campaign carried on by President Carter since 1977. Fearing another Hungarian style uprising, the Kremlin sets out to unite East Europe against the common enemy and humiliate the Americans.
Tothisend, Moscow stages a series of provocations, the most serious of which is a Soviet-inspired coup Saudi Arabia that tips the balance in OPEC towards the results in an oil embargo on the West.
Stabilise Although the Soviet and US navies clash in the Gulf, Moscow joins with the USA in a fresh round of detente after managing stabilise Europe.
But a few months later, in July 1985, civil war breaks out Yugoslavia. The Kremlin supports the pro-Soviet faction.
Ical surprising 'non-nuclear variant' itself.
The USA invades Yugoslavia -to defend 'human rights', With that move America has started World War Three.
Toremain suitably anti-Soviet, and no doubt to avoid offending American colleagues, Hackett not probe the motiyes behind this US initiative But an action such as invasion of Yugoslavia bound to lead to World War Three: it leaves the Warsaw Pact no choice but to invade West Germany in an effort to remove the threat of NATO from its borders.
On D-Day, 4 August 1985, the Pact announces its war aims. It will fight its wayto the Rhine. There it will halt and demand the disbandment NATO alliance. France will not be invaded, and nuclear weapons will not be used, except in retaliation.
Convoys If Western figures can be trusted, the Warsaw Pact has three times as many soldiers and tanks as NATO and about twice Wall However, this takes into account only the NATO forces stationed in Europe. The principal member of NATO is the and East America in What happens as the the Free world Is saved. of course. Hackett outcome depends, things, does welfare and the would be explains should • be spent.
1980s, the book adds. Retaliation Following the Pact the the West prepares military victory.
aircraft. Moscow war unthinkable, impossible. United States and in Hackett's war, quickly flies or convoys across the Atlantic the planes, tanks, and soldiers to make up the shortfall.
After a ferocious land, air, and sea battle lasting almost three weeks, the Pact concedes defeat and withdraws in good order. It's a close run thing, but insists that this happy among other a change in the moral climate in Britain between now and 1985. Herein lies the message of the book. Britain must cut back on social raise defence expenditure from 5 to 9 per cent of the Gross National Product, and the book in detal how the The USA must • re-introduce the draft in the early withdrawal, according to the WWIII scenenario, exploit Hackett would oppose an invasion of East Eutope at this point. It is sufficient to let the peoples of East Europe, together with the oppressed nationalities within the Soviet Union itself, see that the Red Army is not invincible. With that; they will revolt.
accelerates the centrifugal forces by its activities during the closing days of the war. In a last minute bid to persuade the US to recognise the assumption. It describes a future world war, fought largely conventional weapons, involving NATO, the Warsaw Pact, and their Soviet sphere of influence in East Europe, the Kremlin launches a single nuclear strike. Birmingham, England, is obliterated.
NATO retaliates by destroying Minsk, a city suitably situated not too far from the Polish border. Angered by Soviet unilateralism and keen to avoid nuclear attack, the governments of East Europe : and those of several Soviet republics (the Ukraine in the West and those bordering on China ir the East) now secede. The defeated Soviet troops are forced to leave East Europe, and the Warsaw Pact is at an end.
Hackett recognises workers of East Europe do not reject communism, tion. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact - together with the rolling back of Soviet . influence in Aimci Middle East — satisfies Sir John, who is writing his history in 1987, just after the event In Hackett's world, warfare ceases to be an apocalyptic or irrational act of mutual annihilation. The war is fought according to to say, in order to achieve limited and rational goals The outcome of war may alter the course of history, but it has nothing in common with genocidal destruction. In WWIII, Moscow fights to save its bureaucratic satellitestates and NATO to achieveits long cherished aim of breaking up the Warsaw Pact. Predicted Are the leaders advocating Hackett's scenario? Does the book reveal, for instance, the true meaning of SALT and Carter's human rights agitation?
Marxists have always said that if revolution does capitalism in the West, a Third World War is inevitable; though, of course they have never predicted when it will happen. In the strike.
conventional Hackett European defence'.
attack that the only Russian dominacurocommuttists Communist However, Clausewitz; that of West Europe.
Despite domination over 191r anc war West overthrow History, past, capitalism paperback. both. Perhaps this is one reason why revolution produced reaction among the hawks in the calling for the USA to knock out the USSR in a nuclear 'first The advocates of the non-nuclear variant. on the other hand, will want to bring forward the war things deteriorate further.
says little about the working class. advantage of prodding the Pact to invade West Germany is that NATO can present the war as one of 'national In August 1914, the European socialist leaders supported the imperialist war with the excuse that each country was defending itself from But NATO would do well to beware of. this historical precedent. Hackett, for example, placing no faith in the anti-Soviet declarations of the Italian Party inviting Russians into Italy. That is a move that could only lead to civil war. In France elsewhere the pro-imperialist position triumphs.
the fear of war, especially of nuclear attack, would be revolutionarv distur bances would break out in many parts The working class parties would have a duty to launch an insurrectionary bid for power and pull the armed forces out of NATO. Only reformist the working class invariably turns co revolution in time of war. The two greatest revolutionarv waves of th European working class - between 1923, and again between 1941 and 1947 — were brought on by We must make certain that nucka escalation is not the only danger that the NATO war-mongers have to take into account when making their plans for World War Three August 1985 published by Sidgwick & Jacksor 1978, at £7.45. Republished by Sple Books in September 1979, at £1. 75 l
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respective allies in Africa and the Middle East. DAVE BAILEY discusses this bestseller.
possession of nuclear weapons by both East and West makes another world A recent book, The Third World War: A Future History, undermines this