Memorandum submitted by Professor Beatrice Heuser

Military Exercises, Accidents and Miscalculations

Summary

Since the late 1950s, NATO’s main concern has been the possibility of a war arising, not from deliberate choice on both sides, but by accident and miscalculation.  In the context of the Russian invasion of Georgia, and subsequently the annexation of Crimea and the presumably Russian-supported civil war in East Ukraine, the use by Russia of ‘maskirovka’ in the context of military exercises has been revived.  Moreover, both Russian and NATO or NATO-cum-partner) exercises have increased in number, and particularly on the Russian side also in numbers of military personnel participating.  A delicate balance might be emerging, between what is perceived to be needed on our and our partners’ side in terms of deterrence through demonstration of ability to defend against aggression, and provocation or giving the other side an excuse for purportedly defensive or even pre-emptive action.  This is a balance always in danger of being overturned by accident or miscalculation, a balance could yet result in catastrophe.

Lessons from the 1980s

It is known that during the Cold War, Moscow several times planned to use or actually used military exercises as a smokescreen to deploy troops for an invasion of a neighbouring countries.  Exercises of this sort took place along the Yugoslav frontier during the Tito-Stalin split and an invasion is known to have been planned for 1950.  The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was prepared in this way.  In the 1980s in particular, Rumania was reluctant to allow Soviet forces to pass through Rumanian territory for joint exercises with Bulgaria, and several times refused itself to take part in WTO exercises, presumably because it feared a repetition of what had happened in 1968. 

Indeed, exercises were of considerable significance during the very dangerous phase in East-West relations lasting from December 1979 until 1984, with its peak probably in 1983.  Warsaw Treaty Organisation (WTO) exercises tended to assume that NATO would use the cover of an exercise to launch a surprise attack on WTO territory.  This general fear of NATO led to WTO personnel monitoring Western movements nervously, and misinterpreting events.  Poignantly, scenarios of WTO exercises included that of NATO using an exercise to prepare an attack on the WTO.  This was the scenario of the WTO exercise Soyus 1983.  Soviet strategy, operational art and tactics devoted much attention to ‘maskirovka’, the art of disguising (‘masking’) the true intentions of one’s planned actions.  This tactic serves to deploy armed forces into a theatre of conflict in the guise of a military exercise.  The assumption that NATO might do the same was at the core of the Able Archer crisis of the autumn of that year:  it seems that WTO officers mistook a NATO command post exercise involving some aircraft for undercover preparations for a surprise nuclear attack on the USSR.  Famously, the shooting down of KAL007, mistaken by Soviet military for a Western military aircraft, in the night of 31 August/1 September 1983 must be understood against that background.

NATO planners, at least in the 1980s, assumed that NATO exercises were carefully monitored by the WTO.  They consciously used such exercises, including WINTEX exercises, in order to signal to the WTO what NATO’s doctrine for nuclear use was, and especially, what the rationale behind it was (namely, that NATO had no intention of attempting to conquer WTO territory and was exclusively concerned to terminate hostilities and ideally to restore the status quo ante).[1]  Leading officials and key officers of NATO countries were probably excessively confident that their signalling of peaceful NATO intentions, and yet of a determination to defend NATO territory if necessary (but by no means to attack the WTO) was unmistakeable, un-misunderstandable.  Given what we now know about the crisis of 1983, we thus know that this did not always work very well, as other factors influenced what the adversary perceived.  Everything suggests that the hawks in the Kremlin – mainly the Russian military leadership of the WTO – were capable wilfully or unwillingly to misinterpret this period.  This should make us modest about our abilities to ‘signal’ certain intentions unmistakeably to an adversary.[2]  Despite the eventual benign outcome, this episode, which took place against the background of many mutual small ‘exercise’ incursions into each other’s air and sea space, should serve us as a warning that the present events in and around the Western and South-Western parts of the Russian Federation and adjacent territory must be monitored carefully. 

Since the mid-1970s consensus has emerged in the West that the advance announcement of the place, timing, duration, and size of military exercises is a confidence and security building measure contributing greatly to international stability, something that seems desirable to us, as it confers a little more stability to any crisis.  This perception is not universally shared (nor was it always held throughout NATO). 

Thanks to the CSCE and later the OSCE, a certain degree of transparency was introduced, so that since the early 1980s, it has become standard procedure between NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organisation (WTO) to announce military exercises and their scope, and to invite observers from the other side.  This does not mean that all parties to such arrangement accepted them wholeheartedly; indeed, there is evidence that the WTO tried to circumvent this commitment by treating big exercises as multiple smaller exercises which fell under the threshold of exercises that had to be announced.  Nor was NATO entirely innocent in this regard.  Moreover, observers of some of these exercises gained the impression that they were shown only parts and given a distorted picture. This was accomplished by revealing only partially the purpose and design of an exercise, as well as its operational phasing and tactical execution, or by restricting the observation period or access to the exercise area.

So even after this practice had been introduced, extended WTO exercises (Zapad 81) held in the autumn of 1981 are said to have included preparations for a possible invasion of Poland.  The threat of this seems to have persuaded the Polish government to accept martial law, proclaimed in the presence in Warsaw of Soviet Marshal Kulikov, supreme commander of the WTO forces, and the military regime of Jaruzelski.  The pattern of this and similar events in the Cold War is strikingly similar to that of Russian exercises near Georgia in 2006 which rehearsed, and then 2008 which actually prepared the invasion (and indeed subsequently, although on those later occasions, about which Georgia protested, they did not lead to war) and along the borders of Ukraine in and since 2014.

Reassuring Allies and Partners

Besides being executed to deter aggression, exercises serve to take officers and officials in NATO’s International Staff, military organs, and in NATO member states concerned through procedures that might have to be followed in case of aggression.  They are designed to reassure allies and partners about NATO’s ability to organise comprehensive defence, and to put the required measures into practice if need be.  This has in the past had unexpected consequences. 

Thus civil defence exercises confronted members of the public with the horrors of nuclear war, and resulted in protests against ‘cynical’ government provisions such as triage and an insufficient number and capacity of nuclear shelters providing only for a select part of the population.[3]  (The fear of similar alienation led French governments never to opt for civil defence schemes and never to exercise them.)

On another level, some exercises such as WINTEX served to take officers and officials in NATO’s International Staff, subordinate military commands , and in NATO member states concerned through the procedure that would have to be followed to take and then implement key decisions with huge political implications.  This could have unexpected consequences, however.  For example, in WINTEX 1989, against the scenario of a WTO attack on NATO territory, the British assumed the task to execute a first use of nuclear weapons against Soviet territory, assigning it to a Tornado.  This was supposed to reassure the NATO allies who might have been tempted to surrender in the face of a Warsaw Pact attack, if the USA did not come to their aid with nuclear weapons – thus the British reasoning.[4]  What happened, however, was that the West Germans brought the exercise to a premature close as they found nuclear use in that particular exercise context unacceptable – to the great surprise of the British ‘players’, and precipitating something of a crisis in intra-alliance relations. 

Previous NATO exercises had also created intra-alliance friction where they were supposed to show strength and result in deterrence.[5]  In 1990 NATO abandoned the planning and conduct of exercises positing a war with the Warsaw Pact and replaced by CMX which did not lack political sensitivity but much less so, of course, than the previous ones.  (The Warsaw Pact exercises wound up in 1990; plans for a last exercise involving German forces on East German territory was planned for early 1990, but never took place.) 

At least since 2009, Russia has reintroduced a nuclear element into some of its exercises.  In March 2013 it is supposed to have simulated nuclear use against Sweden in the context of an exercise in the Baltic.  Other scenarios are said to have included an invasion of Poland to create a land bridge to the isolated Kaliningrad Oblast that is part of Russian territory. 

The question inevitably arises within NATO today whether a nuclear dimension should again be included in an exercise now, and it is no doubt a subject of debate.  On the one hand that might increase deterrence.  On the other, it propels us back to configurations of the Cold War which were emphatically not as stable as some leading Western actors of those years like to think. 

Moscow now systematically accuses NATO members and partners of provocative actions and indeed actions that break international law, pointing to the NATO intervention in the Kosovo conflict in 1999, the US-led coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003, and indeed to Western exercises as reasons for Russian action.   In 2008 Russia explained its invasion by pointing to a joint US-Georgian exercise Immediate Response in which US forces were training Georgian forces for deployment in Iraq.  The annexation of Crimea was in part explained as a response to a supposed threat to Sevastopol arising from US exercises in the Black Sea. 

Conclusion

Today it seems that we are back to a game of ‘chicken’, in which Russian President Putin is banking on Western fearfulness of a military response, and exploiting crises, using exercises to feel the water, test possibilities, indeed to prepare aggression and destabilise regions where he would like to expand Russian authority (or even direct rule).  It is such instability that allows him to change the status quo in what he perceives to be Russia’s favour. 

And yet, even now, with most NATO countries no longer feeling vitally threatened by Russia, Putin is playing with fire. He is racking up hysteria on his own side, and Western reactions – thought by us to be merely deterrent – could once again lend themselves to dangerous misinterpretations, deliberate or mistaken.  Accidents and miscalculations may even now result in a situation that is unintended by either side. 

Much thought should be given to further measures that must be taken to avoid this.  The likelihood of such a development may be small, in the language of the last British National Security Strategy.  It is nevertheless the development we should most dread, as even now, with reduced nuclear arsenals on both sides, it might be the worst imaginable.

7 October 2015