From: JMARTTILA@FINABO.ABO.FI (Fast-Eddie Felson)
Subject: Re: Finnish defence
Organization: Turku School of Economics
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 01:49:10 GMT
X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.24

From: mtf@saha.hut.fi (dalens ande)
> Although I'm no military expert, I can't really agree with this. The soviet
>military (along with space research) was *the* pride of ex-Soviet Union, and
>it was top class by any standards. The Soviet troops weren't very motivated in
>Afghanistan, but things could be different. A charismatic leader could use the
>current confusion and social problems and focus peoples thoughts on nationa-
>lism and panslavism, and have the most motivated army in the world. The
>know-how and high-tech are still there, at least for the most part.
 
I would not call the vast majority of ex-Soviet or Russian troops top class.
The most significant thing in the red army is its size. There sure are some
technically advanced and well trained units, but most of the manpower is what
you would be, if your 'TJ' were 1000 days (like theirs) O;). Russian don't
have that much hi-tech or know-how that we hadn't heard about. Anyway, 
hi-tech has one bad side - it's expensive and they really can't afford it.
The red army could rather be described as a quantity army than a quality
army. 
What comes to the motivation, an invader never has the motivation of
someone defending one's own home. Nationalism isn't really the key to
motivation in the red army that consists of ethnically very different 
groups.
 
>Also, having observed the finnish army from a grass-root level for the past
>nine months (yea, I'm in the army *sigh*), I haven't become very convinced
>of the effeciency of the finnish army... If the russians would attack here,
>finns would probably be very motivated to fight back (the gallups show this,
>most people I know who are doing the armed service would, according to their 
>own words at least, flee to Surinam :-), but the level of technical skill
>and competence is *not* high, and at the moment most people there aren't 
>motivated at all. 
 
The motivation problem in the Finnish army is not about men not willing
to defend their country with guns, but feeling that the training is not
interesting or that it's useless and one has better ways to spend
one's time. For the red army (call it whatever, but basically it's quite
the same it used to be) the motivation problem is different. The military
service lasts 2-3 years which the privates might spend by digging up 
potatoes or thousands of kms away from home fighting against someone 
defending one's home, religion & country (like in Afghanistan).
The technical skill and competence of the Finnish army is fairly good
especially after modernization of our air force. Our navy is small, but
the attack crafts are partly new and under modernization. The ground forces
are adequately equipped for defence warfare.
Geography is also on our side and that can be seen in resources allocation,
training and peacetime preparations.
 
> Well, I used the "few hundred" as a symbolic expression... I'm sure they
>could send *enough* MIGs to gain complete control of finnish air space 
>(which of course would be disastrous for Finland) if they wanted to.
 
Now we have to think about what would be the objective of the red army and
who would have assets to protect against it. It's not very likely that
the Russians or whatever they would be called would come for only Finland.
Even if they did, the other countries would not like to watch the border
of the western world being radically moved to west. By this I want to say that
all those 'hundreds of MiGs' would have other places to be than just Finnish
airspace O:)
 
> Yes, you're probably right. My only defense is that with guerilla war one
>could perhaps lenghten the situation of war and thus the international pres-
>sure on the attacker would be more effective. Granted, history has shown
>that international pressure isn't much to count on, but the other alternative
>(i.e the current organized military) doesn't seem very appealing either.
>A short fight, may be a week or two, huge losses - and that's it. The situa-
>tion would be "normalized" quickly. 
 
The international pressure depends on a) the distance to the crisis area
b) the ethnical situation c) the 'rate of civilization' d) political
aspects and e) economical interests. Europeans don't care that much about 
some banana republic or a poor asian or african country which is far away, 
of some other race and religion and not accustomed to the western system 
and standards.

The strategic goals of guerilla warfare could be that a) the threat of it 
often makes the enemy consider twice attacking, b) if there's regular war 
going on somewhere else it forces the enemy allocate more troops to maintain
order and thus takes them away from the actual front c) it makes occupying 
the country cost by the means of money and manpower (like in Afghanistan)
and that way makes it unbearable.
 
                JM

    _______________________________________________________________________
    Jouni Marttila - Yo-kyl{ 11 B 25, 20540 Turku, FINLAND - +358 21 374624
         jmarttila@finabo.abo.fi - jmarttila@finabo - abovax::jmarttila
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