The North Atlantic Alliance and the Soviet Union in the 1980s PDF
Preview The North Atlantic Alliance and the Soviet Union in the 1980s
THE NORTH ATLANTIC ALLIANCE AND THE SOVIET UNION IN THE 19808 By the same author COLLECTIVE SECURITY (with Professor O. Pick) W ARNING AND RESPONSE THE NORTH ATLANTIC ALLIANCE AND THE SOVIET UNION IN THE 1980s Julian Critchley © Julian Critchley 1982 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1982 All rights reserved, No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1982 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS L TD London and Basingstoke Compam'es and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-05618-7 ISBN 978-1-349-05616-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-05616-3 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 Contents A cknowledgements vi PART ONE BASIC ISSUES 1 The trial of strength 3 2 Some illusions to be dissipated 13 3 The strategie situation transformed 25 4 The myth of the Tropic of Cancer 35 PART TWO POLITICAL AND MILITARY DEVELOPMENTS OF THE SOVIET UNION 5 Strategy of the Communist Party 43 6 Some internal eharaeteristics and problems 55 7 The military organisation of the Soviet Union 68 8 Soviet armaments: present strength 79 9 Prospeets of the projeetion of Soviet power 90 10 Propaganda as an instrument of poliey 101 PART THREE DEVELOPMENTS OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC ALLIANCE 11 The problem of unity amid diversity 115 12 Nuclear arms and policies 127 13 The Northern theatre of operations 137 14 The Central Front 146 15 The Southern theatre of operations 160 16 Naval tasks within and beyond the Treaty Area 172 PART FOUR SOME DEFENCE PROBLEMS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM 17 Some aspeets of the defenee of the United Kingdom 187 Not es 198 Index 204 Acknowledgements In the making of this book I am particularly grateful for the co-operation and advice of John Eppstein, formerly Secretary General of the Atlantic Treaty Association and editor of World Survey, and for the generous help of John Poole, in the Scientific Section of the House of Commons Library, in obtaining the documentation which I needed. The author and publishers would also like to thank the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office, for the extract from Written Answers, 31 July 1980. Part One Basic Issues 1 The trial of strength The purpose of this book is to trace the probable course in the next ten years of the trial of strength, which has already lasted for more than decades, between the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and the United States and its allies, on the other. It makes no prophecy. Q.uite unforeseen events may undo the most confident forecasts, as did the Iranian Revolution and the eruption of Islamic fervour in 1979. But it will suggest the probable evolution of the policies and armaments of both sides, in the light of available information, and examine the consequences of the present correlation of power in the world. Any credible speculation of the future must begin by taking account of the lessons of the past. What has the experience of the first 30 years of the strategic contest between the North Atlantic Alliance and its Communist Russian rival to teach us? It has been the Soviet side throughout which has been the pace-setter, with the domination of the world by its brand of Socialism as its constant objective, with changing tactics and with rapidly growing military strength. Yet it has been proved that, on the other side, a system of collective defence can be kept up and adapted by a group of unregimented and far from bellicose peoples for the best part of a generation, even without the stimulus of imminent attack. This is encouraging; but there are already many signs that the task of reinforcing the common defensive effort with civil morale is likely to become more difficult with the passage of time, if only because of the ever-rising cost of modern weapons - disarmament by inflation - and the persistent hankering for compromise, if not appeasement, which revulsion against nuclear arms evokes. It is, of course, the sine qua non of a successful strategy of defence that there should be a reliable reservoir of political will upon which the government can draw. I devote a later chapter of this book to that crucial subject. It is important to remember that the striking success of the North Atlantic Alliance, so quickly constructed in 1949 after the 3 4 Basic Issues Communist conquest of Czechoslovakia and the Berlin blockade, in arresting the further encroachment of Stalin's military and political power in Europe, happened before men and women now in their thirties were born. It takes a greater historical sense than most of them, and even more younger people, possess to realise the significance of the peace - which, their elders would say is thanks to NATO - that they have known all their lives. That is one reason why defence and foreign affairs occupy so small a place today in the minds of the majority, a fact which is of great advantage to those who, for political motives, want to weaken the North Atlantic Alliance. If a growing minority has been aroused in Britain during the 1970s to the need to reinforce the defensive capacity of NATO, it is largely thanks to the influence of television, not in recalling past history, but in giving day-to-day news about actual developments in the Soviet Union, its threatening military superiority in Europe, its strategie expansion in other continents and its repressive internal regime. It is evident that if the Atlantic Alliance is to remain effective during a fourth decade, a far more serious effort is needed than has hitherto been forthcoming in the Allied countries, and in particular those of Northern Europe, whose Socialist parties are particularly susceptible to the Soviet propaganda of peaceful co-existence, to educate those who can lead and inform their fellow citizens in the strategie realities confronting the nation and its allies. No-one wants the wholesale indoctrination and inculcation of dass hatred to which every citizen in Soviet Russia and its satellite states is subjected from infancy. But it cannot be said that the political leaders of the West have, since the early days of the Atlantic Alliance, given their peoples a very clear picture of the basic issues involved, which are obscured rather than enlightened by arcane references to such abstractions as 'deterrence' or 'detente' and the wishful thinking which habitually accompanies the latter. DISSIMILAR ANTA GON1STS What are the basic issues? The contest between the two power groups which we are studying is not the rivalry of similar entities, like the nation-states or alliances of states between which in the course of European his tory there have often been wars or threats
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