A constructed Peace The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963

This represented a certain movement away from a full-fledged MC 48-style rapid escalation strategy. Escalation there might well be, but it would take place in a more controlled manner. The West, worried about retaliation, was not going to rush headlong into a full-scale nuclear war. The Soviets would first be made to see how serious NATO was, how ready the West was to risk escalation: by putting a sizeable ground force into action, NATO could force the enemy to confront the specter of escalation and thus to reassess his position. Ground forces were thus an integral part of a deterrent strategy based on something more than simple apocalyptic threats. They were the chips one needed to play the poker game of controlled escalation.⁶⁴⁵

This was thus not a full-fledged limited war strategy, but it certainly was a step in that direction: Gruenther's 1956 concept explicitly accepted the possibility of a local military conflict in Europe that might be contained without a general war. Norstad took the idea a bit further with his notion of shield forces strong enough to enforce a "pause" before general war broke out, and thus able to provide an "essential alternative" to the strategic nuclear attack.⁶⁴⁶

NATO formally accepted this more flexible strategy in 1956 and 1957, with the adoption of a new NATO Political Directive, and a new fundamental strategy document, MC 14/2, based on it. It is often said that the adoption of MC 14/2 represented the alliance's acceptance of a "massive retaliation" strategy. But in reality MC 14/2 needs to be seen as a major move away from "massive retaliation"--in fact, as a kind of halfway house between MC 48 and the "flexible response" strategies of the 1960s and beyond.⁶⁴⁷ The Political Directive and MC 14/2 represented the climax of a process that had been set in motion, at least to a considerable extent, by British efforts to get the alliance to embrace a pure "massive retaliation" strategy, one which (unlike MC 48) did not recognize the need for substantial ground forces in Europe. But in the process that led to the Political Directive and MC 14/2, the official British view was defeated. It was the American concept, the idea that substantial ground forces were necessary, that prevailed.⁶⁴⁸

The NATO Council adopted the Political Directive on December 13, 1956. The key passage called for forces able "to deal with incidents such as infiltrations, incursions or hostile local actions"; it declared that these forces should "have the capability to deal with" such situations "without necessarily having recourse to nuclear weapons." MC 14/2, adopted in April 1957, echoed this language at a number of points, and included also a "Statement on Limited War" which defined basic NATO thinking on this question in some detail:

The Soviets might therefore conclude that the only way in which they could profitably further their aim would be to initiate operations with limited objectives, such as infiltration, incursions or hostile local actions in the NATO area, covertly or overtly supported by themselves, trusting that the Allies in their collective desire to prevent a general conflict would either limit their reactions accordingly or not react at all. Under these circumstances NATO must be prepared to deal immediately with such situations without necessarily having recourse to nuclear weapons. NATO must also be prepared to respond quickly with nuclear weapons should the situation require it. In this latter respect, the Military Committee considers that, if the Soviets were involved in a local hostile action and sought to broaden the scope of such an incident or to prolong it, the situation would call for the utilization of all weapons and forces at NATO's disposal, since in no case is there a NATO concept of limited war with the Soviets.⁶⁴⁹

Eisenhower's personal views were of course very much at variance with this general approach, and the fact that such statements were nonetheless presented as official American policy shows how strong the "flexible response" philosophy now was within the Eisenhower administration. Its strength rested not just on the military case for a degree of flexibility. Political arguments also played a major role. Indeed, people like Dulles were for obvious reasons reluctant to challenge Eisenhower's military judgments directly. But they were on much firmer ground in emphasizing the political effect of continuing to place such heavy reliance on nuclear weapons. A European war, Dulles and his followers freely admitted, might well run its course as Eisenhower said it would. There might be little chance of keeping such a conflict under control. But long before such a war broke out, a strategy of placing such heavy emphasis on strategic nuclear forces would have very serious political consequences. The Europeans would turn away from an American policy that might well lead directly to their destruction. The NATO alliance might well fall apart. Even in 1953, Dulles was concerned about the NATO concept "losing its grip" in Europe, about American military bases there coming to be seen more as "lightning rods" than as "umbrellas."⁶⁵² Too great a reliance on nuclear forces, and especially on strategic nuclear forces, would lead the Europeans to separate themselves from the United States. It would, he said, "strain the will to fight and spur neutralism."⁶⁵³

The Europeans, Dulles argued in 1954, therefore had to be given "some sense of choice as to the actual character of warfare." In 1958, he made the point even more bluntly. The NATO allies, he said, "must at least have the illusion that they have some kind of defensive capability against the Soviets other than the United States using a pushbutton to start a global nuclear war." If they did not get that capability, they would "disassociate" themselves from America--that is, from an alliance that might well lead directly to their nuclear destruction.⁶⁵⁴

Dulles was thus firmly against the idea of America putting "all of our eggs in the general nuclear-war basket."⁶⁵⁵ NATO needed to develop a strong area defense, and in the mid-1950s he thought that a defense of Europe based on low-yield, low-fallout tactical nuclear weapons might well soon be feasible. The strategy of massive retaliation would sooner or later drive the Europeans away from the United States, but a new strategic concept based on "the tactical defensive capabilities inherent in small 'clean' nuclear weapons" might enable America to save the alliance.⁶⁵⁶

But Dulles was just about the only major figure in the administration who thought that this was the way to go. A defense strategy based on tactical nuclear weapons might have made sense if the West was the only side to possess weapons of this sort. The problem, as a top Pentagon official pointed out to him, was that "the enemy can use the same kind of weapons against us."⁶⁵⁷ NATO might have had its "constraints policy" limiting the yield of nuclear weapons that could be used in the east European satellites and especially in East Germany, but there was no guarantee the USSR would observe similar restraints.⁶⁵⁸ And in any event the sheer number of weapons that would be used, not their average size, might well be the controlling factor. Responsible military officers were at this time talking about fantastic numbers of such weapons. General Gavin, for example, referred to an Army requirement for 151,000 weapons, 106,000 of which were for tactical battlefield use and 20,000 for "support of our allies."⁶⁵⁹ A war fought mainly with tactical nuclear weapons might well destroy all of Europe, while Russia and America were left intact. And such a shift in strategy was meant to save the alliance?

The basic problem, in fact, with any strategy that emphasized area defense, even one that relied essentially on conventional forces, was that the NATO side could exert only limited control over the nature of the war. The NATO powers might themselves not want to use nuclear forces, but the USSR might still be tempted to use nuclear weapons against European targets, calculating that the United States would be reluctant to escalate the war and risk the destruction of American cities. So no matter how strong the shield forces were, western Europe still needed something in the way of nuclear deterrence. A degree of flexibility was certainly a good idea, but NATO Europe needed something more.

How then could the Soviet nuclear threat to Europe be countered? One basic approach was to tie the American nuclear deterrent closely to Europe--to try to make sure that if Soviet nuclear weapons were used against Europe, the Americans would retaliate with a nuclear attack on the USSR. The idea, that is, was to guarantee that nuclear retaliation would be as automatic as possible. The United States should thus continue to maintain a large military force in Europe; the larger the force, the more inescapable the commitment, and the greater the likelihood of nuclear escalation in the event of a European war; and this meant that the Soviets would probably be deterred from starting a serious conflict, and especially a nuclear conflict, in the first place.

And a strong U.S. presence meant that SACEUR, with his control over nuclear forces, would continue to be an American. This was another major source of reassurance for the Europeans. It was like the old theory from the American colonial period of "virtual representation": European interests in the event of a crisis would be championed within the American government by a general whose whole way of looking at things had been shaped over the years by his fundamental responsibility, the defense of western Europe. Norstad, in fact, did come to play this kind of role. "The NATO nations," as one official noted in 1961, "have grown to trust Norstad because they feel he is one of them, not an advocate of some American policy."⁶⁶⁰ But whatever confidence the Europeans might have in the NATO commander as an individual, the feeling was that SACEUR could play this role only if explicit arrangements defining his war-making authority were worked out with the allies: during the predelegation discussions in 1957, Dulles argued that it "would be more assuring to our allies" to give SACEUR in his capacity as the U.S. commander in Europe formal authority to use nuclear weapons in the NATO area.⁶⁶¹

But even this approach might not solve the problem completely. No matter what was said and what sort of assurances were given, the fundamental questions would remain. SACEUR might in theory have broad war-making powers, but in the final analysis he remained an American general, and would any American president (except perhaps for Eisenhower himself) ever really be willing to surrender effective control over American forces? And if the ultimate decision was in the president's hands, what guarantee was there--no matter what was happening to the American army in Europe--that he would order a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union if such an attack would inevitably lead directly to the destruction of American society? Would the Europeans necessarily even want him to do so, if the attack would inescapably lead to their own destruction? Wouldn't the Europeans want to have some control over what was done, so that they might have some real influence on the decisions that would have to be made in the light of circumstances at the time? Indeed, how could the Europeans accept a situation where their fate rested, in the final analysis, so completely in American hands?

The fundamental issue, then, was the question of control--and of responsibility. From Dulles's and Eisenhower's point of view, a situation where America had all the power, and therefore all the responsibility, was unhealthy, and indeed lay at the root of a "certain malaise" in the alliance.⁶⁶² In the current situation, the Europeans could behave irresponsibly. The United States could be criticized from both sides. The charge could be made--and in fact increasingly was being made--that America would not launch a full-scale nuclear attack in defense of Europe once America's own cities were at risk. At the same time, the Europeans could complain that America would indeed go to general war rather than suffer a major defeat, and that Europe would be destroyed in the process. The fact that the criticism came from both ends shows that it was not American policy as such that was the root of the problem.⁶⁶³ The difficulty was built into the situation, or at least into the situation that would exist in a few years when general war would mean virtually total devastation. The Europeans had to be made to face up to the real problem, and that meant that they had to be given some real control over what would happen in a crisis.

It was not that European doubts about American resolve were fundamentally baseless. The timing was perhaps be a bit off. Many Europeans thought in the 1950s that the world of nuclear parity, of mutual deterrence and "strategic stalemate," had already arrived. Some European leaders questioned the resolve of even Eisenhower, a president who believed in the soldierly ethic of death before dishonor, and who, even more than Dulles, felt that the United States would have to follow through and launch a full-scale nuclear attack if she were pushed far enough, almost regardless of consequence. But would any other American president be willing to take the plunge? Dulles, for one, did not think so, and was therefore convinced that the "European doubt" was basically "rational."⁶⁶⁴

The problem was fundamental and inescapable. And as top officials in the late 1950s thought through the problem, one basic conclusion began to emerge. Solutions based on strengthening the NATO shield, on making NATO strategy more flexible, on keeping a sizeable American army in Europe, or on giving SACEUR greater formal authority, might all be useful, but they would not solve the problem. Over the long run, there was perhaps only one really viable solution, and that was for the Europeans to get a nuclear deterrent of their own.

Around 1956 and 1957, the various elements in the nuclear sharing equation were falling into place. The Europeans, who only a few years earlier had "recoiled in horror" at the thought of using nuclear weapons, were now, as Eisenhower put it, "clamoring" for the United States to share these weapons with them.⁶⁶⁵ And indeed official European attitudes had undergone an amazing transformation. In late 1953, Eisenhower and Dulles had been complaining to each other about how the NATO allies were refusing to accept the realities of the atomic age. The Europeans, the President thought, were "lagging far behind us and think of themselves only as the defenseless targets of atomic warfare." Dulles agreed: "while we regarded atomic weapons as one of the great new sources of defensive strength, many of our allies regarded the atomic capability as the gateway to annihilation."⁶⁶⁶ But by 1956 the Europeans were if anything too "pro-nuclear" for Dulles's taste. At the December 1956 NATO Council meeting he had to resist strong allied pressure for what he viewed as an excessively heavy emphasis on nuclear forces and a consequent slighting of conventional capabilities.⁶⁶⁷

As for the Americans, the top officials in the Eisenhower administration were willing by this point to go a long way toward meeting European concerns by providing them with the weapons they needed. The basic thrust of American policy at this time was to set up a system which would indeed give the European allies confidence that the weapons would be available to them in the event of an emergency. The NATO nuclear stockpile plan, formally proposed at the NATO Heads of Government meeting in December 1957--perhaps the most important policy initiative ever undertaken by the Eisenhower administration--was framed with this objective in mind. This plan was based on the idea that "a naked promise of nuclear protection" by America was "no longer a sound basis for any major country's security." NATO Europe needed a system that would assure the availability of American nuclear weapons in an emergency, and the "best assurance" that nuclear power would "in fact be available lies in our allies actually having a share in this power close at hand and a capability to employ it effectively." America had been "moving in this direction" for some time, but now the process had to be accelerated. Under the stockpile plan--which, incidentally, had originally been proposed by the French government--the allies could be reasonably certain that the warheads would, when the time came, "be available to the appropriate NATO commanders for allied purposes."⁶⁶⁸ The Europeans could in this way be confident that nuclear forces would be used "automatically in response to nuclear attack" and "if necessary to meet other than nuclear attack."⁶⁶⁹

This plan did not call for a formal surrender of ultimate American authority, but U.S. officials at the time thought that an "extremely important" policy decision had been made.⁶⁷⁰ The assumption was that the United States was taking a major step in the direction of full nuclear sharing--that is, of putting the weapons under effective European control. The Americans were already arming the NATO allies with nuclear-capable weapons (with nuclear components released to them in the event of a defense emergency). If the stockpile plan was considered "extremely important," this could only be because it meant that the U.S. government had decided to go well beyond the existing policy and give the Europeans a good deal more.

And indeed over the next few years the NATO allies were given effective control over American nuclear weapons. By the end of the Eisenhower period, about 500 American nuclear weapons were deployed to non-US NATO forces in Europe, and the basic picture regarding control of these weapons has been clear for many years.⁶⁷¹ What was done was quite extraordinary. By 1960, allied fighter-bombers on quick reaction alert were sitting on runways, armed with American nuclear weapons, ready to take off on a moment's notice. American control over these weapons was weak and ineffectual. The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy conducted an important investigation of these matters in late 1960; it concluded that the arrangements that had taken shape were a travesty of the very idea of American "custody." A lone American sentry standing on the tarmac, armed only with a rifle, not even knowing what to aim at if the pilot tried to take off without authorization--often a mere 18-year old "required to stand long watches in the open for periods extending as long as eight hours at a time"--this was what American custody of those weapons had come to mean.⁶⁷²

And it was not just a question of effective control over nuclear-armed aircraft. People were also concerned with the problem of the control of the strategic missiles that NATO had decided to deploy in the late 1950s, the Thors based in Britain and the Jupiters eventually based in Italy and Turkey. These intermediate-range ballistic missiles were theoretically under joint control. There was a "dual key" system designed to make sure that armed missiles could be launched only if officers from both America and the host country used their keys. In reality, however, it was by no means clear that the American government had the physical ability to prevent the use of those weapons. A Congressman visiting a Thor base in England in 1959, for example, was amazed to find a British officer in possession of both keys; no warheads were on the base, but when they were deployed there, the possession of both keys (or duplicates, which it was presumed the British would have made) would give British authorities effective control of an armed IRBM. In any event, the U.S. officer might be overpowered by the host country forces in a crisis and his key taken away.⁶⁷³

From the JCAE's point of view, the overall picture was disturbing. American control was essential "fictional"; the arrangements that had taken shape were "of dubious legality"; the old norms of U.S. custody and control were "being stretched beyond recognition."⁶⁷⁴ How then did this system come into being? Was it basically a question of the military working out these arrangements on its own, of a "gradual, step-by-step surrender to the pressure of our strong and entrenched military bloc," of Eisenhower losing his grip on policy, too tired, too soft, to assert himself and do what was obviously necessary?⁶⁷⁵

This sort of interpretation is simply incorrect. Eisenhower, in fact, was the driving force behind the nuclear sharing arrangements. The president pressed consistently for a very liberal policy in this area, indeed at a time when the military was still dragging its feet.⁶⁷⁶ The transfer of physical control over American nuclear weapons to the NATO allies has to be seen as an act of high policy. It was not just something that was allowed to happen because of laxness at the top, but was rather the result of a fundamental policy decision taken at the very highest level of the government.

Eisenhower and other high American officials in the 1950s strongly supported the basic idea of nuclear sharing. With increasing fervor, the president argued unambiguously for the sharing policy. The allies, he said in this context in 1955, could not be treated as "stepchildren," but rather had to be treated generously.⁶⁷⁷ He disliked the "attitude that we will call the tune, and that they," the Europeans, had "inferior status in the alliance."⁶⁷⁸ The mere idea that the U.S. government should try to keep those weapons away from its allies was in his view almost insane. It was as though "we had been fighting wars with bows and arrows and then acquired pistols. Then we refused to give pistols to the people who were our allies even though the common enemy already had them."⁶⁷⁹

He personally, as he said in February 1960, had therefore "always strongly favored the sharing of our weapons."⁶⁸⁰ But under the law, the weapons had to remain in American custody. The real problem, in his eyes, was the attitude of the American Congress, which seemed "to think that our situation was the same as in 1947 when we had a monopoly of the nuclear secret."⁶⁸¹ It refused to get rid of the Atomic Energy Act, a "terrible" piece of legislation which had done "great harm" to American relations with the NATO allies.⁶⁸² "The stupidity of Congress in this regard never ceased to amaze him."⁶⁸³ Over and over again, he made the same point. The Atomic Energy Act, he said in October 1957, had been "a great mistake." The policy it mandated "seemed to run counter to common sense," he told de Gaulle in September 1959. The law, he told the French leader a few months later, was "somewhat absurd," but de Gaulle had to understand that "there was as much nationalism in the United States as elsewhere." And he took exactly the same line in meetings with U.S. officials. In May 1959, for example, he complained about being "handcuffed" by the "senseless limitations" Congress had placed on the administration.⁶⁸⁴