In addition to helping deter a massive Soviet attack, no matter how unlikely, the U.S. troops in Germany have at least three other important functions. First is that of assisting in maintaining ground access to West Berlin and Western rule in West Berlin. The presence of properly deployed American forces in enough strength so that "incidents" on the Autobahn or at the Berlin boundaries can be met with a proportionate, but not an undue, response that is clearly American, provides a constant reminder to the Soviet Union of the dangers of attempting to change the situation of West Berlin by force. The Americans in West Berlin serve a corresponding function with respect to possible incursions by East German police or troops, the use of Soviet forces for political intimidation, and the like. These functions will remain vital until the political arrangements governing the relations of West Berlin, the Federal Republic, and the German Democratic Republic are clearly accepted by all of the parties. The second function of U.S. troops is that of maintaining a presence and a forward deployment sufficient to reassure the Germans in particular and Western Europe in general of our continued commitment to their defense. While this deployment is inseparably connected with the prime task of displaying our intentions to the Soviet Union, it, so to speak, plays to a different audience. Finally, U.S. troops in Germany assure other members of NATO that immediate management of the alliance's confrontation with the Soviet Union is not solely in the hands of the West Germans, and they provide the means of integrating German forces into the NATO command system. This is an important element in alliance solidarity, whose value even the German government accepts.

While all these functions are separable for analytical purposes, the demands they make for U.S. forces are by no means additive. The tasks of garrisoning West Berlin and providing a large enough mobile force to make clear that access to the city cannot be closed off without a major military confrontation require about two and one-half U.S. divisions: onehalf in Berlin, one for deployment at the Autobahn approaches, and one as a general reserve. One more division would make possible enough for ward deployment of U.S. troops in southern Germany to provide assurance to the Germans and the other NATO members of the seriousness of our commitment. We now have almost twice as large a ground combat force in Germany as this. General supporting forces and air forces are probably not so much larger than necessary, but units now manning a large variety of tactical nuclear weapons could usefully be viewed as even more redundant than the ground combat forces. Altogether, at a crude estimate, present U.S. forces in Europe may be on the order of 30 to 40 percent

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larger than would strictly be needed to meet the current strategic requirements of the alliance, if these requirements were defined in politically realistic terms.

If any sizable reduction were to be made in U.S. forces, it would almost certainly be paralleled by some reduction-though not necessarily a proportionate one-in force levels and budgets of the European members of NATO; the United States would no longer be able to exert its customary pressure in NATO for large budgets and stronger forces. Thus, any changes that a new administration may make must be considered in terms of their total effects on NATO's deployments.

Three kinds of arguments can be made for sizable reductions in U.S. forces in Europe. The first, and probably most persuasive, is a budgetary one. At present levels of defense and total federal expenditures, any deployment that is not strictly necessary is a luxury. In particular, our paying for extra insurance that the Europeans do not themselves believe necessary, as shown by their own expenditures, is most inappropriate. To realize significant budgetary savings, we must not only withdraw forces from Europe to the United States; they must also be scaled down in total numbers. The second argument stresses the desirability of shifting more responsibility to the now prosperous Europeans for their own defense; but this cannot be accomplished by exhortation, as we have discovered over some years. It can only be done by facing them with the facts of our decisions. The third argument concerns the significant possibilities for arms-control arrangements affecting Europe that force reductions might open up.

These arrangements are of two kinds. First is the parallel reduction of forces on the central front, matching U.S. troop reductions with withdrawal of Soviet forces stationed west of the Soviet borders, and reductions by other NATO members with those of the Eastern European countries. Second is the creation of a substantial denuclearized zone on both sides of the dividing line in Germany. Both of these are items which, in one shape or another, have long figured in Soviet arms-control proposals and propaganda and which we have steadfastly rejected. Our past attitude rested on both military and political grounds. Militarily, these changes appeared to undermine our forward strategy by removing from the central front both the troops and weapons on which it was based. Further, our removal of troops across the Atlantic could not be compared with a Soviet removal to just behind its own western borders, some 700 miles from the German dividing line. Politically, they were viewed as threatening the unity of the NATO alliance at two levels. Until fairly recently, discussing them would

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have appeared to be a sharp reversal of U.S. strategic doctrines; in a dangerous situation, such a reversal would have been alarming, especially to the Germans. On an ideological level, the negotiations required for such arrangements would have appeared to "equate" NATO and the Warsaw Pact or would have involved the recognition of East Germany.

Today the military grounds are no longer relevant to our current strategic concepts and the appraisal of the military balance which they embody. While the particular political objectives raised in the past are not now apposite, there are significant political problems that would be raised by the discussion of such proposals. They turn essentially on the role of the Federal Republic. It has always been difficult for Germans to accept their exclusion from Soviet-American discussions on matters that concern them so intimately. On the other hand, it would be difficult for them to negotiate in a forum which included the GDR as a legitimate party; indeed, it is difficult to see how negotiations of the requisite sort could be carried on if all the alliance members on both sides participated. This is not to say that a process of negotiation cannot be found but to emphasize the important role of the relations between the Federal Republic and the United States and the views of the Germans in any such process.

Further, there is the difficult problem of whether it is wise for the United States and NATO to move unilaterally on force reductions and redeployments of tactical nuclear weapons or whether changes should be restricted to those on which there are reciprocal undertakings by the Warsaw Pact nations. A case for some unilateral action exists: such action may provide an important or even a necessary initial impetus to the negotiating process, both for the Soviet Union and for the Europeans, who may then have a clearer idea of how much defense they need and want to pay for. Yet, if there are to be negotiations, we cannot simply give away our bargaining position, and too much unilateral change can make ncgotiation appear unnecessary to the Russians.

In the area of strategic nuclear forces, bilateral Sovict-American discussions are clearly appropriate, and the arms-control issues themselves are central to the discussions. In the area of European military deployments, arms-control problems are inevitably closely linked to the larger political issues of the German settlement; and the character and pace of the discussions depend heavily on views in the Federal Republic about how to regulate its relations with the GDR in particular and the Communist governments of Eastern Europe in general. Therefore, negotiations on the arms-control issues cannot be separated from broader political negotiations on Germany and a European settlement. These, in turn, will bear

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575 heavily on the political relations of the Federal Republic, the United States, and the other members of NATO.

Further, the interests of the other side in such arms-control negotiations are not clear. The westward deployment of Soviet troops has always been at least as much for their value as a political instrument in dealing with the bloc countries as for their role in confronting the forces of NATO. The invasion of Czechoslovakia underlines this point; and it is doubtful that the Soviet Union would want to discuss troop withdrawals or reductions now. Neither would the Western Europeans. Thus, unlike negotiations on the deployment of strategic weapons, arms-control discussions are probably an item for the future; nonetheless, they should not be dropped out of sight.

Other General Purpose Forces

The foregoing discussions of the strategic military balance and the needs of NATO dealt with situations in which the basic military and political considerations governing the possible use of force can be translated into the kind of quantitative terms necessary for decisions on force levels and budgets; in Europe there is a reasonably coherent and explicit rationale for policy, dominated neither by arbitrary political assumptions nor by forecasts of complex chains of future contingencies, though, to be sure, both elements cannot be entirely dispensed with. When we consider the military forces required for other purposes, however—namely, the general purpose forces for world-wide use, the strategic reserves, and the supporting forces for air-lift, sea-lift, general overhead, training, and reserve strengthwe move into an area much more difficult to deal with in quantitative terms. However, we can make some progress by dividing the problem in two and considering, first, forces in East and South Asia and, second, U.S. strategic reserves and other supporting forces.

At the present, of course, our deployments in Asia are dominated by the war in Vietnam. We have some 550 thousand military personnel in South Vietnam, nearly 100 thousand more in Thailand, in Strategic Air Command (SAC) units engaged in bombing Vietnam, and naval personnel in Southeast Asian waters. This total is a little short of 20 percent of our total armed forces; it is also only a little short of the whole increase in forces-700 thousand men-added since the levels planned for 1964, the last year before we began the sharp increase in our military commitments in Vietnam.

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In addition, we still maintain two army divisions in South Korea, somewhat less than one-division elsewhere in the Pacific, some air force units in Japan, Okinawa, and the Philippines, and Seventh Fleet forces over the whole of the western Pacific.

On the assumption that the Vietnam war will be settled in a way that involves the total withdrawal of all American forces from the country-at some near future, but unspecified, time-what do the political prospects outlined above demand in the way of military commitments? One division in South Korea will certainly suffice for deterrence purposes; it may not even be necessary, since South Korean forces are adequate for defense against the possibility of another invasion. A second division, which we have considered withdrawing for some time, now functions essentially as a trade for South Korean troops in Vietnam. Considerable naval and air deployments will still be needed in the western Pacific to perform the general function of deterrence and low-key political support of neutral and allied countries against communist threats to use force and the particular function of protecting the independence of Taiwan. These functions, of course, involve not only the direct presence of the Seventh Fleet but also the less visible total power of the United States. Deterrence on this basis can be expected with high confidence to continue to be effective in protecting Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and Indonesia in view of the low capability of the military forces of the Asian communist nations for overscas or long-distance operations and their overall strategic weakness.

Given a fair degree of internal unity and economic growth, the same can be said about India. Its own military capabilities for defending its border with China are not negligible, and the logistical problems for the Chinese of mounting an invasion of India that reaches at all deeply into the plains beyond the Himalayan foothills are formidable. With sufficient political will, India can make a repetition of the frontier attack of October 1962 unattractive to China as long as American, and perhaps even Soviet, assistance seems to be in the offing. Without a stable political underpinning, of course, even a large U.S. force would be of little help. There is a case for extending the patrol range of some Seventh Fleet forces westward into the Indian Ocean-and even into the Bay of Bengal-simply to make the American military presence more visible. The basing problens this would present must be faced; and if the fleet's range cannot be extended without any forward land bases, or with bases involving no political problems, such as Australia, it is doubtful whether the gains would compensate for the problems created by the bases.