PENTAGON WAR SCENARIO SPOTLIGHTS RUSSIA

STUDY OF POTENTIAL THREATS PRESUMES U.S. WOULD DEFEND LITHUANIA

Barton Gellman Washington Post Staff Writer
February 20, 1992; Page a1

A classified study prepared as the basis for the Pentagon's budgetary planning through the end of the century casts Russia as the gravest potential threat to U.S. vital interests and presumes the United States would spearhead a NATO counterattack if Russia launched an invasion of Lithuania U.S. intervention in Lithuania, which would reverse decades of American restraint in the former Soviet Union's Baltic sphere of influence, is one of seven hypothetical roads to war that the Pentagon studied to help the military services size and justify their forces through 1999. In the study, the Pentagon neither advocates nor predicts any specific conflict.

The Lithuanian scenario contemplates a major war by land, sea and air in which 24 NATO divisions, 70 fighter squadrons and six aircraft carrier battle groups would keep the Russian navy "bottled up in the eastern Baltic," bomb supply lines in Russia and use armored formations to expel Russian forces from Lithuania. The authors state that Russia is unlikely to respond with nuclear weapons, but they provide no basis for that assessment.

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National security officials outside the Pentagon sharply disputed the scenario's premise, noting that the United States never recognized the Soviet Union's World War II conquest of the Baltic states but steered clear of interference there for fear of nuclear war. One State Department official said the Pentagon scenario "strikes me like being more of a Tom Clancy novel." Another official with responsibility for European security policy said flatly, "We have no vital interest in Lithuania."

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Wolfowitz, who requested the scenarios in an Aug. 10 memorandum, wrote that they would "guide program formulation and evaluation." Wolfowitz asked for two scenarios centering on Russia: a smaller, more rapidly developing threat based on the consolidation of existing Russian forces, and a much larger, more slowly developing threat premised on "reconstitution" of a Russian-based hostile superpower.

The reconstitution scenario names no adversary, citing only a "resurgent/emergent global threat," or REGT. It describes a five-year U.S. buildup that would come in response to a Russian buildup, could exceed peak Cold War levels and could lead to a major global war.

The Lithuania Scenario

The Lithuania scenario is a potential diplomatic embarrassment, emerging as it has in the aftermath of a joint declaration Feb. 1 by President Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin that "Russia and the United States do not regard each other as potential adversaries."

It is also the only European contingency in the Pentagon document. Congressional advocates of drawing U.S. forces in Europe below the 150,000 troop level set by the Pentagon for the mid-1990s can be expected to challenge the realism of the scenario and assert that no plausible mission remains for large-scale NATO forces.

Finally, the Lithuania scenario is the most demanding single military contingency in the Pentagon document and, therefore, a potentially controversial yardstick for the military force required in the late 1990s. A working group from the Joint Staff's planning directorate, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the office of program analysis and evaluation estimated it would take 7 1/3 divisions, 45 fighter squadrons and six aircraft carriers to fight the Russians.

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REGT Scenario

A "resurgent/emergent global threat," or REGT, becomes capable of threatening U.S. interests worldwide. According to national security sources, the scenario refers to Russia, with or without other former Soviet republics.

The REGT develops into an "authoritarian and strongly anti-democratic" government over about three years, beginning in 1994. After four or five years of military expansion, the REGT is ready to begin "a second Cold War" by the year 2001, or launch a major global war that could last for years. Pentagon planners assume that the United States would spend years of political debate before beginning a buildup in response to the REGT. "Reconstitution" of U.S. forces, as the Pentagon calls the buildup, would include expanded recruitment, weapons modernization and greatly increased production, and, if necessary, the draft.

No outcome is projected for a global war.