2. THE STEWART ALSOP ARTICLE IN THE SATURDAY EVENING POST OF 1 DECEMEBER 1962, WHICH, HE STATES, "IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE I'VE EVER WRITTEN," CONCERNS CUBA, BUT MAINLY DEFENSE SECRETARY ROBERT MCNAMARA, WHO "HAS THE HIGHEST INTELLIGENC

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP74-00115R000300080036-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 20, 2014
• Sequence Number: 36
• Publication Date: November 27, 1962
• Content Type: MEMO

'STAT
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STAT
V/6
/COO
MEMORANDUM FOR THE DEPUTLDIRECTOR
0/
VIA: The Executive Director 11
% 27 November 1962
Of
1. This memorandum is for information only.
2. The Stewart Alsop article in the SATURDAY EVENING POST of 1 December
1962, which, he states, "is the most important piece I've ever written,"
concerns Cuba, but mainly Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who "has the
highest intelligence quotient of any leading public official in this century."
Alsop on page 16 quotes McNamara as being "absolutely convinced" of current
intelligence estimates regarding U. S. decisive margin of superiority in
missiles. But on page 18 in answer to a question regarding the so-called
missile gap myth, McNamara states: "The myth was the result of incomplete
intelligence; although it was created by intelligence analysts acting in good
faith, it was a myth all the same."
3. I sent you yesterday an advance copy of LIFE which also glorifies
McNamara and which gives McNamara and the DIA credit for the hard intelligence
on Cuba.
Attachment
-STAMM J. GROGAV
Assistant to the Director
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The
Saturday
About the Authors., Washington editor Stewart I?T
Alsop hdi eves that his article on OUR NEW STRAT- FOUNDED IN I72 III
EGY is "die most important important picce.I've ever writ-
ten." Alsop not only talkeifat lenglh-With -sec- diltior.0?11
retary of Defense Robert McNamara, whose
remarkably candid exclusive interview is recorded
in detail, but also asked questions of practically all
of McNamara's chief military and civilian subordi-
nates. ?=?,?????
nates. . . .
ur w Strategy
THE ALTERNATIVES
TO TOTAL WAR
By STEWART ALSOP
? If the Cold War ever reaches the final showdown,
do we have to choose between nuclear holocaust and
surrender? ? Or can we find other ways to defend
ourselves? ? Planning for such a crisis is the problem
confronting Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
? Pentagon strategists call it "thinking about the
unthinkable." ? They use weird terms like "spasm
response," "megadeath" and "counterforce collat-
eral damage." ? But these words could become
realities the next time Khrushchev makes a wrong
move. ? In the following pages, a Post editor reports
on McNamara's "Doctrine of Controlled Response"
why it has cost billions in extra spending, why
it might someday save millions of American lives.
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"There's not much doubt he has the highest
I.Q. of this century's top public officials."
When Nikita Khrushchev gave the order to
build nuclear-missile sites in Cuba, he laid
a military trap for the United States. In so doing,
he brought the world close to what President
Kennedy called "the abyss" of nuclear war. The
President never had the faintest doubt that the
Soviet missile bases in Cuba had to be eliminated
at whatever risk. Behind this crucial decision was
an understanding of the military realities that
underlie and shape the world situation today. No
one in the United States is better qualified or
more articulate upon the subject of these military
realities than the President's chief strategic ad-
viser, Secretary of Defense Robert F. McNamara.
Since McNamara became Secretary of Defense,
the whole American defense establishment has
been shaken from stem to stern, and some $14,-
000,000,000 more than planned by the Eisen-
hower Administration has been allocated for our
defense. With the McNamara regime in the
Pentagon well into its second year, it is time to
ask: What are the results of all this shaking and
spending?
Moreover, since McNamara took over, the
strategic theory of the United States?the basic
thinking about the kind of wars we may be called
upon to fight, and how we will fight them?has
been drastically revised. It is important for
Americans to understand this revolution in our
strategic thinking, for it is a revolution we will
live with or die with for years to come.
It ought to be said at the outset that this report
is not going to make light or easy reading. It con-
cerns subjects which a lot of Americans prefer
not to think about at all. Moreover, it is impos-
sible to write about such subjects without using
occasionally a rather weird sort of Pentagon
shorthand, which includes phrases like "second-
strike counterforce capability" or "spasm re-
sponse," or "counterforce collateral damage."
The jargon has an unreal and academic ring at
first, like the debates of medieval theologians.
But if you talk, as this reporter has recently
talked, with the 30 or 40 key men who are re-
sponsible for our strategy in the nuclear age, the
jargon begins to take on an oddly fascinating
reality. For you come to recognize that it is
about things that are real enough?like the sur-
vival or destruction of the United States, or the
life or death of you and me.
Thinkers About the "Unthinkable"
The inventors of the Pentagon shorthand are a
new breed of men, the "defense intellectuals."
The job of this new breed is to "think about the
unthinkable." The nuclear weapons and the
ballistic missiles, married together, have changed
the very nature of warfare, as Winston Churchill
was the first to point out, and the defense intel-
lectuals are professional students of this new and
almost unthinkable kind of war.
Most of them are young, almost all are bril-
liantly intelligent, and many once worked for the
Government-supported "think factories," like
the Rand Corporation. McNamara has imported
a good many of these defense intellectuals into
the Pentagon?men like Charles Hitch, Henry
Rowen, Alain Enthoven, Eugene Fubini, Harold
Brown. But the No. 1 defense intellectual is
McNamara himself.
There is no longer much doubt that Robert
McNamara has the highest intelligence quotient
Orany leadin-g public official in this century. With,
his astonishing mentaI equipment, McNamara';
quickly mastered the shorthand of the defense'
intellectuals and the basic concepts which it
expressed. He has gone on to reshape and re-
define those concepts. He is himself the chief
inventor of three distinct but related "McNamara
doctrines." These three McNamara doctrines
express the revolution in our strategic thinking.
A good place to begin, in order to understand
the McNamara doctrines, is with the story, often
told in the Pentagon, of the encounter between
one of the defense intellectuals and an Air Force
general. It took place in the pre-McNamara era,
at the vast headquarters of the Strategic Air
Command near Omaha, Nebraska. The defense
intellectual had a high security clearance, and
the general briefed him at length on the SAC
"war plan." The war plan was a design for reduc-
ing all Russia, in a matter of hours after the "Go
order" was given, to a heap of radioactive rubble.
"General," said the defense intellectual. "You
don't have a war plan. All you have is a sort of
horrible spasm."
Genius for Recognizing the Obvious
The "horrible spasm" war plan was simply a
massive civilization-destroying attack, a natural
outgrowth of the theory of "massive retaliation."
In his job McNamara has had no choice but to
think about the unthinkable. McNamara has a
genius for recognizing the obvious: The Soviet
Union is obviously also capable of "massive re-
taliation." Thus if a horrible spasm is visited
upon the Soviet Union, a horrible spasm will
also be visited upon the United States. To base
U. S. strategy wholly on the "spasm response"
therefore means, as one defense intellectual puts
it, "basing strategy on a willingness to commit
suicide."
McNamara recognizes that in certain circum-
stances we may have no choice but to "literally
destroy" the Soviet Union, come what may, as
he says in the revealing interview which accom-
panies this report. But McNamara is a man who
hates to be pinned down. He always wants a
choice. His favorite word is "options."
"Bob McNamara seeks his options," says one
friend, "as Parsifal sought the Holy Grail." His
thinking about the unthinkable has led Mc-
Namara to the conclusion that even in a nuclear
war it should be possible to "maintain the op-
tions." He has concluded that even a nuclear
war need not necessarily be a civilization-
destroying "multimegadeath war"?megadeath
being the shorthand for a million dead.
This conclusion is central to McNamara's stra-
tegic theory. The object is to avoid the "spasm
response," and to make the nuclear weapon a
usable instrument of national policy. The instru-
ment, if it is ever used, must be under continuous
control of the civilian authority?the President
or, if he is killed, his constitutional successor.
This is the Doctrine of the Controlled Response.
It is the basic McNamara doctrine, to which the
two other McNamara doctrines are corollaries.
"Before McNamara," one defense intellectual
explains, "the President really had only two
I :7'
"
buttons to push?Go and No Go. If he pushed
the Go button, the military took over VI? the
spasm response. McNamara wants to' je 'the
President a whole series of buttons on his nu-
clear console, from strictly limitAd tactical nuclear
war at one end, through several shadings to
Armageddon at the other end. He wants to give
the President a nonnuclear console as well. And
he wants to make sure that the civilian leaders,
not the military, do the button-pushing from
beginning to end."
Two requirements must be met, if the Doctrine
of the Controlled Response is to make sense.
First, the difficult problem of maintaining con-
trol, even after a surprise nuclear attack, must be
solved. The buttons must still be there to push, a
civilian leader must be there to push them, and
the military must be able to understand and obey
the button-pushing.
This is the problem of "command and con-
trol," to which McNamara from the beginning
has assigned a high priority. Various steps, some
necessarily secret, have been taken to assure
continued command and control. The whole
communications system has been made heavily
redundant, so that it can still function if part of
it is knocked out in a surprise attack. Many
things have been done to ensure against un-
authorized or accidental button-pushing. For
example, an electronic "permissive link" system
has been established to short-circuit the un-
authorized firing of a nuclear weapon and thus
guard against the sort of war-by-accident de-
scribed in the novel Fail-Safe. And steps have
also been taken to ensure the physical survival
of the civilian leadership. "If one day Lyndon
Johnson is no longer seen in his accustomed
haunts," one of the defense intellectuals wryly
remarked, "you'll know the situation is really
ugly."
The Still-Secret Gaither Report
The other requirement is that there must be
weapons to respond with even after a massive
surprise nuclear attack. Here it is worth glancing
back into the recent past, for such a backward
glance will suggest how our situation has been
transformed in this respect. Readers with long
memories will recall the furor five years ago over
the famous, still-secret Gaither Report. The rea-
son for the furor was simple. The members of
the Gaither Committee, after a good look at
our situation, concluded that the Soviets might
soon be capable of playing Delilah to our Sam-
son, by destroying our ability to retaliate against
a surprise attack.
In those days almost the whole of our nuclear
striking power was concentrated on some 42
aboveground SAC bomber bases. A single hy-
drogen bomb per base might all but eliminate
our nuclear striking power, leaving us a hairless
Samson. The then-current intelligence estimates
indicated that the Soviets would soon be able
to do the job.
Despite much soothing syrup distributed at
the time, the Gaither Report sent a shiver
throughout the entire defense community. It was
a useful shiver. Work on the ground-based long-
range missiles and the Polaris missiles and sub-
marines was stepped up. So was work on
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In Pentagon terms, "spasm response" strategy
"is based on a willingness to commit suicide."
BMEWS, the Ballistic Missile Early Warning
System, which covers the northern approaches
to this country. And for the first time a propor-
tion of the big SAC bomber force was put on
15-minute ground alert.
It is important to understand the significance
of the BMEWS-bomber combination. For that
combination is still today, in this worried autumn
of 1962, the heart and soul of our defense against
Soviet surprise attack. BMEWS would provide
warning of any missile attack across the northern
approaches. Half of SAC's 1,500 bombers are
always now on a 15-minute ground alert. This
great force of SAC alert planes would be off the
ground and winging toward the Soviet Union
before a Russian bomb fell. Although some of
these planes would certainly be destroyed, they
could unquestionably deliver a wholly devastat-
ing nuclear retaliation. Thus the Soviets could
not play Delilah to our Samson.
The Cuba Plot: to Bypass BMEWS
_
This suggests why McNamara instantly recog-
nized Khrushchev's attempt to transform Cuba
into a missile base as a trap, which had to be
smashed at any cost. Khrushchev's trap was a
way of bypassing BMEWS. There is no missile
warning system between this country and Cuba,
and Cuba is so close to this country that no
effective warning system is possible. If Khrush-
chev had completed the laying of his trap, he
_
would have broken the BMEWS-bomber corn-
as a thief breaks the combination of
a safe. With no warning time, the whole SAC
-
bomber complex would have been nakedly ex-
posed to surprise attack from the Soviet missile
base in Cuba. The world balance of power would
have been shifted drastically in Russia's favor.
The "controlled response" which McNamara
seeks would then have been rendered impossible.
To be sure, airborne SAC bombers and the
Polaris missiles, which because of limited ac-
curacy and range are essentially "anticity" weap-
ons, would have ensured us the final, suicidal
"spasm response." But that is precisely what
McNamara seeks to avoid.
From Khrushchev's point of view, the combi-
nation would have been broken just in time to
give him an opportunity for a decisive showdown
with the West. As the Cuban story has unfolded,
it has become obvious that the attempt to estab-
lish a Soviet missile base in Cuba was part of an
elaborate plan, first conceived many months ago,
to prepare for such a showdown.
A 4,000-man team of Soviet military techni-
cians installed the missiles with amazing speed,
and this team must have started training last
May or earlier. A vital part of the plan was an
attempt by Khrushchev to deceive President
Kennedy. A subordinate officer of the Soviet
embassy in Washington conveyed personal as-
surances to the President from Khrushchev,
through attorney general Robert Kennedy, that
under no circumstances would Soviet weapons
capable of hitting targets on the United States
mainland be established in Cuba. The purpose
of both the speed and the deception is clear in
retrospect. It was to use the Cuban missile base
as leverage to force an American backdown in
Berlin, or Southeast Asia, or elsewhere.
McNamara, who likes to see war zones for himself, visits Vietnam with Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer.
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"Bob McNamara seeks his options," says one
friend, as Parsifal sought the Holy Grail."
Khrushchev's need for maximum speed and
maximum deception is easily explained. Very
soon now the.BMEWS-bomber combination will
no longer be the essential element in our defense
against surprise attack. Very soon now our
defense combination will be unbreakable.
Here it is instructive to compare what was
being said only a few years ago by knowledge-
able men and what McNamara is saying now.
In 1958, for example, Sen. John F. Kennedy
warned in a somber speech that the United
States in "1960-64" would be in a "position of
great peril," as a result of crushing Soviet supe-
riority in 'offensive and defense missile capabil-
ity." He was not alone. Among many others,
Gen. Maxwell Taylor, now chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, foresaw much the same grim
future, "unless heroic measures are taken." (The
general's italics.)
Compare these dire forecasts with what Mc-
Namara says in the accompanying interview
about our ability to "take a full surprise attack"
and respond either by destroying the aggressor
or hitting only military targets. If McNamara is
not talking through his hat, our situation in terms
of the nuclear power balance has been wonder-
fully transformed.
Mind you, if Khrushchev had succeeded in
breaking the BMEWS-bomber combination, Mc-
Namara would have been talking through his
hat-But the combination has not been broken,
and McNamara is not talking through his hat.
Our situation has been transformed. Why?
Is it because of McNamara's "heroic meas-
ures"? He has allocated about $6,000,000,000
more than planned under the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration to improve our ability to deliver
nuclear weapons to target. But McNamara him-
self is the first to acknowledge that this is not the
real reason for the transformation?the money
has not yet begun to pay off importantly in
nuclear hardware. As one defense intellectual
put it, "What we are living with now is what we
inherited from Ike."
Decisive "Margin of Superiority"
The real reason for the transformation in our
situation is that, as McNamara says, "a myth of
national weakness has been destroyed." It might
be-more accurate to say that "a myth of Soviet
strength has been destroyed." The Soviets simply
did not build the kind of long-range-missile
fo-r-Ee they were expected to build. According to
the- inielligence estimates current three or four
years ago, the Soviets were expected by this time
to have between 600 and 800 intercontinental
missiles. According to the current estimates,
the 100'th long-range missile became opera-
tional only a few weeks ago.
If the current intelligence estimates are ac-
curate?and on this score McNamara says that
he is "absolutely convinced"?the decisive "mar-
gin of superiority," which McNamara claims, is
entirely real. That margin is based today on the
BMEWS-bomber combination which Khrush-
chev tried to break. But McNamara's $6,000,-
000,000 extra investment will also soon be paying
off in a big way.
Until very recently our intercontinental ground-
based missile force was "soft"?it consisted of
about 60 of the big, liquid-fueled, thin-skinned
missiles, like the Atlas and the first version of the
Titan. These missiles are aboveground. They
could be destroyed by a warhead exploding
several miles away, and it is slow and tedious
work to get them into firing position. They could
thus be destroyed in a surprise attack, which is
why the BMEWS-bomber combination is still
so vital.
But in recent weeks the first "hard" Titan and
Minutema,u inissile sites in the United States
have been declared ready for business. A hard
missile is dug underground. It can be put out of
business only by a direct hit or a very close miss.
And the Minuteman can be fired almost as
quickly and simply as a bullet is fired when you
pull the trigger of a gun.
Moreover, thanks in part to McNamara's $6,-
000,000,000 investment, we will soon have large
numbers of these hard missiles. By the end of
next year they will number in the low hundreds.
By the end of 1964 we will hive upward of 800.
When that time comes, no trap IChrushchev can
lay for us could eliminate our ability of "con-
trolled response."
Claim: Sure Second-Strike Capability
Missile mathematics is a complicated business,
which keeps the Pentagon's computers whirring.
But as one of the defense intellectuals has re-
marked, "You don't really need computers?
only the stub of a pencil and the back of an
envelope." The Pentagon rule of thumb is that
it would require eight Soviet missiles to knock
out one hard American missile. Thus to have any
hope of destroying our missile force?let alone
our bombers, our submarines and our other
means of delivery?the Soviets would have to
have a missile force eight times as big as ours.
"They just can't do it." That is the confident,
unanimous prediction of the defense intellectuals.
And as time goes on, and our protected missile
force grows, it will become more and more im-
possible for the Soviets to "do it."
With the Cuban trap smashed, in short, Mc-
Namara claims what is known in the Pentagon
shorthand as "sure second-strike capability." He
claims more than that, although some Pentagon-
ians privately believe that his second claim is
premature. He claims that we could "respond by
hitting only military targets." In the shorthand
McNamara claims "second-strike counterforce
capability."
Here we come to the second McNamara doc-
trine, which is a corollary of the Doctrine of the
Controlled Response?the Doctrine of Counter-
force Retaliation, which is also known as "the
no-cities doctrine." Here it is in McNamara's
words, in a historic recent speech in Ann Arbor,
Michigan:
"Our nuclear strength . . . makes possible a
strategy designed to preserve the fabric of our
societies if war should occur. The U.S. has come
to the conclusion that to the extent feasible . . .
principal military objectives, in the event of a
nuclear war. . . should be the destruction of the
enemy's military forces, not of his civilian pop-
ulation."
One of the young defense intellectuals tried to
explain this "counterforce doctrine" in simple
?
terms: "This country and the Soviet Union are
like two men with cocked pistols. Both know that
if one trigger is pulled the other will be pulled.
Both want to be able to aim at the heart. But
both have a mutual interest in avoiding death.
So both will also want to be able to aim at the
shoulder, say, or the hand holding the pistol, as
in one of those duels where both duelists want
to stop short of killing. The trouble is, of course,
that to hit the shoulder and not the heart you've
got to have a damn good aim. And if you aim at
the shoulder, and the other fellow aims at your
heart, you've got to have another bullet left to
aim at his heart."
' McNamara recognizes the need for that second
bullet. Here he is again, speaking at Ann Arbor:
"[We can] retain, even in the face of a massive
surprise attack, sufficient reserve striking power
to destroy an enemy society, if driven to it. In
other words, we are giving the possible opponent
the strongest imaginable incentive to refrain from
striking our cities."
One of the defense intellectuals put the matter
more simply: "We might choose to go for the
missile bases, not Moscow. But if he hits New
York, good-bye Moscow?and every other place
in Russia bigger than a one-horse town."
This "counterforce doctrine" represents a
revolution in our defense strategy. It also holds
out hope?though no certainty?that the "fabric
of our society" could survive a thermonuclear
war. Because it is so important, certain questions
need to be asked about this second McNamara
doctrine.
The first question has already been asked?in
Russia as well as in this country. Is it really a
"first-strike doctrine"? Is it a formula for hitting
the Russians before they can hit us? If we have
the power to strike decisively at Soviet nuclear
forces after they have hit us, doesn't it make
sense to strike before they can hit us?
No U.S. Temptation to Strike First
McNamara's answer is that it does not make
sense. As one defense intellectual put it, "We
could decimate their forces in a first strike, but in
the nuclear age decimation is not enough."
Suppose, with a first strike, we knocked out
nine tenths of their missile-bomber force. They
would still have enough left to destroy the major
cities of Europe and America?and that is pre-
sumably precisely what they would do. As a
McNamara subordinate put it: "We're not about
to kiss good-bye to Manhattan, not unless we
have to."
The second question is also obvious. Won't the
Soviets also achieve a "sure second-strike capa-
bility"? McNamara's answer is surprising and
significant. The first part of the answer is, of
course, "yes." There is already evidence that the
Soviets are getting ready to leapfrog from their
cumbersome soft missiles to the hard solid-fueled
missiles like Minuteman. The second part of the
answer is the surprising part. It boils down to
"the sooner, the better."
Many of the military men, like General Taylor,
agree in substance with McNamara's curious but
logical reasoning, as set forth in the accompany-
ing interview. Some do not. In the Air Force
especially, there is skepticism about the whole
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Some military men are skeptical about the whole
retaliation theory of the "defense intellectuals."
theory of "counterforce retaliation," which is
regarded as the unrealistic invention of the de-
fense intellectuals. "You just can't control these
weapons that easily," says one Air Force general.
"It's like asking us to play a Beethoven sonata
with one hand tied behind our backs and the
other in a boxing glove."
But on one point there is unanimous agree-
ment. McNamara's "no-cities" theory makes
sense only if it is married to a serious national
shelter program.
The only way to kill a hard missile is to use a
nuclear warhead to dig it out of the ground. This
means ground-level bursts. This in turn means
great masses of radioactive debris in the atmos-
phere and thus maximum fallout. (This used to
be called "the bonus," but in the current short-
hand it is called "collateral counterforce dam-
age.") The best estimates are that even in a
no-cities war there might be upward of 70,000,000
dead in this country from fallout alone. In some
circumstances, depending on certain variables,
the fatality rate could be upward of 60 percent
of the population from fallout alone, even if the
cities were spared.
Chances for Surviving Catastrophe
Given so monstrous a catastrophe, could "the
fabric of our society" be preserved? Perhaps in
time it could be restored. The human race is
fecund, and human bodies could in time be re-
placed more readily than the delicate machinery
of our industrial society. But the fabric would be
most terribly rent, and it would be a very long
time before it could be knitted together again.
Now suppose the same set of circumstances,
plus a serious national fallout-shelter program.
The Pentagon's innumerable studies suggest that
in this case fatalities might be "on the order of"
10 percent of the population.
In short, even under what the Pentagon grimly
calls "optimum" circumstances, nuclear war
would be a hideous thing. But as McNamara
says, "You have to think about it." And even
with one American in 10 dead from a nuclear
attack, the essential "fabric" of American society
might well be preserved if our cities and indus-
tries still stood.
All this is enough to suggest why McNamara
means to put a serious fallout-shelter program
very high on his list of priorities for the next
session of Congress. But all this is also enough to
suggest why thinking men in and out of the
Pentagon are beginning to question the value of
the nuclear weapon as the chief military instru-
ment of national policy.
"Bob McNamara is a near-genius," says one
of these critics. "His no-cities theory is a brilliant
attempt to rationalize the nuclear weapon. But it
just won't wash. Suppose both sides adopt a no-
cities strategy?which seems to me unlikely?how
can you rely on a weapon as your chief instru-
ment of power when you know that using it will
cost you at least twenty million dead?"
McNamara himself, in his endless quest for
"options," has moved at least halfway to the
conclusion implicit in that question. And here
we come to the last of the McNamara doc-
trines?the Doctrine of the Conventional Option.
Ever since he became Secretary of Defense,
McNamara, with the President's full backing,
has preached this doctrine doggedly?often to
deaf Allied ears. The heart of this third Mc-
Namara doctrine is simple. We must have enough
nonnuclear power so that "we cannot have
nuclear war forced upon us because we have
no other choice."
To this end McNamara has invested some
$8,000,000,000 above the Eisenhower level in
nonnuclear defense. Because of the difference in
lead time between conventional and nuclear
weapons, this investment has already paid off
handsomely. McNamara "quantifies the incre-
ment" (a typical McNamara phrase) at 25 per-
cent for the NATO forces, 45 percent for
American forces.
As a result, we now certainly have "the con-
ventional option" in peripheral situations?
Khrushchev never had any doubt that we could
handle Fidel Castro with our conventional forces.
But our central weakness is implicit in the last
part of the interview which accompanies this
article. If the Soviets make a serious grab for
Berlin, we will have to "use all weapons," in
McNamara's phrase. As a defense intellectual
put it, "No matter how you slice it, if we're
serious about holding Berlin, we've got to be
prepared to go to the nucs." (Pronunciation:
newk s.)
In other words, in Europe, which is the grand
prize of the cold war, we could "have nuclear war
forced upon us because we have no other choice."
As McNamara insists, there is no inherent rea-
son, in terms of "wealth, manpower, resources,"
why this should be so. In all these ways the
Western alliance ought to be "more than a
match for the Communist side." But it isn't. In
Europe we lack the "conventional option." And
we are not going to achieve that option in the
near future.
Final, Intangible Cold-War Factor
As a defense intellectual says, "Sure, we could
match them?if. If the British adopted con-
scription. If the French committed their forces
to NATO. If the Germans upped their propor-
tion of manpower and gross national product
devoted to defense to our level. If we ourselves
cut back our long noncombat tail. But when are
all these things going to happen? Not until or
unless we've all had the living daylights scared
out of us."
Perhaps that time is coming soon. And here
we come to a final, intangible factor in the cold-
war equation, a factor which cannot be "quan-
tified." It is will?the will of the people of the
United States; above all, their President.
Nikita Khrushchev told Robert Frost that we
Americans are "too liberal" to fight. Earlier he
told the British ambassador in Moscow that
Americans were not "crazy" enough to "sacri-
fice thirty million people for three million people
in Berlin." Khrushchev must be persuaded that
we are "crazy" enough to do just that.
Perhaps Cuba has helped to persuade him.
Meanwhile, in charge of our defenses is a brilliant
man with the courage to think about the un-
thinkable and the strength to shape our strategy,
and the means to support it, in terms of the hard
realities of the nuclear age.
Comptroller Charles Hitch
came to the Pentagon
from Rand Corporation.
Henry Bowen worked
at the Harvard Center
for International Affairs.
17
The "new
breed"
in the
Pentagon
Alain Einthoven, weapons
specialist, was a Rand
Corporation economist.
Eugene Fubini headed
laboratory that worked
on airborne instruments.
Harold Brown, research
chief, was director of
a radiation laboratory.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/05/20: CIA-RDP74-00115R000300080036-6
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/05/20: CIA-RDP74-00115R000300080036-6 ?
McNamara thinks about the unthinkable
in a candid, exclusive interview with Post editor Stewart Alsop,
the Secretary of Defense discusses our strategic situation today.
Asor: It seems to me interesting to compare
what you said at Ann Arbor about the 'stra-
tegic balance of forces and what was being said only
a few years ago by responsible people about the
prospect of great Soviet supziarAtt,y, in missiles.
How do you explain the difference?
MCNAMARA: This nation created a myth of its
;
wn weakness. That is the main reason. The
yth was the result of incc,:n !lete intelligence;
although it was created, bCf Tiii"Tqlralirail:alysts
acenTin good 'faith, itsAas a*Jnyth all'the same.
.7M8171-TO7C"onfident are you that the myth
of the missile gap was and is a myth?
MCNAMARA: Absolutely confident. Of course
there is a margin of error.-Triere always is. But
the margin of error is much ,less than the margin
of our superiority. And the ending of the myth
has made it possible to take a firm line with our
adversaries and at the same time to reassure our
friends that we are strong and determined to
use our strength if we have to.
Arsor: What do you think about the proposi-
tion that th,-; price of any kind of nuclear war is
so high that the nuclear weapon is not a rational
instrument of national policy?
MCNAMARA: Your question suggests the rea-
son why we have Made a great effort to achieve
nonnuclear options, so that we cannot have
nuclear war forced upon us because we have no
other choice. Suppose you were to start from
the premise that nuclear war is unthinkable and
that you are not capable of fighting a nonnuclear
war. If that is true, then you have no military
foundation at all for your policy.
No sane man wants nuclear war, or any kind
of war. But war has to be conceivable in support
of vital national interests. Otherwise you have
no real national power. You have to meet three
tests. First, you have to have the power to
support your policy. Second, you have to know
you have that power. Third, he?the other side?
has to know you have that power, and he has
to believe that you will use it if your vital in-
terests are threatened.
We have today sufficient nuclear power so
that we could take a full surprise attack and
respond in such a way that we would literally
destroy the aggressor. We also have sufficient
nuclear power so that we could respond by hit-
ting only military targets.
Option of No-Cities Response?
ALSOP: In. other words, you have the option
of adopting the so-called no-cities, or counter-
force, response, which you discussed in your
Ann Arbor speech.
McNAmAu6s Yes, we would have that option.
I think in same ways the press overplayed that
part of the speech. I carefully qualified what I
said, and I made it clear that this was only one of
a series of options. I would want to be absolutely
certain that we had the other options.
AISOP: Surely we must assume that the time
will come when the other side will have a sure
second-strike capability?solid-fuel missiles, hard-
ened bases and all the rest of it
MCNAMARA: Yes, and that raises an interesting
point. I believe myself that a counterforce strat-
egy is most likely to apply in circumstances in
which both sides have the capability of surviving
a first strike and retaliating selectively. This is a
highly unpredictable business, of course. But
today, following a surprise attack on us, we
would still have the power to respond with over-
whelming force, and they would not then have
the capability of a further strike. In this situa-
tion, given the highly irrational act of an at-
tempted first strike against us, such a strike seems
most likely to take the form of an all-out attack
on both military targets and population centers.
This is why a nuclear exchange confined to
military targets seems more possible, not less,
when both sides have a sure second-strike capa-
bility. Then you might have a more stable
"balance of terror." This may seem a rather
subtle point, but from where I'm sitting it seems
a point worth thinking about.
"No Pressure on Us to Preempt"
ALSOP: As you know, some writers here and
abroad have interpreted what you said in your
Ann Arbor speech as implying the possibility of
the United States' adopting a first-strike strat-
egy?a strategy of hitting first.
MCNAMARA: What I said meant exactly the
opposite. Because we have a sure second-strike
capability, there is no pressure on us whatsoever
to preempt. I assure you that we really never
think in those terms. Under any circumstances,
even if we had the military advantage of striking
first, the price of any nuclear war would be ter-
ribly high. One point I was making in the Ann
Arbor speech is that our second-strike capability
is so sure that there would be no rational basis
on which to launch a preemptive strike.
ALSOP: It seems to me that a no-cities doctrine
only makes sense if it is married to? a serious
fallout-shelter program. Otherwise, even if the
cities were left standing, the fatalities from fall-
out would be astronomical.
MCNAMARA.: Yes. Some people seem to feel
that even to think about the fatalities which
might result from a nuclear war is immoral. But
you have to think about it. You have to ask your-
self whether there are no situations in which one
side or the other might use nuclear weapons.
Your answer has to be that there are such situ-
ations. Then you have to recognize that there
is a tremendous difference, a vital difference,
between, say, thirty percent fatalities and sixty
percent. A serious national fallout-shelter pro-
gram could make that sort of difference.
Arsor: When you think in terms of fatalities
in the tens of millions, aren't you forced to ask
yourself, again, whether the nuclear weapon is
in fact a rational instrument of national policy?
McNAmARA: In a sense, nuclear war is cer-
tainly irrational?all war is irrational. But being
irrational doesn't make it inconceivable. You
might be -forced into nuclear war as a result of
an irrational act on the other side, for example,
or of a misjudgment of our response to an attack
on our vital interests. And given a nuclear capa-
bility on the other side, you must have a credible
deterrent on your side. And you can't create a
credible deterrent by threatening an incredible
action. For example, the use of nuclear weapons
would be an incredible response to the building
of the Wall, or to certain kinds of political-
military pressure on the periphery. You can't
fashion a deterrent by threatening to take action
which no one in fact believes you will take.
The nuclear weapon, for example, becomes
a rational weapon only in relation to situations
in which the weapon might credibly be used?
those situations in which the alternative might
be even worse than the risk of nuclear war?for
example, a surrender by stages to Communist
aggression. There are certain circumstances in
which the other side is dead sure we will use the
nuclear weapon?an attack on the United States
or on our NATO allies, for example. But there is
always the danger of miscalculation. This is why
it was important to make clear in a public state-
ment that we mean to defend Berlin and that, if nec-
essary, all weapons will be used for that purpose.
ALSOP: Berlin seems to me to symbolize our
great central weakness. We're in far better shape
to fight another limited conventional war like
Korea than we were. But we still do not really
have the "conventional option" in Europe.
MCNAMARA: I don't maintain that the balance
of conventional forces in Europe is all we would
like it to be. But the NATO forces have been
made much stronger?General Norstad quanti-
fies the increment at twenty-five percent. Our
own conventional forces have been increased by
forty-five percent?from eleven to sixteen com-
bat-ready divisions in the Army, for example.
What is more, all sixteen divisions are better
combat divisions, with more mobility, more air-
lift and more tactical air support. So the true
increment is greater than forty-five percent.
We have stockpiled equipment for two divi-
sions in Europe, and exercises prove that the
men for these ,divisions could be airlifted to
Europe in a matter of a week or so. We have a
strategic reserve in this country of eight divisions
as against three a couple of years ago. Our air
power in Europe is at least equal to theirs, and
there is on the central front about an equal
number of men on both sides of the line.
"NATO a Match for Communist Side"
ALSOP: Yes, but they have much greater
reserve power, don't they? Isn't the real difference
that the threshold is higher?that they would
have to mobilize and bring up their reserves to
gain conventional superiority in Europe?
MCNAMARA: Yes, they would have to bring
up their reserves. But can they? We have a lot
of air power in Europe. And we have reserves,
too, don't forget. We spend two billion dollars
a year on the reserves and the National Guard.
I'm not saying that we wouldn't all be a lot
happier if we had more conventional power in
Europe. But conventional power is only part of
the equation, and as I've said, if necessary we
would use all weapons. But if we say that the
Western powers are hopelessly inferior, then
we're creating another myth of weakness. By any
sensible standards?wealth, manpower, re-
sources?NATO is, or can be, more than a match
for the Communist side. ' THE END
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release @ 50-Yr 2014/05/20: CIA-RDP74-00115R000300080036-6