Return to the ground floor of this tower
Return to the Main Courtyard
Return to Fort Freedom's home page
]]]]]]]]] HYPMOTIS GORBACHEV CONJURES AN ARMS REDUCTION [[[[[[[[[[
(1/6/89)
by Mark Helprin
Mr. Helprin is a novelist and political commentator.
From the WALL STREET JOURNAL, 12/13/1988
Mikhail Gorbachev is as arresting and as magnetic as someone who
is being chased. Like Khrushchev, he shows signs of frenetic
overextension. He must succeed before his opposition decides that he
has gone too far without success. So, he throws many plates in the
air, and his solution to the problem of keeping them all up there is
to add yet another. He will restructure the economy--and the polity.
He will make an accomodation with the West--and China. He will deal
with strategic arms--and conventional forces. He will withdraw from
Afghanistan--and reorganize the military.
His latest initiative is probably less than he himself wants and
far less than meets the eye, because he is laying down a double track.
His concessions are carefully hedged to mollify his opposition, who,
should he depart the scene, will find the apparatus in place for
pursuing a policy quite different than his. This is the price they
exact for his experimentation.
And he does what he does so brilliantly that when he left
Manhattan to visit Ronald Reagan and George Bush in their place of
exile on a tiny island in the harbor, the president and the president-
elect sat with him by the fire, in what looked like a daze. As he
held forth, they had the expressions of fish whose heads have been
banged against the deck. Remember the Spirit of Glassboro? The
detente of the '70s? Now we have Voodoo '88.
MAGIC OF AMBIGUITY
He has paralyzed the notorious skepticism of the American press
with the magic of his ambiguity. But if instead of sleeping in his
arms one looks carefully at his proposals, modest wisdom may defeat
overcredulous haste.
The initiative was offered disingenously. A man who says that he
has not come to score points then magnanimously forgives the Third
World its not exactly overwhelming debt to the Soviet Union, clears
his throat, and bats his eyelashes at the West. The arms-reduction
proposals were delivered several days in advance of much more
stringent demands from NATO. Despite the Van Buren transition, Mr.
Bush has not hit the ground yet, much less running, and he must have
loved receiving a fait accompli while handcuffed and tranquilized.
That the arms-reduction decision was accomplished unilaterally
immunizes it to the sting of verification. With no NATO
participation, Mr. Gorbachev, like a writer without an editor, can
avoid cutting out what is dearest to him. Because no agreement
exists, nothing is even vaguely binding: What the general secretary
giveth, the general secretary can taketh away. And he is to be
admired for awarding to himself immense space in which to maneuver.
A reduction of 500,000 troops appears stunning until one
remembers that the Soviet defense establishment consists of 5.2
million regulars, 6.2 million ready reserves, and 55 million other
reserves. If the 500,000 were decommissioned early into the reserves,
the reduction would be merely a change in the active/reserve ratio.
If the cut came from the reserves themselves, it would be even less.
Seven hundred thousand of the 5.2 million regulars are railroad,
agriculture and construction troops. If the railroad troops were
taken out of their uniforms and called railroad workers and they still
operated the rolling stock essential for the Red Army's logistics and
transport, the reduction would be a ruse.
What if the cuts came from category II or category III divisions,
manned at only 50%-75% and 20%, respectively. Would the full
divisional strength be counted? Even if the counting were accurate,
cutting category III divisions alone represents less of a troop
reduction than a restructuring to emphasize fully ready formations at
the expense of the slower-to-mobilize cadre units. The reductions may
merely trim administrative fat across the board and make Soviet
divisions even leaner, or they may be concentrated on the eastern
front with China, or result from the planned transfer of some
noncombat tasks to civilians.
The Soviet draft pool has declined by one-third since the late
'70s, and in view of unrest in the autonomous regions, a change in the
ethnic mix of the army may necessitate a reduction that preserves a
higher ratio of Slavs. In any case, these cuts represent just over a
4% reduction of regulars and ready reserves over the next two years.
In the two years that have just passed, Soviet forces grew by 6%.
Since 1982 they have grown by almost 25%. Certainly most of the
people who are now euphoric about the proposed 4% reduction were not
even aware of the 25% addition.
Of the 50,000 troops that Mr. Gorbachev promises to withdraw from
the front, one must ask, where are they going? They represent
slightly more than 5% of active Warsaw Pact troops in the area. If
they withdraw they will reduce the pact's lead from 20% to 15%. But
the front is where the territories of the two alliances narrow. Each
alliance already keeps more than twice as many active troops farther
back, where they are less vulnerable and do not choke the field of
maneuver. In sum, he is moving 50,000 troops from a forward area
where about a million are stationed to a rearward area where two
million are stationed.
This is sound policy in view of three developments--the INF
treaty, which makes the rearward area a sanctuary beyond the range of
most of NATO's tactical nuclear weapons; the development of weapons
capable of searching out enemy formations behind the front lines but
at limited ranges; and Soviet military doctrine's rapidly evolving
love affair with maneuver. The West is ecstatic because the Russians
are modernizing their army. Is voodoo a strong enough word for this?
The general secretary left himself even more leeway concerning
hardware. Eliminating 10,000 tanks, 8,500 "artillery systems," and
800 combat aircraft will nonetheless leave the pact with 58,000 tanks
to NATO's 30,000; 54,000 "artillery systems" to NATO's 24,000; and
8,750 non-naval combat aircraft to NATO's 7,500. But that is not the
point. Neither is it that the Soviets have 20,000 T-55 tanks that are
more appropriate to Benin or Algeria than to a European battlefield,
and that 10,000 of these are supposedly in storage near the inter-
German border, where half of the proposed cut is supposed to take
place.
The heart of the matter lies not in numbers but in velocity. The
reductions are to take place over two years, which is at the rate of
5,000 tanks, 4,250 "artillery systems," and 400 aircraft per year. In
the first half of this decade the Soviets were producing about 5,000
tanks, 4,000 "artillery systems" and 2,500 aircraft each year. Since
then, the numbers of aircraft have declined as they become more
complex and capital intensive, but tank production keeps apace. In
fact, during Mr. Gorbachev's tenure, Soviet military production
capacity has increased. At the United Nations he spoke about
converting two of three military plants. This will have enormous
impact on the swords-into-plow-shares factions in the West, but less
of an impact on the 150 major final-assembly plants and 3,500
subsidiary facilities in the Soviet military industries.
Mr. Gorbachev gave no assurances about production. If it
continues at customary rates, the reductions he promises will result
in two years of zero net growth rather than contraction. Meanwhile,
and partly in reaction to the initiative in question, the West's
equipment (and manpower) levels are bound to contract. They have
begun to do so already. By the time Mr. Gorbachev has implemented his
concessions, the Warsaw Pact will have increased its lead over NATO,
albeit at a slower rate as a result of his new program.
NOTHING SPECIFIC PROFFERED
If there is an encouraging component of the program it is the
promise to reduce bridging and assault units near the front, for these
are essential to aggressive action. But where will they go? As far
as anyone knows, they may just be redeployed farther back to better
advantage. Nothing specific was proffered, though Mr. Gorbachev said
of the Soviet forward divisions that, "Their structure will be
different from what it is now; after a major cutback of their tanks it
will become clearly defensive." The immense volume of words the
Soviets have expended over the years (including the four Gorbachev
years) professing that their deployments were purely defensive is now
impeached by a single sentence, which, perhaps not surprisingly, makes
exactly the same claim.
Much has been made of Mr. Gorbachev's sincerity. I do not doubt
his sincerity, but neither do I doubt his ambiguity. To paraphrase
Shakespeare, specificity is all. Because the promised arms reductions
have precious little specificity, they must be approached with greater
than usual care. Now is the time not for euphoria and reflief but for
sobriety and vigilance. If you want to die in your bed, you had
better not walk in your sleep.
* * *
Return to the ground floor of this tower
Return to the Main Courtyard
Return to Fort Freedom's home page