{"id":69174,"date":"2021-12-09T14:30:04","date_gmt":"2021-12-09T03:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=69174"},"modified":"2021-12-09T14:42:53","modified_gmt":"2021-12-09T03:42:53","slug":"the-china-threat-and-lessons-from-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-china-threat-and-lessons-from-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union\/","title":{"rendered":"The China threat and lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

This month marks 30 years since the USSR collapsed voluntarily. It\u2019s rare in world history that such a militarily powerful empire disappears without going to war. The Soviet Union had 12,000 strategic nuclear warheads, 260 divisions with 50,000 tanks, 7,000 combat aircraft, 370 submarines (including 94 tactical nuclear attack submarines) and some 260 principal surface combatants. Western intelligence assessments until almost the very end continued to see it as a power with few real weaknesses. As late as 1986 the then deputy director of the CIA, Robert Gates, told me that the Soviet Union was poised to outstrip America in military power.<\/p>\n

Why did US intelligence assessments fail to predict the end of the USSR, and does this have any relevance for today\u2019s assessment of the threat from China?<\/p>\n

First, it must be recognised that the Soviet Union was an incredibly difficult intelligence target. There were several reasons for this: the secrecy of the Soviet state and the unreliability of its statistics, the paucity of any publicly available military data that could be depended upon, and the lack of intelligence sources inside the Kremlin. There was an acute ideological suspicion of the USSR that made even modest attempts at a more balanced approach subject to ridicule and outright hostility, including in Australia. Even so, there was plenty of evidence for those of us who visited the USSR that something was acutely wrong with an economy that couldn\u2019t supply even the most basic needs of food and housing for its population.<\/p>\n

Second, there was real fear\u2014especially in the 1970s\u2014that Soviet economic growth rates were outstripping those in an America that was in the throes of stagflation and its defeat in Vietnam. Moscow\u2019s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was seen in some quarters\u2014not least by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser\u2014as the beginning of World War III and a real threat to the West\u2019s crucial access to oil supplies from the Persian Gulf. On almost every front, the USSR seemed to be on a winning streak. So, there was deep concern throughout the Western alliance system that the USSR was creating a geopolitical situation in which \u2018the correlation of world forces\u2019 was moving decisively in Moscow\u2019s favour.<\/p>\n

Third, this sense of palpable fear that the Soviet Union was winning, and the West was losing, the arms race led to an acute sense of paranoia in US intelligence agencies. In the Western world\u2019s most powerful intelligence establishment\u2014the CIA\u2014the head of Soviet counterespionage, James Jesus Angleton, believed that the agency was riddled with Soviet spies. Even in Canberra, the head of the Office of National Assessments considered that anybody who did not hold his views of the USSR was working for the other side.<\/p>\n

This world of extreme fear meant that there was little recognition that Mikhail Gorbachev was attempting serious reforms of the Soviet political and economic system. Even now, there is no agreement about the fundamental reasons for the collapse of the USSR. Many Americans still believe that they outspent the Russians into oblivion in the arms race. Others think that it was the failed 10-year occupation of Afghanistan that was the trigger for the Soviet collapse. Still others\u2014including me\u2014focus on the prolonged stagnation of the Soviet Union\u2019s economy and society.<\/p>\n

The economic crisis played a central but often underestimated role in the last few years of Soviet history. In a new book, Collapse: the fall of the Soviet Union<\/em><\/a>, historian Vladislav Zubok asserts that Gorbachev\u2019s policy of openness and transparency greatly contributed to the rise of anti-communist and nationalist movements. Gorbachev\u2019s decisions generated a voluntary and unprecedented devolution of power that eroded the ideological legitimacy of the Communist Party. Zubok concludes that Gorbachev\u2019s leadership, character and beliefs constituted a major factor in the Soviet Union\u2019s self-destruction. Under a different leader, there was no reason why the Soviet system could not have staggered on for several more decades\u2014like North Korea, for example.<\/p>\n

Turning now to the China threat assessment, I consider there is a grave danger that\u2014yet again\u2014the West is failing to see that country\u2019s real weaknesses. And once more we are being asked to conform to the dominant view that China is all powerful, and that its economy and military are superior to those of America, or soon will be.<\/p>\n

I detect the same inclination to accept self-serving claims that China\u2019s military technologies are superior to those of the US. For instance, claims are made that the latest Chinese submarines are quieter than those of the US, even though America has been at submarine quieting for over 70 years and China is a Johnny-come-lately. It is also claimed that China\u2019s DF-21D ballistic missile can destroy US aircraft carriers when we have no reliable data at all about the accuracy of China\u2019s missile systems against a moving target.<\/p>\n

We are supposed to be awed by the fact that China is now deploying multiple independently targetable nuclear warheads for its intercontinental ballistic missiles, which was a technology the Soviet Union developed in 1975 for its SS-18 ICBMs. And, contrary to the breathless claims that China\u2019s recent testing of a fractional orbital bombardment system was unprecedented, the Soviet Union deployed 18 FOBS missiles more than 50 years ago (between 1971 and 1979) that could deliver their warheads into low-earth orbit and attack the US from its unprotected south.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s economic and military growth have been truly amazing over the past two decades, while America\u2019s back has been turned in Afghanistan and the Middle East, but the fact is that China is not yet a military superpower like the former USSR.<\/p>\n

We urgently need much more considered and cautious studies about the pros and cons of China\u2019s emerging power. For this to be credible in terms of formulating the China threat assessment, we need to see deeply expert analysis about the strengths and weaknesses not only of China\u2019s military power but also of its demographics, corruption and pollution challenges, as well as informative studies of domestic turmoil and the party\u2019s reaction to Xi Jinping\u2019s growing dictatorship.<\/p>\n

And we need to remember that Beijing spends as much on internal security as on external defence, which should tell us a lot.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, China has no experience whatsoever of fighting modern warfare. And when we proclaim that the Chinese leadership believes this or that, we need to acknowledge that, as with the former Soviet Union, we have no intelligence sources in Beijing\u2019s Politburo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month marks 30 years since the USSR collapsed voluntarily. It\u2019s rare in world history that such a militarily powerful empire disappears without going to war. The Soviet Union had 12,000 strategic nuclear warheads, 260 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":167,"featured_media":69238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,1143,2364,746],"class_list":["post-69174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-great-powers","tag-military-capability","tag-soviet-union"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe China threat and lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-china-threat-and-lessons-from-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The China threat and lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This month marks 30 years since the USSR collapsed voluntarily. 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