The Third World War - August 1985

by John Hackett

  In the realm of space the Soviet Air Forces had recognized the military application of space vehicles for communications and reconnaissance from the earliest moments of their space programme. The USSR-USA competition initiated by the Soviet Sputnik some thirty years earlier had been a long-playing space spectacular for all the world to watch. Although the engineering approach of the superpowers was often different, and US reliability was always superior, in general terms the Soviet Union had acquired capabilities which matched those of the USA. These had proved very valuable in peacetime and it now remained to see what their importance would be in war.

  There was another vital matter, upon which little of much significance was said in the Red Army, perhaps because so very little was known about it. It concerned the very nature of nuclear warfare. Though the recent tendency in Soviet military thinking had been to accept that a major war might open with non-nuclear operations, and that these might even be prolonged, it must be emphasized again that nuclear and non-nuclear warfare had never been regarded in the Red Army’s philosophy as alternatives. Each fitted in as an element in a total war-fighting capability, to be exploited as policy and occasion demanded. As we have clearly seen, the Western concept of ‘escalation’ out of conventional warfare into nuclear, and of further ‘escalation’ from battlefield nuclear action into strategic, had no real equivalent in the Soviet Union, still less the notion of a ‘firebreak’ between successive steps. Though a non-nuclear variant had been studied and fully prepared for, it had never ceased to be widely expected that a major campaign against NATO would probably open with massive attack in depth by nuclear or chemical weapons, or both, to be followed by swift and violent exploitation by formations (which would be largely armoured) attacking off the line of march. With nuclear weapons, penetration was expected to reach a depth of some 120 kilometres in a 24-hour period. Equipment in Red Army divisions was designed for action on an irradiated or chemically dangerous battlefield. Outside the combat zone, if a strategic response from the other side brought the homeland under attack with nuclear weapons, there was at least provision - not total but far greater than any until quite recently seen in the West - for the protection of some of the more important elements in the population, for the maintenance of essential services and for the continuance of the war.

  If, on the other hand, advantage were to be seen in a non-nuclear offensive, if Western battlefield nuclear weapons could be smothered or blinded and important results could be obtained even before NATO, without the stimulus of their use on the Warsaw Pact side, could reach inter-Allied agreement on the release of such weapons, this possibility too would be considered. Apart from the reduction in scale of the threat to the homeland and the absence of collateral nuclear damage in the theatre (which might or might not have its advantages), the principal effect of a non-nuclear opening to the land battle would be a slowing up in the rate of advance. Instead of covering 110 to 120 kilometres in a day the assaulting formations would be doing well if they managed forty.

  But whatever was said, planned or done about nuclear operations of war, whether by hard-headed realists in the East or by commentators in the West ranging from homespun tacticians to far-out philosophers, one thing was universally true. Nuclear weapons of war had never yet been used on the battlefield and nobody, anywhere, knew what would happen if they were. Even within an integral concept of total war-fighting, using all means at choice, the decision to use this one would need very careful consideration indeed. The harder-headed the realists having to make the choice, the more carefully would they be inclined to reflect on the possible - but completely unpredictable - consequences. The West’s increasing preparedness to defend itself was throwing an even harsher light upon this very important consideration.

  CHAPTER 14: The Stage Is Set

  Shortly after 0400 hours on Sunday, 4 August, it became clear to the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and was at once made known throughout a world waiting in an agony of suspense, that the Warsaw Pact had opened a general offensive against the forces of the Atlantic Alliance. The invasion of Western Europe had begun.

  To some the news brought a curious sense of relief. At least the uncertainty was over. For many others, particularly in the governments and armed services of Allied countries, it raised the anxious question as to whether enough had been done for NATO’s defences since the seventies to repair the damage of the locust years. Could the West, in fact, survive? To most who heard the news, at least in Europe, it brought only grim and unhappy forebodings.

  The Soviet intervention in Yugoslavia, and the swift and forceful response to it from the United States, that conjunction of miscalculation and mischance in which could now be seen the spark which set off the general explosion, seemed almost to be forgotten. More important things were at stake. The very future of the human race might now become the issue.

  From the outset the world was swamped with Soviet claims, flooding through every possible channel of communication, that this was no more than defensive action, to which the Warsaw Pact had been driven by neo-Nazi ambitions supported by capitalist imperialism.

  ‘It has long been clear,’ the announcement proclaimed, ‘that the new Nazis are set on the reunification of Germany by force and the subsequent domination of Europe as an early step to world supremacy. The policy of "forward defence", which is self-evident military nonsense if it does not mean action by the FRG east of the Demarcation Line, has never been more than a thin cloak for the firm intention to invade the GDR as a first move towards the dismemberment of the Warsaw Pact and the destruction of the USSR. The change of name from Vorwdrtsverteidigung (Forward Defence) to Vorneverteidigung (Frontal Defence) has done nothing to disguise the nakedness of an essentially aggressive policy. Plans for the invasion are now, in total authenticity,’ as the announcement put it, ‘in Soviet hands, and their authors will in time be brought to justice. Meanwhile, it has become abundantly clear that there is no time to lose in cutting out the Nazi canker. Otherwise all hope will vanish of a lasting peace in Europe.’

  The Soviet message to the world went on to give assurances that the purpose of the Pact’s action was first to restore peace in Yugoslavia, where troops from the capitalist West had invaded a socialist country, and at the same time to suppress the true source of disturbance to world peace. This would necessitate the occupation and neutralization of West Germany but no more than that, except for such other action as military security demanded. The integrity of French territory would be especially respected, and the French government was urged to allow its military forces no part in resisting those of the Warsaw Pact. The Italian government was ordered, in rather more peremptory tones, to consult its socialist conscience and permit no resistance to Soviet troops compelled to enter Italy.

  ‘It is very much hoped,’ the announcement proceeded, ‘that the United Kingdom will see the unwisdom of supporting its old enemies against its former allies, and above all that the United States will recognize the dangers on the one hand from a revival of Nazi adventurism and the fervent hopes for an enduring peace cherished in the Soviet Union on the other.’

  Reference was then made to nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union, the statement said, saw no need at present to make use of its very powerful armoury of nuclear weapons in the prophylactic action now going forward.

  ‘Any significant use of radiation as a weapon of war, however,’ the statement went on, ‘either against troops of the Warsaw Pact or against their homelands, from whatever source, will result in the abandonment by the Soviet Union of all restraints in the use of nuclear weapons and full-scale counter-attack to any depth found necessary. The cities of the NATO countries will face in that event a dreadful end.’

  Such was the Soviet message to the world, put out first at 0400 hours, Central European time, on 4 August 1985, and continually repeated in the days that followed. It was made known in many different ways, in many different lands and in many different languages. It was heard with feelings varying from rapturous
hope to blank despair, and greeted with responses ranging from warm welcome, which was rare, to raucous derision, which was not.

  In Europe, on 4 August 1985, even after only a week of NATO mobilization, the Allied Command was in a far better condition to meet an emergency than could have been possible a very few years before. Several months of spurious detente in the first half of the year had certainly done something to slow down the rate of improvement in NATO’s preparedness; indeed in some respects it had almost brought it to a halt. Illusory hopes that the leopard had this time changed its spots had been freely aired. There had even been repetition of the whimsical claim, so often heard in left-wing groups in Britain, that there could never be any question of changing spots, for the animal had always been in fact immaculate, and that the enormous offensive capability of the USSR had been developed simply to protect its own progressive way of life and the freedom of the peoples it had liberated.

  The voices raised for so long among the British left wing, and from their ill-assorted allies among the die-hard disengagers in the USA, urging a sharp reduction in military spending and the withdrawal of troops, had recently been listened to with growing scepticism. It was therefore possible, even in the months of false detente in the spring and early summer of 1985, to proceed, against this chorus, at least with those defence programmes whose suspension would increase domestic unemployment. Improvement in the air defences of the United Kingdom, for example, went on. It was even possible in the USA, though only by the narrowest of margins, to retain the Active Forces Draft.

  There is no need to dwell here on the political and social stresses generated in the United States in the years 1979-81 over the reintroduction of the draft, nor to recapitulate the stormy history of the passage of the appropriate legislation. We are more concerned with its consequences, as seen in Allied Command Europe in 1985, and with the sobering reflection that without it no book like this, placing on record as it does the manner of the free West’s survival, could ever have been written.

  It is just worth recalling, however, as a helpful reminder, that the US Army was in 1977 facing a critically dangerous position in the virtual disappearance of its reserves. When public disenchantment with the Vietnam War resulted in the end of the draft and the creation of an all-volunteer army, a sharp decline in paid-drill personnel (i.e. personnel actually carrying out reserve training) set in. By 1977 the Army’s National Guard and Reserve were 100,000 under peacetime strength. The Army’s Individual Ready Reserve - the pool of trained men to fill up units and replace combat losses - was dropping so fast that by 1982 it would at this rate have been 360,000 short of mobilization requirements. The back-up Selective Service System was in such ‘deep standby’ that training of drafted personnel could not start until four months after mobilization and no trained men to replace combat losses could be expected to reach Allied Command Europe until three months after that.

  A scheme produced by the US Army to spend $750 million a year on a Reserve Component Readiness Improvement Package (RCRIP) was rejected. Schemes for a Reserve Component Draft, or for an Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) Draft, were found to be unworkable. The only real alternative was an Active Forces Draft, with exemption for Reserve Components and IRR volunteers. Without it, within a few years, the US Army would only have been able to go to war when the war was over.

  American public opinion in 1977 would not have accepted reintroduction of the draft. A Gallup poll in that year showed that 45 per cent of all Americans were against it, with a count as high as 82 per cent of all males between eighteen and twenty-four years of age.

  Gradually, however, as elsewhere in the Alliance, the realization began to spread that the Russians meant what they had so often said and knew exactly what they were doing. In spite of the most strenuous efforts of those who refused to recognize the threat, or argued that if there were one it did not matter, or even claimed that they welcomed the chance of living under a Marxist dictatorship (whether anyone believed them or not), the awareness grew in the United States that a time could come when truly vital decisions would have to be made, and that it would be very foolish for the nation to surrender in advance all power of choice.

  Soviet international diplomacy, uncompromising and unconciliatory as ever, was not unhelpful to those in the West who sought to make the danger better known. The Active Forces Draft was introduced in 1982. By early 1985 the reserves, though with some way still to go, had passed above crisis level. The US Army in Europe was no longer in such a state that, in the event of a military showdown with the Warsaw Pact, it would face early and unavoidable disaster because of a lack of trained manpower.

  The position of France, critical to the whole question of the survival of the Alliance, must now receive attention. In the long history of Soviet maladroitness and miscalculation since the Second World War nothing - not the free elections so rashly allowed in Austria in 1946, or the swift re-arming of West Germany by the USSR’s recent allies in response to Soviet threats, or yet the alienation of Marxists outside the Soviet Union or the antagonization of China or the ineffective meddling in the Middle East - nothing at all in an impressive record of political ineptitude proved to be a more spectacular and costly failure than the confident attempt by the Soviet Union to persuade France to renounce her obligations under the Atlantic Treaty.*

  * Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty lays down that in the event of armed attack on any signatory each member will assist the country so attacked by taking ‘such action as it deems necessary including the use of armed force’.

  The earlier Brussels Treaty, to which France also still belonged, was even more categorical about affording military aid to a victim of attack.

  The II French Corps, stationed in Germany, embodying two enlarged divisions now, with supporting troops, up to full strength, was put by the French government at SACEUR’s disposal even before the Soviet announcement. In fact, it came under command to AFCENT at midnight on 3-4 August. The corps was to be followed in a matter of days by the first of three further mechanized divisions from the First French Army. From 4 August the French Tactical Air Force was ordered to support French forces on the ground as SACEUR might determine. French ports, communications, military installations and, above all, airfields and airspace were at the same time made available to the Allies.

  If France had stayed in NATO, or come back in good time, a French army group located in southern Germany and fully integrated into AFCENT might so have strengthened the whole Central Region as to deter in real terms - without nuclear shadow-boxing - a Warsaw Pact invasion. It was too late to think about that now. What gave real cause for satisfaction and solid ground for hope was the very active unofficial contingency planning which had long been a feature of relations between the French General Staff in Germany and CENTAG.

  The onset of war in Europe posed a particularly cruel problem for Turkey. She was recovering from deep economic gloom, but her armed forces had been weakened by the restriction on equipment supplies from the US. This ban had been imposed by Congress, contrary to the wishes of the US Administration, on the occasion of the Turkish action in Cyprus in 1974. Some partial mitigation had occurred in the late seventies but full re-supply had only been arranged three years before the present outbreak. Turkey had for some time been making it clear to the US and to the other Allies that the performance of her Alliance responsibilities would have to be made proportionate to her reduced capability. It said much for the steadfastness of the Turkish character, as well as for their historic fear of Russian aggression, that they did not go further in their reaction to Congressional displeasure. Relations with Greece had begun to recover from the low point reached at the time of the Cyprus affair and the argument over sea-bed rights in the Aegean, and it was largely the progress made in patching up this quarrel which finally led Congress to authorize the resumption of full equipment deliveries. But three years was a short time in which to make good the deficiencies and catch up with the new types of weapon systems which ha
d meanwhile become available.

  The growing threat during 1984 of Soviet action from the north and Soviet influence in Egypt from the south had further helped to cement the improvement in Greek-Turkish relations, and thus paved the way for Greece to resume active participation in NATO planning and co-operation, which had also been interrupted in the aftermath of the Cyprus affair.

  The circumstances leading to the actual outbreak of war in Europe proved particularly unfavourable for Greece and Turkey, however. Egypt’s move into Arabia had disrupted some of their oil supply and emphasized the Soviet presence in Syria and Iraq, which were Turkey’s neighbours to the south and east. The outbreak of hostilities in Yugoslavia brought increased Soviet troop concentrations into the Balkans and enhanced Bulgaria’s role as a potential jumping off point for a drive to the Straits or the Aegean.

  Nevertheless, Soviet policy also faced a dilemma. The rugged terrain of the Anatolian plateau was not of much use to them, but passage of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles might be crucial to their success in driving America out of the eastern Mediterranean. No doubt sufficient forces could be concentrated in Bulgaria to force back the Turkish First Army from Edirne and open the way to occupation of Gallipoli and the Bosphorus approaches - even if Istanbul itself, now peopled by 4 million Turks, would be a most indigestible mouthful. But any such moves, even accompanied by airborne landings, would give plenty of time for the blocking of the Straits by demolition, mines and blockships. Even with control of the shores of the two waterways these obstructions could take some vital weeks to clear. Since this was intended by the Soviet planners to be the period within which the whole European operation would lie, the disadvantage of armed attack on the Straits loomed rather large.