Rockefeller Report Calls for Meeting It With Better Military Setup, Sustained Will

THE U.S.S.R.'S CHALLENGE

INTO the post-Sputnik atmosphere of foggy fear and cautious reassurance came this week a careful, levelheaded assessment of the dangers that face the U.S. and some hardheaded suggestions as to what ought to be done about them. This was the Rockefeller Report, drawn by a panel of 19 citizens * after 14 months of hearing expert testimony, weighing evidence and hammering out conclusions. The report's basic message: the U.S.. with perhaps a two-year clear superiority in striking power, is rapidly losing its lead over the U.S.S.R. in the military race. "Unless present trends are reversed, the world balance of power will shift in favor of the Soviet bloc. If that should happen, we are not likely to be given another chance to remedy our failings. However, it is emphatically not too late if we are prepared to make the required big effort now and in the years ahead."

THE SOMBER THREAT

The peril to the U.S., says the report, lies in the meeting of two separate dangers. These are 1) the Communist threat, striving with a combination of missile rattling and peace propaganda to dominate the U.S. and the free world; 2) the city-killing potential of new thermonuclear weapons.

The city-killing potential is grimly set out: "An attack on 50 of our most important urban centers would, in the absence of effective defensive measures, produce at least 10 to 15 million dead, 15 to 20 million injured from blast and heat, and another 25 to 35 million casualties from fallout."

Already the U.S.S.R., by sacrificing "the civilian sector" of its economy, had passed the U.S. in the quantity and quality of many high-priority weapons. The Russian atomic stockpile, long smaller and less diversified than the U.S.'s, is now growing to the point where Communism can inflict grievous damage. The U.S.S.R. has a force of modern jet bombers with electronic defenses, a fleet of 4OO-plus submarines, even an arsenal of operational medium-range ballistic missiles with which the Communists can now attack targets in Japan, Formosa, and most of Western Europe (but the U.S.S.R.'s intercontinental missiles are still experimental).

And the U.S.S.R.'s greatest and growing advantage is that Communism, by its nature, is ready to strike the first blow and need prepare only for the war it proposes to fight, while the U.S., by its nature, must be defensive and gear its planning and procurement to any possible form of attack at any possible time.

Says the report: "Foreseeable new offensive weapons such as ICBMs--sudden in action, massively destructive, difficult to destroy either before launching or in flight--will greatly aggravate the problems of strategic defense and enormously increase its costs."

THE SPECTRUM OF RESPONSE

"The world knows that the U.S. will never engage in preventive war," says the Rockefeller Report. Nor can the U.S. turn into a coercive Communist-type garrison state. "The power which is generated by the voluntary effort of a free people cannot be equaled by the reluctant compliance of subject nations." The only choice for the U.S. is to generate the essential new power while also preserving and expanding the democratic vigor of the U.S. way of life and the growth of the domestic economy.

The time to begin: now. The cost: $3 billion more for defense spending every year for the next several years, "with no leveling-off likely before 1965." The approach: a determined streamlining of plans and organization along the whole defense spectrum:

Strategic Concepts. Above all, the U.S. must plan for the all-out war. Therefore the U.S. must now increase the battle potential of the Strategic Air Command by multiplying and dispersing its bases, by maintaining a bigger strike force at the ready and in the air. The U.S. must tighten its defenses against enemy aircraft, missiles, and missile-firing submarines. The report takes a dim view of Naval aircraft carriers in the missile age, urges the Navy to spend more money on submarines and antisub protection.

The U.S. also needs to put new emphasis on land-sea-tactical air capability to fight limited wars--nuclear or conventional ("Morality does not depend on the type of explosive but upon the use to which the explosive is put"). It must also be ready to support friendly governments in "concealed wars," i.e., to help quench subversion from within. "Unless we have a clear understanding of our national purpose and close political ties with other nations of the free world, we shall find ourselves paralyzed in the face of upheavals which may gravely imperil the safety of the whole world."

Defense Organization. In the light of new strategic concepts and new weapons technology, the old land-sea-air roles and missions of the Army, Navy and the Air Force are out of date (TIME, Jan. 6), and ought to be drastically revised. Items:

P:The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who currently is an unofficial compromiser and adviser to the Secretary of Defense and President, should be designated the "Principal Military Adviser to the Secretary of Defense and the President," put in actual command of the Joint Chiefs. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs would head a sort of supreme staff in control of new "functional" commands, e.g., Strategic Air, antisubmarine warfare, continental defense, to suit modern operational requirements.

P:The Secretary of Defense, now "so burdened with negative tasks... that he cannot play his full part in the initiation of high military policy," ought to serve as Deputy Commander in Chief to preside over operations, logistics and appropriations, to exercise direct personal charge of all research and development, e.g., outer-space projects.

P:All U.S. officers above the rank of brigadier general or the equivalent should in effect be taken out of their old services to become officers of a new single-service "Armed Forces of the U.S.," a new plateau of promotion to which all younger officers would presumably aspire. "Junior officers would know that their future would depend on their ability to take a broad view, rather than on the ability to defend the point of view of their service on interdepartmental committees."

Industrial Base. The U.S. needs a great and growing technological base, a pool of scientific talent and a high level of scientific ability to 1) maintain the strategic balance in the cold war's battle of the laboratories, 2) cut down the crucial "lead time" in which new weapons are brought from drawing board to operational capability. "Providing we apply [this technological base] with a clear sense of direction, [it] should enable us to assign high priority to a greater variety of projects than the U.S.S.R."

Tightening Alliances. For all the chronic talk among U.S. allies about neutralism, fear of Communist prowess, weakness of frail economies, inability to make sacrifices, U.S. allies as well as the U.S. have "an equal interest" in withstanding Communism in all-out or limited war. It is therefore in the equal interest of the U.S. and U.S. allies to 1) pool scientific and technical resources and brainpower, 2) tighten allied interdependence in command, 3) keep U.S. forces deployed in NATO's airpower and ground-power shield, 4) provide willing European allies with nuclear weapons and delivery systems--controlled by Europeans--"to give reality to the European sense of participation, which is a basic ingredient of the will to resist." And in the final analysis, whenever the U.S. choice lies between "acquiescence" in Communist aggression and acceptance of a split among allies, "we must act with resolution--or accept grave losses."

Civil Defense. "Our civil defense program and that of our allies is completely inadequate...In the age of the ballistic missile, the known capability of a society to withstand attack will become an increasingly important deterrent." Specifically, the U.S. must develop an attack-proof radio warning net, begin building radioactive fallout shelters coast to coast (but a fantastically expensive blast-shelter program deserves more study), disperse stockpiles of food to meet famine and industrial reserves to meet economic chaos (with immediate tax incentives for companies that build new plants away from target areas). Beyond this obviously costly program the U.S. should plan to help U.S. allies plan and pay for their civil defense programs too. "Civil defense will not be easy and it can never be complete...but protection against radioactive fallout and other contamination appears to be much more feasible."

Disarmament Talks. "Genuine, enforceable, inspected reduction of arms is an objective on which all Americans are agreed, [but] the illusion of security brought about by a spurious agreement to disarm would be a poor substitute for vigilance based on strength."

"A world from which the threat of war has been removed would correspond to the deepest desires of American society," the report sums up. "We like to believe that reasonable men can settle all disputes through good will and compromise, and that power should be invoked only as a last resort. We therefore tend to think of diplomacy and force as successive and separate phases of national policy. Unfortunately, the position in which we find ourselves does not permit such absolute distinctions. In a revolutionary period the ability and willingness to use force may in itself provide a factor of stability. To a world threatened by aggression and infiltration, American strength and resolution are essential if there is to be a guarantee of security..."

* Panel II, one of seven panels set up in the Special Studies Project of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc. of New York. Co-signers of the Defense Report: Investment Banker Frank Altschul, vice president, Council on Foreign Relations; General (ret.) Frederick L. Anderson, commander of the Eighth Bomber Command in World War II; onetime Assistant Secretary of the Army Karl R. Bendetsen; President Detlev W. Bronk of the National Academy of Sciences; former Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Gordon Dean; Physicist James B. Fisk of Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.; Investment Banker Bradley Gaylord; Lawyer Roswell L. Gilpatric, former Under Secretary of the Air Force; Investment Banker Townsend W. Hoopes; Johns Hopkins Administrative Officer Ellis A. Johnson; Harvardman Henry A. Kissinger, author of Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (TIME, Aug. 26); Colonel George A. Lincoln, West Point social scientist; Henry R. Luce, editor-in-chief, TIME, LIFE, FORTUNE; Lawyer Frank C. Nash, former Assistant to the Defense Secretary (who died during the study); Laurance S. Rockefeller; Harvard Economist Arthur Smithies; Physicist Edward Teller; Aeronautical Consultant T. F. Walkowicz; Industrialist Carroll L. Wilson, former AEC general manager.

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