Principles & Heresies

PHRASES LIKE “strategic doctrine” and “military policy” have a certain distant and abstract quality that tends to deprive them of political sex appeal. Yet there is no issue—not even Vietnam or the disorder in our cities—which is of such intimate importance to every living American as the conflict over the strategic doctrine and military policy that have come to be associated with the name of Robert McNamara. What is at stake is, quite literally, the lives of three out of every five Americans, to say nothing of the survival of the United States and of Western civilization. The issue is too serious to be discussed, as it often is, simply in terms of the personality of McNamara. He is no doubt the principal executor of current policy, and if that policy is wrong, as I believe it is, his removal would be a necessity both practically and symbolically to make way for a reconstitution of our strategic stance. But McNamara, although he is one of the architects as well as the principal executor of present policies, is not primarily responsible for them. This responsibility rests first of all, of course, with the President and his predecessor, but more fundamentally it is lodged in the liberal outlook on world politics with its insistently suicidal refusal to face reality.

THE EFFECT of this outlook is disastrous for the basic requirement of all strategic thinking—estimate of the enemy’s intentions and estimate of the enemy’s capabilities. On the level of intentions, it produces a wilful blindness to the open and continuous proclamation of the philosophicopolitical doctrine of world Communist rule—a doctrine from which the Communist leadership in its fundamental statements has never deviated for fifty years, whatever its immediate tactics. But the self-induced blindness goes further. Even were it not for the underlying Communist doctrine, even were the Soviet Union simply an expansive great power in a bi-polar world, how would it be possible safely to ignore the Soviet military doctrine—freely available in every Soviet military journal—which uninhibitedly puts primary reliance on a sudden nuclear-rocket first strike? Communist intentions, both philosephico-political and military, are clearly and unreservedly aggressive. Since we are deeply committed to a second-strike-only policy and since our strategic potential is shaped to this policy, our sole defense against a Soviet knockout blow that would kill 120 million Americans is based on the concept of deterrence—that is, sufficient believable power to retaliate after a Soviet first strike with great enough force to inflict upon the enemy what the analysts call “unacceptable damage,” an equally terrible destructive blow. It is obvious, therefore, that the very existence of the country depends upon such unquestionable superiority in our striking force that under no circumstances would the enemy dare to carry through his avowed intention of striking a pulverizing blow at the United States.

FS

About the Author

Frank S. Meyer

Frank S. Meyer was a senior editor of National Review.

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PHRASES LIKE “strategic doctrine” and “military policy” have a certain distant and abstract quality that tends to deprive them of political sex appeal. Yet there is no issue—not even Vietnam or the disorder in our cities—which is of such intimate importance to every living American as the conflict over the strategic doctrine and military policy that have come to be associated with the name of Robert McNamara. What is at stake is, quite literally, the lives of three out of every five Americans, to say nothing of the survival of the United States and of Western civilization. The issue is too serious to be discussed, as it often is, simply in terms of the personality of McNamara. He is no doubt the principal executor of current policy, and if that policy is wrong, as I believe it is, his removal would be a necessity both practically and symbolically to make way for a reconstitution of our strategic stance. But McNamara, although he is one of the architects as well as the principal executor of present policies, is not primarily responsible for them. This responsibility rests first of all, of course, with the President and his predecessor, but more fundamentally it is lodged in the liberal outlook on world politics with its insistently suicidal refusal to face reality.

THE EFFECT of this outlook is disastrous for the basic requirement of all strategic thinking—estimate of the enemy’s intentions and estimate of the enemy’s capabilities. On the level of intentions, it produces a wilful blindness to the open and continuous proclamation of the philosophicopolitical doctrine of world Communist rule—a doctrine from which the Communist leadership in its fundamental statements has never deviated for fifty years, whatever its immediate tactics. But the self-induced blindness goes further. Even were it not for the underlying Communist doctrine, even were the Soviet Union simply an expansive great power in a bi-polar world, how would it be possible safely to ignore the Soviet military doctrine—freely available in every Soviet military journal—which uninhibitedly puts primary reliance on a sudden nuclear-rocket first strike? Communist intentions, both philosephico-political and military, are clearly and unreservedly aggressive. Since we are deeply committed to a second-strike-only policy and since our strategic potential is shaped to this policy, our sole defense against a Soviet knockout blow that would kill 120 million Americans is based on the concept of deterrence—that is, sufficient believable power to retaliate after a Soviet first strike with great enough force to inflict upon the enemy what the analysts call “unacceptable damage,” an equally terrible destructive blow. It is obvious, therefore, that the very existence of the country depends upon such unquestionable superiority in our striking force that under no circumstances would the enemy dare to carry through his avowed intention of striking a pulverizing blow at the United States.