Word: westerners
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...strength of the Khmer Rouge, largest of the three guerrilla groups (the others are Sihanouk's Nationalist Army and former Premier Son Sann's Khmer People's National Liberation Front), is in dispute. Soviet and Vietnamese military advisers insist that the Kampuchean armed forces can contain the threat, but Western analysts have their doubts. Kampuchea's 30,000-man regular army and the 100,000 irregulars assigned to defend their country are largely untested. Many Kampucheans fear that once the Vietnamese draw down their forces, the Khmer Rouge may succeed in grabbing power once more...
Gorbachev has little choice but to strive to bring the military under tighter control. While the armed forces have long occupied a privileged position in Soviet life, military spending has become a major impediment to Gorbachev's drive to revitalize the economy. Many Western experts estimate that the armed forces consume as much as 17% of the Soviet gross national product (vs. 6% for the U.S.). That comes to roughly $300 billion and places a heavy burden on the country. Observers agree that Gorbachev's restructuring of the civilian economy will not be possible without parallel changes in the military...
...high technology in weapons threatens the whole Soviet concept of war with obsolescence," says Christopher Donnelly, director of Soviet studies at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. Every Soviet service has turned to technology in a faltering attempt to keep up. Though not always state of the art by Western standards, lasers, computers and satellite technology have been brought into the arsenal and forced officers and troops to deal with complex new weapons...
...Soviet surface navy, by contrast, continues to lag far behind Western fleets. High operating costs and wear and tear have forced Soviet ships to spend 85% of their time in port, compared with 66% for U.S. vessels. Moscow has severely curtailed Pacific-fleet activity since 1984. "There's no doubt that the Soviet navy is deploying markedly less," says Harlan Ullman, an expert on Moscow's fleet at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Signs support the thesis that they are changing their strategy...
...force remains the most backward Soviet service. When a Soviet defector flew a MiG-25 fighter to Japan in 1976, Western experts judged the craft to be little more than a crude weapons platform -- underpowered, poorly built and laced with dangerously primitive electrical wiring. Soviet jet engines still burn out early and guzzle more fuel than comparable U.S. power plants. The Soviets continue to fly 1950s-era propeller-driven Bear-H reconnaissance bombers on patrols off Alaska and the U.S.'s Eastern Seaboard. New jet fighters like the MiG-29, a downsized version of the 14-year...