Rethinking the Unthinkable

By R. Z. Sheppard

How To Make War by James F. Dunnigan; Morrow; 442 pages; $14.50

Hold the butter. The annual cost of the world's guns and other implements of war, says James Dunnigan, is currently $700 billion and rising. The U.S.S.R., which has long stressed quantity over quality, will further mortgage its economic future if it hopes to catch up with the military technology of the West. The expensive problem facing the U.S. and its allies is that increased complexity of weapons usually means a decrease in reliability. Service rivalries and political pressure do not help. Getting the bugs out of new machinery may take years, a-which time the molds of obsolescence start to sprout. Dunnigan, author of The Complete Wargames Handbook, a consultant to the Defense Department and lecturer at U.S. service academies, has facts and figures in reserve. The Soviet Union puts 14% of its gross national product into arms. The U.S. spends 7% of its larger G.N.P., and Japan less than 2% of the earned wealth from its consumer-products society. By some inscrutable jujitsu of the defeated and the disarmed, Japan is winning the peace.

How to Make War is all the more chilling for including such bloodless assessments. A hybrid of manual and analysis, the book describes what warriors and their equipment can and cannot do. Dunnigan is no recruiting sergeant. Details of ground, air and sea operations, nuclear and chemical capabilities and logistics are rendered in a neutral tone that amounts to wry understatement on human nature. On the standard of living at the front: "It is very low. The overriding goal is not to get hit by flying objects." On looting: "Arming a man still seems to change his concepts of property rights."

Basically, the author handles the elements of warfare as a physician would examine parts of the human body, without prudery or shame. The result could be one of the publishing sleepers of the season. For while most people do not like to openly discuss the facts of war, they are secretly fascinated by them. There is also the anxiety factor. Not since the nuclearwar shivers of the '50s, which peaked with the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, has there been so much discussion about the possibilities of global conflict.

Love it or leave it, war is culture at an elemental toolmaking level. Indeed, one can browse through this book as if it were an unimaginably well-stocked hardware store. Something in Chobham, the latest composite armor? Your enemy will probably have it too, so better pick up a "high explosive squash head" (HESH), which flattens against a tank before it explodes, sending out a shock wave that breaks up machinery and men. The list goes on; arrays of missiles, electronic and chemical nasties sweep over the reader in waves of gadget lust.

Modern does not always mean better. Dunnigan holds that artillery remains the most feared and efficient means of killing soldiers in the field. He notes that during the 1973 Middle East war, Arab forces fired 2,100 Russian-made antiaircraft missiles. They shot down 85 jets--but 45 belonged to Egypt and her allies. Lack of experience and skill with high-tech also showed up on the Iran-Iraq killing grounds where both sides used 1970s weapons and 1917 tactics.

The superpowers cannot afford such indulgences. This, says Dunnigan, is particularly true for the Soviet Union. Despite vast quantities of men and materiel, the U.S.S.R. is believed by the author to be in a poor position for a prolonged stalemate. His reasons: a strained economy, naval bases that are awkwardly located, unreliable satellites, and equipment and maintenance that are generally inferior to those of the West. This is not especially good news, for if a Soviet blitzkrieg should fail, Dunnigan feels that Russian leaders might quickly resort to chemical and nuclear weapons.

All this death and destruction is logically projected in a spirit of gamesmanship. Yet How to Make War is far more than "Dungeons and Dragons" for grownups. One Dunnigan scenario of how World War III could come about touches on the irrational, which is history as it endlessly reveals itself: "A vicious circle develops as each side suspects the other of superior technical performance. Lacking any means to validate this performance, the claims become even more outrageous and expensive ... In Russia, where the spirit and practice of the Potemkin village (a false front, as in motion picture sets) still lives, the national mania for secrecy only makes the problem worse. The possibilities are endless, as is the expense. Even more dangerous is a national leader believing the illusions."

In fairness, there are enough illusions on both sides. The reality is that in the military world of acronyms, the last to be uttered would be MAD--mutually assured destruction. --By R.Z. Sheppard

Excerpt

"A successful attack is won before it begins. The norm is not enough time, not enough resources, not enough skill, not enough information. Remember, a defender can fire off a shot in relative safety ... The attackers may eventually get him but not before they've had a few more casualties. In an attack the quality of the troops is the critical factor. Poorly trained, poorly led troops often do not . . . attack against any opposition, and when they do, they take heavy casualties. Some things never change and this is one of them. Reckless bravery does not help much, as it just gets more attackers killed

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