The Pentagon isn’t the only one learning lessons from Desert Storm. The Soviets have taken their own microscope to the war. NEWSWEEK has obtained a Defense Intelligence Agency translation of a “Soviet Analysis of Operation Desert Storm,” apparently prepared by Soviet military officials in Moscow and Baghdad. Pentagon sources say a Soviet officer attending a recent Harvard University seminar gave a copy of the report to the seminar’s organizers, who passed it along to the Defense Department.
The report reveals that the Soviet military kept close tabs on the force it now may never fight. The 78-page study, complete with maps of American and Iraqi troop dispositions, says the U.S. Army conducted “more than 150 exercises” at American bases to prepare for battle. And by Moscow’s count, each U.S. soldier consumed “76 liters per day” of water in the desert. The report grudgingly gives the Pentagon high marks. Its command and control and “large-scale transport movements” were “highly effective.” But there are caveats: “one should not exaggerate the capabilities of the new weapons.” Other assessments:
The Soviets appeared dumbfounded that Bush ended the war so soon and let Saddam get away with part of his Army intact. Their explanation: faulty intelligence must have “deceived the higher political leadership” on “Iraq’s combat potential, which led to adoption of incorrect decisions.”
The Soviets sometimes assigned more prowess to the Pentagon than it deserved. Before the ground war started, Schwarzkopf’s deputy, Lt. Gen. Calvin Waller, blurted out to reporters that the allies weren’t yet ready to attack. The Soviet report concludes that this was part of a massive deception campaign in which “a special group of journalists was set up” to feed false information to Iraq.
Moscow believed that “one of the most important missions” of the American air war was targeting Saddam himself. But the Soviets concluded this must have been more of a psychological operation against the dictator than a real assassination attempt because the mission “was illuminated in too much detail in the open press.”
The report is thin-skinned about criticism of Soviet weapons the Iraqis used in the war. It claims that Moscow’s best equipment wasn’t fielded and what was used was in the hands of incompetents. Talk about “defeat” of Soviet arms “is a premeditated propaganda trick by the West” to create the impression “that we are not so strong.”
The bottom line on America’s victory in Desert Storm? “In our view this euphoria is illusory and dangerous,” the report concludes, particularly if Washington thinks “that all problems can be solved by military force.” That’s sound advice, even if it did come from our old enemy.
