ir Power and Western hY A MILITARY CORRESPONDENT ARSHAL of
the Royal Air Force Sir John Slessor was Chief of the Air Staff during Labour's last two years in office and for the first year of the present Povernment. Until eighteen months ago he was chairman 0f the Chiefs of Staff in London. That he should now deliver self of a serious piece of strategical analysis for public nsumption is therefore an important event. He can claim .to speak with rare authority about his special subject, which p air power; and he can take his reader behind the scenes to ,I!tspect part of the foundations—and limitations—of the Pritish defence programme. He has shown himself once again an outspoken and 'courageous officer. None of the admirals, and only Lord Montgomery among the generals, Would dare to imitate him.
But for all the brilliance of its author, his little book* is 13est regarded as the opening speech of a grave debate rather ,t1lan a convincing exposition of British military policy. In me weeks ahead he will come under fire from many quarters, and not least from the Royal Air Force, for his pungent and ImMensely readable defence of atomic air power leaves several ,Iirgent and relevant questions unanswered. The printed word Ls a less forgiving medium than broadcasts on the Third rrogramme, or lectures to staff college students. Some readers of Strategy for the West will put it down after a second or third reading with an uncomfortable suspicion that our present hig4er strategic thinking is a terribly hit-or-miss affair, if this is a fair sample.
Take it from me, says Sir John Slessor, that atomic weapons Will not be abolished and will definitely be used in another great war. Effective over-all defence against them is not a practical economic proposition. This is a very good thing, he Pontinues; it means that war, in the sense of total world- Wide ' shooting ' war, has now abolished itself, and that the World will now have a chance to return to sanity, though there will be. small wars. We have the Great Deterrent (generally believed to be available in quantity only to the Americans and the Russians) to thank for this.
So far so good. The real World War III is in progress now, the the Communists will do all the damage they can, though ule Colossus has feet of clay. We must, therefore, address _ourselves to the problems of the long haul '—and, being a Marshal of the RAF, he adds "under the wings of atomic ,„11Ir power." For many of this country's cold war commitments were will be a need for infantry with light supporting weapons:- and in the next Korea-type war there may even be a good easC for using some atomic weapons, if such action will hurt e enemy more than the allies. Air power may not be able to 40 very much in limited war, however, since in its fullest ense it is an unlimited instrument. Ideas will be the real !veapons, and the satellites are somehow to be encouraged to Iollow Yugoslavia's lead and break with Moscow.
We are now nearly half-way through Slessor's book. Hardly a word has been uttered which would provoke a blush in Camberley or Havant. And then, quite suddenly, the author Produces from inside his flying jacket a chapter entitled The otr ength We Need' in which he throws most of these careful ajgnInents into the dust-bin. Sir Winston Churchill said in 4949 that air mastery is the supreme expression of military Power. Therefore, says Sir John, we must put first things urst, and since the kernel of air power is the long range, jet- Propelled high-altitude bomber, Britain must have 'V' Strategy for the West. Marshal of the RAF Sir John Slessor. Cassell & Co. pp, 162. 9s. 6d. bombers—the real deterrent to war, and the only force which can crush aggression at its source, should the deterrent fail. There will have to be an army as well, but on reduced scales, with most of the Territorials downgraded for civil defence roles.. There will have to be a Navy, but it will not need many aircraft carriers and could yield substantial econo- mies.' Service loyalties are excellent, he says, but they should not be allowed to distort our judgement. The really vital thing is to maintain the essential level of technical efficiency and battle-readiness in the Air Striking Force. And we simply cannot leave this side of the affair to the United States, because we should lose our influence over allied policy and planning, and waste all the dearly bought experience of the RAF and the British aircraft industry. "This thing is so much a matter of life and =death to all of us that no British family of the requisite quality should rest content until they have at least one son serving his country in the air."
I do not propose to follow Sir John Slessor through his final chapter on Germany, since he has no special claim to be an authority in this field. ,But I do suggest that his general argument is a remarkable essay in unsound logic, and a good example of how professional opinion at a really high level can tie itself in knots. As it happens, I have always believed that the Air Ministry should get the lion's share of the defence budget, and that the decision to build 'V' bombers is a sound one. But rhaving read Strategy for the West I can now see why some others think otherwise. For if atomic bombs are indeed an overwhelming deterrent, it seems only common sense to let the Americans do the deterring for the next twenty years, as they have done for the past nine, while this country concentrates on light mobile ground forces, or what you will. The laity (as opposed to the professionals) will surely think it very foolish of the Government to persuade itself that American atomic air power has made global war impossible, and then proceed to spend hundreds of millions of British money simply to make it impossible all over again. They are strongly advised to leave this book alone. It will only upset them.
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