Gorshkov’s Final Words: What Do They Mean? Hull Down on the Red Horizon

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For ^sboai_s

"i th ^reasons partly linked, naval leaders a. ^e Soviet Union and the United States ate navigating their services around

alike

Srw,' ^ln home waters. Cuts in military ^shri u^{8 m}'ght soon force each fleet to g₀j ^{x ar}>d to cut back on the pace of sea- ^e3ch^ °P^cral'ons. An era of growth for One ^SIC*^C bas come to an end—though to .'^,Vondcrs whether the Soviets have yet °Us ® ^UP "ahead slow” on their vigor- j_vi^naval construction program. ar_c °^{re tban} budgets and building rates '^nv°lved. The national security cli­mate for each country is being trans­formed by more rapid and fundamental change than has occurred at perhaps any time since the end of World War II. While changes in the Kremlin dominate the military news, equally portentous re­arrangements are under way in interna­tional economic matters. Despite the res­pite from the protracted wars of Iran and Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in Angola, vio­lence and outright war continue to be the norm in several regions. Chemical, nu­clear, and missile weaponry proliferates while seemingly intractable starvation, sickness, and ecological damage leave many inhabitants of the world small hope for peace and prosperity. Little in this catalog of daunting problems yields to military intervention by the superpowers. As a result, the central concerns of na­tional security decision makers are shift­ing from the military dimension of the Cold War to economics, diplomacy, and their military underpinnings.

In political calculus, lower tension and less money do not add up to larger na-

achieved, but at a much lower cost, nally, they reason, a doctrine of defe^ sive sufficiency can provide a phy^slC safety net ensuring against outright We ern attack and safeguarding control > Party elites.          .. j

The Soviets are also reversing t*¹ . doctrine for dealing with the Th¹ World. In original Soviet theory, “'^va, of national liberation” were to adva*¹^ the Soviet Union and communism world leadership. The theory floppe

void;

ideologies. (Even in Eastern Europe -

So­

Assembly, the Soviets have not

vies, whether one does the figuring in Russian or in English. Such times call for the advocates of large navies to marshal their arguments afresh. As others in this colloquium make clear, it is to such ends that editor and presumed book impresario Fleet Admiral Gorshkov bent the last of his remarkable efforts to build a major navy and to teach its importance to the world’s number one land power. (And might we not in passing admire the intel­lect our adversary Gorshkov brought to his decades of advocacy? His books and the generation of naval theoreticians he galvanized are an enduring legacy to the Soviets.)¹

But in this book, Gorshkov and his fel­low authors fail to make a strong case to a Soviet leadership facing desperate finan­cial problems that a large and inherently expensive navy should figure promi­nently in the strategy of the Soviet Union. Even the tone seems wrong. In his fore­word Gorshkov sounds like a museum piece. General Secretary Gorbachev and his advisers such as Marshall Ahkromeyev and Foreign Minister Shevardnadze do not organize their thinking around such classic Marxist- Leninist rhetoric as “imperialism’s inten­sified aggressiveness” and the “irrecon­

Gorbachev touring a Soviet Navy cruiser in Murmansk—is the naval leadership out of step with the Secre­tary General’s “new thinking”?

cilable struggle,” which Gorshkov trots out. Gorbachev and his fellow reformers have largely consigned such thinking to the trash heap as they correct what they call the “distortions” that occurred under Stalin and the “stagnation” that took hold under Leonid Brezhnev. Soviet the­oreticians now attack strident language of the sort used by Gorshkov as the stereo­typed and cliche-ridden mentality that imprisoned leading cadres of the past in their own propaganda. A kinder, gentler vision has been found in the precepts of Marx, Engels, and Lenin now that they are newly freed of the decades of Trot- skyite, ultra-leftist error. Gorshkov seems not to have mastered this new lan­guage before he died.

This is not merely a point of style. Gorshkov and the trio of authors are so far out of phase with Gorbachev’s “new political thinking” that it is unlikely this book found an attentive audience among the current leaders in the Kremlin. Might the book even have caused a backlash of suspicion that the Soviet naval leadership was dragging its feet on the reforms dic­tated by perestroika? Admiral Chemavin certainly distanced himself from the book when asked about it by Proceedings (February 1989): “The authors ... set down their opinion regarding the main

TASS/SOVFOTO

strategic tasks of tomorrow, which may be of some interest to a certain group of readers. ...”

Let us take our own quick look at what might be the main strategic tasks of to­morrow’s Soviet Navy in light of Gor­bachev’s “new political thinking.” Moscow’s fundamental self-critique is that the buildup of military power has had exactly the opposite of the intended ef­fects. Rather than conferring superpower

dominance, massive investments in mil¹' tary power had netted out to a double loss for the Soviet Union: abroad, the appr^e' hensive countries of the West and Ash* gathered together in outright opposition' outpacing Soviet power with their oW military buildups; at home, the massive Soviet investment in the military secto* crippled overall economic development

The Soviet reformers have also revise¹¹ their ideas of war itself. It remains then fundamental belief that war must be avoided. It is increasingly their conv>^c‘ tion that nuclear weapons have made the risk of war so dangerous they must a^c" tively work to lower the threat. Socialisn’ can no longer hope to physically crus" capitalist imperialism: War, if it came- would be catastrophic.

Therefore, they conclude, the Sovi^eI Union must find its way to global leader ship as a superpower by other than J^uS military methods. This is not merely th^e fluff of propaganda. It is that, too, but th^e Gorbachev “peace offensive” has the merit of truth as the Soviets see it. As result of these objective analyses, h*⁶ Soviets—feeling beleaguered by *^j West’s active containment and hobble by their economic and social failures"'' have switched to a new game plan. M¹* tary security is now to be achieved by ¹¹¹ twin instruments of arms control and ³ doctrine of defensive sufficiency. em military strength is to be reduce through negotiation and by using redu^ tions in the threat to encourage the We^st military alliances to splinter. If ^succef, ful, net military advantage can still

The initial successes of socialist re tions often trailed off into a number expensive failures. Soviet pragma*¹ ₍ now see their few remaining soda* partners, such as Cuba and Vietnam' ₍ massive fiscal burdens with embarrass¹¹¹;

viet power is diminished. The Sov¹¹- still dominate the political landscape- the term “puppet” no longer descfl the increasing divergence among War* Pact members.) As Gorbachev ¹¹¹¹¹ . clear in his celebrated December I speech before the United Nations Gem

^ncluding the appalling depredations of .in—are dispirited. Obnovleniye, re- ahzation or rebirth, is mandatory and gent. The many tools of reform include ^^restroika and glasnost. While Gor- ^chev’_s own political genius animates reforms, it is clear the leadership _c ^ely shares his conviction that the ^untry cannot continue in its old ways 'ut risking complete collapse.

_0r ^{s l}he Soviet Navy part of the problem ,, Part of the solution? Obviously the ^^v'et military, dominated by the Red _n tfy, will retain prominent status. The

‘luesti,

ttaki

^c°uld

make special contributions to the

oned their drive for global leadership, ^ut their methods have had to change. A Peace offensive” and Gorbachev’s ⁿ'ghly engaging personal diplomacy Promise influence in developing coun- ^ries where decades of military threats ^and fomented revolutions have backfired.

Moscow now believes security and ^saPerpower status are to be achieved ^r°^ugh economic strength and diplo- ^ma[ic stature. But the plain fact is that, ^CXceP' for military strength and the space P^r°gram, the Soviet Union is a wreck. ^1,6 economy is in a shambles, public ^ahh is declining, environmental pollu- °ⁿ >s mounting, the vaunted apparatus . ^Central planning is discredited, and the izens—who have endured so much.

Without

'on here is whether the navy can ^e a case that, given a global role, it

reformers’ drive both for world influence and for domestic revitalization. Gorsh­kov, V’yunenko et al seem to be so wide of the mark as to risk their navy’s future. They consign the Soviet Navy to a defen­sive role in wartime, waste their chapter on wars in the Third World with the dredging up of more antique rhetoric about American Imperialism, and see change only in terms of new technology. Likewise Admiral Chernavin, though up- to-date with Gorbachev’s terminology, seems limited to a vision of his navy as principally relevant to defense in war. Admiral Chernavin also is careful to re­cite the catechism that all branches of ser­vice must operate in unity (i.e., there is no thinking of an independent navy role). None argue for naval forces to take a larger role in the front rank of those insti­tutions actively contributing to the Sovi­ets’ attempt to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.

Gorbachev and his close adviser Mar­shal of the Soviet Union Sergei Akhromeyev seem to agree. Their actions suggest a maritime strategy that allows the Soviet Navy to subside into a less expensive status in the defensive safety net. The only bold strokes they promise are to divert a portion of the successful and efficient naval building industry to domestic production and to aim an offen­sive campaign at chopping down the U. S. Navy through arms control. Admi­ral Chernavin illustrates this latter theme with his allegation of an “aggressive bent" in U. S. thinking and his attack on U. S. aircraft carriers, battleships, and Marines as sea strike forces without de­fensive purpose. Chernavin is not alone. This full-scale assault is being voiced by every top-level Kremlin official at every opportunity.

Moscow seems to have calculated that large, forward-deployed naval forces are destabilizing and are to be deemphasized. Gorshkov’s 30-year campaign has failed to sell the idea of a positive correlation between a global navy and global influ­ence to a nation that is now maneuvering for breathing room while it tackles daunt­ing problems of internal revitalization.

'Soviet sources for this paper include the book under review, the interview with Admiral Chernavin in the February 1989 Proceedings, recent press accounts of speeches by Gorbachev, Shevardnadze, and Ahkromeyev, plus the important article by Soviet Professor V. Dashichev, “East-West: Quest for New Relations. On the Priorities of the Soviet State’s For­eign Policy,” Literaturnaya Gcizetci, 18 May 1988. A special thank you to Defense Intelligence Agency Soviet analyst Ron Krueger.

Captain Seaquist, having recently completed a tour as the commanding officer of the USS Iowa (BB-61), is now serving on the Joint Staff, working in the Field of strategy.

^ Uniquely Naval Design____________

^ Commander Robert W. Herrick, U. S. Navy (Retired)