Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, National Security Affairs, Volume II, Part 1

S/S–NSC files, lot 63 D 351, NSC 135 Series

Views of the Chairman, NSRB (Gorrie), on “Reappraisal of United States Objectives and Strategy for National Security” (NSC 135/1) ¹

top secret

[ Washington , undated.]

1. The Policy Statement (NSC 135/1) and its supporting documents, when viewed in the light of the status of our national security programs (NSC 135), fail to supply the Resources Board with an adequate framework for the evaluation of the several programs relating to the nonmilitary security of the United States regarding which it advises the President. Programs for passive defense including civil defense, dispersal of industry, rehabilitation of industry after attack, and the continuity of the essential functions of Government, all have been proceeding with inadequate policy guidance.

2. The policy needed is one which will relate the military defense and the passive defense of the U.S. to each other and which also will relate our over-all defenses to the estimated capabilities of the Soviets to attack the U.S. There has been a lack, not corrected by the NSC 135 series, of guidance which would coordinate the nation’s passive defense capabilities and its military defense capabilities.

3. As the agencies responsible for nonmilitary defense have developed their programs a basic fact has become increasingly clear. There is very little likelihood that these programs can be made effective, unless through military defenses the destruction from enemy attack can be held down to manageable proportions. This means that the two major elements of the nation’s defense structure do not meet. The gap leaves us dangerously vulnerable to the effects of attack.

4. Without effective military defense, passive measures which would significantly reduce the damage resulting from attack are infeasible both from the point of view of cost and time required to make them effective. It is essential to formulate nonmilitary security programs in terms of their relationship to military defensive capabilities. Similarly, military defense must be programmed in light of the recognized limits of passive defenses to deal with attack.

5. The assessment of our position with respect to the USSR, forming the background for this paper and the goals of our programs which are based on the findings of the paper, do not indicate that we now have or that we are projecting military defenses for the United States adequate to deal with Soviet offensive capabilities in the sense above outlined.

6. Paragraph 6c of the Policy Statement recommends that the United States take the necessary measures to “assure ready defensive strength adequate to provide in the event of general war a reasonable initial defense and to ensure reasonable protection to the nation during the period of mobilization for ultimate victory.”

7. One of the underlying assumptions of the paper is that in event of war the enemy would endeavor to strike the United States with an initial decisive blow. This can mean only that the initial blow would carry the full force of the enemy’s capabilities for strategic attack. No evidence is found indicating that we now possess or that our programs project defenses, military and passive, capable of holding the results of such an enemy attack within manageable proportions.

8. The paper also recommends in paragraph 6d that we round out and maintain the mobilization base. The importance of protecting the mobilization base against covert attack and sabotage is stressed. However, the necessity to provide military defenses for the base against overt strategic attack is not dealt with.

9. Paragraph 7 states that the United States should develop substantially improved civil defense in light of the capacity of the U.S.S.R. to deliver an atomic or thermo-nuclear attack. This recommendation is made without evaluation of the feasibility of providing adequate civil defense in the presence of inadequate military defense.

10. In raising the problem of guiding nonmilitary security programs, two broader problems are brought into question. They are the over-all adequacies of our defense effort and the balance of that effort as between offensive and defensive capabilities. The Summary and General Conclusions strongly recommend that we not adopt a policy of strengthening our defenses at the expense of projecting our strength outward to the enemy. This recommendation has this Agency’s full support. Nevertheless, it is clear that we also must deal realistically with the problem of insuring the people and the economic power of the U.S. against destruction.

11. Underlying the nation’s defense policies and programs is the assumption that the free world can create sufficient strength to deter the Soviets from precipitating general war. The present major deterrent is our estimated atomic superiority. Certainly another powerful deterrent would be defenses adequate to make the enemy doubt his ability to gravely cripple the United States.

12. The staff study which underlies the Policy Statement points out with great force that the deterrent effect of our atomic strength is likely to decline over the next few years. This is due to the fact that “the control relationship in the atomic equation appears not to be that of stockpiles to each other, but rather the relationship of one stockpile, plus its deliverability, to the number of key enemy targets, including retaliatory facilities, which must be destroyed in order to warrant an attack.”

13. The decline in the deterrent force of our atomic strength underlines the need for strengthening other deterrents, including the ability to blunt the enemy’s attack. This, in turn, implies the need for a substantial over-all increase in the national defense effort.

14. The failure of the policy paper to deal adequately with the foregoing problems appears to result from an incomplete evaluation of the following points:

a. It is assumed that the Soviets would attack if they felt capable of dealing the U.S. a decisive initial blow without gravely endangering their own regime. (See appendix, para. 1)

b. Gross superiority of U.S. atomic striking power probably would not deter the Soviets if they felt capable of striking such an initial decisive blow and, hence, atomic superiority in itself soon will cease to be a controlling deterrent to general war.

c. Nuclear weapons have made it possible for the initial attack to be decisive and have greatly enhanced the value of surprise.

d. Since by means short of initiating general war the U.S. cannot prevent the Soviets from building increasing strength for the delivery of a mass-destruction attack, our immediate course must be to offset that increasing strength so clearly as to leave little doubt in the Soviet mind regarding its incapability to strike a decisive blow.

e. The growing Soviet strength can be offset by building defenses that would place the success of an attempted decisive attack in serious doubt and by building a retaliatory striking force clearly capable of penetrating Soviet defenses to strike a blow that would both critically damage the war making capacity of the USSR and gravely threaten the continued existence of the regime.

f. The security of the U.S. can be safeguarded against the danger of surprise decisive attack only by a major national effort to create the two foregoing deterrents to Soviet aggression at the earliest possible date and under no circumstances at a date later than the Soviet atomic stockpile reaches the level required for decisive attack in terms of numbers of bombs vs number of U.S. and other free world targets.

15. For the above reasons it is not our view that the NSC 135 series provides adequate guidance in these respects for our national security programs or for the formulation of the F.Y. 1954 Federal Budget. It is our recommendation that the problems before the nation and our defense policies and programs be re-evaluated in light of the foregoing considerations.

1. A covering memorandum from Lay to the National Security Council dated Sept. 2, reads: “At his request, the attached views of the Chairman, National Security Resources Board, on NSC 135/1 and the Annex thereto are circulated herewith for the information of the National Security Council in connection with Council consideration of NSC 135/1 at its meeting on September 3, 1952.”