War Without Profit Promises a New Epoch

THE MISSILE STANDOFF

BEHIND the grimly serious interservice war that flares sporadically through the Pentagon is the fact of swiftly changing weaponry that makes cherished service concepts obsolete almost as fast as they are worked out. The changing military concepts, in turn, bring strong pressure for reassessment of U.S. foreign policy; e.g., if the U.S. plans to counter future aggression with atomic attack, how many troops should it keep in Europe and Asia? But while the Defense and State departments work to keep up with these changes, surprisingly little thought has been given to an epochal event in weaponry that will most certainly confront the world in four to six years. The event: a standoff between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in intercontinental ballistic missiles--a change that will not only wrench every concept of defense but will permeate every aspect of international diplomacy as well.

The basis of today's military and political considerations is the chance of an atomic Pearl Harbor. Conceivably, Russia's leaders might still bet their lives on the possibility that a surprise hydrogen attack with strategic bombers could wipe out effective U.S. retaliatory power before U.S. planes could leave the ground. The gamble would be desperate, but the Strategic Air Command's General Curtis LeMay recently warned Congress that it might --conceivably--pay off. In short, today's fear of atomic war stems from the fact that the aggressor still has an outside chance to profit from attack.

The ICBM will end all hope for such aggression, however devastating, without sure and deadly retaliation. Thus, for the first time in human history, all chance of profit will be gone from all-out aggression.

Death Valley & Keokuk. The offensive potential of the ICBM is starkly clear. Traveling at 15,000-m.p.h., arching as high as 800 miles above the earth, armed with hydrogen warheads, Russian missiles might, within 30 minutes after their launching, rain ruin on U.S. cities, cause millions of casualties, raze the U.S. industrial plant.

But with its own ICBM, the U.S.--no matter how hard hit--could still strike back with equal ferocity. Engineers say the ICBM can be hidden away in underground tubes (see cut) safely out of reach of the enemy's ICBM. And dummy missile sites could be scattered around by the hundreds to draw enemy fire. The dispersive possibilities of the ICBM are overwhelming: the pressure of a single finger upon a master panel in an underground stronghold would be enough to raise the fiery spume of pre-aimed ICBMs from launching pads in the Death Valley wasteland and a Rocky Mountain fastness, from the arctic icecaps and the barnyard of a farmer near Keokuk, Iowa. The button need not be pushed by one of General LeMay's military experts; it might as easily be pressed by one surviving mechanic.

Thus, an ICBM Pearl Harbor attack could bring only devastating ICBM retaliation. Under such circumstances, full-scale aggression could not be considered by the rational mind. The ICBM could therefore stand as the greatest possible deterrent to all-out war, the full defense against its own kind--and all the equations of military and international relationships would be changed.

War & Peace. Some U.S. military leaders, especially in Army circles, argue that wars would then be conducted with "conventional" weapons in the style and on the scale of World War II. Others contend that there would be open season on brush wars of Korea's size and shape, with limited use of the tactical atomic bomb. Pundit Walter Lippmann suggests that guerrilla warfare might become the only thinkable type of conflict. Another possibility: since no nation could be expected to submit to ultimate defeat through the attrition of a series of limited wars, the tendency would be for such wars to expand until the imperiled nation, in desperation, finally pushes its ICBM button. With that risk involved, even the smallest war in its ultimate consequences could become too hazardous for the undertaking. The form of war might therefore shift entirely to economic, social, political and ideological conflict.

Because of its military potential, ICBM will rewrite all the rules of foreign relations. With ICBM firepower, huge armies will become obsolete. The nature of alliances will be changed; even now, the idea of expanding NATO from a purely military shield into a working community of political and economic interests is being discussed. Barring some new kind of economic or political magnetism, neutralism will become an even greater factor because of the risk of military involvement with either of the ICBM-armed powers. Certainly, statesmen will be able to approach the labyrinthine problems of disarmament from a new basis, once all profit is gone from world war.

The history of the club and the longbow and the musket teaches that the ICBM will probably not be the "ultimate" weapon in the sense that no defense can ever be developed against it. But there will doubtless be a period of years, perhaps decades, when the ICBM stands as the supreme, unstoppable weapon. Should the missile standoff burst upon a world unprepared to think about the new meanings, the ICBM could cause explosive political tensions that might even trigger the missile itself. What is important, then, is for the U.S. to approach the age of the ICBM with some hard thinking about its meaning.

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