REMARKS OF SECRETARY OF DEFENSE ROBERT S. MCNAMARA BEFORE THE ECONOMIC CLUB OF NEW YORK WALDORFASTORIA HOTEL, NEW YORK, NEW YORK MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1963

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP66B00403R000400060018-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 21
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 20, 2004
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: November 18, 1963
• Content Type: PREL

Washington bi, 11,L1~,ZMME: PAT OF DEFENSE
OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
HOLD FOR RELEASE
UNTIL 6:30 P.M. (EST)
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1963
NO. 1486 - 63
OXford 5320b
OXford 53176 (Copies)
REMARKS OF SECRETARY OF DEFENSE ROBERT S. McNAMARA
BEFORE THE ECONOMIC CLUB OF NEW YORK
WALDOR-FASTORIA HOTEL, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1963
Before long this Administration will be presenting, once again,
the details of a proposed national defense budget for the consideration of the
Congress and the public. Given the importance of these mattiers, their
complexities and uncertainties and the existence of real differences of opinion,
a degree of controversy is inevitable, and even desirable.
Some controversies, however, reveal underlying differences in per-
spective that scarcely suggest the participants are living in the same world.
Within the past few weeks, some critics have suggested that we have literally
hundreds of times more strength than we need; others have accused us of
risking the whole future of the nation by engaging in unilateral disarmament.
I would like to believe that criticisms bracketing our policy in that fashion
prove it to be rational and sound. But a discrepancy of that order cannot be
reassuring. Rather, it indicates that we have failed to convey to some part
of our audience even the broadest outlines, as we see them, of the problems
that our military strategy and force structure are meant to address. I believe
we should be able to move from controversy on that scale toward consensus in
military off prprovartF 1 j i2 eM ll~~xQ1A 6~~04 i1~4~0 0 9~-1
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but at least on an appreciation of the major national security problems
confronting us, on the broad alternative paths to their solution and on
the dominant goals, obstacles, costs and risks affecting choice My
purpose in speaking to you this evening is to help move in this direction.
As a prelude, then, to the coming season of debate, I should like
to identify and discuss some basic matters on which a considerable
degree of consensus seems to me both possible and desirable, although
by no means assured.
These include those over--all comparative strengths and weak-
nesses of the opposing military alliances that form the bold relief in the
strategic environment. In short, they are the considerations that seem
to have relatively long-term significance compared to the annual
budget cycle.
Matters of that degree of permanence tend to be stamped on our
minds as being unchanging and unchangeable, the unquestioned fre.mework
of daily and yearly policy-making Yet these factors of which I shall
speak do change: more swiftly and more profoundly than our picture of
them tends to change. Indeed, I believe it is just the fact that over the
last decade this topography has changed -- while many maps have not - -
that accounts for some apparently irreconcilable controversies.
Let me recall the earlier period briefly, for comparison. The
strategic landscape at the outset of the 'Fifties was dominated by two
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outstanding features. One was the practical U. S. monopoly of deliver-
able, strategic nuclear weapons. The other was the Soviet Union and
Communist China's virtual monopoly of ground force on the continents
of Europe and Asia.
Both of these determinants of Western military policy had changed
considerably by the end of the Korean War. The Soviets had produced
atomic explosions and had created a sizable nuclear delivery capability
against Europe, while NATO ground forces had expanded rapidly, and
military operations in Korea had greatly tarnished the significance of
Chinese Communist superiority in numbers. But the old notions of
monopoly persisted as short-cut aids to thinking on policy matters.
And they were not so misleading as they came later to be. Soviet armed
forces approaching five million men still heavily outweighed the NATO
forces in Europe; and Soviet delivery capability against the U. S. was
dwarfed by that of SAC. Moreover, tactical nuclear weapons were being
heralded as a new nuclear monopoly for the West.
Even as these earlier notions of monopolies grew obsolete, ideas
about the feasibility of alternative policies continued to reflect them.
So did ideas about how wars might be fought. Nuclear operations, both
strategic and tactical, by the U.S. in response to Soviet aggression
against our allies were. considered to be virtually unilateral. Hence it
was supposed the problem of credibility of the U. S. response would
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scarcely arise, even in the case of relatively limited Soviet aggressions.
Western reliance upon nuclear weapons, in particular strategic systems,
both to deter and to oppose non-nuclear attack of any size seemed not only
adequate but also unique in its adequacy.
That sort of situation is convenient for policy-makers. It makes
policy easy to choose and easy to explain. Perhaps that is why throughout
most of the 'Fifties, while the Soviets under various pressures decreased
their ground forces and the NATO allies built theirs up, and while the
Soviets acquired a massive nuclear threat against Europe and laid the
groundwork for a sizable threat against the U. S. , the picture underlying
most policy debate remained that appropriate to 1949. It was a picture
of a Communist Goliath in conventional strength facing a Western David,
almost naked of conventional arms but alone possessed of a nuclear sling.
Toward the end of that decade, the prospect that the Soviets would
acquire intercontinental ballistic missiles at a time when our strategic
forces consisted almost entirely of bombers focused our attention and our
budget even more sharply than before upon our strategic forces. The
urgency of the problem of deterring the most massive of -attacks was a
new reason for thinking that the West could spare neither resources nor
thought to deal more specifically with lesser threats. The most urgent
task was to provide for deterrence of massive aggression by assuring
the survival under any attack of forces at least adequate, in the calculations
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of a potential attacker, to destroy his society in retaliation. It was now
not the assurance of continued nuclear superiority that preempted the
attention of policy-makers but, on the contrary, the struggle to maintain it.
But it is time for the maps to change by which policy is charted
and justified. The old ones, which assumed a U. S. nuclear monopoly,
both strategic and tactical, and a Communist monopoly of ground combat
strength, are too far removed from reality to serve as even rough guides.
Neither we nor our allies can afford the crudities of maps that tell us
that old policies are still forced upon us, when a true picture would show
important new avenues of necessity and choice.
What most needs changing is a picture of ourselves and of the
Western Alliance as essentially at bay, outmanned and outgunned except
for nuclear arms no longer exclusively ours. We should not think of
ourselves as forced by limitations of resources to rely upon strategies
of desperation and threats of vast mutual destruction, compelled to deal
only with the most massive and immediate challenges, letting lesser
ones go by default. It would be a striking historical phenomenon if that
self-image should be justified. We are the largest member of an Alliance
with a population of almost 450 million people, an aggregate annual
product which is fast approaching a trillion dollars, and a modern and
diverse technological base without parallel, facing the Soviet Union and
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its European satellites with their hundred million fewer people and an
aggregate output no more than half that of the West.
And quite apart from ignoring the underlying strengths of the West,
the outdated picture I have described takes no account of the military
capabilities in being that our investment over the last decade, and
specifically in the last few years, have bought for us. If new problems
put strong claims on our attention and our resources today, it is very
largely because we have come a large part of the way that is feasible
toward solving some old ones.
Let me summarize the current status of the balance of strategic
nuclear forces, that part of the military environment that has preoccupied
our attention for so long. In strictly relative numerical terms, the
situation is the familiar one. The U. S. force now contains more than
500 operational long-range ballistic missiles -- ATLAS, TITAN,
MINUTEMAN, POLARIS -- and is planned to increase to over 1700 by
1966. There is no doubt in our minds and none in the minds of the Soviets
that these missiles can penetrate to their targets. In addition, the U. S.
has Strategic Air Command bombers on air alert and over 500 bombers on
quick reaction ground alert. By comparison, the consensus is that today the
Soviets could place about half as many bombers over North America on
a first strike. The Soviets are estimated to have today only a fraction
as many intercontinental missiles as we do. Furthermore, their
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submarine-launched ballistic missiles are short range, and generally
are not comparable to our POLARIS force., The Soviets pose a very
large threat against Europe, including hundreds of intermediate and
medium-range ballistic missiles. This threat is today and will continue
to be covered by the clear superiority of our strategic forces.
The most wishful of Soviet planners would have to calculate as a
certainty that the most effective surprise attack they could launch would
still leave us with the capability to destroy the attacker's society.
What is equally pertinent is that the relative numbers and survivability of
U. S. strategic forces would permit us to retaliate against all the urgent
Soviet military targets that are subject to attack, thus contributing to
the limitation of damage to ourselves and our allies.
Deterrence of deliberate, calculated attack seems as well assured
as it can be, and the damage-limiting capability of our numerically
superior forces is, I believe, well worth its incremental cost. It is a
capability to which the smaller forces of the Soviet Union could not
realistically aspire. That is one reason, among others, why I would
not trade our strategic posture for that of the Soviets at any point during
the coming decade.
But given the kind of force that the Soviets are building, including
submarine-launched missiles beyond the reach of our offensive forces,
the damage which the Soviets could inflict on us and our allies, no matter
what we do to limit it, remains extremely high.
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That has been true for our allies ever since the middle and late
'Fifties. Soviet acquisition of a sizable delivery capability against the
U. S. , and more significantly their acquisition of relatively protected
forces, submarine -launched or hardened, has been long and often
prematurely heralded. Its arrival at last merely dramatizes the need
to recognize that strategic nuclear war would under all foreseeable
circumstances be bilateral -- and highly destructive to both sides.
Larger budgets for U. S. strategic forces would not change that
fact. They could have only a decreasing incremental effect in limiting
somewhat the damage that the U. S. and its allies could suffer in a
general nuclear war. In short, we cannot buy the capability to make a
strategic bombing campaign once again a unilateral prospect.
That must, I suggest, be accepted as one of the determinants
affecting policy. Another is that the same situation confronts the Soviet
leaders, in a way that is even more intensely confining. In fact,
enormous increases in Soviet budgets would be required for them to
achieve any significant degree of damage -limiting capability. The
present Soviet leaders show no tendency to challenge the basis of the
U. S. strategic deterrent posture by such expenditures.
In the last two years alone, we have increased the number of
nuclear warheads in the strategic alert forces by 100%. During that
period we have more than doubled the megatonnage of the strategic
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alert forces. The fact that further increases in strategic force size will
at last encounter rapidly diminishing returns -- which is largely an effect
of the very large investments the U. S. has made in this area -- should be
reflected in future budgets. The funding for the initial introduction of
missiles into our forces is nearing completion. We can anticipate that
the annual expenditure on strategic forces will.drop substantially, and
level off well below the present rate of spending. This is not to rule out
the possibility that research now in progress on possible new technological
developments, including the possibility of useful ballistic missile defenses,
will require major new expenditures. In any event, there will be recurring
costs of modernization.
In the field of tactical nuclear weapons, the. picture is in important
respects similar. The U. S. at present has in stockpile or planned for
stockpile tens of thousands of nuclear explosives for tactical use on the
battlefield, in anti-submarine warfare and against aircraft. They include
warheads for artillery, battlefield missiles, demolition munitions,
bombs, depth charges, air-to-air missiles and surface-to-air missiles.
The consensus is that the U. S. is presently substantially superior in
design, diversity and numbers in this class of weapons.
This is an indispensable superiority, as we can readily understand.
if we consider how our problems of strategic choice would be altered, if
the tables were reversed and it were the Soviet Union which held a
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commanding lead in this field. Nevertheless, what we have is superiority,
not monopoly, and even if tactical nuclear warfare can be limited, below
some ill-defined threshold of strategic exchange, the key fact is that if the
West initiates such warfare in the future it must be expected to be
bilateral, in any theater which engaged the Soviet Union. Again, we
cannot buy back a monopoly, or the assurance of unilateral use.
Finally, there is the area of what we call our general purpose
forces. Within the last two years, we have increased the number of our
combat-ready Army divisions by about 45%, from 11 to 16. There has
been a 30% increase in the number of tactical air squadrons; a 75%
increase in airlift capabilities; and a 100% increase in ship construction
and conversion to modernize the fleet.
But it is not only force size that matters. The key to the
effective utilization of these forces is combat readiness and mobility.
The most recent demonstration of our ability to reinforce our
troops presently stationed in Europe occurred last month in Operation
BIG LIFT, the first of a series of planned large-scale, world-wide
exercises. For the first time in military history, an entire division
was airlifted from one continent to another. That movement could
never have been accomplished without a massive increase in our airlift
capability, which is still being expanded. (It will have risen 400%
between 1961 and 1967.) It required the development of new techniques
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to preposition combat equipment, of which we have two extra division
sets now in Europe. It called for new techniques in military training
and administration to make sure that units are really ready to move out
on a moments notice. This exercise, in which some 16, 000 airmen and
soldiers and more than 350 planes took part, is directly relevant to the
needs of Europe, where it brought a seventh division to join the six that
are to remain in place. It is also relevant to the ability of the U. S. to
fulfill its policy commitments world-wide, swiftly and in effective strength.
But, it might be asked, what is the significance of all this for the
realistic security problems of the United States and its allies` To what
contingencies are these forces expected to contribute, and how effective
might they be, measured against the strength of opposing forces? How
meaningful is it to talk of 16 or 20 or 30 divisions in opposing the ground
armies of the Soviet Union and Communist China?
Such questions are often meant to be merely rhetorical, in view
of the supposed masses of Communist.. troops. The fact is that they are
serious, difficult questions, to which I shall suggest some tentative
answers. But it is difficult to encourage realistic discussions of specific
contingencies so long as the shadow of the Communist horde hangs
unchallenged over the debate. The actual contingencies that seem to be
to me most likely and most significant are not those which would involve
all, or even a major part, of the Soviet Bloc or Chinest Communist
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armed forces, nor do they all involve Europe. Hence, aggregate figures
of armed strength of NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations are not
immediately relevant to them. But it is useful to make these over-all
comparisons precisely because misleading or obsolete notions of these
very aggregates often produce an attitude of hopelessness toward any
attempt to prepare to meet Communist forces in ground combat, however
limited in scope.
The announced total of Soviet armed forces for 1955 was indeed
a formidable 5. 75 million men. Today that figure has been cut to about
3. 3 million; the Warsaw Pact total including the Soviets is only about
4. 5 million. Against that, it is today the members of NATO whose active
armed forces number over five million. The ground forces of NATO
nations total 3. 2 million, of which 2. 2 million men are in Europe, as
against the Soviet ground combat forces total of about 2 million men,
and a Warsaw Pact total of about 3 million. Both the Soviet Union and
the U. S. forces of course include units stationed in the Far East. In
Central Europe, NATO has more men, and more combat troops, on the
ground than does the Bloc. It has more men on the ground in West
Germany than the Bloc does in East Germany. It has more and better
tactical aircraft, and these planes on the average can carry twice the
payload twice as far as the Soviet counterparts.
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These facts are hard to reconcile with the familiar picture of the
Russian Army as incomparably massive. The usual index cited to support
that picture is numbers of total active divisions, and the specific number
familiar from the past is 175 divisions in the Soviet Army.
This total, if true, would indeed present a paradox. The Soviet
ground forces are reliably estimated to be very close to two million men,
compared to about one million for the U. S. How is it that the Soviets can
muster ten times the number of active, combat-ready, fully-manned
divisions that the United States has manned, with only twice as many men
on active duty? The answer is simply that they do-not. Recent intensive
investigation has shown that the number of active Soviet divisions that
are maintained at manning levels anywhere close to combat readiness is
less than half of the 160- 175 figure.
What remains is a large number, but even that is misleading.
For one thing, U. S. divisions have about twice as many men in the
division unit and its immediate combat supporting units as comparable
Soviet divisions. A U. S. mechanized division has far more personnel in
maneuvering units, far more in armored cavalry, far more engineers,
far more signals, far more light armored personnel carriers, and far
more aircraft available in support than Soviet divisions. In addition to
longer staying power, much of the U. S. manpower and equipment margin
is muscle that would make itself felt on D-Day. If, on the other hand,
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we were to reorganize along Soviet lines, we could display far greater
numbers of divisions comparable to those of the Soviets.
The Soviet combat-ready force remains a formidable one.
Moreover, the Russians do have a powerful mobilization capability;
in particular, they have a large number of lightly manned or cadre
divisions to be filled out on mobilization. Still, this reality remains
strikingly different from our accustomed maps of it.
I do not wish to suggest that such aggregate comparisons are by
themselves a valid index to military capabilities. But they are enough to
suggest the absurdity, as a picture of the prevailing military strengths
on which new efforts might build, of David and Goliath notions borrowed
from 1949.
None of this is to say that NATO strength on the ground in Europe
is adequate to turn back without nuclear weapons an all-out surprise
non-nuclear attack.
But that is not in any case the contingency toward which the
recent and future improvements in the mobility and capabilities of
U. S. general purpose forces are primarily oriented. Aggression on
that scale would mean a war about the future of Europe and, as a
consequence, the future of the U. S. and the USSR. In the face of
threats of that magnitude, our nuclear superiority remains highly
relevant to deterrence. The Soviets know that even non-nuclear
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aggression at that high end of the spectrum of conflict so threatens
our most vital interests that we and our allies are prepared to make
whatever response may be required to defeat it, no matter how
terrible the consequences for our own society.
The probability that the Soviet leaders would choose to invoke
that exchange seems to me very low indeed. They know well what
even the Chinese Communist leaders must recognize upon further
reflection, that a nuclear war would mean destruction of everything
they have built up for themselves during the last 50 years
If we were to consider a spectrum of the possible cases of
Communist aggression, then, ranging from harassment; covert,
aggression and indirect challenge at one end of the scale to the
massive invasion of Western Europe or a full scale nuclear strike
against the West at the other end, it is clear that our nuclear superi-
ority has been and should continue to be an effective deterrent to
aggression at the high end of the spectrum. It is equally clear, on
the other hand, that at the very low end of the spectrum a nuclear
response may not be fully credible, and that nuclear power alone
cannot be an effective deterrent at this level in the future any more
than it has been in the past.
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The fact is that at every level of force. the Alliance in general,
and the U. S. Armed Forces in particular, have greater and more effective
strength than we are in the habit of thinking we have -- and with reasonable
continued effort we can have whatever strength we need. I have spoken
already of strategic weapons, where the great superiority of the United
States is the superiority also of the Alliance. In tactical nuclear weapons
a parallel superiority exists -- and while many of our Allies share with us
in manning the systems which would use these tactical warheads in the hour
of need, it is not unfair to point out that, even more than in the strategic
field, the tactical nuclear strength of the Alliance is a contribution of the
United States. That strength has been increased, on the ground in Europe,
by more than 60% in the last two years. Today the thousands of U. S.
warheads deployed on the continent for the immediate defense of Europe
have a combined explosive strength more than 10, 000 times the force of
the nuclear weapons used to end the Second War. Tactical nuclear strength
the Alliance has today, and we have provided it_
But neither we nor our Allies can find the detonation of such
weapons -- and their inevitable bilateral exchange -- an easy first choice.
At the lower end of the spectrum, therefore, we also need strong and
ready conventional forces. We have done our part here and we continue
to believe it just -- and practicable -- for our partners to do theirs.
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The most difficult questions arise over the best means for meeting
a variety of dangerous intermediate challenges in many parts of the world:
those which threaten the possibility of sizable conflict while still not
raising the immediate issue of the national survival of ourselves or of
any member of our alliances. Conflicts might arise out of Soviet sub-
version and political aggression backed up by military measures in non-
NATO areas in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.
There is a range of challenges that could arise from Communist China
and its satellites in the Far East and in Southeast Asia. Most danger-
ously, approaching the upper end of the spectrum, there is the possibility
of limited Soviet pressures on NATO territory itself, along the vast
front running from Norway to Greece and Turkey. Both the flanks
and the center contain potential targets. And always, of course, there
are the contingencies that could arise in relation to Berlin.
It is difficult to say just how probable any of these circum-
stances might be, although they must be regarded.as more likely than
still larger aggressions. What one can say is that if any of these more
likely contingencies should arise, they would be highly dangerous.
Inaction, or weak action, could result in a serious setback, missed
opportunity or even disaster. In fact, if either a nuclear exchange or
a major Soviet attack should occur, it would most likely arise from a
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conflict on a lesser scale, which Western capabilities had failed to deter
and which an inadequate Western response had failed to curb in time.
Since World War II, the expansionist impulse of the Communist
Bloc is clear, but equally clear is its desire to avoid direct confrontation
with the military forces of the free world. In Greece, in Berlin, and in
Cuba, Communists have probed for military and political weakness but
when they have encountered resistance, they have held back. Not only
Communist doctrine has counselled this caution, but respect for the
danger that any sizable, overt conflict would lead to nuclear war, It
would follow that no deterrent would be more effective against these
lesser and intermediate levels of challenge than the assurance that
such moves would certainly meet prompt, effective military response
by the West. That response could confront the Soviets with frustration
of their purposes unless they chose themselves to escalate the conflict
to a nuclear exchange, or to levels that made nuclear war highly
probable -- a choice they are unlikely to make in the face of our
destructive power.
The basis for that particular assurance cannot be systems in
development, or weapons in storage depots, or reserves that must be
mobilized, trained and equipped, or troops without transport. We need
the right combination of forward deployment and highly mobile combat-
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ready ground, sea and air units, capable of prompt and effective
commitment to actual combat, in short, the sort of capability we are
increasingly building in our forces.
This capability requires of us -- as of our Allies -- a military
establishment that is, in the President's words, lean and fit,. We must
stop and ask ourselves before deciding whether to add a new and
complex weapon system to our inventory, whether it is really the
most effective way to do the job under the rigorous conditions of
combat. We must examine constantly the possibilities for combining
functions, particularly in weapons that could be used by two or more
Services. Given this tough-minded sense of reality about the require-
ments of combat readiness, it should be possible for the United States
not only to maintain-but to expand this increased strength without
overall increases in our defense budget. As our national productivity
and our gross national product expand, the defense budget therefore need
not keep pace, Indeed, it appears likely that measured in relative --
and perhaps even absolute - - terms, the defense budget will level off
and perhaps decline a little. At the same time, we are continuing the
essential effort to reduce the impact of Defense spending on our balance
of payments, We have already brought this figure down from $2. 7 billion
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in FY 1961 to $1. 7 billion for FY 1963, and we shall continue to reduce
it, without reducing the combat ground forces deployed in Europe, and
while strengthening our overall combat effectiveness.
And it must be our policy to continue to strengthen our combat
effectiveness. I do not regard the present Communist leaders as
wholly reckless in action. But recent experience, in Cuba and, on a
lesser scale, in Berlin, has not persuaded me that I can predict with
confidence the sorts of challenges that Communist leaders will
come to think prudent and profitable. If they were again to miscalcu-
late as dangerously as they did a year ago, it would be essential to
confront them, wherever that might be, with the full consequences of
their action: the certainty of meeting immediate, appropriate, and
fully effective military action.
All of our strengths, including our strategic and tactical
nuclear forces, contributed last year, and they would contribute in
similar future situations to the effectiveness of our response, by
providing a basis for assurance that the Soviets would not dangerously
escalate or shift the locale of the conflict. But above all, in order to
fashion that response, and to promise the Soviets local defeat in case
of actual ground conflict, we had to use every element of the improve-
ments in combat readiness and mobility that had been building over
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the preceding year and a half, including combat divisions, air transport,
and tactical air. And the last ingredient was also there: the will to use
those forces against Soviet troops and equipment.
Let us not delude ourselves with obsolete images into believing
that our nuclear strength, great as it is, solves all of our problems of
national security, or that we lack the strengths to meet those problems
that it does not solve. In the contingencies that really threaten -- the
sort that have occurred and will occur again -- we and our allies need
no longer cnoose to live with the sense or the reality of inferiority to the
Soviet Bloc in relevant, effective force. Let us be fully aware of the
wide range of our military resources, and the freedom they can give
us to pursue the peaceful objectives of the free world without fear of
military aggression.
21
Approved For Release 2005/01/05 : CIA-RDP66B00403R000400060018-1