Reflections on Cold Wars: the 1983 Oslo Atlantic Defense Symposium

REFLECTIONS ON COLD WARS: THE 1983 OSLO ATLANTIC DEFENSE SYMPOSIUM

by Dennison I. Rusinow

1983/No. 15 Europe/General [DIR-2-'83]

In August 1983 the Norwegian Na- ly mentioned in passing ("if this seems tional Defense College sponsored familiar today '. They are, however, a symposium to discuss the ef- the purpose of this Report, which is fects on Western defense policies therefore not an account of the Sym- of the events and influences of the posium or a summary of its.findings and period from 1947 through 1953. conclusions per se. The putative "moral of the story" for today's world will in most The symposium was able to draw cases be left to the reader, in part on newly accessible materials and because it is often ambiguous, which is the memories of some of the par- what the "lessons" of history usually are. ticipants in the creation of NATO, but the lessons of =Cold War I," The Oslo Symposium was attend- like most of the lessons of history, ed by scholars from nine NATO coun- turn out to be generally ambigu- tries (Norway, West Germany, Great Bri- ous. tain, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland, the United States, and Canada) and neutral Sweden. The discussions were enlivened and enlightened by the With "European and Atlantic presence of senior Norwegian par- Defense 1947-1953" as its theme, the ticipants in the creation and early years Oslo International Symposium organized of NATO, whose revisionist comments and reminiscences provided healthy reminders that documents from official History in August 18a was ostensibly archives and published memoirs, the principal grist of the historians' mills, rare- ly contain the whole truth and nothing but happenstance the meeting was held the the truth. The decision to omit partici- same week that the Defense Minist in pants and topics from the Mediterranean Oslo was preparing to release an official flank of NATO was taken, despite some repo on the latest (unidentified but misgivings, to achieve greater depth of focus and detail at a three-day meeting. "From War to Cold War" was the zling episode in Cold War II and a lively theme of the first day's sessions, based topic of discussion during conference on papers describing American, British, coffee breaks. The coincidence was an and French attitudes to security ques- appropriate symbol of the way current tions and spheres of influence in the events and scholarly reinterpretations of years 1945-50 and the formation of the the first Cold War were bound to cast Western Union and its expansion into a sha6ows on one another, nvtng com- North Atlantic Treaty Organization parisons and reflections on the past as (NATO) in 1948-49. The second day was a guide to the present, or at least a devoted to what Olav Riste, the Sym- source of useful lessons and monitions. posium's organizer and Director of the Such comadsons an6 mflectons Oslo Research Center, called "North were nt on the aen6a or amon the Atlantic Treaty Mark I: Limited Com- purposes of the Symposium, although mitments." The third focused on they hung in the air and were developments after the outbreak of the 2/DIR-2-'83

Korean War in June 1950, a period that ities, were turned upside down by the guaranteed to provoke disagreements, Riste labeled "NATO Mark I1: Defense Korean War pose a different, debatable, The Oslo Symposium, where the ques- Build-up and Integration." The penul- and contemporary set of questions. If tion concerned crucial turning points in timate paper that last day, entitled there was a misunderstanding of what Western attitudes to Soviet intentions "NATO goes Nuclear," carried the story Korea signified, it is also interesting to and consequently in Cold War and beyond 1953 and into a third phase in discover, in today's different but partly NATO history, was only a partial excep- NATO history, characterized by strategic analogous circumstances, that our Euro- tion.. Although there was an initial and planning and political dilemmas that are pean NATO partners shared it to a final consensus that February 1948 (the still, or again, on the agendas of NATO greater extent than most of us then knew Prague coup) and June 1950 (the out- commanders and political leaders in the and than many of them were later will- break of the Korean War) deserved the 1980s. ing to admit. label, several participants muddied the The recent publication or opening The extent to which NATO's waters for a time by nominating other of U.S. and some other NATO archives military capability, including the events and dates for the countries, for the years and subject under study American nuclear deterrent, was an issues, key individuals, or groups that provided one reason for holding the empty scabbard in the early years of the were the focus of their own studies. This Symposium at this time. These newly ac- Alliance was unknown even to most reminder that one must also ask "Whose cessible materials, frequently cited in member-country ministers and senior of- turning point?" threatened at one stage Symposium papers and discussions, ap- ficers with a clear "need-to-know." to atomize the discussion and the con- parently contain no startling revelations. American military planners were fully cept, but it also suggested another way They do, however, suggest some minor aware and drew appropriate conclu- of approaching the subject. In this and revisions of Cold War history, alternate- sions, as their war plans of the period many other cases, one suspects that the ly confirming or raising new doubts about show. Other recently accessible answers for different individuals and previous interpretations of particular documents also reveal, however, that groups, weighted for their influence over events and policies. they tactfully refrained, as far as possi- policy or public opinion and charted over Among these confirmations and ble, from informing their European part- time, would point to specific moments revisions, those of greatest potential con- ners that these plans presumed an in- when the accumulation achieves a "criti- temporary relevance and interest for itial and unavoidable Red Army conquest cal mass" that brings about the kind of non-specialists include the following: of first all and in later versions almost all larger-scale dramatic or fateful changes The Communist coup d'tat in of continental Western Europe. For their that do deserve to be called "historic tur- Czechoslovakia in February 1948 and part, the governments and high com- ning points." Such an approach would the North Korean invasion of South mands of NATO Europe found good surely help to explain how and why cer- Korea in June 1950 were crucial in reasons, including concern for their own tain events in the history of Cold War mobilizing public opinion, especially a and their peoples' morale, for going had a "turning point" impact while others critical mass of "elite" or policy-making along with this game, indulging in self- that should and often did have equal or opinion, behind the creation of the delusion and not asking their American greater significance for individual actors Western European Union and NATO counterparts too many awkward ques- in the drama were denied this honor. As ("Mark I' in 1948-49 and for effective tions. for Cold War II, a current event, the same rearmament, including that of West Ger- In the light of the above and approach, with our definition of the quan- many, and integration of the latter after other considerations, NATO's "going tity and quality of a turning point's critical mid-1950 ("NATO Mark I1"). Without nuclear" in the Eisenhower era acquires mass sharpened by the historical exer- these events, NATO Marks and II either a firmer aura of eventual inevitability and cise, might also give us a modestly im- would not have happened at all, or would pertinence. The sigh of relief that passed proved predictive (and preventive?) have assumed different and probably through European chancelleries, in- capability. weaker forms. While this has long been cluding some neutral as well as NATO The Prague coup undeniably was common wisdom about the period, the ones, emerged clearly from the scholars' an event of this kind, an earthquake with Symposium shed new light on the who, papers and former participants' more serious and lasting consequences when, and how of the impact of Prague reminiscences at the Oslo Symposium. than earlier tremors in the same series. '48 and Korea '50, and on the dimensions The perpetuation and modernization of By the end of 1947 many key individuals of their importance. In this process in- NATO's nuclear dependence in later and groups on both sides of the Atlantic nocence, wisdom, idles fixes, and years, along with the nature and ra- had already been converted, or needed misunderstandings played a fascinating tionale of the Soviet nuclear buildup no conversion, to what one may for brevi- and often contradictory mixture of roles (anticipatory-offensive or responsive-de- ty call a Cold War perspective, but other at various levels, all with suggestive fensive?), are of course separate ques- views of Soviet intentions and the ap- analogies in Cold War I1. tions that may have different answers. propriate responses were still com- Although the origins of the However this may be, it is instructive to petitive. Western foreign and military Korean War and the Soviet role in its out- know more about what NATO planners policies reflected this ambivalence. The break seem to have been particularly and politicians thought they knew in the Truman Doctrine of March 1947 and the and fatefully misunderstood at the time 1950s, what they did not know or were launching of the Marshall Plan that sum- another piece of now common but this wrong about, and other accidents of mer had been significant harbingers, but time still contested wisdom the NATO decision-making on what is again a the Truman Doctrine's commitments response may have been a significant critical and contentious subject. were explicitly limited to Greece and case of doing the right thing, at least in Turkey, two special and urgent cases the short term, for the wrong reasons. Prague and Korea: From "Mark I" outside what was then considered The longer-term effects of the way views to "Mark I1" Western Europe. As for the Marshall of the nature of "the Soviet threat," and "Turning points" in history are a Plan, it is now frequently forgotten that therefore of NATO's purposes and prior- bane of historians, almost always it was initially offered to all of war- DIR-2-'83/3

ravaged Europe, including the U.S.S.R. tween East and West that the Soviet power of the United States with its and its satellites. This was partly a feint Union was believed to have a multi- nuclear monopoly was too overwhelm- but partly an honest indicator of mixed farious interest in maintaining. Further- ing. In these circumstances the Red Ar- motivations, in which =one world" wartime more, a Communist Party with a plurali- my, still licking its own wartime wounds, and early post-war idealism continued to ty won in genuinely free elections and could be expected to pose no more than co-exist with "two-world" anxieties and leadership in a left-of-center and friend- the back-up threat of a coup de grace in reluctant American recognition that ly coalition government, plus a tradi- specifically propitious conditions spheres of influence exist, whether one tionally Russophile population, had sure- again as in Czechoslovakia. likes it or not, and that the United States ly provided adequate guarantees that NATO's priorities were to echo this had one and an interest in its defense. Soviet interests would be duly respected rank-order of concerns. The traditional The military alliance being and domestic policies at least "pro- military definition of "collective security," negotiated that winter by Britain, France, gressive" social-democratic. The Red Ar- the purpose of the Alliance, was ex- and the three Benelux countries was in my had withdrawn shortly after the lib- panded to include and in this case its genesis also a hybrid of older and eration, technically because it had no emphasize collective economic, social, newer perspectives. Ostensibly an in- legal reason to stay (as it did, on the and political security. NATO's primary strument of collective security against a basis of end-of-war Allied occupation function, therefore, was to facilitate and re-militarized Germany, still the only agreements, elsewhere east of the Elbe coordinate economic recovery and other potential enemy listed in the text of the and the Enns) but also in apparent forms of joint West-European and trans- Brussels Treaty when it was signed in recognition that Czechoslovakia was dif- Atlantic action designed to enhance the March 1948, the Western Union they ferent. None of the extenuating circum- strength, political stability, and morale of were creating already had what a Sym- stances heretofore invoked to explain a its battered European members. posium paper on the subject called a defensive Soviet hegemony over and The hidden agenda of Western "hidden agenda" for many of its creators: limited to the backward countries of Union's founders, which included in- as "an elaborate device to entangle the Eastern Europe, with their traditions of creasing awareness that the region's United States" in an otherwise hopeless Russophobia, "reactionary" anti-Soviet seriously diminished weight in the defense against a different if still unnam- autocracies, and use as invasion routes worldwide balance of power and control ed enemy, the Soviet Union. into Russia, seemed to apply. In the over its own destiny was permanent Coming at this moment the Com- "satellitization" of Czechoslovakia the rather than temporary, provided another munist seizure of power in Czechoslo- Soviet Union had, on this reckoning, and devious reason for emphasizing vakia eliminated the ambivalence, flagrantly and ominously overstepped a NATO's economic and political over its hastened the signing of the Brussels boundary of what was beginning, reluc- military functions. An enduring and Treaty (with the hidden agenda now ap- tantly, to be accepted, and had done so assured American engagement, reliably parently foremost in the minds of those in a westward direction. committing the New World to redress the present), and precipitated the creation of As evidence presented in Oslo balance of the Old in peace as well as NATO during the following twelve also makes clear, however, the "Soviet war, was in this situation essential but months a remarkably brief period in threat" confirmed by the Prague coup could not be taken for granted. Despite view of the complexity and frequent con- was still widely regarded, on both sides the hopeful precedents of the Truman tentiousness of the issues and the un- of the Atlantic, as primarily economic and Doctrine and Marshall Plan (and of a precedented nature of such a peacetime political in nature. Without rapid New York headquarters for the United military alliance for the United States and economic reconstruction and related im- Nations), statesmen both in Europe and several other signatories. Prague had provements in welfare and "social justice" Washington continued to fear America's this dramatic effect in large part because to bolster social stability and existing isolationist tradition and a repetition of the coup suddenly and significantly regimes, it was feared that war- the 1920s, this time with even more enlarged the number of influential peo- devastated and demoralized Western disastrous and immediate conse- ple, and of those who elect or consent Europe would continue to be vulnerable, quences. The mood of the U.S. 80th to them, who believed that Soviet inten- as Czechoslovakia had been, to satelliti- Congress, which lagged behind public tions were aggressive and expansionist zation and "Sovietization" through pro- opinion (according to 1948 polls)in rather than defensive and did indeed paganda and political subversion by readiness for increased American com- pose a serious and urgent threat to in- Soviet agents and local Communist par- mitments, reinforced these fears. Anti- dependence and multi-party democracy ties acting on Stalin's orders. The role of colonialism, another tradition then still in Western Europe, beyond the limes of domestic Communists in social unrest alive and influential in American political the Red Army's presence and of "legiti- and a wave of strikes in several Western culture, also played a role in public as mate" or at least "understandable" Soviet countries at this time seemed to prove well as Congressional reluctance to security concerns. that this was what Stalin was up to. supply Europe with arms and American Czechoslovakia had also seemed Soviet military adventurism, on the forces that might encourage the French, to lie outside those boundaries. With its other hand, could be discounted for at Dutch, and British to release more of westward geographic orientation and least the rest of the first postwar decade, their own to hold restive or rebellious col- history and thoroughly "Western" political although war through misadventure onies in Asia and Africa. This, too, was and social values and institutions (now could not. The awesome damage in- well known in Western Europe. twice betrayed in a decade with Western flicted on Russia by World War II was too Documents cited at Oslo reveal a connivance or impotent acquiescence, recent and unreconstructed, the new widespread conviction that in these cir- which intensified the emotional aspect of Soviet empire in Eastern Europe was still cumstances the easiest and perhaps the Western reactions), it was not generally too unstable (witness Tito's defiance of only way of banning the specter of isola- regarded as belonging to Eastern Stalin, which became public in the tionism and binding the United States to Europe. On the contrary, it had been months between the Prague coup and Europe for the long haul was to invoke since 1945 a self-proclaimed bridge be- the establishment of NATO), and the traditional American idealism, while at 4/DIR-2-'83

the same time deflecting historic spying species in the heart of the British in those NATO countries i.e., all Euro- American antipathy to "entangling Citadel: only the British could be trusted pean members where unpleasant alliances," by emphasizing NATO's role with the awful truth, since the govern- memories Of an armed and brutally ag- as an instrument for economic and ments of key continental allies like gressive Germany were still fresh. Since political recovery and by playing down France and Italy were either penetrated nothing less than one or both of these military commitments, which were there- or porous. In any case the ignorance of unpalatable options would really help, fore less clearcut in the final text of the the continental allies was sustained by there was little incentive to do anything North Atlantic Treaty than in early Euro- a reluctance to ask pointed questions else. pean drafts. This was a game that that were likely to produce demoralizing These barriers to a better armed military planners and others concerned answers and compounded by flattering West were being reinforced by the ap- with the military side of the Soviet threat illusions (which the British seem to have parent success of containment without were quite willing to play for the sake of shared) of virtually infinite American much rearmament. The good guys, the American security guarantees and arms. resources and power. The Europeans anti-Communists, had won the Greek The price of the game was less were thereby condemned to producing civil war with the help of American aid and slower rearmament than the military defense plans and blueprints for Amer- and the Communist guerillas' loss of their considered wise and a set of strategic ican-supplied rearmament that bore lit- Yugoslav sanctuaries as a by-product of defense plans largely devoid of effective tle relationship to American capabilities Yugoslavia's quarrel with Stalin. Yugo- coordination, honest information-sharing, and intentions and therefore to reality. slavia itself had successfully spun out of or even of forces and joint commands Quite often sensing that this was so, they the Soviet orbit, to the West's significant capable of fulfilling them. The dimen- took comfort from America's monopoly geo-strategic advantage, and the Red sions and implications of the emptiness of nuclear weapons and delivery Army had only rattled its sabers around of the NATO scabbard in those years systems, the trump card they desperate- the frontier, provoking a few border in- and of illusions and self-delusion on the ly hoped would make their own planning cidents. This and its failure to challenge part of its European members, with the and forces matter only for the opening the Berlin airlift seemed to confirm an un- partial exception of the British are only trick of a general war. Here too they were willingness to risk general war, or even now becoming public information as ar- ignorant. As we now know, the American a local one that might escalate, despite chives of the period are selectively nuclear arsenal in those years was so Soviet predominance in conventional opened. If the assumptions about Soviet small and of such quality that, if it failed weapons. intentions that led to NATO's creation to deter merely by existing, it could not On the Western home front Com- were correct, one must conclude, and be have stopped a determined invader who munists were no longer part of any glad, that Soviet authorities were as ig- had presumably discounted even greater government, having resigned or been norant and therefore excessively awed damage from it in deciding to invade. ousted from governing coalitions in by American power and its NATO exten- What the Oslo Symposium called France and Italy in 1947 and even in oc- sion as were most of their West Euro- "North Atlantic Treaty Mark I" was indeed cupied Austria, where a lone Communist pean counterparts. a NATO of limited commitments and Minister had been a propitiatory gesture American war plans in NATO's capabilities and no effective joint plan- to the Soviet occupation authorities, in early years were the most realistic, if only ning and command structures. 1949. They had failed (if they actually in- because those who wrote them knew the Awareness of just how limited was bound tended, which they probably did) to turn limits of American capabilities and so to spread and penetrate over time, and strikes and social unrest into insurrection harbored fewer illusions. While continen- in fact was doing so by early 1950. The or a coup in these same three countries tal West European planners and their net effect, in conjunction with other and and elsewhere. And they seemed to governments insisted from the beginning competing concerns, was more perverse have reached the apogee of their voting on a meaningful defense "as far east in than positive for a militarily stronger strength without anywhere again achiev- Germany as possible" or at least on the alliance. It was increasingly realized that ing the relative majority which had Rhine, early American plans the ones an even halfway credible conventional played a major role in their takeover of that would have been activated, by the defense of the continent would be im- Czechoslovakia, and which they had way, if the Prague coup or the Berlin possible, if the Russians one day really briefly enjoyed in two early postwar elec- blockade had led to war in 1948 an- came, without a major military build-up tions in France. ticipated token resistance and then a by NATO members and a significant All in all there seemed to be little quick withdrawal of all American (and German contribution. The first was reason to rock the boat with unpopular allied?) forces fro the continent, to be politically impossible everywhere. Still increases in defense budgets at cost to followed in due course by liberation from serious balance-of-payments and other other sectors or by forcing the German bases in North Africa, Britain, and farther economic problems continued to com- question, and good reasons not to. Just west. Revised versions in the next eight- mand more attention, and to seem more then, however, North Korean forces in- een months were slightly more optimistic urgent, than the putative threat of a Red vaded South Korea in an attempt to and included bridgeheads to be held in Army that had stomached the relief of the reunite the divided Korean nation by non-NATO southern Spain and various- Berlin blockade and Yugoslav defection, force and under Communist rule. ly in Brittany, Norway, or elsewhere after and whose readiness for a major war Few of those who played roles in the rest of continental Europe had been most European strategists had now post- the Atlantic Community's reaction to this abandoned. poned to the mid-1950s. In these cir- event seem to have had doubts about its The primary reason for American cumstances no government had the will, significance: reluctance to share these plans with their and few saw an overwhelming need, to 1. The North Koreans were acting European partners, except for the opt for more guns rather than more but- on Soviet orders, as what would now be British, is obvious, but a second reason ter. The second, a rearmed Germany, called Soviet proxies, and were testing is ironic in view of what shortly became was still anathema to some NATO Western resolve to resist armed Com- known about Soviet moles and other governments and to most of the public munist aggression in a situation and DIR-2-'83/5

place where the experiment could be mands, and Greece, Turkey, and a American failure to come to South contained if it went wrong. rearmed and fully sovereign West Ger- Korea's aid would have encouraged the 2. If the West failed the test, all many as additional members. In the Soviet leadership to re-evaluate the risks previous bets were off in Europe as well. words of the same discussant, "A series of such adventures elsewhere, whether 3. Regardless of the outcome in of calculated steps transformed NATO or not the Korean "test" was conscious- Korea, the invasion proved that the into a full-scale military alliance." ly designed as such by Moscow. It is Soviet threat was also military after all, A few influential people worried similarly quite possible that the Soviet and now rather than later, implying that that reversing priorities to this extent was side might have behaved more aggres- NATO's rank-order of concerns and a mistake that put the military cart before sively in Europe, and to the point of war, priorities must be reversed forthwith. the socio-economic horse and invited in any of several East-West crises after Thirty years later few if any of the disputes over the German question and the mid-'50s (when Western analysts had experts attending the Oslo Seminar guns-versus-butter that would undermine anticipated Soviet readiness for a major seemed to doubt that the first of these a still fragile pro-NATO consensus. In war) if the West had not by then achieved propositions, and with it the "proof' part their view the strength and stability of a more credible level of preparedness, of the third, was wrong and a serious Western societies were still the crucial stimulated in large part by that fateful misinterpretation of Soviet intentions and elements in Western defense, and the misinterpretation of the events in Korea. the way the Soviet bloc worked. Several anticipated accompaniments of a major Possible, but not certain. It ob- mentioned and none dissented from the buildup of NATO arsenals and armies viously depends on what Soviet inten- now widespread (but still contested) view inflation, deferred increases in still un- tions really were, then or at any other that the North Koreans acted on their satisfactory levels of non-military produc- moment. And this, it was said repeated- own initiative, although they would cer- tion and consumption, and associated ly and in various contexts at the Oslo tainly have informed Moscow of their in- political strains would ultimately prove Symposium, is the crucial imponderable, tentions. Soviet culpability, in this inter- more damaging to that defense and the what one participant called "the 64-billion pretation, was limited to failure to impose Western cause than continuing to tol- kroner question." Failing a convincing a preventive veto, which was equally cer- erate some degree of Soviet preponder- answer, no judgment on the appropriate- tainly within Moscow's power. If this is ance in conventional weapons. Some ness of Western responses to "the Soviet true, it tells us nothing about Soviet in- further argued that the Soviet Union's threat" at any point in postwar (or in fact tentions elsewhere in the world and rulers, given their own nature and that post-1917) history can be fully confident neither proves nor indicates that the of their system, could and would manage and competent. Tacitly or explicitly con- Kremlin was planning to launch the Red to retain this preponderance in any case, ceding this point, those who raised the Army westward, or in any other direction, leading either to an endless arms race question invariably disqualified them- with or without American resistance in or to the same imbalance on a higher selves from attempting an answer, Korea. plateau of weaponry and risk. pleading lack of evidence of the kind a On the other hand it was, as things But these were now the voices cry- careful historian needs. Would someone turned out, a grave Soviet/North Korean ing in the wilderness that advocates of else in the group please give it a try? No miscalculation, probably encouraged serious Western rearmament had been one did. On two occasions someone (according to both the original and the before June 1950. By the second half of suggested, wryly, that the organizers currently favored interpretations) by the decade NATO had a formidable should have invited a Soviet scholar with thoughtless high level American arsenal, unified commands with multi- access to the relevant Soviet archives statements that had seemed to imply national forces committed to them in and a willingness to tell us what is there. that South Korea lay outside the case of war and for joint peacetime ex- The implications are considered at the American protective and defensive ercises, and plans for a serious if not end of this Report. perimeter. Not only did the United States wholly adequate defense beginning respond in Korea after all, along with where the Europeans wanted it, on the Intriguing By-products other countries, but the repercussions in frontier with the Soviet Bloc. Three other aspects of conse- Europe were immense. One discussant On this reckoning the story is one quences of this part of the story also at the Oslo Symposium used the term of an isolated Soviet miscalculation on merit some comment for their contem- grande peur, with its suggestion of mass the other side of the world, misinter- porary relevance before proceeding to panic, to describe the atmosphere and preted as conclusive evidence of ag- other issues: emotion that gripped many West Euro- gressive military expansionism every- 1. Since the late 1960s there has pean governments but not always where and at the earliest opportunity, been a tendency on both sides of the public opinion in their countries when producing enormous and lasting conse- Atlantic to assume or to remember that the attack on South Korea was taken as quences in Europe and for the future of NATO and Western re-armament in its a sign that the bear was loose, hungry, East-West relations that were not justi- "Mark I1" variant were basically American and on the hunt in all directions. Several fied by the event. It is still possible, creations, born of earlier and greater high officials in Europe and the United however, that NATO's reaction to Korea American alarm over Soviet actions and States anticipated a Soviet attack on was a case of doing the right things for purported intentions that was later Western Europe within eighteen months. the wrong reasons. In other words, variously regarded as prescient or as ex- The Atlantic Community's priorities were Korea, the misinterpreted event, did not cessive and possibly quite unwarranted. reversed, and forthwith. "NATO Mark I," warrant the reaction but Soviet intentions West European governments went with such limited military commitments did, because in fact (and with no Korean along, despite reservations based on dif- and capabilities that one Oslo discussant connection) these intentions were now, fering interpretations and priorities, called it "an instrument for reassurance, or would otherwise have become, or because the United States was too not a true military alliance," gave way to perhaps always had been, what NATO's powerful and too important to European "NATO Mark I1" with its serious defense response incorrectly assumed that Korea recovery and security to be gainsaid. To- buildup, integrated planning and com- "proved." If so, it is not unlikely that an day this historical memory serves to rein- 6/DIR-2-'83

force a more general view that has movements, whose fundamentally cooling period in cabinet and parliament gained many new adherents, and prob- divergent values and aims, aggravated pantries. The battle of the budget is a law ably a majority of European public opin- by their common origin and competition of politics even in times of stress, as ion, since the advent of the Reagan Ad- for the same constituencies, have more recent NATO governments and ministration: the American perception of periodically led to a kind of civil war on planners have also discovered. Force in- the Soviet Union has tended to be the political left. It is also worth noting creases were considerable, even leaving paranoic and Manichean at least most that in Stalin's last years the present out American increases earmarked for of the time; the European has usually generation of Western European Social- Korea, but almost everywhere less than been better balanced and closer to reali- ist and Social-democratic leaders, at that military planners and their supporters ty. It is only a step further to what a time junior party, trade union, or govern- considered desirable or even necessary. British historian at Oslo, who said he has ment officials, was imbibing an ex- European defense ministers generally found "no supporting evidence" to con- perience of Communist and Soviet be- encountered greater difficulty and took firm it in the British papers of the period, havior, and of disputes and splits within more cuts from colleagues in cabinets called the "fashionable view" that the en- the non-Communist left over its interpre- and parliaments, not usually because tire Cold War "was an American inven- tation, that was similar to the ex- European concern with defense was less tion, a cloak of respectability under which periences that had shaped the attitudes than American but because European the United States, dragging along a of the previous generation. economies and social budgets were still dependent Britain, unnecessarily divided Considering beth this older and re- hard-pressed in the early 1950s. West Europe and polarized the world." cent history, there is no reason except European increases in force levels and It is thus instructive to rediscover, ignorance to be surprised and un- armaments consistently fell behind what with confirmation from new evidence col- prepared or disbelieving when a Fran- the Americans, in particular, wanted. lected by both European and American (;;ois Mitterand, Bettino Craxi, or Bruno Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, the bat- scholars from archives on both con- Kreisky turns out to have views of the tle of the larger budget among the three tinents, that these historical memories Soviet Union and Communism very services was conspicuously won by the and reconstructions are not entirely ac- similar to those of Bevin, Clement Attlee, Air Force, and within the Air Force by the curate. One must still ask "Whose turn- Karl Renner, and other European Strategic Air Command under the for- ing point?" for each individual and Socialists who were pioneer advocates midable Curtis LeMay. government, but West European hidden and practitioners of tough political, The net results were continued agendas in 1947-48, grande peur after diplomatic, and military responses some American military preponderance within June 1950, and other ministerial or mass 35 years ago. the alliance, continued heavy European perceptions and military policy prefer- On the other hand, ordinary West dependence on American protection, ences described at the Symposium are Europeans ("public opinion"), often with and an American protective shield heav- reminders that alarm and consequent recent and positive experience of native ily tilted in favor of air power and of the enthusiasm for NATO and rearmament Communist and Soviet partnership in the long-distance strategic bombing compo- were frequently greater and earlier in struggle against fascism before and dur- nent of that air power. Europe, at least for key individual and ing the war, were freqently less prepared At Oslo the further consequences collective policy-makers, than in Amer- for the transition from Russians-as-good- were discussed on the basis of papers ica. If many in Washington were wrong allies to Cold War views than their entitled "The Decision for a West Ger- in their intepretation of Korea or wrong political elites, both left and right, whose man Defense Contribution" and "NATO the other way around in being surprised personal experience or privileged Goes Nuclear." by the Prague coup they had plenty knowledge of unpleasant and ominous 3. Meanwhile (and beyond the of company across the Atlantic. Soviet behavior during and after the war period under discussion at Oslo), those It is equally useful to be reminded was usually not shared by the general who had worried that "NATO Mark I1" was that Socialist ministers and govern- public. For a number of reasons putting the military cart before the socio- ments, for example but not only in Bri- American public opinion seems by and economic horse were silenced for a time tain, were frequently among the earliest large to have made the transition more by more modest increases in military ex- and most apocalyptic in defining the quickly and also more vehemently. At penditures than they had feared, and for threat and calling for collective Western this level the currently fashionable a longer period by another generally action to combat Communist subversion presumption that West European and unanticipated development. On balance and deter Soviet aggression. Often, as American perceptions of the Soviet more stimulated than braked by the in the case of Ernest Bevin, earlier per- threat were even then out of sync may Korean War, which increased American sonal experience with Communists in therefore have some validity. "Ami go demand for European goods as well as their own trade union movements and home" and "Eisenhower assassin" graf- American military assistance to the Euro- other conflicts on the political left seems fiti of the early 1950s were not all the pean allies, Western Europe's prolonged to have predisposed them to recognize work of Communists and fellow-travel- economic boom, the fat years when it nefarious intentions emanating from that lers. The legacy, reinforced by later was possible to have more guns and quarter more quickly, if not necessarily developments, lives on in some circles more butter at the same time (literally, more accurately, than many of their col- along with the legacy, in other circles, in fact a notorious "butter mountain"), leagues on the political right. However of gratitude to the same "Ami" for sav- made the critics' concerns seem irrel- that may be, the views and policies of ing Western Europe from hunger and the evant for more than two decades. these Socialist ministers and govern- Reds. A similar fate more briefly befell ments regarding the Soviet Union consti- 2. There is a German saying that those who maintained, with or without tuted a logical extension to inter-state nothing is ever eaten as hot as it is undertones of anti-Americanism or Com- relations of a long history of deep mutual cooked. So it was with NATO rearma- munist sympathies, that American per- suspicions and conflict-prone relations ment plans cooked over the fire of the ceptions and policies were wrong- between Socialist and Communist Korean panic but served only after a headed, provocative, and a threat to DIR-2-'83/7

peace. Several developments tended, followed by the demise of dtente, blocs, and after 1948 Germany itself was sometimes paradoxically, to take the reopened all these questions and the only major European prize not yet wind out of their sails. Stalin's successors disputes, thereby also incidentally mak- clearly awarded to either side. were trumpeting "peaceful coexistence" ing the "true" history of Cold War and We all know how tne story turned instead of class warfare translated to its lessons matters of more than out, partly as a result of deliberate pol- inter-state relations and were attempting academic importance. Among the old icies and partly adventitiously: two Ger- to prove their sincerity with significant issues again on the agenda, the nuclear manies, one of them Western and a full gestures, including a belated evacuation and German ones, since 1979 member of NATO, the other Eastern and of eastern Austria in the framework of a themselves linked by the key West Ger- a member of the Warsaw Pact, both arm- State Treaty guaranteeing that country's man role in the invention and subse- ed and with an indeterminate number of neutrality and recognition of Yugoslavia's quent vicissitudes of NATO's Doppel- citizens unreconciled to the imposed divi- "separate road," complete with a public beschluss or =duel track decision," are as sion of their nation and/or to the socio- apology for previous Soviet behavior. serious and divisive as the underlying economic system and Superpower hege- Soviet-American and East-West relations question of the reasons and responsibili- mony under which they live. It has been were on balance gradually improving, ty for Cold Wars that can destroy the so since 1955, when the German Fed- despite periodic and sometimes dramatic world if they turn hot. eral Republic was formally admitted to setbacks. It could be argued, and was, NATO on May 9 and the Warsaw Pact that all this reflected the inner-directed Germany in the Middle was signed in retaliation on May 14, but and genuinely more pacific policies of a The German question, as it was it has never achieved a fully convincing new "de-Stalinizing" Soviet leadership posed in the post-1945 context of a appearance of permanence. The boun- rather than the influence of Western Europe in the process of division into op- dary between East and West Germany resolve and rearmament, and that the posing Eastern and Western blocs and is still the principal and most sensitive excuse for NATO, large military forces, a small group of neutrals, was actually point of East-West physical contact, a and subservience to American views for comprised of three interdependent ques- special gate in times of d6tente and a the sake of American protection and tions: re-unification or partition; neutrality special danger in times of tension, and arms was melting in pace with the Cold or alignment; disarmed or rearmed a some people already see signs that the War's thawing. It was equally arguable, set that yields, in various combinations, pressure of Cold War II is reopening two however, that precisely Western up to a dozen theoretically possible parts of the original postwar German toughness and cohesion endowing con- solutions. 3 The choice would basically question. Some of the issues raised on tainment and deterrence with credibility, be made, jointly or separately and the long road from the breakdown of were responsible for Soviet restraint, im- .deliberately or adventitiously, by the ma- Four-Power talks on Germany in 1947 to proved relations, and reduced risk of 'jor erstwhile allies who had conquered the double ratification of German parti- war; their retention and perfection pro- and occupied Germany and were now tion, alignment, and rearmament in May vided the best guarantee that these ranged in the two opposing camps. 1955 are therefore worth recalling and benefits would endure, there being no Smaller members of the recent anti-Hitler not only, as at Oslo, as a fateful and persuasive evidence that the Bear had coalition had at best a moral right to a fascinatingly might-have-been-otherwise really changed his character and inten- small say. Soon, however, an additional bit of history. tions. The level and posture of Soviet but initially muffled voice was admitted Three interdependent dilemmas forces, Soviet activities elsewhere in the to the debate, the Western powers hav- with up to a dozen theoretical solutions world, and perhaps especially the nature ing decided that the answer, if it was to inevitably give rise to complicated ques- and significance ascribed to the most be durable and not dangerously destabil- tions with many dependent phrases, dramatic European setbacks to improved izing, must be at least tolerable to the even when some solutions are relations in those years Hungary in Germans themselves, and that a West eliminated a priori because they were 1956, the Berlin Wall in 1961, and German contribution to Western never contemplated and could not have Czechoslovakia in 19682 appeared to defense, increasingly regarded as happened or endured (e.g., a partitioned confirm the second view, which con- necessary if not entirely desirable, could Germany with both states neutral, which tinued to prevail. not be obtained without giving the West was in nobody's interest and would not In the relaxed and hopeful at- Germans a say in their own future. Each have lasted if tried). The same themes mosphere of the thaw even alarm over of these parties French, British, reappear in a series of Baroque varia- nuclear weapons proved hard to sustain, American, et al. to the west, Soviet to the tions. Here is a sample, with the and the once impressive anti-nuclear east, and German in the middle had distinguishing focus of each variation movement in northwest Europe dwindled a number of sometimes conflicting con- italicized for clarity as well as emphasis: into insignificance. Except where pas- cerns and interests to consider, not all Would a reunified and perhaps sions were refueled by domestic events, connected to the developing East-West formally disarmed but certainly neutral as in Greece in 1967 and after, anti- confrontation and some subject to Germany (guaranteed neutrality would American and anti-NATO graffiti and the change over time. Different and chang- be a necessary ingredient because sentiments they represented were in- ing Western attitudes to West German neither bloc would surrender its occupa- creasingly a Communist and further-left rearmament are merely the clearest and tion zone, or later its dependency, to a monopoly until, with the defection of most important case in point. united Germany free to join the other "Euro-Communists" who came to regard For all, however, the German bloc) be better or worse for European the U.S. as a lesser threat than the question was of acute importance and stability and peace in the long run than U.S.S.R., they became a further-left and fraught with special danger. The boun- a Germany divided, against the will of extreme right monopoly. dary between Western and Eastern oc- most Germans, into client states of the The end of the fat years in 1974 cupation zones in Germany was the prin- blocs, with both armed or (as a serious- and the coming of lean ones later in the cipal and potentially most explosive point ly considered option) with the western decade, preceded by Vietnam and of geographic contact between the two one an unarmed semi-sovereign defen- 8/DIR-2-'83

sive glacis for its bloc? circumstances. status to the existing military position in Would an armed, sovereign, Even the way that solution finally Eastern Europe. The West German con- and presumably soon again economical- came about gives the observer of con- tribution to Western defense takes ly vigorous and commercially aggressive temporary East-West and NATO affairs almost precisely the form some had Germany, either united and neutral or a feeling of dj& vu. There is the Soviet wanted and considered only a matter of divided and respectively bound to the Union, then as now frantically attempt- time and timing as early as 1948, two blocs, turn out (in one or both ing to prevent a significant addition to although a lot of china had been broken either-or permutations) to be more threat- Western military capacity. Threats of along the way. ening to Soviet pretensions to eastern- reprisals if the West goes ahead with If this seems familiar (but only up or pan-European hegemony or to French West German rearmament and integra- to a point, since the denouement of the and other West European interests and tion into NATO alternate with "peace of- contemporary analogy is still in the future identities, all of them so often challenged fensives" and calls for a pan-European at this time), some cardinal differences in the past century by overweening Ger- security conference; there is overt and are equally suggestive. man economic and military power? covert Soviet encouragement and at- Most obviously, the armaments In a variation on both of the tempted exploitation of those in the West that are presently in contention are above of particular salience in NATO's who are also, for a variety of reasons, op- nuclear, which makes the current issue early years, which of the following would posed to the same things; and there are intrinsically more serious and likely to on balance best serve the concept of periodic Soviet diplomatic initiatives for arouse more intense emotions in more Western defense "as far east as possi- a peace treaty with a reunified and people than a question concerning con- ble" while also accommodating other neutralized Germany, "which most of the ventional arms, even in German hands particular Western concerns: (1) a dis- NATO leaders," as an Oslo participant and involving the emotional issue of Ger- armed Western Germany occupied by noted, "viewed as mischievous attempts many's role in Europe. Western forces who could use it as a to disrupt the solidarity of the alliance Second, the German question was forward battlefield but had no formal and prevent German rearmament." Op- posed in a period otherwise marked by obligation to protect and defend German position in Western Europe is there, initially frigid and tense but after Stalin's territory; (2) an armed West Germany variously based on antipathy to the Cold death slowly thawing East-West rela- contributing to Western defense, but with War and the division of Europe, fear of tions, by a modest number of what are sovereignty, equality, and NATO security Germans bearing arms again or the today called "confidence-building guarantees that would be hard and arms race in general, fear of provoking measures," and by a Western near-mo- perhaps dangerous to honor as a mini- the Soviet Union into rash action, latent nopoly of a then small pool of nuclear mum necessary price for this contribu- neutralist and anti-American sentiments, weapons. The current context includes tion; or (3) a united, neutral, and perhaps etc.; it is in origins and aims autonomous the demise of detente and the popular formally disarmed Germany as an of Soviet interests and intrigues but in hopes it aroused, seriously deteriorating unusually large buffer state that (a) would some cases vulnerable to penetration or Soviet-American relations and mutual require Soviet forces to withdraw from manipulation. lack of trust, and rough parity in nuclear the Elbe to the Oder and contribute to The American administration arms at horrendous levels. The dangers stability by separating the blocs, but presses for a European initiative that it inherent in the second of these combina- might instead (b) tempt the Russians by believes will be more easily accepted tions can reasonably be regarded as its patent inability to defend itself against than an American one. The most ap- greater, and dashed hopes tend to make the Red Army alone and without allies, propriate European government in the the present danger seem even more or (c) seek relief from this danger and an circumstances, in this instance French, unbearable to many people. outlet for German ambitions by "doing a produces one, the European Defense Third and often overlooked in Rapallo" and seeking security guaran- Community (EDC), that appears to cut America- there are today demonstrably tees and economic privileges through the Gordian knot of conflicting concerns far fewer people in Western Europe who closer relations with the East? by absorbing future West German forces view the Soviet Union as a positive Finally, which solutions would into integrated European ones with a model and are prepared to believe that contribute most, and which would con- single unified command. This solution is Soviet intentions are always or usually tribute least, to making the dangerous accepted by the other six countries in- benign. This change is reflected, inter and generally undesirable division of volved, but successive French govern- alia, in the character of most (but not all) Europe permanent or conversely, to ments waver and the scheme is ultimate- contemporary Western European peace eliminating it? ly killed when the French National movements and demonstrations. Their Having plagued NATO from its Assembly, apparently moved by a false slogans and banners, like some of the founding until 1954, these questions and impression that most of the country is weapons they are protesting, are usual- others concerning Germany's role in against it, rejects the EDC treaty two ly "MIRVed" for multiple targets the Europe and German rearmament are still years after all had signed it. All of this Soviet Union, SS-20 missiles, etc. as well partly or wholly open or re-openable, delays the formation of operational West as the United States, Pershing and although the die appeared to have been German units by several years, until cruise missiles, etc. Observers of the cast thirty years ago. Of the concerns 1957, but intervening developments and European scene twenty years earlier can that underlay them then, only French changing attitudes within Western seldom recall a single slogan or banner and other West Europeans' fear of reci- Europe and between East and West from those days that denounced East divistic German militarism, diminishing have meanwhile withered the opposition German rearmament or otherwise over the years if not yet extinguished, and made the new Wehrmacht general- treated both sides as equally or in vary- has ceased to be a significant factor. Of ly acceptable and even welcome. The ing degrees co-responsible for what the the ingredients of the 1954 solution, only Soviet "counter-measure" for West Ger- demonstrators then considered obnox- German rearmament appears non-re- man integration into NATO is the War- ious. West European leaders, unlike their pealable in almost all conceivable saw Pact, which merely gives de jure American counterparts, generally appear DIR-2-'83/9

to be aware of this difference as they occupation zones in 1949, has also 1947, at latest, that the Bomb had been weigh the potential political costs of made the broader East-West division of contributory but not decisive in the defeat various choices they will have to make. Europe harder to undo. It is less clear of Japan and were looking at the future Finally, Western Europe in the what would have happened and to in the same light, although their Soviet 1980s is not the Western Europe of the whose advantage if Soviet initiatives counterparts "concluded almost im- 1950s, a still sorely wounded economic in 1951-52 and perhaps 1953, indicating mediately" that nuclear weapons would and hence political dependency of the a willingness to abandon the Soviet Zone indeed be decisive in future wars. United States. It is collectively America's and accept a reunified and neutral Ger- Like the German question in those equal, in several countries with stan- many in order to avoid an armed West same early postwar years, the nuclear dards of living and what these reflect that Germany in NATO, had been tested, one might therefore have turned out are higher than American levels. Asser- found genuine, and led to such a solu- otherwise that it did. NATO's "going tiveness is the natural accompaniment tion. They were not so tested, and the nuclear" was a phenomenon of the of equality and consciousness of same. very existence of the last one, sometimes 1950's and took place in stages. These West European governments and na- attributed to Beria after Stalin's death included an increasingly diversified and tions even the hold-out Germans and before his own fall, is disputed. sophisticated American nuclear arsenal have long since ceased to be humbly if Yesterday's might-have-been grown to about 1,000 weapons by 1953 resentfully willing to accept automatic could in principle appear again as a and nearly 18,000 by 1960; development American leadership and to choke back might-be, a prospect that has lately at- of a fusion "superbomb," first detonated objections when they think they have not tracted renewed attention and specula- in October 1952; a new strategy of been adequately consulted in matters af- tion in Germany and elsewhere. If it were "massive retaliation" based on a strategic fecting their interests. The European to happen, how would both sets of con- nuclear capability that critics were soon "third force" that many Americans as well cerns that Kennan articulated 35 years calling "overkill"; and going nuclear on as Europeans thought would be healthy ago in 1947 as well as in 1948 be the battlefield as well, with small- and vainly tried to conjure into life in the reappraised? In today's world, would a warhead "tactical" weapons deployed in late 1940s exists, for better or for worse. united but neutral Germany be a con- Europe in 1953 and after. The British first Meanwhile, and as suggested tribution to peace and stability or a tested their own A-bomb in October above, many of the questions and alter- source of new tensions and dangers? 1952, the French theirs in February native answers that characterized and Might it lead to the "Finlandization" of all 1960. Each time there were correspond- prolonged the German problem from Western Europe (meaning foreign policy ing Soviet developments, one jump 1945 to 1954 are still or again relevant. subordinated to Soviet interests and con- behind or occasionally ahead but This is particularly true of those that cerns in exchange for freedom to choose almost always sooner than predicted on weighed the comparative virtues and one's own governments, policies, and the basis of Western estimates of Soviet vices of a reunited and neutral or still social system), or might it perhaps lead scientific and technological capabilities. divided and aligned Germany. instead to the "Finlandization" of Eastern As one Symposium participant put it, Late in 1948 George Kennan, who Europe, the maximum hope of most peo- "The Golden Age of NATO nuclear a year earlier had preferred a partition- ple there? Would it be more or less satis- supremacy lasted only months." The ed Germany to reunification under con- fying and therefore more or less pacify- "balance of terror" was a dominating ditions that might be "giving the Russians ing to German aspirations, East and reality before the decade was over, the chance to dominate the whole coun- West, than the present situation? although Soviet achievement of full try," was instead making the case that The realism of such might-have- global parity with the West was still an independent, demilitarized, neutral, been's and might-be's, then and now, several years in the future. and unified German state was preferable depends in large part on what Soviet The review of this story at Oslo, after all, and was advocating a new ef- desires "really" were and are. As far as based on presentations by two American fort to secure Soviet agreement. The the past is concerned, participants at the specialists, did not go much beyond argument underlying Kennan's "Program Oslo Symposium again raised and again published and usually well-known A" proposal of November 1948 was para- avoided the question. sources, but it was a useful and at times phrased in a paper for the Oslo Sym- suggestive summary of how and why it posium as follows: "A permanently divid- 3oinl Nuclear all happened. Afterward the present ed Germany, with each half the client of The Bomb was already there, writer picked out what he wanted for a a rival non-European superpower, would waiting to become the Great Deterrent, deliberately heterogeneous list of some not only ruin chances for a mutual with- when the Cold War began. Until well in- of the things that led to what several drawal of Soviet and American forces to the 1950s, however, it loomed larger Symposium participants described as and preclude any possibility of weaning in the calculations of political leaders and over-dependence on nuclear weapons in away Moscow's East European satellites; the anxieties of ordinary people than in NATO arsenals and plans: it would also, by leaving a highly skilled anybody's arsenal. As already noted, the The explosion of the first Soviet and highly nationalistic people artificial- number and quality of nuclear weapons atom bomb in September 1949, herald- ly separated, create a volatile and in American possession in the late ing the end of the American nuclear unstable political balance, subject to 1940s, when nobody else had any, could monopoly, was obviously a factor. It led revanchist pressures from both sides of not alone have defeated a determined immediately and directly to President the line." aggressor of Soviet size and conven- Truman's approval of accelerated Today few would argue with the tional brawn who had not been deterred research to determine the feasibility of thesis that the division of Germany, by their mere existence. Nor were they a fusion or hydrogen bomb. At the same which became progressively harder to dominant in American strategic planning. time, and reportedly as a concession to undo after a series of Cold War As the Oslo Symposium heard from a critics who argued that the "superbomb" measures that began with separate civil leading American specialist on the sub- would not increase American security, he administrations in western and eastern ject, the U.S. military had concluded by ordered a broad review of national 10/DIR-2-'83

security policy in the light of the new up. This was in a way ironic: the argu- their advance against NATO lines." At Soviet nuclear capability. The product, ment for West German rearmament was the same time, "this atomic offensive a National Security Council study of April not only its absolute necessity for a for- strategy would undergo numerous 1950 known as NSC 68 and frequently ward defense of Western Europe but refinements for presentation within the quoted at the Symposium, called in- because it, too, would ease the need and defense establishment, before the key ter alia for a major conventional and pressure for still more rearmament, by committees of Congress, and to the nuclear military buildup. implication nuclear as well as conven- American public. The campaign of sell- NSC 68 was a straw in the wind, tional, by the original NATO members. ing the Strategic Air Command and its but the wind was not yet strong. Truman, It turned out to be the other way round, deterrent mission was extremely suc- at the time more opposed to major in- as far as nuclear weapons were concern- cessful ..." The final result was "a creases in defense spending than fear- ed, because West German membership strategic nuclear capacity which one re- ful of Soviet forces armed with nuclear in NATO created a new context for cent scholar aptly calls "overkill." weapons, significantly failed to endorse "defense as far east as possible." As had happened in the begin- the NSC study until '`the North Korean Western Germany was now part of the ning, with the first atomic bomb, the invasion provided the catalyst to reverse fortress the Atlantic alliance was pledged West's "overkill capacity" was soon mat- budgetary priorities," as a Symposium to defend, not an expendable glacis ched by the Soviet Union. By the end of paper laconically put it. A revised version before its gates; the devastation of its ter- the 1950s both sides were sufficiently was finally approved on September 30, ritory and population "was no longer a alarmed, and the Soviet side apparent- 1950. This, however, was still part of the matter of indifference to NATO," as a ly thought itself sufficiently close to pari- broader story of the Korean "turning non-German participant in the Oslo ty, for control of the awful weapon to find point": rearmament there would be, but discussion indelicately put it. How to de- a simultaneous place on both of their it was not yet clear what mix of conven- fend the West further east became a agendas for the first time. The tional and nuclear buildup it would con- more complicated question that only a Americans had tried before, and even in tain. The equation was incomplete. more credible nuclear arsenal seemed the middle of the first great American The impediments to a major in- to answer. In the early years, however, nuclear build-up President Dwight Eisen- crease in conventional weapons and these weapons were seen primarily as hower had written, in a letter to a friend men in uniform to bear them included, a device to buy time time, that is, to first published in the fall of 1983: as already suggested, political and social get American forces to Europe in suffi- When we get to the point, as we one day as well as financial costs; and the first cient numbers to hold the line well east will, that both sides know that in any out- category was bound to be more serious of the Rhine and not, as later, for the break of general hostilities, regardless of in a heterogeneous alliance where the last battle, the Endschlacht, when all else the element of surprise, destruction will burden would vary from member to had failed to halt the conquest of NATO's be both reciprocal and complete, member, inviting disagreements among Germany. In conjunction with the Soviet possibly we will have sense enough to them as well as within each political nuclear build-up, this change would still meet at the conference table with the class. Whether a nuclear buildup would further increase the demand for a more understanding that the era of armaments be financially cheaper than a conven- diversified as well as larger nuclear had ended and the human race must tional one was arguable, but it was cer- arsenal. Another chapter with a modern conform its actions to this truth or die. 4 tainly cheaper politically and less of a parallel? Somebody on the other side now social disrupter. For the European part- At the Oslo Symposium par- apparently agreed. The long, unended ners, moreover, it was cheaper on all ticular attention was paid to yet another process of negotiation, frequently three counts, because the Bomb was factor, already mentioned in passing blocked or set back by new crises and then (and apart from modest British and earlier in this Report. In the United States the lack of the minimum degree of French deterrents would remain) an ex- the battle for the largest share of the mutual confidence that is the prere- clusively American burden. The sigh of Korean-inspired increase in defense quisite of any disarmament, began. It relief discernible in European archives spending was won by the Air Force, and eventually encompassed conventional and reminiscences from the period when within the Air Force by the Strategic Air as well as nuclear weapons, so far equal- the American nuclear deterrent began to Command (SAC) and its boss from Oc- ly in vain. The week this Report was grow registers a heightened sense of tober 1948 to June 1957, General completed the author dutifully attended security, but also a happy feeling that the LeMay. The Air Force grew from 87 two Vienna press conferences "cele- need and pressure for ever more Euro- wings in mid-1951 to 137 by 1957, with brating" the tenth anniversary of the start pean arms and armies would in conse- the lion's share going to SAC. From 962 in this city of Mutual Balanced Force quence be eased. If more "nukes" meant operational aircraft at the end of 1950 Reduction (MBFR) negotiations. One fewer troops, the temptation to give (with most of the long-range bombers ob- was by the Dutch Ambassador to MBFR, priority to the former was great and like- solescent B-29s), SAC's force grew to speaking for "the West," the other by the ly to be greatest for those who would 1,850 by the end of 1953 and 3,068 at Soviet Ambassador speaking for "the have to supply troops but not nukes. This the end of 1955 (with one-third of these East." At the first of these the BBC's was not, of course, the last time an ad- last all-jet B-47s and 18 of them the first Vienna correspondent asked whether we dition to the American nuclear force B-52s to come on line). With this expand- should anticipate a twentieth anniversary would be quietly applauded, or even ing force structure, the Symposium was press conference in ten years time. perhaps initiated, in the same countries told, SAC developed a broader mission Willem J. De Voss Van Steenwijk, the where opposition to it would also be with three principal elements: "to destroy Dutch Ambassador, declined to fiercest. those bases from which the Soviet Union prophesy. The answer to the German could launch an atomic attack against question that was emerging in a similar- the United States, to eliminate Russian ly piecemeal fashion in those same years industrial capability, and to attack The putative "lessons" of Cold War also played a role in the nuclear build- massed conventional forces and retard history implicit and occasionally explicit DIR-2-'83/11

in the foregoing pages are generally am- possibility, already mentioned in the without the partial remedy of an inquir- biguous and can be misleading. The Korean case, that a false historical ing press and other forms of public ac- lessons of history usually are. Sources analogy or misinterpretation of an event cess to some of what goes on behind quoted at Oslo reveal, for example, that may provide a wrong reason for doing closed doors. "Kremlinology" that reads the authors of NATO and Western rear- the right thing. Soviet ambitions and in- between the lines and inferential reason- mament were often partly motivated and tentions, whether as fruit of Communist ing which attempts to construe private sometimes downright obsessed by his- ideology, Russian imperialism, traditional thoughts and purposes out of public acts torical analogies in their own lifetime paranoia, or all of these and more, may and statements are poor substitutes. We Hitler and appeasement and the Rhine- indeed be quite different from Hitler's and operate largely in the dark, a condition land and Munich s when Stalin, wrongly incriminated in specific cases that encourages paranoia and Soviet intentions, the satellization of like Korea and Afghanistan but still a Manichean views of the world. Eastern Europe, and the Prague coup grave threat to Western interests and Personal exposure to Soviet views that was so reminiscent of the Anschluss values. If so, Western responses have of the West, including those of sup- of 1938 were not really "history repeating basically been correct in principle, posedly well-informed sources, confirms itself" but distinct phenomena requiring however often miscalculated, self- that the other side does not do much bet- autonomous analysis. damaging, or based on misinterpreta- ter, despite the advantages they should The tricks that history plays may tions in specific instances. enjoy from the "asymmetry of informa- also be subtler. The Western interpreta- It ultimately depends on what tion" (a charming bureaucratic phrase tion of the Soviet role and purpose in the Soviet intentions and capabilities "real- recently used in the context of the MBFR outbreak of the Korean War, which made ly" were and are. The capabilities side is negotiations) between what is available Korea a crucial "turning point" in Cold hard to calculate, with wide margins for to the East and to the West about one War I, was probably a grave misinter- error and disagreements. The only cer- another. pretation. The significance attributed to tainty (a point also made at the Sym- Henry Kissinger, who has some the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in posium) is that intelligence estimates are claim to privileged knowledge and ex- 1979, a similarly crucial "turning point" likely to err on the side of exaggeration, perience, has described the net results in Cold War II, was nearly identical and because in that business the penalties in an ominous metaphor: was based in part on the "lesson" of for overestimating a threat are small and The superpowers often behaved like two Korea, as understood in 1950, and the penalties for underestimating one are heavily armed blind men feeling their others from recent Soviet and world great. As for intentions, we have seen way around the room, each believing history. If the interpretation of Korea was how this vital question was repeatedly himseff in mortal peril from the other, a misinterpretation, it is obviously not raised, only to be left unanswered on whom he assumed to have perfect vi- necessary, logically or factually, that the grounds of professional lack of com- sion. Each tends to ascribe to the other role and intentions usually ascribed to petence and evidence, at the Oslo Sym- a consistency, foresight and coherence the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in posium. The caution of the scholars is that its own experience belies Over 1978-79 constituted an analogous justified. We do not really know, in the time, even two blind men can do enor- misreading. But it may have been so, way historians and social scientists want mous damage to each other, not to and some historically unburdened and to and policy makers ought to know. The speak of the room. 7 authoritative analyses have argued that relevant archives are closed. The knowl- it was. edgeable actors prevaricate, which is [October 1983] On the other hand there is the true everywhere but in this instance

NOTES

1. But only some materials in the newly ac- 3. I.e., more than the obvious eight because from his Missouri home on being notifed of cessible archives. See lan Black, "Historians in any answer that includes partition it is possi- the North Korean invasion of South Korea, Attack Strict U.S. Rules on Declassifying ble that one part might be neutral and another "reflected on the way in which Hitler had built Papers" (Washington Post Service, here cited aligned, one part disarmed and another up his strength by piecemeal aggression in from the International Herald Tribune of armed. the late 1930s and concluded that the United September 13, 1983), for complaints about States must resist the North Korean attack." overly-restrictive access to documents from 4. The full text of the letter, dated March 28, the 1950-54 period also heard at Oslo and with 1956, and sent to Richard L. Simon, president 6. See for example Louis Dupree, reference to other countries as well. of Simon and Schuster, was published by col- "Afghanistan 1980," AUFS Report No. 37, umnist David S. Broder in the Washington 1980. 2. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962, Post, International Herald Tribune etc. in 7. although it caused particular alarm in Europe, September 1983. As quoted by Philip Geyelin, "Superpower the the is not on this list because, unlike those that Metaphor: Blind Misreading Blind," in are, it was widely regarded as partly or 5. This was true of Americans as well as International Herald Tribune, October 7, 1983. primarily an American rather than exclusive- Europeans. An Oslo paper notes that Presi- ly a Soviet transgression. dent Harry Truman, returning to Washington