Chains of Command

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, from his autobiography, It Doesn’t Take a Hero; New York; Bantam Books, 1992 (reprinted with permission)—9 December 1990, C+ 124, 2100: Phoncon with the chairman [General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff]. The two leaders discussed the issue of a declaratory policy with regard to retaliation against biological or chemical attack. The chairman said he was pressing the White House to inform Tariq Aziz [Iraqi foreign minister] that we would use our “unconventional weapons” [quotes added] if the Iraqis use chemicals on us …

Adrian Karatnycky, Foreign Affairs Magazine, June 1992— … In their May [1992] meeting [Ukrainian president] Kravchuk and [U.S. President] Bush agreed on Ukrainian participation in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks agreement …

President Kravchuk demonstrated the depth of Ukrainian concern in late April [1992], when he announced the republic’s intention to seek Western security guarantees in exchange for scrapping Ukrainian nuclear arms …

… A free and pro-Western Ukraine would deprive a newly aggressive Russia of its capacity to reassert superpower control over its former satellites. Bolstering a strong pro-Western Ukrainian democracy and assisting a stable Ukrainian state, materially and technically, would not only benefit Ukrainians but the entire democratic West.

PEACE MOVES REMAIN FRUSTRATED AS DNIESTER, SOUTH OSSETIA CLASHES GO ON

06/28/92 Newsgrid News — MOSCOW (JUNE 28) DPA — Fighting continued Sunday in the Dniester and South Ossetia regions of Moldova and Georgia, where peace moves remained frustrated, local media reports said.

In the Dniester region, 16 people were reported killed and 21 wounded in clashes Sunday between Russian and Ukrainian forces on the one hand and Moldovan forces on the other, in defiance of the ceasefire agreed in Istanbul at the weekend by the presidents of Russia, the Ukraine, Moldova and Romania.

LOS ANGELES TIMES, 22 July 1992—About 60 Ukrainian crew members of a Black Sea Fleet patrol boat mutinied Tuesday, raising the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag and sailing to the Ukrainian port of Odessa to protest rough treatment by their Russian superiors.

… The mutiny served as a reminder that the Black Sea Fleet is a tinderbox, vulnerable to any spark of nationalism …

The incident came close to exploding in the morning when Russian Black Sea Fleet commanders … sent several ships and a seaplane to cut it off. Among the interceptors was the missile boat, Impeccable, carrying an assault team ready to board the boat and seize it.

AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY, 5 October 1992—Ukraine is seeking support from Western nations for an ambitious plan to complete the conversion of its defense industry to civilian production in three to four years.

Victor I. Antonov, minister for the military-industrial complex, said Ukraine is pursuing conversion “in a very radical manner.” More than 500 commercial programs have been created, mainly involving medical and agricultural equipment …

Unlike Russia, Ukraine has decided against a policy of selling arms abroad to keep factories open and generate hard currency, he said. Instead, Ukraine plans to retain only a small military technology base to support its army, converting all other enterprises to civilian production …

AIR FORCE MAGAZINE, Mary C. Fitzgerald, September & October 1992 [reprinted with permission] — Russian military leaders are currently focusing not only on creating the Russian armed forces but also on developing a new military doctrine for the 1990s and beyond. A draft of a new Russian doctrine was published recently in Military Thought, the main theoretical journal of Russia’s armed forces.

This new doctrine identifies two direct military threats to Russia: the introduction of foreign troops in adjacent states and the buildup of air, naval, or ground forces near Russian borders. In addition, a violation of the rights of Russian citizens and of persons “ethnically and culturally” identified with Russia in republics of the former Soviet Union is viewed as “a serious source of conflicts.”

… The 1990 doctrine held that nuclear war “will” be catastrophic for all mankind, while the 1992 doctrine holds that it “might” be catastrophic for all mankind … Russia now views limited nuclear warfighting as a possibility. These changes may stem from the growing proliferation of nuclear weapons on Russian borders, which increases the possibility of a limited nuclear conflict.

… [General Rodionov, chief of the General Staff Academy of the Russian Armed Forces] contends that, for centuries, Russia has struggled to acquire an exit to the Baltic and Black seas and that “the deprivation of such free exits would contradict [Russia’s] national interests.” … Attempts by any state in Europe, America, or Asia to capitalize on existing disputes among the CIS states or to strengthen its influence in these states … would violate Russia’s national interests and security.

… General Rodionov’s bold views about the new doctrine may well reflect a civil-military rift concerning the extent to which old Soviet imperial interests should be pursued by military means.

AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY, 23 November 1992—Military commanders at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) and their civilian counterparts at NATO Headquarters, Brussels … see dangers looming both inside Russia and among its neighbors as a result of growing military factions in the unstable Russian political situation …

“There is still an awful lot of hardware in Russia, and an awful lot of nuclear weapons in Russia,” [British General Sir Brian Kenny, deputy supreme allied commander Europe] said.