Crunching Gorbachev's Numbers

By Ed Magnuson

"This can be the most significant thing that's happened to Western security in NATO history," declared retired General Andrew Goodpaster, a former supreme commander of NATO. Echoed David Abshire, a former U.S. Ambassador to the Alliance: "It's a bold, masterful move, among the most consequential in NATO's 40-year history." As NATO's foreign ministers convened in Brussels, the Secretary-General of the West's 16-nation military pact was far more subdued but still upbeat. "It's an encouraging development which we welcome," said West Germany's Manfred Worner.

The praise was directed at Mikhail Gorbachev's promise to reduce, by 1991, Soviet troops and conventional armaments along the "central front" that divides West Germany and the East bloc nations. Western strategists have nervously watched that historic invasion corridor for four decades, knowing it is where a Soviet assault might come. "Gorbachev offers not just words but deeds," contended John Steinbruner, director of foreign policy studies at Washington's Brookings Institution. "It is now even harder to portray the Soviets as striving for the capability for a quick thrust into Europe."

But other Western military experts who took a hard look at the numbers Gorbachev ticked off in his sweeping U.N. speech were less impressed. "What counts isn't what he's taking out, assuming he does, but what remains," observed former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, the skeptical architect of the Reagan Administration's $2.4 trillion defense buildup. Soviet superiority in conventional forces in Eastern Europe is so great, claimed Jimmy Carter's Defense Secretary Harold Brown, that the cuts will not significantly reduce their advantage. Said Brown: "If war were to break out today, I would not have very much confidence that NATO could hold conventionally for more than a couple of weeks."

Despite the divergent assessments, military strategists agreed on two major points: 1) Gorbachev's reductions will bring the NATO and Warsaw Pact deployments in the collision-point region closer to, but still far from, a stable balance, and 2) the Soviet retrenchment will not diminish the Kremlin's ability to retain its military grip on its East bloc neighbors.

The military impact of the Gorbachev initiative will depend on precisely how the force reductions and withdrawals are carried out. Here is what Gorbachev promised to achieve in the next two years and what the numbers might mean:

The Soviets will withdraw 5,000 tanks from East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary and another 5,000 from the European portion of the U.S.S.R.

This is the most impressive of the cutbacks, since it includes roughly half the Soviet tanks based in the three satellite nations (Poland, conspicuously, was not mentioned). "No matter how you slice it, Gorbachev can't make these tank cuts in these areas without seriously affecting their offensive capability," said Anthony Cordesman, a Washington-based military analyst. While the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies still would have some 41,500 battle tanks between the Ural Mountains and the forward NATO positions, their advantage would be reduced from a 2.3-to-1 to a 1.9-to-1 ratio. That is still a solid edge, yet the assumption of the West is that it must prepare for only a defensive war. Traditionally, military experts assert that an attacking force must have at least triple the strength of the defending foe to be confident of victory.

Skeptics note that the Soviets could merely eliminate their aging T-54 and T-55 tanks, retaining their more modern T-80s, T-72s and T-64s, and that the old armor would not be missed. This argument is a switch. U.S. Army analysts have long insisted on counting older tanks in any attempt to achieve East-West parity.

Six Soviet tank divisions will be withdrawn from the same three East bloc countries and then disbanded.

Sixteen such divisions are based outside the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, so the elimination of six would be significant. An additional twelve tank divisions are maintained by other Warsaw Pact nations. NATO has about 14 divisions, including two from the U.S. A NATO division has more manpower (16,600 vs. 12,000) and tanks (348 vs. 328). The East would retain an edge in armored divisions: 22 vs. 14.

Soviet troops in the three countries will be reduced by 50,000.

Gorbachev's figures do not quite add up, since manpower in the divisions he intends to demobilize appears to exceed 50,000. There are an estimated 585,000 Soviet troops in the three nations, so shrinkage would be only 8.5%. These reductions would have little impact on combat effectiveness or the Soviet army's intimidating effect on the occupied nations.

From the same area, as well as from the European part of the U.S.S.R., 800 combat aircraft and 8,500 artillery systems will be withdrawn.

While the Warsaw Pact would maintain a solid numerical advantage in combat planes (8,250 vs. 3,977 for NATO), the West's fighters and assault aircraft are considered better at providing support for ground troops. The Soviet pullback of roughly 10% of the Warsaw Pact's European-theater aircraft, while not large, would signal a shift toward a defensive stance. The cut in artillery would be a hefty 20% slash in existing Warsaw Pact firepower along the central front. But the total cut is less significant; the Soviet bloc could still field some 34,900 artillery pieces, mortars and rocket launchers against NATO's 14,458.

Assault landing troops and crossing units will be withdrawn from Soviet forces in the three East bloc countries.

While this promise cites no numbers, it could turn out to be a critical component of Gorbachev's claim to be moving toward a defensive deployment. Such mundane items as assault bridges mounted on armored vehicles get little public attention, but the Warsaw nations, by NATO estimates, have a 2,550-to- 454 edge in these river-spanning devices. Conceded a NATO official: "This certainly helps stability by reducing the chances of a bolt-from-the-blue attack."

The Soviets will reduce their total military manpower by 500,000.

While the figure sounds impressive, it could be the least significant of the reductions. The highest Western estimate places the Soviet armed-forces personnel at 5.2 million. This includes perhaps 1.5 million noncombatants. If Gorbachev demobilized only the peripheral personnel, his troops would lose little in fighting efficiency.

Sheer numbers do not measure such intangible factors as morale, combat readiness, training and leadership -- in all of which experts generally give NATO an edge. On the other hand, geography lends the Soviets a huge advantage. Whatever personnel and armaments Gorbachev withdraws from Europe could readily be returned in a time of crisis. Weinberger even contended that demobilization of Soviet troops is easily reversible: "In the Soviet Union you can turn a soldier into a peasant and back again in rapid order, without public opinion, parliament or editorial back talk."

One point about the Soviet leader's unilateral decision is not in dispute: he blitzed NATO's military diplomacy. The Western alliance, burdened by time- consuming consultation between its members, labored for two years to stake out a negotiating position for the Conventional Security Talks between the East and West, expected to begin next spring in Vienna. "There's the danger that in one stroke Gorbachev can derail the alliance's arms-control planning," warned Abshire. Indeed, as the NATO ministers met in Brussels last week, they did not want to play Scrooge by shunning the Gorbachev Christmas present. However, they wanted far more substantial force reductions than he announced.

To avoid the "bean-counting" disputes over troop numbers that have stalled conventional cuts for years, the NATO ministers agreed to seek more verifiable limits on the firepower of both sides. In tanks, for example, they proposed a cap of 20,000, which would require a Warsaw Pact drawdown of 31,500 and a NATO retirement of only 2,000. Within these totals, NATO asked for sublimits for each nation; the Soviets could retain no more than 12,000 tanks of the 37,000 they now deploy in the region.

Gorbachev's one-way diplomatic strike will have implications beyond conventional forces. It will make it much more difficult for the U.S. to persuade its NATO allies to modernize the short-range Lance missile, which can hurl battlefield nuclear warheads about 80 miles. American planners would like to extend the range to the 300 miles permitted under the recent intermediate nuclear-forces treaty. But West Germans, in particular, are already worried about the abundance of tactical nukes in their midst.

The Soviet moves will undoubtedly add to the U.S. domestic pressure to hold down America's military spending. Demands to recall some of the 320,000 U.S. troops in Europe may grow. Even as he may have softened the NATO alliance, Gorbachev also looked toward China with a soothing pledge to pull back an unspecified but "major portion" of his troops from Mongolia.

The savvy Soviet leader may only have been offering to yield what economic circumstances and a dwindling pool of draft-age youths would have led him to do anyway, but he did it with flair in a media-bathed forum. As the West's defense planners scrambled to respond to his initiative, the Kremlin's boss appeared to have scored a visionary diplomatic victory in a most unusual way: by withdrawing.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Map by Paul J. Pugliese

CAPTION: NATO vs. WARSAW PACT IN THE CENTRAL FRONT

With reporting by Christopher Redman/Brussels and Bruce van Voorst/Washington