: THE WAR AND PEACE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE - TAPES C10035-C10036 MICHAEL CARVER
Interviewer: I'M GOING TO START OFF, LORD CARVER, BY ASKING YOU ONE OR TWO QUESTIONS ABOUT FLEXIBLE RESPONSE.
Interviewer: LORD CARVER, WHAT AS YOU SEE IT IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN THE MAJOR PROBLEM WITH THE NATO STRATEGY OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE?
Carver: I think the major problem has been that it doesn't really take into account what the other side's reaction is likely to be.
Carver: It assumes that the other side's reaction is going to be more or less equivalent to whatever action NATO itself takes and even though that might conceivably be the case it, if, you cannot possibly assume that it will be the case and the whole question of what the other side's response to our initial use of nuclear weapons would be has been really thrust under the carpet.
Interviewer: LET'S JUST TALK PERHAPS IN A LITTLE BIT OF DETAIL.
Interviewer: DRAWING ON YOUR EXPERIENCE IN NATO PLANNING, LET'S, CAN YOU GIVE US SOME IDEA OF HOW THE SCENARIO GOES OR WOULD HAVE GONE OR DID GO WHEN, WHEN THESE THINGS HAD BEEN PLANNED IN THE '70S.
Interviewer: IF YOU WERE IN CHARGE OF BRITISH FORCES IN GERMANY HOW DOES IT, HOW DOES IT GO, I MEAN HOW, HOW WAS THE STRATEGY...?
Carver: Well the assumption, I mean the, the assumption is that you first of all try and hold Warsaw Pact forces up without using nuclear weapons but of course if you succeeded in doing that then that solves the problem but on the assumption that you didn't then a number of curious scenarios could be brought up, the most curious, which I think was invented by Denis Healey in the early days of planning flexible responses, what they called the warning shot, when you fire off apparently one nuclear weapon at that, some unknown target or no target at all, at marshes or something and say now then Russians, that just shows you that if you're, go on any more like this we're prepared to, to use more.
Carver: What happens if they ring back and send one back again and say, well that shows you were prepared to meet them, nobody has ever been able to explain it.
Carver: You could then go on from there to an initial use of presumably the shorter-range weapons, artillery.
Carver: Then if that doesn't do the trick the theory behind NATO's flexible response and what they call escalation dominance is that you then go up rungs of the ladder until you're finally prepared if you haven't brought the war to an end by that time to let loose a strategic weapon against the Soviet homeland.
Carver: What Europe's looking like at that stage I'm not quite sure.
Interviewer: WAS THERE IN YOUR EXPERIENCE, WAS THERE ANY KIND OF GENERAL AGREEMENT OR COMMON DOCTRINE ON THIS QUESTION OF DEPLOYMENT AND HOW NUCLEAR WEAPONS WOULD BE USED AND WHAT THEY WOULD BE USED FOR?
Carver: Well this goes back a long way.
Carver: I mean this goes back to McNamara's demand in 1961 that really Europe should try and free itself from thinking that the moment Europe, Western Europe was attacked the Americans would loose strategic weapons against the Soviet Union, when they ran the risk of Soviet strategic weapons landing on the USA.
Carver: And if McNamara had had his way Europe's conventional forces wouldn't have been increased a great deal.
Carver: But for a whole series of reasons, part political, part military, part financial, European members of NATO were not prepared to do that, and the Federal Republic of Germany in particular, having no nuclear weapons of its own and no warheads is very sensitive on this issue that there mustn't be a break between the possible use of nuclear weapons on the battlefields and the possible use of U.S.
Carver: strategic weapons on the Soviet Union, but, but the, the evolution of NATO's policy of flexible response took years of argument but was never really totally satisfied.
Carver: And the actual plans of its Supreme Allied Commander in Europe for the employment of the nuclear weapon systems which were available to him, which are almost all American, have always remained completely secret.
Interviewer: IS IT FAIR TO SAY THOUGH THAT THERE WAS A DIFFERENCE IN VIEW BETWEEN SAY THE BRITISH ON THE ONE HAND AND THE AMERICANS ON THE OTHER AND POSSIBLY THE GERMANS SOMEWHERE ELSE ALTOGETHER AGAIN ON WHETHER A WAR COULD BE FOUGHT IN EUROPE, WHETHER TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS COULD BE DEPLOYED?
Carver: No, I don't think there was any disagreement really.
Carver: I mean I think, I think people went, you know, practical soldiers very often thought, well you know, is it really possible to, to fight a war, control a war when these things are flying around, and then one rationalizes by saying well we've got, we, we have got to make it clear to the other side that we are prepared to be able to fight if they use them and therefore you've got to go through the motions I mean I, I used to try and bring a sense of proportion to troops under my command when I was commanding a brigade in Germany way back in 1960, saying don't get too fussed about whether B Company have had a hot meal when the United Kingdom has ceased to exist.
Interviewer: YOU'VE TALKED ABOUT PRACTICAL SOLDIERS, CAN YOU GIVE US SOME IDEA NOW OF HOW YOU CAME TO HOLD THE RATHER SKEPTICAL VIEWS WHICH YOU DO HOLD ABOUT THESE WEAPONS AND THEIR USEFULNESS?
Carver: Well that goes back even further really, it goes back to when I was on Monty's staff in SHAPE in the early 1950s, when I was responsible for organizing study periods, and this was just when the Americans were pressing NATO to accept views of tactical atomic weapons and he told me to write a paper for him on the subject, and I went and talked to General Beaufre who was the very brilliant French general then running the NATO Tactical Study Group.
Carver: And it was easy, very easy to produce a paper on what we would do if we had them, but the moment you assumed the other side might have them too, which was bound to happen in time, but at that time people didn't think that they had enough to be able to use them tactically, this totally changed the picture.
Carver: And Beaufre and the American General Gavin thought up a series of completely unrealistic, I thought, ideas as to how you could fight when the enemy were using these things, but the conclusion was interesting.
Carver: The conclusion was that if you thought you were going to have to fight a war in which nuclear weapons were used on the battlefield by both sides, you needed more conventional forces, not less, because of the damage that your forces would suffer.
Carver: So the idea that nuclear weapons were somehow going to enable you to economize in conventional weapons was completely false.
Carver: That was such an unpopular view that it was brushed under the carpet.
Interviewer: LORD CARVER, I THINK I'M RIGHT IN SAYING IT'S YOUR VIEW THAT NATO DIDN'T COME TO TERMS WITH, AND STILL HASN'T COME TO TERMS WITH, THE STRATEGIC CHANGES WHICH YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.
Interviewer: COULD YOU PERHAPS GIVE ME THAT VIEW, AND THEN EXPLAIN WHY DIDN'T YOU THINK THAT NATO HASN'T BEEN ABLE TO COME TO TERMS WITH STRATEGIC CHANGES?
Carver: Well, Liddell Hart faced this issue in the 1960, in the 1960s in his book Deterrent or Defense.
Carver: I think because the consequences of accepting it are unpleasant.
Carver: They face you with some very difficult problems to face and that it's easier to go on, it's easier to go on as you are and certainly the whole business of working hard a nuclear weapons policy that was agreed in NATO took so long and was so contentious that people shudder at the thought of throwing the whole thing to the melting pot again.
Carver: The whole issue really is one, the really, the crux of the issue of what the Germans think and the Germans have a split mind about it.
Interviewer: COULD YOU ELABORATE ON THAT?
Carver: Well, the Germans at same time are, are very anxious that their country should not be devastated by nuclear weapons and they, they like the rest of the NATO, tend always to neglect the one, the other side's likely views on it, but they're also extremely anxious to ensure that their country isn't devastated by a non-nuclear wear and therefore they keep on stressing the importance of, of the nuclear weapons in preventing a war, in deterring a war taking place at all, an assistance there's no decoupling between any, any crossing of the Inner German border and the American threat against Soviet cities while at the same time being very reluctant to accept that you could have a conventional war of any length and very reluctant of course to abandon any form of forward defense, and also reluctant to accept the Inner German border is a frontier which ought to be defended.
Carver: I mean they, they consistently opposed any more fortifications, any form of minding of the Inner German border.
Carver: I accept that they face a very, very difficult problem and it's very difficult for them to get the balance right.
Carver: What really matters to them is the absolute assurance that the Americans are committed to the defense of Western Germany, and that matters to us too.
Interviewer: NOW LET'S TURN FOR A SECOND TO SOME OF THE WEAPONRY.
Interviewer: LORD CARVER, AS I UNDERSTAND IT YOU WERE AGAINST, OR YOU DIDN'T THINK VERY HIGHLY OF BATTLEFIELD NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THAT INCLUDED THE ENHANCED RADIATION.
Interviewer: IS THAT CORRECT?
Carver: Yes, I mean I've already explained why I think short-range battlefield weapons are not only militarily useless because you wouldn't be allowed to use them anyway, but also quite dangerous.
Carver: Enhanced radiation weapon I like even less because there's a danger that blurs the distinction between non-nuclear weapon systems and nuclear weapon systems and I think that's a very dangerous thing to blur that distinction and you could, you could see that, that you could get greater pressure, greater pressure of the military, whoever they might be, to use the enhanced radiation weapon on the grounds that it didn't do, wouldn't do too much damage to Western Germany itself, with the result that, that you would have set off the first nuclear weapon and the consequences of that, as more than one American defense secretary has said, are absolutely incalculable.
Interviewer: CAN I TURN NOW TO SOME OF THE ARGUMENTS WHICH AS IT WERE YOUR CRITICS...WISHES TO SAY WHAT WHAT, WHAT THEY CAN SAY IS WHAT'S THE ALTERNATIVE TO RELIANCE ON, ON, ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS? WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE?
Carver: Well, I rely on of course hope forever really to, to rely on the overall deterrent to war, which the possession of nuclear weapons by the two superpowers the fact that, that they can in the last resort inflict appalling damage on each other.
Carver: I believe that that is a valid overall deterrent to either of them getting involved in direct hostilities against, against each other.
Carver: At the same time it's important that NATO should be seen to be supported by nuclear weapons in order to make it quite clear to the, to the Soviet Union that they could not use their nuclear weapons in Europe without fear of, of a reply in kind.
Carver: But what I'm quite clear about in my own mind is it would be, and I keep on using the same words, criminally irresponsible of any military or political figure on NATO's side to be the first to use nuclear weapons on the assumption that the other side would only reply in the same limited way that we had themselves or not reply with nuclear weapons at all.
Carver: I think that is a totally unjustified and very dangerous assumption.
Carver: I believe therefore that what is important is that, that NATO should be seen to be supported by the United States, and the most important element in that is that physical stationing of United States conventional land and air forces in Europe and that they are backed up by American systems which have the capability to attack targets within the Soviet Union.
Carver: I don't believe you will need more than that in nuclear weapons but the conventional forces must be sufficiently capable, sufficiently strong, not necessarily in total numbers but sufficiently capable to be seen to be capable of meeting some form of incursion across the Inner German border and bringing hostilities if they did break out, if that deterrent did fail, to a halt before you used nuclear weapons.
Carver: Now as long as the Americans are quite clearly committed with their conventional forces to Western Europe, then NATO does not need to match the Soviet Union tank-for-tank, aircraft-for-aircraft, gun-for-gun and missile in Europe, but were the Americans not to be so committed then Europe would need to do so, so it's not just a question of replacing the troops which the Americans have in Europe.
Interviewer: LORD CARVER, CAN I ASK YOU A QUESTION NOW ABOUT THE DECISION TO BUY TRIDENT? CAN YOU BRIEFLY REMIND US WHY YOU WERE AGAINST THAT?
Carver: Well I am against it.
Carver: Well, I'm not against the Trident missile, a good missile.
Carver: I'm against Britain spending a lot of money on replacing what it calls an independent strategic strike system of its own.
Carver: Independent in that it must be capable of attacking Moscow at a time when nobody else is flinging anything at them at all.
Carver: And secondly, strategic in that it must be capable of overcoming the anti-ballistic missile defenses of Moscow.
Carver: Now those two criteria mean that it is considered necessary they have a submarine capable of firing at any time of the day or night 365 days of the year and secondly, that you've got to penetrate future ABM system, which they're allowed under the ABM Treaty, and that forces you into, I mean four boats at least and it forces you into designing and building new warheads and...to.
Carver: I believe it's quite unnecessary for us to have such a system.
Carver: I have never objected to our contributing to the NATO Supreme Allied Commander of Europe's theatre nuclear force, which is after all the primary purpose for which President Kennedy allowed us to have Polaris and conditions which were repeated in the agreement between Mrs. Thatcher and President Carter.
Carver: But then for that purpose you don't necessarily have to have a British boat because they're American boats doing the same job ready to fire all the time 365 days of the year.
Carver: Nor do you have to penetrate Moscow's ABM defenses.
Carver: The existing Polaris warhead, the existing Polaris missile will do the job.
Carver: I admit you've got to have a new one because it's going out and what I have persistently said is that we should have looked at our systems in the light of NATO's modernization of SACEUR's theatre nuclear systems, and if in looking at that and deciding what NATO really needs it is considered to be a good thing, that we should contribute to it, I would have no objection about it.
Interviewer: LORD CARVER, CAN YOU JUST EXPLAIN WHAT THE IMPACT OF SOVIET PARITY, THE SOVIETS ACHIEVING PARITY HAS BEEN AND WHETHER IN YOUR VIEW NATO HAS REALLY TAKEN THAT ON BOARD AND ABSORBED THAT INTO ITS THINKING?
Carver: When the Americans first put forward to NATO the proposition that American tactical nuclear weapons should be used as part of NATO plans it was assumed that the Soviet Union would never have enough nuclear weapons for them to be able to use them on the battlefield, although studies did take place in the early 1950s as to, how you could possibly fight a battle if the other side were using the same sort of weapons as we produced to use ourselves and the results that came up you could either come to the conclusion that it was impossible to fight one at all or else that you needed to have so many forces to compensate for the ones which have been destroyed by nuclear weapons that you, you were back on the same argument that, that, that you needed as many conventional forces as if you hadn't got nuclear weapons.
Carver: But NATO has consistently failed to take realistic account of the fact that the Soviet Union over the years has developed the capability, both in terms of nuclear warheads and the systems to deliver them all the way from the battlefield up to the strategic, which means that it is totally unrealistic to assume that the other side will not reply in kind and probably reply in greater numbers and with a greater destructive power than you yourself have used in initiating nuclear weapons.
Interviewer: THANK YOU.
Interviewer: THAT WAS A VERY GOOD ANSWER.
Interviewer: LET US TURN NOW PLEASE TO THE CURRENT OR THE DEAL WHICH IS LIKELY TO BE STRUCK ON NOVEMBER THE 7TH OR WHENEVER, THE INF DEAL.
Interviewer: WHAT, WHAT IS YOUR VIEW OF THAT?
Carver: I don't get particularly excited about the INF deal, either if it does come off or if it doesn't come of.
Carver: Ideally as a starter for doing away with nuclear weapons they're not the systems that I would begin with.
Carver: Nevertheless I welcome the agreement because if only the fact that the Soviet Union are going to have to get rid of far more warheads and rather more menacing systems than the United States are going to have to do.
Carver: But we have to look back and say why did we have them in the first place, and this was a combination of two factors and to go back to 1977 when Helmut Schmidt made his lecture at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Carver: He was worried about the, the Americans and the Soviet Union getting together and in order to improve their mutual security really bringing about a state of decoupling in Europe, by which the Soviets might feel that they could use nuclear weapons in Europe without fear of strategic response from the united States, and he seized on the SS-20 as the weapon system which seemed to be this and reluctantly I, I'm pretty certain, reluctantly the Americans agreed to, certainly reluctantly from Richard Perle's point of view to introduce the Tomahawk cruise missile in a land-based version into Europe and the American Army was really rather reluctant to have the Pershing II, They weren't quite certain it was going to work anyway.
Carver: And they were brought to pacify this idea of Helmut Schmidt's.
Carver: It didn't actually make the slightest difference to the vulnerability of Europe to, to, to the Soviet nuclear systems.
Carver: There's so many of them you could use any number, and the SS-20 was undoubtedly designed as a successor to the SS-4 and -5 whose task was to knock out American nuclear delivery bases in Western Europe.
Carver: That's what they were introduced for and that's what the SS-20 was meant to do.
Carver: But the introduction of Pershing IIs and Tomahawk cruise missiles, although politically and psychologically, shall we say perhaps valuable to NATO to re-assure against decoupling was of no military significance at all because it, and nobody ever actually even suggested that they could knock out the SS-20s because the SS-20s mobile and they would have to strike before the SS-20s had struck anyway, so the cruise missile was particularly useless for the purpose.
Carver: So it doesn't worry me that they're being taken away, although of course we're back in the situation that Helmut Schmidt was worried about, except that the addition of the SS-20 to all the other systems which the Soviet Union have got will have been done away with we hope.
Interviewer: THANK YOU.
Interviewer: CAN I JUST CONCLUDE WITH A GENERAL QUESTION, TWO GENERAL QUESTIONS REALLY? THE FIRST ONE IS GIVEN THE AMBIGUITY WHICH LIE OVER THESE MATTERS, GIVEN THE AGREEMENTS...HOW EASY IS IT, WAS IT FOR YOU AS A PRACTICAL MILITARY PERSON TO ACTUALLY TRAIN TROOPS TO FIGHT SOME KIND OF NUCLEAR WAR, TO, TO SIMULATE SOME KIND OF SCENARIO FOR THE NUCLEAR WAR?
Carver: Well we had to pretend to do this.
Carver: Every exercise in Germany always had to finish up with the use of nuclear weapons because otherwise it would be said that we weren't, you know, we know longer believed in them but of course the moment you begin to use nuclear weapons the exercise has got to come to an end anyway because nothing much can happen after that.
Carver: I don't think that, certainly I myself when I commanded a brigade in Germany nearly 30 years ago, by view was that although you go through the motions of, of the sort of anti-nuclear style what you've really got to do is to make absolutely certain that your troops can fight conventionally because that's the only thing that they're actually going to be able to do.
Interviewer: THANK YOU.
Interviewer: LET ME, IF I CONCLUDE WITH, WITH ANOTHER ANSWER, WITH ANOTHER QUESTION WHICH RELATES TO THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE MILITARY AND THE, THE POLITICIANS, THE POLITICAL LEADERS.
Interviewer: WOULD YOU, WOULD YOU, IN YOUR EXPERIENCE IS IT FAIR TO SAY THAT DOCTRINE AND NUCLEAR DOCTRINE FOR POLITICIANS IS COMPLETELY ELASTIC THING, THE FUNCTION OF WHICH IS LEGITIMIZED WHATEVER THEY ARE POLITICALLY DOING AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT IN TIME ...CAN I, CAN I, CAN I ASK YOU TO GIVE US YOUR VIEWS ON THAT QUESTION?
Carver: Well when I was, when I was Chief of the General Staff and Chief of the Defense Staff these nuclear issues were not hot issues at all and therefore were very seldom discussed but practically all the time when I was chief of the Defense Staff the Labour Government was in power and the Labour Government policy was quite clear, which was to, to run on Polaris as long as it possibly could be run on but not to plan a successor system, and I was quite happy to go along with that but the actual running of, of the Polaris system...The replacement costs which were going to make a great hole in the defense budget.
Interviewer: SO YOU'RE SAYING THAT, THAT IN THE, IN THE '70S THE NUCLEAR QUESTIONS WERE NOT GREATLY TO THE FORE?
Carver: No, they weren't.
Interviewer: WAS THERE, WAS THERE RELUCTANCE AMONG POLITICIAN TO STIR ANYTHING?
Carver: There was certainly a reluctance within the Labour Party to stir up things for fear that it would cause division within the Labour Party.
Interviewer: AND DID YOU ENCOUNTER A GREATER WILLINGNESS TO CONFRONT THE QUESTION AMONG OTHER POLITICIANS?
Carver: Well they really weren't, they really were not hot issues at that time.
Carver: I mean there were much more serious issues at stake, I mean as far as the Army were concerned it was very much involved in Northern Ireland and then when the Labour Government came in the principal concern for the Chiefs of Staffs, of which I was the GC of Staff was the whole defense review and that took, took more of our time and in fact was in our opinion far more important than starting arguments about the nuclear, nuclear issues which were not.
Carver: It wasn't until after that, a combination of factors which particularly the need to replace Polaris, the question of the modernization of SACEUR's theatre nuclear weapons, the rather bellicose attitude of Reagan when he was a Presidential candidate and when he became President, and the events in Iran, against the Americans in Iran, all those came together to make it suddenly appear to people in Europe that there might possibly be a war in, in Europe and that the nuclear issue came to the fore then, but it wasn't a hot issue.
Interviewer: WHEN YOU'RE READY LORD CARVER...
Carver: The, the thing which worries a whole lot of people is that all armies that are supported by nuclear weapons have to work out systems by which whole procedures for using them, procedures for ensuring that your own troops don't get hit by your own weapons and procedures for requesting them and then for exploiting their use; the Soviet Union has them, we have them, all NATO countries have them.
Carver: And that upsets people because they think that everybody is keen on nuclear war-fighting, and this of course is the paradox inherent in the whole nuclear business, that if you wish to deter the other side from invasion or from making war by the threat of the use of nuclear weapons, you have to make it clear to him that in certain circumstances you would be prepared to use them.
Carver: Nevertheless, the other side of the paradox is that if you were in fact to use them you would almost certainly finish off worse off than if you had not, but you can't, you, you can't escape from that paradox.