Defense of the North American Continent
Abstract
It is a great pleasure once again to address the annual Symposium of the Defence Research Board of Canada. I will examine this afternoon the question as to what strategies we should consider in our struggle with the Soviet Union and the bearing of these strategies on the defense of North America. Let me be clear that I speak only for myself and not for the U.S. Army for whom I work - indeed, with tiny exceptions, all of my "classified" material might well come from recent articles in Fortune, Harpers, Colliers, or the Saturday Evening Post. In spite of this I must admit that the exact kind of reasoning I will pursue might not have been possible without long conditioning in military affairs and without much access to the most secure and classified material. My discussion will be concerned with the increasingly bright prospects that our decisions, if well made, can lead to actions that will secure without question our survival in the face of the inimical threat of the Soviet Union. I do not believe that we can find a simple, linear, exact, and rational solution to this problem. Intuition and emotion, as well as calculations, must play a part in the decisions to be reached by our leaders, and we ourselves must accept the fact that this is a non-simple, non-linear, probabilistic and irrational world and yet have the faith and courage that in spite of these complexities and uncertainties, we can achieve practical solutions to our problems, just as we have always done in the past.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 1953
- Accession Number
- ADB234130
Entities
People
- Ellis A. Johnson
Organizations
- Johns Hopkins University