THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES

by Bobbitt, Philip

  To the extent that American and Soviet policy makers confronted a symmetrical set of problems in a bipolar world, their policies can be discussed in this paired, complementary way. First, with regard to the role of nuclear weapons: for the United States to maintain the conflict but avoid battle, it had to deploy a force sufficient to deter attacks by the Red Army and also sufficient to prevent the development of a West German nuclear force that would otherwise be inevitably raised to defend the Federal Republic of Germany from Soviet coercion. This deterrence was impossible to accomplish with U.S. ground forces alone, owing to the large numbers of troops required. The American public would not, in the decades-long struggle that evolved, have stationed such a vast armed force abroad. Only by developing and deploying nuclear weapons to defend American allies, rather than just the American homeland, could the United States field a force that would accomplish its strategic objectives. By the same token, the Soviet Union could not permit the United States to enjoy a continental sanctuary in case of a European conflict. Long-range nuclear weapons were the only way for the Soviet Union to take the threat of a hot war to the American continent and thus be assured of a cold war in Europe.

  Second, with respect to force levels in Europe: once the U.S. homeland became vulnerable, the United States could not make its nuclear threat credible on behalf of Europe unless there were also ground forces under U.S. command in Europe that could both parry modest conventional threats (without forcing the United States to commit to a nuclear attack in political circumstances that would not justify such devastation) while at the same time serving as hostages whose destruction by a large-scale Soviet ground attack would immediately create the political will to ensure a nuclear American response.5 On the Soviet side, the USSR had to maintain forces large enough both to deter national uprisings—a mission that did not require vast manpower—and to check any temptation by the West to assist such uprisings—which might require large forces—and to exercise some coercive political influence over Western European states, espe-cially West Germany. To do less imposed enormous risks, because if the satellite states were to spin out of the Russian orbit, only a force of World War II proportions could bring them back in.

  Third, with regard to the use of force: the United States had to find ways to refrain from actually resorting to fire in Europe, because its logistical position—six weeks across the Atlantic from delivering its full force—was so vulnerable and attenuated. The USSR also had to show restraint, because a change in U.S. policy to fight an active war in Europe would, whatever the ultimate outcome, threaten cataclysmic destruction for the Soviet state. As a result no two states were as careful to protect the existence of the other—despite their rhetoric—as were the United States and the Soviet Union once the Soviets acquired the ability to attack the U.S. homeland.

  Fourth, with respect to the constraints placed on where the Long War was allowed to break into violence: the situation of both parties tended to confine conflict to areas outside Europe. So long as the United States was unwilling to use nuclear weapons beyond the well-defined limits of its vital interests, the USSR could maintain the conflict outside Europe and, it seemed for a while, even prevail in certain theatres. The United States, however, could neither acquiesce in nor escalate these conflicts: the former amounted to a loss in a campaign of the Long War, with incalculable effects on the cohesion and vitality of the Western alliance (which came to include Japan and other Asian states); the latter strategy would have cracked completely the domestic popular basis that, with some fissures, held together so remarkably for almost half a century, offering a rebuke to the Tocquevillian thesis that parliamentary republics cannot sustain a consistent foreign policy.

  An awareness of these four, mutual parameters—the nuclear competition, the level of conventional forces in Europe, the avoidance of conflict on the Central Front, and the eagerness to engage in the Third World—will assist us in briefly reviewing the short history of the Cold War, this last of the campaigns of the Long War. But before recounting this nerve-wracking if ultimately triumphant history, one observation must be made about the Alliance and Soviet strategies described above. Neither of these strategies discloses a plan for terminating the conflict; neither shows how its side will actually win. (In the parlance of contemporary Washington, neither side had “an exit strategy.”) Each side seemed to hope that the other side would collapse of its own internal contradictions and to believe that, if only the conflict could be joined and endured, history would vindicate one but not the other. Astonishingly, this appears to be what actually happened (although it was hardly obvious at the time that this would be the case).

  The first engagement of the campaign occurred, not surprisingly, in Germany. The Marshall Plan, which was begun as a program of reconstruction for Britain, France, and other Western European states, was soon extended to Germany. By 1948 German nationals had assumed economic responsibilities for the new “Federal Republic,” sustained by American support. In late June a new currency, the deutschemark (DM), was introduced to replace the inflation-ravaged reichsmark (RM). In retaliation the Russians introduced a new currency in their sector. The Western powers were unwilling to allow this currency, over whose monetary policy they had no control, to enter the West through Berlin and so they introduced the new DM into West Berlin. This assertion of constitutional sovereignty in the divided city provided the spark for the first crisis of the Cold War. The next day, the Russians cut off all access by road, rail, and canal between Berlin and the West. The blockade lasted for eleven months. British and U.S. aircraft made almost 200,000 flights to Berlin, carrying 1.5 million tons of food, coal, and other stores.6 In May 1949 Stalin lifted the blockade. Although American forces had been mobilized to fight their way into Berlin—and although the Russian forces could easily have interdicted the airlift—neither of these eventualities occurred. One might say that a “crisis” is the form of battle that is customary in a cold war, and that distinguishes it from a “hot” one. Engagements in a cold war therefore can include either conventional battles (like the Communist drive toward Seoul in 1950) or crises (like the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962).

  The second engagement of this new phase of the Long War occurred in Asia, following a pattern that was to repeat itself in many different parts of the Third World. Beginning as a civil war, largely apart from the Long War, but fought, as in Europe, between parliamentary, fascist, and communist constitutional alternatives, the struggle for control of China entered its final phase with the withdrawal of the Japanese. Nationalist armies were given vast amounts of Western aid, but the corrupt and rigid system for which they fought proved unable to successfully deploy its superior forces. Promising land reform, an end to the dictatorships of regional warlords, and the extermination of a pervasive system of corruption, the Communists steadily gained support from China's people. In 1949—the same year as the Berlin airlift—Mao Zedong achieved complete control of China, and the American-supported forces of Chiang Kai-shek7 fled to the island of Taiwan, a former Chinese colony. Although the extent of Russian support for Mao has been exaggerated, this event was undoubtedly a terrible blow to the West. The United States did not wholly acquiesce in this development, however, and began to grope its way toward rules of engagement in Asia consistent with the parameters I have outlined above. Taken all in all, these rules have been a notable success—not as dramatic as in Europe—but probably as positive as could be reasonably expected.

  Events in China structured everyone's expectations in the next campaign: Korea. The USSR had declared war on Japan only a few days before the Japanese surrender in 1945, but did not fail to send troops into the Korean peninsula as the war ended. The United Nations (the international organization, not the wartime alliance) assumed responsibility for the peninsula and designated the United States and the Soviet Union to administer the south and north of Korea respectively. South Korea was more populous than the North, and the United States hoped that having established a democratic constituti
on in the South, popular free elections to unite the country would bring parliamentary institutions to the whole peninsula. The Northern leader, Kim Il-sung, refused, however, to take up the 100 seats in the National Assembly allocated to the North. After months of discussions with the Russians, Kim returned to Moscow with a well-prepared plan for the invasion of the South. Stalin had doubts about such an invasion, according to Khrushchev, and feared the Americans might return to the peninsula in force. Mao's opinion was solicited, and it was he who, in the end, persuaded Stalin that the United States would not intervene.8

  On June 25, 1950, the North Koreans launched a successful surprise attack on South Korea, capturing the Southern capital and trapping the South Korean forces within a narrow perimeter around a Southern port. In legal terms, this was an attack on the United Nations. The U.N. Security Council—with the Russian member absent in protest over the refusal to seat the Communist Chinese representative—voted to send assistance. After a dramatic landing in the rear of the North Korean forces, the American commander launched a counterinvasion of North Korea, driving north almost to the Chinese border. The Chinese then intervened in staggering numbers; urgent requests to Washington from the U.S. commander for nuclear weapons support were denied and the line of defense was not stabilized until the U.N. forces had been pushed back to a latitudinal parallel roughly marking the original division of the country. For two years there was a bloody stalemate, ending in an armed truce in 1953. This armistice was secured by the presence of U.S. forces and the extension of nuclear deterrence to the Korean peninsula. Perhaps as much as any other factor, this development led the Chinese to demand assistance from the Russians in producing nuclear weapons, a demand that the Soviet Union refused. This rebuff, disclosing as it did many other conflicts of interest between the two states, led to the break between the two great Communist powers and eventually to the triangulation of the Soviet/American/Chinese relationship. But before this could occur, the United States would be tested a third time in Asia.

  Mao's assessment of U.S. fortitude had proved to be a fateful error. Had it not been for the Korean conflict with its massive Chinese commitment of forces, China would likely have successfully seized Taiwan,9 owing in part to the greater difficulty of delivering effective U.S. resistance to Taiwan than to Korea. Such a step would have had incalculable consequences, but fortunately this did not happen, though there continued throughout the 1950s to be threats to Taiwan from Beijing. No longer, however, could China count on Soviet support.

  Stalin died in 1953, and the first of a series of meetings “at the summit,” in Churchill's phrase, took place in Geneva in 1955 among the parties to the Cold War. This led to the signing of the Austrian State Treaty, by which Four Power occupation forces were withdrawn and Austrian neutrality confirmed. Like the War of Spanish Succession, which it so much resembled, the Long War had its moments of successful diplomatic détente, and, also like the War of Spanish Succession, it was often driven by the local, national aspirations of populations in the occupied (or disputed) states. Khrushchev's secret speech to the Twentieth Party Congress in February 1956, denouncing Stalin and Stalinism, was soon circulated and led to a surge of hope in the states of Central and Eastern Europe that a new order was possible. Riots broke out in Poznan in June that brought the return to power of the Polish leader Gomulka, previously imprisoned for ideological deviations from Stalinism. A greater threat to the Russian satellite system occurred in October when the Hungarian leader Imre Nagy took power. In November he announced that Hungary would end its alliance with the Soviet Union and pursue a neutralist foreign policy. Political prisoners were freed; there was talk of holding genuinely free elections under a multiparty arrangement. In strategic terms this was by far the most important development in Europe since the Berlin blockade. The Russians agreed to a tactical withdrawal but almost immediately returned to Budapest in force and crushed the Hungarians. Although Nagy was given asylum in the Yugoslav embassy during the conflict, he was eventually imprisoned and executed on June 16, 1958.10 Carefully adhering to the parameters that were emerging to govern the East-West conflict, the Americans expressed “profound distress” and claimed to be “inexpressibly shocked” by developments11 but did nothing.

  These events not only were significant in themselves, as they crucially threatened the alliance system of the Warsaw Pact, but were important also for their relation to events in Germany. When an uprising ultimately broke out in East Berlin, it too was swiftly crushed with memorable brutality.

  The successful prosecution of war depends, as Clausewitz wrote, upon the proper coordination of political leadership, armed forces, and the passions of the people. If the East German people, ignited by the same emotions that inspired the Poles and the Hungarians, had brought about a new leadership for the German Democratic Republic (GDR)—if they had chosen parliamentarianism for Germany—this would have forecast the end of the Long War. It was, after all, over Germany's fate with respect to the three alternative systems of twentieth-century government that the Long War began and continued to be fought. As it was, the USSR took special care to see this did not happen.

  After the uprisings in Poland, Hungary, and East Berlin, the Soviet Union began to threaten to conclude a unilateral peace treaty with the GDR. From a legal point of view this would have forced the Western powers to negotiate with the East German state—which they did not recognize—for access to West Berlin. Such an assertion of constitutional sovereignty would have greatly inflamed the conflict: it would have amounted to an attempt to end the Long War through partition, much as the Thirty Years' War was ended. In 1648 the Peace of Westphalia had divided up the states and princes of Germany on religious lines; a Soviet peace treaty with the GDR would have done the same thing along ideological lines. This perspective helps explain why the West reacted with such horror to the prospect of a “peace treaty” and indeed provoked a panic among American leaders that is otherwise hard to understand today.12 Many assumed that recognition was tantamount to the seizure of West Berlin by the East Germans. At any rate, President Kennedy made it clear that he regarded this threat as the latest feint in the strategic competition between East and West* and promptly announced an increase in the strength of U.S. forces in the area by 217,000 men, roughly triple the previous number, bringing American troops to their highest levels in Germany in the post–World War II period.13

  Ten days later, the Russians replied to Western diplomatic notes, observing that “[f]or many years the United States has been evading a peaceful settlement with Germany, putting it off to the indefinite future. The American Note shows that the U.S. Government prefers to continue adhering to this line.”14 Of course this was perfectly true. The United States had decided to resist the partition of Europe, to continue the Long War, and thus was unwilling to agree to a peace. On August 7, Khrushchev ridiculed the American position:

  What provisions of the Soviet draft of a peace treaty with Germany could give the American President a pretext to contend that the Soviet Union “threatens” to violate peace? Could it be those which envisage the renunciation of nuclear weapons by Germany, the legalizing of the existing German frontiers, the granting of full sovereignty to both German states, and their admission to the United Nations? If anyone allowed himself to resort to threats it was the U.S. President.15

  Many persons hearing these remarks must have asked themselves why the United States was overreacting; and unless the dimensions of the entire conflict are appreciated, the American position seems petulant, absurd. It was in fact, as the perspective of the Long War shows, nothing of the kind, but reflected instead an acute appreciation of the fundamentally constitutional issues at stake. Moreover, there was, lurking beneath the cloak of sovereignty that such a treaty would throw over the East German state, a vexing problem. To recognize the GDR would have been to permit them to control not only access to West Berlin, but access out of East Berlin, as any state is permitted to do with its own borders. At this time, about 300,000 East
Germans were disappearing into West Berlin and thence to West Germany each year. Since 1949 three million persons had gone through Berlin to the West. This continued flow of young, talented, educated, and professional people was damaging in and of itself; it could at any time, however, erupt into a complete hemorrhage. The purpose of the Russian treaty was to stanch this flow, and thus to prevent a greater one. On the night of August 12 – 13, 1961, a concrete barrier up to six feet high and topped with barbed wire was erected in the Potsdamerplatz by communist “shock workers.” Similar barriers of greater height were raised at other points along the boundaries of the Eastern and Western sectors of the city. Building the “Berlin Wall” was a bold move by the Soviet Union and the wall's survival was, as Khrushchev later claimed, a “great victory.”16 This engagement, like the Viet Nam War, must be scored a communist success, even if, as in Viet Nam, the United States could not prudently have done more than it did. The West, though it brought up bulldozers backed by tanks and some infantry, never attempted to breach the wall and confined itself to complaints at the U.N.

  Roughly one year later, American photo reconnaissance disclosed that the Russians were in the process of installing ballistic missiles in Cuba with an intermediate range (1, 000 – 1,400 miles). The Cuban Missile Crisis has been widely misdescribed as provoking the United States into a threat to launch nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union if Russian missiles were not removed from Cuba.17 Actually, the president's carefully worded ultimatum stated that if nuclear weapons were used against the United States from Cuba, the United States would retaliate against the USSR, a very different matter, and a position well within the parameters of the tacit U.S./Soviet rules of engagement.* This ultimatum was coupled with a blockade of the island and preparations for invasion. In that context, the statement was not an ultimatum so much as an invitation to deal, and this is exactly what happened. In exchange for the removal of the weapons, the United States pledged not to invade Cuba; and the United States undertook to remove intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) based in Turkey that were targeted against the Soviet Union. Like the Berlin Wall, this was a tactical success for the Russians—Khrushchev uses the same words in Russian to describe both events in his memoirs18—but was it not also, like the Berlin Crisis, a strategic calamity for the USSR?