Seablindness. Seth Cropsey
guided-missile cruisers, launched in the mid-1960s, were both comparable to American air-defense cruisers at the time and carried a wide variety of anti-air, anti-surface, and anti-submarine warfare combat systems. Nimble Soviet destroyers and frigates such as the Kashin- and Krivak-class surface combatants bristled with long-range anti-ship missiles and anti-submarine mines and torpedoes. By the late 1970s, the Soviets had begun work on a very short takeoff and landing aircraft carrier, similar to the United Kingdom’s Invincible-class anti-submarine warfare carriers, but with a heavier surface-to-surface armament.4
Still, Gorshkov’s pride was his submarines. According to Soviet naval doctrine, surface ships would engage air threats while undersea forces would shoulder the bulk of offensive action. By the late 1970s, the Soviet navy operated close to two hundred attack submarines, the majority of which were diesel electric.5 The Alfa-class—NATO’s designation—nuclear-powered submarine was the fastest in the world at the time of its construction in 1977. The Soviets also developed more than a dozen Charlie-class nuclear-powered submarines that carry cruise missiles, designed to stay at sea on extended patrols and attack NATO ships with their long-range missiles. The Soviet Oscar-class submarines, under construction at the end of the 1970s, were long-range, high-endurance guided-missile boats comparable to America’s.
By the early 1980s, the Soviet navy operated around 260 attack, cruiser, and guided-missile submarines, a fleet larger than the American submarine force at that time.6 Gorshkov’s navy supplemented its surface and subsurface fleet with substantial land-based naval aviation. A modified version of the Tu-95 Bear bomber was used for long-range reconnaissance. Strike aircraft included the Tu-22M Backfire bomber and Il-38 May anti-submarine warfare aircraft.7
In addition, Soviet strategic naval forces at that time included seventy ballistic-missile nuclear submarines (SSBNs) of varying types, the most advanced of which could slip undetected through the narrow passage between the Kola Peninsula and the main Russian land mass. The Yankee- and Delta-class SSBNs formed the backbone of the USSR’s sea-based deterrent force. Gorshkov assigned these boats to targets in North America, reserving European targets for the less-advanced Hotel- and Golf-class submarines.8 This choice eliminated the need for older, louder boats to transit the GIUK gap and increased the Soviet nuclear arsenal’s efficiency. The Soviet construction program of ten submarines per year between 1968 and 1977 facilitated this rapid increase in subsurface forces.
Amphibious capabilities were the one area that the Soviet navy neglected during the 1970s. Power projection was never the goal of Soviet sea control strategy; creating an extensive amphibious fleet would have been counterproductive. Nevertheless, Gorshkov initiated some modernization of amphibious capabilities, constructing three Ivan Rogov–class amphibious ships.9 These vessels could operate offshore, dispatching assault troops from a well deck, or discharge tanks and armored personnel carriers directly onto a beach in an opposed landing. Each ship could carry 520 marines and twenty-five tanks, or a maximum of fifty-three tanks and eighty armored personnel carriers. Even in amphibious capabilities, the Soviets were slowly catching up to the United States.
Gorshkov’s Soviet navy could not execute the same range of missions that Admiral Elmo Zumwalt’s U.S. Navy could during the 1970s, even before the Reagan buildup. However, the Soviet navy was more than capable of challenging the free use of critical sea-lanes by U.S. forces for transport and combat. At the same time, the U.S. Navy was shrinking as World War II ships were decommissioned, with the expectation that the administration and Congress would support replacing them with modern combatants.
1972–1980—THE USSR IN AFRICA AND LATIN AMERICA
As U.S. military power declined during the 1970s, America’s rivals became bolder, taking advantage of increasing volatility in the Middle East, Africa, and, later, Latin America. America’s withdrawal from Vietnam and its ensuing global reset had not decreased the range of its commitments, but it had emboldened its adversaries. A resurgent Soviet navy with a true global reach allowed the USSR to exert its influence on several continents. It helped shape Soviet foreign policy throughout the last two decades of the USSR’s existence, reinforcing Moscow’s stock in the Third World and its position as a global power.
Nixon’s presidency initiated the period of rapprochement with the USSR known as détente. This policy represented a shift toward a traditional balance-of-power diplomacy, with the goal of creating a tense but stable international environment. American military power would prevent the Soviet Union from expanding its dominance into Western Europe. But the Soviets would refrain from undue provocations globally in return for a relaxation of the West’s economic barrier against the Eastern Bloc. Simultaneously, Nixon and his successors pursued a strategic reset with China intended to safeguard American interests in the Pacific, while whipsawing the Soviets and raising questions about China’s reliability as a fraternal socialist partner.
For the first half of the decade, this policy was largely successful. Zumwalt’s slowly modernizing U.S. Navy remained dominant over its Soviet adversary, and American conventional and strategic forces in Europe deterred Soviet aggression. The State Department undertook arms control initiatives that produced arguable results.
Still, a host of factors undermined détente after 1975, resulting in increasing challenges to American power. The post–Vietnam War decline in American military power and the United States’s refocus toward Europe’s central front allowed adversaries to exploit openings in Africa and Latin America. Moreover, the relative economic strength of the United States compared to its allies, particularly Japan, had declined. The period of unquestioned American economic dominance ended simultaneously with America’s military drawdown after the Vietnam War.
Political and strategic reasons dictated the USSR’s decision to increase its influence in Latin America and Africa. Both continents were fertile grounds for postcolonial Marxist and nationalist movements, offering Soviet emissaries ideological access to various governments and rebel groups. Strategically, Soviet military planners recognized that the South Atlantic could influence NATO’s main line of communications. NATO might bottle up Russian submarines and surface combatants in such choke points as the GIUK gap, but Soviet naval forces deployed in Africa and Latin America would, at a minimum, tie down significant American assets in the South Atlantic and hold out the hope of distracting the United States from supplying its fellow NATO members during a central European conflict.
The Soviet Union began by targeting Latin America. Latin American stability has been a major U.S. interest since the 1820s. Putting pressure on the United States in this theater made obvious sense to Soviet strategic planners. Cuba became the linchpin of Soviet activities in Latin America. Cuba’s extensive revolutionary activities throughout the region gave the Soviet Union easy access to multiple guerrilla groups throughout Latin and South America. In return, the Soviet Union funneled huge quantities of arms to Castro’s regime, with arms shipments in 1981 reaching 63,000 tons.10 By 1980, Soviet military aid to Cuba alone was ten times the United States’s military assistance to the entirety of South and Central America.11
Nicaragua served as the other pillar of Soviet regional policy. Throughout the 1970s, the Soviet Union progressively increased its support for the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, or FSLN), a Marxist revolutionary group that sought to topple Nicaragua’s dictator Anastasio Somoza. Beginning in 1978, the Soviet-equipped and -trained FSLN escalated their attacks on government forces, leading to a full-scale civil war between the Somoza regime and the Sandinistas.12 Significant Soviet support allowed the Sandinistas to overthrow the regime and establish control of Nicaragua in July 1979. Not since 1959 had a country in the Western Hemisphere fallen to communist rule. The Soviet Union bankrolled the new Nicaraguan military, enabling it to grow to 45,000 men by the mid-1980s.13 Throughout Latin America, left-wing rebel groups and insurgencies increased their activities, typically with external Soviet backing. By 1980, the USSR supported two major communist regimes, a third friendly regime in Peru, and two insurgent groups in El Salvador and Costa Rica.14
In response to growing Soviet power, President Carter reactivated Operation Condor, the Department of State–Department of Defense–CIA program initiated by President