ON the day after Hiroshima, men began speculating on a future when two or more nations would be able to blow each other up. The appalling prospect formed a rim on the horizon; imagination would not penetrate beyond it. But when horizons are closely approached they always disclose new horizons farther on.
Now the world is only a few steps (perhaps four or five years) away from absolute atomic deadlock, the point where the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. could destroy each other in all-out war, no matter which held a slight advantage and no matter which shot first.
As what was once a dim prospect takes the form of hard reality, strategic planners see that atomic deadlock does not offer a stark, final choice between absolute mutual destruction and perpetual peace based on absolute mutual fear.
Speculation about the military landscape beyond 1960 begins to be filled with quite definite shapes of other alternatives, new ways of war that will be conditioned by new technological possibilities and by the political and strategic consequences of the top-level deadlock. Beneath that uneasy firmament the struggle between the free and Communist worlds will go on. Nations and whole continents may be won or lost—indeed either side may meet final defeat—without recourse to the ultimate attack.
In recent months this new basic concept of the military future has stirred the Pentagon to the depths. Signs of the new view appear in the current budget estimates and even in statements of foreign political policy. An examination of the new prospect can be made without recourse to secret material. Such a survey falls into two parts: ¶ Establishing the fact that absolute atomic deadlock is a real possibility for the near future.
¶ Pulling together public technical and military information and examining it in the light of possible deadlock in the absolute weapons.
THE APPROACHING DEADLOCK
AN analogy, currently popular in military circles, goes back to the nation's frontier days. Two men, their faces twisted in hatred and fear, confront each other across a card table. Each holds a revolver within inches of the other's breast, pointed unwaveringly at the heart. There they sit, each with the sure power to cause instant death, yet afraid to squeeze the trigger. For the one who shoots first will himself be killed—by the reflex action of a dying man.
The U.S. and the Soviet Union already are near a stage where each has the power to smash the other into radioactive rubble. Yet with hundreds of bombers soon to be poised for instant take-off with thermonuclear bombs, neither nation could be confident of its power to stay the other's deadly reflexes.
Intercontinental missiles will hasten the day of deadlock already implicit in intercontinental airplanes with hydrogen bombs. For several years, the U.S., complacent of its ability to stay ahead of Russia in all things technological, has been daintily fingering missile projects.
Its smugness was roughly shattered last year by intelligence reports of a Soviet breakthrough: the development of a rocket engine with a thrust of at least 240,000 Ibs., which could be used as part of the power plant for a multi-stage intercontinental missile.