Behind the Headlines Soviet and American Military Might: the Jewish Factor

Edward Luttwak does not agree with Andrew Cockburn. Luttwak is the brilliant defense analyst and one-time Israeli resident who wrote what has been called one of the major books in political science, “The Coup d’Etat.” He is probably the only political scientist to have a word, Luttwakian, coined after his name. The term is synonymous with brilliant analysis.

Now working as a consultant to the United States Department of Defense (and a lecturer before various university and academic constituencies) Luttwak has authored a study of the Soviet Union which is diametrically opposed to the conclusions reached by Cockbum. Luttwak’s book, “The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union” (St. Martin’s Press), is a frightening look at the imperial designs of the Russian colossus.

It is significant that Luttwak, who wrote a doctoral dissertation on the Roman empire, considers the Soviet Union today to be a modem incarnation of the ancient empire. He sees uncanny similarities, particularly between the expansionist patterns which ancient Rome undertook and current Soviet practices. In fact, Luttwak sees Soviet expansionism as almost inevitable.

NO EQUIVALENT ARMS IN THE WEST

Whatever weaknesses may have existed in the Soviet armed forces (and Luttwak recognizes that they did and do exist), they are now under control. Luttwak believes that in the last 10 years the Soviets have effected enormous improvements both in their military hardware and in their battle planning.

According to Luttwak, the Soviets not only have impressive military equipment of immense destructive power, they also have armaments for which no equivalent as yet exists in the West.

These include automatic trench-diggers and ribbon-bridges; the latter were put to effective work in the Egyptian crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War. Luttwak says that while the Russians were at one time behind the Americans in helicopters, the Soviets are now on a par with this brand of weaponry.

On the issue of the ramifications of the various Arab-Israeli wars, Luttwak does not share the same conclusions as Cockburn does. Luttwak denies that Soviet equipment was found wanting in the confrontation with Israeli soldiers.

“They tell us more about Israeli skills than about the quality of Soviet equipment.” Western armies, says Luttwak, would not have found it so easy to develop the projectiles and strategy which destroyed so many Russian tanks.

In his analysis of Soviet military production, Luttwak suggests that the West not be fooled by allegations about Russian inefficiency. The Americans might have a slight lead in ordnance, says Luttwak, but that is more than offset by the faster Soviet production cycles.

Luttwak is concerned that the experience of Soviet armies in Hungary and Czechoslovakia not be used as a paradigm of future Soviet strategy. He agrees with Cockburn that the Russians performed very poorly in both theaters and that had either the Hungarians or the Czechs fought back, the Soviets would have lost many men.

The example of Afghanistan, according to Luttwak, shows that the Russians have improved tremendously since their actions in 1956 and 1968 in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In fact, the invasion of Afghanistan demonstrated a Soviet capacity for boldness in planning and execution that were uncharacteristic of traditional Russian patterns of military thinking. This means that Russian military men have opted for a new kind of flexibility in their grand strategies.

BASIS FOR SOVIET EXPANSIONISM

Luttwak’s most important insights derive from his perception that the Soviet Union’s expansionist future is a function of its volatile political and ethnic make up. Using the example of ancient Rome, Luttwak paints a scenario which sees the Russians eventually gobbling up those countries adjacent to it in order to protect its own vital life lines.

This problem is compounded by the fact that within 20 years, if demographic trends continue, the Russians will be a minority in their own country. The Asian populations will have become the dominant group in Soviet society. This change in the ethnic strands of Soviet society will contribute to the disequilibrium of the country.

It is interesting to note that neither Cockburn or Luttwak consider as decisive factors the intelligence information on Soviet weaponry supplied to the United States by Israelis.

It is of course, impossible to test the validity of either the Cockburn or the Luttwak thesis. That would require testing parameters too horrific to conceive — namely, global war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Hopefully, the debate will remain on the academic level.