Abstract
Henry Kissinger wrote that ‘The more moderate the objective, the less violent war is likely to be’, as if the choice of weapons and the manner of their use would be governed by the war-aims of the contestants. Yet the choice of means had to be decided on the basis of those available, and the problem faced by the proponents of limited war was that the means most appropriate for limited objectives—strong, local conventional forces—were by far the most expensive. However strong the argument for conventional forces in terms of military logic, it would not carry the day if there were no funds available from hard-pressed and restricted national budgets (paradoxically, limited budgets did not make for limited war). In consequence many, but not all, of the proponents of limited war in the mid-1950s opted for ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons.
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Notes
- 1.
Bernard Brodie, ‘Strategy hits a dead end’, Harpers (October 1955); Osgood, Limited War, p. 230. Osgood was not totally convinced of the value of tactical nuclear weapons. His discussion of the costs and benefits attached to their use is careful and balanced. For a discussion of the debate about how best to fight a limited war see Morton Halperin, Limited War in the Nuclear Age (New York: John Wiley, 1963).
- 2.
The Eisenhower Administration and NATO Nuclear Strategy: An Oral History Roundtable conducted by David A. Rosenberg and Robert A. Wampler and Participants: Robert Bowie, Andrew Goodpaster, Uwe Nerlich, Robert Richardson, David A. Rosenberg, Jennifer Sims, Robert A. Wampler. 10 May, 1989 [Transcribed by Dan Addess] Accessed at: http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/lory1.ethz.ch/collections/coll_natomilplan/transcript100b7.html?nav1=1&nav2=7&nav3=1.
- 3.
Denis Healey ‘The bomb that didn’t go off’, Encounter (July 1955); Blackett, Atomic Weapons and East West Relations, p. 8.
- 4.
The concept of tolerable loss was based on RAND studies but the term was coined at SHAPE. David S. Yost, ‘The history of NATO theater nuclear force policy: Key findings from the Sandia conference’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 15: 2 (1992), 228–61.
- 5.
Originally in Deterrence by Denial and Punishment, Research Monograph No. 1, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, 2 January 1959, and then to a wider audience in Deterrence and Defense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961).
- 6.
Rear-Admiral Sir Anthony Buzzard, ‘Massive retaliation and graduated deterrence’, World Politics, VIII:2 (January 1956); On Limiting Atomic War (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1956), written by Richard Goold-Adams on the basis of discussions with Buzzard, Blackett and Denis Healey M.P. On Buzzard see John Baylis, ‘Anthony Buzzard’ in John Baylis and John Garnett, Makers of Nuclear Strategy (London: Pinter, 1991).
- 7.
Richard Goold-Adams, On Living Atomic War, p. 20.
- 8.
‘Graduated deterrence’, Economist (5 November 1955), p. 458.
- 9.
Colonel Richard S. Leghorn, ‘No need to bomb cities to win war’, US News & World Report (28 January 1955), p. 84.
- 10.
Buzzard, op. cit., p. 229.
- 11.
Bernard Brodie, ‘Strategy hits a dead end’, op. cit.; idem., Strategy in the Missile Age, pp. 321–5.
- 12.
A. J. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army between Korea and Vietnam (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1986), p. 70.
- 13.
Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, pp. 174–83.
- 14.
James E. King, ‘Nuclear weapons and foreign policy. II—Limited annihilation’, The New Republic (15 July 1957), p. 18.
- 15.
William Kaufmann, ‘The crisis in military affairs’, World Politics, X:4 (July 1958), p. 594.
- 16.
Michael Gordon Jackson, ‘Beyond Brinkmanship: Eisenhower, Nuclear War Fighting, and Korea, 1953–1968,’ Presidential Studies Quarterly, 35: 1 (March 2005), pp. 52–75.
- 17.
Eisenhower cited in Robert H. Ferrrell, ed., The Diary of James C. Hagerty (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), p. 69.
- 18.
Memorandum of Conference with the President, May 24, 1956; 10:30 am.
- 19.
Diary Entry by the President, January 23, 1956, FRUS, 1955–1957, National Security Policy, Vol. XIX.
- 20.
Memorandum for the Record by the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Anderson), January 23, 1956. FRUS, 1955–1957, National Security Policy, Vol. XIX.
- 21.
Memorandum of Conversation, Military Paragraphs of Basic National Security Policy, Department of State, July 2, 1959.
- 22.
‘SHAPE History 1957’, 1967: https://www.nato.int/nato_static/assets/pdf/pdf_archives/20121126_SHAPE_HISTORY_-_1957.pdf, pp. 14–5.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Major General Talensky, editor of Military Thought, in the March 1958 issue of International Affairs, ‘I-73 Soviet Propaganda on the Nature of the Nuclear War Threat’, CIA/DI/FBIS Radio Propaganda Report, 25 June 1958. ‘I-53 Soviet Propaganda on Tactical Atomic Weapons and Limited War’, CIA/DI/FBIS Radio Propaganda Report, 1 October 1957, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/1957-10-01.pdf.
- 25.
All quotations are from Chapter 7 of Garthoff, Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age.
- 26.
This document refers to a 1954 Soviet guide: Memorandum from Helms to the Director of Central Intelligence, 18 June 1962, CIA. Available at: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00246A029700280001-2.pdf.
- 27.
T. N. Dupuy, ‘Can America fight a limited nuclear war?’, Orbis, V:1 (Spring 1961): p. 32.
- 28.
Address by General Maxwell D. Taylor entitled ‘Military Objectives of the Army, 1960 to 1962’ at the Secretaries’ Conference, Quantico, Virginia (21 June 1958), p. 6.
- 29.
For a detailed study of this point based on a series of British wargames, see: Letter from Denis Healey to Henry Kissinger, February 27, 1969, specifically the attachment: ‘Nuclear Planning Working Group, Script of Presentation by Defence Operational Analysis Establishment (UK)’, April 1966. The conclusion drawn from this study was that there must be a threat to use TNWs against Warsaw Pact countries.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Bacevich, The Pentomic Era, p. 150; Ingo Trauschweizer, The Cold War U.S. Army: Building Deterrence for Limited War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008).
- 32.
Liddell Hart, Deterrence or Defence, p. 81; P.M.S. Blackett, ‘Nuclear weapons and defence’, International Affairs, XXXIV:4 (October 1958).
- 33.
Henry A. Kissinger, ‘Limited war: conventional or nuclear? A reappraisal’, Daedalus, vol. 89, No. 4 (1960). This was later published, as Donald Brennan, ed., Arms Control, Disarmament and National Security (New York: George Braziller, 1961), p. 145.
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Freedman, L., Michaels, J. (2019). Limited Means. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57350-6_9
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