The Third World War: The Untold Story

incorporated an interim agreement of the previous year to limit TNF in Europe.

Although much work had to be done on the rest of the Treaty, the US had pressed hard for an early deal on TNF to accompany the actual deployment of the first new Tomahawk GLCM in Britain and Italy in late 1983, with more to follow in West Germany and Belgium, but with none in the Netherlands, which had opted out. From December 1979, when the decision had first been taken by NATO to modernize the TNF, there had been a curious and ambivalent relationship between the implementation of the decision and arms control. Unless there was some chance of a serious diplomatic effort through arms control measures to remove the military requirement (or at least to reduce the number of weapons), it was not certain that any of the European nations would be willing to take these missiles in and very likely that some would refuse. At the same time, unless there was some chance of the programme being implemented, NATO would have no bargaining position, and without it would be unlikely to secure any cuts at all in the 250 Soviet SS-20 or the 350 older SS-4 and SS-5 missiles which also remained in service.

In their early stages the discussions on TNF arms control were not easy. This was in part a consequence of the mutual suspicions in the tense international climate following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, crisis in Poland, and the election of a US Administration bent on major rearmament. But the difficulties were even more a result of the sheer intractability of the issues: the USA wished to focus primarily on land-based missiles in the USSR that could hit Western Europe, which included many SS-20s based east of the Urals; the USSR wished to exclude weapons based outside Europe but include the American FBS, notably aircraft such as the F-111 and F-4 and even some aircraft carriers whose A-6 Intruder and A-7 Corsair aircraft could only attack Soviet territory with difficulty but which constituted a significant danger none the less. Lastly, because the Soviet SS-20 missiles were fitted with MIRV with three warheads (while the Pershing II and GLCM had only one warhead each) the US wished to use warheads as the basis for comparison while the USSR wished to count only the launchers. There was also the tricky question of the British and French nuclear forces which the Soviet Union wished to take into account, while Britain and France wanted them left out.

Not one of these issues was close to resolution by the time the talks (not yet in their new guise of START) began in mid-1982. This new beginning provided an opportunity to break the deadlock. The basic conceptual breakthrough was to try to identify a class of weapons which, though deployed in theatres, were essentially strategic in nature in their yield and in the targets they were likely to engage, and so ought to be linked with the other strategic weapons that had been considered appropriate for SALT.

Any demarcation line with nuclear weapons is inevitably arbitrary, but this approach made it possible to accept that the only United States TNF that deserved to be called strategic were the Tomahawk GLCM and Pershing II due for deployment, and the F-111 aircraft already based in Europe. On the Soviet side, account would have to be taken of the SS-20, SS-4 and SS-5 missiles, and the Backfire, Badger and Blinder aircraft under the command of the Soviet Long-Range Air Force. This allowed for all shorter-range systems to be excluded, perhaps for another negotiating forum, and got round the problem of how to justify the inclusion of Soviet systems facing China and some medium-range US aircraft based in the United Kingdom that would otherwise have been left out. The formula still could not accommodate the British and French strategic nuclear forces, but it was agreed to put off this issue, once again, for the next stage in the talks.

This broader definition of strategic weapons having been agreed, the issue then switched to how they should all be counted. In the past, the basic unit of account had been missile launchers or aircraft, with special categories for missiles with multiple warheads or bombers with air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM). The Americans attempted to introduce new counting rules whereby full notice would be taken of the properties of the various weapons, such as yield, accuracy and number of warheads. These proved complicated to formulate, however, and raised verification difficulties, and were anyway strongly resisted by the Soviet side. Eventually the Americans gave up on these new rules but pressed instead for stricter restrictions on MIRV missiles and greater co-operation on verification procedures. The main concession that the US made was to accept that major deployment of submarine- launched cruise missiles (SLCM), then being contemplated by Washington, would undermine any agreement. This concession led to the resignation of the US Navy Secretary.

The eventual agreement reached was to place a limit of 2,000 on the strategic forces (bombers, ICBM and SLBM) on each side (compared with a figure of 2,250 that had been part of the 1979 SALT II agreement). However, the new ceiling also had to accommodate the weapons based in Europe. Ceilings were placed on missiles with MIRV (including the SS-20) and aircraft carrying ALCM (1,000) and on ICBM with MIRV (650). The Soviets made a token cut of fifty in their giant ‘heavy’ ICBM (to 250) and accepted that the USA could build weapons of a similar size should they desire (which was unlikely). Each side would be free to mix its weapon types and their geographical distribution within these limits but at least 200 could be based in Europe. NATO decided that this figure would be sufficient for its needs in Europe. Since this meant a cut to a quarter of the planned complement of missiles and aircraft it was readily accepted as a significant arms control achievement — achieved multilaterally.

Such was the situation reached in the mid-eighties as mankind moved on towards an uncertain and forbidding future. Both sides stood like brooding giants, each guarding a store of weapons more than enough to destroy the entire population of the planet. Both deeply hoped that none of these deadly engines would ever need to be employed but their hopes were based on different thinking. On the Soviet side the aim was to offer to Western democracies a choice between a war of nuclear annihilation on the one hand, or acceptance on the other of piecemeal absorption into a communist world. If, in the event, the use of force had to be initiated it would, in the Soviet concept, be in the first instance with conventional weapons but sufficiently powerful to make the use of nuclear means unnecessary. On the Western side the most widely favoured aim was to possess sufficient non- nuclear war-fighting strength to halt an initial thrust by conventional means alone. This would leave the Soviets to choose between calling a halt, or invoking a nuclear exchange which would mean appalling and unpredictable disaster on both sides with little possible advantage in the outcome to anyone.

Western hopes lay, therefore, in the creation of an adequate non-nuclear armoury, in which the early years of the 1980s had shown disquieting deficiencies. What had been done to correct these, how far it was effective and how far it fell short we shall now enquire.

Chapter 5: Weapons

New tools for the battlefield, that is to say, weapon systems based on advances in technology, often remain without being tried out upon the battlefield itself for many years. The Israelis, for example, had used equipment produced in the United States in the 1973 war and the Americans themselves had had their last opportunity to try out major new systems in the war in Vietnam. Some of the newer equipment on the Soviet side was seen to work successfully in the hands of Egyptian clients in 1973 and the Soviet Union was itself able to employ newer versions of it, as well as the older and better known, behind the screens set up round Afghanistan from 1980 onwards. In helicopters, for example, in which the USSR had made very considerable advances, variants of the MI-24 type known as Hind D and E, were particularly useful for the location and destruction of pockets of Mujaheddin tribesmen. In Afghanistan, also, the Soviets used scattered mines which, although produced and issued in considerable numbers elsewhere had hitherto had little use. They also used some chemical agents.

Such situations as these, however, differed widely from that of the central conflict towards which the great powers were heading in the summer of 1985. In north-western Europe much of the equipment of both sides and their war-fighting techniques — which in some respects had developed radical differences — had never yet been tested in battle.

It was generally agreed that the tank, though there had been over the past score or more years occasional attacks upon its supreme position, was still the key factor on the land battlefield. Both on the Western and on the Soviet side there had been very considerable improvements in the tanks now in service, mainly in better protection, higher mobility, greater lethality in the main armament and in more effective fire control.

In the United States tank fleet the well-tried M-60A3 (which had been replacing the M-60A1) was now itself