Se SS. Se By FRED WEIR The current massive buildup of conventional armed forces in the U.S. began in the late 1970s amid wildly exaggerated charges that the United States was “falling behind’’ the Soviet Union, and that the USSR was add- ing to its forces ‘‘far beyond any defensive needs.” This ‘“‘Soviet Threat’’ campaign has succeeded in convincing many people, and it comprises the major public justification for the present arms drive. It is inter- esting to note, however, that one group of people it has failed to persuade are the Pentagon generals themselves. In late 1980, alarmed that right-wing rhetoric about | American military ‘‘weakness’’ and implications that | Pentagon leaders had been ‘‘negligent”’ in letting this | happen, was getting out of hand (and possibly threaten- | ing their jobs), the Pentagon produced a point-by-point Tefutation of their critics’ charges. The resulting docu- Ment, which was given only limited play and then quashed by the incoming Reagan administration, has been published by the Centre for Defence Information in Washington (Defence Monitor, Vol. IX No. 8A). It is somewhat of an eye-opener to read what the Pentagon says in response to its far-right critics, and compare it to what they customarily tell us. For instance, concerning the charge we looked at last week, that the Soviet Navy has grown stronger than the U.S. Navy in Tecent years, the Pentagon document says: ‘In fact, the Soviet Navy, which started far behind us, has been declining in size recently, not increasing. With regard to large oceangoing surface combatants, the U.S. Navy has deployed more than twice as many platforms as the Soviet Navy since the early 1960s. The U.S. continues to hold superiority over the Soviet Navy in performance of critical missions such as strike warfare, amphibious Warfare, and anti-submarine warfare, as well as in readi- hess.”’ “The Soviet Union. also built a massive strategic defensive weapons system backed by 100 times as many radars as we have. The Soviets built 2,600 fighter interceptors while the U. S. cut back to 309. ...’? — The SALT Syndrome, right-wing film shown on hundreds of U.S. television stations. | _Asimilar picture emerges when we look at the tactical {air forces of the contending powers..For a brief period, during the mid’70s, the Warsaw Treaty enjoyed an appreciable numerical advantage. This is somewhat de- Ceptive, however, since far more of their air strength is _devoted to short-range interceptors, and air defence equipment. NATO has always held the preponderance | Of strike and multi-purpose aircraft. _ THE SOVIET THREAT The Pentagon document is surprisingly blunt on this point: ‘‘ The Soviets built an extensive air defence be- cause they face a far more significant threat from USS. (and other) aircraft than we do from theirs.” Today, with building programs instituted during the late 70s in place, NATO is overtaking the Warsaw Tre- aty even in terms of gross numbers. Moreover, a far greater proportion of Warsaw Treaty air strength is older types, Mig-19s, Mig-21s, Su-9s. NATO air forces have many more of the newest, most sophisticated variants than do the Eastern forces. Of highly advanced aircraft, the USSR has produced only 300 Mig-27Ds and 250 Mig-25s to date, while the U.S. Air Force already has 600 F-15s and the U.S. Navy has 350 F-14s in service. Currently entering service with western European Air Forces are 807 Tornado multi-role air- craft, reputedly vastly superior to any Soviet type. << now that we’re on the subject of tanks, when you talk about approximate military parity, such as now exists in the European theatre, you can’t take just one military compo- nent and use it as a measure of the overall balance. Yes, the Warsaw Pact countries have numerical superiority in tanks. But there are other components on the western side that compensate. For instance, the western advantage in Euro- pean theater nuclear warheads for artillery, nuclear mines, anti-aircraft guns, aircraft systems and soon ... There is an important western advantage in aircraft systems integrated with ground forces, including combat helicopters which provide valuable support with their guns and missiles. And quite a big superiority in anti-tank weapons.” — Soviet Lieut. General M.A. Milshtein, interviewed in 8 Days, Dec. 22, 1979. There is one area-of military strength where the War- saw Treaty does, clearly, enjoy a significant numerical edge. In the European theater today, the Warsaw Treaty _ deploys some 27,200 tanks compared to only 11,800 for NATO and France. This contrast is cited frequently in the media, often together with panic-stricken images, a la General Hac- kett, of helpless NATO defenders being crushed under the sheer weight of the armored Soviet juggernaught. All of this leads one to question why the NATO indus- trial powers compete so sharply to sell their latest armor to Israel and third world markets, if these weapons are desperately needed to redress the European imbalance. Propaganda aside, NATO leaders seem relatively unconcerned with the Soviet advantage in tanks. The Soviet leaders, for their part, learned the lessons of tank warfare the hard way, during WW II, at Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk. Soviet generals and military plan- F 500 NAVAL FORCES aa i 400 oy 7 = L- 300 6+ - 200 : | | | — : a - Number of Major Total Naval Tonnage Surface Combatant Ships | (Millions of Metric Tons} Source: DOD Annual Report. FY 1982 ners obviously believe in the value of armored forma- tions. They are not necessarily correct. A personal experience seems relevant here. During 1973, I lived in northern Israel, and witnessed the out- break of the October War. Shortly after the hostilities, I was able to hitchhike up to the battlefields on the Golan Heights. The scene was ruined tanks, as far as the eye could see. Half of the elite Israeli tank corps lay, burnt out, amid the wreckage of hundreds of Syrian T-5S5s and T-62s. The bulk of this destruction had been caused, not by the traditional combat of tank against tank, but by a new weapon: small wire-guided missiles, deployed by both sides and fired from jeeps and shoulder-launchers carried by infantrymen. It seemed to me then — and still does — that the era of the tank as an important measure of military power was gone forever. Now, in Europe today NATO deploys 193,000 anti- tank weapons, the bulk of which are guided missiles. That is roughly six such weapons for every Warsaw Treaty tank. In addition, NATO stocks almost 4,000 one-kiloton nuclear artillery shells designed to be fired from conventional howitzers at concentrations of enemy armor. Also coming is an unspecified number of neutron ‘*bombs’’, allegedly intended for the same purpose. Under the circumstances it is hard to see 30,000 Warsaw Treaty tanks — or 300,000, for that matter — making much difference in the overall military balance. The claim that the Soviets maintain conventional military superiority is clearly fraudulent. Says the Pentagon about most of the ‘*gaps’’ we have looked at: ‘‘ These are misleading statistics which use selected data in comparisons designed to show over- whelming Soviet superiority. . .. A comparable exercise could show the same superiority for the United States’’. And former U.S. Secretary of Defence Harold Brown adds: ‘‘I believe that those who mistakenly claim that the United States is weak or that the Soviet Union is strong enough to run all over us, are not only playing fast and loose with the truth, they are also playing fast and loose with U.S. security.” i _ Last week I pointed out that the sub- ject matter of political economy is the Production (economic) relations of People which include the ownership of the means of production, the place dif- ferent social groups occupy in produc- tion and the relations between them, and the forms of distribution of the material Wealth produced: * ee mi . be Be | “me, | Capitalism in this point of decline | Alfred Dewhurst 2 | Marxism-Leninism Today materials, state funds such as pension, unemployment and other budget funds, bank and credit deposits. Last, but not least, are joint ownerships, with private monopolies in industrial and resource development consortiums. All of the above, and more-not men- tioned, constitute state property. In real- ity, however there is no real difference between the property of the capitalist (neem { a 1 This week I want to stress that unlike urgeois economists, who pretend that the doctrines they promote are universal and stand above class, Marxists do not de the class character and partisan na- ture of Marxist-Leninist political €conomy. This partnership does not wever, diminish its objective and Scientific character. This is so because the interests of the working class coin- Side with the objective course of social velopment; and with the interests of all Canadians fighting for emancipation from the oppression of monopoly Capitalism. Marxist-Leninist political economy arms people with knowledge of the €conomic laws which govern social velopment, opens up clear objectives, and provides a scientific basis for a pro- gram of economic and political demands to advance the vital interests of the work- ng people. *x* * * The economic system in Canada is with the monopolies dominating that ownership. This has brought into being a qualitatively new form of capitalist ownership — monopoly property. This was not always so. It came into beingasa result of competition between individual capitalists, which saw the stronger swal- low up the weaker — the take-over of many capitalist firms by a few big capital- ist concerns. An important form of this process was the emergence and spread of joint-stock companies — a form of group capitalist ownership which has the result, in the words of Karl Marx, that “‘the associated capitalist takes the place of the individual capitalist’’. In our times the lion’s share of capital and production in Canada is concentrated in the hands of some form of joint-stock companies. Most monopolies are such companies. But only large joint-stock companies are lies. monopo! wg A monopoly is acompany, association tion of sucha scale, that it is able to assert its economic supremacy over all medium and small firms, and even big companies in given areas of capital, production and merchandizing. The giant monopolies, in fierce com- petition aniong themselves, inexorably apply financial pressure on small capital enterprises. This process either leads to financial bankruptcies of the weaker firms, or, they become captives of the big monopolies in the form of producing parts and semi-finished products under contract to the industrial giants. The same process operates in the service and food industries. * * * The state structure in modern capital- ist countries, such as Canada, is com- ‘pletely integrated into the system of monopoly capitalism. In such countries the state owns and controls a consider- able range of capital and resource property. This property includes trans- portation systems, energy resources and systems, extensive areas of lands and state and the property of the private capitalist monopolies. In conditions of modern capitalism, state property in re- spect to its class essence, is the total property of the monopolies. * * * Existing alongside of monopoly are the family farmers and other small com- modity producers, who produce com- modities with their own labor and own their own means of production. How- ever in today’s conditions, most of such ownership is more formal than real. Their indebtedness to the big banks is so great that in practice their farms and businesses have, in a very real sense, become the property of bankers and cre- dit houses. The capitalist state, like the private capitalists, alienates its workers from the means of production and exploits them with its capital. And, just as capitalism in its final stage, alienates the workers from the means of production, so does it alien- ate the small commodity producers from or a group of big capitalists, which con- their means of production. centrates or controls capital and produc- N.B. More to come. i | Capitalism. The large-scale means of Material production are privately owned forests, armaments and other military PACIFIC TRIBUNE—APRIL 2, 1982—Page 5 * ayoS —SB2h 8 1AGA--2MUaIFT VITO