THE WRONG DEBATE

...Neither the U.S.S.R...

...The Russians, however, suffered total defeat...

...It is difficult to visualize Czech or Hungarian divisions mounting a spirited offensive against the West...

...But even if we were to assume that the Soviets are interested in launching such an attack, the "threat" posed by Soviet heavy missiles depends on a series of additional assumptions ranging from the unlikely to the utterly absurd: that the war would be fought entirely with strategic nuclear weapons — and without tactical nukes and conventional arms...

...that nuclear submarines and bombers would be kept on the sidelines for the duration...

...It is a war America seems determined to lose...

...The Russians do not plan (or hope) to defeat the United States in actual war, but to dismantle its empire over the years...

...disease and famine were rampant...

...A formula which serves to place the naval balance in proper perspective reads: size of navy, plus quality of navy, multiplied by naval geography, equals naval power...

...George Ott, a retired teacher of history and political affairs, has written for Armed Forces Journal, U.S...

...Far from enhancing "national security," the arms race impairs it further...

...The Continental Congress sent Benedict Arnold to Canada in an attempt to oust British forces there and enlist Canadian revolutionaries in the U.S...

...But the military response has been the lesser prong of Soviet strategy...

...They are waiting for the American empire to collapse and for American capitalism to crumble...

...cause...

...whether it be centered in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East...

...The United States alone has in operation several all-nuclear battle groups — fourteen nuclear-powered surface combatants either operational or on order...

...Nuclear weapons pose a far greater threat to the Soviet Union than to the United States...

...And the reliability of these Eastern European units is open to question...

...It is not only Soviet bloc airmen who obtain insufficient training...

...Moscow's junior partners are deprived of the most up-to-date equipment, and their fighting capability is thus impaired...

...Even in what the Pentagon describes as the "critical" Central European area, the odds do not favor the Soviet Union...

...When the United States was a weak new nation, it sought to enhance its power by undermining British power...

...In contrast, the United States boasts thirteen giant carriers, carrying the most sophisticated aircraft...

...We are told, for example, that by 1985 the Soviets will have enough MIRVed heavy missiles to destroy every U.S...

...But even with the addition of these satellite troops, the Pact lacks a three-to-one numerical advantage that many military commanders hold essential for a successful offensive...

...The Soviets must not only contemplate a multiple strategic threat from the sky, but also, as they see it, two massive ground assaults — one from Europe, the other from China...

...The Soviet Union may no longer be a beacon of revolution, but it recognizes the ancient wisdom that the enemy of my enemy is my friend — and the enemy of the West has been a worldwide revolutionary process that refuses to subside...

...The NATO-states, by contrast, have free access to the world's oceans...

...And the Warsaw 'Nuclear weapons pose a far greater threat to the Soviet Union than to the United States' Pact's numerical advantage in tanks is balanced by NATO's superiority in tank quality...

...Moreover, the Pact has virtually nothing in the way of seaborne air power — one small carrier-type vessel capable of launching only short-takeoff aircraft...

...I do not know any responsible official, military or civilian, in this government or any government, who believes that the Soviet government now plans conquest by open military aggression...

...Another myth sold as fact in the current propaganda campaign concerns the Soviet naval "buildup...

...Washington also encouraged Zaire to send in troops from the North and South Africa from the South...

...IfOur national security does not hinge on military strength...

...Countering NATO's apparent disadvantage in tanks is its real advantage in aircraft...

...it is actually undermined by the endless, mindless accretion of overkill capacity...

...Despite an early Soviet lead in the "space race," the United States built and deployed the first intercontinental ballistic missiles...

...Why should the Soviets risk the loss of ten million or twenty million or thirty million lives, and hundreds of billions in devastated property, when they can achieve their goals by simply waiting for the American empire to fade away...

...more than a billion lack access to clean water...

...Ethiopia provides an example...

...No one went so far as to predict that hordes of Red Army parachutists would descend on Detroit or Kansas City...

...All of it is based on empty (though emotion-charged) assumptions...

...the primary means of expanding Soviet power and influence has been the link to revolutionary upheavals...

...The Russians have no intention of occupying American territory with soldiers and tanks, or of destroying the United States by a nuclear attack...

...Whatever problems have been posed by Soviet policy and practice in the years since World War II, the Russians have never initiated a new round in the arms race...

...On the contrary, the wealth drained from the American economy by the arms race promotes inflation, undermines the dollar, adds to the national debt, and leads to recurrent economic crisis...

...allies and the fifth an avowed enemy of the U.S.S.R...

...The frightening image conjured up is one of a supine America at the mercy of a Soviet first strike...

...If Eastern European tank units are excluded, the Russian tank lead is greatly reduced — 9,250 to 6,930...

...These facts give the lie to right-wing claims that NATO is outnumbered and outgunned — that it is vulnerable to a Soviet assault...

...Many Ethiopians doubtless concluded that it was time to "stop the United States...

...Similarly, we are told that despite the formidable U.S...

...ns are icebound for seven :t, each year...

...As peoples rebel against colonialism, imperialism, and exploitation by their own upper classes, some turn neutralist and others move directly into the communist camps...

...Even now, the United States has almost three times the number of deliverable strategic and tactical warheads to be found in the Soviet arsenal, and when accuracy and "lethality" are taken into account the gap is even wider...

...In the initial phase of the German invasion, the Red Army lost three million men, 22,000 guns, 18,000 tanks, and 14,000 aircraft...

...instead, the United States insisted on continuing underground testing...

...It could have done so in the mid-1950s, when the Soviets accepted a French-British-American plan for disarmament...

...Would they serve as an addition to Soviet forces, or would they be a liability...

...The Soviets may not be able to "get ahead" of the United States...

...Naval Institute Proceedings, and National Defense...

...The Red Army as a whole spends less time on maneuvers than do U.S...

...The terms of the "debate" have been set: Shall we increase the military budget by 5 per cent or more (after inflation) , as urged by the hardliners, or by the mere 3 per cent (after inflation) proposed by the Carter Administration...

...Yet when the Germans struck in June 1941, Soviet defenses collapsed...

...When a revolt broke out some years ago, American planes flown by American pilots transported loyal troops from the hinterlands to crush it...

...The Soviets have an obvious interest in protecting their "national security" as they perceive it, and they have an obvious interest in expanding their influence and power...

...today it is sixteen nations and almost half the world's population...

...Not only is the dependability of Eastern European units uncertain, but their weapons are inferior to those of Soviet units...

...If this rule holds, the maritime view from the Kremlin cannot be reassuring...

...Those goals are inherent in the very nature of every nation-state, including the United States...

...And time is obviously on their side...

...and its allies...

...the prime strategy is economic and military support for nations in revolt...

...When the alarm is sounded, therefore, that we must "stop Russia" by adding still more weapons to our swollen stockpiles, we are being subjected to fantasies — first because it is no longer possible to "stop Russia" with military force without incinerating the whole world, and second because the root causes of American difficulties lie elsewhere — in Washington's penchant for supporting exploitation and counterrevolution...

...We know that the United States and the Soviet Union have the capacity to inflict at least twenty-five times the devastation needed to achieve "stable deterrence...

...As the Russians view the global distribution of power, they see the United States as number one, themselves as number two...

...It has been argued that NATO's command of industrial and manpower resources does not extend to the military sphere, but data from London's prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies indicate that the military balance is heavily weighted against the U.S.S.R...

...American hawks argue that if the United States were to become militarily vulnerable, the Russians might seize the opportunity to launch their own disarming first strike...

...Assessments of comparative mili-tary strength are always prone to grievous error — even when they are not couched in deliberately deceptive terms, as in the current SALT II debate...

...Raymond Aron has pointed out that this was the means by which the Soviet Union deterred the United States in the first decade after World War II...

...We know that the Soviet stockpile has increased under SALT I from 2,100 to 4,000 strategic warheads, and will increase to more than 8,000 under SALT II...

...And beyond China, the Russians face not open water but a past and potential foe — Japan...

...The war that really threatens our survival does not figure in the SALT II debate...

...The Russians are aware of this uncertainty: A Soviet officer, in assessing the reliability of East German forces, noted that "a German is a German...

...Neither Washington nor Moscow has disclosed what sort of war, if any, it intends to fight...

...The most simplistic scenarios of the Cold War are in vogue again...

...So long as the American Establishment insists on responding to that crisis by building more bombs, it drives the desperate people of the world into the arms of its adversary...

...They may be doomed to long-term military inferiority...

...It was only when the latter had moved hundreds of miles toward Luanda that the revolutionary regime in Angola called on the Soviets and Cubans for direct help...

...We know that under SALT I the United States increased its stockpile of strategic nuclear warheads from 4,600 to more than 9,000, and that a similar increase will occur under SALT II...

...Once more we are told that our security — our very survival — hinges on spending more to buy more weaponry...

...Even when a revolution is not inherently pro-Soviet — as in Iran and perhaps Nicaragua — Russia benefits because its adversary has lost a sphere of influence...

...97 per cent were illiterate, and per-capita income was $1 a week...

...Americans are vulnerable to direct attack only from the U.S.S.R...

...Russians, in contrast, are the chosen targets of four nuclear powers — Britain, France, China, and the United States...

...The Russians would be compelled to withdraw from the contest and allow the CIA and Pentagon to manage and manipulate other governments at will...

...Even General Alexander Haig, the recently retired NATO commander who has joined the chorus calling for more arms, admits that there exists "no likelihood in the short term of a Warsaw Pact attack across the Central region boundaries...

...The U.S.S.R...

...The wrong debate America is losing the real war Sidney Lens and George Ott Suddenly last summer the debate over ratification of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty was transformed into a no-holds-barred campaign for a new and drastic escalation of the international arms race...

...Presumably, it could then issue an ultimatum to the Russians: "If you don't stop coming to the aid of revolutions in Angola, Ethiopia, and anywhere else, and if you don't permit us to overthrow revolutionary governments as we please, we will annihilate you with a disarming first strike...

...The Soviets have achieved enormous success in chipping away at Western influence while avoiding direct military involvement...

...Our true enemy today is not communism or Soviet ambition but world hunger...

...Well into the 1960s, American nuclear superiority was overwhelming...

...escalation...

...America's foreign policy problems are rooted in a world ravaged by social decay — a world in which the United States almost invariably buttresses a decadent status quo...

...For many years, the United States bolstered the colonial Portuguese regime, which used American military aid to suppress Angolan liberation efforts...

...that the war would be confined to intercontinental exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union, without any conventional or nuclear engagement in Europe or elsewhere...

...Others are on seas that have exits controlled by unfriendly nations...

...Comparisons of military strength, whichever superpower holds the advantage, become meaningless when each has the capability to destroy the other many times over...

...Subsequently, Moscow reacted to the American challenge by building up its nuclear arsenal in a feverish effort to match the American pace...

...Moscow has enough resources, enough scientific know-how, and enough of an impulse for self-preservation to achieve at least a near-stalemate...

...But of the five highest-ranking nations, four are U.S...

...Some 2.5 billion human beings live on an average income of $4.50 a week...

...they have always reacted to U.S...

...that allied nations on both sides would simply watch the spectacle on television, rooting for their respective teams...

...Reminiscing on this period in 1965, George Kennan reinforced the Dulles estimate: "It was perfectly clear to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the Russia of that day that the Soviet leaders had no intention of attempting to advance their cause by launching military attacks with their own armed forces across frontiers...

...America would rule the world, unchallenged...

...In the East is a hostile, nuclear-armed China...

...John Foster Dulles conceded in 1949 that the Soviet government "does not contemplate the use of war as an instrument of its national policy...

...World communism" was a single, enervated nation of about 180 million people in 1944...

...for the Soviets, military power is an important but secondary feature of "national security...

...forces...

...Compared with their U.S...

...Supporters of the SALT II agreement — the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Henry Kissinger — teamed up with right-wing opponents of ratification to depict a growing threat of Soviet "military superiority" which would lead, inevitably, to an ultimate "takeover" of the United States...

...Prior to World War II, the Soviet Union spent more on military equipment than any other nation...

...In that process, the American empire is diminished and American "national security" undermined...

...In these circumstances Washington repeatedly renewed secret agreements to equip Emperor Haile Selassie's army and police, gave him $400 million in economic and military aid (more than that given to any other African nation), and trained 2,800 of his officers...

...The facts are these: •ffThe United States has held the military advantage over the Soviet Union since World War II, holds it today, and will continue to hold it for the foreseeable future...

...spread...

...It is a war in which we are already far behind...

...It also has a long lead in the development of nuclear submarines, missiles with multiple warheads (MIRVs), maneuverable reentry vehicles (MARVs), cruise missiles, neutron bombs, mini-nukes, and Mark 12-A warheads...

...The Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies face a nuclear-armed NATO alliance that commands a gross national product triple their own, and a population half again as large...

...But they are not necessarily pursued by military means...

...Today, the United States is close to a breakthrough in antisubmarine warfare that may jeopardize the entire Soviet nuclear submarine fleet...

...For the United States, "national security" means military power...

...instead, Washington withdrew the plan...

...On the Sino-Soviet border, a half million Russian troops are confronted by far greater numbers of Chinese...

...During the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the Israelis captured 500 modern Soviet battle tanks, and found them decidedly inferior to the U.S...

...It rebuilt its conventional arms machine after World War II so that if it were threatened with nuclear attack it might respond by overrunning all of Western Europe in a few days or weeks...

...But that makes no sense...

...The figure is virtually meaningless without specific information about the relative effectiveness of large and small bombs, their accuracy, and the targets at which they are to be directed...

...Historically, the Russians always have seemed stronger than they actually proved to be...

...But NATO in the West is not the Soviet's only problem...

...The Russians are there now with advisers, economic aid, military aid, and Cuban troops, but they would not be there if the United States had not been there first...

...General David Jones, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledges that NATO air forces "are a far more potent combat force" than the Warsaw Pact air force...

...In the early days of the Cold War, American leaders frankly admitted that Soviet strategy was not geared to military invasion but to other means of "defense...

...In the 1790s, the Jef-fersonian wing of the American democracy made common cause with the French Revolution, acting not only on an impulse of political sympathy but on the assumption that a strong, revolutionary France would mean a weaker Britain...

...This means that the tank imbalance which presently favors the Warsaw Pact by a margin of a little more than two to one is less significant than it would appear...

...M-60 model...

...nor its junior partners has any nuclear-powered combat surface ships...

...None of this has any bearing on reality...

...It acquired the atom bomb four years before the Soviet Union did, and the hydrogen bomb nine months sooner...

...If the United States had the military power to launch a "disarming first strike" — a surprise attack that would destroy virtually every Russian missile and instrument of war before it could be used — Washington might impede the revolution which threatens its status quo...

...It could have done so in 1963, when the Russians were ready to accept a total ban on nuclear testing, which is indispensable for the development of new weaponry...

...For a third of a century, every advance in the arms race has been initiated by the United States...

...Once more the rivalry of the superpowers is depicted in scorecard terms — who's ahead in this weapon or that, where are the "gaps," how big is the point Sidney Lens, a contributing editor of The Progressive, is the author of "The Day Before Doomsday, "recently reissued in paperback by Beacon Press...

...Certainly the Red Navy has expanded from what it once was — it was once practically nothing...

...Russia has hardly shunned military "defense...

...Angola is a similar case study...

...The Soviet Union is strengthened because the United States has been weakened...

...Recognizing its military inferiority, Moscow has sought to redress the balance by aligning itself with the massive national revolutions, involving six dozen nations and half of humankind, that have rocked the planet in our time...

...If the destabilizing factor between Moscow and Washington, then, is national and social revolution, it is difficult to see how spending more money on arms will give the United States an edge in the contest...

...Whether we arm or disarm, the world revolution will not end nor will the Soviet Union abandon its basic strategy of aligning itself with that revolution...

...whether it begins next week or in a dozen years, the Soviet Union continues to be highly vulnerable...

...Though the communist sphere is fragmented, with China, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Cambodia no longer under Moscow's sway, these nations as well as such Third World states as Algeria, Tanzania, Libya, Iraq, Ethiopia, and Yemen have seceded from the Western sphere...

...But that scenario, which lurks behind the current debate over Soviet "superiority," is a fantasy...

...To the extent that any realistic assessment is possible, it suggests that whether a military confrontation be conventional, nuclear, or a mix of both...

...One member of the Warsaw Pact has openly declared its intention of following an independent line: Romania's president Nicolae Ceausescu has asserted that his nation "will not surrender to anyone the right to involve the Rornanian military in action...

...Emissaries were sent to Ireland and India — to spread the revolution, if possible, and thus weaken Britain...

...Although Russia's lack of success in past wars cannot serve as an accurate measure of future operations, neither can it be totally ignored...

...We can conclude from these figures that both sides have carried the arms race far beyond the bounds of sanity — but we cannot conclude that the Russians are "getting ahead...

...According to the Institute's count, NATO has more men under arms than the Pact, as well as a larger percentage of volunteers...

...Soviet military effectiveness can be placed in proper perspective only if we bear in mind that tanks and planes, as well as other equipment, are only as effective as the crews that man them...

...But in major surface ships, NATO outnumbers the Warsaw Pact by 490 to some 270, and in tonnage, NATO outweighs the Pact by a three-to-one ratio...

...On the eve of World War I, Russia had an army of 1.4 million men, which prompted a Swedish geopolitician to write that Russia "appears as the greatest military power in the world...

...The more of our energy and resources we squander on preparation for the wrong war, the closer we come to the collapse anticipated by the Soviets...

...a half billion are utterly destitute...

...Blood may be thicker than ideology...

...But the present danger spelled out by the Committee on the Present Danger and its ilk was almost as alarming: An enfeebled America, having lost its "will" to sustain military might, would be subjected to the Soviet Union's ruthless nuclear blackmail to the point where it would have no choice but to "surrender" to Soviet hegemony...

...counterparts, Soviet seamen spend little time at se- And the high rate of turnover •sian submariners greatly Tectiveness of that arm of Submarines as well as the Warsaw Pact navies cap unknown to the...

...Minuteman missile as it slumbers peacefully in its hole in the ground...

...When Portugal itself was forced to withdraw because of a leftist revolt at home, Washington subsidized two "moderate" factions and hoped it would manage to impose a regime favorable to Western capitalism...

...In fact, a Soviet attack on Western Europe is highly implausible...

...Here, NATO forces outnumber the Russians by a three-to-two ratio...

...When Eastern European troops are included, the total Warsaw Pact forces do hold a slight edge — 935,000 to 804,000...

...Not only are NATO aircraft superior to those of the Warsaw Pact, but their pilots are better trained and more experienced than their Pact counterparts...

...Many of uk...

...advantage in the number of deliverable warheads, the Soviets can now match the American total "firepower" of about 8,000 megatons — the equivalent of eight billion tons of TNT...

...The Soviet Union has followed a similar course, and more for geopolitical reasons than for the sake of ideological commitment...

...Russian history, a history of countless invasions, has left deep wounds on the Russian psyche, which only the perception of an adequate defense can heal...

...But they have amply demonstrated that they can match any American build-up with a build-up of their own — and one sufficient to prevent the United States from launching a "disarming first strike...

...That has been their strategy for decades, and they see no reason to abandon it now...

...and its ; illy landlocked...

...Given the secrecy with which each side screens its strategic and tactical plans, its assets, and its liabilities, any assessment of comparative strength is dubious at best and, at worst, dangerously misleading...

...Should conflict break out in Europe today, NATO aircraft equipped with deadly guided weapons are believed capable of inflicting heavy losses on Pact armored columns...

...At any point in the last three-and-a-half decades, the United States could have brought this incredibly costly and dangerous process to a halt simply by saying, "Enough...

...For the better part of three decades, Washington propped up a feudal regime under which 93 per cent '. . .for the Soviets, military power is an important but secondary feature of "national security" ' of the population lived on subsistence agriculture...