“The wisdom of all these latter times, in princes’ affairs, is rather fine deliveries, and shiftings of dangers and mischiefs when they are near, than solid and grounded courses to keep them aloof.”
—Sir Francis Bacon

No matter where the finger roams on the map, the question inevitably arises: What are the Russians trying to do here? Richard F. Staar, a Senior Fellow at The Hoover Institution and an authority on Soviet communism, seeks to assess the global intentions and strategies of the world’s most vigorously expansionist regime. Some of the subjects discussed are predictable—the Kremlin’s world view and decision-making process; official attitudes toward Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, the Third World, East Asia, and the U.S. But what distinguishes Dr. Staar’s book from others of its sort is the analysis of the tools of Soviet influence: foreign propaganda, espionage and active measures, foreign trade, and military strategy. By drawing attention to these topics, Staar emphasizes his basic theme, that the Soviet Union is not just another Great Power motivated only by Realpolitik, but is a power driven by a messianic ideology to advance “social progress” in all parts of the world. Though Marxist-Leninism may experience setbacks, its political superiority over capitalism will eventually give it victory. The West is in a state of general crisis, the area under the control of “imperialism” is shrinking while that of socialism is growing.

The Soviet military is the most obvious policy tool. It is a topic that Staar is well-qualified to discuss as former ambassador to the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction (MBFR) talks in Vienna during 1981-1983, His tables comparing the strategic forces of the U.S. and the USSR indicate that Soviet doctrine is not based on the American doctrines of deterrence and mutual destruction. The Soviets emphasize the successful prosecution of war and the survival of communism in any clash with the West. In oldfashioned terms, this means they plan to win. Their nuclear forces are geared to “counterforce” strikes against U.S. and NATO military forces. The window of vulnerability is still open, with the USSR able to “destroy any undefended fixed target in the United States with a single warhead.” On the ground in Europe, the Red Army can launch an offensive before NATO can mobilize.

The picture is not all black. Staar believes that the Eastern European armies are unreliable and would add little to the Soviet war effort except for a few elite units integrated into the Soviet second echelon. Indeed, he expresses the optimistic view that if NATO could ever fight its way behind the iron curtain, the Warsaw Pact would collapse. Though new Army doctrine talks a great deal about offensive action and “deep strikes” into Pact territory, neither the U.S. nor NATO seems willing to expand conventional forces enough to defend the West, let alone push the battlefield eastward.

Given the material advantages possessed by capitalism, Soviet expansion can continue only so long as the political will of the West is paralyzed. Soviet active measures weaken Western will through disinformation and propaganda aimed at the general public and through terrorism and assassination of opponents. Staar provides a list of Soviet front organizations and other groups linked to the fronts which are active in the propaganda campaign. However, nothing serves Soviet intentions quite like the West’s own extensive news media. The constant and competitive search for “news” provides the Soviets with opportunities to plant forged documents, fabricated incidents, and twisted perspectives in the Western press, where they acquire instant credibility. The Soviets have their own massive publication program in the noncommunist world, some of it in the open like the Progress Publishing House in Moscow, which translates works into 40 languages, some of it hidden like Ethnos, the largest newspaper in Athens, financed by the KGB and filled with pieces from correspondents in the U.S. and England who are known communists.

Though the Soviets have an elaborate’ network of agents and fellowtravelers, there are enough independent leftists, liberals, and political partisans in the media to aid Moscow without direct ties.

Freedom of the press in the West provides the East with a multitude of printed and spoken criticism of public figures, organizations, society, and government policies that Soviet propagandists then cite in their own articles and speeches.

A Soviet agent is far more persuasive when he can cite the words of an American congressman that the American President’s policies are a threat to world peace. Staar provides numerous examples for all the forms of Soviet clandestine activity. It makes for reading which is both fascinating and horrifying.

Joseph Churba believes that Soviet policy is working all too well and that the Reagan Administration is not coping with it much better than did the Carter Administration. Dr. Churba is a founder of the Center for International Security and served as Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency 1981-1982. Like Staar, he sees Soviet ambitions as global. “The Soviet Union is not like other states. It is rather like an organization—the Communist Party—that owns a country.” Churba believes pressures are mounting on the Soviets to move now rather than wait.

The Soviets already lag behind the West in their economic base, making up for this by concentrating a larger share of resources on heavy industry and armaments. Yet, they risk being left hopelessly behind by the revolution in telecommunications, robotics, and bioengineering now taking place in the capitalist states. The Soviets must try for global hegemony by the end of the century before the West can fully develop these new technological resources.

World War III started in 1975 when the Soviets airlifted weapons and supplies for 6,000 Cuban troops in Angola to establish a puppet government. Since then, the Soviets have established a network of strongpoints distant from their own borders: Vietnam, Mozambique, Nicaragua, North Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia. In 1979 they departed from the use of proxies and invaded Afghanistan. Soviet gains were “carried out by ordinary troops, using ordinary weapons, in what would seem, compared with the high technology of nuclear arms, a remarkably primitive procedure.” Most of these operations occurred in areas near the Persian Gulf oil fields on which Western Europe, Japan and, to a lesser extent, the U.S. depend. There was never any thought of using nuclear weapons to stop the Soviets or their allies, but in the wake of Vietnam there was no serious thought of using conventional forces either.

Churba sees the Middle East as the central battlefield in the conflict between East and West. Disruption of oil shipments would collapse the Western economies, thus buying the USSR more time to develop its own economic potential. The threat of disruption would be a powerful diplomatic tool to drive Europe and Japan into “neutrality.” The current energy glut and the reduced use of Arab oil in the U.S. has blinded many people to the fact that the world oil market still depends on Persian Gulf oil.

For many, this dependence on Arab oil has meant a need to court the Arab states at the expense of Israel. Churba believes this is the major error of both the Garter and Reagan Administrations. The Arab oil states will continue to sell to the West for economic reasons. The threat does not come from them, but from the USSR and the radical states and movements it supports. The threat is a military one and must be countered on those terms.

Israel—with the strongest military power in the region—has a stable pro-Western government and is opposed to Soviet expansion. It is the only state in the region which the U.S. can count as an ally. In contrast, the principal Arab states, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are militarily weak, unreliable, and do not consider Soviet influence to be the main danger. Yet, to appease Arab opinion, the U.S. opposed Israel military actions against the Iraqi reactor at Osirak (1981) and against PLO forces in Lebanon (1982), despite the fact that both Iraq and the PLO are tied to the USSR. Reagan held up deliveries of military aircraft to Israel after Osirak and in Lebanon provided safe escort for PLO forces out of Beirut. The U.S. has also opposed Tel Aviv’s “annexation” of the Golan Heights.

Favoring this course are the “Arabists” in the State Department and those military planners in the Pentagon who want American bases closer to the Gulf than Israel can provide. Churba advocates basing two heavy U.S. divisions in Israel to back up the Rapid Deployment Force in the belief that no Arab state can be relied upon to provide such bases. Yet, Israel has never wanted U.S. troops on its soil, and it is doubtful that Congress would approve the stationing of combat units in such a trouble-spot, even if they were available.

By the same token, Churba’s proposals for reinstituting conscription and for mobilizing industry to build up U.S. conventional war-fighting capabilities, however desirable, seem well beyond the realm of political possibility. Congress has already brought to a halt the Reagan rearmament program. The President will be lucky if he can keep the Strategic Defense Initiative moving, a program which fits Churba’s desire for an active defense against nuclear attack. Churba is correct when he observes that the U.S. and its NATO allies have a larger population and several times the economic strength of the Soviet Bloc and should thus be able to win any arms race. He simply fails to address the political problem of getting the democracies to act.

This lack of will manifests itself in several of Henry Kissinger’s articles in Observations, a collection drawn from varied sources, including Senate testimony, speeches to NATO meetings, university seminars, interviews and articles in news magazines. Kissinger favors arms control negotiations and believes that mutually beneficial agreements are possible. But he sees defects in SALT II and strongly argues that arms control must be integrated with defense planning. His ideal—which accords with the Reagan position—would be an arms treaty which would reduce offensive weapons to a low enough level that a missile-defense system could defeat a first strike.

Unfortunately, many Americans view arms control as a substitute for military preparedness. Furthermore, negotiations are seen as a way to reduce tensions and are thus an end in themselves. The Soviets play on these misconceptions, with “almost every Soviet aggressive move . . . followed by an offer to accelerate arms talks.” Yet the talks never lead to arms reductions nor to any slackening of Soviet expansion. Kissinger repeatedly advocates “linkage” between Soviet actions and arms talks to break this cycle.

But can political support be sustained for such a policy? Congress has already tied funding of new strategic programs to a Presidential certification that negotiations are being pursued-to limit or ban the new weapons. The U.S. is under constant pressure to prove to its allies that it is not a greater threat to peace than the Soviets! Additional concessions to Moscow and unilateral restraint are urged upon us. Yet constant appeals to patience, moderation, and “peace” can sap the will of a nation to act at all.

Kissinger’s position is to the right of the reputation he had while he was in the Nixon and Ford Administrations. In office, Kissinger remarked that it is impossible to think about issues; all you can do is react to pressure. All of the pressure in Washington pushes in the direction of retreat. These pressures can only be resisted if more people can be made aware of the facts presented by Staar, Churba, and Kissinger and then summon the strength to act on them.

 

[USSR Foreign Policies After Detente, by Richard F. Staar; The Hoover Institution Press; Stanford, CA]

[The American Retreat: The Reagan Foreign and Defense Policy, by Joseph Churba; Regnery Gateway; Chicago]

[Observations: Selected Speeches and Essays, 1982-1984, by Henry Kissinger; Little, Brown; Boston]