THE DANGEROUS DECADE AHEAD

For more than 30 years, the United States has conducted foreign relations in the shadow of nuclear arms; now the nuclear umbra is darker and more extensive than ever. There are many more weapons than before, but most significantly, the range, accuracy, targeting flexibility, and payload of intercontinental nuclear weapon systems have been markedly improved:

• During the past decade, the warhead count of intercontinental nuclear weapons went up 200 percent.

• Their estimated explosive power (equivalent megatonnage) grew some 30 percent.

• Their pin-point targeting (hard target kill) potential increased 200 percent.

In contemplating the dangers of this decade, we must keep in mind that the US and the USSR have long since lost their virtual monopoly in nuclear weapons. The United Kingdom, France, and China possess operational nuclear forces. India has exploded a nuclear device, and several other countries may be maintaining an option to develop nuclear explosives. By the end of the 1980s, it is possible that a dozen or more nations could have some military nuclear capability.

With regard to other weapons of mass destruction, there is significant evidence that the Soviets and their allies have used toxic chemical weapons in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan, and the 1979 Sverdlovsk incident revealed what we believe to be Soviet activities with deadly biological weapons. Even small powers like Vietnam and Pakistan appear to have chemical capabilities. Arms and the control of arms will continue to be of primary importance to our future, and to that of all mankind.

Nor, of course, are weapons of mass destruction the sole issue. We enter the 1980s after a decade of pronounced growth in the inventories of advanced conventional weapon systems in the hands of not only the Soviets and their allies but the developing nations as well. While US transfers of armaments to the Third World via grant aid, sales, or sales financing, declined throughout the 1970s, shipments from other suppliers increased. For example, the Soviet Union continued to underwrite the military undertakings of Cuba, Vietnam, and other client states in Asia and Africa. Ethiopia alone has received $2 billion worth of Soviet military assistance over the past four years. The Soviets also have

sold significant quantities of modern tanks, aircraft, and other ordnance to Libya, Syria, Iraq, and India. Meanwhile, other developing countries (for example, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Israel, and North Korea), which at the beginning of the decade imported almost all of their arms, have themselves become manufacturers and suppliers of sophisticated arms for the Third World. The net effect has been that many developing nations have become armed to the point that they are capable of waging a war of great destructiveness, swiftness, and reach. As a consequence, intra-regional conflicts in areas like Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa more than ever before threaten wide-spread death and devastation and portend harm to US inter

ests.

Although burgeoning military capabilities are a worldwide phenomenon, our principal concerns for the decade are the growth of Soviet military power and the increased assertiveness of Soviet foreign policy. The Soviets now exceed the US in numbers of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles and are making strides to close the gap in technology. Improved accuracy and MIRVing of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles increasingly threaten the survivability of US fixed land-based strategic systems, with dangerous impacts on the overall strategic relationship. At the same time, expanding Soviet theater nuclear forces (TNF) poised against Western Europe and Asia have improved in range, accuracy, and survivability. The Soviet navy, with more major surface combatants and general purpose submarines than the US Navy, now makes its presence felt on all the world's oceans. New and improved models of conventional weapons continue to appear.

As the military power of the Soviet Union has grown, so has the propensity of the Soviets to interfere directly, or indirectly through surrogates, in the affairs of other nations. By reducing the ability of the US and its allies to cope with Soviet and Soviet-supported initiatives, the Soviet Union has laid the foundation for an assertive foreign policy. A growing capability to project military power beyond the periphery of the USSR is a reflection of this Soviet drive to exert influence worldwide.

Soviet interest in space is another matter of concern. While competition in space is less conspicuous than the struggle for influence in the Third World, it is no less important to the security of the US and its allies. Soviet technology breakthroughs in space-related military ca

pabilities have disturbing potential for upsetting the balance of power.

These military developments have proceeded amid growing interdependence among the world's nations and increasing complexity in international relations. There are now 166 nations, 24 more than there were in 1970, 77 more than in 1960. Most emergent states are small, and most of them desperately poor. The world population grew approximately 12 percent during the past 10 years, and, in general, nations rich at the beginning of the decade became richer, while poor nations became poorer. Over the period 1974 to 1979, the industrial nations and the major oil exporters collectively earned in international currency transfers some $300 billion, while the less developed or endowed nations suffered a net loss of $250 billion.

Despite all the advances of modern agricultural technology, famine continues to afflict whole populations; in Afghanistan, Kampuchea, and Somalia, starvation adds to the misery of refugees from war. And during the 1970s, the world encountered distinct limitations upon its ability to provide for its energy require

ments. Demand for fossil fuels exceeded available supply, and international trading for petroleum occasioned the largest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind. Over the past six years, the hard currency earnings of Third World oil-exporting nations were three times those of the developed nations.

Petroleum has become of major strategic importance for virtually every nation in the world. About 45 percent of all world fuel needs (oil, gas, nuclear and solid fuels) are met by oil. Moreover, the world's dependency upon oil for military purposes is increasing. While World War Il was fueled 60 percent with coal and 40 percent with oil, mobilization during the Korean War was fueled 60 percent by oil. US fuel needs during the Vietnam War were met almost entirely by oil, and the availability of oil for any future mobilization is, of course, one of the principal problems we face. Geopolitically, the energy problem for the United States and its allies centers on the Persian Gulf. The countries of the Gulf littoral, many strife-prone and politically unstable, supply about 65 percent of total world imports (Map I-1), and hold about 55 percent of projected world oil reserves. Considering all energy sources-fuels plus non-fuel sources, includ

ing solar power, hydro-electric power, and the like-the Persian Gulf area supplies the US and its major allies with the following percentages of their total energy consumption:

• United States-5 percent

• Western Europe-32 percent

• Japan-53 percent

The United States imports 22 percent of its oil from the Persian Gulf region. At the end of 1979, the United States was dependent on all foreign sources for 44 percent of the oil it consumed, and US consumption accounted for 24 percent of the world's crude oil import market. At the end of the next decade, depending largely on the price of crude oil on the world market, the US is projected to be importing from 30 to 43 percent of the oil it consumes. Therefore, while US dependency on Persian Gulf oil alone is not vital, US dependency on world oil market supplies will continue to be crucial to our economic well-being. Were Persian Gulf oil to be interrupted or seriously attenuated, that world oil market could be expected to panic. The United States and its principal allies have some 100 to 200 days of stocks on hand at current usage rates, but obviously current usage is a reflection neither of emergency military needs nor increased consumption by a mobilizing civilian economy. Were Persian Gulf oil cut off all together, estimates are that the Western economic and military capabilities, even with oil rationing, could be gravely weakened within months.

As far as the Soviet Union and its allies are concerned, the USSR currently supplies almost all of their energy needs. Some in the United States intelligence community hold that this near self-sufficiency will soon give way to partial dependence on the world oil market, possibly as soon as 1982. Other estimates, however, hold that the Soviets-with sufficient access to Western technology-will develop their vast oil reserves in Siberia in time to postpone such dependency, at least through the next decade.

The Soviet Union's self-sufficiency in fossil fuels -oil, natural gas, and coal-is mirrored by virtual selfsufficiency in other minerals. The Soviet Union must import only six minerals critical to its defense industry, and only two of these are brought in for as much as 50 percent of requirements. In contrast, the United States relies on foreign sources to supply amounts in excess of 50 percent of its need for some 32 minerals essential for our military and industrial base. Particularly important

mineral imports (for example, diamonds, cobalt, platin um, chromium, and manganese) come from southern Africa, where the Soviet Union and its surrogates have established substantial influence, and where US access, given the inherent instabilities within the region, is by no means assured.

The dependency of the United States on foreign sources of non-fuels, minerals, and metals has increased sharply over the last two decades. Taking a list of the top 25 such imported commodities, in 1960 our dependency averaged 54 percent. In 1980, our dependency for the same items averages 70 percent. In fact, our dependency is 75 percent or more on foreign countries where war could, in the foreseeable future, deny us our supplies of bauxite, chromite, cobalt, columbium, manganese, nickel, and tantalum. These metals and minerals figure in the manufacture of aircraft, motor vehicles, appliances, high strength or stainless steels, magnets, jet engine parts, cryogenic devices, gyroscopes, superconductors, capacitors, vacuum tubes, electro-optics, printed circuits, contacts, connectors, armor plate, and instrumentation, among other things. (Maps 1-2 and 1-3)

The foregoing dangers should not be regarded as wholly a matter of markets or access threatened by regional political considerations or events, for the fact is that the US is engaged in competition against the Soviet Union. Whether or not we choose to regard our relationship in competitive terms, the Russians assuredly do.

US MILITARY STRATEGY

To cope with the dangers of the 1980s and meet the Soviet challenge, the US must continue to pursue a strategy that draws upon the combined resources of allied and friendly nations to full and mutual advantage. In order of priority, the requisites for such a national military strategy are deterrence of Soviet nuclear attack against the US and its allies; the defense of European and Pacific allies, including protection of access to Southwest Asian oil vital to their security; and an ability to deal elsewhere with lesser contingencies that may threaten other US or allied vital interests. In effect, the Western Hemisphere and the three regions of greates importance to US extra-hemispheric interests- West ern Europe, Northeast Asia, and Southwest Asiacomprise a system of interconnecting and inextricabl linked strategic zones. (Map 1-4) As US security i closely tied to that of its allies in Western Europe an Northeast Asia, and as all depend on continued acces to the oil resources of Southwest Asia, so US strateg