defending the west the united states air force and european security, 1946-1998

8/7/2019 Defending the West the United States Air Force and European Security, 1946-1998

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IntroductionThe United States Army Air Forces became an independent service, theUnited States Air Force, in 1947-the second year, supposedly, of peace. Inreality there had just begun a long conflict between the United States and its

allies and the Soviet Union and the satellite states subject to it . In 1949 lheUnited States and most of the non-Communist countries of Europe signed theNorth Atlantic Treaty. The United States Air Force, which had been only atoken presence on the continent since the end of World War 11, once morecrossed the Atlantic in strength. The commitment of that service to peace andsecurity in Europe, which continues still, has been the longest of its history.This pamphlet attempts to give the general reader some sense of the role theUSAF has played in Europe since the end of World War 11. It contains threesections. The first reviews the reasons for the origins of the Cold War anddescribes the strategic concerns that drove the United States to commit itself tothe military defense of distant lands. The second section reviews the higherstrategy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with specialreference to the central role of air power. The final section reviews the historyof the United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) in order to show the manyways in which the United States Air Force has served American national-security policy on the continent. This section is closely based on a brief historyof USAFE prepared by Dr. Daniel Harrington of USAFEs history office. I amgrateful to Dr. Harrington for having made his study available to me.


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Part One

The Origins of the Cold War and the Founding of theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization1946-1947

The Origins of the Cold WarThe origins of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are to be found in therivalry that developed after the Second World War between the former SovietUnion and the United States and its allies i n Western Europe. The reasons forthe Cold War, as that conflict came to be called, were many and complex.

Historians still debate why the Grand Alliance of World War I1 so soondissolved into protracted acrimony that at times seemed to threaten World War111. While there are few signs that the controversy about the origins of the ColdWar will be soon stilled, much has been learned in the last decade. The collapseof the Soviet empire has for the first time allowed scholars access to thearchives of the now vanished communist regimes of Eastern Europe and Russia.In the West, too, the progressive declassification of official documents hasrevealed much about events once obscure or even unsuspected.Some writers have dated the Cold War to the Russian Revolution of 1917and the subsequent establishment of a communist regime in Russia by V. I.Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Since it is quite certain that there would have beenno Cold War if Lenins coup of 1917 had miscarried and there had been noGreat October Revolution, this argument seems plausible. But it posits toodirect a line between the insurrectionary program of the early Bolsheviks andthe hostility it inspired around the globe and the events that brought on the ColdWar following the Second World War. The Soviet regime changed much underJoseph Stalin, who achieved dictatorial power after Lenins death in 1924.Under Stalin the USSR acquired-outwardly, at least-many of the attributesof a conventional great power. And while there is no reason to doubt the Sovietrulers adherence to the revolutionary precepts of Marxism, there is now muchevidence to show that during World War I1 Stalin expected the wartime allianceto endure for some years once the fighting had stopped. Such an outcome would

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Vladimir I. Lenin (left) and Joseph Stalin.certainly have been to his interes t. Th e USSR needed to recover from the war,and i t would probably hav e received significant aid from the United States hadserious postwar tensions failed to develop.*The supposition that a straight line can be drawn from 1917 to the ColdWar also overlooks the many ch anges in Western opinion about Soviet Com-munism both before and during the Second W orld War. Most peo ple know thatStalin established perhaps the most pervasive tyranny the world has ever seen.Much less familiar is the fact that in som e respects his program appeared to beconservative. By the late 1930s Stalin was famous in the United States not somuch as a dictator-there was after all no shortage of dictators at that time-butas the man who had tamed the wilder excesses of Bolshevism. Th e early Bol-sheviks had extolled sexual freedom and derided patriotism in favor of inter-nationalism. S talin, on the other hand, promoted family life and promoted loveof country. Under Stalin, too, sharp econom ic inequalities replaced the relativeequality of an early day. The early Bolsheviks them selves Stalin largely exter-minated, either by sh ooting them o r confining them to concentration camps. Inthe W est many conservatives-just those observers one would expect to bemost alive to the com mu nist peril-hailed these deve lopm ents as proof thatSocialism could not be made to work and saw them as evidence that the USSRwas becoming a nation and ceasing to be the embodiment of a revolutionarycause.The w artime a lliance of the Upited S tates with the Soviet Union was theproduct of necessity. In Adolf Hitler both coun tries found a dangerous com mo nenemy, whom neither could defeat without the help of the other. But many

* At the end of the war the Roosevelt Administration had under serious considerationa low-interest long-term loan of $6 billion to the Soviet Union.2


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thoughtful Americans believed that the alliance could survive the war becausethe moderate, nationalistic Stalin had no strong ideological reason for fore-going the aid he would need to restore his ravaged country as expeditiously aspossible. From a point early in the war, to be sure, it was obvious that the USSRwould exert a large measure of influence over its neighbors i n Eastern Europe.But neither the United States government nor American public opinion wasmuch disposed to object, provided that the Soviets exercised their influencewith a light hand, neither severely oppressing the peoples of the region nor soalarming the nations of Western Europe as to bring about the conditions foranother war-runaway suspicions, rival alliances and an arms race.The prospect of another war, remote as i t may have seemed in 1945, wasthreatening twice over. As one global conflagration came to an end, the thoughtof another was a nightmarish specter from which the mind recoiled. The prob-able consequences of such a war, moreover, were also highly disturbing. Thelikely contestants, in the American view, were not the United States and theSoviet Union, but rather Great Britain and the Soviet Union. By 1944, it hadbecome evident that the Soviets and the British were vying for influence inEurope. Washingtons fear was that if the conflict got out of hand-if theUnited States failed in its efforts to play the honest broker between its twoAllies-there might ultimately be a war. The Soviet Union would almost cer-tainly win the war and become the master of Europe-and, probably, of Asiatoo. To American officials-and increasingly to students of internationalrelations outside the government-that seemed the worst possible threat thatcould be imagined to the long-term national security of the United States.It may be said without too much oversimplification that at the beginning ofthe war the international objectives of the United States amounted to little morethan a series of general principles-free trade, democratic self-determination forall peoples, and the creation of an international security organization to replacethe alliances, spheres of influence, and balances of power by which nations hadsought to secure their interests in the past. Historians have variously called thissomewhat utopian program internationalism or Wilsonianism, after PresidentWoodrow Wilson, who championed it during the First World War. During theSecond World War, there developed a supplementary way of conceptualizingthe national interest. By the end of 1943, i t had become obvious that theWilsonian program could not be realized in full because both Great Britain andthe Soviet Union rejected important parts of it. American policymakers thenbegan to ask themselves what would be the minimal requirements for thesecurity of the United States in a world in which the power politics of theunhappy past survived. They concluded that if they failed to realize theWilsonian program, they should at least see that no single power dominatedEurope or, more serious still, both Europe and Asia. For a state that dominatedEurasias vast resources of industry and manpower would be much more power-fu l than the United States and very likely to prevail against i t in a war. Such a

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Woodrow Wilson.

state could, for political purposes, chok e off Am ericas foreign trade and blockher access to vital raw material. This line of argument predated the war-various writers had advanced i t during the 1930sto argue that the United Statesshou ld work to block Hitlers bid for mastery of Europe-but the war seem edto validate it. The U nited States, Great Britain, and the So viet Union togetherhad barely defeated a Germ any that controlled Europe. Could then the UnitedStates and Britain prevail ag ainst a USSR that disposed its own vast resourcesas well as those that Hitler had controlled? In 1944 the Joint Chiefs of Staffconcluded that they could not.The stakes, then, were large as the great powers addressed themselves to theproblems of forging a postwar settlement in the wake of Germanys defeat.None wanted a major trial of strength, and yet one cam e soon because in thespecific conditions that prevailed at the end of the war the objectives of thethree major victors made conflict all but inevitable. The United States wantedto realize, to the extent that it could, the W ilsonian program of free electionsand free trade. For the sake of those objectives, and also to prevent theconsolidation of Europe under the U SSR , Washington opposed the consolida-tion of intrusive So viet influence ov er Eastern Europe and any spread of Sov ietinfluence into Western Europe, the Middle East or the Far East. The Sovietleaders, for their part, wished at a minimum to assure the military security of theUSSR by keeping dow n the defeated Germany and by creating in Eastern an dSoutheastern Euro pe gove rnments they cons idered friendly-which for themost part would not have been democratically elected governments. To thatend, they fostered in the nations occupied by the Red Army left-leaninggovernments in which communist parties had predominant, if not exclusive,influence. But the Sov iets aims were not purely defensive. They also wishedto prepare the way for the final triumph of Com mun ism in Europe when, as theyfully expected, another great depression struck the capitalist world. Theensconcement of communist parties in positions of power in Eastern Europe

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served that purpose; so too did the various form s of aid the USS R extended tothe communist parties of W estern E urope . For the time being, however, Stalininstructed the western communists to collaborate w ith the bou rgeois parties andto avoid provoking the United States and Britain. President Franklin D.Roosevelt had told Stalin during the war that American fo rces would be quic klywithdrawn from Europe at the end of the war, and the dictator wanted to donothing that would induce Washington to keep its troops on the contine nt.*Potential conflict obviously inhered in the Am erican and S ovie t programs.A com prehen sive explanation of the circum stances that m ade potential conflictactual would have to account for many more causa tive and contributory factorsthan there is room to discuss here. Several elements, however, were clearlyprimary. The first of these was the collapse of the international system a s i t hadexisted before the war. Germany, defeated and occupied, had ceased to be aplayer on th e global stage, France and Italy had both ceased to be major powers,although the French, nom inally listed among the victors, clung desperately tothe shreds of departed glory. Many of the states of Eastern Europe and theBalkans had been the scenes of some of the fiercest combat in history. Organ-ized political life barely existed in these states, and all except Gre ece had beenoccupied by the Red Army. Everyw here there was despe rate poverty and socialunrest. Euro pe, in short, represented a power vacuum that would have broughtthe former allies into some degree of conflict even with the best of will allaround. For one power to deal effectively with the chaos in its area of occu-pation was ips0 facto to increase its influence at the expense of the others.Germany was a particularly difficult problem to manage. After Hitlersdefeat, the pre-Nazi political parties eme rged from the rubble and began to viefor power. The communists from the first had strong Soviet backing-theywere, in fact, instruments of Soviet foreign policy. Before long the UnitedStates and Britain were aiding the opponents of the communists. In this way,Germanys internal political struggles became internationalized with seriousresu1ts.t The dangers were obvious to all sides, for Germ any, even i n her devas-tated condition, was potentially more powerful than all the othe r countries ofEuro pe. If the German com munists, creatures of Moscow, prevailed, the resultwould be just that dom ination of Europ e by the USSR that was Washingtonsworst fear. But if , on the other hand, the capitalist parties prevailed, Germanywould be in the hands of groups who were, in Mo scows estimation, intrin-sically hostile to the Soviet Union. A non-communist Germany, moreover,

* Britain, seriously weakened by the war, felt obliged in most instances to follow theAmerican lead and may, for the purpose of this discussion, be d iscounted as an independentactor.t To see this inner-German struggle in perspective one has to rea lize that everyoneexpected that sooner or later there would be a treaty of peace and an end to the occupationof the country.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt.

might represent a powerful bar to the spread of Communism elsewhere inEurope. Germany, in short, seemed the key to the future of Europe.The collapse of Europe had repercussions around the world. It weakenedthe great colonial empires, and everywhere peoples long subject to Europedemanded freedom from their now enfeebled masters. Unrest in what came tobe called the Third World unsettled the world system for decades to com e. Inthe immed iate aftermath of the war, howev er, one aspect of the fall of empirescontributed particularly to the com ing of the Co ld War-the weakening of thelong dominant position of Great Britain in the Near East.Th e so-called Big Th ree of the Allied coalition-the United States, theSoviet Union, and Great Britain-finished the war with very different prospects.Britain was bankrupt and, as soon became apparent, virtually a client of theUnited S tates, whose position was very different. Sh e had emerged from the warwith her econom y vastly expanded rather than w eakened, and possessed of twoweapon s of unprecedented force-strategic air power and the atomic bom b. T heUnited States was, in fact, the strongest power the world had ever known.Several cons iderations initially cons trained Am ericas ability to play the role ofglobal hegemon. She had, for one thing, slight experience in that role. TheUnited S tates, though playing an international economic role of unprecedentedimportance in the world between the wars, had declined to grasp most of theopportunities for political power that flowed from her role in World War I.Am ericans had rather fallen back on a policy somew hat misleadingly known asisolation ism. At the end of World W ar 11, Am erican e lites were largely in thethrall of an infatuation with the newly created United Nations organization.Within a year or two , the essen tial inutility of that frail institution was apparent,but by then there was another obstacle to the exercise of effective power-themighty Am erican military mach ine of W orld W ar 11had been dem obilized. Th eArmy had been reduced to a handful of divisions barely adequate for theoccupation of Germ any and Japan. Th e Air Force, though perhap s faring better

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During World War 11, the U.S. aviation industry expand ed tremendo usly,producing 96,000 aircraft, com pared to 2,195 produced in 1939. This B-24factory used au tomotive assem bly line techniques to speed produc tion.than the Army, w as also unde rfunded, and its cutting edge, the S trategic AirCommand, suffered i n its early yea rs from indifferent leadership.* Th e N avywas in better shape than its sister services, but was less useful with respect tothe struggle developing in Europe. Sh ips were less relevant to the political con-frontations in Europe than troops on the ground, and only long-range aircraftcould strike at the heart of Am ericas only potential foe, the USSR.

Th e remaining m ember of the Big Three, the Soviet Union, had sufferedunimaginably in the war, but like the U nited States, emerged from the strugglemuch m ore powerful than she had entered it. Her pow er rested chiefly on theappeal of the communist brand of socialism to a significant minority ofEuropes population and on her army. The Red Army, while reduced in sizeduring the first year of peace, remained m uch larger than any other army in theworld. A program of mechanization, moreover, actually increased its strikingpower as i t shrank in size. The military power of the Soviet Union was apolitical fact of enormou s significance.

* A measure of the extent and rapidity of the American demobilization: the strengthof the U. S. Army Air Forces fell from about to 2,250,000 men at the end of the war tobarely 300,000in early 1947.


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As the Soviets advanced westward they, no less than the British andAmericans in their sphere, had to organize political administration for theregions in the rear areas of their army. On the face of things they adhered, m oreor less, to the promises the Big Th ree had tendered to the world at major war-time co nferences, most notably the Moscow Conference of O ctober 1943 andthe Yalta Conference of February 1945.Th e interim regimes the Sov iets estab-lished were nominally somewhat representative of the non-fascist politicalforces in Eastern Europe, and they pledged themselves to hold the free andunfettered elections promised at the Yalta Conference, where Roosevelt,Stalin, and Prime M inister W inston S . Churchill of Britain had m et for the lasttime. A shado w, however, lay across this scene. The com mu nist parties enjoyeda degre e of influence their relatively m odest num bers did not justify, and a s arule they controlled the cabinet posts that disposed the coercive powers of thestate-the military and the police. Still, these interim regimes were not fully-developed d ictatorships, and two of the countries in the Soviet sphe re, Finlandand C zechoslovakia, were truly democracies.It now seem s quite likely that Stalin did not intend to establish com munistdictatorships as fast as actually happened. His plan was that coalition regimes-albeit coalitions in which the com mu nists were dominant-should endu re unt i lanother great depression overtook the w orld, as he confidently expected. TheSoviet Un ion, recovered from the w ar, would then turn chaos and despa ir to itsadvantage. The plan immediately began to go wrong . The non-C omm unistoppo-sition parties of Eastern Eu rope declined to play the passive role Stalins planreserved for them. Encouraged by the support of the powerful United States,they resisted the encroachments of the com munists. The repression they enduredaroused i n the West both sym pathy and increasing suspicion of Soviet motives.The se suspicions w ere further increased by the developing political struggle inGermany and by domestic developments i n the USSR. During the war Stalinhad encouraged the belief that peace would see a significant reduction of therigors to which the peoples of the USSR had been subjected since 1917. Theend of the war actually saw, however, a reimposition of discipline. Stalinsregime had com mitted too many crime s to tolerate even a slight degree of free-dom. Nationalist rebellions, more over, simmered in Ukraine and Byelorussia,and in Siberia there were serious uprisings among the slaves of the labor cam ps.Stalin also wished to increa se the military power of the Sov iet state through acontinuation of the program of forced industrialization he had begun in the192Os, and this too required a tightening of the reins. He invoke d the nefariousdesigns of the c apitalist W est to justify his frustration of the Soviet peoplesdesires for a better life, telling them in February 1946 that despite the SovietUnions victory in the recent war, it was still threatened by a capitalist en-circlement.This invocation of a basic theme of M arxist-Leninist fundam entalism wasdesigned for domestic consumption. But it struck a resonant note in the West

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because so much of the optimism about the prospects for coexistence with theSoviet Union had been based upon the belief that the Soviet regime had shed therevolutionary enthusiasm of its early days. Stalins harping upon the mortaldangers posed by the continued existence of capitalism could not prompt areconsideration of earlier vie w s-e sp ec ial ly at a time when the non-Comm unistopposition parties i n Eastern Europe were becoming subject to increasinglysevere repression and the German communists were striving for politicaldom inance with open Sov iet backing. A third aspect of the crisis also becam eapparent in 1946-the Soviet intrusion into the M iddle East.During the war, Great Britain and the S oviet Union had jointly occupiedIran to facilitate the delivery of su pplies to the latter state. At the end of the war,the Sov iets declined to honor a pledge m ade to Iran at the time of the occupationthat all foreign forces would be w ithdrawn shortly after the end of the war. Thepurpose of this breach of faith was to pressure the Iranians into grantingMoscow an oil concession in the northern part of the country. By early 1946,the Iranian imbroglio had developed into an international crisis that cam e beforethe United Nations. The S oviets eventually withdrew their forces, though onlyafter securing from Iran a prom ise to grant the oil concession they desired. (T heIranians later went back on their promise once all the Sov iet troops were gone.)Meanwhile, a more serous crisis had developed over Turkey . In June 1945the USSR demanded the cession to it of two Turkish provinces and effectivecontrol over the Dardanelles Straits. Pressure on the Turks m ounted the reafter,especially i n 1946. The m ovement of Soviet troops toward the Tu rkish borderand othe r warlike preparations i n the sum me r of that year, reported by Westernintelligence agencies, indicated that Stalin might be preparing to invade T urkey .A strong stand by the United States-which included extensive military prepa-rations and a highly secret meeting in London at which American and Britishplanners drew up the first join t Ang lo-American plan for war with the SovietUnion-apparently induced Stalin to climb down. Soviet pressures on Turkeyand Iran, seen against the backdrop of the progressive communization ofEastern Europe, confirmed fo r many in the West the suspicion that the SovietUnion had embarked upon a career of expansionism.The crises in the Near East had played ou t by the end of 1946 , and thefollowing year saw little concern w ith the prospect of arm ed aggression by theSov iet Union. The attention of policy makers turned to various form s of indirectaggression by the Soviet Union and to the continu ing econom ic crisis in Europe,which the comm unist sought to exploit at every turn. In the opening m onths of1947 W ashingtons attention focused on Gree ce, which was then in the throesof an armed rebellion by com munist-led forces, to which the S oviets extend edaid in ways revealed by Western intelligence agencies. The result was theTruman Doctrine, proclaimed before Congress i n March 1947 that extendedmilitary and economic aid for Turkey and Greece. Several months later theUnited States embarked upon the M arshall Plan-a com prehe nsive program of

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President Harry S . Truman (left) and General George C. Marshall, Chief ofStaff of the Army during World War I1 and Secretary of State after the war.econom ic aid for Europe that took its name from Secretary of S tate George C .M arshall, who announced i t in June 1947.By the end of 1947, the United States, Britain, and France had despaired ofeffective cooperation with the Soviets in the administration of occupiedGermany. Meeting in London i n the latter part of that year, representatives ofthe three governments laid plans for the unification of their zones of occu pation.Implicit in this scheme w as the creation of an eventual W est German state andthe division of G erman y. The Soviets took strong exception to this on ground sthat were both defensive and offensive. On the on e hand, they feared the crea-tion of any Germ an state, seeing in it a potential danger to themselves. On theother, however, they also feared that a division of Germany would stymie theefforts of the German Com mun ist Party to spread its influence into the Westernzones of occu pation. In late February the Soviets began w hat appears to be havebeen a cam paign of psychological warfare to convince the Western pow ers thatthey could pursue their program for Western Germany only at the risk of war.There were unusual Soviet troop movements i n Eastern Germany, Sovietdependen ts were withdrawn, billeting space was co nfiscated in East Germantown s for troops said to be about to arrive from the USSR, and Soviet agents inGermany and elsewhere spread tales that indicated other preparations for war.Western intelligence agencies quickly saw through the So viet game, and theSoviets shifted strategies. Warlike preparations, real and simulated, largelyceased-but the Sov iets now undertook the blockading of Berlin.Th e Berlin Blockade w as ostensibly a response to the plan of the Westernstates to extend the single currency they had adopted for their zon es occupa tionin Berlin. But a larger aim emerged from talks between the Soviets and theirEast German proteges, which became known through the efforts of Western

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intelligence agencies to shatter the prestige of the Western powers so thor-oughly that no German would entrust his future to them.The blockade lasted from June 1948 through May 1949, when the Sovietsthrew in the towel. From their point of view the whole exercise had been pro-foundly counterproductive. The creation of a West German state had been accel-erated rather than retarded, and there developed a potentially powerful Westernmilitary alliance where individual states had shivered in the shadow of Sovietpower.The Founding of NATO

Even before the crisis that broke i n early 1948, the leaders of WesternEurope had contemplated various steps toward political and military integration,the better to recover from the ravages of war and to resist Soviet encroachments.On January 13, 1948 the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, informedSecretary of State Marshall that the moment was ripe for a consolidation ofWestern Europe, and that in his view the first step should be a joint offer on thepart of Britain and France of a defensive treaty to Belgium, the Netherlands andLuxembourg. Marshall warmly endorsed the British proposal. Bevin publiclyproposed his alliance on January 22. France and the Benelux countries(Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) responded favorably. On March17,1948, against the background of ominous Soviet military demonstrations ineastern Germany, representatives of the five powers signed in Brussels theTreaty of Economic, Social and Cultural Collaboration and Collective Self-Defense. Known simply as the Brussels Pact, this instrument created a col-lective security organization known as the Western Union. The Brussels Pactalso established the Consultative Council of the foreign ministers of the fivesignatories, who were to meet periodically in order to consult with regard toany situation which may constitute a threat to peace.The United States initially preferred that any European security organiza-tion should be a third force between the United States and the Soviet Union.Early on, however, American officials let i t be known that the United Stateswould be sympathetically disposed to membership if such a course seemednecessary. Given the extreme military enfeeblement of Western Europe, fewofficials can have believed that the United States would not ultimately adhereto the new organization. The point was rather to give i t every appearance ofbeing an entirely European initiative to reduce the provocation to the Soviets.The Soviets own provocations in Germany, however, quickly made this con-cern less pressing and Bevin raised the question of a general security pact forthe nations of the North Atlantic region, including the United States, on March1 1, even before the signing of the Brussels Pact. Secretary Marshall replied thevery next day that the United States was prepared to proceed at once i n thejoint discussions on the establishment of an Atlantic security system.

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On March 22, 1948, there convened in the Pentagon the United States-United Kingdom Se curity Con versation. Great secrecy surrounded the talks, forwhile there was an eme rging consensus in the executive branch that the UnitedStates should adhere to a m utual assistance pact w ith its European allies, thesubject had yet to be raised with Congress. The British tried to draw theAm ericans into giving a firm pledge of m ilitary help. The American de legateswould say only that US full support shou ld be a ssum ed, as no definite assur-ances could be given w ithout the consent of Congress. The talks concluded onApril 1 , with the presentation of an American paper (later known as thePentagon Paper) that outlined how invitations might be issued to prospectivemem bers of a north Atlantic alliance for the creation of mutual defe nse pact, inwhich an attack on on e mem ber should be regarded a s an attack on all.Concern with cong ressional reaction to the proposal lessened on June 1 1 ,1948, when the Senate overwhelmingly passed Resolution 229 (called theVandenberg Resolution after its sponsor, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg),which declared that the Senate favored the progressive development ofregional and other collective arrangements for individual and collective self-defense , as well as the association of the United States with such arrange-ments as are based on con tinuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, and asaffect its security. From this date i t appeared probable that the Sen ate wou ldapprove American m embership in a defensive alliance for the North A tlanticstates.In April the British an d French governm ents had urged the United States toparticipate in forthcoming military talks of the Western Union. The TrumanAdm inistration, awaiting pa ssage of the Vandenberg Resolution, delayed. OnJune 23, once the Senate had safely passed the resolution, the Un ited S tates sentdelegates to the meetings of the Western Un ions Permanent M ilitary Com mit-tee in London on a non-membership basis. The London military talks con-cluded in the early fall, with the announcement on October 5, 1948, that theWestern Union had decided to create a Commanders-in-Chief Committee toplan for the defense of Western E urope . Field Marsha l Bernard L. Montgomeryof Alamein was to head the new organization, which was to have its head-quarters at Fon tainebleau, France.In the summ er of 1948 , a series of meetings between representatives of theUnited States, Canada, and the members of the Western Union began inW ashington. Known formally as the Washington Exploratory Talks on Security,the negotiations soon established that all parties favored the convening of ageneral conference to establish a North Atlantic defense organization. TheW ashington Exploratory Talk s also produced the outline of the founding treatyfor the confere nce to consider. The d raft instrument contained a pledge that thesignatories should regard an attack against any of their number as an attackagainst all, whereupon the o ther states would extend aid, military or other, asmight be necessary to restore and assure the security of the North Atlantic

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Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson.

area. The conferees also agreed how the conference should be called: theUnited States should extend invitations to Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Ireland,and Portugal to participate in a conference in Washington at which they, to-gether with the states party to the Washington Exploratory Talks, would drafta treaty of mutual defense. Early in 1949 Italy, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, andPortugal were added to the list of invitees.

When Dean G. Acheson replaced George Marshall as Secretary of State inJanuary 1949 he appointed himself the American delegate to the WashingtonExploratory Talks. He found himself conductingtwo parallel negotiations-onewith the European representatives, the other with Senators Tom Connally andArthur H. Vandenberg from the Senates Committee on Foreign Relations. Iwas, Acheson recalled, like a circus performer riding two horses-for one tomove ahead of the other would mean a nasty fall. The Senators had severalconcerns, but of these one was especially grave: How could a convincing com-mitment by the United States to go to the aid of its European Allies bereconciled with the provision of the Constitution that only Congress mightdeclare war? Any automatic commitment to go war, should the Soviets invadeWestern Europe, would obviously contradict that constitutional requirement. Onthe other hand, it was equally clear that the more automatic the response of theUnited States, the greater the deterrent power of the treaty would be. TheSenators insisted that Article 1 1 of the treaty declare that this Treaty shall beratified and its provisions carried out by the Parties in accordance with theirrespective constitutional requirements. This tilted the instrument away fromautomatic involvement, to the distress of the European negotiators. Article 5 indraft provided that an attack on one state should be regarded as an attack on alland that the allies would jointly and severally take measures to restore peaceand security. To strengthen the effect of the treaty, Senators and ambassadorsalike agreed that the phrase including the use of armed force should beworked into this pledge. But whatever the language of the treaty might state, the

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effectiveness of the instrument as a deterrent would ultimately depend upon aperception that people of the United S tates, through their rep resentatives, woulddefend Europe even to the extremity of war.The text of the proposed North Atlantic Pact was published on M arch 18,1949.Th e preamble spok e of the determination of signatories to safeguard thefreedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on theprinciples of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. The heart of thetreaty w as Article 5 :Th e Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them i nEurope or North A merica shall be considered an attack against themall; and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occu rs,each of them, in exercise of the right of individual o r collective self-defense recognized by A rticle 5 1 of the United Nations, will assist theParty or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and inconcert with the other parties, such action as i t deems necessary,irxluding the use of arm ed force, to restore and maintain the securityof the North A tlantic area.

Th e treaty was to bind signatories for twenty years. After that time , any partymight w ithdraw upon a years notice.On April 4, 1949, the foreign ministers and ambassadors of Belgium,Canada, D enmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the N etherlands, Nor-way, Portugal, and the United Kingdom met with Acheson and PresidentTruman in Washington for the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty. Achesonsigned for the United States. The secretary noted that the Marine Band, withunconscious but appropriate irony, played two songs from Georg e Ge rshwinsPorgy and Bess that epitomized the existing military potential of the newalliance-It Aint Necessarily So and Ive Got Plenty of Nothin .

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Part Two

Air Power and the Higher Strategy of theNorth Atlantic Treaty Organization

From its inception in 1949 through the collapse of the Soviet empire in1989, NA TO faced a potential foe numerically superior to itself. At times theadvantage of the Soviet bloc was overwhelming; at others, merely daunting.Through out the Cold War, NAT O relied heavily on air power to offset the ad-vantage that the enemys large armies would confer in any conflict. NATOswar plans remain classified, but the recent declassification of the alliances m ostimportant strategic documents mak es it poss ible to trace the central role that airpower w ould have played in the defense of Europe. Air power w ould, of course,have had many roles in a war with the Soviet Union, but tw o w ere of particularimportance: the strategic air offensive against the Soviet homeland and theinterdiction of So viet forces advancing westward against NA TO.The role of the strategic air offensive changed considerably. In NATOsearly days, when the United States enjoyed a nuclear monopoly, an atomicattacko n the USSR would imm ediately have followed the opening of hostilities.But as the Soviet Union developed its own atom ic capabilities, the question ofwhether the USS R should be directly attacked became more complex and con-tingent. Interdiction, on the other hand, becam e on the wh ole more im portant.In N AT Os early years the Soviet forces stationed i n Germ any could, with littleor no reinforcement, have overrun Western Europe. But as the alliances con-ventional strength grew , Soviet offensive action would have required con sider-able augmentation of the Soviet Group of Forces in Germany by reserve form-ations from within the USSR . If those forces could be prevented from reachingthe front, the odds against NATO would become somewhat less formidable.

The Development of NATOs StrategyThe first task of the new alliance was to organize itself. The foreignministers of the member states, sitting as a group, constituted the North A tlanticCouncil, NAT Os highest policy-making body. In September 1949, the Coun cil

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created the Defense Committee, which was composed of the defense ministersof the member states. The foremost responsibility of the Defense Committeewas to determine the alliances strategy and to approve plans to implement i t .The actual work of preparing the plans was the province of the Military Com-mittee, which comprised the chiefs of staff of the member states. In practice theMilitary Committee, which met only intermittently, supervised the work of apermanent secretariat, known as the Standing Group, which did most of theactual work of planning. NATO did not have a Supreme Commander unti l 1951.Until then there was a decentralized system of five Regional Planning Groups- o n e each for Western Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe and theWestern Mediterranean, the North Atlantic Ocean and, finally, for the UnitedStates and Canada.

Once the new alliance had established its organizational structure, i t ad-dressed the political and economic problems of raising the forces necessary forthe defense of Western Europe and of devising a strategy for their effective em-ployment. By October 10, 1949, the Standing Group had prepared SG-1, TheStrategic Concept for the Defense of the North Atlantic Area. This documentwas very general in character. It affirmed that the alliance should maintainforces adequate to deter a Soviet attack. If deterrence failed, NATOs forces hadto be able to achieve air superiority, to defend their lines of communication andbase areas, and to deliver an early counteroffensive to drive back the invaders.Each nation was to contribute to the common defense in proportion to its means,the alliance as a whole being careful not to let the cost of defense impair theeconomic stability of a continent still recovering from the most destructive warin history. What the document called the hard core of the ground forces wouldhave to come from the European states, for the United States had no plans toadd to its garrison in Germany, where two divisions had been on occupationduty since the end of the war.The stark reality, of course, was that the alliances conventional militarycapabilities were exceedingly limited. SG 1 stressed, accordingly, that i n theevent of war there should be an immediate strategic air offensive against theSoviet Union employing nuclear weapons. This would be the responsibility ofthe United States Air Forces Strategic Air Command (SAC). In 1949, and in -deed, throughout the rest of the Cold War, whatever the turns in NATOs stra-tegy the deterrent effect of the alliance was ultimately no greater than the abilityof the United States to strike at an aggressor with its atomic-capable strategicbombers and (from the 1960s on) ballistic missiles. NATOs conventionalforces were never so strong in relation to those of the Soviet bloc that anywestern statesman could be certain that the Soviets would be deterred in a crisisfrom using force against Western Europe if the nuclear forces of the UnitedStates had become clearly inferior to those of the USSR or if serious doubts haddeveloped that the President of the United States would shrink from usingnuclear weapons in the event of war.

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SG 1 went through several revisions in the Military Committee, whichapproved i t as MC 3 on October 19, 1949. It then went to the Defense Com mit-tee as DC 6. The Danish Government objected to the very explicit statementabout the use of nuclear weapons, although all the other governm ents supportedit. Louis A. Johnson, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, offered a compromise:NATO should insure that it had the ability of carry out strategic bombingpromptly by all means possible w ith all types of weapons, w ithout exception.W ith this diplomatic chang e, the Defense Com mittee approved The StrategicConcep t fo r the Defense of the North A tlantic Area. as DC 6/1 on Decem ber1, 1949. Approval by the North Atlantic Council followed on January 6, 1950.NATO now had an approved strategy.DC 6/1 set forth strategic principles for NA TO as a whole, but they w ereof too general a character to guide the work of the Regional Planning Groups.Th e Standing Group, accordingly, prepared SG 13/16, Strategic Guidance forNorth Atlantic Regional Planning. This docum ent was furnished to the Region-al Planning Groups in January 195 0, though the Military Com mittee did notapprove it as MC 14 unt i l March 28, 1950. MC 14 forthrightly advised theRegional Planning Groups that NATO would not soon be able to field forcesnearly as large as those of the Soviet Union. C onsequently special em phasismust be laid on the necessity for developing methods to compensate for numer-ical inferiority so that the USSR would b e deterred from attacking the alliance.In practice this would be mean that NATO would have to rely heavily on nu-clear weapons-a fact already appa rent from DC 6/1.On the basis of S C 13/16 the Regional Planning G roups prepared estimatesof what they would require to defend their areas in 1954. Although som e of theRegional Planing Groups had prepared em ergency plans for immed iate use byexisting forces, there were no illusions on the part of the W estern Pow ers thatthey could mount serious resistance to an invasion unti l they had built up theirforces. T he expectation was that by 195 4 this process would have ad vanced farenough to create at least the possibility of a successful defense. On e purpose ofthe exercise put to the Regional Planning Groups was to prepare the basis fora consolidated estimate of the force levels the alliance would require in 1954.Once i t had received the estimates from the Regional Planning Groups, theStanding Grou p then consolidated them into the North Atlantic Treaty O rgan-ization Medium Term Plan, which the Defense Com mittee approved as DC 13on April 1 , 1950.While the principal purpose of the Medium Term Plan was to establishdesirable force levels to guide the alliances build-up, that could scarcely bedone without a strategy for the employm ent of the forces that were to be raised.DC-13 contained a more fully developed strategic concept than either DC 6 /1or M C 14. Deriving from the emergency plans of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff,i t stated that the aim of NA TO in war would be destroy the ability of the USSRto make war through a strategic offensive in Western Eu rasia. In the Far East

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Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson.

the strategy would be defensive. DC 13 envisioned a war unfolding in fourphases:

1. D-Day through the stabilization of the Soviet offensive2. The initiation of major counteroffensive operations by NATO3. The prosecution of the counteroffensiveunt i l the USSR capitulated4. The final achievement of NATOs objectives, which were not specified.First among the basic undertakings set forth in DC-13was to carry out

strategic bombing promptly by all means possible with all types of weapons,without exception. Apart from this thinly veiled reference to atomic weapons,the rest of the basic undertakings were unremarkable: to check the enemysoffensive,to establish effective air defenses, to protect lines of communicationsand base areas. The plan next developed specific tasks for the alliance as awhole and then for the Regional Planning Groups. These were essentially a re-statement of the list of tasks i n MC-14.

The second section of DC 13 was an estimate of Soviet capabilities. Itpredicted Soviet courses of action in the event of war and presented analysis ofSoviet weaknesses. DC 13 stated that principal Soviet force (the size of whichDC-13did not estimate) would attack across the North German Plain to capturethe ports of the Channel in order to hinder the reinforcement of the defendingforces. That accomplished, the Soviets would move down the French Coast tothe Pyrenees. There would probably be secondary attacks through southernGermany into central and southern France and northward into Denmark.

In discussing Soviet weaknesses, the authors of DC 13 pointed out that thestrategic offensive was not the only vital role that air power would play in thedefense of Western Europe. Because of a shortage of motor transport, the Sovietarmy was particularlydependent upon rail transportation,and the rail networkof the Soviet bloc was barely adequate to meet present industrial needs, and is

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unlikely to increase at a greater rate than the requirements of an expandingindustry. This would prove a major handicap in war, and the state of the roadsand the shortage of trucks in the Soviet bloc were such that in the event ofhostilities the system of road transport would not accord much relief to analready overburdened railway system. Aerial attack on the railroad systems ofCentral and Eastern Europe by NATOs aircraft promised to impede the Sovietoffensive by slowing the arrival of supplies and reinforcements that the Sovietswould sorely need once the alliance had developed a somewhat greater abilityto defend itself.The third and final part of DC 13 presented a strategy for the defense ofNATOs member states in 1954. While the plan outlined efforts to be taken inthe northern and southern regions and mandated steps to be taken to defendlines of communication across the Atlantic, it anticipated that the major Sovietthrust, and therefore the major battle, would be on the central front. Therewould the war be won or lost. The document observed that while sabotage andthe improvement of lesser obstacles could hinder the attackers, the only majornatural obstacles to an invasion of the region from the east were the Elbe andthe Rhine Rivers. DC 13 opted for what became known as forward defense:the enemy should be held as far to the east as possible to cover the Netherlands,Italy, and Denmark, to preserve the potential of Western Germany, to retain theopportunity for offensive operations in the Baltic Sea, and to lend depth to thealliances position. The exact line to be held, however, was not specified. Thepaper specified an active defense that would employ mobile forces for localoffensive action when opportunities presented themselves. Strong naval forcesin the North Sea and the Mediterranean would be necessary to secure the alli-ances flanks. DC 13 stressed that only through air power could NATO consis-tently undertake offensive action. While strategic aircraft based mainly i n theUnited States destroyed the USSRs war potential, tactical aircraft wouldattack the enemys ground forces, lines of communication and rear areas. Thelargest number of these tactical aircraft would be American-from units of theUnited States Air Force stationed in Europe and the United Kingdom and fromcarriers of the United States Navy stationed in the North Sea and the Bay ofBiscay.To make possible a forward defense in 1954 the framers of DC 13 calcu-lated that by D + 90 days NATO would require 90 1/3 divisions, 2,324 navalvessels plus amphibious vehicles for one division, and a total of 1 1,940 aircraftall types.* The difference between NATOs existing strength in 1950 and thealliances projected needs for 1954 became know as the Gap. How the Gapwas to be closed was the alliances central concern for the next several years.

* Military planners refer to the day on which fighting begins as D-Day and calculatephased deployments in terms of days after D-Day. In this context D + 90 means 90 daysafter the beginning of the Soviet invasion.19


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Initially there were conce rns in Washington that the force levels that DC 13established for 1954 were unrealistically large. They dissipated when the out-break of the Korean W ar rekindled intense suspicions abou t Soviet intentions.There w ere serious concerns in the West that the invasion of K orea was a diver-sion designed to draw Am erican forces aw ay from the real Soviet objective-Europe. When N ATO s defense ministers m et in October they revised the goalsof the Mid-Term Defense Plan upwards with MC 28 on October 28, 1950,which the North Atlantic Council approved later in the year. NATOs goal for1954 was now to have 49 divisions on D-D ay, 79 on D + 30, and 95 on D + 90.in December the M ilitary Com mittee and the Council D eputies, meetingjointly, w orked out a solution to the vexatious problem of G erma ny, agreeingthat German armed forces should be limited to one-fifth of NATOs totalstrength. The two reports were com bined and sent to the Defense C om mittee asa single docume nt, German Contribution to the Defense of W estern Europe.The Defense C om mittee and the North A tlantic Council met jointly in Brusselson December 18 ,195 0and approved the report. When Secretary Acheson calledupon the meeting to name a S upreme Com mand er, Frances M inister of De-fense, Jules Moch stepped forward and proposed that the m eeting call upon theman who was in the minds of everyone-General Eisenhower. W ith no de-bate, the conference called upon the United States to propose Eisenhowerformally. President Truman did so immed iately, and on December 19 NA TOhad its Supreme Com mander. Th e next day Truman placed under Eisenhowerscommand all American forces i n Europe, which, the Administration had de-cided, should be substantially increased after all.Eisenhower opened his headquarters, SHAPE (Supreme HeadquartersAllied Powers Eu rope), at Versailles, outside Paris, on April 2, 1951. Changesin NATOs organization soon followed. SHAPE took over the work of theRegional Planning Groups for Western Europe, N orthern Europe and SouthernEurope. In 1952 the North Atlantic O cean Planning Group was replaced byAllied Command Atlantic, with its own Supreme Commander, known asSACLA NT. These changes left only the Canada-United States Planning Groupin existence. The year 1952 also saw other major changes: there was created athird area of command for NATO, the English Channel and adjacent coastalwaters, which cam e under the Channel C om mittee. In February 1952 Gre eceand Turkey joined NATO, and the North Atlantic Council created the post ofSecretary General so that the alliance should have a political counterpart to theSupre me Com man der. From this time, too, the North Atlantic Council began tosit permanently, each nation being represented by an ambassador.The year 1952 saw a change in American defense policy that had largeimplications for Europe. Previously nuclear weapons had figured in the defenseof Western Europe chiefly in terms of the strategic air offensive against theUSSR. While most of the nuclear weapons employed in the offensive wouldhave been d irected against Soviet industrial ce nters, the Joint Ch iefs of Staff,

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General Dwight D. Eisenhower

who supervised the target list for the strategic air offensive, reserved a smallnumber of weapons for use against targets the destruction of which would slowdown the Soviet advance into Western Europe. The so-called ROMEO (for re-tardation) mission had been recognized as a basic task of the Strategic AirCommand ever since 1949. In 1952, however, the Joint Chiefs allocated part ofthe nuclear stockpile to theater commanders for use at their discretion. As apractical matter, the joint theater commanderin Europe (Commanding General,European Command) would have to rely on the Strategic Air Command to de-liver his nuclear weapons. A special center, SAC ZEBRA, was established toplan for the use of nuclear weapons in Europe in support of European Com-mands war plans, which were of course closely coordinated with those ofNATO.

When the North Atlantic Council met in Lisbon, Portugal, in February1952, it increased slightly the force levels set by MC 28. The goal for 1954 wasnow to be 96 divisions by D + 90. The Council raised the projected force levelsat the insistence of General Eisenhower, who as SACEUR (Supreme AlliedCommander Europe) pressed hard for large conventional forces. A new strategydocument, MC 14/1 (a revision of MC 14), which the Military Committee andthe North Atlantic Council approved in December 1952, reconfirmed the goalsfor 1954, warning that because the conventional NATO forces at present inbeing fall far short of requirements, no relaxation can be allowed in theirplanned expansion.

Even before the approval of MC 14/1 NATOs conventional build-up hadbegun to lose momentum. The socialist governments ruling most of the coun-tries of Western Europe found that the mounting costs of rearmament clashedwith their ambitious plans for the creation of welfare states. This inherentconflict could be overlooked in the fright caused by the wholly unexpected startof the Korean War. But the shock wore off as i t became increasingly apparentthat there were no signs that Moscow planned a comparable adventure in

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Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.

Europe. In March 1953,moreover, Joseph Stalin died. His successors appearedto be less threatening, and they were in any event preoccupied with their ownstruggles for Stalins mantle. They a lso had to cop e with growing unrest i n theirempire that flared into rebellion in Eastern G ermany in June 1953. Not a fewAmerican officials watched with dismay Western Europes retreat from thegoals of the Lisbon Conference. But the United States did not lag far behind.General Eisenhower becam e President Eisenhow er in January 1953 and redirec-ted American national security policy. As his diary reveals, Eisenhower hadlong worried about the effects of ever-escalating governm ental spending anddebt without end on the American economy. He worried no less about the ef-fects of pervasive militarization on American institutions. As SA CE UR , he hadloyally implemented a policy of increasing the size of Western conventionalforces. As President, however, he was free to set his own cou rse. He did notlong hesitate in doing so . Nuclear weapons promised more bang for the buckand, therefore, the possibility of sav ings for the sam e or even greater degree ofsecurity. The N ational S ecurity Council embod ied this policy in NSC 162/2 ofOctober 30, 1953, which stated succinctly that in the event of hostilities theUnited S tates will consider nuclear weapons to be a s available for use as otherweapons.The implication of these words for the defense of Europe w ere clear. NSC162/2 observed in respect to the continent what had long been obvious: themajor deterrent to aggression against Western Europe is the manifest determi-nation of the United States to use its atomic capability and massive retaliatorypow er if the area is attacked. But Eisenhowers Secretary of State, John FosterDulles, left no doubt of what the new policy portended when he spoke to theNorth Atlantic Council in April 1954. Calling attention to the familiar fact thatthe forces of the Soviet bloc outnumbered those of NATO by a considerablemargin, he argued that i t should be the alliances policy to use atomic weaponsas conventional weapons against the m ilitary assets of the enem y w henever and

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wherever it would be of adva ntage to do so. Th e argument fell upon respon-sive ears.One way in which President Eisenhow er hoped to reduce military spe ndingwas by reducing the size of the Am erican forces committed to NATO. There de-veloped in this way, as regards NATOs force levels, a similarity of viewsbetween the conservative administration of Eisenhower and the social democ ra-tic regimes of Europe-an alliance of convenience , mad e possible by the deathof Stalin and the troubles in the Sov iet bloc, between those who w anted to savemoney and those who w ished to redirect spending from m ilitary to social pro-gram s. Th e retreat from L isbons goals was not without incident, for there w erethose who opposed the course. One of these w as General Matthew B. Ridgw ay,who became SACE UR in May 1952,after serv ice of rare d istinction in Korea.*Th e primary task Ridgway set for himself w as to devise an app ropriate strategyfor defending Western Europe with the relatively low-yield tactical nuclearweapons that were becoming increasingly p lentiful. In this respect, Ridgw aysthinking paralleled that of NSC 16212, then under developm ent. This approachalso found increasing favor among the European members of NA TO , who sawin tactical nuclear weapons a means of creating a credible defense on thecheap. Ridgway was out of step, however, in that he took the position that theuse of nuclear weapons on a large scale would require larger rather than sm allerforces because casualties in even a limited nuclear war w ould be massive.This and other positions that Ridgway took embroiled him in a series ofdisputes with his fellow comm anders in NAT O. Eisenhow er gracefully extrac-ted Ridgway from h is difficult position by returning him to Washington in M ay1953 to become the Armys Chief of Staff. He was replaced as SACEUR byGeneral A lfred Gruen ther, who had served as SHAP ES Chief of Staff eversince Eisenhower had established the headquarters two years before. Gruentheralso turned his attention to the perils and possibilities of nuclear w eapons bycreating the New Approach Group at his headquarters in August 1953. Thespecial study group was still working away busily when, in early Decem ber, theNorth Atlantic Council requested an estimate of the force levels that NATOwould require for about the next five years.By the summer of 1954, the special working group at SHA PE had com-pleted a large number of studies on the implications of nuclear weapons forNATO. Two papers that summarized the general conclusions of the New-Approaches studies went to the Standing Group which, after solicitingcomm ents, combined them into a single document that became M C 48 when the

* General Ridgway had taken command o f the Eighth U . S. Army late in 1950 afterthe surprise entry of the Chinese into the Korean War had hurled the command intoheadlong retreat and reduced it to little more than a demoralized armed mob. Within a fewmonths Ridgway reformed his comm and, restored its elan, and launched an offen sive againstthe vastly more numerous Chinese that cleared them from South Korea.23


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General Matthew B. Ridgway.

Military Committee approved it on November 22,195 4. T he formal title of M C48, The Most Effective Pattern of NATO M ilitary Strength for the Next FewYears, was deceptively mo dest. Its nominal purpose was to provide interimstrategic guidance, pending a revision of MC 14/1. But what i t advocated wasa drastic embrace of n uclear weapons. E mploying none of the delicate circumlo-cutions that had been used in earlier strategic papers, MC 48 stated that theadvent of nuclear weapons systems will drastically change the conditions ofmodern war. Indeed, superiority in atomic w eapons and the capability to de-liver them will be the most important factor in a m ajor war in the foreseeablefuture.MC 48 stressed that NATO s forces must have an integrated atomic capa -bility and should plan and make preparations on the assumption that atomicand thermonuclear weapons w ill be used in defense from the outset. Th e docu-ment stressed that if NA TO did not use nuclear weapons imm ediately, WesternEurope would be overrun in short order. The authors of MC 48, in sum, left noroom for doubt about where they stood-NATO must use nuclear weaponsfrom the very start of a war with the Soviet Union and w ithout waiting to see ifthe Soviets used them first. In this way they faced up to the logical strategicimplications of the alliances failure to follow through on the Madrid program.Taking account of the growth of the Soviet nuclear arsenal more than the au-thors of MC 14/1 had, the framers of MC 4 8 underlined the new importance inatomic warfare of what had long been a basic task of air power--counter-airoperations: the only present fea sible means of stopping an enemy from deliv-ering atomic weapons ag ainst selected targets in Europe is to destroy his meansof delivery at the source. This will require early atom ic counter-attack againstthe enemys [atomic] delivery systems. Hitherto this was to have been anaspect of SAC strategic air offensive. In the dawning era of potential tacticalnuclear warfare, NA TO s own air forces would have to have this capability inorder to begin counter-air operations immediately.

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On December 17,1954, the North Atlantic Council approved MC 48. Withthis decision the political leadership of the alliance approved not the use ofnuclear weapons for the defense of NATOs area-that had been assumed fromthe very beginning-but planning for the automatic use of nuclear weapons bythe forces under the command of SACEUR rather than the Strategic Air Com-mand, as has been the case previously. As so often happened in the history ofwarfare, technical change had made possible strategic change.In 1950, the military had requested the Atomic Energy Commission, whichproduced all of Americas nuclear weapons, to develop a small nuclear weaponthat could be carried in high-performance tactical aircraft. By mid-1952 sucha weapon, the Mark VII atomic bomb, had been developed. It could be carriedby the standard American fighter-bomber of the period, the F-84 Thunderjet.In June 1952 the newly created 49th Air Division deployed to Great Britain.Equipped with nuclear-capable F-84s, this unit for the first time gave EuropeanCommand-and, therefore, NATO-a theater-based nuclear capability. In theevent of war, the chief targets of the 49th Air Division would have been railroadcenters and tactical airfields supporting the Soviet attack on Western Europe.While MC 48 endorsed a greater and more automatic use on nuclearweapons, i t did not develop the new strategy in detail. In the summer of 1956,accordingly, the Standing Group and the Military Committee started work ona revision of MC 3 and MC 14 in light of the decisions embodied in MC 48.Two documents resulted from the fundamental reevaluation of strategy-MC1412 and MC 4812.MC 1412, Overall Strategic Concept for the Defense of the NATO Area,placed even more emphasis on the use of atomic weapons than MC 48 had,stressing that NATO should seek to deter Soviet aggression through the pros-pect of nuclear retaliation, but, if deterrence failed, the alliance had to be readyto fight a nuclear war:

Our chief objective is to prevent war by creating an effective deterrent toaggression. The principal elements of the deterrent are adequate nuclear andother ready forces and the manifest determination to retaliate against anyaggressor with all the force at our disposal, including nuclear weapons,which the defense of NATO would require.In preparation for a general war, should one be forced upon us:a. We must first ensure the ability to carry out an instant anddevastating nuclear counteroffensive by all available means anddevelop the capability to absorb and survive the enemys onslaught.b. Concurrently and closely related to the attainment of this aim, wemust develop our ability to use our land, sea and air forces for thedefense of their territories and sea areas of NATO as far forward aspossible to maintain the integrity of the NATO area, counting on theuse of nuclear weapons from the outset.

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It should be noted that the phrase as far forward in the paragraph quotedabove had a greater significance in 1957 than i t had pre viously, for the FederalRepublic of Germany had become a memb er of NATO in 1955.MC 14/2 allowed some flexibility in responding to a Soviet incursion.NATOs conventional forces were not simply a trip wire for the nuclearforces. The authors foresaw a need for dealing flexibly with infiltration,incursions, or hostile locations that might result of from the unauthorized init-iatives of local Soviet com ma nders or of rulers of the sa tellite states of EasternEurope. M C 14/2 stressed that NAT O should have the capacity for dealing w ithsuch lesser threats without necessarily having rec ourse to nuclear w eapons.The M ilitary Com mittee prepared M C 48/2, M easures to Implement theStrategic Concep t, as a companion to M C 14/2. It described the practical steps

that would have to be taken to implement the strategy se t forth in MC 14/2. MC48/2, like M C 14/2, dealt largely with what it called the Nuclear R etaliatoryForces, it also stressed that NATO needed adequate Shield Forces to dealwith a limited military situation which an aggressor might create i n the beliefthat gains could be achieved without provoking N AT O to general War. In suchsituations the Alliance should be a ble to act promptly t o restore and m aintainthe security of the NATO area without necessarily h aving recourse to nuclearweapons. But while MC 48/2 stressed in this way the need for being able todeal flexibly w ith crises short of a general assault on the a llianc e, it specificallyrepudiated th e concept of limited war: i f the Soviets were involved in a hostilelocal action and sought to broaden the scope of such an incident or prolong i t ,the situation would call for the utilization of all weapon s and forces at NA TO sdisposa l, since in no case is there a concept of limited war w ith the Soviets.The Military Com mittee forwarded both M C 14/2 and MC 48/2 in April1957 to the North Atlantic Council, which approved them on M ay 9, 1957. Thetwo com plementary docum ents now represented NA TOs strategy, replacing al-together MC 3/5,MC 14/1, MC 48 , and MC 4 8/1.The doctrine of massive retaliation was the product of a period of theUnited Statess nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union. That the days ofAm erican strategic supremacy w ere numbered was appreciated from the first.Th e Soviet Union had exploded its first atom ic bomb in 1949 and was knownto be developing strategic bombers. Still, the end of American nuclearsupremacy probably cam e more quickly than had been supposed, and it was cer-tainly accompanied by a num ber of very rude shocks. By 1950, the Soviets wereflying numbers of the Tupolev Tu -4 , a copy of the B-29 Superfortress that wascapable of reaching the United S tates on one-way missions. In 1954 and 1955,the USSR showed off two large and very impressive-looking intercontinentalbom bers at celebrations in Moscow-the jet-propelled M yasishchev M ya-4 andthe Turbop rop Tu-95. In 1957, the Sov iet Union becam e the first nation tolaunch a satellite and to test an intercontinental ballistic m issile. The develop-ments of 1957 raised fears in some minds that the USSR m ight in the strategic

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The Soviet Tupolev Tu-4 Bull (top), a copy of the Boeing B-29 (bottom).

contest pull ahead of the United States, which had yet to orbit a satellite or totest an ICBM. By seemingly demonstrating the United States was not-or atleast would soon no longer be-immune from nuclear attack by the Soviets inthe event of war, the Soviets had raised doubts about the credibility of theAmerican nuclear deterrent. Many Europeans began to voice privately whatPresident Charles de Gaulle of France said publicly: no U . S . President willexchange Chicago for Lyons.

That the developing balance of terror would affect NATOs strategy wasinevitable, but in the event what spurred a reconsideration was a new crisis overBerlin that began i n 1958 and smoldereduntil 1962. All members of the allianceagreed that nuclear war would not be an appropriate response to a renewedblockade of Berlin or to any of the other provocations that seemed likely inconnection with the latest Berlin crisis. Early in 1959, accordingly, the UnitedStates, Britain, and France created a special planning staff to develop limitedresponses to possible limited Soviet actions in Berlin. In the United States the

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Introduced in 1955, the Tupolev Tu-95 Bear was anextraordinary aircraft with variations that flew into the 1990s.new administration of President John F. Kennedy also believed that there wasa need for a more flexible-and less dangerous-approach to dealing with theSoviet Union in international crises. In April 1961, the National SecurityCouncil, in response to the festering Berlin situation, issued National SecurityAction Memorandum 40 to revise the stance the United States would take inNA TO toward threatening contingencies in Europe. NSAM 40 stated that firstpriority be given , in NA TO programs for the European area, to preparing for themore likely contingencies, i.e., those short of nuclear or massive non-nuclearattack.

Reconnaissance photograph showing missile equipment i n Cuba.

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Charles de Gaulle (left) and John F. Kennedy.By the latter part of 1962, the Berlin crisis had faded, but a much morethreatening (albe it briefer) crisis flared over the effort by the Sov iets to emp lacestrategic rockets in Cub a. Th e United States brought the confrontation to a satis-factory ending by emp loying its military forces in a limited way. The successfulblockade of Cuba, w hile occurring ou tside of Europe , was just the sort of lim-ited response that NSA M 40 had called for. Together the crises over Berlin and

Cuba had given Western strategy a powerful impetus in the direction of whatcame to be called flexible response.At ministerial meetings of the No rth Atlantic Cou ncil in 1961 insistent callsfor a fundamental reconsideration of the alliances strategy began to be heard.Discussion con tinued fo r two years, finally bearing fruit in September 1963 inap ap er by the Military Co mm ittee, MC 100A (Draft), Appreciation of the Mil-itary Situation a s it Affects NA TO up to 1970.The study coupled a critique ofmassive retaliation with a recommendation that the alliance should respond toaggression w ith graduated escalation : there should first be an effort to repel anassault with conventional weapons which effort, if unsuccessful, would be fol-lowed by the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Only if the attack continuedwould there be a recourse of strategic nuclear weapons, which w ould at first beused sparingly.Som e members of NAT O were uncomfortable with the proposed doctrine;Fran ce refused flatly to accept it, apparently fearing ju st that lapsing of the onceabsolute commitment of the United States to defend Europe a 1 oufrancethathad provoked de Gau lles observation about the relative values to an Americanpresident of Chicago and Lyons. French resistance, the assassination of Presi-dent Kennedy, and the growing involvement of the U nited S tates i n SoutheastAsia for a while stalled NATOs adoption of anything like the program forwhich MC 100/1 (Draft) had called. In March 1966, however, de Gaulle

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announced that France would withdraw from NAT Os military structures, butnot from the alliance per se.Many co nsequences flow ed from Frances conclusion of her military rolein NAT O. Not the least of these was that it became p ossible to consider a rad-ically new app roach to strategy. With the leading opponent of flexible responseno longer participating in the NATOs military bodies, it became possible toadopt a strategy along the lines of M C 100/1 (Draft). Late in 1966 the MilitaryCom mittee again called fo r a strategy of flexible response to replace the decade-old MC 14/2.Th e North Atlantic Council, sitting as the Defense Planning C om-mittee approved the concept in May 1967, issuing a document that stated thatthe overall strategic concept for NATO should be revised to allow NATO agreater flexibility and to provide as approp riate of one or more of direct defense,deliberate escalation, and general n uclear respo nse, thus confronting the enemywith a credible threat of escalation i n response to any attack below the level ofa major nuclear attack.The new strateg y, like its predecesso r, found expression in two documents,one an abstract doctrinal explanation, the other a treatise in practical implemen-tation. The first of these, MC 1413, The Overall Strategic Concepts for theDefense of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Area, which the DefensePlanning Committee issued in its final form on January 16, 1968. M C 24/3stated that The de terrent concept of the Alliance is based on a flexibility whichwill prevent the potential aggressor from predicting with confidence NATOsspecific response to aggression and which will lead him to conclude that anunacceptable degree of risk would be involved regardless of the nature of hisattack. In short, NA TO declared its willingness not merely to reply in kind toa limited attack but to even to escalate its defensive response first through ademonstrative use of a nuclear weapon to their employment on select targets(primarily related to interdiction) and finally, if necessary, to what the papercalled a General N uclear Response.The companion docum ent to M C 14/3 was M C 48/3, M easures to Imple-ment the Strategic Concept for the Defense of the NATO Area. It summarizedthe strategy developed in M C 14/3 and identified the steps that would have tobe taken to mak e the strategy practicab le. It noted particularly requirements forimproved intelligence and operational readiness, stronger offensive capab ilities,better air defenses, quicker mo bilization, and more effective logistical support.Th e Military C omm ittee approved M C 48/3 on May 6, 1969. The approval ofthe Defense Planning Committee followed on December 4, 1969.M C 14/3and MC 48/3 were the last strategy documents that NA TO devisedbefore the collapse of the S oviet empire. With them, accordingly, this survey ofthe alliances military strategy during the Cold W ar concludes.

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Part Three

United States Air Forces in EuropeThrough the Cold War and Beyond

Having discussed the origins of the Cold W ar and traced in a general waythe role of air power in the higher strategy of the North A tlantic Treaty O rgan-ization, we turn now to som e of the more particular w ays in which the UnitedStates Air Force served the causes of peace and security in Europe during theCold War and beyond. Some of these services were directly in support ofNA TO; others supported ends of foreign policy not directly related to the NorthAtlantic Alliance. A useful way of organizing a review of the activities of theUSAF in Europe is through the history of United States Air Force In Europe(U SAFE).The direct ancestor of USAFE was United States Strategic Air Forces inEurope (USSTA F) wh ich, comm anded by General Carl Spaatz, and comprisingthe Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces, was responsible for the A merican portionof the Combined Bomber Offensive against Germany. Following Germanyssurrender, USSTAFs mission became the disarmament of the Luftwufse, theenforcement of surrender terms, and the disposal of no-longer needed warmatkriel. Because the command was no longer engaged i n strategic bombing,the War Department on August 7 , 1945 gave the organization the name i t hasproudly borne to the presen t day-United States Air Forces in Europe. Head-long demobilization followed Japans surrender a week later, and the hugeaerial armada created during the war vanished virtually overnight. On V -E Day ,US STA F had controlled 1 7,000 aircraft and 450,000 men. By the end of 1947,merely 458 planes and 18,120 men rem ained. Of 188 combat aircraft assignedto USA FE, only three B-17 bombers, two A-26 attack bombers, and thirty-oneP-47 fighters were fully operational. On V-E Day the command had operated152 airfields. By 1947 the num ber had fallen to thirteen-nine in the Americanoccupation zone of Germany and one each in Berlin, Austria, Libya, andLiberia. There were no longer any numbered air forces serving in Europe.*

* During the war there had been four numbered air forces in Europe-two strategic(the Eighth and the Fifteenth) and two tactical (the N i n t h and the Twelfth).31


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The brief war scare of 1946 merely caused the drawdown of American airpower in Europe to pause for a while. Also without lasting effect was the firstincident of the Co ld Wa r that produ ced Am erican fatalities. In August 1946 thecommunist government of Yugoslavia shot down an unarmed A merican C A 7transport. The U.S. responded by sending six B-29s to Germ any as a show offorce, and Yugoslavia subsequen tly apologized and offered compensation. Butwhile 1947 saw high diplomatic drama as the United States responded to S ovietpressures on Greece and Turkey with the Trum an D octrine and to Europes eco-nomic crisis with the Marshall Plan, fears of a general war with the SovietUn ion, so briefly acu te the year before, receded.* In M arch 1947, the theatercommander, General Joseph T. McNarney, told the War Department all heneeded was an Air Force of about 7,500 [men] to provide air transport andcommunications. He had no use for combat units, which he described as anadministrative burden, and he wanted them withdrawn. Faced with limiteddefense budgets and tight man power ceilings, no one in Washington objectedto McN arney s plans. General Eisenhower, now Army Chief of Staff, noted thatthe mission of U.S. forces i n Europe was to occupy Germany, not prepare forwar. In June 1947, howev er, the Strategic Air Comm and began a policy of rota-ting groups of B-29s through US AF Es bases in Germany. This practice gaveth e crews practice i n intercontinental flying, while serving as a reminder thatthough largely demobilized United States had retained a strategic bombingforce-and the atom ic bom b.?The year 1947, then, though seeing high political dram a, provided a respitefrom confrontations of a m ore direct sort between the antagonists of the ColdWar-so much so, in fact, that the pace of the JCSs war-planning slowednearly to a standstill. The next year, however, saw a return to the pattern of1946. The Western Allies, despairing of reaching ac om m on policy i n Germanywith the Soviets, laid plans fo r the unification of their zones of occup ation. Th eSoviets responded, as we have seen, with a campaign of psychological warfaredesigned to convince the Western powers that war might result if they persistedwith their plans. When that failed, the Soviets began to interfere with traffic tothe city of Berlin which, though under four-power occupation, lay 110 mileswithin the Soviet zone of occupation. B y June the city was su bject to a blockade

* USAFE, i t should be pointed out, played a small but important role in the TrumanDoctrin e. Military aid was an especially urg ent part of the program of aid to Greece, whichwas battling partisans backed by the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania.USAFE provided airlift support to the American aid mission to Greece, transferred aircraftto the Greek air force, and then provided spa re parts and m aintenance to keep the planesflyin during the protracted guerilla war with the Co mm unis t partisans.9 Th e aircraft deployed to Europe did not carry nuclear weapons. Th e 509th Bom bGroup- the Atomic Strike Force- remained in the United States as i t would h ave beentoo vulnera ble if stationed in Europ e. In the event of war with the S oviet Unio n the aircraftof the 509th would have deployed to bases in the United Kingdom and then proceededalmost immediately to their targets.32


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General Carl A. Spaatz (left) and General Joseph T. M cNarney.that cut off all supp lies from the westerns zones of occupation and allowed onlya trickle from the surround ing countryside of the Soviet zone.M ore was now at stake than the fa te of Berlin and the plan for the unifi-cation of the Western zones. If the Western Powers allowed themselves to bedriven from the former German capital, their prestige w ould everywhere havebeen broken and only the bravest citizens of Europe would have hazarded theirlives and those of their families in a seem ingly foredoom ed struggle to stem theadvance of Soviet communism. Speaking to the leaders of the Social UnityParty (SED) on March 22, 1948, the leading G erman com mu nist, Walter U1-bricht said of the impending blockade, Tremendous responsibilities will restupon the SE D during the next few mo nths because the fight of the progressiveworld against reactionary cap italism is cen tering in B erlin .. . .W hoever holdsBerlin holds Germany and w hoever holds Germany holds Europe.It was the good fortune of Europe-and of all the world-that in thisperilous hour the United States Air Forc e and the R oyal Air Force proved equalto Stalins cha llenge. Even before B-29s had arrived at British bases to under-line the United Statess com mitment to stay the course in Berlin, British andAm erican transport had begun to ferry food, coal, and medical su pplies into thebeleaguered city.* Begun a s a hasty im provisation, the effort grew into a mas-sive operation that kept more than two million Berliners alive through a hardwinter. By spring, the Anglo-Am erican airlift had reached a peak of efficiency

* Though the Berlin airlift remains the best-known of USAFEs humanitarianmissions, it was not the first, as the comm and had engaged in a similar operation at the endof World War 11. To avert starvation in areas of the Netherlands that had remained inGerman hands until the end of the war, British and American aircraft dropped ov er 1 1 ,OOOtons of food in the first week of May 1945.33


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Hundreds of B-17s stockpiled in Europe wait for destruction after the w ar.that surprised, even as its gratified, its planners. On April 16, 1949, 2,764sorties delivered 12,941 tons of supplies. Every two minutes an aircraft landedor took off at one of Berlins three airfields. Stalin, recognizing that he had beenbeaten, lifted the blockade on M ay 12,1949. The airlift continued unti l Septem-ber 30, however, in order to build up stocks against any new blockade. In all,Anglo-American aircraft delivered 2.3 million tons to Berlin, with Americanaircraft carrying abou t 1.8 million tons, of which I .4 million tons was coal andthe rest food. In all, thirty-one American airmen lost their lives to defeat theblockade of Berlin.The signing of the North Atlantic Treaty by the United States and itsWestern European allies on April 4, 1949, had large consequences for USA FE,whose mission now becam e more complex and m ultifaceted a s it shifted frombeing little more than an occupation force to preparing for possible combat. OnJanuary 2 1 , 195 1 , USA FE became a joint comm and directly subordinate to theJCS. It soon after reactivated the Twelfth Air Force in Germany to serve a s atactical air arm for NATOs ground forces. USA FE also organized the Third AirForce for the defense of Great Britain. Other changes were also necessary. Theoriginal dispositions of the American occupation forces in Germany had notbeen chosen with tactical considerations in mind. USAFE operated only twobases for com bat aircraft, Neubiberg and Fuerstenfeldbruck in Bav

defending the west the united states air force and european security, 1946-1998

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