February 12, 1973

Mr. Fred Ikle

Department of Political Science
Rand Corporation

Santa Monica, California

Dear Mr. Ikle,

Your Arms Control Group Seminar "Will Deterrence Last Out the Century"
is a provocative and insightful writing that must have provoked a great deal
of comment and correspendence. It resonates with a great many of my own ideas,
some of which I would hatehave dared to expressed as forthrightly as you have
without being able to offer more hopeful and positive prescriptions. I am
certainly very much looking forward to seeing you while you are at the Center
here next year but meanwhile will burden you with a few of my own thoughts
and comments, some of them from other miscellaneous writings and mostly
highly consonant with your own concerns.

In order of importance the issues I have in mind are:
1) maintaining the integrity of central command and control of the sea
based deterrent. Until we can improve our technical solutions of this problem
we are bound to continue to get the same shoulder shrugging attitude that
we now customarily face. I do not believe the problem has been subjected to
the kind of quantitative analysis that has justified other aspects of force \Y
planning. Howewer, I am hardly privy to what might be the most critical and

influential thinking in this field. I hope this is a matter that you can sS
take some part in forwarding the solutions to as eloquently as you have stated {7
the problen. : (i)
2) The legal implications of the Genocide Convention in relation to our MAB 4

strategic policies. The Senators and the State Department people with whom
I have corresponded on this point seem quite uncomprehending (note enclosures). +

3) Coping with irrationality. Quite obviously the maintenance of our own "over- QR
kill" capacity does little to deter the ultimately irrational adversary, if
you think of Hitler in the bunker as an example. But it is scarcely obvious
that reducing our deterrent level will improve the situation. The problem
is how to get him to reduce his! I realize that there are cross-talk
connections between these issues but equally that some of them are paradoxical.
I have been deeply impressed by your own studies of irrational decisions that
enveloped previous wars, but I wonder if we cannot begin to say that we are
entering into a new era precisely because the magnitude of potential
destruction is both highly predictable and many times more terrifying than
in the past. My optimism on this score goes just so far and it is terrifying
to think what the outcome of another Hitlerian uduenteare would be in the
contemporary environment. Have you thought what difference it would have made
to British and French policy vis—avéas cardinal events like the re-
occupation of the Rhineland if eventual nuclear rearmament were in mind?

over

 
4)

Mr. Fred Ikle -2- 2/12/73

One thing that can be said fairly certainly, howdver, is that a
Hitler who had a nuclear retaliatory force would not have found himself
in the bunker at the last resort ~- that the basic objectives of warfare
would be altered -- that we could no longer consider unconditional surrender
as the means by which a major system war can end. All of this leads to
number
- exactly what is the nuclear deterrent able to deter? Nuclear plackmail
perhaps but we have yet to see a clear-cut solution to the strategy of
salami-slicing on the part of a vicious and determined and if you will
“irrational” adversary like a Hitler. With all of the stabilizing effect
of a nuclear stalemate the paradogical implication that the nuclear shield
will give the highest yield to the most risk-taking and the nuclear weapons
will be used -- probably not in a single massive exchange but in a progressive
escalation similar to the way in which conventional armors were used during
World War II.

All in all, your arguments against sole reliance upon the deterrent
stalemate are absolutely convincing. May we look forward to a second paper

addressing the remaining agenda?

But I hope you can find time to comment on the more specific details
of this letter before you complete the latter.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr
Enclosure