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With that chilling report, an old Air Force program called Atlas was revived and thrown on a crash priority basis.
Working also with such missile prototypes as the Northrop "Snark" and the North American "Navaho" (which have intercontinental range, but at speeds only comparable to current bomber types), the U.S. may be catching up. The prospect is that by 1960 both the U.S. and the Soviet Union will have missiles that can carry hydrogen pay loads at 10,000 m.p.h. with a range of some 5,000 miles.
Missiles have a highly pertinent advantage over bombers, which need huge runways and surrounding installations. For the vast dispersion possibilities of missile launchers will greatly increase the reflex potential of any nation that is attacked.
The intercontinental missile makes complete and inescapable the analogy of the card players, as far as the card-player scene goes. But card players cannot sit there forever, or alone. They must have friends to bring them food, allies whom they can inspire or intimidate to action outside the deadlock. And the atomic adversaries, unlike the pistol-bound card players, have means other than their main weapons with which they can claw at each other.
The tableau of international deadlock will not stay frozen. The goal of Communism is world domination. Atomic stalemate cannot change that goal; it can merely force a switch in method. The era of strategic deadlock is less likely to see a peaceful world than a busily vicious one, boiling with limited wars. These will not necessarily be little wars. The only limitation is on the use of the ultimate strategic weapons against the Russian and American homelands. This development has been thoroughly previewed. When they were far behind in the collection of nuclear tools, when they knew the U.S.
could destroy them, the Communists attacked in Korea. The U.S. limited its reply. Korea behind them, the Communists redoubled their interest in Indo-China. The U.S. answered with a threat of "massive retaliation"—which was not carried out. In those cases, the Reds relied on a U.S. reluctance which will be obviously much stronger when, by 1960, the Russians possess the means of annihilating the U.S.
A recent paper by the Center of International Studies at Princeton is regarded among Pentagon planners as the best statement of the danger of overdependence on the doctrine of massive retaliation. Korea and Indo-China, says the paper, are symbols (especially to the Communists) of how a nation that can massively retaliate may yet be challenged successfully. In the long run, the erosion of repeated U.S. failures of the Indo-China type could be nearly as disastrous as all-out thermonuclear war. Therefore the U.S. must do more than maintain its strategic deterrent: it must also establish a tactical deterrent. It must be able to punish local aggressions with such speed and force that the Communists will finally call a halt. This is the concept of the double deterrent to the wars of tomorrow. To the essential capacity of pulverizing the U.S.S.R. by thermonuclear strategic attack must be added a tactical claw —swift, deadly, flexible.
BEYOND THE DEADLOCK