The foreign and defense policies of the United States seem to have reached another parting of the ways. While Secretary Dulles expounds the possibilities of limiting future wars through the use of tactical nuclear weapons, retiring Defense Secretary Wilson shows no inclination to think in terms other than massive retaliation.
Fortunately, Wilson is retiring. Also, he is apparently out of step on this issue with his subordinates, including Admiral Arleigh Burke and General Maxwell Taylor, both of whom feel that brushfire conflicts, if crushed rapidly, can be contained.
Unfortunately, our defense set-up, as conceived in past Congressional economy cuts, cannot deal rapidly with small wars of the Korea type. It can deal with them, but not with sufficient speed. Unless fighting breaks out on the doorstep of one of our overseas bases, locales where the Russians are scarcely liable to start anything, we are only prepared to move in one division with any alacrity.
Such a force will probably be insufficient to cope with anything on even a medium scale, and there is no reason to expect our allies to be able to back us up immediately. Even if we had a sufficient number of men ready to move, we would not have and have not for years had adequate transportation facilities.
Yet Dulles talks almost blithely of using tactical nuclear weapons both as a deterrent to aggression and a force to meet it. The only way to employ such weapons would be to have them already on the scene--a feat which would take a prophet to arrange--or to transport them there. The latter is made more difficult by the fact that transportation facilities have continually been cut in order to keep bomber and missile programs untouched. The former would require not only a sixth sense and an unparalleled intelligence agency, but also the manpower to maintain whatever weapons are to be kept on hand in potential trouble areas.
It seems apparent, therefore, that if Secretary Dulles is to abandon his massive retaliation bluff in favor of a policy of tactical nuclear weapons for smaller wars, he must arrange with the Defense Department for the improvement of transportation facilities. While this might entail curtailment of Wilson's precious missile and bomber programs, it seems the only realistic step to take.
It is high time that the government made its abandonment of the massive retaliation concept official, and there could be no better way to do so than by presenting a completely revised program of defense expenditure geared more to the brushfire war possibility than to the total war theory.
The consequent reapportionment of defense appropriations would involve greater attention to rapid mobilization and transportation facilities and less stress on provisions for all-out nuclear holocausts. While not leaving us powerless against nuclear attack, such a policy, would allow us greater flexibility in meeting aggression.
It would be too much to expect an economy-oriented Congress to provide at the same time for the possibility of American aid being asked in internal conflicts within countries with which we are allied. To give aid in cases where Communist troops threaten to overthrow friendly governments, such as Iraq, America would have to be able to get small units to the trouble areas in a flash. Such readiness would be too expensive to provide at the moment, and our best hope is that provisions for wars of small dimensions can be made now. We cannot allow such a palpable bluff as massive retaliation to stand in the way of realistic defense policies.
