38. Letter From the Deputy Secretary of Defense (Gilpatric) to Secretary of State Rusk0
Dear Dean:
We appreciate receiving your views on the draft military section of Basic National Security Policy, as set forth in your letter of July 9th.
I note that your principal concern is over U.S. local war planning. The pertinent provision of the draft which you reviewed stated that, “At the present time the main basis for U.S. local war planning is the plan for the resumption of hostilities in Korea. For the present, the level of forces called for in this plan, including the mobilization of U.S. reserve forces, remains the basis of U.S. local war planning outside of Europe.”
As a result of subsequent work here in the Department of Defense we are considering a modification of the foregoing provision in a manner which I believe you will find more satisfactory. Moreover, we plan to emphasize even more clearly than in the earlier revision that there must be adequate military alternatives to the initiation of general war by the U.S., and that the greatest importance is attached to giving the President the option to commit substantial non-nuclear forces before having to decide to initiate the use of nuclear weapons in defense of U.S. commitments.1
The resolution of the order of magnitude of forces to be used in local war planning may well be the outgrowth of the present intensive re-examination of our forces now going on in the light of the Berlin situation, particularly the analysis of the ways of strengthening our forces by increasing their non-nuclear capability.
Sincerely yours,
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 711.5/7-1461. Secret.↩
- See Document 39.↩