Nikolai Luzin
__TITLE__ NUCLEARProgress Publishers Moscow
Translated from the Russian by Dmitri Belyavsky and David Fidlon
Designed by Alexander Alexeyev
CONTENTS
H. n. JlysHH JWEPHAfl CTPATErHfl H 3flPABblfl CMblCJI
Page
Can Man Control the Nuclear Age? ........... 5
In Lieu of an Introduction • • • •.......... 5
Chapter 1
The Clouds Gather......................
8
The Atomic Monopoly.................
8
Meeting on the Elbe...................
8
Claims to World Leadership..............
11
Relying on Nuclear Strength.............
15
``North Atlantic".....................
23
Carried by Inertia .......................
30
The Paradox of the Nuclear Age...........
30
New Illusions.......................
33
The Escalation of Blackmail.............
39
Limited War for Europe................
43
Last Button for the NATO Coat..........
47
Chapter 2
Soviet Peace Strategy .................... 54
Light at Tunnel's End................. 56
Peace Is Our Ideal.................... 57
No Cause for War.................... 61
Wars Can Be Different................. 67
Principles of Peaceful Coexistence......... 72
The Peace Offensive.................. 83
USSR-USA: Beginning of the Dialogue......... 89
Contradictory Trends................. 89
New ``Principles'' of Partnership.......... 95
``Strategic Sufficiency"................. 99
From Confrontation to Negotiation........105
Treaty on the Limitation of ABM Systems .... Ill
Important Limitations.................115
Other Agreements....................119
Peace for Europe.......................121
Towards Concord and Cooperation........122
A Shift Towards Realism...............125
Helsinki, 1975......................131
© HanaTejibCTBO ``Ilporpecc'', 1981 English translation ©Progress Publishers 1981
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
11101-241 014 (01) -81
0802010100Chapter 3
Direction of Counterattacks................136
Smokescreen.......................138
The Term ``Detente'' Attacked...........139
Camouflage.........................146
Contrary to Common Sense................152
A Dangerous Relapse..................152
Agreement Must Be Reached ............168
Time to Get Down to Business...........178
People Versus the Military-Industrial Complex . 187
Treading on Slippery Ground............192
The Planet's Trouble Spots..............197
A Concept Exhumed..................212
Chinese Hegemonism---a. Threat to Peace........218
Provocations.......................219
Betrayal..........................225
Collusion..........................234
Peking's Ambitions...................237
China Unmasked ....................242
Chapter 4
Furthering Detente......................248
Justified Optimism...................248
Moscow Works for Detente..............248
Joint Efforts.......................254
Post-Helsinki Europe..................267
From Positions of Reason...............280
What Has Already Been Done............295
What Is Being Done ................301
Missiles Against Detente ...............310
Components of Success...................319
Lessons of History Serve the Cause of Peace . . .321 The Struggle for Peace Has to Be More Vigorous ...........................325
References ........................331
Name and Subject Index...............341
CAN MAN CONTROL THE NUCLEAR AGE? IN LIEU OF AN INTRODUCTION
It has been estimated that in the past five and a half thousand years peoples have lived through 14,000 wars. And, singularly enough, the progress of civilisation saw the wars become greater in scale and deadlier in effect.
In olden times wars were as a rule fought between two states and usually began and ended with one general battle. They cannot be compared to modern world wars. Take, for instance, the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. We know from our school days that this was an engagement between two states---Persia and Athens. World War I had 33 combatant nations. The Athenians and Persians numbered from four to six thousand on each side. During World War 1,74 million people were mobilised. The front was one kilometre long. The combined length of the Western and Eastern fronts in World War I was 2,000 kilometres. The Athenians lost about 200 men at Marathon. World War I took a toll of 10 million lives.
A mere 20 years after World War I nazi Germany and militarist Japan unleashed World War II. It by far eclipsed World War I in scale. This time 61 nations joined the war, with 110 million people in the active service. Casualties were over five times those of World War I: 54,800,000 dead and 90 million wounded.
Then came the discovery of atomic energy. Controlled by man, it can greatly benefit the human race. If reason fails to hold it in check, it
will bring untold sufferings to all nations. Still, atomic energy was first used for military purposes.
The emergence of atomic and, later, of thermonuclear weapons of huge destructive power made it clear to mankind that a new world war would cause incredible devastation. From then on peace among nations has become an objective and necessary condition for mankind's survival.
Mankind did not remain indifferent to its fate. It began a dogged struggle against thermonuclear war and for durable, universal, just and democratic peace.
The outcome of this struggle, however, is not yet decided. Retreating under the pressure of the peace forces, the enemies of peace and detente cling to their battlelines and launch counter-offensives.
This dramatic struggle to prevent a nuclear war and to preserve life on earth is the subject of this book. It attempts:
---to reveal the plans and schemes of using nuclear energy for war preparations, by tracing the emergence and evolution of the Pentagon and NATO nuclear strategy and by showing its danger to the world;
---to explain the nature and origin of the peaceful foreign policy pursued by the Soviet Union and other socialist countries;
---to assess the gains of world peace forces in their struggle for peace and detente;
---to show who opposes detente and why, and to explain the dangers of this for today's world;
---and, finally, to reassert the need for more
vigorous action for peace.
All this is vitally important for each and every one of us, since the very possibility of a nuclear war would make the pressure gauge approach the red line. Beyond it lies disaster. Common sense requires us to bury the hatchet and make nuclear energy serve peace.
The Author May 1979
Chapter 1 THE CLOUDS GATHER
Regrettably, but inescapably, we have to begin by recalling the unpleasant realities of the cold war. And that helps us understand the danger that mankind faced, helps us correctly assess the progress already made in the drive for peace, and, most importantly, it helps us fully grasp the need for making detente irreversible. It is like the doctor needing to know how serious an illness is before he can assess its progress and successfully complete the treatment. Another reason why we recall the past in the name of the future is because if mistakes are not to be repeated, they must be remembered.
glasses, and canned spam as the gourmet treat. This, however, did not matter, for the tone at the soldiers' feast was set by their sense of a duty fulfilled, and by mutual hospitality.
We spoke different languages but understood each other perfectly. Soviet soldiers were sure that the Americans were equally eager to finish off the nazis and win peace. And the Americans were sure that the answer they were getting was, "We must always be Mends so there is no more war.''
Then there were meetings of regiment, division, army and army group commanders. Higher level meant bigger scale: military honours, banquets, speeches and toasts translated by interpreters. But the spirit was still the same as at the soldiers' get-togethers. General Omar Bradley presented Marshal Konev with a jeep, and Konev's return gift was a Don stallion. When General Zhadov, Commander of the Fifth Army, met Lieutenant-General Hodges, Commander of the US First Army, he said, "Let this be the door to durable and lasting peace." At a ceremony where US medals were awarded to Soviet officers, an American general of the US 22nd Army Corps observed that those who had lived through the horrors of this war should be able to secure peace, and deserved every possible help.
Moscow marked the meeting on the Elbe with 24 salvoes of a 324-gun salute. Two weeks later the world celebrated the day of victory over nazism.
At that time, we hoped it was the last of all wars. It can never happen again, we thought. Still, there were those who sceptically recalled
THE ATOMIC MONOPOLY Meeting on the Elbe
World War II was drawing to a close when on April 25, 1945 Soviet and US troops, advancing into Germany from East and West, cut through Hitler's armies and met on the Elbe. Allied soldiers---men and officers---were all friendly grins, hugs and handshakes. Autographs were exchanged, and NCOs, usually on the lookout for any flaws in uniform, made as if they did not see buttons missing from tunics and stars from caps---the result of souvenir swapping.
Of course there were banquets, with combat capes and flasks serving as tablecloths and
that World War I, too, had been called the war to end all wars.
The defeat of nazism was one of the principal arguments that lasting and durable peace was possible. Surely, no matter what the motives were for which the governments had fought, the fact remained that nazism, the main source of war, had been eliminated. This was not disputed, although many pointed out, with good reason, that while nazism was defeated, imperialism lived on and its nature remained unchanged.
Great hopes were pinned on the experience of the anti-nazi coalition, which had demonstrated that a sober and realistic approach to global problems meant that fruitful cooperation between countries with different social systems was both possible and advantageous.
``Everything is clear with the Soviet Union," some said. "It is building communism, and for it war is like a fire to builders of a house. The United States, too ... hadn't Roosevelt called for Allied unity to be preserved after the war?''
``That's all very well," others replied, "but Roosevelt is gone, and Truman, when still a senator, had said to aid the Soviet Union if Germany was winning, and to aid Germany if the USSR was winning, and to let them fight each other to a standstill, so that the United States alone would remain strong.''
There was both hope and doubt. That was understandable: one cannot live without faith, though faith had taken a beating in the war. Still, most of us soldiers sincerely welcomed peace and gave no thought to any possibility of a new war. Even the few sceptics were hesitant,
as if they were referring to some remote future. Few believed that things would turn for the worse so soon, before our eyes. But the unwanted changes were on the way.
Claims to World Leadership
The first cloud appeared soon after the end of the war. In December 1945 US President Harry S. Truman said: "Whether we like it or not, we must recognise that the victory which we have won has placed upon the American people the continuing burden of responsibility of world leadership.''!
To many of us this came as a shock. There were puzzled questions: why should one country lead others? What did the President mean?
Soon things became clearer. Following President Truman's statement US State Secretary Dean Acheson declared that foreign policy should be pursued from "positions of strength", adding that "we must build strength and if we create that strength ... the whole situation in the world begins to change".^^2^^ This meant the United States intended to achieve world leadership by force of arms.
There were American statesmen who did not share this doctrine of world domination. Senator William Fulbright, for example, said: "Great nations in the past have set out upon such missions and they have wrought havoc, bringing misery to their intended beneficiaries and destruction upon themselves. America is showing some signs of that fatal presumption mission,
10 11which has brought rum to great nations in the
past.''^^3^^
Regrettably, the realists among the Western statesmen were in the minority. Those who wanted a tough policy came out on top. Events took a turn that threatened peace. Such was the will of monopoly capital.
The cold war began. The man who started it was Sir Winston Churchill, descendant of the Duke of Marlborough, former Colonial Secretary, War Minister and Prime Minister, who "hates Soviet Russia bitterly", as Lenin wrote of him ,4 a Tory of the old school, a man who had outlived his age but did not part with its ideals. In March 1946, only seven months after World War II ended, he delivered his famous Fulton speech, calling on the Western world to unite against communism and to set up military and political blocs aimed against the Soviet Union.
A bit later former US Ambassador to the Soviet Union George Kennan outlined the anti-communist and anti-Soviet views of his country's military establishment and called them the "containment of communism" doctrine. It became the cornerstone of US foreign policy.^^5^^
In the 1950s the containment doctrine was supplemented by the doctrine of rolling back communism. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles defined it as follows: "The United States should not be forever content to confine Soviet communism within its present orbit but should instead openly declare that its goal was the liberation of the peoples enslaved behind the Iron Curtain and then take specific measures toward that end.''^^6^^
The cold war was mostly aimed against the Soviet Union: our former ally had changed his orientation. Politically, this was not new.
The peoples of Russia and the United States had never fought against each other, and there was no hostility or ill feeling between them. After the October Revolution the relations between the young Soviet state and the United States were never based on settling disputes by force of arms.
The Soviet Union has always built its relations with the United States on the need for countries with different social systems to coexist peacefully. Our country has never threatened US security, we have fought together against the common enemy, nazi Germany and militarist Japan. So why such a sudden turn?
But was it sudden? US Professor Michael Parenti says it was not. In his book The AntiCommunist Impulse he writes: "It should be evident by now that the anti-communist impulse did not emerge suddenly in the postwar years...; it has been with us for many decades. In 1919 the emerging spectre of Bolshevism sent a shudder throughout the bourgeois world. Having few investments in Russia, American capitalists suffered no noticeable deprivation at the hands of the Bolsheviks, but they saw the Soviet revolution as representing a socio-political order which fundamentally challenged their systems.''?
This did not prevent the United States from joining us in the anti-nazi coalition when a common danger arose. The war was over, however, and the situation changed. Socialism
13 12was firmly established in the heart of Europe. The colonial system was disintegrating, colonial empires were collapsing. The age of absolute domination by a handful of imperialist powers over a huge part of the world was drawing to a close.
These history-making changes restrained the exploitation of the working people by the monopolies of major capitalist countries. This was unacceptable to US monopolies, and so Western imperialist circles tried to halt and even reverse the logical historical process of social and national liberation. After repeated political defeats imperialism began to prepare a military comeback. This is what bourgeois politicians meant by "containment of communism", "rolling back communism" and "positions of strength". The very existence of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries was an obstacle to continuing the old imperialist policy, to colonial rule, and to aggressive wars.
The anti-communist course was aimed primarily but not exclusively against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. US armed interference in the affairs of developing countries, it turned out, was directed against all those forces who tied the hands of US monopolies---the revolutionary and national liberation movements in any country, and whole nations fighting for political and economic independence.
The United States virtually assumed police functions even in developed capitalist countries. Its allies were far from equal partners in military blocs. US monopolies freely used these blocs to
infiltrate friendly countries. American journalist Leopold Kohr showed the nature of US relations with its allies on the example of Italy in his book The Breakdown of Nations. Rewrote: "If Italy lies within our defence system, our own boundaries must lie in Italy. This means that, whatever we may declare, subconsciously and by implication we consider her as one of our dominions, free to choose her own road only within the limits of our pleasure. And the same is true of all other countries this side of the Iron Curtain. "8
The issue, therefore, was to reshape the world to suit American demands on the principle that might is right.
Relying on Nuclear Strength
US World War II casualties were marginal. Not one enemy bomb fell on the United States. The growth of the US economic potential was all the more significant in view of the war-weakened economies of Japan, Germany, Britain, France and Italy. In 1948 the US share in world capitalist production rose to 55.8 per cent. Unlike the United States, the Soviet Union suffered greatly from the war.
Besides, by the end of the war the United States was the only country to possess a new and vastly destructive weapon, the atomic bomb. Here is how this came about.
After nazi Germany was defeated, concluding the war against militarist Japan was the order of the day. By August 1945, with the Soviet Union about to join the war, victory over Japan was a
14 15foregone conclusion. Japan no longer had any European allies---neither Germany nor Italy. The territories it had lost included the previously captured islands in the Central and SouthEastern Pacific, Burma and part of Indonesia, the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Japan's most important communication lines with its southern suppliers of raw materials were cut and taken over by US armed forces. The Japanese navy had suffered irreparable losses. The US Air Force was hitting Japan proper. In August 1945, true to its commitments under the Yalta Conference, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Soviet armed forces routed Japan's elite Kwantung Army in Manchuria and North Korea, liberated Southern Sakhalin and the Kuriles, with Japanese casualties exceeding 1,200,000 officers and men.
Despite the already obvious collapse of Japanese militarism, the United States, on August 6 and 9, 1945, dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, although this was not necessary for victory. The reasons for this bombing can be deduced from certain events that preceded it and from the direction of US postwar foreign policy.
It is generally known that information about military atomic research in nazi Germany was one of the principal motives for similar research in the United States. But the process of the development of atomic bombs was dragged out, the war with Germany was over, and the purpose of the bombs changed. According to US journalist Bert Cochran who quotes General Leslie Groves, head of the atomic bomb-manu-
facturing project, on the eve of the atomic test President Truman's first thought was about Russians, not the Japanese. "If it explodes, as I think it will," he remarked, ``I'll certainly have a hammer on those boys."9
The emergence of a new weapon of great destructive power turned heads in the Pentagon. As General Maxwell Taylor wrote, the military in the United States "were quick to believe that our armed forces had in the air delivered atomic bomb the absolute weapon which would permit the United States, its sole possessor, to police the world through the threat of its use".^^10^^
These ambitions gave impulse to the US nuclear strategy, the principal component of the overall US political and military course. It meant that the US political and military leadership intended to use atomic weapons for foreign policy purposes, with world leadership as its goal.
Falling back on its nuclear capability, the United States talked tough to other countries, seeking political concessions. It should be noted, however, that even during the US nuclear monopoly, some farsighted American politicians called on their government to act rationally. They insisted on preserving trust between the United States and the Soviet.Union, opposed atomic diplomacy and blackmail. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, for example, in his memorandum to President Truman of September 11, 1945, warned that US-Soviet relations could deteriorate beyond repair. "If we fail to approach them now and merely continue to negotiate with them, having this weapon rather
162-537
17ostentatiously on 'our hip, their suspicions... will increase'."11Still, the arrogance of power, as Senator Fulbright put it, won the day.
All Soviet proposals of joint measures to prevent military uses of atomic energy were seen by US ruling circles as an admission of weakness, and were turned down out of hand.
Atomic diplomacy was like an attempt at armed robbery. But it gave no answer to what would happen if the gun-waving did not succeed. This question was to be answered by military strategy.
The numerous volumes on US military strategy detailed ways of using the armed forces to attain political goals and listed methods of preparing, launching and fighting wars.
The key strategy centred on winning by powerful nuclear strikes against vital enemy targets (primarily political, administrative and industrial centres) delivered by an airborne strategic force. The aim was to destroy the socialist countries, with the Soviet Union as the main target.
This idea was promoted chiefly by the US Air Force brass. Their thinking was no doubt considerably influenced by the Italian General Giulio Douhet's doctrine of air warfare,^^12^^ which said a war could be won by bombing vital enemy centres without necessarily destroying the ground forces.
Even before World War II this doctrine found its supporters in the US Air Force. General Mitchell, who shared Douhet's views, wrote: "The old theory that victory means destruction of the hostile main army is untenable... It is now
realised that the hostile main army in the field is a false objective, and the real objective are his centres... Armies themselves can be disregarded if a rapid strike is made against the opposirtg centres, because a greatly superior army is at the mercy of an Air Force inferior in numbers.''^^13^^
Still, it took time for the air warfare doctrine to be officially adopted in the United States. Nuclear weapons and the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities gave air force generals a new trump card. They insisted on priority buildup for the US Air Force. This time, political and military leaders supported the air power concept since it was based on the fundamentally new element of nuclear weapons.
In 1947 the US Air Force was made an independent armed service. A year later a special presidential commission concluded that the Air Force should have priority status, maintaining that victory depended on air power. Although the concept of "balanced forces" led to the subsequent buildup of the other services, the Pentagon began to think that the success of the Army and Navy in their theatres of operations would depend on the results of atomic air strikes against vital enemy targets.
The concept of atomic air power was made the central element of US military strategy.
At that time the Pentagon believed that a thermonuclear war should be coalitional, total and swift. Military dictionaries called it an all-out war. US military experts gave it other names: total war, total thermonuclear war, unlimited war, and even spasm war.
Coalitional war, as conceived by the Pen-
18 19tagon, meant that capitalist nations would unite in military and political blocs against all socialist countries. A thermonuclear war would thus b'ecome a new world war.
Total war meant that all resources of the country and its allies would be involved and all enemy resources destroyed.
Relying on nuclear strikes, the Pentagon expected a swift victory (according to President Eisenhower, within 60 days). Hence the belief that the war would be short, and hence the total confidence in victory.
In those days, apart from an all-out nuclear war, US military strategy made no provision for any other type of war or armed conflict. The Pentagon expected that any fighting in peripheral areas would be part of the all-out nuclear war fought at a great distance from the United States,,as far east as possible.
Douhet's air warfare doctrine also influenced the views of US military theorists on how to launch an all-out nuclear war. Douhet recommended to start the war by massive surprise air strikes prior to declaring war. His US Air Force followers fully shared these views. Calls for a preventive war were especially strong in the United States in the 1950s, after the Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons. Brigadier General Dale O. Smith, for example, who was on the National Security Council's Operations Coordinating Board, maintained that "in absolute war, that nation first able to apply the most destructive power to the heart of its enemy will be the nation to survive".^^14^^ Air Force Secretary Paul H. Douglas said in 1959 that US
strategy relies on a surprise strike by all available forces and resources, and that America should be the first to deliver such an air strike.
This surprise nuclear attack was given different names in the United States: surprise nuclear strike, pre-emptive strike, first strike, preventive war. Its essence, however, remained the same and could be deduced from the term "preventive war", meaning, as US military theorist Bernard Brodie defined it, "a premeditated attack by one country against another, which is unprovoked in the sense that it does not wait upon a specific aggression or other action by the target state".^^15^^
Brodie also formulated the aims of preventive war. According to him, preventive war reflects an idea congenial to modern military thinking, that of seizing the initiative and carrying the fight to the enemy. This approach, he claimed, reflected the idea that some convulsive and fearfully costly act would justify itself through the elimination of the evil enemy and of the need to live in the same world with him. To secure that liquidation, Brodie wrote, almost any price is worthwhile.^^16^^
Major postulates of the atomic air power strategy, including nuclear strikes against cities, air force planes as delivery vehicles, and a surprise nuclear attack, were already evident in the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In January 1954, however, when John Foster Dulles coined the term, the atomic air power strategy was renamed the strategy of "massive retaliation" with the socialist countries as its target.
20 21The State Department had its reasons for rechristening the overage brainchild. The open aggressiveness of US atomic strategy had outraged the world public. A broad movement of protest against plans to use nuclear weapons spread all over the globe. The Stockholm Appeal to ban atomic weapons, adopted by the World Peace Congress Permanent Committee in 1950, was signed by 500 million people in 80 countries.^^17^^ The White House urgently needed to camouflage the aggressive nature of US nuclear strategy with defensive phraseology and to make it appear respectable. This is exactly what the State Secretary attempted, for the words `` retaliation'' and "return strike" presupposed a threat to US security. This was just a diplomatic trick, however, since it was common knowledge that no member of the socialist community intended to attack the United States.
Dulles said'in his statement that the key to the nuclear war issue depended primarily on the United States' ability to deliver an immediate return strike in a manner and time, and against targets of US choice. Since these words referred to the Korean war, the United States obviously reserved the right to start a world nuclear war on any pretext, by ascribing any social or national liberation movement anywhere in the world to "the long arm of Moscow''.
Dulles' statement said nothing new about the socio-political, military and technical content of an all-out nuclear war. This was admitted in the United States by, among others, such prominent nuclear war theorists as Henry Kissinger and Bernard Brodie. "The doctrine of
massive retaliation," Kissinger wrote, "was far from new at the time Secretary John Foster Dulles proclaimed it.''^^18^^ And Brodie remarked: "After all, the Dulles doctrine of January 1954 represented nothing new.''^^19^^
Dulles left unchanged even the views on preventive war. Prominent US journalist George Lowe wrote in his book, The Age of Deterrence, that the "prospect of preventive war was implicit in Dulles's doctrine of massive retaliation"^
"North Atlantic"
To prepare for a global nuclear war, the United States built a system of military and political alliances spanning 44 countries, including the Western Hemisphere Defence Treaty Organisation (1947); the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO (1949); ANZUS (1951); the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation, SEATO (1954), the Central Treaty Organisation of the Middle East, CENTO (1959), and bilateral agreements with Japan, the Philippines (1951), South Korea (1953), and Taiwan (1954).
The United States surrounded the Soviet Union with military bases (about 400 major and 3,000 auxiliary bases), and stationed troops in 64 countries.
The creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, a closed, class-oriented and aggressive military and political alliance of the bourgeoisie, presented an especially great threat to peace.
22 23The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington on April 4, 1949. Initially, it comprised 12 nations: from the United States and Great Britain to Iceland and Luxembourg. Turkey and Greece joined in 1952, and the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955. Thus, NATO united 15 of the most advanced capitalist nations of Western Europe and North America, with a combined territory of about 22 million square kilometres, combined population of about 490 million, and, of course, high militaryindustrial potential. NATO members accounted for four-fifths of the capitalist world's industrial output.
NATO's military sphere was divided into three areas: the European, Atlantic and the English Channel Zones. A Joint Strategic Allied Command was set up for the armed forces of each zone, and a regional strategic group comprising the United States and Canada.
Fifteen nations on two continents united in NATO under the umbrella of the United States, the large military concentrations, and the vast scale of the theatres of operations, all pointed to US preparations for a world war. The subsequent arming of allied NATO forces in Europe with nuclear weapons was an additional indication that these preparations were for an all-out war.
In those days, US military strategy made the following provisions: to use allied NATO forces in Europe within the framework of a global nuclear war; to achieve victory mostly by the atomic weapon-carrying US strategic air force
(the ``sword'' forces) and to subsequently capture enemy territory by allied NATO forces in Europe (the ``shield'' forces).
The forming of NATO permitted the United States to set up military bases on the territory of its allies, bringing its troops and weapons directly to the European borders of the socialist countries. Besides, the Pentagon counted on using West European infantry. For example, when General Bradley, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was distributing functions between the United States and Western Europe, he frankly said that the United States would be responsible for strategic airborne strikes while Europe would provide basic ground troops (read, the cannon fodder---Auth.}.
US military strategy and its peripheral aspects concerning a war in Europe were approved at the September 1950 NATO Council session and used as the basis of the North Atlantic Treaty's coalition strategy.
Thus, soon after World War II ended, forces were regrouped to prepare for World War III.
Militarists and revenge-seekers in the FRG were elated. They thought West Germany's entry into NATO would help them cancel out the results of the Third Reich's defeat in the Second World War, and accomplish the tasks left unresolved by the two world wars. The revengeseekers began talking of revising the results of World War II, of changing the existing borders in Europe, of territorial claims to Czechoslovakia, Poland, the German Democratic Republic and the Soviet Union. "A strong Europe with a free Germany could become a dam against the Red
24 25tide and could permit us, some time in the future, to win back both the Soviet zone and the regions beyond the Oder-Neisse line," Chancellor Konrad Adenauer wrote in so many words.^^21^^
Fully geared to Bonn's political strategy, the Bundeswehr's military strategy was clearly aggressive. Lieutenant-General Adolf Heusinger, the Bundeswehr's Inspector General and Chairman of NATO's Permanent Council, said the West "should advance wherever chance permits. The West must use this fighting method to oppose the East... in other words, to capture the initiative as soon as possible. Only this flexible war technique can lead to success. 2 Offensive operations from the very start of the war and capture of strategic initiative imply a surprise attack and preventive war.
Apart from that, Bonn's generals claimed that they should be the ones to start the war in Europe because the FRG bordered directly on the socialist countries. They wanted the Bundeswehr to have ``priority'' in armed conflicts. "It is quite legitimate to imagine," General von der Heydte explained, "conflict situations which would not at once or not completely grow to engage all NATO allies but would nevertheless demand military action. In these circumstances of national emergency NATO should give a free hand to German contingents.''^^23^^ In other words, Bonn's strategists believed that NATO should give carte blanche to the Bundeswehr in launching a war, while the payment for its consequences would be shared by all members of the North Atlantic Pact.
The only point on which Bundeswehr and Pentagon generals differed was the evaluation of the peripheral aspects of US strategy, the interpretation of the "forward defence strategy" ("advanced frontiers strategy"): to the Pentagon all Europe was ``peripheral'' since it was far from US borders. US strategists were not unduly concerned about specific areas of operations in Europe. They expected that after a surprise nuclear strike against the Soviet Union, the Soviet Armed Forces group in Germany, like a severed lizard's tail, would show signs of life, perhaps even counter-attack, possibly even reach the Rhine, but then, cut off from its country, would inevitably expire. Meanwhile, NATO's allied armed forces, after finishing off the Soviet troops in this part of Germany, would invade the socialist countries and complete their destruction.
The Bundeswehr, on the other hand, interpreted the "advanced frontiers" strategy as combat operations by NATO forces exclusively on the territory of the socialist countries. For the Bundeswehr they were the periphery. While before the FRG joined NATO, West German generals had to pretend to agree with the Pentagon that a decisive battle in Central Europe could begin on the Rhine, after the country's entry into the North Atlantic Alliance this point of view changed. "With the Federal Republic's entry into NATO, with the creation of the Bundeswehr, and with the introduction of tactical atomic weapons," General Hans Speidel said, "the strength of our `shield' forces has grown considerably, so that today we can
26 27perform defence operations by the EuropeCentre forces deployed not on the Rhine but along our easternmost borders---close to the Iron Curtain. "24
The more vigorous the popular protest against these aggressive preparations grew, the more often NATO strategists talked about defensive operations and defence by advance. This, however, did not change the essence of the Bonn revenge-seekers' military strategy. It was based on the idea (not new to the Kaiser's and Hitler's generals) of fighting the war on enemy territory. This was proved by Bonn's subsequent steps--- the proposal to advance NATO forces directly to the borders of the GDR and Czechoslovakia, and the actual deployment of new Bundeswehr divisions along the socialist countries' borders, so that combat operations could be carried to their territory as soon as war began.
Field Marshal Count von Moltke had been the first to advance the doctrine of a mobilised army on the enemy's borders, surprise attack, and Blitzkrieg on enemy territory. Moltke led two wars to victory: the Austrian campaign of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871. Frederick Engels wrote about the former that the Prussians' amazingly poor strategy defeated the Austrians' still worse strategy at Sadowa. In France, the Prussians owed their victory largely to Thiers' government of national treason, which opened the gates of Paris to the Germans. Still, victors are never judged, and Moltke was proclaimed a brilliant strategist.
Count von Moltke's followers---generals Moltke, Schlieffen, Ludendorff and their nazi
heirs---used his ideas to draw up plans for the two world wars and lost them both.
The German people cannot be equated with West German militarists. Common sense tells us that the West German working people, aware of their past history, will do all they can to prevent, together with other nations, a new deadly adventure. We all know that there are political adventurers in the FRG, but Germans in all probability remember the words of their great countryman Karl Marx: "A nation and a woman are not forgiven the unguarded hour in which the first adventurer that came along could violate them.''^^25^^
World peace forces tolerate no violators and warmongers, including German ones.
In the 1950s a preventive war against the Soviet Union and other socialist countries was contemplated in all earnest. The truly aggressive nature of US and NATO imperialist designs is evident from what George Lowe wrote in The Age of Deterrence:"One suspects that if the truth is ever known about this period in our history, we will find that preventive war was under active consideration by the government (of the United States---Auth.)... The doctrine of pre-emptive war received official sanction on April 29, 1960, when George H. Mahon, Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, submitted Report 1561 on defence appropria-
This concludes our brief outline of the 1945-1960 Pentagon and NATO military and political strategy, an insidious arid criminal scheme of mass annihilation in a nuclear war.
28 29CARRIED BY INERTIA The Paradox of the Nuclear Age
At that time the imperialists did not dare start the world thermonuclear war they had been preparing. And for good reason.
First, it was still a long way from individual atomic bombs, as in 1945, to readiness for a nuclear war. The United States had still to stockpile nuclear explosives and delivery vehicles. That required time. Nor were there as yet any intercontinental ballistic missiles. Because of their limited range, aircraft could not hit Soviet territory from air bases on US soil without stopovers or refueling in flight. This meant that first military bases would have to be set up near Soviet borders. For this there had to be military alliances. That also took time.
Second, in view of imperialist preparations for a nuclear war, the Soviet Union had had to build up its national defence and reciprocate by manufacturing its own nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles. In 1949 the Soviet Union tested the atomic bomb, in 1953 the hydrogen bomb, and then went on to equip its armed forces with nuclear missiles, including ICBMs. This had the effect of a cold shower on warmongers in the West.
Besides, to counter aggressive NATO moves the countries of the socialist community signed, on May 14, 1955 (six years after NATO was formed), the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, subsequently called the Warsaw Treaty. The Treaty
explicitly stated that in case of armed attack against any signatory, the others would immediately come to its aid. The birth of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation was a forced response. It was and continues to be strictly defensive.
Imperialist plans to use nuclear weapons unilaterally collapsed, to say nothing of expectations to win.
As George Lowe wrote, "by 1956-1957 it was impossible to achieve the desired devastation of Russia without suffering tremendous destruction to our own country".^^27^^ Western strategists could not fall back on preventive war either, since any nuclear attack against the Soviet Union would inevitably trigger a devastating counter-strike. Robert McNamara, then US Defence Secretary, admitted that "the Soviet Union with its present forces could still effectively destroy the United States, even after absorbing the full weight of an American first strike".^^28^^
Illusions of world domination suffered a crushing blow. The policy of attempted nuclear diktat and blackmail failed.
Hence the new tenor of US foreign policy declarations in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Even John Foster Dulles, one of the architects of the "positions of strength" and "brink of war" policy, declared in 1957 that the United States and its allies had to take the necessary measures if local conflicts arose, avoiding an all-out war. President John F. Kennedy, who had earlier thought that in certain circumstances the United States must be ready to risk war, said, on January 10, 1963 that total war was
30 31senseless. In contrast to the 1950s, there began to appear positive aspects in US foreign policy, though the general background in the 1960s was still negative. The United States signed the Moscow Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and some other accords.
The admission that nuclear war was suicidal and therefore unacceptable as a means of US foreign policy meant that the military and political strategy of massive retaliation was also classified as untenable. Here is how General Taylor put it: "It is my belief that Massive Retaliation as a guiding strategic concept has reached a dead end and that there is an urgent need for a reappraisal of our strategic needs."29 In short, the Pentagon had misjudged the actual balance of world forces, had not understood the nuclear age, overestimated its own capacity, and underestimated Soviet defence capability. Today the Pentagon is clearly unable to destroy the world socialist system and the movements for freedom and independence. And unrealistic military and political objectives inevitably lead to errors in planning.
The time had come to analyse the situation and reshape international relations on the basis of peaceful coexistence. This, however, did not come about. There was no thaw. The war preparations, having gained considerable momentum, went on. The thought of military superiority could not be dispelled overnight. Nuclear strategists took a long time to reconcile themselves to the paradox of power---the huge
nuclear capability that could not be put to use. Still thinking in terms of the pre-nuclear age, they tried to circumvent the irreconcilable contradiction between nuclear war as a policy instrument and the inability to guarantee national security in case of such war.
New Illusions
In the United States, the feverish search for a way out produced new strategic military concepts. The "massive retaliation" strategy was modified and renamed "flexible response" strategy. It was officially recognised in President John F. Kennedy's messages to Congress of March 28 and May 25, 1961.
The "flexible response" strategy differed from the previous doctrine in providing for the use of both nuclear and conventional arms in the drive for foreign policy objectives, a wider range of types of war, certain changes in an all-out nuclear warfare, and a flexible organisation of the armed forces.
This strategy was drawn up for three types of war: local wars to suppress national liberation movements, limited conventional and nuclear wars, and an all-out nuclear war.
Local wars are relatively small-scale conflicts initiated by the imperialist powers to preserve or restore colonial rule, and also armed conflicts between developing countries provoked by internal reactionaries and by imperialists. Participation of any nuclear powers, and use of nuclear weapons, in local wars are usually ruled out. The US euphemism for local wars to
323-537
33suppress national liberation movements was counter-insurgency warfare.
Local wars are no novelty in military theory. The Pentagon simply altered its military strategy to suit the existing imperialist practice of suppressing national liberation and social movements with conventional (non-nuclear) means since, as experience had shown, nuclear blackmail of Asian, African and Latin American countries had not produced the desired results. The strategic "limited wars" concept is a different matter. US military theorists use the term to denote a war directly or indirectly involving the nuclear powers. This is what makes it different from all other previously known types of armed conflict and from modern local wars. Bernard Brodie wrote: "As a rule we do not apply the term 'limited war' to conflicts which are limited naturally by the fact that one or both sides lack the capability to make them total (for example, the colonial war in Algeria). We generally use it to refer to wars in which the United States on the one side and the Soviet Union or Communist China on the other may be involved, perhaps directly but usually through on both sides.''^^30^^
US military theorists hold that the theatre of operations in such wars would be limited by clearly delineated geographical borders so that the fighting would not spread to the rear of the principal combatants, for, as Robert Osgood said, "a war not fought within geographical limits would probably pose such a massive threat to American and Russian security that both powers would feel compelled to strike at the
centre of opposition".3 l The concept of possible theatres of operations in a limited war will be clearer if we recall that the Pentagon believes that such a war could be fought in Europe between NATO and Warsaw Treaty countries, i.e., on avast territory.
US military theorists also assume that the opposing forces will both renounce strategic nuclear strikes in the rear of the principal combatants. In Brodie's words, the term " limited war" practically always "connotes a war in which there is no strategic bombing between the United States and the Soviet Union".3 2 Tactical nuclear warfare, however, is considered admissible. That is, a limited war may be both conventional and nuclear. The yield of the tactical nuclear weapons is not limited, and the escalation of conventional limited wars into nuclear ones is declared probable. This is usually based on the claim that the Soviet Union and other socialist countries are stronger than the West in conventional armaments, and that the West would, therefore, have to use tactical nuclear weapons to avoid defeat. Another argument in favour of tactical nuclear weapons is that they will be in the hands of professional soldiers, who would not hesitate to use them if the situation goes critical.
The "limited war" concept sets no final goals and does not envisage the enemy's unconditional surrender, complete annihilation, or any threat to the survival of the combatant nations. Henry Kissinger wrote that limited war "reflects an attempt to affect the opponent's will, not crush, to make the conditions to be imposed seem
34 35more attractive than continued resistance, to strive for specific goals, not for complete annihilation".^^33^^ Still, whatever their advocates may say to the contrary, limited wars would be fatally dangerous to the countries where they would be launched.
Who would profit from such wars? Would the United States? Is limited war really an alternative to a global nuclear war, as Western strategists would have us believe? Of course not. Limited wars, like any other major aggravation of international tension resolved by force of arms, increase the danger of a world nuclear war, for a limited war may well escalate into a global conflict.
Since the military do not know precisely what forces the enemy will commit to the war, and since they have to consider every possibility, their plans for a limited war envisage its evolution into an all-out nuclear war. The losing side will take increasing risks to avoid defeat, and -'is likely to go over to an all-out war, as Henry Kissinger wrote.^^34^^
Taylor, Kissinger, Brodie and other architects of the "limited war" concept did not altogether reject an all-out nuclear war, which they described as an extreme measure. This, however, did not suit such Pentagon generals as Power, LeMay, Richardson and Smith. Scorning the inevitable return nuclear strike, they still held that all-out nuclear war was acceptable to the United States. They thought they could impose nuclear war ``rules'' that would permit them to destroy the enemy and ensure their country's survival. That was where various concepts of
36a controlled nuclear war originated.
One of these was the ``counterforce'' or ``city-avoidance'' theory. The name derived from the Pentagon's concept of mutual nuclear strikes initially aimed only against military targets and not cities.
The authors of this concept counted on US superiority over the Soviet Union in nuclear weapons. They held that this would permit the Pentagon, given equal losses on both sides, to completely destroy Soviet nuclear weapons while retaining a considerable part of the US nuclear capability and ensuring the country's survival and effective armed forces.
Here the United States would again---as in the initial stage---possess superior nuclear capability. The sole difference would be that in the late 1940s and early 1950s the United States was just beginning to accumulate nuclear devices and delivery vehicles and to surround the Soviet Union with military bases, whereas in the 1960s these would all be plentiful.
What would happen in this event is easy to see, for at that time no one had yet discarded the ultimate US political goal of all-out nuclear war---that of annihilating the Soviet Union and other countries of the socialist community. To the contrary, General Nathan F. Twining reiterated that all-out nuclear war would resolve the key question: whose system is to survive. The Pentagon's moral integrity which is demonstrated when butchering civilians in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Vietnam, would not make it stop halfway. This is why it is quite logical to suppose that in case all Soviet nuclear weapons were
37destroyed and the United States still had some at its disposal, the Pentagon would hit Soviet cities, as it had planned previously. Nuclear theorists clearly saw the ``counterforce'' strategy precisely as the initial phase of an all-out nuclear war. And in any case, how can one talk about selective targets or a controlled nuclear war when nuclear strikes produce dangerous and deadly radioactive fallout. Besides, many military targets are located near cities and other populated centres, making the term "military target" a vague and relative notion.
Despite all this, the ``counterforce'' concept was officially approved by US political and military leaders in 1962. The United States, it was announced, reserved the ``right'' to wage controlled thermonuclear war if necessary. True, in the final analysis, even Henry Kissinger cast doubt on the ``counterforce'' strategy, saying it was technically unfeasible since the enemy could make its deterrents invulnerable. Besides, as George Lowe said later, the Russians had no intention of playing .the game by American rules. In fact, the Soviet Union planned no destructive ``games'' at all. Such terms as game, and rules of the game, sounded blasphemous since they were applied to perverse plans of annihilating millions of human beings.
One can easily understand the intentions and ambitions of those who fathered this and other strategic military concepts ("first strike", "guaranteed destruction", "limited strategic war", "limited damage"), detailing the ways and means of waging all-out nuclear war for inhuman and irrational goals.
Theories of preparing, launching and fighting an all-out nuclear war were conceived at the time of US nuclear monopoly. They further evolved during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, when the US-Soviet nuclear ratio was (by US estimates) 15, even 20 to 1 in favour of the United States. The various versions of a controlled nuclear war were approved by US political and military leaders in the early 1960s when this ratio was estimated at 8 to 1. One may ask why an all-out nuclear war was recognised as suicidal for the United States when the ratio was better, and as acceptable when it was worse.
The Pentagon scenarios for any type of an all-out nuclear war with the other side possessing nuclear weapons were even more reckless and unrealistic than before.
The Escalation of Blackmail
In 1965, the flexible response strategy was supplemented by the "escalation of war" concept put forward by US military theorist Herman Kahn in his book On Escalation.~^^5^^ One cannot be certain whether this concept was officially approved by the Pentagon. Still, significantly, On Escalation was published at the time the escalation in Vietnam began. Besides, one should not forget that Kahn is no stranger to the Pentagon. For many years he had worked for RAND Corporation^^36^^, and in 1961 headed the Hudson Institute which studies war problems under contract to the US Department of Defence.
38 39Kahn's book details a deliberate escalation of international crises, leading up to an all-out war. The escalation begins with provoking a pseudocrisis (first step of escalation), and ends, according to Kahn, with spasm war (i.e., full-scale chaos and universal disaster).
Here are some of Kahn's recommendations for escalating war from the lowest to the highest phases.
Military exercises and games, especially in enemy-sensitive areas. Partial mobilisation. Attacks against embassies and border posts. Deliberately provoking severance of diplomatic relations. Red alert. Border skirmishes without declaring war. Armed conflicts launched simultaneously in different theatres of operations. Declaration of limited nuclear war. Limited (disguised as accidental) use of nuclear weapons. Ultimatum that nuclear weapons will be used. Partial (about 20 per cent) evacuation of civilians from cities. Local nuclear war against military targets only. Selective strikes against the civilian population. Complete (about 95 per cent) evacuation of civilians from cities. Strikes against military-industrial targets. Unlimited strike against enemy armed forces. Mutual strikes against cities to annihilate civilians. And finally, spasm war (when all the buttons have been pressed and the decision-makers together with their staff go home, if, Kahn adds with gallows humour, they still have homes). Such is the 44th and last stage of escalation.
There is an obvious link between the `` escalation'' concept and the concepts underlying the "flexible response" strategy. But while the
40``limited wars" concept only allowed for the possibility of a limited war evolving into an all-out nuclear war, and while the `` counterforce'' concept implied nuclear strikes against cities after strikes against military targets, the ``escalation'' concept directly and deliberately recommended all these steps.
Kahn suggests that the US show its readiness to take risks. Kahn's eighth stage, for example, provides for various unlawful acts of violence to confuse and intimidate the enemy. At the 16th stage (ultimatum that nuclear weapons will be used) statesmen should, Kahn advises, tell the enemy: "Unless you back down, we will go to war", or "One of us has to be reasonable before this crisis blows up, and it won't be me".^^37^^ At the 21st stage (limited use of nuclear weapons) the enemy should be told: "I have dropped two bombs. Having dropped two, I may be willing to drop twenty. I've demonstrated it. Don't you want to listen to reason?''^^38^^ And so on.
The ultimate goal of Kahn's escalation theory is neither new nor original: "If the US felt sufficiently powerful and secure, it might demand that the Soviet Union not only be partially disarmed, but be subordinated to some kind of an international authority. The most ambitious objective might be the total disarming and occupation of the Soviet Union.''^^39^^
Kahn recommended that this goal be reached by playing on the fear of an all-out nuclear war, by intimidating the enemy through deliberately escalating the war to the hilt. He felt that any limited conflict could grow into spasm war if the enemy, fearing it, does not surrender.
41Herman Kahn's escalation theory reposes on the notion that the Soviet Union and other socialist countries will partially or wholly surrender before the threat of their destruction in a thermonuclear war.
But the whole idea is neither serious nor realistic. On Escalation totally lacks in objectivity. It is untenable, because Kahn models a bilateral war process on a unilateral basis. His theorising is unacceptable because he does not and cannot know how the other side would respond to a given step in military escalation. Finally, he does not even know how the other side would play this dangerous and foolish ``game'' without prejudicing its interests.
Kahn's notions would be a lot more sober if he proceeded from the assumption that any opposing side will defend itself against aggression by all the means at its disposal.
Kahn's theory is thoroughly absurd. Objectively, no matter what aims it pursues, escalation can lead to an all-out nuclear war, and this with fatal consequences for its initiators. It is clearly useless to look for short cuts to victory in a nuclear war if both sides possess nuclear missiles, especially if their forces are approximately balanced. Threats do not always produce the desired effect, even on a weak opponent. Against a strong opponent they are useless and dangerous.
But we are not surprised that the head of a national security institute formulated so unprofessional a theory. Herman Kahn as a person has nothing to do with it. There could have been someone else. The point is that the Pentagon
wanted this bilge. When it wanted to justify its "massive retaliation" theory, Kahn produced Thinking about the Unthinkable and On Thermonuclear War. When, contrary to reason, the Pentagon wanted to prove that it could win a nuclear war, Kahn switched to the new situation and produced On Escalation.
The US press called Herman Kahn the Clausewitz of the nuclear age.^^40^^ What it did not say, or simply did not know, is that von Clausewitz's thinking was different from Kahn's. He had written: "The closer the character of warfare approaches absolute war, and the more the outlines of war involve the interests of the combatant nations, the closer the interconnection of all war events and the more urgent the necessity to think about the last step before taking the first one.^^41^^ Although written a long time ago, these words are as relevant as ever. It is as if Clausewitz foresaw the awesome dangers of the nuclear age. Such is common sense.
Limited War for Europe
Modified US nuclear strategy meant alterations in NATO strategy. It was held in the United States that NATO countries, while ready to take part in all-out nuclear war, should concentrate on preparing for limited war.
The strategic military concepts of "limited war" and "flexible response" were being imposed on Europe for the following reasons.
First, the Pentagon believed that all-out nuclear war, which would be fought mostly by the US strategic nuclear forces, would leave its
42 43allies idle. Secondly, and more important, the Pentagon expected to avoid a return strike against targets on US territory, because limited war ruled out the bombing of targets in the rear of the principal belligerents.
At first sight it might appear that limited war is less of an evil for European nations than all-out nuclear war. This, however, is not so. Even a conventional limited war in Europe between NATO and Warsaw Treaty countries would equal World War II in scale and consequences, while tactical nuclear warfare would turn Europe into a nuclear testing ground. That in a limited war combat operations are mostly confined to battlefields alters nothing. In modern war important military targets ( headquarters, airfields, missile sites, nuclear depots, reserves) are spread across hundreds of kilometres along the front and in depth. Battlefields in Europe would therefore blanket the territories of most European combatant nations. Small consolation for Europeans that a limited war does not provide for strategic nuclear warfare. Even tactical charges are many times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The journal Wehr und Wirtschaft commented that classifying nuclear wars by yields is like saying it is safer to jump from the fourth rather than the sixth floor. NATO's European members reacted differently to the "flexible response" and "limited war" concepts and this for selfish reasons. France rejected them out of hand. Britain accepted them as a basis for NATO strategy. Revengeseekers in Bonn responded negatively at first.
44But to reject the "limited war" concept meant breaking the FRG's military alliance with the United States in the NATO framework. The CDU/CSU, then the ruling coalition, could not afford that.
West German leaders differed in their approach to the new strategy. According to the German Institute for Military History (GDR), publisher of Bundeswehr, Armee fur den Krieg (The Bundeswehr, an Army for War), Franz Josef Strauss's group categorically rejected the "flexible response" strategy and the "limited wars" concept, and insisted on retaining the "massive retaliation" strategy and the all-out nuclear war concept. The Ludwig Erhard-- KaiUwe Hassel group, while sharing Strauss's views, thought West German military policy could be adapted to the new US strategy. The third, less prominent group, advocated a more realistic policy of negotiation, even of negotiation between the two German states.
In 1963, when Erhard and Hassel replaced Adenauer and Strauss as Chancellor and War Minister, the new leaders' point of view gained the upper hand. Still, having accepted the US concept of a "limited war" for Europe, the Bundeswehr strove to make NATO countries officially accept the Bonn version of the " advanced frontiers" concept since that suited the FRG's claims to the Bundeswehr's leading role in the North Atlantic Alliance. Besides, Bonn counted on the chance to turn a limited war into an all-out nuclear war. According to Hamburger Abendblatt, Lieutenant-General Werner Panitzki of the Bundeswehr was convinced that any war
45in Central Europe would turn into an all-out nuclear war. This idea was also reflected in the Bundeswehr's demand for a lower nuclear threshold, the term which in the West denotes the moment of transition from conventional to nuclear warfare. The lower the threshold, the sooner conventional war would escalate into nuclear war. As War Minister Hassel of the FRG said, "The concept of 'flexible response' in Europe---both political and military---must not be interpreted to mean the so-called atomic threshold can be raised unduly high... This means, so far as concerns the defence of Europe... that the atomic threshold must be very low.''^^42^^
Thus, while the Pentagon was counting on avoiding a return nuclear strike against targets in the United States by fighting a limited war in Europe, the Bundeswehr wanted to solve a similar problem for the FRG by its involvement in an all-out war. In such a war, Bonn's generals believed, the enemy's return strategic nuclear strike would be delivered against the United States and not the FRG. They also planned to reduce the effects of enemy tactical nuclear strikes by carrying NATO combat operations to the territories of the socialist countries.
For people in the same boat, incidentally, it matters little whether torpedo hits fore or aft. Both an all-out war and a limited nuclear war in Europe would be fatal for the boat's crew. Finally, these differences between the Pentagon and the Bundeswehr were overcome by the compromise of approving both the American "flexible response" strategy and the West
46German "advanced frontiers" concept. Subsequently, first in 1963 and finally in 1966-1967, appropriate corrections were introduced into NATO's coalition strategy. This reflected a considerable increase of the role the FRG played in the North Atlantic Alliance.
Thus, the modification of US and NATO strategy and the replacement of "massive retaliation" with "flexible response" did not remove the threat of a world thermonuclear war which would annihilate all mankind, including the United States. The "flexible response" strategy did not promise any advantages to the United States, to say nothing of West European NATO members. It was clearly dangerous and led nowhere.
Last Button for the NATO Coat
All these military concepts and strategies sprang from fertile ground. They were generated by the class interests of US ruling circles, by the US socio-economic and political system, by the development level of the productive forces, by the economics and politics of the United States and NATO countries.
War preparation concepts bred vigorously. The buildup of US and NATO armed forces, the nuclear weapons issued them, the training of field troops and staff officers, all pointed to the nature of a future war.
In the 1950s the strategy of "nuclear air power" and "massive retaliation" determined priority buildup of the air force. According to General Taylor, in 1955-1959 Air Force pur-
47chases of new armaments accounted for 60 per cent of all defence appropriations. By early 1962, defence programme had provided the United States with up to 600 heavy bombers and up to 1,200 medium bombers, all capable of carrying nuclear bombs.
In the 1960s the structure of US armed forces was geared to the "flexible response" strategy: strategic offensive forces were assigned the mandate to fight an all-out nuclear war, the function of general purpose forces was limited wars and participation in an all-out nuclear war: special purpose forces, the marines and part of general purpose forces were reserved for local wars. Nuclear missile forces received priority buildup status. From 1962 Minuteman ballistic missiles were deployed, and in 1964 they already totaled 600. From 1964 to 1968 their number grew to 1,000, and that of submarinelaunched ballistic missiles, from 356 to 656, while total armed forces strength rose from 2.69 million to 3.55 million officers and men, and the defence budget from 50.7 to 75.6 billion dollars (at current rates).^^43^^
The nuclear strength of NATO allied forces in Europe also grew. US pressure led to a steady increase in the number of nuclear charges and delivery vehicles. Initially, the United States issued nuclear weapons only to US forces in Europe (by 1948 there were already two groups of nuclear bombers stationed in Britain). Then US air force bases for nuclear carriers were set up in Greenland, Iceland, the FRG, Italy, Portugal (the Azores), Spain, Greece and Turkey.
From October 1953 US troops in Western Europe were equipped with nuclear artillery charges, from January 1954, with pilotless aircraft and then with tactical missiles with the range of 30-40 to 740 kilometres. Mediumrange missiles were stationed in Britain, Italy and Turkey, they all carried nuclear charges.
Meanwhile, the United States began issuing delivery vehicles for nuclear charges to its NATO allies, Britain and the Federal Republic of Germany. The United States armed two regiments of West German-based British Rhine Army with Corporal missiles, and in 1962 began selling Polaris missiles to Britain. US delivery vehicles for nuclear charges poured into the Bundeswehr: over 700 by 1966.^^44^^
Apart from that, Britain and France started work on their national nuclear devices. Great Britain tested its first atomic bomb in 1952, and its first hydrogen bomb in 1957. The former were issued to the armed forces from 1954, the latter from 1958. The first French atomic test was held in 1960. After they adopted nuclear charges, British and French forces were equipped with nuclear bombers, missiles, and missile-carrying submarines.
By the late 1960s, allied NATO forces in Europe accounted for over 7,000 nuclear charges---7,000 Hiroshimas. This nuclear saturation turned Europe into an explosive continent. Nuclear weapons were, as the phrase goes, the last button sewn onto the NATO soldier's coat.
Unlike in the old days, this time war preparations were carried out on a giant scale and were different by virtue of the special nature of
484-5.T?
49atomic and hydrogen weapons. In a nuclear explosion the concentration of energy reaches millions of calories per cubic centimetre and the temperature, millions of degrees (iron evaporates). Nuclear explosions are therefore immeasurably more powerful than conventional (non-nuclear) ones. They are equivalent, depending on the yield of the charge, to the blast effect of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of tons of TNT. Besides, nuclear explosions differ from conventional ones in their effect due to the simultaneous action of the shock wave, luminous radiation, and penetrating radiation. They also produce radioactive contamination of the terrain.
The danger of a nuclear war lay not only in the possibility of its deliberate launching but also in the likelihood of losing control of developments, especially when tensions were deliberately aggravated. NATO countries, for example, are known to have attempted intimidation and nuclear blackmail of the opposing side by declaring red alert. And in the nuclear age, when strategic nuclear weapons are virtually always ready to be used, announcing red alert is like putting your finger on the launching button. We should also remember that some NATO countries interfered in armed conflicts and deliberately aggravated European tension precisely at times of international crises (for example, during the 1962 Caribbean crisis), when the political climate was by itself unhealthy enough. Moreover, all this was often accompanied with provocative calls by the reactionary press for a preventive nuclear strike against the
Soviet Union, with a veritable witches' sabbath of revenge-oriented West German regional associations of non-existent Eastern provinces, and with other similar acts that lacked elementary common sense.
To sum it up, attempts at world domination from "positions of strength", the forming of aggressive military alliances, the creation of powerful armed forces and of nuclear weapons, aggravation of international tensions and brinkmanship frequently put mankind on the very edge of the nuclear abyss. Add to that the ensuing moral and psychological damage.
Brainwashing the public to prepare it for war and trying to intimidate the ``enemy'', Western mass media had for many years been harping upon the alleged inevitability of a nuclear war. Moral considerations were simply ignored. Some propagandists even claimed that the nuclear annihilation of enemy population was justified by humane reasons. For example, Reverend Ferguson, US Air Force Chaplain, wrote in Air Force journal in 1956: "I believe that our most humane course would be to aim a stunning blow at the most appropriate enemy targets even though the toll in lives might be great. Full application of airpower with its best weapons is less brutal than alternative ways of fighting modern wars because it is decisive, sure, and swift. Prolonged torture is immoral when swift victory is possible.''^^45^^
Militarist propaganda abounded in such absolutions. But taking mass nuclear killings off people's conscience was like justifying killing as such. The line separating what is logically
50 51permissible from total permissiveness practically disappeared. The age-old commandment "Thou shalt not kill" was turned inside out. Otherwise how can one explain that during US atomic monopoly and, due to the momentum gained, for some time later too, the strength and possible consequences of atomic weapons were vigorously advertised. The press described with relish what nuclear bombs had done to the two Japanese cities. The idea that nuclear weapons would bring easy victory was hammered into the minds of the American people. Propaganda masterminds wanted the press, radio and television to make the average American certain that US armed forces would hit the enemy with nuclear weapons, NATO infantry would clear the area of the remains of Soviet troops, and that war would be over in a couple of months. Newspapers savoured the details: northward from Baku to Leningrad, eastward from Smolensk to Novosibirsk, all vital centres of the Soviet Union would be reduced to cinders by the terrible nuclear flames. "Give me the order to do it, and I can break up Russia's five Abomb nests in a week. And when I went up to Christ---I think I could explain to Him that I had saved civilisation! "^^46^^ boasted MajorGeneral Orvil A. Anderson.
This propaganda, unexpectedly, boomeranged against Americans. They suddenly found that the vividly described nuclear war horrors could threaten themselves. Hence the campaigns publicising the alleged US lag in nuclear armaments, engineered to justify the arms race. Hence nuclear shelters built everywhere, mass
civil defence drills, nationwide psychosis and mass hysteria.
People could not tell whether air raid warnings were practice drills or the real thing: was that the last time they were hiding in the fall-out shelters that offered dubious protection anyway? Would nuclear weapons be used? Perhaps they would be banned, the way chemical weapons were banned under the Hague Convention? But if not, then what? Those were troubled times, and no break in the clouds was in sight.
52Chapter 2 SOVIET PEACE STRATEGY
In August 1961, at the height of the cold war, I visited the German Democratic Republic. Just at this time the GDR was adjusting its frontier regime and customs regulations on the border between West Berlin and Democratic Berlin, capital of the GDR---legitimate measures by a sovereign nation. But the American command in Europe responded by strengthening the West Berlin garrison.
On the highway from Berlin to Magdeburg I saw US army trucks heading for Berlin. They were moving slowly, keeping their distance, and the highway, running straight as a die, made the convoy look endless. Their headlights were on, although it was daylight and there was no fog. Regulations, I thought. When they approached the checkpoint, the trucks slowed down, and a Soviet lieutenant waved some of them on and stopped a few to speak to the officer sitting by the driver.
I parked my car, approached the lieutenant, introduced myself and asked if I could watch.
``If you wish," the young red-cheeked lieutenant answered. But he added, smiling: "What's there to watch?''
I explained that I had known American soldiers in the war.
``A good reason," the lieutenant said. And again he grinned: "It's a far cry from those days.''
``Where are they headed and why?''
``The US convoy carrying personnel and equipment is proceeding from West Germany to West Berlin along the assigned route," the lieutenant rattled off as if making an official report. Then he added, "Why? I don't know. Supposedly as a show of determination." "A show for whom?''
``Maybe for us, maybe for themselves. You know how it is. Like whistling in the dark. Showing others you aren't afraid, and it's reassuring yourself too. When you're a kid, I mean.''
The lieutenant excused himself (duty called) and went to stop another truck. When he returned, he summed it all up: "Pure, unmitigated foolishness, I'd call it.''
``Why foolishness, Lieutenant?" "I mean this sending of reinforcements. Everybody knows West Berlin isn't threatened. Besides, it is tactically incompetent to send troops into an encircled area.''
``Incidentally, Lieutenant, why has our army taken on this monitoring function?''
``Ask the Americans. They don't want to recognise the GDR checkpoint. Doesn't make sense: it's GDR territory they are driving through. What's all this about anyway?" the lieutenant said unhappily.
His remarks and the way he performed his duties showed that he had no respect for those passing through the checkpoint, although he was clearly sociable and good-natured. His smile alone proved that.
The faces of the American soldiers, too, showed neither curiosity about the new sur-
54 55roundings nor any youthful animation. They were blank, withdrawn, even grim. On the other hand, what was there to be happy about? Still, I had known Americans to be companionable, fond of a joke.
I thanked the lieutenant and drove on. I felt uneasy: one could see that the fifteen years of the cold war had had their effect. The cold warriors had managed to split the world, although, one hoped, temporarily. To quote the lieutenant, why? Why indeed? As if there were no global tasks facing mankind. As if the foremost of these wasn't preventing a nuclear war.
...The trucks rolled on. I could not forget the soldiers and their faces, the meeting at the checkpoint. How different it all was From the meeting on the Elbe back in 1945 when we had agreed to be friends so there would be no more war.
I wished I could meet my old friends, talk things over, find out what they thought and whether they knew the truth. I had a lot to say and, I was sure, they did too. Together, we'd figure out if the clouds could be cleared and if there was light at the end of the tunnel.
preached with the old yardstick. Soviet foreign policy and our nation's attitude to issues of war and peace can be understood much more easily if one has grasped the Soviet people's philosophy, our ideology, the socio-political structure of our society, and the role the Communist Party of the Soviet Union plays in leading the Soviet people.
Peace Is Our Ideal
Wars between nations are contrary to our ideology and" to the practical tasks of communist construction. The ideal of the Soviet people is peace.
Mankind's best minds have always realised the evil of war, revealed its horror and depravity, called for an end to wars, roused people against them.
Lev Tolstoi said war was contrary to human reason and nature. In War and Peace Andrei Bolkonsky said, on the eve of the battle of Borodino: "They meet, as they will tomorrow, for murder, to kill and maim tens of thousands of people, and then they hold thanksgiving services for having killed many people (and they add to that number too), and proclaim victory, thinking that the more people have been killed, the greater the accomplishment. How can God look and listen to them from above?''
Ernest Hemingway wrote: "The only way to combat the murder that is war is to show the dirty combinations that make it and the criminals and swine that hope for it''.
Immanuel Kant dreamed of eternal peace.
LIGHT AT TUNNEL'S END
I would huve told the Americans I had met on the Elbe what we thought of the cold war, of a new world war, of the struggle for peace. I would have explained that the Soviet Union and all other socialist nations were a new socioeconomic formation which could not be ap-
56 57The internationally known French socialist Jean-Leon Jaures, who vigorously opposed the preparations and start of World War I, paid with his life for his convictions: he was killed by a chauvinist warhawk.
The Moscow Tretyakov Gallery displays Vassily Vereshchagin's Apotheosis of War, one of his famous battle pieces---a mound of human skulls with a raven perched on top. It is an eloquent statement of the artist's attitude to war.
Francisco Goya's The Disasters of War have a similar message.
Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin were among mankind's noblest figures to oppose war.
One hundred years ago Karl Marx, founder of scientific communism, wrote in the "First Address of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association on the FrancoPrussian War": "In answer to the warlike proclamations of those who exempt themselves from the impost of blood, and find in public misfortunes a source of fresh speculations, we protest, we who want peace, labour and liberty! ... Whatever turn the impending horrid war may take, the alliance of the working classes of all countries will ultimately kill war... in contrast to old society, with its economical miseries and its political delirium, a new society is springing up, whose International rule will be Peace, because its national ruler will be everywhere the same---Labour] "1
Lenin was always a passionate and implacable enemy of imperialist wars. He was particularly vigorous during World War I which dressed
workers and peasants in soldiers' uniforms and turned them into cannonfodder.
At the time Lenin was living in Switzerland, where he initiated and led the revolutionary struggle against the war launched by the imperialist powers.
He spoke about the war in Berne, Lausanne, Geneva, and Zurich to local groups of emigre Bolsheviks, to Swiss Social-Democrats, to European internationalist Socialists. He wrote The War and Russian Social-Democracy, the manifesto of the Bolsheviks' Central Committee, Socialism and War, The Collapse of the Second International, and numerous articles. He worked to unite, on the basis of internationalism, groups of emigre Bolsheviks, to organise the printing and distribution of Bolshevik publications, to establish ties with revolutionaries in Russia, and to consolidate the alliance of internationalistoriented European Socialists.
Lenin analysed the social nature of imperialist wars. He was the first to show that big imperialist predators waged wars to redivide the world already divided among them, in a mad scramble for markets, export of capital, raw materials, spheres of influence, and colonies. He demonstrated that World War I was unjust, annexationist and predatory on both sides. He pointed out that the bourgeoisie used imperialist wars to suppress democracy and the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, to set one nation against another, to undermine proletarian solidarity. He showed the capitalists grow fat from millions of deaths.
Lenin exposed the treachery of European
58 59Socialist leaders who had opposed the war but, once it began, betrayed the working class and their internationalist duty by siding with their governments. Professing to defend their countries, they voted for war allocations in their parliaments.
Lenin worked out the tactical moves to be followed in dealing with issues of war and peace. It was useless, he said, to try talking the imperialists out of being imperialist. In his "Letters from Afar" he referred to the GuchkovMilyukov Russian cabinet who supported the war: "To urge that government to conclude a democratic, peace is like preaching virtue to brothel keepers.''^^2^^
Lenin calls on the Bolshevik Party, on the revolutionary parties in all countries to declare war on war and to fight against war up to and including their governments' defeat in the war.
That Lenin condemned wars among nations is evident in all his works on military issues. "An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence---such is our ideal... War ran counter to the aims of the Communist Party," he wrote.^^3^^ Unto this day this is our motto.
No wonder: since Communist parties represent workers and all working people, their very nature forbids them to support wars among nations. As the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union says, "To abolish war and establish everlasting peace on earth is a historic mission of communism. "^^4^^
No Cause for War
Given enough time, we could have talked about the origin and nature of wars with the Americans we had met on the Elbe. Such discussion would make it much easier to understand the position of the socialist countries who do not and cannot have any cause for aggressive wars.
Issues of the origin, nature and causes of wars are treated differently by the bourgeoisie and the Communists.
Bourgeois philosophers, sociologists and military theorists, following the class guidelines laid down by the powers-that-be, try to prove that wars are everlasting and inevitable, to camouflage their class nature. The most absurd attempt is to explain the causes of war by man's biology. Many bourgeois scholars maintain that, since man is a biological being, he is subject to laws that are common for all animals. This, they claim, means that man possesses built-in predatory instincts and is naturally disposed towards violence. Hence wars.
Some proponents of this theory of inherent violence draw a primitive analogy with, say, inter-ethnic brawls. Others offer deliberately vague expostulations concerning the mysteries of the subconscious. Still others (the social Darwinists) refer to the theory of natural selection in the animal kingdom. It logically follows, they claim, that wars are the highest form of the struggle for survival among men.
To agree with all this would mean to disregard the millions of years of man's evolution, to bring
60 61homo sapiens down to animal level, and to pin one's faith on something irrational instead of on human reason. But human activity is guided by reason, not instinct.
Other bourgeois theories do not stand up to criticism either, including the geopolitical, neo-Malthusian and other such theories that attempt to explain the origin and nature of wars.
Marxists interpret these issues differently. War, they say, is the continuation of politics by violence on the part of, in Lenin's words, "powers concerned---and the various classes within these countries---in a definite period".5 And the politics of each class illustrate its key economic interests. In other words, politics is the gist of economics.
War is a socio-historical phenomenon. It sprang from the advent of private ownership of the means of production, the division of society into classes, the emergence of the state and the army. In a class-antagonistic society wars are fought for gain, for bigger profits of the ruling exploiting classes. Both history and contemporary developments prove this point.
The Marxist-Leninist doctrine provides answers to the question of what causes wars and whether they can be eliminated. This should be of interest to everyone.
In slave-owning society where slave labour was the chief source of profit for slaveholders, wars were fought to acquire more slaves. Prisoners of war and civilians driven from their homes were turned into slaves during wars in ancient Assyria, Persia, Egypt, Babylon, Greece and Rome.
In feudal society where wealth for feudal lords was mostly supplied by serfs and land, wars were chiefly fought to win new territories. No matter what the pretext, these wars usually turned the losing country into a tributary vassal region or annexed it.
Since the prime movers of capitalist production are profit, surplus value, and capital accumulation, these were the goals of the countless wars waged by the bourgeoisie at the dawn of capitalism to capture foreign markets, territories and colonies.
By the early 20th century when capitalism entered its highest monopolistic stage of imperialism, when the world was divided among the major capitalist powers, wars were fought to redivide the already divided world. The countries that considered themselves cheated of their rightful share of raw material sources, markets, and capital investment spheres, tried to advance by launching annexationist wars. Others used force to preserve what they had captured and continued to plunder their victims. In World War I, for example, Britain captured German colonies in East and South-East Africa, and France received the mandate for most of the Cameroon and half of Togo, all to increase monopolist profits.
Today, while the contradictions among capitalist powers remain, the class-oriented imperialist policy is mostly aimed against the socialist community, the national liberation and working-class movements. The ultimate goal, however, is unchanged. In their attempts to "roll back" socialism and to suppress the national
62 63liberation movement, the imperialists dream of restoring their sway over the world, so that monopolies could reap their profits unhampered.
The prime mover and cause of wars in any society of antagonistic classes are private ownership of the means of production and the striving of the ruling classes for greater wealth and profits.
In the socialist countries there are no privately owned means of production, no classes or social groups interested in profit, and therefore, no causes to launch aggressive wars.
The peaceful foreign policy of the Soviet Union and other countries of the socialist community that share the Marxist-Leninist platform is determined by their social nature. This policy springs from the identity of the ruling Communist parties' interests with those of the entire nation.
The socio-economic and political aims of our society are such that the Soviet people have nothing to gain from annexationist wars. The goal of socialist society is to satisfy the steadily growing material, intellectual and spiritual needs of its members. This means that the Soviet people need peace and not war. They are building the material and technical basis of communism, and you can only build when there is peace.
The Soviet people have first-hand knowledge of what calamities wars can bring. The USSR had had to repulse two large-scale imperialist invasions: during the foreign military intervention and the Civil War of 1918-1920, and during
the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Both these invasions brought death and destruction to the Soviet people.
In 1918-1920 most factories were destroyed and the mines flooded in the Donets Basin, Krivoi Rog area, the Urals and Siberia. In 1920 the war cut the output of key industries more than sevenfold compared to the 1913 level. The drop in coal mining was more than threefold. Pig iron output in 1920 was 2.7 per cent of the 1913 level. The figure for cement was 3 per cent; for railroad cars, 4.2 per cent; for sugar, 6.7 per cent, and so on. The country was devastated. There was famine.
In 1941-1945 the nazis destroyed 1,7.10 Soviet cities and over 70,000 villages. They blew up and burned 32,000 industrial sites, pillaged 98,000 collective farms, 1,876 state farms and 2,890 machine-and-tractor stations, destroyed 65,000 kilometres of railroads. A total of 20 million Soviet people died on the battlefields, under nazi bombs in cities and villages, in death camps and during forced labour in Germany. Almost every ninth Soviet citizen had not lived to see Victory Day. Almost every family lost someone in the war.
The Soviet people know the price of war. Having lost so many of their kin, having lived through the horrors of war, people cannot wish for a new, let alone a thermonuclear, war. The very idea is unnatural.
The Soviet people, educated in the spirit of brotherhood and friendship among nations, cannot by their very nature contemplate annexing foreign territories or enslaving other nations.
645-537
65Another reason why the Soviet Union does not want war is its internationalist proletarian solidarity. Peace among nations is in the interests of all workers, in socialist and capitalist countries alike. Peace strengthens the workers' international ties, war disrupts them. As Marx wrote, "If the emancipation of the working classes requires their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfill that great mission with a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the people's blood and treasure?''^^6^^ Today, this point is still valid. The working people pay the price of war in blood and deprivation. The capitalists use wars to step up exploitation, to do away with the already meagre freedoms, to suppress the class struggle.
Peace enables the developing countries, which have thrown off colonial rule, to preserve and consolidate their national independence.
Finally, Marxists analyse and assess each war in its historical context, together with its political, economic and other causes. Lenin repeatedly stressed that each war should be studied separately in its historical perspective, according to Marx's dialectical materialism. He insisted that a previous, long-gone era should not be automatically superimposed on the present, and he exposed the sophists who deliberately compared dissimilar examples. In the nuclear age, when an imperialist-inspired thermonuclear war can devastate the world, Marxists-Leninists consider prevention of wars a necessary condition of mankind's progress.
Wars Can Be Different
Unlike pacifists, Marxists believe that all wars are not alike. Even Lev Tolstoi, dedicated exponent of non-resistance to violence, wrote in War and Peace; "And blessed be not the nation who, like the French in 1813, having given a perfectly executed salute to the magnanimous winner, gracefully and courteously hand over the hilt of the sword to him. Blessed be the nation who, at a time of trial, without racking their brains as to what should be properly done in a case like this, simply and easily reach for any cudgel handy and keep laying about until contempt and pity replace insult and vengeance.''
This has happened to practically every nation, for wars can be just and unjust, and they can be distinguished by a universal and objective criterion. The answer to the question of what is a just war is implicit in Karl Marx's recommendation "to vindicate the simple laws of morals and justice, which ought to govern the relations of private individuals, as the rules paramount of the intercourse of nations".^^7^^ Marx repeatedly stressed this point: for example, in the " Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Association" (1864) and in the "First Address of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association on the FrancoPrussian War" (1870).
We hold that this is absolutely logical. Human society, aside from honest people, includes criminals. It is natural and legitimate for any society to protect its citizens from them and
66 67also provide for the right to self-defence. These rules of interpersonal conduct, universally recognised as moral and just, should be applied to international relations and serve to distinguish a just war from an unjust one.
This would mean that any wars fought to acquire new territories, to capture raw material sources, markets and areas for capital investment differ from plain robbery only in scale and are therefore unjust. Conversely, wars fought by captive nations against colonialism and for national independence, and by developing countries against aggressive attempts to restore colonial rule, are just, for any individual has the right to defend himself against robbery. The point is still valid if the burglar got into an apartment (colony) yesterday and the victim only managed to throw him out today.
By the same token, aid to a country that fell victim to aggression is as moral and just as assistance to a robbery victim. And again, when a capitalist predator attacks a weaker country, the latter, acting on the wishes of most of its people, has a right to defend its sovereignty and independence.
If two capitalist countries fight a war to redivide the already divided world, both sides can be legitimately compared to two robbers fighting over their loot. Such wars for world domination are clearly predatory and unjust. World War I was a good example.
It is logical to evaluate all wars from this position of morality and justice. Then it becomes obvious that the war fought by the American people for independence against the
British in 1775-1783 was a just war. Similarly, the war of the Vietnamese people for freedom and national independence against US aggression was definitely just.
The same criteria of universal morality and justice should be used to evaluate the war fought by the Soviet Union against nazi Germany in 1941-1945. In this case Germany was obviously the attacker.
The Nuremberg Trial of nazi war criminals proved that Hitler and his clique had planned to destroy the Soviet socialist system and all it had achieved, to dismember the USSR and annex most of it to Germany, to strip it of its wealth, and to kill or enslave in Germany millions of Soviet people.
The guidelines for Operation Barbarossa, signed by Hitler, Keitel and Jodl on December 18, 1940, show that the nazi aggression against the Soviet Union in June 1941 had been planned in advance. Specific orders and directives detailed the ways of annihilating Soviet people. For example, Hitler's orders to Army Group Centre issued before the advance on Moscow ran as follows: "This city is to be surrounded... Not one Russian soldier or civilian---man, woman or child---should be allowed to leave the city. Each attempt at escape is to be suppressed by force of arms. Where Moscow stands today a great sea is to be created which will forever conceal from the civilised world the capital of the Russian people.''^^8^^
The peoples of the Soviet Union defended their homeland, socialism, their freedom and independence, their very lives. They fought
69 68bravely and skilfully, and they played a decisive role in defeating nazi Germany, routing 607 divisions of the latter-day Huns.
The Great Patriotic War was also of international significance. It defeated the nazi regime and liberated several European nations, including the German people, from nazism. This is why the monument in the Treptow Park in Berlin to the seven thousand Soviet soldiers who fell in storming the city is inscribed in German and Russian: "Eternal glory to Soviet Army soldiers who have given their lives to free mankind from nazi bondage.''
Wars fought to defend the socialist homeland from imperialist aggression are undoubtedly just. Still, there are attempts to contest even this self-evident truth, to claim there is a contradiction between the Soviet people's drive for peace and the recognition that wars to defend the socialist motherland are just. There is no contradiction here. The Soviet people indeed want peace and do not contemplate attacking anyone. The talk about the growing Soviet military threat is plain bluff. Our country spends no more than is necessary for defence. At the same time it is wrong to see the struggle for durable peace as an admission of weakness.
The just war to defend the socialist motherland is a forced defensive measure. The threat to peace lies elsewhere.
Our country strengthens its defence capability to protect itself. The cold war, meant to pave the way to a ``hot'' war, was not launched on our side but in the West. That is where the first atom bombs, nuclear diplomacy and strategy, and
70military and political blocs appeared. That is where the ideological, political, economic, military and psychological preparation for a nuclear war began. Even the term itself---the "cold war"---was coined in the West by US journalist Walter Lippmann.
The preparation for a nuclear war was openly directed against the Soviet Union. It was quite logical, therefore, for the USSR to take the necessary steps to ensure its security. To count on a lasting Soviet lag in acquiring nuclear weapons was clearly unrealistic politically, militarily and technologically. How could one expect that a powerful socialist country, aware of the aggressive designs by an imperialist country possessing nuclear weapons, would not take steps to protect itself? Besides, in the age of the scientific and technological revolution, when its results in all developed countries are about the same, it is imprudent to rely on a long-- standing unilateral possession of any type of nuclear weapons. It is quite likely that similar weapons will be developed in other countries that possess the sufficient scientific and economic potential. This catching-up process is usually so swift that the country planning to use the new weapon's advantages cannot even put it into mass production.
Another forced defensive measure that threw cold water on the militarist and revenge-seeking hotheads was the formation of the Warsaw Treaty Organisation. As Leonid Brezhnev recalled, "Together with our allies in the defensive Warsaw Treaty, we had to build such a defence capability which made leaders of
71bourgeois countries understand that instead of talking tough to us they should use the language of reason, realism and mutual advantage.''^^9^^
It is quite obvious that the Warsaw Treaty is inherently defensive. As Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko said in 1975, in the twenty years of the Treaty its members, individually or jointly, have not initiated a single conflict nor acted to aggravate tensions in any region of the globe.
Still, we have never believed armaments, let alone nuclear parity, to be a reliable guarantee of durable peace. They have been necessary while the West refused even to contemplate arms control and reduction. But durable peace can and must be achieved by disarmament under strict international control, without prejudice to anyone and to benefit all.
Principles of Peaceful Coexistence
On November 8, 1917, the second day of the revolution, the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies unanimously approved the Decree on Peace drafted by Lenin. In this decree the Soviet government proposed to all combatant nations and governments that they immediately open negotiations to end the world war and conclude a just, democratic peace without annexations or indemnities. Lenin's decree proclaimed new principles of international relations that recognised the sovereign rights and equality of all nations and ruled out settlement of international disputes by force of arms. Peace among nations
was proclaimed the basic law of international relations.
In his closing remarks on the peace report, Lenin said: "We reject all clauses on plunder and violence, but we shall welcome all clauses containing provisions for good-neighbourly relations and all economic agreements; we cannot reject these.''^^10^^ Later, Lenin repeatedly raised this issue in his talks to foreign pressmen. At that time, this was the only way to get in touch with capitalist governments: diplomatic recognition was withheld and we were blockaded economically.
When a foreign correspondent asked him what could serve as a basis for peaceful relations with the United States, Lenin answered: "Let the American capitalists leave us alone. We shall not touch them..." Replying to another newsman's question of whether the Soviet government was ready to guarantee complete non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, Lenin said: "We are willing to guarantee it." Asked about the Soviet position on economic agreement with the United States, he replied: "We are decidedly for an economic understanding with America---with all countries but especially with America.''^^11^^
These and other statements, together with the Decree on Peace, laid the foundation of relation between a socialist country and capitalist countries: the principle of peaceful coexistence and mutually advantageous cooperation of countries with different social systems.
In November 1917, in "The Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia" and in the
72 73Appeal by the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Federation "To All the Working Moslems of Russia and the East", the Soviet government abrogated treaties and agreements that infringed the sovereignty of Iran and Turkey, withdrew its troops from their territories, and declared that it would shape its relations with the countries of the East on the basis of equality, mutual respect and cooperation.
In late 1917 the Soviet government recognised the independence of Finland and annulled the treaties on the partition of Poland. Soviet Russia was the first country to recognise Afghanistan's independence and to support the Turkish national liberation movement.
In its Declaration of June 25, 1919 the Soviet government waived the unjust treaties the tsarist government had concluded with China and offered to negotiate a durable peace. The Declaration said: "If the Chinese people want to be free like the Russian people, and to avoid the fate planned for them at Versailles ... let them realise that their only allies and brothers in the struggle for freedom are the Russian worker, peasant and their Red Army''.
In December 1919 the 7th All-Russia Congress of Soviets adopted a resolution on the international situation which reiterated that Soviet Russia was striving for peace, and which again proposed to the Entente powers that they "jointly and separately immediately begin peace negotiations''.
The point about peaceful coexistence of countries with different social systems was not
raised spontaneously. It logically followed from Lenin's conclusion made in 1915-1916 that socialism could be established in one country or group of countries, and consequently, that countries with different socio-economic and political systems would inevitably exist side by side.
It is a well-known fact that Lenin considered it imperative to negotiate peace with the combatant nations in case revolution won in Russia. In 1915 he wrote: "If the revolutionary class of Russia, the working class, comes to power, it will have to offer peace.''^^12^^ On the eve of the October Revolution Lenin, in his article "The Tasks of the Revolution", again reiterated that once it won, the Soviet government should immediately suggest to all belligerents that a universal peace be negotiated at once on democratic conditions. This was exactly what the Soviet government did.
The Communist Party came to power with a scientifically sound foreign policy programme. As Leonid Brezhnev said, "Lenin was the first in history to unite the theory of scientific communism with the conduct of state foreign policy. This union of Leninist theories and Leninist practice gave rise to the principles and methods underlying the socialist policy in the international arena by which we, his pupils and followers, are and shall always be guided."13 Since the adoption of the Decree on Peace and unto this day, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet government have steadily pursued peaceful foreign policy. This has not been an easy task. The first years of
74 75Soviet power were particularly difficult.
The 1922 Genoa Conference of 34 countries was one example. It was the first international conference to include Soviet delegates. Foreign diplomats were listening to Georgi Chicherin, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, as if he were a creature from another planet. On Lenin's instructions Chicherin laid down Soviet proposals to establish relations among countries with different social systems on a reciprocal and equal basis, to secure durable peace among all nations and to achieve universal reduction of armaments. This was unheard of.
Meanwhile, since World War I had naturally failed to resolve inter-imperialist contradictions, the capitalist world embarked upon a new arms race, preparing for a new world war. Aware of the possible consequences, the Soviet Union did all it could to oppose the arms race and to promote disarmament. In November 1927 the Soviet delegation to the League of Nations proposed a universal and complete disarmament treaty. Western powers rejected this initiative. The Soviet delegation then submitted a draft treaty on partial disarmament. This proposal was also rejected.
At the 1932 World Disarmament Conference, Soviet representative again proposed universal disarmament or, failing that, progressive reduction of armaments. The only country to support the proposal was Turkey. The naval powers, as the Italian delegate aptly remarked, demanded that land forces be disarmed, while the land army powers wanted disarmament for the navies. That was all.
The nazis' rise to power in Germany increased the danger of a new world war. For fascism stands for war. To counter this growing threat, the Soviet Union decided in 1933 to campaign for collective security and mutual assistance by the USSR and the capitalist nations against aggression.
This set the tone of the Soviet diplomatic effort on the eve of World War II. Soviet initiatives were aimed at preventing war which did not threaten the USSR alone. Nevertheless, the West rejected them.
The 1933 World Disarmament Conference rejected the Soviet proposal to work out a definition of aggression. In 1934 under German and British pressure, the capitalist countries refused to sign an East European mutual assistance pact, proposed by France and supported by the Soviet Union. In 1938 Western powers ignored the Soviet proposal of joint protection of Czechoslovakia from German aggression. In 1939 Britain and France sabotaged the Moscow talks on a military treaty that was to come into force in case of aggression.
Western hostility to Soviet initiatives, the Munich deal with the aggressor, the naive belief in Hitler's promises to direct the war only to the East, against the Soviet Union, all led to wellknown consequences. The price mankind paid for Western refusal to accept peaceful coexistence and collective security was over 50 million people dead.
The memory of those who fell in World War II demanded that a new and deadlier war be prevented, and the Soviet people worked towards
76 77this goal. The Soviet Union continued on its Leninist foreign policy course to peaceful coexistence, to friendship among nations, to durable, just and democratic peace. The emergence of nuclear-missile weapons and the threat of a nuclear war turned the struggle for peace into struggle for survival.
To make postwar peace stronger, the Soviet government proposed, in September 1949, that a peace pact be signed by the five great powers--- the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, France and China. The proposal was rejected.
The Soviet government warned Western countries that the creation of military and political alliances in Europe threatened European and world peace. In the Soviet Foreign Ministry statement of January 29 and in the memorandum of March 31, 1949, the Soviet government presented its analysis of the Brussels Pact^^14^^ and of the plans to sign the North Atlantic Treaty. These Soviet statements stressed that the Western powers had strayed from the anti-nazi coalition policy and embarked on the dangerous course of setting up aggressive alliances. The West, however, ignored the warning and signed the North Atlantic Treaty.
In 1954, in a diplomatic note to the governments of the United States, Great Britain and France, the Soviet Union declared it was ready to consider, jointly with interested governments, the question of Soviet participation in NATO. The Soviet point was that the participation in NATO of all the great powers of the anti-nazi coalition would make it open to other European countries, and that it would cease to be a closed,
aggressive alliance. The West refused this offer and again showed that NATO was class-oriented and anti-Soviet.
That same year, at the Berlin Conference of Foreign Ministers of the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain and France, the USSR proposed a collective European security treaty, envisaging joint action by all European countries and the United States against any aggression in Europe. At the 1955 Geneva Summit Conference of the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France, the USSR again proposed an all-European collective security treaty. It was rejected both times.
To relax US-Soviet tensions, the USSR, in January 1956, offered to sign with the United States a friendship and cooperation treaty to develop and consolidate friendly relations on the basis of equality and non-interference. This Soviet step found no support.
The Soviet people were nevertheless sure that the West would sooner or later accept peaceful coexistence. They were convinced that peaceful coexistence was an objective necessity and the only acceptable basis for international relations.
In October 1961 the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union adopted the new Party Programme which proclaimed that a new world war could be averted and detailed the principles of peaceful coexistence of countries with different social systems. According to relevant Soviet documents, peaceful coexistence envisages:
---settlement of disputes among nations through political negotiations instead of war;
78 79---non-interference into the internal affairs of other countries, recognition of every nation's right to freely choose its economic and political system and to make its own decisions;
---strict observance of the sovereignty, equality and territorial inviolability of all countries regardless of their size;
---promotion of economic, scientific and cultural cooperation on the basis of equality and mutual advantage.
Soviet diplomacy vigorously promoted peace at the United Nations in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
Back in 1946 the Soviet Union submitted a draft resolution at the United Nations on universal reduction of armaments and on banning the production and use of nuclear energy for military purposes as a priority task. The Soviet Union again raised this issue at the United Nations in 1948 and, after it acquired nuclear weapons, in 1954, 1955, 1956 and 1959.
In 1947 the Soviet Union proposed that the United Nations condemn war propaganda.
In 1948 the Soviet government proposed that the permanent members of the Security Council reduce by one-third their ground, naval and air forces. Similar Soviet proposals on armed forces reduction, including those that took Western views into account, were repeated in 1952, 1954-1957 and 1959. Aware that the United Nations would take a long time to act on this proposal, the Soviet Union unilaterally reduced its armed forces by 640,000 men in 1955, and by 1,200,000 in 1956.
In 1960, 1961 and 1962 the Soviet delegation
to the United Nations submitted new proposals on universal and complete disarmament, but the imperialist powers opposed them and they were not adopted.
For decades many Soviet peace proposals were rejected, usually with no grounds given. Soviet diplomats were amazingly patient in the face of this stone wall treatment.
Not all seeds fall on fertile ground: after all, one cannot expect miracles overnight. The important thing is that peoples of the world see what we sow, that it is not discord or violence. They pay more attention to our voice. And today, politicians cannot afford to ignore public opinion.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s Western governments altered their attitude to Soviet peace initiatives: not all of them were rejected out of hand, they were carefully studied and some even accepted. This was a slow process, but the world political barometer started moving from the cold war to detente.
This was mostly due to the growing strength of the Soviet Union and the socialist community. In bourgeois society you do not treat a poor relation as your equal. And our country had since the October Revolution grown from an underdeveloped, foreign-dominated agrarianindustrial land, into an economically powerful and scientifically advanced socialist nation.
The Soviet Union overtook all capitalist nations except the United States in total industrial output, and in some branches it even outstripped the US. Stable and crisis-free Soviet economy was confidently leading in growth
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81rates. By the end of 1970, statistics showed that the Soviet Union had doubled its national income in ten years; its industrial output volume, in eight and a half years; and its production assets, in eight years. To double the same indicators, it took the United States respectively 20, 18 and 22 years.
Strengthening its defence capability, the Soviet Union first broke the US atomic monopoly and then achieved nuclear parity with the United States. The West could no longer count on military superiority over the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Hence NATO's conclusion that a war against them would be suicidal.
West German Wehrkunde magazine assessed the situation as follows: "The strategy developed by NATO in the 1950s relied almost exclusively on US superiority in nuclear weapons and delivery means. The growth of Soviet military potential has eroded this strategy's credibility... The Soviet Union is now sufficiently equipped to deliver a return strike.''^^15^^
The Soviet Union acquired great political prestige as the initiator and driving force of the peace effort, as defender of those who fell victim to imperialist aggression, and as a true friend of all nations committed to freedom.
At the 1922 Genoa Conference the Soviet Union was the only country to speak out for peace. Only after World War II new socialist countries emerged and joined the peace drive. The Soviet Union and other socialist countries were bound together by their communist
philosophy. Hence their common goals and joint efforts.
To counter the "positions of strength" course and the imperialist practice of pursuing foreign policy by armed force, the socialist countries proclaimed sovereign equality of all nations and peaceful coexistence as their foreign policy goals. They made peace the essence of their national policies, and all peace forces gravitated towards them.
The collapse of the colonial system also strengthened the drive for peace. Newly liberated countries needed peace to consolidate their independence. Most of them supported the socialist nations in their campaign to prevent imperialist wars. The imperialists had always used colonial and semi-colonial countries in their wars as sources of raw materials, fuel and manpower. Now these countries were committed to peace.
The anti-war movement led by the working class in the developed capitalist countries was growing more popular.
All these important changes put an end to absolute imperialist domination in the world and altered the global balance of forces in favour of peaceful coexistence.
The Peace Offensive
Soviet leadership kept track of these changes and seized the opportunity they offered. Preparations began for new Soviet foreign policy initiatives, the "peace offensive" as they were later called.
82 83There still remained the urgent tasks of eHminating the consequences of World War II and of improving the European political climate. These included recognition of postwar borders, military detente, broader economic ties and a European conference to discuss these issues.
The Soviet initiative was supported by the socialist countries. The Conference of the Warsaw Treaty Political Consultative Committee adopted, in July 1966 in Bucharest, the Declaration on Strengthening Peace and Security in Europe. The Declaration envisaged steps towards political and military detente: recognising the inviolability of borders, promoting good-- neighbourly inter-state relations, disbanding the military organisations of the North Atlantic and Warsaw treaties, and convening an all-European conference on security and cooperation.
This programme of the socialist countries was supported at the Conference of the Communist and Workers' Parties of Europe in Karlovy Vary in April 1967.
Specific details and additions to the proposal of an all-European conference were worked out at the sessions of the Warsaw Treaty Political Consultative Committee in March 1969 and December 1970, and at the Warsaw Treaty Foreign Ministers' Conference in February 1971.
Preparations for the peace offensive covered other aspects as well, including meetings between Soviet and US delegations, begun in late 1969, to discuss strategic arms control.
The timing of the peace offensive was very important. It called for a thorough knowledge of the world alignment of forces, for a correct
evaluation of which side---peace and progress or war and reaction---had greater weight. It also called for taking both objective and subjective factors into consideration, including an assessment of how realistic each Western leader was. The Soviet Union had to foresee which course events would take and to choose the best moment for announcing its peace initiatives so that the scales should tilt in their favour.
The Soviet peace offensive is usually associated with the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union held in March 1971. The Congress adopted a comprehensive foreign policy programme to achieve durable peace, greater international security and detente, and to avert a world nuclear war. These objectives were later called the Soviet Peace Programme.
This Programme is so important that we believe it useful to quote it here. Leonid Brezhnev echoed the voice of our people when he presented the Communist Party initiative. He said: "First.
``To eliminate the hotbeds of war in South* East Asia and in the Middle East and to promote a political settlement in these areas on the basis of respect foi the legitimate rights of states and peoples subjected to aggression.
``To give an immediate and firm rebuff to any acts of aggression and international arbitrariness. For this, full use must also be made of the possibilities of the United Nations.
``Repudiation of the threat or use of force in settling outstanding issues must become a law of international life. For its part, the Soviet Union
84 85invites the countries which accept this approach to conclude appropriate bilateral or regional treaties. "Second.
``To proceed from the final recognition of the territorial changes that took place in Europe as a result of the Second World War. To bring about a radical turn towards detente and peace on this continent. To ensure the convocation and success of an all-European conference.
``To do everything to ensure collective security in Europe. We reaffirm the readiness expressed jointly by the participants in the defensive Warsaw Treaty to have a simultaneous annulment of this treaty and of the North Atlantic Alliance, or---as a first step---dismantling of their military organisations. "Third.
``To conclude treaties putting a ban on
nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological weapons.
``To work for an end to the testing of nuclear
weapons, including underground tests, by
everyone everywhere.
``To promote the establishment of nuclearfree zones in various parts of the world.
``We stand for the nuclear disarmament of all states in possession of nuclear weapons, and for the convocation for these purposes of a conference of the five nuclear powers---the USSR, the USA, the PRC, France and Britain. "Fourth.
``To invigorate the struggle to halt the race in all types of weapons. We favour the convocation of a world conference to consider disarmament questions to their full extent. We stand for the
dismantling of foreign military bases. We stand for a reduction of armed forces and armaments in areas where the military confrontation is especially dangerous, above all in Central Europe.
``We consider it advisable to work out measures reducing the probability of accidental outbreak or deliberate fabrication of armed incidents and their development into international crises, into war.
``The Soviet Union is prepared to negotiate agreements on reducing military expenditure, above all by the major powers. "Fifth.
``The UN decisions on the abolition of the remaining colonial regimes must be fully carried out. Manifestations of racism and apartheid must be universally condemned and boycotted. "Sixth.
``The Soviet Union is prepared to expand relations of mutually advantageous cooperation in every sphere with states which for their part seek to do so. Our country is prepared to participate together with the other states concerned in settling problems like the conservation of the environment, development of power and other natural resources, development of transport and communications, prevention and eradication of the most dangerous and widespread diseases, and the exploration and development of outer space and the world ocean.
``Such are the main features of the programme for the struggle for peace and international cooperation, for the freedom and inde-
86 87pendence of nations, which our Party has put forward.''^^16^^
Such is the Peace Programme---clear, specific and feasible proposals. Their realisation by all nations and governments would greatly benefit everyone, for the Programme, a purposeful and humanitarian long-term plan, reflects mankind's age-old dream of a world without wars. The Programme points the way for this dream to come true.
The Peace Programme was, of course, unanimously approved by the Soviet people and welcomed in the socialist countries. It also greatly impressed world public opinion and all people of goodwill. Even the bourgeois press which usually ignored Soviet peace initiatives this time spoke of the Peace Programme with approval. The Russians' goal, as presented by Leonid Brezhnev, an American newspaper wrote, is total disarmament.
The Soviet Union embarked upon the practical realisation of the Peace Programme, opening a new stage in the drive for peace. Foreign policy issues were repeatedly discussed at bilateral and multilateral meetings of Party and state leaders from European socialist countries and at sessions of the Warsaw Treaty Political Consultative Committee. Soviet Communist Party and government leaders also met with Western statesmen in a series of intensive and useful summit conferences. Results were soon to follow.
USSR-USA: BEGINNING OF THE DIALOGUE
The first steps on the road to international detente were by no means easy. There were considerable difficulties in concerting the actions of states belonging to different social systems with their different views on war and peace. The weight of traditions and the momentum of the cold war were making themselves felt.
In many respects the success of the efforts to avert a world nuclear war depended on an improvement in the relations between the USSR and the USA, the world's biggest nuclear powers. It is important to note that US foreign policy at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s was complicated and contradictory.
Contradictory Trends
As could have been expected the strategy of "flexible response" endorsed by the US Congress proved its utter untenability within a decade (1961-1970).
As a result of the nuclear strategic arms race the US became oversaturated with nuclear weapons, but as before did not ensure its security. A retaliatory nuclear strike was still inevitable if the US initiated a world nuclear war. Neither did the Pentagon's hopes of successfully pursuing local war materialise, judging by the failure in Vietnam.
The US gained nothing in Vietnam and the war there showed that the attempts to break the
88 89socialist system link by link, which is what the concept of "limited wars" is all about, did not produce the results desired by the aggressors. Their political miscalculation was self-evident. Typically enough, when Richard Nixon was being sworn to presidency upon his re-election to the post he, in effect, acknowledged the futility of interfering in the affairs of other countries.
US intervention aroused the indignation of all honest people throughout the world. It accelerated the involvement of great masses in many countries into the anti-imperialist struggle and led to a considerable moral and political isolation of the United States.
The war in Vietnam evoked serious protest in the US itself. It was voiced by people belonging to different classes and social strata of American society. The movement against the war in Vietnam and for the peaceful solution of controversial issues assumed unprecedented dimensions in the US, and stimulated the growth of opposition towards the government in political parties and the Congress. After the expiry of his term as US President Lyndon Johnson admitted that the situation in the country was critical.
Neither did the US derive any economic benefits from the war in Vietnam. On the contrary, the unceasing arms race, the enormous military expenditures and the US aggressive policy in general created economic difficulties for it both at home and abroad. The militaryindustrial boom which set in only in 1965-1967 was followed by a decline in the volume of
industrial output. Taxes on the income of the population increased as did the deficit of the federal budget, the cost of living index rose and the gold reserves of the US treasury dwindled. US economic and foreign trade positions on the world capitalist market weakened.^^17^^
The crisis of the monetary system of the West precipitated by the decline in the real value of the dollar intensified the rivalry between the monopolies of the major capitalist powers.
During the war in Vietnam the US was surprised to discover that neither its wealth nor might were limitless. "It should be obvious, without argument," wrote the American military theoretician Hanson W. Baldwin, "that the demands on the US economy, the US taxpayer and the US patience in the decades ahead are too great to support a global policy of intervention... It is time for a change, time to tot up the balance sheet of commitments versus resources, time to redefine our vital interests, time to determine how we can protect those interests at... a cost acceptable to the United States! "^^18^^
Of course, US economic difficulties were rooted in its socio-economic system in the first place, but the overstrain on its resources was largely a result of excessive military expenditures, the arms race, foreign policy gambles and the syphoning of funds from the solution of crucial domestic problems. All this gave rise to the question of priorities. Doubts were expressed about the expediency of further channeling excessive investments into the arms race and foreign policy ventures to the detri-
90 91ment of outlays for the country's domestic needs.
Neither did the war in Indochina bring the US a military victory. The world's biggest industrialised capitalist country failed to break the will of the heroic Vietnamese people who fought for their freedom and independence during the long war. A small country stood firm in the face of attacks by a modern air force, a powerful fleet, land forces, marines and the Green Berets. Super-heavy bombers, equipped with everything that modern science and technology had to offer, levelled towns, factories and power stations with the ground. Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were burned with white jelly-like gasoline Napalm B, which burns at a temperature of 2,000°C, is thin enough to be sprayed over large areas and sticky enough to adhere to any object, including human skin. Vietnam's vegetation was destroyed by defoliants and herbicides.
In terms of its objectives, its scale and weapons the war in Vietnam was a limited non-nuclear war for the United States, one of the types of war envisaged in the strategy of "flexible response". The collapse of the Pentagon's plans evidenced the insolvency of the concept of "limited wars" and the strategy of "flexible response" in general.
When all these military and political miscalculations became apparent, serious doubt arose in the United States about the effectivity of the strategy of "flexible response", and attempts were made to think over the reasons for the defeat in Vietnam, crutch the rickety policy and
strategy with new military-strategic concepts and introduce certain changes into US foreign policy. It became clear that there were insurmountable contradictions between the aggressive schemes of US military-industrial circles, on the one hand, and the real possibilities for promoting them. The US had to modify its foreign policy course and enter into talks with the socialist countries. This was the demand of the forces of progress, of the majority of the American people, including certain financial and industrial circles which realised that America's hazardous course had no future, and moreover, was detrimental to their interests.
But while most of the American people showed an increasing desire for a realistic foreign policy which was dictated by the situation, the militaristic forces insisted that the country should pursue a more rigid foreign policy, use nuclear weapons in limited wars and continue the arms race. After the unsuccessful non-nuclear limited war in Vietnam, the Pentagon stubbornly insisted that nuclear weapons should be used in limited wars. For example, representative of the US Navy Commander Roy Beavers, in an article entitled "A Doctrine for Limited War" published in US Naval Institute Proceedings in October 1970 compared the position of a major power that failed to bargain with all of its options with that of a millionaire at a pennyante poker game. Beavers maintained that nuclear weapons should be used in limited wars so as to avoid the costly and lengthy involvement in such a war, as had happened to the US in Vietnam.
92 93But US militaristic circles placed special emphasis on continuing the strategic nuclear arms race, and replacing outdated weapons systems with technically more modern ones.
Thus, different forces in the USA proposed two incompatible courses in US foreign and military policy. Such was the complicated and contradictory situation in early 1969 in which the new, Nixon Administration, launched its activity after the exit of Lyndon Johnson.
From the outset it had to choose what path to follow. Capitalism's age-old traditions of resolving controversial inter-state issues by force, conservative thinking and cold war psychology caused the new Administration to think of reverting to the old policy from "positions of strength". On the other hand, the new political realities, the collapse of the policy of force, the obvious suicidal nature of nuclear strategy, and economic and financial troubles prescribed a modification of the country's foreign and military policy.
The US Administration began a reappraisal of American military-political strategy with due account for the above contradictory trends, and based the modernisation of the strategic line on such elements or factors as partnership, strength and negotiations. Partnership meant that the US intended more widely and actively to use its allies in military blocs; strength meant that the US planned to increase its military might; and the element of negotiations was designed to moderate its confrontation with its opponents.
Military strategy, too, was devised. Now it was no longer called strategy of "flexible re-
sponse", but a strategy of "realistic deterrence" and replenished with new military-strategic conceptions: "total forces", "one-and-a-half wars" and "strategic sufficiency''.
New ``Principles'' of Partnership
In June 1969 President Nixon told a press conference on Guam that the Saigon government should share with the United States the responsibility for the war in Vietnam. What he meant was that war against Asians should be waged by Asians themselves.
That was how Nixon's Guam Doctrine was born and the principle shifting the war burden onto the shoulders of the allies was eventually called the "Vietnamisation of war". In his foreign policy message to Congress in February 1970 Nixon said that all of America's allies in military blocs had to share its burden of " protecting peace and freedom". He used the words ``peace'' and ``freedom'' to hide America's intention of sharing the burden of aggression with its allies. After that his regional doctrine became global.
In keeping with his doctrine a very large portion of economic, political, moral and military outlays connected with preparation and conduct of wars would be borne by its allies while US leadership would remain undisputed. The main political purpose of the doctrine was to build up the forces of the capitalist world, to intensify the struggle against the world socialist system when the alignment of forces was unfavourable for imperialism by getting other
94 95capitalist countries to play a bigger and more active part in this struggle.
The means for doing this were expounded in the military-strategic concept of "total forces" whose essence was outlined by US Secretary of Defence Melvin Laird.
``Total forces" in Laird's understanding were the regular and reserve units of the US and its allies taken together. He declared that the US would assume the leadership of the "total forces" and plan their utilisation. The militarystrategic concept of "total forces" envisaged a new method of using US armed forces in limited non-nuclear wars in different theatres of operations. For instance, if the strategy of "flexible response" envisaged the conduct of such wars by US general purpose forces with allied support, the strategy of "realistic deterrence" envisaged their conduct by the land forces of the allies with US air and naval support.
Explaining the US stand on this question Laird declared that it was, above all, a question of manpower resources, and that the US was ready to help the allies with materiel, and air and naval support. It was all very simple. The war in Vietnam showed the United States that employment of land forces in limited wars led to heavy casualties in manpower which in turn resulted in serious political complications.
Hanson Baldwin formulated the new principles of US expansion which he tried to cover up with rhetoric about defence: "The first line of defence," he wrote in 1970, "is diplomatic and political...; the second is the dollar; the third, United States naval and air power; the fourth,
troops of our allies and indigenous; and the last, the United States soldier.''^^19^^
The same circumstances also accounted for the general growth of the trend of replacing people with equipment, which is typical of the strategy of "realistic deterrence". US strategymakers suggested that such replacement should take place as a result of a certain reduction of the land forces following their technical modernisation, more intensive equipment of general purpose units with tactical nuclear weapons and the strengthening of the navy.
The ideas of replacing man with equipment are by no means original. Their exponents were Fuller, Douhet, Guderian and other bourgeois military theoreticians. These theories appeared before the Second World War and were overturned in its course, but the US chose to pick them up again.
The appearance of the military-strategic concept of "one-and-a-half wars" was also connected with America shifting the burden of the war in South-east Asia on its allies. The fact of the matter was that initially the KennedyJohnson Administration stemmed from the possibility of the US simultaneously waging two limited wars (in Europe and in Asia) and one small local war in another part of the world, say, Africa or Latin America. And though the US did not wage "two-and-a-half wars" at one and the same time, while this Administration was in office it was nevertheless preparing for them. This was borne out by the formation of groups of US armed forces in overseas territories and the existence of mobile reserves of general
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97purpose forces at home.
The Nixon Administration reappraised US possibilities and replaced the concept of " twoand-a-half wars" with that of "one-and-a-half wars", calculating that it could wage one limited and one small (local) war at one and the same time. Taking public opinion into consideration the Nixon Administration portrayed this step as a voluntary wish to lower military activity, although in effect it was forced to make it. Simply, the unsuccessful war in Vietnam showed the United States that the strategy of "flexible response" ignored the principle of economising strength, and that the existence of two approximately equal groups of US troops in ' Europe and Asia merely fragmented its armed forces without any hope for success. But the general purpose of these innovations remained unchanged---that of rolling back communism.
Re-examining America's ability of waging limited wars, US military theoreticians concluded that it could not be equally strong in all parts of the world, and that when it formed military groups on foreign territories, set up military bases, and deployed its fleets it was necessary to take into consideration the economic, political and military-strategic importance of various region's for the United States.
Interesting in this respect is the following assessment of the degree of importance for the US of various parts of the world which was made by Hanson Baldwin, a military theoretician closely connected with the Pentagon: (1) region which can be classified as part of a ``categorical'' imperative---North America, in-
eluding the Caribbean; (2) region of vitally important interests---Western Europe; (3) region of vital interests---Japan, South Korea, the offshore islands and land masses fringing Asia, extending from the Aleutians to Australia and New Zealand; (4) region of high importance-the Middle East and South-east Asia; (5) region of lower order of priority than the other listed--- India and Pakistan; (6) region of fringe importance---the rest of the world, including most of Africa south of the Sahara.^^20^^
This regionalisation of the world envisaged the preservation of the global nature of US expansion and simultaneously a differentiated attitude to various parts of the world. In general, however, this showed that the Pentagon had not shelved its plans for waging limited wars in keeping with the strategy of "flexible response", but merely tried to shift their burden onto the shoulders of the US allies and more extensively employ the latest military equipment in such wars.
"Strategic Sufficiency"
Another important aspect of the modification of the military and political strategy was the course of continuing the buildup of strategic nuclear forces and reliance on strength.
The views of the Kennedy-Johnson Administration on a universal nuclear war which were reflected in the concept of ``counterforce'' rested on the need to have superior nuclear forces, and this found its practical embodiment in an unprecedented arms race. It was only
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