TNAG-0476-FCO40-541-Strength-of-garrison-in-Hong-Kong-1974 — Page 132

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Defence

13 MAY 1974

[MR. MASON.] Co-operation in Europe, in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, and in the talks on mutual and balanced force reductions. Their participation in these talks is, I am sure, very serious. I am confident that they, like us, wish to achieve reductions in the burden of defence expenditure while maintaining undiminished security. I hope that they, to, recognise the advan- tages of genuine détente. Mutual and balanced force reductions will necessitate mutual good will and patience. could be a move towards meaningful détente.

They

Both we in this country and the Soviet Union have everything to gain from put- ting behind us past disputes and establish- ing our relations on a basis of friendship, realism and co-operation. None the less, it would be wrong to ignore the military equation. As we saw six months ago in the Middle East, it can be as dangerous to close one's eyes to the facts of a military situation as to ignore political factors.

As Defence Secretary, I should be shrinking from my responsibilities if I did not ensure that full account was taken of the existence of the military threat. What are the facts about the threat? The Soviet Union continues to spend heavily on defence. Her different social structure allows her to devote much less to her service men-especially in the ranks-in pay, food, accommodation, support for the families, leave travel and so on, than we or our principal allies do for our Servicemen, whether volunteer or conscript. The Soviet Union can, as a result, spend a much larger proportion of its defence budget on equipment than is possible for any Western country.

In total, the Soviet Union is still spend- ing nearly 8 per cent. of its gross national product on defence compared to less than 7 per cent. in the United States. The absolute level of spending in the Soviet Union has been rising steadily from year to year, with very little price

inflation, and in 1974 will amount to the equivalent of about 80 thousand million United States dollars, roughly comparable to the current level of defence spending in the United States. I recognise, of course, that China must loom large in the Soviet Union's own calculations of her defence needs. But there is no evidence that Soviet forces deployed in

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central Europe have been reduced on that account.

spending over the past five years has been A significant feature of Soviet defence

the very large increase in outlays on military research and development and space. These have been rising at about 10 per cent. a year, and the Soviet Union may well now be spending nearly twice as much on military research and development and space activities as the United States.

Russia has achieved parity with the United States in strategic weapons-that is, the intercontinental and submarine- launched ballistic missiles and the long- range bombers. Also, in manpower and conventional weapons the Warsaw Pact's superiority over NATO is distinctly marked. The House should be under no illusaion about that. In Central

Europe the disparities favour the Warsaw Pact by about two and a half to one in tanks and about two to one in field guns and aircraft; and the Warsaw Pact has some 20 per cent. more soldiers than the alliance and some 30-40 per cent. more soldiers in fighting units. These dis- parities do not take into account the back-up forces stationed in the Soviet Union itself. Large and well-equipped Warsaw Pact forces are also deployed on NATO's flanks.

Comparisons by numbers alone do not give the whole picture. To take one example, there are differences between East and West in the equipment and combat effectiveness of army divisions. The Warsaw Pact has more main battle tanks, but NATO-at least at present- NATO's has more anti-tank weapons. tactical air forces, though smaller than the Warsaw Pact's, are in some cases of better quality. But the great strides the Warsaw Pact is making in modernising and re-equipping its forces are gradually reducing such advantages in quality as NATO possesses; and, compared with NATO, the Warsaw Pact forces have the

operational advantage of standardising almost wholly on one type of equipment -the Soviet pattern. This applies to tanks, artillery and small arms, and tac- tical aircraft, just to give a few examples.

We know, too, that in recent years the Soviet Union has emerged as a mari- time super-Power, with all that that implies, by developing a large, modern,