54. Memorandum for the Record by the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Anderson)1
THE REPETITION OF THE NET EVALUATION SUBCOMMITTEE BRIEFING BEFORE THE PRESIDENT, THE SECRETARY OF STATE, THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, AND THE CHAIRMAN OF THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION
Following the briefing above described at ten o’clock this morning,2 there was some discussion, the substance of which I am setting out in this memorandum for the record.
The President expressed some surprise and some doubt about the conclusion in the report that strategic warning contemplated in Plan C would not cut down materially the amount of damage that would result to the United States from the Soviet atomic attack. He said he had believed that with strategic warning we could put ourselves in a position to defend against such an attack, and thus reduce to a greater degree than the report disclosed the amount of damage that would result to the United States. (One of the assumptions made in the report was that in the event that the Russians launched a full scale attack, the nature of the attack on the United States would be to reduce the number of continental targets and emphasize attack on Strategic Air Command bases.)
[Page 189]The President expressed the opinion that such capabilities as were played into action in the war games supporting the NESC report would certainly force a deterrent to the initiation of full scale general war with atomic weapons, if nothing else.
At this point, General George expressed the view that in such a situation as that assumed in 1958 there could and probably would be room for brush-fire or peripheral clashes, even of rather substantial size, and still not be enough to touch off all-out atomic blows; that in his opinion there would not be such an atomic exchange of blows as that contemplated in the report unless one nation obviously was embarking upon an all-out attack upon the heartland of the other.
The President again expressed his astonishment at our inability to defend ourselves better from aerial attack after a strategic warning. He pointed out that the U.S. success in the gaming appeared to lie in the stockpile differential between our assumed stockpile in 1958 and that estimated to be the amount in the Russian stockpile—a differential which the Committee assumed could be as much as 50% off in the estimates. It was pointed out that NIE estimates as to present and future size of Russian stockpiles were assumed to be correct.
At this point, Admiral Strauss made the point that if the size of the Russian stockpile approached parity with ours, the situation would become worse from our standpoint until we entered the phase of optimum or effective utility of thermonuclear weapons by both sides—and all of this short of and before taking into account the situation that would obtain when the ICBM capability could be attained.
The President observed that it was reasonable to assume that the Russians had conducted exercises similar to the NESC study, and that they had some appreciation of the implications for destruction of their regime and their country as a result of the use of thermonuclear weapons on a strategic scale. He said we had to give them credit for having some sense—that the whole prospect of an exchange of all-out blows with thermonuclear weapons simply staggered the human mind, and that he doubted that the human mind was capable of meeting and dealing with the kind of problems that would be created by such an exchange of blows.
Admiral Radford added that there were many variables in the thing, and that he could not answer a number of questions categorically as to the result of the full-scale use of thermonuclear weapons in general war. He added that in this war gaming exercise, we had, he felt, leaned over backwards to look at the worst situation from our standpoint, and assumed things which might not or would not necessarily have to happen in the event of atomic war. General George [Page 190] expressed disagreement with this thought, and said he felt it had been played out pretty faithfully along the line of a realistic appraisal of what would happen.
The President said, assuming that instead of the number of megatons estimated to be delivered on Russia, the amount was only 1/7th of that,—still this is the sort of thing the rational mind could not invite or take steps that might produce it. He went ahead to say he thought the report proved its usefulness, and he felt it was highly desirable to continue making these studies annually, since it kept the intelligence people alert, and needled and alerted the planners as well.
He said the thought kept occurring to him that after such an exchange as the games contemplate, it would be a long time before a country so struck would be shipping out any troops to fight any other kind of war.
Secretary Wilson expressed the view that the principal role of the Army would under such circumstances be to keep law and order at home. The President said that the report had led him to suspect that little wars in the future would be more apt to be in the form of internal rebellion rather than major external aggression, since the latter would be apt to bring strategic retaliation with thermonuclear weapons.
General George expressed the view that with the deterrent effect of the realization of what strategic thermonuclear war meant, the nature of warfare beneath such an umbrella would more likely be of the peripheral variety.
The President said he drew two further conclusions from the briefing,—first, that both sides would increasingly tend to avoid provoking such a situation as that played out in the war games; in other words, the deterrent against the use of all-out thermonuclear warfare would grow in proportion to the magnitude of the capability; second, he said he was all the more convinced that we could not prepare for little wars at great distances from the United States, and commit several divisions here and several divisions there to resistance against local aggression. Rather, we should trust, he felt, to the kind of major deterrent that the prospect of strategic thermonuclear war would bring.
Secretary Dulles said that this approach might be OK for us but that the people in these little countries who are friends of ours will continue to want to know what will happen if they are attacked. They would, he felt, want to have some tangible evidence that we will be in a position in such an event to come to their rescue and help them defend their countries against external aggression. The President’s response was that these little countries are going to have to be in a position to defend themselves on the ground, depending upon the United States to send in air, naval, and other forms of mobile support.
[Page 191]General George said he believed there would never be another Korea, meaning I took it that we would never, under such a policy as the President outlined, undertake to go in with our own ground forces without the willingness to use additional power that nuclear weapons give us to support the indigenous defending ground troops. The President said: “I will never commit our forces to battle where I cannot get at the heart of the enemy’s power and support”. He obviously had reference to the self-imposed limits upon our conduct of the Korean conflict.