Cruising routinely through the chill North Pacific last fall, U.S. Navy ships and aircraft reported unusual Russian missile activity. The Navy tracked a couple of Russian intercontinental missile shots into northern waters, considered deploying a U.S. submarine to snag a made-in-Moscow ICBM nose cone before Russian pick-up ships could get to it. During the past fortnight the Navy watched with increasing interest as radar-studded Russian trawlers headed thousands of miles southward into the Central Pacific. Last week the Navy and the U.S. got the news through Moscow's Tass Agency of what the Red fleet was up to.
The Soviet Union,...