Edward
Rowny
interested in global strategy. Even though he was an Air Force officer, he didn't
share many of the Air Force officers' ideas of an air force-dominant strategy. He
had a moderating effect on the new Air Force. Norstad saw a need for a sizeable
Navy to maintain control of the seas, and also saw a large role for the Army in
physically taking and holding land objectives. While he saw in this scheme a role
for the Air Force, it was not nearly as large as his brother officers in the Air Force
wanted.
During our dream sessions, General Norstad would have us speculate about the
future. We talked about international issues we expected to emerge and how the
military fit into them. Several of us were quite critical, even though we were
otherwise great admirers of General Marshall, as to how he had handled events
toward the end of the war. We felt he had put an overriding requirement on
getting the troops out of Europe and rapidly drawing down the Army. We thought
he had overlooked the real objective of the military in peacetime, that is,
complementing and implementing our political objectives. For example, some of
us were critical that U.S. officials had stopped our Army from advancing, thus
allowing the Soviets to move into Berlin. We also felt the U.S. should have moved
its forces into what Churchill called the "soft underbelly of Europe.
Norstad had us analyze and discuss the telegrams George Kennan was sending in
from Helsinki about Stalin's expansionist goals. We critiqued the famous telegram
which later became the "Mr. X" article in
recommending that the
U.S. contain the Soviet Union.
Norstad believed that science would play a large role in the future of the military.
One of our officers dreamed up the idea of ablative nose cones for nuclear
weapons. If this could be developed, we could envision an intercontinental ballistic
missile force. In other words, the warheads could fly long distances and in space
not bum up when they reentered the atmosphere. If this could be done, we could
foresee the development of submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
Even more revolutionary, if the weapon's nose cone could survive, then so could
a man inside a capsule. Norstad's officers dreamed up the idea of putting a man
on the moon within 25 years.
These were mind-boggling and mind-stretching ideas. We worked hard at
preparing for these dream sessions, reading history, being briefed by scientists, and
talking to global strategists and heads of think tanks.
About the time that our tours of duty in the Pentagon were coming to an end,
General Norstad came up with the idea that several of us should go to graduate
school to study international relations. Colonels Goodpaster, Dziuban and I were
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