There Will Be War Volume III

by Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War

  Volume III

  edited by Jerry Pournelle and John F. Carr

  Published by Castalia House

  Kouvola, Finland

  www.castaliahouse.com

  First published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. (1983)

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

  The stories in this collection are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Editor: Jerry Pournelle

  Associate Editor: John F. Carr

  Technical Editor, 2015 Edition: Eric Pobirs

  Cover Image: Lars Braad Andersen

  Version 001

  Copyright © 1984, 2015 by Jerry Pournelle

  All rights reserved

  The stories contained herein were first published and copyrighted as follows:

  DETERRENT OR DEFENSE? by Jerry Pournelle was written especially for the 1984 edition. Published by arrangement with the author and the author’s agent, Blassingame, McCauley, and Wood. Copyright © 1984 by J. E. Pournelle.

  THE SPECTRE GENERAL by Theodore Cogswell was first published in the June 1952 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It is reprinted by permission of the author. Copyright © 1952 by Street and Smith Publications.

  THIS EARTH OF HOURS by James Blish was previously published in the June 1959 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Published by arrangement with the author’s estate. Copyright © 1959 by Mercury Press.

  007: “IT IS ENOUGH, IVAN. GO HOME!” by Reginald Bretnor first appeared in the October 1983 issue of Survival Tomorrow. It is presented here by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1983 by Personal Survival Center.

  THE TOOLS OF WAR by Roland J. Green and Clyde R. Jones appeared for the first time in the 1984 edition. Published with the permission of the authors. Copyright © 1984 by Roland J. Green and Clyde R. Jones.

  ACT OF MERCY by D. C. Poyer first appeared in Unearth Magazine. Published by permission of the author. Copyright © 1984 by D. C. Poyer.

  THE ECONOMICS OF WAR by David Friedman appeared for the first time in the 1984 edition. Published by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1984 by David Friedman.

  THE MIRACLE-WORKERS by Jack Vance was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in the July 1958 issue. It is presented here by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1958 by Street and Smith Publications.

  THE DEFENSE OF EUROPE by Stefan T. Possony was published for the first time in the 1984 edition. Published by arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1984 by Stefan T. Possony.

  HIDE AND SEEK by Arthur C. Clarke was previously published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1949. Reprinted by arrangement with the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc. Copyright © 1949 by Street and Smith Publications.

  THE MYTH OF A LIBERATION by Doan Van Toai first appeared in the October 21, 1982 issue of The New York Review of Books. This essay appears by special arrangement with the author. Copyright © 1982 by Doan Van Toai.

  PSI-REC: OF SWORD AND SITAR, THE WAR WITHOUT by Peter Dillingham appeared for the first time in the 1984 edition. Copyright © 1984 by Peter Dillingham.

  SILENT LEGES by Jerry Pournelle originally appeared in Combat SF edited by Cordon R. Dickson. Published by arrangement with the author and the author’s agent, Blassingame, McCauley, and Wood. Copyright © 1975 by Doubleday & Company, Inc.

  The editor gratefully acknowledges that research for the non-fiction essays, including “The Defense of Europe” by Stefan Possony, was supported in part by grants from the Vaughn Foundation, and The L-5 Society. Responsibility for opinions expressed herein rests solely with the authors.

  For the non-commissioned officers of the armed forces of the United States.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Cover

  Introduction: Deterrent or Defense? by Jerry Pournelle

  The Spectre General by Theodore Cogswell

  This Earth of Hours by James Blish

  007: It Is Enough, Ivan. Go Home! by Reginald Bretnor

  The 'Eathen by Rudyard Kipling

  The Tools of War by Roland J. Green and Clyde R. Jones

  Act of Mercy by D.C. Poyer

  The Economics of War by David Friedman, Ph.D

  That Day by Rudyard Kipling

  The Miracle-Workers by Jack Vance

  The Defense of Europe by Stefan T. Possony

  Hide and Seek by Arthur C. Clarke

  The Myth of a Liberation by Truong Nhu Tang

  Psi-Rec: Of Sword and Sitar by Peter Dillingham

  Silent Leges by Jerry Pournelle

  Afterword by Jerry Pournelle

  There Will Be War Vol. IV

  Riding the Red Horse

  The History of Strategy

  Books by Jerry Pournelle

  Castalia House

  New Releases

  Introduction

  DETERRENT OR DEFENSE?

  by Jerry Pournelle

  Thus be it ever when free men shall stand

  Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation…

  –The Star Spangled Banner, Verse 4

  Frederick the Great said that “neither the peasants in the fields, nor the burghers in the towns, should know or care when the state was at war.” The U.S. ideal is given in the “military’s verse” to The Star Spangled Banner. Allowing for differences in attitude—in Frederick’s day, his conquests, though less successful than today’s Soviets’, were less berated in rhetoric—both intend that armies defend their nations.

  There had always been exceptions, of course. Coastal towns were vulnerable to raids or bombardment from the earliest days of naval war. Even so, defenses were possible: Witness Fort McHenry, where The Star Spangled Banner was written. For the most part, civilian populations were relatively safe until their national army had been defeated.

  There grew up conventions, rules and laws of war. Most, like the convention that undefended cities could be declared “open” and thus spared bombardment, were designed to protect the helpless. War might be barbaric, but some elements of civility might be preserved.

  The airplane changed that. The British threw away the open city convention for wide area bombardment. Their high-altitude night attacks by Bomber Command had an average miss distance of six miles. RAF bombardiers were told to dump their bombs anywhere they liked; they’d at least kill some Germans. The Luftwaffe retaliated. World War II became a war against the helpless, culminating in Dresden and Cologne and the indiscriminate fire raids on Tokyo.

  Even then there was defense. The RAF, Luftwaffe and Imperial Navy set new standards for heroism as they literally placed themselves between their homes and war’s desolation. Bombers got through; but not all got through, and not all went home. Imperfect defense was better than no defense.

  Nuclear weapons and the ICBM dealt the final blow to defense. The atom bomb, and later the hydrogen bomb, was so destructive that no more than a handful could devastate a nation’s economy. World War II showed that a few bombers always got through—and there was no defense at all against the ICBM.

  For a few years after the Soviets obtained nuclear weapons, the United States continued with the notion of defense. There are still abandoned missile sites around Los Angeles and other
cities. Eventually, however, it was decided that the cost was too high and the effect too low. Interceptor aircraft would suffice to defend against conventional bombs; nothing would help against a nuclear attack. For the first time in our history, we admitted that we could not defend ourselves. We adopted a doctrine of pure deterrence.

  There always was an element of deterrence in our national policy. To deter someone is to prevent him from acting, through either fear or doubt. If you seek to deter an attacker, one of the best deterrents is good defenses; if the attack is likely to fail, it’s not rational to try it.

  Unfortunately, the United States found itself forced to a strategic doctrine of pure deterence at a time when civilian intellectuals dominated strategic thought. Deterrence is a very soft concept. Defenses involve hardware and capabilities. One may have doubts about the adequacy of a defensive system vs. a particular attack, but at least there is an objective event under debate: Can Sea Cat prevent a Mirage aircraft from successfully attacking a ship? Deterrence, however, is a mental event. Only an attacker knows whether or not he has been deterred. The deterrer can only make guesses based on certain assumptions.

  One of the assumptions is that deterrence is possible, i.e., that the potential enemy is sufficiently rational; that he knows the consequences of the forbidden action and cares enough to avoid them. You cannot deter the utterly mad or those who no longer care about the future.

  Second, deterrence must be public. A secret defensive weapon may be decisive in actual combat; a secret deterrent weapon is utterly useless.

  Third, deterrence may be based on pure bluff; alas, far too many cheese-paring officials seized on this aspect as a way to save money. Weapons need not work—indeed, one need not have any weapons at all—so long as the enemy believes you have workable weapons.

  There followed any number of brilliant theoretical essays on deterrence. They had subject matters such as “The Rationality of Irrationality.” I recall reading with quiet approval the statement that, “After all, if the other chap is rational and really believes you, then your threat that if he doesn’t give you the last piece of toast, you’ll blow your brains out all over his new suit will work.” All you had to do was convince the other guy you were crazy enough to do it.

  We didn’t notice at first, but the defense of Europe became almost exactly analogous to that. In fact, it’s worse. We now tell the Soviet leaders that if they attack Europe, we’ll commit suicide by killing their helpless civilians while sparing their weapons and their leaders.

  European defense has now resulted in stationing six U.S. divisions in the path of a hundred Soviet divisions. There is a slim possibility that the U.S. forces in Europe can stop a mobilized Soviet army; it is very unlikely they can do so without employing nuclear weapons. Do we then suppose that the Soviets do not know this? Are they not likely to open the attack by preemptive strikes against our theater nuclear forces? That attack will itself devastate much of Europe.

  The Europeans know this, and many therefore oppose introduction of U.S. theater nuclear forces (TNF) to their territory.

  It is all made more absurd by opposition to Enhanced Radiation Weapons, sometimes known as “neutron weapons.” These can kill exposed personnel while sparing both buildings and their sheltered inhabitants. Such weapons are not magic, but they would be extremely useful in defending against massed armor armies. When we seek to deploy them, we are told that this is inhuman; that we seek to kill the Europeans while sparing their buildings.

  “No incineration without representation,” the European Peace Movement shouts; yet when we seek to bring home our army, we are accused of “isolationist selfishness” by the very governments that seek to prevent our deploying the weapons that might give our armies a chance in a European war.

  In fact, the logic of MAD, of Mutual Assured Deterrence, robs us of credibility. We cannot defend Europe without threatening nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union—which is to invite Soviet retaliation against the U.S. We have arrived at a doctrine which, in the words of Henry Kissinger, “is one that exposes the United States to the devastation of her own territory for people who will not run that risk in defense of themselves.”

  Deterrence has not yet failed, but the balance of terror is delicate indeed and becomes increasingly more so as the U.S. Strategic Offensive Forces (SOF) grow obsolete and vulnerable.

  Deterrence seeks to prevent war; but employing a strategy of pure deterrence pins our hopes not on technology, where we are strong, but on psychology and diplomacy—not fields in which we have had notable past successes.

  We’ve gone farther. Mutual Assured Destruction—MAD, the strategic doctrine adopted by McNamara and continued to this day—has rigid logical requirements. Part of the justification for the Interstate Highway System—the largest and most expensive building program in human history—was that under each approach ramp we would build a fall-out shelter. After the system was proposed, we adopted MAD. The logic of MAD—never accepted by the Soviets—states that civil defenses are an act of aggression.

  If we protect our citizens, we must believe the Soviets would attack them; if they’re properly deterred, they won’t attack except in response to our attack; therefore we must be planning to attack.

  Note also that we must as a matter of public policy believe they are deterred; if we express any doubts, then rationally we must attack first.

  On the other hand, pure deterrence promised considerable savings. The incremental costs of building fall-out shelters as part of the Interstate Highway System were not high, but there could be real savings on weapons systems. Since both sides were “like small boys standing in a pool of gasoline,” there would be no need to collect matches. If the Soviets kill us, we’ll kill them back; all we need, then, is enough to kill them with. Strategy was reduced to an engineering problem: If we have the capability to kill enough Russian civilians, all will be well.

  Accordingly, the U.S. installed the Minuteman system and quit. Since the Soviets were assumed to be rational, and therefore to think like U.S. university professors turned military theorists, they would understand this unambiguous signal. No one wants to feel inferior in this modern world; therefore the Soviets might build a few more weapons systems than we have; but once they’d caught up, it would be silly for them to go on collecting matches…

  The theory was brilliant, but apparently one or another of the assumptions was wrong. When the Soviets “caught up,” they didn’t halt. They didn’t even slow down. They kept four separate assembly lines going three shifts a day, turning out ICBMs as quickly as possible, to the detriment of their civilian economy.

  They do it still.

  Deterrence certainly hasn’t deterred them from building weapons.

  Perhaps, though, this is all to the good? These weapons they build; surely they’re a mere waste of precious resources. There’s nothing they can do with them–

  Now understand, there’s no doubt that if the Soviet Union were ruled by Harvard professors, they’d be utterly deterred, not only from attacking the U.S. but also from adventures in Europe and Afghanistan. Alas, there’s some evidence that they’re not.

  There’s a second problem with deterrence.

  It’s immoral.

  Free men standing between their loved homes and the war’s desolation is compatible with Judeo-Christian tradition and the Thomistic doctrine of Just War. Setting fire to the enemy’s women and children isn’t. Yet if we don’t threaten to bum Russian schoolgirls, how can we honor our pledge to Europe? Without credible threats, we are thrown upon the good will of a gang of aged homicidal maniacs who have conclusively proven that they care very little for their own civilians and nothing at all for anyone else’s. Lest you doubt that, closely examine Andropov’s role in the 1956 Hungarian uprising.

  The dilemma is intolerable, and utterly divides the West.

  Assured Destruction vs. Assured Survival

  In 1969, Stefan T. Possony and I published The Strategy of Technology. We arg
ued strongly for a policy of “Assured Survival” in opposition to the McNamara policy of MAD. Assured Survival was defined as a strategy that sought to ensure the survival of the United States, not merely to assure the destruction of the Soviet Union.

  There were many approaches to Assured Survival. One was Civil Defense: If deterrence failed, some of our citizens might yet survive. Another was construction of defensive systems, first to protect our missiles, then to protect our cities. The defenses would not be perfect, but they would at least provide some protection.

  Defense is, of course, a form of deterrence. Indeed, without some kind of defense, MAD itself becomes difficult; for MAD requires “invulnerable” second-strike weapons. If the enemy can destroy one’s retaliatory weapons, then deterrence is not mutual.

  Weapons may be made “invulnerable” through their basing, or through doctrine. Alas, the experts are agreed: There is no basing scheme that will guarantee the survival of the Strategic Offensive Forces (SOF) past the end of this decade. Survival of the SOF must increasingly depend on active measures.

  The threats to the SOF are very real. Our strategic deterrent is based on the Triad principle: three independent kinds of offensive forces. Alas, all three are vulnerable.

  The air leg of the triad depends on the B-52: a once glorious airplane, but old, older than most of her crew. The B-52 has been described as “a mass of parts flying in loose formation.”

  Adding air-launched cruise missiles helps a little, but not enough; the B-52 plus standoff missiles still must penetrate the Soviet defense systems. Unlike us, the Soviets believe in air defenses, and they have a lot of them.