The Myth of Soviet Military Supremacy : <i> by Tom Gervasi (Harper & Row: $24.95; 545 pp.) </i>

It is with good reason that Tom Gervasi titles his book “The Myth of Soviet Military Superiority.” He thinks the story of the Soviet Union’s preponderance in arms is all a big fabrication. Not only are the Soviets behind us in strategic weapons, he says, but they are behind in intermediate range and tactical nuclear arms in land forces and conventional strength on the European front, and in overall military spending.

Gervasi goes on to argue that the Reagan Administration’s massive defense buildup has been sold to the U.S. public with lies and manipulated information, and that the Administration has systematically suppressed dissent by using threats, punishments and selective favors.

As a result, Gervasi concludes, most of the main-stream press and think-tanks have been dragooned into a conspiracy of deceit. The real reason the United States is amassing ever-greater arsenals, Gervasi states, is because the defense industrialists want to increase their already-swollen profits.

Perhaps because of the iconoclastic views presented, this book is sure to be quoted frequently, and its message will be widely spread. Gervasi, the director of the Center for Military Research and Analysis in New York, has amassed formidable statistical information. The appendixes, footnotes, end notes and index constitute more than half of the volume. The dust jacket notes with pride that “comprehensive notes and appendixes document where every piece of evidence was obtained.” So the quality of the author’s command of facts, his care in argumentation, and his identification of sources become crucial in judging the book’s value.

Unfortunately, Gervasi indulges in much the same use of half-truths and tailored arguments for which he so justifiably excoriates his opponents. Regarding bombers, for example, Gervasi calls them and their weapons the “most important” (emphasizing megatonnage), “most accurate” of all, and highly dependable in reaching their targets. In supporting these assertions, however, he obscures the distinction between bombers which would penetrate Soviet air space at some risk to drop bombs or launch missiles, and aircraft which would stand off in relative safety and launch cruise missiles from a distance. Regarding submarine-launched ballistic missiles, he talks about the U.S. SLBMs of today being superior in accuracy to Soviet land-based rockets. While the U.S. Trident II D-5 missiles of tomorrow may have these characteristics, presently deployed U.S. SLBMs do not. One is left with a suspicion that the virtues of bombers and submarines are exaggerated and the effectiveness of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles minimized because Soviet strength is concentrated in the last category.

Regarding U.S. command and control, Gervasi argues that there is not “necessarily any need for a communications system that is sure to survive a nuclear attack. A retaliatory attack does not have to rely on such a system.” A hundred pages later, the author discusses the threat to Soviet command and control posed by Pershing-II missile deployments. There he quotes Defense Electronics magazine approvingly: “The removal of C2 (command and control) capability by a comparatively small number of Pershings would render much of the Soviet ICBM first strike and retaliatory forces impotent.” Gervasi seems to be arguing the case both ways.

According to Gervasi, U.S. Establishment spokesmen claim that American use of nuclear weapons in Europe would carry “no risk” of escalation to an intercontinental exchange. Perhaps one or two spokesmen have made such foolish claims, but there surely cannot have been very many of them. Gervasi also asserts, in arguing the balance of land forces in Europe, that Soviet forces “in the Leningrad, Baltic, Byelorussian and Carpathian military districts . . . are not in Europe.”

In quite a few cases, Gervasi’s end notes do not support his statements in the text. For example, he cites a 1949 interview of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to claim that Dulles acknowledged that there was then no real evidence of a threat from the Soviet Union. This did not sound like the Dulles I knew, so I looked up Gervasi’s end note, which cited “interview, U.S. News and World Report (March, 1949).” The citation carried no reference, incidentally, to the volume, number, date or page in the magazine, and I went through all four weekly issues of that month finding no interview.

Looking through other issues of the same year, I did find an interview with Dulles published on Jan. 21, 1949. That interview did not carry the words attributed to Dulles by Gervasi, however, and Dulles’ tone was not as represented. Dulles said: “You have a tense situation like a dry autumn in the wood when any fool can start a fire. . . . Soviet communism teaches that, while you must work for the overthrow of non-communist governments, you have to pick your time. . . . The peoples of Western Europe . . . feel naked. . . . Russian Communists’ . . . methods are violent. . . .”

Take another example. On Page 145, Gervasi asserts that “America paid $122 billion in 1982 alone to equip and maintain its forces in Europe.” The author’s end note cites a 1983 article by Earl C. Ravenal--even though, in his text, Gervasi attributes the information to the General Accounting Office. Comparing Gervasi’s language with Ravenal’s, one discovers that Gervasi misquoted Ravenal’s figure by a few billion dollars and got the year wrong.

What Ravenal had done was to break down the total 1984 Defense Department budget request of $274 billion into European concerns, Asian concerns, Rapid Deployment Forces, and strategic programs. He then assigned more than 40% of the total to Europe, figuring that Europe was America’s central military commitment. This gave Europe a prorated 40% share of all Defense appropriations of any kind--from those supporting Army divisions in the United States, to new weapons development, service academies, recruiting stations, Pentagon operations, etc. Ravenal’s organization of his data was odd, but at least he explained what he was doing. Gervasi uses Ravenal’s figures to argue that U.S. forces stationed in Europe as a “token of support” for NATO cost egregious sums and--besides--are really maintained there to subjugate our European allies.

If the examples just given were representative of but a few aberrations in generally careful documentation, it would be one thing; but one could go on and on with additional instances of arguments and citations gone astray. It is a pity, because Gervasi has presented some truths. A powerful case can be made for much of what he believes. A few of his suspicions about the Reagan Administration are well founded without a doubt. The idea of Soviet military supremacy probably is a myth. I am reminded of a remark made by Madame de Stael about the Russians almost two centuries ago: “If they do not attain their objective, they always go past it.” Whether or not this be true of the Soviets, it does seem descriptive of Tom Gervasi.