THE COLD WAR & THE SMALL WAR A New Study in tne Anatomy or U.S. Doctrine

IN the Pentagon, the State Department, the White House, top U.S. policymakers are earnestly debating a new book, a brilliant, independent analysis of the nation's post war diplomatic and military struggle with Communism. Title : Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (Harper; $5). Author: Political Scientist Henry A. Kissinger, 34, associate director of Harvard's new Center for International Affairs, a policy consultant to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, wartime Army intelligence special ist. Heart of Kissinger's analysis: Americans must drastically revise their hopes for Communist redemption, e.g., through disarmament, their fears of all-out war, and their mental cliches about the shape of the next war, if they expect to win out against a relentless, single-minded enemy.

Between tne Alternatives

The U.S., says Kissinger, is so conditioned by its heritage of domestic achievement, by a history of military victories, and a general faith that peace is "normal" that it still does not realize the dimensions of danger in a world half-controlled by "an irreconcilably hostile bloc." The Communists, on the other hand, have exploited the U.S. desire for peace and its fear of all-out atomic war by playing with considerable skill their "strategy of ambiguity," i.e., by alternating belligerence with "peaceful coexistence," open repression (Hungary) with subtle infiltration (the Mideast). "What is striking [is] that essentially the same pattern of Soviet behavior should time and again raise discussion about its 'sincerity' or its 'novelty,' " says Kissinger. "Nothing could be more irrelevant." Steadfast Communist doctrine uses war and peace as varying opportunistic means to the same distant goal: domination of the entire world.

U.S. military policy against Soviet expansion, says Kissinger, has been inhibited by "our notion of aggression as an unambiguous act [i.e., a direct attack on the U.S. or Western Europe] and our concept of war as inevitably an all-out struggle" resulting in the enemy's "unconditional surrender." Against indirect Communist aggression by "internal subversion, intervention by 'volunteers,' domination through political and psychological warfare," U.S. doctrine has no flexible alternative between total war and peaceful inaction, because it is geared to "total" concepts. Neither psychologically nor militarily has the U.S. been willing to take risks or properly shape its power to battle less than total threats. Even when it enjoyed A-bomb monopoly, the U.S. failed to translate "our military superiority into a political advantage" over the Soviet bloc. Result: Communism took over in China and Czechoslovakia, won control of North Korea and North Viet Nam, is still busily at work in Southeast Asia.

Survival, Kissinger warns, "depends not only on our strength, but also on our ability to recognize [and fight] aggression" in all its forms. "In the nuclear age, by the time a threat has become unambiguous it may be too late to resist it."

Switcning tne Burden

Mastering the Soviet strategy of ambiguity, contends Kissinger, requires some drastic revisions in U.S. diplomatic and military doctrine. The U.S. must be willing to spend money--and lives, too, if necessary--to nip small Communist aggressions. He does not in the least down-rate the basic importance of the Air Force's Strategic Air Command and its capacity for massive retaliation. But the very existence of SAC, he holds, provides an opportunity to meet the less-than-total Communist strategy of ambiguity with a less-than-total U.S. strategy. This means that the U.S. must be psychologically, militarily and diplomatically prepared to fight "limited" nuclear wars to upset less-than-total Communist challenges.

Limited war, Kissinger maintains, need not lead either to all-out H-bomb war or to stalemate; linked with diplomacy, it strives for specific political gains. For every new Communist aggression, it promises a punishing limited setback, a setback that the enemy will reluctantly accept because the loss is not worth the risk of starting the all-out war. Thus the strategy of ambiguity and the burden of decision for risking total war are turned on the enemy; either he must settle for setback or risk the certain destruction that would come with all-out war. Thus the small inroads of aggression are stopped before they can add up to an all-or-nothing world crisis. "The fact that the Kremlin may stand to lose from a limited nuclear war does not mean that it could profit from all-out war," says Kissinger. "On the contrary, if our retaliatory force is kept at a proper level and our diplomacy shows ways out of a military impasse short of unconditional surrender, we should always be able to make all-out war seem an unattractive course."

Example: Korea

Kissinger's horrible example of how not to conduct limited war is Korea, the one limited war the U.S. has fought against Communism. All the confusions of U.S. policy popped up as fighting went on. Washington's fear of touching off a "big war" enfeebled U.S. planning to the point where General Omar Bradley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, crossed off an-expanded offensive as "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time." Zigzag U.S. policy was further shaken by paying too much attention to allies, e.g., Britain and France, who had no basic strategic interest in Korea, opposed taking any risks, however minor, which might extend the war to Europe. Unprepared for limited war, "we thought we could not afford to win in Korea, despite our strategic superiority, because Russia could not afford to lose." Kissinger contends that a decisive Red Chinese defeat in Korea would probably not have brought an all-out war; instead, the Soviet Union might have coldly reconsidered expending its resources to help a bungling ally. In any case, the Sino-Soviet alliance would have been severely strained. But during the long Korean stalemate, "our traditional insistence on divorcing force from diplomacy caused our power to lack purpose and our negotiations to lack force."

What the U.S. now needs to back up its broadened array of weaponry, says Kissinger, is a more subtle set of concepts in diplomacy and armed forces. Guiding U.S. power, U.S. diplomacy must always keep communications open with the enemy, make clear U.S. intentions to use appropriate force in local situations while possessing the capacity to inflict massive retaliation should big war come. Above all, diplomacy must leave room for "reasonable" "settlements, without pushing the Soviets into a blind thermonuclear alley.

Equally important, the U.S. armed forces must escape their preoccupation with all-out war, and the resulting scramble of all three services to get in on the Big-War act. Kissinger holds that the services must still develop a strong secondary capability to fight local wars. The Army, he says, should be expanded (by at least four divisions), not cut, to give it an adequate strategic reserve; it should acquire sufficient transportability and airlift so that it can be quickly moved in force to threatened areas. The Air Force should boost its less favored child, the Tactical Air Command. The Navy should place less emphasis on large, strategic carriers (soon to be downgraded by missiles), more on ocean-controlling antisubmarine warfare.

"To use our strategic striking force as a dual-purpose force would weaken the deterrent to all-out war [exactly] when it should be strongest." Lacking adequate small-war forces, the military command will be strongly tempted to counsel avoiding local conflicts in order to conserve strength for a "clearer" provocation--an echo of Omar Bradley's wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time. Without urging sky's-the-limit spending, Kissinger deplores the effect of increasing budget-mindedness on Administration thinking. "Budgetary requests are not formulated in the light of strategic doctrine. Rather doctrine is tailored and, if necessary, invented to fit budgetary requests."

Washington Reaction

Kissinger gets--and deserves--high marks from some of Washington's top policymakers and military men for the logic and solid thought evident in his shrewd analysis of postwar U.S.-Communist relationships, and his important book has become must reading in top echelons of Government. Policy planners generally agree with his tough analysis of the mistakes of Korea (says a top airman: "We made a basic mistake"). But they insist that the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council are now well aware of the need to be ready for small wars. Says one Pentagon critic: "We've already got a national doctrine: deterrence and containment. We want to deter the big wars, and the little ones, too." Moreover, the Dulles doctrine of retaliation "by means and at places of our choosing" is clear notice that the U.S. is prepared to fight small wars. The notice itself--with its own quality of ambiguity because it implies that the U.S. will decide just how small or how big to make the war--has perhaps won limited wars before they were started, e.g., Quemoy and Matsu off the China coast in 1955; in challenging the Soviet creeping offensive in the Mideast through the dispatch of the U.S. Sixth Fleet at the time of the Jordanian crisis (TIME, May 6).

On the military side, the services argue that they now have a substantial small-war capability. The Army, while woefully in need of air transport, is streamlining itself so that it can quickly be flown to brush-fire war areas. The Navy's readiness to use Marine amphibious forces is part of the Navy's traditional role in "limited situations." And the Air Force's Tactical Air Command and some SAC units could be diverted to limited wars without limiting SAC's overall retaliatory mission.

Such criticism of Kissinger specifics are valid, but so is Kissinger's broader point that all these assets are likely to be wasted unless the U.S. is militarily, and above all psychologically, ready to use them--if deterrence fails. It takes a firm hand and steady nerves to face a small-war challenge, to resist the outcries against atomic weapons, and to confront the enemy with the choice of backing down or risking all-out war. Raising the prospect of such a challenge in advance is Kissinger's important service. At a time when public apathy, disarmament talk and budget-mindedness are being felt in the scales of U.S. policy. Auditor Kissinger has brought fresh ideas to weigh.

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