When Russia Is Ready

by THOMAS K. FINLETTER

WE WILL soon reach a point in the atomic race with Russia when, unless we become considerably more alert than we are, the supremacy in air-atomic power which to date has been ours will shift from us to Russia. The day is about to come when the Russians will have enough bombs and the aircraft with which to deliver them to make a sneak atomic attack on the United States which will destroy our major cities and most of our industry. The Russians are not likely to make such an attack unless they believe that at the same time and as part of the same assault they can knock out enough of our retaliatory Atomic-Air to make it possible for Russia to survive our enfeebled counterattack. So if we fail to build an air-atomic force which the Russians will fear to take on — and we well may — the supremacy in this absolute weapon will pass from us to them, no matter how many atom bombs we may have at the time.

We are moving relentlessly toward this date of absolute Russian air-atomic power, when they will have enough bombs and planes to destroy our cities, our industry, and, if we are not properly prepared, our ability to hit back. We should assume for the purposes of our national policies and planning that the Russians will reach this absolute point during the year 1956.

The Russians have and always will have one great advantage in the air-atomic race which we cannot take from them. This is the willingness— which they have and we do not—to make a sneak Pearl Harbor-type attack. Great as this advantage is, it can be beaten. The formula to beat it is to have a U.S. Atomic-Air so well defended and so overwhelmingly strong that the Russians would know that it could absorb a Russian sneak assault and then go on to destroy the Russian state in the counterattack. No one can stop the Russians from building the bombs and planes which will enable them to destroy our cities and industry in a sneak attack. We can, however, make it an act of national suicide for them to do it. But if we are to do this we need a radical change in our military policies and a searching restudy of our foreign policy.

We are coming to the end of a clearly defined first phase in the history of atomic weapons. We are about to enter another phase, in which conditions will be wholly different. In the first phase the United States was safe; the atomic bomb was a powerful asset in the American arsenal. In the second phase the atom bomb in the hands of the Russians will become a vital threat to our safety.

The moment it was certain that fission atomic weapons could be made, the military tactics and strategy which had been in use up to that time became obsolete and the power relationships of the nations were profoundly altered. This was not recognized at the time, and it is not fully understood even now when the fusion weapon—the terrible hydrogen bomb— has been invented and we are entering the time of atomic plenty, when atomic bombs of all kinds will be available to us and the Russians in great quantities.

Copyright 1954, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston 16, Mass. All rights reserved.

We have been slow to realize how serious this Russian atomic threat will be, because during this Phase I — in which we still are — we have been far ahead of the Russians in air-atomic power. From the beginning of Phase I in August, 1945, until September, 1949, the United States alone had the atomic bomb. There was no reason for our fearing the Russians then.

There was not much more reason for fearing them after they did explode their first fission device in the autumn of 1949. A few bombs in the hands of the Russians were not a serious menace. But when the Russians reach the point of having enough bombs and enough airplanes to deliver them to destroy in a single sneak blow the cities and major industry of the United States, then we enter a new era, which I shall call Phase II.

2

DURING Phase I when we were ahead in the atomic race it would have been foolish for the Russians to attack us or to allow a situation to arise which would have led to general wars. The Russians were not foolish. They have conducted their foreign policy since 1945 with due deference to the airatomic power of the United States. They have been difficult and truculent. They have allowed their Chinese Communist junior partner to be very aggressive in the Far East. But they have been careful not to allow any of their policies, irritating though they might be, to get near the point of producing general war with the United States.

We may expect the Russians during Phase II to be much more aggressive in their foreign policy, to be considerably more willing to risk war. They will know that we, the United States, will be less ready to take offense when we know that the destruction of our cities and our industry may be the result of our being too oflended. And I fear also that when the fact of this Russian Phase II atomic power becomes generally known, it may have a damaging effect on the will to resist in some of the nations that are still free, and even possibly in the core of resistance to Communism, the NATO community.

This is why some men think of preventive war. Moral arguments lose their weight in the presence of a simple logic: to live under a threat of obliteration by the Russians, at a time of their choosing, is intolerable. The Russian Communist government is not likely to hesitate to blow us to pieces if it thinks it would advance Russia’s interests, nor will the Soviet government be deterred by the possibility of heavy losses in the course of the attack and of our counterattack; it is therefore wrong, immoral, the proponents of preventive war argue, for those whom we have elected to run the United States government to allow the country to be put in such a position; whereas if we should attack the Russians before they get their absolute power we could destroy this threat. Why do we hand the Russians this advantage of being the only ones who would strike first?

The fact is that we are handing the Russians this advantage, and I believe that we shall continue to hand it to them. I do not believe that the present Administration, or its predecessor, or any Administration that will succeed it, would or will make preventive war. Nor do I believe that any United States government, even when we have passed into this dangerous Phase II, will do anything but seek a peaceful solution with the Russians. I agree wholly with this attitude. It would, I believe, be a betrayal of our people if a government of this country were to do otherwise than its urgent best to avoid atomic war.

At a lower level of discussion, I add that preventive war is also wholly impractical. No first, or sneak, atomic attack by the Russians or by us, even before the Russians have their absolute power, can knock out wholly the other side’s ability to strike back, unless the victim has been careless in his defensive preparations, which the Russians have not. The proponents of preventive war must therefore understand that if we take their advice we will have atomic bombs on American cities now, and in increasing numbers from now on, as well as on Russian targets. The phrase preventive war is a misnomer; the correct term is World War III. There are other practical objections, such as the fact that our air-atomic force is geared to NATO and cannot operate properly except as part of the NATO system—that is, with the agreement of our NATO allies.

We need, then, a new military strategy for Phase II. And we should start immediately to build the forces with which to carry out this strategy. Military strategy usually means how to fight a war. The new strategy of which I am speaking means something different. It means the organization of our U.S. military forces in such a way that the Russians will not dare use their air-atomic threat. The purpose of our new U.S. military strategy must be to concentrate with single-mindedness on preventing war from happening.

To do this the United States must build a U.S. Atomic-Air so well defended and so powerful in number and quality of its aircraft, missiles, and personnel that it can accept a Russian sneak attack and have enough power left over to go on to destroy the Russian state in the counterattack. It must therefore be, and it must be known to the Russians and to our allies to be, overwhelmingly defended and overwhelmingly powerful against the best the Russians can put up.

But, it will be asked, is this new? Has not this been our policy since the end of World War II? Have we not always concentrated on the Strategic Air, even before the build-up of the U.S. military establishment which started in 1950? Did not Winston Churchill say, in 1948, before the NATO Defense Force was organized, that it was U.S. airatomic power that was saving Europe from the Russian tyranny? And even after the Russians got the atomic bomb in September, 1949, they were respectful of the U.S. Atomic-Air; they were careful not to let their various moves against the free world or the aggressions of their junior partner China set off a general conflict. Has not the United States always kept ahead of the Russians in the air-atomic race; do we not now have and are we not planning for the future a Strategic Air of which the Russians are and always will be afraid? Why do we need to change our policies in any way, except to keep up to date with the changes in technology that are going on ?

It is important to understand that we are not building the kind of overwhelming Strategic Air for Phase II which will make the Russians fear to make atomic war. If we continue to think that we now have or are building an Atomic-Air that will continue to keep the Russians and the Chinese under control in Phase II as we have done in Phase I, we will find ourselves in deep trouble. This complacency about our Atomic-Air is the greatest weakness in our defense planning.

The reason the Russians did not use their airatomic power in Phase I was that they did not have it. They will have it in Phase II. The fact of great Russian air-atomic power compels our Strategic Air to a wholly new standard. In Phase I it was enough that our Air be able to deliver our stockpile of atom bombs against the opposition of an enemy ill prepared defensively, and with little offensive power. Now our U.S. Strategic Air will have to be overwhelmingly better than an enemy who will have concentrated the national effort of a great state on making its defenses as good as they can be and on building the best military and sabotage offensive it can to knock out by surprise our ability to counterattack, and who will have the bombs, the planes, and the missiles with which to obliterate our urban and industrial life.

There is no reason to be complacent about our ability to build a Strategic Air to this new and powerful level, or to think that we are now doing it. The standards of the Strategic Air for Phase II are much too low. If our Strategic Air is to be relatively so much stronger than the Russian Atomic-Air that the Russians will fear to attack, its absolute standards will have to be drastically improved. The Russians cannot have thought seriously of a direct attack on the United States at any time during Phase I; they did not have enough atom bombs to do it. That is, they did not have enough atom bombs and planes, combined — as a Russian attack would be—with a fifth-column sabotage operation, to knock out the U.S. Strategic Air.

The U.S. Strategic Air thus did stalemate the embryonic air-atomic power of Russia, and her conventional military power as well, during this Phase I. Russia’s use of military power so far has been vicarious. The Red Army has been inactive, and so too has the Soviet Long-Range Air Force. This is a fine achievement of the US. Strategic Air. But it was made possible more by the weakness of Russia than by the strength of the U.S. atom bomber fleet.

We took some chances in Phase I. The defense of the Strategic Air bases and of its fleet of counterattacking planes was not as strong as it should have been. The base structure, especially, was weak. And at one time during the Korean War we denuded our air defenses almost entirely. But we cannot continue to take chances like this in Phase II.

There is only one standard of Phase I which must be continued into Phase II. That is the clear superiority of our Strategic Air over Russia’s, both in bombs and in the means of delivery. The opposition to our bombers which the Russians will be able to put up in Phase II will be of a wholly different order from that of which they are now capable. The damage to our atomic force which the Russians will be able to do in their first blitz will be much greater. And the stakes of the struggle will change. As we come into Phase II the relative air-atomic strength of Russia and the United States may decide the survival or the destruction of the NATO alliance and the civilization of its members. The standards of the U.S. Strategic Air for this Phase II, in its defense and its offense, must be so much higher than those of the present as to make of it a force different in kind from what we have had.

In Phase I we have coasted on the strength of having first developed the bomb. The build-up of the Strategic Air which we made during Phase I was due in large measure to an extraneous event, the war in Korea. But now we are back where we cannot rely on external stimuli to make us do what we should to protect ourselves. Now we have no alternative but to anticipate the future, and to do what we know is necessary if we are to save ourselves.

3

THE Russians have shown that they are pointing toward some date in the near future which will be a peak of their air-atomic power. The great national effort they have put into their atomic program shows that their target date is near at hand. The pattern of their aircraft building shows the same peaking, no doubt with the purpose of arriving at a high point in the number and quality of the longrange bombardment planes and missiles at the same time that they get the number of fission and hydrogen bombs they want into their stockpile.

As World War II ended, the Russians started a great build-up of their air power. The program was to convert the 20,000 planes they had in their fighting units into first-class modern jet-driven aircraft. They started first to renovate their defensive airplanes, the interceptor aircraft, whose purpose is to knock down the attacking bombers. They gave us quite a shock. For after all our talk about the poor quality of Russian engineering, the Russian Air Force turned up with the MIG-15, a first-class interceptor, almost as good as our then best, the North American F86 Sabre jet. In some respects the MIG had better performance than the F86.

The Russian post-World War II long-range bombers had nothing like the same quality as the MIG. There were no planes in the Russian longrange fleet later and better than the TU-4, a copy of our now obsolete B-29, the big bomber of the war in the Pacific in World War II. Apparently the Russians, from 1945 to, say, 1950, were not interested in long-range bombers. This fits in with the theory that the Russians did not propose to make general war during Phase I — that is, until they got atomically ready. But they were interested in building their air defenses; not just the MIGs, but their radar systems and, soon after the MIG, a nightfighter interceptor capable of operating under all conditions of weather.

After the MIG the next high-class Russian jet to appear was a light bomber, the IL-28, a two-jetengined plane as good as the British Canberra, the best in the NATO countries. This was more disturbing than the appearance of the MIG because the Soviet light bomber would be useful in ground attacks by the Chinese Communists in Korea or Indochina, or by the Russians in Europe. Still, there was the American Strategic Air, which the Russians knew would be used if they were to attack NATO, and at this stage of the Russian aircraft build-up they had no advanced type of long-range bomber to compare wilh their line interceptors and light bombers. It seemed, at this point, if the pattern of Russian aircraft was a sure guide, that the Russians were not yet ready for a general all-out war with the United States and the other NATO countries. This comforting state of affairs was not to last long. For the Russians then started to build and renovate their Long-Range Air Force.

The reason is obvious. The bombs were about to come in to the Russian atomic stockpile in quantity. They therefore started to synchronize the bombers and the bombs, to build fine, fast, highaltitude, long-range jet aircraft of the modern type, comparable to the Boeing B-47s and B-52s which are the best of our own long-range fleet. They apparently have these new bombers in production. On more than one occasion the Russians have said that they are working toward a rocket missile capable of carrying atomic warheads at supersonic speeds from Russia to targets in the United States. The Russians have been accurate about similar claims in the past. They really did get a fission bomb when they said they would. And they came up with a hydrogen device on the date that Molotov announced in advance. They may falsify history by claiming to have invented everything that ever existed, but they seem regard the truth as a good tactic when they talk of their progress in the scientific revolution in armament.

The pattern in short is that the Russians are now synchronizing their atomic weapons with the necessary means of delivering them. The combination will give them their absolute air-atomic power.

4

IF WE try to guess what is in the Russian mind we shall, I think, reach these conclusions: first, that the Russians will not use their air-atomic power to destroy our cities and industry unless they think they can simultaneously knock out enough of the U.S. Atomic-Air to stop it from making an overwhelming counterattack on Russia; and second, that they are very busy working on a plan to do just that.

Here is where we in the United States are masters of our own fate. Because we will not start World War III, we cannot stop the Russians from reaching this level of absolute air-atomic power. But we can stop them from using it.

We may be sure that the Russians are working intensively on several plans of attack on the U.S. Atomic-Air. One plan is the direct military attack

—physically to destroy it, or enough of it that the counterattack of what is left will not do vital damage to the Russian war machine and the Russian state. They would do this by a combination of direct air attack on the U.S. atomic planes and bases in the United States and in other countries and by a vast sabotage operation directed at the same targets, the two to strike simultaneously.

Another line of the Russians to break up the U.S. Atomic-Air is to create political difficulties among the NATO states with the result that the U.S. Strategic Air bases in the NATO countries will not be available to the U.S. Air on the day the Russians choose for their attack. The Russians are making good progress on this line.

And, possibly most important of all, the Russians are waiting watchfully for the United States to falter, to let its Atomic-Air fall to a point where the Russian defenses can take care of enough of the U.S. bombers to keep the blow to a level that Russia can accept. And, as part of this line, we may be sure that the Russians are driving frenziedly to jump ahead of the United States in the scientific revolution, to rush their defensive electronics and defensive missiles ahead of our attacking bomber techniques, and to develop a ballistic rocket while we are still in the piloted-bomber stage — that is, to win the race for air-atomic power in the critical area of quality.

We can, I say, be masters of our fate about this. We can block the Russian plans. We can build our Atomic-Air to a level which will keep the peace in Phase II as it has in Phase I. Or we can fail.

If we let this battle for air-atomic supremacy go to the Russians, we will be in an intolerably weak position. The worst would be that the Russians, knowing they can knock out our Atomic-Air, will make an atomic blitz against us and our NATO allies. Those who argue that they will not — because they are winning the cold war anyway, or for some other reason — are dangerous counselors to listen to. But even if the Russians were to shrink from using their terrible power, their possession of air-atomic supremacy would be intolerable. Imagine a situation in which our survival was at the mercy of a decision of the rulers of Russia.

The NATO alliance would fall to pieces if the United States were to let the Russians win the race for air-atomic superiority. The United States would be back in its Fortress America, and the Fortress would not be very strong.

The first and indispensable step toward winning the race is to realize that we can lose it and that we shall lose it unless we make radical changes in our military planning. We are bemused by the ease with which we held our air-atomic superiority during Phase I. We must understand that the Russians were only warming up during Phase I and that the race starts for keeps only as we enter Phase II.

Unless we concentrate single-mindedly on combating the numerous Russian drives to break down our retaliatory air-atomic power, we will lose this race. I know that this requires the reversal of the main lines of our military thinking because it is rooted in the past and in the present — both of which are now out of date. We must have a totally different concept of the composition of our military forces than we now have. And it will be very difficult to have this concept because to have it we must look to a future and radically different set of conditions from those we have known and now experience. As things look now, we will not win this race with the Russians. In the interest of holding the NATO alliance and of our own immediate selfdefense, we should get urgently busy to win it.

5

THE keystone of our strategy to nullify this Russian threat must be to block overwhelmingly the several avenues of attack on the supremacy of our airatomic power which the Russians are now planning. This calls for heavy increases in the defense of our Atomic-Air and a great build-up in our base structure and in the number and quality of the counterstriking planes and missiles of our retaliatory airatomic force—both far beyond the inadequate Phase I standards in defense and offense we are now planning.

This would require the following major changes in policy: —

1. Remembering that the Russians must knock out a substantial part of our Atomic-Air before they dare use their own, we must improve our general air defense for the continental United States and for the rest of NATO territory so as to take a heavy toll of the Russian bomber stream before it can reach the bases of the Atomic-Air in the United States and abroad. The Russian direct attack on the Atomic-Air bases and planes would be from two sources: a bomber atomic attack with or without air-to-ground missiles (and, as science marches on, with intercontinental missiles) and an atomic attack from submarines by ship-to-shore missiles with atomic warheads.

The bomber atomic attack is now the most serious menace. To meet it we need a greatly improved air defense system, based on the principle of forward interception — that is, hitting the Russian bombers as far out from their U.S. targets as we can. We are now only sketching the beginnings of such a system.

2. We need a new structure of bases for the U.S. Air Force.

Bases are the most neglected part of the Air Force, its most vulnerable part. Bases always come last in the affection of the Air Force planner. First come the airplanes and the personnel. Far down the line are the bases without which the aircraft and the personnel are of no use. Here is the great opportunity for the Soviet to knock out the U.S. Strategic Air. We may be sure they have it in mind. We are disturbingly unaware of this critical weak spot. It is standard procedure in our military budgeting to cut the money for bases first, and to restore it last.

How the Russians must be counting on this! Even the bases in the continental United States are vulnerable, because there are too few of them and because individually they are not properly protected, granted the high importance of the Strategic Air equipment. A direct Russian attack, combined with a fifth-column sabotage operation, could take a dangerously high toll on our SAC bases unless we increase greatly the defense of them.

We could reduce the damage to the Strategic Air bases and planes in the United States from air attack and from sabotage to an acceptable level if we were to disperse our Strategic Air equipment by having more SAC bases in the United States and by building better dispersal facilities on each base, and by bettering substantially the defenses of each base. This would call for underground installations for SAC airplanes and important supplies and for other devices to protect them against direct or sabotage attack.

The SAC bases abroad need even more improvement. Foreign bases for SAC will be indispensable during all this Phase II. We shall indeed have to have them as long as piloted aircraft are used to carry the atomic attack. The range of piloted aircraft will increase with the improvement in jet engines, in aircraft design, and in refueling techniques. Someday, not very late in Phase II, nuclear-powered aircraft with practically unlimited ranges should make their appearance. But chemically fueled airplanes already can go great distances with refueling. Several years ago an Air Force plane flew around the world nonstop. But distance affects the effectiveness of the attack. Even after wholly guided and ballistic missiles supplant piloted aircraft, intermediate bases will be valuable.

The present base structure abroad is inadequate for Phase II. It is vulnerable to Russian direct attack because it is not thick enough. It does not have enough concentric rings at various distances from the Russian bases so that U.S. planes may stage safely and be widely dispersed against the Russian concerted D Day effort to knock them out. And the bases are not protected as they should be by underground installations for planes, personnel, and fuel and other storage. Underground installations and wide dispersal are doubly important in foreign countries, where protection against sabotage and direct attack is much more difficult than in the United States.

3. Perhaps most important of all, there must be more emphasis and more money spent on research and development. We stand a good chance of losing the race for quality. We are subjectively vulnerable on this subject. We seem to be incapable of admitting, even after the masses of evidence that have poured in on us, that the Russians can equal us in quality. We confuse our ability to massproduce with quality. The recent Russian claims of their jump to Phase III ballistic missiles should alert us to stop neglecting quality.

4. The quantity of the planes in the U.S. counterattack must be overwhelming. We must assume a Russian air defense at least as advanced technically as that of the United States; we must take into account the probable damage which a concerted Russian direct and sabotage attack on our Atomic-Air bases, aircraft, and personnel would do; and then, allowing a margin for error, we should have enough planes and crews left over to overwhelm the Russian defenses and destroy the Russian state in the counterattack. Our present plans are far short of this standard.

A Strategic Air such as this would be a wholly different force from that we are now planning. I have necessarily described it in general terms. It is, however, a difference between a force which would make it known to the whole world that the Russians would not dare start an atomic war and a force which by advertising weakness would encourage them to attack and would bankrupt U.S. leadership in the free world.

Numbers of wings in the Air Forces will not measure for the reader the true condition of our Strategic Air. For there are wings and wings. In the composition of the Air Force wing listing there are strategic wings, interceptor wings, fighter wings, and troop carrier wings. So it depends on what the wings are, and also on what the Russian defensive strength is. The all-important factor of quality is not revealed at all by the statement of the number of wings, nor is the condition of the base structure. That is one reason why they are so far behind.

The best, although imperfect, barometer by which the reader can judge whether a serious effort is being made to build a counterstriking Atomic-Air of the dimensions and quality proper for Phase II will be the dollars appropriated to the Air Force for New Obligational Authority each year. If this figure is below $18 billion in any of the next four or five years (the figure for the current fiscal 1955 year being about $12 billion) the presumption is almost conclusive that we are still not preparing for the terrible threat before us. If it is at $20 billion, the reader can be almost sure that the Russians will not be able to use their new air-atomic power either to attack the free world or to bully it into surrendering its freedom. A few years of figures like that and the level-off annual cost could be lower.

An Atomic-Air like this is not all we need in our military establishment. But it is the keystone without which the other elements are useless. If we are to have it, we shall have to make it the Priority I of our military establishment; it must have the first call on the dollars available to the military services. Only when the needs of this retaliatory force are fully satisfied should we allocate money to other military tasks.

It will be hard to get this principle accepted and this force built, not because anyone is likely to deny that our national survival depends on our having it, but because tradition and the way the military services are organized under the Acts of Congress make it almost impossible to set up a system of priorities within the military establishment. And without a system of priorities, no really effective countersiriking Atomic-Air can be built.

This is the first of two articles which the Atlantic is privileged to draw from Mr. Finletter’s forthcoming book, Power and Policy, to be published this fall by Harcourt, Brace. His second paper, ”The Strength to Win,”will be featured in the October Atlantic.