COULD YOU TELL US WHAT IMPACT, IN YOUR VIEW, NUCLEAR WEAPONS HAVE HAD ON THE WAY THAT WARS ARE NOW GOING TO BE FOUGHT, OR CAN BE FOUGHT?

The impact that nuclear weapons, uh, will have on future wars... basically is to reduce the length of the war, shorten it, foreshorten it tremendously. Uh, the point here that is generally not understood is that wars of attrition, which are conventional wars, go through three phases. There is an initial phase which is a holding phase while the countries mobilize and build ammunitions and their forces, deploy them overseas in the theater; then, there's a battle phase, you might say, a highly intensive phase which results in a final decisive phase of who wins or loses, depending on who can apply the most force at the right time and in the best way. Now in the case of nuclear warfare, you have an entirely different scenario, for the simple reason that the maximum amount of destructive power required to do any job is available at the onset of hostilities. One cannot envision mobilizing the nuclear industry and building nuclear weapons after D-Day, and then deploying them overseas and using them. I like to explain it in terms of children in a snowball fight. The classic snowball fight, or conventional war model, is where the children build the snowballs as fast as they can and throw 'em at each other. Whereas in a nuclear model they would have accumulated snowballs all night long, they would have them at the onset of the fight, and then they would throw them as rapidly as possible and when they ran out of snowballs it would be all over. So in a graphic sense, you have a smooth level and rising curve over a period of three or four years that depicts the tempo of conventional wars of attrition, major ones. Whereas you would superimpose upon it a very very quick peak of intensity that would drop off to victory or loss, probably within months if not days, if it were nuclear. The principal impact that nuclear weapons have had on warfare is to dramatically reduce the time of the combat and of achieving victory or defeat. Uh, if one considers... the nuclear situation in terms of, having at hand from the onset, the means of creating the maximum amount of destruction possible, and delivering that right at the beginning, then if that isn't decisive nothing will be. Uh, I like to explain it in terms of children in a snowball fight... if the children build snowballs and throw them as fast as they can at one another, you have a conventional for-, uh, war model, uh, where you have mobilization, movement of troops overseas, training, a buildup of forces, and finally a decisive phase. In the nuclear situation, all of those weapons are on hand at D-Day; no one would conceivably go into production, deployment and delivery after the onset of war. This means that our children have their stockpiles of snowballs at hand when they start throwing; they will throw them at each other as fast and as effectively as they can; and whoever wins will be quickly decided. So, that is one of the most fundamental differences, time? And of course the resulting importance, or decrease in importance on reserve forces, mobilization base and factors that take, uh, time to bring to bear. Uh, another very important element, however, uh, possibly equally important, is the posture of the forces. And here we have a very serious problem, because while the time factor is recognized, the posture factor has not really been recognized. Uh, Lord Montgomery used to refer to it back in the old days, in terms of saying that if you added machine guns to both sides at the Battle of Waterloo, while the forces remained in close-order formation on horseback in the sunshine, you would have whole platoons wiped out, the war would be of short duration, and you would be, require massive replacements. So what happened? The forces changed their posture; you no longer were on horseback in the sunshine? They went to trench warfare, to dispersed warfare, to mobility. Unfortunately, today we have added the nuclear weapon to the artillery in many cases, particularly in the army, without changing the old conventional posture, and formations, and when you leave concentration of forces in the face of the area effects of nuclear weapons... you invite a disaster.

GOING ON FROM THERE, WHAT WAS THE IDEA BEHIND THE 1952 LISBON FORCE GOALS?

Uh, with respect to the early days of NATO force planning, when NATO started, for both political and technical reasons, uh, little consideration was given by the NATO planners to nuclear weapons; uh, they were presumed to be in the US strategic stockpile, which was, uh, not included as part of the NATO defense problem initially. Uh, the NATO planning groups, then, came up with the minimum force requirements that the military of the 12 nations, just coming out of war, felt would be necessary for the security of Europe against, presumably a conventional Soviet or Warsaw Pact attack. Now, those force requirements exceeded by several hundred percent in many areas the amount of forces that the so-called temporary council commission, which had been appointed by the NATO council to determine the ability of nations to contribute, said the countries could afford. That was, you may remember, uh, people may remember that era, the, uh, Averill Harriman, Sir Eric Cloudon, Jean Monet group. So when Lisbon came about, you had a situation where the minimum forces stated by the generals coming straight out of war, were unachievable according to the best estimates of the governments and economists that were appointed to judge this. And that left a situation in which some of our top leaders, including General Eisenhower, perceived that it was the beginning of the end of NATO, because the military would go back and tell their political masters that it was a great idea for our security but it won't work; we can't get there from here. Unless, unless the military came up with a method of doing the business, a strategy, and a method of resisting, namely, Soviet aggression, that was affordable and did not depend upon mass. And what did they do? They used the technology where we had the advantage at that time: tactical nuclear weapons. And after two years of special studies that were undertaken of what the implications of all this would be, it ended with the political directive of the NATO council of 1956, which said, "Any major Soviet act of aggression will be met by nuclear response from the onset." And as an aside, I should tell you, interestingly enough, that that is really all that President... Reagan's 1983 SDI proposal is. Being unable or unwilling economically to match Soviet buildup in convey, in nuclear offensive weapons, we're changing the business to a strategy which exploits our long suit in technology, only in this case, instead of it being nuclear, it's space and defense technology. And the same game is played over again.

[QUESTION REPEATED]

The 1952 Lisbon force goals... were those goals that were established by the then military of the 12 nations coming straight out of the war, as the minimum required to effectively defend against the Soviet Warsaw Pact threat. Now, we must remember that at that time, the Warsaw Pact had not demobilized to the extent our side had. And the principal effect of those goals resulted from the fact that our capabilities to raise the minimum forces that the military called for were tremendously limited, and were largely defined by what was known as the temporary council committee, or the Three Wise Men, uh, Averill Harriman, Sir Eric Cloudon, and Jean Monet, who had been assigned the task of determining what the then NATO countries could afford. And the difference between the minimum forces deemed necessary, and those deemed feasible economically, was in the order of two or three hundred percent in some areas. Therefore, it became apparent to the NATO leadership, particularly to General Eisenhower and his people, that unless the military came up with another method of doing the business, other than classical World War II conventional methods, the military of the NATO nations would go back and tell their political masters that the treaty was a great idea but it won't work; you can't get there from here. And this would be the beginning of the end of the alliance. Each country would search for other means of security for their people. Therefore, we then did, after two years of study, essentially what has been done since President Reagan's 1983 speech: we looked for another method of doing the business. And we exploited our best technology at the time, which was the tactical nuclear weapon, and that resulted in the well-known political directive of 1956, which stated that nuclear would respond to any major Soviet or Warsaw Pact aggression with nuclear weapons from the onset. So by changing the method of doing the business, we were able to counter the Soviet mass and superiority. And it's important for people to understand, I believe.... when they think about it, that we didn't have, at that time, the capability to fight effectively with nuclear weapons we didn't even know how we would go about doing it very well. But that didn't matter, because no one knew we didn't, least of all the Russians, who regardless of their superiority were then forced to go back and take 10 or 20 years to figure out how to cope with this new technology and this new threat, and we bought 20 years of deterrence. And the same applies to the missile business today.

WHAT OTHER OPTIONS WERE AVAILABLE AT THAT PARTICULAR TIME TO NATO?

At the time of the Lisbon conference, there were really, uh, only two options: either NATO maintained a capability, rough military equivalence in conventional forces, and everybody knew what that meant, because they just came out of a war, or else NATO relied upon new, untried and untested nuclear technology. Now there will be some that will point out that there was an idea of a mixture there. Where the battle in Europe could be conventional but would be decisive in our favor by virtue of the US strategic nuclear capability. But this was a situation that was more imaginary than real, in that it mixed apples and oranges, and obviously once it went nuclear it was going to go nuclear across the board in all likelihood, and therefore one had to logically adopt to a nuclear environment at all levels to be realistic in a defense posture.

IN THE PERIOD 1954-60, THERE WAS QUITE A RAPID INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF TACTICAL NUCLEAR WARHEADS THAT WERE PLACED IN EUROPE. WHAT WAS THE REASON FOR THAT?

The reason for the large numbers of nuclear weapons and their deployment to Europe following the '54 period, I would presume, was primarily the fact that the council and the military had adopted the strategy of nuclear response from the onset, and once you... adopt a method of doing something, you obviously have to come up with the means of doing it. Therefore, at that time, in order to implement the strategy of nuclear response, all of those responsible for producing armaments and for producing the tactics and doctrine, uh, generated the various and sundry weapons systems that they felt, uh, would be needed to carry out the new strategy, and this quite logically mushroomed. Now, as time went by, and as political primarily and antinuclear forces in governments begin to temper the nuclear response from the onset, first with the, uh, General Norstad notion of a pause while people would think about whether to go nuclear or not on both sides, and later with conventional flexible response, then the tide began to run slightly the other way, and those that were proponents of backing off from a nuclear capability, uh, their voices, uh, argued that the more, uh, dangerous, uh, the more, uh, prone to immediate use or lack of control systems, uh, Davy Crocketts and hand-held weapons should be withdrawn, and you saw a tendency to concentrate and reverse, uh, the direction of that flow in the '60s.

...LARGE NUMBERS WAS MORE OF INERTIA RATHER THAN PLANNING FOR A TOTAL LEVEL.

The buildup of those large numbers was a perfectly logical and normal implementation of a decision to base the defense on that type of weapon. Uh, it was a deliberate decision, obviously, by all concerned, but at that time, that was the way the war was going to be fought, and therefore, uh, if we're going to drive to town in cars, carmakers are going to come out with all the models of cars that they can dream up to make available to drive to town. Now, if you decide you're going back to horses, then the car production'11 cut down and the horses will start being sold to go... to town. It's that simple.

THE THEORY OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE CAUSED A LOT OF DEBATE WITHIN EUROPE WHEN IT WAS PROPOSED BY MCNAMARA. DO YOU THINK THAT DEBATE WAS NECESSARY TO HAVE?

Uh, yes well, sorry, back off on that, I missed your point. The debate that, uh, took place over the adoption of flexible response was fully justified at the time; uh, the unfortunate part... is how it came out, and that is in favor of flexible response. Uh, because the problem was that those countries, and particularly the French, along with the military strategists of most countries, including many of ours, whose voices were obviously muted by the McNamara administration, felt that conventional flexible response made no military sense, for a very simple reason: and that is that you can't be in two different postures at the same time. Now, as one of our leaders once said, I recall very clearly, "If my forces are concentrated with 25 airplanes on an airbase, with troops in barracks, with tank formations on the highways, all in the area of a single fireball, and I'm hit with nuclear weapons, I'm dead, I can't respond. Conversely, if I deploy my forces in a way that I can survive and fight in a nuclear environment, and I'm told I can't use nuclear weapons, I have no concentration and no mass to arrest the enemy advance." So it is not a practical proposition to be, to leave the Soviets a choice of which way they will attack you, depending on which posture you're in, and it is even worse to have to change from one to the other in the middle of the battle, particularly when you're losing. Unfortunately, the combination, an unholy alliance, of antinuclear political attitudes and pressures, coupled with the resistance of the military bureaucracies, to a large extent in all services, to change the posture, the presentation, the organization, the doctrine and the strategy of their forces in peacetime, and without test in war, led to efforts to merely add the nuclear weapon as a nice desirable addendum to the existing artillery, while still maintaining all the rules, missions, and classic conventional force requirements, and this peculiar mixture has existed to this day, with very questionable, in my opinion, very questionable, capabilities in terms of fighting a major war in either mode.

YOU MUST HAVE BEEN AWARE OF THE FRENCH DECISION TO LEAVE NATO. WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THAT?

With respect to the French decision to leave NATO, uh, I would not say, except in hindsight, that I was aware of it; I certainly was not party to any of the political discussions on it. I would, however, attribute their decision to the fact that under General DE Gaulle, the French were much more realistic and prone to, uh, look at how... the battle should really be fought Under General DE Gaulle, the French, and particularly the French military... were much less prone than other nations to be influenced in their strategic and military thinking by political and antinuclear considerations. They were more realistic. And they began to lose confidence in concepts like flexible response, in proposals like the multilateral force that the US political echelons attempted to use as an excuse to pull nuclear weapons off the continent by putting missiles on freighters as a substitute, and felt that their national security depended that they be more realistic and adhere more to the lessons to be learned from the advent of nuclear weapons, so I would not say it was unanticipated that they would drop out....

WHAT IMPACT DID THE FRENCH WITHDRAWAL HAVE?

But, with respect to the impact that the French withdrawal had, it is my opinion that it was not all that great, certainly not on security, and it may have even been beneficial, because it acted as a brake to the introduction of politically oriented strategies. And... caused many people, particularly in Europe, to have another look at their antinuclear, uh, efforts. The French military have always been in very very close coordination, even after the break with us, and DE Gaulle was supportive even during the, uh, Berlin crisis of '61, of General Norstad's activities, when it came to actually, uh, carrying out defense actions, so the fact that it led the French to build an independent strategic force, a force de frappe, uh, the fact that it led them to look independently at doctrine, and yet the fact that they remained in close liaison and have even increased their relationship over the years in this regard, suggests that, uh, one should not say that it was... had any great adverse impact, and one could really make a case that it may have had a beneficial impact, from a purely military point of view.

CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE FLEXIBLE RESPONSE DEBATE AND THE DEBATE ABOUT THE MULTILATERAL FORCE? HOW IMPORTANT DO YOU THINK THAT DEBATE WAS, IN TERMS OF TURNING EUROPEAN OPINIONS?

With respect to the multilateral force, of course it was in a way a temporary event, because it never went anywheres. Uh, fortunately, from a military point of view. Uh, there was no question in our minds at the time that that proposal was made, and when I say "our," I mean the many others who were following the military activities in the United States, that this was a political effort to create a substitute for nuclear weapon deployment among the forces on the continent, and then use that substitute as an umbrella under which to reduce our deployments; now, this created grave concerns among the allies, because in essence it was more or less a withdrawal of US commitments to use any and all weapons on behalf of the defense of Europe, if necessary. Fortunately, the whole idea of basing missiles on surface ships made no military sense, even to our own navy, and when some- one suggested if it was such a great idea for NATO, that the US navy should substitute some freighters for Polaris submarines, the then chief of naval operations, uh, violently objected and said that it was really a silly idea in the first place, and it was recognized in due course as such and had to be abandoned, but it had, uh, it certainly did not build up confidence in US strategic leadership, and if anything, it alerted many people to the fact that under the new McNamara era, political considerations were going to be dominant, and the military, uh, and logical defense and strategic solutions, uh, would be overruled when they ran counter to the aspirations of antinuclear groups and others, regardless of security.

DO YOU THINK THE UNITED STATES ARMY AND PERHAPS OTHERS IN EUROPE EVER MADE UP THEIR MIND ABOUT WHETHER THEY WANTED TO FIGHT WITH A NUCLEAR WAR OR FIGHT A CONVENTIONAL ONE?

Well, that is a, uh, the, uh, what the reaction of the military has been to the adopt, to nuclear warfare, the advent of the possibility is a fascinating subject that historians will eventually have, I'm sure, a great time in dealing with. Uh... the way it now appears, in retrospect, and was, that the best planning for the consequences, and proper force postures and strengths, of nuclear war were done in the early days before the impact of their adoption was understood by the service bureaucracies. Uh, after that, you then had resistance to change, to very basic changes in force composition, roles, missions, survival measures... that so shook the establishment... that every time they looked at it they said, "Oh, my God, it hasn't been tried; uh, we better go back to protecting what we've got, what worked in the last war, and we can live with the idea of merely adding the nuclear weapon to the artillery." And of course, that condition prevails still today, and as a result, uh, there are many of us who have grave doubts as to whether, uh, we really are spending our money on a valid security posture or rather on one that has been badly bastardized by political and antinuclear considerations. The only thing I would add to that is that I am certain that the old saying, "Confusion to the enemy," applies also, and that the Soviets, in varying degrees, have had the same tug of war between the forces and postures that their marshals found successful in World War II, and the need to integrate and change to accommodate the new technologies.

DURING YOUR TIME IN NATO, IN EUROPE, WOULD YOU HAVE SAID THAT THE WAR-PIGHTING PLANS WERE IN ANY WAY CONGRUENT WITH THE PLANNING THAT WAS GOING ON IN THE ARMY?

If we look at the advent of, and impact of nuclear weapons in terms of the various services, and their reaction to them, uh, while there were... specific differences in areas where some were more quick to adopt out of necessity than others, uh, I think that the entire establishment... had roughly, overall, the same resistance factors. Now, the Air Force has always... created the image of taking the lead in their adoption, but their image was forced upon them by the fact that it was a physical impossibility, physical and economic impossibility, to have conventional nuclear response in strategic missiles and bombers. When you went nuclear, you had to go nuclear; there's no way that you could build, carry 500-pound bombs in ICBMs cost-effectively, or even in B-52's or B-36's, of consequence. So, they were obliged to face up to the fact that the strategic element of the Air Force... would have to be based upon nuclear capabilities, and therefore let's not dilute it with any other notions. The other elements of the force, including tactical air, did not suffer from this, and amusingly enough, after the NATO policy was adopted in the '50s, and measures to implement it were understood, you can go back and see that there was a tremendous effort to abandon air bases; we gave up the Rhine General Depot; we started looking at V-Stall aircraft, at single aircraft deployed in farmyards, on highways, all of those things; and then we went right back under conventional flexible response to the classic comfortable 25 airplanes on a runway, wingtip to wingtip, all deployed on an airbase in the area of a fireball. Which makes no sense, if you're going to be attacked by nuclear weapons, but which the Air Force, as in the case of the army... rationalized, in order to maintain their capabilities. And you found the same thing in the Navy. The Navy wanted to use 'em to deliver, but they weren't about to rationalize at concentrating all their firepower on one ship in a great big multibillion dollar carrier... was a very questionable thing to do when one single nuclear weapon could wipe it out. Oh, no, they rationalized that was needed for a conventional phase, whether it made sense or not, so all the services have, over the years, resisted change to the extent that it was a threat to their classic posture, to their classic roles, their missions, and their activities. And I think you have to deal with it... in a, as a whole. There were, during the period that, uh... that this transition is taking place, there had been, from time to time, people who have attempted to, uh, actually have a hard look and see what the implications of nuclear warfare are. And there have been several exercises over the years; I recall one that was called Oregon Trail... but interestingly enough, practically all those exercise... merely reinforced the concern by surfacing problems that no one was prepared to take appropriate measures to deal with. They just reminded people they had these problems, but they would write them off by assuming it wouldn't go nuclear, or by adopting, or saying we need it for the conventional phase of the flexible-response, uh, and similar responses of that nature.

HOW COMPLICATED DO YOU THINK IT IS REALLY?

One of the most difficult things for people to understand with respect to the changes... that nuclear weapons logically bring about, in the nature of warfare, is their impact on what I call the posture of the forces; that is, the presentation of the forces to the enemy. Some people would say, the extent of their vulnerability. Uh, the classic example is that when both sides have weapons that can wipe out an entire air base, it makes no sense to concentrate 25 multimillion-dollar airplane within the fireball of one single weapon. You then have to devise a posture which disperses these forces out beyond the level of the base. The same is true of concentrations of armor, or infantry, or other... forces. But when you change the posture, you then obviously also create dramatic change in quantity, in logistics, in management, in communications, and you make it almost impossible to go back to an old posture...if you have to, to fight conventionally. Which brings us back to the fact that the incompatibility of the conventional versus nuclear lies primarily not in the weapons, but in the presentation of the forces, and I recall in 1958 escorting Field Marshall Montgomery to the National War College, where he made a speech. And, if I remember his words, he said: "What we are doing is changing the method of doing the business. With nuclear weapons, we use firepower as the decisive element, not manpower; we use the nuclear weapons instead of the bodies of the troops, to achieve our objectives." And this is the area that, of course, has been very difficult for any of the services to adapt to, because of the irreversibility of doing so, and the desire of the politicians to maintain a conventional posture.

AT ONE POINT YOU WERE INVOLVED WITH MILITARY PLANNING FOR THE EUROPEAN DEFENSE COMMUNITY. DID YOU HAVE ANY PROBLEMS IN WHAT YOU WERE TRYING TO DO ON THAT COMMITTEE, AND WHY DO YOU THINK THE EDC FAILED?

If we look at the early NATO problem, and at the fact that we had a major imbalance in conventional forces, there were several solutions at the time that could be examined. Of course the early NATO problem did not take into account the indirect effects of any American strategic nuclear attack on the homeland of the Soviets, and that factor was introduced, but did not close the gap by any means. In addition to that factor was the possibility of increasing the contribution of conventional capabilities and other capabilities by bringing the Germans on board, and this led to the proposal for German rearmament. And as it is well known, the French initially resisted this proposal, primarily on the grounds that they did not wish to see German government-controlled units the size of divisions; they were willing to allow the Germans to be integrated into European-type units at a lower than division level. The result of this clash that took place in the logical military proposal again of creating German divisions, and the political aspiration of preventing this, particularly on the part of Jules Marque and the... French defense minister, and France, led to the European Army proposal. Which had not only the seeds of solving the German rearmament, but would have been a great leap forward towards a United States of Europe, which had gotten impetus under the Churchill leadership... his speeches in Missouri and in Geneva, uh, and under the, uh, Jean Monet and the Saar, uh, Tripartite coal community, the Plan Vert, the Green Agriculture Plan. At the time, it seemed to many of us that had the European defense plan been adopted, we've recognized faults in terms of its military capabilities, a year or two earlier, it probably would have succeeded, because with the other actions going on in the agricultural and economic field, the corrective actions would have gone in the right direction they would have gone towards greater integration, not less integration. Unfortunately we lost two years in trying to make a perfect solution, and in those two years we lost France and others in terms of ratification, and the scheme of a United States of Europe went down the tube at that time.

WITH THE INTRODUCTION OF TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAFONS INTO EUROPE, HOW WAS IT ENVISAGED THAT THEY WOULD BE USED? WOULD THEY BE USED BEFORE SAC WAS DEPLOYED, OR WOULD THEY BE ONE PART OF AN OVERALL BATTLE?

With respect to the relationship of strategic versus European and NATO defenses, in the very first... meeting that I attended in Paris, long before... there were any Lisbon goals and so forth, uh, it was quite clear that the security of Europe was going to depend upon a U. S. commitment to use, quote, and they adopted the words "any and all nuclear weapons" from the onset, if necessary. Now, by the time the 1956 political directive came about, that called for using these new weapons from the onset of any major acts of aggression. Anything bigger than incursions, and minor border incidents. Obviously, I would say that it was accepted, if not clearly stated, that any such use... would be involved very quickly, if not from the onset, strategic use. And all the plans that I was familiar with in those days gave credit to the results of the strategic operation on reducing the Russian capability to augment build-up and bring reserves in, thereby making it easier for Sacure to do his job, without necessarily matching everything the Soviets had all the way back to the Urals. So I think that most people realistically considered, at least in the military, that a nuclear war would be a total war, and did not envision, certainly in those days, a nuclear war limited to Europe, by itself, or on the other hand, losing a conventional war in Europe without resorting to American strategic weapons.

WHAT WAS YOUR REMEMBRANCE OF THE BACKGROUNDS OF THE LISBON FORCE?

When NATO was first formed, the first thing that had to be done was to prepare a list of the types of forces and quantities required to provide a credible defense against the Warsaw Pact Soviet threat. That was done by planners from the military of the 12 nations and the standing group, who coming right out of World War II, based their requirements upon classic conventional experience, and forces. No credit was given, in that particular force requirements, to independent US strategic nuclear actions, they knew they would take place, but they hadn't given them much credit, primarily because security precluded our saying much about 'em to our allies at the time. And the force requirements that emerged and were later presented at Lisbon... were very much higher than could be... met, considering the wartime reconstruction and economics, particularly of the European nations. It was this conflict between the need, military need, and economic reality, that led to a series of planning events... that produced what we now call a technological end run of the military balance that favored the Soviets conventionally; in other words, plans to use our best new technology, nuclear, to offset Soviet conventional mass in Europe. And that is what led to the political directive saying, "Yes, that is how it will be done," with the result that we bought ten to 15 years of effective deterrence, whether or net we had military parity.