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]]]]]]]]]]]]]] MILITARY UNSERIOUSNESS TODAY [[[[[[[[[[[[
by Angelo Codevilla (12/14/1989)
(Remnant Review, 12/1/89)
[A. Codevilla, a former aide to Sen. Wallop, is now a Senior
Fellow at the Hoover Institution]
[Kindly uploaded by Freeman 93401DORM]
At the threshold of the 1990s, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff
reassured the American people that "The warfighting capabilities of
the Armed Forces of the United States, currently at their highest
peacetime levels in our history, are adequate to protect the U.S.
homeland and its territories."[1] A natural deference to military
rank, a decade of talk about the "Reagan military buildup," the
evident disarray and loss of nerve within the Soviet Communist Party,
the rush by Eastern European communists to deny their heritage, all'
lead Americans to accept the Chiefs' judgment. In fact, however, the
American people have never been so outmatched militarily. Ten years
ago the Soviet Union's armament gave it a good chance of destroying
most of America's missiles and bombers in a first strike, and of
defeating U.S. forces in Europe, all without inflicting, or suffering,
casualties on the order of World War II. Today the relationship
between the Soviet Union's and the United States! armaments has much
increased the Soviet Union's chances of such a victory. If present
trends continue during the 1990s the Soviet Union's military advantage
is certain to grow.
This is not alarmism. There is simply no other way to
interpret the hard facts. During the Reagan buildup, the Soviet Union
outproduced the U.S. in key weapons by the following ratios:
intercontinental missiles, 4 1/2 to 1; air-defense missiles, 6 1/2 to
1; bombers, 4 to 1; tanks, 3 1/2 to 1; artillery, 8 1/2 to 1. In some
categories, above all the production of anti-missile devices, there is
no ratio. Soviet production lines are turning out high quality
products, while the U.S. produces nothing[2]. The Joint Chiefs do not
deny the ratios, they simply claim that they are offset by U.S.
advantages in "operational planning, leadership, training and
morale."[3] The U.S. government makes no attempt to explain by what
kind of miracle forces that are so outnumbered and outgunned could do
themselves or their country any good.
I am not arguing that the Soviet Union is chomping at the bit
to use its military superiority against the U.S. On the contrary,
Soviet policy today seems to be in a Brest- Litovsk phase, i.e.,
emphasizing retrenchment. Nor am I denying that ever since about 1985,
Mikhail Gorbachev has been flirting with internal political forces
that could well lead to the destruction of the Soviet Union. My
argument is quite simply that Soviet military developments have been
quite insulated from the domestic turmoil, and hence that Soviet
military power relative to that of the United States and HAT0 has
increased substantially, that all signs point to yet more relative
increases, and that only the Soviet Union is resolved, somebody will
inherit control of a military machine that is worthy of attention on
its own terms. Military power is not the whole story. But it is a part
of the story that people neglect at their-peril.
Today more than ever, military power is the Soviet Union's
only outstanding trait. But that should comfort the American people
about as much as someone who runs into Mike Tyson in a dark alley
should be comforted by the realization that Tyson seems to be a
troubled, one-dimensional fellow. My point is that, the military
threat to the American people is what it is, and is growing, not so
much because of the U.S. government's inability, but because of the
U.S. government's inability to take it seriously. To understand where
we are we must consider how we got here.
The Problem in 1979
Since about 1964, the U.S. government, under the influence of
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, had thoroughly misunderstood the
role of strategic weaponry in modern warfare. McNamara, following
Bernard Brodie's lead[4] had posited that nuclear weapons could not be
used to any rational purpose whatever. Because they could only be used
to destroy, but not to defeat, an enemy, they simply guaranteed a
peaceful "ba-lance of terror" forever. Thus, McNamara and his
successors made sure that the U.S. would not build any missiles with
the combination of nuclear yield and accuracy necessary to destroy
Soviet missiles in their silos. Instead, American missiles were
designed as efficient city-killers. In addition, McNamara and his
successors under Richard Nixon made sure that the U.S. would have no
means of intercepting Soviet missiles once launched. In sum, we were
to prepare to kill primarily Soviet civilians, the Soviets were to
prepare to kill primarily American civilians, so nobody would kill
anybody.
This line of reasoning was codified in the SALT I Treaty of
1972, which the U.S. foreign policy establishment hailed as the end of
the U.S.-Soviet strategic competition. The whole framework, however,
was premised both on the Soviet Union's willingness to deny itself the
fruits of technology and on the ability of nuclear weapons to destroy
the world. On closer examination with the passage of time, neither
premise stood up.
Many, including Donald Brennan, Leon Sloss, and myself
(included in these pages) argued that these premises were at variance
with reality from the beginning. During the 1970s, reality slowly
forced its way into the consciousness of U.S. Strategic Planners.
McNamara had defined "destruction of the Soviet Union" as killing 25%
of the population and 50% of the industry of that country. But as-U.S.
officers picked the targets to be hit, it became obvious not just that
the world as a whole would not end, but that no matter what the U.S.
did, the Soviet Union would still be there. The question was: What
kind of Soviet Union? The goal of 50% industrial destruction was
unattainable. As for population, it made a big difference which 25%
died and which 75% lived. So, if American strategic weapons were to
deter war, they had to threaten to do something that would be to the
advantage for the U.S. to actually do. That would mean eliminating not
innocent civilians, but the most important people in the Soviet Union.
But these were almost as well protected as Soviet missiles.
On the other side of the ledger, during the 1970s the U.S.
noticed that the Soviets were doing exactly what the U.S. had entered
into SALT I to prevent: they were acquiring a fleet of missiles
designed, not for armageddon, but, to destroy American missiles on the
ground. Because of this, the specter of a Soviet first strike, and of
an American defeat, was becoming more real by the day.
So, near the end of the 1970s, a chorus of conservative
critics, aided by the pressures of reality, convinced President
Carter's Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, to stop thinking in
McNamara's terms, and that the most reasonable way of using U.S.
missiles was to threaten to strike at those Soviet missiles that the
Soviet Union had not used in a first strike. The idea was to warn the
Soviets that they would not be able to retain a reserve force with
which to coerce America, and this to deter the Soviets. President
Carter embodied this realistic Revolution in Presidential Decision #59
in July 1980. But P.D. 59 was no more than an intellectual step in the
right direction.
The trouble with P.D. 59 was that U.S. missiles, unlike their
Soviet counterparts, had not been designed for the peculiar
combination of yield and accuracy needed for counter-force work.
Second, it was highly doubtful that President Carter's proposed remedy
for this, 200 MX missiles in semi-mobile, semi-hidden carriages, would
have been enough even to accomplish Brown's modest goal. Third, by
1981 the Soviets had long since begun programs to put their reserve
intercontinental missiles on trucks and railroad cars, making them
untargetable. The Soviets had gone a lap ahead. P.D. 59 was too
little, too late. But once the intellectual divide had been crossed,
one both public opinion and the U.S. government realized that the
threat facing the U.S. was defeat rather than destruction and that the
u.s. could engineer its own safety by a judicious choice of weapons,
the way was open for serious solutions. The Presidential election of
1980 was fought in part on the issue of seriousness with regard to
strategic weapons.
Solution and Dissolution
The point was to undo the Soviet strategic advantage, and to
protect the American people. The Soviet ICBM force had to be prevented
from doing its intended job. By 1980 it was already too late to do
this by out-doing the Soviets at counter-missile forces. The Soviets
were too far ahead.
By 1980, however, everything was in place for a technological
end-run: the establishment of a serious American anti-missile defense
that would make impossible a successful Soviet disarming strike, and
would substantially protect the American people in case the Soviets
had been so foolish as to try one. Senator Malcolm Wallop (R-WY0) had
been quietly working with Pentagon officials to marry pointing,
tracking and optics technology of the KH-11 intelligence satellite
with a Navy chemical laser to produce a space-based weapon. He had
also been promoting several programs in the U.S. Army to build an
infra-red, anti-missile versions of the Airborne Warning and Control
System (AWACS) aircraft, along with optical guidance for anti-missile
interceptors. The Pentagon officially stated that if certain
decisions, that Wallop was recommending were taken (namely to
concentrate on actually building one) the first space-based laser
weapon could be tested in space by November 1986.[5] Later that year,
a high level Pentagon study group stated that the U.S. could have a
fleet of missile-killing lasers in orbit by 1990.
By 1982, the General Accounting office reviewed U.S. anti-
missile laser programs and concluded that the most efficient use of
money would be to focus on building one. In both 1981 and 1982,
Senator Wallop's amendment to the annual defense authorization bill to
require just that, passed the Congress handily. Note well: These were
not amendments to require research. They required the construction of
actual anti-missile weapons. And they passed despite the opposition of
the Administration.
What was on the Reagan Administration's mind? very little.
Chiefs of the Army, Navy, and `especially the Air Force, saw anti-
missile weapons as a competitor for funds, and persuaded both
President Reagan and his secretary of defense to oppose any plan for
building them. But by 1982-83, the Administration was in deep trouble
with regard to Strategic policy. In 1980 it had promised to restore
American military superiority the "margin of safety" this country had
always enjoyed. It had criticized Carter's 200 semi- mobile MXs as
inadequate. But its own plan of October 1981 was underwhelming. After
the hoopla and the billions for the Chief's favorite military
constituencies, the difference between it and the Carter plan boiled
down to adding 100 B-1 bombers and subtracting 100 MXs -- except that
Carter had had a strategic rationale for his. Reagan had none. Thus,
the Reagan plan appealed to no one. President Reagan would point to
the Soviet missile buildup and say that it must be countered. But when
he and his advisors were asked how his plan made America safer, they
had no answers. Thus, throughout 1982 and early 1983 the nuclear
freeze movement swept this country unchecked.
On February 11, 1983, Ronald Reagan met with the Joint Chiefs
to discuss precisely how to "sell" the strategic program. Among the
ideas batted around was that of a modern anti-missile defense.[6]
Reagan seized on it and started the process that led to his speech on
March 23, 1983, in which he announced that anti-missile defense, later
called S.D. I., would henceforth be the centerpiece of U.S. strategic
policy. It is pointless to ask what, if anything, beyond public
relations Reagan had In mind. Perhaps he really did not distinguish
between speaking and doing. It is beyond doubt, however, that his
senior military and senior civilian advisors were all longtime foes of
anti-missile defense and, to a man, intended to limit the President's
program to a combination of public relations and research.
As public relations, S.D.I. was a smash hit. Instantly, the
ground was cut from under the "peace" activists. Instantly, the
President mobilized big majorities on the polls behind his defense
policy. Almost instantly, the Soviets started to ask the U.S.
government what it would have to promise in order to avoid S.D. I.
becoming reality. But S.D. I. as actually pursued by the Reagan
Administration was the very opposite of a military policy. President
Reagan rhetorically defined it as something that at one stroke, would
make nuclear weapons obsolete and guarantee the American people's
safety. Nothing can possibly do that. An anti-missile defense will
protect more or less well according to how the attacker attacks, how
much and how well one has built the defense, and a host of
circumstances. One cannot exclude the possibility that it will protect
totally. But under no stretch of the imagination can anyone guarantee
this.
Reagan's promise to guarantee protection, however, played into
the hands of his military advisors, who then set standards for S.D.I.
equipment which present technology could not possibly meet. So. the
actual S.D.I. program became a technological tail-chase without end.
This transformed the chief issue of the strategic policy, i.e. what
are you going to do about the Soviet war-fighting missile force, into
a pseudo-technical issue: When will this or that crazy requirement be
met? This transformation provided a convenient cop-out for both
President Reagan and President Bush. When asked about S.O.l., they
have consistently put off making a decision until all the information
is ready. Consider how unserious an attitude this is.
The U.S. had concluded that contrary to the expectations that
underlay the area's control treaties (NATO, SEATO, etc.), the Soviets
had acquired the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war. Then U.S.
officials had struggled for over a decade with the question: What is
to be done to avoid living under this unilateral sword of Damocles?
They had to come up with only one answer: Anti-missile defense. But
S.D.l. officially consisted only of a decision not to decide to take
the only open path. S.D.l. is also a decision to pursue no other path
while S.D.l. research is open. Thus, virtually from the outset, S.D.l.
ceased to be a reasonable prescription to provide the defense one
could with the tools available, and became the principal excuse for
marking time in the face of continued Soviet strategic dynamism.
Another factor has contributed to this paralysis: Mikhail
Gorbachev. But Gorbachev is not an independent variable. He did not
come out of a clear red sky, to do battle with the leaders of the
Western World for the hearts and minds of free people. Rather, he got
his credentials of good faith from the only person in the world who
might possibly have granted them: Ronald Reagan. Again, it serves no
purpose to ask what, if anything, led Reagan as early as 1985 to
declare that Gorbachev was .an asset to the West. For our own
purposes, it is necessary only to note the military effects of the
fact that he did.
The foremost of these results is that it is virtually
Impossible in today's Pentagon to have a serious conversation about
how the Soviets might best use what they have and how we might best
protect ourselves. Ho sooner does one begin than the conversation
turns from hard military substance, i.e., how we and they might use
our weapons to the best advantage, to soft Sovietology, namely
speculation on Gorbachev's future. In other words, the U.S. military
has "bet the farm" on Gorbachev: turning the Soviet Union into a non-
threatening thing.
The Changing Strategic Balance
Let us begin with strategic forces, both offensive and
defensive. What matters here is the capacity to destroy the other
side's forces while protecting one's own, and protecting one's own
society from collateral damage. Hence, the basic term of reference
must be the number of one side's counterforce warheads[7] against the
number of the places in the other's country where strategic weapons
and command and control centers are located, plus their "hardness.
The United States' "hard" strategic targets include 50 MX
missile silos, 950 Minutemen silos, some 100 locations in two dozen
ports where about twenty ballistic missile submarines and perhaps
fifty cruise missile-firing attack submarines may be located on any
given day, some 100 locations on about 25 airfields where the United
States 98 B-1 and 300 B-52 bombers are located, and about 800
radar,communications, command, control and intelligence targets. To
hit these 2,000, places the Soviets have at least: 3,080 counterforce
warheads aboard 308 55-18 ICBMs, 552 warheads aboard 138 SS-17s, 1,950
aboard 350 SS-19s, 100 aboard a like number of truck mobile SS-25s,
and about 1,000 on perhaps 100 rail mobile SS-24s. That amounts to
over 6,500, or a 3.5 to 1 ratio -- from about 2.5 to 1 a decade ago.
In addition to this, the Soviets have perhaps another 5,000 non-
counterforce strategic warheads. On our side, the only warheads with a
counterforce potential equal to the Soviets' are the 500 atop our 50
MXs. Given that Soviet "hard" strategic force targets number at least
4,000, the ratio is 1 to 8. Not good.
In practice, this means that a decapitating first strike is a
serious option for whomever has power in the Kremlin. but none at all
for the U.S. It also means that after such a strike, the U.S. would be
left with very little strategic power other than the perhaps 2,400
submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) warheads at sea at any one
time. How might we use them? The Secretary of Defense's recent annual
reports give no reason to doubt the common-sense judgment that there
is no way that would do any good to the U.S. Remember the rule of P.D.
#59: "Shoot at missile silos." But our current SLBM warheads would
only blow the dust off silos. Then what else?
The #1 priority of the Strategic Air Command today is, not
unreasonably, the Soviet control structure, namely top leaders. But
Soviet Military Power (1988) has pointed out, the top Soviet
leadership's command centers are so deep underground that not even the
world's biggest nukes would reach them -- never mind our puny 40 to
100-kiloton SLBM warheads. The Secretary of Defense's annual report
for 1988 vows bravely "to hold at risk those assets that the Soviets
value most." But these `are precisely the ones that we can't hold at
risk.
So, what can be the meaning of the 1989 Joint Military Net
Assessment's claim that U.S. Strategic forces are sufficient to
"inflict unacceptable damage to the USSR under all conditions of
retaliation?" It means a rhetorical return to the McNamara years, only
without intellectual coherence or the hardware to back It up. At best,
Robert McNamara was intellectually honest enough to lay out his
assumptions. Today, it Is clear only that the sole rule of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff's reckoning Is that In the end they must grant
themselves a passing grade, no matter what.
This balance is in the process of changing because of two
factors. First, arms control. If present trends in strategic hardware
were simply to continue, the Soviet Union's additional gains would be
marginal. It already has the virtual certainty of reducing the U.S. to
not much more than 2400 warheads. A 10 to 1 ratio against present U.S.
Strategic forces would only squeeze that number a bit.
The importance of the proposed Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
(START) is that as it cuts down the number of missiles on both sides,
it would very likely squeeze the United States allotted number of
warheads into perhaps 400 strategic targets, or fewer. Most likely
there would be 50 fixed, or semi-fixed MXs, perhaps 100 vulnerable
bombers, and perhaps 15 submarines, only 8 of which would be at sea at
any given time. The Soviets would have some 4,000 counterforce
warheads to hit them with. That would mean a 10 to 1 ratio, but
against a much smaller target base. The result is that the U.S. might
well be reduced to counting on far fewer than 2,000 surviving
warheads, and conversely that the Soviets would have far fewer than
2,000 warheads to worry about.
Enter the second major change: Soviet anti-missile defense. We
are seeing something of a replay of what happened in 1972. The U.S.
possessed the technology for a state-of- the-art anti-missile system.
The Soviet Union persuaded the U.S. not to use it by promising cuts in
offensive forces, and then the Soviets went ahead and built precisely
the defensive system that the U.S. was going to build (plus, of
course, gaining the advantage in the offensive field as well).
Today the heavy construction for a Soviet ground-based ABM
system is well-nigh complete. In addition to the ultra-modern ABM
system in Moscow (that employs some S.O.l. technology stolen by James
Harper in 1984 and that covers a sizeable chunk of European Russia)
the Soviets have built nine Pechora class radars, all far more capable
than the best of the United States' ABM radars of the 1970s. The
production lines for the local radars and interceptors associated with
this system are running, and the products are going who knows where.
Then there are the mobile SA-10 and 5A-12 surface-to-air missile
systems that have been tested repeatedly and successfully against
ballistic missile warheads. Working together with the big radars each
one of these systems could protect a small area against a light
attack. And there will be hundreds of these units. Indeed. Mikhail
Gorbachev's number-one military priority has been the anti-missile and
anti- aircraft defense service. the P.V.0.
One might almost say that one of the principal reasons for
Perestroika has been the Soviet leadership's realization that for the
P.Y.0. to do its job well in the 90s it needs Western technology. But
note: Even without new Western technology, arms control and
counterforce might well reduce the American threat to the point that
the PVO might well handle it, especially since it is backed by a civil
defense system that spends the equivalent of 7 billion U.S. dollars a
year, with $200 billion of shelters and equipment already in the
ground. The U.S. has none.
In 1986 through 1988, the U.S. Secretary of Defense's annual
statement said: "left unchallenged these trends will, over time,
remove from risk an increasing portion of those (strategic and
command) assets which the Soviets consider vital in retaining control
over their society and achieving their wartime goals. "But because the
U.S. is challenging those trends, the Soviet Union is more and more
likely to achieve its wartime goals. One of the foremost is to make it
very unlikely that the U.S. would intervene were the Soviets ever to
decide to use force against Europe. The balance is already such that a
U.S. military intervention in Europe has become unthinkable.
Today, the politics of Europe have totally broken out of the
post-war mold. No one can know how the realignment that is now in
progress will end up. But a prudent maxim for unsettled times is this:
keep one's eves on who has what guns.
The biggest change in the conventional military balance in
Europe is the progressive denuclearization of U.S. forces in Germany.
The key event was the IHF treaty. The Soviet Union gave up perhaps 441
55-20 launchers, each with at least one reload and thus perhaps 2700
warheads. The U.S. gave up 108 Pershing II warheads and 454 ground-
launched cruise missiles. The trade, as regards shorter range missile
forces -- American Pershing 1As and Soviet SS 22s and 23s, was even
more lopsided. while the Soviet Union gave up only a small part of its
ballistic and cruise missile striking force in Europe (it retains the
variable range SS-25s and 24s as well as the 3,000-odd 55-21 missiles
whose 500 mile range covers 80% of European targets), the U.S. gave up
everything it had that could shoot beyond Germany. This has united
West Germany in the firm determination to get rid of the U.S. Army's
few lance rockets and nuclear artillery. The U.S. forces eliminated
under the INF Treaty were not much. But they were the only hint of a
possibility that the U.S. might strike the Soviet Union with nuclear
weapons in case of war in Europe. Now even that is gone.
It is a common misconception[8] that the Soviet Union is "de-
valuing nuclear weapons," especially in Europe. In fact, the Soviets-
continue to produce about 500 SS-21s every year. So, each year's
production carries as many short range (500 miles maximum) missile
warheads as Gorbachev has promised to withdraw from Europe. In
addition, the Soviet Union's production of nuclear-capable artillery
outnumbers ours by about 17 to 1. No, the Soviet Union is de-
nuclearizing Western Europe, not Eastern Europe.
This of course lets the rather old-fashioned Soviet numerical
superiority exercise its full weight. Note that the Soviet Group of
Forces in East Germany still has more divisions than the entire U.S.
Army. The historic reason for the Atlantic Alliance has been precisely
that American nuclear weapons make up for the conventional forces that
the Europeans were once unable, and are now unwilling, to provide.
Now that U.S. nuclear power has effectively been rendered
irrelevant for Europe, the only hope is that the Soviets will somehow
willingly reduce their threat faster than U.S. and allied conventional
forces melt away. (In 1989 the U.S. announced the first of its major
two withdrawals from Europe: 10% of the total, heavily weighted toward
combat units.) But the most reliable index of future military power,
i.e., current military production, tells us that relative Soviet
military power on the Eurasian continent will continue to grow.
Conventional wisdom has it that Gorbachev is converting the
Soviet military economy to civilian tasks, but this is not so. Tank
production actually rose a bit from 1986 to 1988, to 3,500 units
(against a U.S. total of about 700). This means that the announced
elimination of 5,000 tanks from the Soviet inventory (old T-55s) is
made up by the little more than a year's production of state-of-the-
art T-80s. Gorbachev has announced a cut of 50% in the rate of tank
production. Even if that happens, the rate will be nearly 3 times that
of the U.S. Production of fighter and fighter-bomber aircraft has
actually risen a bit, to some 700 per year, while that of armored
infantry vehicles and self-propelled artillery has risen substantially
to 4,550 and 1,100, respectively.
The Soviet armed forces are in the process of one of their
periodic "revolutions." There was one in the mid-1920s, another in the
late 1940s, and a big one between about 19xx and 1964. These
revolutions consist of eliminating old weapons and concepts while
introducing better ones. They always involve some shrinkage in
quantity and a substantial increase in quality. The current
"revolution" seems cut out of the same cloth. As Soviet military-
industrial complex look to the future, they are eliminating less-
trained personnel (some of whom, from Central Asia, don't even speak
Russian) and are trying hard to raise the quality both of the
equipment it produces and of the people who are to operate it. In
other words, Soviet conventional forces are not becoming weaker, they
are preparing to win the next war.
The Political Context
The Soviet Union's troubles are, above all, political. These
troubles are most likely to raise. not power. the importance of
military power. Of course, the economy is a mess. But as every
Leninist who remembers 1921 (as well as every free market economist)
knows, it could be improved simply by the State's withdrawal from
economic life. But the whole point of Gorbachev's, as of every other
dictator's activity, is to control society. Ever since 1985, Gorbachev
has waged a spectacularly successful struggle for control of the
organs that control Soviet society, namely the Communist Party and the
KGB. His purges have been as thorough as Stalin's, though unbloody. He
has replaced almost two- thirds of the Party Oblast, District, and
Republic Central committees, and some 70% of the Secretaries of these
organs. In Moscow, 63% of the personnel in the Party's city district
committees were replaced. To do this. Gorbachev has had to literally
turn the country upside down by allowing, even encouraging,
unprecedented criticism of the Party and unprecedented freedom of
political organization. Gorbachev has also weakened the Party's
Central Committee, Secretariat, and even the ministries. In the
process, the prestige and cohesion of the Communist Party have been
shattered, perhaps irremediably.
What has Gorbachev built up? The KGB, the military, and, at
the top of the pyramid, a little-known but enormously powerful central
organ known as the Defense Council. It controls all the guns and the
truncheons in the land: the Ministry of the Interior (whose special
troops have been augmented by paratroopers), the KGB, especially the
Second Chief Directorate that controls the lives of Soviet citizens,
and the Third Chief Directorate that controls the Armed Forces, plus,
of course, the armed forces themselves.
There is virtually no possibility of Gorbachev's being
deposed. He is infinitely better-entrenched than Khrushchev was. The
real question is: How will he govern a country that seems to be coming
apart? The answer seems to be that he is preparing to govern it as
China's Deng xiao Ping and Poland's Wojtech Jaruzelsky governed their
countries: dispensing with the party as cumbersome baggage, and
relying primarily on the networks that control violence.
No one can reasonably pretend to foresee the future of the
Soviet Union. We can only see what is before us now: a country
underfed, overarmed, filled with many hatreds that run very deep and
cut across one another, and in which violence is likely to play the
dominant domestic role. It is impossible to foretell what sort of
international behavior will flow from this. The U.S. government,
however, has premised our entire National Security policy on the
assumption that the Soviet Union will undergo a slow, steady, peaceful
evolution into a social-democracy, and that it will be a factor for
peace in the world. And if it doesn't?
Conclusion
There is nothing inevitable about our military predicament,
deep though it is. The Soviet Union really is backward and poor. The
Soviets could not maintain themselves in a position to fight and win a
war were the u.s. to do but a fraction of what it could do for itself.
For example., while building an anti -missile defense would not solve
all our problems, it would deprive the Soviet union of the "top cover"
for the rest of its military activities. Turning all of our missiles
into counterforce missiles, and putting all of them on roads, rails,
or under the sea, would also help.
Without the assurance of being able to drastically reduce u.s.
strategic power at the outset of a war, no military action in the
world, not even the suppression of recalcitrant allies, would be safe
for the Soviet union. Most important, our own physical safety would
be, if not guaranteed, certainly much enhanced.
The situation of the u.s. forces in Europe would also be
improved by a u.s. ballistic missile defense because it would restore
some possibility that u.s. Strategic Forces could come to the aid of
NATO. Nevertheless. to make NATO militarily viable again is a tall
order indeed. under present political conditions, in which uncertainty
is being, presented as the guarantee of long-term safety, it is
probably impossible. The first and most fundamental step would have to
be an anti-missi1e defense for Europe. Beyond that, NATO would have to
actually carry out all of its plans for technical modernization (e.g.
"smart" weapons) radically increase basic equipment such as armored
personnel carriers, air defense missiles, etc. and redeploy in a
militarily rational manner. But there is virtually no chance of doing
any of these things in Germany. That country's political evolution is
beyond our scope here.
Suffice it to say that since it may be impossible to give u.s.
troops in Germany the capacity to defend themselves, withdrawal may be
the most reasonable option open to the u.s. France, and Britain,
however, may be willing to join the u.s. in militarily realistic
plans. France, for example, is already at work on an anti-missile
weapon, the 5A-9O. There is every reason for the u.s. to refocus our
European military plans on France and Britain.
The U.S.. government does not lack technology. The debate over
S.D.I. was highly misleading. The choice before us now is the same as
it always was and always will be: Do we use today what we have today.
or not? The sight of the Soviet union already using stolen S.D.!.
technology should be sobering. But it is overwhelmed by the sight of
political turmoil in Eastern Europe. Nor does the u.s. lack money. We
are now spending 5.3% of GNP on defense. In our economy, each
percentage point is worth over SO billion dollars. If we spent simply
at the rate we did in the prosperous early 6Os (i.e., about 8%), we
would have about 200 billion dollars per year more to work with. The
u.s. government lacks something more precious than technology and
money put together -- namely, seriousness about military affairs.
References.
1 Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1989 Joint Military Net Assessment, P.ES-11,
Washington, Department of Defense, 1989.
2 Department of Defense, Soviet Milltary Power, 1900, p. 34.
3 ibid., p. 96
4 Bernard Brodie, et al., The Absolute Weapon (New York: Harper & Row,
1946).
5 Letter by William Penny, Under-Secretary of Defense, to Senator John
Culver, Chairman, Subcommittee on R & D, Senate Committee on Armed
Services, June 24, 1980.
6 lncidentally, a debate between Senator Wallop (and myself) and Hans
Bethe on this subject had been featured on the front page of the
Washington Post's Outlook section the previous Sunday, February 6,
1983. The Sunday Outlook section is required reading in Washington.
7 That is, those with the coordination of yield, accuracy and speed
necessary to Destroy the others' forces in their silos.
8 Spread by, among others, Robert Jarvis, The Meaning of Nuclear
Revolution. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984).
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