Tethering Hawks: U.S. Restraints in the Cold War
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE
INTERSCHOOL HONORS PROGRAM IN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES
CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND COOPERATION FREEMAN SPOGLI INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
By
Reed Jobs
June 2014
Adviser:
Scott D. Sagan
1 Abstract
The 2003 American invasion of Iraq broke the U.S.’s historic forbearance from pursuing a policy of preventive war. Recently, considerations of preventive war have come to the fore in the rhetoric of U.S. policymakers and academics. This thesis analyzes the U.S. restraints in historic considerations of preventive war. The period examined is the early Cold War. The cases analyzed are the American considerations of preventive war against the first and second Communist nations to develop nuclear weapons. The acquisition of nuclear weapons by each Communist state prompted the U.S. Departments of State and Defense to independently compile a litany of policy options which debated and weighed the political and military costs of preventive war. The primary source documents used in this thesis were recovered from a variety of sources, including the National Archives, where academically under-examined policy documents were recovered.
The documents examined reveal normative and theoretical restraints in each United States decision not to pursue a policy of preventive war. While the conventional narrative of the Cold War ascribes the phenomenon of peace to the dominant restraint of deterrence, this thesis proposes that each policy of restraint was instead created by several restraints, acting in concert. While current cases regarding considerations of preventive war are not examined, I hope this thesis elucidates how policies of restraint are formed. This thesis does not seek to replace the conventional narrative of deterrence, it seeks to augment it.
2 Acknowledgments
I first need to thank my thesis adviser Scott Sagan for all of his time, counsel, and patience. I feel immense gratitude to have had the opportunity to study under Professor Sagan, and working as his student, teaching assistant, research assistant, and finally thesis advisee has been the defining experience of my undergraduate career. Without his guidance, this thesis would not have occurred. I am very thankful to Professors Martha Crenshaw and Chip Blacker for their leadership in the Honors Seminar, and their availability in providing assistance and advice. I would also like to thank Shiri Krebs for her administration of the class. I owe Professor Gil-li Vardi a debt of gratitude for reintroducing me to my love of history, and for all of our excellent conversations – past and future. I would also like to thank Professor Norman Naimark for his support over the past years, he is an exemplary adviser and scholar. I would like to thank Colonel Joe Felter of CISAC for helping me navigate military documents, and for his continuing friendship. I would like to thank William Burr for his work as a scholar, and for his knowledge of the National Archives. I would like to thank James Goodby of the Hoover Institute for taking the time to be interviewed by me – it was truly an honor to speak to you and I absolutely love your work. I would like to thank my entire CISAC Honors class, I am certain I would not have made it without our small-unit cohesion. I would finally like to thank my family and friends. My roommate Patrick, Matt, Chris, Lucas, Maayan, Dan, Shiv and Taylor. My tenacious and brilliant sisters Erin and Eve for all their love over the years. Megs, Greg, Michelle, Brad, Tracey, Doug, Jenny, Amanda, Garrett, Ava, Kaitlyn, Brittany, Shannon, Scott, Elin, Nik, Sara, Mona, Richie, Gabe and Grace, you all know you’re awesome. Finally, my mom Laurene for her love, friendship, and unyielding belief in me. Thank you all so much.
3
Table of Contents
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………....2
Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………….….3
Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………….……4
Chapter 1…………………………………………………………………………….…………….5
Chapter 2…….……………………………………………………………………...……………19
Chapter 3…………………………………………………………………………………………30
Chapter 4…………………………………………………………………………………………58
4
Chapter 1 – Restraint to Action
On Tuesday night of the first week of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F.
Kennedy departed from Washington to attend a fundraiser in Chicago. Before his flight,
President Kennedy requested the hawkish, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to rise from his retirement and join the Executive Committee advising the President on Cuban options.
Acheson arrived in Washington on Wednesday, while the President was away, and quickly sought to bring discipline, decisiveness and unanimity to the Executive Committee. An epitome of bold, anti-Communist interventionist policy, Dean Acheson’s most famous contribution as
President Truman’s Secretary of State was convincing Truman to intervene in the Korean War.
In the subsequent decade he had largely retired from politics. Entering the ExComm meetings, though a breathing reminder of the former administration’s policies, Acheson was nevertheless widely respected as one of the foremost living foreign policy experts.
Acheson’s hawkishness had not atrophied with age. In the ExComm meetings on
Wednesday, firm in his conviction and design, Acheson argued that the United States should strike the Cuban missile bases, “immediately and without warning.”1 Concurring in this recommendation were the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who believed a surprise airstrike, followed by a general invasion, to be the surest way of eliminating the Cuban threat.
There appeared an unlikely opponent to Acheson’s bellicosity over the course of the weeklong ExComm meetings: Robert Kennedy. According to a Kennedy biographer, while
Robert Kennedy had been one of the most hawkish members of ExComm initially, “Acheson’s
1 Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), 215.
5 hawkishness had helped make a dove out of RFK.”2 At some point during a speech of
Acheson’s at the Executive Committee, the Attorney General turned to his brother’s speechwriter and counsel, Theodore Sorenson, and passed the note: “I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor.”3
In a diametric shift Robert Kennedy began to argue restraint in Cuba. This was not the first use of the Japanese analogy; Robert Kennedy later was seen convincing Acheson “my brother is not going to be the Tojo of the 60s.”4 While Kennedy was not the first to make the parallel between Pearl Harbor and Cuba, his belief in the necessity of a moral restraint was decisive in ExComm’s ultimate decision to advocate a restrained policy of a blockade.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is perhaps the most famous instance of the powerful influence of normative restraint in the Cold War. Historians and biographers of the period, however, attribute the influence of moral restraints in the Cuban Missile Crisis to the personal convictions of the Kennedy brothers. True, the fear of instigating a “Pearl Harbor in reverse,” was particularly acute among the Kennedys, and flew in the face of the recommendations of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, as well as those of the conventional experts, like Acheson. This restraint towards aggression has not been thoroughly examined by historians of the period, for historians link the restraint’s overt appearance here in the Cuban Missile Crisis to the personalities of the Kennedy brothers, instead of understanding the restraint in its own right.
Throughout the Cold War, American preventive force found itself restrained on several fronts. Evidently, the anti-preventive war norm was influential, as the Cuban Missile Crisis illustrates, however as a restraint, it was hardly alone. An examination of government
2 Thomas, 215. 3 Thomas, 215. 4 Thomas, 215.
6 statements, contingency plans, and intelligence reveals the existence of multiple, independent restraints on American considerations of preventive war in the Early Cold War period.
The three restraints this thesis examines are the anti-preventive war norm, the nuclear taboo, and deterrence theory. Conventional wisdom highlights the influence of deterrence theory
– a cost-benefit analysis of military capabilities – as the dominant restraint of the Cold War.
Recent scholars, however, have identified additional restraints on Cold War policymakers. In addition to the restraint imposed by the enemy’s military capabilities, restraint also originated from concepts of moral norms. Independent of deterrence theory, a moral aversion to the usage of nuclear weapons – what has been identified by scholars as the nuclear taboo – existed as a restraint on policymakers. The final moral restraint, as revealed in the Cuban Missile Crisis, is a norm against instigating preventive war. How deterrence, the anti-preventive war norm, and the nuclear taboo interacted in the minds of Cold War policymakers, and subsequently how these concepts were created into policy, is the focus of this thesis.
This thesis proceeds to analyze the relative strength of deterrence, the anti-preventive war norm, and the nuclear taboo in two case studies. First, three leading Cold War scholars will provide definitions of deterrence theory, the anti-preventive war norm, and the nuclear taboo.
After presenting conventional definitions, this thesis will address the chosen case studies chronologically. The first case examined is the American decision not to pursue a policy of preventive war against the Soviet Union in the years immediately following the USSR’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. The second case examined is the U.S.’s decision not to pursue a policy of preventive war against Communist China, in the years immediately proceeding and succeeding their acquisition of a nuclear weapon. Additionally, a document of U.S. contingency war plans against Communist China created during the early stages of the Vietnam War will be
7 analyzed in the Chinese case study. A concluding analysis of the case studies and documents examined will be last.
Definitions
Deterrence
Accounting for the phenomenon of non-use through analysis of deterrence, historian John
Lewis Gaddis in his work The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War explains:
“the development of nuclear weapons has had, on balance, a stabilizing effect on the postwar international system.”5 The ‘stabilizing effect,’ of nuclear weapons, has indeed “produced the longest period of stability in relations among the great power that the world has known in this century; it now compares favorably as well with some of the longest periods of grew power stability in all of modern history.”6
Gaddis’s analysis is comprised of the relationship between the United States and the
Soviet Union, and proceeds chronologically. Though Gaddis touches briefly on the relationship between the United States and the Russian Empire, his analysis begins in earnest with his research on US-Soviet relations immediately following the Second World War.
Gaddis addresses the precedent-setting norms against using nuclear weapons formed during Truman administration, his analysis, however, is on the ethical implications of using nuclear weapons, not of engaging in preventive war. “The first of the precedents Truman set was the most important: it was recognition of the fact that atomic weapons differed in character from
5 John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 231. 6 Gaddis, 245.
8 all other weapons. And so could not be dealt with in purely military terms.”7 This separation is vital to the development of a second independent restraint, the nuclear taboo, which will be discussed later. Gaddis augments his characterization of the Truman administration with his portrayal of a reluctant American entry into the Cold War.
Gaddis posits that the U.S. “did not welcome the onset of the Cold War,” and attributes
American entry to “a generalized sense of vulnerability,” coupled with “the indisputable evidence of Moscow’s unilateral expansionism.”8 While the term ‘domino effect’ had not yet been coined, Gaddis claims that government officials were deeply worried about a ‘bandwagon’ effect of growing Soviet influence. 9
Gaddis cites the experience of the Berlin blockade crisis as particularly formative in creating American predilection for deterrence. “Without access to Kremlin archives, it is impossible to say whether the deployment [of B-29 bombers to British airbases] accomplished its objective,” writes Gaddis, “but when the airlift proceeded without incident, it appeared that the bomber deployment had accomplished its purpose, and American officials drew the appropriate conclusions.”10 The success of the Berlin airlift, and the seemingly coercive power of the B-29 bombers in Britain had a major effect in convincing American policy-makers of the benefits of deterrence. Without any major material commitment, U.S. forces were perceived to have restrained Moscow from further aggression. The conclusions drawn by American officials, according to Gaddis, were confidence in “the extent to which credibility could be made to compensate for capability,” and “it had not involved explicit threats.”11
7 Gaddis, 106. 8 Gaddis, 38. 9 Gaddis, 42. 10 Gaddis, 110. 11 Gaddis, 110.
9 These cornerstones of deterrence theory, as laid out by Gaddis, are the foundations of his argument. In Gaddis’s analysis, the positive American experience of the Berlin blockade shaped the U.S.’s position towards the August 1949 nuclear test of the Soviet Union. The choices available to the United States following the Soviet nuclear test were, according to Gaddis, either
“a greater emphasis on conventional warfare capabilities,” or an augmentation of the nuclear stockpile.12 Given the already proven power of deterrence in the crisis of the Berlin blockade, when confronted with an atomic Soviet Union, “the United States could by no means abandon nuclear weapons [because of their value as a deterrent.]”13 Gaddis argues, even very early in the
Cold War deterrence was acknowledged as the best implementation of nuclear weapons.
Thus, Gaddis posits that Americans, while initially reluctant, quickly accepted the power of deterrence, as well as Truman’s crucial normative precedent that “nuclear weapons differ emphatically from all other weapons, and should be treated with corresponding respect.”14 This acknowledgement of a normative taboo on nuclear weapons Gaddis identifies to supplement his argument for the self-regulating power of deterrence. Gaddis expounds on the ethical norms surrounding non-use, writing:
[Americans] enjoyed at least a decade in which nuclear weapons could have been used without any realistic possibility of Soviet retaliation. What deterred the Americans – and caused them to embrace in practice the principle of ‘no first use’ – was the simple dilemma of disproportion: how does one actually use means that are clearly incommensurate with the ends one has view?15
Gaddis’s analysis, however, is not on the restraining power of the taboo in and of itself, but rather the extent to which the taboo augmented American deterrence. “Resort to what had come
12 Gaddis, 112. 13 Gaddis, 114. 14 Gaddis, 108. 15 Gaddis, 146.
10 to be thought of as the absolute weapon,” warns Gaddis, “to achieve less than absolute political or military objectives could only have had a cheapening effect: the result could well have been more frequent use, but less effective deterrence.”16 Here, Gaddis acknowledges the power of the nuclear taboo, yet presents it merely as one of many factors within the broader context of maintaining credible deterrence.
The focus of Gaddis’s argument is the history and formation of deterrence, and he extends his argument beyond the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, on to what he dubs the ‘Long Peace’ fostered by deterrence policy. Gaddis comments on the structure of the bipolar international system as, “[surprisingly] encouraging stability,”17 a complex characteristic Gaddis attributes to the caution of Washington and Moscow. Gaddis rejects personal leadership, economic dependence, or even morality as the causes of this observed caution. Rather, Gaddis argues, “it seems inescapable that was has really made the difference in inducing this unaccustomed caution has been the workings of the nuclear deterrent.”18 The ‘nuclear deterrent’ specified here by Gaddis is descriptive of the later Cold War, wherein the USSR and US possessed roughly equal arsenals, and had established second-strike capability. Deterrence, as illustrated earlier by Gaddis, operates outside of nuclear dimensions as well, and therefore is also explanatory in accounting for the phenomenon of peace in the early Cold War, during periods of nuclear asymmetry.
Critically, in terms of deterrence nuclear weapons are simply an extension of military capabilities. Therefore, in the years of the early Cold War, when the USSR did not possess any nuclear weapons, or had only a meager arsenal, it’s massive conventional forces nonetheless served as a deterrent to the United States, just as the United States nuclear arsenal served as a
16 Gaddis, 146. 17 Gaddis, 223. 18 Gaddis, 230.
11 deterrent to the Soviets. Deterrence, therefore, should not be restricted to cases of nuclear weapons, but instead represents the sum total cost-benefit calculation of military capabilities.
Thus, while deterrence in the Cold War conventionally is understood in terms of nuclear weapons, it may exist as a restraint independent of nuclear dimensions. For many Cold War scholars, and certainly for John Gaddis, deterrence is the cardinal restraint accountable for the phenomenon of peace during the long Cold War.
The Nuclear Taboo
The nuclear taboo, divorced from its significance to deterrence theory, has been studied in and of itself as a constraint upon American use of preventive war. Brown University professor Nina Tannenwald, in her work The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons since 1945 provides an excellent study of the history, development, and relative strength of the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. This work by Tannenwald represents one of the first and finest pieces of academic study on the influence of the nuclear taboo.
In developing her argument, Tannenwald first addresses differing explanations of historical non-use, rebuffing deterrence theory in particular. “Deterrence,” explains Tannenwald,
“is defined as dissuading an adversary from doing something it otherwise would want to do (and which is perceived as threatening) through threats of either denial or punishment, or a combination of these.”19 Tannenwald acknowledges the power of deterrence, especially after the advent of thermonuclear weapons by both the United States and the Soviet Union, yet rejects deterrence’s universality in explaining non-use. Augmenting deterrence, Tannenwald argues the
19 Nina Tannenwald, The Nuclear Taboo, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 32.
12 presence of a powerful taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. Tannenwald presents her argument against deterrence in three main prongs. Following her criticisms, Tannenwald offers her own explanations to the phenomenon of non-use through her study of the normative effects of the taboo against nuclear weapons.
In her first argument against deterrence, Tannenwald notes “there are a significant number of cases of non-use where deterrence simply did not operate. These include cases during the early years of the Cold War when the United States possessed a literal and then a virtual nuclear monopoly.”20 This prong of her argument is fairly straightforward, and is in contradiction with Gaddis’s deterrence narrative. While Gaddis claimed the experience of the
Berlin blockade in the early Cold War had a didactic effect in the formation of American deterrence theory, Tannenwald attributes non-use in this period to the precedent-setting differentiation of nuclear weapons developed during the Truman administration.
In a further criticism of deterrence theory, Tannenwald writes, “even when deterrence is applicable, gaps in the theory leave unclear on what basis deterrence actually operated.”21 While a more general criticism of deterrence than her first, Tannenwald supports this statement by criticizing the seemingly arbitrary criteria by which the ‘costs’ of deterrence were realistically measured. “Why did President Truman agonize over the possibility of using nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear adversary while President Eisenhower actively considered use of nuclear weapons in situations of less than compelling national interests,”22 asks Tannenwald. She goes on to elaborate on the scope of her criticism, claiming that it falsely “assumes a high degree of rationality on the part of the actors,”23 and that all actors ‘correctly’ interpret the meaning of
20 Tannenwald, 33. 21 Tannenwald, 33. 22 Tannenwald, 34. 23 Tannenwald, 34.
13 deterrence. She cites the experience of the Gulf War, and the failure of “20,000 warheads of the
US and Israeli nuclear arsenals,” to deter Saddam Hussein’s attacks “with conventional weapons” as clear evidence of the shortcoming in deterrence. “Here,” explains Tannenwald,
“normative factors appear necessary to any satisfactory explanation.”24 Thus, as Gaddis argued deterrence’s logic to be an analysis of costs and benefits, Tannenwald challenges the consistency of such analyses over time.
In the third and final prong of her critique of deterrence, Tannenwald writes, “that important causal factors appear to lie outside the theory. These include psychological factors, domestic politics, and, normative factors.”25 The decisive normative factor for Tannenwald is her titular taboo, which she defines as “widespread popular revulsion against nuclear weapons and widely held inhibitions on their use.”26 Forming the bulk of her research, Tannenwald tracks the normative power of the nuclear taboo from its inception, to the critical instances of the
Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Gulf War.
Tannenwald credits the origins of the nuclear taboo to President Truman’s “precedent that nuclear weapons were different,”27 and thus illegitimate. “Truman,” says Tannenwald, “was responsible for setting two conflicting precedents about the bomb: that it could be used in combat and be stunningly effective, and that it was not an ordinary weapon.”28 Congress’s creation of the United States Atomic Energy Commission to oversee America’s nuclear facilities not only aided in differentiating nuclear weapons as ‘different,’ but also brought moral questions into nuclear discussions. Tannenwald particularly credits the personality of AEC commissioner
24 Tannenwald, 35. 25 Tannenwald, 36. 26 Tannenwald, 8. 27 Tannenwald, 100. 28 Tannenwald, 98.
14 Thomas Murray, for his “outspokenness about the moral aspects of nuclear weapons,”29 and also takes note of Murray’s close relationship to President Truman. Tannenwald thus argues the influx of moral arguments against the arbitrary use of nuclear weapons, coupled with the distinctive manner in which Atomic Energy Commission managed said weapons, merged to create a taboo around the use of nuclear weapons.
Tannenwald also invokes the influence of the UN effort to categorically delegitimize nuclear weapons in this period as particularly important in the development of the nuclear taboo, claiming that the formation of the UN Atomic Energy Commission “created a permanent institutional forum for the stigmatization of nuclear weapons.”30 Though the UN Atomic Energy
Commission was short-lived, and the Baruch Plan was a very public failure of nonproliferation,
Tannenwald nonetheless maintains: “the UN played a central role in the creation and dissemination of antinuclear weapons norms.”31 These antinuclear weapons norms were born from the distinction of nuclear weapons by the UN as ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ “formally
[linking] nuclear weapons to previously banned chemical and biological weapons.”32
Tannenwald submits that this international distinction proved vital to the formation of the nuclear weapons taboo.
During the Korean War, when nuclear strikes were contemplated, Tannenwald credits
Washington’s non-use with “US leaders’ perceptions of a tentative nuclear taboo, which they associated with negative public attitudes towards nuclear weapons.”33 Citing public opinion
29 Tannenwald, 100. 30 Tannenwald, 101. 31 Tannenwald, 101. 32 Tannenwald, 363. 33 Tannenwald, 363.
15 polls, as well as the stance of President Truman, who by this point considered nuclear weapons
“morally repugnant,”34 Tannenwald thus evidences the constraining power of the nuclear taboo.
She not only posits the nuclear taboo as a powerful constraining factor, but rather as “[by the beginning of the 1960s,] a de facto prohibition on any use of nuclear weapons.”35 Hers is a powerful break from deterrence theory, and she credibly proves the constraining influence of the nuclear taboo during the Cold War.
In her concluding analysis of the post-Cold War era, Tannenwald concedes that the nuclear taboo “could unravel in several ways.” Tannenwald cites “changes in the nature of warfare and growing US hegemony,”36 as possible factors that might signal a significant change in the nuclear taboo. International terrorism, and a yearn for decisiveness abroad by US leaders might put “political leaders…under great pressure to consider [using nuclear weapons].”37
Concluding, Tannenwald acknowledges the post-Cold War era as a new international system, in which the nuclear taboo may find itself imperiled.
Anti-Preventive War Norm
The final restraint examined in this thesis is the anti-preventive war norm, already illustrated in the example of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Though apparent in the case of the Cuban
Missile Crisis, the anti-preventive war norm has not received academic scrutiny commensurate with the first two restraints. While recent scholars have given the anti-preventive war norm
34 Tannenwald, 363. 35 Tannenwald, 363. 36 Tannenwald, 383. 37 Tannenwald, 383.
16 greater attention, there has been only one major book written on the subject of the anti- preventive war norm in the Cold War context.
West Point Professor Scott Silverstone, through a political science methodology, tracks
U.S. decisions against instigating preventive war throughout the past fifty years in his work
Preventive War and American Democracy. Professor Silverstone adopts “a purely empirical approach,” to the discussion of “the normative implications of preventive war.”38 Silverstone presents a historical analysis through a diverse selection of case studies, from the Presidential administrations of Truman and Eisenhower, to the ExComm committee meetings of the Cuban
Missile Crisis. He concludes with an analysis of coercive anti-proliferation, and a study of the
Iraq War within the normative context of preventive war.
Silverstone begins his impressive work with by placing his own research in the broader literature of preventive war. He criticizes contemporary scholars, asserting: “in the existing research on the rejection of preventive war in [the Truman administration] Marc Trachtenberg and Dale Copeland have most definitively concluded that American military weakness and lack of readiness for war is the answer.”39 In refutation, Professor Silverstone analyzes:
Previous studies on the rejection of preventive war that focus on the material explanation fail to look closely at how these individuals actually characterized preventive war and the language they used when preventive war was under discussion, in both public statements and in classified discussions. What we find is that the vast majority of political leaders and government officials in the executive branch and in Congress, in both political parties, as well as the vast majority of those discussing preventive war in contemporary academic works, in the press, and in books for general readers, refused to carefully consider the strategic dimensions of preventive war because they had previously rejected the idea on normative grounds. 40
38 Scott Silverstone, Preventive War and American Democracy, (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2007), vii. 39 Silverstone, 42. 40 Silverstone, 48-49.
17 These normative grounds are what Silverstone explores in his work. His empirical study of personal statements, public opinion polls, and strategic decision-making support his analysis of the impressive normative restraint of preventive war. Silverstone does not incorporate deterrence or the anti-preventive war norm as explanative in his analysis, and solely focuses on the normative influence of the anti-preventive war norm on policymakers. His conclusion is sound, however his omission of an analysis of additional restraints limits the applicability of his findings. While Silverstone is convincing in identifying an under-examined restraint in the field, he is inadequate in analyzing the relative power of this restraint compared to others.
Evidently the anti-preventive war norm, the nuclear taboo, and deterrence each enjoy their own school of thought and literature, however little has been done to track their simultaneous influence, or the degree to which they interact and change together over time.
Primary source documents from the United States State Department and Department of Defense provide unique insight into how these restraints are formatted into policy, and the constructive and destructive effects of their interaction. Critically, the documents under examination have not yet been analyzed in terms of restraints by academics. The following pages will inspect the relative power of deterrence, the nuclear taboo, and the anti-preventive war norm as individual restraints, highlighting moments of their interaction and inaction.
18 Chapter 2 – The Soviet Question
The precarious tension between the United States and the Soviet Union changed strategically, in a fundamental way, with the successful test of a nuclear weapon by the Soviets in 1949. Previous to the successful Soviet test, realists noted that the Soviet acquisition of an atomic bomb would present the greatest risk to U.S. security in its history. Against this threat in the immediate post-WWII era, the United States engaged in the UN to prevent nuclear proliferation. The American Baruch Plan of 1946, which proposed international regulation of atomic energy was vetoed in the UN by the Soviet Union. Yet, beyond diplomatic and economic policies against Soviet acquisition of nuclear materials, the United States restrained from using preventive force, and roundly rejected it as an acceptable alternative. Constituting U.S. restraint were conventional principles of deterrence, coupled with restraints against preventive war.
These restraints are found in institutional form in the document NSC 68, which advocates U.S. restraint on the basis of deterrence and the anti-preventive war norm. The restraint of the nuclear taboo is not apparent in this document. According to Nina Tannenwald, the nuclear taboo did not factor into NSC 68’s advocacy of restraint, and is therefore absent from this analysis.
Once the Soviet Union successfully tested their first nuclear weapon, diplomatic and economic measures had clearly failed. In their wake, preventive war seemed the only available obstruction to Soviet nuclear capability. However, the United States continued to reject preventive war. The constraints acting on the U.S.’s recourse to force in this period were partially material, yet they also included novel political and moral dimensions. The creation of national security institutions during this period, and their subsequent publications, reveal an institutionalization of restraints.
19 In early 1949, the United States government approved a reexamination of its strategic nuclear policy, in reaction to evidence that the Soviet Union was itself developing nuclear weapons. Staff members of the departments of State, Defense, and the Atomic Energy
Commission were gathered in Princeton, on a “purely informal, individual basis,”41 to provide policy suggestions to President Truman. Attending were James Conant, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and George Kennan. Noted in the Princeton meeting was, “when the USSR has any atomic bombs a critical reexamination of our war plans will be required.”42 In preparation, policies reexamining the US’s stance on atomic energy and weapons were implemented subsequent to the
Princeton report. Many of these policies were preventive in nature, and used strategic economic policies to obstruct the USSR from developing nuclear weapons. In a letter to Senator McMahon, the Chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, Atomic Energy
Commission Director David Lilienthal wrote of the necessity to “[secure] the cooperation of other countries in control of exports of important atomic energy materials and equipment to the
U.S.S.R. and its satellite areas.”43 This control of exports constitutes a preventive economic policy by the United States, a policy which some were eager to extend into the realm of war.
Following the Soviet atomic test, the intensity given to the question of preventive war highlighted a diverse moral topography in Washington, a variance that had existed prior to the nuclear test. As early as 1946, President Truman privately wrote, “get plenty of Atomic Bombs on hand, drop one on Stalin, put the UN to work and eventually set up a free world.”44 While this statement was in the form of a private note, it reflects a divergent preference towards
41 United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949. Vol. I: National Security Affairs, Foreign Economic Policy, www.digicoll.library.wisc.edu, (accessed January 15th, 2014), 422. 42 FRUS, 425. 43 FRUS, 430. 44 Harry Truman, Strictly Personal and Confidential: The Letters of Harry Truman Never Mailed, ed. Monte Poen, (Boston: Little Brown, 1982), 31.
20 preventive war, even in the highest of offices. Joining President Truman, several top military officials espoused similar views on preventive war. Writing privately in 1946, General Leslie
Groves commented:
If we were ruthlessly realistic, we would not permit any foreign power with which we are not firmly allied, and in which we do not have absolute confidence, to make or possess atomic weapons. If such a country started to make atomic weapons we would destroy its capacity to make them before it had progressed far enough to threaten us.45
Against the private, favorable statements on preventive war given by few members of the
Truman administration, and from the Pentagon, there was a burst of political and media attention given to the anti-preventive war norm in American foreign policy. Some public intellectuals denounced preventive war on the grounds of deterrence, however many made similar arguments for explicitly normative reasons. Former Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, in a 1947 Foreign
Affairs article elucidated the constraining power of the anti-preventive war norm in American foreign policy by characterizing it as purely antithetical to American values. Stimson described preventive war as,
Worse than nonsense; it results from a hopeless misunderstanding of the geographical and military situation, and a cynical incomprehension of what the people of the world will tolerate from any nation. Worst of all, this theory indicates a totally wrong assessment of the basic attitudes and motives of the American people. Even if it were true that the United States now had the opportunity to establish forceful hegemony throughout the world, we could not possibly take that opportunity without deserting our true inheritance. Americans as conquerors would be tragically miscast.46
45 Leslie Groves, Diary, cited by George Quester, Nuclear Monopoly, (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2000), 42. 46 Henry Stimson, “The Challenge to Americans,” Foreign Affairs, October 1949, 9.
21 Clearly, the invocation of Americans’ ‘true inheritance’ is not only a call to the anti-preventive war norm, but it also evangelizes American moral exceptionalism to an extreme degree. In previous articles, Stimson vilified Hitler’s initiation of war against the Soviet Union, declaring aggressive warfare not simply a crime against a nation, but a crime against all humanity.47 While public opinion polls suggested that Americans were nearly equally divided along the question of whether or not they could trust Russia in the immediate post-war years, the majority decisively opposed the pursuit of preventive war.48
Along with former administration officials, public intellectuals weighed in on America’s strategic position. In 1949 CBS military analyst George Fielding Eliot wrote, “Americans would be reluctant to begin a war, doubly reluctant to begin one under the most favorable conditions…that is, by surprise air attack with atomic weapons. To do so might, indeed, be to forfeit that moral advantage, that inner assurance that our cause is just, which upbore our hearts through the darkest days [of WWII].”49 While this statement by Eliot captured the public zeitgeist, a few intellectuals, namely Bertrand Russell, did advocate for preventive war, however their ruminations remained on the fringes of the public dialogue.
Despite vague language, there are several distinct instances of the anti-preventive war norm appearing in formal U.S. foreign policy. In 1949, responding to President Truman’s statement of a Soviet nuclear test, “the acting secretary of state sent a classified cable to U.S. embassies and consulates around the world to provide guidance on this issue.”50 This cable, now declassified as part of the Foreign Relations of the United States, states, “it is clear that the danger of war does not spring from the policies of the U.S…everyone knows that the preparation
47 Cited by Scott Silverstone, Preventive War and American Democracy, (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2007), 65. 48 George Quester, Nuclear Monopoly, (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2000), 106. 49 George Fielding Eliot, If Russia Strikes, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1949), 23-24. 50 Silverstone, 66.
22 for aggressive war is impossible in a democracy and even more so in a coalition of democracies.
If there is a danger of war it stems from attitudes and policies of others.”51 While the motive of this cable is political, the language used is blatantly that of the anti-preventive war norm.
Therefore, not only was the anti-preventive war norm a powerful molder of U.S. foreign policy, but it was also viewed by policymakers as integral to the U.S. mission abroad. What this cable touches on is the point invoked most frequently by anti-preventive war proselytizers: that preventive war is against the nature of the American state.
The defining foreign policy of the Truman Administration would have to be that of containment, famously codified in the National Security Council document 68. While NSC 68 advocated a massive rearmament by the United States in response to the (newly nuclear) Soviet threat, it rejected a policy of preventive war, on political grounds. In a letter directive, President
Truman wrote to his staff, “after consideration of the Report by the Secretaries of State and
Defense, dated April 7, 1950, re-examining our objectives in peace and war and the effect of these objectives to our strategic plans, I have decided to refer that Report to the National Security
Council for consideration, with the request that the National Security Council provide me with further information on the implications of the Conclusions contained therein.”52 After addressing substantial material and military constraints on American capabilities to engage the Soviet Union in war, NSC 68 outlines the normative role the United States plays in the global stage, and uses normative language to reject preventive war. Classified until 1975, NSC 68 was designed as “a single statement of U.S. policy that could be used to enforce discipline and common purpose among the various branches of the government as American policy adapted to the changing
51 FRUS, 538-539. 52 Harry Truman, Letter to James Lay, April 13, 1950, www.trumanlibrary.org, (accessed January 20, 2014), 1.
23 Soviet threat.”53 Indeed, its very secrecy signals the influence of the anti-preventive war norm itself, for while similar invocations made by politicians may be attributed to a desire to gain popular support, the anti-preventive war language in NSC 68 cannot be so accredited. Rather, it reveals the true constraining power of the anti-preventive war norm in even the shrewdest
American military policy. NSC 68, though declassified in 1975, remained the bible of containment policy throughout the Cold War.
Like the UN Charter, NSC 68 does allow great license for U.S. policymakers to employ force for national defense, leaving the door open for interpretations of anticipatory self-defense.
However, addressing that loophole, NSC 68 virulently disavows aggressive warfare. Clearly,
NSC 68 states, “for [the United States] the role of military power is to serve the national purpose of deterring an attack upon us while we seek by other means to create an environment in which our free society can flourish, and by fighting, if necessary, to defend the integrity and vitality of our free society and to defeat any aggressor.”54 While sanctioning self-defense in purposefully vague terms, NSC 68 nonetheless bluntly ascribes purely aggressive warfare as against the role of the United States military.
In its preface, NSC 68 acknowledges the temptation of preventive war in the precarious strategic situation, as “any substantial further extension of the area under the domination of the
Kremlin would raise the possibility that no coalition adequate to confront the Kremlin with greater strength could be assembled.”55 Not only is this language indicative of preventive-war logic, but NSC 68’s characterization of the Soviet Union is also along similar, intractable lines.
Describing the strategic goals of the Soviet Union, NSC 68 claims,
53 Silverstone, 68. 54 US National Security Council, “NSC 68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security,” April 14, 1950, www.trumanlibrary.org, (accessed February 20, 2014), 12. 55 NSC 68, 4.
24 [Soviet design] calls for the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society in the countries of the non-Soviet world and the replacement by an apparatus and structure subservient to and controlled from the Kremlin…The United States…is the principal enemy whose integrity and vitality must be subverted or destroyed by one means or another if the Kremlin is to achieve its fundamental design.56
Thus, in no vague terms does NSC 68 describe the threat of the Soviet Union as an intractable, existential one. In a rare ethical admonition, NSC 68 characterizes the Soviet system as,
“[possessing an] extraordinary flexibility [of tactics, which] is certainly a strength. It derives from the utterly amoral and opportunistic conduct of Soviet policy.”57 This language places
Soviet policy diametrically opposed to that of the United States. However, despite condemningly characterizing Soviet expansionism, even when coupled with the analysis that further Soviet growth might render an anti-Soviet coalition inadequate, NSC 68 does not recommend preventive warfare to counter the grave Soviet threat. Instead, NSC 68 posits a broad policy of containment, “which is in effect a policy of calculated and gradual coercion,”58 with particular emphasis on democratic development abroad.
Specifically, NSC 68 rejects preventive war on the grounds that,
Resort to war is not only a last resort for a free society, but it is also an act which cannot definitively end the fundamental conflict in the realm of ideas. The idea of slavery can only be overcome by the timely and persistent demonstration of the superiority of the idea of freedom. Military victory alone would only partially and perhaps only temporarily affect the fundamental conflict, for although the ability of the Kremlin to threaten our security might be for a time destroyed, the resurgence of totalitarian forces and the re-establishment of the Soviet system or its equivalent would not be long delayed unless great progress were made in the fundamental conflict.59
56 NSC 68, 6. 57 NSC 68, 15. 58 NSC 68, 22. 59 NSC 68, 11.
25
Thus, NSC 68 rejects preventive war because it would fail to address or solve the fundamental conflict between the US and USSR. Instead of war, NSC 68 presents a strategy of deterrence, and stresses the importance of the ‘timely and persistent’ nature of U.S.-led democratic development abroad to curtail Soviet power. However, incorporated in the strategy of deterrence and containment are strong normative regulations on the interplay between the applicability of force, and the character of the American people and state.
NSC 68 goes to laborious ends to define the character of the American armed forces, in particular contrast to the totalitarianism of the USSR. According to the document, “[The
Kremlin] does not hesitate to use military force aggressively if that course is expedient to the achievement of its design. The differences between our fundamental purpose and the Kremlin design, therefore, are reflected in our respective attitudes toward and use of military force.”60
NSC 68 goes beyond describing the armed forces of the United States as non-aggressive in nature; it credits the United States with the particular distinction of being the global bulwark of
“integrity,” and of “free society.”61
Additionally, NSC 68 describes the United States as precedent setting in its foreign policy. Using normative language, force is made permissible only under dire circumstances.
“The resort to force, to compulsion, to the imposition of its will is therefore a difficult and dangerous act for a free society which is warranted only in the face of even greater dangers. The necessity of the act must be clear and compelling; the act must commend itself to the overwhelming majority as an inescapable exception of the basic idea of freedom; or the regenerative capacity of free men after the act has been performed will be endangered.”62 This
60 NSC 68, 12. 61 NSC 68, 5. 62 NSC 68, 11.
26 massive constraint on military prerogative is a normative one, and restricts the use of force to an unprecedented degree. Few contemporaneous documents, even in the public arena, give such an elucidated mandate on the virtue of normative behavior.
Balancing the unambiguous anti-preventive war norm in NSC 68 is an unfavorable assessment of Soviet military capabilities. Not only does NSC 68 advocate restraint on the basis of the anti-preventive war norm, but restraint is also advanced on the grounds of deterrence.
NSC 68 analyzes both the U.S. and USSR to be deterred by the other’s military capabilities, nuclear or conventional. Though at the time of NSC 68’s publication the U.S. held a virtual monopoly on nuclear weapons, the conventional forces of the Soviet Union nonetheless acted as a deterrent to U.S. aggression. “The ability of the United States to launch effective offensive operations,” observes NSC 68, “is now limited to attack with atomic weapons. A powerful blow could be delivered upon the Soviet Union, but it is estimated that these operations alone would not force or induce the Kremlin to capitulate and that the Kremlin would still be able to use the forces under its control to dominate most or all of Eurasia. This would probably mean a long and difficult struggle during which the free institutions of Western Europe and many freedom- loving people would be destroyed and the regenerative capacity of Western Europe dealt a crippling blow.”63 The destruction of Western Europe by conventional Soviet forces, therefore, serves as a deterrent to U.S. aggression, irrespective of nuclear superiority. The subsequent policy options recommended in NSC 68 reveal a concern for the asymmetry in conventional forces. This attempt at force parity by the United States is not characterized in NSC 68 as aggressive in nature, since the ability to deter the USSR conventionally would only make preventive war less necessary for U.S. policymakers, particularly given NSC 68’s stance on instigating preventive war. Therefore, the deterrence conceived by NSC 68 is double-edged: the
63 American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68, ed. Ernest May, (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1993,) 70.
27 Soviet Union would be deterred by the atomic and conventional forces of the United States, and the United States would be deterred by the conventional (and later atomic) forces of the Soviet
Union, with the knowledge of the unacceptable moral repercussions of aggression.
Recommending policy options, NSC 68 is famous for introducing massive military rearmament into the standard operating procedure of deterrence, which had previously involved only political and economic pressure. Conventionally, NSC 68 is understood as ushering in the
American military industrial complex, advocating: “to check or turn back the expansion of the
Soviet Union and communism, the document said, the West needed large, ready military forces.”64 This analysis is one based on deterrence and the anti-preventive war norm. The recommendation of large conventional rearmament not only would serve to deter the conventional forces of the USSR, but would also make preventive war less necessary. If, according to the document, “the capabilities of our allies are, in an important sense, a function of our own,” and if, “[an American] decision to summon up the potential within ourselves would evoke the potential strength with in others and add it to our own,”65 than the maintenance of
American potential is paramount to the maintenance of peace, and the lack of preventive war exigency. This potential, defined in NSC 68, is one not simply measured by military or material means, but also by “confidence and a sense of moral and political direction.”66 NSC 68 therefore balances the restraint provided by deterrence with a bold insistence of moral propriety.
As suggested by evidence in NSC 68 and FRUS documents, the anti-preventive war norm and deterrence were particularly active in the early Cold War. The decision not to pursue a policy of preventive war was heavily influenced by normative considerations, and such principles were transcended the public arena into secret government directives. While initially
64 May, vii. 65 NSC 68, 24. 66 NSC 68, 24.
28 hawkish in his Presidency, Harry Truman’s approval of NSC 68 a year after its publication suggest a fundamental change in the President’s view towards preventive war. In his farewell address, President Truman lectured, “now, once in a while, I get a letter from some impatient person asking, ‘Why don’t we get it over with? Why don’t we issue an ultimatum – make all-out war, drop the atomic bomb? For most Americans, the answer is quite simple: we are not made that way.”67
NSC 68 and the Soviet acquisition of nuclear weapons illustrate the complexity of policy design of the period, apart from Gaddis’s narrative of pure deterrence. Containment of the spread of Communism, the augmentation of conventional armed forces, and the maintenance of credibility are all found in NSC 68. These policies mirror Gaddis’s evidence for deterrence. Yet the influence of normative arguments, and the enshrining of moral elements in NSC 68 are a nuance absent in the narrative of deterrence. The policies of containment and proxy conflict of
NSC 68, founded in deterrence, are counterbalanced in NSC 68 by normative restraints. The combination of normative and deterrent restraints in NSC 68 suggests a nuanced, balanced policy; one which a plain narrative of deterrence overlooks.
67 President Truman’s Farewell Address, January 19, 1953.
29 Chapter 3 – Watching the Dragon Grow Teeth
In the early Cold War age of rigid international diplomacy, the United States found an intractable dilemma in the rise of a Communist state in Mainland China. A few short years after the end of the Second World War, the forces of the Chinese Communists led by Mao Zedong swept the American-backed Republic of China to the island of Taiwan. Diplomatic, military, and ideological differences pitted the interests of the United States against those of the Chinese
Communists in the subsequent decades. During the series of diplomatic and military crises that defined U.S./Chinese relations in the early Cold War, the United States contemplated a wide array of policy options towards the Chinese Communists. However, despite repeated opportunities, the U.S. was restrained from acting preventively against China. While various
U.S. government departments, or influential individuals held drastically different opinions on how to deal with China, these opinions were also restrained from materializing into action.
This chapter discusses the United States’ considerations of preventive war against the
Chinese Communists, both nuclear and non-nuclear cases, and will analyze the relative power of restraints in each moment. Deterrence theory, the nuclear taboo, and the anti-preventive war norm are each present in one or more of the cases examined. The cases examined provide insight as to how these restraints are thought of, implemented, and conflated by policymakers.
Through this comparison, relationship between the above restraints over time is apparent.
The evidence for these restraints may be found in declassified government studies and reports on China. These formerly secret reports on military and policy options with respect to
China over a period of fifteen years reveal several instances of the United States invoking restraint. Importantly, the restraints examined span nuclear and conventional contingencies. The
30 considerations by the United States against China may be divided into three distinct moments spanning the years 1950-1965.
The first consideration of war against China by the United States was during the initial phases of the Korean War, recently following the establishment of the government of the
Republic of China on the island of Taiwan (Formosa) in May 1950. United States military officials considered preventive war against Mainland China during this period as a contingency plan for the defense of Taiwan. Importantly, the character of war considered against China by the Joint Chiefs was conventional, not nuclear. This consideration of preventive war by the Joint
Chiefs was denounced by the State Department, who cited the utilitarian, material consequences of violating the anti-preventive war norm by attacking China. Ultimately, the contingency of preventive war was never adopted, seemingly vindicating the analysis of the State Department at the time.
The second consideration of action against China occurred a decade after the first, when intelligence surfaced during the Kennedy Administration of China’s nuclear weapons program.
Though intelligence on the level of development of the weapons program was imperfect, a vast amount of government time and energy was spent reviewing every available policy option for the
United States, with scenarios ranging from inaction to bombing. Unlike the previous consideration of action against China which was interdepartmental, this consideration was largely confined to the intelligence community, with a few included from the Executive. While documents from this consideration are sparse, restraints, particularly deterrence and anti- preventive war norm, are apparent.
The final consideration of war against China transpired in a similar manner to the first, as a contingency plan made by the military in the eventuality of direct Chinese involvement in the
31 Vietnam War. From declassified comments of contingency plans it may be importantly gleaned that unlike the preventive contingency plans surrounding the defense of Taiwan, these included nuclear scenarios. Yet, similar to the critics of the contingency plans of preventively attacking
China to defend Taiwan, and to the restraints in the Kennedy Administration, the critics of the
Johnson-era contingency plans invoke the nuclear taboo as a major restraint on their ability to conduct a large-scale war with China. While such plans were luckily never necessary, the consistency of government officials to cite utilitarian restraints to their military capabilities speaks to the relative strength of restraints during this period. Ironically, the strength of restraints in the early Cold War did not always incentivize compliance.
Two Chinas: the defense of Formosa
The first consideration of preventive war against the Chinese Communist regime occurred merely months after the establishment of an uneasy peace between the Chinese
Communist and Republic of China forces. In June and July of 1950 the United States
Departments of State and Defense individually began to analyze options available to the U.S. government. That May, the Chinese Communists and ROC had ceased armed hostilities, though no formal armistice or peace agreement was ever signed, nor had the United States even acknowledged the Communist regime as legitimate. On August 3, per a request by the National
Security Council, the Departments of State and Defense combined their analyses of policy options and associated comments into an interdepartmental report labeled, ‘Immediate Action with Respect to Formosa.’ Importantly, this report was requested only months after U.N. intervention in the Korean War, but before PRC volunteers intervened across the Yalu River.
While the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff included in the report remain classified,
32 comments by the Office of the Secretary of State on the Joint Chiefs’ recommendations are not.
From the content of the State Department’s comments, it may be inferred that the subject of the
Joint Chiefs’ report is the contingency of conventional preventive war against Mainland China.
The particular views espoused by the State Department in their comments on this contingency reveal a judgment of the situation founded on a quantitative interpretation of military potential as well as a strong invocation of the utilitarian consequences of normative violation.
In its comments on the classified report by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department concluded the contingency of preventive war against the Chinese Communists to be an utterly undesirable policy option. Since, “there is, as yet, no reliable intelligence information that an attack on Formosa is imminent,”68 any action taken on the part of the U.S. or Chinese Nationals would be preventive, not preemptive, and would thus carry with it the consequences of violating the anti-preventive war norm. As the nature of war with the Chinese Communists would be preventive, the State Department asserted, “the launching of preventive bombing attacks by either U.S. or Chinese Nationalist forces against the mainland or against concentrations in mainland territorial waters, however, would have most serious results and would be unacceptable from a foreign policy point of view.”69 Here the restraint argued by the State Department is not founded on the material capabilities of the Chinese Communists, but instead on the international opprobrium attached to normative violation.
The ‘unacceptable’ foreign policy consequences are specified by the State Department as a loss of support in for the United States in the United Nations. If the United States were to violate the anti-preventive war norm, it would likely face “major diplomatic problems with our
68 United States Department of State, Office of the Secretary, ‘Comments on the Recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Defense of Formosa,’ A Report to the National Security Council by the Departments of State and Defense on Immediate United States Courses of Action with Respect to Formosa, Washington: August 3, 1950, (declassified March 16, 1991), page 2. 69Defense of Formosa, 1.
33 relations with friendly governments.”70 Additionally, the State Department estimated that the foreign policy consequences could spill from the United Nations pulpit to the United Nation’s
Task Force in Korea. The initiation of a preventive war against the Chinese Communists could, according to the State Department’s analysis, provide the Chinese Communists with a diplomatic pretext to intervene themselves in Korea, as “other members of the United Nations contributing forces for Korea would be under great pressure to withdraw such support if Chinese intervention were afforded a pretext by action taken by us with respect to Formosa.”71 Thus as analyzed by the State Department, the consequences of violation of the anti-preventive war norm would be twofold: U.S. influence in the United Nations would be imperiled, and the Chinese Communists would be afforded a political pretext for their own aggression. Though what the State
Department was describing would only be China’s involvement in a war with a limited scope, the implications for precedent setting and escalation are enormous, and of great concern to the
State Department. While this analysis is heavily influenced by foreign considerations, and thus somewhat indicative of the State Department’s likely position, there is a conspicuous absence of any discussion of military capabilities. Nowhere in the document does the State Department judge the Chinese to be deterred by U.S. conventional or atomic forces, and this absence in analysis and conclusion suggests a predominant concern of normative violation.
Given the diagnosis of diplomatic isolation that would befall the United States if it were to be in violation of the anti-preventive war norm, the State Department cemented its criticism with a final commentary on the weakness of allied Chinese Nationalist forces. The Nationalist air force, would likely not be able to “achieve a serious military effect through the proposed
70 Defense of Formosa, 3. 71 Defense of Formosa, 2.
34 action [of preventive war,]”72 against the Chinese Communists, even if in concert with US air forces. Thus, even from a purely military point of view, the State Department analyzed that the pursuit of preventive war to be strategically disadvantageous.
Therefore, from a perspective of global diplomacy down to the situation on the ground, the State Department roundly rejected the proposal of preventive war on the grounds of normative violation. The central prong of the State Department’s argument is the penalization upon the United States of military and political isolation, which given the situation in Korea would hinder the efforts of the United States and vindicate the efforts of the Chinese
Communists. This argument by the State Department is significant in its invocation of restraint, however it is hardly surprising. What is surprising is the basis of normative arguments in utilitarian rhetoric, rather than morality. While NSC 68 disavowed preventive war on the grounds of American ‘values,’ here the State Department dismisses preventive war on the utilitarian costs it will inflict internationally. This justification for the anti-preventive war norm through utility becomes increasingly visible over time.
Due to the report from the National Security Council, coupled with adept leadership, the
United States thankfully did not pursue a policy of preventive war with Communist China in
1950. Following the Korean War, tensions mounted again with the Chinese during the 1955
Taiwan Straits Crisis, wherein the Chinese were ultimately deterred from aggression towards two islands near Taiwan by the presence of the United States nuclear umbrella around Taiwan. The experience was to prove formative for the Chinese decision to develop its own nuclear weapons project, which would lead to the second consideration by the United States of preventively attacking China in 1960.
72 Defense of Formosa, 3.
35 China and the Bomb
The Chinese Communist government began their nuclear weapons project in the mid-
1950s. While previously, Mao had spoken contemptuously of nuclear weapons, calling them in a 1946 interview “a paper tiger which the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people,”73 his position reversed in the following decade. According to archivist William Burr, one of the few scholars currently examining U.S. considerations of preventive war with China during the 1960s, “[it was] the 1954-55 confrontation between Beijing and Washington over the offshore islands of
Quemoy (Jinmen) and Matsu (Matzu) in the Taiwan Strait that Mao made his initial decisions to develop at least a modest nuclear capacity.”74 Given the apparent nuclear asymmetry of the
Taiwan Straits Crisis, “in January 1955, in the midst of the crisis, [Mao] authorized a full-scale effort to make China a nuclear power.”75 The pursuit of an atomic arsenal by the Chinese was twofold: they began construction of their own facilities while simultaneously importing scientific expertise from the Soviet Union.
Though initial progress on the Chinese nuclear weapons program was slow, a second
Taiwan Straits Crisis in 1958, “and U.S. nuclear weapons deployments on Taiwan reinforced, in
Mao’s view the wisdom of his earlier decision.”76 This led to, all in 1958, the creation of the
Beijing Nuclear Weapons Research Institute, the Northwest Nuclear Weapons Research and
Design Academy, as well as construction of the Tongxian Uranium Mining and Hyrometallurgy
Institute.77 Additionally, as Burr and Richelson note, “by 1960, construction work on a nuclear test site was also under way in western China, at Lop Nur.”78 While the Soviet Union had
73 John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 6. 74 William Burr and Jeffrey Richelson, “Whether to Strangle the Baby in the Cradle: The United States and the Chinese Nuclear Program, 1960-64,” International Security, vol. 25, issue 3, 2001, 57. 75 Burr and Richelson, 57. 76 Burr and Richelson, 58. 77 Burr and Richelson, 58. 78 Burr and Richelson, 58.
36 assured scientific assistance at the initiation of the Chinese nuclear program, Sino-Soviet relations by the end of the decade had cooled. According to Burr and Richelson, “the Sino-
Soviet aid agreement began to fall apart in June 1959, and at the time the Soviets ended their assistance, they had delivered none of the key components for the facility, much less a promised
‘sample’ atom bomb.”79 Thus, by the ascension of the Kennedy Administration, the Chinese nuclear program was on its own, and while “U.S. intelligence sources knew that China was pursuing a nuclear development strategy [they] had little specific knowledge of its extent and capability.”80 Yet by 1960 intelligence nonetheless began to appear of China’s nascent nuclear program, prompting the consideration of a wide array of policy options.
Intelligence and the Kennedy Administration
United States intelligence on the Chinese Communists nuclear weapons program in the
1960s was haphazardly riddled with errors in acquisition and correct interpretation. While intelligence analysts were relatively proximate in their timeline of a successful Chinese nuclear weapons test, this estimation was arrived at accidentally.
The first intelligence report provided by CIA on China’s nuclear weapon’s development was coalesced in 1962 from analysis of aerial photography of construction sites inside China.
The “estimate of 25 April 1962, NIE 13-2-62, ‘Chinese Communists Advanced Weapons
Capabilities,’ judged that enough uranium metal could have been produced by September 1961 for a single 200 megawatt load for an as yet undiscovered reactor.”81 Given the technical vacuum created by the departure of Soviet personnel in 1960, “a first test would be delayed,” the
79 Burr and Richelson, 58. 80 Burr and Richelson, 58. 81 Inside the CIA’s Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency’s Internal Journal, 1955-1992, ed. by H. Bradford Westerfield, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 245.
37 report concluded, “perhaps by as much as several years.”82 Specifically, this report assumed a design of a plutonium bomb by the Chinese.
New aerial intelligence in 1963 provided additional evidence for the plutonium theory.
While “gaps in information were still substantial, but a probable plutonium production reactor had been found at Pao-tou. Plutonium from this reactor alone, it was believed, could lead to a device in early 1964 at the earliest, and late 1964 or 1965 with even normal difficulties.” The level of progression analyzed in this report is staggering, and is in stark contrast to the analysis of the previous year. Beyond measuring capabilities, SNIE 13-2-63 “judged that there possibly were more plutonium production facilities than the one identified, however, and therefore the
Chinese perhaps could achieve a first detonation of a plutonium-based device at any time.”
Despite this characterization, the report concluded, “the Chinese probably could not produce weapons grade U-235 before 1966, and that 1968 or 1969 were more likely dates.”83 Observing the marked increase in Chinese nuclear production facilities in 1963, intelligence analysts thus incorrectly judged the production of these facilities to be plutonium, and their timeline reflects this judgment. Ironically, while the estimate of this analysis was relatively timely, their judgment on the type of nuclear weapon was completely wrong. The actual test itself, which occurred in October 1964, shocked the U.S. intelligence community.
While not a centerpiece of the Kennedy Administration’s foreign policy, questions about the correct U.S. response to the Chinese nuclear program reached as far as President Kennedy himself, who in the early 1960s flirted with the possibility of preventively attacking the Chinese nuclear facilities. In an interview conducted in 1964, William C. Foster, the Director of the
82 Westerfield, 245. 83Westerfield, 245.
38 Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, claimed the President, “felt somehow there must be a way in which the rest of the world can prevent China from becoming the kind of a destructive force which all of its public pronouncements indicate it desires to be.”84 To this end, Director
Foster quoted President Kennedy as remarking, “you know, it wouldn’t be too hard if we could somehow get kind of an anonymous airplane to go over there, take out the Chinese facilities – they’ve only got a couple – and maybe we could do it, or maybe the Soviet Union could do it, rather than face the threat of a China with nuclear weapons.”85 While Foster noted that these statements made by President Kennedy were his offhand speculations, and merely the product of his “thinking out loud,”86 their content is strikingly revealing.
In these remarks, President Kennedy exhibited little restraint to using force preventively against what he saw as the “major threat”87 posed by the Chinese nuclear facilities, with one notable exception: the anonymous aircraft necessary for the bombing. Implicitly, the scenario of bombing the Chinese nuclear facilities with American airplanes was less desirable to the
President than bombing Chinese nuclear facilities with anonymous airplanes, meaning the positive identification of an aircraft would carry with it consequences. The implicit consequences of aircraft identification could be a tactical compromise, or could be the diplomatic repercussion from the violation of the anti-preventive war norm.
Tactically, if the President had chosen to conduct a bombing of Chinese nuclear facilities, operating under the shadow of anonymity would carry with it significant advantages.
Anonymity would have similar political advantages, such as plausible deniability by the
Kennedy administration if the operation were to be a failure. However, besides tactical or
84 William C. Foster, recorded interview by Charles T. Morrissey, August 5, 1964, (36), John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program, www.archive2.jfklibrary.org (accessed March 11, 2014). 85 Foster, 36 86 Foster, 36 87 Foster, 36.
39 political considerations, the suggestion of aircraft anonymity by President Kennedy could be evidence for fear of international repercussions of violating the anti-preventive war norm or the anti-surprise attack norm. This second-hand quote of President Kennedy does not provide significant insight to differentiate whether Kennedy’s suggestion of anonymity betrayed tactical, or normative concerns, however at the very least these comments do reveal a preference on the part of the President towards operating covertly.
The inclusion of the Soviet Union in Kennedy’s remarks is a significant one, as this was not the only overture made by U.S. officials towards a Russian-American alliance against
Communist China. According to nuclear scholar Matthew Jones, Averell Harriman, a veteran
U.S. diplomat during the Kennedy Administration and Under-Secretary for Political Affairs by
April 1963, agreed with President Kennedy’s assessment of the Chinese situation. Harriman wrote to Kennedy conveying these beliefs, suggesting Moscow might agree to a joint action to threaten China’s nuclear facilities if Beijing would not agree to enter into a test-ban regime.88
When a U.S. representative was required in Moscow to negotiate the Partial Test Ban Treaty in
July 1963, Harriman was handpicked for the position. Jones writes that Harriman had been granted “authority to draw out from Khrushchev his view of the means of limiting or preventing
Chinese nuclear development and his willingness either to take Soviet action or accept U.S. action aimed in this direction.”89 Harriman’s overture was rebuffed by Moscow, as
“Khrushchev, embroiled in the struggle with Beijing over the leadership of the Communist movement did not want, at this stage, to lose ideological credibility by being pulled into a US-
Soviet condominium aimed at China.”90 Interestingly, according to this analysis of Khrushchev
88 Matthew Jones, After Hiroshima: The United States, Race and Nuclear Weapons in Asia, 1945-1965, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 418. 89 Jones, 419. 90 Jones, 419.
40 by Professor Jones, neither Khrushchev nor Kennedy seemed particularly concerned with anti- preventive war norm violation, nor did they speak of the possibility of deterring China. Unlike the earlier consideration of preventive war against the USSR in 1950, wherein the Soviets still possessed a conventional force large enough to be considered a deterrent, there is no mention on either the part of the US or the USSR of the deterrent capability of the Chinese conventional forces. Instead, restraint is imposed by the US and USSR internally, either from ideology or political feasibility.
Observably, there is a marked change in the restraining power of the anti-preventive war norm from the State Department’s rejection of the contingency plans surrounding the defense of
Formosa, and Kennedy’s ruminations on preventively attacking the Chinese nuclear weapons facilities. While both cases analyzed China to be a major threat to U.S. interests, the argument of the diplomatic repercussions of violating the anti-preventive war norm is seemingly absent in these statements made by President Kennedy. Instead, the President ruminated about including a foreign power in violation of the anti-preventive war norm. Where the norm holds, however, is in the explicitly covert nature of its implementation, likely due to the greater perceived consequences of overt action.
New Intelligence, Administration
Decisive intelligence surfaced during the early Johnson Administration of the imminence of a Chinese nuclear test, resurrecting again the question of preventive action. The response by
State Department policymakers to new intelligence on China in 1964 was one that hearkened back to the State Department’s position on preventive war with respect to the defense of
41 Formosa a decade earlier, as well as the ruminations of President Kennedy. The State
Department’s analysis rejected preventive war on the grounds of its negative policy implications, yet sanctioned the possibility of covert subterfuge as acceptable.
By 1964 the U.S. intelligence community had continued its surveillance of Chinese nuclear reactors, and believed a Chinese nuclear explosion imminent. A special NIE report on the Chinese nuclear facilities concluded, “the advanced stage of construction at a probable nuclear test site in Western China indicates that the Chinese Communists will detonate their first nuclear device in the next few months.”91 The intelligence report substantiated their conclusion with analyses of aerial photography from Chinese construction sites, coupled with estimations of
Chinese uranium mining. “On the basis of new overhead photography,” the report claimed, “we are now convinced that the previously suspect facility at Lop Nor in Western China is a nuclear test site which could be ready for use in about two months.”92 The report described,
“developments at the facility include a ground scar forming about 60 percent of a circle 19,600 feet in diameter around a 325-foot tower (first seen in April 1964 photography), and work on bunkers near the tower and instrumentation sites at appropriate locations is underway.”93 The report commented on the high degree of state resource allocation for the program based on the advanced progression of the Chinese site, stating intelligence “[suggests] that it is being prepared for both diagnostic and weapon effect experiments.”
This intelligence report augmented its aerial analysis of Chinese nuclear potential with intelligence of known Chinese nuclear production. Though only the Pao-t’ou reactor was identified by the report as operational, “photography of March 1964 indicated that major
91 Director of Central Intelligence, “The Chances of an Imminent Communist Chinese Nuclear Explosion,” Special National Intelligence Estimate, August 1964, www.nsarchive.org, (accessed March 2014), 2. 92 Chances of an Imminent Chinese Communist Nuclear Explosion, 2. 93 Chances of an Imminent Chinese Communist Nuclear Explosion, 2.
42 construction at the site…had apparently been completed.” The report specified, “if no major obstacles were encountered it would take at least 18 months, more likely two years, after the starting up of the Pao-t’ou reactor before a nuclear device would be ready for testing.”94 Perhaps hedging their estimations, in analyzing the Chinese production of fissile material, the intelligence estimate stated, “all evidence on fissionable material production in China indicates – though it does not prove – that the Chinese will not have sufficient material for a test of a nuclear device in the next few months.”95 Despite the uncertainty of the timeline projected by the NIE report, the
State Department had already developed a comprehensive study of the implications of a successful Chinese nuclear program, with an analysis of U.S. policy options. Though the full
State Department Study remains classified, documents summarizing and analyzing it are not. Of particular note is a Presidential memorandum written by Robert Johnson, a leading State
Department expert on China, which summarizes the currently classified longer study. While this memorandum was developed in April 1964, four months before the NIE report, it analyzes the same intelligence, albeit with less specificity.
Robert Johnson’s memorandum does not characterize the Chinese nuclear program as a threat, and analyses deterrence as the preferable policy option. The great “disproportion between
U.S. and Chinese Communist nuclear capabilities makes Chinese first-use of nuclear weapons highly unlikely,”96 according to Johnson. Rather than use its nuclear weapons offensively,
Johnson posited that the Chinese Communists would use their nuclear capabilities “to weaken the will of Asian countries, to stimulate division among them, to put political pressure on the
U.S. military presence in the area; and to obtain support for Chinese claims to status as a world
94 Chances of an Imminent Chinese Communist Nuclear Explosion 3. 95 Chances of an Imminent Chinese Communist Nuclear Explosion 3. 96 Robert H. Johnson, State Department Policy Planning Staff, “Implications of a Chinese Communist Nuclear Capability,” with forwarding memorandum to President Johnson by Walter W. Rostow, April 17, 1964, www.nsarchive.gov, (accessed March 11, 2014), 2.
43 power.”97 While these objectives are clearly against U.S. interests in the region, Johnson avidly denounced any U.S. posture beyond deterrence.
Answering the question, ‘Should the U.S. engage in pre-emptive military action against identified ChiCom nuclear facilities?’98 Johnson concluded, “[Preventive action] would be undesirable except as part of military action against the mainland in response to major ChiCom aggression. Prospects for covert action should receive continued examination.”99 Thus, Johnson amalgamates the views from the earlier State Department, and President Kennedy in his analysis of the situation. Not only does Johnson rely heavily on deterrence, including his conclusion that the most appropriate U.S. policy in Asia to be, “an implicit nuclear threat and a visible ability to deal conventionally with Communist aggression,”100 he hedges his rejection of preventive war with the caveat of covert operations. While Johnson’s motivation for including his suggestion of covert prospects is obscure, it is possible that he included such a provision because it is a loophole of semi-sanctioned preventive action within the anti-preventive war norm. If Johnson’s belief in deterrence were absolute, there would be no need for his desire to explore the option of subterfuge. Thus, Johnson’s language may be interpreted to be promoting the anti-preventive war norm along with deterrence as the basis for necessary restraint to preventive military action.
Johnson explored possibilities of preventive covert action in a currently classified study for the
State Department, “The Bases for Direct Action Against Chinese Communist Facilities.” While this later document by Johnson would be cardinal in assessing the State Department’s views towards covert action, and thus the influence of the anti-preventive war norm, there is no
97 Johnson, 2. 98 I believe such an action would technically be preventive, not preemptive. 99 Johnson, 2. 100 Johnson, 2.
44 evidence to suggest that Robert Johnson’s point of view towards the situation strayed from his previous analysis in the memo to President Johnson.
The Chinese and the Vietnam War
The final, and most extensive invocation of restraint against China during the early Cold
War occurred in the early stages of the Vietnam War. Scenario plans, while not classic examples of policy in action, are incredibly revealing in their measurements of feasibility to the influence of restraints.
By the time of the Vietnam War, no official Defense Department study on the possibility of Chinese involvement existed. Thus, a study on possible US/Chinese confrontation was immediately called for following the deployment of additional troops to Vietnam in 1965.
Specifically, a short-term report of possible US/Chinese scenarios was compiled in 1965 by a special study group of State and Defense Department officials. The special study group actually produced two major studies on China, a long-range report and a short-range report. The first study is a short-term report on possible escalatory contingencies in 1965, compiled in March of
1965. The second study is a longer-term one of U.S. objectives towards Communist China, projecting for the next five years. The long-term report on China was not completed until 1967, and while its discussion of U.S. restraints is rich, accessibility permits analysis of only the short- term report compiled by the Departments of State and Defense. Though the scenarios in the
1965 report are limited in that they presuppose Chinese violation of the anti-preventive war norm through involvement in the Vietnam War, the report’s analysis of U.S. policy options in response
45 to such a Chinese move is very rich in providing evidence for active, and occasionally ironic, restraints on U.S. military power.
Undertaken on March 8th, 1965, the purpose of the ‘Short-Range Report’ on Communist
China, “is to examine major confrontations between the United States and Communist China which might develop during 1965 from the situation in Southeast Asia, and the various political and military factors involved for the United States, with a view of determining which political and military goals and courses of action the United States and China might adopt in the event of such a confrontation.”101 This ambitious study was compiled “as a result of an agreement made between the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Deputy Undersecretary of State for Political
Affairs…it is under the managerial control of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff and under direct control of the Director, J-5, Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is the Study
Director.”102 The members of the study group included Lieutenant General B. E. Spivy,
Brigadier General J. M. Hightower, James Goodby of the State Department, R. L. Hewitt of the
CIA, as well as officers from the Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.
The first section of the study, titled ‘Principal Findings’ details the current political climate in the United States with respect to the Vietnam conflict, and assesses the general courses of action available to the U.S. “The assumed confrontation situations considered in this study,” the report specifies, “arise out of an existing conflict in which the Chinese are not directly involved and in which the U.S. has taken great pains to assure all interested parties that it has no aim other than to bring about a cessation of the DRV’s support for the Viet Cong subversive effort in Vietnam.”103 The limited objective of simply bring a cessation to the DRV’s
101 The Special State-Defense Study Group, ‘Communist China: Short-Range Report’, Washington: Government Printing Office, March 1965, (SDG-65-007), vi. 102 Communist China: Short Range Report, iii. 103 Communist China: Short Range Report, 2.
46 support of the Viet Cong is consistent throughout the document as the U.S.’s best case scenario, however it is juxtaposed to the risks inherent in punitive strikes against the DRV.
Given the limited American objectives in South Vietnam, the most favorable policy option against China presented is deterrence. The Chinese, “while contemptuous of the U.S. in many regards, they realize that if pushed too far the U.S. might respond with nuclear attacks against them.”104 The Chinese, according to the study, recognize the military power of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and while “the U.S. cannot press the air war against the DRV without risking some limited Chinese military involvement…the most likely forms [of involvement] do not present the U.S. with critical military problems or serious inherent risks of further escalation.”105
Giving a poor diagnosis of Chinese military capacity, the study substantiates the negligible risk of limited Chinese involvement by estimating, “the introduction of Chinese ground troops into the DRV, particularly if accompanied by threatening moves elsewhere along the Chinese borders, would raise world fears of an expansion of hostilities (and would probably be intended to have that effect) but would pose no direct military threat and would not necessarily presage their use in offensive operation.”106 Reconciling possible Chinese aggression with deterrence, the document analyzes “the Chinese are likely to adopt such risky courses of action only if strongly provoked.”107 The nature of American provocation of the Chinese is characterized as any perceived threats to Communist allies, namely North Vietnam. Beijing’s fear of American incursion into Communist Asia was taken very seriously in the study, which suggests the U.S.
“[defer or avoid] those steps which appear to threaten the very existence of a Communist regime in North Vietnam or to represent the first steps in an effort to deal serious blows to China itself.”
104 Communist China: Short Range Report, 3. 105 Communist China: Short Range Report, 3. 106 Communist China: Short Range Report, 3. 107 Communist China: Short Range Report, 4.
47 Deterrence, therefore, constitutes the first line of restraint in the report, as it reconciles limited
U.S. objectives and capabilities in the region. Considering a failure of deterrence, the study proceeds iteratively to describe four possible escalatory scenarios.
In the first scenario, Situation A, “the U.S. with RVN assistance has been conducting air attacks against the Viet Cong and military targets in the DRV for approximately 10 to 12 weeks…during this time, the U.S. has increased land-based and naval air strengths in Southeast
Asia for the aerial offensive in Vietnam.” The study postulates, “the effect of the bombing on the DRV’s government, military, and populace initially has been to draw them together with a heightened sense of nationalism and that there has been no significant reduction in the DRV’s supply and support of the Viet Cong.” 108 If the U.S. objectives in this scenario are to, “compel the DRV to cease support of the insurgency in the RVN,” the alternative courses of action proposed in this scenario are: “1. Maintain existing level of effort by U.S. and RVN against the
DRV [or] 2. Increase on an ascending scale the intensity and scope of the bombing in the DRV to include highways, railroads, ports and peripheral industrial centers in addition to military targets.”109 For the purposes of the scenario, it is assumed the U.S. chose option 2. Against this intensified conventional force, the scenario analyzed the Chinese options to be the continuation of indirect support of the Viet Cong, defensive air operations in the DRV, or a ground invasion of RVN/Southern Laos with regular DRV/ChiCom forces. The report estimated, “ChiCom participation in a large-scale invasion of Southeast Asia is highly unlikely at this stage…it would carry the gravest risk of U.S. retaliatory attacks on China.”110 The low level of conflict explored in Situation A is mirrored in it assessment as a low escalatory risk, as political and material factors would likely discourage the ChiComs from intervention. In the report’s appendix
108 Communist China: Short Range Report, 21. 109Communist China: Short Range Report, 22. 110 Communist China: Short Range Report, 9.
48 however, is Alternative Situation A, which details the policy options available to the U.S. were the Chinese to launch a massive, surprise preventive attack in Southeast Asia. Discussion on
Alternative Situation A will follow.
The second scenario, Situation B, describes, “Over the past 5 months, the U.S./RVN have flown about 4,500 sorties against targets in the DRV. This aerial campaign commenced with attacks against military targets and was increased in intensity and broadened in scope to include transportation targets and peripheral industrial centers. The destruction of the latter has partially disrupted the DRV’s small industrial establishment.”111 Against this action, the Chinese
Communists have stepped up their aid, including the providing of ‘volunteer’ aircraft and antiaircraft artillery. The U.S. objectives in Situation B are identical to those in Situation A; to compel the DRV to cease support for the Viet Cong insurgency. If Situation B levels of military pressure were insufficient to achieve the U.S. objective, the report analyzes two possible alternative courses of action to the U.S. – “increase military pressures against the Viet Cong and
DRV, [or] increase military pressures against Viet Cong, DRV and ChiComs including offensive action against South China Bases.”112 The second course of action, to include offensive action against the South China Bases is not included in the analysis of Situation B, instead it is explored in Alternative Situation A.
The analysis of the course of action in Situation B – an increase in conventional forces against the Viet Cong and DRV – is methodically explored in the remainder of the second scenario. Judging the U.S. air force and navy to possess the necessary capacity for such an escalation, the report suggests the effectiveness of an increased conventional attack to be
111 Communist China: Short Range Report, 15. 112 Communist China: Short Range Report, 16.
49 militarily quite high, disturbing DRV transportation networks “by 50 to 75%.”113 Additionally, the main difference in Situation B is the change in the nature of the U.S. commitment in
Vietnam. The “employment of substantial number of ground troops in Southeast Asia as well as a stepped-up air campaign, and consideration of offensive mining and blockade measures, “ against the DRV, “might stimulate pre-emptive moves on the part of either the DRV or the
ChiComs,”114 and would therefore require a reassessment of U.S. objectives in the region. This reassessment of objectives, however, is the only restraint mentioned in Situation B towards U.S. escalation in Vietnam. This restraint is characterized as a political one, for in order for troop escalation to presage increased operations, “procurement, mobilization, and budgetary requirements,”115 must be met.
The third scenario, Situation C, postulates, “the expanded U.S./RVN aerial offensive has destroyed or seriously damaged principal military targets, highways, bridges, railroads, ports, and communications and industrial facilities in the DRV, except those located in Hanoi.”
Against this escalation, “the Chinese Communists, however, are taking a hard line. They have stepped up their propaganda campaign against the U.S. in response to mounting U.S. pressure and because of the wavering of the DRV, ChiCom aircraft operating form bases in Hainan and
South China have engaged U.S./RVN planes bombing North Vietnam which has increased the attrition rate of U.S./GVN aircraft. Large numbers of CHiCom ground forces have been deployed to the DRV and have taken up defensive positions along the coast, the DMZ, and the
Laos border.”116 Given this rapid escalation of events, the report analyzes U.S. objectives to be:
“compel the Communists to cease their aggressive actions aimed at Southeast Asia, assist in the
113 Communist China: Short Range Report, 19. 114 Communist China: Short Range Report, 24. 115 Communist China: Short Range Report, 25. 116 Communist China: Short Range Report, 32-33.
50 establishment of a stable government in the RVN and defeat the insurgency.”117 To achieve this objective, the study offers three alternative courses of action: negotiation, increased military action against the Viet Cong and China to include action against South Chinese bases and ports, and the same as above, except to use nuclear weapons. While the U.S. “must be prepared to consider reasonable offers made by the Communists…[negotiations] offer little hope for achieving objectives,”118 and are thus omitted from further considerations.
The possibility of using conventional military pressure on the Viet Cong and ChiComs would be a massive escalatory step, and would “include targets in Hanoi…ChiCom air and naval bases on Hainan Island and South China,” and “can be accomplished but will require substantially increased logistic support,” 119 according to the report. These attacks would destroy large quantities of Chinese aircraft, and would be extremely effective from a military point of view. Engaging China in a large conventional war, however, would necessitate a reassessment of U.S. strategic objectives in the region. If “Chinese leaders [accept] the dangers of an escalation…the minimum objective of a U.S. decision to carry the war to the China mainland would presumably be to force Beijing to stop using its bases, aircraft and maritime forces in support of the DRV.”120 Even these minimum objectives, as judged by the report, carry the minimum risks of increased indirect Soviet support, conventional stalemate with the Chinese, or the possibility of a massive Chinese land invasion of Southeast Asia. With deterrence still the dominating restraint, the report noted that the U.S. would need to “have a firm idea of what it would seek if the war escaped containment.”121 Were escalation to occur, the report identifies that future U.S. relations with China might be irreversibly marred, and “with ChiCom hostility
117 Communist China: Short Range Report, 33. 118 Communist China: Short Range Report, 33. 119 Communist China: Short Range Report, 34. 120 Communist China: Short Range Report, 38. 121 Communist China: Short Range Report, 40.
51 unchanged, we must be prepared for the problems created by an intensified and even longer drawn-out cold war.”122 Thus, the report invokes deterrence as the basis for U.S. restraint against escalation with the Chinese. Interestingly, the report also capitalizes on the foreign policy implications of anti-preventive war norm violation as an aid to U.S. dampening of escalation. Were the U.S. to engage the Chinese in open hostilities, the report judged escalation to be highly risky. Therefore, “preferably, U.S. attacks on Communist China should develop out of clear provocations, such as attacks on U.S. bases or ships on the high seas. In any case, the bombing of Chinese bases should be portrayed as a logical and military necessity outgrowth of military actions initiated by Beijing.”123 Here the anti-preventive war norm has a dual stabilizing effect. It ostensibly restrains U.S. forces from engaging the Chinese first, and if engagement were to occur, it limits U.S. retaliation as punitive, not aggressive.
The use of nuclear weapons, mentioned first here in Situation C, is not analyzed in this scenario. The discussion of nuclear escalation appears instead in later scenarios.
In third scenario postulated in the report, Situation D, the United States, “has increased frequency, intensity, and scope of air attacks against North Vietnam, extended to military and industrial targets in major cities, including Hanoi. Air strikes are being conducted against air and naval bases in South China…two U.S. Army division have been deployed to Thailand and additional land and sea power has been deployed to Southeast Asia.”124 Against this massive conventional escalation, “the Communists have now launched a major attack at the beginning of the dry season against South Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. The U.S. had about 14 days warning of the build-up for the invasion.”125 Were the Chinese to launch such an invasion, the objectives
122 Communist China: Short Range Report, 40. 123 Communist China: Short Range Report, 40. 124 Communist China: Short Range Report, 43. 125 Communist China: Short Range Report, 43.
52 available to the U.S. would be twofold: the restoration of a status quo ante bellum, with success allowing the adoption of additional objectives. The additional objectives considered in the report are:
1. Defend along the Mekong-Savannakhet-DMZ line with minimum ground forces and lunch major conventional air and naval offensives against enemy-controlled Southeast Asia and selected targets in China. (Targets in China to include nuclear facilities, a spectrum of military and military support targets, plus selected industrial facilities.)
1b. Same as above, except use nuclear weapons.
2. Conduct a ground, air, and naval offensive in Southeast Asia in order to drive the ChiCom out of Southeast Asia and to seize and occupy Laos and North Vietnam. (Concurrently conduct a major conventional air and naval offensive against all of China of the same magnitude and for the same objectives as in #1.)
2b. Same as above, except use nuclear weapons.
3. Conduct major ground offensive in Southeast Asia and against North Korea, and China in order to seize and occupy China, North Korea, Laos, and North Vietnam and destroy Communist control of these countries.
3b. Same as above, except use nuclear weapons.126
These objectives, progressing iteratively in terms of escalation, are accompanied with military estimates on personnel required, and expected casualties. In each case of escalation, the central decision is whether or not to use nuclear weapons to achieve the U.S. objective. In all of the military estimations, personnel requirements and casualties are drastically lower when nuclear weapons are used, and military feasibility on the use of nuclear weapons is universally deemed “excellent.” Additionally, the report judged, “the use of nuclear weapons close to or at
126 Communist China: Short Range Report, 43.
53 the outset of a large-scale air offensive against China would create far greater pressures for an early Chinese decision to back down than would the use of conventional weapons.”127 However, the report makes clear distinction of the necessary restraints on the marked advantages of nuclear weapons usage.
The discussion of nuclear weapons usage in Situation C yields a unique perspective on an ironic interpretation to the nuclear taboo. The report initially utilizes the taboo in its traditional usage, as a restraint on the benefits of nuclear warfare. This is understood through the report’s admission that the use of nuclear weapons “against even essentially tactical targets in Southeast
Asia probably would produce and overwhelmingly adverse reaction, from U.S. allies as well as the Communist world and the uncommitted powers.”128 Yet, despite of this admission, or perhaps because of it, the report makes a revealing admission. “Conceivably,” the report ruminates, “the early use of nuclear weapons might produce [an early Chinese capitulation] before a strong adverse world reaction could develop.”129 Here the nuclear taboo is employed inversely – it incentivizes early use of nuclear weapons to achieve military goals whilst still politically feasible. Not only does the report consider the benefits of this early usage from a military point of view, it also examines the political feasibility. “The initial use of nuclear weapons against atomic energy installation and selected military targets in China,” the report explains, “might be more easily justified especially if it resulted in an early Chinese backdown before further attacks had occurred, but would still involve serious political repercussions for the
U.S.”130. The presence of the nuclear taboo is addressed through its possible violation, as the report estimates violation would cause U.S. political isolation accompanied with “lasting
127 Communist China: Short Range Report, 54. 128 Communist China: Short Range Report, 54. 129 Communist China: Short Range Report, 54. 130 Communist China: Short Range Report, 54-55.
54 resentment against the U.S.” across the globe, with “no sure means of countering these adverse reactions.” 131 However, these utilitarian political constraints are not decisive in buoying the nuclear taboo in the report. While political repercussions are addressed, and characterized as grave – “there is a danger in many parts of the world…lasting resentment against the U.S. might be generated.”132 Therefore, “if the U.S. used nuclear weapons it would have to be ready to go alone and accept the political losses which it would incur.”133 Yet, the report suggests these political repercussions may be mitigated with two techniques. “The first would be to demonstrate convincingly Beijing’s intransigence and military aggressiveness…the second technique would be to begin making public statements, well in advance of the fact, about the necessity for using nuclear weapons in any major war with Communist China.”134 Thus, the report suggests that the United States could use China’s violation of the anti-preventive norm as a sanction for violation of the nuclear taboo. It also suggests that a propaganda campaign would seriously ameliorate domestic political fallout. Therefore, it is not for the conventional fears of violation which the report advises against the use of nuclear weapons. Rather, just as early violation of the nuclear taboo is the only violation conceivably politically feasible, it is on the basis of the perceived political intransigence of the Chinese Communists which instead restrains the authors of the report from advocating early nuclear war.
Restraints Together
Deterrence, the nuclear taboo, and the anti-preventive war norm not only coexist as important restraints on U.S. action; their intermingling may be destructive as well as
131 Communist China: Short Range Report, 55. 132 Communist China: Short Range Report, 55. 133 Communist China: Short Range Report, 55. 134 Communist China: Short Range Report, 56.
55 constructive. Particularly, this is evidence in the above Short-Range Report on China.
Deterrence in this case is used to justify preventive war restraint. However, the glaring problem acknowledged in the study is the disruptive influence of the anti-preventive war norm on U.S. deterrent credibility. “The U.S.,” the document analyzes, “cannot go very far in the direction of self-restraint without reducing the effectiveness of U.S. punitive actions and encouraging the
Chinese to conclude that it is unwilling to go further.”135 In the current (1965) conflict U.S. credibility, necessary for adequate deterrence against the Chinese, is strengthened through punitive action against the North Vietnamese. Paradoxically, these punitive reprisals are precisely what the Short-Range report judged would incense China towards intervention. Thus, the U.S. is in a caught in a disastrous trap. Unable to secure credibility through reprisal due of the risk of Chinese intervention, the credibility of the U.S. deterrent against the Chinese therefore diminishes. This paradox of credibility is acknowledged, but not answered in the report, which only goes as far as to warn the readers that increased punitive action against the DRV would carry with it serious political risk.
Discussing the possible use of nuclear weapons, the document is evenly balanced in weighing military benefits against political costs. In the event of a large-scale war with China, the study concludes, “it is conceivable that the mission might be accomplished without nuclear weapons…large-scale conventional bombing of Chinese nuclear weapons installations and other critical targets throughout China might quickly bring a Chinese move to end the fighting.”136
However, intransigence of Chinese leaders to capitulate to conventional demands could produce
135 Communist China: Short Range Report, 4. 136 Communist China: Short Range Report, 7.
56 and adverse situation, wherein, “long before China had been battered into submission, the U.S. might be faced with overwhelming international and domestic pressure to end the war.”137
While the failure of deterrence to abate the U.S./Chinese War as postulated in this scenario may be interpreted to be counterbalanced by the strength of the above invoked nuclear taboo, this restraint is paper thin. Instead of its traditional role, the nuclear taboo in this scenario incentivizes the early use of nuclear weapons, while still politically feasible, to achieve military objectives far more decisively. Yet, overriding the political feasibility of violating the nuclear taboo is the restraint of opposed political intransigence. “With determined and fanatical enemies, like those we confront in Peiping and perhaps Hanoi, there is serious danger that they will refuse to do so as long as they are physically able to carry on, thus facing the U.S. with difficult problems of what to do next,”138 the report explains. The resolve of the Chinese
Communists is thus the lynchpin of the entire study. Given the “international and domestic pressure” built up against the U.S. to desist either nuclear or conventional bombing of Chinese bases, and the solely military advantages to be earned from nuclear bombing, the study presents a war with China in the most unfavorable of lights. Not only would U.S. objectives against
China be vague and ambitious, the capacity to achieve such objectives would be vitally limited.
Ironically, this analysis could very well be extended to describe a coterminous U.S. conflict in
Asia.
137 Communist China: Short Range Report, 8. 138 Communist China: Short Range Report, 9.
57 Chapter 4 – Conclusion
Maxwell Taylor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the Cuban
Missile Crisis, advocated preventive intervention in Cuba. Joined unanimously by various representatives of the armed forces, General Taylor’s recommendation to President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis was an aerial bombardment of the Cuban missile facilities, to be followed by a general invasion of the island. In General Taylor’s recommendation, conventional forces were deemed most appropriate. It is unclear whether the choice to use conventional troops demonstrated a fulfillment or nullification of the nuclear taboo. Certainly though, in this moment deterrence was absent. The conventional forces of Cuba did not deter the United States, nor did the United States believe the Cubans could be deterred by the nuclear forces of the
United States. While West Berlin, held by the Soviets effectively as a hostage against U.S. aggression was a point of restraint for President Kennedy, it was not sufficient to restrain
General Taylor from recommending preventive war against Cuba.
Were General Taylor’s recommendations adopted, the U.S. would not have been restrained by deterrence, since the possibility of deterring Castro was rejected. Additionally, the anti-preventive war norm would also have been crossed. Violation of the anti-preventive war norm was argued by Robert Kennedy to be unacceptable, and ExComm’s eventual recommendations hewed towards Kennedy’s interpretation. The triumph of the anti-preventive war norm in the Cuban Missile Crisis not only speaks to the norm’s influence; it also represents an exception to the dominance of the restraint of deterrence in the Cold War. Completely accounting for restraints on U.S. force, therefore, requires multidimensional observation.
58 Evidently, the restraints on U.S. use of force are diverse, and have adapted over the course of the early Cold War. Against the Soviet Union, the United States found itself deterred by the massive conventional forces of the USSR. NSC 68 judged any US/Soviet conflict to likely necessitate the use of atomic weapons, coupled with massive conventional losses. Paying no heed to the nuclear taboo, NSC 68 rejected the preventive option on the grounds of its unacceptable conduct, characterizing it as a gross violation of American tradition.
Against Communist China, in the 1950 case of the defense of Taiwan, where the United
States did not characterize the conventional forces of the Chinese Communists as a deterrent, the option of preventive war was again rejected. This rejection, while based on normative violation of the anti-preventive war norm, is distant from the logic of NSC 68. While against the Soviet threat NSC 68 denounced preventive war partially on moral grounds, the State Department in
1950 rejected conventional preventive war against the Chinese on a utilitarian calculation of foreign policy. While this decision was likely influenced by the coterminous situation of the
Korean War (prior to Chinese Communist intervention), the basis for normative invocation is markedly different.
The consideration of preventive force again against China, stirred by evidence of nuclear weapons development, was even more unrestrained in the mind of President Kennedy in the early 1960s. Kennedy mitigated the utilitarian foreign policy consequences of preventive war instigation in his overture to the USSR for assistance, as well as his specification of anonymity.
These actions – seemingly to diminish the cost of normative violation – are all within the purview of the anti-preventive war norm. Kennedy’s statements did not weigh heavily on deterrence, as did he speak of being deterred by the large Chinese Communist conventional forces, nor did he speak of the Chinese being deterred themselves. Rather, deterrence was
59 introduced against the Chinese in 1964, in Robert Johnson’s State Department memorandum.
Yet, Johnson’s memorandum gives no mention to a restraint on U.S. capabilities based on
Chinese capabilities; deterrence instead was founded on the belief that the Chinese would themselves be deterred by the United States, making preventive war unnecessary. Johnson’s memorandum included the possibility for sabotage, revealing a lack of restraint on the part of the
United States, a position in stark contrast to U.S. restraint against the Soviet Union in 1950.
The Short-Range Report on China reveals U.S. restraint against China not to be founded on normative principles of tradition, nor in the deterrent power of China’s capability, but rather in domestic political feasibility. The nuclear taboo, estimated by military planners to translate into domestic political repercussion provided the basis for U.S. restraint against China, a restraint completely divorced from the normative precedents of NSC 68.
Conventional narratives on the phenomenon of peace during the Cold War lean heavily on deterrence scholarship. While deterrence is certainly evident in the period, it is by no means the sole restraint, and the nuclear taboo and anti-preventive war norm especially have been under-examined by Cold War historians. Indeed, the document “Communist China: Short-
Range Report,” has not been scrutinized by any Cold War historians for restraints. Its inclusion into the Cold War canon is a necessary one, as it exhibits the counterintuitive results of normative interaction within military planning. The incentive for the early use of nuclear weapons – a decision made precisely because of the existence of a taboo – is a counterintuitive nuance largely absent in the scholarly literature, revealed only in the discovered plans themselves.
Independent actors, circumstances, and institutional practices distinctively influenced policymakers in each consideration of preventive war. No single narrative of these norms exists,
60 as the implementation of one may result in the violation of another. Therefore, each of these restraints deserves equal scrutiny by Cold War scholars – an equality which currently is absent.
A poverty exists in the current analysis of preventive war. Current scholars maintain to deterrence-centric principles of cost-benefit analysis to explain state behavior, without paying heed to normative restraints at play. The United States policy in the past fifteen years has exhibited a disregard for some of the normative restraints examined in this thesis, and by doing so set a precedent for their violation. A single case of normative violation does not necessarily suggest more to come, however it does alter the relationship of restraints to one another.
Therefore, normative nuances must be apparent to future scholars. The nuclear taboo and the anti-preventive war norm, each under-examined by current academics, continue to influence considerations of preventive war, and their disregard or inconspicuousness to policy makers will likely lead to mistakes. I hope this thesis has aided in elucidating some of these under- examined, yet hugely influential restraints.
“Given all the conceivable reasons for having had a major war in the past four decades,”
Cold War historian John Gaddis writes, “reasons that in any other age would have provided ample justification for such a war – it seems worthy to comment that there has not in fact been one; that despite the unjust and wholly artificial character of the post-World War II settlement, it has now persisted for the better part of half a century. That may not be ground for celebration, but it is at least grounds for investigation.”139
Investigation of the restraints holding back war is precisely what the aim of this thesis has been. Primary source documents have proven the existence of several independent restraints influencing policymakers, being constructed and deconstructed circumstantially by discrete
139 Gaddis, 216.
61 actors. Restraints under-examined by historians, such as the anti-preventive war norm and the nuclear taboo, evidently played large roles in the formation of Cold War policy. The resulting peace has not originated from any single restraint or circumstance, but the sum product of diverse restraints balanced by policymakers creating the future.
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