The Third World War: August 1985

CHAPTER 9: The Invasion of Yugoslavia

The situation in the early summer of 1985 was fraught with crises and uncertainties of many kinds. The year had begun with the Soviet exercise in the use of military power to achieve political ends in the demotion of the US from its world role. The resulting instability had, however, shown up at least as many weaknesses on the Soviet side as on the American. And the Russians had to fear that all these sources of anxiety might culminate together in some way — Chinese pressure in the central Asian republics, the collapse of the Middle Eastern house of cards, Yugoslav tendencies to move closer to the West, and the cumulative effects on the Soviet-controlled regimes in Eastern Europe of an oil shortage, higher food prices and increased military effort at the expense of civil consumption.

The comparatively cautious policy hitherto pursued, which might be described by the slogan ‘proxy and periphery’, had not yet produced the promised results. The attempt to turn the Eurasian landmass into a base for worldwide naval operations had suffered the inescapable setbacks of geography and temperament. The choice now lay more clearly between accepting an unwelcome and even humiliating return to previous spheres of influence, and making violent and rapid use of the remaining real Soviet assets in the shape of its truly formidable conventional attack capability in Europe and its ruthless ability to suppress dissent wherever the Red Army was present.

The West was not wholly unaware of the debate now being conducted in the Kremlin. The belief that one of the Soviet options must be war in Europe, including the recapture of Yugoslavia, had led at last to a real effort to make good deficiencies in the conventional forces available to Allied Command Europe in NATO and in the all-important air defence of the United Kingdom as the bridgehead for US reinforcements. (For the action taken to improve the UK defence capabilities, see Appendix 1.) Means of counter-action in Yugoslavia were depressingly small, but at least from the Western political point of view conditions were more favourable. The Italian Communist Party, whose general allegiance to NATO had remained somewhat qualified, could be relied upon (it was hoped) to support the defence of an independent communist regime finding its own way to socialism against the forcible imposition of Soviet control. Yugoslavia was historically a prototype of Euro-communism and geographically a bastion against Soviet pressure to conform. Some preparations could therefore be made by US forces in Italy to counter a possible pro-Soviet coup supported by Red Army troops from Hungary.

In the final stages of the Soviet debate, opinion varied as to whether Yugoslavia should be dealt with in isolation or whether there should be a Soviet advance on a broad front in Europe. Those advocating more general action not only emphasized the importance of prosecuting Soviet foreign policy as a coherent whole but saw this in particular as bringing a series of advantages. Acquisition of the greater part of Western Europe would extend still further the glacis hitherto provided only by the communist states of Eastern Europe. It could remove, perhaps for years, the possibility of US action on the Western flank. It might be best to do this before China was ready, before the Soviet position in the Middle East deteriorated too greatly, and before improvements in NATO defences went much further. It would allow, and indeed necessitate, strong measures against those in Poland and Czechoslovakia who were now demanding not only freedom of expression but also cheaper food. The destruction which war would cause in both Germanies would buy a further breathing space before the German problem once more posed a threat to the Soviet Union. In a major conflict with NATO Yugoslavia would be unimportant and could be dealt with en passant. Limited Soviet action in response to an appeal for help from within the country was in any case attractive. Effective US counter-intervention was unlikely, but if it took place it could be used to justify a more general attack upon the West through Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

In the end events as usual took control. The Soviet-inspired Committee for the Defence of Yugoslavia staged an abortive foray into Slovenia, precipitating a collision between the Slovenian provincial government and the federal government in Belgrade. The Committee called for Soviet help. At the same time some bakeries closed in Gdansk and Dresden due to diversion of fuel to factories producing military transport, and the resultant riots threatened to get out of hand. Soviet reaction was seen to be unavoidable. The hard-liners won the day.

Meanwhile, the manoeuvre season had arrived. The Soviet command was staging two major exercises, one in Hungary and one of unprecedented size in East Germany. The Final Act signed at the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe required the notification of manoeuvres over a certain size and encouraged states holding them to invite observers from other countries. The Russians played this in two ways. On grounds that they were of relatively little importance they failed to notify the Hungarian manoeuvres, believing that these might be the first to be converted into the real thing, but notified the German exercise through the normal channels.

On 27 July 1985 a Soviet airborne division in an unopposed landing secured the approaches to Belgrade. At the same time a Soviet motor-rifle division from Hungary crossed the Yugoslav border on the Budapest-Zagreb road, followed by another. The pro-Soviet Committee was recognized as the provisional government of Yugoslavia, and Yugoslav frontier forces, after a short engagement, were quickly obliged to withdraw towards Zagreb. The Soviet plan was to occupy Zagreb and thence link up with the airborne troops east to Belgrade and fan out west to Ljubljana. Meanwhile, the exercises in East Germany intensified, with more formations moving forward from the Western Military Districts of the Soviet Union through Poland.

The NATO side, in spite of many warnings, had failed to make specific provision for this kind of threat in Yugoslavia. That country had remained the ‘grey area’ par excellence. It was not covered by the NATO commitment to automatic defence. But equally the West had not renounced interest in what happened there, as they had by implication in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. The continued neutrality of Yugoslavia was obviously a Western interest of prime importance. But it is difficult to guarantee a country whose foreign policy is based on non-commitment, as Britain and France had found with Belgium prior to 1939. Therefore greyness was made a virtue: the very uncertainty of Western reaction was made a principle of deterrence.

The grey chicken now came home to roost and NATO had to decide — or rather the USA decided, with reluctant Italian acquiescence, while NATO tagged along. In the hope of favourable Yugoslav reaction, and in view of all the long history of Italian-Yugoslav conflict, it was vital to avoid the use of Italian forces. But after some days of furious diplomacy in Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, US marines and airborne forces from Italy were able to make unopposed landings at Rijeka (Fiume), Ljubljana and some of the Dalmatian islands. What was much more serious, within twenty-four hours they were in action against Soviet airborne and armoured units.

At this stage the US government still harboured a final hope that they might be able to isolate events in Yugoslavia from the wider European scene, and above all that they might be able to limit the impact upon American public opinion of any fighting there. They called for an immediate meeting of the Security Council. They ordered their commanders in the first instance not to move beyond the boundaries of Slovenia, and, to prevent the inflaming of opinion in the United States, to put an immediate ban on all television coverage of their operations.

But they were too late. They had counted without the enterprise of a resolute Italian television cameraman, Mario Salvadori. He was not employed by the official Italian television service, RAI, but by an international newsfilm agency. He had at one time lived in the States. In Italy he had made good friends among the American marines, whose peacetime manoeuvres and parades had provided him with useful material when other news was scarce. He happened to be at their base when the alert began, and his friends took him along ‘for the ride’ when they were airlifted to Ljubljana.

It was thus decreed by chance that one of the first encounters between Soviet and US forces in the Third World War took place under the eye of a television camera. With his portable and lightweight electronic equipment, Salvadori was present at the first contact, when Soviet forces thrusting into Slovenia came face to face with American marines on the outskirts of Kostanjevica, between Ljubljana and Zagreb. Three Soviet tanks, moving forward in the confident belief that no US forces had yet reached the area, were surprised by a unit of US marines whose armament included Milan anti-tank weapons. All three tanks were very quickly put out of action by first-shot strikes, and a company of Soviet infantry on a hillside beyond the town was swiftly recalled to redeploy in a stronger position immediately to the rear. At the same time Soviet strike aircraft carried out a rocket attack on the Americans, causing some very ugly casualties.

Much of this Salvadori, a daring and intelligent cameraman, recorded on tape. It was action material of extraordinary drama. The high quality of the ENG pictures gave a sense of reality and vividness greater than any in film pictures of Americans in action in the now distant Vietnam War. The destruction of the Soviet tanks, one of which blew up within a 100 metres of the cameraman’s position; the shocked, drawn faces of Russian prisoners being escorted to the rear; and the spectacle of the Soviet infantry suddenly withdrawing, so that the whole of the small hillside seemed to move, conveyed in sharp, almost exultant terms the information that the Red Army was far from being invulnerable. The trained military eye might have noted that the Soviet infantry, in their sudden rearward move, were providing a model of how to carry out the very difficult operation of a withdrawal in contact, under fire. A military observer would certainly have recognized that three tanks do not constitute a significant force. But this small action, if only because it was small and readily grasped, came over as a clear US victory. Only the pictures of the mutilated victims of the rocket attack, one screaming in agony, were a reminder of the cost.

Salvadori was not only a skilled cameraman. He had had long experience of outwitting officialdom. He quickly made his way to Ljubljana, without disclosing the contents of his recording, and managed to get a lift on an aircraft back to Italy. There, through his agency, the material was transmitted by satellite throughout the world. It was in the hands of the American networks before the White House or the Pentagon were even aware of its existence. The networks, moreover, knew that the material had already been circulated widely, not least to the Iron Curtain countries, who had helped themselves unhesitatingly to the satellite transmissions of the agency. So into the homes of the American public went, unplanned, uncensored, almost unedited — except for one peculiarly hideous shot of a marine whose face had been blown away — these scenes of the first clash between the Russians and the Americans.

With acute anxiety the United States authorities awaited the reaction of their own people. To their relief, and also to their surprise — as indeed to that of most commentators in the press — the result was not one of dismay or fear, but of anger and pride. There was anger at the sufferings inflicted by the bombing, seen so close upon the screen, but there was also an upsurge of pride at this spectacle of Soviet troops being held in check and even withdrawing. In an instant, without formal declarations of war, the American public felt themselves to be at war, and some fundamental instinct for survival welded them together. The battle of Kostanjevica was a minute operation in the huge waves of fighting which were to follow; Salvadori’s pictures were to be outdone by miles of more dramatic, more terrible coverage. But few recordings of this first television war were to have such an influence. There could be no doubt now, not only in the minds of the American public, but in the world at large, that the Soviet Union and the United States were involved in a shooting war. And the first recorded glimpse of it had been a glimpse of Soviet troops on the run. -

This incident was easily presented to the Warsaw Pact countries as what some at least of the Soviet hawks had been waiting for, the ‘attack’ by the West on a communist state. It was the momentum of events, however, much more than the actual incident itself, that now took charge. Soviet forces were joined in battle with troops of the United States. This was the stupendous, almost unbelievable event that brought into brutal reality what had so long been feared. The Soviet Union and the United States were in combat action against each other on a battlefield. The chocks were out. The huge military mass of the USSR was already beginning to move down the slipway. There could now for the Soviet Union be no possible alternative to the launching of the full invasion, already well prepared, of Western Europe, and the advance to the Rhine, for the destruction of the Atlantic Alliance, and the removal of the threat from US ‘imperialism’, operating from the forward base of Federal Germany.