Military spending upsets Soviet economy

Press, 4 July 1978, Page 16

Military spending upsets Soviet economy

By

MARK FRANKLAND

in London

Western anxiety about growing Soviet power has reached the point where many people are forgetting that Moscow, too, has its serious problems. Yet these problems are so various and in some cases so profound that any judgment of Soviet strength that ignores them will certainly be incomplete and probably misleading too. The West’s most obvious worry is Soviet military strength, now accepted to be the rough equal of America’s in strategic nuclear weapons and superior in some respects to the N.A.T.O. forces in Europe. But studies of the Soviet economy show that Moscow has been able to create this power only by heavy economic and social sacrifices.

Almost half the machinery produced in the Soviet Union is probably military equipment of some sort. This represents an alarming diversion of resources from investment badly needed to modernise Soviet industry. If the Soviet Union has paid a high price to catch up with the West militarily, it will have to pay an even higher price to hang on to that ' position if military competition continues. There are various estimates of what will happen to the Soviet economy during the next 10 years, but they all agree that it will grow at a slower and slower

pace. By the 1980 s this could be between 3 and 3.5 per cent a year, which would be the same, or rather below, that expected for the industrialised West. Investment to maintain equality with America in a new round of weapons competition would have to be extracted from proportionately diminishing funds, while the investment itself might be proportionately higher than in the past because the Soviet Union is far behind America in important areas of new military technology such as miniaturisation.

Technological backwardness means tha tthe Russians match the West only at the price of extremely inefficient use of materials and resources: for example, fighter planes that are (by Western standards) far too heavy, and missiles that are wastefully large. There is almost no doubt that the Soviet Government, if it judged it necessary, could continue to squeeze the money from its economy to pay for new weapons as it has in the past. The Soviet response to President Carter’s unexpected proposals last year for drastic cutbacks in strategic weapons which the Russians believed disadvantageous to them was only the latest proof of this. Moscow sent defiant messages to Washington which said, in effect: We do not

want a new round in the arms race, but we have made sacrifices before to maintain our power. Have no doubt that we shall do so again if it is necessary. It is hard to believe that this is what Moscow wants to happen.

The Soviet Union, though, has another major defence problem apart from the West —China. The Chinese quarrel with Moscow has for some time puzzled Western strategists. A good many of them have been invited to China where, almost without exception, they have pleased their hosts by outspoken appreciation of China as a military counter-balance to the Soviet Union. But while China remains for many Westerners an agreeable factor in theoretical strategic calculations, it is for Moscow an outright and immediate threat. The new Chinese leadership, Soviet officials now say, is every bit as bad as the late Chairman Mao.

An important article in “Pravda” this month accused China of preparing for a third world war. It was followed by another arguing that Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s adviser on national security affairs, had on his recent visit to Peking agreed on “a joint political line with China on a wide range of international problems on an anti-Soviet basis.”

The Soviet Union has not yet accused the West of a military alliance with China. But it is clearly worried that Britain and other West European countries might sell China military equipment. For instance, China has shown interest in the British Harrier jet. Western supporters of arms sales to China have not yet thought through the

consequences of such deals. Certainly the British Government has not made up its mind whether it would do more good than harm. The Russians have no doubt. They have already warned West European Governments that too close cooperation with China would do “irreparable damage” to their relations with Moscow. An economy that cannot

satisfy both civilian and military needs, at least with the necessary speed, and a potential enemy to the East as well as the West: these are the problems that the West does not have. They are too serious and too long-lasting t 0 be reconciled with a view the Soviet Union as a superpower that easily has > ts wa V w ‘ t h the world, 0.F.N.5., Copyright.