East-West Battle of the Bean Counters

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Does this mean that NATO is about to accept an offer it should refuse? Not necessarily. The nonnuclear threat from the Warsaw Pact, many defense experts charge, is vastly inflated by a defense establishment conditioned to crying wolf in order to boost budgets. Fears of NATO vulnerability are largely based on paper comparisons of tanks, divisions, aircraft, artillery and other weapons. But "bean counting," as that tallying process is called, does not show the whole picture.

One of the most often cited authorities on Warsaw Pact strength, for example, is Soviet Military Power, the Pentagon's glossy guide to the Red menace. The latest edition gives the Warsaw Pact 230 divisions, compared with only 121 for NATO. Confined to footnote, however, is the vital information that a Warsaw Pact division contains fewer troops than its NATO equivalent -- in fact, only 11,000, vs. 16,000 for NATO. The book correctly points out that Warsaw Pact divisions are heavily armed but neglects to note the superior logistics, training and overall battle management of NATO divisions. The Pentagon's bean count also ignores French and Spanish forces because these do not come under direct NATO command. Yet France's army, with 296,000 troops, including three armored divisions stationed in West Germany, is one of the largest in the alliance and is firmly committed by treaty to NATO's defense. The troops of the Soviet Union's East bloc allies, whose divisions are included in the Warsaw Pact totals, are thought to be considerably less reliable.

Defense experts point out that what really counts in terms of repelling a Warsaw Pact attack is not the overall balance of forces but the lineup in Europe's so-called central region, which includes East and West Germany and parts of Czechoslovakia and Poland. Soviet military doctrine calls for swift victory in this critical zone before the West's economic might and manpower advantage could be fully mobilized. Yet a tally of combat-ready forces in the central zone gives the Warsaw Pact just under 1 million troops, slightly fewer than the number deployed by NATO. The Warsaw Pact has an advantage in tanks -- 14,000 to NATO's 9,700 -- but that edge is smaller than for Europe as a ^ whole. "The Soviets cannot be confident of winning, even with a blitzkrieg," says former U.S. Defense Secretary Harold Brown. And if Soviet commanders also factor in the possibility that a successful attack might trigger a full-scale nuclear conflict, then an assault looks even less attractive. Says Brown: "They'd be nutty to try."