The Russian-American War

by WALTER LIPPMANN

[THE military argument in this paper is a shortened but unexpurgated version of a lecture which I delivered early in April to officers attending the Air War College at Maxwell Field. I was speaking to men whose professional duty it is to prepare for war, and I was trying to make an objective and coldblooded appraisal, as every responsible citizen must, of our fundamental policy towards Russia in the light of the military situation. — W.L.]

I BELIEVE there is no such thing as an all-purpose military doctrine, good for any kind of war. A special theory has to be formulated for the particular kind of war that a nation has reason to think it might have to fight.

Now it seems clear to me that our strategic air power would score heavily in a possible war with Russia. But that does not mean that strategic air power is a universal or absolute weapon good for any kind of military purpose that the nation might have to carry out.

It is useless, and indeed positively misleading, to debate doctrines of air power or of naval power or of land power as if there could be one general doctrine good against Germany, good against Japan, good for the Chinese civil war, good in Greece, and good against Russia. In our national security we shall have to develop a special theory of air power — one which defines correctly the uses and the limitations of air power during a foreseeable period of time for a specific war with the Soviet Union.

Let us then remind ourselves why American military planning in relation to Russia, not in relation to anyone else, must be calculated in terms of air power.

The United States and its partner, Canada, are with respect to Russia and its satellites a continental island separated by the oceans and the polar ice from the Eurasian land mass. North America is for this generation, at least, superior in military technology and in industrial capacity. But North America is, and will continue to be, manifestly inferior in military manpower. Therefore, the American military establishment for a conflict with Russia must in t he very nature of things be built around offensive weapons which can act at long range and do not require large numbers of men in the theater of war itself.

Strategic air power is obviously the only kind of military instrument which meets these fundamental specifications, and American military planning must, therefore, be built around it. For, as against the almost complete self-sufficiency of Russia, the command of the seas can never be decisive. It is necessary, to be sure, to have command of the seas in order to get near enough to Russia to wage war. But sea power cannot itself wage war against Russia as it did, for example, against Japan.

Copyright 1949, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston 16, Mass. All rights reserved.

Quite as evidently American military planning cannot be built around the ground armies. They too are necessary in order to hold and to capture positions required for the operation of air power. But no one can suppose that America could form, or that Americans could be so mad as to try to form, armies to fight the decisive campaigns of a war with Russia on the ground.

Consequently, strategic air power is the principal military instrument available to America which can be used with serious effect, be it to implement diplomacy in the cold war or to wage a shooting war. The American military establishment, American strategic planning, and American diplomacy have, therefore, to be adapted to and regulated by the requirements, the uses — and we must add at once the very great limitations — of strategic air power.

Now I come to some things which many airmen may not agree with. Having recognized the primacy of air power for America in relation to Russia, I am not at all of the opinion that we can or should accept the claims for air power advanced by the school of Douhet, Mitchell, and Seversky.

All that we can regard as certain is that strategic air power is indisputably the best military instrument available to us, to the United States, in this particular conflict of ours with Russia. But to say that it is the best instrument available to us is not to say that it is the perfect, the absolute, and the certain instrument, or that it can be used effectively and decisively to achieve any purpose which the State Department, the President, the Congress, or the people might happen to think was desirable.

I do not think it at all certain or even likely that strategic air power can be used to back a policy of compelling the Soviet Union to end the cold war by an unconditional surrender; that is to say, by agreement to all the political and ideological objectives which we should like to see attained and on which they and we are opposed to each other. Nor does it seem to me certain or even likely that we could terminate a shooting war with a surrender of the Russian Army, the liquidation of the Soviet regime, the transformation of Russia into a democracy, and the extirpation of Communism throughout the world.

2

STRATEGIC air power may be our very best available instrument and nevertheless be a limited instrument, effective only if employed to back up limited political objectives. In my view, given our geographical position and the fact that strategic air power is our best available instrument, we must take very good care that t lie policy for which we use it is suitable to its capabilities.

When we examine the use of air power as our principal military instrument in a conflict with the Soviet Union, we must distinguish between the destructiveness of air power and its decisiveness as a military and political weapon. We shall find, I believe, that air power can be employed more successfully to prevent a war than to win a war; that it can be used more effectively to deter aggression than to compel a retreat, to hold fast rather than to push forward. Air power will support a guarantee, as in the Atlantic Pact, against organized military aggression much more surely than it could enforce an ultimatum in a crusade against Communism. It can be used to tell the Russians what they may not do outside the orbit of their armies; it can be used with very uncertain effect to compel them to do anything inside the orbit of their armies. Thus, while air power is tactically the most offensive of all weapons, strategically it is only a deterrent weapon, and politically it is a defensive weapon.

This is not the orthodox doctrine of air power. The orthodox doctrine of the knockout blow by air power rests on the major premise that the enemy will present a fixed target : that its armed forces are surrounded, unable to retreat or advance; that its own industrial areas are in fact vital centers without which it can no longer attack or resist; and that its armies are incapable of capturing other vital centers which cannot be bombed.

When applied to Germany or to Britain or to France or to Italy in the war of 1914-1918, which is what Douhet and Mitchell were thinking about, the theory had a very high degree of plausibility. The British, living on an island, were surrounded by water and presented the fixed target which the knockout blow by air power assumes. France, with its back to the sea, and a superior German Army in front of it, was cornered and, therefore, liable to be knocked out.

Germany, on the basis of the 1914-1918 situation — that is to say, with a military front in the West which contained her — was also a fixed target. For had her cities been devastated, the only place into which the homeless people could have retreated was the overpopulated and industrially backward region of Eastern Europe. By the same token Japan with its large population living on islands proved in fact to be an ideal target for air power.

When, however, we apply the theory to Russia, we find that these postulates on which the theory rests cannot be taken for granted. The theory, as I said, supposes that the enemy can be cornered and then knocked out. But the very thing it is most difficult to do with the Russians is to corner them. Their territory is vast; it is one sixth of the surface of the globe. Were their principal cities, which are not large in number, destroyed, there would still be countless towns and villages in which the population could take refuge.

Moreover, their own territory is not surrounded. Their troops can march out of it in many directions. Above all, we must not forget that very considerable bodies of their troops are today well outside of Russian territory, 500 miles west of their frontiers and in virtual possession of many great cities, from Berlin and Prague to Mukden and Shanghai. The Russians, therefore, are not cornered. The Russian cities are not the vital centers which the theory of a knockout blow by air power demands.

For when the theory speaks of vital centers, it means centers so vital that without them further resistance is impossible. In this sense of the term the Russian cities cannot be regarded as vital centers. Moreover, the Russians do not regard their cities as we or the French regard ours.

We must never allow ourselves to forget the historic defense of the Russians against an opponent who possesses superior military power. It has always been to abandon their cities, to scorch the earth, to evade his organized blows by retreating, and to wear him out by guerrilla warfare.

Now the Soviet leaders are not only Russians who remember how the Russians resisted Napoleon and Hitler. They are also revolutionary international Communists. And, as such, they are predisposed to the idea that Communism can be promoted in Berlin and in the Ruhr and in Paris, in Lorraine and in Rome, in Brussels and in Prague and in Warsaw, even if Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa, and the rest are bombed out. We must conclude that since the Russians cannot be cornered, the real objectives which General Mitchell had in mind do not exist in Russia. Therefore, it is not reasonable to believe that we could bring about the quick decisions which he taught could be had by the use of air power.

This re-examination of the standard doctrine of air power has shown, I believe, that the DouhetMitchell-Seversky theory, which was formulated between the two World Wars, is applicable in fact to wars of that type — namely, to wars in which the principal targets are presumed to be Germany, Great Britain, France, or Japan; to wars in which the enemy has not only lost command of the air over his territory but is cornered in that territory.

And so, while I repeat that I believe that our military establishment and our military planning and diplomacy must be built on the foundation of air power, I contend that the doctrine of air power, as formulated by Douhet and Mitchell, is obsolete for a war with Russia. If we do not reconstruct the doctrine, we shall once again, as the saying goes, be preparing for the next war with the methods and weapons which proved successful, or would theoretically have proved successful, in the last war.

3

I HAVE followed the public statements and propaganda of the Air Force in Washington, and I do not hesitate to say that in my view the American public and the Congress are being taught a doctrine of air power which would be sound enough if the hypothetical enemy were Germany or Japan, but is dangerously misleading as respects Russia.

I realize, of course, that the Douhet-MitchellSeversky doctrine of quick decisions by the destruction of the vital centers is not accepted unreservedly by all airmen. But it is such a plausible theory, even if it is a wrong one, that I think it is fair to say it has come to dominate American thinking about the possible conflict with Soviet Russia.

For the American people would very much like to believe that there is a way of winning a decisive victory by a short war, fought with big machines and a small number of men. The fascination of the quick, decisive war, with few casualties for the victor, is irresistible. Reinforced by the invention of the atomic bomb, the intercontinental bomber, and the guided missile, the Douhet-Mitchell-Seversky theory exercises such sovereign influence upon public opinion that soldiers, diplomats, and public men are under strong pressure to accept it in shaping the grand strategy of any conflict with Russia.

If the theory were right, then when the air force was sufficiently equipped we could deliver an ultimatum calling upon the Soviet government to surrender unconditionally; and if it refused, we could compel the Soviet government by a short, sharp, and decisive war to agree to any terms — including its own dissolution — which the United States deemed it desirable, expedient, wise, or just to set down in the instrument of surrender.

But if, on the other hand, the theory is wrong, if it is reasonably certain that no such quick decision could be achieved by air power, then the air attack would be a gigantically destructive raid but it would be followed by a long-drawn-out, confused, unplanned and unplannable condition of violence and disorder of which no one could foresee the course, the character, the remedy, or the end.

So we have to make up our minds as to what air power is capable of doing against Russia. We have to make up our minds as to what kind of military instrument it is for a war with Russia. If it were the military instrument which the orthodox and popular air power doctrine says it is, then we could risk a diplomatic policy which made increasing demands upon the Soviet Union and culminated in an ultimatum and a demand for its unconditional surrender. But if air power is not an instrument which can compel a decision of that type, then a diplomatic policy based on the false assumption would result in the rejection of the ultimatum, leaving us with a choice of acknowledging a disastrous diplomatic defeat or of precipitating a war which we were able to begin but were not able to conclude.

I contend that no responsible statesman has a right to assume that there is even a reasonable probability that the raiding of Russian cities could conclude a war with Russia. When the great raids on the cities had been completed, he must still expect the Russians to continue to carry on the kind of warfare to which they are conditioned by the military traditions of their wars against Napoleon and against Hitler a kind of warfare in which, as Communists, they are peculiarly adept.

Indeed one might say that while guerrilla warfare is an old method of dealing with organized forces, which have superior weapons, the Communists are the first who have ever been well prepared in time of peace to wage guerrilla war. The Communist cells, the fifth columns, the partisan bands, the fellow travelers, the tactics of sabotage at critical points, the general atmosphere of secrecy and terrorism, are the guerrilla method in politics.

If, as Clausewitz put it, war is the continuation of polities with a mixture of other means, guerrilla war is the continuation of Communist politics. In occupied Europe and during the German invasion of Russia in 1941, (he Soviet government and the Communists showed that they knew how to wage guerrilla war.

Therefore, when we make our plans, we should not think only about how it would suit us to wage war, but how the Russians would wage it. The Russians have devoted as much energy and conscious effort to preparing for guerrilla war, their traditional method of defending Russia and their method of promoting the Communist revolution, as the British ever devoted to the navy, or as we devote to the B-36’s and to the atomic bomb.

There can be little question that, were the cities of the Soviet Union subjected to great raids, the reaction of the Soviet leaders, of the troops of the Red Army, and of the Communist civilians all over Europe would not be to surrender but to wage guerrilla warfare. For one thing, they would not believe it possible to surrender. In so savage a conflict, with the ideological issue so irreconcilable and so passionate, surrender would make Communists everywhere liable to arrest and in most parts of Europe to execution.

Moreover, to give up and surrender would not bring peace to the great mass of people who would be made homeless by the destruction of their cities, and would be faced with famine and unemployment by the dislocation of their industry. Their best hopes of individual survival would be as brigands and bandits infiltruting the less ruined regions of Europe and of Asia.

The question, therefore, which the conventional air power doctrine has to answer is whether there is any way in which air power could be employed so that effective guerrilla warfare could not be waged. I believe there is no way.

If the Red Army remained a force in being, even after the vital centers of Russia had been destroyed, then a long-drawn-out guerrilla war would be feasible and would have to be expected. We must assume, I contend, that the Red Army would still be a force in being. For Eastern Europe, from Berlin and Vienna to Helsinki and Bucharest, would be its redoubt. It could nol be expelled from that redoubt by air power even if w e resorted to the unimaginable horror of destroying the nations we professed to be liberating. From that redoubt the Red Army could sally forth into the neighboring countries, into Scandinavia and the Middle East, into Italy and into Greece, into Western Germany and into Western Europe. It could sally forth, not necessarily as an organized force that could be engaged in a decisive battle, but as bands and raiding parties in conjunction with the Communist underground forces.

I think it would be well if we remembered the broadcast made by Stalin on July 3, 1941, after the initial break-through by the German armies: “In case of a forced retreat of Red Army units all rolling stock must be evacuated; to the enemy must not be left a single engine, a single railway car, not a single pound of grain or a gallon of fuel. Collective farmers must drive off their cattle and turn over their grain to the safekeeping of state authorities for transportation to the rear. All valuable property, including non-ferrous metals, grain, and fuel, which cannot be withdrawn must without fail be destroyed. In areas occupied by the enemy, guerrilla units mounted and on foot must be formed, diversionist groups must be organized to combat enemy troops, to foment guerrilla warfare everywhere, to blow up bridges, roads, damage telephone and telegraph lines, and to set fire to forests, stores, and transports. In occupied regions conditions must be made unbearable for the enemy and all his accomplices. They must be hounded and annihilated at every step and all their measures frustrated.”

Therefore, I suggest that the strategists and planners of war by strategic air power need to study something more than whether bombers, radar, proximity fuses, and the other instruments of air power are technologically adequate. They need to study the little bands of men with tommy guns who, conducting guerrilla warfare, may be able to by-pass the air offensive. For it may well be that guerrilla warfare is to mechanized warfare what jiu-jitsu is to orthodox pugilism.

4

I HAVE spent much time emphasizing the limitations of air power. Where does this leave us? [What follows is a development of the conclusion of the original lecture — W.L.]

We are left, I think, with the balance of forces very considerably in our favor as we approach the time when, as Mr. Churchill once said, “the best chance of avoiding war [is] to bring matters to a head with the Soviet government and, by formal diplomatic processes, with all their privacy and gravity, to arrive at a lasting settlement.”

The balance of military forces, reflecting as it does the balance of all forces that could bo brought to bear if the struggle cannot be dealt with by diplomacy, permits an acceptable accommodation. I am not talking about harmonious coöperation or about intimate collaboration, or about moral and spiritual agreement, but about an agreement to disagree, to live and let live. Often in history, that has proved to be the only outcome. Irreconcilably different ideological and political systems, though each contended that it was universal, have nevertheless come to rest in their own regions of the world.

The Soviet government knows that if there were war, its principal antagonist would be the United States, and that North America is for all practical purposes an invulnerable continental base. From that base immensely destructive, albeit indecisive, blows can be launched against Russia. Against it, against North America, no comparable blows can be launched from the Soviet Union. Within the foreseeable future which statesmen and strategists must consider there is no prospect that Russia can equal, much less surpass, the American power to deal out destruction at long range. For some years to come the United States can strike without being struck. If and when the time comes that we can be struck at all, our power to strike immensely harder blows will have been multiplied and magnified.

Therefore, the United States possesses the power to deter military aggression. It can prohibit the use of the armies of the Soviet Union against all the countries which the United States chooses to guarantee against armed attack. The Red Army cannot march beyond its present lines without precipitating a war with the United States. In that war the United States cannot be conquered by the Red Army. It cannot even be seriously attacked by any forces the Soviet Union possesses. If, therefore, the Kremlin were to decide to launch an aggressive war, it would be challenging an antagonist to a mortal conflict, knowing that the war against him cannot be won and that he cannot even be wounded.

But though this is an immense advantage in our favor, we must measure it accurately. The power to deter armed aggression is a limited power. It enables us to prohibit the expansion of the Soviet orbit and of the Communist revolution by Russian military power. It enables us to limit the conflict outside the orbit of the Red Army to a struggle waged by political, economic, moral, intellectual, and spiritual means. That is a great deal. But it is not everything. And if we were to exaggerate the effectiveness of our military power, thinking it can do more than deter armed attack, it would cease to be even deterrent.

For the power to deter is effective only if the nation at which it is directed has been convinced that it will not be struck if it refrains from striking. If the Russians should be seriously convinced, by their own propaganda, that the United States was planning to attack them even if they did not attack, then our power would cease to be deterrent. If the Kremlin really should come to believe—I am not talking about what its propagandists pretend to believe — that our air power and our atomic weapons will be used not only to deter Soviet military aggression but to destroy the Russian cities and the Soviet regime, then they will not be deterred. If they believe outpower is aimed not at what they may do, but at what they are, that we plan to destroy them and not merely to hold them, then they will be provoked. They will be men who expect to be hanged if they do, and hanged if they don’t. They will have nothing further to gain by agreement and nothing to lose by aggression.

Therefore our power to deter military aggression by the Soviet Union can be deemed effective only if we succeed in eliminating the idea of a preventive and of an inevitable war, only if our diplomacy succeeds in presenting a clear alternative to war.

That alternative must in the nature of the case be a negotiated settlement in which, as Europe is liberated, the survival of the Soviet government and the security of the historic Russian homeland are not threatened by the power of the United States and of its allies in the Atlantic Community. If we make the issue one of Soviet survival and of Russian security, if the terms of the settlement we propose are unconditional surrender, then from the Soviet point of view and from the Russian point of view, the risks of war will be less than the consequences of appeasement. For then they will believe that war, however destructive, will still be indecisive, and that if they must go down, they will take all Europe down with them. They will believe that in the ensuing chaos their own chances of survival will be as good as anyone else’s chances.

For these reasons our strategical doctrine cannot support commitments to unlimited aims—such as the triumph of democracy over communism throughout the world, the overthrow of the Soviet system, or the forcible erection of free states upon the ruins of the totalitarian police states. The State Department and the Pentagon can aim only at a settlement with the Soviet government and its allies. That settlement must aim to make freedom and democracy, where they now exist, more secure. It must aim by negotiation — which means by compromise, inducements, and by pressure — to terminate the military partition of Europe. But these aims can be achieved only by recognizing the vital interests of Russia as well as the vital interests of our friends and of ourselves, and of admitting that the world will have to be big enough to let differing systems of life and of government exist side by side.

If we attempt more than that we shall bring destruction upon ourselves and upon the world. Cold wars cannot be conducted by hot heads. Nor can ideological conflicts be won as crusades or concluded by unconditional surrender.