Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy

(By Henry A. Kissinger, 1957)

Kissinger spent most of his adult life dealing with a revelation and a revolution; the discovery of nuclear fission. He recognised that nuclear weapons changed how nations would conduct foreign policy. Ever the realist, Kissinger knew that nuclear weapons would slow but not stop war, and he grappled with the two-sides of the coin thereby tossed: that possession of nuclear weapons, no longer held in monopoly, would either prevent all war, or lead to global catastrophe. He also thought, presciently, that neither arms limitations agreements, exchanges of information such as sharing of flight plans or disclosure of sites, or weapons inspections programmes, would be of any real use. “Policy is the art of weighing probabilities; mastery of it lies in grasping the nuances of possibilities.”

His theory was that limited nuclear war was possible. “…we added the atomic bomb to our arsenal without integrating its implications into our thinking. Because we saw it merely as another tool in a concept of warfare which knew no goal save total victory and no mode of war except all-out war….Given the power of modern weapons, it should be the task…to create alternatives less cataclysmic than a thermonuclear holocaust…the crucial problem of strategy…is to establish a reasonable relationship between power and the willingness to use it…Henceforth the only outcome of an all-out war will be that both contenders must lose…All-out war has therefore ceased to be a meaningful instrument of policy….The characteristic of a limited war…is the existence of ground rules which define the relationship of military to political objectives…war cannot be limited unless both sides wish to keep it limited…the consequences of a limited victory or a limited defeat or a stalemate – the three possible outcomes of a limited war – must seem preferable to the consequences of an all-out war….Limited war and the diplomacy appropriate to it provide a means to escape from the sterility of the quest for absolute peace, which paralyzes by the vagueness of its hopes, and of the search for absolute victory, which paralyzes by the vastness of its consequences.”

The notion of limited nuclear war never came to pass. In fact, Kissinger’s tract may have been an enormous bluff directed at the Soviets. But en passant, he also made several observations that still seem apt almost 70 years later: “…our European allies have been unwilling to make the economic sacrifices required for a meaningful defense effort and some of them have tended to escape harsh realities by denying their existence…The difficulty with our present budgetary process is, that by giving priority to cost over requirement, it subordinates doctrine to technology…A society owes its vitality to its ability to strike a balance between the requirement of organization and the need for inspiration. Too much stress on organization leads to bureaucratization and the withering of imagination. Excessive emphasis on inspiration produces a tour de force without continuity or organizational stability…we face the challenge of demonstrating that democracy is able to find the moral certainty to act without the support of fanaticism and without a guarantee of success.”