Soviet Buildup, New U.S. Naval Strategy Worry Nordic Nations

HVERAGERDI, Iceland —  The large buildup of the Soviet Union’s Northern Fleet since the early 1970s, coupled with a new and aggressive U.S. naval strategy in the European Arctic, has raised the prospect of a superpower confrontation in a region long noted for an absence of political tension.

These developments, described by area specialists as part of a gradual rather than sudden change, have unsettled Nordic governments, which see growing U.S. and Soviet interest in their region as a possible threat to their security.

Although tension in this region remains low compared to better-known global trouble spots, Nordic government military analysts believe that the potential for confrontation has increased substantially.

Government officials and defense specialists from the United States and the five Nordic countries--Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland--gathered recently in this village retreat 20 miles west of Reykjavik to study the implications.

“The danger of a superpower conflict spilling over into the Nordic area has definitely increased,” said Tomas Ries, a research associate at the Norwegian Institute for Foreign Affairs in Oslo.

‘Mediterraneanization’

In interviews, senior Norwegian officials expressed concern about a possible “Mediterraneanization” of the Norwegian Sea--a reference to the large Soviet and American naval presense in the eastern Mediterranean.

Western military observers trace the buildup of the Soviet Northern Fleet, based on the Kola Peninsula, to the early 1970s, about the time the Soviets developed long-range missiles that enable submarines to hit targets on the U.S. mainland from positions close to their Arctic bases. Previously, these submarines had to move well south into the Atlantic to get within range of their U.S. targets.

According to the Institute of Strategic Studies in London, the concentration of Soviet submarines today is greater in the Nordic region than anywhere else in the world.

In response to this buildup and other, more global, developments, the U.S. Navy recently adopted an aggressive new strategy for the Nordic region that requires its submarines to move north swiftly into the Barents Sea at the earliest stages of a crisis and destroy nuclear missile submarines and attack submarines of the Northern Fleet in their home waters.

This concept, part of a comprehensive review of U.S. naval strategy published in January, 1986, also envisions U.S. aircraft carrier groups moving into northern waters cleared of hostile submarines to reinforce Norwegian defenses and possibly to support amphibious landings in the region.

Maritime Choke Points

Previously, the Navy’s strategy for the North Atlantic was purely defensive. It called for U.S. submarines to lie in wait at so-called choke points between Greenland, Iceland and northern Britain and engage Soviet submarines as they moved south to fire nuclear missiles or attack allied shipping lanes.

On one hand, the Navy’s new concept offers welcome reassurance to Norway and Denmark, both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, that the Nordic region would not be abandoned to the enemy at the onset of hostilities.

The revised strategy has focused attention on the northern region, an area that used to fear that its defense needs were being ignored by an alliance historically preoccupied with the possibility of conflict along the central front through divided Germany.

In the past three years, the presence of U.S. carrier battle groups in the Norwegian Sea has increased, reflecting the new conditions. But compared with other, more volatile parts of the world, this presence is relatively minor.

From an average of just over four days a year between 1975 and 1985, these U.S. battle groups now spend up to two weeks a year in the region.

On the other hand, despite the potential advantages of this new attention, Nordic officials find it distinctly unsettling. While many of these officials at the meeting welcomed the increased U.S. interest in the region, they also voiced concern about a concept that many of them described as overly dramatic, forceful and provocative.

Some Nordic officials see the Navy’s strategy as a high-risk policy that could suddenly transform their region into a major battle zone.

Sources in Norway and in neutral Sweden have also noted that the Navy’s high-profile presentation of its offensive strategy has generated public concern about a perceived American willingness to use military rather than political means in a crisis.

The most sensitive aspect of the U.S strategy is that which advocates large-scale attacks on Soviet nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs). Many U.S. and Nordic defense specialists have voiced concern that such action, taken against a part of Moscow’s nuclear deterrent in the earliest stages of what is still a conventional conflict, might trigger a nuclear exchange starting in the region.

“There are many in Norway who are relieved about the increased American interest but worried about the idea of going after SSBNs early in a conflict,” Ries said.

Horizontal Escalation

The Navy’s idea of so-called horizontal escalation--attacking the Soviet Union in regions far from an immediate crisis point--has also generated concern as the superpowers increase their naval presence in the region.

With Moscow’s recent emphasis on producing quieter submarines, doubt has been expressed about the U.S. Navy’s ability to quickly locate and destroy the large numbers of Soviet submarines before they scatter into the open sea.

Although superior technology has made American submarines far more difficult to detect than their Soviet counterparts, respected Western sources say the gap is closing rapidly.

Retired Royal Navy Capt. John Moore, writing in the current issue of Jane’s Fighting Ships, noted that recent Soviet progress and potential breakthroughs in quiet-running technology could transform anti-submarine warfare.

“Fifteen years ago the average Soviet boat was very noisy when compared with her Western contemporaries,” Moore commented. “Now the situation is totally different.”

U.S. submarine warfare secrets passed to the Soviets by an American spy ring headed by former Navy warrant officer John A. Walker, and the illegal transfer of Western quieting technology to military shipyards in Leningrad in the early 1980s, have facilitated Soviet efforts in this area and added to the doubts about the new Nordic strategy.

Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger and former Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman Jr. have described the security damage of these developments as considerable.

John Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago political scientist and an outspoken critic of the Navy’s offensive strategy, argued that significant Soviet improvements in quieting technology would undermine the plan’s validity.

“If the strategy calls for destroying Soviet SSBNs quickly but you can’t find them, then it raises some fundamental questions,” he said.

Steven Miller, director of Defense Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies, added, “If the damage is as bad as Weinberger and Lehman say it is, then the maritime strategy is in trouble.”

The fact that a Norwegian defense contractor, Kongsberg Vaapenfabrik, was one of the two companies involved in the illegal sale of advanced milling technology that gives the Soviets the capability of producing quieter submarines has strained relations between the United States and Norway.

Nordic countries, eager to retain the low level of tension that has characterized the region since World War II, want to maintain a strategic balance in the area, but without a major U.S. or Soviet military presence.

However, with little direct leverage, these countries have devoted their energies to longer-term measures for reducing the possibility of confrontation.

Recently, for example, Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg, in meetings with Finnish officials in Helsinki, talked about how to extend discussions on arms control and confidence-building measures between the superpowers.

Sweden has promoted the idea of maritime confidence-building measures between the superpowers, but U.S. officials familiar with the subject indicate that the complexities of issues such as verification and notification of movement make any accord on maritime arms control or confidence-building measures extremely unlikely soon.

For the present at least, any reversal of the heightened superpower presence in the Nordic region seems equally unlikely, Nordic officials believe.

Tyler Marshall, The Times’ bureau chief in London, was recently on assignment in Iceland.