DETERRENT TO WAR

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Both the letter by Mr. Schnur (CRIMSON 10/11/60) and the reply by Mr. Cowan missed most of the points worth making on the issue of the construction of fallout shelters. Mr. Schnur argued that we should construct shelters because nuclear war is possible and it is suicidal not to be prepared. Mr. Cowan argued irrelevantly that "the atmosphere created by current Civil Defense measures has unquestionably instilled in the American public a certain complacency about nuclear war...."

The mistake common to both these approaches to the problem is a failure to discuss it within the context of the strategy of deterrence which the United States has presumably adopted. I believe that an adequate civil defense program is not worth the money, that a greater contribution of deterrence can be made by expenditure on relatively invulnerable weapons systems and on greater mobility and fire power for our conventional forces. Bomb shelters, being an essentially static and inflexible strategic element, could probably in the course of time generate an offensive weapon that would nullify their value. For instance, trench warfare was rendered obsolete by the invention of noxious gases. The history of arms races indicates that such a development is most likely if the prospective counter-measure, in this case perhaps of a toxicological character, appears cheaper than the defensive objective, in this case, fallout shelters. An adequately massive shelter program would cost much more money, it would seem, than the prospective development by the Soviet Union of a way to circumvent it. The chief objection to a shelter program, and there are others which Mr. Cowan implied, thus emerges as economic. It would cost more money to construct than to countervail.

The most persuasive case for an adequate shelter program, which Mr. Schnur failed to make, and which I reject for the above reasons, is the possible contribution such a system would make to the deterrent posture of the United States... It is estimated that under current conditions, without an adequate civil defense program, nuclear war would result in sixty million American casualties. It is almost incredible that an American president would invoke such a holocaust in the case of a Soviet invasion limited to Europe. But if the enemy should ever come to believe that we would not carry out our purported policy of nuclear retaliation, he might be inclined to invade Western Germany with presumable impunity. This is not to say that the Soviet Union would attack West Germany, but that it might, and that at any rate, the diplomatic advantage would shift to the Communists in any negoiations which might be conducted on the issue...

There are two practicable ways to prevent such a disadvantageous situation from occurring. We could undertake a vast civil defense program to reduce probable American casualties to an estimated ten million and thus render at least credible our threat of massive retaliation to an invasion of Europe... Or, because of the deficiencies I mentioned earlier of a shelter system, we can increase vastly the fire power and mobility of our conventional and tactical nuclear forces in Europe. Though I would advocate the latter approach, a civil defense program, accompanied by constant statements of our belief in its considerable effectiveness, is probably better than no improvement at all in a strategic position which in all probability will lead either to the loss of Berlin, then West Germany, or to the ultimate, unspeakable disaster. George F. Gilder '61-2