Air University Review, May-June 1967
The most ardent and the most emotional supporters of disarmament, the
impatient ones who argue for unreciprocated unilateral or unbalanced measures,
on the grounds that they will help to create the necessary confidence and
inspire the other side to reply in kind, are in reality the worst enemies of
any realistic disarmament.
-Arthur H. Dean, former
Nation Disarmament Conference
Power without morality is
imperialism. Morality without power is helplessness in a world of the Communist
Grand Design.
-Max Lerner
The past two decades have been cataclysmic. We have seen the inception of the cold war; the remarkable feat of the Berlin airlift; the victory of Chinese Communism; the Korean War with its wrenching effect on the American conscience and polity; the death of Stalin; the bursting of the Hungarian revolution; the ostensibly successful conclusion to the Cuban missile crisis of October-November 1962; the American involvement and commitment in the jungles of South Vietnam; and now the promise of convulsion on the Chinese mainland.
There is yet another development that transcends all of these events, important as they undoubtedly have been. We have reference, of course, to the transition from the atomic to the hydrogen age with its attendant revolution in weapons technology, which, in turn, marked the dawn of the space age.
Today we possess a luxury that was not possible during the more than twenty years elapsing since the end of World War II. Today we can focus the beam of historical perspective on these years with all of the advantages that hindsight may confer. And while it remains true that historians are notorious for seeing diverse and even contradictory elements at work during a single period in history, it is also true that with the passage of time certain drives and conclusions emerge that may be fairly labeled a consensus.
It has now become clear that historians, political scientists, and those
concerned primarily with international political affairs have arrived at one
significant and overwhelming conclusion applicable to the years since 1945,
This is that the existence of strategic nuclear weapons in the hands of the two
great protagonists has resulted in a stabilization of world affairs generally
thought to be highly improbable years ago. This strategic stabilization has
brought about a significant change in the conception of war and also in the
utility of military power. The usability of military power has declined
substantially. Although we are not here concerned with the matter of
Military power in general remains important, and the superiority of the American strategic nuclear deterrent in particular is indispensable. This general view is held by such scholars as Klaus E. Knorr, Max Lerner, James Dougherty, Arthur H. Dean, Marshall D. Shulman, and Bernard Brodie.1 The stabilizing and even hopeful effects of mutual deterrence are now called completely into question by Professor Philip Green of Smith College.*
Green attacks the theory and practice of nuclear deterrence on several fronts. A good part of his book is given to a scathing dissection of the writing of Herman Kahn as it appears in On Thermonuclear War and Thinking About the Unthinkable. Thomas C. Schelling, Albert Wohlstetter, Oskar Morgenstern, and other deterrence theorists also receive a measurable portion of Professor Green’s attention. Kahn remains pre-eminent because, as Green says, On Thermonuclear War “is without doubt the most significant single contribution to arms policy discussion during the nuclear era.” (p. 15)
In general, Green attempts to show that the use of systems analysis by the deterrence theorists, as he calls them, is essentially a fraud. The theorists have surrounded themselves with an “aura of authority,” a good part of which they have created themselves. Significantly, the theorists—in stressing game theory—have failed to take into consideration vital issues of contemporary international politics. Theirs has been a narrow focus, devoid of rigorous political thought, which is essential for solving contemporary problems and for structuring a viable national security policy. At the same time, Green accuses the deterrence theorists of harboring a narrow and “most simplistic American variety” (p. 86) of anti-Communist bias.
Perhaps the most basic of Professor Green’s qualms is his assertion that the theorists view almost all issues in terms of military force:
The astonishing outburst of intellectual energy that has been put into the study of national security issues, and which shows no signs of abating before the cold war itself does, has almost entirely revolved around the single question of what particular national strategies are best justified by the “novel” ability to make “ultimate” nuclear threats. (p. 5)
Thus, military security is equated generally with national security and the concomitant thesis that the Soviets, for example, only understand and respect force. And the thrust of the arguments put forward by the deterrence theorists is cloaked in so-called scientific analysis. According to Green:
It is not merely that the idea of systems analysis offers no particular hope of dealing rigorously with the great policy questions inherent in deterrence studies; rather, one suspects that in this context the method of rigorous analysis may be inferior to informed and informal speculation. (pp. 89-90)
While the theorists have focused their attention on the calculable, this kind of analysis is not nearly as meaningful or important as a rigorous consideration of political and moral questions. “What help is clever model-building when one is only piling abstraction on abstraction?” (p. 90) the author asks. The deterrence theorist believes a world can be structured on nuclear threats and the theory itself rests upon man’s rationality, which, under stress especially, might break down at any time.
Professor Green’s indictment rests primarily on the charge that the theorists have neglected almost entirely history, politics, and morality. He alleges “that for years most of them were (most still are) egregiously guilty of avoiding the moral issue altogether or misrepresenting it.” (p. 250) It has not been demonstrated that strategic nuclear deterrence (possession of a nuclear second-strike force) is our best strategy. Other strategies might very well prove more successful. One might ask, What other strategies? In attacking Schelling’s conflict theories, Green asks:
Why could not a disarmed world maintain deterrence without nuclear weapons, and perhaps even by means of non-military strategies? In principle, it is surely not impossible; and if the resulting balance would be relatively unstable, one might prefer the potential of that instability to the “stability” of a world armed to the teeth with “second-strike” missiles, (p. 154)
And Green is prepared for the argument that nuclear deterrence has been successful for over two decades. He puts it this way:
. . . one can find few grounds for claiming that nation-state behavior in the cold war period has been more sensible than at other times, It will hardly do to rest that case on the mere absence of general war since 1945. Twenty years without general war is hardly a long enough time to suggest anything at all. The arms race continues; great power hostility remains; crises recur. (p. 210)
Thus, the author feels strongly that the world has learned little if anything since the end of the Second World War. He closes the book on a grim note, pointing to the disproportionate influence of nuclear experts and their strategies. The “intellectual imperialism” of deterrence theory is seen as a grave threat to American democratic society.
It must be said that Professor Green’s book has about it a strangely outdated
air that in the final analysis is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Indeed,
Edgar S. Furniss, Jr., in his foreword to Deadly
Logic, expresses his regret that the book could not have been published
earlier. The fact of the matter is that the so-called great debate over the
strategy of strategic nuclear deterrence occurred during the late 1950’s and
early 1960’s. Nuclear deterrence has, in general, been accepted as the bedrock
foundation of American and Western defense and national security. Great effort,
not a few lives, much time, and billions of dollars have been expended in
giving the
One can certainly make a case, as Green does, that specific nuclear
theorists have employed a pseudoscientific approach to national security
affairs. Some have indeed cloaked themselves with a kind of scientism that has
made their thought almost unintelligible to the layman. It can be fairly argued
that Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War fits this description. The book
contains a surfeit of jargon, is poorly written and edited, and is based in
part on false assumptions and illogical reasoning. Over and above this point,
it is unquestionably true that scientists in general are not totally neutral
and objective. Like other human beings, they hold varied and sometimes
impassioned political views. Scientists possess no unique political gifts which
endow them with special insight. And it is clear that in some instances
critical scientific opinion, while sincere, has been based upon prior political
judgment. 2
Green, of course, has said that On Thermonuclear War is the most significant contribution to the subject of nuclear deterrence and arms policy. This is at least debatable. I would agree with Professor Green when he contradicts himself and says that Bernard Brodie’s Strategy in the Missile Age “is the most useful, single contribution to the literature of deterrence—and this without recourse to the pseudo-science that has been that literature’s all-too-customary hallmark.”3 (p.333) But, understandably, Strategy in the Missile Age would not have served as the ideal target for Green’s shafts in the way that Kahn’s book does.
When the author takes Kahn and Schelling to task for neglecting history and
politics, he is on solid ground. Too often have scenarios dealt with human
affairs by excluding relevant experience. In fact, Max Singer of Kahn’s Hudson
Institute has said that “experience won’t serve as a guide any more to practical affairs. The world has become too complicated.”4
This kind of facile generalization, completely lacking in depth, adds
nothing to informed and rigorous discussion. The essential difficulty with much
of what I have called the “new theorizing” is that it bears little resemblance
to today’s world. All too often scenarios are based on what is possible
rather than on what is probable.5
On the other hand, Green makes the mistake of indicting the entire community of nuclear theorists for the transgressions of the few. It is simply not true to say that all or even most deterrence theorists neglect history, politics, and morality. Nor is it correct to allege that these theorists have dealt obsessively with the ability of nations to make nuclear threats. When Professor Green declares that “rigorous deterrence analysis has been empty of real thought about the major problems of national policy,” (p. 268) he is engaging in the kind of simplistic, black-and-white thinking that he spares no end in deploring.
Among the many serious thinkers on national security policy—I suppose Green would call them deterrence theorists—who have considered international politics are William W. Kauffmann, Bernard Brodie, Albert Wohlstetter,6 Henry A. Kissinger, Klaus E. Knorr, Thornton Read, and Robert E. Osgood. These men have discussed the role of strategic nuclear deterrence in a world racked by divisive political issues. They have, I believe, provided us with valid insights into world politics and have made a signal contribution both to rational discourse and national policy. To suggest that nuclear theorists have not grappled with history and politics is a disservice to them and to the truth.
Nor, as Green indicates, is the community of nuclear thinkers monolithic. Many issues over the past decade have resulted in debate and division amongst deterrent theorists. The composition of strategic force structure is only one such issue that provoked an outpouring of discourse along with diverse opinions. For the fact remains that nuclear theorists have as many different ideas and points of view as journalists, policy-makers, diplomats, and professors of government. To allege otherwise and infer that the community as a whole is a kept one is intellectually scandalous.
What does one make of Green’s assertion that nation-state behavior has not changed since 1945? What can one say about “the mere absence of general war since 1945”? Is it valid to suggest that “twenty years without general war is hardly a long enough time to suggest anything at all”? In all candor, one is appalled at such flippant distortions and generalizations on the part of a professor of government. And one does not have to appeal to deterrence theorists to set the record straight. For example, Marshall Shulman, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and research associate at the Russian Research Center at Harvard University, has argued cogently that the lesson of the past twenty years has been that adequate Western strategic power has been, and remains, necessary for international stability.7 The same conclusion is echoed by Raymond Aron, the distinguished French philosopher and historian, and other historians and political scientists in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
It should be remembered that the period 1945-1967 is not merely another 22-year hiatus. It happens to be precisely the period of the cold war and the nuclear age. And rather than suggesting nothing at all, this span has confronted us with a revolutionary impact. We have witnessed a revolution in technology, in weapons development, and in the usability of military force. The value of possessing nuclear weapons for defensive deterrence has been manifestly demonstrated. The objective of the American strategic nuclear deterrent has been the prevention of general war. This goal has obviously been achieved. And it is neither a “mere” objective nor a “mere” achievement.
The question of deterrence and the arms race is, of course, a moral one. Again, while some theorists shun the moral implications of nuclear deterrence, many do not. The nuclear pacifist rightly emphasizes morality while the theorist who dismisses grave moral questions commits a disservice to man and to himself. But Professor Green, in his plea for morality and disarmament, finds himself ultimately with a position of complete condemnation of violence. He thus refuses to face what is reality but what is to him something unacceptable in the human condition. In so doing, he has taken flight from politics, from that realm of human endeavor that he himself has so eloquently implored us to consider. Nuclear weapons and conventional weapons and nuclear blackmail and political blackmail and coercion do exist. The unavailability of various weapons will not change the nature of man.
While Professor Green evidently supports disarmament and abjures nuclear deterrence, he provides nothing in the way of a solution for our dilemma. In short, he comes up with a zero when it comes to getting from here to there. This has long been the weakness of the pacifist and the disarmer.8 He is long on critique and short on responsible avenues for amelioration or solution.
Thus, to condemn strategic nuclear deterrence as a policy while merely asking if complete disarmament might not have done the job as well over the past twenty years is a practice of intellectual bankruptcy which fails completely to recognize the ambiguity inherent in humanity. For Green presents, after all, the time-honored radical solution of the revisionist. This amounts to an admission of failure, a flight from politics, a lapse into the simplistic, and an inability to come to grips with the major political issues of our time.
Ambiguity is indeed part of the very fabric of human endeavor. And contradiction is often a by-product of our ideas and actions. There is no better example of either than Professor Green’s book.
*Philip Green, Deadly Logic: The Theory of Nuclear Deterrence (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1966, $6.00), 361 pp.
Notes
1. To be sure, there are some revisionists who would not accept this proposition. The names of D. F. Fleming and H. Stuart Hughes come to mind.
2. See Herman S. Wolk, “Scientists, Politics and the Bomb,” Air Force and Space Digest, October 1962.
3. It should also be noted that Brodie’s Strategy in the Missile Age was published in 1959, thus antedating Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War. Green erroneously lists the publication date of Brodie’s book as 1960 in his bibliographic note. Further, several other noteworthy books on nuclear strategy appeared long before Kahn’s, including William W. Kauffmann’s (ed.) Military Policy and National Security, 1956 and Henry Kissinger’s Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, 1957. These books, along with Brodie’s, are in my judgment at least as significant (although not as sensational) as Kahn’s On Thermo-nuclear War and, in fact, opened new paths that others followed.
4.Quoted in Arthur Herzog, “Report on a ‘Think Factory,’” New York Times Magazine, 10 November 1963.
5. Herman S. Wolk, “Is History Obsolete?” Air Force and Space Digest, August 1964.
6. Wohlstetter himself has written critically of scientists although Green does not mention it. See Albert Wohlstetter, “Technology, Prediction Disorder,” in The Dispersion of Nuclear Weapons, R. N. Rosecrance (ed.), (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964).
7. Marshall D. Shulman, Beyond the Cold War
(
8. An exception is Walter Millis, An End to Arms (New York: Atheneum, 1965). See Herman S. Wolk, “Walter Millis’s 1984,” Air University Review, September-October 1965.
Herman S. Wolk (M.A.,
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of
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