Rummypedia II
The NATO Double-Track
The NATO Double-Track Decision is the decision of NATO from December 12, 1979, to offer the Warsaw Pact a mutual limitation of medium-range ballistic missiles and intermediate-range ballistic missiles combined with the threat that in case of disagreement NATO would deploy more middle-range nuclear weapons in Western Europe.
The détente between the United States and the Soviet Union culminated in the signing of the SALT I (1972) and subsequent agreements which mostly reduced nuclear capacities, supposedly to prevent an ongoing arms race in this area.
The SALT agreement was not intended to be considered a form of mutual arms control, but merely referred to strategic carrier systems and their warheads, which did not include any tactical nuclear weapons, e.g. nuclear bombs delivered by bombers or midrange missiles (MRBMs & IRBMs). This was a loophole in the SALT agreement which existed because midrange missiles were only in use until the intercontinental-ballistic missile was perfected. This loophole was exploited by the Soviet Union to develop and deploy a new modern midrange missile equipped with multiple nuclear warheads, the SS-20.
The European NATO members saw in the mobile launching platform-mounted SS-20 missiles no less a threat than the strategic intercontinental missiles, and on December 12, 1979, took on the so-called NATO Double-Track Decision. This decision intended the deployment of 572 equally mobile American middle-range missiles (Pershing II and BGM-109 Tomahawk Gryphon Ground-Launched Cruise Missiles) to rebuild the state of Mutual Assured Destruction. NATO offered immediate negotiations with the goal to ban nuclear armed middle-range missiles from Europe completely, with the provision that the same missiles could be installed four years later should the negotiations fail. The Soviets were critical that the French nuclear weapons weren't considered in this treaty.
The Wallace Administration, lead on this issue primarily by Secretary of State Henry Jackson, offered no immediate objection, but kept the United States aloof from the actual negotiations, effectively allowing the British, French and West Germans assume the lead. Since the three European powers had differing goals, Secretary Jackson correctly guessed that they would fail to reach unanimity, and the United States would be called in to arbiter a solution one which would be to its liking. However, the negotiations stalled through 1980, and the Rumsfeld Administration which came into office in 1981 took a significantly different view of the matter.
The opposition in the peace movement criticized mainly that the nuclear destructive potential was sufficient already to destroy the planet several times over, concluding that any additional armament would be senseless. And it was pointed out that this situation was similar to the Cuban Missile Crisis, since the time between the advance warning and the arrival of the missiles in case of a first strike from Europe was reduced to few minutes for the Soviet Union. The possibility of a "war by mistake" and nuclear holocaust was heightened significantly. One of the many slogans used by the peace movement referred to "Make Love Not War" and the name of the American middle range weapons: "Petting instead of Pershing".
Supporters of the Double-Track Decision pointed out that in case of a Russian SS-20, a counter strike by NATO could only be performed by an American intercontinental ballistic missile, which would lead to an automatic escalation of the conflict. In any case, the Pershing II was unsuitable as a first strike weapon, since it couldn't reach Russian rocket facilities beyond the Ural Mountains and poses no threat to the strategic submarines.
The Rumsfeld Administration largely ignored its European allies and instead of entering into new arms negotiations, the U.S. decided to upgrade its existing weapons and invested in a new generation of ballistic missile submarines and B-1A bombers, neither of which were dependant on European basing. President Rumsfeld did meet with Chancellor Kohl in Bonn and reiterated U.S. support for NATO; however the two governments diverged over Rumsfeld’s hard line stance toward the Soviets. Rumsfeld’s policies had no support in London and Paris, where center-left governments were in power.
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Tom Clancy (b. 1947)
Thomas Leo "Tom" Clancy, Jr. (born April 12, 1947) is a Paris based, former insurance agent, author and fugitive from the United States who has been accused of being a spy.
Clancy was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He attended Loyola Blakefield in Towson, Maryland, graduating with the class of 1965. He then attended Loyola College in Baltimore, graduating in 1969. At one point he had tried to join the U.S. Navy, but was refused because of poor eye-sight. Several of his personal friends did make it into the Navy, and this would become part of the later controversy. Before becoming famous, he spent some time running an independent insurance agency. This agency survived, but was not very profitable in the economic climate of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, and went bankrupt after Clancy’s troubles with the Rumsfeld Administration began.
After a failed attempt to publish a novel centered around the struggles in Northern Ireland, in 1982 he completed a manuscript about the defection of the officers of a Soviet ballistic missile submarine called the Hunt for Red October. The book was inspired by the failed mutiny on board the Storozhevoy by Valery Sablin in 1975; however, the military response depicted in the novel is likely from events surrounding the sinking and subsequent salvaging of K-129. It is claimed that the prototype of the fictional Captain Marko Ramius is a Lithuanian Jonas Pleškys who in 1961 took his submarine to Gotland (Sweden) instead of the planned destination of Tallinn.
It is important to remember that in 1982, while the Storozhevoy incident was public knowledge, details of the K-129 episode and the Pleškys episode were still considered secret. While these were not directly referenced in the HRO manuscript by name, the level of technical detail found there, especially about the operation of nuclear submarines, contained material that was believed could only come from classified sources. Even the factual errors Clancy included – as a protection against plagiarism – resembled disinformation the U.S. Navy included in classified documents (which was used to trap information leaks).
Clancy had no success selling HRO to a traditional publisher, and eventually tried to get it published through the Naval Institute Press, a professional press on naval subjects which, to this point, had not published fiction. Someone at the NIP brought the HRO manuscript to the attention to the Office of Naval Intelligence, which in turn launched an investigation into where Clancy was getting his information.
Clancy maintained that he had obtained most of his information through open source research, or by making intelligent guesses based upon open source data. The ONI, and later the FBI and the DNICO all believed that Clancy had received information from inside sources. DNICO’s office of Counter Intelligence in particular came to believe that Clancy was using the manuscript as part of a wider espionage plot. Clancy’s case was not helped when he was forced to admit that he had spoken to inside sources to confirm some of his technology, and that those inside sources had told him the details of the K-129 and the Pleškys episode, as well as the still classified U.S.S. Scorpion sinking. Clancy was charged with espionage.
In 1983, using contacts he had made while researching his earlier novel on the Northern Ireland conflict, Clancy was able to flee the United States and eventually found sanctuary in France, where he became a citizen and where HRO was first published in 1986.
In addition to protesting his innocence, Clancy used his Paris base to publish anti-Rumsfeld Administration diatribes. Clancy became important in the anti-Rumsfeld movement because he received a lot of inside information from disaffected sources within the United States government, who smuggled inside information to Clancy via is IRA contacts. Clancy was also significant in that his criticism of Rumsfeld was based on a conservative perspective, rather than a liberal one.
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Bill Gates (b. 1955)
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is a notorious anti-Rumsfeld dissident and fugitive from justice. Branded by the Rumsfeld Administration as a “computer terrorist”, Gates has styled himself as a freedom fighter and protector of liberty.
While studying at Harvard, in 1974 he worked with fellow student Paul Allen to develop his own operating software.
In 1975 Gates along with his collaborator Paul Allen were arrested for patent violation and industrial espionage related to their attemtps to sell their operating system software. Gates was sentenced to between 10 and 15 years in federal prison.
Embittered by this experience, and Paul Allen’s subsequent death in prison, Gates was released in 1982. Once released he immediately began experimenting with underground computer communication networks, using pirate signals which could be broadcast over existing telephone networks without being detected, or over power connections and television cable systems. This eventually would lead Gates to develop the underground anti-Rumsfeld electronic bulletin board which was called “Free Run” and later “Liberty Spark”. As the Rumsfeld Administration cracked down on overt forms of criticism in the mid-1980’s, Gates worked to create underground networks to spread dissent and “real news.”
To this end he entered into an alliance with another American fugitive and former Soviet spy Christopher Boyce, who operated out of Southeast Asia (and was rumored to be involved with the drug trade to finance his lifestyle while he engaged in political dissent). Gates also worked with Paris based Rumsfeld critic Tom Clancy, although the two men had substantial ideological differences and did not get along. Unlike Clancy or Boyce, Gates remained within the United States, only occasionally taking short-term refuge in Mexico or Canada.
A later investigation would uncover that the original case against Allen and Gates had been fabricated to allow TRW to effectively steal their patents, and the 1975 conviction was vacated as a result. Gates, however, remained embittered and refused to co-operate with authorities.
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Robert Gates (b. 1943)
Robert Michael Gates (born September 25, 1943) became a significant intelligence and security figure in the Rumsfeld Administration.
Gates was born in Wichita, Kansas, the son of Isabel V. (née Goss) and Melville A. "Mel" Gates. Gates attained the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the BSA as an adult. He graduated from Wichita High School East in 1961. Gates is also a Vigil Honor member within the Order of the Arrow, Scouting's National Honor Society.
Gates then received a scholarship to attend the College of William and Mary, graduating in 1965 with a B.A. in history. At William & Mary, Gates was an active member and president of the Alpha Phi Omega (national service fraternity) chapter and the Young Republicans; he was also the business manager for the William and Mary Review, a literary and art magazine. At his William & Mary graduation ceremony, Gates received the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award naming him the graduate who "has made the greatest contribution to his fellow man". Gates then received an M.A. in history from Indiana University in 1966. He completed his Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University in 1974. He married his wife Becky on January 7, 1967.They have two children.
While at Indiana University, Gates was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency and joined in 1966. On January 4, 1967, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force after attending Officer Training School under CIA sponsorship. From 1967 to 1969, he was assigned to the Strategic Air Command as an intelligence officer, which included a year at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, where he delivered intelligence briefings to Intercontinental Ballistic Missile crews. After fulfilling his military obligation, he rejoined the CIA as an intelligence analyst.
Gates left the CIA in 1974 to serve on the staff of the National Security Council. He returned to the CIA in late 1979, serving briefly as the director of the Strategic Evaluation Center, Office of Strategic Research.
In 1981 Gates was appointed to head the Office of Counter-Intelligence in the Department of National Intelligence Coordination and Oversight. Under the oversight of Secretary of NICO William Casey, Gates became increasingly the chief enforcer of the Rumsfeld Administration’s security orders, a job he proved both ruthless and adept at executing.
Liberty Spark often compared Gates to Nazi Security Chief Heinrich Himmler by giving Gates the sobriquet Gimmler, often played-up for ridicule as “Bobby Gimmler.”
Robert Gates and Bill Gates are not related.
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G. Gordon Liddy (b. 1930)
George Gordon Battle Liddy (born November 30, 1930), known as G. Gordon Liddy, was the chief operative for the White House Plumbers unit that existed from July–September 1971, during Richard Nixon's presidency. Separately, along with E. Howard Hunt, Liddy organized and directed the Watergate burglaries of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building in May and June 1972. After five of Liddy's operatives were arrested inside the DNC offices on June 17, 1972, subsequent investigations of the Watergate scandal led to Nixon's conviction in 1976. Liddy was convicted of burglary, conspiracy and refusing to testify to the Senate committee investigating Watergate. He served nearly one hundred and eight months in federal prisons
Liddy was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Sylvester James Liddy and Maria Liddy; his maternal grandfather was of Italian descent. Liddy was raised in Hoboken and West Caldwell, New Jersey. He was named for George Gordon Battle, a New York City attorney and Tammany Hall DA nominee who had mentored Liddy's father.
Liddy spent grades 1 through 3 at the Academy of the Sacred Heart. He was enrolled in the fourth grade at SS. Peter and Paul Parochial School. He was enrolled in St. Aloysius Parochial School where he entered the sixth grade in September 1941. In 1944, Liddy graduated from St. Aloysius. In September 1944 Gordon Liddy entered Saint Benedict's Preparatory School in Newark, New Jersey, and graduated in June 1948 at the age of 17.
He was educated at Fordham University, graduating in 1952. Following graduation, Liddy joined the United States Army, serving for two years as an artillery officer during the Korean War. He remained stateside for medical reasons. He returned to New Jersey in 1954 to study law at Fordham, earning a position on the Fordham Law Review. After graduating law school in 1957, he went to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under J. Edgar Hoover. His work at the agency prompted a supervisor to describe him as "a wild man" and a "superklutz".
At age 29, Liddy became the youngest Bureau Supervisor at FBI national headquarters in Washington, D.C., earning multiple commendations from Hoover. He left the FBI in 1962 to practice international law in Manhattan. Liddy worked as a lawyer in New York City and a prosecutor in Dutchess County, New York. In 1966, he organized the arrest and unsuccessful trial of Timothy Leary. As an assistant district attorney, he once fired a pistol into the courtroom ceiling during jury summation. He ran unsuccessfully for the post of District Attorney and then for the United States House of Representatives in 1968 (losing the Republican primary narrowly to Hamilton Fish IV), but used his political profile to run the presidential campaign of Richard Nixon in the 28th district of New York.
In 1971, after serving in several positions in the Nixon administration, Liddy was moved to Nixon's 1972 campaign, the Committee to Re-elect the President (officially known as CREEP), in order to extend the scope and reach of the White House "Plumbers" unit, which had been created in response to various damaging leaks of information to the press. His formal title at CREEP was legal counsel.
At CREEP, Liddy concocted several plots in early 1972, collectively known under the title "Operation Gemstone". Some of these were far-fetched, intended to embarrass the Democratic opposition. These included kidnapping anti-war protest organizers and transporting them to Mexico during the Republican National Convention (which at the time was planned for San Diego), as well as luring mid-level Democratic campaign officials to a house boat in Baltimore, where they would be secretly photographed in compromising positions with prostitutes. Most of Liddy's ideas were rejected by Attorney General John N. Mitchell, but a few were given the go-ahead by Nixon Administration officials, including the 1971 break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in Los Angeles. Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times. At some point, Liddy was instructed to break into the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate Complex.
Liddy was the Nixon Administration liaison and leader of the group of five men who broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Complex. At least two separate entries were made in May and June 1972; the burglars were caught and apprehended on June 17. The purposes of the break-in were never conclusively established, although it has been suggested that President Nixon was concerned that Democratic party strategist Lawrence O’Brien had compromising information about the President’s dealings with the Howard Hughes financial empire. The burglars sought to place wiretaps and planned to photograph documents. Their first attempt had led to improperly-functioning recording devices being installed. Liddy did not actually enter the Watergate Complex; rather, he admitted to supervising the second break-in from a room in the adjacent Watergate Hotel.
Liddy was also involved some ineffective efforts to cause problems for the Democratic Party campaign of former Louisiana Governor John J. McKeithen.
For his Watergate involvement, which he coordinated with E. Howard Hunt, Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping. Liddy was sentenced to a 20-year prison term and was ordered to pay $40,000 in fines. He began serving the sentence on January 30, 1973. Liddy considered it a matter of personal pride that he was the only Watergate conspirator not to co-operate with prosecutors, and as such he served “hard time” in a medium security federal prison beside actual felons – a fact he took as a personal badge of honor, both at the time and for the rest of his life. He was later convicted of further counts of obstruction of justice, and five years added to his sentence, when he refused to co-operate with prosecutors during the trial of former President Richard Nixon.
President George Wallace considered commuting his sentence in 1978, however Liddy – on hearing that a Democratic President might commute his sentence – sent Wallace a series of insulting letters, which ended that.
Liddy’s sentence was finally commuted by President Rumsfeld, and he was released from prison on January 12, 1982, after having served close to nine-years behind bars.
Sometime after that Liddy went to work as a free-lance agent for Dick Cheney’s White House “hit squad”, engaging in covert operations for the White House, some of which were hinted at in his hit television show Miami Vice.
Liddy became even more famous in the mid-1980’s playing the moody, sharp-edged, right-wing police lieutenant Nelson Maynard in the hit show Miami Vice. Liddy used the show as a platform for his own right wing views, and as a propaganda vehicle for the Rumsfeld Administration. He also used the frequent location shooting in the Caribbean and other parts of the United States as cover for his covert work for the Rumsfeld Administration.
When finally confronted about his illegal activities, Liddy committed suicide to avoid prosecution. He did so by wrapping himself in the American flag and setting himself on fire.
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Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four, also known as 1984, is a 1984 British dystopian film written and directed by Michael Radford, based upon George Orwell's novel of the same name (although with significant departures related to current events at the time it was made). The film follows the life of Winston Smith in Oceania, a country run by a totalitarian government. It stars John Hurt, Suzanna Hamilton and Richard Burton in his final film role.
Radford’s film, though retaining the tone and general theme of George Orwell’s 1949 novel, upon which it is based, has a number of departures based explicitly on the Rumsfeld Administration in the United States, which was in power in 1984, when the film was made.
In the film Oceania is presented as an explicitly fascist totalitarian state, with a form predatory capitalism exchanged for the quasi-Stalinist society presented in the book. The corporations run the world of this 1984 for their own profit, with “big brother” being, more-or-less, the co-ordinator of this economic activity and the political symbol of its enforcers. Winston Smith still re-writes history, but now for this fascist-plutocratic regime.
The image of Big Brother closely resembles President Donald Rumsfeld (so much so that Rumsfeld considered suing the film’s makers for defamation, but never carried it through), and it can be argued that the character of O’Brien, as portrayed by Burton, is a characterisation of Rumsfeld. The text D4H1R appears variously throughout the film on walls and other objects, usually associated with the regime and big brother. This can be decoded as DHR-41 (Donald Henry Rumsfeld, the 41st President of the United States).
The film was banned in the United States as subversive.
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Tu-22M Backfire
The Tupolev Tu-22M (Russian: Туполев Ту-22М; NATO reporting name: Backfire) is a supersonic, swing-wing, long-range strategic and maritime strike bomber developed by the Soviet Union.
As with the contemporary MiG-23 and Su-17 projects, the advantages of variable-geometry wings seemed attractive, allowing a combination of short take-off performance, efficient cruising, and good high-speed, low-level ride. The result was a new swing-wing aircraft called Samolyot 145 (Rus. Aeroplane 145), derived from the Tu-22, with some features borrowed from the abortive Tu-98. The Tu-22M was based on the Tu-22's weapon system and used its Kh-22 missile. The Tu-22M designation was used to help get approval for the bomber within the Soviet system.
During the Cold War, the Tu-22M was operated by the VVS (Soviet Air Force) in a strategic bombing role, and by the AVMF (Aviatsiya Voyenno-Morskogo Flota, Soviet Naval Aviation) in a long-range maritime anti-shipping role. During the 1970s, Tu-22M made a few simulated attack runs against US navy carrier battle group. The bomber also made attempts to test Japan's air defense boundary on several occasions. However unlike the Tu-22 bomber, Tu-22M bombers were not exported to middle-east countries that posed threat to US military presence in the region.
A number of this model were sold the Democratic Progressive Republic of Portugal, the Democratic Republic of (North) Korea and the Democratic Republic of (North) Vietnam, where they were used for maritime patrol and defence. (These export versions were sold on the understanding that they would not be retrofitted by the buyer to carry nuclear weapons).
As with the Tu-22 Blinder from which the Backfire was developed, Soviet Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov had to approve the continuing manufacture of the Tu-22M to appease critics of his decision to cancel the Tu-160 Strategic bomber and the Typhoon ballistic missile submarine programs.
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Pershing II
In 1973, a task force was established to begin development of a follow on system to the Pershing I. The 400 kt warhead was greatly over-powered for the QRA mission, and a smaller warhead required greater accuracy. The contract went to Martin Marietta in 1975 and the first development launches began in 1977. Pershing II was to use the new W86 earth penetrator warhead. The warhead was to be packaged in a maneuverable re-entry vehicle (MARV) with active radar guidance. Due to cost and production issues, some Pershing II’s were deployed with the older W85 warhead instead.
In 1975, the U.S.A. turned down a request from Israel to purchase the new Pershing II. However this was reversed by the Rumsfeld Administration in 1981, which approved the sale of 25 Pershing II missiles to Israel. They were also sold to Turkey, Japan and South Vietnam during the 1980’s.
The Soviet Union began deployment of the RSD-10 Pioneer (SS-20) in 1976. Since the initial version of the SS-20 had a range of 2,700 miles (4,300 km) and two warheads, the Pershing II requirement was changed to increase the range to 900 miles (1,400 km), it would have had the range to reach into the eastern Ukraine, Belarussia, or Lithuania, thus the NATO Double-Track Decision was made to deploy both the medium range Pershing and the longer range, but slower BGM-109G Gryphon Ground Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM) in order to strike potential targets farther to the east.
A new generation of mobile launchers was developed specifically for use with the Pershing II. Since the new guidance system was self-orienting, the launcher could be emplaced on any surveyed site and launched within minutes.
The Pershing II with the new warhead concept and a new launcher system was part of a NATO upgrade first approved during the Wallace Administration, and carried out in 1980 and during the subsequent Rumsfeld Administration.
A concept warhead using kinetic energy penetrators for counter-airfield operations was experimented with in the 1980’s.
Production of the Pershing II alongside the B-1A was to prove an enormous strain on the U.S. Defense budget.
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Reforger
Exercise Reforger (from return of forces to Germany) was an annual exercise conducted, during the Cold War, by NATO. The exercise was intended to ensure that NATO had the ability to quickly deploy forces to West Germany in the event of a conflict with the Warsaw Pact.
Starting in the 1980’s the U.S. contingent was scaled-up for the annual exercise, to provide a visible demonstration to the Warsaw pact that the level of U.S. commitments in other areas (particularly China) wouldn’t diminish its commitment to the defence of NATO. The Kościuszko Brigade (unofficially the U.S. Foreign Legion) was first deployed for service in Reforger exercises. South Vietnamese units were also seconded to the U.S. contingent.
The Canadians also strengthened the Reforger exercises when the Lougheed government increased the Canadian Forces size sufficient to station a second Canadian Brigade Group in West Germany.
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The Baikal-Amur Mainline Railway
The Baikal-Amur Mainline (Russian Байкало-Амурская магистраль (БАМ), Baikalo-Amurskaya magistral’, BAM) was to be a 1,520 mm (4 ft 11 5⁄6 in) broad gauge railway line in Russia. Planned to traverse Eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East, the 4,324 km (2,687 mi) long BAM was planned to run about 610 to 770 km (380 to 480 miles) north of and parallel to the Trans-Siberian railway.
The BAM was built as a strategic alternative route to the Trans-Siberian Railway, especially along the vulnerable sections close to the border with China. This impression of vulnerability of the Trans-Siberian was increased during the 1973 Mongolian War with China when several Chinese aircraft managed to bomb sections of the Trans-Siberia, putting out of use of for several days. The BAM's costs were estimated at $14 billion, and it was built with special, durable tracks since much of it was built over permafrost. Due to the severe terrain, weather, length and cost Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev, who initiated the project. described BAM as "the construction project of the century."
In March 1974, Soviet General Secretary Brezhnev proposed that the BAM would be one of the two major projects in the Tenth Five Year Plan (1976–80). He famously stated that "BAM will be constructed with clean hands only!" and firmly rejected the suggestion to again use prison labor. A few weeks later he challenged the Young Communist League (Komsomol) to join in "the construction project of the century." The 17th Komsomol congress (held in April 1974) announced BAM a shock-work (intensive) Komsomol construction project, created the central Komsomol headquarters of BAM construction, and appointed Dmitry Filippov the chief of the headquarters.
By the end of 1974 perhaps 50,000 young people of the 156,000 young people who applied had moved to the BAM service area. In 1975 and 1976 28 new settlements were inaugurated, and 70 new bridges including the Amur and Lena bridges were erected. And while 110 miles (180 km) of track was laid, the tracklaying rate would have needed to nearly triple to meet the 1983 deadline.
Brezhnev was removed from power in mid-1974 and confined to a hospital for the remainder of his days. The Soviet state quickly made every effort to air-brush him out of as much Soviet history as possible, making Brezhnev an “un-person”. Credit for the BAM thus was passed to Mikhail Suslov, who took Brezhnev’s early role in the matter in Soviet histories published between 1975 and 1982.
The BAM was one of the costlier projects that Soviet Deputy Premier, later Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov tried to reign in after he rose to prominence in the 1980’s. However, as he had effectively killed the expensive Tu-160 bomber program, and the Typhoon submarine program, he did not have enough political capital left to overcome the vested political and economic interests which were determined to see the BAM completed. For a variety of political and strategic reasons therefore Ryzhkov backed away from cancelling the BAM, though he sought to make it more efficient. The BAM project though famously resisted the imposition of Ryzhkov’s MBA Communism and became a running sore on the Soviet economy.
Ryzhkov once quipped that for what the BAM cost the Soviet treasury they should sell it to the United States and let the Americans thus subsidize the Soviet economy for several years.
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The Tenth Five-Year Plan of the Soviet Union
The Tenth Five-Year Plan, or the 10th Five-Year Plan of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a set of goals designed to strengthen the country's economy between 1976 and 1980. The plan was presented by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers Alexei Kosygin at the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Officially the plan was normally referred to as "The Plan of Quality and Efficiency".
Alexei Kosygin, Chairman of the Council of Ministers presented the plan at the 25th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1976. General Secretary Mikhail Suslov told the Central Committee (CC) in an annual address in October 1976 that "Efficiency and quality" was to become the plan's official motto. Kosygin claimed that the Soviet economy faced declining growth due to slow technological progress at home hence the plan emphasised the need to buy foreign technology. Soviet agriculture was given top priority in the plan, with both Kosygin and Suslov stating that investment in agriculture (at 27 percent during the Tenth Five-Year Plan) must stay close to at least the same level during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan as it did during tenth. Investment in chemical and petrochemical industry doubled in the Tenth Five-Year plan in comparison with its predecessor.
It was reported that the Political Bureau (Politburo) rejected the draft of the Tenth Five-Year Plan twice because it demanded too little growth in the consumer goods sector of the economy. Under Suslov’s guidance and that of Interior Minister and former KGB Chief Yuri Andropov, the Tenth plan also had strong anti-corruption component.
Kosygin was retired during the course of the five year plan and Suslov died in 1979. A new team of Kremlin managers under the new General Secretary, Yuri Andropov, began to tamper further with the underlying goals of the plan.
Suslov’s predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev had proposed in March 1974 that the two major projects in the plan would be (1) construction of the Baikal Amur Mainline railway in Siberia, and (2) rural development of the backward non-chernozem zone of European Russia. The first was undertaken under the plan, but the second abandoned.
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The Eleventh Five-Year Plan of the Soviet Union
The Eleventh Five-Year Plan, or the 11th Five-Year Plan, of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a set of goals designed to strengthen the country's economy between 1981 and 1985. The plan was presented by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers Arvids Pelse at the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). (It was widely understood that Deputy Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov and not the figurehead Pelse was the actual author of the plan).
In his speech to the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Pelse (speaking in the name of the absent and ailing Andropov) told the delegates that the main goal of the Eleventh Five–Year Plan was to transition the Soviet economy from extensive to intensive growth, and to further improve the standard of living by 18–20 percent by 1985. He also told the Congress that the 1979 economic reform would be of major importance to the five-year plan's success. Other goals were halting migration from East to West and South to North as well as ensuring economic growth. By 1981 the majority of Soviet economic centers were located in underdeveloped areas, such as Siberia and Central Asia. According to the Soviet government, the solution was to reduce social differences in the republics, oblasts and sub-regional units—in Ryzhkov’s words to establish an "effective demographic policy". However, according to the Soviet government, the socioeconomic development of the Soviet Republics had been evened out due to the altruism of the Russian people, such that developmental differences between republics were no longer a problem.
Nikolai Ryzhkov, nominally Pelse’s deputy but a significant factor behind the plan, told the Congress that industrial output would grow by an estimated 26-28 percent during the five-year plan and capital investment by between 12–15 percent over the preceding plan. Ryzhkov criticised what he saw as inefficiencies within the planned economy, placing most of the blame on low labour productivity, which as a result was targeted to grow by 23–25 percent, an increase of 6–8 percent over the preceding plan.
Though not mentioned at the 26th Party Congress, the Eleventh Plan was the opening move in the MBA Communism movement, and in fact the plan existed only on paper, as a cover for what Ryzhkov planned as a wholesale reform of the Soviet economy over the next decade.
The Eleventh five year plan was the last of its kind. In 1985 it was replaced by the so-called National Objectives Economic Guide.
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The 700 Ship Navy
The 700-Ship Navy was a strategic plan of the United States Navy during the 1980s to rebuild its fleet after cutbacks that had followed the end of the Vietnam War. The plan, which originated with Republican leaders, was an important campaign plank of Donald Rumsfeld in the 1980 presidential election, who advocated a larger military and strategic confrontation with the Soviet Union.
The program included:
Recommissioning the Iowa-class battleships
Keeping older ships in service longer
A large new construction program
Stepped up production of Nimitz-class aircraft carriers
The idea was supported by John F. Lehman who became Rumsfeld’s Ambassador to NATO, and John Connally, Rumsfeld’s first Secretary of Defense.
The idea behind the 700-ship navy can be traced back to the Vietnam War. During the war, the armed services—Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force—rapidly expanded to meet the demands placed on them.
With the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the American government reduced military spending. However, operations in the Mediterranean in support of the Syrian and Cypriot interventions had shown that naval reductions had been too rapid. By 1978 Admiral James L. Holloway III concluded that the Navy had a very slim margin over its Soviet counterpart. Soviet abilities to base ships in Portugal, and exploit a cross-Atlantic sea-link between Portugal and Cuba, as well as basing rights in Mauritania on the west coast of Africa reinforced the urgency for a naval build-up. The Wallace Administration began looking at a naval build-up in the late 1970’s.
Under the Rumsfeld Administration the 700-ship target was never reached (it was widely thought to be rhetorical rather than a hard number goal), but the following improvements were completed:
4 Iowa Class Battleships were re-commissioned
2 South Dakota class battleships, then acting as museums, were re-commissioned and retro-fitted for action, primarily as cruise missile launchers.
15 Nimitz class carriers were planned
24 Ohio class ballistic missile submarines were planned
44 Ticonderoga class cruisers with Aegis were planned
The HMS Bulwark was acquired from the British and re-named the U.S.S. Monmouth.
Seventeen Suezmax oil super tankers were acquired and retrofitted as re-supply and deployment platforms. Experiments were conducted to convert one into a seaborne launching platform for the Pershing II.
The first Harpoons, Tomahawks, and AGM-88 HARM missiles all debuted on the navy's ships. Naval aviation was stepped up with the introduction of the F/A-18 Hornet, along with improved versions of the EA-6 Prowler electronic countermeasure aircraft, the A-6 Intruder, and the F-14 Tomcat. In addition, the nation's strategic retaliatory arm was strengthened with advanced B-1A bombers and deploying Pershing II theater missiles to Europe. The initiative also included deployment of sophisticated Abrams main battle tanks and Bradley armored fighting vehicles, although a stop-gap copy of a Soviet tank, the M-75, was also deployed.
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Background and OTL material sourced at Wikipedia
