Can America Win the Next War?
Walsh, Edward J.
him today in a particularly silly attempt at guilt-by-association. Perhaps even sillier is the criticism Lugar has had to endure from those conservatives who seem to view political effectiveness...
...With that rare and curious thrust at objectivity one sometimes finds in the Times, he writes as devil's advocate, posing the "what if" questions: Will the Russians launch a conventional tactical assault aimed at the English Channel and the North Sea ports, or, exploiting their newly fearsome submarine and surface naval strength, slowly choke Edward J. Walsh, who served as a First Lieutenant in the U.S...
...that SALT II will save the world...
...Drew Middleton / Scribners / $8.95 EdwardJ...
...An all-out attack by the Soviets with conventional forces would demonstrate their willingness to gamble that neither side will push the final Button...
...Though he wrote the book in 1975, his comparison of NATO and Soviet force levels and capabilities will remain timely until all the punctilious details of troop strength, weapons readiness, and budget appropriations are lost in the flames and debris of Europe...
...motivated, welltrained, tough, and ready, but--too few...
...But they, like we, can only guess...
...t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t Prints by Elliott Banfield Works by The Alternative's cover artist and art advisor, may be seen at the Associated American Artists gallery at 663 Fifth Avenue (between 52nd and 53rd Streets), New York City, Monday-Saturday, 10-6...
...His answers are disturbing...
...Lugar, on the other hand, brings a more substantial approach to his responsibilities as a candidate and as a public official--and for that reason, has been the object of more criticism and publicly expressed reservations from both ends of the political spectrum...
...But I believe these two Midwestern Republicans, whose chances for higher office are at least reasonable, nicely illustrate the kinds of choices facing the COP as it endeavors to recover a certain parity vis-a-vis the opposition...
...Thus the speculation about Armageddon loses meaning, and Middleton, not one to moralize, suggests instead that the brushfire war, the "war of national liberation" in the Third World should be the concrete concern of NATO planners...
...The consensus in the West has been since Hiroshima that there will be only losers...
...This assertion is of course preposterous, bit it illustrates the difficulties Lugar--who is probably one of the few men in public life who has both read and understood Edmund Burke--will encounter in dealing with a certain segment of the Republican Right...
...The Dardanelles, the Scandinavian North Cape, and the Danish strait are barely manned, assuming the Soviets will ignore these vital waterways, without which their modern navy is irrelevant, and which they have coveted through the centuries of the czars...
...But Drew Middleton, watching them with admiration, turns and looks, in despair, across the Wall...
...The "scenarios," we learn, are endless, and, nearly without exception, to the advantage of the military monolith which is the Soviet Union...
...trained, dedicated, and equipped for one purpose: the expedient destruction of NATO forces, and the occupation of Western Europe...
...The American military has recovered, in large measure, from the internal cancer contracted in Vietnam...
...He sees, in the-trance of detente which mesmerizes the West, a mulish unwillingness in London, Paris, and Washington to prepare realistically and adequately for-total war...
...Thompson represents a kind of pleasing public persona, distinctly non-philosophical in approach, and largely inoffensive despite--or possibly because of--an apparent unwillingness to express his views on any topic more controversial than whether he is for or against corruption...
...Behind the barbed wire and concrete which partition the world between freedom and slavery, wait the slaves, millions of them, carefully grouped in mechanized divisions, tank columns, tactical air squadrons, and antiaircraft crews...
...All we could hope for, he continues, is the retention of a foothold on the Continent and Britain as a staging area for future operations...
...Perhaps even sillier is the criticism Lugar has had to endure from those conservatives who seem to view political effectiveness as some kind of badge of ideological "impurity...
...Walsh The bugles of NATO blare forlornly across Western Europe these days...
...Watching the troops of the Fourth Mechanized Division trudge cheerfully through freezing nights on week-long field exercises at Fort Carson, Colorado, and listening to the cocky claims of the elite Rangers in the heat of Georgia, the optimism about the American ability to whip the Russians is facile and uncritical...
...Middleton counted, in '74-'75, a total Soviet strength of 2,050,000...
...he raises questions about a possible new war and about whether the love of freedom will ' again triumph...
...Of course, it is quite possible--even likely--that neither James Thompson nor Richard Lugar will ever be part of a future Republican national ticket...
...We still have the industrial and technological might which thirty-five years ago equipped and supplied the nation to fight a war simultaneously on two and one-half continents...
...In Germany, on the free side of Berlin, the American Seventh Army, the British Army of the Rhine, and the crack German tank teams drill with heartening enthusiasm, anticipating the Soviet blitzkrieg...
...Middleton is the military correspondent for the New York Times and author of The Sky Suspended, an account of the love of freedom which won the Battle of Britain...
...A rebirth of will is what Middleton's book is about...
...But none of this is enough...
...Who will win the next war...
...The bankrupt strategies of deterrence through second-strike capability, a presumptive warning of Mutually Assured Destruction, are expressed in sophistical and bemused forays at friendship with the Soviets...
...Some signs are encouraging...
...In Can America Win the Next War...
...Middleton, nearly alone among his colleagues, is willing to expect the worst...
...that the Soviet system will crumble from within...
...Preoccupation with economic and social problems, which do not apply in that part of the world where the stability of society is the stability of the machine gun and the insane asylum, preclude sufficient expenditures for defense by the West...
...Some prominent conservatives, citing such things as Lugar's refusal as Mayor to spurn relatively strings-free federal revenue sharing funds, have determined that Lugar does not really pass muster as a "true conservative," and have even argued that conservatives had nothing to choose between the junketeering, organized-labor-dominated, corrupt, and thoroughly liberal Hartke and his GOP opponent...
...About one million of these are deployed in Northern and Central Europe, facing the convoluted admixture of troops, equipment, and tactical notions which is NATO...
...the United States by guerrilla war at sea...
...Strewn from Norway to the Alps are 610,000 Americans, Canadians, British, French, and Germans...
...It is unlikely, he asserts, that NATO will strengthen itself adequately to meet the Soviet and Warsaw Pact threat...
...Again and again, Middleton tells us, the troops in Europe, the nuclear-powered ships and silent submarines, the highly trained and motivated officer corps, the best, qualitatively, in the world, are not enough...
...The inclusion of KGB border guards and MVD formations, Erickson continues, 30 The Alternative: An American Spectator January 1977 including support personnel brings the figure to about 4,200,000...
...Politics is an exceptionally fortuitous business, and there are numerous other individuals whose aspirations reach to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...
...t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t The Alternative: An American Spectator January 1977 31...
...Marine Corps, works with the United States Industrial Coundl in Nashville...
...Carter's recent success may strike some as an argument for selecting Thompson-like candidates as the GOP begins its latest efforts toward a national resurgence...
...What is more, we've got the F-14 Tomcat, capable of knocking any Soviet aircraft out of the sky at a range of one hundred miles...
...Lawrence B. Fitzmorris of the Fourth: "When and if the test comes, these kids will go, go, go, and do, do, do...
...The figures have become more frightening since the book appeared...
...but I believe that if my party would truly distinguish itself from its opposition, and offer that oft-touted ideal of a "genuine alternative," it would be wise to opt for standard bearers of Lugar's caliber and qualifications...
...Says Lt...
...And Middleton, envisioning a Soviet tank assault, predicts the conquest of Western Europe in ten days...
...Professor John Erickson, Director of Soviet Studies of the United States Strategic Institute, quoted extensively by Middleton, made another estimate in early 1976: "The 'base military manpower' strength of the Soviet armed forces is taken to be 3,424,000--which however, is simply an intake and establishment figure...
...Adding the command staff, training and the 'extended service' elements on an average basis, this would produce an overall figure of 4,109,000...
...But Middleton argues: "Under military, political, and social conditions in the United States and among our chief allies of today and the next three or four years, the West could not win a conventional war in Europe in the sense that the Soviet forces would be halted short of their primary objectives and eventually driven back to Eastern Europe...
...And the American brass, as Middleton describes it, basks in a dangerous complacency...
...But the kind of will Middleton is talking about is the will to survive, to dredge up the memories, clouded by deterrte, of the diplomacy of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and the peace of the graveyard...
...Our soldiers, sailors, and airmen, two wars ahead of the Soviets, command technical and logistical assets superior to the best Russian tanks and missiles...
...Thirteen aircraft carriers are able to deliver a nuclear punch to every ocean, sea, and harbor in the world...
...But what are the questions implicit in the consideration of "future operations...
...The generals, on their haunches, wait for the assault, as the French waited in 1940, hardly aware of the disarray of their preparations, as if the Russian bear, reliving 1914, will blunder en masse, weapons piled on wagons, towards the Rhine...
...With persistence, a rebirth of will, with the prudent employment of tactical forces, the West can hold its own...
...Through the streets of European cities march the Communist parties of the West, drowning out the few remaining advocates of defense planning, vindicating Lenin's dicta--and Solzhenitzyn's...
...that the Russians must also deal with the Chinese...
...BOOK REVIEW Can America Win the Next IVar...
...Middleton's warning is cold and comfortless: he posits a continuing struggle, if not on the plains of Germany, then in the jungles of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, pitting the Soviet "client" states against Western allies, abandoned by isolationists and editors throughout the free world, who cry "No More Viemams...
...And the greatest deterrent to the impassive chessplayers in the Kremlin may be that the American people, abused by myopic leadership and an overdose of dissent, have nonetheless historically closed ranks in the face of overt assaults on freedom...
...Racial and drug problems have diminished...
Vol. 10 • January 1977 • No. 4
