The Third World War (54 page)

The areas that have increased their industrial production most in recent years (Japan-China and South America) were cut off from imported supplies of oil when the 1985 war broke out. Each had accumulated large reserve stocks before the war and the war was far shorter than they expected. They got by with ease. The Japanese, who are now the world’s most advanced technicians and who had feared that the impeding of oil supplies from the Middle East might prove much longer-lasting, have progressed dramatically with experiments on the thousands of possible other ways of releasing energy from storage in matter. This does not apply simply to nuclear, solar, wave and geothermal energy, but also to, for example, creating artificial rain in large tanks by allowing warm air above sea water to rise through deliberately cooled upper air and getting hydro-electric power from that. Also, the protests of environmentalists against nuclear fission have diminished since the war, and nuclear fusion is at hand.

One must beware of any forecasts about fuel supplies now the war is behind us. In February of 1947, during the Shinwell fuel crisis, Britain’s Prime Minister, Clem Attlee, said that no coal miner need fear for his job for the rest of the century. Within twelve years, a majority of the then existing coat mines in Europe and Japan had closed down. The forecast ‘oil-short 1990s’ may prove like that. The Middle East may, like thecoal-miningdistrictsatthe end of the coal age, have tragically priced itself into standards of living it will no longer be able to afford. Or it could still prove for some years (as many people suppose) to be the main supply area for a valuable and depleted natural resource.

In either event, the Middle East is not going to be a comfortable southern neighbour for the new
EEC
. If oil is still scarce, there will be a Jockeying for positions there. If the area is going to be poorer than it has grown accustomed to thinking it has a right to be, there may be constant coups d’etat. It became fashionable in the 1970s and early 1980s to suppose that a main object of diplomacy would always be to make good friends of the rulers of Iran and the Arab oil countries. But billionaire shahs and sheikhs are not likely to be the most popular folk heroes for the last decade of the twentieth century.

After each major war this century, a great empire has melted away. After the 1914-18 war, the defeated Austro-Hungarian empire. After the 1939-45 war, the victorious British empire. After the 1985 war, the defeated Soviet Union. That last is the only result of the late war that can be accounted as certain so far. For the rest, the most accurate prophecies could prove to be the ones that seem least likely now.

There is a nice story of a political prophet in Munich in 1928, who was asked to prophesy what would be happening to the burghers of his city in five, fifteen, twenty and forty years’ time. He began:’I prophesy that in five years’ time, in 1933, Munich will be part of a Germany that has just suffered 5 million unemployed and that is ruled by a dictator with a certifiable mental illness who will proceeed to murder 6 million Jews.’

His audience said:
Ah, then you must think that in fifteen years’ time we will be in a sad plight

‘No, replied the prophet,
I prophesy that in 1943 Munich will be part of a Greater Germany whose flag will fly from the Volga to Bordeaux, from northern Norway to the Sahara.’

‘Ah, then you must think that in twenty years’ time, we will be mighty indeed.’

‘No, my guess is that in 1948 Munich will be part of a Germany that stretches only from the Elbe to the Rhine, and whose ruined cities will recently have seen production down to only 10 per cent of the 1928 level.’

‘So you think we face black ruin in forty years’ time?’

‘No, by 1968 I prophesy that real income per head in Munich will be four times greater than now, and that in the year after that 90 per cent of German adults will sit looking at a box in a corner of their drawing rooms, which will show live pictures of a man walking upon the moon.’

They locked him up as a madman, of course.

Reorganizations of the British contribution to the land forces of Allied Command Europe—of which, over the years, there had been several—had always been represented by the British government of the day as improvements to BAOR’s effectiveness. even when their actual result could only be a reduction in combat capability. The 1974 reshuffle was no exception. The Northern Army Group (under British command, it should be remembered, and containing almost all the British ground troops assigned to
NATO
) had never at any time been fully adequate to its task—to repel a Warsaw Pact incursion into northern Germany. No one really believed that
NORTHAG
. even given time for its four constituent corps (Belgian. British, Dutch and German) to be brought up to war strength and moved forward to battle locations from barracks far in rear, would be able to hold up indefinitely a conventional attack on the scale to be expected, and there were virtually no reserves in depth to deal with a breakthrough. The 1974 reorganization

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of the British Army made a weak position weaker.

It was this tack of forces in depth which had led to the stationing of two US brigades in northern Germany—most valuable but still far from sufficient to restore tactical control once the
NORTHAG
front was pierced. The main significance of this move on the part of the Americans, though its purpose was essentially military, can be seen as political rather than tactical. It showed simply that the US did not accept the clear implication of British defence dispositions in Germany: that a failure to hold an invasion on the Demarcation Line must very soon be followed by nuclear action, which could lead to a strategic nuclear exchange; that provision for a land battle in depth was unnecessary-The Americans, in rather pointedly providing two combat brigades for the very purpose of defence in depth, in an area of mainly British responsibility, demonstrated that in a matter directly affecting the security of the United States under threat of strategic nuclear attack, they were not prepared to allow their choice of options to be dictated by British defence policy.

This did not pass unnoticed in Britain. The suggestion, given a generous airing in the British press, that Britain was continuing to rely on the US to do what Britain should really be doing for itself, was not particularly pleasing to the British public in a time of reviving national confidence-It was to play a small but not unimportant part in securing public approval for the increase in Britain’s contribution to the
NATO
ground forces, which will now be explored.

The principal features of the restructuring programme for the British Army carried out under the Defence Review of 1974, to which reference has already been made. were as follows:

divisions would be made smaller and one level of command, the brigade, would be eliminated. The span of divisional and unit command would be increased, with the result that there would be fewer HQ and fewer but larger combat units. The fighting capacity of the British Army of the Rhine, it was claimed, would be maintained and in some respects enhanced—though if anyone believed this to begin with no one did for long. not even the politicians who made the claim. Certain specialist functions (such as the flying of army aircraft, the manning of the larger anti-tank missiles and the driving of supply vehicles) would be concentrated in the hands of a single branch of the army.

For the army as a whole, the aim was said to be to reduce manpower while maintaining combat effectiveness. It was true that the numbers of equipments in service were kept at about the same level, which was dangerously low. What was described as ‘cutting the tail and keeping the teeth’, however, only meant that even in the inadequate numbers to which these equipments had been reduced, there were insufficient men to man, maintain and move them. The real purpose, of course, was economy at almost any price. Within three years of the 1974 Defence Review
BAOR
was at its lowest level of operational efficiency ever.

Not everything that was done was wholly bad, however. The regular army logistic reinforcement which the army at home (United Kingdom Land Forces—
UKLF
) was to provide for
BAOR
was drastically reduced, but to help fill this gap units of the Territorial and Auxiliary Volunteer Reserve (
TAVR
) were integrated into newly created regular combat formations. These, though brigades in all but name, could not be called brigades without contravening one of the declared principles of the exercise. They were therefore given the imprecise but otherwise inoffensive title of’field forces’ instead. This was at least one step towards a much needed improvement, the better use of reserves.

The effect of the restructuring plan on
NATO
reinforcement plans was one of nomenclature and source rather than of numbers. Before it,
UKLF
had undertaken to despatch to
BAOR
in support of
NATO
a total of some 60,000 to 70,000 troops, consisting of complete formations—3 Division and 16 Parachute Brigade, for example —and a whole series of unit and individual reinforcements of great variety Some were
TAVR
Signal Groups to activate the
NATO
and
BAOR
communications systems; some were so-called Yeomanry Regiments, fully equipped with armoured reconnaissance vehicles, to thicken the covering force troops available to 1 British Corps; others were units or individuals to strengthen either the structure or total numbers of
BAOR
formations, regiments, companies and squadrons. Leaving aside those who might be sent to the so-called flanks of NA FO (Scandinavia, Italy, Greece. Furkey). the operation was designed to bring
BAOR
on to a war footing. which involved more than doubling its peacetime establishment. It was essentially a reinforcement which combined regular units, regular reservists and units of the
TAVR
.

After the army’s restructuring programme had been completed in 1978, the plans for reinforcement were substantially the same. but it was of course a reinforcement of a
BAOR
which had itself been restructured. By then I British Corps contained four armoured divisions (which were little more than large brigades) and one light infantry formation, called 5 Field Force. Two other field forces, 6 Field Force from Aldershot and 7 Field Force from Colchester, were part of
UKLF
reinforcements for
BAOR
and were themselves composed partly of regular units and partly ofTAVR, the latter providing the bulk of the logistic support. Otherwise the reinforcement plan conformed to the previous pattern. As far as equipment was concerned
BAOR
remained as poorly provided as ever, though some new
ATGW
were promised soon.

Public dissatisfaction in Britain with its contribution to
NATO
, as Soviet military preparations still showed no sign of slowing down while pressure within the Alliance upon its members to do belter steadily increased, caused the British government to introduce in 1979 a new Army Reserve Act. whose main purpose was to lap unused sources of trained military manpower. This Act laid down the means by which a liability for annual training and for embodiment in a national emergency would be given to those officers and men leaving the army each year (some 20,000 in number) who had hitherto not had any such liability. There were two main categories: first, those who served on short regular engagements, that is, officers who had completed a three-year Short Service commission and soldiers who had served for three, six or nine years with the colours. The second category (for it was decided to disregard Long Service men who retired at the age of fifty-five) comprised officers who had served on Special Regular commissions of up to sixteen years and soldiers who had completed twenty-two years. Although this second group already had certain reserve liabilities in an emergency, they were not required to do annual refresher training. The new law would therefore enable the government to call on both junior officers and soldiers and also on more senior ones, such as majors and warrant officers. All those in these various groups would for three further years have a training liability for two months’ annual embodiment, including overseas training, and their reserve liability in times of national emergency would continue until their forty-fifth birthday. The necessary safeguards of employment and so on were included in the legislation. Thus some 20,000 officers and men, well trained in existing equipment and techniques, from all corps of the army, became available each year from 1980 onwards.

Four things would be required to turn this availability of men into a really valuable
NATO
contribution—weapons to equip them. the structure to absorb them into units and formations, training exercises both at home and in their
NATO
rote, and all the administrative, ammunition and transportation support necessary to make them operationally effective. Extra equipment came to hand in two ways: first, a modification of regular infantry and armoured units reduced them once more from four companies/squadrons to three, which was all their authorized manpower could properly support anyway; second, re-equipment programmes for regular units on a ratner more generous scale made it possible to transfer weapons and vehicles to the newly forming reserve units. These were themselves formed by the expansion of existing
TAVR
organizations. The Artillery and Engineer Groups were trebled, each regiment forming a group; the dismounted Yeomanry Regiments were remounted on armoured vehicles; the two fully equipped Yeomanry Regiments quadrupled in size, each squadron forming a complete regiment; fifteen more of the
TAVR
Home Defence battalions were given a
NATO
role and equipped accordingly. There were similar expansions and re-equipment programmes for signal support and logistic units, and all was fitted into the existing organization of
UKLF
. At the same time;