WEAPONS AND POLICIES
BarrAnsi has the Bomb, for better or for worse; and in this season of the year, when the Defence White Paper and the debates arising out of it in the Commons are imminent, the need is to assume its existence, and start from that premise. It may be that at some future date a party will be given a majority which is pledged to repudiate nuclear warfare, to throw all avail- able stocks of weapons into the sea, and to eject our allies from their bases on land or loch. But this is unlikely; and even if it were much more
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probable than it is we iiu con-
sider, still have to co- sider, in the meantime 1;tw best to exploit the deterrents we have; to ensure that they continue to deter, but do not at the same time involve us in avoidable hazards.
In an article in Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (re- printed here by the Institute of Strategic Studies), Henry A. Kissinger makes an admirably de- tached survey of what is surely the most import- ant defence problem that. we have to face: how to strike a reasonable balance between nuclear and conventional weapons. In his celebrated book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, pub- lished in 1957, Dr. Kissinger came down on the nuclear side; he assumed that wars, all wars, would be, or at least might be, fought with nuclear weapons. The hope that certain categories of war would continue to be fought on the Korean pattern, he argued, was unrealistic, be- cause a nuclear strategy presented the West's only strong card against the overwhelming weight of Communist manpower. He urged, therefore, that a purely formal distinction should be planned and made by the West—not between nuclear and conventional war, but between all- out and limited war; his idea being that the West, by designating peripheral conflicts as -limited, could avoid the risk of their developing into full-
scale wars with no weapons barred. , It was an interesting idea, and in some ways a hopeful one; but any strategy which depends upon the capacity of one side to impress the other with its good faith is obviously risky. And
now, Dr. Kissinger has moved to a rather different position. He still believes that the need for nuclear weapons in limited wars may exist; but he considers that greater emphasis must be placed on the need for strong conventional forces; for a number of reasons, of which two are particu- larly important.
The first is the utter failure on the Ran of military leaders to agree on the uses to which tactical nuclear weapons can be put in a limited war. Nations disagree among themselves; one nation's services disagree with each other; and there are individual disagreements within each service. It would be totally impossible, in the event of war breaking out, effectively to con- trol the use Of nuclear weapons, If they were freely available; nor, of course, would it be pos- sible to explain to an enemy at the receiving end of an atom bomb that it was only a tactical weapon being used in a limited war.
The second reason is that the pattern of arms control negotiation has tended to stress the dis- tinction between nuclear and conventional (rather than strategic and tactical, all-out or limited) weapons; and future negotiations will reinforce this trend. The inhibitions about using nuclear weapons are certain to increase : 'Whatever the other consequences of a nuclear test ban, it will reinforce the already strong reluctance to use nuclear weapons in limited war.'
To place reliance upon the nuclear deterrent for use in limited wars is, therefore, dangerous; yet it is hard to see the West renouncing it entirely, without accepting the proposition that we would be prepared to lose Europe to a con- ventional attack rather than retaliate with nuclear weapons. So, we must not depend on those weapons entirely : 'we must be prepared to accept the paradox that the best road to nuclear arms control may be conventional rearmament.' This is a point of view that has often been put forward in these columns; and it is one to which the Government would presumably claim to sub- scribe in principle. But by allowing what is probably the most important of our conventional
forces, the Army, to run down, are we not de- priving ourselves of what is—in effect—an insur- ance policy? So long as the strength of the Army iQ allowed to depend not on the country's stra- tegic requirements, but on the number of men who can be attracted to join and stay in without renewing conscription, it will be impossible for it to be ready for any emergency. Already, many of the units overseas have been dangerously weakened; and there is no real strategic reserve on which to draw. If Conservative back-benchers can do nothing else, in the next few weeks, they can at least ensure that this policy is not allowed to go uncriticised.
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