From the outset the world was swamped with Soviet claims, flooding through every possible channel of communication, that this was no more than defensive action, to which the Warsaw Pact had been driven by neo-Nazi ambitions supported by capitalist imperialism.
‘It has long been clear,’ the announcement proclaimed, ‘that the new Nazis are set on the reunification of Germany by force and the subsequent domination of Europe as an early step to world supremacy. The policy of "forward defence", which is self-evident military nonsense if it does not mean action by the FRG east of the Demarcation Line, has never been more than a thin cloak for the firm intention to invade the GDR as a first move towards the dismemberment of the Warsaw Pact and the destruction of the USSR. The change of name from Vorwdrtsverteidigung (Forward Defence) to Vorneverteidigung (Frontal Defence) has done nothing to disguise the nakedness of an essentially aggressive policy. Plans for the invasion are now, in total authenticity,’ as the announcement put it, ‘in Soviet hands, and their authors will in time be brought to justice. Meanwhile, it has become abundantly clear that there is no time to lose in cutting out the Nazi canker. Otherwise all hope will vanish of a lasting peace in Europe.’
The Soviet message to the world went on to give assurances that the purpose of the Pact’s action was first to restore peace in Yugoslavia, where troops from the capitalist West had invaded a socialist country, and at the same time to suppress the true source of disturbance to world peace. This would necessitate the occupation and neutralization of West Germany but no more than that, except for such other action as military security demanded. The integrity of French territory would be especially respected, and the French government was urged to allow its military forces no part in resisting those of the Warsaw Pact. The Italian government was ordered, in rather more peremptory tones, to consult its socialist conscience and permit no resistance to Soviet troops compelled to enter Italy.
‘It is very much hoped,’ the announcement proceeded, ‘that the United Kingdom will see the unwisdom of supporting its old enemies against its former allies, and above all that the United States will recognize the dangers on the one hand from a revival of Nazi adventurism and the fervent hopes for an enduring peace cherished in the Soviet Union on the other.’
Reference was then made to nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union, the statement said, saw no need at present to make use of its very powerful armoury of nuclear weapons in the prophylactic action now going forward.
‘Any significant use of radiation as a weapon of war, however,’ the statement went on, ‘either against troops of the Warsaw Pact or against their homelands, from whatever source, will result in the abandonment by the Soviet Union of all restraints in the use of nuclear weapons and full-scale counter-attack to any depth found necessary. The cities of the NATO countries will face in that event a dreadful end.’
Such was the Soviet message to the world, put out first at 0400 hours, Central European time, on 4 August 1985, and continually repeated in the days that followed. It was made known in many different ways, in many different lands and in many different languages. It was heard with feelings varying from rapturous hope to blank despair, and greeted with responses ranging from warm welcome, which was rare, to raucous derision, which was not.
In Europe, on 4 August 1985, even after only a week of NATO mobilization, the Allied Command was in a far better condition to meet an emergency than could have been possible a very few years before. Several months of spurious detente in the first half of the year had certainly done something to slow down the rate of improvement in NATO’s preparedness; indeed in some respects it had almost brought it to a halt. Illusory hopes that the leopard had this time changed its spots had been freely aired. There had even been repetition of the whimsical claim, so often heard in left-wing groups in Britain, that there could never be any question of changing spots, for the animal had always been in fact immaculate, and that the enormous offensive capability of the USSR had been developed simply to protect its own progressive way of life and the freedom of the peoples it had liberated.
The voices raised for so long among the British left wing, and from their ill-assorted allies among the die-hard disengagers in the USA, urging a sharp reduction in military spending and the withdrawal of troops, had recently been listened to with growing scepticism. It was therefore possible, even in the months of false detente in the spring and early summer of 1985, to proceed, against this chorus, at least with those defence programmes whose suspension would increase domestic unemployment. Improvement in the air defences of the United Kingdom, for example, went on. It was even possible in the USA, though only by the narrowest of margins, to retain the Active Forces Draft.
There is no need to dwell here on the political and social stresses generated in the United States in the years 1979-81 over the reintroduction of the draft, nor to recapitulate the stormy history of the passage of the appropriate legislation. We are more concerned with its consequences, as seen in Allied Command Europe in 1985, and with the sobering reflection that without it no book like this, placing on record as it does the manner of the free West’s survival, could ever have been written.
It is just worth recalling, however, as a helpful reminder, that the US Army was in 1977 facing a critically dangerous position in the virtual disappearance of its reserves. When public disenchantment with the Vietnam War resulted in the end of the draft and the creation of an all-volunteer army, a sharp decline in paid-drill personnel (i.e. personnel actually carrying out reserve training) set in. By 1977 the Army’s National Guard and Reserve were 100,000 under peacetime strength. The Army’s Individual Ready Reserve — the pool of trained men to fill up units and replace combat losses — was dropping so fast that by 1982 it would at this rate have been 360,000 short of mobilization requirements. The back-up Selective Service System was in such ‘deep standby’ that training of drafted personnel could not start until four months after mobilization and no trained men to replace combat losses could be expected to reach Allied Command Europe until three months after that.
A scheme produced by the US Army to spend $750 million a year on a Reserve Component Readiness Improvement Package (RCRIP) was rejected. Schemes for a Reserve Component Draft, or for an Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) Draft, were found to be unworkable. The only real alternative was an Active Forces Draft, with exemption for Reserve Components and IRR volunteers. Without it, within a few years, the US Army would only have been able to go to war when the war was over.
American public opinion in 1977 would not have accepted reintroduction of the draft. A Gallup poll in that year showed that 45 per cent of all Americans were against it, with a count as high as 82 per cent of all males between eighteen and twenty-four years of age.
Gradually, however, as elsewhere in the Alliance, the realization began to spread that the Russians meant what they had so often said and knew exactly what they were doing. In spite of the most strenuous efforts of those who refused to recognize the threat, or argued that if there were one it did not matter, or even claimed that they welcomed the chance of living under a Marxist dictatorship (whether anyone believed them or not), the awareness grew in the United States that a time could come when truly vital decisions would have to be made, and that it would be very foolish for the nation to surrender in advance all power of choice.