Document created: 19 September 03
Air University Review, January-February
1974
One of the few unequivocally sound lessons of history is that
the lessons we should learn are usually learned imperfectly if at all.
—Bernard Brodie, War and Politics
It has been said that, despite the absence of a world war, the decade of the sixties was in some respects the worst decade experienced by the United States in this century. A case can be made for this assertion. America experienced a series of traumas, including war, assassination, and severe social and cultural stresses. All these shocks fed on one another. None was more poisonous than the Vietnam war. Its effects buffeted every segment of our society, so pervasive was its character.
It was the longest of American wars; and though at this writing American involvement in Indochina seems almost to be over, it will doubtless be some time before the severe effects lessen. This war forced fundamental thinking, none more important than the relationship between the purpose and means of war.
This century has been called the century of violence. It is unique in history because revolutionary technological developments provided man with unprecedentedly destructive weapons for waging conflict. Consequently, our age has been marked by an urgent attempt to reconcile old habits with new means. Development of atomic weapons and their use at the end of World War II ushered in the nuclear age. Statesmen recognized that survival now demanded restraint and perhaps ultimately weapons limitations, if not disarmament.
The singular value of Bernard Brodie’s War and Politics* is that it is the work of one who has reflected long and deeply on the interaction of military power and statecraft and who was in the vanguard of those who, after the Second World War, attempted to understand and communicate the meaning of the existence of the atomic bomb. Among scholar-strategists, he pointed the way. The destructive power of the atom was so great that now its only conceivable role would be to prevent nuclear war. The fact that such a war has not occurred is tribute to the bomb’s awesome power and to the healthy fear it engendered in the minds of the world’s people and their leaders.
*Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1973, $8.95), 514 pages.
Brodie was perhaps the first American scholar-strategist comprehensively to relate the traditional role of arms to the nuclear age. In The Absolute Weapon (1946), which he both edited and contributed to, he emphasized that the atomic revolution had shattered the traditional uses of military power:
The atomic bomb erases the
traditional pattern because its enormous destructive potency is bound vastly to
reduce the time necessary to achieve those results which presumably accrue from
strategic bombing. . . . A world accustomed to thinking it horrible that wars
should last four or five years is now appalled at the prospect that future wars
may last only a few days.1
In Strategy in the Missile Age (1959), Brodie wrote that the only use for these incredibly destructive weapons was to prevent war.
This meant pursuit of a strategy of nuclear deterrence. The instrument of deterrence would have to be maintained “at a high pitch of efficiency” always. “It is now up to us,” he stressed, “to pay the price to make it work.” This book remains the best treatise on the origins of air strategy and the policy of nuclear deterrence.
Brodie has always been a scholar-strategist with a difference, his thought firmly rooted in realpolitik. In War and Politics, his driving concern, from Clause-witz, is the question of matching military means with political purpose. In this regard, the First World War was a disaster—a grinding war of attrition pursued, as Brodie observes, for “victory for its own sake.” This conflict, fought from trenches, took on a power all its own.
As Brodie writes, Brigadier General Giulio Douhet, the Italian air
theoretician, had been appalled (like Winston Churchill, among others) at the
carnage of World War I, attended by no clearly articulated political objectives
save to press on to victory. Aircraft held promise as offensive machines. No
effective defense against them existed. Effective military action would depend
on mastery of the air, and the major objectives should be population and industry.
To Douhet, the airplane was unique. It could reach the enemy’s vitals without
being stopped.2
Though Douhet had misjudged the effectiveness of air defense and the ability of civilians to withstand bombing attacks, his conception of air warfare and organization of air forces provided a model onto which subsequent ideas could be grafted. Though passage of time ultimately bared his misjudgments, his framework remains relevant, his basic idea having been resuscitated by the development of nuclear weapons.
With the end of World War I, statesmen groped for a way around grueling wars of attrition. The years between the wars produced, if nothing else, a jump in the magnitude of destructiveness with development of the bombing plane, which had shown promise as a military weapon prior to the end of World War I.
The bomber played a significant role in World War II. Though critics have charged that strategic bombing failed to achieve its objectives3 and that it proved too costly, Brodie notes that the European bombing offensive achieved its goal, though tardily. In the Pacific, the American bombing offensive with B-29s—after naval and ground forces had put them within reach of Japan’s home islands—had brought Japan to a state of collapse prior to the dropping of two atomic bombs.
Moreover, the historical record showed that by June 1945 General Henry Harley (“Hap”) Arnold, AAF Commander, was convinced that the conventional bombing offensive would force Japan to surrender within a few months without having to drop the atomic bomb. This was communicated to President Truman on 18 June 1945 by Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker (Arnold was in Okinawa).4 Arnold directed Major General Curtis E. LeMay XXI Bomber Command, to inform the Joint Chiefs that there was every indication that conventional strategic could bring Japan down. On 19 June LeMay briefed the Chiefs. General Arnold’s view, was based not only on the success of the B-29 campaign since March 1945 but also on the fact that—unlike Europe—the Pacific bombing offensive was under direct control of the Army Air Forces.5 Arnold was determined to show that a nation could be defeated without being invaded.
After the war, in November 1945, in his Third Report to the Secretary of
War, General Arnold wrote that “the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did
not cause the defeat of Japan, however large a part they may have played in
assisting the Japanese decision to surrender. Japan was defeated already by the
cumulative destruction of her capacity to make war.”6 This judgment
was subsequently confirmed by United States Strategic Bombing Survey. In
sum, Japan’s defeat without invasion was, as Kent Roberts Greenfield wrote, “an
achievement unprecedented in history of war.”7
As for dropping the two atomic bombs, Brodie in retrospect approves of President Truman’s decision: “A demonstration over a deserted island would have been anything but impressive, and there were too few bombs in hand to use one in that manner.” (p. 53) Also, Brodie correctly emphasizes that LeMay’s incendiary campaign—urged by Arnold in February and March—was well along in the process of turning Japan’s major industrial and population centers into ruins. Brodie gets confused here, however, and writes that the most destructive attack of this war (including the atomic attacks) occurred on 23 May 1945 on Tokyo. This is incorrect, the great fire storm raid taking place the night of 9-10 March 1945, killing 72,489 people and injuring over 40,000, according to the official record of the Japanese War History Office.
With hindsight, the historian’s potent weapon, he notes that after more than a quarter century the use of atomic bombs on Japan “has not made one iota more likely any future use. One would suspect that quite the contrary is the case.” (p. 56) The nuclear balance has been exceedingly stable, so far vindicating Winston Churchill’s prophecy that mankind could look forward to the nuclear age with confidence that a nuclear war would not occur.
Korea, Brodie observes, was the first American war fought without Congressional approval and “would have been inconceivable before the changes wrought by World War II in the American people’s conception of their nation’s world role.” (p. 58) In a democracy, public support for war is crucial, a point that Brodie constantly emphasizes. When a President confronts a decision for war,
. . . it is hard to see the slightest justification for the President’s unwillingness to share his responsibility as well as his authority with Congress. True, too small a majority even in a favorable vote may be an embarrassment, but if the President has no more support than that, it is better he not be at war. There is also the danger, certainly realized later in the case of Vietnam, that the President will begin to identify his own personal prestige with that of the United States. (pp. 111-12)
Nonetheless, President Truman committed American forces in Korea. When this conflict locked into stalemate, it became an issue in the 1952 campaign. Eisenhower, after being elected, went to Korea and then determined to end the war. In May 1953, after Secretary of State John Foster Dulles informed the Communist Chinese, through New Delhi, that if the war was not ended the United States would carry the attack (including A-bombs) to China, a truce was signed in July 1953. This threatened use of nuclear weapons has since been called the classic triumph of the “massive retaliation” policy of the Eisenhower administration.
Brodie devotes considerable space to Vietnam, a disaster he says that we inflicted on ourselves, largely resulting from decisions made by President Lyndon B. Johnson. But what about earlier decisions made by President John F. Kennedy? Kennedy, Brodie correctly notes, was much concerned about Indochina. He increased American “military advisers” in Vietnam from about 600 to almost 17,000. Kennedy must also bear responsibility “for appointing those officials who were to guide his successor down the path of major military intervention in Vietnam.” Brodie nevertheless believes that President Kennedy would not have escalated in the fashion of President Johnson. Kennedy “was free of the personal pigheadedness and truculence that Johnson so markedly betrayed. There can thus be little doubt that his conduct concerning Vietnam would have been critically and basically different.” (p. 143)
On nuclear weapons, unlike several recent commentaries that suggest the nuclear balance remains unstable, even precarious8 Brodie bears down hard on the idea that this balance is “decidedly not delicate.” Nuclear weapons have not been used since World War II, and scientist-novelist C. P. Snow’s prediction in 1960 that they would be used before the decade had ended has fortunately proved to be wrong. There are, of course, no panaceas. But, as Brodie points out, “we have ample reason to feel now that nuclear weapons do act critically to deter wars between the major powers, and not nuclear wars alone but any wars. That is really a very great gain.” (p. 430)
In War and Politics, Brodie returns to points previously discussed in articles and books, among them the contention that Albert Wohlstetter’s January 1959 article, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” published in Foreign Affairs, shook up the Strategic Air Command, “which had consistently refused to recognize that it had a serious vulnerability problem.” (p. 380) This allegation is false. The fact is that, from the day he took command of SAC in October 1948, General LeMay was acutely aware that his forces were vulnerable and also that his crews were not adequately trained.
Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington and Chief of Staff General Hoyt S Vandenberg had discussed SAC’s weaknesses with LeMay prior to his leaving for Omaha, and LeMay’s orders were to upgrade the command as quickly as possible. With the Berlin blockade having begun in June 1948, the Truman administration wished to improve the nation’s strategic atomic capability.
Consequently, LeMay moved swiftly to improve training (instituting much more realistic bombing practice and his “lead crew” concept) and push for the B-36, an “intercontinental” bomber. He also ordered a disciplined program to perfect refueling techniques. Specifically on the matter of vulnerability, he was in fact much concerned. He thought that bases in the United Kingdom might be “lost” with the outbreak of war, hence the United States could not afford to depend on them for launching a strategic counteroffensive. For this reason, among others, LeMay had advocated development of the B-36 and SAC’s refueling techniques. He emphasized these critical points at a conference of Air Force commanders convened by Vandenberg at Maxwell Field in December 1948. They were considered by the Air Force Board of officers in early 1949, this group deciding to increase B-36 production.
In short, from the start LeMay recognized the problem. In his presentation to a Worldwide Commanders’ Conference in April 1950 he stated that SAC in the near future would be exceedingly vulnerable to a first strike. He told top Air Force leaders that “we could lose the whole striking force before it can deliver a blow.” The Truman administration and the Air Staff shared LeMay’s concern, and in the early 1950s Vandenberg and Secretary of the Air Force Thomas K. Finletter agreed that protecting SAC was top priority—a major national issue on which the country’s foreign policy, would depend.9
In the 1950s, then, SAC developed a substantial air refueling capacity and in 1956 and 1957 conducted ground alert tests, leading to the command’s ground alert program that began in October 1957. Also, dispersal started in 1958, and B-52 airborne alert tests began in September 1958. Thus, though it may be argued that to some degree the Air Force acted tardily, it is wrong to say that the Air Force by 1959 “refused to recognize” the vulnerability problem.
Another long-standing concern of Brodie’s is military influence on national policy. When military advice has been bad, Brodie says it should not have been followed. He does, of course, recognize the President’s final responsibility, and he does not hesitate to say when he thinks a President (e.g., Lyndon Johnson) has used bad judgment. He accuses the military generally and high Air Force officers specifically (Generals LeMay, Thomas S. Power, and Nathan F. Twining) of holding parochial views, based primarily on weapons capability rather than on broad international political analysis, and of being “hard-liners.” (Chap. X)
“It is perhaps too bad we cannot give all our top generals and admirals the useful training of being a President for eight years,” Brodie writes, “but considering the deep convictions of some of them, it would be hazardous to try.” (p. 494) This point, of course, is really irrelevant; just as irrelevant as the idea that Presidents ought to take a turn at becoming generals for a while, though heaven knows they might find this experience useful. I understand Brodie’s concern, but it must also be said that these officers did keep their views under control while on active duty. That is the important point. I would not fear to give them Brodie’s prescribed training. I have no doubt that our generals and admirals would come to appreciate—very swiftly if they hadn’t already—the complexity of the nation’s problems. They were, after all, specialists of a rare order. Many of them undoubtedly held views which Brodie would label narrow, for most dealt daily throughout their professional lives with the problems of military hardware.
In citing former Air Force Chief of Staff General Thomas D. White, Brodie makes the mistake of zeroing in on something General White wrote in 1963 (after he retired), to show the hard-line military view. (p. 466) Paradoxically, in selecting White, he has singled out an Air Force Chief of Staff with a deserved reputation for reflection and analysis distinguished by broad perspective. To be fair, Brodie writes that General White was “far from being the kind of notorious hard-liner” that LeMay was! Brodie’s comment reminded me of a speech General White gave in 1957 to Air Force members of the National War College and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces: disdain parochial views, he admonished these officers. . . . Too much time and effort, he said, have been spent on interservice squabbling. . . . Creative thinking is required. . . . Do not be afraid of new ideas. . . . Above everything, always keep in mind what is good for this country. In my judgment, this speech more accurately reflects General White’s career and the cast of his mind than the statement Brodie quoted.
I am also reminded of General Power. When CINCSAC, he could often be somewhat caustic and even truculent when meeting the press. But the important point was that when conferring on substantive matters with Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, he was unfailingly a man of vision and restraint.
But despite Brodie’s somewhat surprising vehemence, he does understand the origins and reasons for the military perception. And I am confident he would be among the first to recognize that throughout its history the United States has been—with few exceptions—fortunate in the caliber of its professional military.
The Second World War comes to mind. General Arnold and his predecessors had nourished the Army Air Corps through lean, unfulfilled years. When the United States entered World War II, Arnold was ready. On orders from President Franklin Roosevelt (who had previously excluded him from high councils), Arnold quickly built up the Army Air Forces, placed men he knew to be competent in positions of leadership, and then organized and directed the AAF’s global campaigns. Despite precarious health (he had several heart attacks during the war), General Arnold, with superior administrative skill and dedication to the task, displayed what Americans have always admired in their military men: loyalty, competence, integrity. These traits have never been in short supply among the American military.
I think War and Politics a timely book. Brodie’s thinking is especially welcome at this time when citizens must think about our country’s vital interests. To do so inevitably leads one to the Constitution and the ideas of the Founding Fathers who framed this remarkable document.
The decision to make war, as Brodie says, is not to be taken lightly. In a democratic republic like the United States, it is much more than simply a matter of strategy, tactics, and hardware. Democracies do not wage sustained war successfully—ever—without overwhelming support of the citizenry. And when the nation does go to war, it is essential to remember that “restraint in the application of force—in order to keep that application compatible with its purpose—may make the force applied ineffective for its purpose.” (p. 358)
Strategy, of course, is directly related to the objectives of military efforts. Always the purpose. Are the means and cost compatible with the national objective? Ours is a nation more known for technologists than strategists or philosophers. Yet, we lose sight of purpose only at our grave peril. Technological skill is important. But it cannot solve all problems, nor can it substitute for logic or judgment.
National purpose, at any time, is derived from our traditions and values. Should politicians ever be in doubt about them they need only consult the repository: the people of the United States.
Silver Spring, Maryland
Notes
1. Bernard Brodie, “The Atomic Bomb and American Security,” Memorandum # 18, November 1, 1945, Yale Institute of International Studies. This study was expanded and included in Bernard Brodie, ed., The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946).
2. A new edition of Giulio Douhet’s major work, first published in 1921, The Command of the Air, trans. Dino Ferrari (New York: Coward-McCann, 1942) has been published by Arno Press, New York, 1972, as a volume in its “World Affairs” series.
3. For example, according to Nordal Akerman, the importance of strategic bombing was subsequently “denied, now that it has become clear that the German industrial and military potential continued to grow in spite of ever more intense bombing.” Nordal Akerman, On the Doctrine of Limited War trans. Keith Bradfield (Lund, Sweden: Berlingska Boktryckeriet, 1972), p. 56.
4. Interview, Thomas A. Sturm and Herman S. Wolk with Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker, 27 November 1972.
5. Arnold, Global Mission, pp. 566-67. For emphasizing the importance of this point I am indebted to Thomas A. Sturm, my colleague.
6. Third Report of the Commanding General of the Army Air Forces the Secretary of War, 12 November 1945, p. 53.
7. Kent Roberts Greenfield, American Strategy in World War II: Reconsideration (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1963), p. 121.
8. See, for example, Fred Charles Ikle. “Can Nuclear Deterrence Out the Century?” Foreign Affairs, January 1973.
9. “Concept of Long Range Bombardment Operations,” paper presented to Aircraft and Weapons Board by War Plans Division, January 1953.
Herman S. Wolk (M.A., American International College) has been with the Office of Air Force History since 1966. For seven years he was a historian for Hq Strategic Air Command. During the Korean War he served in the U.S. Army information and education program. Mr. Wolk has taught history and lectured on strategic nuclear deterrence and matters related to the cold war. His articles have appeared in Air Force and Space Digest, Military Review, and Air University Review, among others.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air
Force or the Air University.
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