East-West Battle of the Bean Counters

By Christopher Redman

The Western alliance had been waiting for the decision. After a lengthy and bitter debate that almost split Chancellor Helmut Kohl's ruling conservative coalition, West Germany last week finally closed ranks with its allies and endorsed Mikhail Gorbachev's "double-zero" proposal to eliminate both long- and shorter-range intermediate nuclear forces from Europe. Bonn's decision will permit NATO Foreign Ministers, meeting this week in Reykjavik, to give U.S. arms negotiators an unambiguous go-ahead for an INF agreement with the Soviets. Suddenly, the much-discussed superpower summit this fall -- at which Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan would sign an INF deal -- is beginning to look possible.

Such an accord would represent a historic arms-control breakthrough. For the first time, both sides would be compelled not only to slow the arms race but to junk hundreds of newly deployed missiles. But despite official NATO support for an INF deal, many Western leaders fear that double-zero could turn into double jeopardy for the alliance. According to the proposal's opponents, pulling those missiles out of Europe would put NATO at the mercy of superior Warsaw Pact conventional forces.

For nearly 40 years, standard military wisdom in the West has held that Warsaw Pact armies so outnumber and outgun NATO that only nuclear arms could redress the balance. This conventional forces "gap" has legitimized NATO's reliance on nuclear weapons, which in turn has allowed the alliance to hold down its spending on nonnuclear forces. Now, however, with NATO's nuclear inventory likely to shrink, fears are surfacing that decades of nuclear dependence may have left the alliance with insufficient conventional clout to keep the peace.

Alliance military commanders claim that the conventional balance is tilted heavily against them. "Every year," says NATO Supreme Commander General Bernard Rogers, "we find the gap continues to widen." Rogers warns that "within days" of a Warsaw Pact invasion, he would be forced to seek permission to use tactical nuclear weapons to halt an otherwise unstoppable advance. Once NATO crossed that threshold, however, escalation to full-scale nuclear war might be impossible to stop. The grim joke in NATO military circles is that its defense strategy consists of "fighting like hell for three days and then blowing up the world."

To help raise the nuclear threshold, NATO defense ministers agreed last month to strengthen their conventional forces through a 3% boost in defense spending. Yet most NATO governments have consistently failed in the past to fulfill their military spending commitments. Moreover, with the Gorbachev peace offensive in full swing, it will be difficult to win public support for military budget increases. In West Germany, for example, 72% of respondents in a U.S.-sponsored survey registered approval for Soviet arms control diplomacy, compared with only 9% for U.S. efforts. Says Eberhard Schulz, a West German Sovietologist: "Gorbachev's propaganda has really reached people."

Does this mean that NATO is about to accept an offer it should refuse? Not necessarily. The nonnuclear threat from the Warsaw Pact, many defense experts charge, is vastly inflated by a defense establishment conditioned to crying wolf in order to boost budgets. Fears of NATO vulnerability are largely based on paper comparisons of tanks, divisions, aircraft, artillery and other weapons. But "bean counting," as that tallying process is called, does not show the whole picture.

One of the most often cited authorities on Warsaw Pact strength, for example, is Soviet Military Power, the Pentagon's glossy guide to the Red menace. The latest edition gives the Warsaw Pact 230 divisions, compared with only 121 for NATO. Confined to footnote, however, is the vital information that a Warsaw Pact division contains fewer troops than its NATO equivalent -- in fact, only 11,000, vs. 16,000 for NATO. The book correctly points out that Warsaw Pact divisions are heavily armed but neglects to note the superior logistics, training and overall battle management of NATO divisions. The Pentagon's bean count also ignores French and Spanish forces because these do not come under direct NATO command. Yet France's army, with 296,000 troops, including three armored divisions stationed in West Germany, is one of the largest in the alliance and is firmly committed by treaty to NATO's defense. The troops of the Soviet Union's East bloc allies, whose divisions are included in the Warsaw Pact totals, are thought to be considerably less reliable.

Defense experts point out that what really counts in terms of repelling a Warsaw Pact attack is not the overall balance of forces but the lineup in Europe's so-called central region, which includes East and West Germany and parts of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Soviet military doctrine calls for swift victory in this critical zone before the West's economic might and manpower advantage could be fully mobilized. Yet a tally of combat-ready forces in the central zone gives the Warsaw Pact just under 1 million troops, slightly fewer than the number deployed by NATO. The Warsaw Pact has an advantage in tanks -- 14,000 to NATO's 9,700 -- but that edge is smaller than for Europe as a ^ whole. "The Soviets cannot be confident of winning, even with a blitzkrieg," says former U.S. Defense Secretary Harold Brown. And if Soviet commanders also factor in the possibility that a successful attack might trigger a full-scale nuclear conflict, then an assault looks even less attractive. Says Brown: "They'd be nutty to try."

When it comes to winning battles, firepower, tactics, readiness, morale, leadership and even luck can have more to do with success than mere numbers. It is difficult to tell which side is ahead in these factors, but NATO may have an edge in some nontangible categories. Its weapons, on the whole, are more sophisticated than their East bloc equivalents. The Soviets are said to be closing the quality gap, though many Western defense experts dispute that claim, given the poor performance of Soviet equipment in recent Third World conflicts. During Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, for instance, Syria lost 80 Soviet fighter planes, while shooting down only one of Israel's U.S.-made aircraft. When it comes to tank armies, the majority of NATO's side are up-to- date main battle tanks, such as the U.S. M-1 Abrams and the West German Leopard 2, while the latest Soviet models, the T-64, T-72 and T-80, represent only about one-third of the Warsaw Pact total. As a result, East bloc tanks are generally less reliable, sophisticated and mobile than their NATO counterparts and have a lower rate of fire. "If our tanks can fire twice as fast as theirs," asks a U.S. armor expert, "doesn't that wipe out their advantage?"

Similarly, NATO may be outnumbered on paper in combat aircraft, but its pilots are superior to and its aircraft more sophisticated across the board than the Warsaw Pact's. Western aircraft can fly more combat missions because they can refuel, rearm and be repaired faster. They also operate under worse weather conditions, allowing them to provide the air superiority that would be essential for defeating the Warsaw Pact on the ground.

NATO has some genuine disadvantages as well. Allied aircraft could be shot down in droves by their own side because NATO has yet to deploy a reliable means of enabling its air defense forces to identify friendly planes. On the ground, NATO defenses could be crippled by shortages of ammunition, reinforcement problems and rear area attack by Soviet special forces. And the Soviets' new "reactive" armor, which can detonate an incoming antitank missile prematurely, could make many NATO antitank weapons obsolete. But perhaps a greater shortcoming, say some defense experts, is the Western military's tendency to promote the appearance of irremediable NATO inferiority. That perception can send dangerous signals to the East while undermining the West's will to defend itself. "INF reductions need not reduce our security, but doomsday talk about it could," warns a top alliance analyst. With Europe's nuclear missiles due for a drastic cutback, NATO defense planners will have to move from counting their beans to watching their words.

With reporting by Bruce van Voorst/Washington, with other bureaus