A red menace?
Mary Kaldor
The Soviet Navy Today John E. Moore (Macdonald and Jane's £6.95)
This glossy book by the editor of the authoritative Jane's Fighting Ships is timely, for there is much clamour in defence circles these days about expansionist ambitions on the part of the Soviet navy. In his foreword, Captain Moore emphasises the importance of facts. Yet facts are nothing more than selective descriptions of the world: one person's facts may convey quite a different impression when combined with somebody else's. Captain Moore's are presented with rather little historical or military comparison, leaving the reader with the overall impression that today's Soviet navy is a new and destabilising phenomenon in world affairs. That being so, I would like to offer an alternative factual perspective, though, as Captain Moore rightly points out, numbers and technical capabilities are not the most relevant criteria. It so happens that the Soviet Navy is smaller now than it was in 1958, the year chosen in a Brookings Institute study as a benchmark for historical comparison. Manpower has fallen by one third, from 750,000 to around 500,000. And today's Soviet fleet is older, and therefore less modern, than it was in 1958.
Comparisons with the American navy offer a similar corrective, even without taking into account the disparity in naval capabilities between European NATO states and non-Russian Warsaw Pact ones. The Soviet Union has no fixed wing sea-based air power and, as of 1974, possesses one tenth as many naval aircraft as the United States. The United States has an overwhelming superiority in its support system, which permits US ships to operate world wide without reliance on bases, and in its amphibious landing capability. Only in submarines is the Soviet Union significantly ahead in numbers, but this is offset by the sevenfold American advantage in nuclear weapons aboard strategic submarines, and by the fact that US attack submarines are quieter, faster and newer than the Soviet ones. The Soviet Navy is older than the US Navy and pay and living conditions of Soviet seamen are very poor in comparison, raising questions about efficiency and endurance. Finally, according to evidence presented by Admiral Hyman Rickover to the US Congress, the projected American ship construction rate for the rest of this decade is substantially greater than that of the Soviet Union.
Having said all that, there are two major developments in the Soviet navy which are of considerable significance. One is the changed deployment of the Soviet navy, in the shift from a coastal defence force to an ocean-going fleet. The other is the substantial technical improvement in missile-firing submarines and surface ships. Interestingly, Captain Moore lays most stress on the first development; the use of the Navy as a "political force world-wide for the spread of socialism and communism" is a recurrent theme in his book. He suggests that the Soviet Union is aiming at an offensive capability for intervention and interdiction of Western shipping. Yet the evidence for this interpretation is scant. As far as intervention goes, Soviet Naval Infantry is extremely small, numbering 12,000 men, and has been declining. (The US Marines number neafly 200,000.) The Soviet landing capability is minimal; although Captain Moore suggests that the sizeable merchant marine could be used for this purpose, it is strange, if the Soviet Union really intends to build up an intervention capability, that the amphibious forces should have been so neglected. Finally, the Soviet Union has no sea based air power to provide air cover for intervention. Her two helicopter carriers and the aircraft carriers currently under construction are evidently designed for anti-submarine warfare purposes. Captain Moore suggests that the new aircraft carriers could take VTOL aircraft; but there is no sign yet, either, of a suitable aircraft or of the equipmeht needed to operate fixed wing aircraft.
As regards interdiction of Western shipping, there is no doubt that the Soviet attack submarine force could pose a substantial threat but the evidence suggests that this is not the Soviet intention. Such interdiction would imply a sustained conventional war which Soviet military planners do not envisage. Moreover, the Soviet Union does not have sea based air power or a sea based support system. Nor does it possess a world wide net-Work of naval bases to compensate for this weakness. Whatever Captain Moore may say, airfield and port facilities at Conakry and Berbera are not the same as well equipped and secure naval bases, especially in war or times of extreme political tension.
There is another interpretation of the changing role of the Soviet navy. This has been put forward by a noted authority on the Soviet navy, Michael MacGuirk, He argues that both the technical improvemets and the changing deployment of the Soviet navy are prompted by the requirements of strategic defence. In particular, the increased range of US nuclear attack carriers in the mid-'fifties led to the development of cruise missile submarines, medium range aircraft and missile equipped surface warships, while the appearance of Polaris submarines in the early 'sixties led to the development of anti-submarine carriers for detection and a new generation of fast, quiet nuclear powered submarines for tracing.
While MacGuire's interpretation fits what we know — largely from Captain Moore's own work — of Soviet capabilities, the personal emphasis on a world-wide political role for the navy by its commander in chief, Admiral Gorshkov, and the increasing frequency of "good will" visits still have to be explained. It is important to put this in the context of overall Soviet foreign policy. Historically, an emphasis on an outward looking ocean-going fleet has coincided with periods of the most intense diplomatic and economic' overtures to the West. So it was in the late 'thirties that Stalin called for the construction of aircraft carriers and cruisers in addition to the substantial submarine building programme. It would be odd if naval strategy moved in the opposite direction from foreign policy, and if the Soviet Union built up an offensive naval capability at
the very moment when peaceful coexistence and economic interchange were being touted. The Soviet military press suggests that what is being built up is an anti-intervention capability for use in peacetime; in other words, an attemPt to force the West to abandon military methods of achieving political aims, to preserve the conditions for detente, and to protect the increasingly important Soviet foreign trade. The wide publicity given to Soviet naval exercises and overseas deployment
would support this contention.
The second development, the improvement in missile-firing ships, particularly the latest cruise missile attack submarines, receives far less attention in Captain Moore's book. Yet this development, not confined to the Soviet navy, is surely of much greater concern, vastlY increasing, as it does, the vulnerability of all surface ships and calling into question the rationale for big ships. For a country like Britain, with little interest or capacity for unimpeded military intervention, it suggeStS that a navy dominated by aircraft carriers and cruisers may well have become a romantic extravagance. Perhaps this is why Captain Moore does not dwell at length on the subject.
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