The Third World War (14 page)

The grey chicken now came home to roost and
NATO
had to decide—or rather the
USA
decided, with reluctant Italian acquiescence, while
NATO
tagged along. In the hope of favourable Yugoslav reaction, and in view of all the long history of Italian-Yugoslav conflict, it was vital to avoid the use of Italian forces. But after some days of furious diplomacy in Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, US marines and airborne forces from Italy were able to make unopposed landings at Rijeka (Fiume), Ljubljana and some of the Dalmatian islands. What was much more serious, within twenty-four hours they were in action against Soviet airborne and armoured units.

At this stage the US government still harboured a final hope that they might be able to isolate events in Yugoslavia from the wider European scene, and above all that they might be able to limit the impact upon American public opinion of any fighting there. They called for an immediate meeting of the Security Council. They ordered their commanders in the first instance not to move beyond the boundaries of Slovenia, and, to prevent the inflaming of opinion in the United States, to put an immediate ban on all television coverage of their operations-But they were too late. They had counted without the enterprise of a resolute Italian television cameraman, Mario Salvador!. He was not employed by the official Italian television service, RAI, but by an international newsfilm agency. He had at one time lived in the States. In Italy he had made good friends among the American marines, whose peacetime manoeuvres and parades had provided him with useful material when other news was scarce. He happened to be at their base when the alert began, and his friends took him along ‘for the ride* when they were airlifted to Ljubljana.

It was thus decreed by chance that one of the first encounters between Soviet and US forces in the Third World War took place under the eye of a television camera-With his portable and lightweight electronic equipment, Salvador! was present at the first contact, when Soviet forces thrusting into Slovenia came face to face with American marines on the outskirts of Kostanjevica, between Ljubljana and Zagreb. Three Soviet tanks, moving forward in the confident belief that no US forces had yet reached the area, were surprised by a unit of US marines whose armament included Milan anti-tank weapons. All three tanks were very quickly put out of action by first-shot strikes, and a company of Soviet infantry on a hillside beyond the town was swiftly recalled to redeploy in a stronger position immediately to the rear. At the same time Soviet strike aircraft carried out a rocket attack on the Americans, causing some very ugly casualties.

Much of this Salvador!, a daring and intelligent cameraman, recorded on tape. It was action material of extraordinary drama. The high quality of the
ENG
pictures gave a sense of reality and vividness greater than any in film pictures of Americans in action in the now distant Vietnam War. The destruction of the Soviet tanks, one of which blew up within a 100 metres of the cameraman’s position; the shocked, drawn faces of Russian prisoners being escorted to the rear; and the spectacle of the Soviet infantry suddenly withdrawing, so that the whole of the small hillside seemed to move, conveyed in sharp, almost exultant terms the information that the Red Army was far from being invulnerable. The trained military eye might have noted that the Soviet infantry, in their sudden rearward move, were providing a model of how to carry out the very difficult operation of a withdrawal in contact, under fire. A military observer would certainly have recognized that three tanks do notconstitutea significant force. But this small action, if only because it was small and readily grasped, came over as a clear US victory. Only the pictures of the mutilated victims of the rocket attack, one screaming in agony, were a reminder of the cost.

Salvador! was not only a skilled cameraman. He had had long experience of outwitting officialdom. He quickly made his way to Ljubljana, without disclosing the contents of his recording, and managed to get a lift on an aircraft back to Italy. There, through his agency, the material was transmitted by satellite throughout the world. It was in the hands of the American networks before the White House or the Pentagon were even aware of its existence. The networks, moreover, knew that the material had already been circulated widely, not least to the Iron Curtain countries, who had helped themselves unhesitatingly to the satellite transmissions of the agency. So into the homes of the American public went, unplanned, uncensored, almost unedited—except for one peculiarly hideous shot of a marine whose face had been blown away—these scenes of the first clash between the Russians and the Americans.

With acute anxiety the United States authorities awaited the reaction of their own people. To their relief, and also to their surprise—as indeed to that of most commentators in the press—the result was not one of dismay or fear, but of anger and pride. There was anger at the sufferings inflicted by the bombing, seen so close upon the screen, but there was also an upsurge of pride at this spectacle of Soviet troops being held in check and even withdrawing. In an instant, without formal declarations of war, the American public felt themselves to be at war, and some fundamental instinct for survival welded them together. The battle of Kostanjevica was a minute operation in the huge waves of fighting which were to follow; Salvadori’s pictures were to be outdone by miles of more dramatic, more terrible coverage. But few recordings of this first television war were to have such an influence. There could be no doubt now, not only in the minds of the American public, but in the world at large, that the Soviet U nion and the United States were involved in a shooting war. And the first recorded glimpse of it had been a glimpse of Soviet troops on the run.

This incident was easily presented to the Warsaw Pact countries as what some at least of the Soviet hawks had been waiting for, the ‘attack’ by the West on a communist state. It was the momentum of events, however, much more than the actual incident itself, that now took charge. Soviet forces were joined in battle with troops of the United States. This was the stupendous, almost unbe-lievable event that brought into brutal reality what had so long been feared. The Soviet Union and the United States were in combat action against each other on a battlefield. The chocks were out. The huge military mass of the
USSR
was already beginning to move down the slipway.

There could now for the Soviet Union be no possible alternative to the launching of the full invasion, already well prepared, of Western Europe, and the advance to the Rhine, for the destruction of the Atlantic Alliance, and the removal of the threat from US ‘imperialism’, operating from the forward base of Federal Germany.

The year 1984 had seen some difference of view in the Kremlin on the most profitable method of exploiting the USSR’s very considerable position of military strength. The difference was in the last resort no more than a matter of emphasis, but it had been evident for some time and was not without importance in the subsequent development of events.

The older men, all with experience of the Second World War, continued to see in Germany the most persistent and dangerous threat to the long-term security of the Soviet Union. They fully recognized the enormous strength and influence of capitalist America, the other great superpower, and the potential danger it embodied. Unless the United States disintegrated under the stresses of capitalist contradictions, of which it had to be admitted there was at present little sign, there would at some time have to be a reckoning with her. But the danger from a rearmed, industrially powerful West Germany, eagerfor revenge, was both more immediate and more real, both in itself and in its catalytic influence on the countries of the West. These older men tended to see external problems more in terms of Europe and its extension in North America than of the outer world. They were at least as much Russian as Marxist-Leninist, and in some cases more so.

The younger men, none of whom had been old enough to take any part in the Second World War, thought more in terms of the rest of the world than of Europe, and even there, though they were fully alive to the danger from Germany, did not regard it as the whole core of the external problem. They were uncompromising Party men, born and brought up under the system, completely devoted to it and wholly conscious that it was the sole condition of their being who and what they were. They were at least as much Marxist-Leninist as Russian, and in some cases more so.

Such difference as there was, it must be repeated, was only one of emphasis. There was no disagreement on the persistent threat to the system from the capitalist-imperialist world, with West Germany playing a major rote under the leadership of the United States. Nor was there disagreement on the high probability of a future threat from China, on the dangers of heresies in national communism, on the absolute need to keep the Party supreme and watertight, or on any other fundamental issue. There was also complete agreement on the inevitability of the ultimate triumph of the system everywhere, on the necessity to exploit every external opportunity to advance the Soviet interest, on the wisdom of tactical manipulation in the short term to secure greater gains in the long, and on the paramount necessity for a dominant position of military strength abroad—at the cost if necessary of damping down progress at home—as a fulcrum for the lever of Soviet political power.

The differences lay chiefly in the choice of areas of exploitation. The old guard were inclined to look towards the centre, towards the manifest contradictions of developed capitalist societies and the unstable “relationships between them. The younger men looked more to the periphery, to the opportunities offered among developing societies and the relations not only between these societies but also between their own developing world and more developed countries.

There was no shadow of disagreement on the necessity to neutralize West Germany at some time, by military force if necessary. Centralists put this higher on their list of priorities, perhaps, than the others, and might have been more inclined to pre-emptive action. It was agreed policy to impair the coherence of the Atlantic Alliance wherever possible; to reduce or offset the military strength of
NATO
by any means that offered; and to maintain a military capability at sufficient strength and readiness to ensure that any crisis in central Europe, up to and including full-scale warfare, could be managed to Soviet advantage.

Politically the years since the rearming of West Germany (which had to be recognized as a major setback) had seen considerable improvements to the Soviet position. The departure of France from
NATO
was a great gain. The Vietnam War had been a useful distraction. There had been advantage in the existence of some movement in the United States towards a degree of disengagement in Europe; in the financial and economic difficulties of the United Kingdom, particularly where balance of payments and budgetary difficulties had combined to reduce troop deployments in continental Europe—and also, peripheralists might say, in the British withdrawal from the East; in the strong growth of left-wing elements in the politics of everyone of the Atlantic Allies; in a general decline among Western democracies in public interest in defence; and in certain other developments. The pursuit of detente had been helpful to the Soviet interest, and negotiations of arms limitation and force reductions had brought small but useful gains.

A very highly classified planning document, given a strictly limited circulation in the Kremlin in October 1983, which fell into Allied hands after the fighting was over, throws a sufficiently clear light on Soviet policy in relation to
NATO
to justify the inclusion of a summary of it here.

Subject: Removal of the threat from
NATO
to she security of the
USSR
m Europe.

This could be achieved in the following way.

Rapid military defeat of AFCENT, with the simultaneous elimination of AFNORTH and AFSOUTH, followed by an advance to a voluntary stop-line: Hook ofHolland-Nijmegen- -Maastricht-Saarbrucken-Trier-the Rhine-Basel. The intention of the USSR to stop on this line without entering French territory will have been made abundantly clear worldwide. It is assumed that a government of the Popular Front will continue to be in power in France when the action takes place and that, in spite of not unimportant differences between France and the USSR, there will.be sufficient reluctance on the part of the French to become involved in hostilities with the Soviet Union to ensure an adequate response to the pressures that can be brought to bear. It can therefore be expected, though of course not guaranteed, that French forces will not participate in these operations.

Once the
FRG
has been totally occupied its neutralization can be put in hand on the usual lines under accepted procedures. The complete collapse of the North Atlantic Alliance can be confidently expected to follow from its failure to prevent this from happening. Bilateral negotiations can then be opened with the
USA
. Other ex-allies can for the time being be ignored.

A firm decision to act along these lines will only be taken in the light of the prevailing situation and in relation to all other relevant developments, though complete military plans will be kept up to date for this contingency in itself. Nevertheless. certain factors bearing on choice of time should be kept in mind.

A resounding military victory over the West, followed by the dismantling of the
FRG
and the collapse of the Atlantic Alliance, will reinforce Soviet hegemony within the Warsaw Pact and weaken divergent national socialist movements outside it. Current tendencies suggest the advisability of achieving this fairly soon. It might be unwise to delay it beyond

1987.

NATO
countries have recently initiated some improvements in ‘defensive’ preparedness. These are at present modest, but the maintenance of the same rate of expansion will in time set constraints on Soviet freedom of action. In five years; time the achievement of the military objective will be considerably more difficult.