Russia's navy
Sir: Will someone please tell me why almost every present-day writer on naval matters must be so intellectually, timid?
Professor Martin, in his article concerning Russia's navy (10 May), %% rites that, '. . . in pursuing these tasks [developing threats to Europe and America] the Russians face tre- mendous strategic problems as a result of
their geography . . . .' This is quite true only if one accepts that surface navies will con- tinue to be dominant in the future. However, many people seem to feel that the underseas ship will be the capital ship of the future navies. Even Professor Martin, in his excellent volume The Sea in Modern Strategy, sees no answer to the underseas ship other than a better under- seas ship.
There are technical problems but, as a friend who is in a position to know wrote re- cently, there is no real technical lag—only one of doctrine! This friend added that Professor Martin's book can hardly be called 'modern' if it does not treat fully the underseas.
A partial answer is given by Professor Martin
in that '. . . recent press accounts of Soviet policy are clearly inspired by naval lobbyists and patently exaggerated; missiles with a range of ten miles are equated with those of hun- dreds, and aged cruisers are presented as fierce new contenders for naval supremacy.' This is quite true - and yet it is most strange in a truly ironic manner. The ideas of modern western nuclear strategy have been founded upon the theories of Mackinder, but now it appears that these ideas are quite definitely false. If Mackinder's ideas are false, then the competing concepts of Mahan seem to be true. Moreover, it takes a very obtuse person to fail to realise that if sea power can be realised through the use of underseas navies, then the ideas of Mackinder would be completely thrown into the ashcan and the sea power ideas of Mahan would reign supreme. Thus, it appears that present-day western naval thinkers are a most curious lot!
Robert E. Walters Flat Nine, Mornington Avenue Mansions, London WI4
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