Will WW III catch us unaware?
The scenario for World War III has been a common topic of discussion and description lately. Details vary, but the main theme is always the same: World War III starts with a warm-up period, and then the Soviet Army directs a heavy blow against Germany, before moving on to the French border. The Soviet Northern Fleet tries to cut off the stream of troops and provisions to Europe from the United States and the oil from the Middle East. After NATO has won a new Battle of the Atlantic and fortified its resources in Great Britain, there will be another D-day, and Allied troops will liberate Europe and turn the Soviet Army back to Moscow. Nothing much happens in the Pacific arena, except for the extraction of resources to be used in the Atlantic battles. The war will be conventional because neither of the superpowers can take the losses of nuclear war, and because the dust from the nuclear blasts would rise to the upper atmosphere and create a new ice age which would obliterate mankind.
The World War III scenario described is a rehash of World Wars I and II. It is completely wrong.
The North Atlantic situation was discussed last year in a series of speeches at the Maritime Museum, Stockholm. The Soviet military attache in Stockholm brought a map with the Soviet Union at the center—the world as viewed from Moscow. It was an unfamiliar perspective to the Western onlookers. The Soviet lieutenant colonel explained that the Soviet Union is surrounded by enemy powers, threatening the motherland from all directions. To the north are the United States and Canada; to the east are the United States, Japan, and China; to the south are India and Turkey; and only to the west is there a barrier of friendly states belonging to the Warsaw Pact, and neutral Finland. According to the lieutenant colonel, the United States is the main enemy, and Europe is just a secondary consideration.
The attache continued with some Soviet history. Russia has been attacked from the west several times, four times seriously: by Swedish King Charles XII, ending at Poltava; by Napoleon, ending at Moscow after the Battle of Borodino; by Kaiser Wilhelm, who was the only one to conquer Russia in modern times, settling with the peace at Brest-Litovsk; and the Soviet Union by Hitler, ending at Stalingrad. But long ago Russia was attacked many more times from the east—by the Mongols—and ultimately served as a barrier that saved Europe from the Mongol hordes.
In another speech, a Norwegian admiral gave his view of World War III, which is basically the same as that given by Major Hugh K. O’Donnell,
Jr., U. S. Marine Corps, in “Northern Flank Maritime Offensive” (pp. 4257, September 1985 Proceedings) with the only difference being the time factor. The admiral described Soviet maneuvers in the north, which take place every year near the Norwegian border— sometimes with sizable naval forces and landing ships consisting of naval infantry and army troops. He declared that the time interval between a seemingly peaceful exercise and a real forced landing can be very short—12 hours at the most. This is the reason for Norway’s permanent standing army brigade in the north.
Here in Sweden, we have a similar situation. Warsaw Pact maneuvers in the southern Baltic take place every year, some with up to 100,000 troops participating. If a Polnocny-class medium landing ship is on the coastline (within 12 nautical miles of shore) when the training phase explodes into actual war, it will take only 40 minutes to land six tanks and 200 soldiers on Swedish soil.
The Soviet war plan for Scandinavia has been public knowledge ever since a Czechoslovakian general defected to the West in 1976. The plan has even been published in the Swedish press. Additional details supplied in the ensuing years create a scenario of rapid coups d’etat executed by Spetsnaz personnel, with Swedish-speaking, air-lifted troops (three brigades from the Baltic Military District and one from the Belorussian Military District) deployed in Sweden to Ska-ne (two brigades), Stockholm (one brigade), and the Ostersund area (one brigade to seize the NATO headquarters in Trondheim). Two mechanized divisions come from Murmansk to seize northern Norway, and the Soviet northern fleet takes care of the Norwegian coastline as far south as Trondheim, as far north as Svalbard m the Arctic Ocean, and west to Denmark’s Faeroes and Iceland. A Polish air-lifted brigade seizes the Danish Islands and perhaps Jutland with the help of Polish and East German landing craft. The Warsaw Pact staff gives 48 hours for this operation.
The nuclear winter alternative becomes less credible with time. Nuclear weapon developments today incorporate a more flexible load with several small independently targeted reentry vehicle warheads—which can reach more targets with greater accuracy—instead of a single one-megaton blast. The French have gone from neutron charges for tactical use to neutron charges for strategic missiles. These neutron charges do not produce the mighty dust clouds of earlier bombs or even wreck the buildings on the ground; they simply kill all life within the target area, humans and animals, and after 30 minutes tanks and armored personnel carriers can advance without suffering harmfm effects from remaining radioactivity- This technique could change nuclear warfare into conventional warfare. Although France is ahead in neutron- charge exploration, it seems that the Soviets are taken with the idea. In the
their
mam purpose might change to
mted States and other Western coun- les> a general war is not imminent.
The fact that Soviet submarines are JnUch faster and quieter than ever here is common knowledge. And more an a few Western defense publicans have marked the concurrent de- lne in U. S. submarine design inno- Jttions. Admiral Vladimir Nikolayevich v-hr
hai
iemavin’s surface navy will be en- ®ced by the addition of a nuclear- ffopeiied aircraft carrier in a year or
tw0
United States, the production of the neutron bomb seems to be delayed.
Of course, many megaton charges Wl1! remain in the Soviet inventory, but
estroying U. S. Minuteman missiles in olorado (in a manner similar to that mentioned in “Strategic Defense, Stra- egic Modernization, and Arms Con- |r°l, September 1985 Proceedings), jnstead of “town-busting”—mass ex- srminntion of civilians and destruction 0 industrial centers.
And perhaps a “Chinese biological Powder” could be spread over China in e Soviet “western wind” just before me outbreak of World War III. Europeans won’t be affected, but after two Weeks, there aren’t any more Chinese People in China. . . .
The Soviet Union cannot conquer the mted States by waging war in Ger- ,,1any- In order to conquer a superPower, troops must be placed in the enemy mainland. The Atlantic is too '''■de for a Soviet amphibious assault, ut the Bering Strait is not—after all, ls the nearest way to the old Russian Possessions of the Alaska and Califor- n,a territories.
The Soviets will not start a war Mthin the next five years. Mikhail orbachev needs more time to modify ls Marxist-Leninist centrally planned Ureaucracy along the lines of the Chinese socialistic market economy. Raises the Soviet standard of living is a '§h priority for Gorbachev. Swedish c°mmunist writer Maj Wechselman ,,escribes the Soviet Union as the armed poverty house,” and she can't01 understand why a country in such a ^odition is viewed as a threat to the mted States. I believe that as long as e Soviets must import grain from the
a new Kirov-class nuclear- ^r°Pelled guided missile cruiser, and reveral destroyers and frigates of the °fremennyy-, Udaloy-, and Krivak- asses. This will give the Soviets three t^rr'er battle groups in the Pacific and , 0 in the Atlantic within the foreseeable future.
All Soviet ships have been acclaimed
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for their sea and battle worthiness (in Proceedings, for example), while some U. S. ships leave much to be desired in the way of stability and machinery configuration. To survive an atomic, biological, and chemical (ABC) war, the larger Soviet warships have a type of armored citadel that keeps the main functions intact, providing the blast does not destroy the entire ship. Most U. S. ships lack armor entirely, and their ABC defense capabilities have been strongly criticized (again, in the pages of Proceedings). The newly introduced Kevlar plastic armor is only a half-hearted solution. The electronic gadgetry on U. S. ships may be superior to Soviet equipment, but how does it react to the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effect? Tests in Sweden have shown that transistorized circuits are crippled for a substantial period of time, or even permanently, by EMP emissions.
The sum of my reflections indicate a somewhat different scenario for World War III than what has been written during the last few years. The war will start without warning if the Soviets initiate it. The Soviet Union cannot afford or allow a “warm-up period” for the West, thus the war will be nuclear from the beginning. Also, the Soviets cannot afford a long, conventional war, and they are more prepared to accept a great loss of people than the Western countries. After all, they lost 20 million people during World War II, while the United States lost less than one million. World War III will most likely proceed like this:
In September, when the European farming season has ended, a nuclear blast from Soviet nuclear-powered fleet ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs)- launched missiles destroys Washington, D. C., New York, and other big cities on the East Coast within five minutes of launching. The U. S. Minuteman missiles in Colorado remain unfired in their silos because the administration that controls their launching no longer exists. Twenty-five minutes later, Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles arrive and destroy the Minutemen in place. Most American cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants and U. S. Navy, Air Force, and Army bases are also hit within the first 30 minutes. Large dust clouds from the interior of the United States spread out over the Atlantic Ocean on the western wind, but little of the radioactive fallout reaches Europe.
Meanwhile in Europe, Soviet troops take Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland as planned (within 48 hours), but in Central Europe the Soviet Army withdraws to a main line of defense m the middle of Poland as the East and West Germans “fight it out” with each other. Most large European cities are destroyed: in Western Europe, by Soviet intermediate range ballistic missiles (including SS-20s); and in Eastern Europe, by British and French SSBN- launched missiles. In Asia, the Soviet ar mies hold a front at the Yalu River, where approximately 20 million Chinese are perishing in a rain of artillery fire and tactical biological warfare missiles. In Alaska, the Soviets land 10,000 soldiers with equipment each hour. They meet only limited resistance because the towns, airfields, and army depots have been destroyed by tactical nuclear missiles.
The first clash at sea takes place in the North Atlantic between a U. S. battle group with two carriers, one battleship, and escorts, and a Soviet battle group with Kirov, Frunze, and two Sverdlov-class cruisers. The EMP effect from the first missile fired by the Kirov paralyzes the electronic equipment on the U. S. ships for 30 minutes. In that one-half hour, most of the U.S. ships become victims of Soviet conventional missiles, torpedoes, and gunfire. After two hours, only the NeW Jersey remains, with a ragged superstructure and a slight list but nevertheless alive and setting course for Boston, the only large city still intact on the East Coast.
Some time later, the Chinese have all been annihilated, and the Soviet armies at the Yalu River move westwar to be sealifted to Jutland, where they push south to Berlin, and then west along the coast through the Netherlands and Belgium, and on to the French border. The German Army in Poland has collapsed for lack of fuel and ammunition. The Soviet armies in North America control Alaska and part of Canada, and are advancing south along the coast. They expect to have San Francisco before Christmas.
Fantasy? Yes, today. But considering the present trend, the Soviets will ha'e a superior navy in the near future.
They already have the will to conquer the United States. The Soviets do not want European industry—they can buy everything that is produced in Europe today. 1 think the Soviets want to o^n Alaska and California again, and they probably want Florida too, so they can be closer to their friend, Fidel Castro,