Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

Even on the strategic level nuclear weapons were not cheaper than conventional weapons nor did they use less manpower, and, once they were introduced into tactical levels of combat as well, costs rose astronomically. Really, costs were irrelevant, as long as they were essential, as they indeed were and would continue to be until there was either (1) relaxation between the United States and Russia or (2) one or more substantial new Powers grew up on the land mass of Eurasia.

The costs of modern weapons arose from their intrinsic costs to some extent but also from their rapid rate of obsolescence and the gigantic costs of development. Each of the strategic B-52 bombers cost $8 million, almost ten times the cost of the B-29’s of 1945. Bases and costs of skilled manpower rose proportionately, especially when the rise of Soviet retaliatory power made necessary drastic dispersal of SAC bases and a great increase in the constant airborne alert. Moreover, whatever the cost, deliveries of B-52’s were slow, only 41 by New Year’s 1956, with a production rate of about one a week (with about 25 percent rejected by the air force) after that. This compared with Soviet production of their equivalent planes, the “Bison” and the “Bear” (TU-95) of over five a week in 1956. The display of at least ten “Bisons” in the Red Square “flyover” on May Day 1955 was a considerable shock to the “New Look,” but a year later Eisenhower was ready to take it in stride: “It is vital that we get what we believe we need; that does not necessarily mean more than somebody else.” Five days later, he introduced a new concept: “Enough is certainly aplenty.”

The gradual obsolescence of the manned bomber and the use of nuclear missiles, especially ICBM’s, raised the cost of nuclear retaliation. The Minute Man ICBM, of which we needed hundreds, cost over a million dollars each, with tens of millions more for manning and maintenance, while the nuclear submarine with its 16 Polaris missiles ran over $120 million each. Moreover, all these strategic-weapons were obsolescent almost as soon as they were operational.

The costs of conventional forces, armed as they must be with nuclear tactical weapons, also soar. The “New Look’s” assumption that introduction of the latter types would reduce the need for manpower was quite mistaken. The necessary manpower increases, and, because of a higher degree of training and skill, is more expensive. The introduction of nuclear tactical weapons, which the Russians obtained almost as soon as we did, required that ground forces be widely dispersed and provided with great mobility in small groups (both by air and ground vehicles). This required more men and more money.

The “New Look” curtailment of money was also reflected in men. All services except the air force were cut, so that the total figure for military manpower, at 3.7 million in December 1952, was almost 2.5 million six years later. The army was cut by one-third, from 1,481,000 representing 20 divisions to below a million in 14 divisions. In this way, army expenditures were cut almost in half, from $16,242 million in FY 1953 to $8,702 million in FY 1956. Protests against this by men like Army Chief of Staff General Matthew Ridgway were answered with the bland assertion that these smaller forces had greater fighting power, “a bigger bang for a buck.” In 1955, however, when Eisenhower returned from the first, relatively successful, “Summit Conference” with Khrushchev in Geneva, filled with determination to achieve his $33 billion defense-expenditure level in FY 1956 instead of FY 1957 as originally planned, even Dulles and Wilson objected. One reason for the objection was that price inflation of several percent a year had already reduced the amount of defensive strength being obtained without getting within several billions of the budgeting goal.

This dispute over the primacy of fiscal or defense considerations reached a turning point in 1955-1956 in a series of controversies and minor shifts of position by the Administration. These shifts of position were concessions to aroused public opinion and were not a consequence of any real change of ideas within the Administration, as can be seen from the fact that other budget-cutting drives occurred in 1957 and, to a lesser extent, in 1959, both in the face of growing evidence of Soviet capabilities, growing evidence of Soviet unfriendly intentions, increasingly irritated relationships with our European allies, a steady attrition of support from the Administration to the opposition, and an increasingly restive American public opinion.

The Administration’s new strategy found relatively little support in military circles except in the air force and in Admiral Radford, who had been made chairman of JCS, in succession to General Bradley, in August 1953, chiefly because he was an Asia First supporter. General Ridgway opposed the Administration’s military policies, from his position as army chief of staff, by his testimony before congressional committees. After his retirement in June 1955, he declared in his memoirs that the military budget “was not based so much on military requirements, or on what the economy of the country could stand, as on political considerations.”

Six months later, Trevor Gardner resigned as civilian head of Research and Development for the air force with blasts at Secretary Wilson for hampering research on guided missiles and for general obstructionism, even in strategic retaliation, with the single exception of the B-47 medium-range jet bomber (whose use was completely dependent on air bases in allied countries). Gardner’s colleague, the well-known scientist and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Development Dr. Clifford C. Furnas also resigned in disgust in February 1957. He was followed by others, notably by General Gavin in 1958.

Most of these later protests arose from Secretary Wilson’s opposition to the development of missile weapons and will be mentioned later, but the obstructionism was fairly general. In 1951, as a consequence of Korea, the army demanded tactical airlift equipment for at least two divisions and strategic airlift for one division. More than five years later, Secretary Wilson stated that airlift capacity was adequate when there was still none for even a single division. When his military adviser tried to point out the underrating of our ground forces in view of our obligations to NATO, the secretary replied that we had no commitment to NATO. In November 1954, three years before “Sputnik,” a journalist asked Wilson for comment on the possibility that the Russians might beat the United States in the satellite race; the secretary replied, “I wouldn’t care if they did.” Two years later, in 1956, Furnas made the same warning, and received the secretary’s reply, “So what?” The culmination of all this was Wilson’s orders of November and December 1956, which crippled the army’s ability to use contemporary tactics by restricting it to missiles of less than 200 miles’ range, and forbidding it to use planes of over five thousand pounds or helicopters of over ten thousand pounds’ weight. As one chief staff said of Wilson, “He was the most uninformed man, and the most determined to remain so, that has ever been secretary.”

Unfortunately, President Eisenhower, who prided himself on ceasing to be a military man when he became a politician, invariably supported Wilson even in his most mistaken decisions.

The Rise of Khrushchev, 1953-1958

The United States was saved from the consequences of this shortsighted and ignorant policy by two factors: (a) the Soviet Union had no intention of risking any direct clash with the United States, and (b) the Soviet Union during most of this period was in the midst of an

intense internal struggle which made it impossible for it to follow any course of sustained aggression.