The outcome is a question of our policy, not of Soviet policy. We possess the ability to consolidate the West’s position in Asia. We must use that ability to the hilt to protect both our own interests and the interests of our friends and allies in Asia.
Naval Power
The event that dramatically symbolized the fact that the United States had become a world power was President Theodore Roosevelt’s action seventy-five years ago in sending the “Great White Fleet” around the world. It is ironic that the decline of the United States as a world power may be marked by another naval milestone: by our losing our unquestioned superiority over the Soviet Union in naval power.
The United States is an “island” country and therefore a sea power; the Soviet Union, situated in the center of the Eurasian heartland, is basically a land power. As a land power, the U.S.S.R. can reasonably be expected to maintain superior ground forces along its long borders with potential adversaries. As an island sea power, dependent on oceangoing commerce and on sea lines of communication with our allies, the United States must insist on decisive superiority on the waterways of the world.
While we have not sought to challenge the Soviet’s “natural” advantages on the land, they have not reciprocated by conceding our title to the seas. Instead they have vigorously pursued a naval program designed to cripple our advantage on the oceans in case of conflict—a program that gives them mobility while it seeks to deny us that very quality. Historically, the Soviet Navy has been unimportant. Now that has changed.
Just as the Soviet strategic buildup was paralleled by a U.S. strategic demobilization, the same pattern has been followed with the two sides’ navies: the Soviets built, we mothballed.
From an unimportant coastal naval power at the end of World War II, the Soviet Union has grown to a major global naval power today. The Soviets now have the world’s largest and most modern surface navy, its largest fleet of attack submarines, and its largest fleet of ballistic missile-carrying submarines. Recently the Soviets have doubled the size of their largest cruisers and started production of their first nuclear attack carriers, a major new step in their program of naval expansion.
Soviet warships already operate regularly, not only in the Atlantic and the Pacific, but also in the Indian Ocean, in the Mediterranean, and in the Caribbean. Not only does the Soviet Navy threaten our own naval superiority and the security of our sea-lanes; it also is becoming a central element in the U.S.S.R.’s rapidly growing capacity to project its military power, quickly and flexibly, into the most distant and remote areas of the globe. Perhaps the most telling sign of Soviet intentions is the vast expansion of their shipyards. Only half of their shipyard capacity is now being utilized, which leaves room for huge increases in shipbuilding in the future.
• • •
Even as the Soviets were building and deploying a powerful counterforce to our navy, the United States was saving them much of the trouble. In the last decade we cut the number of our ships by more than half, from 976 in 1968 to 453 in 1978. Admiral James L. Holloway, then chief of naval operations, reported in 1978 that in a sea war “which involved Soviet combatants in both the Atlantic and Pacific our prospects for success for sea control would be marginal.”
The commander-in-chief of the Soviet Navy, Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, boasts, “The flag of the Soviet navy flies over the oceans of the world. Sooner or later the United States will have to understand that it no longer has mastery of the seas.”
Gorshkov may overrate his own accomplishments and underrate our superiority in carriers. But the fact remains that the Soviet Navy has soared to a position of second best in the world, and is moving rapidly toward becoming number one. This would be a disaster for the United States, and there is no time to lose if we are to avert it.
In a foreword to the 1979-1980 edition, the editor of the authoritative Jane’s Fighting Ships warns of the significance of these developments. He says that failure to counter Soviet moves into countries “in which there can be no reason for their presence other than plans for expansion and eventual control” is allowing the U.S.S.R. to establish a series of bases remarkably similar to those used by the British empire at the turn of the century. He concludes:
By dropping the shield of maritime security the Western leaders have so weakened their own position that they are moving towards a position of vulnerability to blackmail.
The results of the blackmail? Deprivation of raw materials, markets and the freedom of those friends who are not strong enough to guarantee their own security.
The Soviets are prepared to maintain at least a 775-ship navy for the foreseeable future. The U.S. target for the mid-1980s is only 525 ships. While the U.S. Navy is barely managing to avoid further budget cuts, the Soviets are building four new cruiser classes, at least two new aircraft carriers, and every six weeks a new submarine. The United States does not have to match the Soviet Union ship for ship; we have major seafaring allies and they do not. It should be noted again, though, that we have a significant problem in obtaining those allies’ cooperation in areas where they are reluctant to be seen to be involved with us—as in the Mideast in 1973. And the U.S.S.R. has one unique advantage: its fishing fleet and merchant marine are integrated with its navy. “Nonmilitary” Soviet trawlers have traditionally served as the eyes and ears of the Soviet Navy off our coasts.
For all these reasons, we have to make a very substantial effort to increase the size of our naval forces and to modernize them. A recent Atlantic Council study demonstrated that a U.S. shipbuilding and aircraft procurement of an additional $10 billion annually would be required to support a 600-ship navy. This figure is probably the minimum that would be needed. The study also showed that the other members of the alliance should collectively be able to maintain another 600-ship navy for approximately $6 billion additional annually, after a period of modernization. These levels appear consistent with total alliance defense spending and should provide combined navies capable of handling the 775-ship threat of the Soviet Navy, if that should ever become necessary. We need a single policy that clearly specifies for each alliance country the future role and mission of its navy, a strategy for carrying it out, and a commensurate construction program for the next ten to twenty years. Nothing short of that will be adequate.
• • •
The allied nations have a common area of interest in that we all depend on open sea-lanes for our continued prosperity, indeed for our very survival. The interconnected one-world ocean, that body of water that makes the earth look blue from space, links America and Europe and provides contact between the West and the rest of the world. As Harold Macmillan has said, Asia and Africa are the two great lungs by which Western culture breathes; the oceans of the world are the arteries that carry the life-giving oxygen from these lungs to us.
The artery that leads directly from these twin lungs is the Indian Ocean. Many Americans, if asked to name the five oceans that go with the seven seas, would not get much further than the Atlantic and the Pacific. Another ocean we should start thinking more about is the Indian. In 1968, within a month after the British announced they were withdrawing from “East of Suez,” Admiral Gorshkov was in India testing the political waters. Soon afterward the Soviet Navy began making itself at home in the Indian Ocean, and by 1976 the Soviets were spending five times as many ship-days there as we were; in 1979 they maintained eighteen to twenty ships in these waters.
The Indian Ocean contains many of the key choke points through which the commercial and military ships of the world must pass. The Straits of Hormuz control traffic in and out of the Persian Gulf; the Suez Canal and the Bab el Mandeb Straits control transit to the Mediterranean; the Straits of Malacca, passage to Japan and the Pacific. With Soviet-backed groups sweeping to power all around the borders of the Indian Ocean’s “crescent of crisis,” and Soviet ships steaming back and forth across its expanses, the Indian Ocean may one day become a “Red Sea.”
America has permanent fleets in the Atl
antic, the Pacific, and the Mediterranean—all areas of vital and legitimate interest to the United States. In view of the British pullback and the heightened importance of the Indian Ocean, we must, in league with our allies, work out an arrangement to station an American Fifth Fleet there. This, together with the British, French, and Australian navies, would be a stabilizing force in the area.
The West—and the United States unilaterally—must build up its naval strength to be able to defend those sea routes that are vital to it.
The Nixon Doctrine
More nuclear bombs, unquestioned military superiority, and massively superior economic strength will not deter revolutionary war, terrorism, or other forms of communist aggression that fall short of conventional war. The United States, our allies, and friends must develop power commensurate with the power being used against us. It makes no sense to try to use a sledgehammer to kill a fly. That kind of enemy calls for a less powerful but more effective weapon—a fly swatter.
In these situations it is not the balance of power in the arsenal that counts, it is the balance of power on the battlefield. If we are relatively equal to the Soviet Union in nuclear arms, but the Soviets have 5,000 Cubans, or even 500 agitators and terrorists, where we have no countervailing force, then the balance of power on the scene is massively on their side. Local defense forces are the ones best equipped to deal with these low-level threats, but if the aggressor is receiving aid from outside, those defending their freedom must also have access to aid from outside.
The Nixon Doctrine provided that the United States would supply arms and assistance to nations threatened by aggression, if they were willing to assume the primary responsibility for providing the manpower necessary for their defense.
Some Americans have an almost theological aversion to having the United States sell arms abroad. But those who argue against supplying our friends with the arms they need to defend themselves ignore one very important point. There is almost no case on record since World War II in which arms provided by the United States have been used by the country receiving them for purposes of aggression. Soviet arms are the ones that have been consistently used to break the peace.
Whether we like it or not, most countries need arms, and this is especially true of those in the path of Soviet ambition. Many of these nations have unfriendly neighbors. In much of the world democracy is weak or nonexistent and the army is essential to internal stability. These simply are facts of life. Another fact of life is that the Soviets are willing arms merchants, wherever arms sales can give them a foot in the door.
• • •
The Soviets cannot match the West in terms of the promise of economic progress, and their ideology has little appeal. But if the leader of a threatened or unstable nation finds that the only way he can retain power is to turn to them, he will do so. Some leaders who have broken with the Soviet Union may be forced to return to the Soviet fold if the United States does not provide them with an alternative source of arms. We must not leave such leaders with that sort of Hobson’s choice.
Now that the Soviet Union is pouring Russian arms and Cuban troops into Africa, some in the West argue that we should not aid the targets of this new aggression because in the end the Soviets will dig their own graves in Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and elsewhere. But this will not happen. The Soviets are ruthless in the use of power; they are expert at digging graves for others. Even the staunchest local resistance cannot hold out indefinitely against an aggressor who is better armed.
Colin Legum, a British expert on Africa, writes, “A new phrase is creeping into the language of Marxists in the third world: ‘superior arms.’ The argument among those advocating revolutionary change is that, in choosing your ‘strategic allies,’ it is necessary to be sure that they possess ‘superior arms.’ ”
Reliable delivery of military supplies is of crucial concern to the leaders of Third World nations. The Soviets stand by their friends in this regard. It is both stupid and dangerous for the United States to curtail arms sales to our friends while the Soviets supply the enemies of our friends.
It is ironic that the Soviets have had enormous success since World War II with their own version of the Nixon Doctrine. In Vietnam, they helped their allies by providing the arms; we helped our allies by providing both the arms and a large proportion of the men. More than 110,000 Americans were killed as a result of wars with Soviet-supported communist forces in Korea and Vietnam. The Russians suffered no casualties in those conflicts.
The interests of the United States and of our friends and allies require that we provide threatened nations with the aid they need to defend themselves. World conditions still require that the basic elements of the Nixon Doctrine be fully implemented. We must have the strategic nuclear power to hold the ring against the Soviets whenever they seek to extend their domination. We must keep our treaty commitments by having adequate conventional and theater nuclear power. When the Soviets resort to indirect aggression by support of revolutionary war, we can avoid more Vietnams by providing military and economic assistance to our friends so that they will be able to defend themselves without our assuming the burden of fighting the war for them.
Meeting the Cost
The notion that government spends more for arms than for social programs is a myth. The total defense budget today is less than 5 percent of our GNP and less than 25 percent of the federal budget compared with peaks of 12-13 percent and 61 percent, respectively, at the height of the Korean War. While defense spending has gone down since 1965 from 7 to 5 percent of GNP, federal, state, and local spending on social welfare programs has gone up from 12 percent to 21 percent—four times as much as we spend on defense.
As Michael Novak has pointed out, “Free societies are not natural to this planet. They have arisen only rarely in human history and commonly they have collapsed in the face of superior barbaric force. . . . The alleged superior morality of the statists—who desire more funds for the bureaucracy of poverty and less for the bureaucracy of defense—may not be as moral as the statists like to believe.”
Dr. Fritz Kraemer, Henry Kissinger’s early mentor, graphically illustrates the problem. “It is a question of priorities,” he once told me. “If I have a house in the valley and there is a leak in the dam in the mountains, repairing the leak must come before adding a room or buying a Picasso for my house.”
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Slessor put this “question of priorities” in capsule form: “The most important social service a government can render its people is to keep them alive and free.”
In the mid-1980s, assuming present projected defense spending in the United States and the U.S.S.R., the West will face a situation of maximum danger. The Soviets will have unquestioned superiority in strategic and theater nuclear weapons, overwhelming superiority in ground and air forces, and at least equality in naval forces.
The current administration’s proposed 5 percent increase in defense spending, even if a real 5 percent, is totally inadequate to meet that threat. Rather than fixing on such arbitrary and minor percentage increases, we should examine our military requirements and determine the funding necessary to meet them, given a reasonable and coherent set of priorities. But even a cursory summary of our needs demonstrates that a 5 percent increase is far too little at this late stage.
With or without further SALT agreements we must increase our strategic nuclear power so that after a possible first strike we have enough ground-based missiles to liquidate the remaining Soviet ground-based missiles, destroy all important military targets, and still have a survivable reserve force equal or superior to that of the Soviet Union. In addition, we must improve our capability to protect our civilian population. Otherwise we will be blackmailed into surrender since the option of mutual mass destruction of civilian populations will not be credible.
We must restore parity between NATO’s and the Warsaw Pact’s theater nuclear and conventional capability, and assure that our key forces can survive eve
n a surprise attack.
We must provide the arms and assistance needed by our friends and allies to meet threats they face from forces supplied by the Soviet Union and its allies, whether those threats are internal or external.
As a land power with two fronts, the Soviet Union may be expected to have overall superior conventional land forces. But we are a sea power, and therefore we must strengthen our navy to ensure that we will have unquestioned superiority at sea. Our own security, and that of every nation using the world’s sea-lanes, depends on that superiority.
We cannot do what is needed without cost, both socially and financially.
I considered the end of the draft in 1973 to be one of the major achievements of my administration. Now seven years later, I have reluctantly concluded that we should reintroduce the draft. The need for the United States to project a strong military posture is now urgent, and the volunteer army has failed to provide enough personnel of the caliber we need for our highly sophisticated armaments. Its burden should be shared equally by all strata of society, with random selection and as few deferments as possible. Even so, it will cause hardships, and whatever its form, the draft is inherently unfair; it can only be justified by necessity. But as we look at the 1980s, necessity stares us in the face: we simply cannot risk being without it. To put off that hard decision could prove penny wise and pound foolish; our reluctance to resume the peacetime draft may make us weak enough to invite war, and then we will find ourselves imposing a wartime draft instead.
To meet the requirements for restoration of a balance of power adequate to deter war and avoid defeat without war will require an increase in our defense budget of at least $30 billion—in 1980 dollars—annually for five years. This means a real increase of more than 20 percent over present levels. This is a substantial sum, but it would amount to barely more than 1 percent of our GNP. It is necessary life insurance—for our life as a nation and for the lives and freedom of the more than 2 billion people living in the noncommunist world. This is the most important social service we can provide.
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