties, some shift in executive or legislative leadership. The
Japanese surrender of 1945 was marked as much by changes in
the structure of authority and influence within the government
as by changes in attitude on the part of individuals. The victims
of coercion, or the individuals most sensitive to coercive threats,
may not be directly in authority; or they may be hopelessly
committed to non-compliant policies. They may have to bring
bureaucratic skill or political pressure to bear on individuals
who do exercise authority, or go through processes that shift
authority or blame to others. In the extreme case governing
authorities may be wholly unsusceptible to coercion—may, as
a party or as individuals, have everything to lose and little to
save by yielding to coercive threats—and actual revolt may be
essential to the process of compliance, or sabotage or assassina-
tion. Hitler was uncoercible; some of his generals were not, but
they lacked organization and skill and failed in their plot. For
working out the incentive structure of a threat, its communica-
tion requirements and its mechanism, analogies with individu-
als are helpful; but they are counterproductive if they make us
forget that a government does not reach a decision in the same
way as an individual in a government. Collective decision
depends on the internal politics and bureaucracy of govern-
ment, on the chain of command and on lines of communication,
on party structures and pressure groups, as well as on individual
values and careers. This affects the speed of decision, too.
"Connectedness" in Compellent Threats
As mentioned earlier, a deterrent threat usually enjoys some
connectedness between the proscribed action and the threatened
response. The connection is sometimes a physical one, as when
troops are put in Berlin to defend Berlin. Compellent actions often
have a less well-defined connectedness; and the question
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 87

arises whether they ought to be connected at all. If the object is

to harass, to blockade, to scare or to inflict pain or damage until
an adversary complies, why cannot the connection be made
verbally? If the Russians want Pan-American Airways to stop
using the air corridor to Berlin, why can they not harass the
airline on its Pacific routes, announcing that harassment will
continue until the airline stops flying to Berlin? When the
Russians put missiles in Cuba, why cannot the President quar-
antine Vladivostok, stopping Soviet ships outside, say, a twelve-
mile limit, or perhaps denying them access to the Suez or
Panama Canal? And if the Russians had wanted to counter the
President's quarantine of Cuba, why could they not blockade
Norway?25
A hasty answer may be that it just is not done, or is not
"justified," as though connectedness implied justice, or as
though justice were required for effectiveness. Surely that is
part of the answer; there is a legalistic or diplomatic, perhaps a
casuistic, propensity to keep things connected, to keep the
threat and the demand in the same currency, to do what seems
reasonable. But why be reasonable, if results are what one
25. It has often been said that American tactical superiority and ease of access
in the Caribbean (coupled with superiority in strategic weaponry) account for the
success in inducing evacuation of the Soviet missiles. Surely that was crucial; but
equally significant was the universal tendency—a psychological phenomenon, a tradition
or convention shared by Russians and Americans—to define the conflict in Caribbean
terms, not as a contest, say, in the blockade of each other's island allies, not as
a counterpart of their position in Berlin, not as a war of harassment against strategic
weapons outside national borders. The countermeasures and counterpressures available
to the Russians might have looked very different to the "Russian" side if this had
been a game on an abstract board rather than an event in historical time in a particular
part of the real world. The Russians tried (as did some unhelpful Americans) to find
a connection between Soviet missiles in Cuba and American missiles in Turkey, but
the connection was evidently not persuasive enough for the Russians to be confident
that, if the dispute led to military action or pressure against Turkey, that definition
would hold and things would go no further. The Caribbean definition had more coherence
or integrity than a Cuban-Turkish definition would have had, or, in terms of reciprocal
blockade, a Cuban-United Kingdom definition would have had. The risk of further
metastasis must have inhibited any urge to let the crisis break out of its original
Caribbean definition.
88 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

wants? Habit, tradition, or some psychological compulsion

may explain this connectedness, but it has to be asked whether
they make it wise.
There are undoubtedly some good reasons for designing a
compellent campaign that is connected with the compliance
desired. One is that it helps to communicate the threat itself; it
creates less uncertainty about what is demanded, what pressure
will be kept up until the demands are complied with and then
relaxed once they are. Actions not only speak louder than words
on many occasions, but like words they can speak clearly or
confusingly. To the extent that actions speak, it helps if they
reinforce the message rather than confuse it.
Second, if the object is to induce compliance and not to start a
spiral of reprisals and counteractions, it is helpful to show the
limits to what one is demanding, and this can often be best
shown by designing a campaign that distinguishes what is
demanded from all the other objectives that one might have
been seeking but is not. To harass aircraft in the Berlin air
corridor communicates that polar flights are not at issue; to
harass polar flights while saying that it is punishment for flying
in the Berlin corridor does not so persuasively communicate
that the harassment will stop when the Berlin flights stop, or that
the Russians will not think of a few other favors they would like
from the airline before they call off their campaign. Most of the
problems of defining the threat and the demands that go with it,
of offering assurance about what is not demanded and of
promising cessation once compliance is forthcoming, are ag-
gravated if there is no connection between the compellent
action (or the threat of it) and the issue being bargained over.
The same question can arise with deterrent threats; some-
times they lack connectedness. To threaten the Chinese main-
land in the event of an overland attack on India has a minimum
of connectedness. If the threatened response is massive enough,
though, it may seem to comprise or to include the local area and
not merely to depart from it. But it often lacks some of the
credibility, through automatic involvement, that can be achieved
by connecting the response physically to the provocation itself.
Contingent actions—not actions initiated to induce compliance,
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 89

ut actions threatened against potential provocation—often need

the credibility that connectedness can give them.
Connectedness in fact provides something of a scheme for
classifying compellent threats and actions. The ideal compellent
action would be one that, once initiated, causes minimal harm if
compliance is forthcoming and great harm if compliance is not
forthcoming, is consistent with the time schedule of feasible
compliance, is beyond recall once initiated, and cannot be
stopped by the party that started it but automatically stops upon
compliance, with all this fully understood by the adversary. Only
he can avert the consequences; he can do it only by complying;
and compliance automatically precludes them. His is then the
"last clear chance" to avert the harm or catastrophe; and it would
not even matter which of the two most feared the consequences
as long as the adversary knew that only he, by complying, could
avert them. (Of course, whatever is demanded of him must be
less unattractive to him than the threatened consequences, and
the manner of threatened compliance must not entail costs in
prestige, reputation, or self-respect that outweigh the threat.)
It is hard to find significant international events that have this
perfectionist quality. There are situations, among cars on high-
ways or in bureaucratic bargaining or domestic politics, where
one comes across such ideal compellent threats; but they usually
involve physical constraints or legal arrangements that tie the
hand of the initiator in a way that is usually not possible in
international relations. Still, if we include actions that the initia-
tor can physically recall but not without intolerable cost, so that it
is evident he would not go back even if it is equally clear that he
could, we can find some instances. An armed convoy on a Berlin
Autobahn may sometimes come close to having this quality.
A degree less satisfactory is the compellent action of which the
consequences can be averted by either side, by the initiator's
changing his mind just in time or by his adversary's compliance.
Because he can stop before the consequences mount up, this type
of compellent action may be less risky for the party that starts it;
there is a means of escape, though it may become a test of
nerves, or a test of endurance, each side hoping the other will
90 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

back down, both sides possibly waiting too long. The escape
hatch is an asset if one discovers along the way that the
compellent attempt was a mistake after all—one misjudged the
adversary, or formulated an impossible demand, or failed to
communicate what he was doing and what he was after. The
escape hatch is an embarrassment, though, if the adversary
knows it is there; he can suppose, or hope, that the initiator will
turn aside before the risk or pain mounts up.
Still another type is the action that, though beyond recall by
the initiator, does not automatically stop upon the victim's
compliance. Compliance is a necessary condition for stopping
the damage but not sufficient, and if the damage falls mainly on
the adversary, he has to consider what other demands will attach
to the same compellent action once he has complied with the
initial demands. The initiator may have to promise persuasively
that he will stop on compliance, but stoppage is not automatic.
Once the missiles are gone from Cuba we may have after-
thoughts about antiaircraft batteries and want them removed
too before we call off the quarantine or stop the flights.
Finally, there is the action that only the initiator can stop, but
can stop any time with or without compliance, a quite "uncon-
nected" action.
In all of these cases the facts may be misperceived by one
party or both, with the danger that each may think the other can
in fact avert the consequences, or one may fail to do so in the
mistaken belief that the other has the last clear chance to avert
collision. These different compellent mechanisms, which of
course are more blurred and complex in any actual case, usually
depend on what the connection is between the threat and the
demand—a connection that can be physical, territorial, legal,
symbolic, electronic, political, or psychological.
Compellence and Brinkmanship
Another important distinction is between compellent actions
that inflict steady pressure over time, with cumulative pain or
damage to the adversary (and perhaps to oneself), and actions
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 91

that impose risk rather than damage. Turning off the water
supply at Guantanamo creates a finite rate of privation over
time. Buzzing an airplane in the Berlin corridor does no harm
unless the planes collide; they probably will not collide but they
may and if they do the result is sudden, dramatic, irreversible,
and grave enough to make even a small probability a serious
one.
The creation of risk—usually a shared risk—is the technique
of compellence that probably best deserves the name of "brink-
manship." It is a competition in risk-taking. It involves setting
afoot an activity that may get out of hand, initiating a process
that carries some risk of unintended disaster. The risk is in-
tended, but not the disaster. One cannot initiate certain disaster
as a profitable way of putting compellent pressure on someone,
but one can initiate a moderate risk of mutual disaster if the
other party's compliance is feasible within a short enough pe-
riod to keep the cumulative risk within tolerable bounds.
"Rocking the boat" is a good example. If I say, "Row, or I'll tip
the boat over and drown us both," you'll not believe me. I can-
not actually tip the boat over to make you row. But if I start
rocking the boat so that it may tip over—not because I want it to
but because I do not completely control things once I start
rocking the boat—you' 11 be more impressed. I have to be will-
ing to take the risk; then I still have to win the war of nerves,
unless I can arrange it so that only you can steady the boat
by rowing where I want you to. But it does lend itself to compel-
lence, because one may be able to create a coercive risk of grave
consequences where he could not profitably take a deliberate
step to bring about those consequences, or even credibly
threaten that he would. This phenomenon is the subject of the
chapter that follows.
 3
THE MANIPULATION
OF RISK

If all threats were fully believable (except for the ones that
were completely unbelievable) we might live in a strange world
—perhaps a safe one, with many of the marks of a world based
on enforceable law. Countries would hasten to set up their
threats; and if the violence that would accompany infraction
were confidently expected, and sufficiently dreadful to outweigh
the fruits of transgression, the world might get frozen into a set
of laws enforced by what we could figuratively call the Wrath of
God. If we could threaten world inundation for any encroach-
ment on the Berlin corridor, and everyone believed it and un-
derstood precisely what crime would bring about the deluge, it
might not matter whether the whole thing were arranged by
human or supernatural powers. If there were no uncertainty
about what would and would not set off the violence, and if
everyone could avoid accidentally overstepping the bounds,
and if we and the Soviets (and everybody else) could avoid
making simultaneous and incompatible threats, every nation
would have to live within the rules set up by its adversary. And
if all the threats depended on some kind of physical positioning
of territorial claims, trip-wires, troop barriers, automatic alarm
systems, and other such arrangements, and all were completely
infallible and fully credible, we might have something like an
old fashioned western land rush, at the end of which—as long
as nobody tripped on his neighbor's electric fence and set the
whole thing off—the world would be carved up into a tightly
bound status quo. The world would be full of literal and figura-
tive frontiers and thresholds that nobody in his right mind
would cross.
92
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 93

But uncertainty exists. Not everybody is always in his right

mind. Not all the frontiers and thresholds are precisely defined,
fully reliable, and known to be so beyond the least temptation
to test them out, to explore for loopholes, or to take a chance
that they may be disconnected this time. Violence, especially
war, is a confused and uncertain activity, highly unpredictable,
depending on decisions made by fallible human beings orga-
nized into imperfect governments, depending on fallible com-
munications and warning systems and on the untested perfor-
mance of people and equipment. It is furthermore a hotheaded
activity, in which commitments and reputations can develop a
momentum of their own.
This last is particularly true, because what one does today in
a crisis affects what one can be expected to do tomorrow. A
government never knows just how committed it is to action until
the occasion when its commitment is challenged. Nations, like
people, are continually engaged in demonstrations of resolve,
tests of nerve, and explorations for understandings and misun-
derstandings.
One never quite knows in the course of a diplomatic confron-
tation how opinion will converge on signs of weakness. One
never quite knows what exits will begin to look cowardly to
oneself or to the bystanders or to one's adversary. It would be
possible to get into a situation in which either side felt that to
yield now would create such an asymmetrical situation, would
be such a gratuitous act of surrender, that whoever backed
down could not persuade anybody that he wouldn't yield again
tomorrow and the day after.
This is why there is a genuine risk of major war not from
"accidents" in the military machine but through a diplomatic
process of commitment that is itself unpredictable. The unpre-
dictability is not due solely to what a destroyer commander
might do at midnight when he comes across a Soviet (or Ameri-
can) freighter at sea, but to the psychological process by which
particular things become identified with courage or appease-
ment or how particular things get included in or left out of a
diplomatic package. Whether the removal of their missiles from
94 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

Cuba while leaving behind 15,000 troops is a "defeat" for the

Soviets or a "defeat" for the United States depends more on
how it is construed than on the military significance of the
troops, and the construction placed on the outcome is not easily
foreseeable.
The resulting international relations often have the character
of a competition in risk taking, characterized not so much by
tests of force as by tests of nerve. Particularly in the relations
between major adversaries—between East and West—issues
are decided not by who can bring the most force to bear in a
locality, or on a particular issue, but by who is eventually will-
ing to bring more force to bear or able to make it appear that
more is forthcoming.
There are few clear choices—since the close of World War II
there have been but a few clear choices—between war and
peace. The actual decisions to engage in war—whether the
Korean War that did occur or a war at Berlin or Quemoy or
Lebanon that did not—were decisions to engage in a war of un-
certain size, uncertain as to adversary, as to the weapons in-
volved, even as to the issues that might be brought into it and
the possible outcomes that might result. They were decisions
to embark on a risky engagement, one that could develop
a momentum of its own and get out of hand. Whether it is bet-
ter to be red than dead is hardly worth arguing about; it is not a
choice that has arisen for us or has seemed about to arise in the
nuclear era. The questions that do arise involve degrees of risk—
what risk is worth taking, and how to evaluate the risk in-volved
in a course of action. The perils that countries face are not as
straightforward as suicide, but more like Russian roulette. The
fact of uncertainty—the sheer unpredictability of dangerous
events—not only blurs things, it changes their character. It adds
an entire dimension to military relations: the manipulation of
risk.
There is just no foreseeable route by which the United States
and the Soviet Union could become engaged in a major nuclear
war. This does not mean that a major nuclear war cannot occur.
It only means that if it occurs it will result from a process that is
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 95

not entirely foreseen, from reactions that are not fully pre-
dictable, from decisions that are not wholly deliberate, from
events that are not fully under control. War has always involved
uncertainty, especially as to its outcome; but with the technol-
ogy and the geography and the politics of today, it is hard to see
how a major war could get started except in the presence of un-
certainty. Some kind of error or inadvertence, some miscalcula-
tions of enemy reactions or misreading of enemy intent, some
steps taken without knowledge of steps taken by the other side,
some random event or false alarm, or some decisive action to
hedge against the unforeseeable would have to be involved in
the process on one side or both.1
This does not mean that there is nothing the United States
would fight a major war to defend, but that these are things that
the Soviet Union would not fight a major war to obtain. And
there are undoubtedly things the Soviet Union would fight a
major war to defend, but these are not things the United States
would fight a major war to obtain. Both sides may get into a
position in which compromise is impossible, in which the only
visible outcomes would entail a loss to one side or the other so
great that both would choose to fight a major nuclear war. But
neither side wants to get into such a position; and there is noth-
ing presently at issue between East and West that would get
both sides into that position deliberately.
The Cuban crisis illustrates the point. Nearly everybody ap-
peared to feel that there was some danger of a general nuclear
war. Whether the danger was large or small, hardly anyone
seems to have considered it negligible. To my knowledge,
though, no one has ever supposed that the United States or the
1. A superb example of this process, one involving local incidents, accidents
of darkness and morning mist, overzealous commanders, troops in panic, erroneous
assessment of damage, public opinion, and possibly a little "catalytic action" by
warmongers, all conjoining to get governments more nearly committed to a war
that might not have been inevitable, occurred within drum-call of my own home.
See the detailed account in Arthur B. Tourtellot, Lexington and Concord (New
York, W. W. Norton and Company, 1963). It is chastening to consider that the
"shot heard round the world" may have been fired in the mistaken belief that
a column of smoke meant Concord was on fire.
96 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

Soviet Union had any desire to engage in a major war, or that

there was anything at issue that, on its merits, could not be set-
tled without general war. If there was danger it seems to have
been that each side might have taken a series of steps, actions
and reactions and countermeasures, piling up its threats and its
commitments, generating a sense of showdown, demonstrat-
ing a willingness to carry the thing as far as necessary, until one
side or the other began to believe that war had already started, or
was so inevitable that it should be started quickly, or that so
much was now at stake that general war was preferable to ac-
commodation.
The process would have had to be unforeseeable and unpre-
dictable. If there were some clearly recognizable final critical
steps that converted the situation from one in which war was
unnecessary to one in which war was inevitable, the step would
not have been taken. Alternatives would have been found. Any
transition from peace to war would have had to traverse a re-
gion of uncertainty—of misunderstandings or miscalculations
or misinterpretations, or actions with unforeseen consequences,
in which things got out of hand.
There was nothing about the blockade of Cuba by American
naval vessels that could have led straightforwardly into general
war. Any foreseeable course of events would have involved
steps that the Soviets or the Americans—realizing that they
would lead straightforwardly to general war—would not have
taken. But the Soviets could be expected to take steps that,
though not leading directly to war, could further compound
risk; they might incur some risk of war rather than back down
completely. The Cuban crisis was a contest in risk taking, in-
volving steps that would have made no sense if they led predict-
ably and ineluctably to a major war, yet would also have made
no sense if they were completely without danger. Neither side
needed to believe the other side would deliberately and know-
ingly take the step that would raise the possibility to a certainty.
What deters such crises and makes them infrequent is that
they are genuinely dangerous. Whatever happens to the danger
of deliberate premeditated war in such a crisis, the danger of in-
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 97

advertent war appears to go up. This is why they are called

"crises." The essence of the crisis is its unpredictability. The
"crisis" that is confidently believed to involve no danger of
things getting out of hand is no crisis; no matter how energetic
the activity, as long as things are believed safe there is no crisis.
And a "crisis" that is known to entail disaster or large losses, or
great changes of some sort that are completely foreseeable, is
also no crisis; it is over as soon as it begins, there is no sus-
pense. It is the essence of a crisis that the participants are not
fully in control of events; they take steps and make decisions
that raise or lower the danger, but in a realm of risk and uncer-
tainty.
Deterrence has to be understood in relation to this uncer-
tainty. We often talk as though a "deterrent threat" was a
credible threat to launch a disastrous war coolly and deliber-
ately in response to some enemy transgression. People who
voice doubts, for example, about American willingness to
launch war on the Soviet Union in case of Soviet aggression
against some ally, and people who defend American resolve
against those doubts, both often tend to argue in terms of a once-
for-all decision. The picture is drawn of a Soviet attack, say, on
Greece or Turkey or West Germany, and the question is raised,
would the United States then launch a retaliatory blow against
the Soviet Union? Some answer a disdainful no, some answer a
proud yes, but neither seems to be answering the pertinent
question. The choice is unlikely to be one between everything
and nothing. The question is really: is the United States likely to
do something that is fraught with the danger of war, something
that could lead—through a compounding of actions and reac-
tions, of calculations and miscalculations, of alarms and false
alarms, of commitments and challenges—to a major war?
This is why deterrent threats are often so credible. They do
not need to depend on a willingness to commit anything like
suicide in the face of a challenge. A response that carries some
risk of war can be plausible, even reasonable, at a time when a
final, ultimate decision to have a general war would be implaus-
ible or unreasonable. A country can threaten to stumble into a
98 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

war even if it cannot credibly threaten to invite one. In fact,

though a country may not be able with absolute credibility to
threaten general war, it may be equally unable with absolute
credibility to forestall a major war. The Russians would have
been out of their minds at the time of the Cuban crisis to incur
deliberately a major nuclear war with the United States; their
missile threats were far from credible, there was nothing that
the United States wanted out of the Cuban crisis that the Rus-
sians could have rationally denied at the cost of general war.
Yet their implicit threat to behave in a way that might—that
just might, in spite of all their care and all our care—lead up to
the brink and over it in a general war, had some substance. If
we were anywhere near the brink of war on that occasion, it was
a war that neither side wanted but that both sides might have
been unable to forestall.
The idea, expressed by some writers, that such deterrence
depends on a "credible first strike capability," and that a coun-
try cannot plausibly threaten to engage in a general war over
anything but a mortal assault on itself unless it has an appre-
ciable capacity to blunt the other side's attack, seems to depend
on the clean-cut notion that war results—or is expected to
result—only from a deliberate yes-no decision. But if war tends
to result from a process, a dynamic process in which both sides
get more and more deeply involved, more and more expectant,
more and more concerned not to be a slow second in case the
war starts, it is not a "credible first strike" that one threatens,
but just plain war. The Soviet Union can indeed threaten us
with war: they can even threaten us with a war that we eventu-
ally start, by threatening to get involved with us in a process
that blows up into war. And some of the arguments about
"superiority" and "inferiority" seem to imply that one of the
two sides, being weaker, must absolutely fear war and concede
while the other, being stronger, may confidently expect the other
to yield. There is undoubtedly a good deal to the notion that the
country with the less impressive military capability may be less
feared, and the other may run the riskier course in a crisis;
other things being equal, one anticipates that the strategically
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 99

"superior" country has some advantage. But this is a far cry

from the notion that the two sides just measure up to each other
and one bows before the other's superiority and acknowledges
that he was only bluffing. Any situation that scares one side will
scare both sides with the danger of a war that neither wants, and
both will have to pick their way carefully through the crisis,
never quite sure that the other knows how to avoid stumbling
over the brink.
Brinkmanship: The Manipulation of Risk
If "brinkmanship" means anything, it means manipulating the
shared risk of war. It means exploiting the danger that some-
body may inadvertently go over the brink, dragging the other
with him. If two climbers are tied together, and one wants to
intimidate the other by seeming about to fall over the edge,
there has to be some uncertainty or anticipated irrationality or it
won't work. If the brink is clearly marked and provides a firm
footing, no loose pebbles underfoot and no gusts of wind to
catch one off guard, if each climber is in full control of himself
and never gets dizzy, neither can pose any risk to the other by
approaching the brink. There is no danger in approaching
it; and while either can deliberately jump off, he cannot
credibly pretend that he is about to. Any attempt to intimi-
date or to deter the other climber depends on the threat of
slipping or stumbling. With loose ground, gusty winds, and a
propensity toward dizziness, there is some danger when a
climber approaches the edge; one can credibly threaten to fall
off accidentally by standing near the brink.
Without uncertainty, deterrent threats of war would take the
form of trip-wires. To incur commitment is to lay a trip-wire,
one that is plainly visible, that cannot be stumbled on, and that
is manifestly connected up to the machinery of war. And if
effective, it works much like a physical barrier. The trip-wire
will not be crossed as long as it has not been placed in an in-
tolerable location, and it will not be placed in an intolerable lo-
cation as long as there is no uncertainty about each other's
100 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

motives and nothing at issue that is worth a war to both sides.

Either side can stick its neck out, confident that the other will
not chop it off. As long as the process is a series of discrete steps,
taken deliberately, without any uncertainty as to the con-
sequences, this process of military commitment and maneuver
would not lead to war. Imminent war—possible war—would be
continually threatened, but the threats would work. They
would work unless one side were pushed too far; but if the push-
ing side knows how far that is, it will not push that far.
The resulting world—the world without uncertainty—would
discriminate in favor of passivity against initiative. It is easier to
deter than to compel. Among a group of arthritics moving deli-
cately and slowly at a cocktail party, no one can be dislodged
from his position near the bar, or ousted from his favorite chair;
bodily contact is equally painful to his assailant. By standing in
the doorway, one can prevent the entrance or exit of another
ailing guest who is unwilling to push his way painfully through.
In fact, without uncertainty all the military threats and ma-
neuvers would be like diplomacy with rigid rules and can be
illustrated with a modified game of chess. A chess game can end
in win, lose, or draw. Let's change the game by adding a fourth
outcome called "disaster." If "disaster" occurs, a heavy fine is
levied on both players, so that each is worse off than if he had
simply lost the game. And the rules specify what causes dis-
aster: specifically, if either player has moved his knight across the
center line and the other player has moved his queen across the
center line, the game terminates at once and both players are
scored with a disaster. If a white knight is already on the black
side of the board when the black queen moves across to the
white side, the black queen's move terminates the game in dis-
aster; if the queen was already across when White moved his
knight across the center line, the knight's move terminates the
game in disaster for both players. And the same applies for the
white queen and the black knight.
What does this new rule do to the way a game is played? If a
game is played well, and both players play for the best score
they can get, we can state two observations. First, a game will
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 101

never end in disaster. It could only terminate in disaster if one

of the players made a deliberate move that he knew would
cause disaster, and he would not. Second, the possibility of dis-
aster will be reflected in the players' tactics. White can effec-
tively keep Black's queen on her own side of the board by
getting a knight across first; or he can keep both Black's knights
on their own side by getting his queen across first. This ability to
block or to deter certain moves of the adversary will be an im-
portant part of the game; the threat of disaster will be effective,
so effective that the disaster never occurs.
In fact, the result is no different from a rule that says no
queen can cross a center line if an opponent's knight has al-
ready crossed it, and no knight can cross the center line if an
opponent's queen has already crossed it. Prohibitive penalties
imposed on deliberate actions are equivalent to ordinary rules.
The characteristic that this chess game shares with the trip-
wire diplomacy, and that accounts for its peculiar safety, is the
absence of uncertainty. There is always some moment, or some
final step, in which one side or the other has the last clear
chance to turn the course of events away from war (or from
disaster in our game of chess) or to turn it away from a political
situation that would induce the other to take the final step to-
ward war. The skillful chess player will keep the knight across
the center line or near enough to cross before his opponent's
queen can get across, with due allowance for the cost of having
to devote resources to the purpose. Skillful diplomacy, in the
absence of uncertainty, consists in arranging things so that it is
one's opponent who is embarrassed by having the "last clear
chance" to avert disaster by turning aside or abstaining from
what he wanted to do.
But off the chess board the last chance to avert disaster is not
always clear. One does not always know what moves of his own
would lead to disaster, one cannot always perceive the moves
that the other side has already taken or has set afoot, or what
interpretation will be put on one's own actions; one does not al-
ways understand clearly what situations the other side would
not, at some moment, accept in preference to war. When we
102 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

add uncertainty to this artificial chess game we are not so sure

that disaster will be avoided. More important, the risk of disas-
ter becomes a manipulative element in the situation. It can be
exploited to intimidate.
To see this, make one more change in the rules. Let us not
have disaster occur automatically when queen and knight of op-
posite color have crossed the center line. Instead, when that
occurs, the referee rolls a die. If an ace comes up the game is
over and both players are scored with disaster, but if any other
number appears the play goes on. If after the next move the
queen and knight are still across the center line the dice are
rolled again, and so on.
This is a very different game. And not just because disaster
may or may not occur when queen and knight get into those
positions, instead of occurring with certainty. The difference is
that now queen and knight may actually be moved into those
positions. One can deliberately move his knight across the line
in an attempt to make the queen retreat, if one thinks his ad-
versary is less willing to incur a continuing risk of disaster, or
thinks his adversary can be persuaded that oneself will not re-
treat, and if the momentary risk of disaster is not prohibitive. In
fact, getting one's knight across and blocking its return with
one's own pieces, so that it clearly takes several moves to re-
treat, may persuade the adversary that only he, by withdrawing
his queen, can reduce the risk within a tolerable time.
If the black queen cannot retreat—if her exit is blocked
against timely retreat—the white knight's tactic to force her
withdrawal is ineffectual and gratuitously risky. But it can pos-
sibly serve another end (another risky one), namely, to enforce
"negotiation." By crossing over,once the queen has crossed and
cannot readily return, the knight can threaten disaster; White
can propose Black's surrender, or a stalemate, or the removal of
a bishop or the sacrifice of a pawn.What he gets out of this is
wide open; but what began as a chess game has been converted
into a bargaining game. Both sides are under similar pressure to
settle the game or at least to get the white knight out of mis-
chief. The outcome, it should be noticed, will not necessarily be
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 103

in White's favor; he created the pressure, but both are subject to

the same risk. White's advantage is that he can back out more
quickly, as we have set up the game in this example; even he
cannot retreat, though, until Black has made his next move, and
for the moment both have the same incentive to come to terms.
(White's ability to retreat, and Black's inability, may seem more
of an advantage to White than it actually is; his ability to retreat
is an ability to save both players, equally, from disaster. If no
bargain is reached, the white knight has to return, because he is
the only one who can. If Black can avoid entering any nego-
tiation—can absent himself from the room or turn off his hear-
ing aid—White's sole remaining objective will be to get his own
knight back before he blows things up.) If "disaster" is only
somewhat worse, not drastically worse, than losing the chess
game, the side that is losing may have more incentive to
threaten disaster, or more immunity to the other's threat, and
perhaps in consequence a stronger bargaining position. Note, in
particular, that all of this has nothing to do with whether a
knight is more or less potent than a queen in the chess game;
queen and knight can be interchanged in the analysis of this
paragraph. If the clash of a squad with a division can lead to
unintended war, or of a protest marcher with an armed police-
man to an unwanted riot, their potencies are equal in respect of
the threats that count.
In this way uncertainty imports tactics of intimidation into
the game. One can incur a moderate probability of disaster,
sharing it with his adversary, as a deterrent or compellent de-
vice, where one could not take, or persuasively threaten to take,
a deliberate last clear step into certain disaster.2
2. To clarify the theoretical point it may be worth observing that the uncertainty
and unpredictability need not arise from a genuine random mechanism like the
dice. It is unpredictability, not "chance," that makes the difference; it could as
well arise in the clumsiness of the players, some uncertainty about the rules of
the game or the scoring system, bad visibility or moves made in secret, the need
to commit certain moves invisibly in advance, meddling by a third party, or errors
made by the referee. Dice are merely a convenient way to introduce unpredictability
into an artificial example.
104 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

The route by which major war might actually be reached

would have the same kind of unpredictability. Either side can
take steps—engaging in a limited war would usually be such a
step—that genuinely raise the probability of a blow-up. This
would be the case with intrusions, blockades, occupations of
third areas, border incidents, enlargement of some small war, or
any incident that involves a challenge and entails a response
that may in turn have to be risky. Many of these actions and
threats designed to pressure and intimidate would be nothing
but noise, if it were reliably known that the situation could not
get out of hand. They would neither impose risk nor demon-
strate willingness to incur risk. And if they definitely would lead
to major war, they would not be taken. (If war were desired, it
would be started directly.) What makes them significant and
usable is that they create a genuine risk—a danger that can be
appreciated—that the thing will blow up for reasons not fully
under control.3
It has often been said, and correctly, that a general nuclear
war would not liberate Berlin and that local military action in
the neighborhood of Berlin could be overcome by Soviet mili-
tary forces. But that is not all there is to say. What local mili-
tary forces can do, even against very superior forces, is to initi-
ate this uncertain process of escalation. One does not have to be
able to win a local military engagement to make the threat of it
effective. Being able to lose a local war in a dangerous and pro-
vocative manner may make the risk—not the sure conse-
quences, but the possibility of this act—outweigh the apparent
3. The purest real-life example I can think of in international affairs is "buzzing"
an airplane, as in the Berlin air corridor or when a reconnaissance plane intrudes.
The only danger is that of an unintended collision. The pilot who buzzes obviously
wants no collision. (If he did, he could proceed to do it straightforwardly.) The
danger is that he may not avoid accident, through mishandling his aircraft, or
misjudging distance, or failure to anticipate the movements of his victim. He has
to fly close enough, or recklessly enough, to create an appreciated risk that he
may—probably won't, but nevertheless may—fail in his mission and actually collide,
to everyone's chagrin including his own.
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 105

gains to the other side. The white knight is as potent as the

black queen in creating a shared risk of disaster.4
Limited War as a Generator of Risk
Limited war, as a deterrent to continued aggression or as a
compellent means of intimidation, often seems to require inter-
pretation along these lines, as an action that enhances the risk
of a greater war. The danger of major war is almost certainly
increased by the occurrence of a limited war; it is almost cer-
tainly increased by any enlargement in the scope or violence of
a limited war that has already taken place. This being so, the
threat to engage in limited war has two parts. One is the threat
to inflict costs directly on the other side, in casualties, expendi-
tures, loss of territory, loss of face, or anything else. The second
is the threat to expose the other party, together with oneself, to
a heightened risk of a larger war.
Just how the major war would occur—just where the fault,
initiative, or misunderstanding may occur—is not predictable.
Whatever it is that makes limited war between great powers a
risky thing, the risk is a genuine one that neither side can alto-
gether dispel even if it wants to. To engage in limited war is to
start rocking the boat, to set in motion a process that is not al-
4. It may be worth pointing out that, though all attempts to deter or to compel
by threat of violence may carry some risk, it is not a necessary character of deterrent
threats that they be risky if they are, or try to be, of the full-commitment or trip-
wire variety discussed in the preceding chapter. What can make them risky is that
they may not work as hoped; they are risky because they may fail. Ideally they would
carry no risk. It is part of the logical structure of the threats discussed in this chapter
that they entail risk—the risk of being fulfilled—even though they work (or were
about to work) as intended. One is risky the way driving a car is always risky: genuine
accidents can always occur, no matter how well the car is designed or how carefully
it is driven; risk is a fact of life. The other is risky the way certain forms of road-
hogging are risky: a genuine risk is incurred, or created, or enhanced, for the purpose
of intimidation, a risk that may not be altogether avoided if intimidation is successfully
achieved because it may have to operate for a finite period before compliance brings
relief. This risk is part of the price of intimidation.
106 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

together in one's control. (In the metaphorical language of our

chess game, it is to move a queen or a knight across the center
line when the other knight or queen is already across, establish-
ing a situation in which factors outside the players' control can
determine whether or not the thing blows up.) The risk has to
be recognized, because limited war probably does raise the risk
of a larger war whether it is intended to or not. It is a conse-
quence of limited war that that risk goes up; since it is a
consequence, it can also be a purpose.
If we give this interpretation to limited war, we can give a
corresponding interpretation to enlargements, or threats of en-
largement, of the war. The threat to introduce new weapons,
perhaps nuclear weapons, into a limited war is not, according to
this argument, to be judged solely according to the immediate
military or political advantage, but also according to the delib-
erate risk of still larger war that it poses. And we are led in this
way to a new interpretation of the trip-wire. The analogy for
limited war forces in Europe, or a blockade about Cuba, or
troops for the defense of Quemoy, according to this argument,
is not a trip-wire that certainly detonates all-out war if it is in
working order and fails altogether if it is not. We have some-
thing more like a minefield, with explosives hidden at random; a
mine may or may not blow up if somebody starts to traverse the
field. The critical feature of the analogy, it should be empha-
sized, is that whether or not one of the mines goes off is at least
to some extent outside the control of both parties to the engage-
ment.
This argument is pertinent to the question not only of wheth-
er, but of how, to cross the boundaries in some limited war. If
one can gently erode a boundary, easing across it with-out
creating some new challenge or a dramatic bid for enemy
reprisal, and if one finds the current bounds intolerable, that
may be the way to do it if one wants the tactical advantages of
relaxing a rule. But if the tactical advantages are unimpressive,
one's purpose in enlarging some limited war may be to con-
front the enemy with a heightened risk, to bring into question
the possibility of finding new limits once a few have been
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 107

breached. One may then try not to maximize the stability of

new limits as one passes certain thresholds, but to pass them in
a way that dramatizes and emphasizes that the engagement is a
dangerous one and that the other side should be eager to call a
halt. Deliberately raising the risk of all-out war is thus a tactic
that may fit the context of limited war, particularly for the side
most discontent with the progress of the war. Introduction of
nuclear weapons undoubtedly needs to be evaluated in these
terms.
Discussions of troop requirements and weaponry for NATO
have been much concerned with the battlefield consequences of
different troop strengths and nuclear doctrines. But the battle-
field criterion is only one criterion, and when nuclear weapons
are introduced it is secondary. The idea that European arma-
ment should be designed for resisting Soviet invasion, and is to
be judged solely by its ability to contain an attack, is based on
the notion that limited war is a tactical operation. It is not.
What that notion overlooks is that a main consequence of
limited war, and potentially a main purpose for engaging in it, is
to raise the risk of larger war. Limited war does this whether it
is intended to or not.
This point is fundamental to deterrence of anything other
than all-out attack on ourselves. And it is fundamental to the
strategy of limited war. The danger of sudden large war—of
unpremeditated war—would be a real danger and would obsess
the strategic commands on both sides. This danger is enhanced
in a crisis, particularly one involving military activity. It is en-
hanced partly because of the sheer preoccupation with it. And it
is enhanced because alarms and incidents will be more frequent,
and those who interpret alarms will be readier to act on them.
This is also, to a large extent, the purpose of being prepared
to fight a local war in Western Europe. The Soviet anticipation
of the risks involved in a large-scale attack must include the
danger that general war will result. If they underestimate the
scale and duration of resistance and do attack, a purpose of re-
sisting is to confront them, day after day, with an appreciation
108 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

that life is risky, and that pursuit of the original objective is not
worth the risk.
This is distantly—but only distantly—related to the notion
that we deter an attack limited to Europe by the announced
threat of all-out war. It is different because the danger of war
does not depend solely on whether the United States would
coolly resolve to launch general war in response to a limited
attack in Europe. The credibility of a massive American re-
sponse is often depreciated: even in the event of the threatened
loss of Europe the United States would not, it is sometimes said,
respond to the fait accompli of a Soviet attack on Europe with
anything as "suicidal" as general war. But that is a simple-
minded notion of what makes general war credible. What can
make it exceedingly credible to the Russians—and perhaps to
the Chinese in the Far East—is that the triggering of general
war can occur whether we intend it or not.
General war does not depend on our coolly deciding to retali-
ate punitively for the invasion of Western Europe after careful
consideration of the material and spiritual arguments pro and
con. General war could result because we or the Soviets
launched it in the mistaken belief that it was already on, or in
the mistaken or correct belief that, if we did not start it in-
stantly, the other side would. It does not depend on fortitude: it
can result from anticipation of the worse consequences of a war
that, because of tardiness, the enemy initiates.
And the fear of war that deters the Soviet Union from an at-
tack on Europe includes the fear of a general war that they initi-
ate. Even if they were confident that they could act first, they
would still have to consider the wisdom of an action that might,
through forces substantially outside their control, oblige them
to start general war.
If nuclear weapons are introduced, the sensed danger of gen-
eral war will rise strikingly.Both sides will be conscious of this
increased danger. This is partly a matter of sheer expectation;
everybody is going to be more tense, and for good reason, once
nuclear weapons are introduced. And national leaders will know
that they are close to general war if only because nuclear
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 109

weapons signal and dramatize this very danger—a danger that

is self-aggravating in that the more the danger is recognized, the
more likely are the decisions that cause war to occur. This argu-
ment is neither for nor against the use of nuclear weapons, but
for recognizing that this consequence of their use equals in im-
portance—and could far transcend—their tactical battlefield
accomplishments.
It is worth noting that this interpretation suggests that the
threat of limited war may be potent even when there is little ex-
pectation that one could win it.
It is our sheer inability to predict the consequences of our
actions and to keep things under control, and the enemy's sim-
ilar inability, that can intimidate the enemy (and, of course, us
too). If we were in complete control of the consequences and
knew what would and what would not precipitate war—a war
that we started or a war that the enemy started—we could make
no threat that did not depend on our ultimate willingness to
choose general war.
This is not an argument that "our side" can always win a war
of nerves. (The same analysis applies to "their side" too.) It is
a reminder that between the alternatives of unsuccessful local
resistance on the one extreme, and the fruitless, terrifying, and
probably unacceptable and incredible threat of general thermo-
nuclear war on the other, there is a strategy of risky behavior,
of deliberately creating a risk that we share with the enemy, a
risk that is credible precisely because its consequences are not
entirely within our own and the Soviets' control.
Nuclear Weapons and the Enhancement of Risk
The introduction of nuclear weapons raises two issues here.
One is the actual danger of general war; the other is the role of
this danger in our strategy. On the danger itself, one has to guess
how likely it is that a sizable nuclear war in Europe can persist,
and for how long, without triggering general war. The danger
appears great enough to make it unrealistic to expect a tactical
nuclear war to "run its course." Either the nuclear weapons
wholly change the bargaining environment, the appreciation of
110 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

risks, and the immediate objectives, and bring about some

termination, truce, tranquilization, withdrawal, or pause; or else
the local war very likely becomes swamped in a much bigger
war. If these are the likely alternatives, we should not take too
seriously a nuclear local war plan that goes to great lengths to
carry the thing to its bitter end. There is a high probability that
the war either will go down by an order of magnitude or go up by
an order of magnitude, rather than run the tactical nuclear
course that was planned for it.
More important is how we control, utilize, and react to a sud-
den increase in the sensed danger of general war. It will be so
important to manage this risk properly that the battlefield con-
sequences of nuclear weapons may be of minor importance.
The hour-by-hour tactical course of the war may not even be
worth the attention of the top strategic leadership.
One can question whether we ought to use nuclear weapons
deliberately to raise the risk of general war. But unless we are
willing to do this, we should not introduce nuclear weapons
against an adversary who has nuclear weapons on his side. This
raising of risk is so much of the consequence of nuclear
weapons that to focus our planning attention on the battlefield
may be to ignore what should be getting our main attention
(and what would, in the event, get it). Once nuclear weapons
are introduced, it is not the same war any longer. The tactical
objectives and considerations that governed the original war are
no longer controlling. It is now a war of nuclear bargaining and
demonstration.
In a nuclear exchange, even if it nominally involves only the
use of "tactical" weapons against tactically important targets,
there will be a conscious negotiating process between two very
threatening enemies who are worried that the war will get out of
hand. The life expectancy of the local war may be so short that
neither side is primarily concerned with what happens on the
ground within the next day or two. What each side is doing with
its strategic forces would be the main preoccupation. It is the
strategic forces in the background that provide the risks and
the sense of danger; it is they whose disposition will preoccupy
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 111

national leaders as much as anything that is going on in Europe

itself. It is the strategic forces whose minute-by-minute behavior
on each side will be the main intelligence preoccupation of the
other side.5
Limited and localized nuclear war is not, therefore, a "tacti-
cal" war. However few the nuclears used, and however selec-
tively they are used, their purpose should not be "tactical" be-
cause their consequences will not be tactical. With nuclears, it
has become more than ever a war of risks and threats at the
highest strategic level. It is a war of nuclear bargaining.
There are some inferences for NATO planning. First, nuclear
weapons should not be evaluated mainly in terms of what they
could do on the battlefield: the decision to introduce them, the
way to use them, the targets to use them on, the scale on which
to use them, the timing with which to use them, and the com-
munications to accompany their use should not be determined
(or not mainly determined) by how they affect the tactical
course of the local war. Much more important is what they do to
the expectation of general war, and what rules or patterns of
expectations about local use are created. It is much more a war
of dares and challenges, of nerve, of threats and brinkmanship,
once the nuclear threshold is passed. This is because the danger
of general war, and the awareness of that danger, is lifted an
order of magnitude by the psychological and military conse-
quences of nuclear explosion.
5. This is why one of the arguments for delegating nuclear authority to theater
commanders—as presented in the election campaign of 1964—made little sense.
That was the argument that communications between the theater and the American
command structure might fail at the moment nuclear weapons were urgently needed.
But if the weapons were that urgently needed, especially in the European theater,
there would surely be appreciable danger of general war, and to proceed without
communicating would guarantee the absence of crucial communication with the
Strategic Air Command, the Defense Intelligence Agency, North American Air
Defense Command, military forces everywhere, civil defense authorities, and, of
course, our diplomatic establishment. It could preclude a choice of what kind of
nuclear war to initiate; it could catch the Americans by surprise, and might merely
give warning to the Russians.
112 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

Second, as a corollary we should not think that the value or

likely success of NATO armed forces depends solely, or even
mainly, on whether they can win a local war. Particularly if nu-
clears are introduced, the war may never run its course. Even
without the introduction of nuclear s, a main function of re-
sistance forces is to create and prolong a genuine sense of
danger, of the potentiality of general war. This is not a danger
that we create for the Russians and avoid ourselves; it is a
danger we share with them. But it is this deterrent and intimida-
tion function that deserves at least as much attention as the
tactical military potentialities of the troops.
Third, forces that might seem to be quite "inadequate" by
ordinary tactical standards can serve a purpose, particularly if
they can threaten to keep the situation in turmoil for some pe-
riod of time. The important thing is to preclude a quick, clean
Soviet victory that quiets things down in short order.
Fourth, the deployment and equipment of nuclear-armed
NATO troops, including the questions of which nationalities
have nuclear weapons and which services have them, are
affected by the purpose and function and character of nuclear
and local war. If what is required is a skillful and well-
controlled bargaining use of nuclears in the event the decision is
taken to go above that threshold, and if the main purpose of nu-
clears is not to help the troops on the battlefield, it is much less
necessary to decentralize nuclear weapons and decisions to local
commanders. The strategy will need tight centralized control; it
may not require the kind of close battlefield support that is
often taken to justify distribution of small nuclears to the
troops; and nuclears probably could be reserved to some special
nuclear forces.
Fifth, if the main consequence of nuclear weapons, and the
purpose of introducing them, is to create and signal a height-
ened risk of general war, our plans should reflect that purpose.
We should plan—in the event of resort to nuclear weapons—for
a war of nerve, of demonstration, and of bargaining, not just
target destruction for local tactical purposes. Destroying a
target may be incidental to the message that the detonation con-
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 113

veys to the Soviet leadership. Targets should be picked with a

view to what the Soviet leadership perceives about the character
of the war and about our intent, not for tactical importance. A
target near or inside the U.S.S.R., for example, is important be-
cause it is near or inside the U.S.S.R., not because of its tactical
contribution to the European battlefield. A target in a city is
important because a city is destroyed, not because it is a local
supply or communication center. The difference between one
weapon, a dozen, a hundred, or a thousand is not in the number
of targets destroyed but in the Soviet (and American) percep-
tion of risks, intent, precedent, and implied "proposal" for the
conduct or termination of war.
Extra targets destroyed by additional weapons are not a local
military "bonus." They are noise that may drown the message.
They are a "proposal" that must be responded to. And they are
an added catalyst to general war. This is an argument for a se-
lective and threatening use of nuclears rather than large-scale
tactical use. (It is an argument for large-scale tactical use only
if such use created the level of risk we wish to create.) Success
in the use of nuclears will be measured not by the targets de-
stroyed but by how well we manage the level of risk. The So-
viets must be persuaded that the war is getting out of hand but
is not yet beyond the point of no return.
Sixth, we have to expect the Soviets to pursue their own
policy of exploiting the risk of war. We cannot expect the Sovi-
ets to acquiesce in our unilateral nuclear demonstration. We
have to be prepared to interpret and to respond to a Soviet nu-
clear "counterproposal." Finding a way to terminate will be as
important as choosing how to initiate such an exchange. (We
should not take wholly for granted that the initiation would be
ours.)
Finally, the emphasis here is that the use of nuclear weapons
would create exceptional danger. This is not an argument in
favor of their use; it is an argument for recognizing that danger
is the central feature of their use.
In other words, nuclears would not only destroy targets but
would signal something. Getting the right signal across would be
114 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

an important part of the policy. This could imply, for example,

deliberate and restrained use earlier than might otherwise seem
tactically warranted, in order to leave the Soviets under no illu-
sion whether or not the engagement might become nuclear. The
only question then would be, how nuclear. It is not necessarily
prudent to wait until the last desperate moment in a losing en-
gagement to introduce nuclear weapons as a last resort. By the
time they are desperately needed to prevent a debacle, it may be
too late to use them carefully, discriminatingly, with a view
to the message that is communicated, and with the maintenance
of adequate control. Whenever the tactical situation indicates a
high likelihood of military necessity for nuclears in the near fu-
ture, it may be prudent to introduce them deliberately while
there is still opportunity to do so with care, selection, and a
properly associated diplomacy. Waiting beyond that point may
simply increase the likelihood of a tactical use, possibly an in-
discriminate use, certainly a decentralized use, determined by
the tactical necessities of the battlefield rather than the strategic
necessities of deterrence.
In its extreme form the restrained, signaling, intimidating use
of nuclears for brinkmanship has sometimes been called the
"shot across the bow." There is always a danger—Churchill and
others have warned against it—of making a bold demonstration
on so small a scale that the contrary of boldness is demon-
strated. There is no cheap, safe way of using nuclears that scares
the wits out of the Russians without scaring us too. Neverthe-
less, any use of nuclears is going to change the pattern of
expectations about the war. It is going to rip a tradition of
inhibition on their use. It is going to change everyone's expecta-
tions about the future use of nuclears. Even those who have
argued that nuclears ought to be considered just a more efficient
kind of artillery will surely catch their breath when the first one
goes off in anger. Something is destroyed, even if not enemy
targets, if ever-so-few nuclears are used. Whatever a few nu-
clears prove, or fail to prove about their user, they will change
the environment of expectations. And it is expectations more
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 115

than anything else that will determine the outcome of a limited

East-West military engagement.
It is sometimes argued, quite correctly, that this tradition can
be eroded, and the danger of "first use" reduced, by introducing
nuclear weapons in some "safe" fashion, gradually getting the
world used to nuclear weapons and dissipating the drama of
nuclear explosions. Nuclear depth charges at sea, small nuclear
warheads in air-to-air combat, or nuclear demolitions on de-
fended soil may seem comparatively free of the danger of unlim-
ited escalation, cause no more civil disruption than TNT, appear
responsible, and set new traditions for actual use, includ-
ing the tradition that nuclear weapons can be used without sig-
naling all-out war. Obviously to exploit this idea one should not
wait until nuclear weapons are desperately needed in a serious
crisis, but deliberately initiate them in a carefully controlled
fashion at a time and place chosen for the purpose. It might not
be wise and might not be practical, but if the intent is to remove
the curse from nuclear weapons, this may be the way to do it.
Among the several objections there is one that may be over-
looked even by the proponents of nuclear "legitimization."
That is the waste involved—the waste of what is potentially the
most dramatic military event since Pearl Harbor. President
Johnson, remember, referred to a nineteen-year tradition of non-
use; the breaking of that tradition (which grows longer with
each passing year) will probably be, especially if it is designed
to be, a most stunning event. It will signal a watershed in mili-
tary history, will instantly contradict war plans and military ex-
pectations, will generate suspense and apprehension, and will
probably startle even those who make the decision. The
first post-Nagasaki detonation in combat will probably be evi-
dence of a complex and anguished decision, an embarkation on
a journey into a new era of uncertainty. Even those who propose
readier use of nuclear weapons must appreciate that this is so,
because of the strong inhibitions they encounter during the
dispute.
This is not an event to be squandered on an unworthy mili-
116 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

tary objective. The first nuclear detonation can convey a mes-

sage of utmost seriousness; it may be a unique means of
communication in a moment of unusual gravity. To degrade the
signal in advance, to depreciate the currency, to erode gradually
a tradition that might someday be shattered with diplomatic
effect, to vulgarize weapons that have acquired a transcendent
status, and to demote nuclear weapons to the status of merely
efficient artillery, may be to waste an enormous asset of last re-
sort. One can probably not, with effect, throw down a gauntlet
if he is known to toss his gloves about on every provocation.
One may reasonably choose to vulgarize nuclear weapons
through a campaign to get people used to them; but to proceed
to use them out of expediency, just because they would be
tactically advantageous and without regard to whether they
ought to be cheapened, would be shortsighted in the extreme.
Face, Nerve, and Expectations
Cold war politics have been likened, by Bertrand Russell and
others, to the game of "chicken." This is described as a game in
which two teen-age motorists head for each other on a highway
—usually late at night, with their gangs and girlfriends looking
on—to see which of the two will first swerve aside. The one
who does is then called "chicken."
The better analogy is with the less frivolous contest of
chicken that is played out regularly on streets and highways by
people who want their share of the road, or more than their
share, or who want to be first through an intersection or at least
not kept waiting indefinitely.
"Chicken" is not just a game played by delinquent teen-agers
with their hot-rods in southern California; it is a universal form
of adversary engagement. It is played not only in the Berlin air
corridor but by Negroes who want to get their children into
schools and by whites who want to keep them out; by rivals at a
meeting who both raise their voices, each hoping the other will
yield the floor to avoid embarrassment; as well as by drivers of
both sexes and all ages at all times of day. Children played it
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 117

before they were old enough to drive and before automobiles

were invented. The earliest instance I have come across, in a
race with horse-drawn vehicles, antedates the auto by some
time:
The road here led through a gully, and in one part the win-
ter flood had broken down part of the road and made a
hoi-low. Menelaos was driving in the middle of the road,
hoping that no one would try to pass too close to his wheel, but
Antilochos turned his horses out of the track and followed
him a little to one side. This frightened Menelaos, and he
shouted at him:
"What reckless driving Antilochos! Hold in your horses.
This place is narrow, soon you will have more room to pass.
You will foul my car and destroy us both!"
But Antilochos only plied the whip and drove faster
than ever, as if he did not hear. They raced about as far as the
cast of quoit . . . and then [Menelaos] fell behind: he let the
horses go slow himself, for he was afraid that they might all
collide in that narrow space and overturn the cars and fall in a
struggling heap.
This game of chicken took place outside the gates of Troy three
thousand years ago. Antilochos won, though Homer says
—somewhat ungenerously—"by trick, not by merit."6
Even the game in its stylized teen-age automobile form is
worth examining. Most noteworthy is that the game virtually
disappears if there is no uncertainty, no unpredictability. If the
two cars, instead of driving continuously, took turns advancing
exactly fifty feet at a time toward each other, a point would be
reached when the next move would surely result in collision.
Whichever driver has that final turn will not, and need not,
drive deliberately into the other. This is no game of nerve. The
lady who pushes her child's stroller across an intersection in
front of a car that has already come to a dead stop is in no par-
ticular danger as long as she sees the driver watching her: even
6. The Iliad, W. H. D. Rouse, transí. (Mentor Books, 1950), p. 273.
118 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

if the driver prefers not to give her the right of way she has the
winning tactic and gets no score on nerve. The more instruc-
tive automobile form of the game is the one people play as
they crowd each other on the highway, jockey their way through
an intersection, or speed up to signal to a pedestrian that he'd
better not cross yet. These are the cases in which, like Antil-
ochos' chariot, things may get out of control; no one can trust
with certainty that someone will have the "last clear chance" to
avert tragedy and will pull back in time.
These various games of chicken—the genuine ones that in-
volve some real unpredictability—have some characteristics
that are worth noting. One is that, unlike those sociable games
it takes two to play, with chicken it takes two not to play.
If you are publicly invited to play chicken and say you would
rather not, you have just played.
Second, what is in dispute is usually not the issue of the mo-
ment, but everyone's expectations about how a participant will
behave in the future. To yield may be to signal that one can be
expected to yield; to yield often or continually indicates acknowl-
edgment that that is one's role. To yield repeatedly up to some
limit and then to say "enough" may guarantee that the first show
of obduracy loses the game for both sides. If you can get a rep-
utation for being reckless, demanding, or unreliable—and appar-
ently hot-rods, taxis, and cars with "driving school" license
plates sometimes enjoy this advantage—you may find conces-
sions made to you. (The driver of a wide American car on a
narrow European street is at less of a disadvantage than a static
calculation would indicate. The smaller cars squeeze over to
give him room.) Between these extremes, one can get a reputa-
tion for being firm in demanding an appropriate share of the
road but not aggressively challenging about the other's half. Un-
fortunately, in less stylized games than the highway version, it is
often hard to know just where the central or fair or expected
division should lie, or even whether there should be any recog-
nition of one contestant's claim.7
7. Analytically there appear to be at least three different motivational structures
in a contest of "chicken." One is the pure "test case," in which nothing is
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 119

Another important characteristic is that, though the two play-

ers are cast as adversaries, the game is somewhat collaborative.
Even in the stylized version in which they straddle the white
line, there is at least an advantage in understanding that, when
a player does swerve, he will swerve to the right and not to the
left! And the players may try to signal each other to try to co-
ordinate on a tie; if each can swerve a little, indicating that he
will swerve a little more if the other does too, and if their
speeds are not too great to allow some bargaining, they may
manage to turn at approximately the same time, neither being
proved chicken.
They may also collaborate in declining to play the game. This
is a little harder. When two rivals are coaxed by their friends to
have it out in a fight, they may manage to shrug it off skillfully,
at stake but reputations, expectations, and precedents. That is, accommodation or
obstinacy, boldness or surrender, merely establishes who is an accommodator, who
is obstinate or bold, who tends to surrender or what order of precedence is to
be observed. A second, not easily distinguished in practice, occurs when something
is consciously put at stake (as in a gambling game or trial by ordeal) such as
leadership, deference, popularity, some agreed tangible prize, or the outcome of
certain issues in dispute. (The duel between David and Goliath, mentioned in the
note on page 144, is an example of putting something at stake.) The third, which
might be called the "real" in contrast to the "conventional," is the case in which
yielding or withdrawing yields something that the dispute is about, as in road-
hogging or military probes; that is, the gains and losses are part of the immediate
structure of the contest, not attached by convention nor resulting entirely from
expectations established for future events. The process of putting something at
stake—if what is at stake involves third parties—may not be within the control
of the participants; nor, in the second and third cases, can future expectations
be disassociated (unless, as in momentary road-hogging, the participants are
anonymous). So most actual instances are likely to be mixtures. (The same distinctions
can be made for tests of endurance rather than risk: wealthy San Franciscans
were reported to settle disputes by a "duel" that involved throwing gold coins
into the bay, one after the other, until one was ready to quit; and the "potlatch"
in both its primitive and its contemporary forms is a contest for status and reputation.)
A fourth and a fifth case may also deserve recognition: the case of sheer play
for excitement, which is probably not confined to teen-agers, and the case of "joint
ordeal" in which the contest, though nominally between two (or among more than
two) contestants, involves no adversary relation between them, and each undergoes
a unilateral test or defends his honor independently of the other's.
120 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

but only if neither comes away looking exclusively responsible

for turning down the opportunity. Both players can appreciate
a rule that forbids play; if the cops break up the game before it
starts, so that nobody plays and nobody is proved chicken,
many and perhaps all of the players will consider it a great
night, especially if their ultimate willingness to play was not
doubted.
In fact, one of the great advantages of international law and
custom, or an acknowledged code of ethics, is that a country
may be obliged not to engage in some dangerous rivalry when it
would actually prefer not to but might otherwise feel obliged to
for the sake of its bargaining reputation. The boy who wears
glasses and can't see without them cannot fight if he wants to;
but if he wants to avoid the fight it is not so obviously for lack
of nerve. (Equally good, if he'd prefer not to fight but might feel
obliged to, is to have an adversary who wears glasses. Both can
hope that at least one of them is honorably precluded from join-
ing the issue.) One of the values of laws, conventions, or tradi-
tions that restrain participation in games of nerve is that they
provide a graceful way out. If one's motive for declining is
manifestly not lack of nerve, there are no enduring costs in re-
fusing to compete.
Since these tests of nerve involve both antagonism and co-
operation, an important question is how these two elements
should be emphasized. Should we describe the game as one in
which the players are adversaries, with a modest admixture of
common interest? Or should we describe the players as part-
ners, with some temptation toward doublecross?
This question arises in real crises, not just games. Is a Berlin
crisis—or a Cuban crisis, a Quemoy crisis, a Hungarian crisis,
or a crisis in the Gulf of Tonkin—mainly bilateral competi-
tion in which each side should be motivated mainly toward win-
ning over the other? Or is it a shared danger—a case of both
being pushed to the brink of war—in which statesmanlike for-
bearance, collaborative withdrawal, and prudent negotiation
should dominate?
It is a matter of emphasis, not alternatives, but in distributing
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 121

emphasis between the antagonistic and the collaborative mo-

tives, a distinction should be made. The distinction is between a
game of chicken to which one has been deliberately challenged
by an adversary, with a view to proving his superior nerve, and
a game of chicken that events, or the activities of bystanders,
have compelled one into along with one's adversary. If one is
repeatedly challenged, or expected to be, by an opponent who
wishes to impose dominance or to cause one's allies to abandon
him in disgust, the choice is between an appreciable loss and a
fairly aggressive response. If one is repeatedly forced by events
into a test of nerve along with an opponent, there is a strong case
for developing techniques and understandings for minimiz-
ing the mutual risk.
In the live world of international relations it is hard to be
sure which kind of crisis it is. The Cuban crisis of October 1962
was about as direct a challenge as one could expect, yet much
of the subsequent language of diplomacy and journalism re-
ferred to Premier Khrushchev's and President Kennedy's having
found themselves together on the brink and in need of states-
manship to withdraw together.8 The Budapest uprising of 1956
was as near to the opposite pole as one could expect, neither
East nor West having deliberately created the situation as a test
of nerve, and the Soviet response not appearing as a direct test
of Western resolve to intervene. Yet expectations about later
American or allied behavior were affected by our declining to
acknowledge that events had forced us into a test. This appears
to have been a case in which the United States had a good ex-
8. "Brinkmanship" has few friends, "chicken" even fewer, and I can see why most
people are uneasy about what, in an earlier book, I called "the threat that leaves some-
thing to chance." There is, though, at least one good word to be said for threats that
intentionally involve some loss of control or some generation of "crisis." It is that
this kind of threat may be more impersonal, more "external" to the participants; the
threat becomes part of the environment rather than a test of will between two adversaries.
The adversary may find it easier—less costly in prestige or self-respect—to back away
from a risky situation, even if we created the situation, than from a threat that is
backed exclusively by our resolve and determination. He can even, in backing away,
blame us for irresponsibility, or take credit for saving us both from the consequences.
Khrushchev was able to claim, after the Cuban crisis, that he had pulled back
722 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

cuse to remain outside, and chose even to take that position

officially.
The Berlin wall is an ambiguous case. The migration of East
Germans can be adduced as the impelling event, not a deliber-
ate Soviet decision to challenge the allied powers. Yet there was
something of a dare both in the way it was done and in its being
done at all. The Berlin wall illustrates that someone forced
into a game of chicken against his better judgment may, if all
goes well, profit nevertheless. The U-2 incident of 1960 is inter-
esting in the wealth of interpretations that can be placed on it; a
U.S. challenge to Soviet resolve, a Soviet challenge to U.S.
resolve, or an autonomous incident creating embarrassment for
both sides.
A good illustration of two parties collaborating to avoid
being thrust into a test of nerve was the Soviet and American
response to the Chinese-Indian crisis of late 1962. It probably
helped both sides that they had ready excuses, even good rea-
sons, for keeping their coats on. For anyone who does not want
to be obliged into a gratuitous contest, just to preserve his
reputation and expectations about future behavior, a good ex-
cuse is a great help.
It may seem paradoxical that with today's weapons of speedy
destruction brinkmanship would be so common. Engaging in
well-isolated small wars or comparatively safe forms of harass-
ment ought to be less unattractive than wrestling on the brink
of a big war. But the reason why most contests, military or not,
will be contests of nerve is simply that brinkmanship is un-
avoidable
from the brink of war, not that he had backed away from President Kennedy.
It is prudent to pull out of a risky situation—especially one that threatens everyone—
where it might appear weak to pull away from the threatening opponent. If war
could have arisen only out of a deliberate decision by President Kennedy, one
based on cool resolve, Khrushchev would have been backing away from a resolved
American President; but because the risk seemed inherent in the situation, the
element of personal challenge was somewhat diluted. In the same way a rally
or a protest march carries the threat of an unintended riot; officials may yield
in the interest of law and order, finding it easier to submit to the danger of accident
or incident than to submit directly to a threat of deliberate violence.
THE ART OF COMMITMENT 123

and potent. It would be hard to design a war, involving the

forces of East and West on any scale, in which the risk of its
getting out of control were not of commensurate importance
with the other costs and dangers involved. Limited war, as re-
marked earlier, is like fighting in a canoe. A blow hard enough
to hurt is in some danger of overturning the canoe. One may
stand up to strike a better blow, but if the other yields it may
not have been the harder blow that worried him.
How does one get out of playing chicken if he considers it
dangerous, degrading, or unprofitable? How would the United
States and the Soviet Union, if they both wished to, stop feeling
obliged to react to every challenge as if their reputations were
continually at stake? How can they stop competing to see who
will back down first in a risky encounter?
First, as remarked before, it takes at least two not to play this
kind of game. (At least two, because there may be more than
two participants and because bystanders have so much influ-
ence.) Second, there is no way in the short run that, by turning
over a new leaf, one can cease measuring his adversary by how
he reacts to danger, or cease signaling to an adversary one's
own intentions and values by how one reacts to danger. Confi-
dence has to be developed. Some conventions or traditions must
be allowed to grow. Confidence and tradition take time. Stable
expectations have to be constructed out of successful experi-
ence, not all at once out of intentions.
It would help if each decided not to dare the other again but
only to react to challenges. But this will not turn the trick. The
definition of who did the challenging will not be the same on
both sides. At what point a sequence of actions becomes a
deliberate affront is a matter of judgment. Challenges thrust on
East and West will never be wholly unambiguous as to whether
they were created by one side to test the other or to gain at the
other's expense. If all challenges were clear as to origin and
could only arise by deliberate intent of the adversary, a condi-
tional cessation would quiet things once for all. But not all
crises are so clear in interpretation. And there is too much at
stake for either to sit back and be unresponsive for a period
124 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

long enough to persuade the other that it can safely relax too.
What is at stake is not only the risk of being exploited by
one's partner. There is also the risk that the other will genuinely
misinterpret how far he is invited to go. If one side yields on a
series of issues, when the matters at stake are not critical, it may
be difficult to communicate to the other just when a vital issue
has been reached. It might be hard to persuade the Soviets, if
the United States yielded on Cuba and then on Puerto Rico,
that it would go to war over Key West. No service is done to the
other side by behaving in a way that undermines its belief in
one's ultimate firmness. It may be safer in a long run to hew to
the center of the road than to yield six inches on successive
nights, if one really intends to stop yielding before he is pushed
onto the shoulder. It may save both parties a collision.
It is often argued that "face" is a frivolous asset to preserve,
and that it is a sign of immaturity that a government can't swal-
low its pride and lose face. It is undoubtedly true that false
pride often tempts a government's officials to take irrational
risks or to do undignified things—to bully some small country
that insults them, for example. But there is also the more seri-
ous kind of "face," the kind that in modern jargon is known as
a country's "image," consisting of other countries' beliefs (their
leaders' beliefs, that is) about how the country can be expected
to behave. It relates not to a country's "worth" or "status" or
even "honor," but to its reputation for action. If the question is
raised whether this kind of "face" is worth fighting over, the an-
swer is that this kind of face is one of the few things worth fight-
ing over. Few parts of the world are intrinsically worth the risk
of serious war by themselves, especially when taken slice by
slice, but defending them or running risks to protect them may
preserve one's commitments to action in other parts of the
world and at later times."Face" is merely the interdependence
of a country's commitments; it is a country's reputation for
action, the expectations other countries have about its behavior.
We lost thirty thousand dead in Korea to save face for the
United States and the United Nations, not to save South Korea
for the South Koreans, and it was undoubtedly worth it. Soviet
THE MANIPULATION OF RISK 125

expectations about the behavior of the United States are one of

the most valuable assets we possess in world affairs.
Still, the value of "face" is not absolute. That preserving
face—maintaining others' expectations about one's own
behavior—can be worth some cost and risk does not mean that
in every instance it is worth the cost or risk of that occasion. In
particular, "face" should not be allowed to attach itself to an
unworthy enterprise if a clash is inevitable. Like any threat, the
commitment of face is costly when it fails. Equally important is
to help to decouple an adversary's prestige and reputation from
a dispute; if we cannot afford to back down we must hope that
he can and, if necessary, help him.
It would be foolish, though, to believe that no country has in-
terests in conflict that are worth some risk of war. Some coun-
tries' leaders play chicken because they have to, some because
of its efficacy. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." If the main
participants wish to stop it, the game can probably be stopped,
but not all at once, not without persistence, some luck, and
recognition that it will take time. And, of course, there is no
guarantee that the cars will not collide.
 4
THE IDIOM
OF MILITARY ACTION

Most of the wars we know of have been restrained wars—

conditionally restrained, each side's restraint somewhat
depending on the enemy's. "Unconditional surrender," the
announced aim of the Allies in the Second World War, sounds
like an unbounded objective, and the national energies that
went into that war were pretty unstinting. But the very idea of
"surrender" brings bargaining and accommodation into warfare.
Contrast "unconditional surrender" with "unconditional
extermination."
Implicit in our demands for surrender was an understanding,
a well-grounded expectation, that once Italy, Germany, or
Japan laid down its arms it would not be treated to a massacre.
In calling that war a restrained one, I have in mind not the
unilateral restraint that the Americans or the British showed in
Germany or Japan, once they were in charge and the enemy had
already surrendered. I have in mind the conditional restraint—
the bargain, the proposal that we would stop fighting if they
would. Italy and Japan, even Germany, could still exact a price
in pain and treasure and in postwar stability, and they knew it;
they could not win, once the tide had gone against them, but
they could make our victory hurt us more or cost us more. The
war was costly to both sides, and jointly we could stop it if terms
could be negotiated.
Terms could be negotiated; and it has to be remembered that
some of the terms were unspoken. The Germans knew that
submission meant survival—not slavery, gas chambers, or an
endless orgy of plunder and rape by occupation troops, at least
not in the Western-occupied portion.
Somebody might argue that Japan was really finished if the
726
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 12 7

Americans just wanted to wait—that the United States could

have gone on producing atomic bombs, dropping them as they
became available, and that Japan had nothing to offer in a
surrender negotiation. But that would be wrong both in principle
and in fact. The United States did want the war finished quickly.
The United States did not want to pursue a mass killing in Japan;
the Japanese war cabinet would not have been the first
government in history to use its own population as a shield,
daring an enemy to destroy people as the price of destroying the
regime, knowing that violence was done to American principles
by obliging an American government virtually to exterminate
an enemy. Furthermore, the Japanese had an army in China;
their orderly withdrawal depended on organized surrender.
The United States wanted a Japanese government that could
order soldiers in the Pacific islands to surrender and not to hold
out indefinitely either in continuation of a lost war or as local
bandits. The United States wanted the opportunity to impose a
stable regime in Japan itself and to conduct a military occupation
consistent with its political objectives and democratic principles.
The United States wanted a surrender that acknowledged the
decisive role of the United States with minimum credit to the
Soviet Union and minimum Soviet rights of occupation; that
required an early surrender, and one negotiated mainly with the
United States. The United States wanted to demobilize a large
military establishment and to enjoy the relief that goes with the
end of a war; holding an invasion army in readiness for ultimate
collapse, while a slow atomic bombing campaign reduced
Japan to rubble, was expensive and undesirable. (It was officially
believed that invasion would ultimately be necessary unless the
Japanese came to terms; whether or not that belief would have
held up, it gave powerful reason at the time for strongly prefer-
ring an orderly surrender.) The Japanese government, in other
words, still had important powers that it could withhold or
yield—the capacity to cooperate or not—and therefore had
important bargaining assets. The fact that it had infinitely more
to lose than did the United States, in case no agreement was
reached, should not obscure the fact that the United States
128 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

could get little consolation out of its ultimate ability to destroy

tens of millions of people. In terms of what the United States
was bargaining for, the trading position of the Japanese
government was not to be despised.
As Kecskemeti points out in his study of the terminal stages of
war, "The survival of the loser's authority structure was a
necessary condition for the orderly surrender of his remaining
forces," creating a dilemma for democratic victors, to whom
that authority structure appears the very embodiment of "the
enemy."1 In wars with avowedly limited objectives the
preservation of authority on the other side is more readily
appreciated. As American troops approached victory on the
outskirts of Mexico City in 1847, General Winfield Scott was
"persuaded to hold his position and not attempt to force an entry
into the City." In his eagerness to secure the fruits of victory, he
and his State Department colleague "were easily convinced that
a forward movement of the army might cause a general dispersal
of officials from the capital, leaving no one with whom to
negotiate." The fact that they paused too long while the enemy
regrouped does not invalidate the principle, but only reminds us
that it takes at least as much skill to end a war properly as to
begin one to advantage.2
The Germans were exhausted, and the French too, when the
Franco-Prussian War was brought to a close in 1871. The
Germans possessed all that they wanted of French territory and the
French had little hope of expelling them; but without complete
victory (and often with it) it takes two to stop a war. The French
could still exact a price from the Germans, and the Germans
from the French. They had a common interest in closing the
books on war, cutting their losses or cashing in their gains and
putting a stop to the violence. The French wanted the
Germans out, and the Germans needed security to evacuate.
Both sides had an interest in keeping communications open, re-
specting emissaries and ambassadors and listening to the other
1. Paul Kecskemeti, Strategic Surrender (New York, Atheneum, 1964), p. 24.
2. Otis A. Singletary, The Mexican War, pp. 156-57 (italics supplied).
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 129

side, and working out reliable arrangements for closing out the
war.
Not all of the restraint in these wars was confined to the
terminal negotiations. White flags and emissaries have usually
been respected, and open cities, ambulances and hospitals, the
wounded, the prisoners, and the dead. In battle itself, soldiers
have shown a natural willingness to permit, even to encourage,
enemy units to come out with their hands up, saving violence on
both sides. The character of this restraint, its reciprocal or
conditional nature, is even displayed in those instances where it
is absent; where no quarter was given, it was usually where
none was expected. Even the idea of reprisal involves potential
restraint—ruptured restraint to be sure, with damages exacted
for some violation or excess—but the essence of reprisal is an
action that had been withheld, and could continue to be withheld
if the other had not violated the bargain.
The striking characteristic of both world wars is that they
were unstinting in the use of force; and the restraint—the
accommodation, the bargaining, the conditional agreements
and the reciprocity—were mainly in the method of termination.
The principal boundary to violence was temporal; at some
point the war was stopped though both sides still had a capacity
to inflict pain and cost on the other. Surrender or truce brought
the common interest into focus, putting a limit to the losses. But
until surrender or truce, the use of force was substantially
unbounded.3
Contrast the Korean War. It was fought with restraint,
conscious restraint, and the restraint was on both sides. On the
American side the most striking restraints were in territory and
weapons. The United States did not bomb across the Yalu (or
anywhere else in China) and did not use nuclear weapons. The
enemy did not attack American ships at sea (except by shore
batteries), bases in Japan, or bomb anything in South Korea, es-
3. The principal exceptions, aside from the treatment of prisoners and other
battlefield negotiations, were the reciprocal avoidance of gas, some restraint in
the selection of strategic bombing targets early in the war, and the non-exploitation
of populations in occupied countries as hostages against invasion.
130 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

pecially the vital area of Pusan.4 And, depending on just who

one considers the "enemy" to have been, there were striking
inhibitions on nationality. During the first stage of the war,
there were no Chinese; and the Soviet Union, with the possible
exception of some unacknowledged pilots or technical person-
nel, never did enter the war with submarines, aircraft, or troops.
The Korean War is our one modern instance of a sizable, overt
limited war conducted by well-organized armies representing
both sides in the East-West conflict. To call it "restrained" is,
of course, to take a very broad view; the density of fire and of
manpower was comparable with the campaigns of both world
wars. Both sides slugged it out with unrepressed fury: the
troops fought for their lives; there was as little etiquette on the
battlefield as in any theater of the Second World War; the stakes
were high; and there was a strong sense of "showdown."
Restraint took the form of specific limitations on the fighting;
within those limits, the war was "all out."
It is a strange spectacle, and indeed what makes it plausible is
only that it actually occurred. The circumscribed use of force
on the Korean peninsula can be understood only by reference to
the fearsome threat of violence in the background. Nuclear
weapons were known to exist on both sides, East and West, and
whatever the estimates about their size and number they scared
people; the Soviet Union held in reserve a tidal wave of military
manpower and was not believed so vulnerable to attack, even
atomic attack, as to be wholly intimidated from launching war
in Europe. The consequence was a war in which the fury of
battle was exceeded only by the preoccupation with violence
held in reserve.
The Korean experience set patterns and precedents that have
affected, and will affect, the conduct of limited war and the
planning for it. That war not only reflected the phenomenon of
4. According to Halperin, the Chinese were willing to bomb South Korea but
only with planes launched from North Korean airfields, and the latter were kept
substantially unusable by U.N. air attack. The character of this self-imposed limitation
makes the reciprocity especially vivid. Morton H. Halperin, Limited War in the
Nuclear Age (New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1963), p. 54.
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 131

restraint in furious war but undoubtedly determined attitudes

toward restraint.
In default of competitors, the Korean War has served as our
typical example. It has been distinguished from "all-out war"
not only in degree but in kind, at least until Secretary McNamara
officially acknowledged that even a major war between the
main adversaries could be limited too. Such a prolonged,
tightly bounded, energetic, and purely military campaign is at
least a possibility in the nuclear era because it actually occurred.
But it may be only one possibility, one pattern, one species of a
variegated genus of warlike relations, and no more a model of
what "limited war" really is than the first animal the Pilgrims
saw reflected the wildlife of North America.
Tacit Bargains and Conventional Limits
Nuclear weapons were not used in the Korean War. Gas was not
used in the Second World War. Any "understanding" about gas
was voluntary and reciprocal—enforceable only by threat of
reciprocal use. (That the Geneva Protocol of 1925 outlawed
chemical agents in war and was signed by all the European par-
ticipants in World War II does not itself explain the non-use of gas; it
only provided an agreement that both sides could keep if they chose
to, under pain of reciprocity.) It is interesting to speculate on
whether any alternative agreement concerning poison gas could
have been arrived at without formal communication (or even, for
that matter, with communication). "Some gas" raises complicated
questions of how much, where, under what circumstances; "no gas"
is simple and unambiguous. Gas only on military personnel; gas
used only by defending forces; gas only when carried by projectile;
no gas without warning—a variety of limits is conceivable. Some
might have made sense, and many might have been more impartial
to the outcome of the war. But there is a simplicity to "no gas" that
makes it almost uniquely a focus for agreement when each side can
only conjecture at what alternative rules the other side would
propose and when failure at coordination on the first try may spoil
the chances for acquiescence in any limits at all.
132 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

"No nuclears" is simple and unambiguous. "Some nuclears"

would be more complicated. Ten nuclears? Why not eleven or
twenty or a hundred? Nuclears only on troops in the field? How
close to a village can a nuclear be dropped? Nuclears only when
the situation is desperate? How desperate is that? Nuclears only
on enemy airfields? Why not bridges, too, once the ice is broken?
Nuclears only on the Yalu bridge? But once nuclears are available
"in principle" for a unique and significant target, won't it be
easier to go on and find a second target, and a third, each almost
as compelling as the one that preceded it?
There is a simplicity, a kind of virginity, about all-or-none
distinctions that differences of degree do not have. It takes more
initiative, more soul-searching, more argument, more willingness
to break tradition and upset expectations, to do an unprecedented
thing once; the second time comes easier, and if the enemy
expects you to do it a second time, now that you have done it
once, why not do it the second time, and a third?
National boundaries are unique entities. So are rivers. A national
boundary marked by a river, as the boundary between Manchuria
and North Korea was marked by the Yalu River, is doubly
distinctive. It is noticeable and meaningful if somebody conducts
military operations, bombing for example, up to the banks of the
river; even if he reaches the river only at a few points in his
bombing, one is likely to describe the area of military activity as
marked or limited by the river. If one looks at a map with pins
indicating every place where a bomb has dropped, and tries to
see the pattern, he will notice that the pins are all on one side of
the river; draw instead an arbitrary irregular line and put all the
pins south of it, and the enemy, looking at the pins in his own map
on which the line was not drawn, can only be puzzled by the
pattern. Bomb once across the Yalu, and the enemy will expect
more bombs across the Yalu the next day; keep bombs this side
of the Yalu for several months, and the enemy will suppose that,
though you may change your mind at any time, the odds are
against your bombing north of the Yalu tomorrow.
Even parallels of latitude—arbitrary lines on a map reflecting
an ancient number system based on the days in a year, applied
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 133

o spherical geometry and conventionalized in Western

cartography—become boundaries in diplomatic negotiations
and conspicuous stopping places in a war. They are merely lines
on a map, but they are on everybody1 s map and, if an arbitrary
line is needed, lines of latitude are available.
The shoreline is unambiguous. Water is wet and land is dry.
Ships come in all sizes and shapes, and so do structures and
vehicles on land; but anyone can distinguish the class of ships,
which float and are confined to the offshore waters, from the
class of objects that rest on hard ground. An artillery piece on the
ground may be a fair target, while a gun turret on a floating vessel
is "different." It would be hard to draw the line at vessels twenty
miles at sea, or over some stipulated tonnage, possibly even
between naval vessels and troop transports; but if one draws the
line at the shore it is clear what one has done. "No ships" is
unambiguous in a way that "some ships" cannot be. In the same
way, "no Chinese" is unambiguous in a way that "some Chinese"
cannot be. When the Chinese entered the war, they entered in
force. The Chinese might have limited their participation to a
couple of divisions, at an earlier stage in the war. But who could
expect them to stop at two divisions when a third could make a
difference? Who would suppose, if the two divisions were
identified, that a third might not be lurking somewhere? Who
would suppose that, having taken the decision to introduce
themselves into the war with two divisions, it required a major
new decision to add a third? Who would abide the discovery of
two Chinese divisions, still withholding nuclear weapons and
keeping this side of the Yalu, yet treat a third Chinese division as
an occasion for bombing Manchuria or resorting to nuclear
weapons?
And what is so different about nuclear weapons? Is it the size
of the explosion? Would everyone expect either side to observe a
weight limitation on bombs containing TNT, drawing the line at
one ton, or ten tons, or (if there were planes to carry them) fifty
tons? And why is a kiloton nuclear bomb so different from an
equivalent weight of high explosives dropped in a single attack?
It is. Everybody knows the difference. The difference is not
134 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

tactical; it is "conventional," traditional, symbolic—a matter of

what people will treat as different, of where they will draw the
line. There is no physical or military reason to treat a nuclear
explosive differently from an explosion of TNT, but there is a
symbolic difference that nobody can deny, just as the first mile
north of the thirty-eighth parallel is "different" from the last
mile south of it. Logistically, an airfield north of the Yalu
differs only slightly from an airfield south of the Yalu; and since
the planes that operate from it, or the planes that might attack it,
do not have to cross a bridge or ride a ferry, the river could just as
well be ignored in any tactical analysis. Symbolically, though,
there is a gap between them, a difference in kind and not in
degree. They belong to different classes of territory, and nobody
can ignore the difference. President Johnson said, "Make no
mistake. There is no such thing as a conventional nuclear
weapon."5 He was absolutely right; it is by convention—by an
understanding, a tradition, a consensus, a shared willingness to
see them as different—that they are different.
The American participation in the Korean War increased by
discrete steps: first, military-aid personnel; then bombing from
the air; then a commitment of ground troops. There may be
some number of ground troops that is equivalent to a specified
air attack, but a commitment of ground troops did not look like
just more of the same. Troops were a different class of
intervention and signaled more troops on the ground, in a way
that intervention by air did not commit us to ground intervention
or make it inevitable.
The Yalu was like the Rubicon. To cross it would have
signaled something. It was a natural place to stop; crossing it
would have been a new start. There are qualitative distinctions
between different kinds of military activity, between nuclear
weapons and high explosives, between aerial bombing and
ground intervention, between ships at sea and installations on
shore, between people in the uniform of North Korea and
people in the uniform of China. These are discrete, qualitative
boundaries, natural lines of demarcation, not necessarily perti-
5. New York Times, September 8, 1964, p. 18.
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 135

nent in a tactical or a logistic sense, but nevertheless "obvious"

places to draw the line, for reasons more related to psychology
or custom than to the mathematics of warfare.
What we have is the phenomenon of "thresholds," of finite
steps in the enlargement of a war or a change in participation.
They are conventional stopping places or dividing lines. They
have a legalistic quality, and they depend on precedents or
analogy. They have some quality that makes them recognizable,
and they are somewhat arbitrary. For the most part they are just
"there"; we don't make them or invent them, but only recognize
them. These characteristics are not unique to warfare or diplo-
matic relations. They show up in business competition, racial
negotiations, gang warfare, child discipline, and all kinds of
negotiated competition. Apparently any kind of restrained con-
flict needs a distinctive restraint that can be recognized by both
sides, conspicuous stopping places, conventions and precedents
to indicate what is within bounds and what is out of bounds,
ways of distinguishing new initiatives from just more of the
same activity.6 And there are some good reasons why this is so.
The first is that this kind of conflict, whether war or just
maneuvering for position, is a process of bargaining—of threats
and demands, proposals and counter-proposals, of giving re-
assurances and making trades or concessions, signaling intent
and communicating the limits of one's tolerance, of getting a
reputation and giving lessons. And in limited warfare, two
things are being bargained over, the outcome of the war, and the
mode of conducting the war itself. Just as business firms may
"negotiate" an understanding that they will compete by
advertising but not by price cuts, and rival candidates may agree
implicitly to attack each other's policies but not their private
lives; as street gangs may "agree" to fight with fists and stones
6. The phenomenon shows up in the traditional American expression, "the other
side of the tracks." Railroad tracks in an American town were not so much a
physical barrier to commerce between social classes as a conventional boundary
that people could perceive and confidently expect others to perceive. Racial maps
of American metropolitan areas show the same striking tendency for black and
white to concentrate in areas separated by conspicuous landmarks, usually landmarks
whose only significance is that they are conspicuous.
136 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

but not knives or guns and not to call in outside help; military
commanders may agree to accept prisoners of war, and nations
may agree to accept limitations on the forces they will commit
or the targets they will destroy.
Just as a strike or a price war or a racketeer's stink bomb in a
restaurant is part of the bargaining and not a separate activity
conducted for its own sake, a way of making threats and
exerting pressure, so was the war in Korea a "negotiation" over
the political status of that country. But, as in most bargaining
processes, there was also implicit bargaining about the rules of
behavior, about what one would do, or stop doing, according to
how the other side behaved.7

7. There seems to be a widespread belief that "negotiation," or "bargaining,"

is essentially a verbal activity, even a formal one, and that there is no negotiation
unless the parties are in direct verbal contact, even face to face. According to
this definition there was no visible "negotiation" between the American government
and the Vietcong or the North Vietnamese in the spring of 1965, and no "negotiation"
between Khrushchev and Eisenhower in Paris in 1960, in the wake of the
U-2 incident, when the summit conference did not quite occur. By the same definition
a strike is not part of an industrial negotiation but rather an object of it; to sulk,
to walk out, to bang one's shoe on the table, to overturn strikebreakers' automobiles,
to concentrate marines in the Caribbean, or to bomb targets in North Vietnam
is not only not negotiation, according to this definition, but a denial of negotiation—
the thing that negotiation is a proper substitute for. For legal or tactical purposes,
this is often a good definition; etiquette is worth something, and when the National
Labor Relations Act adjures disputants "to bargain in good faith," meaning to
sit down and talk responsively, this highly restrictive definition of bargaining serves
a purpose, that of imposing some civilized and conservative rules on the conduct
of bargaining. Analytically, though, the essence of bargaining is the communication
of intent, the perception of intent, the manipulation of expectations about what
one will accept or refuse, the issuance of threats, offers, and assurances, the display
of resolve and evidence of capabilities, the communication of constraints on what
one can do, the search for compromise and jointly desirable exchanges, the creation
of sanctions to enforce understandings and agreements, genuine efforts to persuade
and inform, and the creation of hostility, friendliness, mutual respect, or rules
of etiquette. The actual talk, especially the formal talk, is only a part of this,
often a small part, and since talk is cheap it is often deeds and displays that
matter most. Wars, strikes, tantrums, and tailgating can be "bargaining" as much
as talk can be. Sometimes they are not, when they become disconnected from
any conscious process of coercion, persuasion, or communication of intent; but,
then, formal diplomatic talk can also cease to be meaningful negotiation.
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 137

Much of this bargaining is tacit. Communication is by deed

rather than by word, and the understandings are not enforceable
except by some threat of reciprocity, retaliation, or the
breakdown of all restraint. Because the bargaining tends to be
tacit, there is little room for fine print. With ample time and
legal resources a line across Korea could be negotiated almost
anywhere, in any shape, related or unrelated to the terrain or to
the political division of the country or to any conspicuous
landmarks. But if the bargaining is largely tacit and there cannot
be a long succession of explicit proposals and counterproposals,
each side must display its "proposal" in the pattern of its action
rather than in detailed verbal statements. The proposals have to
be simple; they must form a recognizable pattern; they must
rely on conspicuous landmarks; and they must take advantage
of whatever distinctions are known to appeal to both sides.
National boundaries and rivers, shorelines, the battle line itself,
even parallels of latitude, the distinction between air and
ground, the distinction between nuclear fission and chemical
combustion, the distinction between combat support and
economic support, the distinction between combatants and
noncombatants, the distinctions among nationalities, tend to
have these "obvious" qualities of simplicity, recognizability,
and conspicuousness.8
Even their arbitrary nature may help. God made the differ-
8. An important aspect of this tacit bargaining is brought out by problems of the
following sort. Suppose two persons must agree, without prior communication, on
where to draw a line or to impose a limitation. They must do this by proposing,
each separately, a line or limitation, and only if they make identical proposals do
they succeed in reaching agreement. They look separately at the same map and propose
divisions of territory; or they consider various limitations on gas, nuclear weapons,
or some other aspect of combat and propose where a line might be drawn. Certain
lines or limits prove to be poor candidates: there is no reason for choosing one over
the other that is so compelling that one can suppose his partner would make the same
choice. Some are good choices—they enjoy uniqueness, or prominence, or some "obvious"
quality that makes them stand out as candidates for simultaneous choice. The reader
may try it; pick some limitation on, say, nuclear weapons, and let a partner do the
same, without any prior understanding but both trying to make the same choice. The
results are usually suggestive. To pursue the inquiry further, see Thomas C. Schelling,
The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 53-80.
138 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

ence between land and water; age-old processes of geology

made the river; centuries of tradition divided the earth into
conventional coordinates of latitude and longitude; man's
inability to fly made the difference between air and ground
activity a marked one; and in observing these boundaries, one is
accepting a kind of outside arbitration, something "natural,"
something that has the compelling quality of a tradition or
precedent and was not just made up for the occasion. A line
drawn to the north of the Yalu or to the south of it would have had
to be "proposed," while the Yalu itself had only to be "accepted."
Some other qualities are required. The limits must be of a kind
that each side can effectively administer on itself; a pilot can
recognize a river or a shoreline more easily than some arbitrary
line drawn on his map; non-use of a particular weapon, like gas
or nuclear arms, is more easily enforced on one's own troops
than are particular target limitations that they might ignore or
miscalculate in the heat of battle. The limits are most impressive
and most likely to stand up if crossing them is conspicuous and
would be readily noticed. Most of these considerations reinforce
the idea that the particular limitations observed will be qualitative
and not matters of degree—distinctive, finite, discrete, simple,
natural, and obvious.
Tradition and precedent are important here. (In fact, traditions
and precedents themselves have precisely these qualities.) Any
particular limitation will be the more expectable, the more
recognizable, the more natural and obvious, the more people
have got used to recognizing it in the past. The line between
nuclears and high explosives was not only observed during the
Korean War but reinforced. The tendency to think of parallels of
latitude as obvious "dividing lines" was not only exercised in
Korea but reinforced by the experience.
Even the Geneva accords in World War II, governing the
treatment of prisoners of war, noncombatants, hospitals, and so
forth, though nominally a formal negotiated agreement, have to
be recognized as essentially a tacit understanding, not in the
way the details were worked out but in the way they were
accepted and acknowledged during war. A number of countries,
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 139

including Germany and Britain, had formally subscribed to the

code of behavior worked out by the International Committee of
the Red Cross; it specified a number of things about treatment
of prisoners, how to declare an open city, or how to mark the
roof of a hospital. The details of this code had been worked out
in advance, with some participation by the countries that
ultimately adopted the code. And to a remarkable extent the
code was adhered to by countries fighting against each other—
remarkable considering that a bitter war was being fought, the
conduct of the war was in the hands of "war criminals" in some
countries, and the conduct of the war included civilian reprisals
and other violent contradictions to the concept of a clean war. If
one asks why the Geneva conventions were adhered to, to the
extent they were, it is hardly an adequate answer that
governments felt morally obliged and politically constrained to
be on their good behavior. Moral obligation was notably absent
among many participants in the Second World War; and being
charged with violation of an "agreement" on the Geneva
accords would have been a comparatively minor public relations
problem for most of the countries concerned. Evidently there
was self-interest in moderating some dimensions of the war,
and compliance with the Geneva agreements has to be
considered voluntary. It was voluntary and conditional; for the
most part countries must have followed the Geneva accords to
the extent they did in the interest of reciprocity. But why was it
not renegotiated, either by tacit gerrymandering of behavior or
by explicit exchange of proposals?
The answer must be that when some agreement is needed, and
when formal diplomacy has been virtually severed, when
neither side trusts the other nor expects agreements to be
enforceable, when there is neither time nor place for negotiating
new understandings, any agreement that is available may have a
take-it-or-leave-it quality. It can be accepted tacitly by both
sides or by unilateral announcements that one will abide by it if
the other does too. Had there been several competing
conventions all proposing to govern the treatment of prisoners,
each different in detail, it might have been harder to settle on one.
140 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

But with a single document available, a single consistent set of

procedures already worked out in detail, with no time to
renegotiate the fine print, there was a single candidate that
could win by default, and otherwise very likely no agreement
could be reached.
This interpretation is supported by the fact that the United
States complied with the Geneva accords even though it was not
a signatory. The United States had no legal obligation to
anybody, not having subscribed to that convention. But evidently
if the United States wanted to reach an "understanding" with its
enemies, at a moment when diplomatic niceties could not be
tolerated, the choice was to accept arbitrarily the convention
that was available or do without. Typically this is the principal
authority behind an arbitrator's suggestion in any dispute: the
disputants having reached the point where they cannot
satisfactorily negotiate an agreement themselves, and having
either called in an arbitrator or had one forced upon them, there
is a strong power of suggestion in whatever the arbitrator comes
up with. He provides a last chance to settle on the one extant
proposal; if agreement is badly desired and further negotiation
out of the question, the arbitrator's suggestion may be accepted
in default of any alternative.
The sheer arbitrariness undoubtedly helps. The Geneva code
already existed, like the thirty-eighth parallel, the Korean shore
line, or the Yalu River, and did not need to be proposed, only
accepted.
It is worth observing that tacit negotiation of unenforceable
agreements can sometimes be much more efficacious than
explicit verbal negotiation of agreements that purport to carry
some sanction. One difficulty with overt negotiations is that
there are too many possibilities to consider, too many places to
compromise, too many interests to reconcile, too many ways
that the exact choice of language can discriminate between the
parties involved, too much freedom of choice. In marriage and
real estate it helps to have a "standard-form contract," because
it restricts each side's flexibility in negotiation. Tacit bargaining
is often similarly restrictive; anything that can't go without say-
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 141

ing can't go into the understanding. Only bold outlines can be

perceived. Both sides have to identify, separately but
simultaneously, a plausible and expectable dividing line or
mode of behavior, with few alternatives to choose among and
knowing that success on the first try may be essential to any
understanding at all. Negotiated truce lines, for example, are
rarely as simple as the unnegotiated ones; rivers and coastlines
and parallels of latitude, mountain ridges and ancient boundaries
are often unambiguous and have power of suggestion behind
them. They have to serve if detailed changes cannot be
negotiated. This is why some status quo ante is an important
benchmark for terminating an affray; benchmarks are needed,
and the only ones that will serve are those that both sides can
perceive, each knowing that the other perceives them too. In
warfare the dialogue between adversaries is often confined to
the restrictive language of action and a dictionary of common
perceptions and precedents.
The Idiom of Reprisal
Three torpedo boats out of North Vietnamese ports attacked an
American destroyer thirty miles off their coast on August 2,
1964. The American ship fought them off, damaging one, and
remained in the area. Two days later, accompanied by a sister
ship, the destroyer was attacked again, and again the attacking
force—this time a larger one—was chased away with the help
of American aircraft from a nearby carrier. Twelve hours later,
sixty-four American aircraft from the carriers Ticonderoga
and Constellation attacked naval installations in five North
Vietnamese ports, reportedly destroying or seriously damaging
about half of the fifty PT boats in those harbors and setting fire
to a petroleum depot. While the attack was under way, President
Johnson announced on television that the North Vietnamese attack
had occurred and had to be met with positive reply. "That reply is
being given as I speak to you tonight." He said, "Our response for
the present will be limited and fitting," adding that, "we seek no
wider war" and that he had instructed the Secretary of State to make
that position totally clear to friends "and to adversaries."
142 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

With only one dissent, the eleven Republican and twenty-two

Democratic members of the Senate Foreign Relations and
Armed Services Committees were satisfied that the President's
decision was "soundly conceived and skillfully executed" and
that, in the circumstances, the United States "could not have
done less and should not have done more." Republicans and
Democrats, military and civilians, even some Europeans, with
unusual consensus felt the action was neatly tailored in scope
and in character—everybody, that is, with the possible exception
of the North Vietnamese and the Communist Chinese. Even
they may have thought so. As a matter of fact, theirs was the
most important judgment. They were the critics who mattered
most. The next step was up to them. America's reputation
around the world, both for civilized restraint and for resolve and
initiative, was at stake; nevertheless, the most important
audience, the one for whose benefit the action was so
appropriately designed, was the enemy.
If the American military action was widely judged unusually
fitting, this was an almost aesthetic judgment. If words like "rep-
artee" can be applied to war and diplomacy, the military action
was an expressive bit of repartee. It took mainly the form of
deeds, not words, but the deeds were articulate. The text of
President Johnson's address was not nearly as precise and ex-
plicit as the selection of targets and the source and timing of the
attack. The verbal message reinforced the message delivered by
aircraft; and the words were undoubtedly chosen with the Com-
munist as well as the American audience in mind. But that night's
diplomacy was carried out principally by pilots, not speech-
writers.
War is always a bargaining process, one in which threats and
proposals, counterproposals and counterthreats, offers and
assurances, concessions and demonstrations, take the form of
actions rather than words, or actions accompanied by words. It
is in the wars that we have come to call "limited wars" that the
bargaining appears most vividly and is conducted most
consciously. The critical targets in such a war are in the mind of
the enemy as much as on the battlefield; the state of the enemy' s
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 143

expectations is as important as the state of his troops; the threat of

violence in reserve is more important than the commitment of
force in the field.
Even the outcome is a matter of interpretation. It depends on
how the adversaries conduct themselves as much as on the
division of spoils; it involves reputations, expectations,
precedents broken and precedents established, and whether the
action left political issues more unsettled or less unsettled than
they were. What happens on the ground (or wherever the limited
war takes place) is important, but it may be as important for what
it symbolizes as for its intrinsic value. And, like any bargaining
process, a restrained war involves some degree of collaboration
between adversaries.
No one understands this better than the military themselves,
who in many wars have had a high regard for the treatment of
prisoners. Aside from decency, there is a good reason for keep-
ing prisoners alive; they can be traded in return for the enemy's
captives, or their health and comfort can be made conditional on
the enemy's treatment of his own prisoners.9 Collecting the
dead is an even more dramatic instance of the non-conflicting
9. This kind of bargaining power can even be the motive for taking prisoners.
At the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War an advance party of Thebans entered
Plataea during the night but most were killed or captured; the main force arrived
next morning and, since the attack was unexpected, found numbers of Plataeans
outside their city. The Thebans planned, therefore, initially to move against the
Plataeans outside the walls, "to take some prisoners, so as to have them to exchange,
in case any of their own people had been made prisoner." The principle was valid,
but the Plataeans beat them to it, announcing, via herald, that they already had
their prisoners and that, if the Thebans did any harm to the Plataeans outside
the walls, they would put to death the Thebans whom they had already taken.
They even negotiated a complete Theban withdrawal by offering to return the
prisoners, but in the end violated the understanding and killed them. Hannibal
tried to sell his prisoners for cash, after the battle of Cannae; the Romans refused,
apparently not so much to frustrate Hannibal's economics, though, as to maintain
"a precedent indispensable for military discipline." The disciplinary point raised
by the Romans is a reminder that bargaining is especially complex when the objects
of bargaining are themselves participants, with interests of their own. Livy, The
The War with Hannibal, pp. 158-65; Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War,
pp. 97-101.
144 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

interest in war, of a recognized common interest among enemies

that goes back in history at least to the siege of Troy.10
What makes restrained war such a collaborative affair is that
so much has to be communicated. The American government
not only wanted to conduct the raid on North Vietnamese naval
installations; it wanted the North Vietnamese to know why it
was doing it and what it was not doing. What the North Viet-
namese understood from the action—how they interpreted it,
what lesson they drew, what they expected next, and what pat-
tern or logic they could see in it—was more important than the
dismantling of a minor naval capability. The operation was un-
doubtedly designed with great care, but it did not take great care
to destroy twenty million dollars' worth of North Vietnamese
assets and to inflict a few score casualties, or whatever the
consequences were. The care was in devising a communication
that would be received by the North Vietnamese and the
Chinese with high fidelity. And it was in the North Vietnamese
interest to read the message correctly: certain things might have
10. Another striking instance is the duel, as a method of war, which Yadin
finds to have been common in Canaan long before the arrival of the Philistines.
"Apparently the stimulus of the duel," he says, "was not primarily boastfulness
or conceit on the part of the individual warriors, but the desire of commanders
to secure a military decision without the heavy bloodshed of a full-scale battle."
He analyzes the familiar example of David and Goliath. "A champion comes forth
from the Philistine camp, shouts contemptuously to the Israeli army, and demands
that they send a warrior to do battle with him. A close examination of the narrative
shows that Goliath is not being simply boastful and provocative. There is a specific
intent behind his words. He is offering the army of Israel a method of war
which was common enough in his own army but was still strange to the Israeli
forces. . . . Goliath is, in fact, suggesting that the contest between him and the
representative of Israel shall be instead of a battle between the two armies. This
finds emphasis in the continuation of his declaration, and he presents the conditions
of the contest: 'If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be
your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our
servants, and serve us.' Here, then," concludes Yadin, "is a form of warfare—
a duel—which takes place in accordance with prior agreement of the two armies,
both accepting the condition that their fate shall be decided by the outcome of
the contest." Goliath's army in the end fled, not keeping the bargain. See Yigael
Yadin, The Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands (2 vols. New York, McGraw-Hill,
1963), 2, 267-69.
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 145

gone wrong with the enterprise, especially in the response to it,

that would have been deplorable to both sides.
What made the attack on the PT boat appear so "appropriate"?
An abstract military evaluation does not tell us much; at a
modest cost in casualties (two aircraft lost with their pilots), a
modest loss was inflicted on the North Vietnamese military
force. Equivalent damage inflicted on the North Vietnamese air
force, or its army, or its military supply lines, would not have
carried the same meaning and would not have seemed nearly so
fitting. What made it seem fitting was not its success as a
military threat. It was as an act of reprisal—as a riposte, a
warning, a demonstration—that the enterprise appealed so
widely as appropriate. Equivalent damage on other military
resources might have made as much sense militarily, but the
symbolism would have been different.
Had the United States waited a week to mount the attack,
some of the connection would have been dissipated. Had the
United States struck at North Vietnamese airfields, on grounds
that the PT boats had proved ineffectual and the next attack
might come from airplanes, the connection would have been
less close between act and reprisal. Had the United States
returned to the attack day after day, shooting at naval
installations, port facilities, and warehouses, the entire operation
would have lost neatness; the sensation of "justice" would have
been diluted; the "incident" would have been less well-defined;
and it would have been harder to tell what was reprisal for the
destroyer attack and what was opportunistic military action.
A good way to describe the American response is that it was
unambiguous. It was articulate. It contained a pattern. If some-
one asks what the United States did when its destroyers were
attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin, there is no disagreement about
the answer. One can state the time, the targets, and the weapons
used. Nobody supposes that the United States just happened to
have an attack on those North Vietnamese ports planned for that
day; and nobody is in any doubt about precisely what military
action was directly related to the attack on the destroyers.
When a dog on a farm kills a chicken, I understand that the
146 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

dead chicken is tied around the dog's neck. If the only purpose
for punishing a dog's misdemeanor were to make him suffer
discomfort, one could tie a dead chicken around his neck for
soiling the rug, or spank him in the living room every time he
killed a chicken. But it communicates more to the dog, and
possibly appeals to the owner's sense of justice, to make the
punishment fit the crime, not only in scope and intensity but in
symbols and association.
With the dog we cannot explain; we cannot tie a dead chicken
around a dog's neck and tell him it is because he bit the post-
man. We can tell the North Vietnamese, though, that we are
destroying their PT boats because they attacked our ships, and
could just as easily have said, alternatively, that we were
shooting up supply routes into Laos, blasting some factories,
hitting airbases, or intensifying the war in South Vietnam, in
reprisal for their attacks on the destroyers. Why does the action
have to communicate, as it has to with dogs, when we can
perfectly well verbalize the connection with every assurance
that they are listening?
This is an intriguing question. It seems that governments do
feel obliged to make a pattern of their actions, to communicate
with the deed as well as with words. In fact, there is probably no
characteristic of limited war more striking than this, that one
communicates by deed rather than words, or by deed in addition
to words, and makes the actions form a pattern of communication
in spite of the fact that each side is literate enough to understand
what the other is saying. There is something here in the
psychology of communication—in people's sense of proportion,
of justice, of appropriateness, in the symbolic relation of a
response to a provocation, in the pattern that is formed by a
coherent set of actions—that goes beyond the abstract military
relation between enemies, beyond the economics of cost and
damage, beyond the words that are used to rationalize a set of
actions. We see it all the time in diplomacy. If the Russians
restrict the travel of our diplomats or exclude a cultural visit, our
first thought is to tighten restrictions or cancel a visit in return,
not to retaliate in fisheries or commerce. There is an idiom in
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 147

this interaction, a tendency to keep things in the same currency,

to respond in the same language, to make the punishment fit the
character of the crime, to impose a coherent pattern on rela-
tions.
It is important to figure out why. It is equally important just to
recognize that this is so. Whether it involves power of suggestion,
sheer imitation, plain lack of imagination, an irrelevant instinct
for coherence and pattern, or instead involves some good
reasons—even reasons that are only vaguely understood and
responded to instinctively—the phenomenon deserves
recognition. When Khrushchev in 1960 complained about U-2
flights, he hinted that Soviet rockets might fire at the bases from
which U-2 aircraft were launched in the neighboring countries,
Pakistan and Norway. Was this because the U-2 aircraft were a
threat to him and he would eliminate it by hitting the bases from
which they were flying? Probably not. The analogy of the dead
chicken seems at least as compelling as the notion that destroying
a particular airfield would in some physical sense prevent a
recurrence of the flights. Khrushchev was making a connection,
making his threatened riposte peculiarly suit the thing he was
complaining against. He could have said he would deny visas to
Pakistani, shoot a Pakistani vessel at sea, drop a bomb in a town
in Pakistan, sabotage Pakistani railroads, or give military aid to
an enemy of Pakistan. But he didn't. He said, or strongly
hinted—whether or not he really meant it—that he would blow
up the place where the U-2 aircraft took off.
This is so natural, as was the American response to the attack
on its destroyers, that we may not even be inclined to question
the principle involved. Some of these responses are so "obvious"
that one is unaware that "obviousness" constitutes a striking
principle of interaction in diplomacy, even of military behavior.
It is particularly interesting that this happens between countries
that are hostile to each other, between whom the legal niceties
need not apply.
To say that it would have been gratuitous, inappropriate, and
arbitrary for Khrushchev to destroy an army post after a U-2
flight took off, or for the United States to hit Laotian Commu-
148 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

nist installations after the destroyers were attacked, only

provokes the question: So what? What is the compulsion to
embody coherence and pattern in one's actions, especially
against somebody who has just tried to shoot up your destroyers
or has violated your airspace with a reconnaissance plane?
Rules are easy to understand among countries that try to get
along with each other, that respect each other, subscribe to a
common etiquette and are trying to establish a set of laws to
govern their behavior; but when somebody flies U-2 planes
over your missile sites, why not kidnap a few of his ballerinas?
Even when this tendency to act in patterns—to respond in the
same idiom, to make the punishment fit the crime in character as
well as intensity—has been explained it still deserves to be
evaluated; the fact that it comes naturally does not mean that it
necessarily embodies the highest military or diplomatic wisdom.
One could argue, perhaps with some validity, that it results from
intellectual laziness: there may be a hundred ways to respond to
an enemy action, somehow a choice has to be made, and the
choice is easy if the range is narrowed by some tradition or
instinct that keeps the game in the same ball park. Rules of
etiquette serve this purpose; they limit choice and make life
easier. It can also be alleged, possibly with some justification,
that bureaucracies have a propensity toward casuistry, legalistic
reasoning, and philosophical neatness that makes national
leaders instinctively act in a coherent pattern, as though
coherence were the same as relevance and as though repartee
were the highest form of strategy. The tendency for unfriendly
countries to debate with each other continually, to accuse each
other and to justify themselves, may enhance this tendency to
think of all diplomacy, including military action, as a legalistic
adversary proceeding.11
11. The urge to make punishment fit the crime in content and nature, not merely
in severity, reportedly appears in children by about age 6 and becomes dominant
by age 10 or 12. "The essential point," says Piaget in describing the children's attitudes,
"is to do to the transgressor something analogous to what he had done himself, so
that he should realize the results of his actions; or again to punish, where it is possible,
by the direct material consequences of his misdeed." He calls this the principle
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 149

But there is undoubtedly more to it. To relate the reaction to

the original action, to impose a pattern on events, probably
helps to set limits and bounds. It shows a willingness to accept
limits and bounds. It avoids abruptness and novelty of a kind
that might startle and excessively confuse an opponent. It
maintains a sense of communication, of diplomatic contact, of a
desire to be understood rather than misunderstood. It helps an
opponent in understanding one's motive, and provides him a
basis for judging what to expect as the consequences of his own
actions. It helps the opponent to see that bad behavior is
punished and good behavior is not, if that is what one wants him
to see; unconnected actions, actions chosen at random, might
not seem to follow a sequence of cause and effect. In case the
opponent might think that one is avoiding the issue, turning
aside and pretending not to notice, the direct connection between
action and response helps to eliminate the possibility of sheer
of "punishment by reciprocity" and identifies it with children's developing notion
of social contract, of rules governing relations among people rather than rules
imposed on people by divine or natural authority. The littler children tend to think
of rules as something imposed from outside; "expiatory punishment" appeals to
them and "there is no relation between the content of the guilty act and the nature
of its punishment." On the difference between the two, he says, "The choice of
punishments is the first thing that brings this out," the little ones being concerned
only with severity, the older ones believing, "not that one must compensate for
the offense by a proportionate suffering, but that one must make the offender
realize, by means of measures appropriate to the fault itself, in what way he has
broken the bond of solidarity."
Of course, "bond of solidarity" somewhat exaggerates the contractual relation
between Arabs and Israelis, or Americans and North Vietnamese! Nevertheless,
restraints and reprisals among nations are based on little else but reciprocity of
some sort; connecting the response to the provocation is a way of showing that,
though some "rule" has been violated, rules still exist, are in fact being enforced
in the act of reprisal, and are enforceable only by the threat of each other's response.
It would be interesting to examine reprisals in colonial areas, where the relation
is authoritarian rather than reciprocal, to see whether a more "expiatory" mode
of punishment is typical. A key difference between the expiatory and the reciprocal
modes is apparently between judging the deed and its punishment as an isolated
event and viewing them as episodes in a continuing relationship, an essentially
bargaining relationship. See Jean Piaget, The Moral Judgment of the Child (New
York, Collier Books, 1962), pp. 199-232, especially pp. 206, 217, 227, 232.
150 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

coincidence and makes the one appear the consequence of the

other.
One can still ask why the same association cannot be made
verbally, providing much greater freedom of action if a greater
freedom is desired. Part of the answer may be that words are
cheap, not inherently credible when they emanate from an
adversary, and sometimes too intimate a mode of expression.
The action is more impersonal, cannot be "rejected" the way a
verbal message can, and does not involve the intimacy of verbal
contact. Actions also prove something; significant actions
usually incur some cost or risk, and carry some evidence of their
own credibility. And actions are less ambiguous as to their
origin; verbal messages come from different parts of gov-
ernment, with different nuances, supplemented by "leaks" from
various sources and can be contradicted by later verbal messages,
while actions tend to be irrevocable, and the fact that action
occurred proves that authority is behind it. "I wish it were
possible to convince others with words," said President Johnson
(April 7, 1965) during the air attacks on North Vietnam, "of
what we now find it necessary to say with guns and planes."12
The fact that there can be good reason does not imply that this
coherent "diplomatic" mode of action is always the best. There
can be times when a country wants to shake off the rules, to deny
any assurance that its behavior is predictable, to shock the
adversary, to catch an adversary off balance, to display un-
reliability and to dare the opponent to respond in kind, to ex-
press hostility and to rupture the sense of diplomatic contact, or
even just to have an excuse for embarking on a quite unrelated
venture as though it were a rational response to some previous
event. This is still diplomacy: there are times to be rude, to break
the rules, to do the unexpected, to shock, to dazzle, or to catch
off guard, to display offense, whether in business diplo-
macy, military diplomacy, or other kinds of diplomacy. And
12. "That son of a bitch won't pay any attention to words," is the way President
Kennedy said it of Khrushchev. "He has to see you move." Arthur M. Schlesinger,
Jr., A Thousand Days (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 391.
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 151

there are times when, though in principle one would like to

conform to tradition and to avoid the unexpected, the tradition
is too restrictive in the choices it offers, and one has to abandon
etiquette and tradition, to risk a misunderstanding, and to insist
on new rules for the game or even a free-for-all. Even then, the
rules and traditions are not irrelevant: breaking the rules is more
dramatic, and communicates more about one's intent, precisely
because it can be seen as a refusal to abide by rules.
The fact that nations show a tendency to embody their intent
in their actions does not mean that this sort of communication is
received and interpreted with high fidelity. The Gulf of Tonkin
was an extreme case of articulate action, partly because the
events were so isolated in space and time from other events and
so dramatically at variance with the context. The process of
diplomacy by maneuver is typically a good deal clumsier, with
actions less subject to careful control for the message they
embody, subject to background noise from uncontrollable
events, and subject to misinterpretation. Even the Gulf of
Tonkin events may not have been as plain to the North
Vietnamese at the time as they were shortly afterward to the
Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees.
Tactical Responses and Diplomatic Responses
If one side in a crisis or military engagement steps up the
conflict, abandoning some restraint or crossing some threshold,
we can distinguish two very different determinants of the
other's response. One is the change in the tactical situation—
the pressure to avert defeat or to recapture advantage by
enlarging its own participation. The other is the incentive to
make an overt response, to meet the challenge, to effect a
reprisal, to "punish" the other side for its breach of the rules or to
"warn" against doing it again, even to force the initiator to back
down and observe the old rule, ceasing what he started or
withdrawing what he introduced. The Chinese entrance into the
Korean War appears mainly motivated by the first determinant,
the tactical need to keep the American military from conquering
all of Korea. There was no obvious "incident" to which they were
152 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

reacting, no sudden change in American military conduct that

released them from some "obligation" to stay out. In contrast
was the American response in the Tonkin Gulf, based not on
military requirements but on a diplomatic judgment of what the
situation called for. Similarly, when Syrian artillery, which had
often harassed Israeli military outposts and received ground
fire in return, fired on civilians in late 1964 the Israeli response
was to break the ground-fire tradition and use airpower to
silence the batteries. I am told that an important consideration
in this decision was that a serious departure from routine by the
Syrians deserved a retaliatory break in the Israeli tradition—
with the attendant risk of enlarging the war.13
Because there are these two consequences of any enlargement,
the "tactical" effect and the "diplomatic" effect, there are two
different modes of enlargement. One is to minimize, the other is
to exploit, the appearance of initiative, challenge, rupture, or
abandon. If the purpose is to shock the other side, creating a
sense of danger, signaling initiative, determination, or even
recklessness, and so to intimidate the other and to give it pause,
the appearance of "breach in the rules" can be accentuated.
Whether the action involves new weapons, nationalities, or
targets, shifting from covert to overt intervention, or widening
the territorial scope of the war, one mode is to do it suddenly,
dramatically, and in a manner that dares the other side to react
with equal vigor. Even the choice of what initiative to take can
be made with a view to its shock effect rather than its tactical
consequences. The use of American "reconnaissance" aircraft
in reprisal attacks in Laos in 1964 had mainly this effect; the
object was probably not to do a certain amount of damage on the
ground but to demonstrate American willingness to become
more deeply engaged. Disguising the attacks as Laotian, in a
way that permitted the tactical missions to be carried out with
equal success, would not have served the purpose.
13. I am also told that the recent American air reprisals in North Vietnam were
recognized at the time as a precedent for the interpretation of air reprisals in Syria,
air strikes having become incorporated into the language of reprisal with the connotation
of once-for-all riposte rather than of a declaration of renewed or enlarged war.
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 153

If instead the object is the tactical advantage of relaxing some

constraint, not intimidation, an effort can be made to erode or
erase the boundary rather than to breach it dramatically. A
doctrine of "hot pursuit," for example, can be invoked in
attacking enemy airfields or ports, stretching the battlefield in a
plausible way. If the enemy then prefers to construe "hot
pursuit" not as a gambit in a war of nerves but as a tactical
extension of the original war, he may be free to treat it as less in
need of reprisal than if the attack were an abrupt change in the
character of the conflict.14
Manipulation of Conventional Thresholds
Can a government create plausible limitations in advance of a
conflict, choosing the kinds it considers safe and advantageous?
And can limitations be denied their obvious and compelling
quality by being denied in advance or eroded in some fashion?
Evidently they can, but not easily.
Take the case of nuclear weapons. Numerous activities fortify
the symbolic distinction between nuclear and ordinary
explosives. Even the test ban, nominally aimed at peacetime
testing, celebrates and ratifies an acknowledged distinction be-
tween nuclear weapons and all others. In the same manner, but
in reverse, a widespread use of clean nuclear explosives for
earth-moving and other economic projects would tend to assim-
ilate nuclear to other explosives, getting people used to the idea
that the choice between TNT and nuclear explosives should be
based on efficiency alone, eroding the tradition that nuclear ex-
plosives are different. Alternatively, the use of nuclear weapons
anywhere in combat would shatter a precedent; deliberately
introducing them into a war in which they were not necessary,
under circumstances where there was little likelihood of things'
getting out of hand, could cast doubt on the presumption that
nuclear weapons are weapons only of last resort and create ex-
14. For further discussion of "Motives for Expansion and Limitation," see Halperin' s
chapter with that title, also his chapter on "Interaction Between Adversaries," Limited
War in the Nuclear Age, pp. 1-25 and 26-38.
154 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

pectations that they would be used again when expedient,

reducing the plausibility to each nuclear country of the other's
reluctance to use them.
Can verbal declarations alone create viable limits? Words
apparently do contribute. Directly, the discussion of possible
limitations helps to create expectations; it may even do so in the
absence of any intent. A sustained argument about whether the
use of nuclear weapons at sea, or in air-to-air combat, is
qualitatively different from their use on land might create, or
sharpen, such a distinction in advance. Verbal activity can call
attention to distinctions that might not have been recognized;
the United States has usually distinguished between combat
assistance and the provision of military advisors, a distinction
that might not have been so noticeable without discussion of it.
Secretary McNamara's proposal that cities be "off limits" is
one that, though its expression does not create the difference
between cities and military establishments, can at least call
attention to a potential dividing line, announce to the Soviets
that this is a distinction the U.S. government is alert to, and
propose that information systems be designed to tell the
difference between an attack on cities and an attack on military
establishments.15
Characteristics of Thresholds
Some of these thresholds or limits have the quality that when
they are crossed there is unavoidably a dramatic challenge,
provoking the question, What will the other do now? Gas and
nuclear weapons have this character; one expects the adversary
15. "The open declaration of a city-avoidance option (as compared with mere
secret preparation for city avoidance) is, in a sense, a notice served. It is a notice
in accordance with which an enemy may well expect the United States to behave
in case war is forced upon us. The purpose of making the declaration is not to
solicit an 'agreement' to the rules of nuclear war. It is rather to be sure that
a potential enemy is aware of the new choice it has. If it values the lives of
its citizens, it should take steps to create for itself a targeting option to spare
the cities of its enemies." John T. McNaughton, General Counsel of the Department
of Defense, address to the International Arms Control Symposium, December 1962,
Journal of Conflict Resolution, 5 (1963), 233.
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 155

not merely to reappraise the tactical situation but to consider

some overt reaction, some riposte, some answer. (An obvious
possibility is to introduce similar weapons of his own, if he has
them.) Another such challenge is crossing a national boundary.
Adding forces of a new nationality, especially from a country
that is capable of a major increase in military activity (like the
Chinese armies in the Korean War) is another dramatic
challenge.
An important characteristic of limits or thresholds is whether
they apply to both sides. If one breaches a limit (crosses a
threshold), is there some equivalent step the other side can take?
Is it possible to answer "in kind," or is the particular step
unavailable to the other or meaningless for it? In a war in which
both the United States and the Soviet Union participated, the
introduction, say, of nuclear weapons by one could be "matched"
by their use on the other side. ("Matching" would not mean that
equivalent nuclear firepower is introduced or that the
consequences cancel out, only that there is a response in the
same "currency.") In other cases, such as blockade of China,
there would be no "obvious" response in kind. Sometimes there
are, sometimes not, equivalences or symmetries in the restraints
observed and the initiatives available to both sides. If one side
cannot simply accept the other's gambit but cannot match it in
kind, there may nevertheless be some "obvious" response or
reprisal. The introduction of American aircraft carriers into a
local war would not be matched by the introduction of carriers
by the other side; but attacks on the carriers, and on other
vessels at sea, might appeal as the "appropriate" response. It is
always, of course, up to the governments concerned whether or
not to respond in kind; there are the risks of continued escalation,
as well as military effectiveness to be taken into account. Nor is
there any suggestion that a "matching" response cancels the
initial act in a tactical or quantitative sense. Indeed, if there is a
strong expectation that the response will be limited to
"appropriate" or "obvious" or "matching" actions, the side
about to take some new initiative will choose, among the possi-
bilities available, the particular steps in which the other side's
756 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

"matching response" is comparatively weak—aircraft in

Vietnam, for example.
An interesting characteristic of some of these thresholds is
that they arise by a historical process, even inadvertently or
accidentally, and can acquire status just by coming to be
recognized over a prolonged period. The North Koreans, for
example, may have considered early in the war that the critical
port city of Pusan should be "fair game" but were too busy
winning the land war to spare aircraft for the purpose. Modest
air attacks on Pusan early in the war might have got the
Americans used to them, at a time when they were having to get
used to successive defeats on the ground anyhow. Possibly the
response would have been reprisals against China, threats of
atomic bombs, and so forth; possibly not. But over the weeks
this apparent safety of Pusan acquired the status of "sanctuary,"
and a North Korean attack on the port would have been an
abrupt change. In fact, American use of the port—night
unloading with lights, for example—reflected an eventual
reliance on its sanctuary status, and a bombing attack would
have been a breach of expectations.
A more important limitation that acquired status with time
was the non-use of nuclear weapons in Korea. In retrospect this
was one of major influence: it set a precedent that is fundamental
to the inhibition on nuclear weapons today and to the
controversies about whether and when nuclear weapons ought
to be introduced. Had they been used as a matter of course in
Korea—and they might or might not have been decisive,
according to how they were used and how the Chinese reacted—
there might have been a much greater expectation of nuclear
weapons in subsequent engagements, less of a cumulative
tradition that nuclear weapons were weapons of last resort.
As a matter of fact, if the United States government had
desired to be free to use nuclear weapons whenever it might be
expedient—in the straits of Formosa or in Vietnam, in the
Middle East or in the Berlin corridor—there would have been a
strong case for deliberately using them in Korea even without a
military necessity. Their use in Korea could have retarded or
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 157

eliminated any sensation that nuclear weapons were a different

class of weapons; it could have established a precedent that they
are to be freely used like any other weapon, would have reduced
their revolutionary surprise and shock in subsequent engage-
ments and would have raised the general expectation that,
where nuclear weapons would be useful, they would be used.
The Korean War itself was decisive in the precedent it set, in its
confirmation that the decision to use nuclear weapons was, in a
real sense and not just nominally, a matter for presidential
decision, and in making nuclear weapons the hallmark of
restraint in warfare. In 1964 President Johnson said, "For
nineteen peril-filled years no nation has loosed the atom against
another. To do so now is a political decision of the highest
order."16 The nineteen years are themselves part of the reason
why.
An "UltimateLimit"?
Some thresholds have made a claim to being the "ultimate limit,"
the last stopping place before all-out war. There have been
several of these, none sacrosanct. The most controversial has
been the line between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons; there
are many who believe (and official Soviet statements have
supported them) that once nuclear weapons are used in any
East-West conflict, everything goes. Some think that nuclear
weapons would simply be the "signal" that the war was out of
hand, that both sides would read the signal and restraint would
give way to abandon, each would rush to get in the first strategic
blow and the situation would literally explode in all-out war.
Others think that nuclear weapons would create so much
damage and confusion and so increase the tempo of war that
the thing would get out of hand in defiance of the best efforts to
control it. Some think that military officers have such an infatu-
ation with firepower and brute force that they would take the bit
in their teeth and forget all restraint. And some, without think-
ing much, just believe that when the first nuclear weapons go off
the balloon goes up.
16. New York Times, September 8, 1964, p. 18.
158 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

Beliefs matter. Beliefs may not correspond to statements;

official Soviet declarations that no nuclear war could be limited
do not mean that Soviet leaders believe it—or, if they do, that
they would not change their minds quickly if a few nuclear
weapons went off. President Eisenhower used to say that
nuclear weapons ought to be used like artillery, on the basis of
efficiency, but that does not begin to imply that he really felt
that way; his willingness to negotiate the suspension of nuclear
tests is evidence that he was affected by the psychological and
symbolic status of nuclear weapons. Even those who believe
that the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons
is sentimental folly and political nuisance, and that there is no
rational basis for distinguishing explosions according to their
internal chemistry, will nevertheless catch their breath when
the first one goes off in anger, in a way that cannot be explained
merely by the size of the explosion.
But beliefs do matter. If everybody believes, and expects
everybody else to believe, that things get more dangerous when
the first nuclear weapon goes off, whatever his belief is based
on he is going to be reluctant to authorize nuclear weapons, will
expect the other side to be reluctant, and in the event nuclear
weapons are used will be expectant about rapid escalation in a
way that could make escalation more likely. Virtually all of
these thresholds are fundamentally matters of beliefs and
expectations.
Another "ultimate threshold" that has appealed to some is the
direct confrontation of Soviet and American troops in battle.
There have been some who felt that a war could be restrained as
long as the two major powers were not directly engaged in
organized military combat, but that if infantrymen in Soviet and
American uniforms, organized in regular units and behaving in
accordance with authority, started shooting at each other, that
would be "general war" between the United States and the
Soviet Union, and it could stop only with the exhaustion or
collapse of one side or both in a major war. It is hard to see how
even a strong belief in it could have made this true; but it is an
interesting bit of testimony to the symbolic character of these
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 159

thresholds and restraints, and seems not only to make war an

extraordinarily "diplomatic" phenomenon but would make the
biggest war in the history of mankind a phenomenon of antique
diplomacy reminiscent of the dueling etiquette of some centuries
ago.17
An important "ultimate threshold" that undoubtedly commands
more assent is the national boundaries of the United States and the
Soviet Union. If "limited war" has meant anything in recent
years, it has usually meant a war in which the homelands of the
two major adversaries were inviolate. There are undoubtedly
many reasons for this, but an important one is surely the
principle discussed earlier regarding an attack on California. It
is simply the question, "If not here, where?" Is there any stop-
17. As Maxwell Taylor has pointed out, beliefs in certain thresholds can become
embodied in the planning process, thereby become reflected in military capabilities
and command procedures, and thus become more tangible, more rigid. If a government
sufficiently believes that any nuclear war will inevitably become "all out," or that
any engagement of Soviet and American troops must become "all out," there may
be inadequate plans and inappropriate forces for the contingency that got ignored.
In the end it is then more dangerous to cross the threshold; choices become more
extreme; the threshold is less likely to be crossed but, when crossed, may have
to be crossed by a great leap. He strongly implies this was the import of the
Soviet-American troop-engagement threshold. As he also implies, there is a tendency
for certain terms or concepts to become the subject of "official definitions," and
these tend not to be analytical but "legal" in their application.
To say that any Soviet-American engagement in which nuclear weapons are
used is "general war," in an official glossary, does not tend to broaden the definition
of "general war" to include small engagements, nor does it merely predict that
small direct nuclear engagements are likely to lead to general war; rather it tends
to state that general war shall occur under those conditions and that planning
to the contrary is unauthorized or contrary to some agreement. This is a fundamental
difference between scientific, or analytical, definitions and those that apply to the
interpretation of statutes, orders, commitments, and agreements. It is also why
any set of "official definitions" is bound to be prejudicial. Maxwell D. Taylor,
The Uncertain Trumpet (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1960), pp. 7-10, 38-
39.
This is not to deny that it does make a difference if Americans and Russians find them-
selves at war or, if not quite "at war," in a war on opposite sides. The question of whether
or not to bomb North Vietnam's surface-to-air missile sites was recognized to involve,
in an attenuated way, the possibility of Russian casualties from American military action;
160 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

ping place once the national boundary has been penetrated? Can
any limitation of intent be communicated; is there any portion of a
country that one can conquer without being tempted to go a little
further; is there any portion of one's country that can be yielded
without implying that, if a little more pressure is put on, a little more
will be yielded?
Visible intent would be important. Suppose Soviet troops spilled
into Iran during an uprising in that country, and Turkish or
American forces became involved. Soviet aircraft could operate
from bases north of the Caucasus, and a possible response would be
an attack on those bases by American bombers or possibly missiles.
To do more than symbolic damage the missiles would have to
contain nuclear warheads; these could be small, detonated at
altitudes high enough to avoid fall-out, confined to airfields away
from population centers, and might easily make clear to the Soviet
government that this was an action limited to the Transcaucasus as
an extension of the local theater.
There is no doubt that this would be a risky action. It might or
might not be militarily effective; and it might or might not open
up some "matching" use of Soviet air strikes, perhaps also with
nuclear weapons confined to military targets, possibly including
American ships in the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean,
possibly including Turkish air bases. Even if the war stayed
limited it would remain to be analyzed which side, if any, would
get a tactical advantage out of the exchange; the question that
concerns us here, though, is whether the American air or missile
and while this possibility could have been a significant argument either for or
against such bombing, and might not have been decisive either way, it was at
least recognized as a significant issue, and properly. It is only the "ultimate"
nature of the threshold that is deprecated in the text. The Vietnamese case illustrates
that many thresholds can become ambiguous, especially if pains are taken to make
them so. Any Russians at the SAM sites were not, presumably, "at war" or even
officially "in" it; their presence was more supposed than verified; their participation
in the shooting, if any, could be denied by the Soviet Union to reduce the embarrassment
to both sides; and in other ways the drama of the "incident" could be played
down. The fact that there was no announcement by either side that the sites had
been attacked, until several days after the first attack, tended to dilute the incident
and make it more casual.
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 161

attack on Soviet soil would necessarily mean all-out war or

anything like it.
It could. It could because the Soviets considered this an
intolerable affront and recognized that any failure on their part to
respond to the challenge with all-out war would be interpreted as
a sign of hopeless weakness, and the United States would
become ever more arrogant and intimidating, penetrating Soviet
territory whenever it was locally convenient, expecting to use
nuclear weapons unilaterally, and knowing that the Soviets
having once been pushed to the brink were unwilling to go
further. Or it could because the Soviets, obliged to carry out
some dramatic reprisal, foresaw a sequence of reprisals spiraling
upward with no stopping place; foreseeing that, they might
choose to take the initiative. It could also lead to general war
because the Soviets responded by reflex, having automatic plans
to treat any nuclear attack as all-out war, unable to discriminate a
localized attack from a comprehensive one, and thus joining the
issue by a process of "automation." Finally, even if the Soviets
responded in a moderate way, the thing could still get out of
hand. So it could lead to general war, either instantly in a Soviet
response or through the further compounding of actions.
But it could also not lead to general war. It leads to general war
only if the Soviets want it to, or if they believe that it inevitably
must. But they needn't believe in the inevitability of it, if only
because the American action itself contradicts the premise that
both sides consider this to be the signal for general war. The
American government surely would not have done it if it
intended it to lead to general war; and the American government
must not expect the Soviet government to feel that it has to lead to
general war. It is an affront, of course, a challenge and a
demonstration, and an insult to the integrity of the Soviet Union.
But it is also a tactical operation in a local war, one in which
Soviet aircraft happen to be operating from bases behind their
borders rather than from advanced bases. It is a matter of
interpretation whether the Soviets can respond with anything
less than general war without seeming to submit; but considering
the exorbitant cost of responding with an all-out attack on the
162 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

United States, there ought to be strong motives on both sides to

interpret the American action as not obliging an all-out
response.18
Secretary McNamara's policy of 1962 goes even further in
suggesting that a major campaign against homelands might still
consciously avoid cities. This was a proposal that homelands in
the awful emergency of major war not be considered "all-or-
none" entities. Even a major attack on military installations
need not, according to McNamara's declaration, have to be
considered the final, ultimate, step in warfare, bursting the
floodgates to an indiscriminate contest in pure destruction. He
was talking about a much larger and more violent "limited war"
than had theretofore received official discussion, but the
principle was the same. What he challenged was the notion that
restraint could pertain only to small wars, with a gap or
discontinuous jump to the largest of all possible wars, one
fought without restraint. His proposal was that restraint could
make sense in any war, of any size, and that the traditional
distinction between small restrained wars and massive orgies of
pure violence, with nothing between, was not logically
necessary—was in fact false and dangerous.
Even Secretary McNamara left open, however, the question
whether the last frontier in modern warfare, the last threshold
before purposeless mutual destruction, occurred at the city
limits. One cannot tell from his speech or from his published
testimony (or from William Kaufmann' s sympathetic exposition
of Secretary McNamara's policies)19 whether or not cities be-
18. There is an important geographical asymmetry between the United States
and the Soviet Union; this hypothetical "spillover" of a local war into Soviet territory
has few, if any, plausible counterparts in the Western hemisphere. Symbolically
the Soviet border might seem almost as dramatic a "last stopping place" as the
American shoreline; but tactically and logistically the United States is more remote
from most potential theaters of local war, particularly a ground war, and any extension
of warfare into United States territory would be a more discontinuous jump. (The
most plausible geographical exception might be Florida airbases, had the Cuban
crisis become a Caribbean war in 1962.)
19. William W. Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy (New York, Harper and
Row, 1964).
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 163

came that last category, an all-or-none target list, and whether

the very last possibility of reciprocated restraint is to avoid
them altogether. Indeed, much published discussion of the "new
strategy" that involved possibly sparing cities treated cities the
way that many people had treated nuclear weapons, as an ulti-
mate qualitative stopping place beyond which no line could be
drawn.
But if it makes sense to take seriously Mr. McNamara's in-
sistence that cities can be distinguished from military installa-
tions and a boundary between them possibly observed in war, it
equally makes sense to go on and ask whether some deterrence
could still work and the war be terminated short of the exhaustion
of targets on both sides, even though a city or a few cities had
been struck in anger (or by inadvertence, carelessness,
inaccuracy, or somebody's failing to cooperate).
Evidently the tempo of nuclear war is what makes people
think it hopeless, or unpromising, to keep any relations with the
enemy once the first city goes. If cities could be destroyed in-
definitely, but at a rate not exceeding one per week or one per
day, or even one per hour, nobody could responsibly ignore the
possibility that the war might be stopped before both sides ran
out of ammunition or cities. An enemy might surrender or come
to terms; some truce might be arranged; the original issues that
provoked the war might still receive some attention. National
leaders could not neglect the fact that millions of people were
still alive who would either remain alive or be destroyed accord-
ing to how negotiations and warfare were conducted. No na-
tional leader would think of resigning his job and just turning
the dial to "automatic," letting the war run its course, as long as
he had a country and a population to which he could feel re-
sponsible. And nobody would suppose that the enemy's be-
havior had been ineluctably fixed in perpetuity by a decision to
"go automatic."
But speed cannot be the only reason why cities are widely
assumed to go by default, once it appears that the first has gone.
Another may be thoughtlessness: if it took years for the govern-
ment to perceive that even a homeland war, a war fought inter-
164 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

continentally with nuclear weapons, might be kept within

bounds and cities not all deliberately destroyed, maybe it just
takes more time for the next question to be asked.
There is a dilemma in dealing with any of these limitations in
warfare. Evidently the most powerful limitations, the most
appealing ones, the ones most likely to be observable in
wartime, are those that have a conspicuousness and simplicity,
that are qualitative and not a matter of degree, that provide
recognizable boundaries. In fact, a main argument in favor of
any stopping place is the question mentioned earlier, "If not
here, where?" The Americans will not stop at the Yalu, nor the
Chinese at the shoreline, nor will any other significant
boundaries be recognized and observed if all modes and degrees
of participation merge together along an undifferentiated scale.
It is undoubtedly in the interest of limiting war that some
obvious firebreaks and thresholds occur. To insist that the use
of nuclear weapons can as readily be limited at fifty as at zero, or
that Hitler could have used just a little gas, or that two Chinese
divisions in South Vietnam would have been analyzed for their
quantitative significance alone and not with regard to the drama
of their nationality, undermines the most important potential
limitations. There might be a dramatic threshold separating
cities from no cities; and to argue that one can as readily stop
after the third city, or the thirteenth, or the thirtieth, detracts
from the more promising boundary at zero.
We should remind ourselves that the way this subject is
officially discussed will partly determine the answer—whether
in fact a war could be contained once a few cities had been
destroyed. The critical thing would be whether both sides credit
each other with a recognition that the war might still be
restrained, or instead credit each other with resignation to the
belief that the first city is the final signal of abandon. It could
also depend on whether each side had taken the trouble to
design its military forces, and its sources of information, so that
it could distinguish between a few cities and many and keep its
conduct under control. And it would depend on whether, within
the category of "cities," everything is but a matter of degree or
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 165

instead there are some subclasses or patterns or conventional

boundaries to help find a stopping place. It is hard to stop
without an obvious stopping place, and it may be important to
search for some; failing any other mode of limitation, something
in the pattern and timing of response might help to slow the
tempo, to communicate a willingness to bring the war to a close,
to maintain a threat in reserve.
The case for a nuclear-conventional distinction is a good deal
stronger, though, than the case for drawing a clear line at cities,
for the reason that the city limits cannot be all that clear.The
chances are good that the distinction between nuclear and
conventional weapons will not be blurred, either in prospect or
in action. We shall probably know it, and the enemy too, when a
nuclear weapon is next used in warfare, whether the initial use is
by the United States, by the Soviet Union, or by any other
country. But the line separating "cities" from all other localities,
and the recognition that a city has in fact been deliberately
destroyed, are unlikely to be so clear. (How big a town is a
"city"? How near to a city is a military installation "part" of a
city? If weapons go astray, how many mistakes that hit cities
can be allowed for before concluding that cities are "in" the
war? And so on.) It is not a choice between preserving a clean
line or blurring it by emphasizing quantitative limitations
thereafter; there is no such clean line, and the problem of
quantitative limitation, once cities have begun to be hurt, may
be like the same problem of stopping at cities in the first place. It
means exercising a restraining judgment in the noise and
confusion of warfare, not relying on an unambiguous alarm bell
that signals a deliberate "jump."
The question was not clearly raised by Secretary McNamara,
and to avoid raising it may appear to give an implicit answer in
the negative. The answer should not go by default; and while
anyone can argue that the first city (if there is a clear "first")
raises greatly the likelihood that the rest will turn to cinders (just
as one can argue that the first uniformed American soldier shot
by a uniformed Russian acting under orders might signal all-out
war), this by no means implies that the consequence is so
766 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

ineluctable that one should take it for granted, nor so nearly

inevitable that one should make it genuinely inevitable by
treating it as though it were.
Wars of the Battlefield,
Wars of Risk,
and Wars of Pain and Destruction
For a decade American ideas of limited war were dominated by
the experience in Korea and by the dangers in Europe. The war
in Korea had been mainly a military engagement, not a contest
in brinkmanship and not a coercive war of civilian fright and
damage. Any war in Europe was expected to be much the
same—a military engagement whose outcome would be
determined by strength and skill applied on the battlefield, by
manpower, firepower, tactical surprise, concentration, and
mobility. A European war was not expected to be as protracted
as the Korean War; nevertheless, short of blowing up into
general war, it was expected to run its course within whatever
limits of territory, weaponry, or nationality both sides might set
for themselves.
The Cuban crisis raised the prospect of a very different species of
"limited war." More than just raising the prospect, probably it
should be construed as an actual instance of the new species, one in
which no shots were actually fired. This new species is the
competition in risk-taking, a military-diplomatic maneuver with or
without military engagement but with the outcome determined
more by manipulation of risk than by an actual contest of force. The
Vietnamese war again brought brinkmanship, this time in the noise
of actual warfare rather than the suspense of diplomatic
confrontation. The threat of unintended enlargement was evidently
meant to intimidate the Chinese and the Russians, to coerce their
decisions on whether and how to participate, as well as to pose for
the North Vietnamese the risk of a larger war in which destruction or
military occupation—even intervention by the Chinese—might
cost them much that they had built during the preceding decade,
including their own independence. Evidently the risk of some
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 167

incident involving Russians or Chinese was expected to coerce

the United States as well. The risks of such enlargement, with
consequences painful to both sides, were so widely remarked
that they could hardly have failed to be incorporated in the
strategies on both sides.
But the Vietnamese war brought in a new element, new to the
United States, if not to Algeria, Palestine, and other arenas
outside the East-West competition. This was the direct exercise
of the power to hurt, applied as coercive pressure, intended to
create for the enemy the prospect of cumulative losses that were
more than the local war was worth, more unattractive than
concession, compromise, or limited capitulation.
This is yet a third species of limited warfare, and its
implications are comparatively unexplored in the strategic
literature. One can suppose that, for the same reasons, they may
have been comparatively unexplored even within the American
government. The Southeast Asian experience will undoubtedly
stimulate reflection and analysis of this kind of warfare and
possibly lead to controversies and to proposed formulae in the
field of punitive warfare somewhat analogous to the familiar
controversies and formulae governing limitations on combat,
the conventional-nuclear threshold, territories, nationalities,
and so forth.
The familiar limits—hypothetical limits for hypothetical
wars, or the actual limits in the Korean War—have usually had
the static either-or quality discussed earlier; they tend not to be
matters of degree but matters of type, class, or kind. The classes
may be defined in rather arbitrary ways, but they have some
appeal to credibility and are pertinent mainly because lines
need to be drawn. They can be observed because one side or
both may be willing to accept limited defeat or some outcome
short of tactical victory, rather than take the initiative in
breaching the rules, and prepared to act in a manner that reassures
the other side of such willingness. The limits may be respected
because, if they are once broken, there is no assurance that any
new ones can be found and jointly recognized in time to check the
widening of the conflict. They tend to have a legalistic qual-
168 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

ity in that a particular mode of conduct is perceived to be either

inside the limits or outside them, not allowable in some degree
and forbidden beyond some limit, not allowable in some degree
and progressively less allowable as the quantity or intensity in-
creases.
This raises the important question whether there can be a
"degree war" instead of a war limited by types of participants,
types of weapons, types of targets, classes of territory, and
things of that sort. Might each side watch the intensity of the
other's effort, judging it quantitatively, reacting to intensification
on the other side with intensification on one's own, adding a
few more troops, a few more targets, a few more weapons, not in
discrete jumps or by admitting whole classes that correspond to
some natural distinctions, but accommodating purely by degree?
Or is there a tendency for any mode of warfare, once embarked
on, to be intensified up to the next natural limit, up to where a
new decision is required to change the quality of participation?
What happens to a "limited war" if there are no natural stopping
places, no readily perceived limits that both sides can
acknowledge, no particular reason for confining the activity at
one point rather than another along some quantitative scale?
Reprisal and Hot Pursuit
There are two special cases that fall somewhere on the borderline
between qualitative limitations on combat, and the quantitative
application of coercive violence. One is reprisal, the other is
illustrated by "hot pursuit." The word "reprisal" connotes a
response, a reply, a retort, or an answer in kind, and implies a
reciprocal action, some punishment for a breach in the rules.
The bombing of naval ports in the Gulf of Tonkin had this
character; one unaccustomed act was responded to with another,
the two actions linked in time with the intended relations of
cause and effect, of crime and its punishment, of violation and
retribution. Nominally, at least, the reprisal is related to the
isolated breach of conduct, not to the underlying continuing
dispute. The motivation and intent can of course be more ambi-
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 169

tious than that; the object can be a display of determination or

impetuosity, not just to dissuade repetition but to communicate
a much broader threat. One can even hope for an excuse to
conduct the reprisal, as a means of communicating a more
pervasive threat. Nevertheless, the reprisal tends to have a
direct linkage with a recognizable act, and an association with it
in time is intended to communicate that that particular act went
beyond certain bounds and has provoked a response that may
also go outside the routine bounds, and that the incident is
capable of being closed. Reprisals may, of course, spiral in a
competition to have the last word, and an exchange of reprisals
may become so prolonged as to become disconnected with the
original incident and take on a character of coercive warfare,
even the character of a showdown. Even then, there may be a
tendency for reprisals to retain their linkage in time, each act
being adjusted to the one that preceded it. This is different from
the steady pressure of coercive warfare, aimed at settling the
original dispute and not just at punishing some departure from
the accepted method of conducting that dispute. Reprisals often
have the function of policing qualitative limits against violation,
not of widening the area of combat itself.
A somewhat different function is represented by hot pursuit.
In hot pursuit one may chase an intruder back across the line and
into his own territory, carrying the fight even to his home base.
This, like reprisal, is an isolated event linked to some initiating
action of the other side. It is "isolated" in the sense that it does
not declare open warfare on the enemy territory so penetrated or
on the bases that become momentarily vulnerable to the hot
pursuer. The idea of hot pursuit seems to be that it can happen
repeatedly, not just once—that is, that the penetration in hot
pursuit does not open up a new theater of war. The purpose of
verbally invoking "hot pursuit" is not merely to find an excuse
for it but to identify a limitation in intent, to let the enemy
appreciate that this is not an abandonment altogether of some
previous restriction but an allowable departure under the rules
of the game.
And it does become part of the rules of the game. This is why
170 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

it seems to differ from "reprisal." Hot pursuit can become

routine; it can become the standard price for becoming engaged
with the pursuer. It is not a breach of routine reciprocating an
enemy breach, it can be a new routine. It does have the character
of a "limitation" defined not by type of action or target or
territory but by linkage with an enemy action. It is a qualitative
limitation, defined by reference to provocations or opportunities,
but with results somewhat like a formula for quantitative
limitation.
Hot pursuit is usually thought of in terms of military
engagement; reprisals, though the targets may be military, have
more the element of punishment and threat. Both differ from the
kind of continuous coercive warfare that was introduced by the
bombing of North Vietnam in February 1965. That was a
bombing campaign, not an isolated event. It was not in response
to any particular act of North Vietnam but was an innovation in a
war that was already going on, an effort to raise the costs of
warfare to North Vietnam and to make them readier to come to
terms.
Coercive Warfare
The theoretical question whether limits in warfare tend by
nature to be qualitative, or can be matters of degree, assumed
sudden relevance with the initiation of the bombing campaign
in North Vietnam in February 1965. To approach the question it
is helpful to remind ourselves what kind of conflict the Korean
War had been. It was almost exclusively a battlefield war.
There was little coercive exercise of the power to hurt, of the kind
discussed in Chapter 1, except to the extent that it hurts when
soldiers are killed and wounded and money is spent on war. The
civilian pain and destruction were locally devastating, but they were
incidental to the battlefield warfare—to the defeat and capture of
enemy troops, to the conquest of local territory, to the destruction
of supplies and military facilities. Neither side's military strategy
was mainly concerned with how much civilian damage was
being done locally and whether in view of that damage it
made sense to abandon military objectives and to halt the war.
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 171

The main power to hurt was held in reserve: the American

ability to use nuclear bombs in China, the Soviet ability to hurt
the United States or to threaten Western Europe, and any Soviet
or Chinese ability to coerce Japan by the threat of bombing,
remained latent. The power to hurt surely policed the boundaries
of the war, deterring unilateral enlargement and keeping the
Soviet Union and the United States from engaging each other
directly. But the power to hurt, and susceptibility to hurt in
return, circumscribed the war without being deliberately
exercised in the conduct ofthat war.
Contrast the bombing of North Vietnam. This was not an all-
out interdiction campaign, exclusively designed to cut supplies
to the Vietcong; had it been that, there would have been little
reason not to do the bombing on a larger scale at the outset. The
bombing had an evident measure of coercive intent behind it: it
was evidently designed, at least partly, to inflict plain loss of
value on the adversary until he began to behave. The bombing
was widely discussed, and sometimes explained by the
Administration, as a means of putting pressure on the
government of North Vietnam; and when extension to industrial
establishments was discussed, it was not mainly in terms of
slowing down the enemy's war effort but of raising the cost of
not coming to terms. The occasional hints and actual instances
of conditional cessation of the bombing testified to its
negotiatory character. The results of the bombing in North
Vietnam, in contrast to that in the south, were to be sought in
North Vietnamese willingness to comply, to accommodate, to
withdraw, or to negotiate (as well as in setting a pattern, and
possibly a warning, for the contingency of Communist Chinese
participation).
The bombing still showed some tendency to stay within class
distinctions. (Some of the perceived limits or class distinctions
may have arisen by default: if the initial selection of targets
omits certain whole areas or types of targets, for reasons of
convenience, for momentary lack of a capability to hit them, or
for any other reasons incidental to the bargaining process, the
mere recognition of these omissions may create a "precedent"
172 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

that makes dramatic an action that, had it occasionally been

engaged in all along, would have received less attention.) The
city of Hanoi acquired somewhat the status of a lateral dividing
line; bombing north of that city was perceived as a departure
from a self-imposed restriction. But once bombs were dropped
north of the city there was no sudden concentration there, as
though lucrative targets that had been off limits were suddenly
declared available. The bombing still took the form of limited
coercive punishment, as much in support of negotiation as in
support of the military effort, as much a diplomatic move as a
military one. There is a suggestion here that coercive warfare
can be conducted by degree, in measured doses, in a way that
purely military engagements—"battlefield" engagements—
tend not to be. When one side can hurt the other, possibly when
both can hurt each other, the process may be more gradual, more
deliberate, less concentrated.
This may be due to two things. First, the hurting does no good
directly; it can work only indirectly. Coercion depends more on
the threat of what is yet to come than on damage already done.
The pace of diplomacy, not the pace of battle, would govern
the action; and while diplomacy may not require that it go
slowly, it does require that an impressive unspent capacity for
damage be kept in reserve. Unless the object is to shock the
enemy into sudden submission, the military action must
communicate a continued threat. Furthermore, in a "com-pellent"
campaign it may take time for the adversary to comply; decisions
depend on political and bureaucratic readjustments; and it may
especially take time to arrange a mode of compliance that does
not appear too submissive; so diplomacy may dictate a measured
pace.
Second, a campaign of civil damage, even when conducted
by both sides against each other, will not necessarily be a
contest in local strength in which it is important to strike before the
other can strike or to concentrate overwhelming force. In military
engagements the advantages of surprise, concentration, and timely
commitment of reserves usually make it inefficient, perhaps
disastrous, to withhold resources too long and to let them dribble
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 173

slowly into battle. But a campaign of civil damage is often com-

paratively uncontested, able to be delayed or spread over time
with no particular loss in efficiency. Unless there are defenses
to be overwhelmed or enemy reinforcements to be preempted,
haste may be of no value.
So there may be no great loss in military efficiency, and a gain
in diplomatic effectiveness, by limiting the degree of intensity
of such a campaign. And if both sides are able to conduct painful
reprisals against each other, there may be a natural reluctance to
maximize mutual damage.
Most of us, in discussing limited war during the past ten years,
have had in mind a war in which both sides were somewhat
deterred during war itself by unused force and violence on the
other side. That is, we were not thinking about wars that were
limited because one side was just not interested enough, or one
side was so small that an all-out war looked small, or even
because one side was restrained or both were by humanitarian
considerations. We have mainly been talking about wars that
involve some continued mutual deterrence, some implicit or
explicit understanding about the non-commitment of additional
force or non-enlargement to other territories or targets. This
mutual deterrence or reciprocity, this conditional withholding
or abstention, is important—so important as to deserve the
emphasis it got. But in coercive warfare there is another
important reason for not committing all of one's force, not
destroying all the targets one might destroy, even if one faces no
possibility of enemy escalation. It is simply that the object is to
make the enemy behave.
To use the threat of further violence against somebody
requires that you keep something in reserve—that the enemy
still have something to lose. This is why coercive warfare,
unless it gets altogether out of hand and becomes vengeful, is
likely to look restrained. The object is to exact good behavior or
to oblige discontinuance of mischief, not to destroy the subject
altogether. This would be true even if the enemy posed no threat
of reprisal or reciprocal damage and even if the punitive warfare
were costless.
174 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

I have been distinguishing the coercive campaign against

North Vietnam from the more straightforward military campaign
against the Vietcong.The latter campaign will prove to have
been substantially "coercive" if in the end the Vietcong yield
because their losses are unendurable, to themselves or to their
supporters; if in the end they yield or become manageable
through sheer loss of numbers, or loss of leadership or supply, it
is in my scheme a "battlefield" rather than a coercive mode of
warfare that we wage against them. If one insists it is all the
same war, it only means the two modes can be mixed in the same
war yet be distinguishable and worth distinguishing. South
Vietnam has illustrated, as Algeria did dramatically, that one
side may wage a coercive and terroristic war while the other
tries to oppose it forcibly, not coercively. Algeria showed also
that when battlefield warfare proves unavailing, and the terror-
istic adversary cannot be disarmed, confined, or repelled forci-
bly, the army that first tries forcible action may resort to terror
itself. And Algeria showed that relying on coercive terror in
return may prove to be not only degrading but incompatible
with the purpose it is intended to serve. North Vietnam suggests
the important possibility that coercive warfare may be directed
against things the adversary values other than his population;
when one is trying to coerce governments, rather than popula-
tions themselves, the distinction between civilian (non-military)
targets and civilians themselves is a crucial one.

Coercive Warfare and Compellence

Among the reasons why coercive warfare has not figured much
in our theoretical discussions or our military plans, one is that
we have been mainly concerned with "deterrence," and de-
terrence is comparatively simple. Partly our aim has indeed
been deterrence; partly deterrence has been a euphemism for the
broader concept of coercion, as "defense" has replaced words
like "war" and "military" in our official terminology. It is a re-
strictive euphemism if it keeps us from recognizing that there is
a real difference between deterrence and what, in Chapter 2,1
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 175

had to call "compellence," that is, a real difference between

inducing inaction and making somebody perform.
Compellence is the business the United States got into in
North Vietnam. It was trying to make the North Vietnamese
regime do something (even if only to stop something it was
doing) and that is different from deterrence."Compellence"
helps to explain why the coercion took the form of delivered
damage, not just verbal threats of damage; the Americans
communicated the threat by progressive fulfillment, because
the first step was up to the Americans. Compellence also helps
to explain why this kind of campaign needs to be allocated over
time and apportioned in its intensity, in a way that retaliatory
deterrent threats often do not. And it explains why it is so
important to know who is in charge on the other side, what he
treasures, what he can do for us and how long it will take him,
and why we have the hard choice between being clear so that he
knows what we want or vague so that he does not seem too
submissive when he complies. Compellence was new business
for the United States in Vietnam, as was coercive warfare; it
was no coincidence that these two departures from earlier
concepts were linked together in place and time.
This was a new departure undertaken in rather specialized
circumstances. First, the bombing itself was unilateral; the
North Vietnamese were militarily unable to do anything like
responding in kind. How such a war might go if both sides were
capable of conducting similar and simultaneous campaigns
against each other received no answer. Second, the Vietcong
had already been using terroristic techniques of intimidation,
against civilians as well as against enemy military personnel,
and the war had never been confined to straightforward
engagement. Third, nuclear weapons were not used; the weapons
most peculiarly suited to civil destruction and the ones whose
reciprocated use could accelerate most rapidly and get out of
hand were not involved.
In fact, there was no hint that nuclear weapons were being
considered in this role. But of course they would have to be
considered if the adversary were China rather than North Viet-
176 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

nam, and undoubtedly would be considered, both for their

greater effectiveness against a larger adversary and because it
would become a much more serious war.
Deterrence will go on being our main business, compellence
the exception; but for actual warfare the historical mixture may
now be more nearly representative of what we have to expect.
Roughly speaking we have one limited war of the battlefield
(Korea), we have several contests in risk-taking (Berlin, Cuba),
and we have one example of coercive violence, North Vietnam.
We'd be wise to recognize that North Vietnam may be as
"typical" of limited war as Korea, and then turn around and look
at other parts of the world in the light of this new emphasis. I see
no reason to suppose that a war in Europe, if it should break out,
would be a battlefield test of strength the way Korea was rather
than a competition in risk taking, as Cuba was, or a coercive
campaign, as North Vietnam has been. In a way, because of the
greater relevance of nuclear weapons, one might put greater
emphasis on brinkmanship and coercive civil damage than on
battlefield tactics, when thinking about Europe. The Vietnamese
war provided a precedent for taking this seriously.
Coercive Nuclear Warfare
The relevance to Europe of coercive warfare, war involving lim-
ited coercive campaigns of civil destruction and not just
qualitative limits on the modes of combat, needs to be examined.
And there the widespread expectation that nuclear weapons
would be used in a serious war may change the picture
substantially. If strategies for the conduct of limited war in
Europe have been dominated by the Korean experience, and the
possibility of coercive warfare or a war of reprisal excluded by
default, there should be an examination of whether this may be
the kind of warfare that in fact would come about. The Vietnamese
war does suggest that if the war is going badly for a participant
who has the option of shifting the emphasis from combat to
coercion, he may do so; doing so with nuclear weapons might be
ever so much more dangerous, but might appear to the loser
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 177

correspondingly more potent. In thinking about a nu-

clear strategy for Europe we ought, then, to consider whether a
nuclear war might degenerate (or transcend) into a coercive
campaign rather than retain the characteristics of a test of
strength on the battlefield.
Because nuclear weapons are peculiarly suited to the creation
of pain and damage and fright there is some presumption that if
they were used they would be used, wittingly or unwittingly, to
hurt, to intimidate, to coerce.
The suggestion has occasionally been made that if the Chinese
or North Koreans again attack South Korea, if the Soviet Union
attacks Western Europe or Iran, if the Chinese attack India, it
may not be necessary to oppose them with force. A little
violence may do the trick. Knock out a city, tell them to quit;
knock out another if they don't, and keep it up until they do. The
earliest proposal I know of, and a provocative one, was by Leo
Szilard, who delighted in putting his ideas in shockingly pure
form. As early as 1955 he proposed that if the Soviets invaded a
country that we were committed to protect, we should destroy a
Soviet city of appropriate size. In fact he even suggested that we
publish a "price list" indicating to the Soviets what it would cost
them, in population destroyed, to attack any country on the list.
On whether the Soviets might be motivated to destroy a city of
ours in return, Szilard allowed that they probably would be; that
was part of the price. They would get little consolation from it,
he argued, and our willingness to lose a city in return would be
testimony of our resolve. A cold-blooded willingness to punish
the enemy for his transgressions, even if it hurt us as much as
them, he considered an impressive display.20
In less artificial form the notion of "limited reprisal" or
"limited retaliation," a "limited punitive war" or "limited
strategic war," has been broached from time to time by theorists
but never discussed, as far as I know, by officials in any country
(although Khrushchev, as mentioned above, during the U-2
dispute of 1960 hinted that he might punitively fire rockets at
20. Leo Szilard, "Disarmament and the Problem of Peace," Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, 11 (1955), 297-307.
178 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

the bases from which the U-2 flights were launched). Not only
has there been official silence on it, but the possibility of using
pure violence rather than fighting a local and limited "all-out"
military war confined in territory, weapons, and nationalities,
has received little unofficial attention. The idea stayed alive in
footnotes and occasional tentative articles, was momentarily
dignified by nine authors who produced a book on it in 1962,21
still received little notice and has never become one of the
standard categories in the analysis of warfare.
But if we can talk about wars in which tens of millions could be
killed thoughtlessly, we ought to be able to talk about wars in
which hundreds of thousands might be killed thoughtfully. A
war of limited civilian reprisal can hardly be called "unrealistic";
there is no convincing historical evidence that any particular
kind of nuclear warfare is realistic. What often passes for realism
is conversational familiarity. Any kind of war that is discussed
enough becomes familiar, seems realistic, and is granted some
degree of likelihood; types of war that have not been discussed
have a novelty that makes them "unrealistic." Of course, if a
style of warf are has not been thought about, it may never occur—
unless it is the kind that becomes suddenly plausible in a crisis, or
can be eased into without deliberate intent.
The idea, though, that war can take the form of measured
punitive forays into the enemy's homeland, aimed at civil
damage, fright, and confusion rather than tactical military
objectives, is not new; it may be the oldest form of warfare. It
was standard practice in Caesar' s time; to subdue the Menapii, a
troublesome tribe in the far north of Gaul, he sent three columns
into their territory, "burning farms and villages, and taking a
large number of cattle and prisoners. By this means the Menapii
were compelled to send envoys to sue for peace."22
21. Klaus Knorr and Thornton Read, ed., Limited Strategic War (Princeton,
Princeton University Press, 1962).
22. The Conquest of Gaul, pp. 164-65. See also pp. 115-18 on "the first crossing
of the Rhine," where "his strongest motive was to make the Germans less inclined
to come over into Gaul by giving them reason to be alarmed on their own account,
and showing them that Roman armies could and would advance across the river."
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 179

Nor were punitive reprisals confined to relations between a

colonial power and its subjects; Oman describes this form of
warfare between the Byzantines and the Saracens in the ninth
century. When the Saracen invaded,

much could also be done by delivering a vigorous raid into his

country and wasting Cilicia and northern Syria the moment
his armies were reported to have passed north into Cappadocia.
This destructive practice was very frequently adopted, and
the sight of two armies each ravaging the other's territory
without attempting to defend its own was only too familiar to
the inhabitants of the borderlands of Christendom and Islam.23

Coercive warfare of this sort not only characterized the struggle

in Algeria, and the Arab-Israeli cold-war relationship; it has
been present in greater or lesser degree in strategies of
intimidation ranging from lynching to strategic bombing.
Actual violence is rarely as pure in character or purpose as a
23. Oman, The Art of War in the Middle Ages, p. 42. It is important to distinguish
two variants of this strategy. One is to coerce the enemy's behavior directly by the
threat of damage—to make him quit or surrender, in much the same way that hostages
are used. The other is to oblige him to bring his offensive forces home (or to keep
them home) in a defensive role and to give up or curtail his original campaign. This
latter purpose seems to have been among Caesar's motives for his campaign across
the Rhine (p. 115); and the same principle when inverted—forcing troops to leave
the security of their town walls and sally forth to battle—was among the motives
for crop destruction and other marauding activities practiced by invaders in ancient
times. (There is an anecdote of a general, on the defensive, being taunted by the
opposing general, "If you are a great general, come down and fight it out." His reply
was, "And if you are a great general, make me fight it out against my will.") The
tactic of forcing, by attacks on life and property, an enemy to commit himself to
battle is often crucial to guerilla operations and—when it can be done—to counterguerilla
operations. And it was a major consequence (although not recognized at the time)
of the strategic bombing of Germany. Aside from the damage inflicted, the bombing
raids caused the Germans to divert, by the time of the Normandy invasion, about
a third of their entire munitions output to air defense, according to Burton H. Klein.
"It can be seen," he says, "that where the preinvasion attacks really paid off was
not nearly so much in the damage they did, but rather in the effect they had on
causing the Germans to put a very significant part of their total war effort into air
defense." Germany's Economic Preparations for War (Cambridge, Harvard University
Press, 1959), p. 233.
180 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

theoretical formulation of "coercive warfare" might suggest,

nevertheless it is worthwhile to sort out some of the different
effects and possible purposes of purely destructive exchanges
even though there are limits to how neatly a strategy of violence
can be tailored to an intent.
One purpose is to intimidate governments or heads of
government or to impress them with one's own resolve and
one's own refusal to be intimidated. The punitive blow hurts the
enemy, implies that more will come unless he desists, and
displays resolve or daring in the face of his possible counter-
measures. Already this is complex. One can display resolve by
hurting oneself, not just by hurting the opponent; and the
punitive act can be either an initiative or a response. If a
response, it can be conceived and communicated as a "normal"
mode of response—just a substitute for tactical military activity
elsewhere—or as an "extraordinary" response to some enemy
action that is considered to be out of bounds.
The pain and damage could also be aimed at intimidating
populations, affecting governments only indirectly. Populations
may be frightened into bringing pressure on their governments
to yield or desist; they may be disorganized in a way that
hampers their government; they may be led to bypass, or to
revolt against, their own government to make accommodation
with the attacker. Even a few nuclear detonations on a country,
unless all news and communication are cut off, would likely
dominate civilian life and cause evacuation, absence from work
and school, overloading of the telephone system, panic purchas-
ing, and various forms of disorder. (If all communications are
cut to prevent the news from reaching people and outside radio
transmissions jammed for the same purpose, the people may be
even more scared.)
Terrorism usually appears to be aimed mainly at intimidating
populations and perhaps separating them from their govern-
ments. But national leaders can be directly influenced by the
prospect of continued pain and destruction, particularly if they
are at all responsive to, and part of, the population affected. In
many countries, especially in Europe, people have been sensi-
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 181

tive to the fact that to be "protected" or "liberated" by a tactical

nuclear campaign would hurt. Although local nuclear warfare,
whether in Europe or Asia, is usually discussed as though it
would be a tactical military campaign, the people in the areas
involved are undoubtedly susceptible to nuclear intimidation,
and probably so are their leaders. In the event of a tactical
nuclear campaign, the outcome might be at least as much
affected by the incidental or deliberate civil damage as by the
tactical military results. The consequences might be those of
nuclear reprisal, on a limited scale, even though the weapons
were nominally delivered for tactical purposes.
Limited nuclear exchanges may suddenly look realistic to a
decision-maker who is confronted with two familiar and
"realistic"alternatives—massive obliterative war and large-
scale local defeat. The option of changing the character of war
may be what then appears obvious; the idea that one should
stick to the local rules and lose tactically when he can shift the
war to another basis may be what then looks unreasonable.
There is a more convincing way to make the case that such
tactics could occur and may have to be expected if nuclear
weapons are used in a local or regional war. It is that this kind of
war would grow naturally out of the other kind, the more
"tactical" kind of war. Imagine the limited introduction of
nuclear weapons for purely tactical purposes in Central Europe.
It would be hard in the course of such a war not to notice that a
by-product of the tactical use of nuclear weapons was substantial
civilian pain and damage and the fear of more. Particularly if
one used nuclear weapons to reach a little behind the lines, to
destroy rail centers, ports, or air bases, there would be killing of
people and collapse of their homes that could not go unnoticed.
And there would be fright, refugees clogging the roads in panic
and probably reports on both sides that weapons had been used
deliberately against towns or cities. Intended or not, such
damage and the fear of more would be considerations, possibly
decisive, in either side's willingness to continue. Even if not
intended, this kind of coercion would be part of what either side
was doing in the nominally "tactical" use of nuclear weapons.
182 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

Certainly in target selection one would notice that particular

targets involved more of this violent by-product than others. If
tactically one side were doing well it might bend over backward
to keep the war tactically pure and limited, picking targets that
minimized nonmilitary damage. But if the other side were
doing badly it would certainly recognize that, in the guise of
tactical warfare, it could do an enormous amount of punitive
damage. If one side hit a few tactical targets that involved
disproportionate civilian damage, the other would be under
strong temptation to pick a few such targets in return. It is
unlikely that when both sides were exchanging sizable punitive
attacks as by-products of a tactical campaign they would persist
in ignoring a main consequence of their action.
This kind of thing could easily continue under the guise of
tactical warfare. Graduated reprisal into the Soviet homeland
(or into the West) might take the form of picking nominal
targets that were "tactical" or "strategic" in a strictly military
sense. But the motivation might become more and more that of
subjecting the other side to unbearable punitive pressures, to
demonstrate how frightening the war could become, and to
intimidate with the threat of further expansion. The fact that the
other side can do it, too, would not necessarily dissuade this
motivation; and either side, if it wished, could probably persuade
itself that the other had been the first to cause unnecessary
civilian damage and thus bring the dimension of pure violence
into the local war. If the pressure becomes unbearable for both
sides, the action may be terminated and a result negotiated that
does not reflect the local tactical superiority that one side or the
other originally possessed or thought it did.
This has implications for the size and character of military
forces, in NATO or elsewhere. If the introduction of nuclear
weapons locally and tactically is likely to evolve into an open or
disguised war of intimidation, an ability to win the tactical
campaign may be neither a necessary condition for success nor
a sufficient one.
More important, the purpose of introducing nuclear weapons
in a tactical war that one was losing would not be solely, or
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 183

mainly, to redress a balance on the battlefield. It could be to

make the war too painful or too dangerous to continue. Even a
limited tactical use of nuclear weapons would be designed to
maximize the pressure on the other side to call off the war. And
this is less likely to be the pressure of combat casualties and
material losses on the fighting front than the pressure of an
expanding exchange of limited violence, especially if the war
takes place in densely populated parts of the world. These
punitive attacks, though they might seem exceedingly slow and
measured compared with an all-out attack on the enemy's
strategic weaponry, could be fast compared with the pace of
tactical warfare. What happens on the battlefield may be of only
moderate interest compared with the conduct of such a nuclear
war of nerve and endurance. The original theater and tactics
would no longer define either the character or the locale of the
war that evolved or the issues involved in its termination.
It would be a mistake to think that conducting war in the
measured cadence of limited reprisal somehow rescues the
whole business of war from impetuosity and gives it "rational"
qualities that it would otherwise lack. True, there is a sense in
which anything done coolly, deliberately, on schedule, by plan,
upon reflection, in accordance with rules and formulae, and
pursuant to a calculus, is "rational" but it is in a very limited
sense. It helps if we can slow down a war, induce reflection, and
provide national leaders with a consciousness that they are still
responsible, still in control, still capable of affecting the course
of events. This is different from saying that there is some logical
way to conduct a war of limited reprisal or that a decisive intel-
lect can provide sure guidance in such a war on what to do next.
Even if this kind of warfare is irrational it could still enjoy the
benefits of slowness, of deliberateness, and of self-control. The
situation is fundamentally indeterminate insofar as logic goes.
There is no logical reason why two adversaries would not bleed
each other to death, drop by drop, each continually feeling that
if only he can hold out a little longer the other is bound to give
in. There is no assurance that both sides would not come to
feel that everything is at stake in this critical test of endur-
184 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

ance, that to yield is to acknowledge unconditional submissive-

ness. It may take luck as well as skill to taper off together in a
manner that, leaving neither side a decisive loser in a final
showdown of resolve, permits the awful business to come to an
end.
Nor is there any guarantee—or even a moderate presumption
—that the more rational of two adversaries will come off the
better in this kind of limited exchange. There is, in fact, likely to
be great advantage in appearing to be on the verge of total
abandon. However rational the adversaries, they may compete
to appear the more irrational, impetuous, and stubborn.
This is not to deprecate the value of cool, measured, deliberate
action in contrast to spasmodic violence. But there are bound to
be limits to the safety and security that can be achieved in any
style of warfare, if only because limited war is, to a large extent,
a competition in the endurance of damage and the acceptance of
risk.
China as a "Strategic-Warfare" Adversary
For years most strategic analysts have thought of Communist
China itself either as a minor theater in a major war or as an
indirect adversary. Hardly anyone seems to have thought about
what kind of war it would be or ought to be if the United States
became directly engaged with China.
There is little or no visible evidence that in the design of
strategic weaponry the possibility of war with China has been
taken into account in a manner commensurate with the attention
China is now given by the U.S. government. The great diplomatic
event of the last half decade is that China is no longer, for
purposes of strategic warfare, equivalent to Siberia or the Baltic
coast. It is a separate country; and both the Chinese and the
Russians have managed to establish that Russia is not absolutely
obliged to defend China, or to retaliate on behalf of China, if
China should get militarily engaged with the United States.
For a long time the idea of a war with China seemed al-
most meaningless, for although everybody was permitted to
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 185

express misgivings about American commitments to France and

Germany, nobody seemed to have misgivings about the Russian
commitment to China. To attack China was merely to give the
Russians first strike in a general war. And in that war there was
a main adversary, Russia, and all the United States had to do
was to obliterate enough of China to destroy the regime, or to
satisfy a revenge motive, or to use up whatever weapons it had
that could not reach Russia.
Now, however, the overriding consideration in case of
engagement with China would be to avoid obliging the Soviet
Union to intervene. And if it did not intervene, the ensuing war
would have, and should have, almost no similarity to the kind
of "general war" that is usually envisaged with respect to the
Soviet Union.
The attempt should be to minimize casualties, not to maximize
them; there would be no reason to kill Chinese, and there is no
historical reason to suppose that the Chinese people, by the
hundreds of millions, are any worse threat than any other people
except for the regime that heads them in disciplined opposition
to us. There may be some reason to threaten to destroy Soviet
society in case of general war; I see no reason to threaten to
destroy Chinese society in case of general war. There is even less
reason actually to destroy Russian society in case of general war,
and none at all for destroying Chinese. Somehow the notion got
around that the Chinese would still outnumber us if we killed
only half of them, and we should therefore try to kill more; this is
a grotesque idea and, as far as I can tell, the Chinese do not
believe, any more than we should, that victory would go to the
side that merely outnumbered the other at the end of a cataclysmic
war.
If we did have a war with China, it could be either of two kinds.
It could be an effort to destroy the present regime by destroying
or disrupting the physical and social basis of its authority and
control, with a simultaneous effort to minimize population
damage. Or it could be an effort to coerce the regime to come to
terms, to pull its troops out of India, to withdraw from
Formosa, to disarm itself, or something of the sort. In either
186 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

case, it is virtually certain that we would not and should not rely
on our strategic missiles against China.
We should not because that is probably the most expensive
way to destroy the targets that would need to be destroyed and
the way least consistent with the constraints we should observe,
to wit, minimizing gratuitous population damage, minimizing
the Soviet obligation to intervene, and minimizing postwar
revulsion against the way we had fought the war. And we would
not, because the need to keep our deterrent force intact and
ready, to keep the Russians at bay, would be greater than it had
ever been before. A war with China would be precisely the time
when the United States ought not and would not use a substantial
proportion of its strategic deterrent weapons against a second-
rate enemy, when Polaris and Minuteman weapons would be
valued far beyond their historical money cost.
Furthermore, coercive warfare against Communist China,
intended not to destroy the regime but to make the regime
behave, would probably be aimed at Chinese military potency
and objects of high value to the regime. The two least appropriate,
or least effectual, weapons might be the two that people seem
readiest to contemplate: conventional explosives and megaton
warheads. It might indeed take nuclear weapons to shock the
Chinese into an appreciation that we were serious; and it
probably would take nuclear weapons, in the face of whatever
attrition rate the Chinese could force on us in a protracted
campaign, to give us any commanding ability to inflict military
or economic damage on them. What the United States was
doing in North Vietnam in 1965 against a third-rate adversary,
with conventional explosives carried by airplanes that were not
designed for the purpose, it would probably attempt to do in
China with low-yield nuclear weapons in airplanes that have
not yet been designed for it.
We should probably want to destroy the Communist Chinese
force with weapons that would cause no casualties beyond a
half mile or so from the airfields; we should want to destroy
industrial facilities that had a low population or labor-force
density. We should want to destroy transport and communica-
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 187

tion facilities, military depots and training facilities, and troops

themselves. We might not afford to do it with conventional
weapons (unless newly effective conventional weapons were
designed for it) and could not afford to cover such a target
system with precious strategic missiles.
We need to recognize that China, as a "strategic" adversary,
could not be taken care of by "strategic-war" planning that was
developed during two decades of preoccupation with the Soviet
Union. China is a different strategic problem altogether. New
modes of coercive limited warfare might have to be developed
for coping with the problem. The entire tempo of war would be
wholly different from anything contemplated against the Soviet
Union; except for a small retaliatory force that the Chinese
might possess some time in the future, there would be few or no
targets of such urgency as to make the initial moments, even the
initial days or weeks, as critical as they are bound to be in
planning for the contingency of Soviet-American war. The idea
of "limited strategic war" between the Soviet Union and the
West is often dismissed as plain impracticable, and those who
dismiss it may be right; between China and the United States a
war would have whatever tempo the United States decided on,
or a tempo determined by Chinese actions in some local theater,
not the hypersonic tempo of preemptive thermonuclear
exchanges.
The need to distinguish a campaign intended to eliminate the
regime from one intended only to coerce the regime into good
behavior could become supremely important when the Chinese
possess a nuclear retaliatory capability (against the United
States or against any other population center that they might
choose). Making clear to them that, however bad the war
already was for them, it could become much, much worse,
might be the most effective way to keep that capacity for
nuclear mischief disarmed. At the same time, the most potent
coercion might be a target strategy that threatened the regime—
eventually, gradually, or uncertainly, not suddenly and decisive-
ly—and such a strategy would require discriminating what it is
that the regime most treasures and where it is most vulnerable.
188 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

Whatever its effect on the North Vietnamese willingness to

support the Vietcong, and whatever the capacity of North Viet-
nam to control the Vietcong in submission to the threat of con-
tinued bombing attacks, the bombing of North Vietnam must
have had one implication for China that went far beyond the war
in Southeast Asia. Forcible resistance to them outside their
borders can never cost the Chinese more than the resources they
knowingly put at risk, the troops and supplies they send abroad;
but the bombing of North Vietnam is a mode of warfare that the
record now shows to be a real possibility, one that the United
States has not only thought of but engaged in. It is a mode of
warfare that, at least with air supremacy and the absence of
modern anti-aircraft weapons, can be conducted deliberately
over a protracted period. And it is a mode of warfare that, if
quantitatively increased, could cause extensive physical damage
inside the target country, denying any guarantee that the costs
of aggression could be confined to the expeditionary force put
at risk outside one's border.
Nuclear weapons (or other unconventional weapons) are
hardly discussed in connection with the North Vietnamese
bombing campaign, presumably because nuclear weapons are
not essential to the campaign and because the issues in Southeast
Asia are not yet commensurate with the issues raised by nuclear
weapons themselves. For translating the North Vietnamese
campaign to China, though, nuclear weapons are sure to be
considered, not only because their greater efficiency may be
more decisive but because the issues involved in a coercive at-
tack on China itself would be correspondingly greater and more
likely to equal or to exceed in seriousness the rupturing of our
antinuclear traditions. Whether intended or not, the air attack
on North Vietnam must carry a warning message to China, a
message more credible than the massive threat of megatons on
Peking, more potent than the threat of logistical support to the
Indians or of Korea-type opposition elsewhere in Asia.
All of this does not mean expecting a war with China, any
more than preoccupation with deterrent forces has meant set-
tling for a war with the Soviet Union. It means making sure that
THE IDIOM OF MILITARY ACTION 189

if the point should be reached where a war with China were

contemplated or forced on us, we would not fight a preposter-
ously wrong kind of war for lack of having thought in advance
about it or for lack of having equipped ourselves for a major
adversary that differs drastically from the adversary that moti-
vated our strategic weapons design for two decades.
It also means thinking about the kind of threat that we wish
to pose to the Chinese. There may well be something incredible
about a threat to drop megaton weapons on cities like Peking,
as well as the threat to engage them in a Korea-type encounter.
If they are to be threatened with anything other than rebuff
outside their borders, it must be a kind of war that is not wholly
incompatible with our principles, with the need to keep the
Soviet Union deterred, and with the forces we have available.
A major attack on India could make all of this suddenly
relevant, just as the Vietnamese war suddenly made relevant a
concept of warfare that did not conform to the model of
"limited war" that we inherited in Korea.
 5
THE DIPLOMACY
OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL

As a doctrine, "massive retaliation" (or rather, the threat of it)

was in decline almost from its enunciation in 1954. But until
1962 its final dethronement had yet to be attempted. All-out,
indiscriminate, "society-destroying" war was still ultimate
monarch, even though its prerogative to intervene in small or
smallish-to-medium conflicts had been progressively curtailed.
Beyond some threshold all hell was to be unleashed in a war of
attempted extermination, a competition in holocaust, a war
without diplomacy and without "options" yet unused, a war in
which the backdrop of ultimate deterrence had collapsed on the
contenders—a war that would end when all weapons were
spent. But in his speech at Ann Arbor, Michigan, in June
1962—a speech reportedly similar to an earlier address in the
NATO Council—Secretary McNamara proposed that even in
"general war" at the highest level, in a showdown war between
the great powers, destruction should not be unconfined. Deter-
rence should continue, discrimination should be attempted,
and "options" should be kept open for terminating the war by
something other than sheer exhaustion. "Principal military
objectives . . . should be the destruction of the enemy's
military forces, not of his civilian population . . . giving the
possible opponent the strongest imaginable incentive to re-
frain from striking our own cities."1
The ideas that Secretary McNamara expressed in June 1962
have been nicknamed the "counterforce strategy." They have
occasionally been called, as well, the "no-cities strategy." As
1. See above, pp. 24-26.
190
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 191

good a name would be "cities strategy." The newer strategy at

last recognized the importance of cities—of people and their
means of livelihood—and proposed to pay attention to them in
the event of major war.
Cities were not merely targets to be destroyed as quickly as
possible to weaken the enemy' s war effort, to cause anguish to
surviving enemy leaders, or to satisfy a desire for vengeance
after all efforts at deterrence had failed. Instead, live cities were
to be appreciated as assets, as hostages, as a means of influence
over the enemy himself. If enemy cities could be destroyed
twelve or forty-eight hours later and if their instant destruction
would not make a decisive difference to the enemy's momen-
tary capabilities, destroying all of them at once would abandon the
principal threat by which the enemy might be brought to terms.
We usually think of deterrence as having failed if a major war
ever occurs. And so it has; but it could fail worse if no effort
were made to extend deterrence into war itself.
Secretary McNamara incurred resistance on just about all
sides. The peace movements accused him of trying to make
war acceptable; military extremists accused him of weakening
deterrence by making war look soft to the Soviets; the French
accused him of finding a doctrine designed for its incompatibil-
ity with their own "independent strategic force"; some "real-
ists" considered it impractical; and some analysts argued that
the doctrine made sense only to a superior power, yet relied on
reciprocity by an inferior power for which it was illogical. The
Soviets joined in some of these denunciations and have yet to
acknowledge that they share the American government's inter-
est in limiting such a war—though their reaction acknowledges
receipt of the message.
This was the first explicit public statement by an important
official that deterrence should be extended into war itself and
even into the largest war; that any war large or small might have
the character of "limited war" and ought to; that (as live cap-
tives have often been worth more than enemy dead on the bat-
tlefield) live Russians and whole Russian cities together with
our unspent weapons might be our most valuable assets, and
792 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

that this possibility should be taken seriously in war plans and

the design of weapons. The idea was not wholly unanticipated
in public discussion of strategy; but suggestions by analysts
and commentators about limiting even a general war had never
reached critical mass. Secretary McNamara's "new strategy"
was one of those rare occurrences, an actual policy innovation
or doctrinal change unheralded by widespread public debate.
Still, it was not altogether new, having been cogently advanced
some 2,400 years earlier by King Archidamus of Sparta, a man,
according to Thucydides, with a reputation for both intelli-
gence and moderation.
"And perhaps," he said,

when they see that our actual strength is keeping pace with the
language that we use, they will be more inclined to give way,
since their land will still be untouched and, in making up their
minds, they will be thinking of advantages which they still
possess and which have not yet been destroyed. For you must
think of their land as though it was a hostage in your
possession, and all the more valuable the better it is looked
after. You should spare it up to the last possible moment, and
avoid driving them to a state of desperation in which you will
find them much harder to deal with.2

Enemy Forces and Enemy Cities

There were two components of the strategy that Secretary
McNamara sketched. Most comment has implied that they are
two sides of the same coin, and whether we call it heads or tails
we mean the same. But they are distinct. "Counterforce"
describes one of them, "cities" (or "no-cities") the other. The
two overlap just enough to cause confusion.
Badly expressed they sound alike. In "counterforce" lan-
guage the principle is to go for the enemy's military forces, not
for his cities (not right away, anyhow). In "no-cities" language,
the principle is to leave the cities alone, at least at the outset,
2. The Peloponnesian War, pp. 58-59.
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 193

and confine the engagement to military targets. If we were at

a shooting gallery, had paid our fee and picked up the rifle and
could shoot either the clay pipes or the sitting ducks, "shoot the
pipes" would mean the same as "don't shoot the ducks." But we
are not talking about a shooting gallery. The reason for going
after the enemy' s military forces is to destroy them before they
can destroy our own cities (or our own military forces). The
reason for not destroying the cities is to keep them at our mercy.
The two notions are not so complementary that one implies the
other: they are separate notions to be judged on their separate
merits.
There is of course the simple-minded notion that war is war
and if you are not to hit cities you have to hit something. But
that comes out of the shooting gallery, not military strategy.
The idea of using enemy cities as hostages, coercing the enemy
by the threat of their destruction, can make sense whether or not
the enemy presents military targets worth spending our ammu-
nition on.
It may not make sense; the enemy may be crazy, he may not
be equipped to know whether or not we have yet destroyed his
cities, he may not be able to control his own conduct according
to the consequences we confront him with. But if it does make
sense, or is worth trying at the outset, it makes sense whether
or not we can simultaneously conduct an effective campaign to
reduce his military capabilities.
The counterforce idea is not simply that one has to shoot
something, and if cities are off limits one seeks "legitimate"
targets in order to go ahead with a noisy war. It is a more serious
notion: that a good use of weapons is to spend them in the
destruction of enemy weapons, to disarm the enemy by trading
our weapons for his. If we can forestall his attack on our cities
by a disarming attack on his weapons, we may help to save
ourselves and our allies from attack.
The "counterforce" idea involves the destruction of enemy
weapons so that he cannot shoot us even if he wants to. The
"cities" idea is intended to provide him incentive not to shoot
us even if he has the weapons to do it. (It can also, with no loss
194 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

of manliness, be recognized as a decent effort to keep from kill-

ing tens of millions of people whose guilt, if any, is hardly com-
mensurate with their obliteration.)
The two notions complement each other, of course, in that
both are intended to keep the enemy from using his weapons
against us, one through forcible disarmament and the other
through continued deterrence. There is some incompatibility,
though. The city-hostage strategy would work best if the enemy
had a good idea of what was happening and what was not hap-
pening, maintained control over his own forces, could perceive
the pattern in our action and its implications for his behavior,
and even were in direct communication with us sooner or later.
The counterforce campaign would be noisy, likely to disrupt the
enemy command structure, and somewhat ambiguous in its
target selection as far as the enemy could see. It might also im-
pose haste on the enemy, particularly if he had a diminishing
capability to threaten our own cities and were desperate to use
it before it was taken away from him.
Nevertheless, a furious counterforce campaign would make
the enemy know there was a war on, that things were not com-
pletely under control and that there was no leisure for pro-
tracted negotiations. If his cities were to be threatened more
than verbally, so that he knew we meant it, it might be nec-
essary to inflict some damage; doing it in a counterforce cam-
paign that caused a measure of civilian damage might be better
than doing it in a cold-blooded demonstration attack on a few
population centers.
There are, then, different strategies that somewhat support
each other, somewhat obstruct each other, and somewhat com-
pete for resources. Either alone could make sense. A completely
reliable and effective counterforce capability would make it
unnecessary to deter the enemy' s use of his weapons by keeping
his cities conditionally alive; it would simply remove his weap-
ons. And a completely successful threat against his cities would
immobilize his weapons and induce capitulation. (In the latter
case the "war" would not look like a big one, in noise and dam-
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 195

age, but the sense of commitment and showdown could make it

"all-out" in what was at stake.)3
The question is often raised whether a counterforce strategy
is not self-contradicting: it depends on a decisive military
superiority over the enemy and yet to succeed must appeal
equally to the enemy, to whom it cannot appeal because he must
then have a decisive inferiority. This widespread argument con-
tains a switch between the two meanings, "counterforce" and
"cities." A decisive capability to disarm the enemy and still
have weapons left over, in a campaign that both sides wage
simultaneously, is not something that both sides can exploit.
Both may aspire to it; both may think they have it; but it is not
possible for both to come out ahead in this contest. (It could be
possible for either to come out ahead according to who caught
the other by surprise. In that case we should say that each had
a "first-strike counterforce capability," superiority attaching
not to one side or the other but to whoever initiates the war.
This is an important possibility but not one the United States
government aspired to in its counterforce strategy.)
It can, however, make sense for both sides to take seriously a
"cities" strategy that recognizes cities as hostages, that exploits
the bargaining power of an undischarged capacity for violence,
threatening damage but only inflicting it to the extent necessary
to make the threat a lively one. In fact, this "cities" aspect of
the so-called "counterforce" strategy should appeal at least as
much to the side with inferior strategic forces. If the inferior
3. The nearest the Administration came to making the distinction emphasized here
is in an address of John T. McNaughton, General Counsel of the Department of
Defense, at an Arms Control Symposium in December 1962. "There is the assertion
that city avoidance must equal disarming first strike" (his italics). "This is wrong.
The United States does not think in terms of hitting first. The city-avoidance strategy
is no more nor less than an affirmation that, whatever other targets may be available"
(my italics), "and whoever initiates the use of nuclear weapons, the United States will
be in a position to refrain from attacking cities. But it will have in reserve sufficient
weapons and it will have the targeting flexibility to destroy enemy cities if the enemy
strikes cities first." (This left open the question, raised above in Chapter 4, whether
"cities" are an all-or-none category.) Journal of Conflict Resolution, 7 (1963), 232.
796 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

side cannot hope to disarm its enemy, it can survive only by

sufferance. It can induce such sufferance only by using its
capacity for violence in an influential way. This almost surely
means not exhausting a capacity for violence in a spendthrift
orgy of massacre, but preserving the threat of worse damage yet
to come.
Some commentators calculated that the Soviets would merely
"disarm" themselves by directing their weapons at American
forces. Having observed that a "counterforce" campaign made
no sense they concluded, on the analogy of the shooting gallery,
that the Soviets naturally had to fire all their weapons some-
where else. And where else could that be but cities? A facetious
answer that brings out the speciousness of the argument is that
the Soviets could just as well fire their missiles at their own
cities. By firing all their weapons at American cities they virtu-
ally guarantee the destruction of their own, and historians
would not much care whether the Soviet cities were destroyed
by weapons produced domestically or abroad. The idea that
restraint in warfare, if it favors the United States, could not be
in the Soviet interest has about the same compelling appeal as
the idea that a Japanese surrender in 1945, if it favored the
United States, could not make sense to the Japanese.4
4. Evidently a counterforce campaign that did not destroy cities and populations
would require that weapons not be located so near to cities as to merge with them into a
single system of targets, and require some protection against radioactive fallout to keep
people from being merely destroyed more silently, a little later, by weapons exploded at
a distance. The United States conspicuously located Minuteman missiles, for the most
part, in the less populous parts of the country, although it did not go to the expense of
relocating bomber bases away from the population centers that, for historical reasons,
they tended to be close to. It has been argued that the Soviet Union, if it continues to have
a numerically inferior missile force and wants to deny the United States a capacity to
attack Soviet missiles in a "clean," no-cities war, might choose to keep missiles and
bombers near cities; a reciprocated counterforce and no-cities war would then be
physically impossible, and war might seem less inviting to the United States. A "mas-
sive retaliation" would be guaranteed by the lack of any Soviet motive to spare cities
and to bargain. If this were done it would not be the first time a government used its
own population as a "shield" for its military forces, daring an enemy to do his worst.
There are things to be said both for and against the idea—in my opinion
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 197

Separating the two components of this strategy is also neces-

sary in dealing with whether a "counterforce" strategy is of
transient or enduring interest. There has been a genuine argu-
ment whether the United States can reliably expect a capability
to disarm the Soviet Union by an offensive campaign, bolstered
by defense of the homeland. By "genuine," I mean an argument
in which either side could be right depending on the facts and
neither can win by sheer logic or casuistry. It is going to depend
on technology, intelligence, costs, and the sizes of budgets; and
the actual facts may never be reliably clear. By the middle of
the 1960s neither side had any clear-cut win in the argument.
Testimony of the Defense Department hinted that the United
States could not count on a good counterforce capability indefi-
nitely. But if we distinguish the "counterforce" from the
"city-threatening" components of the strategy, it is evident that
one part of the strategy does, and the other does not, depend on
the outcome of this argument. If it is going to turn out as a re-
sult of technology, budgets, and weapon choices, that we do
not have a capability to disarm the enemy forcibly, then of
course a strategy that depends on doing so becomes obsolete—
at least until some later time when that capability is available.
But there is no reason why that makes the "cities" strategy
obsolete. In fact, it virtually yields front rank to the "cities"
strategy.
One might pretend, in order to make war as fearsome as pos-
sible, that the obvious way to fight a war if we cannot success-
fully destroy military forces is to destroy the enemy's cities,
while he does the same to us with the weapons that we are
powerless to stop. But, once the war started, that would be a

much more against, even for the Soviet Union—but the point that needs emphasis here
is that, though this could frustrate a counterforce city-avoidance campaign, it would
not make city destruction a more sensible mode of warfare. It is simply a precarious
means of making Soviet weapons less vulnerable by reducing American motives to
attack them—confronting the American government with a choice between "counter-
force" and "city-threatening" strategies, and no opportunity to combine them—and if
war should come the motives for restraint should be no less, possibly greater, than if
weapons were segregated from people.
198 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

witless way to behave, about as astute as head-on collision to

preserve the right of way. And general nuclear war is probably
fearsome enough anyway to deter any but a most desperate
enemy in an intense crisis; making it somewhat less fearsome
would hardly invite efforts to test just how bad the war would
be. And in the intense crisis, belief that the war could be
controlled if it broke out, and stopped short of cataclysm, might
actually help to deter a desperate gamble on preemption. So the
alleged hard choice between keeping deterrence as harsh as
possible and making war, if it should occur, less harsh may not
be the dilemma it pretends to be.
The Confrontation of Violence with Violence
The situation in which either side could hurt the other but not
disarm it could arise in two different ways. It could arise
through both sides' procuring and deploying forces of such a
kind that each force is not vulnerable to disarming attack by the
other side. Or it could come about through warfare itself.
Discussions of "counterforce warfare" often imply that the
war involves two stages. In the first, both sides abstain from an
orgy of destruction and concentrate on disarming each other,
the advantage going to the side that has the bigger or better
arsenal, the better target location and reconnaissance, the ad-
vantage of speed and readiness, and the better luck. At some
point this campaign is over, for one side or both; a country runs
out of weapons or runs out of military targets against which its
weapons are any good, or reaches the point where it costs so
many weapons to destroy enemy weapons that the exchange is
unpromising.
At this stage it is possible, but only barely possible, that both
sides have disarmed themselves and each other, and they are
momentarily secure from further attack. But any practical
evaluation suggests that each side would have weapons left
over by the time it had done all the counterforce damage it
could do, or could afford to do, to the other's arsenal. Residual
weapons will remain and the war is not over.
Now what happens? The more optimistic explanations of a
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 199

counterforce strategy imply that at this point the United States

has a preponderance of residual weapons, therefore an over-
whelming bargaining power, and faces the prospect of an "all-
out" city-destruction war with less to lose than the enemy,
whose residual arsenal can do some damage while ours can do
damage unlimited.This threatened city war is usually implied to
be an all-or-none affair, like full-speed collision on the highway,
and the driver who has his whole family in the car is expected
to yield to the driver who has only part of his family in the car.
This is unsatisfactory. This counterforce exchange—this first
stage in major war—accomplishes partial disarmament on both
sides, possibly quite unequally, setting the stage in noisy and
confusing fashion for a second stage of dirty war, a stage of nu-
clear bargaining with cities at stake, a stage of "violence," of
implicit and explicit threats and likely some competitive de-
struction of cities themselves to a length that is hard to foretell.
Two adversaries face each other in the knowledge that war is
on, each capable of large-scale damage, probably unprec-
edented damage, possibly damage beyond the ability of either to
survive with any political continuity. If each retains more than
enough to destroy the other, the counterforce exchange was
merely a preliminary, a massive military exercise creating great
noise and confusion (and undoubtedly great civilian damage
too), but constituting an overture to the serious war that is
about to begin. If one side is less than able, or each side less
than able, substantially to destroy the other, the counterforce
stage made a difference but was nevertheless a prelude to the
serious exploitation of violence that is about to begin.
So we have two routes that might lead to this confrontation
of violence, one by way of procurement and technology in
peacetime, the other by way of a counterforce campaign in war
itself. The situation would not be this static, of course. It could
be that one side can further disarm the other, in a process that
takes time, so that there is pressure on the country with the
more vulnerable forces to exploit its capacity for violence be-
fore it is taken away by the enemy. And of course, if this brink
is arrived at through counterforce warfare, the situation is one
200 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

of fright and alarm, noise and confusion, pain and shock, panic
or desperation, not just a leisurely confrontation of two coun-
tries measuring their capacities for violence. The two "stages"
could overlap—indeed, if counterforce action were unpromis-
ing for one side, it might omit that stage altogether and proceed
with its campaign of coercion. It might in fact be forced to
accelerate its campaign of terror and negotiation by the pros-
pect of losing part of its bargaining power to the other side's
counterforce action.
We know little about this kind of violence on a grand scale.
On a small scale it occurs between the Greeks and the Turks on
Cyprus and it occurred between the settlers and the Indians in
the Far West. It occurs in gang warfare, sometimes in racial vio-
lence and civil wars. Terror is an outstanding mode of conflict
in localized primitive wars; and unilateral violence has been
used to subdue satellite countries, occupied countries, or dissi-
dent groups inside a dictatorship. But bilateral violence, as a
mode of warfare between two major countries, especially
nuclear-armed countries, is beyond any experience from which
we can draw easy lessons.
There are two respects in which a war of pure violence would
differ from the violence in Algeria or Cyprus. One is that in-
surgency warfare typically involves two actively opposed sides
—the authorities and the insurgents—and a third group, a large
population subject to coercion and cajolery. Vietnam in the
early 1960s was less like a war between two avowed opponents
than like gang warfare with two competing gangs selling "pro-
tection" to the population.
There is a second difference. It involves the technology of
violence. Most of the violence we are familiar with, whether in-
surgency in backward areas or the blockade and strategic
bombing of World Wars I and II, were tests of endurance over
time in the face of violence inflicted over time. There was a
limit on how rapidly the violence could be exercised. The dis-
penser of violence did not have a reservoir of pain and damage
that he could unload as he chose, but had some maximum rate
of delivery; and the question was who could stand it longest, or
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 201

who could display that he would ultimately win the contest and
so persuade his enemy to yield. Nuclear violence would be more
in the nature of a once-for-all capability, to be delivered fast or
slowly at the discretion of the contestants. Competitive starva-
tion works slowly; and blockade works through slow strangu-
lation. Nuclear violence would involve deliberate withholding
and apportionment over time; each would have a stockpile
subject to rapid delivery, the total delivery of which would
simply use up the reserve (or the useful targets).
If the Western alliance and the Soviet bloc ever began an
endurance contest to see who could force the other to yield
through the sheer threat of persistent nuclear destruction, the
question would not be who could longest survive some techno-
logically determined rate of destruction but who could most
effectively exploit a total capacity the delivery of which was a
matter of discretion. If both engaged in a contest of destruction
as fast as they were able, each hoping the other would yield
first, the destruction might be absolute within a period too short
for negotiation. Neither could sensibly initiate maximum de-
struction, hoping the other side would quit and sue for a truce;
time would not permit. Each would have to consider how to
measure out its violence. This adds a dimension to the strategy,
the dimension of apportionment over time.
What we are talking about is a war of pure coercion, each
side restrained by apprehension of the other's response. It is a
war of pure pain: neither gains from the pain it inflicts, but in-
flicts it to show that more pain can come. It would be a war of
punishment, of demonstration, of threat, of dare and challenge.
Resolution, bravery, and genuine obstinacy would not neces-
sarily win the contest. An enemy's belief m one's obstinacy
might persuade him to quit. But since recognized obstinacy
would be an advantage, displays or pretenses of obstinacy
would be suspect. We are talking about a bargaining process,
and no mathematical calculation will predict the outcome. If I
waylay your children after school, and you kidnap mine, and
each of us intends to use his hostages to guarantee the safety of
his own children and possibly to settle some other disputes as
202 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

well, there is no straightforward analysis that tells us what form

the bargaining takes, what children in our respective possessions
get hurt, who expects the other to yield or who expects the other
to expect oneself to yield—and how it all comes out.
There has been remarkably little analysis of this problem in
print. It has sometimes been argued, superficially, that the Soviets
might blast an American city to prove they meant business, that
the Americans would be obliged to blast two Soviet cities in re-
turn, and that the Soviets would feel it incumbent on them to
blast three (or four?) cities in return, and so the process would
go, growing in intensity until nothing was left. This is an impor-
tant possibility, but there is nothing "natural" about it. It is not
necessarily a submissive response to destroy half as much in re-
turn rather than twice as much. The appropriate strategy for
showing resolve, firmness, endurance, contempt, and righteo
usness, is not an easy one to determine. The cold-blooded
acceptance of pain might be just as impressive as the cold-
blooded infliction of it. Pericles endorsed the principle when he
told the people of Athens, in the face of a Spartan ultimatum,
"And if I thought I could persuade you to do it, I would urge
you to go out and lay waste your property with your own hands
and show the Peloponnesians that it is not for the sake of this
that you are likely to give in to them."
This is a strange and repellent war to contemplate. The alter-
native once-for-all massive retaliation in which the enemy so-
ciety is wiped out as nearly as possible in a single salvo is less
"unthinkable" because it does not demand any thinking. A sin-
gle act of resignation, however awful the consequences, is still
a single act, an exit, not only a resignation to one' s fate but a res-
ignation of responsibility. The suspense is over. And it may
seem less cruel because it does not have a cruel purpose—it is
merely purposeless—compared with deliberate, measured vio-
lence that carries the threat of more. It does not require calcu-
lating how to be frightful, how to terrorize an adversary, how to
behave in a fearsome way and how to persuade somebody that
we are more callous or less civilized than he and can stand the
violence and degradation longer than he can. A pure spasm of
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 203

massive retaliation, if believed to be sufficiently catastrophic,

is more like an act of euthanasia, while a consciously conducted
"cities strategy" has the ugliness of torture. Maybe one of the
reasons why thermonuclear warfare has been likened to "mu-
tual suicide" is that suicide is often an attractive escapist solu-
tion compared with having to go on living. Still, though a con-
scious "cities" strategy may be uglier, it would be more respon-
sible than automated all-out fury.
And it might involve the destruction of some cities. We could
hope, of course, that by verbally threatening to destroy all of
their cities or none of them, according to whether they surren-
der or not, we assure their surrender and we both stay alive. If
this situation has been arrived at by waging a furious counter-
force campaign and possibly a ground war in some theater,
there may be a sensation of initiative and desperation that
makes the threat more credible than if no war were going on.
But what if he does not surrender? If we then have any choice,
other than just destroying everything or nothing, we have to
think of something impressive in between.
It might be possible to make the massive threat credible by
being physically unable to hurt his cities except all at once. If
we had a massive bomber fleet approaching his country, capable
of devastating his cities in a single attack but incapable of re-
turning home because he could easily destroy the bombers on
the ground, equally incapable of staying aloft forever, so that
every bomber had to hit a target now or forever lose its ability;
and if the time schedule of negotiation made it impossible to
halt the attack in mid-course once the first bombs were
dropped, the all-or-none threat might be credible—at least if
the enemy knows the facts as we know them. Even then he may
not comply—or not on the demanding time schedule of bomber
sorties—and we must regretfully blow up our influence along
with his cities, leaving it his turn to do his worst, or else risk
losing all our influence by pulling back altogether. It is about
as bad to be thought bluffing as to be bluffing.
So some sheer nuclear violence might be exchanged until the
two sides came to terms. There is no guarantee that the terms
204 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

would reflect the arithmetic of potential violence. If one side

can destroy two thirds of the other, and only be destroyed one
third itself, this does not guarantee that it wins the bargaining
hands down, having its own way altogether just because it is
decisively superior. Nor does it mean that it has about "two
thirds" of the bargaining power and should expect an outcome
with which it is twice as pleased (or half as displeased) as its
adversary. There is no simple mathematics of bargaining that
tells both sides what to expect so that they can jointly recognize
it as a foregone conclusion.
There is no compelling reason to suppose that one side must
unconditionally surrender; nor is there any compelling reason to
suppose that one side would not unconditionally surrender. The
more "successful" the nuclear bargaining is for both sides, the
more weapons will be left unused at the end. In the absence of
unconditional surrender both sides retain some weapons. (This
only means that both sides keep some cities.) It is an inconclusive
way to terminate a war, but better than some conclusive ways.
The Crucial Challenge: Ending It
A war of that sort would have to be brought to a close, con-
sciously and by design. It could not simply run down by exhaus-
tion when all the targets were destroyed or all the ammunition
expended; the whole idea is to keep the most precious targets
undestroyed and to preserve weapons as bargaining assets.
Some kind of cease-fire or pause would have to be reached and
phased into an armistice, by a bargaining process that might at
the outset have to be largely tacit, based on demonstration more
than on words, but that sooner or later would have to become
explicit.
The way the war ended could be more important than the way
it began. The last word might be more important than the first
strike. There is much preoccupation with the decisive impor-
tance of speed and surprise in an initial onslaught, but little
attention to what could be equally decisive—a closing stage
when the military outcome might be no longer in doubt but the
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 205

worst of the damage remained to be done. The closing stage,

furthermore, might have to begin quickly, possibly before the
first volley had reached its targets; and even the most confident
victor would need to induce his enemy to avoid a final, futile
orgy of hopeless revenge. In earlier times, one could plan the
opening moves of war in detail and hope to improvise plans for
its closure; for thermonuclear war, any preparations for closure
would have to be made before the war starts.
Even the enemy' s unconditional surrender might be unavail-
able unless one had given thought in advance to how to accept
and to police surrender. And a militarily defeated enemy, des-
perate to surrender, might be unable to communicate its offer,
to prove itself serious, to accept conditions and to prove com-
pliance on the urgent time schedule of supersonic warfare unless
it had given thought before the war started to how it might end.
Neither side might be motivated to give the thought, unless
there had been at least a tacit understanding that a major war, if
it were once started, would also have to be stopped.
It is conceivable that each side would exhaust its weapons in
a single-minded counterforce effort to minimize the other's ca-
pability to hurt cities. But if each had the ability even to notice
what the other was doing, each could see in this process that the
other, too, was more concerned to limit damage to itself than to
inflict it; so a basis for accommodation would be evident. Fur-
thermore, beyond some point in this military duel, it would
make more sense to save weapons and let the enemy shoot at
them than to expend them shooting at his. So a sensible war
plan ought to provide in advance for the bargaining value of
scarce weapons in bringing war to a close and for the likelihood
that the enemy, too, would not have spent all his bargaining
power in counterforce attacks.
There could be a pause after some initial counterforce on-
slaught before deliberate, if limited, population attacks began;
or there might be no pause. Either way the war must be brought
to a close by conscious decisions. It would not stop by itself.
Just extending a pause would require decisions to do so.
When and how to stop a war ought to depend upon what the
206 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

war is about. But we are talking about what is necessarily a hy-

pothetical war—a war, furthermore, that is universally expected
to be so unproductive for either side that even the assumption
of a motivating objective may not make sense. The war could
have arisen over something: Germany, Cuba, Southeast Asia,
Middle Eastern oil, the occupation of outer space or the ocean
bottom, revolt in a satellite country, assassination, espionage, a
false alarm or an accident, even a technological surprise that led
one side or the other to launch war in fear for its own security.
But even if the war is about something, what it was originally
about may soon be swamped by the exigencies of the war itself.
Had the Cuban crisis or a Berlin crisis (or even the U-2 crisis,
with its Soviet threats to bomb the airfields from which the
planes took off) led to a general war, the war would quickly
have left Cuba, the Autobahn, or the U-2 launching strips be-
hind.
With today's weapons it is hard to see that there could be an
issue about which both sides would genuinely prefer to fight a
major war rather than to accommodate. But it is not so hard to
imagine a war that results from a crisis' getting out of hand. The
aims and objectives, though, on either side would be those of
a country that finds itself in a war it did not want and from which
it expects no gain.
There may be very few points at which such a war could be
stopped. It would be important to identify them ahead of time.
Missiles in flight cannot be recalled. (In principle they could be
destroyed in flight if it were essential to keep them from reach-
ing their targets, but only if they had been designed to make
that possible.) Bombers under radio silence may be beyond re-
call until their mission is completed. A cloud of radioactive fall-
out will travel with wind and gravity and cannot be stopped by
an armistice. Automated decisions, and plans that make no pro-
visions for stopping in mid-course, may not be susceptible to in-
terruption. Populations would be unwieldy during the process of
sheltering. And some episodes in war would be so frantic and
confused that messages could not be responded to, or decisions
taken, to bring things to a sudden halt.
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 207

Different events have different time scales. Missile attacks

might be stopped on 30 minutes' notice (corresponding to the
time a missile is in flight); bomber attacks might be called off
on a few hours' notice if the planes were over enemy territory,
more quickly if the planes were not yet in the enemy's air-
defense zone. If massive ground attacks are in progress, as they
might be if the larger war had grown out of a war in some thea-
ter, the time required to halt them would be longer. And if both
sides must stop their weapons at approximately the same time,
as might be essential and surely would be important, a recipro-
cally synchronized halt of all important activities would be
feasible, at best, only at a few opportune moments, and even
then only if both sides were alert to the opportunities and had
identified them in advance.
If there were no explicit communication, any pause might de-
pend on one side's stopping its missile launchings and the other
side's recognizing that the first had stopped. The signal and its
response would consume most of an hour if each side could reli-
ably observe only the impact of enemy missiles, not enemy
launching. From the moment one side stops launching, even as-
suming a clean and sudden stop, it could be upward of 20 min-
utes before the enemy could notice that missiles had stopped
landing; after allowing for reaction time (plus some waiting to
make sure) it would be upward of another 20 minutes before the
side that first stopped would discern a cessation of impacts in
its own country. A lot of war could happen in that much time.
A decisive factor would be information; an ability to know that
enemy launching has stopped, not just that arrivals on target
have stopped, could make a difference to this communication
process. And, as is so often the case with deterrence, the
enemy's information could be equally important; if we have
stopped—if we have initiated a cessation or responded to his
—we want him to know it quickly and reliably.
If the war started with a salvo of missiles and the launching
of aircraft, there might be an opportunity to stop it before the
main bomber fleets of either side had reached their target areas.
Missiles would be peculiarly good at hitting quick-moving tar-
208 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

gets—aircraft on the ground, missiles not yet launched—or for

destroying air defenses in order to help the bombers penetrate;
the greatest danger to population centers might be forestalled if
an armistice could be reached before the bombers arrived.
There would be precious little time for negotiations; but al-
ready the outcome might be foreseeable, and nothing but inertia
or the lack of facilities for reaching a truce would motivate
continuation of the war into the bomber stage. (Of course, not
all the bombers have to cross oceans to reach their targets; any
"stages" would be ragged and approximate.)
Bombers vividly illustrate the dynamic character of war—the
difficulty of finding resting places or stopping points, the impos-
sibility of freezing everything. Bombers cannot just "stop."
They have to move to stay aloft; to move they have to burn
fuel, and while they are moving crews become fatigued, enemy
defenses may locate and identify them, and coordination of the
bombers with each other will deteriorate. If the planes return
to base they have to recycle, with refueling and other delays if
the truce was a false one and the war is still on. Finally, at base
they may be vulnerable. The aircraft would have been launched
quickly for their own safety, and once in the air were immune
to missile attack; when they return to base they may be newly
vulnerable—if the bases still exist. If they have to seek alterna-
tive bases their performance would be further degraded, and so
would the threat they pose to the enemy in bringing about, or
keeping, a precarious armistice.
Stable stopping points therefore must not only be physically
possible, in terms of momentum, gravity, and fuel supplies, and
consistent with command arrangements, communications, the
speed of decisions, and the information available; they must
also be reasonably secure against double cross or resumption of
the war.
Armistice and Arms Control
Like any form of arms control, an armistice would probably
have to be monitored for compliance. It might possibly take the
form of an unnegotiated pause, each side holding fire to see
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 209

whether the other would too. It would have to be a noticeable

pause on both sides, lasting long enough to suggest that it would
persist if each conditionally withheld his fire to see if the other
did. But, even in this unnegotiated case, both sides would carry
out reconnaissance over enemy territory; and once communica-
tion were established, negotiation would undoubtedly occur.
There are some good reasons for supposing that, if the war
could be stopped, it might be a simple cease-fire that would do
it. Considering the difficulty of communication and the urgency
of reaching a truce, simple arrangements would have the strong-
est appeal and might be the only ones that could be negotiated
on the demanding time schedule of a war in progress. And a
crude cease-fire might be the only stoppage that could be ar-
rived at by tacit negotiation, by the mere extension of a pause.
How far the subsequent negotiations could depart from the sta-
tus quo so established is questionable; neither side would be
eager to resume the war, and in default of agreement the thing
might just stay stopped. If the cease-fire is only partial, though,
or if for reasons like the fuel consumption of loitering aircraft
it is inherently unable to endure without more explicit arrange-
ments, the momentary pause would not necessarily determine
the main outlines of the final arrangement.
The argument that, of all forms of armistice, the simple cease-
fire is the most plausible and likely, is a strong one. Neverthe-
less, one side or both may not wait for some natural "pause"
and may declare or broadcast its willingness to stop and the
terms it would expect. (The side first motivated to announce its
terms could be either the stronger or the weaker, the one most
hurt or the one least hurt, the one with the most yet to lose or
the one with the least yet to lose, the one that started the war or
the one that did not—and it might not be clear who started it,
who had been hurt worse, or who eventually had the most yet
to lose.) The natural simplicity of an extended "pause" would
depend on actually reaching such a pause; urgency is against it.
If verbal exchange can take place, though we should still have to
expect any agreement to be crude and simple, it would not have
to embody the status quo or even simultaneous stoppage. It
210 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

does not take long to say "unconditional surrender," and vari-

ous simple formula might be available if any thought had been
given to the matter before the war.
What seems most likely if the war were successfully stopped
is a "progressive armistice," with attention going to progres-
sively less urgent things as tentative understandings were
reached about the most urgent. First would be the cease-fire it-
self, which would be sudden if a sudden stoppage is feasible; it
would probably not be, so there would have to be some allow-
ance or understanding for weapons and activities already be-
yond recall. Sanctions or reprisals might have to be threatened
for enemy activity that went beyond the tolerance of the agreed
cease-fire.
Second would probably be the disposition of residual weap-
ons. An important possibility here would be self-inflicted de-
struction. If among the terms of the understanding were that
one side should disarm itself, partially or completely, of its re-
maining strategic weapons, ways would have to be found to
make it feasible and susceptible of inspection. If it had to be
done in a hurry, as it might have to be, enemy aircraft could be
required to land at specified airfields, even missiles could be
fired at a point where their impact could be monitored (prefer-
ably with their warheads disarmed or removed), and subma-
rines might surface to be escorted or disabled. Certainly of all
the ways to dispose of remaining enemy weapons, self-inflicted
destruction is one of the best; and techniques to monitor it, fa-
cilitate it, or even to participate in it with demolition charges
would be better than continuing the war and firing away scarce
weapons at a range of several thousand miles.
"Uncontested reconnaissance" would be an important part of
the process. Submitting to surveillance, restricted or unre-
stricted, might be an absolute condition of any armistice. In the
terminal stage of the war, it is not just "armed reconnaissance"
that could be useful but "unarmed reconnaissance," uncon-
tested reconnaissance by aircraft or other vehicles admitted by
sufferance.
As in any arms agreement there would be a problem of cheat-
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 211

ing. And as in any arms agreement, there are two very different
dangers. One is that the enemy may cheat and get away with it;
the other is that he may not cheat but appear to, so that the ar-
rangement falls apart for lack of adequate inspection. Suppose
the armistice is barely one hour old and several nuclear weap-
ons go off in our own country. Has the enemy resumed the war?
We may know within another few minutes. Is he testing us, to
see how willing we are to resume hostilities, or is he sneaking
in a few revenge weapons or perhaps trying to whittle down our
postwar military capability? Or was this a submarine or a few
bombers that never got the word about the armistice, or con-
fused their instructions and thought they were to carry out their
final mission before the armistice? Was this an ally or a satellite
of the main enemy, who has not been brought into the armi-
stice? Would the enemy know it if some of his weapons had hit
us since the armistice; if we fire a few in reprisal to keep him
honest, would he know or believe that these were in response
to his own or would he have to assume that we were taking a
new initiative, possibly resuming the war? If there is yet no
truce covering a European theater, or some overseas bases,
how can we tell whether local activity there is a violation of the
spirit of the partial truce or merely continued military activity
where the truce has not yet been extended?
If questions like these are to be answerable, it will be because
they were posed and thought through in advance, recognized at
the time the pause or agreement was reached, and even appreci-
ated as pertinent when the weapons themselves were designed
and the war plans drawn up. Both sides should want to avoid
spoiling the possibility of an armistice through lack of adequate
control over their own military forces.
The armistice would induce ambivalent feelings about se-
crecy. The militarily stronger may be hard-pressed to prove that
it is stronger (or to be sure that it is stronger). If one side is
submitting to a very asymmetrical disarmament arrangement, it
may have to prove how strong it is for bargaining purposes and
then prove how weak it is in meeting the disarmament demands
of its opponent. For purposes of bluff it would be valuable to
272 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

have an opponent think one had hidden weapons in reserve; for

abiding by a truce arrangement it may be frustrating and dan-
gerous to be unable to deny convincingly the possession of
weapons that one actually does not have.
Some Hard Choices
A critical choice in the process of bringing a war to a successful
close—or to the least disastrous close—is whether to destroy or
to preserve the opposing government and its principal channels
of command and communication. If we manage to destroy the
opposing government's control over its own armed forces, we
may reduce their military effectiveness. At the same time, if we
destroy the enemy government's authority over its armed forces,
we may preclude anyone's ability to stop the war, to surrender,
to negotiate an armistice, or to dismantle the enemy' s weapons.
This is a genuine dilemma: without technical knowledge of the
enemy's command and control system, the enemy's war plan
and target doctrine, the vulnerabilities of enemy communica-
tions and the procedures for implementing military action, we
cannot reach a conclusion here. All we can do is to recognize
that there is no obvious answer. Victorious governments have
usually wanted to deal with an authority on the other side that
could negotiate, enter into commitments, control and withdraw
its own forces, guarantee the immunity of ambassadors or sur-
veillance teams, give authoritative accounts of the forces re-
maining, collaborate in any authentication procedures required
to verify the facts, and institute some kind of order in its own
country. There is strong historical basis for presuming that we
should badly want to be sure that an organized enemy govern-
ment existed that had the power to demand its armed forces
cease, withdraw, submit, mark time, or perform services for us.
This has to be weighed against the advantage of disorganizing
the initial enemy attacks by destroying the enemy command
structure. It may be that there is a clear answer one way or the
other, but in this book we do not know which way the answer
goes; we know only that it is important. Crudely speaking the
questions are whether the enemy's command structure is more
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 213

vital to the efficient waging of war or the effective restraint and

stoppage of war, and which of the two processes is more impor-
tant to us.
There could of course be a distinction between preserving the
political leadership in the enemy country, together with its
means of communication and command, and destroying or iso-
lating it while leaving intact the military command structure
that might be able to come to terms to stop the war. This is not
an easy choice either; one might think the military would be
tougher and more amenable to futile sacrifice, while civilian
leaders would try to preserve their country. On the other hand,
one may suppose that political leaders have less to live for while
the military, whatever their attitude toward sacrifice, may be
more realistic about the futility of the enterprise and more de-
voted to what would endure within the country than to the po-
litical fortunes of a regime. Here again the answer depends
upon expert knowledge; and the answer would not be easy. But
some authority within the country would be needed unless the
war is to come to an end by sheer exhaustion of weapons alone;
and the traditional principle of destroying the enemy's "will to
fight" would have to give way before the more important prin-
ciple of preserving the enemy's "will to survive," his ability to
command, and his "will to come to terms." The so-called "will
to fight" is a huge metaphor covering the psychology, the bu-
reaucracy, the electronics, the discipline and authority, and the
centralization or decentralization of the enemy's military plans.
If we are to get any influence out of our enormous capacity for
violence, we had better be sure there is some structure capable
of being influenced, and capable in turn of bringing the war
under control.
A second dilemma arises in the pressure of time that we
would want to impose on an enemy. Assuming ourselves mili-
tarily ahead after some initial stage, we might find ourselves in
the position where a vigorous further prosecution of the war
could progressively cut down the enemy's residual forces, and
we should have to decide whether that is the most effective way
to immobilize his weapons. If we were certain that he would fire
214 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

all of his weapons as quickly as he could, and fire them to maxi-

mize civilian damage on our side, the argument for going after
his weapons quickly and unstintingly would be conclusive. If al-
ternatively we were certain that he preferred to pause and ne-
gotiate, but nevertheless would fire his weapons rather than see
them destroyed on the ground, our all-out attack on them would
simply pull the trigger; the argument against it would then be
conclusive. These are but two extreme possibilities, but they
illustrate how hard the choice would be. An all-out effort to
destroy enemy capabilities and an all-out effort to coerce enemy
decisions may not be compatible with each other. There is no
conservative way to err on the safe side; we do not know which
is the safe side. Next to the choice of preserving or destroying
the enemy government, this choice between maximizing en-
emy weapon-attrition rates or minimizing the urgency
to use those weapons may be the most critical, the most
difficult, and the most controversial. Here is a point where the
distinction between the straightforward application of brute
force to block enemy capabilities and the exploitation of potential
violence to influence his behavior is a sharp one.
A third choice relates to allied weapons. It is a choice mainly
for allied countries that have their own nuclear forces, but it is
to some extent a choice the United States could influence. For
the next decade or more allied nuclear forces would be of minor
significance in the conduct of military operations because they
would be few in comparison with our American forces and
because our target plans might not be reliably coordinated.
Any targets allied countries could destroy, the United States
probably feels obliged to attack, too.
If the allied weapons were themselves vulnerable to attack,
as aircraft probably would be, they might have to be used quickly
to avoid their own destruction; and if their targets were consis-
tent with the American war plan they would merely be used up
early in the campaign (and be of little value compared with their
cost). If the allied weapons were of such a character that, in
addition to being vulnerable to attack, they could be effec-
tively used only against population centers, there would be real
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 215

danger that they would succeed only in spoiling the prospects

for restraint and successful termination. This could virtually
make them as much of a threat to American cities (and to their
own cities) as to the Soviet cities that they hoped to destroy.
If they were not so vulnerable as to have to fly instantly to
target but could be withheld to deter attacks on their own popu-
lation centers, they might assume rising importance as the war
progressed. If the main antagonists, the United States and the
Soviet Union, spent a substantial portion of their own weapons
in a military duel, the comparative sizes of the allied forces
would rise by the mere diminution of the forces they were com-
pared with. The effect this would have on the terminal stage of
war would depend critically on how those countries were
equipped to participate in any terminal negotiations.
The most successful use of the weapons, from the point of
view of the countries concerned, might be to preserve them for
continued deterrence, enabling those countries to end the war as
nuclear powers. Since these weapons might turn out to have a
greater capacity to spoil the American war plan than to contrib-
ute to it, this could even be the best employment of the weapons
from the American point of view. A strange implication is that,
though Europeans have occasionally expressed apprehension
that they might end up fighting their own futile war against the
Soviet Union while the United States saved itself by keeping its
own weapons grounded, an important possibility is exactly the
opposite—that they would prefer, if their weapons were not too
vulnerable, to count their weapons in the reserve force and let
the main expenditure of weapons take place between the two
larger military opponents.
Negotiation in Warfare
To think of war as a bargaining process is uncongenial to some
of us. Bargaining with violence smacks of extortion, vicious
politics, callous diplomacy, and everything indecent, illegal, or
uncivilized. It is bad enough to kill and to maim, but to do it for
gain and not for some transcendent purpose seems even worse.
Bargaining also smacks of appeasement, of politics and diplo-
216 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

macy, of accommodation or collaboration with the enemy, of sell-

ing out and compromising, of everything weak and irresolute.
But to fight a purely destructive war is neither clean nor heroic;
it is just purposeless. No one who hates war can eliminate its
ugliness by shutting his eyes to the need for responsible direc-
tion; coercion is the business of war. And someone who hates
mixing politics with war usually wants to glorify an action by
ignoring or disguising its purpose. Both points of view deserve
sympathy, and in some wars they could be indulged; neither
should determine the conduct of a thermonuclear war.
What is the bargaining about? First there is bargaining about
the conduct of the war itself. In more narrowly limited wars—
the Korean War, or the war in Vietnam, or a hypothetical war
confined to Europe or the Middle East—the bargaining about
the way the war is to be fought is conspicuous and continual:
what weapons are used, what nationalities are involved, what
targets are sanctuaries and what are legitimate, what forms par-
ticipation can take without being counted as "combat," what
codes of reprisal or hot pursuit and what treatment of prisoners
are to be recognized. The same should be true in the largest
war: the treatment of population centers, the deliberate creation
or avoidance of fallout, the inclusion or exclusion of particular
countries as combatants and targets, the destruction or preser-
vation of each other's government or command centers, demon-
strations of strength and resolve, and the treatment of the com-
munications facilities on which explicit bargaining depends,
should be within the cognizance of those who command the op-
erations. Part of this bargaining might be explicit, in verbal
messages and replies; much of it would be tacit, in the patterns
of behavior and reactions to enemy behavior. The tacit bargain-
ing would involve targets conspicuously hit and conspicuously
avoided, the character and timing of specific reprisals, demon-
strations of strength and resolve and of the accuracy of target
intelligence, and anything else that conveys intent to the enemy
or structures his expectations about the kind of war it is going
tobe.
Second, there would be bargaining about the cease-fire, truce,
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 217

armistice, surrender, disarmament, or whatever it is that brings

the war to a close—about the way to halt the war and the
military requirements for stopping it. The terms could involve
weapons—their number, readiness, location, preservation, or
destruction—and the disposition of weapons and actions be-
yond recall or out of control or unaccounted for, or whose sta-
tus was in dispute between the two sides. It would involve sur-
veillance and inspection, either to monitor compliance with the
armistice or just to establish the facts, to demonstrate strength
or weakness, to assign fault or innocence in case of untoward
events, and to keep track of third parties' military forces. It
could involve understandings about the reassembling or recon-
stituting of military forces, refueling, readying of missiles on
launching pads, repair and maintenance, and all the other steps
that would prepare a country either to meet a renewed attack or
to launch one. It could involve argument or bargaining about
the degree of destruction to people and property on both sides,
the equity or justice of what had been done and the need to in-
flict punishment or to exact submissiveness. It could involve the
dismantling or preservation of warning systems, military commu-
nications, or air defenses. And it very likely would involve the
status of sheltered or unsheltered population in view of their
significance as "hostages" against resumption of warfare.
A third subject of bargaining could be the regime within the
enemy country itself. At a minimum there might have to be a
decision about whom to recognize as authority in the enemy
country or with whom one would willingly deal. There might
be a choice between negotiating with military or civilian authori-
ties; and if the war is as disruptive as can easily be imagined, there
may be a problem of "succession" to resolve. There could even
be competing regimes in the enemy country—alternative com-
manders to recognize as the inheritors of control, or alternative
political leaders whose acquisition of control depended on
whether they could monopolize communications or get them-
selves recognized as authoritative negotiators. To some extent,
either side can determine the regime on the other side by the
process of recognition and negotiation itself. This would espe-
218 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

dally be the case in the decision to negotiate about allied coun-

tries—China, or France and Germany—or alternatively to re-
fuse to deal with the primary enemy about allied and satellite
affairs and to insist upon dealing separately with the govern-
ments of those countries.
A fourth subject for bargaining would be the disposition of
any theater in which local or regional war was taking place.
This could involve the evacuation or occupation of territory,
local surrender offerees, coordinated withdrawals, treatment of
the population, use of troops to police the areas, prisoner ex-
changes, return or transfer of authority to local governments,
inspection and surveillance, introduction of occupation authori-
ties, or anything else pertinent to the local termination of war-
fare.
The tempo and urgency of the big war and its armistice might
require ignoring theater affairs in the interest of reaching some
armistice. If so, there might be an understanding, implicit or ex-
plicit, that the theater war is to be stopped by unilateral actions
or by immediately subsequent negotiation. There might conceiv-
ably be the expectation that the theater war goes on, risking re-
newed outbreak of the larger war; and possibly the outcome of
the major war would have made the theater war inconsequential
or its local outcome a foregone conclusion. A theater war would
in any case pose acute problems of synchronization: its tempo
would be so slow compared with that of the bigger war that the
terms of the theater armistice simply could not be met within
the time schedule on which the larger war had to be brought to
a close.
Fifth would be the longer term disarmament and inspection
arrangements. These might be comprised in the same package
with the armistice itself; but stopping a war safely and reliably
is different from maintaining safe and reliable military relations
thereafter. The first involves conditions to be met at once, be-
fore the war is ended or before planes return to base, before re-
laxation has occurred and before populations have been brought
from their shelters. The second involves conditions to be met
afterward.
THE DIPLOMACY OF ULTIMATE SURVIVAL 219

For that reason the armistice might, as in the days of Julius

Caesar, involve the surrender of hostages as a pledge for future
compliance. What form these might take is hard to foretell; but
selective occupation of communication centers, preplaced dem-
olition charges, destruction of particular facilities to make a
country dependent on outside aid, or even personal hostages
might appear reasonable.The purpose of any of these types of
hostages—hostages not taken by force but acquired by negotia-
tion—is to maintain bargaining power that would otherwise
too quickly disappear. It is to provide a pledge against future
compliance, when one's capacity for sanctions is too short-lived.
The principle is important, because there is no necessary
correspondence between the duration of one's power to coerce
and the time span of the compliance that needs to be enforced.
A sixth subject for negotiation might be the political status of
various countries or territories—dissolution of alliances or
blocs, dismemberment of countries, and all the other things that
wars are usually "about," possibly including economic arrange-
ments and particularly reparations and prohibitions. Some of
these might automatically be covered in disposing of a theater
war; some would already be covered in deciding on the regime
to negotiate with. Some might be settled by default: the war it-
self would have been so disruptive as to leave certain problems
no longer in need of solution, certain issues irrelevant, certain
countries unimportant.
Of these six topics for bargaining, the first—conduct of the
war—is inherent in the war itself if the war is responsibly con-
ducted. The second—terms of armistice or surrender—is inher-
ent in the process of getting it stopped, even though by default
most of the terms might be established through an unnegotiated
pause. The third—the regime—is at least somewhat implicit in
the process of negotiation; the decision to negotiate involves
some choice and recognition. The fourth—disposition of local
or regional warfare—might be deferred until after the urgent
business of armistice had been settled; but the armistice may
remain tentative and precarious until the rest of the fighting is
actually stopped. The same is probably true of the longer-term
220 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

disarmament arrangements, and of political and economic

arrangements.
We are dealing with a process that is inherently frantic, noisy,
and disruptive, in an environment of acute uncertainty, con-
ducted by human beings who have never experienced such a
crisis before and on an extraordinarily demanding time sched-
ule. We have to suppose that the negotiation would be trun-
cated, incomplete, improvised, and disorderly, with threats,
offers, and demands issued disjointedly and inconsistently, sub-
ject to misunderstanding about facts as well as intent, and with
uncertainty about who has the authority to negotiate and to
command. These six topics are therefore not an agenda for ne-
gotiation but a series of headings for sorting out the issues that
might receive attention. They are an agenda only for thinking
in advance about the termination of war, not for negotiation
itself.
How soon should the terminal negotiations begin? Preferably,
before the war starts. The crisis that precedes the war would be
an opportune time to get certain understandings across. Once
war became an imminent possibility, governments might take
seriously a "strategic dialogue" that could powerfully influence
the war itself. In ordinary peacetime the Soviet leaders have
tended to disdain the idea of restraint in warfare. Why not? It
permits them to ridicule American strategy, to pose the deter-
rent threat of massive retaliation, and still perhaps to change
their minds if they ever have to take war seriously. On the brink
of war they would. It may be just before the outbreak that an
intense dialogue would occur, shaping expectations about
bringing the war to a close, avoiding a contest in city destruction,
and keeping communications open.
It is sometimes wondered whether communications could be
established mid-course in a major war. The proper question is
whether communications should be cut off. There would have
been intense communication before the war, and the problem
is to maintain it, not to invent it.
 6
THE DYNAMICS
OF MUTUAL ALARM

With every new book on the First World War it is becoming

more widely appreciated how the beginning of that war was
affected by the technology, the military organization, and the
geography of Continental Europe in 1914. Railroads and army
reserves were the two great pieces of machinery that meshed to
make a ponderous mechanism of mobilization that, once set in
motion, was hard to stop. Worse: it was dangerous to stop. The
steps by which a country got ready for war were the same as the
steps by which it would launch war, and that is the way they
looked to an enemy.
No one can quite say just when the war started. There was a
great starting of engines, a clutching and gearing and releasing
of brakes and gathering momentum until the machines were on
collision course. There was no "final" decision; every decision
was partly forced by prior events and decisions. The range of
choice narrowed until the alternatives were gone.
Railroads made it possible to transport men, food, horses,
ammunition, fodder, bandages, maps, telephones, and every-
thing that makes up a fighting army to the border in a few days,
there to launch an attack or to meet one, depending on whether
or not the enemy got to the border first. Reserve systems made
it possible to field an army several times the size that could be
afforded continuously in peacetime. Business management on a
scale eclipsing any other enterprise known to government or in-
dustry determined the railroad schedules, the depots, the order of
call-up and shipment, the ratio of horses to caissons, hay to
horses, ammunition to gun-barrels, combat troops to field kitch-
ens, the empty cars returning for more, the evacuation of rail-
227
222 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

heads to make room for more troops and kitchens and hay and
horses coming in, and the matching of men with units, units
with larger units, and the communications to keep them in
order.
This miracle of mobilization reflected an obsession with the
need for haste—to have an army at the frontier as quickly as
possible, to exploit the enemy's unreadiness if the enemy's
mobilization was slower and to minimize the enemy's advan-
tages if he got mobilized on the frontier first. The extraordinary
complexity of mobilization was matched by a corresponding
simplicity: once started, it was not to be stopped. Like rush-hour
at Grand Central, it would be fouled up enormously by
any suspension or slowdown. A movie of it could be stopped;
and while the movie is stopped everything is suspended—coal
does not burn in the engines, day does not turn to night, horses
get no thirstier, supplies in the rain get no wetter, station plat-
forms get no more crowded. But if the real process is stopped
the men get hungry and the horses thirsty, things in the rain get
wet, men reporting for duty have no place to go, and the process
is as stable as an airplane running out of fuel over a fogged-in
landing field. Nor is the confusion merely costly and demoraliz-
ing; the momentum is gone. It cannot be instantaneously started
up again. Whatever the danger in being slow to mobilize, worse
still would be half-mobilization stopped in mid-course.
This momentum of mobilization posed a dilemma for the
Russians. The Czar wanted to mobilize against Austria with
enough speed to keep the Austrians from first finishing off Ser-
bia and then turning around to meet the threatened Russian at-
tack. The Russians actually had mobilization plans for the con-
tingency, a partial-mobilization plan oriented toward the south-
ern front. They also had full-mobilization plans oriented toward
the main enemy, Germany. As a precaution against German at-
tack, full mobilization might have been prudent. But full mo-
bilization would threaten Germany and might provoke German
mobilization in return. Partial mobilization against Austria
would not threaten Germany; but it would expose Russia to
German attack because the partial mobilization could not be
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 223

converted to full mobilization. The railroads were organized

differently for the two mobilization plans. The Russian dilemma
was to "trust" in peace with Germany—in the face of a German
threat to mobilize if Russia mobilized against Austria—and try
to preserve it by mobilizing only against Austria, or to hedge
against war with Germany by mobilizing for it and thus to con-
front Germany with an Eastern enemy mobilizing as though for
to tal war.1
How different it would have been if the major countries had
been islands, as Britain was. If a hundred miles of rough water
had separated every country from its most worrisome enemy
the technology of World War I would have given the advantage
to the country invaded, not to the invader. To catch the enemy' s
troop ships on the high seas after adequate warning of the
enemy's embarkation, and to fight on the beaches against am-
phibious attack, with good internal communications and sup-
plies against an enemy dependent on calm seas for getting his
supplies ashore—especially for a country that preferred to arm
itself defensively, with railroad guns and shore batteries, and
submarines to catch the enemy troopships—would have given
so great an advantage to the defender that even an aggressor
would have had to develop the diplomatic art of goading his op-
ponent into enough fury to launch the war himself. Speed might
have mattered to the defender, but not much. If in doubt, wait; or
mobilize "partially" until the situation clears up. Being a few
days late won't matter if it takes the enemy several days to load
his armada and cross the channel; and defensive mobilization
will not threaten the other country with attack and provoke its
own.
It is not inherent in the logic of warfare, or in the science of
weaponry, that haste makes all that difference. With some kinds
of geography and technology speed is critical—with other kinds,
not. But in 1900, with the transport and military technology
1. See Ludwig Reiners, The Lamps Went Out in Europe (New York, Pantheon
Books, 1955), pp. 134 ff. His three chapters, 13-15, pp. 123-58, are the best
I know on the dynamics of mobilization and their effect on decisions. See also
Michael Howard, "Lest We Forget," Encounter ("January 1964), pp. 61-67.
224 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

available then to Europe (and which had been tested in the

Franco-Prussian war), being fast on the draw appeared decisive.

Victory can only be insured by the creation in peace of an

organization which will bring every available man, horse,
and gun (or ship and gun if the war be on the sea) in the
shortest possible time, and with the utmost possible mo-
mentum, upon the decisive field of action.... The statesman
who, knowing his instrument to be ready, and seeing war
inevitable, hesitates to strike first, is guilty of crime against
his country.

So reads Colonel Maude's introduction to Clausewitz.2

Even if we have no control over the way technology unfolds
we can still know what we like. And what we like is a military
technology that does not give too much advantage to haste. We
like that whether we are Russians, Americans, or anybody else.
The worst military confrontation is one in which each side
thinks it can win if it gets the jump on the other and will lose if
it is slow. Let us modify Colonel Maude's statement: The
statesman who, knowing his instrument to be ready on condi-
tion he strike quickly, knowing the enemy instrument to be
equally ready, knowing that if he hesitates he may lose his in-
strument and his country, knowing his enemy to face the same
dilemma, and seeing war not inevitable but a serious possibility,
who hesitates to strike first is—what?
He is in an awful position. It is a position that both he and
his enemy can equally deplore. If neither prefers war, either or
both may yet consider it imprudent to wait. He is a victim of a
special technology that gives neither side assurance against at-
tack, neither such a clear superiority that war is unnecessary,
and both sides a motive to attack, a motive aggravated by the
sheer recognition that each other is similarly motivated, each
suspicious that the other may jump the gun in "self-defense."
Among all the military positions that a country can be in, in
2. Karl von Clausewitz, On War (New York, Barnes & Noble, 1956), introduction
by F. M. Maude. The date of this introduction is apparently around 1900.
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 225

relation to its enemy, this is one of the worst. Both sides are
trapped by an unstable technology, a technology that can con-
vert a likelihood of war into certainty. Military technology that
puts a premium on haste in a crisis puts a premium on war it-
self. A vulnerable military force is one that cannot wait, espe-
cially if it faces an enemy force that is vulnerable if the enemy
waits.
If the weapons can act instantaneously by the flip of a switch,
a "go" signal, and can arrive virtually without warning to do
decisive damage, the outcome of the crisis depends simply on
who first finds the suspense unbearable. If the leaders on either
side think the leaders on the other are about to find it unbeara-
ble, their motive to throw the switch is intensified.
But almost certainly there is more to it than just throwing the
switch; there are things to do, and there are things to look for.
Things to look for are signs of whether the enemy is getting
closer to the brink or has already launched his force. The things
to do are to increase "readiness." Readiness for what?
Some steps can increase readiness to launch war. Some steps
reduce vulnerability to attack. The mobilization systems of con-
tinental countries in 1914 did not discriminate. What one did to
get ready to meet an attack was the same as what one did to
launch an attack. And of course it looked that way to the
enemy.
There is bound to be overlap between the steps that a country
can take to get ready to start a war and the steps it can take to
make war less inviting to its enemy or less devastating to itself.
There is no easy way to divide the measures of alert and mobili-
zation into "offensive" and "defensive" categories. Some of the
most "defensive" steps are as important in launching a war as in
awaiting enemy attack. Sheltering the population, if shelter is
available, is an obviously "defensive" step if the enemy may
launch war before the day is out. It is an equally obvious
"offensive" step if one expects to launch an attack before the
day is out and wants to be prepared against counterattack and
retaliation. To stop training flights and other incidental air force
activity, readying the maximum number of bombers on airfields,
226 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

is a way of assuring greater reprisal against the enemy in case

he attacks us; it can also be a step toward readiness to attack
the enemy.
Still, though there is overlap, there can be a difference. One
readiness step that was widely reported at the time of the Cuban
crisis was the dispersal of bombers to alternate airfields. The
airfields of many large cities are capable of handling air force
bombers; in peacetime it would be a nuisance, an expense and
possibly a danger, to keep bombers with bombs dispersed
to large-city airfields. But in a crisis, when it is important not
to confront the enemy with a bomber force that is too easy a
target for his missiles, doubling or trebling the number of bases
among which the bombers are dispersed can be worth some
nuisance, some expense, even some danger. The bombers are in
no better condition to launch an attack if they are dispersed
away from their main bases; they may actually be somewhat
less ready for a coordinated surprise attack, especially since
they may be more susceptible to enemy surveillance. But they
are less vulnerable to enemy attack. Thus the comparison of our
readiness for a war that we start and our readiness for a war
that the enemy starts is changed by such dispersal. Whatever the
wisdom of converting large-city airfields into urgent military
targets—and it is preposterous unless the bombers are desper-
ately in need of a modest improvement in their security—one
can at least recognize that such dispersal mainly reduces vul-
nerability to attack rather than increasing the advantage to be
gained by launching an attack.
There can also be a difference in the sheer timing of mobiliza-
tion. The enemy can presumably take steps for his own readi-
ness at the same time we take steps for our own. If the steps he
takes reduce his vulnerability to attack, reducing the advantage
to us of a sudden surprise launch of our strategic forces and giv-
ing him greater assurance of our unlikelihood to do that, then
just allowing him time for such increased readiness will reduce
our offensive capability relative to our defensive, or our "coun-
terforce" capability relative to our "retaliatory" capability. The
way both sides alert their forces and mobilize in a crisis can
have much to do with whether the situation becomes increas-
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 227

ingly dangerous or not. The degree of readiness, the extent of

mobilization, the high alert status of strategic forces and a sense
of "confrontation" will make the situation tense and expectant
and hostile in appearance. The situation may not be more
dangerous at the end of a day's mobilization, though, if each
side provides the enemy less to be gained by sudden attack and
the penalty on waiting (the premium on haste) is reduced.
The Mischievous Influence of Haste
The premium on haste—the advantage, in case of war, in being
the one to launch it or in being a quick second in retaliation if the
other side gets off the first blow—is undoubtedly the greatest
piece of mischief that can be introduced into military forces,
and the greatest source of danger that peace will explode into
all out war. The whole idea of accidental or inadvertent war, of a
war that is not entirely intended or premeditated, rests on a
crucial premise—that there is such an advantage, in the event of
war, in being the one to start it and that each side will be not only
conscious of this but conscious of the other's preoccupation
with it. In an emergency the urge to preempt—to preempt the
other's preemption, and so on ad infinitum—could become a
dominant motive if the character of military forces endowed
haste and initiative with a decisive advantage. It is hard to
imagine how anybody would be precipitated into full-scale war
by accident, false alarm, mischief, or momentary panic, if it
were not for such urgency to get in quick. If there is no decisive
advantage in striking an hour sooner than the enemy and no
disadvantage in striking an hour later, one can wait for better
evidence of whether the war is on. But when speed is critical the
victim of an accident or a false alarm is under terrible pressure
to get on with the war if in fact it is war or if the enemy seems
likely, even in "self-defense," to anticipate war by starting it. If
each side imputes similar urgency to the other, the urgency is
aggravated.
It is not accidents themselves—mechanical, electronic, or
human—that could cause a war, but their effect on decisions.
Accidents can trigger decisions, and this may be all that any-
body has ever meant; but the distinction needs to be made. The
228 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

remedy is not just preventing accidents, false alarms, or unau-

thorized ventures, but tranquilizing the decisions. The accident-
prone character of strategic forces—more correctly, the sensi-
tivity of strategic decisions to possible accidents or false alarms
—is closely related to the security of the forces themselves. If a
country's retaliatory weapons are reasonably secure against sur-
prise attack, preemptive or premeditated, the country need not
respond so quickly to alarms and excursions. Not only can one
wait and see but one can assume that the enemy himself, know-
ing that one can wait and see, is less afraid of a precipitate deci-
sion, less tempted toward a precipitate decision of his own.
But there are two ways to confront the enemy with retaliatory
forces that cannot be destroyed in a surprise attack. One is to
prevent surprise; the other is to prevent their destruction even in
the event of surprise.
Radar, satellite-borne sensory devices to detect missile
launchings, and alarm systems that signal when a country has
been struck by nuclear weapons, could give us the minutes we
might need to launch most of our missiles and planes before
they were destroyed on the ground. If the enemy knows that we
can react in a few minutes and that we will have the few min-
utes we need, he may be deterred by the prospect of retaliation.
But hardened underground missile sites, mobile missiles, sub-
marine-based missiles, continually air-borne bombs and mis-
siles, hidden missiles and aircraft, or even weapons in orbit do
not so much depend on warning; they are designed to survive an
attack, not to anticipate it by launching themselves at the enemy
in the few minutes after warning—perhaps ambiguous warning
—is received. In terms of ability to retaliate, warning time and
survivability are to some extent substitutes but they also com-
pete with each other. Money spent dispersing and hardening
missile sites or developing and building mobile systems could
have been spent on better warning, and vice versa.
More important, they conflict in the strategy of response. The
critical question is, what do we do when we do get warning?
The system that can react within fifteen minutes may be a po-
tent deterrent, but it poses an awful choice whenever we think
we have warning but are not quite sure. We can exploit our
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 229

speed of response and risk having started war by false alarm,

or we can wait, avoiding an awful war by mistake but risking a
dead retaliatory system if the alarm was real (and possibly re-
ducing our deterrence in a crisis if the enemy knows we are in-
clined to give little credence to the warning system and wait
until his bombs have landed).
The problem may be personal and psychological as well as
electronic; the finest products of modern physics are of no avail
if the top ranking decision-maker, whoever he may be within
the time available, is too indecisive, or too wise, to act with the
alacrity of an electronic computer.
We get double security out of the system that can survive
without warning: the enemy knowledge that we can wait in the
face of ambiguous evidence, that we can take a few minutes to
check on the origin of accidents or mischief, that we are not de-
pendent on instant reaction to a fallible warning system, may
permit the enemy, too, to wait a few minutes in the face of an
accident and permit them in a crisis to attribute less nervous
behavior to us and to be less jumpy themselves. (If we think the
other side is taking Colonel Maude's advice, we have an extra
reason for taking it ourselves!)
If we think of the decisions as well as the actions we can see
that accidental war, like premeditated war, is subject to deter-
rence. Deterrence, it is often said, is aimed at the rational calcu-
lator in full control of his faculties and his forces; accidents, it is
said, may trigger war in spite of deterrence. "The operation of
the deterrence principle in preventing war," says Max Lerner,
"depends upon an almost flawless rationality on both sides." 3
But it is really better to consider the more "accidental" kind of
3. The Age of Overkill, p. 27. Incidentally, when people say that "irrationality"
spoils deterrence they mean—or ought to mean—only particular brands of it. Leaders
can be irrationally impetuous or irrationally lethargic, intolerable of suspense or incapable
of decision. A Hitler may be hard to deter because he is "irrational," but a Chamberlain
is equally irrational and especially easy to deter. The human inability to rise to the
occasion may sometimes lead to a Pearl Harbor, or to a remilitarization of the Rhineland;
it probably also cushions a good many shocks, accidents, and false alarms and helps
governments to rationalize their way out of crises. This is no consolation when we
confront the wrong kinds of madness; still, we may as well get the theory straight.
230 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

war—the war that arises out of inadvertence or panic or misun-

derstanding or false alarm, not by cool premeditation—as the
deterrence problem, not a separate problem and not one unre-
lated to deterrence.
We want to deter an enemy decision to attack us—not only a
cool-headed, premeditated decision that might be taken in the
normal course of the Cold War, at a time when the enemy does
not consider an attack by us to be imminent, but also a nervous,
hot-headed, frightened, desperate decision that might be precipi-
tated at the peak of a crisis, that might result from a false alarm
or be engineered by somebody' s mischief—a decision taken at a
moment when sudden attack by the United States is believed a
live possibility.
The difference is in the speed of decision, the information
and misinformation available, and the enemy's expectations
about what happens if he waits. The enemy must have some no-
tion of how much he would suffer and lose in a war he starts,
and of how much more he may suffer and lose in a war that, by
hesitating, he fails to start in time. He must have some notion of
how probable it is that war will come sooner or later in spite of
our best efforts and his to avert it. In case of alarm he has some
estimate, or guess, of the likelihood that war has started and of
the risks of waiting to be sure. In deciding whether to initiate
war or to respond to what looks like war the enemy is aware not
only of retaliation, but of the likelihood and consequences of a
war that he does not start, one that we start. Deterring premedi-
tated war and deterring "accidental war" differ in those expecta-
tions—in what the enemy thinks, at the moment he makes his
decision, of the likelihood that alarms are false ones or true,
and of the likelihood that if he abstains, we won't.
Accidental war therefore puts an added burden on deter-
rence. It is not enough to make a war that he starts look unat-
tractive compared with no war at all; a war that he starts must
look unattractive even as insurance against the much worse war
that—in a crisis, or after an accident, or due to some mischief, or
in misapprehension of our intent—he thinks may be started
against him or has already started. Deterrence has to make it
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 231

never appear conservative to elect, as the lesser danger, preemp-

tive war.
"Accidental war" is often adduced as a powerful motive for
disarmament. The multiplication and dispersion of ever more
powerful weapons seems to carry an ever growing danger of ac-
cidental war; and many who are confident that deliberate attack
is adequately deterred are apprehensive about the accidental-
war possibilities inherent in the arms race.
But there is a conflict, and a serious one, between the urge to
have fewer weapons in the interest of fewer accidents and the
need—still thinking about "accidental war"—to have forces se-
cure enough and so adequate in number that they need not
react with haste for fear of not being able to react at all, secure
enough and so adequate in number that, when excited by alarm,
we can be conservative and doubt the enemy's intent to attack,
and that the enemy has confidence in our ability to be calm,
helping him keep calm himself. A retaliatory system that is inade-
quate or insecure not only makes the possessor jumpy but is
grounds for the enemy's being jumpy too.
It is important to keep in mind, too, that (as in any other
business) accidents and mischief and false alarms can be re-
duced by spending more money. To correlate weapons, acci-
dents, and arms budgets ignores the fact that the security of re-
taliatory forces, the control over them and communication with
them, is an important and expensive part of the military estab-
lishment. For a given number of weapons, more money may
mean more reliable communications and command procedures.
Skimpy budgets may mean skimpy protection against malfunc-
tion, confusion, and mischief.
Even numbers can help. Few people have kind words in print
for "overkill," but it is probably a valid principle that restrain-
ing devices for weapons, men, and decision processes—delaying
mechanisms, safety devices, double-check and consultation pro-
cedures, conservative rules for responding to alarms and com-
munication failure, and in general both institutions and mech-
anisms for avoiding an unauthorized firing or a hasty reaction to
untoward events—can better be afforded, and will be afforded,
232 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

if there is redundancy in numbers. If weapons are scarce, every

restraining device will meet with the argument that some weap-
ons somewhere will fail to get the word, that some lock will be
unopened when a weapon should be fired, and that delay will
cause some weapons to be fired too late. The best answer to this
argument is that there is enough ammunition to keep a few duds
from making all that difference and we can afford an occasional
malfunction resulting from conservative procedures and re-
straining de vices.
To say this does not prove that a larger strategic force will be
less susceptible to accidental or unauthorized launch. But it can
be; and while the argument is not of enough weight to pretend
to settle the question of disarmament, it surely is of enough
weight to be taken into account.
''Vulnerability7' andDeterrence
"Vulnerability" is the problem that was dramatized by Sputnik
in 1957 and by Soviet announcements then that they had suc-
cessfully tested an ICBM. Nobody doubted that the aircraft of
the Strategic Air Command, if launched against Soviet Russia,
could do enormous damage to that country, unquestionably
enough to punish any aggression they had in mind and enough
to deter that aggression if they had to look forward to such pun-
ishment. But if the Soviets were about to achieve a capability to
destroy without warning the massive American bomber force
while the aircraft were vulnerably concentrated on a small num-
ber of airfields, the deterrent threat to retaliate with a destroyed
bomber force might be ineffectual. The preoccupation with vul-
nerability that began in 1957 or so was not with the vulnerability
of women and children and their means of livelihood to sudden
Soviet attack on American population centers. It was the vul-
nerability of the strategic bomber force.
This concern with vulnerability led to the improved alert sta-
tus of bombers so that radar warning of ballistic missiles would
permit the bombers to save themselves by taking off. And it led
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 233

to the abandonment of "soft," large, liquid-fueled missiles like

the Atlas, and the urgent substitution of Minuteman and Polaris
missiles which, in dispersed and hardened silos or in hidden
submarines, could effectively threaten retaliation. An Atlas mis-
sile could retaliate as effectively as several Minutemen, if alive,
but could not so persuasively threaten to stay alive under at-
tack. In the late 1950s and the early 1960s the chief criterion
for selecting strategic weapon systems was invulnerability to
attack, and properly so. Vulnerable strategic weapons not only
invite attack but in a crisis could coerce the American govern-
ment into attacking when it might prefer to wait.
Vulnerability was a central theme of the Geneva negotiations
in 1958 about measures to safeguard against surprise attack.
There is nothing especially heinous about a war begun in sur-
prise; if people were going to be killed it would be small conso-
lation to have the bad news a little before it happened. What
made surprise attack a worthy category for consideration in a
disarmament conference was precisely this character of strate-
gic weapon systems, the possibility that "surprise" might help
an attack to succeed, and by inviting success spoil deterrence.
But success would be measured by how well the surprise attack
could forestall retaliation on the country launching attack; the
measure of success would not be the speed with which cities
could be destroyed but the likelihood that the victim's strategic
weapons could be destroyed. If enemy bombers could be caught
on the ground, with speed and surprise, the enemy population
could be disposed of at leisure. Measures that might spoil sur-
prise, or that might make strategic weapons less vulnerable to
surprise, if available to both sides and possibly arising out of
collaboration between them, might stabilize deterrence and
make it more reliable, assuring each side against being attacked
and thus reducing each side's incentive to attack.
So we have the anomaly of a great disarmament conference
devoting itself in large measure to the protection not of women
and children, noncombatants and population centers, but of
weapons themselves. If an "open skies" arrangement could
234 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

make bombers and missiles more secure, keeping the threat of

retaliation a lively one no matter who launched the war, the
women and children would be safer, not because they would
have warning if the war were to come but because the war
would be less likely to come. If a city has a limited number of
bullet-proof vests it should probably give them to the police,
letting the people draw their security from a police force that
cannot be readily destroyed.
The Charact of Weapons: Strength vs. Stability
There is, then, something that we might call the "inherent
propensity toward peace or war" embodied in the weaponry, the
geography, and the military organization of the time. Arms and
military organizations can hardly be considered the exclusively
determining factors in international conflict, but neither can
they be considered neutral. The weaponry does affect the out-
look for war or peace. For good or ill the weaponry can deter-
mine the calculations, the expectations, the decisions, the char-
acter of crisis, the evaluation of danger and the very processes
by which war gets under way. The character of weapons at any
given time determines, or helps to determine, whether the pru-
dent thing in a crisis is to launch war or to wait; it determines or
helps to determine whether a country's preparations to receive
an attack look like preparations for attack itself; it determines
or helps to determine how much time is available for negotia-
tion on the brink of war; and it determines or helps to determine
whether war itself, once started, gets altogether out of control or
can be kept responsive to policy and diplomacy.
To impute this influence to "weaponry" is to focus too nar-
rowly on technology. It is weapons, organization, plans, geogra-
phy, communications, warning systems, intelligence, and even
beliefs and doctrines about the conduct of war that together have
this influence. The point is that this complex of military factors is
not neutral in the process by which war may come about.
Obviously this is so in a one-sided sense. The weak are un-
likely to attack the strong, and nearly everybody acknowledges
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 235

that there is something to "deterrence." This is not what I have

in mind; the matter would be simple if relative strength were all
that mattered and if relative strength were easy to evaluate. Either
the strong would conquer the weak or the strong, if peaceful,
would be safe against weaker enemies; combinations might form
to achieve a balance or a preponderance, but we would be dealing
with simple quantities that could be added up. When I say,
though, that "weaponry" broadly defined is an influential factor
itself, I refer to its character, not its simple quantity. A military
complex cannot be adequately described by a quantity denoting
"strength."
One critical characteristic has just been discussed—the de-
pendence on speed, initiative, and surprise. This is different
from "strength." If one airplane can destroy 45 on an airfield,
catching the other side's airplanes on the ground can be deci-
sively important while having more airplanes than the other side
is only a modest advantage. If superiority attaches to the side
that starts the war, a parade-ground inventory of force—a com-
parison of numbers on both sides—is of only modest value in
determining the outcome. Furthermore, and this is the point to
stress, the likelihood of war is determined by how great a re-
ward attaches to jumping the gun, how strong the incentive to
hedge against war itself by starting it, how great the penalty on
giving peace the benefit of the doubt in a crisis.
The dimension of "strength" is an important one, but so is
the dimension of "stability"—the assurance against being
caught by surprise, the safety in waiting, the absence of a pre-
mium on jumping the gun.4
4. If not already acquainted with it, the reader should certainly see Albert
Wohlstetter's classic, "The Delicate Balance of Terror," Foreign Affairs, 37 (1959),
211-34; it marks the watershed in professional treatment of the "vulnerability"
problem and the stability of deterrence. Malcolm Hoag, "On Stability in Deterrent
Races," World Politics, 13 (1961), 505-27, is a lucid theoretical treatment that
contrasts alternative arms technologies and the types of arms rate they can generate.
T. C. Schelling and Morton H. Halperin consider the arms-control implications
in Strategy and Arms Control (New York, Twentieth Century Fund, 1961), especially
Chapters 1, 2, and 5.
236 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

Stability itself has both a static and a dynamic dimension. The

static dimension reflects the expected outcome, at any given
moment, if either side launches war. The dynamic dimension
reflects what happens to that calculation if either side or both
sides should move in the direction of war, by alert, mobiliza-
tion, demonstration, and other actions that unfold over time. It
involves the steps taken in a crisis. Do we become more vulner-
able or less vulnerable as we ready ourselves for the possibility
of war, and does the enemy become less vulnerable or more vul-
nerable and less or more obsessed with his own vulnerability
and his need to attack quickly? Equally important: what hap-
pens tomorrow and the day after as a result of the steps we
take today? If we make ourselves less vulnerable today is it at
the expense of tomorrow?
A vivid example of this dynamic problem is bomber aircraft.
In case of warning they can leave the ground. If they leave the
ground they should initially proceed as though to target; in case
it is war, they should not be wasting time and fuel by loitering
to find out what happens next. As they proceed to target, they
can be either recalled or confirmed on their mission. (The ac-
tual procedure may be that they return to base unless confirmed
on their mission, by "positive control" command procedures.)
If recalled, however, they return to the relative vulnerability of
their bases. They need fuel, their crews are tired, they may need
maintenance work, and they are comparatively unsynchronized.
They are, in sum, more vulnerable, and less ready for attack,
than before they took off.
This is a dynamic problem, involving the pressure of time; it
is a situation that cannot be sustained indefinitely. It is not an
unsolvable problem; but it is one that has to be solved. Like the
railroad mobilization of World War I, the bomber arrangements
may enjoy simplicity and efficiency by ignoring the possibility
that they may have to loiter or return to base. Like the railroad
mobilization of World War I, the procedures may coerce deci-
sions unless the procedures are compromised to facilitate or-
derly return to base. Decisions may be compromised in either of
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 237

two directions. The planes may fail to take off when they ought
to, because of the high cost of spoiling the force on a false
alarm and having to return to base disorganized. Or a decision to
proceed with war may be coerced by a situation in which air-
craft are momentarily in a good position to continue with war
and in a poor one to call it off.5
If both sides are so organized, or even one side, the danger that
war in fact will result from some kind of false alarm is en-
hanced. This is one of those characteristics of armed forces that
influences the propensity toward war and that is not comprised
within a calculation of "strength." The Strategic Air Command
has undoubtedly been cognizant of this problem and has taken
steps to minimize it; the point here is simply that the steps are
necessary, they undoubtedly cost something, and the technology
of aircraft affects how well the problem can be solved. If the
problem is not perceived at the time when the aircraft are de-
signed, or at the time the runways and refueling facilities are
provided, the solution of the problem may be less complete or
more costly.
The fueling of missiles could have created a similar problem
if solid-fueled missiles had not so quickly replaced the originally
projected missiles utilizing refrigerated fuels. If it takes time to
fuel a missile, fifteen minutes or an hour, and if a fueled missile
5. Roberta Wohlstetter, whose unique study of Pearl Harbor: Warning and
Decision (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1962), dissected the problem of
intelligence evaluation in a crisis, has recently pointed out the crucial interaction
between intelligence and response. "In the Cuban missile crisis," she says, "action
could be taken on ambiguous warning because the action was sliced very thin.
. . . If we had had to choose only among much more drastic actions, our hesitation
would have been greater. The problem of warning, then, is inseparable from the
problem of decision. . . . We can improve the chance of acting on signals in
time to avert or moderate a disaster . . . by refining, subdividing and making
more selective the range of responses we prepare, so that our response may fit
the ambiguities of our information and minimize the risks both of error and of
inaction." "Cuba and Pearl Harbor," Foreign Affairs, 43 (1965), 707. For an example
of action sliced so appallingly thick that paralysis was guaranteed, see Henry Owen's
discussion of the Rhineland crisis of 1936, "NATO Strategy: What Is Past Is Prologue,"
in the same issue, pp. 682-90.
238 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

cannot be held indefinitely in readiness, a problem very much

like the bomber problem can arise. To fuel a missile is not a
simple act of prudence, achieving enhanced readiness at the cost
of some fuel that may be wasted and some potential mainte-
nance work on the missiles themselves after the crisis is over. If
the fuel begins to dissipate, or the fueled missile becomes sus-
ceptible to mechanical fatigue or breakdown, getting a missile
ready requires a risky decision. The risk is that the missile will
be less ready, after a brief period, than if it had never been
made ready in the first place. It, too, like the aircraft burning
fuel in the air, can coerce a decision; it can coerce a decision in
favor of war once it is fueled and ready and threatens to become
unready shortly. It can coerce a decision to remain unready by
making it dangerous to put the missile into its mobilization
process.
In the mid-1960s, American strategic weapon systems did
not appear to have much in common with the mobilization
process of 1914. Secure yet quick-firing missiles of the Minute-
men and Polaris type, and carefully designed alert procedures
for the bombers, appeared to minimize the constraint or coer-
cion on decisions in a crisis. The strategic weapon systems
seemed to have a minimum of "dynamic instability" embod-
ied in their alert and mobilization procedures.
Some observers thought this was a disadvantage, because the
enemy could not be so readily coerced by American demonstra-
tions, by getting ourselves in a position of temporarily increased
readiness, by taking steps that showed our willingness to risk
war and that actually increased the risk of war. There were some
who thought that bombers were more usable in a crisis than
instantly ready missiles, because they could dramatically take
off, or disperse themselves to civilian bases, giving an ap-
pearance of readiness for war.
They could be right. What needs to be recognized is that the
flexing of muscles is probably unimpressive unless it is costly or
risky. If aircraft can take off in a crisis with great noise and
show of activity, but at no genuine risk to themselves and at
modest cost in fuel and personnel fatigue, it may demonstrate
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 239

little. The impressive demonstrations are probably the danger-

ous ones. We cannot have it both ways.6
Mobilization: A Contemporary Example
There is nevertheless an important area of mobilization, one lit-
tle recognized and much underrated, that could prove enor-
mously important in a crisis, for good or ill—for good if one
wants demonstrations, for ill if one does not want to put na-
tional decision-makers under acute pressure for a decision, es-
pecially for ill if it has not been foreseen and taken into account.
This is the area of civil defense.
Civil defenses are often called "passive defenses," while
anti-missile missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, and interceptor air-
craft are called "active defenses." In an important sense,
though, giving the words their ordinary meanings, it is the civil
defenses that are probably the most active and the "active de-
fenses" that would be the most passive. If we should install anti-
missile missiles around our population centers they would
probably be quick-reacting missiles themselves, in a state of
fairly continuous readiness, involving no dramatic readiness
procedures and not being utilized unless threatening objects ap-
peared overhead. One can imagine other kinds of defenses
against ballistic missiles that did involve readiness procedures,
that required decisions to mobilize in advance; perhaps short-
lived orbiting systems that had to be launched in an emergency
in anticipation of attack would have this character. But the sys-
tems currently under discussion or development appear to be
relatively "passive." They would sit still in constant readiness
6. Alfred Vagts has a rich chapter on "Armed Demonstrations," in his Defense
and Diplomacy (New York, King's Crown Press, 1956). He warns, cogently citing
Disraeli and Churchill on his side, against the demonstration that falls short of
the mark and signals the opposite of stern intent. He believes, too, that a fundamental
change has taken place in "this instrument of diplomacy" in the last thirty years,
namely, "Much if not most of Western demonstrativeness is inward, rather than
outward. It is directed toward their own citizenry, rather than at the address of
the Russians." Whether or not he would change his emphasis today, ten years
later, the point is a valid one.
240 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

and fire only in response to the local appearance of hostile ob-

jects overhead.
The civil defenses would be a dramatic contrast. Shelters
work best if people are in them. The best time to get people in
the shelters is before the war starts. To wait until the enemy has
launched his ballistic missiles (if one expects some of them to
be aimed at cities) would be to leave the population dependent
on quick-sheltering procedures that had never been tested under
realistic conditions. Even if the enemy were expected not ini-
tially to bring any of our cities under attack, fallout from target
areas could arrive in periods ranging from, say, a fraction of an
hour up to several hours, and in the panic and confusion of war-
fare a few hours might not be enough. Furthermore, the most
orderly way to get people into shelters, with families assembled,
gas and electricity shut off, supplies replenished and fire hazards
reduced, the aged and the sick not left behind, and panic mini-
mized, would be by sheltering before the war started.
And that means sheltering before war is a certainty. There is
a dilemma right here. If sheltering will be taken as a signal that
one expects war and intends to start it, sheltering gives notice to
the other side. Surprise would depend on not sheltering. A na-
tion's leaders must decide whether the advantage of surprise
against the enemy is worth the cost of surprising their own
population unprepared. This would be a hard choice. Can one
afford to warn his own population if it means warning the
enemy? Can one afford surprising the enemy if it means surpris-
ing one's own country?
It is unlikely that sheltering would be an all-or-none opera-
tion . Partial or graduated steps would almost certainly recom-mend
themselves if a government took the problem seriously. If
at midnight a president or a premier considers war a significant
likelihood within the next twenty-four hours, can he let every-
body go to work the next morning? Or should he declare a holi-
day, so that families stay together, urban commuter transpor-
tation is not fouled up, people can stay tuned in to civil defense
bulletins, last-minute instructions can be communicated, and
some kind of discipline maintained? If the possibility of general
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 241

war rises above some threshold, perhaps because a vigorous war

is in process in some theater, might not the aged and infirm and
those distant from shelter facilities be sheltered or readied for
shelter; and should not some of the less essential economic
functions be shut down? Can a president or a premier leave the
entire population in its normal pristine vulnerability to attack,
knowing that war has become a significant likelihood? There is
the possibility that any sheltering would be a dramatic signal
that war was imminent, and would tip the scales toward war it-
self, and should be avoided. Equally compelling, though, is the
notion that sheltering is less dramatic, less dangerously demon-
strative, if it can be graduated in a crisis, so that there is no sud-
den all-or-none shutdown of activity and rush to the shelters.
Sheltering is not the only "passive defense" activity that
might be involved. One type of defense against thermal radia-
tion from nuclear weapons—and it is semantically unclear
whether this is a passive defense or an active one—is smoke or
fog injected into the atmosphere. A thick layer of smoke can
make a difference, especially if anti-missile defenses could
oblige the enemy to detonate his weapons at a distance. But a
smoke layer could not be produced instantaneously after enemy
weapons came in sight; it would work best if the smudge-pots
were put into operation before the war started. This means that it
is most effective if subject to "mobilization," with the attend-
ant danger that it signals something to the other side.
People in shelters cannot stay forever. The usual calculations
of how long people should be able to stay in shelters—what the
supply of rations should be, for example—relate to how long it
might take radioactivity to decay, and cleanup procedures to dis-
pose of fallout, so that the outside environment would be safe.
But if we must envisage sheltering as a mobilization step, as
something that occurs before war is a certainty, then the endur-
ance of people in shelters is pertinent to the crisis itself. They
may well have been in their shelters for two or three weeks
without any war having started; and, like aircraft in the air, they
coerce the nation's leaders into decisions that reflect the inability
of the country to sustain its readiness indefinitely. Of all the
242 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

reasons for having people able to stay in shelters for an ex-

tended period, one of the most important would be to avoid any
need to have a war quickly because the people couldn't stand
the suspense or the privation any longer .7
De-sheltering would be a significant activity. It would be a
dramatic signal either that a nation's readiness was exhausted
or that the crisis was becoming less dangerous. It would be at
least as significant as a withdrawal of troops or diminished alert
for strategic forces. In fact, if populations were sheltered,
negotiations would concern not only what the crisis was
originally about but also the crisis itself. The imminence of war
would be at least as important as the originating cause of the
crisis, and perhaps dominate negotiations. It is likely that a
condition for de-sheltering one's own populations would be the
enemy's assuming comparable vulnerability for its own popu-
lation, whether through synchronized de-sheltering or the
enemy' s de-sheltering as a condition for our own.
These are not purely hypothetical possibilities; the fact that
the United States has only a rudimentary civil defense program
does not make these considerations irrelevant. We undoubtedly
have in this country a tremendous potential for civil defense in a
crisis. If reasonably organized, the labor force and the equipment
of the United States might create a good deal of civil defense
within a week or a day. There were at least some people who
stayed home during the Cuban crisis. That was a mild crisis;
but it might have gone differently. If most Americans decided,
or were advised, that war was an imminent possibility, they
would undoubtedly provide themselves a good deal of protection
if they were decently instructed. They could do even better if
plans for such a "crash civil-defense program" were available
in advance, and if any critical supplies and equipment were pre-
positioned for such an emergency. In fact, simply to avoid
panic it could be essential to get the population busily at work
7. In a prolonged crisis, sheltered people could take fresh air nearby, perhaps
by rotation, and separated families could be reunited; stocking of supplies could
continue and emergency measures be taken outside shelters. This possibility eases
the hardships of shelter, but complicates planning—unless it goes ignored in the
planning.
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 243

on civil defense in a crisis, whether filling cans with water,

shoveling dirt against fire hazard, educating themselves by tele-
vision, or evacuating particular areas before panic set in.
Some of the "mobilization" steps might be more dramatic,
more difficult, even more important in the absence of prepared
civil defense facilities. So the lack of a systematic program
would not necessarily mean that the President had no decisions
to make, in a crisis, with respect to the population and the econ-
omy. It might only mean that he had less cognizance of his op-
tions, less control over his own choice, and less knowledge of
the consequences for lack of plans and preparations.
So we do have "mobilization procedures" that could become
dramatically important in a crisis. They are anomalously called
"passive" defenses when they are potentially more "active" than
any others. They are not part of our military organization and
our weaponry, so we typically ignore them in discussions of our
military posture. But there they are, and they could make the
brink of war as busy and complicated and frantic as the mobili-
zations of 1914. We can hope they would not make it as irre-
versible.
The special danger is that the way these processes work will
not be understood before they are put to test in a real emer-
gency. The dynamics of readiness—of alert and mobilization
both military and civilian—involve decisions at the highest level
of government, a level so high as to be out of the hands of ex-
perts. "The bland ignorance among national leaders," writes
Michael Howard in describing the mobilization of 1914, "of the
simple mechanics of the system on which they relied for the
preservation of national security would astonish us rather more
if so many horrifying parallels did not come to light whenever
British politicians give their views about defense policy to-
day."8 Being an Englishman, he modestly confined his com-
ment to his own kind. I have no knowledge of how profound the
Russian ignorance is of these matters; the American ignorance
is surely not "bland," but it must be great. There are only
twenty-four hours in the day; and no President, Secretary, Chief
8. "Lest We Forget," p. 65.
244 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

of Staff, or national security advisor is likely to master the di-

plomacy of military alert and mobilization, particularly when it
depends on knowledge of how the Soviet machine works, a
knowledge that the best intelligence cannot provide us if the So-
viet leaders do not understand it themselves. There are only
twenty-four hours in their day, too. In managing nations on the
brink of war, every decision-maker would be inexperienced.
That cannot be helped. Thinking about it in advance can and
should make an enormous difference; but it did not in 1914.
The only people who thought about it were the people responsi-
ble for victory if war should occur, not the people responsible
for whether war should occur.9
The Problem of Stability in an Armed World
These two modes of potential instability—one arising in the ad-
vantage that may attach to speed, initiative, and surprise at the
outbreak of war, the other arising in the possible tendency for
alert and mobilization procedures to become irreversible, to im-
pose pressure of time on decisions, or themselves to raise the
premium on haste and initiative—are undoubtedly the main
sources of mischief that reside in armaments themselves. Delib-
erate war can of course be undertaken, and sometimes credibly
threatened, no matter how much stability resides in the weapons
themselves; but the extent to which armaments themselves may
bring about a war that was undesired, a war that could bring no
gain to either side and was responsive to no political necessity,
must be closely related to one or both of these two kinds of in-
stability. And it is the character of weapons as much as their
quantity, probably more than their quantity, that makes the mil-
itary environment stable or unstable. The character of military
forces is partly determined by geography, partly by the way
9. As background for interpreting the events of 1914 and the ensuing war, and
even more as background for today's problems, the first two chapters of Brodie,
Strategy in the Missile Age, are a merciless examination of the way high officials,
civilian and military alike, are tempted to evade the awful responsibility for managing
military force when things go wrong.
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 245

technology unfolds over time, partly by conscious choices in the

design and deployment of military force.
If all nations were self-sufficient islands with the pre-nuclear
military technology of World War II, mutual deterrence could
be quite stable; even a nation that had determined on war would
not care to initiate it.10 With thermonuclear technology the
danger of preemptive instability becomes a grave one; weapons
themselves may be vulnerable to sudden long-distance attack
unless they are deliberately designed and expensively designed
to present less of a surprise-attack target. This in turn can imply
a choice between weapons comparatively good for launching
sudden attack and weapons comparatively good for surviving
sudden attack and striking back. The Polaris submarine, for ex-
ample, is comparatively good at surviving attack and striking
second; the Polaris missile itself may be good for starting a war,
but not compared with its ability for surviving attack. It is an
10. This is meant to be a factual statement and therefore could be wrong. It
could be wrong either about the facts or about the way people would perceive
the facts. If amphibious assault looks promising because coastal defense or submarine
interdiction is underestimated, the mutual deterrence will not be stable even though
it ought to be. And if a country exaggerates the security its oceans give it, as
the United States may have done up to 1914, it may not take the steps that, together
with its oceanic isolation, could give it security. Hudson Maxim estimated in
1914 that, though the United States had great potential for self defense, there
were actually three or four countries that could use our oceans as avenues and
successfully invade us. He doubted the United States would arm itself until after
it had been badly defeated in a war, and he concluded, discouraged, that "Our
business at the present time is to pick our conquerors. I choose England." Defenseless
America (New York, Hearst International Library, 1915), pp. xx, 72-78, 99-108,
120-25. T. H. Thomas, in a most interesting article on "Armies and the Railway
Revolution," says that, "One of the most popular anticipations throughout Germany
in the early 1840's was that the coming railway network would establish a decisive
handicap against offensive wars, and in particular would make impossible a French
invasion of German territory. . . . The first actual test of war quite shattered this
picture. In the Italian war of 1859, even with incomplete and very imperfect
railway systems, large armies were carried rapidly from distant regions to the
chosen front of attack, and Napoleon III could launch a major offensive with
a speed the first Napoleon could never have attempted." War as a Social Institution,
Jesse D. Clarkson and Thomas C. Cochran, eds. (New York, Columbia University
Press, 1941), pp. 88-89.
246 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

expensive weapon compared with other missiles, and the ex-

pense goes into making it less vulnerable to attack, not into
making it a better weapon for launching sudden attack. To put
the same point differently: a reliable ability to strike back with
500 Polaris missiles, after absorbing an attack, corresponds to
a first-strike capability of about 500 missiles, whereas a reliable
capability to strike back with 500 more vulnerable weapons
would require having a multiple of that number, in order that
500 survive attack, and the first-strike capability would be cor-
respondingly larger. To say that the Polaris system provides, for
any given level of retaliatory capability, a comparatively small
first-strike capability is only to say that it provides, for any
given level of first-strike capability, a comparatively large
second-strike capability.
If both sides have weapons that need not go first to avoid
their own destruction, so that neither side can gain great advan-
tage in jumping the gun and each is aware that the other cannot,
it will be a good deal harder to get a war started. Both sides can
afford the rule: When in doubt, wait. In Colonel Maude's day,
the recommended rule was: When in doubt, act. Act quickly;
and if tempted to hesitate, remember that your enemy will not.
The problem does not arise only at the level of thermonuclear
warfare. The Israeli army consists largely of a mobilizable re-
serve. The reserve is so large that, once it is mobilized, the
country cannot sustain readiness indefinitely; most of the able-
bodied labor force becomes mobilized. The frontier is close, the
ground is hard, and the weather is clear most of the year; speed
and surprise can make the difference between an enemy's find-
ing a small Israeli army or a large one to oppose him if he at-
tacked. Preparations for attack would confront Israel with a
choice of mobilizing or not and, once mobilized, with a choice
of striking before enemy forces were assembled or waiting and
negotiating, to see if the mobilization on both sides could be re-
versed and the temptation to strike quickly dampened.
At the thermonuclear level, the problem of preemptive insta-
bility appeared a good deal closer to solution in the middle
of the 1960s than it had at the beginning ofthat decade. This was
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 247

largely due to the deliberate design and deployment of less vul-

nerable offensive weapons, partly due to a more explicit official
recognition of the problem, and perhaps somewhat due to a
growing understanding between the United States and the Soviet
Union about the need, and some of the means, for avoiding
false alarms and avoiding responses that would aggravate sus-
picion. During the Cuban missile crisis the Soviet Union appar-
ently abstained from any drastic alert and mobilization proce-
dures, possibly as a deliberate policy to avoid aggravating the
crisis. The establishment of a "hot line" between Washington
and Moscow was at least a ceremony that acknowledged the
problem and expressed an intent to take it seriously.
But the problem of instability does not necessarily stay
solved. It may be kept solved, but only by conscious efforts to
keep it solved. New weapon systems would not automatically
preserve such stability as had been attained by the second half
of the 1960s. Ballistic missile defenses, if installed on a large
scale by the United States or the Soviet Union, might preserve
or destroy stability according to whether they increased or de-
creased the advantage to either side of striking first; that, in
turn, would depend on how much better they worked against an
enemy missile force that had already been disrupted by a sur-
prise attack. It would also depend on whether ballistic missile
defenses worked best in protecting missile forces from being de-
stroyed or best in protecting cities against retaliation. And it
would depend on whether ballistic missile defenses induced such
a change in the character of missiles themselves, or such a shift
to other types of offensive weapons—larger missiles, low flying
aircraft, weapons in orbit—as to aggravate the urgency of
quick action in a crisis and the temptation to strike first.
Stability, of course, is not the only thing a country seeks in its
military forces. In fact a case can be made that some instability
can induce prudence in military affairs. If there were no danger
of crises getting out of hand, or of small wars blowing up into
large ones, the inhibition on small wars and other disruptive
events might be less. The fear of "accidental war"—of an un-
premeditated war, one that arises out of aggravated misunder-
248 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

standings, false alarms, menacing alert postures, and a recog-

nized urgency of striking quickly in the event of war—may tend
to police the world against overt disturbances and adventures. A
canoe can be safer than a rowboat if it induces more caution in
the passengers, particularly if they are otherwise inclined to
squabble and fight among themselves. Still, the danger is almost
bound to be too little stability, not too much of it; and we can
hope for technological developments that make the military en-
vironment more stable, not less, and urge weapon choices on
both sides that minimize instability.
The Problem of Stability in a Disarmed World
Much of the interest in arms control among people concerned
with military policy became focused in the early 1960s on the
stability of mutual deterrence. Many writers on arms control
were more concerned about the character of strategic weapons
than the quantity, and where quantity was concerned their over-
riding interest was the effect of the number of weapons on the
incentives to initiate war, rather than on the extent of destruc-
tion if war should ensue. A fairly sharp distinction came to be
drawn between "arms control" and "disarmament." The former
seeks to reshape military incentives and capabilities with a view
to stabilizing mutual deterrence; the latter, it is alleged, elimi-
nates military incentives and capabilities.
But the success of either depends on mutual deterrence and
on the stability of that deterrence. Military stability is just as
crucial in relations between unarmed countries as between armed
ones. Short of universal brain surgery, nothing can erase the
memory of weapons and how to build them. If "total disarma-
ment" could make war unlikely, it would have to be by reducing
incentives. It could not eliminate the potential. The most primi-
tive war could be modernized by rearmament, once it got
started.
If war breaks out a nation can rearm, unless its capacity to
rearm is destroyed at the outset and kept destroyed by enemy
military action. By the standards of 1944, the United States was
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 249

fairly near to total disarmament when World War II broke out.

Virtually all munitions later expended by the United States
forces were nonexistent in September 1939. "Disarmament"
did not preclude U.S. participation; it merely slowed it down.
As we eliminate weapons, warning systems, vehicles, and
bases, we change the standards of military effectiveness. Air-
planes count more if missiles are banned, complex airplanes are
needed less if complex defenses are banned. Since weapons
themselves are the most urgent targets in war, to eliminate a
weapon eliminates a target and changes the requirements for at-
tack. A country may indeed be safer if it is defenseless, or with-
out means of retaliation, on condition its potential enemies are
equally disarmed; but if so it is not because it is physically safe
from attack. Security would depend on its being able to mobi-
lize defenses, or means of retaliation, faster than an enemy
could mobilize the means to overcome it, and on the enemy's
knowing it.
The difficulty cannot be avoided by banning weapons of at-
tack and keeping those of defense. If, again, nations were is-
lands, coastal artillery would seem useless for aggression and a
valuable safeguard against war and the fear of war. But most are
not. And in the present era "defensive" weapons often embody
equipment or technology that is superbly useful in attack and
invasion. Moreover, a prerequisite of successful attack is some
ability to defend against retaliation or counterattack; in a dis-
armed world, whatever lessens the scale of retaliation reduces
the risk a nation runs in starting war. Defenses against retalia-
tion are close substitutes for offensive power.
Disarmament would not preclude the eruption of crisis; war
and rearmament could seem imminent. Even without possessing
complex weapons, a nation might consider initiating war with
whatever resources it had, on grounds that delay would allow an
enemy to strike or to mobilize first. If a nation believed its op-
ponent might rush to rearm to achieve military preponderance,
it might consider "preventive war" to forestall its opponent's
dominance. Or, if confidence in the maintenance of disarma-
250 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

ment were low and if war later, under worse conditions, seemed
at all likely, there could be motives for "preventive ultimatum,"
or for winning a short war through coercion with illicitly re-
tained nuclear weapons, or for using force to impose a more
durable disarmament arrangement. As with highly armed coun-
tries, the decision to attack might be made reluctantly, moti-
vated not toward profit or victory but by the danger in not seiz-
ing the initiative. Motives to undertake preventive or preemptive
war might be as powerful under disarmament as with today's
weapons, or even stronger.
In a disarmed world, as now, the objective would probably be
to destroy the enemy's ability to bring war into one's home-
land, and to "win" sufficiently to prevent his subsequent buildup
as a military menace. The urgent targets would be the enemy's
available weapons of mass destruction (if any), his means of
delivery, his equipment that could be quickly converted for
strategic use, and the components, standby facilities, and cadres
from which he could assemble a capability for strategic warfare.
If both sides had nuclear weapons, either by violating the agree-
ment or because the disarmament agreement permitted it, stabil-
ity would depend on whether the attacker, improvising a deliv-
ery capability, could forestall the assembly or improvisation of
the victim's retaliatory vehicles or his nuclear stockpile. This
would depend on the technology of "disarmed" warfare, and on
how well each side planned its "disarmed" retaliatory poten-
tial.
If an aggressor had nuclear weapons but the victim did not,
the latter's response would depend on how rapidly production
could be resumed, on how vulnerable the productive facilities
were to enemy action, and whether the prospect of interim nu-
clear damage would coerce the victim into surrender.
In the event that neither side had nuclear weapons, asym-
metrical lead times in nuclear rearmament could be decisive.
Whether it took days or months, the side that believed it could
be first to acquire a few dozen megatons through a crash
program of rearmament would expect to dominate its opponent.
This advantage would be greatest if nuclear facilities them-
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 251

selves were vulnerable to nuclear bombardment; the first few

weapons produced would be used to spoil the opponent's nu-
clear rearmament. Even if facilities were deep under the ground,
well disguised or highly dispersed, a small difference in the time
needed to acquire a few score megatons might make the war un-
endurable for the side that was behind. It might not be essential
to possess nuclear weapons in order to destroy nuclear facilities.
High explosives, commandos, or saboteurs could be effective.
"Strategic warfare" might reach a purity not known in this cen-
tury: like the king in chess, nuclear facilities would be the over-
riding objective. Their protection would have absolute claim on
defense. In such a war the object would be to preserve one's
mobilization base and to destroy the enemy's. To win a war
would not require overcoming the enemy' s defenses—just win-
ning the rearmament race.
Such a war might be less destructive than war under present
conditions, not primarily because disarmament had reduced the
attacker's capability for destruction but because, with the vic-
tim unable to respond, the attacker could adopt a more meas-
ured pace that allowed time to negotiate a ceasefire before he
had reduced his victim to rubble. Victory, of course, might be
achieved without violence; if one side appeared to have an ad-
vantage so convincingly decisive as to make the outcome of
mobilization and war inevitable, it might then deliver not weap-
ons but an ultimatum.
An International Military Autho ity
Some kind of international authority is generally proposed as
part of an agreement on total disarmament. If militarily supe-
rior to any combination of national forces, an international
force implies (or is) some form of world government. To call
such an arrangement "disarmament" is about as oblique as to
call the Constitution of the United States "a Treaty for Uniform
Currency and Interstate Commerce." The authors of the Feder-
alist Papers were under no illusion as to the far-reaching char-
acter of the institution they were discussing, and we should not
be either.
252 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

One concept deserves mention in passing: that the projected

police force should aim to control persons rather than nations.
Its weapons would be squad cars, tear gas, and pistols; its
intelligence system would be phone taps, lie detectors, and
detectives; its mission would be to arrest people, not to threaten
war on governments. Here, however, we shall concentrate on
the concept of an International Force to police nations—and all
nations, not just small ones. The most intriguing questions are
those that relate to the Force's technique or strategy for deterring
and containing the former nuclear powers.
The mission of the Force would be to police the world against
war and rearmament. It might be authorized only to stop war;
but some kinds of rearmament would be clear signals of war,
obliging the Force to take action. There might be, explicitly or
implicitly, a distinction between the kinds of rearmament that
call for intervention and the kinds that are not hostile.
The operations of the Force raise a number of questions.
Should it try to contain aggression locally, or to invade the ag-
gressor countries (or all parties to the conflict) and to disable
them militarily? Should it use long-range strategic weapons to
disable the country militarily? Should it rely on the threat of mas-
sive punitive retaliation? Should it use the threat or, if necessary,
the practice of limited nuclear reprisal as a coercive technique?
In the case of rearmament, the choices would include invasion
or threats of invasion, strategic warfare, reprisal or the threat of
reprisal; "containment" could not forestall rearmament unless
the country were vulnerable to blockade.
Is the Force intended to do the job itself or to head a world-
wide alliance against transgressors? In case of aggression, is the
victim to participate in his own defense? If the Indians take
Tibet, or the Chinese encourage armed homesteading in Siberia,
the Force would have to possess great manpower unless it was
prepared to rely on nuclear weapons. A force could not be
maintained on a scale sufficient to "contain" such excursions by
a nation with a large population unless it relied on the sudden
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 253

mobilization of the rest of the world or on superior weaponry

—nuclear weapons if the defense is to be confined to the area of
incursion. But the use of such weapons to defend, for example,
Southeast Asia against neighboring infiltrators, Western Europe
against the Soviet bloc, East Germany against West Germany or
Cuba against the United States, would be subject to the ordinary
difficulties of employing nuclear weapons in populated areas.
A country threatened by invasion might rather capitulate than be
defended in that fashion. Moreover, the Force might require
logistical facilities, infrastructure, and occasional large-scale
maneuvers in areas where it expects to be called upon. Keeping
large forces stationed permanently along the Iron Curtain is a
possibility but not one that brings with it all the psychological
benefits hoped for from disarmament.
A sizable intervention of the Force between major powers is
not, of course, something to be expected often in a disarmed
world. Nevertheless, if the Force is conceived of as superseding
Soviet and American reliance on their own nuclear capabilities,
it needs to have some plausible capability to meet large-scale
aggression; if it hasn't, the major powers may still be deterred,
but it is not the Force that deters them.
A capability for massive or measured nuclear punishment is
probably the easiest attribute with which to equip the Force.
But it is not evident that the Force could solve the problems of
"credibility" or of collective decision any better than can the
United States alone or NATO collectively at the present time.
This does not mean that it could not solve them—just that they
are not automatically solved when a treaty is signed. If the Force
is itself stateless, it may have no "homeland" against which
counter-reprisal could be threatened by a transgressor na-tion;
but if it is at all civilized, it will not be wholly immune to the
counter-deterrent threats of a transgressor to create civil damage in
other countries. These could be either explicit threats
of reprisal or implicit threats of civil destruction collateral to the
bombardment of the Force's own mobilization base. (The Force
presumably produces or procures its weaponry in the industrial
254 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

nations, and cannot be entirely housed in Antarctica, on the

high seas, or in outer space.)
If it should appear technically impossible to police the com-
plete elimination of nuclear weapons, then we should have to
assume that at least minimal stockpiles had been retained by the
major powers. In that case, the Force might not be a great deal
more than one additional deterrent force; it would not enjoy the
military monopoly generally envisaged.
One concept needs to be disposed of—that the Force should
be strong enough to defeat a coalition of aggressors but not so
strong as to impose its will against universal opposition. Even if
the world had only the weapons of Napoleon, the attempt to
calculate such a delicate power balance would seem impossible.
With concepts like preemption, retaliation, and nuclear black-
mail, any arithmetical solution is out of the question.
The knottiest strategic problem for an International Force
would be to halt the unilateral rearmament of a major country.
The credibility of its threat to employ nuclear weapons when-
ever some country renounces the agreement and begins to rearm
itself would seem to be very low indeed.
The kind of rearmament would make a difference. If a major
country openly arrived at a political decision to abandon the
agreement and to recover the security it felt it had lost by start-
ing to build a merely retaliatory capability and sizable home-
defense forces, it is hard to envisage a civilized International
Force using weapons of mass destruction on a large scale to
stop it. Limited nuclear reprisals might be undertaken in an
effort to discourage the transgressor from his purpose. But un-
less the rearmament program is accompanied by some overt ag-
gressive moves, perhaps in limited war, the cool and restrained
introduction of nuclear or other unconventional weapons into
the country' s population centers does not seem plausible, unless
nonlethal chemical or biological weapons could be used.
Invasion might offer a more plausible sanction, perhaps with
paratroops armed with small nuclear weapons for their own de-
fense; their objective would be to paralyze the transgressor's
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 255

government and mobilization. But if this should be considered

the most feasible technique for preventing rearmament, we
have to consider two implications. We have provided the Force
a bloodless way of taking over national governments. And a pre-
emptive invasion of this kind might require the Force to act
with a speed and secrecy inconsistent with political safeguards.
There is also the question of what kinds of rearmament or
political activity leading to rearmament should precipitate oc-
cupation by the Force. In our country, could the Republicans or
Democrats campaign on a rearmament platform, go to the polls
and win, wait to be inaugurated, denounce the agreement, and
begin orderly rearmament? If the Force intervenes, should it do
so after rearmament is begun, or after a party has introduced a
rearmament resolution in Congress? The illustration suggests
that one function of the Force, or the political body behind it,
would be to attempt first to negotiate with a potential rearming
country rather than to intervene abruptly at some point in these
developments.
Again, the character of rearmament would make a difference.
Suppose the President presented a well-designed plan to build
an obviously second-strike retaliatory force of poor preemptive
capability against either the International Force or other coun-
tries, but relatively secure from attack. If he justified it on the
grounds that the current military environment was susceptible
to sudden overturn by technological developments, political up-
heavals, irrepressible international antagonism, the impotence
of the Force for decisive intervention, the corruption or subver-
sion of the Force, or other such reasons, then the authorization
of a drastic intervention by the Force in the United States would
be less likely than if the President ordered a crash program to
assemble nuclear weapons, trained crews, and long-range air-
craft. It would make a considerable difference, too, whether re-
armament occurred at a time of crisis, perhaps with a war going
on, or in calmer times.
The point of all this is simply that even an international mili-
tary authority with an acknowledged sole right in the possession
256 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

of major weapons will have strategic problems that are not

easy.11 This is, of course, aside from the even more severe
problems of political control of the "executive branch" and
"military establishment" of the world governing body. If we
hope to turn all our international disputes over to a formal
procedure of adjudication and to rely on an international military
bureaucracy to enforce decisions, we are simply longing for
government without politics. We are hoping for the luxury,
which most of us enjoy municipally, of turning over our dirtiest
jobs—especially those that require strong nerves—to some
specialized employees. That works fairly well for burglary, but
not so well for school integration, general strikes, or Algerian
independence. We may achieve it if we create a sufficiently
potent and despotic ruling force; but then some of us would
have to turn around and start plotting civil war, and the Force's
strategic problems would be only beginning.12
Designing Disarmament for Stability
A stable military environment, in other words, would not result
automatically from aban on weapons and facilities to make
11. Max Lerner, in the book cited earlier, exemplifies the common tendency
to confuse the solution of a problem with its replacement by another, in his haste
to make the case for drastic disarmament. "If there were an outlawry of aggressive
war in any form, enforced by an international authority, a good deal of what is
dangerous about total disarmament could be remedied" (pp. 259-60). But so would
it if the outlawry were enforced by the United States, the NATO alliance, or the
fear of God; and if such outlawry of "aggressive war" could be enforced by a
potent and decisive and credible authority (immune to the dangers of an opponent's
"irrationality" that Lerner, as mentioned earlier, thinks may spoil deterrence), we
might settle equally well for something more modest, less unsettling, than "total
disarmament." Who cares about arms, much, if we can reliably rule out all modes
of aggressive warfare (and self-defensive, preventive, inadvertent, or mischievous
warfare)? It may be easier for some "authority" to manage its job if all its opponents
are "totally disarmed" but this depends on analysis, not assertion. One cannot
disagree with Lerner, only question whether he had said anything.
12. For a more extensive, and somewhat more constructive if equally discouraging,
treatment of the "Strategic Problems of an International Armed Force," see the
author's article by that title in International Organization, 17 (1963), 465-85,
reprinted in Lincoln P. Bloomfield, ed., International Military Forces (Boston,
Little, Brown, 1964).
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 257

them. War, even nuclear war, remains possible no matter how

much it is slowed down by the need to mobilize and even to
produce the weapons.13 The two modes of instability that
worry armed countries now (or ought to worry them) would be
just as pertinent for disarmed countries. The timing of war and
rearmament, and the role of speed and initiative, would remain
critically important in a world in which the pace of war was ini-
tially slowed for lack of modern weapons. There would remain,
even in the design of "total disarmament," the difficult choice
between minimizing war's destructiveness and minimizing its
likelihood. If disarmament is to discourage the initiation of war,
to remove the incentives toward preemptive and preventive war,
and to remove the danger of unstable mobilization races, it has
to be designed to do that. Disarmament does not eliminate mili-
tary potential; it changes it.
The essential requirement is for some stable situation of "re-
armament parity." If disarmament is to be durable, it must be
so designed that the disadvantages of being behind in case an
arms race should resume are not too great and so that, in the
face of ambiguous evidence of clandestine rearmament or overt
evidence of imminent rearmament, nations can react without
haste. The straightforward elimination of so-called "military
production facilities" might, by sheer coincidence, provide the
stability; but stability is more likely if there is a deliberately de-
signed system of "stable equal readiness for rearmament." It is
impossible to eliminate the ability to rearm; one can only hope
to stretch the time required to reach, from the word "go," any
specified level of rearmament, and try to make defensive or
retaliatory rearmament easier than offensive or preemptive
rearmament. One can try to take the profit out of being ahead
and the penalty out of being slow and to minimize the urge of
either side, in a renewed arms race, to consolidate its advantage
(or to minimize its disadvantage) by launching war itself.
It is not certain that maximizing the time required to rearm is a
way to deter it. Lengthening the race course does not neces-
13. This was proved in World War II when the United States not only produced
nuclear weapons while the war was on but invented them! Next time it would
be easier.
258 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

sarily lessen the incentive to be first under the wire. It may,

however, reduce the advantage of a small headstart; it may
allow time to renegotiate before the race has too much
momentum; and it may reduce the confidence of a fast starter
that he could win if he called for a race.
The likelihood of war, then, or of a rearmament race that
could lead to war, depends on the character of the disarmament.
If mobilization potentials are such that a head start is not
decisive and the race course is long, preemptive action may be
delayed until motives are clear. Important elements for stability
in a disarmed world would be the dispersal and duplication of
standby facilities for rearmament and of reserve personnel or
cadres around which rearmament could be mobilized. Dispersal
could be important because of the interaction between
rearmament and war itself. If a nation could achieve just enough
production of weapons to disrupt its opponent's rearmament, it
might gain a decisive advantage. Once the race were on, a few
easily located facilities for producing nuclear weapons might
invite a preventive and very limited war.
The argument here is not that disarmament would be especially
unstable, or less stable than the present world of armament. It is
that disarmament could be either more stable or less stable
militarily than an armed world, according to how the existing
military potential loaded the dice in favor of speed, surprise,
and initiative or instead made it safe to wait, safe to be second in
resuming an arms race or second in launching attack, and on
whether the easiest directions of rearmament tended toward
stable or unstable armaments.
It should not be expected that reduced tensions would be the
natural consequence of a disarmament agreement, making the
existing military potential irrelevant. Not everyone would be
confident that disarmament provided a viable military environ-
ment or promised the political atmosphere most conducive to
peace and good relations. It is hard to believe that any sober
person under any conceivable world arrangement could come to
believe with confidence that war had at last been banished from
human affairs until there had been at the very least some dec-
ades of experience. There would be surprises, rumors, and
THE DYNAMICS OF MUTUAL ALARM 259

sharp misunderstandings, as well as the usual antagonisms

among countries. It is not even out of the question that if
something called "general and complete disarmament" were
achieved, responsible governments might decide that interna-
tional apprehensions would be reduced if they possessed more
secure, more diversified, and more professionally organized
mobilization bases or weapon systems, with more freedom to
improve them, drill them, and discuss the strategy of their use.
It might be that moderate though expensive modern weapon
systems, professionally organized and segregated from the main
population centers, would provide less—not more—military in-
terference in everyday life than a "total" disarmament agree-
ment under which every commercial pilot carried emergency
mobilization instructions in his briefcase.
Stability, in other words, of the two kinds discussed in this
chapter, is relevant to any era and to any level of armament or
disarmament. It is just not true that if only disarmament is
"total" enough we can forget about deterrence and all that. It
would be a mistake to suppose that under "total" disarmament
there would be no military potential to be controlled, balanced,
or stabilized. If disarmament were to work, it would have to
stabilize deterrence. The initiation of war would have to be
made unprofitable. It cannot be made impossible.
It is sometimes argued that to perpetuate military deterrence
is to settle for a peace based on fear. But the implied contrast
be-tween stabilized deterrence and total disarmament is not
per-suasive. What would deter rearmament in a disarmed
world, or small wars that could escalate into large ones, would
be the apprehension of a resumed arms race and war. The extent
of the "fear" involved in any arrangement—total disarmament,
nego-tiated mutual deterrence, or stable weaponry achieved
unilater-ally by conscious design—is a function of confidence.
If the consequences of transgression are plainly bad—bad for
all par-ties, little dependent on who transgresses first, and not
helped by rapid mobilization—we can take the consequences
for granted and call it a "balance of prudence."
 7
THE DIALOGUE
OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT

Nuclear age communications were dramatized by the Soviet-

American hot line, a leased transatlantic cable with teletype
machinery at both ends. Some people hailed it as a notable
innovation; others were simply astonished that, in an age when
one can directly dial his mother 3,000 miles away to wish her
happy birthday, facilities did not already exist for a more urgent
conversation. The hot line is a reminder that even in the era of
Telstar and radio-dispatched taxis, facilities for quick commu-
nication between heads of government may not exist unless
somebody has thought to provide them.
The hot line was foreshadowed in a speech of Secretary
Heiter's in early 1960. "Observers might prove useful, during a
major crisis, helping to verify that neither side was preparing a
surprise attack upon the other." And he said that "other ar-
rangements for exchanging information might be developed to
assure against potentially dangerous misunderstandings about
events in outer space." The possibility that, in a crisis, reciprocal
suspicions might be amplified by afeedback process, each side's
preparation against surprise looking like preparations for attack,
had begun to receive attention by the time of the Geneva
negotiations on surprise attack in 1958. Gromyko gave a vivid
description at a press conference of "meteors and electronic
interferences" causing Soviet aircraft to be launched, in turn
causing American bombers to be launched, so that both sides
"would draw the natural conclusion that a real attack by the
enemy was taking place."
But Gromyko was not the first Russian to be concerned
about this feedback. It worried the Czar in July 1914, when he
260
THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 261

was trying to decide whether mobilization against Austria

would alarm the Germans into mobilizing against France and
bring on general war. In fact, the germ of the hot-line idea has
to be sought still further back. Neither Gromyko nor Herter, nor
any modern writer on arms control, has expressed the problem
more lucidly than Xenophon did in the fourth century before
Christ. Mutual suspicion arose between the Greek army depart-
ing Persia and the Persian army that escorted them. The Greek
leader called for an interview with the Persian, to try "to put a
stop to these suspicions before they ended in open hostility."
When they met, he said,
I observe that you are watching our moves as though we
were enemies, and we, noticing this, are watching yours, too.
On looking into things, I am unable to find evidence that you
are trying to do us any harm, and I am perfectly sure that, as far
as we are concerned, we do not even contemplate such a
thing; and so I decided to discuss matters with you, to see if we
could put an end to this mutual mistrust. I know, too, of cases
that have occurred in the past when people sometimes as the
result of slanderous information and sometimes merely on
the strength of suspicion, have become frightened of each
other and then, in their anxiety to strike first before anything
is done to them have done irreparable harm to those who
neither intended nor even wanted to do them any harm at all. I
have come then in the conviction that misunderstandings of
this sort can best be ended by personal contact, and I want to
make it clear to you that you have no reason to distrust us.1
The upshot of this incident is chastening. The "personal con-
tact" so established was used by the Persians to slay the entire
leadership of the Greek host; and while we owe to their
treachery one of the most rewarding books on strategy in print,
we can lament that they did not get arms control off to a more
creditable start. The mistake was apparently in thinking that the
1. The Persian Expedition, p. 82.
262 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

only way to take the danger out of distrust is to replace it with

trust.
The hot line is not a great idea, just a good one. It reminds us
that arms control need not be exclusively focused on grand
schemes to preserve the peace. Actually, the hot line may be
largely symbolic. Who could devise a more vivid, simple cer-
emony to commemorate nuclear age relations than the delivery
to the Pentagon of Cyrillic-alphabet teletype machinery, manu-
factured in the Soviet Union and lend-leased in return for
American equipment delivered to the Kremlin. The mere ex-
change of such facilities probably induces people to think more
seriously about communication, so there may be a better basis
for knowing what to say, as well as the equipment for saying it,
in an emergency.
It is a commentary on the state of our thinking about war and
deterrence that the hot line enjoys such novelty. The Republi-
can platform in 1964 singled it out for attention as though it
were unnatural, and as though the urgency of possible commu-
nications was a sign of intimacy and America's allies should
feel dispossessed by this American liaison with the enemy.
Journalistic coverage aggravated the novelty by picturing an
American President and a Soviet Premier literally on the tele-
phone (as though there were some language they could speak to
each other) and even promoted the apprehension that President
Kennedy or President Johnson in his pajamas, at three o'clock
in the morning, would sleepily give away some remote part of
the world without consulting an atlas or the Department of
State.
But there is plenty of historical precedent for communication
between enemies. Even the world wars were eventually termi-
nated by a process of negotiation that depended on some line of
communication that traversed the combat zone and linked en-
emies in diplomatic contact. If another war should come, espe-
cially a big one, time might not permit seeking out a neutral
ambassador to serve as go-between, especially if his fallout shel-
ter had no external antenna. Upon reflection almost anyone will
agree that the communication that takes place between enemies
THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 263

is the most urgent and that what is "unnatural" in the modern era
is the notion that in case of war there could be nothing legitimate
for enemies to talk about.
It is hard to imagine any more bitter enmity than that between
the Arabs and the Israelis upon the establishment of the State of
Israel. Yet during the cease-fire in Jerusalem at the end of 1948
a "hot line" was established—in this case literally a telephone
line linking senior commanders on both sides of Jerusalem
(English and Arabic being available languages on both sides)—
to handle emergencies arising out of the cease-fire arrange-
ments. The idea, I am told, was not dreamed up by civilian arms-
control enthusiasts but initiated by the military commanders
themselves, who perceived that exchanges of fire and other
incidents might need to be handled in a hurry. This was no
novelty; Julius Caesar in Gaul, or Xenophon in Persia, under-
stood the crucial importance of communication with the enemy
and inflicted the severest penalties on subordinates who did not
respect the personal safety of enemy ambassadors.
In an engineering sense, starting a major war is about the most
demanding enterprise that a planner can face. In broader stra-
tegic terms, terminating a major war would be incomparably
more challenging. If ever general war should occur there is
every likelihood that it would be initiated reluctantly or would
occur unintended; getting it stopped in a manner consistent with
all that is at stake would be of an importance and a difficulty that
eclipsed any other problem that any modern country has ever
faced. Some kind of communication would be at the center of
the process. Even deciding with whom one is willing to nego-
tiate might be of critical importance. The hot line does not take
care of this problem; it only dramatizes it.
The most important measures of arms control are undoubtedly
those that limit, contain, and terminate military engagements.
Limiting war is at least as important as restraining the arms race,
and limiting or terminating a major war is probably more
important in determining the extent of destruction than limiting
the weapon inventories with which it is waged. There is prob-
ably no single measure more critical to the process of arms
264 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

control than assuring that if war should break out the adversar-
ies are not precluded from communication with each other.
The Continuous Dialogue
A hot line can help to improvise arms control in a crisis; but
there is a more pervasive dialogue about arms control all the
time between the United States and the Soviet Union. Some of
it is unconscious or inadvertent. I have in mind not the formal
negotiations that provide headlines from Geneva, but the con-
tinuous process by which the U.S.S.R. and the United States
interpret each other's intentions and convey their own about the
arms race.
The treatment of nuclear weapons is a good example. Nomi-
nally there exists a formal limitation on testing; but the inhibi-
tions on nuclear activities surely go far beyond the terms of the
treaty, and communication about the role of nuclear weapons
has by no means been confined to the formal bargaining about
tests. There is an understanding that nuclear weapons are a
special category to be differentiated from the more traditional
explosives. The emphasis given to conventional forces by the
United States over the past several years is based on the notion
that, in limiting war, a significant dividing line occurs between
conventional and nuclear explosives, that once a nuclear weapon
is used in combat, the likelihood of further use goes up. Some
kind of communication, formal or informal, deliberate or inad-
vertent, tends to create, to confirm, or to enhance these expec-
tations. And there has been a good deal of communication about
this nuclear-conventional distinction. Singling out nuclear weap-
ons for a test ban itself celebrated a symbolic or psychological
difference between nuclear and other weapons. The negotia-
tions helped to put a curse on nuclear weapons and undoubtedly
contributed to a class distinction that, if dramatically recog-
nized in peacetime, can hardly be ignored in case of war.
Even denying the difference between nuclear and other
weapons may have contributed to this discrimination. Soviet
protestations that nuclear weapons would surely be used had a
strident and unpersuasive quality, and at least acknowledged
THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 265

Soviet awareness of where the West would draw a line. Just

joining the argument can contribute to the process of discrimi-
nation.
There has been similar "communication"—at the Soviet
leaders, if not with them—on other arms questions. Military
exploitation of space is an illustration. We have indeed made
formal proposals for prohibitions on weapons in space, particu-
larly weapons of mass destruction. But the significant commu-
nication has been outside Geneva, some of it verbal, some in
what we and the Soviet leaders did and did not do. Anyone who
read the newspapers and attended to congressional hearings,
government press releases, and press conferences probably got
the impression that the United States government had no
intention of orbiting nuclear weapons, hoped the Soviet Union
would not, and would have been obliged to respond vigorously
if it became suspected, known, or announced that the Soviet
Union had placed nuclear weapons in orbit. A possible reaction,
suggested by the history of our reactions to Soviet behavior,
would have been to imitate their performance. Another possi-
bility would have been to interfere with their weapon satellites.
And a possible reaction, suggested by both Sputnik and the
Korean War, would have been to step up the pace of our entire
defense program, especially its strategic component, and most
especially our space military activities.
That is probably the impression the Soviet leaders got. Again,
it is difficult to tell whether the United States government was
consciously signaling its position to the Soviet leaders, giving
them hints of what to expect if they did and what to expect if they
did not orbit weapons. Much of what a government—any gov-
ernment, but especially the American government—says on a
sub-ject like this is in response to immediate questions raised by
the press and by Congress. Much of what it says is caught up in
the momentum of space programs and military programs. There
are many important audiences at home and abroad, and the
government speaks with many voices. So it would usually be
wrong to suppose the existence of a coherent and careful pro-
gram of communication to any single audience. Nevertheless,
266 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

one can suppose that behind some of the statements—and

undoubtedly behind some of the silences—is an awareness of
the official Soviet audience.
The "agreement" between the United States and the Soviet
Union about weapons in orbit, embodied in a U.N. resolution
that the two countries sponsored in 1963, appeared to be just
formal acknowledgment of an understanding that had already
arisen outside of formal negotiation. And what more effective
way was there for Khrushchev to ratify the understanding that
peacetime satellite reconnaissance was now OK (reversing an
earlier Soviet position about shooting them down) than to
complain to Senator Benton about U-2 flights over Cuba on
grounds that satellites were the proper way to accomplish the
same result!
Another arena in which signals may have been emitted is city
defenses against ballistic missiles. The Soviet leaders an-
nounced proudly in the early 1960s that they had solved the
"technical problems" of intercepting missiles. Throughout the
postwar period the Soviet leaders have put more emphasis on
air defense than the United States, and it could be supposed that
they had a predisposition toward defensive installations. It
looked for a while as though they might try to recover some of
their missile-gap stature by being ahead, or claiming to be
ahead, in the deployment of ballistic missile defenses, exploit-
ing a breakthrough that might, in the judgment of some people,
drastically shift the strategic balance, leapfrog the American
missile superiority, and demonstrate Soviet inventive and pro-
ductive genius.
In the United States some congressmen, some experts, and
some journalists seemed to consider ballistic missile defenses
the next great step in strategic weaponry. This interest was
reinforced by the test ban. Both critics and supporters of the test
ban treated ballistic missile defenses as the most significant
development that might be inhibited by the suppression of
nuclear experiments.
The Administration took the position in the mid 1960s that
ballistic missile defenses might or might not prove feasible and
economical but that nuclear testing did not appear to be deci-
THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 267

sive. The implication was that the test ban was not an indirect
ban on ballistic missile defenses or on any other major weapon
programs. One could also draw the implication that the test ban
might have to be reexamined if that judgment on the signifi-
cance of testing for missile defenses should prove wrong in the
light of new developments.
What was communicated to the Soviet leaders in all this? If
they read the testimony of defense officials and the journals
devoted to space technology, they undoubtedly got the impres-
sion that the Administration considered such defenses to be not
yet worth procuring but worth an energetic program of devel-
opment. They could surely suppose that we were not far behind
them, and possibly ahead of them, in solving the technical
problems and better able than they to afford the cost of a major
new dimension of the arms race.
The Soviet leaders may also have noticed that many officials
and commentators said that it would be most serious, even
disastrous, if the Soviet Union proceeded with a large-scale
ballistic missile defense program and the United States did not,
and that the United States should compete and keep up in this
field even if, judged on their merits, such defenses really did not
appear to be worth the cost. The Soviet leaders might recall the
spurt to our defense program and our ballistic missiles in
particular that was set off by Sputnik and the apprehension of
a missile gap. They may have noticed an almost universal
opinion that the United States could not afford to be second in
advanced military developments of the magnitude of ballistic
missile defenses.
It is possible that they caught on, that they came to perceive
that a major program of their own (particularly because city
defenses could hardly be invisible) would provide motive,
stimulation, or excuse in this country for pushing ahead with a
comparable development, perhaps at a pace they would find
difficult to match. Perhaps they saw that there was a borderline
decision yet to be made in this country, and they might tip that
decision by rushing ahead with a program of their own or even
by exaggerating their progress.
268 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

They seemed to quiet down somewhat on the subject. Even a

comparison of the original and the revised editions of Marshal
Sokolovskii's Military Strategy displays some damping of the
original confidence and enthusiasm. Probably without intend-
ing it the United States may have signaled something to them—
something a little like what is called a "deterrent threat" when
it applies to foreign adventures, but which in this case applied
to the Soviet internal program. It may have been conveyed to
them that our reaction to their program would take the profit out
of it and only make the arms race more expensive and more
vigorous, not only in ballistic missile defenses but in the kinds
and numbers of offensive missiles that would have to be
procured.
Implicit Bargaining over Arms Levels
With respect to what we call "aggression"—overt penetration
of political boundaries with military force—this process of
deterrence is taken for granted. But the bargaining process is
less explicit and less self-conscious where domestic arms
preparations are concerned. We threaten the Soviet Union that
if it seeks strategic advantage by invading Turkey or Iran we
shall react with military violence; we do not so explicitly
threaten that we shall react with military violence if the Soviets
seek military advantage through procurement of a large missile
or bomber force, or if they seek to deny us an effective force by
building missile defenses and bomber defenses. On the whole,
we consider war, even a very limited war, an overt act calling
for military response; we do not consider arms pre-parations,
even when directed against us, an overt provocation requiring
or justifying hostilities.
Nevertheless, in principle, an arms buildup with hostile intent
might be met with a military response. The concept of preemp-
tion suggests that "hostilities" can be initiated by an enemy
country within its own borders, entailing quick military re-
sponse. Mobilization of armed forces has typically been con-
sidered nearly equivalent to a declaration of war; at the outbreak
of the First World War, "deterrent threats," unfortunately
unsuccessful, were aimed at domestic acts of mobilization as
THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 269

well as against overt aggression. And preventive war against an

arming opponent has been a lurking possibility at least since the
days of Athens and Sparta.2 More recently, the United States
has engaged in directly coercive military threats to deny the So-
viet Union the military advantage of advance deployment of
missiles. While Cuba is probably best viewed as a political and
geographical Soviet move, it can also usefully be viewed as a
Soviet effort to achieve quickly and cheaply an offensive mili-
tary advantage. An interesting question is whether a compa-
rable crash program within the Soviet Union to acquire a first-
strike offensive force might be eligible for comparable sanctions.
As a matter of fact, arms-buildup bargaining does seem to
take place, though in a less explicit fashion than the overt terri-
torial bargaining that takes the form of alliances, declarations of
commitment, and expressions of retaliatory policy. During
most of the Eisenhower Administration the American defense
budget was a self-imposed restraint on the Western arms
buildup. The motivation may well have been mainly economic,
but it is a fair judgment that part of the motivation was a desire
not to aggravate an arms race. Even when the assumed "missile
gap" created grave concern about the vulnerability of American
retaliatory forces in 1959 and the Strategic Air Command dis-
played a lively interest in the rapid enlargement of an airborne
alert, the Administration was reluctant to embark on crash
military programs, and there was some evidence that its reluc-
tance was a preference not suddenly to rock the arms-race boat.
2. The Corinthian delegates: "You Spartans are the only people in Hellas who wait
calmly on events, relying for your defense not on action but on making people think
that you will act. You alone do nothing in the early stages to prevent an enemy's expansion;
you wait until your enemy has doubled his strength. Certainly you used to have the
reputation of being safe and sure enough; now one wonders whether this reputation was
deserved. The Persians, as we know ourselves, came from the ends of the earth and got
as far as the Peloponnese before you were able to put a proper force into the field to
meet them. The Athenians, unlike the Persians, live close to you, yet still you do not
appear to notice them; instead of going out to meet them, you prefer to stand still and
wait till you are attacked, thus hazarding everything by fighting with opponents who have
grown far stronger than they were originally." The Peloponnesian War, p. 50.
270 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

Moreover, among the many inhibitions on civil defense in this

country over the last several years, one was a desire not to add
a dimension to the arms race, not to appear frantically con-
cerned about general war, and not to destabilize the defense
budget.
There have also been the direct efforts, in disarmament nego-
tiations, to reach understandings about the relation of armed
forces on both sides. With the exception of the test ban, these
have come to nothing; and the test ban, whatever combination
of good and harm it may have done so far, pertinently illustrates
the combination of threats and reassurances that, at least im-
plicitly, go with any bargaining process. In addition to the argu-
ment, "We won't if you don't," there has been the argument,
"And we will if you do."
More visibly and more dramatically, a defense-budget in-
crease was virtually used for display by President Kennedy in
the summer of 1961, as a reaction to the Berlin provocations of
that year. The alacrity with which Khrushchev responded with
announced budget increases of his own that summer made the
process look very much like negotiation in pantomime. The fact
that Khrushchev was unable or unwilling even to make clear
what he would spend the money on, and the fact that many of
the increases in American spending were only indirectly related
to the Berlin problems that prompted the increase, confirmed
the interpretation that these increases were themselves a process of
active negotiation, of threats and responses through the me-
dium of the arms race itself.
And when the summit conference in Paris collapsed in May
1960 in the wake of the U-2 incident, Khrushchev showed his
sensitivity to this bargaining process. In response to a reporter's
question why American forces had gone on some kind of alert
the night before, he remarked that it was probably the American
Administration's attempt to soften up American taxpayers for
a defense-budget increase. In that remark, he showed himself
perceptive of the arms-buildup bargaining that goes on between
us and alert to the early symptoms of an aggravated arms race.
THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 271

Communicating Military-Force Goals

I wonder what we communicate about military-force levels. I
have particularly in mind the strategic nuclear forces, the
medium and long-range bombers and missiles. Verbally, at
least, we communicate something, because the most dramatic
disarmament proposals in Geneva tend to be concerned with
force levels—percentage cuts, freezes, and so forth. Disarma-
ment aside, American force goals must be somewhat related to
what number of bombers and missiles we think the Soviet
Union has or is going to have; and probably the missile buildup
in the Soviet Union is related in some fashion to the size of
Western forces. When the Secretary of Defense makes an
announcement about the total number of missiles or subma-
rines or long-range bombers this country plans to have on
successive dates in the future, he is providing a guideline for
Soviet forces planning at the same time.
And presumably Soviet programs, to the extent that we can
perceive them with any confidence, have an influence on ours.
The Soviet leaders have probably learned that the easiest way
to add bargaining power to those in the United States who
would like to double our missile force is to enlarge their own,
or to seem about to enlarge it, or to find a persuasive way of
claiming that it is going to be larger than we had predicted.
They probably know that if they display a supersonic heavy
bomber with evidence that they are procuring it in significant
numbers, the bargaining power in this country of those who
want a supersonic bomber will go up. It may go up for good
reasons or for bad reasons, but it will go up.
Implicitly, then, if not explicitly, each of us in his own pro-
gram must influence the other in some fashion. The influence
is surely complicated and uneven, indirect and occasionally ir-
rational, and undoubtedly based often on inaccurate projections
of each other's programs. But the influence is there.The Soviets
may not have realized when they lofted their first Sputnik into
orbit that they were doing for American strategic forces what
the Korean invasion had done earlier to Western military pro-
272 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

grams. They might have guessed it; and even if they did not, in
retrospect they must be aware that their early achievements in
rocketry were a powerful stimulus to American strategic weapon
development. The American bomber buildup in the 1950s was
a reflection of the expected Soviet bomber forces and air
defenses; the "missile gap" of the late 1950s spurred not only
research and development in the United States but also weapon
procurement. Whether the Soviets got a net gain from making
the West believe in the missile gap in the late 1950s may be
questionable, but it is beyond question that American bomber
and missile forces were enhanced in qualitative performance,
and some of them in quantity, by American beliefs.
Here it becomes clear that the so-called "inspection" prob-
lem, widely argued in relation to disarmament, is really no more
relevant to disarmament than to armament. We always have our
"inspection" problem. With or without disarmament agree-
ments we have a serious and urgent need to know as accurately
as possible what military preparations the other side is making.
Not only for overt political and military responses around the
world, but even for our own military programming, we have to
know something about the quantity or quality of military forces
that oppose us. In deciding whether to plan for 20 or 200 Polaris
submarines, for 500 or 5,000 Minutemen, in deciding whether
a new bomber aircraft should have special capabilities against
particular targets, in reaching decisions on the value and the
performance of defenses against ICBMs, in deciding what to
include in the payload of a missile we build and how to
configure our missile sites, we have to estimate the likely
military forces that will confront us year after year throughout
the planning period.
We have to use what information we can get, whether from
unilateral intelligence or from other sources. If we decide
unilaterally to be just as strong, twice as strong, or ten times as
strong as the Soviet Union over the next decade, our need to
know what the Soviets are doing is as important as if we had a
negotiated agreement with them that we should be just as
strong, twice as strong, or ten times as strong over the decade.
THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 273

The difference is apparently that under disarmament agree-

ments it is acknowledged (at least in the West) that each side
needs information about what the other is doing. It is even
acknowledged that each ought to have an interest in displaying
its program to the other in the interest of maintaining the
agreement. But this should be equally true without any agree-
ment: the Soviets in the end may actually have suffered from
our belief in the missile gap, much in the way they would suffer
under a disarmament agreement that provided us insufficient
assurance about the pace of their own program. If we insist on
a given ratio of superiority and drastically overestimate what
the Soviets have, not only do we spend more money but they
have to spend more too. They have to try to keep up with us; and
in so doing may "justify" ex post facto the program that we had
set afoot on the basis of our original exaggerated estimates.
There is undoubtedly, then, some interaction between the
forces on both sides. But any actual dialogue is quite inexplicit.
There is rarely a public indication of just how American strate-
gic force plans might be adapted to changes in the Soviet pos-
ture. The Defense Department does not say that its program for
the next several years involves a specified numerical goal that
will go up or down by so many hundreds of missiles according
to how many the Soviet Union seems to be installing.3 Nor does
it ever appear that an articulate threat of enlargement in Ameri-
can force is beamed at the Russians to deter their own buildup.
Any bargaining that the American government does with the
Soviet government about force levels is thus quite inarticu-
late, probably only semiconscious, and of course without any
commitments behind it. The Soviet leaders are even less ex-
3. There would be precedent for it. Winston Churchill, addressing the House
of Commons in 1912 as First Lord of the Admiralty, "laid down clearly, with
the assent of the Cabinet, the principles which should govern our naval construction
in the next five years, and the standards of strength we should follow in capital
ships. This standard was as follows: sixty per cent in dreadnoughts over Germany
as long as she adhered to her present declared program, and two keels to one
for every additional ship laid down by her." Winston S. Churchill, The World
Crisis 1911-1918 (abr. and rev. ed. London, Macmillan, 1943), pp. 79-80.
274 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

plicit, if only because they are a good deal less communicative

to the outside world.
Feedback in the Arms Competition
In the short run we can presumably base our military plans on
decisions the Soviets have already taken and programs they
have already set afoot. There is substantial lead time in the
procurement and development of weapons, and for some pe-
riod, measured in years rather than months, it is probably safe
to estimate enemy programs rather than to think about influenc-
ing them. At least, it is probably safe to estimate them rather
than to try to influence them in the downward direction. We
could probably boost Soviet military production within a year
or two, just as they could boost ours by their actions; it is
unlikely that either of us would slack off drastically on account
of any short-run events—short of a change in regime or the
discovery that one's information has been wholly wrong for
several years. (The fading of the "missile gap" did not nearly
reverse the decisions it had earlier provoked.)
But in thinking about the whole decade ahead—in viewing
"the arms race" as an interaction between two sides (actually,
among several sides)—we have to take some account of the
"feedback" in our military planning. That is, we must suppose
that over an appreciable period of years Soviet programs
respond to what they perceive to be the "threat" to them, and in
turn our programs reflect what we perceive to be that "threat"
to us. Thus, by the end of the decade, we may be reacting to
Soviet decisions that in turn were reactions to our decisions
early in the decade; and vice versa. The Soviets should have
realized in 1957 that their military requirements in the middle
1960s would be, to an appreciable extent, a result of their own
military programs and military public relations in the late
1950s.
This is the feedback process in principle, but its operation
depends on the fidelity of perception and information, biases in
the estimating process, lead time in military procurement deci-
sions, and all of the political and bureaucratic influences that
THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 275

are brought to bear by interservice disputes, budgetary dis-

putes, alliance negotiations, and so forth.
An important question is just how sensitive either of us
actually is to the other's program. To approach that question,
we ought to inquire into the processes by which either of us
reacts to the other. These reactions are surely not just the result
of a coolly calculated and shrewd projection of the other side's
behavior and a coolly calculated response. Nor do the military
decisions of either side result simply from rational calculations
of an appropriate strategy based on some agreed evaluation of
the enemy. Partly they do, but partly they reflect other things.
First, there may be a certain amount of pure imitation and
power of suggestion. There is usually a widespread notion that,
to excel over an enemy, one has to excel in every dimension.
There seems to be a presumption that, if the enemy makes
progress in a particular direction, he must know what he is
doing; we should make at least equal progress in that direction.
This seems to be the case whether in economic warfare,
nuclear-powered aircraft, foreign aid, ballistic missile defenses,
or disarmament proposals. This particular reaction seems to be
based on hunch; it may be a good one, but it is a hunch.
Second, enemy actions may simply remind us of things we
have overlooked, or emphasize developments to which we have
given too little attention.
Third, enemy performance may have some genuine "intelli-
gence value" in providing information about what can be done.
The Soviet Sputnik and some other Soviet space performances
may have had some genuine value in persuading Americans
that certain capabilities were within reach. The United States'
detonation of nuclear weapons in 1945 must have been compa-
rably important in making clear to the Soviets, as to everyone
else, that nuclear weapons were more than a theoretical possi-
bility and that it was perfectly feasible to build a weapon that
could be transported by airplane.
Fourth, many decisions in government result from bargaining
among services or among commands. Soviet performance or
Soviet emphasis on a particular development may provide a
276 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

powerful argument to one party or another in a dispute over

weapons or budget allocations.
Fifth, many military decisions are politically motivated, in-
spired by the interests of particular congressmen or provoked
by press comment. Soviet achievements that appear to be a
challenge or that put American performance in a poor light may
have, beneficially or not, some influence on the political-
decision process.4
And in all of these processes of influence it is not the true facts
but beliefs and opinions based on incomplete evidence that
provide the motivating force.
I see no reason to suppose that the Soviets react in a more
rational, more coolly deliberate way, than the West. They
surely suffer from budgetary inertia, interservice disputes,
ideological touchstones, and the intellectual limitations of a
political bureaucracy, as well as from plain bad information.
Furthermore, both we and the Soviets play to an audience of
third countries. Prestige of some sort is often at stake in
weapon-development competition; and a third-area public ex-
ercises some unorganized influence in determining the particu-
lar lines of development that we and the Soviets are motivated
to pursue.
On the whole, the evidence does not show that the Soviets
understand this interaction process and manipulate it shrewdly.
The Korean War, in retrospect, can hardly have served the
Soviet interest; it did more than anything else to get the United
States engaged in the arms race and to get NATO taken seri-
4. There is even some influence of "fashion" in military interests: scientists
who had been wholly uninterested in "big" bombs before the Soviet explosion
of a sixty megaton weapon in the Arctic in 1961 appeared to "discover" interesting
things about very large weapons, and had more of the facts at their fingertips
soon afterward. Ballistic-missile defenses became fashionable in the early 1960s,
partly through stimulation by the Soviet Union. The tendency is of course not
peculiar to military programs; physical fitness and poverty, like space, show the
same phenomenon. Maybe fashion is a good thing if it is reasonably selective;
it may be useful to concentrate attention on a few developments, rather than to
apportion interest strictly to the merits of programs, especially if interest has to
reach "critical mass" before people can concert and communicate. Evidently this
is something, though, that there can easily be too much of.
THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 277

ously. The Soviets may have been under strong temptation to

get short-run prestige gains out of their initial space successes;
perhaps they lamented the necessity to appeal to a public
audience in a fashion that was bound to stimulate the United
States. Whatever political gains they got out of the short-lived
missile gap which they either created or acquiesced in, it not
only stimulated Western strategic programs but possibly gave
rise to a reaction that causes the Soviets to be viewed more
skeptically at the present time than their accomplishments may
actually warrant. Maybe the Soviets were just slow to appreci-
ate the way Americans react; or maybe they, too, are subject to
internal pressures that keep them from pursuing an optimal
strategy in the arms race. But if on their own they do not
understand the extent to which Western programs are a reaction
to theirs, perhaps we can teach them.
This kind of thing has happened. Samuel P. Huntington
examined a number of qualitative and quantitative arms races
during the century since about 1840, and he does find instances
in which one power eventually gave up challenging the su-
premacy of another. "Thus, a twenty-five year sporadic naval
race between France and England ended in the middle 1860s
when France gave up any serious effort to challenge the 3:2
ratio which England had demonstrated the will and the capacity
to maintain." He points out, though, that "in nine out often races
the slogan of the challenging state is either 'parity' or 'superi-
ority,' only in rare cases does the challenger aim for less than
this, for unless equality or superiority is achieved, the arms
race is hardly likely to be worthwhile."5 The latter statement,
however, is probably more relevant to a pre-nuclear period, in
which military force was for active defense (or overt aggres-
sion) rather than for a deterrent based on a retaliatory potential.
The British, after all, usually settled for a strong defensive
capability, in the form of a navy, and could do this because
Britain was an island; land-war technology on the Continent
5. Samuel P. Huntington, "Arms Races: Prerequisites and Results," Public
Policy, Carl J. Friedrich and Seymour E. Harris, eds. (Cambridge, Harvard University
Press, 1958), pp. 57, 64.
278 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

could not so overtly discriminate between offensive and defen-

sive force, and anything less than parity meant potential defeat.
It is hard to believe that the Soviet Union could openly ac-
knowledge that it was reconciled to perpetual inferiority. It
would be difficult for them even to acknowledge it to them-
selves. It might, however, be possible to discourage very sub-
stantially their genuine expectations about what they could
accomplish in the arms race. At the level of strategic weaponry
they have, for one reason or another, had to content themselves
with inferiority during the entire period since 1945; they may be
able to content themselves indefinitely with something less
potent, less versatile, less expensive than what the United States
procures. In any event they may be led to believe that they can-
not achieve a sufficiently good first-strike capability to disarm
the United States to a sufficient extent to make it worthwhile.
If Soviet leaders try to discern how our force levels relate to
their own, do they see any close association between that rela-
tionship and the disarmament proposals we make in Geneva? It
is hard to say. For reasons that are not altogether clear, there has
been a tendency for disarmament proposals to assume that
some kind of parity or equality is the only basis on which two
sides could reach an agreement. Disarmament negotiations
typically assume also that arms are to go downward, rather than
to stop where they are or just to rise less than they otherwise
might. (If this were not so—if a freeze had been recognized all
along as a drastic measure of arms control—the absurdity of
"inspection proportionate to disarmament" could not so easily
have been disguised.) But if the Soviet leaders have felt them-
selves to be engaged in a tacit dialogue on strategic forces, they
probably perceived it as one in which the United States was
concerned with how much superiority it wanted at the strategic
level and where to taper off a rising inventory of missiles. Thus
the conscious and articulate dialogue at Geneva and the less
conscious, inexplicit dialogue that goes on continually in Washing-
ton and Moscow are based on alternative premises—perhaps
properly so, the Geneva dialogue having to do with what the
West would consider appropriate if the whole basis of military
THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 2 79

relations between East and West could be formally changed.

If this ongoing dialogue, the one that really counts as far as
military planning is concerned, gets little help from the verbal
exchanges in Geneva, is it actually hindered by them? Do we
get a confused message across to the Soviet leaders, and pos-
sibly they to us, because of the noise emanating from Geneva
and uncertainty about which is the authentic voice?
I used to worry about this; and it may be that on matters
narrowly identifiable as "arms control" the disarmament nego-
tiations are a noisy interference. But I doubt whether they
significantly obstruct the Soviet ability to get the message from
Washington unless the Soviet leaders are so ill-attuned that they
would not get the message anyway. (They may be ill-attuned,
as their Cuban overstep suggests, but we cannot blame it on
Geneva.) In America we have been suffering from proliferation
in recent years—of cigarette brands, not nuclear weapons—
and smokers eager to try new brands are usually anxious to
discriminate between mentholated and ordinary. As far as I
know, there has been no collusion between cigarette manufac-
turers and their millions of customers on a signal, and there may
not have been even among the manufacturers, yet there has
arisen a fairly reliable color signal: mentholated cigarettes are
to be in green or blue-green packages. I think by now the So-
viet leaders have discerned that statements datelined Geneva
are mentholated.
Disarmament advocates may not like the idea that any under-
standings with the Soviet Union on force levels are reached
through the process of military planning and a half-conscious,
inarticulate dialogue with the enemy, unenforceable when
reached, subject to inspection only by unilateral intelligence
procedures, and reflecting each side's notion of adequate supe-
riority or tolerable inferiority. Opponents of disarmament may
not like the idea that the executive branch or the Defense De-
partment, even inadvertently, may accommodate its goals to
So-viet behavior or try to discern and manipulate enemy inten-
tions. But the process is too important to be ignored and too nat-
ural to be surprising. Nor is it a new idea.
280 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

In 1912 Churchill was chagrined at the naval procurement

plans of the Kaiser's government, which was about to purchase
a quarter again as many dreadnoughts as Churchill had ex-
pected them to. He wondered whether the Germans appreciated
that the result of their naval expansion would be a correspond-
ing British expansion, with more money spent, tensions aggra-
vated, and no net gain to either from the competition. The
Cabinet sent the Secretary of State for War to Berlin to commu-
nicate that if the Germans would hold to their original plan, the
British would hold to theirs; otherwise Great Britain would
match the Germans two-for-one in additional ships. Churchill
thought that if the Germans really did not want war they would
be amenable to the suggestion, and that nothing could be lost by
trying.
Nothing was lost by trying. In his memoirs, Churchill displays
no regrets at having had the idea and having made the attempt.
He had not had a "disarmament agreement" in mind; he simply
hoped to deter an expensive acceleration of the arms race by
communicating what the British reaction would be. He did it
with his eyes open and with neither humility nor arrogance.6
Decades earlier the French had been persuaded of the futility of
trying to overtake British naval tonnage, and it made sense to
see whether the Germans could accommodate to the same prin-
ciple. Like the Greek "hot line" to the Persians, it was a good
idea. Unlike it, it was undertaken with open eyes and no
commitment; the emissary was not assassinated in the enemy' s
camp nor was naval procurement held up pending its outcome.
Essentially, this process of discouraging the Soviets in the
arms race is no different from trying to persuade them that they
are getting nowhere by pushing us around in Berlin. In Berlin,
as in Cuba, we have tried to teach them a lesson about what
might have been called "peaceful coexistence," if the term had
not already been discredited by Soviet use. We did, in the Cuban
event, engage in a process intended to teach the Soviets some-
thing about what to expect of us and to discourage them from
making future miscalculations that might be costly for both of
6. The World Crisis, pp. 75-81.
THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 281

us. In the vicinity of Berlin we have been trying, not without

success, to persuade them that certain courses of action are
doomed to futility. Maybe we could communicate something
similar with respect to the arms buildup itself.
It does seem worthwhile to have some design for managing
the arms race over the next decade or two. It is prematurely
defeatist to suppose that we could never persuade the Soviets,
at least tentatively, that this was a race they could not win. The
principle of "containment" ought to be applicable to Soviet
military preparation. However constrained they are by an
ideology that makes it difficult for them to acknowledge that
they are bested or contained, they must have some capacity for
acceptance of the facts of life. Perhaps the American response
can be made to appear to be a fact of life.
This is a kind of "arms control" objective. But it differs from
the usual formulation of arms control in several respects. First,
it does not begin with the premise that arms agreements with
potential enemies are intrinsically obliged to acknowledge
some kind of parity. (But since there are many different ways
of measuring military potency, it might be possible to permit an
inferior power to claim—possibly even to believe in—parity
according to certain measures.) Second, it explicitly rests on the
notion that arms bargaining involves threats as well as offers.
It may be impolite in disarmament negotiations explicitly to
threaten an aggravated arms race as the cost of disagreement.
But, of course, the inducement to agree to any reciprocated
modification of armaments must be some implicit threat of the
consequences of failure to agree. The first step toward inducing
a potential enemy to moderate his arms buildup is to persuade
him that he has more to lose than to gain by failing to take our
reaction into account. (It could even be wise deliberately to plan
and to communicate a somewhat excessive military buildup
ratio relative to the Soviet force in order to enhance their
inducements to moderate their own program. This sort ofthing
is not unknown in tariff bargaining.)
Of course, some important dimensions of the arms buildup
cannot be characterized as an "arms race." A good many mili-
252 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

tary facilities and assets are not competitive: facilities to mini-

mize false alarm, facilities to prevent accidental and unautho-
rized acts that might lead to war, and many other improvements
in reliability that would help to maintain control in peacetime
or even in war. That is to say, it may be no disadvantage to one
side that the other should make progress on those particular
capabilities. Indeed they may be as desirable in an enemy force
as in one's own. We may not react to the particular steps they
take along these lines, but if we do it is not to make up some lead
we have lost. The hardening or dispersal of the missile force
within a fixed budget may represent an "improvement" in a
country's strategic posture but may not be especially deplored
by the other side; the second country may actually react, in its
own planning, in a direction that is reassuring rather than
menacing. A missile-hardening race is not the same as a
missile-numbers race. Getting across to the Soviet Union the
kind of reaction they can expect from us, therefore, involves
more than a quantitative plan; it involves getting across a notion
of the kinds of weapon programs that appear less provocative
and those that would appear more so. The Cuban affair is a
reminder that there can be a difference.
If, in our attempts to plan a decade or more ahead, we take
seriously the problem of arms-race management and consider
the interaction between our programs and the Soviets', we have
to engage in quite a new exercise: thinking about the kind of
military-force posture that we would like the Soviets to adopt.
Typically in discussions of military policy we treat the Soviet
posture either as given or as something to be determined by
factors outside our control, to which we must respond in some
adequate way. As a result, nothing appears to be gained by
thinking about our preferences among alternative Soviet pos-
tures, doctrines, and programs. But if we begin to examine how
we might influence the Soviet posture, we have to consider
which alternative Soviet developments we prefer and which we
would deplore.
Quantitatively, this requires us to decide whether we want a
maximal or a minimal Soviet effort. Qualitatively, it requires us
to consider alternative Soviet weapons systems and force
THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 283

configurations. The kinds of arguments we occasionally have

in this country about first-strike versus second-strike forces, the
merits of active and passive defenses of the homeland, a
counterforce or a city-destroying general-war doctrine, and a
mix of forces between intercontinental and limited-war capa-
bility—all of these arguments we can imagine taking place
within the Soviet Union, too. If we are to have any influence on
the outcome of those arguments, diffuse and indirect though it
may be, we have to decide in what direction we want to exert it.
On the Subdual of Violence
Of all the military matters on which the American and Soviet
governments communicate, none is more important than how a
major war might be conducted if it actually occurred. This issue
is important because it may have more to do with the extent of
devastation in such a war than the accumulated megatonnages
in the forces. And it is a matter to which some kind of
communication is essential. Expectations arrived at before the
war might be decisive, not only in making the search for viable
limits successful but even in making the effort worthwhile and
making the governments sensitive to the possibility.
It seems to have been a discovery of recent years that some
reciprocated restraints would make sense in a general war, in
the unhappy event such a war should occur. Since even this
primitive concept had not been obvious, some conscious thought
and communication are evidently essential. Of all the reasons
for observing restraint in such a war and for going to some
trouble in peacetime to see that restraints could in fact be
observed, the strongest reason is that it makes sense for the
other side, too. But the other side must know it, must be
equipped to perceive restraint if it occurs, and must have
equipped itself to be discriminating in its own fashion, too.7
The first hints of such a policy in the United States appeared
early in the Kennedy Administration, in such things as the defense
budget message. The first official articulation of it was in
7. See Chapter 5, above.
284 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

Secretary McNamara' s June 1962 speech in Ann Arbor, Michi-

gan. Some unofficial discussion of the idea had appeared in the
literature before then; it had already been attacked with equal
vigor by persons identified with peace movements and by
persons identified with the most intransigent "hard" military
line. Secretary McNamara amplified the signal by several
decibels, giving it official expression in a major speech.
The Soviet response to the official American suggestion that
even a thermonuclear war, involving strategic weapons and
homelands on both sides, might be restrained and brought under
control, is still in process. If the idea took that long to appeal to
our own government, especially when it was not exactly a new
idea, one should not expect it to appeal instantly to Soviet
leaders particularly when it emanates from the United States.
They may have to think about it, argue about it, analyze its
compatibility with their own weapons plans, and find a mean-
ing and interpretation of it that correspond to their own strategic
position. There is every reason to suppose that the concrete
implications for the Soviet Union of such an idea would be very
different from the implications for the United States, if only
because the strategic forces of the two sides are both unlike and
unequal.
Furthermore, the Soviet leaders may be inhibited from ac-
knowledging wisdom in an idea on which the Defense Depart-
ment holds a copyright. And they may have committed them-
selves to some early rebuttals that embarrassed their further
treatment of the subject. For the strategically inferior power
there is a dilemma to be taken quite seriously: to maximize
deterrence by seeming incapable of anything but massive
retaliation, or to hedge against the possibility of war by taking
restraints and limitations seriously.
On this and other questions about nuclear weapons and
nuclear war, there are signs that the dialogue between East and
West is becoming more real, more conscious, less like a pair
of monologues and more like two-way communication. The
second edition of Military Strategy—the landmark official
Soviet strategic publication, which appeared in 1962 in the Soviet
THE DIALOGUE OF COMPETITIVE ARMAMENT 285

Union—showed unmistakable signs of response to the Western

response, a feedback cycle. According to Thomas W. Wolfe,
author of the introduction to one of the American translations
of the volume, the Soviet authors were becoming aware that an
important audience for their work is in the Western nations and
that it matters how they communicate with that audience.8
As a matter of fact, the American treatment of that particular
book may have set in motion a process of conscious communi-
cation that will be as important as anything that goes on in
Geneva, perhaps more important, completely eclipsing Pugwash
Conferences and other minor efforts to get communication
going between East and West on security matters.
The principle that may have been uncovered by the American
treatment of Marshal Sokolovskii's book is a simple one. You
get somebody' s attention much more effectively by listening to
him than by talking at him. You may make him much more self-
conscious in what he communicates if you show that you are
listening carefully and taking it seriously.
Two translations of the book appeared quickly in the United
States, both with introductions by noted American scholars of
Soviet military affairs. One was a quick translation, known to
have been done for the United States government; the other was
a translation supervised by three well-known experts on Soviet
policy at the RAND Corporation.9 Columnists gave a good deal
of attention to the book. There was every sign that it was being
carefully read within the government and by scholars, military
commentators, journalists, and even students. No wonder the
Soviet authors in their second edition reacted to some of the
Western commentary, "corrected" some of the "misconcep-
tions" of their overseas readers, and quietly corrected some of
8. T. W. Wolfe, "Shifts in Soviet Strategic Thinking," Foreign Affairs, 42 (1964),
475-86. This article has since been incorporated into Wolfe's superb Soviet Strategy at
the Crossroads (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1964).
9. Soviet Military Strategy, RAND Corporation Research Study, H. S. Dinerstein,
L. Gouré, and T. W. Wolfe, eds. and translators (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1963),
V. D. Sokolovskii, ed. of original Russian edition; also V. D. Sokolovsky, ed., Military
Strategy (New York, Praeger, 1963), introduction by R. L. Garthoff.
286 ARMS AND INFLUENCE

their own text. There are indications that some of the more
extreme doctrinal assertions have been softened, as though in
fear the West might take them too seriously!10
This strange, momentous dialogue may illustrate two prin-
ciples for the kind of noncommittal bargaining we are forever
engaged in with the potential enemy. First, don't speak directly
at him, but speak seriously to some serious audience and let him
overhear. Second, to get his ear, listen.
10. Wolfe gives an example that is almost too good to be true. Four of the
Sokolovskii authors, in an article in Red Star, took issue with the American editors
on whether Soviet doctrine considered "inevitable" the escalation of limited wars
into general war. To prove they had never argued for "inevitability," they quoted
a passage from their own book—a passage that the American edition had actually
reproduced in full—and deleted in quoting themselves the very word "inevitable"
from their own quotation! Foreign Affairs, 42 (1964), 481-82; Soviet Strategy
at the Crossroads, pp. 123-24.
 AFTERWORD
AN ASTONISHING SIXTY YEARS:
THE LEGACY OF HIROSHIMA

The most spectacular event of the past half century is one that
did not occur. We have enjoyed sixty years without nuclear
weapons exploded in anger.
What a stunning achievement — or, if not achievement, what
stunning good fortune. In 1960 the British novelist C. P. Snow
said on the front page of the New York Times that unless the
nuclear powers drastically reduced their nuclear armaments,
thermonuclear warfare within the decade was a "mathemati-
cal certainty." Nobody appeared to think Snow's statement
extravagant.
We now have that mathematical certainty compounded more
than four times, and no nuclear war. Can we make it through
another half dozen decades?
There has never been any doubt about the military effective-
ness of nuclear weapons or their potential for terror. A large part
of the credit for their not having been used must be due to the
"taboo" that Secretary of State Dulles perceived to have at-
tached itself to these weapons as early as 1953, a taboo that the
Secretary deplored.
The weapons remain under a curse, a now much heavier
curse than the one that bothered Dulles in the early 1950s.
These weapons are unique, and a large part of their uniqueness

An earlier version of this afterword was previously delivered as my Nobel

Prize acceptance speech on December 8, 2005.

287
288 AFTERWORD

derives from their being perceived as unique. We call most

of the others "conventional," and that word has two distinct
senses. One is "ordinary, familiar, traditional," a word that can
be applied to food, clothing, or housing. The more interesting
sense of "conventional" is something that arises as if by com-
pact, by agreement, by convention. It is simply an established
convention that nuclear weapons are different.
True, their fantastic scale of destruction dwarfs the conven-
tional weapons. But as early as the end of the Eisenhower ad-
ministration, nuclear weapons could be made smaller in explo-
sive yield than the largest conventional explosives. There were
military planners to whom "little" nuclear weapons appeared
untainted by the taboo that they thought ought properly to attach
only to weapons of a size associated with Hiroshima or Bikini.
But by then nuclear weapons had become a breed apart; size
was no excuse from the curse.
This attitude, or convention, or tradition, that took root and
grew over these past five decades is an asset to be treasured. It is
not guaranteed to survive, and some possessors or potential
possessors of nuclear weapons may not share the convention.
How to preserve this inhibition, what kinds of policies or ac-
tivities may threaten it, how the inhibition may be broken or
dissolved, and what institutional arrangements may support or
weaken it deserve serious attention. How the inhibition arose —
whether it was inevitable, whether it was the result of careful
design, whether luck was involved, and whether we should
assess it as robust or vulnerable in the coming decades —is
worth examining. Preserving this tradition, and if possible,
helping to extend it to other countries that may yet acquire
nuclear weapons, is as important as extending the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty.
The first occasion when these weapons might have been used
was early in the Korean War. Americans and South Koreans had
retreated to a perimeter around the southern coastal city of
Pusan and appeared in danger of being unable either to hold out
or to evacuate safely. The nuclear-weapons issue arose in public
discussion in the United States and in the British parliament.
AFTERWORD 289

Prime Minister Clement Atlee flew to Washington to beseech

President Truman not to use nuclear weapons in Korea. The
visit and its purpose were both public and publicized. The
House of Commons, considering itself to have been a partner in
the enterprise that produced nuclear weapons, considered it le-
gitimate that Britain have a voice in the American decision.
The successful landing at Inchon mooted the question whether
nuclear weapons might have been used if the situation in the
Pusan perimeter had become desperate enough. But at least the
question of nuclear use had come up, and the upshot was in
the negative.
There may be more than enough reasons to explain the non-
use at that time in Korea. But I do not recall that an important
consideration, for either the U.S. government or the U.S. public,
was apprehension of the consequences of demonstrating that
nuclear weapons were "usable," of preempting the possibility
of cultivating a tradition of non-use.
Nuclear weapons again went unused in the disaster brought
by the entry of Chinese armies and were still unused during the
bloody war of attrition that accompanied the Panmunjom nego-
tiations. Whether they would have been used; where and how
they might have been used, had the war ground on for many
more months; and what the subsequent history would have been
had they been used at that time in North Korea or in China is of
course speculative. Whether the threat of nuclear weapons, pre-
sumably in China rather than on the battlefield, influenced the
truce negotiations remains unclear.
McGeorge Bundy's book Danger and Survival: Choices
about the Bomb in the First Fifty Years1 documents the fascinat-
ing story of President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles
and nuclear weapons. Within three weeks of Eisenhower's in-
auguration, at the National Security Council on February 11,
1953, "Secretary Dulles discussed the moral problem in the
inhibitions on the use of the A-bomb.... It was his opinion that

1. McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the
First Fifty Years (New York, Random House, 1988).
290 AFTERWORD

we should break down this false distinction" (p. 241). I do not

know of any government analysis at that time of what actions
might tend to break down the distinction and what actions or
inactions would preserve and strengthen it. But evidently the
Secretary believed —and may have taken for granted that the
entire National Security Council believed — that the restraints
were real even if the distinction was false and that those re-
straints were not to be welcomed.
Again, on October 7, 1953, Dulles: "Somehow or other we
must manage to remove the taboo from the use of these weap-
ons" (p. 249). Just a few weeks later, the President approved, in
a Basic National Security document, the statement, "In the
event of hostilities, the United States will consider nuclear
weapons to be as available for use as other munitions" (p. 246).
This statement surely has to be read as more rhetorical than
factual. Taboos are not easily dispelled by pronouncing them
extinct, even in the mind of one who does the pronouncing. Six
months later at a restricted NATO meeting the U.S. position was
that nuclear weapons "must now be treated as in fact having
become conventional" (p. 268). Again, saying so cannot make
it so; tacit conventions are sometimes harder to destroy than
explicit ones, existing in potentially recalcitrant minds rather
than on destructible paper.
According to Bundy, the last public statement in this progress
of nuclear weapons toward conventional status occurred during
the Quemoy crisis. On March 12, 1955, Eisenhower said, in
answer to a question, "In any combat where these things can be
used on strictly military targets and for strictly military pur-
poses, I see no reason why they shouldn't be used just exactly as
you would use a bullet or anything else" (p. 278). Bundy's
judgment, which I share, is that this again was more an exhorta-
tion than a policy decision.
Was Ike really ready to use nuclear weapons to defend Que-
moy—or Taiwan itself? It turned out he didn't have to. The
conspicuous shipment of nuclear artillery to Taiwan was surely
intended as a threat. Bluffing would have been risky from
Dulles' point of view; leaving nuclear weapons unused while
AFTERWORD 291

the Chinese conquered Taiwan would have engraved the taboo

in granite. At the same time, Quemoy may have appeared to
Dulles as a superb opportunity to dispel the taboo. Using short-
range nuclear weapons in a purely defensive mode, solely
against offensive troops, especially at sea or on beachheads
devoid of civilians, might have been something that Eisen-
hower would have been willing to authorize and that European
allies would have approved, and nuclear weapons might have
proved that they could be used "just exactly as you would use
a bullet or anything else." The Chinese did not offer the
opportunity.
On the status of nuclear weapons, the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations were in sharp contrast to the Eisenhower. There
was also a change in roles within the Cabinet. Hardly anybody
born after World War II remembers the name of Eisenhower's
Secretary of Defense, Charles Wilson. But most who have stud-
ied any American history know the name of John Foster Dulles.
A bit of research with Bundy's book shows the contrast. In
Bundy's index there are thirty-one references to Dulles, two to
Charles Wilson. Under Kennedy and Johnson the score is re-
versed: forty-two references to Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara, twelve to Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
The anti-nuclear movement in the Kennedy administration
was led from the Pentagon, and in 1962 McNamara began his
campaign —his and President Kennedy's —to reduce reliance
on nuclear defense in Europe by building expensive conven-
tional forces in NATO. During the next couple of years McNa-
mara became associated with the idea that nuclear weapons
were not "useable" at all in the sense that Eisenhower and
Dulles had intended. Undoubtedly the traumatic October of
1962 —the "Cuban Missile Crisis"—contributed to some of
Kennedy's key advisers' and Kennedy's own revulsion against
nuclear weapons.
The contrast between the Eisenhower and the Kennedy-
Johnson attitudes toward nuclear weapons is beautifully sum-
marized in a statement of Johnson's in September 1964. "Make
no mistake. There is no such thing as a conventional nuclear
292 AFTERWORD

weapon. For 19 peril-filled years no nation has loosed the atom

against another. To do so now is a political decision of the
highest order."2 That statement disposed of the notion that nu-
clear weapons were to be judged by their military effectiveness.
It disposed of Dulles' "false distinction": "A political decision
of the highest order" compared with "as available for use as
other munitions."
I am particularly impressed by the "19 peril-filled years."
Johnson implied that for nineteen years the United States had
resisted the temptation to do what Dulles had wanted the United
States to be free to do where nuclear weapons were concerned.
He implied that the United States, or collectively the United
States and other nuclear-weapon states, had an investment, ac-
cumulated over nineteen years, in the non-use of nuclear weap-
ons; and that those nineteen years of quarantine for nuclear
weapons were part of what would make any decision to use
those weapons a political one of the highest order.
It is worth a pause here to consider just what might be the
literal meaning of "no such thing as a conventional nuclear
weapon." Specifically, why couldn't a nuclear bomb no larger
than the largest blockbuster of World War II be considered con-
ventional, or a nuclear depth charge of modest explosive power
for use against submarines far at sea, or nuclear land mines to
halt advancing tanks or to cause landslides in mountain passes?
What could be so awful about using three "small" atomic
bombs to save the besieged French at Dien Bien Phu (in Indo-
china, 1953), as was discussed at the time? What could be so
wrong about using nuclear coastal artillery against a communist
Chinese invasion flotilla in the Gulf of Taiwan?
This question has received two answers, one mainly in-
stinctive, the other somewhat analytical, but both resting on a
belief, or a feeling — a feeling somewhat beyond reach by
analysis — that nuclear weapons were simply different, and ge-
nerically different. The more intuitive response can probably
best be formulated, "If you have to ask that question you

2. New York Times, September 8,1964.

AFTERWORD 293

wouldn't understand the answer." The generic character of ev-

erything nuclear was simply —as logicians might call it — a
primitive, an axiom; and analysis was as unnecessary as it was
futile.
The other, more analytical, response took its argument from
legal reasoning, diplomacy, bargaining theory, and theory of
training and discipline, including self-discipline. This argument
emphasized bright lines, slippery slopes, well-defined bound-
aries, and the stuff of which traditions and implicit conventions
are made. (The analogy to "one little drink" for a recovering
alcoholic was sometimes heard.) But both lines of argument
arrived at the same conclusion: nuclear weapons, once intro-
duced into combat, could not, or probably would not, be con-
tained, confined, limited.
Sometimes the argument was explicit: no matter how small
the weapons initially used, the size of weapons would inelucta-
bly escalate, there being no natural stopping place. Sometimes
the argument was that the military needed to be disciplined, and
once they were allowed any nuclear weapons it would be im-
possible to stop their escalation.
The case of the "neutron bomb" is illustrative. This is a bomb,
or potential bomb, that, because it is very small and because of
the materials of which it is constructed, emits "prompt neu-
trons" that can be lethal at a distance at which blast and thermal
radiation are comparatively moderate. As advertised, it kills
people without great damage to structures. The issue of produc-
ing and deploying this kind of weapon arose during the Carter
administration, evoking an anti-nuclear reaction that caused it to
be left on the drawing board. But the same bomb — at least, the
same idea —had been the subject of even more intense debate
fifteen years earlier, and it was there that the argument was
honed, ready to be used again in the 1970s. The argument was
simple, and it was surely valid, whether or not it deserved to be
decisive. The argument stated that it was important not to blur
the distinction — the firebreak, as it was called — between nu-
clear and conventional weapons; and either because of its low
yield or because of its "benign" kind of lethality it was feared,
294 AFTERWORD

and it was argued, that there would be a strong temptation to use

this weapon where nuclears were otherwise not allowed, and that
the use of this weapon would erode the threshold, blur the fire-
break, pave the way by incremental steps for nuclear escalation.
The argument is not altogether different from that against so-
called peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs). The decisive argu-
ment against PNEs was that they would accustom the world to
nuclear explosions, undermining the belief that nuclear ex-
plosions were inherently evil and reducing the inhibitions on
nuclear weapons. The prospect of blasting new riverbeds in
northern Russia, a bypass canal for the waters of the Nile, or
harbors in developing countries generated concern about "legit-
imizing" nuclear explosions.
A revealing demonstration of this antipathy came with Amer-
ican arms controllers' and energy-policy analysts' universal re-
jection of the prospect of an ecologically clean source of electri-
cal energy, proposed in the 1970s, that would have detonated
tiny thermonuclear bombs in underground caverns to generate
steam. I have seen this idea unanimously dismissed without
argument, as if the objections were too obvious to require artic-
ulation. As far as I could tell, the objection was always that even
"good" thermonuclear explosions were bad and should be kept
that way. (I can imagine President Eisenhower: "In any energy
crisis where these things can be used on strictly civilian sites for
strictly civilian purposes I see no reason why they shouldn't be
used just exactly as you would use a barrel of oil or anything
else." And Dulles: "Somehow or other we must manage to
remove the taboo from the use of these clean thermonuclear
energy sources.")
But it is important not to think that nuclear weapons alone
have this character of being generically different, independent
of quantity or size. Gas was not used in World War II. The
Eisenhower-Dulles argument could have applied to gas: "In
any combat where these gases can be used on strictly military
targets and for strictly military purposes, I see no reason why
they shouldn't be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or
anything else." But as Supreme Commander of the Allied Ex-
AFTERWORD 295

peditionary Forces, General Eisenhower, as far as we know,

never proposed any such policy. Maybe if, at the time, he had
been put through the exercise he would have convinced himself
not that gas should never be used but that gas was at least
different from bullets, and that decisions on its use raised new
strategic issues. And ten years later he might have recalled that
line of thinking when, I think reluctantly, he let his Secretary of
State urge doing for nuclear weapons what Eisenhower appar-
ently never thought of doing for gas in the European theater.
Some other things have this all-or-none quality in warfare.
Nationality is one. The Chinese did not visibly intervene in the
Korean War until it was time to intervene in force. American
military aid personnel have always been cautioned to avoid
appearing to engage in anything that could be construed as
combat, the notion being that contamination could not be con-
tained. There was some consideration of American intervention
in Indochina at the time of Dien Bien Phu, but not on the
ground; and in the air it was thought that reconnaissance would
count less as "intervention" than would bombing. There is typ-
ically the notion that to provide equipment is much less par-
ticipatory than to provide military manpower; we arm the Is-
raelis and provide ammunition even in wartime, but so much as
a company of American infantry would be perceived as a
greater act of participation in the war than $5 billion worth of
fuel, ammunition, and spare parts.
I mention all this to suggest that there are perceptual and
symbolic phenomena that persist and recur and that help to make
the nuclear phenomenon less puzzling. And I find it remarkable
how these perceptual constraints and inhibitions cross cultural
boundaries. During the Chinese phase of the Korean War the
U.S. never bombed airbases in China; the "rules" were that Chi-
nese bombing sorties originated from North Korea, and to abide
by the rules, Chinese aircraft originating in Manchuria touched
wheels down at North Korean airstrips on the way to bombing
their American targets. That reminds us that national territory is
like nationality: crossing the Yalu River (the Chinese-Korean
boundary) on the ground or in the air entailed a qualitative
296 AFTERWORD

discontinuity. Had General Mac Arthur succeeded in conquering

all of North Korea, even he could not have proposed that pen-
etrating just "a little bit" into China proper wouldn't have mat-
tered much because it was only a little bit.
Still, these qualitative all-or-none kinds of thresholds are
often susceptible to undermining. A Dulles who wishes the
taboo were not there may not only attempt to get around it when
it is important, but may also apply ingenuity to dissolving the
barrier on occasions when it may not matter much, in anticipa-
tion of later opportunities when crossing the barrier would be
a genuine embarrassment. Bundy suggests that in discussing
the possibility of atomic bombs in defense of Dien Bien Phu,
Dulles and Admiral Radford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, had in mind not only the local value in Indochina but
the use of Dien Bien Phu in "making the use of atomic bombs
internationally acceptable," a purpose that Dulles and Radford
shared.
The aversion to nuclear weapons — one might even say the
abhorrence of them — can grow in strength and become locked
into military doctrine even without being fully appreciated, or
even acknowledged. The Kennedy administration launched an
aggressive campaign for conventional defenses in Europe on
grounds that nuclear weapons certainly should not be used, and
probably would not be used, in the event of a war in Europe.
Throughout the 1960s the official Soviet line was to deny the
possibility of a non-nuclear engagement in Europe. Yet the So-
viets spent great amounts of money developing non-nuclear
capabilities in Europe, especially aircraft capable of delivering
conventional bombs. This expensive capability would have
been utterly useless in the event of any war that was bound to
become nuclear. It reflects a tacit Soviet acknowledgment that
both sides might be capable of non-nuclear war and that both
sides had an interest, an interest worth a lot of money, in keep-
ing war non-nuclear — keeping it non-nuclear by having the
capability of fighting a non-nuclear war.
Arms control is so often identified with limitations on the
possession or deployment of weapons that it is often overlooked
AFTERWORD 297

that this reciprocated investment in non-nuclear capability was

a remarkable instance of unacknowledged but reciprocated
arms control. It is not only potential restraint in the use of
nuclear weapons; it is investment in a configuration of weapons
to make nations capable of non-nuclear combat. It reminds us
that the inhibitions on "first use" may be powerful without
declarations, even while one party refuses to recognize its own
participation for what it is.
With the possible exception of the Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty, this buildup of conventional weapons in Europe was the
most important East-West arms understanding until the demise
of the Soviet Union. It was genuine arms control, even if inex-
plicit, even if denied — as real as if the two sides had signed a
treaty obliging them, in the interest of fending off nuclear war,
to put large amounts of treasure and manpower into conven-
tional forces. The investment in restraints on the use of nuclear
weapons was real as well as symbolic.
That the Soviets had absorbed this nuclear inhibition was
dramatically demonstrated during their protracted campaign in
Afghanistan. I never read or heard public discussion about the
possibility that the Soviet Union might shatter the tradition of
non-use to avoid a costly and humiliating defeat in that country.
The inhibitions on use of nuclear weapons are such common
knowledge, the attitude is so confidently shared, that not only
would the use of nuclear weapons in Afghanistan have been
almost universally deplored, it wasn't even thought of.
But part ofthat may be because President Johnson's nineteen-
year nuclear silence had stretched into a fourth and then a fifth
decade, and everyone in positions of responsibility was aware
that that unbroken tradition was a treasure we held in common.
We have to ask, could that tradition, once broken, have mended
itself? Had Truman used nuclear weapons during the Chinese
onslaught in Korea, would Nixon have been as impressed in
1970 by the nineteen-year hiatus as Johnson was in 1964? Had
Nixon used nuclear weapons, even ever so sparingly, in Viet-
nam, would the Soviets have eschewed their use in Afghani-
stan, and Margaret Thatcher in the Falklands? Had Nixon used
298 AFTERWORD

nuclear weapons in 1969 or 1970, would the Israelis have re-

sisted the temptation to use them against the Egyptian beach-
heads north of the Suez Canal in 1973?
The answer surely is that we do not know. One possibility is
that the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have repeated
itself and the curse would have descended again with even more
weight. The other possibility is that, the long silence broken,
nuclear weapons would have emerged as militarily effective
instruments and, especially if used unilaterally against an
adversary who had none, a blessing that might have reduced
casualties on both sides of the war, as some think the bomb on
Hiroshima did. Much might have depended on the care with
which weapons were confined to military targets or used in
demonstrably "defensive" modes.
We were spared from temptation in the Persian Gulf in 1991.
Iraq was known to possess, and to have been willing to use,
"unconventional" weapons —chemicals. Had chemical weap-
ons been used with devastating effect on U.S. forces, the issue
of appropriate response would have posed the nuclear question.
I am confident that had the President, in that circumstance,
deemed it essential to escalate from conventional weapons, bat-
tlefield nuclear weapons would have been the military choice.
Nuclear weapons are what the Army, Navy, and Air Force are
trained and equipped to use; their effects in different kinds
of weather and terrain are well understood. The military pro-
fession traditionally despises poison. There would have been
strong temptation to respond with the kind of unconventional
weapon we know best how to use. To have done so would have
ended the then forty-five peril-filled years. We can hope no
president has to face such a "political decision of the highest
order." I've no doubt any president would recognize that that
was the kind of decision he was facing.
I have devoted much attention to where we are and how we
got here with the status of nuclear weapons in the belief that the
development ofthat status is as important as the development of
nuclear arsenals has been. The nonproliferation effort, con-
cerned with the development, production, and deployment of
AFTERWORD 299

nuclear weapons, has been more successful than most authori-

ties can claim to have anticipated; the accumulating weight of
tradition against nuclear use I consider no less impressive and
no less valuable. We depend on nonproliferation efforts to re-
strain the production and deployment of weapons by more and
more countries; we may depend even more on universally
shared inhibitions on nuclear use. Preserving those inhibitions
and extending them, if we know how to preserve and extend
them, to cultures and national interests that may not currently
share those inhibitions will be a crucial part of our nuclear
policy.
I quote from an editorial that Alvin M. Weinberg, the distin-
guished nuclear physicist, wrote on the fortieth anniversary of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
After saying that he had always been convinced that both Amer-
ican and Japanese lives were saved by the use of the bomb in
Japan, he gives another reason for his belief that Hiroshima (but
not Nagasaki) was fortunate. "Are we witnessing a gradual
sanctification of Hiroshima — that is, the elevation of the Hiro-
shima event to the status of a profoundly mystical event, an
event ultimately of the same religious force as biblical events? I
cannot prove it, but I am convinced that the 40th Anniversary of
Hiroshima, with its vast outpouring of concern, its huge demon-
strations, its wide media coverage, bears resemblance to the
observance of major religious holidays. . . . This sanctification
of Hiroshima is one of the most hopeful developments of the
nuclear era."
A crucial question is whether the anti-nuclear instinct so
exquisitely expressed by Weinberg is confined to "Western"
culture. I believe that the set of attitudes and expectations about
nuclear weapons is more recognizably widespread among the
people and the elites of the developed countries; and as we look
to North Korea, Iran, or others as potential wielders of nuclear
weapons, we cannot be sure that they inherit this tradition with
any great force. But it is reassuring that in the same way
we had no assurance that the leadership of the Soviet Union
would inherit the same tradition or participate in cultivating that
300 AFTERWORD

tradition. Not many of us in the 1950s or 1960s would have

thought that were the Soviet Union to engage in war and lose (as
it did in the 1980s in Afghanistan), it would behave there as if
nuclear weapons did not exist.
We can be grateful to the Soviets for behaving that way in
Afghanistan, adding one more to the list of bloody wars in which
nuclear weapons were not used. Forty years ago we might have
thought that the Soviet leadership would be immune to the spirit
of Hiroshima as expressed by Weinberg, immune to the popular
revulsion that John Foster Dulles did not share, immune to the
overhang of all those peril-filled years that awed President
Johnson. In any attempt to extrapolate Western nuclear attitudes
toward the areas of the world where nuclear proliferation begins
to frighten us, the remarkable conformity of Soviet and Western
ideology is a reassuring point of departure.
An immediate question is whether we can expect Indian and
Pakistani leaders to be adequately in awe of the nuclear weap-
ons they now both possess. There are two helpful possibilities.
One is that they share the inhibition — appreciate the taboo —
that I have been discussing. The other is that they will recog-
nize, as the United States and the Soviet Union did, that the
prospect of nuclear retaliation made any initiation of nuclear
war nearly unthinkable.
The instances of non-use of nuclear weapons that I've dis-
cussed were, in every case, possible use against a nonpossessor.
The non-use by the United States and the Soviet Union was
differently motivated: the prospect of nuclear retaliation made
any initiation appear unwise except in the worst imaginable
military emergency, and that kind of military emergency never
offered the temptation. The experience of the United States-
Soviet Union confrontation may impress Indians and Paki-
stanis; the greatest risk is that one or the other may confront the
kind of military emergency that invites some limited experi-
ment with the weapons, and there is no history to tell us, or to
tell them, what happens next.
Most recently there is the concern that Iran and North Korea
may acquire, or may already have acquired, some modest num-
AFTERWORD 301

her of nuclear explosives. (Libya appears to have withdrawn

from contention.) Great diplomatic skill and international coop-
eration will be required to suppress or discourage their interest
in acquiring such weapons. Equally great skill, or greater, will
be required to create or enhance the expectations and institu-
tions that inhibit the use of such weapons.

Johnson's nineteen years have stretched to sixty. The taboo

that Ike appeared to denigrate, or pretended to denigrate, but
that awed President Johnson a decade later, has become a
powerful tradition of nearly universal recognition.
The next possessors of nuclear weapons may be Iran, North
Korea, or possibly some terrorist bodies. Is there any hope that
they will have absorbed the nearly universal inhibition against
the use of nuclear weapons, or will at least be inhibited by the
recognition that the taboo enjoys widespread acclaim?
Part of the answer will depend on whether the United States
recognizes that inhibition, and especially on whether the United
States recognizes it as an asset to be cherished, enhanced, and
protected or, like John Foster Dulles in Eisenhower's cabinet,
believes "somehow or other we must manage to remove the
taboo from the use of these weapons."
There is much discussion these days of whether or not "de-
terrence" has had its day and no longer has much of a role in
America's security. There is no Soviet Union to deter; the Rus-
sians are more worried about Chechnya than about the United
States; the Chinese seem no more interested in military risks
over Taiwan than Khrushchev really was over Berlin; and ter-
rorists cannot be deterred anyway —we don't know what they
value that we might threaten, or who or where it is.
I expect that we may come to a new respect for deterrence. If
Iran should, despite every diplomatic effort or economic pres-
sure to prevent it, acquire a few nuclear weapons, we may
discover again what it is like to be the deterred one, not the one
doing the deterring. (I consider us —NATO at the time —as
having been deterred from intervening in Hungary in 1956 and
Czechoslovakia in 1968.) I also consider it crucial that Iran's
302 AFTERWORD

leaders, civilian and military, learn to think, if they have not

already learned to think, in terms of deterrence.
What else can Iran accomplish, except possibly the destruc-
tion of its own system, with a few nuclear warheads? Nuclear
weapons should be too precious to give away or to sell, too
precious to waste killing people when they could, held in re-
serve, make the United States, or Russia, or any other nation,
hesitant to consider military action. What nuclear weapons have
been used for, effectively, successfully, since August 1945, has
not been on the battlefield or on population targets: they have
been used for influence.
What about terrorists? Any organization that gets enough
fissile material to make a bomb will require many highly quali-
fied scientists, technologists, and machinists, working in se-
clusion away from families and occupations for months with
nothing much to talk about except what their A-bomb might be
good for, for whom. They are likely to feel justified, by their
contribution, to have some claim on participating in any deci-
sions on the use of the device. (The British parliament in 1950
considered itself, as partner in the development of the atomic
bomb, qualified to advise President Truman on any possible use
of the bomb in Korea.)
They will conclude — I hope they will conclude — over weeks
of arguing, that the most effective use of the bomb, from a
terrorist perspective, will be for influence. Possessing a work-
able nuclear weapon, if they can demonstrate possession — and I
expect they will be able to do so without actually detonating it —
will give them something of the status of a nation. Threatening to
use it against military targets, and keeping it intact if the threat is
successful, may appeal to them more than expending it in a
purely destructive act. Even terrorists may consider destroying
large numbers of people as less satisfying than keeping a major
nation at bay.
The United States was slow to learn, but learned eventu-
ally (in 1961), that nuclear warheads require exceptionally se-
cure custody — against accident, mischief, theft, sabotage, or a
Stmngelove-like unauthorized adventure. There is always a
AFTERWORD 303

dilemma: reward violators of the Non-Proliferation Treaty by

offering the technology to keep the warheads secure, or with-
hold the technology and let the weapons be less secure. At least
we can try to help educate the new members of the nuclear club
to what the United States did not appreciate for its first fifteen
years as a nuclear power: nuclear weapons require the most
secure technological aids to secure custody.
I know of no more powerful argument in favor of the Com-
prehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the Senate rejected in 1999,
than the treaty's potential to enhance the nearly universal revul-
sion against nuclear weapons. The symbolic effect of nearly two
hundred nations ratifying the CTBT, which is nominally only
about testing, should add enormously to the convention that
nuclear weapons are not to be used and that any nation that does
use nuclear weapons will be judged the violator of the legacy of
Hiroshima. I never heard that argument made on either side of
the debate over the treaty. When the treaty is again before the
Senate, as I hope it will be, this major potential benefit should
not go unrecognized.
The most critical question for the U.S. government regarding
nuclear weapons is whether the widespread taboo against nu-
clear weapons and its inhibition on their use are in our favor or
against us. If inhibition is in the American interest, as I believe
obvious, then advertising a continued dependence on nuclear
weapons, that is, a U.S. readiness to use them or a U.S. need for
new nuclear capabilities (and new nuclear tests) —let alone
ever using them against an enemy — has to be weighed against
the corrosive effect on a nearly universal attitude that has been
cultivated through universal abstinence of sixty years.
This page intentionally left blank
 INDEX

Accidents, 93, 95 n., 227-33, 247, Assurances, as part of threat, 74 ff.

282 Atomic bomb, 17 f., 127. See also
Acheson, Dean, 46, 54 Nuclear weapons
Active defense, 174 n., 239, 277. See Austria, 11,12, 261
also Ballistic missile defense Automaticity, 39-40, 50 n., 92,161-
Air-borne alert, 269 63,203,206
Air defense, 174 n. See also Active
"Balance of prudence," 259
defense; Ballistic missile defense
Balance of terror, 18. See also
Aircraft, nuclear-powered, 275. See
Deterrence
also Bomber aircraft
Ballistic missile defenses, 247, 266-
Alaska, 62
68, 272, 275-76
Albania, 61
Bargaining, 1, 7; tacit, 131-41, 216;
Alert. See Mobilization
in warfare, 135-41, 142-45,163,
Alexander, 9,45 n.
199-203, 215-20; on armament,
Algeria, 6,15, 61, 167, 174, 200
268 ff. See also Coercive war;
Allies, in war termination, 214 f.,
Commitment; Compellence;
218
Diplomacy; Geneva negotiations;
Ambassadors, 263
Limited war; Surrender
Amnesty, 74 n.
Battlefield warfare, 26, 166-70; as
Anarchists, 37
criterion in NATO, 107 ff.
Anti-missile missiles, 239. See also
Benton, Senator William, 266
Ballistic missile defense
Berlin, 38-39, 46-49, 55 f., 63, 69,
Arab, 148 n., 263
73 f., 86 f., 92-94,104,121 ff.,
Arbitration, 140
156,176,206,270
Archidamus, 192
Blockade, 16, 69, 77-87 passim,
Arms control, vi; in termination of
200 f., 252
war, 208 ff., 248-59, 261 -64,
"Blocness," 61
281. See also Disarmament
Bluff, 35, 211 f. See also Commit-
Arms race, 248-51, 256-59, 260-
ment; Credibility
83, 274-77, 28 I f f .

305
306 INDEX

Bomber aircraft, 203, 206 ff., 236 f., n., 159 n., 211, 217 f., 231. See
269-71; dispersal, 226; vulner- also Communication
ability, 232 Commitment, 35-91, 93, 96. See
Boundaries, 132,137,141,155, also Credibility; Deterrence
159 f. Communication: in Korea, 54-55; in
Brinkmanship, 91, 99-125, 166 bargaining, 135-37; in reprisal,
Brodie, Bernard, 16 n., 244 n. 144-49; in warfare, 194, 205-09,
Budapest, 13,15, 74 f. See also 212-13, 220; in crisis, 260-63;
Hungary about armament, 264 ff.; about
Buzz-bomb, 17, 30 nuclear weapons, 264-65; about
Buzzing, airplane, 87, 91, 104 n. war, 283-86. See also Bargain-
ing; Command and control; Com-
Caesar, 10 n., 14, 179 n., 219,
pellence; Credibility; Deterrence;
263
Threat
California, 35, 56-60,159
Communist China, 6, 51-66 passim,
Captives. See Hostages; Prisoners
83, 122, 133, 151, 155 f., 177,
Carthage, 66n.
184-89,252
Castro, Fidel, 83. See also Cuba
Compellence, 69 ff., 79 ff., 100,103,
Catalytic war, 95 n.
172,174 ff.
Cease-fire. See Termination of war
Competition in risk taking, 166
Chamberlain, Neville, 229 n.
Compliance, 82 ff.
Cheating, in war-termination agree-
Concord (and American Revolu-
ment, 210 f.
tion), 95 n.
Chess, 100 ff., 251
Congress, 265, 266, 267
Chiang Kai-shek, 43,49, 51, 73
Connectedness, 86 ff., 145 ff.
"Chicken," game of, 116-25
Conrad, Joseph, 37
Children, 32 n., 74 n., 135, 148 n.,
Constellation, 141
201
Constitution of the United States,
Churchill, Winston S., 8, 18 n., 29,
251
35 f., 114, 239 n., 273 n., 280
Counterforce, 18 n., 190 ff., 226,
Cities, 18 n., 58-59,113,154,
283 fif.
162 ff., 191ff.,283ff.
Credibility, 3, 36 ff., 42 n., 50 n.,
Civil defense, 111 n., 196 n., 239-
97 f., 253
44, 270. See also Shelters
Criminals, 4
Civil war, 6, 29, 200; American, 15-
Crises, 96 f., 121 n. See also Berlin;
16,23
Cuba; Quemoy
Clarkson, Jesse D., 245 n.
Crusaders, 9, 20
Clausewitz, Karl von, 224 n.
Cuba, 38, 40 f., 57-58, 60-65, 80-
Cochran, Thomas C., 245 n.
87,94-98, 120 f., 162 n., 166,
Coercion, 4-5, 85-86, 167 ff.,
176, 206, 226, 237 n., 242, 247,
172 fif., 250. See also Compel-
253,266,269,279-82
lence; Deterrence
Cyprus, 6, 200
"Come-along" holds, 8
Czar, 222, 260
Command and control, 111 n., 154
Czechoslovakia, 60
INDEX 307

David and Goliath, 144 n. Eisenhower, Dwight D., 67, 83 n.,

Defense: and deterrence, 2, 78-80; 136,158,269
usage of term, 7,174; and offense, Electric bumper, 42 n.
225, 249; budget, 269 ff. See also Escalation, 104, 286 n.
Ballistic missile defenses; Civil Euthanasia, 203
defenses; Mobilization Extortion, 85
Defense, Department of, 7,154 n.,
"Face," value of preserving, 124 f.
195 n., 273 f., 279, 284
Fallout, radioactive, 196 n., 240
Defense, Secretary of. See McNa-
False alarm, 95, 228 f., 231 f., 237,
mara, Robert S.
248, 282. See also Accidental war
Definitions, official, 159 n.
Fashion, in military planning, 276 n.
DeGaulle, Charles, 69
Federalist Papers, 251
Delegation, of nuclear authority, 38,
Feedback, 260 ff., 274 ff.
llln.
Finland, 52
Democracy, 15n.
First strike capability, 98, 195, 204,
Demonstrations, 238, 239 n., 242
247, 278. See also Preemptive
Denmark, 10, 12
war
De-sheltering, 242
Fisher, Roger, 50 n.
Deterrence, 2,7,31-32,36-49,92;
Foreign aid, 85
and defense, 2,7-8,78-80; ra-
Formosa, 49, 67, 73, 82,185
tionality, 36-43,229; and com-
France, 12, 20, 35,128,185,191,
pellence, 70 ff.; graduated, 78; and
261, 277; nuclear force, 42 n.,
uncertainty, 97-99; in war, 190
50 n.
(see also Cities; Limited war);
Franco-Prussian War, 20,128
accidental war, 229 f.; and vulner-
Freeze, of arms levels, 271, 278
ability, 232; in disarmament, 248-
Friedrich, Carl I, 277 n.
59; of mobilization, 268; of arms
Fuller, J. F.C., 15 n.
race, 268 ff., 277,281 ff. See also
Brinkmanship; Coercion; Com- Gallois, Pierre, 39
mitment; Credibility; Limited war Gandhi, 42 n.
Dinerstein, H. S., 285 n. Gang warfare, 135,200
Diplomacy, 1, 32, 36, 150-51,172. Garthoff, R. L., 285 n.
See also Bargaining Gas, 129 n., 131,137 n., 138,154,
Disarmament, 50 n., 256 n.; and 164
accidental war, 231 f.; stability of, General war, 159 n., 190-220
248-59; and mobilization, 249 ff. Geneva negotiations, 233, 260-71,
See also Arms control 278-79, 285
Discipline, 143 n. Geneva Protocol of 7925, 131,
Dispersal, of missiles, 282 138 ff.
Disraeli, 239 n. Genghis Khan, 5 f.
Duel, 144 n. Germany, 36, 38, 97,126,128,
Dulles, John Foster, 45-46, 65, 67, 179 n., 222 f., 253, 261, 280,
83 n. 285 n. See also Hitler
308 INDEX

Greeks, Greece, 21, 97, 200 Intelligence, 111 n., 237 n., 275. See
Gromyko, Andrei, 260 f. also Inspection; Reconnaissance
Guantanamo, 83 Intentions, 35
Guerilla warfare, 24, 179 n. International military authority,
251-56
Halperin, Morton H., 130 n., 153 n.,
Iran, 57, 160, 177, 268
235 n.
Iraq, 49
Handford, S. A., lOn.
Irrational. See Rationality
Hannibal, 66 n.
Israel, 148 n., 152,246,263
Hanoi, 172
Italy, 126
Hardening, of missiles, 282
Harriman, W. Averell, 39 Japan, 19,86,126 ff., 130, 196
Harris, Seymour E., 277 Jerusalem, 9, 263
Haste, 152 n. See also Speed of Johnson, Lyndon B., 84,115,134,
warfare 141,142,150,157,262
Hawaii, 60 Jordan, 49
Henry V., 11
Kaufmann, William W., 162 n.
Herodotus, 11 n., 32 n.
Kecskemeti, Paul, 128 n.
Herter, Christian, 260
Kennedy, John R, 38, 40, 64, 77, 81,
High Wind in Jamaica, 70 n.
83, 121, 122 n., 150 n., 262, 270,
Hippias, 32 n.
283
Hiroshima, 15, 17 f.
Khrushchev, Nikita, 39,40 n., 46,
Hitler, 11 f., 25, 29,42, 86,164,
49, 82 n., 121,121 n., 122 n., 136,
229 n.
147,150 n., 177,266,270
Hoag, Malcolm, 235 n.
Kidnapping, v. 10,30,201
Homelands, 57 f., 62, 159 f., 162
King Lear, 74 n.
Homer, 117
Klein, Burton H., 179 n.
Horelick, Arnold, 82 n.
Knorr, Klaus, 178n.
Hostages, 6, 8, 32 n., 129 n., 143 n.,
Korean War, 6, 31, 53-55, 80, 94,
179 n., 191-92, 195, 201 f., 217,
124,129,134,137 f., 151 f., 155
219
ff., 166,170,176 ff., 189,265,
Hot line, 247, 260-64, 280
276
Hot pursuit, 153,168ff.,216
Howard, Michael, 223 n., 243 Labor disputes, 4
Hungary, 36 f., 52, 65, 73 f., 120 f. Landlords, 68 f.
Huntington, Samuel P., 277 Laos, 146,152
Larson, David L., 65 n.
Ice picks, as weapons, 19
"Last clear chance," 44 f., 70, 90,
Imitation, 275
101,118
India, 51, 53, 122, 189,252
Latitude, parallels of, 132,137,140
Indians, American, 5, 148
League of Nations, 26
Inferiority See Superiority
Lebanon, 49, 52, 94
Initiative, relinquishment of, 43 ff.
Lerner, Max, 18, 229, 256 n.
Inspection, of war-termination agree-
Lexington, 95 n.
ment, 210 f., 217-18,272 f., 278
INDEX 309

Limited war: and cities, 24-26, Nehru, 53

162-66,190-204, 283-84; and Norway, 50 n.
NATO, 46,107 ff., 111 ff., 176 ff.; Nuclear explosives, non-weapon,
and homelands, 57-59,156-62; 153
creation of risk, 105-16,123; Nuclear-powered aircraft, 275
nuclear weapons in, 109-16, Nuclear threshold, 157,165
131-32,153-58; surrender, 126- Nuclear weapons, 17-25; beliefs
29; bargaining, 131-41, 142-45; about 18-20,157; in limited war,
limits and thresholds, 131-41, 46,108-16,160-61,163-64,
153-68; reprisal, 141-51,168- 175, 176-84,186,188; delegation
70; concept, 142-43,166 ff., 173; of authority, 111 n.; NATO and,
"ultimate limit," 157-66; and hot 111-16,182-84; abstention in
pursuit, 168-69; coercive war- Korean War, 129,131 ff., 156; as
fare, 179-84; and China, 184-89. threshold, 131-34, 137, 153-58,
See also Bargaining; Com- 164-65; under disarmament, 250
pellence; Deterrence; Korea; Sur- ff.; international authority, 253;
render; Termination of war; communication with Soviets,
Vietnam 264-65; large-yield weapon,
Limits. See Limited war; Thresholds 276 n. See also Brinkmanship;
in warfare Cities; Limited war; Speed of
Livy, 66 n. warfare; Test ban
Nuisance value of war, 33
McNamara, Robert S., 24-27,40-
41,59,131,154,162-65,190- Oman,C.W. C.,79n., 179 n.
92, 284 Open cities, 129
McNaughton, John T, 154 n., 195 n. Open skies, 233
Marne, Battle of, 21 Options, 44,190
Massive retaliation, 190 ff., 196 n., Orbiting weapons, 239, 265
202-03,252 Overkill, 18,23,231
Maude, Colonel F. M., 224, 246 Owen, Henry, 237 n.
Maxim, Hudson, 245 n.
Pakistan, 56, 147
Melman, Seymour, 50 n.
Palestine, 6, 15,167
Mexican War, 10,32, 128
Pan American Airways, 87
Miscalculation, 138, 165. See also
Parity, 257 f., 277, 281. See also
Accidental war; False alarm
Superiority
Missile gap, 266-69, 272-77
Passive defense, 239. See also Civil
Mobilization, 221-59, 260-62, 268
defense
Montross, Lynn, 6, 9
Pause, 205-10
Mossadegh, 38,43
Peaceful coexistence, 280
Napoleonic wars, 27, 28 f. Pearl Harbor, 229 n.
National Labor Relations Act, 136 n. Pericles, 202
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Orga- Persians, 10 f., 21, 280
nization), 52, 82, 107 ff., 253, 276 Persuasion and dissuasion, 71 n.
Negotiation. See Bargaining Piaget, Jean, 148-49 n.
310 INDEX

"Plate glass window" role of troops, Retaliation, 7, 31 f. See also Massive

47 retaliation; Reprisal
Police, 234 Rhineland, 229 n., 237 n.
Portal, Lord, Air Chief Marshal, Riot, 42 n., 45 n., 122 n.
13n.,76n. Risk, manipulation of, 91, 99 ff.,
Positive control, 236 105 fif., 166 ff., 238, 247 f.
Power to hurt, 1-34,167 ff. Risk-taking, competition in, 94 ff.
Precedent, 135,138,143,153,156 Romans, 21, 66 n. See also Caesar
ff., 171 Rouse, W.H. D., 117n.
Preemptive maneuver, 49 Rubicon, 134
Preemptive war, 18 n., 224-30, 250 Russell, Bertrand, 116
Preventive war, 249 ff., 269
St. Petersburg, Declaration of, 26
Price of admission, military victory
"Salami tactics," 66 f., 77
as, 13
Sanctuary, 156,216
Prisoners, 129, 138, 143,216
Schelling, T. C., 137 n., 235 n.,
"Protection," 13,200
256 n.
Ptolemy, 45 n.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 150 n.
Public opinion, 50 n.
Scipio, 45 n.
Puerto Rico, 60,124
Scott, General Winfield, 10,128
Pug wash Conference, 285
Secrecy, in war termination, 211 f.
Punishment, 148-49,151. See also
Self-inflicted destruction, 210
Power to hurt; Reprisal
Selincourt, Aubrey de, 11 n., 66 n.
Pusan, 156
Shelters, 196 n., 218, 225, 239-44
Quemoy, 38,43, 51, 59, 63, 65-66, Sheridan, General P. H., 14,17
73, 82-83, 94,106,120 Sherman, General W. T., 15,17, 25,
Quester, George H., 16 n. 30
Shoreline, 137,162n.
Racial conflict, 4,135 n., 200
Singer, J. David, 71 n.
Racketeering, 4
Singletary, Otis A., 10 n., 128 n.
Railroad, 221 ff., 236, 245 n.; tracks,
Sino-Soviet relations, 62 n.
135 n.
Smoke, as passive defense, 241
RAND Corporation, 285
Snyder, Glenn H., 79 n.
Rationality, 36 ff., 229, 256 n.,
Sokolovskii, V. D., 268, 285, 286 n.
275 ff.
Sokolovsky, V. D. See Sokolovskii
Read, Thornton, 178 n.
Space, 265, 275-76. See also Ballis-
Rearmament, 248 ff., 257 ff.
tic missile defenses
Reciprocity, in punishment, 148 n.
Speed: of nuclear warfare, 20, 23,
Reconnaissance, 209-10
163, 207-08; of coercive warfare,
Red Cross, International Committee
172-73, 200-01; in war termina-
of, 26 f., 139
tion, 213-14, 218-19; advantage
Reiners, Ludwig, 223 n.
of, 222-23, 227-30; in rearma-
Reprisal, 8, 129, 141-52,155, 168-
ment, 257-58. See also Preemp-
69,177-79,210,216,252
tive war
Republicans, 262
INDEX 311

Sputnik, 232, 265, 271, 275 Thresholds in warfare, 135,151-68

Stability, 234-38, 244-51, 256-59 passim
Steinstücken, 48 Thucydides, 66 n., 192, 269 n.
Strategie Air Command, 111 n., 232, Tibet, 252
237,269 Ticonderoga, 141
Strategie bombing, 16,129 n., Tonkin, Gulf of, 120,141 ff., 168
179 n., 200 f. Tourtellot, Arthur, B., 95 n.
Strategie dialogue, 220 Tradition, 151,152 f. See also
Strategy, 34 Precedent
Strike, industrial, 135-36 Trip-wire, 47, 71, 62 n., 92, 99,
Suicide, mutual, 203 105 n., 106,109
Summit Conference, 136 n., 270 Truce, 129, 141. See also Armistice;
Sun Tzu, 45 n. Termination of war
Superiority, military, 87 n., 98 f., Truman, Harry S., 69
191, 195 f., 204-11 passim, 266- Turkey, 83 n., 87 n., 97,160, 200,
83 passim 268
Surprise attack, 55 n., 172, 228, 233,
U-2 flights, 77,122 f., 136, 147, 177,
240, 260. See also Mobilization;
206, 266, 270
Preemptive war
Ultimate limit, 157ff.
Surrender, 12, 23, 30-31, 74 n., 77,
Uncertainty, 92-103,117 f. See also
86,126,129,196, 204-05, 210.
Accidental war; Brinkmanship;
See also Termination of war
"Chicken"
Swiss, Switzerland, 50 n., 79
Unconditional surrender, 23. See
Syria, 152
also Surrender
Szilard, Leo, 177
United Nations, 64, 124, 266. See
Tailgating, 136n. also Geneva negotiations; Inter-
Tariff bargaining, 281 national military authority
Taylor, Maxwell D., 159 n.
Vagts, Alfred, 239 n.
Technology, influence on warfare,
Vegetius, 45 n.
224 ff., 234-49 passim
Vera Cruz, 10
Tempo of war, 187. See also Speed
Verdun, 5
Termination of war, 20,128-29,
Victory, 22, 30-31,34
141,163,204-20,262-63
Vietnam, 38, 62, 75 f., 83 ff., 136,
Terrorism, 6 f., 17-18, 24, 200 f. See
141 ff., 152 n., 159 n., 164,
also Coercion; Power to hurt
166 ff., 171 ff., 175,186-88, 200
Test ban, 62 n., 153,264-70
Volciani, 66 n.
Thermal radiation, 241
Volunteers, 68
Thomas, T. H., 245 n., 286 n.
Vulnerability, 23 f., 208, 214, 217,
Threat, 1-18, 92. See also Brink-
224-28, 332-39, 269
manship; Compellence; Cred-
ibility; Deterrence Warner, Rex, 13 n.
"Threat that leaves something to Warning systems, 228 f., 232 f.
chance," 121 n. Weaponry. See also Technology
312 INDEX

Wellman, Paul L, 14 n. World War II, 9, 20, 25, 30,126,

Whiting, Allen, 54 138 f., 248 f.; gas, 131; strategic
"Will to fight," 213 bombing, 179 n.
Wohlstetter, Albert, 40 n., 82 n., Wright, Quincy, 27, 33
235 n.
Xenophon, 12 f., 13,45, 261, 263
Wohlstetter, Roberta, 40 n., 82 n.,
237 n. Yadin, Yigael, 144 n.
Wolfe, Thomas W, 285, 286 n. Yalu River, 129,132,134,138,140,
World War 1,16, 20, 21, 25, 221 ff., 164
243 f. Yugoslavia, 52, 61