by John Hackett
“Protection through speed, eh?” thought Klaus. “Was fur Quatsch ist das!” What rubbish! He jumped to the ground and ran. A moment later the whole Leopard exploded in a shambles of twisted metal, equipment, human wreckage and the indescribable mess of war.”
Accounts such as these show how powerful was the impact of the thunderbolt which came down in the early morning of 4 August on NATO ground forces in the Central Region of Allied Command Europe, and the fury in the air. It was so violent as to leave on most of those who first had to meet it a very deep feeling of shock. Its effect was stunning. Some of the ground troops who came through the first day unscathed were by the evening as dazed and disorientated as the survivors of a savage traffic accident.
Very few of the men now engulfed in the volcanic eruption of ground action on a modern battlefield had ever before been exposed to anything remotely like it. The thunderous clamour, the monstrous explosions, the sheets and floods and fountains of flame and the billowing clouds of thick black smoke around them, the confusion, the bewilderment, the sickening reek of blood and high explosives, the raw uncertainty and, more than anything else, the hideous, unmanning noise — all combined to produce an almost overpowering urge to panic flight. To men in forward units the enemy seemed everywhere. Their roaring aircraft filled the sky, ripping the earth with raking cannon fire. Their tanks came on in clanging black hordes, spouting flames and thunder. The fighting vehicles of their infantry surged into and between the forward positions of the Allied defence like clattering swarms of fire-breathing dragons. It looked as though nothing could stop the oncoming waves. There seemed to be no hope, no refuge anywhere.
Panic here and there was only to be expected. Some lately recalled reservists — and even long-service regulars — found this sudden exposure to gigantic stress more than they could bear. Occasionally, under the swift contagion of uncertainty and fear, NATO units simply broke and melted away — but not often. Men adjust quite quickly, even to the appalling conditions of the battlefield, particularly where there is a job to be done which they know how to do and for which they have the right tools, and above all when they do it under competent direction in the company of their friends. The first day was a nightmare — but it was far from a total disaster.
But why was all this happening? What had brought it about? How had the course of events developed to this point — and what was now to follow?
CHAPTER 2: The World in 1984
By the inauguration of the fortieth president of the United States in January 1985, the world was in transition from the old-fashioned conflict situations, based on military and political competition for power, towards the newer ones involving urban guerrilladom and a ‘Third World manufacturing revolution’ — though in some places this was going erratically wrong. North-South had begun to overshadow East-West.
There were 180 governments in the world. As in 1977, at the time of President Carter’s inauguration, only about thirty-five of these could realistically expect their leaders to be replaced by a process of election. The most common way to change a government was by coup d’état or by dictatorial succession.
But the frequency of coups was growing, and they were often bloody. Bureaucrats in some communist countries had reason to fear that the habit might spread to them. The more fearful apparatchiks included some in the Soviet Union, a country which had for so many decades normally changed its government not by violent overthrow but by cosy dictatorial arrangement. China, by contrast, was concentrating on becoming ‘a new Japan’ through economic expansion. There was already talk of a China-Japan co-prosperity sphere.
The new President-elect of the United States, Governor Thompson, was a southern (and therefore conservative) Republican. He had been quite unknown nationally two years before his election in 1984, just as his two-term predecessor, President Carter, had been two years before his own election in 1976.
Mr Thompson had campaigned energetically against the ‘soft-centred international liberalism’ of the Democratic candidate, Vice-President Mondale. The President-elect was, however, worried by his own relative lack of knowledge of international affairs, and called two prestigious advisers in this field down to his South Carolina home the weekend after his election. One adviser was the director of the new United Universities Think-Tank. The other was a previous Secretary of State, always known as the Ex-Secretary.
The two were asked to set down a summary of their views about the main challenges that would face the Thompson Administration over (as it was assumed) the years 1985-93, and to compare these with the challenges that had faced the USA on President Carter’s Inauguration Day in 1977. The Think-Tank’s report was to concentrate on the ‘poor South’ of the world, the Ex-Secretary’s report on the Soviet Union and the ‘rich North’.
During the week after the election of November 1984, and therefore eleven weeks before his Inauguration Day in January 1985, Governor Thompson received these two reports.
The Think-Tank’s report displeased him. It seemed, he told his wife, to be ‘written by a computer with a bleeding heart’.
THE THINK-TANK’S REPORT ON THE ‘POOR SOUTH’, NOVEMBER 1984
On President Carter’s Inauguration Day in January 1977 there were 4 billion people in the world, of whom two-thirds (or 2.7 billion) lived in countries with a median income below $300 a head, while one-third lived in countries with median incomes above $3,000 per head. About 55 per cent (or 1.5 billion) of the 2.7 billion people in very poor countries were below the age of twenty-one. That, indeed, is a major reason why they were such poor countries. They were, in 1977, nations of children, who produced pretty well nothing, and of teenagers, who produced little but riots.
The main change on your Inauguration Day in 1985 will be that those 1.5 billion people will be eight years older than they were in 1977. The main change on your retirement day in 1993 will be that they will be sixteen years older. As the 1.5 billion have moved up into the main childbearing age groups, world population has inevitably risen somewhat (to 4.5 billion), although fertility rates have luckily continued the decline they were already showing by the early 1970s.
The poor countries of 1985-93 are no longer nations of children and of teenagers, but of under-employed cohabiting couples in potentially the most productive (and militarily effective) age groups, the twenties and early thirties.
The great majority of this unprecedented addition of 1.5 billion people to the world’s labor force since 1977 are non-white, and are as literate as, for example, the Turkish workers in Germany in 1977, when they had an earnings level of around an annual $5,000 in 1977 dollars. There is no reason why with a proper technostructure the additional population should not attain earnings of something like the same standard, bringing from those 1.5 billion young workers by far the biggest sudden increase in real gross world product the world has ever seen. The tragedy is that the technostructure is not in most places being provided.
The poor South of the world can today be divided into four groups:
1 A few breakthrough countries where real GNP is increasing at 7-12 per cent per annum, but which have also maintained social cohesion. Apart from the People’s Republic of China, most of these are countries which have retained free-market economic systems: e.g. Brazil in South America; Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines in Asia. Many of them are in East Asia, however, and have therefore been aided by the remarkable economic growth in China since the death of Chairman Mao, even more by the coming together of the Japanese and Chinese economic miracles [see the Ex-Secretary’s report below]. Most of these Asian ‘breakthrough’ countries will want to remain neutral in any big power struggle, and continue to make money, as the United States did in 1914-16 and 1939-41.
2 A certain number of unstable right-wing countries: e.g. Mexico and Argentina in South America, the richer states of the former Union of South Africa and the capitalist half of the disintegrating Indian Union. These countries have free enterprise economic systems, and have generally had quite h
igh economic growth rates in the period 1977-84. But they have been unable to handle the social problems of the proletarianization and urbanization of a sizeable part of their labor force, so urban guerrilladom, muggings in the overcrowded cities, and corruption in the civil service and police are rife. Their governments are sometimes unlovely rich men’s dictatorships, which proclaim loudly that they are loyal allies of the United States, though the United States should not always be pleased to have them.
3 A group of unstable left-wing countries: e.g. Egypt (and indeed most other African countries, including Zimbabwe), Bangladesh and the poorer states of the disintegrating federation of India, and also to some extent Pakistan. In these countries the governments are generally replaced by coups d’état, and the ‘new class’ of government technocrats live in constant fear of these.
4 The only Moscow-communist countries left in the poor South of the world are now in the Caribbean — led by Jamaica and Cuba. But some of the ‘unstable left’ countries — of which the most important is Egypt — seem to be moving towards Moscow. The former communist small countries in East Asia (Vietnam, North Korea, etc.) still call themselves communist — as does Chairman Hua’s China — but with the Japanese-Chinese rapprochement they are merging into the East Asian co-prosperity sphere.
Significantly, the Asian republics of the Soviet Union itself are showing some signs of restlessness. Their peoples would gain if they could forge more independent ties with the China-Japan co-prosperity sphere and loosen their ties with Moscow, just as the states of the disintegrating Indian Union and former Union of South Africa have loosened their ties with Delhi and Pretoria.
The real GNP of countries in these four groups and their growth since 1977 clearly indicate that the ‘breakthrough’ and ‘unstable right-wing’ governments have made their peoples much more prosperous in the period 1977-84. In economic terms, the ‘unstable left’ countries (wholly) and the Moscow-communist countries (partly) have failed. It would be better for all the peoples of the world if more countries could be lifted out of the ‘unstable left’ class into either of the first two categories.
Yet the four most likely flashpoints of trouble in the poor two-thirds of the world, at this beginning of your presidency, are connected with possible attempts by either ‘unstable left’ or Moscow-communist countries to seize or subvert power in ‘unstable right’ countries. We would judge that these four most probable flashpoints are:
1 In the Middle East. The conclusion of peace with Israel, under the Geneva settlement during Mr Carter’s presidency, has allowed the Arabs even more freedom for their internal quarrels. Since the new unstable left government in Egypt remembers the food riots with which its own supporters overthrew the former President Samdi, there is a strong temptation for Egypt to go for the oil of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. This could be by means of internal subversion followed by proclamation of a new and immensely rich United Arab Republic (including Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) which would sponsor a new hard line in OPEC. Egypt has been angling for some time for Soviet support for such coups d’état in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, but so far this has been refused. It is quite possible that a ‘United Arab’ coup d’état would win popular support among young men in the Gulf, since many of them regard their free-spending sheikhs as effete pooves, like the rulers of the old Ottoman Empire. If a new UAR of this kind were ever proclaimed, some people would say that the consequent threat to world oil supplies would, of itself, justify US military intervention in the area. We would not advocate this, but the choice between peace and war, even nuclear war, might conceivably lie outside American hands. The only stable right-wing (indeed, ‘breakthrough’) country in the area — the Shah’s Iran — might not sit idly by. And Iran now probably has a nuclear capability based on French technology, even though it has never tested a weapon.
2 The communist Caribbean (in which Jamaica is now the leader, rather than Cuba) and unstable governments of Central America might try to initiate a coup d’état in Mexico, whose dynamic new president deserves US support.
3 Black African forces from the ‘unstable left’ countries of Zimbabwe and Namibia, supported by Cuban and Jamaican and maybe even Soviet ‘volunteers’ landed in Angola and Mozambique, might attack those states of the former Union of South Africa which have developed right-wing governments, sometimes ‘unstable right-wing’ ones. By far the richest of these states are, of course, the three ‘white tribes’ homelands’ of Southern Cape Province, Eastern Natal and Krugerland (Pretoria-Johannesburg). But a real prosperity is also being attained by those black-ruled states and cantons of the former Union of South Africa who have struck up successful (although so-called ‘Uncle Tom’) economic relations with the three White homelands. If there is an actual invasion of this area from the north, the dilemmas set for your Administration will be: (a) economic, because benign growth spreading from the dynamic area of former South Africa appears to be Africa’s only hope for a non-oil economic growth area this century; and (b) military-moral, because the white tribes in South Africa agreed under the Treaty of Pretoria of 1982 that neither they nor the black tribes in former South Africa should have substantial military forces, but that there would be reliance on UN troops on the northern border (most awkwardly, now Mexican, Polish and Indian troops) and perhaps some hopes, however ill based, of intervention by US troops.
4 Rival factions and states in the former Indian Union may start appealing separately to the Soviet Union and China. There might be civil war again in this whole area of India-Pakistan-Bangladesh.
But the biggest threat to peace may lie in the troubles of the Soviet Union and its satellites. This is discussed in the Ex-Secretary’s report on the rich North of the world.
President-elect Thompson received the Think-Tank’s report at the same time as he was presented with the Ex-Secretary’s report, which dealt with subjects closer to his heart.
THE EX-SECRETARY’S REPORT ON THE ‘RICH NORTH’, NOVEMBER 1984
The principal instabilities in the rich North of the world between 1977 and 1984 have come in old-fashioned countries or blocs which have failed to adapt in time to the new basis of survival. Soviet Russia has shown the least ability to adapt to a changing world, and Moscow is now beset by crises to its west, east and south.
Poland and Yugoslavia, for different reasons, are the two most dangerous flashpoints in the West.
Poland has diverged significantly from the norms of communist society. Comecon-decreed exports to the USSR are interfering with its standard of living, while political dogma is preventing the introduction of free enterprise systems in Polish industry. Polish workers much prefer employment by multi-national companies, when these operate in their country, to employment by the Polish state. The state, though the most powerful employer, is also the most disliked. As Poland goes tomorrow, Czechoslovakia and Hungary are liable to go the day after.
East Germany is bound to seek a greater political role, proportionate to its economic superiority in Eastern Europe. East Germany now has a gnp per head of $4,000 a year, twice European Russia’s $2,000 a year. Neighbouring West Germany has a GNP per head of $11,000 a year, and the East Germans know they could have something like this too if they could ever throw off the yoke of the USSR.
The successful participation by the Italian communists in government since 1982, and a Popular Front government in France, have frustrated further advance towards European union and have weakened NATO. But the Italian experience has also bred unexpected dangers for the Soviet Union, because it has shown in practice the success of other roads to ‘socialism’, and thus provided encouragement for Poland.
This is a model more likely to be followed than that of the weak new regime in post-Tito Yugoslavia, which has not been able to resist the establishment of pro-Soviet cells in Serbia. But Yugoslavia is another very possible flashpoint, precisely because it is so weak. If there are near-revolts in Poland or East Germany, I do not think the Soviet Union will be eager to send in its own troops to pu
t them down. But they might well engineer (and accept) an invitation from communist cells in Serbia to put down a so-called capitalist counter-revolution in Slovenia or Croatia.
This would be the cheapest Soviet intervention, designed to show the Poles and others that the Red Army still can, and will, move quickly and aggressively when it must. It is therefore all the more dangerous that NATO has left its policy towards Yugoslavia so vague. At present the Russians probably feel that a re-assertion of their power in Poland might lead to reaction from the West (perhaps from West Germany?), but that a new assertion of power over Yugoslavia would probably bring no Western response more powerful than protests.
West Germany has been somewhat disillusioned by the disappointing progress of the EEC and of NATO. The CDU-led opposition is playing for power in Bonn by reviving hopes of reunification with East Germany. Internal revolts in Poland and East Germany might now bring a more positive response from Bonn — a prospect which fills the Soviet Union with alarm.
The Soviet Union itself is ruled by the last of the Second World War generation, believing in power for the regime, austerity for the masses and a foreign bogey to encourage obedience. The government in Moscow is said to be beginning to be somewhat worried about the possibility of disaffection in the Red Army; the present generation of educated youth has no great enthusiasm for three years’ conscripted service under arms.
Moscow is even more worried about the growth of nationalism in the Asian republics of the Soviet Union, which are looking enviously at the increasing prosperity of Japan and China.
The fastest economic growth in the years 1977-84 has occurred in Japan, China and the countries with close trading links with them. Already in 1950-73 Japan had led the industrial growth league, and it should probably have been foreseen that China would follow it. China and Japan share many characteristics. These include traditions of subordination of the individual to the group in a search for group harmony; an incredible vitality, which is very different from the attitude in India, and owes less to material incentives than that in the West; and a capacity for hierarchical self-organization. China under Chairman Mao had already provided the groundwork for economic take-off by creating almost full employment in the countryside. Chairman Hua then opened the door to the import of foreign technology. It was natural that the main technology to flow in (including that for increased production of Chinese oil) should be Japanese.