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From: usenet@ucbvax.ARPA (USENET News Administration)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Soviet Conventional Offensive Capability, an unConventional view
Message-ID: <10534@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 4-Oct-85 05:30:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.10534
Posted: Fri Oct  4 05:30:17 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Oct-85 06:39:02 EDT
References: <1173@ames.UUCP>
Reply-To: tedrick@ucbernie.UUCP (Tom Tedrick)
Distribution: net
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 45

The article was interesting. A few comments:

>2. When the Wermacht invaded the USSR on 22 June 1941 the Red Army was
>vastly superior in numbers of men, tanks, and aircraft.  The Germans
>went through the Red Army like a hot knife through butter.

At that time the Red Army had been weakened by a purge of its
military leadership (which may have been inspired by a German
plot, I forget what the latest conclusion on that matter is).
The German army at that time was better trained, led and equipped
than any previous army in history. It particularly excelled in 
mobile mechanized warfare, which noone had been able to defend
against up to that time. Stalin was hoping to avoid war and
was not fully prepared.

The Soviets later proved to be extremely tenacious, ruthless,
brutal, almost inhumanly difficult opponents, particularly excelling
in close combat. While Germany probably should have been able to
achieve at least a stalemate in the east (were it not for their
insecure cryptosystems), the Soviets should not be taken lightly.

>5.  The Soviet Navy is divided by geography into four separate forces
>that cannot support each other.  This allowed a smaller Japanese Navy
>to sink most of the Russian fleet around the turn of the century.

I seem to recall that an intelligence leak played a role there.

>Please don't give me a rap about NATO never attacking.  Russia has
>suffered three major invasions from Western Europe in the last two centuries,
>Napoleon once and Germany twice.  To leave that boarder weakly defended
>would be idiotic.  

To be fair, in WW1 it was Russia that invaded Germany first.

My conclusion: You can't be too careful or too strong when
	       dealing with the Soviets. Also I would expect
	       they would have an easier time overunning
	       Western Europe (were it not for tactical nukes,
	       etc.) than they have had in Afghanistan.

The Soviets are very shrewd, patient and careful. They seem to
pick on the weakest points where they can achieve maximal gains
with minimal risks. I do admit I don't quite understand 
their Afghanistan strategy yet. But I would not conclude that
they couldn't do much more if they wanted to.


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